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"but never watch your blade—you watch your enemy. Your focus has to be narrow and wide, all at once."

Div showed him Shii-Cho, the first of the seven Jedi fighting forms. He taught Luke the basics, thrust and parry, lunge and deflect. Div cringed as Luke ran through his velocity drills looking like a child waving a stick. But he would learn. Form III, Soresu, was more advanced, but Luke had already figured out many of the basic laserblast-deflection techniques. His movements were still too loose and ranging, making him a wide target for incoming blasts.

Every time Div used the lightsaber to demonstrate, it was more difficult to hand it back. His body remembered all the moves, effortlessly falling into old habits. But it wasn't just the fighting techniques, or the deadly efficiency of the blade.

A lightsaber wasn't just another weapon. Using it, even for practice, meant connecting with the Force. There was no other way to achieve the balance, the necessary equilibrium of stillness and motion. Wielding the lightsaber meant opening himself up to everything he'd shut out these last several years. It meant unlocking a door in his mind that he'd thought was sealed forever.

It was tempting to believe that it wasn't. Ferus seemed to believe that Luke could begin his training even as an adult—contrary to everything Div knew about Jedi traditions.

So why couldn't Div return to his training, reclaim the skills of his youth, fulfill the destiny everyone had foreseen for him?

Even if he'd wanted it, Div felt sure it wouldn't work. Being a Jedi meant opening oneself up to the Force. It meant having trust. It required a degree of blind faith, of innocence, that Div had long since lost the capability to feel. He wasn't willing to let that vulnerability—that weakness—back into himself.

"Like this?" Luke asked, executing a perfect riposte-counterparry combination. He spun around, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, slashing the lightsaber across a bough of the nearest Massassi tree with startling accuracy. Not that Div was about to reveal that he was impressed.

"That's great…as long as your enemy moves no faster than a tree," Div said. "Again!"

Luke swept through the training exercise again, and again, blade flashing, eyes lit with determination. Div couldn't help remembering his own training many years ago. Hiding out on an asteroid with all those proud warriors, so eager for the day when he would be big enough to fight by their side. They had died for him, all of them. Gave him their one escape pod. Watched him disappear into space and waited to die. Safe in his pod, Div had watched as the Imperials had aimed their terrible weapon at the asteroid and erased it from existence.

All those people, giving up their lives so that Div could escape—so that the galaxy's

"only hope" would survive.

All that, and it wasn't me after all, Div thought as Luke slashed and leapt and spun, striving for perfection. But what if it's him?

CHAPTER EIGHT

Belazura was a sewer.

According to the records, the planet had once been a popular vacation spot, its long stretches of white sandy beaches calling tourists from all over the Inner Rim. X-7 had scanned the holopics in disgust. All that land, wasted on useless pursuits. Pale bodies stretching out under the three suns. Children splashing in the surf. And behind them, acres of lush green hills, cluttered with roaming herds of wilterbeasts and hairy bronaks.

The inefficiency of it was criminal—or should have been, at least.

X-7 climbed out of his Howlrunner and looked around with satisfaction. It was an open-air spaceport, left over from the old days when it would have afforded views of the sparkling coastlines and blooming hills. Those were all gone now, thanks to the Empire.

The hills had been stripped as 11-17 miner droids probed the earth beneath for valuable varmigio and mutonium. Derricks and power generators dotted the water as far as the eye could see. The water itself had