Chapter 6: The Wild Bantha Chase

The Falcon hurtled through hyperspace with the mottled blue outside the ship whizzing by monotonously. Han had mostly kept to himself through the journey, and Chewie had been equally standoffish, throwing himself into the ship's constant stream of repairs in sullen silence. Kit had taken to sitting in the ventral quad bay indulging herself in a constant stream of bad news. She was surprised to find that her clearance codes still worked, as she expected to be suspended from data analysis as well. She assumed that with the flood of refugees a lone tech's clearance codes were of little consequence.

A pit of horror grew in her stomach as she read on. The chemical composition of the atmosphere of Savareen was slowly changing, and the concentration of oxygen was approaching levels that would lead to mass suffocation. Already, vulnerable populations had been decimated, with tens of thousands of deaths. Hosnian Prime had decided to cut off further refugee accommodation, and the new flood of refugees from Savareen had nowhere to go. The Hutts were prohibiting resettlement within their territory, and Republic systems in the Outer Rim and Mid Rim were beginning to balk at resettlement as well. A flotilla of starships sat parked in space with food running out. Meanwhile, scientists had attempted to run exploratory tests at Rakata Prime, and the entire team vanished without a trace. The Republic had put a pause on further excursions until they could find out what had happened, and the obfuscating answers from Republic Intelligence screamed loud and clear that they were no closer to discovering the origins of the phenomena than they were to solving the refugee issue.

The resulting political noise dominated the news, pushing out the pending landmark legislation that the Senate continued to debate. Protests had begun to emerge on some of the core worlds as political forces and media voices hammered home the failures of the government to protect its people while simultaneously criticizing every proposal designed to protect those affected. Chancellor Organa's government appeared to be on its heels, and a segment of hardliners in the Senate were making as much noise about the issue as possible. The Rylothians and the Rodians were particularly vocal, as they stood to field the most Savareenian refugees due to proximity. The Senator from Kuat, a human named Bolsko whom Kit knew to be a blustering opportunist, pounced on the tragedy, blasting criticism of the government and Organa across every media outlet – especially the ones he had owned before becoming a Senator.

She tossed the data pad aside in disgust and frustration, and moments later, Han Solo pinged her from the cockpit, "Hey kid, we'll be at Xarthax in 15 minutes." Kit pulled herself out of the swiveling gunner seat and climbed up to the galley. Chewbacca was busying himself with repairs to a component, and he did not acknowledge her passing. She passed through to the cockpit, where Han Solo was reclining, leg up against the console, lost in thought.

"Savareen is probably lost," she told him.

Han shifted slightly, but his gaze remained distant. "How long before the atmosphere is unbreathable?"

"8 days," she responded, her own gaze drifting out the cockpit window as she considered the ramifications of an atmosphere collapsing.

"And how long did it take on Rakata Prime?" Han asked, still staring out the cockpit.

"27 days," she answered, and without waiting for the next two questions, she added, "19 on Batuu, and 15 on Jedha."

Han remained silent with his gaze focused outside the cockpit. The scent of Wookie and unbathed male human had invaded her senses, and Han's apparent loss of concern for decorum and hygiene struck a pang of sadness and disgust within her. After a long pause with the two sitting in the cockpit, staring at hyperspace mottling, Han broke the silence, "When we reach the planet, I'll do a flyby of the facility. I'm not equipped for water recon, so I don't expect we'll see much. After that, I can park on the outskirts, and you can poke around. Tomorrow morning, I fly off, with or without you."

Kit, her annoyance resurging, asked, "And what will you do?"

Han gestured toward the cockpit, indicating that he would keep sitting in his chair, staring out the window.

Kit decided on a gamble to see if she could provoke him out of his torpor. "Hey, are you Han Solo or not?"

Han responded with indifference, saying, "Not anymore, kid," and then he pulled the hyperspace lever back. The stars came back into focus, and the planet of Xarthax lay before them, its seven moons in perfect alignment. Much of the planet lay blanketed in dense cloud cover, with only a few island-like mountain ranges extending above the oceanic fog.

Kit left the cockpit to gather her comm unit, her badge, and her blaster. Minutes later, she felt the Falcon vibrate as it entered the planet's atmosphere, and she moved back to the ventral gun to get a good look at the facility but also to get away from Han's stench and indifference. The ship dropped out of the blazing sunshine into a sea of cloud and continued through heavy fog for another five minutes. The ship's momentum slowed, then came to a halt above a ruined building partially submerged in water. The facility's outer wall, designed to hold the highest tides back and protect the interior of the building, had been breached by the explosion. The water had flooded into the facility, which was still smoking slightly from the few areas that stood above the water. Flotsam and a slick of chemicals clouded the water around the facility. Han was right; without underwater gear, there would be little to deduce from looking at the facility from above.

Han had concluded that there was nothing to see without checking in with her first, and the ship pulled away from the wreckage, passing over the city. The city was small, dilapidated, and primitive, and she suspected that the locals – at least those who were not killed in the explosion – would probably have little to offer. As the ship passed over the city to the landing area, Kit climbed out of the gunner's bay and solidified her plan: check in at the Republic outpost, and if that yielded nothing, poke around with the locals to see if anybody had seen anything.

Moments later, the ship settled with a bump, and the boarding ramp descended. Kit stepped into the cold Xarthaxian mist, carrying little optimism with her.

***

The Acronemsis stopped in its tracks and receded into a craggy alcove as it heard the rumble of the approaching ship and felt the vibration through the air. As the ship neared, she deduced the presence of three beings from their vibrations in the Force. She peered through the fog, recognizing the shape of a roughly circular ship. All Acronemses in the Order of Ren's special forces had been trained to recognize this ship, and she identified it as the Millennium Falcon. Her species' own peculiar form of agitation and frustration spiked, as she knew this would complicate a hunt that was already proving more difficult than expected. She keyed the commlink on her slender, black, shell-encased wrist for long-range transmission.

She uttered several clicking and percussive noises, which a communication unit translated into a robotic monotone. "Lord Veryx. The Millennium Falcon has arrived on Xarthax. Fugitive still not found. Please instruct."

A miniaturized figure of Veryx, still cloaked and masked, emerged from her commlink. Even in miniature, the Acronemsis could tell he was not pleased. "The Republic appears to have deduced a clue about the attack. Capture all involved. Send the Falcon out to space and ensure it is destroyed. Make it look like an accident. Kill the fugitive."

The Acronemsis clicked an affirmative, and the transmission ceased. She stretched her wings then floated away into the mist.

***

Kit passed through the nearly deserted city. A handful of children playing a primitive game noticed her approach, but they vanished into the shadows as soon as she neared. The mist muted the city's sounds, creating an eerie, unnatural silence. Condensation dripped from rooftops, nourishing small streams that flowed into gutters and down into the sewers. She checked a projected holomap emanating from her wrist device as she navigated to the doorstep of the Republic outpost, a shabby building with Republic insignia emblazoned above the door that stood apart from the main habitations within the town. After checking to see whether anybody around her was watching, she withdrew a key card and pressed it to a sensor. The door snapped open with a hiss, and she stepped inside.

Using the light radiating from her wrist device, Kit navigated through the cramped waiting room and passed through into the central office. A pair of obsolete computer consoles stood against the wall, and a pair of desks sat across from each other separated by a modest amount of floor space. The office was shabby, ramshackle, and neglected, as if whoever operated here rarely bothered to come in. Given Xarthax's reputation – or lack thereof – Kit reckoned she could not blame the techs for doing the bare minimum. As she regarded the depressing condition of the outpost, she wondered to herself whether just such an assignment might come from her insubordination.

She fired up the office's computer, which took an inordinate amount of time to boot up. When it finally registered as functional, she entered her security code, which gave her access to the facility's records. She pulled up the day of the attack but found that no Republic personnel had been present; the two officers manning the station had been off planet. The security systems had been switched off, even though nobody had been reported present. Once the computer whirred into life, she ran a check to see whether an external hack had interfered with the security systems, when. . .

"Can I help you," spoke a mild voice from behind her.

Kit whirled around, blaster out, and found herself aiming at a timid looking human officer who immediately threw his hands up in the air in terror. Kit took in his appearance and countenance, then slowly lowered her blaster. The man, hands still up, explained to her, "I saw the lights go on, and I thought Nilsan had opened the office up after hours." He paused, before adding tentatively, "Who are you?"

"Kit Antilles, Republic Intelligence." She responded crisply, settling on a strategy to come across as competent and commanding as possible. "Director Voon sent me here to review the events from the previous week. Did you not get the message," she paused for emphasis, "Or were you off-planet?"

The officer blushed, which Kit took as a confirmation that he had been off-planet. Judging by how little there was on Vulta City, she could not blame him for doing so. Still, her frustration deepened when she realized that Republic staff had been derelict, and that there would not be any eye-witness account from an official source. Kit, taking his silence for an affirmative, responded, "At ease. I just need to run a diagnostic to see if there were any clues leading up to the reactor explosion."

The officer responded, "I can save you the time. We ran an inspection a month prior, and we found no significant issues with the reactor. We can't test anything now since it will be underwater for the next month, but our tentative conclusion is that it must have been user error."

Kit nodded. Dead-end. The wild bantha had been chased, but not caught. "Very well, Officer. . ."

"Officer Bahnlo," the officer replied nervously.

"Yes, Officer Bahnlo. I will include this in my report that user error likely spurred the explosion. Expect an analysis crew here when the tides recede. In the meantime," she paused again for effect. "I will omit from my report that you were off-planet. I have limited time, as I need to travel next to the Savareen system to help with the refugee situation."

"Affirmative," replied Bahnlo, and with that, Kit left the office. She stepped back outside, crestfallen that she had reached a dead end, and she began the long walk back to the Falcon.

***

The Acronemsis, aloft, circled the Falcon, running a scan on her wrist commlink to determine the ship's security measures. The scan turned up a camera that viewed the ventral half of the ship near the entrance, but nothing else. Reaching out through the Force, she detected two life forms aboard. The emotional resonance from the human life form suggested a brooding, resentful state of mind. The resonance from the alien suggested focus and concentration, but on some sort of mechanical issue. Neither being seemed attuned or alert to any external threat.

After making that deduction, she fluttered down to the dorsal side of the ship, landing lightly and without sound. She stalked on hind legs and clawed forearms toward the starboard edge of the ship and ran a second scan. The security camera did not appear active; clearly, the ship's inhabitants were not expecting a threat. She dropped down silently, using the thousands of stiff hairs at the ends of her clawed fingers and toes to cling to the ship's surface. She reached the ship's boarding ramp, which stood open, unwatched. After waiting a moment to detect any shift in the emotions within, she entered the ship.

She saw the Wookie first. He was welding a ship component, and the sound of the welding equipment made him oblivious to any other sound. She hovered directly above him then released her grip to dangle upside down. Her mask split apart, revealing a pair of fangs that dripped a clear liquid. A quick strike to the back of the creature's neck, and the Wookie swooned into unconsciousness. Through the Force, she caught the welder and lowered both it and the Wookie gently down to avoid an unnecessary thump that could alert the human.

With the Wookie neutralized, she continued along the ceiling toward the ship's cockpit. Through the cockpit entrance, she could see the human's foot up on the ship's console, and the human leaning back in his chair. Reaching out through the Force, she held him in an invisible grip. She heard his grunting and felt his sudden spike of panic before she pulled him toward her and injected him with the same venom. The human fell still, unconscious.

With her prey unconscious, she produced a silken webbing from a quartet of spinnerets that emerged from her abdomen. After wrapping them in a sticky cocoon of webbing, the Acronemsis hung both the Wookie and the human from the ceiling, where they spun idly, unconscious. She regarded both momentarily. The Wookie appeared too furry to be edible, the human too old. She recalled sensing the emotions of a younger female human on the ship. Surely, the human currently wandering the city might be worthy of a feast.

With her appraisal complete, the Acronemsis stalked out of the Falcon. She checked the device on her wrist to track for a communication device connected to this location, and the girl's communication device registered near the location of a Republic outpost. The Acronemsis took flight into the mist to hunt for the human.

As the Acronemsis left, the ship's computer whirred out of its dormancy. Despite being in low-power mode, the computer had registered the entire event, and it cursed itself for having allowed the security camera to remain off. It ran a diagnostic and concluded that both the captain and the Wookie were alive, but unconscious and defenseless. Now the Republic officer was in danger. She sent a warning to the officer, and then, having witnessed the alien being's strange powers – powers which she had seen only in specific humans – she composed a separate message to send to a planet only a few parsecs away to a human who was certain to help.

***

JX-3846 had spent the last several hours following the bobbing blue light through the subterranean maze of lava tubes beneath Vulta City. Exhaustion and pain coursed through his body, as a sense of gnawing hunger and weakness threatened to overtake him. At several points he slipped into hallucinations where shadows in the walls appeared to become a host of Acronemses threatening to consume him, but he found that so long as he focused on the blue glow, he was able to keep going. A few times, he even imagined that he heard Ben Kenobi's distant, echoing voice imploring him to continue.

He emerged suddenly from the tunnels onto the surface, and the cool mist reinvigorated him. He climbed to the lip of the tunnel, which spilled forth from a small, volcanic ridge near the edge of the town. The blue light had faded and disappeared, but the distant voice of Ben Kenobi resonated from deep within, "Reach out with your feelings. What do you notice?"

JX-3846, unsure of what the prompt meant, closed his eyes and tried to listen to his feelings. At first, all he noticed was tiredness, aches, and a gnawing hunger. As he focused on the hunger and the sensations in his body, another awareness emerged, quite small, but distinct. He heard Ben's voice again, "Yes, concentrate." JX-3846 concentrated on the small awareness, which began to grow larger and take a vague shape. JX-3846 recognized the shape as fear, danger, violence. Somewhere, nearby, something had murderous intent. He focused more deeply on the awareness, which took shape as an instinct telling him to enter the town and head to the north. Mindful of Ben Kenobi's guidance to listen to his instincts, JX-3846 heeded the message from within and entered the town.