• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Master Hamner waited until the last of those departing had passed beyond the Chamber door. He pressed a button on his chair arm, and the door slid into place and locked. “Master Durron, report readiness.”

Kyp cleared his throat. “Our StealthX squadrons are currently at seventy-two percent operational readiness. By current estimates, in two days they’ll be at ninety-one percent, which is likely to be a peak. To get a better proportion of fully operational Exes, we’d need to lay out credits in such a way that the government and press couldn’t possibly not notice.”

“This one says we launch now. Let the other percentages join us in two days.”

Master Hamner looked as though he were repressing a pained reaction. “Thank you, Master Sebatyne. And launch where? To the Maw? We don’t know where these new Sith are.”

Saba Sebatyne did not seem in the least daunted. The reptilian Jedi Master stood, restless. “Launch for a staging area where the government cannot interfere with us. Where they cannot record and track us. Let us go dark, stealthy … and now.”

“In two days, we may have reestablished contact with Ben Skywalker or the Solos. We may know much more than we do now. We wait.” There was no mistaking the martial tone of command in Hamner’s voice. “We’ll maintain the same subterfuge we have been using: Most of the Masters will remain clear of the Temple except during these meetings, so as to avoid the appearance that we’re up to something. Master Ramis, the rotation of our most experienced Jedi pilots back to Coruscant is continuing as planned?”

Octa Ramis merely nodded.

“And still no evidence in the Archives for this hitherto unknown branch of Sith?”

That set several heads to shaking. Hamner sighed. “Very well. Let’s get back to it. Thank you, everybody.” He pressed the button on his chair arm again, and the Chamber door slid open.

Kyp caught Jaina’s eye before he headed for the exit. “Stay close to the Temple. When we launch, I want you in a StealthX.”

“Count on it.”

NEAR REDGILL LAKE, DATHOMIR

Ben woke early, predawn. He hadn’t had much sleep; he’d stayed up late with his father, working on their respective lightsabers, and they had been rewarded with two fully functioning weapons before they turned in, shortly after midnight.

Ben could have slept longer, but his thoughts and sleep were troubled. He sat up where he’d slept, a couple of meters from the offworlders’ campfire, wrapped his blanket around him, and thought, hoping to soothe his worries, to be as detached and reflective as a Jedi should be.

When Darth Caedus, his own cousin Jacen Solo, had died, predeceased by Jacen’s Sith mentor Lumiya, and when his Sith apprentice Tahiri Veila had shown no sign of wishing to follow the Sith traditions, Ben had hoped it meant that the Sith were finally gone for good. Oh, of course there had been suggestions otherwise: the continued existence of Ship, the Sith meditation sphere he himself had once commanded; rumors of lingering, dying Sith communities out in the galaxy somewhere. But he could ignore them. They weren’t in his face, waving lightsabers.

That had changed with the arrival of the Sith strike team in the Maw cluster. Most of the Sith whom Ben and Luke had fought had been at about the level of training of experienced Jedi Knights. Luke had described Vestara Khai’s female companion as being at the approximate level of a Jedi Master. Ben didn’t feel lucky enough to hope that the strike team had been the last representatives of this new Sith Order.

So there were Sith again, and part of him, the younger Ben who had been tortured and nearly turned by Darth Caedus, was still a little afraid of them.

Death didn’t frighten him. Becoming like Jacen Solo … that was another matter.

A couple of meters away, Luke sat up, fully awake, serene. “Your emotions betray you.”

Ben gave him a scowl. “Your emotions wander around short-sheeting beds and putting everyone’s hands in bowls of warm water.”

Luke grinned. “Would you please stop saying things like that?”

“Sorry. I just