The stink of char. Eye-stinging soot. Whimpers, screams, and the moaning of rent metal. Ahsoka rises in the aftermath of the skybridge bombing amid carnage.
Daylight shimmers through acrid smoke as if peeping through filters. Rebar juts out at wretched angles from gouged duracrete. Half of the bridge is simply gone, the whole structure staying suspended by a narrow, blackened, blasted passage that looks ready to give out at any moment. Then there are the bodies: Dozens. Maybe a hundred or more. Broken, twisted people. Children. Corpses in every guise and every stratum so that Upper and Lower City intermingle in an exposition of death, nobility and poverty reduced to mere reminiscence in the bloody abhorrence of it all.
Only Ahsoka is still standing. Only Ahsoka do the four armored security guards dropping in off of a police speeder confront, their rifles raised, their faces cloaked behind the steely visage of their helmets. Ahsoka raises her lightsabers, shaking off the explosion, the horror, the death. The fight will not wait for her to save who she can.
One of the officers fires without warning. Ahsoka deflects the shot and dodges forward when a pair of blaster bolts veer over her shoulder and catch the shooter in the chest, throwing him back as his three companions duck behind debris.
"Commander!" shouts Rex, sprinting forward, blaster pistols at the ready. He crouches down behind a chunk of duracrete as large as a child, firing another volley to keep their opponents behind cover. "We've gotta get out here."
"Tell me something I don't know, Rex," Ahsoka says, ducking behind the duracrete as the officers return fire. She grimaces as she looks back at the bodies, some still, some stirring. "Some of them are still alive."
Rex shakes his head. He points off to the skyline, where several speeders break from the airlanes and head their way. "More security incoming," he says. "We don't have time."
"I don't even know what happened," says Ahsoka, peeking over cover and back down again as more blaster fire comes in. "I just—"
Then the bridge quakes. The metal groans, the duracrete cracking, and Rex grabs Ahsoka's arm as the skybridge shudders. "No time. The bridge's coming down."
"There's a passage forward. We have to get through those guards."
Rex rises, dodges a shot, and fires. "Then let's go. I've got you covered. Come on!"
Ahsoka sprints out of cover as the bridge rumbles and moves. With her lightsabers crossed and raised in front of her, she runs at top speed as the whole world seems to come apart, metal and bodies and the ground beneath her twisting, snapping, falling into the kilometers-high descent to the city surface below. She spins and whirls over fire, shoving two of the guards to the ground with the Force as Rex strikes the third squarely in the head with a shot. She's almost made it to the under-building passage ahead—safe, solid ground in the tunnel that connects the skybridge to the adjacent tower—when the whole thing gives way.
She stumbles, falls. Behind her Rex slips. "Commander!"
No time to hear him out. As she skids down the collapsing skybridge, she hitches one lightsaber to her belt, jams the other's blade into the duracrete floor, and reaches out for Rex. She catches him by the slimmest of margins, finger-to-finger as the bridge crumbles like some fallen titan plunging into an abyss. Slabs of infrastructure hurtle through the air, pinwheeling, spiraling, until the first chunks slam into the cityscape below with an enormous blast.
But Ahsoka's solution is temporary. Her lightsaber blade digging into the bridge (or whatever is left of it dangling from the side of the tower) is only slowing their descent; even now she merely cuts a wide, burning slice in the duracrete as she and Rex fall little by little. "Rex, grab the rebar! Grab something," she shouts. "We're slipping."
He throws his hand up, catches the side of the collapsed bridge, and hangs on as Ahsoka lets go and skids. She deactivates her lightsaber, lets herself tumble, and snatches the destroyed edge of the bridge as rubble bounces and falls beside her, plunging into freefall. All of Taris below her, the open air, the city. Far too close.
"We've got to climb," Rex grunts, already making his way hand-by-hand up the ruins.
It's a near-vertical ascent, but Ahsoka does not argue: There is nothing else to do but make their way up the dangling bridge ruins inch by inch, one slip, one mistake, throwing them into the void. Ahsoka's hands burn. Her fingers shriek. Sweat drips down her brow and into her eyes. But still she climbs.
Above her Rex stops, holding on to a jagged rib of rebar with one hand while withdrawing one of his blasters with the other. He pops off a trio of shots at a passing police speeder, catching it in the engine coil as the vehicle races away with smoke trailing from the cowling. "Keep moving," Ahsoka says. "This all could come down on us. Keep moving."
Another speeder zips by when they're halfway up. Two security guards lance rifle shots at them, blasting away at the bridge, blowing bits and pieces of the mess into the ether. Ahsoka keeps climbing. Keep going higher. Keep going. Only when Rex stops and volleys another round of counter-fire do they evade. Climb. Climb.
It feels like hours. It feels like days. But by the time Ahsoka's shoulders feel ready to quit, her hands protesting to the point she feels they will throw her into the empty air on their own accord, she is nearly there. Rex grabs a handle on the top of the bridge, yanks himself above the debris-strewn threshold, and reaches down for Ahsoka. "Got you," he grunts as he takes her hand, wincing as he drags her up. "Ugh. Made it."
"Yeah," groans Ahsoka, massaging her shoulders. "Come on, we can't sit around. Security's going to come around at any moment. We've got to keep going."
The tunnel through the building is less than forty meters, but they don't even make it halfway before a speeder descends on the next skybridge on the tunnel's far side. Five guards jump out, rifles ready. "Stand down," booms the lead guard. "We have you surrounded. Stand down."
Another speeder pulls up behind them with officers at the ready. Ahsoka whips her lightsabers into action, the tension in her arms fading as she readies for another fight. Just keep going. Just keep going.
Then the five officers ahead of them startle. "What the—" the lead guard says.
Another speeder, a chromed, four-engined pleasure vessel moving far too quickly to be obeying local traffic safety ordinances, slams into the officers and pitches four of them off of the bridge. The fifth throws himself to safety just in time to see a figure vault off of the offending vehicle, blue lightsaber flashing.
It is all he sees before Anakin drives his lightsaber into his chest.
"Get over here, now!" thunders Anakin as he races forward to intercept the shots coming in from the officers behind Ahsoka. Shadows wash over his face. "I'll keep you covered. Go!"
Ahsoka doesn't think. She doesn't question how her master is here when he was supposed to be back at the Tath estate. Instead she bolts forward into a dead run, arms pumping, head down. She slides past Anakin as he whirls, turns, launches blaster fire back at the guards who have now dropped onto the tunnel. When Ahsoka has passed him he reflects a final shot, then gathers the Force in his hands, grimaces, and launches a wave of energy forward.
The shouts tell Ahsoka all she needs to know about what happens next.
From the speeder Obi-Wan waves Ahsoka forward. "Aren't we all having so much fun today," he sighs as she and Rex leap in.
Anakin is no more than a foot behind them. "Really great time for jokes," he says. "Move over. I'm still driving."
"Oh, I was afraid you'd say that. After that nice breakfast, too."
Ahsoka drops into the rear seats and leans over, catching her breath, rubbing her hands to ease their aching as Anakin blasts them into the sky. "I don't know what happened," she pants as they veer around the tower, less speeder-like and more as if flying in a starfighter in the heat of battle. "I was checking out a signal from the comms tower, Master Kenobi—"
"You can give us the full story on it later," Obi-Wan says. "I have an inkling of what happened."
"What went on at the estate, General?" Rex asks.
"The usual for this sort of thing. We had a nice evening of entertainment, a hearty meal, good conversation, some lightsaber practice—Anakin, will you please watch where you are flying?"
"Are you the one flying? Just let me handle it and—"
Ahsoka sees the incoming security speeder before he does. "Look out!"
Anakin jolts the craft so hard Rex nearly falls out. "All right, that was a maybe little close," he says as he peels towards a trio of towers to their right.
"I'm going to be sick," mutters Obi-Wan.
They veer between the towers as their pursuit closes in, the security speeder whirling about and moving onto their tail, rifle fire flying in. Anakin clenches his jaw, climbs, and then dives into a roll, pinwheeling between the towers as the security speeder struggles to keep up. Then Anakin dips and curves around the nearest tower in a turn so tight Ahsoka feels as if she's going to black out. Their pursuit tries to match the maneuver. The result is an enormous explosion as it plows into the building, glass and steel flying everywhere.
"They're going to bill the Republic for this, you know," says Obi-Wan.
"I'm sure the Senate can figure it out," Anakin replies.
Ahsoka glances behind them as another speeder pulls up, a soldier standing behind the pilot and rifling shots at them. "Got another one," she says.
"Keep us even, General," Rex says, aiming his blasters. "I got 'em."
"Nothing too fancy, Rex," says Anakin.
Ahsoka snorts. "You're telling him that?"
"I must agree," murmurs Obi-Wan, looking a shade green.
"What did I just say a minute ago about the backseat flying?"
Rex squints and fires. His first and second shots miss, but the third one catches the security speeder in its glass viewscreen. The pilot tries to maneuver away, but Rex hits the underside, then the engines, and fire plumes from the vessel as it wavers like a drunk and veers away. "Nice shot," says Ahsoka.
"Just another day on the job," says Rex.
As they rocket past another building, the advertising viewscreen on it blurs and flashes. Solan Tath's face fills it forty stories high, full of anger, full of indignant justice as he shouts, "The Jedi have brought the Clone Wars to Taris! They violate our neutrality, think they can seize our world out from under us, and what does your prime minister do? What does your ruling council do? They do nothing! They will not protect you, my fellow Tarisians. They abandon you to curry favor with the Republic, with the same corrupt Jedi who come here to kill and thieve!"
Playing under him is a recording of, as far as Ahsoka can glean, what must have happened to lead Anakin and Obi-Wan here. Gardens. A stage. A blaster shot. Solan Tath wounded, falling, crying assassins, assassins. Then there is Anakin in full glory on camera, lightsaber lit, blasting electrostaff-carrying security guards with the Force. "You shot him?" Ahsoka asks.
"I didn't shoot him, that's just what that thing wants you to think," snaps Anakin. "Did you blow up that bridge?"
"No!"
"Then I didn't shoot him. We all got set up."
Obi-Wan groans. "Can we please just find a place to land before we argue about who shoot who?" he says. He points to a large hole in the cityscape before them, a cargo tunnel linking the Lower City with the skyline like the mouth to some urban sarlacc swallowing whole the transports and freighters zipping in and out of the aperture. "There. Passage to the Lower City. We can get lost down there."
"This is not," says Anakin as he dives towards the tunnel, "exactly how I thought this assignment was going to go."
No, thinks Ahsoka as she looks over her shoulder, watching Solan Tath launch accusation after accusation for all of the Upper City to see. No it isn't. The best-laid plans are left in tatters, crumbling with the blasted skybridge, and now they are little better than fugitives on the run on a planet the Taths are turning against them, against the Jedi, against the Republic.
There is nothing to do but to go forward. Keep going. Keep going.
Chancellor Palpatine's office can give Padme the shivers. Crimson everywhere, cold air, the stillness, quiet of it all, as if nothing said in here can escape these walls. She knows the Chancellor to be a good man—an effective politician, perhaps even to the point of cold-heartedness at times, but effective nonetheless. Still, he could stand to redecorate. At least make this place a little more approachable.
Yet he, at least, is full of sympathy today. "My heart goes out to Senator Robb. To all of Taris. And to you, my lady, for having to see her in her final moments. And to you, Senator Organa," says Palpatine. "You can be assured that this vile act will not go unpunished. Already I have investigators searching every inch of the Senatorial offices for signs of an intruder. We will find them. And we will show them the justice of democracy."
Padme closes her eyes. Nods. The little things she is supposed to do. But none of it will drown out that sight of Kin Robb clawing at the floor, splayed out like an animal, gasping for breath. Nothing will drown out that little voice inside her. You had your suspicions that night of the party, that night Ahsoka contacted you. You didn't say anything. Why didn't you say anything? But there is nothing she can do now. "Thank you, Chancellor."
Beside her, Bail Organa muses. It is just the two of them, them and the Chancellor and the Chagrian Vice Chair of the Senate, Mas Amedda, alone in this chilly heart of galactic democracy. Such an incursion, such a breach of the trust and safety of these walls, and yet so few know. The other senators will know before long, but the Chancellor couches patience, patience. We must cushion this blow. This will be hard on us all. "It's like with Senator Farr," Bail says, his eyes lost amid the dead space of the Coruscant cityscape outside. "Enemies within are driving us apart, tearing us down."
Padme knows he means well, but that is the last thing she wanted to hear. First Onaconda Farr of Rodia, and now Kin Robb of Taris. Senators fighting for peace, clashing with the hawkish factions of the Senate, and now both are dead. Friends, dead. The war has reached even this vaunted institution, and death is everywhere. Death is the only thing that is winning. "Senator Robb would've wanted us to keep going on," she says. "She wanted peace. She fought so hard for Taris to stay neutral. We have to maintain that, for her sake. For her people's sake."
Chancellor Palpatine looks grave. "I'm afraid, my lady," he says, "that may be difficult."
"What do you mean?" says Bail.
"Reports that have come in from Taris yesterday are troubling, to say the least," says Palpatine. He nods to Amedda, who punches buttons on his datapad and brings up a holorecording on the Chancellor's desk. "I am afraid neutrality seems to be slipping away."
Padme recognizes Hosha Tath shouting, her face twisted in anger and rage as two recordings play behind her. In them she finds recognition too: Anakin. Ahsoka. Lightsabers drawn. Explosions. Blaster fire. "If the Republic would stomp on our neutrality," Hosha snarls on camera, "and if the Republic would spit on our peace, then what is left but to show them Taris's strength? Our leaders ignore every death, excuse every action as terrorists run rampant through the Upper City, causing all manner—"
Amedda shuts the recording off. "Peace seems scarce on Taris."
"Yes," Palpatine agrees. "I have great faith in Master Skywalker, but it seems whatever the Jedi Order is engaged in on Taris, it is going poorly."
"The Jedi are not terrorists," spits Bail.
Palpatine holds up his hand. "You do not need to tell me, Senator Organa," he says, "but the truth of the matter is that appearance is what matters. The Tath family maintains vast influence in media and popular opinion on the world, and if the Jedi have clashed with them—if popular sentiment on Taris turns against the Jedi—then Taris risks falling from the Republic's good graces." He sighs and leans forward, pressing his fingertips together. "I know the Order means well, but there are times, many times, where action and fighting does nothing but aggravate an irascible situation. I fear the Order's involvement in the war, the Jedi's role as generals and commanders, has made them as much a risk in some situations as an asset. Democracy is such a fragile thing. We cannot afford to have it go so awry."
"The Jedi wouldn't have gone to Taris without knowing how fragile the Neutral Systems are," says Padme, confused. What happened between Ahsoka's call and now? What blew up? If the Taths knew Anakin was coming, as Ahsoka said, did they have a set-up waiting for him, too? And if so, why? "This can't be their fault. This is…Master Skywalker, I'm sure, went to Taris with the best of intentions."
"I, too, am sure of it," says Palpatine, "but we cannot let this situation further inflame the precarity of the neutral worlds. If they lose faith in the Republic, the Separatists will be waiting to capitalize."
"I'll go," Padme says abruptly.
"Pardon?" says Amedda. "Senator?"
The speed of her response shocks even her, but now that she has made up her mind, it is too late to veer off course. Anakin is in trouble. If she can fix that—if she can help him—then she will. If that helps the Republic and democracy as well, all the better. "A Senatorial delegation could smooth things over with Tarisian leadership. At least with their prime minister," says Padme.
Amedda considers her proposal. "It might ease their fears," he says to the Chancellor. "Convince Tarisian government, at least, to remain loyal. The people can always be brought around later. Days matter in the midst of war."
"It's a fine idea," says Bail, "but you shouldn't go alone, Padme. I'll accompany you."
"Thank you, Bail, but with all due respect, I can handle it," says Padme. "I have plenty of experience with Mandalore. Taris holds their neutrality just as dear."
Palpatine rises. He turns, facing the window looking out at the city. There is a regality about his stature, the way he clasps his hands behind him, back straight, head high. Almost imperial. "Senator Organa is right," he says, "if for no other reason than that two pairs of eyes can better see the situation at hand than just one." He turns. "Please, my lady. Taris is close to breaking. It would agonize me if anything were to happen to you on that world. It would agonize all of Naboo. The two of you, I am sure, will fare all the better with each other's company."
Padme wants to resist. She wants to be alone on this assignment—not just to address the Tarisian government and convince them to stay loyal, but to find Anakin, to pull him out of whatever devil's trap he has stumbled into. But Palpatine's pleading eyes, his subtle smile, his…his…there is something else that she can feel, isn't there? She cannot say no. "All right," she says in the end, "but we shouldn't waste time. If the situation on Taris is spiraling down by the day, we need to leave at once."
"Of course," says Bail. "A plain diplomatic courier from the Senatorial transport fleet would be best, rather than one of our personal ships. I'm ready immediately."
"Go, Senators, to Taris," says Palpatine. "Carry the Republic's will with you. And may the best of luck be with you."
As Padme leaves, she does not see Palpatine turn. She does not see him smile.
She does not know that all is proceeding as he has foreseen.
There is no time in space. No day, no night, no dawn, no sunset. Just cold space, frozen as if it will always be this way, the black from which the twinkling of stars defies the darkness. It is chilly, forlorn, lonely. The Jedi are expected to venture forth across space, planet to planet, system to system, but Tamri will always want firm soil beneath her feet. The reliability of maternal earth. That kind, giving resistance of land. The reassurance of a sky that shall never throw her into the void.
The silence, too, unnerves her. It is too quiet aboard the Into Evening's Call. This freighter could hold a dozen people comfortably, but just the four of them—and the two mercenaries spend most of their time in the cockpit, at that—makes it all the lonelier, all the colder. Like living in a morgue.
She tiptoes through the main living hold as Sae dozes on a couch. Sleeping hours, according to a clock set to Nar Shaddaa time, but Tamri cannot sleep. Echoes of Belderone bounce around her head. Falco standing to the last, under fire as they abandoned him. She's tried talking about it with Sae, but all her master does is shake her off, her face shadowed by that same darkness Tamri saw after Master Gallia's death. It's taking its toll, all these losses, aren't they?
This war has to be over soon. It has to. Doesn't it?
Her stomach gurgles. Amid the quiet of space and the purr of the hyperdrive it may as well be a gunshot. Before she can wander off to the ship's tiny kitchen Sae stirs. "I already made breakfast," Sae mumbles. "You just have to warm it up. Kitchen."
"Oh," says Tamri. Is that what time it is? Breakfast time? She supposes it is important to keep up a semblance of routine, even if that routine keeps landing them in bad situations. Spaceports, impound yards, hyperspace—it's a soggy, dirty blur. "Thanks. Can't sleep either?"
"I'm trying to now," Sae murmurs. Then she turns over away from Tamri.
Sorry.
Tamri yearns for company, no matter what form it takes. Emerging from the kitchen with a bland pastry in hand—apparently by "making breakfast" Sae meant taking a plastifoil-wrapped package out of the storage cupboard and leaving it there before wandering back to the hold—she pokes her head into the cockpit. It's oddly spacious even with seating for only two. The frontal viewscreen stretching above and below the pilot and co-pilot seats exposes all of hyperspace around the ship, the blue blur of faster-than-light travel enveloping ship, people, all. A private little universe where only the four of them might dwell, even for only a short while.
Neelotas is missing—sleeping, or trying to sleep, like Sae, Tamri imagines. Only Lendon Rust is here, the Zeltron mercenary's feet kicked up over the piloting controls, his scarlet-skinned arms propped up behind his head. He peers over his shoulder at Tamri's arrival, grunts, and returns to looking back out the viewscreen without a word.
"Are we running into more battle?" Tamri says. "More lasers and droid fighters?"
"Nope," Lendon murmurs. He pauses, his fingers twitching. "You gonna sit down, or you gonna just stand there watching?"
She sits. The controls baffle her: Tamri has never been much for piloting. Perhaps the Jedi are expected to do such things—Sae is a decent pilot for sure, capable at the controls of a transport or starfighter, and Tamri knows all about the legendary skills of people like Master Plo Koon or Anakin Skywalker—but maneuvering ships through the void has never come easily to her. It's so empty. So lacking in spirit. The black, airless beyond right there. She understands the mechanics, the digits, the engineering, everything that makes a ship go—she is at home and alive with the wires and parts and machines—but the piloting itself she will always leave to others.
Tamri nibbles on the pastry as she slides into the copilot's seat. Stale. Dry. Flaky. Starship food. "How many different hyperjumps have we done?" she says.
"Five," murmurs Rust. His eyes closed. His face serene.
"Why did we need to do that?"
"Loads of hyperspace turbulence all around Ossus's subsector. Gotta keep jumping in and out to reenter coordinates. Takes a while. Only real determined people go there. Blame it on whatever blasted the planet thousands of years ago," says the mercenary. He takes a deep breath. Opens his eyes. "Rastic said you were looking for something important there."
Tamri nods. "Yeah. There are lots of old Jedi ruins on the planet. We're looking for…for something."
"Something. Great. Descriptive."
"Mm. My master knows more. I think," she says. "What was he like?"
"Who?"
"Rastic. Our intelligence officer contact who got himself captured. He hired you, right? That's what Falco said."
Rust scoffs. "Yeah. He was an idiot. Man had the brain of a bantha. Republic can't hire for nothin', apparently."
"Oh. Guess no surprise he got captured by bounty hunters, then."
"Yup. But he paid well and he paid ahead of time, so whatever. The credits are what matters to me."
"Ahead of time? So you're not going to run off and abandon us on Ossus, are you?"
Rust smirks. "You gotta have a little honor in this line of work. Or, at least, that's what Neelotas tells me. Pretty much the reason why we left the Haxion Brood and went independent. Guy said he didn't want to take bad orders anymore and I just went along with it. He'd never let me ditch you all, for what's it worth. Guess some of that rubbed off on me."
Tamri smiles. "Well. Good."
They sit in silence for a long while, Jedi and mercenary, their lives a galaxy apart and yet no more than three feet separating them in the cockpit. Sensors beep. Lights flicker, fade, flicker again. The scanner in front of Tamri is empty in hyperspace. All around is the light, the blue, the passing of space before them in this hypnotic slipstream. Rust sits up. "Almost time to jump out of hyperspace," he mutters.
"Time for a new set of coordinates?"
"Nah, we're at Ossus," he says. He looks at his scanner and shrugs. "You ever flown any freighters like this with the Jedi?"
"No, not really. Sae does the flying. I go along for the ride."
The Zeltron points to the scanner. "Why don't you take us out of hyperspace?"
"You sure?" says Tamri, gulping down the remains of her pastry. "I don't want to mess it up."
"Thought you Jedi had special senses and whatnot. Ah, whatever. You won't mess it up. Just grab that handle on your right and pull it when you see the big blob on your scanner."
Tamri doesn't know what big blob he means, but she'll go along with it. It's more than Sae usually lets her do. She waits with baited breath, a strange sort of excitement building—is this the thrill of piloting? Or, at least, actually being good at piloting?—until her scanner starts beeping and a white, globular mass appears on her scanner. "Is that it?"
"You gonna pull it already or are we gonna crash and die?"
She yanks on the handle. Hyperspace blurs, dims, fades. Stars rush past, then slow, then hurtle to a stop. Ossus roars into view. A world of brown. Rock-littered surface beneath a tan-sky atmosphere. A sphere of debris and meteors passes around the planet like a shield, as if some sister world exploded here long ago and now its grave has wrapped this tomb planet with its bones. "Not exactly a pretty sight," says Rust.
Sae stumbles into the cockpit, "Maker," she mutters, taking a swig from a dark green bottle, "do you ever do maintenance on this thing? It rattles like a Hutt with bad bowels."
"You offering to pay?" says Rust.
Sae scoffs. "Bill the Republic," she says. She waves at Tamri. "Scoot. Let me sit."
Tamri stands and moves aside. She frowns as Sae slouches down, taking another drink. Perhaps space has no time, but isn't it a little early to be taking swigs from whatever (almost certainly intoxicating, based on what she saw in the larder) beverage that is? "Maybe I should make breakfast next time?" she suggests gingerly.
"Go 'head," Sae murmurs. To Lendon she adds, "I'll punch in coordinates for where you need to go. It's near the northern pole."
"That's a big place," says the Zeltron.
"Temple ruins built into an old mountain. Frosty. Around the entrance there's an abandoned, pre-war archeological dig site from the Kuat Society for the Preservation of Historical—you know what? There's digging stuff around a hole in a mountain. Just follow the coordinates."
"Fair enough."
They dive into the Ossus sky. Flame blasts around the cockpit as the Evening plunges into the stratosphere. Then as they dip below thin, wispy grey cloud cover the landscape of Ossus opens up. Rocky plains, mushroom-like mesas. Vegetation as sparse as on Coruscant. It really is a tomb, Tamri thinks: As if life itself evacuated this place long ago, leaving death and death alone to reign among its whispers, its memories, its echoes. Old stone. Barren wastes. There is a sadness to Ossus, a thought of what could have been. This was once the library world of the ancient Jedi Order. Now it is only dust and rocks and ghosts.
From behind her Neelotas shambles in, wiping sleep from his eyes, his head tendrils lying limp against his shoulders. "Oof. That's an ugly planet," the Nautolan grunts. "This the Jedi idea of a vacation?"
"I could use one of those right about now," Sae harrumphs.
Neelotas laughs. "Yeah? I know this great place on Ylesia, whole bunch of Twi'lek girls who—"
"Not that kind of vacation."
Tamri perks up. Again her curiosity takes over. "Isn't Ylesia a Hutt world?" she says.
"Yeah, kind of," says Neelotas. "Mostly. Interested? You wouldn't believe some of the spice dens they got, it's all kinds of great."
"How's that?"
"Tam, not now," says Sae, sounding tired.
Lendon taps his scanner. "Bad news. Mountains everywhere. Gonna be hard to isolate just one of them."
"There ruins everywhere? Archeology stuff?" says Sae.
"Ruins, yeah. I don't have any pings on sensors or tech or whatnot, so I have no idea if the Kuat whatever of whatever set down."
Sae groans. "Just fly low. I'll point out anything interesting."
The Evening passes over one mountain range, and at last Tamri gets her first look at what Ossus may have looked like in its glorified past. A stone column-lined road runs down to an enormous squat, square building—a temple? A library?—flanked by a pair of small pyramids surrounded by debris. That old familiar thrill fills her up. It's like digging through a lost civilization, rooting through the records of a people forgotten to the galaxy. Being the first to know what all others have forgotten. The Jedi Council might have sent Sae and her here, but clearly they didn't know everything—if they had, there would've been no reason to root around the place for whatever knowledge Sae has hinted at finding. Oh, to spend time here. Real time, not time pressed by war and the demands of the Order. To dig her hands into this foreign earth and come away with something that no one has set eyes on in thousands of years—it is all Tamri wants right now. The mystery. The intrigue. The history. She just wants to know it all.
Sae points to a ruin complex rising to their left beside a pair of low, sloped mountains. "There. That's it."
Hints of snowfall speckle the ground here. Mountains topped with white; frost-dusted slopes that look as if decorated with powdered sugar. The wind buffets the Evening as Lendon pulls the ship in for a landing near an arrangement of dozens of tents and prefabricated buildings, utilitarian stuff designed by whatever academic expedition Sae mentioned that must have evacuated with the onset of war and the occupation of this sector by the Separatists.
The Evening settles down on the ground with a thump. "I'm gonna stay inside, for what it's worth," says Rust. "These dusty, barren planets don't do much for one's health."
"Your loss. I'm havin' a look around," Neelotas says, his face lit up to the point Tamri thinks he's almost as excited for adventure as she is. "Don't worry," he adds to Sae, "I'm not interfering in whatever your business is. Just gonna see the sights."
"Be my guest. All the same to me," says Sae. "Tam, come on. We have things to do."
"This is the right place," Tamri asks as they tromp through the hold. "Right?"
Sae doesn't answer. She hands Tamri her sullied, gray cloak from Belderone as the ship's boarding ramp creaks open. "Put this on. It's cold. Did you eat?"
"Yeah. A little."
"Good. We might be out and about for a while."
The wind whips in, harsh, biting, but fresh. Tamri breathes it in. "Master?" she prods Sae again. "You are sure where we're going, right?"
Sae clenches her jaw. She stares right ahead out of the opening ramp. Before them scatters the remains of the archeological dig site, and beyond that a massive, gaping hole in a mountain, as if some great monster of myth smashed the rock apart with its fist. "Yeah. I'm sure."
"Are you sure about what we're looking for?"
Again Sae does not respond at once. Still she only looks forward, and from the way Tamri sees her eyes stare—dead-set, firm, her brows creasing—she has the impression that Sae is less looking for what the Jedi Council told her to find and more in search of something she herself seeks.
A funny feeling invades Tamri's chest. Alien. Upsetting. Almost queasy.
"Yeah," says Sae, her voice hardened, determined. "I can feel it."