Renegade Rising
Prologue
Finn's modified lambda shuttle, the Renegade, coasted into the dock at Omega Base. The base was located inside an abandoned Imperial scientific base built on the inside of Mount Tantiss on the planet Weyland. From above, it looked like a rugged wilderness. If the remnants of the First Order knew the old base was there at all, it had never occurred to them to check if the Resistance was hiding an outpost in the ruins.
Finn unbuckled his harnesses as soon as the ship was safely on the ground. He had no reason to expect a rough landing but he had learned through experience that he should always keep himself secured for take-offs and landings when his pilot, Gatya Feyn, was flying the ship. Gatya was a tall, slender woman from a species named the Feetula that lived beyond the outer rim. She had four arms with talon-like fingers and long, green feather-like coverings draped over the backs and sides of her head and down from each of her shoulders. She had a narrow face with sharp, but humanoid, features. She could be a bit rough on the passengers but she was the best pilot the Resistance had left.
Gatya released the controls and walked past Finn and down the ramp. He followed her down. They briefly stopped to see what had become of R7. His feet were still mag-locked onto the side of the hull but most of the rest of him was gone. "Sorry, Buddy," Finn said. "You bailed us out back there. We'll miss you."
"We only had him for three missions!" Gatya said.
"Yeah. That's one more than the last one made it," Finn said, subdued.
"Ye've bad luck with those droids, ye know that?"
"I know, Gatya. I know."
"Good thing ye have good luck with pilots!" she said. She smacked him on the shoulder of his flight jacket and headed off to the mess without waiting for a reply.
Finn continued on to the command center under the center of the mountain. There were guards with round helmets stalking the halls who saluted him but hardly seemed to pay him any mind as he wound through the labyrinth of the old base.
General Poe Dameron was in the command center, as usual, standing near the central display console and looking over a sprawling chart of the sector with a consternated look. Three years in command of the Resistance had not been kind to him. His flowing brown hair had turned half gray and been cut into a short, military buzz. He had at least a few lines around his eyes and the corners of his lips, though, most of the time, it was hard to tell how much of that was age and how much was a scowl.
"General Finn," he said without much warmth. "How did the mission go?"
"Not great, general. We lost two more x-wings and the Renegade needed emergency repairs. And I lost R7."
"Business as usual, then?" the general replied, hardly looking up from his charts. "Did you get the intel you were after?"
"Yes, sir. We found out where Darth Ebron has gone. He's heading for Melochaj, to the Qelloc Temple."
"I have no idea what that means."
"I didn't either. It's a deserted world with an ancient temple out in a mostly empty section of the outer rim. The temple is Pre-Republic, they say. According to legend there's an ancient fighting force of some kind that was trapped there. Something that even the first Jedi were terrified of. We think Darth Ebron is trying to revive the force and bring it to his side."
Poe sighed and finally looked up. "It's a wild goose chase. He's on a wild goose chase. If there was anything there it's ten thousand years dead now. Let him waste his time, not ours," he said.
"He thinks it's real. We couldn't find much about Qelloc but what we did find was… troubling. Melochaj was considered a forbidden planet by the Jedi, it was quarantined for the entire Republic. They didn't think whatever was there was dead, just trapped."
"Look, no offense, but Ebron isn't our main concern right now. Admiral Raith and General Skeen both have at least three times as many ships and as many aligned systems as Ebron and they're building more. To make things worse, our last spy in Admiral Raith's force vanished and now we've lost track of his fleet entirely. For all we know they're headed here. So forgive me, but some wannabe Sith Lord chasing legends on desert worlds isn't exactly worth diverting our fleet over."
"That may be," a voice said from the command chair nearby, "but that doesn't mean we should ignore the threat entirely." The chair spun around to reveal Rey Skywalker dressed in gray Jedi robes.
"Great, Rey's here," Poe muttered. He collected himself. "I'm sorry. Lady Skywalker: to what do we owe the pleasure?"
"Something told me this was where I needed to be," she replied.
"Of course. But as I was telling General Finn, we're stretched thin as it is. We can barely maintain control over half this sector and delivering aid to the warlords' victims is taking up most of our resources. I just can't justify chasing Ebron around right now."
"Darth Ebron is not to be underestimated," Rey replied. "He may not have as many ships as the other warlords at the moment but there are other forms of power. He wields the power of the force well. Much of the knowledge of Sith powers was lost when Palpatine died but Ebron is working to rebuild that knowledge and his powers have grown considerably."
"He hasn't seemed too dangerous."
"Easy for you to say; you've never crossed blades with him. If this mysterious force on Melochaj is real and Ebron adds it to his own he could become our greatest concern quite quickly."
"What do you want from me, Rey?" Poe asked.
"Let us investigate. You're right we can't spare much of the fleet but that doesn't mean we should do nothing. We can take the Renegade and keep our distance to see what Darth Ebron finds."
"'We'? You're going too?" Poe asked.
"I feel like I should," she replied.
"Lady Skywalker," Poe said, "we need you here. We have to keep training the Jedi younglings if we want any hope of ever gaining the upper hand."
"'Hope' is something we will never lose, General," Rey replied.
Poe waved a hand. "Fine. You two and Gatya can take the Renegade. But do not - and I mean this - do not engage. I want all three of you back here in one piece, ASAP."
"Of course," Rey replied.
"I'll need a droid, one who can handle Gatya's flying," Finn said. "Can we take BB-8?"
"No!" Poe replied. BB-8 rolled quickly across the floor from across the room and hid behind Poe's legs, shaking. "No. No! Absolutely not. You're not taking my droid again. Not after what happened last time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that!"
"He's fine," Finn said, "Look. His head's back on and… almost straight."
"Absolutely not."
"All right. Is Artoo available?"
"No. He's with Padawan Veyda trailing Skeen's forces."
"Is there anyone else?"
"You're in luck. We have one droid just out of the repair shop who's very experienced with… advanced flying maneuvers. Buddy. Come out, buddy. Finally got a mission you're gonna like, pal."
An older style Republic astromech with a truncated cone for a head rolled out at full speed. It had a variety of tools attached to a variety of limbs, and at least six of them were extended out and waving around excitedly. "Womp womp whump womp. Womp whup. Da daaa!" he said excitedly as his head spun in three circles.
"Chopper?!" Finn said, clearly disappointed.
"Whump? Whump womp!" Chopper said.
"Yeah, sorry, Chop, but I was hoping for something a little less outdated."
"Womp whump womp? Wump waaaa!"
"Yes. Of course," Finn said as Chopper continued to prattle on. "Yes. I know… you're a hero of the Rebellion. Yes. Of course. You're right, I should be honored to serve with you. Of course, Chop. Sorry I said anything. Yes, you can tell me all about Chopper Base on the way to Melochaj. Let's go." Finn turned to walk out and Chopper and Rey followed.
Chopper kept ranting as they walked but Finn turned to Rey. "Thanks for standing up for me in there," he said.
"Of course, old friend," she replied. "You were right that there's more risk here than General Dameron was seeing. He's become so focused on ships I fear he's lost sight of the bigger picture."
"You're sure you want to come? It sounds like we're just going to sit around with the power off and come back."
"Somehow, I doubt that, Finn. If I must be honest with you… I have a bad feeling about this."
Darth Ebron's fleet dropped out of hyperspace in the Melochaj system. He had eight star destroyers flying in formation with ten light cruisers and an extensive TIE fighter escort. His command ship was a modified star destroyer that had been painted black except for his personal sigil, a red face with slitted eyes.
Ebron was a Trandoshan, a reptilian humanoid with lizard-like eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth. He wore all black except for a chain of polished vertebrae around his neck. A long, flowing black cape trailed behind him as he looked down at the deserted world below from the bridge of his command ship.
Melochaj looked like a smooth, polished blue ball from orbit. The color was unnaturally even across the entire surface from pole to pole. "Do we have any readingss?" Ebron asked.
A uniformed human commander on the deck replied, "Yes, my lord. There are no life signs but… this is unusual. Our scans indicate a breathable atmosphere."
"Thiss iss not unusual at all, Commander. The world iss not dead. I can feel it from here… the living force iss strong. The world sleeps, Commander, but it livess. Can we ssee the temple?"
"Yes, my lord."
"Ready my shuttle!"
Ebron spun and marched off the bridge and to his shuttle. He brought only his personal guard, dressed in bright red outfits with full helmets, and launched to travel to the surface.
The Qelloc Temple was a great pyramid that was nearly two kilometers tall, with a flat area on top that was several hundred meters across. At the center there was a massive ring of stone pillars that surrounded a huge stone throne and a pair of smaller stone altars. The entire temple, like the rest of the world, was polished in the same shade of blue. The shuttle landed on the platform just outside of the pillars.
Ebron walked out and towards the throne. Just in front of it, there was a blue statue of a warrior that was more than twice Ebron's considerable height. The statue depicted a species that Ebron had never seen before. It was roughly humanoid, except that its eyes were on the bottom of its face and its mouth, gaping open with jagged teeth, was at the top. It was holding something that looked like a handle for a weapon in one hand, over its head.
Ebron paused only briefly to examine the statue. "Now," he said, "if our researcherss were right, we need only destroy these altarss…"
Before he reached them, however, he noticed an odd cloud of dust-like particles swirling out from the columns around him. The cloud seemed to move with a mind of its own and it collected between the altars. Bit by bit, it assembled itself into a human-like figure in less than a second.
The figure's body was blue like everything else but had a flesh-like texture, unlike the hard polished shine of the temple. He was dressed in gold-colored armor that covered his chest and shoulders and had armor plates along his legs as well. On his head, he had a crested gold helmet that covered his eyes without any apparent opening. The crest was a half-circle with the flat surfaces facing front and back. On the front of the crest there was a radiating pattern of alternating gold and dark blue spikes that looked like rays of light emitting from the sun.
"Who are you?" Ebron asked.
"I'm the Qelloc Prison. I'm its embodiment, and its guardian."
"Prissson?" Ebron asked. "I've come to free your captivesss."
"Then you will die," the guardian said. Another cloud of dust formed into a weapon in his right hand, a long, metallic weapon that resembled a double-bladed scythe. Still another formed into a handle in his right hand. He ignited the handle weapon and a long, pink fibril of light shot out from it, resembling a cross between a lightsaber and a whip.
Ebron drew and ignited both ends of his own red lightsaber and moved quickly to attack. He struck at the pole weapon first, expecting to be able to easily slice it with his lightsaber blades, but found to his surprise that the metal was invulnerable to the lightsaber. He was briefly off guard and nearly took a swinging blow to the head from the blade end of that weapon.
He force jumped away, landing some ways off, but quickly found the guardian on him again. The guardian swung the light whip at him, forcing him to block with his lightsaber. The whip wrapped around the lightsaber blade, and the guardian tried to yank it away as he swung the blade weapon at Ebron's head once more.
Ebron quickly disconnected the two halves of his lightsaber, allowing him to wield it as two weapons with one held in each hand. He spun the free half up in time to block his opponent's blade and swung it at his opponent's body.
The blade swung cleanly through but didn't appear to cause any damage. The guardian's body turned to mist again just ahead of the blade's path, only turning solid again once the blade had passed through the other side.
The two continued to fight, rapidly striking blow after blow at each other's weapons without finding a way to strike the other down. Ebron managed to pull the whip from his opponent's hand but couldn't free it from his saber. He tossed both away from the platform, feeling he had better chances if he deprived his foe of the second weapon.
Ebron attempted to use force lightning on his foe, but the guardian was able to use his pole weapon to block that as well. The effort was draining to Ebron, so he abandoned it quickly.
Each time Ebron struck at the guardian he again turned to mist ahead of the blow, and Ebron was unable to damage him. Ebron decided to try an unorthodox strategy; he lifted one of his personal guards up with the force and threw him at the guardian. The guard was sliced in half by the guardian's blade, but as the body crashed towards him, he turned entirely to mist to allow it to pass straight through.
Ebron repeated the maneuver as soon as the guardian was solid again, but this time he didn't wait for the guardian to regain his form. Instead, he unleashed a storm of force lightning directly at the cloud, attacking the guardian while it was in mist form. The lightning burned through the tiny particles, and it appeared that the guardian had no defense against the attack in that form.
The guardian's voice rang out from all directions. "You fool. You have no idea what you've unleashed…" In seconds, the entire cloud of mist was destroyed in a blaze of lightning.
The ground beneath the temple shook, and the shine of the blue coating that covered everything vanished at once. The coating appeared to crack up, and then melt. Ebron stood between the altars and watched as the liquid substance shifted and writhed all around him. It pooled together into puddles, which coalesced and rose from the ground. Soon it took the form of massive, red-skinned human-like figures. They were the same species as the statue, but alive.
As the figures took shape, they began to chant in an alien tongue. Ebron watched with interest, unsure how to proceed. Then, after only seconds of the alien chanting, they chanted, "We follow our general. We hail you, general!"
"You sspeak Basic?" Ebron asked.
"We do now," one replied.
They continued to chant allegiance. "Yesss," Ebron said, "You are mine! You will do my bidding!"
"We follow our general," one said. "You are not our general. He is our general." He pointed behind Ebron.
Ebron turned to see that the statue behind him had come to life. The weapon in its hand had become a lightwhip like the one the guardian had used. Ebron spoke to it, "I have freed you! And now I will command your forcess as my own!"
"It is right for the strongest to lead," the general said. "I'm General Roh'laj and I've led the forces of the Melocheth since their creation. If you wish to lead, you may challenge me. By law, any can challenge at any time. The strongest must lead."
"Then I challenge," Ebron said.
"So be it," Roh'laj said. He ignited his whip.
Ebron charged at him, but the whip struck at him before he was close. Ebron tried to jump away, but Roh'laj redirected too quickly and sliced both of Ebron's legs off below the knees. Ebron fell to the ground.
A second strike from the whip cut off Ebron's hand and wrapped up his saber in a single sweep. With a flick of his wrist, Roh'laj tossed the lightsaber away and out of sight off the pyramid.
Roh'laj casually lifted his empty left hand and lifted Ebron's body from the ground with the force. "You fought poorly," Roh'laj said, "but I'm in your debt. You have freed the Melocheth, so that we may once more strive to take our rightful place as masters of this galaxy. The strongest must lead!" He yelled.
The crowd of warriors around him repeated in unison, "The strongest must lead!"
"To show my gratitude," Roh'laj said, "I'll give you the finest gift I can give to someone who challenged my leadership: a swift death."
Ebron struggled briefly but couldn't move. He tried to scream but couldn't. In a flash, his body incinerated from the inside out and fell to the ground as a pile of ash.
Roh'laj pointed to Ebron's guards, who watched on in shock. "Kill his men," he said to his soldiers. "Ready the Heartship and prepare to man fighters. Today we reclaim our right!"
The other Melocheth fighters cheered and moved swiftly to carry out his orders.
The Renegade dropped out of hyperspace in the Melochaj system. They were far from Ebron's fleet to avoid detection when they came out. Gatya put them on a course to drift closer. They looked down at the odd, blue planet below and the First Order fleet in orbit above it.
"We need to shut everything down except for sensors," Finn said.
"Womp whump?" Chopper asked.
"Yeah, you too, buddy," Finn said. He turned the droid off as Gatya used her four hands to rapidly shut down all of the shuttle's non-essential systems.
As they drifted closer, Ebron's fleet came into clear view. "There's his command ship," Finn said. "We should keep our distance."
"He's not there," Rey said. "He's already on the surface."
"Still, I don't want to get too close. Our orders are to not engage."
"Since when do you care about orders?" Rey asked with a bit of wry smile.
"It's been a while since we've fought together, Rey. I'm not as reckless as I was."
"I hope you are, for all our sakes."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Never mind, old friend. Something is wrong. There's something happening on the surface."
All three looked down at the planet. The planet had been blue a moment before, but suddenly the blue color was gone and replaced with a dark gray. "What's happening? Is it Ebron?"
"I'm not sure," Rey replied.
They continued to watch, but the sensors weren't able to read anything from the planet's surface. Suddenly, Rey said, "Ebron is dead."
"Really? Well there's a bit of good luck!" Gatya said.
"Perhaps. I'm feeling something else. This planet has a strong connection to the force, stronger than anything I've ever experienced. It was mostly blocked before but now it feels overwhelming. There's a power down there… like nothing I've felt. Force wielders, connected to the force of the world itself. Incredibly strong."
"Light or dark force?" Finn asked.
"Both," Rey replied. "We're in terrible danger. We should leave."
"Wait," Finn said, "There's something coming up from the surface. It's a huge ship but I'm not picking it up on any sensors."
Finn kept trying to get a better feel for the massive ship that was leaving the planet. It was dark colored and had a rounded shape, but Finn couldn't see the outlines well at that distance because of its color. It moved towards the star destroyers, and it absolutely dwarfed them in size.
There were also smaller ships moving around it, and moving at incredible speed. There was still nothing on the sensors but Finn was sure he could see thousands of ships. They flew into the First Order fleet with incredible speed. Finn could see blaster fire from the First Order ships a moment later, followed shortly by a string of explosions.
"The TIE fighters are gone!" Gatya said, looking through the sensors. Moment's later, the light cruisers and star destroyers exploded in flames as well.
"Huzzah!" Gatya said, "Finally something's going our way!"
"This is not good news," Rey said.
"But they're killing the First Order for us!" Gatya said.
"These are not our friends. They'll attack us just as quickly as our enemies. Ebron has unleashed something monstrous here. We need to leave. Plot a course back to Omega Base."
"I'll have to power back up," Gatya said.
"Do it," Finn ordered.
Gatya rapidly restarted the Renegade's systems while Finn turned Chopper back on. "Plot us a course home, buddy," Finn said.
Chopped plugged in and began to compute. When he was done, Finn said, "Punch it!"
Gatya pulled back on the lever. The ship whined, but nothing happened. "What's wrong?"
"Whomp whump!" Chopper said. He continued trying to explain.
"We're caught in a gravity well?!" Gatya said. "How can that be?"
Chopper kept explaining. "He's right," Rey said, "During the Galactic Empire, the empire deployed a gravity well weapon that could stop ships from jumping to hyperspace or even pull them out of it. The ships were called Interdictors. I've read about them as well."
"How do we beat it?" Finn asked.
Chopper rambled and Rey said, "Chopper's right. Every time the rebels escaped the Interdictors, they did so by destroying them. I don't think we have that option. But there was a theory at the time that was never tested. It was hypothesized that a Jedi could use the force to create a second gravitational anomaly that would counteract the effect of the gravity well."
"Can you do it?" Finn asked.
"I have to try. It's our only chance. Someone has to get back to the Omega Base to warn them about what's happened here. You saw what they did to that First Order fleet. The entire galaxy is in grave danger. I'll take the escape pod."
"Escape pod? What? No, you have to stay with us," Finn said.
"I can't. I wish I had more time to explain but the only way I can break you free of the gravity well is by making an incredibly powerful anomaly of my own. But I will be the source of the second anomaly. It will center on me. You'd never be able to jump to hyperspace if I was on board and the Renegade was in the middle of such an intense gravitational distortion."
"We can't just leave you."
"You must. This is why I needed to come."
"They'll kill you."
"Not today."
"You knew this was going to happen, didn't you? You knew you were going to have to do this."
"Not exactly, old friend. I knew there was great danger and I knew I wouldn't make it back, not this time. But in my heart, I know, old friend: I will see you again."
"Those ships have spotted us so whatever ye're doing, will ye do it fast?" Gatya said.
Rey nodded and ran for the escape pod. A moment later she ejected out into space.
"Chop, keep an eye on those readings. As soon as we have a clear path, we need to jump," Finn said.
Finn still couldn't see a thing on the sensors but he could see through the window that Gatya was right and the enemy ships were approaching fast. Finn had no idea what their weapons range of capabilities were. Given how quickly they'd destroyed the First Order fleet, however, he knew they would make short work of the Renegade.
"Chop?" Finn said, "Any progress?"
"Whump whump wump. Wa waa."
"I hope she hurries up."
The enemy fighters were close enough to make out their profiles. They had an oval of wings surrounding a cylindrical cockpit and four long guns protruding from the wings on each side. Finn could see the weapons starting to glow.
"Chop?"
"Womp whump waa. Waa! Waa!"
"Now, Gatya!"
The fighters' weapons began to glow bright white, and Finn could see energy beams, like streaks of lightning, join the four tips as they prepared to fire. Before they could, however, Gatya yanked the lever and the Renegade blasted away into hyperspace.
Rey's escape pod drifted for only another moment before one of the fighters locked it in a tractor beam. The fighter pulled it rapidly to the massive ship that had launched from the surface, which was now sitting stationary in orbit over the planet. Fighters streamed out of its three hangars constantly as Rey approached.
The pod was pulled into the ship and dropped in a large, empty bay. General Roh'laj approached it slowly. With one wave of his hand he ripped the door off and with a second he lifted Rey out.
He held Rey in the air, forcing her arms out wide and away from her saber. He lifted it off her belt and called it into his own hand without letting her move a millimeter.
"You won't win," Rey said.
"And why not?" The general asked with no hint of emotion in his voice.
"You wield the Dark Side. Your greed and ambition will be your undoing. The light side always wins in the end."
"The light side of the force is a lie," the general said.
"And the dark side is better?"
"The dark side of the force is a lie. There is only one force, and what you call the light side and dark side are just constructs your people invented. I've learned much about your culture in the last few minutes and I'm learning more by the moment. The 'sides' of the force are nothing more than limitations you've hobbled yourselves with. By refusing to embrace all aspects of the force, your Jedi and your Sith have only denied yourselves access to true power. You will see. I will show you."
"I have nothing to learn from you!" Rey said.
"What you learn or refuse to learn is your choice, and it doesn't matter to me. But there is something I want to learn from you."
"I'll never tell you anything!"
"You won't have to. There is only one thing I fear, young Jedi. The force is strong in this galaxy and there is always one person born among its people who has the power to bring balance to it. Your Jedi had a prophecy about one such person, who they called the chosen one. Do you know who this is?"
"I won't… ah! Get out of my head!" Rey yelled.
"You may not realize what you know. This person would have preternatural skill with the force, and the ability to wield all aspects of it. You do know. No… you did. You knew the last one, Luke Skywalker, but he has died. Did he have any issue? No. He died childless. How long ago? Ah. Just five years ago. When the chosen one dies without issue, their power will pass to another. A youth who is only coming into their power. Thank you, Rey Skywalker, you've been most helpful."
"Stop! Ahhh!" Rey yelled.
"I will keep you here. Your pain will attract more of your kind to their doom. In time, this chosen one will sense it too, and you will lead them to me. But they won't be ready. I don't know who he or she is, but, thanks to you, I now know that your people's only hope is just a child."
