Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 06_ Balance Point - Kathy Tyers [6]
The galaxy seemed to teeter, poised between light and darkness. Luke stood close to the center, counterweighing the dark invaders.
But as their numbers increased, the balance tipped.
Uncle Luke, Jacen shouted. What should I do?
Luke turned away from the advancing Yuuzhan Vong. Looking to Jacen with somber intensity, he tossed his lightsaber. It flew in a low, humming arc, trailing pale green sparks onto the galactic plane.
Eyeing the advancing horde, Jacen felt another enemy try to seize him: anger, from deep in his heart. Fear and fury focused his strength. If he could, he would utterly destroy the Yuuzhan Vong and all they stood for! He opened a hand, stretched out his arm …
And missed.
The Jedi weapon sailed past him. As anger released him, fear took a tighter hold. Jacen flailed, leapt, tried stretching out with the Force. Luke’s lightsaber sailed on, shrinking and dimming with distance.
Now the galaxy tipped more quickly. A dark, deadly tempest gathered around the alien warriors. Disarmed, Luke stretched out both hands. First he, then his enemies, swelled to impossible sizes. Instead of human and alien figures, now Jacen saw light and darkness as entirely separate forces. Even the light terrified him in its grandeur and majesty. The galaxy seemed poised to plunge toward evil, but Jacen couldn’t help staring at the fearful light, spellbound, burning his retinas.
A Jedi knows no fear … He’d heard that a thousand times, but this sensation was no cowardly urge to run. This was awe, it was reverence—a passionate longing to draw nearer. To serve the light and transmit its grandeur.
But compared to the forces battling around him, he was only a tiny point. Helpless and unarmed, besides—because of one moment’s dark anger. Had that misstep doomed him? Not just him, but the galaxy?
A voice like Luke’s, but deeper, shook the heavens. Jacen, it boomed. Stand firm.
The horizon tilted farther. Jacen lunged forward, determined to lend his small weight to Luke’s side, to the light.
He misstepped. He flailed for Luke’s hand, but missed again. And again, his weight fell slightly—by centimeters—toward the dark enemies.
Luke seized his hand and held tightly. Hang on, Jacen! The slope steepened under their feet. Stars extinguished. The Yuuzhan Vong warriors scrambled forward. Whole star clusters winked out, a dark cascade under clawed enemy feet.
Plainly, the strength of a hundred-odd Jedi couldn’t keep the galaxy from falling to this menace. One misstep—at one critical moment, by one pivotal person—could doom everyone they’d sworn to protect. No military force could stop this invasion, because it was a spiritual battle. And if one pivotal person fell to the dark side—or even used the ravishing, terrifying power of light in a wrong way—then this time, everything they knew might slide into stifling darkness.
Is that it? he cried toward the infinite distance.
Again, Jacen perceived the words in a voice that was utterly familiar but too deep to be Luke’s. Stand firm, Jacen.
One of the Yuuzhan Vong leapt toward him. Jacen gasped and flung out both arms—
And grabbed a flimsy bedsheet. He lay on his back, on a cot under a corrugated blue synthplas roof. The room was bigger than a refugee shelter. It had to be the medical end of the dome’s hardened control shed.
“Junior,” another familiar voice drawled. “Hey, there. Glad you could join us.”
Jacen looked up into his father’s wry half smile. Worry lines crowded Han’s eyes. Behind him, the Ryn named Droma clutched and twisted his soft red and blue cap, and his long mustachios drooped. In recent months, Droma had become his dad’s … what? His friend, his assistant? Certainly not a partner or copilot, but a real presence.
The settlement’s most valuable droid, a 2-1B medical unit that Han pirated no-one-knew-where,