I still had to delay a bit. Kiala—sudden as an erection at ninety—caught me practically at the Temple exit and dragged me off for yet another round of procedures, scans, and tests.
Patiently (what was the point of picking a fight?) enduring all the misery dumped on my head, I found out I had about five days left of floundering in the healers' captivity. The tests were deemed acceptable, the wounds were closing up. The healer said nothing about the spiritual side of things, but as far as I could tell, everything was fine there too.
So I needed to hurry. Valkorion wouldn't wait.
After tossing another ten packs of dry rations aboard the ship, I finally set off toward my goal.
I needed to sum up everything I remembered about the fourth moon of the gas giant Yavin.
The first to arrive there was the Sith Dark Lord Naga Sadow, hiding from the Jedi during the Great Hyperspace War. He ordered his followers—the Massassi—to raise enormous temples where the energy of the dark side of the Force would be focused. Hiding from the galaxy, Sadow conducted experiments, creating monsters from the descendants of his crew through Sith magic. Sadow placed himself in stasis, until he was awakened by Freedon Nadd, who took up his teachings and killed his teacher.
Later, sensing the power of the dark side within himself, the fallen Jedi Exar Kun arrived on the moon. During the Great Sith War, Exar Kun made Yavin 4 his last stronghold, draining the life energy of thousands of Massassi to preserve his soul despite his body's death. As a result, he managed to remain as a Force spirit. And it came back to bite Luke Skywalker when he decided to found a Jedi Academy on the moon.
Besides that, it was from Yavin 4 that the Alliance struck the Death Star.
And again, it was on Yavin 4 that Revan's Shadow—twisted, filled with malice and rage, having survived an encounter with an Imperial strike team at the Rakata station known as the Foundry—used the ancient Jedi Master's physical shell to try to resurrect and destroy Vitiate. The first part of the plan succeeded. The Emperor's spirit returned from oblivion and, wearing the mask of Emperor Valkorion, brought both the Republic and the Sith Empire to their knees.
And now I was setting course for that historic little spot.
The remarkable part was that there was no mention of Yavin 4 in either the Jedi Archives or the Holonet. Most likely Dooku—or the Jedi themselves—had deleted information about the planet to stop fallen Jedi pilgrimages.
What could Valkorion need on this planet?
If Rik's personal memories weren't locked, I might have known the answer. But now…
I was almost sure Valkorion was playing with me. What game?
The Emperor had said I needed to prepare before flying to Yavin 4. How exactly?
Was that the point of training Force-users? The Master set vague tasks, and the apprentice carried them out. Or didn't.
Who knows what the benefit of this assignment was supposed to be.
If I could direct the Force fairly skillfully (by my own estimate), I hadn't tried practicing with a lightsaber yet.
I had about twenty hours of flight ahead of me, so I went down to the hold and cleared it out for training.
Tossing the familiar little ball into the air, I ignited the sun-colored blade and took my stance.
***
I finished with blaster deflection after a couple of hours. I can't say it went well—and the numb right side, left arm, and ass wouldn't have let me lie to myself even if I wanted to. I needed to let my body restore sensation in the defeated sections.
At the same time, I decided to start reading the information I'd copied from the Archives. After all, I'd be going to the front soon enough.
As it turned out, besides historical and tactical notes, I'd managed to copy information on a lot of other things. Because of my not-quite-correct copy request, the terminal recorded everything from cross-references too. Now in my spare time I could read in detail about the Imperial dreadnought Rendili StarDrive built, the Zakuulan Eternal Fleet…
Ships of the past interested me little, so I got down to reading about battles.
If I'd hoped that commanders of the past would describe maneuvers and give advice like "What's the first thing you should shoot off an enemy ship so it can't run," I was painfully mistaken.
Most major conflicts between opposing sides were controlled by Force-users. The attack on Darth Malak's Star Forge supported by Bastila Shan's Battle Meditation was proof enough.
It was worth noting here that, in most cases, space battles were won by one of two scenarios. The first: a Jedi (or pro-Republic) sabotage group carried out a strike on the enemy flagship, after which the demoralized enemy either surrendered or was exterminated by the Republic fleet with zeal and numerical superiority.
Cases of any kind of truce, territorial concessions, and the like were practically absent from galactic history. Only the Cold War and the Eternal Empire's invasion could boast anything similar. In other cases, the Republic always found the strength to unwind its enemy across the entire galaxy. Sometimes it looked outright wild. Judge for yourself.
After defeating Malak's Sith at the Battle of the Star Forge, the Republic fleet—despite being significantly inferior in number of warships—not only drove the Sith away, but took their territories for itself. The same thing happened to the Sith Empire.
The historical essays treated the chronology and battles of the First and Second Galactic Wars very superficially. After the First, the Republic and the Empire signed a truce. In favor of Dromund Kaas, Coruscant ceded a number of territories. Then the Second broke out, and after it there was a drift toward rapprochement between the Republic and the Empire against a common enemy—first the Revanites, then the Eternal Empire.
How the conflict with Zakuul ended was described in the essays in very vague terms. The Outlander usurped power in the galaxy; however, later the Republic crushed both him and his allies from the Sith Empire.
Well, there you go. The Outlander, whom I'd considered the Hero of Tython returned from oblivion, turned out to be a usurper? It's a shame that over four thousand years historians reduced that moment to a simple "usurped power."
And how did the Republic manage to come out the victor? Zakuul had the Eternal Fleet—an armada created by unknown sentient machines. And the Sith Empire possessed impressive armed forces as well…
And then it hit me.
Of course. If the Outlander was the Hero of Tython who, one way or another, seized power in Valkorion's Eternal Empire, that would have turned the Order against him. The Eternal Empire did not join the Republic, did it? It did not. Neither did Dromund Kaas.
For millennia, the Jedi had been masters at destroying Light adepts who strayed. No wonder the annals contained slightly less information about the Hero of Tython—just like about Revan—than was necessary. If I hadn't known who killed Vitiate, I would have believed the Archives' records: "The Sith Emperor was slain by a powerful Jedi." Meaning that in the future, after Revan's Shadow was destroyed, the paths of the Hero and the Republic diverged. And so radically that his very name was scrubbed from history. I doubt anyone now could say why.
Back to tactics.
Throughout all history, those gifted in one side of the Force or the other used ordinary sentients as expendable material. A simple soldier on the battlefield mattered little when the clash was between Force adepts.
Of course, there were exceptions—the Mandalorians, for one, or commandos. Those had specialized training.
The Mandalorians had their way with the Republic as they pleased—until Revan took the matter in hand.
The "new Sith" had their way with the Republic as they pleased—until the Jedi Lord Hoth took command.
This list could go on forever.
And then Ruusan happened. The destruction of the Sith marked the end of the Sith–Jedi confrontation. The Jedi relaxed, disarmed, rejected the principles of warriors. They became "keepers of the peace." The army and the fleet were put to the knife. The Judicial Forces took over maintaining law and order.
For a thousand years, the galaxy cultivated seeds of corruption and lawlessness… The Jedi became the Senate's chained dogs.
Of course, measures were taken to revive the fleet. The Katana Fleet, for example—a dreadnought fleet of two hundred Rendili StarDrive ships linked together by a special system that made the ships repeat the actions of their flagship. And as a result of the flagship crew being infected by some kind of filth, the fleet jumped into hyperspace and waved goodbye to the Republic…
After that, everything that happened to the Republic over the last thousand years hardly deserved to be called "war." And hardly deserved much attention.
Of course, technical progress couldn't be denied. Technology developed and improved.
But tactics…
Remember the Battle of Naboo, where the Trade Federation army—and the Gungans—used tactics against each other that were already being used on Earth in Napoleon's time… In a galaxy where people fly in space…
It was savage.
Though… if the USSR had enjoyed a thousand years of peace, if the navy and army were dissolved, could we have withstood Hitler's onslaught in that case?
But looking from the other side—the USSR would never have disarmed, because it was surrounded by ideological and geopolitical enemies. And the Republic after Ruusan had no serious enemies…
Yeah. Hoping I'd find the knowledge of my predecessors in the Archives, I stepped right in it. For the most part, the information I got there had no value for the coming war. Sure, if studied carefully, maybe I could have gleaned a few grains, but it still wasn't it…
So I'd have to act by my own judgment. Though not just me. Thousands of Jedi were building command experience through their own trial and error. Why was I any worse?
Glancing at the time indicator, I swore as I noticed I'd spent almost seven hours studying holo-discs. The paralyzed parts of my body had already come back to life, and I went for the second round of training with the spherical droid.
But this time I decided to do it in armor.
First, I needed to understand whether I could wear armor at all—it wasn't exactly light. And I had to study how I would move in it…
I chose Sith armor I'd seen in a Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer. In it, Sith warriors butchered Republic soldiers on Alderaan. The armor even came with a cloak. Mood-appropriate: matte black, with blood-red edging on the sleeves ending around the elbows, and on the lining. "In a black cloak with a blood-red lining…" No, I think it was white in that quote. This one was no worse.
The armor included a fairly comfortable bodysuit, with armor elements secured over it—a breastplate and backplate, greaves, pauldrons… On the utility belt I even found magnetic mounts for a lightsaber. The mask—which was in fact a high-tech helmet with a closed breathing system, a heap of filters and lenses—I decided not to wear yet, but I brought it with me and set it on the workbench in the hold.
Activating the training droid, I began deflecting its stunning shots.
***
The new training session was noticeably easier.
Saturating my body with the Force, I practically turned the armor into my second skin. It clung to me so perfectly, as if it had been made for me. Though, in truth, it simply adjusted itself to its wearer thanks to a modular design.
The more often I used the lightsaber, the more actively muscle memory "remembered" what had been hammered into it over years of training.
A few more hours of practice, and I could deflect almost every shot the droid fired at me. The rest the armor absorbed without much harm.
I regretted bitterly that I hadn't borrowed a sparring droid from the Temple to hone my fencing skills. Alas—after the fight, you don't swing your fists.
Of course, lacking anything better, I practiced familiar sequences in "shadow fighting," but without a real opponent such training was laughable.
After shedding the armor, I asked R3 and learned there were no more than seven hours left in the journey. All ship systems were normal, no course deviation detected.
Satisfied, I took a shower and washed the sweat off after training.
I had no intention of driving myself into exhaustion with training. No telling what Valkorion had prepared on Yavin. Of course, I was unlikely to be fully ready for it, but at least I'd rest before the unknown.
With those thoughts, I passed out.
***
I was awakened by my mechanical assistant's chimes.
R3, noticing I wasn't reacting to its trill over the intercom, rolled down from the bridge to poke me with a manipulator.
Rubbing my eyes, I went straight to the refresher, threw a couple ration bars into myself, and put the armor on again.
In the viewport, a planet was visible, its entire surface covered in green and blue patches.
The droid chirped affirmatively.
"Yavin 4," I confirmed. I'd never seen it before, but now I felt this world like an old acquaintance. Of course my predecessor had been here. I cursed myself for my forgetfulness. Of course. This was where Valkorion's ghost had killed my previous Master.
"Make a couple of passes through the atmosphere," I ordered. "We'll scout and pick a landing site."
The droid chirped affirmatively.
Defender—without overthinking, I'd registered the ship under its model name—dropped from orbit, spiraling lower and lower.
Somewhere around the third pass, I sensed the dark side radiating from a specific point on the planet. The corvette was redirected there at once.
Even from orbit I could have bet my refuge here would be the Great Temple.
The same one where the Rebels would later set up their base, and from where they blew the Death Star to hell in Episode IV.
The same one where my old teacher died, and I found a new one.
The corvette landed not far from the Temple, touching down smoothly on the moon's rain-softened ground.
I checked that my lightsaber was still there, tucked a handheld light into my belt. After a moment's thought, I tucked a blaster into my belt too.
"Wait for me on the ship," I instructed the droid. "Don't let anyone in except me. If I don't return in a couple of days—fly back to Coruscant. Actually," I slapped my palm to my forehead, "let's record a message."