Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [105]
“Just the thing I wanted to talk with you about.” I stroked my goatee and began pacing back and form before him. “I checked New Republic law. Property claims are abandoned well shy of four millennia. As a result, I’ve filed a claim for this place, and now it’s mine. I’d love to have you stick around, but your statue is right where the wife will want the entertainment center. You understand, don’t you?”
“You insolent bug!” Kun opened his shadowy arms wide. “You prattle on as if your wit can armor you against my might.”
“And you think you can hurt me?” I scoffed at him. “This is your eviction notice.”
“You’re playing with powers more titanic than you could ever know.”
“Save the threats.” I yawned. “I’ve been going over all the stuff you’ve done, and I’ve figured out your weakness. While disembodied, you can’t affect the physical world.”
Kun’s expression darkened. “No?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Ah, then I cannot do this.” The wraith waved an ethereal hand and sparks shot from each of the explosive packets I’d scattered about. Blue flames flared as the detonators each melted.
Just like the Jedi Holocron!
My nose closing against the stink of melted plastic, I glanced up at Kun. “Ooops.”
Kun flicked a finger at me, sending me whirling across the courtyard. I tried to gather the Force around me to protect myself, but the shock at my error kept me from it. I slammed into an obsidian wall and heard a bone in my right forearm crack. I clutched the limb to my chest, but Kun spun me again, smashing my flank into a low wall. Ribs crunched with that impact and I felt something inside go, as well.
Kun was enjoying himself, probably for the first time in millennia, the very thought of which made me vomit. Kun’s laughter echoed through his stronghold as he pitched me around, dancing me and rolling me back and forth across the courtyard. I thought his actions were haphazard, especially when he lifted me into the air, then dashed me down, shattering my left leg, but even through the pain I had a clarity of mind. He wanted me thinking, not dead, yet, and that made my stomach roil again.
Eventually, like a child tiring of a toy, he let me go. I slumped to my side and involuntarily flinched as his shade came to cover me. “Just because you never saw me affect the material world, it doesn’t mean I couldn’t. And even if it is something of an effort to do so, here, in my stronghold, it is a pleasure beyond your possible ken.”
I let my words hiss out between clenched teeth. “I think I’ll put a wideview holoprojector right where you’re standing.”
“Childish jokes from a childish mind.” He gestured casually and all the explosive charges I’d placed sailed out of the temple and splashed in the black lake. Glancing down at me, Kun let his voice become icy. “You could have been raised to the level of divinity by my hand. Now you will be destroyed by it.”
Even before I could taunt him again, he gestured and I felt a presence behind me. I rolled over and saw Mirax standing there, her eyes full of fire. “I should have known, CorSec, that you would abandon me. You said you wanted me more than you wanted your Jedi heritage. I gave you all that I am. I want to bear your children. This is how you repay me? You leave me alone, all alone, dying alone; while you play games with rocks and pictures?”
The vehemence in her voice ripped straight through me. It collapsed my stomach and shoved it out through my spine. I wrapped my hands around my belly and hunched forward. “No, Mirax, no!”
The wailing calls of all the infants who had died on Carida swirled around me to accompany her voice. “Hear them, Corran. They are your sons, your daughters. They are the children you have denied to the world. You accused Exar Kun of being a fool because he destroys life, but you are more of a fool. You could have created it. With me. If you wanted me. If you truly loved me.”
I hugged my broken arm to fractured ribs, folding around the pain in my middle. I knew she was nothing but an illusion Kun had conjured from my mind, but it seemed too real for me to disbelieve