“No, Master C’baoth,” Skywalker said, his voice almost gentle. “Surely you must understand that the means are no less important than the ends. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.”
C’baoth snorted. “A platitude for the simpleminded. Or for those with insufficient wisdom to make their own decisions. I am beyond such things, Jedi Skywalker. As you will be someday. If you choose to remain.
Skywalker shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.” He turned away and walked toward Mara-
“Then you turn your back on the galaxy,” C’baoth said, his voice now earnest and sincere. “Only with our guidance and strength can they ever hope to achieve real maturity. You know that as well as I do.”
Skywalker stopped. “But you just said they hate us,” he pointed out. “How can we teach people who don’t want our guidance?”
“We can heal the galaxy, Luke,” C’baoth said quietly. “Together, you and I can do it. Without us, there is no hope. None at all.”
“Maybe he can do it without you,” Mara put in loudly, trying to break up the verbal spell C’baoth was weaving. She’d seen the same sort of thing work for the Emperor, and Skywalker’s eyelids were heavy enough as it was.
Too heavy, in fact. Like hers had been on the approach to Jomark :
Stepping away from the X-wing, she walked over to Skywalker. C’baoth made a small movement, as if he were going to stop her; she hefted her blaster, and he seemed to abandon the idea.
Even without looking at him, she could tell when the Force-empty zone around her ysalamir touched Skywalker. He inhaled sharply, shoulders straightening from a slump he probably hadn’t even noticed they had, and nodded as if he finally understood a hitherto unexplained piece of a puzzle. “Is this how you would heal the galaxy, Master C’baoth?” he asked. “By coercion and deceit?”
Abruptly, C’baoth threw back his head and laughed. It was about the last reaction Mara would have expected from him, and the sheer surprise of it momentarily froze her muscles.
And in that split second, the Jedi Master struck.
It was only a small rock, as rocks went, but it came in out of nowhere to strike her gun hand with paralyzing force. The blaster went spinning off into the darkness as her hand flared with pain and then went numb. “Watch out!” she snapped to Skywalker, dropping down into a crouch and scrabbling around for her weapon as a second stone whistled past her ear.
There was a snap-hiss from beside her, and suddenly the terrain was bathed in the green-white glow of Skywalker’s lightsaber. “Get behind the ship,” he ordered her. “I’ll hold him off.”
The memory of Myrkr flashed through Mara’s mind; but even as she opened her mouth to remind him of how useless he was without the Force, he took a long step forward to put himself outside the ysalamir’s influence. The lightsaber flashed sideways, and she heard the double crunch as its silent blade intercepted two more incoming rocks.
Still laughing, C’baoth raised his hand and sent a flash of blue lightning toward them.
Skywalker caught the bolt on his lightsaber, and for an instant the green of the blade was surrounded by a blue-white coronal discharge. A second bolt shot past him to vanish at the edge of the empty zone around Mara; a third again wrapped itself around the lightsaber blade.
Mara’s fumbling hand brushed something metallic: her blaster. Scooping it up, she swung it toward C’baoth—
And with a brilliant flash of laser fire, the whole scene seemed to blow up in front of her.
She had forgotten about the droid sitting up there in the X-wing. Apparently, C’baoth had forgotten about it, too.
“Skywalker?” she called, blinking at the purple haze floating in front of her eyes and wrinkling her nose at the tingling smell of ozone. “Where are you?”
“Over here by C’baoth,” Skywalker’s voice said. “He’s still alive.”
“We can fix that,” Mara growled. Carefully picking her way across the steaming ruts the X-wing’s laser cannon had gouged in the ground, she headed over.
C’baoth was lying on his back, unconscious but breathing evenly, with Skywalker kneeling over him. “Not even singed,” she murmured. “Impressive.”
“Artoo wasn’t shooting to kill,” Skywalker said, his fingertips moving gently across the old man’s face. “It was probably the sonic shock that got him.”
“That, or getting knocked off his feet by the shock wave,” Mara agreed, lining her blaster up on the still figure. “Get out of the way. I’ll finish it.”