Rassi had dreamed of winning renown in the Silent Enclave. She’d imagined a day when something bad would happen – strangers would appear, or maybe a Jedi would find them – and she would be the one to save the day. Everyone would know and everyone would treat her better and she’d be able to prove that she wasn’t as worthless as they always said she was.

Watching the a horde of Death Shadows closing in on the remnants of the Enclave held a surreal quality.

In her hand she held a dark crystal which was filled with ghosts that were spoiling for a fight. People who had spent years being crushed by the Dark Side and had some quality rage issues they needed to work out.

The Dead of Praxis Mar had volunteered to help her out of a desire to make a payment on the debt they felt they owed Nix and Ayli. At the time that had meant standing against the Silent Enclave, which had thrilled Rassi more than she had the words to express.

Somewhere though things had gotten complicated. 

Holding hands with Solna felt as fundamentally right as holding hands with Felgo felt fundamentally weird.

And yet the circle they’d formed was strong.

Stronger than the one Rassi and Solna could have formed on their own.

She hadn’t forgotten what Tovos and his crew had done to her but in the communion they shared, she felt their spirits seeking to make amends, which was the weirdest thing of all.

Almost weird enough to convince her to call upon the Praxis Mar ghosts to defend the Enclave that she’d wanted to see destroyed more than anything else in the galaxy.

“It’s too late. We can’t save them,” Polu said, disbelief drowning out everything else in his voice.

“We’d die if we tried,” Yanni said, not trying to hide the fearful memories that were tearing through her. “Just like Yoldo.”

Rassi didn’t have any pleasant memories of Yoldo, so his loss was somewhat blunted fo her, but given Yanni’s expression it wasn’t hard to imagine how horrible his death had been.

“It’s not too late,” Solna said, her presence in their bond as cool and strong as steel.

“Should it be?” Tovos asked, the despair in him a raw wound in their bond.

Because saving the people of the Enclave would mean saving a society which had used and betrayed them both.

Was something that was built on subjugation and exploitation worth preserving?

Rassi shook her head.

No.

It wasn’t.

But that wasn’t the right question.

She could understand Tovos’ despair. It resonated so deeply with her that it was hard to imagine how it could be wrong.

But it was.

The Silent Enclave was the corruption in the Xah that they had always used to control and dismiss her. It was a society built on strictures which could not be allowed to persist, and feeding it to the Death Shadows would tear it down more effectively than any other tool Rassi had at her disposal.

But it wasn’t just a society she would be consigning to suffering and death. It was people. Horrible people who wouldn’t be missed along with souls who were suffering as she’d been, and people who could do so much better if they were given the chance.

Tovos’ despair was willing to give up on all of them, to punish and destroy the people who’d never understood what they were a part of, and even the ones who were trying to be as kind and caring as they could, just to make sure the galaxy was rid of the ones who’d done them harm.

Rassi didn’t need the Force to tell her that path led to the Dark Side. That walking the harder path was what it took to make a better world. That if she failed, and she was very likely to fail, her choices would make her a better version of herself than the one which lay at the end of Tovos’ path.

“Sister Zin, can you get us to the Enclave in under about five minutes?” Rassi asked. A part of her hoped the answer would be ‘no’, which would spare her from making her old dream into a disquieting and uncomfortable reality.

“That depends,” Zin said. “Where are they, and why should we go there?”

“They’re twelve klicks directly spinward from here,” Rassi said.

“That would be a hard burn for an auto-transport like this one,” Zin said.

Which meant it was possible but she wasn’t particularly convinced yet.

“Tondu,” Solna said. “She’s there.”

“And she is?” Sali asked, apparently no more convinced than Zin was.

“No one special,” Solna said. “But she snuck Rassi and me half of a silverberry pie after we were kicked out of the Life Day celebration last year.”

“She has a younger brother too. Umbe?” Rassi said, recalling how she’d helped the little boy build a dirt castle once.

“Old Kodi’s there too,” Osdo said.

“An Elder?” Zin asked.

“No. He’s just an old guy. Lives alone but he always makes little droids to help people with tasks,” Osdo said. “He…I used to go talk to him, you know, after I’d mess up an assignment.”

“I went to him too,” Tovos said, his despair turning to something else that Rassi couldn’t quite place.

“Kodi’s nice but you two are stupid,” Felgo said. “I figured out a long time ago to bring food supplies to Grams Xela. She’s as smart as Kodi is and she cooks you good food too.”

“No one here wants to save the Silent Enclave, but we do want to save them,” Solna said.

“Nix did that for us,” Rassi said. “I think she’d want us to do the same for them.”

Zin’s reply was spoken by the auto-transport’s engines and the inertial dampeners which strained as they blasted off.

“Just a warning,” she said when they were a minute into the flight. “I don’t have a ‘stun setting’ on the weapons I’m carrying at the moment, so if anyone there gets any funny ideas and starts shooting at me or you, I will be reducing them to greasy stains on the ground, right?”

“I could give you a few choice targets if you’d like?” Felgo asked. He was joking but only barely so.

Rassi wasn’t concerned about that, in part because she knew the Enclave would be able to sense the far worse threat of the Death Shadows by the time they got there, and in part because she suspected that Felgo’s list would have a pretty fair overlap with her own.

“We haven’t learned that much,” Yanni said. “How are we supposed to fight the Death Shadows? We can’t do that thing Ayli did.”

“I believe that will be my job,” a ghostly skeleton man said.

It was only because they’d had a lifetime of training in controlling their emotions with an iron fist that Tovos’ team didn’t break the circle and leap to the edges of the room.

“Apologies,” Hendel the skeleton man said. “It’s been so long since I’ve dealt with the living regularly that it’s easy to forget how startling my current good looks can be.”

“What is that?” Yanni asked, obviously still considering a retreat to more distant and sensible grounds.

“That’s Hendel,” Rassi said. “He can help us deal with the Death Shadows.”

“He can help us deal with the Death Shadows,” Solna said.

“He can stop an army of them alone?” Tovos asked.

“Not exactly,” Hendel said. “Though, and consider that I’m saying this after what I’ve been turned into, those things are the definition of ‘wrong’, so I’d be delighted to try if it came to that.”

“I guess…I guess I can’t do any less then,” Yanni said, her courage grabbing hold of the entirely reasonable fear she was feeling.

“Our job isn’t going to be to fight the Death Shadows,” Solna said. “We’ve got a much harder task than that.”

“Dismantling the Silent Enclave?” Tovos guessed.

“Eventually, but before that we need to convince them to put right what the wrongs they’ve been part of for centuries now,” Rassi said.

“You’re right,” Hendel said. “That does sound harder. Where are you even going to begin with that?”

“We could dance for them, like Nix and Ayli danced for you,” Rassi said, looking over to Tovos, “Except, I don’t think I can trust them that much.”

“You absolutely shouldn’t,” Tovos said. “Even if all of the Elders fled, there will be people left who know what they were doing, both with the Expunging Rite and with the assassinations and if you open yourself up to them like Nix did for us, they will definitely try to strike you down. If they don’t the rest of the Enclave might pull them to pieces.”

“Wait, assassinations? When did that happen?” Sali asked.

“Whenever the Elder’s needed money,” Tovos said. “It’s what my team was training for, though they never called it that.”

“They told us we could be sent after Jedi sympathizers and people were were natural manipulators of the Xah and were corrupting it,” Osdo said.

“We were supposed to ‘quiet’ them,” Polu said, a note of pained remorse in his voice which Rassi suspected was due to how completely he’d bought in to the euphemism.

“How many other teams like yours does the Enclave have?” Zin asked, a low, suspicious lilt in her voice.

“We’re the only ones,” Yanni said. “It’s meant to be a great honor, so we’re supposed to keep it secret. Our missions too. They’re just scouting runs to ensure no one had detected us, or at least that they story we’re supposed to stick to.”

“They are not the only team,” Sali said.

“Certainly not,” Zin said. “I would estimate at least one other, or possibly two?”

“Definitely two,” Sali said. “For the kind of work they would have been doing you wouldn’t want the same biometrics showing up too often in the periphery of the kill site.”

“And they’ll be more experienced than this team?” Zin asked, without it sounding at all like a question.

“Since it sounds like these guys haven’t carried out a proper assassination yet? I would guess one of their senior teams has ten years of experience on them and the other one twenty. Past that they problem ‘retire’ them.”

Rassi had no idea how Sali could know the inner workings of a secret organization within a completely hidden society, but it didn’t sound like she was guessing about any of the things she said either.

“You leave us to take care of them,” Tovos said. “It’s the least we can do, after, well, everything we’ve done.”

“I don’t think you know what ‘taking care’ of a team of assassins looks like,” Sali said. 

“They won’t see us coming,” Felgo said, nodding in support of his leader.

“And you won’t see them,” Sali said. “Remember, they’ve had more practice at this than you’ve had. Even assassin’s who aren’t mystical Jedi types learn to be more aware than most.”

“You can hide yourselves in the Force, but they will be able to do that as well won’t they?” Zin asked.

“But they won’t be. They’ll be try to defend the Enclave,” Polu said.

“Will they?” Yanni asked. “Or will they be hiding even more deeply than the rest because they have more to hide?”

“I think you already know the answer to that,” Zin said. “Which is why you should leave them to us.”

“To you and Queen Sali?” Yanni asked. “But you can’t hide yourselves in the Xah at all?”

“Don’t have to,” Sali said. “Or did you think being a Pirate Queen meant you had fewer assassins to deal with than normal?”

Rassi tried to imagine what a ‘normal’ amount of assassins was, since it sounded like her assumption of ‘zero’ was somehow incorrect. Before she could arrive at an answer though an interruption arrived.

“I’m afraid we’re going to need you more than they will,” Kelda said and as she and Ravas appeared faintly on the auto-transport.

“What? How are you here?” Sali asked.

“Once we got out of the cloaking field you’re covered by we were able to locate Nix and Ayli,” Ravas said. “And we caught a glimpse of their immediate future.”

“I thought Force visions were untrustworthy?” Zin said.

“They are, usually,” Kelda said. “This one was startling clear though. The shuttle they’re using is going to be destroyed, and you are the only ones who can save them.”

“But you’re going to need a whole lot of pirates to pull it off,” Ravas said.