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“Where did you learn all this history, Kyp?” Luke said, standing up. He put his hands on his hips, trying to stare Kyp down. The young man had become more and more volatile as he acquired Jedi knowledge. Calm, you must be calm, Yoda had said, but Luke didn’t know how to make Kyp calm.

Kyp flashed his glance across the trainees, who looked at him in astonishment. “If the Sith War had turned out differently,” he said, “perhaps the Jedi Knights would have learned how to defend themselves when Darth Vader came hunting, and they wouldn’t all have been slaughtered. The Jedi would never have fallen, and we wouldn’t be here, taught by someone who doesn’t know any more than we do.”

Luke remained adamant. “Kyp, tell me where you learned all this.”

Kyp pushed his lips together and narrowed his eyes. He drew several deep breaths, and Luke could sense the turmoil inside him, as if his mind were working rapidly to come up with an answer. “I can use the Holocron too,” he said. “As Master Skywalker keeps telling us, we are all obligated to learn everything we can.”

Luke didn’t quite believe the young man’s words, but before he could ask another question, Artoo trundled in, warbling and chittering in alarm. Luke deciphered some of the electronic language. “No idea who it is?” he said.

Artoo whistled a descending hooting negative.

“We have a visitor,” Luke announced. “A ship is landing on the grid right now. Shall we go out to greet the pilot?” He turned to place a firm hand on Kyp’s shoulder, but the young man shrugged away. “We’ll discuss this later, Kyp.”

Relieved to have a distraction that would shatter the tension, Luke led the way. The other Jedi students followed him down the stone steps and through the hangar bay to the cleared landing grid.

A small personal fighter—a Z-95 Headhunter, a sleek metallic cruiser often used by smugglers—circled and eased down into the clearing. The other students stood at the edge of the grid, but Luke came forward.

The cockpit doors swung up like the wings of a great insect and the pilot emerged. Luke saw a sleek silvery suit clinging to the curves of a young woman’s body. She stepped down, pulled off an opaque helmet and shook her dark reddish-brown hair. Her angular face had once been pinched with determination, but now seemed softened, her eyes wider, her full lips not entirely unaccustomed to a smile.

“Mara Jade,” Luke said.

She tucked the helmet under her left arm, squeezing it against her rib cage. “Hello, Luke.” She looked at him with just the hint of a friendly expression, then raised her eyebrows. “Or do I have to call you ‘Master Skywalker’ now?”

Luke shrugged, holding out his arms to welcome her. “That depends on why you’re here.”

She left the Headhunter open behind her as she strode across the clearing to take his hand in greeting. Then she swiveled in a military-style maneuver to survey the dozen students that had come to Luke’s training center.

“You told me I had the ability to use the Force,” she said. “I came here to learn more about it. Jedi powers could help me run the smugglers’ guild.”

She unzipped a flexible pouch at her side and tugged out a packet of microcompacted folds of cloth, more than Luke could believe would fit inside a tiny package. She shook the brownish folds, unwrapping her garment.

She looked at the identical garments on all of Luke’s trainees and then back at him. “See,” she said. “I even brought a Jedi robe.”

Over a generous meal of spiced runyip stew and bowls of chopped edible greens, Luke watched Mara Jade feed herself as if she were famished. Luke savored every bite, sensing the nutrients and energies as they slowly permeated his body.

“The New Republic is counting on your Jedi Knights, Luke, and things are getting much worse out there,” she said.

Luke leaned forward, lacing his fingers together and trying to pick up echoes of her emotions. “What’s happening?” he said. “We’re starved for news.”

“Well,” Mara Jade said, still chewing a