Before - Legends An Uncertainty in the Force [Inter-Sith Wars, EU, Angst Challenge, OCs]

Author: Oddly Salacious
Title: An Uncertainty in the Force
Era: 2194 BBY, Old Republic, Inter-Sith Wars; soon after the events of Conventions.
Genre: EU
Characters: OCs: Wonofor, Ush Mei-mei, Detric "Den" Ona-ban (intro).
Summary: A Jedi searches for a troubled student obsessed with Sith lore.
Intro: For Angstmongers Anonymous Angst Challenge #2; Angsty First & Last Lines (Dialogue Edition) hosted by @ViariSkywalker. Dialogue lines 3 and 5. Bonus words used.

An Uncertainty in the Force​

"WE are not alone."

The whine of a speeder bike rose and fell to echoes outside the curtained window—a dockyard worker perhaps threading purple twilight towards the yellow dots of home. Inside, on wilted carpet beneath that window, a sickly Zolan violet shed another leaf.

"Statement: Master, if you'll not be needing me, I'll shut down for a while. It will take many cycles to cleanse that drivel from my flash drives."

Detric Ona-ban blinked through strands of untied and unruly black hair; glanced round to his tall servant standing near the abandoned cot. The cot and the desk-and-chair where Detric scrolled through reams of electronic rant were the only furniture afforded to the tiny rental. The sprawl of the galactic-standard yellow smudge near the door concealed a single sink vanity. Not even the overhead luminy—when it worked—could alleviate the cheap.

"Hmm? Uh, yes, Wonofor. That'll be all. I'll wake you if I need anything."

"Observation: Master, you have been reading for five-point-one-three standard hours. There may be little else gained before you rest. Perhaps it is time that you shut down, too."

The Jedi waved an empty hand at his grey companion. But against the settling gloom, Wonofor's orange photoreceptors burned feral like Ralltiiri tiger eyes. The likeness to that creature from Detric's earliest memories was startling.

We are not alone.

The chair creaked and Detric switched tabs on his data reader. He keyed the replay and a quiet feminine voice rose from the device's speaker: a lovely fragrance to lift stale spirits.

"Den, the attached file has what I pulled from Rosindale's portal here at the university. Her last entry is timestamped from two months ago when she was still registered with Delywn Rhys' department." Detric—Den—Ona-ban paused the player to think.

Delywn Rhys was a tenured professor at the University of Bar'leth and a wizard at astro-navigation and hyperspace charting. Professor Rhys could not be reached at the moment having taken sabbatical around the time of this rambling mang'elo, as his Twi'leki friend would call it. And it was she who had contacted Detric, concerned that a graduate student—Khan Rosindale—had convinced Delywn Rhys to mount an expedition to the Dromund Kaas Sith world. From all appearances they had both departed Bar'leth in the weeks since.

Detric himself knew enough of the lost planet to challenge the notion that such a mission without the Jedi High Council's involvement was possible. "Still," he muttered, "if Rhys is able to retrace the jumps through the Trans-Hydian and its roving bands of Mandalorian pirates..." he mused, "a planet is never lost in and of itself. We're the ones who find it." He keyed the player and welcomed back the familiar voice.

"Rosindale mentions a Swokes Swokes captain chartering a deep-space freighter out of Kattada Station. That could be the place where they booked passage up the Perlemian. It's in the entry—"

Ona-ban switched tabs again and scrolled the list of bookmarks he had scattered amongst Rosindale's log diary.

"Bulgum Of Makem Te," he read aloud. "Captain of the Ponderous Gleam.

"Ponderous Gleam?" he inquired of the room. Thankfully, Wonofor's eyes remained dark in shutdown. "Whose warped mind dreams up this echuta?" Detric finished, a little more quietly.

There was an audio clip of the Omwati attached to the entry. He searched to a point in time that he had noted earlier and pressed play. Khan Rosindale chirped at his face.

"We are not alone. And some of us who have heard Professor Cirnix Van's lecture believe something is being covered up. Roicce, well, he thinks the school shoved the professor down in his basement office, can you believe that? And denied him Sava... to keep him quiet all these years until he dies or retires. So, there must be something that they're not telling us or want us to know about. A growing menace maybe. If the Sith are back and if the Jedi won't tell us—"

Ona-ban stopped the player with a sigh. There were more than two-hundred minutes of the same, seeded often enough with half-truths to bolster Rosindale's wilder claims. Detric added more scribbles in his ledger, but nothing more illuminating than those which he had already made.

The next several entries revealed a heated mind reaffirming false logic and building on biases: slowly at first, but doubling in momentum until Khan Rosindale began shifting the onus to any supposed person who would disagree with her assessments. Delywn Rhys' name surfaced often as Rosindale—"Ro-sin-doll-la," Detric quoted—plotted stratagems like someone possessed.

Detric sat up. Possessed.

"We are not alone," he said firmly. "And some of us who have heard…"

And? ...And?

The match of excitement struck in his stomach and the Jedi leapt back to Ush Mei-mei's introduction, his finger jabbing the play button. He listened and then skimmed the playback forwards several seconds. –Listened and skipped a few more seconds.

"...rofessor Cirnix admitted that he believed himself to have acted under some kind of mind control at the time. The Jedi concluded that Cirnix—" Detric stopped the playback.

We are not alone. Period, complete thought. And…

Was it possible that Cirnix Van—who claimed to have crashed on and then who alone escaped from the devilish mystery of Dromund Kaas—could it be possible that he had purposefully subverted some of his lecture audience? Was this a man of academic disrepute dangling the carrot of notoriety for vengeance's sake? Or, was Cirnix Van influencing the impressionable for a more nefarious cause?

Regardless, Cirnix Van had smuggled the memoirs he had made during his escape past the Jedi who questioned him forty years ago. Had he concealed other things from them as well? Was he force sensitive? Could he shield his connection to the Force? Shield a connection through the Force?

It was possible. After all, the Sith of legend were masters of guile and deceit.

Detric needed something more reliable as this was surely the overture to his own slippery symphony of conjecture. He needed Rhys, Rosindale, or Dromund Kaas. And—he needed help.

He thumbed the call button on his data pad and keyed in a stored channel. A small square in the upper right of the screen revealed to him his appearance: a close up of his scruffy face, dark eyes under dark brows, and loose hair. He quickly corralled his wayward locks in a dewback leather band. Then he flattened the camera for a portrait call. Time is money, and so is streaming data through hyperspace.

"Den?" The Twi'lek answering scrunched her eyes in the photonic glare. "Oh! Den!" Ush Mei-mei said, waking a little and recognizing her caller. "What time is it?"

Detric winced. "Stang! Sorry, Ush. It must be early there. I forgot. I'll make this quick."

"It's no bother. Den somobis askiu. …Ona-bahn, nek. Den…" She was speaking to a sleepy mumble behind her. Detric saw ghostly fingers rise into the cropped frame; curled into a friendly but obscene gesture.

"Tell Mathewe that I'm sorry for the late call… Mathewe?" Detric received a thumbs-up for the effort and the hand disappeared.

"I'll make this quick," he repeated to her. "I made it in to Brentaal a day ago. Caught the early transport out of Corsin."

"That's good news. And I did say you could call any time," Ush Mei-mei said. Her eyes inadvertently drifted to the chronometer at the bottom of her screen. "Forward me the HoloNet bill, yes? What's the matter?"

"I, er… need you to search the UB library again."

Ush rose, her holocam wobbling as she plodded sleepily over to her own desk light-years from where he sat. For a brief second, Detric caught sight of a bare shoulder, her throat, slender clavicle and the rising swell—he realized she was nude. Detric fought a slash of hot jealous lightening with Jedi stoicism. It’s the natural impulse. Rise above.

"Logged in, Den. What's the topic we're looking for?" Ush flicked one of her twin lekku aside as she settled herself more comfortably.

"Dromund Kaas," he said.

"There's nothing in the library except the postulates on the Stygian Caldera itself," she gently reminded him. "I sent you what I remembered from Cirnix's private journals."

Detric recalled that past conversation, from before he had started out for the Core Worlds. Trying to locate a particular absorption nebula a few dozen light-years in diameter amidst the vast hugeness of a radio-noisy galaxy required a droid's brain to calculate the odds of success—never mind the odds of finding a small planet inside the Stygian Caldera. At best, the university library had shooed them away and clammed up.

"We're trying a different approach. Search Revan."

"Is that a person?"

"Yes," he answered, "an old Jedi who lived over a thousand years ago, joined the Sith, was betrayed by his friend, brain-wiped to become a Jedi again by the Jedi. Saved the galaxy. Then went missing out in the Deeps. He gets taught to all Jedi initiates as part of their Do-Not-Do series."

"Wow. R-E-V-A-N? The human male? Says here... the Revanchist?"

"Zapped it in one. Wasn't the best moment for the Jedi, that brain-wiping trick," Detric admitted. He rubbed the new stubble on his chin. "A real clever form of possession. Treads the light-dark boundary it does.

"A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge. Never for attack." Detric quoted from his Jedi training.

Ush, half-listening, scrolled the library's search returns. "It's a real patchwork here, Den. There's really nothing coherent... just stubs and clips from all over." Her eyes with their thinly tattooed wings at the corners were darting right-to-left at a blistering pace. Ush had an eidetic memory and processed things at an exceptional rate. She could also speak eighteen languages fluently without trying. In short, she was a genus.

"There are dozens of links to Coruscant, all of them from the Jedi Temple by the looks of it. Most will be locked behind the temple's security firewalls. Wouldn't Coruscant or the Obroa-skai enclave have something more complete on Revan than us?"

"Personal records are restricted information," Detric replied, repeating what had pestered his mind for some time. "Obroa-skai's library is just a mirror of Coruscant. And plus" he added, "the temple libraries banned me from the restricted sections unless I log a master's approval first. That's why I didn't retrieve the Cirnix Van testimonial and why I might have to call on a master if this doesn't pan out. That could add weeks of delay."

"I see." Ush yawned showing the sharp little whites of her upper and lower canines; and she grew silent for a time. Detric waited. Ush had humanoid ears, a rare recessive trait in Twi'lek women. In one ear, she wore two small hoops of silver that shown brightly in the blue-green video image.

"Do you still want me not to speak to Professor Cirnix?" she asked as she sifted through the results.

That's decidedly so… now, Detric thought. "Something tells me to keep him away from this," he answered. "And I won't put you in that position knowing your histories."

"Thank you," Ush breathed. More time passed interspersed with few questions and fewer answers; some comments, and laughs shared between the friends.

"Here's something you may find interesting," she said at last, biting her bottom lip as she quickly scanned the rest of the content. "I found summaries and comments for Gree recordings filed by another department: Xeno Antiquities. Thank the good Sava Bayonne for her devotion to all things Gree. Do you know of a Jedi Master Oteg?"

"I knew an Otegg once, but that man weren't no Jedi," Detric said lightheartedly. "Stiffed me sixty-four skaft-pence when he thought I'd cheated him at Pazaak. He is the single worst player I've ever met."

Ush ignored him. "Master Oteg lived around the time of Revan and aided his rescue from Dromund Kaas. Mmhmm." Ush read through a few more sections silently. Detric heard her absently cracking her fingers and he tried not thinking about her other things. Bare skin things. Softly curving round things. The pleasant, possible pressure of things. Warm breathing and heartbeats. Fingertips. The closeness he desired.

"Den—" Detric opened his eyes from a Jedi calming meditation; Ush was still reading. "Apparently Master Oteg spoke with a Force ghost to obtain the planet's location.

"Can you do that?" she chuckled. "Speak to ghosts?"

"Me? What? No," Detric answered faithfully. "I've never heard of anyone who could. Fascinating."

"A pity. That could really save us some time here."

"I'll take that up with the Council the next time I'm back home."

"My!" she said. "Does the Jedi Code allow for sarcasm these days?"

"Sarcasm? No, I was being honest. Think of it: at the first sign of conflict, we could dial into the Jedi GhostoNet for intel. Need instant enlightenment? Boom! GhostoNet—no personal experiences required."

"Zip it in carbonite, laser brains."

Detric grinned. "Yes, Professor."

Ush's gaze dropped below his line of sight for a minute. "I'm giving you a secure link to my university account's drop box. You'll be able to download all this material and… wait. What's your droid's name?"

"Wonofor?"

"I'm sorry. No, what's his make?"

"Erm… He's an HK-50 protocol droid." Detric answered. "He's been at the Jedi Academy for decades, maybe a century or more. My master assigned him to me when I was granted my knighthood six… no, eight! years ago now. —And he, his master. Wonofor is something of a Jedi family heirloom."

"There's an HK-47 model listed here," Ush said. "Although, it wasn't a protocol droid. Revan created the 47 to be an assassin droid. There's even a cross reference to Telos IV and a hidden droid facility there."

"Assassin?" Detric said. "HK… Does that stand for Hunter Killer?" The hairs on his arms were raised. He had encountered guardian and war droids before. This was different—this was murderous.

"That's not listed here," Ush said, indicating the transcripts. "But Meetra Surik, our Force ghost, traveled with this droid for a time before her death. There's no mention of what happened to it, but this HK-47 droid links Revan with Surik and Surik links us to Dromund Kaas. Would your droid know anything of that model?"

Detric caught himself staring in the direction of the companion with whom he had traveled to dozens of star systems—and for some of those, with whom he had fought his way out again.

"He's probably had a brain wipe," he wagered. Detric had grown to adulthood around the droid, but he knew very little of Wonofor. The cagey droid certainly looked and acted differently than the traditional protocol droid. He concealed a heavy blaster inside his armored shell, for starters. Wonofor's assertive nature was something that Detric accepted as being due to Wonofor's continued service to the Jedi Knights. Now all of that seemed—menacing.

"Ush… er, thank you," he said. "I'll call you again soon. Let me have a chat with Wonofor."

"Go carefully, Den," Ush warned. "Even a complete memory wipe doesn't mean that a droid’s deeper programming gets obliterated. There might be more to him than we know.

"Den Jedi-sokarwou, do'scopti sal Eben," she inclined her head towards him in blessing.

"Ush, I don't know what I would do without you. A thousand times, thanks. I'll talk to you later."

Detric canceled the call and shut down his bright data pad. He sought through the darkness for a sign of his droid. His night-blind eyes flicked and fumbled then for the small brushed-metal cylinder tossed earlier onto the cot. His palm tingled with the itch of the Force to call his lightsaber to him. Instead, he called for the droid.

"Wonofor. Please wake."

Two rectangles in the dark flared into orange life. Words raked through a metal grill somewhere below that predatory eyeshine. "Greeting: I am awake, Master. All systems nominal."

"That's good. Wonofor."

Detric started right in. "Wonofor, where were you manufactured?"

The response was automatic: "Answer: I do not have access to that part of my—"

"Wonofor, cancel," Detric interrupted. "Wonofor, tell me the year you were manufactured. How old are you?"

The glare did not—could not change—but the Jedi felt a subtle shift in demeanor. Logic processors were registering him, paying special regard to Detric's unsaid intentions.

"Disclosure: Master, I am afraid that I cannot answer that question."

"Were you made on Telos IV?"

Silence. The orange eyes watched him through the blackness.

"Wonofor," Detric said, "I need to know. I believe that you may have information that could help me find Dromund Kaas and solve Khan Rosindale's disappearance. Perhaps even, it'll uncover something more dangerous if the Sith are involved. Tell me anything you know about an HK-47 model, Telos, or a Jedi named Meetra Surik. Were you operational when—"

At the mention of Meetra Surik's name, the orange glare flashed and sputtered and Detric grew sharply afraid. A clicking started up in the corner where Wonofor stood. Detric reached slowly for the desk lamp and switched it on. The harshness of silver lines and stark shadows cut at him amidst the spartan room. Wonofor had remained where he was, of course, but his limbs were shaking violently. The droid's head ratcheted from side to side and he issued something like an "Wrrr-rrrr-ik-kik-kik" from his vocabulator. The seizure subsided gradually. Then slowly, Wonofor began to speak again.

"Model: HK-50.82r-104; Series Number: 50; Major Version: 82-; Minor Version: release; Unit: 104. Statement: HK-50 ready to... x4b72656961. System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array. System.Dynamic.UpdateDelegates.UpdateAndExecute3[q0,q1,q2,qret]. CategoryInfo: OperationStopped: [], IndexOutOfRangeException."

And with that, Wonofor fully powered down. Detric rose and went to his robotic companion. He looked up into the dead grey of optical sensors. The droid's arm resisted all of Detric's strength when he tried raising it.

"Wonofor? Hey, buddy. What's going on? Wake up, will you? Wonofor, wake."

The droid said nothing, did nothing, did not twitch or stir. Detric searched the room for answers. Confused, Detric felt strangely alone. He looked at the expressionless face of his dead droid. What did this? What was it I said? Wonofor—

"Why won't you talk to me?"

* * *​

 

WOW great story about the old republic with nice characters. I like to see more of Detric and Ush

 

@earlybird-obi-wan - thank you for the compliments! And many thanks for reading the story; I 'm glad you found the characters engaging.

* Ush just muttered something funny to me. And she still thinks she should've worn a top despite me having cropped the image frames; but she understands the angst challenge and all the little twists I was going for.

I'd like to return to the time of the Inter-Sith Wars once I finish the Battle of Metellos series. It's an older time, and I feel like it's ripe for harder Sci-Fi. —And gothic horror.

Detric Den Ona-ban is one of my oldest OCs although he's never made an appearance in the forums until now. I'd really like to bring in his Padawan to complete—nearly—the establishment of all the OCs who hyper freely around in my headspace. That introduction might be done in a short-short story (my favorite form of prose) for another challenge. I'd first have to ask Den's Padawan if I could alter the timeline (a little perk of being a time-traveling fan fiction writer).

Ush is nearly as old an OC as Den (she frowned at me when I wrote that). Fortunately, her early tales did not survive the Great Forum ReOrg. Good riddance for they were honest trash. Ush has a rich personality to draw upon.
* Ush just suggested that I add in the SPOILER tag I had deleted from the original post on how to pronounce her first name... but I won't.

* * *​

@Findswoman - I eagerly look forward to your reactions!! Many, many thanks!
Seeing a much younger version of Wonofor was fun for me, and it definitely made me think of the depths to which his and Bess's relationship went—especially when Bess was a younger, less burdened, Jedi Knight. Wonofor's shutdown does contain a clue, and is somewhat a real-life programmer's joke. But, it's no spoiler for us that the HK-50s were sent after Surik. And yes! Rosindale is just the tip of the iceberg, but she's a sharp tip .
* I just made a lightsaber igniting sound.

 

The sense of growing menace here is really well done; I really like how you approach SW-verse horror. All the characters feel very unique and intriguing, even those who only make their way on screen briefly.

The personality established for Wonofor right off the bat is endearing and makes it all the more unsettling when something goes... not quite right with him.

Yeah, that's not a good sign.

Aww no, bad idea. Those obsessive Sith-researchers, never genre savvy.

Really liked this line, chills!

I really like how we get both a temporary lightening of the mood and some insight into Detric's personality in lines like this.

Oh wow, I can just imagine how a rumor like this could spread like wildfire in the gossip mill of a university -- and maybe there is a spark underneath all the smoke. The thing is, you can always get some kind of trouble out of a Sith artifact/place. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy that way.

Sounds like most of the HoloNet, probably.

Okay, that is bad news.

Or some from column A, some from column B. Sounds like he's going to make it everyone's problem in whatever case.

I really like this little everyday detail -- we often don't get a really good sense of what Space Utilities and Internet are like and what they can do or cost.

LOL, wrong time to call. I like how we get some pieces of the history and interactions among these characters even in just a short conversation.

I feel bad for him here, and it makes me worry a bit for Detric. Not so much that he has an unrequited crush on Ush Mei-Mei (as he reminds himself, that's a thing that happens), but it feels like that is a bad bit of baggage to be carrying into a confrontation with Ancient Sith Nonsense. Unprocessed emotions tend to go not so well with that kind of thing.

I love this encapsulation of Revan's whole saga!

Trust the librarians, Detric.

Oh, now this is an interesting avenue as well! We do meet ghosts pretty frequently in the OT, but there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe it was common to encounter one since the knowledge was apparently buried for a long time based on Qui-Gon's account. And that's just the benign ghosts of course...

Nah, I think most Jedi ghosts would tell you that they can advise away and people will do mostly what they would have done anyway.

Very cool history for Wonofor, and it seems like he's somehow connected to this whole mess -- worryingly so.

It would be unnerving to find that out so suddenly!

I really like how it's hard to tell if this is some kind of incipient mistrust due to malign influences on Detric, or if it's just him being caught off guard by an unexpected development with a familiar and trusted companion. In any case, it definitely ratchets up the tension.

Oh wow, this is both sad and very eerie as a note to end on. I know it's been a while, but here's hoping there will be a continuation of this story at some point because it feels like we're being set up for quite the terrifying journey!

 

Very compelling situation and unnerving for Detric to discover his 'trusty' droid might be hiding something ominous which is pretty much verified by the self-destruct sequence there at the end.