Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 09_ Edge of Victory 02_ Rebirth - J. Gregory Keyes [35]
A person screamed, too—the man who had shot Kelbis Nu. The blast meant for Anakin had struck him high in the chest, and he fell, legs kicking.
Anakin came back to his feet and found Tahiri facing two men still armed with blasters and two unarmed. They looked uncertain.
It was only then that Anakin realized, by their patches and uniforms, that they were Peace Brigade.
The thugs started backing out of the alley in a small knot, blasters pointed defensively. Anakin stood about a meter to Tahiri’s right and a little in front of her.
“Let’s take ’em,” she said. Her voice had a furious, cold quality to it that Anakin had heard twice; once when she was under the heaviest influence of her Yuuzhan Vong conditioning; once in a vision he’d had of her as a dark Jedi, her face mutilated by the scars and tattoos of a Yuuzhan Vong warmaster.
“No,” Anakin said. “Let them go.”
His generosity didn’t stop the Peace Brigaders from taking a parting shot as they ducked around the corner.
“Jedi brats!” one of the men shouted. “Your days are numbered!”
When he was sure they weren’t just hiding around the corner, waiting for his guard to drop, Anakin turned to survey the damage.
The Peace Brigader had stopped moving. Kelbis Nu was still alive—barely. His glassy eyes were looking beyond Anakin, but he reached up a hand.
“Ya …,” he said weakly.
“Tahiri, use your wrist comm. Try to find the local emergency channel.” He took Nu’s hand and pulsed strength from the Force into him. “Hold on for me,” he said. “Help will be here soon.”
“Ya—ya—ya …,” the Rodian gasped.
“Don’t try to talk,” Anakin told him. “Waste of strength.”
Suddenly Kelbis Nu went still, his trembling ceased, and for the first time he seemed to actually see Anakin.
“Yag’Dhul,” he whispered, and behind that whisper was a stormwind of danger.
That was all. The Jedi’s life left him with his last breath.
Tahiri was shouting at someone over her wrist comm.
“Never mind, Tahiri,” Anakin said. “He’s gone.” Tears started in his eyes, but he battled them down.
“He can’t be,” Tahiri said. “I was going to save him.”
“I’m sorry,” Anakin said. “We got here too late.”
Tahiri’s shoulders began to twitch, and she made a sound like hiccuping as she fought to control her tears. Anakin watched her, wishing he could help, that he could make the grief go away, but there was nothing he could do. People died. You got used to it.
It still hurt.
“He said something at the end,” Anakin told her, hoping to distract her.
“What?”
“The name of a planet, Yag’Dhul. It’s not far from here, right where the Corellian Trade Spine and the Rimma Trade Route meet. And I felt … danger. Like he was trying to tell me something bad is happening there.” He glanced down at the bodies. “C’mon. We’d better go.”
“We have to do something,” Tahiri said. “We can’t just let those guys get away with it.”
“We can’t hunt them,” Anakin said.
“Why not?”
“Because we’re Jedi, not assassins.”
“We could at least tell security or whoever enforces the law around here.”
“We’re supposed to be here anonymously, remember? If we draw attention to ourselves, we endanger the mission.”
“Some mission. Getting supplies. This is more important. Anyway, we’ve already drawn attention to ourselves.” She nodded at the crowd of vagrants drifting toward them, the curiosity of two dead bodies overcoming their fear of two live Jedi.
And as if to highlight her point, a trio of groundcars arrived at the end of the alley and disgorged armed, uniformed people.
“I guess we’ll be talking to security after all.” Anakin clipped his lightsaber to his belt and held up his hands to show they were empty.
The officers approached warily, led by a lanky, craggy-faced man with the fading