Abyss (13 page)

Ship’s amusement was unmistakable. He had a special relationship with Vestara. She had been the first Tyro he had found back on Kesh, and her presence had always burned more brightly for him than had others. But did she truly believe herself strong enough to command Ship
now
? Was she fool enough to think she could match wills with one as ancient and dark as the Maw itself?

Then Ship’s presence was gone.

Vestara continued to stare out at the dark crescent, expelling her anger with a calming trick she had learned from her father: a condemning curse, followed by a promise to herself that she was not forgoing retribution, just giving it time to grow. By fleeing again, Ship was putting her in a delicate position with her Master, Lady Rhea—one dangerously close to failure.

Of course, part of Vestara’s anger came from the knowledge that she had overreached her abilities. She had hoped to impress Lady Rhea and the other Sith by commanding Ship to return to the
Eternal Crusader
. But she had been mistaken to think she could match wills with the ancient presence that had reached out to them on Kesh—and Vestara did
not
allow herself to make mistakes. Mistakes got apprentices killed. Worse, they prevented Sith apprentices from advancing to Sith Sabers.

After a moment, Lady Rhea said, “Lost it again.” It was a statement, not a question, and there was disappointment in her voice. “Ship continues to toy with you.”

Vestara was quick to shake her head. She did not like to disappoint her Master—especially when it was because she had made a mistake—and this time she saw no need.

“Ship is going … well,
inside
.” She pointed toward the dark crescent. “Through there.”

Lady Rhea raised a thin eyebrow. “You know this how?”

“I feel it,” Vestara explained. “Whatever called Ship away from Kesh is hiding in there.”

Lady Rhea narrowed her eyes and studied the crescent for a moment, then said, “Ship has been
allowing
you to find it.”

“That’s how it feels,” Vestara confirmed. She would not have dared to contradict Lady Rhea even if it hadn’t been so. “I see no other reason I’d be able to sense him when Lords and Masters cannot.”

“As long as Vestara
is
sensing it.”

The comment came from the opposite side of Lady Rhea, where Master Yuvar Xal was also standing at the command rail. With green, deep-set eyes and black hair hanging down to his collar, Xal’s features were just a little bit too sharp to be considered truly handsome—a flaw that had no doubt contributed to his slow advancement on beauty-conscious Kesh.

“I find it, um,
interesting,
” Xal continued, “that Ship chooses to reveal itself only through an apprentice.”

Lady Rhea turned to glare at him. “Master Xal, are you suggesting that my apprentice has led us out here on a lark?”

“Not at all, Lady Rhea,” Xal replied. “I’m concerned because she may have misconstrued what she’s sensing in the Force.”

Vestara glanced behind Lady Rhea and saw Xal’s apprentice, Ahri Raas, looking in her direction. A Keshiri male, he was as gorgeous as most members of his species, with pale lavender skin, shoulder-length white hair, and large, expressive eyes—which he was now rolling to show his weary impatience.

Vestara shot him a half grin and nodded. Xal had been assigned to the
Eternal Crusader
as Lady Rhea’s executive officer. In the way of the Tribe, that meant he had also become her primary rival for command of the vessel. Most likely, the conflict would be waged as it was now, on a level of constant innuendo and political maneuvering. But there was always the possibility it would come to violence, and that was something Vestara tried not to think about. If it did come to a shipwide bloodletting, she and Ahri would be on opposite sides, and the last thing she wanted to contemplate was having to kill her best friend.

To Vestara’s surprise, instead of continuing to engage Xal directly, Lady Rhea elected to do it through her. “What do
you
think, Vestara?
Is it Ship we’ve been following, or some figment of your imagination?”

Taking her lead from Lady Rhea, Vestara leaned slightly forward and turned to lock gazes with Xal. It was a terrible affront for a mere apprentice to face a Master in such a manner. And that affront would suggest to the entire crew that Lady Rhea’s power was so great that even her
charges
felt secure in challenging Xal.

“I know Ship’s presence as well as anyone does,” Vestara said. “And it
is
Ship I’ve been sensing.”

Xal’s eyes flashed emerald with rage, and the already quiet bridge fell absolutely still as shocked Sabers awaited his response. Had Lady Rhea not been standing there, Vestara was quite sure that response would have been a Force spike through her own heart. But Xal could not attack her in public without it being construed as an attack on Lady Rhea herself, and he could not yet have gathered the kind of support he would need for such a thing. The imperfections of his appearance simply did not permit him to work that fast.

The best response in such a situation would have been to demand that the apprentice’s Master discipline her. But Xal was still trying to glare Vestara into an apology when Lady Rhea deprived him of the opportunity.

“I have every confidence in the acuity of your Force sense, Vestara,” Lady Rhea said. “But I wonder if you’ve given any thought to
why
Ship keeps allowing us to find it?”

“I have,” Vestara said, guessing what Lady Rhea was thinking by the way she had phrased the question. “But I don’t believe Ship is leading us into a trap—at least not intentionally. I think he just wants us to understand why he left.”

Lady Rhea paused and glanced over at Xal. “Master Xal, what is your opinion?”

“Who am I to question the word of
your
apprentice, Lady Rhea?” Xal’s snide response was a not-so-subtle rejection of the graceful surrender Lady Rhea was offering him. “If the girl thinks she has a special link to Ship, and if
you’re
willing to believe her, who am I to question your orders?”

“I see,” Lady Rhea replied.

Xal had, in effect, told her that if she was wrong to trust Vestara, he intended to use her mistake to steal command of the
Eternal Crusader
. It was a terrible blunder. He was telegraphing his blow out of anger, and his poor judgment would count heavily against him in the crew’s opinion. Now his only means to put himself back into a position to challenge Lady Rhea would be to kill Vestara in a way that couldn’t be traced to him—and he was effectively declaring his intention to do exactly that.

Lady Rhea gave him a disappointed shake of her head, then said, “I’ll tell you what
I
think.” She was not even bothering to face Xal as she spoke, instead addressing herself directly to the bridge crew. “I think Ship is allowing only Vestara to find it because she is young. Someone older might have a stronger will—a will powerful enough to compel its return.”

A murmur of agreement rustled over the bridge, and several crew members nodded openly. They were all Sith Sabers, mostly humans descended from the shipwrecked crew of the original
Omen
. But there was also a sizable number of lavender-skinned Keshiri who, like Vestara’s friend Ahri, had risen from a disadvantaged social status to become full members of the Sith Tribe. Although there was no separate officers’ caste aboard the
Crusader
, the three seats of authority on the bridge were all occupied by Keshiri Sabers, for—like all hierarchies in the Tribe—the ship’s company was a strict meritocracy, with positions of responsibility awarded only according to ability.

“If Ship doesn’t want to be forced to return,” a melodious Keshiri voice asked, “why allow
anyone
to find it?”

Vestara’s head snapped around.

“I mean, if it can hide from
you,
” Ahri continued, “it can hide from Vestara.”

He shot her a frightened glance, and Vestara flashed him an apologetic smile. It wasn’t Ahri challenging Lady Rhea, it was Xal, trying to use his apprentice to embarrass
her
. The difference was that Lady Rhea had the power to turn his ploy against him. If she decided to punish Ahri herself, Xal was not strong enough to protect his apprentice, and the rest of the crew would take that failure as a further sign of his
weakness—which, of course, was the reason that Lady Rhea almost certainly
would
kill Ahri.

But Lady Rhea must have seen a trap that Vestara did not, because instead of punishing Ahri for daring to challenge her, she turned to smile at him.

“Very good, Apprentice Raas,” she said.

Vestara winced for poor Ahri; now Xal would whip him for sure.

Lady Rhea continued, “I’m happy to see that
one
of you is thinking about something other than maneuvering me out of command.”

“Uh, you are?” Ahri asked.

“Certainly. Tell me, why do
you
think Ship would go to such lengths to make sure we could follow it?” Lady Rhea shot a disparaging glance at Xal. “Why do you think it would have picked
that
place to let us find it again?”

Ahri swallowed, then said, “Because Vestara’s wrong,” he said. “It is leading us into a trap.”

“Precisely,” Lady Rhea replied. “And do you know
why
?”

Ahri fell into a thoughtful silence, obviously trying to puzzle out the same thing as Vestara. If Ship was what the records aboard the
Omen
indicated he was, he was a servant of the ancient Sith. Everything he had done since finding the Tribe—even the fact that he had researched the Battle of Kirrek and gone to the trouble of tracking them down—certainly supported that assertion. So why would Ship lead the
Eternal Crusader
into a trap? There simply
was
no good explanation.

Ahri reached the same conclusion a moment later. “I’m sorry, Lady Rhea.” His voice quavered as though he expected to be beaten. “I have no idea.”

“No?” An amused smile came to Lady Rhea’s face. “Pity. I was hoping
someone
might.”

A silence fell over the bridge as nervous Sith began to exchange glances, searching for someone who had the answer Lady Rhea sought.

Lady Rhea let the tension to build a moment, then shook her head in despair. “
Laugh
, people,” she ordered. “It’s a
jest
.”

A burst of laughter, all the more powerful because of the tension it
was releasing, rolled over the bridge. Lady Rhea waited for it to run its course, allowing it to purge all apprehension from the crew so it could function at optimum efficiency again, then finally raised her hand for silence.

“In all seriousness, I have no idea what Ship is doing here,” she said. “But I
do
believe Vestara is right about it, and Lord Vol commanded us to return Ship to Kesh. So set battle stations and keep alert, everyone. We’re going in.”

The bridge bustled back to life, and the tiny crescent ahead quickly swelled to a giant, sickle-shaped abyss. As they drew closer, the blue ember inside brightened into a blue dot, and the dark presence that Vestara had sensed earlier grew steadily more distinct and more powerful. She wondered for a moment if that presence might be Ship toying with her, just pretending to be something else. Then she noticed the looks on the crew’s faces and realized that if that were so, she was not the only one being toyed with. Some of her fellow Sith looked worried, some looked confused, and two Keshiri even looked enraptured. But no one showed any indication that they recognized the presence they were feeling.

Vestara glanced over and found Lady Rhea frowning in concentration. But her Master’s gaze was not fixed on the dark crescent into which the
Crusader
was traveling. Instead Lady Rhea’s eyes were focused on the two black holes revolving around each other in the binary system. Her expression was wary and alert, though not quite hostile, and Vestara could tell that her Master sensed something there—something she herself had not detected.

Vestara shifted her Force awareness toward the binary system and brushed a
third
presence. It was vast and cloudy, faintly dark and welcoming, but with a pair of bright seeds that felt almost threatening in their intensity. They seemed somehow more pure than the cloud in which they floated, knots of solidness adrift in an ocean of vapor.

Then the color drained from Lady Rhea’s face, and she braced herself on the bridge rail, her knuckles whitening as she squeezed.

“Lady Rhea?” Vestara asked. “What is it?”

Lady Rhea continued to stare toward the binary system. “I’m not sure. It felt like …” She let her sentence trail off, then shook her
head. “It’s hard to say. I thought for a moment I recognized a presence.”

“Recognized
what
presence, Lady Rhea?” Xal asked. “If Ahri is right about this being a trap—”

“It changes nothing,” Lady Rhea interrupted. “We have our assignment.”

“Only if we
know
Ship is in there,” Xal reminded her. “Lord Vol said nothing about throwing our lives away in pursuit of phantoms.”

The Force rippled with the crew’s growing anxiety, and Vestara knew that Lady Rhea had made a rare mistake by admitting that Ship might be leading them into a trap. Everyone aboard could sense the strange presence waiting ahead, and she felt certain that a fair number of them had also sensed the smaller presence near the binary. A persuasive argument from Xal might be enough to make the crew doubt Lady Rhea’s judgment. And when Sith began to doubt the judgment of a leader, it was seldom long before they took a new one.

Vestara knew Lady Rhea was strong enough to retain command until the
Crusader
was inside. But if they did not find Ship quickly, or ran into trouble before they did, Xal might well be in a strong position to challenge her authority. And if he won? There would be no doubts about Vestara’s own fate.

She focused her attention on the growing abyss ahead. It was practically all she could see now, a vast smile hanging sideways in space, opening wide to swallow them down, with the tiny blue ball of a distant sun burning bright at the bottom of its belly. Vestara reached out to Ship, opening herself to the Force and begging him to answer her call, to reveal himself not just to her but to the rest of the crew as well.