5.07

"Wheeeee!!!"

Following the gleaming golden orb through the heavens, armed only with a tiny flimsiplast tube for a weapon was both exciting and fun. Sure, there was none of the danger present in hunting other quarries to send one's blood dancing in the veins but there was skill involved in navigating the treacherous terrain and the risk of stranding yourself in the middle of nowhere with no way to go forward or back was ever-present. It took either an enormous level of focus to just fly after the inviting target or just letting go entirely and relying entirely on something greater than yourself while enjoying every moment, something far too few beings in the galaxy could truly do. And yet here on Zeltros the former seemed impossible while the latter came as easily as breathing.

"When did we return to the ship?! And who turned off the compensator?"

Jestra tumbled through the room wildly, bumping into two pillows, the sofa, and the holoprojector, bed-hair already caught on a fork and a sock. It was kinda funny, so I laughed.

"We're still in the motel, cuz," I told her as I inverted course and came to a standstill above her. "You should go wash and wake up."

"That was mean," Aurra commented as Jestra sleepily made for the bathroom. The former bounty-hunter was not at all inconvenienced by her present situation, disassembling and cleaning her twin quad blasters with practiced ease despite being upside-down. Then again I'd never seen her lose her cool, not even in the direst of situations; my little practical joke barely made her raise an eyebrow.

"Eh, she'll wake up at least." With a gentle nudge against the sofa, I went after the golden orb instead. Five seconds later Jestra came out of the bathroom screaming bloody murder.

"I am going to murder you and thoroughly enjoy it," she growled, several dozen clear orbs of varying sizes spreading over the room. "Is this your idea of fun?"

"Come on, cousin, get the stick out of your ass, and feel the awesome!" I had finally caught up to the golden orb and it was quivering before me in terror as I prepared my mighty weapon. "I AM ISRAFEL, THE MIGHTY HUNTER! HEAR MY ROAR!" The transparisteel windows rattled in their frames at my Force Shout; our neighbors would hear the declaration of my glory, soundproofing, or no soundproofing. Then I speared my quarry through its core, lowered my lips to the handle of my weapon, and sucked dry its lifeblood. "Wow, this Corellian brandy is all the money," I said as I sucked the liquor through the straw. Then, with a gesture at the floating orbs of water, I pulled the nine largest of them in a tight orbit around me. "Look, Jestra! I'm Fluorine!"

"You're drunk," she informed me with a glower and a wet, still sleepy one at that. "Now turn the artificial gravity back on, we need to be on the ship by midday."

"This is no artificial gravity," I corrected her ominously, then giggled and gestured at three more floating water orbs, sending them in a loose orbit around her. "And you're just Lithium; your argument is invalid."

"Teenagers." Jestra retreated after that growled exclamation, slamming the door behind her. Aurra and I shared a look and a shrug.

We didn't get back to the Sprinkle until late afternoon.

xxxx xxxx

​

The Elom system had only been discovered a century before by the Jedi Exploration Corps and had only been given a cursory examination at first. It had only a single inhabitable planet - and a cold, arid, mountainous one at that - and no asteroid belt or gas giants. The primitive horned humanoids that lived on it closely resembled Zabraks, except for their smoother, pale red skin and leaner appearance. Several colleges in the Core had speculated they were descendants of a lost Zabrak colony, but academic curiosity was abandoned in favor of industrial interest when major deposits of Lommite were found on-planet. Similar in many ways to aluminum and titanium, the ore was also blaster-resistant and blaster-reflective and was highly valuable in the production of transparisteel, with applications in security glass, starfighter canopies, and various forms of armor.

"Are we there yet?"

Naturally, the Republic was quick to invite the planet to join for mutual defense and cooperation in the pursuit of peaceful cultural advancement and didn't exploit the native population at all. In fact, they didn't even notice there was a second sapient species on planet until seventy years after the first mining operations began. Ninety-four years after its initial discovery Elom was still a largely primitive place with no industrial or urban centers to speak of, but its natives had learned. Its sparse population of a hundred and fifty million had formed into highly professional guilds that exported Lommite and imported foodstuffs, starships, and personal weapons. Given another few decades they might become another Mandalore, and not the current, mostly-peaceful version.

"Are we there yet?"

Both Father and Grakkus had business contacts here, which was how we'd managed to track our target. To Father, Elom was just a source of materials and profits that would not be easily tracked by the Core and the Republic in general. The unusually insightful Hutt had seen deeper, however, and with the Sprinkle so close a glance at the planet was enough for the barely-dormant cold to seep through the light-side haze of Zeltros. If Nar Shaddaa was a boiling cesspit where millions of violent deaths fed the dark side through mundane, human cruelty, the power stirring beneath Elom's surface was older, more uniform, more sinister. Something darker and fouler than a Hutt's dreams dwelt in the dark corners of this world, a shadow of a bygone age. To Grakkus, Elom was the source of the occasional Sith artifact. To me, it was a gateway to places that had been quietly erased from the galaxy's archives over many generations.

"Are we there yet?" Apparently, Jestra had yet to forget our earlier session of Force-levitation, for she was still as abrasive and arbitrarily contrary as she'd been in the past week. Rolling my eyes at her, I deepened my connection to the Force, ignored the shadow of Elom for the time being, and nudged the controls just so, turning the Sprinkle towards deep space. Aurra was the better pilot by far, with Jestra a distant second, but what would follow required a level of precognition and probability manipulation neither of them could pull off.

"Are we there yet?"

A hundred and thirty-nine seconds of gliding through space later, the stars stretched into glowing lines to infinity for an infinitesimal moment between one heartbeat and the next, then every light in the cockpit died. A grey-blue speck could be seen in the distance against the backdrop of faraway stars, barely visible even to eyes bred to superhuman clarity and enhanced with the Force. If everything had gone as planned, sensors around the system had recorded the shock wave of Cronau radiation from the Sprinkle entering hyperspace, but the extremely short length of the micro-jump coupled with our powering down would have made our re-entry indistinguishable from our departure; to all observers, we would have left the system rather than micro-jumping and nobody would have a reason to look more closely until it would be far too late.

"Are we there yet?"

Aurra was already in the airlock, adding a utility belt, her quad pistols, a thin metal backpack, and a seemingly normal yet unfashionable pair of boots to her usual armored skin-suit. Jestra compromised between mobility and protection with a pilot's suit of layered armorweave, the same backpack and boots, and a carbine to her gear. I went for the latest version of armor Arkanian science had produced, the articulated cortosis-alloy chips hugging my form with the weight of comforting security. There were no boots to go with this one but built-in greaves, and the tech built into its layers meant I needed no backpack either. Finally came the helmets, narrower than those of a pilot's, with a built-in filtration system. We all checked each other for leaks and to ensure everything worked because accidents happened and asphyxiation would be both a stupid and unpleasant way to die.

xxxx xxxx

​

The cold silence of the void is less oppressive with the Force allowing one to listen to the ebb and flow of life across the Galaxy. More annoying, too; Jestra might not be able to ask if we were there yet with the enforced comm silence, but she was thinking it for all she was worth, knowing I'd pick it up. Ignoring her infantile behavior, I relaxed as I had back on Zeltros and embraced the Force. It was not quite a surrender to its guidance, as many Jedi believe is proper, yet neither was it a demand. The Force was my ally, and in alliances, both participants not just get a say but must agree and cooperate to get the best results. For a few seconds, nothing happened, the three of us floating just outside the Sprinkle's airlock. Then, for no apparent reason, the ship fell behind. It was slow at first, just a few yards per second, but we rapidly picked up speed with no feeling of acceleration until the modified YT-1000 became a distant white speck.

For what seemed like minutes we floated in the void, the vastness of space around us unchanging. For many spacers getting lost in space just in your vac-suit was the stuff of nightmares, but to me the silence, the absence of life... it was soothing. Just as back in Zeltros, I could forget the problems of the galaxy for a little while longer. If all went well, it would only be for minutes. If not, we could always abort and call the Sprinkle remotely to pick us up. As the other speck ahead of us grew larger though, we had to face a new problem:

An asteroid the size of a small village with a fortress on it as large as the Hoover dam was coming up, and we were going far too fast...