Star Wars_ The Old Republic_ Revan - Drew Karpyshyn [26]
Moving with long, quick strides he made his way to the spire on the northwest corner of the courtyard. This tower was home to the Council of First Knowledge, a collection of five Jedi Masters and their underlings who specialized in the history and lore of the entire Order. It was also home to the Temple Archives—by far the galaxy’s largest assembled collection of documents, data disks, and holocrons. It was often said that if an item did not appear in the Archive records, then it did not exist.
Despite the bold claim, Revan doubted he’d find anything to explain his dreams lurking in the stacks. He’d actually come here in search of something else. Someone else. A name from his past.
Massive chunks of his memory were still missing. To fill in the gaps, he’d need to speak to someone who had been with him during that time. Someone who had served beside him in the war.
Malak had been his right hand during the campaign against the Mandalorians. But Malak was dead; Revan would get no answers there. Yet there had been another—a powerful Jedi named Meetra Surik. Meetra had been among the first to join Revan’s cause, and she quickly proved herself to be a brilliant tactician and military leader.
Recognizing her potential, Revan had made her a general, giving her control over nearly half of the Republic and Jedi troops under his command. Meetra had been instrumental in defeating the Mandalorians, dealing them a devastating blow during the Battle of Malachor V … though at a cost nearly impossible to fathom.
He hesitated only briefly at the door leading into the spire, steeling himself for what he might find. Then he entered the building and mounted the long, spiral staircase leading up to the first floor of the Archives.
Revan had defeated Mandalore shortly after Meetra’s victory at Malachor V, effectively ending the war. Then he and Malak had set off into the Unknown Regions, while Meetra had returned to face the judgment of the Jedi Council. She hadn’t spoken to Revan since; he didn’t even know where she was.
He knew some of the details of what had happened. On her return, the Jedi Council had declared her a traitor for following Revan. They had stripped her of her rank and banished her, branding her as the Exile. According to the rumors, she had left Republic space and simply disappeared. Yet Revan felt there was more to the story.
Meetra hadn’t tried to contact him following Malak’s defeat. Even if she had left Republic space, she surely would have heard of Revan’s redemption by now. The fact that there had been no word from her was disturbing.
Once he had tried to reach out to her with the Force. Serving in battle with someone formed a special bond; even across the breadth of the galaxy he should have been able to get some vague sense of her presence. Yet he had felt nothing. The simplest explanation was that she had become one with the Force, but Revan couldn’t allow himself to believe she was dead. After surviving the horrors of Malachor V, an anonymous death in the Outer Rim simply didn’t seem fair.
He stepped from the spiral staircase and onto the fourth-story landing, then pushed open the door to the second floor of the Archives. He was relieved to see there was nobody else around; he wanted to do his research in private.
Passing through the tightly packed stacks of data disks, he took a seat at one of the holo-terminals. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, so he simply entered Meetra’s name into the index.
Several entries came up, including an official report on Malachor V compiled by one of the Jedi Archivists. He made a mental note of the reference number, retrieved the data disk from its shelf, and inserted it into the terminal.
He spent the next few minutes reviewing the report, but failed to come across anything he didn’t already know. Malachor V had been a trap, a ploy to lure the Mandalorian fleet in close enough to the planet to unleash the mass-shadow generator—an experimental superweapon that would draw upon the gravitational anomalies unique to the Malachor system to instantaneously