Keetss voice was hoarse. “It’s a promise. I’ll die trying, but I’ll get him back to you.”
“I don’t need promises. I need to go. I have to go get him.” Astri’s eyes filled with tears. “You think he’s so strong, and he is. But he’s still a boy. He can still be afraid. I have to try, I’ll say I’m his mother, I’ll demand ”
“That’s just what Bog wants you to do,” Oryon said firmly. “If you show up, you’ll be arrested in the time it takes you to walk up the ramp.”
Astri’s body suddenly collapsed in on itself, and she folded herself in two, crouching near the floor, her forehead against her clenched hands.
Everyone began to talk at once, about the academy’s location, probable security, where to procure a getaway vehicle, if the delivery services would be vulnerable to infiltration.
Trever stepped forward. “I have a plan,” he said. Everyone stopped talking. Everyone looked at him. “I’ll enlist,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Again and again Ferus relived the moment when the lightsaber went through Roan’s body. Again and again he felt the shock of it. Again and again he wondered if he could have moved, if he could have foreseen it, if he hadn’t been so stupid, so slow, so convinced that Darth Vader would follow procedure, instead of striking out at a man who held no weapon against him.
He was in a cell, alone. He lay on the hard ferrocrete floor, his cheek against it. He knew why Vader had let him keep his lightsaber. It was a taunt. Vader knew it would torture Ferus to feel its familiar weight on his belt, to put his fingers on its handle, and know that his training had meant nothing. His lightsaber was useless. Vader was right.
Somewhere above him was sky and space and countless stars, and he was just a particle in the galaxy, and he was alone. Roan was gone. Their friendship had been full of separations, but they had always found each other again. They had trusted each other and watched each other’s backs, and in one moment of criminally stupid miscalculation he had underestimated his opponent, and because of that, Roan was dead. Because of him.
Life would go on around him, but he wouldn’t be the same. He turned a different face to the galaxy now. The grief had changed him forever. He felt that as clearly as he could feel the ferrocrete against his cheek.
Roan’s death had introduced fear to his life. His powers were so puny compared to what he faced. His will had carried him through. Now he realized that in the most secret recesses of his heart, he had held out one hope. That one day this would be over and he could go back to his life with Roan. He hadn’t known the meaning of family when he’d been with the Jedi, but now he did, and the loss of it was impossible to bear.
Which proved he wasn’t a Jedi. Attachment shouldn’t be his reason for going on.
If he wasn’t a Jedi, what was he?
And what did it matter? For soon he’d be dead. How curious to feel that he wouldn’t mind.
But before they killed him, he would replay Roan’s death again and again.
The lightsaber moved so fast, it was as though it jumped from Vader’s hand. The mortal strike was assured and driven by the Force, the dark side that surrounded Vader and pulsed steadily from him. He had only been a blur.
Ferus suddenly sat up. He had heard a voice as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud.
Break it down, Ferus.
Obi-Wan? That was what he would say, in that cool way that could be so annoying.
Break down the movement; don’t see it as a blur. You ‘re a Jedi yes, you are! so be a Jedi.
He didn’t feel like a Jedi. But he would obey that voice and try to break it down.
He closed his eyes and grabbed the memory. This time he struggled to leave his feelings behind. He had to see it clear.
He saw Darth Vader move now. He saw the curl of his cape. The way he turned his body, the position of his feet, the way his arm moved. He had used a classic Jedi shun move, rotating the lightsaber 360 degrees, but the rotation had moved so fast he’d been unable to track it.
Break it down.
Form IV. Then Form VII, the most advanced Jedi form. Done aggressively, with impeccable control.
Coldness gripped his heart. Jedi moves.
The movement had been done with a grace and finesse that rendered it not part of a drill but part of Vader’s body. He brought an individual flair to it that made it his own.
Something familiar about that form. An aggression, a confidence … It struck a memory he couldn’t touch. But who could it be?
If he could only know how old Vader was. Had he been on the Council? Such expertise suggested it.
I know him. I know the way he moves.
But everyone he’d studied with was dead. He couldn’t say for certain that every Jedi he’d ever met was dead, but he knew the fate of all the Padawans. It had to have been an instructor, or perhaps a Jedi Master who had been away for long periods, so long he had lost his connection to the Jedi Temple, and Palpatine had exploited it. …