Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi II: Omen

by Christie Golden

  They turned a corner, and beheld beauty.

  The light came not from artificial lighting brought here by the Aing-Tii, nor from the relics that had been carried into the cave for so many millennia. Instead it emanated from glowing stones of all hues—red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white, and all shades and gradations in between. On the floor from stalagmites; from the stalactites that hung above them like lightsabers; on each wall, they glowed.

  “Rainbows,” Ben said quietly, and Luke nodded. This was a place where the Force was extremely strong. It was not purely energy from the light side, but it was most certainly not a hollow of dark-side energy such as Luke had encountered on Dagobah during the trial he had so miserably failed. He could not tell for certain, but he wondered, as Ben spoke, if this was the reason the Aing-Tii had developed their rainbow theory of the nature of the Force. Standing here, embraced indeed by its power, Luke could understand why they felt so.

  He took a deep breath, pulled himself back from the awe the place inspired, and said, “We’re here for a purpose. Let’s be about it.”

  Ben literally shook his head to clear it, then nodded. They moved forward, through this antechamber crowded with Force-imbued stones, to a second cavern.

  It was much larger than the first, a rectangular space about twenty by thirty meters. While this cavern, too, was illuminated by the Force, that was not the primary reason for Ben’s quick inhalation.

  Everywhere the eye looked were relics. They were stacked three or four deep, in haphazard piles that looked as though they’d been simply tossed down.

  “If these things are so precious to them, why do the Aing-Tii treat them so carelessly?” Ben asked, nudging a round, apparently seamless object gently with a foot.

  “Because they can’t touch them,” Luke said. “They can’t organize or arrange or catalog them in any way. They just have to bring them in here somehow—wrapped in something perhaps—and set them down.”

  “And we have to sort through all this?” Ben said, his voice cracking slightly. Luke couldn’t blame him. Such a task was not just daunting but bordering on the impossible.

  “We don’t have to compile data and analyze each one,” Luke said. “But … from what Tadar’Ro seemed to think, we’ll find answers as we handle them. Insight. Knowledge that we can pass along to the Aing-Tii about what direction they should go.”

  Ben looked slightly less pained, but still very dubious. “How long do you think it’ll take?”

  “Well,” Luke said, “I do have nine years and a few months left to fill …”

  “That’s not funny”

  INSIDE THE EMBRACE,

  ON THE AING-TII HOMEWORLD

  THE PROCESS WAS HARDLY A SWIFT ONE, BUT IT WENT FAIRLY QUICKLY. After a few moments of paralyzing indecision at the vastness of the task, Luke and Ben started the simplest way possible—they picked up the first item they encountered as they entered the cavern, and began there.

  Everything they touched had the imprint of the Force on it in some way, shape, or form. Some were fairly powerful to handle; others only had a faint residue. Most of what they picked up, examined in the Force, and then discarded was clearly technological, although some items were fossils or stones or other organic materials.

  “If only we could take all these things to the Temple,” Luke said wistfully. It was impossible, of course. The relics belonged to the Aing-Tii, and they would never part with even the least of them. “So much knowledge here. So much we could learn, about other cultures, about the history of the galaxy, perhaps about the Force itself. You and I don’t have the skills or the tools to properly examine even the smallest fragment of what we’re seeing. All this wisdom, collected here by beings who are forbidden even to handle them, let alone study them. I respect other beings’ religions, but I have to confess … this strikes me as a tragic waste.”

  “I know,” Ben said. “I’m really curious about some of these things.” He paused, looking up at his father as a long, twining piece of what seemed to be metallic rope twisted slowly of its own accord in his hand. “So … what are we looking for?”

  “Guidance,” Luke said. “A … hit, a bit of insight. You’ll know it if it happens.”

  “There are times,” Ben said drily, “when I empathize with those who express frustration with the vagueness of the Force.”

  After the first few hours, when they had made only a little headway and stopped for a food and water break, Luke found himself agreeing with Ben’s comment.

  “They’re all powerful items,” Ben was saying as he chewed on a stick of something greenish brown and intended to be more nutritious than tasty. “I mean, I get that. But I’m not getting any hits. Nothing that’s shouting out, Do This, Aing-Tii!”

  “Neither am I,” Luke admitted.

  “Dad … do you think we’re going to find anything to help Tadar’Ro and his people?”

  Luke hesitated. “It’s completely possible that there isn’t anything in here to find. But there are still an awful lot of artifacts,” he pointed out. “It may be that there’s one particular thing that will turn out to be useful, and we’ll just have to find it.”

  Ben groaned slightly.

  The hours seemed to stretch on with no sense of time passing, although their chronos were working just fine. Sometimes Luke would think hours had passed when it had just been twenty minutes. Other times, he was shocked to realize he’d spent three hours without realizing it.

  What had at first been an intriguing, if laborious, undertaking had become almost mind-numbingly rote. Luke forced himself to stay open to the Force and not let his mind drift from the task at hand. He couldn’t afford to miss anything, no matter how subtle. But so far, they had found nothing that could give the Aing-Tii any sort of guidance.

  Luke straightened and stretched, eyeing the next round of artifacts. His eye fell on something shiny, catching the light of the glowing Force stones.

  It was a small pyramid of gleaming metal. While some of the other artifacts had shown signs of age and wear and tear—some of them seemingly so fragile that Luke and Ben had been reluctant to touch them—this item looked almost newly minted. Luke extended a hand, grasped it—and gasped.

  THE OUTER RIM

  PRESENT DAY

  Vestara had always hoped that one day, if her path toward Sith mastery unfolded as she had dreamed, she would be permitted aboard the Omen, the Ship of Destiny, to learn its secrets and that of her own history. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined that another Ship might descend from the skies, looking like a red, winged eye, to summon and teach her.

  But the ways of Fate are strange indeed, and Vestara seized the challenge eagerly.

  Shortly after the devastating news that the Sith, far from ruling the galaxy as the Tribe had ignorantly assumed, were facing extinction, Vestara had been called to enter Ship itself. She was not the first, she knew; Lord Vol, the Grand Lords, and the Masters had all preceded her. But she was the first among the apprentices, and had stood quietly before it.

  The spherical vessel was bizarre almost beyond her imagining. Where a moment earlier had been a seamless, red, pebbly, curved surface, there was now an open hatch. Before her eyes, a line formed beneath the glowing yellow, eye-like viewport. A ramp extended in welcome. Vestara did not hesitate; indeed, she had to stop herself from racing upward. She felt the vessel’s pleasure as she first placed her boot upon the ramp. It was almost like—a sigh of relief. She forced herself not to grin.

  Steadily she walked upward, into the heart of the vessel. She was not certain at all what to expect, and so simply observed. The interior was smaller than the exterior would indicate. It was a single chamber, four meters across and two and a half high. The curving walls inside looked exactly like those outside, and before she could think, Vestara extended a hand and ran her fingers lightly along the pebbly orange surface. She could have sworn she felt the vessel quiver, like a pet muut being caressed. The wall was warm to the touch as well and seemed to pul
se slightly, like a living thing.

  There were no sets of controls, no chairs, nothing she had been led to find inside of a ship or indeed any mechanical construct. Ship wasn’t going to give her any clues, either. What was expected of her, then?

  Vestara frowned, then knelt down in the center of the empty, warm chamber. She closed her eyes and reached out in the Force to the vessel.

  Command me, Ship told her.

  A smile tugged at the scarred corner of her mouth.

  Fly, then.

  She didn’t really expect it to obey so simple an instruction, and when suddenly the door was sealed over, like a wound closing, and the ship instantly vertically rose, Vestara tasted fear.

  Only for a moment, though. She did not blindly trust the ship, but she knew what he was designed for, and she knew she had the will to direct him if she didn’t panic. She moved forward on the strange surface to where she could see out the viewport to the Temple that had receded, the faces of the Sith watching in the courtyard rapidly becoming tiny dots. She was as high as she had ever been on Tikk, and then suddenly she was higher still, and looking down on her home planet with eyes wide in astonishment.

  It was beautiful, green and brown and blue with wisps of white clouds here and there, and Vestara suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to leave it.

  You wish to be a Sith Master, do you not?

  You know I do.

  Then leave this world behind, so that you may conquer others.

  Slowly, her palms moist, Vestara had nodded. We will need more than you, Ship, if we are to conquer worlds in the name of the Sith.

  I will teach you. I will teach all of you.

  And so he had. Every apprentice, every Sith Knight, every Master and Lord learned how to navigate the vessel. He knew more about the Omen than they did, and they eagerly drank in the knowledge he shared. And then he took them to the stars.

  They began with the conquest of a single vessel, alone and unprotected, no match for Ship. They harried it, dancing and fighting with weapons that Ship manifested into physical form with a thought, forcing the vessel to crash-land on an uninhabited world. What crew did not die in the accident met death by Sith lightsabers, shikkar, or glass parang—a bladed weapon originally used for clearing undergrowth that had new value as a weapon that could be thrown and then return to the thrower. The Sith aboard Ship scavenged this, their first kill, and with the vessel’s parts were able to make strides toward reconstructing Omen.

  And they returned to space. Isolated and distant from the rest of the galaxy they might have been until now, but no longer. Ship knew where to take them, how to get there, and they would hunt and take their prizes and return with no one left to reveal the location of their hidden world. So they did, again and again, until Omen was completed and spaceworthy Five thousand years old it might be, but it was Sith, and with repairs, it again dominated the skies.

  Two ships, now. One a Sith training vessel, the other a Sith battle cruiser. More vessels fell beneath the determined Sith attacks; more vessels that would be pressed into service to the dark side of the Force. Vestara was permitted to be part of the crew of one of the very first craft so commandeered. It had been given to Lady Rhea to command and renamed Eternal Crusader. Vestara learned as all of them had—by a few practice drills and by jumping with both feet into full-on space battles.

  These new, spacefaring Tribe members had even adopted new garb for the purpose. Loose, flowing robes were a hindrance in scrambling aboard downed vessels and fighting in tight quarters. Instead, Vestara and the other crew members of the various vessels in the new Sith armada wore tight-fitting pants, shirts that permitted air to circulate and cool overheated bodies, comfortable boots for running and climbing, and weapons that were small, deadly, and clipped neatly to a belt, such as vibroblades, shotos, shikkars, and parangs, as well as the traditional lightsaber. Vestara’s light brown hair, which she still kept long, was almost always tightly braided now. She could not afford any distractions.

  Two years had passed so, and they had been the fastest of Vestara’s young life. Sixteen now, she had transformed from a girl who yearned to become a Sith Master to a highly respected apprentice; from an innocent who had never taken a life or even dealt a severe injury to an accomplished killer who had slain dozens by all methods imaginable. She had once dreamed of being allowed even the most fleeting of glimpses inside Omen; now she served on a vessel even larger and more powerful than that ancient, respected warship.

  They were returning home after a particularly satisfying attack: six Sith ships against two bulk freighters, which now were being towed back to Kesh to be repaired, refurbished, renamed, and integrated into the increasingly powerful Sith armada. They had nearly a dozen vessels now. Vestara was happy in her current assignment, though she would have preferred to stay with Ship. He had accompanied them on this battle, and she could feel his contentment in the Force at their progress.

  And then she felt … something else.

  She couldn’t figure out what it was—a jolt, an unsettling in the Force, like a stone being thrown into a pond. It was nothing negative, but—very powerful.

  Lady Rhea gasped, her fingers digging into the arm of her command chair. Her face had gone white, and her eyes were enormous and unseeing. Vestara glanced at her in concern, then left her station to go to her Master and kneel beside her.

  “Lady Rhea—what it is?”

  For another moment, Lady Rhea simply stared, wide-eyed, at nothing. Then she blinked and seemed to come to her senses.

  “I—felt someone very powerful in the Force,” she said, her voice slightly shaky and laced with an uncertainty that Vestara had never before heard from her. It made her stomach clench. “Strong in the power of the light side. A Jedi … a great Master.”

  And Vestara felt a surge from Ship and a name was placed in her head: Skywalker.

  * * *

  “DAD?”

  Ben’s voice seemed to come to Luke from far away, floating to reach him. It was only his son’s touch on his arm that finally brought Luke out of his Force-induced reverie.

  “What just happened? You all right?”

  Luke shook his head, staring at the item in his hand, and then gently placed it back down on the pile. Once he had ceased to be in physical contact with it, the strange tingling in the Force ceased.

  “I—yes. I’m all right.”

  “What was that?” Ben looked warily at the object, clearly deeply reluctant to touch it himself.

  “It’s called the Codex,” Luke said, knowing this was true but not remembering getting the knowledge. “It seemed to … enhance my Force powers. Augment them, make them much stronger.”

  Ben lifted an eyebrow and looked with new respect and curiosity at the item.

  “That’s kinda astral. What is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s old … it’s powerful. And—” Luke hesitated. “It felt …”

  Ben frowned. “Dark? Is it dark-side technology?”

  “No, no.” Luke shook his head. “But it … while it enhanced my Force abilities, it also—” He groped for words, unused to being unable to articulate what he needed to convey. “I felt vulnerable. As if my ability to resist the temptations of the dark side was being tested. But it’s not dark-side technology in and of itself, it’s just … there’s a price for that kind of power.”

  Ben nodded slowly.

  “And there’s something else. I sensed a disturbance in the Force.”

  “That’s … hardly ever a good thing,” Ben said.

  “Agreed. But it wasn’t violent, or tragic. Just … there was a kind of wrongness out there. Something’s amiss. Out of harmony.”

  “Could you tell where? Or who it affects?”

  Luke turned to Ben and looked at him searchingly “It’s coming from the Maw.”

  THE AING-TII HOMEWORLD

  TADAR’RO WAS WAITING FOR LUKE AND BEN WHEN THEY FINALLY emerged, blinking slightly at the change from the comforting dimness of the
Force stones to the harsh sunlight of the Aing-Tii homeworld.

  Luke was willing to bet that Tadar’Ro had not moved at all during the entire time he and Ben had been inside, testing all the artifacts. The Aing-Tii teacher had curled up like a boulder, and now as they emerged he slowly uncurled and stood to face them. His tongues flickered, and his yearning flooded the Force.

  “Do you have an answer for us from Those Who Dwell Beyond the Veil?”

  Luke and Ben exchanged glances. Luke nodded. “I do. But I feel strongly that what I have to say should be told to all the Aing-Tii together.”

  Tadar’Ro was disappointed, but he also understood. He nodded, the gesture seeming to come to him more naturally now. “Very well. But let us make all haste now to return to them. I am sure that they are as anxious as I to discover what Those Who Dwell Beyond the Veil wish for us.”

  Tadar’Ro was indeed anxious, if the pace he set was any indication. Luke and Ben found themselves using the Force to keep up with him. They could, of course, simply have asked Tadar’Ro to slow down, but knowing what he did, Luke understood the Aing-Tii’s driving need. And he, too, wanted to share what he had learned as quickly as possible.

  Force-sensitives all apparently, the Aing-Tii knew they were returning. By the time Luke, Ben, and Tadar’Ro reached the Jade Shadow, dozens of Aing-Tii were waiting for them.

  Still as stone they were, as ever, sitting on their haunches as if they had been carved so. Luke almost felt buffeted by their emotions in the Force: fear, excitement, hope, anger, resentment, gratitude. A rainbow.

  Luke glanced over at Ben, who nodded solemnly. Then Luke took a deep breath, calmed himself, and spoke.

  “When we came here, we had many questions about Jacen Solo. Thanks to Tadar’Ro, we have learned more about him. We also learned many things we didn’t expect to: about Jorj Car’das, about the Aing-Tii and how you use the Force. How you regard it. We are the richer for that knowledge.