The calm of hyperspace washed over Solna’s senses like an endless ocean to sink her worries into.

Which was good because she had a lot of them.

She was in so much trouble. She could never be forgiven. She had corrupted the Xah on a fundamental level.

And she was certain she would do it again.

Certain she had been right to do it.

Somehow though, despite the fact that she’d rejected the Silent Enclave and burned at thinking about what they’d done to her and Rassi, somehow she was still terrified of them finding out what she had done.

It wasn’t rational. She knew it wasn’t rational. No one needed to tell her that.

And so Rassi hadn’t said a word.

Solna could feel Rassi struggling with her own memories of the experience, though Rassi’s struggles felt markedly different from the ones within Solna’s heart.

They would compare notes. Someday. When the memories were more distant and Solna had some kind of handle on them.

Until then, Solna sat at the foot of Rassi’s bed and let Rassi work on braiding her hair.

The simple physical contact and the relative quiet of hyperspace made things bearable enough and part of Solna could feel her emotions following suite with each light year that passed.

“Can I come in?” Nulo asked from outside the door to their small room.

Rassi glanced down at Solna who nodded quickly. Nulo wasn’t silent in the Force, but she wonderfully calm most of the time which was also nice to be around.

“Sure thing,” Rassi said. “What’s up?”

Nulo floated through the door on her grav plate and settled it onto the floor to put herself at Solna’s level.

“I just wanted to see how you were doing,” Nulo said. “There’s a tradition among Horizon Knight apprentices that after each mission an apprentice goes on, the other apprentices are supposed listen to whatever stories they have to tell. I know it’s probably different for you, but you two filled us on on what the raid against the Lich was like so I thought you might have a tale to tell about this one too.”

“This one was rough,” Rassi said. “We found one of the Death Shadows.”

“Ravas said you killed it or something like that?” Nulo asked.

“He was already dead,” Solna said. She hadn’t expected to be able to find her voice but the words came easily anyways. “What we did was closer to…” 

She wanted to say ‘granting him peaceful silence, but that was an Enclave phrase, and not at all what they’d really done.

“He’d been killed by the Silent Enclave,” Rassi said. “We were able to call back the pieces of his spirit and let the Force take them.”

“Is that what happened to all the Shadows?” Nulo asked.

“We don’t know, but probably,” Solna said.

“Which is a problem since it means they’re drawn to the Silent Enclave by their basic natures, not any technique we can replicate,” Rassi said, gathering up another bunch of Solna’s hair for another braid.

Nulo gave a low throated chortle which felt something like a rueful chuckle in the Force and said, “So, they’re literally a dead end.”

“Somewhat worse than death,” Rassi said. 

“And there are a lot of them,” Solna said, painfully aware of what that said about the Silent Enclave.

“We’re not totally out of luck,” Nulo said. “Monfi managed to find some old records about a property transfer. He thinks it might be from where the Enclave was setup before the mining colony.”

“I’m not sure how that’s going to help us at this point,” Rassi said. “Even if we find the first place the Death Shadows attacked, all we’re going to discover is the first place the Expunging Ritual was used, and that could have been thousands of years ago.”

“I know the Enclave is really good at hiding in the Force, but part of what we Horizon Knights do is look for things that hide themselves in the Force,” Nulo said. “I don’t think any of us ever needed to try to find the Enclave – you’re not monsters.”

“That’s debatable,” Rassi said.

“Okay, well they’re not the kind of monsters we usually look for,” Nulo said. “That could be good though. If we can find enough sites the Enclave was at Monfi and Lasha might be able to pick up on commonalities they can use to find where they are now. The Enclave is used to hiding from the Jedi, so hopefully they don’t know the kind of things we can do.”

“If we can find them…” Solna started to say and stopped. 

What if they could find the Enclave again? Could she stand against the Elders?

Or more importantly could she stand against them without killing every last one of them.

They weren’t weak of course, but knowing what they had done could she really leave any of them alive? The Expunging Ritual needed to die and the people who’d used it need to die right along with it.

That did not feel good in the Force though and she was keenly aware where those homicidal impulses would lead her.

But the Elders did need to be stopped.

“If we can find them, we can expose them,” Rassi said. “The Silent Enclave was a mistake. They claim that they’re hiding away from the galaxy to be safe from the Jedi but it was never about safety or the freedom to live in harmony with the Force. It’s always been about control. It’s what they did to us and it’s what they’ve killed for, over and over and over again.”

“If we expose them though, won’t they just disappear again?” Nulo asked.

Which was the obvious problem. Even the youngest member of the Enclave could cloak themselves and pass unseen by non-Force users and those with even a bit of training we able to evade anyone who lacked exceptional sensitivity to the Force.

“It depends who, or what, we expose them to,” Rassi said

Which was a chilling though.

Rassi’s struggles with what they’d done were very different than Solna’s were.

The image of what unleashing the Death Shadows on the Enclave and ensuring that the Enclave couldn’t escape them this time was terrible.

And terribly appealing.

“We need a better answer than that,” Solna said, casting the idea out into the galaxy despite the fact that her imagination couldn’t grasp what that solution could possibly be.

“Crew to the cockpit,” Goldie said over the intercom. “There was a message payload waiting for us on the holonet when we dropped out of hyperspace and you’ll all want to hear this.”

Solna looked at Nulo to see if the Hutt had any idea what the message might be, but Nulo gave a wiggle that was the Hutt equivalent of a shrug and keyed her grav plate to lift off from the deck.

In the cockpit they found the other Horizon Knights, Lasha, Monfi and Moffvok waiting along with Archivist Bopo who was at the comm station, apparently decrypting the message.

“Is it really from them?” Goldie asked.

“The key’s one Ayli has used before, so I’d wager good money this is legit,” Bopo said. “Unless you Force users has secret message encryption powers?”

“We use pretty much the same encryption tech you do,” Monfi said.

“Though I suspect ours in a little older,” Lasha said. “We don’t have the time or credits to stay as update as a proper archivist would.”

“You would be amazed at how little time or few credits they make archivists get by on,” Bopo said. “Ayli has, or at least had, better access to encryption tech than I ever did. I only saw her use that a few times though. This message is more her typical style.”

“That’s nice and all but what does it say?” Goldie asked, her mechanical patience wearing thin about as quickly as a flesh and blood daughter’s would have.

“Let’s find out,” Bopo said and clicked a final few keys on the terminal in front of her.

From a project at the front of the cockpit the image of Ayli in translucent blue hologram light sprang to life.

“Hi folks. Hopefully you didn’t have to wait to long to get this message. Check the timestamp on it to confirm, but Nix thinks it’ll be no more than a day from now that you’ll pass through the Hydraken System. We don’t know where you’ll be heading – probably looking for us is our guess. We can save you some time if so – Goldie, we’ll be staying with your aunt’s for a few days.”

The lights in the cockpit flashed in a sequence that Solna could only read as delight.

“If we’re not with them when you get there it means we either found a trail to follow sooner than we expected, or we needed to get back into hiding as quick as possible.” 

Nix and Ayli could have been hiding from any number of things, but of course it was the worst possible option.

“We’ve got Tovos and his crew with us, and there are some things that are hunting members of the Silent Enclave. From what we can tell, they don’t seem to be hunting you girls, Rassi and Solna, and we’re not sure why. You’re either good enough to hide from them on your own, or you’ve broken away from the Enclave enough that they don’t consider you a part of it anymore.”

“Or we’re carrying an army of angry dead souls who whupped them so bad the jumped to lightspeed on their own last time we met them,” Rassi said.

“However you’re staying safe from them, keep doing it,” Ayli folded her hands together in a show of how serious she hoped her words would be taken. “We don’t know what the Death Shadows are, or what they ultimately want, but we’ve seen what they can do to someone who can’t defend themselves.”

One of Tovos crew had died. Solna didn’t need to hear Ayli say the words. The Force confirmed what her own intuition was telling her.

Part of Solna wasn’t unhappy about that.

Tovos had always been a jerk and had tormented Rassi on more occasions than Solna could count. 

Also, he’d been the one to kidnap Nix and Ayli.

So he’d gotten what he deserved.

Except it hadn’t been him the Death Shadows had targeted. 

Or maybe he’d been better defended.

Which raised the question of how Nix and Ayli had dealt with the attack? The Death Shadows weren’t terribly discriminant when it came to attacking people near an Enclave. 

“We’re going to find the Enclave. Tovos says they’ll be under the deepest cloak they can weave, but Nix is pretty sure Goldie’s aunts will have some options for finding people that the Enclave isn’t familiar with.”

“Who are your Aunts?” Rassi asked.

“A pirate and a nun,” Goldie said.

“An odd pair of aunts,” Monfi said. “I take it we’ll be visiting one and then the other?”

“Only if Aunt Zin is on the road,” Goldie said. “Otherwise they’ll both be at Aunt Sally’s fortress.”

“You have an Aunt who owns a fortress?” Nulo asked and Moffvok added a wuff. “And is a pirate.”

“Technically she’s a Pirate Queen, but she says that ‘Planetary Administrator’ is getting to be more accurate every day.”

“You’ve already laid in a course to them, haven’t you?” Lasha asked.

“Yeah. We’ll be coming up on the hyperspace lane we need in about a half hour,” Goldie said. “I could do a lightspeed skip to get us there quicker, but Mom will not like what it does to my drives and I’d rather be the one to scold her than the other way round.”

Solna could picture the moment Goldie had in mind. She could picture turning the whole problem of the Silent Enclave over to Nix and Ayli and any other adult who could be trusted to deal with it.

She could picture all of that, even though the Force was telling her clearly that none of it was going to happen.