OSSUS
ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE
They had been traveling for two days, moving slowly over the rugged hills, and only at night, keeping to the flightpath Kevv came up with and making the occasional adjustments based on what they discovered. When they came upon a triple volcano—one huge, weirdly-shaped mountain with three separate calderas around its side, each one spewing its own near constant river of lava—they found the dark clouds in the sky to be advantageous, as they stretched for hundreds of kilometers, creating a chilling fallout effect across much of this region of the planet. More active volcanoes near the ground presented an opportunity in terms of off-and-on pyroclastic clouds, in which the Dathomirian Curse navigated just above them, masking its own heat signature.
While they traveled, the three of them played games of dejarik, and bet small sums of credits in sabacc games to keep things interesting. Ageless would sometimes leave Namyr and Kevv to play alone while he went into the cargo bay and cued up TRD-5. Ageless had been working on something, returning to the basics of Shii-Cho and Makashi. He knew that in saber-on-saber combat, a person would have to be extremely focused on not making a single mistake, lest even a glancing slice from a lightsaber remove a limb or finger.
He’d already seen it happen with Luke Skywalker in Cloud City.
So, his new approach meant leaving some of Ataru’s more acrobatic movements to the side, at least while facing off against an advanced saber user. He wrote in his journal, A saber practitioner will want to protect their hands, head, and centerline at all cost. Protect your centerline, while constantly pressing theirs, and look to create the opening. That’s the way. Apply Echani footwork only when the opponent overextends? That last was a strong possibility, he felt, something he would try in more mental simulations and sparring matches against TRD-5.
* * *
Ageless’s training was cut short when Kevv called from the cockpit, “Getting a strong bounce-wave and some radiation spikes on scopes. We’re not being painted, I don’t think, but there are a few ships in the area scanning.”
On his jog up to the cockpit, Ageless said over commlink, “Anywhere for us to hide in the vicinity?”
Kevv looked over his shoulder, just as Ageless entered the cockpit. “Uh, I think there’s…yeah, there’s a series of canyons up ahead, they split apart and go in all sorts of directions. Some of the lava flow’s heat ought to help us out. Radar shows mountainous terrain up ahead. So, we should be fine for now.”
“Good,” Ageless said, and looked over the sonar scans. He was seeing deep valleys, cracks in the planet’s surface and that went deep. Very deep. And as they flew over them, Ageless used the Curse’s exterior cams to zoom in on those gaping cracks. “Those aren’t just holes or canyons,” he said, looking at the bottomless voids. “Those are colossal sinkholes.”
The cracks splintered off in a thousand direction. Stars above and below, the surface looks like a crack eggshell.
“Yeah, I noticed a few of those a couple of kilometers back,” Kevv said. “It looks like there’s massive hollowed out caves beneath the surface. Permafrost probably started melting a couple thousand years ago, and it’s slowly been sinking. Could be a lot of things. Could be the whole continent is subducting, could be tectonic activity from the overactive volcanoes melting the permafrost—”
Kevv cut himself short when a warning bell sounded.
“Uh oh.”
“What is it?” Ageless said, but at the same time the alarm went off, something tickled at the edge of his senses. A tremor in the Force, unlike anything he’d experienced before. Like a stone tossed into a pond, and he was feeling the ripples. Someone’s coming.
Kevv checked his sensors. “There’s a wide-field scan in the area, but it’s zeroing in on our region. Could be a coincidence, could be they’ve found us.”
“Get us underground,” Ageless said. “Now.”
The Duros spun around in his seat and looked at him. “What? You actually want to go down into those sinkholes?”
Ageless selected one of the colossal sinkholes on screen and pointed at its gaping maw. “This one. Take us down inside there. Do it now, before it’s too late.”
“What’d I miss?” said Namyr, just now stepping into the cockpit.
“We’ve got company,” Ageless said, just as Kevv dipped the Curse’s nose down and plunged them into the sinkhole.
A gasp tore at Namyr’s throat, and she said, “We’re—we’re not actually going into—”
Before she could finish the sentence, they were cast into darkness, except for the lights coming from the control panels. The Dathomirian Curse flew straight into what looked like the throat of some stone beast, and they all went quiet as Kevv turned on the forward lights and began searching for anywhere to park. He found a hole in a cliff wall, easily big enough for them to slid into, and Kevv parked them expertly inside, then switched off all power.
Here, they waited.
And Ageless stretched out with the Force. Several waves of dangers came through, feeling almost like heat, rippling through the center of his stomach, the very place where he began his small orbit exercises. It seemed his training had paid off in that sense, and he became aware of other threats coming and going from all around him. It was like being in a heavy current, and then feeling it subside, the water easing up.
“We’re in the clear,” he said.
“How can you be sure?” Namyr asked.
“Trust me.”
Namyr shrugged. “Well, just in case, let’s hunker down here for another night. Kevv, you go get some sleep, I’ll take first watch.”
“Won’t argue with that,” said the Duros, yawning and unstrapping himself from his seat. “Wake me up if anything exciting happens.”
“Ageless, you get some rest, too,” Namyr said.
He nodded. Though, when he headed aft, Ageless actually felt like having a little diversion. He walked in the cargo hold and once again went through his slow exercises, breathing heavily, integrating Ataru into his tactical movements of transitioning from lightsaber, to pistol, to rifle, and back to lightsaber.
At one point, Namyr was on her way to the galley to get some food, when she poked her head in to see what he was doing. Ageless had sensed her a few seconds before she said, “That’s interesting. What do you call that?”
“A martial art,” he said, taking in breath through his nose and exhaling through his mouth. He did a slow cartwheel, and then a quick somersault and a spinning side kick.
“Never seen that style before…but a couple of movements look like Teräs Kasi or Udas’mon. What do you call it?”
“It doesn’t have a name yet.”
“You’re developing it?”
“Yes.”
After a moment, Namyr walked into the cargo hold and said, “Want to give it a test drive?”
Ageless paused partway through readying a front kick. He smiled at her. “What? You mean like a rematch of our fight on Hoth?”
Namyr shrugged, and ran a hand through her blonde hair, which she’d probably dyed for the sake of disguise at some point. She tied her hair in a back bun, and rolled up her sleeves. “I’ve got the Curse’s sensors set to alert my commlink if they detect anything. We should be fine.” She saw the electrostaff leaned up against a stack of crates. “This what you’re having the training droid use against your lightsaber?”
“Yes. But, Namyr…a lightsaber isn’t exactly safe to spar with. One little mistake—”
“Just the basics, then. Show me a little?”
Ageless looked her over. He almost balked at the idea, but then some part of him, the competitive side, egged him on. Because she and Kevv had bested him at Hoth, teaming up against him while he was weak. And that memory still stung. Anger, fear, aggression, the Dark Side are they. Master Yoda’s words of warning, returning in this moment, urging him against this feeling of an old vendetta.
Then he said, “Let’s do it.”
* * *
Kevv woke up to the sound of fighting, and a lightsaber clashing with something. He leapt out of bed, evading a dream where he’d been weightless outside of a space station above Duro and doing some kind of repair work. He snatched up his blaster pistol from the bedside table and went scrambling down the corridor, until he came to the cargo hold and saw, to his surprise and confusion, Namyr and Ageless Void locked in mortal combat.
The blue blade of the lightsaber spat and licked against the electrical exterior of the electrostaff in Namyr’s hand, as she cleverly evaded each of Ageless’s attacks. But then, suddenly, the Zabrak closed the distance, baiting her with a feint and then batting her electrostaff out of the way an instant before he rammed her chest with his shoulder. Then Ageless slipped a leg between hers, and reaped both her feet off the ground. Namyr landed with a thud and a grunt, but rolled backwards and recovered, coming at him with quick, questing attacks—
“You know,” Kevv shouted, lowering his pistol, “you could’ve warned a guy! I was sleeping. Woke up and thought we were being raided.”
The two combatants paused, both panting and sweating. Then they smiled at one another, and then at him.
“Sorry, Kevv,” Namyr said.
“Yeah, sorry,” Ageless sighed, switching off his lightsaber with a hissing snap. “Guess we got a little carried away.”
“Who won?” he said.
“Nobody. Yet.” Ageless looked to Namyr. “Want to go a few rounds without the weapons?”
“Yes. That…was a bit too intense for me. You came close a few times—”
“I had the saber under control—”
“I’m sure you did.”
Kevv watched them for a second as they hydrated, then limbered up, put in mouthpieces, and began to circle one another. They bumped fists to indicate they were both ready to spar. He watched them jab at each other, testing one another’s defenses. It was clear to him, watching them slip and bob-and-weave attacks, that Ageless was operating on a different level than when last they’d fought him. He wondered if Namyr sensed it, too. She has to. I mean, look at him.
Ageless was dancing away from her attacks effortlessly, then performing split entries with his hands, catching her across the jaw or performing an oblique kick to her thigh. He evaded everything, at one point dropping his hands and only using his upper body to sway and his footwork to maneuver around the cargo hold.
Kevv watched as Namyr became frustrated, and she shuffle-stepped towards Ageless aggressively and tried a tricky series of jabs and spinning backfists, then created a bridge-arm and yanking Ageless’s hand out of the way when it came up to defend. This time she got him, a clear strike across the top of his head. But, because he was a Zabrak, she yelped when she cut herself across the chipped horn on his head, which opened her up for a moment.
Seizing the opportunity, Ageless moved in fast. Namyr blocked the jabbing hand, and the next one, then tried twisting her opponent’s arm into an elbow lock but Ageless twisted out of it, spun around to deliver an elbow to the center of her chest—
But Namyr was good with joint locks, Kevv knew that from past experiences sparring with her. She quickly snatched Ageless’s wrist, twisted it, but he straightened out the arm and she resorted to another elbow lock, which he slipped out of and came at her with another backfist, which she blocked, grabbed, twisted again, and flipped him—
Except Ageless went with the throw, somersaulting to land on his feet instead of his back! Then he reversed the wrist grab, twisted Namyr’s entire arm, and flung her to the ground with a loud thud. She performed a kip-up, whipping herself back onto her feet, but as soon as she did, Ageless had used fast, clever footwork to maneuver to her side, slipped past her jab, ducked her cross and clutched her midsection with both arms. When Namyr tried to break his grip, Ageless slid quickly up to her neck, and performed a chokehold.
Namyr’s face turned red, then purple, and finally she tapped out, gasping for air.
“That was a pretty neat wrist lock you did,” he said, panting. “I didn’t see it coming. And you kept coming at me, putting me right back into a joint lock. Every time I escaped from one, you had another one ready. How did you do that?”
“That which blocks the way, becomes the way,” she panted, massaging her throat.
“What’s that?”
“Mikkap, the self-defense instructor who taught me and the other Zero Souls. Something he used to say: ‘That which blocks the way, becomes the way.’ It means if someone blocks you with the left hand, then you immediately address the left, by attacking it. That way, you’re always changing it up. You blocked me with that arm, so I immediately pushed it aside and tried an elbow lock on the same arm, but you broke out of it, spun around and hit me in the chest, so I snatched the wrist of that arm and tried the same.” She shrugged. “It’s more of a philosophy than anything else. Always go for that which blocks your path, don’t chase other techniques hoping they’ll work.”
“That which blocks the way, becomes the way,” Ageless said, musingly. “I’ll have to remember that.”
“Show me how to get out of that chokehold, and I’ll show you the Ch’ka Lock Flow Series that Mikkap taught us.”
Ageless stretched his wrists and arms, limbering up again. “Deal,” he said.
Kevv watched them for a few minutes longer, wondering at the strangeness of their little trio. Two Rebels and a (former?) Imperial. Here they were, two Rebels who ought to be natural enemies with the Imp, and yet the Imp was joining them on a mission of sabotage. Kevv smiled to himself. He actually saw Namyr and Ageless smiling, too, even laughing on occasion when one of them did something surprising. It was a free exchange of information, they were improving one another’s skill set.
Kevv sat there, reveling in the moment, taking it in. How many more moments like this do you get in life, when you’re watching two people set aside their extreme differences and teach each other something? How often did you get to sit there with two people—maybe even two friends if he dared to think of them that way, especially Ageless—and watch them mature?
In here, inside this starship hidden beneath the ground on an abandoned planet, he could almost imagine there was no Galactic Civil War, no Imperials waiting for them up top. Wouldn’t that be great, if this was their reality, and not war? In here, there was just growth, and learning. And there was laughter.
He went and got himself a cup of caff, then went back to the cargo hold to watch. He eased himself on top of a pallet, crossed his feet, leaned back, and enjoyed the show.
* * *
They got underway again once night fell. They were now approaching the side of the planet where the Imperials were operating. They knew that because radio chatter was picking up, not all of it encrypted since some of it was just between scientists or researchers at several different dig sites, stretched across a hundred kilometers or more of canyons. Since they were on this side of the planet, though, the days were longer than the nights—thanks to Ossus’s bizarre, speed-up-and-slow-down rotation—so they spent less time traveling by flight.
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Ageless was the first to suggest that he and Namyr take the speeder bike out for a little drive, just far enough through some narrow canyon passes that they could park it under an overhang, then proceed quietly on foot. They did this three nights in a row, conducting reconnaissance, both kneeling at the top of rocky, vegetation-less ridges, scanning the terrain ahead with electrobinoculars, and communicating with hand signals.
They noticed several humanoids moving in the distance, climbing along cliffs, some of them using ropes and others not. “Descendants of the Jedi?” Namyr whispered.
Ageless shrugged, and continued scanning the canyons ahead. “Impossible to say. I’m sure it wasn’t only Jedi that lived here. There were probably people working in the spaceports, merchants, ordinary folk like everywhere else.”
“And Sith?”
He shrugged again. “I suppose it’s possible some of them got stuck here before the final battle that caused…all this.” He lowered the electrobinoculars and waved around at the nearly barren wasteland. A few weird-looking, spiral-staircase-shaped trees dappled the far horizon, and there were snares of brown vines that clung to several cliff faces, but besides that there was no sign of how a civilization could continue to feed off of anything.
“Let’s get back to the ship, report with Kevv,” she said.
“Yeah.”
They couldn’t risk using commlinks, and the speeder bike was too small to lug a two-way relay station, so unless they were going to call for help, they were incommunicado with Kevv.
Ageless and Namyr trekked under the stars on foot, moving carefully around giant sinkholes that would easily spell their doom should they fall in, as well as a number of sulfur pools that glowed blue and green with bioluminescent algae that lived on the surface. Occasionally, they heard the distant whine of a TIE fighter, that signature noise of their twin ion engines distinguishable everywhere.
They hid behind an outcropping of boulders, and waited for the TIEs to pass by in the night, then got underway again.
They had spelunking gear, but so far had rarely had to use it, since the rocks were naturally crenelated with such holes that it was easy for them to find handholds and footholds. A few times, their footfalls unearthed something by accident; a bone, a stone with markings written in eroded Old Besh, a metal pole that might have belonged a nobleman’s scepter millennia ago, and a square coin that had perhaps once been used by the people of Ossus’s currency. It certainly looked similar to ancient cred chits they had seen in docu-holos.
Each night they reported back to Kevv, and each night he looked supremely relieved to see them return. They went over some of the pictures and videos they’d taken, comparing notes, going over the sensor readings Kevv had been getting from the Curse, coming up with a plan for the next day’s recon work.
They chatted, they ate, they played sabacc, and they sometimes trained in the cargo hold. These days seemed mostly relaxed, even fun, with quite a bit of camaraderie. But soon, they knew, they would reach the point of no return, and would travel directly into the heart of the Imperials’ main dig site, which Kevv had learned through intercepted radio transmissions was called “Trident.”
“It’s all over their unencrypted comms,” Kevv said, as they gathered around the dinner table that night to eat a few reheated rations and blue milk that he’d kept refrigerated. “It’s almost all they ever talk about: Trident. From what I can tell, they started with eight teams, and now have expanded to twenty-three, all of them with purge trooper units overseeing them.”
Ageless blanched. “Wait a minute. Purge troopers?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s strange.”
“That’s not all. Each dig team is headed up by different researchers from different universities—Evronett, Denon, Malastare—and all of them with focuses on Jedi history and archaeological digs like this. I’ve heard them chitchatting about their time at university over the radio.”
“Got any names?” Ageless asked, wiping blue milk from his lips. “Of the people in charge, I mean.”
“Uh, yeah, hang on.” Kevv sorted through the flimsiplast he’d been scribbling on. “There’s mention of a Doctor Cilvetra, I think he’s a male Twi’lek, seems to be mostly in charge over Trident. Then there’s a Doctor Kil-toma, not sure species or gender. Let’s see here…there’s a Doctor Aphra, a Human female operating mostly alone at a place called the K’tuzian Stretch, but the people on comms seem to speak about Aphra with some…frustration? I don’t think they like here. I don’t know, I need to peruse the channels a little more—”
“Wait a minute,” said Namyr, brightening. “Doctor Aphra, you said?”
“You know her?” Ageless asked.
“I know of her, yes. From the University Quarter on the Second Moon of Thrinittik. Her father was obsessed with Jedi artifacts, drove his wife crazy, and she couldn’t handle it. Aphra followed in her father’s footsteps, becoming obsessed with archaeological digs, especially those with Jedi history. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see the Empire using her here.”
Kevv said, “There’s something else. A person referred to in a few messages between a stormtrooper and a purge trooper commander. The name is ‘Emperor’s Hand,’ and it’s referred to by the feminine. I think it’s a female Human.”
Namyr looked to her right. “Ageless? Ever heard of her?”
He searched his memory. Nothing ran clear, but he could swear that at the very mention of the name, Emperor’s Hand, some niggling feeling crept up on him. It was coming from both the Force and the Dark Voice, he felt sure of that. And the feeling came with a strong emotional warning: danger.
“Can’t say I’ve heard of her, exactly,” he said, keeping a straight face. “But something’s not right about all of this. Purge troopers? Here? Those guys are trained for…well, purging. They suppress whole cities who experience uprisings against the Empire. You need a Rebel group hunted down and eliminated, they’re the guys you call. Purge troopers move in fast, and they take no prisoners. But this planet is dead. Why are they so afraid they brought purge troopers?”
“Maybe something about the locals has them spooked?” Kevv offered.
“Or maybe this dig is just that important,” Namyr said. “And they don’t want to leave anything to chance, no risk of the Rebel Alliance finding this place and destroying their operation.”
Kevv looked back at Ageless. “Emperor’s Hand sounds a lot like the codenaming convention you guys used in the Kingdom. Ageless Void, Horizon Lost, Vicious One, Old Miser. You sure you’ve never heard of her?”
“Never,” he said.
But that night, he would meditate on it deeply. He wouldn’t have long to find answers, because the next day they were heading deep into Trident territory. They would get as close as they could, park the Dathomirian Curse somewhere in the nearby canyons, and then Ageless and Namyr would take the speeder bike as far as they dared, then hike, and begin their next leg of recon.
* * *
EXCAVATION SITE “TRIDENT-17Δ.778-Σ”
BASE CAMP
Mara Jade, known to others as the Emperor’s Hand, knelt at the mouth of the cave, at the very edge of the cliff, facing west. As she watched the sun setting low over the dark Ossus hills, seeing how it turn the chaotic clouds into pluming fireballs, she stretched out through the Force, and felt the Dark Side calling. Her lord and teacher, Emperor Palpatine, had called it the Beckoning, and had told her how it would feel once the stronger urges came, the calls to draw greater power from a limitless well, and with an almost lustful need.
The Beckoning helped draw in her will, pulling her needs and desires into one focal point, allowing for one strong burst of Dark Side energy that pulsed invisibly around her. A dark fog enveloped her mind, yet piercing that dark fog, like a bright spear made out of molten magma, was a strange figure. This figure left an impression on her. A Dark Voice, belonging to an unknown entity.
That Dark Voice had rarely spoken to her. In years past, Mara had first come into knowledge of the Force by voices, echoes from her past and future, sensations she knew did not originate with her, as if sensing someone else’s thoughts and emotions. They were coming from every direction, just small tickles in her mind. When she dreamt, she heard some of those voices more pronounced.
The Emperor had told her that the Dark Voice was just one of those creatures floating somewhere in the ether, unknowable, unconquerable. But it could participate in the Beckoning, as well. The Dark Voice had a hunger, one entirely insatiable, and that hunger was for power. But the Dark Voice, Palpatine had said, could only siphon off power from others here in the mortal plane of existence, coercing them to drink from pools of knowledge, so that it may partake secondhand.
A leach who feeds off fatter leaches, he’d said. But it is a mistake to underestimate this leach. This one’s hunger is only matched by its ambitions, and I do not fully know what those are.
Mara had heard the Dark Voice on and off when she first began to study the Force, but for the last few years it had been completely silent. But as soon as she reached Ossus, she became aware of its presence again. She couldn’t hear the entity now, but she sensed it was near. So very, very near.
She stood up and walked back into the cave where the team of twenty excavator droids were hard at work with laser beams, plasma cutters, massive durasteel drills, and even shovels and buckets. The Mark III 885-7b excavator droids were top-of-the-line, built like tall moisture vaporators you might see in places like Navarro or Tatooine, but with trays that could link up with each other excavator droid, deploying a conveyor belt that connected them all, and allowed them all to efficiently expel the dirt and rock they had torn through that day, sending the debris down the cliffside.
Mara had to marvel at the efficiency of the Trident Project. She pulled on her goggles so that she could see through the brown clouds of ancient dust, and also her rebreather so that she could filter out all the dust. Through the Force, she felt guided into the seven new chambers the excavator droids had unearthed. She’d already radioed up to the Emperor’s Might, and told Moff Inrammen what they’d found.
Three new sarcophagi, each one containing the dusty remains of Jedi Masters. Mara had started collecting the lightsabers of those dead Jedi, almost like General Grievous was once said to have done, only she took them apart to study them. She was surprised to see that some of the Jedi, for one reason or another, had apparently sleeved their lightsaber hilts in wyyyrooka wood, an extinct type of wood once grown on Kashyyyk, and with old, esoteric symbols carved into them. She’d discovered one lightsaber apparently carved out of bone, and one analysis droid said it was likely a piece of krayt dragon bone.
None of the lightsabers worked, of course, since their parts had withered and decayed, but the kyber crystals inside them seemed at least partially viable.
Mara moved now into the newest sarcophagus to be unearthed, inside the tomb of a Jedi who, according to the tablet written in Old Besh just above the entrance, was called merely The Auger. The reason this was so interesting was because The Auger was a Jedi of unknown species and gender, but according to legend had held lectures just below the Great Jedi Library.
“Move,” she told one of the excavator droids, who trundled out of her way obediently.
Mara laid down and crawled through a gap in the jagged stone. If she could but find a single piece of evidence inside The Auger’s tomb that indicated where his offices had been, that might point the Trident team in the direction of the Library, and to the Dark Holocron that her master desired so badly.
Mara crawled for almost a hundred meters before she came to a room so cold and dark it reminded her of the sanctum where the Emperor had first taken her to learn how to meditate. She stood up, peering around at the darkness. She needed a light, but would not ignite her lightsaber in here, lest it inadvertently cut something precious. She took the torchlight from her hip and flipped it on. A small, palm-sized mouse droid came trundling through the hole whence she came, and panned its cameras around to record what she was seeing.
Hieroglyphs of so many different shapes and design schemes were carved into the stone walls, and, above her, upon a durasteel ceiling, was a colorful depiction of some type of chamber with many gears. The ceiling was partially collapsed, two stone columns had completely crumbled. Mara realized this tomb could easily collapse any second, especially if another earthquake struck.
She knelt and took pictures with her datapad. To the mouse droid, she said, “Park at the middle of this room and pan around. Get a full three-dimensional recording.”
The mouse droid beeped, then extended a small pincer and pointed behind her. She turned. There was a small doorway there, also partially collapsed. A crack in the wall had widened over the centuries, perhaps wide enough to let her into the next room.
Mara sucked in her stomach as much as she could and squeezed through the crack, and when she came out the other side, she felt the Dark Voice trying to speak to her. The entity was excited now, because it thirsted for knowledge that it could suck from any Force-user, and here she was standing in a nexus, looking at something remarkable. For surely this was knowledge no one had seen in millennia.
“A star map,” she said, in an awed whisper. She looked among the lines that connected some of the stars into shapes of eels, krayt dragons, banthas and strange-looking birds. “Constellations. Unique to Ossus’s night sky, maybe? But…”
But something in the Force was prodding her.
She drew from that well of darkness, asking it, begging it for a sense of this place’s purpose. She felt her awareness prodded and poked, and then at last her eyes were guided towards one of the constellations, as well as a depiction just beside it that revealed a connection to what looked like the same room filled with gears depicted in the previous chamber.
“A star map. Only viewable from the Observatory or some other room?” she guessed. “But a star map to what? Where—”
Suddenly, the floor beneath her shook, and dust fell from the ceiling onto her head.
The mouse droid squealed and rolled out of there.
The earthquake lasted only a few moments. Mara figured they had enough for the time being, the excavator droids could uncover the rest when they came through, and the constructor droids could come in here and put up some new support beams to try and keep these tunnels open.
“Ooroo!” the Dark Voice suddenly shouted into her mind, just as she was exiting the chamber. “The Tomb of Ooroo!”
“Patience,” she told the Dark Voice, almost as though speaking to a stubborn child. “Patience. In time, you’ll have answers.” She added, “Once I have them.”
* * *
ALONG THE K’TUZIAN STRETCH
The Gonk droid was the first sign that they were nearing the main operation. They had been driving at night, around the perimeter of Trident’s farthest reaches. Ageless had sensed something up ahead via the Force, and parked the speeder bike behind an outcropping of huge tan boulders, quietly directing Namyr with a hand gesture to find cover. They kept their commlinks on their hips, and earpieces in their ears, crawling along the dusty ground, inchworming to the top of a small hill.
Ageless thought, Where there’s a Gonk, there’s civilization. It was a line from an old parable, about a man dying of thirst in a desert. Gonk droids were low-level in terms of sentience, and they were essentially just walking power generators. Their volatile bodies could carry a tremendous amount of energy for their masters. One could always count on finding them in city spaceports, in a military compound, or, in this case, on a field expedition, powering several speeders and portable sensor arrays.
The ground beneath him quaked lightly, the rocks all around dancing and vibrating. Tremors had been passing through this region for a couple days now, and you could hear the dull, distant roar almost anywhere.
Ageless slowly pulled the electrobinoculars from his backpack, and peered through them, zooming in on the Gonk droid on the hilltop. He saw what appeared to be six Humans, one Twi’lek, and a pair of Jawas. He whispered into the mic attached to his collar, “Nine sentients, one Gonk. A couple of Jawas here—that suggests maybe a joint effort with the Scrappers Guild. The Empire uses them in a lot of digs because the Guild has all sorts of mining equipment, and Jawas who specialize in identifying rare minerals, resources, old tech, and appraising it. You see any more from your angle?”
He looked across the small, rocky valley, where Namyr had crawled to a neighboring hilltop, doing her own scan. “Negative,” she whispered back over commlink. “I see what you see. But I heard a loud whine a few minutes ago. I think a TIE patrol is in the area, probably orbiting the dig site. We don’t want to stay out here in the open too long.”
“Copy that.” He had sensed the danger in the sky already, but couldn’t tell from which direction it was coming. Ageless stretched out with the Force to try and sense any other sentients in the vicinity, but found none. “Heading back to the speeder. Meet you there?”
“Affirmative.”
An hour later, after performing a few double-backs to make sure no one had followed them, they pulled back into the Curse’s cargo hold, and there they discussed their plan to do an approach of the dig site tomorrow night. Ageless had a few listener bugs he could plant around the area, and into their main comms relay stations, so that they eavesdrop more easily and gain the intel they needed to know what exactly the Empire had discovered so far.
Kevv said, “Not a bad idea. I’ve been monitoring communications all day, and I picked up a few mentions about weather concerns. Seems the team meteorologists are predicting one hell of a magnetic dust storm over the next few days. Could be trouble for us.”
“Or exactly what we need for cover,” Ageless said, glancing over at Namyr. “What do you think? Too risky?”
She shrugged. “If you’re up for it, I am. The bike will be easier for us to ride in that kind of storm, long as we keep ducked into valleys, and stick to the bottom of that canyon we mapped out yesterday.”
Ageless nodded. “Makes sense. Well, then, let’s all get some sleep. We got a busy day tomorrow.”
* * *
IN ORBIT ABOVE OSSUS
Killer Caz moved his TIE Defender out of low orbit and began his descent towards the planet. He was flanked by Gudree and Stezrek, his wingmen, and together they had finished their sweep of the area. Cazrael was now certain that if the fireballs he’d detected over a week ago had in fact been Rebels, they’d successfully moved on from this region. He needed to expand his search.
So far, ionic trails suggested there was, in fact, a small-scale starship in the vicinity, probably a freighter. High Command seemed certain Cazrael was just getting readings from their own ships, we came through each day dropping off supplies for the dig teams.
Cazrael disagreed. He smelled something. An infection.
They were close. Whoever had snuck past the Empire’s ships and slipped onto Ossus were very, very close.
“Sir?” came Gudree over comms. “What do you think? Another sweep?”
Killer Caz checked his fuel gauge. “Let’s head on back, fellas. Refuel, get some shuteye. We’ll be back at it tomorrow.”
And so will they, he thought. Cazrael was sure of it.
* * *
ABOARD THE GOZANTI-CLASS STARSHIP EMPEROR’S MIGHT
LOCATION: IN ORBIT ABOVE OSSUS (POLAR ORBIT)
ROLE: RECONNAISSANCE
CURRENT MISSION: MONITORING & PROTECTING EXCAVATION SITE “TRIDENT-17Δ.778-Σ”
Moff Inrammen stood at the main viewport of the bridge, looking down at the dark side of the planet. The sun was about to crest at the far end of that endless dark sphere. At their current orbit, they saw fifteen sunrises per day, and Inrammen liked to see as many as he could. Admiral Ozzel, an old mentor of his, had once told him that a man leading a starship crew ought to take regular reminders of the domain over which he ruled, and that meant being the bridge to take in as many cosmic anomalies or beauties as possible.
Admiral Ozzel was gone now. Inrammen didn’t know the full story, but he’d heard the admiral had run afoul of Lord Vader’s famously foul mood. Moff Inrammen didn’t know the full details, and hadn’t gone looking into it. Why? What good would it do? We serve at the behest of the Emperor and his will. We do what we can for the sake of galactic stability, and those who can’t do that job well…
He shrugged inwardly. Admiral Ozzel had been tested. And he’d failed that test. Moff Inrammen felt he was now being given such a test, and it was one he was determined to succeed. For in his hand he held a communiqué that had been printed onto flimsi. It had come from a source moving towards the Adega system, using priority codes reserved only for high-ranking Imperial officials.
And Moff Inrammen recognized this code. It was an older code, but it certainly checked out: it was a Lambda-class shuttle, bearing none other than an Inquisitor. And the message simply said this:
I am inbound to your ship. Prepare quarters for me. I am an operative for Emperor Palpatine, you may check with him or Lord Vader for my credentials. I am on a mission of utmost importance. Be prepared to hand over access to ALL of your scanning data and intel once I arrive.
That was it.
Moff Inrammen couldn’t say exactly why, but it filled him with dread. An Inquisitor, on their way to Ossus, and who wanted access to all the data they had collected thus far.
Something was wrong. Something was imminent. And Inrammen was determined to pass whatever test was coming at him, and redeem the name of his Noble House, so that once again the Inrammen family would be known as Kel-Inrammen.
He tapped a button by his bed. “Moff Inrammen to bridge. Send me a ship’s steward. I’ll need a room prepared for a special operator. We’re going to have a visitor.”