Vader stared his opponents down. Children in rebellion practically wetting themselves as they stood not a hundred feet away. He could feel their fear in the Force, like a shark detecting the electrical firing of a nervous system, and Vader fought through the pain of his cybernetics to hone in on it. To focus his perception to the point that the material world fell away and all there was him and these children. All their was now was the fear radiating off them and the determination to stand and fight.
Both tasted sweeter than Nabooan wine.
The seconds ticked by and he watched them, Kestis and the Jedi in clone armor on either side of the makeshift formation. They would rush him, each darting to a respective side to try and flank him while the three in the middle peppered him with blaster fire. A solid strategy, one Vader himself would have used if he were in their shoes, but the strategy's predictability outweighed its merit.
That was the Jedi way after all. Vader thought to himself.
Then his perception locked onto the nightsister standing behind the scavenger with the tonfas. Rather, his perception locked onto the empty space where the Nightsister had been. Without warning, green light bloomed behind him and a cold sharpness stabbed into his side through the gaps in his armor. The pain bloomed out across his body and Vader lashed out through the force, sending a shock wave of energy out like a detonated hand grenade. Another flash of green light bloomed from behind him and he barely had time to register that the blade was still stuck into his side before they were on him.
Blades of crackling blue and steel light came down on him from either side. Vader blocked the armored Jedi's strike with his saber and grabbed Kestis by the throat with his free hand before pivoting on one heel to slam him into armored Jedi. They bashed together like toys and Vader raised his fist, clenching it to rip a slab of the ceiling out bringing it down in front of him, blocking a volley of blaster and sonic projectile fire. With a grunt, he sent the slab flying at the shooters barely registering Sunduri slowing it with a herculean effort.
Vader turned to the Jedi and plucked Kestis off the ground with the Force, and stabbed his saber down in the armored Jedi's leg at the same time. Her scream rang through the air as he shifted his grip on Kestis, closing around the boy's throat like a vice grip. Feeling it clamp around the soft flesh and watching his eyes bulge as his wind pipe closed only another burst of green light to bloom in front of him. The nightsister appeared in the space between Vader and Kestis, burying another blade in his arm and kicking off his chest to grab both Jedi, whisking them away in another burst of green light.
He tried to pivot back towards the others before something beeping at the end of the knife exploded. Fire and hateful light filled his vision and Vader was sent flying back to slam into the wall, his life support systems screaming in protest as they tried to keep him alive. His lungs burning and muscles trembling, Vader's vision cleared enough for him to see his prey loaded into the transport. The shooters having used the slab he'd thrown at them as a shield.
"Clever." He gurgled, raising his hand to restrain the transport before it could get away.
"Not today monster!" The armored Jedi yelled, raising her hands to the ceiling.
A wave passed trough the ceiling and with a deafening roar it came down on their heads. Vader raised a bubble of force around him, stopping the largest of the debris from crushing him. Through the falling debris he saw the transport blasting away through the freight tunnels. Watched as his prey slipped into the dark of the tunnels, and out of his grasp.
For now.
?
Greez was working to unstuck a particularly troublesome button on the Mantis' coffee machine when the vessel shook slightly. He looked from the coffee machine to the bridge and wondered if he'd forgotten to switch the anti-gravity actuators to idle. Then a power surge passed through the ship, flickering the lights off and then back on after a few seconds. Another tremor passed through the ship and Greez almost jumped when the Mantis' engines roared to life.
"What the?" He asked, darting to the bridge.
"Greez, the Cinnamon Wind's engines are powering up and that's forcing the Mantis' to cycle." Cere said from her seat at the comms terminal. "Something just engaged the Cinnamon Wind's auto pilot. We're lifting off."
"Heaping piles of wookie crap!" Greez yelled, hopping into his chair and opening activating the two ship's nav computers. "The job must have gone sideways."
"Greez! Cere!" Cal's voice cut through the comms. "We're loaded into the-"
The ship shook and the tell tale sound of heavy blaster fire hitting a shield shook through the bridge.
"-Cinnamon Wind lift off now!"
Without hesitating, Greez slammed the controls and the two bonded ships blasted forward and up out of the space port. Tremors from air resistance and blaster fire ricocheting off the shields shook the ships, and as they climbed higher and higher Greez was pressed back into his seat. The G-forces pressing him into the cushions until he couldn't tell where the after market Rancor leather stopped and he began. Then a half dozen blips appeared on his radar followed by a single blip larger than all the others combined.
"As good a pilot as I am, folks." Greez groaned, as heavy blaster fire battered the shields. "I don't think I can shake the bogies on our tail."
"Greez!" Rowan's voice came through the crackling speakers. "Remember when I said those gas canisters were empty."
"Yeah." He said.
"Well, they're not empty." Rowan said. "They're housing seismic charges."
"What?!" Greez yelled. "There's a dozen seismic charges strapped to my ship?!"
"I'm a fan of overkill, sue me!" Rowan groaned. "Just hit the release!"
Unable to think of a witty reply, Greez did just that. A deafening screech shook him to his bones and with a lurch the Mantis and the Cinnamon wind were freed from one another as the rigging fell away. More importantly, the "gas canisters" fell with it and as Greez used the reduction in weight to blast the Mantis ahead. Narrowly avoiding the cascade of energy released by twenty four seismic charges going off all at once. Blue light over powered the natural sunlight outside the Mantis and the deafening shock wave rattled the ship like a storm surge smashing into a beach. Greez checked the radar as the blips on the radar went from nine blips, to five, to three, and finally to two.
"I have to admit overkill feels like a million credits and a Ghirvizian telk roast right now." Greez said. "Now how do we get through that planetary gate?"
"What do you think the charges were for?" Rowan asked, grunting as Greez watched the Cinnamon Wind bank hard towards the gate.
"What are you going to do?" Greez asked.
"I'm gonna light the sky on fire." Rowan said before the feed cut out.
The Cinnamon Wind accelerated towards the gate, a massive cannon at its front glowing white hot as lightning coiled off it. Greez watched as the vessel roared toward the gate until it was only a mile or so away. Then a bolt of white lightning leapt through the air, coiling like a snake lunging towards prey, to slam into the gate and exploded in a super nova of white light. Shielding his eyes, Greez turned the Mantis as a wave of energy, like concentrated sunlight, bounced off the hull. When the glare faded away, Greez looked at where the gate had been, and found that a hole large enough for the Mantis to slip through.
"See you...other side." Rowan's voice came through in patchy bursts as the Cinnamon Wind rocketed through the opening in the shield.
"Remind me not to cheat at cards when that guy's playing." Greez said to Cere as he engaged the drives to follow after the Cinnamon Wind.
?
Kella hobbled out of the Cinnamon Wind's comms room, the wound in her leg aching as she used a crutch to navigate the ship's narrow hallways. It had been six hours since their escape from Solemnace, and the others had retreated to lick their wounds and recover from the fight with Vader. Not Kella though, she had developed a habit of not resting until all of her people were accounted for. A habit she'd developed during the clone wars, and one her master had encouraged, as a way to endear herself to the clones under their command.
"Look where that got you, eh old girl?" She said, laughing bitterly.
She hobbled down the hall, past the galley where the other Jedi, Cal, and his nightsister napped in comfortable chair. Past the infirmary where her sister in law, that was a term Kella didn't think she would get used to, was patching up the one armed force user. Eventually, Kella hobbled her way to a small workshop tucked into a fold in the ship's super structure.
Sitting at a cramped workbench was her brother, the other half of her soul if Karrocki custom could be believed. He sat with his back to her, nimble fingers working at something on the bench as he hummed to himself quietly. Kella leaned against the door frame and watched him work until he grunted and raised what ever it was up to bang it on the table hard enough to make a thwack sound. Then it began to glow and a holographic image materialized in the air.
"Hi Da! Hi Ma!" Two little girls with horns squealed in the hologram before even that simple message devolved into a high pitched string of madness.
"Their names are Roweyna and Reywan." Rowan said, turning around to look at Kella. "They're your nieces and just turned two."
"They're...they're beautiful." Kella said. "You must be proud."
"They're why I do all that I do." Rowan said, chuckling.
"You know, it's so odd knowing I have family beyond the Order." Kella said as she leaned against the work bench. "My whole life, family was theoretical. I knew I came from somewhere of course, but as to memories of a mother or father? Nothing."
"If it makes you feel any better I'm pretty sure Granny had our father shipped off to bake bread in the outer rim." Rowan said, his tone only half joking. "Did your call make it through?"
"Yes, my people made if off Solemnace during our little distraction." Kella said. "Turns out detonating a dozen seismic charges at once is more than enough of a distraction. Be honest, did you know we'd survive firing that death trap of a cannon? Or that you'd be able to destroy the gate with it?"
"The latter's easy, when we were cycling through to enter the atmosphere I noticed that the ring's outer supports were degraded by age." Rowan explained, not without a note of pride in his tone. "A good blast was all it needed to pop off its hinges so to speak. As to the former, I figured the Force isn't so anticlimactic as to bring the two of us together during a heist for the same artifact just to let me blow us all up with my own weapon."
"Fair enough." Kella said. "Though that does remind me that you owe me a ship, and a Dornian centurion lizard."
"Saving your life doesn't make us even?" Rowan asked. "I mean what's a little property damage between siblings?"
"If you recall, I had to clash blades with Darth Vader, the Emperor's personal Jedi hunter, to buy you time for that little "grenade taped to a knife" trick." Kella reminded him. "There's no way we're even yet, brother."
"I'm a little strapped for credits right now." Rowan said. "You will not believe what seismic charges cost these days, but I can probably boost the power output of those kohlen crystals in your shield."
"Tried that once, it blew my master out of a window." Kella said.
"Ah, probably misaligned the potentia coils." Rowan muttered before looking up at her. "Your master, I'm assuming they're-"
"She was killed on the planet Ushima." Kella said, her expression cooling as the memory played behind her eyes. "Her name was Magna Trofonni."
"Magna Trofonni?" Rowan asked, running his tongue over the gap in his teeth. "The same Magna Trofonni who saved the Karro royal family from an assassination attempt around 17 years ago?"
"The same." Kella said, looking into her brother's eye. "She's the one who inducted me into the order after she found out I was Force sensitive."
"Ah, I always wondered about her." Rowan said, venom dripping from every word. "How'd she die?"
"Shot in the stomach by her lover as they strolled through a meadow." Kella said, the bluntness in her voice almost as harsh as Rowan's venom. "He was a republic navel officer, old family with lots and lots of connections to the senate and all that. Apparently one of those connections was to the grand chancellor himself, and to score a cushy post in the Imperial navy he decided to kill a woman who loved him as a show of loyalty."
"Well I feel like an asshole." Rowan said, producing a bottle and two glasses from a drawer. "I don't suppose that officer had a long career?"
"No actually." Kella said, accepting a freshly poured glass of something that smelled like fermented apples. "Last I heard he was rotting at the bottom of a river on Kashyyk after someone threw him off a bridge. I would have done it myself but running for your life has a habit of curtailing any revenge vendettas."
"Ah, that's a bit of a shame." Rowan said. "On Northtier revenge most often ends with someone getting buried in snow, but I've always felt that lacked the panache of drowning."
"To rivers then." Kella said, raising her glass.
"To rivers." Rowan said, clinking his glass against hers.
?
Three days later…
Merrin sat in the Cinnamon Wind's galley, with Kella across from her and Rowan standing at the end of the table watching and listening as they talked. The trio had met for breakfast and started up a conversation on their respective views on the Force when Rowan asked about the shattered sphere she carried. Three hours later, the trio had poured a thick layer of salt over the tabletop so they could draw simple representations of different aspects of their philosophies.
"-and so, the Physical Force goes hand in hand with its complimentary aspect, the Living Force." Kella explained, putting the finishing touches of what looked like a solar system drawn in the salt. "Both in turn connected to time and space through the Unifying Force which in kind is entwined with the Cosmic Force. Through these four spheres, the Force permeates all living things, from the heart of every star to the smallest single celled organism, and it is with these four spheres we contemplate both our use of the Force and our place within it."
"Fascinating." Merrin said, her eyes focused on the drawing as her fingers stroked the shattered crystal sphere in her hands. "Before the Nightsisters and the book of shadows, there was a woman named Allya who brought to the daughters of Dathomir our magicks. Though my sisters followed a different book, there were mentions of such concepts buried beneath the darker lore of our people."
"Allya..." Kella and Rowan said at the same time, startling both.
"You know of Allya?" Merrin asked "Her name echoes in my mind, but there is little I actually know of her beyond the legends."
"She was an exiled Jedi during the great peace of the Old Republic." Kella explained. "She fell to the dark side and was expelled from the order for it, but after that the records at the temple don't say much of what happened to her."
"Because she taught a band of exiles how to use the Force." Rowan said, snapping his fingers. "Allya is a legendary figure not only for your people, but to everyone who doesn't subscribe to either the Jedi or the Sith. Give me a second."
Rowan bounded out of the galley like a man possessed.
"Allya was a Jedi?" Merrin asked.
"Yes, I only remember the name because she's one of the few Jedi listed in the archives to have fallen." Kella said, raising an eyebrow as her brother skidded around a corner and out of sight. "As you can imagine, in the last few decades the Order thought it was best to suppress any information that even hinted at our inadequacy."
"What do you think?" Merrin asked, cocking an eyebrow in kind at the Jedi. "Do you think they were right in suppressing knowledge of Allya and others like her?"
"Yes and no." Kella said. "The Order wasn't perfect by any means, but through their traditions the Jedi held sway in the galaxy for thousands of years. We kept the balance and the peace, stopped the Sith at every turn and only failed when the entire galaxy was turned against us by a misguided former Jedi. Suppression of those who fell may have stopped us from expecting it in our ranks, but the Jedi were ultimately on the side of balance."
"From what I have been told by Cal and the others, the Jedi misunderstood balance and believed themselves to be the ultimate authority on the Force." Merrin said, thinking of Kella's declaration in the Tython exhibit. "It sounds like hubris brought you low, and not betrayal."
"The Jedi were and are the ultimate warriors of the light, we brought hope and peace to the Republic." Kella said, her face darkening. "Pride in our history and skill is not the same thing as hubris, Nightsister."
"Semantics." Merrin said, stroking her sphere. "You claim to be the ultimate light, yes? But the Force is light, it is life incarnate as you said, drawing from it to do good does not make you the pinnacle but part of the balance. To think otherwise is hubris worthy of your Emperor. With that hubris comes the fall, skill and history can only delay it. Pride corrupted my sisters, blinded us to all but the pursuit of darkness, and it was pride which brought us our fall. I have learned the lesson only falling this low can teach, have you Jedi?"
Kella stared at Merrin for a long moment, and Merrin could feel the anger bubbling beneath her steely green eyes. Merrin's grip tightened on the fractured sphere, summoning energies from its depths and readying herself for a fight. But Kella simply exhaled sharply and stood up to stomp out of the room, narrowly avoiding Rowan as he came back into the galley with a huge leather bound book in his arms.
"What's her problem?" Rowan asked as Kella stomped her way out of the room.
"We had a disagreement in opinion." Merrin said. "What's that?"
"A third edition Book of Law, supposedly from the singing mountain tribe on Dathomir." Rowan said, wiping salt away from the table top before putting the book down and patting it proudly. "I found it in the family vaults years ago, and fell in love with the illustrations. Absolutely filled with lore and spells, but the damn things written in an ancient dialect of Dathomirese. So it's just been collecting dust on my shelf instead of doing any actual good."
"This was written by Allya?" Merrin asked, cracking open the old book and letting the smell of aged paper fill her nose.
"Originally yes, before being added to and copied by some of her direct descendants." Rowan said. "From what I've managed to gleam from it, the book contains a lot of early history for your people, as well as spells and rituals not, uh, modified by the Nightsisters. Think of this as payment for saving our asses down in those tunnels."
"Thank you, Rowan." Merrin said, running her fingers down the script on the first page.
She read the words printed on the yellow paper and felt as if the past was reaching out to her. It was a creed she knew, only not by memory, but by how the words echoed deep within her. A creed her people had once lived by before her ancestors stepped into the shadow, before they were twisted to accommodate the thirst for power and dominance. Before the darkness came to swallow Dathomir.
"Daughters of Allya." She said, her voice far away as she read the words:
Learn these words and learn them well, for they are the foundations
that will increase your strength and keep you safe from harm.
Those who suffer emotion will never enjoy peace.
Those who choose ignorance will never know their own greatness.
Those who yield to passion will fail to dominate.
Those who fear death will never achieve pure power.
Never forget that your magic must always be used wisely.
Never concede to evil, lest you be consumed by it.
"This is who the Nightsisters once were." Merrin said, letting the words of her forebears resonate in the air like a musical note. "We followed the Book of Shadows and our mothers shunned any other tome, I wonder how much that ignorance weakened us?"
"Yes, the witches of Dathomir are a power to be reckoned with even the tribes in exile after the Nightsisters took over." Rowan said, obviously delighted at her reverence. "Before the Nightsisters adopted their own "unique" interpretation of Allya's teachings they followed this book like all of the other tribes. Your magicks aren't based in the Darkness Merrin, they were born from the Light. Just like the Jedi."
"This is...a good gift Rowan." Merrin said, looking up to smile at him. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it." Rowan said, returning her smile with a gap toothed grin of his own. "Knowledge good or bad should be shared with those who need it most in my opinion. You can use it better than I can so it's only right that you carry it on with you. That said, if you want me to help fix that focus you're fondling my workshop is always open."
"Are you sure you don't just want to examine it?" Merrin asked.
"I do just want to examine it to see what I can do with it, but that doesn't mean fixing is a mutually exclusive goal." Rowan said, raising his hands in a so what gesture.
?
Trazen, the self styled head curator of the Infinite Reliquary, shuffled through the sterile hall, sweat dripping down his clammy forehead. The Storm troopers escorting him said nothing as they walked down the hall ignoring his attempts at conversation, these weren't the dregs from his local regiment after all. These were Lord Vader's personal troops, the honor guard specifically chosen by this nascent lord of the Sith.
"Stop here." One ordered as they came to a stop before an armored door. "Go inside."
"Of...of...course." Trazen stuttered as the trooper opened the door.
He stepped into the room and was struck by the brutally cold temperature of the air. His augments creaked and the artificial plating shielding his back crackled as the cold air washed over him. Coupled with the cold was an oppressive aura from the room's single occupant. Standing before a cluttered work bench, adjusting the mechanics of an artificial arm was Lord Vader clad in a thick black robe.
"Trazen." He said, his voice crackling from a partially damaged helmet. "I find that I'm in need of your services once again."
"Of course Lord Vader." Trazen said, bowing low. "I have served the Sith my entire life, and I will serve you to the best of my ability."
"Good." Vader said, putting the tool down and testing his grip. "Exhibit 63-AE of the Tython exhibit, tell me all that you know about it."
"Ah, the Voidus Exodendum." Trazen said. "A piece of morphogenic kyberite carved into the shape of a pyramid, etched with traditional Je'daii script. It is nothing more than a bauble my lord, a key to a mythic artifact from a bygone era. The fact that it was on display at all is only because it was found within the remains of a Tho Yor on a moon in the Deep Core."
"Morphogenic kyberite?" Vader asked, opening his chest piece to reveal machinery.
"Ah yes my lord, such a rare substance makes knowledge of it very sparse." Trazen explained. "It is a rare type of Kyberite, even rarer than pure kyber so I am led to believe, that changes shape and electromagnetic qualities once acted upon by specific Force techniques it is attuned to. The Exodendum's specific "opening" technique was never found, and as such was regulated to knick knack status."
"And if someone was able to "open" it?" Vader asked, replacing a power cell in his chest piece.
"Ah, well most pieces carved of morphogenic kyberite were often used as keys or storage devices, requiring them to be opened before use." Trazen said, watching the grisly maintenance with morbid attention. "We at first believed that the Exodendum's purpose was unlocking the Tho Yor it was found in, but alas it's structure did not match any of the, admittedly few, surviving mechanisms. From our partial translations, it was meant to be used to be used in conjunction with a "gate to the place between places" where a great tool of the Kwa, something called the Auger, waited. The drivel of ancient zealots if you ask me."
"Why, if this was just a paper weight, did two Jedi in hiding come out of the shadows to steal it without touching any of the far more valuable items in your collection?" Vader asked, closing his chest piece restoring his condition to almost presentable.
"I have…" Trazen began before a hologram appeared before them.
"Yes Trazen." Emperor Sheev Palpatine's image said, sunken eyes considering him with sadistic amusement. "Tell us more about this tool of the Kwa."
?
Cal sat in Rowan's main workshop back at his base, watching Kella as she leaned against Rowan's workbench. Beside her, encased in blast resistant glass was the key, a pyramid of onyx that seemed to warp the Force around and within it. Her words in Trazen's spire had haunted him for the last three days, and he had sworn Merrin to secrecy until he gotten more information from the other Jedi. To believe Kella, that key held the secrets to a hyperspace weapon and not the benevolent knowledge Rowan believed was hidden beyond the door.
"Explain this weapon to me." Cal said. "Rowan thinks it's the secret to mastering hyperspace, but you think it's some kind of weapon, why?"
"It was a favorite topic for my master." Kella explained. "Around two hundred years ago, the High Republic was brought low during a galaxy wide hyperspace outage during a massive colonization push. For more than a week, no ship or transmission could be sent through hyperspace what so ever. The official story was an exotic particle storm from the black hole at the center of the Galaxy, but in truth it was the result of a Jedi expeditionary force activating the weapon remotely through a Kwa outpost. Seeing the damage it caused, the council ordered the outpost destroyed and any mention of it to be scrubbed from the archives."
"Then how do you or your master even know about it?" Cal asked.
"Sometimes an absence is just as telling as it being in plain sight." Kella said. "If what Rowan's told me is true, he discovered it through mentions found in our family's little collection of Force related materials. But my master looked into the legends of the Kwa and their infinity gates, eventually coming across the Tython compass Rowan stole from me. The markings on the compass told of the key and the gate it opens, confirming what our predecessors tried to erase."
"And you think you should use a weapon that the Jedi of the High Republic thought too dangerous to use?" Cal asked. "Kella, if you're right and this weapon can cut the entire Galaxy out of hyperspace then you'll strand thousands, if not millions, of ships. Do you have any idea how many ships are moving through hyperspace at any given moment? How many ships are moving through dead space or brier patches of radiation? Yes, you would starve the Empire, but you'd also be causing unpredictable amounts of damage to the galaxy at large."
"It would buy us time, Cal." Kella said. "I'm not planning to turn it off for years on end, just long enough to send the structure of the Empire itself to weaken. To show people that these bastards are not all knowing and all powerful, and that they can be beaten. A few months without hyperspace and the Empire will take years to reestablish power, if it can pull itself back from the brink at all, and in that time we can begin to rebuild our order, Cal. My master believed that the weapon would allow specifically attuned ships to enter hyperspace even after it was fired, and with those ships we can gather Force sensitives together and bring about a new age of Jedi."
"You could also allow any rebels free reign of Hyperspace." Cal said, thinking over the idea before his mind again thought of planets starving and ships trapped in dead space. "But it could still kill millions, and at the very least, the chaos a weapon like this would cause isn't worth firing it in the first place. Rebuilding the Jedi order on a pile of corpses is as bad a foundation to build on as a Sith temple."
"What then would you have me do?" Kella asked. "We have to resist the Empire, and putting around the galaxy hiding like rats won't help us. I agree that the potential for damage is high, but think of how many lives were lost in the war with the separatists? How many clones, civilians, and traitors to the republic were ground to dust by the great war machine? The Jedi had no problem with that endeavor did we?"
"That was different." Cal said.
"Because it was war?" Kella asked, stepping forward to look him in the eye. "I sense doubt in you Cal, doubts of the order and your place in this galaxy. The Jedi were never meant to be soldiers, but the war made us both into children of war, didn't it? What do you think our venerated comrades like Anakin Skywalker or Plo Koon would do in our place, hm? Our masters are dead Cal, we are all that remains of the Jedi, and it is our duty to do exactly what they raised us to be. Warriors of the light who will snuff out the darkness in their stead."
Cal stared at her for a long moment, her words hanging in the air. In her eyes he saw himself, a child raised by the Jedi and all the battles, both internal and external, that upbringing spawned. She was an orphan thrown into a world that wanted nothing more than to kill her for the simple crime of being a Jedi. This young woman had seen the horrors of war and for her service was forced into hiding. He understood her zeal, for a chance to strike back at the evil that rewrote her reality and restore the order that raised her, she would watch the galaxy burn.
"You're wrong." Someone said before Cal could reply.
They looked over and saw Rowan standing at the entrance to the workshop carrying a daughter in each arm. Both were sound asleep with one drooling on Rowan's arm as he gently placed them on a small cot in the corner of the room. He removed a lock of hair from one twin's face before turning around to consider them.
"Tervein and torvein." Rowan said after a moment.
"What are you talking about?" Kella asked.
"They're the Kwa words for tool and weapon respectively." Rowan said. "Most people confuse the two considering the language hasn't been spoken for over thirty millennia. Your master was wrong Kella, the tool behind the door is so much more than a weapon. It's the literal heart of the Kwa's hyperspace network, a repository of knowledge and equipment that can unlock the true potential of hyperspace."
"Then why did the Kwa allow the Rakata to wipe them out if they had such mastery, hm?" Kella asked.
"Because you're not completely wrong." Rowan explained, pulling out an old note book and withdrew a datastick from it. "I've been obsessed with the old stories, the tales of empires and peoples dead long before the Republic was a gleam in a bureaucrats eye. My mothers would lull me to sleep with tales of peoples who bonded the mysticism of the Force with pure scientific ingenuity. But the Kwa were always my favorite, what little kid wouldn't get a kick out of magic lizards uplifting species all across the galaxy?"
He inserted the data stick and summoned a holographic schematic of reptilian creature clothed in a flowing robe. It spoke to them in a strange tongue that tickled Cal somewhere behind his frontal lobe. Speaking for about three minutes before stuttering and starting again in a loop.
"This was originally stored in a holocron our five times great grandfather bought off a rogue Jedi, Kella." Rowan explained. "He spent most of his life translating this record. It details the existence of something they called the Auger. It wasn't a weapon but a tool that they used to shape hyperspace itself, and yes it could close off hyperspace but it could also create new hyperspace lanes. The Kwa left it locked on Tython because if it fell into the hands of the Rakata it would become a weapon, one that would have ripped the galaxy to pieces."
"And you didn't think to tell us any of this?" Cal asked.
"I did." Rowan said, rolling his eyes. "I thought "Don't fuck around with it or you might rip the galaxy in two" was implied."
?
Somewhere in the darkness of the unknown regions...
Nestled in the shadow of a gas giant was an automated ship yard that could, at full capacity, produce half a dozen star destroyers at once. Yet despite that ability to multi task, the ship yard's full attentions were focused on a single massive project, a star destroyer so massive that it dwarfed every other ship in the Imperial navy. Even as a skeletal frame of what it would be, the ship would strike fear into any living being that laid eyes upon it. Especially the little boy hidden away at its heart.
He could not remember what his name was. His master, at least that's what the man in the black armor had said to call him, had taken it from him and replaced it with another. The boy couldn't remember anything or anyone before waking up in this strange place, but that didn't matter now. Now was the time for "training".
The boy ran down the hall, his blade glowing in his hand lighting the way as he darted down the hall. He heard the clanking of the droid's feet far behind him, and almost cried out at the sound. Instead, the boy bit his lip and swallowed the cry, as he rounded a corner into a storage room. Otherwise known as a dead end.
"Come now Master." The droid's voice tickled the boy's ears. "It is time for our sparring session. We do not want to disappoint your Master, now do we?"
The droid who both hunted and looked after him stood in the doorway. Though this droid was nothing like the ones in the boy's fractured memory, because this droid had a human skull floating a fluid filled sphere for a head. Its body was lanky and covered in dozens of small projectors that glowed dully in the shade of the entryway. Two bright yellow eyes watched him from within the expressionless skull, lit with an oddly cold humor.
"I...I...I don't want to fight today, Proxy." He stammered, extinguishing his blade. "I'm tired."
"As per your Master's directives exhaustion is not a valid excuse for skipping training." Proxy said, producing two blaster from his hips as his form changed to that of a man armored in shining metal. "But, to accommodate your fatigue I will choose my worst combat module for your training today. Jango Fett should provide you with a riveting training exercise while giving me a decent chance at fulfilling my prime directive."
"Plea...please….please Proxy." The boy begged as the droid aimed a pistol at him.
"Raise your weapon if you do not wished to be peppered with blaster fire, Master." Proxy said, almost pulling the trigger when a chime emitted from his chest. "Hold on, I am receiving a transmission from your Master, Master."
Proxy lowered his weapon and his formed shifted once again, this time to another armored form clad in black. Without thinking, the boy fell to his knees and bit his lip to stop the tears from coming. This was his Master, the man who gave him his name and had begun teaching him the ways of the Force. He would no tolerate crying.
"Raise your head, apprentice." The deep voice boomed.
"Yes Master." The boy said, raising his head to look into his master's cold black mask.
"Soon my apprentice, I will have need of you." Master said. "You must redouble your efforts in training before we next meet. I expect you to last at least a minute with me or you will be thrown into the black parts of the ship with only Proxy's most terrifying forms to keep you company."
"Yes Master." The boy said, biting his lip so hard he could taste blood. "I understand."
"Good." Master said. "Our great work is almost at hand my apprentice. The Force has seen fit to grant us an opportunity to right the scales. Soon you will take your place as my true apprentice, and fulfill the rule of two. Ready yourself boy, for this task I aim to hone you into a weapon more powerful than any Sith or Jedi. Do you understand me Starkiller?"
"Yes Master Vader." The boy lied. "I do."