Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi, Volume 5 (11 page)

“I took the job because I wanted to help, but I also wanted to disappear. One of my conditions was that I could wipe my identity and Lune’s records from the Samarian system. I
thought I’d take off right after, but I was delayed, and then the Empire closed the spaceport so fast.…”

“They can be very fast when they want to,” Clive said.

“So why did Larker do it?” Ferus asked.

“He knows that the Empire is planning to take over the planet. He decided to break down the system in order to give the Sathans time to form a resistance cell. When the system comes back
up, some records will be gone, such as who fought on the side of the Republic in the Clone Wars, or who criticized Emperor Palpatine when he was still a chancellor. They’ll have to start from
scratch to find their enemies.”

“Enough talking,” Solace said. “Let’s move.”

Astri put her hand on Lune’s shoulder. “We’re ready.”

Ferus squatted in front of the boy. “Lune, we’re going to have to climb on the roof and walk across a beam. We’ll be very high.”

“I have good balance,” the boy said.

“I’m sure you do. When we’re up there, I want you to try something. Trust your feelings. Try not to think, only feel. Let the air help you.”

“What he means is—” Astri started.

“I know what he means, Mom,” Lune said. His gray-blue eyes were clear as he nodded at Ferus.

Ferus nodded back. A connection passed between them, one he knew was fueled by the Force. Someday, he hoped, Lune would know what that meant.

They walked out of the apartment. They could hear the whistling of the wind around the girders on the roof.

“Stay back!” Solace suddenly said.

She and Ferus turned at the same moment as two prowler droids crashed through the hallway window. The two Jedi leaped up as one, and slashed through them. Smoking, the droids crashed to the
ground.

“They had time to transmit our position. We have to move quickly,” Ferus said.

They raced up the stairs. The wind hit them full in the face as they stepped out onto the partially completed roof. Girders and beams crisscrossed the area closest to the hangar in the adjoining
tower. Ferus stayed close to Lune and kept a careful eye on Trever.

He and Solace concentrated the Force. This was a difficult task for any Jedi, especially one who had never achieved Master status. To lift a heavy object in the air using only the Force took
great concentration.

No
, Ferus told himself, remembering the lessons of Yoda.
Not concentration. Belief.

The beam rose in the air, rotated, and traveled across the empty air to the hangar tower next door. It entered one of the openings and shuddered as it hit. It held.

They now had a bridge to cross over. Hundreds of kilometers in the air, with no railing…but a bridge.

“Solace, you lead Astri and Lune over,” Ferus said.

Astri and Lune balanced on the beam. The wind blew, pushing Lune’s hair in his eyes. He didn’t flinch. He appeared perfectly balanced.

“I’m letting the air help me,” he called to Ferus.

“You can do it,” Ferus said.

Solace stayed between them. They walked single file across the beam. Lune never faltered. He never looked down. He walked across the beam as though he was strolling across a park on a sunny
day.

“Now I’ve seen true courage,” Clive said.

Ferus turned to agree that the boy was amazing. He saw that Clive was watching Astri.

Solace, Astri, and Lune reached the other side. Astri hugged her son to her side.

“Your turn, Trever,” Ferus said.

Clive crooked an arm for Dona. “I’ll escort you to the beam, madam.”

Dona nodded. “Don’t worry about me—I live on a mountain. I can do it.”

Trever, Dona, and Clive started across the beam.

Roan waited with Ferus. They watched as the trio inched across the beam.

Suddenly Ferus was alert to an intruder. A prowler was streaking toward the beam. In the hangar tower, Solace had seen it, too. Dona ducked, almost losing her balance, but Clive grabbed her arm.
Another prowler zoomed upward.

“Don’t move!” Ferus shouted to Roan. Then he Force-leaped across the space, soaring toward the aggressors as Solace did the same. In midair, the two Jedi slashed through the
droids, sailed past each other and both landed on the beam as lightly as drifting snow.

“Ferus!”

Roan was leaping from beam to beam, avoiding beam fire from two spider droids that had appeared on the partially finished roof. Ferus jumped back to the roof, deflecting the fire. He landed
behind the two spider droids and slashed at them with his lightsaber, turning them into molten metal.

“I’m beginning to like this Jedi business,” Roan said.

Across the way, Trever, Dona, and Clive were now safe in the tower. Roan and Ferus hurried to the beam and walked quickly across. “Okay, now comes the hard part,” Ferus said.

“My cruiser is three levels down,” Astri whispered. “The ramps are at each end.”

They moved toward the ramps that linked the levels. They couldn’t risk taking the turbolift. They were almost down the ramp when they heard a squad of stormtroopers heading up. It was too
late to retreat; the troopers had spotted them. The commander gave the order to fire.

Ferus and Solace raced forward as the troopers began firing. Their lightsabers whirled as they charged. Roan and Oryon stayed behind, firing their blasters. Clive and Astri placed themselves in
front of Dona, Trever, and Lune, their blasters in hand.

Ferus was not used to fighting with Solace. Her style surprised him. She was a loner, and, at this point, a reluctant Jedi. But her fighting style was as generous as it was aggressive. Her leaps
were liquid, and she seemed to be everywhere at once, protecting Ferus and guiding them all downward even as she vanquished the troopers. Ferus couldn’t read her intentions as quickly as he
should, but it didn’t matter. She read his. She countered his moves, reinforced his strikes, and covered his back.

When the clones were littered around them, he deactivated his lightsaber and nodded at her in admiration. “Thanks.”

They continued on, down to the next level. More prowler droids flew toward them, and Ferus cut them down in three clean strikes.

“They’re going to send more firepower now,” Solace said. “They know where we are.”

They raced down the last ramp toward the cruiser. Solace leaped into the pilot seat. Dona hurried inside along with Clive. Oryon sat next to Solace. Roan jumped in behind Solace, squeezing
himself into the cockpit behind the laser cannon controls. Astri and Lune were next.

Suddenly an explosion rocked the hangar. A pair of droidekas had entered and were blasting at a load-bearing column. The column soon crashed to the floor.

The roof overhead began to cave, cracks spreading rapidly. The duracrete underneath their feet began to shift. Ferus grabbed Lune with one hand and Trever with the other. Oryon reached out and
yanked Astri inside the craft.

“Lune!” Astri screamed.

With a thunderous roar, half of the level above collapsed. Ferus dove for cover with the two boys as the droidekas continued their deadly blasts.

Solace gunned the engines and soared away from the flying debris. She hovered outside in the air while Roan manned the laser cannons. He made one accurate shot, blasting one droideka and sending
the flaming mass of metal into the other one.

Ferus rolled to his feet, coughing out the dust. “Discord missile!” he shouted, spotting one in the air. He knew from his Clone Wars service that it was filled with a flock of buzz
droids, those lethal droids that could adhere to a starfighter going at top speed and drill into it, disabling it in seconds.

Solace dove away, but the discord missile kept tracking.

Lune suddenly sent his laser lasso flying. It was a clean red line in the air, flying outward toward the missile. Ferus held his breath. He could feel the Force in the air as Lune unknowingly
used it to guide the lasso. Lune may not have been aware of what the Force was, but his mother was in danger and he would make it work for him.

The lasso snaked around the missile, hard enough to yank it slightly off course. It crashed into the side of the hangar. Solace zoomed away, under fire from the ground now.

More stormtroopers were spilling up the ramp, blaster rifles firing. Ferus released Trever and kept the two boys behind him as his lightsaber arced in the air, deflecting fire. While he moved
backward, he considered what to do. Solace was circling around, trying to avoid fire and get back inside the hangar. The battalion was between her and Ferus. More were coming every moment. One of
them fired a missile and it hit only meters away. Ferus felt the heat of the blast on his face.

Thinking frantically, Ferus jumped onto a small airspeeder. He shepherded Trever and Lune inside, then started the engine. “Drive!” he ordered Trever. He leaped onto the back of the
speeder, lightsaber in hand, and deflected fire. Trever took off.

“Where to?” Trever shouted.

“The roof next door!” Ferus dropped back into the speeder as Trever pushed the engines. They shot out into the air and straight over to the roof. Here they were finally out of range
of the blasterfire and missiles.

“Let me take over,” Ferus said, reaching for the controls. He zoomed over the beams, searching. Then he dove the craft down into an unfinished turbolift shaft. Safe for the moment,
he let the craft hover.

“What now?” Trever asked.

Ferus thought carefully back on the design of the tower. He knew the wall would be thin near the roof, since the reinforcing durasteel hadn’t been added.

“Solace will find us,” Ferus said. He directed the craft up the shaft and maneuvered it closer to the wall. “I need you to do something for me.”

Trever saw the order in Ferus’s eyes. He shook his head. “No. I’m not leaving you. Not again.”

“You have to. You have to take Lune.”

“I can take care of myself,” Lune said.

Trever sighed. He knew he had to go. “Every time I leave you, you end up captured.”

“Not this time. The Emperor wants me free. I don’t know why, but he needs me. All I have to do is walk out. I can buy time until you can get away. Trever, it’s the only
way.”

Trever nodded. “All right. But just so you know, you can’t get rid of me for good.”

“I know.” Ferus activated his lightsaber. He buried it in the wall. It glowed, and the wall began to disintegrate, peeling back on itself. Lune watched, wide-eyed.

“I’ve never seen a Jedi in action before,” he said. “I wish I could do that.”

“Maybe someday you will,” Ferus said. He jumped onto the partially demolished wall. Hanging on with one hand, he scanned the air. He was high over Sath, on the opposite side from the
lobby. Stormtroopers were specks below him, lined up and ready to receive orders. Several seeker droids zoomed below but hadn’t tracked him yet. He saw no sign of Darth Vader but still felt
his presence.

A glint on a wing, and Solace was diving, heading for him.

“You’re going to have to be quick,” he told Trever.

Trever balanced on the speeder, holding Lune by the hand. He stepped carefully onto the wall, helping Lune to stand beside him. They balanced there, waiting, while Solace cut back on the
engines.

She expertly guided the craft to nudge against the wall. Astri’s face was white with suspense.

Lune and Trever stepped easily into the craft and were pulled into seats by Astri’s eager hands.

“Get to the base. I’ll join you,” Ferus shouted over the wind to Solace.

He watched as the ship zoomed away. Then he turned, jumped into the borrowed speeder, and raced back up to the roof. He picked his way past the blasted beams and took the stairs down to street
level to meet Darth Vader.

The dark side was so strong that Ferus felt like he was being engulfed by it as he walked up to Vader. He had to pull himself together and act as normal as he could, not like
he’d just fought a heated battle.

“I think we’re tracking the same person,” he told Vader. “Any luck?”

Vader didn’t answer for a moment. A long moment. Ferus tried not to sweat. All he could hear was the tunnel-echo whooshing of Vader’s electronic breath-mask.

“Several battalions of droids and troopers have been demolished. Prowler droids as well. The saboteur has help.”

“Lucky that you came prepared,” Ferus said, indicating the armed activity around him.

“Strange. Captain Chainly reported that lightsabers were involved.”

“That doesn’t seem likely,” Ferus said, relieved that he’d hidden his own.

Vader didn’t answer. “Do you have the saboteur’s name?”

“Quintus Farel,” Ferus answered.

“That is an alias.”

“That’s all I have. The apartment was empty when I got there.”

“You took a long time to find me.”

“I was searching. I thought we should work together.”

“I work alone.”

He could not have bested Darth Vader in battle. Ferus knew that. But he had won this round simply by walking out the door. For some reason, he had the protection of the Emperor. As long as he
had that, Vader couldn’t touch him.