The Hutt mistress herself is within spitting distance. The slug is dazed, tilting toward her side. Niima shakes her head as her reptilian eyes refocus. Sand streams from her crumpled, rotten skull.
The Hutt bellows something in proto-Huttese, but the translation is lost to another bolt piercing the air, and one of the wheel-cars suddenly flips up, turning once, twice, before slamming back down on top of one of the beasts. The creature screams as its back snaps.
Turbolasers. That’s what’s firing on them. Sloane knows that sound. That beam. She’s never been on the ground when they’ve been firing—and she’s never been the one in their sights—but she knows what they can do, and if they don’t move, they’re all dead.
Change of plans.
The wheel-bike won’t save her. But those plateaus? They might. She reaches down to find her one ally in all this—
Sloane looks over and sees that half of Brentin Wexley is missing.
Oh, no.
But then he sits up, sand and dust seeming to melt off him. Somehow a wave of it buried part of him. He coughs and hacks, but there’s no time for him to clear his lungs, so Sloane gets behind him and helps him stand.
She points. “The plateaus. Run.”
They run.
Just as another turbolaser blast turns one of the wheel-bikes to ash.
On the first day, five pilgrims depart from their starship and set out across one of the countless deep cave systems of Christophsis. They set out with great purpose, bringing with them a sacred gift that was stolen from this place not that long ago: kyber crystals, gems that grow at only a few precious spots here on this world. (Though much of this world is crystalline, the kyber crystals are considerably more rare.) The kyber crystals were taken from this world by the Empire and used to construct the world-killing laser of the Death Star. Though they were also used by the once peacekeepers of this galaxy, the Jedi, in constructing their lightsabers. Brin Izisca said that these must be returned from whence they came: Christophsis. To their, in his words, “home.”
One of the pilgrims is a droid—an MA-B0 cargo lifter droid they call Mabo—and he is the one who carries the crate that holds what was stolen.
On the third day, as they march up a steep rocky embankment studded with crystal spires and slippery with scree, Addar the human confides in his friend Jumon the Iakaru: “I don’t know why we are doing this.”
Jumon shrugs it off and growls, “Because this is what must be done.” His whiskers twitch when he says it, as if this explains it all.
And yet Addar—who is young, untested, and uncertain—persists: “I just mean, what’s the point?”
“Tonight, around the fire, we will watch the holovids again to help you understand.” And they do. When night falls, they start a fire underneath one of the vents leading out to the open sky (where Addar looks up and sees a spray of stars that gleam and glitter like the walls of these caves). Jumon has Madrammagath the Elomin set out the projector disk. From it emits the crackling, staticky holoform of Brin Izisca: the pastor and philanthropist who governs their faith and their community, the Church of the Force. The image of Izisca goes on about the heritage of the Force, about how all things are connected, and about how the Jedi do not control the Force but rather, are merely conduits for it—“antennae attuned to that cosmic frequency,” the man says, and even in the holoform it’s easy to see the wonder dancing in his eyes like torchlight. But Addar isn’t feeling it. Addar isn’t feeling any of it.
When the vid is done, Jumon must sense his apprehension and barks: “We do it because we do it. Because these must return home.” Jumon rolls over in his pack and goes to sleep.
And that’s the end of that.
On the fourth day, they enter the crystal forest. Here the trees are weak and wispy, their bulk more like threads than trunks, their branches like filaments—and yet they stand tall because they are encased in blue crystal. Some even grow up from the ground and marry with the ceiling. When the cave wind moves through them, it keens and moans, a shrill cacophony coupled with dread, groaning lamentations.
As the fourth day ends and the fifth day begins, Madrammagath consults with Uggorda the Duros. His cheeks lose their rosy bloom and his horns twitch as he says: “We are being hunted.” Uggorda confirms it, and she says: “Stay vigilant.” Given how rarely she speaks, the warning carries extra meaning, and fear scurries through every micrometer of Addar.
We shouldn’t have come, he thinks.
On the sixth day, Madrammagath is found dead. He goes off into the crystal trees to relieve himself, and he never returns. They discover his body, cut to pieces as if by saw-blade.
Jumon snarls: “Now we know what hunts us.”
“What?” Addar asks.
“Kyaddak.”