“A night descends which shall never pass. The sun has fallen, devoured by the nameless beast, and with its last light faded, no more gods stand to bring us to salvation. I write this for the uncaring void and the empty wastes which will remain as we, the peoples of this mighty world descend into madness, and barbarism, and, at the last, the silence of unquiet death.”

– Grigo Weltham, recording an oracular vision on the day of the last sun fall. Cited in the following decades as how very wrong seers are capable of being.

The greatest city in the world was full of rats, and I was one of them. We huddled down in the unwanted places, snatched up the scraps people let go, and tried our very best to draw absolutely no attention to ourselves.

Predictably, that did not always go so well for us.

“Little! Move your ass! The patrol just got Pibby.”

I wasn’t overly fond of hearing my own name called out. In part because “Little” was annoying accurate, and in part because I really didn’t like the idea of the City Patrollers knowing that I even existed much less that there was someone with my name that they’d missed. There were a lot of things that pissed off the Patrollers but high up on the list was anything that reminded them what a bunch of screwups they were, like, for example, the fact that they were consistently failing to capture one tiny little Ratkin girl who had a habit of making acquaintances with other, more idiotic Ratkins.

Pibby wasn’t someone I’d known long. Which was true of most of the others who were scurrying down the alley with me. Unlike us though, Pibby hadn’t been clever or lucky enough to dive into the alley when the Patrol’s wagon came rumbling around the bend, and as a result, Pibby was going to be volunteered for the Holy and Sacred duty of taking part in the Kindling Tithe.

He didn’t deserve that.

None of us did.

No one at all did.

But that’s what the Lords said was needed. Sacrifices had to be made in order to keep the flame portals open. Without them we’d have no warmth and no light, which would mean no food either.

People like food. I know this because I’m people, and I like food a lot.

As it turns out, a lot of other people only disagree with the part where I get to be a ‘people’. That’s not unique to Ratkin. Lots of people who aren’t favored by the Neoteric Lords don’t get to count as ‘people’. We’re still useful as kindling. We burn just fine after all. And we can be put to work for a lot of different things which, if we’re lucky, is enough to get the Patrollers to look elsewhere when they go out to round up the month’s Kindling supply.

Pibby hadn’t been that lucky though, and as I ran so hard it felt like my lungs were going to explode, I had all kinds of visions that I wasn’t going to be that lucky either.

If we’d actually been rats, getting away would have been a lot easier. Vaingloth, our local Neoteric Lord, hadn’t built his city from the ground up. Like all of them, as far as I knew, he’d taken control of one of the big cities of the old world and spared it with the portals he’d been able to open when the sun got eaten up, which meant there were plenty of spots in it someone that was actually rat-sized could have used to escape. I’m sure the great and glorious Neoteric Lord would have preferred otherwise but saving the world hadn’t allowed for much time for architectural renewal in the process.

To be fair, ‘saving the world’ does sound like a big deal, and I’d have to guess it was since I don’t think anyone outside the Lord’s cities managed to, you know, survive. The cost of that survival was everyone who could be packed into the city, was. Then everyone had to deal with the fact that we’re all completely dependent on the Lord’s whim to continue surviving. If he says we’ve got to burn up a bunch of people each month to keep the portals open, then in they go.

“It’s a great honor”, “They only use the ones who deserve it, the criminals, and that sort”, “I think it cleans up the streets nicely”, “Well, we’ve got too many people as it is, of course we need to thin things out a bit”.  

It’s really amazing the kind of things you can overhear when, with a bit of an oversized cloak, you can be mistaken for a human kid who’s just hanging around. Not that it was just the humans who thought that. Or even all of them. Plenty of humans got tossed in as Kindling too, right along with Gobs, and Avians, and anyone else the Patrol decided looked annoying and/or flammable.

I liked to tell myself that as a little Ratkin girl, there wasn’t enough of me to be worth burning. I liked to tell myself I was too clever to get caught too. Too easily overlooked. Not worth anyone’s time really. And too good at keeping my head down and my nose out of trouble.  I liked to tell myself a lot of things.

And, I maintain, I am clever.

When I saw the others I’d been scavenging with take a hard right and head down one of the cross streets, I knew they were dead. The street was too wide. There were definitely going to be more Patrollers there.

And I was right. 

I had a better option though. A thin little gap between two houses on the left that only someone my size could manage.

I threw myself into it and learned, yet again, that sometimes, being clever is not even close to enough.

The patroller who caught me was human. Big guy. Couldn’t fit in the gap I was squirming through if you held a sword to this throat.

His arm though? Yeah, that fit in just fine. He snagged me with a single grab and yoinked me out of the illusion of safety with barely any effort at all.

If I had more ratlike features I could have bitten him with terrible rodent teeth, or scratched him with noxious claws. 

Or something.

Or anything.

All I’ve got are some good ears, whiskers, and a nose that works a bit better than most folks. 

I sagged and went limp. The dead weight of a body is supposed to be hard to lift.

I wasn’t.

“Hah! Got it,” he said, holding me up by one arm to show to the other patroller.

“Sure you didn’t leave some of it back there?” the other one said. “Gonna need three more like that it just to count for one real person.”

I didn’t bother to stir. I wasn’t really that little, but it didn’t matter. There wasn’t exactly a minimum size for the ‘Holy Offerings’.

“Maybe they’ll call it a bonus,” the one that was holding me said. “You know, a little extra for the portal, to keep it happy.”

I was pretty sure the portals didn’t have a ‘happy’ setting, but what did I know? I was just kindling right?

Well not just kindling.

I was clever kindling.

Yeah, I was still hanging onto that despite all the evidence to the contrary. When you’ve got the fighting capacity of an over boiled noodle, you hang onto whatever you can.

Step one of being clever was lulling them into a false sense of superiority. That was incredibly easy since they were superior to me in pretty much every physical attribute.

Step two was not letting them put me into a spot I couldn’t escape from. Like, for example, the back of one of their collection wagons.

“They caught you too?” Pibby said as they swung the wagon door closed after unceremoniously chucking me inside.

“All part of the plan,” I lied to him. I didn’t mind when he shot me a skeptical look in response. I wasn’t try to make Pibby feel better. I was trying to make myself feel better.

I really didn’t want to burn.

Not like everyone else had. 

This city didn’t deserve the warmth it would get from burning me. 

The patrollers moved off to finish corralling the others, so I tried kicking the door, on the off chance that they’d forgotten to put the lock on it.

Patrollers are idiots, but patrollers who let people just walk out their collection wagons wind up on the kindling pile quickly enough that the ranks are not quite idiotic enough to make grandiose mistakes when I really need them to.

“We can’t get out of here like that,” Pibby said. As though that wasn’t staggeringly obvious.

“Of course not,” I said, imaging that I really did have a plan and everything I did was in service to it.

My “go to” strategy was hiding. When that failed, my backup was running. When that failed, I was supposed to hide some more. It wasn’t a wide repertoire of options, but it had served me well right up until it hadn’t.

Which meant it was time to try something new.

Something new that my fear drenched brain was going to dredge up right away.

Any time really.

But sooner would be better.

Since I would be on fire later.

Not a helpful thought I have to confess, and it was asking a lot for my brain to function at all under the circumstances, but I didn’t really have much else to work with. Just an empty wagon and no tools in sight.

My eyes drifted over to Pibby.

“Want to try something really stupid?” I asked.

“What could be stupid at this point?” he asked in return, so I explained my idea to him.

And he agreed it was stupid.

But he also agreed to try it.

It only took a few minutes to take our shot, since the patrollers wrapped up their hunt early.

“Hey, where’s the other one?” the patroller who’d grabbed me said when he peeked back into sealed cage we were in.

“She wiggled through the bars and took off,” Pibby said, sitting carefully so that I was able to hide completely behind him by curling up into a small ball.

Yes, my big plan was to go back to hiding.

But I was going to try something new too.

“Like hell she did,” the patroller said, at least not referring to me as ‘it’ anymore, which was nice. “Get out here.”

It was a stupid plan. Clever people come up with good plans, and this was a stupid one.

But it worked.

The patroller threw off the lock and reached in to drag Pibby out into the meager light of the aether torches they carried and I clung to Pibby’s back to stay obscured until the last second.

Whatever the patroller had been expecting, it hadn’t been for me to roll around Pibby and go for one of the knives on his belt.

He swung at me with his torch, which did not feel good, and went to grab the sword he was carrying.

I can understand being worried about losing a sword, but he was also carrying a dagger, and those not only fit my hands a lot better, but, as it turns out, they’re much easier to use when you’re inches away from someone.

In the stories they tell in taverns and at festivals, the brave fighter always seems to dispatch their foe with one terrible and/or swift blow.

I think the patroller took something like thirty or forty.

That didn’t take long.

I’m small but I’m not slow.

Not being slow was also what got me running again.

To my credit, I feel, I had the presence of mind to drag Pibby with me. He didn’t want to be dragged along. Which was fine. Following a Ratkin girl who was covered in patroller blood and was probably not going to live long enough to be fed to the fires was not the best company to keep. I at least dragged him away from the wagons though before the other patrollers made it the cart to see what I’d done. 

With precious few options to work with, I hurled us into an a building someone had forgotten to buy a door for.

Pibby, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom, went up, scaling the staircase in front of us three steps at a time. Maybe he planned to hop from rooftop to rooftop? Maybe he planned to spontaneously discover an aptitude for flight magics? Whatever his plan was I wished him luck with it and went with what I knew.

Down.

Lots of buildings have access to the old sewer tunnels, and I’d spent enough time in them that I was sure I could get lost better than the patrollers would be able to find me.

Not that they were ever going to stop looking.

But that was a problem for a Little who’d found a new hiding place and could manage to put at least two thoughts together in a row.

My luck, being what it was, left me in the building’s sub-basement running my hands along a wall which lacked the normal hatchway into the sewer tunnels. It was pitch dark of course. Even decent places had limits on how much light they were afforded from the Lord’s precious hoard. I knew what the hatchways felt like though, and working in the dark wasn’t exactly new to me.

Frustrated, I punched the wall, as though I could smash through it with all of my amazing brute force.

Punching walls is stupid, just in case that wasn’t clear.

My fist hurt enough that I stamped my foot and bit back a scream of frustration and pain. 

Also not the brightest move since making any sound to attract the patrollers was a terrible idea under the circumstances.

In this particularly case though, it was a spectacularly bad idea since the floor I was standing on was not, it turned out, especially sound.

I plummeted through the boards as they gave way beneath me and sent me tumbling down a slanting shaft into sheer darkness.

Falling was disorienting, but I knew I’d dropped below the levels of the old sewers and was still going for a while before I came to a hard stop against something that thankfully was neither ‘spikey’, ‘stabby’, nor ‘impaling’. 

Feeling around, I found roots. Thick, old roots. I expected them to crumble away at my touch since most of the old trees had withered and died long before I was born, but these were supple? And warm?

Squirming a hand in between them, I managed to part a few.

And my world shattered.

Down, lost in the depths, rays of golden light unseen in the world for a century flooded through the vines.

The Force gave Alyi supernaturally quick reflexes. Few Twi’leks had ever moved like she did, and even among Twi’lek Force Users her response times to danger was phenomenal. It was the part of using the Force she’d gravitated too the most naturally. The part she saw, in time, that she’d been relying on for far longer than she’d been aware of the Force’s existence as a real phenomena. The part that had saved her life countless times, and was currently the only thing buying her the few precious seconds of life she was experiencing.

But it wasn’t enough to buy her safety, or her survival.

Kelda was helping her. Deflecting blaster bolts as they poured down the hallway and trying, unsuccessfully to push their attackers away.

Normally that would have been enough to decide any battle. Regular storm troopers wouldn’t have withstood Kelda’s first telekinetic shove. Rattling them into the walls would have been more than enough to leave them addled and disoriented so that, worst case, Ayli could shoot them all (or run away, but Ayli hated running from Imperials).

These storm troopers were unaffected by Kelda’s Force techniques though.

No.

Not unaffected.

Protected from them.

Ayli had sensed that the Elders were doing something, taking a hard to discern action against Nix and herself. Apparently the Silent Enclave had developed a technique to shied and empower others with the Force.

It was an ability that was blatantly at odds with their espoused tenants, but discovering that the Enclave’s Elders were complete hypocrites was like discovering that it was a bit hard to breathe in space – unpleasant but far from surprising.

“Ayli!” Nix yelled from the cover of the room Ravas had tossed her into. 

Ayli couldn’t look to see what Nix was doing, but the Force told her that Nix was reaching out to deflect the blaster bolts too.

Which helped.

With Nix turning some of the fire aside, Ayli was able to start weaving a few inches closer to the shelter of the room Nix was in.

But the room Nix was in was not a shelter.

Ayli felt, more than saw, the attacks aimed at Nix. Two of the Elders had been tossed into that room first.

They weren’t in the best of the shapes, but neither was Nix.

Ayli couldn’t help herself.

She flung her arm sideway to shove one of the attackers away from Nix.

And promptly caught a blaster bolt with her forearm.

For a moment, adrenaline kept her going. She didn’t feel the pain. She wasn’t distracted. She was able to keep deflecting the other blaster fire that was coming at her.

But only for a moment.

As soon as the burning agony from her arm registered, her concentration was shattered.

She survived for another moment thanks to Kelda’s effort.

And the moment after that thanks to Nix pulling her to safety, though that cost her another hit from a bolt to her right lekku which was so instantly painful that she blacked out.

Unconsciousness lasted seconds but those seconds were long enough to shift the battlefield.

When Ayli blinked the pain out of her eyes, she found Nix and Ravas both holding fully energized Rexnarian Vibroblades. They were nasty weapons and the blood that coated them said they’d been put to nasty work.

The two Elders were dying. Mortally wounded from a number of rather brutal knife strikes. With medical attention they could probably be saved, but bacta tanks weren’t exactly plentiful in the middle of a firefight.

“We can get you out of here,” Ravas said, as a wave of suffocating pressure landed on all of them.

The knife Ravas had been holding dropped to the floor as she and Kelda faded and winked out of sight.

“That’s the other Elders,” Nix said, trying to catch her breath. “We’re cut off.”

“The storm troopers are advancing,” Ayli said, calling the fallen vibro blade to her hand. She still had her blast rifle but having options was always a good idea.

“Can you stand?” Nix asked.

Ayli tested her leg and stifled a scream.

“No. Which means I get to stay here,” she said. It was more than the Rebellion’s standard procedure. It was their only path to victory.

“We both do,” Nix said. “I don’t have any feeling in my left leg yet. Stupid stun blades.”

“We can’t defend ourselves here,” Ayli said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m not going to let them kill you,” Ayli said, desperation waking her Dark Side even more than the pain had.

“We’re not going to die here,” Nix said, shaking her head. “I don’t know how, but we’re going to…oh.”

Without warning she threw herself over Ayli, forming a human shield against the blastwave which ripped the hull wide open.

Hull breeches were not, at any point in Ayli’s life, good things. 

Any point up until that precise instant.

She felt the mass of storm troopers, Force protected though they were go spinning out into the void and the pounding of automatic blaster fire quieted.

The rush of air of which had slammed her and Nix against the remains of the wall to the destroyed hallway continued to gush out. Star Destroyers are large enough that even multi-room holes in their superstructure are nowhere near capable of venting a meaningful amount of their atmosphere. 

A weird whine went through the deck beneath her and the torrent of air slowed leaving them happily able to breath rather than enjoying the embrace of the hard vacuum like the Storm Troopers were.

“The deflectors modulated for atmosphere. Wow the pressure seals must be wrecked if the systems defaulted back to that,” Nix said, gazing out as though she could see the innards of the ship and was watching them work.

“What was that? Someone’s engaged the flagship?” Ayli asked, her senses scrambled as much from the explosion as from the pain wracking her body.

Head wounds uniformly suck among all of the galaxies many species. Lekku wounds were far worse though.

Or at least Ayli was prepared to testify to that fact under her current circumstances.

“Not just someone,” Nix said, a delighted smile lighting her face like a sunrise.

“There’s no airlock left, so I’m docking here. Anyone shoots at me and I’ll be firing another proton torpedo at you.” Goldie’s voice ran out from an external speaker system loud enough to rattle the durasteel deck.

Before Ayli could question the arrival, she heard the crash of metal on metal and felt a hard jolt go through the deck. Goldie’s idea of ‘docking’ was a trifle more destructive than most and Ayli was beyond certain that the threat to unleash more proton torpedoes at point blank range had been made in ernest. Fortunately that did not prove to be necessary since the enemy combatants who would have provoked such an action were in the process of drifting away into the void.

“Found them, Nulo, bring the medkits,” Lasha the Horizon Knight said, drifting into view in one of the EVA suits from Goldie’s stores.

“Are they hurt?” Goldie asked, her mechanical voice the precise sort of emotionless to serve as a prelude to cataclysmic levels of violence.

“We’re fine. Slightly shot up, but your timing was impeccable,” Nix said. “Tend to Ayli first. I just need a stim for my leg.”

Lasha took one look at both of them, closed her eyes and waved her hand back and forth.

“You need wound sealant, and she needs burn care,” Lasha said, while Nulo was on hand to provide before Lasha could finish speaking.

Being tended to by a medic wasn’t a new experience for Ayli, though being tended to by one with Force sensitivity was new. Lasha didn’t need to ask where things hurt, or if the treatment was sufficient. Also, Lasha had apparently brought along some very high end medical products, because the anesthetics had brought both her arm and lekku pain down to an annoying ache and Ayli could almost swear that her skin had started regrowing already.

That the medical supplies had the same branding as the ones from Goldie’s stores didn’t make a lot of sense, but Ayli had more important things to worry about.

“How did you find us?” she asked, amazed that the Elder’s cloaking field hadn’t made that impossible.

“Deduction,” Nulo said, as she held her hands against Nix’s side where a stab wound had left her bloody and bruised.

Which also didn’t make sense. Stab wounds and bruises are produced by very different sorts of trauma.

“I knew you’d be on the flagship since that had to be where the Elder’s ran,” Goldie said over the comm that Lasha was carrying. “From there I just had to scan for your entry point and then look for heat signatures.”

Muffvok whuffed a few times.

“We helped from there,” Nulo translated. “Its really hard to sense anything here, but the pain from these wounds stood out.”

“If you can move them, we should get out of here,” Goldie said. “Aunt Sali is keeping them busy but I’m not exactly in a good spot if any of the Tie’s they’ve scrambled come to check out what’s happening.”

‘You need to take off, now,” Nix said.

“Nope. Not leaving without you,” Goldie said, her adamant tone the exact same one Nix was using.

“We can’t leave. We had to stop the Elders now,” Nix said.

“You’re not in much shape for that,” Lasha said.

“We’re doing to have to be,” Ayli said, rising to her feet and finding her leg shockingly firm and supportive. All she had to do was limp a little and she was fine.

“What you have to do is get to safety, which is not here,” Goldie said. “Let Aunt Sali blow up the Elders.”

“They have Kelda and Ravas,” Nix said.

Goldie was silent for a long moment.

“Bantha poodu,” she said at last. 

“Yeah. It is,” Nix said. “I’m not sending you away though. We need you. Just not right here.”

“Where do you need me then?” Goldie asked.

“If we’re not onboard, you can unlock your thrusters and hit maneuvers than even the inertial dampeners won’t hold up to, right?”

“Yes?” Goldie asked hesitantly.

“I need you to crash a Tie-Fighter into the docking bay. More than one if you can.”

“That’s going to make getting you off this ship a bit difficult,” Goldie said. “Not impossible, but why do you want me to block off your primary escape route.”

“Because I don’t want the Elders escaping either.”

“And then I come get you?”

“Not quite. There’s one more task I’ll have for you.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t know yet. Just get close enough to comm us after you take out the docking bay. The pieces will be in place by then.”

“That sounds terrible. I hate this plan.”

“You’re the only one who can make it work.” Nix’s words were fond. And manipulative. And honest. It was probably the combination of the three that won Goldie over, though Ayli suspected that getting to destroy a docking bay was a serious enticement all on its own.

“And what are you going to be doing?” Goldie asked.

“Rescuing Kelda and Ravas,” Ayli said.

“And putting a stop to the Elders and their Imperial backers,” Nix said. “I think the Force is fed up with all of their nonsense.”

“This is outside our usual purview, but I’d have to agree,” Lasha said. “Even with whatever this horrible thing they’re doing to the Force, I can still feel the pull to finish this here and now.”

“I would object and say you don’t have to, but we could really use your help,” Nix said.

“They can empower regular soldiers,” Ayli said. “And the Imperials are never shy about expending legions of Storm Troopers, especially if they feel personally threatened.”

“That sounds difficult to fight against,” Lasha said. “Which means you will likely need these.”

From her sack, she draw forth a pair of hilts and handed Ayli and Nix the lightsabers they’d left on Goldie when a stray thought months earlier had told them it might be a good idea.

There was a pirate navy dropping out of hyperspace. A pirate navy under the command of one of Nix’s ex-girlfriends. 

Nix hadn’t expected that. 

She welcomed it, certainly. Could feel the Force sitting in silent, smug satisfaction at the turn of events. But understanding it or explaining it? Nope. That was well beyond her capabilities.

“Oh good, we got here in time,” Kelda said, appearing in the seat behind Nix’s in the shuttle’s cockpit as was her wont.

“Not by much though,” Ravas said, appearing behind Ayli. “The other fleet was just about to jump to lightspeed.”

“They were,” Ayli confirmed. “The Interdictor’s shut that down though. Thanks for arranging that.”

“The alternatives were unappealing,” Ravas said.

“How were we going to die?” Nix asked, easily deciphering Ravas’ meaning.

“One of their ships was meant for planetary pacification,” Kelda said. “When you broke its drive to keep it from getting away, the crew overloaded the weapons system’s core to make sure it didn’t fall into anyone else’s hands.”

“Planetary pacification…they have an proton beam cannon on one of those ships?” Ayli asked, a tinge of familiar horror creeping in her voice.

Nix didn’t fault her for that at all.

Proton beam cannons had achieved a degree of notoriety late in the Galactic Civil War when a rather famous one had reduce the planet of Alderaan to a free floating debris field.

Like every other ship’s mechanic in the galaxy, Nix had followed the feeds and publications talking about the tech requirements for something like that and been disturbed not only by the sheer scale of malice required to build a moon-sized weapons platform, but, even moreso, by the fact that it was viable to mount a much smaller system on a capital ship. 

A ship based proton beam cannon couldn’t pack the power to explode a planet in a single shot, but apart from overwhelming terror there wasn’t much need to literally destroy planets when simply burning off all the surface life would ‘pacify’ them just as efficiently.

“Okay. We have a new target then,” she said. “The Silent Enclave Elders are a personal issue. We can’t leave an Imperial remnant out here roaming around with a genocide weapon at their fingertips.”

“We’re not letting them leave here at all,” Ayli said.

“The Blood Ravens agree with you there,” Sali said. “Seems like the Imperials have been trying to take over some of the local systems and provide ‘security’.”

“Wait, Blood Ravens? That’s not your usual pirate crew is it?” Nix asked.

“Nope. We’ve been enemies for years! Isn’t at right Isos?” Sali said.

“Enemies? You would me Saliandrus. Rivalry does not need to involve enmity. I’ve had nothing but the highest respect for you since Bartlo IV,” an older man’s voice, Isos’s Nix guessed, said.

“You shot me and threw me out on airlock with the ship’s trash over Bartlo IV,” Sali said, with no particular animosity in her voice.

“And you survived. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Knew you were one of the real ones after that,” Isos said.

“We’re glad to have your help Captain Isos,” Nix said with about half her attention. The rest was busy searching in the Force for some sign of the Enclave’s Elders.

“Oh, don’t be too grateful,” Isos said. “It’s not everyday a rival shows up and offers to double the size of your fleet.”

“Double? Sali what did you offer him?” Ayli asked.

“There’s a fleet sitting right here. One Isos has been putting in a lot of effort to find. Told him he gets all the salvage rights to whichever ships he can capture.”

Which meant the Imperial fleet would become a pirate one and the local sectors would be rather more perilous for New Republic business endeavors.

Nix considered that for a moment and shrugged. She’d worked with both pirates and legitimate business ventures and of the two at least the pirates only preyed on those with wealth. The Corporations of the Inner Rim worlds tended to be more diffuse in their predation but they stole from a far wider, and less affluent, base of the population.

“The ships are fine, but what about the Imperials?” Ayli asked.

“That’s the best part. Any of ‘em who aren’t too stupid to surrender, we can sell to the New Republic!”

“The Republic still has a bounty on active Imperial soldiers,” Sali translated. “And a higher one on Imperial Officers, active or not.”

“There’s a group of people here who aren’t Imperials,” Nix said. “You’ll want to leave them to us.”

“I can’t promise we’ll be exercising much restraint in our fire patterns,” Isos said.

“It’s not you killing them that I’m worried about,” Nix said.

“These more Sith guys?” Sali asked.

“No, not Sith. These guys are less ‘red laser swords’ and more ‘you won’t see them until after they’ve killed you’.” Nix knew, as warnings went, the pirates weren’t going to believe her, at least not at first.

“Sounds like a barrel of fun,” Isos said. “We’ll pack some plasma throwers just in case we do make their acquaintance.”

Nix shivered at the thought. Not because of the damage a sheet of plasma could do to human body but because of the absurd amount of collateral damage the ship’s interiors would sustain. She’d spent an entire month retrofitting a shuttle’s interior after it had been targeted by a single plasma thrower burn, a sustained fight with them though?

Would not be her mess to clean up after!

“They’re launching more Tie’s,” Ayli said. “We should get to their flagship now.”

“You’re thinking they might cloak it?” Nix asked, sensing a building tension in the Force.

“No, that particular horrible thought hadn’t occurred to me,” Ayli said. “I’m more concerned that keeping track of every fighter the flagship launches is going to be hard and any one of them could have an Elder in it.”

“Can you get us there?” Nix asked, even her Force enhanced senses having a difficult time keeping the swarm of ships and turbo laser battery fire from overwhelming her.

“Yes. In one piece? Maybe.” Ayli said.

“We just need to land,” Nix said. “Once we’re in the docking bay, we can find the Elders and snag a new ship if we need.”

“Or you could hang back and not get my shuttle shot to pieces,” Sali said.

“What’s that…comms are…breaking up…not…hearing.” Nix flipped the comm switch off with a smile at the face she imagined Sali would be making.

“That’s not at all what comm interference sounds like, you do know that right?” Ayli asked.

“More importantly, Sali knows that,” Nix said.

“She is a Pirate Queen.”

“Yes, but she’s my Pirate Queen,” Nix said. “She’d forget about me if I didn’t annoy her from time to time.”

“Nix, my beloved, trust me that no one will ever forget you.”

“Want to surprise her by bringing her the shuttle back in pristine condition?” Nix asked.

“That’d be delightful. What did you have in mind?”

“The Enclave Elders are busy corrupting the Xah out there,” Nix said, gesturing to an Imperial ship a moment before it faded from view. “Very naughty of them.”

“That’s going to be hard on Isos’s fleet.”

“Yes and no. I don’t think the Impy ships can move too far away or the Enclave cloak over them will fall away. In fact, from what I can sense, I’m pretty sure the Enclave’s technique doesn’t extend as far as the interdiction field goes.”

“Good. I don’t want to have to spend anymore time in my life hunting down Imperials.”

Nix could hear old wounds reopening as the thought crossed Ayli’s mind.

“I’m guessing if the Imp ships fire it’ll give away their position too. That’s not the important part though, or not the important part for us.”

“Tell me you’ve figured out how to do what they’re doing?”

“Sort of?” Nix offered a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t think I could set the cloak like they can, but I’m pretty sure I can drag one of its edges over us.”

“That would make flying into that mess a lot easier,” Ayli said as she began inputting a series of semi-random thruster burns.

“Yeah, it’s once we get there that the hard part begins.”

“Believe it or not, I have infiltrated an Imperial Star Destroyer before,” Ayli said.

“It’s not the Star Destroyer or its crew I’m worried about,” Nix said. “The Elders out number us by quite a lot. And they’ve been practicing their techniques for a lot longer than both of us combined.”

“True, but they’ve mostly been practicing them on people who they’ve trained since birth not to fight back. What are the chances that they’re ready for something like us?”

“We’ve surprised them a couple of times already. Dolon has to be getting paranoid at this point about what I can do to the environment around him. Which will make him even stupider probably, but also harder to pull those specific tricks off against.”

“Then we’ll use some new tricks,” Ayli said. “I don’t care if they outnumber us. I want a life with you. A real one. Not running and hiding and being afraid of some super powerful organization coming down on us like an asteroid strike.”

“If I have to blow up that entire Star Destroyer, I promise you, that’s exactly what we’re going to have. You, me, and maybe a couple of kids?”

“Kids? Never thought of being a Mom. Not quite sure how we would make that work..oh, wait, you mean Rassi and Solna? Absolutely. Skip the whole diapers and vomiting everywhere stage and start right in with the good bits.”

Nix felt her heart flutter at the thought of how much she wanted ‘the good bits’. She took a deep breath though. Her desire was so strong that she really would have blown up the Star Destroyer, right then, and while that was an option she wasn’t going to take off the table, she knew, intellectually at least, that it couldn’t be the first one she followed.

“Time to fly then!” she said and reached out to the Force.

Which was strangely quiet.

Unnaturally so for a battle. There were ships full of people in an incredibly heightened emotional state. Or states. Though it was muted, Nix could sense the fear, the excitement, the bloodlust, and the anger which suffused the people who were floating out among the stars with her.

What she couldn’t sense anymore was where the Silent Enclave Elders had gone.

But she could feel the quiet, awareness averting weave of the cloak they’d covered local space in.

It was a gossamer thin working of the Force. More intricate and subtle than anything Nix had ever tried to do. She could make out its extent, and could feel some small part of it, but it would take her years of practice and meditation to even begin to spin the threads the cloak was made of.

Since she didn’t have years, she took the best path open to her and gathered up as much of the cloak as she could with the Force, dragging it over herself and the rest of the shuttle.

The Elders of the Silent Enclave would know what she was doing.

They would likely even be able to stop her and strip away the edge of the cloak Nix had clutched onto.

But they wouldn’t be able to do it quickly, and with Ayli at the shuttle’s helm, speed was the only tool that could have saved them.

Nix was feeling confident of that, wrapped in the safety of the Enclave’s cloak to hide them from enemy fire and the security of Ayli’s piloting to get them to the flagship via the fastest and safest route.

But the safest route through a battlefield is still not necessarily safe.

The bolt that caught the shuttle disintegrated Nix’s hopes of returning the shuttle to Sali unharmed.

It also disintegrated the back half of the shuttle and left them spinning out of control through the void of space.

Dropping out of hyperspace to find an armada waiting with weapon systems powering up wasn’t as alarming as it should have been. In part that was because Ayli could feel the Force guiding her and knew that she wasn’t about to be reduced to space dust in the next few moments. More than that however was the fact that the make and model of the armada’s warship woke her slumbering rage.

“Got multiple targeting locks from, well it looks like everyone over there,” Nix said.

Evasive maneuvers were called for, but Ayli kept their shuttle flying straight and true towards the fleeing Enclave racing yacht.

“Comm alert coming in too,” Nix said. “Do you want to take it or shall I?”

“Go ahead.” Ayli was too focused on closing the distance with the much faster yacht and staying alert for the targeting locks turning into confirmed attacks to feel like dealing with the people she knew were on the ships in front of her.

“Zardewill Consortium shuttle, you have violated an Imperial control sphere. Power down your weapon systems and prepare to be boarded.” The speaker’s crisp core world accent left Ayli reaching for the Force to strangle him at range.

That wasn’t going to solve their problems though. Killing one Ex-Imperial Officer was good but killing an entire armada of them was always better.

“I’m going to need to see some Imperial Security codes. We’ve run across a lot of pirates claiming Imperial navy privileges.” Nix wasn’t speaking the lingo a professional navigator would have used but it didn’t matter. Pushing back against the authority they’d never deserved to have and was entirely illusionary was an effective tactic for inciting anger no matter what words were used.

“You will stand down now,” the faux-Imperial officer commanded. “Any attempt to flee the system will result in your immediate destruction.”

Ayli brought the hyperdrive up to full power for an instantaneous jump and held it there for a moment, giving the armada a chance to fully lock onto them and make the decision to blow them out of the sky before they got away.

In the instant that the lead ship fired, she threw the shuttle into hyperspace and brought it right back out.

Nix wasn’t going to be happy with that move. Rapid jumps into hyperspace were an astrogation nightmare and, worse, played havoc on the hyperdrive. Even with the inhumanely smooth skip the Force had let her pull off, the drive was going to need replacement parts soon, and would start behaving unpredictably after a few more jumps, which was never ideal.

“I’m sorry, where you threatening us instead of providing legitimate credentials?” Nix’s communique was not designed to deescalate the situation, which was probably further proof she wasn’t a Jedi, and it made Ayli love her all the more for it.

“Zardewill Shuttle, you will stand down this instant!”

“Random pirate armada, you are harboring a group of elite criminals,” Nix said. “They just docked with your flagship in a Incomm Starburst class racing yacht. If you’d care to send them back out so that we can return them to the justice they fled from, we…well I guess we won’t be leaving you alone even if you do that.” Nix looked over al Ayli who nodded in response.

She’d spent so many horrible years, all of her childhood really, fighting Imperial Forces. Leaving this remnant of the Imperial navy to regroup, rebuild, and become a new menace to the galaxy was simply not going to happen.

“Yeah, you should probably surrender now,” Nix said. “You won’t like what happens if you test us.”

The targeting systems on most of the armada had locked onto their shuttle again, but the lightspeed skip had given them enough distance that a fair portion of the armada’s weaponry was ineffective. The ones which could reach them were still a problem, but not one that Ayli was overly concerned with.

At least not until the Force went abruptly silent around her.

“Oh. That was a mistake.” Nix had closed her eyes. Nix was not referring to what she’d said. Nix was concentrating. And whispering to the Force.

Ayli was only somewhat aware of that however. Facing an armada of ships firing at her, if even from their maximum range still demanded more or less the entirety of her natural piloting talent, hard won experience, and battle honed attention.

“Ah. There we go,” Nix said, her tone perfectly calm. “Imperial pretenders, check your sensor. Your new guests are disembarking now in your main dock. There are eleven of them. Watch the one in the lead. See how he’s suffering from fairly severe burns? I did that to him. Because he displeased me. He has now displeased me for a second time.”

Nix tightened her hand into a fist and gave a small snarl.

“In case your curious where he just went, the flight path should be obvious from the third starboard camera in your docking bay, but I would recommend turning on your external sensors. He’ll be out of tractor beam range shortly and if you wait a moment you might even catch the moment when he pops like a blood balloon.”

People exposed to hard vacuum did not, in fact, pop like balloons of any sort, but a remarkable number of people were unaware of that fact and it made for a satisfying visual image in the case of Primus Dolon.

An easily circumvented outburst of revenge aside, Nix’s assault also had the benefit of casting the Enclave’s Elders into chaos, which shredded the field of silence they’d wrapped Ayli’s shuttle in.

“Jedi scum!” The wanna-be Imperial’s voice held as much disgust as fear but Ayli could tell that fear was easily winning the contest between the two. “You may have escaped the Emperor’s justice so far, but we will destroy you in his name!”

Nix looked over at Ayli is disbelief.

“I just threw someone out of a docking bay and slapped the hell out of a bunch of old people? In what galaxy is that something a Jedi would do?” 

“I don’t think they’re up on the fine points of religious doctrine among the different Force traditions,” Ayli said, diving into the path of a turbo laser battery a fraction of a second before the plasma bolts could reach them.

Closing the distance with the armada was neither a safe, nor a smart play, but it did ensure that the Imperials…

Ayli had to stop that thought.

These weren’t Imperials.

Not anymore, if they ever really had been.

What was more likely was that they were the newest generation of pathetic losers to be recruited by the fading remains of an Imperial navy task group which the Alliance hadn’t been able to track down. There might be a few of the senior staff who’d once served as actual Imperial officers, but the rank and file were usually drawn from the sort of people who’d gleeful serve a fascist regime if only they could find one to join which would justify their hatred and small mindedness.

That the galaxy had no shortage of such people during the Emperor’s reign, and was still abundant with them was balanced in Ayli’s heart only by all the people she’d known who were so much better than that.

Giving up on the galaxy was easy, and she suspected that a lot of ‘Imperial soldiers’ in the armada’s ships had done just that. She couldn’t though. Not when there were so many people in it still worth fighting for.

As she piloted the shuttle into a deadly hail of fire therefor, she banished the idea that she was still fighting Imperials. The people in front of her weren’t the boogeymen of her childhood. They didn’t hold unconquerable power and control over everything in the galaxy.

Not that the Imperials ever had either, but as a child up against a machine which had seized control over ever facet of life she could see, it had been hard to imagine what path could possibly lead them to victory.

As an adult, starting down an enemy that was, in an immediate and personal sense, every bit as overwhelming as the Galactic Empire had been, she still couldn’t see a path to victory.

But she saw more than ever the need to fight for one.

“You seem to be having some problems with destroying us. It’s probably because Imperial maintenance standards sucked,” Nix said. “I mean, you know that the galaxy moved away from them like almost immediately after you all lost to the Alliance right? The last Imperial shipyard was even decommissioned two standards ago. And it wasn’t that people minded that it had been churning out stuff for the losing side. Business’s just want to make money and your stuff? It sucked. Gotta swap out all the Imperial trash that people loaded their ships up with because it was cheap, when you think they’d realize that the Empire never gave a flying bantha poodu about quality or safety. Just look at the Tie Fighter design, right? Worst safety record of any single man fighter in galactic history. Oh, you’ve got some! That’s nice.”

Ayli was not at all surprised to see a flight of Tie’s launch from one of the nearest ships. Capital ship weapons were great in a space battle but demonstrably terrible at dealing with small ships.

Tie-Fighters, on the other hand were excellent in dogfights. Potentially deathtraps for their pilots, as Nix had pointed out, since they lacked the shielding of a better built fighter like an X-Wing, but nimble and deadly nonetheless.

Which made it all the more amusing when they started plowing into one another in the tight formation they were flying in.

Ayli glanced over to see Nix deep in concentration again.

Most shuttles were not armed. Corporate shuttles in particular often flew to destinations where combat vessels were not allowed to land out of safety concerns.

Since they’d borrowed the ship from Sali though, armaments were not a concern. There might be a pirate out there who would fly around in an unarmed shuttle, but if so, Sali had probably already shot them down.

Which meant Ayli got to dogfight.

With a twenty to one advantage, it should have been a short and unpleasant experience.

With the Force directing her where to go and when to shoot though, the odds were not at all what they appeared to be.

Especially since the pilots who were most in position to cause they problem found control switches and triggers flipping or freezing up exactly when they didn’t want them too.

“Well that was fun,” Nix said as the last two Tie-Fighters plowed into each other leaving the galaxy none the worse for their loss. “Do you have anymore toys we can break?”

Angry static answered her question and from the flagship, Ayli could feel plumes of unbridled rage rising.

 “Ah, you only had a few of those. That’s a shame. Probably hard to keep your gear in working order when it was so badly made in the first place,” Nix said. “So are you going to  return our prisoners to us then?” Nix asked, the hint of amusement in her voice calculated to even further enrage everyone who could hear it aside from Ayli who found it delightful.

“You failed to kill me, you witch!” Primus Dolon said, cutting into the line.

“I didn’t fail at anything,” Nix said. “You’re alive because I want you alive. For now.”

“Lies. You will die and you will never see who killed you,” Dolon said.

“Pretty sure I will,” Nix said, and focused again.

On the open comm, Ayli heard a scream of pain and surprise, though oddly not Dolon’s.

“I’m guessing you were thinking to send Elder Korgruv as your first assassin?” Nix asked. “You might want to get him to a bacta tank, like right now. That broken plasma conduit he was standing near didn’t really make him any uglier but there’s probably time to save his eyes if he gets treatment right away.”

“Nix, I think you broke them,” Ayli said. “The armada’s powering up their hyperdrives to jump out of here.”

“Oh. That’s not going to be a problem,” Nix said as a second armada slammed out of hyperspace and a gravity well enveloped a fair portion of the solar system.

“Did someone order an interdictor?” Sali asked, joining the comms.

Went to a Con this weekend and forgot to put up a post yesterday that the Con ate up all my writing time – next chapter should be on Tuesday as usual though!

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

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

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

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

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

“On one condition,” Sali said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I know that, but why?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or both.

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

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

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

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

“You get vacation time?” Goldie asked.

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

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

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

—-

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

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

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

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

“Ten minutes?” Lasha asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Felgo they knew never would have questioned the Elders. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The danced a Silent Dance,” Felgo said.

“To her death,” Osdo added.

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

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

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

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

“Sort of?” Solna asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ayli enjoyed being on starships, but watching a double sunset on a veranda that overlooked a sparkling silver-blue sea while a warm breeze tickled her lekku was scoring points for planetside living too.

“You know, I never planned on taking apprentices, even as a ship’s mechanic,” Nix said, plopping down into a chair beside Ayli’s. “I always figured getting people to actually do the work would be a nightmare. Now I’ve got five Force apprentices and they just won’t stop!”

Sali’s deepthroated laugh was one of evil delight.

“Is it wrong that I want to wish five more of them on her?” she asked, sipping from a surprisingly non-alcoholic mixed fruit beverage.

“Then we’d never get to enjoy her company at all,” Zindiana said, looking up from the datapad she was reading.

The ‘pirate haven’ Nix had navigated them to was quite a bit nicer than Ayli had expected it to be largely thanks to the two women they were sharing an early dinner with. 

Ayli knew Sali had setup a new empire for herself from the remains of the Klex Cartel’s holdings. What she’d expected (a lawless outpost of the sort of criminal scum Ayli felt the most at home with) was not at all the sort of fortress Sali had put together though.

The Klex ‘treasure hoard’ had been largely invested in legitimate ventures throughout the galaxy. That had kept it safe from pillaging as the Cartel fell, or at least safe from pillaging by people who were not Nuns of questionable repute and considerable skill.

Part of accessing the wealth of the Klex had required presenting a legitimate front to the concerns it was invested with, hence the Pirate Queen Saliandrus’s adoption of a more formal and less ‘murdery’ persona. 

Sali’s home was still a fortress – one the New Republic would have found challenging to assault even with a full battle group – but that security was all part of the offerings the ‘elite resort for cultured clientele’ promised.

As it turned out, a neutral location where no pirate had to worry about another pirate’s fleet blasting them to space dust was an appealing vacation destination for quite a few of the galaxy’s ruthlessly wealthy individuals. 

That Sali was making them significantly less wealthy with every service offered was a mark of prestige for the elites. That Zin was marking each and every one of them with trackers was not a service which was advertised, but rather offered gratis and without notice. The data taps into their comm channels and bank accounts were also unobtrusive and largely unused as well. 

As Sali described it, “the best space battle is the one the other side can’t afford to send any ships to,” and Ayli couldn’t find a fault with that.

“I think you were nicer as a Pirate Queen,” Nix grumbled, chomping into the plate of smoked meats and sugared berries Ayli had put together for her.

“Oh, I was,” Sali said. “See what you’ve unleashed on the galaxy when you kidnapped me away from all that?”

“Better a happy pirate than a cranky one,” Ayli said, closing her eyes to enjoy the play the breeze around her lekku. How other species ever enjoyed life with their unfeeling ‘hair’ completely escaped her at times like these.

“I was never cranky,” Sali said. “I was fearsome.”

“Fearsome and cranky,” Zin said. “They’re both good looks on you.”

“Cranky is a good look?” Nix asked between bites.

“When it’s focused on someone awful? Delightfully so,” Zin said, which struck Ayli as an odd attitude for a Nun to have, but Zin had always been an odd sort of Nun.

“So what are the gaggle of kids you brought with you doing now?” Sali asked. Sali who was older than Nix and Ayli by no more than half a decade and had only marginally more room to consider Tovos’s crew as children than Ayli did.

“Stabbing each other with their minds,” Nix said. “I was going to ask for a pallet of cerebro-stims for each of them for the headaches they’re going to have tomorrow, but it’s probably better for them to feel exactly what the cost is for overdoing it like they are.”

“As their instructor couldn’t you just tell them to stop?” Zin asked.

“And what do you mean ‘stabbing each other with their minds’? I thought your Force stuff didn’t do attacks like that?”

“It doesn’t, and I could,” Nix said. “I this case where they’re doing is listening for surface level thoughts. Sometimes people broadcast what they’re thinking, sometimes you can kind of poke past their barriers with the Force and get a sense what they’re thinking about. With these kids, it’s shockingly easy to poke through their defenses, largely because they never learned to raise the sort of mental barriers that even the most Force insensitive do.”

“So you’re having them poke each other’s thoughts to work up to being able to read more well defended people?” Zin asked.

“Not at all,” Nix said. “They don’t believe in using the Force for anything active, and certainly nothing that impacts someone else. What they’re trying to work out is how to create some defenses so that they won’t be as vulnerable to other Force users.”

“What other Force users do they have to worry about? You were saying you took care of that Lich guy right?” Sali asked, tearing a hunk of meat off the bone it was still connected to in a suitably pirate fashion. 

“We mostly just distracted him,” Nix said. “It was our friends who really destroyed him. He wasn’t the only horrible thing out there in the galaxy though.”

“You mentioned running into a group of ‘Death Shadows’ was it?” Zin asked. “I should probably get some interview notes from you on those. I don’t know that my order has encountered them before.”

“I suspect they’re a particular problem for the Silent Enclave,” Ayli said.

“Who I should also interview you on,” Zin said. “It seems unlikely that they’ve existed as long as they have without being catalogued but anything is possible.”

“More than possible in this case,” Nix said. “Given how well they can hide themselves, it’s highly likely I would say.”

“Especially since they’re quite willing to kill to maintain their anonymity,” Ayli said.

“Really?” Sali said and Ayli could hear the smile spreading across her face. “Did you bring me a troupe of hyper-elusive spies who lack any moral compunctions about eliminating their assigned targets?”

“Yes,” Nix said. “But bear in mind they’re MY hyper-elusive killer spies.”

“We have a group of killers now?” Ayli asked.

“Of course,” Nix said. “One’s I will never ask to kill anyone – in fact I plan to discourage that rather thoroughly before we find the Enclave – but it’s good to keep in mind what people are capable of and anyone who can pass as unnoticed as they can would make almost perfect assassins. Isn’t that right Polu?”

“What? How did you sense me!” the youngest of member of Tovos’ crew complained.

Ayli congratulated herself on not reaching for either her blaster (because of course she had a blaster on her, some habits she refused to let die after how many times it had saved her life) or a shower of Force Lightning (which situationally might be more useful than a blaster, but only if she felt like destroying her soul as much as her target’s body – and there was a wonderfully warm body sitting beside her who did a fantastic job at dispelling Ayli’s accumulated urges towards self-destruction).

Sali and Zin were not quite as controlled as Ayli was, but to their credit neither one pulled the triggers on the blasters which appeared in their hands.

“Please don’t shoot my ward,” Nix said with the clear knowledge that no one was actually planning to do anything of the sort.

Polu had frozen and, to his credit, was broadcasting the entirely reasonable shock of fear he was experiencing at being on the wrong end of several blaster barrels.

“That was good,” Ayli said, offering Polu the equivalent of a Force fist bump for not suppressing his emotions like he’d been taught to all his life.

“Not good enough,” Polu grumbled. “Nix still noticed me.”

Nix laughed at that.

“Polu, we just spent five hours together, practicing touching each other’s minds,” Nix said. “We’re so close in the Force at the moment I can feel the beats of your heart. If you’d waited another hour or two, I would have had a much harder time noticing you, I promise.”

“Oh. Well that makes sense.” Polu was only mollified for a moment though. “Wait, ‘harder’ just means you still could though right?”

“Yes. You’re my responsibility now, so I’ll always have a connection to you in the Force,” Nix said. “It would fade away to nothingness if I ignored you for long enough, but since I don’t plan on doing that, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

“I see, I see,” Polu said. “So that’s what they meant by Jedi trickery.”

Ayli suppressed a chuckle at Nix’s frown. Which Nix then let blossom into a toothy grin.

“Did I ever say the Jedi were only ones who were tricky?” she asked innocently.

“You said we could trust you,” Polu said, with more teasing than accusation in his voice.

“Oh you can definitely trust her,” Sali said. “To do what’s right for you, whether you like it or not, ask me how I know!”

“I’m sure Polu has better things to do than listen to old pirate tales,” Nix said, paling a bit.

“Nope. Don’t think I do,” Polu said. “We never got to hear those in the Enclave. I’ve been so very sheltered. I definitely need to learn what the galaxy is really like.”

“Stars, you’ve already corrupted my daughter, is everyone I bring near you going to turn into a pirate?” Nix asked Sali.

“I didn’t turn into a pirate,” Zin said.

“Really? Are you sure about that?” Nix said, gesturing to the pirate resort which Zin was co-owner of.

“Perhaps that’s what the Force wants of you,” Ayli said to Nix. “Maybe the galaxy needs more pirates and the Force is using you to make sure it gets good ones.”

“I’m one of the ‘good ones’? That sounds insulting somehow,” Sali said.

“Of course it does,” Nix said. “Everyone knows you’re the best one.”

Sali fought a smile off with a frown and was at best partially successful at it.

“See,” Sali said, turning to Polu, “This is what you’ve got yourself tangled up with. If you ask me, working for me would be a lot easier and simpler.”

“I will keep that offer in mind!” Polu said, over Nix’s grumble. “I do have a question from the others though; were you able to send out the people you had in mind to look for the Enclave’s new location?”

One of the first things Ayli and Nix had done on landing at Sali and Zin’s Fortress/Resort was to bring them up to speed on their current adventure and Nix’s idea of using Sali’s ‘extra-legal’ contacts to track down the Enclave.

Nix’s argument had been that while the Enclave was incredibly well hidden from remote sensing via the Force, they were still a large and insular group of people with fairly specialized needs who were, notably, not self sufficient and therefor would need things like food, sanitation, and housing setup quickly, which would attract the sort of mundane, boring notice that bounty hunters and the like used to track their prey all the time.

The Enclave was worried about things like the Jedi and Death Shadows tracking them, but the Jedi had done their own investigations and, from what Ayli had read, relied rather strongly on the Force, while the Death Shadows weren’t exactly the sort of creatures who could hire a bounty hunter since, among other things, they lacked credits, voices, and the ability to form complex plans.

“No, we haven’t,” Zin said. “It turns out we didn’t need to. I’m reading through the reports now to confirm it, but one of our contacts on Selvus alerted us yesterday to a new group of travelers who showed up outside of their town and match the description of your Enclave almost perfectly.

“They setup camp on Selvus?” Polu asked.

“No. That’s what I’m looking for now,” Zin said. “From what our contact could discover they were there to purchase construction supplies and a bacta-tank. His report says they didn’t look like they were going to be staying long.”

Ayli rose from her chair in unison with Nix.

“Thank you for your hospitality as always,” she said to Sali and Zin.

“But we need to leave now,” Nix said, reaching out with the Force to Tovos and the others to hurry them towards the rapidly narrowing window available to them.

Standing in the empty shell that had once been her house, Solna felt like a vast gulf of time had passed, rather than just a few days.

“It was always this empty, wasn’t it?” Rassi asked, coming up to stand beside Solna in a manner that was somehow more comforting than any physical affection would have been.

“I hated it here,” Solna said. “I should have told you that. I don’t even know why I hid it.”

“Can you imagine what Honored Jolu would have done if she’d overheard you?” Rassi asked.

Solna had to laugh. Jolu had played the role of boogeyman for a lot of the children in the Enclave, but had taken a special interest in Rassi, and by extension Solna. Avoiding her attention had been one of the soft boundaries they’d been hemmed in by from the time they were old enough to understand that rules existed.

Despite her exalted position in their lives though, Jolu hadn’t been the true nightmare which plagued them. Her attention, if often sharp and biting, was always coupled with lessons and a chance for Rassi and Solna to redeem the mistakes they’d made.

The true boogeymen were the children that no adult saw fit to hold back from heaping abuse on Rassi and, far less often in Solna’s view, Solna too. The children weren’t alone though. There were plenty of adults who openly spoke of their eagerness for the day when Rassi would face the Trials of Silence, fail them, and cease to be a problem for the Enclave.

No one bothered to suggest that Solna would fail her trials. She was considered properly silent, noticeably more so than many of her age mates. Her defenses of Rassi was imagined to either be an eccentricity she would grow out of, or a sign of character defect so deep that she would be drawn down into the whirlpool of failure that would drown Rassi.

In theory Josta and Krelvarth should have been concerned about that. In other families, the caregivers would rise to defend their children, and would instruct them in private on how to be proper members of the Enclave. 

Josta and Krelvarth weren’t Solna’s mother and father though. They were family in that most people in the Enclave were related in some manner. The two of them had drawn the short straw for raising Solna after her mother abandoned her and ran off with a boy from a transport who might or might not have been Solna’s father. Solna didn’t think Josta would have accepted the responsibility if not for the support stipend that came with it. Krelvarth didn’t even care about that. His best quality was that as far as he was concerned Solna didn’t exist.

Solna wished more people were like Krelvarth.

“I keep expecting someone to catch us,” Solna said.

Rassi scuffed her foot on the floor. “I think they’re afraid of the reverse.”

“What do you mean?” Solna turned to study Rassi’s expression.

“Imagine if we did to them what we did to the Lich?” Rassi said, looking up to meet Solna’ gaze.

“We couldn’t though,” Solna said, puzzled at what Rassi was imagining. “They’d hear us coming the moment we landed.”

“Would they?” Rassi asked. “I know I’m loud. I can’t control myself like I should. Together though? When I’ve got you for balance?”

“That wouldn’t help?” Solna could see what would happen so clearly because there’d been so many times they’d tried to sneak off to catch a moment’s peace and so many times they’d been caught. How could Rassi think a silent assault on the Enclave would be anything but an unmitigated disaster?

“I lost track of you,” Rassi said simply.

“You what?”

“When we were sneaking past the Lich’s defenses? I couldn’t sense you. Not the whole time. And when I could, you were like the memory of a whisper.”

“So you were having problems sensing things?” Solna couldn’t make sense of what Rassi was saying. No matter how well they’d practiced their studies, neither one was ever unsure where the other was or how they were feeling.

“Not in the slightest,” Rassi said, shaking her head. “I could feel everything around us. All of the traps the Lich left. Ravas and Kelda. I could even tell where Goldie was!”

“But not me?” Solna felt an ache thud in her chest. “Did I do something wrong?”

The idea of losing her connection with Rassi was unthinkable. For as much as Solna had needed to protect Rassi over the years, there wasn’t anyone who Solna felt anywhere near as safe with.

No one else who she…

“No silly!” Rassi said, rolling her eyes and cutting off Solna’s train of thought. “You were perfect. You snuck past about a billion physical sensors and twice that many Xah constructs! And you made it look easy!”

“But you got by all of those things too?”

“I was with you.”

“But I wasn’t doing anything to cloak you. That would have been…”

It would have been a manipulation of the Xah.

The Force.

Whatever.

Solna had thought she was past that, but it turned out that a lifetime of indoctrination didn’t simply wash away cleanly in a few days.

“A corruption?” Rassi asked, a teasing tone in her voice. “Well no worries there Enclave girl. I did that all on my own.”

“What though? I mean how? You?” It would have been mean to call out Rassi like that after all of the trouble she’d had staying quiet in the Enclave, but Rassi was right. Solna hadn’t been doing anything to silence Rassi and somehow Rassi had slipped past the same traps Solna had.

“Yeah. Me,” Rassi said, one of the first prideful smiles that Solna had ever seen on her lighting up her face. “I was with you, so I could feel what you were doing.”

“You’re always with me though!”

Except she wasn’t.

The other kids tended to attack Rassi when she was alone. 

“I know, but I was always so afraid of disturbing the Xah that I was constantly fighting to be perfect. With you though, I didn’t have to be. I mean, yeah, we couldn’t really afford to mess things up, but the traps and stuff, they were fair. I was afraid of them but that was okay, so were you.”

Solna blinked. Had she been radiating fear? No. The traps would have definitely picked up on that. 

But she had been afraid.

“I could feel how you were letting your fear go, it didn’t ripple out into the Force, it just kind of blew through you like a gentle breeze.”

Was that what she’d been doing? Solna wasn’t sure, she hadn’t really been paying attention, just doing what she always did and letting…

She hadn’t been using the Force. She’d been letting it use her!

“Oh.”

“Yeah. The Enclave doesn’t know how to do that,” Rassi said. “That was all you. You invented that on the fly.”

“No. No I didn’t,” Solna said, understanding reverberating through her as memories came together and shattered more than a few long held beliefs. “It wasn’t on the fly.”

“Uh, when did you figure it out then?” Rassi asked, it being her turn to be perplexed.

“I’ve always known,” Solna said, tiptoeing through her memories. “Or I worked out how to work with the Force without being noticed long enough ago that no one questioned it.”

“Are you sure? You always passed the tests the Honored’s gave us, and they were definitely watching for things like that.”

“I passed because I was cheating!” Solna said, chuckling at the idea.

And at the idea of who she’d been. 

Or who she’d thought she’d been.

“I was never a prodigy,” she said. “I just figured out how to trick everyone in thinking I was one.”

Rassi stared at her for a good long moment.

Then she took Solna by the shoulders and looked her directly in the eyes.

“Repeat what you just said,” Rassi instructed her.

“I’m not a prodigy. I cheated.” It was an oddly freeing concept.

“So. Let me get this straight. You think that figuring out a technique as, let’s say you were five standards at the time, figuring out a technique that fooled literally everyone in the entire Silent Enclave, include Honored Jolu and Primus May His Breath Be Damned DOLON. You think figuring out a technique like that somehow indicates that you are not absurdly amazing? Is that really the line of reasoning you’re going with.”

“Yes?” Solna had to admit that Rassi’s phrasing did highlight a few weak points in Solna’s argument.

“I see. So you’re a prodigy and a tremendous idiot. Gotcha. Just wanted to make sure.”

“Shut up! And wait, what about you? Miss Woe-Is-Me-I’m-So-Bad-With-the-Xah? You just watched me and figured out how to do the same thing that I probably spent a decade working on?”

“Well, yeah, cause I was thinking about. You did it all on reflex.”

“That doesn’t make it better!” Solna wasn’t even sure which side she was arguing for anymore.

“It totally does though!” Rassi said, gripping Solna’s shoulder tighter.

Though not tight enough to hurt.

Never tight enough to hurt.

“Listen, my point isn’t that you’re amazing. That’s just a fact,” Rassi relaxed a bit as she spoke. “My point is that we’re both a lot stronger than we imagined. A lot stronger than the Enclave would ever let us imagine ourselves to be.”

“Okay, sure, I can see that,” Solna said. It was a weird idea, much too far outside the bulk of her previous experiences, but those were all suspect given the things she’d learned about herself and about the Enclave.

“I don’t think we’re alone in that though,” Rassi said. “I think what we’ve learned is what anyone who leave the Enclave can learn. I think that’s why they left. They’re afraid of us.”

Solna laughed. Rassi was being serious but she was also out of her mind if she thought that Honored Jolu was ever going to be afraid of them.

“If you look out that empty space right there where a window used to be, you might notice that what’s left of the camp has been pretty thoroughly destroyed, right? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the Death Shadows who did all of that might, just might, have been a slightly bigger worry than the two of us.”

Rassi smiled.

It was a smile Solna had seen before. One that said Rassi had noticed something that Solna should have too.

“Yeah. About that. You know what’s kind of funny about that? When was the last time the Enclave even caught wind of the Death Shadows being on the same planet they were on? How about the last time there was an actual attack?”

“Do we even know if there ever was an attack?” Solna said, seeing where Rassi’s argument was leading.

“Nope. I mean, let’s give Jolu at least the benefit of the doubt and say there was. Even if so though, it has been a long time since the Death Shadows found where the Enclave was staying.”

“And a day after we left, they suddenly attack in full force. Yeah. Okay that is pretty weird.”

“Not weird. Terrifying. At least to Primus Donol, and probably every other Elder. And you know what they would have to be asking themselves?”

“Whether we called in the Death Shadows before we left.”

“And if we can do it again,” Rassi said, completing her thesis.

“Did we?” Solna asked, a sick bile rising in her stomach.

“What? No. Of course not,” Rassi said. “But they can’t know that.”

“We can’t either,” Solna said. “I hated it here right? I was the one who bent the Xah so that Nix found us and flew us away. How do we know I didn’t also call down the Shadows as retribution?”

Nix awoke in Ayli’s arms. 

Which was a rather nice change of pace from the last however long it had been.

The splitting headache however suggested that things hadn’t gone quite how she’d hoped they would on their reunion.

“We’re being held captive, aren’t we?” she asked without opening her eyes.

Ayli ran her fingers through Nix’s hair.

“Yep.”

“And they stunned us.”

“Yep.”

“Even though we went along willingly.”

“Yep.”

Nix sighed.

“I remember seeing it coming and thinking ‘oh well, this’ll be less hassle than the alternative’. That wasn’t a good thought was it?” Nix also remembered angling to take a bit more of the stun blast than Ayli, which explained why Ayli had woken up before her.

Or Ayli was simply used to getting stunned. Some of the stories of her childhood that Ayli had shared with her had rather horrific elements to them and building up resistance to stun blasts, either voluntarily or involuntarily seemed like it would fit right in.

“It was the right play,” Ayli said. “Trying to shield me was kind of silly, though I do appreciate it.”

“Where are we now?” Nix asked, opening her eyes to take in their surroundings.

Or that had been the plan.

Tearing her eyes off of Ayli after they’d been apart was more challenging than Nix had anticipated.

“We’re in ‘the Brig’, or in other words an unused storeroom on the rust bucket transport they picked us up in.” Ayli continued to stroke her fingers through Nix’s hair, the gentle smile on her face almost enough to make Nix miss the silver hue Ayli’s eyes had taken on.

“How are you feeling?” Nix asked, both in terms of the residual effect from the stun blast as well as her new ocular condition.

“Like I’m right where I want to be most of all in all the galaxy,” Ayli said.

Her touch had washed away the pain from the stun-induced headache without Nix even noticing it.

“Think they’re monitoring us?” Nix asked, sneaking a kiss onto Ayli’s forearm.

“Not with cameras or sound recorders,” Ayli said. “I don’t think they need to though. They are very skilled in using the Force.”

“They call it ‘the Xah’,” Nix said. “And they’re very specialized in how they interact with it.”

She filled Ayli in on what she’d learned about the Silent Enclave from Rassi and Solna, bringing Ayli up to speed on the two new additions to their life and how things had gone so far with the two girls.

“I spoke with Solna,” Ayli said. “Briefly. She seems to have formed a bond with you pretty quickly.”

“They’re alone in the galaxy now,” Nix said.

“My, I wonder how that feels,” Ayli said with more than a trace of self-deprecation.

She and Nix had both been left to fend for themselves at too young of an age, and they were of one mind about not allowing that to happen to anyone else on their watch.

“Also I sort of danced them into accepting that they’re worthy of being cared for,” Nix said, and explained the trial that Rassi and Solna had attempted and how she’d felt it was necessary to step in.

“I’m surprised you beat them at their own game. That sounds incredibly dangerous,” Ayli said. There wasn’t accusation in her tone. She understood why Nix had done what she had, she was simply impressed it had worked.

“I wanted the win more than they did,” Nix said. “Plus I figured Goldie would get me on med-gurney and bring me back if I went too far.”

“And then you left them with Monfi to go invade a Lich’s tomb?” Ayli asked, moving on to the teasing portion of their reunion.

“That was definitely not the plan,” Nix said. “My thought process was…”

“Pretty plain to see,” Ayli said. “You wanted Goldie, Rassi, and Solna as far from Praxis Mar as possible. In case you’re wondering that was absolutely the right decision to make.”

“It seems like it paid off in the end too,” Nix said. “I could feel the moment Paralus’s phylactery was destroyed and it felt a whole lot like Rassi and Solna were the ones who did it.”

“I’m only surprised it wasn’t Ravas who got there first,” Ayli said.

“She had to have been blocked away from it. Kelda too,” Nix said. “There’s no chance they would have let the girls get anywhere near the planet, much less the tomb if they hadn’t been out of other options.”

“I’m hoping they’re not still trapped,” Ayli said. “I’ve been expecting them to drop in and check on us any time now.”

“They probably can’t find us,” Nix said, noticing the unnatural serenity in the Force around them.

“This is what happened to you when you were in the Enclave’s encampment then, isn’t it?” Ayli asked. “I was wondering about that, but it feels so benign.”

“It largely is,” Nix said. “Apart from their leadership, I think the Enclave is largely non-hostile.”

“That doesn’t seem to be the experience our two new girls had,” Ayli said.

“Social violence and neglect can be inflicted very peacefully,” Nix said. “Some of that is due to the leadership of the Enclave, and some of it is just people being horrible like people will. Rassi didn’t fit in there and her parents had ‘caused trouble’ in the past so she was forever going to be the one they dumped their frustrations and anger onto. The effects meant to be shared by all of them though? Those wouldn’t be outlets for their darker emotions.”

“I seem to be missing mine, as a note,” Ayli said.

“Your darker emotions?” Nix asked.

“My Dark Side in general,” Ayli said. “She fought Paralus for us. Let Monfi and Bopo escape.  But she lost.”

“What does that mean for you, do you think?” Nix asked. “You still feel like you’re fully you, from what I can sense.”

“Oh, I am,” Ayli said. “And I don’t think you can kill a Dark Side like that. I don’t even know what would happen if you did? I’m guessing you’d just die? In this case though it feels more like my anger, and fear, and despair, are just taking a bit of a nap. When I think about what happened to Rassi and Solna for example, I know there should be anger there, but all I feel is a bit tired and distant.”

“How about when you think about the girls themselves?” Nix asked.

“That’s much easier, and its mostly delight and anticipation,” Ayli said. “They sound so brave. I can’t wait to meet them properly.”

“Once we get this wrapped up, that’ll be our first order of business,” Nix said, imagining a dozen different scenarios for how that might play out, all with the same lingering question behind them.

“So does this mean we’re starting a family then?” Ayli asked, thinking along similar tracks to Nix.

“I…we’ve never talked about that have we?” Nix asked, self-conscious that she’d never thought about it enough to even know what her desires were up until then.

“We haven’t, largely because I don’t think it occurred to either of us that it might be something that would ever come up.”

“And, so of course, it has,” Nix said, shaking her head at how the Force seemed to be extremely adept at placing her in situations where she did not know the right answer.

Mechanics joked about wanting to have the Parts Manual for life, and Nix’s answer had always been that you wrote your own Life Parts Manual, but that answer was not exactly comforting when faced with the truly serious decisions life threw at her.

“And so it has,” Ayli said. “So are you going to ask me about it?”

“I’m trying to figure out how to phrase things so that you’re free to answer how you truly feel,” Nix said.

“I suggest using words, any of them will probably do, and then trusting that I will be honest about my feelings with you,” Ayli said, planting a quick kiss on the tip of Nix’s nose.

“You’ve already thought about this, haven’t you?” Nix asked, suspicion over how much longer Ayli had been awake forming in her mind.

“I have,” Ayli said. “But that’s not asking me about it.”

“No, no it’s not,” Nix said, a slow smile spreading across her face as an opportunity she’d been almost too slow to grasp occurred to her.

Reluctantly, she shifted out of Ayli’s arms. 

“Let’s do this properly then,” she said, rising enough to be kneeling across from where Ayli was sitting.

“Captain Ayli’wensha, would you like to make a family with me,” Nix asked.

A bright spark of joy lit up in Ayli’s eyes but before she could answer the storeroom door was thrown open and Tovos, backed by four other members of the Silent Enclave, stared at them from behind raised blasters.

Nix groaned, but Ayli just rolled her eyes.

“The time has come,” Tovos said. “We will be landing in five minutes. You will be taken to face judgment as soon as have joined the others.”

“Good, good,” Nix said, with a distinct lack of patience or kindness in her voice. “I think I’m in the mood for a bit of judgment at the moment.”

“Don’t make us stun you again,” Tovos said, shifting his grip on his blaster rifle.

“We didn’t make you stun us before,” Nix said.

“You were attempting to corrupt the Xah,” one of the other guards, Felgo, said.

“Oh? Is that the argument we’re going to have?” Nix asked.

“These probably aren’t the people we need to speak with about that,” Ayli said, laying a restraining hand on Nix’s arm.

Nix didn’t have a lightsaber. And she wasn’t going to use the Force to attack any of the people before her. Not with Force Lightning, or even with the milder Force Push. It was still good however that Ayli had reminded Nix to hold back. One does not work as a ship’s mechanic without learning how to brawl a bit after all and the sprocket heads in front of her seemed to be dearly in need of some ‘percussive maintenance’.

“You’re going to come with us,” Tovos said.

“That does seem to be the general plan,” Nix said, feeling a trifle bad for the boy.

By age, Tovos was theoretically an adult, but from a life lived inside the confines of a recluse cult, he hadn’t yet managed to develop any of the maturity that was supposed to come with adulthood. That he was in over his head was clear and Nix guessed it wasn’t a question of ‘was’ that going to drive him to bad decisions but rather ‘how many’ bad decisions he would make and ‘would Nix be able to mitigate the fallout well enough’.

That thought helped her relax a bit.

She’d been in stressful situations, and been over her head drowning in unfamiliar responsibilities before and the last thing she, or Tovos, needed was someone goading them into worse mistakes than the ones they’d make naturally.

Nix held to that thought as the junker freighter descended through an unfamiliar sky, rumbling with the thirty seven different critical repairs it needed (Nix counted) but landing safely nonetheless.

Unfortunately that was where their safety ended.

“This isn’t good,” Felgo said. “I’m not getting a beacon reading.”

“Is the new encampment set up?” Tovos asked.

“No…wait, yes, partially,” Felgo said.

“And the ships? Where are they?” Tovos asked.

“I’m not seeing anything on telemetry,” Felgo said.

“That’s because they’re not here,” another Enclave member, Bortos, said. “They cleared a landing area, but it’s empty.”

Nix looked out the viewport and saw exactly what Bortos was talking about.

It wasn’t the encampment she’d visited, but she recognized a few of the tents which had been erected. The rest of the encampment was simply missing though, and the large open area where ships could land was devoid of machinery entirely.

What lay before them weren’t ruins.

And they weren’t empty.