Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi, Volume 3 (2 page)

He was home.

A flexible durasteel arm of a sensor was still sticking out of the wall. Ferus tested his weight on it, and it held. Using it as leverage, he was able to hook his fingers over
the edge above and boost himself up for a quick look at the site of the old garden.

With a grunt, Ferus balanced on his palms. The garden hadn’t just succumbed to the fire, he saw—it had been blasted. Chunks of blackened stone blocked the former entrance. The glass
had shattered and needles of it were still lying about.

He remembered....

Standing next to Siri as she crushed an herb and held it under his nose. “What does it say to you?”

“It’s an herb,” he said.

“But what does it
say
?”

“I don’t understand, Master.” What did she want? Ferus was only thirteen, just beginning his apprenticeship. He was afraid all the time of doing or saying the wrong
thing.

“This is part of the Force, too, Ferus. Connection to living things. Close your eyes. Smell. Good. Now. What does it say?”

“It says...lunch.”

Siri barked her short laugh. “Not very imaginative, but I guess it will have to do. Let’s try another....”

“Master? Yoland Fee doesn’t like anyone to pick his herbs. It’s a rule for the Padawans.”

Siri turned to him, her hands full of edible flowers and green herbs. She smiled.

“You know, Ferus, if you could manage to get some of that starch out of your tunic, we’d get along much better.”

Ferus felt the strain shoot through his arms from holding himself up. He dropped back to his perch. He hadn’t fully realized that entering the Temple put him at risk from more than
Imperial troops. He’d take stormtroopers over memories any day.

Siri had been right, of course. Thinking back to that moment, he remembered how careful he’d been to keep his spine straight, his gaze level. He had been conscious of his every word,
tailoring it to what the perfect apprentice should say or do.

Every time Ferus looked back to a memory of himself as a Padawan, he wondered how anyone could stand him. It was only later, on Bellassa, through his friendship with Roan Lands, that he had
learned to unbend from the rigid contours he had set for himself, to see that perfection was a prison he had built that kept him apart from others.

He missed his old life with Roan as much as he missed the Jedi. War and the Empire had torn his life in two, as it had for so many in the galaxy. At first he hadn’t recognized the change.
Palpatine’s grab for power had been so slow, so careful. So fiendishly smart. He had known that in times of turmoil beings looked for leadership—and didn’t examine too closely
what that leadership was up to. When the reality behind the mask emerged, it was too late.

“The stones have collapsed around the opening,” he told Trever. “We’ll have to blast one. Think you can manage it?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

He had discovered that Trever was something of an explosives expert. Trever could calmly take apart an alpha charge and amp it or weaken its power without batting an eye. His brother Tike had
been part of the resistance movement on Bellassa and had taught him. Tike had died, along with Trever’s father, at the hands of the Empire. After that, Trever had made his living on the
streets of Bellassa, and had picked up plenty of knowledge on the way. He was a product of war and suffering, old before his time, hiding the vulnerabilities of a boy that still crouched underneath
his bravado.

“We’ll need a half charge, just enough to blow a small hole,” Ferus told Trever. “We don’t want to attract any attention.”

Trever fished an alpha charge out of his utility belt. “This should do it. Boost me up.”

Ferus gave him a boost. He held onto the boy’s feet as Trever wriggled, positioning the charge between the massive stones.

“Let’s take cover,” Ferus said, easing Trever back down.

“It’s only a half charge.”

The blast almost blew Ferus off the ledge. He grabbed at the protruding sensor and swung in midair, caught by a buffeting wind. It grabbed at his body and twirled it like a reed. He decided to
take his own advice to Trever and not look down.

He swung his legs back onto his old perch. Trever had squeezed himself into the carved-out opening.

“That was a half charge?” Ferus asked, incredulous.

“It’s not an exact science, you know,” Trever replied sheepishly.

“Let’s just hope the stormtroopers didn’t hear it. Come on.”

Ferus boosted himself up once more to inspect Trever’s handiwork. Despite the power of the blast, the hole was small, a testament to the strength of the stone. It was just big enough to
squeeze through.

Well, that takes care of one of my fears, anyway
, Ferus thought. They wouldn’t be stranded on this tower. At least they could get inside.

He wouldn’t think about how they would get out.

Yet.

Ferus Force-leaped up to the opening and balanced. He reached a hand down for Trever and hauled him up. They bent over and eased through the opening Trever had blasted through the stone.

They were inside the Temple now, in a place Ferus knew well, but he found himself lost for a moment. This bore no resemblance to the Temple he’d known. He was in a heavily damaged area,
and for a moment he couldn’t get his bearings. One wall was demolished, another blackened with smoke. The corridor he’d expected to turn into was gone. Instead there was a mountain of
rubble.

“We’ll have to go this way,” he said, turning in the opposite direction.

They climbed over a collapsed wall. Ferus stood still for a moment. Despite all that had happened, the Force remained present. It was still here for him, and he connected to it.

Suddenly, he felt completely oriented, and very clear.

The Temple could be a gigantic maze to outsiders, but to a Jedi the design made sense. It had been fashioned to conform to the life of a Jedi, to make getting around easy. So it followed the
rhythms of a Jedi, with meditation flowing into physical activity into nature into food into study into research and support.

“This used to be the droid repair area,” Ferus told Trever. “So there should be an access to the service tunnels here, too.”

Pools of water had collected on the floor. Rain dripped in. The smell of smoke rose from the blackened walls. Ferus tried to push any emotion away. He needed to focus.

“I like to look at the droids,” Anakin said.

Ferus nodded. He had come to drop off a small droid for repair as a favor to a Jedi Master. To his surprise, he’d found Anakin Skywalker checking over droid parts.

He didn’t know Anakin very well. He’d only just arrived at the Temple this past year. He’d heard the rumors, of course. How strong Anakin was in the Force, how Qui-Gon Jinn
had picked him off a remote desert planet. How Obi-Wan Kenobi had offered to train him personally after Qui-Gon’s death. How he could be the Chosen One.

“I built a droid on my homeworld,” Anakin said. Something in his voice told Ferus that Anakin was lonely.

Ferus wished he had the ability to say the right thing, to respond with warmth to a boy he didn’t know. He wished his awkwardness didn’t come off as stiffness. He wished he were
more like Tru Veld or Darra Thel-Tanis, who could talk to anyone and become their friend. But it was hard for him to know what to say. He didn’t have that gift. His teachers were always
telling him to be more in touch with the Living Force.

“I don’t remember my homeworld,” he said finally. “Or my family.”

Anakin looked at him under a shock of blond hair. “Then you’re lucky.”

That lonely boy had grown into an astoundingly gifted Jedi. And now he was dead. Ferus didn’t know how or where. He’d been reluctant to ask Obi-Wan. The look on the Jedi
Master’s face when Anakin was mentioned was enough to stop Ferus. Grief had marked Obi-Wan, and he looked older and grayer than his age would warrant.

Ferus was beginning to make sense of the blackened and twisted shapes now. There, the heap of fused durasteel—that had been the shelving that had run along one wall. It had held droid
parts. Stone had crumbled into pebbles that crunched under Ferus’s boots as he walked into the echoing space. He kicked through some melted parts on the floor. Gaping holes in the roof
overhead had let in the morning rain. Rustlings told him that creatures were living here, scurrying through the debris.

The protocol droids were eerie shapes, half melted, their eye sockets blank. They looked like fallen soldiers.

The smell of decay was in his nostrils. Decay and failure and ruin.

And it was only the beginning of what he would see.

“So where’s the entrance to the tunnels?” Trever asked.

Ferus wrenched his mind back to the task at hand. He gazed about, trying to orient himself. “That opening there leads to the grand hall. I think we’d better avoid it. The entrance to
the service tunnels was over there. At least, I think that’s where it was.”

They stared across the room at a gigantic pile of rubble.

“All I can say is, if we have to get through that, you’d better be right,” Trever said.

Suddenly they heard the noise of tramping feet.

“Stormtroopers,” Trever whispered.

Ferus quickly pointed to a towering, misshapen pile of twisted metal. It had fused from the heat; it had once been a pile of droids. The jagged nature of the heap had created holes throughout.
They would be able to squeeze inside and hide underneath it.

Just in time. A squad of white-armored stormtroopers entered the space through the blasted-out opening that led to the grand hall. The officer in charge spoke through his headset. “Sensors
indicate life-form activity.”

Trever looked at Ferus, alarmed. Ferus watched as the squad began to systematically comb the space, quadrant by quadrant. That was the trouble with stormtroopers, he thought testily. They were
so
efficient.

Within minutes they would spot them. Ferus had no doubt of that. They were circling the droid heaps, checking every crevice, every dark corner.

Ferus felt something wet and bristling brush his leg. Only the most severe discipline of the Jedi, ingrained in his bones, prevented him from flinching. A meer rat, fat and bold, waddled by.
Before Ferus could warn him, Trever jumped slightly, banging his head against the metal. The faintest clang sounded through the space.

“Halt activity.” The officer swiveled, training a glow-rod just centimeters from their hiding place. “Evidence of intruders. Search and destroy.”

Trever reached into his pocket. Without making a sound, he withdrew the turnover he’d placed there. He tossed it a short distance away. The meer rat scudded after it.

The officer caught the movement. The light from the glow rod was jerked toward the sound, and it caught the rat in mid-scurry.

“Another rat,” the stormtrooper said in disgust. “They’re so big they trip the sensors. I’m getting tired of these false alarms. Come on, let’s head
out.”

Ferus and Trever waited until the sound of the footsteps faded.

“That was close,” Ferus said.

“And there goes the rest of my lunch,” Trever added.

They wriggled out. Avoiding the rat munching on the turnover, they headed toward the area where Ferus was sure they’d find the entrance to the tunnels. The debris was piled so high that
there was no way to tell where the entrance had been. He closed his eyes.

Ferus concentrated on the memory of his brief conversation with Anakin as a boy. He used an exercise that every Padawan had learned. They were led to a spot, told to open their eyes, look for
five seconds, then close them again. Then they were to describe everything they’d seen. Sometimes they faced what seemed to be a blank wall, and they would have to note every crevice, every
irregularity.

Ferus reached back, past years of events and feelings that could cloud his mind, past his child’s perspective, and focused on what he had seen. He could conjure up the texture of the cold
against his fingers, the droid parts neatly labeled on the shelves, the banks of computers. When he remembered the ding on the dome of a battered astromech droid to Anakin’s right, he knew he
was getting there. The Force helped him to connect to memory as much as what was around him now.