Lightsabers

12

Broad-shouldered Norys, former leader of the Lost Ones gang and new stormtrooper trainee, spread his white armor on the bunk in front of him. He studied the pieces carefully, then began to assemble the glossy outfit, donning the components one at a time—and enjoying every minute of it.

The boots went on first, stiff and sturdy. Then the greaves, the shin armor, the leg plates, body armor, arm plates, and finally the flexible but tough gloves. He felt as if he had been transplanted into the body of an assassin droid, a fighting machine encased in an impenetrable shell.

Norys allowed himself a satisfied smile. This was much more impressive than anything his gang members had ever scrounged deep in the decaying alleys of Coruscant’s underworld. He had been the toughest, meanest, angriest young brute of all the gang members. But being a stormtrooper was better … so much better.

All of his former companions were also soldier recruits undergoing training. Norys fully expected to be the best among the new troops, just as he had been toughest among the Lost Ones.

On the downside, he was no longer his own boss, free to do as he wished. He had to follow the orders of the Second Imperium. But with armor such as this and the military might of those who followed their Emperor, it was all worth it. Besides, if Norys proved himself valuable enough, his rank would increase, and he’d be placed in command of more soldiers, maybe even fly a TIE fighter. Without a doubt, he would have more power and cause much more damage than he’d ever imagined when he was just a gang leader.

Things were looking up.

The last piece of his stormtrooper outfit was the hard white helmet with black eye goggles and mouth speakers. He slipped the helmet over his head and locked it into place at the neck joint. At last he stood totally encased, completely protected—no longer a disreputable bully with a grimy outfit and stolen scraps as his only possessions.

Now he was someone to be reckoned with: a stormtrooper.

Norys marched down the corridor, taking care to clomp loudly on the deck plates with his armored boots. They made such a satisfying sound.

He had memorized the layout of the Shadow Academy station and knew exactly how to get to the private training room where old Qorl, the former TIE pilot, had ordered him to report. Standing outside the sealed door, he keyed in the access code—he’d felt a private thrill when Qorl had given him the secret numbers—and waited for the computer to process his entry request.

With a hiss like an angry serpent, the door slid aside. Norys marched boldly into the shielded room, and the door sealed itself behind him.

Qorl stood inside the training chamber holding a wicked-looking spear in his black-wrapped left hand. His droid replacement arm gripped the gleaming shaft with enough force to dent the metal. The serrated head of the spear had a long central prong with two side spikes curving up like a dragon’s barbed tail.

“You’re late,” Qorl said. He cocked his droid arm back—and hurled the deadly weapon at Norys with all the strength in his robotic servomotors!

Norys stood astonished as the deadly spearpoint hurtled toward his chest plate. He just had time to cry “Hey!” in a panicked voice amplified by his helmet speakers before the barbed tip impacted squarely with enough force to smash him backward.

Norys slammed into the wall, his helmet ringing against the hard metal bulkhead. His vision sparkled with impending unconsciousness. He expected to see a spear sprouting from his heart and waited for his nerves to send shouts of mortal pain. He wanted to scream that Qorl, his supposed teacher, had betrayed him, murdered him—

But a split second later his thoughts cleared enough to hear the clatter as the spear shaft fell harmlessly to the floor. He looked down at his chest in amazement and saw only a nick in the white armor where the spear had struck.

“What did you do that for?” Norys shouted.

Qorl answered in a gruff but calm voice. “To teach you respect for your stormtrooper armor, Norys,” he said, “but also to warn you not to become overconfident. Yes, that armor is powerful enough to stop many weapons, such as this crude spear.” The TIE pilot nodded toward the jagged weapon on the floor plates.

Norys bent down to grab the spear, narrowing his eyes in rage as he looked at his teacher. The old pilot had made a fool out of him. He felt a dangerous anger boiling through his veins. He had a good mind to take the triple-pronged spear and attack the pompous old man with it.

“But don’t think your armor is invincible.” Qorl reached inside his uniform, pulled out a deadly blaster pistol, and pointed it directly at Norys. “For instance, this blaster could slice through that armor as if you were wearing nothing at all.”

Norys stiffened, looking into the ominous snub barrel of the pistol. His mind raced. What had he gotten himself into? Why was Qorl so upset with him? He wondered whether he could swing the spear, knock the blaster away, and strike down the TIE pilot. That would serve the old man right….

Qorl turned the blaster pistol around and extended it toward Norys, butt end first. “Here. This will be your personal weapon,” he said.

Norys dropped the spear to the floor and tentatively took the blaster. The pistol felt very good in his gloved grip. Qorl nodded at him. “For target practice,” he said, then went over to the controls by the door.

The gray light-absorbing walls of the windowless room shimmered.

Suddenly Norys found himself standing in a dank, dim cave with fanged stalactites dripping from the walls and ceiling. Long spikes of stalagmites rose like blunt knives from the floor. Unseen water trickled somewhere, and a pallid light seemed to ooze from the pale rock itself. Despite the room’s visible transformation, Norys could detect no change in the smell of the air through his helmet filters.

“The walls of this chamber will absorb blaster bolts,” Qorl said. “Your weapon has already been set to full power. There won’t be much recoil, but you must become accustomed to how it feels to aim and shoot and hit a target. Pay attention now. Watch for them as they attack.”

“Watch for what?” Norys said, looking around from right to left. “What’s going to attack me?”

The cave seemed more sinister now. The eye goggles distorted his vision, and he tried to compensate. Strange creature noises burbled and hummed from every direction. He couldn’t tell if they were insects or rodents, but they sounded vicious to him, as if everything within this chamber might be a predator.

Norys had hunted in the lower alleys of Coruscant, tracking giant granite slugs, multifanged spider-roaches, mutated feral rats—and his intuition told him this was simply a testing chamber on the Shadow Academy. He didn’t think there could be any real danger. Not really.

However, this cave certainly seemed real enough….

With a squalling cry, a leathery-winged creature dropped out of its hiding place in the ceiling and swooped toward him. Its eyes were huge and slitted, and Norys could see pointy ears or antennae on top of its head and razor claws at the ends of its flapping wings as it swept down.

A mynock. They weren’t supposed to be terrible predators—but from the wicked fangs and claws as it swooped toward him, Norys decided this was one mynock with a bad attitude.

He pointed the blaster and squeezed off an energy bolt, but the beam went wide, striking a stalactite and startling up four more of the angry flying creatures. The new batch of mynocks also attacked, annoyed at him for disturbing their dark slumber.

Norys squeezed the firing button again and again, adjusting his aim as he watched the bright bolts streak through the dimness. The brilliant spears of light dazzled his eyes, and he could barely see through his filtered goggles.

The devilish mynocks swooped and avoided the deadly beams.

This wasn’t fair! It was supposed to be target practice. He should have been able to point at a bantha’s-eye or hide behind a window while shooting at an unsuspecting target in the streets below, as he had often done on Coruscant.

The blaster missed again and again as mynocks swirled around him, flapping their wings and assailing his ears with skull-splitting screeches. Norys wondered if Qorl had intentionally adjusted the blaster’s aimpoint to throw the beam off.

He suddenly realized that he had been aiming wrong. It was his own fault. Reacting wildly to his sudden fear, he had overcompensated.

As the first mynock came toward him again, claws outstretched and long fangs ready to tear him to shreds, he took a second to aim and squeezed off a long bolt that sizzled through the creature’s body. The mynock gurgled and fell to the floor, where it was impaled by one of the stalagmites.

“Yes!” Norys shouted in triumph—but three new mynocks swirled around him, attracted by his shout. He fired again and missed. The creatures came at him from the front, side, and behind. Norys turned, remembering to think, point, aim, and shoot. He eliminated another creature.

Two more emerged from the ceiling, but Norys swiveled at the waist and forced himself to concentrate. One of the two struck from behind, though its claws skittered off Norys’s white stormtrooper armor. He ignored it as he set the second mynock firmly in his sights and shot it.

“Gotcha!” He turned and carefully targeted the remaining creatures, one after another. Gradually, his shooting improved. He learned how to aim. He had learned how to be deadly.

Finally, his blaster pack winking from low charge, Norys stood still and waited—but no more of the creatures emerged from the illusionary cave. He squinted through his goggles, alert for a new attack.

The walls of the cave shimmered and vanished, leaving only the flat metal shell of the training chamber. He allowed himself to relax.

“Good,” Qorl said.

Norys turned to see the old TIE pilot standing next to the controls. In the excitement of the exercise, he had forgotten entirely about the military instructor.

“That was fun,” Norys said. “I’m getting good at it.” He looked down at the blaster, wondering when he’d be able to use it next, when he’d be allowed to practice against a real target.

“You did well enough, Norys,” Qorl said again, “but you must remember—mynocks don’t shoot back.”

Qorl pushed another button on the controls, and the door to the training chamber opened. “Come, we must go to the assembly rooms. Everyone will be there.” The old TIE pilot waited for Norys to march ahead of him. “Our Great Leader is planning to address the Shadow Academy.”

Zekk sat smothered in his private shell of self-confidence as dozens of Dark Jedi students gathered in the confined room where Master Brakiss and Tamith Kai lectured them in the ways of the dark side.

Zekk wore his padded suit of dark leather armor and sat straight and proud, shoulders squared. His lightsaber hung comfortably at his side. After weeks of training, he had grown fully comfortable with it. It was like a part of him, an extension of his body. That, more than anything else, convinced him he was destined to be a Jedi Knight. He was a loner, but he was also the most powerful of Brakiss’s students. The other trainees flashed him occasional glances. Zekk had rapidly surpassed all of them, even those who had been at the Shadow Academy for months and months.

But then, Zekk had the greatest motivation. He wanted to be strong. He wanted everything the Force could give him.

Among those gathered in the assembly hall he noticed Vilas, the Nightsister Tamith Kai’s dark-haired and brooding trainee. Vilas, who was from Dathomir, was arrogant and smug, always looking down at him, never letting him forget that it was he who had stunned Zekk when he’d resisted capture on Coruscant. Zekk wasn’t about to forget. He felt a rivalry with this swarthy young man who talked too often about how he had ridden rancors and summoned storms on Dathomir—as if Zekk was supposed to be impressed.

The ominous Tamith Kai stood next to her protégé Vilas. She and the new Nightsisters had begun training Vilas during the Shadow Academy’s construction. They therefore considered him the first of the new Dark Jedi, stronger than the others. For now.

Zekk crossed his arms over his leather-armored chest, knowing that they were wrong. And one day, Zekk told himself, he would prove it.

Burly Norys and the Lost Ones—new stormtrooper recruits taken under the wing of military commander Qorl—stood at attention. The other senior-ranking stormtroopers seemed at ease, while the Lost Ones appeared restless and uncomfortable in their new body armor.

But everyone listened intently to the Great Leader’s speech.

In the center of the chamber the overwhelming and awesome image of the Emperor Palpatine filled the open space in the confined room. The glowing hologram towered taller than any person present, a paternal figure and stern watchman.

Crackling from transmission static, the image of the cowled Emperor addressed them from his hideout somewhere in the Core Systems. Yellow reptilian eyes under hooded brows watched the gathered students. The eye of Palpatine was always on them.

“Our plans for the Second Imperium are close to completion,” the Emperor said. “All beings are doing their part to return a New Order to our galaxy. Each of you will help my Second Imperium become powerful. Each of you is an important part of a great machine that will crush the Rebellion and put an end to their so-called New Republic.”

The holographic image pivoted, giving the impression that Palpatine’s gaze was sweeping across each and every person there.

“Our space fleet grows day by day, thanks to the hyperdrive cores and turbolaser batteries stolen in a recent brilliant military ambush. That equipment is helping us create our own battle fleet. Our ships will at first be smaller than the behemoths the New Republic can bring against us—but we shall fight, and we shall win. Our army of Dark Jedi is nearly complete.”

The Emperor seemed to grow larger, his image swelling to loom above them. The rippling hood around Palpatine’s shriveled face seemed to blow in an unseen wind. His eyes widened, blazing with the light of twin white suns.

The Emperor’s voice boomed out, raised to such a volume that Zekk flinched. “Hear me, my Jedi Knights and stormtroopers. The Force does not favor weaklings. We have the strength. The Force is with us—to victory!”

Then the transmission ended, and the Emperor’s cowled silhouette dissolved into sparkles and static.

The entire assembly set up a deafening cheer, in which Zekk joined wholeheartedly.