by Troy Denning
Who said that is her plan? Ship replied. Or that you have a choice?
“I’m a person, not some tangled wad of biocircuits like you,” Ben countered. “I always have a choice.”
Ship withdrew in a swirl of dark mockery, leaving Ben alone to contemplate his growing despair. Despite his brave words, he had no illusions about his chances of resisting Abeloth in his current circumstances. Every time he so much as thought about escaping, he heard a hiss in the ventilation duct, then awoke later with no real idea how long he had been unconscious. If she wanted to change bodies with him—or steal his, or whatever it was she did when she took possession of someone—there was little he could do to stop her.
And that was the most terrifying aspect of his captivity. Abeloth had not hurt him—had barely even spoken to him. In fact, most of the time she seemed entirely oblivious of him. Yet he could always feel her presence, a cold tendril of fear that had taken root deep inside him, binding him to her in a way that chains could not. Abeloth wanted Ben for her own. She always had. He had first felt her touch as a two-year-old child, when his parents had hidden him and the other Jedi younglings at Shelter during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong. He had not been there an hour before the tendril had come, a cold aching need that had frightened him so badly that he had closed himself off from the Force for years.
Now Abeloth had him for good. He could feel that in how the tendril had knotted up inside him, in the way its cold filaments had anchored themselves into his heart and his entire chest. Even if he couldn’t bring himself to accept it, Ben saw the hopelessness of his position. He was Abeloth’s, pure and simple, and the only fate that awaited him now was the one she had planned for him. He understood that.
The only thing Ben didn’t understand was why. There were hundreds of powerful young Jedi in the galaxy, and dozens right there on Coruscant. Yet Abeloth had gone to elaborate lengths to capture him, to lure him into a trap and separate him from his companions. There had to be something special about him—something that Abeloth needed from Ben that no other young Jedi could provide.
The obvious answer, of course, was lineage. Ben was the only child of Luke Skywalker, who himself was the only son of the Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker. Of course, Jaina Solo was also a grandchild of the Chosen One—but only one of her parents had the Force. So that had to be what Abeloth needed from him—his bloodline.
But why?
Ben was still contemplating this question when a pair of weary-looking Sith walked into view, approaching from the rear of the reception hall. The first was a tall, lavender-skinned Keshiri woman. Though badly tattered, her elaborate robe suggested her status as a Sith Lord. She had probably been beautiful once—a few days ago, in fact—but now her face was so rash-covered and swollen that the skin had actually split in places. The second Sith—a young woman—was every bit as haggard as the first. Had she not been wearing light combat armor under a brown Jedi cloak, it was entirely possible that Ben would not have realized he was looking at Vestara Khai.
Part of his confusion arose from the lightsaber still hanging from Vestara’s hip, and from the fact that she seemed to be walking at the Lord’s side. Vestara’s hands were not bound in any way that Ben could see, and her escort’s hands were not particularly close to her own weapons. Clearly, the Lord did not feel she had anything to fear from Vestara.
Ben went from stunned to confused to angry in the time it took the two women to walk ten meters to Abeloth, who still stood feeding on the fear and anguish of the dying space marines. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing—Vestara walking free among Sith—and it occurred to him this might be a form of Fallanassi illusion, similar to the one that Abeloth had used to deceive him and Vestara on Pydyr. Maybe Vestara was actually in stun cuffs and unarmed, with a Sith Lord at her back pressing a shikkar to her kidney.
Maybe … but Ben didn’t think so. Her presence with the Keshiri woman explained too much—like the ambush in the water treatment plant, and how the Sith always seemed to be one step ahead in the assault on the Temple.
The conflagration out on the platform abated as the last pieces of blastboat came crashing down on the space marines. Abeloth lowered the arm she had been using to shield herself and turned to greet Vestara and the Keshiri Lord. Like loyal subjects, both women immediately dropped to a knee and dipped their heads.
Abeloth balled the tentacles at the end of her injured arm and held them out toward the Keshiri, who kissed them as though they were a hand, then rose. Abeloth repeated the gesture with Vestara, this time glancing toward Ben with her broad mouth curled into a self-satisfied smirk.
And that was when Ben recalled what Vestara had done on Pydyr. When she had realized that Lord Taalon was falling under Abeloth’s sway, she had killed him. And when her own father, Gavar Khai, had turned up in Abeloth’s service, she had killed him, too. Maybe Vestara had been a Sith spy all along … though Ben was once more finding that hard to believe. But he was sure of one thing: Vestara would never serve Abeloth willingly. So either Vestara could not see Abeloth’s true form, right in front of her … or she was merely playing along—because she had no other choice.
Abeloth continued to look toward Ben for a few moments after Vestara had kissed the knot of tentacles. Finally, she motioned her “subject” to rise, then led both Vestara and the Keshiri Lord toward Ben. As the trio approached, a section of Ship’s hull peeled away and became a boarding ramp. Abeloth motioned the Keshiri woman to stay behind, then led Vestara aboard and stopped just inside the cabin.
Vestara did not even make it into the cabin. She stopped at the threshold, clearly stunned. “Ben?”
Ben raised his chin and stared at her, trying to look as though he were struggling to control his anger.
“Sorry about leaving you behind, back at the water treatment plant,” he said, thinking of Abeloth so he could put some real spite into his voice. “But it looks like you came out okay. Sleemos always do.”
Vestara stepped into the cabin and backhanded him across the face … hard. “Watch your tongue, Jedi, or it will be wagging from the tip of my parang.”
Behind her, Abeloth’s tiny silver eyes twinkled with delight, and Ben decided that—if he was right about Vestara—he just might have a chance of surviving this after all. He glared at her for a moment, then hit her with a Force shove … which she was braced to accept. Vestara merely rocked back on her heels, then flicked her wrist and sent him flying so hard his head nearly slammed into the cabin wall when he hit it.
“Be careful, child,” Abeloth said, speaking in what sounded like six voices at once. She stepped forward and laid her tentacles across Vestara’s forearm, eliciting a barely perceptible shiver. It was just enough to suggest to Ben that Vestara knew exactly who had touched her. “He is no good to me dead.”
Vestara glared at Ben with what appeared to be true hatred in her eyes. “As you command, my Beloved Queen.”
“Good.” Abeloth retreated toward the door. “Ship tells me the boy has been thinking of escape again. You will guard him.”
“And if he tries to escape?”
“You won’t let him,” Abeloth replied. She stopped at the top of the boarding ramp. “Perhaps he will be more inclined to remain if you tell him what you did in the escape tunnel.”
Vestara’s eyes grew wide, and Ben felt a flash of alarm in the Force. Before she could reply, Abeloth turned away and descended the boarding ramp.
Ben waited until Abeloth had turned back toward the reception hall’s wrecked entrance, then looked up and met Vestara’s gaze. Her eyes were softer than before, but she wisely resisted any urge to comfort or console him. She knew Ship’s capabilities as well as Ben did. Ship could not only watch her, it could eavesdrop on the thoughts in the top of her mind.
“So, what happened in the escape tunnel?” Ben demanded.
“I led an ambush.” There was a hard edge in her voice that did not match the apology in her watery eyes. “On the Millennium Falcon.”
“You what?” Ben had no need to fake the shock, anger, or confusion in his voice. Her story made no sense, yet he could see in her face—and feel in the Force—that it was true. “What was the Falcon doing down there?”
“Dropping off Bazel Warv. He’s dead.” Vestara paused, doing a fairly good job of pretending to be cruel by making Ben wait for the news that she knew would be closest to his heart. “The Solos managed to escape into the Temple, but they’ll be dead soon enough … if they aren’t already.”
Noticing that she hadn’t said anything about Allana or more casualties, Ben breathed a silent sigh of relief and said, “You’re a lying she-voork. There’s no reason the Falcon would be down there.”
“Your confusion is understandable.” Vestara was managing to sound like she was actually enjoying this—and, perhaps, on some level she was. After all, tapping into one’s secret emotions was the key to good acting. “The Falcon is supposed to be with the academy students, I know. We don’t know why it wasn’t—only that our signal people intercepted some chatter about infiltrators entering through the evacuation route. Since I was the only one who knew how to find the tunnel, I led the ambush. Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be the Millennium Falcon.”
Vestara was telling the truth about being surprised—but she was lying about everything else. Ben could see it in her eyes and feel it in the Force, and she was a good enough liar that it shouldn’t have been that easy for him. There wasn’t any more she could tell him, and she was letting him know it.
Ben nodded to show he understood, then asked, “So you were just playing me all along? You were never serious about becoming a Jedi?”
“Does it look like I was serious?” Vestara’s voice held so much contempt that she sounded sincere, and something dark began to burn inside Ben. “Yes, Ben, I was playing you. That’s what Sith do.”
Ben glowered at Vestara, thinking of all the times she had betrayed and deceived him in the past, deliberately allowing the dark ember inside to build into full-blown anger. With Ship able to touch the surface of their minds almost at will, it was important to feel the emotions appropriate to their words, or Ship would sense the disparity and realize whose side Vestara was really on.
Ben was still glowering when a faint rumble began to reverberate through Ship’s landing struts. It was so dull and muffled that he thought he might be imagining it—until Vestara frowned and glanced down at her feet.
“What’s that?” she demanded.
Ben shrugged. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
He looked through the viewport that Ship had created earlier and saw that Abeloth had stepped fully out onto Pinnacle Platform. She was standing at the balustrade, leaning slightly over the rail. And once again, her gaze was fixed on the Galactic Justice Center. One set of tentacles seemed to be pointing toward the base of the distant structure, while the other was hanging down toward the plaza, pulsing and shimmering as she drew on the dark side energy of the frightened crowd below.
“Ah—Abeloth is angry,” Vestara said, following Ben’s gaze. As she studied the scene, the rumble deepened and grew more audible, and Ship began to sway on its struts. She did not speak again for a second or two, then the entire reception hall started to shake and the wrecked entry began to drop rubble. “The people of Coruscant have disappointed the Beloved Queen. Now they will feel her wrath.”
Ben began to have a very bad feeling about what was happening. “A groundquake?”
Vestara turned back to him, her mouth twisted into a smile that seemed more frightened than cruel. “The groundquakes are just the beginning, you fool,” she said. “The volcano will be the true punishment.”
Ben recalled the giant volcano at Abeloth’s home in the Maw, and the pool of magma on Pydyr, and quickly understood the truth of what Vestara was saying. Whether the volcanoes somehow fed Abeloth’s power or were a mere side effect, it seemed clear that they were associated with her presence. And on Coruscant, even a small flow of magma would kill millions. With footings and foundations melting by the square kilometer, skytowers would fall by the thousands, tumbling into their neighbors or dissolving into the same pools of molten stone that had eaten away their bases. The fumes, superheated and filled with noxious gases, would kill hundreds of millions—and if a pyroclastic flow developed, the death toll would rise to the billions.
And the whole time, Abeloth would be feeding off the fear and anguish of the victims. She would grow into a being beyond mortal comprehension. With the dark side hers to command, she could literally reshape the galaxy in any manner she wished.
Ben shook his head, not quite able to grasp the enormity of what was happening before him. He was watching a deity being born—and she was not a benevolent one. It felt like he was caught in one of those terrible nightmares from which it was impossible to awaken, except that if this was a nightmare, it had been going on so long that it had become his life.
Ben looked back to Vestara and found her studying him, watching him come to the same conclusion she had no doubt reached days before, when she had made the decision to infiltrate the Sith. Abeloth had to be stopped at any cost, even if it meant sacrificing themselves—or each other.
After a moment, Ben asked, “The people of Coruscant have disappointed Abeloth how, exactly? There’s nothing they could have done that would justify that kind of punishment.”
Vestara’s smile turned passably cruel. “Who said the Beloved Queen needs justification for anything she does? And anyway, it’s what the kreetles didn’t do that has angered her.”
“Which is?”
“They didn’t defend her,” Vestara replied. “When the Jedi and their space marine galoomps invaded our Beloved Queen’s palace three days ago, only a few brave spirits tried to protect her. Most Coruscanti just went home and hid like the cowards they are—and that is why they will suffer.”
“Our forces are inside the Temple?” Ben gasped, uncertain whether to be relieved or alarmed. If they had already been inside for three days, then clearly the battle was not going well. “How?”
“They came in like flitnats, through an exhaust portal,” Vestara answered. “The fools have been trying to clear the palace of Sith ever since—and they have no idea what they are truly facing. When they finally do discover the Beloved Queen, they will wish they had died on a Sith shikkar instead.”
Ben glared at Vestara with an expression of pure hatred that he hoped would conceal the gratitude he felt for the information she was so subtly relaying. In telling him the location of the initial breach—an exhaust portal—she had also explained why it was taking so long to clear the Temple. The Jedi and their space marine allies were being forced to fight for every meter, and that was going to take time. But even more important was what Vestara had told him about the attackers having no idea who they were truly facing. If the Jedi didn’t know that Abeloth was in the Temple, then they wouldn’t be pushing to kill her. They would be taken completely by surprise when the magma began to flow—and by then it wouldn’t matter what they knew. Abeloth would be too strong to defeat.
Ben locked gazes with Vestara, then looked quickly toward the still-lowered boarding ramp. “And you’re just going to let that happen?” He looked back toward Vestara. “You’re just going to let Abeloth annihilate the jewel of the galaxy?”
“As long as it destroys the Jedi, yes.” Vestara kept her gaze on Ben. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“You’re right. I don’t know why you wouldn’t.” Ben looked back toward the boarding ramp, then back to Vestara, then back to the boarding ramp. “It just seems like an awful waste, destroying that much wealth.”
He looked back to Vestara and tipped his head toward the boarding ramp. She held his gaze for a moment, then her eyes went soft and she gave a brief nod. She understood. She had to find the Jedi and bring them back to Abeloth.
“Coruscant’s wealth is nothing to me.” Vestara reached down and unclipped the safety clip on her lightsaber hook. “It belongs to t
he Beloved Queen, and it is hers to do with as she pleases.”
“The Beloved Queen is a sick sack of tentacles.” As Ben spoke, he was rising to his feet and spinning around to present his back to her. “I’ve seen starving Hutts who aren’t as crazy as she is.”
“Sweat-licking skarg!” A hissing crackle sounded behind Ben as Vestara ignited her lightsaber. “For that, you lose your hand!”
Ben spread his arms as far as he was able, trying to stretch his stun cuffs wide. A searing heat warmed the heels of both palms as the blade sizzled through the armored cable, and his hands came free.
A familiar hiss sounded from the ventilation duct as anesthetic gas began to pour into the cabin, and Ship sank on one side of its struts as it started to raise the boarding ramp to prevent their escape. Ben spun around and grabbed the blaster pistol from Vestara’s holster.
“Gas!” He shoved her toward the ramp. “Go! I’ll take care of Ship.”
Vestara did not need to be told twice. She simply nodded and leapt for the exit. Ben took the blaster off safety and spun away from her, aiming toward a small control nodule in Ship’s rear wall. Then Vestara cried out in surprise behind him, and the sizzle of her lightsaber faded into silence.
Resisting the temptation to look, Ben raised the blaster and pulled the trigger—and sent a single bolt burning into the floor as the weapon was Force-jerked from his hand.
In the same instant, Vestara came flying in at his flank, hitting so hard it felt like she had been launched from a missile tube. They flew across the cabin together and slammed into an interior wall, then dropped onto the floor in a tangled heap.
The anesthetic gas was already filling Ben’s head with fog, and he could feel a knot rising on his brow where he and Vestara had banged skulls. Still, he managed to fight off the rising tide of darkness long enough to look back toward the exit, where the lavender-skinned Lord was standing on the half-raised ramp, watching Ben and sneering.
“Jedi fool!” the Keshiri said. “If she will betray us, she will betray you, too.”