Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [109]
Luke took a deep breath. “I need you to tell me more. How did Exar Kun fall at the end of the war? What happened to him? How did he die—or were you finally able to bring him back to the light side?”
“Exar Kun was my greatest student,” Master Vodo said, “yet he was corrupted. He was seduced by the powers available to him through studies of ancient Sith teachings.”
Luke nodded gravely. “I am afraid that the same thing might have happened to some of my own students, Master Vodo. Did Exar Kun ever return to the powers of good?”
“That was not to be,” the image of Master Vodo said. “Because I was his Master, I alone of the allied Jedi went to confront him, hoping that I could turn him back. I knew it was a foolish mission, but I had no choice. I had to try.”
“What happened?” Luke asked.
The image flickered, as if something had sparked inside the Holocron; then Master Vodo reappeared. “Exar Kun destroyed me. He slew his own master.”
Luke was suddenly jarred out of the story, remembering that the gatekeeper images in the Holocron were interactive simulacra with personalities imprinted upon them—not the real spirits of long-dead Jedi Masters.
“Then what happened to Kun at the end of the Sith War?” Luke asked.
“All the Jedi banded together and came to the jungle moon in a united front against the Sith stronghold Exar Kun had built. The allied Jedi combined their power into a massive annihilating strike.”
Master Vodo’s image flickered again, dissolved into static, then reassembled itself. “… which obliterated the surviving Massassi natives and …” The image broke up, flickered, re-formed, then broke up again—as if something were jamming it.
“But Exar Kun—what happened to Exar Kun?” Luke demanded. He couldn’t understand what was going wrong with the Holocron. He shook the Holocron, tapped it a few times, then set it down on the flat, hard table and stepped back to get a better view of the holographic Jedi Master.
Inside the static-filled cube a dark knot appeared, like a storm gathering within its translucent walls. Master Vodo-Siosk Baas reappeared. “—but Kun was able to—”
Suddenly Master Vodo’s image shattered into a thousand glittering fragments of colored light, as if a greater force had torn it apart from within.
The darkness inside the Holocron grew deeper and larger, swelling like a slow-motion explosion. Arcs of red fire struck out in all directions from the black fist. With a high-pitched shrieking noise of discharged energy, the faces of the cube split. The Holocron steamed as it collapsed with a shower of sparks, a stream of black curling smoke, and a stench of melted electronics and organic components.
Luke backed away, raising his hands to shield his eyes from the blaze. For a moment it seemed that a solid black hooded form like a walking silhouette rose up from the Holocron, laughing in a deep subsonic voice. Then it drifted away, dissipating into the stone walls.
Luke felt cold fear grip him. The small white cube of the treasured Holocron lay in a melted lump on the table.
Luke would have to find his own answers—and soon.
30
“Luke, I’ve had enough of this!”
Luke looked up as Mara Jade emerged from the turbolift in the hangar bay of the Great Temple. She had stayed on the jungle moon a few days, long enough to learn how to use her own Jedi skills, but the incident with Kyp Durron and the loss of her personal ship had soured the experience for her.
Luke turned from where he stood next to Artoo-Detoo and two Jedi trainees. Kirana Ti bent over to heft a pack of wilderness supplies as she and Streen prepared for a short sojourn out in the jungles. She wore the reptile-skin garments and ornate lacquered battle helm she had brought from her harsh world of Dathomir.
Streen fidgeted and glanced toward the shaft of sunlight that came in under the half-opened hangar door. He wore the many-pocketed jumpsuit he had kept from his gas-prospecting days