Chapter 122: Lost Stars of Nallastia
Chapter 122: Lost Stars of Nallastia
– Nallastia – Fondor System – 23.7 BBY –
As Aayla parried blaster fire from a trio of combat droids, she remained more than a little incredulous that she was still dealing with the machinations of a Hutt, clear in the Fondor System. Or, at least, that seemed to be how this mess all started.
Specifically, as far as Shaak and Asajj had been able to determine from investigation of a fake derelict pretending to be the ancient colony ship Sun Runner, the entire clusterfuck they were dealing with had originally been a long-term plan of Groodo the Hutt. The Hutt, a major owner of the Esseles Shipyards, had apparently intended to use the derelict in a ploy to destroy his competition in the Fondor Shipyards. A plan that might even have worked, without outside interference, but which the Hutt had abandoned after the start of the Hutt Crusade as a bit too provocative. He’d been protected from the effects of the Crusade by the fact he was a Republic business being, with no real connection back to the Hutt clans. His long-term plan had been derailed by common sense, an unusual amount of it for a Hutt, when he decided he didn’t want that protection to be strained while Hutts were in even more bad odor than usual, galaxy wide.
That said, he’d already built the 400-meter-long fake Sun Runner, and Hutts weren’t known for just wasting assets like that. Instead of throwing away all of his work, he’d conspired with Senator Rodd of Fondor and a droid designer from Kuat named Hurlo Holowan on an alternate use for the ship. Fondor and Nallastia had a long history of disliking each other, a history that started over 4,000 years ago when the moon had been sold to a wealthy party from the Darpa Sector. Said party had desired to save the moon from industrial exploitation by Fondor, and had terraformed it for human habitation.
The colony the buyer had started on his new moon, after naming said moon after his wife, had become fierce environmentalists and preservationists. The locals, in fact, took both nearly to the point of religious fervor, which put them very firmly at odds with the industrialists of the planet Fondor itself. In particular, it put them at frequent and heated odds with the Fondor Shipwrights Guild, who very much wanted the moon back for its mineral resources.
The moon and planet did have a trade agreement, with the moon providing food for Fondor and Fondor’s defense fleet providing protection in return, but they very much didn’t like each other. Personally, Aayla considered threatening your own food source the height of abject stupidity, but Senator Rodd had decided that the Hutt’s original plan being called off presented an opportunity. If he couldn’t be paid off handsomely by Groodo to help destroy the shipyards his world was known for, then he’d just make his money another way. Specifically, by finally doing away with the small colony on Nallastia and seizing the moon of Fondor…just incidentally taking the mineral rights for himself.
Groodo had actually had the good sense to bow out, selling the Sun Runner to the Senator to use as he wanted. Technically perfectly legal, with the Hutt even narcing on the fool to the Jedi, via a clandestine message providing information to Shaak Ti when she’d first officially arrived in system. His game in doing so was perfectly obvious of course, particularly after Shaak Ti rather forcefully interrogated the Senator. Groodo was setting himself up as a concerned businessman who’d built a ‘commissioned replica ship,’ but become ‘worried over what the Senator planned to use it for.’ Piously reporting on him made Groodo out to be a positive saint by Hutt standards, farther insulating him from the effects of the Crusades by making himself the ‘good guy.’
Aayla could begrudgingly admit that the slimy slug had done a good job of it. Nothing he’d done was technically illegal, and he’d legitimately helped by ratting out the Senator. So the Hutt wouldn’t even face a slap on the wrist for his part in all of this.
All of this being the fact that the fake Sun Runner had been used as bait.
The original colony ship had been lost, shortly after delivering its colonists, while it was making a supply run back to their home sector. The Nallastians had been looking for it off and on, via numerous expeditions, for thousands of years since then. Understandably, when it had shown up drifting and a Fondor patrol had ‘kindly’ pointed it out to them in a gesture meant to ‘mend bridges,’ they’d had it towed to their world.
Only for battle droids to come pouring out and assault the very Fortress Aayla was now attempting to relieve.
Thankfully, Skull Fortress wasn’t undefended, with fifty Nallastian warriors stationed there at all times. Maybe a third of them had still been alive and holding out when Aayla, who had slipped into the system separately from Shaak Ti and done the digging for the entire clusterfuck in the background, had managed to reach the volcano in a borrowed Cloakshape fighter. Less thankfully, the reason the droids were attacking here was because the Trinity Stones the warriors were protecting contained a gravity vortex that, if the stones were disrupted, would likely wipe out the entire population of the moon. A planned ‘accident’ that would have been covered up, with the Senator arranging to reclaim the moon after any survivors were dealt with.
Gritting her teeth as she channeled a trick she’d only recently picked up, she blasted the distressingly-capable combat droids with Force Ionize. It was a rare skill that most Jedi shied away from, due to its visual similarity to Force Lightning, but Aayla had searched it out after learning of the Trade Federation’s secret battle droid factors. This was the first time she’d attempted to use it outside of experimental training, and she was pleased to see it worked exactly as advertised. The entire group of droids she’d struck with it seized and fried, shutting down…and reducing the incoming fire directed at her by nearly a third.
Satisfied with the success, she rushed in to repeat the maneuver on the next group. With any luck at all she could reach the defenders before too many more of them fell, and together they could either destroy the droid force in full, or else hold them off until Shaak Ti and Asajj arrived with reinforcements. The rest of Fondor hadn’t been in on the Senator’s scheme, thankfully, and a wing of fighters was already inbound to help. With security forces troops not too far behind on shuttles. She honestly just needed to make sure the Trinity Stones remained undamaged until help arrived, but she’d always been an overachiever…
… … …
"Beyond the skulls that scream from walls,The first star rests where giants fell.The second star burns under falls.The third star lives where monsters dwell."
Aayla, accompanied by Quenelle the Skull Queen, also known as Margravine, ruler of Nallastia, stared at the place were two ancient and giant creatures had died. The entirety of the lava tubes they were in were the result of a massive supervolcano going off in ancient days, an event which had originally rendered the moon partially uninhabitable. The fact it originally had been a garden moon had made terraforming it for humans again fairly easy, but the remnants of the ancient fauna trapped in the walls of lava here were certainly a creepy sight. One that, combined with the wind following through rock to create a ‘howl’ of sorts, gave name to the ‘Cavern of Screaming Skulls.’ They’d already passed the majority of the fossils, but these two were something else. Far larger and far older, the pair of giants looked to have died fighting each other.
“Well, this seems obvious for the first one. Any ideas where the gem we’re looking for will be?”
The Margravine shrugged, indicating ignorance beyond the poem passed down from her ancestors. Sighing, Aayla reached out to the Force for a guidance instead, and was relieved to feel a pulse in the direction of one of the skulls. Carefully picking her way over to it, she found what she was looking for concealed in one of its eye sockets. One of the three Lost Stars of Nallastia, the ancient power gems were apparently the only thing that could unmake the Trinity Stones safely. Something that the ruler had agreed needed to happen after the attack came perilously close to damaging one of them. Only Aayla’s arrival, followed twenty minutes later by starfighters and troop transports from Fondor, had prevented disaster.
Carefully picking up the power gem, Aayla studied it with curiosity. Such power gems were immensely rare. Even more than something like corusca gems, a single one of which could buy a city block on the highest levels of Coruscant. Power gems, being even rarer, were literally priceless…and very, very dangerous. Not in and of themselves, technically, but because they emitted an aura that could completely disrupt energy shields of virtually any kind. Ship shields, station shields, even planetary defense shields. Type or power made no difference.
The Margravine’s own ancestors had amassed their fortune, the fortune with which they’d purchased Nallastia in the first place, by playing pirate with the gems. They’d used them to raid ship and stations in the Darpa sector to immense effect, the gems being able to completely bypass the typical protections of shields in their raids. The ‘Lost Stars’ had also, as it happened, been used to create the Trinity Stones in some fashion Aayla didn’t have a prayer of understanding. Only they, or a similar set of power gems, could unmake the stones in return. Thankfully, contrary to common belief, they hadn’t actually been lost with the original Sun Runner. Instead, they’d been left on the moon and later hidden by the first Margravine’s wife to prevent them from being misused again.
“Well, that’s one of them, at least. I’m guessing, based on how literal the poem was, that we’re looking for a set of waterfalls for the next one. Shall we?”
The Margravine nodded, and the two of them continued deeper into the caverns…
… … …
“So that’s it then, but what will you do with the gems and the Trinity Stones? People know now that you still have them.”
Margravine Quenelle’s expression soured at that.
“The Trinity Stones are harmless without the gems to restart them. As for the gems, I had wished never to need them, precisely because they will be a target now that they’ve been used. I could put them back into the Cavern, but there is no certainty they will not be found, now that they are known to be on the moon at all.”
Aayla nodded and very carefully made a suggestion. She’d been feeling the Margravine out the entire time, with a thought in mind.
“The League would love to have use of them. Specifically, to help insert teams onto the remaining Hutt worlds that have planetary shields. The Hutts have proven distressingly willing to destroy their own planets out of spite, killing millions in the process, and getting teams down to disarm their doomsday weapons has been…iffy.”
The Margravine’s scowl deepened at the suggestion.
“I have no love for the Hutts, who are the exact type we were trying to keep them away from. But they are still part of our heritage. Nor am I certain I could trust a government to use them wisely.”
Thankfully, Aayla had felt the woman out about her views regarding Jedi, and they were mostly positive. Which meant her next gambit might work.
“So don’t give them over to the League, but to the Jedi. Specifically into the care of myself or Shaak Ti, who you’ve met personally. We’ll keep them out of pirate hands while interest in them dies down. If everyone knows you gave them to the Jedi, they won’t come looking here either. When we return them in a year or two, they won’t be looking your way any longer.”
The other woman paused, seeming to mull that idea over. Aayla carefully sweetened the pot, with admittedly another long-term goal in mind as well.
“We can also provide protection. Fondor clearly has numerous treacherous elements, and you’ve been reliant on their navy. The League can post starfighters and a detachment of capital ships to protect the moon specifically. Normally, this deep into the Republic, that wouldn’t be possible. Except that Nallastia is explicitly not part of the Republic. Meaning we can cut a deal with you directly to put a Fleet Station in around the moon. That would protect you from Fondor’s machinations, if they make another attempt like this.”
She could both see and sense the instant that she’d won the ruler over with that idea. The Senator of Fondor being behind all of this had shaken her confidence in their current protection, even if the navy had come to their aid in the end. The fact that it would give the League a Fleet Base within the Republic where they could quietly install a Jump Gate was, of course, only a secondary consideration to wanting to help…
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A/N 1: So, the adventure with the Lost Stars of Nallastia was originally in Star Wars Adventures 1-3, and it should have been Obi-wan and Anakin. It really was supposed to happen in 23 BBY, so I decided to hijack it via Butterfly Effect. Both as something for Aayla to do, and because those power gems were a tempting solution to the Throne Worlds...