[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(159)

He began to catch up to her.

She bounded up along the rails, toward the surface habitat, her lightsaber giving her enough light to see the cross-rungs where she needed to place her feet.

Jacen saw spots of blood on some of those rungs, evidence of the injury Lumiya’s whip had inflicted on her.

The rails rose through a gap in the cavern ceiling, and beyond that point Jacen could no longer see Nelani. He left his own lightsaber on but closed his eyes, seeking her with his Force-senses-And there she was, hurtling toward him in the leg-forward posture of a vicious side kick.

Not looking in her direction, he twisted aside and swatted at her with his lightsaber. He put no strength behind his blow; he didn’t need to. The blade caught her on the inner thigh, slicing through cloth and skin and muscle. She shrieked, flew past him, hit the stony surface of this cavern floor, and rolled, in the curious way that low gravity mandated, to a halt.

He bounced toward her, slow, sure, and predatory.

When he reached her, she was sitting, unable to stand, her now lit lightsaber in her right hand, her right leg, now useless, beneath her. He could see part of the wound, black with cauterized flesh and blood. She looked up, the pain on her face made more stark by the glaring brightness of both their blades.

“Jacen, don’t do this,” she said.

“You don’t understand what’s at stake.”

“I’m not concerned with living or dying,” she told him. “I surrendered my fate to the Force when I joined the order. It’s you. If you do this, you’ll become something bad. Something destructive.”

“A Sith.”

“No. Call it whatever you want to. What do you call someone who kills without needing to? Someone who joins sides with evil because of a well-reasoned argument.”

He stood there and looked at her, and was battered by emotions-his, hers, lingering dark side energies from thousands of years before. Her health and beauty, which had been marred and which he would mar further. Her despair and disillusionment, which were almost palpable energies, scarring his nerves like sanding surfaces.

A deep sorrow settled across him, sorrow at the tragedy being perpetrated. In Nelani’s myriad futures he could dimly glimpse good and kind acts, love, perhaps family and children. He was about to cut through the connective tissues between Nelani and those futures, and he could feel the pain of that cut. In a way, the sensation was almost comforting, reminding him that he was still possessed of human emotion, of human values.

“Nelani,” he said, “I’m sorry. You’re … a deflector that would send the future spinning into tragedy. And you’re too young, too weak to understand it, to correct it.”

“Jacen-“

He struck, a slash that turned into a twirl binding her blade. The maneuver disarmed her, leaving her arm untouched but spinning her lightsaber off into the darkness.

He struck again, a surgical thrust that entered the precise center of her breastbone, emerged from her spine.

Jacen pulled the lightsaber free. Nelani slumped to the side, and he felt her begin to vanish into the Force.

Until she finished her slow fall and her head lolled against the stone, her eyes did not leave his.





Chapter Thirty-Four


CORELLIAN SPACE, ABOVE TRALUS

LEIA WATCHED THE STATUS BOARDS AS THEY PROVIDED UPDATES ON the situation at Rellidir. Headquarters shields down. Headquarters destroyed. Tralus citizens spilling into the streets, sniping on GA ground occupation forces with hand blasters, hunting blasters.

Corellian capital ships and hyperdrive-equipped starfighters dropping out of hyperspace on the far side of Tralus, joining the furball in the skies above Rellidir, swelling its numbers even as the GA retaliated with more and more starfighter squadron launches.

Covert messages from Han relayed in tight-burst data packets; they arrived from his datapad through a sophisticated comlink currently glued to the bottom of a mouse droid scurrying around somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge. Those messages reported Han alive, Jaina alive, Wedge alive; the Antilles girl alive.

Withdrawal command from Dodonna. The GA squadrons obeyed, disengaging where and when they could, some of them staying behind for last-minute exchanges with the gloating Corellians.

Leia was called back to the bridge, where she rejoined Admiral Limpan on the walkway. Together they watched Dodonna’s complement of surviving starfighters line up for landings in the ship’s hangar bays.

“We could have held on here,” Admiral Limpan said. “By throwing more and more forces into the mix. And yet that would have been counterproductive. Making peace harder to achieve. We didn’t, we won’t … but that makes this conclusion a scripted one. The men and women who died, young and brave, did so for a predestined conclusion.”