Ord Garant
The Shadow of the ship was formidable. Few ships came to Ord Garant any more, the blazing of the Atanares Trail had left few ships indeed with a reason to come to this dusty world, and less and less ships visited now with each passing year. Oftentimes no large ship landed on Ord Garand from one trade-fest season to another.
The fest was an annual pilgrimage for many of the desert clans, the Jauai, those people who had never left Ord Garant, of many races now, they were those who had chosen to remain on the world when all economic value was lost. Land-lovers, herders, and people for whom the galaxy had nothing to offer but pain, they were the Jauai.
Galen Kant rode the broad backed Agonthar beast as it plodded toward the Trade Meet, the ship from offworld was huge this year always some trading company came, the contract was small but it was lucrative, there was much that the people of Garant wanted, and from time to time they had things to trade that were yet of value beyond meat and bread, once a year was enough to make it worthwhile.
The tents of the Jauai were set around the bulk of the landed craft, in the shadow of its lights, streamers of pennants and banners had been established. He was late, he knew, it had taken months of guiding his herds across the plains for this meeting, but it was good enough, well enough, to be worthwhile. He wanted a new blaster rifle, a condenser and a holonet terminal, his daughter wanted these, and more, and his son’s speeder-bike was growing old enough to disappoint his friends. Those things did not come cheaply.
And he knew that he would be able to get them all, and more. He had something special. He stroked the saddlebag of his Agonthar. Wrapped in kid-leather within it was a treasure. He did not know exactly what a treasure it was, but it was ancient, and it was intact.
He pulled the blue cloak of a Jauai desert nomad up a little, and removed his facemask, waving a courteous hello to one of the ship’s crew. “Where are the tech-buyers?” he asked.
The tech-buyers worked out of tens and pre-fabricated buildings that had been set up around the ship’s base. Haggling and debate filled the air, and he made his way to the man he’d dealt with last year.
“What do you have for me, Galen?” the man, the trader Tanten asked, bringing a digital-lens to his face, like an ancient jeweller, as he leaned on his table. Oftentimes, trading in for old technology on Ord Garant was a matter of trading for scrap, but there were enough good scores to make signing on to the ship a worthwhile business, particularly for techno-archeologists. Once, someone had found an entire ancient Sienar Battleship at Ord Garant, buried in the sands from some ancient and abandoned shipyard.
There was little that such a ship could tell modern spacefarers, the galaxy had gone through some technological upheavals, but for the most part a smooth growth had been experienced in key spacefaring industries, with occasional lapses in production quality due to war or the rare great breakthroughs, still, there was much that a museum would pay for certain things.
Reverently, Galen unpacked his find, it was small, the size of a man’s fist, a hunk of optronic crystal, pointed at the ends, with small micro-electronics along its edge. It was baked into rust on one side, but on others, the devices still worked. “My daughter Galia found it,” he said, “and more, but I’ll show you this first,” he said.
“What is it?” Tanten wondered.
“It’s from the memory core of an ancient ship,” he said, “we tried to access it, we didn’t get far, but enough to see the checksums are correct; it still holds datum, of some sort. The electronics are fried, and I don’t know what language the information is in, but the crystal stacks are intact.”
“I’m listening,” Tanten said.
“This,” he said, “is the memory core of a ship from the Sith Wars.” Tanten couldn’t hide his excitement, but there was more, and Galen gave him a moment. “There was one thing that I could make out,” he said, “I’ve had six months with this. The ship came from Zakuul.”
__ __ __
Zakuul; every child in the galaxy had heard of it. Ancient wonders dotted the galaxy, from the Coruscant Ice Crypts to the Dawn Pyramid of Aargau, the Brass Soldiers of Axum and the forbidden gardens of Nuswatta created for Xim the Despot. Others were lost, rumours. The Mindharp of Sharu, the Fabled planet of Tund, and more spoken of by younglings of many species, lost treasures and lost worlds. Zakuul was one such.
Zakuul; every story told it differently, some things were common in all stories, though. A short lived empire, ironically called the Eternal Empire or the Eternal Alliance, had risen from this obscure world beyond the fringes of known space, and conquered the galaxy, striking down and overwhelming the Jedi and the Sith both. An empire created by evil, or by a god, it was said that a Sith, or a Jedi, or a smuggler, or even a humble soldier, overthrew it and disbanded it in time.
But the stories were all the same. Zakuul had a fleet beyond any other, which it used to conquer the galaxy within weeks, sweeping all before it. Its people lived in glittering palaces without want or privation, catered for utterly by droids advanced beyond all others. Poverty was non-existent on Golden Zakuul, and more.
Tall tales, and dismissed by many as children’s fables.
Until at last, the galactic Academic community was blessed with the decryption of an ancient find from a backwater world. And at last, the location of a world, so long lost, was found by the galaxy once more.
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