Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [102]
“But you have secrets.” Kam’s eyes became crescent slits. “You and Master Skywalker have not been wholly forthcoming.”
“True, but there are good reasons for this, reasons Master Skywalker himself gave me. His sister, despite the dire circumstances here, chose not to violate those confidences.” I looked him straight in the eye. “You have your reasons for being here, so you can shore up your personality against the weaknesses that allowed you to be seduced by the dark side. My reasons for being here are different, but no less important to me. I want Exar Kun’s influence as dead as you do. Together we can accomplish this, each doing our parts. Mine are just going to be different than yours.”
Kam considered my words for a moment, then slowly nodded. “I’ll tell the others you think tonight is not a good time for planning against Kun.”
“Leave me out of it. It’s only logical that working on things now will be to no one’s benefit. Let’s get some sleep and plan tomorrow, during the day. Kun doesn’t seem to strike effectively during the day.” I gave him a solid smile. “We are going to win against him, you know.”
“We’ve got no choice.”
“Agreed.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “Kun’s picked the wrong people to fight at the wrong time, and that’s the last mistake we’ll let him make.”
The council of war convened in what had once been the Rebel command post for the first strike on the Death Star. Dust shrouded the various artifacts that hadn’t been hauled away by Imperial survey teams or New Republic museum curators. What remained was largely serviceable and permitted all fourteen of us to sit around comfortably. Despite there being ample room for me at the central table, I hung back and pushed my sphere of responsibility out to fill the room and monitor what was going on with my fellow apprentices.
I immediately picked up a jet-black strand connecting Streen to Kun. I was sure the old gas prospector had no idea it was there. He was still mortified at his near-murder of Master Skywalker and his dwelling on what he had almost done was what allowed Kun to maintain the link. More fortunately, Streen’s emotional turmoil meant any information coursing down that line to Kun was unreliable, carrying with it dour emotional impressions.
If that were not enough to make Kun think we were hopelessly incompetent, Ambassador Cilghal’s curious logic must have convinced him of it. She dismissed Dorsk 81’s fear that Kun could listen in on our planning sessions by saying, “We must operate on the assumption we can still fight him. We have enough real problems to confront—there’s no need to manufacture worse ones from our imagination.” As a warrior, I couldn’t imagine anything worse than our side remaining willfully ignorant of the possibility that our enemy knew what we were planning, but in the espionage-laden world of diplomacy, that didn’t appear to be so important.
I kept careful track of what information moved through the conduit from Streen to Exar Kun and found I really needed to inject very little into it, or edit very little from it. Twelve half-trained apprentices and two toddlers planning to annihilate someone who had survived an onslaught by the combined might of the Jedi of his age sounded ridiculous on the surface of it. Tionne carefully told us how our own little council mirrored that of the Great Council of Deneba, when the Jedi united to defeat Kun. She made it sound grand and hopeful, but with only a little push I was able to make it sound hopeless.
I let Streen fill Kun with our resolve to unite and defeat him, but Kun’s contempt for us came rolling back along the line like an echo. He had faced fleets of ships and all the known Jedi. He had slain his own master. His power was unrivaled. He had defeated our Master and beyond our resolve to fight, we had no operative plans and nothing with which to challenge him. We were snacks he would devour at his leisure, not morsels that might choke him.
His connection to Streen atrophied and died as various of us offered plans that wouldn’t trap a stintaril.
My quiet