Skyborn

“Actually, it’s probably very bright on the way down a black hole,” Luke pointed out. “Just because gravity is too strong for light to escape doesn’t mean it can’t exist, and there’s all that gas compressing and glowing as it’s sucked deeper and deeper.”

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“Yeah, but you’re dead,” Ben said, “and everything is dark when you’re dead. Still, I see what you mean. I doubt Tadar’Ro expects us to fly down a black hole.”

“No, not downone.”

There was just enough anxiety in Luke’s voice to make Ben glance into the mirrored section again. His father was frowning out at the two black holes, staring into the fiery cloud between them and looking just worried enough to twist Ben’s stomach into a cold knot.

“ Betweenthem?” Ben could see what his father was thinking, and it didn’t make him happy. In any system of two large bodies, there were five areas where the centrifugal and gravitational forces would neutralize each other and hold a smaller body—such as a satellite or asteroid—in perpetual equilibrium. Of those five locations, only one was directly betweenthe two bodies. “You mean Stable Zone One?”

Luke nodded. “The Chasm of Perfect Darkness is an ancient Ashla parable referring to the twin perils of ego and ignorance,” he explained. “The Tythonians spoke of it as a deep dark canyon flanked by high, ever-crumbling cliffs.”

“So life is the chasm, darkness is falling all around,”

Ben said, taking an educated guess as to the parable’s meaning, “and the only way to stay in the light is to go down the middle.”

Luke smiled. “You’ve got a real feeling for mystic guidance.” He lifted his hands away from the yoke.

“You have the ship, son.”

“Me? Now?”Ben considered pointing out that his father was by far the better pilot—but that wasn’t the issue, of course. If Ben was going to face his fears, he needed to handle the flying himself. He swallowed hard, squared his shoulders, then confirmed, “I have the ship.”

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Ben deactivated the mirror panel and accelerated toward the black holes. As the Shadowdrew closer, their dark orbs rapidly began to swell and drift toward opposite sides of the cockpit, until all that could be seen of them were tall slivers of darkness hanging along the rear edges of the canopy. Ahead lay a fiery confluence of superheated gas, swirling in from two different directions and so bright it hurt Ben’s eyes even through the Shadow’s blast- tinting.

He checked the primary display and found only bright static; the navigation sensors were awash in elec-tromagnetic blast from compressing gas. The Shadow’s internal sensors were working just fine, however, and they showed the ship’s hull temperature rising rapidly as they penetrated the cloud. It wouldn’t take long for that to become dangerous, Ben knew. Soon the fierce heat inside the accretion disk would start fouling guidance systems and control relays. Eventually, it would compromise hull integrity.

“Dad, how about doing something with those sensor filters?” Ben asked. “My navigational readings are snow.”

“Adjusting the filters won’t change anything,” Luke said calmly. “We’re flying between a pair of black holes ,remember?”

Ben exhaled in exasperation, then cursed under his breath and continued to stare out into the fiery ribbons ahead. At best, he could make out a confluence zone where the two accretion disks were brushing against each other, and the painful brilliance made it difficult to tell even that much.

“How am I supposed to navigate?” Ben complained.

“I can’t see anything.”

Luke remained silent.

Ben felt the hint of disapproval in his father’s Force aura and experienced a flash of rebellion. He let out a mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

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cleansing breath, allowing the feeling to run its course and depart on a cushion of stale air, then saw how he had been blinded by his anxiety over the navigation difficulties.

“Oh . . . right,” Ben said, feeling more than a little foolish. “Trust the Force.”

“No worries,” Luke said, sounding amused. “The first time I tried something this crazy, I had to be reminded, too.”

“Well, at least Ihave an excuse.” Ben took the navigation sensors offline so the static wouldn’t interfere with his concentration. “It’s hard to focus with your dad looking over your shoulder.”

Luke’s crash webbing clicked open. “In that case, maybe I should get some—”

“Who are you kidding?” Ben shoved the yoke over, flipping the Shadowinto a tight barrel roll. “You just want to bite your nails in private.”

“The thought hadn’t crossed my mind,” Luke said, dropping back into his seat. “Until now,ungrateful off-spring.”

Ben laughed, then leveled out and checked the hull temperature. It was climbing even faster than he had feared. He closed his eyes and—hoping the gas was not so thick that friction would aggravate the problem—shoved the throttles forward.

It did not take long before Ben began to sense a calm place a little to port. He adjusted course and extended his Force awareness in that direction, then started to feel a strange, nebulous presence that reminded him of something he could not quite place—of something dark and diffuse, spread across a great distance.

Ben opened his eyes again. “Dad, do you feel—”

“Yes, like the Killiks,” Luke said. “We might be dealing with a hive- mind.”

A cold shudder was already racing down Ben’s spine.

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His father had barely uttered the word Killiksbefore the memory of his stint as an unwilling Gorog Joiner came flooding back, and for the second time in less than an hour he found himself desperately wanting to withdraw from the Force. Gorog had been a dark side nest, secretly controlling the entire Killik civilization while it fed on captured Chiss, and Ben had fallen under its sway for a short time when he was only five.

It had been the most terrifying and confusing time of his childhood, and had Jacen not recognized what was happening and helped Ben find his way back to the Force and his true family, he doubted very much that he would have been able to break free at all.

Thankfully, the presence ahead was not all that similar to Gorog’s. There was certainly a darkness to it, and it was clearly composed of many different beings joined together across a vast distance—most of space ahead, really. But the distribution seemed more mottled than a Killik hive- mind, as though dozens of distinct individu-als were joined together in something vaguely similar to a battle- meld.

Ben was about to clarify his impressions for his father when a familiar presence began to slither up inside him. It was cold and condemning, like a friend betrayed, and he could feel how angry it was about the intrusion into its lair. The Force grew stormy and foreboding, and an electric prickle of danger sense raced down Ben’s spine. He could feel the darkness gathering against him, trying to push him away, and that only hardened his resolve to finally face the specter. He opened himself up, grabbed hold in the Force, and began to pull.

The presence jerked back, then tried to shrink away.

It was too late. Ben already had a firm grasp, and he was determined to follow it back to its physical location. He checked the hull temperature and saw that it mill_9780345519399_2p_all_r1.qxp:8p insert template 6/4/09 10:1

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was hovering in the yellow danger zone. Then he focused his attention forward and saw—actually saw—a thumbnail- sized darkness tu