Yoda

Read Yoda for Free Online Page A

Book: Read Yoda for Free Online
Authors: Sean Stewart
Tags: Fiction
Leem was not normally of a nervous disposition. Gentle, motherly, and placidly competent, she was a great favorite of the younger acolytes, and very difficult to rattle. A Mace Windu or an Anakin Skywalker might grow restless at the Jedi’s essentially defensive posture, but not so Maks Leem. The Gran were a deeply social, community-oriented folk, and she had gladly given her life in service to the ideal of
peacemaker.
What she hated was that now, by slow but seemingly relentless degrees, she and the Jedi were turning, contemptibly, into
soldiers.
    She had thought the Republic’s civil war was the worst thing that could happen. Then came the slaughter on Geonosis, claiming the flower of a Jedi generation in a single day. The flash of plasma bolts, the taste of sand in one’s mouth, the whine and shriek of battle droids—it seemed like a nightmare now, a confused blur of grief and pain. She had lost more than a dozen comrades, all closer to her than sisters. That had brought the war home as no distant newsvid could.
    On the way back to Coruscant, Master Yoda had spoken of healing and recovery, but for Maks Leem the last thirty months had been hard, hard. For her, it was easier to face memories of the battle than to cope with the terrible
emptiness
in the Temple. Forty places set for dinner in a hall made to hold a hundred. The west block of the kitchen gardens left fallow. The rhythms of Temple life cut away for lack of time; no time for gardening now, or mending robes by hand, or games. Now it was hand-to-hand combat, small-unit tactical training, military infiltration exercises. Food made in a hurry from ingredients bought in the city, and grave-eyed children of twelve and fourteen suddenly monitoring comm transmissions, running courier routes, or researching battle plans.
    The children worried Leem the most. The Temple, nearly empty of adults, felt like a school the teachers had abandoned. Suddenly orphaned Padawans, acolytes with too few teachers and too many responsibilities: Maks Leem feared for them. As hard as Yoda and the other teachers tried to instill the ancient Jedi virtues, this generation could not help but be marked by violence. As if they had been weaned on poisoned milk, she always thought. For the first time since the Sith War, there would be a generation of Jedi Knights who grew up surrounded by a Force clouded by the dark side. They were learning to feel with hearts made too old, too hard, too soon.
    It was one of these children, the gentle, graceful boy named Whie whom she had taken as her Padawan, who had called her to the Temple entrance. Maks had arrived to find the boy remaining (as always) remarkably serene, while enduring a good deal of moist bluster from a pompous, overbearing, and furious Troxan diplomat, who could not believe he was to be stopped at the Temple doors by a mere boy. This purple-faced being with furiously vibrating gills claimed to have a dispatch to be delivered to Master Yoda personally.
    Maks came to Whie’s rescue at once, using the Force in the way that came most naturally to her, soothing the Troxan until his gills lay still, pink, and moist, and seeing him off with the promise that she would personally deliver the package to Master Yoda. Whie could have done the same—the Force was strong in him—but Padawans were not encouraged to use their powers lightly. The boy’s gifts had always been great; perhaps in consequence, he always took special care not to abuse them.
    Whie handed her the packet. It was a high-security diplomatic correspondence pouch, of a type in common usage by many Trade Federation worlds. A mesh of woven meta-ceramic and computational monofilaments, the pouch was both a container and a computer, whose surface was its own display. Most of that surface was presently covered with a bristling array of letters, the same message repeated in Troxan and Basic.
    The bag seethed in her hand, not unpleasantly, as computational

Similar Books

Mathilda, SuperWitch

Kristen Ashley

The Lords of the North

Bernard Cornwell

Beautifully Unfinished

Beverley Hollowed

The Parasite Person

Celia Fremlin

No Magic Moment (Secrets of Stone Book 4)

Angel Payne, Victoria Blue

Escape Into the Night

Lois Walfrid Johnson

Thundering Luv

LM Preston