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  “Dad?”

  Nothing moved but his father’s mouth, which opened barely far enough to emit a hoarse whisper. “uh …yeah.”

  “You okay?”

  The eyes closed in what was probably as close to a nod as Luke could manage. “I will be,” he rasped. “Just need to …get blood to my muscles again.”

  “Yeah, well good luck with that.”

  Ben used the Force to undo the straps across his own chest, then tried to sit up …and dropped back to his gurney in a heap.

  “It’s always like this,” a familiar voice said behind Ben. “Give yourselves a minute.”

  Recalling his reluctant Mind Walker guide, Ben craned his neck around and looked toward the far side of the chamber. Rhondi Tremaine was still sitting where he had left her before going beyond shadows, slumped against an equipment cabinet with her legs splayed out beside her. The stun cuffs he had slapped on her before leaving were still on her wrists, securing her to the floor beam he had exposed. With sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, and a brow furrowed in pain, she looked just as bad as Ben felt. The sight of how little care he had taken for her comfort made Ben wince at his behavior. He had deliberately not offered to set an IV drip for her, believing that if she were in danger of dying, she would be more eager to make their trip a quick one, so she could be certain of returning to free her brother.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Better than you look, I hope.”

  “That’s nice.” Her gaze shifted to Luke. “If you want grandchildren someday, you need to have a conversation with your son about how to talk to the ladies.”

  “Ben, be nice to the lady,” Luke ordered. “And get her out of those stun cuffs.”

  “Sure.” Ben tried again to sit up, and this time he succeeded. “As soon as I take care of you.”

  He freed himself from the IV catheters and the gurney straps, then did the same for his father and retrieved three packs of hydrade from his supply bag. When his father proved too weak to push the suck-nozzle through the punch hole, Ben did it for him.

  “Dad, that trip …it was pretty dark,” Ben said, holding the tube into his father’s mouth. “Worse than a triple hit of yarrock, even.”

  Ben could tell by the way his father’s eyes widened that he had used a really bad analogy.

  “Uh, not that I’d know,” he said. “Just assuming, really.”

  Luke stopped sipping long enough to say, “You’d better be.”

  “No worries,” Ben said. “I get plenty of weirdness just being your son.”

  When Ben fell silent for a moment, his father reached up and took the sip-pack. “Keep talking.”

  Ben looked away, unsure how to broach the subject of what they had experienced together at the Lake of Apparitions. Actually, he was not even sure they had seen the same things.

  Finally, he just asked it. “All the stuff that happened while we were Mind Walking …was that real?”

  “Talking to Anakin and your mother, you mean?”

  Ben nodded and began to feel a little more certain of the experience. “And to Jacen.”

  “Was that real?” Luke repeated. He let out a choked half laugh. “Maybe you’d rather ask me something else, like what’s the ultimate origin of the Force.”

  “We’ll save the easy stuff for later,” Ben replied. “Seriously, this whole experience is making me barvy. I need to figure it out now.”

  His father closed his eyes and let out a long breath, then said, “You’re the detective, Ben. You can figure this out for yourself—in fact, I think you have to.”

  Ben sighed. Sometimes he really hated having a Jedi Master for a father. Everything was a lesson.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with the fact that we both saw the same people at the Lake of Apparitions.”

  “We all saw the same people,” Rhondi added. She jerked her stun cuffs against the beam to which Ben had secured them. “How about a little consideration here?”

  Seeing that his father was strong enough to hold his own sip-pack, Ben grabbed another and started toward Rhondi. “If we all saw the same thing, that means we really experienced something. We just can’t be sure what, since we were …”

  “Outside our bodies,” Luke clarified.

  “Because our bodies don’t exist beyond shadows,” Rhondi said. “Only our true presences.”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that,” Ben said. He squatted next to Rhondi. “But your word isn’t evidence. I still don’t know whether I had the experience of really talking to Mom, or if I just saw what someone in that … place wanted me to see.”

  “Then you must agree that the place is real,” Rhondi observed, “if you believe someone in it can make you see anything.”

  Ben nodded, the blood in his veins suddenly running slow and cold. “It’s real. I felt something there that I recognized from before …” He turned to his father. “From when I was at Shelter. It’s what drove me away from the Force.”

  “You’re sure?” Luke asked.

  Again, Ben nodded. “It’s as real as we are,” he said. “And I’m pretty sure it’s behind the paranoid delusions that Jedi Knights my age keep having.”

  “It’s a good theory,” Luke said. “But how is it spreading, for example?”

  “The same way that’s happening.” Ben waved through the viewport at all the bodies floating in the meditation vault beyond the control room. “The same way I felt it at Shelter. Through the Force.”

  “Your Jedi Knights aren’t sick,” Rhondi said. “They are only being called home.”

  Ben glanced back to her and realized that he had not yet released her stun cuffs, but he decided it might be better to wait until they had finished the conversation. He prepared a sip-pack for her, then held the tube to her lips and returned his attention to his father.

  “You might call that evidence, too,” Ben said. “Qwallo Mode didn’t show up here by accident.”

  Luke sat up and reached for a second sip-pack. “I’m not arguing against you there, Ben,” he said. “I’m just trying to think things through. For instance, why aren’t Kam and Tionne having trouble? Or any of the adult Jedi Knights who spent time guarding Shelter?”

  Ben could only shake his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “If I’m not affected—or infected—it has to be because I withdrew from the Force. Maybe trained adult Jedi have too many defenses. Or maybe there’s something smart behind this. If the Masters Solusar had felt that place reaching out—”

  “Right,” Luke said. “The young ones would have been moved. But why now? It’s been nearly a decade and a half since there were any students at Shelter.”

  That answer, Ben did not have to think about at all. It was all around him, in the strobing alarm light and the smoking circuits—in the timing of when things started to go wrong in the control room.

  “Centerpoint Station was destroyed—that’s what changed.” He looked back to Rhondi. “That’s when these alarms started going off, and it’s when Rhondi and her brother started to feel compelled to return—along with a lot of Daala’s other spies.”

  “Daala’s spies’?” Luke turned to Rhondi.

  “Long story,” she said. “Ben’s right. When you destroyed Centerpoint Station, everything changed.”

  “It’s like we opened a hatch or something,” Ben said. “And suddenly, whatever we felt in Shelter started leaking out—maybe reaching out—beyond the Maw.”

  Ben knew by the sudden paling of his father’s face that he had made a convincing argument.

  “Wonderful,” Luke said. “Any idea what, exactly, is getting out?”

  Ben could only shake his head. “And I’m still trying to figure out the Lake of Apparitions,” he said. “I’m convinced that it’s real. But …”

  He let the sentence trail off, unable to ask the question.

  “But you don’t know whether that was really your mother you saw,” Luke finished. “It’s a hard question to answer—maybe one that we can’t answer.”

&n
bsp; Ben turned to Rhondi and raised a questioning brow.

  She jerked her stun cuffs against the beam and raised her own brow. He thumbed the release pad, and the cuffs came undone.

  Rhondi’s jaw fell. “They weren’t even locked?”

  “In case I didn’t make it back,” Ben said. “I’m not that cruel. Now, what can you tell me about my mother?”

  Rhondi rubbed her chafed wrists. “We all return to the Force when we depart our bodies,” she said. “Afterward, those who are strong in the Force sometimes show themselves in the Lake of Apparitions. Whether it’s where they abide or is only a portal through which they can look, I don’t know … but I believe those we see are real.”

  “What about Mind Walkers whose bodies die while they’re beyond shadows?” Ben asked. “Do they go to the Lake of Apparitions, too?”

  “Not at first,” Rhondi said. “At first, they stay beyond shadows with us. But after a time, they seem to lose their way, and then sometimes we see them in the Lake of Apparitions.”

  “How long do they stay there?” Luke asked. “Could you see your grandparents, for instance, or even your ancestors?”

  Rhondi shook her head. “Eventually, they no longer show themselves.” She took a long sip of her hydrade, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know why.”

  Ben scowled at her claim, but before he could think of a way to test it, the muffled karrummph of a detonating magmine reverberated through the control room floor. Rhondi’s eyes went wide with horror, and she turned toward Ben.

  “You promised!”

  “Promised what?” Luke asked.

  “That I’d let her brother go if she helped us,” Ben explained. He turned to Rhondi. “He’s probably okay. That door charge was placed to direct the blast—”

  “Probably?” Rhondi staggered to her feet and started up toward the exit at the back of the trilevel room. “You murglak!”

  “Rhondi, hold on!” Ben stepped to where he could see the mine he had placed on the hatch. “It’s welded, remember? And don’t forget the door charge!”

  “Welded?” Luke echoed, intercepting Ben. “Door charge? Ben, what the blazes have you been doing while I was gone?”

  “I’ll explain in a minute,” Ben said, continuing to look toward the exit. Rhondi had reached the hatch and was beginning to pound it with the heel of her hand. “Right now, I’d better get to that charge before she—”

  Ben was interrupted by a stunned cry as a red circle of blazing heat burned through the back of Rhondi’s skull. Her body, lifeless before the scream died, crumpled to the floor. Behind her, the bright column of a scarlet lightsaber began to cut a smoking furrow through the thick metal of the hatch.

  A wave of danger sense rolled up Ben’s spine. He turned to find his father already standing beside the gurney, his lightsaber in hand and his attention fixed on the entry hatch. Ben could see by how low he held his hand, and by the fatigue in his eyes, that his father was still weak. But he could also feel his father drawing on the Force, pulling it into himself to enliven atrophied muscles and restore dead synapses.

  “Ben,” his father asked, “who the black empty void is that?”

  THE TIPS OF FOUR SCARLET LIGHTSABERS WERE CHASING ONE ANOTHER around the perimeter of the hatch, so bright that Ben could look at them only through the blast-tinting of his helmet’s faceplate. The blades were cutting through the thick alien metal as though it were plasteel, and Ben could feel dark presences—a lot of dark presences—standing in the corridor outside.

  His father was down in the front of the control room, trying to cut a meter-wide escape hole into the viewport. The metal was only a fraction the thickness of the hatch, but his lightsaber was cutting much more slowly than the blades of the mysterious intruders. It seemed strange that thin transparent material should be so much tougher than a heavy metal hatch, but that was certainly the way it looked.

  “Dad, you’re cutting really slow,” Ben said, speaking into his helmet microphone. After Rhondi’s death, the first thing both Skywalkers had done was put on their vac suits with the idea of fleeing back to the Shadow as swiftly as possible. “Could your power cell be low?”

  Luke’s reply came over the helmet receiver, calm and patient. “Son, I’m a Jedi Master. Do you really think I’d forget to check my own lightsaber’s power-cell levels?”

  “Just asking. Strange things happen around here.” Ben checked the hatch again and saw that the four scarlet blades were almost to the corners. “Such as …they’re cutting through that hatch about twice as fast as you’re cutting through the viewport.”

  “That is interesting.” Luke sounded less nervous about this news than intrigued by it. “And you’re sure you have no idea who they are?”

  “Dad, I told you no. But they had to hear Rhondi pounding on that hatch.” Ben wasn’t worried about electronic eavesdropping; even if the intruders had a receiver set to the correct channel, the Skywalkers’ communications were encrypted using the latest Jedi technology. “And they still pushed a lightsaber through it at head height. Does that sound like Mind Walker style to you?”

  “Not really.” Luke deactivated his lightsaber and stepped away from the circle he had been cutting, leaving about ten centimeters at the top still attached. “But they didn’t manifest out of the void. They’re a part of this somehow.”

  “Yeah, but we really don’t have time to stop to talk …”

  Ben let the sentence trail off as his father raised a hand and used the Force to push the smoking circle of semi-attached viewport outward, opening a hole large enough to serve as an escape route. Instead of leading the way through it, Luke started toward the back of the room, angling toward the corner opposite Ben’s.

  “We need to take one alive,” Luke said.

  “Alive?” Ben echoed. “Check your vitals readout. You’re barely strong enough to make a run for the Shadow—much less take prisoners.”

  “True—and feeling better every second.” Luke pointed at the hatch. “Ben, we need to find out who those people are—and who sent them. That’s the key to figuring this place out.”

  Ben knew there was no point in arguing. His father’s voice had assumed that I’m the Master tone. Besides, the logic was sound, at least until it came to the part about them making it back to the Shadow alive.

  “Can we at least be careful about it?” Ben asked. “Right now, all we know about them is that they don’t mind killing people, and they have a thing for red lightsabers. Whoever they are, they seem to have all the advantages.”

  “Not all of them,” Luke said, slipping behind an equipment cabinet on the opposite side of the room. He was on the upper tier, about five meters past the hatch. “Are you ready with that gas cylinder?”

  Ben checked the hand torch he had used to weld himself and Rhondi into the chamber. The feed valve was wide open, and the safety shutoff was disabled.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Then hide your Force presence and wait for my signal,” Luke ordered. “We might learn something just by watching them.”

  Ben slipped into his own hiding place—the foot well of an equipment console, on the upper tier directly across from his father. He quickly drew his Force presence inward, shrinking it down until even he could not sense it, then felt the floor reverberate as the heavy hatch fell into the room.

  Two seconds later the door charge detonated, but there were no muffled screams to suggest that anyone had been near the entrance when the fuse activated. Whoever they were, Rhondi’s killers had obviously learned their lesson when they opened Rolund’s cell and tripped the first mine.

  The blast of the door charge was still vibrating through the floor when Ben felt the lighter pounding of running feet. He guessed that maybe seven or eight intruders had entered, but there was no way to be certain. He waited five long breaths for them to pass his hiding place, then peered out toward the hatchway. The metal was still smoking and glowing white. Even so, he could see a pair of vac suit boots on t
he floor outside the hatchway.

  A double comm click sounded inside Ben’s helmet. The signal meant his father was preparing to move, but it would be impossible to see the rear guard from his side of the room. He hit a chin toggle inside his helmet, intending to warn his dad about the ambusher, then saw the intruder’s boots charging into the control room and realized his father was already moving.

  Holding the gas canister in one hand and his lightsaber in the other, Ben rolled from his hiding place. A line of eight intruders was descending toward the diversionary hole in the viewport, all of them in a hurry. Like the Skywalkers, they were wearing full combat-rated vac suits and carrying lightsabers. Some also carried blasters, and most wore equipment belts with two sheaths, one for a slender glass-handled dagger and one for a curved, heavy-bladed parang.

  Ben’s father was already sliding onto the top of an equipment console, so intent on capturing a prisoner that he did not sense the rear guard coming through the hatch behind him. The intruder’s faceplate was raised, revealing a lavender face with fine features and a long nose, slightly more slender than a human’s. In her gloved hand, she was holding one of the dark parangs. Instead of leaping into a melee attack as Ben had expected, she stopped and raised the parang.

  “Dad!” Ben commed. “Roll, now!”

  The parang flew, and Luke rolled, disappearing over a row of equipment cabinets just as the weapon spun past centimeters above his helmet. Unable to hear the commed message, the woman grimaced and extended her hand, using the Force to call the weapon back—and presenting her back to Ben as she moved to put the row of equipment cabinets between herself and Luke.

  Ben did not give her a chance to catch the parang. He simply Force-leapt across the last three meters between them, pointing his lightsaber at her heart and thumbing the activation switch. To his relief, both his weapon and his body felt fully powered—though, in the latter case, it was impossible to say whether the fuel was the hydrade he had quaffed earlier or his desperation to save his father.

  The woman must have had her own danger sense. Even before Ben’s blade extended, she was spinning away, still reaching for her parang with one hand, igniting her own lightsaber with her other, and snapping a vicious heel kick at Ben’s groin with her near foot.