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

by Troy Denning

  The fist descended and sent Vestara flying, completely out of the grotto and onto the rubble pile that High Lord Taalon had Force-blasted from the entrance earlier. She tumbled across the stones backward, tucking her chin to prevent her skull from cracking against the stones but otherwise leaving herself unprotected. Three somersaults later, she slammed into a chunk of broken pillar and finally came to a rest, her head spinning and her body aching. Her barely healed shoulder had begun to throb again, and a line of stinging dampness confirmed that her old abdomen wound had reopened.

  Two pairs of boots began to crunch toward her from the grotto mouth. Vestara struggled to her feet and stood at attention. This was the third time she had been punched, and she knew High Lord Taalon would not want to kneel down when he inspected his work. Her tunic and trousers were torn in a dozen places, exhibiting an impressive array of cuts and already darkening bruises. She had a split lip, a bloody nose, and two black eyes, but so far nothing that seemed likely to cause permanent disfigurement.

  Despite her fear that High Lord Taalon would find it necessary to change that, Vestara would not have dreamed of begging for mercy. The fight against Luke Skywalker had left her father in far worse condition than she was, with a pair of blaster burns and an amputated forearm. Even Taalon was having trouble breathing because of some cracked ribs, and his cheek was as swollen and black as a guama fruit. Most alarming, his fall into the Pool of Knowledge had done something to his eyes. The pupils had grown so large that meeting his gaze was like staring down a pair of wells, and if Vestara looked long enough, it seemed to her that she saw two dim stars twinkling in the bottom.

  The two men circled Vestara twice, appraising every detail of her injuries, and finally stopped in front of her. Taalon sent a chill down her spine by looking her up and down for several more moments, then turned to her father.

  “What do you think, Saber Khai? Have we done enough?”

  Khai’s expression grew hard and thoughtful, but there was an almost imperceptible arch to his brows that suggested how painful the question was for him to answer. The last thing he would want was to see Vestara seriously injured, and yet he had to know, as she did, that asking for too little might easily get her killed.

  After a moment, Khai shook his head. “It’s certainly clear she’s been beaten, but will that fool the Jedi? We need something disfiguring—a broken nose, perhaps, or a burst eyeball.”

  Vestara tried not to show her fear as Taalon studied her face and contemplated her father’s suggestion. The nose could be repaired by any competent surgeon, but the eye would be a handicap forever. To the discerning taste of the Keshiri, even the best prosthetic would be evident and considered a blemish worse than the scar at the corner of her mouth.

  Instead of raising his hand to strike, though, Taalon shook his head. “Skywalker is clever. A serious injury, he would view as an effort to win sympathy and reinforce Vestara’s story.”

  Khai nodded. “Yet this will be enough to play the boy’s sympathy,” he observed. “He’s still very naïve.”

  “Indeed. We also avoid the question of how a mere apprentice managed to escape from us without injury.” Taalon grabbed Vestara beneath the jaw and turned her head to inspect his handiwork more closely. “Has the Skywalker boy fallen in love with you?”

  Vestara felt the heat rising to her cheeks, but she answered honestly. “I’m not sure it’s love yet,” she replied. “But I do know he entertains fantasies of turning me to the light side.”

  Taalon’s brow cocked. “Does he?” He glanced over at Khai. “How would you feel about a Jedi daughter, Saber Khai?”

  Khai’s smile was quick and cynical. “Nothing would make me prouder, High Lord … as long as she remains Sith on the inside.”

  “Yes, that would be necessary,” Taalon confirmed. He continued to hold Vestara by the jaw. “And you, child? What are your feelings about the Skywalker boy?”

  Vestara let her eyes drop, then admitted, “I’m not sure, my lord.” She did not even consider trying to lie; any attempt was doomed to fail, and it would only make Taalon suspicious of her motives. “I think I may be falling in love with him, but …”

  She let the sentence trail off, not sure what else she had intended to add.

  “But?” Her father’s voice was stern. “You’re not sure?”

  Knowing better than to take the opening her father was trying to make for her, Vestara glanced up and shook her head. “No. I just don’t want to.”

  To her surprise, this drew a sympathetic smile from Taalon. “But you must, my dear,” he said. “If young Skywalker senses that you are falling in love with him, then he will fall in love with you.”

  Vestara’s eyes grew wide. “You wouldn’t forbid it?”

  “Forbid young love?” A snort of amusement escaped Taalon’s broken nose, sending a spray of blood down Vestara’s ripped tunic. “My dear, there are some things even a High Lord cannot forbid. All I demand is that you use what you feel—just as you would use your anger or your pain. Can you do that?”

  Vestara nodded, eager and relieved. “Of course.”

  “Good.” Taalon continued to hold her by the jaw, bending down and moving in close. “You understand what we require?”

  Vestara nodded. “I’m to learn the identity of the Jedi queen,” she said. “The one you saw in the Pool of Knowledge.”

  “No!” Taalon squeezed her chin so hard that Vestara feared he intended to break her jaw after all. “You are to learn everything about her—not just her identity.”

  “Yyy-ee-sss.” Vestara could barely squeeze out her reply. “I understand.”

  “I doubt that.” Taalon continued to squeeze, the black emptiness of his gaze drawing Vestara in, making her feel dizzy and hollow inside, as though she were falling, tumbling down into the dark wells of his eyes. “This is an important assignment, Vestara—more important than slaying the Skywalkers, or discovering the truth of what became of Abeloth. It may be the most important assignment I have ever given any Sith.”

  “My lord, I’m honored,” Vestara said, feeling truly flattered. “May I know why?”

  Taalon glanced back toward the grotto. “Because I have seen it, my child.” He finally released Vestara’s chin, but she continued to feel trapped, lost in the abyssal darkness of his gaze. “Destiny has but one throne, and if a Jedi queen claims it, the Sith cannot.”

  A heaviness came to the jungle air, and the flattery of a moment earlier became a burden Vestara felt ill prepared to carry. She knew she was strong in the Force, but the Skywalkers were mighty, and even Ben was a battle-tempered warrior whose experience went far beyond hers. The only advantages she could claim were her charm and her treachery, and she was not fool enough to believe they would make her the equal of Luke Skywalker or his son.

  When Vestara’s astonishment kept her silent longer than was proper, her father stepped in to cover. “So our goal must be to discover this queen’s identity?” he asked. “And kill her before she can assume the throne?”

  “Let us not limit ourselves, Saber Khai,” Taalon said. “It may be that even the Jedi do not know their queen’s identity yet. Perhaps she has not even been born.”

  “My lord Taalon,” said Khai, “if the queen has not yet been born, how do we know there is anything for Vestara to learn? Or that the Jedi know any more than we do?”

  “Because of when they attacked,” Vestara said, recalling how quickly the fight had erupted after High Lord Taalon saw the image of the Jedi on the throne. “Ben tried to get me to pretend we hadn’t found the grotto. Then, once we were inside, his father attacked the instant High Lord Taalon saw their queen.”

  “Precisely.” Taalon stepped away and turned to peer into the fungus jungle. “The Jedi know something about this queen … and I know Vestara. She will discover what that is.”

  Whirling through the jungle was a blizzard of bird-moths. They were as bright as jewels, saballine blue and rardo red and coratyl yellow, and they were squeaking a
nd chirping like a thousand tiny astromechs during an ion barrage. Some were as small as a human fingernail, but a few were the size of a Bith’s head, and nothing was trying to eat any of them. The stalks of the club mosses had grown knobby with tree turtles, and the ferns sagged with the weight of dangling wing-snakes. Most disconcerting of all, the ground tremors had stopped and the volcano had ceased rumbling.

  It was, as the saying went, all too calm. And as Luke reached the jungle’s edge, where a sandy bank descended to the beach, he saw why.

  Dozens of huge drendek lizards were wheeling over the river, their great wings blotting out the blue sun. Closer to shore, a colony of long-legged reptiles that looked like a cross between eopies and emaciated nerfs stood ankle-deep in the crimson water, drinking in peace while a carpet of golden smotherpads floated nearby. Thirty meters from the shore, the Sith’s Emiax sat squatting on its S-shaped landing struts, its drooping wingtips hanging down so far they almost touched the azure sand.

  “Hey!” Ben said, stopping at the jungle’s edge beside Luke. “The Shadow’s gone!”

  “Very observant, Jedi Skywalker,” Luke said. “But if you expect to impress me, tell me who took her.”

  “Too easy, old man.” Ben looked high into the sky, suggesting that he had come to the same conclusion Luke had—that Abeloth had stolen the ship and escaped the planet. “I suppose this makes me a Master?”

  “Not quite.” Luke glanced over, quietly checking to make sure Ben’s wound had not come unglued—and that he was holding up okay after their long run from the Pool of Knowledge. “To make Master, you’d have to bring her back.”

  “The ship? Or just Ab—?”

  Ben’s question was cut short by a muffled crackle of Force-lightning coming from deep in the jungle behind them. They dropped over the sandy bank and whirled around to peer back through the foliage. Even drawing on the Force to sharpen his vision, Luke could see only twenty meters or so through the bird-moth blizzard and tangled curtain of fronds. He extended his Force awareness in the direction from which the sound had come and sensed only the planet’s primordial miasma of life, voracious and alien and tinged with darkness. Fortunately, both Skywalkers were already hiding in the Force, so it seemed unlikely the Sith could sense their location any better than he could theirs. But with Ben injured, the Shadow gone, and Abeloth on the loose, that was not much comfort.

  “Sith,” Ben whispered. “Probably chasing Vestara.”

  “Or wanting us to think they are,” Luke replied. He pulled a thermal detonator off his equipment harness and started back up the bank. “Go prep the Emiax.”

  Ben grabbed his elbow. “Dad … no.”

  Luke looked back, saw the concern in his son’s eyes, and sighed. “You’re worried about the girl?”

  “I saw Taalon hit her during the fight,” Ben said. “They might believe her interference was on purpose.”

  “If they believed that, she’d be dead already,” Luke replied. “Ben, I know you like bringing pretty girls to the light side, but Vestara isn’t like Tahiri. She was raised Sith.”

  “Dad, that Force lightning was meant for someone, and it wasn’t us,” Ben replied. “It has to be Vestara.”

  “No argument there. They’re trying to set her up to infiltrate.”

  “They already did that,” Ben replied. “How many times do you think they’re going to use the same old trick?”

  “Until we quit falling for it.”

  Ben winced, but seemed to recognize the truth of what Luke was saying and nodded. “Okay, maybe it is the same trick,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t matter. Vestara is still a Sith, she still knows where Kesh is, and that makes her the best intelligence we have on the enemy. Can we really afford to give that up?”

  Luke dropped his chin in surrender. “I suppose not,” he admitted. “But I’m not taking a chance with that girl. Any false moves and—”

  “I know: blast her.” Ben nodded. “I just think she deserves a chance.”

  “A last chance.” Luke returned the detonator to his equipment harness, then pointed his son toward Emiax again. “You’re going to have to bypass hatch security, so try to enter from the far side of the ship. It may buy you a couple of extra minutes if the Sith arrive before you’re in.”

  “Will do,” Ben said, smiling. “That’s what I admire about you, Dad.”

  “Always thinking?”

  Ben shook his head. “So much confidence in your son.” He started down the bank in leaps in bounds. “How long do you think it’ll take me to pop a hatch lock older than you are?”

  Luke would have made a retort about older locks being better engineered, but his audience was already at the bottom of the bank. He returned the detonator to his equipment harness, watching as his son rushed across the beach toward the Emiax. The young Jedi’s robes were ripped open, revealing an entire flank and hip stained brown with dried blood, and a puckered line showed where the wound had been closed with first-aid glue. The reminder of how close Ben had come to being killed made Luke ache with fear, but it also filled him with tremendous pride to see his son handling the injury with such humor and grace. And—though he remained convinced that forbearance was wasted on Vestara or any of the Lost Tribe Sith—Luke could not help admiring the young man’s compassion and determination to give others a second chance, or even a third.

  Luke pulled his blaster, then crawled up over the bank and took a hiding place in the undergrowth. The jungle remained still, and for several minutes he lay smelling the musty soil, half expecting his ankle to cramp beneath the crushing pain of a constrictor vine, or his throat to fill with the venomous blossom of a fangthorn. But nothing attacked, and he was smart enough to understand just how frightening that was. Abeloth had played them, Jedi and Sith alike.

  How far back her plan extended, Luke could not say. Perhaps escape had been her intention even during the war against the Yuuzhan Vong, when she had reached out to Ben and the other younglings at Shelter. Or perhaps she had fled her planet only in desperation, to escape those who had come to enslave or destroy her. The only thing Luke knew for certain was that her “death” had been a ruse—and that now she was aboard the Jade Shadow, flying out into the galaxy, alone and free.

  Luke began to worry that the Sith might be approaching from a less obvious direction—then, finally, he saw a curtain of fronds shudder. Vestara appeared an instant later, running swiftly and in Force-enhanced silence. The arm beneath her injured shoulder was once again hanging limp, and her face was swollen, bloody, and mottled with bruises. Luke felt a pang of pity for her. Whether inflicted in anger or as part of a stratagem, the beating she had taken had clearly been real. Of course, he found it suspicious that none of her traumas was disabling or disfiguring—but then again, he might have dismissed even severe injuries as little more than a ploy to win Ben’s sympathy.

  Vestara raced past his hiding place and stopped at the jungle’s edge, her shoulders sagging as she peered down on the river beach. Luke could not test her Force aura without running the risk that she would sense his presence, but the way she braced her hands on her hips and kicked at the ground suggested she was more angry at the Shadow’s absence than frightened by it. Still, she was hardly the kind to panic, and her apparent calmness did not necessarily mean her flight had been a ruse.

  But when Vestara uttered what he assumed was a Keshiri curse and remained on the edge of the bank, awaiting her pursuers, Luke knew her life had never been in danger. The beating had been a ploy designed to play on his son’s affections, and it made Luke’s stomach churn to know how hurt Ben would be when he learned how callously the girl was trying to manipulate him. Sadly, that was not a wound Luke dared help his son avoid. Ben would understand beguilement only after he had been exploited by it; he would accept the weakness of the human heart only after his own heart had betrayed him. Before he could be the truly great Jedi he was destined to become, Ben needed to learn these lessons in his gut as much as in his mind. It tore Luke up, but a
s a father all he could do was watch and be there to catch Ben when he fell.

  Vestara had been standing at the jungle’s edge for only a moment when the muffled thud of running boots sounded in the foliage behind her. She turned and, as High Lord Taalon emerged from the fronds, she began to speak in Keshiri. To Luke’s astonishment, Taalon replied with a fork of Force-lightning that caught Vestara square in the chest and sent her tumbling over the sandy bank and out of sight.

  Luke waited until Taalon had stepped more clearly into view, with the half-hidden form of Gavar Khai moving through the jungle behind him, then disengaged his blaster’s safety. The two Sith must have sensed their danger, for by the time Luke had depressed the trigger and sent a flurry of bolts screaming toward them, both were already diving for cover. On the way down, Taalon took a bolt under the collarbone and a second along his neck, but Khai simply vanished into the undergrowth.

  Continuing to lay suppression fire with one hand, Luke pulled the detonator off his equipment harness and set a three-second arming delay, then switched the fuse to MOTION and tossed it onto the ground about a meter in front of him. He backed away still firing, and by the time the two Sith began to return fire, he was already leaving the jungle. He reached out to Ben in the Force, felt only impatient alarm in response, and realized that his son was having trouble overriding the Emiax’s hatch security. Luke sprayed a dozen more bolts back into the jungle, then stopped firing and hazarded a glance down toward the shuttle.

  Ben was standing on the near side of the craft, his lock slicer pressed to the hull just above the hatch controls. He was frantically punching keys and watching the slicer’s screen, searching for some clue to the security scheme. Halfway down the embankment, Vestara was just beginning to recover from the effects of the Force lightning, her body still trembling and jerking as she struggled to her knees. A thin wisp of smoke was rising from her torso, where the heat of the attack had burned a hole in her robes.