Recycled

 

    A blur of pale skin, and Emon’s face erupted in pain.

     “You left them behind? Coward!” she spat as she began collecting weapons and other gear she thought she would need to break them out herself.

     “Now just hold on a minute,” Emon said solemnly, “You don’t understand. Sara was shot.” Ellé dropped the hold-out blaster she had been stuffing hurriedly into one of her pockets. It clattered noisily on the floor in the sudden silence. Uncomfortable with the silence, Emon quickly broke it, “It was pretty bad. Your brother said she’d die unless they surrendered and let the New Rep doctors put her into some bacta. He was right, too.” Emon rubbed his still tingling cheek where Ellé had slapped him, “Thanks for the confidence in me, by the way.”

     “What? What did you just say to me?” screamed Ellé, “To Sith with you, all right? To the coldest, darkest depths of Sith with you! My sister-in-law might die, who knows what’ll happen to my brother, and I’m supposed to feel guilty for over reacting at you?” This time she forwent the slap and brought her clenched fist squarely across Emon’s jaw, causing him to stumble back a few steps. “Nothing I can do but wait!” she mumbled angrily to herself as she stormed into her room and hurled the door shut.

 

 

     There is a fine line between justice and vengeance. Raych was mildly curious which side of that line she was on. Surely the execution of the murderer of her undercover team fell on the bright and noble side of justice. But was it her determination to make it her personal vendetta the determining factor, the final shove in the wrong direction, that plunged her quest into the dark, relentless abyss of revenge? Did it even matter to her at all? She was no Jedi blessed with mysterious powers of the Force. Her life was not so divided between black and white, the Light Side and the Dark Side. She was an average Duros being and lived with all the gray in-between areas that came with it.

     She supposed it didn’t really matter. Without a ship, what could she do?

     It was night, and it had begun to rain.

     Raych skulked miserably through the shadows of Trepeis Spaceport, desperately searching for someplace dry—for some remaining shred of hope. It had seemed so plausible during her heat of rage, but now clear thinking had returned. The man she wanted to kill—no, needed to kill—would not stay on Opsth forever, and she had no ship.

     The storm increased, and the rain became heavy and cold. Each plump drop that burst on her head and shoulders added its own downward force to her body, pushing Raych back on the planet, preventing escape to the stars above.

     Stumbling into puddle after icy puddle, through shadow after deathly shadow, Raych avoided all potential good Samaritans for fear they were spies or would turn her in. She passed many lodges and homes, their lights warm beacons of safety and comfort stretching through the haze of rain like a mother calling to a child lost in a crowd. But she could not risk it.

     At last, she found a vacant storage shed tucked away between two shops, eclipsed by their shadows. Ducking under the low entrance, Raych crawled into the far corner. It was too dark to see. Sitting on the damp floor, she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. There curled up in a ball, Lieutenant Raych K’arassa’s body started to shudder, but not from the cold.

     Outside the rain continued its deceptively harmless pitter-patter, pitter-patter long into the night.

 

 

 

     Dawn. What a sharp contrast to eight hours ago! And yet still full of scents lingering from the wet night before.

     The gentle square of light from across the shed caressed Raych’s eyelids and brought her mind back to consciousness and to the realization that she was still prisoner on this planet.

     Now what?

     Raych groaned and tumbled out of the tight ball she had slept in. Her muscles were in agony. Her first attempt to stand resulted in collapsing rather violently back onto the hard permacrete floor. Cursing in her native language, the lanky Duros wobbled back to her feet again, but decided against it and sat back down, slowly stretching her aching legs. Blinking away the sleep from her eyes, she groped about for the blaster that fell out of her hand after she had drifted off to sleep.

     “Hello?”

     Blaster finally in hand, Raych spun to face the unexpected voice. The bulky figure crouching in the low opening to the shed with hands hovering near his ears, palms out, and an wary grin on his face was none other than Uopal Masch.

     “Oh, it’s only you,” Raych sighed, relaxing slightly and looking away briefly, disgusted.

     Masch carefully brought his hands back down. “Nice to see you, too,” he commented sarcastically as he took a cautious step towards her.

     “Stop.” Tensing up again, Raych thrusted her blaster a tiny but noticeable amount forward, reminding Masch that it was still pointed at his face.

     Masch replaced his hands in front of him in a surrendering gesture, showing once again he was unarmed. “Look, I’m not going to hurt you. Especially since you helped me out after I got zapped by that Jedi person.”

     Raych kept her blaster trained on Masch. “I don’t know,” she said suspiciously, “You left pretty quick.”

     “Yeah...uh...I had some things to take care of. You know how it is.”

     “No, I don’t. Suppose you tell me.”

     “Listen, I heard what happened to your team. How they’re all—”

     “I know what happened to my team!” Raych bit out.

     “Sorry. I know who it was. Who lead the attack. I knew someone in the New Republic was running some behind-the-scenes personal war, but I didn’t know it was General Koplar until I saw him in the spaceport just after the attack.

     “I didn’t think you’d survived,” Masch continued, “then I’d rented a room across the street and saw you through the window last night. I hated to see you sleep in here, but it was so dark,” he looked at the blaster she still aimed at him, “you wouldn’t’ve recognized me and shot me right out.”

     “I might end up shooting you anyway.”

     Masch did not flinch, “Trust me, we’re on the same side here. I’ve got a homing beacon on Koplar’s ship. We’ll know when he leaves, then we can take the ship I ‘borrowed’ to follow.” Masch offered his hand, “Let me get you something to eat. You can use my room to get cleaned up.”

     Raych accepted the proffered hand, and Masch helped her stand. Putting her arm around Masch’s back, Raych leaned intimately close to him so that her body was pressed firmly against his left side. Masch could feel the barrel of her blaster in his back as she buried it in the folds of his jackets with the arm she wrapped around him.

     “Now, dearest, no need to try any funny business, right?” Raych said, emphasizing her point by jabbing her blaster more forcefully into his back.

     “Wouldn’t a human and Duros couple attract attention?” Masch asked.

     “Yes, but that’s not the same as suspicion.”

     Masch saw her point: sneaking about in shadows would draw the wrong kind of attention. “Of course, my sweet,” Masch crooned as he wrapped his arm around her waist, completing the charade before they stepped out of the shed.

 

 

     “News from Coruscant, General.”

     General Koplar awoke with a start. The lights in his cabin aboard the small freighter had been extinguished for the night several hours ago. “It had better be good news, Captain,” he muttered after finding the intercom switch.

     “Very much so, sir,” the captain’s voice assured from the speaker, “A couple of humans were caught trying to hack their way into classified files in Imperial Palace. Our boys back home believe one of them is Kaaren’s commander friend.”

     “Really?” Koplar rolled out of bed. “I’m coming up to the bridge.”

 

 

Several days later...

     “You have ten minutes,” explained the guard as he ushered Emon and Ellé into the visiting room.

     The long, rectangular room had a heavy steel door on each end and was divided by a wall of clear transparasteel parallel to the short ends of the room. The room was painted so blindingly white that even in the farthest corners of it shadows could not exist. Face-to-face, one on each side of the invisible barrier in the middle of the room, were two basic tables with two plain stools each.

     Ellé gazed across the room through the transparasteel at the hollow shell of a man sitting on the other side as she and Emon made their way to him. The man, her brother, sat at his table, head hanging and arms resting on the polished surface in front of him. His left arm ended just below his elbow. The bionic replacement complete with hidden blaster had obviously been confiscated; the sleeve of his lime-green prison jumpsuit tied in a knot to keep the empty fabric from flopping about. Ellé and Emon sat down on their stools, and Rivash did not even stir. He sat so still, Ellé was afraid to speak.

     “Hi,” she ventured almost silently.

     Still he sat statue-still. Ellé waited patiently, and finally, a quiet “hello” came from his mouth as he slowly lifted his head to look at them.

     Ellé gave her brother a concerned smile, “How is Sara?”

     “She did not make it.”

     Ellé felt her heart twist into a tight knot, and her vision started to blur. She thought she had prepared herself emotionally for this possibility, but she guessed she had not prepared well enough.

     “I’m so sorry,” Emon’s voice echoed distantly in her ears.

     Sniffing, but letting a tear crawl down her cheek, Ellé leaned close to the transparasteel so that the guards by the doors could not hear, “We’ve got to get you out.”

     “No,” Rivash said simply.

     “What?” Ellé asked in a strange voice, the feelings of grief and surprised disbelief mixing and conflicting inside her. “What about your mission and all?”

     “It does not matter,” Rivash muttered.

     “What are you talking about?” Emon asked gently, “I can only imagine how you must feel, but you wouldn’t have gone to all that trouble to find me if it wasn’t important. At least tell us what to do.”

     “It does not matter,” Rivash repeated raising his voice a notch. He started to lift his left arm, but remembered there was not a hand attached to it anymore. Shifting, he pointed at Emon with his right hand instead, “I would not expect you to understand.”

     At a loss for what to say, Ellé sat silently, a maelstrom of emotions swirling violently about her heart. She had never seen her brother like this before.

     Emon, on the other hand was frustrated. He lost his temper and blurted out at the widower, “As I recall, Commander, I outrank you.”

     Face bright red and scowling angrily, Rivash slammed his one hand down on the table as hard as he could, stood up, and stormed wordlessly back towards the door leading to the prison.

     The guards calmly followed after him.

 

    

     “Are you telling me we’ve been tracking Emon Kaaren for nothing?”

     The captain sighed. “That’s the short of it, General.”

     As soon as the information about Kaaren’s commander friend being arrested arrived in the hands of General Koplar and his men, the general had ordered one of the authorized computer techs back on Coruscant to be bribed. The response was surprisingly quick. The tech managed to use his computer access at Imperial Palace to dig up the specific file Kaaren’s people had been looking for, and since the tech had all the proper clearance codes, the search would go undetected for a more than adequate period of time. The tech also drove a hard bargain. Koplar’s wallet would have been terribly light if ten thousand random bank accounts had not “donated” their few credits each. But, Koplar would have gladly paid the price with his own money to have the document he know held in his hands. In fact, he would have paid double if need be.

     Koplar rapidly skimmed through the datapad in his hand. “Captain, set a course for the planet Onivode in the Glanidor Sector.”

     The captain saluted crisply and left the general’s room.

     Koplar leaned back in his chair and prepared for a more thorough reading of Emperor Palpatine’s private file on Operation Energy.

    

 

     “You don’t have to follow me anymore.”

     “You were right. I shouldn’t’ve said what I said. I can only say I’m sorry!” Emon called as he hurried through the thick crowd to catch up with Ellé’s brisk pace.

     They were walking along the sidewalk outside of the prison. The sidewalk, like all sidewalks on Coruscant, clung to the side of the building and extended several meters over the several hundred story drop to the planet’s surface. At regular intervals, the walkway branched out over the mile-deep canyon between buildings to form a small landing platforms. Ellé reached one of these platforms at the end of the city block. She walked over to the directory sign listing various transportation companies and pushed one of the buttons, hailing a taxi. Emon finally caught up with her as she was sitting on a bench to wait. There was railing along the side of the platform, still Emon half feared Ellé might be upset enough to try to toss him over the edge.

     Sitting down beside her, Emon started to speak, “Listen—”

     “I told you to go away.” She abruptly got up and went to lean on the railing on the other side of the landing platform.

     Calmly, Emon stood up, followed across the platform, and again placed himself beside her. Ellé wordlessly shifted to face away from him. Emon decided to let her be for a moment.

     The riotous sound of engines filled his ears has the traffic roared by overhead, the drivers paying no heed to the two figures below. Snickers and giggles came from behind Emon as a group of adolescents passed by, discussing the latest piece of gossip about people known only to them. Across the way a child lingered by the window of a toy store, his mother leading him along by the hand. And next to the toy shop, Emon saw an elderly couple resting at a table in an outside café. A waiter asked them in the most polite of words, no doubt, to purchase a meal or leave. The two left without complaint, and the waiter was left intently cleaning the table for the next customers, oblivious to nothing else in the galaxy at that moment. Emon strained his ears further and made out the low hum emanating from all around. The sounds of a city. They flowed over him and engulfed his senses, and he hated it. Too much noise when there was too much to think about and too much at stake.

     “He’s not thinking straight, and you know it,” Emon began softly as he turned his attention away from the city and turned to talk to the back of Ellé’s head. “Too much grief.”

     Ellé did not turn around to face him. “Don’t get too sympathetic. It might ruin your reputation,” she muttered sarcastically.

     Emon scowled at the blonde sheet of hair facing him. He truly did regret Sara had been killed, but, the way he saw it, that was the past. There simply was not the time for sorrows now.

     “Whatever the reason Rivash found me for, it had something to do with our mission. Nearly the whole galaxy wants to kill me because of what I thought I knew. There’s something out there. Something important or dangerous or both. We’re the only ones who know my secret’s wrong. You have to tell me what the plan was. Why did we hack into the palace computers? We can’t just give up. What kind of life will there be with that threat out there?”

     Ellé finally turned around to face Emon. Her eyes were dams holding back a deluge of tears. “What do you know about life? Bounty Hunters and prison inmates don’t exactly get the best picture of it, now do they?”

     There was a beep signaling that Ellé’s ride had arrived. She looked at Emon for a brief moment then marched to the middles of the platform where the speeder was waiting. Emon followed and put his hand on her shoulder just as she was stooping to board the vehicle.

     “Wait.”

     Ellé jerked away from his grasp and forcefully brushed his hand away. “Because of my brother’s damaged memory, he couldn’t remember where the planet you were sent to was located. We hoped the Emperor had a record of the mission. Now if you’ll excuse me,” Ellé climbed in the seat of the speeder.

     “Well, I remember where it was. In have flashback dreams sometimes,” Emon said enthusiastically, hoping she’d come around.

     “Good-bye, Mr. Kaaren. If you want to save the galaxy, you will just have to do it yourself.” And with that, Ellé reached for the door a began to pull it closed.

     Desperate, Emon called out, “But is that what Sara and your brother would want you to do?”

     The speeder door paused in mid-swing.

     “Close tha door a’ready!” called the driver’s gruff voice.

     The door opened again, and Ellé slid to the far side of the speeder, making room for Emon. Stepping into the speeder, Emon came face-to-face with a pair of emerald eyes narrowed to slits.

     “Don’t ever use that line to your advantage again.”

     Emon nodded and pulled the door closed as the speeder accelerated to meet the flow of traffic.

 

 

     “He’s left already?” Raych asked as she stood up from the table stuffing a last morsel of food in her mouth. She was still quite hungry, but her thirst for revenge had replaced her desire for food.

     Masch was waiting at the door of the hotel room, “That’s what I said. Hurry. He’s already got a head start.”

     No time for their deception, Masch jogged out of the building trying not to look too conspicuous. A cautious Raych followed close behind with her hand on the butt of her blaster hidden in her jacket pocket.

     “I thought you were going to ‘borrow’ a real ship!” Raych said into his ear when they arrived in the spaceport a few moments later.

     “It’s the best I could do,” Masch whispered back.

     “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re just a food inspector.”

     Masch frowned then brushed the insult off. “It’s the ship Kaaren and I flew in on. No one on the planet will care that it’s gone, and we need to get it out of here before Zsinj tracks it down.” Masch pulled the release level, and the small boarding ramp in the rear of the Delta Class Dx-9 Stormtrooper Transport Relay 2 dropped open. “Besides it flies well enough.”

     “You and who flew this ship in?”

     “Never mind.”

 

 

     “So how come I can remember planet Onivode, and your brother couldn’t?”

     “I don’t know!” Ellé said impatiently, “Does it really matter? Let’s just worry about if we can fix this big, terrible threat of yours, OK?”

     “Yeah, sure.”

     The scout ship Too Many Secrets magnetically clung upside-down to the underside of a huge passenger liner as it exited through its cleared opening in Coruscant’s planetary shield.

     Strapped in the copilot’s seat by its crash webbing, Emon looked up a the ground hundreds of kilometers above his head and was thankful for the Secrets’ artificial gravity.

     The two sat in the ship quietly watching the clouds stained orange by the sunset and pollution drift by. “When the shuttle you talked about,” Ellé said eventually, “exploded on top of him, he could have lost some memory then. And I guess the people who put that thing in your head needed you to remember the planet so your report to the Emperor would match the mission he sent you on.”

     “Well…That makes sense, anyway.”

     The rust colored atmosphere darkened to an inky black ocean of nothingness dotted with pinpricks of stars as the passenger liner climbed into the highest reaches of the planet’s exosphere.

     “I feel like I’m in a bad holofilm,” Emon commented, trying to lighten the mood, “Two people, one ship, out to single-handedly save the universe.”

     Ellé glanced across at Emon for only a second with an entirely unreadable expression on her face. Then she turned back to her instruments. Choosing a particular lever, she said, “Disengaging magnets.” Too Many Secrets broke off from the host passenger liner, reoriented itself, and escaped Coruscant’s gravity well before the tiny ship winked out of existence entering the hyperspace route to the Glanidor Sector.

 

 

     It was cold. So very cold. The slightest movement of the wind dragged the glacial fingernails of winter across their skin. The blue sky was perfectly clear, not a cloud in sight, consequently the snow was blindingly white from reflecting the unobstructed sunlight. But the air was so frigid that the planet’s star seemed to be merely a painting on a painfully distant sapphire canvas, for its light gave no warmth.

     Raych wrapped the survival blanket still tighter around herself and took another staggering step forward in the snow bringing her one half meter closer to the buildings in the distance. She hoped she would never have to live through another winter on Onivode again.

     Masch was trudging along in front of her. When he looked back over his shoulder to confirm she was still following, Raych again raised the blaster—which was now frozen to her hand—that she had been carrying at her side. It had been a little too convenient that Relay 2’s plasma inverters had failed at just the right time to force them to land in the middle of nowhere and lose track of Koplar’s ship. Masch sighed and started walking again. Raych lowered her blaster back to her side and continued walking also. She did give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was not leading her into some elaborate trap. The more she thought about it, though, the more unlikely that scenario seemed...which is why she hadn’t shot him yet.

     The relentless crunch, crunch, crunch of their feet crushing the snow under them was suddenly interrupted by the low whine of repulsorlifts in the distance. Raych and Masch halted and watched as a small speck on the horizon grew into a rather large sized hovercar coming towards them. The hovercar stopped with its passenger side facing the two travelers. The passenger door opened invitingly, and a robed man in the car smiled at them.

     “Hello. Need a ride?” he asked cheerily.

     “No,” Raych insisted.

     “Yes!” Masch answered at the same time. “Got a heater in there?” he asked entering the car.

     “Of course,” the man answered.

     “Wait!” Raych protested.

     The two men looked at her expectantly. Raych stood there thinking. She didn’t want to be picked up by some stranger, but on the other hand, she didn’t want to walk the rest of the way alone either.

     “I’m coming too,” she resigned at last.

 

 

     “Are you sure this is the right place?”

     “It’s what I remember,” Emon answered, “Except for the snow.”

     “There’s nothing here!” Ellé shouted. They had landed Too Many Secrets in the middle of an abandoned and mostly destroyed town. None of the buildings poking up through the snow even had all four walls left standing, let alone were inhabitable. Ellé guessed the buildings were not even up to the same technological level as most of the galaxy.

     “Why did I listen to you? ‘Well, I remember where it is,’” Ellé mimicked Emon’s earlier statement. “These people were fighting amongst themselves,” she gestured at the blast patterns of second rate laser guns, “not a against some huge, all powerful threat you think is out here!”

     Emon glanced around and had to agree with her conclusion. He had been around nearly every type of blaster there was during his jaunt as a bounty hunter and could differentiate between top-of-the-line and “primitive” blaster patterns. Ellé, however, must have picked it up from her brother.

     “There must be something else. Something we’re not seeing,” Emon thought out loud.

     “Something like Koplar’s private army?”

     “What?” Emon asked, looking around. But Ellé had already slipped out of sight. Then hearing the marching footsteps himself, Emon sprinted into the nearest building—or what was left of it, anyway. It only had three walls and no ceiling, but at least it would keep him out of the soldiers’ line of sight for now. Emon caught sight of Ellé in one of the corners peering out one of the cracks in the wall.

     “They will see your footprints in the snow and follow them to you,” a new voice whispered from behind Emon. Emon and Ellé both nearly jumped out of their skins and both drew their weapons. A man in a hooded ruby cloak had materialized in the center of the ruined structure. He stretch out his hands and both Emon’s and Ellé’s blasters soared across the room into his grasp.

     Recognition flicked through Emon’s mind. The man was, quite impossibly, younger than the first time Emon had met him, but still, there he was standing in front of him, repeating the same trick he had done several years past. “Yabin Culain.”

     “It is unfortunate for my people that you remember me,” Yabin nodded, “I trust you’d rather follow me than take your chances with the soldiers.” He pointed at the ground where a square hole had appeared in the snow with a stone staircase leading to an underground room.

     Ellé gave Emon a quizzical look. Emon did not know what to tell her. He could not remember anything about this fellow, short of his name. Following Yabin Culain was an uncertain path, but waiting around for Koplar was certain death. Shrugging his shoulders, Emon followed Yabin down the steps.

     At the bottom of the stairs, Yabin handed them back their blasters but asked them to keep them powered down, explaining about his people’s nonviolent beliefs. Emon and Ellé accepted their weapons back, and Yabin produced a glowrod from his robes and proceeded to lead them down the dark and narrow stone passageway.

     “What’s going on?” Emon asked boldly once they were out of earshot from the entrance. “Why did you put those memory things in our head?”

     “Ah, so you know,” Yabin said regretfully, “We wanted you not to come back.”

     “And yet here I am.”

     “Yes,” Yabin said with a tone that abruptly ended the conversation.

     After only a few twists and turns in the tunnel, the group arrived in a huge circular cavern. It was an entire village. The outer wall of the mammoth chamber was lined with nearly a hundred tiny houses with an occasional tunnel like the one Yabin just led them through in between. From Emon’s view, the right side of the underground city was elevated above the left side, and a crystal clear stream ran down the slope from one end of the cavern to the other. In the center of the chamber, there were a variety of larger stone buildings, but most of the empty space had been filled with several feet of soil for growing crops. But the most amazing spectacle was the rock in the ceiling was glowing, bathing the whole town in a golden light.

     “Aren’t you worried about it collapsing someday?” Ellé asked.

     “No,” answered Yabin, “We have the Force.” He began to lead them on a tour of the city. “We are known as the Leir Caste, a Force sect embracing nonviolence. Our powers and technology are devoted to life. Notice our plants: able to grow in this cave to provide us with food so that we may live.

     “Of course, this is not meant as a permanent home,” Yabin continued, “Merely a winter home to seek refuge from the cold. However, you have seen the destruction from the civil wars and know why we have lived down here for so long.”

     “This really is interesting,” Emon spoke, “But what was my mission that you so effectively erased from my brain about?”

     “Many of us are not human, not at the moment. That is why there were the wars. It is rather difficult to explain. I suppose ‘ghost’ is the best term to describe my race. Yes, we are Force ghosts. When a person dies, we are ‘born’ by entering the corpse and re-animating it through the Force. A new living being with the mind of a child inhabits the body of what is usually an old person. The body’s aging process is reversed, again because of the Force. The body grows younger while the mind inside grows older. It’s not really much different from your way of things. We both start life with frail bodies and minds and we both end life likewise.” Yabin glanced at his companions, “You are...disturbed by this, to put it kindly.”

     “No, we’re not,” Ellé denied.

     “You are,” Yabin insisted, “Most people are at first. It was the more Imperial citizens of Onivode who were disgusted. They declared us ‘unnatural’ and demanded we be eliminated. We would not fight them, of course, but more accepting people unnecessarily took it upon themselves to defend us. You wonder why. It is because they wanted to join us, but they did not understand. Their killing in defense of us made them unworthy to be a member of the Leir Caste. There are ways to defend oneself without the use of violence.”

     “But why,” Ellé asked, “did they want to join the Leir Caste?”

     “Haven’t you wondered what happens to us when our host bodies become children bodies again? Eventually, our bodies become so young that they cannot survive in a normal environment any longer. They must then be placed into an incubation tank that simulates a female’s womb. Finally, we die, and the original being regains his or her body, the aging process is returned to normal, and the person gets a new life. The cycle repeats, thus a symbiotic relationship giving each entity immortality.”

     “Weird. So when you see a dying person, you let them die so your population can grow?” Emon asked suspiciously.

     “You insult us! We save all life we can.”

     “So what happened with the wars?” Ellé asked quickly, changing the subject.

     “Our young don’t yet understand when they re-animate a person. They are driven by instinct. So when the xenophobes started dying in the wars they had created, our young were drawn towards their bodies. Once the symbiotic bond was formed, the original people tried to resist and it drove them insane. The Emperor sent you to figure out what was happening. Fortunately, we got to you first. Eventually, they gave up on aid from the Empire and figured out that if they left the planet, they would not have to worry about us. Reluctantly they migrated off this world.

     “We just wanted to be left alone,” Yabin explained, “We couldn’t let you return with the knowledge of us. Others would have followed.”

     It was all far too bizarre for Emon. Actually, he was not sure if “bizarre” was a sufficient description.

     “Ah, the chief elder has arrived,” Yabin informed them.

     Emon turned around to face three individuals who had come up behind him. The first one, the “chief elder” was only a boy—a boy’s body, anyway—and wore the same style of robes as Yabin. There were two other people behind the boy: a Duros woman and—

     “What are you doing here?” Masch and Emon asked in unison.

     “More importantly, what are all of you doing here?” inquired a sophisticated and dark voice. It was General Koplar’s voice back by a couple of heavily armed soldiers. He looked at Emon, Masch, and the Duros each in turn. “All three of you in one place. Wonderful.” And with that, his lightning quick reflexes pulled his sidearm from its holster and shot Emon square in the chest before Yabin and the chief elder could use the Force to disarm the intruders.

 

 

     Raych could feel the hot, burning hatred rising in her throat as she watched the being she despised the most in the whole universe draw his blaster and shoot one of the persons she hadn’t yet met. She drew her own blaster, powered it on, and dashed towards, but Masch stepped in front of her and held her back by the shoulders, preventing her from completing her suicidal charge.

     The two Force masters finally pulled the soldiers’ blasters away. A sudden wind came out of nowhere and blew Koplar and his men harmlessly out one of the chamber’s exit tunnels.

     “Who’s in charge of security around here?” the chief elder demanded.

     Still restrained by Masch, Raych brought the butt of her blaster across his nose with a back hand swing. He immediately let go of her to clutch his bruised face, and Raych was free. She sprinted toward her goal as fast as she could blaster in hand.

 

 

     Emon could taste the blood in his mouth as he lay on the cold rock. He saw out of the corner of his eye the Duros running in the direction Koplar had gone. Ellé’s face appeared over him. He felt her doctor’s hands probing at his wound. No sound escaped her lips though Emon could see her talking. He didn’t need to hear what she was saying. Her expression was informative enough. It was the end. Emon watched her stand up. She towered over him as she seemed to argue with Yabin. She angrily shook her head at the Force monk. What doesn’t she want him to do?

     Emon closed his eyes and his thoughts drifted to why he had come here. What was he dying for? To find some people who just want to be left alone? His mind flashed back to the landing platform on Coruscant, and the sounds of machines, the sounds of cities, filled his mind’s ear. Visions of the child at the toy store, the drivers of the endless lines of airspeeders, the young people laughing joyfully behind him flashed through his brain. Then Emon remembered the low, incessant hum that he’d had to strain his ears to hear. It was not just the sound of a city. It was the sound of life; the sound of millions upon millions of voices all talking at once. Billions of individuals all going about their business, entirely unaware that Emon was thousands of light-years away lying on the hard stone ground dying. The vision of the laughing kids flashed again. “What was he dying for?” What had he lived for?! Ellé had been more than correct. He knew nothing about life, and he now he’d lost it.

 

 

     Emon awoke with a gasp and sat up. Finally getting control of his breathing, Emon calmed down and realized he was back in his bed in his home on Opsth. He placed his hand over his chest and leaned his head back onto his soft pillow. He been dreaming of great adventures among the stars again.

     It was still dark out. Emon looked across the bed at his wife. Ellé was still sleeping soundly next to him. It suddenly seemed odd that he was married to Ellé. They had been married for several years, and he’d never had that feeling before. I must just be tired, Emon thought.

     Tomorrow was a big day. His pohtaytoh crop was due for harvest. Tomorrow he would have to load all his vegetables into his K14 Haste-class scout ship Too Many Pohtaytohs and take them to the market in Trepeis Spaceport.

     Emon wished for the millionth time that he could use the ship to explore the galaxy. He wasn’t quite sure why he bought it. He was stuck on his farm, and the ship just wasn’t designed to haul vegetables around.

 

 

 

Epilogue

 

     Lieutenant Raych K’arassa had never felt more nervous in her entire life. She hoped she wasn’t the only one who felt this way in Admiral Drayson’s presence.

     Raych stood at perfect military attention in front of the admiral’s desk and watched as he read her report on her mission to Opsth.

     “After Zsinj’s forces attacked, you were the only one who survived, correct?” Admiral Drayson asked.

     Raych nodded the affirmative.

     “Then,” the admiral continued, “you managed to track Zsinj’s agent’s escape vector to the Glanidor Sector in a stolen ship...all by yourself? Impressive. But once you arrived in the Glanidor Sector, you had lost their trail.”

     “Correct, sir. May I suggest a full search team be sent? Zsinj’s presence in that sector could mean anything.”

     “But Zsinj was killed in a recent battle.”

     Raych quickly covered her surprise and asked calmly, “How, sir? When?”

     “I’m afraid that information is classified, Lieutenant.” Admiral Drayson regarded the Duros standing in his office carefully, “Tell me again, Lieutenant K’arassa, what did you find in the Glanidor Sector.”

     The answer came to Raych’s brain instantly, “Nothing but empty space, sir!”

     “You answered that question rather enthusiastically. Are you positive you found nothing? No space stations? No asteroids?”

     Raych was confused at the admiral’s questions. She searched her memory. Snow? Was there snow? Snow falls on plan—There was a sudden tingling sensation in the back of her head. Raych raised her arm to scratch at the itching spot on her head, and returned to searching her memory. There was nothing, of course. “Nothing but empty space, sir,” she told the admiral.

     Admiral Drayson leaned back in his chair and frowned. “Very well, Lieutenant. Dismissed.”

     Raych gladly retreated from the admiral’s office. Outside in the waiting room, Raych saw a heavy-set man sitting in one of the chairs. Their eyes met, and Raych thought his face to be awfully familar. She abruptly brushed it off as déjà-vu and forgot about him entirely as her hand returned to that particular spot in the back of her skull. That tingling feeling was back again...

 

CMDR/CPT Beef/Thunder/Wing X/ISD Challenge

February 07, 2001