It should be said that the purpose of visiting the Archives was originally entirely different.
The Temple, like any other social structure, teemed with rumors. There was nothing supernatural about it—Jedi are sentients too; it's in their nature to discuss internal and external affairs.
Including the Council's decisions.
My recovery was approaching, and therefore so was my departure for the front.
Faerost under a GAR siege. The battle on the moon of Thune. The Battle of Atraken… The war was expanding its reach. The mechanism of sentient destruction was picking up speed.
Even though the rumors didn't assign me a precise posting—rear lines or front—I still leaned toward the idea that I would have to learn the hardships of war firsthand. Most of those who survived Geonosis went to the front; I was no better. Not an exception even once.
I had a choice: act like a typical Jedi of this era and gain command experience through losses and failures, or adopt the wisdom of the saying, "A fool learns from his own mistakes, a smart man learns from others'."
I chose the latter.
This galaxy has seen more war than peace. Not always on a global scale, but conflicts in the Heavenly River are an inseparable part of existence.
So it would be simply stupid not to take advantage of the information on the tactical and strategic moves used by commanders, Jedi, and Sith in the past.
And there was no more accurate and complete (though after Dooku's manipulations, I would question that "complete" part) repository of data than the Temple Archives.
Like any Jedi, I could use the information stored here to my heart's content at any available time. But like everyone else, I had no right to take data storage out of here. At most, I could copy what I needed onto a holo-disc.
At an even pace (Jedi don't hurry), I walked through the third of the Archives' four halls to the terminal farthest from the entrance. Two dozen bronzium busts of the Lost Twenty—the last of them being the notorious Dooku—looked down at me.
Officially, the Order claimed only twenty Jedi Masters had voluntarily left their ranks. But even my very superficial knowledge was enough to doubt the truth of that statement. In any case, I hadn't come here to engage in demagoguery about the Order's path.
Settling in at the terminal, I started entering keywords into the search bar one by one. The Mandalorian Wars. Revanchists. The Old Sith Wars. The New Sith Wars. Dreadnoughts. Battleships. Space and ground combat tactics…
Thousands and thousands of pages of Aurebesh text…
There was no doubt I had no intention of reading it all right now. After skimming the key parts of each article, I discarded the unnecessary ones and decided to save the rest. Sliding one of the holo-discs into the receiver, I selected the articles and essays that appeared and queued them for copying.
As for myself, I decided to kill the time working on the Holonet.
Strangely enough, there was huge demand in the galaxy for Jedi lightsaber crystals. The price for ordinary Adegan crystals could reach several tens of thousands of credits. Estimating how many I had, I realized I could become obscenely rich. And if I considered how many ownerless, unwanted ones were lying around in the storeroom…
Stop. It can't really be that simple, can it? If even the simplest crystals sell for more than pocket change, why hasn't Gri sold them off by now? He's a Jedi fence. It can't be for no reason that he decided to help me with the ship—he was clearly pursuing his own interest. He can tell me all he wants that he "just wanted to help," but later he'll surely ask for some kind of favor.
Still, that didn't change the fact that with crystals worth a couple dozen million in his domain, he hadn't tried to cash in on them… Sure, he can't just "move" them all at once—who the hell needs hundreds of crystals—but by selling them little by little, he could live quite comfortably.
Of course, trading common crystals couldn't bring fabulous profits. On the market, just like among the Jedi, only the rarest crystals were truly valued.
For example, for a "Rainbow Gem," one anonymous buyer was willing to pay up to fifty MILLION credits.
Another offered a small planet in the Outer Rim in exchange for a crystal from the planet Eray.
There were also offers of favorable trades. A handful of Hurrikaine crystals promised its owner half of a profitable business on Mustafar…
Sellers and buyers operated on anonymous trading platforms that charged a certain percentage of the deal. The platform acted as an intermediary between seller and buyer, taking from one and delivering to the other. Client confidentiality, full legal and security support for transactions. No risk. The platform assumed full responsibility for the cargo or money delivered to the client. And as the advertisement assured, there were no dissatisfied customers.
Well. Very tempting.
Driven by greed, I took about a dozen plain crystals out of my cloak pocket and scanned them one by one on the portable device built into the terminal.
Then I created an anonymous seller account and added the scan files of the crystals to the goods registry…
"Do you require my assistance, Knight…?" A tall woman approached me—slightly wrinkled, but proud and unbending as a pole: Jocasta Nu.
The Temple's chief archivist. Keeper of all Jedi knowledge. And a lady who was quite easy to like.
If not for the fact that she crept up like a cat.
Thank the Force, she came from the opposite end of the table and couldn't see what I was doing.
"Knight Rik Dougan," I introduced myself, rising from the chair. "Forgive my discourtesy—I didn't notice your presence."
"I only just arrived," the archivist smiled. "I was passing by and couldn't help noticing your perplexed expression, Knight Dougan. I haven't seen you in the Temple before," she added meaningfully.
I had to explain.
"I spent a long time with my former Master, Abhira, in the Unknown Regions. I only arrived at the Temple shortly before Geonosis and became a Knight then. That's why my perplexed face is unfamiliar to you."
I allowed myself a smile, showing that my last words were a joke. Jocasta's gaze warmed by a couple of degrees.
"Well then, Master Abhira was a good friend of mine," she said. "His death is a grievous loss to the Order."
"Without a doubt," I nodded. "It hurts me too. Like some part of me was torn out by the roots."
Strangely, lying came just as easily to me as telling the truth. Not a single muscle in my body twitched as I said those words, even though memories of the torture the Zabrak put me through were swirling in my head. And there was no happier moment than the minute Valkorion turned him inside out.
But the archivist didn't need to know that. That was precisely why, with a clear conscience, I masked the hatred and contempt raging in me for my former mentor behind an aura of goodwill and Light. A little Sith spell Valkorion had shown Dougan…
"Perhaps then I can help you," the old woman offered. "From the looks of it, you're in a hopeless dead end."
"The thing is…" On the table in front of the terminal lay a scattering of crystals I had scanned but hadn't put away yet. While Jocasta and I stood on opposite sides of the terminal, she couldn't see them. Nor could she see that the screen displayed a trading platform for selling those very crystals. "I'm downloading information on wars of the past. I want to arm myself with the experience of my predecessors so I can act more effectively."
"Well," the archivist stroked her chin. "Since the start of the war, you are not the first Jedi to come to the Archives for that. But not all, not all… Here my help certainly won't be needed," she smiled. "Still, I will offer you advice. Pay attention to the New Sith Wars. Those were the last military actions of Jedi generals. One of the Order's most majestic histories."
"Thank you for the guidance, Master Nu," I bowed again. Then inspiration struck me. "Master Nu, could you help me with one matter?"
"For the former Padawan of my friend Abhira," Jocasta smiled. "I will help. And not with just one. What has happened, Rik?"
Choosing my words carefully, I continued:
"I have an old navigation computer. It contains information on the location of a planet I need. But the galactic coordinates are outdated. If I update the computer's database, that information will disappear."
"So that's how it is…" The archivist looked at me thoughtfully. "Is this planet truly absent from the modern database? Even in the Archives?"
"It's a very small planet," I improvised on the fly. "Far out in the Unknown Regions, and it doesn't have any useful minerals. So almost nothing is known about it now. But before I leave for the war, I would like to visit that world… again."
Jocasta looked at me with narrowed eyes.
"And the reason for your pull toward that planet—you will not tell me, of course, Knight Dougan?"
"Why wouldn't I?" I asked with theatrical surprise. "On that planet lies my past."
The Jedi woman nodded with understanding.
"You are seeking a path home," she said firmly. "But is your navicomp truly so old that you must account for errors from stellar drift?"
"The planet's coordinates vanished together with Master Abhira," I lied again. In reality, I had destroyed the navicomputer on the ship I returned to the Order in. Lightning—well, lightning does that. "So the only chance to find the planet is a computer from an ancient ship—more than a thousand years old."
"I understand," the old woman nodded. I didn't dissuade her from what she'd imagined for herself. Why would I? "Use the Bureau of Hyperspace Lanes algorithm for coordinate calculation prior to the Great Resynchronization," she advised. "It is quite accurate. Your computer is evidently very old, since such an algorithm is not installed in it. If my memory serves, they've been installing that algorithm on ships for three thousand years now…"
"Thank you, Master," I bowed once more. Satisfied with herself, the archivist left without another word.
No, I felt no pangs of conscience for deceiving the archivist. Not the slightest.
The moment Jocasta's back disappeared from view, I returned to the terminal. With a light motion of my hand, I swept the crystals into my pocket and focused on the monitor.
The algorithm I needed really was in the Archives. Created a little over four thousand years ago by some Corellian scientific outfit, it was transferred to the Bureau of Hyperspace Lanes—a Republic agency responsible for preserving old and developing new hyperspace routes in the galaxy. And the Order, as usual, had acquired a copy.
I copied the algorithm that interested me. There was still a gap in my plan to find Yavin: to update the coordinates in the navigation computer, an astromech droid was required. Because independent updates to navicomp databases were strictly forbidden by the manufacturer. I needed to acquire a little bucket on wheels.
Since the keyword-based information was still copying, I returned to browsing the trading platforms.
As it turned out, my anonymous profile had already received half a dozen messages.
I rejected the first two offers immediately—obvious, blatant advertising for intermediary services.
The third was too cheap: 100 credits per crystal.
The fourth was already acceptable: 8,000 per crystal. But only with supporting documentation from specialists—purity, origin of the crystals, and so on.
The fifth offer was to trade a couple crystals for a shipment of spice. No, thanks.
Only the last buyer raised the fewest objections.
The price I had listed—11,000 credits per crystal—was fine with him. But individual crystals didn't interest him; the client wanted all ten of the crystals I had put up for sale. Payment: a credit chip for 100,000 credits. Another 10,000 would go to the platform owners for intermediary services.
Well. 100,000 credits was a very solid sum. Many in the galaxy don't see that much in a year. And I'd been here less than a month, and that kind of money could already be mine.
I replied that I agreed. The buyer was currently offline. So I cleared the terminal's history and went back to my quarters.