The Ritual
For a few horrible breaths, Anna just stares at the silhouette of the star destroyer looming in the night sky.
"We have to go," she whispers in a daze. Her gaze snaps back into her lap to where BD-1 is bouncing urgently. "We have to go now." She leaps to her feet.
The pit droids are still working away at the top of the Mantis's fin, their welding torches flaring in bursts of white light. Taking a breath, she raises her hands and yanks.
"Sorry, guys!" she apologizes as the droids tumble down at her in a mess of flailing limbs and jabbering yelps. She taps one on the eye as it falls, catching the other in her arms as the first springs back into its storage form and skids across the hull. "Kind of in a hurry!"
She rolls her eyes at the droid's indignant yapping as she bops it on the eye and watches it fold up. These things could definitely use a few more processor cores.
BD-1 scurries up her shoulder as she reaches down and tucks the other pit droid under her arm. Without a backward glance, she leaps off the edge of the hull, closing her eyes and twining the quicksilver around her to slow her enough to take the edge off the fall as she lands in the sand. The doors to the cabin are still wide open. Hopefully, nobody's standing in the entryway. She launches herself into the ship, diving into a roll and slamming into the opposite wall with a bang and a trill of alarm from BD-1.
"Whoa! Watch it, kid!" Greez yells from the dining room table, looking up from a half-finished plate of steak. "What's going on?"
"Star destroyer," Anna gasps as she hastily drops the pit droids onto the couch.
"Captain? We have a problem!" Merrin's voice shouts from the cockpit.
Urgent footsteps sound from the hallway to the crew quarters as Cal bursts into the cabin, breathing hard.
"We have to go. The Empire's here."
Greez glances between the three of them, his mouth drawn into a thin line.
"Can't a guy catch a kriffing break?" he groans. He launches to his feet, dashing into the cockpit and leaving his steak forgotten on the table. "Cal! Get your butt in here!"
The lighting strips overhead flicker to life with the sputtering whine of the hyperdrive. Cal rushes past, awkwardly shouldering his way around Merrin as he dives into the cockpit after Greez. BD-1 leaps off Anna's shoulder to trundle after him.
"What do I do?" Anna shouts after them. There's a sharp whirr as the exit doors slam shut, followed by a low, stuttering screech.
That doesn't sound good.
"The airlock won't seal!" Greez yells. "The emergency exit lever is still down!"
"You mean this thing that Cal tore out of the wall?" Anna scrambles to pick up the lever handle from where it's still lying on the floor. To her relief, the end of the handle doesn't seem to be snapped—looks like it just came loose from the socket. The hole where it used to sit looks like it needs a few new rivets, but maybe...
She jams the handle back into the socket and slams it forward with all her might. It rotates forward surprisingly smoothly, and something clicks inside the wall. A blast of stale air washes over her from the door seams.
"That fixed it, I think!" Greez shouts back from the pilot's seat.
To her left, the holotable blinks, zooming in to display a map of the local region around them. Four red dots appear in the air, drawing steadily closer to the blip that marks their current position. Her stomach sinks with dread.
"TIE fighters inbound," Cal reports grimly.
"Let's get out of here!" Anna urges.
"Deflector shields are still charging," Greez growls. "If I take off now, we're dead. Merrin, now would be a real good time for some of that witch magic!"
"Anna. I need your help."
Merrin's voice is calm. It's also much closer than Anna expects. She whirls to find the Nightsister sitting cross-legged on the lounge table behind her.
"Me? You want my help?" she sputters in surprise.
"I lost my ritual stone when they captured me," Merrin says, as if that's supposed to be a sufficient answer. She extends her hands, palms up as if holding out an invisible offering. Her sharp gaze feels like it's piercing straight through Anna's body. "Take my hands. Quickly."
Hesitantly, Anna obeys, half expecting her hands to freeze or catch fire or something equally terrible. Nothing happens at first. Her eyes flit nervously up toward Merrin's cool expression.
"Okay… what do I do now?"
Merrin closes her eyes.
"Sisters. Mother. Lend me your strength."
The words are spoken like an incantation. Something about their tone has the hairs on the back of Anna's neck standing on end. She pulls back instinctively, but Merrin's grip has tightened until it's almost painful.
"Sisters. Mother. Lend me your strength."
Now the words sound hollow, distant, like they're echoing from the end of a long tunnel. Merrin's hands are cold, so much colder than they should be. The lights in the cabin dim and distort, casting the Nightsister's face in an eerie pallor, making the tattoos on her ashen skin seem to writhe in the shifting shadows. Gossamer strands of green energy leak outward from the ink, as thin and delicate as spider's silk. Anna watches helplessly as the tendrils drift around them both, wrapping them in a cocoon of ethereal light.
Merrin's eyes open, her irises blazing green, and Anna hears singing.
The singing isn't real, not in the sense that it makes any sound. The harmonies in the song are so strange and exotic, she doubts they could even be made with real voices. Yet, somehow, the song is achingly familiar. She's heard this song before, sung by a different voice.
The green envelops her, and she closes her eyes. The melody is familiar, but the words-that-aren't-words are not.
She sees Dathomir, in a way she never could with her own eyes. Veins of light stretch inward from the surface, reaching deep down into the core where they merge into a vast, beating heart. The planet spins and spins, decades and centuries passing in the blink of an eye, and suddenly the scene shifts. She sees a fortress sculpted from jagged mountainsides, with battlements of stone, towers constructed from hide and bone. She sees robed women in dark caves, extracting a glowing green essence from fissures in the ground, shaping and molding it with a graceful and terrible dance. She sees an enormous man rise from a ritual circle drawn with blood, reborn in an image of hatred and vengeance.
She sees a creature more machine than flesh tear indiscriminately through Nightsister after Nightsister, wielding four mismatched blades of whirling plasma.
She sees a child kneeling in burning ruins, surrounded by the dead and dying, tears flowing freely down her cheeks as she screams her lament to the sky.
The bone-chilling wail of TIE ion engines passing overhead snaps her out of the trance. The screams fade evenly into the distance until the cabin is silent once more.
"Whatever you're doing back there, it's working," Greez calls back cautiously from the cockpit.
Green light still wreathes Merrin in a rippling halo. Anna glances to the windows to find them covered in a sheen of the same strange energy.
"Let's get out of here, Greez!" Cal urges.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm on it!"
There's the familiar feeling of her stomach dropping as the ship lifts into the air, but despite the hull rattling under her feet, Anna can't hear the sound of the thrusters at all. The nose of the Mantis tilts way above the horizon, and she struggles to stay upright as the ship accelerates into the night sky in unnatural silence.
"What the…" she whispers. Across from her, Merrin remains completely still.
Nobody says a word until the deep navy of the sky outside the cockpit has melted into the purest black.
"Cal, are you getting anything on their comms?" Greez's voice is low, like he's scared he'll give away their position if he speaks too loudly.
"I haven't found the cypher for their frequency yet," Cal answers apologetically. "There's nothing tagged as an alert, though. Pretty sure they'd be alerting if they found us."
"Alright." The hyperdrive's pitch rises with the click of flipping switches. "We're gonna have to haul ass to a refueling depot. Let's hope that star destroyer isn't playing dumb, because if they follow us through this jump, we're dead in the water."
"Thanks for the optimism." Anna can practically hear Cal's eyes rolling.
The pitch of the hyperdrive peaks, and a rumble passes through the hull as the familiar vortex of hyperspace tears open in front of the bow. In that instant, Merrin lets go of Anna's hands like they're electrified. Slowly, the tendrils of green light disappear from the air. Anna jerks her hands back to her chest, trying her best to rub the cold out of them.
For a moment, she and the Nightsister just stare at each other.
"What was that?" Anna finally asks.
"Who are you?" Merrin asks back. There's something new in those red eyes. Something bordering on fear.
Something clicks in Anna's head.
"You were using me as a ritual stone? What—how did you know that was even going to work?"
"I didn't. But I had a hunch." A slight smile tugs at the corner of the Nightsister's mouth. "The ritual stone was just a conduit. Another Nightsister works just as well. Or, in your case…" Her voice trails off. "You can hear it too, can't you? The song of the ichor?"
Anna nods numbly. "I heard something, for sure. I saw Dathomir." The image of the little girl among the bones flashes in her mind again. "I think I saw you."
Merrin unfolds her legs, danging them over the edge of the table. Her eyes never leave Anna's.
"We Nightsisters are creatures of Dathomir. The ichor flows through us. It's the source of our magick. Magick has memory." Merrin tilts her head slightly. "But you… you are not of Dathomir."
"No. No I'm not." Anna keeps her eyes fixed on Merrin's. "Did you see anything? Anything from my past?"
The other woman nods slowly. "I saw fire. I saw the soldiers of the Empire burn your planet to the ground. I saw your people murdered." Her lip twists into a bitter scowl. "Seems like we have more in common than I thought."
Glancing away, Merrin rises to her feet and makes for the cockpit.
"Wait!" Anna calls after her. "Is this going to be a regular thing? This ritual?"
"If we want to stay hidden?" The Nightsister doesn't turn. "Probably."
Anna stares at Merrin's back as the Nightsister walks past the holotable and takes a seat on the bench—the same bench where Anna sat, back when the comms station was still occupied. Back when Cere was still with them. Apparently, she's been taking Merrin's spot in more places than one since she joined the crew.
Stiffly, she uproots herself from where she's standing, walking quickly past Merrin into the cockpit. The whirling blue of hyperspace fills her vision as she slides into the seat at the comms terminal, but all she can see is the whirling blue of the cyborg creature's lightsabers as they exterminate an entire people. Merrin's people. She shudders.
If all of Merrin's rituals end up feeling like that, this is going to get old really fast.
The fuel depot is an underwhelming sight. In her years hitchhiking the galaxy, she's seen sprawling, labyrinthian space stations with populations to rival that of entire planets. This one is barely larger than a cargo freighter. A single docking port greets them from the side of the cylindrical structure, guide posts lined with faintly-winking lights extending out into space. Tanks of hydrogen fuel jut out behind the depot in a dense grid, perfect spheres of metal glinting in the faint starlight.
Before long, a message pops up on the comms terminal.
Welcome to Perthi Pit Stop!
There are 0 ships in the queue.
You have been assigned Bay 1.
Anna breathes a small sigh of relief. At least they're not asking for identification. Of course, fueling depots rarely ever do, but every single column of symbols scrolling up the terminal screen is a painful reminder that Cere isn't here to help them anymore.
She pivots the chair to face toward Greez.
"Nobody's in line. They're telling us to dock."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Cal asks, leaning forward in his seat. "This is probably the most wanted ship in the galaxy right now."
"If you got a better idea, I'm all ears," Greez sighs, "but the Mantis ain't going nowhere without fuel."
Cal exhales a long breath through his nose. "Alright, I'll think of something."
BD-1 chirps nervously from his spot on the dashboard as the depot grows steadily in the cockpit window.
"Anna, let me on the receiver," Cal says suddenly. Anna stands to let him take the seat at the comms station.
"What are you gonna do?" she asks, raising her eyebrows, but before Cal can answer, the transceiver crackles to life.
"Hi, uh, welcome to Perthi," a tired-sounding male voice drawls. "Please provide the model of your ship."
"S-161 XL, Latero Spaceworks," Cal answers.
Faint static plays through the speaker for a few seconds.
"Stinger, huh? I don't think you're gonna like this. Says here we have to detain all S-161 spacecraft for Imperial inspection."
Greez curses softly under his breath. "Cal, what the kriff are you doing?" he hisses.
"Listen," Cal states calmly into the receiver, "you don't need to detain our ship. We're just a group of weary travelers looking to refuel." His fingers twitch over the microphone.
"What are you…" The station operator sounds confused all of a sudden, like he just realized he's been reading an instruction manual upside-down. "You're right. I don't need to detain your ship."
"We're not suspicious," Cal continues in the same tone. "You'll let us go without reporting this."
"Yeah, you're not suspicious," the operator echoes. "I don't have to report this."
"You'll let us dock now."
"Alright, come to the docking bay. Let's get you hooked up"
The station looms over the right side of the ship as Greez eases the Mantis to a halt at the fuelling bay. His knuckles are white on the control column as bumps sound along the hull from the docking clamps locking into place. The fuelling hose connects at the stern with a heavy click.
No escape now.
"Yeesh, you guys were running on fumes." A pause. "She looks banged up too. What happened to the vertical stabilizer?"
"We were…" Cal gives Greez a quick glance. "We were sightseeing. Miscalculated a jump and ended up in an asteroid field. Got a few scrapes on the way out." He gives a strained laugh. Droplets of sweat bead on his forehead.
"Oh I've been there." The operator returns the laugh. "Gotta be careful with that. Don't wanna pop out next to a black hole."
The silence that follows is stifling. Anna thumbs the handle of her blaster nervously, uselessly, her eyes locked on the terminal screen.
The whoosh of the fuel pump halts with a squeak.
"She's all topped up now. That'll be 125 cred."
Cal taps a few keystrokes on the terminal with practised speed.
"You don't need to record this transaction," he says through his teeth. "Keep it as a tip."
"I… You know what, between you and me, I think I'll keep this as a tip. Thanks for the business. Fly safe out there."
The comm shuts off as the docking clamps release, setting the Mantis adrift once more. Greez eases forward on the throttle. Everyone starts breathing again as the depot drops out of view.
"You should use that trick more often, Cal," Greez mutters out of the side of his mouth.
"What the heck was that?" Anna blurts. "Was that the Force? Can I do that?"
Cal's mouth quirks in a smile as he wipes the sweat off his brow. "Maybe. I'll try to teach you sometime. Might come in handy."
Greez lets out a loud sigh.
"Okay, now that that's done…" He hovers his two left hands over the dashboard. "Where to next?"
Cal rises from the seat, looking to Anna before sneaking a glance to where Merrin sits motionlessly just behind the cockpit. He rakes his fingers through his hair in a familiar motion as he turns back to Greez. It's grown past his ears now.
"I don't know," he sighs. "Somewhere we can talk."
The captain raises an eyebrow. "Middle of nowhere it is, then." He shakes his head. "Alright, grab some seat."
The whine of the hyperdrive picks back up as Greez pushes down on the throttle.
The lounge of the Mantis seems larger than usual in the thick silence. The lights are dim, the thin windows like slates of obsidian lining the walls. With the hyperdrive switched off, every little rustle of fabric and squeak of leather sounds deafening.
Greez wasn't kidding when he said middle of nowhere.
Anna shifts her weight on the couch cushions. Ptuli-weave fabric, as Greez keeps telling her—impossible to get oil stains out of. No droids on the couch. She looks up from her clasped hands, brushing a small curtain of hair out of her vision.
The rest of the crew is seated along the rest of the couch, their faces lit from below by the soft glow from the lounge table. Greez toys with a strip of dried jorgan fruit. Cal stares motionlessly down at the table's surface. Merrin has her eyes fixed on him, her face half concealed behind her loose bangs.
Anna opens and closes her fingers. The last few times the crew was sitting around this table, it was to decide her fate. This time, for once, she isn't the outsider. But the relief she feels comes with a prick of guilt. She looks at Merrin, at her guarded eyes and closed posture, and can't help but remember herself in the woman's shoes.
It's Merrin who breaks the silence.
"So. What's the plan?"
"Don't look at me." Greez leans back, raising his eyebrows and chewing pensively. "I'm just the getaway driver."
"Okay." Merrin's tone is calm, but firm. "Cal? As you said, I've been away for a while. Catch me up." The words are blunt, matter-of-fact.
Cal glances up. He takes a long breath.
"Things have changed, Merrin," he says quietly. "Lots of things."
Merrin waits motionlessly for him to continue. Cal sighs.
"Well stopped running raids on Imperial outposts when you didn't come back. We monitored transmissions and tried to save as many Force-sensitives as we could. That didn't work too well. Then…" Cal glances over at Anna, gesturing at her with a tilt of his head. "Then we ran into her."
"I was running from the Haxion Brood," Anna chimes in. "I tried to stow away on the Mantis, but BD-1 found me." BD-1 trills triumphantly from his perch at the edge of the holotable behind the couch, and she lets out a weak laugh.
Merrin remains silent.
"Anna's the last of her people," Cal continues. "She was missing her memories when we found her. She kept having nightmares, Force visions. Long story short, we hacked an Imperial database and found a secret hyperlane to her home planet."
"You hacked an Imperial database?" Merrin blinks once.
"That's where we first ran into that Inquisitor," Greez grumbles. "The one with the crazy weird ice powers."
Merrin's eyes go hard.
"So you went to her home planet. You found ruins." A statement, not a question.
Cal nods. "Genocide. Nobody survived the Empire. Nobody but Anna."
Merrin's eyes shift to land on Anna. "How did you escape?"
"My mother paid a smuggler to get me off-world." Anna looks back down at her hands. "She… blocked my memories somehow, so I couldn't reveal myself by accident. I spent the last thirteen years thinking I was just some random orphan."
"And now?" Merrin tilts her head contemplatively. "Who are you now?"
"I've taken her as my Padawan learner," Cal answers before Anna can reply. "She's very Force-sensitive. All her people were. It's why the Empire destroyed them."
"It's too late to save Arendelle," Anna states, her voice low. "But if I can help stop the Empire from murdering more innocent people, then that's what I have to do."
Merrin studies her for a moment.
"Another survivor, then," she finally says, raising an eyebrow in Cal's direction. "She fits right in." There's a strange hint of bitterness to her tone, one that Cal doesn't seem to notice.
Cal nods again. "I was training her on Tatooine." He rubs the back of his head with a strained expression. "She learns quick, but she's not ready. We're not ready."
"Ready for what?" Merrin frowns.
"The Fortress Inquisitorius." Greez's tone is uncharacteristically somber. "Cere's last wish was to shut down the Inquisitor program once and for all." He pops the remainder of the jorgan fruit into his mouth.
Merrin stares slowly from Greez to Cal, her expression unreadable. Suddenly, she laughs, sharp and harsh.
"Look at this. You always said my plans were too bold, but this? This is suicide."
Cal glares back, a defiant gleam in his eyes. Anna can see his shoulders tensing back up, his jaw set in a hard line. When he replies, however, his words are soft.
"Things are different now." His posture slumps as he places his hands down on his thighs with a dull slap. "Look, I was wrong, alright? I was wrong to think hiding was the answer. I was wrong to think we could run forever. There's no running from the Empire, not with the Inquisitorius breathing down our necks. We have to put an end to this, once and for all."
At first, Merrin says nothing. Anna starts picking at her hand-wraps in the laden silence. Then Merrin shakes her head.
"Three years of trying to get you to see things my way, and all it took in the end was for me to leave. Should have done it a long time ago," she deadpans. "Should have done it a long time ago." She extends a hand over the table. "I'm in."
Cal accepts the handshake carefully. His mouth opens, closes, and opens again.
"For what it's worth, I'm sorry for what I said yesterday. It's not your fault. It was never your fault."
Merrin's eyes go hard. "I will fight by your side, Cal Kestis. That hasn't changed."
"I'm glad you're back, Merrin." Cal swallows. "After the prison ship, I thought I lost you."
Anna forces down the pang of jealousy that threatens to swell in her chest.
"Will take more than that to get rid of me," Merrin shrugs. She leans back, folding her arms. "You still haven't answered my question. What's the plan?"
"I don't know." Cal glances to Greez. "Dathomir's too risky, now that the Empire is looking for Merrin again. What do you think, captain? Endor? Mon Calamari?"
"What about Ilum?" Anna blurts. All eyes in the room turn toward her.
"That's on the other side of the galaxy, kid," Greez says slowly. "That'll cost us most of our fuel. Besides, it's heavily guarded."
"We won't be staying long." Anna fixes Cal with a determined look. "I might not be ready to face the Inquisitorius, but I'm ready for the next step in the Jedi path. I'm ready to craft my own lightsaber. With the Empire's attention on this side of the galaxy, this might be our best shot."
Cal regards her with hesitant eyes. "Anna, are you sure about this? The Crystal Caves aren't exactly a walk in the park. Padawans died there every cycle, and that was before the Empire moved in."
"I'm sure," Anna nods.
"Cal survived. How hard could it be?" Merrin says flatly. "So we go to Ilum."
"Cal?" Greez folds his arms.
Cal holds Anna's gaze for another breath. "Alright. We go to Ilum."
"Okay then." The captain pushes himself to his feet with a groan. "Now that that's settled, if you'll excuse me, I'll be in the cockpit plotting hyperlanes if you need me."
He waddles back toward the front of the ship with a yawn.
"By the way, if you're hungry, there's more steak in the right-hand storage unit in the kitchenette," he calls over his shoulder. "Just don't ask where it came from."