Lindmon's saber whizzed in his hand, the squad of stormtroopers in front of him fired harmlessly into his blade as it flipped around him. The group was retreating, the troopers at the front trying in vain to hold him as their comrades ran down the long dark hall behind them. Lindmon could feel the adrenaline coursing through him as he deflected a bolt back into the face of the trooper who fired it, the helmet sizzling as the soldier collapsed to the ground dead.
"We can't hold him! Go!" One of the troopers shouted, turning behind him to his comrades. Lindmon darted forward, his blade slamming into the chest of the soldier as the man gasped his last breath and collapsed to the floor. The group of soldiers reached the end of the hall, the door there closed tight. As one of the remaining soldiers tapped rapidly at the console in an attempt to open it, Lindmon's saber flew from his hand and planted hilt deep in the back of the trooper's head. The red blade carving heat scars in the wall on the other side as the force pinned his helmet against it.
The final soldiers slammed on the door, the fear dripping from them pulled Lindmon forward as his blade flew back to his hand. The screams of the stormtroopers echoed in his head as his blade slid easily through their bodies in a flurry of slashes and dismembered limbs. As the pile lay at his feet, the red glow of his blade thrummed against the stark white of the armor of his foes. The door before him slid open, the darkness of the other side filling the hallway like a heavy fog spilling forth. He took a step over the threshold, a figure on the other side beckoning him forward. The red glow of his opponent's lightsaber covering the floor around him as the two approached each other. Lindmon raised his saber and took another step, coming face to face with a massive wall.
The figure on the other side stopped as Lindmon did, and as his eyes adjusted he could see the form of black skull, the red eyes glaring out at him.
"Rise and shine Crest." the figure said, the voice raspy. Lindmon raised his blade, the light of the sword shining into his own face as he watched his opponent mimic him, the face of the Skull melting away to reveal Lindmon's own staring back...
Lindmon woke with a start, cold sweat covering himself and the cot he lay upon. He scrambled into a sitting position, breathing heavily. Sabine looked over from her position at the ladder leading down, raising an eyebrow at him as he wiped his face.
"Everything ok? Nightmare?" She inquired, concern clear in her voice.
"Yea, I'm fine just... we're there then?" Lindmon asked, changing the subject as he pulled himself from the rack, his legs shaking.
Sabine waited at the bottom of the ladder, arms crossed. "Did you want to talk about it?" Watching as Lindmon came down.
It was hard not to notice his recent struggles sleeping. They all slept in the same room after all.
"No, no," Lindmon replied, waving her off and stepping inside the cockpit. "I'll be fine. Let's see what we've got."
Sabine frowned but let it go for now. She didn't like when people pried into her business and tried to give that same respect to others. Still... what had happened in the last month, what could be bothering the Lieutenant like this? He had been commanding Palatine base for over a month now, as well as honing his Jedi skills. Leadership was stressful, she knew that first hand. Sabine decided she would keep an eye on him, recurring nightmares weren't a good sign, especially for Jedi.
Within the cockpit Sulahaan adjusted their hyperlane route on the navi computer to his left, linking together the pieces of their route back to Palatine base. "Planet iss unnamed," Sulahaan explained, "just a generated Imperial marker. Designated XR-533."
Giz swept the Zephyr's scanners over the drifting cluster of debris as they approached. The readouts identified large masses of durasteel armor plating, twisted barrels of turbolaser cannons and hundreds of humanoid signatures. Crew members that had been vented into space from massive hull breaches, petrified and rigid.
"Whoa," Giz exclaimed, "Check this out..."
As the ship flew closer to the gas planet, the wreckage became easier to identify visually. Among the flotsam was the skeleton of a massive creature, nearly eight hundred meters long. The corpse picked dry of flesh, Mynocks most likely. The creature would have been almost as large as a Star Destroyer, the ravenous space pests would have fed off it for over a year.
It had a streamlined, torpedo-shaped body, and a horizontally flattened head with empty eye holes placed on the sides. The large mouth was filled with egg-shaped, irregularly implanted teeth. It was an awesome sight, a creature that could have been hundreds of years old or more...now just a barren asteroid of bone.
Sabine gripped the back of the co-pilots chair as she examined the carcass of the huge creature. She almost chuckled through the incredulous smirk on her face. This was the place. Before they were only searching along trails based on guesswork and clues but now they were actually in pursuit.
Immediately disregarding the task of identifying the many bodies floating in the wreckage she moved on to the next potential option. She couldn't find him if he was dead. "How many moons are around five-thirty-three?" Sabine hastily asked Giz.
"Thirteen total, most of them are on the far side of their orbit patterns right now."
"How many with life?"
"Three." Giz replied after a short pause to check the incoming readouts.
Sabine turned back to face Lindmon, her eyes ignited with fiery zeal. "We need to get to those moons Crest."
Lindmon gazed out of the viewport into the faces of countless floating corpses. Their bodies were a mix of burnt, charred flesh and frozen crystal. Five years of floating absently and being bombarded with heat from the nearby star left them almost unrecognizable, but each one still seemed to be screaming in his ears. "This place is heavy, the years have done nothing to settle down the damage to the Force done here." He mused quietly.
The Zephyr boosted out of the cloud of debris and angled its trajectory to synchronize with the large gas planet's orbit. Lindmon could still feel the whisper of pain and anguish that emanated from the petrified corpses and bones of the large creature. It was difficult to identify what it had looked like in life. The flesh and tendons had been devoured clean, but he found that it looked similar to the strange creature depicted on Sabine's shoulder armor. Carefully repainted after the ion discharge damage, it had the same broad head emblazoned on the striking blue shoulder plate. It looked a little less dreadful with its bright yellow and purple skin.
As they drew closer to the moons Giz flicked on the scanners and directed them to take a more definitive sweep. After a few minutes the console chimed and three separate markers popped up on the screen. "Okay so...we've got one that's almost entirely water, life form readings were minimal but I was only able to get surface scans, there's no telling if it's as eccentric as Palatine." Giz explained to Lindmon with a chuckle, "Our second candidate is just the opposite, forests mostly, and the life scans topped out. They're both along the equatorial orbit lines so they have a similar climate, warm and humid."
"And what about the last one?" Lindmon queried.
Giz rechecked her display before responding, "That one is on the far side of the planet, we'll have to get closer. But based on its trajectory it'll have a more sparse climate than the others, tundra maybe?" She traced her finger across the screen, showing the moon's path around the gas giant. Its orbit was slow and meandered behind the planet, shielding itself from the dwarf star for such a long period of time that the climate had adapted to be colder.
Sabine rubbed her chin, trying to process the different options. Which area to check first. She knew how Ezra would react under duress, if he couldn't escape the sector he would go to ground and hide until he exhausted the Imperials. So anywhere that made it difficult to search for him would, ironically, be the best place to start. Each moon however, were extremely suitable for this, he could have picked either of them to hide on, and that's only if he didn't find a way out of the sector.
The decision making wasn't any easier for Lindmon. He was anxious to try searching the waters for clues. The effort could take forever and they had already spent enough time just trying to get here.
"The forest planet is the closest as of now, we may as well start our search there, we could subsequently split up and have You and Giz go and take a look at the ice ball while Sul and I take a look down there, Sul's nose would be helpful."
"Not to mention the cold and I don't get along all that well." Sul grunted.
Sabine nodded at the idea, looking down at the incoming data. "That could work yea." She responded. "Would definitely help to speed it up a little."
Lindmon tapped on Sul's shoulder. "The hard part will be finding the lead that could pinpoint where they went down." He moved over to the data console before continuing. "Try and get us some scans that show any crashes or similar things to give us a clue as to where they may have gone." Sul flashed a thumbs up before maneuvering the ship.
Several hours passed slowly as the shuttle moved into its new orbit position. Sabine and Giz had passed the time by checking readouts on the monitors as they slid by. Lindmon assisted in the positioning, but little else happened until finally the console chimed and Giz made an excited noise. "Tech readings! Two spots on the forest moon! Looks like we found our escape pods!"
A breath of relief escaped the Lieutenant, and he could tell the others were similarly relieved. "Then it seems we start there. Let's head down." Sul grunted in affirmation as he set the shuttle on an entry approach. "Let's find ourselves a jedi…"