Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [53]
Luke nodded. “Black holes are an interesting astronomical phenomenon to scientists, and a vaguely unsettling image for most other people … but Force-users and Force-sensitives have a real dislike or dread of them.”
“Why?”
His father shrugged. “The Force derives from life. Even death is not all that disturbing to a Force-user, since it is a part, a necessary consequence, of life. Black holes are something else. A cessation outside of life. Maybe the way they draw in all energy and trap it forever runs against our instincts. I'm not sure. I do know that the Force-sensitive children we hid at Shelter during the Yuuzhan Vong War did not like being in the Maw, surrounded on all sides by black holes. You're too young to remember, but the Jedi caretakers at Shelter said there was a lot of crying.”
“Did I do a lot of crying?”
“I don't think so. You were pretty much shut off from the Force in those days.”
“Well, good.”
Luke grinned and returned his attention to his calculations. “Ready to jump in ten seconds … five, four …”
When space untwisted around them, they were well within the Dorin system. The sun ahead was bigger but no more cheerful, and its dull hue seemed almost dirty. Ben could see stars above and below the sun, but looking rightward and leftward through the yacht's ports, there was nothingness, no welcoming gleam of stars. He suppressed a shudder.
It took a few minutes for Luke to raise Dorin starship control on the comm. The distant officer spoke Basic with an odd, slightly muffled accent, but she rapidly authorized Luke to land his craft at the spaceport in the capital city of Dor'shan and assured him that replacement air bottles for his breath masks were readily available for purchase.
As Dorin grew in the forward viewport, it became no more appealing to Ben. Dark and mottled, it had a gloomy aspect to it. But he reached out with the Force and felt no such emotion emanating from it. In fact, it was as alive as any low-population world he had visited, and far cheerier under the surface than the malevolent Ziost. He relaxed. Dorin was not a place of hidden dread and evil intent.
They slid through a murky atmosphere and descended toward a twilight city of buildings that were small and isolated by Coruscant standards. Many were domes, ziggurats, trapezoids—all forms much wider at the base than at the summit, and Ben was reminded of what he had read of this world, that its architecture and even, to some extent, the abilities of the Baran Do Sages had developed in response to the ferocious storms that frequently swept across the planet's surface. Ben decided that these squat, unlovely buildings were ideally suited to a population that needed to hunker down and wait out bad weather.
And perhaps they weren't so unlovely after all. Even from a great altitude, he had seen the city as a sea of lights blazing in many colors, and as they got low enough to glimpse details on the face of the buildings illuminated by those lights, Ben saw the Kel Dor geometric and organic patterns painted onto those buildings, disguising their rudimentary shapes with patterns of well-matched colors. Some structures bore tawny browns and golds in color waves that suggested sandstorms, while others were in dappled aquatic hues that would probably half convince someone standing beside them that he was resting at the bottom of a shallow bay.
Then they were over the spaceport. Each building had a domed terminal or hangar, with simple arrows on the roofs pointing to a specific landing circle or set of circles. Luke set the Jade Shadow down on a circle of permacrete next to a smaller white and tan dome. Then he taxied slowly on repulsorlifts, following blinking lights embedded in the permacrete surface, into the adjacent domed hangar, whose doors slid closed and sealed once the yacht was settled. Inside, the hangar was well lit but bare.
Ben unbuckled and rose. “This place isn't as ugly