Teller walked through the streets of Nordic feeling lighter than he had in weeks. Something about the connection to everything was uplifting and it reminded him that nothing ever really ends or even begins. It was strange, but good.
Then he walked through the doors of the old city hall and felt the cold steel barrel of a DC-15a blaster rifle pressed against his temple.
"You a Jedi?" asked a man in his early twenties, with a thick beard and crazy eyes.
"No." He looked back at Thayla. "No, right?"
She nodded.
The man moved on, leveling the barrel between Thayla's eyes. "You a Jedi?"
Thayla raised her hands. "Yes. I am Thayla Creed, Jedi Knight."
The man smiled and moved on yet again, but Jon smacked the barrel out of his face.
"Get that away from me."
"Jon, we are guests here."
"And that means he can point blasters at our faces?"
The man just smiled again and slung the blaster over his shoulder, which Teller now saw was covered in white markings and words. "You must be the wild bunch I've heard so much about."
"I don't think wild is the term to describe us."
"Of course you don't," Jon told Thayla.
"Don't be modest. You guys dropped the walls of that Mandalorian outpost. That takes balls of durasteel."
"I don't particularly like that phrase."
"Of course you don't."
"Where are my manners? I'm Ahor, unofficial-official leader of these merry souls some refer to as the Rabble."
Ahor turned and started walking further into the building, allowing Teller to read the white words "Free Surgery" written down the length of the barrel.
"Welcome to Paradise," he told his visitors, as they walked into what was once the impressive rotunda of city hall, where presumably city representatives and wealthy mine owners would have shaken hands in expensive, pressed tunics. It was now packed with fake palm leaves and Felucian trees stuck in the ground and in the walls. The floor was covered by plush carpets, snack tables, booze counters and pillow cushions of all shapes and sizes, and members of the Rabble were lounging all over the place in various states of undress.
Many had clearly just come in from long patrols and dusty hikes before sprawling out on the pillows, but it wasn't until Jamie rushed forward and dived headfirst into the soft mass of cotton and bodily fluids that the rest of them truly realized what a bad combination that was.
"Dad, I smell something."
"Don't worry, wookie. We'll burn your clothes when you get back."
"So brave heroes, tell me about your adventures," said Ahor, collapsing into the pile as if it was nothing. "The Blood Battalion chased you all the way to my gates. I wouldn't mind knowing why."
"Teller shot down one of their troop landers," said Jon, apparently keeping to himself that he thought the Blood Battalion was still patrolling their gates. Teller made note of that.
"That's a tough job. How did you do it?"
"It was with a swivel turret. I'm not sure of the model, but from point blank range it didn't really matter."
"Fighting the Blood Battalion at point blank range. You guys really are crazy." Ahor reached out his hand and someone appeared out of thin air to put a drink in it. "I need crazy right now. Wartime is crazy."
"What can we do for you?" Thayla asked him, seeming much more official in her fancy Jedi threads.
"That's a good attitude, being willing to throw yourself into the flames. You'll do well in Nordic," Ahor told them. "Follow me."
The structure they walked through was made from brilliantly shining stone with intricate carvings and yet more rotundas that could have covered a small freighter. Clearly, whatever government had stood before the Rabble took over had been one with fine taste, but Ahor's problem didn't lie amongst the mosaic tiles and the formerly fine leather furniture. It laid below.
"This is it," he said, in a room so far underground it was practically the basement of the basement. "This whole place is storage, but we knocked out a few walls to expand. That's when we found it."
"What did you find?"
"You tell me, Jedi."
Behind all the barrels and the crates was a door, a single door, bare and unlit. It stood fixed into a wall of bare permacrete, unpowered and locked tight.
At least, until Ahor pressed a few keys on his personal datapad and the door swung open.
"Well?"
Even Teller and Jamie, barely acolytes to the Force, could smell the energy emanating from the pitch black doorway.
Jon stepped away, grabbing his daughter and making her do the same. "This is dangerous."
"Says the man who broke into a Mandalorian fortress," Thayla reminded him.
"It's different. Something is wrong here."
"But we are Jedi. Our duty is to the people of the galaxy and doing what is in their best interest."
"Having us investigate some barren room in a crappy basement is in their best interest?"
Thayla turned away from him and stared headlong into a void that she absolutely could not see. Not one shred of light could escape from it.
"The dark side is here, in this place. It has to be investigated and confronted. Teller, do you think you're ready for this?"
"Oh don't worry about me," the young smuggler said with a sardonic grin. "I still have my stick."
Thayla fought the urge to roll her eyes. "Keep focused. Feel the energy around you. Don't focus inward, focus on the greater whole. Do you understand?"
"I get it. I'm ready, Master Creed."
She smiled, hoping that he wasn't lying to her, and stepped inside.