“These things didn’t happen because of your failures, Ferus. They happened because someone did them. Darth Vader is responsible for those deaths. Not you. He is the one who fashioned the plan to kill. He is the one who blew up that asteroid.”
Obi-Wan sat quietly with Ferus for long minutes. He remembered his own bitterness, his own shame and despair. What had saved him? How could he save Ferus?
“Forgiveness isn’t a feeling,” Obi-Wan said finally. “It’s a decision you have to make for yourself every day. Every day, you will fight for a moment of peace.”
“That is a journey I’m not inclined to take.” Ferus leaned back, exhausted. “Everyone I love is dead.”
“Not everyone.”
Ferus thought of Trever. “No. Not everyone.”
“One day you will have peace, Ferus,” Obi-Wan said. “Until then I’ll give you the only thing I can give you.”
Ferus opened his eyes. Obi-Wan’s gaze was gentle. Obi-Wan had made it through his own despair. He knew the way. “What is that?”
He had expected gentle wisdom, or maybe a Jedi lesson. Instead, Obi-Wan spoke in a brisk, practical voice.
“A job.”
Everything was ready for his departure. His ship was fueled and standing by at the hangar near the Orange District. Keets and Curran had come to say good-bye. Dex was with them, once again in his repulsorlift chair. He had lost weight during his illness and was half the size he used to be.
“Wherever you’re going, go safe and be well, my friend,” Dex said. He patted him on the back with all four arms.
“If you need us, we’ll be there,” Keets said.
“We’re going a hundred levels down,” Curran said. “We found a neighborhood like the Orange District.”
“Except it’s not orange,” Keets said. “Never liked the color, anyway. We found a colony of Erased. They set up in an abandoned field of gigantic cisterns, the ones that used to supply water to Galactic City. They filled them up with water. It’s like living on a water world. We’re going to live on a house raft. Not bad.”
“We won’t forget them,” Curran said. “Solace, Ry-Gaul, Oryon, Garen, Raina. Heroes all.”
“We’ll be ready to fight when the time comes,” Keets said.
Dex leaned in to speak to Ferus for a moment. “Never believed in second-guessing, you know. You did your best, and that is always good enough. We’ll see more losses than these before we’re through. They were all great heroes, but more will step up to take their places.”
The Svivreni never said good-bye. With sorrow in his eyes, Curran gave the traditional farewell of his homeworld. “The journey begins, so go.”
Curran, Keets, and Dex climbed back into their battered airspeeder. Ferus watched until the vehicle blended in with the space traffic and he could no longer distinguish it.
He turned away and began to walk. There was one more thing to do. And it was the hardest thing of all.
Trever sat waiting with Malory Lands. They had use of the clinic for twenty minutes only; Malory had arranged it.
Ferus’s steps faltered. Out of all the things he had had to do over the past months, this seemed the most impossible.
He and Obi-Wan had discussed it. Trever had been with them from the beginning. He had heard that Vader was a Sith Lord. He knew the Emperor was a Sith. That knowledge could put him in great danger.
Ferus had a way to protect him.
Malory took him aside. “I’ve been working on the formula since you gave it to me. I can pinpoint Trever’s memories pretty precisely.”
“I want him to remember his parents. His childhood,” Ferus said.
“He will. But...” Malory hesitated. “You understand, don’t you, that if I wipe out the last year...he might not remember you? His memories will be spotty starting from the death of his father and brother. It will intersect with when he knew you and Roan.”
It felt like a great pain was ripping him apart. To remove Roan from another memory felt like another death.
And he would lose Trever, too.
Ferus swallowed. “I know.”
“I explained it all to Trever. He’s waiting to talk to you.”
Ferus approached the boy. He sat next to him on the examining table.
“So I guess this is good-bye,” Trever said. “Maybe. You know, the worst part is that I won’t remember what a great hero I was. I never thought I could be a hero.”
“You’ll have your chance to be a hero again. And I’ll always remember you as one.”
“I was pretty full-moon awesome, it’s true.”
Malory came up behind them. “It’s time. The procedure will take at least twenty minutes, so...”
“I’ll wait at the hangar.”
Ferus and Trever slid off the table. Ferus turned to Trever and embraced him.
“I lied before.” Trever’s voice was muffled. “The worst part will be forgetting you.”
There had been times in the past days when Ferus had wondered if he still had a heart. Now he knew he did. He felt blinded by his pain.
“You are my best friend,” Ferus said. “That will never change.”
He stepped back. He looked at Trever, wanting to remember the affection in the boy’s gaze. Then he walked away. He opened the clinic door.
“Don’t forget me!” Trever called after him.
Ferus hesitated, then walked out, letting the door close softly behind him.
Vader stood with Lord Sidious in his Master’s private quarters above his office. His briefing had been short and satisfactory. Twilight had been a success. The resistance movement was dead. The preliminary test for the superweapon had proved that one day it would perform as they expected.
Ferus Olin was dead. Or gone. It hardly mattered.
He had done it all, everything his Master wanted, and more.
“The success of the first stage of the superweapon pleases me,” Lord Sidious said. “What does not please me is that you failed my test.”
Vader was surprised. “I don’t understand, Master. I annihilated the resistance. I destroyed Ferus Olin. He was not our ally. He was our enemy.”
“Of course he was our enemy,” Lord Sidious said. “And of course I meant for you to destroy him. That was not your test.”
“My test...”
“You fought him with emotion. Just in the way you pressured Zan Arbor to come up with that memory agent. Yes, I know about that, how badly you wanted it. I had hoped for more from you, my apprentice. I expected you to leave Anakin Skywalker behind. By your actions you have shown me that Anakin is not dead. Until he is dead, Lord Vader cannot truly rise.”
A rebuke instead of praise. Instead of a reward, a warning.
“You killed her. That was good—it brought you to me.”
You killed her. That was good. Vader was shocked at the grief and anger that roiled through him at his Master’s words. He could easily have struck his Master down.
Lord Sidious smiled. “You see?” he taunted.
His Master was right. Anakin wasn’t dead. If Anakin were truly dead, he would not be feeling this despair.
“You must accept this—all steps are necessary when the outcome is this.” Lord Sidious raised one arm and took in Coruscant glittering around them, the stars and planets burning above. “The galaxy is in our grasp,” he rasped.
“I will eliminate Anakin, Master. And...her.” He would bend his mind to it. He would banish Padmé without a drug. He would do it with his anger. With his will.
With all that he’d done, with all that was behind him, where else would he go, what else could he do, but this?
He bowed his obedience.
His Master’s pale gaze traveled beyond him to the dark night sky. “See that you do. Because until that day, no matter how useful you are to me, you will be a failure.”
Astri and Clive arrived in the ship Dex had procured for them. “We arranged for a house on Bellazura,” Astri told Ferus. “It’s near the beach, so you can see the water. It has a ga
rden. We have ID docs, and credits...” Her voice trailed off. “We’ll raise him with Lune. He’ll have a brother again. And parents...We’ll take care of him.”
“I know he’ll have the best possible life,” Ferus said.
“Even with me as a father?” Clive tried to joke.
“Well, except for that part,” Ferus said.
Astri slung an arm around Clive. “He’ll make a great father. He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“Malory is telling him that he was in an accident,” Clive said. “That it wiped away parts of his memory, including the fact that we adopted him. She says that he won’t remember us, but with constant contact he might associate us with good feelings in his past.”
Ferus nodded.
A med airspeeder approached and landed. Trever climbed out, looking around as though he hadn’t seen the hangar before. Malory looked across the hangar at Ferus and nodded. The experiment had been successful.
Ferus watched Trever cross the hangar. He felt his breath catch. Trever’s walk was different. He’d forgotten that Trever had been a different person six months before. He’d been a street thief. Over his time with Ferus, Trever had lost that cockiness, that defensiveness. Now it was all there in his walk.
Get your hero’s walk back, Trever.
Something was missing in Trever’s eyes, too. All that sorrow. He didn’t remember Garen, or Ry-Gaul, or Solace. He didn’t remember seeing the asteroid blown up in front of his eyes. That was something, at least. Trever had been spared that memory.
Trever’s gaze passed over him as though he were a stranger.
Malory introduced him to Clive and Astri. Lune ran down the ramp of the ship and hurried toward Trever, shouting his name. Trever looked startled.
“Guess you’re my new family,” Trever said. “You don’t look so bad.”
“And this is Ferus Olin,” Malory said. “He’s from your homeworld.”
Trever turned to him. “Good to meet you.”
Ferus couldn’t speak.
“Are we going to get this show on the road?” Trever asked. “I can’t remember chunks of my old life, so I’m kinda anxious to start on the new one.”
Ferus cleared his throat. “Good-bye.”
“See you! Hey, whoa, is that our cruiser? Sweet!” Trever hurried toward Astri and Clive’s ship. “C’mon, kid!” he called to Lune.
Lune hesitated before turning away. “May the Force be with you,” he said to Ferus.
“May the Force be with you, Lune. You would have made a fine Jedi. Take care of Trever. Just don’t let him know it.”
Lune grinned and ran off.
“I’m not saying good-bye,” Clive said. “I have a feeling I’ll see you again. You have an annoying habit of popping up when I least expect it.”
“You never know,” Ferus said.
He embraced Astri, then Clive. Malory climbed into her cruiser. After administering the memory agent to Trever, she had destroyed it. It was too dangerous to keep active while the Empire controlled the galaxy.
He watched Malory’s ship rise and join the space traffic. Astri’s ship followed.
In his heart, he wished them long lives and as much peace as they could find.
He would never see them again.
The grasslands of Alderaan were vast and beautiful. Ferus lived on the edge of the great wilderness that lay across the sea from Aldera. Close enough to the city, but not part of it.
Bail had found him a house nestled in a small valley. He had no close neighbors. His cover story was that he was a botanist, working on a great work on the grasses of Alderaan.
His real work was protecting Princess Leia.
He was here not as a bodyguard, but as a safeguard. Just as Obi-Wan watched over Luke from a distance, he would be here if Leia needed him. She would never know him, but he would always be there.
He would make sure that no danger came to her. The daughter of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala would always be safe.
Ferus stood outside the door of his small dwelling. The sun was on his face and the wind was in his hair, but he didn’t feel them. Instead he felt only the memories of all the lives that had touched his, and the people that he’d loved. Trever lived in him, and Roan. The Jedi he had fought beside. The heroes he had known.
Obi-Wan had told him to trust that a rebellion would rise. It would take years, but it would come. Dex’s words had comforted him. In his mind, Ferus saw Garen, Solace, and Ry-Gaul, but he also saw new heroes behind them, stepping up to take their places.
Obi-Wan was right about forgiveness. Ferus could feel himself gain a little more each day. He had even forgiven Anakin, for hadn’t he come close to the line that Anakin had crossed? Underneath his tunic was a red scar—a brand to remind him that he had touched the dark side of the Force.
Maybe that scar would remind him about the need for compassion. And one day he would able to direct it toward himself.
Obi-Wan had shared some of Qui-Gon Jinn’s words with him before he’d left Tatooine.
A Force connection is a gift we honor not only in our hearts, but in our choices.
“You made the choice to live,” Obi-Wan had told him. “Now live with honor.”
His gaze moved toward the city of Aldera. This was his new home. Ferus knew in his bones that he wouldn’t leave this planet alive. These grasslands would hold his spirit one day.
Here he would live, until the day he joined the Force and joined his friends, and Roan, at last. Until then he would trade the life he’d had for this one. He would say good-bye to all the things he’d known.
The journey begins, he told himself. So go.
Jude Watson, The Dark Rival
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