Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [127]
The overwhelming elegance of my surroundings sharply contrasted with what I had known at the Jedi academy, making Yavin 4 seem but a distant memory. Coronet City seemed more right to me, I fit in better here. The academy’s jungle setting had always left me slightly uneasy. I realized, sitting in a plush nerf-hide chair, sipping Corellian brandy and watching the city spread out beneath me, that being city born and bred, I had a preference for urbanity and civilization. Coruscant was too built up for me to feel comfortable there all the time, but here, on Corellia, I could feel at home again.
Nice place to raise kids.
My grandfather told me stories of Booster Terrik from back before my father got him sent to Kessel, back before Jorj Car’das had eaten up Booster’s organization, only in turn to have his organization taken over by Talon Karrde. “So, you see, when Hal caught Booster that first time, Booster considered it pure luck, and forever after worked hard to taunt and elude Hal.” My grandfather smiled broadly. “I don’t think Booster ever truly appreciated your father’s skills as a detective.”
We spoke of many things that evening, even on the ride back to the estate. I discovered in my grandfather that night someone I had never known before. Of course, my first relationship with him had been established as a child to a man, which brought with it certain behaviors. By the time I moved into adulthood, I’d joined CorSec, and our relationship shifted to more of a professional one. This was not a deliberate shift but a natural one, since our jobs dominated our lives. While I could speak to him about my romantic entanglements, that again was a youth speaking to an elder. And then, when my father died, the pain we both felt battered us emotionally to the point where sharing feelings hurt too much, so we stoically didn’t touch upon subjects that would reopen old wounds.
On this night, for the first time, I was able to relate to him as just one adult to another. It was an odd feeling, yet one in which I took great pride. Here was the man who knew my father and Nejaa better than anyone. If he could like me, if he could respect what I had done, then there was a good chance they would have also. This realization quelled some of the discomfort I’d felt since my final encounter with Exar Kun, and that night I went to sleep feeling better than I had in a long time.
Master Skywalker had once said that Jedi do not dream, so when I found myself on a bright, arid world, with my lightsaber unlit but held in my right hand, I wondered at how I had gotten where I was. I saw the emerald sleeves of my Corellian Jedi tunic, and even that did not seem out of place, though the material was finer than that of the clothes I’d been given on Yavin 4. It wasn’t until I looked over to my right and saw Ylenic It’kla, resplendent in his purple cloak, and, beyond him, the Jedi General in his brown and khaki desert-born robes, that I realized I wasn’t me.
The three of us, spread out sufficiently to give ourselves room to fight, stood in a dusty bowl-shaped depression beneath a duracrete dome. A dozen three-meter-tall pillars scattered around its circumference held the dome aloft, allowing the light from the outside to illuminate the arena. Makeshift tents and storage sheds occupied a quarter of the arena in the direction we were facing. Emerging from the central pavilion, three figures came out to stand opposite us. Each of them bore a lightsaber. Their leader, the taller, blond man facing the general, took a step