by Troy Denning
“Your own … protection,” Control said. “This is a cross-species epidemic … very virulent. Divert at once.”
As the Pydyrian spoke, Luke and Vestara returned to the flight deck. Instead of assuming her usual seat, Vestara came forward to take the navigator’s seat, no doubt hoping for an opportunity to check the latest settings on the subspace transceiver. Ben saw the hint of a smile cross his father’s lips and knew she would learn only what he intended her to learn.
“So, do we divert?” Ben asked. A sense of dread began to settle over him. He had read about some of the plagues that had ravaged the galaxy in the past, wiping out entire civilizations and leaving whole worlds devoid of sentient life. The last thing Ben wanted was to be responsible for spreading another one. “Maybe someone on Almania can tell us what happened.”
Luke shook his head. “Stay on course.”
“Uh, are you sure about that, Master Skywalker?” Vestara asked. Her Force aura was taut with the same fear that Ben felt, and there was an edge to her voice that suggested she would not allow herself to be taken to a plague world without a fight. “That guy sounds pretty sick.”
Luke did not bother replying, and the Pydyrian’s voice came over the cockpit speaker again. “Shuttle Emiax, be advised that our spaceport is closed to all traffic. You will not be allowed—”
“Pydyr Control,” Luke interrupted. “You be advised that this is Grand Master Luke Skywalker of the Jedi Order, in pursuit of a stolen vessel of great personal significance, and we are going to land and recover it.”
“Master Skywalker?” The Pydyrian sounded healthy for an instant, but quickly lapsed back into his reedy voice. “I assure you, no star yachts … have landed on Pydyr in the last week. You would be condemning yourself and your companions to a long and …”
The words trailed off into a fit of coughing, and Ben felt more convinced than ever that the poor fellow was mere hours from death. But when he looked over at his father, he found no hint of concern or fear, only a knowing smirk and a jaw set in determination.
Ben realized then that nothing was going to dissuade his father from landing on the plague moon, not fear for their own safety or that of the galaxy, and his heart began to climb into his throat.
“We’re not going to turn away, are we?” he asked.
Luke shook his head. “We’ll be fine. Trust me.”
“Why should we?” This question came from Vestara. “I can feel in the Force that something terrible is happening down there. How can you be so sure we won’t be affected?”
To Ben’s surprise, his father’s smile grew wider, and it did not vanish as he turned to face Vestara directly.
“To begin with, I never mentioned what kind of vessel we were chasing.” Luke looked back toward Pydyr. “And Control knew it was a star yacht.”
With a cloud of dust motes swirling through its cavernous hangar and a long line of berthing bays sitting empty and dark along the back wall, the Corocus Spaceport looked more like a narglatch den than a planetary transit station. The giant maintenance cranes were bleeding orange corrosion from their rivets and weld-seams, and the faint wheeze of a leaky pressure coupling was whispering somewhere in the back of a darkened repair bay. Through the viewport window, Luke could see only one other vessel in the hangar, a classy BDY ZipDel light transport sitting across the way in the mouth of a transfer bay, its human crew peering out their own viewports toward the Emiax.
Their Force auras were trembling with fear, their faces mottled by blue blisters and weeping sores. Luke could see by the purple bags beneath their eyes that they were exhausted with worry, and it was clear by their unkempt hair and drooping shoulders that they were close to giving up hope. He held their gazes, then began a special breathing exercise designed to help him immerse himself in the White Current—two short inhalations followed by a single long exhalation.
Adepts of the White Current believed that the Current was separate from the Force, that followers of other Force-using traditions were drawing on some lesser form of mystic energy. Other traditions tended to view the White Current as no more than a different manifestation of the Force. To Luke, they were both right. The White Current was different from the Force—but only in the sense that any current was a different thing from the ocean in which it flowed. In their essential wholeness, they were each other.
After a few breaths, Luke began to sense the White Current flowing past him, a feathery brush that made him feel refreshed and strong. He opened himself to it just as he would have to the Force, and it began to ripple through him, to fill him with a sensation of warmth and contentment. He surrendered himself to the current, let himself become a part of its flow and the flow to become a part of him.
Now that Luke had joined with the White Current, he began to see things through it—not as they appeared, but as they truly were. He turned his attention across the hangar again, pouring feelings of reassurance and calm into the White Current and using it to look at the two crew members of the ZipDel transport.
Their blisters and sores quickly faded from sight, and their flesh tone returned to a more healthy-looking pinkish beige. But their postures remained slumped and their eyes clouded with despair, suggesting that while their illness was merely an illusion, it was one they themselves accepted as real. Causing such suffering was an unthinkable cruelty to devotees of the White Current—and one that told Luke all he needed to know about where Abeloth was hiding.
“You two stay on the Emiax.” Luke opened the hatch and started down the boarding ramp. “I’ll go find out where they’re hiding the Shadow.”
“In just your robe, Master Skywalker?” The concern in Vestara’s voice sounded genuine. “We have hazard suits aboard.”
Luke glanced back. “A hazard suit?” Sensing another chance to steer her toward a false conclusion regarding Jedi abilities, he flashed his most condescending smirk. “Why would anyone need a hazard suit when he has the Force?”
He descended the boarding ramp into the briny, fetid air of the hangar, then made his way through a cloud of still-swirling dust to the opposite side of the landing pad and ascended a brick staircase to the portmaster’s office. Inside he found only two Pydyrians, both covered in the same bluish blisters and weeping sores as the humans he had glimpsed earlier. Small and slender, with long faces and delicate, vaguely avian features, the two Pydyrians were perched on roosting stools, their back-folding knees tucked beneath their seats and their toe-talons locked tight around wooden crossbars. Both were tilted precariously forward, the communications officer over his comm equipment and the portmaster over his slant-topped desk, and both appeared sick and on the verge of collapse.
Luke studied them through the White Current, as he had with the ZipDel crew, and saw that their illness was an illusion. As much as he wanted to believe it was Abeloth deluding the inhabitants of Pydyr, he had his doubts. Dozens of Sith—including a couple of Masters and a powerful Lord—had spent weeks in Abeloth’s company without perceiving her true nature, and he himself had failed to see through her deceptions for days as she lay in the Shadow’s medbay disguised as Dyon Stadd. Given how easily he was penetrating this illusion, it seemed unlikely to be Abeloth’s doing.
Luke crossed to the portmaster’s desk and cleared his throat.
The Pydyrian barely raised his head. “You would be Luke Skywalker? The Luke Skywalker?”
“That’s right,” Luke said. Although his face might not be well known on Pydyr, his name most certainly was. Decades earlier, he and Leia had helped free the Almanian system from the tyrant warlord who had been on the verge of pushing the Pydyrian species into extinction. “I’m looking for my wife’s star yacht, the Jade Shadow.”
The portmaster nodded. “So you have said. As I told you over the comm, nothing by that name has landed here.” He used a slender hand with three long fingers to tap a command into a datapad on his desk, then turned the screen toward Luke. “Please look. You have just killed yourself for nothing.”
“I doubt that.” Luke peered down and found the spaceport traffic log on the screen. Though there were only fifty entries on the first screen, they went back nearly a month, and none of them was a Horizon-class space yacht. “The Shadow may not have landed in your spaceport, but I’ve already found all the evidence I need to prove the thief landed on Pydyr.”
“As you walked across the landing pad?” the portmaster scoffed. He rocked back on his haunches and looked Luke directly in the eye. “You Jedi are good.”
“Not that good,” Luke said. He put a touch of Force behind his words, using it to plant the lie he intended to tell more deeply in the portmaster’s mind. “You see, she’s the carrier.”
“The carrier?”
Luke pointed at the portmaster’s sore-covered face. “Of the Weeping Pox,” he said, making up his own name for the illusory disease. As much as he disliked lying, it was sometimes a necessity for any Jedi—and right now, his best option was to use the illusion, not fight it. “The thief is immune to this disease herself, but she’s the one spreading it.”
“Spreading it?” the comm officer echoed, coming alert. “Someone is causing this plague intentionally?”
“We don’t know her motivations,” Luke said, turning to the comm officer. “Perhaps she’s just frightened. But we need to stop her.”
The comm officer’s eyes shrank to angry beads. “You should have stopped her before Pydyr.”
“We haven’t had much cooperation.” Luke spread his hands. “I’m afraid she’s proven very adept at persuading people to hide her.”
The comm officer’s gaze shifted toward the portmaster, either urging his superior to reveal what they knew—or seeking permission to do it himself.
“And that’s a very unfortunate thing,” Luke continued. “Because the longer it takes us to get her into a lab, the more beings will die.”
“The lab?” the comm officer asked. “You think you can cure this?”
“That’s what the scientists tell me,” Luke replied. “If they can figure out why she’s immune, they can replicate it.”
The officer’s eyes went back to the portmaster. “Najee, we must tell him.”
“You already have, you fool,” the portmaster answered.
“And he did the right thing.” Luke fixed his gaze on the portmaster—Najee—and put an edge in his voice. “It’s not just Pydyrian lives that are at stake. Where will I find her?”
Najee shrugged. “Who can know? We tracked her ship to the … to the seashore, well outside the city.”
“Near a certain temple,” Luke suggested. He watched the Pydyrian’s expression sink and knew that he had guessed correctly—that he had been guessing correctly since the Emiax entered the Almanian system. Abeloth had come here to find the Fallanassi, a secretive order of women who were also known as Adepts of the White Current. “Najee, I know that the Fallanassi make their home here, and I have every reason to suspect the thief intends to hide among them. If I’m correct, their lives are in great danger.”
“You are correct,” the comm officer interrupted. “The Jade Shadow approached under its own transponder code and—”
“Sanar!” Najee hissed. “The High Lady asked us not to speak of this.”
“You remain silent if you wish.” Sanar pulled his headset off and tossed it onto the comm console, then hopped down off his perch. “But if Luke Skywalker needs help saving the galaxy from this plague, the least I can do is show him where to start looking.”
Following Luke Skywalker and his Pydyrian guide without being seen was going to prove difficult—especially in the bright orange hazard suit Vestara was wearing to protect herself from the epidemic. If her quarry remained on foot, the huge columns and shadowy arcades of Corocus’s blocky, mud-brick architecture would provide her with plenty of cover. But if they emerged from the spaceport in a speeder, she would need a speeder to follow, and in the deserted streets of Corocus that would quickly get her spotted.
Still, whether they emerged on foot or in a vehicle, Vestara had to keep them under surveillance. She had already used a public S-thread booth in the spaceport to send a dispatch to the Lost Tribe relay center on Boonta. Within the hour, the Circle of Lords on Kesh would know that the Skywalkers were hunting for Abeloth on Pydyr and that Vestara suspected they had already sent for Jedi reinforcements. It was difficult to guess how the Circle would respond, but respond they would … and it was her duty to be ready with as much intelligence on their enemies as she could gather.
Vestara studied the line of landspeeders resting on their struts along the side of the street, then selected one of the most common models and colors—a turquoise-blue Ubrikkian AirCushion—and stepped over to the driver’s door. She used the Force to pop the locks from the inside, then lifted the door and slid into the driver’s seat. The alarm system was flashing red and pinging softly, warning her that it needed to read a thumbprint. Vestara ducked down and looked behind the scanning pad. It was difficult to see clearly through the hazard suit’s transparent faceplate, but after a moment she located the signal carriers and used the Force to jerk the two wires free of their contact points.
The alarm began to wail immediately. Vestara touched the ends of the wires together, silencing the siren in less than a second—then cried out in surprise as the vehicle’s passenger-side door lifted open.
“Galactic Alliance Disease Control,” she said, preparing to Force-hurl the intruder into the adjacent building. “I need transport to—”
“Don’t,” said Ben Skywalker’s filter-muted voice. “Just … don’t.”
Vestara looked up to find Ben, also wearing a hazard suit, standing outside the speeder. His lightsaber remained on his belt, but he was holding a blaster pistol—and pointing it at her.
“Ben.” As she spoke, Vestara was wondering how long he had been watching her, and whether he had seen her enter the PanComm S-thread booth in the spaceport. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Right,” he said. “That’s why you invited me.”
Vestara cocked her head. “Would you have come any other way?”
“Of course not,” Ben said. “We’re supposed to be waiting aboard the Emiax. You are supposed to be taking a nice long sanisteam.”
Vestara thought for an instant, then said, “That’s right. How did you know I wasn’t?” She shot him a playful smile and, wondering how effective her flirting could be from inside a hazard suit, cocked her brow. “Did you peek?”
“Didn’t need to.” Ben plucked at his orange hazard suit. “I checked the suit locker. Now let’s go put these suits back where they belong.”
Ben waved the blaster barrel for her to leave the speeder.
Instead, Vestara hit the repulsor activator. “I’ve got a better idea. Get in.”
“I’m under orders.” Ben leveled the blaster at her. “And for once, I should probably obey them.”
Vestara rolled her eyes. “Ben, we both know you’re not going to use that thing, and I’m not going to get out.” She used the Force to depress her door toggle, and the driver’s door dropped into place. “So you can either get in, or let me go alone.”
Ben holstered his blaster. “You forgot the last option.”
“What’s that?”
“Pull you out of there by force.”
Vestara raised her brow, surprised by his assertiveness. “As fun as wrestling you might be, Ben, aren’t you forgetting something?”
Behind his faceplate, Ben’s expression finally began to grow uncertain. “What?”
“I’m Sith.” Vestara put some edge into her voice. “There’s no telling how far I’ll escalate things. It might even get deadly.”
Ben’s shoulders slumped, and he slipped into the passenger’s seat. “Do I at least get to know where we’re going?”
“Sure.” As Vestara spoke, the nose of a SoroSuub landspeeder began to emerge from the spaceport parking garage behind them. She reached over and, sliding down in her seat, pushed Ben’s head down. “We
’re following your father.”
“What?” Ben tried to sit up again.
Vestara used the Force to push him back down. “I don’t know about you Jedi, but we Sith are not in the habit of allowing our Masters to go hunting things like Abeloth alone—not without a backup plan.”
Ben stopped struggling. “You think he’s going after her now?”
“I don’t know. But if they have traffic control on this moon, they have entry tracking.” As Vestara spoke, a sleek-sounding landspeeder passed on the street. “So why didn’t the portmaster just tell him where to find the Shadow? This has the feeling of a setup to me.”
“Maybe.” Ben grew more thoughtful. “Something might be up.”
“I think something is,” Vestara agreed. “So we follow at a discreet distance. If Master Skywalker doesn’t need us, we go back to the Emiax with no harm done. But if there’s trouble, we may be just the surprise that tips the balance in your father’s favor.”
“Okay, maybe you’ve got a point.” Ben lifted his head enough to peer over the dashboard. “But I want you to know something.”
“Yes?” Vestara sat up behind the pilot’s wheel, fearing he knew about the message she had sent—and wondering why that felt like a betrayal to her. “What is it?”
Ben shot her a half smile. “You’re a bad influence.”
The dark veil of a storm cloud was pushing in from the sea, assailing the base of the cliff with an endless succession of rolling white-caps. Between waves, hundreds of oval forms appeared from the water, many of them large enough to be starships but probably just boulders. Farther out stood the white spire of a distant island encircled by sea cliffs as high as the one upon which Luke was standing.
