Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 03_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [51]
Cool, sweet oxygen filled him, and Streen exhaled and inhaled again. Reaching out with his power, he did the same for all the other Jedi students, nudging air into their lungs—helping them breathe, helping them grow stronger.
“We are more powerful than you,” Dorsk 81 said, gasping, in a tone that mixed challenge with amazement.
“How you must hate me,” Exar Kun said. Desperation tinged the edges of his voice. “I can feel your anger.”
Cilghal used the silken ambassadorial voice she had worked so hard to develop. “There is no anger,” she said. “We don’t hate you, Exar Kun. You are an object lesson for us. You have taught us much about what it is to be a true Jedi. By observing you we see that the dark side has little strength of its own. You have no power that we do not have. You merely used our own weaknesses against us.”
“We have seen enough of you,” Kam Solusar said grimly from the edge of the circle, “and it’s time for you to be vanquished.”
The Jedi trainees stepped closer together, cinching the circle around the trapped shadowy form. Streen held his lightsaber high, while across the circle Kirana Ti raised hers to a striking position. The nebulous glow around the new Jedi Knights grew brighter, a luminous fog that joined them in an unbroken ring, a solid band of light forged by the power of the Force within them.
“I know your flaws,” Kun said stridently. “You all have weaknesses. You—” The shadow lunged toward the streamlined form of Dorsk 81. The cloned Jedi candidate flinched, but the other trainees gave him strength.
“You: Dorsk 81, a failure!” He sneered. “Eighty generations of your genetic structure were perfect, identical—but you were an anomaly. You were an outcast. A flaw.”
But the olive-skinned alien would not back down. “Our differences make us strong,” he said. “I’ve learned that.”
“And you”—Exar Kun whirled to Tionne—“you have no Jedi powers. You are laughable. You can only sing songs about great deeds, while others go out and actually do them.”
Tionne smiled at him. Her mother-of-pearl eyes glittered in the dim light. “Someday the songs will tell of our great victory over Exar Kun—and I will sing them.”
The glow continued to brighten as the synergy between the trainees grew more powerful, weaving threads to reinforce their weak spots, to emphasize their strengths.
Streen wasn’t sure exactly when another image joined the Jedi candidates. He saw a new form without a physical body—short and hunched, with withered hands held in front of it. A misshapen funnel face, whiskered with tentacles, stared with small eyes hooded by a shelf of brow. Streen recognized the ancient Jedi Master Vodo-Siosk Baas, who had spoken to them from the Holocron.
Kun’s image also saw the ancient Jedi Master, and his expression froze in a sculpted grimace of astonishment.
“Together Jedi can overcome their weaknesses,” Master Vodo said in a bubbly, congested voice. “Exar Kun, my student—you are defeated at last.”
“No!” the shadow screamed in a night-rending voice as the silhouette fought to discover a part of the circle he could breach.
“Yes,” came another voice, a strong voice. Opposite Master Vodo glimmered the faint, washed-out form of a young man in Jedi robes. Master Skywalker.
“The way to extinguish a shadow,” Cilghal said in her calm and confident voice, “is to increase the light.”
Kirana Ti stepped forward with the lightsaber that had been built by Gantoris. Streen met her with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber. The two stared into each other’s eyes, nodded, and then struck with the brilliant luminous blades.
Their beams crossed in the middle of Exar Kun’s shadowy body—pure light intersecting pure light with an explosion of lightning. The flash of dazzling white seemed as bright as an exploding sun.
Darkness flooded out of the shade of Exar Kun. The blackness shattered, and fragments flew around the circle, seeking a weak heart in which