OSSUS
AMID THE K’TUZIAN STRETCH
Ageless awoke to a voice. It was barely a whisper, and came with a gentle yet vehement prodding. Move, it urged. He sat up slowly, looking around at the predawn horizon. Currently, he lay in a crevice in the side of one of the many colossal basalt pillars that peppered the canyon.
Standing up, he had a look around. He put a hand on the rocky ceiling overhead, and leaned out over the side to have a look down. Beneath him was an almost two-hundred-meter drop. He heard light breathing, not quite snoring, and turned to find Namyr Abjura still lying exactly where she had been. But one of her eyes was just barely opened. She was pretending to sleep, and had her hand on her blaster.
She still doesn’t fully trust me. She wants to, but she can’t be sure. I don’t blame her. In her shoes I’d feel the same way about me. “We need to move,” he said.
Namyr sat up slowly. “Why? You hear something?”
Yes, he thought, but you wouldn’t believe me if I told you how. “It’s just a feeling I have.”
“What kind of a feeling?”
“The kind that says if we don’t move now and get to some serious cover deeper in, then we could be in trouble. I don’t know, I just feel…exposed.” It was close enough to the truth, because here came that voice again, telling him Move! Now! but it wasn’t in the tone, power, or cadence of the Dark Voice. This was something else. Someone else. And he felt it as a tremor in the Force, the same way a spider feels a vibration along its web, telling it something was touching its web. Except this feeling was warning him about a threat.
“Well, then,” said Namyr, as she hopped up and began packing up their campsite. “Let’s move.”
Their campsite was made so that it was easy to fold up, and easy to abandon if they had to. They each threw their backpacks on, cinched them tight, then walked to the edge of the tiny cave-like crevice they’d been sleeping in, and looked at their next target. A basalt pillar about fifty meters away. It was jagged, sort of uneven like a stack of sopjacks Ageless’s grandmother used to make for special breakfasts on the morning after they’d placed a deceased loved one in a burial pod.
“I’ll take the lead this time,” he said. Ageless prepared himself, aimed his ascension gauntlet at the pillar, fired, and then went swinging. He’d selected a rocky overhang—that way, he didn’t smack against the stone facing. He now swung hundreds of meters in the air, throwing his hips and legs back and forth, picking up momentum to create a greater swing, then grabbed hold of the wall and pulled in his ascension cable and did the same trick again to reach the next pillar.
Namyr was right behind him, he could see her just as the morning sunlight was just touching the peaks of the pillars. And now, on the wind, he thought he heard the whine of engines. And they were approaching.
Keep moving, the friendly voice said. They’re almost on you.
Ageless looked up at the top of the pillar, fired his grapnel up towards another overhang, and the ascension gauntlet pulled him upwards. He did this trick again to gain more altitude, then fired to the cliff face thirty meters away. He knew he was going to have to swing and stick out his legs to try and absorb the impact. He swung away, and as he did, he was sure he heard the unmistakable sound of twin ion engines.
His feet hit the wall, as did his chest an instant later. The air temporarily left his lungs, but he attached himself to the wall, reeled the grapnel back in, fired straight up to the cliff’s edge, and ascended to the top of the cliff. Namyr was seconds behind him, and when one of her hands lost its grip, and she was dangling there by only her ascension cable, he reached down to take both her hands and hauled her up and over. It was difficult, but he was able to call upon the Force to make it a little easier.
Get to cover! Now! the voice practically shouted at him. That voice was urging him towards a cave entrance.
“Over there!” he said to Namyr, pointing to it. They dashed inside, and just in time, too, because outside they could see the light-blue flash of a trio of TIE fighters, accompanied by a Lambda-class and a Horizon-class vessel. And as he peeked out from the shadowy cave entrance, Ageless felt a wave of power emanating through the Force. More than just a tickle of his “spider-web” connection to it, it caused a momentary, vertiginous lurch.
“What is it?” Namyr said. “Ageless, you don’t look so good.”
“Someone powerful in the Force is in those ships. Maybe more than one person.”
“The Force?”
“Yes.”
Namyr looked like she was a bit skeptical. She’d seen him training with a lightsaber, and while training aboard the Dathomirian Curse he’d mentioned to her that some of his training was influenced by old Jedi methods, but it was obvious by the look on her face right now that she was skeptical. “What is it that you…sense? Or whatever?”
“I don’t quite know how to explain it, but we’re in trouble.”
“How did you know to run, Ageless?”
He shrugged. “I felt something. Or heard it. And I trusted in the Force. Somehow, it told me I could trust that feeling, that voice.” Ageless shook his head, and watched as the TIEs and the other two ships hovered around the basalt pillars they had just passed through. “They picked up on something. Maybe…maybe they picked up on me.”
“What do you mean?”
“They went directly to where we just were. Of all the places to go, why there? The overhang should’ve masked our heat signatures, so how did they know?” He looked at her in the dim predawn light. “Unless they can sense me, the same way I can sense them when they’re near. Only they’re better trained than me in the Force. They sensed me from farther away, long before I would’ve picked up on them.”
“But you did sense them.”
“No. Somebody warned me.”
“What do you mean, Ageless? Who warned you?”
He shook his head again. “We can’t sit here and talk about this, not while they’ll be zeroing in on me. Come on, we need to move.”
“Where to?”
Ageless turned on his flashlight and aimed it deeper into the cave. He’d felt directed here, like the friendly voice had been guiding him in this direction, almost like a pull. Now that he looked at it, he thought he knew why. “This cave is artificial. The Imperials dug this out.” He pulled out his datapad and checked to see if the map Namyr had sliced out of the research station could give them an idea of where they were. He zoomed around the map until he found their position, and he smiled. “Look here. This tunnel leads deeper into the Trident dig zone. Not quite a straight shot towards Doctor Aphra like we were hoping, but it’s not too roundabout, either.”
Namyr had a look at the 3D map. She nodded. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. This is not bad. It looks like there are some open shafts that used to be natural heat vents.” She looked around. “We’re standing inside what was once one of many outlets for a supervolcano, now dormant.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way,” he said.
“Well, Aphra’s notes say there are slow-moving rivers of lava below, which lead to other chambers, some of which lead to the Jedi Praxeum. That was their primary hub, their school and academy.”
Ageless nodded, “There are some turbolifts that the Empire’s droids installed for the research teams to get around. And look here, a few mine cars on magnetic lifts. A magna-rail. The tracks go for almost a hundred kilometers.”
“If we’re careful, and stay out of sight, and plan our route carefully, then with a little luck we can make it to the chambers where Doctor Aphra is working beneath the mountains.”
“All right, let’s get moving.”
They did one last equipment check, then ran headlong into the cave, their flashlight beams bouncing off walls of ancient obsidian. Some of the walls were emblazoned with symbols, and those symbols had eroded away with time. And, as they went, Ageless detected the owner of the Dark Voice all around him. The friendly voice had abated, he could no longer sense its owner’s presence.
Looks like we’re on our own again, he thought. But he couldn’t help but wonder who it had been reaching out through the Force to help him.
* * *
OSSUS
ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE
Kevv’s wrist chrono vibrated, waking him up slowly. It was connected to the Curse’s computer and set to let him know if the ship’s sensors detected anything unusual within a thirty-kilometer radius. The parameters for “unusual” were sometimes broad, especially for a ship’s computer, and could be anything from a strange surge in bio-signatures to an uptick in local comms activity. In this case, it was neither. Emissions from twin ion engines had been detected in the area, enough that it probably meant a small squadron was close by.
Kevv sat up quickly and looked at his scanners. Radar wasn’t detecting them yet, but that didn’t mean anything. Nestled as the Curse was inside a concave patch on the cliff’s face, he could only “see” in one direction, and if the TIEs were flying low to use the terrain to mask their signal, then he wasn’t going to be able to pick them up on sensors.
If they’re being that sneaky, it means they either know something I don’t, or it’s pure dumb luck. Kevv didn’t believe in pure dumb luck at this level. What were the odds that they’d swooped down this low, of all the places on the planet, of all the canyons being surveyed across the Trident zone, and just so happened to be flying so low as to be patrolling close to his hiding spot?
He had a decision to make, and he needed to make it fast.
Kevv looked out the forward view, and saw that it was still pretty dark out, the sun hadn’t risen yet. He cued up the Curse’s engines, levitating her on her repulsors, then pulled out slowly and let her drop a hundred meters down into the canyon before he activated downward thrusters. He tilted her forward, moving between two gigantic basalt pillars. Ahead of him was a series of natural stone bridges that connected opposite cliffs (and perhaps one or two of them were actually artificial, possibly built by the ancient Jedi that resided here), and he flew underneath them.
Forward thrusters kicked on, he decided to maneuver underneath the bridges, and fly low between the canyon walls. If he spread his own engine exhaust around a bit, and yet keep hidden underneath the colossal bridges and overhangs, then they might fly right over him and confuse his ship’s emissions with those of any of their research team’s shuttles. Kevv had been monitoring the research shuttles, of which there were several, for just such a need.
But he couldn’t do this forever. Eventually he would need to find another hiding spot for the Curse. She was far too big a girl to remain unseen forever.
There were gigantic sinkholes all along the canyon floor, and only some of them had been scanned by Namyr and Ageless in their days of recon work. He knew that some of them led to underground, interconnected caves. The Curse was a YT-2400, about 28.5 meters in width, but she could take off vertically and hover in place for hours before straining her repulsors. Kevv thought he could manage it, but it would mean he’d have no way to hear any transmissions from Namyr or Ageless for the next few hours while he hunkered down.
Sun’s coming up, Kevv. Gotta make a decision. Gotta do it now.
With the TIE signatures getting closer, he found the nearest sinkhole, tipped the Curse’s nose down, and dove underground.
* * *
WITHIN THE K’TUZIAN STRETCH
SOME 300 METERS BELOW THE SURFACE
They clambered down another subterranean slope, then used their ascension cables to reach the bottom of a bored-out hole. They started feeling the heat and steam long before they saw the lava. From one craggy chamber to the next, the temperature increased, and Ageless was already boiling inside his light tactical armor. He could only imagine what Namyr was feeling inside her own gear.
“It does down here,” Ageless said when they came to the next huge chasm. “And the air smells rough. We’re going to need our breathers.” He pulled his from his utility belt and stuck it in his mouth, and made sure the nose piece cinched tight. Namyr did the same beside him. He peered down in the dark pit. “I go first?”
“Sure. After you,” she said.
He fired his ascension cable down into the chasm, felt it connect to something. Then he strapped a harness onto himself, and the auto-belaying rope was affixed to a rock behind him. He would repel down, and the ascension cable would be his backup in case the rope somehow came undone. Ageless reached out to the Force to clear his mind, then put both his feet against the lip of the chasm, slowly lowering his butt over the opening, and started with a little hop down. He pushed with his legs down the chasm wall, feeling the heat rising. He glanced up to make sure Namyr was following.
Once or twice, he stopped to turn his on lightsaber and cast its light around, and he saw what appeared to be ancient script etched the in walls. It was neither Besh nor Old Besh, but some other kind of alien script he’d never seen before. He turned off the lightsaber, clipped it to his belt, and continued repelling.
When they came to the bottom, they unhooked themselves from their harnesses and left them dangling, then reeled in their ascension cables. The heat in this tunnel was intensely oppressive, and Ageless could see a vague orange glow up ahead, just at the next bend of the tunnel. And when they made the turn, they came upon a slow-moving river of lava, with giant pillars of stone, basalt, and obsidian so jagged it looked like it would easily cut you.
“Over there,” Namyr said. She pointed up the “shoreline” of the orange river, towards what appeared to be a metal platform over an ancient stone column. The column was obviously left here by some long-dead civilization. “I read the Jedi were known to have meditation chambers in some pretty intense places. Frigid wastes, the edge of volcanoes, things like that. They would meditate for long periods to see how long they could force their bodies to take it.”
Ageless nodded towards the metal platform. “But that one has to be the Empire’s doing. A research overlook?”
“If so, it means they found something interesting down here. They wouldn’t have put it here for no reason.”
“Let’s be careful. My scanners aren’t picking up any bio-signs or droid activity, but you never know.”
“Right.”
They used ascension cables to swing up and over the river of lava, and all the while Ageless was aware that if they made even one mistake, they were goners. They made it up to the platform, its metal extremely hot due to proximity to the lava, and Ageless felt the intense heat even through his gloves. They climbed up and over, moving across the guardrail-less platform to a sensor station. Ageless took up overlook position while Namyr did her thing, slicing into the system and taking whatever data she could.
“We’re close,” she said. “The magna-rail is up ahead, and it doesn’t look like anyone is using it right now. Nor the turbolift at the other end. No one’s logged in at this station in almost a week. But that could change any moment.” She turned to look at him, her voice coming through the breather’s mic. “Do we risk it?”
“We need Doctor Aphra’s device to get through the Koboh matter, which she says is unbreakable without it. The longer we take getting to her, the longer Kevv is left out there alone. We—”
“The tomb!” cried the Dark Voice into his mind suddenly. “The tomb is close! It is all that matters! The tomb! The tomb!”
“Ageless? You okay?” Namyr walked over to him, and shook his shoulder. “Ageless?”
Ageless winced, suppressing the migraine with a Jedi breathing technique. “I’m good. Let’s keep moving. We take the rail, then the lift.”
“You sure? You sure about this?”
“What choice do we have?”
Another half-hour of spelunking and swinging from pillars brought them to a parked airspeeder. Doubtless, the Imperial researchers were using the speeder to get to and from platforms, instead of having to do the dangerous swinging around that Ageless and Namyr were doing. They passed dig equipment, an unused and dusty mantle-saw, and an abandoned excavator droid that had been crushed in a partial cave collapse. They might’ve been cut off from their route, had Ageless not had the lightsaber, which cut through the rocks like warm butter, allowing them to move the smaller bits to create a passage and squeeze through.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
They came to another river of lava, and just beside it was the magna-rail. It was clear the tunnel went on for kilometers on end, and was partially natural, partially artificial. The car itself was parked and ready to go, with simple controls for automated transport. It was a boxy car, made out of insulated durasteel and with only one transparisteel window looking straight ahead at where you were going. It had eight seats, and a bit of room for standing. Looking at the main screen, Ageless saw that the rail had six different destinations it could send them to.
“Mount Gujahhl, right?” Ageless said, tapping that destination on the touchscreen. “That’s where Aphra said she was?”
“That’s the place.”
“Then here we go.” He throttled up the magna-rail’s drive, they heard its electromagnetic repulsors cuing up, and felt a smooth transition forward. Ageless went and strapped in, knowing that this thing was about to pick up some serious speed.
Namyr sat across from him and did the same. “Something is wrong, isn’t it?” she said. She looked at him with all seriousness. “You…felt something, didn’t you? Not just when the TIEs came, but just now. Something to do with the Force? Like a…a funny feeling? I read that some Jedi described it as a ‘tremor,’ are you…?”
“I’m not a Jedi.”
“I know that, but have you been actually training in the Force somehow? You’ve been talking about it a lot, reviewing old Jedi training. And you’ve got the lightsaber.” She shrugged. “Level with me, Ageless. Do you know something I don’t?”
Ageless thought about how much he ought to share. Then he said, “I don’t know how to describe it.”
“Then try your best.”
“All I know is…somebody’s coming.”
* * *
ATOP THE K’TUZIAN STRETCH
Inquisitor Mann walked along the edge of the basalt pillar. Behind him, the Emperor’s Hand stood on the ramp of her Horizon-class ship, and the ship itself was hovering in the air, just at the lip of the pillar’s edge, its ramp lightly touching the stony ground. They were both looking at what appeared to be the scattered remains of a campsite, recently abandoned, but none of Moff Inrammen’s research teams had recorded having any sort of research post on this particular spot. There were research teams scattered all over the canyon, and some of the Empire’s operation had gotten so messy that some teams were getting lax in reporting in, but Mann still did not think this had been a research team who camped here.
The Force was speaking to him. Something had drawn him to this spot, and the sensors aboard the Hand’s ship suggested faint bio-signs only moments before they arrived. He turned and looked at her, red hair whipping all around her in the cold Ossus wind, and saw in her deep, burning green eyes that she sensed it, too. They were close. So close to uncovering some rogue operation, but their enemies were still one or two steps ahead of them.
“Well, Ether?” said the Hand, walking up to him. “What next?”
Mann was about to say something when they suddenly received a transmission over comms, directly into their earpieces. “This is TH-821,” came the voice of Cazrael. He and his two wingmen were slowly orbiting the pillar in their TIEs. “I’ve got positive signs of engine exhaust about a hundred klicks southeast of us. Not one of ours, we don’t have any ships that big in that area.”
“What does the signature read?” said Mann.
“Bigger than a starfighter. Probably freighter-sized. At least, according to these emission signatures.”
“They’re moving all around us,” Mann said, turning back to the Emperor’s Hand. “They’ve split up. It’s a Rebel cell, probably small, no more than five or six of them, I’d say. They’ve split up and gone in different directions. My guess is, a detachment team was sent to spy on the local Trident tunnels, while one or two ships were left behind to pick them up in case an emergency escape was needed.”
The Emperor’s Hand walked over to him, closed her eyes, evidently stretching out with the Force. Inquisitor Mann wondered just how thorough her instruction in the Force had been to be able to do that. She opened her eyes and said, “Someone warned them. I feel a sense of urgency in their departure.”
Mann nodded. He’d detected the same via the Force. An interloper. He knew not who, but someone had clearly scared off their quarry. “Come on. Let’s return to your ship.” To Cazrael, he called back, “Commander, I want you to go and inspect this possible freighter. I and the Emperor’s Hand will take her ship and continue sweeping the area for the Rebels who are on foot. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
The TIE fighters pulled away, and went diving deeper into the canyon.
Mann stretched out with the Force, and thought, He’s here. I can sense it. Ageless Void is here, and he has help, both from a physical presence, and an incorporeal one. He touched the lightsaber at his side, almost unconsciously, and walked up the ramp into the ship. Behind him, the Emperor’s Hand lingered a moment longer, then joined him.
* * *
ABOARD THE LADY OF HOPE ASCENDANT
100 KILOMETERS AWAY FROM THE TRIDENT DIG SITE
R-3PO sat by the comms station, waiting. With his audio-receptors, he could hear R4 at the back of the ship, working busily on something or other. The protocol droid stared patiently down at the sensor station, waiting. Safe within the cover of the frozen overhang, the Lady of Hope Ascendant sat hidden. Her sensors reached out for signs of enemy activity. So far, nothing.
The long-range two-way relay station that was set up outside of the ship was waiting for any transmission from Master Ageless and the others. So far, nothing.
He continued waiting patiently.
* * *
COMING OUT OF HYPERSPACE ABOVE THE FOREST MOON OF ENDOR
ABOARD THE MC80A HEAVY STAR CRUISER HOME ONE
The starlines resolved themselves into the normal stars of realspace, as Home One came rocketing towards the Forest Moon of Endor along with the rest of the fleet, and raced towards the half-constructed spherical monstrosity. A second Death Star, Admiral Ackbar marveled to himself, shaking his head at the audacity of it. Such vanity, such hubris. But Palpatine will not suffer the embarrassment of the destruction of his ultimate weapon. He has to show the galaxy the Empire is eternal, that no matter if you cut off an appendage, it will grow back.
Ackbar was determined to show that all things end, even empires.
The fleet moved in quickly. At the head of the primary attack force was the Millennium Falcon, flown by General Lando Calrissian, along with his co-pilot Nien Nunb. Surrounding him were X-wing, A-wing, and Y-wing squadrons. Calrissian’s voice came over comms, “All wings report in.”
Ackbar heard them all tossing out callsigns:
“Red Leader standing by.”
“Gray Leader standing by.”
“Green Leader standing by.”
“Lock S-foils in attack positions,” said Commander Wedge Antilles.
Ackbar watched in his swiveling tactical chair as, in his viewport, the starfighters’ wings all expanded to their attack positions and the fighters assumed attack formations.
“May the Force be with us,” Ackbar broadcast to the entire fleet.
The fleet made its approach, and Ackbar had this sneaking suspicion. He saw no defenses, he detected no TIE fighter patrols. Pulling up his tactical display, he search for signs of targeting-laser emissions, any hint that they were being painted. So far, nothing. That didn’t make any sense, their fleet was big enough that the Empire ought to have detected them by now—
“Break off the attack!” Calrissian suddenly shouted over comms. “The shield is still up!”
“I’ve got no reading,” said Antilles. “Are you sure?”
“Pull up! All craft pull up!”
And it suddenly struck him that Calrissian was correct. Something wasn’t right about all of this. “Take evasive action!” Ackbar commanded. “Green Group, stay close to Holding Sector MT-7!”
“Admiral!” someone cried from behind him. “We have enemy ships in Sector 47!”
Admiral wrenched his gaze back to the forward viewport. “It’s a trap!”
* * *
OSSUS
BENEATH MOUNT GUJAHHL
The magna-rail came to a slow, shuttering halt, and Ageless stepped out first into a far, far colder cavern. No lava veins here, nor any sign of obsidian or ancient lava riverbeds. He did, however, detect the tiniest earthquake as soon as he stepped out of the magna-rail. He held up a fist, bringing Namyr to a halt while he listened. A minute later the earthquake had passed, and he waved her to follow. They both moved with pistols in hand at low-ready position.
These passages were obviously artificially-made corridors, with symbols written in Old Besh that he recognized. They were lit by halogen lights that hung from the ceiling every ten meters or so. They went up a series of steps made out of corrugated metal, paused at a juncture when a mouse droid went wheeling by. Just when it was about to pass them, it stopped, turned to face the shadows in which they were ensconced, and Ageless ignited his lightsaber and cut it to pieces before it could sound an alarm. He switched the saber off, nodded to Namyr, and they kept moving until they came to the turbolift.
They stepped inside the lift car. According to the lift’s control screen, it went down 220 meters; that was as high as a skyscraper on the upper levels of Denon. Ageless saw that there were levels dubbed 228.1Σ and 4149.6Ώ and other such designations. Cross-referencing those with the maps Namyr had sliced out of the research station, and looked at Doctor Aphra’s notes, they saw that what they were looking for was probably a tunnel 193 meters down dubbed 661.4Δ.
Ageless tapped the screen for that level, and the lift started heading down.
The turbolift moved sluggishly at first, and then with greater purpose. He and Namyr hadn’t said a word to one another in almost an hour, communicating entirely in hand signals. Now they exchanged a meaningful look. They nodded to one another, as if to say, This is it. Have your game face on.
When the turbolift reached its destination and the doors shunted open, they stepped out into another cold, ill-lit passage. And here, they had their first run-in with Koboh matter. The stuff was everywhere, and it was strange. A thick black substance, but also suffused in a strange bluish shimmer at times. It was thick like muddy ropes, congealed and hardened around the cave ceiling, the ground, and quite a few offshoot cave entrances.
“It looks like black snot,” Namyr whispered.
After a brief scan to make sure the tunnels were bereft of bio-signs, Ageless tested the hardness of the Koboh-matter strands, first by shooting them with his blaster, then trying to slice the black strands with his lightsaber. It was to absolutely no effect: the Koboh matter absorbed his blaster bolts like they were water, and his lightsaber’s blade bounced right off of it like it was made of rubber.
“What in the blazes?” Namyr whispered.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Ageless said. “Not ever.”
Namyr looked at her datapad’s screen, referencing the cave’s map. “This way. The labyrinth should be just up ahead.”
When they entered it, they found someone had strung up more halogen lights than anywhere else they’d been so far, with lots of taped-off areas with holo-tags highlighting writing on the walls, probably marking it for later study. There were symbols here written in Old Besh, and Ageless used his datapad to translate some of them:
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no chaos, there is harmony.
There is no death, there is the Force.
“A Jedi mantra?” Namyr said.
He shrugged. “I suppose so.”
“ ‘There is no death’?” she said skeptically.
Ageless stared at the words a moment longer, then looked down at the handheld scanner that hung from his hip. It had chirped quietly, and a red dot had appeared on its screen. “Life signs up ahead,” he whispered. “This way.”
They moved through the labyrinth, backtracking whenever they came to a collapsed tunnel, of which there were several. They snuck past one tunnel where a pair of excavator droids were working to unclog the passage, and then crept into a room with a vaulted ceiling, from which hung ancient stalactites that grew through the fading murals on the ceiling. That ceiling was also lit by some researcher’s halogen lights.
Koboh matter clung to almost everything. Wall murals were almost completely encased in it, ancient durasteel doors were coated with it, and most of the stalactites were covered in it. Ageless and Namyr had to be careful not to trip over strands of the matter that wound jaggedly across the floor, almost like barbed wire.
Ageless heard scuffling, someone grunting and breathing heavily. It was coming from just up ahead, around a corner, from which a flashlight’s beam was emanating. He crept around the corner first, blaster pistol pointed out, and found an auburn-haired Human woman knelt on the ground, a series of scanners arrayed all around her, all plugged into one another, and she was gazing down through a massive crack in the ground. A crack that huge was probably made by a cataclysmic earthquake. But the hole was mostly covered by Koboh matter, and utterly inaccessible. The woman was knelt beside the hole, trying to see down through the gaps in the Koboh matter with her flashlight. On her shoulder, resting dead and lifeless, was a busted BD-1 exploration droid, tiny, with its two eyes missing from its flat head.
Ageless stood ten steps away, aimed his blaster pistol right at the back of the woman’s head, and said, “Doctor Aphra, I presume?”
The woman froze. Slowly, she turned around, a frown on her face. She wore light-enhancing goggles, but removed those now, and suddenly gave a big, warm, beaming smile and said, “The Rebel saboteurs, I presume?”
Ageless glanced a question over to Namyr. “How do you know who we are?”
“I’ve heard radio chatter from some of the droids they sent down here. I’ve got a partner down here that speaks binary, listens to all the droid gossip. They’re looking for you up top. But, as it so happens, I don’t give a toss! Want to come give me a hand? I could really use your help.”
Ageless was suddenly suspicious. For a woman who’d just ambushed by Rebel saboteurs, she didn’t look nearly as intimidated as she ought to be.
Namyr said, “Give you a hand with what? Looks like the Koboh matter has you blocked, Doctor.”
Doctor Aphra smiled, winked, then turned slowly and said, “Busy?”
“Busy?”
“That’s what I call this BD-1 model here,” she said, pointing to the droid on her shoulder. “It’s technically a BzD-1. You know, ‘BZ’? ‘Busy’? She’s got a bio-scanner/sample-collector that works much the way an older model once did—”
“The one belonging to Cal Kestis?” Ageless said.
Aphra lifted an eyebrow. “You know your history. Yes. I rigged the anti-Koboh matter emitter to the specifications that Kestis one did. And I think Busy can get us through here. I think that whoever Jedi Master Ooroo was, he—or she, or it—somehow knew about Koboh matter thousands of years ago, and used it to protect his tomb. Busy and I were just about to try to cut through some of this Koboh matter when you—”
“Where is his tomb?” Ageless asked.
Aphra snorted. “You’re kidding, right? You’re standing directly above it.” She waved them over. “Come on, have a look down through the hole.”
Ageless eyed the DL-57 on her hip. “Remove that blaster from its holster, very slowly, and lay it on the ground. Then maybe we can talk.”
Aphra gave another one of her warm smiles. “Of course. After all,” she said, moving slowly. “We’re all friends here. Right, Triple-Zero?”
“That is so very correct,” said a droid’s monotone voice, from a somewhere behind them.
Ageless spun and aimed his weapon at what appeared to be an onyx-plated, black-as-night protocol droid with glowing blood-red eyes. It had a blaster pistol in one hand, and a BlasTech rifle in the other, each weapon trained on the two intruders.
“We are indeed all friends here,” the droid said.
“Triple-Zero’s an old friend of mine. Same friend I told you can speak binary. Assassin droid in a protocol droid’s frame. Trust me, he’s deadlier than he looks. And ornerier. So, let’s all be friends right now, what do you say? We could just—um, hey, what the hell is that?” She was pointing to Ageless’s right hand.
While Namyr had her pistol trained only on the droid, Ageless had his pistol pointed at Aphra, but by reflex he’d also drawn his lightsaber. He hadn’t switch it on yet, but he was prepared to. He didn’t think he would be able to block blaster bolts in the Soresu style, but it was better than trusting only his armor at this point. He looked between Aphra and the droid, and said, “It’s a lightsaber.”
“Where,” she said slowly, “did you,” she said, walking towards him, “get,” she whispered, “that wonderful,” she exclaimed, “piece of tech? That looks way too new to have been found down here.”
“Tell the droid to lower his weapons, and I’ll tell you.”
Aphra tsked. “I’m not that stupid, newcomer.”
“Then tell him to lower one of his weapons. We’ll lower all of ours if he’ll lower at least one. Fair enough, you got the drop on us, but we’re not your enemy. In fact,” he said, clipping the lightsaber slowly back to his belt, “we may very much be on the same side. Because I have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that you’re looking for the Tomb of Jedi Master Ooroo.”
Aphra frowned. “Now, how the blazes did you know what I’m after?”
Because the Dark Voice wouldn’t have led me here otherwise, he thought, but didn’t say. “Show us how the anti-Koboh matter works, and what you’re working on. Namyr here tells me the Empire usually twists your arm to help them out. You want to be independent? Your own boss? Have your own digs fully funded without having to be strong-armed or threatened with death?” Ageless nodded over to Namyr. “She’s got contacts at the highest echelons of the Rebel Alliance.”
“I’ve got a direct line to Darth Vader. Ever heard of him?” said Aphra, sassily.
“But do you have the freedom to come and go as you please? Could you leave this planet without the threat of a bounty being put on your head so big the Guild would fight each other for the right to claim you?”
Aphra smirked, but behind that smirk, Ageless sensed a wavering in her confident veneer. “I’m a researcher. A scientist. I just want the truth about the Jedi to be known, that’s it.”
“And the Empire wants to twist it to their ends. We know.”
“That’s not all they want,” Aphra said.
Ageless detected something in the doctor’s words, something ominous. “What do you mean?”
“There’s something down there. I sent another BD-1 droid down there. It was the only thing small enough to wedge itself between the gaps in the Koboh matter. Well, that, and a mouse droid, but mouse droids don’t have the sensor suites that exploration droids have.”
“What did your BD-1 find?” asked Namyr.
Doctor Aphra hesitated, looking between them. Doubtless, she was trying to determine how much she could trust them. But Ageless saw her struggle, saw her wanting to trust them, and so he tried something. Reaching out with the Force, he attempted to slightly nudge her emotions in the direction he needed. It wasn’t a full-on manipulation of her senses, just tipping her over an edge she already wanted to jump from.
“There’s a tomb down there,” she said. “Bigger than anything I’ve ever seen or heard of.” She pulled out a holoprojector, and emitted a blue-white hologram of an immense cavern, with a vaulted ceiling hundreds of meters high. “The Observatory. I think this is it, and it sank far beneath the surface. Or…was pulled under. I think at the last moment, when all hope was lost and it was apparent the Sith were going to destroy this planet with a double supernova, someone used gravitronic construction to pull the Observatory down beneath the mantle, or perhaps amid the mantle. The Observatory was then transformed into a tomb to keep Master Ooroo’s body intact.”
Aphra looked nervous about saying this next part. She changed holograms, and now showed an image of a jellyfish-like creature writhing in a stone statue. No, not stone. That’s—
“Is that carbonite?” Ageless asked, incredulous.
“Yes. I believe Master Ooroo is still down there. He’s probably not alive—the longest recorded survival of someone in carbonite is a couple thousand years—in fact, that’s how people traveled the vast distances of space before the invention of the hyperdrive—but most of that level of carbonite-freeze technology was lost tens of thousands of years ago.”
Ageless approached the hologram, staring into the “face” of a massive jellyfish-like being. “It’s a Celegia,” he said. “They’re incredibly rare. Few of them are even alive now.”
“Yes,” Aphra said exuberantly, smiling at his interest. “And here’s the thing: Celegia can’t breathe oxygen. It’s toxic to them. So maybe…maybe the cyanogen chamber in which he lived and breathed got damaged, and he had no other choice but to bury himself this way. See these droids here?” She pointed to holographic images of ancient droids, all dead, corroded, busted, and littered around the carbonite slab. “I think they may have been in charge of waking him up intermittently, then refreezing him.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To oversee the final construction and burial of his tomb,” Aphra said. “To be forever vigilant over it. A silent guardian, living alone, waking every few years to ensure things were safe, then having his droids put him back in the deep freeze.”
“But why would he do that?”
“Perhaps he knew the hyperlane to Ossus had been destroyed, and that no one was coming to save him, anyway.”
“Okay,” Namyr said. “But why would he remain vigilant? What would he be overseeing down there? Why protect this place at all and lace it with Koboh matter?”
Doctor Aphra smiled mischievously. “That is what I want to find out.”