Chapter 15 – Ossus

After almost a day of travel, they finally reached their destination and left hyperspace. Back in conventional space, they saw an orange world with patches of yellow here and here. Clouds were visible on the southern part of the planet with a blue light illuminating them.

"This is where we go? We can see the thunderstorms from up there."

Lyn was a bit worried when she saw the world they planned to settle on, it was inhospitable, to say the least, and thunderstorms seem to be a recurrent event in this world.

"Don't worry, if we can't live on it, we'll leave and the thunderstorms are a good omen for us, it can block planetary scans and load the atmosphere with electricity which makes landings more complicated. Fewer risks to be discovered for us."

Layan, in his seat, was a bit surprised by the state this world was in. He thought that after several thousand years it would have recovered more. Even if the data from the scan were perturbed by the turbulent atmosphere, he knew that this world could accommodate life but the living conditions would be harsh.

The ship entered the atmosphere of Ossus and started to shake as the atmosphere was laced with electrical storms disturbing the ships in its course.

After a short time, they finally went past the disturbance and soon reach near the surface, from the cockpit they could see the sky of the planet filled with electrical disturbance and several machines of a past era half-buried in the ground.

"Old lost technology, I already love this world."

"Me, not that much."

While Layan was enthusiastic about this world, Lyn wasn't really enthusiastic, even if this world has recovered of whatever cataclysm it went through, it was still far from being an ideal world. Looking at the information shown by the sensors on the ship, the atmosphere of this world was still radioactive, even if the levels of radiation were low.

"I'll try to find us a good place to settle in when I'll get some free time during your training. I'll go search for jedis rel…"

Layan was talking about their future course of action but stopped as he saw several antique buildings. These millennia's years old buildings were still standing even though they became damaged with all the time that went by without repairs.

"What is that?"

Lyn looked at it and saw these buildings, some were almost intact other had an entire section crumbled and on other foundations were barely visible buried under their own debris.

"What we were searching for."

These ruins seem to be an ancient city, old structures were everywhere but those still standing could be counted with one hand. He continued to fly the ship past it to see what was around and finally landed the ship atop a war-scarred when he made sure there was no indigenous population or any archeologist in the sector. The only thing he saw was unknown quadruped species that seem inoffensive to him.

He knew about Ossus being an archeological site several hundred years in the past, they even found an old lightsaber that was finally handed to a descendant of the Sunrider bloodline, but with time and his less than welcoming climate, Ossus became less frequented by the archeologic community.

"Let's sleep and tomorrow, we will use the speeder bikes to find a good place to settle in."

They began their trip by leaving Corellia then headed to Tatooine and then traveled almost for a day to Ossus, tiredness started to appear. Even if Layan was enthusiastic to explore a world almost, no one set the foot on in the last hundreds of years, he had to take Lyn well-being into account.

The two entered their respective quarters after wishing a good night. Layan soon fell sound asleep but the same couldn't be said about Lyn. She couldn't sleep, she was turning and returning in her bed, and when she was falling asleep a flash showing her parent's death came to her mind. This event and her short time as a slave left a trauma in her psyche.

Previously, she was sleeping with the girls when they were still together, but now she was alone with her anguishes. After more than an hour during which she couldn't sleep even for a second, she raised from her bed and headed toward the double bedroom made for himself located beside the smallest hold.

She pressed the button at his door which emitted a light sound on the other side, but Layan already detected her at his door. During his time as a leader of a group of insurgents against the Empire, he was used to being on his guard, particularly while sleeping, the slight sound of her bare footsteps on the ship floor woke him up even before she reached the door.

"Trouble sleeping?"

He opened the door and saw her usually beautiful sapphire color eyes now being bloodshot and knew what was going on. After he was freed from slavery and taken in by the bandit's group after his escape, he had recurring nightmares about his family or sometimes memories came to his mind like the image of his brother giving a headbutt to a spike to end his own life.

"Huh… Yeah."

"Come inside. With your training and the improvements in your abilities, your nightmares will slowly disappear don't worry."

In his case, what makes his nightmare disappear was training to shoot with a blaster and focus all his attention on building or hacking droids and informatics systems. Nightmares are often caused by discomfort or fear, sensing yourself becoming more powerful and confident is a good way to fight it.

Each of two slept at an edge of the bed. Lyn was a bit shameful to ask him this, showing a defect to her master, but she knew that otherwise, she would be unable to sleep. Layan, on the other hand, was contemplating on a way to take care of her trauma, master Shaak Ti that Ossus had a crystal cave from what was recorded in the archives. This cave wasn't only a crystal cave, a place where crystals were abundant but also the place where padawans were taking their trials in the past.

(It reminds me of Dagobah, but I can't take her here. I don't know where it is and the Jedi neither so that cave may have fallen down on itself or at the least the entrance, and Lyn would be unable to support it with her current skills.)

What you see in this type of place can be either an answer to an interrogation, fear or something else the force wants to show you, but from Layan memories of his visit of Dagobah cave, it can be a dangerous experience. Someone without any training like Lyn may suffer after-effects.

A few minutes later, Lyn's breathing became lighter, she finally fell asleep. Layan smile and closed his eyes, doing the same.

They were awakened in the middle of the night by T3, banging against their door and beeping like crazy. The droid appeared to be freaked out if a droid could be.

Layan rise from the bed and put his lightsaber at his waist before running out of the room where he saw the droid, letting behind him a lost and drowsy Lyn. T3 was running in a circle while beeping.

"Calm down T3, tell me what happened."

"Beep. Beep. Beep."

The droid started to express himself using binary, a set of beeps and whistles put together to create something resembling a sentence. As the droid continued to speak, Layan expression became darker, because if the droid was right something was hiding to his sense and he had absolutely no idea.

Lyn finally arrived and watched as Layan was listening to the frightened droid. The wind was whistling, and torrential rain was heard hitting the hull of the ship.

"Lyn go to the turret and try to find something out there. If it appears to be hostile, shoot it down. I'll go see outside."

He headed toward the boarding ramp and pressed the button to set it down. Once the ramp down, he could see the torrential rain falling which made the ground muddy. It was now the middle of the night on Ossus, and the two moons were barely giving any light.

Out of the ship, he tried to feel something around him, a presence or something but the only thing he could feel was the quadruped species native of the planet. His silver bladed lightsaber was on giving him a bit of light adding to that of the ship that he ordered T3 to set on before going down.

Using the com-link at his wrist, he contacted Lyn that was waiting inside one of the turrets.

"Shoot several rounds in all the direction, I want to see if there is really something or if I have to repair T3."

The young girl did so and fired a few rounds in all the directions, adding to the destruction already omnipresent on the planet.

"Stop."

As Lyn stopped shooting, he heard something running away, it was fortunate that he could improve his sense with the force because the sound of the rain was so strong that otherwise, he couldn't have heard the runaways.

"Interesting, there really is something able to hide to my sense in this world. From the sounds it made while running away, it is bipedal."

"What could it be?"

Lyn answered via the com-link as she was surprised by Layan's statement.

"I don't know maybe an animal, some rare species can feel the force and use it instinctively, using the force naturally they could have developed an ability similar to force stealth like a predator hiding his presence to his prey."

"What do we do?"

"We go back to sleep. T3 will stay on alert and command the turrets. I will active the MagnaGuards to keep watch outside."