Chapter 3
"For something called the Unknown Regions, this area is fairly boring, Master."
"We want boring. Exciting usually means being shot at." Jedi Knight Varan Kilvaari replied, though he knew that his Padawan didn't really complain about nothing going on. That raid two weeks ago had been excitement enough for him. "What we do need however is a place for a permanent base. One year aboard that ship is enough for me, thank you very much."
That left out the various odds and ends they had picked up since then. Between them, the Jedi had picked up enough reputable, semi-reputable and sometimes outright criminal contacts that could and would dispose of the loot they could not use themselves, but a lot was kept. Much of it was to feed the overcrowded Star Destroyer, though also every hyper-capable shuttle was kept, which was how the two of them had found themselves in this small Geonosian blockade runner that had somehow found it's way into the hands of one of the new Imperial Governours before being lost to the Jedi four months ago.
But that didn't solve the basic issue the Republic Remnant faced was one of supply and sheer room. However much space the absence of the Clones aboard Fearless had opened up, it could not go on forever, which was why the Executive Committee, comprised to equal parts of Jedi, Navy Officers and now also a smattering of civilian refugees, had decided to set up some sort of base where everyone could be housed and more easily fed. Kilvaari didn't know how he felt about the Order being so much more closely intertwined with outsiders than it had ever been the case under the Old Republic. He also considered it to be a bit grandstanding that they were calling themselves the Republic Remnant at Senator Ami... Senator Skywalker's suggestion, but in a way it was acceptable and soothed a few ruffled feathers among those on both sides that wouldn't accept the only alternative, one group completely subordinating itself under the other. After all, accepting the military ranks various Jedi had held in the Grand Army of the Republic before it had become the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps was one thing..
And the Senator was another can of worms all on her own. Most had accepted the revelation to the wider Jedi Order about her matrimony with the other Skywalker and the twins that were rapidly becoming the darlings of the entire ship, even though both Skywalkers refused to have them trained by the traditional methods. To him she and they represented a casual dismissal of the ways the Order had been run for generations, and because of that there still was a bit of resentment in his soul whenever he saw one of that family of four.
'No, resentment is wrong. Resentment leads to envy, and envy is of the path to the Dark Side.'
Kilvaari banished the thought, remembering that for all his many flaws, Skywalker had been the one who had given the Jedi enough forewarning to not be overrun by the Clones, and as much as he hated to admit it, Kilvaari knew that the old ways of doing things were over, because the Order simply could not sustain itself if it did not change.
There were some that clung to the old ways, and he had admittedly been one in the beginning, but that had changed when he had been knighted a month after the Exodus and been assigned the then masterless Jedi Padawan now at his side another two months later. After some issues in the first few weeks, the boy having missed his old master terribly, the two now got on rather well, and the Force bond between them was as strong as any Master/Padawan pair could wish. He liked the boy very much, and he knew that this went both ways. Besides, as a scholar by inclination, it pleased him that Zet Jukassa was, for all his eleven years, a very mature and wise beyond his years young boy.
"Is there something that bothers you, Master?" Zet asked, his concern flowing over the bond.
"Nothing of consequence, my young Padawan." he replied with a smile. He would have to get over his dislike for the Skywalkers and their Togrutan friend who was fast becoming a part of their clan as a surrogate aunt for the twins.
Oddly, he didn't begrudge Tano her choice of leaving the Order, that happened on occasion, there the problem was that she... she skirted around the edges without being willing to commit herself to the life, to the point of carrying a lightsabre she'd gotten from somewhere. But again, it was probably just his unwillingness to change his ways. Old pet, new tricks and all that.
He glanced over at Zet who was working the scanners as they surveyed this uncharted system, and he decided that in all likelyhood the next generation of Jedi Knights would be different. Among the younger ones, Knights, Padawans and Younglings they were the big heroes that had saved all their lives, and he had to admit, there was not a small part of truth in that sentiment, if of course somewhat overblown.
The Council didn't encourage that, but they didn't exactly do the opposite either, and Kilvaari knew that it was because at times like these, morale was vitally important. Still, he couldn't help how he felt, and he supposed that was human nature.
"Master, there's something on the long-distance scanners."
"A ship?"
Zet leaned closer to the scopes he was monitoring. "I don't know, Master. It's stationary and I don't read any energy emissions but it's about as large as a Corellian Destroyer."
"Movement, location?"
"It's about a light-second out from the fourth planet's current position, no movement."
Kilvaari consulted the star chart they'd made only an hour earlier in his head. The fourth planet was in the middle of the habitable zone of this system, with a likely very varied climate.
"Let's get closer, shall we?" he said, and changed the shuttle's course towards their contact.
As they approached and the object became visible on the optical scanners, he saw why it couldn't be a ship. It was a space station, and a very, very old one. It's dusty and impact-pitted hull was of no design he recognized, but the general function as some sort of orbital defence station was clear enough from the way the weapon turrets, although now literally frozen in place, looked outwards.
"And you are sure there are no energy readings?"
"None, Master. No station-keeping drives, no targeting scanners, not even internal heating. Just... nothing at all but metal and alloys."
"Can you give me an age estimate?"
Zet shook his head, and it was a bit much to ask from an eleven year old who had to work with sub-par equipment.
By the station's battered appearance and the thick layer of dust on it, it had to be very old indeed. In fact, it seemed to be the by far oldest space object Kilvaari had ever seen. As they got closer to the planet though the station slipped from his mind, because he could sense even at this distance that this planet was very strong in the Force. Not like Dagobah, the system Master Yoda had talked about some time back. That planet was dark, very dark.
This one... Kilvaari knew they both sensed the overflowing life here, and it was.. light. Very light. Sure, there was the usual swirl of violence and death that came with a primitive eco-system, but overall the Darkness was no than on, say, Naboo or Alderaan.
"Master..."
"Indeed, Zet. This bears closer inspection."
He steered the shuttle into a high orbit and they began as detailed a scan of the surface as the Genosian sensors would allow. The planet was a temperate world, smack dab in the middle of the habitable zone. Most of the land-mass was concentrated on the southern hemisphere between the lush dark green equatorial zone and the sub-arctic, with only a chain of volcanic islands north of the equator, most of them dormant mountains that poked through the surface of the oceans that covered a little less than three quarters of the surface. To the north of that were some islands that were not quite large enough to rate as a continent.
The actual continents on the southern half of the planet were criss-crossed with rivers, mountains, deserts and pretty much every possible landscape that one could want. The largest continent had what seemed to be a large lake in the middle of it, fed by glacial streams from the mountain range to the north itself running off into several rivers that fed into yet another ocean, likely some sort of massive extinction-level event impact crater that also had had a hand in creating the mountains. On the northern of it, near where one of the rivers fed into the lake he detected...
"Master, those are artificial structures."
"I see, Zet."
Kilvaari manoeuvred the shuttle so that it was directly above the anomaly they had detected and zoomed in as much as the optical sensors allowed.
What he saw was a set of buildings at the foot of a cliff. Partly built inside the cliff itself and on a platform that itself towered over the river that ran in a canyon a few hundred metres below that, they seemed to be made of ferrocrete and metal, but mostly over grown with local plant life, and definitely not used in a long time. In fact, they were barely visible even if you knew what to look for.
The platform wooded hills that eventually went over into the mountain range. All in all, a perfect place for a colony. Which was why he felt strange in looking at the abandoned one he saw down below.
"Air samples?" Zet suggested, and Kilvaari nodded with approval.
"Very good, Zet. Ready the survey drone."
"Yes, Master."
The Padawan went to the tiny back compartment that held one of Fearless survey/recon drones and readied it for launch while Kilvaari piloted the shuttle on a course that would have them on a slow downward spiral with the abandoned camp in the centre.
Zet returned and reported the drone ready for launch.
They launched it by opening the cargo hatch and allowing for the drone to fall out by dipping the shuttle in that directions.
"Readings are coming in, Master." Zet reported, "The atmosphere is fairly close to Coruscant standard, but oxygen is slightly higher, and average air pressure as well."
"Contaminants?"
"No known contaminants, atmosphere seems to be perfectly breathable to most species. If we wanted to, we could open the windows right now."
Kilvaari smiled. "We are still a mite too high in the atmosphere for that, my eager young Padawan. But I'll keep it under advisement."
Zet flushed. "Yes, Master."
"Anything else I need to know?"
"Faint, very faint traces of volcanic ash."
There probably had been an outbreak not to far away in the near past, with most of the ash clouds never making it across the mountains to the north.
"Any sign of sentient life?"
"None, Master. No artificial pollution of any kind, no sign of artificial roads, waterways or anything."
Technically he had enough to make a report to the Council, but something drew him to the camp. Not just instinct, but it was deeper, it was in the Force.
He glanced over at where his Padawan was still busy with the drone's readouts. It didn't seem that he had sensed it, but then, it was very faint, at the very edge of his perceptual range. He had no doubt that more experienced Jedi than himself would be able to sense it better, so it was likely that Zet could not at all. It got stronger as they closed though, so that might change.
"Zet, we are going to land and inspect that camp closer. Even though his planet seems perfect, something made the previous owners abandon it, and we need to know what that was."
He set the shuttle down in the open half-circle the abandoned buildings formed at the cliff and the first thing he noticed was that they had obscured a clearly artificial cave entrance into the bedrock of the planet. It, and what looked very much like the entrances to several hangars, but again, no sign of inhabitants or even any refuse left behind. The building soon turned out to be empty one-room shacks, colonial prefabs that could have come from literally every civilized world in the Galaxy. The only sign of habitation they could find was that there were corroded remnants of metal that may have been, preserved over the centuries by the hermetically sealed environment of the habitats.
When they stood in front of the dark cavern, Zet was visibly distraught. "Do we go inside?"
Kilvaari smiled at him. "Be mindful of your feelings, Zet. Trust in the force, trust your senses and they will both protect you. Besides, I sense no malice from in there." It was clear that seeing his old Master shot down in front of his eyes had made him less trusting in his own abilities and he still needed occasional reassurance beyond the usual positive reinforcement.
He knew that Zet would now be reaching into the Force himself and it seemed that whatever he was able to sense did not reassure him too much, but he also did not seem to be more scared than before.
So they walked in.
Between their lightsabres and their Force-enhanced senses they didn't need torches as non-sensitives would have, but it was still very dark and they could not see all that far. If there ever had been any infrastructure such as power supply and lighting it had ling since been rotted away by time and the elements, but even an untrained observer would have been instantly aware that the cave was too regular in form and workmanship to be anything but artificial, even if the cracked masonry hadn't given it away. To Kilvaari it looked like it was an entrance or a supply tunnel of some sort and sure enough, Zet discovered the first branch tunnel only a few steps on.
"Wait a second, Zet."
They stopped and Kilvaari pulled a small device from his robes. The scanner was nothing special, but it had come in handy before. A quick sweep of their surroundings showed that the access tunnel they were in reached into the cliff and the plateau beyond for almost a kilometre, and even though it went beyond the scanner's range, there was a virtual insect hive of smaller chambers and tunnels beyond, and even a few caves on the upper level that could and probably had served the original owners as hangars for fighters and shuttles.
The ground was dry, so either the local ground-water was a considerable depth below them or there was some sort of gravity based drainage system they couldn't see.
"What do you think, Master?"
"Well, there seems to be no apparent cause for this to be abandoned. No predators we could see, no Dark Side infestation, no virus or other plague that could have killed everyone and no bodies that could tell us what went on here. Odd, but hardly out of the realm of possibility. We need to call this in."
tbc
Overall, most of this chapter and some of the next one play my theories on the distant history of the GFFA.
