Chapter 38

Whispers

Ahsoka looked around the cargo bay, and found former Jedi Master Ylenic It'kla in the corner of the room. His legs were crossed, and his eyes were closed. Nevertheless, he spoke.

"Hello, Ahsoka. I gather the repairs are going well."

"As well as they can without replacement parts. Unfortunately Baudo class ships are almost always custom made, so none of the parts are interchangeable with anything from the Drexl. I'll look through some of L'Larr's accounts and see if there's enough money to replace all the landing struts with something a little more standardized." She took a deep breath and continued, "But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

She sat down in front of him and set the ancient Jedi holocron on the floor next to them. With a gentle nudge through the Force, the holocron activated, and the hologram of an ancient Twi'lek master appeared above it.

"Greetings again, young one." He turned to Ylenic and said, "I am Master Zhar Lestin. What answers do you seek today?"

"I am Ylenic It'kla," the Caamasi replied, "And Ahsoka is the one seeking answers today." He turned to Ahsoka. "We are here to help however we can."

Ahsoka took a deep breath, and the moment she opened her mouth to speak, the story spilled out of her. The voice in her head, the crystal that trapped spirits in the Force, the ancient Sith Lord who trapped his own soul in a holocron. It all came out in a babble. And in the background, Ahsoka could hear the voice laughing and telling her how weak she was.

"Weak."

"What?" Ahsoka said, opening her eyes. "Sorry... I..."

"I suspect that this Sith is getting weak. His crystal is broken, and you said that when you broke the larger crystal that housed several Force presences, you could feel them slip away and become one with the Force." Ylenic sounded calm, but his voice wasn't having the same effect that it usually did. Normally just hearing his voice made the people around him feel calmer, at peace. "He is scrabbling for the last vestiges of control."

"I have never encountered such a corruption of Sith alchemy, but in their mad lust for power, the Sith have created many abominations like this," the hologram of Master Zhar added.

Master Zhar's image flickered in the dim light of the cargo bay. Ahsoka wondered if she could believe anything her senses were telling her. For that matter, how difficult would it be for a mind, trapped in one holocron, but powered by a crystal that could trap and hold Force energy, to tap into a nearby holocron and project through it?

Maybe asking the holocron anything was a mistake. Maybe that's what the voice meant when it said it was going to corrupt her friends. Maybe that was the only other outlet.

That had to be it. Nat was too young, not sensitive enough in the Force to be manipulated. Master It'kla was too sensitive, he'd notice the intrusion. The Sith had used Ahsoka because she fell into the middle. Sensitive enough for someone as weak as he was to reach into her mind and start manipulating her, but not strong enough to fight back.

The cargo bay spun around her. No, her head was spinning, not the cargo bay.

Maybe she really did have a concussion. Or maybe she just couldn't trust her senses. Ylenic's voice echoed in her montrals, and his furry face filled her vision. His yellow eyes looked at her.

Yellow eyes. Where had she seen eyes rimmed in yellow like that before?

Something was very wrong.

But her mind was too fuzzy to know what it was.

Yellow eyes.

Kan'to Kree had yellow rimmed eyes. On the Force-conduit planet Mortis, when Ahsoka and Master Skywalker had been influenced by the Son, a man who was the representation of the dark side of the Force itself, their eyes had turned yellow.

Darth Nadir's voice echoed in her mind. "You'll do what you have to do to survive, Jedi."

She stood up and screamed, "No!"

The room stopped spinning. And she realized that Ylenic's eyes were yellow two days ago when she first met him. They were always yellow. There was nothing wrong with Ylenic. There was no way that the Sith Holocron could have influenced him.

Was there?

He was on Susevfi before she was. He'd been tracking Kan'to Kree and Mirian while they were infected with shards of the broken Sith holocron.

Mirian actually had a piece of crystal shrapnel in her. She could be still under Darth Nadir's influence even now.

Ahsoka closed her eyes. She could hear Ylenic's voice, trying to reach her, trying to calm her. She knew somewhere in the back of her mind was Darth Nadir, trying to influence her in more subtle ways.

She shut them both out. She had to find balance. She had to find herself.

"Might as well still be back in that cave," she said.

She opened her eyes slowly to see that both the hologram and the living, breathing Jedi Masters were both looking at her with concern.

"I'm all right," she said, "for now. I just... I don't know if it's him in my head, or this place, or the concussion."

"Perhaps we should all leave on the Red Drexl. If the Sith is truly losing his Force essence through the cracked crystal, all we will need is some time away from this place. The Whipclaw is just a ship, it can be retrieved later."

"No. We have to destroy that thing. Even if he's getting weaker, he'll just panic and lash out more. I don't want him finding a soft spot in my brain and doing something bad. All it takes is for him to put an image in my head and make me flip a couple of switches, and I'll end up turning the safeties off and then opening an airlock. We can't take that risk. Either we finish fixing the Whipclaw, or we find a way to install a missile tube on the Drexl. Whichever's quicker."

Master It'kla nodded, "Very well. I'll ask Xho and Jyssa which they think will be the most feasible."

"In the meantime, I need to meditate. I can't be walking around in my state. I could be a danger to everyone around me."

"Resist me, and you're endangering yourself and your friends," snickered the voice in the back of her mind.

Ylenic said, "I trust your judgment, Ahsoka. You know your limits far better than I do."

She closed her eyes, trying to shut out any illusions the Sith might throw at her. Without another word, Ahsoka collapsed down onto her rear end on the deck, then crossed her legs and began trying to meditate again.

This was just like being back in that cave. Only now there were other people around, people who could get hurt if she failed.

Which just meant that she couldn't fail. "I won't let you down," she said to the sound of Ylenic's retreating footsteps.

"It's funny how you trusted him enough to tell him about the voices in your head," said Darth Nadir. "It's even funnier that he told you, right to your face, that he trusted you too."