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.

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

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

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

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

Somewhere though things had gotten complicated. 

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

And yet the circle they’d formed was strong.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rassi shook her head.

No.

It wasn’t.

But that wasn’t the right question.

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

But it was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tondu,” Solna said. “She’s there.”

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

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

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

“Old Kodi’s there too,” Osdo said.

“An Elder?” Zin asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dismantling the Silent Enclave?” Tovos guessed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What? How are you here?” Sali asked.

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

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

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

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

Solna expected to find many things when they landed on Selvus. A hostile welcoming committee seemed the most likely. The condemnation of her teachers and caretakers was all but a certainty. It had crossed her mind that an Expunging Rite in progress was not entirely out of the question either.

Instead what she found, what they all found, was chaos.

Goldie had touched down briefly at a starport named Dolos Station. Those who were intending to go ashore were promptly swept out of the ship, while those who chose to remain with Goldie as she rocketed off to pursue her parents remained clustered on the bridge.

Those who disembarked included Rassi and Solna, Tovos and his crew, and the Horizon Knight Monfi. Ravas and Kelda had expressed a desire to come with the shore party but given the cloaking field Tovos’ crew was still employing their ability to serve as messengers would have been severely limited.

“If you need us, you need only call,” Kelda said.

“Though you’ll want to make it a loud one,” Ravas added.

Everyone could sense that Nix and Ayli were in pursuit of the Enclave’s leadership and that a struggle awaited them. Kelda and Ravas would be the first line of support for that battle, followed as quickly as possible by Lasha, Nulo, Moffvok, Bopo, and, of course, Goldie.

Sali had opted to join the shore party since a battle with the elder Force Users didn’t seem like a good time to her.

Also there was the fact that Zin had contacted them as soon as they entered the planetary landing grid.

“Well my plan backfired,” Zin had said. “I specifically followed them in case they needed backup, but they never even made planetfall here.”

“What happened?” Goldie had asked.

“Apparently a ship broke the lockdown one of my Sisters had put on the port and Nix and Ayli followed them into hyperspace.”

Which was ridiculous. Everyone agreed it couldn’t have worked since you can’t simply jump after someone who goes to lightspeed. Without know they jump calculations, the chance that you’d even wind up in the same solar system were microscopic. 

“If Ayli did it, she had way to make it work,” Goldie said. “We just need to figure out where they went.”

“That won’t be a problem,” Kelda said. “Ravas and I can simply ask them.”

“Let’s do that then. Now,” Goldie said.

“We’ll need to drop our guests off on the planet first,” Kelda said.

“They’re getting a free ride. We can drop them off after we have Nix and Ayli back,” Goldie had countered.

“Except we won’t be able to come back here while their projecting their cloak,” Kelda said.

“And if they stop projecting their cloak, the Death Shadows will flock down on them and  us.” Ravas said.

Goldie sighed, which certainly wasn’t something she’d been programmed to do.

“Fine. Aunt Zin can you get us landing clearance asap?” Goldie asked.

“Already on it my dear,” Zin said. “You’re cleared for a landing on Pad C11 in ten minutes.”

Which was ten minutes longer than Goldie had wanted to wait, but it gave the shore team enough time to gather their stuff and collect what information Zin had to offer on the current state of the Silent Enclave.

Ten minutes and about fifteen seconds later though and the shore team was all on their own, with Goldie once more lifting off for orbit at maximum speed.

“We should go see how this Enclave of yours is doing,” Monfi said, hailing an auto-mover down that had enough space for them all.

“Sister Wenley is watching them still,” Zin said. “If anyone else had tried to leave she would have alerted us.”

“The others won’t be leaving,” Tovos said. “The Elder’s would have commanded them to stay behind when they left.”

“How long will those orders hold in the Elders’ absence?” Monfi asked.

“Until the Elders return or until someone in the Enclave grows old and skilled enough to be named a new Elder.” Tovos wasn’t saying anything Solna hadn’t expected to hear. The idea that the Elders were to be followed unquestioningly had been stamped in her since she was a able to understand words. Her current perspective on the Silent Enclave brought with it a new emotion in place of the desperate devotion she’d once felt.

Rage.

Beside her, Rassi blinked and pulled Solna in for a quick side-hug before offering her hand for Solna to hold.

Which was the right gesture. Holding Rassi’s hand was always comforting, and Solna knew that greeting the situation which lay before them with anger wasn’t going to lead to a good outcome for anyone.

“Let’s get you all back home then,” Sali said as she inspected the most obvious of the blasters she was carrying. Solna couldn’t quite sense where the other ones were, which was a feat in its own right, but the Force was quite clear that Sali, even after passing through the starport’s security was still bristling with more armaments than most New Republic fortresses possessed.

“I gather there will be some danger involved but this is an event which I need to record for the Order’s records,” Zin said.

“Which is why I’ll be right there with you,” Sali said. “Us pirates thrive on danger after all.”

Which wasn’t exactly true. Solna could sense that Sali was more unconcerned with the danger before her than thriving on it. She’d seemed reasonably happy to come along and corral Zin but beyond that a life of relative safety and ease seem to suit the pirate queen quite well.

That thought led to Solna ponder what it was she desired in her life.

Safety and ease always held their fascinations, but Solna wasn’t sure she was ready for either one. Not until she’d sorted out the Silent Enclave, or at least done her part to try.

What “that part” might be still escaped Solna. Even as angry as she was, the prospect of taking on the entire Enclave was daunting. For several reasons, not the least of which being that she could see how the Elders had done what they had, could see the techniques they’d used to manipulate the Enclave and if the Enclave fought back against her hard enough, she wasn’t entirely sure she could resist using those techniques too.

“The local security force should have the rest of the Enclave under house arrest by now,” Zin said. “After their ship blasted out of the port, the rest of them are being investigated for being part of a criminal conspiracy with a high flight risk level.”

“Security won’t find them,” Tovos said. It should have worried Solna that he was doing a field rebuild of his blaster rifle. That was standard procedure at the start of a combat mission, but they weren’t going into combat with the rest of the Enclave and Tovos knew that.

He believed it too which Solna found deeply at odds with the Tovos she’d known.

The Tovos she’d left behind at the Enclave was a bully and was among the least flexible of people when it came to the Enclave’s doctrine she knew. The young man who sat across from her in the auto-cab had found something important but at an unbearably high cost. What peace he’d been able to make with the loss of not only his crew member but the person he’d believed himself to be seemed to be based on anger at those who’d abused them as much as a love for his teammates he’d never let himself acknowledge before.

That Solna could reach all that from his stray thoughts was the most shocking thing of all though and the most absolute proof of how much he’d been changed.

Rassi squeezed her hand again, calling her attention away from concerns of the future to the reality which was rapidly approaching them.

“This is supposed to be the Enclave’s temporary berths?” Zin said as the auto-cab circled over an empty field where a few security enforcers remained milling about.

“Looks like they’re smart enough to falsify their landing coordinates,” Sali said. “Which means we do not want to go down there.”

“The auto-cab’s destination is already locked in,” Zin said.

“And you already have its controls hacked. So have it take us to the empty berths on the other side of the main terminal.”

“You have such faith in me,” Zin said as the auto-cab gently banked away towards another unused landing field at the outskirts of the starport.

No one asked why they weren’t going to land and talk to the security enforcers. Showing up at a mysteriously empty crime scene was a sure ticket to have all the blame for what happened pinned on you and while Zin’s contact could probably deal with the legal troubles for them, Security Enforcers were just as likely to shoot first and file charges against the corpses later since it cut down on the chance that their version of events would be challenged.

“We can find where they are,” Rassi said.

“They’ll be under a stronger cloak than we have,” Osdo said.

“And they have a lot more emotions to hide,” Rassi said. “Solna and I can find them, if we work together.”

“Should someone better with the Xah help her?” Felgo asked, not intending it to be a rude question, but simply still trapped in the impression he had of Rassi for the last decade or more.

“She’s much stronger than any of us,” Tovos said.

“I know Solna is. Everyone knows that, but Rassi…” Felgo said but Tovos cut him off.

“Rassi is who I’m talking about. Do you know why she was ‘always tripping up’? It’s because she’s so much closer to the Xah that it can’t help but resonate with her emotions. We were idiots not to see it.”

“And she wasn’t ‘always tripping up,” Osdo said. “She beat me at the last City Walk test we did. She was…she is pretty talented. But they never let us see that.”

“We never tried to see it.” Tovos had paused in the rebuild of the blaster with his head hung low.

“We could help them now though right?” Felgo asked.

“Why would they want us to?” Tovos asked. “Do you think they could trust us? Do you think they don’t hate us? We won’t do anything but disrupt their connection to the Xah.”

Solna had a free hand.

So she took one of Tovos’ hands from his blaster rifle.

“We don’t hate you,” she said.

Tovos shook his head and looked to Rassi, who had a far greater right to hold onto the animosity they’d both felt for him.

“I did,” Rassi said. “But I don’t want to anymore. You didn’t have to do the things you did to me. Or to Solna. Some of that wasn’t you. The Elders made us who we are, and so a lot of that is on them.”

“But some of it is on us,” Tovos said. “And we can’t ask you to forget that.”

“I’m not going to,” Rassi said. “But if you really are sorry for what you did, then I make out a lot better if I give you a chance to prove that.”

With her free hand, she took Felgo’s hand in her own to begin the circle which the children of the Silence Enclave formed with no more words.

Solna glanced over at Monfi who could have joined them as another Force user, but he shook his head with a smile. This was something he was an outsider to, and he clearly did not want to intrude.

Which was probably for the best. As the circle sank down into the silence of the Xah they swiftly passed the point where other Force Users could have easily quieted themselves. Unlike during a Silent Dance though, the ritual Rassi was leading them through was one predicated on supporting each other as they stilled the Force within them and cast their awareness outwards.

Solna had expected she and Rassi could cover the starport without endangering themselves. Together with Tovos, Felgo, Osdo, Polu, and Yanni though, they covered the planet.

Which was how they found the Silent Enclave.

And how they discovered the host of Death Shadows that were descending upon them.

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

Which was good because she had a lot of them.

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

And she was certain she would do it again.

Certain she had been right to do it.

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

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

And so Rassi hadn’t said a word.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Somewhat worse than death,” Rassi said. 

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

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

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

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

“That’s debatable,” Rassi said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the Elders did need to be stopped.

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

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

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

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

Which was a chilling though.

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

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

And terribly appealing.

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

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

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

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

“Is it really from them?” Goldie asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part of Solna wasn’t unhappy about that.

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

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

So he’d gotten what he deserved.

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

Or maybe he’d been better defended.

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

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

“Who are your Aunts?” Rassi asked.

“A pirate and a nun,” Goldie said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There had been shouting. There had been harsh words. There had even been some violence. Nix had been surprised that none of it had been direct at her or Ayli.

Ayli had apparently been ready for that though and had pulled Nix quietly to the side of the cargo room and sat them near a stack of supply crates which were too heavy to be casually knocked over as Tovos and his crew fell into the sort of screaming that inevitably came when a crew was pushed past their breaking point.

Happily, said screaming was not punctuated by blaster fire despite the fact that everyone on the ship except for her and Ayli were armed.

“You can’t believe them. It can’t be true. There must be some other reason. There must be some lie there. Jedi lies. The Jedi always lie!” Polu, one of the two youngest crew members yelled through tears which Nix was sure he would deny shedding later.

“They’re not Jedi.” That it was Tovos making the assertion was surprising only in that he beat Osdo to it, since Osdo had already backed up Nix and Ayli up on that three time so far in the argument.

“But we are Silent!” Yanni’s statement held enough desperation to border on being a question. “The Elder’s speak with the Xah. The Primus…”

“There have been false Primuses before,” Tovos said. “Buchadi.”

The name meant nothing whatsoever to Nix, nor to Ayli it seemed, who shrugged when Nix glanced at her to check.

“That was different,” Yanni said. “He was corrupt from birth, and he corrupted Elder Miknel and Elder Chini before becoming Primus.”

“They are all corrupt,” Tovos said. “They use the Xah as a weapon, and they use it against us.”

Nix wondered if she should step in. The anger driving Tovos and the fear driving the others was being fed by their failure of their mission and their despair at the lives they thought they’d lost. Though they weren’t that much younger than Nix, they’d been so sheltered and fed so many falsehoods about the galaxy and their place in it that Nix couldn’t help but feeling like she’d become the den mother for a group of particularly Dark Side vulnerable and well-armed toddlers.

She started to rise to inject some sanity into their discussion but Ayli grabbed her arm and silently shook her head, indicating for Nix to watch a bit longer.

“Which of them are corrupt doesn’t really matter, does it?” Felgo said. “We’re never going to see them again, we are alone in our silence.”

“Can we let a corruption in the Xah like that remain though?” Polu asked.

“We let the Jedi exist,” Osdo said.

“The Silent do not seek out conflict. We allow the Xah to bring to us the same conflicts it brings to all,” Tovos said, speaking by rote a maxim Nix could feel he didn’t fully believe in anymore.

It was odd being able to sense his emotional state so easily. He was still little more than a whisper in the Force, but the whisper was clearly there and only as quiet as it was out of a lifetime of habit.

“Maybe we should be seeking conflict,” Felgo said. “I mean, they taught us to close our eyes to what they were doing right? Isn’t that what Nix showed us? That we’ve been trained to be damned sheep? That all of this, everything we’re supposed to be, it’s all so they can can control us better? Why should we be silent about that?”

Nix definitely wanted to join the discussion there. She clearly remembered where that sort of explosive anger had led her and she was not about to let the little band in front of her go down that particular path to the Dark Side.

Once more though, Ayli wordlessly held her back, nodding towards Tovos for Nix to focus on what was really happening.

“We could do that,” Tovos said. “We could throw off our Silence. Take the Xah in our hands and use it to make things how we want them to be. I’m sure it would feel right. Like something we had to do.”

The words he didn’t speak were the ones the rest of his crew heard the most loudly.

“Oh, oh that’s what they did, wasn’t it?” Polu said.

“When they overthrew Primus Buchadi. They Expunged him as the rightful punishment for his crimes.” Yanni had a look of fresh dawning horror on her face as the Force confirmed each word she spoke.

“Which involved Expunging people in the Enclave who spoke against him,” Polu said, sharing the same horror as Yanni.

“Which they then continued to do themselves against everyone who spoke against them,” Osdo said.

“Or who tried to leave,” Felgo added.

“My older brother…” Tovos’s voice cutoff and all of the others nodded as a fresh wave of horror swept over them.

Tovos’s brother hadn’t been trying to leave the Enclave. He’d been used to stop someone from leaving the Enclave. A sacrifice to the Expunging ritual against someone who’d tried, as feebly as they were able to, to fight back.

Ayli ran a calming stroke down Nix’s arm which had gone tense as steel at the fresh evidence of what the Elders of the Enclave felt they were allowed to do.

“We’re not going to become them,” Tovos said, the fire of certainty fully returned to his voice. “We cannot find them to bring them justice, and we will not corrupt the Xah in an attempt to do so.”

“How will we even know what will corrupt the Xah though?” Polu asked. “The Elders were always the ones to guide us. If they were corrupt, then how can we know if anything they told us was or was not a corruption of the Xah?”

“You listen to it,” Nix said, after glancing at Ayli who nodded in agreement.

“We’ve always listened to the Xah though,” Polu said. “And we never heard any of this.”

“You did,” Ayli said. “You just weren’t allowed to notice it or remember it.”

“That’s not possible, is it?” Yanni asked.

“It’s difficult to do on most people, but definitely possible, and I’m sad to say, easier on you because they never taught you how to protect yourselves,” Nix said.

“Can you teach us?” Polu asked.

“Yes, but I don’t know if I should,” Nix said. “Don’t misunderstand me, I want you to be protected. The idea of you wandering the galaxy like you are seems like a horrible punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.”

“Why not teach us then?” Yanni asked.

“A few reasons,” Nix said. “First, how we approach the Xah and the Force is different. I know you can learn how I do things because Solna was able to pick up some simple shielding techniques in and five seconds of Ravas showing her what to do.”

“Solna is a prodigy. You’re concerned what she can do will be beyond us?” Tovos asked.

“Not at all. I mean, yes, she’s exceptional, but in my view, you all are,” Nix said. “No, what I’m concerned about there, is that I don’t want to change your relationship with the Xah to be like mine, since the relationship you have is special and let’s you do amazing things that I either can’t or would have a staggeringly hard time replicating.”

“Okay?” Yanni said, clearly uncertain of whether Nix’s appraisal was correct or not. “And the other reason?”

“The other reason is that you’ve been taught since birth not to trust people like me, other Force users, and I think part of proving I can be trusted, is to respect the boundaries you’ve set. I don’t want you to wake up tomorrow and feel like I tricked you into anything,” Nix said, which also didn’t seem to convince Tovos’ crew, so she added the most important idea she had. “And, I don’t think you need me to teach you how I do it. Your Elders shield themselves just as strongly as I do. I think protecting yourselves is something you can learn to do, your way. All it takes is practice and someone to work with, and that, that I am more than willing to do.”

“So you won’t turn us into Jedi, but you’ll help us turn ourselves into Jedi?” Tovos asked, an odd little quirk at the edges of his lips.

“They’re not Jedi,” Osdo and Felgo said in unison, which brought a much needed laugh to everyone in the cargo room, even Tovos.

“I was thinking more that you could turn yourselves in Elders. Elders as you’ve imagined them to be. Leaders and councilors,” Nix said. “Which, I suppose is what the Jedi made of themselves, but you’d be smarter than them.”

“We would be?” Tovos asked, amused incredulity rising over the fatigued anger and despair.

“Yeah. The Elders can get married right? The Jedi wouldn’t let their members do that. Kinda surprised it took them so long to fall if they believed in that kind of nonsense, but the galaxy is a weird place with plenty of room for weirdness,” Nix said.

“Wait, hey, that’s right, why didn’t we notice that before?” Yanni asked. “These two can’t be Jedi, they’re already married!”

“To be fair,” Ayli said. “We know a Jedi and a former Sith who are basically married too, so that particular Jedi tradition is a little flexible I would say, but yes, we are definitely married.”

“Even if we don’t exactly remember all of it,” Nix said.

“How do you not remember getting married?” Polu asked Nix. “Especially to her?”

Nix had to smile at that. Ayli was indeed an astounding catch.

“Copious amounts of Silur Brandy,” Ayli said. “Or was it Rasdan Schnapps?”

“Both. And, uh, I think we went for a round of Rembral ‘32?” Nix poked at the memories but even with the Force’s aid they were little more than a happy haze.

“It was a good night,” Ayli said.

“It was a good beginning,” Nix said.

“Maybe this is a beginning for us too then,” Osdo said. “Without the intoxicants.”

“It will have to to be,” Tovos said.

“Should we let our Cloak drop?” Polu asked. “We don’t need to keep it up against anyone anymore right?”

Nix felt the silence which surrounded them start to peel away but it was Ayli who stepped forward first.

“No!” she said. “Keep the cloak up! It’s all that’s protecting us at the moment.”

“Protecting us from what?” Felgo asked.

“We’re light years away from where we encountered the Death Shadows in this world, but they can move through the paths outside this world and are so much closer to us in the Force than they should be.”

“But you defeated them, didn’t you?” Yanni asked.

“I…it wasn’t exactly a defeat?” Ayli said. “I gave it to the Force. The Death Shadows are something like voids where a person should be. There are echoes in them, I think of what or who they once were and the echoes in that one called out for rest. Giving it to the Force sort of filled the void in and unmade the Shadow, but I don’t know if I can do that with all of them. The ones who come for us next will be the ones with less loss and more anger remaining in them I think.”

“So we’re going to be hunted by them for the rest of our lives?” Osdo asked.

“Not necessarily,” Nix said. “The Silent Enclave knows other means to keep them away. Means I probably disrupted when I broiled Dolon. If we can find them, I think I can convince them to share those secrets with us and the rest of the Enclave.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in using the Xah to compel people to do your will?” Felgo said.

“I don’t, and I won’t. I don’t like what it does to the Force, or what it does to me,” Nix said. “There’s lots of other methods of persuading people to do things though.”

“We will not find them using the Xah, not unless we truly corrupt it, and we will not do that,” Tovos said.

“What if I told you we didn’t need the Xah at all to find your people,” Nix said. “All we need is a quick stop at one of my favorite pirate havens.”

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything. All of her training had been focused on the exact opposite of that. When she felt Solna reach out to the Force therefor she had no idea what her best friend might be doing. When she then saw Solna plunge into the pit with the Death Shadow, or whatever it was, she figured out what was going on.

Solna had lost her mind.

Rassi sprinted forward to the edge of the hole, intent on leaping in after Solna but from the depths of the pit, she saw a light rising back up.

“We don’t have long,” Solna said, cradling a luminous ball of deep purple and blue light as wide as her torso in front of her.

“For what?” Rassi said, instinctively shying away from the orb in Solna’s hands.

“To call him back,” Solna said.

“There is no one there,” Ravas said.

“Yes, exactly, and we can fix that,” Solna said, her eyes focused solely on glowing ball as the illumination from it began to writhe and pulse.

“What do you need?” Rassi asked.

The orb was absolutely a corruption of the Xah. It was the definition of awful, an aberration which shouldn’t have ever been allowed to exist. It could and would hurt them, as surely as a plasma flare.

Rassi could only sense peril from it, but she chose to ignore that for one very good reason. 

She could feel what Solna was projecting as well.

Comfort, camaraderie, and the promise of an end to its rage.

Rassi had no idea how Solna was going to provide any of those things but that didn’t matter. She know Solna well enough to believe it was possible, and more importantly, she believed in Solna. 

No matter what they were doing, Rassi would be at Solna’s side. Being anywhere else simply didn’t make sense.

“We need to listen,” Solna said. “He needs to tell us who he was.”

“This is a bad idea,” Ravas said. “That thing is a hole in the Force. It is a manifestation of the Dark Side even I haven’t run across. All it can do is mislead you.”

“That’s why we must do this,” Solna said, looking up and making eye contact with Rassi. “Please.”

Rassi didn’t answer with words.

She simply stopped breathing.

For her, quieting the Xah within herself so she could perceive the deepest truths of the Xah beyond her was always a battle. Her Xah, the Force within her, was a tempest in its quietest of moments. 

Fortunately, she’d had rather a lot of practice winning that battle. Or at least winning it well enough to hear what she needed to.

In the silence, she could feel the joy radiating from Solna quickly retreat into silence as well. That brief glimpse was enough to fill Rassi with confidence in what they were doing while also allowing her to focus on something other than the delightful emotion resonance between the two of them.

“I am no more.” 

The words were voiceless, spoken by nothing, and nothing more than the faintest of whispers in the preternatural emptiness in the Force Solna was carrying.

But whispers, no matter how faint, belong to someone.

“Who are you?” Rassi asked, only imagining the barest of touches on the Force to convey the words.

“I am no one.”

“But you were someone once,” Solna said.

“You were Silent,” Rassi said, a fleeting glimpse of a kindred soul passing through her mind.

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything, but Solna had and Rassi could feel the Force struggling to aid them. It wanted to know who had been lost.

It wanted them back too.

“Silent?” the voiceless whispers gained volume and the barest hint of depth.

“Like me, like us,” Rassi said. “You were part of the Silent Enclave.”

The heat which greeted Rassi’s words was not a friendly bit of warmth. She could have mistaken it for blinding rage but the undercurrent of loss and sorrow was too great to ignore.

“We were too,” Solna said. “But listen to us speaking. We are Silent no more.”

“Silent no more,” and the voiceless whispers were no longer voiceless.

“Silent never again,” Solna said. “Speak to us and we will speak for you.”

“I am nothing.”

“But you were someone. What you most lack is what they once were,” Solna said, and Rassi could hear depths in the void Solna carried, deeper losses and greater pains.

“If you can’t tell us, may we search for the answers ourselves?” Rassi asked, acutely aware of how intimate the contact she was contemplating would be.

“Yes. Find…find what was lost. Find me.”

With no movement and no greater sign that the shift in her focus, Rassi asked Solna if this was what she had been planning. Solna’s answering nod was motionless but all too clear to Rassi, and so they began.

In the distance, Rassi heard Kelda and Ravas shift, moving to prevent what the Solna had conceived of doing, but seeking down into the void’s deepest places wasn’t a realm either the former Jedi or the former Sith had been trained to explore.

In the first pit, Rassi found herself in a strange inverted world. Into the absent spaces she poured her awareness, her understanding, and the Force which flowed within her.

What formed from the mold was the picture of a man clad in the robes of an Enclave guardian and the moment when his losses began.

Rassi felt the pride the man had carried and understood it well. The Enclave’s guardians were tasked with protecting the Primus whenever he was required to travel outside the Enclave’s boundaries. Earning a position among their number was one of the highest martial honors a member of the Enclave could aspire to.

He had been honored beyond so many and he had failed.

In the tableau which was cast from the mold, Rassi saw a Primus not only slain but Expunged. Struck down by a technique only the Silent Enclave knew. 

“You couldn’t protect him,” Solna said and the void resounded with that truth.

Rassi saw something more in the tableau though.

“He hadn’t deserved your protection,” she said.

Revulsion, rejection, and confusion swept the scene away.

“What had he done?” Solna asked, and Rassi sought out another pit within the void.

A new scene took shape.

A trial. 

The dead Primus was there in effigy and behind him an impossibly high mountain of bodies rose.

Around the Primus, his guards stood, no longer armed or respected, each chained to their own podium as changes were read out against them.

“They held you responsible for what he’d done,” Rassi said.

“Had you known?” Solna asked.

Shame crushed the scene to dust and a new scene rose from the exposed wound in the void.

The man stood guard at a door. It was a sacred door and what was transpiring beyond it was more profane than words could capture.

But there had been orders.

And without seeing what was happening, it had been easy to believe that no abuse of power was happening. All the guard had needed to do was remain blind and his conscience was clear. Believe in the Primus. Believe because to do otherwise would mean the world was so much worse than he wanted to face.

Because not believing would mean that he was so much worse than he wanted to face.

“Was this your punishment?” Solna asked.

Anger and righteous indignation tore the scene apart and replaced it with another one.

Banishment.

A wife and a child he would never see again.

His position lost, his authority stripped away, his future gone.

Flames of rage crackled in the scene though.

This hadn’t been his punishment.

This was the punishment he was given, and the one he’d accepted. Not immediately, but when he saw what he’d been a part of, he’d known that it was what he’d deserved.

The flames licked at the scene, scorching and burning away the false facade, calling back the moment which had been hidden at the bottom of the pit.

The man who was no longer a guard and no longer Silent was rendered in midstride, leaving the Enclave behind. 

The flames swelled, consuming the scene and replacing it with one of the man alone on the road, walking to nowhere, and carrying the burden of the fate he’d accepted. 

And then he wasn’t alone.

New guardians struck him down.

And shackled him.

Into the mine they brought him.

Down empty passages.

To a room where his wife and child waited.

His wife a hostage not against his behavior, but as coercion for his child.

Someone was needed to bear the cost of the ritual.

Someone who he would not fight back against.

The scene became hot enough to sear flesh but the worst was still to come.

“Choli,” the voice was the man’s but the name was his child’s

The child who had survived the ritual. Who the man had sacrificed everything to spare. 

Who had been killed once the ritual was finished anyways.

“Why?” Solna croaked out and to Rassi the flames that surrounded them didn’t seem nearly hot enough.

There was no answer from the void, but Rassi heard the echoes from an age past in the Force.

“They wanted justice,” she said. “The banishment wasn’t enough for some of them. The people who’d lost their loved ones to the Primus’ Expunging rituals wanted more than blood. They wanted the scales to be balanced.”

“Not like this,” Solna said. “Horror can never balance horror.”

“No. It cannot,” Ravas said.

“Did you see all that?” Rassi asked.

“We saw it through you,” Kelda said.

“Why kill Choli though?” Solna’s voice was tight with the void’s anguish.

“They didn’t want any witnesses,” Ravas said. 

“They’d condemned the Primus for what he’d done. They didn’t want anyone to say they were the same as he was,” Kelda said.

“But the power was still too alluring to pass up, especially when they could pretend it served a righteous cause,” Ravas said.

“What are we going to do then?” Rassi asked, feeling entirely unmoored by what she’d seen.

“The Enclave left this world over a hundred years ago,” Kelda said. “Those involved in this are all long dead. There’s nothing that can be done to them.”

“This isn’t about them,” Solna said. “This is about him.”

“He’s gone as well,” Ravas said, her voice heavy with sympathy.

“We can bring him back,” Solna said. 

“No. Bringing the dead to life, it’s worse than you can imagine,” Kelda said.

“Not to life,” Rassi said, understanding Solna’s meaning. “We can bring him back to the Force.”

“To Choli,” Solna said.

“How would…?” Ravas started to asked, but neither Solna nor Rassi waited to answer her.

In the silence, they shared their fears with each other.

Neither had ever tried anything like what Solna was suggesting, and both knew it would be considered an unforgivable corruption of the Xah. 

The could be costs far beyond anything they were aware of as well. 

At best they would simply fail.

At worst they could drop into the void themselves, destroying everything they were in the effort to restore what a total stranger had once been.

And what he had been wasn’t anything wonderful.

He’d been a small and cowardly man, given authority and prestige to lord over others with. He’d been part of a series of atrocities. The people who’d known him and what he’d done hadn’t believed he could ever deserve forgiveness and was it Rassi and Solna’s place to offer the forgiveness he’d been willfully denied?

Rassi didn’t have a elaborate answer to those questions. What she saw before her was not justice though. 

And what she and Solna were going to offer was not forgiveness. 

The man would not escape the weight of his actions. He would carry them into eternity. 

Just like everyone else. 

Rassi wasn’t used to asking the Force for anything, and the Force wasn’t used to asking Rassi for what it needed. 

The wound before them needed to be healed though, and so Rassi opened her heart, and at last let herself be as loud as she could be as the Force crashed through her like thunder, filling her and filling the void to call back the scattered, forgotten pieces of the man who’d once been.

She only saw his spirit for a moment.

He had no place in the world of the living, and the Force was more than ready to welcome him back.

The Force and two spirits who’d been waiting for him for so very long.

Ayli was surprised when Nix returned to their “cell” both by the smile hiding on Nix’s lips and the company she was dragging with her.

“Got a moment?” Nix asked with Tovos and Felgo both in tow.

Ayli glanced over to Osdo who was studiously hiding his face from Tovos, despite that fact that both his expression and his presence in the force were entirely guilt-free/

“I have quite a few moments,” Ayli said. “Did you all want to join me in meditating?”

“Not exactly,” Nix said. “I need you to demonstrate something, and perhaps dance with me.”

Ayli quirked her head to the side, but listening to the Force told her that Nix was oddly serious on both counts.

“What are we demonstrating?” Ayli asked, intrigued more by the chance to get to dance with Nix, but willing to take things in the order presented. However Nix planned to win over Tovos’ crew probably involved one or more dangerous uses of the Force – it was Nix after all.

“Tovos says that the Xah doesn’ talk to them,” Nix said.

“Uh, I thought it was a point of pride that you can listen to the Xah better than anyone?” Ayli said, glancing from Tovos and Felgo to Osdo for confirmation.

“We listening but the Xah does not speak,” Osdo said. “Not to us.”

“What do you hear then?” Ayli suspected that the language limitations of Galactic Basic might be tripping them up, but working around those was often challenging. What a word like “speak” meant in one language might take a doctoral dissertation to explain to someone who spoke a different language. That everyone crammed their native languages down into the homogenized stew that was Galactic Basic was responsible for maybe a third of the conflict in the galaxy in Ayli’s estimation (with the other two thirds being split between willful stupidity, greed, and people simply being awful.)

“The Xah is the wind, it is a river, it is the beat of blood inside it,” Tovos said. “It brings us information, but it does not speak.”

“I notice you’re saying ‘it does not speak’, not ‘it cannot speak’?” Nix waited for confirmation from Tovos but Ayli could feel Nix’s attention drifting over the other members of the crew, both the ones present and the ones working elsewhere on the ship.

“It…” Osdo started to say, but Tovos cut him off.

“The Elders can hear the Xah speaking to them,” Tovos said. “It is what marks them as an Elder, and why they speak with one voice.”

“But they don’t?” Nix said, sounding as confused as Tovos was.

“Yes they do,” Osdo said. “The guidance of the Elders is always clear because they can hear the guidance of the Xah.”

“I had a few scant minutes of interacting with them and in that short time Honored Jolu and your Primus definitely disagreed about things,” Nix said.

“Then the Xah was conflicted,” Tovos said. “That is what you bring to us.”

“The Xah was fine,” Nix said. “Remember, I put up no resistance. When I saw how much a small leap had disturbed you, I made sure I didn’t ask the Force for anything. Think back, after I, somewhat rudely it seems, landed near you, did you sense anything out of the ordinary from me. It wasn’t until later that I got…I suppose loud is underselling it.”

“You destroyed a building,” Felgo said.

“I did. I really did,” Nix said sounding much too fondly proud of the accomplishment. “To be fair though, that was after Dolon tried to kill me like an idiot. And he was the only one in the building. I think I set him on fire too, didn’t it? I bet that was nasty. Generator fires can burn super hot, though the model you had was pretty middling. If it had been one of the good ones, I                                                                                         probably could have vaporized him. A good CrashTech 8100 or a 9200 even? That would have been a sight to see. Might have taken out some other buildings too though, which was not the intent. Of course if it had been a serious one like a PlasDrive 220A? One of those things could have cratered the whole tradeport. That’s why you only find them on the combat class capital ships. Sorry, where was I?”

Ayli chuckled at the looks on their “captors” faces. That particular mix of awe, revulsion, curiosity, and sheer confusion was one which only her wife could produce.

“That cannot be true,” Tovos said, shaking his head and rallying. “You attacked Primus Dolon unprovoked. He told us that himself.”

“He lied,” Nix said. “He does that. A lot, from what Rassi and Solna have said.”

“Jedi lie. The Elders cannot lie. Lies disturb the Xah!” Felgo’s declaration had all the rote certainty which was missing in Tovos’ silence.

“They do,” Nix said with a nod. “But if you tell the lie through the Force, the one you tell it too will have a much harder time discerning that. The Jedi used that to resolve conflicts peacefully, but it is still a violation of the people who are ‘mind tricked’ and the Force itself.”

“That is the Jedi,” Felgo said.

“And your Primus,” Nix said.

Felgo’s hand went to his blaster, but Tovos was oddly still.

“The Jedi lie and you cannot prove what you say.” That small traces of conflict showed on his face struck Ayli at last. Neither of the other Enclave members were displaying anything except blank, calm emotions. That Tovos wasn’t suppressing his, or wasn’t suppressing them fully was either the sign of extreme turmoil inside him or something even more serious.

“Yeah.” Nix sighed. “The Force said we’d get to this point. It’s great like that. Pointing out the incredibly obvious, even when I’d really don’t want it to be right. Stupid Force.”

“You hate your Force?” Osdo asked.

“No. I love my connection to it,” Nix said. “I’ve relief on it my whole life, way before I knew what it was. The Force is wonderful. And awful. And terrifying. And occasionally incredibly freaking smug!” She shook a fist as though something beyond the room’s ceiling was looking down on her.

“Smug?” Osdo asked.

“Smug.” Nix confirmed and brief in a deep breath. “There is something we can do that will prove what I’m saying.”

Ayli took a breath too and felt how disgruntled Nix was at what she was going to suggest next.

Then Ayli saw why.

“It’s okay. We’ll be okay,” she said, earning her a a nod of gratitude from Nix and looks of further confusion from the others.

“Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on us,” Tovos said, a weariness in his voice.

“Sadly they would. None of you were ever allowed to develop the natural resistances to mental manipulation which most Force users possess,” Nix said. “But that’s not how we can convince you. Or its not how I’m willing to convince you. Subverting your will to my own? You would never trust me again, and if I did that I’d be proving that you never should.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Tovos asked.

“Dance. Ayli and I are going to dance.”

“And how would a dance prove anything?” Tovos was shading into irritation, a cycle he seemed to have run through repeatedly.

“You tell me,” Nix said. “If Ayli and I were to dance a Silent Dance, would we be able to have the strength to craft lies in the Xah? Or would what I showed you have to be what I’d witnessed myself?”

“You cannot silence yourself enough for it to matter,” Tovos said.

“But you would know that too,” Ayli said, knowing the answer before she asked the question.

“Your failure will prove nothing.” There was an air of uncertainty which was breathtaking given the repression the three Enclave members were capable of.

“Which is why we’re not going to fail,” Nix said.

“Dying will not change anything for us,” Tovos said.

“Which is why we’re not going to die,” Ayli said.

Tovos looked like he wanted to argue, and Ayli saw that he probably should. Her and Nix successfully conveying what Nix had experienced was going to shatter them. 

But sometimes, people need to break.

She certainly had.

Over and over again.

Each time losing bits of herself.

Or that’s what she’d thought. For the first time she began to wonder if what she’d managed to recover from those losses wasn’t every bit as valuable as what she’d left behind.

Seeking destruction, or worse, seeking to inflict it on others, wasn’t a path to growth, but neither was shrinking from the fear of loss.

Failure had to be more than option, it had to be a reality. If she’d never pushed herself far enough to fail, she wouldn’t be half the person she was.

And so, when everyone gathered in the small cargo hold, she danced.

Nix had been right to grumble at the Force’s suggestion that a Silent Dance would convince Tovos and his crew of Nix’s words. 

Not because it wouldn’t. 

Even as they started, Ayli could feel that it would work. 

But that didn’t make the dance itself even vaguely pleasant.

She followed Nix’s lead, quieting her breath, calming her blood, and eventually, stilling her heart. 

In the Rebellion, Ayli had heard countless remarks about ‘dancing with death’. More than once, she’d been the one to make them and had been perfectly accurate in her claims. Those had always been frantic, adrenaline fueled bursts of chaos and madness, where death had roared like blaster bolt and a plasma bomb and a scream to end all tomorrows.

The Silent Dance was none of those things.

Her heart’s final beat was long past and she was still stepping onwards, following, following, and ever following Nix down into a darkness so still that the call of the Force beyond it was almost undeniable.

Answering the call was her destiny. And the destiny of all others. It was the one mercy and kindness absolutely guaranteed to all who lived, that at the end there would be peace, and serenity, and a place in eternity with all who’d passed before.

But her soul wasn’t bound for eternity. She was set on something much more important.

With her last step, she followed Nix a pace further, rising back towards life even though she had left it so far behind. 

Too far for her life to be stretched.

Too far for her to return.

But not to far for the Force to carry her.

“Was…did we do it?” she asked, blearing and not quite able to see at first.

“She’s alive!” It sounded like Osdo said that but Ayli had a more pressing concern.

Where was Nix?

Opening her eyes and bringing blood back to everywhere that needed it, she got her answer. Nix was right beside her.

Laying on the ground.

Still and unbreathing.

“Away,” Ayli said, not that anyone had dared get close to either of them.

Though her ability to feel fear was muted still, the site of Nix unresponsive and not breathing did a fantastic job of lighting up Ayli’s limbic system.

“Breathe,” she whispered, lowering her head to Nix’s to begin rescue breathing. At her touch though, she felt the faintest echo the Force stirring in Nix and changed her plans. “Bring her back to me. There’s more for us to do.”

There was always more for those who passed on to do, which made that a less than compelling argument, but Ayli wasn’t arguing, and the Force agreed. It didn’t understand why Nix had pushed it away beyond a general sense of the need which had driven Nix’s actions, but it was more than happy to flow into her and Ayli was more than happy to help.

A moment later, Nix coughed weakly, twitched, and at last opened an eye.

“Ugh, yeah, that was just as bad as I thought it was going to be,” she said. 

“Lies,” Tovos said, anguish writ on his face and through his presence in the Force. “Everything we were taught has been lies.”

It didn’t surprise Solna that though the mine she and Rassi were descending into had been closed for over a hundred years, the tech within it was still in perfect working order. She knew that the Silent Enclave wouldn’t have accepted subpar materials for any of their ventures. Everything she’d ever seen them use was old and durable, meant to work for lifetimes so that as little contact with the outside world as possible was required. Despite that however, in every pebble and shadowed corner, she could feel the mine collapsing on her.

She could have spoken to Rassi about her premonition, but when you were in danger, speech was forbidden. The Enclave’s rules held far less sway over her than they had a few days earlier (How had her world changed so much so quickly? How had she?), but some of their strictures were ones she wasn’t sure she really wanted to abandon.

Plus Rassi already knew what she was thinking.

They could both feel how the Xah was moving. It had been hurt. There was agony embedded in the stones and it had nothing to do with the mining process. Stone’s didn’t care if they were split apart or hauled away. They were stones. Agony was the province of those who could be aware of it.

Below us. Rassi didn’t need words to indicate that. The focus of her gaze, the set of her jaw, the solidity of her grip on Solna’s hand. There were channels of communication open to them which needed no words to break the silence they held. It’s strongest below us. 

It knows we’re here. Solna couldn’t be sure of that, the sense of being watched could have been nothing more than her own fears feeding back on her. Giving the unnatural depth of the shadows though Solna was inclined to pay attention to her fears.

It’s not attacking yet.

It could be waiting for us to come too close to escape.

Then it won’t be able to escape either. Rassi’s touch was firm and reassuring on that point.

Solna felt a grin crinkle the corner of her eyes. Rassi’s new found confidence was an overdue delight. There’d been so many years when, no matter how well she did, or how hard she worked, Rassi hadn’t been able to believe any compliment Solna ever paid her because the voices of the rest of the Enclave rang too loudly in her ears. 

Solna suspected Rassi’s confidence was at least partially a front put on to keep them moving forward, but even that felt like a massive step in the right direction.

Ahead of them, across a wide cavern that was littered with the detritus of a once active work site, a second set of lifts stood, function indicators lit once more after Solna had enabled the main power circuits to the mine. The haphazardly parked grav lifters and the piles of ore still awaiting sorting and processing provided clear testimony that whatever event had finally forced the Enclave to abandon the mines had to have happened suddenly and without warning.

That one? Solna asked indicating the lift that dropped to the lowest posted level. 

According to the map there were three significant deposits which were being excavated, each at progressively deeper depths than the previous one. The lifts were high speed transports to bring the ores to the central sorting and staging room which made up the top level of the mine where Rassi and Solna had arrived.. 

Rassi shook her head at the deep lift and indicated the overseers office which overlooked the plasma carved cave from high up the wall, above the elevators on the far side of room.

Solna raised an eyebrow at that. Whatever awaited them was below, and felt like it had sunk to the lowest depths it could fine.

Rassi gave a confirming nod, so Solna tagged along willingly. Was there something in the Xah leading Rassi there? Or was it some new Force skill she was developing? How quickly would their relationship with the Xah change? 

Or did it even have to change?

Solna’s mistrust of the lies she’d been taught had grown over the years with the last few days turning it into a violent revulsion against the Silent Enclave, but somehow that didn’t entirely carry over to her understanding of the Xah. 

She’d always been talented with it, controlling herself far better than any other child her age and better in a number of cases, she felt, than the adults who were supposed to be teaching and correcting her.

That’s they’d been teaching her to be a malleable, controllable, puppet of a person filled Solna with the sort of rage that she’d spent her lifetime learning to hide. 

The Xah though? The Xah had always been a source of comfort for her. She loved existing in harmony with it. Clumsy members of the Enclave, when they were trying very hard to be ‘silent’, inevitably left glaringly obvious voids in the Xah. Spots where everything was preternaturally still.

When Solna was pushed herself to utter silence, the Xah remained as it was because she offered it no resistance. As it flowed, so did she. Every movement and every moment was no different than if she hadn’t ever existed. That’s how in tune she was with the Xah.

Rassi, by contrast, had a curiously more active relationship with the Xah, at least from what Solna could see. The sort of silence which the Enclave valued so highly, and which came so peacefully to Solna, was always a struggle for Rassi, but a struggle that she somehow won, time and again.

Though their teachers would never admit it or ever off Rassi praise for it, there’d been more than one test where it had been Rassi, not Solna, who’d been the least perceptible, the most silent.

So which one of them was the prodigy? Which one of them was special? Nix had beaten them both and she’d apparently only been studying the Force for a little over a year, so did it matter how much the Enclave had managed to teach them at so young an age? Or what about Kelda and Ravas? They had literally centuries of experience with their abilities. They were avatars of the living Force, the Xah taking the form of the living and speaking to her directly, and yet neither of them were capable of fixing all the problems before them. So did all those years of experience make them more special than the rest?

Or had the Enclave been wrong about that too.

Could people be special in innumerably different ways?

By the time they’d navigated small mag lift up to the overseer’s office, Solna’s thoughts were spinning about as much as her world was, but as Rassi keyed open the door using one of the Enclave’s standard access codes, she understood what had drawn them here.

A fourth elevator, smaller than the others, was powered and waiting for them. Inside it were buttons for four destinations. One for each of the active excavation levels and one which required a special key to unlock.

The lock turned as the Force twisted around it and the elevator doors slid closed.

We’ve been invited. Solna meant it as a warning, but Rassi just smiled.

Because she’d been the one to knock on the creature’s door.

With as hidden as they’d been, nothing should have sensed them entering the elevator, and nothing would have, if Rassi hadn’t tapped a little beat into the Force.

Do we need stay silent? Solna asked.

Better to surprise whatever’s down there, than be surprised by it.

Which, as arguments went, was persuasive enough in Solna’s book to justify allowing her to continue doing what felt right and natural.

Descending down to the hidden depths of the mine however felt less and less right with each moment that passed.

This is definitely a trap. She didn’t need to warn Rassi, but it was almost impossible to not communicate that.

A trap for the Enclave. I don’t think whatever’s down there can sense what we are.

But it can tell that we’re using the Enclave’s techniques.

And yet it doesn’t know how to penetrate them.

Did they capture one of the Death Shadows?

That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe that was why they left here?

The elevator arrived at the lowest level and Solna felt their answers awaiting them in the darkness beyond the elevator’s door.

Before she could step out into the small area which the elevator’s lights were illuminating though, a wave of hunger hit Solna that was nearly strong enough to knock her out of the silence she was taking refuge in.

It doesn’t understand why we’re not here. Rassi had her eyes closed, searching for the presence which Solna could pinpoint all too easily.

Its there. Solna pointed into the darkness, indicating a pit with a grating over it. Though it was hidden by the lack of illumination, Solna could feel the precise geometry of the room from the waves of disgust which washed up from the pit.

Pit? Rassi asked.

At the bottom of the pit, but it’s in this room too, and now the elevator.

It’s the mist on the floor?

The mist is its hatred. It feels familiar.

Something from the Lich’s tomb?

No. Something from me. This things hates the Enclave.

I think it is a Death Shadow. Something in the pit must be trapping it.

I don’t know, maybe not? An idea was coalescing in Solna’s mind, but she was agonizingly aware of what a bad idea it might be.

What are you doing? Rassi asked, as Solna stepped forward out of the elevator and bent down to run her hands through the mist that was covering the floor.

The rage which suffused the mist wasn’t at all foreign to her. Whatever was in the pit didn’t hate the Enclave because it had been crafted with hate, or summoned for vengeance. The pit creatures…no, the pit persons hatred came from the same place hers did.

The person in the pit had lived with the Enclave.

They’d been Silent, like Solna had.

And the Enclave had destroyed them.

Solna’s breath caught.

They were a Death Shadow.

Or they could become one.

Just like she could.

“We need to free him,” she said aloud, dropping all the silence she’d attained.

The person in the pit recoiled, but from the unexpected arrival of a presence and the weight of the sentiment behind Solna’s words.

“Kelda, Ravas! We need you!” Rassi said aloud, and Solna could feel the worry that had swallowed Rassi’s heart.

“I’m okay,” Solna said. “He’s not though. We need to free him.”

“That’s not a person down there,” Rassi said. “Listen to the Xah, or ask the Force. What’s down there, there’s no life in it.”

“She’s right,” Ravas said. “I don’t know what it is, but that’s not something that was ever a part of the Force.”

“The Enclave hurt them. Whatever they are now, however impossible that is, I know that’s true.” Solna spoke the words as much for the person in the pit as for her companions and from the proto-Death Shadow, she felt an invitation to join it in its hate.

“Be careful,” Ravas said. “It’s hungry and it will do anything to get out of there.”

“We can’t leave it here,” Solna said. It wasn’t the Force which was telling her that. Not exactly. Her heart was clear on that point though.

“If we release this thing, it will become a roaming blight like the other Death Shadows we’ve encountered,” Kelda said. “Unless you have some other idea?”

“I think I do,” Solna said and for the first time in her life, she consciously asked the Force to help her.

In front of her, the grating on the pit lifted away and without waiting for the others, Solna stepped over the edge and dropped down into the darkness below.