Chapter Text
Chapter 4 - Raxus
The low hum of the hyperspace engine carried her to sleep as soon as she left Nar Shaddaa, a bulletin arrived on board from the Mirialan minister who’d chased her from the planet. Swirling memories and notions of love blended with feelings of anguish and guilt at seeing the Minister’s statement at the murder and death of his daughter. Even a call to the New Republic’s rekindling Jedi Order was placed during the investigation. Kreia coiled herself to sleep in a spare cabin aboard the shuttle, her twin braids she wrapped still dangled past her ears. She woke up during the arrival to the Raxus system, catching the sight of her own face in the window looking out into space, she marvelled at her youthful body. The tight black suit jacket and trousers still appeared unblemished after the flight from Nar Shaddaa but she realised it wouldn’t take the authorities long to dispense some kind of image to circulate the nearby worlds.
As the transport arrived at one of the orbital residential platforms, Kreia looked around and saw the scavengers and haulers moving around. The transport she’d just ridden was filled with families coming to see their loved ones. Feelings of loss stemmed from the most recent addition to the pool of consumed energy. She quieted them, focusing her attention on the sight past the hanger, the desolation on Raxus’ surface, marred by wreckage of ships. The design of which were unlike anything she’d seen before, yet some were strangely similar.
“You here for family or to work?” A bumpkin voice asked her, standing by her side with a small datapad. His face was masked by black soot and the only unmarred skin was the large circles around his eyes from the goggles he wore to protect his eyes on the large melting pot world of scrap.
“I’m just passing through… Can you advise me please… That ship there…” Kreia pointed one out, a former imperial star destroyer, broken into three segments across a large hillock of metal and ruined craft.
“That’s a Star Destroyer… You never seen one before?” He asked her, she turned to face him. He was a large creature, orange skin in an orange jumpsuit wearing a singed brown cloak around his body. He had a second pair of arms that gripped his hips while the other pair held the datapad to discuss the ship with her.
“Never… It… reminds me on an Old Republic Sith Battle Cruiser…” She said, her memories darting back to flashes from an old war between the Sith and the Republic, the near extinction of the Jedi order… the Mandalorian Wars…
“Good eye… the design of the Venator class starship during the Clone Wars was modelled after some designs taken from the Old Republic… Efficient design, more manoeuvrable and can hold a larger crew compliment… Why change what ain’t broken… I guess. At least until the New Republic scrapped them in favour of the new Mon Cal freighters.” The bumpkin voice pulled up an image of a large silver coloured ship, the bow contained the main bridge but a long narrow corridor like design led to the stern with a descending spire. It was odd… but it felt newer to her to here the worlds like Venator or Mon Cal.
“I’d like to go down there… To examine the ship.” Kreia said, offering the man a small pile of credits she’d taken from a dresser in Meena’s quarters. “And one of your robes… if you’d be kind.”
He looked her up and down, surprised by a strange aura the woman exuded, he felt compelled to believe that he should take her to the surface and gestured behind him to a small skiff like transport that was waiting for another work crew.
Kreia closed her eyes and saw the powerful spirits emanating around her, some more bright and others dull, the hues of their souls and energies in the living force more often than not at odds with themselves. The more she came to understand and recall her own powers, the more she looked around the galaxy and saw the balance was carefully maintained… but it was still precarious. A dark force loomed that threatened to unbalance it again… She never cared much for notions of darkness or light… simply survival. In the past she’d tried to maintain the balance but making others aware that too much of one will cause the galaxy at large to either burn itself into oblivion… or stagnate into complacency. She didn’t know the context for any of these beliefs, she just knew them, in her mind that they were hers.
The large orange skinned, four-handed alien guided her to the transport, a small crew of scavengers also waited on board and they welcomed their captain on with his guest. He pulled a spare long brown hooded robe from a hook on the cabin wall and handed it to her with a smile.
“You new!?” one of the human crew called to her, moving closer but not sitting directly next to her. The volume a necessary addition due to the energy of the thrusting engines starting up to take the crew down to the surface.
“Just a visitor.” She said, a sly and knowing smile as she kept her dark eyes closed to not draw too much attention to them. The young man, she saw, was a dull blue light. She knew from this that he was kind, compassionate but there was a violence to him… a darkness that he masked with his good deeds.
“AJ! Stop bothering the lady…” Another of the humans called to him and he moved back down a seat towards them.
“No… I’m sorry. I should try to be more approachable.” Kreia said, instead allowing herself to move towards the group, opening her eyes and returning them to the deep blue they had been.
She sat in a strange social circle of humans, all returning to work on the planet below to continue breaking apart a small cargo transport that had recently resurfaced. It wasn’t an Imperial design, as they showed her a holo image and the detailed layout. It had been buried on this planet below the accumulated rubble and ruin for almost two centuries.
“It’s a Yinxi ship...” Kreia pointed out as the crew pondered the design being nothing they’d seen before or since. “… They were a race of powerful force sensitive quadrupeds…” Kreia continued.
“You must be some kind of xenoarchaeologist, no-one we’ve sent the specs to has been able to tell us anything like that…” One of the additional human crew sat opposite Kreia recalled and gestured to another of the crew to approach and listen as Kreia looked over the ship in more detail.
“Oh… no… Clearly they’ve changed since then. In the time of the Old Republic the Yinxi were thralls of the Sith Empire, they were corrupted and used as siphons and channels. Their blood was said to be more valuable to their archaic rituals than Kyber…” Kreia recalled, remembering a strange facility on an old Sith world which bled the creatures for their supplies before culling them.
“Wow… So you must be from Coruscant… or Tython? It’s been a long long time since anyone with any knowledge of the Force or the Jedi or the Sith was even allowed to say the words…” AJ, the initial introducer interjected. Strange words arose in her mind around the planets he mentioned. Coruscant was familiar but Tython… was new.
“History isn’t for storing in books, it’s for knowing, learning… Using the past to change the future.” Kreia continued, reciting an old lecture in her mind… this wasn’t one of her own memories though… it was something melded into her blood…
“Wiser words…” The captain said as he returned from the co*ckpit. He’d placed the shuttle on autopilot and had been listening in from his seat up front.
“Reckon we’ll find some old Sith stuff on board Cap?” Another of the humans asked with a wide smile, clearly interested in the potential profit that would bring to them all.
“I hope not. With all the New Republic sh*t going out about anything Sith or to do with those Inquisitors… I don’t want anything to do with it…” The captain said, scratching his head with one of his four arms and sitting next to Kreia.
“We’ll arrive at the starboard fuselage… We’ll move off a few kilometres to our breaker, do our job and come back for you? Unless you can find your way to us before we’re done?” he asked her, holding up a small holo display of a map of the immediate area, the distance between the ship she was drawn to and the small Yinxi ship they were hoping to salvage.
“That’s acceptable to me… I will be in contact if there is anything else you can aid me with… Thank you captain.” She replied, nodding her head and pulling the hood over it as the crew all whispered to each other behind her. She moved back to her solitary spot away from the crew and closed her eyes to meditate for the rest of the journey.
“There’s no way…”
“She’s gotta be a Jedi…”
“Maybe she’s the other one…”
“Nah… she’s too pretty to be evil…”
“Keep it in your pants Slimeball…”
“Oh come off it Ang… you like the look of her too… I can tell.”
“What’s a nice girl like that doing on our sh*thole…”
“Hold on to your hats kids… We’ll be stopping off on the ISD Ravager and moving on to our own quarry…” A call came through from the co*ckpit, the loud abrasive voice of the captain as he raised his voice.
Kreia opened her eyes to find one of the human crew getting ready to open one of the side doors, watching her with curiosity. She stood with no discernible trouble as the rest of the crew seemingly fell around the space due to the jostling of the transport.
Once the ship arrived at just a few feet from the outer hull of the star destroyer, Kreia took in the sight and smell that arrived as the door opened. The smell of sulphur and melting metals and plasteel filled the atmosphere, the noise of collapsing metals scraping against each other. The heat immediately became more unbearable and the winds carried small clusters of smoke and ash. She shielded her mouth and departed with a step, bidding the crew goodbye with a small wave with one hand and watching the ship leave. She took a moment to observe her immediate surroundings, the sudden horizon was nothing but destroyed cruisers, ships and small transports. Some bore insignias faintly reminiscent of that belonging to the Old Republic, others a sharp cornered hexagonal pattern with a spoked cog inside. This one became more prevalent as Kreia found a small entry way along the dorsal plates and dropped in to investigate. She felt a sudden draw to the rear of the ship, the command deck, she’d assumed would be in the tall broken section with a large ball structure adorning the top.
As she moved through it, she heard small echoes through the force. Voices of soldiers, men and women loyal to the Empire of a Palpatine. Loud alarm sirens sounding a battle alert. The sounds of blaster fire, small arms in the corridors and small plasma burns scorched into the surrounding walls told her the story she didn’t need repeated. The ship was boarded, attacked and taken by soldiers of a resistant force, Palpatine’s Empire had fallen to a smaller force… The ebbs and flows of History repeated, she thought, the Jedi fall and the Sith rise… then vice versa. She wondered what ebb or flow the galaxy was currently in, recalling the fall of the Galactic Empire was filled with rumours in Meena’s datapad detailing the horrific order bringing weaponry the Rebellion sought to destroy over a moon called Endor.
As she moved through the corridors, finding tall hallways that were once connected by turbolifts and hangers that were once filled with pilots and small fighter craft, she remembered a point from her own past. The ship reminded her of other cruisers in the time of the Old Republic, battles in ships where the Sith sent apprentices to board to find Jedi Masters armed with force techniques that could throw the balance in one side’s favour with the power of belief in their victory, that could fill one side with hope. She allowed herself to feel the force around this ship, to gauge balance this particular ship fell over. She felt a struggle, dark versus light, like the loyalty of the those in service to the Empire had waned in favour of those who believed the Empire was wrong… She saw a moment in the history of the ship as she walked towards the command deck along the fallen superstructure.
“Run! Run!”
“Seal the bulkheads… the Rebels have taken levels fourteen through thirty…”
“How…?”
“They’re being led by a Jedi…”
“Jedi!? There’s no such thing… Stand firm!”
Kreia paused and watched as the history unfolded, armoured men in white scorch marked unform designs fell to their knees in combat ready positions as one man, in a grey coat and short brimmed hat took up a standing command position behind them, a blaster raised at the bulkhead at the far end of the corridor.
“Is it him?”
“Quiet!”
“Is it the assassin who killed the Emperor!?”
“The Emperor is not dead Private!”
“But is it him!?”
Kreia watched the spectres of the past bicker and argue with their leader, an officer who trembled nervously quick to debunk the notion their Emperor was dead.
She watched as the spectres fled, the shape of the bulkhead didn’t change for her as she could only see the living force recreate the events of the past. One of the first soldiers fired but the blaster shot was immediately redirected towards him. A light ghostly shade entered the corridor from the far side, his aura was unmistakeably that of a Jedi. He wielded a blue lightsabre, at least in the shade, his hair was longer and his face stoic. Kreia saw the refusal of the Jedi to change their lightsaber forms, recognising it immediately as Form two.
One by one the spectres of the troopers, she herself was familiar with fell into pieces. The Jedi tried to disarm, separating the soldiers from their weapons and using the force to pull them into the walls and knock them unconscious. The officer continued firing his weapon until the last moment, the Jedi clutched his hand and pulled the blaster pistol out of it with some force.
“You can’t take the ship! The self destruction protocols will break us apart before I allow rebel filth like you to take the Ravager…”
“One less ship in service to the Empire? That’s fine by me…”
The Jedi threw the blaster away behind him, pulling the sabre to his front and stabbing the officer through the stomach with it before carrying on towards the bridge.
Kreia attempted to follow the shade but found no further sign of it as she too arrived on the command deck. A long narrow catwalk rose into view, two sunken departments with terminals at either side of the walkway. Large viewing windows covered and laid with soot and ash and dust, their view blocked by the deluge.
“Certainly sleeker…” Kreia said under her breath to herself. A sudden disturbance behind her drew her attention. As she turned, she found nothing. She retreated into one of the sunken pits by the side of the main bridge. She closed her eyes and through the force discerned three individuals further down the ship’s misshapen turbolifts.
“Someone tripped the sensor…” A masked voice said, the tone and mechanical sound of it said a rebreather was worn by the speaker.
“Who the f*ck would come here? I thought we had a deal for the scavengers to leave the ship alone.” Another voice arose and Kreia continued to track the faint hues of their souls through the force as they arrived at the large doorway at the entrance to the bridge.
“Check the Captain’s quarters… if it’s Imps here to reclaim their property we need to end them quick…” The largest of the three guards addressed the other two. They both left in a hurry through another doorway in the wall just behind the bridge entrance, a small office like room was found within. A desk with the faint feeling of something else… more present in the force than these people.
“I know you’re still here…! I can smell you.” The thug said with a smile to his face. “You smell like money… and… blood… Come out… maybe we can make a deal!?” He continued, pulling a small vibroknife from his belt, the singing vibrations of the metal blade locked his position for Kreia as she opened her eyes, reaching a hand out towards one of the terminals, she pressed a still glinting button on the console and in a second, the main illuminations of the room went dark and the room was left in next to complete darkness.
“Pol! Drexyl! Get out here!” The large thug called to his compatriots as he turned a small flashlight device on his shoulder on. Kreia was now hugging a large exposed metal beam clutching the ceiling of the bridge, looking down she moved into position behind the last of the three.
“What is it?” A grinding voice sounded below her, the voice of the woman it belonged to.
“I don’t know… lights on…” The centre figure, another male, stepped forward and left too great of a distance between himself and the guard behind him. Kreia fell with no noise to the floor of the bridge, not disturbing the settle dust and moved up behind the woman, holding her head in both hands and tearing her hands in opposite directions. The ensuing viscera littered the floor as both of the other guards heard the flesh and bone of their colleague tear behind them but quickly the corpse vanished into the darkness.
A barrage of blaster fire in her direction acted like strobe lighting, the lead and largest of the guards focused his fire, directing his other underling forwards into the shadows as the fire stopped.
Aiming his blaster high, the smaller of the two approached the darkness and in a split second found himself pulled into on the cusp of the pit behind him, the strap of his blaster rifle holding his neck in place and with a single violent snap his head was removed from his body.
“Come out here ghosty! I got body mods made of duranium alloys… You can’t break my bones…” The last called out, looking down into the pit to find the bleeding decapitated head of his colleague slowly rolling in the dusty against a black leather chair below.
As he turned, spinning on the spot, he found his quarry. The tight form fitting suit of hugging the figure of a slender young woman with twin braids adorning the sides of her head down to her clavicle. He didn’t fire, he just aimed his rifle in her direction.
“What is it you are guarding here…?” Kreia asked, a motion in the force emanating from a locked cabinet in the captains quarters. “Whatever it is, it is beyond you…”
She taunted him.
“We’re under orders… From the New Republic and Reborn Jedi Order to not allow the weapon in that cabinet to fall into Imperial hands… Try… and we will… hngh!!!” He startled as he felt his limbs pull in opposite directions. Kreia turned towards him, holding a single hand raised in his direction, open palm up and levitating the target a metre from the bridge decking.
“A weapon… Why not seize it… Use it for yourselves?” She asked, watching as the man struggled against the full power of the force holding him in place, the pressure on his limbs and joints forcing him to scream in anguish as the skin of his body was held together only by the metal cybernetic additions holding his skeleton together.
“We… can’t… open it…” He strained, the flesh of his arms coming undone with a solid guttural scream as she pulled them to opposite sides of the room.
“Why not…?” She asked again, continuing the interrogation as though she weren’t tearing this large humanoid alien to shreds with her mind.
“It’s locked… to the navicomputer… The safe can only… be opened… At precise coordinates! PLEASE PLEASE!?” He screamed for assistance, pleading for mercy as his legs began to tear at the joins to his torso.
“Fascinating… But the ship is broken… it cannot go anywhere… why are you still guarding it…?” She continued asking as the colour of his blood filled the joins where his limbs fought to continue being part of the whole.
She relented for a moment, hoping the ease in pain might give him some hope at a reprieve.
“We were told… someone would turn up… eventually… who could open it… And we had to do… anything to stop them…” He breathed in and out raggedly his arguing muscles twitching as the metallic undertones of his bones shone through from the accompanying shoulder torches of his fallen comrades.
“Not only a weapon… an inaccessible weapon that is too dangerous to even exist… Even more fascinating. Are there more of your kind here, more sentinels to this power?” She said, suddenly recalling her old voice, the worn dry scowling and scathing remarks she’d make to her fellow travellers through space.
As she relented, she watched in surprise as the metal bones of the man seemed to coil around the hilt of the blaster pistol at his belt. With a single gesture, she pulled the flesh from that arm stirring in the man unimaginable pain that brought his head to a sweaty and delirious mess. If he had comrades, they would have appeared by now.
“No… But if we don’t report… Stronger than us… are going to come for you… Witch, the Jedi will come for you!!” He called out, the metallic skeletal structure reaching for the blaster pistol still and managing a single shot in her direction. It never reached it’s mark however, it simply glazed off the dust covered reflective black tiled floor. She tilted her head, her eyes darker than the deepest lightless pits of the ship.
“Young one… Jedi, Sith… Even without your vaunted weapon, I’m beyond and above such banal contradictive ideologies… I simply want to… return home.” Kreia said with a half-smile. She lowered the hand that held the man in place, he remained floating a metre from the floor of the bridge. Her focus turned to the bow of the starship. Reaching into the force, she felt the cold metal compartments of the wreckage and saw how they fit together.
“What are you doing!?” The suspended man behind her screamed as she reached out her hands, open palm upwards once more and the entire structure they had been guarding began to tremble and shake and jostle. The corpses on the floor, the liquid pooling under his floating feet began to tilt and shake. Kreia closed her eyes and focused.
The metal joins and plates surrounding the ship on the surface began to pull together as though magnetized, the three broken portions of the star destroyer began to coalesce, mashing together like puzzle pieces that don’t fit.
The captain and the salvage crew returned to the surface level of Raxus as the metal pile below them began to tremble and shake. The sight that greeted them was the fragmented, and shedding shell of a star destroyer, a ship they had barely just seen collapsed beyond repair, return to it’s former shape. It wasn’t a perfect fit back together but it was slowly beginning to find its way to being almost correct. Missing portions were patched with other ships from the ground below. Casting her mind to the crew themselves, she a sudden tearing into the infrastructure of the Yinxi ship scared the salvagers as streams of red fluid began to pour from the walls. The smell was horrific, causing the captain himself and his crew to gag and vomit. The fluid being pulled smelt of death and horror and viscera but they’d not even seen a sign of a containment vessel in the ship as they were pulling it apart. The fluid flew quickly towards the Ravager.
Back on the bridge, the semi stable cybernetic guard was still watching in terror and horror as Kreia began to point the recollected star destroyer towards the sky and stars. Aiming it directly at the orbital platform inhabited by the families and other salvage and scrap crews.
As Kreia lowered her hands, the flurry of fluid that filled the Yinxi ship, called to her by the force began to work its way into the decks of the Ravager and as she paused to turn to the captive guard the lights returned and all the terminals around the bridge suddenly burst into illumination and function. The viewing windows incinerated the scum and grime on the outside and the ship began to follow a heading, unsaid and unknown.
“You’re… insane! You pulled the ship back out of the grave to scrap it against the platform!?” The captive man screamed as he saw the quickly approaching mass of metal and spires in front of him.
“I will return home, no matter what… is in my way.” Kreia said turning a hand towards the bow of the ship, reached into the force and saw her path forwards. With a quickly building parade and dance of lights in front of them, the ship darted forwards into hyperspace, the impact left behind was unknowable… to all except the single crew of salvagers and scrappers on the surface of Raxus.
They watched in horror, sobbing in disgust as the floating orbital platform erupted into a fiery collapsing pile of metal and glass and… life.
“How did she…?” The captain said, tears welling in his eyes, believing in his heart that the woman he brought to the Ravager was responsible for this. Watching as the slowly descending space structure began to burn falling in orbit as it neared the lava pits, sulphuric acid wells and molten metal below.
In Hyperspace, Kreia felt the suffering through the force and fed on it, the dying hundreds of men, women and children, feeding the absence inside of her through hyperspace. The suffering filled the hollow and she knew… she was going in the right direction.
“You’re a monster…” The captive man still hung in above the bridge whispered under his breath, feeling the air leave him.
She turned on her heels and pulled the hood of her cloak down around her shoulders, raising a single hand towards him and clutching the air inside in one quick violent movement. The man’s body fell to the decking, the cybernetic skeleton inside of him remained in place, no remaining occupant. She dropped it to the decking and allowed it to fall backwards into pile of dismembered and severed flesh.
“I’m a clone… of a monster.”
