Allies

by Christie Golden

  “Activate lightsabers,” Luke said. “And be ready for anything.”

  There were several sounds of the snap-hiss of the lightsabers in the underground corridor that was no doubt about to deliver them right into Abeloth’s hands—or tentacles. He held the lightsaber in his right hand and counted down: “three, two, one.”

  And then they rushed forward into the blue light of day.

  Into the empty ruin of an old courtyard, overgrown with vines, tree ferns, and other plants. It was contained by steep walls on all sides. Pillars jutted up, blue-green with moss. In the center of the courtyard was the basin of a fountain. The sound of its bubbling floated to them on the still, hot air that stank of sulfur. And from the fountain, buffeting him in the Force as the sulfur was assaulting his physical senses, rose dark side energy.

  Luke knew the place at once. He had been here, Beyond Shadows. This was where he had seen Abeloth for the first time. Had seen her grotesque face in the dark cloud formed by the sulfur, had felt her tentacles wrapping around his leg, trying to wriggle their cold way inside of him. Whispering his name.

  Luke, it had said.

  Come.

  He had refused her then. Mara had warned him not to continue pursuing her.

  He couldn’t see her, couldn’t feel her, but he knew she had to be here.

  “Abeloth,” he called. “Abeloth, I’m here.”

  “So am I.”

  Luke whirled. As he turned to face her, out of the corner of his eye he saw his companions all stiffen suddenly, expressions of stark terror on their faces. But he had no time for them, not when she had finally appeared.

  Standing before him was not the monstrous, hideous form he had seen Beyond Shadows. No being with long, strawlike blond hair, tiny eyes like deep-set stars, a too-wide mouth and arms that ended in writhing tentacles. No, this being did not present that form to his eyes.

  She was tall, true, but looked human. She had long, curly dark hair, thick and heavy. Her eyes were gray, and crinkled in a smile. And then she shifted again, the hair shortening, becoming straight, the color of honey, the eyes turning a slightly silvery shade of gray.

  “Luke,” she said, stepping forward. Her eyes were bright with tears, and the arms that she extended to him trembled. “You’ve come for me. You’ve finally come for me. I knew you would. All this time, I had faith.”

  For the second time that day, Luke was sent reeling in shock. He stared at Abeloth, at this being that had done so much harm to so many. Who had driven young Jedi mad, who had taken so many lives. This ancient, evil being of whom even Mara Jade was afraid.

  And he knew her.

  He suddenly, sickly understood why it was she had been able to touch him so profoundly, so tenderly, aboard the Jade Shadow. Why it had been so easy for him to confuse that contact, which should have been so reprehensible, with that of the loving touch of his mate.

  Because he had once loved her with his whole heart and being. Loved her more than anything in the universe. Had once intended to breathe his last breath in her arms.

  “Callista,” he whispered.

  “I KNEW YOU WOULD KNOW ME,” THE CREATURE WHISPERED. HER GRAY eyes were bright, bright as stars, and they glistened with tears of joy. “You have always been able to know me. You knew me when my very essence was part of a ship. You knew me when it was in a body that was not my own, and even now, even here, you know me.”

  Luke stared at her, his vision tunneling, blood thundering in his ears. Not since Darth Vader had uttered the terrible words, I am your father, had he been so shaken.

  He couldn’t help it. He extended a hand, clasped hers, and they met in the Force.

  Time stopped.

  This thing was indeed Abeloth. Was the being who had slithered into his son’s mind when Ben was just a toddler. Was the instigator of mad Jedi, had turned plants to predators that attacked her enemies. Had destroyed Sinkhole Station and the hundreds of unfortunates who dwelt there. It was horrific, radiating dark-side energy, fueled by hatred and evil, by fear and by need and by loneliness. It represented everything Luke had dedicated his life to fighting.

  It was also, inconceivably, impossibly, Callista.

  This was no trick, no act. This was no illusion, to make him think of his lost love, to soften him so she could strike when his guard was down. That would be difficult enough to have to witness. But this really was Callista.

  He had fallen in love with her when, at the time of her body’s death, her spirit had been woven into the dreadnought Eye of Palpatine. Callista’s physical self had been destroyed, but she had used her Force skills to merge with the vessel. There, she had spoken with Luke, had shared visions of her life with him through the Force. He had had dreams of her then, as he had aboard the Jade Shadow; dreams of her lying beside and behind him, her long, strong body pressing comfortingly into his. He’d fallen truly and deeply in love with a spirit, a soul. Later, his student Cray Mingla, for personal reasons of her own, had chosen to give her body to Callista, so that she and Luke could finally be together.

  Still dazed, he recalled the description that Vestara had given of Abeloth: sometimes she had dark, thick, curly hair, such as Callista had had in her first life; sometimes she appeared with the short, honey-gold, stylish locks that Cray Mingla had worn.

  Tears stung his eyes and his heart swelled with a bittersweet aching. Oh, it was her, it was his Callie, and the love he had once felt for her was still there, still sweet and warm and true.

  In becoming human once again, Callista had lost her connection to the Force. She had learned that she could only touch the dark side, and they had parted ways long ago as she embarked on a journey to recover her Force powers.

  He felt Callista affirming his thoughts, her essence washing over and around and through him, her love bright and true and strong, and the tears began to pour down his face. Luke leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers.

  She had come here, seeking answers, and found only the lonely, needy monster imprisoned at the heart of the Maw. The thing that had lured Jacen in, had damaged so many, had grown and fed and used Callista as it had used others before and since.

  The warmth enveloping him chilled suddenly. He pulled back, just slightly, from her presence in the Force. Immediately, her longing for him became not sweet, but desperate, frightened, needy. He felt the tentacles slipping into the center of his being. She had him again after so long, too long. She had been a fool to have walked away from what they had had together. To have let him marry another, father a child not of her body. It had been wrong, and she would not make that mistake again, ever. They had found each other, she and Luke Skywalker, after so many wrong turns and bitter regrets. Her one true love. And they would now be together, forever.

  No. That was not the way. Luke touched her cheek gently, and she leaned into his hand. Luke wanted to help her. He needed to take her away from here, find a way to separate that part of her that was warm, stubborn, brave, humorous Callista from the monster in the Maw capable of such vast evil and cruelty. It would be all right. It would all be all right. He could unravel the bright thread of Callista from the ugly tapestry of Abeloth and her darkness, he knew he could, if she would let him—

  Let him? Let him? Let him take away the power she had discovered? Let herself become less than the magnificent being into which she had evolved? No, Luke had it all wrong, she would make him like her, would teach him to grow so far beyond himself that he would laugh at the small being he had once been, even as she now laughed gently at his misguided earnestness. This was why he had come. Luke’s path had led him here, beyond any hope or dream or wish, to the Maw, to Callista’s arms again, and now he would never leave.

  They would be together.

  The way she was, and the way she would make him.

  For eternity.

  Luke’s heart broke, again, inside him.

  Mara’s words came back to him: She is never what she seems to be.

  This being was not Callista. O
h, it wore parts of her like some obscene costume, real, true parts of her, parts that made him ache to behold, but it was not her. Callista had once vowed to never use the Force again, if the only way to do so was to touch the dark side. She had fought bravely in the Clone Wars, had sacrificed her life to save others. She was a Jedi. And he knew now that she was as dead as if he had seen her lifeless body.

  The woman he had loved was gone. Abeloth had taken her, as she had already taken so much from so many. He wanted to reach Callista, to save her, but he realized sickly that there was not enough left to save.

  I’m sorry. I can’t help you.

  Callista—no, it wasn’t her, he needed to stop thinking of her as that—Abeloth dropped his hands and stepped back, shock on her face.

  “After all this, after all we went through, together and apart … you would forsake me?” Tears filled the silver gray eyes, poured down her cheeks.

  Luke swallowed, forcing calm alertness through his body. He dropped into a pre-fighting stance, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, the lightsaber, still lit, in his hand.

  “You might once have had part of Callista in you,” he said quietly. “But whatever was good, and true, and right about her—that’s all gone. You took it all and left only shards of her behind. Just like you tried to do with Dyon. For the love I once bore her, I again say, I am sorry, I cannot help you.”

  She continued to gaze at him, and the expression on her face would have moved a harder heart than Luke’s. But his was already broken with the knowledge of what had happened. That his Callie was gone, forever. He continued to regard her solemnly, and she fell to her knees, looking dazed. Sobs racked her frame and she lowered her head.

  “Then you doom all you love, Luke Skywalker,” said Abeloth. Three voices seemed to come from that throat.

  She raised her head. Her face had changed, had become that ugly, tiny-eyed, wide-mouthed monster. Except the part of her that remained Callista. Luke wasn’t sure which—the nose, the hair, but it was an obscene amalgam he knew was designed to torture him.

  He had refused her, and she would destroy him.

  Her eyes suddenly blinked quickly and she glanced upward. Luke could feel it now, too, a tingling of dark-side energy overhead, but nothing of Abeloth’s doing. Hope surged within him.

  In her arrogance and her fixation on Luke, Abeloth had discounted the hundreds of Sith scattered over the area. She had focused on him to the exclusion of almost everyone else who was physically with him, and certainly those who were not. And thus ignored, the rest of the Sith had begun their weaving.

  The Dathomiri Nightsisters used the Force to create a sort of net called a control web. Working together as a team, they wove tendrils of Force energy together and extended it over an area of ground. It felt as if a ball of yarn were being tossed from one to the other as strands of energy crisscrossed and interwove. Beasts beneath this net, this web, would obey the weavers. Luke, Ben, and Vestara had all been firsthand witnesses to this web weaving on Dathomir.

  Never let it be said, Luke thought, that the Sith did not learn quickly, nor that they did not know a good thing when they saw it. It had been Vestara’s suggestion to have those who were not directly involved in attacking Abeloth stand by and work together. The weaving was shaky, inexpert, but with so many strands from such powerful Force-users—hundreds as opposed to tens—even this beginner’s web was enough to unsettle Abeloth as they had hoped it would.

  She lowered her head, fixed him with anger and rage, and lifted her hands.

  And suddenly Luke knew what she intended. Who she would attack.

  It would not be him.

  Luke charged.

  It was out there. Jaina could feel it—Ship, the Sith training vessel Ben had once piloted, that he had found on Ziost and had awakened from its centuries of slumber. The vessel she, Jag, and Zekk had encountered not so long ago on Lumiya’s asteroid—the vessel Zekk had sent away from Alema Rar, with instructions to find a better master. And it most certainly had—it had found the Lost Tribe.

  And Jaina knew that if she could feel it, it could feel her.

  Oh well, Jaina thought, shrugging mentally as she piloted her StealthX toward where she sensed the meditation sphere was lurking.

  From what little the tight-lipped Sith girl had shared with Ben and Luke, and Luke had passed on to Jaina, Ship had been very chummy with the Lost Tribe Sith until Abeloth had called it to serve her. Vestara had said that Ship felt unhappy obeying Abeloth, but that could be Sith lies. Regardless, to Jedi, it was an enemy, whoever was controlling it, and she wanted to blast the cursed thing to tiny bits of … whatever it was made of.

  She could sense it more clearly now. She had expected it to be in the atmosphere, probably already attacking the group assembled to harm its master. But it was in orbit about the planet, doing … nothing.

  No, not nothing.

  Waiting.

  She could see it now, a tiny dot on her tactical display. “Rowdy, get me a better look at this thing.”

  WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT THAT? THOSE THINGS ARE UGLY.

  Jaina smiled a little. “Agreed.” She’d given the astromech a new name and a sort of personality, tinkering with it recently to upgrade it with a humor protocol. Despite its wisecrack, the droid of course obeyed, and Jaina got her first good look at the Sith meditation sphere.

  She’d not seen it up close before, and it was even uglier than she had expected. It looked like a giant yellow-orange eye, covered with veins, with spikes on four sides and propelled by batlike wings. Jaina shook her head at the thought that it had been her cousin who had found this thing, who had gone inside it and made it obey him.

  I see you, Jedi Solo.

  I see you, big ugly orange-red thing.

  Humor rolled off it, then she felt it … ignoring her. Her immediate reaction was irritation.

  You’re working with Abeloth.

  I am programmed to obey a strong will. The girl is strong, you are stronger, Sword of the Jedi, but neither of you can break the hold she has on me. She is older and more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

  So powerful she has you just sitting there because she anticipates needing you, instead of letting you fight me, is that it?

  She felt stoic silence in the Force.

  “Enough chitchat,” she said to Rowdy. “Launch shadow bomb one.”

  She felt a gentle bump beneath her seat as the bomb was forced from the tube. She reached out for it in the Force, her eyes fixed on Ship, directing the bomb directly toward it. It simply sat there. For a wild moment, Jaina wondered exactly how sentient it was. Why wasn’t it attacking her, or moving out of the way? Was this thing choosing suicide by Jedi rather than continuing to help Abeloth against the Sith it had been designed to serve? Was it really going to—

  And suddenly, as if someone had snatched something she was holding right out of her hand, she felt Ship commandeer the direction of the bomb and send it spiraling off harmlessly. It turned to “face” her now. And as Jaina watched, its surface seemed to shiver. Strange appendages began to form, and she realized Ship was making its own weapons and training them on her.

  The battle was on.

  Good.

  Abeloth was raging. Ben felt buffeted by the sheer hatred roiling off her. Sweat sprung on his brow, beneath his arms, and a brush of what had terrified him so badly a few moments ago shuddered through him. She turned her tiny eyes upon him and he gripped his lightsaber. If this really was Callista—or rather, what the thing in the Maw had left of someone his father once loved—then he knew there was no better target to hurt Luke Skywalker than himself.

  What could he do against her, really? But he had to try.

  He took his cue from his father, who lifted his lightsaber and charged the creature. Taalon and Khai, too, rushed into the fray. Ben started to join them. Vestara was right by his side.

  Abeloth was still staring at Ben, and as he raced toward her, she smiled, and flicked three of the tiny tentacl
es that served as fingers.

  Beside Ben, Vestara’s eyes flew wide as something seized her by the throat, lifted her two meters off the ground, and shook her. She dropped her lightsaber, one hand going to her throat attempting to pry off the invisible fingers, the other hand outstretched, fingers splayed hard. Blue force lightning shot from her palm to dance erratically in the air around her for a moment, not reaching its target. Then, inexorably, the blue lightning began to twist, like heated metal folding, to go back on its creator. At the same moment, a thick white root, tipped with finger-length barbs, shot out of the ground. The roots, capped with a thick green spike, twisted around Vestara, then reared back like a snake about to strike. Vestara’s eyes darted to the spike and she yanked in her hand, folding her arm over her chest as the spikes struck home a second time.

  “Vestara!” shrieked Ben. He sprang forward, slashing frantically at the vines, calling her name again and again. She dropped like a stone to the ground, landing hard on her arm, face twisted in agony, booted feet churning up the loose soil. Blood poured from several puncture wounds on her arm and chest, and there was something obviously wrong with her shoulder. Tears poured from her eyes, but she stayed silent, so silent—

  Vestara …

  He gathered her in his arms and raced away from Abeloth’s fury, setting her down, away from the vegetation that even now struggled to crawl up on her. Her face was sweaty and her eyes rolled in her head.

  Ben realized he was shaking as he cradled her. “It’s okay, I’ve got you Ves, you’re okay,” he murmured over and over again. He forced his fingers to stop trembling as he tried to examine her injuries. There didn’t seem to be anything life-threatening; it looked like the shoulder was dislocated. The puncture wounds were deep, but nothing had hit a vital organ or artery. Relief flooded him. She was going to be all right. Ben gave her a quick smile and turned, started to rise.