"Our ancestors won freedom for mankind, but what are we to do with it?" King Daliste III of Cron, 236 LE
The star system didn't even have a name, though Cronese cartographers two centuries back had marked the white dwarf as Gamma-718. No one had ever paid much attention to the asteroid field; according to records on the Ascendant, nobody had even attempted a mining operation. No sentients lived here and no hyperspace beacons marked its location.
But nonetheless, something was happening here. Jaminere wasn't entirely certain what, but when the comm station at Raxus Prime picked up the emergency screamer coming from this desolate point in space, he'd scrambled both the Ascendant and Harridan. More ships were on the way, but it would take them hours to navigate the beacon system and get here.
In the heart of Jaminere's dreadnought, the sensor screen was lit up with markers denoting the largest several hundred asteroids in a field of millions. Just looking at it all made his eyes ache and he turned to Captain Sovane.
"Run the standard checks," he said, "Heat, unusual metals, energy signatures. Pull the emissions analysis from Endregaad and look for anything that matches."
As Sovane hurried to comply, Jaminere picked his audio headset off the table and fit it over his head. After adjusting the wire-mounted microphone he tapped the small control panel on his earpiece to open a direct link to the Harridan.
"Captain Felric, do you copy?" he asked.
"I read you, Viceroy. Should we divide the field for search?"
"Yes. Scout everything off your port bow. We'll veer starboard. Utilize standard search methods and check for emissions matching those from Endregaad."
"Yes, sir. If we spot the target?"
"Notify me but do not engage. Deploy hemioliae and battlebirds as you see fit to assist in the search and corner the enemy if need be. But again, do not engage without consulting me."
"Understood. Is there anything else, sir?"
"No. Ascendant, out." Jaminere tapped off the link and looked again at all those asteroids drifting through space. They ranged in size from tiny bits of space rock to planetoids, and there were literally a million places their quarry could be hiding.
Because hiding they must be. Somebody had screamed for help from this location; now they were no place to be seen. They were here, somewhere, and they'd probably run for cover as soon as they saw who'd arrived. Panic left no time for clean-up, and he'd bet anything they'd left scraps of debris somewhere in this garble. Once found, those scraps would become a trail leading to their target.
Until the scraps were spotted it was going to be a long wait, but Jaminere would stay here and stare at the bright dotted screen until his eyes hurt if that was what it took to get his prey. There was no room for slack and no room for error, not on a mission like this.
-{}-
There was no room for error. More than any time since they'd departed from Tython, one misstep could doom them. The pressure set Mal-Oba Talyak's hearts racing, and faint sweat pricked the skin beneath his long-haired mane. Now more than ever, they'd need the Force to survive.
But would the Force come through for them? It was a question he'd asked himself over and over during their outbound journey. In his half-century as a Master he'd studied many theories of the Force. Some posited that the mysterious energy field was an eternal constant, and Jedi merely drew on it like handfuls of water from an ocean. Others thought the Jedi produced the Force through their bonds with each other. Either way, this region of space seemed a wasteland. Despite its hundreds of inhabited worlds and billions of sentient lives, it was barren of Force-users.
Was the Force truly weaker here, or was the weakness from his own doubt? Despite all his experience and learning, Talyak simply did not know.
Sitting in at the pilot's station of the Hand of Light, he searched for certainty. Though he sat in a meditation pose with eyes closed and purposely tuned out the frantic voices ricocheting through the cockpit, he knew exactly what their situation was. Two Imperial warships had appeared over the asteroid field and were scouring it for their quarry. The Hand, as well as the Tionese ship with which it coupled, had moved into the spread of tumbling rock for shelter. Essan had used the secondary helm controls on her station to nudge them tight against one especially large asteroid.
It would hide them from the Imperials for a short while, maybe even a long while, but hiding got them no closer to their goal. They needed to find the Force-users who had fled Endregaad. Talyak needed to find them. He needed the galaxy to be more than a great, barren nothing.
So he tuned out all the arguments passing above his head and searched for life. In the spread of drifting space-rock there was precious little to be found. He sensed, dimly, scattered flecks of non-sentient life-forms, perhaps living in island ecosystems on select asteroids, but there had to be more. He tried to widen his awareness to encompass the vastness of this entire solar system but found himself distracted by the borderline-panic of his companions and the cold concentration of the Imperial crewmen.
And then he found something else: a mood of despair edging toward fatal acceptance. He grasped it firmly with his mind, focused on it, and knew that it was coming from a collection of individuals; dozens, perhaps over a hundred. These were the people from Endregaad, and from their bleak mood he could tell their ship was doomed, as were they. Unless they received help from the Jedi.
Triumph spread through him. Concentrating still, he sent out a hail in the Force. Could the beings in the stranded ship sense him? Would they understand his greeting, and if so, would they send a reply?
Talyak waited. His triumph cooled as he realized there would be no response.
But there was life, and that life had used the Force. He was sure of that, just as he was sure what they needed to do next.
When he opened his eyes and stood, all the arguing in the cockpit stopped. With a sweep of the head he took in Essan at her station, Erakas clutching the hilt of his sword for reassurance, Vaatus near the door like he was ready to bolt. The two humans, father and daughter, stood nearest and looked to him in expectation.
Talyak said in halting Tionese, "I have found the ship."
"How?" asked Ajek Kroller.
"Trust him," Erakas interjected. "He knows what he's doing."
"Well I don't," the older man said. "I don't see anything on your sensor screens. How could you find them?"
"Where is the ship?" Essan asked in Tythan.
"The largest planetoid off our port bow." Talyak gestured out the window with his lower-left hand. "I sense over a hundred lives, but the ship has been badly damaged."
"Hey, talk to us," Kroller insisted. "Tell us what's going on."
In Tionese, Erakas explained, "We've located the ship at the planetoid. We think it's stranded but there are a people inside, alive."
"Great, but how did you—"
"That doesn't matter right now." Reina squeezed his arm and looked at Talyak. "You're in charge, right? So what's your plan?"
"With this ship, we rescue."
"You burn thrust for that planetoid and those warships are gonna see it," Kroller shook his head.
"There may be another way," Erakas said. The other humans stared at him, but he volunteered nothing more.
Talyak told them, "This is our fight. Not for you. Return for your ship."
"We'd be happy to," said Vaatus, "but then what? If we run they'll spot us too."
"We're hiding okay here," Reina said, but glanced warily at the sensor screen. "I say we keep hiding close to this asteroid until those warships go away, or at least until we've got a clear chance to run."
"That may be a long time," Vaatus said.
"Then we stay here. We watch and wait." She looked straight at her father. "And if these guys need any help we can, I don't know, run a distraction for them. Burn our jets and buy them a little time." Kroller's face twisted, and she added, "You said we had a debt to pay, right?"
"Yeah, but I didn't mean it," he sighed, then told the Jedi, "You've got your rescue mission or whatever, and that's all great and noble, but I'm taking care of my family, you understand? I don't want to get any more tangled with the Empire than we already are."
"We understand," Talyak said. "Go. Do like you will. We protect ourselves."
Kroller nodded, but he didn't look any happier and didn't immediately leave.
"Go ahead," Erakas said. "You speak to us on comm. Warn us if they get close."
"Right, we'll do that at least," Reina agreed without looking to her father for approval.
Awkward silence seized the cockpit; then Essan broke it. "If you are going, go," the Sith woman said. "We go also."
"Right." Kroller turned to Talyak, hesitated, then held out a hand for shaking. Not a Jedi gesture, nor a Talid one, but he'd heard it was common here.
So Talyak shook it. Then Kroller turned for the door and walked out. Vaatus was right behind him; Reina lingered for a moment, eyes passing over all three Jedi, lingering a little longer on Erakas. Then she left too.
"As soon as they detach, we move," Essan said, relieved to be using Tythan again.
Erakas looked at the viewport. The destination looked no larger than a fist and was partially occluded by smaller, ever-drifting rocks. The human asked, "Do you really think we can get all the way there without using our thrusters?"
"If the Force is with us," said Talyak, and lucky for him, they mistook his question for an answer.
-{}-
Kroller hated this. He hated every damn thing about it. He hated being pinned down on an asteroid by two Imperial warships, he hated putting his kids at risk (not to mention his own life), he hated being dragged into whatever mission those weird foreigners were running (especially since they seemed so noble; noble people always got you in the worst trouble). He even found himself hating their weird, wonderful starship, because it constantly defied his understanding of what a starship could do.
Strapped into the pilot's seat aboard the Gravity Scorned, he was getting yet another demonstration of the impossible. Using no thrusters, not even small directional jets, the gleaming oblong spacecraft was pushing its way through the asteroid field. It didn't tap on its booster for a kick, not even once. It just moved. Kroller watched through the porthole in silent, frustrated amazement. Physics didn't work that way. They also didn't point you to your destination by magic when even your sensors couldn't find the target.
"Are you guys seeing this?" asked Reina. She was at her navigation station, looking at her sensor board.
"I've got a front-row seat," Kroller admitted, though as the silver dot shrunk it got harder to spot against the asteroids. "That ship… there's gotta be something special with that ship."
"Or with them," Reina muttered.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Vaatus. He, too, was strapped to his station at the rear of the cabin. They were all in their proper places but nothing felt right.
"How'd they reach this system without a beacon?" Reina asked. "And how'd they figure out that ship was here, in that planetoid? It doesn't make sense."
"Maybe they're really lucky guessers," muttered Kroller, because he didn't want to contemplate anything else.
"It has to be the ship," Vaatus said. "Something about their technology… something so advanced we can't even guess what it is. All of that… weird stuff was them hiding its abilities. What else could it be?"
But Reina whispered, barely loud enough to hear: "Magic."
Vaatus's response was forceful. "There's no such thing as magic. There's no gods giving them special powers. I think they're con artists."
"What's the point of conning us? We're not worth conning, and besides, they just let us go."
"You don't understand how people like that work. I do."
"Oh, that's why you were so eager to get out of here."
"If we'd left sooner we wouldn't be stuck with a dreadnought breathing down out neck."
"Yeah, I know," Reina rolled eyes. "Running's your solution to every problem."
Kroller didn't have to see Vaatus to picture the rage in his eyes. He shouted, "That's enough, both of you! Shut your mouths and pay attention to your damned instruments."
He glanced over his shoulder and watched them both stubbornly face their consoles. No argument, no objection. At least he could keep his house under control, Kroller thought. Shame about everything else.
When he looked out the viewport again, he could no longer make out the gleaming foreign ship against all those rough-edged asteroids. Whoever those people were, whatever they were really up to, they were on their own.
-{}-
Moving the Hand of Light through the Force alone was easier than Essan thought it would be. For once, all three of their minds found harmony through shared purpose. Master Talyak was their guide. He alone kept eyes open and hands on the ship's controls, just in case they needed to apply physical thrust to course-correct. He navigated them through the ever-shifting maze of asteroids while at the same time joining his mind to Essan's and Erakas's. He loaned them some of his power and knit their three strengths into one whole greater than the individual pieces. And, united in the Force, they were able to move the Hand through the weightless vacuum, deeper into the tangled belt.
And as they navigated the asteroids and drew closer to their target, Essan knew her companions better than ever before. She felt Talyak's knowledge and power but also his doubt, not in himself but in the thing to which he'd devoted his life. He was desperately hoping the passengers on the crashed ship would prove the Force was a universal power, not some freak accident. As for Erakas, his thoughts lingered on the humans they'd left behind, but also reached out to whoever waited ahead. He hoped to recover in them something of the bond he'd had with his Master Sohr.
What, she wondered anxiously, were they learning about her?
It was the kind of distraction that could break the meld. Essan stifled her thoughts (always so difficult for her) and simply moved. The Hand pressed ever-closer to their destination. On Talyak's urging they swung to the right, then to the left. They wove around drifting rocks until they finally slowed to a stop before the slow-turning planetoid. When Essan opened her eyes, the viewport was filled by a landscape of airless canyons and craters.
She asked Talyak, "Do you know where they are?"
"Perhaps," the Talid allowed. "I am going to use directional thrusters now."
Essan glanced at her scanners. Those Imperial warships were still hovering at the edge of the asteroid belt. The big one, marked by the computer as a Cadinthian dreadnought, was the closer of the two. They looked too far away to notice a few minor thrust-bursts. There was no sign of Kroller's starship, which probably meant it was still hiding.
Talyak tapped the controls gently, nudging the Hand into a counter-spin drift around the planetoid. The battered landscape moved more quickly past them; soon a miles-long gash of a canyon fell into view.
And lying deep within that canyon, wedged between massive stone walls, was the unmistakable form of the alien starship. Talyak immediately nudged the Hand toward it, but it became clear that docking directly with the crashed vessel was going to be impossible. Its hull was battered in all sections, outright torn in some. There was no visible airlock portal and even if there was, it would have been very difficult to maneuver the Hand into that crevasse and dock with it.
"We will have to set ourselves down and go extravehicular," Talyak said.
"We'll go, Master." Essan said. "Someone must stay with the ship… and watch for enemies."
Talyak nodded. "You may have to cut through the hull to enter. Be careful."
"I'll make sure I don't hurt anyone."
"That's not what I mean."
She knew what he meant. Essan stood up and looked to Erakas, who was also rising from his chair. She told him, "I left the translation computer by the airlock. Make sure you bring that, too."
He nodded eagerly. She figured if there really were some of Master Sohr's people inside that ship, Erakas would want the honor of first contact.
They moved quickly after that. They went to the airlock vestibule, donned the EV suits still left life puddles on the deck after their return from the generation ship. Erakas clipped his sword to the waist of his suit as before. As for Essan, she shifted the shaft of her Forcesaber from an inner pocket to an outer. They might need this weapon to cut through the hull and they might need it for even more. Whatever the circumstance, she intended to be ready, and contrary to Talyak's worries, she didn't intend to give herself over to the Force's so-called Dark Side either. She could summon this shimmering blade by mastering the power within herself, as Correa had done.
They stepped out together onto the planetoid's rough face. There was just enough gravity to pull them back to the surface after every leaping bound. Talyak had set them down close to the edge of the canyon, and when they reached the escarpment both looked down on a dizzying drop. The alien ship looked wedged at the very bottom of the crack, over two hundred meters from their position.
"Do you feel it?" Erakas asked her. "They're still in there… They're desperate for help. That ship's got to be losing air. I don't know how we're going to get them all out."
"Make contact first," Essan told him. "The rest comes later."
"Right." His hand twitched around his sword. "Jump?"
"Jump now," Essan agreed. And she did.
Erakas followed a mere second later. Using the Force to guide them, they landed on the surface of the ship at the same time. The impact came harder than expected; it buckled their knees and rattled the damaged piece of hull they'd landed on.
But they'd landed nonetheless. Straightening, winced through the pain, Essan said, "Look for an airlock first. It may be on the other side."
"Or it could be smashed up against a wall." Erakas turned and scanned the exterior. "This isn't like a Tythan ship, is it? I mean, the hull material is similar, but the structure isn't like anything I've seen before."
He talked too much because he was nervous. She said, "Let's check the bow-end first."
With bounding steps, they crossed the scarred hull in seconds. As they neared the point where the hull tapered to a blunt, rounded nose, she thought she was an unusual gray object protruding from the hull near the spot where it wedged against the cliff-face. She immediately started toward it.
When she was just a few meters away, it sprung to life. Some hideous winged creature, with a long narrow tail and suction-like mouth, sprung off the hull. Flapping its wings in the void it landed on her, and Essan couldn't help but shriek in terror. She grabbed her Forcesaber and commanded it to turn on.
But it didn't. It didn't work; the Force just didn't work. The animal gnashed its sucker-mouth, all lined with tiny teeth, against the transparisteel of her helmet. Frantic, terrified, she tried to push it off with her free hand.
Then Erakas was there. He swung with the blunt edge of his sword, whacking the animal in the side and pushing it off her helmet. The creature skittered away, bouncing across the hull before disappearing into cracks in the other cliff-wall.
He was immediately beside her, looking at her suit. "Are you allright? Your suit looks alright."
As she ran hands up and down her flanks to make sure it was intact, Essan gasped, "What was that?"
"I think they call them mynocks," Erakas offered as he wiped a streak of the creature's green mucous— or perhaps blood—off her helmet. "I've heard Tionese spacers talk about them. They can live in the vacuum, in asteroids and on the hulls of starships. They're real pests."
"Quite," she groused and examined the Forcesaber. She'd been able to activate the weapon before when concentrating; she'd done it on Tython and she'd practiced aboard the Hand of Light, never with any problems. The weapon didn't appear damaged, so why had it failed her now? Why had the Force failed her? In that instant she understood Master Talyak's frustrations. But no, the Force hadn't failed her, she'd failed the Force. She'd been surprised and afraid, unable to gather her emotions and turn them into power.
Erakas already had his mind on other things. Stalking to the place where the mynock had latched, he announced, "I see something here! It's definitely an airlock hatch."
She stepped along the curve of the hull to join him. "Can we open it?"
"It's wedged tight against the wall. I don't think we can open it, there's no room to swing the hatch out..."
But they could cut into it, if Essan could get her damned Forcesaber to work. Erakas didn't offer to try himself; she knew he viewed that weapon, and any supposed flirtation with Bogan, warily. His sword had helped on the generation ship but this exterior door was too heavy to pry open. Which meant it was in her hands.
Essan gestured for him to step away, then she went to the edge of the hull. She crouched over the visible portion of the hatch as much as her bulky suit allowed, then took a deep breath and squeezed the Forcesaber with both hands, emitter pointed down.
She closed her eyes and thought. She thought about Tython, the Old City and all its mysteries, the Force storms that raged about it surface. The power there. She thought about (she saw, as vivid as the hatch before her) Correa standing against the storm, this Forcesaber ablaze in her hand. Correa, standing. The storm that killed her. The storm Essan had deliver her to.
She'd thought that in leaving Tython and the Old City behind she'd leave the pain too. No more guilt, no more anger. How foolish that had been. Those feelings surged within her, full of power, and she clung to the image of Correa all the more.
One woman, brave, blazing, doomed against a storm.
The Forcesaber sprung to life in her hand.
Essan looked down and stared at the fiery, restive blade. It felt like an extension of her soul, and she took a moment to savor the power coursing from its tip, through her arms, to her very heart, then back again in a self-sustained cycle. This was her self, manifested through the Force into a blade that could sever any material and defeat any obstacle.
She savored that feeling of cyclical strength and knew it was right.
Then she got to work.
-{}-
Shen didn't even recognize it at first, perhaps because he didn't want to. He'd retreated inside himself because it was the only place where he could find escape (however flimsy and fleeting) from the pain of Vosh's death and the suffocating doom of everyone on the ship. But eventually he knew it for what it was: a steady pulse reaching out to him in the Force, like a knuckle rapping on a door.
Even when he knew it, he didn't understand. In all his many years trying to learn its ways, the Force had never been so active. Always it had been like a placid reservoir that only stirred to waves when moved by his own mental hand. But in this case he sensed that not only was the Force reaching out to him, but some conscious, mortal mind was also.
That was impossible. They were trapped on a dying starship lodged in a canyon on an airless planetoid, drifting through an uninhabited star system. Everything for millions of kilometers around them was void. He and everyone else aboard would soon suffocate, freeze, die, and be swallowed by the great nothing that was the universe. They would meet the same lonely fate as their ancestors who'd fallen to the Scourges and there was nothing he could do about it.
But still the Force kept knocking.
Maybe he was going mad. He'd found a cabin in which to isolate himself from his pain and everyone else, but the knocking drove him out into the open halls. He moved in a daze through the cramped corridors, past the wounded and exhausted, beneath the flicker of dying lights. He found his limbs were sluggish; oxygen deprivation was already starting to wear on him. He could have crawled back into that cabin and curled up for final sleep but the Force just wouldn't leave him alone. The knocking refused to stop.
When he found his way to the Chamber of Elders, the once-busy room yawned with emptiness. The domed ceiling was pressed so hard against the canyon wall that stone drew long scrapes in the transparisteel. The lights here were all dead, save for a handful of scattered beams that shone down on unused control consoles. The Elders were gone, the technicians were gone. It seemed like everyone had given up and waited for death.
Shen stood in the center of the empty room. His head began to swim. He braced himself against his mother's console and wondered where she was. He wondered if the redoubtable Quoll, Chief Elder of their clan, had finally given up.
Then he heard claws scrape against metal. Shen turned to find her standing by the entrance, braced with one hand against the curved wall.
"It will not be long now," she said weakly. "The other Elders have already… passed. They ended, so as spare oxygen for others."
Shen's mind reeled with revelation, deprivation, that incessant knocking in the Force. He said, "We will all die here."
"Yes. But they wished to… liberate time, even a little, for those younger. So you might… prepare yourself for the beyond."
Shen had no idea what lay beyond. His people once believed they could live forever in the Force, but the Force had deserted them all, except for him. He asked, "When will you end it?"
"Soon."
She released the wall and staggered toward her. Her legs wobbled and he staggered forward. Mother and son fell into each other in the center of the chamber and barely managed to hold one another upright.
She looked into his eyes and lightly ran her claws down his cheek. "I wanted… to see you one last time… to explain."
"I understand."
"For you… every second, every breath matters."
"Nothing I do matters."
"Yes it does." Those claws dug a little harder against his flesh. "You are gifted with the Force. For the first time in centuries…. You are a miracle. You are my miracle."
But he wasn't. For all the talk of his destiny he had merely led them here to this stony graveyard. The Force had granted him nothing useful and, worst of all, it hounded his final moments with that incessant knocking.
Bending his head against his mother's he groaned, "I wish it would just… stop."
Her eyes fluttered. "What do you mean?"
"I wish it would let me die… in peace."
One claw dug through his cheek and drew blood. "What is it doing? Tell me."
"It's pounding… in my head… like knocking on a door."
"Knocking… who? What door?"
"I don't know. I just want it to stop."
His mother surprised him by pushing away. Shen staggered back and barely grabbed a console before falling. Quoll went to her own station and tapped its still-glowing screen.
"What are you looking for?" Shen begged.
Quoll ignored him. She worked both hands over the console, inhaled deeply, then finally looked up.
"There is someone outside the ship," she rasped, "and they are knocking on our very real door."
-{}-
Cutting through the exterior hatch of this airlock vestibule had been easy; at least, Essan had made it look so as she sheared the metal apart with a few precise strokes of her Forcesaber. Erakas had felt the Force boiling inside her as she'd worked, and he felt relieved when she stopped powering the weapon.
Getting through the second hatch, however, was more difficult. The ship was losing oxygen already and they didn't want to flush any more than they had to when they entered. Using the Force, Erakas shifted the cut-off piece of the outer hatch and wedged it as tight as he could into the portal where it belonged.
The inner hatch, however, had no handle to turn, and the small control panel beside it refused to respond to any of Essan's random stabs. She remained before the door, one gloved hand flat against its smooth pane, and he could feel her reaching out with the Force, trying to grasp whatever powerful gears and levers kept this one locked into place.
Erakas joined her. He stood at her shoulder, one hand to the metal, and plunged deeper into concentration. He became aware of Master Talyak, still in the ship, and the steady call he was sending out in the Force. So far, it seemed, no conscious mind had replied to it, but Erakas could feel a vague mass of sentient life on the other side of this portal. It was tired and desperate, probably from oxygen loss, but they were people who needed saving.
He just didn't know how they could be saved. The Hand of Light was still perched high up on the canyon rim, and two Imperial warships were scouring the asteroid field. Very likely this place would be the doom of them all.
But he needed to try. He owed it to Master Sohr to save more of his kind or die in the attempt. It was the least he could do to repay his debt to the wise Kwa who's taught him, trained him, raised him as a son.
Focusing on that resolve, Erakas joined minds with Essan. Together, their mental hands grasped the complex interlocking mechanics of the door. Together, they twisted and pushed and forced this heavy pane of layered metal to move to one side. It cracked open first, just a few centimeters wide, and Erakas could see dust and ash flush out with precious atmosphere.
"More," Essan growled aloud.
One more push. Erakas shoved his sword into the gap and used it as a lever, while Essan called on the Force again. Together they pried the door wide enough for Erakas to squeeze his bulky suit through. His breathing apparatus got stuck on the doorframe but Essan roughly shoved him past, then followed. As soon as both were inside the ship, they called on the Force once more and shoved the door closed.
Then everything was still. Erakas found himself panting from the exertion. His breath rasped loudly inside his helmet and fogged the faceplate. Then he sensed it: beings were approaching from the far end of this corridor. He cursed the fog and held his breath, like that would clear it. The lights overhead were flickering, casting portions of the corridor in full darkness. He could only make out tall figures, three or four, moving toward them in the gloom.
But in the Force they became clear. They were tired, desperate, disbelieving. They were also frightened, edgy, and ready to defend themselves against unknown intruders.
Erakas couldn't wait anymore. He reached to his neck and began unsealing his helmet.
"Wait!" Essan called, but he didn't listen. He clipped the sword to his waist and used both hands to wrench the helmet off his head. He breathed the cold, thin air deeply and finally laid eyes on the beings he'd risked his life to save.
They stood tall on long-boned legs. Long arms hung at their sides and ended in three-clawed hands. Their leathery skins varied in color, but the nearest one's was a deep blue-green. Their heads were cone-shaped, with thin mouths lined by sharp teeth, and eyes on short stalks jutted from either side of their skulls.
He knew these creatures from the records on Tython. From ancient artwork and archived images of the great invasion that had nearly destroyed the Je'daii and cast them into the apocalyptic bloodbath of the Force Wars. They were the monsters from nightmare he'd thought consigned to history.
They were Rakata.