Star Wars: Rogue Planet by Greg Bear

Author:Greg Bear
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science-Fiction.Star Wars
ISBN: 9780345435385
Publisher: Ballantine Publishing Group
Published: 2000-05-02T07:00:00+00:00

Anakin had done his best to elude the nightmare that rushed forward out of the smoke, but the laser blasts had stunned him as well as Obi-Wan. He could only crawl backward on his elbows and grimace up at the shadow, trying to make his body hurry or time slow. Time slowed, all right, but he did not speed up.

The shadow disappeared in a fresh billow of smoke, reemerged, became clear.

“Slave boy!”

It was the same Blood Carver Anakin had encountered in the garbage pit. He carried a long shaping lance with a wicked blade on the end and moved quick as lightning. He swung the lance down so quickly Anakin hardly had time to begin his roll to one side. The flat of the blade struck the boy across the back of his skull and neck. His head exploded with sparking pain.

The blow stunned him, but he did not lose consciousness. He felt himself lifted by one ankle, like an amphibian delicacy on Tatooine, and swung through the smoke, dripping blood from his nose. As his assailant whirled him about, he saw the Sekotan ship still in her tendril sling, undamaged.

The Blood Carver casually plucked out and threw aside an engineer who poked up from the dilated opening in the hull, then hoisted Anakin over the ship’s side lobe and dropped him in. Then he crawled after.

Anakin found he could move a little, but pretended to be inert. Where’s Obi-Wan? Is he still alive? How could this all happen so fast?

But he knew. This was the trial, the test no Jedi Temple could provide, no Jedi Master could oversee.

The Force is never a nursemaid.

Anakin was on his own. The first thing he did, while the Blood Carver poked around the interior, looking for any other engineers, was to still all his resentment, all his feelings of failure and inferiority, and most important, his self-anger at having distracted Obi-Wan with his own foolish regard for the ship.

That regard was not so foolish. The ship is part of your power—it is essential in the here and now. It is the beginning of your trial—and it will end with the trial of Zonama Sekot. Your master cannot help you now.

He thought for a moment this might be the suspended voice of Obi-Wan, or even Qui-Gon Jinn, but it was not. If the voice had any quality whatsoever, it was his own—older, more mature. The Jedi I will become. All I have trained to be.

The Blood Carver growled and Anakin heard a small shriek. Jabitha was pushed forward from the back of the cabin, where she had hidden behind a thick cross brace.

She glanced at Anakin, eyes wild with fear like a small, trapped animal. The Blood Carver yanked her arm and tossed her lightly into an alcove beside the rear acceleration couches.

“Be still! He’s dangerous,” Anakin warned her.

Jabitha dropped her jaw as if to speak, but the Blood Carver slapped her hard across the face, then swiveled gracefully, grabbed Anakin by the shoulders, and yanked him into the pilot’s seat.

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