5.08

Elom system, early 26 BBY

Time seemed to slow down as the partly mined-out meteor came into view, a massive edifice of blue-grey metal and rock looming ominously on its flattened surface. It was like a fortress had been ripped out of some terrestrial world along with its surrounding grounds then flung into the void of space. Despite pulling heavily on the Force to decelerate us now, the curving walls, domed roof, and single tower of the fortress came closer far too quickly for comfort. Aurra's and Jestra's inertia was already pulling against my telekinetic grip even as I slowed down... so I stopped doing so. Pushing against them instead I forced them to a near-stop at the cost of being flung forward faster, and slightly off-course.

Laughing at Jestra's yelp at the sudden deceleration, I rode the currents of the Force in a wild tumble, stabilizing when going through the fortress' atmospheric shield hit me like a giant's fist. A split second later I crashed feet-first against the communication antenna on top of the side tower. Phrik-cortosis laminate met permacrete at half the speed of sound; the permacrete lost. The antenna was sheared off its base with the scream of shattering ceramics and tearing metal; my legs were thoroughly bruised and probably got hairline fractures despite armor and Force protection at the sound of "Fucking OW!"

"Excellent landing, kid," Aurra commented over the comms as she lightly touched the ground while Jestra face-planted at almost bruising velocity. Nice of her to let me know the target's ability to overhear us or call for help had been thoroughly wrecked by breaking comm silence.

"Why didn't you tell Jestra to use her boots?" I asked, activating my own as I tumbled through space. One of the windfalls of hiring Aurra was her black market contacts, especially those dealing in illegal but highly useful tech. While the ex bounty hunter didn't care for this particular trinket, I had to agree with her colleague and former boss: miniature ion thrusters in one's boots were awesome. It took about five seconds to stop spinning, and with the fortress having no way to call for reinforcements now I returned to the others at a leisurely pace, catching my breath in the meantime.

"Told her to read the manual," Aurra shot back over my cousin's swearing. "She didn't."

"I'll get both of you schuttas for this!" the last member of the party swore as we got back together. "Kriff... should have worn better armor. Why are we at the edge of Wild Space in some weird fortress in the middle of nowhere?" She stretched, then looked critically at the ominously towering walls. "Who builds a fortress in Wild Space and paints it blue, anyway?"

"Religious nutjobs, obviously." Nobody accosted us as we walked up to the main gate of the fortress, a portal wide enough to accommodate small freighters that were barred by a single, massive durasteel plate. I activated Serifa Altunen's white lightsaber and thrust at the portal; the blade bounced with a shower of sparks. "Hmm... magnetically sealed. Does anyone have an aurodium coin? Heads, we blast through with the Sprinkle's big guns. Tails, we cut through the wall."

"Or - and here's a novel idea - you two stop blowing things up and let me do things properly," Jestra grumbled. Then she took out of her utility belt the unholy offspring of a thumb drive and a railroad spike and started fiddling with the gate's control panel. A minute later she'd proven that her definition of doing things properly included "gutting thoroughly" and "performing arcane hacking rituals on its corpse".

"Gotcha! Forgot to update to the newest Bothan standard, didn't you?" The gate answered by deactivating the magnetic sealing and opening up; Jestra's presence in the Force grew twisted until she was alarmingly close to falling to the Smug Side. "Aren't you two coming?" she asked and bounced through, taking full advantage of the unusually low artificial gravity.

Aurra and I exchanged looks.

"Should we be worried she was sweet-talking and petting the control panel while gutting it?"

We shrugged and followed in the footsteps of my not so sane cousin.

xxxx xxxx

​

"I'm going to invent new forms of torture to practice on you two!" Jestra's shout came from behind a bulky security droid she was using as cover as a trio of floating remotes tried to flank her.

"Sorry cousin," I lied as I threw a security droid at the nearest wall with the Force while leaping over a laser beam sweeping my side of the chamber at knee height. At the apex of my leap, I activated the thrusters in my boots to float in place, then ripped out the laser emplacement telekinetically before it could hide behind a revolving panel. "I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am!" The security droid hit the wall hard... then was impaled on several sharp spikes that sprung out of its point of impact.

"Annoying," was Aurra's monolectic contribution to the conversation. In her defense, she had to keep dodging a pair of three-foot, floating, spinning razor discs. Shooting them brought minimal results; they might not be conventionally armed but they had enough armor to mostly shrug off her quad blasters.

"This is the third death trap you get us into, cousin," Jestra whines as her security droid flattens one of the hostile remotes under its durasteel fist, proving Jestra's combat-hacking actually works, no matter how ridiculous it sounds. Too bad three more flies out of holes in the ceiling. "Sing, switch!" She then shoots the floating razor discs with her carbine, Aurra doing the same to the more numerous but unarmored remotes. All their targets either fizzle and drop or explode into pieces.

"Third?! You got us into that political mess in Kuat, remember?" I parry multiple shots from three more security droids advancing towards my position. A split-second later they seem to stand still as I Force-speed towards them, bisect the first, and Force-push the pieces into the second just so. Said another droid is knocked sideways... straight into a pit trap hidden by the hologram of the continuous floor. "Besides, this is just FUN!!!" My last word turns into a screaming shockwave that stuns the last droid just long enough for Aurra to shoot it full of holes.

"Liar!" Jestra accuses in the momentary lull of action. "You're up to something. You got a message from the Old Man while we were in Zeltros."

"Don't be ridiculous, Father is not that old-"

"He's seventy-two!" For some reason, my cousin wasn't having as much fun. Maybe she got up on the wrong side of the bed? "And don't change the subject! What are we really here for?"

"The message was confirmation of some info I'd thought was unreliable," I admitted with a small smile. "Quite a pleasant surprise, really. I'd say more, but extra fun just arrived."

"Cousins are the worst," my cousin shot back as a contingent of assassin droids came up through the corridor ahead, the Force warning me of more traps getting activated.

xxxx xxxx

​

"You were right, this is as fun as Name Day," Jestra said in an awed whisper, eyes wide as they tried to take in the hundreds of weapons, gadgets, tools, armors, and data cubes proudly displayed in stransparisteel cases and elaborate altars all over the fortresses' core chamber. "This... this is like a museum full of awesome!"

"See? Your baby cousin is always right," I grunted with some effort. "Maybe you-"

"Not a museum," Aurra interrupted me, eyes narrowed. "Trophy hall."

"You're right," Jestra agreed. "The weapons and armor have seen use, some of them recent. And the data cubes and electronic spikes are all the most expensive of their time."

"That's all very good." I told them. "Now could you-"

"...and the way they're arranged, not by type or even era, but as equipment sets for interesting jobs."

"Assassins. Bounty Hunters. Spies," Aurra added with a nod.

"Yes... I see it now," Jestra agreed. "A hall of trophies for someone who hunts really dangerous people." She turned around, her eyes fixed on my prone form. "People like us. What in all the Corellian Hells is this?"

"Can't you get me off the ground first?" I asked, struggling against the tractor beam pressing me down. As traps went it wasn't immediately lethal, but it had no access point to hack, no bonds or walls to cut through, and its generator was built into the very solid ceiling, beyond my ability to damage while sprawled face-down.

"No, because then you won't explain bantha poodoo," my very annoying cousin doubled down. "Now spill."

"Fine!" I tried to cross my arms and failed, which was bullshit. "The message was about Oo'oob the Apostate, a Gigoran Jedi that was cast out of the Order after the Stark War. Strangely enough, that conflict was named the Corsair Wars in some academic circles."

"Get to the point!"

"Oo'oob was cast out of the Order. Father just confirmed he was quietly and indirectly purged as well." And didn't that have some interesting implications where the Council of First Knowledge was concerned? "Specifically, he was taken out by religious hunters that keep shrines with their trophies deep in the Outer Rim."

"This fortress is a shrine, then?" Jestra wondered, frowning pensively. "Why here though? Elom might be remote, but it's not so obscure that such a place would pass without notice. And why would we care, beyond your battle mania? Rare as these relics might be, buying them would be pocket change for House Andrim."

"You'd be surprised." I got comfortable, banishing my annoyance into the Force and embracing the giddiness of success. "For one thing, this fortress is smaller than a Lucrehulk and its builders call it a Migration Shrine. As for the rest, let me up and we'll see if our prize is here."

It only took her another minute to hack the tractor beam. Guided by a small echo in the Force that was obvious at this distance, it took us less than half as long to find a bulky sniper rifle next to the attire of a Jedi master. I picked up the weapon, surprised at how... average it seemed in my hands despite the stain of hundreds of murders and repeated burning of Force-infused material in the few years of use it saw.

"That's it?" The former bounty-hunters tone betrayed her mild disappointment.

"Yes, it's the Farkiller," I confirmed. "The only combination of lightsaber and blaster rifle that isn't on Coruscant..."