There’s a thing about someone insisting that they had to see you and just not taking “no” for an answer, a thing Nix had learned early on in her career – those are the people you usually just do not want to meet at all.

“If Praxis Mar is calling to you, why are we heading away from it at maximum sublight speed?” Kelda asked.

“Because the nav computer hasn’t worked out the jump coordinates yet,” Nix said, doing her best to put everything out of her mind. 

Ideally she only wanted to shut out the booming, wordless voice of the planet that had been swallowed by the Dark Side, but it was loud enough that she could either close out everything or let the planet’s call crash through her loud of to rattle her bones.

“I’m inclined to agree with her decision here,” Ravas said.

“We’ve had poor luck with running away before,” Kelda said.

“And poorer luck with Praxis Mar,” Ravas countered. “If we do have to face Paralus there, we’d be better off all together.”

“Point taken,” Kelda said.

Nix cast a glance over at Rassi and Solna, who’d settled into the comms and engineering chairs behind her. Neither of the girls looked like they were doing especially well and Nix’s guess was that their condition had nothing to do with the near death waltz they’d danced.

“Leaving seems good,” Solna said. “We shouldn’t be here. Nothing should be here.”

“She’s not wrong about that,” Ravas said.

“What is that thing?” Rassi asked, huddled in on herself.

“What you’re feeling in Praxis Mar, a planet which has been lost to the Dark Side of the Force,” Kelda said.

“We spent a few centuries there,” Ravas added. “It’s as unpleasant as you’re imagining.”

“They may be getting it worse than any of us did,” Nix said. “The people of the Silent Enclave are incredibly sensitive to the Force. What they’re feeling from this distance is probably what we were feeling at ground level. Or possible even worse.”

“How could you stand to be on a planet like that?” Rassi asked.

“You’ve grown up in the enclave which is so quiet in the Force that I couldn’t even sense Nix when she was there,” Kelda said. “The rest of the galaxy is, not quite so calm.”

“It’s all like this?” Solna asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Ravas said. “This is monumentally bad. Short of the site of an in-progress massacre, you won’t find anything that comes close to be as unpleasant.”

“Which isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of places where the Force is twisted and gnarled and you will feel like misery is pouring down on you like rain,” Kelda said.

“How do you even handle that?” Rassi asked.

“It varies,” Ravas said. “I can assure you that trying to grab as much powerful as possible so that you can force the galaxy to align with how you believe it should be is, most assuredly, not the right answer though.”

“Nor is shutting everything else out and trying to meditate yourself to a higher plane,” Kelda said.

“You take it as you go,” Nix said. “If you want the real secret to adulthood there it is. We’re all just bumbling along as best we can. Some people like to make endless plans, some react mindlessly and hope for the best, some cast aside all responsibility and belief that faith in whatever they can find will make everything turn out right. Everyone else, which is pretty close to everyone, we make it up as we go and do what we can.”

“That doesn’t sound like it’s enough to deal with something like this Praxis Mar place,” Solna said.

“It’s not,” Nix said. “That’s why we’re running away.”

“Got the jump coordinates when you’re ready to go Mom,” Goldie said.

“Probability that our target system is the one Ayli’s prison ship would have gone through?” Nix asked before hitting the lightspeed jump button.

“High 90’s,” Goldie said. “The next nearest system with a hyperspace lane here is another seven systems past us. Assuming they didn’t overshoot and come back around by an unnecessarily long road, we should find them in the target system.”

“Let’s hit it then,” Nix said and punched the Goldrunner in hyperspace.

The moment the stars began to shift, she heard a despairing wail as Praxis Mar fell impossibly far behind them.

Once the familiar blue swirl of hyperspace filled the front viewport, the crushing weight of the planet’s insistent call dropped away leaving Nix’s thoughts clear once more.

“When we arrive, go to full active scan okay?” she asked, calling up the star charts for their destination.

“That’s going to attract attention,” Goldie said. “Are we picking a fight?”

“From what Ayli was able to convey, it’s a fight that we’d lose,” Nix said.

“Why didn’t we bring Thirty Two then?” Goldie asked.

“Well, first of all, we can’t just take command of Sali’s fleet,” Nix said.

“Aunt Sali would be fine with that,” Goldie said. “And Aunt Zin would smack her if she wasn’t.”

Nix laughed.

“While that is probably true, Sali has her fleet blockading Praxis for a good reason, and I’d rather not let Paralus bring in whatever reinforcements that blockade is holding at bay.” Nix suppressed the small pang of longing for Sali’s presence. Sali had reached the point of accepting that the two of them were not cut out to be a romantic couple, in part because Sister Zindiana was a much better partner in crime, and in part because Sali and Nix fit together so much better as friends than they had as lovers. Not that being lovers had been terrible, but as friends there was just a little bit more sanity in there relationship than there had been.

In the face of possibly losing Ayli and having to deal with the overwhelming might of a Dark Side planet though, Nix was tempted to think her life could use a bit more of Sali and Zin’s unique brand of madness.

“A thought,” Kelda said. “If the ship’s scans will draw attention from the locals, why not ask our young friends for their input. As you said, they are quite gifted in sensing the Force.”

“They’ve never met Ayli though. They wouldn’t know what to listen for,” Nix said, having thought of and already rejected that possibility.

“But you do,” Ravas said.

“I can’t just tell them though,” Nix said.

“Of course not,” Kelda said. “You’ll show them.”

“You did say they were both especially gifted in sensing the Force,” Ravas said.

“What would we have to do?” Rassi asked.

“And why can’t you reach your wife now, you were talking to her before weren’t you?” Solna asked.

“It wasn’t exactly talking,” Nix said. “Not with words.”

“Well, whatever it was, can’t you just do that again?” Solna asked, fidgeting her seat as though the answer might be enough to corrupt her.

Or maybe it was her desire to understand that she was afraid was corrupting her. Nix put a pin in that thought. She and Solna and Rassi were going to have a long conversation at some point about what ‘corruption’ really meant and how they needed to be honest with themselves rather than allowing themselves to be strangled by dogma.

“It’s tiring for her,” Nix said, banishing the frustration from her voice. They were moving towards Ayli as fast as Goldie’s engines could take them, which meant it was a time for patience, and with the girls she wanted, above all else, to show them they could trust her. “I held onto her for as long as she could manage it but communing with the Force inside a Dark Side Nexus is like tearing yourself in half. Part of you needs to be open and part of you needs to shut out the urges and impulses the Dark Side will flood into you.”

“Can you feel her at all?” Rassi asked, her whole face an expression of unmasked concern.

“No,” Nix admitted with a shake of her head. “Or, not like I want to. I know she’s still alive. I know they’re not hurting her. Not yet, but I can’t imagine that’s not a tool they plan to break out if they need to compel our behavior.”

“It’s not a tool we’re going to give the opportunity to make any use of,” Ravas said.

“That’s the plan,” Nix said. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable including Rassi and Solna in it though.”

“Why? What’s wrong with us helping?” Rassi asked.

“We can do it,” Solna said, which surprised Nix given the girl’s overall discomfort with anything even Jedi-adjacent.

“You have the ability, absolutely,” Nix said. “But there’s danger in looking for someone in general. The local pirates or law enforcement or whatever they call themselves may not be able to detect you scanning a system looking for someone, but other Force users might be able to and they might be able to lay traps.”

“We know to avoid corruptions in the Xah,” Solna said. “We weren’t entirely sheltered.”

“There’s corruptions, pockets of the Dark Side, and then there are traps with are specifically intended to go unnoticed until that can do something nasty, like show you what you’re afraid you might see, or reveal your location to the person who set the trap.”

“How do you avoid those?” Rassi asked.

“I have no idea,” Nix said. “I’ve only read about them.”

“When I was a Jedi we would simply trigger the trap,” Kelda said. “That was usually the best method of finding the person who’d put it together. A frightening vision is nothing against a prepared mind, and if they knew where we were, so too would we learn their location.”

“More than a few Jedi fell into Sith clutches thanks to that sort of hubris though,” Ravas said. “And the ones who didn’t were trained in the sort of mental games the Jedi and Sith play with each other since they were children.”

“Which is why I don’t think it’s a good idea for Rassi and Solna to help out here. A general system is dangerous enough but this would be looking for someone we know is trapped in a Dark Side nexus.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Rassi said. “We can do this.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Nix said. “You’ve been through enough and this isn’t your fight.”

“I think it is,” Solna said. “If I moved the Xah to bring you to us to help us escape, you had to be following it because we fit into your life in a way that would balance things. This might be why we’re here.”

“Nope,” Nix said. “You’re here because you’re choosing to be and that’s it. You don’t owe me or the galaxy anything else. Your happiness doesn’t come with a price tag.”

“Solna’s right,” Rassi said. “You helped us because that’s who you want to be, even if the Xah or the Force isn’t telling us to help you, I think that’s how we become who we want to be.”

Nix drew in a long breath and let it out in a sigh.

This wasn’t an argument she was going to win. She didn’t need the Force to tell her that. She had plenty of memories of being a teenager to know how stubborn young humans could be.

“They needn’t be as exposed as you imagine,” Ravas said.

“Indeed. If you are joined together, they can offer you their sense so that if you do encounter anything it will be your defenses which stand against it first,” Kelda said.

“Or more precisely, ours,” Ravas said.

“I am still stretched a bit thin,” Kelda said. “Dispelling Paralus’ shade was a bit taxing.”

“Then you’ll this to me,” Ravas said. 

“Whatever you’re going to do, I would get ready,” Goldie said. “We’ll be dropping out of hyperspace in about ten seconds.”

Nix turned her attention back to the passive scanners as the stars slammed back into place, only to find she didn’t need the sensors right away. 

Not when the lights from a fantastic battle between two armadas were exploding in the distance.