Chapter Text
Rippling against the depths of space, a handful of star-flecked masses cut a wide swath toward a desert moon called Yetzov, itself one of thirteen rocky satellites orbiting a red gas giant known as Yezra in the far reaches of the galaxy. Breaking for the upper atmosphere, the star-flecked shapes took on fresh new details: four S-foils pressed together into a pair of laser cannon-tipped wings, hulls matted black with faint pinpricks of starlight white for camouflage, and the polarized lens of a pilot’s cockpit set behind an equally camouflaged R9 astromech droid.
Jaina Solo felt truly far and away from her troubles back home when flying her StealthX. With her astromech Rowdy plugged in behind her, she didn’t need to be focused and present for every fresh episode of drama that the Masters’ Council had her chasing down or every matter back on Coruscant involving her family. Well, what remained of her family, at any rate. But even that note of grief seemed to float away the longer Jaina stayed at the controls of a next-gen X-wing starfighter, with nothing but open skies before her.
Her comm unit crackled as the other StealthX drew near. “Any sign of our target?”
Jaina glanced out the side window of her cockpit to see a familiar blonde-haired Human with ritual scars along her forehead and painted black swirls along her cheeks. Tahiri Veila rode in her own fighter, courtesy of the New Jedi Temple back home. She wasn’t fully back in the Order, but after everything she and Jaina had been through, she might as well have been a proper Knight. The Council had certainly thought so when they asked Jaina to bring Tahiri along on this mission. In the aftermath of breaking free of Caedus’s influence, the young woman had regained her old self as a fusion of Tahiri Veila and Riina Kwaad from the final days of the war. The markings on her face were proof of that much-needed renewal.
Flipping on her comm switch, Jaina answered, “Nothing yet. I’m surprised the Aing-Tii were willing to let us come out this way.”
“The Masters said it was some prized artifact? Surprised they didn’t come get it themselves...”
“Maybe it’s a courtesy on their end.” Jaina frowned at her scope, trying to boost the scanning range a little more. “They know it’s in Republic Space, so they’ll let us bring to them than come after it themselves.”
A crackle of interference ran over Tahiri’s end of the comm channel. “...Right! Those big ships can pop in and out like crazy! I’d rather not see them up close!”
On that, Jaina had to agree. She’d know she’d go crazy trying to figure out how one of the alien monks’ legendary vessels could appear and disappear without seemingly jumping in and out of hyperspace like every other ship in the galaxy. Talon Karrde had showed her a hologram of one Aing-Tii transport, a massive spiked oblong mass with no discernable bridge or engines. She’d also gotten to see the footage he took of them dealing with a pirate crew in the Kathol Rift.
Dealing, of course, being the polite euphemism for utterly obliterating.
The two StealthXs continued their descent, coming to land outside a small mountain range. On Yetzov, it was approaching something like sunset, with the skies turning a deep purple-blue underneath the massive red gas giant peering through the atmosphere. A few meters away from their landing zone, Jaina could spot a series of caves at the foot of the nearest mountain. She didn’t pick up any energy signatures on her readouts.
But the Force told a different story.
In her mind’s eye, she saw—felt—a faint and unsettling warp of time and space in that cave. The Aeon Torus, the Aing-Tii emissary had called it.
A gift from Those Who Dwell Beyond the Veil, he had insisted, set aside to prevent temptation in our younger days, but now too dangerous to be left unattended as the galaxy grows smaller.
It was the phrase younger days that had convinced Jaina to take the mission. She’d felt something ripple in the Force when the monk spoke via hologram to the Masters’ Council, an echo of something she’d thought she’d lost.
A memory of happier days. Days with her brothers, when they were alive and whole in spirit.
She’d seen that same grief and need tear through Tahiri when she offered the mission to her. No doubt the poor girl thought about her own days at Anakin Solo’s side back at the praxeum. Even after integrating everything the Yuuzhan Vong had done to her, after making peace in the wake of prolonged grief and the recent grip of the dark side on her sanity, Tahiri ached for the same thing as Jaina: a chance to go back to those days.
But the mission parameters were clear. They were not to use this Aeon Torus. They were to secure and deliver it to a rendezvous point near Exocron, where the Aing-Tii would collect it. Jaina, for one, was glad to see something like this go back to its original people. She’d meant too many darksiders who thought every ancient artifact was theirs to claim so they could conquer the galaxy. The stories Kyle Katarn and Jaden Korr had brought back to the praxeum about their battles with Sith cultists trying to unlock ultimate power in the Force were worse than anything Jaina and her friends had gone through trying to fight the Shadow Academy as kids.
No, it was good to see this device go back to its people. Besides, it wasn’t yet another fire in the Galactic Alliance that Jaina was trying to put out. Just a part of the galaxy that needed tidying up. And she and Tahiri deserved something as simple as that, surely.
When she finished the landing cycle, Jaina checked her monitors. “We won’t be long, Rowdy. Everything good on your end?”
Her R9 astromech whistled and beeped. On a small console screen, the auto-translator scrawled out his words in Basic simultaneously: AN OIL BATH WOULD BE APPRECIATED AT THE CONCLUSION OF THIS ASSIGNMENT. OTHERWISE, YES, ALL SEEMS WELL.
“Well, I’ll see what I can do about that. Apologies in advance for the sand and grit out here.”
The droid beeped furiously, and her monitor translated. NO APOLOGIES ACCEPTED UNTIL THE OIL BATH, MASTER JEDI.
Jaina grinned. She unbuckled her crash-webbing and climbed out of the cockpit.
She looked over at Tahiri climbing down from her own StealthX. The tousled-hair woman brushed a hand through her curls and shook her head. She glanced around the mountains before settling her gaze on the same cavern Jaina had spotted.
“Is that the place?” she asked.
“I think so. You feel it, too?”
“Yeah.” Tahiri grimaced. “It’s like being motion-sick while standing still. I don’t like it one bit.”
“Me neither.” Jaina nodded toward the cave. “But the sooner we get this done, the better.”
The Human face wore the grin of a Yuuzhan Vong. “Took the words right out of my mouth...”
They marched together across the sand-strewn wastes, boots crunching in an echo that bounced off the wind-swept brown mountainside. Jaina adjusted the fall of her robe over her jumpsuit, and she watched Tahiri fiddle with something on her utility belt. Neither woman said a word as they crossed the threshold, leaving the harsh sunlight of the desert for the cave’s brisk shadows.
A few more minutes of walking straight, and their Force-attuned senses made them halt.
There, half-buried under a collapsed part of the cave, lay the Aeon Torus.
It was exactly how the Aing-Tii described it: a ring torus with a single edge that wrapped around three times before completing the ring where it started, made of a dark green stone that looked like something chipped off the wall of an ancient sea grotto. As the two Jedi approached, the device itself wasn’t running on any kind of power source they could detect. Even so, the closer Jaina got to the Torus, the more she felt a faint disturbance in the Force. A warbling, disruptive voice in an otherwise gentle choir that permeated everything. But it wasn’t the oil-slick malice or the searing pain she’d come to expect from the dark side.
If anything, this artifact hummed a tune that was neither light nor dark. Too alien to be either.
Jaina knelt down beside the device, pushing away a few of the smaller stones by hand. She did her best not to touch the thing yet. She wasn’t some kid fresh off the academy on Yavin 4, after all.
“Okay, time to commune with this.” Jaina rested her palms on her thighs. “Here goes nothing...”
Tahiri kneeled beside her on the rocky floor of the cave. With their eyes closed, the two Jedi fell back into an old meditation technique from their early days at the academy. The Force washed over them with the cool and shimmering rush of a waterfall, right at the moment where the water hit the rocks below and settled into the gentler flow of an ongoing river. Stress and fear bled away with each passing second, and as one, the Jedi reached their minds out to the Aeon Torus.
The device hummed to life, and Jaina felt something like that warbling alien voice in the back of her mind. She opened her eyes, watching gold and violet runes activate across the warped green surface. Light fizzled in the air above the central open space of the torus ring, slowly morphing into an ancient, static-filled hologram of an Aing-Tii monk. The Aing-Tii as a species—and possibly a whole order, as far as the Jedi could tell—consisted of bipedal reptilians with heavy scale-lined hides marked with ritual runes. Some of the runes on the hologram’s body matched the ones Jaina saw on the artifact itself.
With a polite nod of its head, the holographic Aing-Tii spoke in its native tongue.
Jaina frowned. “Any chance you speak Basic, little friend?”
For a moment, there was silence, but the hologram fizzled again. This time, when the figure spoke, something choppy like Basic emerged from a hidden speaker.
“Gr-gr-greetings, trav-travelers...!” the Aing-Tii construct declared. “I-I am Kadir-Lo, gate-gate-gatekeeper-per of the Aeon-n-n-n-n T-t-t-torus! Sp-speak the e-e-er-era-era at the end of y-your p-p-path...”
“Era? Path?” Tahiri echoed. She swiveled to look at Jaina. “The monks didn’t mention this, did they?”
“To be fair, they’re not a talkative bunch.” Jaina sighed and shook her head. She turned back to the virtual being floating in midair. “Kadir-Lo, I am Jedi Knight Jaina Solo. We were asked to retrieve your device and return it to your people—”
“Ah-ah-ah-h-h!” More static crackled through the hologram’s voice. “Th-this one un-un-under-st-stands you! W-w-we must return to an earl-earlier e-e-er-era, yes?”
Jaina frowned. “No, I don’t mean an era, I mean going back to your native world. In space?”
She was sorely tempted to give the ancient, priceless artifact a good smack along the side. After all, half the tech on the Millennium Falcon responded to the same touch without fuss. But Jaina sensed another ripple in the Force, a discordant pulse that made the back of her teeth vibrate, and she started to push off her knees.
Meanwhile, something else rippled closer to home. Jaina looked over at Tahiri, who hadn’t pulled her eyes off the Aing-Tii machine. Even more troubling, however, was the presence of her fellow Jedi. The young woman’s signature in the Force was normally a bright blue sky over a sand dune, brilliant and rough all at once like her homeworld of Tatooine. But the part of her that was Yuuzhan Vong, twisted and forced into her by the shapers on Yavin 4, was an eerie void in the Force itself, untouched by its power so long as that side of her personality was active.
“I have a bad feeling—” Tahiri started to say.
“Don’t,” Jaina warned.
“A bad feeling that this is about to blow—”
“I said, don’t—”
But it was too late. The moment Jaina reached out for Tahiri’s arm to pull her back, the figure of Kadir-Lo fizzled out, declaring something in its native tongue.
Every rune on the Aeon Torus turned from gold and violet to a blinding white. Every second that passed, the runes grew brighter, and the entire cave shook with some deeper power unlocking. Bits of stone and dust fell over the two Jedi trying to clamber onto their feet, and Jaina held out a hand, trying to shield Tahiri and herself from the light that seemed to pour out from every direction of the Aeon Torus.
“Hang on!” Jaina called, right before the white flooded the cavern and everything—
Everything.
Broke.
Apart.
For a long time, there was no thought, no sound, no movement.
Only void. Only darkness.
Then—
Red. Shifting from dark to bright, growing in hue, in definition.
Then—
Falling. Landing.
Pain. More red. Sharper. Cleaner.
And then—
There she was, back in the cave, alive and herself again.
When Jaina opened her eyes again, everything hurt. She clutched at her chest, feeling her heart racing under her fingertips. She checked the rest of herself, finding nothing broken or bleeding. Her flight suit and cloak were still intact, and she still had her lightsaber and the rest of her gear. Digging into her pocket, she found her comlink, and she heard a hiss of static from an open channel that made her smile with relief.
Jaina slumped back onto the floor of the cave.
“Okay,” she said softly, “not my best moment, but still...”
When she turned to look at Tahiri, her heart sank.
Tahiri was gone. Nowhere to be seen.
As she sat up—slowly, still recuperating—Jaina took in her surroundings. She knew that this cave was still the same cave. And when she looked over, she saw the Aeon Torus again.
No, even that had changed, too. Somehow, in the chaos, it had been covered up in the same pile of rocks and dust from when Jaina and Tahiri had found it. And when Jaina looked behind herself toward the mouth of the cave, she was more than a little alarmed to not see footprints from where she and her partner had come in minutes ago.
If, indeed, it had been minutes ago.
Jaina frowned and did her best to settle into a cross-legged position. Okay, this was strange, but she’d find her answers in the Force. It was the key lesson her mother, her Uncle Luke, and her Aunt Mara had drilled into her since she was a kid. When all else failed, she could always turn to the Force, listen to it, and learn from it.
Closing her eyes, she concentrated.
The Force came back to her, but just for a moment, Jaina thought something was off about its presence. It was the Force, the balance of the light and the dark created by all living things, but the further out her senses extended, the more she felt something different about the moon of Yetzov. Going even further, the galaxy itself felt different. The rush of events wasn’t the same as Jaina remembered them. She’d become used to the psychic scar tissue left behind by the invasion of the Yuuzhan Vong, the Killik crisis, a brand-new civil war for the Galactic Alliance, and the absolute nightmare that was Darth Caedus’s rise to power.
Her heart clenched, anticipating those same scars over the face of the galaxy itself.
But they weren’t there. They simply didn’t exist.
There were other scars now, ones Jaina didn’t recognize. These felt older to her, somehow cleaner and more defined. It reminded her of the feelings she got whenever her parents and her uncle talked about the old days fighting the Empire, facing down warlords like Thrawn and Daala. Even Hethrir, who’d kidnapped Jaina and her brothers when they were still little, had carried something of this sinister durasteel edge in his Empire Reborn campaign.
But none of the sheer carnage of the past decade touched Jaina like before. She couldn’t believe it, but she almost missed feeling it in the Force.
“Guess that blow to the head was harder than I thought,” she muttered.
She took her time getting up. The Aeon Torus didn’t respond when she extended her hand out and concentrated.
“Kadir-Lo?” asked Jaina. “Hello? Anybody home?”
Only silence greeted her.
With a shrug, Jaina marched out to the mouth of the cave. She grabbed her comlink and dialed up an old frequency. “Hey, Rowdy, sorry about the wait. Do you think you can...?”
She trailed off. Nothing on her comlink responded. Jaina stared at the device in her hand.
Pocketing it, she ran outside, her legs burning in agony as she did.
Outside, she discovered, her StealthX was gone. Both StealthXs were. And Rowdy was nowhere to be seen.
Jaina slowly sank to her knees. Her hands flopped uselessly at her sides.
“What in the nine hells is going on?” she demanded quietly.
In the Force, something finally caught her attention. A ripple of something familiar. Someone familiar. Jaina didn’t recognize it right away, but she sensed a fellow Jedi in the Force.
Amid the setting sun in the dark orange skies overhead, a silver twinkle emerged. The descent of an old Corellian bulk freighter, an Action V with a long cylindrical tube that ran the length of massive storage holds and a beak-like bridge. Jaina had no idea who in the Order had gotten their hands on one of those, but she wasn’t about to complain. If they were out here looking for her, then maybe they could provide some answers about the time she was missing in her own head.
That, and wherever Tahiri had gone.
Jaina raised her hands above her head, waving them back and forth as the bulk freighter came in for a landing a klick away from the cave. Sand kicked up amid the winds from the freighter settling onto the terrain, and Jaina began to walk toward the ship at an eager pace.
The boarding ramp lowered, and a figure in a black jumpsuit with a brown spacer’s vest emerged.
Jaina’s heart broke when she saw the young woman’s face.
It couldn’t be. No, there was no way it was possible. But this was her, red-gold hair and green eyes and that familiar vibroblade of a scowl as she regarded Jaina from across the sandy plains—
“You’re a long way from civilization,” said Mara Jade. “Mind telling me what brings you here?”