Private The Tomb Worlds

[Skajin var Imret]

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Shola, Outer Rim.

Reverence isn't alien to me, not after the worlds I've seen, but here it hits stronger than ever. It breeds paralyzing anger. It's all I can do to hold myself back from flying into Bryn'adul space and dying to kill just one more of them.

No wonder so many Darksiders burn out or become nothing. Anger's never felt so compelling, never sunk its claws in so deep. It grows from the reverence and erases it, like a parasite eating its host alive. When I walk the volcanic plains of Shola, I see Kubindi. I see my home burnt. I see and feel the wrongness of it. I am more than I was, but I'll need to grow farther or all these feelings, impressions, visions will burn the heart out of me.

Keeping busy helps. Like Kubindi before the Drael resettlement, Shola is a tomb world. The Sholans left behind an igneous wasteland riddled with mines, some of which descent very deep, protected from the malleable mantle - down to the core. Few other species have ever traveled so far. I learned about Shola during long, happy years at the University of Kubindi. I remember a colleague who loved this place, who'd plumbed amazing, technologically intact subterranean sites and almost had enough grant funding to come back. His main expenses were seismic sensors to predict earthquakes, and environmental suits rated to withstand the corrosive air.

Tomorrow I make the long descent.

 

[Skajin var Imret]

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On my last morning above ground, a quake opened a ruin I'd failed to crack: a mausoleum built as the planet died. The Sholans were a proud species to a fault - who else would mine their homeworld down to the core? Their failure posed an existential crisis, a lack of sensemaking, a feedback loop of the unthinkable. The populace bought in to their elites' hubris and shouldered the cost.

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

Ghrom had stayed on the Libertia while Skajin var Imret had done the initial surveys. He was not scientist, not a scholar or learned man. He was walking mountain held together by force crystals and his own will. However his friend was about to begin a dangerous expadition, one he knew could led to his end. Not only one of exploration of a dead world turned upside down, but one of the soul, Skajin was looking for himself, his control.

They had spoken may times on the dark forces that swirled within them. For Ghorm it was a source of strength and knowledge, but Ska was more concerned than he. Ghrom realized the wisdom his friend possessed so he would go with him, on this walk about. With an open mind and a closed fist, one to learn what lessons were to be tough, one to crush any thing that would get in their way.

 

[Skajin var Imret]

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Ghrom the Molten - marauder, Dark Adept, walking mountain, uneducated brute - is my only real friend. I have colleagues at universities across the galaxy, I am a patron of refugee groups and a leader of insurgents, but actual friendship? There is only Ghrom. We have, after all, nearly everything important in common: the Bryn'adul genocides, and the Dark Side of the Force.

I do still hope I can convince him to take night school.

We came to the first site, deep in the planet's crust: a Sholan facility of some kind, still chugging away brokenly. Many died here, long ago.

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

Skajin var Imret brought us to bubbling ravine of molten lava, it was deep rock, heavy and not what you would normally find at the surface of a planet. He could see from the scorching on the walls this whole area once under "magma" as one could say. The rock seemed to be cooling and receding as it did. The dark forces were strong here. He could feel the many souls that had passed in this very chamber. Wanting to get a better feel for the chamber hit self he passed his hand over the walls, feeling for death. One patch of the wall was particularly cold, in a chamber of heat it was odd.

Doing what he did best he pulled his great hammer from his back and slammed it into the wall as he did the wall began to crack, chunks of smooth rock shattering away to reveal a large blast door of some kind...

"What do you make of this Skajin?"

 

[Skajin var Imret]

Ghrom the Molten

"It szmellsz like hope. Broken hope, but hope nonethelesszz."

The wall yielded under Ghrom's hammer, and the blast door would do the same - if they spent an hour at it. Skajin closed both gloved hands into fists and pulled rubble away from the door's edge in search of - well, anything. Analog handle, electronic controls, service panel. The latter materialized as hammerblows shook grit from metal crevices. Bolts untwirled themselves almost delicately. The panel revealed a strong, tightly coiled latch mechanism, corroded after a thousand years or so.

"We rip that out and we're in."

In short order the door grated down into the bulkhead. Skajin drew a sharp, happy breath and strode ahead through dry bones.

"It's a vehicle. They died here, volcanic gaseszz or szuffocation maybe, asz they were loading or unloading..."

He trailed off, looking up the thing's metal flank.

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

Skajin var Imret offered a much more... gentile approach than the one he had planned, but also more effective if he was honest with himself.

"It's a vehicle. They died here, volcanic gases or suffocation maybe, as they were loading or unloading..."

Ghrom nodded his head in agreement. No words were needed, these were innocents that had died in whatever manner had caused the disaster. As Skajin explored the one end of the vessel he explored the other. The head of the craft had windows that were at eye level to the stone giant and as he approached he held out a hand and wiped away the dirt and dust that had piled up. Two suits of some design sat in the chairs facing the window. The once housed living begins but now were filled with fossilized bones and dry dust. As he looked in further he could see the controls and to his amazement he saw flashing lights and color readouts...

"Feth Skajin, it still has power... now that is what I call built to last..."

 

[Skajin var Imret]

Ghrom the Molten

"Remarkable. Maybe they hooked it to szzome form of geothermal power generator that could at leaszzt partially szurvive szzevere tectonic sztreszz."

Skajin climbed onto a chunk of fallen ceiling for a better view inside the cockpit. The skulls inside the suits' helmets could have belonged to any one of a thousand species. They offered no hint of what the Sholans had looked like.

"In a perfect universzze we'd turn all of thiszz over to teamszz of dedicated academic szpecialistszz."

He hopped down and went around to what was certainly a hatch. After Force-enhanced instinct guided a little experimentation, the vehicle opened. A burst of dead air made his suit's atmospheric sensors whine, but everything stabilized quickly enough. He went up the ramp into...whatever this was.

"It'szz no sztarship."

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

"It's no starship."

The hatch was to small for Ghrom to enter, made for more "normal" sized beings at over three meters tall and nearly as wide he would not be able to make his stones slide through. Instead he poked his head through the hatch and looked around.

"Its' no military craft either..." he said.

From the multitude essences of Sith empire troopers he had adsorbed while taking the Libertia some time ago. Though never trained in combat he just knew things, the knowledge of his victims becoming his own. This vessel had no weapons, but it was build strong with double reinforced bulkheads and metals he didn't know but seemed to be VERY strong. Looking around further he noticed toward the back a set of reinforced cargo doors that looked similar to blast doors one would find on a starship.

" Skajin var Imret , any chance you could get those open." Ghrom asked squeezing his arm through the hatch so he could point to the doors in question.

 

[Skajin var Imret]

Ghrom the Molten

One part reverence, three parts fury: walking among the ancient dead brought visions of Kubindi rushing back. Skajin staggered against the back of a corpse's chair. Ghrom's question barely registered.

"What? Ah - hold on." Skajin stretched his neck and proboscis inside his helmet. He shifted the dead pilot aside and took their place. The controls were all labeled in a language he couldn't begin to translate.

Fortunately, he didn't need to. He toggled a suit module and a connection went live. His protocol droid began translating the ancient script, brokenly, into the Kubaz language. In short order he'd reallocated the last dregs of auxiliary power. The cargo door opened, and the vehicle began draining some kind of capacitor. An ancient reactor chugged to life.

"I think it'szzz a sszzubterranean vehicle. Drillszz, tunnelsz."

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

Ghroms stone feet sounded upon the metal plate of the crafts deck. His lumbering shaking the craft as it continued to wake up from centuries of slumber. The metal construct Skajin was so fond of employing was speaking in Kabaz. A language Ghrom had no knowledge of but his scholarly friend knew well. As he worked Ghrom could feel Skajin sadness, waves of it not related this current situation but from the past. Ghrom was a crude thing, and not wise in the ways of complex emotion. That aside he understood his friend enough to glean what he was feeling and why.

"Memories of home, for you they must be strong... I have none, my people banished me for my belief in the old ways. The forgot the meaning of stone, the way it can protect and empower. They wanted to be of crystal only, frail and one with the force. All those like me that could have protected them were sent away, unvalued and forgotten. Now they are the ones who have vanished from this galaxy and I am all that may remain..."

His words echoed erily in the sounds of the craft as it continued to power up. An awkard silence went of for a few minutes before he asked Skajin var Imret ...

"So what makes you think it makes tunnels?"

 

[Skajin var Imret]

"The apertureszz on the outszzide turrrn out to be diszruptorsz." Skajin pored through the control panels as the distant protocol droid murmured in his comm. "They turrn rrock and maghma to szuperheated vapor and otherr szysztemsz szhunt it arround the vehicle."

Basic remained a challenge. Also, he wasn't quite sure how to respond to Ghrom the Molten . With his proboscis, he slurped calming insect sludge from his Kubaz-designed suit's internal nutrient stores. The controls, which had been sealed in here away from debris and volcanic vapor, responded easily to his touch. The vehicle lurched toward the wall.

Which began to disintegrate.

"Let'sz build you a new home."

 

[Ghrom the Molten]

"Let'sz build you a new home."

"Funny Skajin, my people gave up on the earth long ago, well they did before then end I guess..." Ghrom said.

It was gallows humor, both had lost so much it there was an understanding between them. One that ran deeper than most, especially the short time they had known one another. As the moved the craft began rocking back and forth violently sending Ghrom sliding back and forth into opposing bulk heads. This continued on for a time till Ghrom was able to make his way to the center of the craft and hold on. Seems his bulk was throwing off the balance of the craft. Once he figured that out he was able to keep himself still and the craft as a whole.

"Skaj, where we heading anyhow?"