Dark Resurrection

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

Ten years later.

Urah was a small orange star. Six planets orbited it, but only the fourth was inhabited. The colonists - who were mostly miners attracted by the soil that was rich in minerals - had built a settlement up north, close to the warmer pole. It didn’t take long for the ancient abandoned ruins to be integrated into and absorbed by modern structures and mining outposts. They named this place Chakar III.

Zui Mar and Dan-Lee crossed the stone passageway, standing against the sky at dusk. A large sun dimly blazed on the horizon. Three moons would soon alternate in a sky that was never really dark, coloring it with blue and purple hues. Zui’s stare lingered on the sunset. Even that barren, unwelcoming world was filled with beauty but, above all else, it was still far from imperial domain, so it had been their safe haven and hideout for close to a year. The two moved further away from the bridge and down the streets leading up to the market. They were wrapped in rough leather garments with strapped on armor pieces that protected their chests and shoulders. Their faces were partly shrouded in Malhkis, a local headgear fashioned out of ornate cloth straps, typical of older settlers. They gazed at the odd scenery. Above the plaza paved with limestone slates, the colonists had erected metal and polymer structures towering like colossal, shiny mushrooms above modest stone huts.

Zui Mar stopped among the people crowding the square. He lowered the headgear that covered his face. Something had come over him, a feeling of gloom. He brought his hand to his chest, as if a great weight had descended on it, hindering his breathing. Young Dan-Lee noticed his old companion’s painful look and moved closer.

“Is everything alright, Master?”

“Stop calling me “Master”, Dan,” Zui Mar replied, harshly. “How many damn times do I have to remind you how dangerous that is?”

“I was simply worried about you… and I slipped up. What’s happening?”

“I don’t know, a strange disturbance in the Force. Something I’ve never felt before. Distant, elusive, akin to an indecipherable murmur reverberating in a cave.”

Dan raised his eyebrows, wondering about Zui’s words.

“I don’t get it, but it doesn’t sound that serious.” He smiled and winked. “Shall we proceed?”

Zui got up, shaking his head. “Let’s,” he answered, exhaling a long breath.

He lingered, looking at the young man with whom he had shared the better part of the previous ten years, fleeing from one remote corner of the galaxy to another. Dan-Lee was little more than a teenager when they met. He recalled seeing him on the airship that saved him from the storm on that fateful day. He extended a feeble hand, looking frightened and clumsy. Now he had grown into a tall, burly, strong man. He was also of an unwaveringly optimistic disposition that never let up, not even in the darkest of hours. Zui, who was usually gloomy, envied the young man’s attitude, although he sometimes found it irritating.

All of a sudden, a raggedy man with a shaven head and with arms covered in luminescent tattoos approached them, cut the leather straps of Dan-Lee’s sack, and ran off, vanishing into the crowd.

“You let him take your credits!” Zui shouted.

Astonished, Dan-Lee brought his hand to his side where the sack had been.

“I… I don’t…”

Zui pushed him aside and started running after the pickpocket.

The young man stood speechless for a second, then also gave chase and, since he was young, strong, and able, he quickly caught up with the Master. Zui turned to face him, running side by side.

“You got played like a novice. How is it that you seem unable to perceive anything past your own nose?”

“Sorry, Master, I...”

“...and stop with the “Master” thing already! We have to keep a low profile if we want to go unnoticed.”

The apprentice ignored Zui’s words. Just a few steps ahead of them, the thief flipped a market stand over, making it collapse to the ground.

Without hesitation, Dan-Lee leapt using the Force, pivoted past the obstacle, and landed on the other side, resuming the chase.

Zui stopped, disheartened.

“Low profile… as if…” he muttered to himself while the people around him were gasping at his young companion’s acrobatics.

In the narrow alleyways of the slums, as the first two moons were rising in the sky, Dan-Lee closed in on the criminal, cornering him in a dead end. Zui arrived a few seconds later. He stared at the pickpocket’s face, visibly panicking and desperate for a way out.

Dan-Lee smirked at Zui who was still gasping from the chase.

“Out of shape, huh?”

“C’mon, get your credits back.”

“Should I say: ‘Your wish is my command, Master’?” he sarcastically remarked.

“Without the ‘Master’ part wouldn’t hurt, maybe.”

Puzzled by their relaxed demeanor, the thief raised his blaster and opened fire. The blue blade of Dan-Lee’s sword lit up and deflected the shot into the wall with a spray of sparks.

“Why did you take out the sword?! You really want us to get caught, don’t you?”

Taken aback, Dan-Lee turned to his ungrateful companion.

“Actually... I just saved your life!”

Zui shook his head, dismissing what he said.

The dumbfounded pickpocket fired two more shots that Dan-Lee readily deflected with his weapon. The shots ricocheted on the wall next to the thief, forcing him into a little side-jump to dodge them.

“Again?” Zui said, staring at the sword, annoyed.

Incredulous that he was being scolded, Dan-Lee opened his eyes widely and nodded towards the thief. The man still had the blaster aimed at them, shaking in panic. He started firing at the two again. Dan-Lee addressed his companion while deftly deflecting the shots. “This guy is not letting up!”

Zui grumbled, twirled lightning fast towards the thief, and took out his sword. The blade flashed in the dark alley for just a second, enough to sever the barrel of the blaster, then the Master tucked it away under his tunic. It was over in the blink of an eye.

The pickpocket was trembling with his back to the wall. Throwing the smoldering piece of scrap to the ground, he unlatched the sack and tossed it back to Zui, who caught it midair.

“Forgive me... I did not know you were...”

“Ssssh,” Zui hissed, gesturing him to be silent.

Not far away from the alley a hooded figure, his face covered by a sense-amplifying mask, had witnessed the scene through thermal diffraction sensors. The man called himself Janus, but that wasn’t his real name. To those who crossed his path, he might have looked like a bounty hunter because of his etched ancient mask, but that also was not real.

He downloaded the images to his wrist visor and magnified the foreigners’ faces. They had plasma blades and had shown up every single day on the most wanted list in the imperial bulletin. He had no doubt about their identity.

As he prepared to upload the data, he considered how he could have made an outrageous fortune with that tip-off to the Empire had he actually been a bounty hunter.