Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [78]
Callista shook her head. “We were comfortable at the Mulako quarry resort. I didn’t come here to be comfortable.” She looked up at the impenetrable sky. “I wanted to feel something here … but it’s not working.” She turned sharply, flashing her slate gray eyes at Luke, and he saw devastation within them. “Why do you stay with me, Luke?” she said.
He blinked, shocked at her question.
“You are a Jedi Master,” she continued, “one of the heroes of the Rebellion. You could have anyone you want.”
Amazed, Luke raised his hand to cut off her comments. “I don’t want just anybody, Callista—I want you.”
She flung the rest of her ration bar angrily out into the swamp, where it splashed into a weed-covered pool. Luke heard thrashing and bubbles as underwater creatures fought for loose morsels.
Callista’s expression grew stern. “Well, that’s fine, Luke—but you have to think of more than your feelings. You have a responsibility to the New Republic … to the Jedi Knights. If I’m powerless, I’ll drag you down.”
Longingly, Luke caressed her arm. “No you won’t, Callista. I—”
She stood, abruptly stepping away from him. “Yes! There’s only one way we can be together. It’s all or nothing. If I can’t have my powers back, then we shouldn’t stay together. You’d better start preparing yourself for that possibility. I don’t want to always be in your shadow, unable to do the things you do so easily … taunted by the things I used to do myself. You’d be a constant reminder, opening and reopening my wounds. If I’m not your equal, I won’t be part of this relationship. That’s the way it has to be.”
“Hey, wait a minute …” Luke said, trying to calm her down.
Suddenly, with a screeching subsonic cry, a swarm of nightbats crashed out of the swamp trees and swooped down. They had leathery wings and insectile bodies with six thin segmented legs bearing small, sharp claws. Attracted by the light, the nightbats came toward them. Other flying creatures flurried in front of them, confused by the high-pitched barrage of noise.
The nightbats attacked indiscriminately, scratching with their claws at Callista and Luke, slashing his jumpsuit, his neck. Luke fended them off with his hands. Two clutched Callista’s malt blond hair, tugging it and fighting with each other as she thrashed to knock them away. With a hissing thrumm Luke drew his lightsaber, and Callista yanked hers free.
Luke used the Force to strike at his targets, but the nightbats kept coming, dozens of them. The lightsaber blades crackled and flared, topaz and yellow-green—attracting more of the creatures.
Callista hissed in anger and struck with her lightsaber, clumsily wielding it like a club that sliced through anything she encountered. Luke clipped off the wings of a nightbat, even as more swirled in, shrieking.
Callista shouted curses at them as she attacked blindly and with brute force. Her battle disturbed Luke. It was filled with a fury and a wild abandon he had never seen in her. Callista yelled at the nightbats as if they were an incarnation of her greatest enemy.
“It’s not fair!” she said, targeting Luke briefly with her gaze. “I’ve finally found you—and now I might have to give you up.” She raised her voice and chopped with the sun-yellow blade in such an explosion of fury that she sliced through three of the nightbats. “It’s not fair.”
And as she released her anger, Luke felt a glimmer, dark ripples that came from Callista. He caught a glimpse of her image in the Force, like the flickering afterglow of things seen under a strobelight.
“Leave us alone!” she shouted at the bats and unconsciously pushed. The remaining nightbats went into a confused spiral away from their campsite—buffeted by Callista’s rage—and fled shrieking into the night. Stunned silence returned to the clearing.
Then Callista lowered her energy blade, slumping weakly in the aftermath of what she had done. Luke deactivated his own lightsaber and stared at her in amazement. Outside the perimeter of the glowlamp, though, Luke heard other creatures stirring, larger predators crashing