Star Wars: The Soul of a Sith

Chapter 06

Cathock appeared several hours later along with the two new companions. He and Dalvin smelled of alcohol and moved fairly slowly, but if the Falleen had imbibed a single drop she showed no signs of it. Ren sat quietly in his quarters, watching them all with his mind's eye as they took their places and Neeka gave the final word, and raised the ship off the landing pad.

The plan was to pick up supplies at a randomized location in space. They didn't know who their enemies were. They did know that trouble was coming at them from unexpected directions. It was best to keep their movements unpredictable, Cathock had determined.

Ren drifted in and out of meditation as they traversed several light years. He returned to the dark face that pulsed with the depths of the force within his mind. There was nothing new in this second vision, but the Force seemed to want to show the face over and over to Ren, as if to allow him to memorize every detail of the predatory eyes and the terrible power that lay behind them. Several times Ren's subconscious mind attempted to reach out to his mother, but the mental wall he had constructed between himself and that avenue held strong and his psychic tendrils fell in upon themselves.

Finally, after many hours of this, Cathock's voice came through the ship's sound systems, saying: "Would everyone please meet me in the cargo room?"

Ren stood instantly, happy to throw off the meditations. They were yielding him nothing at the moment, and he was quite curious to know Cathock's secret. He walked down to the cargo room, which was simply a large, open space with several chairs set up. Dalvin and Neeka were already present when Ren entered, and Malanctha was short on his heals. The two of them took seats next to one another, Malanctha casting him a cold smile as they did, and they both waited for Cathock to speak.

"I'm certain all of you are wondering why Neeka was taken hostage seventy-two hours ago. The answer is really very simple: Coordinates."

Ren felt a thunderous surge in the Force. This moment was of immense importance to his destiny. He gazed at Cathock and listened intently.

"Neeka and I were conducting a mission a few months ago in the Kelda system on a small, backwater world known as Kelda six. We happened completely by chance upon a group of... for lack of a better term I will call them militant archeologists. They had been excavating all over the planet, looking for something. You have to understand, this was a freak coincidence. Neeka and I had been assigned a simple pickup operation from an entirely different organization. Out of the hundreds of trillions of planets in the galaxy we might have met on, it only happened to be the exact point and exact moment when the Vultize Syndicate was concluding the pinnacle of its research."

Ren suppressed a chuckle. The way the Force was pulsing through his mind he knew with certainty that this incident was not a coincidence of any sort.

"We were waiting on the planet's surface when we saw our contact's ship destroyed by a planet based weapon. Apparently our enemies had not been ready for us but after they saw us land they readied to shoot us down when we took off. It was only luck, or I suppose the result of professionalism that Neeka and I arrived on the planet first. We pieced this all together and resolved to take out whoever had shot at our client. Kelda six is a jungle world, and Neeka and I had no trouble reaching the enemy base undetected." His eyes shifted to Ren's. "I know that Neeka has explained a bit about our physiology to you; we are extremely difficult to detect by sensors. Even alerted that there were enemies on the planet, these men were not ready for Neeka and me. We killed fifteen or so members of this group in seconds and broke into the gun station where the ground-to-air cannon was housed – it was also where the majority of their research files were held. When I killed the last soldier inside I came across a scientist cowering under an engineering table. Before I said a word to him he held out a trembling hand and said 'here, this is what you want, take it.' I walked over and took a small holocron from him and he shrank away, whimpering with fear. He was such a mess of nerves that I didn't bother killing him – a mistake I have come to regret – but instead I went over to the blast coil of the cannon. I thought the holocron was simply gun codes, but the receptacle on my wrist computer had been damaged in the fight so I just destroyed a few of the main pieces to the gun. Again, it was only chance that I didn't throw the holocron away.