• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Luke’s timing was perfect. As he walked through the lush foliage, he heard his two Jedi trainees approach.

As an exercise in resourcefulness and as an opportunity for uninterrupted concentration, Luke sent his students in pairs into the wilderness. Alone, with no other abilities but their own, they worked on powers of concentration, sensing and studying other life-forms, touching the Force.

Luke raised his hand in greeting as the two stepped through feather ferns and thick blueleaf shrubs. Tall, dark Gantoris parted heavy branches and came forward to meet Luke. His high forehead had been shaven clean of eyebrows; his skin looked chapped and weathered. Though Gantoris had calmly lived among geysers and lava flows on Eol Sha, he seemed startled to see the Jedi Master; but he covered his reaction instantly.

On his hellish world, Gantoris had used an innate talent with the Force to keep a small group of forgotten colonists alive. Gantoris had had nightmares of a terrible “dark man” who would tempt him with power and then destroy him. At first he had thought Luke was that man—Luke, who appeared in his dark Jedi robe, striding through a geyser field to ask Gantoris to come to his academy. Gantoris had tested Luke by making him walk across lava and climb through geysers.

Behind Gantoris came Streen, the second candidate Luke had found in his Jedi search. Streen had lived as a gas prospector in an abandoned floating city on the planet Bespin. Streen had been able to predict eruptions of valuable gases from deep within the cloud layers. Luke had tempted him with the ability to shut off the clamoring voices Streen heard in his head whenever he went to populated areas.

As the trainees bowed, Luke clasped their hands. “Welcome back. Tell me what you’ve learned.”

“We found another Massassi temple!” Streen said breathlessly, looking back and forth. His wispy pale hair was tangled, matted with flecks of vegetation.

“Yes,” Gantoris said. The man’s ruddy face and his braided dark hair were smudged with sweat and dirt. “The new temple isn’t as large as this one, but it seems more potent somehow. It’s made of obsidian, sitting out in the middle of a shallow glassy lake, with a tall statue of a great lord.”

“A site of great power!” Streen said.

“I felt the power too,” Gantoris added. He straightened, tossing his thick braid behind him. “We should learn all we can about the Massassi race. They seem to have been very powerful, but they vanished entirely. What happened to them? Is there something we need to fear?”

Luke nodded gravely. He, too, had sensed the power in the temples. The first time he had come to Yavin 4, Luke had been little more than a boy thrust headfirst into the Rebellion against the Empire. He had barely realized the extent of the Force; in fact, he had learned of its existence only days before.

But he returned to the jungle moon a Jedi Master, and he could sense many things that had been hidden to him before. He knew the dark power that Gantoris had detected, and although he told his students they must share what they learned, Luke felt that certain knowledge could be deadly.

Darth Vader had discovered the wrong kind of knowledge. Luke could not dismiss the possibility that one of his students would be seduced by the dark side.

Luke clapped his hands on their shoulders. “Come inside. Take a drink. A supply shuttle is landing, so let’s go greet our guest.”

When they reached the cleared landing pad, Artoo-Detoo waited next to the grid-control kiosk, chittering coordinates to a descending X-23 StarWorker space barge.

Craning his neck, Luke watched the craft descend with a grinding whine of engines and a blast of jets. The StarWorker barge looked like a trapezoidal cargo container with Incom sublight engines strapped on. The intrasystem craft had seen better days: its gray metallic hull showed discolorations from blaster fire and countless pitted scabs from meteor encounters. But the engine sounded loud and strong as the landing gear kicked in.

The space barge