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.

The Force is all life and all the connections which life has. It was born with the universe and is able to express itself through all who are a part of it. A stream is a part of the Force, as are the stars and even the billions of barren worlds in the galaxy. It touches all of them and everything beyond, but it only listens and speaks to those who can speak and listen to it.

And when they do speak, they are not speaking to one small part of it, and it is not a tiny spark which speaks back.

“Kelda! Ravas! We need you!”

No voice could speak words loud enough to be heard around a world. No sound could leap from one world to another. And nothing could have shifted through the galaxy to find the two spirits who were endlessly far from Rassi when she called out for aid.

Nothing except for the Force.

Solna sensed what was coming and spun to embrace Rassi and shield her, though Rassi’s growing smile said she wasn’t in any danger at all. Which was fine. Solna was still more comfortable embracing Rassi and protecting her than she would have been anywhere else in the galaxy.

The silence of the crowd was met with silence from both the Dead and the Death Shadows as everyone, even the least Force sensitive felt a vast power moving.

“We’re with you,” Kelda and Ravas whispered from trillions of miles away.

Thunder cracked, shattering the silence and blasting everyone back.

Everyone except Rassi and Solna.

Because the thunder had come for them.

And in the center of the Silence Enclave, stood the Enclave’s oldest and greatest fear.

The Jedi had found them at last.

“I’ve got the Death Shadows,” Ravas said, rising to her full height and taking stock of the situation like a general dumped into the middle of a battlefield. “You find out what they need.” She indicated Solna and Rassi with a nod of her head but Kelda was already headed towards them.

With a rave of her hand, Ravas called the fallen and flagging Dead of Praxis Mar back to their feet and filled them with a renewed vigor before striding towards the abomination Elgonu had become and which Monfi was stalemating against.

“Thank you,” Kelda said, when she reached Rassi and Solna’s position. “We’d gotten a bit bound up. Turns out some people have tricks for dealing with spirits like us.”

“Wh..who is this?” Jilla asked, having carefully placed Rassi between herself and the shining blue Force Ghost. That the shining Blue Force Ghost was wearing Jedi robes was possibly the strongest conceivable mark against her, but the calm and peace she radiated offset that to a surprising degree.

“A friend,” Kelda said, offering Jilla slow bow of respect.

“At a time when we could dearly use one,” Rassi said, before turning to Kelda. “We can’t stop the Death Shadows. Not all of them. And I don’t know if the Enclave can learn how quickly enough.”

They couldn’t. Solna knew that. The Enclave wasn’t starting from the right place. They were all terrified and desperate. Their focus was, reasonably, on saving themselves, not on bringing peace to the “monsters” that were menacing them. It wasn’t likely that many others would repeat Elgonu’s foolish mistake and warp themselves into Corruptions in the Xah, but the ones who were the deepest in denial, or locked in their anger would probably stumble in that direction. As for the rest, even the ones who might be open to try Rassi and Solna’s approach would be fighting both their own terror and a lifetime of training against ‘manipulating the Xah’.

Solna could feel how much she’d changed from them. How embracing the Force had placed her so far apart from who and what the others of the Silent Enclave were and how far they would need to go to reach the spot she had.

All of it highlighted how long she’d been walking the path she had.

Her near breakdown on the ship when they’d fled the Enclave had been a bolt of lightning setting fire to kindling she’d been gathering all her life. The sheer fact that she’d been able to, unconsciously, call Nix to their aid showed just how far outside the Silent Enclave’s strictures she’d always lived.

Unlike Rassi though, Solna had been able to hide the communion she had with the Force. Even from herself. Though on reflection, she had to wonder how much she’d really been hiding.

Part of her had always known. The part which had dismissed her discussions with the Force as ‘just little bits of imagination’, or “what-if’s she was even in a situation where she really really needed to ‘risk corruption’ for the good of the whole Enclave”. 

That she was currently in exactly such a situation and that it was far worse than she’d ever imagined somehow filled her with resolve rather than terror though. She wasn’t going to lose here. She couldn’t.

Kelda closed her eyes for moment, becoming even more translucent than usual.

“Some of these lost ones are still bound to the fragments of who they once were,” Kelda said without opening her eyes. “Otherwise are voiceless and truly empty. All that remains in them is the hunger retribution. The lost ones will be drawn to you, but the voiceless ones cannot be given peace.”

“How can we stop those one then?” Rassi asked.

“They won’t stop,” Solna said, listening to the same whispers Kelda was hearing. “Not until they’ve destroyed the ones responsible for their destruction.”

“That…if there is another path to laying those to rest, I’m not certain we will be given the time to discover it,” Kelda said.

“Does that mean, we have to die?” Jilla asked.

“No.” Solna, Rassi, and Kelda answered in unison.

“We can hold those off while you all get away again,” Solna said. “The Silent Enclave has hidden from the Death Shadows for centuries. You can manage it again.”

“If no more Death Shadows are created, their attention won’t be drawn to you as easily,” Kelda said. “That is what began this for each of them and it was the botched Expunging Ritual which your Primus attempted which drew them this time.”

“If it was Dolon’s fault, why aren’t they chasing him still?” Rassi asked.

“I’ve been trying to figure that out myself,” Solna said. “There’s blood on his hands and all the other Elders, and they all left.”

“Not all of them,” Honored Jolu speaking for the first time as she joined the crowd which was slowly forming around Kelda.

“You?” Rassi asked, the tremble in her voice giving away a grief that Solna was surprised to find echoed in herself.

“I am Primus now,” Jolu said. “I am the one they are seeking.”

“Are you?” Kelda asked, her gaze a surgical scalpel as she inspected Jolu.

“The Silent Enclave is mine to govern, mine to utilize, and my responsibility,” Jolu said. “The credits and debts accrued by our past rest on me.”

“The you can save us?” Jilla asked, a question which brought a chorus of understanding nods from the rest of the Enclave.

“No,” Kelda said. “She can’t.”

“I can buy them time,” Jolu said.

“Like hell you can,” Rassi said.

Solna had never noticed before how much larger Rassi was the Honored…or Primus Jolu.

Jolu had always been larger than life. Their mentor and Elder. The one who understood and would always be stronger than they were.

But Rassi had grown, both in body and in spirit. Physically, she could have folded Jolu up like a ragdoll, but it was the fire within Rassi which truly dwarfed the Enclave’s new Primus.

The Enclave, however, was not happy to have a potential source of salvation torn away from them.

“She’s right,” Solna said, stepping forward. “Jolu can die for you, but it won’t save you. She’s not enough.”

“I am more than you have ever known,” Jolu said, rising to her full height.

Rassi laughed.

“You are. And that’s still not enough,” she said. “None of these Shadows are looking for you. Are they?”

Jolu looked away and didn’t answer.

“What does she mean?” Jilla asked Jolu. “What did you do?”

“It’s what she didn’t do,” Solna said, seeing at last what Rassi had perceived.

“She’s never been a part of an Expunging Ritual,” Rassi said. “It’s why she stayed with you here. None of the Death Shadows will be satisfied with only killing her.”

Solna saw a wave of confusion pass over the crowd, and guessed it’s source.

“The Death Shadows will still kill her. Just like they’ll kill all of us,” Solna explained. “Their existence encompasses hatred for everything the Silent Enclave is because we all supported the people who destroyed them.”

“The ones who have nothing but retribution left though? The ones we can’t give peace to? They’ll only stop when they devour someone who invoked the ritual which created them,” Rassi said and turned to Kelda. “Right?”

“They seek balance,” Kelda said. “With nothing left of what they were, they will only cease when the means of their creation has been destroyed forever.”

“Which is why I can lead them away,” Jolu said. “I know the Rite.”

“And have never used it,” Kelda said, taking Jolu’s hands with kindness in her words and gesture. “Knowledge is not evil or good. It is the actions we take we can be judged on, and yours speak well of you. In this regards at least.”

“How do we survive then?” Jilla asked. “Can we still get away?”

“There’s a problem with that,” Tovos said, limping into the circle with the rest of his crew in a similar shape. Behind them the other team of assassins was hobbling forward looking even worse for the wear.

“They destroyed the ships first this time,” Degu, the leader of the other team said, as two members of his team carried him forward. “We thought they were just watching our fight. But they weren’t.”

Solna heard the anguish and despair in his voice and felt it pass through the rest of the Enclave.

They’d fled across the stars and it hadn’t been enough. Scattering on foot was all that was left to them.

And what would be the point?

There was no escape.

In the distance the Abomination roared, even the talents of Monfi and Ravas proving to be insufficient to fully overcome it.

“Let me do this,” Jolu said. “I may not have used the Ritual, but I knew it was being used. I am the only Elder left. It is my right to bear this burden.”

“I’m sorry, but you can’t,” Rassi said. “Not alone. This is something we face together, or not at all.”

“But they’ll destroy us. Nothing is stopping them!” It was a new voice who spoke, a man’s voice Solna couldn’t place and whose identity didn’t matter in the sense that he spoke for everyone in the Enclave.

“Maybe nothing will. Maybe nothing can,” Rassi said. “Maybe all we can do is fall together, but let me ask you this; is there someone here you would be willing to fall with. Someone who you would spend your life for? Is there anyone who matters so much to you, that you would give everything you have for them?”

Rassi reached over, took Solna’s hand and held it high.

“I’ve found the person I would give everything for,” she said.

And then she took one of Jolu’s free hands.

“And she’s not the only one,” Rassi said. “Reach out to each other. I didn’t come back here to watch you die. I know how much we matter to each other. Reach out to the people you refuse to lose. All of you matter.”

Solna cast her right hand out and felt Yanni and Osdo take it.

Throughout the Enclave people began turning to each.

And hands began clasping hands.

In twos and threes and even more, a web was formed.

The simple gesture spoke volumes as with one voice the Enclave communicated the simplest words to one another.

And the Silence was at last broken.

The next attack came when Nix least expected it. Which was so sadly predictable that the two Elders who led it were dead before they had a chance to cry out.

“To be fair, dropping down from the catwalk behind us was a good ambush,” Ayli said, shutting off her lightsaber.

The Elder’s hadn’t been the ones to jump off the catwalk and make the first assault. Three of their empowered Storm Troopers had been poised to led the charge, and likely would have been backed up by the five others who were moving to get into position in case the ambush failed.

They’d been quite and, within the limits of Nix’s abilities, impossible to sense in the Force.

What they hadn’t accounted for was that Ayli didn’t need to use the Force to be aware of attack lines and ambush spots. It had required precisely a single glance up to the catwalk and a frown to communicate to Nix the danger they were in.

It had then taken Nix a single thought to breech the fuel wall in the flight pack of the Storm Trooper at the center of the formation. A significant amount of lift is required to hoist an armored body into the air and keep it there for an extended time. Turning the fuel required to produce that lift was only advisable when you were well away from the fireball which followed.

Nix and her people were.

The Elders were not.

Why the Elders hadn’t donned armor was an interesting, if no longer relevant question. Contrary to the reputation it had for flimsiness, the Storm Troopers armor was sufficient to save them from the blast. Well, the ones who had another trooper or two to act as shields at least. The Elder’s had been at the center of the pack and had been making very sure the Force would provide no danger warnings to anyone. 

The few Storm Troopers who’d survived had, despite their sudden depowering, rocketed down at their targets and opened fire indiscriminately. As Nix had learned though, firing blaster bolts at a Force User with a tool capable of deflecting them was a bad idea in general and a worse one when the Force user in question had been drilled by both a Jedi and a former-Sith mentor in sending attacks back where they’d come from.

“We’ve always avoided using Light Savers to avoid being confused with the Jedi,” Lasha said. “I’m thinking we may want to reevaluate that policy though.”

“We can show you how to make them,” Ayli said. “If you don’t start with a processed crystal, it makes for a nice workout.”

“And if you do, the rest of the circuitry takes about five minutes to put together,” Nix said.

“So why do people think they’re magical?” Nulo asked.

“Probably because anyone who tried to parry a blaster bolt without training in the Force would be laughed out of the afterlife,” Nix said. “Any sane person brings a blaster to a blaster fight.”

“No. Sane people bring a starship to a blaster fight,” Ayli said. “Anyone carrying one of these around is saying they don’t mind if someone confuses them with a Jedi, which has been a bad idea for a long time.”

“Since the Empire?” Nulo asked.

“Since the Jedi were founded I think,” Ayli said. “That’s the problem with being a troubleshooter, trouble gets good at shooting back, and if you’re just pretending to be one, you’ll run into troubles that’re way out of your league.”

“Speaking of troubles, the other Elders are going to have felt those two die,” Nix said. “So they’ll know exactly where we are.”

“Do you think they’ll start running?” Lasha asked.

“I think they’ve run as far as they can,” Nix said. “If they’ve been working for the Imperials, and there’s no chance they fled here otherwise, then this is the strongest ally they have access to.”

“And Imperials do not make for forgiving allies. They’re probably be tolerating the Elders for concessions the Elders gave them like this whole Force-powered Storm Trooper thing they can do. If the Elder’s try to abandon them and the Imperials survive, the Elders will have turned an ally into an ugly, ugly enemy.” Ayli’s tone suggested that she’d seen that happen more than once.

“They’ll still be on the bridge then,” Lasha said. “Which we know is guarded by about a legion of Storm Troopers.”

“And the automated defenses. Storm Troopers are vulnerable to misdirections and aren’t generally the brightest of sorts,” Ayli said. “The automated defenses, we really need someone to splice into for us though because they will absolutely rip us to shreds.”

“If we can find a working terminal would you be able to do it?” Nix asked, recalling the design schematics for the various types of Star Destroyers and considering where the closest terminals with the right access might be.

“Doubt it,” Ayli said. “I lost some of my stuff when the Lich’s droid grabbed me, and even if I had it, most of the codepacks I had are older.”

“Knowing Imperials standards, I’d be shocked if they’d ever updated the systems. In fact given that they’re systems are still working and they don’t have an Imperial starport to do overhauls at, I’ll wager hard credits they’re running old code on everything here.”

“I’d still need better stuff than what I’ve got to splice it though,” Ayli said.

“We have some tools that could manage it,” Lasha said. “But they’re back at our home. This wasn’t meant to be a mission with Imperial entanglements.”

“If we can’t turn the automated systems off, then maybe we can get them to come to us instead,” Nix said, not particularly liking the plan she’d come up with but not having a better one to offer in its place.

“The Elders and the Imperial command will agree on one thing unanimously,” Ayli said. “And that’s that their own lives are more important than anything else. I don’t think we can trick them to put themselves in any significant sort of peril.”

“Yeah. I expect that to be true too,” Nix said. “Which is why we’ll need to let them see how much peril they’re in already.”

“We’re pretty formidable, but I think they have a sense of what our limits are,” Ayli said.

“I think we can make that work in our favor,” Nix said. “Remember how Kelda and Ravas brought Sali in to help us because they’d seen us being killed by a ship exploding?”

“Yeah. There’s a proton beam cannon onboard the flagship,” Ayli said and stopped. Nix watched as understanding dawned in Ayli’s eyes.

“You’re thinking to threaten their prize weapons to lure them out?” Lasha asked.

“Not exactly,” Nix said, still hesitant to even voice the idea.

“She’s planning to blow it up,” Nix said.

“That will cause us certain problems if we’re still on the ship won’t it?” Lasha asked.

“Or within a staggering large radius of it,” Nix said. “Which is why I only want them to believe we’re going to blow it up.”

“And how would you lead them to this belief?” Lasha asked.

“But setting the engine’s power drive to feed into weapon and breaking the cutoffs which would let them stop it.” Nix knew what her own reaction would be to discovering someone had done that as the Elders had, arguably, an even stronger self-preservation instinct than she did.

“Would that bring them to us though?” Lasha asked. “Or aren’t they more likely to flee to the escape pods.”

“Assuming they or the Imperials know anything about ship design? No. Escape pods won’t get them far enough away, and would be easy pickings for the pirates, who might or might not take them into the custody rather than blasting them out of the sky for a laugh.” Nix was reasonably sure any pirates Sali had conned into helping them would be of the ‘take prisoners and sell them to the new Republic’ variety but Sali had been pressed for time.

“So then their own real option will be to deal with us themselves? Ah, yes, I suppose it would be. If they brought along a legion of Storm Troopers, we might think the odds are hopeless and blow the weapon up immediately,” Lasha said, understanding the shape of Nix’s plan at last.

“We’ve dealt with the strike teams they sent. If they come for us again, they won’t make the mistake of coming against us in twos and fours anymore,” Ayli said.

“Yeah, I suspect it will be an all or nothing sort of thing,” Nix said. “They won’t like having to do their own dirty work, but they’ll like the idea of being atomized a whole lot less. Or am I missing something?”

Ayli and Lasha considered the question for a moment but it was Nulo who spoke up first.

“Could they turn to a tech solution to the problem? Like shutting down the engines, or ejecting the weapon out into space? Or venting all the air in this section of the ship?”

“Venting the air would kill all of their own personnel in whatever area we’re in,” Nix said.

“So they will definitely do that. We’ll need to find some space suits for us before we make it clear what we’re planning,” Ayli said.

“Shutting down the engines would be possible too, but that would be its own solution to the problem,” Nix said.

“Because there’s a bunch of pirates out there and they need power to keep them from boarding?” Nulo asked.

“Exactly. After they stabbed me and shot my wife, I’m less opposed to Sali’s friends coming in with plasma casters and cooking the whole lot of them it turns out.”

“The pirates would suffer significant casualties in the process.” Lasha didn’t seem to be arguing against the idea, merely pointing out an easily overlooked aspect of it.

“Not if we lend a hand,” Nix said. “After all if they shutdown power to the ship, the automated defenses go away too.”

“What about ejecting the beam cannon? Can they do that?” Lasha asked.

“It’s too valuable,” Nix said. “Those things cost a fortune to make, even if all they can really accomplish is the same as serious set of bombing runs. It would have to be a retrofit, and probably a shoddy one, which says if they’d put anything like explosive decouplers in at strategic points so they could jump the cannon’s assemble any jump away from it, they’d probably have lost it already. The cannon itself will be hard welded onto the super structure and its support assembly will be patched into the power grid with redundant connecting seals to make sure nothing comes loose when they fire.”

“Then it looks like we’ve got a plan,” Ayli said. “Let’s make it happen!”

—–

They did not have a plan.

What they had was a perfectly viable strategy up until the point where it wasn’t.

Getting Nix and Ayli a set of spacesuits was simple enough. A handful of Storm Troopers were easily distracted from a supply depot and the ones who were rushing to intercept them or on alert were not ready for five Force Users to ruin their day.

Things went well with navigating the Star Destroyer down to the lowest decks where the cannon was attached. There were more Storm Trooper patrols to avoid or fight through, but none of them were accompanied by an Elder, which seemed to confirm that the Elders were no longer willing to risk themselves, even in numerically superior groups.

Nix allowed herself a moment of hopefulness that her premonitions were only anxiety but a part of her knew better. She’d been listening to the Force for her whole life and she couldn’t deny the whispers which were making through any longer when they arrived at the main junction point for the proton beam cannon.

Only the void of space awaited them where an entire deck of the ship should have been.

Nix had been right, she saw. There hadn’t been any preplanned charges capable of ejecting the cannon. Instead the super structure had been ripped apart as though several powerful Force Users had bent their will towards removing the one thing which could threaten their position still.

Rassi had always thought that Solna was a genius, a prodigy of Silence, but hearing her speak so profoundly via the Force dispelled that notion. Solna wasn’t a genius of Silence. She was simply a genius.

Without words or violence of any sort, she’d undone one of the Death Shadows. She hadn’t killed it. That was impossible because the Death Shadows weren’t alive to start with. They were screaming voids left where a life had once been.

What Solna had given it was peace. And restoration. And a place in the Force.

Looking out at the stunned faces of the Silent Enclave, Rassi could hear nothing from them but could feel the swell of disbelief.

They’re world was shifting under them. They’d been told, everyone one of them, since birth, to only every listen and never speak to the Xah, never commune with the Force. They’d been lied to. At every turn. Whenever the Elder’s needed something, the Force had been turned against them and the act scrubbed from their memories. 

That couldn’t have been the life they had. None of them wanted to believe that. No one wanted to be a victim like that. Or have their beliefs they rooted themselves in crumble away.

Many in crowd were pushing back, grasping denial like a cudgel to beat back the truth that threatened to destroy everything they depended on.

None of that was surprising to Rassi. She couldn’t imagine the Silent Enclave believing the news of what had been hidden from them. Not when it had worked so well for some of them so long. She’d been unique, in a sense, in that the Silent Enclave had never worked for her. Even so though, there were parts of her, voices of doubt and fear which questioned what she was doing and warned of dire consequences.

Being afraid was never enjoyable, and it didn’t matter that she’d had a lot of experience with it. None of the times she’d been afraid while growing up made the fear in her any less. Where fear had chipped away at the bedrock of her heart, she was still as wobbly as ever.

What let her stand and face her former people wasn’t experience or raw courage.

It was Solna.

And Nulo. And Muffvok. And Lasha. And Kelda and Ravas.

And Nix.

They’d shown her what a better future looked like.

And they’d believed in.

She could face the crowd before her, because she wasn’t alone, and never had been.

And the surprising part, the part she hadn’t been ready for at all, were all the people in the crowd who started moving to stand with her.

“I don’t want to die,” Jilla, a girl only a few years older than Rassi said. Jilla had been mean to Rassi a few times, but not so exceptionally that Rassi could recall even the general details of the encounters. The Jilla who walked up to Rassi did seem to remember though, each step which brought them closer together driven as much by sorrow and shame as it was by hope at Rassi’s words.

“Good. Let’s get out of her together then!” Rassi said holding up her hand for a fist bump.

Jilla did not fistbump her.

She cast her arms around Rassi in the sort of hug that precisely one person had ever given her in her time in the Silent Enclave.

The look on Rassi’s face must have been priceless. Rassi knew this because of the insufferable grin Solna shot her direction.

Before Rassi had time to figure out if she was supposed to hug Jilla back, Jilla pulled away, took a step back and said, “Thank you. But how? I can’t do what she did.” She nodded over towards Solna.

Solna whose answer was interrupted by three more of the Death Shadows breaking through the ranks of the Praxis Mar Dead whose protective perimeter was shrinking steadily under the onslaught of the Death Shadows.

“Trust the Xah!” Solna shouted, throwing herself in front of one of the Death Shadows.

That was definitely the first step, but Rassi knew it wasn’t going to be enough. There was one far more vital action they needed to take.

“Let the Xah help you!” she screamed as a tumult of sound erupted from the formerly ‘Silent’ Enclave.

“How…how do you we do that?” Jilla was trembling with fear, but she wasn’t leaving Rassi’s side, which saved her life.

The second of the Death Shadows came directly for her and it was up to Rassi to stand before it.

That was somehow easier than speaking to the Enclave had been though.

“Like this,” Rassi said and felt the rivers of the Force around her.

There was so much life within her, so many reasons to live, and so many people she was connected to.

The Death Shadow represented the end of all of that. It’s mere existence spoke of lives broken and ended, reason turned to horror and tragedy, and the fragility of all connections.

Rassi opened herself to the Death Shadow’s pain. She couldn’t deny it, the violation of a life it stood for was too real and too present to pretend it had never happened, or that she could simply ignore it.

Rassi couldn’t deny what the Death Shadow was and what it meant, but she could encompass it. Draw it in and show it how it was only a part of an even greater truth.

Lives end, but that is only one moment in them against so many others. Against the shattering final loss stands every moment of joy, of wonder, of hope, of humor, and love. 

And not only those. 

Holding out her hand to Jilla, Rassi invites the older girl to join her.

Rassi and Jilla had never been friends, had never even been kind to one another, but even so there was a still a bond there. They shared a sense of what a community was, and what people should do for each other. They knew both believed what had been done to the Death Shadows was unforgivable, and that what the Death Shadows were doing was wrong and had to be resisted. 

And standing together, the veils between Jilla ands Rassi  were tearing away. Jilla had never understood that Rassi wasn’t the person or the problem the Elders made her out to be, and Rassi had never imagined that Jilla might possess the courage to rise beyond the life she’d been forced into.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Jilla said.

It’s time to go. Time to rest. We’ll take care of things from here. It’s not your burden anymore, Rassi said, speaking only through the Force and enunciating each word loud enough that the Death Shadow couldn’t deny them.

It’s time was done, and was yet to come again. The pieces it once held belonged together again. They could be part of the cycle of the Force once more. It didn’t need to hold them apart. That was causing it more suffering than taking the risk that it might live again once more someday.

On the other side of the crowd, a very different encounter with a Death Shadow played out however.

“No. You don’t get to take him. He’s mine and I’ll kill you first!” Elgonu, one of the older members of the Enclave yelled. Rassi knew him largely because it was assumed he was only a year or so away from the joining the Elders. He was an unremarkable man, who Rassi tended to avoid because he spent most of his time lecturing people about obscure (and Rassi suspect largely imaginary) tales of crimes against the Enclave by the Jedi, the Galactic Empire, Wookies, and whatever other group or people he felt like railing against.

As the Death Shadow she was dealing with faded away into the Force, Rassi felt the surge of anger rising within Elgonu and started to yell a warning to him.

But it was already too late.

Elgonu lashed out with the Xah. Not Force Lighting. And not an Expunging ritual. Just a wild and uncontrollable surge of anger and force to destroy the Death Shadow which had been heading for his adult son.

The Death Shadow switched course immediately, the blast of power doing precisely nothing to it.

The people around Elgonu were not so lucky though. The clumsy attack hurled the  six people closest time him away, sending three of them crashing in a wall and the other three (including both of his sons) into the dias the crowd was gathered around.

That left Elgonu alone in the middle of a small clearing at the edge of the crowd.

He lashed out again, but it again did nothing, despite the growing anger behind the attacks.

His third attempt was cut short when the Death Shadow reached him. Each of Elgonu’s attack had been in blatant violation of the norms of the Silent Enclave – he was clearly corrupting the Xah – but Rassi hadn’t understood what that really meant until the Death Shadow poured itself into Elgonu and he continued to fight.

In place of being brutally murdered, something much worse happened.

Elgonu managed to truly corrupt the Xah, just like the Elders had always warned them could happen.

From Elgonu’s perspective, Rassi was sure the difference was hard to see. Where the assassin who’d been killed by a Death Shadow had died a gruesome death though, Elgonu lived. 

Sort of. 

The assassin’s Xah, the spirit which was who and what they really were, had passed immediately into the Force on the destruction of his body. Rassi wasn’t sure if the assassin was ‘at peace’ exactly, it felt like it was probably possible to carry regrets into the Force, but the assassin’s spirit was at the very least no longer connected to any suffering or pain.

Elgonu was not so lucky.

He lived, but only in the sense that his shattered and ruptured body was still shambling around with something that had once been a person’s spirit torn and twisted up in it.

From what Rassi could sense, any spark of personality had been as shredded as the Xah was around the Death Walker. All that remained was a twisted, raging monstrosity which was devouring itself and a moment from devouring everyone else.

“I think this one’s mine,” Monfi said, leaping from the building where he’d taken down one of the assassin’s who’d been lining up for a shot on Rassi the lifetime of two minutes previously. “Also, don’t do what this guy did. It’s not what Rassi and Solna are doing.”

Rassi appreciated the support, but saw the problem before them. The one she could have solved. Except that she didn’t have time.

She could give the Enclave an example of how they could live. She could even convince some of them to listen to her.

But they weren’t going to be able to do what she could.

They hadn’t spent their lives with so deep a connection to the Force that their biggest problem was that they simply had to speak to it sometimes, despite that meant ‘being loud’ and getting punished for it. 

That meant that even if the people of the Enclave were willing to throw away the prohibitions they’d lived under, and only some of them were, they simply didn’t have the skill with speaking to the Force to bring enough of it into the conversation with one Death Shadow, much less the army of them that was about to break through the rapidly collapsing ranks of the ghosts who were trying to protect them.

“We need to call for help,” Solna said, at Rassi’s side again, along with more and more of the Enclave.

“Who else is there?” Jilla asked. “The Elders deserted us. Do you have more friends like that one?” She pointed towards where Monfi was battling with the Death Walker and preventing it from devouring the retreating members of the crowd.

“Not like that one,” Rassi said before raising her voice and calling out, “Kelda! Ravas! We need you!”

Solna felt five threats against Rassi diminish to four and then three. Three assassins was still plenty to end her friend’s life though and Solna wasn’t sure how she was going to stop them all.

Before she could though, they ran out of time.

Not her. Not Rassi. Not even the assassins.

All of them. Everyone in the Silent Enclave had missed that their brief window of safety had closed early.

The Death Shadows were in the camp.

Solna froze.

Just like everyone else.

Still.

Silent.

The instinct of a prey animal when it was caught with only the barest hint of cover, but taken to a supernatural level.

No one breathed. The wind which blew with the Death Shadows arrival carried the sound of no whispers, no creaking bones, and no heartbeats. 

It was an unsustainable state. 

Like one of their dances, there was only so long anyone could hold themselves in perfect stillness and silence. Some few might have the control and determination to go beyond the point of no return and avoid the Death Shadows by carrying themselves into a silent death, but a far larger number were going to break and gasp for breath long before then.

And then things would get loud.

From freeze to flight, people were going to scream. They were going to run. 

And they were going to die anyways.

Solna could feel a creeping miasma in the Xah, the curdled blood stench of lives cut short and a beckoning abyss.

The Lich’s tomb had felt like that. 

Death hadn’t come yet, but the unnatural carnage that awaited them would birth a nexus to the Dark Side which would last until all memory of the Silent Enclave had long since faded from the galaxy.

Rassi stepped forward and Solna bit back the urge to scream.

She could not let Rassi be the first one to fall.

But that wasn’t Rassi’s plan.

Solna saw that and stepped forward with her, raising the crystal she carried which matched the one Rassi held aloft.

“Hey,” Rassi whispered, breaking the silence as effectively as a gong.

“We could use a hand now,” Solna said, every eye in the crowd on her.

From the crystals they carried, a nightmare poured forth. The dead of another world. Captured by cruelty and locked in suffering for an age and more.

Solna knew how it looked to the Silent Enclave. She could see and feel the terror in them rise as a new, more visibly horrifying threat rose from the black clouds that billowed from her hand and Rassi’s. She couldn’t blame them either. The Dead of Praxis Mar did not, for the most part, appear as they had in life, but rather stood as the centuries of torment had shaped them to be.

The Silent Enclave was missing something though.

The spectres before them were a nightmare, but who they were going to be a nightmare for was still an open question.

“There are a lot more of the Shadows here than at the tradeport,” Hendel the skeleton said.

“Can you hold them back? We just need a bit more time,” Rassi asked, her gaze fixed somewhere beyond the crowd.

The Death Shadows had drawn back in a wave at the arrival of the Praxis Mar Dead, but like the tide, Solna could feel their presence swelling for a return.

“Don’t know for how long, but yeah, holding out against something horrible isn’t exactly unusual for us,” Hendel said and with a wave of his hands the spectres spread through the crowd breaking the silence with gasps of surprise and cries of fear.

That was all it took to bring the Death Shadows surging back.

The clash between the two, the Shadows and the Dead was not a silent one. Each screamed louder than Solna could have ever imagined was possible and in their own uniquely disquieting manner.

Where the Dead roared with centuries of pent up rage and suffering, the Shadows’ cries rang out from an unfillable well of agony and hunger.

“So what will it be?” Rassi asked, speaking not just to Jolu but the crowd as a whole. “Are you going to let someone here kill me, or are you going to listen?”

Incredibly, Solna felt two of the assassin’s rising to take their shot.

She didn’t want to kill anyone else, but letting Rassi be hurt wasn’t even vaguely a choice.

Come to me, she called to one of the Death Shadows and reached out with the Force, drawing it past the perimeter of the Dead.

With one hand, she caught a blaster bolt an inch from Rassi’s head – or really the Force did. She’d surrendered herself completely to it. The only future she wanted was one where they could be together. Whatever the Force needed from her, it could have.

As for the assassin?

“That one is yours,” she said aloud, pointing to the roof of a nearby shed the assassin had perched on.

The Death Shadow flowed around Solna, touching her face, her shoulder, her arms.

She understood it.

Her heart was not gentle. Or peaceful. She wasn’t willing to turn the Force on a living person, but she did want to see the assassin die.

Had she become something like the people who Expunged the Death Shadow?

Should it take her too?

The Death Shadow wasn’t precisely a sapient being. It was the void where a sapient should have been. What moved it wasn’t a desire from vengeance or rage at what had happened to it. It’s actions were somewhat mechanical in nature, guided only by the echoes of the person it had once been.

“Take me as well, if you need,” Solna said. “But don’t let any of these people hurt her.”

Solna would have been lying is she said the desire for vengeance which the Shadows were lacking didn’t burn bring in her heart, but more important than that, far more important, was that Rassi be protected, and she really would give anything to make sure of that it seemed.

It should have been terrifying, to feel the embrace of death tracing chill lines across her flesh, but there wasn’t any fear in Solna’s heart.

All she felt was proud.

“I don’t think so,” Rassi said, drawing the Death Shadow away from Solna and leaving everyone, even the Death Shadow stunned. “You’re not here for her. And taking anyone how you want to take them won’t fill in what’s missing from you.”

Solna was too slow and too stunned to stop the next blaster bolt. Part of her objected in outraged denial. How could anyone possibly be so stupid as to keep trying to kill a girl who was trying to save everyone?

The attack didn’t quite work out how the last assassin was expecting though.

Solna and Rassi hadn’t come to the Enclave entirely of their own volition. They’d been following the flow of the Force, and Rassi was still quite calmly centered within it.

With a wave of her hand, and a tidal wave of backing from the Force, she batted the blaster bolt away.

That, unfortunately, required releasing the Death Shadow.

Which hadn’t exactly heard the words Rassi had spoken.

It merely sensed someone who was exactly like the ones it hungered for.

The Shadow didn’t cross the distance between Rassi and the assassin. It merely took one step forward and then was beside the assassin.

What happened next was the sort of thing the adults in the crowd shouldn’t have seen, much less the children. Many of them knew the assassin. He’d been a member of the community for fifty years. He’d taught a number of them basic self defense techniques. He’d played Sabbac with others. He’d even won the yearly prize for Garsho Chili for the last five years.

And he’d been an unrepentant murderer.

The cruelty and callousness which lived inside him did not remain there for another instant longer though. Pretty much nothing did when the Death Shadow turned him completely inside out and, while the process started in the blink of an eye, it, sadly for everyone, did not finish that quickly.

From the pile of gore, the Death Shadow arose, larger and screaming louder than ever.

“I’ve got this,” Solna said, with no idea how she was going to hold back the Death Shadow she’d pulled through the ever weakening perimeter of the Praxis Mar Dead. “Tell them what they need to know.”

Rassi began speaking, uninterrupted by assassins at last, and told the gathered crowd about what the expunging rites really were. Her words would have fallen on hardened hearts and unfriendly ears but everyone in the Enclave could feel how the Xah flowed through her. 

Could feel her not as a corrupter of the Xah, but as the voice of the Xah, moving with it and moved by it but without exerting the pressure to move them which they had all grown unconsciously accustomed to whenever an Elder spoke.

When she turned to speaking of how they had been raised to have no defenses so they could be more easily controlled, a wave of denial and outrage arose. 

That was impossible, they couldn’t have been tricked like that! 

The Elders got their positions through experience and oneness with the Xah!

They had defenses! The Xah was their ally. Their ally they were taught never to call on. And which would decide when they lived and died as was natural. As was right!

The Xah which was screaming at them through Rassi to LIVE!

The Xah didn’t want them to die.

So why had the Elders left?

And why couldn’t they be like Rassi?

She wasn’t anything special? She was terrible at being silent! Everyone knew that! She wasn’t anything special, so why was the Xah speaking through her? 

And why wasn’t Honored Jolu speaking at all?

The rock solid denial began to crack under those doubts but the outrage didn’t diminish, it merely began to shift its target.

Which wasn’t an especially good thing from Solna’s point of view since the outrage seemed to be feeding the Death Shadows and driving them into an even  greater degree of frenzy.

It didn’t work out like you hoped, did it? The question wasn’t formed with words. Solna put it together from the empathy she was able to piece together for the Death Shadow.

It didn’t respond with understanding, but it did pause, which was good enough to begin with.

What’s consuming you, the emptiness, it wasn’t filled at all by that was it? She wasn’t blaming or admonishing the Shadow. She wanted to find a path forward for the two of them, because the same abyssal need to hurt people yawned wide in her heart as well.

The Death Shadow did not want empathy though. Or kindness. Or a path forward. It’s nature, all that was left to it, was to destroy.

But Solna had felt its touch. She knew the memories that were lost to it yearned for something more.

For rest. For peace. For justice.

It wanted to leave behind a world where it would never have existed.

What was isn’t what will be. We can learn from what happened. We can see what becomes of our actions. We can do better.

The thoughts called some of the Death Shadows memories back, but with them came the capacity to deny Solna as well.

People don’t learn. They repeat the same mistakes over and over. And what does it matter if they can do better, when what was done is unforgivable?

Everything changes. Even the things we think are forever. Even the worse things. Our power is in carrying the things we love with us, and learning from the things we leave behind.

Solna felt like she was hearing the words as much as speaking them.

Was the Xah speaking through her too? Or had she been thinking about her place and purpose since her old life was lost to her for more reasons than she’d known?

Somewhere in Rassi’s speech, she’d made her points and fallen silent.

So that everyone could watch what Solna was doing.

And could hear what she was saying.

The Death Shadow could not change. It was a crime of the past which could never be left behind.

You don’t need to be bound to the suffering others inflicted on you, Solna said. You don’t need to forgive them, but you can let them go and embrace the new life that’s before you.

Resting her hands on the Death Shadow’s chest, she let the Force flow through her and carry it away to where all the scattered fragments of the person it had once been were waiting for it.

It wasn’t the first time Nix had stood in the wreckage of a starship. If she was feeling honest, it wasn’t even the tenth time she’d stood in the wreckage of a starship that she’d been responsible for. 

All things told though, it wasn’t really so bad. She wouldn’t even need much of a crew to get the broken viewports structurally sound again. Maybe an hour and a couple lifter droids? The rest of the officers lounge was, maybe, a bit worse of a job. The security door was a complete loss, as was all the furniture and the entertainment electronics. Even the comm system was trashed and those could be a devil to route the cabling for on an Imperial ship.

“You don’t have to fix this place up you know,” Ayli said, shaking Nix from her reverie.

“Oh, I know,” Nix said. They’d been talking about not letting the Imperials escape, which Nix was still committed to, when the state of the room had caught her attention.

“Do you need to catch your breath? We’ve probably got a minute or two before they can scramble a combat squad here?” Ayli asked, as she checked Nix over for injuries.

Nix paused for a moment. Had she been injured? A quick internal inventory suggested she was okay, though she knew some hits were easy to overlook.

“I’m good,” she said. “And I don’t think we’ve got that long.”

The Force was oddly muffled – or not so oddly given who their principal opposition was – but Nix was still able to catch the warning it was yelling at her.

With a flick of her left hand, she asked the Force to collapse the ceiling in the hallway which lead past the officer’s lounge. With her right hand she grabbed Ayli and tossed them both to the floor in time to avoid a barrage of blaster fire.

“Oh I really hate those Enclave jerks,” Ayli said, reaching out to drop more of the hallway on the strike team.

“I know they’re here on the Star Destroyer, but I can’t pinpoint them any closer than that,” Nix said. “Probably not in the room with us but I can’t even swear to that.”

“They’re on the bridge,” Ayli said. “That strike team would only have been this close if someone warned the command staff to have them in place, and the only ones who could have sensed us coming are the Elders.”

“We can verify that,” Ravas said.

“Be careful. The Elders knows about you. If the Enclave has any techniques that can hurt you, they’ll be masters of them and they’ll be expecting you to show up,” Nix said, knowing that Ravas and Kelda were both more aware of that than she was.

“We may have a few surprises in store for them too,” Kelda said and sunk through the floor, with Ravas following her a moment a later.

“They’ll send another team soon. We should be elsewhere by then,” Ayli said, looking for any viable exits which were left since the ruin filled hallway didn’t offer much hope of egress.

“There should be a maintenance tunnel underneath the deck,” Nix said. “That would be great if we wanted to sneak up on them.”

“But, of course, we can’t sneak up on the Elders.” Ayli’s grumble showed that she’d grasped the largest problem they faced.

“The good news is I don’t think they’ve worked out the danger they’re in yet,” Nix said, letting her senses expand to take in the ship she was on.

In her mind the schematics of the Star Destroyer flickered into memory, overlaid with the sounds and smells and more distant sensations she was picking up. 

There was the sound of the docking bay, right where she expected it to be and so much farther than she would prefer. 

Far to the rear, the engines hummed with restrained power, the ships reserves being diverted to deflector arrays and its weapon systems. Nix was closer to the engines than the docking bay, which wouldn’t have been her preference and presented some annoying difficulties, but was also perhaps an opportunity in disguise.

“To be fair, if they have anything like a full crew, a Star Destroyer should have enough onboard combat squads that I think we’d have trouble even if the Elders weren’t here.” Ayli had her eyes closed as well but was searching for different things in the Force than Nix was.

“Normally, I’d say we could sneak past them, but maybe this time we want to get their attention and hold it.” Nix didn’t so much have a plan as the germ of an idea and what felt like the tacit reassurance from the Force that it would be with her to help make things work out.

Against a group of more numerous and more experienced Force users, a capital ship full of enemies, and the automated defense systems which Nix knew came standard on Imperial vessels.

Plus the unknown.

That was the real peril.

“I don’t think holding their attention will be a problem,” Ayli said. “For people who don’t like to use the Force, I can feel the Elders twisting the hell out of it.”

“They know better than to try that Expunging nonsense on us,” Nix said. “They don’t have anyone to sacrifice to it and even if they did, Dolon has to know that I’d cram it back down his throat.”

“It doesn’t feel like they’re doing that.” Ayli frowned and concentrated harder. “Whatever it is, they want to kill us, but it’s not a direct attack. It’s something else.”

“Let’s make them work a bit to get to us then,” Nix said. 

From what she could remember the next room over from the officer’s lounge was a supply closet and the room beyond that was where the officer’s living quarters began. The walls between the rooms were solid enough to serve as pressure vessels, but weren’t exactly battle hardened since any explosion which went off inside the Star Destroyer was likely too powerful for even a thick wall to contain.

The Force was not a explosion. It did not have an issue with reducing the two walls to a flying cloud of debris either though.

“You would have been so handy to have around when I was kid,” Ayli said.

“I was a menace as a child. You would have hated me.” Nix smiled at the thought of meeting Ayli years earlier though.

“I’m pretty sure I could never have hated you,” Ayli said.

The first officer’s quarters did not have an Imperial officer in residence. It did however have the officer’s belongings, including a few trophy weapons he’d hung on his wall.

“He left a charged Pogos-12 Blaster Rifle on his wall? I should shoot him just for failing basic Blaster safety,” Ayli said, helping herself to the rifle and one of the pistols which was hanging below it.

“Shame he hadn’t picked up one of those gatling rigs,” Nix said, scoring a pair of blaster pistols for herself. She didn’t recognize the make or model but the trigger and the blasty end of the barrel were obvious enough that she knew she could make them work. “Sali took me a range once to show off her armory. I love the gatling. So little need to aim.”

“She’ll probably be a bit worried about us, won’t she?” Ayli asked, leading Nix out in the only somewhat demolished hallway and trotting forward at a quick walk.

“Probably. We could have Kelda or Ravas let her know what we’re up to.”

“I don’t sense either them at the moment,” Ayli said, pausing well before the next intersection as though listening for something.

“I don’t either. The Elder’s cloak is growing thicker.” Nix wasn’t precisely worried about that but she wasn’t happy with it either. 

“They’re on the bridge,” Ravas said, appearing from behind them a bit more haggard than usual. “We can tell you that much based on the intensity of what they’re doing, but we can’t get in there to pinpoint precisely where they’re standing.”

“Or how many of them are there,” Kelda said, looking similarly fatigued.

“Which means there are definitely a few who are out hunting us on their own,” Nix said.

Whatever else they were, the Silent Enclave was also a training ground for assassins and the Elders were the ones who were the most intimately familiar with that. That their playbook began and ended with “runaway, hide, attack when the target is unaware, then hide again” was more or less a given.

“They won’t be alone,” Ayli said. “Basic operational security. You only send out a single asset when the asset of expendable. None of the Elders think of themselves like that. They’ll have a main group on the bridge focused on blocking out ability to sense anything, and a hit team of at least four out hunting for us.”

“Four?” Nix asked.

“Better to outnumber your foe if possible,” Ravas said. “Ideally, in their view, they’d bring along a pack of apprentices too as cannon fodder to distract you with.”

Nix felt a stabbing jolt from the Force and spun just in time to avoid a slash from a vibroknife with an odd red field around it.

There was an attack coming in from her other side which she could dodge at the expense of bumping into Ayli.

Who was a hair slower than Nix but was shifting away from a blade which was trying to slice her throat open and another which had awful intentions for her right kidney.

Sensing that a stab in her left side wasn’t going to be instantly fatal, Nix focused instead on tossing her first attacker through the nearest wall into one of the other officer quarters.

Fear for Ayli and anger at the (mostly) unprovoked attack made Nix’s fingers tingle with the old, bad lightning. 

But that wasn’t who she wanted to be.

The Force was with her whatever she choose, but that meant it was on her to choose to be better.

Being stabbed wasn’t fun. Especially not when the red field on the vibroblade turned out to be a shock charge that disabled all of Nix’s muscles and left her wide open for a follow up strike.

Ayli fared a little better, managing to dodge the neck strike entirely and avoid the kidney stab through Kelda’s intervention.

Ravas ensured that the followup strike Nix was about to be beheaded by never landed, tossing the assassin away into a pile with the one Nix had pushed.

And then Nix shot them.

It wasn’t exactly hard. Blasters are simple to use and quite accurate at short ranges. Typically they’re quite lethal too, but they do have one unusual drawback.

The Elders demonstrated that by parrying both bolts that Nix shot with their enhanced vibroblades.

Ravas deflected the bolts into the wall, but the point had been made. Random blaster fire was not going to win the battle.

Unless of course it was blaster fire from the opposition.

From around the left and right corners of the intersection two squads of Storm Troopers ran forward and took up firing positions.

Four on two odds had briefly shifted to four on four with Kelda and Ravas joining the fray, but that ratio had flipped against to be closer to twenty on four.

Nix did not like those odds.

Surrendering and playing for time later however was not an option.

The Storm Troopers opened fire and Nix felt Ravas hurl her into the same room the Elders had been tossed into. 

The Elders who were still quite active and getting to their feet.

Through the hole in the wall, Nix could see Ayli and Kelda deflecting the blaster fire with the Force but a lot of bolts were only being slowed for a moment. That was enough for Ayli to dodge them but Nix could see Ayli’s strength draining with each bolt she held back.

This wasn’t a fight they could win, and Nix wasn’t sure if it was one they could even survive.

Rassi shouldn’t have been able to  feel the crowd’s mood shifting. She’d been around ‘loud’ Force users for long enough that her sense of the subtle, shifting currents of the Xah which the Silent Enclave wasn’t quite able to suppress completely should have been lost to her.

The bone deep revulsion which swept over the Enclave in response to Solna saving Rassi’s life was just as hidden as it ever would have been. If anything, the Enclave was being more silent than usual, given the unifying threat of the Death Shadow’s impending arrival. 

So why could Rassi feel not only their disgust and horror at Solna’s use of the Force, but the terror which lay underneath it?

There was too much there to process in between one breath and the next. Too much for Rassi, and too much for Solna.

But Rassi understood.

“It would be best if no one else tried to kill me, I think,” she said in a steady, even voice.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t afraid too. There was fear, and anger, and pain within her, but she was bigger than any of that and strong enough to keep herself open to the world.

After so many years of trying to cram herself into a mold she was never going to fit, and a lifetime of denying the biggest part of herself, Rassi found that the lines she was trespassing beyond had never been for her protection, and beyond them lay the ally she’d been pushing away as hard as she could.

“Leave. You are no longer part of this Enclave,” Honored Jolu said.

And Rassi felt the emotions even Jolu wasn’t able to hide from her.

Fear of a truth long hidden coming to light

Fear of the oncoming tragedy which was inevitable and absolute.

The same long practiced and societally mandated disgust as the rest of the Enclave.

And in a tiny corner, concern for Rassi and Solna, who stood in a unique sort of peril in the midst of the impending apocalypse. That one would have been nice, but it was so small and easily swept aside by other emotions that it was expended in the offer to allow them to leave.

Still, it was oddly comforting that at least one her primary mentors had harbored some love for her.

“No, we’re not,” Rassi said. “And neither are the rest of you. The Enclave ended when the Elders betrayed you.”

Her words weren’t enough to hold back the crowd. They’d never respected her, must less loved her. To them, the loss of her from the numbers was either a relief or of no consequence whatsoever. Under the circumstances, they should have broken free from the gossamer thin social restraints and torn both Rassi and Solna to pieces.

But restraint held.

Not because Rassi was bigger than they were. For all her physical size, she was still only one person, and a child at that.

The Force however was her ally, and no matter how tightly the members of the Silent Enclave closed down their senses, none of them could miss that.

Rassi wasn’t invulnerable, or omnipotent, but in that moment everyone in the Enclave could sense the Xah was moving as fast as a crashing river and that Rassi was the one at the apex of its wave.

“The Elders have gone to seek our allies,” Jolu said. “So that we will not stand alone against the corruption which menaces us.”

Rassi noticed Jolu’s careful word choice. Jolu could have used any number of convenient shadings of the truth, or even outright lies. She could have explicitly branded Rassi and Solna as corrupt – the crowd already unquestionable believed that. Jolu could have dispensed with all of the and simply ordered the crowd to expel Rassi and Solna if that was what she wanted, either via her authority as an ‘Honored’ Elder or through the more typical means of a Xah-assisted command.

“The Elders have gone to hide alone,” Solna said. “The allies they seek are allies for themselves. They know the Death Shadows are here. If they’d meant to defend you they would have stayed.”

Rassi felt another, much more subtle killing intent rising.

From behind a door in a building off to the side of the crowd.

And another from the back of the alleyway they’d come down.

And another from within the crowd.

The older assassination team.

The one which had already lost one member, but that wasn’t why they were hesitating.

They needed the crowd to break in their favor.

Because they were guilty.

Oh so very guilty.

Rassi smiled.

The crowd was going to break, but it was going to break them if she had anything to say about it.

Part of what gave her hope in that regards was that Solna was speaking the truth, and the Enclave knew it. The Elder’s leaving them in their time of deepest need had sent the entire community in denial but it was all too clear what the Elders were doing since there’d been no speeches explaining the plan, and no command to hold out until reinforcements arrived.

The root of the Enclave’s true terror wasn’t the presence of some unwanted children, or even the attack which was sure to come from the Death Shadows. It was that after centuries of the society being shaped into utter dependence on the central figures of their Elders, they had been abandoned.

Rassi had felt the despair Tovos and his crew were drowning in when they believed they’d become ‘Lost’, and a similar lake of misery was washing away the underpinning which everyone, even ‘Honored’ Jolu, had built their lives on.

Rassi knew she could save them from the Death Shadows.

But she couldn’t save them from the change that was to come.

And that was going to be her best revenge.

She didn’t want to kill the people who’d made her life miserable, or even watch them die. She wanted them to live, and understand what they’d done, and do the hard work it would take to become better people. It wasn’t going to be pleasant for them but it was going to be a chance, and that was what they deserved.

“If our doom is inescapable, then it’s better that some part of us is preserved,” Jolu said.

That rallied the Enclave a bit. Rassi could feel a thread of defiance rise in the hearts around her. If the Xah had sealed their fate, the Silent Enclave could still choose how they would meet that fate.

It was noble.

And brave.

And just what they’d been taught to do all their lives.

Accept what someone tells them to do, with no thought of their own. 

Except people are funny. Rassi had developed a capacity for independent thought mostly because she’d had to question every order that was given to her, since she didn’t seem to be able to carry out any of them like people wanted her to. From the swirl of emotions in the Enclave, she wasn’t the only one who was able to think on her own either.

Some, far fewer than was apparent, really believed and shut off all thought. They were the most fragile and terrified of all the Enclave’s people. And the ones Rassi doubted she’d be able to reach. They’d chosen to be what they were willing.

The rest though, the majority of the Enclave in fact? They wanted to live.

A noble, brave end might have seemed better than dying as the terrified victims they actually were, but they were ready to accept a different fate.

All she had to do was make them believe.

Well, make them believe and survive the assassins who had a vested interest in keeping the Enclave docile and ready to sacrifice themselves since the tension coming from the people with a killing intent towards her suggested that they knew the best time to make an escape was when the Elders had taken off and since they’d missed that window they were going to have to settle for the second best option of fleeing while the Death Shadows were busy ripping apart the rest of the Enclave.

How shocking it was that the ‘Defenders of the Enclave’ who’d only been unique in that they took the lives of sapients had managed to lose their empathy for anyone else. Certainly no one could seen that coming.

“The Elders are coming back,” someone in the crowd called out. “They told us they would!”

“Did they?” Rassi asked, the Force carrying her voice into the hearts of everyone present. “What did they say – exactly? Do you remember speaking with them? Or is it just the ghost of a memory? An impression they left you with?”

She waited a moment, letting her words and the truth behind them seek out the cracks in the shields of denial which had been raised against her.

The assassin in the crowd twitched. He’d been taken in by the Elders too, in his heart, despite his head knowing all too well that the Elders would never make it back in time.

Unfortunately for Rassi, that did not awaken a community spirit within him. If anything, it made the killing intents she felt grow sharper and more urgent.

“No. No. I spoke with them?” a woman near the front asked more than asserted.

“Look at those memories,” Solna said. “Are those words you heard through your ears, or through the Xah?”

<The Xah does not lie to you>, Rassi said, reaching out with the Force to speak directly into the minds of the crowd. <But the people who use it can.>

Everyone, even Solna, flinched at that.

There was ‘corrupting the Xah’ with an instant’s reflexive action, and there was using the Force with a sustained intent and a communion with it so deep that no one who’d been raised in the Enclave could ever mistake what Rassi was doing.

It wasn’t the Evil Jedi’s ‘Mind Control’ they’d been warned about. When Rassi spoke to them through the Xah, her words and the Force were in harmony the way few of them had ever been with the Xah in their lives.

“What…what was that?” a children asked.

“You deserve to know the truth,” Rassi said.

“You do not know the truth,” Jolu said, desperation leaking past her shields like in torrents.

And she did have shields.

Rassi had never known that before.

But it made sense. The Elders weren’t the perfect bastions of self control they claimed to be. They didn’t need to be. What they needed was to be secured against the manipulations of the other Elders, and that control in turn allowed them to simply shut off their emotions from the Xah.

“I know why the Death Shadows are coming for us,” Rassi said. “And I know what we’ve done that drives them, and what we did that created them.”

That was the line she shouldn’t have crossed.

At least from the assassin’s point of view.

Five spikes of killing intent snapped from believing they needed to kill her, to knowing they had to do so immediately.

Solna erupted with a killing intent of her own and stepped in front of Rassi, bringing her hands up in a warding gesture.

Rassi let the Force flow through her and offer her the guidance she needed.

Killing the assassins wasn’t in harmony with the Force. It arose from life, to kill with it was to turn the Force on itself.

She wasn’t going to need to do that though.

And Solna wasn’t either.

Rassi could feel the paths before them, and could feel how many there were which ended with them in a better place.

All she had to do was choose which guidance the Force offered which aligned with her heart.

One of the killing intents vanished.

Another startled in surprise, panicked and went silent as well.

From the second floor of the building on her left, she caught a glimpse of the Horizon Knight Monfi slipping into the shadows as an assassin crumpled unconscious but still alive to the floor.

Rassi’s ally was the Force, but it wasn’t the only ally she’d brought with her.

Ayli’s calm had nothing to do with her Force training. When a ship is catastrophically damaged, an experienced combat pilot’s reaction is to remain calm. It’s how one survives the experiences required to become an experienced combat pilot.

Surviving the loss of half the shuttle she was piloting, along with, unfortunately, the shuttle’s entire drive system did present some unique challenges to her survival though.

“Hang on,” she said, as though she or Nix had any choice in the matter.

They’d been knocked into a spin and were, from what Ayli could sense, hurtling towards the Star Destroyer the Silent Enclave’s Elders were on. That was adjacent to good news, but it was where the good news ended.

Rather than the docking bay Ayli had intended to land in, it looked like they were probably going to collide with the super structure, likely in some particularly armored spot where the Star Destroyer wouldn’t even notice the impact.

“Damn it,” Ravas said. “This should have been fixed.”

“It was,” Nix said. “We’re not dead yet.”

Which suggested several questions to Ayli. First, why weren’t they dead?

The answer there was fairly obvious. The shuttle they were flying was a pirate’s shuttle and Sali was used to being attacked often enough that her equipment was top notch. The blast which had exploded the back half of the shuttle had done tremendous damage but the shuttle was designed to survive that sort of thing, with pressure locks that sealed the ship into five independent compartments so that the loss of one wouldn’t endanger the rest, to an engine compartment which vented explosions outward rather than allowing them to obliterate the shuttle itself.

Had she been flying a cheap corporate shuttle, Ayli was reasonably certain she and Nix would be dead already.

Possibly.

The other major question that arose in her mind was why the Force hadn’t warned her of the incoming shot that wrecked her ship.

There the only answer Ayli could find to that question relied on intuition more than reason, but in dealing with the Force that seemed like the best path anyways. Intuition told her that the Force hadn’t warned her of the shot that disabled her craft because it was busy warning her of all the shots which would have atomized it.

The Force was a powerful shield, but all shields had their limits.

And it hadn’t failed to warn her of any immediately deadly attacks.

Not yet anyways.

Aly was keenly aware that the limits of her awareness were significant and that the Jedi Order had been wiped out en masse by regular soldiers with regular blasters when they were distracted and the conditions were right for the Force’s warning to be missed or misinterpreted.

She wasn’t a Jedi, but she was reasonably sure that she could still die like they had.

Especially with the confounding presence of the Silent Enclave Elders and their ability to artificially smooth out the Force and dull the impression Ayli could receive from it.

As if in confirmation of that, Ayli reached out and found once more that she couldn’t feel the Force reacting to their predicament, or to the rest of the battle which was unfolding around them. The cloak the Elders were projecting was powerful enough that no ripples of the destruction where showing up at all.

“Impact in two minutes,” Ayli said, aware of her impending demise but ignoring that in favor of working the problem before her.

No thrusters was bad.

No hyper drive was also bad.

On the plus though, the shuttle weighed considerably less.

And the pressure compartment seals hadn’t been damaged so the bridge still had a standard atmosphere.

The spin was disorienting, but enough of the inertial dampening system’s remained online that it amount to a slight swaying sensation and the stars spiraling by outside the viewport.

“Nix we need to adjust our course, can you help me with that?” Ayli asked. Either answer would work for her, she just needed to know what resources she had available.

“Yes. I can stop our spin if you want?”

“No. Leave that alone. We look like debris at the moment. The Star Destroyer’s targeting systems won’t lock onto us.”

“Do you think we can land like this?” Nix asked, her eyes closed as she reach for a meditative state.

“Yes. This shuttle won’t be flying again afterward, but that’s pretty much a given at this point.”

“Fair enough. The docking bay then?”

“That was my thought, but they’ll have debris deflection systems in place there. I think we want to target one of the officer’s lounges.”

“Yeah, the viewing windows won’t be able to take the impact will they?” Because of course Nix was familiar with the design specs on a ship she’d never flown on.

“I’m hoping for that, but I’ll trust my mechanic if she thinks otherwise,” Ayli said.

“They can deploy barriers over the viewing windows, but those have a habit of sticking because they’re not used often and they need to be maintained from the outside,” Nix said. “There will be a pressure lock on the door into the lounge that’ll seal if the windows are breeched but if we don’t slow down we should crash through that too.”

“Good. That means the only trick we need to worry about is surviving the crash,” Ayli said.

“Let us worry about that,” Ravas said and Kelda nodded in agreement.

As plans went, it wasn’t the worst one Ayli had been a part of. Under normal circumstances, it was one that would absolutely prove to be fatal but then Ayli had never been in anything that could be considered ‘normal circumstances’.

She nodded her agreement and signaled that she was ready to begin by taking her hands off the now-useless controls.

Reaching out to the Force was still a unique experience for Ayli. Unlike Nix for who it was merely a conscious awareness of something she’d been doing all her life, Ayli’s relationship with the Force held so many vestiges of other people in it. From Ravas who she’d absorbed her initial skill with the Force from, to the Jedi of old who’d left their imprint on Ravas, to the echoes of the people who’d crafted the various holocrons she’d spent a year learning from.

Somewhere in there too was the tumult which she’d labeled as her own Dark Side. It seemed to only appear as a separate entity within Dark Side nexuses, and Ayli knew she should be concerned that she could compare and contrast the feel of multiple locations which were overwhelmed by the Dark Side, when the overwhelming majority of the galaxy went their whole lives without visiting a single one.

In a startlingly un-Jedi-like turn, Ayli found she’d developed a fondness for her Dark Side though. She wasn’t going to listen to it of course. Her Dark Side wasn’t exactly a bastion of reason after all. It did want to protect her though.

Which was probably why, despite the beating it had sustained, it was beginning to thrash around restlessly the closer they got to the Star Destroyer.

Ayli breath in, held it for a moment, and released it slowly.

She was going to be okay.

She and Nix had this.

And Ravas and Kelda where here to help them.

She wasn’t alone.

And the people she was with were more than capable of protecting themselves.

Except her memories were all too ready with a full sensory vid and audio show of the times when very competent people in the Rebellion had still failed to save both the people they were trying to protect and themselves.

There were no guarantees in life.

No safety.

Her Dark Side made its best arguments, resurrecting old fears and older heart breaks.

Ayli breathed slowly again.

Her fears were old companions. She wasn’t ready to say goodbye to any of them yet – they’d saved her life more often than she could count – but she was also beyond letting them overwhelm her.

The Force felt both the conflict within her and the moment she moved past it. It was there for her as either a storm of lighting to lash out with or the gentle hand she needed to guide the remains of the shuttle with. 

On the other side of shuttle, the Force responded to Nix’s request for a similar helping hand and together Nix and Ayli gently guided the shuttle on its path.

Right into a cataclysmic collision with a wall of glassteel.

The impact happened too fast for Ayli to fully perceive, even with her Force heightened senses. One instant they were tumbling through the space with the Star Destroyer looming ever large and the next there was a fading echo of a titanic crash and emergency klaxons screaming everywhere.

Ravas and Kelda both sagged in place as the wreckage of the shuttle sloughed off the shield they’d conjured into place to protect their two living charges.

“Let’s not do that again,” Ravas said.

“We said that last time too,” Kelda said.

“We really had people fooled when they called us quick learners didn’t we?” Ravas asked.

“Oh good,” Nix said. “The atmosphere shield wasn’t destroyed!”

Ayli followed Nix’s glance over to the gaping hole in the Star Destroyer’s hull where a thin, flickering forcefield was keeping almost all the atmosphere that remained in the room from venting into space.

“If they’re smart they’ll turn that off right now,” Ayli said. “Which means we’ve got plenty of time.”

Underestimating Imperial Intelligence wasn’t a terribly safe thing to do, but Imperials tended too be so certain of their own superiority that they routinely made the most idiotic mistakes imaginable.

Which was great.

Right up until they didn’t make the mistake you were counting on.

“We need to move,” she said.

“I still can’t find the Elder. They’re too well hidden. Do we have an alternate destination in mind?” Nix asked.

“Yes. The Bridge.”

“That’s going to be well guarded won’t it?” Nix asked.

“Most secure part of the ship.”

“Ah, and also where the fleet leadership will be.” Nix had grasped Ayli’s intent but Ayli felt that clarity was important.

“They don’t get to leave this ship.”

She expected some pushback on that. As a Rebel plotting the murder of an Imperial Officer was part of the days that ended in ‘y’. She wasn’t a Rebel anymore though. In fact she very much wanted to put that chapter of her life behind her, but she knew her ghosts would never forgive her if she let the cancer that was an Imperial command staff remain in the galaxy.

In place of pushing back on Ayli’s plan for bloody homicide though, Nix simply chuffed a little laugh.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” she said.

“What do you mean? You’re okay with this?” Ayli wasn’t sure anything about this was okay, and Nix was one of the least bloodthirsty people she knew.

“No, no, this situation sucks. The only good thing is that I’m not in it alone,” Nix said.

“But you see why eliminating them is necessary?” Ayli asked, again unsure if murder really was necessary. Her Rebel heart said yes, but the Force…

What was the Force saying?

“Not so much necessary as inevitable,” Nix said. “It was our idea to come here, but I’ve been following the Force like I usually do and if the Force decided it was going to send us four to deal with this, I think it’s pretty much done with both the Elders and these Imperial buttwipes.”

“So you think the Force is going to kill them for us?” Ayli asked, not sure if that was better or worse than what she had in mind.

“I think I’m willing to play it by ear, and if my wife says the Imperials don’t get to leave her, then I know several methods of making sure that happens.”

Nix wiggled her fingers and Ayli saw tiny but highly worrying sparks dance from digit to digit.

Solna was out of time. Her people, if she still wanted to call them that, were out of time. So why, she had to ask herself, was everything moving so slowly?

Sister Zindiana had dropped her, Rassi, and Tovos’ crew off outside the private landing facility which was serving as the Silent Enclave’s encampment and blasted back off to get Queen Saliandrus into space where she could help save Nix and Ayli.

Ravas and Kelda were gone as well, though they thought they might be able to make it back again if Solna or Rassi called for them, even if the Enclave’s cloak was still in effect.

That left Solna and her team with a clear view of their destination and nothing holding them back from approaching it.

“Waiting is going to get people killed,” she said, keeping her annoyance and impatience from her voice.

“The guards have arc-repeaters and thermal detonators,” Tovos said.

“They’re expecting a fight,” Rassi said. “They can feel the Death Shadows that are coming in the same as we can.”

“You’re right about them being ready for a fight,” Osdo said. “But arc-repeaters and thermal detonators won’t damage a Death Shadow. And they know that.”

“You think they’ve sensed us?” Solna asked.

“They saw the ship land,” Tovos said. “They know someone is here.”

“But we don’t greet strangers with heavy firepower,” Rassi said. “It makes too much noise.”

“We do when we know they’re hostile,” Tovos said. “The Enclave is on lockdown and they’re all bound into the cloaking field. I don’t know of any plans that call doing both.”

Solna considered that for a moment and tried to clear her mind. Worry was not going to see her through this. 

“You’re right,” she said. “Those are counterproductive to each other. The heavy weapons and high alert have to be making the cloak more porous. There’s too much killing intent with carrying them, and too many heightened emotions from just seeing one in someone’s hands.”

“And maintaining the cloak would have to require attention from everyone. Even the people who are handling the high explosives,” Rassi said. “So the question is, who are they expecting they’ll have to fight?”

Solna considered that too but Tovos found the answer before she did.

“Nix,” he said. “They’ve lumped her into the pile with ‘the Jedi’. When they sent us to bring her back, they told us to treat her exactly like one, including killing her before she could use her powers if she resisted. We never made it back but a strange ship shows up and takes off? They have to think that she broke us and tracked the Enclave down for revenge.”

“Then shouldn’t we walk in there right now and show them that you’re okay?” Rassi asked. “I mean they won’t want to see Solna or me, but you folks are still in good favor, right?”

Solna looked over the other former-Enclave members and saw varying looks of regret or disgust at Rassi’s statement.

“They left without us. Twice,” Osdo said.

“If we show back up now, without Nix in shackles, they’re going to know that we’re not on their side anymore,” Felgo said.

“They want us to be Lost?” Polu asked, his eyes pleading for the lie that his mind would no longer accept.

“They want us to be dead,” Yanni said, her voice quiet and still for a moment before she carried on. “It’s simpler if we are. They don’t have to explain anything. They don’t have to wonder why we didn’t come back on time. They don’t have to justify leaving us.”

“And there’s no worry that we’ve learned their secrets,” Tovos said.

“That’s not going to change though, is it?” Rassi asked. Meaning that waiting wasn’t helping them.

“It won’t,” Osdo said. “But the guards should be about to switch shifts since it’s almost sundown.”

“And the new guards will be better?” Rassi asked.

“See Muktong up there? He’s the one who gave us our weapon’s training,” Felgo said. “If Queen Sali is right, he’s got to be on one of the other assassin teams.”

“Which means the five other guards with him are probably the rest of his team,” Tovos said.

“We’re going to have to deal with him soon or later though, right?” Rassi asked.

“I’d prefer later,” Yanni said. “Especially if it’s after the rest of the Enclave knows that we’re there.”

“Harder to make us disappear,” Polu said.

“They’re leaving,” Tovos said.

“And being replaced with Degu’s team.” Felgo said the name as though it were a curse.

“Degu’s probably the leader of the other assassin team, isn’t he?” Solna asked.

“Has to be,” Tovos said. “The one that’s just ahead of us according to Queen Sali.”

“Which means he’s got less experience than Muktong,” Osdo offered hopefully.

“But still more than we do,” Felgo said.

“We’re out of time,” Tovos said, his eyes closed and his hands folded together in front of his face. “We’ve been out of time, but the Death Shadows will be here in minutes. We have to go.”

He rose from behind the embankment they’d crept up to and began to walk forward with purpose and a certainty that had to be at last half illusionary in Solna’s estimation. His team wasn’t put off by that though and rose to follow him.

“Let us deal with Degu and his people,” Osdo said. “You two need to get to whoever’s in charge now and tell them what they need to do.”

Solna still had no idea how they were going to make that happen.

She’d reached out to the Force, flagrantly violating the Enclave’s customs, only to feel a reassuring certainty that marching forward was the best action she could take. Maddeningly however, the Force was rather lacking in specific details for how or why things would work out well in the end.

“We’ll handle it,” Rassi said. “And if Degu’s team give you trouble, just shout for us. I’m not used to you jerks being nice to me and I’d like to see more of it.”

Tovos turned his head and flashed Rassi a rueful smile before turning to his comrades, “looks like we have our marching orders then.”

“Never orders,” Rassi said. “Just a request.”

Solna understood. They’d been forced into doing and being whats someone else wanted for too long. They need to work together, but that didn’t mean any of them should turn themselves into puppets of another.

Rassi held out her hand for Solna, a gesture that had never been unusual or them but was becoming more common and consistent with each new crisis they faced.

Solna nodded, took Rassi’s hand and rose, pulling their cloak in tighter and deeper than before.

The people of the Silent Enclave knew someone was out there – someone living – whether they had any sense of how many people that was remained an open question. As Rassi and Solna ghosted up to the frankly indefensible perimeter wall and leapt it with purely mundane effort, it became clear that noone was considering that anyone like them was a threat to watch for.

A short distance away, at the gate the private landing facility had put in the cheap fencing, Tovos and his team were greeting Dengu’s team. That Dengu radiated surprise loudly enough for Solna to catch a whisper of it was in part due to her actively working with the Force to enhance her senses, rather than passively absorbing information like she’d been trained too. 

More than that though it was a signal that Tovos had been right. His team was not expected to return. Wasn’t supposed to return. What was happening at the gate was not a joyous reunion. It was the opening round in a battle where the first blow was foregone conclusion and only who landed the final strike was at all uncertain.

Going to their aid was the last thing Solna wanted to do – she’d spent too long being angry with them for that to feel natural. And she had an important mission to do. And leaving Rassi was unthinkable.

So why was her stupid heart lingering on the whispers of her old enemies’ fates that she could still hear?

She scowled.

They’d better make good on their promise to Rassi and survive.

She’d kill them otherwise.

Rassi paused at a corner and cast a quick smile in Solna’s direction. They were so quiet that even with the connection they shared they weren’t leaking emotions to distract the other.

Which didn’t matter.

Rassi could still tell what Solna was thinking it seemed.

Rassi who was so incredibly quiet?

Rassi who couldn’t be calm and peaceful about returning to the Enclave? Who had to have a thousand worse memories of the place than Solna did.

Rassi who was not at all fighting the turmoil within herself that she normally had to?

No one had said Rassi was beautiful in Solna’s memory. Even Solna didn’t try to call attention to Rassi’s looks since she knew Rassi wouldn’t believe her and was sensitive to any comments about a body that people had said countless times was too large, too clumsy, and too unappealing for anyone to ever love.

Those people had been wrong. So very wrong.

Seeing the peace and confidence in Rassi’s eyes and the grace she moved with, Solna’s breath caught in her throat.

Her friend was beautiful beyond any words Solna had.

Which was a wonderful revelation at an absolutely terrible time.

“We are not alone,” Honored Jolu said from around the corner of the habitat they’d been sneaking past.

Rassi gave Solna’s hand a squeeze that made Solna’s heart skip a beat.

Also inconvenient.

What was her stupid brain doing to her?

“We are never alone,” Rassi said, sweeping their shared cloak aside and walking forward, without dropping Solna’s hand in embarrassment as they usually did.

“You?” Jolu’s look of surprise vanished behind an icy and emotionless wall.

“The betrayers! They’ve brought the Shadows to us again!” The cry came from a woman who’d never said more than three words to Solna or Rassi. Solna thought her name was Logi, or Lusa. She knew the two were sisters but she’d never bothered to work out which was which.

“Is that what you told them?” Rassi asked, looking only at Honored Jolu and ignoring the crowd who had gathered in the landing site’s central square.

From the voices which were rising in alarm, Solna’s guessed a good three quarters of the Enclave was present. From the absence of anyone on the central dias, she also guessed that the Elders had indeed abandoned the rest of the Enclave.

That Jolu had stayed behind was interesting, all the more so because Solna couldn’t sense anything from her old mentor and had no idea what Jolu’s true feelings were.

“Why are you here?” Jolu asked, her gaze firm and unrelenting.

“Because they need to know,” Rassi said, meeting Jolu’s gaze evenly.

“Get them!” someone called from the crowd and Solna felt a spike of killing intent rise.

But not from the crowd.

Atop one of the buildings, an air traffic control tower, a man was rising and bringing a blaster to his shoulder.

She acted without thought or hesitation.

She needed to protect Rassi.

And the Force was her ally.

She’d only meant to drag the rifle off course. To pull it from the man’s hands.

The Force however is a powerful ally and the man’s grip was quite a bit stronger than it should have been.

Everyone heard his cry.

Everyone felt the sniper’s shock of fear.

Everyone watched him fall, and some of them even saw what happened when he hit the ground.

There’d been no malice in the act. Solna hadn’t given in to her Dark Side (which was not at all unhappy with the results), but the fact that she’d killed a man wasn’t what sent a wave of undisguised terror through the crowd.

“Corrupt.” The word was whispered rather than shouted.

Everyone in the Enclave had grown up with the terror of the Jedi constantly hanging over their heads. Everyone had guarded themselves zealously against the slightest signs that they were changing the Xah at all.

And so all of them knew exactly what Solna had done.