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By Root 499 0

the rumors that Anakin Skywalker, protégé of the noted Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, was this Chosen One. But Jax had no way of knowing. He had not been privy to such exclusive information. Only a rank-and-file Jedi, he had barely achieved Jedi Knighthood immediately before the Order’s destruction. But it made as much sense as anything else in a galactic society gone mad. Though he had been one of the very few Padawans who had been able to call Anakin Skywalker friend, Jax had not been then, and was not now, under any illusions about the powerful young Jedi’s mood swings. He remembered once sensing Anakin’s aura, perceiving it as strands of blackest night stretching multidimensionally in every direction.

Why hadn’t the Council seen it, as well? Or had they just chosen to ignore it?

“You may be right,” he finally told I-Five. “Or at least, partly right. I doubt we’ll ever know for sure.”

A sudden mental onslaught struck him, unexpected and powerful enough to literally knock him to his knees. Something had just happened, somewhere in the galaxy. Something involving such monstrous pain and death that it had set the threads connecting him to the Force to vibrating like the Balawai Creation gong. He sensed millions upon millions of lives extinguished in some kind of global holocaust. Dropping the energy sword, he cupped his face in both hands and moaned.

“Jax?” I-Five’s hands were made of hard alloy, yet their touch was gentle as the droid took him by the shoulders and turned him, leaning down to peer intently into his face. “Are you all right? What’s happened?”

“Death.” Jax was barely able to croak the word. “Death’s happened. The cry in the night. Mass destruction, somewhere. They’re all … all …”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. The crushing weight of the tragedy that had been thrust upon him barely left room enough for respiration. Somewhere, on some world in the known galaxy, millions upon millions of people had cried out as with one voice—and then had fallen silent, forever. Although the room still seemed to be spinning on its axis, he struggled to his feet. I-Five began to remonstrate, but Jax pushed past him and headed for the front room.

He hoped he was wrong. Hoped with all his heart that this massive disturbance in the Force had been due to something else, anything else. But he knew it wasn’t so, and his certainty was given added corroboration when he saw Laranth’s face. As expressionless and closed off as she could sometimes be, still he recognized the haunted look in her eyes. He knew it mirrored his own.

“Caamas,” she announced tightly.

The location of the catastrophe was almost as great a shock as the initial psychic tsunami that had convulsed the Force only a few minutes previously. Caamas? A world populated by beings who had repeatedly raised the bar for other species through their remarkable achievements in the arts and philosophy? Jax stared in utter disbelief. It made no sense. The Caamasi were gentle, educated beings, for the most part. Their world was one of the very few to maintain a planetary militia instead of a regular professional army. Only someone as paranoid as Palpatine could possibly think that …

Jax realized then what it was, what it had to have been, and the realization left a sour taste of bile in the back of his mouth. Of course. Caamas was the perfect example, guaranteed to pound home the message that the Emperor was too firmly ensconced to be overthrown. His action would demonstrate that if he was crazy enough, or just plain cruel enough, to obliterate a world of scholars and artisans, what was there to stop him from doing the same thing to Corellia, or Alderaan, or Dantooine, or any of a thousand and one other planets?

Nothing whatsoever, as far as Jax could see. And that, of course, was the point.

He felt, to his surprise, a sudden surge of anger against the Jedi—against his own people. Why had they closed themselves off, shirked the duties and responsibilities that had been theirs for thousands of generations? If they hadn’t, perhaps none of this would have happened. If they had been