The Forsaken Chapter 1: Heir to a Dark Legacy, a star wars fanfic

"You should not have come back here."

She stood wordlessly, her dark eyes boring holes in the tall figure before her.

"Do you hear me, girl?"

She nodded.

His anger radiated from him, nearly palpable. "Then why have you returned?"

She smiled humorlessly. "A lapse in judgment, perhaps," she replied calmly. "But I think you know why I've come back. And I know you won't turn me away."

He turned his back on her. "You know nothing," he rasped, his tone dark. "You knew nothing when you first arrived in this place, and you know nothing now. Now leave here. You are not permitted within these walls."

She clenched her fist. "No."

"You will not leave?" His voice was ice and acid.

"But how could you ignore me when you know what is happening?" Hers was a strange mixture of pride and desperation.

He didn't respond.

"You must help me! Help us!" She ground her teeth. "Please! For all-"

He cut her off. "No." Cold, hard, final.

She stared at him disbelievingly, knowing the inevitability of his decision, refusing to believe that he could actually make it. "How can-"

"Leave," he grated.

Disbelief changed to anger, and her old temper, which she had once thought safely buried, surfaced in a rush that she was powerless to stop. The condemnations poured from her mouth. "You short-sighted fool!" she spat, derision heavily lacing her words. "I will make you regret this, I swear it on my brother's grave! I'm going to tear you down, do you hear me, you pathetic, blind old monster?"

He turned, his gleaming, alien eyes ablaze with wrath. Her gaze was fixed to those eyes for a fleeting moment, before she realized that she had pushed him too far. That was the one thing she'd sworn not to do when she returned to this place, yet her fury had gotten the better of her, and now she stared at the ancient eyes that held old, old powers and a reawakened rage, directed solely at her.

"You desecrate these hallowed grounds with your tongue," he rumbled, his deep voice powerful and commanding, and posessed of a somehow terrifying hollow quality.

The fear started to overcome her, then she stopped, gritted her teeth, and glowered at him. Hell, she realized with a strange sort of fatalistic courage, I'm dead anyway. Might as well let my fury burn one last time.

"You desecrate these hallowed grounds by your very existence, you self-absorbed charlatan!" she growled, her rage, now freed from the check of her powerful will, flaring higher with each word. She pulled her lightsaber from her belt, brandishing it challengingly. "You think you're a pretty fucking scary guy, with all your ancient, worthless powers, don't you?" She grinned, tinged by a frenetic mania. "I am not frightened! Fight me, you old wretch!"

His ancient, impossibly powerful energies gathered in a swirling, pulsating vortex around his clenched hands. His voice changed to a pure channel of wrath. "YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE COME BACK HERE!" he roared, his face and body contorting as he amassed his incredible forces around him.

Consumed by her rage, she did not have the sense to be frightened. She attacked.

He screamed and unleashed his power.

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE.

I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE.

I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.

SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT.

I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE.

PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT.

ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME CANNOT WEAR

WERE MADE BEFORE ME, AND BEYOND TIME I STAND.

ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE.

--Dante Alighieri, Inferno

T H E F O R S A K E N

a Star Wars fanfic by

George P. Masologites

Star Wars is owned by George Lucas and Lucasfilm, Ltd., and is used without permission. If I ever tried to claim that I owned it, I would be thrown into a hellish dungeon where I would be forced to eat Stefan Gagne to live. Or something like that. (That is to say, I'm not getting paid for this, but since there's a powerful impetus urging me to write this, I'm doing it for free, so please don't sue me for copyright infringement, I'm broke. Enjoy.)

Part I: Heir to a Dark Legacy

The way of the wicked is as darkness: they

know not at what they stumble.

--Proverbs 4:19

Luke Skywalker rubbed his eyes irately. "Imperial sympathizers?"

That seemed to be how Admiral Galrond, charged with overseeing the defenses of the forest moon of Endor, wanted to explain away even the most minor disturbances. If anything went wrong, it was due to the actions of 'imperial sympathizers.' If a ship malfunctioned, it was obviously due to the sabotage of 'imperial sympathizers.' If a band of terrorists with no known connection to the Empire in any way whatsoever disturbed the peace anywhere, they were designated as 'imperial sympathizers' and dealt with accordingly. Luke was getting very tired of hearing the term.

The older pilot next to him, Scray Halter, nodded at him. "That's right, Commander. Three of them, in single-pilot craft about the size of an X-wing; they're holding a cargo freighter captive and demanding that we pay a ransom or they'll destroy it."

"What kind of craft are these?" Wedge asked, cracking his knuckles.

Scray brought up a rotating schematic hologram in between the three of them, which Luke and Wedge both looked at, puzzled. "I've never seen this before," Luke mumbled, troubled.

"I have," Scray told him. "It was a prototype attack craft that the Empire had nearly completed before it was destroyed. One of the defectors near the end of the war downloaded it and brought it to us. No one figured it would matter, because either we would all be dead before it was completed or the Empire would be gone so it wouldn't matter anymore."

"But someone's completed it," interjected a young pilot called Rat. It was a bit of a curious name for him, considering that he was a tall, muscular young man of maybe eighteen, somber-faced and handsome. "Someone other than the Empire."

Wedge smirked slightly at him. "You have a real knack for stating the obvious, Rat."

Rat ignored him. "So it's possible that this schematic isn't the correct readout for the craft. The new builders could have altered something."

Scray gazed at the hologram thoughtfully. "Possible, I suppose. But it doesn't matter. Luke, we can't give in to their demands. This is one of the first tests that the Alliance has had to face in the post-imperial era."

Luke chuckled dryly. "I'd hardly say that, but I agree, of course; we can't give in to their demands. They'd probably blow the freighter up anyway to make a point." He looked around at the group of pilots, including a quiet young man called Jason. "It looks like we're going to have to take them out ship-to-ship, since ground-based defenses would pose too great a risk to the freighter."

Not that they had a choice. Admiral Galrond declared that these kidnappers were imperial sympathizers, and Captain Strager, Luke's commanding officer, had handed this little calamity over to Luke to deal with, specifically saying not to try to bargain with the sympathizers, but rather to simply destroy them as efficiently as possible. Luke, who had been consumed by preparations for instructing a class that was to begin two days hence for the past six months, welcomed the opportunity to lead Rogue Squadron again - the first time he'd been able to do so, in fact, since before the Battle of Endor. It was an opportunity marred slightly by Wedge Antilles's extensive tirades against Admiral Galrond, who he considered to be a pompous ass and a worthless military leader. Luke privately wished that Wedge hadn't told him about it.

The squadron contained faces that he did not know well, replacing the men who'd died at Endor. There was Rat: young, probably not even twenty yet, with a carefully guarded expression that gave nothing away. Jason, an inexperienced pilot that Wedge had said had amazing potential, and would probably make an incredible fighter pilot as he got older. Scray Halter, a grizzled old warrior who'd been with with the Alliance since the beginning, who Luke was familiar with but had never flown beside before. He was the sole survivor of Ragnarok Squadron, the rest of his comrades all having been killed at Endor, who, rather than attempt to create and lead a new squadron, had simply requested transfer into Luke's - well, Wedge's, really - unit.

Luke was a little uncomfortable with the notion that he could simply ignore the military for months, then come back and suddenly take control of Rogue Squadron once again. It sat a bit wrong with him, as if he did not deserve to be the commander. Wedge, though, who had been Squadron Leader in Luke's absence, did not seem annoyed by it in the least, and had wholeheartedly welcomed his old companion back to the unit. He had not uttered a word of complaint about his sudden demotion.

It's not a demotion, really, though, Luke mused. Wedge was still the Squadron Leader, which was a little strange, since Luke was actually leading the squad. Wedge had even retained his callsign of Rogue Leader, Strager instructing them that Luke was to be addressed as 'Rogue Commander.' Luke knew that the odd restructuring of the squad was due in no small part to his hero status as the Man Who Killed Darth Vader - as well as the fact that he was the single surviving Jedi - and the higher-ups wanting to please him however they could. It would look pretty bad, after all, to be known as the schmuck who'd attempted to screw over the guy that had saved the entire Alliance's bacon at the Battle of Yavin.

Titles and honorifics mattered little to Luke and Wedge, however, and they were mostly just glad to be flying together once again.

Wedge's eyes glittered with excitement as they planned their assault.

Once the craft were in scanning range, Scray immediately pulled up a full readout of them, comparing them to the schematic spinning on a small screen beside him. Rat was right; it was slightly different. The ships they were facing had stronger stabilizers and an altered, more powerful weapons system, but thinner defensive plating and a weaker shield generator. He pulled up as much information as he could find about the weapons system, his eyes widening slightly in alarm.

He spoke into the comlink. "Rogue Commander, you copy? I think we've got a problem here. Rat was right, these ships have been changed a little. The armament's different."

"How different, Rogue Two?" Luke's voice, distorted by the comlink, stil betrayed his concern.

"I'm not sure. I've never seen a ship this small equipped with anything like this before, but it looks like it's some kind of rapid-fire rail gun. My readout says it's probably a helluva lot stronger than our blasters. The good news is that their armor's a lot weaker, so I suggest that we take them out very quickly."

"A rapid-fire rail gun?" Rance Se'karlen echoed, sounding somewhat less than overjoyed at Scray's findings. She was the sole female pilot in the squadron, slightly younger than Luke, highly impulsive, and well-known for her incredible reflexes and superb ability at maneuvering in tight quarters. "This could get messy."

"That's the way to keep up the optimism, Rogue Ten," Pasik Tars, an Endor veteran, commented dryly.

"Optimism," Wedge said, grinning. "Who needs it? Paranoia keeps you on your toes."

Rance laughed. "Paranoia comes as a way of life when flying with you, Wedge."

"Hell with paranoia, Rogue Leader," Dakrill Alems, one of the new additions to the squadron, declared. As with Scray, his own squadron had been decimated in the Battle of Endor, and he'd asked for transfer into the reknowned Rogue Squadron. "Stark raving terror's the way to go. Your reflexes are get damned sharp when you're scared out of your mind."

Pasik Tars chuckled. "Of course, being out of your mind probably won't do your flying any good, Rogue Eleven."

"Good point, Rogue Six," Wedge told him, his grin broader than before. "I'll stick with my paranoia, thank you very much."

Luke ignored his companions' banter. "Listen up, Rogue Squadron. We're coming up on three enemy ships, all powerfully armed. This is a pure offensive, which means no hanging back, no playing it defensive. We fly in, we toast these guys, we fly out, we're home in time for dinner. Make certain that none of your fire hits the freighter. Make certain that the enemy craft do not get a shot off at the freighter before we can destroy them. Take these guys out as fast as possible." They hardly needed to be told any of it, of course, but in this type of encounter, the Squadron Leader was required to give a last minute briefing; although that was not Luke's title, the task had been delegated to him anyway. He glanced over the digital readouts from the onboard scanners quickly. "We're going to be in laser range in thirty seconds. Accelerate to attack speed."

The fight was short and brutal. Rogue Squadron roared in at full speed, laser cannons sending out a fiery rain of death, and two of the altered imperial craft exploded instantly in a brief, violent flare. The third sustained considerable damage but was able to get two shots off from the twin rail guns mounted on the sides of the craft that lanced straight through Rat's ship and grazed Wedge's starboard wing. Before it was able to do more damage, Jason locked on and sent double lasers tearing through its engine. The craft exploded, leaving only dust in its wake.

"We lost Rat," Wedge's voice came through on Luke's comlink. It was remorseful, but not torn: Wedge, a longtime pilot who had been flying since before the destruction of the first Death Star, had seen so many companions die that he was as hardened to it as he ever would be. "And my starboard's roasted a little bit."

"Will you be able to land okay?" Luke inquired, concerned.

"I think so. I've still got pretty good control."

"Good." Luke radioed the cargo freighter, a large, lumbering, unarmed Alcras-B type ship. "Alcras-B, this is Rogue Commander. Do you copy?"

The freighter pilot's relief was almost tangible, even over the comlink. "Copy, Rogue Commander. Thank God you guys finally came along. I was getting pretty worried there for a minute, over."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure what the hell those ships were, but the area's secure now, Alcras-B. You can continue on your previous course, over."

"Appreciate the help, Rogue Commander," the pilot responded. "Alcras-B, over and out."

Princess Leia Organa stood in front of the intricately carved wooden dias at the front of the conference chamber. She faced the Great Council unflinchingly, her voice strong and clear. It made her seem taller than she really was. The other members of the Council, distinguished military leaders or ex-Senators, all, listened intently to her as she spoke.

"I," she began firmly, "am strongly opposed to the reimplementation of the Senate. That body has already once proved that it cannot be trusted to maintain peace and freedom throughout the galaxy, and I, for one, am not willing to simply shove it down the people's throats once again, am not willing to gamble with our hard-won liberty. I believe that setting up an unaltered Senate would make a mockery of all we've tried to accomplish."

Mon Mothma, the Chief of State and chairwoman of the Grand Council, frowned slightly at that. "I don't think you're looking at this from every angle, Princess." Her voice was gentle but carried a commanding authority all the same. "And it would not necessarily have to be an unaltered Senate. In fact, I agree with you that there are some aspects that need to be changed. Many of them I fought for for many years in the old Senate."

Leia nodded. "Indeed, some aspects need changing. A great many aspects, if I may say so, Councillor."

Mon Mothma looked at her serenely, contemplatively. "Obviously you have something specific in mind."

"I do," Leia affirmed. "Three things, as a matter of fact, that I battled for in the old Senate, I feel must be changed before we even so much as consider reinstating it. Firstly, the Senate must not have the authority to enact trade barriers. Second, the Senate must not be permitted to keep and standing army, of droids or otherwise, and third, the system governments would have ultimate authority over the economic and political structures of their own systems, not the Senate."

Admiral Willard scowled. "In other words, for you to consider reinstating the Senate, it would first have to be gutted."

Leia smiled fleetingly. "Call it what you will, Admiral. But I feel if these strict controls - and a great many others - are not placed upon the Senate, it will soon be as corrupt as the old Senate and we'll be right back where we started."

"May I remind you," Willard said humorlessly, "that we are the Alliance to Restore the Republic, Princess Leia? If were to create a powerless Senate - or not create one at all - it seems to me that would be what would truly make a mockery of what we've tried to accomplish."

Her laugh was sharp and cutting. "If our title is truly to be interpreted as strictly as you suggest, Admiral, then we're doomed to go back to right where we started from. We are an alliance to restore the ideals of the Republic, not the exact system with all its flaws."

"Princess, if I may," Admiral Hiram Drayson rumbled, his brows knotting. "I understand where you're coming from, and God knows I feel the same way. But you're taking the idea of restricting Senatorial power too far, Leia. Limiting the Senate's power to enact trade barriers, yes, I can see the utility of that, but to completely forbid them from enacting any trade barrier of any kind? And a standing army is a necessary tool to keep the peace, to enforce galactic law." He voice grew stern and forceful. "And Princess, to give the systems complete control over their own politco-economic structures..." He shook his head. "No. I cannot agree with that. You are endorsing anarchy, Leia!"

"I don't think anarchy is quite the right word," Willard said. "But it would be a highly unstable system at best, a total catastrophe at worst. Princess, if you gut the Senate like that, it is highly possible that it will be impossible to maintain order in the systems."

"Let the systems maintain order on their own," Leia told him flatly. "Admiral Drayson, why do you feel that a standing army is necessary to keep the peace? Peace is already basically kept in a great many of the fringe worlds that the Republic and Empire alike ignored for hundreds of years."

"Don't muddle the issue, Leia," Drayson grunted. "The fringe worlds are one thing. We're talking about the entire galaxy here! It would be ridiculous to think that order can be maintained without at least a small army kept standing by."

Mon Mothma fixed him with her piercing gaze. "Admiral Drayson, what was your objection to allowing the systems to organize their own police forces? I voted for many proposals that outlined similar plans many times in the old Senate."

"My objection to it is that if the systems all keep separate armies to police themselves with, it would be far too easy for them to revolt. And if they did, how would the Senate defend itself? Under Princess Leia's plan, we would have no army of our own!"

"Indeed," Mon Mothma mumbled, turning to the princess. "And what is your reply to that?"

"I want Admiral Drayson to clarify his comment. What do you mean, 'how would the Senate defend itself?'"

Drayson shrugged. "Just what it sounds like I mean. The Senate wouldn't be able to defend itself at all. We would be powerless against any ill-trained rabble that a system's government could throw at us."

"So you're saying," Leia shot back, "that this rabble from a revolting system would physically attack the Senate?"

"No, what I mean is that-"

"You mean attack Coruscant," she filled in for him. "That is the current plan, isn't it? To move the capital back to Coruscant after we've retaken it from the Empire? So this rabble would be sending their army at Coruscant."

"That's right."

"So why couldn't Coruscant simply have their own local police take care of it?"

He was caught off-guard by that. "Do you mean to suggest that local police could defeat a professional army, Princess? I think that you-"

She interrupted him again. "Professional army?" she demanded. "Didn't you say that these men attacking us were 'ill-trained rabble?'"

"Well, yes, but..." He trailed off, scowling. "Princess Leia, what I don't think you quite understand is that..."

An hour later, the debate was still going strong.

Far away, in the Roulander system, a large space station orbited around the unsettled planet Haithren, a dull brownish globe with a foul, sulfurous atmosphere that was peppered by craters and volcanoes alike. The station wasn't spherical; rather, it simply resembled a very large command ship with a correspondingly large permanent or semi-permanent population. And correspondingly large weapons mounts. Aside from its size, though, there was little that was unusual about the station; myriad stations just like it were in just about every civilized system in the galaxy.

A meeting was taking place in one of the more ornately furnished rooms of the station. Five men were seated at a metallic gray table, round, dressed in crisp uniforms that would have made an onlooker realize that this was a military meeting. One of the men, aging but still robust, seemed to be in charge: he had a commanding presence and the others looked at him with respect bordering on reverence when he spoke. His dark eyes burned with an intense inner fire, and his chiseled features and short, thick gray beard gave him a singularly passionate and unyielding appearance.

He pushed a small red button on the underside of the table and a multisided hologram popped up in the center. It was a message, hastily transcribed, with an unmistakable electronic signature at the end.

"You all recognize that signature." His speech was blunt, and his deep baritone carried well enough that he had little need to speak loudly. He flicked the button again, and the hologram vanished without a trace. "General Eckras's mark. That means that Talkhana has given his explicit approval of this escapade."

The younger man to his right tapped his fingers on the metallic surface. His features were clouded. "So what you're saying, Commander Draegras, is that Lord Talkhana is stealing ships from his own fleet?"

Draegras scowled. "What I am saying is that Talkhana is stealing ships from the Free Confederacy and using them for his own ends. Ends which the council has not approved and for which he has been known to act covertly to achieve."

"And what are you presuming that those ends are, Commander?" asked a lean, distinguished-looking old gentleman from across the table.

"You know as well as I that he plans to-"

The old man cut him off, not disrespectfully, but firmly. "I know what it is you are about to say, Commander, and may I remind you that accusing the Lord Talkhana could constitute treason?"

Commander-General Draegras shot him a sharp look. "You know me too well to think that I would make an unfounded accusation, General Palare."

A smile touched General Palare's thin lips. "I know you well enough to know that you sometimes speak before you think, Commander."

"Then you disagree with my assessment of Talkhana's plans?" There was a barely concealed edge in Draegras's voice.

Palare leaned forward. "Whether I agree with you or not is not the point. You are throwing around accusations with far too little evidence, Commander, regardless of how well-founded you personally may feel that they are. You say that General Eckras's mark on that document proves Lord Talkhana's involvement in this scheme, and while I'm inclined to agree with you, it would be impossible for us to prove in any court that Eckras and Talkhana are even connected in any way, let alone that they're plotting together."

A fat, balding, middle-aged man next to Palare nodded studiously. "I agree with General Palare. There simply isn't enough evidence of wrongdoing to accuse Lord Talkhana of anything. Certainly, it would be a simple matter to lock away General Eckras, but that would do precious little good and would harm us a great deal by turning Talkhana's wrath in our direction."

The younger man nodded towards the balding man. "General Kraley is right. Lord Talkhana is a very vindictive man. It would be an ill thing to arouse his anger."

Draegras's scowl deepened. "Do none of you have a spine? You sit there and speak of treason against Talkhana while I hold proof that Talkhana himself is engaged in treason!"

"No," General Kraley rumbled, calling up the hologram again and gesturing to the signature at the bottom, "you hold proof that Eckras is engaged in treason. As much as any of us wish it was so, we cannot connect this to Talkhana in any way whatsoever."

Draegras snorted. "So we're going to let him slip through our fingers once more." He looked disgustedly at the men around the table. "Talkhana has unilaterally commanded three of our finest pilots to attack a completely innocent cargo freighter, to fly to their deaths in an insane attack against the Alliance's fleet on Endor, and we are going to sit here and let him slip through our fingers."

Palare shook his head sadly. "It is not our letting him slip through our fingers, Draegras. Talkhana was far out of our grasp to begin with."

Commander-General Draegras, clearly about to let his anger get the better of him, stood up abruptly and stalked from the room. The others watched him go with a mixture of regret and relief.

Han Solo grinned at her. "Somehow, the image of you as a Jedi knight doesn't sit quite right with me."

Leia looped the belt around her thin waist. "You neither, huh?" Her outfit was a bit different from her usual mode of dress: a nondescript yellowish-tan tunic that reached three-fourths of the way down to her knees, loose white pants tucked into supple calf-high boots, and a seamless black band belt. She stared at herself appraisingly in the full-length mirror opposite her. It was certainly much plainer than she was used to. "How do I look?"

"Oh, absolutely ravishing, your highness." Far from being the derisive term that Han has previously mocked her with, it had become a term of endearment, and he said it without a trace of a biting sarcasm that he once had. The only sarcasm in his voice was good-natured and loving.

She stared at herself a moment longer. "I look like a farm girl."

"Would you really want to muss your royal robes, your grace?" Han's grin stayed in place.

She smiled. "I couldn't care less about my royal robes. But this provides much easier movement, don't you agree?"

He looked her over. "I couldn't say. I've never worn royal robes before."

"Well, whatever they are, I'm sure these 'royal robes' are highly overrated in any case."

Han chuckled. "And surely not anywhere near as sexy as what you're wearing."

Leia sighed. "In any case, for whatever reason, Luke insisted that I wear this. I guess he knows best in this case, but..."

He grinned again, sitting up on their shared bed in the chamber. "No doubt the royal robes would have stopped you from using the Force."

"Yeah, well, I'm going to need all the Force I can get. I can't imagine how Luke's going to go about teaching this."

"Getting paranoid, your highness?"

She sighed. "You better believe it. Well, wish me luck."

In spite of months of preparatory work, Luke didn't have a very solid idea of how he was going to go about teaching it, either. Obi-Wan Kenobi had instructed him, certainly, as had Yoda, but neither experience had left him with anything like a firm guideline about what and what not to do. The fact that the majority of the work had to come from within, from the student's own will, did not make it any easier.

The large room where the class was taught was strictly utilitarian: dull gray concrete walls, floors made with cheap wood from the plentiful forests of Endor, fluorescent tubing overhead, and a wooden crate on the far side. Not an adornment or trace of a quirk showed anywhere, though he assumed it would gain plenty of those quickly enough. But for now, it was as blank a slate as the students minds that he hoped to fill with knowledge of the Force. Thinking of blank slates made him realize just how clueless he was about instructing this class.

So Luke Skywalker stood in front of the assembled eager-eyed students and decided to wing it.

"When you gain a certain amount of mastery over the Force," he began, launching right into the meat of the lesson since he knew that all the students were familiar with the basic concept of the Force, "you gain the ability to sense the Force in others. All sentient beings have the Force in them to some extent or another, and most can learn to control it to a certain degree with proper training. In case any of you are wondering," he added, "I haven't screened this class for potential with the Force or anything like that. Anyone who expressed interest was allowed to come." He glanced around the room. "To be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I'd expected that more people would be interested."

"There's still a kind of taboo about it all," offered a rugged-looking mid-twenties man in the front row whose most striking feature were his sharp, perceptive steel-gray eyes that made him look a good deal older than he truly was. His voice was deep, with a slight rasping sound in it. Luke recalled hearing him referred to as Soar. "I'd wager that more and more people join this class as time goes by."

"But we're the ones with the guts," a cheerful brown-eyed young man named Jeikar spoke up, grinning. He looked to be about sixteen, maybe seventeen. "So teach us all the deep Jedi-master secrets." Several people standing around him flashed a grin his way.

Luke coughed. "Well, that's actually part of the problem. You see, I've never taught anybody how to use the Force before, so I have very little idea how to even begin, let alone teach you any 'deep Jedi-master secrets.'" He paused, then added, "Besides, I'm going to hoard all those for use when any of you misbehave."

There was scattered laughter, which helped lighten his mood somewhat. He also saw Leia in the middle row, smiling at him. He smiled back.

"So," Luke resumed, "since I basically have no clue what I'm doing, I just threw together a rough plan for training you lot, which begins with lightsaber practice." Several of the younger students looked thrilled at the prospect of getting one of the weapons. "Not that that's definitely the best place to start, but it's where I started, so I figured I'd try it and see how it worked out." He pointed towards the back of the room, behind the fifteen or so students. "There's a crate with the lightsabers. Help yourselves."

"Wait a second," Jeikar objected. "How can we use a lightsaber if we can't control the Force yet?"

"What do you mean?" Luke asked, confused.

Soar, whose long-legged stride had gotten him to the crate first, flipped one of the hilts over in his hand, then smiled slightly. "There's a switch," he informed Jeikar dryly, understanding his objection. A brilliant green energy blade lanced out of the silvery hilt, humming softly.

"Oh, yes," Luke said, embarrassed. "The lightsabers aren't activated by the Force. There's a little switch on the hilt that you flip to extend the blade."

The rest of the students, including an equally embarrassed Jeikar, retrieved sabers from the crate, grinning and murmuring excitedly - and a bit nervously - amongst themselves as they switched on the blades and filled the air with the weapons' signature pulsating hum.

"Those are training sabers," Luke added with a grin, "so they won't lop off limbs, just sting a little."

Leia glanced over at Luke, and the twins grinned at one another. "Why," she remarked, gazing at the would-be Jedi knights, all thumbs as they twirled their lightsabers and attempted to look knightly, "doesn't that make me feel a lot better?"

Han glanced up at his fiance as she strode through the door of their chamber, dressed in her unadorned training clothes. "Well?" he asked, expectantly.

Leia cocked her head sideways at him. "Well?"

"Well, how was it?"

"Probably less fun than you had hauling those converters to that colony on Varista." She looked at him curiously. "Speaking of which, I'm surprised you're back so early. Didn't you say that the shipment would probably take about a day to clear with the local government there?"

He grinned. "I was wrong, thank God. It only took a little over an hour, and then I took off. I had planned to spend a little time there with Chewie cleaning up their casinos, but I just decided to come on back here instead."

She raised an eyebrow. "'Cleaning out their casinos?'" she repeated archly.

His grin grew broader. "You're looking at a galaxy-class gambler here, your royal highness."

She choked back laughter and went to change into more comfortable - and less sweaty - clothing. "Anyway," she said through the door to the washroom, "I think today went alright."

"That's pretty vague."

"It's kind of hard to be specific, considering I don't really know what I'm doing yet."

He chuckled. "Well, I don't want a point-by-point description of your day, but is Luke's teaching working? I'm curious."

She frowned. "I guess so. I'm not sure. I mean, I feel like I'm definitely learning something, but I'm not sure if it's Luke or it's me, somehow."

"So you can use the Force now?" He tried hard to keep to old sneer out of his voice, and didn't think he'd quite succeeded.

She paid it no heed. "Not really, but I can sense it. So I'm definitely getting something out of it."

"What? The Force?"

Leia came out of the washroom and slapped him lightly on the side of the head. "No, the training, fool."

Han stared at her for a moment, then started snickering.

"What?"

"It's nothing," he protested, lying on the bed, snickering until his sides hurt. "I just got this crazy image of you and a couple dozen clueless Jedi-wannabes with visors over your heads, attacking each other with lightsabers."

Leia hurrumphed.

As Luke had suspected, Leia progressed by far the fastest of the group. The other neophyte saber-wielders were all quite eager, and most all quite incompetent. Jeikar and several of the other teenage students would have hacked themselves into little pieces by the end of the day if the sabers had been real, full-powered weapons. As it was, they merely were mildly singed all over and several of them would have trouble sitting down for the next few days. Soar, who Luke knew to be an excellent pilot and superb marksman with a blaster, turned out to be an only mediocre swordsman, and Luke could tell that his potential to control the Force, in spite of the strong will that Luke knew to be present, was meager at best. A middle-aged woman named Iris Astridia, handsome rather than pretty, was among the highest of the potentials that he could sense in the group; with diligent practice, he felt sure that the strong-willed, driven woman would make a fine Jedi. Aside from Leia, the person who he felt had the strongest natural ability with the Force was Sabrul Mantier, an older man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a fiery-eyed disposition that belied his advancing age. He also learned fairly quickly, and within a few days had gotten down the rudiments of saber-fighting, putting him a long leap ahead of the majority of the students.

Soar had been right about attendance: with each passing day, as Luke made it clear that the class was always open for anyone who wanted to join, more and more students showed themselves, overcoming their timidity and asking him for training. He wondered that if soon he would have to close off the class to newcomers, lest it become too large for him to instruct all the trainees at one time. And although he certainly appreciated the fact that a great number of people were interested in becoming Jedi, he hadn't intended for this to be a permanent career as a teacher by any means for him. He wasn't about to cut off a group of would-be students, but...

Perhaps when some of the students became skilled enough, adept enough in the ways of the Force, he could entrust the class to one of them. That was still a long way off, to be sure, though.

Or maybe it wasn't, at least in the case of his twin sister. He wondered if she might even have more potential than he did; though she was still a novice, her presence was like a tower amongst anthills in his senses, and she learned amazingly quickly. Sabrul Mantier, as quick, tough, and savvy as he was, was no match for the short, slender woman in combat - he was better at swordplay (in fact, Luke judged that he was the best swordsman of the entire lot) by a slim margin, but Leia, with only token guidance from Luke, had began to use the Force as an effective battle tool. Though her skills were still rudimentary, she had already been able to use the Force to create small, invisible bursts of kinetic energy. When she had time to focus, she could hit hard enough with it to make even a big man like Mantier stagger backwards. While Luke was impressed at her learning rate, it alarmed him that she was able to do so much with so little instruction. The point of the exercises that he had devised was to determine whether or not the student had significant potential to control the Force, and to teach them to use their lightsabers. The fact that Leia was already teaching herself to use the Force as a weapon...

Luke frowned. Yoda said that fear, anger, and aggression led to the dark side. Does that mean that Leia using the Force aggressively will take her to the dark side?

He puzzled over that for several long minutes, wishing that he had Kenobi or Yoda here to help him train the students, wondering if the class had been such a good idea after all. As he was the last of the Jedi, he certainly felt the need for continuance, to pass his skills on to others, but...

He sighed. Ben Kenobi had stopped appearing to him after he had seen the vision of him standing with Anakin Skywalker and Yoda at the festival in the village of the Ewoks. He had no idea whether that was because Ben saw no need to speak to him, or because he couldn't speak to him, but he suspected that it was the latter. More than once he'd been in need of guidance, and there had been no ghostly image of Ben nor anyone else to help him.

So he perservered on alone, hoping that he was making the right choices. Back when he'd been back in training under Yoda, he'd had this idea that being a Jedi somehow imbued a person with a certain clairvoyance, a mystical ability to know which route to take, what to do next. But he found that he was little wiser than before, so he was on his own, without magical aid, helping the Alliance to decide on issues ranging from where the new capital should be located to the selection of new technologies to be installed on the Guardian Fleets, as was the current name for the galactic peacekeeping forces. The Guardian Fleets hadn't actually been deployed yet, and, in fact, Luke was generally opposed to their existence; it seemed to him that a centralized police fleet stank of the Empire they'd deposed. The fact that the currently favored plan was to put the new capital on Coruscant, the same planet that the Emperor had made his headquarters, did not make him feel any better about the notion. Coruscant was favored because it had been the capital of the Old Republic, not because of the Empire, but still...

Thinking of the Empire made him think again of the dark side. And Leia. He wondered if it might be best if specifically instructed her not to use the Force as a direct attack weapon, as a tool of her aggression. That was certainly not how Yoda had taught him: rather, Yoda had trained his abilities by having him lift boulders and so forth the Force. And he knew that it was safe to use the Force to augment abilities, such as jumping, but he wasn't sure whether it was safe to use it to augment strength to attack an opponent. And did it matter who the opponent was? Was it worse to use it in training, where the opponent would not be injured, or in real battle, where death was a likely outcome but the opponent was a vicious killer? Did the opponent have to be a vicious killer in truth or only one in the user's mind? What if the user was wrong? Did that make it worse still, because an innocent had been killed? Or did it not matter, because being drawn to the dark side was a strictly mental process? Or was there some objective scale, a definite division between the light and dark sides, and intent was irrelevant?

His head spinning with these questions and many others, Luke strode from the training room, alone. Answers were elusive, and gray areas were many, but he did firmly decide that he would instruct Leia to cease using the Force to directly attack her opponent.

Kail stared at him, stunned. "What do you mean, they refused?"

Draegras slumped down into the hardbacked chair in his office. "That's what I said. The craven fools were afraid we couldn't prove it."

"But the document-"

"Doesn't constitute proof, at least according to Palare and the rest of the spineless cowards."

Kail was flabbergasted. "Of course it constitutes proof! Everyone knows that Eckras doesn't do a damned thing without Talkhara ordering him to!"

"That's what I said. Palare even said he agreed with me, but none of them think that we could prove it in court." He snorted derisively.

Kail considered that. "I think we could, though."

"So do I. But they don't, and I wasn't able to convince them."

"So we're going to do nothing."

Draegras sighed. "Looks that way."

Kail shook his head, angry. "That's ridiculous! Three of the Confederacy's best pilots, sent to their death, and we sit by and do nothing."

"I didn't say I supported it, Kail. But what can just the two of us do? If only we come out with this, we're dead men and you know it."

Kail didn't have anything to say to that. He stood in sullen silence, staring darkly at the wall.

After several long moments, he growled, "We have to do something, Draegras."

"I agree. But at the same time, I'm afraid we're stuck, Kail. We can't do anything."

Kail's eyes turned toward him. They burned with a dark anger.

Reluctantly, Draegras finished his statement: "Kail, we're going to have to wait until another opportunity arises."

"And what if we're not able to prove it in court next time?" Kail demanded peevishly, gnashing his teeth. "What if they say we're not able to prove it in court and we're mired in the mud again, only this time Talkhana finds out about it and orders us to death? Would you still sit here on your sorry ass, saying that we'll 'just have to wait until another opportunity arises?' What if Talkhana's found out about it this time, and is drafting our execution notices right now? Ever think about that, Commander-General Draegras? What if we sit here and do nothing, and Talkhana fucking kills us?"

Draegras scowled deeply at that. "Enough, Kail!" he ordered in a deep, sharp tone, standing. "Do not forget that I am your commanding officer! I will not have you standing there insulting me and swearing at me! Do you understand me, Colonel?"

Kail's face flushed, but the dark anger in his eyes did not abate. "Of course, Commander-General. I apologize for my insubordination."

Wondering if there was a trace of bitter sarcasm in Kail's voice, Draegras sighed and nodded. "Apology accepted, of course."

Before he could say another word, Kail had marched stiffly out the door, taut and furious.

Colonel Kail Stark was a tall, dark-haired man approaching his fortieth year, thin but with a wiry strength not at all evident when he wore his uniform. His brown-black hair had been hacked off short and unfashionably, and his features were not particularly fine or handsome. His eyes, though, dark and deep, had a truly intense cast to them, and made many of the men he commanded wonder if he was some kind of fanatic. And in a very real way, Kail was a fanatic.

He had been born on an impoverished world in the Kholac system, Saldrah, a world which was a hotbed of political radicalism and thus under very rigid imperial control. Few freedoms were permitted to the people, which created more political unrest, which brought more draconian controls down on the planet. It was a vicious circle which he had despaired of ever escaping, especially after his father and older brother Jakren were killed in a riot when he was eleven years old. When his mother succumbed to a plague the following year, he had left his home for the streets, where the law of the jungle ruled: the strong survived. The weak died. His excellent blaster aim had saved him more than once during those years, but even it wouldn't have been enough to save him once he'd gotten on the wrong side of one of the powerful gang lords of the city. Faced with almost certain death, he opted to do something that he'd promised himself so many times he'd never do: he enlisted in the imperial army, and became a stormtrooper for the Empire.

He remained a stormtrooper for only a short time, however. Once he'd received orders to go with his unit to retrieve an R2 droid on a distant world called Tatooine, he'd traveled about half the way with the other stormtroopers, then hijacked a TIE fighter and rocketed to the nearby planet Commenor before anyone even realized that he was gone. By the time the imperial army had navigated through its internal bureaucracy and sent a squad to track him down, he had hired a private cargo freighter and was long gone, on a planet called Alderaan, where he'd, completely by chance, come in contact with the Rebellion in one of the bars in the capital city, in the form of a patriotic idealist named Biggs Darklighter. Kail's hatred for the Empire driving him, he'd joined the Rebellion as a fighter pilot and fought for them until the day they'd dealt the Empire its crippling blow against the reconstructed Death Star and killed the Emperor. But when it became clear to him that the politicians within the Alliance were hell-bent on denying freedom to the systems under their dominion, he'd resigned from his post, hired a passenger craft, and flown to one of the outer worlds of the Roulander system. Roulander was a populous trade center with sixteen worlds, fourteen of them inhabited, surrounding the solitary star, and he'd heard rumors of a group calling themselves the Free Confederates who wanted to revolt against the Alliance. And their goals did truly seem to match his lofty ideals, the ideals that made him out to be fanatical to many people. One of his most passionate ideals was to abolish or completely minimalize the central government that had caused him so much pain; another was to completely free the myriad systems to govern themselves as they saw fit, and to remove the trade barriers and economic sanctions that had kept his homeworld in Kholac and worlds like it trapped in poverty. Once he realized that the Alliance would do very little to accomplish these goals, he joined the Confederates as an officer, and his numerous skills had gotten him promoted to Colonel already.

But...now this!

He scowled as he made his way down the hall, his lithe, long-legged stride carrying him quickly. He had known that there were undesirable elements within the Confederacy, and one of them was the self-styled 'Lord' Talkhana, a vicious, corrupt, ambitious man who Kail considered to be as bad as any ever were in the Empire. The horrible part of it was that Talkhana had managed to take control of the Confederates, and Kail was all too aware of why: too many of the young, naive ideologues, many of whom had only half a clue about what they were supposed to be fighting for, felt that the charismatic Talkhana, an impassionate speaker with an inspiring voice, seemed the perfect man to rally around and lead them to freedom. He was not, though, as Kail quickly discovered, and he just as quickly discovered that there was a counter-movement within the Confederacy to depose Talkhana, labeling themselves the True Free, headed by Commander-General Draegras, Talkhana's third-in-command. Draegras had managed to intercept a copy of the order that General Eckras, one of Talkhana's toadies, had issued, ordering three of their best pilots to fly to Endor - Endor, the center of the Alliance's power! - and capture a freighter that had done no offense to lure the Alliance's defensive fleets to them. It had worked, obviously, and the three pilots had been almost instantly destroyed upon coming in contact with the Alliance's ships. He doubted whether they'd even managed to bring down a single craft from the opposition.

But they'd finally had proof of Talkhana's corruption in the form of the order. It was well-known that Eckras was a boot-licking coward who did absolutely nothing unless ordered to, either explicitly or by strong insinuation, by Talkhana himself. The order to send the pilots to Endor should have been enough to bring Talkhana down, or at least cast powerful suspicions on him, for although Talkhana was generally considered the Confederacy's leader, he was strictly forbidden to act unilaterally, without first consulting the war council.

And the leaders of the True Free were now afraid to act, worried that they would be unable to prove the link between Eckras and Talkhana in court.

It was an absurd objection, and Kail knew that the True Free leaders had to know it. Virtually all the officers in the Confederacy were aware that Eckras did nothing on his own initiative (many of them because they were bitter that the boot-licker got a promotion to General instead of them), and it would have been a small matter to get any number of them to testify in court that this was the case. Not that it would have even been necessary. Talkhana was aware that most people knew about Eckras, so he possibly would not even have contested the charge. They might have been able to bring down the would-be tyrant without so much as a fight!

But now Draegras, too, was afraid to act. Kail knew that it was important for him to have the other leaders on his side, but to flatly refuse to act...

He stormed into his own quarters, shut the door, and made sure there were no observing cameras anywhere nearby. Action had to be taken, and if Draegras refused to act, he would have to do this on his own.

In the soft gray glow before daybreak on Endor, Luke sat, troubled, deep in thought. Something Yoda had told him back during his long days of training on Dagobah reverberated over and over through his mind.

"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense," the diminutive old Master had said in his hoarse croak as he rode on Luke's shoulders through the dense jungles of that world. "Never for attack."

The phrase had suddenly struck him the previous night, and he hadn't allowed himself a moment's peace since. He wracked his mind, his clouded memories, trying to think of anything more specific Yoda had said, but his mind was blank. Anger, fear, and aggression Yoda had said to avoid, as they led to the dark side, but that was vague enough to lead to almost any interpretation that Luke wanted, depending on what angle he approached it from. He didn't feel as if his method of training would anger the students any more than Yoda's endless treks through the jungles, tortuous exercises, and endless cryptic advice had angered him. Aggression...perhaps training with lightsabers was not the best way to avoid this error, but he had told the students to try to enhance their abilities with the force: that was the entire point of the exercise, aside, of course, from learning the proper way to handle a Jedi's signature weapon. He felt that this was a better way to do it - certainly a more interesting way to do it - than having them all stand on their heads for endless hours at a time, trying to lift rocks and droids and X-wing starcrafts, or whatever happened to be nearby.

But when he remembered Yoda saying 'attack'...to him, that carried far different, more specific connotations than 'aggression' did. If using the Force as a method of attack led to the dark side, he realized that he could have already inadvertently started some of his pupils on the way to the darkness by instructing them to use the Force in whatever way they could to increase their battle prowess. He'd felt that there was something wrong with saying so at the time, but it wasn't until last night that he'd realized why: not only was the Force not to be used for attack, Yoda had specifically said that it was only to be used for knowledge and defense. That seemed to invalidate his feeling that using the Force to indirectly attack by making the student faster or stronger was alright.

But...

He sighed, staring at what little of the horizon he could see through the thickly wooded landscape.

If it was evil to use the Force as an indirect agent of attack, why had it been safe for him to do so against Darth Vader? Because Vader had been evil? Or because Vader had been using the dark side of the Force? Or hadn't it been safe for him to use the Force against him? He certainly hadn't felt anything like what he imagined the dark side would feel like after any of his battles with his father, but then, how would he know? He had no idea what the dark side felt like, if the dark side even felt any different from the good side of the Force.

Hell, he mused sardonically, I could have been using the dark side ever since I fought Vader. I don't have any idea how to tell it apart.

That thought did little to allay his worries, and he stared, unblinking, at the slowly rising sun, realizing that he had come no closer to any answers than he had been the previous day.

He remained there, seated, troubled, for many more hours that morning.

After four days, Aurens had finally gathered up the courage to ask Luke Skywalker the Jedi Master for training.

It hadn't been a quick or an easy decision for her. Her first exposure to the Force was when she'd heard about Darth Vader using it from her friends, and how he used it to further his evil ends, choke people, stop hearts, and from rumors of the evil powers of the Emperor, and how he ruthlessly crushed anyone who got in his way singlehandedly with use of the black magic called the 'Force.' She'd also heard of the old order of the Jedi, of course, but it was a vague memory, and it definitely wasn't what popped to mind when she thought of the Force. So it was hard for her to accept that Skywalker had simply set up shop and offered to teach the ways of the Force to anyone who was interested.

She wanted to accept it, though. And she wanted to learn it. She was beginning to realize what a tremendous help she could be to people if she knew how to use it constructively.

And,, she thought, grinning a little mischieviously, it would no doubt be handy as a self-defense tool, as well.

Not that she would likely ever have to use it for that. She, along with most of the other inhabitants of Endor, carried a sidearm pretty much everywhere out of long habit as much as out of any real need for one. But today she had left it in her quarters as she sought out Skywalker.

She finally found him in a long corridor leading to the designated training room, where he gave his daily lessons, and explained breathlessly to him what she wanted.

He smiled at her. He was boyishly handsome, and had a cute smile. "Sure, come with me. Class's open to everybody, and we get more students each day."

"I had a hard time convincing myself to come," she admitted, walking alongside him.

He nodded. "You're not the first to tell me that. Don't worry, it's only the fifth day. No one learns to control the Force that quickly, so you won't be that far behind. And if you need a hand, one of the other students will be more than happy to show off his newfound prowess, I'm sure." He grinned dryly.

"I'm a fast learner."

"Good. You should do well, then." Before they reached the entrance to the training room, he turned to look at her. "What's your name?" he inquired politely.

She smiled. "Aurens. Aurens Locke."

Aurens watched as Skywalker stood at the front of the assembled students - numbering nearly forty, now - and gave a short introductory speech to the newcomers. She was a little comforted by the fact that there was eight other newcomers in addition to herself.

"No one," Master Skywalker, as she was beginning to think of him as, was saying, "can become proficient with the Force without long, arduous training. It is not an easy road, in case any of you were harboring delusions of becoming Jedi masters within the hour." Scattered chuckles. "Come to think of it, I'm not a Jedi 'master' yet, and look how long I've been doing it."

"How long have you been doing it?" one of the other newcomers asked curiously.

Skywalker sighed. "The longest of any man alive, now. Not long at all compared to what Jedi are supposed to have gone through," a troubled flicker passed over his handsome features, then vanished in a blink, "but it's going to have to do, because until some of you begin to become skilled, I'm all that's left." He paused. "So, as I was saying, this takes a long time to master. That's why today, all of you will still be practicing with the lightsabers. For the newcomers that don't know, the sabers are in that crate behind you. You don't get to keep them." He grinned. "So don't let me catch you running off with one or I'll unleash the Force on you."

Stunned silence.

Master Skywalker gave a belated sigh. "It was a joke, people. Jedi are allowed to make jokes, too."

A few embarrassed laughs followed, then the trainees all retrieved their sabers from the crate in the back. Aurens looked at hers curiously, before hearing Skywalker mention that they were activated with a switch, not the Force. It was really quite a beautiful weapon, and it gave off a pleasant humming sound. She flipped her wrist experimentally, finding that it was light as a feather. She had somehow pictured the weapon being heavy, but realized that the energy blade obviously wouldn't weigh anything, which would explain how Skywalker was able to swing the weapon so quickly. She flipped it about a few more times, deciding that she liked the feel of it.

"Would you care to be my sparring partner?" a voice from behind her asked. She turned around to see a grinning teenager standing there, saber at the ready. She was fairly tall for a woman, but he was still a good six inches taller, and he had long, muscular arms. Definitely a reach advantage.

Well, a newcomer was expected to lose, right? And it would be good practice to fight a bigger opponent.

"Sure," she agreed, grinning back at him. "Go easy, yeah? I'm new."

They squared off, and immediately he came at her, flailing away with the humming energy weapon. He obviously thought he had some skill, but he moved awkwardly with the saber; she had seen Master Skywalker use it properly, and the lightsaber was almost like an extension of his arm. While she was observing him, he landed a hit on her shoulder. It stung.

"You okay?" he asked, lowering his weapon.

She nodded. "Fine. Sorry, was just a little distracted. I'm ready now."

And she was. When he charged her again, she easily parried his attack with a short sideways jerk of the saber, holding it vertically, then spun the weapon to twist his arm and lock it in place. She pivoted and grabbed hold of his wrist with her free left hand and before he knew what was happening, she used her torque to bash her saber against the right side of his neck in a blow that would have decapitated him if the sabers had been real. As it was, he merely received a particularly unpleasant shock.

She lowered her weapon and backed up for another go. "Ready?" she inquired.

"'course I'm ready," he mumbled, looking a little miffed about being beaten not only by a woman, but by one who was obviously shorter and weaker than he was. And a newcomer, at that.

She attacked, this time, hop-stepping forward with her right leg in front and feinting low, then, when he parried, sliding her saber up his to send a small shock through the metal hilt into his hand. He tried to recover with a vicious backhand slash, but she flipped the saber easily and knocked it aside, then pivoted and lunged forward, arm in front of her rigid and L-shaped, catching him right in his unguarded ribcage. Slightly unbalanced by his attack, the lunge sent him completely off his feet. He crashed to the floor, and she hop-stepped forward again, holding her saber to his throat. She smiled at him.

"Are you really a newcomer?" he demanded, clambering to his feet, irritated. "I've been here since day one, and you just completely trashed me."

"I guess I've just got a knack for it," she responded, grinning.

"I guess so," Master Skywalker, who had been standing wordlessly nearby, watching them spar, commented. "I'd prefer that you switched partners, however. Neither of you is learning very much from this."

The young man's face flushed in embarrassment. "Master Skywalker," he protested, "it's alright. I can hold my own."

Skywalker glanced at him. "It looked like she completely outclassed you a moment ago, Vastiar."

"But I've been practicing so hard, sir," he said truthfully. "Maybe it's beginner's luck."

"I don't know about that," Master Skywalker muttered. "I don't remember having much luck when I was a beginner. But if you want another go at it, by all means, be my guest. I just didn't want you two to be unmatched. It doesn't do either of you any good."

Vastiar, now aware that Master Skywalker's eyes were on him, focused a lot harder on his attack, lashing out with four rapid strikes to her torso and legs. She effortlessly deflected the first three, but the fourth came in from a tricky angle and nearly landed. She blocked it at the last second, but it put her in a bad position, and he was quick to capitalize on that, moving forward quickly and attempting to sweep her legs out from under her with his right leg. He only caught her leading leg, but lucked into being in the position to use his torque to bring his lightsaber down across her sternum, knocking her backwards and to the floor. She landed on her back, rolled, then came at him, her movements swift and furious. He was able to block the first two, but quickly succumbed to the hail of strikes she delivered and was beaten to the ground.

Skywalker smiled slightly. "I guess I was wrong. She's better," Vastiar flinched as he said that, "but you're holding your own, I suppose. Forget I said anything."

They soon did, caught up in the intricate dance of their swordplay.

Sabrul Mantier's weapon flashed as he jerked his arm about in seemingly random attacks, and Leia's saber met each blow smoothly, refusing to give any ground to the old man. She knew that although his slashing about appeared random, all his attacks were carefully calculated, and his apparent jerky, awkward handling of the lightsaber was the result of the elaborate feinting and misdirection that he so effortlessly employed. He was, she knew, far and away the best swordsman of the students, due, in addition to his keen battle savvy, in large part to his size. He was a very large man: not a largeness of flesh, but rather of powerful, rock-hard muscles, thick bone, and ropy tendon. His long, thickly-muscled arms gave him what Leia considered to be a very annoying reach advantage.

But he was not perfect, and when she sensed that he had overextended a vicious overhand swipe slightly, she brought her saber down on his with all her strength, and, as he staggered slightly, lashed out at him with a barrage of rapid strikes. He recovered just in time, though, and although he gave up a little ground, her saber did not manage to touch him. And then, suddenly, he was coming at her again.

She knocked his first two strikes aside, kicked him slightly off-balance with her right leg, and focused hard on his barrel-like chest, her muscles tensing. A burst of invisible energy, like a fist made of air, bashed him in the upper torso, eliciting a sharp cough of pain from the big man. Before he could recover, she focused again, harder, and landed a heavy blow to his abdomen. He stumbled backwards, the wind knocked out of him, and she quickly capitalized on his weakness, leaping forward and hammering mercilessly at his defenses with her lightsaber. He attempted to turn the tables on her again, but he was too far off-balance, and she caught his attack easily, maneuvering swiftly to one side and pummelling him with multiple body blows from her saber.

Mantier grimaced angrily, pivoting suddenly as he seemed to fall, and tried to sweep her, but she saw it coming. She hooked his leg in the backside of her knee, moving with the attack, then elbowed him sharply in the lower back. As he grunted in pain, she released his leg and, as he tried to spin and gain his feet, smashed him hard in the chest with the butt of her lightsaber, sending him reeling to the floor.

She strode forward to put her saber to his throat and force him to concede the match, but he still had some fight left in him. He scissored her legs as she approached, knocking her to the ground, followed up by a massive strike with his saber that sizzled painfully on her back. Ignoring the pain, she flipped over, concentrating furiously, barraging him with a hail of invisible fists. He anticipated some of them, barely managing to get out of the way, but took the brunt of the attacks, forcing him to lower his guard as he backed up, scowling deeply. Leia lunged to her feet straight at him, landing a well-placed shot to his right ribcage, followed by a slash to his legs that he parried, flipping her weapon aside. She stumbled slightly, and he launched into another offensive, a tricky five-step slash-and-kick attack that had nearly flattened her last time he'd executed it. This time, though, she was ready, and when the thrust kick followed the misdirectional upward slash, she spun lithely aside and brought her saber down on his leg, hard. His features betraying no surprise, he counterattacked instantly, spinning his torso quickly to avoid a follow-up diagonal slash, then pivoting, completing the spin, and snaking his arm forward, grabbing hold on her right underarm. He jerked his arm inward, pulling her forward at an awkward angle, but she reacted in time, twirling in the opposite direction and landing a powerful strike that would have removed his offending arm at the shoulder had the saber been real.

He backed off, his usually deadly serious features cracking into a rare smile. His dark, flinty eyes actually looked pleasant for a moment. "I concede the match," he told her gracefully. "That counter was excellent. I never expected it."

She grinned at him. "I know."

Luke stood in front of the assembled students as they were getting ready to be dismissed from class. He cleared his throat, and there was a tired look about his eyes; it was obvious that he'd not been resting well of late.

"I know," he began, his voice firm and strong, "that the majority of you can barely even sense the presence of the Force at this early stage in your training, let alone channel it for any constructive purpose. However, I am also aware that some of you are beginning to exert some rudimentary control over the Force," he glanced pointedly at Leia, Iris, then Sabrul Mantier, "so I feel that this needs to be said. All of you, I'm sure, know the basic idea of the Force, but what some of you may not know is that there is a 'dark side' to it. I know you all have places to be after this class, so I won't go into a long explanation of the dark side, but the gist of it is this: for all the good, constructive, useful things that can be done with the Force, there exists an equally powerful opportunity to use it for destruction. If your heart is in the right place, I have no doubt that you will not succumb to the dark side. Indeed, the temptation of it will be relatively minor for most of you. But for those of you who are tempted, remember this: fear, anger, aggression. These things are the paths that lead to the dark side, and once you start down the path to it, it will consume you." His blue-gray eyes were piercing and bright as he gazed around at the students. "The Force is not to be used as an attack. That is extremely important. Use the Force to enhance your abilities in combat, but do not strike out with it, do not let your anger, your aggression use the Force as a tool for damage. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense. Remember that. Never for attack."

Soar's penetrating eyes found Luke's. He was blunt and to the point. "Then why train with weapons, Master Skywalker?"

Luke closed his eyes, sighed. "I feel that it helps to focus your mind, allow you to sense the Force better. If you possess the willpower to refrain from using the Force to attack, there will be no damage done by this training."

No one spoke, then, and Luke dismissed them all.

"Leia," he called out. She was among the last leaving.

She looked at him inquisitively.

"Come here," he told her, wondering how he was to phrase his request to her, to make it seem as though he was not suspicious of her. "I have something to tell you."

Sabrul Mantier drew Leia once more as an opponent the next day.

The older man, truth be told, liked sparring the short, pretty woman more than anyone else in the class. He was perfectly aware of his own prowess with a sword, and she was the only one who could regularly give him a good match. That other woman, Iris Astridia, could land strikes on him occasionally, but unless he held back, he found that he could defeat her with almost contemptuous ease.

But Princess Leia...she wasn't extraordinarily skilled with the lightsaber, as he was, but she had somehow managed to acquire a trick where she could hit her opponents with kinetic energy bursts, and she could hit hard with them. They generally weren't enough to bring him down by themselves, but they threw him off balance at critical moments, allowing her to close on him and go on the offensive. In close quarters, she was a formidable opponent, moving quick as a snake and a good deal trickier. In addition to her being faster than him, he was not able to effectively extend his arms when she closed on him, so he had learned to let himself fall back with the energy bursts to keep her at a longer range.

Today, though. He was curious to see how today would turn out, since Master Skywalker had expressly forbidden them to use the Force as an attack (which is what he assumed the princess was doing, unless it was just some strange sleight-of-hand she'd picked up somewhere). A small part of him exulted that he would finally be the uncontested best fighter in the class, but he ignored it, knowing that he couldn't have cared less about being the 'best,' and truly wanting Leia to continue being a serious threat to him.

He nodded to her, and the match commenced.

His was the first attack, lunging forward quickly with a single powerful swipe that she easily knocked aside. Her next move was predictable: she darted in at him, attempting to close quarters with him. It didn't work. Knowing it was coming, he contemptuously parried her sidehand slash, then smashed his knee into her stomach as she spun to the side, a moment too slowly. He followed it up with several vicious cuts at her torso and thighs that she barely managed to hit aside, stumbling badly. Knowing he had her, he moved in for the kill, hitting her savagely in the left shoulder with his lightsaber, cutting her legs out from under her, then standing, triumphant, his saber to her throat.

She conceded the fight with a sigh. He sighed slightly, too, knowing that if the Master had not forbidden her to use her energy attacks, she would have been able to stop his relentless offensives. He didn't feel right about the victory; it was like defeating a one-legged opponent.

"Again?" he inquired.

Leia nodded. "Again," she said. There was frustration in her voice.

In the following matches, the princess, try as she might, fared no better. He refused to insult her abilities by fighting with less than all of his skill, but each time he defeated her, instead of the heady rush of victory, he felt as frustrated as he knew that she must have.

When she left the training room that evening, her shoulders were slumped, and there was a sullen, angry look in her eyes.

Leia stood in her quarters, alone.

Two days past, Luke had taken her aside after the training session and told her that for her own good, she needed to stop channeling the Force into what he termed 'direct attacks.' He was much more specific and insistent than he had been with the general class, and she had done what he'd said the following day - today - and been rewarded by seeing a massive decrease in her own effectiveness in combat, going from being far and away the best fighter in the class to only mediocre. She was able with a lightsaber and learned quickly, but her shortness and lack of reach severely impaired her ability to fight big, fast, long-armed opponents like Sabrul Mantier, who was able to defeat her with ease now. Luke had said that it was probably okay to use the Force to augment her abilities, but she had not yet taught herself how to do that yet and when she said as much to him, he had shut up tighter than a clam, obviously hiding something from her. The most troubling thing was that she had no idea why he didn't want her exercising the abilities that she'd gained. Wasn't that, after all, the whole point of the class? Or did he fear, because she was stronger in the Force than anyone else he was training, that she had the greatest danger of falling to the dark side? It seemed to her that her strength in the Force would protect her from temptation, not make her vulnerable to it.

And the fact that he was not sharing everything he knew about it with her irked her to no end.

"Why in heaven's name would he be hiding things from me?" she wondered out loud, her thin brows knotting in thought.

Well, he had been successfully able to hide the fact that Darth Vader was his father from her, and hadn't seemed particularly guilty about it. And successfully hid that Darth Vader was also her father, and that they were twins. Hiding things from her, it seemed, was as natural as breathing for him.

No, she thought, scowling. What kind of thinking is that? That's hardly fair to Luke...after all, he hid those things from me for my own good.

Still, she wished that he'd tell her why he didn't want her using the Force. As it was, she'd retreated away to her quarters for the evening to practice on her own; after he'd told her that she could only use the Force to augment her abilities, she'd resolve to just that.

Not that she had any idea how.

She decided that her biggest weakness was her shortness, and thus her lack of reach, so she focused on trying to increase her quickness, her lateral movement speed, so that she could move in quick enough that reach would no longer make a difference. In fact, she reflected, if she were fast enough, increased reach would actually be a disadvantage at close enough range.

Proceeding slowly, she tried to pull at the Force, draw it into her body, make her legs stronger and her movements more rapid.

Force the Force to increase my force, she thought inanely, the strain on her mind mentally exhausting her.

After a minute or two, she stopped, slumping over, hands on her knees. She shook her head angrily; she hadn't felt a thing. The direct attacks, the kinetic energy bursts...those had come perfectly naturally, and she'd learned them effortlessly. Obviously, this was going to be a greater ordeal for her.

She concentrated hard again, and again felt nothing except exhaustion, but forced herself to continue again, and again, and again.

Tired, alone, only her willpower keeping her going, she kept repeating it long into the night.

Leia arrived the following day in the training room with a singularly determined gleam in her eye, and partnered up with Iris Astridia for sparring. Iris, middle-aged with a square jaw and sky blue eyes, would have made quite a handsome man, Leia thought, but the features looked a bit out of place on a woman. Not that she wasn't attractive in her own right: taller than most of the men there, with lean, strong muscles and a quick swordarm, but a shapely figure all the same.

Iris nodded to Leia, signaling that she was ready to begin, and extended the blade of her training saber.

Leia did not focus on the swordplay; rather, she attempted to pull the Force into her, make her faster, more agile. Iris, as honorable a fighter as any, did not overly take advantage of Leia's distraction from the swords, but still gave her a jolt every now and then to warn her that she was not going to go easy on her, either. Leia, already sweating from the exertion, was steadily beaten backwards as she attempted to parry Iris's rapid-fire strikes, knowing with no small amount of frustration that the older woman was only fighting halfheartedly, yet she was still beating her.

Draw on the Force, she told herself angrily, trying fruitlessly to make herself quicker and succeeding only in tiring herself out ahead of time. Make it work for you. Feel the Force in your legs. The Force is in your legs. Fast, fast, move faster, make me faster...

It didn't work. With a grandiose flourish, Iris swept her legs from under her, sending her unceremoniously to the floor on her rear end.

"Damn it," Leia muttered, pulling herself tiredly to her feet.

Iris raised a curious eyebrow at her, having never heard the shorter woman swear before. "You feeling okay, Leia?"

Leia sighed. "Fine, fine." She nodded at her partner, and the sparring commenced once again.

Luke watched his twin sister with puzzlement and worry. She was uncharacteristically sullen today, and her reflexes seemed to be slower, as well: he'd seen her hold her own easily against Iris before, but today, she was being soundly thrashed. And although she'd mentioned no troubles to him, he could sense that there was something wrong with her.

Maybe she's sick, or just didn't sleep well, he reflected, watching Iris force her back into a corner effortlessly. But he privately doubted that that was the case, but he couldn't guess what the problem was.

Why don't I just ask her? he mused, grinning to himself. I must be really buying into my Jedi master image if I'm sitting here trying to psychically guess what everyone's problems are.

Leia thought she almost had it when a voice shattered her concentration.

"Leia?" Luke's concerned voice hovered over to her. "I noticed that you-"

"Shut up!" she snarled at him, frustrated beyond belief. "I almost had it, damn you!"

Luke stood there wordlessly, his mouth hanging open. He'd never heard his sister swear before, let alone swear at him. Iris also backed up a step, startled at her sudden vehemence. Several of the nearby students glanced at her, stopping their own sparring matches.

Leia looked instantly ashamed. "I...I'm sorry, Luke," she said sincerely, her face red. "It's just...you interrupted my focus when I was so close..."

He waved her apologies away, and the neighboring students resumed their training. "It's okay, don't worry about it. Look, I, uh, noticed that you've seemed a little troubled today. Like you're not able to keep your head in the fight. Are you okay?"

Leia sighed. "It's just, well, you remember how you told me to only use the Force to augment my abilities, not as a weapon by itself?"

He nodded.

"Well, I'm trying to do that. I just thought I had it right when you interrupted us."

He looked embarrassed. "Um...sorry?"

"It's okay. I'm just a little frustrated is all."

Somehow, both of them knew it was more than that.

The following day brought no relief for the frustrated Leia.

She knew that her opponent, a rugged, gray-eyed man in his mid-twenties named Soar, was a far inferior swordfighter to her, and yet she couldn't seem to penetrate his defenses, and he found holes in hers all too easily. The memory of yesterday, before Luke had interrupted her and Iris, haunted her, laughing at her, mocking how she could feel the Force but was powerless to mold it to her will.

"Perhaps you should rest," she heard Soar say to her, his large, callussed hand on her shoulder. "You do not seem well." He was a man of few words, but she found that for some reason, even those few words that he did speak were too many for her. She just wanted silence, silence to concentrate in. She knew, with concentration, she could gain the power that she lacked.

"I am well," she assured him shortly, brandishing her lightsaber's energy blade, wiping the sheen of sweat from her brow.

She nodded, and he obliged, coming at her, feinting twice, then landing a good hit on her left calf, followed by a powerful strike to her left underarm, then one to her ribs. She jumped backward, then launched her own attack, a rapid three-slash combination that Soar easily knocked aside. He caught the following lunge by giving with it and dragging his saber along hers, causing her to go off-balance slightly, then took his free hand and brought it down on her back, letting her know without actually doing so that he could have knocked her to the ground.

The following rounds went no better for her. Soar, obviously concerned for her and wondering if she was sick, fought with less than all his skill, yet he somehow managed to dominate her. It was as if the more she practiced, the less skilled she became.

I could beat him, though, she thought, pulling herself up from the ground once more. All I'd need to do is use the Force as it comes naturally to me. Luke forbids it, but I could be strong if I just used the Force...

She forced those thoughts down angrily. Luke would not have simply forbidden her from using the Force as a direct attack weapon without good reason. Even if he didn't disclose those reasons to her, she knew it would be unwise in the extreme to simply discount his considerable experience with the Force and ways to use and ways not to use it. Still, the thought lingered at the edge of her mind, pulling at her, tempting her. She felt sure that with practice, she could swiftly become very powerful using the Force in that manner.

Power... She scowled. What am I thinking? Since when was power my motive? I don't care about power...

So she forced down those thoughts, and concentrated on fighting her perpetual losing battles.

Night had already fallen, but Leia paid it no heed. Her lighting was off, in any case, as it had been all day, and her eyes were closed; the darkness made no difference to her, standing, focusing, concentrating, until she was in an almost hypnotic trance, mumbling something softly under her breath.

Her strong will tore and clawed at the Force that she knew was there, could feel, could sense, could almost taste, but could not coerce into her to make her stronger. Her hair was tied back into a messy, unkempt ponytail, far removed from the elaborate hairstyles she usually favored, and it looked badly in need of washing. Her skin was oily and covered with a layer of dusty sweat, garnered from grueling hours of standing still, trying with all her might to manipulate the Force, and having no success.

The Council had convened earlier in the evening, had asked her to be present. She'd refused, retreating instead to her chambers to train herself, to prove herself to...

To what? she wondered, her mind unbelievably tired but not willing to give up. What, who am I trying to prove myself to? Luke? Myself?

She didn't think either was correct. She certainly had never felt the need to prove herself to her brother or herself, but what did that leave?

She had no idea.

But the relentless drive was there, and she felt a compelling power urging her onward, to control the Force, to become stronger, to bent it to her will.

So here she stood, concentrating, focusing, reaching out with her mind.

Aurens was not able to attend class for the next three days.

She worked as a mechanic, generally doing repairs on the various fighter craft that the Alliance used, and one of her assistants had been unable to come to work due to illness. This left her with some misgivings towards the assistant, who she felt was unintentionally depriving her of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn something truly fascinating, but she tried to practice on her own with the saber in her quarters, but it wasn't the same as having a live opponent to spar with.

On the evening of the third day, she once again met with Vastiar, the young man who she'd sparred on the first day, this time in the bar that had been set up in one of the more oddly-shaped underground chambers. He was seated at a small wooden table, alone, drinking something that looked vaguely like whiskey. It was hard to tell, exactly; the lighting in the bar was miserable. The technicians swore that they'd have the lighting system working soon, but then, they'd been promising that for a month now, and she was becoming accustomed to drinking in the dimly-lit tavern.

"Hello again," she greeted him cheerily, sitting down across from him.

He smiled a bit wanly at her. "Good to see you again."

"How's your training going?" she asked politely, signaling to the bartender. He brought over a small glass of wine.

"It's going." His smile vanished, and she noticed that his features showed a somberness that she hadn't noticed when she's fought him. "That's about all that can be said for it."

"Not so good, then, huh?"

He shrugged, taking a sip from his drink. "As good as anything else, I guess."

She cocked her head at him, puzzled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

His smile was more than a trace bitter. "What do you think it means, Locke?"

"I think you're pissed off about something," she said bluntly, wondering how he knew her surname. "And you sound like someone who's dumped his troubles on the world so he won't have to take blame for them."

He raised a curious eyebrow. "And how would you know that? Guy's drinking and says things aren't going so well, and you automatically assume that means that he's dumping his troubles on the world?"

"I'm right, though, aren't I?"

"No, you're not." He stared at her flatly, and she noted with surprise that he seemed largely sober. "I accept responsibility for my problems, and I think it's offensive that you'd assume that I wouldn't."

She shrugged. "Sorry. You just seem like the type."

"'The type?'" He laughed. "What's 'the type?' The whiny type? The weak type?" His humor vanished. "You're a better fighter than me, Locke, I'll readily admit that. But that does not give you the right to sit there and judge me."

Aurens leaned back in her hard steel chair, and neither of them spoke for several long moments.

"How do you know my name?" she asked, finally, breaking the silence.

He chuckled. It was not a particularly pleasant sound. "Aurens Locke. It's on your I.D. tag." He nodded to the right breast pocket of her orange mechanic's jumpsuit, and she glanced at it briefly, embarrassed.

"You have no I.D. tag, Vastiar," she commented, attempting to bring a bit of pleasantness back into the conversation. "What's your name?"

"It's Vastiar."

"Just Vastiar?"

"Just Vastiar."

She nodded. "Vastiar, then, and just Vastiar. It's an unusual name."

He smiled fleetingly. "It should be. I chose it for that reason."

"Oh? How come?"

"Nothing too special," he responded, finishing off his liquor. "I guess I'm just a delusional individualist trying to keep a sense of myself in this assimilated galaxy."

"Assimilated?" Her voice betrayed her surprise.

His eyes met hers. "You don't think so?"

"Whatever I think, I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Vastiar."

He nodded. She noticed that, as he began to speak, his eyes became unnervingly sharp and penetrating. "We're losing our sense of identity, Aurens Locke. The vast frontier systems dwindle daily as we draw them into our mammoth civilization, and we...assimilate them. The Alliance and the Empire and the Old Republic before it are all galaxy-wide dominions, and a lot of people don't stop and think about what that means, what that means for the species and the worlds that fall under their control, don't stop and think about the enormity of it all. When an imperial or a republican government on some far-away, half-imagined world posesses the power, the authority to command our actions, to control our destinies, we become assimilated into a larger whole, working for the fiction of the 'common good,' determined, of course, by the politicians or military men in charge."

"You don't believe in a common good?"

"I believe that there is such a thing, but that invocation of it by a government is evil. The common good exists, but how would a power-hungry politician know how best to achieve it? Why would they even care? Obviously they don't. They use the concept of it to corrupt billions of individual minds and wills into believing that they must work for them, the government, and thus we all fall prey to the system. Assimilated. The larger whole is an abomination."

She looked at him curiously. "You're a strange man to be fighting for the Alliance, then, Vastiar."

He smiled sardonically. "You know what they say. 'Strange times makes for strange bedfellows.' I felt that while the Alliance was far from good, it paled in comparison to the naked evil displayed by the Empire. The lesser of two evils, as it were."

"As it were? Not as it is?"

He nodded. "Now the Empire is all but destroyed; the greater of the evils has been vanquished."

"So what does that mean for you?" she inquired.

"That the remaining evil is still evil."

"You will fight against the Alliance, then? You won't even give it a chance?"

He was silent.

"And if you did fight, who would you fight beside? Would you fight alone?"

He sighed solemnly. "If it came to that, yes, I would. As I said, Locke, I'm an individualist. I do not need a group about me to make me bold. But you're right, the Alliance deserves a chance. Everyone deserves a chance, even the politicians."

She nodded slowly. "So what will you do now, Vastiar the individualist?"

"Train," he responded simply. "The Force fascinates me, and I believe that Luke Skywalker is one of the few truly good men alive today."

"And after that?"

"After that?" His eyes unfocused, and he stared off into the dimly lit bar. "Travel. Wander. Indeed, there is always new people to meet, books to read, and places to see. I think, I hope, that somewhere out there, in some yet undiscovered starfield, I can find freedom at last."

She silently gazed at him for a moment, then broached a subject she had been wondering about. "You're obviously older than you look. I've never heard a teenager say anything like that before."

"Then perhaps you should listen more closely when people speak, Aurens Locke." There was no hint of humor in his voice. "I am nineteen years old."

Again, Leia stood, alone, in her chambers. Her fiance, Han, had left for a couple weeks on a mission to one of the outlying systems, hauling a some kind of sensitive cargo or another.

Her eyes were closed, and perspiration soaked her training garb. She was scowling deeply, in the midst of intense concentration, focusing hard on the Force, on her own being, on merging the two.

Learning the ways of the Force was quickly becoming an obsession for her. She had begun to neglect her duties as a Councillor, preferring to spend all her time in her chambers or the training room, focusing, training, improving her skills with the saber, trying to increase her natural abilities with the Force.

Speed, the speed, the speed, she whispered inside her mind, over and over and over, like a mantra, as if merely repeating the word would make her faster. Her beautiful visage was drawn and haggard from long hours standing in this one spot, eyes closed, never pausing for rest, focusing solely on the Force and using it to make her stronger, faster, more powerful. Yet she felt nothing, could sense that the Force was there but could not coax it inside of her, could not make it augment her speed, could not come as close to getting it as she had during the fight with Iris, when Luke had interrupted her, when Luke had taken the Force from her, when she had been so close, when Luke had jerked it all away from her, when Luke, when Luke...

She bellowed in fury, her eyes flaring open, burning with rage. She stretched her taut arms in front of her and let her anger free, letting its scorching essence sear through her, making her feel alive, feel powerful, feel in control, and the essence of her rage roared through her arms, like water, like fire, and she screamed as the power of her wrath lanced forward in a raging, swirling bolt of heat and flame.

Then her anger was gone, and she fell to her knees, spent, wondering, nearly unconscious. She noted detachedly that the blast had completely incinerated the bed and the dresser next to it, and automated fire extinguishers barely managed to kick in before the entire room was ablaze. A ghost of a smile touched her dry lips as she collapsed to the ground amidst the rapidly cooling wreckage of her chamber.

It was nearly midnight when Luke, deep in a conversation with his old comrade Wedge Antilles about battle tactics and the latest X-wing upgrades, suddenly sat straight up, his blue-gray eyes sharp and alarmed.

Wedge wordlessly raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

Luke closed his eyes. "I just felt a tremendous disturbance in the Force," he said softly. "But...it's gone now."

"That's probably a bad thing, right?" Wedge was accustomed to his Jedi friend doing and saying very odd things. "I've heard you say that before when a lot of people died."

Luke shook his head. "No...it wasn't like that. I guess it wasn't even a disturance, really, just more of a...a..." He grasped for the word.

His friend looked at him expectantly.

"More of a...oh, hell, I can't explain it," he muttered. "But I swear, just for a moment, it reminded me of...well, something I'd rather not be reminded of."

"That's pretty vague," Wedge commented. "What with all you've been through, I can think of about ten thousand things that meet that criteria."

Luke shook his head again. "Forget it. I'm sure it was nothing."

Wedge snorted. "'Forget it?' After all the weird predictions that you've made that have come true? Luke, my friend, you truly have the gift of introducing paranoia into my life."

Luke grinned. "Is that a bad thing? Maybe it'll make you a little less reckless when you fly."

"Maybe it'll make my hair fall out before I'm forty."

"Well, think of it this way: if you're a reckless flyer, you may not even live to be forty. Better bald than dead, right?"

"There's a comforting thought." Wedge looked at him curiously. "So you're not going to...you know, inspect the Force or anything? Raise an alarm? Is Darth Vader back from the dead and standing right behind me?"

Luke didn't respond.

Wedge shot a quick glare behind him, just to be sure.

Luke sat silent for another few moments, then Wedge asked, "You alright, Luke? You looked a little, you know, spooked or something."

"I think I know what I felt," he murmured, troubled. He looked up at his longtime companion. "I'll be back, Wedge."

Wedge snorted again. "Famous last words. Hell with that, I'm going with you. You've piqued my curiosity."

Against his better judgment, Luke assented.

When they reached their destination, Luke was unarmed, but Wedge was nervously fingering the blaster at his side.

"Where is this?" Wedge whispered, not familiar with the area. "I don't recognize-"

"Ssh!" Luke cut him off. "It's Princess Leia's quarters. I think something's happened to her."

Wedge frowned. "You think she's been attacked?"

"I'm not sure."

"You know, I'd feel better all around about this if you were carrying your lightsaber."

Luke stared at the door, as if his eyes could pierce it and determine what was inside. "So would I," he admitted ruefully. "But I'm not going back for it."

Wedge also stared at the door. "Maybe we should go get the guards from the next hall," he suggested quietly.

They looked at each other.

"That would be a bad idea," they both said in unison, Wedge because it would hurt his pride, Luke because he honestly felt, instinctively, that it would be a bad idea.

"Well, here goes nothing," Wedge muttered, flipping his blaster out of its holster and very nearly vaporizing the door. He hopped through, alert and tense; Luke quickly followed him. Neither was quite prepared for what they saw.

Wedge looked around him, jaw slack. The entire room looked like it had been smashed by some giant, flaming hand: the bed was reduced to smoking splinters, the metal along the far wall was melted and seared, the dresser alongside the bed was completely incinerated and in several pieces around the chamber. Most of the plush carpeting had been reduced to nonexistence, and the metal floor underneath was twisted and malformed, as if by tremendous heat. The various decorations that had once adorned Leia's chambers had simply been vaporized.

And in the midst of it all lay an unconscious Princess Leia, haggard in appearance but unharmed by the fire.

"Um," Wedge commented intelligently. "Like, wow."

Luke was already at Leia's side, cradling her unconscious form in his arms. "Oh my God, Leia...oh my God..."

Wedge, regaining his senses, walked gingerly over to Luke. "Is...she going to be okay?" he asked, concerned. He was fond of the pretty, fiesty, good-hearted princess, as many of the pilots of the Alliance were.

Luke nodded, rocking her gently back and forth. "Yes. She doesn't seem harmed by the flames."

"How is that possible?" he asked wonderingly, staring once more at the blasted remains of the chamber.

Luke only shook his head in response.

Leia's absence in training the next day went virtually unnoticed. Luke's, however, was necessarily quite an issue for the suddenly masterless students.

While some of the students were obviously posessed of more inherent skill in either using a lightsaber or controlling the Force, none of them had progressed to a level where they felt confident enough in their abilities to be able to guide others. In truth, even Luke did not feel as if he'd reached that point, although he had not shared that sentiment with any of them.

Sabrul Mantier, generally held by the students to be the best aside from Master Skywalker himself, offered to try and lead the class, although he readily professed to be highly unsure of the wisdom of doing such and made it very clear that it might be smarter for the students to simply skip this session. Most elected not to, however, being fairly confident that the stern, fiery old man would not lead them astray.

He didn't.

The exercises he took the class through were as rigorous as when Master Skywalker did them himself, although the Master generally created one or two new ones every session. Mantier felt it would be folly to attempt to do so on his own.

"Have you seen Princess Leia?" Jeikar said in a low voice to the woman next to him, Iris.

Iris shook her head. "I think she's ill. She hasn't seemed quite as strong lately."

"The princess is ill?" a young man called Taren asked. "Will she be okay?"

Iris shrugged. "I don't even know for sure she's ill. But whatever it is, that little lady's pretty tough. I'm sure she'll be alright."

Wedge felt it wiser to keep his mouth shut about what he'd seen the previous day.

He, along with Scray, Jason, and four other X-wing pilots had been ordered to eliminate a band of revolters in the neighboring star system of Ariskandra. The higher-ups had branded the rebels under the broad umbrella term of 'imperial sympathizer,' but Wedge and his fellow pilots thought that this was something else, something new: an entirely new revolt, separate from either the Alliance or the disintegrating Empire.

Nevertheless, he had his orders, and it wasn't his job to determine who the rebels were, only to destroy them.

He wished that Rat, a good friend of his, hadn't been killed in the orbital fight against the strange, post-imperial craft. That was just pure bad luck: they'd had the drop on their opponents, they'd gone in, blasters roaring, they'd done everything right, but Rat just got unlucky and the third craft had managed to blast him before they could take care of it. He was thankful that Jason had been with them, or the craft might have been able to get a third shot off, and maybe it wouldn't have just grazed his starboard wing next time.

Wedge had learned in the days after the fight that the Empire had christened the crafts Platinum-K6's, purportedly because of the astronomical developing cost that they'd incurred. When he looked into the reason for the expenses, he found out that the Platinums had been developed specifically to test an experimental warp drive with the capability to lock on to a target and actually track it through hyperspace. There was no way to tell whether or not the modified versions they'd faced were equipped with the upgraded drive or not, but, analyzing the schematic, he found that Scray's description of a more powerful weapons system was grossly understating the fact. The Platinums had been installed with a stabilizer nearly four times as powerful as the original design called for, allowing them to remain level and virtually unaffected through tremendous pressure - or recoil. The schematic didn't give as detailed a readout of the weapons themselves as he'd hoped for, but it was enough for him to tell that they were a very complex form of rail gun, guns that used electromagnetic propulsion to throw a shell an unbelievable speeds. The way the ship's weapons had been modified, it seemed to be able to shoot rapid-fire, without recharging for several seconds as conventional rail guns did. In addition, it increased the power of the weapon exponentially, shooting the depleted uranium shell at roughly ninety-five percent of the speed of light, but also produced massive recoil, unlike a normal rail gun.

Which explained how that single shot had been able to destroy Rat's X-wing so easily.

So today, on this mission to Ariskandra, he found himself worrying that the rebel craft might also be Platinums. He didn't cherish the notion of losing another companion so quickly. Or being killed himself.

His fears were allayed, however, when they pulled close enough to the rebels to get a digital readout of their ship specs. They were apparently just six stolen imperial shuttles, retrofitted with standard blasters.

One of the shuttle pilots, apparently the commander, came in through the comlink. "Pilots of the Alliance," the impassive voice on the other end greeted them. "If you wish to avoid engaging us, the Ariskandran Federation fleet, in battle, I suggest you comply with our demands. They are-"

"You don't get any demands," Wedge cut him off grimly. His superiors had specifically stated that he was not to bargain with these rebels, just eliminate them.

"Then you-"

"Prepare to meet your maker," he told the rebel commander, switching off the comlink.

The twelve-man X-wing squadron accelerated to attack speed.

Luke sat in the medical center with Han Solo, who had returned from his latest cargo run earlier in the day, both of them somberly watching over Leia's unconscious form.

It troubled Luke that she did not look at peace, as unconscious people generally did. Her face was as placid and unblemished as it ever was, certainly, but it was as if she radiated with some great internal struggle. He could tell by the worried look on Han's face that he felt it, too.

Neither of them spoke for a great length of time. They simply sat in bedside chairs, staring at the face of the woman that they both loved, one as a fiance, one as a sister, and pondered, deep in thought.

Luke was fairly sure that Leia herself had been the cause of the great fire, or explosion, or whatever it had been, in her quarters. He didn't see any other reasonable way to explain that the room was utterly destroyed and she was virtually without a scratch. But he didn't have a clue how she would have accomplished such a feat: any physical device that she could have used would have certainly hurt her, as well as her surroundings, so that pretty much just left the Force.

Which was ridiculous.

Leia had only been training for days. There was no way she could have unleashed such power so quickly; even Luke, if he for some reason wanted do, would have had trouble incinerating an entire chamber as she'd done, apparently in one blast, and he'd been training longer than anyone alive.

The last of the Jedi, he mused wryly. But apparently not the best of the Jedi.

But if she had been responsible for the destruction...why? What would have possibly been her motivation for blasting her own chamber? Had there been an intruder? Perhaps the intruder had set off a bomb, and she had simply used the Force to protect herself.

Yes, that could be it, he realized, staring at her serene face, flinching at the distress he knew wracked her underneath. It was certainly the most reasonable explanation, he thought, nodding slowly to himself. After all, the Force was not meant to be used as a weapon, but protecting her from an attacker would have served its function perfectly.

He nearly cracked a smile. And God knows that she's got enough people that might want her dead.

He looked up at Han, who looked tired and spent, staring at Leia's face with an intense concentration, vainly willing her to awaken.

She'll be alright.

He hoped.

Leia was floating.

Her eyes were open wide, staring, yet she could see nothing. Vast, unending darkness stretched onward from her in every direction, and she floated effortlessly through the nothingness, unsure whether she was still or moving at warp speed. There were no stars here, as in space, no distant pinpoints of light to light her way, to tell her that she was real, that there was still a place that she could go. She was naked, or at least thought she was; she could feel no clothes on her body, but then, weightless, sightless, floating through an eternal sea of nothingness, how would she have known?

The Force was still there, though. The Force was always there, as eternal and all-encompassing as the infinite void in which she traveled. The Force, which denied her so vehemently, which refused to obey her bidding, which burned in her mind like a fever.

She closed her eyes and reached out to it.

It did not resist, this time, and she exulted silently as she felt the pure, blazing power of the Force course into her, flow through her body, like wonderful liquid fire. Her senses increased a hundredfold, her fears vanished like the darkness before dawn, and she knew that her strength, her speed, her power were unmatched, that she could take on the world, the galaxy, the universe alone. She smiled and drew on the Force, feeling it burn stronger and stronger within her, the feeling pure ecstasy, far more awesome, more powerful, than any lover's touch. Her soul was an unending chasm to draw the power into, and the more she pulled into her, the more she thirsted for the Force. Exulting, mighty, she spread her arms, floating in this void, and drank at the power, laughing silently.

You like the power, don't you?

She didn't see the source of the voice, didn't see anything in this place of darkness, but she recognized it as that of Darth Vader. Her father. It failed to fill her with terror as it once had, and she paid no heed to his presence.

Vader's dark laughter rang in her ears. Abandon the power, my daughter, before it consumes you as it did me.

She smiled, ignoring him.

The road you look down is a dark one, my daughter. Once you have started down it, you will not be able to turn back. Even now, you can feel the corruption, the darkness festering within you, can you not? Do not choose this path, Leia. There is nothing here but the darkness.

She barely heard him, intent on pulling the tremendous, wonderful essence of the Force into her being. There was no darkness in this beautiful thing.

Then you have made the dark road your own, my daughter, my lost daughter Leia, his rasping voice whispered sadly, and there will be no escape for you. My legacy will be yours, my daughter. My heir.

Her eyes still shut, she still drank at the Force.

Vader's presence was quickly fading. May the Force be with you, my heir...

Then he was gone.

And she laughed.