The Roche asteroid belt...

What had started with a small body of the knowledge-seeking denizens of nearby star systems had now far outgrown its original title of an academy.

The need to support that small body of students soon led to the need to support those who supported the scholars, and so on. The sheer size of the space station provided that a community to rival that of the largest asteroids in the Roche belt could grow up. The speed at which this community expanded to fill the station, though, was severely surprising.

The nearby Verpine migrated in large numbers to the station, and brought with them their exotic and creative understanding of science and technology. Verpine mechanics and engineers were now present in force on the station. These professionals, being among the most highly-demanded technicians in the galaxy, attracted those in need of their technological expertise. And those in need of well-crafted, newly built, and most likely powerful technology were a sordidly eclectic group.



"And as you can see," explained Derek, "the data from my original flight doesn't even begin to correlate with any of the data we've collected in this most recent round of surveillances."

"Yesa, quitesa conundrum," came the squeaky agreement of the tall gungan called Frakutsk.

"Not necessarily," contradicted a metallic voice coming from a droid which designated itself as RT Bot.

Derek threw a side-long glance in the droid's direction which clearly communicated his dislike of RT Bot's habit of speaking up whenever it felt it had something to add.

"Furthermore," continued the droid, "If Master Frakutsk had exercised greater caution in the procurement of these processors from the laboratory of the great Sean LaReve, I would most likely already have given you the correlation you are looking for."

"Isawas in a hurry," defended Frakutsk.

The trio was standing in a large and empty office room with a desk shoved into a corner and documents pertaining to the Galactic Coaltion attached haphazardly to the wall. Presently much of the space was taken up by two monstrous cube-shaped computers. These two devices were advanced and experimental, utilizing technology truly understood only by their dead creator, Sean LaReve. They were also inoperative. RT Bot, LaReve's former robotic assistant, was digging around inside one of the computers, repairing damaged circuitry and other unidentifiable pieces of computer technology, but he was far from finished with this task.

Frakutsk knew that RT Bot and Derek would continue to work until they had discovered something useful about the cloaked construction on the other side of the asteroid belt, and so made an announcement. "Yousa two can besa arguin' about sacorellations and things... Mesa gots an appointment to keeps." With this, Frakutsk left the just-graduated student and his robotic foe in his converted office, and began the trek downward through the space station to his personal quarters.

Although he was walking at a brisk pace, as Frakutsk passed through the college on the agricultural level of the station he was acknowledged by several well-meaning students. In the more industrial lower sections, though, the large number of persons on the space station, almost all engaged in some sort of sensitive business, afforded Frakutsk a measure of anonymity. Frakutsk appreciated this, because he was conducting extraordinarily sensitive business of his own.

Eventually, Frakutsk reached the brown hallways of the residential area of the station (apparently designed to be a stylized version of the inside of an asteroid) and entered his quarters. Only two of the sparsely decorated rooms in Frakutsk's home had any particular function for Frakutsk, one being a bedroom and one being a kitchen. The first room seen upon entering was neither of these things and had only a large, grayish brown, oval carpet.

Two feet above that carpet a young Verpine was floating in a meditative trance.

Frakutsk had been training this Verpine in the ways of the Jedi. This Verpine could, therefore, only be called a padawan learner. It was, after all, the directive of the Jedi Order that training of Jedi take place elsewhere now that the temple on Naboo had been closed indefinitely, but Jedi were not exactly respected as defenders of peace everywhere in the galaxy, and as Frakutsk was learning all the time, training a padawan out in the galaxy was nothing like teaching one in the controlled and peaceful environment of the temple.

"Stansa up, padawan Xik," commanded Frakutsk. The eager Verpine did as he was bidden, stretching out his legs to meet the floor and then abandoning his task of levitation. Xik's buggy eyes looked up to the gangly Frakutsk with expectation.

When the temple was open, Frakutsk knew, there were always a good number of Jedi being trained. Now that is was abandoned, Frakutsk could not help but wonder if the other Jedi were still working towards the goals of the order. The temple had been closed in order to stop the Jedi from growing sedentary and inactive, but what were the previous inhabitants of the temple doing now? Were they out in the galaxy defending the peace, or were they hiding from imperial Jedi-killers in their homes? To Frakutsk, the latter seemed more likely. At times, Frakutsk thought that perhaps Xik was the only Jedi learner in the galaxy.

"For today'sa lesson..." began Frakutsk, but he realized he didn't know what today's lesson was. Then, as if inspired by the force itself, an idea struck him.

"Wesa going into the belt."

Xik's eager expression morphed into one which Frakutsk had come to understand as surprise. Xik was always in radio contact with those Verpine dwelling in the asteroids of the Roche belt, but for the past year of his life (Indeed, the only year of his life, for Verpine grew quickly after they hatched) Xik had never actually been back to the belt.

"Why, master Frakutsk?" Intoned the Verpine, his clicks, whirrs, and wheezes forming a better imitation of galactic basic than the speech of any other Verpine Frakutsk had met, although Frakutsk had not met many of the newest generation of Verpine.

"Yousa will be seeing," replied Frakutsk, content that his brilliant inspiration would provide great educational gain and, in time, advance the Verpine's training considerably.

---

The Jedi are supposed to see things before they happen, through a form of prescience granted by the eternal, transcendant force.

But it turned out that the Gungan Jedi's prediction of "great educational gain" on the part of his student was a horribly vast misprediction of what was truely going to be gained...

The mismatched aquatic Gungan and insectoid Verpine had used Frakutsk's small craft to make the brief hop over to a large, nearby Verpine asteroid. They now exited the craft and stepped into the grey-brown tunnels of the Verpines' home.

Xik looked up at his uncomfortably tall master, who began to trod down the asteroid's carefully carved halls with a lumbering gait. Xik had an unsettling feeling somewhere his thorax. In fact, it was unlike anything the Verpine had felt before... it wasn't physical discomfort, more of an emotional dread that he could neither shake nor place.

All the padawan knew was that ever since Frakutsk had told him he would be going into the belt, the young padawan had felt, somehow, that something was wrong.

"Why are we going into the belt, master?" asked the young Verpine, now voicing his growing concerns.

Frakutsk must have heard something of the Verpine's distress, because he turned and slowed down his determined trot. In a reassuring tone, he began to speak to the padawan, "Oh, it'sa nothings really, justa somethings mesa thought..."

Sensing something was wrong with Xik, though, the Gungan stopped speaking as he halted in his tracks. He looked over to his pupil, astounded that he had missed such clear discomfort as the padawan was now displaying.

As Frakutsk looked at the Verpine, he also looked into the force.

And Frakutsk had missed alot more that his pupil's misgivings...



It is difficult to translate the semi-telepathic radio transmissions of the Verpine... the communications are a gradual process involving every Verpine within range...

The Verpine's voice: Failure to comprehend.

A powerful voice: There is no comprehension.

A young voice: Danger! Irrationality! Strangeness!

A powerful voice: There is no-

An intrusion: There is peace!

A powerful voice: But there is emotion...



"Quickly!" commanded Frakutsk, as he ran down a passage in the asteroid. He was headed towards a central chamber, one used for the hatching of new Verpine.

Xik's dread now had a reason: there was certainly something wrong. He struggled to keep up with Frakutsk's long-gaited run.

Now the master and padawan reached the hatching chamber. Halting dexterously, Frakutsk took in his surroundings as quickly as possible, looking at the largely bare room with the force and with his eyes.

There was nothing to be seen. There were eggs carefully attached to the far wall, and there was a small door to an adjoining chamber. This was all to be expected. Frakutsk stood, fixed to the spot, certain that the force had told him something terrible had been here, but finding nothing.

Xik now reached the scene behind his master. It was when Xik reached Frakutsk and Frakutsk turned towards the Verpine that Frakutsk realized that the nearby chamber was what contained the disturbance.

With a few more steps, Frakutsk, followed by Xik, entered the next chamber. It contained formidable cloning equipment: there were pods, tanks, and all sorts of grisly devices which Frakutsk couldn’t name. There was also one Verpine, who was standing fixated by a door on one of the machines.

"I see nothing..." Frakutsk said to a frightened Xik, "but you do...?"

Xik only nodded in response, looking at the same door as the Verpine mechanic who apparently worked here.

The door opened upward to reveal a Verpine, dripping with a brown, gelatinous substance. It took steps out of the chamber, blinking its huge, compound eyes.

It then collapsed, its chitinous form falling chunkily to the floor like a toppled droid.

The Verpine attendant turned towards Frakutsk and Xik, and, motioning wildly, emitted a loud and emphatic string of clicks, whirrs, and buzzes.

Xik clicked back at the attendant, his percussive speech much slower but no more intelligible to Frakutsk than the other Verpine's had been.

"What's he saying..." asked Frakutsk, but Xik continued on speaking with the clearly distrought hatching technician.

Frakutsk knew that the Verpine used cloning procedures to produce mindless, "worker" drones. He also knew that recently the demand for Verpine of this sort (indeed, every sort) had increased, and so naturally they would be in the process of creating more. What Frakutsk did not know was what this cloning procedure could possibly have to do with the terrifying episode he had just seen play out in the Verpine's hive mind not two minutes prior.

Impatiently, Frakutsk waited for Xik to fill him in on what was being said. Eventually, the cloner stopped talking, instead opting to give Frakutsk a long and significant stare.

Xik took the opportunity to speak to his master, "He is," Xik hesitated, "quite distressed. He says this has never happened before."

The cloner let out a growling buzz as Xik continued, "He also says that the problem was obviously with the drone's mind, and he knows from the Jedi's reputation that you," Xik paused again, looking for a translaiton, "mess... with people's minds."

Frakutsk frowned hugely in response to this, virtually every Verpine must, of course, by now have known that Frakutsk was a Jedi. But should that information become public there could be Sith coming to try and kill him. Before Frakutsk's mind could continue to wander to the state of the galaxy and the threat of the sith, though, Xik continued.

"Master," he said, "I think he's right. This seems like something the force has done."

All this talk of the force! If something so terrible was happening, why couldn't Frakutsk sense it? Frakutsk prided himself on his ability to feel the universe through the force more so than any other aspect of his Jedi training. Why then, had Frakutsk not seen anything of this problem until a few moments ago in the corridors of the asteroid, and why could he still see nothing but what stood infront of him?

"Yesa, it does." Frakutsk responded, not knowing what to say.

Xik felt obligated to fill the silence. "What is wrong?" he said, failing to come up with more words.

Defaulting to what he had learned to say as a teacher, Frakutsk answered Xik's question with a question.

"Whatsa does you think?..."

Xik was surprised at his master's answer. Frakutsk was teaching at a time like this? Then, though, the padawan looked over to Frakutsk, and saw him deep in thought. He was clearly considering events himself, and was merely encouraging Xik to do the same.

The Verpine set upon this task with all the vigor of a young learner. Knowing his master's fondness of meditation, and remembering his training, Xik closed his eyes and focused on the force, using himself as a lens through which to view the entire universe.

The learner felt all those around him, and soon those in nearby complexes, and in the not-so-distant academy. Just as Xik's conscious and analytical mind caught up with the strange super-awareness he had learned to gain through this meditation, though, Xik realized what was wrong. This was it! Why hadn't Frakutsk seen it?

No, he corrected himself; this was not what he was looking for. This was a different problem entirely, an even more dire problem. Frakutsk was gone.

Xik opened his eyes and looked at where Frakutsk had been standing. To his surprise, he found his master standing there sure as Xik himself. Confused, the Verpine once more reached out with the force, but with no success. He could not detect his master at all, and where his master's force signature should have been was nothing but blackness in the force. The technician was there, Xik was there, but Frakutsk’s signature was as empty as space.

Xik’s eyes were just beginning to deny what the force had told him, when his thoughts were interrupted by the ignored cloning technician.

"Don't just stand there!" cried the cloner in the spoken language of the Verpine. Xik had previously assured his fellow Verpine that what was happening could not possibly have to do with the Jedi Frakutsk, but now Xik was becoming unsure.

"We aren't." Xik replied cryptically. When the cloner began to give him a look of extreme exasperation, though, Xik realized more of an explanation was necessary.

"Look," began Xik, in as stern but reassuring a fashion as he could, "you are obviously correct in saying there is something wrong. And for all I know you might be correct in your assumption, albeit ridiculous, that this has something to do with the Jedi Frakutsk."

"Bah! Then fix it before messed up clones break more of my equipment!" challenged the cloner.

Xik replied by giving the technician a look that said he was doing all he could and then turned to Frakutsk.

"Master Frakutsk," buzzed Xik in galactic basic, walking up to the gungan.

"Master Frakutsk?" the Verpine repeated, attempting to make eye contact with the gungan.

Frakutsk did not respond.

He is the next victim of whatever killed that clone! thought Xik suddenly. Fighting off panic, he quickly moved in front of his master, and reached up with his long fingers to the gungan's robed shoulder.

"Master!" he exclaimed a third time, lightly shaking his mentor's shoulder, but to no avail. The force had been right: the Jedi was simply not there.

Begin streaming action summary (Galactic Basic)...
Brevity (3) Neutrality (1) Specific information call (xxacr40332);
Use (Artistic type 16, Audience type 445).

Accessing... Accessed.

Synchronizing... Synchronized.

[FONT=Lucida Console]This unit is extremely grateful to be performing its natural function: research. Nevertheless, it must be noted that the human called Derek is a poor substitute for the ingenious and legendary Sean LaReve, this unit's former and entirely scientifically superior creator.

For the 63rd time within the preceding 24 hours, I withdraw myself from the inside of the SICIPs (spacial integration, correlation, and inference processors). Although I was initially skeptical about the chances of fixing the terribly damaged machines, estimating only a 10% probability that they could be fixed, with the combined force of logic and dedication I believe that I may have fallen within my predicted 10% chance of success and returned the machines to an operatable condition.

"Derek," I say in order to interface with my less than apt human companion, "please initialize the spacial integration, correlation, and inference processors."

The human is apparently not in a research conducive state, because he requires several long moments to open his eyes and realize that I am interfacing with him. "What... oh, uh..." he stammers, and then finally (the process took 4.2 seconds) realizes that I addressed him, "Oh... you finally fixed these heaps of junk then?"

I graciously excuse Derek's impossibly inaccurate description of the SICIP devices, Ianddecide to provide the devices with power myself. The process of reaching the proper power chord and inserting it into the energy receptacle requires 18.5 seconds. This process being completed, I bring myself to the control panel of the first large cube-shaped device and inspect its condition.

Impressively, the device's many controls and interfaces are lit and operational. I can tell by the readouts that the machine is not operating at its full capacity. Nevertheless, the machine, once central to Sean LaReve's brilliant process of scientific progress, was designed to undertake intense scientific calculations and its power will be more than sufficient for its current purpose. I glance sideways to note the position of Derek. I see that his eyebrows are brought down in a skeptical facial expression as he stands in front of the second SICIP.

Presently, he speaks. "So, you say that this will tell us what those imperials are building."

I am forced to hone the human's understanding. "Using the raw sensor data from your mission and Frakutsk's recent scans, as well as carefully directed scans of my own, this remarkable device will be able to deduce the physical characteristics behind the New Order's cloak."

Derek makes a facial expression that, based on my previous experience with the human Derek, I decide not expend the processing power required to comprehend, although I estimate a 73% probability of rudeness. Instead, I dedicate my system's full functionality to entering the available data in to the machines. This enjoyable process requires 13 minutes and 35 seconds of uninterrupted work, 6 minutes and 4 seconds of which is dedicated to entering Derek's unconventionally stored data from his personal craft.

Finishing the work, I command the machine to begin its calculations. I am unable to predict with accuracy or precision the amount of time the machine will require for this particular task without extensive study of the data, although I have no doubt that Sean LaReve, who alone fully understood SICIPs, would have known what prediction to make in this scenario. I have barely decided how to allot my internal resources during the wait when the second machine's large output displays fill with processed and extremely useful data pertaining to our target: the physical characteristics of the cloaked imperial presence in the Roche system.

I begin to carefully undertake a reading of the output that will take a predicted 10.6 seconds. Derek, however, lacking the research skills that were designed into me, seems to immediately reach some sort of premature conclusion.

"Zark!" he shouts, an explicative which I have no linguistic understanding of, although it is not the first time I have recorded Derek using it. The resources required to process Derek's output divert 0.9003% of my processing capability, extending the time necessary to fully comprehend the SICIPs' results. "Oh... this is not good."

The processors' results are clear, but their consequences are not immediately obvious to me. As I again reroute my internal resources, this time initiating a particularly abstract analysis protocol, Derek, again apparently convinced that he understands LaReve's machines, grabs a data device from a table against the wall and speaks as he motions towards me and heads out the door of our research room.

"Come on Tee-bot," he says with great urgency (misarticulating my name, as he has only recently begun to do), "we've got to find Frakutsk!"[/FONT]

Before Xik had enough time to figure out what he should do, Frakutsk awoke. His frog-like eyes snapped open, but the muscles of his face stayed completely relaxed. This caused the old Verpine cloner to croak angrily- he thought Frakutsk was just being obnoxiously mysterious. But Xik felt no change in the Jedi's influence on the force and knew that Frakutsk was far from awake in the usual sense.

Immediately, in a flash of movement, Frakutsk sprung away and out the doors, back the way the two Jedi came. Xik couldn't stop his master- he didn't predict the gungan's sudden disappearance nor did he have the physical speed or strength to stop the flying Gungan.

Xik felt a flare of anger unsafe for a Jedi. He knew that he had just been left alone. And now even the old Verpine cloner stopped clicking angrily and was silent. The technician looked with great discomfort toward the collapsed, lifeless clone on the chamber floor.

From outside, there was shout, "Hey!" and a metallic statement "Minister Frakutsk!" Xik recognized the sounds of Derek and RT Bot, and immediately exited the small cloning chamber and larger facility room intending to find the two companions of Fraktusk's in the passage outside. Perhaps one of them knew what was happening, although based on their exclamations Xik guessed they didn't.

Xik reached the carved-out asteroid hallway only in time to see RT Bot's eyes alight with incedulousness and Derek's indignant face.

"Frakutsk just ran off to his ship without stopping to tell us why," Derek told Xik, as if Xik was now going to correct for Frakutsk's rudeness. But Xik could only nod slowly at Derek's statement.

"The Minister took off on a trajectory toward the imperial side of the belt," RT Bot offered.

"Maybe he already knows, then..." added Derek.

Now Xik could think of something to say: "Knows what?"

Derek started to speak, but he stopped himself from saying 'You don't know?' Instead, he told Xik what he had been planning on offering Frakutsk, "RT Bot and I just finished repairing the SICIPs and we got our first results from the cloaked imperial station."

RT Bot cut in, "The results indicated a surprising lack of ordinary nefarious equipment."

'Nefarious' wasn't precisely how Derek would describe the Empire, but he let RT Bot continue.

"Of course, I briefly considered the possibility that whatever the New Order was concealing was much more a simple resupply station than we had initially assumed. However, as soon as I saw the cross-reference data from the SICIPs, I realized what the Imperial's horrible plan must be..."

Derek rolled his eyes at this. He had, of course, been the one to first recognize the Imperial's plan. But RT Bot was continuing:

"The data showed similarities between parts of the design of the Imperial's cloaked station and certain Sith and dark force temples. There was also a giant force symbol in the design with its roots in the ancient experiments of Darth..."

"The point is," interrupted Derek, "that the Imperials are trying to a create some kind of crazy dark-force death-weapon," RT Bot began to correct this gross misdescription, but Derek continued, "Which is why we obviously came to get Frakutsk..."

"But he's gone," buzzed Xik, finishing Derek's sentence. His antennae twitched now as he communicated with the Verpine hive. "Very gone. And I am hearing that my master is flying past the Imperial station in plain sight."

There was a pause as RT Bot recalculated, Derek's mind whirred, and Xik dreaded to think of what Frakutsk could possibly be doing.

Bracesayouself.

The phrase invaded Xik's head quickly and without announcing itself. Of course, the learner knew immediately from whom the thought was from- there could be no mistaking a message through the force from communication with the hive. And somehow Frakutsk's improper Gungan-speech even translated itself into thought-speak.

Xik gave Derek and RT Bot a huge look of realization. Frakutsk was not gone after all! Of course, Derek couldn't read Verpine facial expressions (even after graduating from the Academy in the belt among the Verpine) and RT Bot didn't have the resources necessarily to analyze Xik's face. But they knew something significant had happened anyway, and for at least a while they ceased their respective worryings.

Naturally aided by Frakutsk's communication, Xik felt powerfully connected to the force in this moment. Thus far, Xik had learned of the eternal transcendence of the force. He had studied traditional teachings, and internalized ancient Jedi wisdom.

He was not prepared for what he was about to feel. And Frakutsk's warning, even though heeded as best Xik's limited training allowed, had little effect.

A sudden wilting took hold of Xik's mind. Xik's consciousness, which under the tutelage of the Jedi Knight Frakutsk had been grown and tuned carefully to the force, was still unspoiled and untested. It was now suddenly invaded by filth and darkness. A force-born sickness gripped all of the young Jedi's nerves and organs. The wilting affected every aspect of Xik's freshly-trained psyche and as the Jedi felt each compartment of his mind, he found the same pain waiting in each one.

The change damaged Xik- permanently or not- but even as it did the Verpine retained enough perception to realize that this was not something directed at him. The change was everywhere- in the very fabric of the force.

Isa sorry. Yousa will be getting used to it.

The words reminded Xik that he was strong, and that he had not been studying the ways of the force for nothing- but they did nothing to curb his present discomfort.

Xik lifted his compound eyes and found the nearest living thing- the young human graduate Derek. Xik immediately knew that Derek did not feel the darkness that he had just felt- the darkness that had left the Verpine troubled and disturbed- and that angered the Jedi.

Finally returning to the material world, the Verpine had no choice but to immediately release what he had just felt. Derek was the unlucky receptacle for an outburst from the still-young Verpine.

Before either Xik or the human knew what was happening, Derek was hoisted against an asteroid wall, Xik's scaly exoskeleton digging into his chest. There was fire in the insectoid's compound eyes, but of course that expression was as foreign to Derek as the Verpine's expression of realization had been moments earlier.

Derek knew Xik, and knew that the learner would never do anything to actually hurt him. And so, now, the human spoke the first words that had been uttered in several long moments, "Uh, Xik?"

Xik was beginning to adjust to the new shroud that had imposed itself on him. Xik was reminded of Frakutsk's communication and, relatedly, was reminded of Frakutsk himself. He then remembered that Derek, and even the droid, RT Bot, were in the same, confused position as he was, at least as much as anyone who couldn't have shared the force-experience he had just had could be. Xik let Derek fall back to the ground.

"I feel..." croaked the young Verpine, and perhaps he needed to say nothing more. Certainly, he couldn't think of anything more to say, at least not in galactic basic. Xik's found his antennae twitching, and he began to communicate with the hive. But there was not very much help he could find there. No doubt his brethren listened, but Verpine Jedi were quite unknown to any but the eldest and most wizened of the members of the Verpine species present in the belt, and even those most seasoned individuals did not know much that would help Xik now.

Fortunately, one individual present was always reliable as a source of reason. RT Bot had been correlating away, and now had something to say. "Perhaps more information about our current situation could be revealed by traveling to the location of the imperial cloak and Minister Frakutsk." The conclusion was simple enough, but simplicity was welcome in the present situation.

Did the droid understand what Xik had just experienced, or was RT Bot's suggested action logical no matter what the circumstances of Xik's confusion? After all, if what Xik had said earlier was true, the imperials weren't going to fire on anyone approaching their station (a change in policy, to be certain.) That alone made the situation worth investigating.

To fly across the belt would not take very long at all- the challenge would be to locate the imperial base with enough accuracy to be able to land. That task had, of course, been impossible up until now. If their recent results were any, guide, though the SICIPs would be capable of the computations.

It would just be a matter of creating a proper interface... Derek occupied his mind with these technical details as with unspoken consensus he and RT Bot headed toward Derek's ship.

Xik followed in a clouded daze. The new darkness that surrounded him felt permanent, as if the cleanness of the force up until now had been the result of some temporary shield. Xik didn't know what the reality was, but he knew he wanted to go to the imperial garrison to try to find out. The Verpine Jedi learner gave a softly resolute croaking growl as he trailed Derek and RT Bot. No doubt the noise caused the two concern.

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Perched in the void of space, there was an invention.

Pulled from reality like the air from a vacuum, there was the Invention.



"You know why I have brought you here," announced the Inventor.

It was a unwelcomely melodramatic beginning to what Frakutsk predicted would be an unpleasant speech.

Of course, Frakutsk knew how the Inventor had brought him here. The impossibly powerful vacuuming of the force could hardly be ignored. Frakutsk had also figured where the Inventor brought him- the huge, luminescent crystal structure that was apparently both the source of the imperial cloak and what it was hiding was location enough.

What the Inventor asserted Frakutsk knew, though, was the one thing he did not. This did not seem to bother the inventor as he continued.

"I'm sure it must be very painful for you in the presence of the Void-Vacuum-Eternal so I'll try to spare you the details."

It was indeed uncomfortable here, but Fraktusk took the time to make a sarcastic face at the name the unshaven human in front of him had given his dark creation. He was not sure if his facial muscles actually moved.

"I am the Inventor," said the man as his attempt at a bow was thwarted by his apparent inability to bend more than a few degrees at the waist, "and this, my invention, can cause holes in the very fabric of the force."

Frakutsk thought that a hole was a terrible way to describe the screaming pressure-filled force-vacuum in which he found himself, but lacking the desire to speak in front of the Inventor's invention, he let the obviously insane genius in front of him continue.

"I'll give your inference devices great credit for deducing the presence of a reality vacuum, but I'm sure that the technology they utilize is quite simplistic in comparison to my creation.

"I have tuned this device to the point where it can prevent a single lifeform from manifesting itself in the force and in reality- as all lifeforms must- and to the point where it can suck the current force-being out of a single already manifested entity such as yourself. Now the device is ready for your evaluation.

"And, since all my overseers have abandoned me in favor of combating the reaver invasion- a terribly dull task- you will be able to evaluate and test this invention for a very, very long time."

It was obvious to Frakutsk that he needed to flee, but also that it had been a terrible mistake to fly right to the location of what felt like it was sucking his very existance from him. And the Jedi saw very little hope for escape, given that mistake.

"Unsurprisingly," said the crazed man as he turned to look at the swinging, monsterous crystaline arms beyond him, "your physical form seems to have survived the first of my tests.

"Let's move beyond our control..."

Derek's spacecraft hovered over a great nothingness. He, RT Bot, and the Jedi apprentice Xik waited with hopeless anticipation.

Xik broke the silence. "How can you even know there is something there?" Although perhaps his common was insufficiant to express it, the emphasis of the sentence was on how someone else could know something was there. Xik himself felt still felt the terrible radiating darkness that had gripped him in the asteroid, and it was clearly coming from where the imperial station was not.

Derek took a while to extract himself from his worried thoughts. He took an even longer while to parse Xik's heavily accented common, but, eventually, he managed to respond with relative grace considering the dire situation.

"Technically, there isn't. The entire area has been sucked from existence. But, I think it was one of your kind who said that the entirity of reality could be reconstructed from a single submolecular particle if it had to be, so it's just a matter of knowing where to look."

Xik let out a mandibular sound of revelation, and then emitted a string of whirring syllables in spoken Verpine. Derek assumed that it was the original version of the saying he had just paraphrased, and so nodded.

"Technically," RT now felt the need to answer, even though Xik clearly was already satisfied, "there is something there. Otherwise we would have no particles, submolecular or otherwise, from which to deduce the presence of an imperial space station approximately 312.43 kilometers in one dimension, 153.59 in a second, and 90.51 in the third."

Derek would normally have scoffed at RT Bot's use of the word "approximately," but he was not his usual playful self right now.

"So how are we going to see it and get inside," said Xik once the awkwardness of RT Bot's statement had worn off. He gave no hint that the statement was a question although it was formatted like one.

"The SICIPs are working on that right now," replied RT Bot, stiffly.

"I'd say since it doesn't exist, in order to see it we will need to bring it and everything inside it back into existence," explained Derek darkly, "but yes... we're working on that right now..."

Xik could only feel the coldness and terrible reality of the force, and hope that if the imerial station rematerialized there was nothing waiting to destroy the small spacecraft in which the he and the other two beings were now confined.