• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“I didn’t realize the trials would include psychological torture.”

Chatak glanced at her. “In the end, Padawan, it all comes down to that.”

“The war is trial enough for anyone,” Shryne said over his shoulder. “I say that all Padawans automatically be promoted to Jedi Knights.”

“You won’t mind if I quote you to Yoda?” Starstone said.

“That’s Master Yoda to you, Padawan,” Chatak admonished.

“I apologize, Master.”

“Even if Yoda and the rest of the High Council members have their heads in the clouds,” Shryne muttered.

Starstone bit her lip. “I’ll pretend I’m not hearing this.”

“You’d better hear it,” Shryne said, turning to her.

They held to their southwesterly course.

The fighting along the shoreline was becoming ferocious. Starfighters and droid craft flying well below optimum altitudes were disappearing in balls of flame. Overwhelmed by ranged ion cannon fire from the Gallant, energy shields throughout the city were beginning to fail and a mass exodus was under way, with panicked crowds of Koorivar fleeing shelters, homes, and places of business. Mercenary brigades, reinforced by battle droids and tanks, were fortifying their positions in the hills. Shryne surmised that the fight to occupy Murkhana was going to be long and brutal, perhaps at an unprecedented cost in lives.

Two hundred meters shy of the rendezvous, he was shaken by a sudden restiveness that had nothing to do with the overarching battle. Feeling as if he had unwittingly led his fellow Jedi into the sights of enemy snipers, he motioned Chatak and Starstone to a halt, then guided them without explanation to the refuge of a deserted storefront.

“I thought I was the only one sensing it,” Chatak said quietly.

Shryne wasn’t surprised. Like Starstone, the Zabrak Jedi had a deep and abiding connection to the Force.

“Can you get to the heart of it?” he asked.

She shook her head no. “Not with any clarity.”

Starstone cut her eyes from one Jedi to the other. “What’s wrong? I don’t sense anything.”

“Exactly,” Shryne said.

“We’re close to the rendezvous, Padawan,” Chatak said in her best mentor’s voice. “So where is everyone? Why haven’t the troopers set up a perimeter?”

Starstone mulled it over. “Maybe they’re just waiting for us to arrive.”

The young woman’s offhand remark went to the core of what Shryne and Chatak were feeling. Trading alert glances, they unclipped their lightsabers and activated the blades.

“Be mindful, Padawan,” Chatak cautioned as they were leaving the shelter of the storefront. “Stretch out with your feelings.”

Farther on, at a confluence of twisting streets, Shryne perceived Commander Salvo and a platoon of troopers dispersed in a tight semicircle. Not, however, to provide the Jedi with cover fire in case they were being pursued. Shryne’s earlier sense of misgiving blossomed into alarm, and he shouted for Chatak and Starstone to drop to the ground.

They no sooner did when a series of concussive detonations shook the street. But the blasts had been shaped to blow at Salvo’s position rather than at the Jedi.

Shryne grasped instantly that the flameless explosions had been produced by ECDs—electrostatic charge detonators. Used to disable droids, an ECD was a tactical version of the magnetic-pulse weapon the gunships had released on reaching the beach. Caught in the detonators’ indiscriminate blast radius, Salvo and his troopers yelled in surprise as their helmet imaging systems and weapons responded to the surge by going offline. Momentarily blinded by light-flare from heads-up displays, the troopers struggled to remove their helmets and simultaneously reach for the combat knives strapped to their belts.

By then, though, Captain Climber and the rest of Ion Team had rushed into the open from where they had been hiding, two of the commandos already racing toward the temporarily blinded troopers.

“Gather weapons!” Climber instructed. “No firing!”

Blaster in hand and helmet under one arm, Climber advanced slowly on the three Jedi. “No mind tricks,