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a moment for me to process her meaning, but when I did I stared at her. “You mean walk out there as bait, holding a lightsaber in front of me?”
    “You have two now, correct? Your odds of ensuring the ghest has to eat a lightsaber before it eats you are pretty good.”
    I grinned. Soonta had a strange sense of humor, but she also had a point. I’d be better off protecting myself from a quick attack with two lightsabers than with a single blaster that I’d have to aim and fire in a fraction of a second before I got chomped. I thumbed off the Rodian lightsaber and asked, “I don’t suppose Huulik brought anything else home with him, like a handy step-by-step manual on how to train yourself to become a Jedi?”
    “No, nothing like that, unfortunately. I would have attempted it myself had that been the case, even though I can’t feel the Force.”
    “Well, I’m very grateful for this much.” I turned the lightsaber hilt over in my hands, thinking. “You said he was shot by his own clone troopers?”
    “That was what his recording said. We, of course, had no way to confirm it. Asking the local garrison of troopers if someone may have shot a Rodian Jedi Knight offplanet would attract the wrong sort of attention. But it’s stunning in its implications, isn’t it? Looked at in that light, it might have been the Jedi who were betrayed, not the Emperor.”
    Not for the first time, I wished I’d had more time with Ben. Not only could he have taught me about the Force, but he could have filled in many giant gaps in my knowledge regarding the history of the Clone Wars. The Empire’s version of events was undoubtedly self-serving, but there was no alternative version of events available. My aunt and uncle would never talk to me about it no matter how much I begged them. I felt handicapped by my ignorance.
    “You’ve given me a lot to think about. That is, if I can get us out of here.” Even if Soonta were to leave me here to go get help, she’d need to get on her speeder bike safely—and there was no guarantee she could do that. If the ghest was still waiting in the swamp, it could easily pounce before she could take off. We needed to remove the threat before either of us tried to mount the speeder bike. I withdrew my own lightsaber from my belt, walked forward to the edge of the island, one weapon in each hand, and turned them both on. I crouched to minimize myself as a target as I advanced, holding the lightsabers parallel to the ground and angled to protect each side of me so that I was at the base of a triangle. The ghest would have to be extremely fast and agile to take me out without getting cut. The problem was it had looked like it might actually be that fast and agile.
    The dark water gave no sign of the ghest’s whereabouts, only a promise that it hid a food chain within its depths and I was not at the top of it. Just stepping near the water made me feel like something’s lunch.
    Insects and birds and amphibians continued to drone and chirp and croak, heedless of my problems, but their noise existed on another level than auditory. When I stretched out with my feelings and tried to locate the ghest through the Force, all I got was an overwhelming sense of the life surrounding me—nothing so specific as a single bird or fish or predator. I knew that many of the creatures were hungry and wanted to eat other creatures, but there was no sense that a certain one wished to eat me.
    There I stood, shifting my weight a bit and moving slightly to look alive, lightsabers humming, for five full minutes.
    “Maybe it’s moved on,” I finally said. “How about you try taking the remaining speeder back—I’ll guard you as you get on—and come back to pick me up?”
    Soonta said, “I suppose—” and then the ghest erupted from the swamp on my left, a flash of movement faster than I couldtrack. By reflex I whipped the blade in my left hand toward it while simultaneously falling backward and swinging a fraction