Phoenix - Ghosts of the Past

VII

3rd, Month Grek, 15 AFGE

Dawn ascends her golden throne again, fresh and rosy-fingered. She greeted me with her usual smile, a smile that could rival a sun, and as bright as one, she greeted me with this smile. I was sitting in a tapcaf near the spaceport, sipping a cup of caf and waiting for Sinya to show up. On this fine day, T7 and Emlita would stay behind to keep repairing the ships while will go on a 'scenic tour of the countryside' quite far into the wilderness. Supposedly, according to the holopedia, on the southern part of the continent of Mycera - the landmass Tamwith Bay was on – was a rocky, hilly terrain with quite a few cliffs that was made up of rocks that erode easily on top of having the thick forest that branches out over the cliffs not as tall as the cliffs. In other words, there could possibly be a cave where a ship could hide in and take off under cover. And there was where our destination was.

I waved a serving droid over to refill my cup. After it had walked away with my cup, I pulled out a menu and started going over the options. Most of the things are one that I don't recognise and to my annoyance, there weren't any description or even pictures of the breakfast options and the few recognise was those that I wasn't interested in. Alright, I'm just going to randomly chose whatever, Morning Delight it is. It was the cheapest one there. The serving droid came back with my caf. I took the caf from its hands while pulling up my datapad. Scenery time was over, it's time to do more research on the locations. Someone had very helpfully done a complete survey of the planet's surface from orbit; this was what I found researching on the planet in between repairing the Ashes and studying on currently. From the scans, I had found quite a few caves that could fit the requirement, but all of them quite far apart. With thousands of similar caves all over this planet, it will most certainly give us enough time to get out after someone started searching the caves.

My breakfast finally came. Turns out Morning Delight consists of just a bun, a slab of minced nerf and a square substance that smelled like eggs. Some sort of those so-called 'stir fried' eggs, like those they served at the fast-food chains on Corellia, perhaps? I picked up a fork and dug in. A few bites in, I could already tell this does not bring 'delight' at all. The nerf was so strongly spiced that I couldn't even taste the nerf, and the 'egg' was... a glob. Still, this is infinitely better than imperial rations, and the bun was not so bad.

As I was nibbling on the bun, my datapad was on the table, now displaying the holosite of a speeder shop. I wanted this scenic tour to not be tracked, leaving a trail behind, something that will absolutely happen if I rent a speeder. On top of that, we were planning to hunker down on this planet for a while anyway, a speeder wouldn't go amiss. Right now, I had my eyes on an HCE-23, a locally produced speeder that can easily navigate the wilderness and the best part? It had a repulsorlift powerful enough to lift it high into the air. It was perfect for exploring those caves. Granted, all of the speeders from that company have that ability, but the HCE-23 was the slimmest of them all.

'Hey there, you new here? Haven't seen you around.' Someone slid into the seat next to me.

'Yeah, I'm here to trade, but I think I might stick around for a while.' I actually was planning to make a self-sufficient place that still was close to civilisation, but he didn't need to know that.

'Huh. Oh! Where were my manners? I'm Jacen.' The guy held out a hand to me, but when I clasp mine with his, He grips my wrist and planted a kiss on the back of my hand. My eyebrows rose with surprise. He should be lucky I didn't react as I would a decade ago...

'Charmer.' Instead, this is what he got.

'That I am.' He gave me a cheeky smile.

'Call me Natasha.'

Just then, two squad's worth of stormtroopers walked past the window in a patrol. 24 troopers for one patrol in a secure area near the spaceport. That seems a bit excessive. Out the corner of my eyes, I saw him seemingly disgusted by the display. 'That looks like overkill, isn't it?' I probed him, withholding the urge to sneak into his mind. There was no telling whether there would be someone nearby to notice my use of the force. For now, mere words would suffice.

'Yeah. I mean, there were whispers of insurgents across the Outer Rim, yet the imperials are wasting resources on this planet. It would be better used elsewhere. The people of Raxus were already significantly cowed with the massacres, there was no need to...' He glanced around, before whispering to me, '...terrorise them even more.' Fool. Saying that in the open was just begging to be 'disappeared'. Let's hope the ISB was still focusing most of its attention on their own people.

'You know you shouldn't say that to me. How could you know I wouldn't tattle you to the Empire? Or that I wasn't an ISB agent that was about to arrest you for breaking the Empire Security Law?'

'I got a good feeling about you.' Jacen gave me a tight-lipped smile. 'By the way, how did I break that law? I was only talking.'

'Your words can be interpreted as inciting hatred towards the Empire. That's a crime.'

'Oh.' He said. 'Alright, I have to go. See you later!'

'Perhaps.' He stood up and walked away.

'Soooo... Who is that guy?' Sinya slid into the seat Jacen had just vacated, an eager expression on her face.

'Just some randos deciding to chat up with me.'

'Sure...' She draws.

'Believe me or not, I don't care.' I stood up, 'Let's get moving. Have you chosen a speeder for yourselves yet?'

'Yep.'

'Let's go then.' We set off towards the speeder store, where we already had placed in our orders to pick up our choice of speeders.

Turns out, Sinya had chosen an HU-DCX speeder bike, a rather large, but powerful bike with a sleek and long profile. Both our bikes were green coloured, to be easier to hide in the foliage. 'What are you planning to haul?' I teased, looking pointedly at her bike. 'A freaking farm?'

'You know, this might not be a bad idea...' Sinya said, contemplating, 'That way we could further limit our exposure to security holorecorders.'

'Perhaps...' I mused, 'In the meantime, let's go explore the great scenery of the wilds, should we?' I saddled my bike and started the engine. I glanced at my datapad, 'This way.' I shot off towards the east exit of the city.

After exiting the city, we turned down a road that headed southeast. When we were far from observations, both organic and robotic, we slipped into the forests that cover most of the continent. The trees here were the ones that stood tall with tiny branches, instead of the branchy contorted trees commonly found on the more tropical worlds. The trees of Raxus were tall and slender, with needles as leaves, leaving plenty of natural light through to illumine the ground. It was early spring, and the snow still hadn't thawed. There were hoof tracks all around, a testament to the amount of wildlife on this planet. We were speeding towards the first candidate on the list we had put together.

On our way to the first cave, we met quite a few of the local wildlife. There were some honed, four-legged, slim and large creatures, with the horns being quite elaborate and complex extending wider than their bodies, accompanied with sandy furs and tiny, black eyes. I saw a group of them munching on whatever lies under the snow. There were also hornless versions of the same creature in the group. Different gender, perhaps?

I also observed a smaller kind of creatures stalking the sandy-coloured creatures. This creature had furs ranging from grey to black in colour and a pointed muzzle. For creatures that are grey in colour, they sure did hide well in the foliage. We sped away before we witnessed the hunt.

Near the first cave, there was a tiny creek in a particularly dense part of the forest. We sped through the side of the creek. Sinya was leading and in front of her was a dense bush. There was something odd about this bush though...

'Sinya, get away from that bush!' I yelled into the comms, but it was too late. With a roar, a creature pounced on Sinya.