2025-09-27
Returning to Deck 44, the group interviews a caf owner. A skeptic, he attributes his being telekinetically thrown across his apartment to “electric shocks” from faulty wiring. Sahl checks community posting boards and finds that a “ghost support group” is meeting that night.
They return to Mettawi Central Hospital and ask to see Vencar Petonis, the man Gai saved, but they are refused entry. Having heard rumors of bodies disappearing from the hospital morgue, they leave a message with mortician Tulia Jenard asking for an interview.
While they wait for the ghost group meeting, T3-N1 investigates a salvage company that laid off many of its workers, Golabur Universal Reclamation. The company is run by a young Rodian, flush with cash from his aristocratic father. It bought the salvage rights to a massive Sith ship from a local company, laid off all the workers, and brought in its own people to work on the hulk.
Disguising himself as a rental from a fictitious service, Teni infiltrates the company’s on-station headquarters. The company has a lax, beanbag-chair-style startup culture, but its security is very good. Sensitive documents are moved to a secure database locked behind a high clearance level (3-Blue) for which rental droids are not eligible. Teni is unable to isolate a droid with the requisite clearance and steal its identification. He slices a cheap, culinarily-dubious autochef in the breakroom to act as a spy for him.
The group goes to the ghost meeting. After listening for a few minutes and being dismissed as an outsider, Dessa reveals her lightsaber and proclaims herself a Jedi. The members of the group share their findings. The haunting started a little over two years ago, very faint at first, but has ramped up recently. Verncar would have been the first fatality if not for Gai’s intervention. The manifestations are worse later in the week. Once, someone seemed to pray or go into a trance, and a manifestation was calmed. The person was a young mother, but nobody recognized her.
After the meeting, Dessa tries to draw the presence out, but she only notes its absence. Sahl asks if she has experience with sourceless Dark Side emanations, and she relates the story of a warlord on a barbarian planet who found a cache of Sith spellbooks. Otherwise ignorant of the Force, he became a powerful wizard, but his power leaked out uncontrollably. Dessa’s master Hix brought her and her partner Endi Divera to intervene. Steeped too long in only the Dark Side, they were forced to kill him.
As the manifestation begins, Dessa tries again to reach out to the source. She catches the wave of Dark Side energy and, through the searing rage and helplessness, is able to glean the concept of bedtime.
Backtracing the Dark Force pulse, the group converges on an apartment. Its doors shake like leaves in their runners. At a touch, they rip out and scythe toward the group. Missing, the doors sink a meter deep into the opposite bulkhead.
Inside, they find all the furniture pinned to the walls and ceiling by a sphere of Force emanating from a screaming toddler. The young woman described by the ghost group is crawling on the floor as though into a gale, trying to reach it.
Dessa reaches out to the child and makes contact, but is sucked into a mind palace. All is darkness except for the two spotlights of the child’s eyes, beside whom Dessa is the size of a toy.
Sahl moves up to support the mother and asks how she normally calms the child. She begins singing a lullaby. Sahl recognizes the tune as an old spacer folk melody and joins in, harmonizing and extemporizing.
Failing to hide from the giant shadow child, Dessa endures a wave of Force energy. But it breaks into the real world and pulses through the room, cracking the apartment’s window on the empty stars.
Teni grabs a teddy bantha and gives it to the child. Gai links hands with the mother and Dessa, telepathically piping the song into the mind palace. The manifestation ends and the child swoons asleep.
Afterwards, Dessa interviews her mother. She relates how she came to the station two years ago. She was from a nameless village-planet, married to a repairman. He was scouted by a salvage company and they were given tickets to Mettawi Station. On an intervening stop, their ship was attacked by Mandalorians. Those who fought were killed, including her husband. The men were taken as slaves, the women and children left on the ship with the hyperdrive sabotaged and set on a collision course with the station. Rather than exploding, the drive cut out before impact and the liner was towed into port.
Dessa offers to take them to Ossus so her son can be raised as a Jedi. Sahl rents quarters onstation for the rest of the group. Dessa goes to each of them individually and asks them to take care of Gai; Gai himself she binds to his suite by assigning a heavy load of training.
Dessa, the mother, the child, and Nant, who raised the Force-sensitive Dessa and Endi himself, take the Starbird to Ossus.
