As they crested the rim of the crater and descended into the shapers' laboratory, Zekk couldn't help but think about the last time he'd been in this awful place.
The passing time had not been kind to it; that made him feel better somehow. The frigid vacuum had denuded it of the dense humid air, the nurtient vines that had dangled like streamers from the ceiling into gestation bins, the hedge-walls of dense thorn-plants. Some frozen withered remnants of the grashal's original life remained, but what Zekk saw now was, for the most part, just a barren pocket in a barren landscape, rendered more surreal by Myrkr's green reflected glow and the long shadows cast by tethers of dead vegetation.
Tahiri had been trying to shield her emotions from him since the fight at the shuttle, but now she was positively bleeding into the Force. She felt like she was walking through a gallery of ghosts, each one raising terrible specters of old nightmares. He realized that Tahiri had, quite literally, walked that gallery already, when Caedus had taken her back here to flow-walk back to Anakin's death.
Zekk switched to her private comm channel and said, "Tahiri? Are you okay?"
He saw her jerk inside her vac suit. With a stutter she said, "Yes. Yes, I'm fine."
"Were you… flow-walking just now?"
Her head shifted from side to side. "No. He never taught me how. But I… I remember it, Zekk. It's so vivid."
She sounded entranced and terrified at once, and he felt a pang of sympathy for her. Ever since their unexpected reunion he'd been vacillating back and forth on Tahiri, at one moment empathizing with her struggle to move beyond the darkness in her past, at the other angry at her for being weak and falling under Caedus' spell. He didn't even know how much of it was really anger at Tahiri and how much was anger at Jacen, the friend who'd turned traitor, the one who was no longer here to accept blame for all he'd done. Without Caedus, Tahiri was an acceptable substitute. In his angrier moments he wondered why Daala or the Imperials hadn't sought to punish her for exactly that reason.
"Look," said Taryn from the front of the line. "Definitely some people here. These footprints look fresh."
Zekk stepped ahead and came to her side. He switched his comm to the common freq and said, "How many do you think?"
Praelyx joined them to examine the pattern of boots in the dust. There had clearly been a lot of activity, moving in multiple directions. It was a good bet the Imperial team had simply scoured the entire lab over on arrival.
"Look at that." Taryn bent and pointed to a specific set of footprints. "That's a different pattern than the other boots. The rest are probably standard Imp issue. My guess is Sinsor Khal brought his own vac suit."
"Which probably means he expected to take a trip," muttered Zekk.
"We'll deal with Ducha Markessa another time," said Taryn as she stood straight. "Right now we need to find where they went. There has to be tunnels that go deeper into the worldship."
Zekk and Tahiri glanced at each other across the gloom. Tahiri said, "There were a couple entrances, including ones that led to warrens filled with feral voxyn. That's what we used to retreat, after..."
After Anakin died.
She couldn't finish, so Zekk said, "We could start there, but there might be other tunnels. The best option is to follow the footprints. So, let's spread out. Search the area until we find a passage. My guess is that some parts of this ship still have air pressure and temperature to keep the bioweapon samples alive, so we need to find those."
"We can scan for heat signatures," Praelyx suggested. "This area is cold as space, so anything with even minimal air levels is going to shine like a beacon on IR scopes."
"I've got sensors for that," volunteered Harkum. "Let's get looking."
"Yes," said Taryn testily, "Let's."
Zek had forgotten what it was like dealing with Hapan women. As the group started to fan out to scour the lab, he switched his personal comm to Taryn's freq and said, "No one was ignoring your authority here. We just want to get this done."
"I'm aware, but I am still leading this mission-"
"-And we're still lowly males, I know." He rolled his eyes.
"It's good to see you know your place." To his surprise, he heard amusement in her voice.
"Well, just for this mission," Zekk muttered as he began to look over the footprints. "Once we're done with this I'm going back to the Jedi."
"A shame," she sniffed. "What do you have waiting for you there?"
"You know, I already had this same conversation with Praelyx a little while ago."
"That's not an answer."
He looked up at her. She was right; it wasn't an answer because, just now, he couldn't come up with one. He'd spent so long chasing after Jaina- chasing after the ghost of what he'd had almost twenty years ago- that he'd forgotten what had motivated him before that.
"I am a Jedi," he said stiffly. "Where else would I belong?"
"Tenel Ka is a Jedi. She could use good help on Hapes. And good friends."
He'd never thought of that before, and he struggled to find reason to reject it. Rather than fumble to answer another question he couldn't, he put false bravado in his voice and asked, "What about you?"
"Me?"
"Sure. What's in it for you if I got back to Hapes?"
"I'd better serve my family and my Queen. And I could broaden my horizons." Her lips hinted a smile. "You could too. I think you need to get over the Solo woman."
She'd gone right up to the bantha in the room and kicked it. "I am," he said firmly.
"Good. She's too short for you."
"She's what?"
"You heard me." Taryn looked him up and down with a gleam in her eye. "Leave her to Fel, or someone who doesn't have to bend halfway over to kiss her."
Zekk stared and realized for the first time, that Taryn was quite tall. Not outstandingly so, not for a Hapan woman, but, for normal human women, she was tall.
She saw he had no reply and smirked like she'd won the argument.
Zekk's comm buzzed with a new transmission. He changed his channel and asked, "Yes, what is it?"
"If you two can stop flirting, Captain Muro's found the passage," Tahiri said dryly.
"Flirting?" He checked his comm channel again. "Were we-"
"I didn't need ears, Zekk."
"Oh, right."
"Well, whatever," Tahiri said. "Just don't forget the reason we're here."
As he and Taryn followed Tahiri over to the passage Muro had found, Zekk hoped that exchange hadn't been as plain to everyone else in the group. He'd have a hard time looking either Tahiri or Taryn in the eye for a little while, but despite his embarrassment that conversation had left him with a faint, happy glow. It had been enough to distract him from this dark crater full of ghosts, which was what he'd so sorely needed.
He wasn't sure if Taryn had understood that and being trying to help him, or if Taryn was just being Taryn. Either way, he tried to cling to that faint glow as the group descended single-file down the narrow passage, deep into the dark.