The Planet of Ghosts: Caverns of the Jedi (Across the Stars VII)

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The darkness of the temple was all-encompassing. Their hololamps felt like comically weak attempts to fight back, as dim and small as they were. The huge, empty halls seemed to call out to them as they passed. More than once, Nathan thought he’d heard someone.

 

“What was that?” he’d asked Ozz, who stared at him with concern.

 

“Nothing, kid. Just like last time. Get a grip, would ya?”

 

Something glinted in Ozz’s light. He peered at it, trying to get a closer look.

 

Eefo, their guide, (and current victim of blackmail) led from the front.

“Come,” she said. “The deep archives are this way. If there are any records related to Balaam’s Heart, we will find them there.” Then she added, more bitterly, “We can only hope this excursion does not doom the known galaxy.”

 

Nathan frowned over at her. “Or maybe it’ll keep it safe. If we don’t find the Heart, Pyerce might. It’s worth the risk.”

 

“Woah, woah, woah!” Ozz exclaimed, and his excited cry echoed in the tunnel. He hurried over to what he’d found—a pile of artifacts, gleaming beneath the dust and sand. “These babies look valuable!”

 

Eefo and Nathan stood in the entrance of another hall, pausing to look back at him. Eefo couldn’t hide her disgust with his priorities.

 

“Artifacts for processing, not what you seek.”

 

“Yeah, not what we came here for,” Nathan said. “Come on, Ozz. Sooner we get out of here, the better.”

 

Of course, Nathan should never have said that, because that’s the exact kind of thing that leads to ironic catastrophe. And so it did.

The rumbling began quietly, but was deafening before they had a chance to react. The walls were trying to shake apart. The ground bucked underneath them. The tunnel was filled with the cacophony of shouting and the crashing of rock as they all dodged rubble dropping from overhead and dived for cover. What felt like forever was over in just a few seconds.

Nathan pushed himself off the ground and looked frantically for his friend.

 

“Ozz, Ozz!”

 

“Nerd?” came the weak reply, through a layer of fallen rock.

 

“Ozz!” Nathan shouted again, trying to pull away rubble. His efforts were in vain.

 

“I’m alright, kid! Just…in a different room. You got our bounty?”

 

Nathan felt a mixture of relief and annoyance surge through him, and he took several deep breaths. Eefo was getting to her feet nearby.

 

“You okay?” he asked. She replied with a thumbs up.

 

“Yeah, she’s okay,” he told Ozz. “Hey, we’re gonna make it out of this. Listen, try and go back the way we came, or find another path out. We’ll all join back up at the entrance, got it?”

 

“Sure, sure. Me, worried? About the dark? Nah. See ya in a bit, no problem.”

 

Nathan took a moment to rest after the stress of the cave-in. “He’ll be fine,” he told himself.

 

“Perhaps he will,” Eefo replied dryly. “Forgive me for my lack of concern.”

 

 

“Okay, Ozzie, okay. You’re gonna be okay,” Ozz whispered, casting his hololamp around the rubble to find a good path out. The way they’d come in was blocked, so he chose the next best doorway and started trudging along. “No worries, no worries. Think happy thoughts. You’ll get paid! Oh—“ he turned back and—at least something was going right—a few of the gleaming artifacts were strewn across the floor.

“Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Ozz hooted in glee, scooping up a few golden discs to stuff into his jacket. “Come to Ozzie! Now we just gotta find a way outta this pit, and Papa Ozzie can find a nice fence to hock to you to!”

He was glad Nathan wasn’t here to see him talk to treasure.

Now weighed down with future fortunes, Ozz trudged ahead into the dark tunnels and empty halls of the temple, all by his lonesome. He hummed to himself to ward off any fears. He really needed to start carrying a blaster. Nothing like a blaster to make you feel safe.

 

“Your pockets are heavy, thief.”

 

Ozz spun around, looking for the source of the voice. “Whosaidthat!” he cried, brandishing one of the discs.

 

“A denizen of this sacred place,” said the voice from nowhere.

 

“Oh…oh great, now I’m really going crazy. Amazing. Just ignore it, Ozzie, keep walkin’…”

 

“Ignoring a thing does not make it go away. Your name is Ozzie?”

 

“What? No, it’s…Ozzamandes. Hey, I’m not talkin’ to you. You’re just a voice in my head. Guy might look crazy talkin’ to himself like that.”

 

“I am not a manifestation of insanity, but of the force.”

 

“Ha, the force! Good one, brain.”

 

Suddenly, a creature appeared before him, a woman who seemed both there and not there at the same time, who shone with a ghostly blue glow. Ozz froze in place and stared at her, stunned.

 

She spoke with power and grace, and her face was severe. “A faith is a necessity for a creature, Ozzamandes. Woe to them who believes nothing. Woe to you, for I sense this void...within you.”

 

Shocked, Ozz’s grip went limp. A disc fell to the floor with a ‘clang’.

 

 

 

 

“Follow me,” Eefo said. “I will find us a way out of the tunnels.”

 

Nathan stopped in his tracks. “Wait a second. I want to get out too, but not before we find what we came for.”

 

Eefo’s face twitched. “Don’t you want to find your friend?”

 

“Yeah, but he’ll be fine, and ticked off at me if we leave this place with nothing to show for it. Can we still get to the archives after the cave-in?”

 

Eefo had been caught trying to wiggle out of showing him the archives, and she looked accordingly hateful.

 

“…Yes,” she spat. “Come, do not lose the way.”

 

As they walked, Nathan questioned her.

 

“The Scriptist’s madness, or whatever…he mentioned spirits. That’s just you, right? You’re gaslighting your mentor?”

 

“The spirits are real. The sabotage is mine, but the drain on his mind…the spirits are real. Dark things.”

 

This was not exactly the answer Nathan had wanted to hear while spelunking in a pitch-black tunnel.

“Oh, I see,” he said, shining his light behind him and hurrying to catch up.

 

 

“So what was your life like around here, huh? See any good holos?”

 

“As a Jedi scholar, I forbade myself from material pleasures, if that is what you ask.”

 

“Sheesh, aren’t you a bucket of fun.”

 

Ozz now continued his journey through the tunnels with the ghost woman at his side.

 

"You scoff. There is moral grandeur in this, no? The renunciation, the sacrifice this station requires? The self-exile, the remembrance of mortality, the committing of one's spirit to mystery and thought rather than toil?"

 

"Hah, I'd love to see you tell that to my pops. He loved toil."

 

"You use the past-tense. Your father is one with the force?"

 

"He's dead, if that's what you're askin'. We didn't see eye-to-eye, so wouldn't make much of a difference if he wersen't."

 

“But now you have another family? One of your own?”

 

“Hah! A family, nah. Just this kid mooching off my ship.”

 

“You have a child?”

 

Ozz shook his head, muttering to himself before replying. “No, no. Human’s name is Nathan, we’ve been working together for a few weeks. Can’t stand the guy, honestly. Always going on about safety and stuff. Takes himself too seriously. Got me fired once! For something I didn’t do, I’ll have you know.”

 

The woman smiled softly. “I sense care in your voice.”

 

“Pah! You’re hearin’ things too, then.”

 

“Love finds us in unlikely places. When it crosses our path, we are often slow to embrace it. We deny ourselves the comforts of familial care in order to protect our vulnerable, fragile egos.”

 

Ozz raised an eyebrow up at her and grimaced. “Geez, you get personal, lady. Bet you were a weirdo as a kid.”

 

They were stopped by sounds up ahead, strange howls and whispers that seemed to slither by in a tunnel before them. The woman flew in front of Ozz, her expression stern.

 

“What the keff was that!” Ozz cried, covering his head and looking around for danger.

 

“Dark spirits. My counterparts. The other side.”

 

“Well geez, terrible roommates! You just all hang out in the temple together? Just a big spirit party, good and bad?”

 

“I do not wish it to be this way. Their presence is a desecration.”

 

“Okay, okay…why don’t you evict ‘em then? You’re all glowly, I bet you could get rid of ‘em.”

 

“It’s not a question of my power, but of my purpose. I pledged myself in life to study and knowledge, it is not my place to raise hands against evil, but to equip those who do. I put them out of mind, and avoid their distraction.”

 

“Hm, couldn’t you make, like, an exception?”

 

She rounded on him, her expression fierce, her eyes wide.

 

“Does my life sound like one of exceptions, Ozzamandes?”

 

Ozz shrunk back from the frightful display. “Well, no. No, that’s a good point. But…”

 

The look on her pale face told him not to continue, but he was never good at listening to warnings.

 

“Well, you don’t really have a life, anymore. You’re—sorry if I’m the first one to tell you this—but you’re dead, lady.”

 

“I know this. Don’t insult my intellect.”

 

“Well then, you did good! You held to your pledges! They were pledges for life, right?”

 

She looked thoughtful, her brow knit. She said nothing.

 

“Besides, weren’t you the one that told me…ignoring something doesn’t make it go away?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The deep archives were once locked behind doors that required power to open, powers neither Nathan nor Eefo had. But time and war wears away all things, this time to Nathan’s benefit. The doors were long since destroyed, and their access unblocked.

It was a narrow hall. Rows and rows of old books, many of them destroyed, lined the shelves.

 

Eefo gestured forward. “Feast away, you fool.”

 

Nathan shot her a look. “Kind of unnecessary, but…thank you for bringing me here. Where do I start?”

 

“Balaam’s Heart? I recommend ‘B’.”

 

 

 

“Oh, it works like that? Huh, I expected something weirder,” he said, and he stepped forward to scan the massive stacks.

 

Eefo looked on the shelves—the sheer amount of terrible, dangerous knowledge—and at the young man now searching amongst the tomes. Fear clutched at her heart. Her mind went to the blaster under her robes.

 

 

“You speak sense. Most unexpected,” the ghostly woman said.

 

“Oh, nice,” Ozz grunted. “I’ll try not to be offended about how you said that.”

 

“My apologies. Perhaps, as a spirit, my purpose is something different than what I was bound to in life. Perhaps I must evolve, as my being has evolved. Perhaps I must oppose the dark things here, and purify this temple. Thank you, Ozzamandes, for speaking with me. It has been most enlightening.”

 

“Sure, sure, any time. Now, I gotta get outta here, any chance…?”

 

“We have been following that path for some time. I have been leading you to your friends while we talked. They are just ahead.”

 

Ozz blinked in surprise. “No kidding? You’re alright, lady.”

 

“Ozzamandes,” she said, and her voice became serious and heartfelt. “Do not deny your care for your friend. You would rob yourself of greater riches than those you carry in your coat.”

 

Ozz avoided her gaze, nodding vaguely. “Oh, uh, sure, sure. Yeah, thanks for the advice.”

 

“And Ozzamandes,” she said again.

 

“What?”

 

“Please leave behind the things you’ve pilfered from my temple, if you please.”

 

“Oh,” Ozz blushed, and he casually removed the golden discs from his pockets and dumped them on the floor as gently as he could. “Sure thing, of course.”

 

She smiled. “Thank you. Farewell, I hope we meet again.”

 

“Me too, ‘cept I got no plans to come back to this joint. But uh, I’ll see ya when I see ya.”

 

A fondly amused expression was the last thing on her face before she faded away, and he was left in the dark. A door stood in front of him.

 

Ozz smiled proudly. “’Most enlightening’…Old Ozzie, who woulda thought!”

 

 

Ozz entered the deep archives. The first thing he saw was Eefo, hand on her blaster, and an unaware Nathan. Something in his chest swelled up, and his eyebrows furrowed. She was gonna blast his partner? Not on her life.

 

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” he shouted, and Eefo spun in alarm. She hastily drew her blaster. “Nate, look out!”

 

Ozz threw himself into the Rodian researcher, knocking both of them to the floor. The blaster went off harmlessly, a bright red bolt striking an ancient tome and completing its transition to nothing more than a pile of ashes.

 

Nathan ducked and swiveled. He stared at the prone Eefo. A few seconds and he would’ve been toast.

 

“Woah, woah! Thanks Ozz!” He suddenly grasped that Ozz was here, and grinned widely. “Ozz! You made it!”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Ozz said, dusting himself off. Eefo looked trapped. “Had some help. I’ll tell ya about it later. Geez, once a spy, always a spy, huh!”

Eefo glared at him defiantly. “You’ll bring ruin to the galaxy!” she said, her voice trembling.

 

She stood on shaking legs, and occasionally her eyes darted towards the shelves, wide with fear. She was like an animal, and Nathan felt, most of all, pity. He understood what was driving her.

 

Nathan grabbed Ozz's arm and pulled him aside. He whispered, "Hey, I'm trying to honor what you said on Yavin, I'm telling you before I do something crazy."

 

Ozz looked at him warily. "...Kid, whatever you're thinking, you better not risk our profit, here. We're in a golden spot with this!"

 

"No, I'm not okay with how we've done this. Catching spies is one thing, but blackmailing, threatening deserters to get what we want?" He shook his head firmly. "That's not how I want us to do things."

 

Ozz looked between his eyes, searching for a way to convince him otherwise. There was no chance. He had no choice but to back down.

 

"That's...another payout lost, kid. I hope you know what you're doing: we need credits! Finding your girl is gonna take credits, you understand?"

 

"I know, we'll figure it out! I'm sure we can pick up a side job or something, but...I want to let Eefo go free. She's not even a spy anymore."

 

Ozz threw up his hands. "Have it your way. But you're the least lucrative partner I've ever had."

 

"This pays off in other ways, Ozz.” He turned back to the Rodian, approaching her cautiously.

 

“Hey, I’m not mad that you wanted to shoot me, alright? It’s…well, it’s not okay, Eefo. But I get it.” He stepped forward, and she flinched. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he told her. “We’re going to let you go free. You don’t have to worry about us leaking anything, or telling anyone where you are, okay?”

 

Eefo raised a brow skeptically. She waited for him to continue.

 

“Now, I know you think what we’re doing is wrong. But…I wish you could trust me. My intentions are nothing but good, I swear. You’re right that this is dangerous stuff. The Empire is looking for it, and I can’t leave whether they find it or not up to chance. Please, you don’t have to agree, but…don’t shoot me?”

 

She met his gaze, and gradually seemed to calm. Her eyebrow still twinged in frustration, but she sighed, and the fight had left her.

“Yes. Alright.”

 

“Great,” Nathan nodded. “Ozz, help me find this book!”

 

Ozz was already by the stacks, and held up an old pile of slates bound together with rope. “Was it ‘Balaam’?”

 

“Yeah, why—“

 

“Here ya go.”

He passed the slates to Nathan. Sure enough, Balaam’s name was on them.

 

“No way,” Nathan said, staring. “Ozz, thank you!”

 

“No problem,” he shrugged, unaware of his partners efforts to do what he’d just done in one glance.

 

“We’ve got what we needed. Let’s go see sunlight again, huh?”

 

 

 

 

Eefo led them back through the tunnels until they found the staircase they’d originally descended. They were cheered to see the light flooding through the open archways of the temple doors. Cold wind filled their ears as they crossed the old atrium floor and ventured out into the open air.

They gasped in horror when they saw the sky.

An Imperial Light Cruiser lay in the upper atmosphere. A small, white shape was gliding down towards them; a shuttle.

 

“Aw, hell,” Ozz grunted, slumping hopelessly.

 

“No!” Eefo screamed. “No! They’re coming for the temple!”

 

Nathan blanched, and held Balaam’s slates tightly under his arm. “We’ve got to get out of here. We can’t fight that thing.”

 

“The temple is bad enough, but we must not lead them to the Searchers! The unencrypted archives, the research, they cannot be allowed to have it!”

 

His jaw firmly set, Nathan made a decision. “Ride back to the outpost, I’ll hold them here.”

 

“Kid,” Ozz said weakly. “What the keff are you gonna do?”

 

A plan was formulating in his mind. Nathan approached the small conductor Eefo had planted in the ground when they’d arrived.

 

“Eefo, show me how to work this thing. Then you both go, get to safety!”

 

“Hey, kid,” Ozz said, his tone full of worry in a way Nathan had never heard.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“We’re gonna come back for you. Just hold out, okay? Trust in the…the force, or whatever. You better be alive when I get here.”

 

“I’ll do my best,” Nathan shrugged. “Chances aren’t great.”

 

A grin broke on Ozz’s face. “Oy, bring back the optimism. You’re downright depressing, you know that?”

 

 

“I’ll bring back the optimism when we make some money, how about that.”

 

“Oh, so never.”

 

“Well, never say never!”

 

“Ha! There it is,” Ozz grinned. He patted Nathan on the side. “Take care, kid. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

 

“Geez, what’s gotten into you?”

 

“Oh, shut up. I dunno, had some time to think while I was in those tunnels. Anyway, enough dwaddling! Let’s get this show on the road!”

 

“Yeah, I’ll see you in a bit, Ozz.”

 

A few minutes later, Ozz and Eefo sped back towards camp, Balaam’s slates in hand.

Alone at the entrance to the temple, Nathan waited for the shuttle to touch down.

 

Done