Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 09_ Edge of Victory 02_ Rebirth - J. Gregory Keyes [41]
There, memory and desire betrayed him. He saw himself facing Warmaster Tsavong Lah, his mother bleeding at his feet. He saw his brother, Anakin, confident and cocky after his escape from Yavin 4. He saw himself, only days before, slaying the two living coralskippers and their pilots.
The death of one diminishes us all. Surely that had to be the case with the Yuuzhan Vong as well, though they didn’t appear in the Force.
Which was impossible, if the Force was what the old Jedi Masters said it was.
He actually wished Anakin were here, so they could have one of their arguments. Anakin now held that what they knew as the Force was only a manifestation of something greater, more overarching, something Jedi could only glimpse. To Jacen that felt utterly wrong, and yet it was hard to dispute that it fit the facts as they stood now.
Anakin also thought of the Force as little more than an energy source, something with which the Jedi worked their wills. That also felt wrong, and yet Jacen now seriously questioned the opposing view, that the Force had a will of its own, and that the proper role of the Jedi was to understand that will and work through it.
Neither extreme felt right in Jacen’s gut, and yet he had no answer of his own. He had abandoned his vow not to use the Force, but it had given him no more certainty about when or how it ought to be used, or what a Jedi ought to do. Again, Anakin’s certainty was both enviable and worrisome. Anakin was determined to oppose evil, and just as determined that he could know what evil was, even without the Force to enlighten him.
Maybe Anakin was right. Jacen knew that he couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. He had been given gifts and learned to use them, and it was incumbent on him that he find the proper way to do so. But how was he to judge? Who was he to judge?
Maybe he had been wrong to strike out on his own, to leave the apprenticeship of Master Skywalker. But somehow, he knew, Uncle Luke’s path could not be his, no more than Anakin’s could be.
As it was, he took each situation as he found it. He’d hated killing the Yuuzhan Vong, but the situation hadn’t suggested or allowed for any alternative other than the death or capture of his family. It may have been a bad choice, but at the time it was the only one he was capable of making.
He tried to untangle himself from this internal dialogue, but the more he tried, the more frustrated he became, and he was on the verge of admitting failure anyway when something changed around him.
He came back, bringing the near world into focus, and found everything off but emergency lights.
“Dear me!” C-3PO moaned. “I knew it!”
“Threepio?”
“Master Jacen! You’re conscious!”
“What’s going on, Threepio? How long have we been powered down?”
“Ever since that mass came out of hyperspace,” C-3PO said. “I wanted to help, but Captain Solo was quite unpleasant.”
“I’m sure it’s not you he was mad at, Threepio,” Jacen assured the droid. “I’ll go see what’s going on.”
“Look there,” his father was saying as Jacen entered the cockpit.
“I see,” Leia breathed. “Yuuzhan Vong.”
Jacen studied the long-range scanner readouts. “They’re attacking that freighter?” he asked.
“No,” Han said. “They ain’t attacking it, kid. They’re escorting it.”
“Escorting? Where are we?”
“One jump from the Cha Raaba system,” Han replied.
“Cha Raaba? That’s where Ylesia is, right?”
“Kid gets a gold epaulet,” Han murmured.
“And Ylesia is where the Peace Brigade is headquartered,” Leia added. “So that ship—”
“Supplies for the Brigade and the Vong,” Han concluded. “Couldn’t have figured it better myself. Looks like Lando was right, only if the Peace Brigade is moving stuff inside Yuuzhan Vong space, someone must be moving it to them from outside.”
“Well, we have to stop them!” Leia said.
“What?” Jacen asked. “Why? They haven’t attacked us. They don’t even see us.”