Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [76]
Thrackan shook his head. “Jedi don’t kill prisoners who have surrendered.”
“You haven’t surrendered.”
“I surrender.” Thrackan raised his hands. “There.”
A younger Jacen might have been offended by the older man’s casual, even contemptuous manipulations. This Jacen merely met manipulation with manipulation. “Perhaps Jedi don’t…but I might. You’ve done nothing but do damage to Corellia, to the New Republic, and to my family since I was a child. Wouldn’t the universe be a better place without you in it?”
“Very funny,” Thrackan said. Jacen could feel just the tiniest trace of increased distress in the man’s emotions.
Distress and—no, he was feeling something else, from somewhere else. Pain. Death. From the future.
From a future, one of any number of possible futures. Jacen peered into it, letting the events of that potential time line wash over him, but kept one eye on his cousin, alert through just his sight for any treachery.
Events flashed past him too fast to absorb all their meaning. Starfighters launched lasers and missiles, raining death on the innocent. Why not the guilty? He could see no guilty. Pilot versus pilot, soldier versus soldier, no one was guilty. Neither side was more evil, more dark.
War spread out from Corellia like ripples from a rock hitting the surface of a pond, and the rock was an image of Jacen and Thrackan. Jacen saw clouds of expanding gas where the brave had flown, corpse-littered fields where the brave had fought, near-unrecognizable ruins that had once been huge space vessels but were now crushed like beverage containers on the rocky surfaces of moons.
And pain—pain racking the Force like nothing had since the Yuuzhan Vong war. Pain twisting his kin. Shrieks of loss filled his ears.
He focused on the rock in the pond, the image of himself and Thrackan, and saw all these events unfolding from the point, the here and now, when he failed to kill Thrackan.
Shaken, he yanked himself back from the vision and stood there, breathing heavily.
“What is it, boy?” Thrackan asked, his tone almost kindly. “You’ve gone pale.”
Jacen blinked at him. He felt as though he were hung on a hook. His mind told him that he couldn’t do what his gut said he must. He couldn’t cut down an enemy who had surrendered.
Trust the Force, Luke had told him, so often. Trust your feelings in the Force.
He couldn’t not cut down this enemy, even if the man had surrendered.
Jacen slowed his breathing, his heartbeat. He got his voice under control. “I apologize,” he said. “I actually do have to kill you now.”
“You’re insane. I’ve surrendered.”
“That’s not enough. You ruin the future, Thrackan.” No, that wasn’t quite right. But the future was ruined if he lived. “For the greater good, our Jedi traditions notwithstanding, I have to kill you.”
“But my droids are here.”
A blaster opened up from behind Jacen. He turned to intercept the bolt—and, partway into his maneuver, cursed himself for being tricked twice.
No one stood in the hallway. The sound of blasterfire emerged from a small circular device adhering to the ceiling near a glow rod light fixture.
Jacen continued his maneuver into a full spin. His lightsaber, ending its 360-degree sweep, would cut Thrackan in half.
Instead, it hit a gleaming metal column.
Jacen glanced up. The column was rising out of the floor, propelling the metal disc Thrackan stood on up to the ceiling. The disc hit the edges of the transparent tube, and there was a tremendous thoom noise. Thrackan’s feet launched up from the disc and disappeared from sight.
Jacen stepped onto the second disc and hit all four buttons on the control panel. The disc he stood on raised him rapidly into position, to the bottom of the second tube, and an instant later, a second ear-hammering thoom catapulted him upward.
Propelled by an energy he couldn’t yet define—repulsors? pneumatic air currents? tractor beams?—he flew up through