Star Wars - Relics of the Sith
Chapter 3: The Ambush
The little incident with the bandits on planet Taruk-Nar showed two things: First, the group was now certain that they were not the only ones searching for the secrets of the Sith-temples, and second, they were vastly outnumbered and outgunned. T’Klurr felt that hiring additional personnel was too risky, but he at least wanted to ask for additional funds to get better gear and maybe upgrade the freighter. So he retreated to his quarters and contacted Master Skywalker on a secure holo channel, where he explained the situation and asked for additional funds. The Jedi-Master was quick to grant some extra money and also emphasized that they had to be very careful, since other parties were involved in this hunt for the Sith relics.
Next, T’Klurr asked Trance if she knew any shadow port in their current vicinity, where they could land unnoticed to withdraw the funds from their bank account and purchase a few items afterwards. Trance remembered a planet with a seedy port town known as “Shadow Haven” and with the Jedi’s consent she set a course.
After an effortless landing T’Klurr declared that everyone should stay on the ship to minimize trouble they could run into in such a dangerous place. Only he, accompanied by Trance since she knew her way around town, would step outside, retrieve the money and head back. The smuggler took T’Klurr to the local bank and reminded him to be extra careful, but when he withdrew several thousand credits he didn’t notice that he was being watched.
On the way back to the ship three street thugs blocked their way and demanded the recently withdrawn money at blasterpoint. T’Klurr tried to convince the thugs that he had no money, but they had seen him retrieve it at the bank so they knew he had it. So the Jedi remembered one of his master’s lessons that the force could have much influence over the weak minded. Combined with the typical Jedi gesture he told the gangsters that it wasn’t him who had the money, but another pedestrian a few meters away.
It seemed that the force was strong in him because the three thugs instantly left him alone and instead approached the other person who wasn’t exactly enthralled to give up money that he clearly didn’t have. So they shot him in the guts, took what he had and vanished into the shadows again.
T’Klurr wanted to get back to the ship as fast as possible, since he thought that was none of his business, but Trance had a different opinion on this, since that man had only been shot because of the Jedi sending the gangster to him specifically. The smuggler called the local medic-service and tried her best to stop the bleeding. With a heavy sigh T’Klurr joined her and used his force powers to stabilize the wounded until the med-unit arrived. He also slipped a few hundred credits in the victim’s pocket as compensation and even paid the medics up front.
Pissed off and not in tune with the force T’Klurr and Trance returned to the ship, packed the most needed supplies and took off. Arckess had made good use of her time and found another planet mentioned in the writings: a grim desert world named Tca-57y which technically was still within the mid-rim, but a good stretch away from any major hyperlanes so it was uninhabited and mostly forgotten.
After the bad experience with their last archaeological site Captain Wesley already boarded his B-wing starfighter, which had been fastened to the hull of the “Moon Goddess” using magnetic clamps, at the navigation point before the last hyperjump since he didn’t want to do that when they were already under enemy fire. This proved to be a wise choice as they were indeed greeted by the Imperial star destroyer “Merciless” in an orbit around Tca-57y. The imperials seemed to have expected the “Moon Goddess” as the warship moved to block their escape route while a squadron TIE-fighters were closing in on them.
What followed was an intense battle with Trance pulling every available trick out of her sleeve to evade the TIE’s blaster fire, while Prayn gunned down two of the attackers with the ship’s blaster cannon. Captain Wesley enjoyed every second of it as this was his grand show, and shine he did. No less than 9 TIE’s were blown to pieces through the superior firepower of his B-wing and he cheered at every single one of them. Meanwhile Selissa tried her best to compensate for the unavoidable damage they were taking from the hits that Trance could not evade, but the longer the fight lasted the more systems collapsed.
The last TIE-fighter, only damaged by the blaster canons of the B-wing, managed to crash into the “Moon Goddess” despite Trance’s efforts to dodge all enemy fire. This hit was severe enough to cause a hull breach and set several internal systems on fire. The hyperdrive had also been blown so their only chance was a halfway controlled crash onto the planed below. Trance asked T’Klurr to go to their starboard cargo hold and throw a crate with metal debris out of the emergency cargo purge chute. The Jedi obeyed reluctantly since he believed that he was just ordered to throw himself out of the airlock instead of just pushing a crate out with the force. When it was done, Prayn fired upon the crate setting free a large cloud of shiny metal pieces that were specifically prepped to disrupt sensory images and should help cover up their retreat.
Trance told everyone to strap in and hold on and started a steep descent. The ship rocked back and forth, and two times it almost seemed to go down in a wild spin, but somehow the young smuggler regained control and even managed a decent touchdown on the landing gear. Captain Wesley set down his B-wing right next to the “Moon Goddess” and all worked together to quickly pull a camouflage-net over the two ships.
Chapter 4: Sand and Prophecies
After they had survived the rocky landing quite well Selissa shut down all systems so nobody would be able to track them by their energy signature. Then they heard a faint groan from one of the cargo crates they had acquired at the shadow port and found a Toydarian who was pretty shaken by the space battle and subsequent atmospheric dive. He introduced himself as Tolomei and he apparently had some pretty high debts with some people at Shadow Haven so he had taken his chance to get off that planet inside one of their crates. Now he was presented with the choice to either be put back into the crate, dehydrate in the desert outside or help with the ship’s repairs. Tolomei decided to do the latter and provided good technical expertise with starship repairs.
This was direly needed as the ship was in pretty bad shape. The main hyperdrive motivator had burned out, the backup hyperdrive was damaged and the ion-drive had also suffered. Life support, scanners and other systems weredamaged, shields and weapon systems completely out of order. And lastly, the impact of the TIE-fighter had blown a hole into the hull which had to be closed up. Selissa and Tolomei immediately went to work on the ship and Trance didn’t want to leave them and her ship defenseless, so she stayed behind as well.
Arckess, T’Klurr, Prayn and Captain Wesley decided, however, that they would carry on with their mission to reach the next ancient temple. It turned out that Trance had set them down only a few kilometers away from their destination, which was still within walking distance. They took everything they found in the ship to help survive the desert heat with them and headed southeast. On their way they met several indigenous creatures, but none proved as hostile or dangerous for the well-armed group and so they could advance quickly.
Meanwhile Trance had kept a watchful eye out for trouble and after a few hours she spotted an approaching imperial shuttle. Quickly she locked up Selissa and Tolomei inside the maintenance ducts and slid herself into one of her concealed smuggling compartments so the stormtroopers who spread out and searched the whole ship couldn’t find anything. Trance was relieved to hear that they deemed the ship too damaged to ever fly again so they would not waste ammunition on destroying it any further. Then the troopers boarded their shuttle and went on searching the desert. Luckily the area around the ship was quite rocky and so they found no obvious clues in which direction they had to head next.
Trance had just taken a deep breath and opened up the maintenance ducts where the others were hidden when she heard another noise that wasn’t supposed to be there. On her way to the entrance ramp she ran into some bounty hunters that had been secretly following the imperial shuttle. Before she could call for help Trance was stunned by a blaster shot and the hunters took her away. Selissa was able to understand a piece of their conversation on the way out where they referred to their “customer”, the crime lord Reelo Baruk. Then they were gone.
In the meantime the expedition group had reached the ruins of an ancient temple that were already half-buried in the desert sand, and had started to search them for clues. The temple was spread out over a huge area and featured a hall of giant pillars, pompous archways and the remains of an inner sanctum which was missing most of its roof. In the most reclusive corner of this room where the relentless assault of the elements had had the least effect they found the entrance to an underground burial complex. The passages and tombs were riddled with traps, but their caution and Arckess’ knowledge of archaeological sites proved invaluable and so they were able to overcome them all without triggering them.
In the final burial chamber they found a huge number of hieroglyphic inscriptions, some of which were already withered and symbols were missing or indecipherable. Arckess tried to translate the lengthy text which was supposedly a report by an ancient Sith ruler named Gar Haron. In this text he praised the glory and greatness of the Sith-Empire and mocked the narrow-mindedness of the Jedi for only embracing one part of the force, the light side. At the same time he divided the Sith into two groups: Those who used the dark side only to further their own goals, and those who concentrated on gaining insight and knowledge from all aspects of the force. The fact that sometimes the acquisition of knowledge required sacrifices which the Sith, unlike the Jedi, were indeed ready and willing to make, was – according to Haron – a great strength of the Sith over the Jedi and would lead to others continuing research and utilizing the knowledge gained by those who came before.
The text then seemed to turn into a sort of prophecy of a great danger to the Sith and their accumulated knowledge, both of which could very well be destroyed if certain events came to pass. But the inscriptions also spoke of the arrival of a savior who was supposed to restore balance and keep the accumulated knowledge safe. To aid in this grave task the savior, whose name plate was illegible, would find a gift here which only he or she could obtain. There was a sarcophagus in the chamber decorated with more glyphs which indicated that the gift for the savior would be inside. The stone cover could not be moved, however, neither by hand nor with the force. But there was an indentation in the shape of a hand on the cover. Curious as she was, Arckess put her hand in the recess and the sarcophagus unlocked and could be opened.
Inside was no mummified corpse, however, but two metal cylinders with an emitter and a switch lay neatly in two exactly carved recesses. T’Klurr was greatly alarmed because he had felt the force stir within Arckess when she had put her hand into the indentation. Carefully the young Twi’lek took out the two lightsabers and activated them. With a hum the two shining blades sprung to life, but to the surprise of everyone only one had a red blade as typically wielded by Sith, and the other one was green, a more Jedi-like color. But both weapons seemed to have a certain connection to Arckess which made T’Klurr very uneasy. Since they did not want to leave the weapons behind both were put into the new, blaster-proof backpack that Arckess carried. Some more hieroglyphs seemed to point to their next destination and so they were quickly recorded before the expedition wanted to return to the ship.
Meanwhile the stormtroopers had found the temple as well and were now entering the burial chambers. Since the group had only circumvented the traps and not disarmed them the troopers ran right into them and their screams warned the expedition. The group searched the chamber for a secret door and indeed found one that led to a hidden exit in another part of the temple. That way they could avoid the rest of the troopers and escape the temple unseen.
During the whole time the two engineers had done a tremendous job fixing the “Moon Goddess”. The hull breach had been sealed, life support operated normally, the ion-drive would have enough thrust for take-off and the backup-hyperdrive was functional as well. Careful scans indicated that the star destroyer had already departed and so the path was clear. Captain Wesley again used the magnetic clamps on his B-wing to piggyback his fighter on top of the “Moon Goddess” and take over the controls of the Ghtroc-freighter, since their original pilot was no longer available.
Two weeks later they had barely made the distance that they normally would have traveled in a single day, and finally they arrived at the Ando Prime spaceport. There, Captain Wesley, Prayn, Selissa and Tolomei stayed behind to repair the ship and also install some upgrades for a nice sum of republic credits. T’Klurr had contacted Master Skywalker on their flight back to civilization and sought counsel on how to proceed with the awakening force abilities of Arckess. After a brief consideration Master Skywalker decided that it was wiser to give her training in the force and show her the way of the light side rather than leave her alone with these traits and risk her fall to the dark side. He then tasked T’Klurr with teaching Arckess in the ways of the force. The Nautolan reluctantly accepted this new responsibility for he was almost still a student himself and did not feel ready for such a challenge.
But he bowed to the will of his master and with his blessings he took Arckess to Tatooine where they could meditate and train in solitude. There they went to the old dwelling of Luke’s own late master Obi-Wan Kenobi where he had hidden all necessary tools to construct a lightsaber after he had built a new one for himself. T’Klurr and Arckess now used these tools to create her own pair of lightsabers that were attuned to the light side of the force, after the Nautolan had destroyed the two sabers found on Tca-57y. So the student and her new master spent several weeks with training and meditation until they finally felt they were ready to embark on the next part of their journey.
This time had also been prolonged by the fact that the refit of the “Moon Goddess” had taken longer than anticipated. Mainly responsible had been a small slip that had happened to Selissa during the installation of one of the missile launch tubes which had caused the detonation of one of the missile prematurely. Although it could have been much worse the fix of another hull breach and the replacement of a significant part of the starboard engineering section had taken more than just a few days. On the upside the ship now featured two missile launchers with 6 missiles on each side of the cockpit and a twin-blaster turret on the ship’s belly, as well as a ton of other improvements that would increase hit rate and survivability in their next space battle.
When the “Moon Goddess” was ready Arckess and T’Klurr were picked up from their Tatooine exile and the course was set to the last part of their journey, as Arckess had translated the last set of coordinates during her training.