Abindosan Rescue Mission Concludes

After Lady Arabella, the House Head of Barnaba, takes custody of the deed, Z points out that people will undoubtedly continue trying to steal it. They set up a meeting with her to discuss its safekeeping.

She wants to know who wants this thing and why, of course. They explain that Grand Admiral Thrawn and Drath are both after the planet, but the specific reasons are, sadly, classified (and considering it may well have to do with the Blueprint, they're not lying, either). "It's dangerous," Ree sums up for her quite succinctly. Arabella considers this for a moment, then hands them the deed. "It's yours," she tells them. When Ree stammers her surprise, Lady Arabella explains that this is nothing she wants her House embroiled in. The deed, and the planet, will be safer with the Jedi.

On the way back to Coruscant, Ree dreams of stepping through the doors of the Jedi temple and seeing the place empty. There's coral growing from the walls.

Disturbed and disgruntled, she wakes and gets up to get some coffee. "Meatbag insomnia?" SARR asks her.
"I had a vision," she explains.
"Ah. Magic meatbag insomnia," he corrects himself.
"There was coral in the temple," she tells him.
"I wonder what that could mean," SARR ponders conspicuously.
"Are you waterproof?" Ree asks him pointedly.

She calls Luke, who reports nothing unusual, and shares her vision with him. His eyes flutter closed for a second, then "Just a moment," he tells her, getting up to ostentatiously check the hall outside. "Nope, everything looks fine," he reassures her with a grin.

SARR continues being a jackass. When Ree wonders if everything's really okay, he reassures her that the Jedi tend to land on their feet. "It's almost as if they've got some kind of sixth sense..."

About fifteen minutes after Ree goes back to bed, Kedrihm'Val is up from the same dream. SARR tells him Ree had the same dream, then ponders, "I wonder what that could mean." Following a hunch, Kedrihm'Val stays up for a little while. Sure enough, Lydia comes out about fifteen minutes later, then Dalt ten minutes after that (Dalt: "I had a vision...and also needed to pee."). Each time, continuing to be a jackass, SARR wonders aloud, "I wonder what that could mean." When Dalt asks if the temple knows, SARR tells him, "She called the head magic meatbag, who said *hhhhhhhhhh*" Dalt stares at him. "Too much?" asks SARR.

There's little else to do, so everyone goes back to bed. Ree almost immediately has another dream: in the coral-covered temple, she senses Drath, and someone else. Following the sounds of a lightsaber duel to the Council chamber, she finds Kyp fighting against a Dark Sider with cybernetic implants. She recognizes him as the Grand High Inquisitor Tremaine.

Up again for another cup of coffee, she shares this development with SARR, who points out, "Well, since Master Skywalker said it was fine, I'm pretty sure the Grand High Inquistor isn't roaming the halls."

Again, the others are up in turn with the same vision. While they're sharing their story, Z wakes up and stumps through. "I had a dream," he declares, apparently figuring everybody's up and staring at him in something like horror because they're waiting breathlessly to hear about the latest Chronicles of the Inside of Z's Head. They all breathe a sigh of relief when he describes to them how he was magnificently trashing bad guys in a giant free-for-all street brawl.

And then look faintly sick again when he tells them about this crazy blue-skinned cyborg guy with a lightsaber he had an awesome fist fight with.

After Z wanders back to bed, Dalt shakes off his existential dread. "It's probably just bleedover," he tells Kedrihm'Val, who's still looking a bit shell-shocked. "Think about it, there are how many Force users on this ship, and we all had the same dream at almost the same time? I'm sure it's just bleedover." "I'm afraid to shut down in case I have it too," SARR says, deadpan. "Oo. Ee. Oo."

As they swing in for final approach to Coruscant, Kedrihm'Val seems to see the traffic patterns flicker for a second into the pattern of a coral lattice. He makes a sort of startled noise, and Lydia tells him she's seeing it too. So's Dalt, apparently, who thinks it might be the coral trying to reach out and connect with the lifeforms of the planet it's currently on. The effect seems to be beneficial: crime has calmed down, people are feeling more in tune with each other than usual. Kedrihm'Val finds it rather homey. Even Z demonstrates unusual consideration for his fellow beings by not firing up his jetpack in the temple when Ree comments that they'd better check on the coral quickly.

They hunt up Luke, who says that 75% of the temple's inhabitants have had the dream about the Grand Inquisitor. Ree wonders why they had it on the ship, if it's the coral projecting something. Kedrihm'Val points to him. Luke comments that Force users in general tend to form empathic bonds, and says this might be why the crew works so well together. "That explains why Z had it," Ree answers. Luke looks faintly horrified.

Kedrihm'Val drops in on his evil clone, to find it surrounded by a field of ysalamiri. The Jedi left a space clear of the little buggers just around the clone, since apparently he starts, um, melting if severed from the Force. Kedrihm'Val resists the temptation to knock one of the ysalamiri stands a bit closer.

Everyone finds invitations from Padme Amidala for a dinner, "whenever convenient." She's familiar with the scheduling vagaries of busy Jedi. Ree talks to Kyp, who also looks aghast at the thought of Z sharing the dream. He's doing okay after visiting Kessel, he says; the place isn't what it used to be. They spend some time together.

Z is dismayed by his own mellowness, and worries about the effect of all these feel-good vibes on the show. They'd better get the coral back to Abindosan quickly. It seems to mean well and all, but this isn't where it belongs. It's a good sign that it's reaching out like this, because not only will that make it easier to get the information back in the reef where it belongs, but it's also having a patently positive effect on people, which means that whatever the corruption has done, it hasn't influenced the coral too badly. The computer core will need a power source so they can activate it to transmit the data. Dalt snags a tide-powered generator for the purpose.

And then it's back to Abindosan. Dalt asks Kedrihm'Val to commune with the coral and make sure it hasn't gone all tech-happy during its exposure to Coruscant. It seems fine. Kedrihm'Val talks to the elders, who tell them they trust him to take care of it, and then he does the ritual to summon the Vodne while the others set up the rig. "Tell them not to attack the magic balls," Z tells Kedrihm. "They're good magic balls. Haha!" "Shut UP!" Dalt snaps at him.

After SARR acts like a jackass some more, Z asks whether a droid could become sentient if they're exposed to this coral. Amazed at how much must've gone over Z's head for him to say such a thing, Kedrihm'Val blinks at him, then looks at Dalt. "Droids are sentient," Dalt says. He looks at SARR. "They can also be dicks." Z makes a smart-mouthed comment back at him, leading naturally to Dalt making a Your Mom crack. Recognizing the inevitable, Kedrihm'Val grabs Z.

Z's mother must've been an impressive woman for her son to defend her honor so zealously.

Dalt warns them they'd better stay on their guard. This could take anywhere from a day to a week, and their enemies are likely to come around and try to mess with the transfer. Some Abindosani help stand watch and Ree calls in a couple of Jedi ships to hold orbit around the planet.

That night, Ree wakes from a dream of torrential downpours outside and all the Abindosani passed out. She shakes Kedrihm'Val awake right about as it starts to rain outside. Shortly after that, the Abindosani start passing out. Dalt, looking pleased, explains that he inserted a virus scrub into the system. Checking Kedrihm'Val and the others, Lydia verifies that they all look healthy--healthier than she's ever seen an Abindosani. Dalt's trick seems to be working. "I hope they're okay," he replies. "I could never commit genocide when I wanted to..." Lydia points out, "The bad news is an entire planet of backup is unconscious if anything happens."

But nothing does. By the next day, the Dark Side taint that the Force users always sense in the background on this planet isn't even noticeable anymore. Kedrihm'Val wakes up feeling rather great. After they explain what happened, he leaves to speak with some people about throwing his friends a party. The Abindosani are in a celebratory mood and this is, after all, what they originally sent him out for.

Dalt is quite pleased by all the attention.

They head back to Coruscant a day or so later. Sadly, though the coral's influence calmed them down for a little while, the news shows that the Alderaanians are getting a bit rowdier again.

Ree has another vision that night: she sees Admiral Pellaeon giving some routine orders to a lieutenant, Thrawn standing in the background. Something about the young officer looks terribly familiar to her. The vision cuts to Pellaeon and Thrawn talking in the officer's mess, and then later (as in, it won't happen for about two weeks yet), Pellaeon strides quickly onto the bridge (a brisk walk is Pellaeon-speak for "Holy CRAP sir!") to hand Thrawn a datapad containing a roster of the clone material they got from Admiral Daala. The last name Durron is highlighted.

"Apparently they have a clone of Master Durron's brother, and they'll figure out that fact in about two weeks," she tells Oola the next time she sees her. "You can call him Kyp, you know." "Why are we talking about that?!" Ree asks.

She places a call to Luke. "Just a second," Luke tells her, then makes a show of looking around the room. "Looks okay," he tells her. The humor goes away quickly when Ree tells him why she called. He promises he'll keep Kyp away from the scene. He'll meet them when they land. Reassured as much as she can be, for the moment, Ree goes back to bed. And has another dream, of two possible futures, depending on how this thing with Kyp's brother works out. Either she'll end up sitting down to a nice dinner with them, or else he and Kyp will wind up in a knockdown-dragout lightsaber fight.

Kedrihm'Val is awakened by the sense of someone psychically divining the ship's location. It's no one he knows, but obviously someone saturated in the Dark Side. Focusing on memories of Tatooine, he feeds the observer the impression that they're on their way there rather than back to Coruscant, then goes to tell Ree, waking her out of her vision. Wondering if they can get an idea of who this new person is, Kedrihm'Val suggests calling Malina to see if she can keep an eye on Tatooine to see if anybody comes in looking for them.

Luke sends Kyp on an errand when he gets the message that the Starwind's coming in to land. Meeting them at the port, he tells Ree that the Imperials clone their officers at a certain facility, where some officers are grown carefully to avoid the usual clonal instability. If they move fast, the crew can probably get there in time to intercept. He'll send them Zan, and they'll take Dalt because if this involves cloning technology, at this point there's no telling whether that installation is still using Spaarti, Kaminoan, Dalt's own technology (Dalt bemoans his technology "working for just anyone" as though it'd cheated on him), or Drath's skewed adaptation of it.

The crew has just enough time to see to a few details before they get shipped out. The location they're sent to is a hidden base that dates from the Rebellion; the New Republic uses it as a staging point for clandestine maneuvers. Zan's waiting for them on the landing pad to brief them.

Next up: the glamorous world of interstellar espionage, and Ree flies to the rescue of her boyfriend's sibling!