Strike Force Justice
The blasted sands of Risner, twenty one years after the fall of Coruscant, forty-eight years after the Battle of Yavin, and almost a thousand years after the first settlers reached the world, howled with pain and stank of death. Ash blew on hot winds through rock and ruin, keeping silent watch over fourteen million dead. To the rest of the galaxy, it was just another grave world on the march of the Yuuzhan Vong into the Core Worlds. Above, silently orbiting ruins of space stations held watch. Ruined battle stations and lifeless residential housing stations spun through the weightless black, drifting slowly year after year. A long ring of debris, glittering in the vast pink and purple nebulae that surround the world, ringed the planet. It was a gold mine to adventurers, thieves and pirates. But no one came. They had all fled the Vong fleet and their ravenous appetite for death. For decades the world spun alone. It's existence, like so many others, forgotten by the galactic governments and their busy lives.
But one woman remembered. Long years of searching brought her. Love drove her. And a small ship, an old cruiser, carried her. Not once had she set foot upon the world beneath her. She'd never breathed in its air, nor swam in its empty oceans. Until this day, she'd never even laid eyes upon the world that spawned the men who'd formed the primary influences of her life. She could feel the tears welling up, threatening to come out in a waterfall of emotion. But she fought them back more to prevent her facemask from fogging than a desire to stay calm. She hadn't been calm since they'd made orbit.
Even now, in her mid-thirties, she still moved over the rocks as quickly as when her uncles had trained her in childhood. Her environment suit did little to hinder her rapid advance over the rocks and ruins, her body guards struggling to keep up in their heavier armor. But she couldn't slow down now, not after five years of searching. Bodyguards be damned, she thought, I want my family back. She quickened her pace, and leapt across a two meter chasm. With a small effort, she gathered the Force around her, and pushed. She landed at a run on the other side. Behind her, she heard the rockets of her guards' armored suits as they made the leap. They were necessary, though she wished she could make the journey alone. They couldn't feel what she felt for this place. She rounded a corner and gasped and fell into a rock edifice to avoid crushing a ribcage protruding from the ground. With a grunt she hauled herself up. Her comm went live with the guards' questions about her safety. She waved their concern away and covered the half buried skeleton with small rocks. The tears threatened to come back. The guards watched the desert and ruins around them, giving her privacy with the dead. They'd stopped seven times like this. She'd buried six of them now. The Vong skeleton they'd found she'd obliterated with a demolition charge. Her hatred had never been more evident to any of her troops or servants. With one word, she gave the order to move out, and she raced again, trying to outrun the past.
Soon they crested a large hill, and the basin that once held Risner's Capitol City stretched out before them. The ruins were largely gone here, completely destroyed by bombardment. Her guards scanned the area with their suit sensors. Methodically they reported the same things they'd seen all over the planet: irradiated, lifeless rock. "What we want is beneath, a hideaway."
"Are you sure, ma'am?"
"Exceptionally. Jason's notes place the vault at the bottom of the largest spire in the city, the Capitol Building. And Republic records show that building was at the dead center of the city. So we move into the center."
"Yes, ma'am. Should we call for backup?"
"No," she replied quietly, "we can handle it." She didn't add her thoughts. I need to do this alone.
She started down the hill, orange light from the setting sun reflecting off her visor and her orange jumpsuit, blending her in with the rest of the oranges, reds and browns of the blackened, dead planet. Her guards thundered down the hill in their large, yellow coated, armor, their faces hidden from view by helmets that had no faceplate. They look like blind war droids in that heavy armor, she thought as she watched them approach from the bottom. They reached her and followed her into the ruined city.
The city did not summon her emotions as she expected. The devastation was too complete. Nothing resembled normal life. It wasn't like the news holos of Coruscant. There were ruined buildings, but no speeders or purses or children's toys. There were no cafes with tables set or bookstores with books open on chairs. The Vong had burned it all. I guess this is how cities become the small walls that archeologists always find. She moved on, her bodyguards checking corners for more vonglife. They knew she couldn't sense the minions of the Vong through the Force, so they relied on their advanced sensors. She suppressed a superior snort. She'd never needed more than her eyes to fight the Vong.
They reached the Capitol Spire, it stretched all of a meter into the air, and its floor was smooth, melted durasteel. Her guards looked at each other. They were probably conversing through their helmet comms. "Break out your demolition gear. We're going to do some mining." She imagined them shrugging in their armor, then they moved to prep charges. She held her breath from a safe vantage point as they blew through the durasteel plate, the flash from the blast forcing her visor to darken for safety. She inspected the crater carefully, seeing boulders beneath. She smiled and reached out with the Force. The boulders flung into the air, to land distantly in the city. She dug and dug until she couldn't even lift a pebble. She collapsed, desperate to get into the vault mentioned in the journals she'd found in her uncles' various databases. She knelt on the ground, exhausted, and worn out. The journey had been too long, too hard. Too much. To her surprise, her bodyguards put their armored suits' servos to work hauling rocks out, forming a makeshift ramp with the debris. It drove her emotions over the edge. She sat weeping tired tears of joy.
The digging stopped, and her guards returned to the surface. One offered a large, armored hand to her. She accepted it and soon she was on her feet. "Why?" she asked sheepishly. "Because, Lady Reglia. You were always there for us." They led her down their ramp, which curved away from the direction they'd been digging. She asked why they'd turned. They'd found an armored doorway with their sensors only ten meters below the surface. It formed a small section of the foundation of the building, which they reported sank deep into the planet. "How deep?" she asked. Their sensors couldn't say, it went past their range. "Real deep."
Adorning the door was a crest; it looked like an empty suit of armor, with wide shoulder pauldrons and an armored skirt. The helmet looked vaguely alien, as if designed with a larger than human head in mind. She heard a whistle over her comm. "Is that what I think it is?" The guard to her left wondered.
"The sigil of Strike Force Justice," she replied.
"Always knew you were right, ma'am." The guard to her right said while passing a ten credit chip to his partner.
"No faith in me trooper?"
"No way, ma'am. Just lost one bet. There's another four hundred up there waiting for me."
"What bet did you lose?"
"He thought it'd be destroyed."
She laughed at her guards and their petty gambling. Troopers always did need creative ways to pass the time. She ran a gloved hand across the door, looking for a latch, and found none. "No lock, no handle, nothing. Charges ma'am?"
"No." She stretched out with the Force and found the true handle, covered by the enhanced durasteel of the sigil. The door clicked, and then slowly opened with the loudest, shrillest sound she'd ever heard a door make. "Jason said they never did proper maintenance down here. Guess they forgot to oil the ball bearings of the vault door, too." Her guards lit up the darkness with shoulder lamps and held up gauntleted fists, integrated blaster cannons ready. She led the way into the darkness, lighting a glow-torch herself. A stairwell surrounding a transparisteel turbolift shaft fell deep into the darkness of Risner. The turbolift shaft looked shaken and broken, but the stairs looked carved out of the living rock. And they were intact. "Like my dad always said, 'Onwards and forwards.'"
After a half hour of descending, they came to a bottom. There was another vault door, this one with a keyhole. A false keyhole, Iness knew. Just like on her uncles' starfighters and room doors. She reached out and unlatched it like the first one. The door opened into a small room, it was maybe ten meters square. It held display cases, one after another broken, but a few were only cracked. She checked each artifact. A few were TIE Fighter pilot helmets with unfamiliar names across the top, but each possessing a ludicrous number of starfighter kills. She did not know who TooTs was, but she knew he was a friend to her uncles, and he'd served in the Strike Force's Navy as an Admiral. Two were lightsabers. One red; and one a silvery white. The placards with their owners' names were unreadable. She tucked them into the equipment satchel on her back. She searched for two objects specifically. She found the first, and most important piece easily. It lay right where Jason's notes described. A red stone with a star chart on it, not displayed, but locked in a durasteel safe. The safe door had bent and snapped off, but the piece was unharmed. She tucked that away as well. Iness didn't know what the other object would be like; she just expected something of her father to be in the vault. But nothing held his label or his presence. She found another journal by someone called Wingstriker, and she took this as well. "Ma'am? We've lost contact with the ship. It could just be we're underground, but…"
"Let us return," she ordered, "but we need to lock up and leave a warning. This site is holy to me."
"Yes, ma'am." An hour and fourteen trip wired charges later, they'd secured the site against vandalism and returned to the surface. Iness attempted to contact the ship again, but there was no response. "Let's get back to the shuttle, and head into orbit." She swore she heard one of her guard mutter over the comm, "I've got a bad feeling about this."