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“No!” Gantoris shouted.

“Let loose your anger. Make me stronger.”

“No!” he repeated, turning his head away from the images of burned ruins and blackened bodies.

“They are all dead. All of them,” the dark man taunted. “No survivors.”

Gantoris ignited his lightsaber and lunged at the dark man.

With an insistent bleeping Artoo-Detoo woke Luke from his nightmares. He snapped awake, using a Jedi technique to dispel the weariness and shock of the sudden waking.

“What is it, Artoo?”

The droid whistled, telling him something about a message waiting in the command center. Luke shrugged into his soft robe and hurried across the cold floor in the early light of planetrise. Taking the turbolift down to the second level of the temple, he entered the once-bustling command center.

“Artoo, bring up the lights.” He picked his path through the equipment, dust-covered chairs, shut-down computer consoles, document tables cluttered with debris. He powered on the communications station that Wedge had insisted on installing during his last supply run.

The image of Han Solo waited impatiently for him, fidgeting in the holofield. When he saw Luke appear in the transmission locus, Han grinned up at him. “Hey, Luke! Sorry I forgot to account for time differential. Not even dawn there, is it?”

Luke brushed his brown hair into place with his fingers. “Even Jedi need to sleep sometime, Han.”

Han laughed. “Well, you’ll be getting less sleep when your new student arrives. I just wanted to tell you that Kyp Durron has had enough of his vacation. I think after all that time in the spice mines, he got used to being miserable. The closest thing to the spice mines I could think of was your Jedi academy—that way he can work all day long, but at least he’ll be improving himself in the process.”

Luke smiled at his old friend. “I’d be honored to have him join us, Han. I’ve been waiting for him. He has the strongest potential of all the trainees I’ve seen so far.”

“Just wanted to let you know he’s coming,” Han said. “I’m trying to arrange for the next available transport to Yavin 4.”

Luke frowned. “Why don’t you just bring him in the Falcon?”

Han hung his head, looking extremely troubled. “Because I don’t own the Falcon anymore.”

“What?”

Han seemed filled with embarrassment, eager to end the communication. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll tell Leia hello for you and give the kids a hug.”

“All right, Han, but—”

Han gave a sheepish grin and quickly terminated the transmission.

Luke continued to stare at the blank space where Han’s image had been. First his nightmare of a dark man masquerading as Anakin Skywalker, and now the grim news that Han had lost the Millennium Falcon—

Luke heard a disturbance coming down the hall: clumsy footsteps slapping on the stone floor, panicked shouts. He looked up, ready to scold one of his students for such blatant lack of control, when the cloned alien Dorsk 81 rushed into the control center. “Master Skywalker! You must come immediately!”

Luke sensed waves of horror and misery spilling from his candidate. “What is it?” he asked. “Use the calming technique I showed you.”

But Dorsk 81 grabbed his arm. “This way!” The yellow-olive alien urged him out of the cluttered control room. Luke sensed widening ripples of alarm traveling like an earthquake through the solid stone of the temple.

They ran along the flagstoned corridors, up the turbolift, and into the section of living quarters where the trainees made their homes.

A sour, smoky stench filled the air, and Luke felt an icy lump in his stomach as he pushed cautiously forward. Hard-bitten Kam Solusar and addled Streen both stood outside the open doorway to Gantoris’s quarters, looking pasty and ill.

Luke hesitated for a fraction of a second, then moved through the doorway.

Inside the small stone chamber, he saw what was left of Gantoris. The body lay crisped and blackened on the floor, burned from the inside out. Singed stains on the flagstones showed where he had thrashed about in