Star Wars: Knight Errant Read Online Free PDF

Chancellor Gennara, knew well that her fearful people wouldn’t tolerate her sending large groups of Jedi Knights on offense when all were needed to protect the home front. Treece had cleverly found a way around that. Each standard year, Jedi Knights had been serving three months on law-and-order patrol and nine months at the frontier. But sixteen days were allotted for travel between those assignments, a figure that remained the same even as the boundaries of the Republic contracted. And, as in peacetime, the travel arrangements remained in the hands of individual Jedi Knights.
    That had given Treece an opening. There were enough Jedi volunteers in transit at any moment that Treece could usually get a team of them to rendezvous at a jumping-off point. That allowed a few days for a quick raid—usually one where no casualties were expected—before the Jedi returned to their designated duties.
    The results of Treece’s raids generally pleased the Chancellor. The morale boost came cheaply; all ships and munitions involved came from private contributions. It was a much different reaction than Jedi Knight Revan had received, centuries earlier, in his own extracurricular efforts against the Mandalorians. But the circumstances, Kerra recalled, were different. The Sith were evil; the Mandalorians just had an attitude problem.
    The logistics were complicated, but Vannar Treece had someone he could rely on in Kerra. Vannar—shehad always been on a first-name basis with him—had rescued her from Aquilaris years earlier, just after that planetary paradise fell to forces led by the future Lord Odion. Vannar, sensing the child Kerra’s potential as both a Jedi and a motivated opponent of the Sith, became her sponsor and mentor. She had lost her family, but found a cause.
    Kerra always wondered if he’d given her the work because he’d thought it would be therapeutic for her. No matter—it was. At twelve, she coordinated travel assignments for volunteers. At fourteen, she helped him raise donations. In the last three years, she’d taken charge of outfitting each group, making sure everything from blaster power cells to medpacs were aboard ship in abundance. In a short time, Kerra had learned everything necessary to run a volunteer paramilitary organization—all while working to become a Jedi Knight.
    It had been a busy adolescence.
    But she’d never joined any of the raids herself. Vannar had forbidden that while she was still a Padawan. Returning to Sith space was too emotional a mission for her, and Vannar knew it. So for years, she’d lived vicariously through him and his allies, taking some solace in the knowledge that she, in some small way, was helping the people she’d left behind.
    When Kerra became a Jedi Knight the day before her eighteenth birthday, Vannar had remained reluctant to send her into action. But a dire warning from Sith space had taken that decision from him. Vannar called upon every Jedi available for a vital mission on extremely short notice. Kerra was available—and, as it proved, essential.
    Kerra had found the addition of fieldwork to her duties enormously satisfying. All those forgotten, busy weeks preparing the way for others to strike at the Sith suddenly gained amplified meaning. Now she was the weapon, finally to be used in places she’d fled from when powerless.If anything, she prepared even harder for the mission. With Vannar and the other volunteers at her side, she’d have everything she needed.
    Today, on Darkknell, what she needed was them . And they were gone forever.
    The mission at Chelloa had been a disaster. Everyone had been lost. Everyone . Daiman’s forces hadn’t even been the cause. Vannar’s team had become trapped in the madness that was Sith space. The problem with making only occasional forays into the region was they didn’t know what they didn’t know. Vannar had valued surprise in ensuring that his Jedi Knights got in and out quickly and safely. But he’d