Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 02_ Ruin - Michael A. Stackpole [90]
He looked around the room. “That’s all for now. May the Force be with you.”
The Jedi broke down into little groups and slowly started to filter from the enclosed grove. Luke walked directly over toward Jacen and Anakin and opened his arms. He rested a hand on each of his nephews’ shoulders. “I’m very proud of the two of you. The things you said, well, as the high priest has said, the jungle is no place for children. What you said shows you’re not children.”
Jacen rested his right hand on his uncle’s mechanical one. “Thank you, Master.”
“Me, too, Uncle Luke, thanks.” Anakin smiled broadly at first, then composed his face much more solemnly. “I’m ready to do whatever you need me to do, no matter what.”
Ganner chuckled quietly. “Given your experience fighting the Yuuzhan Vong, perhaps you should be given command of our contingent.”
Luke arched an eyebrow. “I’m not sure that much responsibility should be placed on his shoulders just yet, but someday.”
Daeshara’cor cut through the crowd of other Jedi and paused a couple of meters shy of the group. “Master, if I could have a moment.”
Luke turned toward her. “Please, join us.”
“Yes, Master.” The woman approached, then looked down at her hands. Her lekku twitched ever so slightly, betraying her nervousness. “I just wanted to thank you for trusting me, inviting me here, allowing me to participate in this ceremony. I have been doing a lot of thinking—self-examination. Until asked to articulate things here, I had not understood exactly why I had done what I did, or what that was doing to me. I had allowed my hatred to make as much of a slave of me as my mother had been. I don’t regret opposing slavery, or opposing the Yuuzhan Vong, but I can’t do it for the wrong reasons. Winning or preserving freedom is good; seeking retribution is not.”
The Jedi Master nodded. “That’s a lesson we all need to keep in mind. I’m glad to have you back with us, Daeshara’cor. The struggle we’ll face will demand the best, and here, I think, we have the best.”
Corran, who had joined the group, sighed heavily. “We’ll just have to hope that our best is enough. I can’t shake the feeling the battle for Ithor will be the last for some of us. If we can’t stop them here, well, perhaps becoming one with the Mother Jungle won’t be the worst thing that could happen.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Freed from the Embrace of Pain, Shedao Shai reached out and grasped one of the device’s slender limbs in his left hand. He hung on as tightly as he was able, then lunged his body quickly to the right. His left shoulder popped loudly, the sound echoing within his cabin aboard the Legacy of Torment. The arm slipping back into the socket sparked an argent explosion of pain and sent it rippling through him, weakening his knees. He might have dropped to the floor save that surrendering to the pain would have tarnished it.
And it would not do to let my subordinate see any weakness. He turned his head slowly to where Deign Lian stood, eyes averted to decking. “You have a reason to disturb me?”
“Commander, yes, many reasons.”
“Then give me the best one.”
The implied threat in his command shook Lian, and Shedao Shai took secret pleasure in that. His subordinate did not look up and could not quite rid his voice of a minor tremor. “My leader, we believe we have determined what it was that the jeedai sought to hide on Garqi.”
“Really?” The Yuuzhan Vong leader kept his voice light, his tone questioning. “After so long? Why is it you think you have succeeded now?”
“As you will recall, Commander, we had great difficulty with the probes we were using in that area. We had a high failure rate on them. It was assumed that one generation of them had an undetected defect in the breeding. We employed another, and had similar results.”
Shedao Shai nodded. “You have bored me with these excuses before.”
Lian’s shoulders shifted slightly.