The problem with searching for ships that have fallen out of hyperspace is that there is a rather large area to look for them in. By Nix’s calculation if they flew an optimal search pattern over the space between Ayli’s last known position and the spot where they had definitely lost track of her, they’d complete their search somewhere around the heat death of the universe, plus or minus a few billion years.

That was why she didn’t let Goldie drive.

“Why are we flying towards a system we know they weren’t going to?” Goldie asked.

“I don’t know,” Nix said, leaning into the meditative bond she was sharing with Rassi and Solna. “This is just where we need to go.”

“I hope you’re right,” Lasha said over the comms. “I’m not reading any signs of an active drive anywhere in this system.”

“Me neither,” Goldie said.

“I know. But we’ll find something here,” Nix said. The Force wasn’t being overly helpful in terms of explaining what she was going to find, but it was giving enough of a pull that Nix was certain something important awaited her. Something which needed her sooner rather than later.

“The ship sensors may not be detecting anything, but there is something out there,” Ravas said. “Something cloaked in the Dark Side.”

Nix’s pulse quickened.

Ayli! 

“I don’t think it’s the ship we’re looking for though,” Ravas said. “This doesn’t feel strong enough to be a nexus. It’s more like a lingering shadow.”

“Does this lingering shadow have a set of coordinates?” Goldie asked, electronic frustration sounding remarkably similar to the organic variety.

“The Force doesn’t work like that,” Nix said and punched in the coordinates for the shadow that Ravas had brought to her attention. “But I do.”

To be fair to the Force, it was helpful in directing her hands as they punched in the location they needed to get to, but Nix guessed that was only because she understood the controls and the mathematical concepts they expressed. On it’s own the Force gave more “over there-ish” sort of directions when it wanted her to move somewhere in particular.

“I’m not…” Lasha started to say and cut herself short. “Wait. Monfi! He’s there and someone else is too.”

That should have set Nix’s heart a flutter.

But she knew the other person wasn’t Ayli.

“Best speed to get to them Goldie,” Nix said, pushing back on the concern those rose in her chest. 

She wasn’t going to find Ayli, but she was going to be taking a step close to her.

As it turned out, that step was a more rapid one than she’d anticipated as Goldie performed a millisecond long hyperspace jump to flash across the distance in an instant. Various alarms and warning went off and Nix groaned at the thought of the extra maintenance the hyperdrive was going to need. She didn’t scold Goldie though, or even mention it. When Nix had said best speed, she’d meant it. 

“What do you see there?” Lasha asked a moment later when the ship comms synced back up.

“It’s a shuttle,” Nix said. “It’s got Imperial markings on it but it’s not in great shape.”

“I’ve got two life signs on board,” Goldie said.

“Bring the shuttle into the hold,” Nix said. “Lasha if you want to dock up when you get here, we’ll have Monfi in our med room, if he needs it.”

“He probably will, the idiot,” Lasha said, expressing more affection in her reproach than a Jedi ever would have.

Or, well, most Jedi. The one actual example Nix had was an anomaly even by her own admission.

“Let’s go meet our new guests,” Nix said, rising from the pilot’s chair and heading towards the Goldrunner’s cargo hold.

“Do we need to worry about how warped the Xah is around that ship?” Solna asked, the first to tag along.

“It feels like its changing?” Rassi asked from behind her.

“It is,” Ravas said. “The cloak it wore was a borrowed one. Once we found what was underneath it, the shadow of the unknown faded.”

“So it’s not a danger to us?” Rassi asked.

“That depends if the owner left any nasty surprises inside for whoever found it,” Kelda said.

“No. We’re safe,” Nix said, feeling the wispy remnant of Ayli’s touch on the ship. “She sent this to us. She sent them to us.”

“I’ve got the override for the locks worked out,” Goldie said.

“Pop it open then,” Nix said and stepped back to avoid the gust of exhaust gasses Imperial shuttles often vented after they’d been sealed tight.

One of Goldie’s remotes tapped on the control panel beside the shuttle’s main access port and moved aside to give Nix a clear view into the ship.

A clear view which showed a human male and a Galruxian female both collapsed onto the shuttle’s deck.

“Coming through!” Goldie said as another four remotes scuttled past Nix to begin applying medical aid to the fallen humanoids.

“What happened to them?” Rassi asked.

“As a guess? Darsolys Gas poisoning,” Nix said.

“Did the Force tell you that?” Goldie asked, “Because that’s exactly what I’m reading here.”

“Not the Force,” Nix said. “Darsolys gas is one of the components used in shield systems on Imperial shuttles. If you’re extra paranoid about your shuttle being stolen, it’s also the easiest thing to rig to vent into the cabin, and since it’s non-lethal to most species, one of the better traps to put in something that you might want up triggering yourself.”

“Why are they in a trapped ship though?” Solna asked.

“Ayli put them there,” Nix said on pure intuition.

“She wanted to get them to safety,” Ravas said. “Clever really.”

“How so?” Rassi asked.

“People fleeing from a cruiser in a shuttle are rather unlikely to escape. Either the cruiser will tractor them back on board or the turbo laser batteries will reduce the ship to fine particles,” Kelda said. “If Ayli put them here, then she found a means to get them to safety which could not have been easy under the circumstances.”

“I suspect I know how she did it,” Nix said, hating that her guess almost had to be the correct one.

“She traded herself for them,” Ravas said.

“Yep,” Ayli said, neither surprised, nor disappointed. A part of her even felt a measure of pride in the generosity of her wife’s spirit. A far larger part however wanted to throttle Ayli for thinking throwing herself away to save others was always the play to go for.

Throttling wouldn’t help of course.

But it was still tempting.

“Ugh, why does my mouth taste like I’ve been drinking petrol?” Monfi asked as the treatment Goldie performed brought him back to consciousness.

Goldie had moved the shuttle’s two passengers out of the shuttle and had a roving air purification droid clearing away the remnants of the Darsolys gas that remained in the shuttle.

“After effects of the knockout gas you were hit with,” Nix said. “With the antagonist injection Goldie gave you, the side effects should fade in a few minutes.”

“My thanks to Goldie and yourself,” Monfi said, clearing his eyes and amending, “yourselves” when he saw the others who were gathered around. “You must be Nix?”

“That does seem to be my lot in life,” Nix said. “How did you know though?”

“Your friend and I have met before,” Monfi said, nodding towards Kelda, who nodded back.

“Your partner will be here shortly,” Kelda said.

“Oh, you found Lasha, wonderful,” Monfi said. “And there don’t seem to be any injuries from what I can see? Even better.”

“Do you know what happened to Ayli?” Rassi asked, the impatience of youth a blessed relief to Nix’s ears.

“She went back,” Bopo said, having been roused as well. “She flung me onto the ship and tossed us out of it to get us to safety.”

“Well, a measure of safety,” Monfi said. “We’d just about cleared the cruiser’s exterior when the shuttle gassed us.”

“That probably saved your lives,” Ravas said. “Once the ship had you disabled, you wouldn’t have registered as a threat to the cruiser’s sensors.”

“It wasn’t the ship who saved us,” Bopo said. “It was your wife. She said you’d know where to find her too.”

Nix inhaled and was silent for a moment.

Of course she knew where to find Ayli.

She’d known they were going to return to Praxis Mar someday ever since the moment they’d left it.

This was not the right moment though.

They hadn’t trained enough. They hadn’t learned enough about the Force.

They hadn’t had enough time together.

“Permission to board?” Lasha asked over the comms.

“Granted,” Nix said, largely perfunctorily as Goldie was already opening the hatches for Lasha and her two apprentices.

Monfi rose to greet his partner as she entered the cargo hold, but Lasha gave him little more than an eye roll and went to the shuttle.

“Hah!” she said. “I was right!”

“About what?” Nix asked.

“This isn’t the first cloaked ship I’ve had to hunt down,” Lasha said. “The Lich thinks he’s so terribly clever, but like most smart people, he’s deeply, deeply stupid as well.”

“Can we make use of that?” Nix asked.

“That depends,” Lasha said. “Do you think we could do something useful with the Lich’s phylactery?”

“His what?” Solna asked, staring at the shuttle as though something might leap out of it at her.

“An item he’s bound to,” Monfi said. “It’s what hold his connection to the living world.”

“Do you have those?” Rassi asked Kelda and Ravas.

“We’re not Liches,” Ravas said.

“It’s more than ‘an’ item though,” Lasha said. “It’s the item. So long as it exists, he can never be fully banished or destroyed.”

“And you can find it? With the shuttle?” Nix asked.

“Yes. Definitely,” Lasha said, triumph alight in her eyes.

“Where is it?” Rassi asked.

“I have no idea,” Lasha said. “But with this, I don’t need to.”

“You think you can follow the traces of his power that remain on the shuttle back to their ultimate source?” Ravas said.

“I know I can,” Lasha said. “We followed an Unsubtle to his next victim from one of the knives he left behind. The Lich presents itself completely differently in the Force, but the same threads of malice are there and those can only lead to the heart of his power.”

“It will be well protected if you’re right,” Kelda said.

“I don’t think it will be,” Ravas said. “Think like someone swallowed by the Dark Side. Who would you trust to guard the heart of your existence?”

“No one,” Kelda said.

“Someone I had absolute control over,” Nix said and was surprised when the others turned to look at her. “What? I know it’s stupid, but that’s what we’re predicating this whole endeavor on. Arrogance and poor decisions are like the two primary hallmarks of Dark Side Force users.”

“Both of those take a distant second to paranoia,” Ravas said.

“So they’re evil for being afraid?” Solna asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Ravas said. “Everyone is afraid, some people almost all the time. A Dark Side user’s paranoia is founded in guilt over what they’ve done and the fear that the power they’ve stolen will be stolen from them. Where other people will suffer through the fears, or rise above them, a Sith, or other Dark Sider, will let their fears swallow them and distort them away from any rational view of the galaxy. Fear becomes everything and sublimates into an anger which can only be assuaged by the suffering of others.”

“That doesn’t sound healthy,” Rassi said.

“The Dark Side is a sickness,” Lasha said. “Which is why we must fight it before it spreads.”

“You’re right,” Nix said. “Tracking down Paralus’ phylactery is the only path to defeating him permanently. It had to be done.”

“Then we don’t want to waste time,” Lasha said. “The longer we wait, the more faint the traces of the Lich’s power over this shuttle will grow.”

“Then we need to trade ships quickly,” Nix said.

“Trade? Why?” Lasha asked.

“Because you all need to find Paralus’ phylactery, and I need to find my wife.”