Abyss Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 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 individuals 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 was hovering in the yellow danger zone. Then he focused his attention forward and saw—actually
saw
—a thumbnail-sized darkness tunneling through the swirling fires ahead. He pointed their nose toward the black oval, then shoved the throttles to the overload stops and watched the fiery ribbons of gas stream past the cockpit.
    The ribbons grew brighter and more deeply colored as the ship penetrated the accretion disk, and soon