Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor Page 34

“Oh, yes. Yes, indeed.”

  All Skywalker’s anger had fled. Now he only looked tired. Very tired, and much older than his years. “Did you even bother to investigate?”

  “Of course,” Geptun said. “Verisimilitude is vital. I stand behind every word.”

  “Verisimilitude? I did not defeat Kar Vastor in single combat—I didn’t even fight him. He was terrified, and confused, and aside from one, well, bite, he just ran away. I didn’t cut off his arms with my lightsaber, and I don’t even know what a ‘vibroshield’ is.”

  “I did take some liberties,” Geptun said. “Call it artistic license.”

  “It’s—it’s just so …” Skywalker shook his head helplessly; for a moment Geptun feared he might start to cry. “You make me look like some kind of hero.” The word dripped loathing.

  “You are a hero, General. Trust me on this, if nothing else. In my lifetime, I’ve known exactly four actual heroes, and one of them is you.”

  “Don’t call me General.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve resigned my commission. I’m no soldier. Not ever again.”

  “Ah. And what are you, then?”

  Skywalker’s eyes went hooded. “All those men … I killed them. All of them.”

  “You had no choice.”

  “There’s always a choice.”

  “If that is so,” Geptun said, “then you made the right one. That’s what this story is about. Don’t you understand? You are more than a man, now. You are a symbol of everything that is good in the galaxy. In this horrific civil war, don’t you see how much good that image of you can do? You give people hope. You set an example that they can aspire to live up to. Just by existing, you make people want to be better than they are.”

  “But it’s not me. It’s just some made-up guy using my name. A holothriller hero. A storybook prince.”

  “If you say so.”

  Skywalker lowered his face into his hands, and for a long moment he just sat there, silent, motionless. Finally he said, “You didn’t write anything about my good-byes with Nick.”

  “No. Too anticlimactic. The story needs to end with a nice, neat wrap-up. I like your little astromech droid. I think I’m going to end with him.”

  “On the shuttle, later, after I asked Nick about an investigator and he told me about you, just before Nick and Aeona took off … Nick reminded me that I’d never told him what my ‘best trick’ was. You know what I told him? I told him he’d just seen it.”

  Skywalker lifted his face from his hands, and his eyes were dark. Wounded. Haunted by shadows. “My best trick is to do one thing—to make one small move, even a simple choice—and kill thousands of people. Thousands.”

  Geptun nodded noncommittally. After a moment, he said, “One of those heroes I mentioned liked to occasionally say Jedi are not soldiers. We are keepers of the peace.”

  “Keepers of the peace,” Skywalker murmured. “Yes. Yes, I like that. I think that’s right. We are the light in the darkness.”

  “A poetic metaphor.”

  “I’m not surprised you like it; you made it up. But I think … I think it’s not just a metaphor. I think it’s the plain truth.”

  “And all I’m doing,” Geptun said, “is sharing that light with the whole galaxy. I would think you’d want to play along.”

  “I suppose …” Luke took a deep breath, sighed it out. “Maybe you’re right. How much harm can it do?”

  “Well …” Geptun shifted on the settee. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was about to do something he abhorred: tell the truth.

  Something about Skywalker just seemed to bring that out of him.

  “Let them tell their stories,” Skywalker said. “Let them make holothrillers and whatever else. It doesn’t matter. None of the stories people tell about me can change who I really am.”

  “Yes,” Geptun said heavily. “But they can change who people think you are. And that, my young friend, can do considerable damage. Look at Luke Skywalker and the Jedi’s Revenge.”

  Luke nodded thoughtfully. “I guess … I guess if people are going to tell stories about me anyway, I should make sure they’re telling the right kind of stories.”

  “You’ll never have cause to complain of mine, at least. Just don’t start believing your own press.”

  “No fear of that,” Luke said. “I’m not much of a reader, and holothrillers bore me. But there are a couple of changes you need to make.”

  “Do I? My producers rather like it as is.”

  “And if I were to visit them and talk it over, they might change their minds. They might change their minds about making the production at all.”

  “Oh, please. After all the money they’ve sunk into it already?”

  “I can be,” Luke said mildly, “surprisingly persuasive.”

  “Ah, yes, I suppose you can.” Geptun sighed. “Very well. What changes?”

  “You made the deaths of the shadow troopers seem almost like an accident. Like I didn’t know it would happen. But I did. I knew what I was doing. The story has to say so.”

  “Well …”

  “That lightsaber versus ‘vibroshield’ fight? That goes too. It’s stupid. Besides, who wants to watch me cut up one more villain with my lightsaber? Don’t you think that’s getting pretty old?”

  “Perhaps,” Geptun allowed, “we can work a little bit of truth in there.”

  “And then there’s Aeona Cantor. She’s not my love interest—she’s Nick’s girlfriend, and that’s the whole story. Anyway, she’s not my type. Too abrasive. And I don’t like redheads.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. What did happen to Nick and Aeona? And to Kar?”

  Luke shrugged. “Nick thinks Blackhole is still alive.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what he said. He and Kar figure they have a score there that needs settling. And if Blackhole really is still alive, having Nick and Kar and Aeona on his tail will keep him busy enough looking over his shoulder that he won’t have much time to stir up mischief. Now, look, in the story—some of these similes you use are … well, I’m not exactly a literary critic, but …”

  Geptun sighed and reluctantly reached for the holopad. He had a feeling this would be a long, hard process.

  Rewrites, he decided, sucked.

  MATTHEW STOVER is the New York Times bestselling author of the Star Wars novels Revenge of the Sith, Shatterpoint, and The New Jedi Order: Traitor, as well as Caine Black Knife, The Blade of Tyshalle, and Heroes Die. He is an expert in several martial arts. Stover lives outside Chicago.

  ALSO BY

  MATTHEW STOVER

  Iron Dawn

  Jericho Moon

  Heroes Die

  Blade of Tyshalle

  Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Traitor

  Star Wars: Shatterpoint

  Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

  STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

  You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

  Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

  Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

  Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one tim
e in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

  All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

  Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

  FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WINDU

  In my dreams, I always do it right.

  In my dreams, I’m on the arena balcony. Geonosis. Orange glare slices shadow from my eyes. Below on the sand: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Senator Padmé Amidala. On the rough-shaped stone within reach of my arm: Nute Gunray. Within reach of my blade: Jango Fett.

  And Master Dooku.

  No. Master no more. Count Dooku.

  I may never get used to calling him that. Even in dreams.

  Jango Fett bristles with weapons. An instinctive killer: the deadliest man in the galaxy. Jango can kill me in less than a second. I know it. Even if I had never seen Kenobi’s report from Kamino, I can feel the violence Jango radiates: in the Force, a pulsar of death.

  But I do it right.

  My blade doesn’t light the underside of Fett’s square jaw. I don’t waste time with words. I don’t hesitate. I believe.

  In my dreams, the purple flare of my blade sizzles the gray hairs of Dooku’s beard, and in the critical semisecond it takes Jango Fett to aim and fire, I twitch that blade and take Dooku with me into death.

  And save the galaxy from civil war.

  I could have done it.

  I could have done it.

  Because I knew. I could feel it.

  In the swirl of the Force around me, I could feel the connections Dooku had forged among Jango and the Trade Federation, the Geonosians, the whole Separatist movement: connections of greed and fear, of deception and bald intimidation. I did not know what they were—I did not know how Dooku had forged them, or why—but I felt their power: the power of what I now know is a web of treason he had woven to catch the galaxy.

  I could feel that without him to maintain its weave, to repair its flaws and double its thinning strands, the web would rot, would shrivel and decay until a mere breath would shred it and scatter its strings into the infinite stellar winds.

  Dooku was the shatterpoint.

  I knew it.

  That is my gift.

  Imagine a Corusca gem: a mineral whose interlocking crystalline structure makes it harder than durasteel. You can strike one with a five-kilo hammer and do no more than dent the hammer’s face. Yet the same cystalline structure that gives the Corusca strength also gives it shatterpoints: spots where a precise application of carefully measured force—no more than a gentle tap—will break it into pieces. But to find these shatterpoints, to use them to shape the Corusca gem into beauty and utility, requires years of study, an intimate understanding of crystal structure, and rigorous practice to train the hand in the perfect combination of strength and precision to produce the desired cut.

  Unless you have a talent like mine.

  I can see shatterpoints.

  The sense is not sight, but see is the closest word Basic has for it: it is a perception, a feel of how what I look upon fits into the Force, and how the Force binds it to itself and to everything else. I was six or seven standard years old—well into my training in the Jedi Temple—before I realized that other students, full-grown Jedi Knights, even wise Masters, could sense such connections only with difficulty, and only with concentration and practice. The Force shows me strengths and weaknesses, hidden flaws and unexpected uses. It shows me vectors of stress that squeeze or stretch, torque or shear; it shows me how patterns of these vectors intersect to form the matrix of reality.

  Put simply: when I look at you through the Force, I can see where you break.

  I looked at Jango Fett on the sand in the Geonosian arena. A perfect combination of weapons, skills, and the will to use them: an interlocking crystal of killer. The Force hinted a shatterpoint, and I left a headless corpse on the sand. The deadliest man in the galaxy.

  Now: just dead.

  Situations have shatterpoints, like gems. But those of situations are fluid, ephemeral, appearing for a bare instant, vanishing again to leave no trace of their existence. They are always a function of timing.

  There is no such thing as a second chance.

  If—when—I next encounter Dooku, he will be the war’s shatterpoint no longer. I can’t stop this war with a single death.

  But on that day in the Geonosian arena, I could have.

  Some days after the battle, Master Yoda had found me in a meditation chamber at the Temple. “Your friend he was,” the ancient Master had said, even as he limped through the door. It is a peculiar gift of Yoda’s that he always seems to know what I’m thinking. “Respect you owed him. Even affection. Cut him down you could not—not for merely a feeling.”

  But I could have.

  I should have.

  Our Order prohibits personal attachments for precisely this reason. Had I not honored him so—even loved him—the galaxy might be at peace right now. Merely a feeling, Yoda said.

  I am a Jedi.

  I have been trained since birth to trust my feelings.

  But which feelings should I trust?

  When I faced the choice to kill a former Jedi Master, or to save Kenobi and young Skywalker and the Senator … I let the Force choose for me. I followed my instincts.

  I made the Jedi choice.

  And so: Dooku escaped. And so: the galaxy is at war. And so: many of my friends have been slaughtered.

  There is no such thing as a second chance.

  Strange: Jedi I am, yet I drown in regret for having spared a life.

  Many survivors of Geonosis suffer from nightmares. I have heard tale after tale from the Jedi healers who have counseled them. Nightmares are inevitable; there has not been such a slaughter of Jedi since the Sith War, four thousand years ago. None of them could have imagined how it would feel to stand in that arena, surrounded by the corpses of their friends, in the blazing orange noon and the stench and the blood-soaked sand. I may be the only veteran of Geonosis who doesn’t have nightmares of that place.

  Because in my dreams, I always do it right.

  My nightmare is what I find when I wake up.

  Jedi have shatterpoints, too.

  Mace Windu stopped in the doorway and tried to recover his calm. An arc of sweat darkened the cowl of his robe, and his tunic clung to his skin: he’d come straight from a training bout at the Temple without taking time to shower. And the brisk pace—almost a jog—he’d maintained through the labyrinth of the Galactic Senate had offered no chance for him to cool off.

  Palpatine’s private office, in the Supreme Chancellor’s suite beneath the Senate’s Great Rotunda, opened before him, vast and stark. An expanse of polished ebonite floor; a few simple, soft chairs; a flat trestle desk, also ebonite. No pictures, paintings, or decorations other than two lone statues; only floor-to-ceiling holographic repeaters showing real-time images of Galactic City as seen from the pinnacle of the Senate Dome. Outside, the orbital mirrors would soon turn their faces from Coruscant’s sun, bringing twilight to the capital.

  Within was only Yoda. Alone. Perched solemnly on his hoverchair, hands folded around the head of his stick. “On time you are,” the ancient Master observed, “but barely. Take a chair; composed we must be. Serious, I fear this is.”

  “I wasn’t expecting a party.” Mace’s boot heels clacked on the polished floor. He pulled one of the soft, plain chairs closer to Yoda and sat beside him, facing the desk. Tension made his jaw ache. “The courier said this is about the operation on Haruun Kal.”

  The fact that of all the members of the Jedi Council and the Republic High Command, only the two senior members of the Council had been summoned by the Chancellor, implied that the news was not good.


  These two senior members could hardly have appeared more different. Yoda was barely two-thirds of a meter tall, with skin green as Chadian wander-kelp and great bulging eyes that could sometimes seem almost to take on a light of their own; Mace was tall for a human, less than a hand’s breadth short of two meters, with shoulders broad and powerful, heavy arms, dark eyes, and a grim set to his jaw. Where Yoda had let his sparse remnants of hair straggle at random, Mace’s skull was smooth-shaven, the color of polished lammas.

  But their greatest difference perhaps lay in the feel of the two Jedi Masters. Yoda emanated a sense of mellow wisdom, combined with the impish sense of humor characteristic of the true sage; but his great age and vast experience sometimes made him seem a bit removed, even detached. Nearing nine hundred years of age led him to naturally take the long view. Mace, in contrast, had been elevated to the Jedi Council before his thirtieth birthday. His demeanor was exactly opposite. Lean. Driven. Intense. He radiated incisive intellect and unconquerable will.

  As of the Battle of Geonosis, which had opened the Clone Wars, Mace had been on the Council for more than twenty standard years. It had been ten since anyone had last seen him smile.

  He sometimes wondered privately if he would ever smile again.

  “But it is not the planet Haruun Kal that brings you in a sweat to this office,” Yoda said now. His tone was light and understanding, but his gaze was sharp. “Concerned for Depa, you are.”

  Mace lowered his head. “I know: the Force will bring what it will. But Republic Intelligence has reported that the Separatists have pulled back; their base outside Pelek Baw is abandoned—”

  “Yet return she has not.”

  Mace knotted his fingers together. A breath brought his voice back to its customary deep, flat dispassion. “Haruun Kal is still nominally a Separatist planet. And she’s a wanted woman. It won’t be easy for her to get offworld. Or even to signal for extraction—the local militia use all kinds of signal jamming, and whatever they don’t jam they triangulate; whole partisan bands have been wiped out by one incautious transmission—”