• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Realizing that this was exactly what she had been doing, Tenel Ka went limp. As she did so, Garowyn lost her grip slightly, and Tenel Ka wobbled in midair. So, she mused, the Nightsister is not as strong as she thinks she is.

Then, pretending to struggle again to hide what she was doing, she removed the fibercord and grappling hook that she carried at her waist and looked around for an anchor point. She soon found something that would work perfectly: the wheel on an escape pod's pressure hatch.

Garowyn was still amusing herself with Tenel Ka's "struggles" when, with a practiced flick of her wrist, Tenel Ka flung out her line; the grappling hook caught securely on its intended target. Before the Nightsister could notice, Tenel Ka went completely limp again. When Garowyn's grasp wavered again, Tenel Ka jerked on the line and wrenched herself free, falling to the floor and landing painfully on her rear.

She looked up to see Garowyn's petite form towering over her. But instead of an angry rebuke, all she heard from the Nightsister was a short, sharp bark of amazed laughter.

Garowyn reached out a hand to help Tenel Ka up. "Your pride has served you this time, but it may be your downfall yet," she said.

"That is often true of pride," Luke said quietly, seeming to agree. His eyes assessed the Nightsister. "I believe I could do that."

Garowyn's lips twisted in a derisive smile. "What? You think you could fall on your-?"

"No," Luke cut in. "I believe I could lift a person."

"So?" Garowyn chortled, as if rising to a challenge. "Do your best."

She crossed her arms over her chest, and her hazel eyes dared Luke to move her. Suddenly, her eyes grew wide with astonishment and confusion as her feet drifted off the floor and she rose a full meter and a half into the air.

"I can see that it is time to teach you the power of the dark side as well," she snapped haughtily. She closed her eyes and wrenched with all her might.

Tenel Ka sensed that Luke loosened his grip-but only partially. Garowyn still floated above the deck, but he allowed the force of her movement to turn her around and send her into a dizzying spin.

Then, never taking his eyes from the twirling Nightsister, Luke said,

"Tenel Ka, if you would be so kind as to open that first escape pod."

She understood his intention immediately, and moved to do as he asked.

Within moments they had the gyrating, disoriented Nightsister deposited and sealed within the pod. Tenel Ka's hand hovered above the automatic jettison switch. Luke nodded.

With great satisfaction, she triggered the launch. With a whoosh and a thump, the escape pod containing Garowyn shot out into deep space.

"Master Skywalker," Tenel Ka said, her face serious, "I believe I now understand how it might be possible, as you said, to ... turn a situation."

Luke looked at her, blinked once in amazement, and laughed. "Tenel Ka,"

he said, "I believe you just made a joke. Jacen would be proud of you."

Later that day, when they dropped out of hyper-space and the autopilot alerted them that they were about to arrive at their destination, Luke and Tenel Ka sat in the cockpit looking vainly for a planet, a space station, anything on which they might land.

But they saw nothing.

Tenel Ka turned to Luke in confusion. "Could the autopilot have malfunctioned?" she asked. "Did we have the wrong coordinates?"

"No," he said, seeming calm and self-assured. "We must wait."

Then, as if a curtain had suddenly been drawn aside, they saw it: a space station. A Shadow Academy, Tenel Ka reminded herself. A spiked torus spinning in space, protected by exterior gun emplacements and crowned with several tall observation towers.

"It must have been cloaked," Luke said.

As they approached the Shadow Academy, docking-bay doors opened automatically, and Luke placed a reassuring hand on Tenel Ka's shoulder.

"The dark side is not stronger," he said.

Tenel Ka let out a long breath, and some of her tension drained away with it.

"This is a fact," she