The Knight, Death, and the Devil

Chapter 14: Wanderer In A Sea Of Fog

"This isn't what I expected." Torin leaned over the pilot's chair, peaking out of the cockpit window as they neared the surface of Odessen, nearly scraping the tops of pine trees in their final descent towards the thick mist blanketing much of the planet's surface. Countless cliffs and craggy ridges poked out from the fog, those outcroppings and the trees around them being the only evidence that the planet did indeed have a solid surface beneath the fog.

Their shuttle was approaching one such rock face, though this one had features beyond the natural. A flat white cylinder of gleaming metal was stuck into the cliffside, attached by covered walkways to similar, but smaller structures dug into the rock on either side of it. In front of the central building was a landing pad, below which ran a waterfall that sprayed the underside of the man-made complex with a fine mist.

"What were you expecting?" His Master asked as she slowed the shuttle and began to lower it into the landing pad below.

"A log cabin, maybe some dinky metal prefab setup. Not a... palace." As the shuttle settled onto the landing pad with a thump, he bent over to get a look at the structure. A double doorway to the main structure lay across a short walkway, beside another door leading to a lift that stretched down to the planet's surface.

"Oh, you're exaggerating." She unbuckled from her seat and left the shuttle, leading the group across the pad to the doorway. There was no lock or keypad—why bother? The only sign of life he'd seen were the flocks of birds scared up out of the trees they'd passed in the shuttle. As far as he knew, there wasn't another permanent settlement in the same system as Odessen.

"How did you build this?" Nomi marveled as they entered the main room. Cleaning robots darted from either side of the doorway, making her jump back in fright. They went to work on the white-walled circular room, pulling the protective film off of furniture and scrubbing the floor with their movements. The musty smell of dust was quickly replaced by the metal tang of ozone as the home was scrubbed clean of years of neglect.

"I didn't," Vathamma replied. "I acquired it from an Exchange Underboss who did not think it necessary to pay Imperial tariffs."

"You stole it," Torin stated flatly.

His Master scoffed. "What do you take me for, a common thug?" She pressed a button on the wall near the doorway and the blinds covering the windows retracted it, allowing sunlight to flood in. "I forced him to sign over the deed, then I killed him. There was nothing illicit about the transaction."

She led the trio through another door that opened into a white, featureless server room. An old terminal sat against the wall, and it whirred to life after the press of a few keys.

"Our main order of business is figuring out where Lord Andar—or his ship, rather—are located. From there we can devise a plan to retrieve the data she recovered." Vathamma gestured at Maliss.

White text streamed across the dust-covered black screen, and the Sith frowned. "But that will be impossible to do with the subspace communications array down." She turned to Maliss and Nomi. "You two can make yourselves useful and fix it."

___

Nomi pushed the hovercraft through the forest, navigating towering pines and low copses of shrubs as she and the Mandalorian made their way to the communications array. Despite the fact that the sled did not actually touch the ground, she could still feel every sharp bump and gentle roll of the ground beneath it as the container full of spare parts on top jingled with each shake of the cart. Maliss walked ahead of her, surveying the treeline while her right hand played at the blaster hanging from her side.

"Do you expect to need that?" Nomi said, nodding at the weapon when Maliss cocked her head back to look at her.

"Nope." She turned back around.