Maya-202!

A Star Wars-Inspired Story

Episode I

The Two Prince War

Chapter XIV

The Unknown Truth

It had felt like a long journey in the Tranqu-freighter for Aren. Rather conveniently, and thankfully, they had found medical supplies including bandages, various antiseptics and painkillers in an inbuilt compartment hiding at the back of ship. Aren was resting, and Artex was busy charging up once more with a cable, that had also been neatly tucked away in a corner of the ship. The autopilot systems were on, guiding them to Kamino. Since the panic had died down, he had been thinking, wondering what all of this was about. He'd had it all explained to him about General Grievous and the Separatist Army by Artex – he had heard of it all obviously, the Clone Wars was one of the most famous conflicts in the history of the galaxy. But he didn't know the specifics, so it was very handy to have a friend who was actually involved in it with him. Not to mention it also helped as Artex had previous military experience. From what Aren knew, someone must have brought the General back to life. And it seemed he was targeting Aren specifically – why, he had no clue, but he hoped to find some answers soon.

They were travelling through lightspeed now, after a quick jaunt through the space of Coruscant, and Aren was hoping that they would arrive in Kamino sooner rather than later. He was however, also hoping that General Grievous was not tracking them through lightspeed, even though he knew it was a very difficult thing to do. Whilst the ship swiftly sailed through lightspeed, Aren pushed himself up off the floor and looked through some of the other compartments inside. He wondered if he could find a DCS, or maybe a Holopedia, something that might give him some more information about Kamino now. But he knew he would find out eventually anyway – in fact, they weren't too far away at all now from reaching the planet. Suddenly, Artex buzzed to life, fully charged and revitalised. "Woah! That was some good charging," he exclaimed, and then turned his head to try and see where Aren was. "Oh, there you are," he said once he noticed the Jedi was perching at another inbuilt cabinet at the bottom of the craft. "Hey," Aren greeted, "good to have you back again."

"Good to be back – although I needed that charge," the droid chuckled. "What'ya doing?" he added.

"Just trying to see if I could find anything that might give more detail about Kamino in the present, and possibly give me a clue as to what I have to do with it," Aren explained.

"Ah, well, I can give you lots of facts about Kamino in the past, but not nowadays. The stuff I know about it is really from like a hundred years ago."

"Go on, you never know, it still might be useful."

"Roger Roger. Well… I was involved in an assault on Kamino during the Clone Wars, but that was Tipoca City. It was a very complicated place, if you didn't know your way around it could have been like a labyrinth. Fortunately, we had been given layouts and maps of the buildings in Tipoca, so it wasn't a problem. But I know the Kaminoans were very clever, and the Clones they created underwent vigorous training sessions. The Prince guy could be using the facility to train his army – but the thing is, the last I heard, the Empire destroyed all the cloning facilities on Kamino, so I've no idea how he could be using one," the droid stated.

"Unless he rebuilt one… Or maybe he restored it…" the Jedi pondered.

"Possibly, but I dunno. It would be an incredibly hard task to do. Why go to all that trouble? Mind you, who knows why people do some of the things they do in this galaxy," Artex mused. Aren smirked at him. "Good point. Who knows why we do anything these days…"

After a long couple of minutes, they emerged out of hyperspace, to see Kamino in all its beautiful blue glory. "Wow. It's been a very long time since I've been here…"Artex claimed. Aren was still piloting the ship, but there was no need for alarm, so he didn't have to do any difficult manoeuvres, perfect when he was injured. Out of the blue, two ships whizzed past them – one of them the Jedi and the droid recognised. "Hey, is that a Deep Beyond ship?" Aren questioned.

"I think so, but what was the other one?" Artex said. Aren simply shrugged in response, and continued downwards to the planet.

As they approached Kamino, the storm began to batter their ship. "Looks like the weather's still the same as it ever was!" Artex shouted over the top of the thunderous noise outside. Aren peered around the window, seeing if they could find anywhere to land, and then he looked on the navigation screen. He tapped a few buttons on its interface to load up a map of the area they were in, and found that the only large establishment suggesting any form of civilisation there was a place called 'Irenca City'. "This place seems to be the only one where we might be able to land," Aren guessed as he pointed at the City on the digital map. "Irenca City? Hmmm…" Artex wondered, putting a hand under his chin emulating a human's thinking behaviour. "What are you thinking?" Aren questioned. "Just that I've never heard of it, not even in the Clone Wars."

"How… odd…" was all Aren could say. He steered the ship over, through the stormy clouds and in the direction of the City, and hopefully, they would begin to see signs of it and a landing spot soon.

Fortunately, Aren's wishes were answered promptly – through the mist, views of a man-made city emerged. "There! That looks like Tipoca City, so I presume it is Irenca," Artex said excitedly. Aren nodded at him, and saw on the holomap that there were multiple landing pads, but as they approached them, he and the droid could see that they were mostly covered in a scattering of other Deep Beyond ships and debris, alongside what seemed like… bodies. Baneraax bodies, littered over the walkways. Aren gasped. "Wow… d'you think there was some sort of battle here?" the B1 inferred. Aren gulped, hoping that whoever had killed them all was not still there, after all they too were in a Tranqu-freighter like the belonging to the Deep Beyond on the City platforms. "Looks like it." Eventually, after a little hovering around the land searching, they found a clear spot to settle the ship down. Aren slotted their craft in between some rubble and what appeared to be another abandoned Tranqu-freighter. "Well, at least we found somewhere to park, and it didn't take too long," the Jedi noted. Artex gestured to Aren's leg, which thankfully wasn't bleeding as much anymore, although the bandage was almost crimson from earlier. "You gonna be alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'll be ok – it feels like just a scratch now anyway, Jedi can deal with pain rather easily," Aren cockily said.

"If I had eyes I'd roll them at that comment," the droid taunted. "But I'm glad you're ok," he added sincerely. The pair stood up, got out of their seats and made their way to the ship's exit hatch. The rain still wasn't settling down. "Looks like we're gonna get drenched," Aren stated.

"Ugh, this is so not what my circuits needed today!" Artex complained.

"Wanna stay inside, then?" Aren offered.

"No - I have to admit, curiosity is begging me to follow you."

"On your head be it," the Jedi said.

Trotting down the walkway gave way to a sight to behold, and an unpleasant one at that. The rain had washed most of the Baaneraxx blood away, but the corpses it had come from remained lifeless on the ground, simply for doing their job. Aren couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor creatures. There were so many bodies that he had to watch his step to avoid trodding on one of them, and that idea alone made Aren shudder more than the cold rainstorm. Eventually, they made it to the end of the pathway and approached a large silver-coloured doorway. "I think this is the entrance, if this is anything like Tipoca. But from what I've seen, it is," Artex thought aloud. He and the Jedi made their way through the doors, which opened automatically upon their approach, and found themselves in a long, empty, white corridor. "This is like a ghost town. Hello?!" Aren said the last part loudly to see if anyone could hear them, but his voice echoed and there was no response, nor anyone there – or so they thought. "Roger roger!" Artex bellowed to see if someone could hear him, but again, he also had no reply. "I thought this Prince guy was supposed to have a lab and some sort of army here, but there's nothing or no-" Aren began, but unexpectedly, a figure appeared in front of them, almost out of thin air. The Jedi and the droid jumped back in shock at the sudden appearance. "What the?" the droid yelped. "Who are you?"

"A friend," the figure said. It was a man – he was wearing a large red robe, and he was hooded.

"What's happened here?" Aren asked.

"That isn't important for you. I'm here to answer your question – I can sense… confusion…" the mysterious man said. Aren realised this man was force sensitive, but that was when he also felt a darkness about this man. He wanted to interrogate him about the darkness he felt, but his interest in his situation got the better of him. It might have been the only chance he would get to find out what happened to him. Almost immediately after Aren thought that, the man started answering his questions, as if he was reading his mind. "My name is Scald, and you're here to find out why you lost your memory, and what your memory contained." Aren swallowed in surprise that the man had guessed everything correctly. He said nothing, and let Scald continue. "You came here to find out your link to the Prince, Lord Thomanius. You and he were friends once, but his brother, Prince Onasius, grew jealous of the… friendship. Lord Thomanius believed he was in love with you, and so he took his revenge on him. He cut you two off in a vicious fight, then wiped your memories of the entire incident, and dumped you in the Deep Beyond." All of this information came as a huge surprise to Aren. He noticed that Scald emphasised the word friendship, as if there was more to it than that. Aren did remember and know that he was interested in and liked men, but he had never wanted to act on it, even before the forbiddance of it by the Jedi code. "The two have been fighting for a very long time…" Scald carried on. Aren's head buzzed with a million questions, but the first thing he thought of was Prince Onasius – not only was he a Jedi, but Aren remembered he was on the modern day Jedi Council. "Prince Onasius? But… he's a Jedi. Jedi would never do such a thing – attachment is prohibited, and secondly, something as cruel as what you say he did would go against numerous other points of the Jedi code of conduct…" Aren pointed out. Scald just shook his head.

"Do you really think just because someone is a Jedi that they follow their little 'code'? They have rules, but they're not programmed to follow them like a droid, are they?" he expanded.

"Hey!" Artex cried offendedly.

"My point is they can make choices, they're human, and he made a bad choice." Aren considered everything he was being told. "And how exactly did he erase my memories?" the Jedi wondered. Scald paused for a moment, clearly thinking about how to phrase his next point. "Have you ever heard of a… Force Warlock?" he asked.

"No, or at least I don't think so."

"Force Warlocks are beings who are able to manipulate the force – not like a Jedi with a lightsaber, who uses the force. Warlocks can control the force. I am a Force Warlock, and from what I've heard, one of my… acquaintances was pressured into wiping your memories," Scald claimed.

"You can use the force to do that?" Aren queried.

"Oh yes. Everything leaves an impression in the force – if you get rid of that impression, that mark of history, the person that mark belongs to will most likely lose all recollection of it," the warlock explicated. "I sense… rage… confusion, but mostly anger emanating from you, my friend," he added.

"I just… I can't believe a Jedi, a member of the Jedi Council would do such a thing! And meanwhile, other Jedi, those who are loyal to the code get denied the position to become a Jedi Master and sit on the Council! I have to go and find him, and see if this is all really true – if it is, then I shall confront him about it, and tell Grand Master Rey everything!" Aren yelled at the top of his lungs in fury. Artex wasn't sure, but he swore that whilst the Jedi fumed, he could see Scald smiling a little. Something was off about this whole thing. "What about General Grievous?" he piped up, as it seemed in all his anger, the Jedi had forgotten about it. "Who? The Cyborg? I'm not entirely sure, but after Onasius found out you were alive, he hired him to track you down and kill you, to stop you from finding out the truth and speaking about it. The Prince lives on Iryx, if you're interested." Aren seemed to buy Scald's story, but Artex wasn't convinced. However, before Artex could ask anything else, Aren said "Thank you," to Scald, and barged out of the lab. The droid decided to follow him, as Scald vanished the second after Aren left, leaving behind a veil of red smoke.

"Aren wait!" Artex called as the Jedi charged towards their ship back on the landing platform. "Hold on!" he shouted once more.

"It is despicable! And I'm gonna do something about it, someone has to! Now, are you coming or not?!" Aren screamed to him. Artex was very taken aback – the Aren he had known wasn't like this at all, he was sweet and kind. But now, he seemed meaner, impatient and with a fiery temper, a completely different person to the one earlier. "But his story makes no sense! General Grievous would never make a deal with a Jedi, he always has and always will hate them! And he never even mentioned a thing about why Grievous has suddenly, randomly come alive again after all these years!" Artex roared back at him. For a Battle droid, he had an unexpectedly loud voice when he needed to shout. Aren stopped, as still as a statue for a second – the droid had a good point. "Yeah… ok, no you're right. But Iryx is the only other lead we have right now, and I'm not gonna let it go, and it looks like the warlock has gone now, so unfortunately we can't ask him about it," Aren said, and then looked at the ground. Even though Artex was a droid that supposedly had no feelings, Aren felt apologetic and bad that he had yelled at him, when he hadn't even done anything wrong. "I'm really sorry for my behaviour, Artex," he said.

"Ah, don't worry about it, I've had Separatist Leaders scream at me far worse than that before," Artex replied, and the humorous comment couldn't help but make Aren chuckle a bit. "OK. Next stop: Iryx," he continued to plan.

"Let's go, Roger roger!" Artex declared.

Karanda, Kuquishi Island

"Get it sorted, General! He is the reason I brought you back to life, do not forget!" Prince Thomanius shrieked at General Grievous. It had been a less-than-fun conversation for them that had been going on since they had entered the Karanda system. "I will not fail you, my Lord," Grievous agreed.

"Excellent. Make sure that's the truth," Thomanius said, and Grievous' little hologram disappeared. All of a sudden, he felt someone drawing in on him from behind, moving ever closer. He grabbed his lightsaber, ready to strike in case it was an enemy sneaking up on him. "Good news, Master…" a dreary voice said. He turned around to see Darth Scald. "Sweet Tibanna, Master Scald. Do not do that again," Thomanius commanded.

"Apologies, my Lord. But I think you will want to hear about this. Aren came to Kamino." The Prince's eyes widened. "What?!" he asked.

"Don't worry – I told him your brother was the one who dumped him in the Deep Beyond," Scald said. "Why didn't you kill him on the spot? You know that's what needs to happen!" the Prince raged. "That's Grievous' job. I can't take that away from him. Besides, I sent him after your brother, and now I will tell Grievous he is headed for Iryx. Two birds, one stone. It's a win-win no matter what," the warlock explained his decisions.

"And if he finds out what really happened? My brother will most likely help him find out the truth."

"But that won't happen. The boy can get… very angry when you push the right buttons. I felt it. He wants to do something to your brother, something that will destroy him in the same way he believes he was destroyed by him. A revenge fantasy. He has a lot of potential; I'm honestly surprised you chose to get rid of him. He could've been a powerful ally."

"It is not your place to dictate my plans. But I do hope your tactic works, Scald. If he defeats my brother, well – that would be more than handy…"