About twenty of the marauders waited, spread evenly between their two speeders. Both vehicles had large cannons mounted on the rear deck, and they swung to point at the Jedi, a loud hum splitting the air as the huge weapons powered up.

“Why has the Force called us to fight today?” Loden said.

“For life and the light,” Bell replied.

The speeder’s cannons fired, sending out a dense stream of blaster bolts, an overwhelming, ratcheting, spearing chaos, the sound of death.

Bell was not expert yet at many of the Jedi arts. Loden was right to push him, to take every opportunity to train him, to solidify his skills. He was a Padawan, and probably would be for some time to come. But the lightsaber…that had come naturally to him from the very start.

Loden and Bell deflected the blaster bolts, every last one. The shots were deadly, thick cores of high-powered energy racing at incredible speed—and all of that meant nothing to the Jedi’s lightsabers. Nothing to the Force. The majority of the bolts were deflected skyward, away from the crowd, but both Jedi sent a few carefully aimed bolts back toward the speeders. They didn’t need to coordinate—Bell took the speeder on the left, Loden on the right, each Jedi’s choice obvious to the other through the Force. The bolts twanged off their blades with a sizzle of power.

The deck cannons exploded, becoming twisted, smoking, melted wreckage. The marauders operating those guns died—Bell sensed it happen, even shrouded as he was in the focus he brought to protecting himself and those around him, and through the connection he felt to the other Jedi in the system through Master Kriss’s efforts on the Third Horizon.


Star Wars The High Republic Light of the Jedi Chapter 13