The suits we put on were top-of-the-line, Remnant-made suits, as sleek as one could get, derived from spacetrooper armor, made more nimble and losing most of their protective features. Clearly, they weren't made for fighting in a vacuum, but that didn't matter; we weren't here to have a shootout anyway. The seal around my collar clicked into place as I finished putting it on, then reached for the helmet to complete the look.
Vila had hers on faster than I did, of course, even if it was a bit more stuffy, having to deal with her lekku, getting culred up and around, stuffed inside her own helmet. She just put on the last part of her gear, checked her seals to keep the air in, then looked at me through the visor and gave me a nod. Then... we looked at Sareh, and surprisingly, she handled the suit like she'd worn none before. There was ample fumbling and a touch of awkwardness, making it quite a comical scene.
"What?" She turned slightly away, finally putting on the rest, flexing her gloved fingers, mumbling about something, about why she hates being watched, and that her horns make it uncomfortable... or something.
"I will remember this moment," Vila muttered, holding back a smirk, but with our helmets, it was a clear broadcast not only to us but to Adrian and HK up on the bridge as well.
"Very funny," Sareh snorted, her voice audibly aggravated through the slight distortion of the comms.
I didn't answer, of course, mostly because I was too focused on the inner hatch by then, waiting for the light to turn green from red and let us open it, and enter out into pure nothingness and board a derelict Sith vessel... Surprisingly, the touch of the Dark Side was very, very faint around here... As if it eroded away, which was bullshit, because not even Korriban got cleaned, not to mention the Rakatan world we visited. So, for whatever reason, I couldn't sense the Dark Side as strongly as I would have expected it; there had to be a reason for it... A reason that I will not like.
As usual.
"Comm channels are locked in," Adrian said suddenly when his voice filtered through the helmet's internal speakers. "You'll have a clean channel to the bridge, and a second to each other's relays. But try to not wander out of range, as yours would only cover half of that ship, and I don't want to be playing messenger between you three."
"Don't worry," Vila replied sweetly. "We'll only wander into ancient Sith death-traps; it should be fine."
"You are a Jedi, no?" Adrian asked back, just as sweetly, "It is your destiny or whatever, to deal with them."
"Just make sure to keep the ship steady and ready," I interrupted them. "If anything moves out here, anything, tell us, and we will return. I don't like the fact that we are being watched."
"I will," he said with a shrug, "I must, because your droid is giving me strange looks already."
[Statement: I am observing the meatbag's bodily changes, heat, twitching, sweat, and heartbeat. I can tell when he makes a move that would endanger the mission, and I will intervene as promised.]
Adrian said nothing to that, but I couldn't help but smile, imagining the scene, but not for long, because the hatch opened, and we were... out. Floating across actual vacuum, only lit by the lights of the ship behind us, flying towards the derelict Sith vessel... It wasn't as peaceful as it sounds; it was quite nerve-wracking instead. Looking around while we used the inbuilt, tiny thrusters of our suits, for a second, the stars looked... fainter than I was used to. But it was mostly because the wreckage field loomed around us in every direction, blocking them out. It was different to see the destroyed ships like this, with your own eyes, counting the countless hulks and ribs and twisted metal as the eye-shaped capital vessel turned slowly around its axis, its surface glinting gold in the Vindicator's lights.
"Watch the thrusters," Vila said over the comms, already in the lead as we flew forward in a single file, Sareh in the middle, me bringing up the back. "Keep it tight."
The suit's microjets hissed as I corrected my drift, following her lead while we crossed the gap between the ships in less than a minute, but it felt longer. With each second, that prickling sensation returned now and then, making me look in the direction it came from, but, of course, I could neither see it nor feel it for real. I don't know what that sentry or whatever it was was doing, but I didn't like it.
I knew we were probably walking into a trap, but we could do nothing about it, could we? No matter... finally, we reached the hole. To be honest, up close, it wasn't just a 'hole.' It was a wild-looking wound on the ship's hull that, somewhere in the past, had been tampered with, as if someone wanted to heal a dead body. Mostly because the edges of the torn plating had been cut, trimmed, and braced with a darker-looking metal that didn't match the original at all, as they turned the destruction into a doorway.
"Let me look at it," Sareh hovered near it, checking it out. "Oh," she breathed, and I heard the smile in her voice even through the comm filter. "It's standard, not even that old. I mean, the doorway itself was manufactured post-republic time, I would put it into early or mid-imperial rule."
"What's that mean?" Vila asked, her impatience from floating in nothing sharpening her words.
"Well..." Sareh didn't answer immediately, beginning to fiddle with it, "It means that someone had come here in Emperor Palpatine's time. Was it him? I can't tell, could be. But it could have been others. Who knows?"
"I don't like that idea." Vila and I both said, and even Adrian commented on it.
"We have no knowledge of this place ever being discovered."
"You wouldn't," I chortled, "I don't think the old Sith Emperor liked to share things like this."
"Ta-da!" Sareh chuckled, and the door was then open, and we could float forward, entering the ruin.
The inside wasn't empty, at least, not as empty as I expected. There were structures within, mostly frames, scaffolds, sealed bulkheads set deeper in, like someone had installed a second skin to keep the vacuum out and start an autopsy from within. Along the inner edge of the breach… thin metal struts had been bolted into place, forming a clear, guided path inward.
"Interesting... There were multiple visitors here," Sareh said, examining the struts and platings. "These items are way too far away from each other."
"Meaning?" Vila asked, watching her touch and look at them, even scanning some with the wrist-mounted device on our suits.
"The struts are ancient, similar in composition to what we saw outside, holding the lane clear. They are also old... Thousands of years old. The panels and the door? As I said, Imperial stuff."
That made my spine tingle for some reason.
"So," Vila looked around again, "We have a group that came here, probably not long after the battle... and then, people who rediscovered it in Palpatine's time. Meaning... we will find nothing?"
"I don't know." Sareh shook her head, but that could be the end result... if two Sith groups, separated by millennia, came here to scour the battlefield, there may have been nothing left behind for us to find.
And in times like this, we have to trust the Force, so I closed my eyes. I let it flow through me, let it guide my senses and instinct. Why don't I feel a strong Dark Side presence? Why am I not blocked completely? I could easily sweep my consciousness around the whole wreck and...
"Kael?" Vila asked, noticing that I stopped moving and became stiff.
"Yeah," I whispered. "I'm here, don't worry... I feel something."
"Can you lead us to it?" Sareh asked at once, making Vila scoff.
"Slow down, girl!" She glanced at her, "We may find something, but what if it's inside the mouth of a rancor? Doesn't mean I want to climb into one..."
"That's a vivid metaphor." Sareh's helmet tilted slightly toward her, but by then, I spoke up again.
"This way." I opened my eyes and began moving, deactivating the magnetic clamps in my boot because floating was faster.
Deeper inside, as we followed a rebuilt corridor, the light changed because the Vindicator's beams didn't reach far in here, so we had to switch to our suit lamps, which painted narrow cones of the interior in an off-white hue.
"Did you notice it?" I asked, as we walked past open doors and completely empty rooms.
"Yeah, no corpses at all." Vila nodded.
"No wonder," Sareh argued, "This place was swept clean."
"Even then," I looked at her, "Dead Sith should have left behind Dark Side residue, especially after perishing, all their anger giving these ruins a mark... a permanent one. Where is it?"
"Palpatine harvested it?" Sareh offered, and I couldn't argue with that, but... Could he do something like that? I don't know... I wasn't versed in his abilities or autobiography, to be honest.
As we walked, every sound was just our breathing and the occasional tap of our mag boots on metal when we chose to anchor ourselves, stop for a moment, mapping the corridors. Then, following the Force, we quickly reached the first new structure: another Imperial-made pressure door. It was set into a frame that didn't belong to the original ship, with fresh weld seams and clean-cut edges, and of course, Sareh drifted toward it immediately.
"No." Vila caught her arm before she could touch it, and Sareh looked at her through the visor, clearly questioning her.
"I won't open it," she said after a moment of pause. "I'm only reading about what is behind it."
"That's how it starts," Vila replied with a groan. "And then you're inside the thing and 'only reading' a Sith curse with your face."
"Let me feel it out," I stepped forward as I moved closer to the panel, letting my fingers hover near the door without touching, stretching out with the Force. "I can't sense anything dangerous," I spoke up after a minute, "It should be safe and clean."
"Oh, there are instructions written here in the Sith language," Sareh said suddenly. When I said it was safe, she immediately came near the door, now examining it, "How... Interesting. Hmm... It's… If my memory serves right about their written language, hm... It's a designation for containment...? Maybe."
"Containment of what?" I asked, now a bit unsure of what I was feeling was correct or not.
"Either a vault," Sareh said simply, "or a prison. Many of their words were context-heavy, so, without knowing the full context, it can be either or both."
"Wonderful," Vila's lekku twitched hard enough that her suit fabric tugged. "Kael, are we really opening an old prison door and letting out whatever is inside?"
"Do we have a choice?" I asked, glancing at Sareh, "Can you open it, without triggering anything? If this is a prison door, it may trip security measures if we just force it open."
[Statement: This is why you should have brought me over.]
"You can still go." Adrian offered, but I cut the debate short.
"Let's focus. Sareh, go ahead."
"No problems," Sareh said immediately, as if she'd read the rest of my sentence before I spoke it. "I will not touch without permission."
Vila made a noise that wasn't quite a laugh.
"Sure."
I stared at the door again, trying to get a feel while Sareh began examining, even opening the side panel and finally, rigging the cables, giving them a jolt of power from her suit... and the door, soundlessly in the vacuum, opened. What was behind it was...
An empty room.
"Eh..." Vila groaned as we stepped inside, and nothing happened. "That's... disappointing. What was this place?" She asked with a shrug.
"Good question." Sareh also hummed in surprise, "An execution room? Or a mediation chamber?"
"Both?" I joked a little because it was indeed a weird room.
It was circular with countless ancient panels lining the floor along the walls, while the hull itself held thousands of Sith writings, runes, and sigils, along with indents that looked like human-shaped, wall-mounted sarcophagi. All of them were empty, of course. The weirdest thing was the chair in the middle. It wasn't just a chair, though; it had massive cables running into the floor and metal straps on the armrests, as if they were designed to hold down whoever sat in it. That was not all, because from the ceiling more cables came down, connecting to the high back of the chair and to a hanging, bowl-shaped... thing. Something that probably could be put on someone's head... Was this really a place to... execute someone? Or torture them?
"I can... feel something," I said suddenly, because focusing on the chair, I finally caught the presence of the Dark Side.
"What is it?" they asked, and after a bit of thinking, I stepped forward to the chair, trying to feel it... But... it was faint. Very faint. "I'm gonna do something stupid." I turned towards Vila, "Make sure to yank me out in time."
"Kael..." She groaned, but by then, I was already doing it...
Sitting down in the chair, letting myself connect to the slight residue of the Dark Side that was present within it.