Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [74]
I’d just finished serving everything and was returning from the kitchen after shutting down the stove, when Kyp stormed out of the dining room and clipped me with a shoulder.
“Hey, Kyp, what’s the problem?”
The younger man said nothing and continued to stalk down the corridor. I ran after him and caught up with him after a couple of steps. I dropped my left hand on his left shoulder. “Kyp, answer me.”
Kyp whirled beneath my hand, his dark eyes blazing. I felt something solid hit my chest, but I’d already begun to move to my right. The Force blow he aimed at me glanced off the left side of my chest, yet was strong enough to bounce me off the corridor wall. I caught myself against the rough stones, but not before I’d slid halfway to the floor.
“You are not my master.” Kyp shifted from pointing at me to pointing back toward the dining room. “He is not my master. What good is it being a Jedi if we do not act?”
“What good is it if we are Jedi that don’t act responsibly?” I hauled myself upright. “Remember, Kyp, ‘no-good Jedi’ kicked Exar Kun’s butt.”
Kyp struck at me again through the Force, but I expected it this time. I relaxed and let the Force energy flow over and through me. I absorbed enough of it to let me create a shield that split the attack. The fact that I didn’t end up being ground back against the wall surprised him.
“You’re good, Kyp, but you’re not great.” I held my hands up in a nonthreatening gesture. “You’re involved with someone who lost a long time ago. Don’t compound his error.”
“And who will stop me?”
I hesitated because Kyp’s words seemed to echo within themselves. It took me a second or two to figure out that the echo wasn’t a purely auditory phenomenon. I was hearing Kyp’s voice through my ears, but the undertones were coming to me through the Force. We were not alone, which meant Kyp’s mentor had come to aid his apprentice.
“I will, if you make it necessary.”
An ancient sneer of contempt twisted Kyp’s features. “Puny Jedi, you are of no concern to me.”
Even though I braced myself for another attack, it did no good. Kyp’s previous Force blows were like light breezes compared with a full-out gale. I slammed back into the wall with a teeth-rattling impact. As my body absorbed Force energy and fed it back out, the shield I’d created grew in size. More importantly, my surprise and survival instinct opened me up to the Force and allowed it to flow into the shield. Even so, Kyp’s attack jammed the shield back against the wall and I watched stone crumble beneath its rim.
The safe area I had began to shrink, and my chest became tight as it compressed my ribs. I looked Kyp straight in the eyes and tried to shoot into his brain the image of the mask of hate he wore, but the world around me went black before I could tell if I’d had any success at all.
I awakened probably less than a minute after that, judging by how much of the grain gruel had been consumed in my absence. I hung in the doorway to the dining room, my ribs a bit sore. Streen got up from his place and helped me to a chair while Tionne poured me a glass of water.
I drank it, wishing it was full of Corellian whiskey.
Luke’s blue eyes became slits. “What happened to you?”
“Kyp didn’t like the menu.” I winced as a twinge ran through my ribs. “We had a discussion in the hallway. You didn’t feel anything?”
Heads all around the table shook and I felt cold dread begin to congeal in my stomach. If Exar Kun could mask the attack on me in such a way that Luke could not feel it barely fifteen meters away, then he could have slain Gantoris and could still wreak more havoc here with impunity. We were up against something more powerful than I’d ever cared to imagine existing.
I stood. “Master Skywalker, I would have a word with you, alone.