Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 08_ Ascension - Christie Golden [155]
But the second reason was because when she had visited Korriban and Dromund Kaas … she had been a Sith, visiting a Sith world.
And now, she wasn’t sure what she was.
Vestara seldom cried. Her father had thought it weakness, so she had simply learned not to weep. That night, after his death, lying in Ben’s arms, she had felt completely shattered. She had not had the strength—nor, frankly, the desire—to shut herself off from him anymore. He had held her while she wept and, afterward, as they drifted to sleep. There had been only kisses and loving words, nothing more; Ben would never press his advantage when she was so vulnerable. It was part of what made him Ben; what made him a Jedi.
But she, daughter of the Sith, had not been so sure that was what she had wanted. Was now not sure that any of what had passed between them that night was what she wanted.
It had felt good to truly open herself to Ben in the Force, and later, when speaking with Luke, as well. Her decision had been genuine. It was too debilitating to be a Sith, she had decided. Too hard to constantly keep her guard up, to function alone, even in the midst of a society such as the Lost Tribe. The isolation she had felt at the death of her father—
—Unbearable. As she recalled the moment when Gavar Khai had fallen beneath her lightsaber, Vestara reached out and squeezed Ben’s hand. He turned to look at her, lips curving in a smile as he began to don his protective mask. She felt a wave of love and support from him; not a crashing tsunami, but the constant, gentle flow of a ceaseless tide. Vestara sent back appreciation and warmth as real as his own, then squeezed and let go of his hand. For a moment, the wavering she had felt since that awful night was steadied. She was where she was supposed to be.
“So,” Ben asked Vestara as she put on her own mask, “how are you feeling about going after Ship?”
It was a fair question. Vestara collected her thoughts before replying. “As long as Abeloth is alive and has the power to command him, Ship will obey her. Therefore, he must be destroyed.”
“Or commandeered,” Ben said.
She gave him a sharp look. “He won’t obey Jedi.”
“Not even if we bend him to our will?”
“If you did that, you wouldn’t be a Jedi,” she said. “The only way to control Ship is through strong, aggressive emotions. Desire, anger—not very Jedi-like.”
“How will you feel if we have to destroy him?”
“Honestly? I will feel regret. Ship was the—well, entity I guess is the word—who took me off Kesh for the first time in my life. Can you imagine being planet-bound until you were fourteen, Ben? Never seeing your world from anything but the back of a winged creature? And being told that your fate, your destiny, was not on a single world, but hundreds?” She shook her head. “Ship changed my life, Ben. Yes, if we destroy him, I will feel regret. But I’ll still do it.”
He had paused in his preparations and now simply stared at her, his blue eyes crinkling with the smile his mask hid.
“I wish Dad could hear you say that.”
“He won’t have to,” Vestara said, adjusting the last snap. “I’ll show him.”
It was almost like hitting a physical wall.
They all felt it, down to the last Jedi Knight. Luke could sense the dark side here more strongly than anywhere else he could recall. And even he found his stomach clenching and his skin erupting in goose-flesh; he, who had looked into the face of the dark side and defeated it more times than he could recall.
The evil was not merely ancient. It was—
“Distilled,” Jaina said, stepping beside him as they looked at the ruins of the city before them. Directly above the city and the dormant volcano a mere three kilometers away roiled an ugly black cloud. No simple storm, this; it did not drift from its site, and its gray-black depths occasionally flashed with blue Force lightning. Wind blew from the city, strong and foul smelling and cold. The storm, and the dark-side energies, were here.
Just here.