Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 08_ Edge of Victory 01_ Conquest - J. Gregory Keyes [8]
“Bantha fodder!” Jacen snapped, finally breaking his silence. “Master Skywalker hasn’t been complacent. None of us has. But the sort of naked aggression you condone is—”
“Effective?” Kyp sneered.
“Is it?” Jacen challenged. “What have you and your squadron really accomplished? Harried a few Yuuzhan Vong supply ships? Meanwhile we’ve saved tens of thousands—”
“Saved them for what? So they can flee from planet to planet until there’s nowhere else to go? Jacen Solo, who denied the Force, are you lecturing me on what is and isn’t effective?”
“What isn’t effective is this argument,” Luke interjected. “We need calm. We need to think rationally.”
“I’m not sure that’s what we need at all,” Kyp shot back. “Look where your rational policies have gotten us. We’re alone, now, don’t you all see that? Everyone has turned against us.”
“You’re overstating.”
Anakin switched his gaze to the new speaker, Cilghal. The Mon Calamari’s fishlike head bobbed as her bulbous eyes searched around the chamber.
“We still have many allies,” Cilghal said, “in the senate and among the peoples of the New Republic.”
“If by allies you mean people without the guts to actually turn us in, yes,” Kyp said. “But wait a bit. More Jedi will be killed or captured. Stay here, meditate, and wait for them. I won’t. I know what the fight is and where it is.” With that he turned on his heel and started from the chamber.
“No!” Jaina whispered to Anakin. “If Kyp leaves, he’ll take too many with him.”
“So?” Anakin said. “Are you so sure he’s wrong?”
“Of course I—” She stopped, paused, started again. “It won’t help any of us if the Jedi split. We have to try to help Uncle Luke. Come on.”
Jaina followed Kyp from the chamber. After a second or two, Anakin followed. The debate began again behind them, in much more muted terms.
Kyp turned as they approached. “Anakin, Jaina. What do you want?”
“To talk some sense into you,” Jaina said.
“I have plenty of sense,” Kyp said. “You two ought to know better. When did either of you flinch from battle? It’s not like you two to sit while others fight.”
“I haven’t been,” Jaina flared. “Neither has Anakin, or Uncle Luke, or—”
“Spare me. Jaina, I have the greatest respect for Master Skywalker. But he is wrong. I can’t see the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force any more than he can, but I don’t need that to know they’re evil. To know they have to be stopped.”
“Couldn’t you just hear Uncle Luke out?”
“I did. He didn’t say anything I was interested in, and he wasn’t going to.” Kyp shook his head. “Your uncle has changed. Something happens to Jedi Masters as they grow older in the Force. Something that isn’t going to happen to me. They become so concerned with light and dark they can’t act, but can only be acted upon. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi—rather than act himself, he allowed himself to be struck down, become one with the Force, so Luke could then take all of the moral risks.”
“That’s not how Uncle Luke tells it.”
“Your uncle is too close to it. And now he’s become Kenobi.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” Jaina said. “That Uncle Luke is a coward?”
Kyp shrugged and flashed a little smile. “When it comes to his life, no. But when it comes to the Force …” He gestured with the back of his hand. “Ask your brother Jacen—seems to me he’s going gray early, in that respect. The whole galaxy is falling apart around him, and he’s dithering over theoretical philosophy.”
“He did use the Force, though, as you pointed out,” Jaina retorted.
“To save his mother’s life, from what I heard, and almost not then. How long was she in a bacta tank?”
“But he did save her, and me, too.”
“Of course. But would he have called on the Force to save some Duros he didn’t know? Given the fact that he had ample opportunity to do so before that, the answer is self-evidently no. So it wasn’t some universal respect for preserving life or anything of that sort that led him to break his self-imposed ban, was it?