Chapter 5
Taz sat among scores of beings slowly processing around the broad stone column that rose high into the air, disappearing in smoke and darkness. Runes and scenes carved on the smooth stone glowed blue. The whole place reverberated with energy. Taz felt himself caught up in it, though the hooded beings in their gold and blue robes took no notice of him. At the far end of the temple another being, much taller than the others, stood on a dais clothed in heavy vestments. Its chanting, in strange, strangled tones, exhorted the others, whose heads and arms began swaying in time to the rhythm of the high priest's voice. Taz didn't understand the words, but he could feel their power coursing through him, burning in his veins.
He clamped his eyes shut against the searing heat and felt himself rising in the air, carried by the power of the ritual as it increased in pace and intensity. Despite the pain he cracked his eyes open. The column glowed all over, and now he was rushing up, up through the smoke and haze. He finally saw the narrow ceiling of the temple as he hurtled toward it and he threw up his arms in front of his face. Just when he would have been crushed against the stonework he felt an immense, unyielding force that permeated his body, ripping him into constituent molecules and scattering him throughout the universe.
Taz awoke with a shout, shaking and drenched in sweat. In twenty-five years of life he'd never experienced such a vivid dream. He clutched a hand to his chest, breathing hard and feeling a deep unease, like there was something that he urgently needed to do. He got up and walked around the cottage to calm his jangled nerves. He poured a glass of water with a shaking hand and sat to drink it.
After a while he felt calmer, and went back to the unfamiliar bed, drawing the covers up under his chin. It seemed like he'd no sooner fallen asleep than the dream came again, as intense and visceral as before. It shocked him awake, shaking uncontrollably. It wasn't fear, but a powerful compulsion to do something. Only, he had no idea what that was.
When morning finally came, Taz had been lying awake for hours. He felt drained and edgy. Long hyperspace transits could sometimes cause this kind of restlessness, but he'd never suffered from anything like that before, and he'd never had disturbing dreams like these, even during the worst days of the fighting on Jakku. Maybe the stress of Nanvarr's strange death, having Tess and her new lover on his ship, and their arrival at a secret base run by the people he'd fought for eight years, were all taking a toll. He shook his head, searching for clarity and understanding, but finding none. He uttered a frustrated epithet and slapped the hard bedframe, bruising his palm. Wondering about it won't get you anywhere, Taz.
He went to the refresher, expecting to find a sonic shower. Instead, he was astonished to see that it had actual running water. He hadn't had a water shower in years. They were rare luxuries on his desert homeworld of Filve, and pretty much non-existent during his military service. He stripped, spun the control dial and opened the valve, then stepped into the stall and let the steamy spray beat against his skin with dozens of stinging streams.
After enjoying the hot pulsing shower for a full fifteen minutes, he dried himself off and dressed. He was still tired from lack of sleep, but the shower left him feeling a little more at ease. He'd heard from Sera last night that Tess's parents were indeed on the planet. He was elated by the news, but not being able to share in what must have been one of the happiest moments of her life made him feel awkward, out of place, and upset. That, and the recurrent dream left him feeling on edge.
He walked out onto the small porch. The morning air was cool, but not unpleasant. In the distance he could hear the drone of heavy machinery. He wondered how they'd be able to get a look at the mining operation. They'd need solid evidence of large-scale kyber crystal extraction for the New Republic to take action. He reached overhead, stretching and yawning. At the sound of a door closing he looked over his shoulder. Lyra nodded at him from her porch on the next bungalow, and stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jacket.
"Morning," he said.
"Breakfast at the Daros, I hear."
"Great," Taz said. "I'm hungry."
"You look tired," she observed.
"Couldn't sleep," he admitted.
Lyra shrugged. "First night on a new planet?"
"Yeah, that must be it," he lied. The dreams had felt too real, like he was being sucked into the distant past.
They caught Reiko and Sera coming out of their bungalow, and the four of them took the short walk to the Daros' home. Tess met them at the door, still looking jubilant, and made introductions. His heart sank to see her so happy, but he greeted her parent's warmly.
Taz and Varun added leaves to the dining table to accommodate the group, while Jerric and Amanda cooked, conversing with their guests over the half wall separating the compact kitchen from the dining area. Tess helped them bring the dishes to the table. Their little service droid Bixy, a BX model that had to be sixty or seventy years old, wheeled around, bearing a flask of sarna and cups. It seemed the drink was consumed at all hours.
"I hope everything tastes okay," Amanda fretted, sitting next to Taz. "We haven't cooked for this many people in ages."
Taz took a bite of scrambled eggs and some kind of cooked pudding that was quite spicy. "It's delicious, Mrs. Daro."
"Oh, call me Amanda, Doctor. Missus makes me sound like an old woman."
Taz swallowed another mouthful. As disquieting as his night and morning had been, dwelling on it was only bound to make him feel worse. For some reason an odd detail of the cover identity Varun had compiled came to mind. Doctor Oktos was supposed to be something of a flirt. Can't hurt to try something different for a change. "Well, you're definitely not an old woman, Amanda." he took her hand and kissed the back of it. "Call me Taz."
"Oh my," she fluttered. "May I get you some more, Taz?"
"Of your delicious cooking, Amanda? Absolutely." He handed her his plate. Reiko stifled a giggle behind her hand. Sera and Tess both gave him sour glances. Jerric looked amused as did Varun. Truthfully, Taz had pretty much intended to ignore that bit of the cover story, but Tess's mother seemed receptive, and, oddly enough, it made his dark mood recede a little. Plus, the food was really very good.
After breakfast had been cleared, Varun brought out his datapad and opened a file. The projector flickered on, displaying the globe of Beta Fonidian II. As it rotated, eight or nine location indicators blinked in green. He tapped the screen and the globe flattened into a two-dimensional map. They'd taken the opportunity to scan the planet on their approach for anything that might look like a paleolithic site. "Well Doctor, where would you like to start your survey?" Varun asked.
Taz couldn't say whether one site would be better than another. "Where are we on this map?"
Varun tapped; a blue indicator appeared. "Here, about fifty kilometers from the nearest site."
Jerric looked over Varun's shoulder and pointed to the indicator dot. "There are ruins all over. I don't think anyone's ever studied them before; too much other work to do, but I've flown over 'em a few times."
"Anything you can tell us? About the sites, I mean."
"Not much, Doctor. Most of 'em are on flat grasslands, though I recall hearing there's one in a swamp somewhere."
"Any idea what their purpose might have been?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, Doctor. Maybe you'll be able to tell us, after you get a look at some of them."
Taz grinned. "I suppose that is my job, after all." He started to point at the indicator nearest to them when a shock behind his eyes made him wince.
Jerric took notice. "Anything wrong, Doctor?"
Taz shook his head and rubbed his neck. "Just a little stiff. Unfamiliar bed and all." He stared at the map. I need to go farther afield. He let his hand hover over the map, moving it from marker to marker.
"Doctor Oktos?" Varun prompted after a minute.
Taz looked up. Varun and Tess were both regarding him with strange looks. "I think I'll start here," he said, pointing to one of the indicators. The sensations he'd felt in his dreams came flooding back to him when his hand had passed over that indicator. The Force warning and the feelings from his dreams? It couldn't be a coincidence.
Jerric whistled. "That's over two thousand klicks from here, Doctor. You'll have to pass some rough terrain, too."
"Why that one, Ta— Doctor?" Tess asked, quickly catching herself.
"I, ah— Call it a hunch, Miss Daro." It feels so strange to call her that.
"Have you thought about how you're going to get out there?" asked Jerric.
"I assumed we'd fly there in Allegra's Heart."
"Take our aircar. It'll get you over the Bresura Ridge and you won't burn near as much fuel as your YV nine-twenty-nine would. I'd fly you out there myself, but my shift starts in a couple of hours, and that's a bit of a trip.
"That's alright, I can fly myself."
"I'll go," Lyra intoned. "We don't need the doctor taking a spill in an unfamiliar speeder."
Taz shot her a curious glance. She flicked her eyes at him, looking inscrutable.
"Good idea," Sera seconded. "It was a long trip getting here. I'd like to get Allegra into that hangar for some maintenance."
Varun looked over his shoulder at Sera, who sat on a small couch sipping sarna. Reiko leaned against her with her legs tucked beneath her, looking happy at the suggestion. "I'll contact the dockmaster to see what we can do." Then, to Taz, "if you're decided, why don't you go collect your equipment, Doctor Oktos?
Taz thanked the Daros for breakfast, and made sure to kiss Amanda's cheek, a move that drew more eye rolls from Tess. Back in his bungalow, Taz set his pack on the table and opened it. He didn't really have any 'equipment'. What kind of equipment would a paleologist need, anyway? A holocam to record what he found, something for taking measurements, maybe? He had both of those in the form of his hand scanner. He'd brought Nanvarr's data recorder. It looked odd enough to pass as a piece of surveying equipment, if anyone cared to search him.
On a whim he took out his lightsaber. He could guess it was unlikely anyone would know what it was. Might as well add it to the collection. He threw in a couple of snack bars and slid his canteen into the pack's outer sleeve, then closed up the haversack.
There was a knock at the door. Taz opened it, stifling a yawn and slinging the pack over one shoulder. Lyra waited on the porch. She had a pair of sunshades pushed up on her forehead, and her hair was tied back, the scarlet streak tucked behind her ear. Her pack was at her feet.
"You know, Miss Nimor, I'm sure I'll be fine flying there on my own."
"You chartered us, Doctor, so you might as well use our services. Plus, if something happened to you out there, how would you get back?"
Taz shrugged. She was right, he supposed, but it seemed odd she'd actually volunteer to spend a day with him wandering around an archeological site, especially when neither of them had the smallest idea what to do when they got there.
They met Jerric and he walked them to the hangar. As they passed by the park they saw a half-dozen children playing kickball. "Just how many people are here, Jerric?"
"Between the workers, techs, engineers and support staff, around three hundred. Pretty much all the workers were like Amanda and me, forced labor brought here from detention facilities around the Empire. But after a few months, we started mingling with the Imperial staff. Some even started relationships, and families, as you can see."
"Most unusual, for an Imperial installation," Taz repeated Varun's earlier assertion.
"Maybe, but it's only natural that people would… find each other out here. We are all in this together, after all."
"What is 'this', exactly, Jerric?" Taz hastily added, "I mean, I've read some of the log entries that TaggeCo received, but there seems to be more going on here than just mining kyber crystals."
Daro clasped his hands behind his back as they walked and tapped the back of one hand against the palm of the other. "Mining comprises the majority of our work. We check the quality of the minerals— that's Amanada's team— then process them… using various manufacturing operations that I'm afraid I can't divulge to you."
"We understand, Mister Daro," Lyra said, smiling, and shot Taz a sober look.
He clamped down on the question he was going to ask. Lyra was probably right— best not to probe too much. "Anyway, since we're heading out beyond the confines of the facility, are there any dangerous animals or plants we should know about?"
Jerric pursed his lips for a moment. "On the plains? Let's see… We've seen predatory ursids and canids, and I think there might have been a sighting of some kind of big cat. They mostly avoid us, from what I've heard. I expect you'll have no trouble as long as you don't stumble into a den or threaten one of their young.
"All the same, I think I'll grab my blaster from the ship," Lyra said.
They reached the landing port. Allegra's Heart sat where it had landed. A pair of sentries stood near the rear landing struts, but didn't seem particularly alert. "I'll get the blasters," Taz offered. "I need to grab a few more tools anyway. Why don't you and Jerric get the aircar ready?" Taz waved over his shoulder and headed over to the freighter. Lyra and Jerric continued to the hangar.
Walking through the wide doorway, the hangar was busy with droids— trudging gonks, sprightly pit models with their single huge optical sensors, and multi-armed treadwells. There might have been two dozen men and women in jumpsuits performing maintenance. Lyra counted six standard TIEs. Partially obscured by the fighter ships' big solar collectors, she glimpsed a Striker atmospheric fighter with its characteristic horizontal wings. She wondered how many of those they had on the base. If they needed to escape from Rho-277, all of the TIEs would be a threat, but in the atmosphere a Striker would absolutely chew up a freighter, even one as tough as Allegra's Heart.
Jerric pointed to his right. His aircar hovered on idling repulsors beside an old Eta-class shuttle. Beyond that were a handful of small civilian vessels made for atmospheric flight. Jerric's looked like a four- or five-seat model with a large canopy, two turbines high up on the back, downturned wings that were folded to save space, and a V-tail that extended behind the vehicle on a slender boom.
Jerric opened one of the side compartments. "Amanda and I sometimes go camping in the mountains during our downtime."
They have downtime at a labor camp? Lyra thought, surprised.
"Not sure how much time your survey will take, but it's a few hours to get out there, and the same to get back. Anyway, I had the guys pack some camping gear for you, just in case."
"That was very thoughtful, thank you."
He winked at her. "An overnight trip with just the two of you? Might make a nice little getaway. My Scrapper's Dream was a little over six hundred meters, so Amanda and I could always find somewhere to be by ourselves, but I'll bet there's not much privacy on your freighter."
Lyra blushed in spite of herself. "Doctor Oktos is my charter. I make it a habit not to mix socially with my customers, Mister Daro."
"Jerric, please," Daro said with a big smile. He opened the door for her. "Go on, climb in."
"Thanks, Jerric. Lyra," she reciprocated. She tossed her pack and jacket in the back and slid into the pilot's seat, then spent a minute reviewing the controls.
Jerric took the other seat. "She's a SoroSuub R7 Skywagon. Probably a couple hundred years old, but she runs pretty well as long as I keep up on the maintenance."
Lyra fed power to the repulsor vanes and the Skywagon slid forward smoothly. As they emerged into the sunlight the bubble canopy dimmed to compensate. Lyra slowed the craft to a halt and unfolded the wings just as Taz was coming down the ramp. The sentries gave him suspicious looks, seeing gun belts in his hands, but Jerric got out and spoke to them. Taz set his pack, jacket and their blasters on the back seat, then slid in beside her.
Jerric came over. "Just remember to return your guns to your ship when you get back." He thumbed over his shoulder toward the sentries. "They don't take kindly to having anyone walking around armed."
"We'll do that," Taz assured him. "Thanks for the use of your aircar. It's going to be really helpful."
"Don't mention it, Taz. It's been in the hangar for a while; Amanda and I have been too busy to take it out the past few months. Be sure to look after this pretty young lady while you're out," He advised with a huge smile.
"Hmph," Lyra said from the pilot's seat. "It'll be me looking after him, most likely."
Taz decided not to argue the point. "Thanks again Jerric. We'll be back as soon as I finish the site survey." Jerric stepped away and Taz sealed the canopy window.
Lyra taxied onto the ramp, increased power to the repulsors until they were thirty meters up, then contacted Rho-277 Control for takeoff clearance. She rotated the aircraft while they waited, getting a good look at everything around the landing port. The control center released them and she aimed the speeder south, then applied power to the turbines.
As soon as they cleared the base's deflector, Taz rummaged in his bag, grabbed his scanner and swept the craft. Sure enough, he found multiple devices transmitting at low power. He made some adjustments to the scanner and generated an active pulse loop. "There. Now we can talk."
"They had us wired?"
He nodded. "Four devices other than our ID transponder. I've jammed them."
"That won't interfere with the speeder, will it?"
"Probably not," he shrugged. "The transmitters are low power, so it doesn't take much to jam them. I tried to make the signal look like regular RF interference, so hopefully it won't set off any alarm bells."
"Great," Lyra said. "I was getting really tired of that charade."
"Me too," he said.
Lyra locked in the course. "We'll be in the air a while. Why'd you pick this site, anyway?"
"I think it picked me. I had a feeling at the Daro's house. I think the Force is guiding me to it."
She gave him a skeptical look. "It tells you where to go?"
"No, not really."
"You aren't making sense," she said pointedly.
"You think I don't know that?" he answered, patience slipping. "When it makes sense to me, you'll be the first to know."
Perhaps sensing his frustration, Lyra moderated her tone. "It's just out of the way, that's all."
"If you didn't want to make the trip you could've stayed behind. I'd have been fine on my own."
"It's better than spending time on that base."
Taz looked surprised. "You're uncomfortable there? I thought you'd be happy to be at an Imperial installation."
"That place is no more welcoming to me than the New Republic base was back on Jakku." Lyra looked troubled, or maybe irritated. It was hard for Taz to tell. She certainly seemed conflicted.
"You want to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?" she challenged, almost snapping.
He wasn't looking for an argument. "Forget it. Sorry I asked."
Lyra screwed up her mouth. She let out a deep breath. In a less confrontational voice she said, "So, what's going on with you and Tess?"
Taz gave her a sharp look. "What makes you think something's going on?"
"I have eyes, Oktos. You spent pretty much the whole trip avoiding her. She told me some stories about your Rebel cell. I can put two and two together, you know."
Taz fidgeted. "I was in love. We both were."
"What happened?"
Taz let out a harsh breath. This was the last thing he wanted to talk about. "Jakku." He spat the word, feeling disgusted at how easily the anger and desolation returned. "While I was down on that furnace of a planet fighting your—" he caught himself, clenched his fist and took a breath. "—fighting the Empire's holdouts, Tess and the Olminar were chasing them out of our sector. They had some hard fighting. The ship was nearly destroyed and she got hurt, bad." He felt a surge of rage. "I should have been there!" He swore, slamming his fist against the door.
"Hey, easy!" Lyra said, startled by the vehemence of his outburst.
All the old wounds still felt as sharp as ever. Taz wondered if he'd ever be rid of them. He swore again, with less vigor. "I wasn't there to help my friends and shipmates. I wasn't there for Tess when she needed me, so she..." His hand shook. He thought he'd left that helplessness and fury behind on Jakku. Taz took a deep breath to steady himself, but he still had to drag the words out. "She turned to someone else."
"Numarkos."
"Do you know what it's like to have your heart—" He stopped himself from saying more, pounded his fist on his leg and looked miserable. "I shouldn't be talking about this."
"Rendix knew?" she persisted.
"What's with all the damn questions?"
She fixed him with a hard look. "Guess neither of us wants to talk about the past."
"Guess not." Taz retorted. He folded his arms and didn't say anything while he let his anger cool. Maybe she was giving him a dose of his own medicine. or maybe she was genuinely curious. Her aloofness made it seem more like the former. "Sera didn't know the details, but she knew what I was going through. Said she saw it all the time with the ground troops." He screwed up his mouth. "She did what she could, kept me from feeling sorry for myself around the clock. Hell, she kept me from putting a blaster in my mouth and pulling the trigger. Asking me to come with Rei and her to look for a ship to fix up was her way of breaking me out of myself."
"The same reason you invited me?"
"Yeah, I guess it was."
"I didn't ask you to meddle with my life, you know."
"I was trying to help," he countered, and fiddled more with his hands. Taz leaned his head against the canopy and stared at the ground passing beneath them. Arguing with her was making him even more tired than he already was.
They flew along in silence for some time. Finally, Lyra said. "Forget I said anything. Sorry I asked you about Tess."
"I thought it'd get easier to talk about, but it hasn't." Then after a minute had passed in silence, he asked, "You ever have a relationship fall apart?"
"Nope."
"No breakups?"
"No relationships."
Taz looked over at her. "You're kidding. Doesn't that get lonely?"
Lyra pressed her lips together. "Saves me having to go through what you did."
"You sure you aren't just saying that so you can avoid being hurt?"
"Mind your own business," she said.
"Okay. Sorry."
Lyra looked exasperated. "Why are you always apologizing, Oktos?"
"Because no matter what I do, it seems like you're annoyed with me."
She opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it. Eventually she said, "You don't have to walk on eggshells around me."
"Maybe if you didn't act like it's Lyra Nimor versus the universe all the time, I wouldn't have to. You know, I can count the times I've heard you laugh on one hand." Taz wiggled his fingers for emphasis. "Don't you get tired of being perturbed all the time?"
"I'm not perturbed," she said, "but I'm not going to just lay all my feelings out. You know, not everyone is like you Filvians."
He let out a frustrated sigh. The day started badly, and it had only gotten worse. "I don't want to argue. I just... wish you'd let your guard down a little, that's all."
"Why?"
"So I could get to know you, maybe be your friend."
"Who says I want a friend?"
"Everybody needs friends, Lyra, even you." Taz insisted. Her only response was a cool stare. He scowled and rubbed his eyes. "You mind if I sleep? I really couldn't last night."
She shrugged. "Suit yourself. We've got three hours or so before we land."
Feeling depressed, he leaned the seat back and closed his eyes. Taz hoped the dream wouldn't come again.
Three hours later the autonav pinged. Lyra disengaged it as they approached the point indicated on the map. Taz opened his eyes and sat up, readjusting the seat.
"You snore when you sleep."
She's still annoyed. Great. "Everybody does."
"Not everybody. Can't believe you slept the whole way," she muttered.
Better to sleep than spend another three hours arguing. He stretched and covered a yawn. He felt more rested, but still mired in his dark mood.
Just coming into view, a jumble of light gray rocks, moss-spotted and crumbled, stuck out of the tall grass. Lyra banked the Skywagon in a broad arc around the ruins. "You sure this is the place? Doesn't look like much of a ruin to me."
Taz was no archeologist despite his cover story, but there were clear indications of a regular pattern, to say nothing of the fact that many of the stones were cut, and the remains of a large column sat nearly in the center of the rubble field. For some reason it seemed really familiar, as if he'd been there before. It took a few seconds for him to realize that the column looked very much like the one in the temple he'd seen in his dreams. "This is it," he said with certainty.
"Alright, I'll set her down" she said, and entered a landing cycle. She backed off the throttle and cut in the repulsors as the craft settled, hovering a quarter of a meter over the ground. Lyra powered down the Skywagon and set the repulsors to idle.
Taz was more certain than ever about the dream he'd had last night. Both Master Jorun's journal and Nanvarr mentioned that the Force would sometimes manifest visions of the past or the future. He was pretty sure he'd seen a vision on Narendri Prime, when he found his lightsaber. "It looked a lot different in my head."
She wasn't quite sure what to make of that. "You sure this is the place?" she repeated with more emphasis.
He gave her a distracted nod and climbed out of the speeder. They were on a broad savanna. Meter-high tufts of hardy, straw-colored vegetation punctuated the red grassland, millions of blades swaying in the currents that swept across the open landscape. Here and there a rugged tree with rough black bark had sunk powerful roots into the soil. "Why would anyone put a temple in such a remote place?"
A corner of Taz's mouth twitched. "It was a lot different when the temple was built. Greener." He strapped on his gun belt, set his pack over his shoulder, then started toward the ruins.
"Still remote though," she mumbled, taking her blaster and pack and following after him.
The ruins marked out a round foundation of craggy stones, perhaps twenty meters across, though it was hard to see just how big the place had been from the jumble of blocks. She walked by one, worn by the wind, but still showing the marks from the chisels and hammers its builders had used. She brushed her hand over it and was surprised at how warm the rock felt, given the cloudy sky and the cool air. Another lay in her path, longer than the others and broken in three pieces. Maybe a lintel? She thought she could discern a symbol carved at its midpoint; a disk, with eight spokes radiating outward. It bore a vague similarity to the Imperial Crest, but Lyra couldn't imagine how the two could be connected.
Taz wound a path between the fallen blocks, angling toward the remains of the column they'd seen from the air. As they approached Lyra could just make out weathered carvings and inscriptions. She recognized neither the language nor most of the shapes, although some of them appeared to be people, or at least bipedal beings of some sort. Flecks of colors— russet, a drab blue, dark brown— made her think the stonework must have been painted when it was new.
Taz moved here and there among the rubble for another five minutes, not really seeming to look at anything as far as Lyra could see. He finally stopped in a spot toward the western end of the place. He let his pack and utility bag slip from his shoulders while he made a slow turn, arms outstretched, like he was feeling for something. Then he sat on the ground, legs crossed, and opened his eyes. "This feels like the place I'm supposed to be."
"What does that mean?"
"I think I saw this place, last night in a dream."
"A dream?"
"A bad one. It's why I couldn't sleep," He admitted. "Like I said, I think the Force was showing me this place, like I'm supposed to be here."
She crinkled her brow. "You sure you aren't just making all of this up, Oktos?"
"If I'm being honest, no." He shook his head and got that frustrated look that she'd seen on Allegra when Nanvarr was trying to train him. "I really don't know what I'm doing. I wish I did, but—" He trailed off for a minute, looking unsure and conflicted. "Everything about the Force is hard for me. I feel like— like something important is out there, and if I could only grasp it, everything would make sense." He looked desperate.
"Hey." She knelt next to him. "Stop being impatient."
"What?"
"You get impatient. You try to push everything. Piloting Allegra, that training or whatever it was you were doing with Nanvarr, being angry at Tess and Numarkos."
"You don't know anything about that," he snapped.
Lyra held up her hands. "Hey, don't get defensive. If Rendix told you that, you'd listen to her wouldn't you?"
"You're not Sera."
"No. I'm just the Imp you took pity on, right?" she shot back. She got up, brushing dirt from her knees and wondering why she'd even tried.
"That's not what happened."
She pursed her lips. Maybe I went too far. "All I'm saying is that you don't have to push so hard all the time." The barest hint of a grin showed on her face. "Back at the Alui Sector Academy, hyperspatial mechanics used to always kick my ass. I dreaded the nav practicals because they made us plot a route through the Keovarin Expanse."
"The what?"
"It's a stellar graveyard. Anyway, there was a set of formulas that I just couldn't get my head around, but I knew if I did, I'd be able to plot around the Keovarin's gravitic instabilities."
"Were you able to figure it out? The route, I mean."
"Never did, even though I studied for weeks. Got enough partial credit to squeak out a passing grade, though. Now I just leave the tricky route calculations to the navcomp."
"That… doesn't help much," he said, but his frustrated expression faded into a small grin.
Her ghost of a smile grew by the slightest degree. "What I'm saying is, just do what you can do, and don't let the frustration eat you up inside."
Taz nodded, looking thoughtful. "That makes sense. Thanks."
She shrugged. "Whatever."
Why can't she just take the compliment? Taz uttered a sigh and tried not to look annoyed. "Guess I'll just try meditating, and see what happens. It, uh, might take a while, so..."
Lyra retreated, leaning against one of the warm, flat blocks a few meters away. She took the pad from her pocket and waggled it at him. "No problem, Oktos. I've got plenty of reading to catch up on." She thumbed the pad's security sensor and it blinked to life. She opened the reader and scrolled through the library of titles. Taz began whispering a meditative chant. Lyra couldn't hear the words, but she could tell he was repeating the same phrase over and over again. His eyes closed and he fell into a relaxed cadence. She turned her attention to the article on the decline of the arts in the Age of Empire, and began reading.
Taz had nearly always perceived the Force like a gray haze. His only other connection to it seemed to be the nasty shocking sensation behind his eyes when danger was near. Over the eleven years he'd been aware of it, through the meditations and practicing what he read in Master Jorun's writings, the haze remained. Even as he gained those tiny increments of understanding, learned greater control of the healing trance and how to augment his physical abilities to jump higher and run faster, the gray remained. When Master Jorun spoke of sensing things through the Force, Taz had tried that, but he could never seem to find anything. Well, except on Narendri Prime. He'd begun to suspect that he simply had a weak connection to it, and this ashen fog might be as much clarity as he would ever have.
Nanvarr and Jurun both stressed the need for calm when accessing the Force. Taz's own experience had borne that out; he did his best with it when his mind was still. But he couldn't help letting frustration turn to desperation as he realized that a much greater understanding of the Force lay so tantalizingly close, yet just beyond his reach.
Just do what you can do, Lyra advised him. She wasn't normally so understanding. It was a nice change from her usual attitude that hovered somewhere between annoyance and hostility. Plus, it made good sense. He settled into a comfortable position, arms resting on his knees. He started the Dahann meditation, just to clear his mind, then began Master Jorun's chant in a whisper, his lips barely moving.
I am one with the Force. The Force Is With Me.
After some minutes he felt the familiar and oddly comforting stress that came with maintaining the trance. Careful to keep his breathing deep and slow, he continued the mantra, sliding deeper into the connection.
The gray mist of the Force surrounded him, pressing close all around. But as he chanted, something else entered his perception, an eddy first, then currents in the haze. He waited, willing patience as never before, and more eddies formed, little swirls and lines, even ripples. They intersected, changing each other as they met and passed, combined and diverged. In time, it seemed to Taz that a kind of pattern emerged, imprinted on the gauzy fabric he was caught in. At first he didn't comprehend it, but gradually he realized he was looking at the very ruined temple in which he sat. Turning his mind's eye, the tapestry changed, time slid backward, until the tumbled walls rebuilt themselves. The ancient place hosted dozens of beings who came and went in what must have been the daily flow of life for the adherents of the faith that had led them to construct the Dai Bendu temple. At least, that's the name that resolved in his mind.
The vision, millennia old, shifted and faded as his perception returned to the present. Taz was fascinated by the things he was able to see. He found that the more he relaxed and let the Force flow instead of trying to coerce a response, the more he could stretch out his perceptions, and feel other presences. Sera and Reiko glowed, points of brightness in the gray. Others he felt too— Tess, strong and confident, elated at having been reunited with her parents after so many years apart, but troubled by their seeming embrace of their Imperial captors. Varun, whose presence was guarded, except his feelings for Tess.
Taz keenly felt their love for each other, the potent connection their injuries and mutual convalescence had sparked. He envied that connection; he'd had it with her once, or thought he had. The vision grew darker when he dwelled on that, and how he'd lost her to Numarkos. He turned from them and spent some effort calming his mind.
Reaching out again he could sense the emotions of others like Tess's parents, always in shades of light and dark. He found Tillisk Tafo, felt the sharp dagger edge of his being, the sense of supremacy that the Imperial Will imparted. His affection for the miners, if it could be called that, was tainted by sinister intellect and a certitude that the Empire's recent reversals would be swiftly rectified by his hand.
Vaniel Ruatha was there too. Hers was as sharp a presence as Tafo's, but cold and unyielding. She had the same kind of guardedness as Varun, but exacerbated to the point of paranoia. Taz wanted to shrink from the powerful, dangerous convictions that Ruatha and Tafo shared. The future they planned could doom the galaxy to more decades of destruction. He felt now, more than ever, the urgency of getting information about this place back to the New Republic.
Relaxing into the Force even more, he felt the stirring of everyone on the mining base, their individual essences tiny droplets in the mist. And he kept going, encouraged by what he felt, expanding his perception even wider, feeling fainter impressions of life, on the planet and even across the vastness of space to quadrillions of other lives, maybe more. It dawned on him then that the haze wasn't simply a medium for the Force to show him these things; It was an expression of the universe itself. Over what seemed like long minutes (though his perception of time had ceased to mean anything to him) he could even narrow his sense to an individual particle within the mist, and examine the essence of the lifeform it represented.
The shades of the Force he felt as well. Anger, hate, envy, even passion and desire caused a darkening in the fog. He felt power there, and the same temptation to embrace it that he'd felt aboard Allegra when he'd fought with Tess. But there was also light— Compassion, serenity, curiosity, and an abiding sense of life that made it grow. It had a power too, not harsh and strong like the darkness, but just as potent.
And as the dark and light mixed together throughout the universe they produced the gray of balance. If he was still, very still, and very focused, he could feel the pull of light and dark within him. He reached out to the warmth of the light. He could feel nearly limitless potential in its bright glow, but he also felt something unexpected, like lethargy. The light was warm and good, but static. He reached for the dark, felt its sensuousness, its allure, the offer of power that could be wielded in the service of justice and righteousness, the power to conquer and dominate those who challenged him. It felt good, vital, but in a frenzied way. He had to struggle with every passing instant to avoid the temptation of his darker urges; the jealousy he felt when he touched the connection between Tess and Varun, the despair of seeing so many friends die on Jakku, the impotent rage that accompanied his memory of the Pride of Olminar's return to Vrast, too late to save his family, or the other seventeen million filvians who died there. The Force promised him the power to right all those wrongs, if only he'd give himself over to it, body and soul.
It clung to him like an oily skin, and it took some strength of will to drag himself back from those dark currents. He pushed the vengeful feelings aside and concentrated on finding peace and a center in the tension of the Force. The dark and light stirred together once more and he relaxed in that balance.
Taz drew his senses back in, and he suddenly recognized Lyra, although he couldn't think exactly why that was. He opened himself to the Force even more. She was ablaze in his perception, blotting out everything else. The ferocity of her life force and its every nuance flooded his senses— Deep pain at the death of her family, the love she had for them, most especially Allegra, and the harsh wariness she wrapped around herself to keep from having to experience anything that wretched again.
There was something else in the brilliant point within the Force she occupied; conflict and guilt. The guilt of a survivor, the conflict of someone whose deepest beliefs had been challenged and then crumbled away. She was uncertain, about her years in Imperial service, and her place among the ex-Rebels she'd joined. It frightened her, made her retreat even further inside her layers of emotional armor. Even deep in his meditative state he felt a twinge of shame at the intimacies he was experiencing. He felt like he should reach out to her through the Force, reassure her somehow, though he couldn't think of exactly how to do that.
Lyra's presence in his perception suddenly receded, pushed back by new eddies that flowed and resolved into form. A figure emerged out of the past, commanding all of his attention. At first no more than a gray silhouette, it grew in detail with every passing instant until finally, a girl stood before him. He recognized her instantly— the bright yellow eyes, each with their two distinct pupils, the tan cast of her skin, braids pinned in loops on either side of her head, the cream and brown robes, and— the gold lacquered lightsaber with an exquisitely tooled maroon leather grip that hung from her broad belt. He'd seen her five years ago on Narendri Prime, the day he'd turned twenty, found her lightsaber, and nearly died.
Sha'ila Kal'ii. Her name came to him unbidden. She said nothing, but she took the saber from her belt and balanced it on her upturned palms. Polished and gleaming, Taz could see what an elegant weapon it was, perfectly suited to the more civilized age in which the girl had existed. It rose from her hand, floating between the two of them in Force-space. She smiled, and he felt something guiding him— it could only be her— urging him to delve deeply into the ancient Jedi weapon.
He felt its presence, its weight and power. He poured his senses into it, past the leather and brass and the dark golden phrik alloy of its emitter housing. The internal workings spread themselves before him as all of its parts disassociated and hung, suspended. The pale blue kyber crystal that gave the saber its power spun lazily. Taz could see deep inclusions in the rough mineral splinter, the web of fissures and fractures within its structure. It was just as Nanvarr had said.
Kal'ii prompted him with her alien eyes, and he sought with his perception until, quite nearby, he felt something new, a vibration within the Force. Turning more of his attention to it, he began to perceive not just vibration, but sound. A pale glow began, like a dormant ember reignited by fresh air. At first diffuse, it came into focus as the sound changed pitch, tone, timbre. Finally in sharp relief he saw it— a crystal, like the blue one in Sha'ila's saber, but with a deep amber hue. And, to his unexpected delight, it was singing.
Singing to Taz. He listened, enraptured. Its song went far beyond melodies, harmonies, and counterpoints. Fragments of wisdom, secrets as old as space-time, and a streak of playfulness, all cascaded into him. He answered, surprised to hear a song of his own, though he made no sound. He sang to the crystal with his heart more than his head, and it sang back. Each note was a new, fundamental revelation that left his consciousness as soon as the next was sung. He was filled with elation and a feeling that he could grasp all of the secrets of the universe.
The song faded eventually until it was a mere murmur at the farthest reaches of his mind. The amber crystal hung in the air, perfectly aligned with the other components of the lightsaber. Sha'ila nodded, a deep, serene gesture, and smiled once again. With a push here, a turn there, he choreographed the multitude of parts into a swirling ballet. As they coalesced, Sha'ila grew further away, her presence muted, but kind and reassuring, until only his lightsaber remained, aged and worn, but whole once more.
Taz felt great contentment and exhaustion. He opened his eyes, panting from exertion and covered in sweat. The sun had fallen below the horizon and the sky was quickly darkening. At his feet lay the lightsaber, the gift of Jedi knight Sha'ila Kal'ii, two centuries gone.
Lyra looked up from her book every few minutes to see if Taz had moved. Time after time though, he sat nearly motionless, his breathing and an occasional whisper the only evidence that he was still awake. After an hour she stood up and walked around, as much for a change of scenery as to keep her legs from cramping.
The time stretched on— Three, four, five hours. The bright orb of Beta Fonidian grew lower on the horizon, turning orange as it dipped, splashing the stringy clouds with dusky hues against the fading blue sky. The air grew chillier and still Taz sat, immobile and entranced, apparently.
I hope he's getting something out of this, because I'm bored out of my mind. She tried to think of what made her agree to tag along with him, out to the middle of nowhere, in search of Creation knew what. Even after working with him for months she didn't know what to make of him. He was by turns annoying, obtuse and naïve. But he was also earnest and curious. He was grieving, too. She wondered if his feelings over losing Tess were anything like the depths of despair she'd felt for Allegra and her parents. If they were, she could understand why he'd been on edge and acting so cold for the past couple of weeks. She knew that pain all too intimately, and she kept as far away from it as she could.
She watched him as he meditated, idly timing the slow, steady pace of his breathing. If I'm being perfectly honest, he's not bad for the eyes. She shook that thought right out of her head. Personal relationships with crewmates was a guarantee of disaster. That lesson had been drilled into every academy cadet. When crew members got too close, efficiency suffered. It led to favoritism and inequity. And when the inevitable happened and the relationship soured, morale plummeted, tensions rose. Crew efficiency could drop by as much as thirty-five percent according to studies the navy had conducted a decade before she'd joined. They were required reading for every first-year cadet. Standing orders were to reassign crew members immediately upon the first violation. Three months in the brig and reduction in rank by two grades for the second. The third violation earned you a court martial and unceremonious discharge that dogged you the rest of your professional life. People soon got the message, and crews largely engaged in only the most superficial interactions outside of their duty hours.
Life on a customs cruiser left Lyra little time for such things in any case. She'd been angling for a command position ever since her rookie patrol, and she wasn't about to let something as stupid as an infatuation ruin that. As a bonus, keeping to herself meant that she didn't have to talk to anyone about why she'd joined up in the first place. She dreaded the thought of reliving that ordeal, the memory of the night she'd had to identify bodies of Allegra and her parents at the morgue, shredded nearly beyond recognition by the flechette canisters of the Rebel terrorists at the Sakoola festival.
Lyra hugged her arms to her sides and shuddered. She uttered a little whimper and pushed the horrible memory away. She got to her feet, slid the datapad into her thigh pocket, dusted off her hands and stalked the twenty meters back to the airspeeder, cursing herself over and over for bringing up the recollection.
Her time in Customs had taught her how to erect barriers around herself. What it hadn't prepared her for was living and working in such close proximity as they did on Allegra's Heart. The kind of distance she could maintain on even some of the smaller Customs vessels simply eluded her on a twenty-meter ship where her crewmates insisted on being friendly. Reiko Hudson was particularly quick to warm to Lyra, and even though Sera Rendix was the ship's captain, she came across more like an older sister. Not that she could take Allegra's place. That would never happen.
She yanked open the door, snatched her jacket and threw it on. From the small cargo compartment she grabbed a heater and some instant meals. She started for the ruins, but after a few steps turned back to the speeder. On a whim, she added bivy kits to her burden. Juggling everything in her arms was a chore, but she managed to get it all back to the circle of broken stones after only a couple of stops to pick up a dropped item. Her anger and self-loathing had cooled by then, mostly.
The air began turning chilly. She held a brief internal debate over whether she should drape Taz's jacket over his shoulders and risk rousing him. She settled for taking it from his pack and putting it beside him. She set the six-sided electrothermal generator a couple of meters away, adjusted the output dial, and switched it on. The unit emitted a soft hum, the heat coils quickly taking on a pleasant yellow glow.
Lyra's stomach grumbled; she hadn't eaten since the morning. She grabbed a meal, set it atop one of the plentiful flat stone blocks, and pulled the activation tab. Steam vented almost immediately from the relief valve in the corner of the package. The clear plastic covering the divided tray bulged from the heat and expanding vapor. Carefully she peeled back a corner, then pulled off the rest of the protective film.
While it cooled to a more manageable temperature Lyra unfolded a big tarpaulin from the bivy kit and staked it out near the perimeter of the round foundation. She extended a pair of collapsing rods at the corners and shoved them into the ground, forming a wind barrier, and ran stabilizing lines to keep the big plastic sheet taut. She laid out the bivy bags and inflated the insulative ground pads.
She sat cross-legged in front of her meal, set her canteen beside it, and tucked in. Dinner turned out to be some kind of roasted fowl in a spicy brown sauce, slender fingerbeans that were mottled orange and lavender, smothered in herbal butter, and an unidentifiable starchy mash with a pungent smell. She took one small bite of that and ignored the rest. The blue milk in her canteen was still delightfully cold, though she thought she wouldn't mind a nice warm mug of khaff instead.
Lyra started to clean up when she felt a tingle wash over her. At the same moment, the crook of her arm where Taz had repaired her gouged flesh and shattered bone grew acutely warm. She took her arm out of her jacket to see if she'd been bitten by some local creepy-crawly. The skin was intact, but it was so sensitive that when she brushed it with her fingers she let out an uncontrolled gasp. At the same time she felt Taz's presence very close to her. She glanced over at him and saw little twitches in his shoulders and arms, like someone in the throes of a kinetic dream. A sheen of sweat broke out on his forehead.
Concerned, she took a step toward him, but something made her stop. The warmth in her arm spread to the rest of her body, chasing anxiety away. It felt pleasant and soothing. She recalled feeling that way once before. It was the day they'd first met, when he'd used the Force to heal her. She'd been terrified at what Rebels would do to a captured Imperial pilot. His unexplainable skills had healed her body. And for all his intrusiveness, his compassion had reassured her.
She sat, feeling a little weak-kneed, but kept an eye on the former Alliance medtech. To the twitches he added mumbling, too low for her to catch what he was saying. Hell, as far as Lyra could tell, he was just babbling. She tucked an errant lock of silvery hair behind her ear and slipped her arm back into her jacket. The warmth of the generator and the tingling waves rippling through her pushed her toward ennui. She felt her eyelids droop, and thought that some sleep might be an excellent idea.
She'd almost decided to lay down right where she sat, when the ground began to rumble and shake. The stone blocks started vibrating all around, and Lyra was quite certain she saw the inscribed runes on the tumbled, eroded column glowing with a faint blue-white aura. A few meters to Taz's right, a little rubble pile rose into the air. At nearly the same instant his lightsaber did likewise, hovering in front of him at arm's length.
She watched, fascinated and a little frightened. Her hand crept toward her blaster as the lightsaber also began to vibrate, then come apart before her eyes. The casing and pommel separated, and every constituent piece of the weapon separated from every other until they all floated before Oktos, each piece slowly rotating around the lightsaber's long axis, like an exploded engineering diagram on a holoprojector.
She heard, or felt, an odd sensation, almost like someone singing far in the distance. From the pile of rubble levitating nearby a little crystal shard emerged, no bigger than her thumb. It flashed dimly in the thermogenerator's glow, floated to where Taz sat, and displaced a similar blue crystal that had come from inside the lightsaber. The blue piece fell to the ground, unmoving. Gripped by sudden curiosity, she picked it up and folded it in her hand. She witnessed a soft glow that enveloped all of the pieces as they recombined themselves in a reverse enactment of their earlier disassembly. The completed weapon turned in the air for a few seconds more, then dropped gently to the ground.
Taz wobbled as his eyes opened. Lyra reached for his shoulder to steady him. "You alright, Oktos?" He was hot, almost feverish, his face covered in perspiration.
He wiped the back of his hand across his clammy face. After a second he seemed to remember where he was. "Yeah," he said, his voice unsteady. "I'm okay." He blinked and looked west at the last of the evening light, then down to his wrist link. "Six hours?" He looked spent, but placid, like some weighty burden had fallen away. He shivered when the breeze blew. Lyra nodded at his jacket and he put it on. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it," she replied in that standoffish tone that kept everyone at a safe remove. "So? What happened?"
Instead of answering, Taz clapped a hand to his stomach. "I'm starving."
Lyra angled her head toward the low stone block where she'd taken her dinner. He started to rise, but his legs were numb and weak. Lyra helped him to his feet. He took a wobbly step and leaned against her. "Easy, Oktos, you'll knock me over."
"Sorry," he said, looking embarrassed. He steadied himself and stood up straight.
In a kinder tone she suggested, "Take a walk around, get some of your circulation back."
Taz held his hand out over the lightsaber, palm down, eyes closed. It vibrated on the ground for a few seconds, then shot up firmly into his grasp. Lyra drew in a sharp breath. He opened his eyes, looking like a flight cadet who'd just aced his hyperspatial mechanics practical.
"Whoa," she said. "You learned to do that?"
"Nanvarr taught me the basics, but yeah, that and a lot more, I think. It's all jumbled up in my head."
He thumbed the activation button and the weapon sprang to life, a meter-long beam of ionized plasma glowing with a rich amber hue, like a sun rising over the horizon at first light. It made a buzzing, hissing tone with a deep bass undercurrent that modulated as he moved the blade through the air. He assumed the ready position from the Jedi combat master's recording, took a couple of test swings, then executed a clumsy attack and parry sequence. The weapon moved differently with the blade ignited, though he couldn't understand why it would do that.
Returning to the guard position, he extinguished the blade with a long shhhwooop sound, smiling from ear to ear. "That's more incredible than I could ever have imagined." he breathed.
Lyra was too awestruck to say anything. After a moment she held up the crystal she'd found. The light from the thermogenerator refracted dimly through it. She turned it this way and that before handing it to him. "This is yours. It fell out when you were— fixing?— the lightsaber." She dropped the crystal into his hand. "It's pretty. That's what they've been mining here, isn't it?"
Taz nodded. "It's a kyber crystal. They focus and intensify the plasma energy." He rolled the cracked blue crystal in his fingers. "This one's been fractured. It's too damaged to use." Then he looked at her with narrowed eyes. "How'd you know I fixed it?"
"I saw it float in the air, come apart, then go back together. How else?"
He looked thoughtful for a moment, then clipped the blade to his belt and started walking out the stiffness in his legs.
Lyra pulled the activation tab on his dinner tray and moved the portable heater a little closer.
"You've been busy," he said, looking around. He seemed steadier after a couple of laps.
"Been working my fingers to the bone, as usual, Officer Oktos" she said. "Sit. Eat."
"Yes ma'am, Ensign Nimor," he said, throwing a little mock salute at her. He picked up the tray, sat on the rock and ate eagerly.
When he finished she held out her canteen. "Milk?" He took the offered flask and drained it, then handed it back. She scowled, shaking the empty container. "I guess you really were starving."
"Sorry," he said, looking sheepish. I'll go to the speeder and get more—"
"Don't bother," she interjected, "It's fine."
She seemed to be in better spirits. So was he. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you're being unusually kind."
Lyra shrugged and held out her hand. "Don't get used to it." She took his food tray and put it in the waste bag with hers, then sat on her bivy bag, sinking into the inflated ground pad. She drew her knees under her chin and clasped them with her arms. "Will you tell me what happened?"
"I—" he started, then chuckled self-consciously. "I'm not sure where to start."
"How about the beginning?"
"Yeah, okay." He unzipped his bivy bag and sat on it. "This place was a temple for a faith called Dai Bendu."
"What, like the Bendu monks that hang around starports selling trinkets and chanting incessantly?"
"Maybe," he shrugged. "It's thousands of years old. Tens of thousands. Older even than the Jedi Order." Quickly he added, "Don't ask me how I know that, I just do." Then he told her everything that he saw and felt, as much as he could put into words. After he finished, he leaned back on his hands, lost in thought.
"What do you suppose it means, the light and dark?"
Taz shrugged. "I don't know. Good and evil?" He sounded unconvinced.
"Hmm… Sounds too simple."
"Yeah, but I could feel a difference. The light part was, I don't know, alive somehow. Like it had a special affinity for life."
"So what's the darkness, then, death?"
He shook his head. "No, I think both the light and dark aspects of the Force represent life. Everything I know about the Force says that it binds all living things in the universe together. It's more like... the light wants to encourage life, protect and invigorate it. The dark wants to control life and shape it."
"Want to hear something crazy? Right before you started doing— whatever you did with that lightsaber, I swear I could feel your presence. Like when someone comes right up behind you and you can't see them, but you know they're there. That's what it felt like."
Taz nodded. "It's not crazy. I sensed you in the Force, just like I sensed everyone on this planet, and even beyond." He said the words as if he couldn't quite believe them himself.
"What's that like?" Lyra asked, her curiosity piqued.
"It's hard to put into words. It's not like I'm actually seeing people, well, except for Sha'ila Kal'ii. More like, I can tell who it is from the way they feel in the Force."
How do I feel in the Force? Lyra wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer. Taz yawned, arching his back and stretching his arms over his head. He looked up at the darkening sky. The clouds had cleared and stars began appearing in the inky blackness. She chanced the question. "What did I feel like, to you?"
Taz didn't answer for a time. When he looked at her his expression was intense, but kind. It reminded her of the first time she'd met him. "You felt... bright, like when you look into a glimmerwick flame and it blots out everything else, you know?" She blushed, and her eyes went wide. She started to respond, but he spoke first. "Sad too, for your family. And confused, and scared. And… maybe a little lonely."
"You read my thoughts, Oktos?" she bristled, alarmed and suddenly angry. She regretted having ever asked.
He held up his hands. "No, no! Just feelings! Thoughts are—" He was quiet, thinking hard. "I wouldn't do that unless you let me."
She was still on edge. The kind of power he was talking about, the kind of power he had, frightened her. Growing up, everyone in the galaxy had been taught the treachery of the Jedi, and their mythic, magical Force. But if the Force was real— and she'd seen it for herself— then those who wielded it must have been monstrous.
The more she considered it, the more she felt like running back to the aircar now and leaving him amid the stones and old religion. But everything he'd told her, and everything she knew about Taz made her think he wasn't the kind of person who would use that sort of power. At least not on her. Still, she held her suspicions. "You couldn't take them from me, if you wanted to?"
Taz looked away. "I don't know. This is all new to me. It'll probably take me weeks, months even, just to figure out what I've learned today." Then in a smaller voice, "I think I could, if I wanted to. Force someone's thoughts from them, I mean, like Nanvarr did to me." He looked at her and Lyra saw the fear in his eyes. He was grappling with the enormity of it, too. "But I wouldn't ever. Not to you. Not to anyone I… cared about." He said the last words carefully.
Lyra's stomach knotted. What's he saying? The hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood up.
Was she actually feeling something for him? Sure, his boyishness was attractive in its way, but she had no interest in a relationship.
Do I?
In a moment of honesty that surprised her, she'd admitted to him that she'd never had one. Now she wondered if that might have been her subconscious trying to tell her something. For some reason she thought back to the warmth and deep solace she felt when he'd healed her on Jakku. Maybe those feelings were his, projected when he was using the Force, or maybe they were hers, and he'd somehow drawn them out of her.
How long had it been since she'd really cared for someone— the better part of a decade? She'd loved her parents and Allegra madly. They'd made her feel warm and peaceful. Taz did too, she realized, even when he annoyed her. And that soothing warmth she'd just experienced, the sense of him close by had made her feel calm and comfortable. And happy.
She didn't want to admit it, but he was right when he said she seemed lonely. And when she really thought about it, she hated that feeling. In the service she'd convinced herself that staying detached was the way to stay safe and get ahead. What she got instead was passed over for promotions and command positions, distrust from the Navy, and an unceremonious sendoff at the point of a blaster from her fellows on Jakku. Loneliness and detachment had gotten her nowhere. The first people to care about her were the ones she'd been fighting against. They offered her a home, and made her a part of something that felt a little like family. And he was part of that, too.
Are you seriously going to let him in, Lyra? She leaned away from him. Her heart jumped and her face flushed. She hoped he couldn't see it in the heater's wan glow. To hide her discomfort she got up and ordered, "Turn around."
"What, why?" He looked confused.
Good, she thought. I need to keep him as off-balance as I am. "I've had enough of today. Just do it, Oktos."
"Oh. Alright," he said, turning away.
Lyra took off her jacket, belt and pistol, and laid them on the ground next to her bivy bag. Then she undressed. She trembled in the dark. It felt like her body was moving on its own. Her heart pounded even faster, and she was breathing hard. She could stop if she wanted to, she was sure of it. She leaned over and touched Taz's shoulder.
He turned around, looking shocked when she knelt next to him. "What are you—?"
"Shut up, Oktos," she said, astonished at her boldness. Before she could change her mind, she grabbed him behind the ears and kissed him. His mouth was warm, soft, and, after a moment, willing.
He drew away after a few luxurious seconds. "I, um," he stammered. "I don't understand."
Lyra hadn't expected his lips to feel so good. "Are you saying you don't want to?" She trembled with sudden desire. He was trembling too.
"No, of course not, but—"
"Good," she interrupted. "I'm not in the mood to take no for an answer." She kissed him again and pushed him to the ground.
Afterward, she lay with her head on his shoulder and pressed herself against his hot skin. His arms fell loosely around her waist. It felt good to her. Scary, but good. It would be so easy to lose myself in… whatever this is.
"You okay?" Taz asked, brushing the top of her head with his lips.
"Sure. You?"
"I thought you didn't like me."
"I'm pretty sure I don't," she teased with a self-conscious chuckle, caressing his chest absently with her fingers. "What about you?"
"Are you asking if I like you?"
She nodded without lifting her head.
"Yes, I do."
It sounded like he'd only just realized it himself, but hearing him say it made her feel warm all over. The steady rise and fall of his chest made her recall a time when she'd been sick with a fever. Her father held her against his chest, rocking her in a hand-carved sakoola wood chair that seemed massive to her, and creaked as it moved. She'd fallen asleep to the comforting deep dump-Thump of his heart and the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. She pressed closer to Taz and shivered at the memory.
"Are you cold?"
She hadn't felt that kind of comforting embrace in a long time. And now… Why does he make me feel like this? She sniffled. "It's just the air." Taz tried pulling the top of his bivy bag over her, but the sleeping cocoon was made for one. "Don't worry about it. I'll go to mine," she said.
He held onto her as she started to rise. "You don't have to go." His eyes begged: I don't want you to go.
"This might not have been such a good idea," she said, but stopped trying to get away. "I'm not ready to—"
"I know you aren't," he assured her gently. "I won't ask anything of you, I swear." She let him pull her closer, offering only token resistance. He held her, stroking her hair. "It's okay to need comfort, Lyra. It's okay to want this. It's okay," he soothed, brushing her neck and shoulder with his fingers. The tingling was electric.
It felt like he might need comfort as much as she did. Lyra wanted to speak, but a sudden lump in her throat stopped her.
"Wait a sec." He rolled over, pulled her bag next to his and zipped the two of them together. She took the opportunity to admire the lean muscles in his naked arms and shoulders. "There," he said, tucking the warm fabric around her.
"Now I can't get away, is that it?"
"You've seen through my devious plan," he said, his voice low.
She settled back against him. Lyra wasn't sure where this was going, or how she'd feel about it tomorrow. But she decided, at least for now, that he made her feel content and wanted. The rise and fall of his chest, the steady thumping of his heart and the comfort of his arms lulled her to sleep.
A stirring made Lyra open her eyes. Taz was awake, staring into the night. Brilliant cascades of orange, green, blue, even some red and yellow draped themselves across the sky in radiant, scintillating curtains. They rippled and shifted in slow motion.
She let out a sigh of wonder, her breath misty white in the cold midnight air. "It's an aurora. Inusagi had them, but they were rare. I've never seen one this brilliant."
"We didn't have them on Filve. Something about the magnetosphere." He was awestruck, like she was. "It's beautiful." He looked at her. "So are you, Lyra."
The darkness hid her blush. "Stop flattering me."
"I'm not," he said. "Hasn't anyone told you you're beautiful?"
"Not... for a while. My parents' artist friends always asked for Allegra when they needed a model. I couldn't match her beauty. My chin was too square, my nose didn't have the right proportion, my forehead—"
"They had it all wrong," he said, caressing her cheek.
She smiled in the darkness. "I didn't mind, truly. I wasn't after attention or adoration. And Allegra always said I was pretty. That's all that mattered to me. After they were gone and I went off to the Alui sector academy, well, the military didn't really care what I looked like, as long as I did my job." She was quiet, watching the celestial tapestry move on the solar winds.
"Well you are. Beautiful, I mean. Fierce and passionate too. Does it bother you that I think so?"
The way he said it sent thrills racing through her. "No, I'm just... not used to hearing anyone say it, Oktos."
He got up on one elbow. "You can call me Taz, you know. After all, we've—"
She stopped his lips with her finger. "Anybody ever tell you that you talk too much?"
"Filvians are a chatty lot, just ask us," he answered, curling his fingers over her hand and kissing her palm.
She fixed him with a playful, fervent look and whispered in his ear, "I guess I'll have to find a way to shut you up then, Taz." And she did just that.
Lyra sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes and yawning. The dawning sun sat low on the horizon, half of its disk still obscured by the planet's curvature and the rolling grassland. She felt refreshed and light. Last night was still so fresh in her mind, the sensations reverberated even now. And Taz…
Taz stood a little way off, staring at the sunrise. He turned his lightsaber absently in his hand. When she stirred, he looked over and smiled. "Good morning, Ensign Nimor."
"Officer Oktos," she replied, returning his smile. He'd already dressed. There was a flask of sarna steaming on the thermogenerator's top plate. Beside it, a small pot of porridge, to judge by the spicy aroma. "You've been busy."
"Not too much. I shot off a quick comm check. Sera was concerned when we didn't show up last night."
"What'd you tell her?"
He smiled at the tacit subtext of her question. "That the survey took longer than planned, so we decided to hole up here rather than fly back at night."
"Think she believed you?" I wouldn't, she thought to herself.
He shrugged and took a long drink from his mug.
She teased some of the tangles out of her hair and regretted not having brought a brush. But then, she hadn't really thought they'd spend the night under the stars, in the middle of nowhere. Lyra recalled Jerric's off-handed remarks about getting away with Taz, and her firm rejection. All of that went right out the window, didn't it, Lyra?
She started to get out of the bivy bag, then remembered she pretty much wasn't wearing anything. "Eyes front, Mister."
Taz looked confused. "After last night—"
"I'm still… processing last night. Just humor me."
"Sure, okay," he said, turning away.
She wondered if she'd made him feel bad. Twelve hours ago she'd have hardly cared. Now… She pulled on the tan form-fitting pants, belted her blaster into place and slipped into her boots. She remembered to button her blouse, then zipped her jacket. There was still a cool bite in the morning air.
She filled a mug and stood beside him. "Don't misunderstand, Taz. Last night was—"
"I don't want you to regret it," he said quietly.
Lyra smiled. "I don't, not at all. It was… amazing." He perked up. "I might even let you do it again, in five years or so."
His wounded look was only for show. "I… hope it might be sooner than that," he said, turning sheepish for a moment, "but I'm not— Like I said, I won't ask you for anything."
The conversation was rapidly growing too serious. Lyra had a lot of things to sort out, not least of which was how deep her feelings for Tazbarada Oktos might run. But she'd think about that later. She pointed with her mug. "What's with the lightsaber?"
"Oh, um, the Jedi knight who owned it, the one I told you about? She kind of bequeathed it to me."
"Like she had a choice in the matter," Lyra quipped. "She's been dead over two hundred years, isn't that what you said?"
"Yeah, but, it meant something for her to do that. I'm starting to understand that things steeped in the Force, like lightsabers and kyber crystals, have a connection to their owners. I think that connection endures, even after death. It was in her family for a long time, over a thousand years, I think. So her letting it go, giving it to me, well, I think it's important." He hunted for more to say, but couldn't seem to come up with the right words. "Anyway, since it's mine now I thought I should give it a name."
His explanation made sense in its own way. She didn't pretend to understand how he knew what he knew. At this point she was willing to take what he said on faith alone. Lyra lifted her head affirmatively. "Okay. Did you come up with one?"
He looked at the rising brilliant orange disk of Beta Fonidian. "I've heard that dawn is called aurora on some planets." He ignited the lightsaber, held it before him as if he were comparing it to the rising sun, then extinguished it again. "Orange sun, orange blade. Well, I guess it's more like amber, but you get the idea," he said with a smile. "I think I'll call it Aurora Ascendant. For this beautiful sunrise, and that light show last night."
"I think that's perfect, Taz," Lyra said, and kissed his cheek. "Now, mister-would-be-Jedi, let's eat, do some surveying— whatever that means— and get back. I'll bet that intel officer wants to find out more about what's going on at that mining site, and he's going to be none too happy if we hold him back."