The Unchronicled Adventures Of Ahsoka Tano, Book Ten

Chapter Twenty-Eight: War Is A Wearying Game

LUX BONTERI

Lux had spent the past hour turning the datachip with the records from the Separatist base every which way in his hands and examining it from every angle, debating whether or not to plug it into the reader that beckoned from the table beside his cot in the medbay.

The tiny metal square felt oddly heavy against the palm of his hand. In itself, it was nothing extraordinary – just a spare he had happened to be carrying on him before the start of the mission. There were probably a few family holos on it, or maybe some old legal documents for IronFist that he had forgotten to move to his work filing system back on Cialone. And yet it now carried something infinitely more important: the last few tangible memories he had of his beloved stepfather.

But that thought begged another question: what good were those memories to him if he didn't use them?

Lux's grip tightened around the datachip, then reluctantly loosened again as he reached over to plug it into the reader. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a few seconds to steel himself against what he might find.

When he opened them again, the reader had turned on. A brief automated message flashed across the air above him, informing him that the holoprojector was awaiting commands.

He pulled up the menu and selected most recent file, whose contents were ordered from newest to oldest. Lux realized with a pang of sadness that the most recent one was dated less than two days before Zakhan had been reported dead.

His finger hesitated over the symbol that would to allow the file to play. Suddenly he wasn't so sure he wanted to see what was on the datachip.

"I can't back out now," he whispered to himself. "I owe it to him."

Lux touched hologram with an air of finality, but he was in no way prepared when his stepfather's face appeared, life-sized, on the air before him. The image flickered for a moment, and then his stepfather began to speak.

"Military log 018. Classification: visual. General Zakhan Bonteri reporting in. I know we've been trying to minimize power in non-vital sectors so as not to tax the generators, but considering everything that's happened, I think it's worth the risk to..." Lux's stepfather trailed off, gazing back behind him. "They're coming. It was probably stupid, coming back here to the base – it was the most predictable thing I could have done – but there's nowhere else to go. My troops have been deactivated, and I can't get the backup force online. Things are at their direst, and I can only hope someone sees this message and gets it to Mina or Lux. Oh, my boy... my wonderful boy..."

Lux bit back a trembling lip. Although he knew Zakhan was only staring off into space in order to collect his thoughts as he had often done when Lux was a child, it almost felt like the spectral image of his stepfather was looking right at him.

"Anyways. I have to stay on topic. Someone needs to hear the whole story before Krell finds me again, and based on what I'm getting from what's left of the sensor array, that won't be long at all. This time, he intents to make certain I'm dead, and I don't have the means to fight back or escape offworld."

Zakhan cleared his throat. "After my last a log entry, I was taken captive by the general in command of Republic forces here on Aargonar – a Jedi I've since learned is named Pong Krell. He questioned me for days and had given me the bare minimum to survive. As far as I know, I've told him nothing, but with Jedi one has no way of being sure. I can only hope the Jedi mind tricks Enarion taught me all those years ago were enough to protect me."

Lux's eyes widened. "So they knew each other..."

"Although Krell is by no means a man who gives up easily, he seemed to think he would have better luck hacking my tactical droid than prying Separatist secrets out of me. Eventually, I was put into a containment field with two or three periods of electric torture a day to remind me of my place. But then the strangest thing started to happen: every day, the shocks were slightly less painful than the last. I thought for a while I was just getting used to it and somehow tuning it out, but it wasn't long before I realized that wasn't the case. In a place full of enemies, I had somehow managed to find a silent but ever watchful guardian.