The Last Jedi

Eight


The night before the Laranth’s shakedown, Jax couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t meditate. Could barely think straight at times, though he knew that for the sake of his companions and the resistance he had to pretend that he could. So in the middle of the night, he decided he might as well move his few belongings onto the ship and get used to her “feel.”

The interceptor was much smaller than the Far Ranger, and Jax found that though the captain’s quarters reflected the size differential, they were comfortable enough. He located a place for the miisai tree on a tray that pulled out from the wall next to the bunk. The little “smart pot” the miisai now nestled in was equipped with a set of contacts on the base that allowed it to sync with the ship’s power grid. It used a delicate sensor array to monitor the plant’s nutrient supply and liquid and kept it watered by pulling the needed moisture from the air. A soft yellow light glowed on the front of the shallow pot when the nutrient reservoir became depleted, and a proximity alarm sounded a gentle tone if it sensed movement in the vicinity of the hungry tree—a mechanical means for the miisai to ask for food. Jax swore he would never have occasion to see the light or hear the tone.

Now he filled the reservoir with some crumbled bits of a protein bar that the smart pot would break down into its component parts. Then he sat cross-legged on the floor of the cabin and tried to clear his mind. He focused on his breathing—on visualizing the Force as ribbons of healing energy that wrapped themselves around him.

As before, when he opened his eyes, he saw the energy pulsing and flowing up through the little tree—root to trunk to delicate branch. It danced among the needles and sent filaments out toward him to entwine with the Force ribbons he was generating.

This was a new experience. He was surprised at the sense of warmth and serenity he felt watching the energy strands from the miisai mingle with his own. His meditative state deepened and, at last, he was able to invoke the Jedi mantra.


There is no emotion; there is peace.

There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.

There is no passion; there is serenity.

There is no chaos; there is harmony.

There is no death; there is the Force.

He turned the words in his mind without delving too deeply into their meaning. The rhythm of them was what he craved.

Yes, craved. That was the word. He’d spent days in turmoil; this softly eddying tranquility was balm.

He savored it momentarily, then turned his thoughts to Thi Xon Yimmon … and to Darth Vader. There was a trembling in his concentration when he did that, but he held his thoughts steady. If he was to use the Force to help him find the Whiplash leader, he must be steady. He pictured I-Five’s holographic tracers of the Imperial ships as if they floated in the warp and woof of the Force energies around him. He reached into and through the image, groping for the darkness that would be in Vader’s wake.

In a split second he was back in the dim smoky corridor on the Far Ranger, face-to-face-mask with the Dark Lord.

“I have one more thing to take from you,” Vader had said.

Jax cringed away from the reality.

Anakin Skywalker had said that.

Anakin had taken Laranth from him—Yimmon, too. And more. How much more, Jax was only just beginning to realize.

Why? Why was the Dark Lord toying with him as a predator toys with its prey? What possible benefit did the Empire derive from that?

The answer came in an epiphany. This wasn’t about the Empire or the Emperor. Vader had said it himself: he obeyed the Emperor in his own way. This was about Vader’s choices, not Palpatine’s.

What was it the Cephalon had said? Choice is loss; indecision is all loss.

Had that been as true for Anakin Skywalker as it was for Jax Pavan? Had there been a moment in which the Dark Lord might have engaged him in battle—perhaps killed or captured him—and had the man behind the mask missed that opportunity in his own moment of indecision?

“Why do you hate me?” Jax murmured. “What have I done?”

The answer came to him as strongly as if it had been spoken aloud: He had survived. He had survived Order 66 and he existed to this day as a reminder of … what—of failure? Was Jax merely the one who got away—or was there more to it than that?

When he looks at me … does he see what he might have been?

Jax’s memory provided him with a startlingly vivid image of sparring with Anakin at a time when he had assumed he and his friend might both someday achieve the station of Jedi Master. That had been his aim, anyway, though he had often been struck with the uneasy sense that Anakin was not content with that.

He reached into the small pocket in the sash of his tunic that housed the pyronium Anakin had given into his care. It gleamed on his palm—a gem the size of a small egg, iridescent and otherworldly. It was an unknown quantity, alleged to be a source of unimaginable power. A power that was—also allegedly—to be called forth if one only knew the secret. And that, Jax had been led to believe, was revealed on the Sith Holocron he had received from Haninum Tyk Rhinann. The Holocron that his father, Lorn Pavan, had once tried to acquire.

Another unknown quantity. Jax still had the Holocron, but he had never attempted to access the knowledge it contained. Sith Holocrons were rare, powerful, and reputed to be deeply disturbing to the Force and seductive to Jedi who interacted with them unprepared for the assault that deep a store of dark knowledge could make on reason. The Holocron created a slight disturbance in the Force through its very existence—at least Jax could feel its subtle pull when he was near it—and he had not wanted to risk attempting to activate it.

Truthfully, he doubted he had the capacity to do that now. His fractured concentration rendered his unease with the Sith artifact irrelevant.

Jax glanced up at the shelf the miisai sat upon. The Holocron was tucked into a small trove in the rear wall of the niche created when the shelf was extended from the bulkhead. He was sometimes tempted to lose both the pyronium and the Holocron by entombing them somewhere so he’d never have to think of either again, but he hadn’t followed through on the impulse. The thought of having them fall into the hands of Darth Vader was blood chilling. So he kept them close, reasoning that someday he might find a legitimate use for them.

Certainly, neither had pleasant memories attached. By the time Anakin had given him the pyronium—to keep for him, he’d said—Jax had already had concerns about his friend. He remembered the first time he had glimpsed Anakin in a moment of anger, radiating tendrils of blackest night—whipcords of darkness that had writhed about him, straining outward.

They had been sparring with their lightsabers, and something—to this day, Jax wasn’t sure what—had transformed the other Jedi from an amicable, if distracted, sparring partner into a driven foe. He had suddenly launched himself at Jax like a berserker, forcing him to parry a swift series of blows that might easily have killed him.

Jax had seen darkness in auras before, but never like that and never in a fellow Padawan. Anakin had appeared—in that moment—to stand at the nexus of a whorl of rage and frustration. He was a black hole—sucking light and color from anything or anyone in his gravitational field.

That moment had passed so swiftly that Jax thought he’d imagined it. He’d been left reeling and confused—and embarrassed when Anakin had broken off the attack, grinned at him, slapped his shoulder, and asked, “What’s the matter, Jax? Am I too much for you?”

Later, he’d been on the verge of telling his Master what he’d sensed, but the fact that even Anakin’s own Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, watching from the sidelines, seemed not to have noticed anything had silenced him.

If Jax had spoken of what he’d felt then, would things have been different? Had that been yet another moment in which choice was loss and indecision deadly?

He drew in a sharp breath and tried to marshal his thoughts, slipping the pyronium back into his sash pocket. The tendrils of darkness that he had once thought imaginary he now knew were the threads of Darth Vader’s immense potential power. He thrust down images of the Jedi Temple, the sparring circle, the memories of Flame Night that threatened, suddenly, to intrude. He called back the mental image of I-Five’s tactical display, then reached into it—toward that one, bright spot of crimson—seeking the darkness that always eddied in Darth Vader’s wake.

No.

The uneasiness stopped him just short of putting his “hand” on the trailing edge of that darkness.

He’ll sense you. He’ll know you seek him.

(The Far Ranger, filled with smoke and the smell of burnt flesh, emergency lights flickering, Laranth lying dead behind him on the deck … )

He thrust the memory down and reached again.

Leave it for now. Let him think you might be dead.

Jax hesitated in the act of touching the darkness, wary of his own uncertainty.

(Vader standing in the smoky corridor, coldly taunting.)

Jax opened his eyes and flung himself to his feet, panting. Was there no situation that did not require choice? Was there nothing he might do without indecision?

He looked around him at the snug cabin, laid a hand on the metal bulkhead. It was neither warm nor cool to the touch. The ship was silent. Not even the ventilation system was audible as it breathed warm air into the compartment. He imagined the vessel was waiting for him to do something—to decide something.

He did. He decided to leave the ship and return to his quarters in the underground complex. He left his belongings and the miisai tree behind.



The shakedown cruise went off without a snag. I-Five’s brain was successfully paired with an R2 unit that Geri had scavenged from storage and fitted neatly into the ship’s astrogation system. The setup gave the interceptor the reflexes of a bat-falcon—as swiftly as I-Five could conceive of a maneuver, the ship could execute it. If they found themselves in a battle situation, that ability to make seamless, split-second decisions could mean the difference between success and failure—or life and death.

The shakedown completed, the ship refueled and laden with a couple of crates of I-Five’s “spare parts,” Jax, Den, and I-Five stood on the landing pad in Mountain Home with their hosts. Besides Degan Cor and Aren Folee, there were a handful of others, including Sacha Swiftbird and Geri.

Degan had offered to send Sacha along with Jax to facilitate any necessary repairs on the ship and to serve as emissary from the Toprawan resistance. Jax had declined the offer.

“I don’t know what sort of situation we’re going to be confronting on Coruscant,” he’d explained. “Whiplash is in the process of reorganizing itself; the Imperials may be in a state of heightened security or even heightened aggression. Vader has very likely taken Yimmon there to interrogate him. I don’t want to put anyone else’s life in danger unnecessarily.”

He didn’t add that the presence of a woman on the ship would only underscore Laranth’s absence.

“Put my life in danger?” Sacha objected. “I’d be there to protect you, Pavan, not the other way around.”

“I’m not doubting your capabilities …” He’d started to hedge, but she fixed him with that too-direct gaze and he’d swallowed the words.

“I know what you’re doing. You’re not comfortable with me. I get that. I wouldn’t let it push me into stupid decisions if I were you.”

He’d opened his mouth to respond, and she’d stopped him. “Yeah, yeah, I know—I’m not you.”

“I was just going to say, I don’t think the decision is stupid. You could be of help, yes. You could also be out of your element. Aren says you’ve rarely been off Toprawa and that you’ve never been to Imperial Center. It’s a … a different sort of place.”

She gave him a lopsided grin. “You mean I’d be in the way and possibly call unwelcome attention to myself by gawping at everything.”

“Something like that.”

She’d shrugged and dropped the subject. Neither she nor Degan brought it up again.

Their farewells were brief, and their hold was full of useful items for the Whiplash, including some of the ionite and a selection of droid parts for I-Five and Den to experiment with. They lifted off in the dead of night without running lights, piloted by the droid’s R2 persona. Once in hyperspace, I-Five completed integrating the vessel’s false identity into its every virtual nook and cranny. For obvious reasons, it could not be the Laranth in galactic records. People who knew of Jax Pavan might associate that name with him.

He hadn’t cared what she was called when it came down to it. She was just a ship. Den rechristened her Corsair, and so it was Corsair that bore Jax and his companions back to Coruscant.