“Let’s get her a thranta just like the one you had and we’ll call it good,” Han said. “I think Lando had a couple on Bespin. Bet he could find us a nice one.”
“Han … thrantas can’t live on Coruscant. There’s too much pollution for them here.”
Han groaned quietly. “Livestock Exchange. I bet you’re going to say we can’t just send her along with Artoo and Threepio and a couple of Jedi guards.”
Leia shook her head, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiled. “We need to go with her.” She reached out a small hand and cupped his cheek. “Sweetheart, that’s what is going to make it special to her when she remembers the day years from now. Not that she got to go, not that she found a mount, a pet—but that we took her.”
“Yeah. We took her … to the smelliest place on the planet. Don’t you think that little button nose of hers will have enough after the first three minutes? Mine will.”
“You don’t mind things like that when you’re her age. I certainly didn’t. My thranta was one of the smelliest creatures I’ve ever met, and I adored her. To Allana, it’s all part of the fun and excitement.”
Han thought about the various creatures he’d had to ride during the course of his life. Grondas, rontos, banthas, and, most memorably, tauntauns. Even now, years later, his nose wrinkled at the memory of the stench of the creature’s entrails, spilling out steaming onto the snow as he cut the fallen beast open with Luke’s lightsaber in a desperate bid to save the young Jedi’s life.
Leia squeezed his arm. “Come on, it’ll be fun. And educational. A day out, looking at all the exotic animals, not having to worry about Seff or … Allana will be beside herself with delight.”
Han grumbled to himself. The thought of his little granddaughter, her eyes shining, laughing and clapping her hands, with no shadow of fear upon her bright little life for a change—yeah, it was a pretty appealing image.
“On one condition.”
Leia snuggled closer. “What’s that?”
“No tauntauns. Those things stink.”
ABOARD THE JADE SHADOW
THEY DROPPED OUT OF HYPERSPACE, THE STARS ONCE AGAIN BECOMING white, glowing, stationary dots in the blackness of space instead of streaking white lights. But Ben had no interest in white dots. Who would, when one of the most beautiful spatial phenomena he’d ever seen was suddenly right before his eyes?
Ben literally felt his breath being taken away for an instant before he recovered himself. The tiny hologram of the area that Luke had displayed did not do the Kathol Rift any kind of justice and had done little to prepare him for the spectacle he now saw. He’d seen nebulae before and, like most humans, found them pretty. But this—
It was every color he’d ever seen and some he hadn’t, this glowing, swirling cloud that filled most of the screen. It seemed to shift and pulse like a living thing, its colors constantly changing. He wanted to sit and watch it for a long time, mesmerized by its dance.
“That really is beautiful,” said Luke, his voice holding just a hint of awe. Ben felt a little better about his own reaction if his dad, too, was similarly impressed. “But I’m sure it won’t be so beautiful once we get inside it.”
Ben nodded. He thought about the journals Luke had had him read, of those who had hallucinations in the Rift, and wondered if part of the reason was that the mind had difficulty transitioning from beauty to danger so quickly. With a final admiring glance at the spectacle, he let his gaze fall to his copilot’s console.
Luke thumbed a button that would send a signal to Cilghal’s com-link. When the Mon Calamari did not respond, he caught Ben’s eye, shrugged, and began to record a message.
“Cilghal, this is Luke. Ben and I are preparing to enter the Kathol Rift. Considering the nature of the Rift and the amount of electromagnetic radiation we’re looking at, I expect that any communication attempts are going to be spotty at best, and more likely simply nonexistent. Please attempt to continue to contact us with any updates on the situation with the Jedi. We’ll do the same with anything we learn, on the off chance that something might get through. Otherwise, we’ll contact you when our mission here is accomplished.”
He hesitated, then added, “May the Force be with us all.”
That more than anything Ben had yet learned sobered him like a bucket of cold water. The gravitas of the situation finally settled on his shoulders. It told him that his father wasn’t at all certain they’d come back from this mission.
That was all right. Ben was sixteen, but he’d endured more than most people three times his age. He’d been on missions where he was very unsure as to whether he’d survive—some where he was pretty darn sure he wouldn’t. Returning from the mission was never the point. Succeeding at it was.
Luke turned to see his son looking at him and gave a little smile. “How was lunch?”
Ben was puzzled. They’d eaten an hour ago. “Uh—fine. Why?”
“Because it just might come back up again.”
Ben snorted, offended. “Not likely.”
Luke chuckled. His hands flew over the controls, and Ben’s eyes were drawn inexorably back to the Rift.
Somewhere in there was the homeworld of the Aing-Tii. It was not impossible to find—Jacen had done so. Ben wished his cousin had been a little more forthcoming in the notes he had left in the Archives about his time there. All Jacen had contributed to Jedi knowledge about the Aing-Tii amounted to little more than a few pages, and even that shed no new light on them, their abilities, their world, or how to find it.
But even with the sketchy knowledge they had, he and Luke had been able to narrow their search, at least a bit. First, and most important, the world had to have an environment that would support humans, because Jacen had made no mention of needing special equipment in order to survive. Nor had Jorj Car’das. Ben was glad of that; he’d gotten awfully tired of constantly having to wear the breath mask—and its accompanying backpack rig laden with canisters—back on Dorin.
The planet had to be protected in some fashion from the radiation of the Rift, or else the Aing-Tii would not have been able to evolve as highly as they had. So it would be in one of the “corridors” and not in the denser parts of the Rift itself.
And … that was about it.
The rest was up to them, their skills, the Force, and sheer luck.
Luke calculated their first jump. Ben raised an eyebrow at how short a distance it was. Luke glanced at Ben and smiled. “Ready?”
Ben shrugged. “I guess so.”
They jumped.
Ben was used to the sight of stars streaking past him, appearing as white lines. But when he couldn’t see the stars, it looked as though nothing at all had happened. The beautiful cloud that was the Rift looked exactly the same during their brief transit, and when they materialized in the first corridor, it looked just as if—
The Jade Shadow shook violently. Lights in all colors flashed wildly about them. Ben tried to stabilize the ship, but it was like trying to ride a spooked ronto—it was all he could do to hang on, let alone try to get it under control. He suddenly thought that Luke might have been right about his lunch.
Luke, however, seemed to sit as still as if he had been glued to his chair. In the back of his mind, Ben guessed that it was another way to use telekinesis—if you could hurl yourself across a room, it made sense that you could stay still even when your ship was tossing you about. And then he had no thought for how his father was managing this, because he suddenly jerked his hands back from the console, hissing in pain.
What looked like Force lightning danced across the console and then scurried across every surface of the Jade Shadow. Ben turned to his father to shout out that they were just short-circuited, but then he realized that his father was causing it. The blue, jagged, flashing lines were coming from Luke’s hands on the console. Ben suddenly understood what was going on.
Luke was utilizing the hassat-durr technique.
The Baran Do Sages had taught it to Jac
en, and then they had taught it to Luke. The lightning-rod technique suffused the user’s body with a very low level of electromagnetic radiation; an inexperienced practitioner performing it in a storm would attract lightning. From what he could see, while trying to stay in his seat and still keep the ship steady, Ben guessed that Luke was turning the Jade Shadow into a reverse lightning rod.
And after a couple of moments that seemed like hours, he realized that the hassat-durr was working. The ship calmed down, and the crackling cloud that enveloped them no longer posed a danger.
“ … handy,” Ben gasped. He ran a hand through his hair and wondered how many bruises he’d gotten in the last few minutes.
Luke opened his eyes. “Very. That should last while we assess what damage we took and plot the next jump.”
“Great. Just—next time, let me know when you’re going to do that, okay?”
As they made their way from jump to jump, they developed a routine. It was immediately apparent that both could not sleep at the same time—not when their situation was constantly changing. But neither did they need a full eight hours of sleep apiece every twenty-four. Both of them were familiar with healing trances, which in a pinch could substitute for a good night’s sleep. Ben figured that the Kathol Rift definitely qualified as a pinch.
* * *
“SO,” BEN SAID, WITH EXAGGERATED NONCHALANCE. WE’RE GOING TO go see the Aing-Tii.”
“Yes … we are.” Luke’s voice held a question.
“We’re going because Jysella Horn flow-walked, and you suspect that Caedus might have used flow-walking to kick off the whole Jedi-going-crazy thing in the first place.”
“Right again. Perhaps you’ll tell me my name next, or who my sister is?” Luke’s voice held no irritation, just mild amusement. He was trying to figure out what Ben was getting at. Ben continued.
“So … I’m thinking that the best way to understand something is to learn about it.”
“Ah. Now I see where you’re going with this.”
“Well, you wanted to master the hassat-durr, even when the Baran Do Sages were leery of teaching you,” Ben offered. “Even when they thought it might turn you into another Caedus.”
“True enough.”
Ben waited, but Luke offered nothing further. He waited longer, patiently, but still no more words came. So he tried again.
“It’s not a dark side ability per se,” Ben said. “Not exclusively. It isn’t inherently a harmful thing, like Force lightning or Force grip. I mean—you can’t even really change anything substantial, from what I understand. And Jedi already are able to look into the future a little bit—that’s why our reflexes are so sharp and fast.”
“We use the Force to do that.”
“And don’t you use the Force to flow-walk?”
“True, but … Ben, it’s not what you are imagining it to be like.”
“You don’t know what I’m imagining.”
“I bet I’ve got a good idea, because believe it or not, I was once sixteen, and I know what I would think it was like,” Luke said, a smile softening what was starting to develop into an argument.
“But you were a very young sixteen,” Ben said with a slight touch of arrogance.
“Also true,” Luke admitted readily, chuckling softly. “Even so, some things are universal. I don’t think I want you learning flow-walking, Ben.” He held up a hand as Ben opened his mouth to protest. “No, wait, hear me out. It’s not because I don’t think you are strong enough to use it wisely, but because—” He stopped suddenly.
Ben inhaled swiftly, his green eyes flying wide open.
They were everywhere.
Dozens—no, hundreds of them. They emerged from every nook and cranny on the suddenly ominously dark vessel, squeezing up from hairline cracks, flooding out from under chairs and consoles. Their legs were waving frantically, and they moved with astonishing speed up the chair, across his boots, up the legs of his pants—
“I see them, too,” Luke said. His voice was completely calm. “Nothing but hallucinations, Ben. Remember what we talked about.”
Ben did remember, but it was difficult to focus on remembering that these were simple mind tricks when he could feel the vaping things crawling up his legs and arms. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, falling back on logic when his mind kept feeling those myriad tiny little legs scurrying across his skin.
For one thing, such a profusion of arachnids would have been noticed immediately during the preflight check. And even if somehow this many living things got missed both by technology and human eyes, he would be able to sense them in the Force now—and he couldn’t. For another, the ship couldn’t even contain them all. All logic concluded that the spiders did not exist.
The thoughts, calming and settling, flitted across his brain in less than a second. He opened his eyes and, of course, saw nothing. He turned and met his father’s approving gaze.
“Good job, son. What did you see?”
“Spiders,” Ben said.
“Me too.”
The adrenaline was fading now. The meditation, even as brief as it had been, had sent calming endorphins through Ben’s system. “It seems kind of odd that the hallucinations are so universal, you know? Why not something more specifically tailored to the individual? I mean, there are a lot of things that rattle me more than a bunch of spiders.”
As he spoke, he thought back to the several nights he had spent on Ziost a few years earlier; of the voices, first in dreams and then when he was awake, telling him to do horrible things … leading him to want to do them. He also thought of the torture that his cousin had put him through, attempting to temper him like a piece of metal.
Oh, yes—there were a lot of things scarier than a ship full of bugs.
“I’m not sure. We’d have to study the type of radiation we’re being bombarded with, and the effects it has on human chemistry. It’s possible that it simply activates a basic, primal fear center. Spider bites could be deadly on a primitive world. Strange creatures hovering around us could be, too. Fear is a logical reaction.”
“But … bugs, Dad. Squish. End of problem.”
Luke gave his son a glance. “Still scared you at first, though, didn’t it?”
Ben felt his face grow hot. Not for the first time, he cursed the pale, freckled skin he had inherited from his mother.
“I was just—surprised, that’s all. Now that I know what to expect, I won’t be.”
Luke shrugged. “We know the spiders and the mysterious beings are typical hallucinations. They might not be the only ones. We should be cautious. Anything distressing, out of the ordinary—we shouldn’t automatically assume it’s real.”
“Agreed.”
Ben decided not to try to pick up where they had been interrupted on the conversation about flow-walking. He did not think he was in a strong position to argue that he was ready to learn such a discipline when he’d just been taken aback—even momentarily—by an illusionary bunch of spiders.
They continued on for several hours, carefully planning short jumps. Luke’s hassat-durr technique proved consistently useful, although it did seem to drain him. Ben started to get a sense for navigating the corridors, extending himself in the Force to assist his father in determining which way felt right in a place where everything was constantly changing.
The series of short jumps that sometimes felt like one step forward, two steps back, eventually led them to planets. The concentration of corridors was greatest here; it was what permitted life to evolve at all. But each planet proved to be a disappointment. What life there was was primitive and stunted. And a sick suspicion rose in Ben.
He was reluctant to voice it, but he knew he had to. “Dad,” he ventured at one point, “what if we’re completely wrong?”
“I’m always prepared to entertain that suggestion,” Luke said. “The universe is nothing if not humbling. What do you think we might be wrong about?”
“Well—everything we have says that the
Aing-Tii live inside the Kathol Rift. But what if they don’t? What if everyone is just assuming that?”
“Good question. But you taught me the importance of following the evidence, remember? If everything points to them being here, clearly this is the first place we should look.”
“Well, yeah, under normal circumstances,” said Ben. “But ‘looking around’ here is not good for the Jade Shadow or her crew.”
Luke eyed him. “That’s true. Do have a better suggestion?”
“ … uh. No.” Ben was inordinately pleased that Luke freely admitted that he, Ben, had taught him something. He was less pleased that he hadn’t been able to come up with a better idea. “I guess we follow the evidence.”
Luke grinned. “Then let’s be about it. It’ll take as long as it takes. After all, Ben, we’ve got a decade to kill.”
Ben grimaced.
This time Luke let him plot the jump, checking to make sure Ben had calculated properly. The planet they found, though, could be almost immediately ruled out. Ben took a break to eat and drop into a healing meditation for about twenty minutes, then he and his father traded off.
Luke rose from the pilot’s seat and Ben slipped into it. His dad patted his shoulder as he headed back to the galley to get a bite to eat.
Ben didn’t like to admit it, but he was starting to get bored. He re-focused his attention on what he was doing, because he was wise enough to know that when you got bored, you got careless, and when you got careless Bad Things often happened. He was refreshed, fed, and alert, and his mind wasn’t wandering, but he really, really wished they’d hurry up and find the Aing-Tii. Despite Luke’s quip earlier, and despite the beauty of the Rift, he didn’t want to spend the next several years hopping from corridor to corridor.
Suddenly there came a harsh beeping sound. The lights on the console began chasing one another around like lampflies in summer. The vessel began to shake, but there was no storm—
“What the—” yelped Ben. He stabbed at the controls, damping down a quick spike of fear and harnessing the adrenaline to sharpen his reflexes instead. But his reflexes suddenly didn’t matter.
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi II: Omen Page 13