by Troy Denning
“Very good, Apprentice Raas,” she said.
Vestara winced for poor Ahri; now Xal would whip him for sure. Lady Rhea continued, “I’m happy to see that one of you is thinking about something other than maneuvering me out of command.”
“Uh, you are?” Ahri asked.
“Certainly. Tell me, why do you think Ship would go to such lengths to make sure we could follow it?” Lady Rhea shot a disparaging glance at Xal. “Why do you think it would have picked that place to let us find it again?”
Ahri swallowed, then said, “Because Vestara’s wrong,” he said. “It is leading us into a trap.”
“Precisely,” Lady Rhea replied. “And do you know why?”
Ahri fell into a thoughtful silence, obviously trying to puzzle out the same thing as Vestara. If Ship was what the records aboard the Omen indicated he was, he was a servant of the ancient Sith. Everything he had done since finding the Tribe—even the fact that he had researched the Battle of Kirrek and gone to the trouble of tracking them down—certainly supported that assertion. So why would Ship lead the Eternal Crusader into a trap? There simply was no good explanation.
Ahri reached the same conclusion a moment later. “I’m sorry, Lady Rhea.” His voice quavered as though he expected to be beaten. “I have no idea.”
“No?” An amused smile came to Lady Rhea’s face. “Pity. I was hoping someone might.”
A silence fell over the bridge as nervous Sith began to exchange glances, searching for someone who had the answer Lady Rhea sought.
Lady Rhea let the tension to build a moment, then shook her head in despair. “Laugh, people,” she ordered. “It’s a jest.”
A burst of laughter, all the more powerful because of the tension it was releasing, rolled over the bridge. Lady Rhea waited for it to run its course, allowing it to purge all apprehension from the crew so it could function at optimum efficiency again, then finally raised her hand for silence.
“In all seriousness, I have no idea what Ship is doing here,” she said. “But I do believe Vestara is right about it, and Lord Vol commanded us to return Ship to Kesh. So set battle stations and keep alert, everyone. We’re going in.”
The bridge bustled back to life, and the tiny crescent ahead quickly swelled to a giant, sickle-shaped abyss. As they drew closer, the blue ember inside brightened into a blue dot, and the dark presence that Vestara had sensed earlier grew steadily more distinct and more powerful. She wondered for a moment if that presence might be Ship toying with her, just pretending to be something else. Then she noticed the looks on the crew’s faces and realized that if that were so, she was not the only one being toyed with. Some of her fellow Sith looked worried, some looked confused, and two Keshiri even looked enraptured. But no one showed any indication that they recognized the presence they were feeling.
Vestara glanced over and found Lady Rhea frowning in concentration. But her Master’s gaze was not fixed on the dark crescent into which the Crusader was traveling. Instead Lady Rhea’s eyes were focused on the two black holes revolving around each other in the binary system. Her expression was wary and alert, though not quite hostile, and Vestara could tell that her Master sensed something there—something she herself had not detected.
Vestara shifted her Force awareness toward the binary system and brushed a third presence. It was vast and cloudy, faintly dark and welcoming, but with a pair of bright seeds that felt almost threatening in their intensity. They seemed somehow more pure than the cloud in which they floated, knots of solidness adrift in an ocean of vapor.
Then the color drained from Lady Rhea’s face, and she braced herself on the bridge rail, her knuckles whitening as she squeezed.
“Lady Rhea?” Vestara asked. “What is it?”
Lady Rhea continued to stare toward the binary system. “I’m not sure. It felt like …” She let her sentence trail off, then shook her head. “It’s hard to say. I thought for a moment I recognized a presence.”
“Recognized what presence, Lady Rhea?” Xal asked. “If Ahri is right about this being a trap—”
“It changes nothing,” Lady Rhea interrupted. “We have our assignment.”
“Only if we know Ship is in there,” Xal reminded her. “Lord Vol said nothing about throwing our lives away in pursuit of phantoms.”
The Force rippled with the crew’s growing anxiety, and Vestara knew that Lady Rhea had made a rare mistake by admitting that Ship might be leading them into a trap. Everyone aboard could sense the strange presence waiting ahead, and she felt certain that a fair number of them had also sensed the smaller presence near the binary. A persuasive argument from Xal might be enough to make the crew doubt Lady Rhea’s judgment. And when Sith began to doubt the judgment of a leader, it was seldom long before they took a new one.
Vestara knew Lady Rhea was strong enough to retain command until the Crusader was inside. But if they did not find Ship quickly, or ran into trouble before they did, Xal might well be in a strong position to challenge her authority. And if he won? There would be no doubts about Vestara’s own fate.
She focused her attention on the growing abyss ahead. It was practically all she could see now, a vast smile hanging sideways in space, opening wide to swallow them down, with the tiny blue ball of a distant sun burning bright at the bottom of its belly. Vestara reached out to Ship, opening herself to the Force and begging him to answer her call, to reveal himself not just to her but to the rest of the crew as well.
Instead of Ship, Vestara felt a dark tentacle of need slithering into the void she had created, cold and lonely and hungry for her. It wanted to draw her close and keep her safe, to protect her from Xal and her jealous rivals back on Kesh, from the crewmembers she fought on pirate raids, and from the Jedi with whom the Tribe was preparing to do battle. It wanted her to come to it inside the abyss, to join it in its ancient hiding place, where it could keep her safe … forever.
Terrified and confused, Vestara tried to pull away, drawing in on herself and trying to return her focus to the bridge of the Crusader. It was like trying to pull away from her own intestines. The thing was rooted inside her now, pulling her toward it almost physically—no, not almost. She could feel it actually drawing her into the railing, using the Force to drag her deeper into the abyss.
Then a collective gasp went up from the rest of the crew, and Vestara knew they felt it, too.
“WHEN YOU SAID BODIES, LOTS AND LOTS OF BODIES,” LUKE COMPLAINED through his helmet microphone, “I sort of expected them to be dead bodies.”
“Who knew?” Ben asked. “Do they look alive to you? Do they feel alive?”
Luke had to admit they did not. He and Ben were standing just inside the chamber they had seen from the control room, held to the floor by the station’s centrifugal force. But they were shining their helmet lamps “up” into the chamber’s weightless interior, where a gently undulating sea of limbs and torsos was slowly drifting past their heads.
The writhing light they had observed through the control room viewport was still visible, though only as an inconstant purple glow silhouetting the bodies above their heads. Every few seconds, a hand or foot would twitch, or a puff of breath vapor would rise from someone’s mouth, providing subtle evidence of life. And that was the only evidence. Even their Force presences seemed almost nonexistent, so faint and dispersed that they could not be separated from the diffuse aura that permeated this whole part of the Maw.
“They don’t feel like anything,” Luke admitted. “At least not anything I’ve felt in the Force before.”
He hit a chin toggle inside his helmet, activating a faceplate display that showed the environmental readings in the chamber. Seeing nothing more troubling than a slightly elevated CO2 reading and a chilly room temperature, he put his life support on standby and reopened his faceplate.
As the seal broke, the ammonia reek of unwashed bodies filled his nostrils. Because human noses were so poor at discerning distinct odors, he struggled to identify individual smells. The strongest was
simply the result of too many unwashed bodies in a confined space. But there was also an undertone of decomposition, and—barely detectable—of desiccated flesh. Not everyone in the chamber was still alive.
Then the odors all combined into a single eye-watering stench, and Luke had to call on the Force to prevent his stomach from rebelling. After a few shallow breaths, he conquered his revulsion and began to feel the bite of cold air on his nose and cheeks. The temperature wasn’t quite freezing, but it was cold enough to make him wonder whether someone—or something—was trying to limit the rate of decay in the chamber.
Ben’s helmet hissed open, then Ben gasped, “Bloah! And I thought before that smells couldn’t get any worse.”
“Then you haven’t spent enough time with Hutts,” Luke observed. “We’ll have to correct that.”
Ben half suppressed a gag, then asked, “You’d do that to your own son?”
“Consider it continuing education,” Luke said. “A Jedi Knight should be comfortable in any environment.”
“I’ll bet Yoda wasn’t this cruel.”
“Yoda lived in a swamp,” Luke reminded his son. “He made me eat stuff that smelled worse than this.”
“No way.”
“Absolutely.” Luke did his best Yoda imitation. “Hmmm … slaur roe fresh from the swamp. Tickles the throat, it does, and the belly it fills.”
A croaking noise came from inside Ben’s helmet. Luke chuckled. “Just breathe through your teeth,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”
Luke began to shine his headlamp on the beings floating nearby. They were dressed in light overalls or two-piece utilities, both of the type worn beneath vac suits, and their feet were either bare or covered in boots. Many were humans, but there were beings from most space-faring species: Falleen, Twi’lek, Bothan, and dozens of others. They were universally gaunt and unkempt, and those in older fashions appeared noticeably thinner and more slovenly than those wearing modern clothes.
When a headlamp illuminated their faces, they would usually shift their gazes or even move a hand to shield their eyes. But once in a while, especially when the individual was particularly emaciated or dressed in especially old fashions, the pupils would fail to contract, and there would be no reaction at all. Ben was shining his lamp on one such body, a half-mummified Bith male in a sleeveless Old Republic-era jumpsuit, when he finally let out a nervous groan.
“This is really starting to shiver me out.”
“Me too.” Luke reached in front of a young Wookiee female and shone his headlamp on his hand, then watched in growing confusion as her eyes focused on it only briefly before turning inward again. “I think they’re meditating to death.”
“Yeah, that’s pretty murk, all right,” Ben said. “But take a look at this.”
Luke turned to see a line of liquid beads floating in the beam of his son’s headlamp, curving down out of the mass of bodies above. He had seen too many similar beads in too many space battles not to know what they were, and their bright crimson color suggested they had been shed fairly recently.
“Who’s bleeding?” Luke asked.
Ben activated his wristlamp and turned to shine it behind them, following the crimson trail up into the tangle of floating bodies. Several beings had strings of red ovals on their clothes, but there were no rips or wounds visible, and all of the stains appeared too small to be the source of the heavy blood trail.
“Only one way to find out, I guess.” Ben hitched a thumb toward the interior of the chamber. “Shall we?”
Ben’s tone was casual, but there was an edge to his voice that suggested he did not relish approaching any closer to the purple mystery above. And Luke didn’t blame him. The writhing radiance might be no more than a manifestation of harnessed gravitic energy, similar to the Glowpoint in the much larger Centerpoint Station. Or it might be a tangible embodiment of the Force, the source of the alien longing that had terrified Ben so much as a toddler. Whatever it was, Ben was ready to face it and stare down his old fears, and Luke had never been prouder of him.
“Yeah, I think we’d better,” Luke said. “Somebody up there must be hurt. Why don’t you take the lead?”
Ben nodded, then sprang away. Although there was no artificial gravity to draw him back down, he had to use the Force to counter his angular momentum and avoid hitting anyone. Almost immediately, he let out a startled cry, and a frightened chill came to his Force aura.
“Ben?” Luke called. “What’s wrong?”
“Um, nothing,” Ben assured him. “Just surprised. I think my old friend found me.”
Luke frowned. “That old friend?”
“Well, it sure isn’t Tahiri,” Ben replied. “But don’t worry. I can handle it.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’ll see.” Ben paused between a pair of floating bodies, now about three meters above and three meters behind Luke. “You coming?”
“Right behind you.”
Luke sprang off the floor, then reached out in the Force to counter his angular momentum. As soon as he began to pull himself toward the far side of the chamber, a cold tentacle of longing rose up inside him, urging him to come closer, to surrender to … what? Luke had no idea, only that its presence felt ancient and powerful and somehow familiar, that it seemed to recognize him and care for him and yearn for his eternal companionship.
“Oh,” Luke said. He bounced off a warm body, then used the Force to pull himself after his son. “That’s kind of …unsettling.”
“I guess you could call it that,” Ben said. “I’d just say scary.”
“Yeah,” Luke agreed. “That, too.”
He reached Ben’s side, and together they continued to follow the blood trail deeper into the chamber. As they drew nearer to the center, they began to see tendrils of purple light sliding down between the floating figures. Sometimes it was actually shining through the bodies. But the alien presence did not seem to be pulling them closer to the glow. Rather, it appeared to be all around them, enfolding them and holding them within itself.
Finally, they entered an area where there was no clear blood trail, just a lot of beings flecked head-to-toe with crimson stains. One of them was a Duros with a steady trickle of blood bubbling out of a nasty compound fracture of the thigh. Judging by the color of the bone end and the surrounding flesh, the injury was fairly recent. The Duros had lost so much blood that his noseless face had paled from blue to almost white, and his large red eyes had gone pink with shock. But if any other beings in the vicinity had noticed their companion’s trouble, they had not bothered to rouse themselves from their meditations. Even more shocking, at least to Luke’s mind, was the standard-issue Jedi flight suit in which the victim was dressed, and a faint flatness of the cheeks that Luke thought he recognized from the reports on a certain missing Jedi.
“Ben, does that look like Qwallo Mode?”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “Besides, a Duros in a Jedi flight suit can’t be anyone else. My only question is what’s he doing here?”
“Good question. Maybe he can answer.” Luke opened one of the thigh pockets on his pressure suit and removed his medpac. “If we can save him, that is.”
He pulled out a pair of laser scissors and cut away the jumpsuit leg. Ben strapped a pressure kit around the injured thigh, but he had barely begun to inflate the cuff before the patient snapped his head around to look at them. Luke laid a gentle hand on the Duros’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Qwallo. You’ll be fine as soon as we stop the bleeding.” Luke wasn’t actually sure of that, because Mode—assuming this was Qwallo Mode—had already lost a lot of blood. But one of the first things a person learned in emergency medical training was to keep the patient calm. “Do you recognize me?”
Mode’s eyes swung toward Luke, then grew wide and panicked. He began to flail his arms and kick with his good leg, battering both Skywalkers.
“Blast!” Ben said, struggling to inflate the pressure cuff. “Do you think he’s got it?”
<
br /> “Maybe.” Luke did not need to ask what it was. Before entering the Maw, they had received a message from Cilghal describing what had happened to Natua Wan at the pet expo, and both Skywalkers realized that her illness meant that the Jedi had no idea how widespread the psychosis might be. “I guess that’s as likely an explanation for his disappearance as any.”
Luke slipped around and began to restrain Mode’s arms, then started to project soothing feelings through the Force. Immediately the tentacle inside him began to grow stronger and more distinct, filling him with a cold yearning that—alien as it was—reminded him all too much of the lonely ache that he had been living with since Mara’s death.
Mode twisted at the hip, bringing up a knee that Ben barely caught on a forearm.
“Stang!” Ben said. “Sedatives?”
“Rather not,” Luke replied. “With as much blood as he’s lost, we might kill him.”
“Then perhaps you should let him alone,” said a deep voice behind them. “You seem to be doing more harm than good, yes?”
Luke glanced back to find the flat-nosed face of an ancient Gotal hanging upside down in the purple light. With large patches of skin flaking off the tall sensory horns atop his head and broad features so emaciated they seemed all brow and teeth, he was obviously not far from death himself. He was also wearing the threadbare remnants of a sleeveless, tabard-style Jedi robe dating from nearly a decade before Palpatine.
Behind the Gotal floated several more beings in various stages of starvation. There was an age-yellowed Givin who, with his exterior shell of bones, looked like the walking skeleton he was. There was a skinny Ortolan with an atrophied trunk and a body so thin it seemed nothing more than a leathery bag of wrinkles. There were even a pair of yellow-haired humans, a gaunt male and cadaverous female in green-striped jumpsuits that had been all the rage before the recent civil war.
Luke saw nothing to suggest that they—or anyone else in the immediate vicinity—were affiliated with the Jedi Order, and he decided the presence of two Jedi from two different eras was probably little more than coincidence. He signaled Ben to keep working, then continued to hold Mode’s arms as he looked back to the Gotal.