SithLore

| Sleheyron, Hutt Space
| 31 ABY

Sleheyron had two suns and neither of them did much good. By the time they reached the horizon, the mining district was already dark with soot. The lower city lay in the shadow of refinery stacks, a crooked spread of durasteel walkways, patched habitation blocks, cantinas built out of old cargo modules, and pits that went down farther than anyone sensible cared to look.

Then the rain began.

It was not clean rain. Nothing on Sleheyron was clean.

It fell in warm, thin streaks from the swollen cloud of refinery vapor hanging over the district, carrying ash, metallic grit, and a faint chemical sting. It hissed against hot pipes. It pooled in oil-slicked cracks in the duracrete. It ran down the sides of old buildings in black ribbons and made the whole lower city shine in smeared reflections of furnace-light.

The locals called it rain anyway.

The Black Tooka had been awake since before dawn.

He stood in the narrow upper room he rented above a closed droid-repair stall, hands resting on the edge of a stained workbench. The room had one transparisteel slit for a window, one flickering glowpanel, and a ventilation unit that sounded as though it were dying somewhere inside the wall.

Rainwater crawled down the outside of the window in slow, greasy lines.

On the bench sat a cup of caf gone cold, a disassembled comlink, a handful of spent blaster cartridges, and his mask.

Its surface was black enough to swallow the room’s weak light. Thin violet markings ran across it in jagged lines, splitting around the eyes and mouth like cracks in old glass. It did not resemble a tooka particularly closely, unless one had once encountered a tooka in a nightmare and had decided never to sleep again.

Ari-Gan Rehanis stared at it for several seconds.

Then he put it on.

The change was immediate.

The old Jedi Master disappeared.

In his place stood a tall, hooded drifter in a long black coat, a vibroblade hanging low at his hip and a compact holdout blaster concealed beneath his left sleeve. Rain-dark fabric brushed his boots as he turned toward the door.

There were no robes. No lightsaber. No Jedi insignia. Nothing that suggested he had lived for over two centuries, taught younglings how to calm their breathing, negotiated ceasefires, or once felt the Force moving through every living thing around him.

Now there was only silence.

He left the room without locking the door.

There was nothing worth stealing except the caf cup.

Outside, Sleheyron was waking up.

A cargo lift groaned along its track overhead, dragging a load of tibanna canisters toward the refinery. The rain struck the canisters with a soft, steady tick. Below, a line of laborers shuffled through a security checkpoint, each wearing the same dull orange work suit and the same expression of people who knew their day would end badly.

Nikto guards watched them from behind a blast-shield, carbines held loosely in their hands.

The Black Tooka moved through the crowd without speaking.

Most people got out of his way.

Not because they knew who he was. Very few did. But word had spread through the lower mining district about the masked figure who had started appearing after dark, cutting down spice runners, breaking Hutt debt collectors’ knees, and leaving sealed ration packs outside the doors of families who could not afford to pay their water fees.

A few called him a vigilante.

A few called him a lunatic.

The Hutts, apparently, had begun calling him a problem.

That was enough.

He stopped at a street stall near the checkpoint. A Gran woman stood behind the counter, stirring something thick and steaming in a dented durasteel pot. Her stall sign read HOT MEAT, CHEAP PRICE in Basic, Huttese, and very bad Bocce.

The smell was sharp with spice and overcooked nuna.

She glanced up as he approached.

“Morning, Tooka.”

The masked figure inclined his head.

“You eating today,” she asked, “or just planning on terrifying honest working people until lunch?”

He reached into his coat, placed three credits on the counter, and tapped the side of the pot.

The Gran woman snorted. “That stuff is mostly nuna and whatever didn’t sell yesterday.”

He tapped the pot again.

“You’re a strange one.”

She ladled a thick serving of nuna stew into a battered metal bowl and slid it across the counter. Steam curled from the surface, carrying the smell of pepperroot, grease, and something that may once have been a vegetable.

“You hear what happened at Shaft Twelve?”

The Tooka paused.

The woman watched him over the rim of her spectacles. She had learned enough of his sign language to understand the basics. Not much. Just enough.

He lifted one hand.

What happened?

“Collapse. Maybe. That’s what they’re saying.” Her voice lowered. “Three workers haven’t come up. One of them is a kid, barely old enough to have a labor contract.”

He stared at her.

“Gorga’s people sealed the access tunnel,” she continued. “Said it was unsafe. Said they’ll send a recovery droid when they have one available.”

The Gran gave a bitter little laugh.

“Which means they will not send one.”

For a moment, the Black Tooka’s hand drifted toward the hilt of his vibroblade.

The old reflex came with it. Reach outward, feel the mine. Sense life beneath the duracrete, beneath the rock, beneath all that humming machinery and heat.

He closed his eyes behind the mask.

Nothing answered. No flicker of panic in the darkness below. No distant pulse of breathing. No warmth in the Force.

Just a wall.

The same wall that had been there for decades.

He had tried meditation. He had tried pain. He had tried anger, though he knew better. He had sat for hours in silence aboard stolen freighters and in cheap docking bays, trying to find some crack in the emptiness.

There was never anything.

The Force had not vanished.

It had simply stopped speaking to him.

Ari-Gan opened his eyes.

The Gran woman had gone quiet.

“You alright?” she asked.

He signed carefully.

Where is Shaft Twelve?

She pointed with her chin toward the refinery district. “You thinking of going down there?”

The Black Tooka slid the untouched bowl of nuna stew back across the counter.

The Gran stared at him. “You know they have guards.”

He gave her a brief, humorless tilt of the head. That had rarely, if ever, stopped him.

The route to Shaft Twelve took him through the older parts of the district, where the buildings leaned into one another and pipes ran overhead in tangled bundles. Rainwater dripped from cables and awnings. Steam hissed from ruptured valves. A pair of Rodians argued beside a scrap heap. Somewhere nearby, someone was playing sabacc badly and losing loudly.

The rain made every alley a mirror.

Violet light from the fractures in his tooka mask flashed back at him from the puddles. A broken, stretched-out version of the Black Tooka followed beneath his boots.

At the entrance to the mine, four Nikto guards stood behind a portable barricade. A red warning beacon flashed above the sealed tunnel. Its light caught in the rain and stained the air crimson.

One of the guards noticed him first.

“Oh, look,” the Nikto said. “The cat’s here.”

The others turned.

The Black Tooka stopped several paces away.

“Private work site,” the guard said. “Turn around.”

He signed. There are people trapped inside.

The Nikto frowned. “What?”

A human guard beside him looked closer. “He’s signing.”

“Yeah? Well, tell him I don’t give a crink.”

The Black Tooka repeated the gesture, more slowly.

The human guard translated with a shrug. “He says there are people inside.”

“There were people inside,” said the Nikto. “Now there’s a cave-in.”

The Tooka pointed toward the tunnel.

Let me through.

For a few seconds, nobody moved.

Then the Nikto laughed. “You’re serious?”

The masked figure did not answer.

“Who do you think you are?” the guard asked. “Some kinda sleemo Jedi?”

The question hung there, sharper than it had any right to be.

The Black Tooka’s shoulders stiffened.

The human guard smirked. “Probably one of those holodrama types. Big coat, glowing mask, sword on his belt. You going to wave your hand and make us forget our jobs?”

A small group of workers had started to gather nearby. Nobody said anything. Nobody stepped forward.

The Nikto reached out and grabbed the front of the Tooka’s coat.

“Take off the mask.”

The vibroblade came free with a low mechanical whine. Not fast enough to be invisible, but fast enough. The Black Tooka twisted out of the Nikto’s grip, drove an elbow into the guard’s ribs, and brought the flat of the vibroblade against his throat. Violet light reflected against the Nikto’s teeth. Rain ran down the guard’s cheek and gathered at the edge of the blade.

The other guards raised their carbines.

The Black Tooka’s free hand flicked up.

Not a Force gesture.

A warning.

The human guard hesitated. “Don’t shoot.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s got a blade on Karrik’s neck.”

“Karrik’s expendable.”

The Nikto’s eyes widened.

The Black Tooka looked past him, toward the human guard who had spoken.

Then he signed with one hand.

Then you lead.

The human guard blinked. “What?”

The Tooka angled the vibroblade a fraction closer to the Nikto’s throat.

You know the mine. You take me to them.

The Nikto swallowed. The human guard, meanwhile, looked toward the sealed tunnel, then back to the figure in the black mask.

“You really think you can get them out?”

The Tooka did not move. He could not promise that, not anymore. But he could go down. He could carry rubble. He could cut through doors. He could put himself between frightened workers and whatever had caused the collapse.

Rain slid down the mask’s violet cracks, turning the light beneath them liquid.

So he gave the only answer he had.

He signed: Open the tunnel.

For a moment, only the refinery-rain moved.

It ticked against carbines. Ran in dark threads from the Nikto’s brow. Pooled around the Black Tooka’s boots and reflected his mask in broken violet slivers.

The Nikto found enough breath to sneer.

“You have no idea where you are, you barcy freak. This whole district belongs to Varrga Besadii Diori. You cut me, you die for it.”

The Tooka’s grip did not loosen.

The human guard looked from his choking companion to the sealed tunnel. Another sound came from within. Not knocking this time.

A scrape.

Metal dragged slowly across stone.

“Let Karrik go,” he said, quieter now. “You want in, you go in alone. No escort. No map. No backup. You find your own way through the lower shafts, and whatever happens down there is your funeral.”

The Black Tooka considered him.

Then, deliberately, he lowered the vibroblade.

Karrik stumbled backward, clutching his throat. His hand flew for his blaster, but the human guard caught his wrist.

“Not now.”

The masked figure signed once.

Open it.

“You are dead,” Karrik rasped. “Varrga will hang that tooka mask of yours over his throne!”

The human guard keyed the control panel.

Warning klaxons rose into the wet air. Heavy blast doors shuddered apart, inch by reluctant inch, revealing a throat of darkness beyond. Heat rolled out first, thick with dust, scorched ore, and something sour beneath it.

The Black Tooka crossed the threshold without a backward glance. Once, centuries ago, Ari-Gan Rehanis had been called the Song of Silence; now, beneath the fractured violet stare of his mask, he moved with the noiseless certainty of a narglatch slipping into the kill. Behind him, the blast doors ground shut, sealing away the rain, the furnace-light, and the last thin sounds of the world above. Darkness received him. Far below, somewhere beyond the reach of the warning lamps, something vast shifted in answer to his footsteps.