By the time we were all back on the Vindicator and the ramp had sealed itself after us, I was eager to leave this accursed planet behind. No one spoke much while we lifted off, feeling the same way, only letting out a loud breath when we were finally off and away, heading towards the edge of the system's gravity well.
I watched as Adrian sat in his captain's chair, keeping his posture straight to show he was the least affected between us, which I knew was a lie. His fingers trembled here and there as he moved over the armrest controls, and I could feel his feelings to be... turbulent, to say the least. As for myself, I stayed on my feet longer than I should have, staring down at the world as it shrank beneath us, and even after ample distance was put between us, with a whole layer of vacuum between me and that place, I still couldn't shake the sensation that the planet had on someone who could tap into the Force.
I would rather be back on the Rakatan world than ever return to this place.
Vila, of course, stayed with me, holding my hand, while Sareh stood near her own console, writing, pausing, deleting, rewriting something on her datapad, her face tense and focused on her task, rather than trying to dwell on her feelings. Everyone had their own coping mechanisms. Finally, after we were at the edge of the system, Adrian finally broke the silence.
"The coordinates are good," he said, glancing toward me without fully turning. "HK's local copy and the archive retrieval match perfectly, so we have a destination. If they are indeed real and not his hallucinations."
"Dromund Kaas," Sareh muttered, turning towards us, "Still can't believe he had that in his memory all along."
[Correction: I did not have it 'all along.' I had it and then lost it, as is common among meatbags and unfortunate droids forced to associate with them. Addendum: Your incompetence had corrupted my perfect systems.]
That actually made Sareh snort, while I just kept smiling to myself. Adrian, learning to ignore our rusty friend, muttered something inaudible while he summoned the holomap before us all. While the bridge's light had dimmed, the Galaxy's map appeared before us all. Turning it, Adrian then zoomed in as multiple sector grids slid away, until we arrived at our relevant section. The Outer Rim markers brightened to give us a reference, then he enlarged Nathema first, then swept northwestward across black stretches of little-used space until the map shifted again and another region lit in reddish-brown tones.
"The problem we have," he began explaining, "is not whether we can get there. It's whether we can get there without giving our approach away..."
"True," Sareh stepped in closer and stared at the section of the highlighted fragment, biting her lower lip. "Dromund Kaas sits inside the Stygian Caldera according to the data," she added, glancing at her datapad. "That already makes it difficult... From what I compiled here... Hmm..."
"Difficult is an understatement," Adrian moaned, inhaling loudly while rubbing his face. "The Caldera is effectively a natural mess of distorted lanes and difficult entries, no matter the direction we may take. There are proper ways in, yes, narrow ways in, yes, and... suicidal ways in. We should avoid that. Agreed?"
"Yeah," Sareh replied sarcastically, "The issue is that we don't know which is which."
"Are you sure?" Vila asked, squinting at her, "You were furiously tapping away... You had to find something. I am not buying that you don't know a way in."
"According to what I have," She looked back at her with a hidden smile, "Dromund Kaas is tied to the Kamat Krote. It is the best bet we have, but if we go in clumsily, we'll be noticed the second we touch a monitored corridor."
"And you are assuming we know what this Kamat Krote is?" Vila asked.
"A hyperlane," Adrian added, pulling up the data from what we copied down, "It connects a handful of old Sith-ruled planets. Surprisingly, it runs from Korriban all the way into the Unknown Regions."
As they began talking about possible sentries our Sith enemy may place along the route, I ignored their voices and stepped closer to the map. If I focused only on the old coordinates and on the route line HK had recovered, it all looked deceptively simple. Nathema was in the Chorlian sector, which was now named, thanks to HK's data. Following it, Dromund Kaas sat in the New Sith Worlds, per their own, later designation. To get from one to the other... Well, there was no real route through the dangerous space of the Unknown Regions. Not that there should be, as I don't think that there ever was just two points and a line. That would be... too easy, so... It is what it is.
"Can we avoid the established lane entirely?" I asked. "To avoid detection."
"Ehhh..." Adrian shook his head once. "Not if you want to arrive with a ship intact and a crew not liquefied by navigational stupidity that bounds to occur if you go off into the unknown."
"I thought your computer could handle anything," Vila added, looking at him, making my brother snort at her accusation.
"Uncharted jumps can easily end up with us exiting into the belly of a black hole."
"The exact final leg into Dromund Kaas is what matters." Sareh joined in with her own opinion, "We can take it until the end, exit there, and do micro jumps at the end, to enter from an unexpected direction."
"So we need the lane," Vila said, glancing back and forth between them, "But this only works if we assume they only monitor its final end, not the rest."
"Exactly." Adrian grunted, "Which is a fifty-fifty thing. They either do or don't."
"We have to gamble it!" Sareh argued her point as she ignored his tone. "We break the route into multiple parts. We can stop at these junctions," she pointed them out, one by one, marking them. "From here, we can do small jumps, with acceptable margins, even for you. Then, we go through the empty systems, and then we jump into the Sith core system from whichever side is less expected. Tell me it's not our best bet!"
"If we can still believe in these ancient texts and data..." Adrian moaned, "Who knows if these are still relevant or not?"
"Our lifespan," I said with confidence, "is negligible to the time the universe works with. Ten thousand years is not even a blink on the cosmic scale."
"And we are dealing with things not even half that old." Vila piped in, also agreeing. "If there was a supernova or anything like that that could disrupt our approach, we would know about it. Those are always logged, no matter where they happen in the Galaxy."
"Okay, okay!" Adrian said, raising his hands, "I got the memo. Let me see..." He muttered, falling silent, studying the data, "Well... If HK's nonsense is real... This... Bosthirda or Jaguada will do," he spoke up after thinking it through. "We need to choose one or the other, as the lane joins them both into Dromund Kaas; we could use them as a last micro-jump destination for a safe entry."
"And how do you decide this... quieter point?" Vila asked.
"For starters," Adrian's smile sharpened, looking at us, "By not acting like an idiot. Pick one, you have that Force on your side, no? Tell me which one we will use, make your tingly feelings lead us, eh? Then, we can set a route to reach them. When we arrive, we will use no transponders and no broad scans to stay hidden. You see, these two systems are close enough to my top-of-the-line scanners to sniff around... And it wouldn't even give us away."
"You can scan our target, from... a system away?" I asked, surprised, making his smile as proud as it could be.
"I said, top-of-the-line. Do you think we should stop developing technology? Typical Jedi mindset. But sorry, I can't say more. You are no longer part of the family, my dear brother. What I can tell you is that we'll shadow the lane edge, observe whatever comes and goes, and pick the side with less military chatter to jump in from."
"That sounds almost..." Vila said, doing her best to ignore his jabs at me, "...like a plan."
"The route," I said, dragging everyone back to the map before they could start going back and forth. "Let's finalize our plan then. And we will go from Bosthirda."
"Are you sure?" Adrian asked, but as everyone looked at me, they nodded.
"Kael's feelings are the sharpest amongst us," Vila said confidently, "If he feels that is where we go from, that is where we WILL go from."
Adrian obliged without arguing, and then his fingers drew a series of segmented lines rather than a single clean lane, fixing everything, reviewing it with the ship's computer, then double- and triple-checking it.
"Okay!" He clapped, looking much more confident now, "We depart Nathema and do not head directly for the Sith Worlds. That would be the first thing any competent enemy would predict. Instead, we arc outward through dead Outer Rim pockets and Wild Space-adjacent voids. No major ports, so we can avoid obvious mistakes. By my details, there should be no populated waystations on this vector. Then, from here," he pointed at an unnamed system, "we angle in toward the Caldera from the side least likely to associate with any kind of traffic, be it smugglers or explorers. From there, we can reach our last stop."
"You make us sound like smugglers," Sareh joked, making him shrug.
"You say that like smugglers aren't often the smartest navigators in the galaxy," Adrian chuckled, but then glanced at me. "Talon Karrde played us with setting up routes like this... So, unlike the old ones like Dad, I think we should learn about their methods and utilize them."
"Don't bring up family matters, please..." Vila moaned, and I ignored that comment too, not wanting to talk about our old man.
"Looks fine," Sareh spoke up as she leaned over the map again, her earlier strain from Nathema now replaced by excitement again. "If we're doing this properly," she hummed, "we may stay hidden and could monitor our enemy from the shadows. Send word to the others that we found them..."
"We will think about it when we are there." Adrian answered at once, "And don't worry. If we are fine, I can make sure that some thousand-year-old bastard won't pick up on us, no matter what kind of sensors he has access to."
"He has the Force," Vila said automatically, but then paused, "Well... in a droid's body, he doesn't, but... he did bring along others." She added, glancing at Sareh.
"You have to deal with that." Adrian shrugged, opening her eyes wide, passing that problem onto us.
The planning went on for another hour after that. We marked dead systems for intermediate drops, places so empty no sane navy would waste resources watching them, and points that were so isolated that building a listening post would be idiotic. Then, Adrian created emission masks for the Vindicator's next flight profile. At the same time, Sareh suggested lowering our signatures further by running in staged power cycles during some of the quieter legs, cold enough to vanish into background clutter if anyone swept by while we were on our way to Bosthirda. HK recommended several things that would have violated every agreement we had made with... well, anyone, and probably at least one that went against the law of physics, so those were ignored. I think he was simply trying to annoy Adrian for doubting his coordinates.
By the time we were done, the route looked... ready, and Adrian finally killed the holomap and leaned back, rolling one shoulder, moaning.
"There," he said. "Stealthy enough for Jedi, technical enough for me, ugly enough for the droid, and paranoid enough for all of you. Happy? Can we go and rest before we head off?"
[Correction: Not good enough. But it will do.]
"Shut up," Adrian tried to ignore him, but failed. "I will begin running the protocol for modifications now. We'll cycle down for the first blind leg in six hours, so we'll have a bit of naptime... The computer can carry us forward until then."
"That's a good idea," Vila said as she must have felt the same thing, pulling me away already, "We should rest while we can."
No one argued, and as we all drifted into our own cabins, having a rest before we would head directly towards an old Sith Capital world, not really knowing what we would find there.