The days didn't take long to blur together. Interplanetary travel will do that to you. Although Atton spent as much time in the cockpit as he ever had, the Ebon Hawk practically flew itself. Meetra meditated frequently; Atton didn't. They conserved their emergency rations by eating the slop from the synthesizer, some of them with more whining than others. They played dozens of games of Pazaak. Meetra won twelve of them.
Atton's lightsaber throws didn't make appreciable progress. Meetra didn't push it.
She was in the middle of a sleep cycle when they hit the Nathema system. Atton called her when they were starting the approach, and she took her seat in the co-pilot's chair to get her first look at the planet where Revan had gone missing. Nathema was a dull brown world without even a hint of vegetation to break up the monotonous surface. There was no activity visible anywhere on or near the planet, either: no lights, no other spacecraft. Nothing.
Suddenly she felt ill. She didn't usually get spacesick, but she chalked it up to that anyway until it got worse.
The feeling grew even stronger as the planet loomed larger in front of them, and then she pinpointed it: she couldn't feel the Force here. It wasn't a wound, like Malachor V, and it wasn't a sense that someone was speaking to her but she couldn't hear them no matter how hard she strained, the way she had felt when she had been cut off as an exile. It was just—nothing. Profoundly gone. Wrong.
T3 trilled out directions, guiding them to Revan's last known location. Atton flashed it an irritated side-eye but complied. Meetra could feel herself tensing as they descended.
Atton glanced over. "Something up?"
"Yes. Don't you feel it?"
It took him longer than it had taken her, but a beat later he shook his head. "No. I don't. It's like the Force is just…missing."
"And there's Revan's crash landing." Meetra pointed ahead of them, and T3 beeped in affirmation. Revan had taken out not just part of a building, but a long streak of the street below, and everything that had been in it.
"Women pilots," Atton cracked half under his breath.
She was shot down, Meetra wanted to snap back, but she caught his expression first and knew he hadn't forgotten; like her, he was getting increasingly uncomfortable and dealing with it in his usual way. She kept her mouth shut and gazed at the strip of destruction as they closed in. There was no trace of the ship that had belonged to the red-skinned being who'd kidnapped Revan. Not that she'd really expected there to be, but a twinge of disappointment made itself felt over the terrible sense of unease nonetheless.
Atton brought them in to land near where the Hawk had come to rest on its last trip. Even before the doors opened, the absence of the Force was oppressive, like a physical weight on Meetra's chest, threatening to crack her ribs and squeeze her lungs shut. She wanted to stay on the ship—better yet, to lift the landing gear and fly the ship right back up—but she was Atton's teacher, and she had been a general, and she was used to squaring her shoulders and doing things she didn't want to. She led the way out, deliberately calm. They were Jedi. They could handle this.
Once they touched ground, though, she wasn't at all sure anymore. The pressure on her chest felt like it had tripled. She found herself struggling to catch her breath, and when she turned, she could see that Atton was looking pale too. "Do you want to wait with the ship?" she asked.
He looked like there was nothing he'd like more than to wait with the ship, possibly in the refresher, but he forced an incredulous stare. "What, so I can guard it from the hordes of thieves and vandals roaming the streets? I'm coming with you."
As stubborn as ever, but she wasn't complaining; if he hadn't been there, the desire to bolt would have been close to overwhelming.
She tried to clear her head and think logically. If there had been evidence at the crash site that would have told them anything about where the red-skinned man had taken Revan, T3 would have found it while it was repairing the Hawk. There were two threads to follow here: what Revan had found when she first came to the planet with Malak, and what her kidnapper might have wanted on Nathema, assuming he hadn't just been following Revan; maybe that would give them a hint as to where he'd taken her. Either way, they needed more information about the planet.
"We need to find some kind of archive. Something that can tell us more about this world," she said to T3. Surprisingly enough—and luckily, since standing still was making the pressure worse—it responded quickly. With an oblivious beep of excitement, it led the way like a tour guide through the deserted streets to what looked like an equally deserted government building. (It seemed bureaucracy came in the same flavors everywhere.) The door was locked.
"I don't think we can slice this," Atton said.
"Watch me," she answered, trying to copy a little of his usual bravado as she ignited her lightsaber and carved down through the bolt. The door popped open, and they entered to find themselves in darkness. Atton ignited his lightsaber as well, and in the dim glow, they were able to make out a waiting room—and find the stairs. Neither of them commented on the abandoned piles of clothes littering the floor.
As she climbed, Meetra concentrated on the sound of Atton's footsteps behind her, and on taking slow, even breaths.
It wasn't until they reached the third floor that they found what they were looking for: the data banks. T3 started downloading the information, leaving Meetra and Atton with nothing to do but wait for the first time since they'd landed. Suddenly the full force of the emptiness was on them. There were no windows. There was no light but what they were carrying. The pressure surged back on Meetra's body until she thought she might suffocate. She braced her back against the wall just to hold herself up. It was as if their own energy were being sucked away from them in nature's effort to fill the unnatural void. They could go crazy here, she realized.
Nearby, Atton was pacing, muttering Pazaak moves under his breath.
"Are you all right?" she got out.
He rounded on her. "Let's talk."
"About what?"
"Anything. The weather. What we're going to order at the cantina when we get out of here."
She tried to think. "A Reactor Core."
"Spoken like a smuggler. You pick that up in your merc days?"
"No. Drinking one of those when you're traveling alone is tantamount to having a free credit giveaway. You need to be a Jedi to be able to resist the hallucinogenic effects."
"You know, Exile, some people would say that the hallucinogenic effects are the point."
"I just like the taste."
Atton laughed quietly, though there wasn't much humor in his stifled chuckle. The deadness of the air seemed to flatten out his voice. "What I wouldn't give for a juma juice right now."
Meetra took a breath and stood straighter, looking just at him, shutting the empty building out. He was watching her with the same intensity. "Just what we need, you passing out right where you're standing. I don't know if I can carry you all the way back to the ship."
"Hey, that never—that only happened once. Just because that damn bounty hunter didn't know when to call it quits."
"If I recall, Mira wasn't the one who needed to call it quits."
"Listen, you—"
T3 beeped and disconnected from the system. Meetra spun on her heel. "Let's go."
They hurried down the stairs, through the empty lobby, back out into the streets, toward the ship. She realized she was running only when she noticed that Atton was sprinting beside her. He grabbed her hand and they bolted the rest of the way to the Ebon Hawk together.
Even the clang of their footsteps was dulled as they hit the ramp and charged down the corridor to the cockpit. Meetra beat Atton to the pilot's chair and fired up the Hawk's engines. As soon as T3 made it through the hatch, they were airborne.
She took it up like they were being chased, ratcheted up the throttle and made for the sky, got out of atmosphere and kept going. The Hawk was almost to the edge of the system when Meetra finally pulled back and let it idle, leaning back in her chair and heaving a sigh.
"Fun planet," Atton cracked weakly. He still looked a shade too pale.
She probably didn't look much better. "Barrel of laughs," she agreed.
They looked at each other and laughed, a glad-to-be-alive laugh.
"Glad you were there," Atton said.
"You too," Meetra said back.
They sat in silence for a long moment, just enjoying the feeling of air moving freely through their lungs. Finally Atton cleared his throat. "So, time to get the hell out of here?"
"You've got it." Meetra throttled up the engines again. "And then it's time to get started reviewing those archives."
A full week of drifting through space later, Atton was starting to get a little stir-crazy. They'd been analyzing T3's data from Nathema for days. Well—the Exile had been analyzing it for days; personally, Atton had spent that time alternating between analyzing, cracking wise, and making sure they got something to eat. Meetra would cheerfully have survived the whole week on meditation alone, but Atton had yet to attain that level of Jedi enlightenment.
As far as he could tell, they knew five big things so far:
1. Whatever had happened to Nathema had happened almost a millennium ago, so all their records were ridiculously out of date. Not good.
2 What had happened turned out to be some kind of Sith ritual conducted by a guy named Lord Vitiate, the ruler of Nathema. It had obviously involved the death of everyone else on the planet—and, of course, that weird absence of the Force. Also not good.
3. The records described the Sith Empire, and the Exile was of the opinion that Revan was worried about its coming back. Really not good.
4. However, all the planets mentioned in the archives were already known to the Republic. Not good for their search.
5. Except one: Dromund Kass, the original homeworld of the Sith species. (Atton hadn't even known there had been a Sith species, although the fact that Dromund Kass was long-lost might have something to do with that.) Apparently Vitiate had had a big research program going to find it.
Atton wasn't sure what the broader implications of that last one were, but something told him they were—no points for guessing it—Not Good.
He looked down at the datapad he was holding and realized he'd read the same screen three times without absorbing a word. "Time for a break," he announced, hoisting himself stiffly to his feet and stretching. He'd been hoping the Exile would take the hint, but she didn't even look up, still absorbed in the research project records. Atton headed for the synthesizer, trying to blink away the text still dancing behind his eyes.
Bao-Dur had cleaned the synth pretty thoroughly after that time they'd found a rotting gizka stuck in the works—Atton was going to have to ask Revan about that if they ever found her—but it hadn't helped the taste. Still, it was energy, and better than wasting the rations they'd brought for when they were planetside. He programmed it without needing to look at the controls and sat back to let it work, keeping an ear out for movement from Meetra's direction.
Atton hated cooking, even with a synthesizer. Part of his motivation for perfecting his Pazaak game had been that when you had credits, you could buy all your food out. He was almost glad to have to do it now, though. He hadn't been much use on Nathema, having spent most of the trip trying not to scream, and all this research wasn't his forte either. Making the food was about the only helpful thing he'd done so far, and even that Meetra would've been fine without. Even the damn droid was a more viable crew member than he was at this point.
His brooding was interrupted by motion in the doorway. Excitement shone through the weariness on Meetra's face. "I found it. The research team extrapolated hyperspace coordinates for Dromund Kass. It's our best lead on Revan."
The synthesizer finished the food. Atton looked down at it. Like the data from Nathema, it didn't look good.
"Well, then," he said, "Sith HQ it is. Sounds like fun." He broke off a piece of dinner and chewed it—strangely sour. Revan had better be damn grateful when they got there.
