After days traveling through hyperspace, the ship of Jedi, clones, and very old records finally reached Coruscant and the main Jedi temple there. It had been rebuilt after the Emperor was overthrown and was now a complex of smaller towers surrounding a monument instead of one massive building complex.
"Don't go very far," the Kel Dor Jedi Master Karas Do told the ship of clones. "We may be requested to depart quickly."
"Yes, Master Karas Do!"
The Jedi Master hefted a second pack filled with old records. One was already shouldered on his back and a third was being carried by the Anzati padawan Shai'fu.
"Come, padawan. We are to meet the council, and Lallart."
Lallart had been informed of the records and arrived on Coruscant a day before, flying from Corellia, her home planet.
Shai'fu, who had been sleeping on the ship until about twenty minutes ago, yawned as he followed his master through a doorway leading off the landing platform their ship was parked on. "Why don't we just take the lift?" he asked as they headed down the stairs.
"Exercise is good for you," the old Jedi responded. "Besides, the council chambers in this tower are near the top level. Using the lift would take just as long."
Within a few minutes, and a few staircases and a hallway later, they stood in the council chamber with five masters physically present. Three others, including Luke Skywalker himself, had holo-feeds as attendance. At the edge of the ring of chairs was Lallart, an old, dark-skinned human wearing loose, pale robes that were obviously well-worn and comfortable.
The records were given to her immediately and Karas Do pulled out one of the crystalline data-pads specifically to hand to her first. He'd had the chance, over the long trip from the Outer Rim, to look over them and had found one specifically that looked like a journal with dated entries. "This one seems to be a personal journal of whoever made the records," he told the historian as justification for the specific selection.
"Interesting," Lallart said as she activated the sheet and began to look over the presented information. "This is extremely old."
"Evidence at the site indicated it was early during the war."
"This is before the calendar was standardized," Lallart explained. "And from the dates themselves, this could be at the very beginning."
Shai'fu gaped. From lessons, he remembered that the old Jedi-Sith war had ended long ago and had lasted a very long time. If the records were from its origin, then they were older than they had first looked.
Lallart looked up abruptly from the slightly-glowing crystal panel. "I will need time to properly translate this; they are among the oldest records I've seen."
"Is there anything else you can discern from the records at this time?"
Lallart sighed. "They do not feel of the dark side, but they were almost definitely written by a Sith."
A few minutes later, Padawan Shai'fu was excused from the council chamber to use his time as he wished.
"Wow. Ancient Sith records?" he spoke aloud to himself as he crossed one of the inter-tower bridges that were opened to the sky. There were covered ones as well, but this one had been the nearest to him, and he needed to get across to another tower to reach his favorite dining hall. "Why would they have been shielded...?"
'The foolish padawan should know not to speak such...interesting information...' the spy who caught his words thought to himself as he scurried to a hidden private sled and shot away into the sky to contact his current employer.
Shai'fu felt a twinge from the Force at the spy's departure, but nothing else and it was quickly gone from his thoughts.
A few days later, the council had been called again. Shai'fu was in attendance as well because he and Master Karas Do had found the records in the first place.
"I have finished translating this journal. It was written by a Sith Lord who called himself Darth Sadas. His entries begin before the war and observe its beginnings. Apparently, the dark side crept into influence among his peers, most effectively among the apprentices, over a period of years, and they eventually turned on each other. He mentions several times the 'Ways of Honor,' which I believe to be a creed of some kind, rather like the one held by our Jedi Order. In the later entires of the journal, there are two groups; the normal Sith and those who have fallen to the dark side. The dark ones keep hold of the name Sith, so the others splinter off and leave and rename themselves as the Jedi, a translation of 'Warriors of Honor.' The last entry is a farewell that mentions all the other records and self-sacrifice of nearly all the Sith Lords so the new generation of Jedi can escape and survive. Maps and coordinates are also mentioned, of a Sith stronghold and 'frozen' Sith-turned-Jedi. Because of this, I searched for the maps next, and found this one, which I blended with one of our current maps for comparison."
A hologram appears after a gesture from Lallart showing a section of the Outer Rim, the area Karas Do and Shai'fu had ventured to. All the planets had double entries for their IDs; the first being the current code designation and the second being whatever the Sith had dubbed the planets.
"This is were you found the records," Lallart glanced at Karas Do and pressed a button and the moon the records had been located on flashed yellow instead of blue. "This is the other planet mentioned, with the stronghold." Another moon of a massive gas planet a considerable distance away flashed yellow. It was at least several hours travel between the two--who knows how long it would have taken when the records were first made.
As the council chamber emptied soon afterwards, Lallart handed a data-chip to Karas Do. "This is a copy of the coordinates. The council may ask you to investigate them soon."
Karas Do nodded and pocketed the chip, then pulled his padawan aside and warned him that they may be departing soon. Later, in his private rooms, he notified the ship of bored clones and told them the same. He did not transmit the coordinates, however, because a feeling from the Force told him not to.
Despite that feeling, just before dawn, the chip was stolen from his room. He awakened almost immediately and, though he caught the thief with the aid of his padawan, the data had already been transmitted. The council ordered him to pursue immediately,
The clones, who were all present, had the ship warmed up and ready to go. Karas Do, who remembered the coordinates from looking at Lallart's diagram, input them into the computer for hyperdrive, which was activated as soon as the ship left the gravity well of Coruscant.
Two more parts left. Probably.
