Lady Obscura: Vader's Shadow [Star Wars | Luke Skywalker]

Chapter 12

Hyperspace was cold and dull in the little ship, and Athara was hard pressed to keep her emotions in check. There was nothing at all to distract her, leaving far too much time to dwell on things she had no desire to think about. It meant clearing her mind was far easier said than done, and there was little else to do. She didn't even want to attempt to sort through her muddled thoughts, and musing about Vader's recent behaviour didn't seem any more appealing.

Instead, she tried to meditate.

That was only marginally more successful, and that was only because the goal was to rest and think of nothing at all but her connection to the Force.

Thankfully, Dagobah was close to Hoth, and even with the painfully slow hyperdrive on her fighter and the multiple micro-jumps to prevent being followed, it was not a long trip. By the time she emerged from her fitful meditation she had essentially arrived.

The scant information she had remembered about the little planet had been entirely correct; there was not much there. It was completely covered in forest, and the sensors picked up nothing but life-form readings. There was no sign of civilization, technology or anything of the sort. Athara sighed, trying to push aside her displeasure. If there really was a Jedi hiding down there, he was certainly brave; there was nothing in the galaxy that could convince her to spend the rest of her life on a planet like Dagobah.

After her initial scans were completed, she turned to locating Luke. She was sure he had to be here. When she reached out through the Force, trying to probe the surface of the planet, she was thwarted by the sheer magnitude of life forms and Force anomalies. It was unhelpful to say the least for finding Luke, but she now understood why the mysterious Jedi chose the little planet.

Instead, she began a sensor sweep searching for the beacon built into the systems of Luke's X-Wing. It was a long shot, especially if Luke hadn't activated it. She had told him she would meet him on Dagobah, but that was no guarantee that he had remembered the beacon. Thankfully, after several long, tense minutes, she picked up the faint signal coming from his ship.

It was in a swamp. Then again, it looked like the entire planet was one, big swamp.

She was having terrible luck with planets.

First Hoth, then Dagobah...Athara groaned before changing her heading and preparing for a slow descent. There was something odd about the atmosphere that her secondary scans had picked up, so she instructed N3 to keep a close eye on the ship's systems as they approached the planet's surface.

There were a few tense moments before they caught sight of the tree canopy through the planet's thick cloud cover, an odd electromagnetic property of the atmosphere briefly threatening to scramble her navigational and flight systems. It was another few minutes until Athara spotted Luke's ship and several more before she found a suitable spot to land. She suppressed another groan when she noticed where Luke's fighter had touched down...crashed, more like, considering the splintered and snapped foliage beyond it.

After her own fighter was settled securely on—relatively—dry land, she took a moment before popping the canopy to regain her bearings. As doubt began to niggle away in the back of her mind, she stood, stretching sore muscles before shucking the orange flight suit she'd donned over her clothes and leaping lightly down from the cockpit.

One nice thing about the lack of civilization and the natural 'shielding' effect of so much life was that there was no need to hide her abilities here. Letting out a satisfied sigh, she reached out, touching and exploring her immediate surroundings through the Force before turning and levitating N3 down from on top of the ship. It felt good to use the Force openly again.