"Not bad. Not bad at all."
About two hours later, Deathstroke was rinsing a fist-sized black crystal with bottled water.
They were more than thirty thousand meters underground, and Aphra, Harley, and the others had to wear oxygen masks to breathe. But they had found what they wanted.
This was a dead planet without even a name, just a string of numbers assigned by the Old Republic. It had received about as much attention as an asteroid belt.
But perhaps it had been a mining planet long, long ago. The deeper they dug, the more traces they found of different civilizations.
Thousands of kilometers from the little hollow where they found the crystal stood an ancient vertical shaft. Some equipment and written records left by the Je'daii were still there.
For a long time, this place had been a source of Force Crystals. Later, a Force storm led people to believe the veins were depleted, and the mines were abandoned.
As it turned out, either Force Crystals could regenerate or the miners had not dug deep enough. Perhaps the Je'daii of that era had simply been wealthy enough not to care about one meager mining planet.
Maybe it was fate. This black crystal had been meant for Deathstroke.
"It's pretty. Hey, do you feel anything when you hold it?"
Aphra sat on the ground, leaning against the narrow shaft wall as she caught her breath. Behind her breathing mask, she sounded just like Darth Vader.
Did he feel anything? Of course he did. A Force Crystal was not merely an energy amplifier; it also carried some energy of its own.
The others might not have been able to see it, but with the crystal in his hand, Deathstroke could sense countless threads of energy racing through it. It seemed to