Read Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 02 - Skyborn for Free Online Page B

handle the flying himself. He swallowed hard, squared his shoulders, then confirmed, “I have the ship.”
    Ben deactivated the mirror panel and accelerated toward the black holes. As the
Shadow
drew 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 electromagnetic 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 acleansing 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
I
have 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
Shadow
into 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 offspring.”
    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.His father had barely uttered the word
Killiks
before 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