Fate Of The Jedi: Ascension Part 15

"Okay."

Leia glanced over at the restaurant. She'd seen Allana go through the waitdroid-and-child-and-Squib-sized doorway, but she was willing to bet her granddaughter had found a more normal-sized back door. It was their best shot.

Leia heard some of the blasterfire moving away. Zekk and Taryn were luring them off. It was time. She and Han had been in so many situations like this she didn't even need to tell him what she planned.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Always, sweetheart."

She gave him her blaster pistol. Han rose, a pistol in each hand, and began firing in earnest. At that same instant, Leia shoved her left hand forward. Two of their attackers went flying. She raised her right hand, and the melted metal table rose. As hard as she could, Leia Force-hurled the table toward the center cl.u.s.ter of those firing upon them.

The table crashed down and the rain of blasterfire paused. Leia turned and raced for the restaurant entrance, with Han right behind her.

"Why can we never just sit down and have a decent meal anywhere in the galaxy?" Han complained as he caught up to her.

Leia glanced around at the spilled food, broken plates, and damaged cookware as she headed for the back door.

"Maybe you should tip better," she said.

ABOARD THE JADE SHADOW.

"DAD," SAID BEN, WITH THE SORT OF EXAGGERATED PATIENCE THAT one might use when speaking to a child, "we took her to Korriban. You know, Sith homeworld? And far from turning on us, she defended us."

"I know," Luke said. He was listening to his son, but his eyes were on a slowly turning blue-green sphere. The planet he was regarding with such intensity was either ocean or marsh, with very little dry land. It was a marked contrast with Korriban, which had been their last stop. But it was, to Luke's mind, every bit as dangerous.

Maybe more.

"I mean-those tuk'ata were pretty vicious, and she got them obeying her and leaving us alone."

"I know, Ben, I was there."

There was a long pause. Ben fidgeted.

"And there was a whole pack of them and-"

"Ben!" Luke's voice was not angry, but it was sharp and laced with irritation.

"Quit while you're ahead," Jaina advised.

Ben shot her a skeptical look. "Like you do?" he retorted.

Luke tuned them out, focusing on the deceptively calm-looking world before him. Watery a planet as it was, simply finding a safe place to land would be a challenge. It got harder from there. He would not be the first Jedi to land here. Kyle Katarn had been here before.

So had Mara.

Both had been lucky to escape alive.

The world was so dangerous that Luke had not felt the Jedi were ready to explore its mysteries; it had been allowed to remain a myth, the subject of cautionary tales to make sure wide-eyed young apprentices stayed on the path of the light side.

But Dromund Kaas was real. Darkly, frighteningly, dangerously real, and they were about to land on it.

The discussion-argument was too strong a word-he had been having with Ben was about whether Vestara should be permitted to join them on its soggy surface. The young Jedi Knight had raised a point-a good one, one Luke could find no argument with. Vestara indeed could have set the hounds on them, buying at least enough time to flee back to the Shadow and escape with it. Instead she had protected them all, possibly putting herself in danger to do so.

It wasn't a very Sith-like thing to do.

It was more of a Jedi thing to do. And she had done it spontaneously, swiftly, with no hesitation.

Luke didn't like it.

He leaned back, stretching a little in his chair. Vestara emerged from the refresher, where she'd taken a quick sanisteam. She looked around at the three pairs of eyes on her and said, "Okay, what now?"

"Noth-" Ben started to say, but Luke interrupted him.

"I was considering whether it would be wise to take you with us when we visit Dromund Kaas."

Vestara c.o.c.ked her head. "Oh? I thought it was acceptable for me to accompany you. What made you change your mind?" She didn't seem offended, merely curious.

"I didn't say I had changed it. I was simply reconsidering." Luke nodded at the image of the planet. "That's an extremely dangerous place. And very, very strong with the dark side."

Vestara folded her slender arms and leaned against the bulkhead. She kept her gaze locked with Luke's as she quirked an eyebrow.

"I fail to see how it's different from Korriban, or any of the other places on Jaina and Natua's list."

"There are some interesting historical aspects to this world," Luke said. "Things that perhaps only you and I know, depending on what you've learned from s.h.i.+p. Such as the fact that this world was a colony of the Sith Empire, but faded into obscurity until after the Great Hypers.p.a.ce War. It was rediscovered by a Sith armada wandering for two decades. Sound familiar?"

A muscle in Vestara's jaw clenched, but she remained silent. Ben's agitation in the Force increased.

Luke continued. "They rebuilt this world. It became the capital of the next Sith Empire. Until that fell. Its next round of rediscovery came by someone who rejected the Rule of Two, who thought that there was more than enough of the dark side to go around."

"Dad-" Ben started to say.

Luke held up a hand. "He founded a religion that would become known as the Dark Force. There's an ancient temple there still. It was serviced for centuries by the Dark Prophets. It's so steeped in the dark side that it formed its own nexus-one so powerful it interferes with all weaponry and technology except for lightsabers."

"Well," drawled Vestara, "it's good that everyone here can handle one then, isn't it?"

"I think you see my point."

"That there are similarities between the origins of this culture and my own? Beings are beings, Master Skywalker. The galaxy is old, and there are only so many stories in it."

"And Sith are Sith."

"Meaning that I'll be irrevocably drawn to this dark-side nexus."

"Master Kyle Katarn succ.u.mbed to it," Luke said, and he felt Jaina and Ben's shock. "He was brought back to the light side of the Force only by his pupil. Ben's mother."

"Ironic," said Vestara, "that a Jedi Master was saved from the dark side by a woman who used to be the Emperor's Hand."

"Mara was never a Sith," Luke replied.

"So what's your solution?" Coldness emanated from her. But mixed in with the anger, which Luke had expected, was something else. Hurt. "Here are your options as I see them. One: kill me. End of problem. Two: leave either Ben or Jaina behind to watch me, reducing your group to two Jedi instead of three Jedi and me. Three: take me with you. It's your s.h.i.+p, your mission, and your call. But if you honestly believe I'm going to be tempted to turn on all of you by simply being on a Sith planet after all you've seen from me, you should start thinking about Option Number One. Because anything else is going to either hamper you or distract you. And frankly, I'm tired of it."

Luke was surprised. So was Jaina. Ben wasn't, and Luke felt his pride and pleasure like a sun in the Force.

For a moment, no one spoke. Finally Luke said, "The similarities between the history of Dromund Kaas and the Lost Tribe's own might make it appealing to them. They might see those commonalities as destiny. Fortunately for us, there are a very few places on this planet with solid ground, so it will narrow our search. Unfortunately, that works both ways-if the Tribe is hiding out here, we'll be fairly easy to spot. We need to watch one another closely. If Master Katarn could be swayed, then any of us could. Not just Vestara."

"Probably not you, Dad," Ben said. His voice was still sullen, but mitigated by Luke's decision.

"Probably not. I've been there and back. I like it here better. Let's go, and remember ... it's going to be soggy down there."

It was an understatement. It seemed to Ben that it took forever simply to find a place to land, as his father had warned. There were two places that Luke was interested in investigating: the mighty Kaas City itself, which from the air looked as urban as much of Coruscant, and the dark temple.

There had been no sign of any vessels in orbit, neither ChaseMaster frigates nor s.h.i.+p. Vestara had said that it was likely that either the s.h.i.+ps had landed and been hidden, or else the Sith had cl.u.s.tered their s.h.i.+ps elsewhere.

They dipped below the cloud cover. They emerged to see, even in daylight, a world of dismal gray, blue, and green. Below them stretched Kaas City: dark, as a Sith city should be, with no sign of any lights that would indicate current habitation. It was a well-designed, if sinister, skyline of mostly squares and rectangles jutting skyward, with a few spires here and there to indicate that the Sith of long ago shared another interest with the Lost Tribe-an appreciation of aesthetics.

Although the place looked deserted, Luke veered away from it quickly. "We'll start with the temple, a bit more to the west," Luke said as he skillfully brought the fifty-five-meter-long Jade Shadow in for a landing on what seemed like approximately fifty meters of solid ground in the midst of a steaming, stagnant marsh. "It's a more controlled and much smaller environment than the city."

"I'd just as soon not have to explore an entire Sith city on foot if I can help it," Jaina said. "There's a lot of places they could hide. It would be an ideal spot for an ambush, and in that s.p.a.ce we'd have no chance against their numbers."

"Besides," Vestara offered, "if the Lost Tribe is there, they may live in the city, but they will definitely have visited the temple first. The nexus would call to them, just as the Fountain of Knowledge called to Taalon. There would be indications that someone had been there recently."

Ben gave her a grateful smile. What his father had revealed about Dromund Kaas's history had shaken him. He, like everyone else, had believed that it was nothing more than a myth. And the parallels Luke had drawn were uncomfortable. But he had faith in Vestara. Faith that wasn't just built on hope, but on what he had seen from her. How she had grown. On what he felt from her, not for her. And she'd gotten in a good riposte with her comment about his mother's having saved Kyle Katarn.

Even so, he knew that Vestara was the one most at risk. Luke, as he had said, had been to the dark side and returned. He, Ben, had danced perilously close to that edge-close enough to take a good look and turn his back on it. Jaina, too, had had her life irrevocably altered by it. But Vestara-he knew that in many ways, for her it would feel like coming home.

But so had Korriban, and they had all seen how she behaved there.

The noisome smell of fetid water and decay was borne to them on the still, warm breeze as they walked down the ramp, boots squelching in the muck. Ben thought that if the dark side had a smell, it would be this reek-almost sweet in the way that rot could be, stifling, and impossible to avoid. Dark-side energy, as Luke had warned, was extremely strong here, as strong in its own way as it had felt on Korriban. There it had been intense and almost arrogant, power-hungry. Here those dark energies felt more insidious, more purely evil for evil's sake than fuel for a l.u.s.t for power. Despite the warmth, the moist air felt clammy, like wet skin slapping against his own. Nausea, both physical and spiritual, rippled through him.

Their destination lay straight ahead. Home to the Dark Prophets, site of an extremely powerful Dark Force nexus, the Sith temple loomed upward, a black, somber silhouette against the gray daylight sky, rendered mysterious and unclear by the mist that occasionally thickened to drizzle. No lights punctured its cold darkness.

"Uncle Luke, you take us to the nicest places," Jaina said.

"I'll take you and Jag out to dinner at the Indigo Tower when we get back," Luke replied. "You weren't able to actually eat the last time you were there, if I recall correctly."

"Please-don't talk about eating," Ben said. "My stomach's already reconsidering lunch."

Vestara alone appeared to be unaffected by the stench. She smirked a little and said, "You can block it with the Force."

Ben was about to chide Vestara on her too-casual use of the Force when he realized he'd done the same thing more than once on this strange odyssey on which he and his father had embarked. His stomach heaved again, and he took her advice. Sometimes "casual usage of the Force" was more a necessity than a whim. He'd do none of them any good if he got sick.

Luke stood for a moment, his eyes and other senses searching the landscape. "Anyone sense anything?"

Ben extended himself in the Force, both opening himself to the vile sensation of the dark side and utilizing his senses-even smell, temporarily at least-to gather what information he could.

"Other than the obvious, which is a metric ton of dark-side energy, I can't sense anything," Jaina said.

Vestara, too, shook her head. "I can't feel the presence of anyone familiar here."

Luke's gaze fell on Ben. "Nope," Ben replied.

"All right. Be aware that this world hosts ysalamiri. It's possible if the Sith are here, they've figured that out and will be making use of them to hide themselves."

"It's also possible we might fall flat on our faces if we Force-leap near a tree," Ben said.

"That too," Luke agreed, "which is even more likely. Let's go." The four of them Force-leapt from dry spot to dry spot, mindful of trees cradling ysalamiri and their Force-blocking bubbles, heading southwest of where they had landed the Jade Shadow. It was easy not to lose their way with such a prominent landmark to guide them.

Sometimes they miscalculated in their negotiation of the treacherous terrain, either thinking land was solid where it wasn't or surprised by an ysalamiri bubble, and sank into the reedy marsh water instead. Where there was no mud or water, there were tangles of vines, roots, and weeds that needed to be cleared with lightsaber slashes. After a very short while, all of them were in dire need of sanisteams.

"I think I liked Korriban better," Jaina said. Strands of her brown hair were plastered to her forehead, both from sweat and from the moisture in the air.

"Yeah," Ben said, scratching his head. "At least it was a dry heat."

"And it had puppies," Vestara added, using the Force to leap free from the marshy grip that had both of her feet. "Who doesn't like puppies?"

The banter was a grim sort, a way to keep their spirits up and prevent the ubiquitous, lurking presence of the dark side from unsettling them completely. Luke lifted a hand, and they fell silent at once, turning to him attentively.

"We're about two kilometers away," Luke said. "I'm sure we're all feeling it. It's just going to get more intense. We should be very careful."

They nodded, even the most halfhearted attempt at humor extinguished by the warning, and moved forward without speaking. Ben found his attention wandering toward Vestara, and not in the usual pleasantly distracting manner. He watched her out of the corner of his eye, hoping-and mostly believing-she would not suddenly turn on them, but knowing it was still a possibility.

Drenched by the falls into filthy water and the varied precipitation, Ben grew colder the closer they drew. He knew it had nothing to do with his body, and everything to do with his very essence-and the Force. The dark temple ceased to be a sullen unnerving shape on the horizon and instead became a looming threat. He extended himself in the Force, hyperalert for anything as he had been on Korriban. There they had been attacked by the tuk'ata. Here Ben could feel there were worse things lurking, just on the periphery of his Force sensing.

Luke came to a stop some twenty meters from the temple. He drew his lightsaber but did not light it, not yet. Ben emulated him, feeling his father's own heightened attention in the Force. For a moment, they all stood, subconsciously forming a row, and regarded the temple.

It was solid stone, gray and ma.s.sive, and heavy with banked threat. The darkness emanating from it was almost like a sound so deep that one could not hear it, but could feel it in one's bones or blood. Ben could well believe that in its presence blasters and other mundane energy weapons and technology would be rendered useless. The lightsabers were both simpler and more complex; the technology was simpler, but because of their deep heritage with the Force, they were far more complicated than a blaster.

In the murky light, the four couldn't possibly miss the pair of giant, golden statues of hooded figures, hands folded across the pommels of swords. The figures were more disquieting in this dark, dank place than the ones Ben had seen in Korriban's desert. Painted vines with ominous blossoms and probably deadly thorns twined about the base of the temple.

"What do you sense?" Luke asked quietly, his head turning as he looked around.

"That nexus," Jaina said promptly.

"Yeah," Ben said. "And ... some Dark Force manifestations, but not close. Not yet, anyway."

"It's ... so strong," Vestara breathed. Ben glanced over at her. Her brown eyes were wide, and her voice was a mixture of horror and attraction.

"Vestara," Luke said, sharply but not angrily, and she blinked as if coming out of a daze. "Do you sense any signs of the Sith or Abeloth?"

She shook her head, looking more like her usual alert self. "No. That nexus pretty much drowns out anything else."

"Agreed," Luke said. "Let's look for more ordinary clues. Stay in the courtyard, where we can all see one another. If anyone finds anything, comm me. Stay away from the direct entrance to the temple, though. When we go in there, I want us to do so together."

Ben found the instructions a relief. They moved forward, the ground beneath them giving way to carved, inlaid flagstones as they entered the courtyard proper. As on Korriban, these were etched with disconcerting images: eyes, five-fingered hands, claws. They had been created with ritual and infused with dark-side energy, and Ben felt as though he were stepping on ice with bare feet.

Luke and Jaina wandered off to the left exterior side of the temple, each taking a different corner. Ben and Vestara found themselves on the right. Vestara went a little ahead to examine some ancient braziers, and Ben lowered his gaze to the sinister flagstones. He was not looking at their art; he was looking for footprints, fresh mud, or stones that jutted upward as if they had been stepped on recently.

"These braziers haven't seen fire in a long time." Vestara's voice came to Ben over his comlink, even though she was only a couple of meters away. Ben realized that since they had drawn near the temple, they had spoken in quiet tones. Of course, part of his brain reasoned; if Abeloth or any Sith were lurking nearby, none of the Jedi-nor, apparently, Vestara-would want to announce their presences by shouting. But he knew there was another reason.