Summary: One crystal down and a tragic fate diverted, it's time to move on to more questing!

  Chapter 48: Hosk Station

  “Thank you for all of this, really. I can’t…”

  Aay didn’t hesitate to wrap Shmi in a hug, the older woman returning the embrace readily. For long seconds they just stayed that way, before Aay pulled back a bit.

  “You never have to thank us for doing this right thing, Shmi. And I promise I’ll get that secure comm to Anakin when I can. I’m afraid it might be a few weeks, since Izuku and I have another couple of stops to make before I can return to Coruscant. But I’ll get it to him!”

  Shmi sniffed, womanfully holding back tears, even as she patted Aay on the shoulder.

  “It’s fine, dear. I’ve waited this long to be able to talk to him again, and I understand you’re running a bit of a risk with the Jedi to get it to him anyway. I can wait a little longer. Besides, I’ll be busy for a while myself, getting used to everything new!”

  That was quite true, even if they knew Shmi would make the time whenever they did get the comm to her son. Yet, for the immediate future, Shmi would be busy adjusting to her new life of freedom. Including her new job here on Hosk Station, working for the Thousand Suns Trade Conglomerate. Izuku and Aay had put their Spiritual Quest/Vacation on hold for a few days in the aftermath of Tatooine in order to get Shmi situated into her new life, and they hadn’t been willing to just drop her off and let someone else handle the situation.

  Well, not entirely, anyway.

  They had called in one of the many specialists they had avaible, who was trained to properly help former sves transition into new lives. Shmi’s honestly wasn’t a particurly bad case, but there was almost always numerous issues that would trip up former sves that had been ensved for as long as she had. New identification, accounts, an actual understanding of the legal rights they now possessed. Even for those sves like Shmi who possessed a half-decent, if extremely patchy, education, there was enough involved in suddenly being free that it could be utterly overwhelming.

  Thankfully, given their focus on freeing sves, this was an area that Aay and Izuku had plenty of people on tap to help with. Normally, given the numbers of individuals they regurly freed, one-on-one attention for cases that weren’t overly traumatic was limited. Since Shmi wasn’t going through one of their normal programs, however, they’d pulled someone to specifically handle her case. Eshera was a former sve herself, who had been freed and gone through a program years ago run by Alderaan. The cheerful, yellow-skinned Twi’lek was able to easily put Shmi at ease, and possessed the right skill set to help her transition into her new position with the Thousand Suns Trade Conglomerate. As she was, for the moment, Shmi’s new point of contact, she was with them now as they said goodbye in the Wandering Fate’s docking bay.

  “Ah, that’s not a worry, Miss Skywalker! You’ll only be as busy as you want to be, promise! I’ll smack the company people around if I have to, when your son get’s his comm, to make sure you have plenty of time to catch up with him!”

  Shmi grinned at the perpetually perky and optimistic Twi’lek girl. The two had almost instantly taken well to each other, which was a relief to Aay and Izuku.

  “Eshera, how many times have I told you it’s just Shmi!”

  Eshera’s return grin came with a wink.

  “Lots! But we’ve got to get you used to insisting on Miss Skywalker! Otherwise, you’ll never be able to beat off all the young men after you! Assuming you want to, of course~!”

  Shmi chuckled, though a bit of a blush was present on her face as well. Not that either Aay or Izuku thought Eshera was even remotely wrong. Even just the week of travel and time on Hosk Station had already washed away much of the wear and tear from the sands of Tatooine. Shmi had already been somewhat striking but, as proper care was catching up with her, she was turning out to be outright beautiful. To the point that Izuku was fairly certain the Force must have been preserving her, as she seemed to be bouncing back from the roughness of Tattoine better than anyone had a right too. Give it a few months, and she really would likely need to beat younger men off with a stick…assuming she wanted to.

  “Well…we’ll see about that. But I have a job to learn first. And friends to say goodbye to at the moment.”

  Shmi’s blush darkened for just a moment when she caught Aay’s smirk when she didn’t outright dismiss Eshera’s comment, but she powered through as she returned her focus to them.

  “And I really can’t thank you two enough for the job, either. The more I find out, the more I’m looking forward to it!”

  That was honestly perfectly understandable. Intentional, even, really. The particur trading group they’d set her up with, The Thousand Suns was one of their more cndestine efforts, as it was intended to interact with Hutt worlds. A significant amount of its people were, themselves, ex-sves despite that detail. Specifically, they were ex-sves who had wanted to do something more for others stuck in the same situations they had escaped, yet who weren’t combative by nature. Operating a conglomerate of seemingly-independent trade vessels in and around Hutt Space, they kept their ears to the ground while doing perfectly legitimate business. They also quietly offered support for locals like Bendan Marstrap, serving as a contact point to the greater efforts of the Shattered Shackles and semi-frequently helping smuggle escaped sves off various Hutt worlds. It could be a little risky at times, though they had all the support they needed to minimize that risk.

  Shmi, of course, wouldn’t be put at direct risk like that unless she chose to put herself out there. Even then, it would only be after a suitable period to adjust to her freedom and legitimately think about her future. For the time being, she would instead work an administrative and liaison role from the conglomerate’s headquarters. Said HQ was located over the Mid-Rim world of Karba, or more accurately Hosk Station, which encompassed Karba’s entire moon. The station was a major trade hub, in which yet another trading group like Thousand Suns could virtually vanish among hundreds just like them. From the group’s HQ on the station, Shmi would slowly learn to manage the trade connection with Watto and his now-expanding business. Gathering information and seeking to expand their influence and network on Tattoine was the name of the game, and Shmi would have a significant part to py in helping that effort.

  “We already said you don’t have to thank us…but you’re welcome all the same. Feel free to stay in touch, Shmi, and Aay will contact you on your new personal hypercomm account when she’s managed to get the comm to your son.”

  Shmi smiled and nodded, reaching out to squeeze Aay in one st hug, before letting her pull away.

  “I won’t bebor the point, then. Good luck on the rest of your Spiritual Quest. I hope it goes as well for you as Tatooine did.”

  A st few words and goodbyes were exchanged, then the duo of lovers parted for the Wandering Fate. Mei, who hadn’t had a lot to do with Shmi, had gone ahead to start up the ship while they made their goodbyes. Now, Aay and Izuku quickly joined her. It took only minutes to get a departure ne from the station space control center and, with a st wave through the cockpit windows, they set off again. Shmi would be fine in Eshera’s care, and anyone looking for her would have a hell of a time finding anything, given the cndestine nature of the Thousand Suns. Given their secondary purposes, the conglomerate was very professionally tight with their security. Particurly regarding the identities and pasts of any of their people.

  Shmi was in good hands, with a bright future ahead of her, and it was time to be moving on to look for Izuku’s crystal just as they had Aaya’s…

  ... ...

  Ultimately, they had stayed on Hosk Station for four days, helping Shmi get comfortable and doing a little bit of research on their next destination while she settled in. The route to Tython was…historically fucked, would be the most honest way to put it. The hyperspace nes to it had colpsed numerous times over the 25,000 plus years since it had first been visited by those that would first create the Je'daii Order. An order that would then ter ignite into civil war and split into the Jedi and those who would eventually become the Sith. While it was possible the higher-ranking members of the Jedi Order might be aware of an existing route to the pnet, to the vast majority of the Jedi it was currently considered a lost world…again.

  All of which meant that the only way they had to access it wasn’t via the hypernes, but via the Infinity Gates that Mei and Celeste had rediscovered. Which, as it happened, meant traveling to the pnet where the pair had rerouted the main control hub of the Infinity Gates to when they cut Dathomir out of the loop. The problem that presented was that the pair had, at the Force’s guidance via Celeste, rerouted the controls to a Star Temple somewhere on the world of Felucia.

  Celeste hadn’t recognized the name.

  Aay, on the other hand, most certainly had.

  Annoyingly, the Force choosing that world as a ‘safe’ pce to protect the Infinity Gate network controls made a currently-regrettable degree of sense. Just for starters, the entire reason Aay had recognized the name of the pnet was because it was known to the Jedi Order. Specifically, it was known to them on account of having one of the highest concentrations of the Living Force anywhere in the gaxy. As in, the only reason the entire pnet wasn’t one massive Force Nexus, was because Force Nexuses are primarily concentrations of the Unifying Force, not the Living Force.

  The Living Force was much more about the ‘now’ rather than the past or future. What exactly that meant Aay wasn’t certain, as the Living Force wasn’t a popur field of study for most Jedi. She did know that trips to study Felucia were considered normal for the somewhat rare Jedi who were proponents of the Living Force. That much was common knowledge, to the point that it was literally covered as part of the Jedi Initiate csses that taught the basic differences between Unifying and Living Force.

  That, much to their chagrin as they’d studied up on the pnet, was only the first sign that they likely wouldn’t simply be nding at the Star Temple and waltzing inside. Even a cursory examination of records regarding Felucia had turned up the fact that it had an…aggressive ecology. A local version of Rancors, semi-sentient and Force Sensitive predators called Kaaten, something called a Felucian Ripper, and more nasty things besides. Much like the fauna, the flora was also dangerous, and so were many of the locals. The few truly modern settlements on the pnet were controlled by the Commerce Guild and were retively safe…ish. But out in the wilds, away from those settlements, were the native species. Who were also Force Sensitive, being deeply connected to the pnet’s Force presence. Jungle Felucians, as they were known locally, were the original inhabitants of the pnet and very much not friendly to outsiders.

  Understandable, that st bit, given that the Commerce Guild were basically colonizing invaders to the pnet. Colonizing invaders who were, themselves, invading a colony that had previously invaded the world in the past. Both groups of colonizers, first the Gossam and then the Commerce Guild, had taken advantage of the primitive nature of the original natives. Worse, the Commerce Guild had taken it a step farther in recent years by getting the Republic to recognize the Guild as the pnet’s owners, rather than the native species. An old and oft repeated story throughout the Republic’s somewhat inglorious history, that. Not that the history of Earth had been much different, Izuku had to admit. It seemed to be a sadly universal truth that the natives of any pce got fucked over hard when a technologically superior outsider came knocking.

  Regardless, there were two things that were obviously true about Felucia. One, that it was actually a fundamentally good choice on the Force’s part as a secure pce for access to the Infinity Gates. The vast majority of people trying to survive a delve into ancient ruins on the pnet would need an army. Even then, the Force-and-technology based defenses of a Star Temple would stymie even most armies for a while, if they didn’t have a reasonably powerful Force Sensitive with them. Two, letting the people technically in charge of the pnet know about there being a Star Temple on the world would be a horrifically bad idea. Which meant they were going to need to sneak in, lean on the Living Force (which only Aay could really access between them) to even find the Temple, and then hope they could make the ancient Infinity Gate work to transit through to the Infinity Gate to Tython.

  None of which covered any issues they might run into on Tython itself. Somehow, this seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go through for a lightsaber crystal…

  ... ... ... ...

  A/N: Interestingly enough, Hosk Station exists in both Canon AND the EU. Though there's a lot more detail on it in Legends content that I ran with here. In the EU it was built by the Alderaan Royal Engineers and covered the surface of the entire moon it was built on. As a major trade hub in generally the right region of space, I figured it was a good location to use for what I wanted with this chapter.

  The bits about Felucia in this chapter are actually outright canon, as is the fact that at least one proponent of the Living Force (Qui-Gon Jinn) went there for trials.