Rassi wasn’t surprised that they arrived at Kardebron late. Disappointed, but not surprised. Though Goldie really had made the best possible time to reach the pirate fortress turned pirate resort, Rassi had been able to sense that their destinies did not include a reunion with Nix. At least not within either of their immediate futures.

“How long ago did they leave Aunt Sali?” Goldie asked, having established communications with her ‘favorite aunt’ the moment they dropped out of hyperspace.

“About two days ago,” the Pirate Queen Saliandrus said. “Took my Zin with them too!”

From the slight slurring in her tone, it was just possible that ‘Aunt Sali’ had imbibed a bit too much of something.

“Give me the coordinates and I’ll go bring them back,” Goldie said.

“On one condition,” Sali said.

“Mom’s still not letting me take part in any space battles,” Goldie said.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll have you pillaging ships ten times your size this standard,” Sali said. “That’s not what I need at the moment though.”

“I hope so. What’s your condition though if not pillaging?” Goldie asked in a tone that left Rassi wondering if the talk of piracy was a long running joke, or something the two were seriously considering.

“I’ve got a handful of people here who stayed behind to practice their Force stuff,” Sali said. “They’ve practiced enough though, and each one is mopier than the last. I’ll tell you where your Mom’s went if you give this Lost lot a trip back home.”

“Is that Tovos and the other who started this by kidnapping Nix and Ayli?” Goldie asked.

“Yep. Or most of them I gather,” Sali said.

“If you put them in a shuttle, I’d be happy to test out the weapon systems you got for me!” Goldie said. She didn’t sound remorseless at the idea like a machine would. Somehow Goldie’s gleeful malice had an entirely human quality to it.

“I’d be happy to, but Nix seems to have taken them under her wing,” Sali said. “Called them her wards, so I’m guessing she’d be a little put out if I let you blow them to space dust.”

“Nix…Mom did what?” Goldie asked. “Wards?”

“Yeah. Means she’s responsible for them.” Sali wasn’t as incredulous as Goldie was but she didn’t sound like she could understand Nix’s reasoning either.

“I know that, but why?”

“Have you met your mother?” Sali asked, her grin audible from a few planetary diameters away.

Rassi reached out with the Force, which felt funny to do. She was so used to shying away from it that actively engaging felt clumsy and awkward. Like making conversation with a girl who you thought was awesome but who you’d never talked to because she was best and you were just the worse. Much like how Rassi did eventually manage to bring herself to talk with Solna though, her conversation with the Force was met with equal eagerness on both sides.

Together with her oldest friend, they felt across the void, through the atmosphere and down into Sali’s fortress to find the barest of whispers to indicate that Tovos and several others from the Enclave where there.

Her mind shied away from focusing on them any further. She’d had too many bad experiences with them to feel anything close to neutral to the idea of them joining Goldie’s crew, even if it was for a brief one way trip back to the Enclave.

As she withdrew her focus though, Rassi was struck by the fact that she’d been able to detect them at all.

It was true that she had a greater connection to them than to most of the rest of the galaxy, but none of them were living up the silence the Enclave demanded. Sure they were far quieter than anyone outside the Enclave could claim to be, but even though their thoughts were little more than whispers, they were whispers Rassi could still hear.

Which meant something was either very wrong with them, or they had changed far more than Rassi could ever imagine them changing.

Or both.

“We should see what’s happened to them,” Rassi said.

“Yeah, we need to know why they stayed behind,” Solna added, her thoughts running along similar paths to Rassi’s from the look in her eyes.

 “Fine, we can take them along,” Goldie said.

“And me,” Sali added. “I had some things I had to attend to when they left. Since I have drunk those things under the bar however, I am free to take a leave of absence.”

“You get vacation time?” Goldie asked.

“In this job you don’t get vacation time. You make it,” Sali said. “I’ll make sure people here know what a bad idea it would be if I come back and everything’s fallen to poodu. Which means I get to enjoy my vacation and look forward to breaking some heads when I get back. So it’s win-win really.”

“We’ll be on your landing pad in ten minutes,” Goldie said. “Think you can be ready to leave then?”

“Kid, I’ve been ready to leave for the last two days,” Sali said.

—-

It wasn’t ten minutes before they landed. It was six. Six minutes of atmospheric reentry that Rassi was sure had to have burned a few layers off Goldie’s hull, but which no one was willing to argue with her about.

As promised, Sali, Tovos and the others were there waiting for them.

“Should we help them get loaded in?” Monfi asked.

“No need,” Goldie said. “I’ve got the waldos ready to drag any slowpokes in. We’re lifting off in ten.”

“Ten minutes?” Lasha asked.

“Nine. Eight. Seven,” Goldie said, which Rassi wasn’t certain was enough time for people to actually get on board, but at zero on Goldie’s countdown they did indeed lift off the platform and begin thrusting for space.

“Wow. Nix is in trouble, isn’t she?” Sali asked a few moments later when she arrived in the somewhat crowded bridge.

“No. Of course not,” Goldie said. “Out of curiosity though do they make droid restraining bolts that work on humans?”

“Believe it or not…” Sali began to say and then spied Rassi and Solna who, despite all they’d been through, she obviously mistook for being children still. “Believe it or not that’s something pirates would love to have but alas no one had perfected such a thing yet.”

Which was a lie. Not that Rassi was familiar with any tech like that, but Sali was not exactly a subtle presence in the Force.

“We need to go talk to Tovos,” Solna said, rising and wiggling past Sali to head to the cargo bay where Tovos and the others from the Enclave were still gathered.

Rassi rose to join her but was presented with the problem that Solna was able to squeeze through much tighter spaces than Rassi was.

Sali saw the problem and stepped out of the bridge to make room for Rassi to pass, nodding in solidarity from one large girl to another. They were so very different, but the small moment of understanding left Rassi pondering what her life might have been like if she’d been taken in by pirates rather than having been raised in the Enclave. 

It led her imagination to intriguing places, which kept her distracted up until she got to the cargo bay and found Tovos, Felgo, and Osdo waiting for them. Behind them Yanni and Polu where sitting with their heads pressed together and the Force swirling around them in a manner that would have led to their execution in the Enclave.

“You’re not Silent?” Rassi asked, surprised on about a dozen different levels, including the one that had noticed that Tovos’ team was still projected an Enclave silence field over them all.

“You’re not either,” Tovos said, discomfort radiating off him for only a moment before he squelched it down.

But a moment was far longer than anyone in the Enclave would have allowed themselves to disrupt the Xah.

“The Enclave never wanted us,” Solna said, shifting to stand a little closer to Rassi.

“The Elders loved you,” Tovos said. “It was her,” indicating Rassi with a twitch of his head, “that they always had problems with.”

Rassi was going to contest that, but Felgo, of all people, got to it first.

“Do you think what the Elders did was love?” he asked. “Sure, they singled Solna out as being the best in her class, but they didn’t make that a good thing did they?”

 He looked at Solna who could hide her surprise at his words.

The Felgo they knew never would have questioned the Elders. 

And never would have cut one of his juniors a break.

“We owe them an apology,” Osdo said, despite being the one who had offered Solna and Rassi the fewest hassles out of anyone in his class.

“We owe them more than apology,” Tovos said, which suggested that someone had hollowed out Tovos’ body and possessed what what left.

A better somebody than the body’s original owner apparently, and Rassi was not inclined to complain, despite how deeply weird it was to hear Tovos saying the words he was.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, trying to get a handle on the bizarre alternate universe she had apparently fallen into.

“Nix showed us everything. Everything she saw herself and everything that the Xah showed her about what the Elders had done. To us. To the people who defied them. To…” Tovos’ voice caught and Rassi felt the genuine pain and anger the flashed out from him, “To my brother. And all the others like him.”

“And you believed her?” Solna asked, as shocked by the idea as Rassi was.

“The danced a Silent Dance,” Felgo said.

“To her death,” Osdo added.

“Or close to it,” Tovos explained. “She held nothing back and ran out every bit of strength she had, so the visions she shared, they weren’t just of what the Elders had done with the Expunging Rite. We saw how they shaped and controlled us. We saw what it was like for the victims of the Expunging, and how the Elders ensured they survived the rite.”

“And we saw what idiots we’d been,” Felgo added when Tovos fell silent.

“We’ve spent the last couple of days training and planning,” Osdo said. “We couldn’t go back to the Enclave while the Elders could still control us. So we’ve been learning and practicing.”

“Nix showed us how to defend ourselves, sort of,” Felgo said.

“Sort of?” Solna asked.

“We kind of had to figure it out on our own, but she gave us tips of what to look for and how we could start trying to resist an Elder reaching out an commanding us with the Xah,” Osdo said. “She wanted us to train ourselves though so we wouldn’t lose what we have now.”

Solna shook her head. “She said pretty much the same thing to me.”

“And you learned how to shield yourself from her?” Tovos asked.

“No, from a ghost,” Solna said without offering any additional information.

Since she was no longer suppressing the Force within her though, her sincerity was easy for all present to feel.

Tovos was quiet for a moment, digesting that and searching for words if Rassi was reading him right, before he spoke.

“I’m glad you found a better teacher than the ones we had in the Enclave.” It wasn’t an apology, but it was sincere where an apology would have been a bit too hard to swallow. Only actions and time could prove that he regretted what he had done.

For the moment though, they had a larger, shared problem to resolve.

“What plan did you come up with?” Rassi asked, rather than simply saying ‘why are you here?’

“We know we’re too late to catch up to Nix and Ayli,” Tovos said. “We’d wanted to help them but we can feel that’s not where the Xah is leading us. So we’re going to go home, and put an end to the Silent Enclave.”