Jacen had just left the lake and started back toward the village when another storm came in. The rolling thunderclaps had been warning to wrap up his conversation with Vergere's spirit, but he didn't finish it soon enough to avoid the downpour.
When the rain came it came fast and hard, and it quickly turned the already-damp topsoil to dark muck that tried to suck in Jacen's boots with every step. To escape the rain he had to climb up onto the hard root of one bora tree, awkwardly keeping balance while both hands remained bound in front of him, while the earth beneath liquefied and churned before his eyes.
Against the pounding of the rain and the rasp (the good, painful rasp) of his own breathing, he heard another noise. At first he thought it was the scream of an animal; then he recognizing the cry of a person.
He reached out with the Force and felt panic, fear. Two people, both panicking, both afraid. He knew what that meant, but to be sure, he reached within himself and found the dark hole in himself where Vergere had once dug a Yuuzhan Vong seed implant whose nerves had grasped out and intertwined with his own. He found his Vongsense, like the Force but not, that let him tell the presence of some Yuuzhan Vong warriors, a half-dozen perhaps, almost certainly on the attack.
He remembered what Tahiri had told him as she flew him to the village, that the Sith woman who'd taken Ben had come with a squadron of Yuuzhan Vong warriors from the renegade fleet who had attacking the Ferroans and offworlders in the village; some had been captured, but more had fled into the forest.
He heard something else, something lower and deeper. It took him a moment to put aside the rattle of rainfall and recognize the familiar hum and whir of a moving lightsaber.
He could have stayed there, safe and halfway sheltered from the storm, but he heard the crackle of a lightsaber digging into yorik coral, and another scream.
Whether he'd been Jacen or Caedus or something else, he'd never just sat around and done nothing.
He used the Force to hurry his spring through the forest. He made his running bounds as long as possible, lifted his feet back up the moment they hit the surface of the liquefying mud.
He found them in less than a minute: two blonde women, calves halfway buried in mud, surrounded by six Yuuzhan Vong warriors. As he landed on the gnarled crest of a jutting tree root, he saw one warrior lunge forward and slam his amphistaff against Tahiri's lightsaber. As she tried to push back, another one swiped forward at Danni.
Danni Quee had never been a fighter of any kind; she barely dodged the blow but she had nothing to defend herself with and her feet were stuck in the mud. Another warrior leaped forward, roughly grabbed a fistful of gold hair, and threw her into the muck. As Tahiri tried to hold off two warriors at once, the others crowded around Danni, amphi-staffs raised.
With a shout and a push from the Force, Jacen leaped into the air. He cut like an arrow through the rain and slammed boots-first into the back of the Yuuzhan Vong closest to Danni. The warrior splashed into the mud. Jacen reached out, grabbed another warrior by the wrists, planted one boot against his chest, and pulled hard enough to pop both arms out of their shoulder-joints.
He ducked low just in time to avoid another swipe. Danni tried to rise but he used the Force to shove her back down in the mud; it was the safest place to be. He came back up in front of the warrior with two useless arms dangling from his sides and snapped up a high kick that took him in the chin and sent him tumbling to the ground.
He glanced sideways at Tahiri. The woman thrust her lightsaber between the plates of one warrior's armor, causing him to shout and drop his amphistaff. Tahiri caught it in mid-tumble and the creature naturally, effortlessly, coiled its lower half around her forearm while its upper body snapped straight just in time to block an attack from another warrior.
Now fighting with two arms, Tahiri kicked the second warrior back, then spun around just in time to catch another warrior's downward swing with her lightsaber. She cracked her amphistaff in a nonlethal strike at her enemy's head and dropped him unconscious in the mud.
This was not the weak, pliable, desperate Tahiri Jacen remembered.
She spun and saw him; their eyes met. He knew that they'd come looking for him only to get caught, first by rain and then by renegade warriors, and that they'd never expected him to come to their rescue.
Her eyes dropped to the binds that clasped both his wrists together.
His fell to the lightsaber in her hand, sizzling and popping under steady rainfall.
He felt it all in the Force: the indecision, the shock, the distrust and bitterness, the urge to let Jacen fight and die pitifully against these random warriors because it was all he deserved and they both knew it.
To all of that Jacen had only one response, and he sent it loud and clear through the Force: Trust me.
She lashed out. The vertical blur of lightsaber cut the tether that bound his wrists together. The moment she completed her swipe her hand snapped back up and the silver cylinder spun through the air and slapped into Jacen's rain-wet palm.
All of it- hesitation, choice, action- had taken less than a second.
Tahiri spun to face her second attacker and began parrying his amphistaff blows. Jacen raised Tahiri's lightsaber and spun around just in time to parry another warrior's thrust. A lifetime of lightsaber training came back to him instantly; he pushed the enemy's staff aside, lunged in, and slid his saber through the gap between the warrior's thigh armor and kneecap. The Yuuzhan Vong let out a scream and fell into the mud.
Another one came at him. Jacen sidestepped the thrust of an amphistaff and brought up a foot to kick the Yuuzhan Vong in the side. His boot-tip missed the soft spot between the warrior's armor and cracked hard against a Vonduun plate. Pain shot through Jacen's foot and he stumbled back through the mud.
The warrior jumped forward. Jacen caught the fanged mouth of his amphistaff with his lightsaber blade and tried to thrust the burning energy into the creature's vulnerable mouth. The amphistaff hissed and cried out in pain and Jacen felt a rush of satisfaction-
-and then the tail end of the weapon curled forward. The dagger-blade of the amphistaff's tail end caught Jacen in the forearm. He cried out, jumped back, grasped Tahiri's lightsaber hard even as the pain shot through his body. There was no poison in an amphistaff's tail, he remembered that, but it didn't take the pain away. He looked down to see fresh blood staining the arm of his rain-soaked jumpsuit.
Blood. Blood of a living, breathing man.
He savored the sight of it, just as he savored the pain, and the anger that came with it.
Feeling more alive than ever since his resurrection, he lunged forward again. The warrior's amphistaff was injured, dying, going limp in his hands. The warrior tossed it aside and drew a short-bladed couffe. To go after a man with a long-blade like that was suicide, but these were Yuuzhan Vong, so warped, so convinced of the holy righteousness of their glorious cause that they would sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve their ultimate goal, even themselves.
So like Darth Caedus, he realized in a flash.
Then the warrior was on him. The mud tried to suck his feet down but he called on the Force, pulled his boots free, and barely dodged the thrust. The Yuuzhan Vong swiped out with his couffe-arm, aiming for Jacen's neck. Jacen brought up his lightsaber; the blue blade scraped and crackled against the warriors' armored forearm.
The Yuuzhan Vong threw his entire bodyweight on Jacen, intent on slicing open his neck even if it cost him his life.
Jacen shifted his blade downward; is scraped across the warrior's shoulder-pad, shifted, and cut clean through his neck.
The body instantly went limp against Jacen's. The couffe dropped in the mud and the heavy body threatened to pull Jacen down too, but he shifted his weight and let the headless corpse drop into the muck with its weapon.
He stared down at the body of the being he'd killed. He'd expected to feel something, elation maybe, or at least relief. Instead he felt a dull knowing pity for someone who'd lived to fiercely and died so pointlessly.
The rains had stopped. He wondered when that had happened.
"Jacen!" someone shouted.
He picked up his head and looked around. There was one enemy dead at his feet, three more unconscious or wounded in the mud. Tahiri seemed to have made an effort to incapacitate her enemies rather than kill them. She stood over one battered but breathing warrior, an amphistaff curled around either forearm, breathing hard, staring at something beyond him.
He followed her gaze. The last two warriors had Danni hoisted up between them. The woman's once-bright hair was plastered to her face by mud and rainwater. Her eyes were wide in fear as one warrior held the tip of his couffee against her neck. The second had one arm locked around her shoulder while the other held an amphistaff tight.
In broken Basic, the second warrior said, "Come closer, Jeedai, and woman dies."
Jacen lowered his weapon to his side but didn't shut it off. If these were normal beings he could have used the Force to meddle with their minds or pull the couffe-hand away. Failing that he could have summoned Force-lightning and fried them into submission, but even that wasn't an option, not here, not now.
Tahiri stepped up beside him. She said, "Turr ch'kor ma'rokk Yun-Yammka rok'arr sen!"
"Yar'at chell rokk qahn lokk!" the one with the couffe spat back.
"What did you tell them?" Jacen breathed.
"I told him Yun-Yammka doesn't want this."
"I take it he didn't agree."
"Pretty much."
Jacen tried to send calm to Danni through the Force. He didn't know what else he could do.
Then he remembered his Vongsense. He reached out and sensed from the warriors what he'd expected to find: fanatic conviction of the rightness of their cause, a desperate need to prove their devotion, and willingness to throw away any life, especially their own.
Yes, it was all too familiar. He wondered if anyone had found Darth Caedus as pathetic as he found these Yuuzhan Vong now.
Even as they stood there, threatening Tahiri's life, he found he didn't want to kill them. He shut off his lightsaber. It wouldn't do him any good.
Tahiri touched him in the Force with a question. She wanted to know what he was doing.
"Tell them their people will take them back," Jacen told her. "Tell them their Magister will forgive everything."
"Rel'yaim kout mekhes vorn'lath chokk," Tahiri said. "Yoll kormet sekh tor'churokk zaim."
He sensed some hesitation from the one with the amphistaff, but only steadfast devotion from the one with the couffee at Danni's deck.
The latter barked, "Shalk haim tchor'mekh buhl sehn'ail chokk."
"Nothing good?" Jacen muttered.
Tahiri shook her head. In a very low voice, she said, "Do you think we can take them?"
"No." He paused. "I'm going to try something else."
"Vongsense isn't the Force. We can't control their minds."
"No," Jacen said, "But we can nudge them a little bit. Can you make the one with the couffe confused?"
"Tchorr kell mol'yark qoll shell mok!" the one with the amphistaff jabbed the mouth-end of his weapon at Jacen and Tahiri.
She frowned; the scars on her forehead creased. "Maybe."
"Do it. Now."
He could feel Tahiri slip into the part of herself that was still Yuuzhan Vong, felt her try and reach out and at least blur the concentration of the one with the couffe. If she slowed his reflexed by half a second it could save Danni's life.
Their Vongsense was too weak to do more on the minds of sentients like these warriors, but non-sentient life-forms like the amphistaff were more pliable.
And after all, Jacen had always been good with animals.
He touched the primitive, simple mind of the amphistaff. He found it hungry for a taste of flesh. Amphistaff had to be training not to take a bite out of their owners, but sometimes instinct could overcome training.
He planted a little suggestion in its simple mind: Look right.
The amphistaff's head twitched toward Danni, toward the warrior with the couffe.
He sent one more suggestion. For a short second, that hard little blade looked like a tasty morsel.
The amphistaff snapped to one side. Before either warrior could react, its snake-like body brushed past the inside of Danni's chin. Its fangs clamped down on the couffe and jerked it out of the warrior's hand.
Tahiri grabbed hold of Danni in the Force and threw her down, but Jacen stayed in touch with his Vongsense. The amphistaff started writhing, jaws snapping, eager for a bite of either shocked warrior. The warrior with the staff threw it away and it shot off into the undergrowth.
Tahiri and Jacen both jumped forward. The warriors were defenseless but they raised their hands and claws anyway. They went down quickly; Tahiri cracked her amphistaff over one warrior's head while Jacen thrust his re-ignited light-saber-blade into the other's leg and threw him against a bora trunk hard enough to knock him out.
And then, finally, the forest was still.
Tahiri bent low and looped her shoulder under Danni's to help the Magster up. The older woman wiped the mud off her face with a jacket-sleeve and her green eyes found Jacen's.
"She swallowed and said, "You saved me again."
His mind flashed back to the ice-caves of Helska 4, twenty years and another life ago.
"I just wanted to help," he said. In the end, it had been that simple.
But then he looked down at the prone forms of those Yuuzhan Vong, who in their worst had reminded him so much of Darth Caedus, and he knew that no, it wasn't simple at all.
He felt another presence, quite clear in the Force. He turned around and saw Jaina, dark hair plastered to her face by rain, standing ten meters away with a shut-off lightsaber at one side. She'd reached them just too late, and now she stared at the scene in confusion and disbelief.
He looked down at the shut-off lightsaber in his hand; at the cut tether dangling limply from either metal cuff around each wrist.
He held the saber out to Tahiri, pommel-first. Without a word, she took it and hooked it to her belt.
"We need to talk." He looked around, let his gaze pass over the three women. "All of us."
As Tahiri helped steady Danni, Jacen looked across the forest at his sister, who stood where she was, motionless, watching him without a word.
-{}-
Despite being in a valley, the village had been built to withstand rain. Irrigation canals funneled most of the storm-water toward the nearest river, and the daumuteks themselves were sturdy things that didn't let a drop through their armor-strong bodies.
Even after the rains cleared, heavy clouds hung overhead. The air remained cool and damp as the gray day slid into black night.
When night seemed close enough, the Wraiths wandered out into the gloom. Huhunna insisted she could start a fire, even with all the rain, and Jesmin didn't doubt her Wookiee friend. Soon enough, all five of them were hunched around the leaping flame. The air was thick with the crisp smell of burning kindling, churned-up and muddy soil, and wet grass. Jesmin tried to savor the natural richness of those smells; despite all her best efforts, she hadn't been able to experience the richness of the Force here at all.
She did her best to hide her disappointment, especially since Scut seemed to be growing ever-more enchanted with this place. As they are around the fire, they mostly listened to the Yuuzhan Vong rattle off the interesting bio-engineering information he'd gotten from his talks with Kodra Val and the missing Qelah Kwaad, though Drikall was the only one who could halfway keep up with all his terminology.
They'd just about finished eating when Tahiri Veila showed up. Jesmin hadn't seen the woman since the previous day; she'd only heard that she and Jaina Solo both had gone off somewhere in the middle of the night.
"Welcome, welcome, Jedi Veila," Sharr said as he scooted aside, clearing a spot on his log.
"I didn't know you were back," Jesmin told her.
She felt something flutter off Tahiri in the Force; she couldn't tell what. The other woman sat down next to Sharr and leaned close to the fire. Her face looked clean and smooth, her hair damp, as though she'd just thoroughly washed.
"Do you want any food?" Scut asked. "We've cleaned out most of it, sorry, but we can-"
"I'm okay." Tahiri held up a hand. "I didn't come here to eat."
It was to be official, serious stuff then. Jesmin leaned in a little closer and watcher her over the fire.
"What's going on?" she asked.
Tahiri took a breath and said, "I take it you guys know everything about the messed-up transmitter."
Huhunna gave a low roar, and Sharr said, "Helped repair it ourselves. Or tried to, anyway."
"Then you know when one group comes, they'll all come."
"Do we have a plan for that?" Drikall asked, voice tense.
"We do now. It's not perfect but..." Tahiri took a breath. "It comes down to trust."
She said nothing more. After a curious pause, Sharr asked, "Trust in what?"
"Everyone," she said. "Everyone's going to have a role to play, including you guys."
Sharr spread his hands. "That's what we're here for."
"Thanks. This is going to involve a couple different teams. Sharr, we're going to be sending a group up into orbit, and I want you to take point on that. Drikall and Huhunna should go with you."
"Okay," he nodded simply. "What are we doing?"
"Holding the line," Tahiri said, but before explaining what that meant, she shifted her attention across the fire to Scut and Jesmin. "I was more concerned about you two."
Jesmin tensed. "How so?"
"I'm going to be leading another team. It's going to be even more risky than what Sharr's doing, and probably even more important."
"Why us?" Scut asked.
When Tahiri didn't answer right away, Sharr slapped both hands on his thighs and said, "We can give you guys privacy if you want."
Jesmin was about to object but Tahiri nodded and said, "If you don't mind."
Sharr, Drikall, and Huhunna got up and wandered off into the gloom, leaving Jesmin, Scut, and Tahiri to hunch a little closer over the fire.
Tahiri looked at Scut first. "I'm going to be leading a team of Yuuzhan Vong commandos against a group of Sith. I want to know if you're up for it."
Scut's jaw hung open in silence for a moment; then an incredulous laugh rattled out of his throat. "You're serious."
She nodded gravely. "These Sith have never fought someone they can't feel in the Force. I don't want them to sense anyone on our team at all except me. We're going to give them a surprise."
"And you want me to come with you? Why?"
"Because I don't want just warriors on this mission, I want shapers and techs too. Kodra Val's already agreed to come on."
"But why me?"
"Because this world needs defending. Sharr and the others, they'll be up in orbit, doing their job, but my team is going to be in the thick of it. I don't want to pressure you to do this, Scut, but if you want to really help your people and help Sekot, this is your chance."
The Yuuzhan Vong looked down into the fire. "I'll have to think about that," he said, though somehow Jesmin knew he wouldn't say no.
She was still surprised when Tahiri looked to her and asked, "What about you, Jesmin?"
She blinked. "What about me? You just said you want to be the only non-Yuuzhan Vong on the team."
"I know, but I'd make an exception for another Force-user."
"I'm not Jedi, though. Sure, I can throw stuff with my mind and wave a lightsaber around pretty good, but even then I got my butt handed to me once already." She rapped her knuckled against the cast still on her leg. "Besides, I don't even know what shape I'll be in tomorrow. Drikall says I should be good enough to hobble around without crutches after a good sleep, but..."
"I understand. I just wanted to make an offer."
Jesmin sighed. "Honestly, this place… I don't know what I was expecting when I came here exactly, but I don't think I got it."
It hurt a little to admit it aloud. It hurt even more to see the look on Tahiri's face; it was too close to pity.
"I'm okay though," Jesmin shrugged. "I mean, I already pretty much knew I'd never make Jedi material. I guess I just… needed to be sure."
It was a hard thing to make light of, especially when Tahiri could probably feel all that disappointment bleeding off of her in the Force.
Looking down at her hands, Jesmin said, "I just want to be useful for something, that's all."
"You can still be useful if you go up there with Sharr," Tahiri said.
"Yeah. Yeah, I know." She exhaled and asked, "What about Jaina Solo? I mean, if you need an extra Force-user to fight some Sith, I can't think of anyone better."
"Jaina's going to be doing something… even more important."
"Oh. With Ben Skywalker?"
There was a long pause. She looked up to see the other woman staring into firelight that danced in her green eyes.
"Maybe," Tahiri said at last.
"Oh. So… you didn't find him? I kind of assumed that's what you were up to today."
Tahiri shook her head. "That was… something else."
Abruptly, the other woman seemed to cram her feelings up inside her. Jesmin couldn't get anything off her in the Force.
Pushing off her seat, Tahiri said, "The operation starts tomorrow. You two should get a good night's sleep."
She didn't have to say it might be their last. Jesmin waved her goodbye and watched her golden head darken and disappear into the night.
She glanced beside her at Scut. His eyes were narrowed in thought as he watched the fire.
"You're going to go with her, aren't you?" she asked.
"I can't just walk away." He stopped, looked at her. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"
"I know, don't worry. The Yuuzhan Vong, they're your people. You belong with them."
Scut's eyes went a little wide, like he was surprised by that simple realization. He nodded.
"And me..." She breathed out. She didn't know where she belonged, but maybe it didn't matter. Maybe the only thing that mattered in the end was the choices she made, the actions she took.
"Well," she said, "We'll find out tomorrow."
She rose from the log, looked down at Scut, and said, "I think I'll try to get some sleep."
He nodded but said nothing. As she left him at the fire, she had a feeling he'd be staring into the light for a long time yet.
-{}-
When night fell over the village, Jacen did not want to sleep. A deep part of him was simply afraid. He did not want to lie down in darkness and close his eyes because a small part of him, against all evidence and logic, thought the past day of life might have been an especially strange dream conjured up by his consciousness as it floated in the timeless void of death. He was equally afraid that if he relaxed his awareness and drifted off into the oblivion of sleep, his soul might become unhooked from his body and drift back into death's nothing.
The others were afraid of night for other reasons. Though they hadn't put stun-cuffs back on his wrists, and though he'd professed time and again that he would not try to escape or flee, none of them trusted him. Even as he explained Vergere's idea of how to defend Zonama Sekot, he could see the distrust in everyone's faces.
It was different for each of them. Tahiri watched him behind a mask of lingering but well-earned resentment. Danni looked like she was watching a stranger. As for Harrar, the priest kept his emotions guarded and even through his Vongsense Jacen picked up nothing from him save a cool, curious skepticism.
And then there was his sister.
Her face, her eyes, her signature in the Force all said the same thing. Her brother had already hurt her once, and she would never trust him again, no matter what he said or did. He was surprised by how much that hurt, but if there was one thing Jacen knew how to deal with, it was pain.
Still, their suspicion lingered. They came to the decision that he would be watched all night long. With four of them, it was easy to work shifts. They put Jacen on a bed in a small room in the daumutek next to the Magister's. They gave him an oil lamp for illumination and a plate full of breads and oils to sate his stomach. It was bland food, but it felt extraordinary in his mouth. When they were done, he extinguished the lamp and lay face-up while Tahiri sat in the corner, watching without a word.
He closed his eyes, but didn't try to sleep. His fear of the night was almost childish, but there was nothing he could do the shirk it. As he lay in the dark, his mind began to wander. His body, surprisingly exhausted, felt like it was sinking into the soft bedspread.
Images came in the dark, painted on the blackness of his eyelids. He did not know if they were Force visions, memories, or fantasies of an unsettled mind.
He saw the Dark Man on his throne, dressed in horrific Yuuzhan Vong armor, with grown-up Allana standing proudly on one side while the blonde-haired man scowled angrily on the other.
He saw Allana, dressed in white, sitting on the same throne, surrounded by friends of all species.
Then Allana became Luke, aged but serene, still surround-ed by friends.
Then Luke became him, Jacen as he had been, Darth Caedus surrounded by the same hooded acolytes who had bent before the Dark Man. Angry gold eyes were sunken within a pale, withered face. Allana, now a small child, sat at the foot of the throne and looked up at her father in admiration. He felt revolted.
Then Caedus was gone too, and the acolytes with him. The chamber was empty except for a single man, dressed in black trousers and a battered bronze breastplate. He was stretched lazily across the throne. A leg was draped over a handrest while he rested his elbow on the other and propped up his chin in a cupped hand. This was the blonde man from his first vision, only instead of an angry scowl he now wore an expression of smug satisfaction.
Everything faded into darkness.
Darkness lingered a moment and forever, as it did in dreams. Then there was a spark of light.
He saw a man wielding the same green blades as the Dark Man but without the spiked armor. He was battling another Jedi in a broad sandy desert, while two suns set slowly in the west. He knew this, too, was the Dark Man, as he had once been. A'Sharad Hett.
He saw Hett again, this time old and wizened but no less fearsome, charging the blonde man with both sabers blazing. Strangely, he was without his Yuuzhan Vong armor here as well.
He saw a single figure, dressed in a vacuum-proof suit, drifting above a world now coming out of night. Sunlight spilled across its horizon, illuminating the surface of a brown, dry world that seemed somehow familiar.
He saw another figure, in another suit, drifting before a blazing sun.
Then he saw himself, wielding a red lightsaber he did not recognize, battling the Dark Man on a broad plain of black rock. Lava and brimstone broke through cracks in the earth and black smoke spiraled upward into an incongruously blue sky. Both of them fought like demons and Jacen willed himself to do better, to overcome this Dark Man and slay him, but he was trapped in his dreaming and could do nothing.
He jerked awake. He sat up in bed and found his face slick with sweat. He awkwardly wiped some off his brow with the sleeve of his tunic.
"Bad dream?" Jaina asked from the corner of the room.
He didn't realize she had switched places with Tahiri. In the darkness he could barely see her. He must have been asleep for some time after all.
"Something like that," he rasped.
"That's too bad," she said coolly.
"I think it was a vision," he admitted.
She didn't respond. In the night all he could make out was her dark shape against the dark wall.
He dropped back onto the bed and stared at the dark ceiling. It was a vision, he was sure. At least, some of it had been. The fight on the black-stone plain certainly had been, and it terrified him, because such a landscape implied that great catastrophe was about to befall Zonama Sekot.
He tried to make sense of the blonde man. He'd barely paid attention to him before, but he was hard to ignore now. The man seemed a possible friend or enemy of the Dark Man, just like Allana. Jacen tried to make sense of his vision of the man on the throne. Rather than a site of leadership or idolatry, the throne had looked derelict and useless. Was his vision telling him that this wry, angry, disheveled man would somehow make the Throne of Balance useless? Jacen didn't know if he liked that prospect or not.
"Jaina?" he asked the dark.
He waited a long time for her terse response. "What is it?"
"Jaina, in all this time, have you ever had... visions? Any presentiment of the future?"
"Maybe," she admitted. "Before I came here I had these dreams. I think they were about Zonama Sekot. I was seeing it from orbit and someone was trying to grasp it in his hands. I don't remember much beyond that."
"Do you think the Force was trying to tell you something?"
Another long wait, another gruff reply. "I'm a Sword, Jacen. My job is to fight and kill. And dispense justice, apparently. Vision quests were never my thing."
"You're lucky."
"She certainly is," someone else said.
Jacen jerked up in bed again and looked around. He heard Jaina moving around, and a second later her lamp flicked to life, casting harsh light and long shadows across the room.
Sitting in the corner opposite Jaina was man. He wore black robes in the style of the Jedi and long, tousled brown hair fell in front of his bent head, obscuring his face.
"Who are you?" Jaina asked as she got to her feet.
"Another ghost?" asked Jacen.
"It seems so." The man raised his head, revealing a long face, marked by a thin scar-line under the right eye. It was the face of a young man, younger than Jacen or Jaina, but its eyes were sunken with harrowing knowledge.
Jacen had seen this face before. He had seen in it holo-records projected by R2-D2. He'd seen it with his own eyes when he flowed-walked through the halls of the Jedi Temple during Order 66, desperate for a glimpse of what had turned his grandfather to the Sith.
"You're Anakin Skywalker," Jacen said.
The man nodded. "And you're my daughter's children."
"That boy we've been following around, the one Sekot speaks through," Jaina asked, "Was that you?"
Their grandfather shrugged his shoulders. "I was a boy when I came here. I guess Sekot likes to steal my face. It appeared to me as a little girl and a dead old man."
Jacen stared at this man, trying to wrap his mind around the progression from that round-faced, mischievous blond boy to this harrowed young man to, finally, the black-armored, half-human monster that had haunted an entire galaxy in life and his own dreams in death.
The grandfather he had feared and hated, only to end up walking the very same path.
Of all the marvels Zonama Sekot had wrought, this seemed the most impossible, beyond even his own resurrection.
"I wanted to talk to you so many times," Jacen said.
"I know," Anakin looked very sad. "I wish you could have. Things would have been very different."
"You spoke to me once," Jacen pressed. "A long time ago, but I heard it, and I knew it was your voice. I felt the whole galaxy tipping into darkness and you told me to stand firm."
"Yes." He looked even sadder. "Why didn't you?"
Jacen blinked. "I did. I stood firm against Onimi, I turned his poisons against him, I brought down the Supreme Over-lord and freed the entire Yuuzhan Vong. They're here on Zonama Sekot now, living peacefully. I ended the deadliest war in history. What more did you want?"
Anakin scowled. "And what happened after that?"
Jacen shrunk from his rebuke. Once, maybe even a day ago, he would have argued that everything he'd done had been for a just cause. Now, after his conversations with Vergere and Sekot, he was forced to admit that so much of the fierce ruthless desire that had birthed Darth Caedus had not been born from righteousness of necessity. Rather, it had come from his own aching ego and greedy desire to go beyond the boundaries laid by others, to be special and important and different from every other Jedi.
"Why do you look like that?" Jaina asked softly. "You were... much older when you died."
"I was scarred as Vader, and lived inside a black coffin. But I died as myself. I think that's how the Force chose to remember me."
"The same reason I still have both arms," Jacen surmised.
Anakin nodded. "You died as yourself too. It's the reason there's still hope for you."
Was it true? In that last moment, when Jaina had spun in for the killing thrust, he had dropped his weapon and called out with the Force, telling Tenel Ka and Allana to save themselves. In that moment he had drawn strength not from his anger or ruthless desire, but from whatever love he still had left in his heart.
"I wish... I could have talked to you before," Jacen said.
"Would it have made a difference?" Anakin asked.
"Of course it would have. I flow-walked back in time, just to see you when you turned. I sensed your anger and fear when you led those clone troopers into the Jedi Temple. I knew how determined you were to save the woman you loved. And I knew what it cost you."
"You knew all that," Anakin said, "And you still followed the path of the Sith?"
"I had to." The excuse was sounding weaker every time he used it. "And I didn't make the mistakes you did. On the surface, yes, but I was older. Stronger. I didn't make my choice in anger or fear, I made a rational decision. The galaxy needed order to protect it from the Dark Man in my visions, and that's what I gave it. You made a selfish choice. Mine wasn't."
"You turned a local skirmish into a full-blown civil war," Jaina said bitterly.
"There was always going to be a war. I did my best to stop it."
Anakin shook his head. "After everything you've done, everything you've seen, you haven't really learned."
"I've learned a lot," Jacen said defensively. "Far more than any Jedi."
"You thought you use the darkness for your own ends," Anakin said with bitter knowledge. "But the Dark Side always uses you."
Jacen tried to find some riposte, but he couldn't. It was as Vergere and Sekot had already told him. In his vanity and self-importance, he had wreaked havoc and death, and lost his own soul. And worst of all, he had failed to stop the Dark Man in his vision.
It was such awful knowledge that his mind still kicked in denial like a stubborn child, and just like a child he had no power to change the irrevocable facts in front of him.
"Have you ever thought," said Anakin, "That in trying to prevent this future, you created it instead?"
"I didn't create the Dark Man."
"No," his grandfather allowed, "A'Sharad created himself."
Jacen stiffened. "You knew the Dark Man too?"
"We had a lot of differences, but a lot in common. We were both two boys from Tatooine who could never get over our losses, so we raged against the universe instead."
Jacen looked down at his bed, trying to wrap his mind around all the tethers of fate that had bound three generations of Jedi together.
"When A'Sharad embraced his rage," Anakin said, "He thought he was making himself stronger. He wasn't. He was just reducing himself to the angry child who could never get past his father's death."
"What can I do?" his voice cracked as he stared at the ghost of his grandfather. "How am I supposed to fix this?"
Anakin looked at him for a long time before he said, "Do what you should have done from the start."
It was the worst piece of advice. Jacen had made mistakes, awful ones, he had to accept that. Yet even when he wracked his mind, he could not think of anything he could have done differently. He couldn't have just ignored the vision of the Throne of Balance. He couldn't have gone to Uncle Luke for help without risking Allana's life and dragging Luke into the awful fate he'd felt for himself. If he'd cast aside Lumiya's offer, he'd have abrogated his moral responsibility to seek peace for the galaxy.
"What?" he pleaded. "Tell me what I'm supposed to do. Please, tell me what I'm supposed to do!"
Anakin looked to Jaina. "He really is a fool, isn't he?"
"He always had been."
"Tell me, please!"
Anakin sighed and bowed his head. "Once I stood in the lair of a Sith lord. I had my lightsaber pointed at his neck. I was ready to kill him. But he offered to teach me new powers, so I could have what I'd always wanted. I thought the Force existed to serve me, not the other way around. So I lowered my lightsaber and lost my soul."
"I know. So did I. But what would you have done differently? I know about your situation. The Jedi Council insulted you, distrusted you. They tried to deny responsibility for your training. They were fools. You could never have gone to them for help."
"I didn't have to trust them." Anakin held Jacen's eyes. "All I needed was to trust my brother."
"Brother?" Jacen scowled. "You didn't have a brother."
"Obi-Wan," Jaina said softly, sadly, like she'd been touched with some deep hidden knowledge.
"I had his open hand in front of me," Anakin said. "And instead I chose a Sith lord over him." He laughed a dry, bitter laugh. "I deserve everything I got after that."
Jacen looked away from his grandfather. His gaze met Jaina's and held. Neither flinched, not this time. Even in the dim lamp-light he could see the sadness, the regret, the resentment, even the compassion in her dark eyes.
"You're never as alone as you think you are," said Anakin Skywalker. "You're never as special either. I learned both those things too late. And so did you."
Jaina only looked away when the tears welled in her eyes. She wiped them clean with the sleeve of her jacket. Her body shook with restrained sobs.
"Stand firm" their grandfather said. "Together."
Jacen looked over, only to find an empty corner of the room.
"Jaina," he said, "Jaina I-"
"I have to go," she spun for the door.
"Jaina, wait I-"
She opened the door, slipped though, and slammed it shut. Jacen sat in silence for a long time, staring at the shadows on the wall. She didn't come back to see him, but he hadn't been expecting her to.
He sat for a long time, legs against his chest and chin on his knees. He closed his eyes and saw dim red through his eyelids. He waited for more visions to appear but nothing came. Everything was still, everything was silent, and he felt very alone. It was almost like being dead again.
"I have good news," a voice said.
Jacen opened his eyes and saw the boy with dirty-blond hair sitting right where Anakin Skywalker's ghost had been.
"You," Jacen said simply.
"Was that helpful?" His grandfather's boyish voice was so innocent.
"Is there anyone else you want to bring back from the dead? Anyone else to tell me all the ways I'm messed up?"
"I think you already know them all," the boy was sudden-ly severe. "You've just been too scared to admit them."
"All right, fine." Jacen tried to throw his hands back, only for them to catch on their shackles. "I'm a liar, a killer, and an all-around failure. Total sleemo supreme. Are you happy now?"
"Are you?"
"No. I'm not happy at all."
"Then neither am I."
Silence lingered between them. Finally, Jacen asked, "What now? What do you have to tell me?"
"Two things, actually."
"Good news?"
"Maybe," the boy shrugged.
"What news?" Jacen snarled.
He was sick of being toyed with. Darth Caedus had prided himself on being master of all, but Jacen Solo suddenly felt like everyone had been toyed with him his whole life by the Jedi, the Yuuzhan Vong, Lumiya, Vergere, Zonama Sekot, even this A'Sharad Hett who had haunted his dreams. His lifelong yearning for greatness seemed to have made him the galaxy's sucker.
The boy held up a finger. "One, it looks like they've got the communications system online. They should be ready to fire the beacon within a few hours."
"Great," Jacen said. "That means every ship in the Unknown Regions is going to zero in on our location."
"Pretty much," the boy nodded and held up a second finger. "Do you want to know what else?"
"Tell me."
"I think I've found your cousin."
Ben. Jacen had hardly thought of Ben. He'd been trying not to. He already had to look at Tahiri and Jaina all the time and have all the pain he'd given them reflected back. He'd probably hurt Ben most of anyone, which was no small feat.
But there was still some pain he had to embrace.
Jacen drew a breath and asked, "Is he on your surface somewhere?"
"One of my islands, in the western ocean," Sekot nodded. "They're my newest land-masses, and I've had a hard time keeping track of everything there."
"But can you guide me? Can you show me exactly where he is?"
"Not yet, but I'm narrowing it down." The boy leaned forward intently. "You need to go rescue him, Jacen. You and Jaina, together."
The image of Anakin Skywalker echoed what the dead man's own ghost has just said. Working with Jaina seemed to be another pain he'd have to embrace.
There was no use complaining, so he said, "Okay. Let us know when you're ready and we'll go after him."
"There is a Sith with him," Sekot said. "And, I think, more coming for him."
"You mean the Dark Man?"
The boy nodded gravely. That took Jacen by surprise. All this time he'd been assuming that when the Sith Lord descended to Zonama Sekot, he would be coming for Jacen himself. Apparently that meant he hadn't yet cured himself of egocentricity.
"Why Ben?" Jacen pressed. "What reason, specifically?"
The boy gave a mock sigh. "The Force only tells me so much, Jacen."
"I know. Sometimes I wish it had a neck so I could strangle it."
The boy laughed. It sounded surprisingly authentic. Jacen's thoughts kept moving. He had been focused on protecting Allana all this time, since before she was even conceived. He'd barely thought about the blond man in his vision, and received no warning about him through the Force. Was it possible this man, too, was yet to be born? Could he be some descendant of Ben, destined to topple the Sith once and for all?
As Sekot had said, the Force only told so much. But it was the best idea Jacen had to go on right now.
He stretched out his legs and tipped them over the edge of the bed. Stretching his bound hands in front of him for balance, he dropped his feet on the ground and stood up.
The boy cocked an eyebrow. "Going somewhere? It's the middle of the night."
"I'm not going to get any sleep. Besides, I have to get ready. All of us do."
"Very true," the boy said. "You'll all have to stand firm. Together."
