Adrian's almost-sing-song tone was close to feeling insulting, as he kept humming while operating the ship's sensors. Honestly, looking at him, he acted like we were tourists and he was about to give us a guided tour through a museum exhibit he'd funded, and not some old spaceship-filled graveyard that someone had already robbed clean. Still, I couldn't deny the small flare of curiosity I was also feeling, because if his ship really was what he said it was, then those sensors might be the difference between finding the threat… and saving us from drifting up and down this field of death, searching blindly, right until we got carved apart by an unseen wreck hurtling through space.
Sadly, even with how weird the Sith-made droids were, it didn't mean I could feel them like I could sense or touch a human. Maybe sensors would pick them up before the Force did... all things considered, they weren't living beings after all, so this may be the time where machines indeed worked better than the Force. I could feel and sense if someone had a murderous intent, ready to strike at me... but a droid? No. That was different. As I was thinking that, the Vindicator's thrusters came on, while the ship angled itself slightly, drifting toward the mark where those thin anchoring cables caught the strong glare of our hull lights. Out here, in the middle of intergalactic space, even that was like holding up a lamp in a dark cave.
On the viewport, the wreckage didn't just look dead as my eyes scanned it. It was like... a moment of the past had been freeze-framed. As we slid closer, I started spotting patterns that weren't obvious at first. I saw clusters of ships that should've collided but now were held apart by just enough distance to let something slip through. They were spinning in the same direction, keeping them on parallel paths, making sure they didn't collide, creating navigable gaps that were too neat to be genuine. Whoever came here before made sure that there was a path they could fly through without getting caught in the debris and joining them forever.
The initial wreck we saw was only the opening; there were more around it, stabilized just the same.
And of course, then there were the cables themselves, doing that job. They weren't thick, and by the readings that were now coming back, they were thin lines of an unknown metal-polymer, apparently of something that was not in the database. Meaning, they weren't made either in the Republic or amongst the Remnants.
"Not even Mandalorian," Adrian added, reading the reports of the analysis to us, "Nor Hutt-made. If we can, I want to collect samples and bring them back."
"If we are done," I said, "The last thing we need is to disturb it and make the clues we are looking for get destroyed."
"Naturally." He nodded, still smiling.
"They were for sure using this for something," Sareh murmured from beside me, "I just can't guess for what."
"Nothing good," Vila added while she made a noise like she wanted to spit.
"Could be that they came here to collect important data after the battle or to salvage the ships for components. There are loads of options." Adrian said, reading what his ship's computer was detailing to him.
[Statement: This was not a salvage operation. My calculations say that this is a nest.]
"Stop spooking us, HK!" I turned towards him, but I couldn't tell if he was serious or not... I hope not... because now my eyes were looking for something dreadful that lived outside of... everything. But I couldn't feel anything. But... What if there are things that are out here, not even part of the Force? The Yuuzhan Vong were such beings once... It wasn't... impossible...
"My ship could detect Vong-like signatures just as well. There is nothing out here." Adrian's smile didn't fade as he said it, but his eyes sharpened as he tapped his chair console again. "Not even on the long-range data... But... A passive sweep won't hurt us," he added, though the ship didn't need orders.
As the computer kept working, even with my limited access, looking at his shared version of the sensor readings, I could see enough to understand what he was doing: the Vindicator was mapping the field in three dimensions, tracking each wreck, each chunk of metal that once broke off, each slow or fast rotation, then overlaying a predicted drift pattern… and highlighting what didn't fit. It was even calculating and distinguishing which parts were most likely visited or tampered with, and which were not part of the original trajectory the wreckage would have followed, being left here thousands of years ago.
"Bingo." Adrian said suddenly, "I found something."
"What is it?" We all asked, turning away from the viewport.
"A lane." He waved a hand, and a projection was now displayed before us all, showing a route that led from the tethered ruins into the middle of the field, as if someone had dug one safe route through a junkyard.
"Are we going in?" Sareh asked, glancing at us, but I was unsure.
"Do we know where it leads?" I asked.
"Apparently, to another wreck." Adrian shrugged, "There's a lot, but as far as my ship is concerned, it does go towards a derelict Star Destroyer-sized thing." He explained, and his chair creaked as he leaned forward, eyes bright, clearly excited about... testing the capabilities of his ship, meaning, navigating it through such a debris field. This guy was... a technophile!
"Do we even fit?" Vila asked, unsure about the idea of following an ancient route or whatever this was! Heading in? Just like that? "Why not just fly over it or under it? Space is not two-dimensional!"
"No, it isn't," Adrian agreed, "But my scanners show that the wreck is surrounded by more debris, no matter from where you look. It is shielded from all angles. It had to be a capital ship, protected by the fleet it was leading. They died, forming a spinning wall around it, and now, if you want to get to it... this thing is the safe way."
"So... do we fit?" Sareh asked the same question, making Adrian look at his data.
"Yeah. We fit." He tapped the console, "Don't worry, my little one can micro-adjust the course faster than any human would. Let's sail in... stealthily."
The Vindicator's lights dimmed at that, not fully, of course, but enough that the bridge felt colder, plunging us into half-darkness, while the external running lights were reduced to the bare minimum, and after a burst of speed, the main engines went silent. What remained active to navigate our ship were the thrusters, which were set to micro-corrections only.
As we did so, my mind prickled again from the sensation I'd felt earlier in hyperspace. Trying to catch it... I couldn't tell what it was, but it was present here, too. Weak but... What was this? It didn't feel like sensing someone through the Force, because it was much more mechanical... but if it was, why did I feel it in the first place?
"We may have already been noticed," I spoke up, making them look at me.
"Nothing is on the sensors," Adrian answered a second later. "We aren't being pinged, I can tell you that."
"I trust his senses more than your ship," Vila said, glancing at me, but there was nothing else to do, and Adrian was not about to start arguing about it.
"Oh?" He suddenly inhaled sharply.
"What is it?" We all asked because my brother's exclamation was unexpected.
"Look at this," He said, bringing up the latest readings. "The long-range scanners did pick up an anomaly when it was overlaid against the background radiation."
"A power source?" Sareh whispered, looking at it, furrowing her brows.
"Low output," he nodded, as the ship kept displaying it, before it suddenly winked out. "It was intermittent."
[Statement: Like a sentry.]
"Could have been a stealth unit..." I muttered, looking at Vila, "Like the one on Korriban."
"Then they know we are here and that we are looking for them."
"Maybe not yet." Adrian interjected, "Even if that was a sentry, it didn't send out any type of signals; the Vindicator would have picked up on it."
"Maybe we should get out." Sareh offered, but to my surprise, Adrian shook his head.
"If we are being watched, then they knew from the moment we came here, the second we dropped out of hyperspace. Leave, and we will never find the wreckage ever again. Nor the route towards it. They will destroy it all..." He added as he flicked his fingers across the console.
The Vindicator rotated as he did that, toward an adjacent cluster of wreckage, passing by one of the large dreadnought hulls that was split open like a wound. We already committed to it, so... It was better to keep flying forward. As we headed in, following the stable path, we saw ancient ships of both Republic and Sith designs. Still, the former slowly disappeared, leaving behind only the Sith-made ships... right until we came across something that looked like not even a ship, but a massive eye, with fins on its sides, slowly spinning there, with surprisingly minimal damage.
Well, except for the massive hole in the middle of this is... eye-shaped ship.
"End of the line," Adrian muttered, turning on the searchlights, aiming them at the wreck, which still glinted like gold. Through the hole, we could see the cavern that was its inside, pierced through by whatever finished this ship off. "There is an access point," he said as we kept looking.
"I see it..." Sareh nodded, "The opening shows reinforcement.
"Yeah," Adrian agreed, "I can detect sealed gates were installed inside it, as their composition doesn't match the rest of the ship. I don't say it was repaired, but it was made to accommodate visitors and to deal with the vacuum."
"I know what you feel," I muttered, looking at Sareh, "You want to head into a hollowed-out vault."
"Of course," She nodded, "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Do you know what that is?"
[Statement: It looks like a Sith-made meditation ship. Correcture: The design fits, but it's enlarged to the size of a capital ship.]
"Exactly!" Sareh nodded, "The ancient Sith Lord, Naga Sadow, had a ship like that, I mean, a meditation ship, but this... This size? It's something else! I never seen anything like it, so... I want to see and learn all that we can!"
"I'm not going," Adrian said, which surprised me, if I want to be honest.
"We shouldn't either," Vila shrugged, "But if we want to find clues, we have to."
"..."
There wasn't much else to decide on, sadly. We came to look for clues... and if we want to find any, we had to board the ship.
"Keep an eye on that sentinel." I said to Adrian, and HK was already getting ready, but then I turned to him, almost making him swear at me, "HK, make sure he stays on course... And he doesn't leave us behind."
"My dear brother!" Adrian looked at me, actually shocked, "You... really think so little of me?"
"Coming from the family I grew up in, knowing how our father hates anything Force-related," I looked into his eyes, "Sadly, yes... I can't help but feel that if things were to go down, you would decide to save your ship first, and not us."
[Statement: Acknowledged. If the meatbag tries to betray you, I will engage in a more aggressive version of diplomacy.]
"Just make sure we have a ship to come back to," I added, patting him on the shoulders, leading the others to one of the airlocks, putting on proper suits to drift through space and enter the hulls of an ancient Sith capital ship.