The Force Wills - Chapter 147

The neck of the commando droid was severed cleanly, making interfacing with a logic spike from my wrist quite easy.

What wasn’t easy was actually pulling any intelligible data. These were elite, expensive droids and they were built with anti-tamper safeguards on a hardware and software level. The internal self-destructs were mostly in a commando droid’s body, but there was a single charge in the head that hadn’t gone off. This could happen with a decapitation, if the small explosive was severed quickly enough from the main power supply. It was good news, that I had a chance to access the data, but equally bad news, because if I put too much voltage through the interface spike, it risked the system detecting the body was gone and going off.

M8 took a few moments to spoof it into thinking it was still connected to a proper working body, before quickly switching into decrypting the data.

This took a few minutes because of the complexity, she even had to pull computing power from the Resolute to help.

The only thing she managed to eventually resolve was a blurry image filled with decryption artifacts.

It looked like it was somewhere partially underground; a large cave with a cracked roof that let in sunlight during specific times of the day with very exotic purple-blue shrubbery on the floors and crawling up the walls.

I walked closer to the farmer and projected a holo of the image for them, “You wouldn’t happen to know where this is?”

He squinted into the rendering, “That looks like the Dijer Undergrove, about 42 km east from here.”

“Cross-referencing from Republic survey records, mistress. He’s correct. The flora species match Tasaas spore plants and Yimror shrubs, I have exact coordinates for the entrance.”  

I chucked the commando droid to the gravel road, “Thank you for help, sir. I will do my utmost to remove the threat of these droids from the planet. Force be with you.”

A few steps back and I rocketed into the air, immediately angling to my new destination.

Sixteen minutes of flight later, whilst over rolling grasslands, I spotted six B2-HAs and three droidekas on a patrol.

“Shabla!” I rolled and banked immediately as six homing rockets streaked into air, angling in to blow me out of the sky.

My WESTARs were in my hands in the next moment and I was firing rapidly ahead of me.

The blue bolts intercepted the rockets, exploding in bursts of fire and concussive effects.

I strafed my fire across the B2s as I jinked left and right towards them in a dive.

Two died, while my other shots just splashed over the thick armor.

The droideka’s deployed themselves with shields popping into existence before trying to shoot me.

The awkward angle given how high my approach was, meant that it was easy to simply dodge with precog, leaving me the time to fire again and take out a third B2.

At this point I was barreling down on the patrol from directly above.

I holstered my WESTARs and exchanged them for lightsabers.

A quick somersault and my feet were pointed down, before I pulled in as much of the momentum as I could and then redirected it outward just as my hyperalloy feet touched down in the middle of the small droid patrol.

Dust and grass exploded outwards in the face of the radiant Force Wave that erupted.

The B2s and droideka were picked up and tossed helplessly through the air.

My lightsabers lit with their red fury and shot forward, spinning rapidly.

B2s had barely crashed into the grassy earth with a thump before my lightsabers sliced them into glowing metallic chunks.

Droideka’s bounced like pinballs back into the air, their shields only being able to resist so much kinetic energy.

I grabbed both and ended their existence with a Force Crush.

The hilts of my lightsabers clanked back into my hands, before going back into my thigh compartments.

The presence of an actual patrol in the open like this meant I was definitely on the right track.

I shot back into the air, handling the remaining flight with no further problems.

The Dijer Undergrove entrance was in a canyon that looked like a jagged C shape from the air. It was barely eleven meters at its widest, which plunged into the earth for about eighty meters. The ends of the canyon sloped gently into either side, which explained why it was relatively easy to access on foot.

The enemy would know I was coming by now, so my approach came from directly above.

I came to a brief hover before simply switching off my flight systems and diving.

My fall through the earth, with the canyon walls on either side of me was very exhilarating, but brief.

With the momentum pulled into the Force, I alighted on my feet near the dim cave entrance, before using a narrow Force Push on the three guarding B2s before they could even react to my sudden presence in front of them.

A burst of speed forward, whilst my lightsabers snap-hissed into existence, letting me turn the droids into glowing chunks as I sprinted past their prone forms.

My feet carried me into a steady run through the tunnel beyond.

I emerged into a somewhat familiar sight of the undergrove, spotting the various recognizable plants. It was a beautiful place, the overhead sunlight cutting into the space like an ethereal lightsaber, with the purple-blue plants forming a lush carpet all over the rocky earth. The air was loamy and I could smell a humidity in the air that had to be from an underground lake further in.

Nearly thirty meters away on the far side of the cave, was the enemy; two B2-ACMs standing guard over three Mandalorians without helmets - who were helplessly encased in energy fields.

I immediately ducked, rolled and rapidly skittered forward under the fusilade of fire the droids sent my way. I pulled at the earth around me with the Force, creating two rock projectiles that I sent shooting forward in a kinetic strike.

It was strong enough to bowl over both, buying me enough time to rapidly burst forward with Force Speed.

I stabbed both blades into the rear ends of the B2s between the legs and slashed upward.

‘Anyone else, M8?’

‘Accurate scans within the undergrove are problematic due to EM radiant minerals present.’

‘Not at dangerous levels?’

‘No, mistress. It would take months of constant exposure to even begin seeing the first symptoms.’

I fell back to the Force, letting farsight do the job. There was definitely movement a few kilometers deeper into the cave system, where I spied a stationary guard of two B1 droids.

My focus pulled back to the three Blades in front of me.

The shifting blue energy fields were completely encased around them, leaving them only with a small slit at their noses to let them breathe through. In the Force, they felt like they had been hit by a stun blast, keeping them unconscious. Even as I watched, the disc shaped field emitters below their feet flashed as another stunning pulse radiated into them.

‘All right, this is definitely a nasty evolution of the bloody things.’

A conduit led away from the emitters to a portable energy storage as large as a GNK droid.

One slash of my saber later and all three Mandalorians were released to tumble awkwardly to the mossy ground.

I quickly arranged them into much more comfortable positions and began first-aid.

There were a number of bumps and bruises beneath the armor, but it was their nervous systems that were worrying me. From the looks of things, they had been forcibly kept unconscious for days using the periodic stun pulses, which meant no drinking, eating, their beskar’gam waste systems were full - they had dehydration, hunger and their internal fat stores were being used for energy.

It took me nearly a full quarter of an hour to carefully restore consciousness and help bleed off the excess energy from the nerves, whilst sorting out any potential complications. It also clued me in as to how they had been captured in the first place - the systems of her beskar’gam were showing signs of ion residue. They were still intact, so I could at least access them with my command authorizations.

“Sergeant Kast, can you hear me?” I asked gently, shaking the Mandalorian woman on the shoulder. Her scarred face twisted with discomfort before she wearily opened green eyes to look up directly into my visored helmet.

She blinked and coughed, dry mouth and throat not doing her any favors. Thankfully, the HK-HP had also been designed with me and my healing abilities in mind as well. I stuck my hand through the holosheathe directly into the lower abdomen, where a compartment opened to reveal a first-aid kit, which also included a two litre bottle of water.

“Drink slowly, only two gulps,” I ordered, holding the end open directly into her mouth, where she gulped down the liquid exactly as instructed.

She gasped with relief, wincing as the back of her head thumped off the earth she was laying on, “Manda’lor?”

“It’s me, sergeant, relax for the moment while I tend to your squad,” I confirmed.

“There’s no time to relax, Manda’lor,” she sat up with some difficulty. “We must save Lieutenant Kryze.”

“We will, but you need some recovery time before you can even think of holding a blaster with some competence, that energy field did a number on you. If it wasn’t for my work, you wouldn’t even be able to speak. Consider that an order, sergeant,” I said sternly.

“Yes, Manda’lor.”

I focused on the next Mando, who I recognized as a clanmate, Corporal Jhaveb Vizsla - who was roughly my age and his blue beskar’gam did nothing to hide how tall and lanky he was.

“Tell me what happened,” I ordered, whilst beginning the healing.

“We were training, doing field exercises, when Corporal Vizsla spotted an enemy droid patrol in the forest. We engaged, easily overwhelming the enemy, however, when we tried to report the contact back to the Avalanche, discovered that our coms were being thoroughly jammed. From there, Captain Oron ordered that we should search for the source of the jamming and destroy it. It was the corporal who had the idea to slice the systems of a dead B1 to help narrow the search. That led to this undergrove, but we were intercepted on the way here.”

“By commando droids capable of flight.”

She nodded, her face twisting with self-recrimination, “That was a nasty surprise. It never occurred to anyone that they could take a B2 rocket droid’s flight systems and adapt them to a modified commando chassis. They killed Captain Oron and two others with complete surprise. We didn’t detect them at all. One moment, everything was fine, the next…”

“But you did manage to fight back.”

“Yes, I took command and… I never imagined having to use Phoenix techniques on droids in mid-air, but we managed… right until they shot a missile from a speeder that detonated near us. Beskar’gam’s systems malfunctioned and most of us barely made it to ground with our jetpacks misfiring. Two didn’t.”

So, five dead from an ambush that shouldn’t have happened, yet it clearly did. I hated it when the enemy learned. Now commando droids were also wearing their own version of a ‘droid’ lifesign mask, hiding their signature power sources from general wide-range scanning.

“We were swiftly surrounded and asked to surrender. With armor and weapons malfunctioning, I saw no other option, especially with Lt. Kryze there. If he died…” She trailed off not wanting to contemplate the consequences that would have back on Mandalore with the Duchess.

“Were you interrogated?”

Kast nodded, “Extensively, but none of us gave them anything as far as I’m aware. They placed our force field cages out here to keep us separated. I imagine you’d find the others deeper in the undergrove.”

“Any idea what the Separatists are doing on Raydonia, sergeant?”

“None, manda’lor.”

Jhaveb begun stirring into consciousness and initially he pretended to remain asleep.

“None of that, corporal,” I admonished him. 

 His eyes surged open in surprise at hearing my voice, “Manda-!” He cut his instinctive screech off and struggled to master himself.

“While I applaud your effort, I can confirm the enemy isn’t close to us at the moment. So noise discipline isn’t too crucial at the moment, drink.”

After he had watered his throat, he gazed at the sergeant with both relief and he had distinct tones of guilt resonating throughout his spirit. I moved on to the next Mando. His name was Sergeant Tervho Saxon, the squad medic. His white and green beskar’gam showed multiple blaster hits and he even had a nasty burn through from the bolt that had nailed the back of his left calf.

This would take much longer to get fixed to a point where he was mobile again.

A quick use of the lightsaber to carefully cut the very tough undersuit of the beskar’gam, exposed the wound properly, allowing me to place a bacta strip on it and accelerate the healing process through the Force.

With that done, I could get to work on the problems all three shared.

Jhaveb thumped his head against the earth, closing his eyes briefly before resolve filled his entire being, “Manda’lor, I… I’m sorry this-”

“If you’re going to take personal responsibility for your squad’s ambush, I’m going to stop you right there.”

He shook his head, “I completely missed the beacon the B1 had.”

“Beacon?”

“Yes, manda’lor. The B1, I see now, had a locator beacon that went off the moment I began slicing.”

A quick look at his service record showed why he had been on a Blades squad at his relatively young age. “Corporal, I fail to see how someone with your talents and training could ordinarily miss something like that. Unless you were dealing with a completely novel system. Given the droids we’ve encountered on this planet so far, you have nothing to feel guilty about. Learn from this and move on. Hindsight, corporal, is always perfect.”

With the entire Separatist operation on Raydonia being covert by nature, it was only prudent that the enemy equipped their forces to maintain that secrecy as much as possible.

It meant they knew that they had lost the exterior patrol and now the droids guarding these prisoners.

Any half-decent tac droid would make the conclusion that Mandalorian reinforcement had arrived in search for their missing squad.

We didn’t have long.

I managed to bring Tervho to consciousness nine very careful minutes later.

“Manda’lor? My condition?” he asked, smacking his lips and relishing the hydration.

“Stable, blaster wound is healing, but you’re not running anywhere for at least a day or two.”

He sat up with a wince and regarded his lower leg, then looked frantically around, “Lieutenant Kryze?”

“Not here, most likely kept deeper in the undergrove,” Kast twitched and flexed her legs, trying to regain dexterity and strength.

“Sergeant Kast, how many shots do you have left in your Whistling Bird?” I asked, gesturing to the distinctive vambrace.

“Three, Manda’lor, but the enemy took our helmets, jetpacks and other weapons, target designation will be on automatic.”

I reached into my legs and held out my WESTARs to her and Jhaveb.

She accepted it gratefully, whilst he boggled slightly at the realization that I was using a holodroid proxy before taking the weapon.

“The enemy knows reinforcements are here, they will assume you’ve been freed. We won’t have long. Jhaveb, you will support Tervho. We will use every moment possible to rest and then we move deeper into the undergrove before they can catch us here.”

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Whoever was in command, whether it was a tac droid or some CIS officer, they rather foolishly gave us 23 minutes before I spotted the first signs of a droid response coming our way.

“On your feet, stay behind me, if it’s a clanker, it dies. Sergeant Kast, Whistling Birds only as a last resort.”

“Understood, Manda’lor,” they chorused, thumping their chest in salute.

With lightsabers in hand, we moved deeper into the undergrove, taking a natural tunnel leading north out of this large entry cave.

Our speed was limited with Tervho’s limp, but we couldn’t leave him behind as there was every chance we could be attacked from behind by returning droid patrols. I still wasn’t sure if what was in front of us was the main CIS base.

“Six B2-ACMs, three droidekas,” I warned, as we continued forward.

The tunnel opened into a smaller cave and the droids opened fire on us in a hail of Repeater blaster fire.

Three heavy rocks as big as a speeder burst up in front of us to intercept.

A few hand signals and the two able bodied squad members hurried forward to use the floating rocks as cover to fire back.

Tervho reluctantly jumped on my back at a signal. If I had been a meatbag, it wouldn’t have been possible, but I could easily carry his weight with no issue as a HK-HP.

We continued our advance under fire, as a single B2 died under the combined fire from my companions.

Too slow.

My lightsabers lit and I threw them to the left and right, angling them up and inward, before lancing them into the enemy.

They became a blur of flying red plasmatic buzzsaws that sliced through the B2s high and low.

I dropped our rocky cover in front of us, leaving me free to crush the droidekas.

In the tunnel beyond this cave, I halted the advance with a raised fist before gesturing in front of us.

Four motion activated thermal detonators sparked and died as I used mild electric discharges from the Disable Droid technique.

“Large cave ahead, eight commando droids, two squads of B1s, though most of them aren’t armed, kill them anyway.”

Large was a slight misnomer, it was more accurate to say it was nearly the size and volume of a stadium, filled to the brim with the underground plantlife, insects and even some fauna who made their home in the undergrove.

One possible reason for the CIS presence was also here, visible on the western cave wall, recently excavated given the equipment - the frontage of something that looked like an ancient temple.   

My lightsabers were up and blurring in rapid defense, deflecting the bolts from eight commando droids that were rapidly jumping, shooting and even using their integrated flight systems to do bigger jumps.

I spotted only one solid large rock nearby to use and pulled it over, giving cover to my companions to fire against the enemy.

Two of my rapid deflections went straight back to our flying enemies, causing them to careen out of control and smash themselves into the ground and off to the side, minor explosions thundered through the massive cave.

The remaining commandos were now very close and they each drew vibroblades to engage me.

I let them come within five meters and they jumped into the air, pulling back their arms to slash at me from six different angles.

Only for them to freeze mid-air as I caught every single droid in the grip of Telekinetic Control.

With clear shots Jhaveb and Kast wasted no time in immediately shooting two, whilst my lightsaber slashes filleted the rest.

We were far from victory though as B1 droids poured fire in our direction.

The two original squads became three as more B1s streamed out of the temple.

I was able to advance forward, deflecting shots back and steadily took out B1s along the way.

One of them threw a thermal grenade my way when I was close enough, which I stopped halfway in its arc and sent straight back.

That explosion thundered through the cavern and sent gravel and small rocks raining down from the ceiling.

Stupid droids! A few more like that and we would all be buried!

“Tervho! Reach into my lower back, you’ll feel four droid poppers! Throw them!”

My piggyback passenger was startled and was very happy to finally have something to do besides being a spectator to this battle. He winced as his right hand fumbled blindly within the holosheathe, before he managed to grasp one of the EMP grenades.

He grunted with the effort of the lobbing throw.

It was accurate enough that it landed among the droids on the left flank and detonated immediately.

Eight droids were caught in the expanding EM wave and shuddered briefly before falling over.

“Keep going!”

One by one, the poppers flew through the air, taking out the opposition in batches of six or seven at a time.

A few shots and lightsaber slashes later, it was all over.

I sensed carefully around the cave and into the temple, “Clear!”

Kast and Jhaveb emerged carefully from their cover, their weapons still up and ready.

“What is this place?” Jhaveb asked with mild awe as he stared at the temple entrance.

I could understand the reaction, while it was somewhat small compared to the Illum Jedi Temple’s frontage, the sophistication of the construction we were seeing was definitely the work of a high level civilization. To the naked eye, it looked like the stonework was pure obsidian, but molded and shaped as if a giant hand had worked with it like clay - making decorative columns, arches and giant reliefs that depicted some stylized alien figures with large umbrella shaped heads holding massive bowls; as if they were serving something. There were two of them on either side of the main entrance and faced each other, also as if they were standing guard as well.

“Something the Separatists wanted to keep and possibly study, therefore we must learn why. Come, your squad mates are being kept inside.”

The hallway beyond was more of that perfect obsidian-type construction. The lighting the original builders used was non-functional and looked like light-strips that were stylistically integrated into the walls. The Separatists had brought in their own lighting mounted on stands, which reflected somewhat eerily off the walls.

The first actual room we entered was an entrance hall that stood three floors high, with multiple doors and passageways leading off from it deeper into the structure.

The walls were covered with massive relief panels that glistened from the silvery sheen of an entirely different type of metal - it almost looked like ultra-pure platinum at first glance.

‘Mistress, please go closer to one of those panels!’ M8 begged.

I chuckled, it was easy to forget that M8 started her existence as a BD model exploration droid.

“Gonna need to drop you off, Tervho.”

He nodded “I think I can manage, thank you, Manda’lor.”

With the Blade off my back and hopping to rejoin his teammates behind me, I stepped in front one of the vast metallic relief panels.

It showed a scene of vast numbers of the alien builders working together towards a goal, but they were opposed by another faction of their own species, who seemed less in number but very strong. The upper area also had clear writing in an ideograph style based on square shape with all manner of distinct repeating patterns inside.

‘You got it, M8? I have people to revive.’

‘Yes, mistress. Thank you. I’ll begin analysis and database search, see if this civilization is on record already.’

The entire entrance hall had been converted into a forward operating base by the CIS; portable power generators, recharge points for droids, modular shelter, portable scanning equipment, analysis computers and even fabricators. Even more disturbing was the fact that they had been in the process of literally breaking down one of the metallic reliefs, using a nanodroid augmented cutter to turn it into manageable strips to feed into the fabricator.

I put aside my outrage at the desecration of history and my curiosity about just why they would do this, in favor of tending to the four Mandalorians encased in force field cages.

We took the time to this properly, Jhaveb hacking the controls and turning off power manually one by one.

It took nearly forty minutes of careful healing and the third one released was a very much alive Korkie.

It was immediately apparent that his interrogation had done the most damage. He would have the most to reveal about Duchess Satine and would be very motivated to be uncooperative. He had definitely grown since our last meeting in person, standing at least ten centimeters over me and the martial training, combined with fighting in the war… definitely agreed with his physique. Combine that with his scuffed and blaster-scored beskar’gam;  he was almost the picture of Mandalorian martial might, if on the slightly shorter side of the spectrum.

With Tervho and I both working on the secret son of the Mandalorian sovereign for half an hour, we managed to bring him around.

“Korkie? Can you hear me?” I gave him a light repetitive slap on his cheek, pushing his internal body energies in just the right way to encourage things.

His blue eyes shot open and for a moment only confusion reigned in them, then I felt the Force pulse and pull inward as he instinctively drew on it.

He winced and recognition blossomed, “Ahso-?” He visibly stopped himself. “Manda’lor Vizsla?”

I squeezed him on the shoulder, “You’re going to be fine, lieutenant. Water.”

He downed his allotment eagerly. “Ah, thank you.” He tried to sit up but stopped immediately.

‘Careful Korkie, you have badly strained abdominals and back muscles from the interrogation. I’ve started the healing, but you need to stay horizontal. Call on the Force, just like I taught you, see the damage, carefully bring more to you. That will speed things up.’

‘Yes, Master.’ He returned mentally with a slight hint of mischief.

He might be a secret apprentice, but I was not putting him in the traditional role.

‘Korkie, not your master,’ I gave him an image of me wagging my index finger at him. ‘Now as efficient it would be to have this conversation mentally, it would be too suspicious.’

“All right, LT, did you glean anything from your captors during interrogation?” I asked curiously.

“Yes. They wanted to know all my command codes, not to mention codes and layout of the Sundari palace. We were attacked because of me, they wanted me as a hostage. They knew I would be in this Blades squad aboard the Avalanche. More than likely they wanted to pressure the Duchess into abandoning the Mandalorian-Republic alliance in the war.”

“Probably,” I acknowledged, even as I was inwardly seething at the security breach this represented. It was even worse that I could do nothing about it, because this was definitely a Palpatine-Dooku plan. Mandalore, Republic Intel, the Navy and I knew which Mando squad was on which ship, so of course it would be an open book to Dooku. “The question now is, why keep you captured here among their secret excavations?”

“I have the feeling it was just improvisation, making the best of what they had in place. This is also not their main base on Raydonia. I managed to overhear the ST droid who interrogated me speaking to the commando droids, talking of another location on the planet that served in that role.”

“I see. Anything about why they were studying and desecrating this temple?”

“No, just that the metal these reliefs are made from was of great interest to them. They were pulling in more of it from deeper inside the temple, cutting and using the fabrication machine to render it into transportable ingots.”

‘Mistress! Exciting news,’ said M8. ‘There is no exact matching record of this civilization in the archives, but I did find a general instruction from the Explorations Corps. It instructs Jedi to look for certain key symbols and alien writing ideograms that do match what we are seeing in this temple.’

‘So they’ve found clues and traces of this civilization, but don’t have enough to form a coherent picture.’

‘Precisely, mistress. The Explorers are still searching for a major site for excavation. However, it seems the miserable CIS found one first! And look what they’d done to it! All this history destroyed, just for phrik!”

I had a slight record screeching moment in my head, ‘I’m sorry, M8. Did you just say, phrik?’

‘Yes, mistress! But who cares!? Phrik might be relatively rare, but this history is priceless!’

I stood and looked around me with wide eyes at dozens of giant reliefs made of the same rare metal that stood alongside beskar in the category of lightsaber and blaster resistant metal.

Only one planet at the moment in the entire galaxy had mines for the substance, which were the various moons in orbit of the gas giant Gromas, deep in CIS space. It was an order of magnitude more difficult to mine and work with than beskar, which was why it was so rare and valuable. It was such a flex to have that even Palpatine had integrated it into the hilt of his own lightsaber. The electrostaffs in use by Dooku’s magnaguard droids were phrik-plated and it was this material I had used in my earliest design of vambrace.

Whoever this civilization was, they had used phrik so casually in abundance, along with the construction of this temple, spoke volumes of their scientific prowess.

“Manda’lor?” Korkie prompted with concern, snapping me out of my introspection.

“Sorry, I’m speaking with M8 as well, concerning this temple. Every relief you see around you is made of refined, high purity phrik, which explains the Separatist interest in this place.”

Every Mando in earshot bloomed with astonishment and looked around in amazement.

“That’s amazing, though the thought of the enemy gaining such a huge amount of the material at once is very troubling,” Korkie looked around the temple from his prone position with renewed interest.

“Which is why I’m going to ask my master to get on the holo and order the Avalanche to return to Raydonia as soon as possible. This planet has just become of great strategic interest, a renewed source of phrik on our side of the fence is just what the doctor ordered. There is no way I’m going to let the enemy tear apart more of this place.”

“If phrik is naturally present here, Manda’lor,” Korkie said pointedly. “Then I can see that it would be worth rooting out the Separatists. It might be that whoever these aliens were, they were shipping it in from off-world to decorate their temple.”

He was correct, it just sucked to think that in time we might have to abandon the planet if there wasn’t enough manpower or a ship which could be devoted to the task.

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The Separatist FOB in this temple didn’t have anything to eat, except a supply of coolant grade water for some of the machinery. So I took the time to head back out of the undergrove to call in the Aurna, which M8 flew in drone mode to land nearby.

I brought a crate of food supplies back into the temple for all seven survivors, since most of them were not mobile enough to walk themselves out of the cave system yet.

They dove into the field rations with gusto, but I was mostly busy making careful scans of all the reliefs in the entrance hall.

‘At least this way some record of them will remain, just in case the worst happens, mistress.’

It was something I would do anyway without my droid intelligence’s insistence and I relished the chance to do the smallest sliver of the dream job that lay close to my heart.

Every relief panel was the expert work of an advanced culture, a snapshot into their thoughts, their history, dreams, and fears. The shape of their architecture told the story of their preferred relationship with space and time.

I chose a passageway to the right leading off the hall and continued my exploration.

It was very frustrating not being able to understand the language of the inscriptions. M8 was working on it as best she could, but needed more data and time to even begin constructing the bare bones of a lexicon. I had to make do with best guesses as I stopped by a triptych of reliefs, joined together to form a saga of events.

The aliens were definitely spacefaring and Raydonia was not their homeworld. Their depiction of the great wheel of the galaxy showed them venturing forth from somewhere in the central north sectors, beyond the Mid-Rim, but not completely in the Outer Rim.

“M8, if we were to take this depiction of the galaxy as accurate, where would their origin point be?”

“Galactic Grid Square M-3, mistress. Somewhere along the Veragi Trade Route. I can be no more accurate than a radius of 800 light years with this scale.”

She displayed her navigation analysis in my HUD.

“Do you think these radiant lines in this relief represent their hyperspace corridors? Doesn’t look like any modern map of the North. It also looks like they explored all the way to Mimban before stopping.”

“No match with modern hyper routes, with the likely amount of time between now and when this relief was made, it’s highly unlikely that we could use this as a base for rediscovering them due to stellar drift.”

The central relief showed the aliens discovering many other species and mostly greeting them in friendship, but rather frustratingly, their highly stylized depiction of those species made actually identifying them for sure rather impossible except in one case.

“They met the wookiees, maybe Chewie will have some insight.”

“Rather hard to argue against those figures being anything else, mistress,” M8 agreed.

“Any idea on how old this temple is?”

“The HK-HP sensors are not specialized for this role, mistress. If I was there in person, it would be easy. Perhaps the CIS did some of their own research into the topic, if you could interface with their computers in the FOB, we can see.”

Footsteps approached and I turned to see Korkie doing a fair job of pain suppression and internal Force control to manage a body that protested with every step.

“Lieutenant,” I nodded, keeping my attention forward, deciphering more of the visual history before me.

“Manda’lor,” he stood next to me and also looked into the three-paneled relief. “If I may ask, where are you actually?”

“The Resolute is in the Carida system.”

“Ah,” he nodded in understanding, though I could tell he had been hoping for a different answer. He shifted gears quickly, “Can you actually read this?”

“The language no, but interpreting the visual depictions and intent is entirely possible.” I put a companionable hand on his shoulder, managing a light Bond. ‘Open yourself to the Force, Korkie. Focus before you, think of the hand that made this, think of the mind behind it, what are they saying to anyone who sees it? What did they leave behind?’

He closed his eyes and I felt him doing a reasonable, if clumsy attempt to divine with the Force.

His head twitched abruptly, as he definitely got something for his trouble, ‘The being who made relief this was Force sensitive!’

‘Really? Interesting. Would you care to look at any other panel and see if that’s also the case?’

He hurried over to the other side of the hallway, holding his hand near the relief panel before actually touching the wall itself. ‘Same here, a different artist and even whoever built the temple was also Force Sensitive.’

‘Or at least, whoever built this section of the temple,” I corrected his assumption. “Go ahead and try more.’

It didn’t take much more to come to a conclusion, ‘Either all the engineers and artisans of this species were Force Sensitive or all of them were.’

It wasn’t totally unheard of, but it did narrow the possibilities. We needed much more evidence, though it was gratifying to see Korkie had the sensitivity and skill to even make the conclusion.

The rest of the temple beckoned to me, even in pure darkness I could simply use the HK-HPs holofields to light my way. However, I didn’t dare get too far from my recovering squad of Blades. The inner areas of the temple went far deeper into the ground and it was at minimum the size of the Coruscant Jedi Temple, perhaps larger.

“You find this interesting, Manda’lor?”

“Oh yes, if there wasn’t a war to fight, I’d be in the Jedi Exploration Corps.” I stepped sideways to look at the next relief and had to pretend not to notice how his attention oh so briefly wandered downward to my simulated holographic posterior. Still a young man, despite being seasoned by the war now. “And you, Lieutenant, have you found your own interests yet?”

I felt his frustrated uncertainty, “No, I mean - yes, I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve learned with the Blades, serving with them, saving lives.” He took a nervous breath. “It’s just I’ve found - nothing that truly calls to my heart, not like what you’re describing.”

“Good,” I said mildly, staring at a relief that was depicting a space battle between the aliens and another species, were those Rakatan ships? Again the stylistic choices of the artist made certainty a problem.

“Good?” he asked in astonishment.

“Lieutenant, you’re barely eighteen and have your whole life ahead of you to explore and look for that which will satisfy your spirit. If you knew right this instant, it’d be like jumping to the end of a book to read the ending and avoiding the journey there altogether.”

Were the aliens actually using the Force in the space battle directly? The depiction made it seem as if ‘wind’ was coming from their ships to blast and rend their enemies to pieces. This was in addition to contiguous ‘beams’ of energy that were directly connected to exploding enemy ships.

“I suppose that’s a fair point, Manda’lor.”

His emotions shifted and I inwardly grimaced, “Korkie,” I used his name aloud to properly gather his attention. “Recite the Litany against Fear.”

He grit his teeth and nodded, closing his eyes. “Sorry, Ahsoka, I…”

“You fear failure. You fear doing the wrong thing to court me. You fear my reaction, that I will discontinue your training.” Every word acted like a body blow to his mind, but truth was never guaranteed to be a pleasant experience. “That will only happen should you continue to fall prey to this fear. Fear is the-”

“...mindkiller. I will face my fear…” he mumbled, fighting a sudden battle with himself.

I left him to it, focusing on the star patterns of the relief and running search algorithms to see if any possible locations could be matched.

Many minutes of silence followed as I kept a peripheral awareness of Korkie’s struggles.

Eventually, I felt him triumph into an equilibrium of acceptance.

The demonstration of personal strength in turn made me feel triumph as well, but also-

Okay, yeah, had to be honest with myself… that was impressive and attractive.

“Let’s get back to the squad, lieutenant, I’m teasing myself with all this. I’d get lost in the history of this temple without a second thought.”

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“All right everyone, gather round.” The seven Mandalorian Blades were in front of me under the tall folded nacelles of the Aurna. Rearmed and helmeted from the small onboard armory. The helmets weren’t a high grade beskar and painted a generic silver, but they’d work in a pinch. “The Avalanche has been ordered back, but they aren’t due to arrive for a day at least. The question remains about what to do next. I want to first see if we can’t find the remains of the fallen. Do you have data in your beskar’gam that can help?”

“Yes, Manda’lor,” Korkie confirmed. “We can upload our flight profiles to the Aurna’s computer. It shouldn't be difficult from there, unless the local fauna haven't gotten to the bodies already.”

“Once we have that done, I trust there are no objections to finding these shabla and utterly destroying them?”

All seven chorused, “No, Manda’lor!”

“M8 is working on decoding the data from the FOB. Once we have a location we will go hunting-”

My lightsabers were lit and I sent one surging outward in an arc behind me.

The spinning red blade hit and cut through something invisible… then cut through two more invisible somethings standing right next to them.

By the time my blade had returned into my hand, I was looking at the bisected pieces of three Magnaguards that had been sneaking up on us.

The sheer idea that these large yet nimble droids could sneak at all was worrying, that they were invisible was catastrophic as I could vaguely sense the method that had been used.

“Blasters up, circle formation!”

The Blades’ astonishment were banished as trained instinct took over and they swiftly obeyed.

I walked over to the dead droids and looked down.

Their pieces were still fluttering in and out of visibility.

Even as I watched, the effect tried again but then sputtered and dissipated with wispy green smoke that dissipated.

The feeling in the Force was very familiar - the cloying, acrid sensation of ichor.

The work of a Nightsister of Dathomir.

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A/N: Oh dear. Well, there we have the Blades squad in question. Korkie is at this point an LT, who is being carefully fast tracked to climb the ranks, but there is still significant meritocracy involved with it. Ahsoka and the clans elders, wouldn't allow for anything else, despite the politics pressuring otherwise.

Have a great weekend and stay awesome!