"Michael Stackpole "I, Jedi"" - читать интересную книгу автора

I gave Kam a smile. УIt's a goal.Ф
Kam released the remote and I ignited my lightsaber. The silvery blade splashed cold light over the interior of what had been the Rebel hangar in the Great Temple. We chose to work inside instead of out because the Temple's walls would stop the remote's bolts. While they wouldn't do more than wound my vanity, a stray shot could stun a woolamander and probably kill a stintaril. Since I was as much of a danger to myself with the lightsaber as anything else, doing everything possible to avoid collateral damage was a good idea.
The remote hissed and puffed as it floated through the air. It spun, then spat out a quick ruby dart that lanced into my thigh. I cursed and hopped back, but the remote came in, pressing the attack. I set myself and willed away the pain, then worked on picking up the remote and its next blast.
While the remote, being lifeless, did not have a direct con-nection to the Force, it existed within the universe bound to-gether by the Force. I made myself disfocus my attention on it directly and instead gain an impression of where it fit within the immediate area. I opened myself to the Force, allowing it to seep in and extend my sensory perception. Then, there, I saw the remote moving through the Force, leaving little oscillations in it like a moth moving through smoke. By spotting the distur-bances it created, I was able to pick it up and track it.
Likewise, within it, the transference of energy created even smaller vibrations within the Force. I sensed the microtremors of energy gathering to fire a stinger. I pinpointed where that reservoir of energy existed and began to bring my lightsaber up and around. As the stinger diode spat scarlet fire, I swept my lightsaber in an arc that picked off the dart heading for my stomach. A nanosecond later I caught hints of another bolt, but missed blocking it.
The dart pinned my left foot to the floor. I yelped-and Kam's laughter did not help ease the pain-and danced back. My retreat bumped me into a pillar I'd not expected to be there, rebounding me back toward the remote. It fired again, but the lunge I took at it got enough blade in front of me to deflect the bolt back off over my right shoulder. And right past Kam's right ear.
He arched an eyebrow at me and hit a button on his remote controller, powering the unit down. УDid you manage that on purpose?Ф
I dropped to one knee and rubbed my foot. УI'd love to claim credit, but I'm not the Force genius that Kyp is.Ф
УThat's readily apparent.Ф Kam came over and plucked the remote from the air. УThink back for a second. You didn't know where the pillar was. Had you extended your senses enough to know where I was?Ф
I frowned and tried to recall. УNope. I think my sensory range was about two meters, and you were outside it. So was the pillar until I jumped back.Ф
УAnd when you were hurt you probably pulled the sphere in even tighter.Ф He opened a panel on the remote and twisted a small dial. УI'm going to move it out to four meters. You need to be able to push your sphere out larger and larger, and track the things inside it. If you don't know where you are and what you're doing, you're in deep trouble.Ф
УGot it. Pilots refer to it as 'situational awareness.' If you can't track your own people and the enemy in a vape-brawl, you end up doing a burn-in on some world.Ф
УThat's it exactly. My father used to refer to it as a sphere of responsibility. He used to tell me that as Jedi our sphere of responsibility was as big as the galaxy, and the best Jedi could understand and sort out whole star systems. I'd not actually felt that until the other night, in the grotto.Ф
I nodded. УI copy. As a pilot I tended to be pretty good in the situational awareness area, but using the Force is like trying to learn to see after having been blind for most of my life.Ф
УNot easy, but you can do it.Ф Kam slapped me on the shoul-der. УAnd don't let Kyp's progress bother you.Ф
УBother me?Ф I gave him an annoyed stare. УKyp's progress doesn't bother me. It really has no effect on me.Ф
УReally.Ф Kam's eyes narrowed and sank back into shadows. УYou're not a bit envious of the attention he is getting from Master Skywalker?Ф
I hesitated for a moment and let the question roam around in my brain. I shook my head. УI know I'm competitive, and I would have thought you'd be right, but I don't see Kyp as some-one I'm competing with. I've been second best before. That's a role I can accept. I make it my mission to make sure the front runner can't relax, but I'm more concerned with doing my best than I am with beating someone else's best.Ф
Kam's expression lightened considerably. УThat shows a fair amount of maturity.Ф
УKinda scary, isn't it?Ф
УNot in a Jedi Knight.Ф Kam tossed the remote into the air and it withdrew to a range of four meters. УGo again, Keiran Halcyon. Concentrate. Show me your best.Ф
Of course, my best was nothing compared to Kyp Durron's best. Kyp's growth in the Force was nothing shy of incredible. In just over a week he surpassed anything the rest of us were doing by light-years. Master Skywalker didn't know what to do with him, he was so good. Kyp gave us hope that reestablishing the Jedi Order could be and would be done.
! tried to get to know Kyp, but he kept himself aloof and apart from me. He made other friends among us. Dorsk 81, the yellow-fleshed clone from Khomm, had been closer to Gantoris than most, and Kyp's friendship filled a void in his life. They spent a fair amount of time together, heading off into the sur-rounding jungle as a survey team all by themselves.
Kyp had grown up in the spice mines of Kessel and was very strong in the Force. Growing up in prison made him hold him-self very close, and he didn't take to prying into his life. My attempts to open him up just drove him away from me, so I backed off. I didn't want to do anything that would make get-ting to know him impossible later.
And it wasn't as if I didn't have other things to do.
Gantoris had been dead for over two weeks, and I was really no closer to finding out who or what had killed him than when the smoke was still curling up off his body. I still felt we had a sociopathic killer on Yavin 4, but no one had found any clues of someone lurking here. We had Gantoris' body, but his killer had vanished without a trace.
The Holocron was not much more help in solving the mur-der, but it did give us some planetary history to work from. Yavin 4, it turned out, had been the seat of power of a formida-ble Dark Lord of the Sith, a fallen Jedi known as Exar Kun. He had been seduced to the dark side when he studied the ways of the Sith and incorporated their magics into his manipulation of the Force. He had come to Yavin 4 and had enslaved the Mas-sassi people. He used them to create all the temples on the world to help focus his power. Only when the Jedi of the Old Republic came after him in what became known as the Sith War was he defeated and his evil expunged from the galaxy for all time.
Luke's admonition about the dark side when he saw Gantoris' body made me wonder if, somehow, Gantoris had managed to dig up, decipher and study some Sith artifacts or manuals. Somewhere he had learned to make a lightsaber. I didn't want to think one of the Emperor's Dark Jedi had man-aged to slip onto Yavin 4 and was tutoring students. Figuring that Gantoris had gotten himself in trouble was a more pleas-ant alternative theory.
Unfortunately for my peace of mind, the idea of Gantoris' body being a taunt and a challenge fit all too well patterns I had seen before. My father had always told me to follow my gut. He'd really been encouraging my reliance in the Force, so I started with the assumption that an active intelligence had in-structed Gantoris and then killed him.
The problem with that assumption remained the same as it has always been: if such a person existed, Master Skywalker should have detected him. A droid doing the teaching would explain why we didn't detect him in the network of life on Yavin 4. A droid might even have the knowledge to teach Gantoris, but since it could not manipulate the Force, the lessons learned would be relatively useless.
Off the other edge of the scale we had the possibility of someone so powerful in the Force that he could remain unde-tected even by a Master. Gantoris' Уdark manФ and the person in Master Luke's nightmare could fit that profile. Putting Exar Kun at the top of the list of suspects was easy. He'd certainly not have balked at roasting Gantoris alive, but he'd been dead for four thousand years. Master Luke had alluded to the idea that he had seen and spoken with Obi-Wan Kenobi after the Jedi Master had been killed, but within a decade after his death, Obi-Wan had gone away forever. A Dark Lord of the Sith might have more staying power than that, but four millen-nia?
In addition to working with Tionne to uncover more data about the Jedi, I got to spend more time with Kam learning how to use a lightsaber. We managed to expand my sphere of responsibility up to sixteen meters for fine control, which meant I could pretty much own a city block. If I focused in one direc-tion I was good up to two hundred fifty meters for fine control on picking off blaster bolts, or line of sight for sensing presence. In one experiment, I implanted a vision of dinner being served in Dorsk 81's mind, summoning him and Kyp back from one of their hikes though they were still half a kilometer away.
I tried to get into Kyp's mind on that occasion, but I didn't know him well enough to break through. That confirmed one of my theories about who I could and could not influence. The better I knew someone, the more receptive they seemed to be to my projections. If they were hostile or unknown to me and/ or the image was terribly complex, I had a lot of trouble making them see anything.
After a particularly grueling day I ended up lounging around with the rest of the students in the early evening. We'd spent half the day listening to one of the auxiliary Holocron gate-keepers spin stories of court intrigues in the Old Republic- intrigues that must have been fascinating when you knew who he was talking about, but the gatekeeper's stunning inability to characterize anyone meant that I lost track of what was going on almost immediately. After that another gatekeeper told the story of how Yoda had become a Jedi. That story was actually pretty good and undoubtedly saved my life because a minute more of the Old Republic stories and I'd have slipped into a coma. After that I went out on a ten-kilometer run just to convince myself I was, in fact, alive.
The academy personnel had all gathered in one of the larger seminar rooms on the second level to listen to Tionne's latest ballad. I knew she had drawn it from material we had re-searched together, but she promised it was not a Halcyon bal-lad, so I was willing to come listen. Actually, I'd have come listen even if she were singing about Old Republic court in-trigues because when her voice filled a room, there was no question about it: you were very much alive.
She accompanied herself on a unique instrument that had two resonating boxes mounted on a shaft. Strings ran over the boxes, allowing her to pluck or strum them. The arrangement almost made the instrument sound like two separate instru-ments, and her skill with it brought it close to being orchestral. Most of her ballads, like the new one, the ballad of Nomi Sun-rider, had a stately lyrical theme running beneath them. Occa-sionally Tionne would also break into a slightly more raucous tune that usually got me to hum along.
Nomi Sunrider's ballad came from the era of Exar Kun and the Sith War. She was a woman whose husband had been slain, so she took his place in a Jedi training cadre. She went on to become an acclaimed Jedi who played a key role in the Sith War. Singing about her might have been considered sacrilege in the Great Temple of Yavin 4, but I didn't think anyone would protest the fact after four thousand years. I was wrong.
Halfway through the song, Kyp got up from the floor, his face contorted with disgust. УI wish you wouldn't perpetuate that ridiculous story. Nomi Sunrider was a victim. She fought in the Sith War without ever knowing what the battles were about. She listened blindly to her Jedi Masters, who were afraid be-cause Exar Kun had discovered a way for the Jedi to expand their power.Ф
Tionne set her instrument down, surprised and a little hurt. She asked Kyp why he hadn't helped her reconstruct that leg-end if he had special information like that. Luke asked him where he'd learned what he'd just said, but that question had already answered itself in my gut: Exar Kun. I'd been there with Tionne as we listened to Bodo Baas talk about the Sith War. Kyp's take on it was decidedly pro-Exar Kun and, as nearly as x~e had been able to discover, there were no minority opinions Oil the subject available from the Holocron.
I came out of my reverie as Kyp's blazing gaze brushed past my own. У.. · they wouldn't all have been slaughtered. The Jedi would never have fallen, and we wouldn't be here, taught by someone who doesn't know any more than we do.Ф
Luke again asked Kyp where he had learned his history. The young man hesitated for a moment, then mumbled something i~bout having used the Holocron. I shot Tionne a glance and she frowned. Between the lessons we'd all learned from it and the work she was doing with it, unless Kyp was an insomniac, he really didn't have time to study it.
Before I could call him on that lie, Master Skywalker's R2 unit rolled into the room and whistled at him. I caught a bit of the code for Уincoming,Ф and stretched out with my senses. Even before Luke announced to us that we had a visitor, I caught a sense of a powerful Force presence descending toward the moon. By the time we left the Great Temple, a Z-95 Head-hunter was setting down on the landing grid.
The pilot emerged wearing a silvery, form-fitting flightsuit. She removed her helmet and shook out red-gold hair. Even in the twilight, I noticed the green of her eyes-lighter and more striking than mine. She looked quite beautiful, though the smile she gave Master Skywalker seemed to rest uncomfortably on her kips.
УMara Jade,Ф Luke greeted her.
I missed her reply as the uneasiness I felt over Kyp suddenly became compounded. Iella had told me about this Mara Jade. She had been groomed by the Emperor to be an agent who was adept in use of the Force. Her very existence had been un-known to all but a handful of Imperials, and she would have remained hidden save for her role in defeating Grand Admiral Thrawn. Details on that were all very sketchy, but I'd been left with the impression that she was very competent, very lethal and not that positively disposed toward Jedi.
Despite that, she pulled from a pouch at her side a Jedi cloak. Luke smiled as he turned and presented her to us. УThis is Mara Jade. She has come here to learn the ways of the Jedi.Ф
Everyone applauded her-even Kyp, though he remained sullen. Luke apparently noticed that as easily as I did because he waved me over. УKeiran, will you please see to Mara's billet-ing? I have something to which I want to attend, if you don't mind, Mara.Ф
She gave him a quick nod, then turned and regarded me up and down. УHave we met before?Ф
I knew we had not, but I still found something disturbingly familiar about her. УNo, I don't think so.Ф УOdd, I usually don't forget a face.Ф
УAnd I think I would remember you.Ф I waved her toward the Great Temple. УWe have a variety of rooms ready. Master Skywalker's chambers are on the third level. Likewise some of the students. Most visitors are housed on the second level.Ф