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“Neither am I,” Luke admitted.

“Dad … do you think we’re going to find anything to help Tadar’Ro and his people?”

Luke hesitated. “It’s completely possible that there isn’t anything in here to find. But there are still an awful lot of artifacts,” he pointed out. “It may be that there’s one particular thing that will turn out to be useful, and we’ll just have to find it.”

Ben groaned slightly.

The hours seemed to stretch on with no sense of time passing, although their chronos were working just fine. Sometimes Luke would think hours had passed when it had just been twenty minutes. Other times, he was shocked to realize he’d spent three hours without realizing it.

What had at first been an intriguing, if laborious, undertaking had become almost mind-numbingly rote. Luke forced himself to stay open to the Force and not let his mind drift from the task at hand. He couldn’t afford to miss anything, no matter how subtle. But so far, they had found nothing that could give the Aing-Tii any sort of guidance.

Luke straightened and stretched, eyeing the next round of artifacts. His eye fell on something shiny, catching the light of the glowing Force stones.

It was a small pyramid of gleaming metal. While some of the other artifacts had shown signs of age and wear and tear—some of them seemingly so fragile that Luke and Ben had been reluctant to touch them—this item looked almost newly minted. Luke extended a hand, grasped it—and gasped.

THE OUTER RIM

PRESENT DAY

Vestara had always hoped that one day, if her path toward Sith mastery unfolded as she had dreamed, she would be permitted aboard the Omen, the Ship of Destiny, to learn its secrets and that of her own history. She had never in her wildest dreams imagined that another Ship might descend from the skies, looking like a red, winged eye, to summon and teach her.

But the ways of Fate are strange indeed, and Vestara seized the challenge eagerly.

Shortly after the devastating news that the Sith, far from ruling the galaxy as the Tribe had ignorantly assumed, were facing extinction, Vestara had been called to enter Ship itself. She was not the first, she knew; Lord Vol, the Grand Lords, and the Masters had all preceded her. But she was the first among the apprentices, and had stood quietly before it.

The spherical vessel was bizarre almost beyond her imagining. Where a moment earlier had been a seamless, red, pebbly, curved surface, there was now an open hatch. Before her eyes, a line formed beneath the glowing yellow, eye-like viewport. A ramp extended in welcome. Vestara did not hesitate; indeed, she had to stop herself from racing upward. She felt the vessel’s pleasure as she first placed her boot upon the ramp. It was almost like—a sigh of relief. She forced herself not to grin.

Steadily she walked upward, into the heart of the vessel. She was not certain at all what to expect, and so simply observed. The interior was smaller than the exterior would indicate. It was a single chamber, four meters across and two and a half high. The curving walls inside looked exactly like those outside, and before she could think, Vestara extended a hand and ran her fingers lightly along the pebbly orange surface. She could have sworn she felt the vessel quiver, like a pet muut being caressed. The wall was warm to the touch as well and seemed to pulse slightly, like a living thing.

There were no sets of controls, no chairs, nothing she had been led to find inside of a ship or indeed any mechanical construct. Ship wasn’t going to give her any clues, either. What was expected of her, then?

Vestara frowned, then knelt down in the center of the empty, warm chamber. She closed her eyes and reached out in the Force to the vessel.

Command me, Ship told her.

A smile tugged at the scarred corner of her mouth.

Fly, then.

She didn’t really expect it to obey so simple an instruction, and when suddenly the door was sealed over, like a wound closing, and the ship instantly vertically