Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [26]
The others reacted in their own ways, agreeing or looking away. Kyp knew Luke’s original group of trainees well; others were new arrivals, coming to be trained as the word went out from system to system, and more potential Jedi Knights were found.
Master Skywalker dropped his hands to his sides, relaxing. Kyp switched off his own lightsaber, and the handle swallowed the silvery pure blade. Cilghal and Dorsk 81 also extinguished their weapons.
Luke smiled at them all. “I think I’ve had enough rain. Let’s go back to the temple.”
Suddenly, Kyp felt the tension fade from the air, and it seemed as if they were a group of companions on a simple hike rather than in a ceremony laden with galactic import.
Master Skywalker stepped into the milling group of trainees, seeking out Callista. He took her hand, and they smiled at each other as they led the others along an overgrown path back to the Great Temple.
En route to Khomm, Dorsk 81 piloted the small private spacecraft the New Republic had given them. The cloned alien watched the bright spot of his homeworld grow.
“Approaching on standard vector,” Kyp said from the passenger seat and toggled the comm system. “Kyp Durron and Dorsk 81 on approach. Request landing coordinates.”
Within a moment, the space traffic controller calmly gave Kyp the data he needed. He looked curiously at Dorsk 81. “Are they expecting us?” he said.
The olive-skinned alien shook his head. “No, they just rarely respond to anything in an unusual way.”
Kyp looked at the cloned alien, recalling a previous time they had traveled together. While under the influence of Exar Kun, the ancient Dark Lord of the Sith, he had gone with Dorsk 81 to an abandoned jungle temple, Kun’s private fortress of solitude. There the black spirit tried to destroy Dorsk 81 on a whim, to demonstrate the power of the dark side; Kyp had saved him, though Dorsk 81 hadn’t even known about it.
Since the defeat of Kun, when Dorsk 81 had faced his fears and his inadequacy, the cloned alien had become stronger by accepting his own limitations. Kyp did not push him, but let the smooth-skinned alien follow his own path.
The pale green sphere of Khomm grew larger, filling the viewport. From a distance the planet seemed peaceful and misty, featureless. It had no natural satellites, not even phases of the moon to make regular change. Khomm’s orbit was practically circular, the tilt of its axis nonexistent, creating no change of seasons. So close to the galactic center, the moonless sky was filled with bright stars.
“Looking forward to going home?” Kyp asked as Dorsk 81 altered the navigation controls to take them into a low-energy orbit, from which they could begin a smooth descent to the spaceport.
The alien nodded. “I’m eager to see my duplicates again,” he said. Because they all came from the same clone stock, obviously Dorsk 81 could not call them his parents or siblings, because they were all genetically the same—something subtle had changed with Dorsk 81, though, giving him an ability to touch the Force that none of the other clone stock had exhibited so far.
“I am particularly looking forward to seeing Dorsk 82,” he said. “Grown from my genes, it is likely he has matured since I have been away.”
Kyp blinked in surprise. He hadn’t known that Dorsk 81 had a … child, offspring, younger duplicate. “I’m looking forward to meeting him too.”
As Dorsk 81 piloted the ship in for a landing, Kyp looked up at the densely clustered stars that made a broad river of light across the night of space. The Core Systems. He vowed to find out what the Empire had been doing after all this time.
CORE SYSTEMS
CHAPTER 9
True night was impossible in the Core Systems. Stars clustered so closely together that even the blackest regions of space were a symphony of stellar flares and hot ionized gas clumped in regions once considered uninhabitable. In a navigational hell like this, remnants of the Empire hid among uncharted systems where