• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The Force, idiot, she thought. She reached out, tugging at the cable with the Force, changing her vector so she angled toward it.

She wrapped her bare palms around it, gasping as her hands burned. Her fingers tried to open reflexively, but she couldn’t let them, or she would fall. Nom Anor would escape, Sekot would die—and she would let Corran down.

If the older Jedi was still alive.

She embraced the pain and focused beyond it, using the Force to further slow her descent. Finally, every muscle in her body shrieking in chorus with her palms, she came to a stop.

She looked up, and discovered she had fallen almost a hundred meters.

The anger was back, but now she needed it—not to fight, but to wrap her legs around the cable and pull herself up, though every centimeter gained brought a world of agony. She felt blisters rupturing on her hands.

At least it makes them stickier, she reflected. Her hands conformed to the cable now, as if they were made of tal gum.

Nom Anor went carefully up the narrow path, choosing his steps in the freeze-frame moments that the lightning created as it limned the world white and blue, then left it again in darkness. The rain was a steady drum, and the wind gusted like the laughter of an insane god. His route was a broken spine of stone with yawning pits of darkness on either side. He came to particularly narrow footing and stopped for a moment, realizing that he was actually afraid. It was as if the planet itself was trying to do what the Jedi had been unable to.

As perhaps it was. If Nen Yim was correct, and the planet was sentient, perhaps it had witnessed his act of sabotage. Perhaps it sought revenge.

“Do your worst,” he snarled into the wind. “I am Nom Anor. Know my name, for I have killed you.”

As he said it, he finally knew with absolute conviction that he had done the right thing. Zonama Sekot was like a tonqu flower—attracting insects with its sweet scent, tempting them to alight upon it—where they found themselves cloyed, watching the long petal roll up. Part living, part machine, and somehow part Jedi, it was an abomination—more so than Coruscant, more so than anything in the galaxy of abominations.

Quoreal had been right. They should never have come here.

But Nom Anor had set that to rights.

He crossed the narrow area, stepped over a gap in the next lightning flash, and saw that the way widened a bit ahead.

But from the corner of his eye—

Someone crashed into him, chopping viciously at the side of his neck. The force of the blow knocked him sprawling, and his chin grated against stone. With a roar he kicked back and rolled. A foot caught him under his savaged chin, but he managed to catch it and twist. His attacker fell heavily. Nom Anor scrambled back, trying to regain his footing, but found himself teetering on the edge of a cliff. Lighting ripped the sky, and he saw a silhouette rising against it. Another flash came, this one behind him, and he made out Harrar’s face, terrifying, as if the very gods had put their light of vengeance in him.

“Nom Anor,” the priest shouted through the rain. “Prepare to die, perfidious one.”

“This planet has driven you mad, Harrar,” Nom Anor snapped. “You side with Jedi against me?”

“I side with Zonama Sekot,” Harrar said. “And you—you are accursed by Shimrra, you honorless qorih. I would have killed you anyway.”

“Zonama Sekot is a lie, you fool—a tale I told my followers so that they would obey me.”

“You know nothing,” Harrar said. “You know less than nothing. Do you think you know the secrets of the priesthood? Do you think we share all we know? It is Shimrra who has lied to us. Zonama Sekot is the truth. If you would be of service to your people, you will tell me what you have done.”

Nom Anor felt the lightsaber in his hand. Harrar was advancing, and a single kick would be enough to send Nom Anor plunging to his death. He dared not use the plaeryin bol—even if it still contained poison, the rain would at best deflect it, at worst wash