Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi II: Omen Read online

  This droid, too, was disabled, slowing to a halt, black smoke emanating from it. By then the other Jysella was on her feet, and the apprentices were on her.

  She watched, amazed at her own courage and determination, as she fought wildly. She did not escape unscathed. One blow dragged across her cheek, searing in a black burn. Another blow nearly severed her left arm.

  Still, the other Jysella fought on. One by one, she slew them, dropping the false apprentices until there were none left. She did not mourn them; they were not really apprentices, simply more imposters. In agony, she stepped quickly over the bodies and made for the doors.

  Jysella cried out as she watched what happened next.

  So close—she was so close to making it. But even as the other Jysella was bathed in sunlight from outside, the shield at the entrance to the Temple was activated. Jysella let out a sob as she watched herself writhing, trying to escape, caught as surely as an insect trapped in a spider’s web.

  “No!” Jysella cried aloud. She had been mesmerized, watching this strange scene unfold, and was suddenly seized with a realization. And there was a way for her to prove this realization right.

  She knew, as all Jedi knew, that there were all kinds of security measures in place at the Temple. The past had starkly shown that even a Temple with Jedi in it could still be violated. Jysella, like all the Jedi Knights and probably most of the Masters, wasn’t privy to exactly what many of these security measures were. At least, she had never been before, but if her guess was correct…

  She sprinted to the pillars. If she had indeed somehow been granted a glimpse into the future, then a droid was ensconced within. With a grunt, she thrust her lightsaber in at the exact spot where she suspected the droid’s center would be. The lightsaber cut through the marble pillar—and into the metal and wiring of a security droid. With a whiny hiss and crackle, it was disabled before it was even alerted to attack her. Elated, Jysella leapt across the main hall to the other pillar and repeated the process.

  She turned her head to the exit. She didn’t see the apprentices coming at her yet—which meant she had a chance. Quickly she turned back the way she had come and saw the telltale outline of the door to a service corridor, opened it, and ducked inside. She closed the door behind her, then dived behind the large outline of one of the larger, more industrial-duty cleaning droids. She curled up, trembling, hugging her knees to her chest as she had when she was a little girl, and concentrated on masking her presence within the Force.

  * * *

  JYSELLA HAD BOLTED, AND CILGHAL DIDN’T KNOW WHERE. SHE ONLY knew that the presence on the other side of the door, so very frightened and yet tinged with that strange sense of there-not-there, was gone.

  Quickly she clicked her comlink. “Jysella is on the move,” she said. “Get people at the main entrance immediately. I think she may be heading for it.”

  There came a few seconds of silence interrupted only by the protesting sound of the door as the lightsaber slowly cut a circle through it. The doors were meant to be activated in case of an intruder in the Temple, to protect the Archives, or in case of another disaster such as fire. Thus these doors were not the easiest to get through, not even for a lightsaber, and Radd Minker’s blade was dragging, like a stick through poured and setting duracrete, as he determinedly kept going. It would take several more precious seconds before they were through, and Cilghal didn’t think Jysella Horn had several more seconds. She was dreadfully worried that the confused young woman would get herself killed.

  “It’s impossible!” came a sudden yelp from the comlink. Cilghal, who had seen enough to know that the word impossible was one not to be bandied about lightly, didn’t comment on the exclamation. She asked, “What’s happened?”

  “She—the locations of the security droids are strictly on a need-to-know basis.” This was true—even Cilghal didn’t know where they were ensconced. “There’s only a handful of my team who have that information. And yet Jysella targeted and destroyed the two we were just about to activate. She couldn’t possibly have determined their locations at all, let alone in so short a time.”

  Cilghal thought about the strange resonances she had sensed from Jysella a few moments before, and unease stirred inside her as a suspicion began to form.

  “Go on,” said Cilghal, her enormous eyes on the slowly moving blade.

  “And she’s not heading for the main entrance. We don’t know where she’s heading.”

  “She’s going to want to get out, I can assure you of that much,” Cilghal said. “I would send the security teams to every other exit.”

  “Yes, Master Cilghal.”

  Cilghal sighed. Radd threw her an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry this is taking so long, Master.”

  “Perhaps I can assist,” said Cilghal. Her lightsaber activated with a snap-hiss. She stepped forward and plunged it into the door, feeling the resistance, and began to slowly pull it through the material to meet up with Radd’s incision. It was tricky, doing this in tandem. There was the risk of suddenly feeling the metal yield and having both lightsabers collide while surrounded by white-hot metal, which was why Cilghal hadn’t stepped forward before. But Jysella’s life possibly hung in the balance.

  Cilghal would just have to focus.

  JYSELLA FELT THEM RUSH PAST HER, SENSED THEIR CONCENTRATION ON reaching the exits, their focus so great that they failed to search the immediate area in the Force. That was why they were still just apprentices.

  No, she thought. They weren’t. They were imposters. That was why they hadn’t sensed her. A shiver ran through her and for a moment she was so frightened she couldn’t move. Then, through sheer will, she forced her legs to unfold and got to her feet.

  She pressed the door with her hand, and it slid open. There was no one, nothing, between her and the exit. The guardian apprentices had gone off elsewhere. What about the shield that had been the downfall of her future self?

  Wait—one of the apprentices had been speaking into his comlink as he ran toward her. Was it then that it was activated, when they knew she was heading for it? Had he already contacted security?

  There was no time to head for another exit, no time to sit and concentrate to see if she could again find her future self to learn what had happened. Jysella took a deep breath, grasped her lightsaber firmly, and ran down the empty hall.

  She tensed as she approached the entrance, the daylight coming through and pooling on the carpeted floor, expecting at any moment to feel the energetic net being dropped around her.

  Nothing happened.

  Jysella bit back a sob of relieved joy and raced out to freedom.

  TEMPLE DISTRICT, CORUSCANT

  YAQEEL SIPPED THE HOT, DARK BEVERAGE AND GLANCED AT THE NEWCOMER to the tapcaf. He was human, slender but not scrawny. He had a full head of hair, tawny and immaculately styled, and his clothing was fashionable but tastefully understated. His face was quite handsome by human standards, but the full lips seemed to her to be held in a constant smirk. Yaqeel’s sensitive nose detected some sort of musky scent about him. She had learned that humans liked to adorn themselves with “perfume” or “cologne,” as it was called, apparently not trusting in their own natural scents to attract the opposite sex. Bothans had no such concerns. They all smelled unique and almost all smelled appealing. At least to other Bothans. She cast a glance at Barv and wondered what he thought of her scent.

  Barv was enjoying his caf in silence, his oversized hands holding an appropriately oversized mug. His jade face, with the thick, boxy snout and strong chin that often made him look so glowering and imposing to others, was relaxed in what Yaqeel recognized as comfortable good cheer.

  Yaqeel turned her eyes back to the stranger, noting the well-manicured hands that accepted a portable cup. Now that she looked again, he seemed familiar to her somehow. Not the scent, she’d have remembered that, but his looks. Was he a holovid star? She watched the occasional one that Valin and Jysella had recommended to her and found them pa
ssably entertaining, but she couldn’t identify him. The stranger paid and walked out. He strode off briskly, and a droid that had been patiently waiting outside suddenly lifted and floated after him.

  A Hologlide J57 cam droid.

  And Yaqeel realized where she knew the stranger from. Her eyes narrowed and she growled softly, her fur rippling in displeasure.

  “A journalist,” she spat, infusing the single word with the same disgust and loathing with which she would have said A Sith.

  Barv grunted, but he allowed that journalists, despite Yaqeel’s personal opinion, were beings, too, and they should be allowed to buy a cup of caf if they felt so inclined.

  A pedestrian hurtled through the tapcaf’s window right about then, transparisteel folding about him as he hit a table, and the conversation was dropped.

  Both Jedi Knights leapt to their feet, weapons in hand but not activated, and raced outside as the customers inside screamed and ducked. A soft, pudgy Ortolan, screaming and flailing his blue arms and legs, ears flapping wildly, hurtled toward Barv. Still calm, he lifted a massive hand and Force-caught the Ortolan, lowering him gently to the ground. Yaqeel’s lightsaber snap-hissed to life and she extended her senses, reaching past the chaos and fear to identify the source of the disturbance.

  It took less than a second, and her eyes lit upon the miscreant at the same instance the Force directed Yaqeel’s attention toward her. Her feline jaw gaped for a precious second.

  “Jysella?”

  She was there, just outside the Jedi Temple, her lightsaber lit and clutched in one hand while her other was extended, clearing a path through the crowd and battering back any would-be attackers. Jysella’s eyes were huge, and even at this distance her friends could see the combination of terror and determination in them.

  “Stang,” muttered Yaqeel. Barv was right beside her, and moving as one, the two raced toward their friend and fellow Jedi. Barv rapidly began to outpace the Bothan, moving much more swiftly than most would expect of the large Ramoan. Neither he nor Yaqeel knew who was attacking Jysella, but it didn’t matter. She was Sella, a member of the Unit, and—

  Time seemed to slow. In that stretched-out moment, Yaqeel watched as Jysella tensed. The human Jedi could not possibly have seen Barv running to her side, and somehow Yaqeel didn’t think Jysella sensed him in the Force. Jysella didn’t seem to react so much as she simply leapt and sprang. Barv was suddenly and unexpectedly jostled by a fleeing crowd member—that was something he needed to work on, Yaqeel thought disconnectedly, he tended to hyperfocus in moments of crisis—and ended up several steps to the right of where he had been running.

  And yet Jysella was there.

  The lightsaber descended so fast that Barv barely was able to block it with his own in time. Yaqeel stared, stunned into inaction for a moment. Why was Jysella—

  “It’s not you!” Jysella was screaming as she pressed the attack. She seemed to know exactly when Barv would duck, would parry, would push forward, would execute a Force leap. It would have been astonishing to watch, almost balletic, if it weren’t for the horror that Jysella Horn was fighting another Jedi, and not just any Jedi, but one who was among her best friends in the galaxy.

  Fortunately for Barv, Jysella’s uncanny and hitherto unguessed-at ability to predict where he would be at any given moment seemed mitigated by her panic. She was sloppy, shaking, and Barv, who never seemed to get rattled by anything, managed to defend himself—until Jysella screamed out, “Give me my friend back!” and her glowing weapon sliced across Barv’s midsection.

  Yaqeel cried out as Barv staggered back. Fortunately Jysella’s weapon had barely grazed him. It was a smoking wound, but not deep, and could be treated. Yaqeel’s eyes met Barv’s. She realized now what had happened. Even as pity and sympathy for Jysella washed through her, the Bothan knew that she had to be stopped

  Preferably by fellow Jedi.

  Even more preferably, by Yaqeel.

  Crying incoherently, her mouth made ugly by a snarl, Jysella bore down on the Ramoan. Yaqeel’s hand shot out, grasped air, and pulled. Barv’s huge green body was suddenly invisibly yanked out of the path of Jysella’s slicing lightsaber. The weapon made a buzzing sound as it sliced empty air where a fraction of an instant earlier Barv had stood. Had Yaqeel not intervened, the Ramoan would have been sliced in two.

  Jysella whirled, her gaze impaling Yaqeel. Then her eyes widened in horror and grief.

  “Oh, no … not Yaqeel, too!” she cried brokenly, almost whimpering, and if it were not for the fact that the human girl had just almost killed Barv that sound would have cracked Yaqeel’s heart. Instead she wrapped it in durasteel and hardened herself to what had to be done.

  She glanced around frantically in the instant before Jysella sprang. There was nothing she—ah, the cam droid. There it was, hovering about the now panicking crowd, faithfully recording the incident. And over there, that journalist speaking into something in his hand. It would be all over the newsvids tonight—might already be—actual footage of a Jedi going nuts and attacking civilians and fellow members of her own Order. The GA would have a field day with that.

  Yaqeel reached out again with the Force, snagged the cam, and alternately pulled the droid in Jysella’s direction and pushed the charging Jedi backward.

  Except again, somehow Jysella knew it was going to happen. She turned with more than enough time to methodically slice the cam droid into three chunks, which she then directed back at Yaqeel. The Bothan Jedi was dimly aware of the reporter yelling, “Hey! What are you doing? That’s valuable property!”

  His irritation gave Yaqeel a tiny spark of pleasure. The pleasure quickly vanished when she realized that Jysella was running at her—but then the human Jedi vaulted over Yaqeel’s head at dizzying speed. Yaqeel whirled, set to pursue. Jysella had covered a great deal of distance already; clearly, she was more interested in escaping than in fighting.

  But it didn’t look like she was going to. Even as Yaqeel followed, several GA vehicles pulled up. Their doors slid open and disgorged several men and women clad in the blue uniforms and helmets of Galactic Alliance Security. They immediately started firing on Jysella.

  She leapt, ducked, and moved her lightsaber in a blue blur, batting the stun blasts back at those who were firing on her. For a wild second Yaqeel thought Jysella was going to make good her escape. But there came a blast that was either simply one too many for her to handle or else one she had failed with her preternatural senses to anticipate. In midleap, Jysella Horn was struck by a bolt and rendered unconscious. And because she loved her friend, and because she knew that something dreadful had happened to Jysella to make her act this way, Yaqeel reached out with the Force, caught her, and lowered her gently to the pavement.

  The GA converged on Jysella like a swarm of insects. Yaqeel glanced back at Barv and was relieved to see that he was on his feet, although he was clearly in pain. He nodded to her and she nodded back, turning toward the guards who had clustered around Jysella.

  It would have made for an odd picture, had one not known that Jysella was a Jedi Knight: seven heavily armed officers clustered around one slight human female, their blasters still pointed at her as one of their own quickly bent over the limp form, retrieved her lightsaber, and began to pat her down for any other weapons. One of them snapped restraining devices on her slender wrists.

  This was bad. The GA had already gotten their hands on one Jedi who appeared to have gone berserk. They sure didn’t need another to encase in carbonite and hang on a wall like some sick trophy or credential. If only Yaqeel and Barv had been able to bring her in.

  A thought struck Yaqeel, and she smiled a little to herself. Deactivating her lightsaber and returning it to her belt, she strode briskly up to the nearest GA officer.

  “Good work,” she said. She extended her thoughts, brushed those of the Quarren male who was speaking into a small handheld device. “A smooth capture. I’m sure your superiors will agree that the Jedi belongs in the Temple. I�
��ll take charge of the prisoner from here.”

  The Quarren’s tentacles twitched in irritation, and even before he spoke Yaqeel knew she’d picked the wrong target. “Not likely, Jedi. Take your mind tricks elsewhere and step back before I have you arrested for interfering with the prisoner’s arrest. She was taken down by the GA and will go to them for evaluation.”

  “You’re going to just stick her in carbonite!” Yaqeel burst out, her fur rippling in anger. “She’s a Jedi, and the Temple’s right here!”

  The tentacles twitched, this time obviously in amusement. “Too bad you didn’t bring her down a few meters from here then, isn’t it? This is not your jurisdiction, Jedi.”

  He almost spat the word. Yaqeel seethed, but the Quarren was right. Legally, the GA had authorization here. The fight with Jysella had taken only a couple of minutes, although it had felt like an eternity, and now she watched as several Jedi, lightsabers glowing, poured from the Temple only to halt in their tracks, as helpless as she. She turned away from the sight of their shocked expressions to watch, impotent and furious and heartsick, as one of her best friends was trussed up and bustled quickly into a vehicle.

  The door slammed shut.

  Stang.

  Accepting, if not liking, the fact that she could do nothing for Jysella now, Yaqeel turned and trotted back to Barv. Some of the other Jedi had already reached him, and Cilghal herself had put a flippered hand on the Ramoan’s shoulder and was gently guiding him back to the Temple. No one was going to stop this particular Jedi from receiving Jedi medical aid.

  Barv allowed that he had certainly felt better, but had complete confidence in Cilghal’s abilities to heal him—and, eventually, to heal Valin and Jysella.

  Cilghal caught Yaqeel’s attention and sighed. “I saw it happen, right before my eyes,” she said quietly. “We’ll be debriefing both you and Bazel here. Come back with me to the Temple. We’ll take care of Bazel, and then we will talk.”