"It looks like it worked perfectly." Amir took off the backpack and handed it to Kahalman.
"More than perfectly. Now we can actually show Ahsoka some results." Kahalman awkwardly strapped the backpack onto his own back with all four arms and charged into the testing area.
"The person bringing the funding should be arriving today, right? I'm going up to take a look." These last two days of nonstop thinking and experimentation had worn Amir down badly. He needed a break.
When he went back up into the clinic, Amir found Millisyn and 32 in one of the rooms.
Both of them were seated cross-legged in meditation.
Even though they were out here having fun, training still could not stop.
After relaxing a bit on Eternal Ark, both of them had become even more focused when it was time to practice.
Once he made sure neither of them was slacking off, Amir left the clinic, bought himself an ice cream on the way, and headed toward the port.
Not long after, a familiar ship landed in front of him.
The hatch opened, and to Amir's delight, the visitors were Guli Gena and little Mona, with her long black hair.
"Guli Gena, you're the one delivering the funds? And Mona too. Millisyn's going to be thrilled you came."
"Yes, Ahsoka asked me to bring these." Guli Gena lifted the case in her hand.
"Where's Millisyn?" Mona asked. She was already quite familiar with Amir by now. They had even fought side by side before.
"Come with me. We've got some good stuff here you can take back too."
Amir was eating ice cream, which naturally meant he was not about to let the two of them go empty-handed. He was never stingy when it came to sharing food.
He grabbed another one for Millisyn as well, and the three of them headed back into the clinic.
He brought Mona to Millisyn's room, and soon heard Millisyn's excited shout from inside. A moment later, she came charging out, one hand clutching her ice cream and the other dragging Mona with her.
"Amir..." But the moment she saw Amir, she wilted.
"Go play with Mona. Training's postponed until tomorrow." Amir had given her a day off.
As they rode the elevator down, Amir and Guli Gena chatted.
The blonde little witch looked much more mature than she had a few months ago. There was a sense of responsibility about her now, along with a quiet confidence.
"It's been hard lately. Esteban was attacked by the Empire not long ago. A lot of cities were destroyed, and there are now more than a million refugees. But the Imperials occupying the planet don't care whether they live or die. They're only interested in plundering resources. Many of our people have already slipped in to help them."
"Crimson Dawn, that massive crime syndicate, has recently gathered a huge number of bounty hunters. No one knows what they're planning. Before that, they were raiding large amounts of resources from various worlds, slaughtering countless people..."
Guli Gena had come into contact with a huge amount of intelligence at the base. Every piece of intelligence was another piece of bad news. Every lightly spoken sentence represented countless living, breathing people.
The smiles on her face had become fewer and fewer.
Once again, Amir heard the name Crimson Dawn.
That criminal organization was secretly controlled by Maul, the former apprentice's former apprentice abandoned by the Sith Emperor, Darth Sidious.
The public face of the syndicate now was none other than Han Solo's former almost-girlfriend, Qi'ra.
Amir knew almost nothing about that woman. Han Solo had never liked talking about it either, so where Crimson Dawn would go from here remained an unknown.
But Maul...
Amir had long had plans for him.
Because Amir knew where he was hiding, and he knew what Maul had in his hands.
Through his contact with Ahsoka and the others, Amir had long since realized that the chaos in the galaxy was not caused by the Empire alone.
Outside Imperial control, the major crime syndicates were guilty of things even worse than the Empire.
Crimson Dawn was one of the worst offenders.
If there was even the slightest chance, Amir would never let an opportunity to strike them pass by.
Compared with the powerful Hutt clans, the vast numbers of the Pyke Syndicate, or the mysterious Black Sun, Crimson Dawn was the easiest target to cut into. They frequently issued contracts to bounty hunters and left trails behind.
More importantly, Amir knew Crimson Dawn's secrets. He knew where Maul was, and he knew how to deal with him.
During the Clone Wars, Maul had returned from hell and, through overwhelming personal strength, defeated the Mandalorian leader Pre Vizsla in single combat, taking from him the weapon that symbolized rulership over the Mandalorians: the Darksaber.
But his good fortune did not last long. That authority had only remained in his hands for a short time.
Ahsoka defeated him and threw him into prison, and then Order 66 gave him the chance to escape.
A chain of upheavals had failed to kill him, but they had stripped him of everything he had built over the years.
Now he no longer held any control over the Mandalorians. Only the Darksaber remained in his possession.
And that weapon, useless to him now, was of immeasurable importance in the eyes of some Mandalorians.
For example, Bo-Katan Kryze, who was determined to resist Imperial oppression and wanted to free Mandalore from occupation. She was Duchess Satine's sister, Obi-Wan's old flame's sister, and once the right hand of Pre Vizsla of Death Watch.
To her, the Darksaber was not merely a symbol. With it, she could rightfully claim the title of Mandalorian leader. Most people no longer accepted that tradition completely, but it would still allow her to rally a far greater force to strike back against the Empire.
Amir could absolutely kill with a borrowed blade. He could leak Maul's location to her, and then those hard-hitting armored warriors would come charging straight at Maul on their own.
Amir could then support them from behind to make sure everything went smoothly.
If it worked, Crimson Dawn would inevitably be thrown into massive chaos.
Amir intended to get involved and deal this vile criminal syndicate a serious blow.
"What else do you know about Crimson Dawn?" Amir asked the little witch.
"They're structured a lot like the Hutt syndicates. The higher-ups organize things and hand out assignments, but there isn't a strictly rigid hierarchy or discipline. Still, everyone obeys orders from the top, because betrayal means being hunted by the entire syndicate, and the result is almost always the same: death."
"These past years, Crimson Dawn has carried out brutal massacres and plunder across many Outer Rim worlds, amassing huge wealth in the process. Countless people have been displaced because of them. Their leadership also changed recently, which has made things unstable. I heard the former boss died in a betrayal, and a human woman named Qi'ra took over. She's very capable."
"The organization was never this dominant before, but in just a few short years after the Empire was founded, it somehow gained recognition from many underworld factions... some unseen force pushed it onto the throne as one of the galaxy's great criminal powers."
"Ahsoka and Pax told me all that while we were chatting. They've always been suspicious of the syndicate too."
Amir nodded and committed it all to memory.
Crimson Dawn... Maul...
He already knew what he was going to do.
He only hoped that ghost wandering through the Force for all these years would enjoy the gift he was about to receive.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌌 STAR WARS: RELICS OF THE PAST
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
✨ THE FORCE STILL HAS SECRETS.
The galaxy remembers its wars.
The Jedi remember their teachings.
But beneath forgotten worlds and ancient ruins...
Something older is still waiting.
Star Wars: Relics of the Past has 100+ chapters ahead available now.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌌 THE PAST NEVER TRULY DISAPPEARS
⚔️ Jedi mysteries
📜 Ancient history
💫 Forgotten relics
🚀 Galactic exploration
🔥 Hidden powers
☠️ Dangerous discoveries
✨ Secrets of the Force
Some relics can change a life.
Others can change the fate of the entire galaxy.
And the deeper you dig into the past...
The harder it becomes to leave it buried.
🔥 100+ CHAPTERS AHEAD.
👉 Uncover the galaxy's secrets before everyone else.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌐 SrMagnusCorp: https://srmagnuscorp.com/
🔥 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus
🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/SrMagnuscorp
⚠️ Let your Power Stones guide future releases!
🌌 May the Force be with you.