“No, no, no, no...!”
It was Ccer over the comlink. She was apparently reacting to the planet they found themselves near, upon jumping out of hyperspace after fleeing the Empire, back on Utapau!
To Deacon, the gem-blue and white terrestrial planet with its two moons reminded him of Corellia, but without the large continents. This particular planet was predominately blue oceans, billowy clouds, and a great deal of islands; scattered all over the planet. It was beautiful to the Corellian!
“Figures,” Deacon retorted, “we run across a planet with some potential and you find a problem with it!”
“Captain 90, have you no idea where we are?”
“Look, that Destroyer can follow us anywhere in the Galaxy, Madam, so I had to punch in some kind of coordinates to give us a chance to hide from the Empire. Even if it's in the Unknown Regions...Madam Ccer?”
Apparently, as Deacon was talking with Ccer, she must have told her family that it was safe to get out of the faux-thrusters and stretch their legs. Now, behind him, even with the cockpit door closed, he could hear the Kaird family run into the main area of Burned Cloak. Slowly, the creaking ship began to fill with cackling laughter of young Nedij-raptors. Deacon checked his sensors for other ships nearby and there were none detected at that time; in normal space nor hyperspace. It was a good time for him to set the ship on auto and have a bit of a meeting with the Kairds in the lounge area of the Cloak.
It took a few more minutes for Ccer's grandchildren to settle down. They all sat with their respective parents, filling up the stately lounge with its white furnishings. Deacon stood in the middle of the lounge, next to Ccer for the meeting. Given that the Empire back on Utapau had drastically blown their plan to bits, the Burned Cloak group needed to assess what they would do next. And as for Deacon, he never got the payment for the Nedimix delivery back on Utapau!
Ccer produced a holoprojector and brought up an image of the planet Lehon, which system they had just clumsily entered in. The sharp, blue image produced telemetry and thumbnail sketches about the planet.
“I take it this is another system you've been to,” Deacon guessed.
“Not this time, young human. Not this far out from the Galaxy's Core. Especially not this system, of all the Outer Rim Territories! This is Lehon. I've heard about it from a few acquaintances back on Coruscant years ago. I read the auto-scan identifier from the faux-thruster's console. That's how I knew where we were...an old friend of mine, a Selkath of Manaan, told me that many thousands of years ago, many of Manaan were taken for slaves by an indigenous people from Lehon. They were called the Rakata...”
Ccer directed her attention to Deacon. “Have you heard of them, Captain?”
“I've never even heard of Lehon!”
Ccer nodded, expectantly. “I'm not surprised. Not too many survived once they were snatched from their homeworld and brought here, much less having any descendants tell what happened here. The Rakata not only pilfered the Selkath, but many other species from other planets—Wookiees, Kumumgah, Noghri...Humans. The Rakata were so advanced and powerful that they were able to conquer and enslave these other beings for well over a thousand years. But, eons before that, they received succor form another source. My Selkathan friend said that her family's lore of Lehon gets a little muddled here, since it was so long ago, but a very, very ancient people by the name Kwa visited Lehon and discovered the Rakata in their primitive-state. What was most amazing was the Kwa's power of mixing the Force with science. From that, they created what was called the Infinity Gates...immense, superstructures that served, both, as a galactic weapon and an inter-stellar transporter; giving the Kwa the ability to traverse the Galaxy without the need of a starship!”
By this time, Ccer's grandchildren, and even her adult children, had sat anywhere they could in the Cloak's lounge; listening intently. Deacon was mesmerized. For this was all new to him as well. The images from the holoprojector had changed to show the respective subject that Ccer was discussing at the time. This was via voice-association programmed into the projector.
“It is believed by the Selkath of Manaan that even the ancient Kwa had received this technology from, yet, an even older ancient, of ancient peoples...the Celestials, I believe is what my friend called them. Who were these ancient people is lost in the deep past, if it were ever known at all. But the Kwa took it upon themselves to impart knowledge of the Force and science to the Rakata, as the Celestials had done for them!
“For several generations, the Rakata had, indeed, learned to use the Force and science and created what we know today as hyperdrives! Some in the Galaxy do not take this lore to heart, but, this is what my friend knows...as for the Rakata,” her demeanor had soured now, “they could not shake off their primitive ways, even after so many years and technological advances. For their natural inclinations to Force-sensitivity betrayed them, and they used their technology to overrun many other star systems in the Outer Rim.”
“The enslavement of those you spoke of,” Deacon interjected, remembering the telemetry given from the holoprojector. “In Manaan, Kashyyyk, Tatooine, Honoghr—“
“And Corellia,” Ccer said with poignancy, as she looked at him with sympathetic eyes. It was not lost on Deacon, she could see. She continued. “Indeed, the Rakata had become avaricious with their new-found empire and demanded to know the secrets of the Kwa's knowledge of the Infinite Gates! But upon seeing how the Rakata had turned to the Dark Side of the Force, the Kwa refused. And much like a Sith's apprentice turns to kill the master, the Rakata had turned against the Kwa! Anticipating the Rakata's victory, the Kwa destroyed all of their Infinity Gates before the Rakata could apprehend them.
“Dathomirian Nightsisters were the final blow to this once-powerful, Force-society...the Dathomir witches believed the Infinity Gates were portals that left their world exposed to their enemies. They hunted down and destroyed what was left of the Kwa civilization.”
The holoprojector, via the voice-coder, ended with an image of the planet Lehon and its two moon. It was the exact scene that was right in front of the Cloak's cockpit, Deacon could see through the opened door. But as he looked at Lehon through the cockpit's window, he fell silent. The Kaird family around him, still absorbing the Lehonian tale, began to notice one by one.
“Madam Ccer,” Deacon said, disjointedly, “how long ago has it been since the Kwa-Rakata War?”
As she replaced her holoprojector, she frowned at Deacon's behavior. She glanced at her adult children, to see if they noticed. “According to my friend's family, about a hundred thousand, standard-years ago.”
“Has Lehon fallen to the influence of any other civilization since then,” Deacon asked; not having moved one bit.
“My personal understanding is that a few independent spacers, from archeologists to smugglers, have visited Lehon for its ancient artifacts...” She shrugged as she stepped beside him and looked out the cockpit's window, down the Corellian ship's lounge area and to the front. “Other than that, Lehon has, for practical purposes, been dormant of sentient powers ever since.”
Deacon fell silent. Ccer looked behind her at her family and most of them, in turn, just shrugged. Suddenly, Deacon snapped around and looked at the Kaird family in the lounge, then back at the matriarch.
“Why don't you all buckle yourselves in here, at the lounge, while Madam Ccer joins me up front.”
She shot him a questioning glance with her raptoid eyes.
“Someone's there, Madam Ccer...and it's not the Empire!”
CHAPTER 3
5 BBY, the Lehon System