20240323 Tolla Archive Library Station, Part A

We arrived at the Tolla Archive Library Station, orbiting the serene world of Bunduki, (a planet in the Pacanth Reach in the Outer Rim, homeworld of an order of scholars called the Sedja). We planned to deposit Commissar Celestime with the nearest member of the Grand Archive to learn what the Sith have been doing in the 4000 years since she was last awake.
 
Our lack of communication with our compatriots continued to be uncanny silence, but we did get news reports of a more general nature. "Reaver bombs" were appearing and causing chaos in Chalcedon's system, not just the home world. These were shipments of Reavers which popped open to cause mayhem. All of our compatriots had been missing for the same two weeks that we had been at our secretive location doing our secretive stuff. Notably, Lady Kerplokken had been taken by So'Zen.
 
That, we could process. Vanya had a Palatrium, matching the one So'Zen had on him. Ordinarily, these communication devices would work fine, but there was some unusual interference. She gave it to me to give it a thorough Mentat-scan and fix it. I noticed it used an unknown (to me) type of power source, perpetually charged. When not being used it appeared to recharge via absorbing ambient energy. Subjectively, one could call it a "crystal ball" for its shape and refraction characteristics.
 
Upon concentrating on the interior of the Palatrium, I saw what appeared to be the Chalcedon system, complete with the green tear in hyperspace. The space inside the sphere seemed to zoom in on the location I requested, so I called for the Chancellor, who would be interested in communicating with us. Alas, the Chancellor of Chalcedon did not own a Palatrium, so I was unable to make that connection.
 
Since that did not work, and as a secondary objective, (one vital to the safety of almost all known life forms in the universe), I concentrated on the astrogation coordinates for the rotating temple in an attempt to find Yeager Lexics, hoping to heft the Sun Spear upon him to put it out of more violent hands, (which of course is a relative term). I saw Reavers ships. I saw a grey spear-shaped ship of the Sisters of Battle. Again, it appeared that Yeager's lack of a personal Palatrium prevented any closer examination nor communication, however much the operating system attempted to retrieve the information I requested.
 
I next turned to focusing on Vanya's original issue, the fact that she was unable at the moment to establish a communication connection with So'Zen, who owned another Palatrium. To investigate the stoppage, I used The Math.
 
Vanya mentioned that the Palatrium technology is similar to Infinity Gates. That gave me an off-the-wall thought. I tried the astrogation coordinates of the hyperspace RIFT at Chalcedon, with the ionic energy drifting out of it. The image in the Palatrium swayed and zoomed into the rift. I saw many objects... asteroids? There was a world planet deep inside the rift and a rag tag fleet of fighter ships captured in time. I recognized tie fighters, x-wings, z95's, etc. Interestingly, the nebula was still moving but the fleet appeared frozen in time.
 
There was one ship with familiar racing stripes. Without losing concentration on the location I had found, I tried to use my datapad to request its ship ID transponder code. Not getting was I requested, I tried to locate it, which resulted in coordinates of a nebula cloud beyond the rim in another galaxy. Interesting.
 
I told Vanya that something unknown to the Palatrium's operating system was interfering. I asked Almon (with all his recent research into Sith artifacts) for any theories. He knew of a Sith alchemist who had found acceptably destructive results experimenting with a "force scream" at high energy combined with >200microdoses of chaos (destructive chaos which cost them a life) with just a dash of hyperdrive radiation provided by an interdictor field.
 
So we tried the next obvious step. We attempted to use Almon's pet project portable inductor field combined with Vanya's "Positive Force" connection with So'Zen to empower the Palatrium to overcome the unknown source of interference.
 
That got some results.
 
Vanya projected herself to a Mon Calamari-style ship, with an odd hum unlike the hums to be expected from engines and life support. She traveled to the cockpit and saw Captain Koleen. She was not moving, frozen in time, reaching for the console. She was held in stasis by ... The Force? "I've met her. Something happened." The Force felt altered, caught, not flowing, frozen, held, waiting. Or, perhaps not stopped but only flowing very-very slowly.
 
Vanya, in her meditative pose, invited me to join her in the Math. I acquiesced. Suddenly I was standing in the same ship. I mentioned, "I hate to state the obvious, but this is no library. " This was not at all the Library in which I had expected to find So'Zen.
 
Per our usual strategy, we split up and focused on our own category of problem to solve. Starting with some amateur mental astrogation, I found I could not find the star emitting the light around the ship. There appeared to be a lot of ionic gas free roaming the system. It provided light in the visible spectrum, but did not help at pinpointing our current position.
 
Suddenly Vanya whisked me away to another small ship nearby in the fleet. Finally we found someone besides ourselves immune to the time-stretching effect. Earol Vondromos could speak to us. He explained that they had crashed an empty freighter into an interdictor ring while a ship was making the jump to hyperspace, using the old strategy of creating a strong Defense through utilizing a cataclysmic Offense. It met with their requirement to clear the area of certain offending parties (the Katana Fleet and their Reaver Bomb manufacturing system however, the wave propagated through space and hit The Rift.
 
Vondromos had theories that the result was a manifestation of chaos, a wormhole leading many directions and interacting with the intent of those who journey through, a local collapse of hyperspace which caught this fleet between our universe and that which is known as "hyperspace". He theorized we could use our Palatrium as a power source. (Remember, Infinity Gates work on a similar technology.) Vondromos produced a lens like the one General Vance Kerplokken owned which let him see "Forcey things" and gave it to Vanya and left us. (The lenses did seem to be lacking something individually, like one of a pair of spectacles.)
 
Based on his theories, I formulated a plan. Vanya took us to Koleen, using a type of locomotion she clearly had practiced a bit. We told the Captain she could repair some of the damage to the universe. She could not hear us. We told her she could rescue the entire fleet from its predicament. She could not hear us. We told her we needed her to steal a whole fleet of ships. She heard that part. She said OK eventually. Vanya pressed (in her Jedi way), and Koleen emerged from the stasis.
 
In no time, astrologically speaking, Koleen categorized the ships by age and time required to activate their individual hyperdrives and enlarge the hyperdrives focus to include the space around them, (a sort of a warp-bubble) perfectly synchronized to produce hyperspace bubbles in phase (including the tie fighter Kerplokken was piloting without its own hyperdrive) while Vanya and I focused the Palatrium to provide its energy to aim us at Chalcedon. It was, you know, what Mentats call: a simple plan.
 
It occurred to me that I needed to publish a paper on hyperspace catastrophes and how to fix them.
 
We awoke some time later, back in our own space and time.
 
We found this library from which Almon had not yet been banned. This station was very old, as in first republic. The Grand Archive Organization built this one as a piece of art, slightly different from each other Library station. Commissar Celestime insisted on having "her Jedi" ready to negotiate if necessary as she initiated her visit. We left our conventional weapons behind.
 
A tall thin human met us, with his book-star insignia, Librarian Reth Crotu. Vanya introduced the Commissar and her concerns (1) to share her knowledge (and religious faith(Sith)), and (2) to learn what has happened over the years while she had been sleeping. We handed over the case containing her physical positronic matrix while her visual body walked along. It seemed the handoff would be uneventful.
 
Then there was an earthquake - on a space station.
 
A docking tug, (a blocky bulldog of a ship), was headbutting the station. Its grappling arms seemed to be deliberately attacking. The library initiates in their monk robes attempted to hack into it and gain control. I reached out into the Math and commanded the tug's main engine to shut down. Vanya reached out into the Force and held the structural walls and columns to help the initiates in the docking bay tube to keep their atmosphere. The Lt. (on Vanya's suggestion) opened the emergency escape route door to allow the initiates to escape the docking area in time. I assisted an initiate to strike the tug with another remote-controlled tug so that it missed the Sun Spear and the station. Then, given more time, he got ahold of it. We reviewed the logs to determine what had gone wrong with the tug.
 
Meanwhile, Vanya discovered a recently murdered Trandoshan, (a hearty race) with a Meat Cleaver Sized Hole in his chest. I wondered if the tug was a distraction to allow the murder to go unnoticed.
 
At Vanya's request, I searched the security/maintenance video records and found a human-shaped shadow which leapt from one piece of debris to another, with obvious fore-knowledge that the docking tube would be reduced to pieces. Or (less likely) an extremely dexterous person who is astonished by no catastrophe of any size.
 
This Trandoshan was soon identified. He was bringing a rare book to be copied and studied in the library. It was a holocron holobook, "The Treatise of Inner Alchemy" by early tony tech augers. It reputedly contained meditation techniques in life extension and super healing, and how to integrate one's body with technology.
 
Almon and I submitted a software update for the tugs to prevent the same hack from happening again while Vanya asked permission for us to do so from the head Librarian.
 
Also, Vanya searched for the Eborean parasites in the crew and patrons. She found that Initiate Challa Zanulla showed signs of having had memories erased (headache when thinking of the time preceding the excitement.)
 
It was beginning to appear that this book theft had been planned by someone willing to stop at nothing to acquire it, not even murder.