Episode X Dark Hunter

Cam's First Job

The identified blue mountain rose higher than the neighboring peaks, although the valleys between it and its brother mountains were shallow; and shallower than the true base because the valleys were filled with creeping glaciers.

The cloaked Slave-1 circled the sleeping mountain a few times, so Videsse could assess the potential entry and exit points. Outside, the mountain was dead, with no organic activity, animal or Arkanian. The winds blew between the mountains and shoved Videsse's ship hazardously. Videsse gripped the control arm and stubbornly focused through her own physical state to keep the ship relatively steady. Even so, Cam cried out a few times when the turbulence juggled the ship and dropped it a handful of meters.

The mountain had five small landing pads lipped out from five gaping entryways on the south-side. On each rested two or three Needle-class starfighters, the same model she had encountered in the exosphere. Snow had settled on half of them. In addition to the five landing pads, there was a large flat elliptical expanse at the bottom. It spread out further down the body of the ridge, almost in the valley where the biting wind held its breath. It was meticulously maintained, evident by the lack of ice and snow. Seventy meters was its long axis, and sixty its short axis.

The ground of this expanse was fashioned with an immense mosaic of grey, blue, black, and yellow stones, the largest stones being the size of Slave-1, and its smallest the size of an astromech droid. A black ringed border edged the entire oval, and unfamiliar blue glyphs were etched into it. Along the long axis, there were arranged three black circles, four meters wide consisting of one flat, glassy, black, obsidian stone each. Two were found at the elliptical foci at the western and eastern sides, and the third was positioned in the center. From the center circle, a yellow sigmoid arc curved, the northern arm curving to the west, and the southern arm to the east before becoming one with the dark-stoned border. Also from the axis of the center circle, two yellow stoned lined triangles extended to the tangents of the eastern and western circles.

All of this religiously patterned work was relatively uninteresting to Videsse, who had all of her attention fixated on another point, for sitting next to the eastern black circle was an SS-64 starship, black, dented, beaten, and worn. Its dorsal stabilizers that supported its distal sub-light engines, gave the ship a T-shaped appearance when seen from the front. From above, the cranial bulging cockpit with a caudal hyperdrive engine created a distinct cross-shaped form. The ship, like everything else, seemed lifeless, and the blue-white light of the ice valley made it look grey with anemia; ironically, this sleeping ship was the Vigilance.

It did not sit alone. Arranged around the same east circle were five waste-high pedestals, four of them had indistinct items floating magnetically above them. Across from the Vigilance, a tired curved Razalon FC-20 speeder-bike sat.

Videsse stared at her familiar ship with glassy and shaky eyes. Had it only been eight days since Videsse had last seen the Vigilance? It seemed to her like a decade ago. Everything seemed like a decade ago. How long had it been since she had last seen Boba, her mother, their graves, Donal, PZ-85? A pain in her chest sharpened beyond the simple explanation of alcohol withdrawal and she suddenly desired to put her helmet on, and so she did. The vocalizer activated, making her breathing obvious and wet.

"That's your ship?" Cam asked, who like a phantom, always appeared behind Videsse's chair without her awareness.

Videsse did not answer with words and heaved a spurious cough as she nodded.

"Then it's easy. We just drop down, hop in, and get out of here. Just, how do we get both ships out of here?"

"Raider will take Slave-1 home." Videsse's voice was weak and cracked when she said the word home. She cleared her throat. "But we need to land in the valley."