Shockingly, despite all of the trepidation and preparation we put into venturing into Wild Space, actually crossing into it was incredibly boring. Once we arrived at the generally agreed-upon edge between the Outer Rim and Wild Space, our ships spread out, making short jumps to put several dozen light-years between us.
Once everyone was in place, it was time for our first scans, the exploratory sensors taking an hour to gather deep, sensitive scans of the depths of space in front of us. The scans were sensitive enough that we actually had to turn off our shields and pull all of our ships back behind us, powering down their engines.
The two other groups then transmitted their data to us, and we formulated a vague map of what was out ahead of us. Immediately, we spotted a gravitational anomaly between the group and us to our "left," but it was minor enough that we could easily avoid it. Beyond that, the readings came back clean, which meant it was time for our droid scouts to make their jumps.
Each of the groups had one of their semi-disposable ships jump a hundred light-years forward, into the abyss. When they dropped out of hyperspace, all three ran sweeping local scans, confirming they were safe and alone, before sending the results back to us. Then, after double-checking their data, the groups jumped to catch up with them, all three of us appearing in deep space, since that was what the vast majority of space was.
And then, we rinsed and repeated, taking scans with Clairvoyance with every jump, using our relative positions in each group to draw ourselves closer. Each repetition took a good amount of time to complete, and I was needed on the bridge at the end of each one to do the Clairvoyance check for our group.
Luckily, there were a few nearby officer rooms, one of which I took over and turned into a temporary space for myself. Ahsoka was still living down in our room, since I was basically going to be waking up periodically to scan with Clairvoyance, and she didn't feel like being woken up that much at night.
As we explored, following the safe lanes we cleared and Clairvoyance, we navigated deeper into Wild Space. By the third day, we had passed a few interesting things, some of which we could only see from a distance, some of which were right up close.
Not including normal empty systems, we passed a red giant star slowly burning and swallowing the planets that dotted their system, a dense nebula that we thankfully just missed, but gave out some strange energy readings, as well as two rogue planets orbiting each other as they sat relatively stationary in space, stuck in some sort of gravity anomaly.
Those seemed to be pretty common in Wild Space, and I was determined to avoid getting stuck by one.
By the end of the third day, we hadn't seen any signs of life or other travelers. That meant very little for our primary objective, but it was very encouraging for my secondary objective.
While I definitely wanted to find the hiding Jedi, at least to check up on them, I was also looking for something else. Wild Space was mostly uncharted, and while that made traveling through it dangerous, it also made it the perfect place to hide, hence why the Jedi were there in the first place.
Currently, our only realistic defense around Nirn, as our current shields and weapons defenses were only enough to buy us time, was that our location was a secret. Naturally, we defended that secret to the best of our ability. Very few people knew the actual coordinates for Nirn, and there were even fewer places where those coordinates were actually written down. Additionally, not only did I scan every single person who joined us with my magic, but the Jedi were constantly scanning the city for issues and powerful emotions, looking for trouble. This was primarily to help prevent conflicts between civilians, but it would also, hopefully, catch anyone with less than wholesome interests.
We also continually scanned for outgoing messages, ready to jam anything too powerful. On top of that, communication devices powerful enough to get off planet weren't allowed for civilians, something they accepted surprisingly easily. There was more, of course, hundreds of little things put in place to make it harder for anyone bad to get their hands on Nirn's location.
But no security was a hundred percent.
So, rather than just blindly waiting, having a secret planet deep in Wild Space that our people could reach but would be difficult for others to find could end up saving anyone who made it off Nirn alive. Over time, once I located a suitable planet, I planned to send and store supplies, equipment, and more on the planet's surface, tucked deep in a natural cave or something like that. Then, if the worst happens and we are forced to flee our home, the survivors would have at least something to sustain them.
It wouldn't be enough to live off of for very long, but it would be enough to give them some breathing room. I hoped and prayed it would never be needed, but I wasn't dumb enough to think it was impossible, even with all our security.
So, as we continued our travels, I carefully saved the data on any system that could serve as an emergency stash. Preferably, I wanted a world that was alive, one we could hunt and gather resources from, but a planet that just had a breathable atmosphere, but was otherwise a dead, stable planet would work as well.
I was tempted by the rogue planets, since they were well and truly in the middle of nowhere, and the strange gravity anomaly that caught them, while relatively harmless, would cover their presence, but the fact that each planet was ludicrously cold without a sun keeping them warm put them lower down my list of options.
For a few more days, we traveled, killing time as best we could between jumps. Ahsoka, Mara, and I spent a good amount of time sparring. On top of that, I worked with Mara on her magic, guiding her through learning Frostbite, which she had held off on since it was, in my opinion, the least useful destruction spell, especially since so much of Star Wars tech was hardened against the cold, including things like stormtrooper armor.
A few more days passed, and a few more points of interest were found, including a trinary star system. Our scans of that system revealed it was filled with a massive asteroid field. Most of the space debris seemed to be made up of chunks of what had been at least half a dozen terrestrial planets.
I had to admit, while most of our time was spent traveling and was therefore quite boring, the moments of discovery, like stumbling into the remains of an entire system crumbled around its three stars, were quite interesting. It made me think of shows from home like Star Trek, where the main draw of the show was space exploration. The only difference was that they got to hide the boring parts in between episodes.
Of course, that excitement was tempered by the proof of just how dangerous this whole process was. By the end of the first week, we had lost three droid scout ships to unknown anomalies across all three groups, and two more scouts had had some very close calls. The trinary star system had been one of those close calls, when an asteroid traveling at a ridiculous speed blurred past the ship before they could do their scans.
If it had hit them, they would have been cosmic dust before they could have possibly reacted.
The longer we spent searching, and the deeper we traveled into Wild Space, the more dramatic the shifts in our Clairvoyance. As the distance between us and our target got shorter and shorter, individual jumps saw much more dramatic shifts in Jedi Master Sevarril Arraln's position, at least relative to us.
Eventually, I made the call to start triangulating their position more precisely. Each group made three jumps, measured their positions, and collated the resulting data. When we merged them together, it became very clear that using multiple groups would now be the standard for any future triangulation attempts. With just a few jumps each, we had locked down their position to a shockingly small portion of space.
Unfortunately, having a much better idea of where they were didn't mean we could find them immediately, as we first had to make our way to that spot. That by itself took a whole day of jumping, scanning, sending out the droid scouts, before following after them if they were safe. Once we arrived at the new zone, we repeated the triangulation before once again flying towards a newly marked-off zone.
Tatnia had been absolutely correct: doing this on our own, with only me to triangulate their position, would have taken so much longer. Even with three groups working together, we didn't arrive at our target system until a few days after we started triangulating. With just me, that would have taken a week at the absolute minimum, likely closer to two.
When we jumped in, we did a deep scan of the system. At its heart was an uninteresting star, with five planets orbiting it. Two gas giants spun on the outer reaches, while three terrestrial planets orbited much more tightly around the star. One was a ball of near-molten rock with an orbit way too close to the sun for any living thing to survive, while the other two were at a more reasonable distance. One was another ball of rock with no atmosphere to speak of, while the last had a thick reddish cloud layer, which the scanners read as extremely dangerous. Anyone exposed to that environment would need to be decontaminated before they could interact with others.
Of course, that was the planet Jedi Master Sevarril Arraln's signal was coming from.
We floated there, far from our target, for several hours before finally the other two groups arrived and we could convene a meeting to discuss our next step.
"Alright, I think it goes without saying that we need to approach this cautiously," I said, standing on the bridge of the Hope. "Given how thick and dense that noxious atmosphere is, it's very likely that they cannot sense us. Still, I don't want to get any closer to the Hope, the Triumph, or the Liberty. All three were Clone Wars-era Republic ships, so it will likely spike their suspicion hard. The IPV hadn't gone into service by the time they left, and the DP-20 was not very common as a military vessel, at least not from what I know."
"You think they will assume we are the Empire?" Cal asked with a frown.
"It's possible, which means it's worth avoiding," I admitted with a shrug. "Having Jedi with us will help keep things from spiraling, but I would prefer to avoid the situation entirely. So, everyone going down to the surface will transfer to the Loyal Hound, since the Storm's Edge doesn't have passenger space. On top of that, we will have a squadron of MA-wings as an escort. I will, unfortunately, be restricting the ground teams to people with the proper armor."
While we were pretty liberal with who we gave our woven beskar uniform, as they used the bare minimum of beskar, only people who faced direct combat were given our full armor. Since many of our Jedi hadn't joined combat teams, many of them did not have a set.
A few of the Jedi seemed disappointed, but considering just how lethal the readings were telling us the atmosphere was, I wasn't about to make any exceptions.
"We will also have the Quiet Ark nearby," I said. "Just in case."
The Jedi present for the meeting frowned, but none of them disagreed. They didn't feel any darkness emanating from the planet, but that didn't mean it was safe. Hell, finding a bunch of Jedi driven insane from isolation would be just as bad as a group of dark Jedi, and would likely require the anti-Force ship.
Once we had a general plan, we broke up to make our final preparations. Anyone on board ships that weren't going, and that wanted to, donned their armor and headed to their hangars or airlocks, where we made the slow process of shifting people around. The squadron of MA-Wings also prepared, loading into their starfighters as we were shipped around.
My crew could have ridden down on the Brick, but since other ships were already landing in the atmosphere, I didn't see the point of adding another ship that would need decontamination.
It was already going to be a pain in the ass.
Luckily, we had portable sonic showers we could use to remove most of the contamination from us individually, though our armor would need a much deeper clean later.
Once everyone was transferred around, the Loyal Hound and Storm's Edge pulled away from the rest of the fleet, our MA-wing escort following around us. We headed further into the system, making a beeline for the red cloud-covered planet. We scanned it constantly as we approached, but we were getting nothing new in response. We were going to be relying almost completely on my Clairvoyance, which locked on to our target easily.
As we descended into the clouds, the bridge crew reported some rough turbulence, though the ships were far too powerful and large for it to be noticeable beyond a slight, occasional shift. The starfighters were worse off, but thankfully, as we dipped below the outer thick layer, the harsh conditions evened out. The atmosphere was still absolutely poisonous, but it wasn't just one big rough storm.
Finally, after flying around a good portion of the planet's curvature, Clairvoyance started showing some deviation in its pointing, which meant we were getting close.
Eventually, we arrived at our destination, the Loyal Hound leading the Storm's Edge down to the surface, landing next to a familiar starship, a C70 Charger retrofit, of all things. As we approached, we got a good look at the ship and could see that, while it was mostly intact, its condition was far from perfect. Just from our angle, we could see several bits of carbonized hull, where the ship had taken damage from laser fire. It was also choked with red dust from the clouds around us.
When we landed, I let out a sigh, looking out at the ship through the Loyal Hound's forward viewport.
"Start doing some high-intensity scans of the area," I ordered the bridge crew, after a long moment. "I don't think anyone here is listening. Have the squadron do a dozen looping perimeter sweeps, expanding outward from here, then return to space. Then have them bring the fleet closer, orbiting directly above us.