Brisha brushed off further questions until they’d reached a turbolift near the habitat’s center and ridden it up four floors. It opened onto a circular chamber twenty meters across. The ceiling was fifteen meters above, a curved surface made of a thick layer of transparisteel; scratched so much over the centuries by minor meteorite impacts that it seemed frosted in places, it was still clear enough to show a glorious starfield beyond.
The chamber itself could have been an extension of Dr. Rotham’s quarters. Its walls were lined with shelving, and there were narrow catwalks along the shelving at three-meter height intervals, with black metal staircases providing access between the catwalks. The shelves were thick with books, rolls of flimsi, flickering holograms, statuettes, kinetic art, and even, Jacen saw, the bottled head of a Rodian, its funnel-like snout pointed straight at the turbolift doors through which they’d entered. There was furniture at floor level, mostly long, dark sofas. They looked hard and uninviting, but Jacen recognized them as a modern brand whose surfaces inflated and deflated according to the movements and postures of those who sat upon them.
The room fairly reeked of Force energy-dark side energy. But as strong as it was, this was not the source of all the power, all the dark influence Jacen had been detecting since their arrival. That lay below them, a long way down.
Why does dark side power always seem drawn to the depths? he wondered. Is there something intrinsic that associates it with the deep places, the gorges, the cracks? Even after decades of study, he’d never figured that out.
As Jacen stood in the turbolift doorway, taking in the sensations of Force power like a hungry man sampling scents in a restaurant, Nelani moved into the room’s center, her hand on the hilt of the lightsaber at her belt. She spoke, her voice artificially, mockingly light: “So you’re some sort of Sith.”
Brisha shook her head and moved to stretch out on the nearest sofa, her back supported by one end. The sofa puffed up a little under her weight. She leaned back, her posture negligent, and stretched her arms above her head. “No. If you pay attention to what you’re feeling, you can detect the light side here, as well as the dark side. In these relics, and in me.”
Jacen couldn’t be sure if the last statement was true. Brisha hadn’t manifested any sort of Force energy beyond the energy with which any living being-other than the Yuuzhan Vong-resonated. But he could detect little waves of light-side energy here, intermixed with the dark side.
“So how do you define yourself?” he asked. He moved forward, torn between curiosity-part of him wanted to race among the shelves, looking at each item in turn-and caution.
“A student,” Brisha said. “A student of the Force in all its aspects. And yes, I’ve concentrated on knowledge of the Sith … on utilizing their techniques without greed, without self-interest, to make things better, the same way the best Jedi use the light-side techniques.”
“Then you’ve been corrupted,” Nelani said.
Brisha gave her a pitying look. “You’re so young. Nelani, wielders of the Force all face possible corruption, and many of them give in. It’s just the form that the corruption takes from dark side to light side that differs. The corrupt light-siders become hidebound, so governed by regulation and custom that they can no longer think, no longer feel, no longer adapt-it’s what destroyed the Jedi at the end of the Old Republic.”
“There’s something to that,” Jacen admitted. “You’re not the first person I’ve heard suggest a sort of light-side ossification. But that doesn’t prove that prolonged use of the dark side doesn’t inevitably lead to corruption.”
Brisha sighed, exasperated, and crossed her arms before her. “What is corruption, Jacen? A hard-line light-sider will say that any use of the Force for personal gain is ‘corrupt.’ But someone who mixes altruism with self-interest in very human measures, across a span of decades, isn’t corrupt; he or she is just behaving according to the nature of the species.”
Now she, rather than the items on the shelves, had Jacen’s attention. He moved over to stand before her. “Explain that.”
“I’d love to. But first, some context.”
Jacen heard Ben sigh. Jacen grinned, and Brisha’s smile matched his. Ben was as well behaved as anyone could expect, but his impatience with adult concerns such as providing context for a complicated issue matched that of any adolescent.
“This planetoid,” Brisha said, “was populated long before the miners came. A species of creature settled here. Desiccated bodies I’ve found in the deep places, and signs I’ve seen through the Force, indicate that they were akin to mynocks-silicon-based, invertebrate, subsisting on stellar radiation and silicate materials. The ones here evolved or mutated into a sapient species, over how many millennia I can’t speculate, and developed a society involving cultural hierarchies, stratification as we see in human cultures.”