Vortex: Star Wars (Fate of the Jedi) (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi)

by Troy Denning

  “Probably because Ship is so damaged,” Ben replied. He turned his gaze back to Vestara. “How long did it take Ship to arrive after we felt it coming? Three hours?”

  “Easily,” Vestara confirmed. “We crossed the ridge to the fountain ruins, realized that we had the wrong body, then crossed the ridge again and found an empty medbay in the Shadow. That was at least three hours, and Ship didn’t arrive until later, after we had already started to search for Abeloth.”

  “Right,” Ben said. “So if Abeloth was counting on Ship to rescue her, she was disappointed. In its condition right now, the Shadow or Emiax would have caught up in about two heartbeats and blown them both back to atoms.”

  “Which begs the question of why Abeloth would call Ship in the first place,” Taalon pointed out. “If she couldn’t use it to escape, what good is it to her?”

  “Would she have known Ship was damaged?” Luke asked. “When I reach for someone in the Force, I don’t have a feel for their condition until after I make contact.”

  Taalon’s expression turned thoughtful. “Perhaps.”

  “And perhaps not, High Lord,” Khai said. “A plausible story is not always a true one. By all accounts, Abeloth has lived on this planet for dozens of millennia. Why would she pick now to leave?”

  “First, because she’s wounded and being hunted,” Ben said. “Second, because she can.”

  All three Sith frowned, and Ben glanced over at Luke, clearly wondering how much he should reveal about what they had surmised about Abeloth’s past. Deciding that the more they revealed right now, the more likely the Sith were to believe, Luke nodded.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Maybe it will convince them of the truth.”

  “We will not be convinced until we have Abeloth’s body in our hands again,” Taalon said, turning to Ben. “But go ahead. I’m sure it will make an interesting story.”

  Ben’s eyes flashed, but he nodded. “You know what happened at Sinkhole Station, right?”

  “You mean the explosion that destroyed my frigate?” Taalon demanded.

  “Yeah, that,” Ben replied, completely unintimidated by Taalon’s sour tone. “Well, we think that Sinkhole Station may have been built to keep this planet locked inside a shell of black holes.”

  “To what end?” Khai demanded. “Are you saying this planet was Abeloth’s prison?”

  “We’re saying it might have been,” Luke clarified. “There’s a lot we don’t know, but our trouble didn’t start until after, well, a crack developed in the shell.”

  “A crack?” Taalon asked. “What kind of crack?”

  “The kind that we all came through,” Luke replied. “When Ben and I discovered Sinkhole Station, it was already malfunctioning, and a gap had opened in the shell. We don’t understand the technology any better than you do, but it was clear enough that something was going wrong.”

  “And given that it was floating around in a million pieces the last time we passed by, it sounds like maybe Abeloth has been trying to shake her way free,” Ben said. He waved his arm around at the planet in general. “So we’re thinking this place was probably a prison, not a fortress.”

  Taalon considered this for a moment, then said, “A very plausible story.”

  “It’s more than a story,” Luke said, growing frustrated. “It’s a theory that fits the facts—which is about all we have to go on right now.”

  “Not entirely.” Taalon’s voice grew cold. “Because we Sith also have a theory to fit the facts—which is that you are hiding Abeloth’s body from us because you wish to keep to yourselves all knowledge of her nature.”

  Luke rolled his eyes in exasperation. The trouble with Taalon’s theory was that it was half accurate. He had no more intention of sharing with the Sith any true knowledge about Abeloth’s nature than they did of allowing him and Ben to leave the planet alive. But first things first—they had to find their quarry and finish the job.

  “Look, we’ve been over this. Abeloth is alive, and I have no idea where she’s hiding.” Luke started down the bank toward the raft. If Abeloth remained alive, then Callista—or whatever Callista had become—probably remained with her. Given a chance to concentrate in peace, he might be able to focus on her Force presence and locate their quarry that way. “Unless you have a better idea, I’m going back to the Shadow to meditate on it.”

  “To meditate?” Taalon said, remaining on the bank behind Luke. “I have a better idea than that, I think.”

  Luke half expected his spine to start bristling with danger sense. Instead he saw Ship wobble aloft and wheel around toward them. He glanced back and saw Taalon looking in the vessel’s direction, his eyes half closed in concentration.

  “You think Ship is going to help us?” Luke asked.

  “You’re the one who noted that it had been under Abeloth’s control,” Khai reminded him. “Perhaps the High Lord can learn something useful from it.”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Ben grumbled. “Ship has probably been spying for her since it got back.”

  Taalon shot Ben a smirk. “I can handle Ship, young Skywalker. You’re talking to a Sith High Lord now, not an adolescent apprentice girl.”

  Angry disbelief flared in Vestara’s eyes, suggesting that she believed the same thing Luke did—that Taalon was badly overestimating his control of the vessel. Ship passed overhead and dropped onto its struts atop the bank, its eye-like viewport facing the High Lord. From Luke’s position a little behind and below the vessel, it was possible to see that the long, triangular hull breach caused by the power-plant explosion was already half mended, with edges that were now smooth and puckered inward instead of jagged and flared outward. Even the craters left by Jaina’s cannon hits were starting to close, and the scorch blossoms had faded from a deep, sooty black to more of a charcoal gray. How Ship was repairing itself, Luke had no idea—but the way it had been sitting quiet and shut down, trusting the Sith to keep watch over it, reminded him a lot of a healing trance.

  Taalon turned to Ship. “Is Abeloth still alive?” he asked. “Share your answer with the others, so the Jedi will know I am being honest.”

  Luke’s spine bristled with the chill of a dark side touch, and then Ship spoke.

  The dead do not move themselves. Its voice was wispy and low, audible only within the mind. If the Skywalkers did not hide her, then she must be alive.

  Taalon frowned. “That’s no answer.”

  It is the only answer I have, Ship responded. She released me when I was wounded. What became of her later, you know better than I.

  Luke stepped to Taalon’s side. “Let’s assume that she is still alive.”

  “Yes, let’s,” Taalon agreed. He kept his gaze focused on Ship. “Where would we look for her?”

  A glimmer appeared in the viewport—not inside Ship, but in the viewport material itself—and Luke had the feeling that Ship’s attention had shifted to him.

  You know where to find the answer.

  Luke felt a dark tentacle of longing taking form inside him, slithering higher and starting to grow, and he knew that Ben had been right. Abeloth had survived—and Ship remained under her sway.

  You have been there before.

  Unsure whether Ship was speaking to him alone, or to Taalon and everyone else, Luke did not reply. Instead he pointed his son around behind Ship. Khai motioned Vestara up the bank to join him, then came to stand next to Luke, leaving him flanked on both sides by Sith.

  After a moment’s silence, Taalon finally looked over at Luke. “What did it say?”

  Knowing Taalon would sense a lie, Luke merely shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing we can trust,” he said. “Ben’s right. Ship is spying for Abeloth.”

  Jedi liar! The gleam faded from Ship’s viewport as it shifted its attention away from Luke. He is only trying to hide it from you.

  Taaion shot Luke a sidelong glance, then asked, “Hide what?”

  Luke sighed and, knowing that Ship would say the name if he did not, a
nswered, “The Pool of Knowledge.”

  The planet’s greatest treasure. A slit opened in Ship’s flank, and it extruded a long boarding ramp. Come aboard, all of you. I’ll take you there.

  Too large to descend into the jungle gorge, Ship was hovering just above the narrow cleft, the far end of its boarding ramp resting on a patch of rocky rim. Beyond this outcropping, a vine-tangled slope climbed steeply to the right, ascending through several kilometers of tree ferns and club mosses to the fume-belching crater atop the volcano’s summit. To the left, the slope fell away just as sharply, descending a thousand meters to the base of the mountain, where a vast swamp lay quivering with the volcano’s pent fury.

  In the bottom of the gorge lay the only hint of the pool they had come to find, a tiny yellow-brown rivulet so filled with mud and sulfur that Ben could not imagine it coming from anything called the Pool of Knowledge.

  Vestara stepped into the hatchway next to Ben. “So where’s this Pool of Knowledge?” she asked. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know about the pool, but we’re on the same side of the ridge as the fountain ruins.” Ben stepped out onto the ramp and pointed toward the jagged summit. “The notches in the crater look like they’re in pretty much the same place.” He turned and waved a hand toward the swamp at the foot of the mountain. “And the only swamp I’ve seen is near the fountain, too.”

  Vestara followed him onto the ramp and examined the terrain, then glanced over with a half smile. “Show-off.”

  “It would be more impressive if young Skywalker could tell us where to find this Pool of Knowledge,” Taalon said. He stepped into the hatchway behind them and peered in both directions. “I’m beginning to fear the Jedi are right about Ship being a spy. This is terrain for waterfalls, not pools.”

  The pool is here, Ship insisted. The elder Skywalker has seen it.

  Taalon’s suspicion filled the Force, and he turned to look back into Ship’s interior. “You have been here before?”

  “I’ve been to the pool,” Luke corrected. “But that was while I was Mind Walking. It doesn’t mean I can find it in the physical world.”

  Taalon’s Force aura grew acrid. “If you hope to take me Mind Walking again—”

  Skywalker can find it here, Ship insisted. He knows what to look for.

  Taalon narrowed his eyes, then cocked a lavender brow in the direction of Luke’s voice. “Is that so?”

  Luke did not answer quickly, and Ben knew his father was weighing options. Ryontarr, the Jedi deserter who had served as Luke’s Mind Walking guide during the visit to Sinkhole Station, had claimed that anyone bathing in the Pool of Knowledge would see all that has passed and all that will come. And that kind of knowledge was simply not something that Taalon—or any Sith—could be allowed to acquire.

  After a moment, Taalon let his hand to drop toward his lightsaber. “Well?”

  Luke sighed, then stepped into the light just inside the hatchway. “Look for a grotto,” he said, peering down into the chasm. The crowns of the tree ferns lay thirty meters below, and the ground was probably another twenty meters beneath that. “Somewhere in the bottom of the gorge. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Taalon smirked. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I could warn you not to go inside alone, but I doubt you’d trust me on that.”

  “What makes you think you won’t be along to join us?” This from Khai, who was standing on the ramp between Ben and his father. “No one here is foolish enough to trust a Jedi he cannot see.”

  “We need to split up,” Luke said. “It’s a long gorge, filled with jungle so dense we’ll have to cut it away just to see the canyon walls. Every day we spend doing that is another day Abeloth spends recovering.”

  “Which is probably why she had Ship bring us on this galoomp chase in the first place,” Ben added.

  “Assuming she’s still alive,” Taalon said.

  “You don’t believe she’s dead any more than I do,” Luke replied. “If you did, you wouldn’t be here looking for a way to find her.”

  “Perhaps I enjoy your company, Master Skywalker,” Taalon retorted. “The opportunity to learn so much about your Order is not likely to come my way again soon.”

  “On that much, I think we agree.” Luke pointed up the gorge. “How about if Ben and Vestara head upstream, while the rest of us go downstream?”

  Taalon’s gaze shifted toward the ramp. He studied Vestara for a few moments, no doubt using the Force to impress on her the importance of not letting Ben out of her sight, then turned back to Luke.

  “Very well, two groups.” Taalon nodded to Vestara. “You have your orders.”

  “And be wary of ambushes,” Khai added. “Master Skywalker may be right about Ship’s loyalties.”

  Vestara inclined her head, acknowledging her father’s concern, then glanced over at Ben. “Ready?”

  Ben felt an affirming Force nudge from his own father. “Sure.” He started down the ramp toward the gorge rim. “Don’t wait on me.”

  “I’m going to have to,” Vestara said from behind, “if you insist on taking the long way around.”

  As she spoke the last few words, her voice seemed to be growing more distant and to be coming from beneath Ship. Ben turned to see her already several meters below the ramp and floating down into the gorge under clear control. He glanced toward her father and found Khai gesturing in her direction, obviously using the Force to lower her. Ben was more surprised than he should have been; he had been around these Sith long enough to know they employed the Force as casually as most beings used comlinks or holoprojectors.

  Ben glanced over at his own father and cocked a brow. Luke rolled his eyes at such casual overuse of the Force, but nodded and tipped his head toward the gorge. Vestara was as much a Sith as her father and Taalon, and it wouldn’t do to have her down there searching for the Pool of Knowledge alone—not even for a few moments. Ben took two quick steps toward Ship, then jumped off the ramp and felt his stomach rise as he plummeted into the chasm.

  Vestara had already disappeared into the jungle below, and Ben dropped so fast and so long he began to worry he would crash down on top of her. Then his stomach sank with sudden deceleration as his father’s Force grasp tightened, and he saw a nest of cobervine coming up below him. He snatched his lightsaber off his belt and used the Force to push himself in the opposite direction. Several of the vines struck at him anyway, but it was a simple matter to render the plants harmless by slicing the fangpods away before they reached him.

  Once Ben had passed beneath the jungle canopy, he felt a warning prickle from his father and responded by flooding his aura with confidence and reassurance. An instant later he slipped free and dropped the last twenty meters to the ground, using the Force to break his fall.

  He landed in a tangle of shoulder-high ferns whose barbed fronds were coated with a sticky digestive acid. He quickly used telekinesis to push them aside, then joined Vestara over on the bank of the stream.

  It was larger than it had looked from above, easily four meters across and close to half that in depth. The water was more amber than brown, and clearer than Ben had thought, allowing him to see a meter or so below the surface. Vestara was staring into the stream, her lightsaber in hand and her knees ready to spring. But he could tell by her tense shoulders that she hated being in this place as much as he did, that her memories of Abeloth frightened her even more than the half-recalled terrors he had felt during his time at Shelter.

  Ben stopped beside her and peered down into the water. He could see a handful of ribbon-like weeds bending against the current, stretching in their direction.

  “I really hate this planet,” he said. “How you survived all those weeks marooned here, I can’t imagine.”

  “It wasn’t all that difficult, as long as you were with Abeloth.” Vestara did not remove her eyes from the water while she spoke. “The hard part was knowing what she was—as much as that’s possible—and convincing yourself to stay close t
o her anyway.”

  Ben thought back to his own early brushes with Abeloth and shuddered. It had always been her need that had frightened him before, the impulse to draw other beings closer and smother them in the all-consuming furnace of her own dark energy. But now that she had been killed—or wounded, or driven back into her true form of existence, or whatever had happened to her—he had a bad feeling she just wanted them dead.

  A deep rumble sounded someplace far back inside the mountain, then Ben saw a ripple running upstream and felt the soft jungle soil beginning to settle beneath his feet.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think Abeloth is going to give us much choice in the matter this time,” Ben said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, toward a gorge wall hidden somewhere in the jungle behind him. “What do you say we start looking over back there?”

  Vestara shook her head, then finally lifted her chin and peered across the stream. “We’ll have better luck over there.” She pointed to the other side. “Can’t you smell it?”

  Ben took a deep whiff of jungle air and smelled nothing but decaying vegetation. “Smell what?”

  “The breeze.” Vestara Force-jumped across the stream and began to sniff. “It’s cool, and it smells like a cave.”

  “It can’t be that easy.”

  Vestara glanced over her shoulder. “That mean you aren’t coming, Jedi?”

  Ben flushed. “I’m coming.” He gathered the Force and sprang across the stream, alighting on the bank next to her. “Someone needs to keep you out of trouble.”

  Instead of making a comeback, Vestara surprised Ben by turning to contemplate him. She lowered her brow and gazed into his eyes for a moment, almost challenging him to challenge her, then finally shrugged and shook her head in disappointment.

  “That’s why you Jedi are going to lose this galaxy to us,” she informed him. “You’re afraid of trouble.”

  With that, she spun away and began to march through the jungle, using the Force and her lightsaber to clear a path. Ben fell in behind her—though not too close behind her, lest she not be paying attention on a backswing. He wanted to make some retort, of course, but he understood the ways of the Sith too well to fall into that trap. Emotions were dangerous, unpredictable things, and Vestara probably believed that if she could goad him into losing control, she just might have a chance of pulling him over to the dark side. And Ben knew that if she failed, that if he could show her how strong his side of the Force truly was, that someday she would step into the light beside him.