an important milestone. The way in which we come to that point varies for each of us. In my case, I built my first lightsaber, that saber, before I could drive an airspeeder.”
Marr’s eyebrows rose. “An impressive feat of engineering.”
“Not at all, Marr. The Force spoke and I listened. When I think back, I remember it feeling as if I were sleepwalking. It was … strange.”
Marr approached the table, eyeing the weapon.
“That’s all? You listened?”
“Learning to hear the Force is the most important thing you can learn from me. Everything else follows from it. I think you already hear it plainly when you do mathematics.”
Marr nodded slowly, his brow furrowed.
“Pick it up,” Jaden said, gesturing toward the lightsaber.
Marr took Jaden’s lightsaber and turned it over in his hands, examining the hilt from all angles.
“Now take it apart,” Jaden said. He had chosen the lesson because he thought it would be well suited to Marr’s talents as an engineer.
“This is yours, Master, and—”
“Take it apart, Marr. It’s a weapon. It’s made to be durable. You won’t break anything.” Jaden eyed his chrono and set the timer. “You have five minutes.”
Marr’s mouth fixed into a determined line and he sank into one of the chairs.
Jaden liked his apprentice’s response. No complaint, no protest that he could not do it. Marr simply trusted himself and acted.
Jaden could almost see the analysis going on behind Marr’s eyes. The Cerean’s pupils could as well have been spinning gears. After turning the weapon over in his hands a few times, he set it down, opened the small box of precision tools, and got to work.
Marr had the weapon disassembled and laid out on the table in under two minutes. He picked up the striated, violet-colored power crystal and held it between forefinger and thumb.
“I feel … something in the crystal. The Force.”
“Right. All lightsabers are powered by a crystal. The nature of the crystal determines the properties of the blade.”
“Its color,” Marr said, turning the crystal over, studying its facets.
“That, yes, but more. The crystal is not, by itself, the power source of the weapon. Like the Force user, the crystal is attuned to the Force. Without that attunement, the crystal is just a rock. And while a non–Force user could probably ignite and wield a lightsaber, provided the crystal was properly attuned to the Force, all that lightsaber would be for him is a shaft of superheated plasma. But for a Jedi, the lightsaber becomes more: it is a manifestation of a Jedi’s connection to the Force.”
Marr considered, nodded. “I understand. I think.”
“Put it back together, Marr. Then activate it.”
Marr reassembled the weapon with steady hands and activated it. The purple blade slit the air of the cargo bay. Its hum filled the quiet.
“Be careful, but feel the weight in your hand,” Jaden said. “The blade itself weighs nothing. All the weight is in the hilt, in your hand.”
Marr took a few slow practice swings, trying to mimic some of the technique he’d seen Jaden use.
“Now, feel the Force around you. Feel it in you, in the crystal. The weapon is not a thing apart from you. It is an extension of you. Let the Force flow.”
Marr closed his eyes, his face wrinkled in concentration.
“Still your mind, Marr. You cannot think your way to the connection. Feel it. Let your mind expand outward from the Keep, let that expansion encompass all of you, me, the weapon you hold.”
Marr’s face smoothed and his breathing grew deep and regular. Jaden sensed when Marr made the connection, a mental key fitting a lock.
“I feel it,” Marr said.
Jaden smiled. “Good. Let the connection continue and open your eyes.”
Marr did so.
Jaden took the lightsaber hilt from his belt—the lightsaber he’d taken from the clone, Alpha—and activated it. Its sparking red blade sizzled into existence, its thin red line the border between them.
Marr stared at the red blade, at Jaden. Jaden felt the soft, faint pressure of the dark side against his consciousness. The blade’s crystal, attuned to the Force by Alpha, still carried his taint.
“Do you feel it?” Jaden asked Marr.
Marr nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the blade. “It feels like pressure, like a general sense of unease.”
“That is the dark side,” Jaden said. “The feeling is more acute when the power is greater. What you feel now is just residuum in the crystal of this blade.”
“The intensity of the feeling is a function of the power of the dark-side user and the proximity of that user,” Marr said.