Kota's voice, when he spoke, was deep and commanding, as it had been during PROXY'S impersonation of him. "So I've finally drawn you out of hiding." He turned at last. "I ordered my men to lower the containment field on your approach and..." On seeing the apprentice he stopped midsentence and looked visibly surprised.

"A boy?" With one blindingly fast movement, the lightsaber was in his hand and lit. "After all these months of attacking Imperial targets, Vader sends a boy to fight me?"

Grim and silent, the apprentice adopted a fighting crouch. So the trap had been directed not at him but at his Master. If Kota was disappointed, the apprentice swore that this would be the last emotion Kota ever felt.

He raised his left hand and with the power of the dark side unleashed a bolt of Sith lightning at the renegade Jedi.

Kota only laughed. Raising his left hand in a move that was a mirror image of the apprentice's own, he sent the lightning arcing back to its source. The energy struck both of them, hurling them apart.

The apprentice broke off the attempt, blinking smoke away from his eyes. His anger intensified. He was the first to his feet and running as soon as his boots touched the deck. He felt completely weightless, yet full of momentum, like a hurled spear. His red blade cut a blur through the air, aimed hard at Kota's throat.

The Jedi general ducked and swept his green lightsaber up and down in a lazy attempt to catch him as he went by. That was a move the apprentice had long ago learned to avoid by tucking his head down closer to his center of gravity and rolling in midair, then kicking himself back at his opponent off the nearest wall. This time he pushed telekinetically as he came, attempting to knock Kota's feet out from under him before bringing his blade to bear.

Again, however, Kota deflected his Force energies back at him. Again they were pushed apart.

More cautiously the apprentice circled him, slicing chairs to pieces as he walked and sending the glowing fragments at his enemy's head. Anger made him eager to attack, but he knew better than to give in to it. He hadn't been humiliated. He had successfully tested Kota's defenses. Now that he knew a direct attack would probably fail, he had to find another way to get closer to the man. Or to make the Jedi come to him.

Suddenly Kota was moving, charging with astonishing speed behind a furious diversity of strokes. The apprentice retreated with lips pulled back over his teeth. This is more like it! Green and red energies clashed as he blocked blow after blow and still Kota kept coming, attempting to overwhelm him with sheer determination and speed. The apprentice went back four steps, then stopped. He drew his blade close around him, forming a tight defense in deliberate imitation of the Soresu style that Obi-Wan Kenobi had favored. Realizing he couldn't penetrate it, Kota backed off and tried a different style-slow, deliberate, with sudden and devastatingly quick strikes. These, too, the apprentice parried, and when the old man's guard looked to be slipping, he offered strikes of his own.

The duel raged all across the control center, which shook and rattled as the facility around it broke apart. The apprentice ignored everything else-Juno's voice, the wildly fluctuating gravity, the never-ending explosions, the rising temperature of the floor beneath him-in order to concentrate solely on this one vital battle. Kota wouldn't beat him, but could he beat Kota? He had to. He would rather go down with the ship than break off and admit failure. Darth Vader's secret apprentice knew which fate would await him if he did.

The general was wily and strong and possessed some moves the apprentice had never seen before. But he was older and willfully ignorant of the dark side of the Force. He attempted his charge attack two more times, obviously hoping to force a mistake or wear out his opponent, but it was he who started to show the effects of the duel, he who took hits. Soon his cloak was a smoking rag and one of his shoulder pads was glowing red-hot.

The apprentice pressed harder, feeling victory and the attainment of his full power approaching. Soon the Jedi's lightsaber-and head-would be his. Then he truly would be worthy of his Master's praise!

He caught the general in a choke hold and maintained his grip even though it turned partially back on him. He had been ready for this; his lungs were full. The general, however, clutched at his throat with one hand while barely managing to parry with the other. The apprentice let the fire in his lungs fuel his lust for triumph. Even as darkness crowded around the edges of his vision, he sent objects hurtling at Kota's legs and face, battling him on all fronts.

Finally a fragment of smoking debris struck the general's knees from behind. With a cry of frustration, the flailing Jedi went down, his face purple and eyes bulging. The apprentice relented slightly, letting them both have a little air, but before Kota could scramble to his feet he was on him, pressing down on their locked light-sabers, which sizzled just millimeters from their faces.

Kota strained but couldn't force the red blade away. In his blue eyes the apprentice saw not cleansing hatred, but regret. Even at the end, Kota clung to his weak Jedi ways.

"Vader thinks"-the old man gasped-"he's turned you. But I can sense your future-and Vader isn't part of it!"

The apprentice urged the lightsabers even closer to Kota's face.

Sweat beaded on the Jedi Master's forehead. "I sense-I sense only ..." A look of shock and confusion passed over his face. "Me?"

The apprentice forced Kota's own lightsaber down into his eyes.

And suddenly-as though in a vision from out of time, exactly the sort of vision the apprentice sought in the fire of his red blade-Kota's face became that of another man, a man with dark hair and strong features, features not dissimilar to the apprentice's own.

The general cried out in pain-and in that cry the apprentice thought he heard a man shouting, "Run!"

He flinched away, blinking furiously, wondering if Kota in his desperate extremity had concocted some new and insidious Jedi mind trick. But his head seemed clear of intrusion, and the general seemed to be thinking of anything but attack. Blinded and agonized, he scrabbled backward, his lightsaber slipping from his fingers and dropping with a dead thud to the deck. A blast of telekinesis erupted from him, shattering every viewport in the command center and sending the apprentice flying. A raging wind swept past them, sucking out the smoke and shrapnel of their duel. Kota, too, was sucked out and fell with a fading cry into the atmosphere below. Or had he leapt?

Chapter 3