Locate Naq Med

They settled into the cockpit, Karr taking up the copilot’s seat and the droid strapping in behind them. He told her, “I’ve been doing some digging, and I found out more about the planet my grandmother mentioned. It was mined for phosphates for a few decades, but it was such a miserable place to live and work that the mines eventually closed and mostly everybody left.”

She frowned. “You can find phosphates in marshland?”

“In the area around them, maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, it has a large continent with marshy grasslands near the equator. It’s mostly hot scrubland and wet forests around the rest of it, plus a couple of big oceans.”

Maize pulled up the nav maps, located the planet in question, and looked over the schematics. “It’s kind of the far end of no place, isn’t it? Not exactly Wild Space, but you can see it from there.”

“All the more reason to pick it for a hiding spot,” he said, with more confidence than he felt. He was desperately afraid that he was screwing this up, and if it didn’t work out…then he’d sold his soul to the trade school for absolutely nothing.

He couldn’t let it come to that. He had to believe in the balance. He had to trust the Force.

Everything was riding on it.

“Are we ready?” Maize asked him, her hands gripping the throttle.

Karr knew it didn’t matter what he said. She was about to launch anyway. “Sure. Let’s go.”

Up they went, into high atmosphere—and then into hyperspace, to a strange corner of the galaxy with a planet no one liked, no one needed, and no one would ever want to live on.

Except maybe a very old man who didn’t want to be found.

[...]

When they emerged from hyperspace, the planet Pam’ba was large and round before them. Its oceans were few and far between—dots of blue scattered among sandy savannas and dirty-green swaths of what must have been marshes. A brighter green around the equator probably meant jungles or rainforests, and here and there, patches of white speckled the lands between cold gray mountains.

Karr’s head felt light, but it sometimes did when they emerged from hyperspace. He didn’t know if he’d ever get used to it. But was that all it was? A little bit of disorientation from the travel?

He blinked hard and shook his head in an effort to clear it.

It wasn’t that he could hear something, exactly. It wasn’t that he could see it. It was more like he knew it, from the bottom of his soul—a sharp and distant warmth that felt like certainty. “This is it,” he whispered.

“Do you sense something? Is the Force telling you anything? I don’t know how this works.”

“Neither do I,” he said. “But we’re in the right place. I feel like something is finally right. Does that make sense?”

She shrugged. “Not really. But I’m not stuck in my room surrounded by homework—so as long we aren’t actually, literally violently murdered down there on the ground…I’m game to go check it out.”

He frowned at her. “You don’t think we’re going to get murdered, do you?”

“Not if you’re right and the planet is abandoned. If there’s nobody down there to murder us, we’re all good.

“Did you bring any weapons?” she asked.

“No! Of course not.”

“That’s a shame.” She pulled up a scanner and started checking the planet’s surface. “I tried to find something before we left, but Dad keeps everything locked up. I guess we’re on our own.”

“We’ll be fine. What are you doing?”

She pointed at a set of coordinates that meant nothing to Karr. The numbers scrolled, rolled, and changed faster than he could read them. “I’m looking for someplace to set the ship down that’s near the equator, near some marshy grasslands, and not likely to let the Avadora sink like a rock in a puddle.”

“Oh. Good idea.”

She said, “I know. Now pay attention. Let me know if anything jumps out at you. This is a big planet, and there’s a lot of marshland to scroll through.”

He thought about it hard and tried to be logical. “Look for signs of civilization.”

“Why? Your grandmother said he lived alone in a house in the middle of nowhere.”

“That’s not exactly what she said.”

“You know what I mean.”

Karr rolled his eyes. That was usually Maize’s signature move, but she was rubbing off on him. “He was a hermit, yes—but this planet has been abandoned for almost a hundred and fifty years. If he came here to live, he might’ve started out scavenging from what was left behind.”

“Okay, I get it. If he lived in the marsh grass, he might’ve needed a boat. It’s easier to find one that nobody’s using than to build your own.”

“Exactly!” he said, pleased with his own deduction. “So we should look for small mining towns, or even mining equipment. Anything that a lone human might find useful, if he plans to live here for a while.”

This was their hardest search yet. When they’d visited other planets before, they’d had an idea of a town, or a person, or a distinct geographical landmark. Finding a single dwelling on a large empty planet would be trickier.

Much trickier.

They spent an entire day scanning the planet, squinting at tiny landmarks, overgrown roads, and the scant remains of small communities that had been left to the elements generations before. Here and there, they spotted a large building or a set of silos to hold whatever the miners were dredging up from under the ground. Sulfates, phosphates, whatever-fates. Karr didn’t know what they were for, or why anybody had ever wanted them.

Now nobody wanted them, not anymore. Not badly enough to live on Pam’ba.

Finally, Karr felt it: the twinge. The warmth, the certainty. The sharp knowing that felt like a revelation. He held up his hand. “Wait. Hold on.”

Maize paused the scan display. “What am I looking at? I don’t see anything.”

He closed his eyes and let his hand hover over the image. He pictured it in his mind—a squared-off map of dull green and brown, streaked with black water. Currents swirling. Local animals with thick skin and long faces, snaking among the reeds. Odd birds with very long legs and very small bodies. The collapsing remains of a pier and a brick-shaped building that might’ve been a store or might have been an office.

Beyond all that, a platform on stilts, raised above the wet grass.

On top of it, a featureless brown box. A door. A window.

A house.

[...]

“Yes, it would. This is miserable. I totally understand why a guy who wants to be left alone forever”—he huffed and puffed and yanked his boot out of some thick, squishy muck—“would pick a place like this. You’d have to be pretty crazy to follow anyone out here.

“Are we still headed the right direction? It doesn’t feel like we’re making any progress at all.”

“We’re making progress,” she assured him. “We ought to be able to see the house in a minute. We’ll get there eventually.”

“Eventually” didn’t arrive for another hour, and by then all three explorers were completely exhausted—but when the little shack came into view, Karr felt a jolt of energy and a second wind.

“There it is! Come on, we’re almost there!”

Maize groaned, and RZ-7 creaked, but they picked up the pace. Before long, they reached some sandy ground that wasn’t exactly solid but wasn’t as bad as slogging up to their hips through muddy water. Karr led the charge, breaking into a staggering run.

He tripped and fell, and caught himself on his hands—then picked himself up again. “Almost there,” he gasped. “Almost there.”

The house was elevated on thick wood pilings, sitting atop a platform. Against the platform rested a rough wood ladder that was held together with frayed brown ropes.

The boy stopped in front of it, his heart pounding and his legs burning. They hadn’t come half a kilometer through the marshland, but it felt as if he’d climbed a mountain. Everything ached and nothing was dry, but he’d made it. He’d found the small house where his great-grandfather, a former Jedi Knight, had lived out his last days.

He steadied himself, forcing the hot, aching pain in his head to the side. With a deep breath or two—in and out, in and out—he grasped the ladder barehanded, for his gloves were stashed in his highest jacket pockets. There was a reaction, but it was only a zap. The wood buzzed beneath his fingers.

Maize came up behind him, RZ-7 at her side. “Well?” she asked. “Are you getting anything?”

“I’m getting…everything.” The longer he stood there, holding the wood, the more his pain faded into something calm and understated. It was still present, but it didn’t hurt anymore. It had become a strange sensation but not a miserable one.

“So get up in there. Let’s go inside.”

Karr began to climb the ladder. He went slowly and carefully, not least of all because he didn’t want to pick up any splinters and he was thoroughly exhausted.

He paused, deeply tired from the trek through the water. He stayed there, in the shadow of the small house, staring out across the soaked grasslands. This was the view his great-grandfather had seen. And much like the connection he felt to Kenobi when he held the training remote on the ship, he felt a connection to Naq Med. Maybe even more so because he was family.

And just like before, a flash lit up the air and the hum filled his ears. Karr marveled at how well he had conquered his visions. The transition was seamless, he thought. Until he realized he wasn’t staring into a vision. He was staring into a face with a very deep frown bathed in the green glow of a very intimidating lightsaber.

“What are you doing here?” the man yelled, causing Karr to nearly fall backward off the ladder.

“I’m looking for Naq Med.”

“Naq Med? Who told you that name?”

“J’Hara.”

The man took a step back, giving Karr a better view of his would-be assailant. What he saw was a very old man who was very thin—doubled over in a crouch, all the better to see who was coming up the ladder. His eyes were bright and deep set, and what remained of his hair was as light and gauzy as a cloud. Most of that hair could be found in his eyebrows, which were as wild and untamed as the wilderness around them.


- Force Collector, Chapters 23 and 24