LOTF: Collision/Chapter 5

Far away, just beyond charted space, a large space station stood against a small, white planet. The station was shaped almost like a mechanical dagger ready to plunge into the planet's surface at any moment, with several connected rings lined up and down orbiting the hilt. Sporting several hangars, the station was now home to a modest fleet, able to keep the station safe at least long enough for supplementary forces to arrive, of which there was a large amount. Behind the station, a small yellow sun cast its light upon the many insignias of black handprints dotted on the exterior of the surface, the same as the "Black Hand" on Tatooine. It was the emblem of the Brotherhood, and this station was the once-infamous Brotherhood HQ that had fired on Umbara as Ganner Slarwalker faced the Shadow Assassins.

The bridge of the station was at the very top, a granting full panoramic view of the surrounding space to its inhabitants. From the center of the bridge, two other planets were visible in the distance: a large, stormy purple gas giant past the white planet and a smaller one much nearer to the sun. From the perspective of the bridge, the planet was entirely black, but that was merely its appearance when facing away from the sun. The side that did face it glowed brightly, its molten surface melted by the sun. The planet the station orbited was perpetually snowed over and sometimes had storms, though at the north and south poles large bodies of green-glowing ice covered the surface instead. A small, gray block was the only sign of any sort of installation there, allowing a small blip of orange light to gleam through. The three planets, in order from closest to farthest from the sun, were Anarto I, II, and III.

The bridge of the Brotherhood HQ had once been populated by thirteen individuals, but once the transfer to the Anarto system had been finished, the satellite had become much more vacant, and no longer the sole meeting place for the highest powers of the Brotherhood. The loss of dependence on the space station and shift of priorities had also meant that some of the thirteen members were no longer as important to the organization as they had once been, and Dylan Antiunknown, the leader of the organization, had used that shift to tighten his inner circle down to an even more select few.

In the center of the bridge, on a large black chair with many controls and screens, sat one figure: one of the most influential figures in the Brotherhood, Moras Hedinin. The recent years in seclusion had not taken a great toll on him; he gazed as inquisitively and suspiciously at Anarto II as he would have in the Clone Wars. The same cybernetics still lined his face and body, though there had been many software improvements that weren't visible. Since the Brotherhood had gone into hiding, Moras had only found his job to be more demanding, needing to be the eyes and ears of the entire Brotherhood peering into the rest of the Galaxy to ensure that their secrets were safe. He now spent the majority of his time on the Brotherhood HQ linked directly into the Brotherhood network, monitoring everything.

On one of the chair's screens, a digital fingerprint scanner appeared, as well as a camera feed from outside the bridge. Waiting at Moras' door was Dylan's second-in-command, the only other person Moras answered to. Even over the camera, he could see the scars lining her face, and her neat red hair always stood out from the rest of her. She donned a long, yellow jacket that no doubt concealed a good deal of tools and weapons, as useful for actual operation as it was for appearances. The jacket seemed to be almost a moot point given the passivity of the Brotherhood in recent times, and especially because she would certainly not be on the front lines of any future conflicts, but Dylan had still allowed it, and so Moras tolerated it. She looked up into the camera, which had been well hidden, in anticipation but otherwise did not act. Moras ungloved his right hand and put his finger on the scanner. "Paradus access granted," a small voice chimed, and the door opened.

"Madame Bastra," Moras welcomed her, turning his chair to face her.

"Cyana will do just fine, Moras." She smoothly responded.

...

"Have we met?"

Taran's memory was as clear as day; there was no doubting that he indeed knew who stood before him. The Jedi's face was so much like the one that had haunted him all those years ago, the one that had sewn the first seed of doubt in the Brotherhood that Taran had faced. Suddenly, he was back on that calm day on Coruscant. He heard, and felt, the explosion from far away, that dreaded soft boom. He looked up across Coruscant's city skyline as suddenly lanes of traffic diverted away recklessly from a rising smoke stack, and the shock of what he saw rising for a brief second before he collected himself and ran towards it. He may have been a member of the Brotherhood, but Taran did still have his duties to Coruscant, duties that he had sworn to fulfill. The rest seemed to go by so fast, like a blur, halting again at the moment he had seen the Jedi. He was at the site of the explosion now, a small warehouse the side of which was littered with ash and debris that had been blown out. As the smoke poured into the open, Taran ran towards it, coughing, when his eye was attracted to the shine of a lightsaber. It took him a moment, but Taran realized that it belonged to a figure lying there, covered in ash from the explosion. As Taran approached, he opened his deep blue eyes, and Taran met them. He came closer and looked back at the explosion's source to see another arm reaching out towards him— with body attached. "Blast," Taran cursed under his breath. He grabbed the barely-conscious Jedi around the back and helped him stand up, walking him away from the scene as more officers arrived on the scene. "You're all right, son." Taran assured him. "You're all right."

Taran remembered exactly who this Jedi was. It was Ganner Slarwalker— Dylan still hadn't killed him. As Taran began to envision the revenge he could enact with Ganner, he couldn't help but smile. "Ganner, is that you?" He asked in a surprise that was genuine but felt feigned. Ganner looked back at the woman accompanying him, who was eyeing Taran suspiciously. Taran read the phrase, "We have to go," off her lips.

"We can't leave him." Ganner responded.

Linora sighed, and beckoned for Taran to follow them. "Get a move on. We can talk later." She told him.

...

"As you know," Moras explained, "We've been running Mos Anek for nine years now as the place where we send our failures who aren't worthy of death."

"I remember." Cyana responded, with a feigned slight tremble in her voice at the thought of the place. Criminals hadn't scared Cyana before, and they certainly didn't now. Especially ones who couldn't perform their jobs well enough to keep them. Still, most of the rest of the Brotherhood were terrified of the place, so she played her part.

"As I recall, you were responsible for sending Taran Ragnan there?"

"Yes, I was."

"Good. Observe."

Moras tapped another button on his chair, and the screens lining the room changed to display an image of Taran running along with a woman carrying a blaster and a man with a yellow lightsaber, neither of whom Cyana recognized.

"Moras, what is this— why are you showing me, and not Dylan?" She asked suspiciously.

"That man with the lightsaber was identified by my facial recognition software as the Jedi Master Ganner Slarwalker. I've examined images myself. It's him."

"And you didn't want to be the one to break the news to the boss." Cyana concluded grimly.

"Indeed. That's why I brought you here. The forces on Mos Anek alone won't be enough to stop him. I want you to make sure he dies and no one ever knows what happened."

"I'm beginning to understand why you've made it this far, Moras." Cyana remarked, turning away to exit.

"Show me why you have." Moras responded, closing the door behind Cyana as she left.

...

Sitting behind Ganner in an a rusty landspeeder driven by Linora, Taran scanned the horizons of Tatooine. The suns had begun to set in the sky, shining a deep orange at the end of what seemed to be endless, bare sand. Suddenly, the speeder slowed to a halt, and Taran looked up to see that the team had arrived at a decently-sized homestead, lined with vaporators. Seeing the beginnings of a pit but unable to make out its inner parts, Taran quickly ran towards the crater comprising the living pit, stopping at the edge, leaning over to catch his breath. As Linora and Ganner caught up he asked between breaths, "Where's the ship?"

"Why would I need a ship?" Linora answered.

Taran stood up slowly, fear entering his eyes, as he walked over to Linora, who didn't budge. "You just walked into the Brotherhood's secret prison, killed multiple thugs, rescued me, and you don't have a plan to escape?" He yelled.

"That was a prison?" Ganner asked. "And what's the Brotherhood?"

Taran turned again, eyes wide in surprise. "You don't know at all what you're doing?" He chided them softly, before regaining his composure. "We need to leave, now. They'll be here any minute."

"What?" Linora responded. "We weren't being-"

Suddenly, from behind the ground, a starship flew over so fast it was nothing but a loud blur followed by screeching engine. A second later, the living pit exploded, the impact knocking all three off their feet. Linora was the first to recover, helping Ganner up as Taran recovered on his own. She looked in the direction that the ship had flown in, towards the setting suns, and saw its silhouette turn against them and begin to make its way back. "Linora, we need to get out of here!" Taran called.

As adrenaline entered her system, she turned and ran back to the speeder, jumping in and activating it. Ganner and Taran quickly followed suit. "It's coming around!" Ganner warned her.

The speeder took off as the ship approached again, this time firing blaster cannons at the group, narrowly missing and sending impacts of fire, dust, and sand flying around them. At last, it zoomed past them into the night sky, becoming almost immediately invisible. "We need to get somewhere where that fighter can't strafe us," Taran said. "You, head to-"

"I know!" She interrupted as she violently jerked the speeder to the left, heading towards a nearby canyon.

...

As Cyana paced down the empty corridor towards her hangar on the Brotherhood HQ, she felt a small vibration on the side of her right leg. Not immediately reacting, she slipped her left hand into the pocket of her jacket and discreetly grabbed and pressed a small switch as soon as she knew she was out of sight of the nearest camera. Around her, all cameras or other recording software began to loop the last second they had recorded. Slowing to a stop, she scanned quickly up and down the hallway again, reaching down and pulling a small blaster pistol, an EC-17, from her boot just in case. At last, she pulled out the source of the vibrations- a small holocommunicator, displaying a keypad. She input the passcode, "DURRIS," which was accepted. "Voice identification required for decryption." Baraks' voice stated out of the communicator. Her heart raced ever so briefly at hearing his voice even when she knew it wasn't him.

"Cyana Dakens." Officially, she'd never adopted the name because of the nature of her work. Spies and families never mixed.

"Frequency decryption initiated."

A new image shimmered to life before her, one of a young man. Strange markings lined his irritated face, he had short red hair, and he was dressed in what seemed to be combat armor covering the whole of his body, save for his head, which bore strange runes on it. Cyana would've first taken him for a Jedi, but she knew the Jedi were extinct, so whoever this person was, they were working for the Empire; in fact, they probably served the Emperor himself in order to have access to such a restricted frequency.

"This is Bastra. What's the situation?" She spoke to the comm.

"The Emperor has given me an assignment that you are to help me with. Code word: equanimity." He articulated the code word almost with pride, as though he was taking delight in burdening Cyana.

"That's the right one. What do you need? My situation here is... rigid."

Just outside the range of the station's scanners, Cyana's image gazed back at Decien, who found himself in the pilot's seat of a custom shuttle (modified quite far beyond the capacities of his old interceptor, or other shuttles for that matter), illuminated by the blue light of his holoprojector..

"As is mine. I need your assistance, and I need to speak with you somewhere that isn't over the holo."

Cyana stopped for a moment to think. "I need time. There are orders I have to give."

"Very well." Decien conceded. "But do not take too long. Time is not in our favor."

Decien cut off the connection, and closed his eyes, meditating on the events to come.