The Ghost Ship part 1

The Republic's next mission has the crew heading into Mon Calamari space, where they've been receiving reports of ships vanishing. Since it's not too far from Bimmisaari, they wonder whether it might be the Thule fleet causing trouble, or pirates.

Instead, they get assaulted by a cloud of darkness. It registers almost like a hole in the fabric of the universe, emanating the Dark Side--but not hatred or fear so much as sorrow and despair. Kedrihm'Val says it's haunted, calling it a cloud of ghosts. The fog surrounds them, resolving into the ghostly image of a derelict Star Destroyer with a gaping hole where one of its main engines used to be. As the Starwind settles into the increasingly solid hold, the great ship almost seeming to materialize around it (the Force-users notice a strange phenomenon: their sight seems to fade to monochrome as the image around them grows stronger), the little freighter goes completely dead...along with the majority of the crew's other electronic devices. Only small personal devices--blasters and comms--and SARR seem to be working. Using her palm-pad, Oola runs a scan, finding that while the ships around them and the majority of the Star Destroyer are equally dead, a few areas of the big vessel do have power. She detects lifeforms in two places--a Thule ship resting nearby, and a passenger liner not too far away.

With few other options, the crew equips to cross the airless hold to the liner. They've barely set foot outside the Starwind when they're set upon by several Stormtroopers. The crew finds that, when they're attacked, the armor simply collapses as if it were empty. Still, they vanquish the ghost armor easily enough...until the things start to get back up, at which point they get Force Lighted, which dispels the spectral phenomenon.

At Kedrihm'Val's query, SARR informs them that the place has breathable air. Odd, to say the least. The whole place seems...dead to physical and Force senses alike: stale, as if nothing has moved or breathed here in ages. Looking around, the Star Destroyer's enormous hold is full of ships, some of which Oola notices predate the warship's own period--circa Battle of Endor, only about 20 years ago. Has this ghost ship been sailing around, picking up every drifting craft it comes across? That's an awful lot of derelicts for only 16 years of work.

Kedrihm'Val notices that the passenger liner is shielded by a warding circle. Inside, they learn that people from the other ships gathered here for protection. Asked about the warding circle, they say that one of the passengers set that up to guard them, then went on into the ship to scout around. She hasn't come back. The crew decides they'd better have a look themselves. The guy who works for Oola's father, Sureth Fenn, is there, and comes along with them. Their first destination is the bridge. Oola wants to get a better look at the Star Destroyer's systems.

Dead bodies and debris drift through the hall leading from the hold. Artificial gravity seems to be off here, yet the crew have no trouble getting around. The first room holds a dead officer, slumped over his desk. Cause of death seems to have nothing to do with whatever attacked the ship. In fact, he seems to have been Force-choked. Searching the desk, Ree is struck by a vision: she sees the officer, alive, talking to Darth Vader on intercom. He says, "Apparently the coral from Mon Calamari was destroyed." Annoyed, Vader kills him, but as the vision ends, he turns his head to look at Ree. The officer's log, in the desk, explains that the coral was taken from Mon Calamari for experiments.

Quite suddenly, the dead body makes a grab for Ree. Zann chops it apart easily enough. It doesn't resist. Kedrihm'Val notes that he doesn't feel any malice coming from it...and once he starts thinking, he notices something about the lightsabers: they're working just fine, as are SARR and Oola's droids (which, so far as he's concerned, proves something he's been wondering about droids, free will, and the Force), but the rest of the group's tech is leeching off the life energy of the wielder for power. Concerned, he points this out to the others. Z is merely disappointed that his bombs won't work. He turns and chucks one down the hall. Zann scolds him for irresponsibility. "What if we walk past that and set it off?"

Presented with the mystery of the Mon Calamari coral, they decide to detour to Science. On the way, a conversation leads Kedrihm'Val to wonder how old the ships in the hold are. Thinking about it, Oola realizes that's a very good question, so they head up to a viewing deck overlooking the hold. There, they discover that the seemingly endless chamber wasn't an illusion at all. It stretches on as far as they can see, carpeted with ships of every age and make along the entire span. Studying them, the crew realizes that these don't look at all like ships that spent decades kicking around in space. They look almost as though they've been left here in storage--dusty and moldering, but probably functional. And Oola notices that the further back her eyes travel, the older the ships get. The ones at the furthest range of her vision could easily be centuries old.

Kedrihm'Val, meanwhile, spaces out, under the influence of a vision. He sees two Imperials standing nearby, discussing that "thing" they've got down in Science and whether Vader or the "little dick" will be sent to oversee it.

Having learned all they can there, they head back down, passing through a cafeteria on the way to the Science wing. It's full of dead bodies. Kedrihm'Val is caught in another vision, watching everyone in the room collapse, dying as their shadows are torn away from them. He mentions it to the others, who notices suddenly that it's true: nothing in this room has a shadow. For that matter, nothing anywhere in the ship has cast a shadow...including them.

Approaching the labs, Ree's turn for a vision comes up again. She sees Dalt, a teenager, talking to a number of technicians, arguing over the methods they plan to use. He's concerned about safety, tries to convince them to be more careful. His concerns are dismissed.

The outer door leading to the labs they want is jammed. When they manage to get it open, they find out what jammed it: a pile of bodies pressed up against it from the other side practically bowls the group over. These people obviously died in terror. The back of the door is covered in scratches and dried-blood handprints, and their frozen faces are warped in fear. The hall leading to the lab is likewise scored with scratch marks on walls and floor, blood long-dried in the grooves--as if they'd been dragged backward into the lab while trying to flee, so panicked that they scored the metal with their bare hands. The door at the far end of the hallway--or what's left of it--is a mangled wreck, torn half-away seemingly while in the process of sealing.

The lab beyond is a disaster. A glass shielding cylinder in the center of the room is shattered. Bits of technology lie mangled, and two black handprints are seared into the metal bank of monitoring equipment encircling the central cylinder.

While the others look around, startled by the remnants of such violence, Ree is hit by yet another vision. Technicians and scientists bustle about the room, working the computers and observing equipment, while Dalt stands before the bank of monitors overseeing the central cylinder. Inside is suspended what seems to be a crystal flower, which he studies with worried eyes. As he watches, gauges suddenly spike, and people turn frantic as power waves from the crystal flower shatter the glass casing. A black wave of energy launches from the crystal into Dalt, which seemingly starts some kind of chain reaction as the Force is ripped from everything in the area and drawn into Dalt, whose body now glows with a dark light. His hands burn into the metal of the equipment bank they rest on. The people who don't manage to escape down the hallway are entirely obliterated, not even bodies remaining. Ree herself is hard-pressed not to get lost in the vortex. Then, hearing a sound behind her, she turns to see Darth Vader standing against the tide in the doorway, lightsaber at the ready.

It's easy enough to follow what happened next. Scorch marks on everything in reach mark the path of the ensuing lightsaber duel from the lab down to Engineering. A vision here shows Dalt defending frantically against Vader, who finally slams him back into a wall and tears out one of the Star Destroyer's engines to let the decompression knock Dalt out. Dalt is nearly spaced, grabbing on to the mangled metal of the hole. He screams something in a strange voice that sounds like 1000 people all speaking at once--something about 'Rakata' and 'Architects.' At that moment, almost as if in response, an enormous ship appears behind him, moving up to enfold the entire Star Destroyer.

The group heads up to the bridge, hoping they can access data to get a better look at what happened. On the bridge, a vision shows Vader standing with Dalt unconscious over his shoulder. The ship is displayed on the screen, speaking in what sounds like thousands of languages at once. Kedrihm'Val, who can understand languages, hears it ask for peace, resolution, ending. The thing looks to be a single, enormous Force spirit. The spirit of an entire ship? In the vision, Vader contends with the thing. Attempting to destroy it, but finding himself unable to do so, he instead battles it down and snares the spirit in the dying hulk of the Star Destroyer. As the vision ends, Vader looks right at Kedrihm'Val.