"Of course I've studied the career of Xim. Even after all this time one can learn much about politics and rulership. By that, of course, I mean what not to do. Hah, hah." Senator Palpatine, in conversation, 37 BBY
Jaminere still hadn't gotten used to this place. When he rode the transport down to the surface and got his view of the secret world, that quicksilver marble against violet and faint stars, he felt like he was plunging into childhood nightmares. On Sorasca they said that ghouls and witches haunted the moors of the southern isles, but Abraxin had more frightening ghosts, and was about to get a delivery of its worst ones yet.
The planet had changed so much since he'd first seen it. The meager pirate hideout had been erased, and in its place a massive facility sprawled across the fog-shrouded landscape. Twin factories, filled with industrial machines imported from Barancar, Thanium, and Corlax, rose like metal mountains on either side of a landing facility now equipped to take in cargo barges half the size of the Ascendant, which currently sat alone high above the planet. Those berths were fully capable of receiving the captured spaceship.
After riding the lift down from the docking tower, Jaminere paused to watch the Tyrant vessel as it was lowered through the atmosphere in the thruster-equipped metal harness that had carried it through hyperspace on the Ascendant's undercarriage. This was his first time seeing it with his eyes alone, and while it was not an exceptionally large craft there was something captivating about its rounded hull and the argent gleam of its outer shell, damaged though it was. This truly was a ship unlike anything in the Empire, and if its performance at Endregaad was good indication, there was much they stood to learn from it.
They might learn even more from its passengers. All the prisoners had been transferred into the Ascendant, then into the cargo hold of Jaminere's shuttle Jaminere. He stood at the base of the tower and watched great metal arms open the hold from the outside and move the cages containing the prisoners.
It was Jaminere's first time seeing live Tyrants too, and he ventured near the cages as they were transferred onto flatbed trucks. The aliens certainly had a fearsome build, with claw-tipped hands and feet, powerful limbs, and mouths lines by sharp teeth. Yet they were clearly tired, battered, and depressed; some bore wounds that no one had bothered to treat. As he watched them Jaminere felt an unexpected melancholy. This was all that was left of the race that once enslaved the universe. Once they'd claimed their empire as infinite. It was hard not to think of Lyechusas, the Lisst'n poet kept at Desevro's royal court, and her claim that Xim's name would outlive time.
As the trucks lumbered off, Jaminere took the back seat of a jeep that followed the convoy through security gates, past the high outer walls, and into the most secure section of an already very-secured and very secret complex. The trucks came to rest beneath a row of spotlights, where dozens of armed and armored soldiers were waiting. Even after the trucks parked they held position and waited for further instruction.
Jaminere, in this instance, was not the man to give it. As he clambered out of the jeep's side door and onto the ground, he saw Etian Loreac approaching. The archaeologist had, best Jaminere knew, barely left Abraxin in the past twenty years. Though the man still retained his passion for ancient history, his duties had expanded to make him chief administrator of the entire complex. He still wore a long white lab jacket and he kept his pale hair long even though it had retreated halfway off his scalp.
Jaminere had been expecting Loreac, but the man's companion took him by surprise. That companion stood barely to the director's hip and ambled along on undersized rear legs that forced the director to slow his eager stride. A mere black vest covered the creature's gray-furred hide and the pink nose atop his long snout was upturned and curiously twitching. A thin tail jutted up from his backside and twisted to a hook over his shoulder, like a constant question-mark.
It was of course Oziaf, Special Plenipotentiary to the Emperor.
"You've really done it this time, Viceroy," the T'iin T'iin chirped. "I don't think I've ever seen the Emperor so excited."
"I'm surprised he isn't here himself," Jaminere said.
Oziaf shrugged tiny shoulders. "It couldn't be helped. He's at Barancar, overseeing the rollout of a new fleet of dreadnoughts. He'll be coming personally, of course, but until then he's sent my humble self to investigate your finds."
Because apparently Jaminere was not enough to do the job. Xim once confided his philosophy that two agents, working toward the same goal, in competition with each other, often produced the best results. Jaminere had found it true in his own experience, but he much preferred to assign agents, not be one.
Many beings balked when they learned the trust Xim put in the small, furry alien. Jaminere had at first, and so had Xer himself, to his great detriment. Over the years Jaminere had learned to respect Oziaf, even rely on him sometimes, but he could never actually trust the T'iin T'iin. There were still too many mysteries about his past, and if Xim knew them he would not say.
Apparently he and Oziaf locked eyes for a little too long, because Loreac cleared his throat and declared, "We've prepared spaces for the captives. We'll keep them grouped in cages at the start, then draw out individuals we think are potentially useful."
Jaminere looked to the director. "Useful for what?"
"Well, we've taken apart bodies of dead Tyrants before, but never live ones."
"We can get much more from these creatures than vivisections. You've developed a translation matrix for their language, correct? It's time to test it."
"We'll try, but there's no telling how linguistic drift they'd undergone, or how accurate the translation really is."
"There's only one way to find out, isn't there?" Oziaf sauntered toward the cages. "What about that spaceship of theirs?"
"Teams are looking at it now," said Loreac. "I still have a few of the researchers who worked on the Dellalt find all those years ago. Despite its exterior damage the ship is mostly intact, so there's no telling what we might be able to reverse-engineer from their technology. Better weapons, more efficient anti-grav… we won't know until we take a deeper look."
"Do you suppose some of them might be helpful?" Oziaf tilted his snout toward the forlorn Tyrants slumped in their cages. Jaminere and Loreac hesitated, so the T'iin T'iin added, "They may be childhood monsters to you, but they are sentient beings, and what do sentients all want? Survival, and escape from pain."
Jaminere eyed the creature warily. "Are you suggesting torture or negotiation?"
"The whip or the treat? Are there only two options?" Oziaf tugged his whiskers. "No, we need to be creative. Don't just pluck one at random and turn the screws. Observe them and try to discern their authority figures. Dangle a few microphones where they can't see them and try your translation program on whatever they say to each other. After that, we can cajole, threaten, bribe or just plain lie. The possibilities are endless."
Or annoy them with pointless prattle until they tired and dropped their guard. Oziaf was very skilled at that tactic; he'd used to bring down Xer himself.
Jaminere told them, "If you've read the summaries I sent the Emperor, you'll know that not every captive is a Tyrant. There's one… outlier."
He walked up to the cages and waved them to follow. He circled the trucks, peering up at the Tyrants and they huddled against the reinforced metal mesh of their prisons. He completed half of a full arc when he finally spotted her: one humanoid female with long black hair, scarlet skin, and small horns jutting from the brows of her face, which was currently pressed against the mesh. Through the gaps, her dark eyes peered down at her captors.
Jaminere felt uncomfortable under that gaze, and though it took effort he turned away. "She does not belong to any species I have known," he said.
"I'd need a better look at her." Loreac stroked his chin thoughtfully. "I might discover some… similarities between her race and other humanoids."
"Contain your enthusiasm, Director. We shouldn't take that one apart. She's a rare and valuable commodity," Oziaf tsked. "Incidentally, despite being more well-traveled than either of you, I don't recognize her species either. She is… quite striking."
All three kept watching the alien woman. Something about her was captivating, too captivating. Jaminere walked briskly away to the other side of the cage, and with reluctance the others followed.
"Colonel Belmenos's boarding party captured her aboard the crashed vessel," he said. "She and the Tyrants were fighting with energy-blade weapons similar to some of your past discoveries, Director."
"I'd like to get a look at the fresh samples."
"You will. I should note that, per reports, there was at least one human fighting alongside them who was not accounted for afterward."
"He must have gotten on the ship that escaped," said Loreac.
"Ships," Oziaf corrected. "According to those reports, there was one foreign vessel, possibly also of Tyrant make, and one Tionese medium freighter. Both, alas, escaped our Viceroy's grip."
"Don' be premature," Jaminere warned. "I've not given up on those yet."
"All the same, those three ships appeared at both Endregaad and Gamma-718. I must say, I'm very curious as to what inspired that team-up."
"As am I, which is why we're going to focus our efforts on the red woman." Jaminere looked at their attentive faces but hesitated before his next words. He'd been meaning to bring it up, and this was the right time, but it seemed almost ludicrous.
"There's something else we should consider," he told them. "My people who encountered these… outsiders, both in the ship and in space, report instances where they performed actions which have… well, have no rational explanation."
Oziaf's whiskers twitched. "As opposed to an irrational one?"
"Possibly." Jaminere held out his hands helplessly. "They talk of ships making maneuvers without thrust. Acrobatic feats that defy physics. The ability to move objects without actually touching them..."
"Ludicrous," said the T'iin T'iin.
But Loreac considered. "There have always been stories about the Tyrants possessing abilities beyond humans, and we can't assume this was mere exaggeration by our ancestors. We've recovered texts that speak of some universal force that fuels their godlike powers, one they drew on for energy and strength."
Jaminere remembered those stories well; he remembered how uncharacteristically enthused Xim had been about them. He'd never believed in them himself, and he still didn't, but the inexplicable events of the past few days had him looking at old assumptions anew.
"The great researcher, a mystic at heart?" Oziaf sounded both skeptical and amused. "You surprise me, Director."
"I'm not a mystic, I'm an empiricist," Loreac insisted. "Which is why I plan to take the possibility seriously and subject it to rigorous testing."
"Fair enough." Oziaf lifted his eyes to the cage they'd just left. "I suppose you've already marked your prime subject."
"Yes," the director agreed, "I suppose I have."
-{}-
The planet Mullan was the kind that got easily overlooked. It sat outside the edge of Xim's empire but exported its foodstuffs cheaply and was connected via the hyperspace beacon network. Its native alien population kept to itself and didn't bother with Tionese politics, and the Empire saw no reason to conquer such an unglorious, out-of-the-way planet.
It was not a typical locale fugitive spacers sought for hideaways, but it worked just fine today. After escaping the asteroid field, both the Gravity Scorned and the Hand of Light skipped through multiple beacon points until they'd cleared Imperial territory. Then and only then did they feel safe enough to set down, and even then only the Gravity docked at Mullan's sole groundside spaceport. The Hand, needing no such infrastructure to set down or launch, settled itself neatly into the woods that sprawled south of the port.
It was a strange convergence. When the Gravity's crew arrived they found the ship parked on landing struts in a forest clearing. At its base stood a cluster of aliens unlike anything they'd seen before. Nearly three meters tall, clawed hands and feet, cone-topped heads, eyes like stalks from the side, hairless hides colored blue, green, brown or dull red. To Reina they looked very lost.
Erakas and Master Talyak were welcome sights, though they too seemed in a daze. Reina skipped past Vaatus and her father and approached Erakas directly. "What happened down there? Did everyone make it out okay?"
He shook his head. "We lost Essan. Most of the… the Rakata were captured too."
This explained the long looks. Reina fumbled for consolation. "Well, Essan's tough, right? She can handle whatever they have in store for her." Erakas didn't seem to believe it; neither did she.
When Kroller and Vaatus caught up, they exchanged stiff handshakes with Erakas, then Talyak. The alien clasped four hands in front of him and said, "Thank you very much for coming. We owe you our lives and debt."
When none of them responded right away Erakas added, "We'd have never gotten off that rock if it weren't for you. I'm surprised you came back for us. You didn't have to."
That only made things more awkward. Kroller laughed stiffly and said, "Well, we couldn't just sit by, could we? Besides, together we managed to punch out pretty good. This ship of yours… well, it was good to have it on our wing."
"I wish we could have done more," Reina added.
Kroller looked at the aliens moving dazedly under the tree-dappled sun. "So I've got to ask… who are these guys?"
Neither Erakas nor Talyak replied right away. Vaatus added, "There's something almost… familiar about them."
"I thought that too," Reina added, though she couldn't imagine why. She knew she'd never seen beings like this in her life.
Talyak finally said, "They are… relics. From another time." He spread his lower hands. "Like us."
Which begged the question: What are you people? Reina almost asked it right there. She'd seen what Talyak had done during the last fight and looking back there'd been unexplainable oddities ever since they met Erakas and Essan on the generation ship. Things like suddenly changing direction in zero-g, starships sailing through an asteroid belt with no visible propulsion, hyperspace jumps outside the beacon network and communication with no words spoken.
But she held herself. Her father crossed his arms and said, "I'm sorry about Essan. I got a feeling you three have been through a lot together."
"Thanks," Erakas said, "but we're not giving up yet. We're going to get her back, and all the other… the people who are captured. And we need any help we can get."
Reina watched her father shrink back, and Vaatus snapped. "How by M'dweshuu do you plan to do that? The Empire has her, and who knows where they've taken her?"
Kroller nodded grimly. "He's right. Everybody says they've got planets locked away by secret beacons, places nobody can get close to."
"We can find her." Erakas looked urgently to the Master. "You can find, her, can't you?"
Talyak exhaled. "I will try, of course."
"And then what?" pressed Vaatus. "You'll just hop in your ship and ride it to her doorstep? Just like that?" He snapped green fingers and Reina realized he was angry.
"Hey," she said, "calm down."
Vaatus ignored her. "What are you people? What do you want out of all this? And how are you doing the things you do?"
His harsh tone made Erakas and Talyak both recoil. Reina wanted to soothe him but Kroller said, in calmer but firm tones, "I'm not going to claim we've got a right to know… but you just said you owe us a debt and I happen to agree. You can start paying it off by telling us the truth for once."
"We've never lied," Erakas said.
"No, you've just got secrets. Everybody's entitled to theirs, but like I said, you nearly got us killed a couple times over. I don't like that, and I like it even less when you put my kids in danger too."
Reina started, "Dad—"
Talyak raised his upper hands. "He is right. Yes… he is."
Yet neither he nor Erakas hurried to explain. The young man planted hands on his hips, looked down, gave a long sigh. Finally he said, "We come from far away. The center of the galaxy."
Vaatus asked, "How do you do these things that you do?"
"It's hard to explain. There's… more to this universe than what you see. There's a power underlying everything. It's born from life and connects all life, and even though you can't see or feel it, it's there. But we can feel it, and we've learned to control it sometimes. We call it the Force."
"I knew it," Vaatus sighed. "I knew it would be something like this. You're magicians. Priests. You do all sorts of fancy tricks and then…"
He flailed his hands, growled, turned away in disgust. Reina wanted to call him back but Kroller stopped her with a hand on the shoulder. He told Erakas and Talyak, "He's got his reasons. Don't hold them against him."
"We don't blame you for being skeptical," said Erakas.
"I'm not skeptical," said Reina, "because I've seen what you can do. But I'm wondering… can anyone do what you do? Is this just some… knowledge everybody in the Core has and we don't? Like we skipped those lessons in school?"
Talyak shook his shaggy head. "No. Only a handful are born able to touch the Force."
"Lucky you then," muttered Kroller.
"The Force is a blessing. It is also responsibility." He looked at them heavily. "Essan is learning this now."
"Fair enough," Kroller admitted. "These, uh, friends of yours, do they have this Force too?"
"Only one," said Erakas. "It's complicated. It's… been a lot for us too."
"Are they from the Core?" asked Reina.
"No. They're actually…" Erakas scratched his neck irritably. "Oh, all right. They're Tyrants."
That time not even Kroller had a response. They stared at Erakas and Talyak, waiting for either to laugh at the silly joke, but no, they were serious.
Reina observed, "They don't look very tyrannical."
"They are a fragment," said Talyak. "They barely know their history. Only one has the Force. It was he who led us—and you—on the… chase."
"So they were just resting on Endregaad the whole time and nobody noticed until the generation ship showed up, and that stirred everything up crazy?" Reina looked between them. "Is that how it went?"
"Basically… yes." Erakas shrugged. It was the best he could do.
"You people are just full of surprises." Kroller glanced at the aliens with new wariness. "And you want to go find some Imperial stronghold and rescue more Tyrants?"
After a tiny pause, Talyak said, "Yes."
Erakas added, "We don't want to impose on you anymore—"
"Good, because no offense, but we've had enough." Kroller threw up his hands.
"Dad—"
"No." He told Erakas and Talyak, "Listen, I'm sorry about your friend, and I hope you can get her back with all your weird powers or whatever, but this is not our fight."
"We understand," Talyak said calmly. "You have risked already."
Kroller balked, like he'd been expecting more of an argument. In a softer tone he added, "Listen, if you need local advice or something, well, maybe we can give that. But we're not running into any secret Imperial base. I'm drawing a line there."
"We understand," Talyak repeated. "Thank you."
"Yeah, well… you're welcome." Kroller stuffed hands into his pockets, looked around, then awkwardly trotted after Vaatus.
Reina remained. She asked, "Do you really think your Force can find Essan?"
Erakas looked uncertain. Talyak said, "We will try."
That didn't sound to her like a surplus of confidence. "You'll just… ask the Force where she is?"
"I will meditate. I would best begin now." He nodded at her. "I will see you again."
And with that he trudged off, walked up the lowered ramp of his ship, and disappeared inside of it. They left Erakas and Reina standing alone beneath its shadow, and she found herself hard-pressed for something to say.
The best she came up with was, "This one hell of a ship. I'm envious. How does it set down without a docking tower or a landing pad?"
"We have technology that… repulses gravity."
"So you just rise up into space? No hard burn? No black-out g-forces, no floating in space." She shook her head. "They have it nice where you come from. I wonder why anybody would want to leave."
"We had to," Erakas said. "Our world is... a dead world."
"Oh…. I'm sorry." She looked at him carefully. "Was it… a war?"
He considered. "It was something we did to ourselves."
"You mean the Force destroyed a world?"
"We destroyed it. A long time ago." He looked at his hand. "With the Force we can do great things and also evil ones. It's a huge responsibility. You have no idea."
He looked both young and old then, bowed by the weight of inherited history. Reina's responsibilities never went beyond the hull of the Gravity Scorned, and she couldn't pretend to know what he was going through, but that made her heart ache for him even more.
He might have had unspeakable powers beyond her comprehension, but in that moment he seemed extremely human. She put a hand on his arm and squeezed it.
"I wish we could do more," she said. "But Dad and my brother…"
"It's not your fight." He lifted his head. "It's ours."
She knew he meant himself, Talyak, and the captive Essan. Not these Tyrants, just them: three strangers alone against a hostile galaxy.
A thought occurred to her, and she asked, "Is there a name for people who can use the Force?"
His frown perked to a weak smile. "You can call us Jedi."
Short, simple, and sharp but somehow dignified. "Jedi. I'll remember that." She added, "I'll remember you."
By that she meant all three of them, but him most of all. Her hand slid down to his and touched it. He squeezed briefly back, then released and went into his ship.
-{}-
Essan didn't remember leaving the cage. She only remembered the Imperial soldiers, masked in black armor, approaching the mesh barrier against which she and a dozen Rakata slumped. She remembered pain after that, and darkness. Maybe they'd electrified everyone in the cage or maybe just her. It really didn't matter.
All she knew was that she woke up on a bed in a sterile white room. Metal clasps bound her wrists, ankles, and abdomen. All she could do was turn her head left and right but there was nothing to see except the blinking diode of a camera looking down at her.
She was tempted to use the Force to crush the thing, but no. The Force was her key to survival and she could not afford to expose it so easily. She had to wait and see what her captors wanted.
She didn't have to wait long. A speaker at the base of the camera said, "I see you're awake now. Can you hear me?"
It spoke in Tionese. The voice was high-pitched, almost chirpy, but did not seem female. Essan did not reply.
"I'm sure you'd love to give us the silent treatment," the voice went on. "After all, we've given you a nice comfortable bed to rest on. You'd probably like to close your eyes and sleep. Unfortunately, we can't allow that."
Electric shocks arced through all five metal binds. They only sparked once, but Essan writhed against her restraints.
"We can do much worse than that, which is why it's in your interest to cooperate," said the voice. "We'll give you information and you'll give us information in return. How does that sound?"
Essan lay flat, clenched her fists, and braced herself for another shock.
It did not come. Instead the voice said, "We realize it's possible you don't understand our language, so we won't penalize you for that particular ignorance. Perhaps this is more to your liking?"
And then, to her surprise, a voice spoke in the harsh, guttural tongue of the Rakata. It sounded flat and tinged with a small extra layer of static, like they were using a computer translator.
Those words were truly incomprehensible to her, so she did the only thing she could do: lie flat and wait. The Rakatan voice garbled on for almost a minute, then stopped. She waited. Her heart beat faster and she clenched her hands in preparation.
The second shock wasn't any better or worse than the first. She retched in her binds again but also tried to call on the Force to soothe her pain. It was difficult; she could summon its power when she was in motion toward a goal, or compelled by the strong emotions inside of her. But lying here she was ignorant and impotent, which only made her more helpless.
When her trembling ended (but before pain-echoes stopped) the voice returned to Tionese. "You've put up a good front so far. Perhaps you really can't understand our words. Which is a shame, because we thought we'd give you some of our information before we ask anything from you. A favor for a favor, you understand?" He waited, then gave a little sigh. "Ah, well. I thought you'd be interested in knowing how about your friends on the ships. I'm afraid we weren't able to capture all of them alive. Would you like to know which of your comrades are dead?"
Essan's chest tightened. She couldn't help it. She'd wondered whether Erakas and Talyak had escaped, but when she'd tried to stretch her awareness across the stars to find them, the Force had not availed her. She'd believed she might sense it when they died, even if it was just a faint echo of the pain she'd felt on Correa's death.
When the voice spoke again it was smug. "Aha. Unless your race's facial expressions are markedly different from baseline humans, I'd say we touched a nerve. In that case, we'll stick to Tionese for now. So I repeat the question: do you want to know which of your friends are alive, and which are dead?"
She stared resolutely and silently at the ceiling. The voice said, "We have plenty of questions we'd like to ask you, but we're willing to offer you the first round. You can ask us anything at all and we'll answer."
A part of her yearned to know, but what would be the point? She continued to stare at the ceiling and braced herself for what came next. The subsequent shock lasted longer than the others, and so did the shuddering after-effects.
When the voice came next it was gentle. "We gave you a good offer. You shouldn't have taken our generosity for granted, because you won't get it again."
She wanted to snap back a response but she held herself.
The little voice sighed. "All right, then, we'll be asking the questions next. We'll start with simple ones. All we need is a yes or a no, you don't even have to speak. First: have you always lived in the region we call the Tion Cluster, or did you come from elsewhere?"
She said nothing and braced herself for another shock.
"I'm not from here, believe it or not," that voice said. "I came from far, far away, and not by my own choice, which made it worse. I was an outsider, with no friends or allies. And I had to work very hard to reach the position I hold now. You could become powerful too, if you really wanted. I think our dear Emperor would even welcome you as an asset."
Were they asking her to turn traitor and join Xim's forces? She couldn't imagine who was on the other end of that speaker but she told herself it didn't matter. She had to hold firm.
Another sigh; it sounded honestly regretful. "Ah, well. You can't blame me for trying. I get so lonely being around humans all the time… by the way, they're insisting I shock you again, so I apologize in advance."
The warning didn't help much. Neither did the Force. Some Jedi were good at using it for healing, but not her. The Force inside her had always been volatile and it offered no succor now.
"Anyway," the speaker said, "how about another question? Are you in league with the Yutusk Federation or any other systems that hold out against our mighty Xim? Yes or no. Nod or shake your head."
She did neither and got another shock. They were not getting more intense, but they were getting longer, and so were the shudders that jerked her body against its binds. Slowly, painfully, they were wearing her down.
"Here's another question the humans wanted me to ask, and I admit I'm curious too. Tell me, do you and the Tyrants possess certain… abilities we do not? There's a theory—if you can call it that—which states the Tyrants drew on some pervasive, invisible, ethereal energy to rule their empire. It sounds ridiculous to me, though I'll also admit I'm just a humble T'iin T'iin and ultimate truths are well beyond me. So, yes or no? Can you and your friends use this elusive power?"
The questions rattled around in her head. Yes, because she could, of course, touch the Force, even if it was being damned recalcitrant now. But when she thought on her so-called friends, the Rakatan monsters she'd lost everything to save, she realized they hadn't used the Force. During the battle in the doomed ship there'd been no Force lightning, no feats of mental violence, and during the brief look she'd gotten of their Forcesaber she'd realized they weren't Forcesabers. Rather they were an imitation powered merely by electric current, triggered at the press of a button. Reflecting on it now the conclusion was obvious.
The Rakata no longer had the Force.
And to her surprise (and surely that of her captors) Essan started laughing. It was a sickly laugh; her chest shook and a hissing sound escaped her teeth. The monsters of Jedi nightmare were totally impotent. Harmless. Useless. Just flotsam of history caught on Xim's tidal wave. Not that different from the Jedi themselves, really.
Because if she'd ended up like this, what was the Force good for?
Her captor sounded nonplussed. "Well. Clearly there is a joke somewhere. Perhaps you'd like to share?"
Essan found the words in Tionese. Even she knew these. "Yes," she said. "And… no."
"Yes… and no?"
"Yes," she repeated, "and no."
"I don't suppose you'd like to elucidate on that?"
To that, Essan defiantly shook her head.
"I thought not. Well, in exchange for that half-answer I'll give you an extra warning. This one is really going to hurt."
And it did. It hurt and kept hurting as electric current ran through her body, erasing her thoughts and even the memory of the revelation she'd just had. It was pain, pain, pain as energy crackled through her body, burning cells, killing her slowly.
And this time it would not stop.
Essan tried desperately to call on the Force. Talyak and her original Master had both told her that through it one could escape the worst pain, but she found no refuge now. The agony just kept coming, and she had barely enough mind to bite hard on her lip to keep from crying out. Her sharp front teeth drew blood but she didn't notice; that pain was too miniscule.
As she suffered new realization bloomed in her addled brain. She was alone, with no one to help her. After Correa's death she'd thought she'd found a perfect solitude, and even when she'd traveled across the galaxy with Erakas and Talyak she'd thought herself a woman alone, separated from them by her unorthodox use of the Force and by her past sins. But the separation had been her imagining; now she was truly alone, worlds apart from other Jedi for the first time in her life, with only the Force to help her.
And the Force would not come. She'd tried to call on her frustration, her anger (yes, she realized it now, her self-hate), and convert it to power but the raw shades of the Force did not help. Nothing helped. Essan finally gave in, opened her bloody lips, and screamed aloud.
And then—only then—did the Force flow through her. The bed trembled beneath her. The walls creaked. The camera sparked, twisted off its perch, and was thrown into the opposite wall. Supernatural strength filled her and she managed to wrench both wrists free of the metal binds before electricity shot through the other three. Pain sprung from her ankles and abdomen and raced across the rest of her body. She fell back onto the bed, panting, and tried to summon the Force's violence once more.
But nothing came. She felt tired, empty, cold, like she'd emptied all of herself out in one flare.
One short, impotent fire.
The Force had deserted her, it seemed for good.
Then she heard a hissing sound. She pushed herself into a sitting position and looked around but saw nothing. Yet there was a new smell in the air, and with every breath she felt numbness spread through her body. She might have been able to break free of metal binds, but now they'd turned breath itself against her.
A pointless precaution. She couldn't have fought them if she wanted to. Essan sunk into the bed and let darkness reclaim her.
-{}-
Shen felt as though he were on trial. He was inside the ship, seated in a small bare cabin and facing the two Scourges. The human named himself Erakas, the four-armed creature Talyak. He could feel them in the Force, reaching out to him with concern, curiosity, and skepticism very much like how he felt toward them.
The similarity did not make their conversation easier. Erakas held the translation machine in his hands and fidgeted with it nervously as they talked. Shen explained what he could: his clan's life on Endregaad, the pod which crash-landed from space, the pursuit and the capture of so many of his people, his mother and friends among them. He did not hide anything; there seemed no point in lies.
And the Scourges told him their tale. They had departed from their homeworld and sailed across half the galaxy in pursuit of a generation ark, only to lose it and find Shen's clan instead.
But most of his clan was lost, and they had lost one of their people in turn. And it seemed that was the end of it.
"We haven't given up on our people. Any of our people," Erakas told him, though the translator's voice was mechanical and dry, Shen could hear the conviction in his tone, and his desperation.
"Can you find them?" Shen asked. His words were translated, but the Scourges did not respond. He added, "Once my people navigated the stars with the Force. It could lead us to potent worlds or the places we desired. Our ships themselves were designed to help us touch the Force. Is it not the same for you?"
After his words were translated Talyak said, "It is, sometimes. But this has been difficult. We have both tried meditating, but we cannot reach Essan or find where she is on all these stars."
"Then is there no hope?"
The Scourges did not look at each other, but Shen could feel their shared shame and, yes, embarrassment. They were embarrassed that the Force was not giving them what they badly needed. It was a situation Shen was well familiar with. It surprised him that ones with far better training than he could be victim to the same failure.
"We will search as long as it takes," Erakas said.
Shen regarded their alien faces. "Do you know if your comrade is alive? Can the Force tell you?"
Erakas hesitated. Talyak said, "We would know if she died," but his voice wavered with slight doubt.
Shen took any hope he could. The humans who'd taken his mother and the rest of his clan would keep them captive for questioning and experimentation. They would not kill prisoners right away. There was some time left to find them.
He told the Scourges, "If you find them, I want to be with you. I will fight beside you again."
"Thank you," Erakas said. "If it comes to that, will others in your clan fight?"
"Yes. We will lend our weapons to you."
"Those weapons," said Talyak, "are very curious. They resemble the old Forcesabers, but they are not the same."
"We created substitutes when we lost the Force. The blade, I am told, is just as powerful."
"It seemed that way when we fought in the ship," said Erakas. "I lost my sword there. Could I possibly use one of your weapons?"
"Several were brought aboard this ship. You can have any you like."
"Then I guess I'd better get practicing," the human said with a tiny smile.
Shen offered, "I can… teach you. If you need it."
Erakas hesitated. "We'll see."
"Then perhaps you can teach me about the Force."
Both Scourges stared at him. It was Talyak who said, "That is something to consider later. We must focus on rescuing our friends."
"Of course," Shen said, though it was impossible to mistake the flicker of revulsion from both of them. Perhaps his mother was right, and their ancestors really had committed a great crime against the Scourges, rather than the other way around.
But there was no malice in them, nor hate. What strange creatures they were. He would work with them against their common enemy, because it was necessary. And for the first time in his life, Shen could see how the Force was meant to be used.
-{}-
Before this whole mess had started (right before, in fact, during a meal on Estaria rudely interrupted by Xim's invasion fleet) Reina had asked Vaatus where he'd like to burn money on a vacation. She'd been aboard for beaches and relaxation but Vaatus had expressed a desire to see the jungles and vine-wrapped ruins of Soruus again. The last time he'd been there the place had called to him, and though he'd not admitted it at first he knew why. The dense humid forests had reminded him of the jungles of Kintan, which he'd abandoned long ago. He told himself he didn't miss that world, and there were many things he was glad to be free of, but sometimes he really did long for what he'd known in childhood: trees like pillars, sunlit leaves like a roof overhead, the softness of damp dirt underfoot and the constant smell of decay and growth.
Mullan was cooler and drier than Kintan or Soruus, but it was still good to be in the woods. After the conversation by the ship he'd taken a long, long walk to calm himself down. Eventually he trudged back and hoped to find Kroller and Reina ready to leave.
Instead, as he neared the light-patch that marked the clearing, he found Talyak waiting for him.
Though he was loathe to admit it, his first reaction was fear. He forced himself to stop and stand his ground three meters away from the so-called Master. The four-armed creature stood beneath a patch of shadow that made his expression even harder to discern.
In that slow accented voice, Talyak asked, "What reason is it you revile us?"
Vaatus really did not want to have this conversation. He was hoping he'd be able to fly from here and never see them again but of course he wasn't so lucky. He struggled to meet that shadowed gaze and said, "Revile is… a strong word."
"Repulse?"
Vaatus shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You people… I've seen your kind before."
"Where?"
"Not your people, whatever you are. But others like you."
"You see us in them?"
His hands balled to fists. "How can I not? You've got your secret powers, your magic, your rites… What do you want from us for them? What do you need from my father?"
"We want help. But we demand nothing."
"Yeah, right," he snorted. "They always say that. They want you to think it was your idea."
"Who do you hate so?"
Vaatus looked away. He wished Kroller or Reina would appear so he'd have an excuse to go to them. An excuse to flee like a coward.
"You cursed before," said Talyak. "What is… Madeshu?"
"M'dweshuu," Vaatus corrected.
"What is it?"
Talyak really wanted to know. The only escape was honesty. "When I was growing up, M'dweshuu was a light in the night sky. A bright, ugly light, and when it shone bright people on Kintan, my homeworld, would get sick. Sometimes they'd die. My parents died. We were ruled by people who said they could control M'dweshuu. Because they had secret powers and magic."
"I see.'
"No, you don't. Those people, those priests… They demanded blood. They said they were protecting us but they killed us over and over again. They slain our children. My sister—my birth sister—was killed by them. It was a blood sacrifice and we believed in them, because they said they could control M'dweshuu."
"This is great evil. I am sorry you suffered."
He really sounded sorry too, but that made Vaatus more angry. "I couldn't stand it anymore. Ships came to my planet sometimes, every now and then, so I stowed away on one. I left everything behind to get away from them. Everything." Even the only family he had left.
"Then you met your… father?"
"That's the short of it. But do you know what I found out when I left? M'dweshuu isn't a god. It's a star that went supernova near my planet and blasted it with radiation. Just gasses in space. Invisible waves. That was what we tried to satisfy with our peoples' blood."
Talyak lowered his head, closed his eyes. Vaatus watched him, waited, but the alien didn't even waver. He growled, "Well? Aren't you going to tell me you'd never, ever do stuff like that? That your people only use their magic for good, and they'd never abuse other peoples' trust?"
Without opening his eyes, Talyak said, "No."
"No?"
"With the Force we work good and evil, both. Some have made horrors you cannot imagine."
Vaatus could imagine more than most, but he found he believed him. Talyak seemed pressed by a weight he could never understand.
"I say this, only." He lifted his head, looked at Vaatus. "We know darkness. We try to do light. It is a challenge we face. Every day, we do our best."
That was it. They did their best. No grand proclamation of perfection. No command to worship. Not even guile and false promises. Instead: an admission of fallibility, touched with shame. He thought, for the first time, that these Jedi might be different from the priests of M'dweshuu after all.
Talyak made no more statements and asked no more questions. He simply turned and walked away, not to his ship but deeper into the forest, leaving Vaatus alone.
-{}-
When Essan woke up next her eyes were heavy, her joints ached, and she was slumped against the clean but very hard wall of a cell. She could breathe deep and clear, but the scent of that sickly gas lingered in their nostrils and tainted every breath.
Then she shifted, looked across the chamber, and saw a Rakata staring at her.
It was an older one; at least, its skin looked dry and withered with age. Was it the same elder who'd spoken to her when they'd first entered the ship? Perhaps. Essan could not easily find differences in the creatures' faces, nor did she want to.
She and the Rakata stared at each other for a long time. Had this one been tortured also? Even then, their captors would not have put them in the same cell without a purpose. Perhaps they thought to listen in on a conversation between these two prized prisoners, but if so they'd made a mistake. Essan did not speak Rakatan, and she doubted her opposite spoke Tionese.
But they both spoke Tythan. At least, the Rakata could understand some of it, if this was the same one. She doubted her captors knew any of that ancient Deep Core tongue; but then, she was shocked a Rakata knew any of it either.
She was considering trying to broach this topic when the Rakata did it for her. It said in slow rasping Tythan, "You… hurt?"
Essan looked at that alien visage for a long time before she said, "They tortured me. But I am all right now." Neither of them was truly all right, but it was close enough.
"They… hurt me," the Rakata said. "They ask… in my voice." She tapped her chest
Essan understood. "They don't know this language. I think." She hoped.
The Rakata nodded. "You… Jedi?"
"Yes."
"Other Jedi here?"
Essan shook her head. "They may be dead or far away… but I don't think they're here."
The Rakata exhaled. "They escape into other ship."
Essan perked up. "Which ones? Did you see them?"
"Before capture. Yes. Human escape. And… my son."
It had never occurred to her that Rakata cared for their children. She said, "I hope their ship got away."
"I am... mother." The Rakata tapped her chest. "Name is… Quoll."
The other woman stared at her a long time, then said, "I am Essan."
"Son is Shen. Shen is… like you."
Essan frowned. "He's not a Jedi."
"Not Jedi. Yes. No. He is… touch Force."
Essan thought a long time before she replied. "Can you use the Force?"
"No. Force… left us. All. Except Shen."
That was it, then. When Erakas had first felt a Force-user on the fleeing Rakatan ship he'd found one blessed alien of an ancient race whose kin had long ago lost touch with the Force. It was no wonder he'd chased it madly; he'd thought he'd found his Master Sohr again.
She tried to understand the implications. These Rakata were a pathetic shadow of the monsters the ancient Je'daii had fought. But just as chance or the Force had blessed Sohr, so it had blessed Shen. Did that mean Shen, a Rakata, might with training become a Jedi Master?
Essan revolted from the thought. The Jedi taught that any being was capable of moving in sync with the Force's light side, but it was too hard for her to imagine goodness coming from an individual whose race was synonymous with evil.
Right now, she told herself, Shen did not matter. If he survived he was far away with Erakas and Master Talyak, and whatever fate held for them it did not likely involve her. Not that she expected her comrades to abandon her; after all, they were Jedi, and they understood (better than her) that Jedi must stand together. But what could three Force-users do against the might of an entire empire?
On all practical levels, the closest thing Essan had to a comrade now was the old Rakata who patiently watched her from the other side of the cell.
Eventually she told Quoll, "I saw the weapons your warriors used. They were like my Forcesaber, but there was no Force is them, was there? They were just machines."
"We make them after fall. Without Force we..." she groped for a word.
"Improvised?" Essan offered. "Made a substitute?"
Quoll didn't know those words either. "We make… what we could. You have… real Forcesaber?"
"Had." She held out her empty palms. "I… got it from a friend. It was very old."
"Force... saber..." Quoll repeated the words. "All now is… light… saber."
"Maybe that's enough," Essan said consolingly. If she understood Quoll correctly, the Forcesaber had originally been a Rakatan invention. All this time she'd thought it forged by the Je'daii of old and she'd felt a small pride to carry on the legacy of the ancient order. Now it seemed she'd been carrying another legacy entirely; she and Correa both.
Quoll looked down in thought. Essan watched for a long time before she asked, "Do you have any idea why your son could touch the Force?"
"No."
"And… do you know why your people lost the Force to begin with?"
"No," Quoll said again, then hesitated. "Perhaps… a fault. In us." She tapped her chest again with a three-clawed hand. "Force… left us. Or we left Force."
Essan thought she understood what Quoll was saying. "I don't know if that's possible… I can't say either way. But this place, this empire…. There's no Force here."
"In Shen," the Rakata said. "In you."
Essan looked at her scarlet hand. The skin around her wrist was faintly darkened by electric-singe. "We're just ghosts," she said, "of a long time ago."
"No," Quoll said with quiet defiance. "You… are… future."
It was a preposterous thought. Essan had what Quoll had: nothing at all. For the first time she felt a pang of empathy for the old Rakata; for the old woman. Quoll's long life and Essan's short one, each originating from opposing civilizations and opposing stars, had converged on the same bitter end. She couldn't say who'd drawn the worse straw.
And because neither had anything else to say, Jedi and Rakata stayed where they were, watching each other across the short distance of the cell and waiting for their captors' latest whim.
-{}-
"If you're going to fly this thing into a nest of razorsnakes you'd better make sure it's in top shape," Reina said with a cheery voice and serious eyes.
They walked in the shade beneath the Hand of Light, making slow circles to examine the battle-scratches left on its exterior. Reina stepped eagerly and edgily, followed by Erakas. Kroller and Talyak lingered behind them. At that moment he felt like they were both parents watching over kids who'd grown too much and wanted to fly too far.
"I appreciate help," said Erakas, "but you don't know much about this technology."
"Then you can give me pointers." She bent her head back to look over its port flank. "Besides, I want a free tour of this beauty and I probably won't get another chance."
The point was taken. Erakas said, "All right. I can show a little more."
"Do you have any way to check out its topside? A ladder, maybe?"
The young man chewed his lip. "Not exactly."
"Well, you've got to have something. I don't care if have magic powers, you must have to patch up your ship now and then."
He looked over his shoulder to Talyak. If the Master sent a reply, Kroller neither saw nor heard it.
But Erakas shrugged, "Okay. We'll look at the top."
He held out a hand. Reina reached for it but he swung his whole arm around her waist. She bleated; Kroller wanted to say something but then Erakas jumped, taking Reina with him, up and up until they both landed boots-down on the top of the ship.
Just like that. Kroller couldn't believe his eyes. Up above he heard Reina laugh nervously, then with relief, and Erakas laughed too. Kroller exhaled hard and shook his head. To Talyak he said, "Youth."
"Youth," Talyak agreed.
They stood beside each other, listening to boots twisting on metal overhead and voices muffled by wind and unseen birds' song. To fill the silence Kroller asked, "You and him have been together for a while, I bet."
"No," said Talyak. "Only since we left home."
He looked sideways at the alien. "Really?"
"Yes."
"So you three were just… stuck together? At random?"
"Mostly."
"Well. That's a weird way to run things."
"It is our way."
"I'm not criticizing."
Kroller didn't know why he was stepping light around this alien and scraping to apologize. He had no reason to feel guilty, any more than he had for running on Dorin at Estaria. Okay, he admitted, he did feel guilty about that, but not regret. He'd do anything to protect his family, even if Reina hated him for it, and he knew she'd sulk for a long time once they left.
Vaatus too, possibly. He didn't know what to make of it, but his son had come up to him not ten minutes earlier and said, eyes down and voice awkward, that maybe they should think twice about helping these Jedi (because, that, apparently, was what these strangers called themselves). It was a stunning reversal and when he'd asked Vaatus the reason, the Nikto had merely turned away.
But Kroller had made up his mind. There wasn't even anything for them to do if they wanted to help so it was pointless to roll through doubts and recriminations.
To make certain of that he asked, "You haven't located Essan yet, have you?"
"No." One word ached with regret.
"Then your Force thing hasn't shown you where she is?"
"No."
This wasn't helping Kroller's decision. "You might have to go looking for her the hard way. Not that I'd know where to start. They say Xim has secret hyperspace routes in the Spiral. The Argai pirates have been using those for generations. Maybe, with your ship, you can navigate those and scope out the planets there."
If their strange navigation system was capable of it. Kroller didn't understand how it worked, only that it involved the Force in some way.
Another silence. Voices and footsteps up above, though he couldn't make out words clearly.
Then Talyak said, "I know what happened to your son."
"He told you?"
"Yes. I wonder what happened to Reina's mother."
Kroller supposed that after they'd unloaded their strange secrets, he could unburden too, just a little. "We were doing a cargo transfer to another hauler over Rudrig. It was just me and her then. Reina was small, and we hadn't found Vaatus yet. She had to secure something manually so she went EV. Then this pressure seal on one of the crates blew. It was just old and worn out. She got a face full of debris and it cracked her helmet, tore her suit in four places. By the time I got her back inside she was too far gone."
And that was it. Nothing extraordinary, nothing dramatic. Nobody to swear revenge against. Just the kind of normal equipment failure that claimed the lives of spacers every day. All these years later and he didn't know if that made it hurt less or more.
After a long wind-stroked pause, Talyak asked, "Was it your fault?"
Kroller jerked, looked away. "No. It was just… a stupid accident."
"You know it, you don't believe it."
He snorted. "Your powers extend to mind-reading?"
"Yes," Talyak said plainly. "But I do not need them. Essan carries a similar burden."
"Huh. Does she now?"
That didn't require an answer, so Talyak gave none. He was still getting used to the fact that these people had doubts and troubles and emotions like mere mortals. Not Erakas; he was young and an open book (his being human probably helped too) but this shaggy four-armed alien and the stern scarlet woman had their own shares of woe. Just like him, just like anyone.
Well, not just like him. He crossed his arms and said, "You can read minds? Really?"
"We can… feel thoughts. Some are better at it than others."
He wondered if Talyak could read his thoughts right now and wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer. He opened his mouth to ask anyway when a call came from above.
"Hey!" Reina said. "We've, uh got a problem up here."
All his attention immediately went to her. "What do you mean? Is the ship damaged?"
"Not exactly," said Erakas. "We found something at the base of the port nacelle that does not belong."
"It's flash-welded to the pylon," Reina clarified. "And Erakas says it's not something any of his people made. We can probably pry it off, but I'm not sure what'll happen."
"Do you know what the object is?" Talyak asked.
"Not exactly…" Reina said.
But, sight unseen, Kroller had a pretty good idea what it was, and it meant all his vacillation and doubts had come down to nothing after all.
-{}-
"You wanted to test things empirically," Jaminere told Loreac, "so tell me, what have we learned?"
Personally, he didn't have a clue.
The director sunk into his high-backed chair and looked at the print-outs laid across his desk. "Well," he said, "if it's the Tyrants' physiology you're interested in, we've made all sorts of interesting observations. After taking apart several we've mapped their cardiovascular and intestinal systems very well and are currently analyzing their neural structures. We've also identified multiple compounds that can alternately sedate or neutralize them after aerial exposure."
"Useful if we run into more of them. It's a shame we haven't found a compound that makes then more amenable to questioning."
"Yes, that would be helpful," Loreac said dryly. He picked up a folder of reports of various interrogations, flipped through the pages, and tossed it down. Jaminere well knew what it read. The Tyrants were quite resistant to pain, and several had allowed themselves to die before giving in. None had responded to entreaties. Even in their meager state racial loyalty ran strong.
But Jaminere found himself less interested in the Tyrants than the woman. When they'd put her under interrogation, something had happened, something that defied all the dozens of quantitative instruments Loreac had been using to monitor her. Somehow she was capable of actions that confounded modern science, and the director was visibly frustrated.
All the more interesting was that none of the Rakata had displayed the same talents, even when placed in the same duress. On Oziaf's suggestion they'd tried the same torture on an elder Tyrant female, on the flimsy supposition she might be a matriarch of some kind. She'd endured the torture stoically but summoned no magic powers. It had also been Oziaf's idea to place both women in the same cell to see what transpired between them. The result had been a confounding conversation in a language none of Loreac's translation matrices could identify.
Still so many mysteries, and no way to decipher them.
Loreac steepled his fingers and said, "Fortunately, our investigation of the captured ship have been more elucidating. My engineers are taking apart the artificial gravity generator and will try to reverse-engineer it. They've also discovering interesting new compounds in the hull. The trick will be synthesizing these metals for our own ships."
"What about that strange computer you found?"
"Ah, that." His forehead wrinkled. "We're still trying to decipher it. The structure is totally foreign to our own. Even its circuitry uses different metals than our computers. Curiously, nothing on the Tyrants' ship matches that design either."
"It may have been salvaged from the generation ship at Endregaad. The Harridan is currently holding it and work crews are picking it apart. I'll put you in contact with Captain Felric. You may be looking at pieces of the same puzzle."
"I suspect you're right."
Jaminere looked past him, though the office window at the massive factory complex rearing out of the fog. "Will anything he helpful in our primary project?"
"Perhaps. If we can reproduce that hull alloy it might make very effective armor. The material is heavier than kiirum but seems to withstand physical impact better."
"Haven't you already begun fitting them with duranium?"
"Yes, but most of the units haven't been completed beyond the skeletal phase. We've only rolled out several prototype variants."
"Well, hopefully you'll be putting out superior models very soon."
"Yes. Hopefully." Loreac pivoted his chair away from the window and looked back at Jaminere. "We've made good progress, but I really do wish you'd captured that second ship as well. It would have made a fascinating comparative study."
Jaminere smirked. "Wish for something badly enough and you just might get it."
"What are you talking about?"
"I told you I haven't given up on catching the ones that got away. I meant it." Jaminere put fists on the desk and leaned forward. "If you read my report fully, you'll remember I send a boarding team to take the other ship. The boarding team failed in their primary objective but not the secondary one."
The director's brow furrowed. "Meaning?"
"Before attempting entry, they placed a tracking beacon on the ship's hull. Nothing big or sophisticated, just something that blares out a signal for the nearest nav beacon to pick up, like an emergency distress screamer but on a much narrower frequency."
Loreac jerked upright. "You mean you've found them?"
"We've located them on the planet Mullan. Outside our jurisdiction, but I've managed to negotiate a retrieval mission with the native government." Jaminere smiled; he did love leaving people impressed. "I passed the location on to Admiral Kadenzi. His warships should reach its location any minute now."
-{}-
They came in the black of night but it was impossible to mistake their arrival. The thrum of turbofans rose gradually until it droned out the nighttime song of woodland insects, the wind rose and trees swayed and groaned around the clearing. Finally floodlights poured down on the Hand of Light, so blindly bright that Erakas had to retreat beneath the shade of the hull, to the base of the lowered landing ramp.
The Rakata called Shen stood beside him. There was no language connecting them save the Force, and through it they shared the same uneasy union of dread and hard resolve. There was no escape from what was coming, they could only face it. And impossible as it seemed, they'd have to face it together.
He told himself this was what Master Sohr would want him to do: stand with an unlikely ally, united in the Force, and use their shared and ancient power to right the wrongs that threatened the galaxy. Sohr had told him often that one did not simply be a Jedi; a Jedi was only a Jedi when he acted.
The time to act had come too soon and not the way he wanted, but he had to face it either way.
Turbofans still roared overhead and the light was still blinding as over a dozen commandos in ebon armor dropped from rappel lines and took position around the Hand. More bright lights shone from the barrels of their snapped-up rifles. Glowing pools swarmed around the base of the ship and centered on Erakas and Shen. It was so blinding he had to close his eyes.
The soldiers tightened the circle around the ship. Eyes still shut against blazing red, Erakas raised both hands in surrender. He did not need vision to know Shen did the same beside him.
Then came the crack of a rifle. Electrified metal strands wrapped around his body and arced pain through his nerves. His eyes popped open involuntarily, replacing red with blazing white. Then he fell, and there was only black.
-{}-
The small porthole window of the Gravity Scorned's cockpit offered very little to view, so Talyak felt rather than saw what happened on the planet below. The Imperial seizure team descended swiftly, encircled the Hand of Light where it sat in the forest, and captured the fifteen Rakata and one human aboard without incident. Then the Jedi ship was locked in a cradle frame and lifted into the sky, where a retrieval ship waited in the upper atmosphere to lock it in place and carry it from Mullan into hyperspace. He did not feel Erakas when the Hand was taken away, nor any of the Rakata. He already knew that they'd been rendered unconscious.
Though he sat strapped to a seat in the Gravity's cockpit (secure but slightly awkward, as the crash webbing did not accommodate his extra limbs) Talyak's hearts raced in his chest. In all his decades as a Jedi he had never felt so helpless. It had been bad enough when Essan was captured, but now they had Erakas as well.
Yet it was the only way. They had discussed this as soon as they found the tracking beacon. The soldiers who'd boarded the crashed Rakatan ship had seen Erakas with his helmet off and would be expecting to find him with the Hand. Of the soldiers who'd fought Talyak, none had survived. Thus it was that Erakas had to face the Imperials. To his surprise, every one of the Rakata volunteered to stay on the Hand and be captured as well. As the young, enigmatic Shen had said, they could not live if they abandoned their own.
They would face horrible things in the hands of the enemy. Even if everything went to plan, it was likely some of them would die. What made Talyak's hearts truly race was the thought of either Erakas or Essan perishing. As with Ajek Kroller and his wife, their deaths would not be his fault, but he would never stop blaming himself.
"She's comin' up now," Kroller said as he watched the sensor screen on his pilot's console. The Gravity Scorned was hanging close to Mullan's smaller moon, hidden from view of both the planet and the Imperial warship above, but they had patched into a navigation buoy to track all ships coming and going.
"Do we really think this will work?" Vaatus asked in an irrational whisper.
"No reason it shouldn't," Reina said. "As soon as anyone tries to touch the Hand's computer systems it'll send out an emergency flare, just like the last one. Only this one'll be aimed straight at the Mullan beacon and encrypted only for us." Despite the words, her voice was also tense.
Kroller added nothing, only watched his board. Talyak couldn't read the human's mind exactly, but the emotions boiling off him were easy to understand. He feared for himself and his children, and he wondered whether he'd made the wrong choice in the frantic scramble which had followed the discovery of the tracking beacon.
But he was set on the course and would live or die along it. As would they all.
When they'd taken Talyak aboard, Kroller had warned that they'd not put the Gravity in harm's way more than they had to. They were deliverymen, and Talyak was the package they'd drop into whatever secret base the Hand ended up and save the day with his Jedi powers. Kroller didn't really believe that was possible, but Talyak did. Because he had to.
He was the Master. Younger knights were his responsibility. It was as simple and painful as that.
"There they go," Kroller said softly, eyes on his screen. "Just jumped to hyperspace."
"What now?" asked Reina. "We just… wait?"
"We wait," Talyak echoed. He folded all four hands over his chest, as though to hide the pounding of his hearts.