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suffused her. It couldn’t! She had to know who was inside, what sort of beings they were. Perhaps they were a species she had never before encountered. The thought was thrilling.

As it passed over, its shadow fell across her for an instant. A sensation of coldness, much more than the expected sudden coolness of something blocking direct sunlight, brushed Vestara. She gasped slightly as the feeling tingled through her.

It was cold, yes, forbidding . . . but also challenging.

Curious. Intrigued.

By her.

She no longer was afraid for the vessel’s safety. Its pilot knew exactly what it was doing. It was heading directly and quite deliberately for the ruins of the Ship of Destiny, and the Temple, almost as old, that had been constructed around it.

Any fear or trepidation she had experienced a moment before evaporated like water on a hot rock. Vestara reached out in the Force and summoned Tikk, her uvak. Tikk had been basking in the sunlight, craving the heat as all reptiles did, his sharp beak and brilliant green eyes closed. Now he lifted his bright gold head, stretched out his long neck, and spread his red- and-black ruff in the uvak equivalent of an awakening stretch. With an answering croak, he spread his wings, leapt upward, and flew the few meters toward Vestara and Ahri.

She barely paid attention to Tikk, keeping her eyes glued to the strange vessel as it grew smaller and finally vanished from her sight. When she could see it no longer, Vestara took a deep, steadying breath, then gathered up the long hem of her robes, turned to where Tikk patiently awaited her, and began to run as fast as her long legs would carry her in the cumbersome sand, using the Force to stabilize her feet and push her along.

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“Come on,” she called over her shoulder.

“Where are we going?” asked Ahri, hastening to catch up.

Vestara Force- leapt upward, landing gracefully on the broad back of the uvak. Ahri followed suit, his arms slipping around her waist as he sat behind her.

“To follow the ship,” Vestara said. “Couldn’t you feel it? It was for us, Ahri.”

Tikk gathered himself, shifting his weight from one clawed foot to the other, then sprang upward.

“For us?” Ahri shouted over the beat of the membra-nous, veined wings— wings so very like those of the vessel that had brushed Vestara’s thoughts only a few heartbeats earlier.

“For us,” Vestara repeated firmly. She didn’t know how she knew, only that she did.

The vessel had come for them. For younglings. For apprentices.

It had come for Sith.

It was not a very great distance as an uvak flew to the Sith Temple. Accessible only from the air or by a per-ilous climb, the Temple had been created to protect and watch over the Ship of Destiny and house the survivors of the crash. Vestara had visited here many times before, ever since she had become a Tyro. But she was more excited now than she had been even on her first trip so long ago.

Tikk’s leathery wings beat steadily, and the Temple came into view. It had been hewn from the very rock that had been the destruction of the Ship of Destiny—the Omen.It was very much like the Sith, Vestara thought, to take that which had been responsible for their greatest hardship and make it serve them. She knew the history of its creation; how the original Sith crew, equipped only with lightsabers and a few hand-

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held energy weapons, had cut into the mountain’s heart and shaped the spires, walls, and windows of the massive central Temple. Other wings were added as the centuries crawled past.

Most of the initial work had been done by the Sith, who could move huge chunks of rock with the power of the Force. Later, here and many kilometers away in the capital city of Tahv, the Keshiri— Ahri’s people, the native humanoid species of this world— were put to work, with the Sith in charge. Tahv bore the stamp of a place that had been expanded by a people who had the luxury to appreciate art and beauty; the Temple, while beautiful in its own right, as the first home of the Sith was more functional than decorative. The statuary, of early Sith leaders, including Captain Yaru Korsin, the first commander of the Omen,had been brought in much later, and the lovely carvings were an almost delicate counterpoint to the hard beauty of the Temple ar-chitecture.

Not visible from the air, but housed protectively within a special, highly secured section of the Temple, was said to be the Omenitself. Some muttered that the vessel was nothing more than bits and pieces of twisted metal, preserved only for sentimental reasons. Others believed that much of what it had once been still remained, its knowledge hoarded and shared with only the select few who ascended to the lofty ranks of the Sith Lords or the Masters.

But Vestara was not interested in admiring the black spires and functional, simple terraces of the Temple, or the beautiful figurines of its courtyard. And for once, her thoughts did not drift toward wondering what secrets the Omencontained. This time, her eyes were on the sphere of livid orange- red that sat in the middle of the courtyard of the Sith Temple.

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stared, not even wanting to blink. Suddenly she felt as if all her life had simply been spent waiting until the moment when the spherical vessel had soared over her and caressed her with the cool brush of darkness, calling her to follow it.

The . . . Ship . . . was a perfect circle, its wings now folded in on itself, its surface rough and hard looking.

Dark- side energy seemed to flow from it. Dozens of Sith were milling about in the courtyard already, and Vestara saw that more were approaching on uvak- back.

She wanted to land, to leap off, to rush up to the Ship and caress its knobbed, pebbly surface. A soft sob escaped her; embarrassed, she tried to turn it into a cough. But Ahri knew her too well. He tightened his arms around her waist.

“Ves, you all right?”

“Yes, of course I am. I just . . . this is an unusual situation, don’t you think?”

She knew that Ahri was fond of her, and while she found him attractive— he was a Keshiri male, of course he was gorgeous— she had no desire to start a romance.

For one thing, despite the fact that the Sith were firm believers in merit over birth, there was still a stigma at-tached to being Keshiri. No doors were closed to them by their unfortunate birth— indeed, one of the current High Lords was Keshiri— but there were never mar-riages between them and the Sith, and they had a narrower window of opportunity to prove themselves.

Some Sith did take Keshiri lovers, of course, although the species were sufficiently different that no children could be conceived. The physical beauty of the Keshiri was difficult to resist, but Vestara knew she would not be one of those who succumbed to it. She was utterly devoted to the Force, to her studies, to practicing and training and honing her skills until her body quivered with weariness, until she was drenched in sweat, until mill_9780345519382_3p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 4/28/09

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Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi:Omen she crawled into bed and slept the dreamless sleep of the exhausted.

And now this Ship had come, and she did not care about anything else.

Again she felt the cold perusal, and shivered. Ahri’s arms tightened about her, mistaking the gesture for a physical chill.

You sensed me.

I— I did,she sent back through the Force.