The Meditation of Peace had cut through hyperspace like a blade through silk, its durasteel hull shimmering with reflected starlight as it rode the cosmic currents. Inside, the luxury liner hummed with quiet efficiency—servitor droids gliding between cabins, the scent of freshly polished metal mingling with the faint ozone tang of the hyperdrive. A hundred species mingled in the observation decks, their murmurs blending into the ship's ambient thrum.
"How are you liking things on this ship?" Luna asked. Jyon accompanied, always stoic like the typical Jedi though there was a hint of amusement at the edge of his mouth—barely there, but noticeable if you knew him well enough. Which she did. She tilted her head, letting the artificial gravity keep her loosely tethered as they drifted past a viewport that stretched floor-to-ceiling. Beyond it, hyperspace warped the stars into molten streaks of blue-white fire.
Jyon Skywalker, a young man of short, well-cut, black hair with eyes like the azure skies of New Alderaan. His lower face was clean-shaven, but he had a natural jawline that gave him the air of a prince—though he'd scoff at the idea if anyone dared suggest it. His light Jedi robes clung loosely to his frame, tailored enough to hint at the lean muscle beneath but not so fitted as to draw attention. That was Jyon's way: presence without ostentation.
"It's been wonderful, so far." Jyon answered. "Though I've felt unease from our... armored friends." Walking along the corridor, Jyon subtly nodded toward a pair of Mandalorian mercenaries lingering near a service hatch, their visors scanning the crowd with professional disinterest. Luna smirked—trust the Jedi to sense tension before it even had a pulse. "The Mandalorians are necessary for this expedition." She said. "Coruscant holds long forgotten artifacts, from their forgotten history. If we had pushed for this without their knowledge, it wouldn't have looked good for the senate."
Jyon exhaled through his nose, a barely-there sound that Luna had learned meant he was weighing his next words carefully. The Mandalorians shifted—just a fraction, just enough for their armor to whisper against itself—before one of them turned fully toward them. The visor gleamed under the ship's ambient lighting, revealing nothing.
"Besides," Luna said. "I think their armor is kind of sexy." Teasing Jyon with a sidelong glance—because someone had to puncture the tension—she watched his lips twitch, then flatten again in forced neutrality. "Sexy?" Jyon reacted. "What, you don't find a Jedi attractive?"
"Is that jealousy I'm sensing?" Luna grinned, stepping closer until the toe of her boot nearly brushed Jyon's. The Mandalorian who'd turned toward them tilted their helmet slightly—not enough to be obvious, but Luna had spent enough time studying body language to catch the shift. "Because if it is, Knight Skywalker, that's hardly the Jedi way."
"So tell me about yourself, Mr. Skywalker." Luna leaned against the viewport, her fingers tapping idly against the transparisteel as the hyperspace swirls painted her face in shifting cobalt. She'd asked it lightly—like it was nothing—but the way she held his gaze made it clear she expected an answer worth the breath it took to ask. "With a name like that, you must have quite powerful."
"Supposedly," Jyon said, his voice dipping into something quieter, something almost reluctant. He glanced out at the hyperspace streaks as if they might carry his memories away with them. "I was born on Hrava IV—an ice planet near the Unknown Regions. Nothing but glaciers and blizzards for kilometers." He flexed his fingers absently, the way he always did when recounting something uncomfortable. "My mother was a scavenger. We lived in the wreckage of an old Separatist dreadnought, half-buried in the snow. She used to tell me stories about how it fell from the sky before I was born."
Luna watched him carefully, her teasing grin softening into something more patient. The Mandalorians had shifted back into their patrol pattern, but she barely noticed now. Jyon had that effect—when he spoke, the world around him dimmed just enough to make space for his words.
"The Jedi found us when I was nine," he continued. "A scouting party, tracking rumors of Force-sensitive children in the Outer Rim. They said..." He paused, his jaw tightening briefly. "They said I lifted an entire AT-TE walker carcass off my mother when a storm collapsed part of the ship. She was pinned. I don't remember doing it. Just the cold, and her screaming." His thumb brushed over the back of his hand, a self-soothing gesture Luna had seen before. "They took us both to Alderaan. Well—the new Alderaan, after it's destruction. My mother stayed in the lower levels. She hated the Temple. Was never a fan of the incense."
"What about your father?" Luna then asked, her voice lowering instinctively, as if she'd accidentally stepped onto thin ice. Jyon's fingers stilled against his palm, his gaze fixed on the streaking stars beyond the viewport. "There wasn't one," he said simply. "My mother told the Jedi she'd never met him. That I was... conceived in a dream." His mouth twisted slightly, like he'd tasted something bitter. "The Jedi had theories, of course. Some believed I was a vergence—a manifestation of the Force itself. Others thought—" He exhaled sharply. "They whispered about reincarnation. About bloodlines."
"Force this, Force that," A Mandalorian said. "It's all you Jedi ever talk about." Stepping forward, his Neo-Crusader armor catching the light in a way that made the blue seem almost liquid. Kyaal Nord, according to the insignia etched into his pauldron, tilted his helmet slightly—just enough for the overhead lights to glint off his T-visor as he regarded Jyon with undisguised amusement. "Chosen ones are made, not born," he said, his modulated voice carrying the rough edges of someone who'd grown up spitting out gravel with his first words. "You Jedi treat the Force like some benevolent deity handing out miracles to special children. But power?" He tapped a fist against his chestplate. "Power is earned in the dirt."
"The Force guides us all," Jyon replied. "Whether you like it or not, it binds us—even you." His tone wasn't defensive, just firm. Like stating a fact. Kyaal scoffed, "And what about the Sith? Does the Force guide them as well? Or is your precious Force just playing favorites?" The Mandalorian's gauntlet twitched toward the blaster at his hip—not a threat, just a habit. Luna watched the movement, her fingers curling reflexively around the datapad in her pocket.
"The Force..." Jyon felt conflicted. He exhaled slowly, unclenching his fists without realizing he'd tightened them. "The Force isn't fair. It doesn't pick sides. It just is." He met Kyaal's visor squarely. "And yeah, the Sith use it too. That's why we fight them—not because the Force tells us to, but because we choose to."
"So you say, Jedi..." Kyaal shrugged, the servos in his armor whining faintly as he shifted his weight. "But only time will tell. When another Sith Lord starts attacking again, what's to stop people from looking down on—"
"THAT ENOUGH!" Jyon shouted in frustration, but then stopped himself, pressing a hand over his face. He took a deep breath, the way Jedi were taught to do when emotions threatened to overwhelm them. Luna watched the tension ripple through his shoulders before he exhaled slowly, dropping his hand. "We're not here to debate philosophy," he said, quieter now. "We're here to excavate history—together."
"Fair enough," Kyaal let down his guard. "I apologize for causing discomfort." His modulated voice softened, though the mechanical rasp lingered. He took a deliberate step back, the plates of his armor settling with a muted clink. Luna exhaled, not realizing she'd been holding her breath. "Allow me to properly introduce myself: I am Kyaal Nord of the Mandalorian Alliance. I am to be the expedition's security liaison." He inclined his helmet toward Luna. "And you must be Dr. Grael."
"Kyaal... I recognize that name," Luna said, tilting her head as she studied the insignia on his pauldron more closely. The crest wasn't just Mandalorian—it was weathered in a way that suggested generations of wear. "You were that guy from—" Kyaal interrupted her words. "Let's keep private matters to ourselves please." Luna nodded.
The briefing room doors hissed shut behind them with the finality of a tomb seal. Luna didn't bother with formalities—she slapped her palm against the holoprojector's activation plate before the others had fully settled into their seats. A three-dimensional Coruscant bloomed into existence above the table, its once-gleaming spires now rendered in sickly amber translucency. The lower levels were blackened voids, like rot eating through the planet's core.
"According to my father's research," Luna said. "Our objective should be here." She pointed at a section of the holographic Coruscant that flickered ominously—a district near what had once been the Senate District, now little more than a jagged silhouette against the planet's ruined skyline. The hologram zoomed in, revealing layers upon layers of collapsed infrastructure, like the ribs of some enormous beast picked clean by time. "Level 2738. The undercity there was sealed off centuries ago during the Third Sith Purge. Records suggest it was a repository for Force artifacts—ones too dangerous to destroy, but too volatile to leave uncontained." "Deep beneath that should be where the Ha'rangir city vaults are—the old Mandalorian armories built during the Taung era." Kyaal's helmet tilted slightly, his visor reflecting the hologram's amber glow. "You're telling me we're diving into a Sith tomb and a Mandalorian city?" His modulated voice carried a note of dark amusement. "Sounds like my kind of party."
Jyon exhaled sharply through his nose, his fingers twitching toward his lightsaber before stopping himself. "If this vault was sealed during the Purges," he said, "there's a reason. Sith relics aren't just artifacts—they're alive. And not in a metaphorical sense." Luna tapped a command into the holoprojector, and the display shifted to show a cross-section of the lower levels—a labyrinth of collapsed transit tunnels and sealed bulkheads, all leading downward into darkness. "The good news," she said, "is that we won't be going in blind." The hologram resolved into a schematic of a towering structure buried deep beneath the surface—a ziggurat of black stone, its edges too precise to be natural. "This is the Vault of Echoes," Luna continued. "According to the last surviving records from the Jedi Archives, it was designed by both Jedi and Mandalorian architects during the brief armistice after the Battle of Dxun. It's warded with both Force sigils and Mandalorian countermeasures." Kyaal's helmet snapped toward her. "You're joking." "Afraid not," Luna said with a wry smile. "Turns out your ancestors and mine had a moment of shared brilliance—or shared paranoia." She enlarged a section of the schematic, revealing intricate Mandalorian script woven through Jedi runes along the vault's threshold. "The wards are keyed to both bloodlines. That's why we need each other." Jyon studied the hologram, his brow furrowing. "And the refugees? The scavengers?" Luna's smile faded. "They don't go that deep," she said quietly. "Nothing does." The hologram flickered again, zooming out to show the upper levels of Coruscant's corpse—a graveyard of skyscrapers, their spines broken by orbital bombardments millennia past. Faint heat signatures pulsed here and there, marking the settlements of those desperate or foolish enough to eke out an existence in the planet's corpse. "The surface is survivable," Luna admitted.
"Barely. But the deeper you go, the worse it gets. Atmospheric processors failed centuries ago. The lower levels are a cocktail of toxic gases and radiation pockets." She tapped another command, and the hologram overlay shifted to show swirling tendrils of corrosive fog pooling in the deeper chasms. "And then there's the wildlife." The display resolved into a grainy security feed—something ancient, its pixels bleeding together. It showed a pack of gaunt, six-limbed creatures with too many eyes scuttling across a collapsed walkway. Their hides glistened faintly in the dim light, their elongated jaws splitting open to reveal nested rows of needle-thin teeth. "Rackghouls," Kyaal identified immediately, his voice grim. "Thought they were extinct." "On most worlds, they are," Luna agreed. "But Coruscant's underbelly is its own ecosystem now. A hungry one." Jyon's hand had found his lightsaber hilt again, his thumb tracing the ignition switch absently. "And the vault?" "Sealed tighter than a Hutt's vault," Luna assured him. "But intact. Scans from our probe droids confirm the outer wards are still active." She flicked her fingers through the hologram, pulling up a final image—a massive durasteel door etched with glowing sigils, its surface unmarred by time or corrosion. "Which brings us to the fun part," she said, grinning suddenly. "How we're getting in."