Private Something is Eating the Holocrons!

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"Flowers?"

A flower would be so out of place. He'd glimpsed his grave and it was a simple thing beside other simple things, a plastoid plaque in a refugee camp's dusty burial ground. He thought of others visiting their loved ones' graves and looking over to see flowers from Corellia.

"Thanks, but no," he said at last, as the tunnel took a strange switchback he did not remember. Tiny shards — crumbs — crunched under Corazona von Ascania 's feet.

They came up into sudden sunlight on a hillside. Not far away, a small gray ship was concealed in a crag.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora squinted into the sunlight. As she brought one hand up to shield her eyes, she glanced over to Jorus - were ghosts affected by this sort of thing?

Her boots felt a little uneven against the softer earth. When she went to brush the debris from the treads of her shoe, she was surprised to find jagged specks rather than pebbles.

"Look," she gestured to the little trail of holocron bits strewn through the grass. They were able to follow it up the hill to a jagged split in the rock. "Someone stole the cookies from the cookie jar."

It wasn't long before they were peering over the edge of the crag to the little gray ship.

"I'm not seeing any emblems," Cora whispered. The wrist of her right hand rested against the hilt of her saber, clipped to her belt. "Do you recognize that ship?"

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"And here I'd always heard the Raskava were tidy eaters."

He did squint under the sun but mostly out of habit.

"I'm feeling tied up," he said. "Bet it's the hours of fear of being anchored to that room for eternity. The Exar Kun sort of immortal's a bad, bad deal. But I do feel the need to stretch my wings and let's see..."

He tried to move, as if in the days when he could jump to hyperspace - Force, would he ever see hyperspace again? - and just like that the frustration carried him into the ship. He was reminded of the ghost of Freedon Nadd hopping from Onderon to Yavin in the oldest stories - but then again maybe Nadd had re-anchored himself from a place to Exar Kun himself and just traveled with him.

Fuck.

Corazona von Ascania seemed like a decent kid, but being anchored to her now for some reason would be consistent with being able to leave the vault and come out here insofar as she did.

He tried to move farther than the ship - which was dank, dark, unexceptional - and failed. Instead he shifted back to Corazona's side, having disappeared from there seconds ago. He kept his growing unease to himself.

"Dark in there, and no kind of ship I know. Wouldn't have stuck around if I was them. Maybe there's orbit traffic keeping them down, or maybe what we're seeing is the holocron-eating ritual gone wrong and they've got a throat full of crystal and they're..." He grimaced and shifted again, checked, came back. "...yeah. In the med bay coughing blood. Safe to approach is my bet."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora wasn't as well-read on the properties of Force spirits as she was with other subjects, largely because she knew of no comprehensive texts detailing them. Sure, there were records of encounters, and she'd come across one set of instructions for preserving one's contagiousness after death, but the language was so flowery that even she had difficulty deciphering its context.

Perhaps she wasn't looking in the right archives, exactly.

The tomes all agreed on one constant, though; apparitions appeared to the people and places that they had ties to during their life, hence Jorus occupying his holocron vault. And then he...disappeared? Cora blinked, then took a step back in surprise.

Then, he was back.

"Oh," Cora said. "Did that...did that hurt?" She frowned in thought. The Force shifted, but it hadn't twisted and bent the way it did when her colleagues phased themselves through objects. "No, that certainly can't…"

Jorus flickered, back and forth. Cora joined in wincing at his confirmation. "I do hope that'll mean there's no fight."

The medbay hadn't been difficult to find once they boarded the ship. Small enough, and with an internal layout similar to most. The door hissed open, and she took a cautious step inside.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Unfinished business, Jorus told himself. Ghost stories ended because unfinished business got explained or resolved. Waking up to find a precious thing being destroyed certainly felt unfinished. If he was very, very lucky, resolving this situation in one way or another might set him free. Then again, maybe he'd been trapping himself this whole time.

He went with Corazona von Ascania into the gloomy medbay and tried to turn on the light by force of habit. The switch actually moved, though he felt no contact: the light came on.

A Quarren man — adult but not by much — lay on the medbay's bunk. A metal mask painted with a tentacled face lay on the deck down by his blood-dripping hand. In the two minutes they'd taken to access the ship and get this far, the Quarren had gone from coughing blood to unconsciousness. Shards of crystal glinted in the blood.

"Can you hear me?" Jorus said, his hand passing through the young man's shoulder. He glanced back at Corazona. "Can you heal? Are there medics on Tython?"

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

"I can try," she murmured. As Cora reached out to press two fingers against the Quarren's throat, her eyes flicked to the line of blood trailing down his wrist. It splayed over his fingers, and the glittering shards only heightened her worry.

Her eyes fluttered closed in concentration, and those fingers drew slowly up the length of the cultist's neck and over his chin. Her free hand pried open his oddly shaped mouth, suppressing a shudder as she did so. Slimy.

One shard was guided through his beaked mouth and flicked to the side. She repeated this process until the larger obstructions were cleared away.

"He's not going to feel good after this," Cora said as she curled her fingers around his neck. It almost looked like she was poised to choke the Quarren, rather than working to mend the damaged tissue of his esophagus. "…but I don't think he's lost enough blood to be critical just yet."

Perhaps it was the touch of the Light that flowed through his body, or the presence of a Force apparition, but their patient slowly stirred.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

The Quarren's eyes opened and bulged at the combined sight of a Jedi and a ghost on his ship. He shook off Corazona von Ascania 's hand at his throat, or tried to.

"How much of what you ate do you know now?" said Jorus by way of introduction.

The Quarren eyed him with emotions that he couldn't parse. Weakly, the Quarren sat up. "I took nothing anyone had used for half a century," he said.

Which was true enough. "Eh, you Raskava understand long-term storage. How much could you write down?"

Again, a long pause. "The ritual went wrong," the Quarren said. "Maybe half."

Jorus eyed the specific bloody shards and thought of the rare Wookiee Force tradition of Upari crystal cutting. "Out of Master Qryywrok's Holocron of Gemstones? Half's not too bad. Feels tailor made for community service."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora drew her hand away from the Quarren's neck at the first sign of struggle.

Gemstones?

Seeing as they were in the medbay, she disconnected a holopad that was plugged to one of the scanners. It took a few taps to minimize the unfamiliar medical applications and find something to write with.

"I would advise against attempting to consume the inedible, no matter what you believe you may gain from it."

Her tone was dry as she handed the datapad to the Raskava. Cora turned her focus onto Jorus, having wondered if he'd flicker out of existence after they'd caught the culprit.

"I suppose what he didn't retain will have to be replaced the old-fashioned way," she sighed.

"How did you know which holocron it was that he chewed up?"

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

The Quarren glowered but only to the extent that you might see, on average, from someone who'd recently been saved from a horrible death. He began writing.

Jorus crouched and tried to pick up a bloody bluish shard. It came up off the deck microscopically and tinkle back down right away. He tried not to think of all the friends he'd lost because he couldn't use the Force to do much, certainly not heal.

"Look close enough and the whole holocron was made of carved upari. Maybe that's why your ritual went wrong," he said to the Quarren, who grunted and kept writing. "Upari's its own animal. There's no other crystal I know of that'll have different energy effects based on how it's cut and carved. We hid this...we hid a lot of things in those days, those were bad days. I'd forgotten all about this one or I'd have seen it back to the Wookiee crafters on Kashyyyk. That's where the notes should go, all the content this kid remembers."

Corazona von Ascania

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora met the Quarren's sour look with one of her own. It was the face of a woman who'd compelled more than one rowdy youngling and Padawan write lines in penance for their poor behavior.

Her expression softened as she turned to watch Jorus fiddle with the shard - or attempt to, really.

"I will see to it that his notes are returned to Kashyyyk."

Cora looked as though she wanted to say more. She silently weighed both her words and her curiosity before one won out.

"Why did you feel the need to hide knowledge like this?"

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"Hm? Oh, because it was my job. Or what your job looked like then. I wasn't even a Jedi - I was a Warden of the Sky, if you've heard of that. The Grandmaster, Kiskla Grayson, headhunted me for the Master of First Knowledge seat on the Jedi Council and gave me one job. Figure out how to keep the holocrons secure. Sith were killing, raiding, stealing, betraying - I don't even know how to sum it all up. They were bad years and the Sith were winning, more or less, they'd ripped the heart out of Coruscant."

He knew the Quarren Raskava was listening.

"So I rigged up vaults upon vaults upon vaults. Even put some in deep space and set up what we called the Library Cards, audio links so Jedi anywhere could ask questions to all kinds of holocrons but keep them secure. This'd be long, long before you were born. Then along came another Grandmaster I won't name and she tried to piggyback on it so she could eavesdrop on everything every Jedi asked them, in her order or others, and I was having none of that, so I stole'em all and got them to Jedi I trusted, and some wound up in old vaults during wartime, and Kashyyk was getting torched..."

He realized he was rambling. Frankly he couldn't entirely remember which events had been contemporary with what.

Corazona von Ascania

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

"It sounds like you did what you had to do."

Cora nodded. She could read about history all she liked - but it wasn't the same as living it. She had to wonder, if she ever found herself in Jorus' position, what she would do.

"A grandmaster misusing a learning tool like that is…"

A deep frown cut creases into her face. Jedi were under constant scrutiny, and at times it seemed as though they'd be lambasted for any move they made or didn't make. Sometimes, though, it was deserved.

"You must have been under a lot of pressure. What would you like to see happen to the holocrons in your vault? I can see to it that they're properly cared for, available for Jedi to learn from our past."

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

Now the Quarren was definitely listening. Jorus poked a door control absentmindedly and, somehow, it actually closed, giving them privacy to discuss the locations of tasty holocrons.

"Big question," Jorus admitted. "Can't deny the Alliance's given most of the galaxy's population peace, more or less, for your whole life. But I'm not much for Orders and governments. I'm real not much for how the Alliance surveils hyperlane traffic lately. That new Hyperspace Security Bill's bad news, far as I'm concerned. Call me a purist but I don't want any part of it."

He thought about it for a beat.

"Know what, I'll stick with my old marching orders from Grandmaster Grayson. These're to share. I think there's three left locked up here and there, and I'll give you the codes and all. Toss one at the old Corellia enclave, one at the Shirayans out on Naboo, one at that enclave on the Ithorian herd ship if it's still around, the Vonnuvi."

Corazona von Ascania

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora let out a slow breath. Her shoulders relaxed, but they'd didn't deflate. Next to the ghost of Jorus, she felt like a student. Maybe that wasn't a bad thing.

If only she wasn’t so stiff.

"My brother is with the Shirayans," she offered. It had been some time since she'd spoken to Lysander von Ascania . Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to seek him - and his Master - out.

"I believe the Corellians are still around, too. Master Amani Serys works with the Vonnuvi Enclave. They'll be in good hands."

There was a pause. Cora glanced to the sheet of durasteel that separated them from the cultist. She'd have to take him into custody.

"I don't know how to thank you, Jorus. I'm sorry for how all of this-" she gestured vaguely with her hands "-began. Is there anything you'd like for me to do? Anyone to contact, any messages to pass on?"

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"Well, there's one thing. Give the kid in there a pass. Worst he did is broke something trying to preserve it, more or less, and he's in there fixing what he can by scribbling it out. Far as I'm concerned all you'd have on him is trespassing on a planet your crew didn't own ten minutes ago." Jorus glanced around the somewhat decrepit ship. "Not a great life, Raskava. Not the worst one either."

Corazona von Ascania

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora frowned. Not out of irritation, but thought.

"It doesn't feel right letting him go. Not just because of what he is, but…"

Her expression softened. Hadn't she been like him, once? Not that she'd been a holocron-chomping cultist, but she'd made her fair share of mistakes. If she hadn't been given grace or second chances, she'd probably be living out of a rundown ship like this one.

"Maybe I could show him a different way to preserve knowledge. A less destructive one. I’d like to learn more about what he’s been through, too.”

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

"All sounds like a good thing..."

Jorus weighed what he knew of Corazona von Ascania and the New Jedi Order, and what little he knew about the complete stranger in the other room. He thought about values and priorities and cognitive bias and the Code of the Outer Rim and why the clear course to him wasn't going to go over well at all. Not to a Jedi.

"...long as he's free to go, him and his ship, today or any time he wants. Hate to say it but that's the price for getting those holocrons back in circulation."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora went silent. Her face seemed to take on a grim shadows as she let Jorus' words linger. After a few long moments, she spoke.

"You have my word."

Her tone lightened. She smiled, or at least she tried to, from one corner of her mouth.

"For whatever that's worth. But," she raised a finger. "I won't allow him to leave until we've done a proper scan. I'm not familiar with Quarren biology, and I'd like to make sure that there's no lingering splinters waiting to puncture his windpipe. After that, then…I suppose he'll be free to leave."

The idea of letting him go didn't sit well with her, but very few things did.

Jorus Q. Merrill

 

[Jorus Q. Merrill]

He put aside thoughts of how easily someone like that could wind up amputated for resisting help. It happened. Worse happened.

"Good enough for me."

It would have to be. Being present was feeling less like a tether and more like an effort. He felt himself fading.

He rattled off the locations of the last three holocrons and their vaults' access codes to the best of his recollection. He couldn't well write it down.

"Safe travels, Master Von Ascania. I'll hold you to—"

Gone. Hyperlight.

Oh thank feth.