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Vestara seemed mollified, and her body posture eased slightly.

“Well,” she said slowly, glancing at Ben, “if we don’t know where they were planning on going now—which I don’t—we might want to think about where Sith have been in the past. The Lost Tribe cherishes its own history and hungers to learn more about other Sith, and they would want to learn all they can.”

Ben was nodding. “That makes sense for the Sith, but what about Abeloth? I get the feeling she’s going to go for the greatest source of either power or beings she can take advantage of.”

Luke and Jaina nodded. Luke frowned for a moment as a thought occurred to him. “Vestara … do you think they would travel together?”

She opened her mouth to object, then closed it for a moment, looking pensive. “The original plan was to capture and enslave her. That’s why they initially joined with you. I … I don’t know. If they think it would be a good decision, then yes, I suppose they might do so.”

It was not a pleasant thought—Abeloth and the Sith, working together, but the more Luke sat with it, the more right it felt.

“If they’re traveling together, it would be Abeloth who would dictate the direction. And we don’t know enough about her yet to hazard a guess where she might go.”

“So we’re right back where we started,” Ben said glumly. Vestara had just lost her Kintan strider, one of the most powerful pieces in the game. He moved quickly to take advantage of an opening only to have Vestara, the novice, find an opening herself to take Ben’s own Kintan strider and two other pieces.

“Ship.” It was the hologram of Jaina that had spoken the single, galvanizing word. All eyes turned toward her.

“What about Ship?” Luke asked.

The small figure shrugged. “Ship is the one thing both Abeloth and the Sith truly have in common. Although she’s commanding him, we know that Ship doesn’t seem overly fond of her. I picked up on that when I dealt with him, and Vestara’s confirmed it. He exists to serve Sith and train their younglings. Abeloth doesn’t fit into that programming, and yet he still serves her.”

“He has to,” Vestara chimed in. “He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t like her at all.”

“In the end, Ship is still a vessel,” Luke said. “He will always obey his programming, whatever his personal preferences. We know that about him, and that gives us an advantage.” He had never liked the tendency some had of referring to Ship as a male. Ship was a construct, not a living being.

“Well … that depends on how you define his programming,” Vestara said. “Ship wants to help the Sith, and he is programmed to do so. But he must also obey one with will enough to command him. Abeloth is simply too strong for him to disobey right now.”

Luke eyed her for a moment. “He would come to you if he could, wouldn’t he?”

She nodded.

“Even if you were helping us?”

She hesitated, then said, “Yes. I think so. He wouldn’t like it. He would come, even if just to try to get me back onto what he sees as the right path. But I’m a Sith youngling, and well—not to brag, but he sought me out. I do think I have a bond with him.”

Luke glanced over at his son, who had been quiet through this part of the conversation. Ben, too, had once had such a bond with the ancient vessel. During the time when Ben had been his uncle Jacen’s apprentice, and therefore had been walking the line between the dark and the light side, he had encountered Ship on Ziost. The Sith had once been powerful on that world, and the miasma of dark-side energy had lingered among the ruins that marked their former presence and lain heavily in the shadows of the woods.

Ship, hidden deep in the bowels of Ziost and forgotten for millennia, had called to Ben, sensing in the then-fourteen-year-old youth the brush of the dark side.

Sensing a Sith apprentice.

Ben had responded, utilizing Ship as a way to get off the forsaken world. He had not fully understood at the time that Ship was using him in the same way. He had managed to exert the force of his will over the vessel sufficiently to pilot it, and retained enough of that will not to succumb to its