Chapter 3
This may turn out to be a beneficial deal after all! Peri was feeling more and more clever as he piloted his freighter into Mandalore's upper atmosphere. He now had a prisoner who might prove to be a link to the crime ring he'd been investigating. He also now had an unsuspecting Sith whom he could interrogate informally to gather information about the Sith and hopefully find some weakness to their culture to bring back with him to Corellia. His droid, T3, beeped a ready signal from the nav-station indicating that the coordinates for the hyperspace jump were locked into the navicomputer. To make his new plan work, he needed a little help. Now he was waiting for one of his contacts to answer a page he'd sent out earlier.
"So, what are we waiting on?" asked Thera.
A little impatient, are we? "I'm waiting to make contact with an associate of mine," replied Peri, as he made adjustments to a higher orbital pattern above Mandalore.
"Aren't we in danger the longer we stay in Mandalore's system?" inquired Thera. She felt more and more uneasy as her danger sense in the Force was growing. They had been in orbit for almost a whole standard hour, accomplishing nothing else.
"I am quite aware of our predicament," said Peri. More aware than you realize, yet. While procuring supplies before they launched, Peri had discovered that a generous bounty for Thera had indeed been posted in a café packed full of bounty hunters, wanted dead for treason. A few copies of the posting had already been removed.
"What's your plan for Lady Gosell?" she asked.
"She will be interrogated," said Peri.
"Why not interrogate her while we wait?" Thera pressed.
"I won't be the one interrogating her," Peri responded.
"You work with someone, then, this contact of yours?" she continued to press.
"No, I work alone, primarily," his irritation with her was growing. Since she was talking, he needed to try to redirect this conversation, but she's making this difficult. "I have a contact who helps me with this sort of thing, but I haven't heard from him for some time; once we establish contact and a meeting place, we'll be on our way."
"What if he doesn't respond?" she asked.
"He will!" Peri punctuated each word. This smuggler was very reliable and easy to reach – that was how he managed good business. Thera raised her eyebrows at him, and then turned away in the copilot's seat to stare at the silhouette of Mandalore as its large moon, Concordia, slowly emerged from behind. She felt a small sense of relief to be drifting away from this place, but it was slowly giving way to anxiety as the Force kept sending pulses of danger through her body.
She let her mind drift as she thought back on her master's teachings to try to calm herself. Her master, who had perished in the recent events on the planet below, was a Chiss woman, Lady A'pratti'ka, Dark Lady of the Sith. A'pratti'ka had demonstrated remarkable control and precision in her use of the Force. One of her first lessons had nearly killed Thera when A'pratti'ka taught her to let go of her own fears with her use of Sith alchemy. She also reflected on their strike team commander, Lord Matthster, who had given her personalized mentorship during rare opportunities when they were alone. He wasn't quite what she expected in a Dark Lord of the Sith, but he had expressed confidence in her ability and potential on many occasions.
They were both gone now. She allowed anger and sorrow for their loss to flow through her to flush out her fear and open herself up to the Force. Peri was communicating now with his cohort; she ignored him so as to stay focused on the currents in the Force. She was amazed at how much she could sense, whereas before, learning from her brother, she barely relied on it because of fears she had then, and also because of the amount of effort and practice she put into physical training. She had finally learned to use telekinesis as a weapon, along with Force-enhanced jumps, but she could sense what felt like a whole other world, just beyond her grasp….
"Okay, T3, he has the rendezvous location. Standby for the jump to lightspeed," Peri said, as she drifted back from her thoughts. She held her gaze out the viewport and watched as the thousands of stars in space suddenly illuminated into thousands of bright parallel streaks as the ship plunged into the blue-lighted kaleidoscope of hyperspace.
"There," Peri turned toward Thera, "Now you can feel safer." She kept her gaze out the viewport. "They say that staring at that for too long is bad for your sanity," he added smoothly. She didn't stir. He noted how stunning and lovely she looked, even with her stoic expression.
He was able to find her material for a new outfit while rummaging through Keldabe. She insisted on maintaining her dark green body suit. Now she wore over it what used to be a crimson colored kama. "Warriors wear this in battle to protect their legs from shrapnel and other opportunistic projectiles, and it also prevents the spread of said projectiles in the unlikely event that the wearer triggers the blast", the saleswoman had told him. It seemed reasonable, then, since he couldn't find many clothing items for her height or build. Making a few strategic cuts, she had converted it into a vest, held about her by a leather belt with a gold buckle. Her breathing stayed even as she maintained her gaze, unconcerned.
He shook his head, then sat back in his pilot seat, "In further answer to your earlier concern, My contact is a smuggler of sorts, and once in awhile we trade favors, to include cross-interrogations, the idea being that cross-interrogating would present enough objectivity to the event to reveal things that otherwise might be missed or misleading." Thera nodded a response. Interrogation must be some sort of art for them, then.
"So where are we meeting this smuggler?" she turned back from her hyperspace gazing.
"Ord Mantell. We have a few loose ends to investigate and tie up there, and then I can transport you to wherever you're going, which is where, by the way?"
"Roon," she responded.
"To Roon, then," he nodded with a small touch of enthusiasm. Time to see if I can open her up. "So, what exactly is a Sith, if you don't mind my asking, and how do they use this 'force' that you mentioned?" he asked, shifting around in his chair, as if settling in for a good story. She sighed first, then drifted into another gaze just above the instrument panel, as if gazing into an unseen world.
"The Force is a symbiotic energy field that surrounds and penetrates all living things," she heard herself echoing Lord Matthster. "It is a power that only certain random individuals throughout the galaxy are attuned to well enough to use, to control and manipulate the world around them. The Sith seek order for the galaxy, according to the will of the Force, and to eliminate those who would oppose the will of the Force, or who choose not to live in harmony with it."
That wasn't quite the answer Peri expected, but it would do for now. "And what of the Jedi?" he asked, "Don't they also use the Force?"
"The Jedi," she grimaced, "foolishly avoid certain aspects of the Force, which leaves them vulnerable and shortsighted to all that the Force entails," she replied. Her face turned sullen. "I was only an apprentice Sith," his faced twitched with the revelation. An apprentice,… yes, she mentioned that earlier… this may be a little more difficult than I anticipated! "My master," she continued, "was Lady A'pratti'ka. She taught me to embrace the Force, along with my brother, Jev."
"Brother, eh?" Peri interjected, "So is the Force genetic, it runs in your family? I thought you said it was random."
"Yes, the Force favors whomever it will, but Force-users are likely to breed more Force-users, having already found favor as, yes, my family has."
"Oh. So, are there other living members of your family besides your brother, then?" he asked casually.
"I never knew my mother. My father died, though, when I was younger, at the hands of my brother," she said. Fairly volatile family dynamics, Peri noted. "I don't remember what happened," she continued, "but I had just reached adolescence, and he told me he saved my life. He's never talked much about it since, and I must have blocked out whatever trauma may have resulted against me." She paused for a moment, then turned her gaze slowly into his eyes, as if she suspected something was up, "And what about you?" she asked, "You mentioned you're some sort of investigator, not from Mandalore, I take it?"
Peri smiled at her, a little uneasy as this was the first time she'd looked him in the eye. Wow! He thought. Her hazel eyes are beautiful. Easy; not too much about me, not yet, "I'm from a world on the Core's edge. My employ deals with intergalactic defense, with emphasis on information gathering, since the HoloNet has yet to be restored for some reason." He related to her about Lady Gosell's crime ring, using the topic as a decoy to avoid naming his homeworld, or revealing his intentions with the Sith, or the connections he had uncovered recently between the Sith and several aspects of the web that appeared to be about to emerge and surge against the core worlds. He tried to remember and share every boring detail, but she listened intently, eyes locked onto him, as if it was all interesting to her. He gradually found he couldn't think of a single boring detail to shake her fascination.
He was relieved when the warning beeps sounded indicating they were near the end of their hyperspace jump. "Ah! If you'll excuse me," he turned his head toward T3, "Standby for realspace on my mark." Turning back to his controls he counted down from 5, pushed forward on a lever, then the light streaks blurred back into barely visible fixed star positions in a vast, black vacuum. "T3, let me have the results of your system scan as soon as possible, long range first." Ord Mantell loomed ahead of them off in the distance of space, a ball smaller than a hand at this distance, with a pinkish hue across the day side
"Something doesn't feel right," said Thera, quietly.
"What, is that some sort of Force warning?" Peri asked, intending to downplay her remark.
"I don't know," she replied with a small degree of uncertainty, as she fixed her gaze away from him again, out the viewport at the planet ahead of them, "I just sense something out there waiting for us."
"T3, how about that scan? Has anyone noticed us yet? Anything suspicious?" asked Peri.
T3 beeped twice and his readout appeared on Peri's HUD showing T3's scan results. Nothing out of the ordinary, at least not compared to his last visit a few months ago. They had come out of lightspeed far from the planet, a standard precautionary measure for Peri to avoid the uncertainty of any visceral planetary business, like a new blockade, police action, or unforeseen war of some sort in progress. A lack of the HoloNet outside the core made these sorts of things more unpredictable, especially when coming into realspace. One of those events, or a few other possibilities, may have been what set Thera off.
"If there's nothing specific you'd like to warn me about, then I'll begin to contact my associate." Peri didn't wait for a response from Thera and began creating an encryption at his communication panel. Thera sighed, climbed out of the copilot's station and made her way out of the cockpit. "I'll just be in the lounge meditating," she said, then disappeared.
When the door slid shut, Peri lowered his voice, "T3, I don't know what she felt, but let me know the instant you see anything unusual that doesn't resolve itself in, say, 90 seconds." T3 beeped an affirmative. As much as his luck had changed in the last few days, he didn't want to take anything for granted. Something had spooked Thera, and he wasn't sure how to implement measures accordingly. Now if his contact would hurry and respond to his hail…
The comlink finally chimed. There he is!