Jag’s feet left the ground. He hurtled backward five meters and crashed into the bole of the glade’s shade tree. Then he slid down atop the tangled roots. Leaves rained down on him.
“Jaina!” Zekk ran up to Jag, bent over him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Jag grimaced. “Punishing me. For embarrassing her.”
Jaina flipped acrobatically to her feet and stalked toward Jag. “I am not embarrassed. You tricked me.” She was shouting now, and Zekk saw distant heads turning to look-Wookiees working in the area, humans in the Falcon hangar.
“What part of tricking you would be impossible for Alema Rar or Jacen Solo to do?” Stiffly, Jag began to rise, and accepted a hand from Zekk for aid. Jag’s gloved hand felt, to Zekk, rigid and metallic.
Once Jag was on his feet, Zekk rapped the man’s forearm with his knuckles. “What have you got on under there?” He repeated the experiment on Jag’s chest, which also rang metallically.
“The crushgaunts and beskar breastplate from the other day.”
Jaina came to a stop in front of Jag, almost spitting in her anger. “What are you trying to prove?”
“That you’re training yourself to lose. To die.”
That stopped her. She stared up at him, her anger vanishing in an instant, replaced by surprise. … and doubt.
“Jaina, I’ve watched you for a long time now, preparing yourself for a confrontation with Alema and-and you’re not kidding anyone here-your brother. You’ve trained and trained and sweated and persevered, and as far as I can tell you’ve done a brilliant job at the wrong task.”
“Explain that.” Her eyes searched his.
Zekk was surprised not to see more anger in hers. She must have been afraid of exactly what Jag was talking about and, in typically Jaina-ish fashion, not discussed it with anyone, not dealt with it except through avoidance.
“Sword of the Jedi. That’s what you are, even though nobody’s sure what it means. But I’m sure of this. There are two important words there. Sword and Jedi. You’ve been sharpening yourself into an amazing sword, but you’ve forgotten what it means to be a Jedi.”
“You’re not qualified to say that…”
“Answer me this. What Jedi do you know who would have thrown me into that tree that hard for winning a practice bout? You didn’t know my armor protected my back. You could have broken my spine. The helmet didn’t protect my neck. You could have broken that. What Jedi would have done that to a friend?”
She shook her head. It was as though Jag’s arguments were blaster bolts, and she was batting most of them harmlessly out of the way-but the occasional bolt was getting through, striking her, searing her.
“So. You’re a good Sword and a rotten Jedi. But even if you get back to being a good Jedi, you’re going to die. You know why? Because you’re training in Jedi skills as though you’re going to have a straight-up Jedi duel with your enemies, all lightsabers and light-side Force tricks. But you need to be thinking like someone who hunts Jedi. Like me.” He stepped so close to Jaina that Zekk thought for a moment he was going to stoop and kiss her. “That’s what I did. And I beat you.”
“Once.” Her words were soft, uncertain. “The third time.”
“Are you absolutely sure that if I’d tried that tactic on our first bout, it wouldn’t have worked?”
She was silent for a long moment. Then she shook her head.
Jag unbuckled his helmet and took it off, holding it at his side. “Jaina, as your commanding officer, I’m ordering you to take today off. No training, no strategizing, nothing. Report to me first thing in the morning. At that time, if you think you need another day off, I require you to tell me so. You’ll get it.”
“Yes… Colonel.”
Jag nodded at her and Zekk, then spun and headed back to the hangar.
Jag maintained his brisk walking pace until he reached the Falcon’s hangar. Then he looked around and, seeing no one within sight, moved more slowly and heavily to the Falcon’s boarding ramp. He sat on its slope, leaning away from its angle of descent to remain upright. He set his helmet down, then slowly peeled the thin black gloves off the crushgaunts, staring blankly at the floor as he did so.
“I expected…”
The voice came from the tall, dark figure who seemed to materialize in front of Jag. Jag jumped up, reaching for a blaster pistol that was not there, then relaxed as he recognized the speaker.
“…you to be jubilant.” Zekk frowned down at him. “Not jumpy. And morose.”
Jag sat again and scowled up at the Jedi. Carefully, he used his right hand to pull his left-hand crushgaunt free of his arm. He set it down beside the helmet. “I’m not morose.”