Yoda (9 page)

As soon as Master Xan started talking about “real life,” Scout guessed what was coming. She scanned the room, locating the rest of her comrades in the Round of Eight, checking to see who might make the best opponent. Not Lena—Lena was a friend; besides, the Chagrian was looking straight at her.

Sisseri Deo, all 2.3 golden-skinned meters of him, was sitting with his back to Scout just one table away. As Master Iron Hand continued her little lecture—wasn't she enjoying herself, that grim old lady!—Scout slid from her bench carrying her cup of muja juice, and shuffled forward a few steps as if trying to make out what the Master was saying.

The red handkerchief went up. Everyone who didn't want to get caught in the crossfire of lightsaber blades and dirty dishes jumped to their feet. Scout glanced over at Lena, checking to make sure the Chagrian wasn't sneaking up on her. So far, so good. She edged casually over until she was right behind Sisseri. In purely physical terms, Sisseri was by far the strongest remaining combatant, a huge boy with muscles like tree roots under his gleaming skin. Scout had watched his second-round match, when his roundhouse kick had taken out Forzi Ghul, and she had no interest in going up against him.

By the worst luck, just as the red handkerchief slipped from between Master Xan's fingers, Sisseri spun around to face Scout.

She swore.

The handkerchief hit the ground.

Sisseri grabbed for his lightsaber.

Scout tossed her cup of juice in his face.

Up snapped his hands, the lightsaber a beam of blue light humming wildly over Scout's head as he frantically tried to wipe the juice out of his eyes. Ignoring her lightsaber completely—there was no point in trying to duel Sisseri, he was far too good for her—she charged straight into his chest, letting her hands find the neck of his tunic. She found the sweet hold, her strong wrists cranked, and she felt the old familiar pressure of fingers and cloth cutting into her opponent's neck.
Great,
she thought.
Now all I have to do is count to ten and hold on. One, two…

The muscles in Sisseri's legs bunched, and with a little Force tingle Scout knew what was coming next. He launched himself backward, twisting in midair like a dragonsnake in its death throes so as to come crashing down on the tabletop with Scout underneath him, but she had felt it coming and wiggled around him in mid-flight, so she was on top again when he hit the table with a
whump.

Three, four…

The Firrerreo kept rolling. His giant hands flexed, but for some reason the Force was flowing easily for Scout now and she knew he would try to pull her hands away before he knew it himself. Keeping the choke hold on with her right hand and forearm, she reached down with her left and popped the pressure point in his elbow, so his arm went numb and tingly.

Five, six…

Sisseri stopped thrashing and lay on the tabletop, blinking as if trying to summon the Force, but his eyes were glazing over. He gave a long, despairing hiss and glared at her with bulging eyes, his face congested and still running with juice. “I hate…”

Seven…

“I
hate
muja juice,” he gasped, and yielded.

Scout rolled off him and crouched beside the table, peering around the refectory. There seemed to be six combatants left. Pirt Neer and Enver Hoxha were taking up most of the attention with a scintillating lightsaber duel. Whie and Hera Tuix were fighting hand-to-hand, but still at range, trading kicks, punches, and blocks. That wouldn't last; no matter how elegant one was at range, unarmed fights always went to ground in the end, where it was all grappling skills and joint locks. Lena was just standing up over Bargu, the skinchanger, who was clutching her arm with one hand and bowing in defeat.

Lena's eyes met Scout's, and they exchanged weary, wary smiles.

There was a gasp from the crowd. Whie had just caught Hera Tuix in a very elegant little wrist lock, and although Hera was trying to come up with a counterattack, odds were she would have to tap out at any second. Scout found Lena's eyes. “Now!” she said, and charged, with Lena right on her heels. Whie was stronger than either of them, but if they could take him now, together, while his back was turned and he was holding on to Hera, they might get him out of the equation.

They were at his back. Lena leapt in, but something about the set of Whie's body whispered to Scout that he knew exactly where they were.

Hera yielded.

Whie leapt into the air, five effortless meters, turned a backflip, and landed gently on a tabletop behind them. Lena ran into the table where he had been standing, and if Scout's one Force talent hadn't come to her aid she would have done the same, leaving them both at Whie's mercy. Instead, she was waiting with a whirling lightsaber slash at his legs as he landed on the table. He met her blue blade with his green one in a shower of sparks.

Then something strange happened. Whie stared at Scout, his mouth dropped open, and he recoiled.

“What's the matter?” Scout growled. She swiped across her face with her injured left hand. A few spatters of muja juice showed on the bandage, but that hardly seemed like a reason for him to be staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.

Lena hissed, recovered herself, and darted in to attack. Scout knew she would thrust low, and slashed high, hoping Whie couldn't parry both attacks. Instead of jumping back like any normal person, though, and falling off the table, Whie leapt
forward,
over their heads. A Force shove in her back sent her sprawling into the table he had been standing on, sending up showers of baked dru'un slices, a sleet of fish sauce, and a rain of juice and water.

She rose and shook her head, sending little bits of lunch out of her hair. A line of lightsaber cuts went pinwheeling across the room, followed by a round of spontaneous applause. Lena's feet raced by her table. Then a lightsaber came hissing and spitting through the air, bounced on the floor, and rolled to a stop less than a meter away. An instant later Enver Hoxha appeared, his face contorted with desperation, lunging for his weapon.

Scout reached out and grabbed it. “No!” Enver shrieked as Pirt Neer caught up and held her blade to his throat. “Well?” Pirt's voice said, somewhere high above.

Enver stared daggers at Scout.

“Thanks a lot, Scout,” Enver snarled, and surrendered. He stood, to a round of applause, and brushed off his pants. “Well done, Pirt. You may as well collect Esterhazy so I can get my lightsaber back.”

“Not a bad idea—
ulp
!” Lena had come up behind Pirt while she was accepting Enver's surrender, and put a sturdy arm bar on her. Pirt sighed and yielded.

Lena's cheerful blue face beamed at Scout. “Are you just going to sit there, or are you going to come out and play?”

There was a whirring buzz, lightsabers clashed and sparked, and Lena disappeared in a dance of fancy footwork across the refectory tables. Scout groaned. She should, she really should go help.

She edged out into the open. Lena and Whie were the only two combatants left. They were going at it in the wide clear space in front of the swinging kitchen doors. Whie was pressing Lena hard, his lightsaber spinning a cage of green light around her. Scout sprinted toward the pair.

Too little, too late. As she watched, Lena went through a parry-feint-beat attack-flèche combination, trying for a straight thrust into Whie's chest. He sidestepped, limber as a whipcord. He used his blade to guide hers harmlessly by while at the same time letting his free hand clamp on to her sword hand. He continued to pivot, sinking his weight exactly as Master Iron Hand always taught them, and now Lena's sword hand was caught in a thumb lock that her own momentum was making worse. An instant later they finished like a pair of dance partners: Whie behind the Chagrian girl, pinning her arm behind her back with her thumb folded up at an unnatural angle. He gave the slightest upward pressure on her thumb, and the lightsaber dropped from her hand. One more little nudge had her on her tiptoes. She yielded.

He smiled, let her go, and accepted her surrender with a grave bow. She answered with a curtsy and a laugh, amid the applause of those watching.

Oh, well, Scout thought. So much for tackling Whie two-on-one. She had a plan, but she had really, really been hoping she wouldn't have to use it. She sighed and switched her lightsaber over to her left hand. She trained left-handed often enough that it wasn't completely implausible that she would do such a thing as a desperate ploy to throw him off. For that matter, he might even think she was left-handed. The brutal truth was, she had probably spent a whole lot more time worrying about him than he had ever spent studying her.

She thumbed the power switch, and her lightsaber came on. Stars, how she loved its sound, the weight of the handle in her hand, and the pale luminous blue blade, clear as the sky at first light. She might not be the greatest Jedi apprentice ever, but she loved the Temple and her weapon and this life, and if even Yoda himself tried to take that away from her, she would go down kicking and screaming to the very end.

A small serving droid wheeled through the swinging doors from the kitchen area and surveyed the refectory, emitting a series of dismayed beeps and whistles as it took in the shattered crockery and the food spattered over half the floor and some of the walls. Several tables showed scorch marks from stray lightsaber strokes.

Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy—Scout to her friends—cut a little figure in the air to catch Whie's attention. “I guess that leaves you and me, sport.”

Whie turned. His face fell. “You're still—I mean, I thought I was done.”

There was something insulting about the way he stared at her and then looked away. “Hey, we don't have to fight,” she said.

His shoulders sagged with relief. “I would prefer that. It's just—”

“—You can always surrender,” she finished sweetly.

Scattered laughter in the room. The serving droid scooted forward, its round head spinning anxiously from side to side.

“
Me
? Surrender to
you
?” Whie struggled to master himself. “I don't think so.” Drawing himself up with cool formality, he drew his lightsaber and bowed to her, Master Xan, and Master Yoda.

Scout drew herself up to do the same, but as she dipped toward Whie, the little serving droid buzzed up to her. “Oh, dear, a spill,” it said, peeling a slice of mashed dru'un in fish sauce off her hip. “Let me clean that up for you.”

Laughter roared around the room. Scout blushed to the tips of her ears. So much for her dignified entrance. “Let's go,” she said, and she leapt in.

With the lightsaber in her left hand she made a hard, straight lunge with a single disengage around his first parry, easily blocked by his second. He was sliding her along exactly as he had done Lena…his free hand dropping onto her sword hand and twisting it around, using the lightsaber handle as a lever to create the initial thumb lock. The whole thing was incredibly smooth: the fighter in Scout couldn't help but admire his balance, his precision and body awareness. She would have had a hard time countering the technique, even if she had wanted to.

Three seconds into their fight, and it already looked to be over. He was standing behind her, just as he had been with Lena. A single nudge, exactly placed, sent pain shooting up her thumb and into her wrist. She dropped her lightsaber with a clatter. “Let's stop,” he said. Pleading.

It was the strangest thing—he hadn't been nearly this flustered dealing with Lena, and Lena was a more dangerous opponent than Scout by anyone's reckoning. Scout had seen boys with crushes seem this nervous around the girl of their dreams—it made sparring practice acutely embarrassing for everyone—but she had been working through arm locks with Whie only yesterday, and she would swear on every star in the Republic there hadn't been anything unusual about his behavior then.

He gave her thumb another nudge, and she found herself standing on tiptoe, as if somehow she could climb away from the little needle of pain shooting through her thumb.
“Yield!”
he whispered.

“Not this time,” she said. And then, gritting her teeth, she dropped down, into the pain, and back, driving straight into the teeth of his hold. All he had to do was keep it steady, and her thumb would snap like a dry stick.

But he let go, as Scout had known he would. He was too nice, too sporting to hurt her that badly, and the Force was with her now, and the element of surprise. She turned into him, unwinding the arm he'd had pinned against her back as he loosened his hold. The instant before he decided to leap clear she felt it coming, took his arm like the spoke of a wheel so that when he made his jump she could swing him fluidly into a perfect shoulder throw.

Three seconds later it was over. Whie was lying flat on his back on the floor gasping for breath, while Scout sat on his chest and grinned. She had her right hand twisted in the collar of his robes, which she bunched as he started to twitch. “Un-unh,” she said, tightening her hand just a little to show she had the choke hold if she needed it.

Whie glared up at her, sighed, and yielded. Scout let go of his robe and stood up.

The little serving droid rolled back and forth in dismay. “Oh, dear,” it said. “There's been a spill.”

Someone laughed, and then the clapping started. Master Leem ran by her to attend to Whie, but Master Xan gave Scout a small, wintry smile.

Lena skipped out of the crowd. “Scout! That was incredible!” she cried, grabbing both Scout's hands to swing her around in a victory dance. “That was great! Who would have guessed in a million—Scout?”

“Hand,” Scout whimpered. “Not the left hand.”

“She did it on purpose, you realize,” Hanna drawled. The Arkanian girl regarded Scout coolly. “She was counting on Whie's good nature, guessing he'd be so worried about hurting her he would stop fighting and she could catch him off his guard.”