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“Over here!” Elijah’s voice sounded out through the rubble of the old castle. Jastia leapt over a low wall she’d been examining and sprinted through the crumbled corridors surrounding them.
For ages the archeological team had been picking through the crumbled fortress of the Red Emperor, seeking the reason for the sudden collapse of the Second Galactic Empire. Even the schematics for the massive abode had been lost. They’d hoped that if they were to find the inner sanctum they may be able to make some sense.
Elijah was running his hands along an ornate black stone wall. It was inlaid with intricate reliefs of the galactic battles fought during the rise of the Red Emperor. Here and there it was set with red jewels that seemed to glow even in the dim light filtering through the cracked walls. Even the golden embellishments of the Emperor’s circlet shone as if they were just polished.
“I have a feeling that this isn’t just a wall,” he said, running a finger across a red jewel that was pooled beneath a massive monster. Standing above the slain creature was a figure that appeared constantly at the side of the Emperor in all of the art from the second empire. The figure’s name had been lost to time, but indications were that the man was the Emperor’s consort and knight. “I feel a pull, almost a flow pulling from behind it.”
Jastia examined the edges of the relief with her own flashlight. “You were right the last time, when we found that mystery armor,” she said, recalling the highly polished set of ‘trooper armor in a chamber on a lower level. It had appeared as if whomever wore it had cast it off in a hurry. The records they recovered after were clear that this armor belonged to a former confidant of the Emperor. Immediately after the fall of the Second Empire, much of the historical documentation had been destroyed. All that remained were the few private collections former imperials had squirreled away and a few lost buildings. Even so, many of the names had been redacted or erased in the interest of keeping the few remaining families from being linked to the war crimes the second empire committed.
Elijah pulled back and looked pensive. “I’m sure that this is a sound activated door. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the kriff the word to open it would be,” Elijah sighed. “What about you Jas?”
Jastia sucked the inside of her cheek, thinking back to all the holos she’d watched concerning the Second Empire. “I’m not sure if I remember the name right. It was the super weapon that the Red Emperor designed. The one he intended to use to destroy the republic in one swoop,” It was dancing on the tip of her tongue, but for the life of her she couldn’t recall.
“Oh!” Elijah gasped, snapping his fingers. “You mean the Sun Eater?”
“Yeah, it inhaled suns and exhaled death. But it wasn’t called ‘Sun Eater.’ It was star . . . killer?” she said, stumbling over the last bit. It sounded right.
“Starkiller,” Elijah said in a hushed voice, even now the word was a curse. The devastation it caused wasn’t forgotten in the Republican books written after the Empire ended. They had struck the Emperor’s real name from the histories, and just begun to call him the Starkiller.
There was a rumbling and the wall began to shift. Debris was dislodged around their feet and dust swirled around in the air. Both Elijah and Jastia pulled their scarves across their faces to keep the dust from filling their lungs. When the wall stopped moving a hallway had been revealed, and a bright light shone at the end.
The explorers shot each other a look and Jastia took the lead. Even in this dead place, no one knew how the Emperor had booby trapped the fortress. Even the planet had been inaccessible for hundreds of years after the empire fell. The atmosphere had been filled with poison gas and radiation. Most of the histories pointed the finger at another super weapon designed by the Emperor himself, but some evidence in archives had come to light that indicated that it may have been built and deployed by the rebellion.
They came to the end of the hallway and found it opened up into a vast chamber that appeared to be the Emperor’s personal quarters. It was massive, and almost in pristine condition. The gas and radiation seemed to have not been able to penetrate the walls here. Up in the ceiling was a large dome of transparisteel that must have been disguised from the outside. It was the reason the whole room glowed in the warm light of the system’s sun.
Jastia’s eyes scanned the room, settling on the bed. There lay two skeletons in an embrace. One with a circlet of gold across its sun bleached brow and the other with a collar of gold bearing the Emperor’s seal. Their forms were covered slightly in a large red cape, bordered with intricate gold braiding. Before the Emperor was a ruler, he had been a soldier. Old aesthetics died hard.
Jastia moved closer to examine the skeletons more closely. As she stood at the edge of the massive bed she could see the hands of the two. Each wore a ring on the left ring finger, the Emperor and his consort. “At least that answers that. The knight was also his husband.” She said to Elijah over her shoulder, turning back to the bodies. She then saw lying on the coverlet next to the bone hand of the knight a silver cylinder shaped like a cross. She gasped, no amount of revisionist history had lost that particular technology. “Elijah, it’s a lightsaber! The knight’s lightsaber.”
Elijah appeared at her side, gaping down at the pair. “They committed suicide,” he whispered, gesturing at the scorched holes in the breast bones of each form.
“But why?” Jastia asked, looking at his face.
“Unfortunately we’ll probably never know,” Elijah answered. “The fireplace over there is filled with burned papers. Apparently before they ended their lives they’d burned their flimsies and smashed all of the databanks and holos,”
Jastia sighed. “Well, at the very least we’ve found their bodies. I’ll send a message to the professor to send a preservation team. They will be able to recover the relics at the very least.”
Elijah nodded and headed back down the hallway toward the entrance of the ruins. Jastia turned to follow, but something pulled her to look back. She thought she caught a glimpse of a blue figure standing by the bed. She felt cold wash over her and the thought appeared in her mind, unbidden, we were in love. Jastia shivered and turned, jogging lightly to catch up to Elijah.