Author's Notes: Well, good news to those of you in my characteristically silent readership, I've finally shaken off that loathsome inactivity and started writing this story again, which means I'll start posting once a week again (barring another relapse). I won't be able to put one up this weekend, so I figured I'd just do it now. So here's a long chapter for all of you. Thanks for reading, and as always, feedback is appreciated. Speaking of that, special thanks to Jen DeClan for consistently taking the time to do so.
Chapter Ten
They renewed the scalding trek the next day. Caius, Xristos, and Allie followed along the same path that they had charted out the first day. They carried plenty of water, and trudged slowly through the miserable stream at the bottom of the gorge.
"This place," Allie said with exhaustion, "is too hot."
It took the crew some time to arrive at a consensus about what to do on the planet. Caius and Xristos seemed sure that the alien they met meant them no harm and could be a very important ally, but Bastila and Dustil thought it was unwise to follow him into the city. In the end, both sides had to agree to disagree, and operated under the fact that they had not much choice in the matter. They needed help, and the alien had come straight up to them and offered it.
They reached the mutilated tree that signaled the climax of their hike and began the short, unhappy ascent up the canyon wall.
Reaching the meeting point, they discovered that they were early, and so had to settle down and wait for their contact. They sat on the wickedly hot ground as they passed the time.
While sitting, Caius decided to make conversation, and asked a question that had recently come into mind about his mechanic. He said, "Hey Allie, why did you decide to come with us after Korriban?"
She looked rather perturbed by the question and did not really offer a concrete answer. "Well," she said, "I figured you would probably need a mechanic sometime—right now is a good example."
"That's true—but that doesn't explain why you came. We could've gotten another mechanic if you had wanted."
Her expression twisted into a strange sort of confused frown.
Caius quickly recovered, said, "Not that you are unwanted at all. I mean…you were so concerned about the danger on Nar Shaddaa and Korriban—I figured that you'd want to get as far away from us as possible."
"I—uh—changed my mind," she responded ambiguously.
"I can see that. What caused the change?" Caius probed.
"Nothing really concrete. I just decided that I liked all of you enough to tag along until the end."
Caius was confused by her answer, said, "You came because you like all of these people? Have you met some of them?" He paused. "Never mind that last question. But…you don't seem to talk to the others much. At all, really. Strange that you say you like them all."
"Why is it that important to you?" she asked defensively. Caius noticed she seemed rather flustered. He had no idea why, but apparently she did not want to be asked about this.
Fortunately, no sooner had the conversation ended than Xristos announced that he could see the alien—Hronah—approaching on his cart. He was coming the same direction as last time.
"Is that the alien?" Allie asked.
Caius nodded as the group stood up and moved to the side of the dirt road, awaiting their ride. Allie seemed to be unnerved by the same large lizard that was pulling the wooden wagon, but she gained resolve when she saw how timid it was. Hronah fed it some kind of plant when he dismounted, leading them to believe that despite its carnivorous appearance it actually ate vegetables.
The alien told Xristos that they could climb into the back of the wagon and sit on the bales of the crop. When they got to the city, they could hide at the bottom if they wanted, though he seemed sure that no one would care, much less raise an alarm.
The group obeyed and climbed into the back of the cart and settled in. Caius rolled backwards as their chauffer started up their movement. Allie laughed as he fell into the side of the wooden wall and Xristos just smirked.
The ride was bumpy, to say the least. The two large wheels on the cart were crudely designed, and they wobbled back and forth. Even cruder than the wheels was the rugged road. It was basically created out of rock, and the wheels bounced violently whenever they struck stone.
Hronah did not have as difficult a time as he swayed with the movements of his large lizard.
None of them spoke during the trip, adding to the duration of the journey. Caius merely watched the sky. It was blue, but it was mixed with tan and gave the day a perpetual feel of a kind of hazy morning. The sky was bright, incredibly bright, but the dust in the sky turned it into a dirtier feel.
Caius continued staring upwards, and soon he was treated to a new sight. The unobstructed majesty of the sky gave way to primitive towers that looked to be made of earth. They were not tall, and very close together. However, their height and proximity increased the further they penetrated the city. The buildings looked like they had been erected straight out of ground, build from mud and rock. The windows were simple holes in the walls, and it occurred to him that it must get unbearably hot in them. But perhaps the native creatures had adapted to the heat.
He rolled and shifted onto his side, looking through a crack in the wooden panels into the city streets. He could just barely peek through the crease, but was able to observe much. He saw several different alien species, but consistently observed the three HK had detailed. The short, fat ones were amusing. They waddled as they walked, looking like oversized green peas that he could envision rolling down the street. The rotund creatures had short, stubby legs and arms, and little heads that hung forward off of the top of their short bodies. Caius also saw the white aliens that HK had spoken of. They were barely taller than the fat ones, but much thinner. Their forearms were disproportionately large and they walked mostly on their knuckles. Completely bald, the aliens' domed heads sagged forward on hunched shoulders. What was odd about them was they had no ears or nose that he could see. They had a simple slit at the bottom of their heads for a mouth. According to HK these were the ones that did not communicate audibly, but Caius had no idea how they would talk. There was plenty of the third race on the planet, the Hasan, as Xristos had said. By far they were the most prevalent.
They moved slowly through the city. Caius watched as all the aliens went about their daily routines. It was odd, they certainly did not seem like slaves at all, but HK had assured them that they were. And Xristos said the alien had referenced the Sith by talking about "punishment" of some kind. The whole situation did not sit well with him.
Eventually, the cart came to a stop in a secluded place. Caius perceived the area as some kind of fenced area. He heard Hronah dismount and unhitch his beast from the cart. He assumed they must have arrived wherever they were supposed to. The alien spoke something, and Xristos echoed that they were allowed to get out.
All three of them popped their heads out of the bales of the hay and looked around. They were in a corral. The lizard was roaming freely in a small fenced area that was behind a large mud building. Apparently one of the streets was around the corner, but no one was around them. They shuffled out of the wagon and were led by the alien into an opening in the building that led downstairs. It got cooler as they descended, and after a flight they reached a closed door. The alien unlocked it and opened it.
They were ushered in to find that the house he was leading them into was completely buried underground. It offered respite from the heat, but not much light. They had crude electric lights that Caius wasn't sure were supposed to be there and many, many candles and lamps. The alien then spoke to Xristos.
"He says that he must go back out, but that he will be back shortly and so will the rest of his family. For now we must wait."
Allie shuddered nervously and Caius said, "This could be a trap."
"Well," Xristos said, "there isn't anything we can do about it now. We might as well wait for whatever fate is approaching us."
Hronah then left them in the house. The lights were out, so it was very dim, but Caius could still see enough to move around. He examined everything in the room they were in, and noticed that much of the technology seemed to be in stark contrast with the earthen abode. It was as if many of their things did not belong in the setting. There were no chairs in the house at all, it seemed, so they had to either stand around or sit on the floor. Mostly they sat. The floor was hard but smooth, carved out of rock and then sanded down. It was very cold to the touch and incredibly comforting to them to get out of the heat.
"Do you think you'll be able to fix their droid?" Caius asked Allie.
"I don't know," she said, "it might be different than any of our kinds of droids. If it is…I don't know what I'd do with it."
The conversation drifted into small talk and then eventually Caius shifted it to ask Xristos something. He said, "Hey, is it possible for me to learn how to do that language thing?"
"I think so," Xristos said. "I could try to teach you how to do it."
He cleared his throat before he began, "Think of it in this way. It's like how you focus to do mind reading or persuasion powers, but a little different."
Caius unconsciously closed his eyes despite the fact that it was already pretty dark in the room. Allie was nearby, but he assumed she was merely listening and not very interested at that.
"The hardest thing to do is to let go of all your preconceived notions of language. That may be difficult, but you must try. Stop trying to think of things in the words that they are associated, but in the forms of their existence. Don't think of fruit, for instance, as a word, but as an external entity—something that merely is and words do not do it justice. That will pull you out of basic and from the trappings of ontological origins."
Caius tried this, but it was very difficult to shed the words he knew for things—even in multiple languages—from their respective labels. It was like he had to retreat into some sort of gray world where he did not know exactly how to define things or process thoughts.
"Now," Xristos continued, "you have to reach out with your perceptions to someone else—someone who speaks the language. You can use me, since I technically know it through this same process. Approach it in much the same way you would a persuasion trick. Reach into my mind, but instead of scrambling around what I think to suit your needs, pull out what you want to know. Grab the words that are part of that unknown language and make them your own."
Caius obeyed, and for a little while nothing happened, but then Xristos said something aloud and there was an instant of profound confusion. His mind was flooded with all sorts of images and concepts and phrases that he did not understand but then did at the same time. It was similar to the understanding one has in a dream. Everything in the dream makes sense, but one cannot precisely explain why. He felt this phenomenon as the deluge of thoughts swarmed into his mind. In one glorious instant, it ended.
He opened his eyes, though he still saw much darkness.
He was unsure, and opened his mouth to speak. He said, "I don't think it worked."
"Of course it did," Xristos said, "don't you realize?"
Caius was confused, thought for a moment and then had a piercing revelation. He had said that in the alien language. He had spoken it and not been aware. It had, indeed, worked to perfection.
"Wow," the Exile said, returning to his natural tongue, "that was incredible. Will I be able to speak it fluently?"
"Not without practice," the old man returned, "it'll be slippery for a while. It's still hard to adapt our colloquialisms and concepts to a foreign language, as well as become accustomed to theirs. As a whole, however, you should be able to speak it."
He was about to thank the old man when the lights in the room suddenly exploded into brightness. Caius was momentarily blinded as he had grown accustomed to the dim shade, but he was able to regain his senses. He looked up to see that the origin of the light was a strange floating orb suspended in the middle of the room. It had an odd, somewhat volcanic appearance, as what looked like lava swam within the sphere. The rays of light that it unleashed seemed to move and fluctuate with the red and orange lines that likewise oscillated within the orb. It was very beautiful.
Only moments after the orb had activated their alien friend entered the room. He spoke in his native language, and Caius understood it.
He said, "My Loved Ones are come." The language was odd, to say the least. It had a sort of archaic quality, as if it were a language that he would find in an ancient text of some kind. It occurred to him that the language was naturally musical as well. The words that Hronah spoke were practically sung, but it was clear that he did not shift his inflections to do it. They merely spoke in a very musical sound with a lyrical style. It made his own language seem equally bland and hard as rock.
"They have our ghostly assistant with them," Hronah continued. "We hope that your companion will be able to repair him, for he is important to us."
Several other aliens then entered the room. They were dragging what looked like a droid with them. The other aliens looked more or less the same as Hronah, though they varied in height somewhat dramatically. One was a little fatter, but on average they looked very similar. Their clothes, however, were different from each other.
They set up the droid in the middle of the room, underneath the orb, and left it alone. Caius was shocked at how similar it was to the droids he was familiar with. It bore a striking resemblance to those irritating touristy protocol droids that show up in vacation spots and try to tell you directions to everything.
"What is wrong with it?" Caius asked.
"He no longer sings. We speak and sing to him, and he cannot back. He does what he is necessary, but his joy is taken. His work is hollow."
Caius looked at Xristos quizzically, asked, "What do you think that means?"
Xristos mused, said, "I think he means that it can't talk."
"He does not talk?" Caius asked.
"Yes, good friend. His song has been taken. But he still listens and longs to sing to us."
Caius glanced at Allie, said, "Do you think you can fix it? Apparently it can't talk but still can take orders from them."
"I think I have an idea," she said. "Let me have a look."
She walked around the droid and peered into the back of its neck. She tinkered with the instruments for a few moments. "Ah, I see the problem," she said pleasantly, "the vocabulator is corroded. Let me see if I can repair it, I may have the right stuff in my bag." She rummaged through the bag of tools and equipment that she had brought with her, then said, "Here it is! I can fix it." She looked around, then said, "Uh, can you all stop watching though? It makes me nervous."
"Oh, uh, all right," Caius responded. "I'll see if I can tell them." He shifted his speech and looked at the alien and his family, said, "She does not want us to observe."
"For what reason?" asked Hronah.
"She is uncomfortable with others watching her."
"This does not make me wiser," he said, "why should we not watch? Your practice is uncertain, but we believe she will do good work without our oversight. We shall leave in peace." With that, the group of aliens turned and were about to leave the house when Caius stopped them.
"You do not have to go," he said, "she just wants privacy." Eventually Caius convinced them that they didn't have to leave and Allie subsequently took the droid into another room in order to operate on it.
It was hard to communicate to the aliens—the Hasan. Their language was somewhat counter-intuitive and they spoke too poetically. Often, the meanings of entire sentences eluded him.
As Allie worked, he got to know the hosts much better. He and Xristos engaged in long introductions and learned a lot about the aliens.
They gathered that Hronah lived here with his mother and father—the two more wrinkled and hunched of the group—and his wife. The females were very similar in appearance to the males of the race, the only discernible difference he could pick out was that their ear tentacles seemed to be somewhat discolored. The women of the race had bluish or purple markings on them. He wasn't sure if they were born like that or if it was a kind of cosmetic thing. The small alien was Hronah's son, who was not allowed to speak. It was custom for the children to remain quiet in the company of others.
They explained that the house was handed down through generations, and that their family had always lived here. They were one of the oldest in the city, and that is how they held onto the underground location that provided coolness. They were among the oldest and first. They explained, "When the elders of our people pass, we continue the great cycle and the children assume their roles and continue their place." It sounded awkward but he thought he understood. They also explained that the son would marry a female once they reached the proper age and then the female would move into their house and integrate within their family, lining up in position to be the matriarch in the future. The old patriarch said, "When our son was old enough, he found her and they were joined together as one. One entity and flesh, and now they are here with their son who will also follow his father. And so the great cycle will continue for eternity." Caius found it rather interesting, but his attention was jolted when they made a very curious statement. The older one then said, "But surely you understand this. You are traveling with your father and mate here on this planet."
Caius wasn't sure what was more outrageous: Xristos as his father or Allie as his wife. The thought then suddenly brought images of himself and Allie together in a very bizarre and intimate way. He blinked and thought, That was weird.
Before he could respond, Xristos answered for him and said that they were not related. Far from stopping the questions, the answer only brought more from their hosts, and they also seemed to be unwilling to accept that Caius and Allie were not married.
"We do not understand," said Hronah, "if you are not Loved Ones, then why undertake a journey filled with such life and connections of family?"
"Because we must," Caius answered, then said hastily, "And I am not joined with the girl."
"But you are," the older male answered, "even if not by blood, each of you are bound to each other through fate. Even if you say you are not of one flesh with your female companion, you are in truth for her life is dependent on yours and yours on hers. Is this not unity in the most loving and basic way? You are all joined with each other."
Their logic confused him and he insisted, "The old man is not my father. I do not know my parents."
The aliens were horrified at this. Hronah's wife spoke instead this time, said, "What terrible being you must endure. But this is what we are singing to you. You have left your family and have been joined together as one with your companions. They are your true family."
Caius did not really know what to say. He just wanted them to stop. It rather irritated him, and now he couldn't get the images out of his mind that Xristos and Allie were his family. Maybe they were like family…sometimes, but that wasn't the same thing.
Xristos nudged him and said with a laugh, "They seem to really want you and Allie together."
"I don't get it. Why do they keep insisting that?"
"Family is obviously important to them. There's no use in really arguing it, is there? It doesn't really matter."
Caius frowned, said, "No, I guess not."
Fortunately, the conversation was ended when Allie re-entered the room. She was very gleeful, said, "Hey! I fixed the droid. Wasn't much of a problem, really. It was just routine maintenance. It makes me think that they don't really know how to take care of the droid."
"I wonder how they got it," Xristos said. "It seems to be too advanced a thing to have given their establishment here."
Allie activated the droid and it strolled back into the room and said, "Greetings, LV-1 is here to serve. It is a pleasure to have my voice capabilities restored." It was strange to hear the droid speak in a traditional mechanical style but in the poetic alien language. It was a stark contrast and smacked of the unnatural presence of the machine. It truly didn't belong in this environment.
"It is good to hear you sing once again, LV-1," said Hronah's wife. "Much thanks is owed to this one's mate," she indicated Allie and Caius.
The droid spoke, "Ah, I see both of them. I must thank them for their sacrifices." The droid then looked at his keepers and asked, although it was almost completely off topic, "Are they lovers?"
"What the hell?" Caius exclaimed, forgetting the alien language for a moment. It seemed to lack sufficient ways to curse anyway.
"What? What's wrong?" Allie asked.
"Of course they are, silly ghost machine. Your song is one of great amusement," said the matriarch.
"I am sorry," said the droid. "I did not mean to doon this conversation to mere joking. I shall be ready and willing to serve immediately."
Caius looked at Xristos and they both exchanged looks that blatantly said, "Did that machine just say 'doon'?"
"What's wrong?" Allie asked again, getting impatient.
Caius answered hesitantly, said, "The droid…is saying weird things."
"Oh, that's probably a side-effect of his vocabulator getting damaged. Is he mispronouncing things? That should clear up soon."
"Something like that," Caius said with a sigh.
Xristos decided it would be fun to speak up and said, "It also seems to think that you and Caius are star crossed lovers."
Allie's brown eyes suddenly increased their size almost twofold as she exclaimed, "What?"
Her face reddened and Caius thought he was too. His frustration at the whole ridiculous conversation was reaching its boiling point.
"Let's drop it," he said firmly, "I want to ask them questions about the Sith."
He turned to begin his inquisition, but the aliens were still preoccupied with Allie. She still stood there with a dazed look on her face as the group all turned to look at her. One said, "We must thank the female for her noble aid. Shall we give her a gift?"
Hronah agreed, "I believe a gift is necessary." They then began to babble with each other and Caius could not understand what they were saying. Eventually they seemed to reach a consensus and sent off the young one to go get something. It hopped gleefully away and then emerged from another room a few moments later with a dark jar.
Hronah took the container and then stepped elegantly towards Allie and presented it to her.
"Is this…for me?" she asked, somewhat shocked. Caius nodded so she took the jar and said, "Thank you," despite the fact that they couldn't understand. She hesitantly pried the lid off of the gift, completely unsure what to expect.
Her face conveyed confusion as she put her hand inside the jar and tried to pull the gift out. She tugged at it, and some kind of cloth came out of the container. It was initially wet, but somehow seemed to expand and dry as it came out into the air. She plucked the whole thing out of the jar and then held it up. It looked like a brightly colored tarp with floral designs on it.
Caius thought it was a blanket before Allie said, "It's…a dress?"
One of the aliens spoke and Caius translated for it, "They say that it belonged to the matriarch, but she wants you to have it."
"Am I supposed to wear it?"
Caius tried to judge from their speech whether they expected her to, and after a while judged that to tell Allie not to would be a lie. "I think they want you to," he answered.
She folded it under her am and looked down at it and back at the aliens, said, "Tell them thank you…but I don't like dresses. I never wear them—they're all old fashioned anyway."
Xristos spoke up, said, "You don't want to be rude, Allie. You only have to wear it once for them, then you can just get rid of it once we get back to the Hawk."
She frowned and then looked at the dress again, then exhaled and took it into another room.
Caius tried to put the whole family fiasco behind him and approached the aliens once again. He said, "Hronah, you said that you would answer some questions if we helped you. Will you now?"
"This I promised. I shall not falter on such. Allow me a moment." He turned and whispered something to his family. The young child took off and then his parents and wife all turned to leave. They began working on their separate things and then Hronah led Caius and Xristos away to a corner of the room and they all sat down on the smooth, rock floor. "What do you want to know, my friends?"
"We need your help to find someone. Another of our kind."
Hronah changed the direction of the conversation, asked, "May I ask—for what is it that you come to our world?"
Xristos answered, said, "Our country is in danger—we are looking for someone who can help."
"I see," he answered, "and yet I do not. Who is it that you are seeking?"
"One of our race," answered Caius, "have you seen another on this planet?"
"Not one, but several," he answered ambiguously.
"Several?" Caius asked, confused, "what do you mean? We're not the first of our kind you have seen?"
Hronah blinked, said, "Not at all. There are not many of you, but there are some. Would you like to meet them?"
"Uh…sure. Do you know what they are doing here?"
"They are toiling for the Lords. That is what we all do."
Before Caius could ask what that meant, Hronah stood up. Allie had emerged from the dressing room and was standing in the doorway with the dress on. The other aliens all stopped and regarded her courteously.
She stood very still, asked Caius and Xristos somewhat timidly, "What do you think?"
Both were stunned. They just sat there, not saying anything. Allie mistook the gesture and then said solemnly, "This is why I never wear dresses."
"Allie," Xristos began in that paternal fashion of his, "if you were to walk around outside in that, someone would propose marriage to you within five minutes."
She blushed, but seemed to brighten at the comment. She said sheepishly, "Thank you." She spun around and looked down at her feet. Her inner girl exploded outwards and she said, "I wish I had some shoes that went with it."
Caius was thoroughly shocked. What the hell happened to the other Allie? he thought to himself. This one looked entirely different. The one he was familiar with always had dirt or other marks smeared across her face from working on machines, and always wore clothes that were too big and bore the same marks from work. This Allie was quite possibly one of the most attractive women he had ever seen. She would be able to compete with Bastila easily. He couldn't help but admire her as she spun around and showcased the dress, her wavy brown hair sweeping slightly through the air in the same motion as the dress. It was frayed at the edges, primarily red with elegant flowers sewn into it. It was a very modest dress, and Caius understood that it did not need to be revealing to be beautiful. There were no sleeves, and her slightly tanned arms glistened because of the heat of the planet. She smiled again, and then her familiar brilliant face returned. It seemed to fit her perfectly.
The aliens all seemed to think she was the greatest thing since their droid and the little one ran up and grabbed her leg. She tried to shake him off, but as he would not let go, she laughed and then hoisted him up and held him in front of her. The alien child looked at her oddly and then she brought him closer and held him there with one arm.
There was a strange kind of maternal vibe that she emanated. It was a combination of the dress and the fact that she was holding the child—even if it was an alien.
Hronah said quietly to Caius, "She is very beautiful. You are well chosen."
Caius wanted to be upset at this statement, but he couldn't muster the gall necessary to tell off the alien. And besides, even if the comment was not accurate in terms of their "relationship", it was certainly true. He nodded.
It then occurred to him that it was odd that the alien would say she was beautiful. He was, after all, an alien. Caius certainly wouldn't say that his wife was beautiful. Maybe she was—or maybe she looked like their equivalent of a dog, there was no way for him to know.
He then asked oddly, "How do you know?"
"Her beauty is not a strictly physical being," Hronah said condescendingly, apparently understanding exactly why Caius had asked, "it is internal. She is in love with life. Look how she holds the child. And her smile is that of a friend. She is beautiful. She sings the body electric."
They all stood for a while longer until Allie said that she felt uncomfortable with everyone looking at her and was going to go back and change.
Now Caius was confused, but he was determined not to be distracted further. He would get his questions answered. No matter what.
"Can we return to my questions, please?" he asked Hronah, though he did not expect to be able to easily redirect the conversation.
"You may," the alien said somewhat surprisingly. "You were learning of your own kind on this place."
"That is right. You said that they are here, 'toiling for the Lords.' What does that mean?"
They both sat down on the ground as Hronah began to explain, he said, "The Lords are the rulers. They live in the hive in the central square. They reach out with their fiendish agents and order our own products for themselves. They command. They do not sing, their voices are not music, but death."
"So…you are slaves?" Caius asked.
"I do not know this word. We merely are. We harvest our grain and the Lords demand much of it from us in order to feed themselves. They ask our favors and yet return none. They are not helpful, but they do not forbid our songs. We only must do rightly, and they will let us alone."
"But they make you harvest and take your food from you?"
"Yes—this they do."
Allie had re-entered the room and was now in her old, unflattering clothes. Somehow, though, Caius could not get that image of her in the dress out of his head. She had retreated back into the form of the old Allie, but when he saw her he could only think of the new one. He tried very hard to ignore it and focus on his conversation with Hronah. "Will you not do anything about it? How long has this been going on?"
"For many generations, since we knew that life existed on other worlds. The Lords brought many aliens with them to our planet and forced them all to work here. Most of the ones that you see are not from this place. Only the Hasan owned this planet once upon a time."
"But has anyone tried to stop it?"
"There were some who did. Several generations ago, the Hasan refused to obey. They hid their food, and when the Lords came into their homes to find it, they killed some of them. It was not many, but the taint of death was upon their hands and they were found."
"What happened?"
Hronah continued the tale, "They were caught. Those who did not obey were taken far away to somewhere we do not know. There, the Ruler of the Lords determined their fate. He blinded them. All of them. For every one hundred of them, the Ruler of Lords allowed one to keep an eye. He then abandoned this horde within the desert, allowing the One Eyes to guide their way back to our lands and homes."
"Oh, that is awful," said Xristos.
"Is it? I do not know of it. It is a story of times past. We obey now. The Lords take grain, but they allow us enough to live. And we are allowed to make our songs and live without much fear." He paused, then was seemingly reminded of something. He said, "They do give us things. Our ghostly machine was given to us by the Lords for being productive. He is intended to make us more obedient. They also give us light by means of magic. Should we do without them?"
"I'd say the pros outweigh the cons," Caius said.
"This is true, but our living is not so difficult as you seem to think."
There was an awkward silence. Caius seemed certain that their existence was miserable, but they simply did not know any better. Had they tasted freedom, they would be less inclined to give it up. But, as it stood, ignorance was bliss.
His thoughts were interrupted by Hronah who said, "Fate has cast irony on this conversation. It is time for the Lords to gather our Harvest. I shall deliver it outside and allow them to take it."
Caius was suddenly very nervous. This Sith were coming here? If he would be found, they would unquestionably be slaughtered. He exclaimed, "They are coming? We cannot be seen by them! Quickly."
"Do not fear. They do not venture inside. And then after dark they remain inside their enclave and we are free to roam once more."
Hronah disappeared outside, apparently to prepare his harvest. Caius and Xristos exchanged worried looks, and Allie was therefore put on edge. They did not dare tell her what was happening, though. Any unnecessary trauma should be avoided.
Hronah came back inside and told them not to speak for a few moments. They waited patiently, Caius's heart pounding in his chest. Hronah and his family stood at attention, none of them moving. After five eternal minutes, they loosened up and began behaving normally.
Their host sat back down. He said, "They are gone. You are in no danger."
Caius had, in the silence, looked around the room. He figured that it would be good to know what time it was the Sith made the rounds through the city. If he knew, perhaps they could avoid them. He saw no means of telling time and asked, "What time is it that they come?"
"It is the same every day. They come only just before we are to begin our evening meal."
"How did you know what time it was?"
"I do not understand this question. How could I not? We always know what time it is."
Caius was confused, said, "You don't have to look at a clock?"
"What is a 'clock'? An instrument of time? We have no need of it. What is your race, friend? You have need of apparatus to tell something as natural as the cycle of the glorious day? You are very isolated from life."
The conversation was straying from its origins. Caius then determined to ask, "What of these others of our kind? Have you met any of them?"
"Not myself. But I have seen them about. It would be a simple matter for you to approach one. Would you like to? Tomorrow is the earliest convenience."
"I would, please. If you could help, that would be a tremendous favor."
"We have repaid you for your favor to us, but we could do another in exchange for a promise from you."
"Certainly."
"It shall be arranged. But for now, this trade is over, for the evening meal is upon us. Allow me and my Loved Ones to prepare."
As the day dragged on, those who stayed behind at the Ebon Hawk were growing more anxious.
"How long did they say they'd be gone?" Dustil asked.
Bastila answered, "Caius said he had no idea. Xristos told us not to do anything unless they were gone for three days."
"And what then?" Dustil asked.
"I have no idea. But we will have to do something. We'll have to go into the town, I suppose. Who knows what we'd find."
"Well," the young Jedi returned, "I hope we don't have to do that."
"I agree."
They stood in intense silence for a moment. Elliott was off sleeping, which seemed impossible in the dreaded heat, and the droids were powered down to avoid overheating. They were the only ones able to converse, and Dustil had to admit that he didn't really know anything about Bastila.
He decided to ask, "Hey Bastila. What happened in that cave on Korriban?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I don't remember."
Bastila sat down on one of the chairs that faced the main console in the central briefing room. She said, "You missed visions, mostly. What was yours about?"
"An old friend…someone long dead," he said hesitantly. "What about you?"
"Same thing, Dustil."
"It's hard," he said. "I didn't think I believed Caius when he told me to look out for the visions. But they seemed so real. And I wanted them to be so real…I wanted to change them."
"Me too," Bastila punctuated. She was floating away from the present situation, and she really ended up only putting emphasis on everything that Dustil said.
"Well, anyway," he said, "Thank you for saving me. I'm sure it wasn't easy."
Bastila smiled at him, said, "Of course, Dustil." There was a pause in her speech as she looked away. She turned back and said to him, "You know, your father is really the closest friend I have. I can't tell you how important he was and still is to me and all of our companions."
"So I have heard," Dustil answered. "That isn't why you saved me, is it?"
"No, don't be silly. I saved you because you were in trouble. But it does me good to know that I helped Carth's son. I am glad to repay him for everything he did for me."
"I didn't know he affected you that much," he said. "Well, of course I'm glad you came in to rescue me. And for no other reason than I was a friend in trouble?" He seemed to be thinking for a moment, then said, "You are a true Jedi, Bastila. I'm glad to know one."
Bastila cocked her head and thought on the phrase for a moment. A true Jedi? Was she? She wasn't really sure. For so long she had thought of herself as the true hypocrite for what she had done during the Civil War. This comment, though, somehow brought a lot of peace. She had done just what a Jedi was supposed to do, hadn't she? She had. And now Dustil was telling her.
"Thank you, Dustil," she said, "I needed to hear that."
The evening meal was interesting.
Considering that there were no chairs in the underground house, they all sat on the ground in a large circle, holding these boards on their right arms and eating with their left. The food was of a strange texture, but as soon as Caius, Xristos, and Allie were brave enough to eat it, they found that it had an altogether agreeable taste.
They learned more of their hosts in that time. The patriarch was named Hillel, the matriarch Shanai, and the wife was Sayia. The child, strangely, did not have a name. Apparently they did not get names until they reached a certain age, and their names all had personal implications. They were specifically chosen based on the characteristics of the person getting the name.
Allie seemed to struggle considering she was the only person who could not communicate, but she would often ask and answer questions through Xristos and Caius, so she contributed enough to be interested. And the alien family found her to be the most interesting, strangely, of all of them. The concept of Jedi and intergalactic war did not really matter to them, they were simply curious how she was able to fix their incredible machine with such seeming ease when they had no idea what was wrong with it. She explained through Caius how they should take care of the droid in order to keep it from getting damaged again.
After the dinner, Hillel told them stories about all sorts of things. Native legends, but he also told them about the other humans on the planet. From what they could gather, there were also Twi'leks. But they had no idea how many of them there were, or how they had gotten there. The only thing they could infer was that somehow the Sith brought them here as prisoners. According to Hronah, that was how all the other races (aside from the Hasan) had gotten to the planet in the first place. Apparently none of them had been capable of intergalactic travel, so they were easily exploited by the Sith.
That also raised questions about the nature of the Sith. How was it that they were the only species in the Unknown Regions that was able to achieve that kind of technology? Caius surmised that, perhaps, they too were strangers to the Unknown Regions. He thought that perhaps they were somehow descended from the original Sith race that was believed to be extinct—driven from the Republic. He had no evidence for this, just a guess.
Caius was distracted from his thoughts when the aliens all started clamoring about something. They all spread apart into a half circle. He and Xristos and Allie followed suit, and found themselves all making an arc around Hronah.
He had gone into another room and emerged with a strange wooden thing. It was shaped somewhat like a pear, but with an elongated, curved stem that was a good two feet long. On the stem were eight tightly wound strings—bunched in four pairs—that ran parallel to each other.
It looked like some kind of musical instrument.
His suspicions were confirmed when Hronah began to pluck at it. He sat on one knee and balanced the instrument on his leg and played it. It made an entirely distinct noise, not like any stringed instrument he had heard before. Hronah was incredibly skilled with it. He had only four fingers—as all of his race did—but was able to play it well nonetheless. He remarked that it would be easier for the humans to do it since they had an extra finger. However, his were much longer, and he was able to play an octave for almost every individual note. The result was that the songs he played were even more difficult than they sounded, and they sounded difficult to begin with.
His family sang with him as he played. What Caius thought was striking, however, was that when they sang they didn't distort their voices. They simply talked the same way they always did, but it fit their poetry perfectly. He thought this explained why they referred to "speaking" as "singing"; to them it was the same thing.
The words were beautiful, and Caius and Xristos desperately wanted to write them down so as not to forget, but the alien language had no written form. They thought about translating, but each time they did so, the beauty in the lyrics was lost.
When the show ended, the three instinctively clapped in applause, and the aliens were confused. It took some time to iron out the details, but apparently signs of admiration in their two cultures turned out to be the exact opposite of each other. Instead of making noise, the aliens held that silence was the utmost form of respect for a skilled performance.
After it was all straightened out, they announced that it was time to sleep, as they had to continue their work the next day.
Caius marveled at the hospitality of his hosts. He wondered why they were doing so much for he and his companions. He realized that they fixed the droid, but that didn't really warrant this kind of cultural experience, did it? It was incredible. Surely no one, he thought, has ever gotten to experience something like this before. They had total integration into a foreign culture. It had been 20,000 years since anyone in the Republic could have possibly done that. Unless it went undocumented, which was possible because certainly this instance would too. But regardless, the amazing pattern of events served to place him in a state of profound awe. For one night, the entire fate of the universe did not concern him. He was simply in a state of complete and utter tranquility. It was incredible; he had not experienced that kind of feeling since before the Mandalorian Wars.
Their hosts prepared mats for them to sleep on. They laid them out in the middle of their great room and provided these strange, marshmallow-like things for pillows.
The aliens bid them goodnight and then faded into their respective rooms.
The sun orb was then shut off, casting the room into pure darkness.
Caius found his mind would not allow him to sleep. At least not before he thought himself into tiredness. He had to admit, a lot had happened that day, and a little quiet time to process it was welcome.
The strangeness of being on a new planet with new aliens was deteriorating. He was adapting to the concept. What now concerned him was Allie. Whatever the hell had happened earlier in the day with her had thoroughly confused him. How did he feel about her anyway? He didn't rightly know. He had to confess that he had not really thought of her much before today aside from when he was speaking to her. He had regarded her only as an ally, and a bit of a friend, but he realized that he did not talk to her that much. The catalyst for this whole present quandary, however, had been the fault of the Hasan. It was their annoying insistence that he and Allie were married or whatever the hell word they had for it that caused this state of inner questioning. Strangely, he did not find the idea as ridiculous as at first, and accidentally let himself entertain what that would be like.
He caught himself quickly, and then decided to sort it out scientifically. He decided that the pivotal moment had been seeing her in that dress. That was a sight that he had not been expecting at all and had not prepared himself to behold it. It was just too shocking. That was why he had said nothing. He was lucky Xristos did, or else they both would've been sitting there looking like idiots.
This was his scientific explanation. He remembered that, psychologically, there could be an explanation for his sudden realization of Allie's beauty. He hypothesized that she must have looked the same as she always did, but the context of the situation changed everything. She was, in reality, just the same as she always had been. His perceptions changed due to the emotionally charged environment. After all, they were on an alien planet in the middle of hostile territory.
Yes, that must be it, he thought to himself. He believed that this would solve all the annoying implications that the incident has raised and he would find the whole situation amusing once they got back to the Ebon Hawk.
His mind started to drag as he grew more tired. He was glad to have worked out everything in his mind. However, once he began to sleep, he would've wished that he could be awake and still pondering life as opposed to delving once more into that dream…
"He's still alive," said the Dxun officer.
"How is that possible?" Caius asked him. "Didn't you hear the explosion?"
"I did, sir, but the pilot somehow survived the crash."
Caius wiped the rain off of his face, only for more to splash onto it a minute later. He asked, "Is he going to live?"
"We don't know, sir, the medics are tending to him right now."
"Let me see him," Caius ordered.
"Yes, General, right away. Follow me."
He pursued the man into the dark jungle. As it was now progressing towards dusk, it was getting hard to see. Dusk was just a word though; the world was always gray from rain. There were, in fact, only two times of day: Dusk and Night. Wallowing through the awful mud and twisted vines, they eventually made their way to the crash site. It was brighter there. The spacecraft was still smoldering with flames, seemingly unquenched by the torrent of rain.
"Over here, sir," said the guide.
Caius stepped over a large log and beheld a terrible sight. There was a man, but he was not whole. He was mutilated.
This image was haunting to him. He had reacted to it so strongly that he had repressed the image. It was out of his conscious mind. He truly did not, in reality, remember what it had looked like. He only remembered that he hated it.
He saw the image again. There was a man, bled white, on a makeshift gurney with medics desperately trying to stop his bleeding. His face, somehow familiar, was pale as could be. His dark eyes looked upwards into the unforgiving night sky. Rain fell on his face, but he did not flinch at all when it did. He right leg was shredded. The medics were scrambling to prevent him from bleeding to death and were dressing the wound.
There were lacerations across the man's chest, another medic tending to those. Caius did not want to look, but could not avoid it. As he watched, the medic ripped the man's dog tags off as they were interfering with his work. He tossed them to the ground.
Caius did not remember that for some reason.
He was curious, so he walked over to the tags. He could not remember doing this. But he stooped and picked up the tags. Who was this man who was suffering so terribly? He would have to inform his family if he did not survive. He read the tags and his stomach suddenly leapt into his throat. They said:
Gallenti, Elliott R.
2924564 RADF
Blood Type: A
Corellia
Caius's face warped into stupefied shock. This man? He knew this man! He dropped the tags and looked into Elliott's pale face. He seemed to be barely holding onto life, croaking a wheezing cough and staring at nothing, practically unconscious. How did he know this man? He wracked his brain, but he could not think. Somehow he did, but where, when, how?
An image flashed into his mind from a club on Coruscant.
What image was that? He looked back at the pilot. One of the medics shouted something and they all braced. Another medic put a towel in Elliott's mouth. The first took a huge saw and then began cutting it into Elliott's severed leg, right below the knee. The pilot was jolted from his catatonic state and shrieked a horrifying wail.
Caius looked away.
Another image. He saw Elliott, his face colored again, but fake. It was hiding something, knowledge and emotion, from the past. "So," it asked, "where are we going?"
The medic made another saw through his leg and Caius heard bone splinter.
"I'm Caius Lucullus, if you need a name."
The saw, with one final, grotesque motion, cut through the mass of flesh resisting it. The gag did not lessen the screaming.
Caius saw a knowing look behind Elliott's eyes. In that bar, on Coruscant, it looked like he knew who he was. It wasn't name recognition. They had met before. And Caius had blocked it out from his mind. Had Elliott?
He was in the jungle again. The medics were hurrying Elliott away from the crash site. Off to who knows where. The closest hospital was on Onderon. They would get him out of there.
"Will he survive?" Caius asked one of the medics that had stayed behind.
"I do not know. The odds are against it."
With that, the man then turned and faded away. Caius found himself alone in the dark jungle. There was a smoldering pile of twisted metal to his left, and in front of him was a dismembered limb, bleeding itself dry.
The image seared again into his memory. Suddenly it all came back. He remembered every detail, down to the tags and the dismembered leg. He opened his mouth to scream, having reached his boiling point on the hellish moon.
Caius shot upwards from the mat on the ground. He was sweating, breathing very hard. He did not know if he shouted in reality or in his dream. It was of no consequence at this point. The horrible memory had come back, and he needed to talk to Elliott about it, the first chance he got back.
He wiped the sweat off of his brow and took two deep breaths. He looked around.
It was morning.