When Mynock dropped out of hyperspace and descended into Bespin's atmosphere, Kyra was in the cockpit with Cade and Deliah. She stood, clinging tight to the back of the pilot's chair to get the best view of their arrival on a new planet.
This had become her ritual on their crisscrossing of the galaxy, and as far as vistas went, Bespin offered one of the most impressive. They dropped toward layers of clouds that burned red-gold in the setting sun and vectored past tibanna refinery platforms suspended above an endless plunge toward the gas giant's retin core. On the way here C-3PO had explained that most of the planet's layers of gas were poisonous to humans and so dense they could crush Mynock to the size of a fist. There was a narrow band where atmospheric pressure and oxygen content created a habitable zone, and it was in this area that several million beings had settled and built floating machinery to extract valuable tibanna from the deeper, high-pressure zones. She'd heard of inhabited gas giants and cities in the clouds, but she'd never imagined what they would look like.
After Mynock levelled out they headed toward the final marvel. Cloud City was a thick and elegant disc half-wreathed in auburn clouds, its lower side tapering into a long shaft of repulsors that kept it steadily anchored in Bespin's life zone. A cityscape bristled on the upper side, though as Cade maneuvered them in for landing Kyra saw that many of the buildings were dark and abandoned, their once-elegant façades scarred by rust and worn by neglect. Tall, bright towers still shone at the city center, but it was clear much of the city in the clouds had fallen from grace.
So it was a rush of wonder, followed by grim settling of reality. A fitting metaphor for their mission, Kyra thought glumly.
The circumstances that had put her on Mynock had frankly been a whirlwind, and the initial stages of the journey no less so. Before meeting Jao, Ania, and Cade, her whole life had been spent on Outer Rim backwaters, and while they'd visited plenty of those in the search for Khat Lah, she'd also been exposed to a breadth of history she'd never imagined, all the while learning more about the Jedi and the Force powers they strove to recover.
Yet despite it all, the past ten months had seen hopes quietly fade with each failed mission and empty lead. Nobody had said aloud that they should just give up, even Jariah and Deliah, though Kyra could tell their patience with Cade's vain quest was running low. Those two were trying to sate themselves with small pleasures, like Lehon's sandy beaches or whatever Vong weapons Jariah was going to get on Bespin. For Kyra, Jao, and Lowbacca, stakes were a lot higher and more personal. Supposedly Jariah's friend Chonyo had uncovered an important lead, she so indulged in beleaguered hope.
After they set Mynock down in a hopefully-safe part of town, they gathered in the ship's crew lounge. Cade and Jariah had already thrown on longcoats and looked ready to go.
"Okay, we've told Chonyo we're in and he gave us a place to meet him," Cade said. "We're not gonna drag a whole crowd with us, so it'll just be me and Jariah."
"I'd like to come too," Jao said, polite but firm.
Cade got a little smile, like he'd expected that. "Three's a crowd. What, after all this time you don't trust us?"
"I just want to be there to ask Chonyo questions."
"Ah, let him come," Jariah said. "But you're gonna let me and Cade do most of the talking, understand?"
"I won't step on your toes," Jao said.
They'd stepped on eachother's toes plenty on this trip, but they also knew when to back off before things got ugly. Cade grunted, "We'll be off in a couple minutes. Grab your gear and let's go."
"Should we be armed?" asked Jao.
Cade and Jariah exchanged looks. The latter said, "Cloud City's seen better days. You might as well bring your blaster."
Jao nodded. Unlike Lowbacca, who still carried his lightsaber despite losing the Force, Jao used only a sidearm nowadays. His old weapon had been stolen from him by Darth Talon in the frenzied last minutes of Darth Maladi's lab, and he'd pointedly refrained from building another. He clearly felt that he didn't deserve to wield one until he'd regained the Force.
Within minutes, the three men had gathered their gear and trundled out of Mynock, leaving the others behind. It was the kind of moment when Kyra felt especially useless, but Deliah popped off the sofa and said, "No point in letting the boys have all the fun. I know a place we can scrounge up some good gear for low prices. Kyra, want to come?"
It was the excuse she'd been waiting for. "I don't see why not."
The Zeltron favored her with a smile. "Then let's get going. I'm sure Lowie and the droids can watch over Mynock while we're gone."
That was true enough. Despite proffering his usual wealth of information about Cloud City, C-3PO seemed reluctant to actually step foot in the place. Kyra had no such qualms. She gathered her things and they were out of the ship in minutes. Deliah went out armed, but Kyra refrained from bringing anything. She'd had practice with blasters but the Zeltron was a better crack shot. She'd spent more time practicing with Lowbacca's lightsaber, under instruction from both the Wookiee and Jao, but she couldn't use it without fear of hurting herself.
Thankfully, the environs outside the landing pad didn't seem unsafe. Most of the people and activity took place in the interior portions of the city, and the halls Kyra and Deliah walked through were well-lit, if a little shabby. The inhabitants were a motley group, leaning toward human with plenty of other species mixed in. Some walked fast, like they needed someplace to be. Others, more shabbily dressed, loitered. A few beings slumped desolate in the halls and panhandled pedestrians.
As they made their way to the market space they passed through dirtier corridors, and places where the lights struggled to stay on. The pedestrians grew scarcer and when they found themselves alone in a long dark hall she asked Deliah softly, "Are you sure this is the right way?"
"I'm just following that map we saw," Deliah said, though she kept one hand near her holstered blaster.
They kept walking, and after turning a corner they saw a brightly-lit section further down the hall, and a few more pedestrians. Kyra allowed a small breath of relief and hurried toward the light.
She only got a few steps before a muffled shout stopped her. Deliah froze too and drew her blaster. They looked around but saw nothing in their hall. The sounds didn't stop, and Kyra backtracked to an intersection they'd just passed. She looked down the right branch to see two figures far down the hall, barely visible in the flickering light. One was on his knees, struggling to rise. The other was pummeling him with angry kicks.
Kyra started down the hall but Deliah grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back. Quiet but very firm, the Zeltron said, "None of our business."
"But they're-"
"You're not a karking Jedi. You don't have to go around solving everyone else's problems."
Even as Deliah tugged her back, Kyra looked down the hall to see the standing man deliver more vicious blows. The man on the floor had curled into itself and stopped struggling. The man might be unconscious, even dead.
She'd seen her share of random cruelty in her life. The bloody bones tattoo on her arm was proof she'd been on the receiving end. It was wrong to let this pass; she knew Lowbacca and Jao would have rushed in to break up the fight, Force or no Force.
But Deliah dragged her away. With a pink hand firm on her shoulder, Kyra allowed herself to be pulled toward the clean, bright section ahead. She could still hear the sounds of muffled violence receding behind them; then she heard the tang of a single blaster shot, followed by silence.
Deliah withdrew her hand, and Kyra shuffled to the light in a daze. As they approached the bright place, where beings with decent clothes went around their business unaware, Deliah leaned close and said, "If you'd gone in there, that could have been you. You understand?"
"It wasn't right," Kyra muttered.
"It's life," Deliah said, like that was the end of the argument.
Kyra didn't have any words to continue it. She followed Deliah through another patch of bright halls, to the section of Cloud City that hosted the equipment market. Deliah shifted her attention to the pretty ship parts with apparent ease, but for Kyra it was harder to forget what had come before.
-{}-
Jariah Syn had been in worse places than the one in which they met Chonyo, but it was still a dive. The light was low because half the lamps seemed burned out, the grime on the floor squished faintly beneath his boots, and the Togruta onstage was wriggling around with an impressive lack of enthusiasm. He, Cade, and Jao went straight to the bar and ordered drinks. Once they got libations in acceptably-clean glasses, Jariah scanned the dark cantina for his friend.
The Yuuzhan Vong was sitting in a corner booth with a dead overhead light, but ambient glow spilled across a masquered face with tanned skin and a dark beard. It was the same face he'd seen Chonyo wear the last time they'd met, but different from the one he'd used back on Crimson Axe. It must be handy, Jariah thought, to be able to change faces at will.
"Good to see you again, Chonyo," he said as he dropped into the booth first. Cade followed, then Jao.
"Good to see you too," Chonyo said. His yellow-tinted eyes turned to Jao. "I've never met you before. You the Imp?"
"That's right." Jao gave a polite little smile.
Chonyo told Jariah, "You keep strange company these days. Next time you should bring that Jedi Wook you've mentioned."
"You said not to attract attention."
"Lad, half the patrons here are drunk stupid and the other half are passed out." Chonyo shrugged. "But whatever. Enjoy the drinks. They're actually half-decent."
His guests did just that, but Jariah could see the confusion on Jao's face. Chonyo had been born on Zonama Sekot but been away for nearly twenty years, and he was as far from the Yuuzhan Vong stereotype as you could get.
After taking a gulp of ale Jariah asked, "So what have you got for me? I don't see any cargo here, so I'm guessing you've got it on your ship."
"That's right." Chonyo reached into his brown jacket and withdrew a slim datapad. He slid it across the scuffed table and Jariah looked over the inventory list.
"All fresh merchandise," the Yuuzhan Vong added. "Thuds bugs, blast bugs, razor bugs…. And eight amphistaffs, fresh from the grove."
Jariah scanned the list hungrily. He had a love for exotic weapons and they didn't get more exotic than Yuuzhan Vong stuff. "Do they need breaking in?"
"They do. But you've always been good at that."
He certainly had; he'd been just a kid when Chonyo showed up on Crimson Axe, and the Yuuzhan Vong pirate had taken him under his wing after Jariah's father had been killed by a Jedi. Chonyo had shipped off the Axe less than a year after Cade joined the crew and seemed to be doing well as a smuggler, bounty hunter, and information dealer all rolled into one.
Jao frowned. "Where does one get illegal Yuuzhan Vong weapons when Zonama Sekot's under strict quarantine?"
"You going to report me to your empress?"
"I was just curious. We've got bigger problems than you."
The Yuuzhan Vong chuckled. "Let me put it this way, lad. My people hauled an entire interstellar civilization into this galaxy. Do you really think you'd be able to keep all of us cooped up on a single planet?"
"No," Jao said. "I' imagine your kind wouldn't be very easy to… coop up."
"And you'd be right. There's more shapers running around the galaxy than Nei Rin." He looked to Cade. "When'd you last talk to her, anyway?"
"Been at least four months," Cade said. "She hasn't had anything new for us and we haven't had questions for her."
"So she didn't tell you that Khat Lah's gathered himself some followers?"
Jariah, who'd been half-paying attention to their words, looked up from the datapad. "What kind of followers?"
"Yuuzhan Vong, what do you think? My source says he went back to Zonama Sekot and recruited about twenty of them, mostly warriors."
"When was this?"
"About fifteen months ago, so before all your Sith virus stuff started happening."
"What did he recruit them for?" asked Jao.
"I have no idea. All I've got is word from another Yuuzhan Vong that he saw Khat Lah and a bunch more of our kind on Sevarcos. They had a Sekotan ship, one of the living ones with dovin basal propulsion."
That meant they could stop looking for an IC-2 scoutcraft. The organic vessels crafted on Zonama Sekot could be implanted with either standard technology or Yuuzhan Vong biotech to handle propulsions, weapons, and shields. They were an extreme rarity, the kind everybody stopped to look twice at but next to nobody would be able to identify. Most people thought they were of Geonosian or Colicoid design.
"Any idea what they were doing on Sevarcos?" Cade asked.
"They needed some repairs on their ship. Capable techs for Yuuzhan Vong ones are hard to come by."
"What kind of repairs? Were they in a fight?"
Chonyo shook his head. "My source says a dovin basal was malfunctioning. Genetic defect, probably."
"This source wasn't from Jezal Ordon, was it?"
"No. I haven't heard from him in a while. Anyway, my source told me all they knew, and they're long gone from that corner of space. So there's no point in asking about them."
"You protect other Yuuzhan Vong, I respect that," Jao said. "But did they give any indication of where Khat Lah was going, or where he'd come from?"
"Actually, yes. My source says he overhead some of Khat Lah's crew talking about their last stop. Sounded like Sebiris, in the Kathol sector."
Jariah was far-travelled, but he'd never been to the Kathol region. It was on the farthest edge of the Outer Rim, past even the Minos and Elrood sectors. The place was known mostly for its unexplained spatial anomalies like the Kathol Rift, which according to Cade was inhabited by a strange arcane sect of alien Force-users that existed beyond normal space-time.
All the more reason to stay away, Jariah figured. He'd more or less stopped hating every Jedi for his father's death, but that didn't mean he liked Force-users. Their powers outstripped the understanding of lowly mortals like himself, and worse, whenever they started fighting among themselves they usually dragged the rest of the galaxy into a bloodbath. Some weird tweak of genetics made them automatic lords and masters over everyone else, and while Jariah wasn't the political type, he knew what felt fair and what didn't. Now that they'd all lost the Force- however that worked, he still wasn't sure- maybe things would quiet down a little.
Yet for all that, here he was, helping Cade on some long-shot mission to get the Force back. He wasn't crazy about the mission; he'd much rather be wasting Rav's pillaged money on Zeltros. But Cade was his brother, and his brother needed help, so he'd committed himself to follow. For a while, anyway.
Cade asked, "So they were on Sebiris fifteen months ago?"
Chonyo shrugged. "Not a hot lead, but it's what I've got."
"It's the warmest we've had so far. We'll look into it."
"Glad to hear it." Chonyo finished his drink, then laid his hand on the tabletop and rubbed thumb and forefinger together. No matter what galaxy you were from, it was a request for payment.
"Relax, you'll get your money," Jariah said. "We'll throw it in with payment for the merchandise."
"You decided what you want yet?"
"Let's go back to your ship so I can take a look." Jariah pushed the datapad back to Chonyo and stood up. That was sign for Cade and Jao to rise too, and the latter hurriedly gulped down half his glass.
They walked out of the cantina, Chonyo in the lead, the others following. The stage was empty and, as Chonyo had predicted, the patrons all seemed passed out or well on their way. According to C-3PO, Cloud City had once been a prized destination, but nothing lasted forever.
"Fifteen months," Jao said, half to himself as they walked.
"Best we've got," Cade said. "Not that that says a lot."
"I think it does. I think it says that wherever Khat Lah is now, he's been there for a year or more. It would explain why nobody's seen him travelling recently."
Khat Lah being dead or imprisoned someplace would also explain it, but Jariah didn't bring that up. He said, "Maybe we'll pick up a fresh lead on Sebiris. Stranger stuff's happened."
"We live in hope," Cade said wearily, but he was right. Once they sealed this deal with Chonyo they could get moving again. This time they might even find something useful.
-{}-
The Mid-Rim planet of Mrlsst collected some of the best universities in the galaxy, aggregating their grounds into a vast academic megalopolis packed with research centers, libraries, lecture halls and convocation arenas. Despite hosting millions of students and staff, the place never felt its size. The buildings were white and clean, the boulevards broad and lined with lush green tree-stalks ten meters high. The population drew from across the galaxy, with a predominance of young humans and native Mrlssi.
Eli Horn looked like he belonged, but he wasn't one of them. He had a mission and tried not to be distracted by all the bright faces and pretty young women living lives normal youths were expected to. After docking at the spaceport, Eli had set off on his own for this task; Darth Talon would draw too many stares. He made his way to the campus of Mrlsst's xenoanthroplogy institute, the most renowned of its type in the galaxy and, more importantly, the site of a vast research library.
The archives were open to offworlders and when he stepped into the library foyer, a squat feather-headed Mrlssi directed him to a computer console where he was required to register for a reading permit. He was glad to see it, and he proceeded to enter identification information. He was not in truth a university student from Corulag named Orath Panelis, but like Khat Lah, he'd secured falsified identity cards before he and Talon began crisscrossing the galaxy.
As he finished submitting the information, Eli said casually, "I'm looking for information on the Pre-Republic era, with a focus on the Rakatan and Gree empires. I have a professor who did research here last year. Is there any way I can look up a list of the archives he viewed?"
The Mrlssi's feathers bristled. "Tsi, I am sorry. Reading lists from our patrons are confidential."
"But you do record them?"
"They are stores in our database, of course… But it is not in library permissions to share. Perhaps you could ask your professor, tsi?"
"He died in a speeder accident a few months ago," Eli said, very serious.
"I am so sorry," the Mrlssi flustered. "But the information is confidential. You understand?"
"I understand." He made a show of disappointment.
"I can provide you with a general reading guide, tsi? Your topic is not uncommon. We have a list of the most requested volumes."
"I'd like that, thank you."
The Mrlssi explained that a list would be sent to whatever cubicle Eli activated in the reading hall. Acting suitably polite, he thanked the librarian and made his way to the long, barrel-roofed chamber full of tightly-packed reading cubicles, each one with a built-in touchscreen datapad. As the librarian had explained, the vast majority of the archives were kept in chronic stasis fields and the public was only able to access digitally scanned images or holographic reproductions. Eli selected one cubicle far from the reference desks, where he'd be sure to have privacy, and inserted his reader's card into the datapad. Just as promised, a list of popular tomes regarding the Gree and Rakata downloaded onto his pad.
It would be good to reconcile hard scholarship with the jumble of legends he'd found in the Gree archives, but Eli had something else to do first.
The Jedi and Sith both had taught him to rely on the Force as his primary tool. Now the Force was gone, and he'd had to teach himself new ones. Over the past months he'd been learning how to slice through common digital security protocols, and he doubted the library's reader database was protected by anything too rigorous. It took some experimentation, but after fifteen minutes he was able to access confidential visitor's information on the cubicle's built-in datapad. He scanned through a long list of visitors, hoping with held breath to see his father's name.
And there it was. Just as he'd hoped, Khat Lah had been here, about eighteen months back. Along with his registration information there was a long list of the documents so-called Reikar Horn had viewed and the order in which he'd pulled them.
Just from scanning the titles, Eli saw a pattern. Khat Lah had spent almost a week at this library, first pulling titles related to the Rakata and the Gree, many from the list he'd just been given. On his last two days, however, he'd exclusively pulled documents related to the Kathol sector, which Eli recalled was a region on the Outer Rim's edge, lightly populated and difficult to navigate for its bizarre spatial distortions.
He called up the documents and began skimming them. Some were shorter journal articles discussing theories on the sector's anomalies, but he encountered a series of field reports from an archaeological excavation on a planet called Sebiris. The reports themselves gave little context, but from what Eli could gather, the project had been proceeding on and off for over two decades, frequently interrupted by war or lack of funding. The most recent report was from after Darth Krayt's defeat and described the project as renewed and expanded.
He read more details on the project itself. It seemed that Sebiris was on the edge of a vast, starless expanse called the Marcol Void, which some theorized to be of artificial origin. Sebiris had a native population of saurians, which had been in a pre-industrial state when Palpatine's Empire had taken the world a hundred and fifty years ago. Since then many human settlers had come to the planet, and their coexistence with the native Sebiri seemed tense.
Of particular interest was a massive hexagonal domed structure located on the planet's northwest continent. The Sebiri treated the place with cautious reverence and had never dared break open the dome. Imperial archaeological teams had held no such qualms, but they'd been surprised to discover the dome was carved from a single piece of rock; stranger still, the hard stone seemed to have been removed from a shelf formation on the planet's southern hemisphere.
The galaxy was full of strange, ancient curiosities, but as Eli read on he understood what had caught Khat Lah's particular interest. In the years before the Sith-Imperial war, xenoarchaeologists had obtained equipment and funds to finally carve through part of the dome and see what was inside. Even through the report's dry academic text, Eli could sense the researchers' excitement as they reported their find. They believed they'd uncovered the ruins of an ancient hypergate.
These portals, which could transmit matter instantaneously across the galaxy without need for a spaceship or hyperdrive engine, had been mentioned frequently in the Gree archives. The cephalopod aliens had relied extensively on the devices to bind their interstellar empire together. Some of what Eli'd read had seemed to imply that the Gree had adopted the technology from another ancient race, the extinct Kwa. Other snippets had insisted the Kwa had stolen it from the Gree. Everything seemed to agree that the hypergates has been conquered and co-opted by Rakata seeking to expand their Infinite Empire. Most hypergates had been destroyed, but some were known to have survived in various states of disuse. Eli had read that a gate on Dathomir had been destroyed shortly before Palpatine's rise, and that others still existed in the Gree enclave, though none knew how to use them.
That coincided with the Gree archives themselves, which included an index of over two hundred worlds which had, at one time or another, hosted a hypergate. Dathomir was among them, as were Te Hasa, Asation, and the other planets in the surviving Enclave. The archives were unclear as to whether the gates listed were solely of Gree origin, but the translators hired by Darth Acheron had otherwise been thorough, even generous. The list included not only the names of systems in ancient Gree and modern Basic, but short summaries of the star systems and coordinates using a Republic-era standard spatial grid. While Eli had heard of a few planets, many were unfamiliar, and some so obscure they weren't even listed on standard star charts.
One theory, supported by scraps in the Gree archives, was that the gates had been powered by Force energy. How such a thing worked, Eli had no idea, but he'd seen the same phrase used over and over to describe the energy fueling both the gates and the Rakatan war machines. The translation from Gree had called it the 'breath of the gods,' a phrase that, he recalled, Khat Lah had also used to describe the Force.
The hypergate on Sebiris had clearly aroused Khat Lah's interest. That had been over a year ago, before the Force had gone silent, but it was the best lead they'd uncovered since this search began, and they'd have to investigate it.
Rather than hurry to go tell this to Darth Talon, Eli took his time. He remained in the library for hours, reviewing the digitized archives. Modern scholars confirmed much of what he'd gathered from the Gree translations. The Rakata had been a race of powerful Force-users who'd eventually lost their ability to touch it. The hypergates had been intentionally wrecked by their Kwa and Gree creations in an attempt to stop the Rakata's spread. While ruins had been found, no record existed of a working hypergate, and attempts at understanding them were mostly theoretical.
He still didn't know why the hypergate had elicited Khat Lah's interest, but a visit to Sebiris might reveal something. Before leaving he looked up the latest reports from the excavation team and found two filed within the past year.
What he read in those entries confused him. They spoke of a slowdown in research, staff problems, and equipment losses, but only in the vaguest terms. Given the dry academic precision of the others reports it was very strange, and he pulled up each one the excavation team had filed to try to piece together what had happened.
He found no explanation. Something had happened that the official reports were hedging around, and it had happened after Khat Lah paid his visit to Mrlsst. Whatever the Yuuzhan Vong had done since then, it must have upset the excavation on Sebiris in a way they didn't want to admit publicly.
That was all the more reason to make haste for the Kathol sector. Eli reviewed the reports one more time to make sure he'd missed nothing, then withdrew his reader card from the datapad and gathered his things.
When he stepped outside he was surprised to find it was twilight. The academy city's students and professors had departed their study halls, leaving the quadrangles empty but the boulevards bustling with young people eager for a fun evening. As he made his back to the spaceport Eli wasn't distracted by the bright lights or pretty faces, the life a normal man his age should be living.
He had a place to go, and a mission to accomplish.