Episode II: Part 4

The door chimed before a surly trandoshan in old coveralls and a loose jacket walked into Jammer's room carrying a tray of food. Jammer was on his bunk, he had only just logged off the ship's console a few moments before. He recognized the pirate by his bruised snout and black eye. It was the one who had fought with Deuce named Askrik.

"Aw, you shouldn't have. I didn't get you a thing!"

Askrik bared his teeth in a menacing smile. "Shut up. I wouldn't be nurse-madin' you if it wasn't for your buddy. I owe him for that punch in the mouth."

Jammer sat up and swung his feet to the floor, careful of his bacta cast. He started to reply with something witty, perhaps even mildly irritating, but decided against it. After all, the room was rather cramped and his leg had yet to fully heal.

"You'd have to get in line. He doesn't play well with others."

The trandoshan rolled his eyes and turned away to fumble in his coat pocket in search of something. Jammer limped over to the table and poked at the re-hydrated sandwich of dark bread that embraced two slices of meat.

"Hey what is this anyway?"

Askrik withdrew a small keycard from his pocket and glanced at the sandwitch. "Roast bantha on pumpernickel. We got the supplies offa smuggler who got it from Tapani sector, probably some rich nobles' picnic food. If you don't like it, tough for you. It's what you're getting until we make stationfall again."

The trooper stared balefully at the limp bread until the pirate turned his back on him. Quietly he set the sandwich aside and lifted the steel tray. Askrik was busy entering a note into a datapad ignoring the trooper. Turning slowly, Jammer tested the weight of the tray in his hands.

"Well if it's what I got, then I'll just have to work with it."

****

Deuce dropped the pack on the stone floor with a low grunt. Tools clattered beneath the ripstop durafabric while it settled against a large stone that sat on the floor of the large chamber. The room itself was octagonal with an ornate star, like a compass, made from crushed shell and tile inlaid in the floor. Each compass point indicated a doorway from the room, with the doorway to the south being the route the pirates and their captives entered. Ghost walked up to the sergeant while three pirates spread out through the room casting nervous glances around them.

"Interesting," Ghost commented.

"What is?"

"The walls."

Deuce looked around. The walls were a nearly featureless work save a few inscriptions and patterns near doorways. He sighed, sometimes what little Ghost said was amazingly insightful, other times he wondered if something had been very wrong with Ghost's cloning chamber before he had been hatched.

When Ghost remained silent, Deuce frowned then made a sour face from frustration.

"Ok, I'm osi'yam di'kut. Enlighten' me professor."

The scout trooper cast a quick look at the pirates who were busy studying the few doors out of the room, the odd carvings, or both. Behind them four more pirates entered, escorting a handful of other prisoners. Deuce recognized the Zabrak smuggler and nodded. The smuggler nodded in return.

"Jedi markings," Ghost said quietly with a nod towards one of the carvings. "At least most of it is Jedi inscriptions."

Deuce looked again, tracing out the carvings with his eyes. Memories stirred, back to when he was assigned escort duty cleaning out a burned Jedi temple.

"Yeah, I see it. Never had a hand for reading that stuff." The sergeant paused, "You said 'most'. What is 'most'?"

"Most' is there are other inscriptions over the Jedi writings. See how some characters overlap others? They're cut deeper but don't look as worn as the others. Therefore they're were done more recently, as far as the age of building goes."

"Like graffiti or a warning?"

"Like someone trying to erase what was there. At least that's my guess."

A rough voice of a pirate rumbled behind them. "Hey, you two aren't here sightseein', yer here ta work. Get lifting." The bushy-haired pirate shoved Deuce a step towards the door he and Ghost had been staring at with his rifle. The pair lifted their burden and complied. When they passed through, they both noticed the slash was not one but four parallel cuts with a dark stain in the grooves. Neither of the troopers spoke but they shared a glance. Their instincts said that was blood.

The hallway beyond was darker and dustier than the previous room. Glowrod beams lit the dark corridor, showing off ancient stone tiles worn with great age. After another ten meters, the corridor ended in a long, rectangular room. A few chairs sat against the walls in no particular order in between old, gray cabinets that stood out in stark contrast to the smooth, brown lines of the original stone walls. In the middle of the room lay two long blocks of smoky obsidian. Within the volcanic glass were the faint lines of a metal mesh.

Deuce set his burden of crates down in the room, casting a wary eye towards the obsidian blocks.

"Well aren't they ominous?"

Ghost placed his burden of boxes near the sergeant. He grunted in reply, his eyes fixed on the oddities in the room. Deuce had seen the scout trooper with that look before. Usually, it was when he scrutinized a target, a threat or both. The sergeant believed it to be the latter, since his own instincts said 'threat' as well.

A young human with unkempt brown hair, dressed in coveralls walked over and with a smile to the clones, knelt down and rummaged through the bags.

"I'll have those boxes sliced open in no time." He called aloud.

Deuce crossed his arms and stayed out of the way. He had seen the young man at a distance, and given the pirate was always fussing over some equipment, Deuce figured he was one of or the only technicians around.

"Don't they call you Kal?"

Kal looked around to make sure none of the guards who had started to mill around the room heard him. He found out the hard way once that the rest of the pirates took a dim view of him being too friendly with the kidnap victims. If he was caught that is. He looked at Deuce warily.

"Yeah, why?"

"Just curious. You might want to be careful with those things."

Kal fidgeted a bit. "I know what I'm doin'."

Just a hint of a smile crossed Deuce's face. Despite's Kal's attempt at bravado, he still looked nervous at the prospect of tinkering with the obsidian blocks.

"S'alright, I don't mean any harm. I figure you can more than handle it. I just wanted to give you a good word about it."

At that, Kal fidgeted that much more. He sifted through his tools in an attempt to stall. "Why? What do you know about it?"

"My friend here and I noticed those blocks have some kind of mesh in them. This place is laid out like a Jedi Temple. I've seen one a time or two before. Something like those blocks, in a place like this? They could be a memory core or something nastier."

"Yeah? Well … I appreciate the thought. Cap'n think's that there is somethin' in 'em."

"What?"

"Dunno, but some old book says it's valuable. But that's where you two come in, especially if it's dangerous, she says. Look, I'd better get to work 'fore anybody suspects I'm talkin'."

"Be careful kid and good luck"

"Thanks, luck to you."

When the young man left, Deuce exchanged a dark glance with Ghost. The scout trooper shook his head slowly and stared at the black blocks of obsidian.

Deuce sighed with a weak hope that this could not get any worse. Sadly, something whispered to him that it would.