[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(65)

Thrackan was in the act of reaching toward a control panel on the wall when Jacen lashed out through the Force, hammering Thrackan into the wall. The older man bounced off, rolling painfully to his knees atop one of the silver discs.

And then Jacen reached him, holding the glowing tip of his lightsaber just under Thrackan’s chin. Jacen saw the tips of Thrackan’s beard hairs blacken from the heat.

His cousin, panting and almost stunned, said, “I guess you win.”

“I guess I-“

“Time to die, Solo!” The voice was Thrackan’s but it came from behind. Reflexively, Jacen turned and began to bring his lightsaber up in a defensive posture.

There was a blaster retort from behind him. The shot hit his lightsaber hilt and catapulted the weapon out of his hand, sending it down the corridor.

He spun again. Thrackan, blaster in hand, finished rising and fired into Jacen’s chest.

Jacen caught the shot-bare-handed, dissipating its energy before it reached his palm. He smiled and opened his hand, showing Thrackan his undamaged palm.

Thrackan fired again. Jacen twitched his hand over to the left, caught the second shot.

Then he crooked his finger with his left hand. The blaster flew from Thrackan’s grip into that hand. Jacen glanced back to where his lightsaber lay and gestured for it. It flew the four meters between them and dropped into his right hand. He activated it again and positioned its tip in front of Thrackan’s neck.

“Stang,” Thrackan said. His expression suggested he was genuinely impressed. “I heard rumors that Darth Vader could do that. Can all Jedi do that?”

“No. What did you do? A recording?”

“Yes, a little sound recorder. It was triggered by me saying, I guess you win.”

“Time to die, Solo!” came the cry from behind Jacen.

Jacen snorted, amused despite the urgency of his mission. “I see.”

“Except you really lose. In a minute, all the forces I’ve brought to bear will be here. They’ll continue to follow you, to wear you down, until one of them drops you. And your plan to destroy this station will fail. In that sense, it already has failed.”

A distant wail filled the air, a keening noise seemingly emanating from all directions at once, echoing and overlapping as though a city-sized droid were suddenly grieving for a slain offspring.

Thrackan paled.

Jacen grinned. “That’s the evacuation alarm. It means we have ten minutes to get off this station before it destroys itself. Which means that my apprentice, who is fortunate enough not to share any blood with you, has succeeded in setting up the station’s destruction.” He leaned closer, the proximity of his lightsaber blade causing Thrackan to lean away. “I can still share in his success a little bit. I could kill you, remove your stain from the galaxy.”

Thrackan shook his head. “Jedi don’t kill prisoners who have surrendered.”

“You haven’t surrendered.”

“I surrender.” Thrackan raised his hands. “There.”

A younger Jacen might have been offended by the older man’s casual, even contemptuous manipulations. This Jacen merely met manipulation with manipulation. “Perhaps Jedi don’t … but I might. You’ve done nothing but do damage to Corellia, to the New Republic, and to my family since I was a child. Wouldn’t the universe be a better place without you in it?”

“Very funny,” Thrackan said. Jacen could feel just the tiniest trace of increased distress in the man’s emotions.

Distress and-no, he was feeling something else, from somewhere else. Pain. Death. From the future.

From a future, one of any number of possible futures. Jacen peered into it, letting the events of that potential time line wash over him, but kept one eye on his cousin, alert through just his sight for any treachery.

Events flashed past him too fast to absorb all their meaning. Starfighters launched lasers and missiles, raining death on the innocent. Why not the guilty? He could see no guilty. Pilot versus pilot, soldier versus soldier, no one was guilty. Neither side was more evil, more dark.

War spread out from Corellia like ripples from a rock hitting the surface of a pond, and the rock was an image of Jacen and Thrackan. Jacen saw clouds of expanding gas where the brave had flown, corpse-littered fields where the brave had fought, near-unrecognizable ruins that had once been huge space vessels but were now crushed like beverage containers on the rocky surfaces of moons.

And pain-pain racking the Force like nothing had since the Yuuzhan Vong war. Pain twisting his kin. Shrieks of loss filled his ears.

He focused on the rock in the pond, the image of himself and Thrackan, and saw all these events unfolding from the point, the here and now, when he failed to kill Thrackan.