Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Star Wars: The High Republic (Vol. 1), Issue #2 – “Tomb in Space”! In the previous installment, Keeve the Padawan gets elevated to full-fledged Jedi Knight after she successfully reroutes a swarm of destructive flying bugs away from the Starlight Beacon. It takes me 2,000 words to write all that, but that’s the gist.

The last two panels featured a shadowy, hooded figuring entering the main room of the Starlight Beacon during its dedication ceremony and Sskeer shouting “NOOOOO!” for a very inexplicable reason. Was it supposed to be suspense? Because that’s some shitty suspense.

Star Wars: The High Republic (Vol. 1), Issue #2 [April, 2021]
Written by: Cavan Scott
“Tomb in Space”

Hurtling through space, Keeve recounts her anxiety as she pilots her vector. On every mission she was a Padawan. Now she’s a full-fledged fuck-ass Jedi Knight, so she’ll undergo even more scrutiny. “They’ll be expecting great things,” she says of Jedi Masters, other Jedi Knights, and Mark Hamill. “But that’s fine. The Force is with me. I am one with the Force. Blah blah blah.”

I like this Keeve! She knows when to blah-blah-blah. A couple of bald twin brainiacs named Terec and Ceret are on the ship practicing their lightsaber skills. Ol’ Keever is annoyed as all get-out, but what can a new Jedi Knight do about it, eh? I think Sskeer is there too, but I don’t like him but so I hope someone murders him in a well.

Keeve brings the ship out of hyperspace and is immediately faced with a vessel that has been completedly torn apart. “We weren’t fast enough,” Keeve thinks. A distress signal was picked up on the Starlight Beacon about a ship under attack, and now there are no survivors. Whoops!

“I sense survivors–” says Terec or Ceret. Well, that shut me up. Sensors indicate that the main hull is still pressurized and probably full of scared motherfuckers. They board the vessel and are met with corridors filled with poisonous green gas! LOL! They put on their COVID-19 N95 masks and ready their lightsabers. All this could mean only one thing: The Nihil! The baddest, rudest dudes in the galaxy! Sskeer lost his arm in the Battle of Kur. And now he’ll lose the other one, wouldn’t that be something?

They all split up. Keeve and Ceret to the flight deck. Terec and Sskeer to the rest of the massive ship, hopefully to find a vending machine.

The smoke thickens as Keeve and Ceret walk down more corridors. A true Nihil calling card: pumping their prey full of gas before slaughtering the lot of them. Oldest trick in the book. Terec keeps trying to talk to Sskeer, but Sskeer is having a total Vietnam flashback and starts roaring out of nowhere. Then he gathers his wits and tells the rest that he’s all right. But he’s not. He never will be again. He was in the shit, man. And it was hell, I tells ya.

Keeve is instructed to use the force against the gas, because the almighty Force is like a Swiss army knife. It can do anything. She and Terec find more than they bargain for in the flight deck: a gaggle of dead motherfuckers and the corpse of a Hutt. A nasty, stinky Hutt, of all creatures! In Republic space! Multiple stab wounds, blaster burns, these dudes got messed up bad. Nagnol poisoning, whatever that is. Oh yeah, the gas.

Sskeer sniffs out grain—barley, maybe. Hutts aren’t known for transporting barley! Hops, maybe, but not barley! Ceret points out that, in these trying times, Hutts will sell anything for a handsome profit. Those sneaky, sneaky Hutts. They’ll sell their own dicks for a tidy sum…

THEN THIS HAPPENS!

SNIPER! AHHHH! MERLIN’S BEARD! BY THE HAMMER OF THOR! ZEUS’ CAHONES!

Terec is injured, which also hurts Ceret since their brains are bonded. He clutches his side as well as his pearls! “We will live,” he says finally. Oh thank the gods, I was worried about this stupid bald idiot for sure. Sskeer kicks himself; he should have known there was a sniper in the midst. He whips out his lightsaber and basically goes “I got you! There you are! I’m gonna find you! I know where you’re lurking! I’ve got my senses perked up! Now you’re in for it! Where the fuck are you??” and then the sniper leaps down above Sskeer with a sword, almost slicing the lizard guy in twain. In twain, I say!

“WHY?” Sskeer roars as he swipes the assailant about 18 times with his lightsaber, killing the dude completely. Sskeer’s pupils get tiny as he undergoes another one of those pesky flashbacks. Then he reasons that there was no way to disarm him, see? He was curtains from the get-go, see? Time to contact Starlight, yeah? They’ll “know what to do”.

Marshal Avar Kriss gets the briefing. No survivors except for one Nihil whom they left behind to die, obviously. Maru has analyzed data provided by Terec. It’s barley, all right! Vratixia renanicus, which is Space Latin for “key ingredient of bacta”. The miracle cream that is replacing rejuv here in the good ol’ High Republic era, to be certain.

Ah yes, the Sedri system. Famous for telling us why a Hutt would have bought barley. Fucking idiot.

Sedri is a small system with two habitable planets. Sedri Minor is where it’s at. Maru sees a colony founded 12 years ago with little contact since. “Then they’re overdue for a visit,” says Kriss. Sskeer and Ceret are to go crash the Sedri Minor party while Jedi Who-Cares will recover the Hutt craft. “Chancellor Soh will want to know that the clans are breaking the sanctions by trading openly in Republic territory.”

Keeve wants to go with Sskeer to Sedri Minor, but he wants her to wait with the ailing Terec. “It is decided,” he says no-nonsensely. Which is a great word that I made up!

Keeve is totally going to go to Sedri Minor anyway. Just you wait.

Sskeer and Ceret’s ship lands in Sedri Minor, and two excited kids – a human and an alien – run up to it. “You’re Jedi,” one says happily while Sskeer puffs out his chest and responds in the affirmative. “And you’re not welcome here,” says a rather fat alien named Kal Sulman. Sskeer tells Fatty that he means them no harm, but Kal insists that they are an independent colony that doesn’t need help from the likes of stinky Jedi.

Sskeer, of course, notices the endless fields of vratixia renanicus. Kal wonders why the fuck Jedi would care. Ceret notices something running around the fields and investigates. “Hello?” he says, bug-eyed. “Are you there? Do you require assistance?”

*rustle*

“We are here to help.”

A giant tentacle reaches out of the barley, ready to wring Ceret’s puny little neck.

Meanwhile, Kriss and Keeve go back to the Nihil-destroyed ship and inspect Sskeer’s victim. Kriss is behind herself with disappointment, and Keeve admits that she didn’t know what to do. “I’m sorry. I’ve never seen him like this. He was out of control. Just… just so much rage.” Well, if Kriss had known that Sskeer flies off the handle when he drops his afternoon tea, she would have never sent him over to Sedri Minor. What’s done is done, oh well, moving on!

“AAAAAAAH!” screams Terec for no readily discernible reason. Maybe it has something to do with Ceret’s puny neck. These two feel each other’s pain, after all. “Something terrible has happened,” he moans. Kriss radios Sskeer, who doesn’t know where Ceret went.

Sskeer runs into the fields.

He went to Hooters where it’s Endless Boneless Wing Sunday.

Final Thoughts

Who gives a fuck about Ceret?