At first, scanning the system we had arrived in, and then the planet before us, there was nothing showing up on the computers' scanners. Nothing had triggered alarms or shown incoming signals, no strange readings... absolutely nothing. Just a system like any other... like any uninhabitable, dead system that is. Adrian leaned back slightly in his chair, one hand resting on the console in his armrest as he scanned the star and its orbiting bodies.
"Well," he said after a moment, "if this is your legendary nightmare world, it's doing a great job pretending to be boring. There's nothing."
Sareh didn't answer first; she was standing ahead of him, staring at the forward viewport, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, shivering, and I knew exactly why. I felt the same, and Vila did too as she sat beside me.
The quietness was the clue for it. It was way too quiet. To try and get a better read, I closed my eyes for a moment and reached out with the Force, but... it was gone. I mean, it was there, around the rest of the system, as it should be, but the planet? It no longer existed within it. It was there physically, but ripped out of the Force completely.
"That's wrong," I muttered without thinking about it.
"What is?" Adrian asked.
"The Force," I answered, glancing at him. "It's… the planet is gone while viewed through it."
"I told you," Sareh let out a slow breath. "Wait until we land," she added, glancing at us. "It gets worse."
That wasn't reassuring... at all. And it didn't improve as the planet grew larger and larger as we approached. Even for Adrian, it looked wrong... Gray. It was not dead like a barren rocky world would be, but colorless, muted, and, well, dead like a corpse. It had gone cold. From orbit, I could see continents and oceans... and then I noticed the water wasn't even moving. It was still as a mirror. The atmosphere was there, but where did the wind go? Why wasn't there any wind? I could see clouds drifting across the surface, which meant there was wind, but only at the upper edge, not below... And even that had to be weak. Bizarre...
"Why does it feel like that?" Vila whispered, "I know why," she added, snapping her head at Sareh, "It was a rhetorical question... What I'm saying is that I don't like it."
"Nobody does," She answered, while I stayed quiet. The feeling of nothing was oppressive. It was worse than the Rakatan world, I was sure of that.
"…" Adrian also let out a quiet sigh, shaking his head, "I don't like this," he admitted. "And I don't even know why."
"That's because there's nothing to detect, even for you," Sareh said quietly. "Or for your computers. Check it if you want, there will be no life signs, no biosphere activity, no energy signatures. There will be only one thing: Nothing."
"That's not possible," Adrian replied, yet knew she was right as he began tapping away. "Even dead worlds have something."
"Not this one."
The silence that followed was only broken by the sounds that Adrian made when he pushed the controls forward, setting the ship on a descending trajectory.
"Alright," he snorted, shaking himself back to focus. "Let's go see your haunted rock, then."
The Vindicator entered the atmosphere smoothly, and at first, clouds swallowed us. For a moment, visibility dropped to near zero, but that didn't really hinder the ship itself. When we broke through, I felt it fully, hitting us in the chest like a sucker punch. The moment we crossed into the lower atmosphere... The Force was gone, and none of us could access it at all. I staggered even while sitting in my chair, while Vila grabbed my arm instantly.
"Kael?"
"I'm fine," I said quickly, but neither of us was.
I knew that all four of us, Adrian included, felt like something inside us had gone quiet. We could no longer hear our own heartbeats even if we tried to listen. It was so... creepy. I wouldn't want to stay alone on this planet, because it may be like I was thrown into a sensory deprivation room... Ugh.
"This is so wrong," Vila whispered. "Only a Sith could come up with something evil like this..."
"A Jedi did something similar once," Sareh said suddenly, "Revan, when he was still a Jedi, had a plan to end the war with the Mandalorians, at Malachor V. He had a weapon, a Mass Shadow Generator... It did something similar, or at least, the destruction it wrought had created a being that was... similar."
[Statement: Wrong. It wasn't like that.] HK spoke up at once. [Clarification: It was a gravitational weapon; the Sith that it created, called Darth Nihilus, was an unforeseen consequence of a dying Force-sensitive man. Not the weapon.]
"That's up for debate," Sareh smiled weakly, "And it's a question of how you look at it."
"Let's not debate thousands of years old history." Adrian grunted, "Let's land instead, get what we need, and then leave." And by then, he had also brought the ship down toward a massive structure below.
Or what used to be one. Looking at it from above, it was intact, and all the smaller buildings stood straight next to it. As we made a circle around the landscape, we could see how the roads stretched in clean lines, separating well-designed districts, organized homes, training centers, compounds, squares, everything that made it look like a flourishing colony. There were no signs of destruction, no craters, no ruins per se... Just… emptiness.
"The landing zone the computer had identified looks stable," Adrian said, though his voice had lost some of its earlier confidence. "It can't sense any structural collapse, and I ran the full spectrum. There are no environmental hazards detected."
"That's not the problem," Sareh murmured, "The issue is that there is nothing. Why do you think nothing had rotted away in thousands of years? Why had no new plants grown on the buildings? Where is the rust? Everything is dead, Adrian, get it through your head."
"If they are dead, why are there trees around?" He shot back, making Sareh shrug.
"They are hollow corpses, that's all."
As they bickered, we touched down in what must once have been a central district with a proper spaceport. When the ship powered down, it did so only to a low level, creating a constant buzz and hum which... still felt muted. The ramp lowered, and after it touched down, I was the first to walk ahead... As expected, no wind greeted us. There were no sounds besides the ship's repulsors giving off a whine, which sounded as if it was coming from miles away.
"Let's get what we need," Vila said, holding onto my hand for support, "And let's get out of here!"
"I agree," I replied, "We should head towards a place that looks like a traffic control station or something like that. We may find details on the computers here about the last vessels that left this place. Or something... I have no better idea than that."
"I'm coming too," Adrian said as he walked next to Sareh, following us. "I have a bad feeling about this, and I am not staying alone on the ship."
"That's a good idea." Sareh smiled at him a bit, "It is best if we stay together at all times."
[Observation: This place is even more inefficient compared to last time.]
We all turned toward HK when he spoke up. What the hell? He was standing still, his photoreceptors slowly scanning the surroundings.
"…HK?" I asked, a bit worried that he might be malfunctioning.
He tilted his head, finally looking at me.
[Statement: This place is familiar.]
"What do you mean?" Vila asked, "Were you here before?"
[Processing…] His posture shifted slightly, head drooping a little, before snapping back up. [Acknowledging Statement: I have been here before.]
"What?" Sareh asked, stepping closer to him while HK turned toward her.
[Confirmation: This is Nathema.]
"Yes, we established that," Adrian said, a bit annoyed. "Try to keep up. Is he... defected?"
[Correction: I have operated here before, meatbag Adrian.]
"Can you recall anything more concrete?" I asked and watched as HK's head twitched slightly.
[Statement: Memory fragments found. Data integrity check ongoing... Conclusion: It's partial.]
"You were here," Sareh said with a sharp inhale. "Which means, you had to find something!"
[Confirmation: Yes.]
That was a kind of relief to hear because it made our job much easier. So, with HK leading us forward, we moved as a group, while Adrian walked in the middle of us after sealing the ship behind him.
"This place gives me the creeps." He grumbled constantly.
"You don't even feel the Force," Vila muttered, "You don't know half of it..."
"I don't need to," he shot back. "Something's off."
As for HK, he ignored his complaints, not even berating him as a meatbag. Instead, he moved through the city like he had walked these streets a thousand times, mapping and memorizing everything. We passed buildings that looked untouched. Their doors were still intact, all of the windows remained unbroken, and barely any dust covered them. There were no signs of decay anywhere, no erosion, as if someone pushed a pause button on time itself.
"This isn't natural," Adrian whispered again, scanning everything with his datapad. "There should be degradation... Structural breakdown. Something!"
"There isn't," Sareh said. "I told you already. Are you going to finally believe it?"
Just then, HK stopped before a large structure. It was rectangular and heavily reinforced with guard posts before it and deactivated turrets hanging from the walls. It had to be something military-related.
"This was important," Sareh said immediately. "I can read ancient Sith writing, not fluently, but those that I recognize are adequate enough." She pointed at a sign above the entrance, "It was an... Administrative, maybe governmental branch."
[Confirmation: Planetary Archives.]
The doors slid open with a hiss after HK walked up to the entrance and gave them a jolt from his own power bank. Following him, we stepped inside, hands on our lightsaber hilts, but... There was nothing to fight against, of course. He led us in through the reception hall, up a set of stone stairs, into a massive room where rows of terminals lined the walls. Data consoles, all of them, connected to separate sets of the archives, everything intact. As if forgetting our situation, Sareh rushed forward immediately, activating multiple terminals at once. None of it turned on.
[Smug Awarness: Try this one.]
When HK pointed at the second-to-last on the left-hand side, it showed that it had been tampered with in the past. It had its cover removed, its internals realigned, and there was a small battery pack welded into it that came online when Adrian kicked it. Ignoring HK's comment, Sareh began sifting through it, her brows furrowing.
"No data," she muttered. "Corrupted… wiped… overwritten…"
"Yeah, this isn't decay," Adrian said, joining her. "This is deliberate and not the work of time or fragmentation."
HK walked past them without a word, heading straight to a central console. Then he reached out, pulling off a slab of metal to reveal a hidden, forged connector slot.
[Statement: Accessing personal modifications. The data is there, keep watch while I recover it to the station.]
"You hacked it?" Sareh asked, while we just stood there, letting HK do what he needed to.
HK's head tilted slightly as he answered.
[Confirmation: These modifications are mine.]
"You were here," Sareh said again. "You accessed this place and then wiped it away?"
[Correction: I extracted data from this location, and I couldn't wipe it away. But I had to hide it from later arrivals for security reasons.] Then he fell silent for a moment, [Processing memory reconstruction…] Then, just like that, his head lifted. [Statement: I have retrieved the location of Dromund Kaas.]
"You know where it is?" Vila asked suddenly, as HK turned toward us.
[Confirmation: Yes. Finding local copies. Transmitting.]
"It's coming through," Adrian blinked, seeing data come flowing to the modified console, and he immediately began downloading it to his datapad.
"…You're telling me we just walked into a dead planet, into a dead city, into a dead building…" Sareh stood there, a bit... overwhelmed, "…and he had the answer the whole time?"
[Correction: I did not remember until now. Addendum: I am transferring the data to your meatbag instruments. Record it so we don't need to return here again.]
I exhaled slowly, finally smiling, exchanging a glance with Vila, because we were already used to his antics. Haah... I no longer even find it annoying... more like... endearing. As for Sareh and Adrian...? I couldn't say the same, but that was their problem.