EIGHT

Dustil followed Melan, Torvim, and Iman past the doorwatcher and out to the ruins. It had been drizzly and cold for days, and the ground crunched with old ice. The sand blew around unpleasantly. Dustil trailed behind Melan and Torvim with Iman. The Rodian looked miserable—his people did not take well to the cold, and they were all wearing the just the standard Academy uniform. "Cold out here, huh?" Dustil asked cheerfully.

Iman glanced at him impassively. "It is not for me to complain."

Dustil grinned. "Then I guess I'll have to do it for both of us." Iman smiled slightly at that, and encouraged, Dustil said casually, "A good night to have a woman in your bed."

If the Rodian had eyebrows, they would have been raised. "This is what you call banter, Human? I do not joke of such a sacred thing."

Dustil backpeddled. "No, I know your kind mates for life. I guess you don't have a mate yet, then?"

Iman couldn't hide the sharp pang of loneliness that shot through him, and Dustil knew that he had him. This had to be Kaltona's husband. A Force user, obviously, but apparently not a Jedi. Dustil hadn't known that there were half-trained Force users in the service. Interesting.

He whispered, "Or do you miss your wife, Iman? Do you worry about her?"

Iman looked at him sharply. "How do you—?"

Melan shouted at them from a quarter klick up. "Come on, you two! I don't want to be out in this slop for longer than we have to!"

Dustil jogged ahead, taking a little satisfaction in Iman's confusion. The longer he could keep everyone off balance, the better it was for him. Without intending to, he thought of the Echani woman in the cantina looking for her Jedi killer. You could be one, I think. He shook his head. Now was not the time to fantasize about a glamorously evil career.

Melan stopped in front of a small opening in the rockface. She crossed her arms and grinned. "This is it."

Dustil looked at the opening skeptically. It was less than a meter in diameter—they'd have to crawl on their bellies to get in. "How far is it like this?" he asked.

Torvim squatted down and shone his wristlamp into the cave. The light only illuminated a few meters before being swallowed by the cave. "Melan, you didn't tell me we were going to have to go someplace like this," he complained. "How do you even know what's in here?"

"Because," she said in a falsely sweet voice, "I've been inside."

"You have? When?" Torvim looked irritated. Dustil suddenly found the hilt of his lightsaber very interesting. He didn't want to be in the middle of the couple's argument.

"Last week, when you were pathetically trying to get Revan's attention in the practice room." She smiled, her eyes hard and dark as stones.

"Hey, at least I—" Torvim protested.

Iman broke in softly. "I can see in the dark better than Humans. I will go first." Without further comment, he dropped to his stomach and pulled himself inside the cave. His wristlamp threw eerie shadows on the curved sides of the cave.

The three Humans looked at each other in surprise. Dustil swallowed his snicker. So much for Iman being timid. He gestured to the hole. "Melan, I think since you've been inside, you should go next."

"I was planning on it." She promptly followed Iman inside. Torvim watched her, his eyes on her short skirt and what it failed to cover.

"I'm next," he said quickly.

Dustil rolled his eyes at all of them—why did he feel so much older than everyone?—and dutifully followed Torvim into the cave. He was surprised to find that the walls and floor were perfectly smooth, as though the cave had been mechanically carved from the rock. Melan and Iman were talking ahead of him, but the walls turned their voices into weird, unintelligible echoes. He concentrated on his crawling and didn't bother trying to understand. He tried not to think about how close the walls were around him and what would happen if it got suddenly narrower. Torvim was broader than he was—he would get stuck first, and Dustil could back out of the hole. If it came to that.

Just as he was beginning to think the hole would never end, Torvim's feet suddenly disappeared in front of him. A few seconds later, Dustil found himself sticking out of the hole in a large cavern. He was about ten feet off the ground. He pushed himself out into space and used the Force to right himself before he hit the ground. Dust kicked up around his feet as he landed. The others were a few meters ahead of him, staring at the ceiling.

Dustil looked up and gasped. The roof of the cavern was a perfect dome twenty meters above their heads. It was studded with green crystals that sparkled in the dim light of their wrist lamps. The crystals themselves made a quiet tinkling noise, like a distant windchime. It almost sounded like words, like the crystals were speaking to him—

He was pushed roughly from the side and he stumbled to catch his balance. "Snap out of it," Torvim said roughly.

Dustil blinked and looked around at the others, who were now right in front of him. They were looking at him with varying degrees of concern on their faces. "What?" he asked.

"You've been staring up like a tame bantha for five minutes," Melan explained. "You weren't responding to us at all."

Dustil shook his head roughly, but he could still hear the crystals above him. "Can't you guys hear that?" he asked. He couldn't get their noise out of his head.

Iman looked at him closely. "The crystals speak to you, yes? There are some of my kind who can talk to the earth, but I have never heard of a Human who could do it."

"Yeah, well," Dustil said shakily, "let's just find whatever it is we came for and go." He didn't like the idea of being held in thrall by a pile of inanimate rock. The crystals had power, he could feel it, feel it calling for him. Asking him—

Iman gripped him by the shoulder, breaking another trance Dustil hadn't realized he'd fallen into. Melan and Torvim were far ahead of them now, still bickering. The Rodian leaned in closely. "You must control yourself, Dustil. Do not listen to the crystals. They are too powerful for us. They are from a Dark time, I think."

Together they made for the far end of the cavern, stepping around a perfectly circular pool of still water in the center of the cave. Dustil realized with a cold shudder that this was no ordinary cave, or even a tomb. It was an altar.

Melan was waiting for them, arms crossed over her chest and a smug smile on her face. "So, what you think?" she asked.

"It's all right, I guess," Torvim said, still pouting from their last argument. He shrugged. "I don't know what's so great about a bunch of crystals, except that they talk to Telos, here."

Iman was looking behind him at the pool. "The power comes from there," he stated flatly.

Melan grinned. "Very good, Iman. I knew you were the smart one in this group." She strolled over to the pool and sat cross-legged in front of it. Iman promptly went to the other side and did the same. Dustil exchanged wary glances with Torvim before following suit. He didn't care for the feel of any of this. It didn't feel Dark so much as it felt. . .old.

The pool was completely still and black, not even reflecting the crystals above their heads. Melan held her hands over it, palms down. The hollows of her eyes and cheeks were dark in contrast to the paleness of her face. "The pool will show us things."

Dustil raised an eyebrow. "What kinds of things?"

She smiled mysteriously. "Whatever you want, Dustil. It will show you whatever you want."

Dustil realized suddenly that Melan had been down here before, many more times than she had admitted. She knew how to use the pool, had probably used it before. Why had she asked them to come with her, then? The hair on the back of his neck rose and he suppressed a shiver. He had a bad feeling about this.

They were all looking at him, waiting for him to respond. "I, er, well—" he hesitated.

Melan leaned over the pool. "Come on, Dustil," she whispered, "tell it what you want to see."

The future. Ask about the future, The crystals chimed down at him. He suddenly felt like there wasn't enough air in the cave. He didn't know why, but he knew that asking about the future was a terrible idea. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "The past. I, uh, I want to see the battle of Malachor V." Almost before the words were out—did it know what he was going to ask?—the pool darkened, and he felt it tugging at him, at the place where the Force lived inside him. "Wait—" he said, but suddenly the cave was gone before him.

He was on the bridge of a starship, looking down at a rocky gray planet. Malachor V, he knew. But it was as he had seen it in pictures after the war, the "before" pictures when the planet was still whole. This was before the battle, then. Before the—

"Activate the mass shadow generator," he heard himself say, but it wasn't his voice, it was a woman's voice, and he was terrified by the cold hardness contained in it. He looked down at himself, saw the brown Jedi Knight robes and the lightsaber hilt on the belt. He was watching from behind someone else's eyes.

"Yes, General," replied a soft voice behind him. He—she?—turned and saw a Zabrak in Republic colors behind a terminal. "General, you know what this will do."

"We have to end this war. However it can be done," the General said. She sounded resolute, but Dustil felt her doubt, her fear. He reached out with his Force senses and felt all the people the General was connected to. Force bond after Force bond, more than Dustil knew one person could hold. He could feel them stretching out like a web, all the way to the surface of the planet. How could she bear it, he wondered? Being connected to all those lives, all at once?

Suddenly a blinding wave of darkness hit him, and he went to his knees. A cry tore from his throat. For an agonizingly long moment, Dustil didn't know what had happened. Then he looked up and saw the planet imploding below him. He couldn't breathe—there wasn't air—all those lives, gone.

"General!" he heard, and then felt the Zabrak's hands under his elbows. "General, are you well?"

It was a hole, a great hole below him, inside him, an emptiness like he had felt on Telos, only a thousand times magnified because he was connected to it. The emptiness widened, was unstoppable, would consume him—

—and it was suddenly gone. He was sitting in the cave, staring down at the pool. He could see the faint reflection of the planet before it faded away. The taunting of the crystals was loud in his ears.

He stared at the others, still struggling for air. They looked back at him with mild expressions. "What did you see?" Iman asked.

"I saw—it was—they all died," he managed. "And I felt them all."

Iman bowed his head. "Malachor V was a terrible tragedy. It affects all of us."

Dustil was still struggling to comprehend what he saw. How had the General, whoever she was, borne it? She must have died—no one could survive such a terrible tear in the Force. He realized then that no one else was nearly as affected as him. "But did you not see it? Did any of you?"

Torvim rubbed the back of his neck. "I was on a Mandalorian ship. I think I was a Mandalorian. Somebody said that Mandalore was dead, and people started killing themselves, right there. But it was like it wasn't me, you know? I couldn't feel any of them."

Melan smiled that same small smile. "I was far away, as well. I only saw what happened, and felt nothing."

Iman continued to stare at the pool. "I was on the planet. It did not last long."

Dustil put a shaking hand to his forehead. He had only been a boy when Malachor V happened, and he remembered the whispers of the adults, but he had never known what had really happened. He suddenly remembered being shocked out of bed one night by a terrible nightmare, something indescribable and Dark. His father had been gone, of course, but his mother comforted him and he went back to sleep. Dustil realized now that he must have felt the echo of Malachor, of all the lives lost at once. How could the Galaxy have let such a thing occur?

Back in the present, in the crystal cave, Dustil tried to regain control of himself and re-center himself in the Force. He focused on the ground beneath his folded legs, the feel of the rock against his hand, the damp smell of the cave around him. He realized with surprise he could still hear the echo of emptiness that he had felt on the ship, but it was far away and small enough to put aside. Looking around, Dustil found that he could suddenly feel the Force much more sharply than he ever had before. Dustil could feel Iman's presence in the Force strongly beside him, and he knew without question that the Rodian was not a Sith. His aura was strong, and he lent Dustil his strength. Slowly, Dustil felt his balance return.

"It's your turn, Iman," Melan whispered. "What do you want to see?" Dustil looked at the woman, and he could feel the Dark in her. He hadn't been able to see it clearly before, but it was as plain as the clothes she was wearing now. She was utterly and truly Dark. She wanted them here, for some reason. They should leave now, he realized, before—

"I wish to see the one I most care about," Iman said softly beside him.

"No, Iman, we should—" he started, but the pool tugged again and he was gone.

Dustil wondered for a moment who the pool would show him. Selene, maybe? A sharp spear of sadness pushed up from his throat, and he ruthlessly pushed it down. It had been over a year since Selene. . .was killed. Or maybe he would see his mother? Dustil simply didn't care for most people. Hell, he might even see Zuppo, the gizka he'd been allowed to keep when he was young. It figured that Iman would ask to see something vague.

The light changed, and Dustil could see a blue Twi'lek standing in front of him. Mission? The person he cared most for was Mission? Dustil didn't understand it. She was a pretty but annoying kid who worshipped his father from what he could see, and she certainly didn't even make his top ten when he thought of who he cared for. Then his vision shifted, and Dustil could see an older kid, maybe sixteen, with heavily muscled arms, sandy hair, and prominent freckles. He looked familiar, and Dustil realized with a start that it was one of the Valenta twins from Marne. He certainly didn't care most about—

"Look, you two, we need to keep quiet from here on out, all right?" Dustil heard himself say in a familiar voice. He realized belatedly that he didn't care about Mission or the twin—whosever head he was in was just in the same room as them. If that was Jan or Jirin, then he was probably on Telos, and that would mean—Dustil looked down at himself and saw a familiar blaster and holsters on his hips. Dustil was inside his father's head.

Dustil mentally groaned. Great. Just what you wanted. Maybe if you're lucky, you can still be inside his head when Revan comes back. He was a little surprised, though. He would not have put his father at the top of his list, unless it was a list of vague resentment and mistrust. Maybe the pool knew something he didn't.

As a habit, Dustil reached out with his Force senses, and. . .they were gone. He couldn't feel anything around him, couldn't see any auras, didn't hear the life flowing through everything. Where had it gone? What had happened to him? Dustil spent a few panicked moments before he realized that his father wasn't Force sensitive, and he'd been trying to use the Force through him. He wondered at the blindness of it—Dustil hadn't known that there was anything special about what he could do until Bandon had found him in the cargo hold of the Leviathan and taken him to be trained. But he'd always been able to feel the Force, and it was terrifying to suddenly be cut off from it. How did people live without knowing it? Dustil had always thought that his father must have been a little Sensitive to be as good a pilot as he was—how else could he anticipate the rolls and turns of the ship as he did?—but he realized now that his father had always just done it on his own, without using the Force at all. Dustil's respect for him increased.

"I'll do the talking when we meet with Wann," Dustil heard Carth say. Dustil knew that tone of voice—his father wasn't fooling around. He saw Mission roll her eyes a little but the twin—was it Jan or Jirin?—nodded seriously.

"Don't worry, Captain," he said. "I just want to hear what happened to Jirin. I know you'll find out for us." Dustil wondered what had happened. He hadn't even realized that the Valentas survived the attack.

Carth took the lead as they left what was apparently a speeder bay and entered some sort of base. Dustil couldn't tell if they were underground or just inside—hell, they could even be on a ship for all he knew. They passed door after unmarked door on their way to "Wann's" office. The place looked deserted.

Cautiously, Dustil tried to feel his father's thoughts. It was tricky, because he had to hold himself away from his father to use his Force senses, and then the world around him got indistinct and the movement made him nauseous. He closed his "eyes" and reached out. Carth's mind was surprisingly closed for someone without Force abilities—Dustil couldn't actually hear individual thoughts, just vague impressions and directions. Should not have brought the kids/Wann knows about the virus/Have to stay alert/Let Case and Dustil be safe/Blasters charged and ready/Remember the exits. Dustil was surprised to hear that, even as he was on his own dangerous mission, Carth worried about him and Revan. Overlaying all of his father's thoughts, though, was some kind of haze, like something was off. Dustil tried to pinpoint it, and suddenly felt the virus in Carth's blood. He froze. What was wrong with him? Dustil couldn't reach it, couldn't Heal it, couldn't do anything to stop it. Now that he was looking for it, Dustil could tell that his father was fevered, his reactions a little slower than they should have been. Whatever was wrong with him, he was not in any condition to be unraveling some kind of conspiracy. Go back! he tried to shout to Carth, tried to reach Mission and Jan, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. He couldn't get through his father's Force insensitivity.

They reached a large door flanked with armed guards. "Captain Onasi for Ambassador Wann," he ordered. One of the guards consulted his comm, then stood aside.

Carth pushed open the door and entered the Ambassador's office.

Wann, a heavy-set man in Republic colors, was standing behind his desk with his arms crossed. The light wood walls clashed with the red of Wann's uniform. Dustil instinctively tried to feel the man's aura, but was rebuffed again. Wann smiled widely, falsely. "Captain Onasi! It's good to see you again! How can I be of assistance?" He noticed Carth's companions. "Ah, Mission, is it? Did you and your friend come to join our school?"

Mission grumbled something that Dustil couldn't quite make out. His father's pulse was loud in his ears, drowning out the sounds around him. "Ambassador, I have some questions for you. I hope you can help me get the answers."

Wann's smiled faded a bit. "Of. . .course," said hesitatingly. "Please, have a seat." He waved them to a group of chairs across from a couch. Carth sat on the edge of the couch facing the door, blaster still within easy reach. Mission and Jan awkwardly joined him. Wann sat in the central chair, his bulk uneasily placed on the thin plasteel. He smiled tightly. "So, Captain, what do you need to know?"

"The virus, Wann. What does the Diplomatic Corp know about it?"

Wann hesitated, and Dustil reached out to test his thoughts, only to be rebuffed hard by the plascrete wall of his father's Force insensitivity. He ground his teeth in frustration. He'd gotten too used to the Force helping him read people, and he couldn't tell by just looking at Wann what his intentions were.

"We don't know anything about it. The Republic is very concerned whenever anything happens to one of its citizens, and I assure you that we are doing all we can to help the people of Telos." Wann smiled ingratiatingly.

"Do you know a Zabrak who lives just south of the polar regions?" Carth asked.

Wann's eyes darted to the huge holomap of Telos on his wall. "A Zabrak?" he fumbled, "no, I don't think I know of any—"

Carth leaned forward abruptly and held out a datapad to Wann. The sudden movement made Dustil feel a little speeder-sick, and he wondered if it was his father's discomfort or his own. "I doubt that, but I don't care if you lie to me or not. He's a veteran of the Mandalorian War, and was on the front line at Malachor V when you were attending state dinners on Coruscant. He's not happy about what's apparently happening in the Senate. About Telos." Carth shook the datapad. "He left me a message after I had been here. He knows the truth behind this virus of yours, Wann. About these so-called vaccines."

Wann's collar suddenly looked too tight. He stood up and opened the door to the hallway. "That's about all I have time for today, Captain. If you have concerns about the Senate, I suggest you take it up with your local representative—"

"You've sold the planet to the Ithorians, haven't you?" Carth asked loudly. "You planted a virus to scare the last of the settlers off, and even that didn't work, did it? Now you've resorted to actually killing people." He stood, and had to steady himself on the back of the couch. Dustil couldn't believe what he was hearing—the Republic was selling its own planets to outsiders? Dustil wasn't sure he'd even met an Ithorian—they stayed on their own planet and did weird breeding experiments, from what he remembered. What did they want with Telos?

Wann's diplomatic smile cracked and he glared at Carth. "You backwater colonists never think about what's good for the Republic, do you? No, it's only ever about you and your precious fifty square klicks of farming land." He was practically spitting. "Telos is destroyed, Captain, and it has been for the last four years. It's not getting better, do you understand? Only ten percent of the formerly useable land is repairable—the rest of it is ruin, and it will always be ruin unless we do something about it. Telos is the symbol of our recovery from the wars. We can't let it stay as it is—the public relations are terrible!" Wann stormed away from the door and pointed his finger at Carth. "I thought a man who had traveled as much as you would be a little less provincial. Doctor Coran understood what needed to be done, even if no one else in Marne did."

Carth clamped his hands hard onto his wide belt holster. "I guess I'm just a colonist at heart," he replied. "You didn't deny my accusation. Viruses, useless vaccines, what next, Wann? Ordering children out of their schools at gunpoint? Are you going to poison the crops? You were always a spineless administrator, but I never pegged you for a killer." Dustil shuddered at the cold venom in his father's voice.

To his credit, Wann actually looked chagrined for a moment. He looked at the floor, then back at Carth. His garish tunic strained against his shoulders. "We all have our burdens to bear, Captain," he said. "I have to do what's best for the Republic."

"But what about Jirin?" Jan asked suddenly. He crossed the room in a flash and grabbed Wann's arm. "What did you do to him?"

Wann looked confused. "What?"

"Jirin! You took my brother and you have him somewhere! What did you do?" Jan shook the man, and the Republic security guards started toward them. Wann held up his hand to wave them off.

"Son, I—"

"I'm not your son!"

"I don't know where your brother is. I'm sorry to tell you I'm not the root of all evil on this planet. I'd ask the separatists, if I were you. Are you sure that Jirin didn't join them?"

"No! Of course he didn't! He would have told me—" Jan trailed off, looking defeated. Wann was Hutt-spawn, but it was clear he really didn't know. Dustil wondered what happened to Jirin—he had been the more timid of the Valenta twins, and Dustil didn't think he would have joined a band of mercenaries out of the blue.

Carth put his hand on Jan's shoulder. "Come on, Jan, we've learned all we're going to here. I have a report to make with the Fleet."

All traces of compassion vanished from Wann's face. "Actually, Captain, I'm afraid I can't let you do that."

Carth's hand went to his blaster, but stopped at the low hum of five blaster rifles being trained on him at once. "You would keep a Fleet officer here against his will? You don't have the authority."

Wann gestured, and a pretty blond woman came into the room through a side door. She was holding a hypospanner. "Ooh, sorry, Captain, but I'm afraid that you have the Telosian flu."

Carth looked sharply at Wann. The man shrugged. "Looks like your vaccine deactivated. And my sources tell me that all of the remaining vaccines will be deactivating within twenty-eight hours. We can't let you go back to Marne and infect everyone, can we? After all, there's no cure."

"The virus and the vaccine are the same, aren't they?" Carth asked slowly, realization dawning as he spoke. "You infected everyone with the new virus when you 'cured' them of the last virus." Dustil could feel the anger in his father and wondered if Wann would still be alive if the guards didn't have their blasters aimed at Carth.

"Very good, Captain." Wann clapped his hands together. "Now, I'm afraid we need to wrap up this meeting. I have to begin the evacuation plans."

The blonde piped up. "Republic regulations require that we quarantine you and all of your companions for fourteen days or until you expire. That means you, the boy, and the pretty blue Twi'lek will have to stay here—" she trailed off, looking around the room. "What happened to the girl?"

Carth and Jan looked at each other in surprise. Wann shouted to the guards, "The Twi'lek is loose. She probably has a stealth belt on—find her and bring her to the quarantine cells." He turned back to them, training a small blaster on Jan. "I'll need your weapons, Captain. I assume you won't put up a fight? You look like you can barely stand, and I don't think you intend to risk your young companion by any rash behavior."

Dustil felt the fever clouding his father's thoughts, fear and guilt chasing themselves around in his head. His father's tactician's mind ran through several scenarios, but they all ended with either him or Jan dead. Carth held up his hands. "You win, Wann." He almost kept the resignation out of his voice.

Wann nodded. "I usually do. Guard, take them to—"

Dustil was abruptly yanked out of his father's head and found himself back in the cave. "Wait!" he shouted. He had to find out where they were taking his father, what they were going to do. He had to get to him before the virus killed him.

"Who did you see, Dustil? Someone special, I guess. What was her name, that girl you were paired with?" Dustil blinked slowly, Melan coming into focus before him. "I wouldn't move if I were you," she said sweetly. Dustil glanced down and blanched.

Melan's red lightsaber was a centimeter from his neck. "You and I have unfinished business, Dustil. We need to talk about why you and Revan are really here."