______Tiny numbers scrolled rapidly across the bottom of the display, ticking away the meters in increments of ten. Through the electronically recreated display, the far temple drew ever closer until it filled the viewer.
______She moved ever so slightly in order to make a complete reconnaissance of the area. At this magnification, a few degrees off axis equated to hundreds of yards. It was impossible to get a complete picture, as she had to search for gaps in the dense foliage.
______"There's one..." she murmured aloud to herself. She spotted a lone sentry making a lazy circuit around the temple. There was hardly ever just one guard, she reminded herself. On the flip side, though, what was he guarding? A haunted temple that no one wanted to enter? Maybe one guard was all that was needed.
______She lowered the binoculars, and the temple again became a small white building sticking out above the trees. The side of her mouth pulled down into a frown as she worked the details out in her mind.
______Over four hundred meters, the display had measured. Quite a hike, but they couldn't risk taking a transport. Too easy to spot.
______She inhaled deeply, drinking in the fresh air. There wasn't a sound, save for the rhythm of the jungle, and from her height, even that was dimmed. She watched a flock of birds flying over the surface of the trees. They were flying beneath her as they passed the temple.
______Aeon was perched on a parapet just under the apex of the main temple. From her vantage point, she could see for what seemed like hundreds of kilometers in all directions.
______She was alone for the moment, having sent the others on fact-finding missions to discover what they could about this haunted chamber. Those temples were as large on the inside as they appeared to be from the outside, and looking for one particular chamber wouldn't be very time efficient. Not while trying to avoid the guards as well. She hadn't yet, and had no intention, of informing her father.
______Where were the others? It had been a while since they split up. Aeon had sent Tam and Cammie to press upon Tam's pilot friends for information, and had sent Gates to question Lom Kavolo, a scientist and historian that Aeon spoke with often. She would have gone herself, but she needed to think about the Infiltration.
______It was the curse of being a General's daughter that things were always labeled in military terms.
______She thought about her father, and what had been said at the meeting: that the Alliance was evacuating the system.
______That was the news she dreaded. Just thinking about now it made her heart sink, but it was to be expected. If anything, the victory of just a few days ago had made it inevitable.
______Besides, they never stayed in any one place for very long.
______She surveyed the panorama of trees and jungle beneath her, following it to where it met the beautiful blue sky. She was already missing it here.
______Of all the worlds that she had seen and visited during the course of her lifetime, this was the first one that felt like home.
______Aeon's home world, for lack of a better term, was the star cruiser Ameil. She had been born in space, and had spent as much of her life living on a starship as not. She loved space-she was fascinated by its uncharted depths-but she never felt like there was anywhere that she had come from, or where she belonged. She never felt like she had roots.
______Until now. What was it about Yavin IV in particular? She had no idea, but from the moment they arrived she felt this planet speaking to her, and she trusted it in a way that she never had anywhere else. She could let her guard down here, and feel completely safe.
______She looked off at the far temple again. If the rumors were true, there might be some element left by the Massassi-some trace of their civilization. The Massassi temples were, by and large, empty space to borrow for a fledgling army on the run. Little else had been found there.
______The name Massassi hadn't even come from any source on Yavin IV, but had been passed down by a race known as the Ralma. The Ralma had occupied a neighboring system, and thousands of years ago had compiled a detailed history of the worlds around them.
______Most of that history was lost to the ages-as were the Ralma themselves now, but brief fragments had been recovered and translated, and some of those fragments spoke of the indigenous people who once inhabited this moon. The Ralma called them the Massassi, but whether this was what they had called themselves, or a moniker the Ralma had bestowed upon them would never be known. Regardless, the name stuck.
______Scientifically, however, all the research of the Ralma could be discounted, as the Massassi had vanished long before the Ralma discovered space flight. As the Ralma source material was almost certainly lost forever, their chronicle could be dismissed as hearsay. The few facts they did have about the Massassi-even down to their name-could be the fiction of an alien mind that died thousands of years ago. Only one thing truly remained of the Massassi: the structures they left behind.
______The temple complexes were built in patterns, each one different from the others. Lom Kavolo theorized that they were laid out to match the alignment of the constellations in Yavin's night sky. He further surmised that it was that it was from these key stars that the Massassi marked events on their calendar such as the cycles of planting and harvesting.
______In recent months, however, Kavolo himself had deciphered more writings of the Ralma-writings he is convinced refer to the Massassi. These writings hint at traces of more advanced technology, discounting the theory that they were a simple agricultural based society.
______The temples had stood for thousands of years, but determining an exact date was difficult. For organic matter, it was simple to measure the breakdown of certain elements inherent to all life to determine its age. But stone had no organic matter.
______In the absence of historical records or any kind of markings, the most accurate way of dating the stone of the temples exterior was by measuring the erosion caused by precipitation.
______Of course, even that theory posed its own series of problems. There was evidence of a massive geological cataclysm ten thousand years previous that left the region a barren wasteland. It had been as dry there as on Tatooine, and it was only in the last two millennia that Yavin had regained its lush climate. Weather erosion on the temple dated back more than two thousand years, so that meant the temples had been standing since before the cataclysm. That made them at least ten thousand years old, if not older.
______The Massassi fascinated Aeon, as did all the extinct races. The very idea that an entire people's history, like the Ralma, could die out to the last person she found both compelling and frightening. For the Massassi, it was most likely the geological shift decimating their farmlands that led to their eventual extinction. Regardless of whether they had moved beyond the agricultural phase, the loss of their food source would have been devastating. But what caused the cataclysm? An orbital shift was possible, and an asteroid collision was always a likely candidate in these scenarios.
______Aeon had seen the devastation a rogue asteroid could have on a planet's ecosystem. Even an impact by a small object could change a planet's atmosphere entirely, making a once fertile paradise unlivable.
______But there wasn't any evidence of an asteroid collision. In fact, there wasn't much evidence of anything at all.
______It was the lack of remains that puzzled scientists. They had not found a single Massassi skeleton, not even a bone, in the entire time that they had been here. It wasn't just that the Massassi died out, it was more like they vanished completely.
______It frustrated her that more time wasn't spent on solving the mystery of the Massassi, but the members of the Rebellion had more pressing matters on their minds. Their goal on Yavin IV wasn't to learn about a dead race so much as to prevent becoming one.
______Aeon had always loved studying the past. She had wanted to be an historian, or a deep space pilot. She thought to herself that when the war was over, she would return to Yavin and uncover the secrets of the Massassi. She felt she owed it to them in some way. The Alliance would leave soon-and she would go with them-but she would definitely return someday. This, she realized then and there, was home. If not today, then tomorrow.
______They were all fighting for tomorrow. And if there were one-for her and the Alliance-then she would make hers here.
______It might take a few years, but Yavin IV had kept the secrets of the Massassi for ten thousand years. It would keep them for a few more.
______Wait for me, she smiled to herself. I'll be back.