For five experienced Force Users, taking down a legion of Storm Troopers was not an entirely unreasonable proposition. Even with the cloaking field the Elders of the Silent Enclave were still projecting, Ayli sensed she, Nix, and Lasha could probably manage it. Nulo and Muffvok weren’t quite as significant a part of the equation, but they would likely at least be able to keep themselves safe and could pitch in at unexpected moments to deal with problems before they got out of hand. They could mange it. They could win.

Instead though, they surrendered.

Surrender wouldn’t have been possible before. The Imperials had been under “kill on sight” orders, but with the loss of the proton beam cannon the danger Ayli and her team posed to the Elders and their Imperials masters had reduced substantially.

That alone wouldn’t have been enough to alter the kill order though. Ayli alone was still capable of causing significant damage to both the personnel and infrastructure of the Imperial flagship.

Which she’d been eminently prepared to do before she felt the shift in intention of the troops coming for them.

New orders had been issued and she had a guess as to why.

“They’re going to want to disarm us,” she said.

“That’s going to be harder than they think,” Nix said and Ayli could swear she heard the crackle of lightning behind Nix’s words.

That wasn’t something she wanted for the woman she loved. Drawing power from the Dark Side was as staggeringly effective as it was staggeringly painful. Even if they won free from a situation the Force seemed intent to send them into increasing worse permutations of, Nix would be months or years in regaining the calm center she’d managed to find.

But that wasn’t going to be needed.

The Storm Troopers were going to take them straight to the bridge.

Right past all the automated defenses.

“Drop your weapons!” the lead trooper ordered when they caught up to Ayli’s team.

Nix simply raised her empty hands. She’d clipped her lightsaber to her tool belt where it hung along with a couple hydrospanners, a half dozen diagnostic tools and a few ‘cut and mend’ tools as she called them.

Ayli didn’t have that kind of camouflage for her lightsaber, but she made a show of dropping the stolen Blaster Rifle to the deck.

The Storm Troopers, demonstrably not the brightest of military personnel, seemed fine with that and contented themselves with slapping a set of shackles on Ayli’s team. Or they were until they got to Nulo. 

Most people weren’t familiar with young Hutts. Wrist locks depended on the species in question having notable wrists. Hutts technically did but as, uncharitably, giant space slugs the bones which would have constrainted them into a set of manacles were rather squishy, especially in an adolescent Hutt.

After a few moment of dithering, the Troopers put the manacles on Nulo’s wrists anyways and linked her hoverskiff to one of the Troopers so she couldn’t “make a getaway”.

Ayli wondered if any of them were aware of just how easily a Force user could slip from from a set of manacles, or just what kind of damage she could do even while she was locked into a pair of them. Rather than point any of that out or demonstrate their foolishness however, Ayli held her voice. For the first time in her life, her fight wasn’t with them.

The trip to the bridge would have been a quiet one if not for the near ceaseless pounding of munitions detonating against the Star Destroyer’s deflector shields.

“Most of the time a fleet has picket ships to keep fire off the flagship doesn’t it?” Nix asked.

“Yeah. I saw at least a half dozen of them before we landed,” Ayli said.

“That’s probably down to, what, one or two now?” Nix asked.

“Shut up,” the Storm Trooper behind her said.

“No.” Nix continued walking.

“Shut up or we will blast you all,” the Storm Trooper said and poked her with his Blaster Rifle.

“You won’t,” Nix said. “You need us as hostages. It’s why you were ordered to bring us in alive.”

“They said ‘alive’, not ‘uninjured’, or don’t you care about your little friends?” he trained the Blaster Rifle on Nulo.

“Who do you think has more value, you, a random flunky your bosses can sacrifice for political capital on a whim, or the four of us who are all that are preventing the pirates outside from reducing this ship to space dust?” Nix asked.

Ayli was sure that wasn’t going to be a winning conversational strategy, but then she noticed Nix’s miscount.

There weren’t four of them. Lasha, Nulo, and Muffvok plus Nix and Ayli herself made a five person team.

She’d paused to think about that and watched as the Storm Trooper behind her stepped around her and kept going.

Why would…?

The Force felt awfully still around her.

Ayli frowned.

Nix.

Nix had gone on a expedition to learn new Force techniques.

And stumbled on the Silent Enclave.

Who, of course, she learned from,

Being a thoroughly awful wife, she’d then used what she’d learned about making people stealthy for someone other than herself.

If that didn’t make Ayli love her even more, she would have punched Nix for it.

Being unobserved wasn’t the same as being invisible, but for Ayli’s purposes it was close enough. She kept close to group, passing other patrols and checkpoints by virtual of being ‘part of the crowd’. 

A part of her catalogued every detail, wishing she could somehow hurl the information back to her younger self.

All too soon though, they arrived at the bridge and flights of fancy gave way to the harsh reality before them.

The Elders were, of course waiting for them. As were the senior staff officers of the Imperial remnant. All backed up by as large a contingent of Storm Troopers as could be reasonably squeezed into the space available.

Standing tall over all of them was a holo-projection of Sali.

“As you can see, we have your precious friends,” the Imperial ‘Admiral’ said. “You will cease your attack now or watch as we torture them to death in front of you.”

“She’s technically my Ex,” Nix said, drawing the room’s attention to herself in a manner that was not wonderful for her continued survival but excellent at preserving the cloak she’d thrown over Ayli.

Ayli felt for the edge of the cloak, trying to determine if it would hold long enough for her to close the distance to the Admiral and get a blaster up against his head.

She started to move and felt the attention of the Elders drift towards her.

So probably “no” on taking the Admiral hostage.

“That’s true,” Sali said. “In your favor though, you did introduce me to an upgrade, so I suppose I owe you for that.”

“Ouch, I mean, Zin’s and you are great, but still, upgrade? Ouch,” Nix said, steadfastly refusing to take the small Imperial army around them seriously.

“So what do you think? Should I call off the attack for you?” Sali asked.

“Definitely not,” Nix said. “You know the moment you do, they’ll just shoot us anyways.”

“Sadly, I have seen that happen,” Sali said. “Now if the Admiral were to put you into an escape pod, I’d be willing to order a ceasefire until we collected your pod.”

“That would be a good deal for them. They could probably work out some hyperspace jump coordinates with the time it would buy them,” Nix said and then, because she was indeed truly awful, added. “Except…”

She held up a finger for just a moment before dropping it in time to a tremendous explosion which rocked the entire Star Destroyer.

“Except they don’t have a working hyperdrive anymore,” she said with a smile on their face.

“Execute them!” the Admiral shouted as klaxons blared and emergency lights flashed.

“Hold!”

And everyone froze.

Well, everyone except the Force Users who were present.

Primus Dolon was a wreck of a man, but even if his prime he would not have been able to command Nix, Ayli, or any of the people with them.

The Imperials however? Not renowned for being bastions of willpower or intellect.

“She has done far worse than damage this ship,” Dolon said. He should have been terribly burned, a ruined wreck of a man. Instead, he strode forward from the small crowd of Elders with the strength and vigor of a young man.

Literally.

The cloak the Elders were projecting wasn’t even close to strong enough to hide the stolen lifeforce which screamed through Dolon’s aged frame.

“Silence you!” the Admiral, apparently possessed of at least a modicum of willpower, said. “You’ve already cost us a priceless weapon system. You will sit down and stay quiet until I decide what we’re going to do with you.”

“I don’t think so,” Dolon said and with a gesture twisted the Admiral’s head around more than 180 degrees. “If anyone else thinks they are in charge, please step forward now.”

Bravery, notably, is also not a particular virtue among Imperials, and so quiet was restored, aside from the thud of the Admiral’s body on the deck.

“You will die,” Dolon said, addressing Nix directly. “But we shall survive, and so that may buy you some time.”

“You’ve tried to kill me already,” Nix said. “Didn’t work out so well for you then. You sure you want to try again?”

“Yes, you are strong in the Xah. But your companions? I think they may lack your talents,” Dolon said. “Shall I kill one of the little ones to make my intentions clear? Or shall we negotiate as you came here to?”

“I’m the one you need to be negotiating with,” Sali said. 

Dolon waved his hand again and the holo-projection was cut off.

“You can inform your attack dog of the resolution of our negotiation,” Dolon said. “We both know she will do no more than disable this vessel while you are still alive on it.”

“You might want to listen to the Xah a bit more closely,” Nix said. “Queen Saliandrus is not the sort who takes orders from anyone. Or whose especially long on sentimentality.”

“Then you should make your pleas for your lives quickly then,” Dolon said.

“I don’t think I will,” Nix said. “You seem to be under the assumption that our goal here is to escape when what we really want is to make sure you don’t.”

“Is that so?” Dolon asked. “Then you certainly shouldn’t have come so close to us.”

The cloak dropped.

And the Force ran wild.

Ayli felt Dolon’s attack hit like a thousand sledgehammers and she wasn’t the one it was directed at.

One by one, the Elders of the Silent Enclave sagged as a spectral manifestation of stepped forward from each them and cast twisted vines the Force into Dolon.

Dolon’s assault on Nix was something else though.

He wasn’t trying to kill her.

Her body was unharmed by the Enclave’s strange technique.

Something else was though.

As Ayli watched, light erupted from behind Nix as though it was being pushed out through every pore in her body.

Nix staggered and tried to scream but the relentless pressure of every remaining Elder beating down on her prevented even that.

Lasha, Nulo and Muffvok cast their shackles off and reached out to aid Nix but the three of them were no match for the far larger number of Elders.

So Ayli did what she needed to.

She beheaded Dolon.

Throwing a lightsaber isn’t a difficult trick, and lightsaber blades are exceptionally good at severing flesh.

As she caught the returning blade though, Ayli saw it hadn’t been enough.

Instead of collapsing, Dolon, headless though he was, extended a hand and one of the Imperials collapsed instead. With freshly stolen lifeforce, Dolon knit his head back into his body and turned to Ayli, who stood revealed for all to see.

“You cannot kill me,” he said and directed part of the Elder’s assault against her.

It lessened the pressure against Nix, but not enough. Neither of them, or even both together could overwhelm the sheer magnitude of the attack directed against them.

Ayli felt herself being ripped from her body.

To make room for the souls of the Elders.

They were going to escape by using her as their escape pod!

She fought back, raged, but before she could call on her Dark Side, she heard the voice of her salvation. The voices the Force had promised would arrive in time.

“She can’t kill you,” Kelda said.

“But they can,” Ravas said.

As Death Shadows began to pour onto the Imperial bridge.