Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 07_ Conviction - Aaron Allston [8]
Luke fixed Cardya with a querying look. “Which wasn’t what happened.”
She shrugged. “We got the sensor data on your yacht. Nice, expensive yacht. We decided we wanted it. Which meant capturing it intact.”
Luke nodded. “For once, greed was our savior.”
Cardya shrugged again, unrepentant. “So we threw Hallaf and his daughter in the brig and set up the ambush.”
“Hm.” During the account, Luke had been broadening his senses again, and now he could once more feel the pulse of dark-side energy that had drawn him to this station. If Abeloth had left, what was the source of the energy? He pointed in that direction. “Take us that way. And if anyone else from the station attacks us, we’ll just let their blaster bolts hit you before we start blocking them.”
“Understood.” With a long-suffering sigh, Cardya led them from the warehouse module—and took extra moments to activate her comlink and tell others on the station to stand down.
Luke’s sense of the dark-side energy led them through several other spokes and hubs, until finally they reached a larger module, which Luke recognized as a century-old Corellian module normally used for medcenter stations. It had to have been stolen from somewhere; it was neither old nor damaged enough to have been decommissioned.
“Our command center.” Stone-faced, Cardya led them into its center and to the station’s brig.
Only one of the eight cells was occupied. In it, sitting on the cell’s sole chair, was a middle-aged man, short, skinny, and gray-bearded. Beside him, stretched out supine on the cot, was a young woman. Lean, angular, and dark-haired, she might have been as old as twenty. Her eyes were open, but rolled up in her head so only the whites showed, an unsettling look.
And from her radiated the dark-side energy Luke had felt all this time.
The Force-users and Cardya entered the cell. Luke glanced at the girl on the cot. She seemed stiff, unresponsive. “Who is this?”
“My daughter, Fala.” Hallaf did not stand, and his body language said that he was as dejected as a man could be. “She’s going to die.” His eyes narrowed, suddenly full of fury, which he turned on Cardya. “Your fault. Her death is on your head.”
Cardya shrugged. “By the way, I quit.”
Hallaf scrambled to his feet, but Ben gave him a little shove and he fell into his chair again.
Luke approached Fala and put a hand on her forehead. This close, he could tell that the dark-side energies she radiated were characteristic of, flavored of, Abeloth. “Has she studied the Force for many years?”
“Never.” Her father’s voice was hoarse, despairing. “She’s quick, she feels things the rest of us don’t … but she’s no Jedi.”
“How did she come to be this way?”
“She was in my offices when that woman came. That woman wanted wine, so I stepped out to fetch some. When I came back, Fala was like this. That woman said that she would die … if you and your crew didn’t.”
Luke frowned, considering. With a look, he caught the attention of Ben and Vestara. “There are spots where continued dark-side use for ages, or the presence of creatures instilled with that energy, can cause the places themselves to radiate the power of the dark side. My old Master’s home on Dagobah was near a site like that. I think we’re looking at something similar … but accomplished in a matter of minutes instead of centuries.”
Ben shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I think Abeloth tore off little pieces of her own energy, in a sense, leaving it behind like crumbs of ryshcate for children to follow to danger. And it has poisoned this girl.”
Vestara looked unconvinced. “Dark-side power doesn’t poison.”
“That’s debatable, but we’re not even talking about the dark side as the Sith use it. We’re talking about tiny portions of Abeloth’s own being, energy interworked with her own nature. It turned Fala into a beacon and is keeping her unconscious.”
“Can you do anything?” That was Hallaf, sounding as though he were being choked.
“Maybe.