Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 08_ Ascension - Christie Golden [72]
“Well,” drawled Vestara, “it’s good that everyone here can handle one then, isn’t it?”
“I think you see my point.”
“That there are similarities between the origins of this culture and my own? Beings are beings, Master Skywalker. The galaxy is old, and there are only so many stories in it.”
“And Sith are Sith.”
“Meaning that I’ll be irrevocably drawn to this dark-side nexus.”
“Master Kyle Katarn succumbed to it,” Luke said, and he felt Jaina and Ben’s shock. “He was brought back to the light side of the Force only by his pupil. Ben’s mother.”
“Ironic,” said Vestara, “that a Jedi Master was saved from the dark side by a woman who used to be the Emperor’s Hand.”
“Mara was never a Sith,” Luke replied.
“So what’s your solution?” Coldness emanated from her. But mixed in with the anger, which Luke had expected, was something else. Hurt. “Here are your options as I see them. One: kill me. End of problem. Two: leave either Ben or Jaina behind to watch me, reducing your group to two Jedi instead of three Jedi and me. Three: take me with you. It’s your ship, your mission, and your call. But if you honestly believe I’m going to be tempted to turn on all of you by simply being on a Sith planet after all you’ve seen from me, you should start thinking about Option Number One. Because anything else is going to either hamper you or distract you. And frankly, I’m tired of it.”
Luke was surprised. So was Jaina. Ben wasn’t, and Luke felt his pride and pleasure like a sun in the Force.
For a moment, no one spoke. Finally Luke said, “The similarities between the history of Dromund Kaas and the Lost Tribe’s own might make it appealing to them. They might see those commonalities as destiny. Fortunately for us, there are a very few places on this planet with solid ground, so it will narrow our search. Unfortunately, that works both ways—if the Tribe is hiding out here, we’ll be fairly easy to spot. We need to watch one another closely. If Master Katarn could be swayed, then any of us could. Not just Vestara.”
“Probably not you, Dad,” Ben said. His voice was still sullen, but mitigated by Luke’s decision.
“Probably not. I’ve been there and back. I like it here better. Let’s go, and remember … it’s going to be soggy down there.”
It was an understatement. It seemed to Ben that it took forever simply to find a place to land, as his father had warned. There were two places that Luke was interested in investigating: the mighty Kaas City itself, which from the air looked as urban as much of Coruscant, and the dark temple.
There had been no sign of any vessels in orbit, neither ChaseMaster frigates nor Ship. Vestara had said that it was likely that either the ships had landed and been hidden, or else the Sith had clustered their ships elsewhere.
They dipped below the cloud cover. They emerged to see, even in daylight, a world of dismal gray, blue, and green. Below them stretched Kaas City: dark, as a Sith city should be, with no sign of any lights that would indicate current habitation. It was a well-designed, if sinister, skyline of mostly squares and rectangles jutting skyward, with a few spires here and there to indicate that the Sith of long ago shared another interest with the Lost Tribe—an appreciation of aesthetics.
Although the place looked deserted, Luke veered away from it quickly. “We’ll start with the temple, a bit more to the west,” Luke said as he skillfully brought the fifty-five-meter-long Jade Shadow in for a landing on what seemed like approximately fifty meters of solid ground in the midst of a steaming, stagnant marsh. “It’s a more controlled and much smaller environment than the city.”
“I’d just as soon not have to explore an entire Sith city on foot if I can help it,” Jaina said. “There’s a lot of places they could hide. It would be an ideal spot for an ambush, and in that space we