Indiana Jones and the Sith Stone
Posted by: Darth Danno 12.12.07 12:01am

The droids followed their instructions and once the craft touched down, they offloaded the chamber, and moved it to the prearranged secret location to begin the rejuvenation process. Palpatine knew it would take some time, considering how long the professor had been in stasis. Six hours later, it was complete, but Dr. Jones would still be asleep for at least a couple more hours. His body was taken to a private room the senator had prepared for him, a room complete with hidden video surveillance to monitor his progress.

Forty-five minutes after he was moved, he slowly began to wake. He yawned, stretched, sat up, and cracked his neck. He swung his feet out of the bed and onto the floor. Scratching his head and rubbing his eyes, he couldn't get the strange dream he'd had. Something about people called...Jedi...and Sith? He dreamt of many different worlds and alien races. Mandalorians, the Republic, and something called a Hyperspace war. Wow! He thought, what exactly did he drink the night before? He glanced down and saw he was still wearing his clothes. Many times he would get to working on something, or start reading some ancient tome, and wake up the next morning realizing he had never gotten to bed. Oh well, as long he wasn't late for class.

He stood up, stretched again, and finally took his first look around the room. This was definitely not his living room, or any other room in his house for that matter. Everything was very extravagant and expensive looking. Long velvety-looking curtains covered the windows. The bed was big enough to hold an army, and the bedspread had some intricately ornate pattern sewn into it that he had never seen anything like. Was he out in the field, he wondered? Was he the guest of some sheik, or prince? What country was he in now anyway? Nothing in the room could be tied to any civilization he knew, neither Egyptian, Assyrian, Aztec, Mayan, nor even American Eskimo for that matter. Everything here definitely belonged to a culture he had not had dealings with in the past. Had he been kidnapped, he wondered? Usually when one was kidnapped, they didn't wake up in such posh surroundings as this.

"Well," he said to himself, "I'm not going to get any answers just sitting here." He crossed to the windows, and was just about to throw back the curtains, when the door to his room opened and a solitary figure entered. He wore a black robe with a hood that covered the top part of his face. Indy glanced down at a nearby chair and saw his gun and whip lying there underneath his hat.

"Good morning, Dr. Jones," the figure said to him. "I'm sure you have many questions as to your present surroundings, and what exactly is going on. I will try to assist as much as I can, but I must warn you, much of what I am about to tell you will come as a shock, and I'm sure, will be extremely hard to believe."

Dr. Jones gave his host an icy glare as he slowly made his way toward the chair. "Try me."

His host smiled slightly and nodded. "To begin with, my name is...Sidious, and yes, you have been kidnapped. You are now on a world that is very far from your own; in fact, you're no longer even in your own galaxy. You were taken from your primitive planet and have been in what we refer to as a stasis chamber for the past four years while being transported here. I have need of your expertise to locate an ancient artifact. If you succeed, and don't cause me any undue stress along the way, I will make sure you are returned to Earth none the worse for wear."

Indy couldn't help but crack a smile as he continued to inch his way to the chair. "Riiiiiight."

"I know you think I have taken leave of my senses, Dr. Jones, but what I am telling you is of the utmost veracity. Take a look outside your window if you still doubt me."

Indiana cast a sideways glance down at his coiled bullwhip and Smith & Wesson 45 sitting on the chair just out of arms length, but something told him to play along with this mysterious stranger...for now. So he stepped away from the chair and crossed back to the curtain.

"Be ready for a surprise." Sidious warned.

Indy stared back at him for a few, long minutes, trying to figure him out. Not getting anywhere, he turned back to the window and pulled the drapes aside. The bright sunshine blinded him momentarily, but once his vision cleared, he was in no way prepared for what greeted him.

Everywhere he looked he saw a vast cityscape, stretching out as far as the eye could see. The skies were filled with all sorts of flying craft of varied shapes and sizes. It all looked like something right out of science fiction, and even those craft were primitive compared to these. What kind of drugs had this guy injected him with? There was no way this could all be real...could it?

Sidious' voice snapped him back to reality. "This world you're on is called..."

Indy finished his statement, "Chorus-scent?" He had no idea how he knew that.

Sidiouis applauded slowly. "Excellent! Though the correct pronunciation is "Coruscant". While you were in stasis, I had information about our worlds, cultures, and histories piped into the chamber on a continual basis. It was far more expedient than trying to teach it all to you once you awoke. There are enough details I have to fill you in on in relation to your specific quarry as it is. So all those "dreams" you thought you had, were all very real, and orchestrated by none other than myself."

"But why?" Jones queried.

"As I said before, I need your talents to locate a very specific, and powerful artifact. It is true that there are many within my own galaxy that might be able to locate what I seek, but I need someone who WILL, and you came highly recommended. Know this, I have gone to considerable expense and effort to bring you here, and you WILL comply. I have powers that you cannot even begin to understand. So do not test me, you will not succeed." To prove his point, Sidious raised his hand toward the chair Indy was heading toward, and using the Force, lifted the hat out of the chair and moved it across the room to place it upon Dr. Jones' head.

Quite taken aback by this sudden use of "magic", Indy managed to stammer out, "I come highly recommended...by whom?"

"Again Dr. Jones, our sciences and technologies completely dwarf those of your own. We here are experimenting with what we call cloning. Taking a small sample of one's genetic make-up, and creating an exact copy of that individual from it. The person I chose as the prototype came from an influential Carida family named Ozzell. I know that name means nothing to you, but after the cloning proved successful, I had him, along with others like him, sent to far off planets to see how they would survive in foreign environments, far away from their own. Earth was one of the planets I chose, and that one was raised as a normal, human child under the name: Adolf Hitler."

The mention of that name hit Indy like a ton of bricks. Hitler, father to the Nazi party and instigator to most, if not all of the problems his world was going through at this time, or whatever time it was back home. Hitler was an alien? Or a clone as this guy referred to? This was all too much to take, and he leaned back against the window for support.

"I see all this information I have bombarded you with has taken its toll. I shall take my leave of you, and have some nourishment sent up. I'm sure you're quite famished. Please take care to eat slowly; after all, you haven't eaten solid food for a few years now. Oh, one more thing, we have also perfected the art of time travel. If you are successful in finding what I desire, I will transport you back in time to exactly the point you were abducted, so none will be the wiser. Get some rest, Dr. Jones, I will fill you in on the details of your quest shortly." With that, Sidious took his leave. Indy immediately removed his hat and began feeling for wires, or anything that could have been used to move it from the chair to his head. Finding none only made him worry more about what he'd just become a part of, and how to get out of it.

As Sidious walked down the hall, his apprentice, Darth Maul, soon joined him.

"I watched your exchange on the monitor, Master. Most impressive, you really believe this primitive will be able to locate what you seek?"

"He will do so, or die trying, Lord Maul. Have we heard anything from Jango Fett's successor?"

"Nothing yet, Master."

"Well, they'd better make contact soon or I will be forced to make other arrangements."

"I'd be more than honored to undertake this task for you, my Lord. You have no need to hire someone of their ilk when I..."

"Your time and talents are better spent elsewhere...for now. I want you to find that bounty hunter the Hutt hired and watch her. Make sure she doesn't interfere, but under no circumstances are you to harm her. She, like that bloated gangster on Tatooine, will prove quite useful in the future."

Maul nodded. "Understood, and my ship is being readied for take-off as we speak, Master. One more question though. You told the Earth being we had perfected time travel. I was not aware your power of the Force was such that...

Sidious interrupted him. "Dr. Jones doesn't need to know that I lied to him. I just need to tell him what he wants to hear to keep him in line, and make sure his mind remains focused on the task ahead, not planning some sort of foolhardy escape. Once he has completed his mission, I have no intention of putting forth the effort or funds to return him to his own world. I'll let you dispose of him in any matter you so choose."

Darth Maul headed off toward the turbolift with an evil grin across his face...

Darth Danno