Still, the voices were pleased that he was here. He heard them even when he was awake now. And when he dreamed, they taught him how to fly the eye-shaped craft they had shown him.
Desire, focused the right way, would cause the craft to lift off, to fly. Anger would direct its weaponry—weapons he didn’t understand and could not quite visualize. And he could reach out through it, make contact with his ships, direct them on their missions of—
“Ben … Ben …”
He was tired of the voices, and didn’t know why they even bothered to speak his name, since they had his attention all the time now.
Then he realized it wasn’t the voices. It was Kiara.
He looked down at her and frowned. “What?”
She took an involuntary step away. “You’re that way again.”
“What way?”
“Scary.”
He considered his answer. I have to be this way sometimes. It’s how I’m learning. He imagined Jacen saying it to him, back when he was just learning the ways of the Force, back when the Force had frightened him.
Wait a minute. How can she tell? And what is she feeling? He tried to clear his thoughts—something that he hadn’t really been able to do well since he had gotten hungry and stayed that way.
Because she walked behind him, she had to be sensing something in the change of his body language—either that, or she was sensing something through the Force. Perhaps she was Force-sensitive.
And if that was the case, then she was probably being spooked by manifestations of the dark side. In him.
Again, he shoved away notions of dark side and light side. It was all in what one did with the power.
And yet, since he’d been here, he’d been surrounded by an insinuating malevolence that didn’t come from anything alive. It was energy that had been shaped and left here by hundreds of generations of Sith and followers. And if the energy had definite shape, even when not being generated by the living, was that not the dark side?
He took a deep breath and tried to push the voices away, to cleanse his thoughts. Gradually he did so, and felt a lightening of spirit. Silence came to his ears, broken only by the occasional rustle of wind through the dead branches behind them, by Kiara’s breathing, by the tiny whine of servos within Shaker.
Finally he looked at Kiara again. “Better?”
She nodded, pleased. “Better.”
CORUSCANT SENATE BUILDING, ADMIRAL NIATHAL’S OFFICE
Niathal answered the beep with a gravelly command: “Come in.”
Jacen Solo entered, dressed in his immaculate black Guard uniform and a flowing black cloak. He gave her a crisp salute. “Admiral.”
Niathal returned it. “Sit. Hurry. I have a meeting in thirty minutes.”
Jacen sat. “Gilatter.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Probably because I hurried. Gilatter Eight is where the Confederation meeting is going to take place. The election of your counterpart, their supreme military commander. And the launch point of their next fleet action.”
Niathal sat up straighter. “Intelligence has been working on this all this time, and you come up with an answer first?”
“I have sources distinct from Intelligence’s.”
“Such as your parents?”
Niathal didn’t miss the slight frown that crossed Jacen’s features. “My parents had nothing to do with obtaining this information. It’s from another smuggling resource I’ve been cultivating for months.”
“Interesting. Especially in light of the fact that Intelligence has offered independent verification of the information about the election being followed by a raid. A shipyard raid.”
Jacen nodded. “That’s what my source says, too.”
“Promising. When?”
“Two weeks. Actually, thirteen standard days, nearly exactly.”
Niathal made an exasperated noise. “It will take that long at least to put together a coordinated response. We’re going to rush into our counterplan and get good people killed as a consequence.”
“If I may.” Jacen drew a data card from a pocket and set it on the desk before Niathal. “I’ve taken the liberty of putting together a proposal. For a response you would probably consider uncoordinated. But it would get forces there fast and possibly undetected … and I doubt our equally uncoordinated enemy will anticipate it.”
Niathal gave him a dubious look and inserted the card in her desk slot.
Jacen’s plan was simple and unconventional.
Gilatter was an undistinguished Mid Rim star not far from Ansion. Not one of its worlds was habitable for most of the galaxy’s sapient species.
The planet Gilatter VIII was a gas giant, a world whose surface was a beautiful, glowing swirl of mottled reds, oranges, and yellows. At one point in the distant past, it had been a favorite vacation spot for the Old Republic, circled by a ring of resort satellites, from which patrons could marvel at its natural beauty.
But tastes changed, and the brief era in which planetary artistic appreciation could serve as the be-all and end-all of a wealthy family’s vacation ended—and with it the years of usefulness of the Gilatter system. The last resort satellite had gone out of business a century and a half ago, and Jacen’s estimation was that the resort would probably be the site of the meeting to come.
Step One of his plan was to send Jedi-piloted StealthX snubfighters into the system, giving the Alliance military information about the Confederation forces already there—particularly sensor platforms.
Step Two involved bringing in forces selected from fleets and task forces already in that area of the galaxy, choosing them carefully to keep any one unit from losing too much strength, and defeating the ability of spies and analysts to determine where those reassigned craft were going.
Step Three had the Jedi observers directing Alliance forces into the system, avoiding sensor observation or scouting patrols, and setting them up within the atmosphere of Gilatter VIII. The glowing, radiant atmosphere was so thin at its upper reaches—barely denser than empty space in a standard solar system—that vehicles and vessels of all varieties could be stationed there. Such a world tended to emit higher levels of electromagnetic radiation, making communication between vehicles more difficult—but also making detection more difficult. Step Three would continue until the mission commander concluded that it was no longer possible to sneak forces into the atmosphere of Gilatter VIII—and even then, larger capital ships could muster at a point outside the system and be ready to jump in.
In Step Four, the StealthX observers would signal when the meeting had begun … and all the Alliance forces would move in against the Confederation forces.
Niathal and her analysts evaluated Jacen’s plan and, over the span of a day, considered and discarded several others. Eventually they settled on Jacen’s. It would have to be modified and detailed, but it would serve as a template.
At their next meeting, Niathal informed Jacen of her decision, and said, “I will lead this mission myself.”
He nodded, apparently pleased. “I also want to be there.”
“With the Anakin Solo?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Consider it authorized.”
“My opinion doesn’t count much with my uncle these days,” Jacen admitted. “To get Jedi involvement, you probably ought not to mention my role in this.”
“I’ll have Jedi involvement. All it takes is issuing an order.”
Jacen smiled. “I meant, to get wholehearted Jedi involvement.”
“Yes, of course.”
As he emerged from the Senate Building, Jacen felt a familiar presence. He did not react visibly as the tall woman wrapped in anonymous garments, her lower face shrouded by a scarf, fell into step beside him. “How are you?” he asked.
“Well,” Lumiya answered. “Fully healed.”
“Interested in going on an expedition?”
“I sensed that you were moving into a troubled period. Into much danger. Tha
t’s why I came.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Jacen changed the subject. “Any news of Ben?”
“No. His monitors have temporarily lost track of him.” A note of worry entered her voice. “He may not have survived.”
“I think I would have felt it if he had died.”
“Perhaps not, where he is.”
Jacen didn’t ask. “I have faith in him.”
“Clearly so,” she said.
ZIOST
The last kilometer of the climb up to the citadel was comparatively easy. The roadway, made of dressed black stone slabs that were cracked here and there but otherwise seemed little worn by the passage of time, wheels, or feet, allowed Shaker comparatively quick passage. But the little droid began to slow again two hundred meters from the tumble of rock that apparently marked the citadel’s main entrance, and came to a complete stop a hundred meters from it.
Ben felt like stopping, too. He shook from cold and hunger. He returned slowly to Shaker’s side, noting that the droid’s lights were still functioning. He pulled out his data-pad. “What’s wrong, little guy?”
I LACK SUFFICIENT POWER TO MOVE FARTHER.
Ben thought about sighing but didn’t want to expend the energy. Shaker was running on a charge absorbed from the last blaster’s power pack. If Ben wanted to give the droid more time, he’d have to sacrifice the power pack from his lightsaber. “How long can you stay awake on the charge you have, if you don’t move?”
PERHAPS TWELVE HOURS.
“All right. Shut down now. I’ll wake you up when I’ve found a power source.”
The droid gave an obliging beep sequence, and its lights went off.
Ben turned back toward Kiara, swaying from sudden dizziness—and the gray-furred nek leapt at him.
The rampway leading to the citadel was raised, and the creature must have been paralleling their path from just past the drop-off. Ben’s reflexes, dulled by lack of food and sleep, would have let him down, would have allowed him to become the nek’s next meal, but he wasn’t standing in the open; he pushed away from Shaker, staggering back into Kiara and tripping over her, and the nek missed.
It landed gracefully and turned. Ben rose on shaky legs and ignited his lightsaber.
The nek regarded him, head down, obviously considering whether to attack, then charged away, disappearing over the far lip of the walkway.
“They’re going to eat us,” Kiara said.
Ben switched off his lightsaber. “No, they’re not.”
“I’m not scared anymore.”
It was clear to him that she was. But he knew she had said it to reassure him that it wouldn’t be so bad. That he wouldn’t be failing her.
“If one swallows you, I’ll jump down his throat and we’ll cut our way out together,” he promised her.
“What if it chews?”
This time he did sigh. “You’re too logical.”
It took them the better part of four hours to climb to the top of the rubble heap that blocked the main entrance into the citadel. From the top, Ben could see the trench-like gap between portions of outer wall that had not fallen and the high, more intact inner wall of the citadel itself. He could see gray-blue skies and whitecapped forests stretching to the horizon. It was all so beautiful that he wanted to stay forever.
And it occurred to him that if he killed and ate the little girl, he’d recover his strength swiftly. Maybe he’d even cook her first.
But she was looking at him when the thought came, and the way she slowly drew away from him reminded him that the thought was not his own. He forced it away and gave her a little smile, a genuine Ben smile.
The stone doors beyond the rock pile were down, and it took far less time to descend into the outermost great chamber of the citadel.
The only lights available to him were little streaks of sunlight entering by windows near the ceiling. They let him see that there were no furnishings left in this chamber—not even moldy, tattered remnants. It had been stripped of goods long ago. All that remained were entryways into black hallways and curved stone staircases going up or down.
He desperately wanted to descend. He knew the eyeball-shaped ship was somewhere below, hidden, waiting for him. Calling to him.
But he had no strength, and he knew that if he were to become the ship’s master, he would have to conquer it.
“We’ll camp here,” he told Kiara.
She looked around dubiously, but said nothing.
Ben slept and dreamed that, in the darkest hour of the night, something detached itself from the ceiling far above.
It looked like three giant balls, the center one slightly larger and attached to the other two by pivots. A cluster of five legs emerged from each end ball, and they worked together to allow the thing to walk slowly down the wall.
In his dream, he said, “Go away.”
no
this is my home now
your kind is gone
I shall eat you
“I’ll kill you.”
It paused halfway down the wall.
give me the little piece of meat
I will leave you alone
“I’ll kill you.”
It began its descent again.
“Outside,” Ben said, “there are neks. Hunting me. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the first one. Now I wish I had. But you can. Go outside and hunt the neks. They’ll be close.”
The thing stopped again and waited a full minute. Then it changed course, moving toward the top of the rock pile.
Rocks tumbled down the pile as it squeezed through the opening.
In his dream, Ben thought he heard neks howling.
“Eat girl.”
“Grow strong.”
The voices faded as Ben awoke. Hurriedly he glanced around.
Kiara, looking pale, her features sharpening from strain and starvation, was still asleep next to him.
The ceiling was better illuminated. Around its edges there were many odd shapes—curved balconies, broken statuary, other forms he couldn’t identify. He wondered if any of them might become the thing he had seen in his dream.
He prodded Kiara awake. “Come on. We have work to do.”
“Are we going to wake Shaker up?”
“I hope so.”
As his last act of preparation, Ben reconnected the tracer’s severed antenna-leg to its main body, then hung the pouch loop around the dummy he’d constructed.
It wasn’t much of a dummy—just a carefully built pile of stone with red blankets draped around it. But perhaps it would do. It was situated at a spot where the outer walls still stood and the base of the inner wall was littered with stones that had fallen from the high reaches. The pouch hung from its neck.
Kiara following, Ben retreated past the shriveled, frozen nek body they had discovered upon emerging that morning. They found a spot concealed between two courses of dressed stone, and they waited. Ben was as alert as his starvation-induced lack of focus would allow him to be.
Time passed. In the stillness Ben began to hear the voices again.
“Eat girl.”
“Grow strong.”
“You used to want me to protect her.”
Ben had thought his words inaudible, but Kiara spoke up. “Who are you talking to?”
“No one.”
“Eat girl.”
Why were the voices different now? That was a puzzle, and Jacen had always said that puzzles should always be solved, because then they became information that could be used.
He tried to look at the voices’ suggestion rationally. It made sense on a purely logical level. If he killed, cooked, and ate Kiara, he would have several days’ worth of food. His mind tried to veer away from that line of thought—cannibalism had almost always been discussed in his presence in cautionary tales of stranded crash survivors and people driven mad—but he forced himself to consider the matter.
“Eat girl.”
“Grow strong.”
If he did k
ill and eat her, he’d never be caught, never be punished. Even if he confessed to Jacen, his mentor would analyze the data and determine that it was the correct survival choice.
In fact, just about every logical argument Ben could come up with suggested that eating Kiara was the most appropriate action. The plan Ben had just set into motion might not work. It might take days to complete. He could be dead before then.
Every logical argument—
Ben frowned. But not all arguments had to be logical. Kiara was a little girl, and one who had just lost her father. Her daddy. Never mind that her daddy seemed to have been a small-time criminal and the odds, supported by files of data Ben had seen on the Guard computers, were that Kiara would grow up to be a small-time criminal or another type of drain on society. She might grow up to invent a medicine better than bacta, or to write songs or act in holodramas that made things better for people. Or she might have children who did these things, or teach children to do these things.
But not if she died now.
He wasn’t even sure he liked her; they hadn’t had energy enough to talk very often on their long walk. But he felt bad for her, he felt protective of her—
He felt.
And it seemed to him that neither thinking nor feeling needed to be the boss of the other. In a Jedi, they should be mixed, partners. He wondered if that was the case with Guards as well.
None of that answered the question of why the voices had started by suggesting that he protect Kiara and now insisted that he eat her. But the answer—a possible answer, anyway—came to him.
They had told him to protect her because that’s what he had decided to do, and he hadn’t known how. In suggesting that they could get Ben and Kiara off this planet alive, they had made Ben listen to them. He had begun to understand them … and then had begun to think the way they thought. And now they could suggest different things. They could suggest what they’d wanted all along.
He felt a burst of anger, but clamped down on it. He didn’t have the energy to be angry right now.
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