Cold sweat, the tingle of adrenaline after a fight. Revan lurched to her feet, mind consumed with the return of her sense of self. She was the Revanchist. Leader of the armies of the Republic against the Mandalorians, before she was reborn as a Lord of the Sith.
“Looks like you’re awake,” The voice of the strange girl who saved her from Taris, the Wife of the man who returned her memories to her, came from the doorway. She leaned casually against the frame, a bright smile on her face. “I hope you’re not planning some unspeakable, Sithly evil, now that Dan has returned what the Jedi stole…”
“She is not a fool, like her fallen apprentice,” Revan shivered and Venom’s clone surfaced from below her skin. It squinted at the former Sith Lord’s face, teeth bared. “This one can be trusted, for now…”
“Lord Venom has spoken!” May laughed as Revan shook her hand, an attempt to dislodge the cheeky symbiote. She waved at the still fuzzy force user, a motion for the woman to follow. “Let’s go meet Dan and decide what to do about your Jedi minder… poor Bastila is beside herself, well and truly lost in the bowels of the ship!”
“I’m not sure what I want to do… but I know I want nothing to do with the Jedi anymore,” Revan rubbed her temples. The dogmatic order that had raised her was beyond redemption, hypocritical and useless. “Did this thing inside me say that Malek has fallen?”
“My master reduced him to his component molecules,” Venom gloated in her inner ear. “He was not to be trusted, a fool who couldn’t see beyond the waters of his shaded pond.”
“Dan destroyed his vessel over Taris…” May nodded as they worked their way to the bridge. “I’m sorry that he betrayed you, though it seems pretty par for the course with Sith.”
Revan followed in silence. Alek had been her oldest friend, the first to follow her into the Mandalorian wars. His loss still stung, even with his rather successful coup. The empire they had built together would be in chaos now, beheaded twice in a span of weeks. She needed to return, rally what remained in preparation for war with the true enemy.
“I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me, but I have to leave,” Revan and May stepped onto the bridge, where Dan waited on a well cushioned lounger. “There is a great danger, hidden in the unknown regions, and I…”
“We’re aware of Tenebrae’s Sith Empire,” Dan rose to his feet and gave Revan a wide grin. A flick of his finger illuminated a holographic map, one that detailed the system’s of the enemy she feared. “His time will come soon enough, but we’ll have work to do before we bother poking that sleeping bear.”
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“We’ll also pay a visit to Tenebrae’s other body, the one squirrelled away in wild space,” Dan snapped his fingers and another cluster of worlds illuminated in the display. A whole new group of hidden systems, enough to hold an Empire of its own. “The technology of the Eternal Empire is honestly more valuable than anything the Sith have at their disposal.”
“How could you know about Tenebrae?” Revan’s eyes narrowed as she moved closer to the display. If this map was accurate, the Sith Empire was even larger than she imagined. “He was so certain of his ability to remain hidden…”
“Not all information comes from the force,” Dan shrugged as he dimmed the starmap and replaced it with the projection of a single solar system. Lehon, the home of the long fallen Rakata and the current resting place of the Starforge. “I know that your ancient, Celestial manufacturing centre is parked above Lehon’s star.”
Revan’s hands twitched toward a lightsaber she no longer had, an action that brought a small smile to Dan’s lips. The young man waved again and the projection vanished. He rose to his feet and stretched out his back.
“No need for violent thoughts, they won’t do you much good anyways,” Dan took May’s hand and motioned for Reven to follow as they moved from the bridge. “The Starforge is already as good as mine, but I’m willing to prove to you that we’re the safest hands for the cursed space station.”
A flicker ran through the ship, a shift that drew Revan’s senses outward. They had jumped, but not into hyperspace. Whatever method they’d used, they were far from Taris with a single leap.
“Where are we?” Revan paused at the entrance to a landing bay. Several smaller ships were docked within, but both Dan and May simply walked up to the magnetic barrier that held in the atmosphere. “What kind of proof?”
“Come, the symbiote that awoke your repressed memories will let you survive in space like a spacesuit,” Dan waved her forward, while May stepped through the barrier and into the void. “We’re going to visit a desert planet, but before we do, I thought I’d gather a bit of a gift for the people there.”
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Dan accelerated toward Adriana, the largest gas giant of the Tatoo system. It was the primary source of water for the oceanless world of Tatooine, mined from the dense, icy rings that circled the world. He let his biofield expand as he entered the rings, a massive net that took hold of the ice and pulled it together.
The plan was to collect enough to refill the aquifers of the barren planet. It was too late to simply toss an ocean onto the surface, but he could channel enough below to reintroduce a natural water cycle. It would increase the yields of moisture farmers, and provide areas for viable wells.
“If watching me haul a moon-sized chunk of ice doesn’t impress Revan enough, then I’ll have May display some of her magic,” Dan glanced at the pair of women. They followed at a distance, hand in hand as May towed them to stay in sight. “She’s not stupid and Merlyn’s methods are leagues above anything she’s ever seen.”
With enough ice in hand, he shifted toward Tatooine. This demonstration of Kryptonian power was also a bit of an experiment. Dan would have to keep a fine-tuned control over his biofield, or risk dropping the entire load onto the surface.
“Now to melt everything down and start the hard part,” Twin lines of blue heat lanced from his eyes, into the core of his icy burden. He expanded his heat vision, until the matter in his grasp shifted to its liquid form. “Venom, show me the projection as an overlay, I don’t want to add the wrong amount to the wrong places...”
Dan rolled his shoulders to loosen the tension in his back and carefully isolated the vast ball of water. Even the impact of its mild gravitational field vanished under his grasp. Satisfied, he began his descent into the atmosphere, headed for the depths of the dune sea. Venom’s display highlighted vast, underground reservoirs, a perfect place to start.