18
OSSUS
ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE
Planetary entry had been rough, they’d skipped across the planet’s upper atmosphere thrice, like a stone skipping water, before activating engines and making their final descent. They’d picked up more speed than even Ageless had anticipated, and he’d held on tight as R4 activated all engines from the engine bay, and the sudden crushing g’s had caused a bit of gray out, nearly a loss of consciousness. But then the artificial gravity and inertial dampers had kicked on and the Dathomirian Curse evened out. He’d quickly glanced at his scopes, orienting himself and looking for suitable mountain terrain. Less than ten minutes later, they had landed halfway up a tall, snowy mountain, and underneath a rocky overhang that led into a short cave.
Now, the Curse rested inside this stony nook, its viewport looking out over a snow-covered mountain range that was set aglow by the light of Ossus’s single gibbous moon. The ship’s engines looked like they had redlined but R4 had pumped extra coolant to make heat levels even. Ageless had unstrapped himself, and now gazed out at a world very few people had ever laid eyes on in the last five thousand years.
“Where are the others?” he asked R-3PO, who was then on scanners.
“Namyr and Kevv seem to have found a spot in the valley below us, sir,” the protocol droid reported. “I registered energy spikes from their repulsors, large fluctuations, they probably had a rougher landing than we did.”
“Tell Arfour to get out there and set up a comms relay. We don’t want to broadcast anything broadly, we want a tight, focused two-way comm system between us and the Ascendant. That way, it can’t be picked up by anyone trying to look for us. Have it set it up at the edge of the cave, facing down into the valley.”
“Yes, sir. Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Before we shut off all systems and made our descent, I noted that the navicomputer had picked up a few anomalous readings coming from the nearby Cron Cluster.”
“Cron Cluster?”
“It is—was—a grouping of ten stars. That’s what the last records in this area show, anyway.”
“Okay. And why do we care?”
“Well, the navicomputer only detected eight stars inside the Cron Cluster, sir, and then a pair of dead neutron stars, currently spinning at an unusually high rate.” R-3PO looked at him. “The ship’s computer estimated they detonated between three thousand and five thousand years ago.”
Ageless sat back down, stroking his chin. “So, that’s how they did it. The Sith…they must’ve used something to detonate the stars.”
“Is that possible, sir?”
“It’s possible,” Ageless said, thinking about an operation he’d once heard of called the “Sun Crusher Project,” supposedly research into a sort of bomb that could be sent into the heart of a star and force it to collapse. Zumter had mentioned it as part of an intel report that had accidentally wound up on his desk—he wasn’t supposed to know about it, but someone in Intel Dissemination had slipped up. Last Ageless had heard, the Sun Crusher Project had been scrapped, but the theories that Imperial scientists came up with were, according to Zumter, pretty sound. “It’s possible,” he repeated. “But it’d be damned hard to pull off. And that’s the kind of trigger that, once you pull it, it can’t be unpulled. If that is in fact what the Sith did, then they would have fled this place, too, and in a damned hurry.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ageless thought about that some more. It made sense that they hadn’t seen any seas on Ossus upon approach. A double-star detonation like that would’ve likely stripped Ossus’s surface clean of its surface water, probably even its atmosphere. But that doesn’t make sense, he thought. Supernovas that close, they really ought to have destroyed this planet’s habitability. But scopes show the air looking pretty well breathable.
He sighed, pushing that mystery away for the moment. “Let me know when Arfour has the comms relay set up. I want to make sure we still have Namyr and Kevv around to back us up.”
“Yes, sir. And, may I ask, then what?”
He shrugged. “Then we plan a survey mission, and fly around the planet looking for whatever it is the Empire has found. If we’re lucky—”
“The Tomb of Ooroo!” the Dark Voice suddenly shouted into his mind.
Ageless winced, and called upon the Force to help him suppress it.
“Sir? Are you all right?”
“If we’re lucky,” Ageless went on after a moment, “the Empire hasn’t found anything worthwhile—”
“Find it! Find the Tomb of Ooroo! Go there! Find it! Go there!”
“—and we’ll all just have a laugh about this someday, about how we jumped through all these hoops for nothing.” Ageless calmed himself, and was able to push the Dark Voice away, to the point it was barely a whisper. Though it never truly went away, he could feel its presence hovering just at the fringes of his awareness.
He walked into the back, determined to relax with through meditation, and perhaps a bit of training.
* * *
ABOARD THE LADY OF HOPE ASCENDANT
Kevv was headed aft again, the fire extinguisher still in hand as he searched for any more fires that might have erupted between the walls. He’d already put out two fires that the Ascendant’s auto-extinguishers had failed to smother in time, but luckily he’d found no serious damage. He checked the circuitry bay, then crawled into the ship’s guts to check on the hardware. The repulsors had nearly failed to fire upon landing and that had been a real scare. In fact, he’d thought they were goners.
Kevv hung upside-down by harness and gilly rope, having to come up at the repulsor’s modulator from a weird angle. He occasionally hollered up to Namyr to fetch him a hydrospanner or power coupling, but otherwise worked all by himself. He hadn’t been lying earlier when he told Namyr he’d done a skipping maneuver before, but he might’ve undersold just how rough it could be on a ship this size. Kevv had always performed the maneuver inside his starfighter, never anything as big as the Ascendant.
But it was looking like they were going to make her spaceworthy again, and so far atmospheric sensors were reporting that Ossus had breathable atmosphere with only slightly above normal radiation levels. So that was good. Still, now that they were here, he couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps they had gotten in over their heads, him especially. He might’ve let Ageless’s infectious confidence and his own star-pilot’s enthusiasm convince him to go diving into an adventure without first thinking. An archaeological find five thousand years in the making? Who could resist? he thought. Who can blame me for—?
That thought was cut short when a heat-sink hose burst and sprayed extremely hot steam into his face. He screamed, and scrambled out of the maintenance access shaft, and had to go to the ship’s medbay to get a couple of bacta patches placed over his face and neck. By that time, he could hear the cargo ramp lowering again, and Namyr’s footsteps coming up. She hollered for him, and Kevv called by, “I’m in here!”
When she walked into medbay, Namyr stopped in her tracks. “What in hells happened to you?”
“Heat-sink hose burst. I shut off the valve, I’ll fix it later. How’s it looking out there?”
Namyr sighed and pulled off her helmet. She’d worn her vac-suit outside just in case there were any deadly gases or pathogens that Ossus might surprise her with. She sat her helmet on a table and leaned against the wall. She pulled off her gloves one finger at a time. “It’s freezing out there, but that’s because of the altitude. I’m getting a signal from Ageless. He had the same idea we did, set up a direct station-to-station relay, two-way only. He’s safe. Higher up the mountain than us, underneath an overhang.”
“So, what’s the plan?”
“We haven’t discussed much yet. I recommended we send out short bursts of communications, just in case there are any probe droids that happen to be in the region, or maybe followed us down. He agreed with that.” She shrugged. “But once we’re sure we’re in the clear, I’m going to recommend he joins us down here on the Ascendant, and that we leave his droids behind with the Curse, safe here in the mountains, in case we need emergency backup. Then we proceed in the Ascendant to do our sneak-and-peak of the Empire’s operations.”
Kevv nodded. “Makes sense. One ship is harder to detect than two.”
“Yes. But,” she added, “I expect Ageless will suggest we take his ship. The Curse does have the better guns and shields, and is decked out with ionic exhaust coolers, which makes it harder to detect if we have to run.”
Kevv nodded again. “That also makes sense. Tough choice. Which ship do we take, the fast one or the one with better shields and defenses?”
“Whatever we do, you’ll be the pilot. Ageless and I will man the guns full-time, and if we find a spot to survey or investigate on foot, he and I will deploy to the surface and you will find somewhere close by to hide. We’ll set up another two-way station wherever we end up, so that any Imperials won’t pick up our transmissions.”
“So, just you and Ageless on the expedition team?”
“Seems like that’s the best bet, considering our resources.”
Kevv slowly peeled one of the bacta patches away from his face. He opened and closed his mouth slowly, feeling the skin tightening even as it quickly healed. “You’ll want survival gear, spelunking gear, tools in case you have to sabotage or break through anything. We have all that, of course, but Namyr…I’m starting to have my doubts about all this. I know I was the one who recommended we go ahead with Ageless’s atmospheric-skipping idea but this…this is…” He looked around the medbay, smelling the burning ozone from a fire that had been put out hours ago. “We may have bitten off more than we can chew here. I take full responsibility, I let my starfighter pilot’s ego get in the—”
“You didn’t convince me of anything I didn’t want to do, Kevv,” she said, walking over to punch him companionably on the shoulder. “Who do you think you are, a Jedi?”
They both had a chuckle.
He looked up at her. “There’s just three of us—five if you count the droids—and we’re alone in a remote, hard-to-reach star system, on a dead planet, outnumbered by thousands of Imperials. If we die here, no one will ever know what we—”
“Hey, partner,” she said seriously. “No talking like that. We’re not gonna die here. You, me, Ageless, and the droids are all pros.”
“I just suddenly got a bad feeling about this—”
“We know what we’re doing, and we’ve got the ships and the firepower to deal with whatever’s here. It’s also pretty safe to say at this point the Empire doesn’t even know we’re here, so that gives us the advantage. So, let’s take a day or so to rest up. We’ve earned it. Then we’ll make the trek out.”
* * *
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 Syraak Inrammen sat in his quarters, alone but for the tall, silver attendant droid that hovered silently behind him. Inrammen was going over the day’s reports, the findings of the excavation team down on Ossus. The reports from Trident site were filled geological nomenclature, archaeological jargon, field repair studies, and technical sensor readings, all things that he’d made himself familiar with decades ago. Inrammen was a naval veteran with almost forty years of experience. He’d just been promoted to Chief Petty Officer Omicron-Class when the Republic was dissolved in favor of Palpatine’s ascendancy to the newly-made throne in his newly-forged Galactic Empire, and in the intervening years Inrammen had sailed through promotion after promotion, finally stepping away from his role as a Vice Admiral to become a Sector Moff. In that time, he’d seen it all.
Inrammen was a Corellian, and had gotten his education at Evronett Academy in Coronet City. One might think that growing up the scion of a noble family, in the capital city of a major trade world, had given him every advantage needed for success, but far from it. The Kel-Inrammen family had once been a part of Corellian high society, descended from some of the first founders, or so the crest written in old Aurebesh said above the family home, now demolished. At one time, the Kel-Inrammens had laid claim to almost a quarter of all of Coronet City’s prime real estate, developing trade hyperlanes that no one had ever charted or believed possible as early as a thousand years ago. Those were good times to be among the Kel-Inrammen Dynasty.
That was not when Syraak Inrammen had been born. He’d been born during the Nobility Downfall that stretched across two centuries, seeing numerous Noble Houses crumble, and boycotts from Twi’leks and Rodians (who had long felt exploited by the human-centric Kal-Inrammen monopoly on all workers’ unions) had caused serious troubles for their family. For the first time ever, the Kal-Inrammens had suffered profit losses, even a decline, a devaluation of almost all properties. They had done what was necessary to survive. Businesses sold, warehouses shuttered, properties foreclosed, they rallied in the decades ahead to stage a comeback.
But that comeback never happened.
Indeed, their entire name was devalued to the point they lost the honorary “Kel” prefix that had long denoted respect (and no small deference) to the Noble Houses of Corellia. The Inrammen name had become a joke for centuries. Still was, actually, depending on who you were talking to.
Syraak Inrammen was born into this climate. His mother had barely been holding on to the single business their family owned, a droid manufacturing company, and even that they were hanging on to by only a slight majority of shares. In this environment, he’d learned to earn respect of those who believed in the “Inrammen Curse,” that everything they touched turned to bantha vomit. Shaking hands with business leaders of Coronet, negotiating with banks for loan extensions, and dealing with the near constant threat of hostile takeovers, Syraak Inrammen had grown comfortable talking to people who thought they were smarter than him—who might’ve even been smarter than him—and keeping them beholden to him.
“You’ve a knack for it,” his mother had told him more than once.
But even with their business recovering, it hadn’t been enough. In order to fully redeem his family and businesses, he needed to go to the best college on Corellia, and that was Evronett Academy. So, to pay his way, he joined the military, first as a grunt, then transitioning to Officer School, where, upon making a handful of new friends from all over the galaxy, he found a sudden love for cultural studies, particularly the ancient histories of non-Humans.
Inrammen had been shocked to discover how limited were the imaginations of most non-Human species. Humans were so prolific, constantly spreading far and wide. Throughout every era of history, you would find Humans blazing most of the trails. Humans, he once wrote in a college thesis, are determined to formulate plans at almost every juncture, and execute them with an almost hideous vitality. Those plans almost always encompass a need to see farther, to go farther, with a dreamer’s ceaseless desire to know.
When the Republic was dissolved and became the Empire, Inrammen had been on board with the transition, especially when he saw how Emperor Palpatine was subtly making it a Human-centric institution.
Presently, Moff Inrammen was perusing his datapad, reading a chapter out of the very book that had set him on a course of historical studies (The Many Paths We Take by the Bothan scholar Pakkt Jen’vey), and which had eventually brought him to the attention of a former ISB director (long since retired) who had seen him as the perfect person to lead Emperor Palpatine’s massive endeavor to, as he put it, “rediscover the past.”
Inrammen had doggedly pursued power ever since reaching adulthood. He dealt with the politics within the Imperial Navy for years, and had negotiated on his mother’s behalf against everyone from the Galactic Trade Commission to the InterGalactic Banking Clan. He’d been in boardroom meetings with admirals and ethics committee chairmen, dealing with all those power merchants and their egos. He’d heard their sniping, handled all their recriminations and accusations, and emerged like a fresh diamond, forged by constant pressure.
During Moff Inrammen’s quiet but no less illustrious career, he’d been responsible for helping dig up the largest of the kyber crystals that were then hauled away to the Maw Installation for use in the Death Star’s superlaser, and he was just as involved in the new one being built around Endor.
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And now I’m here, he thought, not quite begrudging. For Ossus was bound to be a significant historical rediscovery, and his name would be all over the history books because of it, but he still wished he was there at Endor to see the culmination of his greatest work, that being the excavation of the single largest kyber crystal ever found, and its implementation into an even more powerful superlaser.
GK-2212, the droid standing behind him, suddenly interrupted his thoughts by saying, in a calm male voice, “Incoming report, Moff sir. An update from the Trident team.”
“What is it now?” he said idly, still reading further down in his book.
“They have an update on the chamber they found. They believe it opens up into another chamber that ground-penetrating radar suggests may be eight hundred meters in diameter, and perfectly spherical.”
Moff Inrammen glanced up. Now he was intrigued. “Do they think it’s the Observatory?”
“They’ve reached no consensus. The language in the report reads tentative. I believe they are hesitant to make a solid prediction.”
“You mean they don’t want to break out the wine early like they did last time.” How many false-positives had it been now? Six? Seven? The twelve different survey teams were down below, escorted by stormtrooper units who had been selected for their previous experience at dig sites, and had had training in knowing where to step, and how not to go traipsing about clumsily and stomping all over what could be priceless (and intelligence-bearing) artifacts.
“Possibly, sir,” said GK-2212. “But they also make a note that one of the probe droids they sent up into low orbit to scan the southern hemisphere’s two continents picked up on two fireballs. Large objects breaching atmosphere.”
“Timestamp?”
“It was approximately two hours ago.”
Inrammen nodded. “That aligns with what Cazrael sent me earlier. Possibly just two asteroids plummeting towards the planet, but he thinks it might’ve been Rebels. Seems unlikely, given the perilous journey we took to get here. And would they have obtained the Hutt Route?” He sighed. “Even if so, two small ships that size aren’t much of a threat. Still, we want to protect our people. Who do we have planetside now?”
“In terms of squadrons?”
“Yes.”
“The 281st Red Squadron and the 357th Krayt Squadron, sir. Though, might I suggest the 281’s, who have a TIE bomber with the new Henchian scanners?”
“Agreed. Send the 281’s out to scan. Have them relay anything they find to Cazrael, who I’m pretty sure is already heading that way.” Chomping at the bit, Inrammen thought, smiling to himself.
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. The excavation droids have finished penetrating the bedrock into the Sunken Grotto, as the team has dubbed it. There had been another earthquake and they’d lost two of the droids down a pit, of which the survey teams have yet to find the bottom. There are also underground trees that grow brilliantly with green and blue lights—some sort of bioluminescence that seems to attract certain predators that eat the insects that try eating the trees. Doctor Aphra and her biology team are en route.”
“Predators?” said Moff Inrammen. “Tell Aphra she should bring backup if she’s going that way.”
“Already done, sir. The report suggests she’s going with 0-0-0.”
“Mm, yes, her assassin droid. Triple-Zero.” A smile touched his lips. 0-0-0 was in the frame of a protocol droid, which made it deceptively innocent in appearance. “She’ll probably be all right, then. Send a security detail with her just in case. But tell them to keep their distance, I don’t want Aphra knowing we’re having her followed. Lord Vader may trust her, but I certainly don’t.”
“Yes, Moff sir.”
“Anything else?”
“An earthquake collapsed Tunnels Three and Ten today, killing one of our surveyors and injuring three others. Two survey droids were also lost. Excavator droids are clearing out the tunnels now. Subterranean sensors predict more seismic activity in the next few days.”
Moff Inrammen sighed. The earthquakes were getting more intense, it was as if all of Ossus had been waiting for them to arrive, setting a trap, and was now rejecting them, ensnaring them in multiple aftershocks that were causing Inrammen only more headaches. “And what of the entrance to the Library?”
“The lower levels of the Great Jedi Library remain impassable, but Doctor Cilvetra says he’s confident that another way into the Auditorium will be found soon.”
“Based on what? Optimism?” Inrammen chortled.
“I suppose, sir.”
“Cilvetra has been promising major results for weeks now, one has to admire his tenacity in the wake of such repeated failure.” Moff Inrammen rotated the hologram of what they’d found of the Jedi Praxeum so far, its blocky, ziggurat structure distinctly visible thanks to probe droids moving through narrow, ancient tunnels using ground-penetrating radar. Whatever cataclysm had befallen Ossus, it hadn’t ended with just two stars going supernova. Something else had rocked this planet to its core, and it was still suffering aftershocks millennia later. “Is there anything else?”
“One other thing,” the droid said, and sent an image to the Moff’s datapad, superimposing it over the book’s text. It was a silvery slab, still in good condition, with an alphabet that looked remarkably similar to modern-day Aurebesh. Inrammen recognized it at once, he and every history student at Academy had been forced to learn to both read and write in Old Besh. “This tablet seems to be made out of a strange alloy, practically antientropic in nature—it resists decay very well. You can see the inscription here mentions—”
“The Dark Holocron,” Inrammen said, leaning forward. “And here…there is a name underneath it, a person described as…what is that word? ‘Caretaker’? A caretaker of the Dark Holocron, but it’s…too vague. I can’t make the rest of it out. It looks damaged.”
“Yes, sir. The lead archaeologists at Tunnel Thirteen believe someone did indeed try to destroy it, but probably ran out of time. They believe the name written there is ‘Ooroo’ but they cannot be sure, and none of the historical records mention a Jedi by that name, except possibly someone named ‘Ourouo’ which may only be a misspelling from the Qel-Droma Epics that were written on the subject.”
Inrammen nodded. “Go on.”
“There isn’t much else, besides this one little tidbit,” said the droid. “A partial translation mentions this ‘Ooroo’ in connection with a gas called ‘kirkyagen,’ which two of our scholars down below believe may in fact be an old pronunciation of cyanogen, a gas breathed by—”
“Celegians, yes,” Inrammen said, nodding along. Celegians were a non-humanoid species from Celegia, essentially highly evolved jellyfish that looked like floating brains, with multiple tentacles that kept them aloft. They breathed only cyanogen, whereas oxygen was deadly to them. “If this is true, then there may have been a Jedi Master here who was a Celegian, and may have been a ‘caretaker’ to the Dark Holocron.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How very interesting.” Inrammen gazed at the image of the ancient tablet, imagining some desperate Jedi hastily trying to destroy this piece while on his way out, during the final exodus when, according to legend, they had attempted to flee Ossus’s demise. What was that Jedi trying to hide? Why conceal another Jedi’s name? It probably didn’t matter, what was relevant was that they their first true sign that they were getting close to their objective, the entire reason the Emperor had sent them here.
The Dark Holocron. So it’s real. Or it was. But did the Jedi get it out in time, or was it left buried here? And where on the planet could it be? Possibly still inside the Praxeum, or the Great Jedi Library, or the Observatory? The possibilities were astounding.
“Anything else, GK?”
“Not at this moment, sir.”
“Then leave me alone for a few hours. Tell no one to interrupt me unless it’s mission critical. I need some rest.”
“Yes, sir,” said GK-2212, and the droid’s servos hummed quietly as it shuffled out of the room.
Moff Inrammen stood up and walked over to his bed. Before he got in, he tapped a switch to bring up a live-feed holo of Ossus. The red-orange planet with its occasional splotches of black spun slowly in front of him. On a whim, or perhaps on some background instinct, he waved for the image to enlarge. He spun the hologram around until he came to the side of the southern hemisphere where Killer Caz had indicated the unknown objects had broken atmosphere.
He zoomed in, examining more than a thousand kilometers of uncharted mountains, deep valleys, caves, rivers, waterfalls, volcanoes, and, of course, dapples of civilization. The natives. At least, those who the survey team’s leaders presumed were the descendants of those that had been left behind thousands of years ago.
Descendants of Jedi, he thought. So what are they now? Mindless primitives?
He didn’t know. So far, their scans had not led them to those heavily populated regions, and they’d only seen a handful of half-naked, primitive sorts running away from the canyon where the Trident dig site was located.
But he thought about those natives. And he looked at those mountains.
And Moff Inrammen had a funny feeling. He couldn’t say what, but he sensed…danger.
Just before he was to lay down, a chime came at his side. His commlink. He answered it, “GK, this had better be mission critical, as I said—”
“Sir, she’s here.”
Inrammen’s voice caught. He didn’t have to ask who the droid meant. He cleared his throat. “I see. Send her in.” He straightened his uniform, checking the mirror to make sure there were no creases. Then, he turned to face the door just as it swished open, and the red-haired woman entered. She had dust on her face, she must’ve come straight from the tunnels on Ossus. She wore a jumpsuit and gear from spelunking, and at her side, ominously, hung the lightsaber hilt.
Inrammen didn’t know her real name—he didn’t think anyone around here did—and had taken to calling her Hand, short for Emperor’s Hand, which was her codename. Though, just before she’d rendezvoused with them along the Perlemian Trade Route, Inrammen had heard one high-ranking officer call her by the name “Jade,” though that might also only be a codename. She had come aboard as a “security consultant” with no other title or rank attached. Nobody seemed to know her, but ISB directors had assured Moff Inrammen that she came with the Emperor’s highest possible authority.
That made no sense to him, which frightened him. Who is this woman that nobody seems to know, yet everybody fears? An Inquisitor? Are those even operating anymore?
“Hand,” he greeted. “To what do I owe this visit?”
“We have a problem,” she said evenly. Her voice was always cold, and Inrammen wondered if she’d ever known joy.
“What is the problem?” he asked.
“Someone is here.”
“Where? On Ossus?”
“Yes.”
“In orbit or down below?”
“Below.”
“How can you be sure?”
The Emperor’s Hand gave nothing away, a perfect sabacc-player’s face. “Someone is here, and they mean to undermine us. I’ve…felt it. I can’t say any more.” She walked over to him, grabbed his decanter of Whyren’s Reserve off a shelf, poured herself a glass, and said, “We need to increase security in the tunnels.”
“What are we looking for?”
She drank her Reserve, and said, “Saboteurs.”
* * *
ABOARD THE DATHOMIRIAN CURSE
Ageless sat alone in the cargo bay, all the pallets and supplies pushed against the walls to give himself room to meditate through motion. It was something he’d done with his grandmother back on Dathomir. Shreya had taught the practice of closing one’s eyes, taking deep breaths, and moving slowly through stretches and forms while being mindful of the breath and the effects of it on the body. He merged this with the training Master Yoda had given him, stretching out with his feelings, feeling the motion of the Force around him, through him.
He had a goal in this. He was searching for control over the stoic flame. Moving through the forms slowly, he experimented with alternating between Yoda’s breathing method (small orbit exercise) and his grandmother’s breathing method (the Intake Stoppage and Isj’vastkja).
This yielded some interesting results, in which he felt himself moving more smoothly. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, he thought. Inspired by this discovery, he wondered how well it would allow him to adapt the movements of Form IV, the Ataru style of lightsaber combat. For the moment, he merely went through the lesser acrobatic movements of Ataru without brandishing his lightsaber, and discovered that the training went more smoothly with the dance-style footwork of the Echani martial art.
He kept moving slowly. Then, every so often, he would burst into sudden speed and spun around with a backfist straight out of Teräs Kasi, or a feint-to-side-kick delivery from Udas’mon. This flowed very well. He finished this set by winding up in a two-handed handstand, legs in the air, breathing deeply as Master Yoda had shown him, trying to ignore the blood rushing to his head. That blood rushing was meant to slowly add pressure over time, even while he stretched out with the Force. He was able to do this for a little over twelve minutes before he got a little woozy and had to stop.
After a quick meal of rations and some water, he sat cross-legged on his bed and meditated on what he’d learned so far. All around him, the Curse hissed and knocked and panged distantly, air-purifiers kicking on and off intermittently, and there was the ever-present sound of R4 trundling down the companionway, off to one task or another.
He dared not search for the Dark Voice. Indeed, he tried to keep that entity as far away from his thoughts as possible, it would only distract him. But he sensed it nearby, like how one might detect a faint buzzing or ringing in the ear when left alone in silence. He wondered about asking it, What is the Tomb of Ooroo? but was afraid that it would only invite the Dark Voice in, granting it permission to be intrusive.
After meditating, he had TRD-5 transition to his caregiver setting, and received a massage. The droid could knead muscles about as good as any masseuse Ageless had ever seen.
Halfway through his massage, a new message came over the comm relay, and R-3PO stepped into his room to report, “Namyr has done a number of short foot recons. She says the area seems as stable and as clear as we’d hoped. Clouds east of here indicate a volcanic eruption from a distant mountain range.”
Ageless nodded. He’d also stepped out a few times to have a look around, and had agreed to Namyr’s overall plan to leave the droids behind with a single ship, though he’d disagreed on which ship they ought to take. His ship was bigger, making it a bit easier to spot on sensors, but he figured they could simply fly low above craggy terrain to avoid radar, and fly slowly through what appeared to be thousands of kilometers of local mountains and canyons to avoid most other sensors. Also, among all the pallets in the Curse’s cargo bay, there was a pair of durasteel crates that had inside them a single two-seater 74-ZK speeder bike, perfect for if they needed to deploy in a smaller, faster craft. The speeder bike only needed to be assembled.
It seemed Namyr was reluctant to agree to that. So, while Namyr and Kevv deliberated, the two ships sat quietly amid the mountains and scanned and looked for any sign that they had been detected. So far, so good.
Later, after another brief check-in with Namyr and Kevv to ensure they were still alive and well, Ageless decided to try something a little different. He took his blaster rifle with him to the rear of the ship, and laid it down on a workbench. After taking it apart and cleaning all its components—that in itself being a quiet, meditative activity—he adorned his tactical vest and pants, his black plasteel body armor, and practiced both Dathomiri and Jedi exercises while in full combat kit.
He stood at the center of the cargo bay, transitioning smoothly from his DC-15 blaster rifle, slinging it by its strap and around to his back before jerking the DL-32 pistol from his hip holster in one fluid motion. Then, just as smoothly, he re-holstered the pistol and unclipped the lightsaber from his belt and ignited it, tip-down grip, and lowered himself into a combat stance.
Ageless practiced this transition repeatedly, trying to merge all his training into a hybrid style that suited him. He even got TRD-5 in on it, and the droid used a spare A280 rifle (the power pack removed) to try and get a clear shot at Ageless’s centerline. Ageless practiced barrel sweeps, smacking the droid’s barrel with his own rifle’s barrel and aiming it towards the ceiling so that it couldn’t get a clear shot. Then he practiced trapping his enemy’s rifle in that position, while he drew his pistol one-handed, or ignited the lightsaber in one fluid motion, all while moving in close and shin-pressing TRD-5’s legs.
To all of this training, Ageless applied his breathing exercises, and sensed the heat gathering inside his palms.
Once or twice, he was able to summon the stoic flame on command. This was a revelation! The brief, flickering green flame ignited in small plumes, there and gone, but he was doing it.
He was doing it!
* * *
ABOARD THE LADY OF HOPE ASCENDANT
“It’s time to make a decision, guys,” Kevv said into the comms mike. “We’ve been sitting idle for almost two whole days, and I think we’ve done enough reconnaissance of the area to be sure there’s no need to have concern over radiation levels, no need to fear most of the predators here—though that large, tusked boar-like creature I spotted on the opposite ridge yesterday through the electrobinoculars looked pretty rough, so let’s steer clear of those—and no airborne pathogens or deadly chemicals to be wary of.” He sighed and leaned against the console, through which he and Namyr were broadcasting up to Ageless. “We need to move soon if we’re going to do this.”
“Agreed.” Ageless’s voice came scratchily over comms. A small snowstorm had moved in, creating comms issues. “I still say taking the Curse is the better option. I’ve got the speeder bike, and room to assemble it and house it here, and deploy it quickly from the bay if we need to.”
“Namyr?” Kevv said, looking at her.
She was sitting in the pilot’s seat, feet propped up on the main sensor board. “The Curse suffered a lot of damage above Dagobah, Ageless.”
“True,” he allowed. “But Arfour and me have done a lot in the way of repairs. She’s a pretty maneuverable ship. Long as we fly smart, we shouldn’t get into any trouble.”
“Famous last words,” she muttered.
Ageless apparently heard it, and laughed. “She’s also got better shields, and if we need to hop on the speeder bike and hightail it, we can deploy faster from her cargo bay. Just saying.”
Kevv watched Namyr carefully. He could tell she was reluctant to leave this fast-moving ship of theirs. But he shrugged at her and said, “He’s got a point.”
She sighed. “All right, fine. We’ll go in yours, Ageless. Bring the droids down here to the Ascendant, I’ll need to show Threepio one or two things so he knows how to fly this thing well enough. If things get dicey out there, if the Curse takes a hit from any sort of enemy fire, the Ascendant may be our only ticket out of here.”
“Can do. But now we need to decide how this operation works. What’s our approach look like?”
Kevv had this covered. “I’ve been using scanners to check out local terrain, and using data that we took from orbit, I think I have a general flight plan. We’re pretty sure the Empire’s operation is on the opposite of the planet from us, right?”
Namyr nodded. “Considering we never saw their ship, but detected their exhaust, yeah.”
“Right,” he said, pulling up a holographic image the Ascendant had taken of the planet terrain from orbit. “Ageless, I’m sending you this now. Here’s the flightpath I’m seeing, along with what look like good alternate routes and places to hide, in case we get spotted on our way crossing each region. Way I see it, the Empire is undermanned here, like Ageless said. So that means few patrols to scan the entire planet. So, we’ll be just one, lonely little ship, moving across the surface. There’s also apparently a lot of volcanic activity, so that’ll give us some cover on our heat signature. And we’ll travel only at night, which is good because nights last longer on this side of Ossus than do the days.”
Namyr’s eyes widened. “Wait, say that again. Nights last longer here? How the blazes does that work?”
Kevv shrugged. “What can I say, it’s just something I noticed while checking my chronometer every time I woke up. You guys honestly hadn’t noticed it? It’s some weird kink about the planet, it literally speeds up once a day, and it’s around the midday point—at least, midday on this side. Something speeds this planet up, slings this part of the planet back around into darkness two hours earlier than it would if the planet rotated normally.” He snorted. “Whatever the Sith did to this planet, they seriously messed up the natural order of things.”
“But that means on the other side of Ossus days last longer than the nights?” Ageless asked, sound more incredulous than Kevv had ever heard. “Do I have that right?”
“Yes, it’s a really weird quirk that honestly I’ve never seen recorded anywhere, not even in those weird ‘Phantom Planets’ those explorers found in the Unknown Regions years back. Ossus is one of a kind. It’s also tectonically unstable, and it especially shows on the far side of the planet.”
“How do you know that?” asked Ageless.
“The Ascendant’s seismic sensors are way more sensitive than almost any ship I’ve ever seen. I don’t know where that Ithorian got all this gear, but this ship’s sensors are able to detect earthquakes halfway across the globe,” said Kevv. “Honestly, I’d love to introduce your astromech to this ship’s computer. I think they’d have a lot to talk about.”
“I’m sure Arfour’s gonna love that,” Ageless said. “All right, Kevv, sounds like you’ve made us a great gameplan. When do we leave?”
“I say we all get some sleep. I’ve been working around the clock on this, so let’s be fresh when we set out tomorrow night.”
“Sounds good. Namyr?”
Namyr nodded to herself, as if coming to an agreement with herself. At last, she said, “Okay, Kevv. It’ll be your show once we get moving.”
He tried not to look nervous about that. “All right. Then let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow night, we begin our trek across the planet, and then get a peek at what the Empire’s doing here.”