13
IN ORBIT ABOVE DAGOBAH
R4 was connected to the Dathomirian Curse’s sensors and was in close communication with the ship’s computer. The little astromech was creating a cross-thread search matrix, scanning across a spectrum of cosmic signals and energies to sift for any anomalies as they ascended into low orbit. Ageless found himself in a quasi-meditative state, falling back on some of the training Yoda had taught him, not so much trying to reach out with his senses, as the Jedi Master had put it, Ageless wasn’t that attuned to the Force just yet, but he’d come to realize he could push his senses a notch or two beyond what even his Nest training had given him.
Colors became more…resolved. Sounds and images became more…potent? Was that the right word for it? Yes, it definitely seemed as though all his senses were drawing a more potent picture and awareness than before, and all his senses were feeding off one another in a way that was far more elegant than he’d ever experienced.
While he watched the dark clouds of Dagobah’s upper atmosphere fade away, and the stars coming suddenly into focus, Ageless looked down at his hands. He remembered what the green flame had looked like rippling out from his fingertips. He rubbed his fingers together now, trying to recreate the sensation. He felt only a ghost-soft echo of the flame’s sensation, closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and felt the heat rising in his palms. When he opened his eyes, he was disappointed. There was no green flame emanating from his hands, yet he was sure he had felt the stirrings of one, the very nascent stage of the summoning.
It will come in time, he told himself. Patience. It will come in time. Like Master Yoda said.
Wait a minute…Master Yoda? Ageless had been thinking of Yoda only as Yoda, and though he’d known the little green fellow was a master in the use of the Force—a grandmaster, even—he hadn’t really referred to him as Master Yoda. That was the kind of reverence he’d held for his drill instructors and martial arts teachers.
Ageless looked at the footage on the center screen of his console. He turned his external cams to look behind his ship, at the planet they were leaving behind. Ageless had learned a lot down on Dagobah, and clearly a change had overtaken him, and not merely a physical one. A mental shift had taken place. Was it because of the strange ik’tra’zihm concoction he’d ingested? Was it Dathomiri “magick” or the Force? Or had it been Master Yoda’s teachings, his demanding yet patient demeanor? Or had it been the place itself, Dagobah, with its strange visions, remote peacefulness, and quasi-comfortable, even alluringly dangerous inhabitants?
Maybe it was all of it? he thought. A perfect mixture of elements, environment, my mental state, and company.
Ageless had had many teachers, and had seen Master Yoda’s centuries’ worth of teaching younglings in full effect. So patient, and so able to push Ageless just the right amount. He already knew that his few months spent on Dagobah would be among the greatest eras of his life—he would never forget it.
Not only would he never forget it, he would—
R4’s squealing cut through all comms, nearly causing Ageless to jump out of his seat restraints. “Arfour? What’s going—?”
“Contact,” R-3PO said calmly from the co-pilot’s seat. The droid turned his head to look at him. “Arfour is saying we are being painted, sir.”
“I’m not seeing it on any of our scopes. Is he sure?”
“He’s sure, sir. He says it’s a very clever targeting signal, almost perfectly matching the heat-rate density of the cosmic microwave background.”
R4 squealed something else over comms.
“Arfour adds that we are in serious danger.”
* * *
AMID HYPERSPACE, APPROACHING DAGOBAH
ABOARD THE LADY OF HOPE ASCENDANT
Kevv stared out through the viewport, waiting for the blue mottled mesh of hyperspace to cohere into one flash of white, then become separated into millions of tiny lines of light. They were about to exit hyperspace, the Ascendant’s computer had already chimed that they were three minutes out. Kevv’s mind was reeling from all that had transpired in the last several days. They’d reached the Sullust system only to find yet another message waiting on them, this one broadcast from a Rebel sleeper cell down on the planet of Sullust. They hadn’t even been able to establish an orbit yet, nor refuel before Namyr had decoded the message from Commander Fera and immediately shouted to Kevv to get the navicomputer ready to set a new course.
“Wait, are you serious?” he’d said. “But we just got here.”
Kevv’s memory went back to that mad rush, when Namyr had come running down the corridor and leapt into her twin cockpit, shouting, “One of our spies down on Sullust was following the movements of a trio of suspected Imperial agents down in Eschewga City Three. They managed to place a bug inside their apartment, but that was weeks ago.” Namyr had excitedly thrown on her piloting gloves and buckled her restraints. Kevv had rarely seen her so worried.
“So, what did they find out?” he’d asked, getting local star coordinates from the navicomputer.
“They’re after somebody. Our spies followed them when they left the planet, they took a shuttle up into orbit. Our spies sent drones to follow them. The three Imperials jumped inside a Lambda-class, which was hiding in a cave on one of Sullust’s moons, then left on an out-system trajectory, heading to an incredibly dark and rarely visited patch of space.” She had looked at him intensely. “They’re on Ageless’s trail. I can feel it, Kevv. Now we have to follow them.”
Kevv had almost asked her Why do you automatically assume they’re hunting for Ageless? But then he’d stopped himself, having learned by now how Namyr thought. She would’ve said, Kevv, this is exactly the kind of spore an investigator and a spy learns to look for. It’s all too convenient, the timing far too…right. It’s just right.
And so, they’d headed out-system, too, first to a planet called Utapau, a planet Kevv was somewhat familiar with from what he knew of battles fought during the Clone Wars, and they’d scanned the outer system for any Lambda-class drive signatures. But Kevv had watched Namyr’s mind work, saw how she became frustrated when, day by day, they failed to find anything, and he witnessed the very moment she’d struck upon another idea. “They’re not here,” she’d said one day while they were both playing dejarik. “If they’re after Ageless, then they’re not here at Utapau, because Ageless wouldn’t come to Utapau, because it’s far too obvious. It’s right on the Terabba sector trade route.” She’d shaken her head. “It’s too obvious. Ageless wouldn’t come here.”
“Then where did he go?” Kevv had asked.
They’d spent a day going over all the star charts for the sector, and Kevv had given his input as to what made sense if Ageless was trying to stay off the grid. It had been Kevv who had said, “If he really, truly wanted to stay off the grid—and I mean a place where not even the Empire was likely to find him—then he’d go here.” He pointed to a handful of off-the-path worlds, each one separated by lightyears of the most treacherous space one could imagine, black holes, neutron stars, stars waiting to go nova and colossal clusters of carbonbergs.
“What does your gut tell you?” Namyr had asked, staring pensively at the charts.
Kevv gave it some thought. “Two worlds,” he’d said. “If the Empire hasn’t zeroed in on him yet, if he’s still alive and active, there are two worlds in this sector where he could hide. Queyta, which is a nearly airless lava-covered planet, the surface often gets hot enough to melt the hull right off your ship. And Dagobah, which…honestly I’ve never heard of, but this HoloNet entry is really interesting. Take a look.”
They’d both pored over the HoloNet articles concerning the faraway swamp world, which was just far enough off of any major trade routes to make it troublesome to get to, yet close enough you could still manage a run out to it—if you were being careful, of course. Very careful. A high metal content in most of the flora was said to make ship sensors go crazy, and landings were exceptionally dangerous. One of those worlds people stayed away from, never settled, never even plumbed for its natural resources.
“Breathable atmo,” Namyr had said at the time. “Food and water. You could live there.”
“You could get killed there,” Kevv chuckled. “Easily. Take a look at this article about Dagobah serpents—‘All known species to be among the most poisonous ever discovered anywhere in the galaxy,’ it says. Loose soil, sinkholes, bogs and quicksand. Force, there aren’t even colonies on it, never have been, so if you get stranded…”
“Nobody’s coming for you for a while,” Namyr had said. The look she’d given him told him everything.
“Want me to plot a course, boss lady?”
“Yeah. Let’s do it.”
Presently, the ship’s computer chimed the sixty-second warning, and Kevv said, “That’s a little early to be exiting hyperspace. Navicomputer’s forward hyper-scopes must’ve sensed something up ahead.” He checked his sensors. “Yep. Looks like some kind of gravity shadow. Not sure from what. I estimate we’ll be coming out of hyperspace just shy of the outer system’s debris field,” he said, referring to that raw, random material that was always left over, even billions of years after a star system’s birth. “About forty seconds till we exit hyperspace. Get ready for translation back into realspace and then let’s be ready for anything.”
“You on guns?” Namyr said, sliding into the cockpit across from him.
“I’m on guns.”
“I’ll man sensors. I’ll start with passive sensors first, don’t want to announce ourselves too early once enter the system. If anybody’s there, they may notice they’re not alone.”
“I plotted a course right outside Dagobah’s moon. It’s a small rock, so if anyone else is using it as a hiding spot, we’ll all get to know each other real fast.”
“Copy that,” Namyr said.
Kevv looked to his right, through his cockpit window, and looked at Namyr sitting in the pilot’s seat of the starboardside cockpit. “What if he’s here? Ageless could merely be rendezvousing with them. These are Imperials agents, after all. Could be leaving these breadcrumbs to set us Rebels up for a trap.”
Namyr looked over at him, her voice coming through his cockpit’s loudspeaker. “I don’t know. Something doesn’t feel right about this. If it’s a trap, it’s far too convoluted just to lure out a couple of operatives, which the Empire would have to know is all the Alliance would be able to scrape together for something this small.” She shook her head. “No. He’s here. I…I can just feel it, Kevv. I rarely get this much of a feeling of certainty, but I have it right now. He’s here, and he’s in trouble. These Imperials coming for him…they’re not his friends.”
“Sweepers? Think they know he’s two-timing them?”
“Maybe they only suspect. I don’t know. It all just feels wrong.”
“But what if he sees us before we have time to make contact with him?” Kevv asked. “What happens if he figures out we’re a Rebel ship? He made decide to attack us and the Lambda, too.”
Namyr sighed. “He’s not stupid. I trust his instincts, same as I trust mine.”
Kevv nodded. He’d learned to trust those instincts, and if right now they were telling her that this was it, then he’d better be on his best game. Cycling up the Ascendant’s guns, he got ready to calculate targeting solutions. As he did, he thought, Ageless, please don’t try to kill us. We can still be allies. If not friends, at least allies.
The final alert came from the navicomputer, and Kevv glanced at it. “Exiting hyperspace in three…two…one—” He pulled the lever.
That mottled blue scene of hyperspace split apart into thousands of starlines, then millions of tiny pinpoints of light, and they saw a cluster of dense brown and white dust—interstellar cosmic dust, traveling the vast distances outside of the Dagobah system, perhaps from some other faraway star system and had gotten trapped here millions of years ago. “So this is why the navicomputer pulled us out early,” he said.
The definitions of “outer asteroid field” and “birthing cloud” were completely arbitrary, but there were some practical differences. For instance, matter became increasingly scarce farther out from the central star (or stars if the system was binary or trinary), and metallic deposits became increasingly rare. The heavier elements that had been left over from the star system’s birth tended to be closer in, having been pulled in by the central star’s gravity, while all the ice and frozen gases congregated farther out. Out here, almost all the condensed gases that had been ejected from the inner system could sometimes wind up clumped together, as could billions upon billions of raw rocks that had never really agglutinated into anything sizable.
But, it could make for seriously dangerous territory to coast through. From the direction they’d approached, Kevv could saw just one more reason that the Dagobah system was so rarely visited. “This cloud is dense. Unusually dense. Gonna take me a sec to navigate a safe path through.”
It took him ten minutes to even begin an approach vector, and even then he had to push the Ascendant through the debris field using only sublight engines. Pangs and bumps along the hull signaled just how fast some of these rocks were moving to be able to get through the main deflectors.
Once through, he calculated a micro-jump through hyperspace. For just two seconds, the starlines reformed the mottled blue of hyperspace, then dissolved when the dark-green planet of Dagobah and its moon came racing towards them. Kevv checked their angle to the planet’s nightside.
But before he could even get a bead on their angle to the moon, Namyr shouted, “I’ve got contacts! Two of them! Traces of energy fire—there!” She pulled up a screenshot and sent it over to Kevv’s console, and he zoomed in to look at the tiny lances of green and red laserfire. “I’m reading energy levels conducive with quad cannons! Ion trails of projectiles suggest Arakyd-type concussion missiles—”
“I see those!”
“Dank ferrik, something’s going down out here—”
“I see that!”
“—either we got here just in time, or we’re too late!”
Kevv was cross-referencing with her readings to feed the data into the Ascendant’s guns, when he noticed something. “These two ships are trying to kill each other, no mistaking it. And one of them’s got a drive trail emission conducive with the output of the Hard Leaf.” He looked over at Namyr. “You were right. It’s him. He’s here. And these Imperials want him dead.”
* * *
ABOVE DAGOBAH
ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE
Several fires had erupted throughout the back end of the Dathomirian Curse. Ageless had been almost completely blindsided, only having enough time to activate shields, but not enough time to begin evasive maneuvers. As soon as they broke through Dagobah’s stratosphere they had been peppered by heavy laserfire. The lasers had dappled across the Curse’s shields with such speed and intensity that it confused the capacitors and caused a stutter in the shield emitters, allowing gaps through the invisible energy field. He’d then gripped the steering levers and dove back towards the planet, barrel-rolling out of the way of the next targeting chime before pulling up and heading for deep space. He’d shouted to R-3PO to start configuring a course out-system, and when the droid asked where, Ageless said, “Anywhere!”
Ageless had rerouted all power from nonessential systems to engines and throttled up to full, snap-rolling out of the way of the next attack. He hadn’t yet seen the enemy, they were somewhere behind, moving fast out of the line of his external cams.
They took a hard hit. Then another, and another. Concussive waves rocked them in their seats, and the inertial dampers fought to keep them seated. “Dank ferrik! Those are missile impacts!”
“Fires, sir,” R-3PO said nervously. “Fires in corridor one, the circuitry bay, the galley, the—”
“On it,” he said, and by flipping three he closed doors and sealed bulkheads in all nonessential compartments, venting out the atmo to deprive the flames of oxygen. The rest of the fires he left in R4’s hands, and he could see on the security cams as the little droid was racing down the halls using its extinguisher to put out whatever flames it could.
Ageless took a deep breath to calm his nerves.
The next salvo caused another stutter in his shields, creating yet another opening and allowing the next lasers to smash through, into the engine coolant line. Smart. They were so damn smart. They targeted what would cripple me before they—
“Ossus!” a voice suddenly shouted into his mind, like an arrow piercing his brain. Ageless screamed, holding his head as a pounding migraine suddenly set in, and then faded. He was trembling like a bomb shelter victim, gazing out at the stars, which now seemed blurry. In fact, the entire cockpit seemed blurry, as did R-3PO seated next to him.
“Sir, are you all right?”
“Did you hear that—”
“Ossus!” the Dark Voice said again. And this time he was certain that it was the Dark Voice, so powerful and aggressive and painful, with both male and female tones overlaid, penetrating his every pore, even his bones, straight into the marrow—
“Ossus!”
A co-conspirator with the Sith Imperative, Master Yoda had said of it. A facet of the Sith’s dark power, a finger or tentacle outstretched from the Dark Side itself, like a malevolent appendage given life or sentience. That was what the Dark Voice was. It has an agenda, Ageless told himself. Master Yoda told you that. Be careful when it—
“Ossus!” the Dark Voice forced into his body and mind once more, causing paroxysms of pain even as their unknown enemy battered the Dathomirian Curse with another salvo.
A squeal came from somewhere in back. “Arfour says our engines are nearly dead, sir! Power levels have dropped to critical—”
“We’re overheating,” Ageless said through the fog of another migraine. His quivering hands worked over the controls, and he tried to force himself to calm. He might’ve been able to outfly their enemy—might’ve—if only the Dark Voice wasn’t tormenting him just now. His eyes were suddenly watering and his entire focus was lost. He felt his senses becoming dulled, as he struggled to remain conscious even as his body and mind both became beleaguered with the sustained effort of forcing the Dark Voice out. “Every system is redlining,” he croaked, looking across his trouble-board. Almost every emergency light was blinking. “We’re going to—”
“Ossus!”
“—going to have to shut everything down, Threepio. We keep flying like this, our core will crack and erupt and then we’re all slag.”
“But, sir, if we shut down every system, including engines, then we’ll be sitting mynocks anyway.”
“They’re not trying to kill us. Least, I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“Sir?”
“They’ve only hit our engines. They’ve stranded us. That means—”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Ossus!”
Ageless paused to run through small orbit exercises and calm himself, feeling the Force as it churned through his body, using it to massage his mind. He envisioned a cage, a big one made of durasteel to keep the Dark Voice out. “That means that whoever they are, they only want the ship. Or they want me, alive.”
“Sir, you really want to—?”
“I said shut everything down, Threepio! Do it now, before we all die! They hit us too hard and too fast! They outplayed us! Shut everything down! That’s an order!” He spoke into the ship’s comm, “Arfour, we’re shutting everything down! Just contain the fires as best you can, then go down to the cargo bay and push the supply pallets to form a wall, like I showed you a few months ago! We need to prepare for their boarding action!”
He barely heard the reply tweet, and hoped it was an affirmative.
Sweating, Ageless went through the shutdown cycle alongside R-3PO, and then went ahead and sent out a transmission of surrender, letting their attackers know that they had no intentions of fighting back. Their enemy must’ve believed them when they detected all systems on the Curse were going cold, and they stopped firing and now flew around to the front of the Curse to aim their cockpit directly at Ageless. The Lambda-class shuttle was about a hundred yards away, not nearly close enough for him to see into the cockpit and make out his enemy, but Ageless sensed something…a tremor of familiarity. It felt like he was sensing…he couldn’t explain it…thoughts? Emotions? And they were all familiar ones, like waves of nostalgia mixed with a surging discipline.
It was then that Ageless realized his tenuous connection to the Force or Dathomiri magick or whatever you wanted to call it was sending him something. A transmission. A warning. A buzzing at the back of his mind. Or else his own instincts were melding with some attractant, riding on the waves of some invisible energy or power. This must be what smelling pheromones is like for some species, he thought. Or when forest animals’ super-sensitive olfactory nerves allow them to pick up on smoke coming from a forest fire a hundred miles away.
His senses were heightened to an extreme he’d never imagined, and yet he felt almost drunk, intoxicated from the hammering his brain had taken from the Dark Voice’s piercing resonance.
Sweating profusely, Ageless stared at the Lambda, his deductive reasoning telling him that these familiar minds he was sensing, along with their familiar discipline, were at the very least professionals like him. They hadn’t stolen the Lambda and refurbished it, they weren’t pirates with lots of practice—no, they were highly trained professionals with a focused goal. A mission.
And he was their mission.
The Empire was on to him, or suspected he was a double agent. Because I’m not where I said I was going to be. I’m way off their grid. So they sent someone after me to find out why. A nanny to check in.
The blinking red light he’d been waiting for finally appeared on his dashboard. Ageless tapped it, and listened to the message repeating. “—repeat, keep all your systems in shutdown mode. If we detect any heat blooms from either your shields or weapons systems, you will be destroyed. We are on an approach vector now, do not activate your engines, and prepare to receive our docking tube and be boarded.”
R4 came rolling up from the back, beeping and tweeting excitedly.
“I agree with Arfour,” R-3PO said. “We should have turned back towards Dagobah, at least tried to lose them below the clouds and fog line.”
“No,” Ageless said, breathing deeply and going through small orbit again, repelling the Dark Voice as much as he could. He could feel it receding, but not fully retreating. “No, they would’ve shot us on our way down, made us crash land. Who knows where we’d land? They would’ve chased us all across the planet. Even if they didn’t destroy us outright, we might’ve ended up thousands of miles away from Master Yoda, far beyond his help, stranded.”
R4 beeped sharply.
“Arfour asks if you think this is any better,” said the protocol droid.
Ageless looked out the forward viewport, just as the Lambda began its approach. “They’re Imperials. I’m an Imperial. They at least think it’s possible I’m still on their side, and that this is all just some misunderstanding. That’s what the Voice of Ether is hoping. He must’ve sent them.” Ageless nodded. “So I can try talking to them.”
R-3PO looked at him. “Do you honestly think you can convince whoever it is that you’re still—?”
“No, not a chance,” he chuckled mirthlessly. “But I can stall them. Delay them until…” He trailed off.
“Until what, sir?”
Ageless stretched out with his feelings, and wasn’t even sure what he expected to find. Advice? Guidance? Until fate or the Force provide me an opportunity, he thought. He looked at his hands, feeling the furnace of heat building there, but still unable to conjure the green flame—the stoic flame, Master Yoda had called it.
Ageless glanced back at R4. “You get the supply pallets arranged in a barricade?”
The astromech trilled affirmatively.
“Good. Let’s get into position.” Ageless gripped his holdout blaster, checked its power pack, then unbuckled his restraints and left the cockpit. Air vents had mostly filtered out the smoke in the corridors, but it was still eye-watering and cough-inducing. He touched the lightsaber clipped his belt.
He was doing a mental inventory of all the assets at his disposal, while at the back of his mind he felt something tickling, some sense of another presence moving towards him. Perhaps two different presences. Not a threat, but not necessarily friendly, either. Ageless could not see the future like Master Yoda and other Jedi purportedly could, but he could detect a confluence of things, several different moving parts coming together.
There is a small drama being played out here, and I haven’t yet met all the players. Someone’s coming. Can I use that?
Without even realizing it, the middle of his right palm became intensely warm.
* * *
ABOVE DAGOBAH
ABOARD THE LADY OF HOPE ASCENDANT
“I don’t detect any more laserfire,” Kevv said. “And I’m not seeing any drive trail flashes. They’ve either blown each other apart or flown to the far side of the planet.”
Namyr thought, It’s not over. It can’t be. She didn’t want to believe they’d come all this way, tracked Ageless Void across thousands of lightyears of space, only to watch him become vaporized right before their eyes. She said, “Have you detected any counter-braking radiation, spacetime warps, anything that would indicate a ship jumping to lightspeed?”
“No,” Kevv said from his cockpit. “But that doesn’t mean that whoever the winner is of that space battle didn’t fly down to Dagobah, or else coasted away on sublight engines. They could be anywhere out here, Namyr. Anywhere on that planet or moon, or else headed out-system.”
Namyr ran a finger across her jawline, looking out at the dark planet and its faint sun. She had to make a decision. “Let’s do this. May an approach towards polar orbit, skim close to Dagobah on a slingshot orbit and try to come around to the planet’s dark side. We’ll do a deep-field scan out-system, looking for telltale signs of anyone in retreat. I’ll aim bio and metallic sensors at the planet, looking for heat blooms or other radiation down on the surface. Maybe there’s slag leftover from the fight, scraps that will tell us who won.”
“You want to go active-sensor?” Kevv said. His voice was filled with doubt.
“Just for a few minutes. If we see anything, great. If not, we go ahead and get the hell out of here. And Kevv?”
“Yeah, boss lady?”
“Have your finger on that attenuator, and be prepared to angle our shields.”
“Way ahead of you.”
They set a course towards Dagobah’s northern pole, and flared up the engines.
* * *
ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE
Ageless was hunkered behind a plasteel crate when he heard the thump! of the Lambda’s external docking tube. It was an inflatable corridor that extended from the Lambda’s bay door and unfurled to attach to another ship’s side. Looking at the external camfeed on his datapad, the tube looked to him like a giant umbilical cord between the two ships. It wouldn’t have its own gravity, but it would have its own atmosphere. But they’ll be in environment suits, so I can’t just try to blast the docking tube to let space kill them.
And besides, whoever was coming across the docking tube would doubtlessly have left someone at the controls—the Lambda would blast the Dathomirian Curse to bits the second it cycled up weapon systems.
When he heard the knock at his bay door, Ageless sighed to steady his nerves. Glanced back at R4, who was huddled beside Threepio beside another stack of plasteel crates. The protocol droid had a blaster pistol in hand, for all the good it would do.
Ageless ran a hand over his rebreather—he hadn’t had time to put on a full environment suit, but a rebreather would at least ensure they didn’t gas him or try to knock him unconscious by blasting holes in his ship and venting all his atmo.
His visitors knocked again.
With a wave, Ageless signaled R-3PO to tap the switch to the bay doors. He didn’t want any more damage to his ship, and if he made them wait any longer they’d probably just slice their way in anyway. So, when the bay doors parted and two enviro-suited bipedal humanoids floated in, Ageless peeked one eye around the corner of his crate and aimed his holdout blaster at them. They floated until they were firmly within the Curse’s artificial gravity field, then thumped down roughly onto the deck.
One of them was huge, probably a Wookiee by the look of his gait and bulk, his enviro-suit and helmet heavily armored. The other one was perhaps Human, could be a Twi’lek, hard to tell behind his helmet’s visor. Both were armed, carrying A280 blaster rifles at the ready, scanning slowly left to right, taking in the cargo bay filled with plasteel crates, gauging the room.
Ageless thumbed the thermal detonator in his left hand, letting the telltale sound of its arming chirp carry through the quiet room. “I trust you boys know that sound, right?” he called out, his voice coming out deep and resonate through his rebreather.
One of them, the big one, the one that was most likely a Wookiee, held out a thermal detonator of his own and armed it.
The smaller humanoid replied, “Sounds just like the one we got, grig. I see three heat signatures—two of them are droids. It’s just you then, Ageless?”
They knew his name. It came as only a mild shock, for he knew the Empire wouldn’t send just any grunts to become bantha fodder, and their attack had been so sudden, so well planned, that it was obvious they were nothing close to amateurs. The efficacy of their approach, the confidence in their entry here to the cargo bay, all bespoke professionals. He’d known that already, but now he realized the degree of their professionalism. They’re prepared. Gear heavy. Technically proficient. Armed with actionable intel. And I sense they’re…paranoid. Very paranoid. It came to him via the Force, there could be no other explanation, for the sensation was just too powerful. Uncommonly alert. They won’t fall for any simple tricks. Whatever I do will have to be carefully done.
Ageless called out to them, “If you know who I am, then that must mean you know what I’m about. Which means you’re also from the Kingdom. You’re Nest agents?”
“We need you to throw down your weapons, Ageless Void, and come on out with your hands up, walk towards us backwards, then kneel.” The shorter humanoid said it matter-of-factly, as if this was already a done deal, he only needed to get the speaking part out of the way.
“I think you misunderstand—”
“No, you misunderstand. Come out or we will—”
“I am on mission, and you are interfering with that mission. I don’t know you. For all I know, you could be Rebs only posing as Kingdom agents. Maybe you killed a couple of Kingdom agents, tortured them, got my name and location out of them—”
“I’m Old Miser,” said the assassin. “The one standing next to me is Vicious One. I’m sure you remember us, Ageless.”
Ageless felt his heart sink. This was about as bad as it got. Indeed he did know both of them, and he knew that Old Miser was a cunning, heavily tactic-based gunfighter and Teräs Kasi master, who had trained near him during his days at the Nest. Vicious One was a gigantic Wookiee, among a group of about a dozen Wookiees taken at birth and experimented upon by Imperial scientists in the “Kashyyyk Project”—at least, that had been the rumor during training. The Wookiee was an expert tracker who specialized in hunting hard-to-find Rebel targets, lone snipers, Rebel assassins and Zero Souls.
Ageless also happened to have heard Zumter once tell him that the two of them had ended up tasked to the same team, alongside a Twi’lek codenamed Unsheathed Saber, after they left training. He closed his eyes, went through small orbit, and tried to grip the Force, flowing with it, reaching deep within himself to find old memories he’d stored up from those days, some of them long forgotten. He needed to find something, a weakness that Old Miser and the others suffered from, anything to give him an edge.
A memory suddenly bubbled up like a corpse floating up through dark, foaming water. A time when Miser and Vicious had been disciplined back at the Nest for both losing their tempers with each other…
They got into an argument. Vicious One had baited Old Miser, they’d gone back and forth in some sort of bout of insinuations—not quite insults, but baiting one another…
Ageless latched onto that, and took another deep, steadying breath.
“I assume Saber is at the controls of your ship then, huh? How’s he doing? Has the War been kind to you three?”
“We’re not interested in revisiting old times, Ageless,” said Miser, and Vicious growled his agreement. “Nor are we here to let you play mind games. We’re only interested in taking you in. Voice of Ether wants to know what you’ve—”
“There’s been a mistake, my friend. Voice of Ether must’ve gotten some bad intel. I’m out here following a lead.”
“If there’s been a mistake, we’ll sort it out. After we take you to him,” Miser added.
“The intimation is that I’ve been compromised?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Why else are you here?”
“Rrrwwrrr-fffrrwwwarrrr ahhrrar Raaahhrrawrrr arrhharrrr arr…” the Wookiee snarled. Translation, The Voice of Ether says jump…
“I get that,” Ageless replied. “We all understand our orders. So you gotta understand mine.”
“Come on out, Ageless!” shouted Miser. “I won’t say it again!”
“You come after me, Miser, and I’ll activate this thermal detonator—”
“And we’ll detonate ours—”
“Then I guess Voice of Ether will be out a few agents.”
“Damn you, Ageless! Stop making this difficult! No one has to die today! We only need to talk!”
“We’re talking just fine right now.” While going back and forth with them, Ageless had sensed that this was the only method available, and he’d latched on to it. Baiting them. He closed his eyes and searched deep, deep within for guidance. A way out besides violence. Not exactly a “Jedi mind trick” but…perhaps this was the very basics of such a trick? Perhaps this was how the Jedi mind trick was first taught, in its initial stages? He shook that distraction away, and concentrated, deciding to send out waves of aggression. He took his own anger and frustration that he was feeling right now and tried aiming it outward, wondering if the Force would allow him to use it like a laser. “I just need a little time to prove to you that I’m no traitor, and I’m insulted by the insinuation. I can prove that I am no traitor—”
“How?” Miser called back.
Ageless could sense his delaying tactic was having an effect, but that effect was quickly losing its potency. He took a moment to think, and just then the Dark Voice spoke to him, gentler this time, and said only a name: “Inquisitor Mann.”
Ageless blinked in consternation. “What? Who?” he whispered. He didn’t know that name. He wasn’t even sure the Inquisitorius was running anymore—in all his years of training and working with the ISB and IIS departments, he’d only ever seen an Inquisitor once, maybe twice when he was visiting Zumter in his main office on Coruscant.
“Inquisitor Mann,” said the Dark Voice again.
Ageless remembered what Master Yoda had said to him about listening to that Dark Voice, that strange, unknowable facet of the Dark Side, but he really needed more information right now and the only person trying to help him was this Unknown Thing. Or is it? Ageless didn’t really know. So, he closed his eyes and went deep within again, concentrating to send out a single thought: “Who is Inquisitor Mann?”
The answer was immediate, layered again in both masculine and feminine voices, a chorus of them, and it brought on another eye-watering migraine. “Tell them Inquisitor Mann has sanctioned your operations here. Tell them to relay it to the Voice of Ether. It will delay them further.”
He didn’t know whether to trust it or not, but what other options did he have at the moment? “Tell the Voice of Ether to talk to Inquisitor Mann. He has sanctioned my operations out here in the Dagobah system.”
There followed a pregnant pause, during which he heard the two Kingdom operatives shuffling uncomfortably. “What…what did you just say?” asked Old Miser.
“I said talk to Inquisitor Mann.”
“How do you know that name?”
Ageless had to think fast. Dropping the name had obviously come as a surprise to them. None more than me. “You’ll have to ask him yourself,” he said, forcing himself to trust the Dark Voice despite everything Yoda had said. “Make a call. Send a message along the HoloNet—”
“The HoloNet doesn’t reach out here, and you damn well know that,” said Miser, who suddenly didn’t sound so confident. “There are no HoloNet hyperspace buoys in this sector, and if there are they’re all decrepit and obsolete. We’d have to call the Voice of Ether after we reach Utapau or—”
“I’m not going with you,” Ageless said. “You’ll just have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust you. Not right now. How in the nine hells do you know Mann’s name? How did you…?” He trailed off. Ageless then heard another voice coming over a commlink, and Miser was talking to him in quick commands. Ageless figured it was Unsheathed Saber, the brains of their outfit, still back on the Lambda and probably wondering what was taking them so long. He could just make out Miser’s words as the guy spoke in whispers, “—saying he’s—I don’t know how he knows—yes, he said Mann several times now—what do you mean?—tracking how many signals?—just one?—but who could it be—”
“What’s the word, Old Miser? We good?”
Miser called back, his voice filled with venom. “Who else is out here with you?”
Ageless was confused. “What are you talking about?”
“I mean the ship currently moving slowly and sneakily up in Dagobah’s polar orbit? Did you honestly think we wouldn’t pick them up?”
Ageless winced. He wondered if it was a trick. If Old Miser was bluffing, and waiting to see if Ageless claimed the unknown ship to be his, then Miser might suspect Ageless was also bluffing about knowing Inquisitor Mann—Whoever that is. However, if it was true, and there truly was someone else out here…
Ageless recalled the feeling he’d had earlier of some familiar force approaching. Not friend, not enemy, but an extra added component. He reached out with his feelings, prodding as deeply as he could into the Wookiee’s and the Human’s intentions. He sensed no deception, not on this, and he also thought he’d detected a note of genuine worry in Miser’s voice.
He almost asked the Dark Voice for help, but decided he’d already leaned on the entity enough. Ageless called back to them, “Oh, you know me, I’m all about having contingency plans. Like I said, my operations here are…complicated. Inquisitor Mann knows this. If you let me go, you can check back with him.”
“Oh, and I suppose you’ll stay right here and wait for us to come back?” Miser laughed mirthlessly. Vicious growled beside him, undoubtedly upset that his hunt had been delayed yet again.
“Actually, no, I won’t be here,” said Ageless.
“Then where will you be?”
“Can’t tell you. Inquisitor’s orders.”
This time the pause was excruciatingly long, and Ageless sensed an agonizing battle going on within the Human and the Wookiee. Inside their hearts, duty and uncertainty fought for supremacy. They had their mission, yet now they were being told that an Inquisitor had superseded the Voice of Ether’s own commands. Ageless sensed the conflict within them.
There came another chirp on Miser’s commlink. Then he said, “If you’re lying about this, Ageless—”
“I’m not lying, Miser.”
“—if you’re lying and we find out, it won’t be quick. You understand? You won’t be sent to Kessel or Duraaz or anywhere like that. I’ll make you a special little project of mine. And your family,” Miser emphasized. “If the Kingdom finds out you lied about this, and they let us openly hunt you, they’ll tell us all your contacts, all known family. No one you know or love will be safe.” Miser added, “And I’ll make you watch.”
Ageless suddenly gripped the lightsaber at his side. In a flash of rage, he nearly ignited it, he very nearly did. He felt a sudden swell of heat in both his hands, and felt as if he could almost conjure the stoic flame right then and there. I’ll just kill them, he thought. Kill them all, here and now. And if he died? At least if he died in battle there would be no reason for the Empire to go after his people on Dathomir. At least then—
Patience, a voice said. Not the Dark Voice, definitely not him. Yoda’s? Sounded like it. But it was there and gone, almost like he’d whispered it from across the room, or else it was the memory of a very old dream…
Suddenly, Ageless was aware of the Dark Voice’s entity all around him, cold and malevolent, and an outpouring of humor flooded him. It enjoyed this. The uncertainty of it all. The Dark Voice’s entity was enjoying playing puppeteer.
“I understand, Miser,” Ageless said, calming himself. How easily he’d felt tempted, how quickly he’d almost just seized on the overreliance of his new power. Anger, fear, aggression, the Dark Side are they. Easily, they flow. “I understand your sentiment. Trust me when I say you won’t have to go looking for anyone. The Empire’s victory is all that matters to me. The Emperor’s will is all I care to fulfill.”
Another long, drawn-out pause. Ageless could hear both Miser and Vicious conferring with Saber back aboard the Lambda. They were being indecisive, even a little argumentative with one another. Then Ageless sensed something, a sudden massive wave of aggression that could have only come from the Wookiee. The red-hot, cloying rage was almost oppressive in its intensity, and Ageless had an uneasy feeling.
He’s going to make a move, despite what his pals say.
“You are right,” the Dark Voice said into his mind. “He is too volatile. He is too long without a hunt or a kill. He will not be denied.”
I understand, but I need you to back off. Right! Now! Ageless asserted. The Dark Voice’s migraine-inducing words were distracting, but to his surprise the entity did in fact listen, and receded. But he’s right. There’s something off about Vicious One. The others are close to being convinced, but he’s not having it. He senses I’m full of it, that I’m bluffing, or else he just wants to have a reason to kill.
Ageless sensed this wasn’t going to go his way.
Then he heard Old Miser say, “Wait—what’re you doing? Wait—stop!”
Ageless heard shuffling, sounded like a brief scuffle between the two operatives.
Then, he heard the beeping of the thermal detonator approach. He looked up, watched it go sailing over his head. Without hesitation Ageless unclipped his lightsaber and leapt towards the detonator and sliced it in half. The detonator’s two halves fell to the floor in, smoking, sizzling, but his maneuver had forced him out of cover and he tried dodging back behind another pallet just as a salvo of red lasers sliced through his left shoulder, left arm and left leg. Screaming, he fell to the floor and slid the rest of the way behind cover.
“Sir!” shouted R-3PO, rushing forward to let loose with wild, suppressive fire. In an instant the droid was shot in the middle of its chest, and went spiraling down to the floor, the hole smoking and sparking. R4 squealed in panic—
“Vicious, stop! I said stop, Vicious!” Miser called, even as Ageless heard the thump-thump-thump of the Wookiee’s approaching footsteps.
Ageless tried to stand. Through gritting teeth he pushed back against the pain in his left leg, leaned against the pallet. When he heard Vicious One getting close, he closed his eyes, breathing deeply to calm himself, waiting for the right timing—
He pushed one of the plasteel crates from the top of the pallet, where it smacked against the Wookiee’s helmet, surprising him and knocking him sideways. Ageless fired into the Wookiee’s chest and helmet, but it was all heavily armored, and the Wookiee fired wildly back as they both ducked for cover.
It was a cacophony of blasterfire and crates falling and Wookiee howls and the squeal of droids.
Then, Ageless turned and started to run for cover behind a pallet at the back of the cargo bay, when suddenly he saw a shadow approaching from around the side of the pallet and he re-ignited the lightsaber and slashed at the barrel of the blaster rifle he saw coming around the corner, then slashed at the user’s upper body.
He watched in mild surprise and shock as Old Miser’s head came cleanly off of his shoulders, and went rolling away. He’d thought it was Vicious, the more unreasonable of the two operatives. Now he had no one to help him talk the Wookiee down.
He was alone in here. Alone against a savage killer who, as the Dark Voice had just said, would not be denied.
Thump-thump-thump came the heavy footsteps from around the next set of pallets.
He heard the savage growl, turned, and sliced the barrel of the Wookiee’s A280 rifle just as it came around the corner, swiped at his face, slicing through the visor but not the Wookiee’s actual face. Ageless fired point-blank into his enemy’s chest, but, just as before, it did nothing. Snarling, Vicious One swiped out with a massive hand and knocked the pistol from Ageless’s hand, and produced a pair of electrostaffs—each one looking almost as small as two regular combat sticks in the Wookiee’s hands. The electrostaffs spat purple, snapping arcs of electricity from both ends.
Vicious One threw himself at Ageless Void, and their blades collided.