Free Yoda by Sean Stewart Page B

it, or did Master Xan look directly at her? “In real life, we rarely get optimal combat conditions. One might find oneself attacked in null gravity, for instance. Or by surprise, or by a droid or other creature whose physiology made certain techniques difficult or impossible. Of course, introducing a Gorax into the Temple is not practical. But there are some things we can do. For instance, in real life—” Scout would swear the Master’s eyes were lingering on her again. “—it is often
dark.
”
    And the lights went out.
    Oh, great,
Scout thought.
No problem. I don’t need to trust my eyes, after all.
    I can trust the Force.

    It was pitch black. In the darkness, Scout could just hear the audience breathing, and the sound of her own blood beating in her ears. A soft rustle of cloth from the direction Master Xan had been standing in. She would be lifting up the red handkerchief—
and Scout had no way of telling when she was going to let it go.
    Oh, boy.
    She tried to use the Force, tried to let her awareness seep out into the dark room. She could feel the presence of the watching acolytes, Master Yoda back in the corner, Master Xan. But she couldn’t find the little scrap of red cloth. For that matter, she had only a vague idea of where Hanna was. It was as if the Arkanian were muddying the Force, the way a Quarren might squirt ink into the sea.
    Well, there was nothing for it. She couldn’t draw before the handkerchief touched the ground, and she couldn’t tell when that was going to happen. She would just have to stay alert, ready to spring backward at the first instant Hanna made any move.
    Scout stared into the darkness. Her eyes felt wide as saucers, and she was straining to hear every creak and whisper. The little hairs on her arms stood up, as if she could listen with her skin.
    And then, a gift from the Force: the sudden electric knowledge that Hanna was going to lash out—
    Now!
    The Force told Scout when the attack was coming; her own hard work told her what it would be. Scout had watched Hanna fight many times in the last six weeks. She
knew
Hanna would start with a high, Force-aided leap, to get out of Scout’s plane of vision, hoping to drop down like a bird of prey from above. The Arkanian’s blade blazed to life, a stroke of green lightning crackling down from directly overhead: but Scout’s blade, a wand of cool blue flame, was there to meet it. The weapons clashed in a jarring burst of sparks, but Scout had the floor to brace against, and the force of her parry sent Hanna tumbling backward through the air. The Arkanian twisted into a perfect backflip and landed in a balanced fighting stance.
    A scatter of applause drifted around the room.
    Blue and green reflections hissed and spat in the milk-white surface of the Arkanian girl’s eyes. “Come now, Esterhazy. Aren’t you going to try one of your dirty tricks on me? You didn’t use them all up on poor little Pax, did you?”
    Scout grinned. “Not even close.”
    If Hanna had a weakness, it was that she was too in love with her lightsaber. There was something in her fastidious nature that made the sweaty grappling of hand-to-hand combat distasteful to her; she was really much happier standing two paces from her opponent and letting her blade do the fighting for her. “You know, Hanna, there’s one thing I’ve always wondered. How exactly do you manage—”
    Scout exploded into a flying flèche in the middle of her sentence, hoping to catch the Arkanian off guard. Hanna snapped to parry, Scout disengaged, Hanna caught her blade triumphantly and slid it down to the side. Scout’s blue lightsaber passed harmlessly by as Hanna spun like a matador to let her go by, but that was all right, since Scout had only meant the swordplay to be a distraction, something for Hanna to feel superior about, right up to the moment Scout’s body was nearly past, when