• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

It must be kept under constant vigil, else it will seduce and corrupt you. One moment you’re swatting an annoying training toy; the next you’re paralyzing an offending being’s lungs and choking him to death. You do it because you can. It becomes an end in itself. As a Jedi, you live always on this edge. A single misstep, and you can fall to the dark side.

It has hap-pened to many, and it is always a tragedy. As with an ad-dictive drug, it’s too easy to say, ’I’ll do it just this once.’ That’s not how it works. The only thing that stands be-tween you and the dark side is your own will and disci-pline. Give in to your anger or your fear, your jealousy or your hate, and the dark side claims you for its own.

If that happens," Master Unduli said, "you will become an enemy to all that the Jedi stand for-and an enemy of all Jedi who hold to the path of right. Rocker Pose, please."

Barriss moved to assume the pose. She said, "And have you ever given in to the dark side, Master?"

For a few seconds, there was silence. Then: "Yes. In a moment of weakness and pain, I did.

It allowed me to survive when I might have perished otherwise, but that one taste was enough for me to realize I could never do it again. There may come a time when you experience this, Barriss. I hope not, but if ever it happens, you must recognize and resist it."

"It will feel evil?"

Master Unduli paused in her stretch. She regarded Barriss with what seemed to be great sadness in her eyes. "Oh, no. It will feel better than anything you have ever experienced, better than you would have thought anything could feel. It will feel empowering, fulfilling, satisfying. Worst of all, it will feel right. And therein lies the real danger."

Now, on a planet many parsecs away from Corus-cant, in a Rimsoo medical facility, Master Unduli’s words on that sunny and cool morning came back to Barriss with renewed clarity and, perhaps, a better un-derstanding. She had been tempted to destroy Phow Ji. He had been no real threat, save to her pride, and she had almost justified it by telling herself that his attack had been a threat to the honor of the Jedi Order. That would have been a lie, of course-the Jedi Order was not threatened by Ji’s attack any more than she person-ally had been. But how close she had come to using that as her rationalization for taking a life!

In a very real way, she realized that she owed a debt of gratitude to Phow Ji. Ironically, his presence here in her life was instructive, was an opportunity for her to learn how to resist the temptation of the dark side. If there was a purpose to all things-if, as the core tenets of the Jedi Code stated, the galaxy was indeed unfolding as it should-then Phow Ji had his destiny to fulfill, even as she had hers.

Barriss took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Master Unduli had been right-she did indeed walk a fine line that had to be watched at all times. It was not an easy path, but it was the one she had been raised from birth to tread. Failure was unacceptable, unthinkable. To be-come a Jedi Knight was her life’s goal. Without the Jedi, she was nothing.

Jos waited until the afternoon shower tapered to sprinkles before he headed to the refuse bin to dump his and Zan’s trash. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough maintenance droids allocated for that duty, so many times he either carried his own garbage out to the bins or it quickly filled up their living quarters. He and Zan had a side bet for the chore going at the sabacc game, and even though Jos had walked away the big credit winner, he had lost the trash bet to Zan, so he was stuck with the duty all week. And it seemed at times that all he and Zan did was sit around and generate trash-the plastiwrap bag he carried had to weigh five kilos and was barely big enough to zip shut.

He skirted the larger puddles and deeper mud, and made it to the bin without being drenched, hit by light-ning, or attacked by killer Separatist battle droids. The sensor on the bin dilated the input hatch, and he fed the bag into