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Back Light of the Jedi
Chapters (53)
  1. Cover
  2. Light of the Jedi
  3. Part One
  4. Chapter One
  5. Chapter Two
  6. Chapter Three
  7. Chapter Four
  8. Chapter Five
  9. Chapter Six
  10. Chapter Seven
  11. Chapter Eight
  12. Chapter Nine
  13. Chapter Ten
  14. Chapter Eleven
  15. Chapter Twelve
  16. Chapter Thirteen
  17. Chapter Fourteen
  18. Chapter Fifteen
  19. Chapter Sixteen
  20. Chapter Seventeen
  21. Chapter Eighteen
  22. Interlude
  23. Part Two
  24. Chapter Nineteen
  25. Chapter Twenty
  26. Chapter Twenty-one
  27. Chapter Twenty-two
  28. Chapter Twenty-three
  29. Chapter Twenty-four
  30. Chapter Twenty-five
  31. Chapter Twenty-six
  32. Chapter Twenty-seven
  33. Chapter Twenty-eight
  34. Chapter Twenty-nine
  35. Chapter Thirty
  36. Chapter Thirty-one
  37. Chapter Thirty-two
  38. Chapter Thirty-three
  39. Chapter Thirty-four
  40. Chapter Thirty-five
  41. Interlude
  42. Part Three
  43. Chapter Thirty-six
  44. Chapter Thirty-seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-eight
  46. Chapter Thirty-nine
  47. Chapter Forty
  48. Chapter Forty-one
  49. Chapter Forty-two
  50. Chapter Forty-three
  51. Chapter Forty-four
  52. Epilogue
  53. Acknowledgments

Bell didn’t love Elphrona—he would have been happier with that Mon Cala posting, for instance, where breezes smelled of sea and life, not rust—but he did love the outpost. It was simple and majestic at the same time. Everything the Jedi should be.

It was dawn, and the rising sunlight caught the electrum of the Jedi symbol, setting it alight with reflected fire. The view from the clifftop where he stood could not be improved. It was perfection.

Bell Zettifar, Jedi Padawan, soaked it in. Then he began to turn around, intending to tell his master, Jedi Knight Loden Greatstorm, that he was not ready for this particular exercise today, and wanted to read up on the techniques a bit more before he just jumped off a perfectly good cliff.

“I believe in you,” he heard Loden say from a few meters behind him.

Bell felt his master reach out to the Force, and then something like a hand in the center of his back. And then he was shoved hard, right off the cliff.

Some thirty kilometers away was the settlement of Ogden’s Hope, a fairly large town built and maintained on the dreams of those who thought they might be able to transform the planet’s mineral wealth into a fortune of their own. The mining industry on Elphrona was over a century old, but the planet’s governments over the decades had successfully resisted the efforts of the huge galactic concerns to buy up and consolidate its resources. The entire planet was divided into a grid, and no one family, corporation, enterprise, or association was allowed to own more than four claims at a time.

That meant much of the planet remained unclaimed, and who knew what treasures might be waiting under the surface, ready to be discovered? Earlier strikes had turned up rare minerals, aurodium and platinum, even stranger substances—a vein of crystals, once. Elphrona was a planet-sized treasure vault, and somehow, it belonged to everyone who lived there. Ogden’s Hope, as a place, was well named. It was a place of possibility, where everyone had an equal chance at success and freedom. Chancellor Lina Soh cited Elphrona often in her speeches as emblematic of the spirit of the Republic. It was a hard place but, generally, a good one.