Surrender is betrayal.
So Qorl had escaped and made his way to the Shadow Academy, where he had watched as the twins were brought in to be trained under the murderous tutelage of Tamith Kai and Brakiss. Qorl had been deeply disturbed by the violence of their instruction, the disregard for the lives of the fresh students.
No one had ever found out that Qorl had discreetly assisted the young friends in their escape as they fled the Shadow Academy. After that Qorl had privately done everything he could to atone for the indiscretion, making his raid on the Rebel convoy to steal hyperdrive cores and turbolaser batteries, then working hard to train Norys and the other new stormtroopers.
A smoking ship streaked overhead: a blaster-scarred and battered cargo transport. Qorl recognized the model of the ship, an unarmed carrier vessel of an old design. Its engines were sluggish, its shields not designed or reinforced for combat.
And now he saw that it was being pursued by a relentless TIE fighter.
Qorl was ashamed to see the TIE pilot waste shot after shot, although sheer luck allowed some of the laser bolts to strike the hull. It would be only a matter of time before the cargo ship exploded in midair.
Qorl tuned his cockpit comm systems to a direct channel with the other TIE fighter. “TIE pilot, identify yourself.”
The gruff voice that responded came as no surprise to Qorl. “This is Norys, old man. Don’t bother me—I’ve got a target in my sights.”
He swallowed, but his throat remained dry. “Norys, you have already crippled the target. That cargo ship is not our main objective. Your orders are to disable the Jedi academy. That ship won’t be causing any more trouble for the Second Imperium.”
“Leave off, old man,” Norys said. “This is my kill, and I’m gonna score it.”
Qorl tried to keep his anger in check. “We don’t keep score, Norys. This assault is for the Second Imperium—not for your personal glory.”
“Go stick your head up an exhaust tube,” Norys said. “I’m not letting an old coward tell me what to do.” Then the bully switched off his comm system and plunged after the burning cargo ship, firing with absolute abandon.
Qorl’s disappointment turned to outrage. This young man’s attitude flew in the face of everything admirable about the Empire. Qorl remembered his earlier TIE fighter training, how he and his fellow pilots had all worked together like a machine: precise, well mannered, respectful, listening to orders—promoting the orderly lifestyle the Emperor had brought to the galaxy. That was worth fighting for.
But Norys did not represent such a philosophy. He didn’t care.
The broadband comm signal came across his speakers again. “This is Jacen Solo with a personal distress this time. We are in deep trouble. Someone is on our tail. Request assistance. Please—can anyone out there help us?”
Qorl flew beneath the aerial dogfight just above the treetops, anguished inside. Jacen Solo was an honorable opponent. The boy had a strong heart, though he had fallen in with the Rebel band instead of the Second Imperium. But could the boy be blamed? After all, his mother was the Chief of State of the Rebel government.
Norys, however, did have a choice. The broad-shouldered boy knew what he had been trained for. He had adopted his Imperial uniform and his ship willingly … yet now he refused to play by the rules. Norys was no better than a ruthless, murderous bully.
The pursuing TIE fighter continued to fly in the slipstream of the crippled cargo vessel. Black smoke curled up from her engine pods, and Qorl observed the precise moment at which the shields failed.
Norys fired again, staining the hull with a slash of black blisters.
Qorl flicked on his own laser cannons and activated the targeting systems. The Lightning Rod would explode in a matter of seconds under Norys’s continued assault. If it did, Qorl wouldn’t be surprised if the bully continued to shoot the burning wreckage to make sure there were no survivors.
Disgust welled up within him. Switching off his comm system, he muttered, “Do I lose any honor by destroying someone who has no honor of his own?”
Qorl had studied every subsystem on the Imperial TIE fighters. He knew their weak points. Qorl knew how to destroy them.
He targeted Norys’s reactor exhausts.
Ignoring his teacher entirely, Norys fired again. His lasers had fallen into a slower repeating rhythm now, as if he savored these last few moments.
The Lightning Rod lurched, in one last helpless attempt to dodge the laser fire.
Qorl closed in on Norys’s ship.
And fired.
Norys’s TIE fighter exploded in the air, annihilated so quickly and completely that the young bully didn’t even have time to cry out in surprise.
Ashamed that his act had been a betrayal of the Second Imperium, Qorl made no attempt to contact the Lightning Rod. He simply changed course and swerved back toward the main battlefield, while the faltering Lightning Rod struggled to remain aloft … or at least to land without crashing too badly.
14
While battles raged above the Jedi academy and in the jungle around it, Imperial commando Orvak crept forward, intent on his mission.
He had left his TIE fighter behind in the wake of the explosions at the shield generator facility, but he would come back to it once he had finished here. For hours now, he had made his way secretly through the thick forest.
Several trees burned in the jungle nearby, sending up coils of putrid smoke from the wet vegetation. He heard blaster fire and shouts, the distant hum of lightsabers. He kept low and quiet, not willing to risk giving away his position.
Skywalker’s Jedi had abandoned their Great Temple to engage in scattered skirmishes in the forests … leaving it open and unprotected for him to do his work.
Approaching the ancient edifice, still hidden by the jungle, Orvak saw black streaks on the thick stone—blaster scoring and scars from proton explosives dropped by TIE bombers. The ubiquitous vines that clung to the pyramid’s sides had withered under the fire and fallen away in heaps. One close explosion had wrecked the temple’s hangar bay door, preventing Skywalker’s fleet of guardian ships from launching.
So, Orvak thought, after all these millennia, this ancient structure had finally been damaged. But it wasn’t damaged enough. He would take care of the rest.
Moving carefully, ducking his helmeted head, he crept through the foliage, ripping up vines and uprooting ferns to clear the way until he finally emerged from the underbrush and stood behind the tall temple.
Above, TIE fighters streaked like birds of prey across the sky; Orvak looked up, silently urging them on.
To one side of the pyramid he saw a newly laid flagstone courtyard. Across it, at the base of the stone structure, a darkened entrance stood open. Imagining what sort of fearful sorcerous exercises the Jedi students performed there, he stepped cautiously into the courtyard.
Already weeds had begun to push up between the flagstones. The jungle would no doubt reclaim its own within a matter of months after he destroyed the temple—and it would be good riddance to this place, he thought. By then he hoped either to be back on the Shadow Academy or perhaps promoted to officer rank on a Star Destroyer … if his mission today turned out well enough.
When the fighting became particularly loud, and proton bombs exploded in the jungle not far away, Orvak made his move. He rushed across the heavy flagstones to the dim doorway that led into the Rebels’ secret temple.
He paused at the threshold for a moment, glad for his helmet in case poisonous vapors might seep out from the interior. Who knew what booby traps the Jedi sorcerers might have laid?