Convergence/Chapter 15

15
               Corian sat outside under the shelter of a crumbling overhang, watching the rain pour down and drench the ground of the ruined military base. A fierce storm had rolled in not long after his unsuccessful attempt at prying more information from the holocron that might lead to a workable ship or a hypercomm. Yet another false lead on a planet full of false hopes and hints of promised treasure. Truth be told, Corian didn’t care much for holocrons, Jedi, or ancient myths. Even if he was. . . Force-sensitive. . . or whatever Jedi-Master-what’s-his-name had hinted on the speeder ride back from the Hall of Remembrance, he didn’t see how it did any of them any good. He scowled and watched the downpour, fuming silently. The wind was severe enough that he couldn’t take the speeder anywhere. Furthermore, he didn’t see any point in looking around the ruined buildings after the rest of the archaeologists had spent most of the previous day searching the complex. Well, maybe there was, but he was in too foul of a mood at present to do a good job of it. He’d look later.

             Instead, he stared out at the storm and wondered what the hell they were going to do—what he was going to do. It was possible that the Grasp would just abandon their pursuit. If they had only wanted what was in the archaeologists’ camp, they might not care about any survivors. But that logic also had its own flaws—if something in the camp was so valuable as to merit raiding an insignificant world this far from their territory, then it was probably worth hunting down anyone who knew anything about it. He’d put long odds on the Grasp just giving up. Unfortunately, while they hadn’t been caught yet—perhaps that fake cliff thing was slowing them down—Corian would put longer odds on them surviving too much longer. Sure, they were reasonably sheltered, and water wasn’t an issue for the time being. Wildlife hadn’t threatened them yet—but food was going to be a problem. They had maybe a week’s supply left, if they stretched it.

             Corian tried to clear his mind and focus on solving the problem. He’d always been good at that, at seeing the heart of the issue at hand and cutting right to it. He started sorting mentally. Their immediate needs were food and shelter from the Grasp. Long-term needs were calling for help or getting offworld. Their assets were one mostly-working speeder, a healthy water supply, and a bunch of three-hundred-year-old junk. For personnel, he had a team of archaeologists of questionable value at foraging and almost no value in a fight. A thought struck him and he was reminded of two more things of dubious worth at best: two lightsabers and a holocron long on philosophy and really, really short on useful, practical information. Maybe he could dismantle one of them for the power cell.

             A thought struck him. They had been assuming that no ship would reach Yanibar for 161—now 160 more days. However, that had assumed that nobody would think it odd that the Five Worlds Defense Force naval infantry hadn’t called in. They were supposed to report weekly and Captain Vanbarce’s last check-in had been three days ago. Corian did some mental math. They would miss their first check-in in four days. Headquarters might chalk it up to technical problems or weather, so they’d probably wait at least another week. Add another week to spin up some kind of relief force, plus two weeks to travel out here. All right, that made it twenty-five days instead of 160. That was far better, though they would still have to make their way back to the camp and find a way to contact the relief force without the Grasp detecting them first. Also, they would still run out of food long before then, but they wouldn’t have to survive winter. If he could forage even a week’s worth of food, they might survive—assuming the weather or the Grasp didn’t get them. One problem at a time.

             The soldier was just starting to review what he knew about Yanibar’s flora and fauna and contemplating some sort of scheme to fish the rivers when he heard the fast-paced crunch of footsteps coming out the door towards him. He looked up, expecting Jhiranae. To his surprise, it was Plaspek, and she was holding some kind of flat square object in her hands. It was difficult to see in the gloomy rain, but she made her way over to him—nervously, it seemed. Or maybe that was just her general demeanor.

             “Um. . . hi,” she said slowly.

             Corian gave her an implacable expression.

             “Hi,” he replied curtly, hoping to indicate that he was not really desirous of company at the moment.

             Or ever, really.

             “What do you need?”

             “Well. . .” she started, and he braced himself for a long litany of useless babbling until she finally reached her point. “I was looking through the offices when I. . . found something. This thing, actually.”

             She held up the object in her hands, which Corian now realized was a datapad.

             “It was inside a vault, but the vault’s hinges were rusted and Messierre was able to get it open,” she explained. “It wasn’t charged, of course, but we found some charging cables and were able to splice them together into the generator. Took us awhile to get it charged, but. . . it turned on once we charged it. Here it is.”

             She pushed a button and the screen glowed to life.

             “That’s neat. Why did you bring it to me?” Corian asked. “Wouldn’t this be more of an archaeology thing?”

             Plaspek shrugged.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “That’s what I thought, but Jhiranae talked to her new holo-buddy and he had a code to unlock the thing and make it work. It apparently is a. . . military thing of some kind. That’s where you come in.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Ah,” Corian said neutrally.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             She offered him the datapad, which Corian gave a skeptical look.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Aren’t you going to take it? To look at military things?”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “It’s in Basic, right?” he asked. “You don’t need me to read it.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             Plaspek rolled her eyes.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Of course not,” she said. “Look, this is hard to explain, but it has things. . . things that maybe only you really understand. I think some of them might be useful.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Okay,” Corian replied slowly, taking the datapad. “Useful to. . . archaeologists?”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Useful to all of us,” she said. “We know you don’t care about the history of this place. But if you can find some kind of military thing in there that helps us all stay alive, or get off this planet, then I think it’d be worth looking at. Don’t you?” “I can get behind that,” Corian told her, accepting the datapad.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             He thumbed through the menus.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Let’s see. . . says here that this device is registered to a Captain Gnnryl, Yanibar Guard Army. There’s a bunch of history documents. . . doesn’t seem useful. . .”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             He trailed off as his eyes caught sight of something in the datapad’s list of options.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Caches,” he read. “Huh.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             Selecting that option, he watched as a map of that area of Yanibar appeared, marked with several dozen symbols. Another button offered to show him the contents of each cache and that temptation was too much.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Well. . . that’s neat,” he said, this time without sarcasm. “I wonder if any of these are still out there?”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Find something useful?” Plaspek asked.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             Corian wasn’t quite ready to succumb to such a fickle mistress as hope. However, there was definite potential here—if—any of the caches were still around and intact. Three hundred years was a long time for anything to remain useful.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “I found something potentially useful,” Corian corrected.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Great,” Plaspek said. “Um. . . one other thing. Jhiranae and Doctor Ostrada wanted to know if there was anything you thought we should do. Otherwise, we were going to head for a site called the Sha Kalan. It’s south of here. Jhiranae thought it was worth exploring there, but she wanted to get your opinion.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             Corian consulted the datapad. There were plenty of possibilities near there. He made a mental note to download as much information off the datapad as possible—one way or another—just in case the thing died.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “That’s fine,” he said. “I’ll be ready in a few minutes. Are you planning on spending the night there?”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “I mean, we’re much closer to water here,” Plaspek replied. “Jhiranae thought it would just be a day trip and we’d come back for the night.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “I’m fine with that,” Corian told her. “Whenever we get there, you can do your archaeology thing. I’ll have a look around.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             The Twi’lek shrugged.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Works for me,” she said. “Enjoy your new toy.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Yeah,” Corian replied. “About the datapad. . . thanks for bringing me that.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             Plaspek winked at him.

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Told you it would be useful!”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             “Potentially useful,” Corian told her. “We’ll see when we get there.”

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">             He still didn’t trust archaeology, or archaeologists, or ancient maps, but now at least he had a map of something useful to dig for. That was a cause he could get behind.

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