Chapter 8
Strange Sensation
Zak was genuinely interested in everything Loru Fa had to show him. It wasn't as much as he had expected, and he half-expected to have been allowed into the genetics sections to grab a sneak peak of their cloning operations—since they were still in the process of building clones for the right price. However, as it turned out, only those clients paying for clones or cloned body parts were allowed into those areas, and even then only minimally. He was, however, shown around the greater city areas, skirting around a construction team of blue-eyed Kaminoans with safety gear heading for the nearest exit to the outside.
"Loru Fa," he started ten minutes after passing the crew when he spotted another blue-eyed Kaminoan performing some form of manual labour.
"Yes?" the graceful Kaminoan woman said, turning her head just enough to see him in the periphery.
"Forgive the bluntness of the question, but does Kaminoan society run on a sort of caste system?" Zak asked hesitantly, unsure whether or not he would be privy to such information.
He hadn't really red much about Kamino, other than the information about their involvement in the Clone War, and their subsequent insurrection against the Empire years after its end.
Loru Fa paused for a moment, and Zak sensed the hesitation as well as she redirected her gaze forward and picked up the pace a little. Zak guessed that she wasn't going to answer, and he chided himself for having asked the question in the first place. He jogged for a few seconds to catch up to her new pace and then slowed to match her.
"A keen observation, for a young Jedi," Loru Fa replied. Zak was beside her now, rather than behind, and he craned his neck to look up at her, using the Force to ensure that he didn't accidentally crash into anyone in the stark-white corridor. "Yes, we do. It may be an odd way to select which field of work each of us is suited to, but it is done based on the colour of our irises."
"Oh?" Zak pressed, genuinely interested.
"As I am sure you are unaware, our society is bred through science, rather than usual near-human methods. Each of us is grown according to what skills and abilities would be most beneficial to the community."
Zak hung from every word, aware that he was being granted a rather unusual honour. Though he hadn't read up on the New Republic's available information on Kamino as yet, he would have wagered a fortune that what he was hearing now was something he wasn't likely to hear ever, and it was more than likely that Loru Fa was breaching some serious guidelines to educating him.
"Deformities or undesired results are not tolerated," Loru Fa went on, unaware of Zak's internal musings. "But, needless to say, the growth process produces physical appearance differences. Those with abilities suited to administration and upper-level management positions have grey eyes, as you have noticed in both myself and the Prime Minister."
"And blue eyes are the menial labourers?" Zak asked, taking a guess. "Cleaners, construction workers, and the like, no?"
"You are correct," Loru Fa said, and Zak saw a flash of indignation cross her otherwise bland features. It was obvious that she didn't like to be interrupted, or to have her words taken from her before she spoke them herself. "Some of those tasks may be tedious and menial, but they are every bit as important as any other work done in the city."
"I see."
"You may not have noticed it at this particular hour of the day, but there is another eye colour present in our species. Those of us with yellow eyes are more properly suited to positions of science, research, and sometimes even diplomacy."
"So, if I were to draw comparisons with … say, Coruscant life; grey eyes would be the upper class citizens, yellow would be the middle class, and blue would be the lower class."
"If you must draw that comparison," the tall woman replied stiffly. Zak could tell he had inadvertently offended her. "But here, we try to view each citizen as the same, regardless of the type of work they do. The "lesser class", as you call them, are just as important as the "upper class" here, because it is those lesser that keep everything in the city functioning, clean, efficient."
"Perfect?" Zak added.
"If you like." They rounded another corner, passing an open, empty lab full of clean table tops and empty beakers and tubes. Loru Fa then stopped and turned to face Zak. "This concludes your tour of our city, Mister Arranda," she said, clasping her hands together. "I do hope that it has been informative and enjoyable."
"Oh, it most certainly has," Zak said with a grin. He knew that Kaminoans didn't necessarily feel strong emotions, or any at all, but he guessed that they were able to identify it just as readily as anyone else.
Curiously, he looked around the corridor, and spotted a location marker in Galactic Basic on the wall near a sealed hatch. His heart leapt into his throat when he realised that they were very close to the landing pad Zak had wanted to take a look at. An odd idea came to him, and he turned back to his guide with a smile in place.
"Could I make a request?" he started, gently nudging her psyche with his mind, trying to get her mind to open up to suggestion.
"Certainly." She gestured with the response, and blinked her large eyes down at him, waiting for his request.
Zak prodded again, and felt the satisfying sinking feeling as that portion of her mind opened. "I wanted to check out landing platform nine," he started. And now, he thought, for the explanation. "During approach, I noticed that platform nine had an excellent view of the city, and I just wanted to see if my thoughts would hold up or not in practice."
She hesitated, longer than Zak would have liked to be sure that his suggestion was sinking in and taking root. But it worked. Eventually, she nodded and guided him down the corridor to a lift tube with a gentle "This way, please."
It was still pouring rain when they arrived at the door leading out onto the platform. It was open now, waiting for him to step through onto the catwalk and into the wet. He drew his cloak tight, yanked his hood up over his head, and then turned to Loru Fa, who stood stock still behind him, fingers laced together and a semi-vacant expression on her face.
"You don't have to come with," Zak assured her, pretending to think that she didn't relish the thought of getting wet. In fact, he was really placing another subtle suggestion. "I won't be out there for long," he assured her, which was truth.
After a second of hesitation, Loru Fa nodded, and Zak turned and left the building.
He erected a weak shield around him to protect from most of the rain, but he didn't want to exert too much energy in complete protection. He needed his senses for other things as well at the moment, such as trying to identify what it was that he had seen earlier as Jaina had made a pass around the city.
But, as he approached the end of the catwalk and the start of the platform itself, he could see that whatever he had seen before was no longer there. There was no dark, blurry shape of an unknown ship; nothing at all in fact.
"Strange," he said to himself. Shaking his head, he pushed forward.
He figured that there would be some sign on the platform that there had been a ship there. He was sure that, had he actually seen one and it had since departed the wet planet, that there would be minimal scorching or heating from the engines. And so he looked. First, he thought to check out the outer edges of the platform, but when he saw nothing, he slowly moved inward, eyes darting left and right across the durasteel beneath him, looking for something that was so obviously not present.
Maybe he had been wr—
"Oof!" His face hit something solid and he fell backwards onto his rump, hard.
Frowning, he shook his head and looked up. "Loru—" he started, thinking at first that his Kaminoan guide had come outside to join him after all, and intent on apologising for running into her. But there was nothing and no one there.
Confused, he pushed himself up to his feet, and re-established his protective barrier, which had fallen with his concentration during the suspect impact. He stood still for several moments, thinking over all the possibilities of what had just happened.
The best he could tell, there was nothing in front of him except for—
And then he noticed it.
There was no rain in front of him. He could see rain, sure, but it was at the very least several meters away from where he stood. Looking up, slightly, he saw that the rain was coming down in front of him as well, but abruptly stopped four or five meters off the ground. He knew what that meant at once, and he reached out a hand to confirm it.
His hand made contact with cold metal, and he instinctively pulled it back in disbelief. Cursing silently to himself, he extended his hand again until he felt the cold, wet metal again, and then ran it back and forth across the smooth surface. It was an odd thing, and he had not truly expected a cloaked ship.
But then; if the ship was cloaked, as he suspected, how was it that he had seen it during his and Jaina's approach? She hadn't seen it at all when he had tried to point it out to her, which led him to believe that it had been cloaked even then. But if that was the case, why was it that he had seen it? That was what he couldn't understand.
He started stepping to the side slowly, following the path of his hand across the surface of the invisible ship until he reached what he approximated to be the forward-most part of the ship. He took his hand away and stepped back, looking into the invisible space with a frown as he tried to make himself see what was, and yet was not, there. He had, however, no luck in doing so. Swearing again to himself when it didn't work, he turned and stormed across the catwalk back to the building where, inside, Loru Fa waited for him.
He was just thinking of reporting the invisible ship to Luke and getting an opinion when it hit him.
It was a feeling he had some experience with, but which was a lot stronger than any he had felt before. It was the feeling of the dark side. He had felt similar, though lessened, sensations from both Darth Pravus and Alitha. Describing as "dark side" just seemed the most appropriate way to Zak. It was a bastardisation of the Force; it made him sick to the bottom of his stomach, and, this instance, made it almost painful for Zak to focus on remaining upright and on his feet.
He whirled around and scanned the area with his gaze, which was starting to blur with tears. He fought it, and drew on the Force in an attempt to block out the unfamiliar presence. It didn't work as well as he'd hoped it would, but he was able to stand without effort, and the sickening feeling in his gut lessened to more of a slight nauseating feeling.
Zak took a deep breath, only now realising that he had had trouble breathing, and swiped the tears from his eyes before scanning the area again.
A wisp of dark fog drifted into view directly in front of him, halfway between him and where he had felt the cloaked ship. He took a step back, and dropped his hand to rest on the hilt of his lightsaber, though he did not draw it yet. The dark fog began to take form before him, and in moments he saw the apparition of a man in bulky black robes, hood drawn forward so far that it threw darkness over everything beneath it.
Everything save those piercing yellow eyes.
"You will always carry me with you," the voice hissed so low Zak was sure he had only heard it in his mind. "No matter what you think you are!" A horrible cackle rent the air, and the wisp faded away, the dark fog drifting off the edge of the platform and down out of sight.
Zak raced after it, peering down over the edge and taking great breaths to steady his racing heart.
Could it be that he had just seen an apparition of himself—the way he had been when he had proclaimed himself a Lord of the Sith? He couldn't know for sure, and he tried to spot the dark fog down below, but he couldn't see it. It was as though it hadn't been there at all, as though he had imagined it.
Maybe he had. All the stress of those years delving through his own mind to recover lost memories from his time on the dark side of the Force, and the apprehension he felt about the Kaminoans' procedure to help him recover the rest could have been causing him to hallucinate; he could have manifest the apparition himself as a way of expressing his own doubt about the procedure he would soon undertake.
The words the apparition had spoken to him, low and as close to inaudible as they were, seemed to support that theory. Zak was constantly aware of the darker side that still remained within him from his brush with the dark side. He strived to keep it under control as best he could, but there was always the fear that the wrong sort of circumstances would bring it back out in him, and that he might not ever come back.
On the other hand, he considered, as he turned back to the catwalk and started back to the building, around the invisible ship. The ship's presence itself meant that Kamino was host to not only he, Jaina and Luke Skywalker. He couldn't claim to know enough about Kamino to judge whether they had ships of their own, but if he were to guess, he could at least say that they didn't use cloaking technology. From his studies, he knew that the Empire, the Sith, and the Imperial Remnant (before joining the Republic) had all used cloaking technology when it was necessary to manipulate people outside of their own.
Perhaps the fact that an unknown, and as yet unmentioned visitor, was present—and in possession of such extraordinary cloaking technology—had something to do with what Zak had just witnessed. He gave small consideration to the possibility that a Dark Jedi—or perhaps a new apprentice of Alitha's—owned that ship, and that they were keeping watch of it.
If that were the case, then they were watching Zak now. It would definitely explain the strength of the dark side presence he had felt moments ago. While true he would have felt a darksider's presence for light years—if they wanted him to—this one instance was strong enough to hint to the fact that they were closer a little closer to home. If they had been watching him, and they were strong enough in the dark side, it was possible they could have created that illusion.
But then how would they have known to use Zak's fear of his own dark side against him? He kept that bit of himself locked up so tightly not even the best Force-telepaths could touch it.
It had to be his own fears playing against him.
Stepping back into the building, he shook the contradicting thoughts from his mind and looked up at Loru Fa, who by now was looking like his hold on her had faded. In fact, she looked confused—horrified, possibly?—about where she was standing, and why.
When she saw him, though, she blinked rapidly. "Mister Arranda?" she said, puzzled. "Why are we here?"
"You don't remember?" Zak said, putting in a touch of his own feigned confusion. "I asked if we could come here because I thought it had a good view of the city."
Loru Fa looked around for a second; her search through her own memory manifesting physically. Zak could tell when she found what she was looking for, because her dark eyes fluttered and she put a hand to her head. "My apologies. It must have slipped my mind."
"That's OK," Zak said. "The view was pretty spectacular."
"I am glad you appreciate our city," Loru Fa said only half honestly. "Would you care to be shown to your quarters?"
"Actually, I'd like to go see Master Skywalker first," Zak replied. Loru Fa nodded and turned to lead him down the corridor and back towards the centre of the building without a word. Zak fell in step beside and slightly behind her and followed in measured silence.
