• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Must be. The other one just disappeared.”

The other one reappeared suddenly, shooting out through the narrow interstice at a height of at least two stories. Clear of the repulsor fields, he executed a perfect somersault in midair and landed on the slab of ferrocrete beside which Jax and Laranth sheltered. With a motion that suggested the closing of a curtain, the youth—for he couldn’t have been more than about fifteen or sixteen—closed the lips of the flux zone, sealing the Sith within. A heartbeat or two later, the fields blazed brighter than the noonday sun on Coruscant’s uppermost levels and gave a sound that made Jax think the sky was splitting. The concussion hurt his ears and buffeted him even in the lee of the ferrocrete block, and it knocked the boy from his high perch to the ground.

He wasn’t unconscious when Jax and Laranth got to him, but he was stunned. Aware of the other’s obvious power, Jax projected feelings of calm as he knelt beside him.

“That was a pretty neat trick you did with that field back there,” Jax said mildly. “Is that dead end going to last much longer?”

The boy blinked and shook his head.

“Then we’d better get you out of here. That Inquisitor’s going to be pretty mad when he comes to.”

“If he’s still alive,” Laranth murmured.

“Who are you?” the boy asked, confusion and fear intertwining in his voice and invading his gray eyes.

Jax held his lightsaber up between them, then deactivated it. “I’m a Jedi Knight,” he said. “My name is Jax.”

six

Jax and Laranth stopped to reconnoiter in the confluence of corridors where they’d met on their way to the Force eruption. The boy, who’d mumbled that his name was Kaj, seemed less dazed now. His eyes kept going to Jax’s lightsaber.

“Which way from here?” Laranth asked, jerking her head toward the alcove terminus of the shaft she’d descended earlier. “That comes out in Ploughtekal. Near the heart of it, in fact. If the Inquisitors are looking for our friend, the market might offer us the best cover. How did you come down?”

Jax grimaced. “I barely remember. Kaj here sort of swept me off my feet.”

“If you’re a Jedi, where’s your lightsaber?”

Laranth and Jax turned in unison to look at the boy. He actually blushed.

“Strictly speaking,” Laranth told him, “I’m a Gray Paladin. We have a somewhat different approach to a few things, lightsabers being one of them. A Gray Paladin isn’t married to a particular weapon. We simply use the Force through whatever tool we prefer. I like blasters.” She patted the pair holstered at her thighs. “Though I’ve been known to use a vibroblade from time to time.”

The boy turned his eyes to Jax. “Your lightsaber is red. His was red.” He flicked his gaze back the way they’d come. “How do I know you’re really Jedi—either of you? How do I know you’re not Inquisitors?”

Jax could feel the uncertainty and fear building up behind the pale eyes. Building toward panic. He’d already seen what this Force prodigy could do when panicked.

“I’m not,” he said. “Touch me. Use the Force to reach out and read me. I won’t stop you.” He saw Laranth’s eyes widen just before he closed his own and opened himself to this strange boy. He felt her trepidation as a cascade of cold lines down his back, felt the boy’s tentative touch as a cool tendril of uncertainty.

Blue. The Force manifested in Kaj as amorphous blobs, blue tending toward violet. Jax saw them in his mind’s eye reaching out for him, encircling him, probing.

After a moment the touch was withdrawn and he opened his eyes to see the boy looking at him, perplexed.

“What did you sense?”

“There’s no anger in you. No rage. I have so much and I have to fight it so hard sometimes. And he …” Again, the flicker of attention back toward the debris field with its possibly dead Inquisitor. “… he was like a furnace. He burned with it. Why are you so different?”

“Because I’m a Jedi,” Jax answered him. “Our Inquisitor friend is—something else.”

“A Sith?”

Jax glanced at Laranth. “What do you know about the Sith?” he asked Kaj.

The boy shrugged. “Legends. Myths.”

“Well, there are