DXUN, 40 YEARS ABE:
It had been a forest moon at one point-and technically, Leia supposed, it still was. It was just that the forest was dead now.
Their sleek little yacht dropped slowly through the atmosphere, moving less like a stone tossed into a pond and more like a funeral procession through a mausoleum-ponderous, heavy, but unobserved. The clouds seemed to be the only thing in motion on the whole world, dull and thick and shredding into jagged wisps around the hull of their ship. Below, everything was the color of thick peat and bleached bone and age-blackened rock. The demarcation line between day and night lay ominously before them, the sun doing less to illuminate the world below than to highlight the weight of its shadows.
The Lady Luck chased the daylight as they descended in a long, slow loop around the wizened orb. The distant, yellowish globe of Onderon dropped out of sight behind them as their orbit moved beyond the curve of the moon. Even when they crossed beyond its edge into Dxun's night, the world below hardly seemed any bleaker. Aphyllous trees reached towards the achromic sky like broken claws that had long since given up their quest to scratch the fraying clouds. If there were animals or insects-and surely there was something still living down there, small and stunted though it may be; the idea of an extant world where there was nothing was almost too much to grasp, even for a daughter of Alderaan-they were keeping well out-of-sight of the interloper that dared disturb their sepulchral seclusion.
They had crossed nearly half the moon's surface before Leia leaned forward, pointing. "Look," she said, pale finger reaching between the pilot and copilot's seats towards the viewport like a lodestone.
"I see it," Han murmured as Chewbacca gave a soft little whuff of agreement.
The Lady Luck curved down towards the one break in the bleak terrain of bare-boned trees: an ancient, crumbling citadel that squatted, heavy and vine-covered, half consumed by the forest. Several dead-looking saplings sprouted along its crumbling outer walls and one wide trunk had split its way straight through the center of the structure, cracking the walls open around it like the eggshell of some ancient beast. There was no way of telling what color or colors the squat fortress had once been; its stones now were black with age and dirt and decay so that it seemed almost more shadow than structure. It would have been impossible to see beneath the cover of the trees if they had still been the lush, vibrant living things they surely must once have been. Against its current backdrop, however, the blocky citadel stood out like a tombstone amid a field of unburied bones.
No one spoke until the landing gear had settled, stiff and crunching, on the hollow carcasses of desiccated branches. The Lady Luck's landing lights illuminated several meters of dry trees and blank rock. Han reached forward and toggled a switch to turn on the floodlights, and a brighter beam stretched from their ship to the front of the citadel. It still looked dark, as though the light did more to define the shadows than chase them away.
It was Chewbacca who finally broke the silence, his growl uncharacteristically quiet as he reached for the bowcaster slung on the back of his chair.
"I don't know, Chewie," Han said nervously, peering forward through the viewport for a closer look. "I've got a bad feeling about this."
"There's nothing here," Leia said. Her voice was hollow, her face pale and flat.
The others turned to stare at her.
"What do you mean there's nothing here?" Han blustered. "You're the one who told us to land here, you can see the place plain as day-or night, I suppose, not that it makes much difference-"
But Leia was shaking her head. "I don't mean the...the building. I mean the moon. Dxun. There's nothing...here. The Force is...is thin, empty. There's no life on this world."
Chewbacca rumbled an anxious interrogative.
"Not like space," Leia explained. "Space is...is wide and open, yes, but it's not empty. The Force reaches between worlds, connects even the dark spots between stars. But this…"
She shivered.
"You want to stay with the ship?" Han asked. For once, there was no trace of his usual sarcastic drawl. He reached back and wrapped a hand around his wife's cold fingers. His face looked gray and worried and the fading light seemed to catch in every crag and wrinkle that a hard-lived life had given him, as though highlighting the length of every year and every parsec he had thus far survived. "Chewie and I can go-"
"No," Leia said, although it was clear she very much did. "No, I have to do this."
Han nodded, although he didn't look happy about it.
Chewie growled reassuringly and patted Leia on the shoulder. They would all go, together.
This time it was Han who shook his head. "No I don't think so, Chewie," he said. He glanced back out the viewport at the looming rubble of their destination. "This place gives me the...the heebie-jeebies." The mocking words did nothing to undercut the truth of his statement. "I want you to stay with the Lady Luck. Make sure we…" His crooked grin came out as more of a grimace. "Make sure we still have a ship waiting when it's time to go."
Chewbacca didn't sound happy about it, but he barked his grudging agreement.
He didn't put his bowcaster down, though. He was still holding it in one strong, furred hand as he followed Han and Leia to the ramp and watched them walk forward towards the dark, crumbling ruin on the dead world that might hold the galaxy's best chance of salvation.