32

Kyp Durron returned to the fourth moon of Yavin in the heartbeat stillness of the jungle night. Filled with a power he had decided to use to its fullest, he felt ready to explode in an exhilarating outpouring of the Force—but he could not let such childish demonstrations seduce him. He had a mission to accomplish, one that would affect the future of the entire galaxy.

Without running lights or landing beacon, he brought the Z-95 Headhunter he had taken from Mara Jade to a gentle rest on the slightly overgrown landing pad in front of the Great Temple. Kyp had no interest in reacquainting himself with the other weak Jedi trainees or even with the misguided and cowardly Master Skywalker. He simply needed access to the ancient Massassi temples Exar Kun had designed as focal points for concentrating the power of the Sith.

Above him the night sky was lush with stars, and the stirrings of the surrounding jungle wove a tapestry of hushed sounds. But the insects made their music more quietly, and few large animals crashed through the underbrush. The entire rain forest seemed stunned by Kyp’s return.

Kyp tossed the oddly glittering black cape over his shoulders. Time to be about his business.

Leaving the Headhunter fighter behind him, he approached the monolithic ziggurat of the Great Temple. Rust-colored vermiform vines writhed out of his way, avoiding Kyp’s footsteps, as if his entire body exuded a deadly heat.

Chisel-cut stone steps ran up the side of the pyramid. He set one foot in front of the other, climbing slowly, listening to the soft echoes of his breathing. Anticipation built within him.

In his mind Kyp heard cheering ghosts, saw visions like a videoloop from four thousand years ago when Exar Kun had found the last resting place of the ancient Sith. Kun had rediscovered their teachings. He had built great temples, establishing the Brotherhood of the Sith among disillusioned Jedi Knights. Here on Yavin 4, Kun had used the Massassi people as expendable resources, power conduits to redefine the chaos and corruption of the Old Republic. He had challenged the foolish Jedi who followed their incompetent leaders without thinking simply because they had sworn to do so.…

Now Kyp would finish the battle, though the enemy was no longer the incompetent, decaying Republic, but the fraudulent New Order and the repressive Empire that had taken the Old Republic’s place. While Master Skywalker limited the training of his new Jedi Knights, Kyp Durron had learned more. Much more.

He reached the second tier of the ziggurat and paused to look down at the insectile shape of his Z-95 fighter resting in the center of the landing grid. No one had yet stirred from inside the temple.

A pastel glow crept into the sky at the horizon as the rapid rotation of the jungle moon brought planetrise closer. Kyp continued to climb the long series of steps, staring toward the apex of the Great Temple.

Kyp had already struck his first blow by erasing dangerous knowledge from the Imperial scientist, Qwi Xux. Only Qwi had known how to build another Sun Crusher—but Kyp, using his bare hands and his newfound power, had torn that knowledge from her brain and scattered it into nothingness. No one could ever find it again.

Next, he would apply a poetic justice that delighted his sensibility, that made him thrill with revenge for all that the Empire had done against him and his family and his colony world. Kyp would resurrect the Sun Crusher itself and use it to obliterate the remains of the Empire. He would be accountable to no one but himself. He trusted no one else to make the hard decisions.

Kyp reached the summit of the Great Temple just as the huge orange ball of Yavin heaved itself over the horizon. Misty and pale, the gas giant swirled with tremendous storm systems large enough to swallow smaller worlds.

The temple’s diamond-shaped flagstones covered the small observation platform above the grand audience chamber. Vines and stunted Massassi trees poked up from the corners of the old stones.

Kyp looked skyward. The small plants and animals filling the jungles of Yavin 4 were insignificant to him. They mattered nothing in the grand scheme of what he was about to undertake. The importance of his vision far exceeded the petty needs of any single planet.

As the sphere of Yavin rose into the sky, Kyp lifted his arms, and the slick black fabric of his cape fell behind him. His hands were slender and small, the hands of a young man. But inside, power sizzled through his bones.

“Exar Kun, help me,” Kyp said, closing his eyes.

He reached out with his mind, following the paths of the Force that led to every object in the universe, drawing power from the cosmic focal point of the Massassi temple. He searched, sending his thoughts like a probe deep into the storm systems of the gas giant.

Behind him Kyp felt the black-ice power of Exar Kun arise, tapping into him and reinforcing his abilities. His own feeble exploratory touch suddenly plunged forward like a blaster bolt. Kyp felt larger, a part of the jungle moon, then a part of the entire planetary system, until he burrowed into the heart of the gas giant itself.

Pale orange clouds whipped past him. He sensed pressure increasing as he plummeted down, down to the incredibly dense layers near the core. He sought the tiny speck of machinery, a small, indestructible ship that had been cast away.

When he reached the bottommost levels of the atmosphere, Kyp finally found the Sun Crusher. It stood out like a beacon, a bull’s-eye in the funneling field lines of the Force.

Size matters not, Master Skywalker had repeated. Kyp engulfed the Sun Crusher with his mind, surrounding it, touching it with his limitless, invisible hands. He thought about heaving it back up, dragging the Sun Crusher out of the depths of Yavin. But he discarded that thought.

Instead, with the assistance of Exar Kun, he used his innate skill to power up the controls again, to move control levers, push buttons to alter the course stored in the Sun Crusher’s memory, bringing it out of its entombment.

Kyp continued to watch the weapon’s progress, focusing on the sphere of the enormous planet as it crested the misty treetops. The Sun Crusher appeared as a silvery dot, seeming no larger than an atom as it emerged from the highest cloud layers and streaked across space toward the emerald-green moon where Kyp waited.

He stared upward and waited, opening his arms to receive the indestructible weapon.

The Sun Crusher approached like a long, sharp thorn of crystalline alloy, cruising upright on its long axis. The toroidal resonance-torpedo launcher hung at the bottom of the long hook. It looked beautiful.

The Sun Crusher descended through the jungle moon’s atmosphere, straight down—like a spike to impale the Great Temple. Kyp controlled it, slowed its descent, until the superweapon hovered to a stop, suspended in front of him.

As the sky brightened with planetrise, the alloy hull of the Sun Crusher seemed as pristine as a firefacet gem, scoured of all oxidation and debris by the intense temperatures and pressures at the core of Yavin. The Sun Crusher looked clean, and deadly, and ready for him.

“Thank you, Exar Kun,” Kyp whispered.

Luke Skywalker awoke from another series of nightmares. He sat bolt upright on his pallet, instantly aware. He had felt a great disturbance in the Force. Something was not right.

He got up, moving cautiously as he sent out his thoughts to check on his students: Kirana Ti, Dorsk 81, the new Calamarian arrival Cilghal, Streen, Tionne, Kam Solusar, and all the others. Nothing seemed amiss. They slept soundly—almost too soundly, as if a net of sleep had been cast over them.

When he reached out farther, he was stunned to feel a cold, black whirlpool of twisted Force around the peak of the temple. It stunned him.

Luke sprinted to the door of his chambers, hesitated, then stepped back to retrieve his lightsaber. He marched down the corridors, smoothing his fear as he rode the turbolift to the upper levels of the ancient pyramid.

Calm, Yoda had said, you must remain calm.

But the sight that greeted him under the dawn sky nearly overwhelmed Luke.

The Sun Crusher hung suspended over the temple, still steaming in the morning air, resurrected from its tomb at the core of the gas giant. Kyp Durron spun around to stare at Luke, his black cape swirling with the rapid motion.

Stunned, Luke reeled backward. “How dare you bring that weapon back!” he said. “It goes against all the Jedi knowledge I have taught you.”

Kyp laughed at him. “You haven’t taught me very much, Master Skywalker. I’ve learned a great deal beyond your feeble teachings. You pretend to be a great instructor, but you’re afraid to learn for yourself.”

He looked back at the Sun Crusher. “I will do what must be done to eradicate the Empire. While I make the galaxy safe for everyone, you can stay here and practice your simple Jedi tricks. But they are no more than children’s games.”

“Kyp,” Luke said, keeping his voice even and taking a step toward him, “you’ve been lured by the dark side, but you must return. You were deceived and misled. Come back before its grip becomes too strong.” He swallowed. “I went over to the dark side once, and I came back. It can be done if you’re strong enough and brave enough. Are you?”

Kyp laughed in disbelief. “Skywalker, it’s embarrassing for me to listen to you talk. You are afraid to risk anything yourself, yet you want to call yourself a Jedi Master. It doesn’t work that way. You’ve stunted the training of your other Jedi candidates because of your own narrow-mindedness. Perhaps I should just defeat you here and now, and then I can take over their training.”

With trembling hands and a deep-seated dread in his heart, Luke reached to his side and wrapped his hand around the slick handle of his lightsaber. He pulled it free, igniting it with the familiar snap-hiss. The brilliant green blade extended, humming and ready for battle.

A Jedi could not attack an unarmed opponent, could not resort to violence before all other avenues had been exhausted—but Luke knew the deadly potential of his most talented student. If Kyp had fallen to the dark side, he could become another Darth Vader. Perhaps even worse.…

“Don’t make me do this,” Luke said, raising his lightsaber, but unsure what to do. He couldn’t just cut down his student, who stood unarmed at the top of the temple. But if he didn’t …

“We have to send the Sun Crusher back,” Luke said. “At one time you yourself insisted that it should never be used.”

“I spoke out of ignorance,” Kyp said, “just as you do.”

“Don’t make me fight you,” Luke said in a low voice.

Kyp made a dismissive gesture with one hand, and a sudden wave of dark ripples splashed across the air like the shock front from a concussion grenade.

Luke stumbled backward. The lightsaber turned cold in his hand. Frost crystals grew in feathery patterns around the handle. At the core of the brilliant green blade a shadow appeared, a black disease rotting away the purity of the beam. The humming blade sputtered, sounding like a sickly cough. The black taint rapidly grew stronger, swallowing up the green beam.

With a fizzle of sparks Luke’s lightsaber died.

Trying to control his growing fear, Luke felt a sudden brush of cold behind him. He turned to see a black, hooded silhouette—the image that had impersonated Anakin Skywalker in Luke’s nightmare … the dark man who had lured Gantoris into a devastating loss of control.

Kyp’s voice came as if from a great distance. “At last, Master Skywalker, you can meet my mentor—Exar Kun.”

Luke dropped his useless lightsaber and crouched. His every muscle suddenly coiled and tensed. He rallied all the powers of the Force around him, seeking any defensive tactic.

With the Sun Crusher looming behind him, Kyp stretched out both hands and blasted Luke with lightning bolts like black cracks in the Force. Dark tendrils rose up from gaps in the temple flagstones, fanged, illusory vipers that struck at him from all sides.

Luke cried out and tried to strike back, but the shadow of Exar Kun joined the attack, adding more deadly force. The ancient Dark Lord of the Sith lashed out with waves of blackness, driving long icicles of frozen poison into Luke’s body.

He thrashed, but felt helpless. To lose control to anger and desperation would be as great a failure as if he did nothing at all. Luke called upon the powers that Yoda and Obi-Wan had taught him—but everything he did, every skillful technique, failed utterly.

Against the full might of Kyp Durron and the forbidden weapons of the long-dead spirit of Exar Kun, even a Jedi Master such as Luke Skywalker could not prevail.

The black serpentlike tentacles of evil force struck at him again and again, filling his body with a pain like lava coursing through his veins. As he screamed, his voice was swallowed by a hurricane from the dark side.

Luke cried out one last time and crumpled backward to the blessedly cool flagstones of the Great Massassi Temple, as everything turned a smothering, final black around him.…