Star Wars_ X-Wing 03_ The Krytos Trap - Michael A. Stackpole [126]
Discarding his prison tunic, Corran pulled some clothes from one of the broken dummies and got into them. The rough-spun brown trousers and pale pull-over tunic itched against his bare flesh and threatened to drive him crazy. From what I remember of Jedi stories, a Jedi would have chosen such clothes just to force himself to learn to ignore the physical sensations distracting him—his clothes become an exercise in concentration. He couldn’t remember where he’d heard that—it had to have been from his grandfather or father, because the Jedi were extinct by the time Corran had learned they had existed, and people who wanted to avoid Imperial scrutiny didn’t display much interest in the Jedi Knights of old.
Corran’s hand went to his throat to touch the medallion he’d worn since he’d inherited it from his father—a medallion he’d left with Whistler for safekeeping before his mission to Coruscant. Mirax Terrik had identified it as Jedi Credit, a medallion issued in limited numbers to mark a Corellian Jedi’s elevation from Knight to Master. I guess carrying it around was my father’s way of covertly defying the Empire.
Corran pulled on a Jedi’s brown cloak and fastened it at his throat. He swirled it around himself, sending lint-nerfs scurrying across the floor and leaping from the top of a display case. A glint of gold in that case caught Corran’s eye. He stepped closer and swept dust from the glass with his hands.
His mouth went dry. That medallion, it’s just like the one I wore, save for the way the eyes have been gouged out of it. Who is that? Irritated that the holographic legend didn’t play, Corran jiggled the case. A hologram began to glow, creating an image of a slender man hovering above the glass, about twenty centimeters high. A voice, starting low and slow, then speeding up into a soprano, accompanied the display. “Nejaa Halcyon, a Jedi Master from Corellia, died in the Clone Wars.”
The light from the holographic projection bled below into a static hologram. It showed Halcyon standing with a boy. The Basic legend running down the edge of the image read, “Nejaa Halcyon and an apprentice.” The projection snapped off and the hologram went dark, but it took Corran several seconds to become cognizant of that fact.
That boy. That was my father.… He’d seen holograms of his father as a child, and the boy in the image looked very much like Hal Horn had at that age. He even looked a bit like me. But that can’t be, can it?
Corran frowned mightily. Mirax had told him that the commemorative medallions were given to family, friends, students, and Masters by the Knight who appeared on them. If my father had been his apprentice, that would explain how he got the coin, but he never said anything about knowing a Jedi or training with him. My grandfather did, but he never mentioned this Halcyon. That hologram has to be wrong, I have to have seen it wrong.
He jiggled the case again, but the projection did not return. He stepped back and up to it again without results. He jogged and then shook the case, but that only moved the medallion around and tipped over the hologram. I need light to see who’s really in that hologram.
Swaddling his left fist in his Lusankya tunic, Corran hammered it against the display case. The glass shattered into hundreds of sparkling shards. Looking around nervously, waiting for some alarm system to start blaring, Corran shook the canvas wrap off his hand and cast it aside. He carefully plucked out the medallion and put it in his pocket. To it he added the hologram and would have walked over to one of the footlights to examine it, but the third memento of Nejaa Halcyon attracted his attention.
Shifting his blaster to his left hand, Corran reached into the case and pulled out a thirty-centimeter-long silvery cylinder. A concave dish capped it, a thickened knob served as the pommel, and a black button rode in a recessed niche precisely