But the red guard had encountered his slaughtered companions outside and knew that Brakiss had seen all the video controls and holographic apparatus in the isolation chamber. The fourth guard, without hesitation, ran back the way he had come.
Brakiss realized with utter certainty that the glorious dream of a reborn Empire had already failed. His Dark Jedi had lost their battle down on Yavin 4. The Imperial fighters were being trounced—but he would not let this impostor, this traitor, escape alive. It would be Brakiss’s final moment of vengeance.
With purposeful steps, Brakiss charged after the man. The red guard moved with astonishing speed, fleeing the restricted area and dashing down the empty corridors of the Shadow Academy. Brakiss ran, but the red guard knew exactly where he wanted to go. Exactly.
The last surviving Imperial guard reached the docking bay and dashed toward Brakiss’s still-waiting high-speed shuttle.
Arriving at the docking bay door, Brakiss shouted, “Stop!” He held his lightsaber high, wishing he could use the Force to make the guard freeze in his tracks, to follow the command—but the charlatan did not hesitate. He dove into the lone shuttle, raised it on its repulsorlifts, and punched the code to release the magnetic atmosphere containment field.
Brakiss simmered with rage. He wondered if he could get to the Shadow Academy’s weapons systems and blow the guard to frozen shards in the vacuum of space. But it would be too late for him.
He felt completely alone on the Shadow Academy. An utter failure. Everything he had tried had backfired on him. And this was the final insult: tricked by a … guard.
Unbidden, a memory came to Brakiss. When the Shadow Academy had been constructed—ostensibly under the guidance of Emperor Palpatine—as a fail-safe mechanism, enormous quantities of linked explosives had been implanted through the station’s structure. That way, if Palpatine ever felt threatened by these new and powerful Dark Jedi Knights, he could trigger the detonation and destroy the Shadow Academy, no matter where it was.
Brakiss stood alone in the hangar bay, watching the tiny shuttle streak farther and farther away. It occurred to him that since there was no reborn Emperor, then the four red guards themselves must have kept the secret destruct codes.
As the escape ship fled from the Shadow Academy and the Yavin system, the last surviving guard acknowledged to himself that the military forces he left behind would be defeated utterly. With the success of the Rebel counterattack, there would likely be no Imperial survivors of this day’s battles.
The guard had to preserve his secret and maintain the illusion that he and his partners had so carefully constructed as a way to restore themselves to power. He could not afford to leave the Shadow Academy intact if he hoped to cover his tracks. With luck, he might find a position among the many criminal elements insidiously working at the fringes of the New Republic.
The red guard sent a brief signal, carefully coded. He transmitted a dreaded phrase, a string of impulses, that he had hoped never to use.
Destruct.
As his tiny shuttle careened into hyperspace, the spiked ring of the Shadow Academy flowered into a fireball, an exploding blossom of flaming gases and debris.
20
As he plodded ahead, Zekk could barely see two meters in front of himself in the murk of Yavin 4’s unfamiliar jungle. Dense underbrush tore at his hair and cape, and his breath came in ragged gasps. His ponytail had come entirely undone. Still Zekk pushed on. Occasionally he glanced back over his shoulder to see if any of Skywalker’s Jedi trainees were pursuing him. He sensed no one following, but he couldn’t be sure. Who knows? he thought. They might have light-side tricks he had never heard of, ways to keep him from sensing their presence.
He had seen many unexpected things today. Strange things. Horrible things. It hardly mattered that the winding path ahead was uncertain and difficult to see: he would have been blind to it anyway. His mind was partially numbed by the sights his eyes had witnessed today. Destruction, terror, failure … death.
Zekk’s foot slipped on a patch of moldy, damp leaves, and he went down on one knee. Grabbing a low branch, he pulled himself back to his feet, then stood disoriented for a moment.
Which direction had he been heading? He knew he was going toward something … but he couldn’t quite remember what. Finally some unconscious part of him remembered, and he set off again.
Suddenly, just ahead of him, a knee-high rodent sprang from the underbrush, its claws extended. Zekk’s Jedi instincts automatically took over.
In one smooth movement Zekk withdrew his lightsaber and threw himself sideways out of the creature’s path. His cheek split open as it smashed against the purplish-brown trunk of a Massassi tree; his thumb pressed the lightsaber’s ignition stud at the same moment. Before Zekk could even blink or breathe, the blood-red blade sprang forth—and sliced through the rodent in mid-leap. With a shriek that broke off abruptly, the two smoking halves of the creature fell to the forest floor.
It reminded him of how he had killed Tamith Kai’s student Vilas in the zero-gravity arena aboard the Shadow Academy station—not a memory that comforted him.
Blood trickled from the cut on Zekk’s cheek, but the pain was too distant, too far away for him to feel. His ability with the Force had protected him just now—after all, he was a Dark Jedi. But what about his companions from the Second Imperium? What of their powers? Why had it all gone wrong? For today he had seen his Dark Jedi, one after another, lose their battles or be captured by Skywalker’s trainees.
He had a terrible suspicion that only he remained.
Oh, the dark side had had its victories. The commando Orvak had obviously succeeded in destroying the shield generators and had no doubt moved on to the next step in his mission. And there had been other times during the day when Zekk had felt the Shadow Academy trainees achieve surges of victory. But each victory had been shortlived.
Brakiss, Tamith Kai, he, and his companions had all been so certain of a quick, decisive triumph. With their training in the dark side, they should have had no problem, Zekk told himself. Wasn’t that what Brakiss had taught?
A few minutes later, Zekk emerged from the darkness into a broad clearing where the wide river ran sluggishly between the trees. His spirits rising ever so slightly, Zekk walked to the edge of the river and stooped to take a drink.
Despite the green color of the water, his reflection was clear. Sunken emerald eyes shadowed with dark circles gazed back at him from the rippling surface. Only the barest spark of his former confidence still lurked in his expression. Tangles of filthy dark hair framed a face as pale as the moon of his home planet Ennth. Blood still oozed from the wound on his face, contrasting nicely with the purpling bruises that surrounded it. It made him think of Brakiss and his finely chiseled features.
A wail of despair echoed through the young man’s head, knocking him to his hands and knees in the mud of the riverbank. In a futile gesture, Zekk pressed his muddy hands over his ears. “Brakiss!” he screamed. “What went wrong?”
Hardly understanding what was happening, Zekk turned his face up toward the sky. For a split second he recognized the spiked ring of the Shadow Academy in low orbit above the jungle moon—
Then, without warning, the space station bloomed into a fireball high above him. Zekk’s jaw went slack at the sight. He had not thought it possible to feel any more pain.
But he had been wrong.
Brakiss. The name whispered now in Zekk’s mind. He knew that the Master had been aboard the Shadow Academy when it blew up. He could feel it. He had felt his teacher’s despair—his mind crying out.