Episode X Dark Hunter

One Conversation

Now, we return to Geonosis. Our story again draws us to this lonely planet. How often must we return to desolation? How often do our own stories bring us back to somewhere like this very place, where death and loneliness hang over us like a shadow?

The orange planet did not rage with a global storm as it did the last time we observed it. The cracked and scarred geography stood clearly visible now. The slight wind disturbed only small clouds of dust. The broad, protected valley that Videsse's shelter resided in seemed to be completely still as if holding its breath. Fifty hectares of quinto grain were just ready to be harvested, the dead, brown stalks tottering, waiting to fall under the blade of a reaper. Two dozen moisture vaporators sat among the grain like gravestones—gravestones that paradoxically provided living water to the dying grain.

Videsse's ship, the Vigilance, settled onto a level patch of bare ground beside a small permacrete hut. The engines on its dorsal-wing stabilizers roared in the valley as the ship lowered and came to rest, kicking up a cloud of dust that almost hid the ship. Once settled, the engines hummed to a dead silence.

With a determined stride, Videsse exited the forward cockpit of the black ship. She walked briskly to the hut, her helmet in one hand and the canister of street medicine in the other.

PZ-85 met her in the doorway. He was an awkward protocol droid; a protocol droid with no protocol. His angular arms rested inhumanly at his sides, and his head pivoted slightly on his long neck as he followed Videsse's arrival.

"How's she doin', Peezee?" Videsse asked in a hushed voice.

"It appears that she is stable, but you know, I am not a medical droid," the droid began. "Her condition is unimproved, but she is not deteriorating."

Videsse nodded. "Thank you, Peezee." She brushed past him and threw her helmet. The helmet made a hollow and dead thud as it came to a rest on the table against the wall. She swept into a rear room as PZ-85 hobbled a short distance behind her. The room was thick with darkness, palpable and stale. The windows were shut to shield light from the patient's weak eyes.

In the corner on a cot, lay a skeleton barely visible in the shadows. Her thin arms wrapped over her chest, and her face sought the heavens beyond the permacrete roof. Except for the heaving of her chest, this undead form would have been mistaken for the deceased already.

Videsse lit a dim flame from a hand-held torch on a small table opposite her, before kneeling beside her mother—her clone prime—Terrah Otlell.

Terrah's thin eyelids and drawn face tried to squint under the oppressive yet feeble light, her hand awkwardly rising to protect her eyes. Her olive-colored skin appeared grayer than any natural tone, and her normally green eyes were almost blue with anemia. The muscles of her face drew back in a failed smile.

"Dess," she whispered. "You're back."

Videsse mirrored her weak smile. Her shoulders were stiff and her movements abrupt. She shifted her knees as she knelt by the cot and removed a purple capsule from the canister before inserting it into a mask diffuser.

"Sh, Ma," Videsse bid her. "Just breathe this in. It will give you strength."

She held the mask up to her mother's face and let her breathe in the produced mist. The gray-purple mist wisped out the sides of the mask as she exhaled.

Terrah's chest heaved at first, but within a dozen breaths it began to slow, and her color returned to a shade closer to normal. She looked less like a corpse and more like a specter.

"Thank you," Terrah exhaled. "That's better."

Videsse began to relax her shoulders and exhaled herself, seeing her mother find some peace.