Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [26]
Now “home” was a conquered battlefield. His family, gathered after so much sacrifice and effort over so many years, was scattered. Young Anakin Solo was dead, and all the hopes Luke had invested in him were gone. Jacen was missing; most were convinced he was dead as well. Jaina had not come to Borleias; she was off on a personal quest of vengeance, and such quests often led to ruin, the dark side of the Force, or death … or all three. Han now recuperated from an injury at a secret Jedi base, and Leia waited with him. The only ones Luke could hold to him each day were Mara and Ben, and the three of them lived surrounded by enemies.
Each time this realization hit Luke, he gently moved it away from his conscious thoughts and meditated, focusing himself on his purpose, his tasks, those he loved. But these Jedi techniques merely put off his worries for a while longer. The worries endured, waiting patiently to claim his attention and erode his confidence. They were the Yuuzhan Vong of his own mind.
Luke found himself surrounded by foliage and thought for an instant that he was on foot patrol in Borleias’s jungles. But he realized within an instant that the air here was even danker than was customary on Borleias, and the precise nature of the plants and trees around him was wrong for that world. Here, the trees were darker, larger, their limbs drooping, while opaque pools of ground-water concealed furtive movements of their occupants.
Dagobah. It was the world where he had trained with Yoda, a lifetime ago.
So this was a dream. He shook his head. No, in dreams he was not usually so lucid. It was a vision, then, a vision through the Force.
He turned and faced the opening into the cave. It was there that he had confronted a vision of Darth Vader—of himself in Vader’s distinctive dress. Now, there was no Yoda to warn him against taking weapons into this place of evil and confrontation, and Luke felt sad that this vision would not give him even the momentary pleasure of seeing his old Master again in the one context where his presence was appropriate.
Luke found he was dressed in black. His lightsaber hung at his waist. He removed it, depositing it in the crook of a tree branch, and entered the cave.
Within, he found only darkness and silence. But he knew something was there, a few steps from him, a deeper darkness. He could neither see nor hear it, but could feel it within the Force. He stepped toward it and felt it move to the side, circling him.
Then it brushed past him, a contact that sickened him, reawakened in him every great hatred of his life—for Darth Vader, for the Emperor, for himself when he had stumbled too far down the path of the dark side—and left the cave. Luke followed.
He emerged into brighter light than he’d seen outside a moment ago, and now he was surrounded by soaring buildings, construction so high that the sky was visible only as a faint sliver of light. All around him, duracrete surfaces, crashed landspeeders, and giant blocks of unrecognizable debris were coated with green algae and waving grasses in a more pallid green hue. At his feet, a human body was covered with the same stuff.
The darkness he’d pursued was ahead of him, farther down the narrow aperture between skyscrapers, still invisible to the naked eye, still nauseatingly tangible within the Force.
It roiled and spun like a tornado. It increased in size until it brushed against the buildings to either side. The algae and grasses there changed when it touched them, suddenly bearing large, malformed fruits as black and slick as old oil. Then every surface in