“And Abeloth controls everything,” Luke surmised.
“She does.”
“Great,” said Ben.
Luke did not reply. More than ever, he was convinced that Sinkhole Station’s job was to keep this being in line—keep the black holes surrounding her world, so that she couldn’t escape. When he and Ben had been there, the station had clearly been falling into disrepair and it looked like the situation had worsened just in the short time they had been away. Now the area to which Abeloth had been confined had shifted ominously, and this bright blue star burned like a defiant flag run up a pole, daring them to come and get her.
Which, Luke mused, they would.
“We will likely encounter Ship,” Vestara said, as if she were just making conversation.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Probably.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You know about Ship?”
“I know more than about him, I piloted him for a while.”
“I’m impressed,” Vestara said. She attempted to relay the information about the crescent to the other ships in this most peculiar of fleets. “Ship is strong. It takes a powerful will to command him.”
“I take it you have?”
She did not look back at Ben, but replied, “Ship contacted me first when he arrived on our world.”
Luke hid a smile. Vestara was intelligent, cunning, and surprisingly strong in the Force. But she clearly was attracted to Ben, as unfortunately his son was to her, and she wanted to impress him. And in so doing, in bragging about her connection with Ship, she had revealed that it had been the strange vessel that had come to them, not the other way around. He didn’t know what that signified, not yet, but it was an important piece of the puzzle that was the Lost Tribe’s history.
“Once we got close,” Vestara continued, “we felt a presence other than Ship’s. It was … cold. It … squirmed its way into you. It was very needy.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Like, oh, I don’t know. A dark tentacle, perhaps?”
“You, too?”
“It is definitely Abeloth,” Luke said. “Interesting that it feels the same to both Sith and Jedi.”
“I guess a tentacle’s a tentacle, no matter who it’s poking or prodding,” Ben said.
“It makes our task of finding her that much more challenging,” Luke said. “But challenges are what make one grow.”
“You sound like my father,” Vestara said.
“Sith or Jedi, I suppose fathers read the same handbook,” Luke said. “Any response?”
“No. It’s doubtful it got through. They’ll have to just follow us closely.”
“But I’m sure you told them about Abeloth’s world and how to find it.”
Vestara regarded him levelly, her brown eyes cool. “Of course I did. Would you not do the same for your Jedi?”
“I would. Then let’s hope we don’t lose any stragglers.”
And he moved in.
Luke had always loved his son. In recent years, Ben had grown into a young man whom Luke respected as well as loved. As Luke maneuvered the Jade Shadow through the “Chasm of Perfect Darkness,” the way was indeed “narrow and treacherous,” as the Aing-Tii had told them, and he appreciated what a good job Ben had done the first time. Even with Abeloth’s Force presence to hold on to, it had to have been challenging. Luke found himself taxed as he cleared his mind and focused on the Force. Again, as it had the first time, the primary display offered only bright static. Turbulence caused the yacht to shudder, although the protective hovering of the Rockhound offered stability that Ben hadn’t had access to. He hoped that the other vessels were negotiating the difficult crossing as well as or better than the Jade Shadow.
The hull temperature climbed as they entered Stable Zone One. Smoothly, with skill borne of long practice, Luke slowed the vessel. All was going as well as could be expected, but there was something wrong. Something was not as it had been the first time. Abeloth’s presence was of course hidden from them, but Luke knew that. Something else …
And then he knew.
The last time they had come this way, both of them had sensed what they first assumed to be a hive-mind. Later, of course, they realized it was the Mind Drinkers, or Mind Walkers as they called themselves, on Sinkhole Station. Their connectedness had initially made them seem to be more akin to Killiks than individual beings. But now, Luke could sense nothing. Was Abeloth so powerful she could cloak their presences in the Force as well? They were in thrall to her. It was not impossible.
The only other explanation was one Luke did not want to consider.
“Dad,” Ben said. “The Mind Walkers—I’m not sensing them.”
“I know,” Luke said quietly. The silence filled the cabin. Luke continued to extend his senses in the Force, trying to find any hints of life from the station that was now not far.
He found none. But his danger sense began to tickle at the back of his neck. Instantly he dove, throwing himself, Ben, and Vestara back against their crash webbing. With only centimeters to spare, the Jade Shadow slipped under a huge chunk of something that had not been there the last time they were here.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Ben murmured.
Luke brought the navigation sensors back up, turning on the floodlights, and instantly realized why they had not been able to sense any life emanating from Sinkhole Station.
Sinkhole Station had been destroyed.
INSIDE THE MAW CLUSTER
THE LARGE, SPINNING CYLINDER RINGED BY A DOZEN ATTACHED TUBES that had been Sinkhole Station was nowhere to be seen. All that was left of the enormous station, and those beings who had lived on it—if you could call Mind Walking living—was chunks of debris. Huge pieces of what were once the gray-white domes, looking like broken eggshells, hung in the icy cold of space, with flotsam and jetsam that were once vessels of all varieties. They were not close enough yet to see bodies, but bodies there would be as well.
In addition to managing his own shock, Luke attempted to send calm to the rest of the fleet even as he continued to maneuver the Shadow. He sensed the astonishment and almost—affront?—of the Sith, as if they were offended that anything would dare get in the way of their plans.
“It’s—just gone,” Ben said quietly. It was stating the obvious, but the shocked silence had to be broken.
“Detecting no life signs, no infrared,” Luke said. “Whatever happened to it did a fine job of destroying it completely.”
Vestara was silent. Ben glanced at her over his shoulder.
“This wasn’t anything you did, was it?”
She had been staring, wide-eyed, as they had been, but now she snorted derisively. “Oh, of course, I planted a bomb that was able to blow apart the entire station, but was unable to escape from two Jedi. Right.”
Ben flushed. “Sorry. Just—really shocked, you know?”
She seemed slightly mollified. “Yeah, I know. I am, too. This does seem the sort of thing Jedi would do rather than Sith—destroy technology rather than let bad people have it.”
“Oh, trust me, we wouldn’t want to destroy this,” Ben said. Luke shot him a quick look.
“Oh? Why not?” Vestara asked.
A bright flash of light caught Luke’s eye. “Blast it,” he said. “Who among your Sith is foolish enough to keep going into this mess?”
Sure enough, a pair of the Chasemaster frigates had decided to ignore what seemed to Luke as common sense and instead had moved forward at far too great a speed to negotiate such a debris field. Doubtless the hapless captain was hoping to score points with Taalon by gathering some information or perhaps looting a body. Daring, but foolish. Luke, Ben, and Vestara watched as, too late, the frigate realized its mistake and tried to avoid a collision.
That was when something very large moved into place, as fast as it could but with agonizing slowness. Luke caught a strong hit of determination as the Rockhound activated its extremely powerful tractor beam and tried to catch both frigates with it.
/> One of them slowed, stopped. The other one slowed, but not enough to keep it from its fate. Ben, Vestara, and Luke all watched, not averting their eyes at the sudden bright flash of light. Luke felt the dozens of lives aboard the frigate wink out, some immediately, some more slowly.
“What a waste,” Luke said. “A useless sacrifice. All they’ve done is create more debris.”
He felt a surge of anger, quickly shuttered, from Vestara. “One might expect more compassion from a Jedi,” Vestara said.
“Compassion is for those who deserve it,” Luke said.
“Looks like Lando was able to get one anyway,” Ben said before Vestara could retort. “You’re right, Dad. I’m sure to the crew of that frigate the Rockhound is the most gorgeous thing in the universe.” The Rockhound was now towing the surviving vessel away to a safe distance. It moved ponderously back toward the debris that had been fatal to the Chasemaster, extended telescoping stabilizer legs, and sunk them deep into the chunk of what had once been a station, or perhaps a ship. It was hard to tell.
“Abeloth,” said Vestara, breaking the silence.
“You think she could do this?” Luke asked.
Vestara shrugged. “She has great power. She is very strong in the Force. But the Maw strikes me as an enormous place, so it’s possible something else did this.”
It was, Ben had to admit. No one knew exactly what was contained in this vast cluster. It was large enough to contain Shelter, and Daala’s Maw colony, where she had hidden for many years rebuilding her fleet. Neither organization had had a breath of knowledge about the other.
Ben was not a big believer in coincidence.
“A pity,” Vestara continued, “that we lost the option to explore the station more.”
“I feel pity not for us, but for those beings who were destroyed,” Luke said quietly. “It’s impossible to calculate how many lives were lost in this … incident.”
Lando’s Rockhound continued to clear a path through the debris. It was slow but steady, and after just a few moments Luke felt it was safe to begin moving forward.
“I wonder how long it will take to clear the debris field,” Vestara said. “My people are impatient.”
Luke glanced over at her and wordlessly pointed at the wreckage of the Chasemaster frigate.
Vestara fell silent.
Luke was now more certain than ever that Sinkhole Station had been designed to contain Abeloth, and that she was, as his beloved Mara had said, something very old, and very dangerous. It had probably been suicidal to think that he and Ben could have approached her alone. Even though he had asserted to the Sith that he wanted to try to reason with her, understand her, he suspected that such overtures would not be welcomed. He suspected, in fact, given what he was looking at now, that they might be flattened like insects.
Vestara had reported the bare bones about Abeloth, but now, as they crept through the litter of what Luke suspected was that being’s latest struggle for freedom, he said quietly, “Looks like we have a lot of time to kill. Tell us about Abeloth.”
She looked at him warily. “You have everything I have told my own people.”
“So tell us something you haven’t told them. Tell us about how you felt around her. What she was like.”
She narrowed her brown eyes. “Come on, Ves,” Ben said, and Luke wondered if his son was even aware that he was calling the girl by a nickname, “the only reason you haven’t told the Sith is because you’ve not had a chance. We’re in this together—and it was your High Lord who proposed the alliance.”
Whether it was the logic or Ben, Vestara nodded. “Abeloth … she strikes one emotionally. I know you Jedi don’t like that.”
“On the contrary,” Luke said, “we are taught to trust our feelings.”
“Really? Interesting. Abeloth …” She paused for a moment, then spoke with more sincerity than Luke had ever sensed from her before. “Her world is, as I have told you, unnatural. And terribly dangerous. We—we lost many. And when we found her … it was just such a relief to not have to be constantly aware of everything around you that you were grateful to be with her. And she was lovely—at first. She—captivating, I think is the word.”
“Physically beautiful?” Luke inquired.
“More than that. You couldn’t stop looking at her, whatever she chose to look like. It was all you wanted to do—look at her, be around her. Like an intoxicant.”
Luke and Ben exchanged glances. “Her looks varied, then?”
“From day to day, or depending on whomever she was around,” Vestara said. “Always more or less human, though. Sometimes fair hair, sometimes brown, sometimes long, sometimes short. The features shifted, the eye color changed a little. Until …” Vestara paused. “Until the moment I really saw her.”
Ben leaned forward. “What happened?”
“I told you, everything obeys Abeloth. That’s why we wanted to be with her—because she kept us safe. But at one point, the plants attacked Lady Rhea. While Abeloth was still there. She let them. That’s when I understood that we had been betrayed, and the next time I saw her—”
Vestara had a great deal of self-control. She was a Sith, from an entire Tribe of them. She had to have self-control. But Luke saw her pale slightly, and her gaze dropped for an instant. And when she spoke, her voice was slightly unsteady.
“Her hair was long and yellow and fell all the way to the ground. Her eyes were tiny, sunk deep into black eye sockets—like two small stars. Her mouth was—it reached literally from ear to ear, and her arms were short, stunted—with writhing tentacles instead of fingers. She was hideous.”
Luke nodded. “She was. She is,” he said. “I’ve seen her.”
“What? And you did not see fit to tell us? When did you encounter her?”
“It wasn’t a literal encounter,” Luke said, “but a sort of spiritual one. The people on Sinkhole Station taught me a technique called Mind Walking. One can leave the physical body and travel elsewhere. I’m beginning to think the places I visited were real. Certainly Abeloth was. And—other things.”
“Leaving the body,” Vestara said. “All those living corpses … that’s what they were doing, isn’t it?”
Luke nodded. “It’s very appealing. Most of them don’t want to go back.”
“And you saw her? Through Mind Walking?”
“You described her perfectly.”
“Well,” said Vestara with false cheer, “at least we three will recognize her when we see her.”
They had entered orbit around Abeloth’s planet having expected to be attacked every light-year along the way. That nothing had happened worried Ben much more than an open attack.
“I still don’t sense her at all,” said Luke. “She’s deliberately concealing herself.”
“A spider in her web, waiting for the flies to come to her,” muttered Ben. “She—”
And then he felt, not Abeloth’s presence, but another one. A familiar one.
Ship.
Vestara’s eyes widened at the same time, and a soft, almost tender smile touched her lips. Ben shuddered at the thought that she felt such affection for the Sith training vessel.
“Ship,” he told his father. “It’s here. And …” He frowned, trying to put a name to what he was sensing from the Sith meditation sphere.
He had expected Ship to be gleeful. It served Abeloth, who was clearly tremendously powerful and utilized dark side energy. Ship was designed to seek out strong wills, and to obey them. It was created to serve the Sith, and presumably, it would be just as “happy” with Abeloth. But instead he sensed …
“It’s despairing,” he murmured. “It’s … lost.”
Vestara’s eyes darted to him. He couldn’t read her expression.
“Elaborate,” Luke said.
“It’s hard to say but … I don’t think it likes having to serve Abeloth very much.”
“She tried to use it against us,” Vestara said. “Abeloth set Ship against the Sith—the beings who
created it, whom it was made to serve. It could not perform one duty without betraying another, and this troubles it.”
Ben made an amused sound. “A dark side meditation sphere and training vessel with a conscience,” he said. “Who’d have thought it?”
Ship reminded Ben that he was a very complex vessel, and Ben was forced to agree.
“Then we should be prepared for it to happily attack us, Ben,” Luke said. “We’re the one target Abeloth can send it after that won’t cause it any discomfort to kill.”
Ben nodded. “And Jaina and Lando.”
“If we can free him from her will somehow, Ship would be a powerful ally,” Vestara said. “He likes me. He doesn’t want to be used to harm me, or the Tribe. But he can’t resist on his own.”
“That may be,” Luke said, “but let’s take this one step at a time. I’m happy enough it’s not firing on us at the moment. Time to go planetside and see what’s there.”
He and Ben were in the pilot and copilot’s seat. There was still no way to communicate with the Sith aboard the frigates, so Ben waited until they were all assembled in orbit. Each frigate opened up to emit two well-armed atmospheric vessels, no doubt crammed to the gills with Sith.
“Stang,” said Ben. “We’ll have to land the Shadow, won’t we?”
“Yes … Why? Is that a problem?”
“Dyon,” said Vestara, as if reading Ben’s thoughts.
“Yep. Abeloth might try to free him somehow.”
Luke glanced over at the monitor. “He’s conscious, though still under the influence of the drug.”
“Let me go check him out while you two take the Shadow down,” Vestara said.
“Give him another dose,” Luke called after her.
The drug was coursing through his system. Dyon Stad could feel it, could sense it, even though he knew on one level he shouldn’t be able to. He knew that it was clouding his mind, slowing down his body, holding him hostage to the physical needs of his form as surely as the stun cuffs held his body hostage here in this sick bay.
Allies Page 29
