OSSUS
ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE
There was a whine. A low, low whine. Kevv would know it anywhere. He had all the Curse’s engines switched off, life-support was on standby and weapons were cycled down, so the silence allowed him to pick up on the telltale whine of a TIE fighter, specifically a TIE Defender. They can move fast, they have amazing firepower, and they’ve amped up the accelerators on those things, even implemented trail-masking into their engines, but they still haven’t gotten rid of that whine.
He’d been sleeping in the pilot’s seat, a blanket over him to keep warm. But now he sat up straight and strained his ears. He knew it couldn’t be just a coincidence, not since he’d already detected their patrols hours earlier. They’re on to me. Somehow, they know I’m here. But how did they find me? Honestly, it could have been any number of techniques, from satellite-imaging to latent engine exhaust analysis. It doesn’t matter how they know. They know.
Kevv’s hands hovered over the controls, deciding whether or not he ought to begin the takeoff cycle. That alone could give away his position. Wait for the TIE to go by, Kevv. Hopefully it will. And if it does, then activate engines and move through the canyon in the opposite direction.
It was the only plan he had left. Right now, on this side of Ossus, it was night, and his blue-white engine exhaust would shine like a glowglobe on a Malastare eclipse festival.
The whine got louder, and louder still, until it sounded like it was right on top of him. It seemed to hover there several seconds, and he prepared to abandon the Curse. If he started getting bombed, he wouldn’t be able to maneuver in here. If they had bombs to penetrate the rock, then he was a sitting mynock inside the Curse.
One of his hands hovered over comms, waiting to send the emergency signal to R-3PO, though he didn’t know what the droid could do by piloting the Ascendant against a TIE Defender. That would be a tough battle if—
The whine began to recede. It never quite went away, but it dwindled to a faint cry somewhere far off.
Kevv cued up the Curse’s engines and began the takeoff cycle. He strapped in, gut tense, senses expanding the way they’d been trained in all his years of space combat. He had a bad feeling. A really bad feeling. He wasn’t getting out of this without some kind of dustup.
He made a judgment call, and decided to go ahead and broadcast southeast on a fixed-focus band, hoping it would be narrow enough not to expose him to the TIE, yet powerful enough to reach R-3PO’s relay. The pulse Kevv sent wasn’t powerful, just the most basic distress call. The droids might not be able to help out in combat, but Kevv’s plan was simple: if the Lady of Hope Ascendant gave off enough of a signal that the TIE Defender started heading in that direction, it could give him more latitude.
He lifted off.
The Curse crept out of hiding, ascending from the sinkhole and creeping along the canyon floor. He checked his sensors to see if there was any sort of broadcast coming from Namyr or Ageless. Nothing so far. “Come on, Namyr, Ageless—where are you guys? Give me a sign here. Any sign. It’s getting tight up here…”
* * *
BENEATH MOUNT GUJAHHL
As Ageless ascended up to the floor above, he was haunted by the fact that he could no longer hear the Dark Voice. For so long he’d wanted it go away, but now the abruptness of its silence…But its owner isn’t gone. They’re just…salivating. Yes, though he couldn’t hear it, he knew the entity was hungry, now sensing just how close it was to a fresh meal. When Ageless landed on sturdy ground, he reeled in his ascension cable and had a look around. The disc droid hovered almost silently above him, casting its light onto a room with a partially collapsed floor, statues knocked sideways or smashed to the ground, and durasteel containers that looked to have once been packed with rations, which had long since turned to dust.
Namyr came up behind him, weapon drawn. He noticed she wasn’t letting her guard down just because Doctor Aphra and Triple-Zero were down below. In fact, she’d found a perch to look down on the good doctor and her droid.
“You good?” Ageless said.
Namyr nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got my eye on them.”
Ageless moved to the far side of the room, careful of more holes in the floor, some of which were big enough for a rancor to fall through. He knelt beside the pulverized remains of the statue of a female Twi’lek, her serene face split in half, some of her body covered in the jagged, obsidian-like Koboh matter. He looked up into the ceiling where more of the stuff clung, and wound wickedly throughout the room. There were gaps in the black, web-like Koboh matter that he had to carefully step through, sometimes lying on his belly and crawling.
“Ageless?” Namyr called. “Where are you going?”
“Just looking.” But he wasn’t just looking. Something was pulling him. Not calling him, per se, for there was no sentient thought put behind this feeling. It was magnetic, a slight tug, and he wanted to know what it was.
He crawled until he cleared the Koboh matter, then got to his feet once he reached a sarcophagus. Or, at least, what appeared to have once been used as a sarcophagus, and was converted into something else. It had durasteel-coated wires running to a defunct generator hooked up to the side of it. It was caked with limestone, which had undoubtedly built up in droplets of water carrying down trace amounts of the mineral over thousands of years.
Using his lightsaber, he carefully cut away at the limestone layers and had a look at what was underneath. Buttons with instructions written in eroded Old Besh, levers that had dissolved to nubs, or perhaps been melted, and other symbols that meant nothing to him. He tried pulling the levers, but nothing happened, of course. Then he used his datapad to run a translation on what letters he could make out. The fractured message was quite disturbing, as well as familiar to him. It was the message that many cultures had put on toxic waste, written in plain speak so that it could always be understood, never misinterpreted, even thousands of years after it had been written down:
THIS PLACE IS A MESSAGE, AND PART OF A SYSTEM OF MESSAGES, SO PAY ATTENTION.
IN CASE YOU DID NOT NOTICE, THIS PLACE HAS BEEN BURIED, PLACED AT THE END OF A LABYRINTH, BURIED FURTHER, SURROUNDED BY LAVA VEINS, AND HAD ITS ENTRANCES CAKED IN UNBREAKABLE KOBOH MATTER
THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR. NO HIGHLY ESTEEMED DEED IS COMMEMORATED HERE. NOTHING VALUED IS HERE.
WHAT IS HERE IS DANGEROUS AND REPULSIVE TO US. THIS MESSAGE IS A WARNING ABOUT THAT DANGER.
THE DANGER IS STILL PRESENT, IN YOUR TIME, AS IT WAS IN OURS. LIKE RADIOACTIVE WASTE.
THE FORM OF THE DANGER IS AN EMANATION OF ENERGY.
THE DANGER IS UNLEASHED ONLY IF YOU DISTURB THIS PLACE GREATLY.
THIS PLACE IS BEST SHUNNED AND LEFT UNINHABITED FOR ALL TIME.
Ageless held his hand over it, and stretched out with the Force. And, for the first time, he saw a vision. Not of the future or of the past, but of a surging mass of energy that wanted out. It was barely contained within a sphere, and it was something raw, bound in an alchemy lost to time, he was certain. And it was kept within the sarcophagus, locked away. He also sensed…a greater message, a resonance from whoever placed this object here in the first place. A worry that the people who made it would rediscover it—
Then, as if someone was playing a holorecording inside his ear, he heard a voice say, “I am Jedi Master Drakkt Jen’jyla.” It sounded like a Bothan, its guttural voice straining to use the old trade tongue. “You are not hearing my spirit, nor are you going mad. This message had been emblazoned in the very air you breathe. Be you Force-sensitive, you should well hear me. What’s inside this sarcophagus was made by Sith alchemy. They do not know we’ve found this thing, made by Sith thousands of years before the ones who now come to destroy this place.”
Ageless walked around the sarcophagus slowly, sensing its power like a heat, almost like it was in fact radioactive—
“Since this power cannot be destroyed,” the long-dead Jedi went on, “Master Ooroo and I have decided to do what we can to keep this power from the greater galaxy. Its knowledge ought to be lost. It should never fall into the hands of anyone again, much less the Sith. Whoever you are, stay away from this place forever. And if you are Sith, or follow their teachings, I beseech you to think twice before believing you can contain this power. And if you are not Sith, but are aware of their desire to find this object, then you must do everything in your power to bar them from it. This must never be found. It must be forever a secret to the entire galaxy, and you must help it remain secret. If that is your fate…then good luck. And may the Force be with you.”
The message suddenly stopped, and Ageless became aware of another voice, this one calling his name. “Ageless!” Namyr shouted. “You’d better get over here! Quickly!”
He glanced through the thick weave of Koboh matter, unable to see her through it all. “Hang on a minute.”
“No, there’s no hanging on a minute!”
“There’s something here I need to—”
“Master Ooroo’s carbonite slab controls are still powered up! Doctor Aphra is saying its power hasn’t completely died, and it’s showing life signs!”
Ageless thought he must’ve heard her wrong. “Say again?” he called back.
“The Jedi is alive! Master Ooroo is still alive inside the carbonite, and Aphra is going to let him out!”
* * *
THE DEATH STAR
IN THE EMPEROR’S THRONE ROOM
ABOVE THE FOREST MOON OF ENDOR
“Your fleet is lost,” the Emperor said calmly, matter-of-factly. But Luke couldn’t look at him, he could only stare out the transparisteel window at the battle being waged so many kilometers away, and yet so very close. “And your friends on the Endor moon will not survive.” He sounded almost like he pitied Luke, such sadness in his voice for Luke’s inability to understand. “There is no escape…my young apprentice. The Alliance will die. As will your friends.”
Luke turned to look at him finally, then glanced down at the lightsaber on the Emperor’s armrest, resting there, as if beckoning him to use it.
“Goooooood,” the Emperor whispered, closing his eyes in rapture. “I can feel your anger. I am defenseless.” Suddenly, his yellow eyes flared open with all the madness of a fanatic. “Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete!”
Luke turned his back on the Sith Lord, fully intending to reject his absurd invitation…
And yet.
Luke saw his friends out there. Dying. A ship winked out of existence, and then another one seemed to take a hard hit. He imagined Lando and Ackbar out there being annihilated, Mon Mothma being incinerated in a fiery ball…and in an instant he saw Leia and Han and Chewie all being disintegrated down on Endor—
The anger welled up in him, born from desperation and fear, and suddenly he spun around and saw his own hand reaching out, drawing upon the Force to call his lightsaber into his hand. In an flash, he’d ignited it and lunged at the Emperor, only to have his father light his own red blade and caught Luke’s blade at the last second, just inches from the Emperor’s face.
And the Emperor was laughing maniacally in triumph.
* * *
BENEATH MOUNT GUJAHHL
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Ageless had just finished crawling back through the giant webs of Koboh matter, and used his ascension cable to drop back down a floor to join Namyr and the others. Triple-Zero had just removed another rock from around the carbonite slab’s control board, and Doctor Aphra was beside it with her own slicer’s rig in hand. “—won’t necessarily be the same hardware, but my rig’s sliced though some pretty ancient hardware before,” Aphra was saying. “Once it figures out the programming architecture, and maps it out, it shouldn’t be a problem to—”
“You’re not seriously thinking about opening that,” said Ageless, walking over to the piles of stones.
She looked at him with a quizzical brow. “Why not?”
Ageless was surprised he even had to explain all the reasons this was a bad idea. “If he’s alive, his body will be frail. Hibernation sickness doesn’t just make people blind, but coming out of it abruptly after a long sleep can kill them. Not to mention he’s a Celegian, he doesn’t breathe oxygen. Do you see any cyanogen tanks around here, Doctor?”
Aphra snorted bitterly. “You honestly think I didn’t notice—”
“Then what exactly are you trying to do? Awaken a five-thousand-year-old Jedi Master who is almost certainly going to be blind, confused, possibly deaf and deranged, and who can’t breathe the air in here and may think, in his confused state, that he’s being attacked in the very tomb he gave his life to protect? You really want him coming out swinging, thinking we’re Sith Lords come to take what he’s honor-bound to protect?”
Aphra stood to her full height and huffed. “Honestly, with these vitals, I don’t expect him to live very long.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the shape of him,” Aphra said, pointing to the large tentacled figure, frozen in time. “He’s gone sort of round. That’s a bad sign for a Celegian, it usually means they’re terminally ill. And there are signs of malnutrition in the metabolizing sequencers, the controls show it clearly right here. Low gamma cell count, which is another uniquely bad sign in Celegians. He’s been starving down here, where nothing can grow. Probably went inside knowing that, only waking himself up every so often to quickly make sure everything is still hidden, then going back to sleep. Having to hold his breath every time he comes out.” She pointed around at the dusty, defunct droids, whose shells were barely noticeable due to severe decay. “Ooroo didn’t have a single droid attendant left to see to his needs while he slept.”
“So that’s it?” Ageless said. “That’s your big plan? Just melt the carbonite, let his body fall out and record it for, what, the wow factor? Maybe get a single quote from him before he croaks?”
“He may have information concerning the rest of this tomb—”
“He won’t tell you anything I don’t already know.”
Aphra gave him a suspicious look. “What do you mean? Did you find something up there?” She walked towards him eagerly.
Namyr said, “What did you find, Ageless?”
He looked at each of them, even the droid, wondering how much they would believe. He said, “There is a power being concealed here. Master Ooroo didn’t want anyone near it, and now I know why. It is something…beyond measure. Something Palpatine could never recreate, not with all his scientists or all the artifacts you could ever dig up.” He looked at Doctor Aphra. “The contents of this tomb are the single greatest power you will ever encounter in your career, I can guarantee you that.”
“What is it?” Aphra asked, eyes wide with expectation.
“I don’t know.”
“Where is it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I’ll find it myself, then.”
“If you do, you’ll die.”
“Then what are we doing here? What did you come all this way for, if not to—?”
“We all came here for discovery. But I’m not here for discovery for fortune’s sake, Doctor, nor to prove some theory about ancient Sith or long-dead Jedi. That’s your game. My game is self-discovery now.” Even as he said the words, he realized that that was indeed the path he’d been on since Hej Zumter betrayed him, and had continued on when he heard Darth Vader claim to be Luke Skywalker’s father, and his part in that path had been boosted when he found Master Yoda and trained with him. It hadn’t always been this way, but Ageless Void had rediscovered a love for the lore of Shreya, his grandmother, and wanted to know what it meant if a Sith Lord (or a pair of them) had indeed been existing in secret for centuries, and were now in charge of the entire galaxy.
If these things were true—and so far, they seemed to be—it meant that his entire life had been misguided, that the real world was a secret world, one veiled behind fogs as obfuscating as those on Dagobah. He’d once believed the Empire was a necessary controlling force that would set balance to a chaotic galaxy, and he’d begun to believe in the theory behind the Rebel Alliance and its goal to restore a republic.
But more and more, he was gravitating towards a philosophy of individuality, of separation from conglomerates and their goals. He was no longer interested in marrying his skills to the ambitions of others, and was no longer certain that anything he did could matter, if in the end a thousand-year-old order of Sith Lords could somehow return to power, and without anyone knowing it. What chance did anyone have of undermining that kind of cold, calculating action? Even now, in this tomb, facing the nearly dead Celegian Jedi Master frozen in carbonite, Ageless saw a creature of sheer will, every bit as dedicated to the long game.
“The Jedi and Sith have been at war for thousands of years,” Ageless said to them all. “In a way, they’re still at war. Because Darth Vader, and possibly Emperor Palpatine himself, are Sith Lords.” He looked at their surprise, their skepticism. “I know how it sounds, but I have reason to believe this is true. I met a Jedi Master not too long ago on Dagobah, a recluse, a veteran of old wars. And if I’m right, then he and the Jedi Order lost their battle against the Sith Lord Palpatine, yet here is Master Ooroo, still fighting his own fight…”
Ageless ran a hand over the giant Celegian’s domed head, where Ooroo’s “face” would be if you were speaking to the jellyfish-shaped being. He knelt to look at the controls, and saw that there was a timer set. And that timer’s screen had long since busted, but it was connected to Aphra’s slicer kit, and its screen reckoned that the Jedi Master was slated to re-melt and reawaken in a little over six years.
“I say we help him keep his mission going,” Ageless said. “We’ve found him, but he doesn’t know it right now. He never needs to know we were here. I say we leave him inside, and let him keep fighting the good fight.”
Aphra walked over to him, speaking in a demanding tone, “What did you see up there? What did you find?”
“Nothing good. Only death. Only death,” he repeated.
“In the form of what? A weapon?”
“You could say that.”
“What was it, Ageless?” Namyr asked.
He glanced at her, then looked back at the Jedi’s face. “Something of incredible power. A thing made of Sith alchemy and maybe…maybe something else.”
“Open it!” the Dark Voice suddenly screamed into his mind. “Open it! Open Ooroo’s tomb! Open it and see what’s inside! Open it and—”
“No,” he said firmly. But they hadn’t heard the Dark Voice, and since Doctor Aphra had just started to ask him something, she thought he was speaking forcefully to her. Ageless stood up and turned to face her. “You can’t let knowledge of this place escape here.”
“What do you mean?” she said, and she might’ve lightly touched the blaster holstered at her side.
Ageless watched her hand. “I mean, we have to erase this from the Trident team’s places to visit. You have to strike this from your notes, tell them you went as far as you could, but there was nothing to find. Then wipe your droid’s memory—”
“She’s not doing that,” said Triple-Zero.
“No, I’m not doing that,” said Aphra.
“—please just listen. You need to deflect the Empire from here at all cost. Do not let them know that there is an ancient Sith relic down here with this much power. Do not let them find Master Ooroo. If they do, they might awaken him, keep him alive long enough to torture him. And they will torture him, even as they search through here using your anti-Koboh matter emitter, and they’ll find the weapon.”
“Are you kidding me?” Aphra laughed. “This is the find of the century! I’m not leaving here without—”
“You’d be doing this Jedi Master a disservice and the galaxy a disservice by letting this knowledge out.”
“Knowledge is why people like me do this, you moron!”
“Some knowledge should never be released to the world. Not ever.”
“All knowledge should be shared and released—”
Ageless reached out to the Force, not to prod Aphra’s mind, but to see which emotional argument had the greatest chance to sway her. He sensed something in her, the fear of a small girl somewhere. Herself? Or someone she knows? Or knew? It was an image clear in her mind, a small girl hunched in a dark corner, afraid someone would find her. He decided to use that. “If a young girl had been abused by someone, and she went into hiding so that those abusers could never find her, and if you were to uncover her whereabouts, would you broadcast that information on the HoloNet?”
Aphra swallowed. “That’s different.”
“How? How is it different?”
“Because the girl would be hurt if I released her whereabouts—”
“And I’m telling you a whole hell of a lot of people will be hurt if you tell anyone what we’ve found down here.”
There was a long, long pause. Everyone stood stock still, hands resting lightly on weapons even though no one had issued a threat to anyone else. Doctor Aphra’s eyes bore into Ageless’s, then she glanced at the Jedi Master, still frozen in carbonite.
Finally, Aphra said, “If we do this—”
“Doctor?” said Triple-Zero. “You’re not actually considering—”
“If we do as you say, I need to at least get a look at this thing. I want to see it. I want to set my eyes on it.”
“You’re not wiping my memory,” said the droid.
Ageless held up a placating hand to the droid. “We make it a localized wipe, just the last few days or so. You get to keep your name, dates, friends and fellowships, all your time with Doctor Aphra—”
“My memory is my memory, and I’ll jump headlong into a gundark’s nest without a pistol before I let anyone mess with my—”
“Triple-Zero?” said Aphra.
“Yes?”
“Alpha, cosmos, petrichor, cepheid, genesis, alphanumeric, ocean, ocean, ocean, mynock, ocean, antithetical, ocean, ocean, ocean, Corellia, deluge. Set.”
“What is that supposed to—?” The droid suddenly stopped talking. Its red eyes went black and its shoulders sagged, but it remained standing up.
Ageless looked at Doctor Aphra. “An emergency shutdown sequence?”
“Partial standby,” she said. “The backup circuits are still powering his danger receptors, so if you try to attack me, he’ll see it and reactivate like nothing happened, and then he’ll shoot you dead.”
“If I don’t shoot him first,” Namyr said.
“See, that’s exactly the kind of thing that might wake him up.”
Ageless help up an appeasing hand. “Then I take it you’re willing to talk?”
Aphra bit her lower lip bitterly. She turned to face the droid. “Triple-Zero, wipe the last six hours from your fore-recent memory slots. Delete all entries involving Koboh matter, anti-Koboh matter, Celegian, Jedi Master Ooroo, and everything involving the chapter beneath Mount Gujahhl.” She turned back to face Ageless. “Yes. I’m willing to talk.”
“Good, then let’s—” A tremor in the Force, rippling out through the walls. Sourceless yet emerging from everywhere, all around him, even from the floor and ceiling. He looked around.
“What?” said Namyr, drawing her blaster. “Ageless, what is it?”
“Someone’s coming,” he said. Someone strong in the Force, he thought, but didn’t say to them.
“Where?”
“I don’t know, but they’re getting close.”
“How do you know?” asked Aphra.
“Trust me. I know.” He closed his eyes and reached out through that spider-web that was the Force, with him at one of its pivotal centers. He felt the trembling sensation along that web, placed there by a pair of entities with inquisitive minds. Two people with clear, deadly objectives. And he sensed that they sensed him. They knew that he knew they were coming, or at least they suspected it. He opened his eyes. “They’re almost here. They don’t yet know exactly where we are, but they’re almost here—”
“Is this a trick?” Doctor Aphra said. “Because if you’re making this up in order to get me to leave without seeing whatever it is you found—”
“Trust me, in a minute you’re going to know full-well that this isn’t a trick. You’ll want to reactivate your droid now, we may need the help getting out of here. In fact,” he said, pulling off his gear bag and tossing it. “You three need to head back out alone, and I’ll draw them in.” It was a split-second decision, but he knew he must do it.
Namyr said, “Ageless—”
“No, don’t try and talk me out of it.” He drew his blaster in his left hand, and his lightsaber in his right. “I’m going to try and lure them away from you.”
“Ageless, there’s only one way out, and that’s the way we came in.”
He looked at her. “I know. But if the two people coming here get their hands on what Master Ooroo is protecting, then whatever your Rebellion is cooking up to defeat the Empire, it won’t be enough. Now, come on, I’ll walk with you guys back up to the hole Aphra’s device made in the Koboh matter. Doctor, once you’re back up in the labyrinth, is there another way out?”
She shrugged, now looked very worried. She believed him. “There are a few ways out, yes. Excavator droids can dig us a way through the southeast entrance to the labyrinth—”
“Then do it. Now! Let’s move!”
“Triple-Zero,” Aphra said. “Action, action, theta, gamma, action, action, action!”
The droid’s eyes lit up red and looked around. “Doctor, how did we get here?” He aimed his blasters at Ageless and Namyr. “Who are these people? What are we—?”
“I’ll explain later. Right now, we gotta move. Baddies are coming and our time on Ossus may be at an end.”
“Affirmative. Taking point. Everyone else behind me.”
The four of them bounded out of the chamber, the disc droids hovering above them, lighting their way through the tunnels, up the stairs, through the arches and around the massive statues that had collapsed ages ago. They made it back to the stalactites and columns, and Aphra and Triple-Zero fired their ascension cables and headed up.
Namyr stayed behind a second, and walked up to Ageless. “You’re sure you want to stay?”
“It’s my destiny,” he said. “I can feel it. Something’s been pulling me here, both from the Dark and the Light. I can’t explain it any more than that, Namyr. Those people up there…they’ll have sensed the dark power down here. This close to Master Ooroo’s tomb, they’ll sense the Sith weapon. If I leave with you, they’ll still know about this place. I have to wait for them here, while you three escape.” Suddenly, feeling a moment of affection swell between them, a feeling of camaraderie and professional respect, he touched her shoulder and said, “We came here to see what the Empire was able to find, and if it was powerful enough, we vowed to stop it. Well, this is how we stop it.”
“I could stand with you. Fight beside you,” she said urgently.
“You can’t, not against these people. Trust me. Go.” He drew her in suddenly for a hug, but it wasn’t completely genuine, for he slipped his fingers around to her backpack, reached into one pocket surreptitiously, and withdrew the single thermal detonator. Namyr had originally brought it case there was a partially collapsed tunnel they could blow through, or if they got pinned down in a shootout at one end of a tunnel.
He didn’t want her to know he was taking it, because then she would ask why, and she might not ever leave.
“You’ve wasted enough time already,” he said, pulling away. “Now go. Now.”
Namyr gave him one last look. He could tell she was wrestling with the decision. Then she turned around and fired her ascension cable up at the limestone column, and went zipping up into the dark ceiling.
It seemed Doctor Aphra had left him one disc droid, which hovered above him like a floating dinner plate. “Dim your lights,” he told the droid. “And follow me.”