“So is he the Chosen One?”
“Qui-Gon believes so.”
“But what do we believe?”
“Skywalker is exceptional, but he’s past the age of being trained.”
“But is he the Chosen One?”
“If he is, then training him becomes irrelevant. He will either find his path or not.”
“A logical argument you make, but direction is needed.”
“Then who will train him? Who can train him? Perhaps nobody can take on the challenge.”
“But if we do not train him, regret it we may.”
“And none of us can take on a Padawan, and we have more pressing problems to deal with.”
The last speaker was Mace Windu. Jacen recognized him from recordings, and his heart sank at how easily they had abdicated responsibility for Anakin considering that he was the Chosen One. Jacen sought parallels, more clues to where Anakin had gone astray on his path to show him the pitfalls to avoid.
This time he needed to see what had happened. He shut out the time-echoes of the voices again and slipped into a corner where he could hide if his Force-invisibility failed as he flow-walked into the past. The effort of sustaining all the techniques at once was making him sweat.
His head pounded and the image of the chamber blurred for a moment, but then it cleared and Jacen felt as if he had woken with a start. The Council sat in their ceremonial seats or appeared as holograms, and one of those present in the flesh was Anakin Skywalker, now a young man, and a very angry one. He was standing in the center of the chamber in a black cloak, arguing with Mace Windu and Yoda.
“Allow this appointment lightly, the Council does not. Disturbing is this move by Chancellor Palpatine.”
“You are on this Council, but we do not grant you the rank of Master.”
“What? How can you do this? This is outrageous! It’s unfair! I’m more powerful than any of you. How can you be on the Council and not be a Master?”
“Take a seat, young Skywalker …”
Jacen watched for a few moments and both pitied and understood Anakin, and knew that he wasn’t following his path, not at all. Poor Grandfather: gifted, exceptional, dismissed, barely tolerated, largely untrained, abandoned. No wonder he resorted to crazed, desperate violence. Had he received the training that Jacen had, if he had been able to perfect his powers and experience all uses of the Force-even those the Jedi academy shied away from teaching-then the galaxy might have been a very different place.
I’m the second chance.
The Jedi Council dropped the ball. And they paid for it.
Jacen had accepted his Sith destiny, but now he understood not only that it had to happen, but why. Everything in his life had led to this point because Anakin Skywalker’s destiny had been subverted and warped by well-meaning but blind Masters, sending him off on a tangent to do a flawed Palpatine’s bidding instead of realizing his own full power.
I’m more powerful than any of you.
It was a boy’s expression of anger, but it was true. And, as history repeated itself because it had no other choice, Jacen was more powerful than any of them except Luke. And he was growing closer to Luke’s strength by the day.
When he achieved Sith Mastery, he would surpass him. He hadn’t yet thought how Luke and he would coexist after that point had been reached. For a brief and tempting moment Jacen considered Force-walking into the future, as he had done before, but his instinct said to leave it alone for the time being.
Power. Power was a vulgar, personal word, shot through with ambition and petty vanity. Becoming a Master was a necessary political step in achieving the ultimate order. Beyond that, it had no meaning, but Jacen would still seek it-purely as a tool.
He could maintain the time flow and invisibility no longer. He snapped out of the past and held his presence in check long enough to leave the chamber and pause farther down the corridor to catch his breath. A maintenance worker appeared from a storeroom and stared at him, surprised.
“Good night, friend,” said Jacen, and mind-rubbed the memory from the man as he left.
SLAVE I, CORONET CITY SPACEPORT, CORELLIA.
“How do you breathe in this thing?” Han grumbled.
“Try shaving in it,” said Fett.
Han Solo adjusted the Mandalorian helmet with both hands. The spare armor that Fett kept stowed in Slave I as a backup was just what he needed to get them right up close to Sal-Solo. The body plates weren’t fitted, so they attached to Han’s clothing without too much trouble, but the helmet was a custom job and he was struggling with it.
“I can’t see,” said Han.
Fett activated the HUD.
“Whoa … what is all this?” Han put his hand on the bulkhead as if he were falling over. “I can’t balance-“