"I'm pretty sure going to Tatooine was your idea," I said to silence Artie's whining about sandy joints.

He returned to his station and plugged into the multi-port. A holographic image of the defunct kyber from the Colonel, spun over his domed head and morphed at Artie's command. A constant stream of countless lines of code scrawled through a secondary monitor in the ship's hull while a tiny duplicate of the data rolled down the droid's circular display screen. He beeped that it was here, we found the key to Lor San Tekka's Zaetech drive.

"How long till it's decrypted?" I asked.

Artie responded by sending a message to my datapad. I pulled up the attachment file that made my eyes go wide, then I ran down into the hold to retrieve Pop's datachip. I wrapped the leather cord around my wrist as I brought it back up the stairs to the work station—sniffed the oils that reminded me of mom, home, hot sands and humid summer nights—then plugged it into my datapad.

"Sidrona Diath—" I began, my heart beating so hard it made it hard for my lungs to find room for air. "Have you ever heard the name, Artie? Or Basilisk, the Extinction of… Oh my goodness, have you heard of someone called Mandalore the Indomitable?"

Artie ignored me but I paid no mind to him either. I was reading aloud, but it took me a long while to realize he had not stopped working on the hologram to listen to me. We had the encryption key, what more could he want from the datacrystal?

"I'm almost there," was all he would say.

"The Zaetech is a pretty straightforward datachip, R3" I said, still scrolling through the data on the legendary Diaths. "You could collate the information in here in minutes."

"We've a few hours before we reach Marleyvane," he beeped and gurgled at me, without moving from his work station. "I know you'll do a great job."

I fumed but he was unmovable. Whatever he worked on was prioritized over disseminating the story from Pop's old necklace. Transcribing the contents of the datachip appeared as a labor of love more than science, anyway. Nevertheless, it did not take long to enthrall me.

Artie would work the entire trip back on his new mystery project, while I took the raw data about the Nameless Jedi and the house of Diath, and gave it form.

#

Findings Log — 11247
Marleyvane
Dr Mary Au'Rona

A chime echoed through the Converso and roused me from my intense focus on the data feed. I left my quarters and went to the refreshment station to grab a piping cup of junnberry tea and a prot-bar to nibble on. Artie was already in the cockpit and prepared to pull the ship out of hyperspace as I slumped into the conn.

"So did you get it, R3? Whatever you were working on?"

Artie shook his head back and forth, and acted as though he was too busy to talk to me. The Converso lurched out of lightspeed and the stars realigned around the system of Marleyvane. I pulled my knees into my chest and sipped my tea as we approached the extraordinary world.

It is not the system itself that's remarkable—big glowing ball of blue seas and gray earth—but the old imperial shipyard surrounding it, that is. The long abandoned naval manufactory, wrapped around the whole world like an iron hoop, is the hallmark of Marleyvane's aesthetic identity. The shipyard once housed some of the Galactic Empire's most distinguished minds, and in its prime was capable of outfitting more than a dozen fleets simultaneously.

Now it is a relic of an age long gone, decrepit and abandoned. Half a century later, scavengers haven't even come near to picking the massive ring dry of its treasures and resources, and probably never would.

As the system grew larger and larger in the viewport, so too grew the detail and definition of the breathtaking black-metal ring. The Converso ducked beneath its imposing shadow and sped into the atmosphere above the academy. Artie spun us around a few towering cumulus formations and raced the setting sun toward the landing pad. He was excited to be back home and the ship flew like it was as well. I was almost jealous of how happy the old droid was getting.

Three looming towers like dark purple minarets before the horizon guided our flight toward the campus. He wouldn't even let me put her into the hangar bay, Artie was so happy to be back. He chirped like an excited canary later as he helped me unload the ship and set up our research station.

I was happy to be home as well, of course, but the air felt thinner, less nourishing, almost uninviting after the many months away. It was psychosomatic, I knew that, but at the time I was terrified that someone might take my findings the wrong way. Even worse, I worried they might take them from me entirely.

I was studying a subject that was shrouded in religious mystery and tied to the very foundation of our galactic society. My paranoia only fed the anxiety and vice versa, but Artie remained above it all: My scientific true north.

He worked round the clock and refused to discuss his intentions, but I trusted him and deflected as best I could.

It was a busy time for us both, returning back to where we began our journey. While I spent days on Marleyvane carefully fielding questions from academics and professors, searching for the most politically (and scientifically) correct way to talk about dismantling the most influential religion in galactic history, Artie continued to manipulate our accumulated data in search of, something... anything, I guessed.

In the meantime we were able to recharge our batteries—both figuratively and literally—amongst the familiar halls and libraries of the Allied Academy. Their limitless resources and facilities made our work easier in most ways, but also more frustrating the longer things took.

Artie was close, he was sure of it, and had been for weeks. I used the data on Sidrona Diath and the Jedi Order's non-intervention against the Indomitable to satisfy the academics for a time, but for every answer I gave, three new questions cropped up. Questions that grew more complex and laden with political undertones as time stretched on. Artie insisted he needed the Academy's offerings to finish his work, so I endured.

One of my teachers used to say: "Good science comes from a simple idea made increasingly more complex." I never realized he was talking about getting and maintaining financial backing.

Finally Artie came to me late one afternoon lit up like a festival service droid, and beeped in an unusually measured tone that he wanted to show me something on the ship. I knew right away that he had struck gold. I was giving a lecture on ritual prophecies in ancient civilizations at the time, but cut it short without a moment's hesitation.

"On the ship?" I asked as he rolled down the hall. "You mean the Converso? Get out of here. If you need to show me something, bring it to me. I'm not going all the way…"

I'm not sure how to describe it, but something about the way he slowly turned to face me and stopped rolling, made me feel like Artie was incredibly on edge. Like his power reserves were on their very last charges. He could see I got the hint, so he turned and rolled the rest of the way in silence.

I followed him from the lecture halls, all the way across the campus to the transport depot, unsure of what was happening but excited nonetheless.

Artie finally began to speak when we entered the hangar, saying that he wasn't sure how much I was going to understand—He knew that the Jedi used the Force as a key to open the holocrons, and knew that we would never be able to replicate that without a living Jedi. But if you can't use a key to open a door, what do you do instead?

"You pick the lock. Or more accurately, convince the door it is open."

"Like slicing it?" I skipped as I exclaimed. "You mean we can hack into the holocrons?"

He beeped that that was precisely what he meant. The datacrystal was not a holocron so unlocking its data was just a matter of "query and response" slicing. Prohibitively time consuming for an average slicer, but Artie was capable of doing trillions of permutations in the space of minutes.

By slicing the datacrystal that I retrieved from Palazzo Dace on Tatooine, Artie had inadvertently exposed a backdoor to all Jedi tech.

After his extensive tests on the Cradle, the kyber datacrystal, and the three Sith artifacts, Artie crafted a rudimentary algorithm that could detect the intentions of a Force relic—the same way a lock-pick feels for ridges and grooves in an analog keyhole. He called it the Intentus Key.

Artie did not want to test it alone and added that we should not risk testing it on Marleyvane at all. I agreed and knew we should get into space. That was why he had packed everything into the ship and had it restored and refueled for take-off. Also, why he had dragged me all the way out to the hangar in the first place.

I could have kissed him if he were biological.

I ran the rest of the way back to the ship and Artie whirred past me into the cockpit and had the engines fired before I could even sit down. We rocketed out of atmosphere and got into open space without a word of goodbye to anyone. The ship zoomed past the shipyard and onto a clean heading.

"You think you're ready, old buddy?" I said as I rose from the conn.

Artie beeped back excitedly in the affirmative. He had a new station in the cargo hold featuring a trio of droid arms extending from the center of a workbench. On the surface rested the three lock boxes that housed the mysterious Sith holocrons, designated SHC-01, -02 and -03 respectively. He explained that the concept was simple enough; he would bombard every millimeter of the relics with the algorithm and monitor what reacts and what does not.

The mechanical trio of arms responded to his input at a multi-port and they sprang to work. He unlocked and unloaded each box with exacting care. Then two hands stretched a fiber optic mesh between them that lit up in many colors through a webbing of delicate sinews. The third hand placed the relics atop the mesh, one by one.

The three holocrons glowed red and burned hot, but the mesh held firm. Then Artie's arms worked in unison to encase the holocrons in the fiber optic mesh. Smoke was rising from the stones as they came together but Artie continued to work as though everything was going to plan.

I was agape as he worked; the light and the heat issuing from the holocrons were impediments to me that the droid was able to withstand.

Artie whistled that he was beginning the transmission of the algorithm and in that very instant the three stones began to shift their shape and mold together to form a triangular pyramid. They moved autonomously through the mesh, spinning as though caught in an anti-gravity chamber.

One of the relics had a horn engraved in its side, the second had a star burst, and third had an open eye. They glowed brightest when pressed against the others. They started to grind and whine as the edges of the holocrons unfolded. Runes spun around each other—the eye was on top, now the star burst, now the horn, and the eye again—until they all collapsed together in a fiery blur.

I blocked my eyes and covered my ears from a sudden booming. A moment later I looked up to see the relic unfold on one side and release a noxious green fog. It slowly infected the recording systems and powered down everything running in the holding bay, including Artie and my datapad.

Then the ghost of Mother Talzin revealed herself behind the gaseous trap. Her Force-image was programmed for many queries—the number of which is hypothetical at this point—but had safeguards and parameters that required careful navigation.

All I could do was record her story during our first encounter. It was noteworthy to me that she chose to explain one prophecy with another. She had no interest in talking about Sith or Jedi matters directly.

When the story was over and the holocron broke apart into its three pieces, I was left with a dark holding bay and a lot of rotten equipment. Some of my ship's systems were not working, but diagnostics showed that the corrosive gas had not escaped the hold. Calculating a leap into hyperspace without Artie would prove annoying but not impossible.

I knew how to get back to Marleyvane, if all else failed, but now was not a good time to return. I would have to explain what happened to R3-J9 if I wanted the Academy techs to fix him. Also, I could not risk the possibility of a data-wipe or upgrade that compromised our work to this point.

The main issue was that Artie was the chief navicomputer for the Converso. I would have to find a locale that the ship could calculate a route to based on previous hyperspace trajectories. There were about a dozen or so systems to choose from without too much hassle, but only one that would accept credits and ask no questions.

I passed it by on my initial scan, but on my second or third pass through the names I was convinced that Naboo was the only viable option.

Findings Log — 11247
Naboo
Dr Mary Au'Rona

Naboo was where Artie came from. I had hopes they would be able to fix the veteran droid without making too much of a fuss. When the navicomputer signaled that the calculations were ready, I did not think for another moment. I engaged the drive and whispered a tiny prayer into the pendant around my neck, then jumped into hyperspace

It took nearly twenty standard hours to make it to Naboo. I used the time to finish transcribing my findings on Sidrona Diath and bolstering the physical records on my interaction with Mother Talzin. I needed to be able to explain what happened well enough for Artie to record it and make it useful for academic dissemination, if and when he was fixed.

As for the little droid himself, I had no way of telling how bad the damage was, and the technicians in Theed were at a loss themselves. It was incredible to see the reception R3-J9 received, how many beings had heard of him, or served with someone that had served with him, and how seriously the Naboo took his wellbeing.

The capital city was warm and welcoming; somehow, it always appeared to be glowing in sun or star light. I was captivated by its loveliness and the friendly people. It took two weeks to get Artie's wiring entirely replaced and the burnt data-boards restored, but the Naboo Naval Corps did the work and never asked for a single credit. They offered me lodging in a civil barracks, catered my meals and even clothed me, in the meanwhile. When Artie finally came round, I had nearly forgotten I was on Naboo for him in the first place, it felt more like a vacation.

"Well, look at you!" I said and rushed over to hug the droid. "You look sparkling, how do you feel old buddy?"

Artie chirped and whirred excitedly. He could not believe I took him back to Naboo. All the old relations and the loving care he was receiving; he was nearly overcome by the surprise, and insisted that I tell him everything that happened after he went dark. I played him the short recording I had caught on my datapad and then recited everything I had written down and remembered. It was hours before I took a breath, I think.

He stayed silent through the entire tale, then when I finished, demanded that I tell the whole thing over again, from the beginning, two more times. I was nearly sick of the story by the time we were through and started to remember resenting Artie's methods. But the sharp droid was not just there to listen to a story; he had one of his own to tell.

Artie explained that while he was powered down, his basic functions were still running, just not interacting with each other. So even though he was powered down, he continued programming trillions and trillions of lines of code. When the Naboo techs brought him back and his higher functions came back online, the data rushed together in realtime.

"What are you saying?" I said to stop my head from spinning.

A chime signaled a new file awaited me on my datapad—also freshly restored by the generous Naboo techs. It was labeled "Intentus Key" and was too large a data load for my pad to run. I looked at him and he whistled that sometimes he does his best thinking when he is shut down.

"I hear that's true about biologicals, too," he said with a chuckle and turned to lead me out of the room.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

Back to the ship, he explained, beeping cheerfully that he had even more to show me. When we got on board the Converso, I saw that the Naboo Navy had replaced the damages to the hold. All the systems were rewired and back to tip-top shape. I could not believe it; Artie just chimed his name in a sing-song way that felt as though he was singing his own theme song.

I thanked the Navy Corp as profusely as I could manage. I must have looked like I had seen a ghost, but they were very gracious. They sped us on our way, and Artie returned to his multi-port as I pulled us out of the planet's dense atmosphere. For the first time, we were leaving a place without a plan and I didn't care.

"I think I was starting to miss you, Artie," I admitted when we were free of Naboo. "I didn't know if I'd ever get to speak to you again."

He chimed back that it would take a lot more that some smoke to kill him off. I laughed and went over to his station to watch him work. Some coordinates were cycling through the monitor and then system names started popping up beside them.

"What are you looking for?"

"The origin of the datacrystal." Artie explained that the defunct kyber housed the encryption to the datachip, but the two were not made at the same time. The kyber was far older than the Zaetech and was only recently altered to contain the information that unlocked the story of Sidrona Diath.

Someone had to put the encryption into the datachip within the last century; Artie was figuring out why.

"Day- Goh- Bah-," I sounded out the name as I read the display. Artie chortled and corrected me. "Oh, Dagobah, what did I say?" I shrugged. "What's there?"

Apparently it was a system extremely rich in the Force, both Light and Dark, and home to one Jedi Master Yoda following the Clone Wars and the Great Purge.

Pop did a lot of the legwork for me on this one, I must admit. He not only left a map behind, but gave us the name of the guy we were looking for. This Jedi Yoda would be dead of course, but perhaps there would be neighbors or villagers nearby that could help. Someone would have records of a being as great and prolific as this master Jedi, right?

It was a promising enough lead to have Artie plot out a course, then make the quick jump to the nearby Sluis sector.

#