Yavin IV
A temple dig site
Hours later Jaslyn stopped and a memory of her mother intruded in the silence of her mind.
“Caught without armor? You might as well be caught without clothes. Cortosis is precious and could save your life.” Her words rang as Jaslyn looked at the speeder and opened the compartment pulling out her original pack and took out the
cortosis weave armor. The deep gray material was not as decorative as it would have been if she had stayed with the Jensaarai but that suited Jaslyn just fine. Slipping the shawl from around her waist and setting it aside Jaslyn then unbuckled the belt and buckles. She slipped out of the hooded vest clad in only her undershirt, a thin white linen that molded to her curves. Her finger trailed lightly over her sabers as she placed them on the shawl she had set aside.
Pulling on the Jensaarai armor was like putting on leather and it molded to her body like a second skin. The designs in the armor allowed for flexibility especially in the elbows, knees, under the arms as well as the groin. Pulling on a specialized utility belt Jaslyn placed her sabers at her sides and reached for the boots that went with the armor. The armor was layered and covered from neck to wrist and neck to feet. The Jensaarai from the youngest to the oldest knew the value of the armor and as they grew their armor became more complicated and layered. She grew up knowing how to make the armor and had taken years to put this together. She was proud of it and it was the least “Jedi” item she owned. She felt like it was a nod to where she had come from and a stepping point to where she was going.
Finally Jaslyn plucked up the shawl and folded it and put it in her pack; which she then put in the container in the speeder. The pull was getting insistent and almost irritating in its consistency. It would only let her ignore it for a few minutes at a time. Jaslyn rolled her eyes and drank more water and climbed back on the speeder. Kicking it into gear and again opening up her senses she turned the throttle up dodging trees and debris by trusting in the Force.
After a discussion on her not needing to kick anyone out of their pre-fab with Iizia, reassuring him she’d be happy to share, and thus not kick out Professor Megalyn Tu of the lodging she’d been at since the camp was struck, her tour began. Most of the lodgings were closer to the exterior than the interior, with about a ‘dozen’ local militiamen being paid to act as community outreach and security for the dig.
She met the cook, briefly, as they chopped, and met some of the academic staff and specialists. Sela Ramallah was as niche a celebrity as it got off Charmath, but amongst the academia of archaeology, she was learning she had something akin to rock star status. Whether happy to thank her for her investment, or happy to meet her because they knew who she was, she spent most of the next hour gladhanding.
It made her glad about the most exciting work she did, no one would ever know about. Although having that kind of notoriety did make navigating dig sites a little easier, and in this case, a lot easier. Towards the end of the tour the senior staff of the dig, not already in the temple, as they worked three shifts around the clock and only two shifts were in camp at a time or not currently working in the camp, met inside the main building with its holoprojector in the center.
The Temple of Yavin 4 came to life in light projected to a hologram, and Selene got a good idea of the progress they’d made. Iizia began the presentation:
“As you can see, we’ve spent most of the beginning of the dig getting through Imperial left-over. A lot of equipment just left, tagged for salvage and destruction by the New Republic, which is one of the reasons the government was so keen to allow us to come and do this.”
Sela thanked the graduate student who brought her a cool drink, as sweat already began to bead and work its way around the base of her hair, “Sounds like what our dreams are made out of.”
The sarcasm elicited laughter from the assembled field academics, including Iizia, short and portly as he was, his thick cheeked face held rather animated expressions as easily as most people looked bored, “Well, with the boring work of that done, we’ve moved on. We’ve taken some interesting Rebellion items, but most of the teams have begun going down as fast as the engineers will allow us.”
She saw the line of their progress, motioning to the hologram of the Temple cutaway with a free hand, “Lift shaft towards the center of the structure? Smart, more likely to be structurally sound than most of the peripheral descents.”
“And cluttered with deadlifts we’ve had to cut through to keep going down. Whatever the power system is, our engineers have had zero success in getting anything to work. Maybe they’re all Force activated, who knows?”
The assembled scholars snickered at it.
Right, like there were Force users around. Ha.“Two days ago, we reached this,” the man focused the hologram of the Temple past the prior lift shaft stoppage, “sensors discovered an adjacent tunnel, and this one doesn’t share the same metallurgy as the rest. It’s older, and shares readouts shared by other Jedi Temples in the Outer Rim around the High Republic era. Very slow work, we’ve attempted to assist the engineers as much as possible, as well as reached out to colleagues at the university. Meanwhile, we catalog what we’ve already been finding from Imperial and Rebellion, including an intriguing cache of Clone Wars era armor, but sadly our goal is the lower structures we believe are still there. There was an accident a day ago, one of the junior engineers fell, and one of our researchers assisting him passed out, unfortunately. We’re not exactly sure why.”
“Doing what you can,” Sela smiled, Selene’s mind instantly narrowing on the accident—she’d have to quietly inquire about it, careful as she went. She felt a juxtaposition of the Force, darkness and light, but in chaos, nothing resembling the natural equilibrium. “I’ll spend the evening looking through reports and poking around, before I devise a plan.”
One of the fellow senior field academics laughed, “Just gonna find a dark hole to jump down?”
“Yep,” Selene said, before taking a sip of the chilled tea, entirely serious, with more than a few people present staring at her in response.
There was a foreboding as Jaslyn drew nearer to the source of her curiosity. She saw on the ridge just above the top of the canopy the top of a structure that sent a shiver along her flesh. She knew right where it was.
Jaaaasssslllllyyyyynnn… The presence was stronger now and was so cold it burned. Jasly’s breath fogged as she maneuvered around a line of trees. It was male and steeped in the darkside. Not that it really bothered her but it was just good to be wary of things that were too far to one side or the other. Fire could warm and it could kill.
Do not listen, child. Your focus determines your reality. A warm voice that Jaslyn thought she should know but could not place from where soothed and calmed her mind. Both presences left her mind but she could still feel them. She put them out of her mind and continued toward the temple, the speeder facing the sun as it started its descent to the horizon.
The late afternoon brought her to a clearing where Jaslyn pulled up sharply as the full impact of the temple made itself known. It was old and massive and… chaotic. There was no balance here; there was an ebb and flow in the Force. Jaslyn’s eyes darted around trying to look at everything all at once. There was almost too much to focus on. Staring and just taking it in for what felt like hours but was really only minutes Jaslyn felt the tug so insistent that it made her gasp.
Throttling up the speeder Jaslyn began to see people at the temple as she got closer. She throttled down and sighed as she realized she was going to have to interact with others when all she wanted was to find what or who was at the end of the quest. There was a man who gave off emotions of irritation and discomfort; likely due to the heat and humidity. Not everyone could use the Force to keep themselves comfortable. For those with the training the environment didn’t pose as great a threat than those that didn’t have the training.
“No visitors. This area is off limits, joint venture of the Wetyin Colonial Authority and the University of Coruscant. Turn around.” The man held up his hand as Jaslyn tilted her head.
“I’m sorry but that won’t be a possibility. Let’s not make this unpleasant…” Jaslyn tapped his surface thoughts.
“Lucas.” She waved her hand.
“You will allow me to pass because I belong here.” The Force flowed through her and tapped the man’s mind. She soothed his emotions as he waved her through.
Jaslyn parked the speeder next to another heavy speeder. She looked at the people who looked at her and as she looked back at them if the puzzle didn’t fall into place she moved on. Finally she entered the main building. Jaslyn was led by the Force to a room as she tasted cold tea just as she opened the door.
“You.” Jaslyn stated as she stared at the woman with ink dark hair and blue eyes. She was pale and slender but not without being womanly.
A thousand thoughts and one entered Selene’s mind when the door opened and a voice reached out to grab her. She was partially through a sentence about the differences in atomic structure between High Republic and Late Republic Jedi architecture when that voice came, and with it brought sudden silence to the room that held Selene, and Professor Megalyn Tu, with whom she was currently sharing a lodging with, and who was inescapably perplexed at the sudden entrance and word of the newest arrival.
By the time Tu looked at Selene for an answer, the Queen of Charmath had her path forward: the twist of her lips into a crooked smile, the glint of mischief in the darkness of her eyes, and the utter ease of the mirth in the whisper of a chuckle that escaped her pale lips, “Jilted lover. Please inform security of a breach, have them raise the alarm, and ask them to question the sentry about this mistake.”
Even if Selene knew the answer to that particular one, already.
Vu was short, curly purple haired with a look of having missed a wash for the last handful of days—life in the field, after all, but there was a quickness to the manner in which the metallurgist snapped to and left the room, her eyes wide in anxiety and fear as she took a step towards the entrance in which the sudden appearing red haired woman stood, before deciding to leave through the other door.
“You scared her,” Selene said, her voice thick with gratification at the fact, even as her attention and eyes went back to the metallurgist’s reports on the small screen next to her, on the other side of the large circular room filled with desks orbiting around the holographic projector in the center, and of course, as with any dig site, a large coffee machine against one wall. “That’s…not good.”
It was a reaction to something on the screen, not of the woman, the woman whom Selene suddenly twisted on a heel to face once again, a grand smile and great width of her suddenly wide eyes opened to regard anew, “you’re about to be very popular,” wryly spoken with a dalliance of a shrug, “not that it matters. Bigger fish for the barbie, and all that. There’s a spirit in this camp…I can obfuscate myself from it as easily as I obfuscate myself from other Force users, for now, but
you and all that…bright, sparkly Light-sidedness?”
The emphasis she put on the last three words were melodical, playful, as if it were all some great game, even as she began to make her way closer to the woman, and closer again, like a predator closing the distance on entranced prey, her body’s movements so fluid, so easy, it was too easy to miss the truth her body language whispered behind every act:
Dangerous.“Sit down,” she instructed in a voice that gave a command as easily as most men breathed, motioning to the chair closest to the woman, “and tell me just who you are, and how you know the Queen of Charmath, Assistant-Dean of Xenoarchaeology, and very generous late investor to this dig, Sela ir-Ramallah Vitaal,” she paused for a beat, before adding, “the Seventh of her name. Just a simple, exceedingly wealthy, exceedingly politically connected, socially reclusive girl living out her heart’s desire of ancient things and ancient cultures as a leading scholar in her field.”
Nope. No Force using here, no sir-ee.“I don’t know you. I just heard you, felt you. I can’t explain it more than I had to be here.” Jaslyn sat down still reeling from the reaction of her world tilting on its axis. She smoothed her hair back from her face; the strands that had come loose from the braid that fell to her waist.
“Until I saw you I had the idea that I was seeing the future. Now I have no idea what is going on.” Leaning her head into her hands Jaslyn scoffed.
“Being a good person shouldn’t be laughable but you make it sound dangerous. Which has to be the biggest joke in the galaxy. I didn’t mean to frighten anyone.”Lifting her head Jaslyn smirked.
“Simple? Queen? And the Assistant-Dean of Xenoarchaeology? Does Leia even have that many titles? Well I suppose if we are trotting out names and titles Jaslyn Dayne, daughter of the Saarai-kaar. I suppose something of an equal rank?” She snarked with a grin.
Selene never did stop stepping forward. Even with each word the woman spoke, even with that grin, Selene just got closer, and closer…until the woman spoke of ‘equal rank’, to which Sela the Seventh barely, hardly, inched a smile at, instead being so close her dark, perfectly straight hair, tickled at the woman as Selene leaned down to this Jaslyn Dayne’s ear, and whispered the kind of whisper that quivered souls and left goosebumps on skin:
“…who said I was done?”
Selene’s body perked straight as a knife, her head tilting sharply to the side, like she was some dark-haired bird of prey. It was the sound of the word, she knew it, she’d heard it, “Ancient Sith word…”
Her fingers
snapped as she found her answer, and her eyes tumbled back onto the woman once more after a quick upward drift as her mind thumbed through the encyclopedia of her memory, “I read about your lot from Inquisitor records. Interesting story, if ironically humorous in a twisted way.”
What the woman said before that was even more interesting in the moment, but Selene wasn’t about to let that be tipped off at the moment—not that it mattered as the door beside the woman opened. She expected security, but instead got a stunned looking Andrejo. The Co-Director of the Dig looked stunned, pale with shock, and dizzy enough to be sick.
“…Doctor Lergo, my Co-Director…was murdered down in the shafts by one of our senior post-grads. More details as they come, security is bringing up the body and the murderer now, then they’ll deal with…well, her,” he said, looking at Jaslyn for the first, and last time, before walking back out again, as if he were simply floating through it all, too phased to be phased.
Selene simply nodded, before turning her attention back to Jaslyn, and smiling, “I do hope you came prepared for the show,” then it happened, as the façade broke and Selene came through, as intense and serious and genuine as any one soul could be, “it only gets worse from here.”
She then, quietly, reached towards her waist and turned off the safety of the blaster at her side.
In a fit of madness, or rash impulsiveness that was unusual for her in multitudes rarely seen, Selene tipped her hand, “I think the spirit brought you here. If it used me, it may know about me,” she sighed the last sentence, unsure of what it meant, and hating to be unsure of what anything meant, “and if it knows about me…”
She just trailed off, going back across the room, and returning her attention to the reports.
“Sounds like you have it all figured out and that the rest of them are all… at best along for the ride? You know better than to turn me over to security. If it gets worse than a murdered Doctor you could use my talents.” Jaslyn stood and studied the holo of the temple.
“So where do we start this little detective drama?”Jaslyn turned to the door with a look of expectation.
“I am no Xenoarchaeology major but I am observant and,” She looked back over at Sela.
“I am ready for the show. Too curious for my own good really. Spirits don’t scare me Queenie.”Stress boiled as Selene felt her thin fingers comb through her black hair, and push back, hard, against her scalp until her fingers were free, and the moment of tension was momentarily behind her. The look Selene gave the woman now was blank, like the expression of someone who’d been through enough pain to come out of the other side numb.
“Then you’re a fool. Come with me.”
Selene left out of the exit on the far side of the woman, her pace quick and her walk determined as she cut a line through the heart of the site camp, past work buildings and past communal bathing set-ups, past lodgings and make-shift kitchens, past utility and storage areas, past transport ships put to ‘bed’ and awaiting power up, past the farthest reaches of the camp and towards the very heart of the temple.
It was there that the secret lifts had been uncovered. Selene hadn’t had the time, or the heart, to tell the assembled academics that they had just been wrong: the subterranean levels they had found weren’t Jedi, they were Rebel. Her suspicion was that the adjacent shafts weren’t even lined with metal, but a mix of metals native to the moon, and stone from the same source…which made their origin far more obvious than it had any right to be.
The crowd formed a semi-circle around the hidden lift, one clearly meant to be hidden, carved out of one of the giant cylindrical support beams of the temple that had been reinforced by Rebels, hinting at its purpose. The screaming started before they even got close, but by the time they were close, several of the dig staff were either looking away, or too staring, disturbed, or in the case of a handful of them…crying. The sound of the screaming was raving madness, and the post-grad student who’d been handsome and daring and bright was now pale and howling, blood still upon his hands, still around his mouth. His arms held down by members of the security team, his trousers and sleeveless top stained, soiled.
The Co-Director, Doctor Lergo, a man Selene had attended more than a few classes and talks of, was bone white, a chunk of flesh missing from his neck, and dark red dagger shaped punctures from his neck to his navel.
“I’ve done this my entire life, and I’ve never seen this,” was the whisper in the ear from Selene to Jaslyn, the very smell of the darker woman, some mix of spice and floral, intensified by the stress of the moment and sheer closeness of their bodies.
“YOU DO NOT BELONG!”The scream came guttural and hoarse, the shoulders of the killer popping and cracking as muscle and bone shifted like serpents under a thin sheet of skin, twisting itself free from the firm grasp of militia security before throwing them free in either direction. Most worryingly to Selene, the scream came the moment the killer’s eyes, bloodshot and yellowed, set their sight on the Jensaarai.
The way it lunged and parted through the assembled crowd caught everyone unaware, and made security hesitate to shoot—what if they hit someone in the crowd? Dayne would have felt a firm shove, before hearing the roaring whine of the K-16 Bryar Pistol come to full, devastating, charge to fire its entire power source in a single shot. Selene waited the half second until the killer was nearly on them before she stepped in front of Jaslyn and fired, blood and brain and scalp and hair flying behind the charging madman, littering some of the crowd and some of the security force with it.
Yet the killer still fought to grab and claw at the woman who stood between it and the Jensaarai, forcing Selene to bend down and take the heft of the blaster pistol to bash at the remaining brain and skull of the post-grad worker until it stopped so much as twitching. A heavy sniff, and a slow stand to full height, Selene flipped her hair back behind her shoulders, and began to catch her breath. She gave the red-haired woman a single glare, before she simply walked away towards one of the communal wash areas of the camp.
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