Nothing will wake you up faster than a klaxon set to full blast.

It’s a fact. It’s science. Designed and perfected by the best engineers in the Imperial Navy, at the height of the Empire, to get pilots out of bed as quickly as efficiently as possible.

I’m not sure I’m ever truly awake without one. But anytime that blaring sound, my mind is sharp, precise, ready to go at a moment’s notice. You might as well drop me from my bed straight into my cockpit.

I suggested that once, to some engineers. Maybe if the Empire hadn’t of fallen, they’d have gotten around to it.

Doesn’t matter now. I’m in my jumpsuit in a flash, racing down to the pilot ready room. I’m two steps into getting my flight suit on when the voice of my squadron commander breaks me out of my routine.

“Stand down Colonel. You’re not on the flight list.” he says.

“What the hell?” Not the most respectful response, but the commander is an old friend, and it’s an all hands alarm. Everyone should be out there, especially a squadron’s executive officer.

“Duty assignments here. You’re assigned to one of the transports landing on the planet. Been given command of a squad of troopers, with a mandate to investigate this colony. Better hurry and change to your dress - you get to play officer today.”

I look over the duty roster in disbelief. Sure enough, there’s my name, along with a transport to report to.

There’s no time to race back to my quarters, but fortunately I have a duty uniform handy in the pilot’s ready room. I make the switch in a hurry, then try the standard uniform cap onto my head, immediately struggling. Too small. Someone’s stolen my custom tailored hat again. Can’t say I blame them. Hard to find one that fits just right these days. And they’ve always made them too small anyways.

I do my best to squeeze my cap on, and make a note to conveniently lose it at the first opportunity. I race down to the hangar bay where the transport I’ve been assigned to is located, dodging other personnel racing to their own duty stations and assignments. I’m about to make a turn down the final corridor when a figure in a dark robe stops me.

“Greetings, Juggernaut Setzer.”

Oh, right. I’m in the Dark Brotherhood.

I forgot.

Memories come flashing in immediately.

I’ve never been good with the Force, but at some point it became apparent that I could do something. That got me sent to the Dark Brotherhood, an obligation I did my best to avoid and put off whenever possible. That was fine back then, but… times were different now. The Dark Brotherhood had seen to my re-enlistment with the fleet. They had seen to the fact that I would no longer be able to shirk my duties with them.

And maybe they had done something to my mind, because I couldn’t seem to ever remember anything about them except when I was on assignment for them.

“I’m going to assume this little patrol assignment is your doing?” I ask, disdain clear in my voice.

The robed figure didn’t react. They never did. “This colony is known to us. It is not something we should be meddling with. Nevertheless, the TIE Corps Commander has not given us time to react as we normally would. Your patrol will include members of Stingray, your battle team. Rely on them. You are searching for an artifact. It was intended to be a source of power, but… you will see. It is a trap. Dispose of it, should you encounter it.”

“Shouldn’t I be worried about the other colonists?”

The cloaked figure stared at me with piercing eyes. “There are no surviving colonists.”

Great.

---

Our transport lands on the southwest end of the colony. We’re one of many - the High Admiral wants a full investigation of this place, and he wants it before his coffee is cold. Why the Grand Master just doesn’t come out and tell him about whatever it is that happened here, I don’t know. Robed figures like to be mysterious. Something about the cloak that stops you from giving anyone a straight answer. Who knows why?

My team is a mix of troopers and other officers, but I recognize a number as members of my Battleteam. Mostly novices and apprentices, but all with far more natural talent in the Force than I have. I’m happy to command this little party, but if finding this artifact requires “sensing” it or some other kind of nonsense, it won’t be me who locates it.

I strategically split up the patrol so that a member of the Dark Brotherhood is left with a pair of troopers. I give my battleteam members the sort of orders you’d expect from the Dark Brotherhood. “Search with your feelings. Like them guide you. Sense the power, and seek to obtain it.”

When the troops ask for what kind of deployment or search pattern we should be engaging in, my response is a bit different:

“Follow the orders of the officer assigned to you. They know what they’re doing.”

The helmets the troopers wear stop me from being able to see their eyes rolling in the back of their head, but I know they’re there. Those are terrible, awful orders, the kind of orders a trooper would expect from a pilot who’s been given command of a ground unit. Which makes them a perfect cover for what we’re really trying to do here.

I take my pair of troopers and point off towards a direction that catches my interest. The complex is large - surprisingly large. A colony of three thousand might seem like a lot at first glance, but that’s a relatively small number for an Imperial colony. And there’s enough structures and buildings here to support ten times that amount, making the low number all the more suspicious.

There’s nothing to indicate anyone has been here for some time. No signs of life. No bodies either. But if I didn’t know any better, I would have just assumed the place had been abandoned twelve years ago. And maybe it has, maybe that’s the reason there’s been no contact. It’d be the easy answer.

Too bad the easy answers are rarely the right ones.

I wander around in no particular pattern, troopers near my side. This goes on for an hour or so, until some movement catches my eye. But it’s not a colonist - it’s an officer and a trooper, running straight into a building. Relying on my instincts, I decide to follow.

Being a bit more experienced, I opt to walk. Not a lot of good reasons to run on a mission, truth be told. You’re almost always better off walking. Especially if you want to maintain a modicum of stealthiness.

I saunter up to the door and peek in. At first, the scene looks absolutely bizarre. Two stormtroopers are sitting down, backs relaxed against the wall. Another pair are slouching by the door, seemingly following their counterparts’ lead. And two officers are both grappling with some object that looks like a mix between a rock, a crystal, and the wire guts of a droid.

I blink and suddenly the image in my vision shifts. No longer do I simply see lounging stormtroopers; now I see them surrounded in red vapors, bubbling up and floating away towards the crystal contraption, as if it were absorbing their very life force.

It’s doing the same thing to the officers, but now I see them not only trying to gain physical possession; I also see them trying to absorb the life force for themselves; not realizing that nearly all of it was being absorbed by the crystal.

“Stun everyone” I command in a whisper. The stormtroopers look at each other, confused, but before I repeat myself, they set their blasters to stun, and begin stunning away.

The seemingly-relaxed stormtroopers topple over easily enough. I watch the officers take multiple hits before falling down themselves. I’m surprised at how easy this was - two Dark Brotherhood members should have been more than capable of avoiding a few stun bolts. But I guess neither of them was willing to let go of the artifact they had been struggling over to take them time to save themselves.

“Stay outside and guard the door.” I order. “Stun anyone else who tries to enter”. The two troopers are likely still confused, but they’re good at following orders; they do exactly as I command. I approach the crystal artifact carefully. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before - crystalline shifting into rocks shifting into bits of technology. I’m no scientist - how someone could have created this, I can’t say.

But I’ve seen enough of what it does to know that it can’t stay.

I pull out my blaster and aim directly at it. As I go to pull the trigger, a voice enters my head.

“POWER!” it screams. “ALL POWER. ALL YOURS. TAKE IT!”

As offers go, it’d be pretty irresistible to most people, let alone most Dark Brotherhood members. Probably a lot of Brotherhood members who would assume they could master it, even if it was a trap.

Fortunately, I’m not like most members.

“No thanks” I reply, before blasting it. A single shot doesn’t seem to work, so I keep firing, repeatedly, until the crystal begins to burn a brighter and brighter shade of red.

My blaster runs out of charge. The crystal structure is still there, but it’s still turning brighter. And now it’s shaking. And humming.

And that’s when I remember the one situation where you really do want to run on a mission: before something is about to explode.

I turn towards the exit of the building, racing out. “HIT THE DECK!” I scream at my troopers, just as I fly out of the building, diving towards cover.

A very impressive, physical feat. Or at least it would be, if anything had happened after that.

There’s no boom. Only the smallest shake and a high pitched hum. Meanwhile, I'm covered in dirt, uniform slightly torn in places. At least my hat has seemingly disappeared.

After a few moments, I peek inside the building. The crystal’s gone. No signs of an explosion - just a burned out spot where the contraption had been. Fortunately, none of the stunned officers and troopers appear to be damaged.

“Are you… feeling alright sir?” one of the troopers asks. I consider asking them about the missing crystal, but I get the sense that they don’t notice that it’s gone. Maybe they never saw it at all.

“Feeling well. Just thought I heard something.” The two troopers look at each other. Great. This mission won’t do anything to help the rumors about me being unstable.

Doesn’t help that they’re probably true.

“Never mind that.” I say, regaining their focus. “Get everyone out of here. Call in a medical team. We’re done here.”

“Nothing else we need to check, sir?” one asks.

“No. There’s nothing else… there’s nothing here to see.”

---

When we get back to the Challenge, none of the troopers or officers can remember what happened. They each remember arriving on the planet, but after that their memories are hazy. Makes for a convenient story.

My two troopers don’t have much more to tell either. They stated that they found the personnel acting “erratically”, and stunned them on my command. Implicit is that telling is that I overreacted, ordering my subordinates to stun fellow officers who were acting weirdly. But that’s fine. No one is arguing with the results.

As I head back to my squadron ready room, I’m approached by my robe contact from earlier.

“You have done well.” he says.

“Great. Can you tell me what I did exactly? What was that thing that we found?”

“A mistake.”

There’s silence between us for a moment. I consider asking for more. But the truth is, I don’t want to know more. I just want to go back to my squadron and forget the whole thing ever happened.

What was I thinking about again?

Oh, right. Need to get back to the squadron ready room. I make my way there, and check in with my squadron commander.

“How’d the ground mission go?” he asks. “Find anything interesting?”

“Not a thing. Honestly, it must have been a boring one… or I slept through it. Can’t really remember a thing.”

He raises an eyebrow at me. “You feeling okay?”

I shrug, then yawn. “Sure! Just a little sleepy. Nothing a blaring klaxon won’t fix.”

My commander shakes his head. “There will be plenty more of that to come. Go get some rest. This is just the beginning. We’re just getting started here.”

That’s funny… I thought someone just said that to me…

Prepare yourself. This is just the beginning…

I wonder who said that? Maybe it was something I dreamt. Or maybe not. Somehow though, I’m sure I’ll remember soon…