A/N: Aren't I nice, two chaps in one day!
A/N 2: I took the following from the movie National Treasure. It was so totally awesome that its plot infects every mystery that I write. PLEASE DON'T SUE ME OVER THIS EITHER! Oh, and sorry for the incredibly short chapter last time. They'll get longer I promise!
Chapter 7
A Short History for a Long Hunt
An hour practically flew by, but it brought results. "Okay, what do you got?" Indy asked when everyone had gathered. Leia started.
"Basically what Luke said, but I did get more of the history. Umm…" she flipped back through her notes. "Right, the Valley was originally discovered by a Jedi named Corban Beth-Shiloh. He was a member of the first council of the Jedi. He made two maps: one to mark the planet and one two mark the place on the planet, and then returned to the council to report what he had found. The council sent Corban back with three other Master Jedi…I didn't find those names."
"I did," Han broke in. "Duo and Katra Arkos, they were twins, and Maceina Kaltor." Attention shifted to him, and he continued the history. "The stuff I got says that the four of them figured out the potential that the Valley had. They decided that this place was way too powerful to be unprotected. Somehow they cloaked the entire planet and then coded the two maps, that's all I got."
"oorrrgun heenakaaaaah eeeoooorrrrnnnn."
"Oh, right, forgot about that. They also surrounded the entrance to the Valley with a hell of a lot of booby traps and then made a third map of how to navigate through them. Each of them took a map, except for Corban he got the code. They went by different ships back to the council."
Luke jumped in, "The council approved all that they did and then divided up the maps and the code and returned the pieces to the four of them with instructions to hide the pieces. Maceina had the idea to attach clues to each piece that would lead to the next one and so on."
"Why?" Indy asked. So far all this information was lockstep with the stuff that he had gotten. But Maceina's idea was something new.
"So that if anyone ever needed to find the Valley after they were gone they could, I guess. It would just be difficult. The council was able to keep the whole discovery a secret. But when that generation of Jedi died, word got out."
CP3O spoke for the first time. "I believe I have the last bit of information. Master Arkos was the last of the original four to die. He gave his former apprentice a small chip of stone and said, I quote, 'This is the first step on the road to power.' He passed away later that night. The chip was placed in the Archives of the Jedi temple on Corescant."
"Great." Han sighed sarcastically. "Well, we might as well go home now."
"What?" Indy looked up. "Why?"
"Corescant was the seat for the Empire when it was in power." Leia said sadly. "During the former Emperor's rise, the Jedi Temple was ransacked and most of the stuff inside was destroyed."
"We have to at least try to find it. Without that first piece, there's no where to start."
Han stood up. "That sounds like a request to get us to Corescant." Chewie followed him out to the cockpit. Indy looked quickly over his notes. The brief history had fallen in line with the information that he had gathered. He now had an idea of where to start. He turned to Luke.
"Time to start a new search."
"Why? We know where the first piece is."
"But what if it isn't there? We need to have a backup plan."
"What do you suggest?" Leia asked. Having been with Luke and Han long enough to learn that Plan A never worked, she was almost always the person to come up with Plan B. Having someone else to suggest it was a welcome break. I'm starting to like this Indiana Jones.
"Let's start by getting as much information as we can on the four Jedi who originally found the place. Search for home worlds, favorite, I dunno, vacation spots, places that had meaning for them."
"I don't get it," Luke said. "Why would they hide their pieces in places like that?"
"Think about it. If you had something of great value, where would you hide it? In your house or in a stranger's?"
"Mine, I guess"
"Why?"
"Because I would have access to it on a regular basis and know…where to hide it." Revelation dawned on his face.
"Exactly. When I go on archeological digs, the most valuable stuff is deep within places that where restricted to just a few people. Or they are intricately hidden in the most ordinary places. If we look for planets that these guys visited on a regular basis, then it'll be easier to figure out the clues…" If we find any. Indy was very skeptical about finding one chip of stone…an idea popped into his head.
"Also, search for any information on this stone chip we're supposed to find. Color, texture, shape, how big it is, what it's made of, stuff like that."
Luke agreed, "So we know what to look for."
"And so if we don't find it," Leia added, "We could guess about what it's supposed to lead us to."
"Okay," Indy said. "Luke, you take the Arkos twins. Leia research Maceina. I'll do Corban. R2 and 3PO, you get all the info you can on this rock."
Two hours later, Luke had done so much research that he felt his head was about to explode. He never knew how many planets the ancient Jedi visited on a regular basis. I guess that when you're the only peacekeepers in the galaxy, you're on the move a lot. There were seven planets, other than Corescant and the Valley's world, which kept popping up in his searches. Apparently, Duo and Katra did everything together. They were identical twins through their young lives, not only did they look and dress the same but they also talked the same way and the Master Jedi that trained them was constantly confusing one for the other. The only difference between the two was that Duo preferred the darker side of the Force. He was slightly more violent, more reckless, and much harsher in battle. The only thing that had kept him from becoming a Sith was his love for his brother. Katra was the polar opposite: calm, logical, deliberate, merciful, and very patient with his hotheaded brother. They had to be together to complete any mission that the council sent them on. Which explains why every record that has one brother has the other. I guess that means that their pieces of the maps are all on the same worlds. That would narrow down our work. Luke saved his work and went to find the rest of the group.
Leia had been researching Maceina. She found out three things about the Lady Jedi, with about a thousand variations on those things: first, Maceina was a Sodukan. Soduka was a very harsh, mountainous world. The highlands were barren craggy cliffs, formed by volcanoes and tectonic up-thrusts. The lowlands were filled with miasmic fumes that would kill any and everything. Yet on this world, a people had managed to grow and develop. Sodukans were humanoids in body with one major difference. They had hawk-like wings, eyesight, and hearing. This enabled them to live in and on the cliffs. Maceina was exceedingly light, due to her hollow bones, had reflexes that impressed even the most powerful Jedi, due to her constant flight, and was bordering on genius. She was extremely creative, resourceful, and smart. Three talents that make her a natural for coming up with and then hiding clues to a galactic puzzle. Second, she created every one of the booby traps surrounding the Valley and had the map of how to navigate through them. Third, she regularly visited only three worlds in the course of her life: Soduka, Corescant, and the planet that houses the Valley of the Jedi. Which should make finding the clues easy to find…I hope. Something about Maceina's history said that her hiding places wouldn't be easy to either find or penetrate.
R2D2 and C3PO had, arguably, both the simplest and the most difficult task to perform. It was simple because all they had to do was find the physical characteristics of a rock. It was difficult because there were next to no records of what the rock looked like. In the thousand years that the stone chip had sat within the archives of the Jedi Temple, almost no one had ever studied, written, or taken a holo of it. For nearly an hour, R2 and 3PO sifted through massive amounts of information looking for descriptions of this rock. 3PO was irritated with the fact that such an insipid task was taking so long, that his partner was not in the least bit discouraged about the lack of information, that Master Luke would not be pleased with said lack, and, most importantly, the fact that he was a protocol droid, not some research computer. The nerve of this Indiana Jones, he was far too much like General Solo for 3PO to be comfortable with him. 3PO was about to give up when R2 beeped in triumph. He had found a small, discarded, and overlooked article that had all the information that they sought. Not only was the physical description of the rock there but also extensive holos of what it actually looked like. Suddenly, 3PO was as joyful as his companion. He could not wait to proclaim his…uh, their, discovery.
Corban was by far the worst person that Indy had ever had to research. He had no records, no journals, no patterns, no social life, no family, and no one really knew him. Corban was a maverick. On Earth he would have been called a nobody. On Corescant he was almost called that, except for one thing: Corban was the most powerful Jedi of that generation. He had shown up at the Jedi Temple in his infancy, attained Master status at an insanely young age, was always on the move and always took the most difficult and life threatening missions. He was without fear, cunning, a brilliant strategist, and utterly single-minded. Corban was unconditionally devoted to the Jedi Order. Good choice to go hide a place of power. Indy found that Corban had the map to find the planet. Unfortunately, Corescant was the only planet that he went to more than once. Means that his map could be absolutely anywhere. He got up from the terminal that he had been working at. Maybe the other's got more stuff than I did.
Han and Chewie were on the bridge discussing the mission. They had successfully entered hyperspace about an hour ago, headed towards Corescant. But being on the outer ring of the galaxy had drastically increased the amount of time to get back to familiar territory, and Han didn't want to push the engines until he was sure that the hyperdrive was really fixed. He had to admit, though, he liked Indiana. Physical characteristics were not the only similarities that they had. Han could see a reckless streak in the archeologist, as well as a familiarity of how the world worked. He could make a good pirate. Han grinned. It was certainly would be an interesting space hop.
He was a little worried about going to Corescant. When the former Emperor had been in power, he used the central planet as the seat of his new government. Unfortunately, that seat had become one of the seediest, dirtiest, most corrupt planets in the galaxy. The utter destruction of the Jedi and the imposition of martial law had turned Corescant into a breeding ground for thieves, drunkards, liars, drug-dealers, and other disreputable scum. The return of the Republic to Corescant had slowly begun to restore order to the planet, but it was only in certain sectors. The capital building was housed in a prison-like compound that also protected some of the residence buildings close to the capital.
The Jedi Temple, however, was still deserted. No on had dared to enter it during the Imperial occupation. The Emperor was fearful that the Jedi would return to their temple and had given orders to his Troopers that any living thing found inside it was to be shot on sight. Not that anyone would have gone in. The Temple was guarded by myths that the dead Jedi still dwelled within and ate the flesh of any living thing that entered. Han wasn't in the least bit worried for their lives, being a pirate had given him a way with other outlaws, and no ghost story in the galaxy fazed him. No, he was worried about the Falcon. He couldn't imagine leaving his precious ship in reach of the cretins on Corescant. He had spent the past two hours planning how to guard the Falcon while they were searching the Temple for this rock. Han snorted at the thought. How are they going to find a rock in a place that has been decaying for the last thirty some years? He stretched and stood up from the pilot's seat. Better go see how everyone's doing.
Can anyone guess what Corban Beth-Shiloh means? Good luck finding out, though I shall give you a hint: His name is Hebrew. And yes, Corban, Maceina, Duo and Katra all belong to me, though they are based, loosely, on some of my favorite characters in other genres. By the way, I love getting reviews…hint hint…