TWO

Somewhere between the Corellian Trade Spine and the Kathol sector, the Star Destroyer Errant Venture dropped out of hyperspace, reoriented its massive wedge-shaped frame, and resumed lightspeed. An uninformed observer would have had less than a minute to wonder what a Star Destroyer was doing in such an out-of-the-way part of space and why it was painted red.

Deep in the Destroyer’s belly, Anakin Solo hardly noticed the transition, so intent was he on what he was doing. He stood quickly into narrow profile, the point of his lightsaber aiming toward the deck, pommel level with his forehead and pointed at the ceiling. With two quick twists of his wrist, he deflected a pair of stun bolts from the remote whirring around him. He flipped the lightsaber to an identical position behind his back to catch the blast from a second remote, then dropped into a crouch, his luminescent weapon whipping up to high guard. A leaping somersault carried him over the sudden coordinated flurry of shots from the two flying spheres. By the time his feet touched the deck, he was weaving a complex set of parries that sent reddish bolts hissing against the walls.

He was in the rhythm, now, and his blue eyes sparkled like electron arcs as the stinging rays came faster, more often, better timed. After a few minutes of this, sweat was plastering his brown hair to his head and soaking his dark Jedi robes, but none of the painful though harmless attacks had found their mark.

He was warmed up, now.

“Halt,” he commanded. Immediately the spheres became stationary and quiescent.

He deactivated his lightsaber and set it aside. From a wall cabinet, Anakin removed another lightsaber, thumbed it on, took a few deep breaths, calmed his racing pulse. It was quiet in the storage compartment he’d converted into his training space. Quiet and spare and off-white. A motley trio of droids regarded him with unblinking eyes. Even the most casual observer could see they had been cobbled together from spare parts, though the central chassis of each was that of a rather common worker drone. They did not look particularly dangerous, until one examined what they held in their hands—wicked-looking staffs, sharp on one end, spoon-shaped on the other. They looked remarkably like snakes, an impression enhanced by the fact that they undulated now and then.

Anakin blew out another breath and nodded at the droids.

“Begin sequence one,” he said.

The droids flashed into motion, their spindly frames moving with eye-daunting speed, two flanking him on either side, one driving straight toward him. Anakin back-pedaled and parried, dropped, and swept the legs out from under the droid on his right. The other two were attacking, one staff spearing at his neck, the other gone suddenly flexible, flicking around his rising parry toward his back. Anakin stepped forward a centimeter and felt the wind from the vicious whip-over as it came up short of his spine.

That’s it, he thought. I’m learning the range. The smallest movement possible to prevent the attack from landing is the best.

He dropped the high parry into a riposte. The droid, suddenly too close to him, tried to retreat but stopped instantly, deactivated when Anakin’s weapon touched its torso.

The downed droid was back up by then, and Anakin found himself circling, holding them at the very outside of his guard and in his field of vision. That kept them off him, and he could probably do that forever. He wouldn’t win the fight that way, though, so he gave them a rhythm to follow and let them try to break it.

One of the staffs suddenly spit a stream of liquid at him. He twisted his body to avoid it, again allowing only a centimeter for the miss. At the same moment, the other droid broke tempo and leapt in deep.

Anakin parried, but the staff wrapped around his wrist. He felt a distinct and painful electric shock. The other droid was an instant behind, leveling a blow at Anakin’s skull.

Somewhere a blaster shrieked, and the droid suddenly didn’t have a weapon—or the arm that held it.

“Halt!” Anakin shouted, and hurled himself away as the staff instantly released his hand. He came down in a fighting posture.

A dark-haired man with a blaster stood in the doorway. He had a beard liberally tinseled with silver and wore green robes the same shade as his eyes. He held the blaster up in a nonthreatening way, as if surrendering.

“Why did you do that?” Anakin asked, trying to suppress the anger suddenly boiling up. He had worked hard on that droid.

“You’re welcome,” Corran Horn said, holstering his weapon.

“Those are training droids. They wouldn’t have hurt me.”

“Oh no? Are those training amphistaffs they’re holding? If he’d hit you with it …”

“He wouldn’t have. They’re programmed to arrest their blows the second the staff touches my skin. And yes, they are training amphistaffs. They aren’t real.”

Corran’s eyes widened in surprise. “How did you manage that? Why didn’t your lightsaber cut through them?”

“It’s not a lightsaber.”

Corran’s expression was almost worth the damage to the droid.

“It’s just a blade-shaped force field, a weak one,” Anakin explained. “Wouldn’t cut anything. The things my droids have act like amphistaffs and move like them, but they just spit dye and deliver a shock when they hit. They only weigh a kilogram or so.”

“I guess I ruined your droid for no good reason, then,” Corran said.

Anakin’s anger was entirely mastered now. It was something he had been working on. “It’s okay. I built it; I can fix it. I’ve got nothing but time.”

“I’m just curious,” Corran said, eyeing the droids. “Booster has a couple of duelist elites in storage. Why not use one of them to train with?”

Anakin deactivated the “weapon” and returned it to the cabinet. “Duelist elites don’t move like Yuuzhan Vong warriors. The droids I built do.”

“I wondered what you’ve been puttering at for the last few weeks.”

Anakin nodded. “I don’t want to lose my edge. You saw what happened—the one you shot had me.”

“Practice is fine,” Corran said. “I just wish you had informed me of what you were doing. Might have saved me a skipped heartbeat and you a droid.”

“Right. I forgot,” Anakin said.

Corran nodded again, this time with a more thoughtful look in his eye. “You didn’t notice me coming. That’s not good. You have to learn to extend your sphere of responsibility beyond the immediate battle.”

“I know,” Anakin replied. “I wasn’t using the Force. I’m training to fight without it.”

“Because the Yuuzhan Vong can’t be sensed in the Force, I assume.”

Anakin nodded. “Of course. The Force is a wonderful tool—”

“The Force isn’t merely a tool, Anakin,” Corran admonished. “It’s much more than that.”

“I know,” Anakin said, a bit peevishly. “But among other things it is a tool, and for fighting the Yuuzhan Vong, it’s just not the right tool for the job, no more than a hydrospanner is what you would use to calibrate the input feed of an astromech.”

Corran cocked his head skeptically. “I can’t precisely dispute that, but it’s not because it isn’t wrong.”

Anakin shrugged. “Try it like this, then. All Jedi training involves the Force, even combat training. Sensing blows and blaster bolts before they happen, that sort of thing. Shoving our enemies around telekinetically—”

“With some exceptions,” Corran dryly reminded him.

“Right. So you should know what I mean. What do you think of Jedi who can’t win a fight without resorting to telekinesis? For that matter, you were CorSec long before you were Jedi. You should be able to see that the Force has become as much of a crutch for us as anything. The Yuuzhan Vong prove that.”

“Sounding a little like your brother. Are you abandoning the Force?”

Anakin’s eyebrows arched up. “Of course not. I’ll use it when it works. When I was being hunted by the Yuuzhan Vong on Yavin Four, I discovered ways to use the Force against them. I looked for the holes in the Force around me. I listened to the voices of the jungle and felt the fear of its creatures when the Yuuzhan Vong warriors passed near.”

“And you learned to sense the Yuuzhan Vong themselves,” Corran pointed out.

“Not with the Force, though. With the lambent I used to rebuild my lightsaber.”

“How can you be sure? I’ve never believed the Yuuzhan Vong don’t exist in the Force. They must. Everything does. We just don’t know how to do it. You attuned yourself to a piece of Vong biotech and now you can sense them. Can you be sure you haven’t found where they live in the Force?”

“Maybe I did make some sort of metalinkage, but if I did I think it’s more of a translation from one to another. I can’t be sure. All I know is, I can use it. But if I lose my lightsaber, or it’s destroyed, or the lambent dies—I still want to be able to fight them.”

Corran placed a hand on Anakin’s shoulder. “Anakin, I understand you’ve been through a lot. The Yuuzhan Vong have taken much that was precious from you. I’ll always be grateful for what you did for my children, and so I’m telling you this as a friend. You need to control your emotions. You can’t allow yourself to hate.”

Anakin shook his head. “I don’t hate the Yuuzhan Vong, Corran. My time with them helped me to understand them. More than ever, I think they must be stopped, but I promise you, I do not hate them. I can fight them without anger.”

“I hope what you say is true, but anger is a quick-change artist and a trickster. More often than not, you don’t see it for what it is.”

“Thanks,” Anakin said. “I appreciate the advice.”

Corran again looked slightly skeptical. Then he motioned toward the droids. “These droids were a good idea. I’d be happy to help you repair that one.”

“That’s okay. Like I said, I have plenty of time on my hands.”

Corran smiled. “Getting a little deck fever?”

“I’m ready to get back out there, if that’s what you mean. But Tahiri still needs me.”

“You’re a good friend to her, Anakin.”

“I haven’t been. I’m trying to be.”

“Tahiri won’t get over her ordeal in a few months. She needs more time. I think she’ll understand if you have to go.”

Anakin dropped his gaze from Corran’s. “I promised her I would stay a while, and that’s what I’m going to do. But it’s hard, knowing what’s going on out there. Knowing my friends and family are fighting while I’m here doing nothing.”

“But you aren’t doing nothing; you just said it yourself. You’re still a part of the defensive effort. Protecting the Jedi students is important. Jumping randomly around the galaxy is probably the safest thing we can do, but there’s no telling when the Yuuzhan Vong or one of their sympathizers will pick up our trail. If they do, we’ll need everyone we can get.”

“I guess so. I’m just so restless.”

“You are,” Corran agreed. “I’ve noticed you’ve been kind of itchy. That’s why I was looking for you, in fact.”

“Really? What for?”

“We need supplies. Obviously, if we’re trying to keep our location secret we can’t take the only red Star Destroyer in the galaxy into an inhabited system. I was going to take one of the transports out. I thought you might like to go. Hopefully it will be a boring trip, but—”

“Yes,” Anakin said. “I’ll do it.”

“Good. I could use a copilot. I’ll meet you in the docking bay tomorrow, say after morning meal?”

“Great. Thanks, Corran.”

“No problem. See you then.”