Finally they heard him groan.
Malory leaned back. “He’s coming around. Don’t try to talk, Ferus.”
“Vader...”
“He’s gone.”
Ferus tried to sit. Malory pushed him down. “Don’t move.”
“He’s on his way there...to the asteroid. He said he could get to anyone.”
“He’s confused,” Malory said.
“No, he’s not,” Trever said as he bent down and looked into Ferus’s eyes. “He’s himself again. What is it, Ferus?”
“Warn them...” Ferus sat up. “Tell them not to go.”
Trever shook his head, his eyes wide. “They are there already.”
“I have to get there.”
“You can’t go anywhere! You need complete bacta immersion.” Malory tried to gently push him down again, but with a surprising show of strength, Ferus stopped her hand.
“What is it?” Trever asked.
Ferus looked at Clive and Astri. “Vader said something about awakening a mole. Remember? But Flame...was an active agent from the beginning. He always has backup, remember? Someone on the base has betrayed us. I’m the only one who can stop him. I need the Force to stop him.”
“But...” Trever said.
“Don’t worry,” Ferus told him. “I have it back again.”
Trever was worried about Ferus. His face was drawn and white, and he looked like he was about to keel over. He had insisted on taking over the pilot seat as soon as the ship neared the asteroid. Luckily the fast-moving storm had moved close to the Core, and they were able to reach it quickly.
“Keep trying to get Solace and Ry-Gaul at the base,” Ferus said. He kept consulting the stormtracker. “I don’t like the looks of this,” he muttered.
“The storm’s interfering with the comm system, that’s for sure,” Trever said. “Wait—I’m getting some breaks here. I think I’ve got an open line!”
A holo-image of Ry-Gaul appeared. “I’m here. The meeting is going well.”
“Ry-Gaul, we have a problem,” Ferus said quickly. “There’s a mole at the base. Someone. And Vader is on his way. You must evacuate everyone. Do you copy?”
“Copy that. The storm is growing—I don’t know if—”
The image fractured into particles of light.
“At least he heard you,” Trever said. “They’ll be able to get out before Vader arrives.”
“I hope so.” Ferus leaned back and closed his eyes. His skin was white against his dark hair. “I hope so.”
Ry-Gaul, Garen, and Solace bent over Raina and Toma. They had both fallen millimeters from each other.
“Toma fired first,” Solace said.
Ry-Gaul turned off the channel on the homing device. “Toma was the mole.”
“I can’t imagine why he turned,” Garen said. “I never suspected him. Not for a moment.”
Ry-Gaul shook his head. “There’s no telling how close Vader is.”
“We’d better rally the others,” Solace said. “There’s no time to waste.”
“We’ll need to destroy the equipment before we evacuate,” Ry-Gaul said. “There might be data on the computers that could help the Empire.”
Wil had come with them, anxious to help. “I’ll do the pre-flight check and get everything ready,” he said.
“I’ll get Lune,” Garen said.
Ry-Gaul began to set explosives in the dome. They would blow it when they were airborne. He looked out the plastoid viewport to Flame’s ship. Wil was doing the pre-flight check.
It was lucky the ship was still in shape to get them out of here.
Get them out of here....
Vader never leaves anything to chance. He always has a backup.
Ry-Gaul raced out of the dome. He could see Wil behind the cockpit viewport, ready to start the engines.
“No!” he shouted.
He ran toward the ship at top speed.
The explosion hit him in the face, and he felt himself blown backward. He landed on the ground, looking at the burning ship. The cockpit had been completely destroyed. He tasted smoke and dust.
Solace came up and helped him to rise. They stood silent for a moment as grief filled their hearts.
“Wil Asani,” she said. “We lost one of the best.”
The resistance leaders ran out of the dome.
“What’s happening?” one of them shouted. The group stood well away from the heat of the burning ship.
Solace kicked the dirt with her boot. “Vader had no use of Flame anymore, so he rigged her ship. She would have blown herself up. Most likely the plan was for her to leave before the air attack.”
“We have no way off now.”
“We’ll have to make a stand here. We have some surface-to-air weaponry. We might be able to hold out until Ferus arrives.”
Ry-Gaul was staring up at the sky. “Do you remember the talk of the superweapon that Tobin Gantor was working on?”
“You think it can destroy an asteroid of this size?”
“I do.”
Solace swallowed. “If that’s true, we can’t tell them.”
“No. If it’s going to happen, it’s better that they not know.”
The flames were dying down on the ship. Solace looked over at it. “There’s no way that ship will ever be flown again.” She looked closer. “Ry-Gaul, look. The port side doesn’t have too much damage. Isn’t that where the escape pod is?”
“Let’s take a look.”
Ry-Gaul walked over with Solace. Garen joined them, leaning on the cane with the repulsorlift motor that Toma had made for him.
“The escape pod isn’t damaged,” Ry-Gaul said. He checked the instrumentation.
“Looks like a miracle,” Garen said. “It’ll fly.”
“And there is only room for one,” Ry-Gaul said.
The three Jedi looked at each other. They said the same name at the same time.
“Lune.”
Trever looked at the stormtracker and gulped. The storm was the worst he’d ever seen, and that was saying something. He had gotten more used to flying in and out of the massive storm, but he’d never done it in this kind of intensity.
He looked over at Ferus, who was gathering himself, studying the stormtracker intently. His tunic was wet with perspiration.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Trever asked.
Ferus turned to him. His eyes held the light Trever remembered, like a beacon in a dark velvet night. “The Force will see us through,” he said. “Try to raise the base one more time. I’d like to know what we’re going to find before we go in.”
Trever turned back to the comm unit. He tried again to reach Ry-Gaul or Solace. “It’s out.”
“Then we go in. Strap yourself in.” Ferus activated his own harness.
He pushed the engines and drove straight into the storm. He went far faster than he usually did. He had reconnected to the Force at the Temple, and he felt stronger. His body was failing, but the Force would take him through. He had no doubt about that.
The ship shuddered as it was slammed by a vortex. It spun until Ferus regained control. Ferus dived as a huge asteroid shot by. It left a space-wake behind that buffeted the ship. Trever was nearly thrown out of his seat.
The severe magnetic shifts were creating vibrant auroras of light—beautiful to see but tricky to navigate as they obscured the small asteroids that barreled unpredictably through the storm.
“Asteroid field to starboard!” Trever rapped out. The ship lurched as Ferus corrected.
The ship suddenly shifted into a deep pocket and plummeted. Ferus felt the terrifying drop in his stomach but let the ship go, knowing that if he fought it, it could break up the vessel. When he felt the pocket ease, he brought the ship back slowly, turning with the vortex until he found a hole in the pressure and shot through it into bumpy space.
“Stars and planets, Ferus!” Trever’s face was white. “That was close.”
Ferus veered around a medium-sized ast
eroid. He hugged it for a short time, staying in its draft. It was large enough to leave a small gravitational pull that Ferus could use to steady the ship. The only trick was staying close without slamming into it. Its path was erratic, and it turned and lurched from side to side. Ferus didn’t look at the instrument panel. He reached out to the Force, letting it tell him what would happen before it happened.
“Ferus...”
“It’s all right, Trever. We can hug this for awhile, let it take us closer.”
“No. Ahead. I thought it was an asteroid. But it’s not.”
Ferus had to lean close and peer through the atmospheric haze. Through the shimmer of a purple aurora, he saw a dark shape.
“It’s an Imperial Star Destroyer,” he said. “It’s Vader.”
“A Star Destroyer? He’s in a Star Destroyer?” Trever’s voice went high and thin. “That is not good news. He could have hundreds of starfighters in that thing.”
“I doubt it. He’s probably running with a small crew. He won’t think he’ll need that much support. We can’t outrun him. We just have to hope we can beat him there and evacuate the others.”
“We can’t outrun a Star Destroyer!”
“Don’t tell me we can’t, Trever. Just watch out for asteroids.”
Ferus kept in the draft of the asteroid. The good news was that even a Star Destroyer’s magnetic systems would be inoperable. He wouldn’t pick up Ferus’s ship on radar.
His only advantage, as Ferus saw it, was that he knew what the asteroid looked like. He’d been to the secret base enough times that he could pick out the asteroid from space. To someone else, it would look like any other. And he hoped Ry-Gaul had dismantled the homing beacon. Vader would have general coordinates, but he wouldn’t know the exact spot of the base.
The asteroid suddenly plummeted into a space pocket. Ferus had anticipated it a half-second before and had already compensated by zooming up, out of range of the gravitational pull. The ship was slammed and rocked back and forth but he held steady.
They were close. Far ahead, Ferus could see the telltale cloud around the asteroid base. He checked the position of the Star Destroyer. His only hope was that Vader would pass the asteroid by.
“There’s a ship on the radar,” Solace told Ry-Gaul in a low tone. “I got a clear view before it went out. It looks like a Star Destroyer.”
Ry-Gaul nodded. He crouched down next to Lune. “Are you ready?”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t want to leave you.”
Ry-Gaul put his hands on his shoulders. “You know you must, though, don’t you? Your mother needs you. The galaxy needs you, too. You must grow up and be safe.”
Lune nodded, his gray eyes intent on Ry-Gaul’s face.
Garen crouched next to him. “Remember all I taught you. The Force will protect you.”
“Trust the Force, not your instruments, to get you through the storm,” Solace said. “Once you’re through, the nav computer will be operational. Find the closest spaceport and land. Find someone you can trust to help you get back to Coruscant.”
Lune never cried, but now his face was tight with the effort to hold in his tears. “It’s not right to leave your friends.”
“Yes, it is,” Garen said. “You are our hope, Lune. We are sending you off.”
“May the Force be with you,” Ry-Gaul said. “Remember what we taught you, and trust yourself.”
“Courage,” Solace told him. It was strange. Here, at the end, she had finally found words of reassurance. “We know you can do this.”
Lune entered the escape pod.
The Jedi stood together, shoulder to shoulder. Overhead the skies roiled with thick atmosphere, clouds colliding against clouds, but they knew the storm was lessening in intensity.
“We had a good journey in this life,” Ry-Gaul said. “I’m ready to join the Force.”
“The galaxy will find its balance again,” Garen said. “It won’t need us to do it.”
“I am happy to be standing here with you,” Solace said.
Everything had worked out so well, Darth Vader thought.
Ferus Olin was dead. Or close to it. Close enough to die slowly on the Temple floor, to suffer as he had suffered on Mustafar.
And now he was in the perfect position to test the first prototype of the superweapon by blasting Ferus’s dream—and the beginnings of a rebellion—into space dust.
He didn’t need the homing beacon. He had already locked on to the coordinates. He had pushed those scientists on Despayre to come up with a program to estimate size, weight, and gravitational pull based on a homing beacon. He could target the asteroid without trouble.
And there it was ahead, spinning in a gaseous cloud.
“Set coordinates,” Vader told the crew.
“Set.”
“Lock on.”
“Locked.”
“Fire.”
Trever screamed.
The energy bolt had been huge. It had hit the asteroid dead center.
One minute it was there, spinning ahead of them. Then there was nothing but debris.
The blowback from the explosion was so huge that it hit the ship and knocked it backward. The ship bucked and rolled. Ferus fought to bring it under control, while his brain frantically tried to make sense of what his eyes had just seen.
The base was gone.
Somewhere he heard Trever keening. “No, no, no, no...”
Ry-Gaul.
Solace.
Garen.
Oryon.
Lune.
The leaders of the resistance on dozens of planets. He felt the loss of so many lives as a great pain inside him. The Living Force receded like a wave that knocked him off his feet.
Red lights flashed. Cockpit alarms sounded.
“We’re going into systems failure!” Trever yelled.
Ferus fought to save the ship. He reached out to the Force. He had to gain control because he had to follow Darth Vader. He had to follow him because he needed to be stopped, and Ferus had to find a way to do it.
It was as though Ry-Gaul spoke in his ear.
“Look.”
He looked. A small arc of light, too faint for a star, a trajectory of speed.
An escape pod.
“Lune,” Ferus breathed.
He fought the dying ship. He eased it into a current that was somehow stable. It was like a gift handed to him by his friends.
The Star Destroyer sailed through the debris cloud, heading off to escape the storm.
He had a moment of calm to consider. Two choices.
Follow the escape pod.
Follow Vader.
His anger was one path. Hope was another.
He chose.
The sandstorm had been blowing for two weeks straight. The nights were freakishly cold, the mornings bitter. With no suns to bake it away, the cold had seeped into the hut. The sound of the sand peppering the walls and the howl of the wind could drive you mad if you were inclined that way.
Obi-Wan Kenobi knew that this storm, like all things, would pass soon enough. Until then, he lived with grit. Sand was in his food, in his bedding, in his hair.
Anakin had always hated sand. Now Obi-Wan knew why.
He didn’t hear the knock over the sound of the wind, but he sensed a presence outside his door. Obi-Wan opened it a crack. Ferus stood, bearded now, the sand thick in his hair, his eyes almost shut by the dirt and sand caking his eyelids. Obi-Wan pulled him inside and shut the door.
He saw at once that Ferus couldn’t speak. The Living Force was weak in him. Obi-Wan led him to the sleep couch and left him there. He hurried to get supplies.
He bathed Ferus’s face in warm water, gently releasing the hardened sand. He kept going back and forth to the cistern for more water and rags. He checked him for wounds and administered bacta. It was obvious he’d been in a fight. There was a large contusion on his forehead, another at the back of his skull.
But that wasn’t what had dimmed the
Force in him.
Ferus looked at him. His eyes filled with tears. He closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall.
He slept for three days.
Ferus awoke at midnight on the third day. Obi-Wan heard him stirring and went down to the pantry, where a pot of stew had been waiting. He warmed it, then scooped it into a bowl made of thick pottery to keep its contents warm. He poured water from the cistern into a jug and brought it all upstairs on a small tray.
Ferus had risen to a sitting position. Obi-Wan placed the tray on his lap. Ferus shook his head.
“You made it to my doorstep,” Obi-Wan said. “You must have wanted to live.”
Ferus ate.
When the bowl and the jug were empty Obi-Wan removed them. He sat facing Ferus, waiting.
The words poured out. Vader. Twilight. Ry-Gaul, Garen, Solace—everyone he’d meant to save. Toma and betrayal. Flame. An asteroid the size of a planet disappearing before his eyes. How everything had turned to dust. How Obi-Wan had warned him, and he had ignored the warnings.
How it was all his fault.
“I know it’s not the Jedi way to say that,” Ferus said, the bitterness and defeat in his voice causing Obi-Wan pain. “But I am responsible. I was blind. I thought I could defeat Vader—that was driving me always, and that destructive impulse blinded me to things I should have known.”
“You had a Sith Holocron working on you,” Obi-Wan said. “There are not many Jedi who could resist those voices. The greatest of us have been brought down. But at the right moment you recognized it.”
“I was too late.”
“You saved Lune. You chose the right path. You followed the escape pod. You brought him back to Astri.”
“You don’t understand. That isn’t enough to save me. I don’t know how to go on. In the cave on Illum—I saw visions. I saw a fireball that consumed Garen. I should have known!”
“The visions were not of the future, but of your own fears.”
“I saw Siri and she warned me. She said I hadn’t lost my arrogance. That I only thought I’d changed!”
“Your own fears, again.”
“But Obi-Wan.” Ferus’s voice was hoarse, his eyes haunted. “What I saw was true.”