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Another wave of TIE fighters soared in with twice the numbers of the previous strike, and the Jedi trainees gave no argument as they sprinted away from the smaller temple and headed into the underbrush.

Overhead, more lines of fire appeared as Pellaeon’s seventeen Star Destroyers launched another wave of ground assault machinery to finish mopping up.

As they reached the giant pyramid that had once been fortified as a Rebel base, Dorsk 81 saw that the trainees’ desperate defense at the crumbling temple had served a secondary purpose he had not expected—a diversion, a decoy for the Imperial forces who now thought the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster was the Jedi stronghold. The TIE fighters and bombers concentrated their forces there.

Despite the fear that rattled through him, Dorsk 81 felt an exhilaration and a camaraderie with the other Jedi. He was fighting for something meaningful. All his life, as yet another duplicate on a world of clones, he had never felt he had a choice in his destiny. Everything had been preset for him until he climbed out of the rut that had been dug in the Dorsk bloodline. Now he was a Jedi Knight—his own choice. And he had just proved he could be good at it.

The long horizontal door in front of the hangar levels of the Great Temple hung halfway open, a dark mouth with thin cool air breathing out from the shaded interior. The Jedi trainees ducked down and rushed inside, hoping that the millennia-old walls would shelter them from the brunt of the Imperial attack.

Tionne rushed past Kyp Durron, who grabbed her arm and shouted, “Go to the communications center! Contact the New Republic and let them know we’re already under attack. The Imperials struck faster than we expected.” Tionne nodded, her pale porcelain face so brittle that it looked as if it might shatter.

Across the river TIE fighters circled over the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster, firing repeatedly with laser cannons. Black smoke etched the air.

Kyp looked toward their stolen Imperial shuttle still on the grassy landing grid. He gestured toward it as Dorsk 81 headed for the relative safety of the deep hangar levels. “I’m going back to the ship,” he said. “We’ve got some weapons there. It’s all we have.”

Dorsk 81 hesitated, then followed as Kyp sprinted across the clearing without looking behind him. Dorsk 81 paused when a clanking noise crashed through the outer rim of trees, and the trapezoidal head of an Imperial AT-ST scout walker shoved its way out of the forest. It thundered twice with its mechanical legs, finding support on the rough ground. The head swiveled, its laser cannons targeted, aiming at Kyp as he ran.

Dorsk 81 froze for just an instant. He saw what was going to happen—but he couldn’t allow it. In an instinctive gesture, he released the Force; he did not restrain himself, did not channel or direct the flow, merely releasing his fear and his wish to get the scout walker away from his friend.

A wall of invisible force slammed into the AT-ST, flattening its cockpit and crushing the walker backward into a tree.

Kyp whirled to gawk at the smashed scout walker. Everything had happened in only a second. “Thanks,” he said.

Dorsk 81 found himself trembling. “It just came automatically,” he said. “I didn’t even think about it.”

“Then you’re a true Jedi,” Kyp said with gentle admiration, but wasted no more time as he ducked into the shuttle and emerged with a pitifully small assortment: five blaster pistols and one laser cutter. “Better than nothing,” he said.

Dorsk 81 looked at them. “Not by much.”

They glanced up at the continuing thunderous sound from the sky as wave after wave of ground assault landers spewed from the fleet of Star Destroyers in orbit.…

Inside, deep in the war room on the second level of the pyramid, the Jedi Knights gathered, unable to shut out the echoing thumps of the constant attack.

Tionne shook her silvery head. “The Imperials have a jamming net in place,” she said. “No