Chapter 51
Shili System – Arratak (Apparently)
Flashes of purple lightning and crackles of thunder continued throughout the night. They robbed Caloc of sleep, though not for lack of trying. The ferocious wind howled past the cave entrance, the occasional gust cheekily wisping inside. Deesix stood stoically in the cave entrance, his scanners flicking across the open space despite the constant rain. Runtan and Caloc took the opportunity to both at least try to rest, curled up on opposite sides of the Varactyl. Runtan claimed that it probably wouldn't wake for another dozen hours.
The storm ceased after about eight hours. The torturous wind and constant rain had dwindled from a downright deluge to a mere trickle in about two minutes as the weather system passed by. Caloc had never seen a storm disappear so quickly. When he asked his self-proclaimed guide about it, Runtan had said that the weather systems were normally like this, springing up randomly and disappearing the same way. The weather was somewhat temperamental, effected by certain ionised reactions in the atmosphere.
It was still dark outside the cave, but daybreak would occur within a few hours. Deesix continued to watch as they packed up their few belongings, careful not to bother the still slumbering varactyl. However, there were no strange anomalies or heat signatures in the immediate area. As he nibbled on a strip on dried, tasteless meat from Runtan's possessions, Caloc studied his new companion. She had removed the tarpaulin from her shoulders after their short fight, and it was tied into a bundle on top of a small pack which had been hidden in the crook of her back. Her lightsabres were nestled between the small of her back and the pack she carried. A large canteen dangled from her left side. There were a set of portable macrobinoculars hidden in a nest of odd bits and scraps on the right side of her equipment.
Where she had gotten a hat from was beyond Caloc. It was a wide-brimmed shallow cone shape, made from thick grasses and reeds. Two triangular holes in the top allowed her angular ears to poke through, her senses unimpeded. Dirt and mud were speckled across the straw surface, and there was a slight change in colour along the left side of the brim, where he assumed she often held it. Slipping it on, she could kneel and disappear in the longer, knee-high grass that he saw outside.
When put together, everything she owned showed the signs of someone who had lived on the moon for a while. Everything, that was, except for the lightsabers. He wondered how long she had been here on Arratak. How long she had needed to defend against predators, to hide her identity. He almost asked, but then decided that now was not the time.
Instead he looked out into the long grass. It seemed different from the night before. When the varactyl had tackled him, he had felt himself slide across slick grass, his butt unceremoniously digging into mud. Now that grass was drying out and straightening up, becoming half-metre tall stalks of brown decorated with green and pink tips. This wasn't the Huu grass from the crash site. This was Pika grass, a native to Shili that grew like a weed in any other soil. It was almost amazing the difference the rain had made to it.
The sky was a brilliant blue, but the orb that was Shili hung to the west, a constant reminder that they were on a moon, and that they would eventually fall into its shadow again. The sun was in the east, slowly rising above the distant mountains. Apparently, Runtan would continue moving towards these, though she did say that they were not mountains.
"We need to keep moving. Head home and resupply before getting you off world."
They moved out shortly after their meagre breakfast, marching across the shallow hills and grasslands towards the distant not-mountains. Although still a mixture of grey stone, shale and the long, dried grass, the terrain was becoming somewhat easier to navigate. It helped when there was light.
Caloc, Deesix and Runtan followed a beaten dirt path that could have been formed by either small beasts or a single machete-wielding man. After a few hours of constant, numbing walking and the sound of a rumbling stomach, it was time to eat again. Runtan diverted to a side track, an even thinner animal track. It led across the fields to a small grove of round trees that poked out of the grass. It was the first recognisable landmark Caloc had seen in a while. As they got closer, he also saw what was in the centre of the grove.
"We should stop here for lunch.", Runtan gestured to the larger tree in the centre of the grove. It was covered in strange, pointed thorny leaves. Hundreds of them weighed down the branches so that they drooped around the top of the main trunk. There were small orange fruit hanging in bunches at the ends of the branches, though Runtan warned they were poisonous unless properly prepared.
They sat beneath the tree, leaning against the thick, smooth trunk. Caloc didn't have a very large collection of food, just the few small packs of gelatinous sludge he had pulled from his starfighter's remains. It was tasteless and bland, but was better than nothing. Thankfully, he was not eating them alone.
Grabbing some charge nullifiers that would switch his bio-electricity to something useable, he got to work plugging Deesix into his arm for an emergency recharge, then sat down to survey the spread that his companion had pulled from her pack. It was still a traveller's meal; the same dried jerky they had for breakfast (he could now see was a vibrant green in the daylight), a few slices of fruit that were browning along the edges, and a small collection of leafy green vegetables that looked delicious. Everything that was easy to pack up in a single travel pack and would survive a long trek in hot sun and unforgiving terrain.
They ate quickly and Caloc asked more about the moon and its topography. She had not wanted to discuss her purpose here, and he decided to allow her to open up to him at her own pace. The Force seemed content with her presence, and he hadn't felt anything that signalled danger. She explained that the moon orbited on a slow axis. The gravitation strain early on in the moon's life had cause a chasm to form around it's entire vertical equator. Uncreatively, the locals called this the Great Canyon. Running along the bottom of the canyon, and filling a majority of it, was the Yoko River. Apparently, his starfighter had 'unfortunately collided with' the dam that stretched across one end of the Great Canyon.
The river divided the High Grave Country from the 'Slums' Country. Currently, they were sitting in the Grave Country, where the Togruta would go to ritualistically bury their ancestors. Protected by the Shili government, each grave was taken care of by groundskeeper droids. No settlements were allowed around the sites. Although people could visit, they needed to land in the Slums and bring an airspeeder into the protected zone.
The Slums, alternatively, had been the unfortunate victim of a hundred-year flood. The grass had recently begun to grow again, but water had killed all living creatures in the area. Travelling through the slums usually required a vehicle with repulsor lifts, since the Yoko River would sometime rise over the bank during a storm and flood one of the gullies the government had commissioned to quell continental disasters. Stone plateaus marked the few scant villages, set well above the floods.
Only one of these villages were large enough to have an operational spaceport, a small port often used by criminals and smugglers. The civilisation around the spaceport was small, and therefore, any ship they could hire would need more credits than either Runtan or Caloc had on them. But it was the only way off Arratak.
Now it was Runtan's turn to ask a question. "Your arm. Why is it wired into your droid?"
Caloc glanced down at the blued, crackling skin. "My blood generates electricity."
She hissed at that, a sound of confusion. "You are what, part Illi? Part Commorat?"
He laughed and unplugged the droid. "Not exactly. I was injured, and instead of a prosthetic, they gave me this. A bio-organic synthetic from my homeworld that simulates my blood."
"So you have lightning in your hand.", Runtan mused. "Most curious."
That was all that was said for that meal. They worked in silence to pack up the meagre lunch again, then continued marching towards the distant not-mountains. They were getting closer to the Great Canyon, Runtan told him, as those mounds marked the borderlands to the cliffs.
They were sliding down an embank of dirt when Caloc thought he saw Runtan staring at him. Turning his gaze to stare right back, he raised an eyebrow in question. She nodded at the droid beside him and asked, "Why did you crash here, Caloc Tiac? Why only you and your droid?"
"I was shot down.", he replied, shrugging.
"Over Shili?", her tone said a lot. It was uncommon for the Jedi to be caught this far out, and she was wondering why he was here, not on Arratak specifically, but in the Shili System. "Did your hyperspace ring survive?"
"No hyperspace ring.", he commented.
"You were on a larger ship?", Runtan growled out.
So, he explained the mission to Pantora. He went over what he knew of the attacks on the people there. Deesix helped out with a few helpful visuals; holograms and recordings to show the carnage that had been occurring there. He told her of the emissary being sent to Coruscant, and of his and Stass' duty to protect him. When he mentioned their being attacked in orbit, Runtan cursed.
"Mining Guild scum.", she muttered darkly. Why would she react in such a manner? He got the sense that it was more personal than she would ever admit. Had she also been attacked? Was that why she was here? Didn't matter. He needed to continue his tale. Hopefully answers would reveal themselves soon.
"They blew up the ship and it went down. I lost visual and radio contact when we entered the upper atmosphere. Comm system must have fried.", Caloc leapt over a small hole in the ground. He continued to explain why he had been in his starfighter, and had then been attacked by the giant ship that had reinforced the Mining Guild. She was less interested in his retelling of the past day's trek from the dam.
When he had finished recounting his adventure, they walked for a few more hours in silence. The grass plains had gradually changed as they went further. The grass was now brushing around their waists again. Tiny insects buzzed through the grass, and small serpentines slithered amongst the stalks. Rocky formations stood out above the grasses every now and then. Once they even came across a flat piece of rocky red ground, which looked incredibly out of place amongst the near constant grey grass stalks.
"Salt crystals.", Runtan explained to him. She bent and scooped up a little bit of the red crystalline specks. They trickled back through her hand and onto the ground once more. "Every now and then a deposit makes it way to the surface and everything around it dies."
He hoped that would not happen to him which on Arratak.
Caloc found that as the steps turned into kilometres and then to miles, his mind returned to the doubts circling through his mind. It was strange to meet a random person in the middle of a nowhere moon. It was stranger to find a Jedi that had never been heard of.
Caloc did not trust Runtan. Not entirely. Sure, she was skilled with her blades, and was clearly able to effectively use the Force. Her acrobatics were fantastic. She spoke like a Coruscanti local and that trick with her tail was inspired. But those facts did not mean that she was a Jedi. He had never heard of Runtan Tanrad in any conversations, nor had he seen her in the Temple records. He had never seen her species either. Granted, he didn't know every species, but she was definitely unique. Was her species perhaps from the Unknown Regions? Or perhaps withdrawn to a single world in the Outer Rim or Wild Space? Perhaps her entire species could utilise the Force in some manner.
And then there was the pendant. It was a Jedi medallion, but it could have been stolen from a tomb. Or perhaps Runtan had simply been trained by one of the lost Jedi, those who vanished into nothingness. Had one of them taken an apprentice and trained them in the ways of the Jedi?
Shaking the questions from his mind, he decided to work from scratch. That started with looking her over again. Fur, probably originally white but now a little dirtier, covered her entire body and small grey spots dotted down her arms and legs. Three diamond-shaped marks sat on the top of her forehead, but those were covered by the shadow of her hat's brim. Most of her face was hidden beneath the straw and grass.
Nearly a dozen strands of fur that were longer than the others ran down the back of her scalp, braided together with colourful string. He could glimpse them hanging around her shoulders, swinging gently back and forth with her steadily gait. Across her shoulders, which like her arms were bare, he could see they had the same three diamonds. Were those natural markings or tattoos of some kind?
Species with tails usually needed them for balance. He had never seen one used like a third limb, and never with the strength, speed and flexibility he had seen during their duel. He glanced down at his wrist, where the tail had bruised him slightly. The faint mark was gone – the Klipton in the limb helping to fast-track his recovery time – but he could still feel the tail's tight grip against his skin. Was there a paralytic in that tail?
Her yellow eyes, each with a slitted vertical pupil, bore into his. "You look as though you are trying to dissect me, Caloc. Why?"
"Who are you?", he asked.
She stopped walking, and it took Caloc a few steps to realise. His feet slid to a stop in the wet grass, and he turned to face her. Runtan studied him for a moment, then sighed. "You are wise to not trust me, Caloc. But please, at least respect my knowledge of this world. You need me to guide you to safe passage."
His eyes narrowed at that. "Why not just take me off world? You said that you could."
"No.", she replied, "If I could have done that, do you not think I would have returned to the Jedi after all this time. But I can take you to someone who can."
She pushed past him to continue walking through the grasslands, following the same track. Watching her go, Caloc thought over her words. So she was a Jedi, or at least had been. He glanced down at Deesix. "What do you think, pal?"
The droid seemed to think about this for a moment before he replied. The burbling beeps he spat out did actually make a good point though.
"Keep an eye on her, will you?", Caloc smiled at his companion. "I still don't completely trust her."