by Claudia Gray
Dez was studying the inscription on the sandstone statue. Reath asked, “Can you read it?”
“No, it’s not written in Aurebesh, and the glyph groupings don’t look like Basic,” Dez said. “But it’s not wholly unfamiliar, either. Reminds me of a couple of ancient languages we studied. An actual scholar might be able to translate. Luckily we’ve got one on board.”
Affie wondered whether she should mention the tools or not. The Jedi didn’t seem to care one way or the other about who might’ve used the station recently, so she decided she’d keep that information to herself for the moment. When she had a chance to talk with Leox or Geode alone, they could discuss this and decide what the Jedi did—and didn’t—need to know.
When Cohmac got his first good look at the small ship approaching them at one-tenth power, he felt a moment of empathy—almost tenderness. It had been literally patched together from at least four or five other ships, none of which appeared even vaguely similar in design. What poverty must have inspired this? At least desperate need had been matched with determined innovation. Where most would’ve considered themselves planet-bound and trapped, these people had found their own way to the stars.
As soon as they had confirmation that all species aboard could breathe inside the station, Cohmac indicated that the ragtag ship could dock at the nearest airlock and went out to meet them, Orla at his side. The initial exploration trio returned to stand beside them as the second airlock spun open.
“Oh, look,” Nan whispered as she walked forward. She was even tinier than she’d appeared on the screen—a girl hardly more than a meter and a half tall, dressed in a shabby but colorful dress. Her dark hair was vividly painted with blue streaks, a flash of vivacity and life. “It’s like my terrarium, but big enough to walk in!”
“Yes, just like your terrarium,” said the elderly Zabrak hobbling out after her, chuckling. His clothes were a match for hers, and his walking stick had countless notches carved into it as a record of some measure of a life Cohmac could hardly imagine. “Hello, there. I’m Hague, and apparently you’ve met my ward, Nan.”
“Cohmac Vitus, Jedi Knight.” He held out his hand to shake, a custom that fortunately seemed to be as familiar on the frontier as at home. “Welcome. Let me introduce my compatriots, Dez Rydan, Orla Jareni, Reath Silas, and Affie Hollow. We hope to turn this station into a place of refuge for those stranded by the hyperspace closure.”
“You’re the ones in charge, eh? Good, good. I don’t mind saying that we’re grateful to see you. Hardly enough provisions on board to last us three days. I don’t need so much, but the little one—”
“I believe the larger transports will offer adequate food for us all,” Cohmac said. Assuming they’re willing to share, and that the hyperspace lanes aren’t closed for too long. No point in worrying these people about it. “For now, get yourselves settled.”
Orla nodded her greetings but moved past Cohmac, back into the Vessel for reasons of her own. The travelers weren’t offended by her departure; Nan, in particular, looked delighted to have found people her own age. No wonder—Cohmac wasn’t familiar with Zabrak life spans, but Hague was at a minimum several decades older. Looking back and forth between Reath and Affie, Nan asked, “Are you both Jedi Knights, too?”
Affie made a sound that Cohmac decided not to interpret as rude. “Hardly. I’m the copilot on the Vessel.”
“I will be a Jedi Knight someday,” Reath said, “but for now I’m still a Padawan. A student in the ways of the Force.”
Nan lit up. “I’ve heard tales of the Jedi. Can you tell me more about your Order? How you learn to do the things you do?”
Curiosity about the Jedi was great in the frontier region, in ways both good and bad. Cohmac hoped they would make a good impression starting from this moment on. However, he suspected Nan’s interest had as much to do with Reath’s pleasant face as it did with the Jedi. Probably far more.
As older Jedi always did when observing such interactions between younger ones and outsiders to the Order, Cohmac mused, I fear someone will have to break it to her that the Jedi don’t—
Well. Let Reath deal with that if and when it arose.
Orla came to his side. “Listen, I know you have plenty to think about at the moment. Leading the group, organizing the refugees as they come on board—”
“Your point?” Cohmac asked.
Orla arched an eyebrow so sharply it could have cut. “My point is, you can delegate your other roles. You can’t delegate your knowledge of ancient artifacts. Dez has pointed out that this place is chock-full of ancient tech and even more ancient statues. With inscriptions. In unknown languages.” Orla pronounced all this in the same tone of voice she might’ve told a racing enthusiast about the Neutrino Angler in the hangar next door, or described holiday sweets to an excited child.
Even though Cohmac was usually more moderate in his enthusiasms…Orla had caught his attention. “Totally unknown languages?”
“One of them, at least, reminds Dez a little bit of Old Alderaanian. He could be wrong, though. An expert’s eyes would see much more.”
“Then I leave it to Dez and Reath to handle the station boarding for now.” He put one hand on Orla’s shoulder. “Lead the way.”
After they had walked several steps away, Orla said, more quietly, “It threw me, at first. An accident in this area of space, a ship we didn’t know well—”
“I thought of it, too,” Cohmac replied. This chapter of his past was one he rarely reflected on. The parallels between this mission and the first one he and Orla had undertaken together—he’d hoped to put them aside and ignore them for the duration of the disaster.
Apparently Orla didn’t intend to let him. He should have expected no less. Cohmac could practically see the words hovering on her lips. However, before she could delve into the subject, she halted in her tracks and said, “Do you feel that? The…shadow? The chill? Reath and Dez sensed it as well.”
“It’s darkness,” Cohmac said. “I’ve felt it, too. Something on this station is bound to the dark side.”
Some people were awestruck by Jedi, unable to relate to them; others could be hostile, afraid of what they didn’t understand, afraid of power they couldn’t possess. Sheltered as he’d been within the Temple, Reath often wasn’t sure how to bridge the gap and connect with regular people as, well, people.
With Nan, there was no gap at all.
“Are the Jedi soldiers? Sworn to the Republic?” She glanced down shyly as they stood beneath the canopy of leaves that sheltered the station docks. “Or do you fight only for yourselves?”
Reath shook his head. “Neither. I mean, we defend the Republic, but we work with them. Not for them. And that’s not all we do. We try to help and protect all those in need, when we can.”
This didn’t seem to make sense to Nan. “Do you accept payment?”
“We’re not mercenaries.” He had to laugh. “Is it so unimaginable that a group of people might try to do the right thing just because it is the right thing?”
“It is around here,” she said, her expression grim. Despite her youth, Nan had evidently witnessed some terrible things. “What’s that at your belt? Is it the sword we’ve heard of? The fire saber?”
He grinned. “It’s called a lightsaber. And yeah, this one’s mine.”
“Will you light it?” Nan asked, anticipation sparkling in her dark eyes.
“Not unless I have a good reason.” (It wasn’t forbidden—but if he did that, he’d draw too much attention. Master Cohmac might even think they were flirting. Actually, Reath thought Nan probably was flirting, but he was just explaining.)
“Please?” Nan’s expression could’ve melted ice. “I’d love to know how it works.”
Before Reath could figure out how vulnerable he might be to that expression, Leox’s voice came over the comms. “The final ships are boarding all passengers to the station. You guys ready out there?”
“Absolutely,” Reath said. The
moment was broken; he could focus on his duty again. “Come on, Nan. Let’s greet the guests.”
She made a face. “Mizi? Orincans? You can call them whatever you want…but they’re not going to act like guests.”
“What will they act like?” Reath asked.
Nan had a mischievous smile. “Wait and see.”
Good thing the bracing joints held on this station, thought Affie Hollow as she made her way along the walkway, through a tangle of vines. Otherwise this thing would’ve imploded, and who knows where we’d have wound up?
(Somewhere else preprogrammed into the computer. Some other location Scover had downloaded, not knowing what traps might have been set for her in old navicomputers.)
Affie had chosen to wander upward, along the lone spiral walkway that traveled along the central globe of the Amaxine station, leading toward the topmost rings. From her vantage point, she could survey the layout almost completely. Outer ring: several metal arches separating the various segments, each of which had an airlock of its own. Central sphere: several enclosures set up along the walkway, but otherwise completely an arboretum. (She would’ve thought it was always intended to be one, if it weren’t for the fact that the Amaxines had built this. The legends suggested they weren’t the “tranquil gardener” type.) Through the transparent plates, she could see some of the other ships coming in to dock.
They put the Orincan ship next to the Mizi? Oh, that’s going to be a huge mess. These Jedi might be brilliant monk-wizards, but they were also completely uninformed about this part of the galaxy, especially which species within it hated each other. As she passed the one large, irregular airlock in the sphere, Affie was tempted to head back to the bridge to help Leox and Geode sort through the resulting squabbles—and to witness the poleaxed expressions on the Jedi’s faces.
(She didn’t dislike any of the Republic types, actually, but it was verrry obvious how much they thought they were the ones bringing wisdom and knowledge. About time they learned better.)
But while plenty of the ships would be crewed by beings that loathed each other, none of them seemed likely to make war. It would be a mess, not a disaster.
Probably.
So that meant Affie was free to explore on her own.
Lower rings? She still didn’t know. Upper rings?
Affie looked up; by then she was within meters of the tunnel that would lead up and out. Time to discover just what else this station had to offer.
From one corridor she heard Orla Jareni and Cohmac Vitus saying something indistinct, no doubt about the antiquities that seemed to practically litter the decks. They’d be distracted by that for a while and would pay no attention to where Affie went or what she did. This was ideal.
She pushed aside a curtain of vines and made her way into the tunnel that led “upward.” Gravity adjusted with her as she went, an unusual and ingenious modification; apparently all those ancient station mechanisms remained in perfect working order. Affie had no intention of touching anything inside, because any tech so old that was still running would be best left alone. Any other space traveler would know that, too.
Other space travelers would also know that the top and bottom rings were the likeliest places for storage bays, and for the cargo others had left behind. If she was any judge, this station’s storage was at the top.
Sure enough, as Affie stepped from the tunnel into the shadowy topmost rings, she could make out long lines of storage bays—some locker-sized, some bigger—stretching into the central dark. Larger storage might be located on the lower rings. The larger bays could hold potentially dangerous substances, so she’d go through those later, maybe with Leox’s help. For now she would just rummage around…
Then she cocked her head. Was there writing on the lockers?
Affie turned on her glow rod as she crept forward. Across the lockers and other bay doors were scrawled some symbols—not labeling but actual handwriting or painting, with the same kind of grease pencil pilots used to mark wires for repair. Affie had never handwritten anything in her life, which was hardly unique. Probably she’d never even met someone who wrote something down.
Nor was this writing Aurebesh. It was…symbols. Little pictures instead of letters. Different lines were written at different heights, in different styles. Then she spotted, at the very ends of the lines, much smaller numbers—
Dates! Affie realized. Those are dates; that tells us when they were here!
As she’d suspected, it hadn’t been that long before. One line was from just six years back. Another was from earlier, but still only about thirty-two years prior. All the writing seemed to come from the recent era, a very long time after this station would’ve been abandoned.
There was no making sense of the lines without knowing their language—or, more likely, their code. The pictographs were fairly crude. Affie ran one finger beneath a line drawing of a crested wave with a diagonal streak through it; that looked like the readouts that indicated a gravitational disturbance. And there was one shaped like a Y—that suggested a potential fork in the hyperspace lanes, or some other diversion. She began to smile as she realized that this was a place where wayfarers left messages for each other, warnings about the path ahead.
But why leave important messages in code? Why not make them easy for everyone to read?
Affie kept picking out new symbols, trying to guess what each might mean, trailing her finger beneath each line. Then her finger came to a stop and her smile faded. This symbol was a four-pointed star—a distinctive, stylized one, a symbol Affie knew by heart. Which was fitting, because she wore it over her heart every day she wore her uniform coverall.
It was the crest of the Byne Guild.
“It’s muggy in here,” Orla said. “Almost steamy. Gotta give the biome credit—the best-seeded arboretums rarely last anything close to this long. This one not only survived, it’s got humidity.”
“Lucky us,” Cohmac said wryly.
They stood in the central sphere, within what Orla could see had been a kind of ceremonial area, one marked with a stone-carved seat—or, perhaps, a throne. A total of four statues stood guard. Each one depicted a different species, or perhaps mythological figure, but they all shared the golden plating and the richly jeweled ornamentation. Vines slithered along the nearby trees and archways—not literally, though the constant rustling encouraged that illusion.
The light was dappled with the shadows of leaves. Those shadows played on Cohmac’s face as he stepped closer to one of the statues, peering up at the finely carved wings and carapace.
“Do you recognize it?” Orla asked.
Cohmac shook his head. “The style of carving is not unlike the ancient Kubaz. But that system is so distant my first assumption would be that the similarity is a coincidence. Furthermore, the Kubaz don’t have any insect gods, so far as I know.”
Orla put her hands on her hips. “Maybe they’re not gods. Maybe they’re monarchs, or historical leaders.”
“Monarchs, perhaps,” Cohmac said. “But I doubt they’re historical figures. The way they’re elevated over the viewers, the grandiose haloes over their heads—see, there are spaces that probably held even larger jewels once upon a time. To me that suggests profound reverence. The deepest respect and adoration. In the long run, history isn’t that kind to anybody. But religions are. Myths are. There could be other meanings, too; until we translate this language, I can’t offer anything more than an educated guess. Gods would be my bet.”
A soft breeze tugged at the edge of Cohmac’s robes, played across Orla’s cheek. At first Orla simply welcomed that faint touch of coolness. Then she thought, Guess that’s why the vines are rustling. This station has even better ventilation than I’d realized.
Then Orla felt a delicate shiver of unease. An eerie sensation that only grew with each moment. Cohmac turned to her. “There it is. The shadow. The darkness.”
They stood still for a few moments. “We’ve all felt it now,” Orla said. “I might have as
sumed it was no more than a rogue tree; plants can sometimes be strong in the dark side. But this…”
“Is different,” Cohmac finished for her.
“It feels deliberate.” Orla breathed in and out, tried to center herself in the Force, but such calm was elusive.
By then the darkness was more than a shiver, almost a presence. As if something, or someone, was slowly approaching them. Orla wondered if that could be true. Had a being hidden on this station? Was it not as abandoned as they had supposed?
“I’m checking the corridor,” Orla said, hurrying toward the door. From the corner of her eye she saw Cohmac nodding—he’d sensed the same thing—
And then Orla was alone in the howling dark.
She dropped into a crouch before the gale-force winds could knock her down. Cold chilled her to the marrow, and sharp flecks of debris scratched at her skin. Terror clawed at her belly, threatening to drag her into darkness, too. Orla called on the Force to sustain her. Even if she could no longer sense it, the Force was always there.
“Cohmac!” she shouted, not knowing why. “Cohmac, where are you?”
Shards of metal and mineral dug into her hands as she pushed herself up, trying to look around. In the distance, she could make out only collapsed beams of metal—and through them, an ominous glow. Though it was the brightest light she could see, it filled her with nothing but horror.…
No more cold. No more darkness. Orla opened her eyes (when had she closed them?) to find herself in the arboretum, near the door, just where she’d been a few seconds before, when the universe made sense.
“Cohmac?” she called, but heard no answer. Rising back to her feet, she saw him lying among the moss and vines on the floor, either unconscious or in trance, as though prostrate before an unknown god. Orla hurried to his side, and just as she knelt by Cohmac’s shoulder, his dark eyes flew open. But his breaths were coming short and shallow, and he stared upward at Orla without seeming to truly see.