The Legion Renewed

Chapter Three

Wedge felt uneasy. He had a feeling that something was wrong. If he had been in his fighter, he would have veered off, looped up, and doubled back to see what was behind him. As it was, he had to settle for simply taking a look down the cell bay.

"Where you goin', Wedge?" one of his companions asked.

"Nowhere," he replied. "Just taking a walk." It would have been impossible to explain what he was doing, because he didn't really understand it himself. Probably he was just jittery from working at a nice, safe, sit-down job for once. The fact that he had Brenna Brellis as a prisoner meant very little to him, although he was conscious that if things had worked out somewhat differently, his father might have died on Croyus Four instead of on his ship. Wedge had a job to do, and guarding Brenna Brellis was just part of that job, nothing more and nothing less.

There was nothing to be concerned about. The building and grounds were well-alarmed and well-patrolled. There was no way anybody could get in or out without somebody noticing. And here within the deepest interior part of the prison-well, the idea was just too ludicrous to think about.

Nevertheless, Wedge still had an uneasy feeling.

He got about halfway down the corridor when he stopped. Puzzled, he reached for the lamp switch at his waist. As the light flooded the small section of corridor, he stepped back in total surprise-not fear, for he had fought with Luke and trusted his life to him more than once-but this was the last face he ever expected to find here.

"Commander Skywalker, what are you doing-ooophh!" He crumpled to the floor as a hand from the shadows expertly clipped him on the back of the head.

Luke quickly bent over Antilles' fallen form and checked for pulse and breathing. The lamp had automatically extinguished itself in Wedge's fall.

"He'll be all right," Briande Brellis whispered.

Luke was relieved to see that Wedge would, indeed, be all right-provided he took it easy and got proper rest for the next couple of days. But just then a worried call sounded from near the guard's station. "Hey, Wedge, you all right?"

The voice that answered was not Wedge's, but in the two guards minds, it sounded like Antilles. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just stubbed my toe."

"You need any help?"

"No, that's all right. But, um, listen-I'm gonna check out the delta back-up system. It might take a few minutes, so keep your shirts on."

"Sure thing, Wedge. Let us know if you need anything."

Luke paused a moment with his hand over the unconscious pilot's forehead to try and make him forget what he had just seen. Hopefully, the mind-suggestion would work on Wedge.

"Nice trick," Briande Brellis said, referring to Luke's voice-manipulation with the guards. "How did you do it?"

Skywalker straightened and thought back to a time when he himself had asked a similar question.

"The Force," Luke replied, smiling, "can have a strong influence on weak minds. Let's go now. Quickly."

The toll of all the Jedi's efforts and concentration of getting inside the prison, and now back outside began to show its effects on Luke's forehead, where beads of sweat were starting to collect. Luke peered around the corner at the station, where there were still two guards left, and took a moment to gather himself for another effort of concentration.

Briande Brellis came up from behind. "Allow me," she said softly.

Luke stepped aside and watched as she reached up to her uniform collar and pulled off a decorative button that had no real practical purpose on the uniform. Then she guaged height and distance and lofted the button high over the heads of the guards and down into the corridor beyond. Luke smiled to himself. It was not exactly what he would have done, but it was effective.

The button fell to the floor with a clatter.

The two guards looked at each other. "I must be goin' nuts," one of them commented.

"Maybe we both are," the other said.

"Either that, or we got ghosts."

Unholstering their blasters, they stepped slowly and cautiously down the corridor where the sound had come from. One guards moved to the light switch that was against the wall. It would wake some of the prisoners, but the evening's noises were just too strange.

Light poured over the entire cell block.

"Hey!" someone complained noisily. "Turn it off!" This sentiment was chorused by several other of the more vocal prisoners.

The guards looked at each other again.

"There's nothin' here," one of the grumbled. They turned around and went back to their station.

They had almost made it to the prison's main exit without further incident when Luke's intended pupil started to duck down a side corridor, towards the armory. He pulled her back by the arm. "Where do you think you're going?" he asked hoarsely.

"They'll have put my lightsaber in there," she replied.

"Leave it," the Jedi said.

"But I-"

"Leave it!" he ordered. For a second, he thought she was going to disobey him, but she didn't. Instead, she set her mouth into a determined line and nodded reluctantly. Then she followed him down the hallway that led to the outside.

Before reaching the exit, the shadows that had been their cover gave way to the lights from the overhead fixtures that were left on all night. Luke and his student pressed themselves against the wall at the edge of the shadows to avoid being seen by the guards on patrol. The sentries carried both blasters and riot guns.

Luke could sense Briande's gaze travelling from the guards and their weapons to the lightsaber dangling at Luke's own hip. He sighed to himself. If they were going to work together, they would have to start trusting each other.

Skywalker motioned for his student to be quiet and to remain where she was. Then he slipped deeper into the darkness and backtracked the way they had come. When he returned a few minutes later, he had Briande's lightsaber in hand. As he held it out to her, he noticed that she seemed neither surprised nor expectant. She just took it and looked at him coolly as she attached it to her belt.

Luke glanced at the exit and then pulled her further back into the shadows where they could talk. There were just a few moments left before the guards would be positioned so that they could escape without being seen.

"The doorway is alarmed," he told her. "We can't walk through without setting off the alarms."

"How do we get out of here, then?" she asked.

Luke gestured. "There's a small window at the top, the last two feet, where it's not alarmed. I'll help you. When I move, give me a three second head-start, and then come running as quickly and as quietly as you can."

Briande Brellis nodded. They went back to the bare edge of the shadows, where she eyed the twelve-foot high door doubtfully.

The Son of Skywalker watched until the guards separated. Then he broke out into a dead run that was made in complete silence. Just at the last possible instant before going through the alarmed passageway, he skidded to a stop on one knee and cupped his hands into a stirrup.

Exactly three seconds later, the woman who looked like Brenna Brellis followed after him. She, too, went running for the door, but unlike Luke she did not stop. Instead, she tried to build even more speed. When she reached Luke, she stepped into his clasped hands.

Luke reacted instantly. Using Jedi-trained muscles, he launched her up into the air and catapulted her over the alarmed section of the door.

It was a high distance, and Luke's apprentice just cleared it. She landed shoulder-first on the ground beyond and rolled away into the darkness.

Without waiting to see whether she successfully landed or not, Luke brought himself from the kneeling position into a forward-face crouch in a single motion, and jumped high into the air. At the apex of his leap, he executed a forward tuck-and-roll which carried him safely through the narrow two feet of unalarmed door. He regained his feet and sprang into the shadows where Briande Brellis waited, just as the guards turned to face each other again, but Luke and his student were moving silently away, invisible in the shadows.

When they were out in the open, away from the prison and moving towards the landing field where Luke's fighter rested, the Jedi turned to his companion. "Who trained you?"

"My father." She picked her way across a tree that had fallen during an electrical storm.

"Your father? He's a Jedi Knight?" Luke was surprised. He had thought he was the only one.

"Was a Jedi Knight. He's dead now."

Luke stopped and looked at her compassionately. "I'm sorry. He must have meant a lot to you." He extended a hand to help her across a small gully, and also to offer a small gesture of consolation.

Briande ignored the hand and jumped across unaided. "I have no feelings for him. He was already half-dead before my sister killed him."

"What do you mean?"

She looked at Luke through eyes that were as cold and distant as space. "I mean that my father was a cripple, not only in body, but also in mind. When my mother was killed, he died with her. He became an empty shell, living in a decrepit body, thinking of very little besides his memories of the past. He swore that he would never pass on his knowledge of the Force, but when Brenna joined the Dark side, he had no choice. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to finish.

Luke waited for her to continue. When she didn't, he picked up the conversation again with another question he was puzzled about. "How did you know me? We'd never even met before I saw you on the street."

Briande Brellis replied crisply, answering his questions but offering no more information. "Before he died, my father told me that if anything happened to him, I was to seek out the Son of Skywalker. He foresaw that you would become a Jedi Knight."

"That still doesn't explain how you could identify my presence."

She didn't look at him, but kept her eyes focused on the terrain, almost as if he wasn't there. "Your father's memory was deeply ingrained into my father's consciousness. He couldn't help but pass it on to me. Much of your father's spirit was passed on to you. I recognized it when I saw you on the balcony."

Luke felt his heart pounding. Which part of his father's memory had Briande Brellis felt? The part that had been Anakin Skywalker, or the other, the Dark One?

Almost as if she had heard his thoughts, Briande Brellis answered him, but her tone was as expressionless as her face. "I hope your father didn't pass everything on to you. It was he who destroyed my father long ago. The man who murdered my mother and made my father an invalid was Darth Vader."

Luke stopped and stared at her in shock. "Then why did you-?"

"Why did I ask you to help me?"

Luke nodded.

"I couldn't get out of that cell alone. And you are the only one who can train me. Besides, your father is the one who turned, not you. Just like it's my sister who turned, not me."

Briande was, Luke suddenly realized, in many ways just like him. It was her place to stop her sister-just as it had been Luke's place to stop Vader. Luke was the only one who could provide her the training she needed to do it, and therefore, whatever personal distaste she may have felt towards the son of Darth Vader had to be set aside.

A Jedi and a Jedi-in-training, each with a dark secret. Each having, or having had, a Dark counterpart. But what Briande did not know-or perhaps she did-was that Luke and his father had been very much alike. Perhaps she and her sister were just as closely linked.

All at once, in the distance, a series of bells and sirens began to sound. Luke and Briande looked at each other. "Somebody must have noticed that you're missing," Luke said.

"Or maybe your friend woke up," Briande suggested.

Either way, Luke thought, it didn't matter. What did matter right now was speed. He held his hand out, remembering that she had refused it before. But this time, with just the barest instant's hesitation, she took it.

"Come on," Luke urged, pulling her with him. The success of their escape depended on reaching his ship before the guards and prison authorities reached them.

Hand in hand, they made a run for the landing field.