Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [11]
Leia felt a rush of hope. “Luke? You can hear Luke talking to you?”
“No!” Streen whirled at her. “The Dark Man. A dark man, a shadow. He talked to Gantoris. He talked to Kyp Durron. You shine the light, but the shadow always stays, whispering, talking.” Streen placed his hands against his ears and pressed his temples.
“This is too dangerous,” Kirana Ti said, knitting her eyebrows. “On Dathomir I’ve seen what happens when a large group falls to the dark side. The evil witches on my planet made things terrible for centuries—and the galaxy was saved only because they had no spaceflight. If the witches had managed to spread their dark workings from star system to star system …”
“Yes, we should all stop our Jedi exercises,” Dorsk 81 said, blinking his large yellow eyes. “This was a bad idea. We shouldn’t have even tried.”
Leia slapped both her hands hard on the table. “Stop this talk!” she said. “Luke would be ashamed to hear his students saying such things. With attitudes like that, you’ll never become Jedi Knights.”
She fumed. “Yes, there is a risk. There will always be risks. You’ve seen what happens to someone who isn’t careful—but that simply means you must be careful. Don’t be seduced by the dark side. Learn from the sacrifice that Gantoris made. Learn from how Kyp Durron was tempted. Learn from the sacrifices your Master made in an attempt to protect you all.”
She stood and looked at each one of them. Some flinched. Some met her gaze.
“You are the new generation of Jedi Knights,” she continued. “That is a great burden, but you must bear it, because the New Republic needs you. The old Jedi protected the Republic for a thousand generations. How can you give up after the first challenge?
“You have to be the champions of the Force, with or without your Jedi Master. Learn as Luke learned: step by step. You must work together, discover the things you don’t know, fight what has to be fought. But the one thing you can’t do is give up!”
“She is right,” Cilghal said in her maddeningly calm voice. “If we surrender, the New Republic will have one less weapon against evil in the galaxy. Even if some of us fail, the rest of us must succeed.”
“Do or do not,” Kirana Ti said, and Tionne finished the phrase that Master Skywalker had drilled into them. “There is no try.”
Her heart pounding, her stomach watery, Leia slowly sat down. The twins stared at their mother in amazement, and Han gripped her hand in admiration. She breathed deeply, began to let herself relax—
When suddenly a strangling outcry of death shattered her soul. It sounded like an avalanche within the Force, an outcry of thousands upon thousands of lives wiped out in an instant. Around the table the other Jedi candidates, all those sensitive to the Force, clutched at their chests or their ears.
Streen let out a long wail. “It’s too many, too many!”
Leia’s blood burned through her veins. Painful claws skittered down her spine, plucking her nerves and sending jolts through her body. Both of the Jedi twins were crying.
Baffled, Han grabbed Leia’s shoulders and shook her. “What is it, Leia? What happened?” He apparently had felt nothing. “What?”
She gasped. “It was … a great disturbance … in the Force. Something terrible just happened.”
With a cold wash of dread Leia thought of young Kyp Durron, turned to the dark side and now armed with the Sun Crusher.
“Something terrible,” she said again, but she could not answer Han’s other questions.
3
The Force moved through all things, weaving the universe into an invisible tapestry that tied the smallest living creature to the largest star cluster. Synergy made the total far greater than the sum of its parts.
And when one of those threads was torn, ripples spread through the entire web. Actions and reactions … great shock waves that affected all who could hear.
The destruction of Carida screamed through the Force, building power as it reflected off other sensitive minds. It rose to a tumult that struck—
And woke.
Sensory perceptions