Being screamed at was never Ayli’s favorite thing in the world. Being screamed at by a slightly monstrous version of herself from less than a handspan away however was oddly calming.

“I know,” she said as the shackles on her wrists fell away.

“Um, who is this?” Monfi asked, still as securely fastened to the wall as he had been before the room became filled with the shattered remains of a half dozen HK droids.

“Me,” Ayli said. “This is me. I’m her, she’s me.”

Her other self bared the razor sharp, jagged teeth which Ayli couldn’t help but admire after seeing them tear off a droid’s head.

“She doesn’t seem to be terribly fond of you,” Mondi said, sounding as deeply confused as Ayli had ever heard him.

Ayli raised her hand, palm open and facing towards the Dark Side double she’d met in Shadowed Cave. The doppelganger raised a matching hand bent into a claw by barely contained rage.

“I’m sorry I can’t be you,” Ayli said. “I can get us out of here though.”

The doppelganger screamed again, and tore at the air between their hands, but without touching Ayli.

“Yeah, I get it, believe me, you’re not wrong. Destroying the danger we’re in, it would feel so good, and so right. And the fear? It’s warning us about so many things we need to be careful of.” Ayli looked into eyes which would forever be the blood red of rage and yellow of terror. A breath in, and a breath out. The peace she could find at home eluded her, but she was able to find her center.

It was a tumult, but she’d expected that. She might be able to play a good game with an enemy like Overwhelming, but with herself she had to be honest. The vast extent to which she wasn’t was something Kelda, Ravas, and Nix had helped her learn.

Far from being destroyed by confronting that truth though, Ayli had found strength there. Strength which didn’t fail her when her fears rose against like they always did.

Her Dark Side knew that too and broke their gaze first.

“You can rest now,” Ayli said, but the doppelganger shook her head, unable to speak or meet Ayli’s eyes.

Ayli wanted to reach out to the warped version of herself and say that everything was going to be okay.

But she didn’t know that it was.

And her anger and fear weren’t ready to sleep just yet.

Not when they were needed.

Not when existing as a separate embodiment was oh so easy in the Dark Side nexus of the ship.

Spinning on her heels, Ayli’s Dark Side took three steps to stalk out of the room, vanishing before she took a fourth.

She hadn’t disappeared though. From out in the hallway, Ayli could hear metal tearing and more screaming. Her Dark Side was very much not ready to cease its rampage.

“That’s not something you see every cycle,” Bopo said, seeming content to stay right where she was in her cell.

“No, it’s not,” Ayli said. “This place is unique though.”

“I’ve never heard of a Dark Side nexus working with a Jedi,” Monfi said.

“Not a Jedi.” Ayli freed her legs and moved over to Monfi to unbind his shackles as well.

“You’re not a Sith either though,” Monfi said.

“Nope. I don’t think a Sith’s Dark Side would be separate enough from them to do what…,” she gestured to the hallway where the sounds of destruction were growing more distant, “whatever she’s doing.”

“You don’t know?” Bopo asked.

“Not a clue.” Ayli unlocked the controls Bopo’s prison cell but couldn’t find the switch to drop the forcefield. “Or, well, one clue; she’s going to destroy Overwhelming. And this ship.”

“You can see her? Or sense her here?” Monfi asked.

“No, I just know what I want to do and I don’t think ‘restraint’ is a notable trait of the Dark Side.”

“If she destroys this ship, won’t that present a few issues for us?” Bopo asked.

“Oh, we’ll definitely die if we’re still onboard when she gets through with this place,” Ayli said. “Which is why we need to leave.”

“The droid, Overwhelming, it can still hear us can’t it?” Bopo asked.

“I’m sure it can,” Ayli said. “It’s got control of the ship’s systems. In fact, I’m pretty sure it could kill us at any point it wanted to. I mean, I don’t breath vacuum very well, how about you? It’d take a half second or so to open airlocks and maybe a minute for the air to all get sucked out?”

“But it needs us alive,” Monfi said, understanding the point Ayli was making.

“Exactly. If it spaces us, I suspect Paralus will arrange for an even worse punishment for failure than my Dark Side is planning on inflicting on Overwhelming.”

Monfi saw the trouble Ayli was having with the door mechanism and came over to inspect it as well, gesturing the question to Ayli of whether she wanted his help or not.

“That works out well for it and for us though,” Ayli said. “It’s smart, and it’s capable of thinking long term. It can easily allow us to get to an escape shuttle that it’s put tracking beacons in. We could search for those and disable them, but we’re under a time crunch too and, realistically, there’s no chance we would find all of the trackers Overwhelming could hide on something the size of a shuttle.”

“Couldn’t it just kill your Dark Side before she did too much damage though?” Bopo asked.

“No,” Monfi answered. “You saw what she did to those HK droids. Ayli’s other self is working with the power of a full Sith Lord here. Also, she’s a projection of the Dark Side. Stabbing her, blasting her, even blowing up the whole ship won’t matter. If something could cleanse this ship and restore balance to the Force here, that would disrupt her ability to manifest but that doesn’t seem like something a droid would be capable of.”

He worked a bit of no-Force related magic and the door to Bopo’s cell powered down.

“So where’s the nearest escape shuttle?” Bopo asked.

“This direction,” Ayli said, leading them out into the hall and in the opposite direction as her doppelganger had headed.

“How do you know that? I thought the Force didn’t work for you here?” Bopo asked.

“The Force works everywhere, even inside a Dark Side nexus,” Ayli said. “In this particular case though, I’m just familiar with Assassin-class corvettes.”

“Do I want to know why?” Bopo asked.

“Well, the Rebellion won, so all those things probably aren’t crimes anymore, but no, you don’t want to know.” Ayli watched the hallways they passed by. 

She knew her reasoning was sound, and she knew Overwhelming had heard her and agreed at least to the point of not spacing them all the moment they escaped the prison room. That didn’t mean she could afford to blithely ignore any warning signs they came across. She hadn’t mentioned that in addition to tracking beacons, Overwhelming could inflict serious but not fatal wounds on all of them, constraining them to land the shuttle somewhere far more convenient to be captured again. If a holding a city hostage had worked after all, holding a hospital was just as likely to.

That thought, and many others like it kept Ayli on high alert as they stalked to the shuttle bay where Ayli hoped they would find a ship.

When they arrived and a ship was in fact waiting for them, she almost turned them around though.

“What’s wrong?” Monfi asked, reading her change in mood from body language rather than the Force.

“This is a trap,” Ayli said.

“The Force is saying that because this is a Dark Side Nexus.” Monfi took a step into the room, before Ayli caught his arm.

“I’m not listening to the Force,” Ayli said. “You’re right that the Dark Side won’t show us a true picture of what’s happening, but this is still a trap.”

“We knew that coming here didn’t we?” Bopo said. “If the droid knows everything we’re doing, then it knows we’re doing this and it’ll have its own plans in place. That was the deal you talked out with it.”

“It was,” Ayli said. “But it’s a machine intelligence that serves a Force Lich. Betrayal and backstabbing are the electricity they run on. It should have attacked us by now.”

“And you want to wait around until it does?” Bopo asked.

“We can’t do that,” Monfi said. “We’re running out of time as it is.”

An explosion shook the ship, followed by a stronger one, and then one which knocked out the lights leaving the only illumination the landing lights in the shuttle bay.

“And now we’re out of time,” Monfi said. “It’s this or we find some other means of surviving the destruction of this ship.”

“No. It’s gotta be this. It’s just that this is a mistake,” Ayli said.

“And why might that be?” Paralus Stahl asked, stepping out of the shadows from beside them.

Ayli reached for her lightsaber but that was the first thing the droid had taken from her.

“We’re not coming to you,” Ayli said, moving to step in front of Bopo.

“I assure you that you are,” Paralus said, smug certainty dripping from every word. “You’re current resistance cannot change your destiny. You will return. No matter how hard you fight against it and how little you desire to succumb to your fate.”

“You’re going to a lot of effort for someone who thinks we’re going to do what you want regardless,” Ayli said.

“Destroying you is no effort at all,” Paralus said.

“You’re about to lose a whole ship over it,” Ayli said. “The cost is just going to keep rising the longer you pursue us.”

“The ship is no concern,” Paralus said. “It will survive or it will become a ghost, luring the unwary to their doom. Nothing you do will improve anyone’s situation, least of all your own.”

“You should probably start celebrating then,” Ayli said. “If you’ve won already, if our fates are decided, might as well throw yourself a party.”

“Your destruction awaits in the future and it will be in the moment when you finally accept that, when despair claims you at last, that is when my celebration shall begin,” Paralus said. “But where are my manners. You have a guest with you. A guest for whom I have no need.”

Ayli felt the killing lightning starting to gather in Paralus’s fingertips and moved to block the bolts that would take Bopo’s life.

But an interruption occurred.

Before Paralus could strike, a red lightsaber blade stabbed clean through his torso. His form turned to smoke as he fell and reformed with a blade of his own, facing off against Ayli’s Dark Side.

“Now we leave,” Monfi said, dashing towards the ship.

A hail of automated blaster fire opened up on him, but he sailed like the wind past them as the Dark Side’s influence was concentrated on the battle between Paralus and Ayli’s Dark Side.

“I can’t move like that,” Bopo said, the distance to the shuttle an impossible gap for anyone without Force powers to cover.

“You won’t have to,” Ayli said and took hold of her friend’s hand. “Just walk with me.”

Bopo looked at her, uncertainty writ large over her features until she managed to make peace with the death that awaited her.

Ayli didn’t lead Bopo to her death though. Step by slow step, they advanced towards the shuttle which Monfi was prepping for launch.

Around them, electronics and machinery exploded as a tornado of power tore through them. Halfway to the ship, Ayli stumbled but rose with fresh determination before Bopo could help her out. 

By the time they reached the ship, the hangar looked worse than if a bomb had hit it.

But not one shot had landed on either of them. 

“We made it!” Bopo cheered as Ayli pushed her up the ramp to the ship.

“Yes,” Ayli said. “You did. And now you’re going to get to safety.”

“What? No. You’re not staying. Why would you?”

“Tell Nix she knows where she’ll find me,” Ayli said. “Tell her what my eyes looked like too.”

Without waiting for Bopo’s protest, Ayli Force pushed her friend into the shuttle, slammed the entry hatch shut.

As the Force tornado cast the shuttle out into the void, Ayli turned to face the thing that had weathered the worst her Dark Side could throw at it, the deal she knew he would accept waiting on her lips.

Ayli needed helped. She hated to admit that, but she was wise enough to know that pretending otherwise was a fantastic method for getting herself and the people with her killed.

“They’re out there, searching for us,” Monfi said. He was pinned to the wall by grav-shackles, which looked to be somewhat less comfortable than the grav-shackles which bound Ayli to the inclined experimentation table. Of them all, only Bopo wasn’t shackled and that was because she’d been shuffled into one of the three small prison cells in the room the HK droids had forced them into.

“I’m pretty sure our friends following us is what Paralus is counting on,” Ayli said.

“Perhaps, but luring four trained Force users into a trap is a rather egotistical move,” Monfi said.

“Is it?” Archivist Bopo asked without rising from the small bench in her cell. “He managed to trap two of you, and he wasn’t even there.”

“She’s got a point,” Ayli said said. “The droid was able to hold a city hostage to compel us, but Paralus is going to have a much better lever against Nix and your people. Us.”

“Lasha knows better than that. The mission has to come first when dealing with a creature like Paralus,” Monfi said without concern or anger at the thought.

“That’s not how Nix think,” Ayli said, quietly loving her wife for that particular bit of madness. “She’s going to come for me even if it means tearing Praxis Mar apart rock-by-rock.”

“That doesn’t tend to work out well,” Monfi said, phrasing it as gently as he could.

“Oh, I’m aware of that,” Ayli said. “Which is why that’s an option we’re going to have to take off the table as quickly as possible.”

“Killing yourselves at this point doesn’t seem like a fantastic idea,” Bopo said. “Especially since, as a note, you’d be killing me as well.”

“Oh, killing ourselves isn’t an option at all,” Ayli said. “If I die, Nix won’t stop at tearing Praxis Mar apart.”

“Your wife sounds like a dangerous person,” Monfi said.

“She can be,” Ayli said. “But she’s also the most compassionate and kind person I’ve ever met.”

“I thought the Jedi teachings were to let go of attachments so that they wouldn’t draw you into the Dark Side?” Monfi said.

“We’ve learned from the Jedi, but neither of us are Jedi,” Ayli said. “And to be fair, I’m not sure the Jedi were either.”

“Because they didn’t follow their own code?” Monfi asked.

“They did, but over time the code changed, or their understanding of it did. I think the Jedi we know of may have evolved some somewhat offbase ideas on what their own code was supposed to mean,” Ayli said. “What we’ve learned from the Force Ghosts we know doesn’t exactly line up with the more recent Jedi texts we’ve recovered which survived the Imperial purges. The same is true with the Sith information we’ve turned up.”

“You found ancient Sith relics?” Monfi asked. “Did you destroy them? They are notoriously dangerous.”

“Nope. All the Sith writings we found were from an Imperial Inquisitor’s personal refuge. It’s possible he was making up things on his own, but some of his phrasing is identical to what Ravas, one of our Force Ghosts, learned from her master. Other bits, the kind that tend to change over time, had drifted, but you could see a path from the ancient ideas to the modern ones.”

“You know a Sith?” Monfi asked, more shocked by that than anything else Ayli had said to them since they met.

“A former Sith,” Ayli said. “Also dead. She’s thrown off the Dark Side more than I have at this point, but I guess sleeping for a thousand years in a Force nexus, protected by the woman she loved, could do that.”

“That’s…I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Monfi said.

“They’re pretty unique,” Ayli said. “I’ll have to introduce you to them both properly after we get out of here.”

“Do you have any thoughts on that?” Monfi asked. “I was hoping once we weren’t constrained by the hostages we could break out with our abilities, but the Force is so negative here that I can’t get much of a hold on it at all.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t anticipating that either,” Ayli said. “I’m willing to bet the droid was though.”

The temperature in the room rose sharply at that and Ayli smiled. Annoying machine intelligences was as easy as it was with organic ones. It was funny too to think of ‘droid’ as being an insult, but so far the two machine intelligences Ayli had met seemed to agree on that.

“There’s also the small problem that even if we do manage to break loose somehow, we’re on a ship in hyperspace. Not a lot of room to run and hide in here and none outside,” Monfi said.

“Escape shuttle?” Bopo suggested.

“Unless we waited till we were near a planet, the odds of anyone finding us are ridiculously slim. Also, the droid could just open up on that shuttle and destroy us in a single turbolaser volley, or tractor beam us right back inside.”

“So we need to escape without the droid noticing it?” Bopo asked.

“Oh, it will definitely notice. I mean, it’s listening to us now, so it’s not like our plans will be a surprise to it,” Ayli said.

The door to their prison cell opened and a half dozen of the HK droids entered.

“Oh, I’m sorry Overwhelming,” Ayli said. “Were we supposed to keep talking and reveal everything we’re going to do with you eavesdropping on the entirely automated ship which you have complete control over?”

“You will reveal whatever I wish for you to reveal,” the nearest droid said. “And my name is not Overwhelming.”

“Sorry Overwhelming, you had the chance to introduce yourself and you didn’t take it,” Ayli said as the HK’s marched over to her.

Any one of the droids could have easily killed her in her present circumstances. The Force wasn’t a terribly large help either. Despite the effort she’d put into connecting with it, and how much better she could feel and hear it, within the Dark Side nexus of the ship’s interior there was so much remembered pain and torment and despair that Ayli could hear little else in the Force, and certainly not true warnings as to what her fate was going to be.

“Might not be good to annoy the Hunter Killer droids there my dear,” Bopo said.

“You should listen to the Rodian woman,” the lead droid said.

“I am Galruxian, not a Rodian you worthless pile of chips,” Bopo said, rising from her bench at the ignorant insult the droid had spoken.

“You are meat,” the droid said. “If you’re fortunate, you will also prove to be useful bait. If you’re not, then there are many uses to which protein chains, calcium, or vital fluids can be put.”

“I find it curious that you feel the need to threaten us when you have us precisely where you want us to be, and as contained as you can possibly manage,” Ayli said.

“Threats are for meat-forms,” the droid said. “I am informing you of the algorithm to follow should you wish to survive beyond the current moment.”

 “Oh, right, droids can only think in code, can’t they,” Ayli said.

That earned a zap from one of the HK’s non-lethal weapon systems.

She flinched at the hit, but that was purely theatrical. The Force wasn’t being particularly vocal about what she was supposed to do, but it was still willing to move when she asked it too and redirecting Force lightning had been one of the earliest things she’d worked out how to do.

From the perspective of the HK droid, Ayli knew her clenched fist would look like a reaction to the shock she’d received. The spark of electricity that she was holding inside the fist wasn’t something she had an immediate use for, but it was a weapon and her history had taught her that the more weapons you had available the better.

“By all means, keep talking,” Overwhelming said.

“You’re being careful not to damage us,” Ayli said.

“That can change.”

“Oh? Is your master the forgiving sort? I haven’t read of many Sith who were particularly happy when their orders weren’t followed?” Ayli asked.

The HK unit shocked her again, and the spark in her first grew denser and more fierce.

“No orders were given that you had to enjoy the journey,” Overwhelming said.

“Real torture is off the table though. That’s interesting,” Ayli said, genuinely curious over why Overwhelming wasn’t using the implements that were on display beside the table she was shackled to. “Paralus wants to wait on that. I wonder why?”

“The others will feel our pain,” Monfi said.

“Which would let them intercept us?” Ayli wondered. It wasn’t entirely implausible. She’d already felt Nix reaching out to her and had responded with what little information she could manage to feed back through the stifling shadow of the Dark Side the ship was cloaked in.

Ayli hadn’t been able to give Nix a good sense of where she was but the two of them both knew where she was heading.

Praxis Mar had called to both of them, and, as the worst possible place in the galaxy for them to be drawn to, it made sense that Paralus’s base was there. It also made sense that Nix would make every effort to cut Overwhelming off before they got to Praxis Mar.

Paralus had nearly killed her in the Shadowed Cave, and Ayli had gotten the sense that he had confronted Nix as well. Facing him when he wasn’t extending himself across light years seemed like a fight they were guaranteed to lose, and that was before factoring in the well of power he’d be able to draw on from the Dark Side planet.

Since neither of them wanted to go to Praxis Mar, helping Nix find them sooner rather than far-too-late should have been the wisest move, but Ayli knew it wouldn’t work out like that.

Overwhelming’s ship was a flying horror show that was only “lesser” to Praxis Mar by virtue of the fact that it was orders of magnitude smaller. The people who had died within it numbered in the thousands. On Praxis Mar the number had been billions. In either location though, Paralus would wield far too much power to engage directly. Ayli knew losing fights, and she knew what you did when saw one. 

You found someplace else to fight.

So drawing Nix to intercept Overwhelming’s ship was not the right play.

Destroying Overwhelming’s ship? That was a much better option.

She had no idea how she was going to do that of course, but, as Kelda had mentioned more than once (though far less often that Ayli had expected her too), trusting in the Force meant believing that it was working through you even when you couldn’t understand how.

“Our connections are always there,” Kelda had said. “Those who came before us? They’re not simply part of the Force, not some distant, wispy ghosts that are just out of sight. They live on in our memory and in who we are. They are a part of us, and push us onwards, just as we carry them forward. You’re never lost, and neither are they.”

It was hard to believe that most of the time, and even harder to feel it, but belief can be a choice, and even when the heart is numb and silent, it was possible to remain open to what could be.

“You’re going to keep all these droids here to be menacing now I presume?” Ayli asked, casting her gaze on the rather excessive guard force Overwhelming had deployed.

“If you were properly menaced, you would be silent until you were commanded to speak,” Overwhelming said.

“I thought you wanted to hear what our plans were?” Ayli asked, sensing movement in the Force. 

Something dark and wicked was heading towards them.

“Your plans are irrelevant,” Overwhelming said. “You are unarmed, and helpless. What do you think you can do to change your fate?

“Oh, I have no idea,” Ayli said, with complete honesty. Each of the plans she had come up with were almost certain to lead to a messy demise. 

The Force was her ally though, and the Force moved in mysterious ways.

“But I bet she does,” Ayli said as a Dark Side reflection of herself appeared at the far side of the room and began tearing the HK droids apart with her bare hands.

Space battles are not especially comfortable places to be. Aside from the ever-imminent chance of winding up on the wrong side of a turbo-laser barrage, there was the fact that people tended to die in battles, usually quite a lot of them and the Force wasn’t especially fond of that. That it was all too ready to share the burst of agony on top of the miasma of fear and uncertainty and rage of everyone involved made being in a pitched battle less than enjoyable for Nix.

“Should we be heading in there to help out?” Goldie asked.

“Help out who?” Nix said, glad that they were only ‘near’ the battle which was unfolding rather than in it. At least for the time being.

“You can’t sense who the good guys are?” Goldie asked.

“I sense a lot of angry and frightened people out there,” Nix said. “Motivations though? Not so much.”

“I don’t think Ayli’s caught in that,” Ravas said. “I can’t sense her but the Dark Side ship would stand out even at this distance.”

“Can the evil Jedi hide their ship?” Solna asked. “They told us warping the Xah to cloak themselves was an evil Jedi trick.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘Sith’,” Kelda said, “Though, to be fair, there certainly have been members of the Jedi order who fell to evil ends without naming themselves as Sith.”

“The Sith arts do include the ability to cloud minds,” Ravas said. “They can hide themselves, their actions, and their aims, but the shadow of the Dark Side is always perceptible. You won’t know that a Sith, specifically, is working against you, but you’ll always be able to tell that the Dark Side is on the rise.”

“I gather that’s how the Galactic Empire rose to power,” Kelda said. “A Sith incited the galactic civil war and Dark Side rose in the strife which followed making it impossible for the Jedi to discern the Sith’s movements and power plays against the overall misery in the galaxy.”

“I’m sensing a lot of misery out there,” Rassi said as a small frigate erupted in a bloom of fire and shrapnel.

“This would be a good hiding spot for the Dark Side vessel,” Ravas said. “But even against this background, it’s presence would stick out.” A worried expression crossed her face. “Probably.”

“Probably?” Solna asked.

“My training in the Sith arts was never, technically, completed,” Ravas said. “When I died, I was still an apprentice.”

“I imagine when you crushed your masters heart into grains of dust that would count as a graduation ceremony, no?” Kelda asked.

“In theory, yes, the only means for a Sith apprentice to become a master is to claim the position through murder, but I was no longer a Sith by then,” Ravas said. “Assuming that’s something I can ever be free of.” Kelda laid a hand on Ravas’ arm in a wordless should of support. “The important point though is that while most Sith would not be capable of hiding the ship in an area like this, I can’t be entirely certain that it would be beyond a Force Lich like Paralus.”

“Then we need to get in there right?” Goldie asked.

Almost as thought in answer to her question, one of the battle cruisers chose that moment to shatter into two pieces as it released the ball of plasma which consumed its midsection.

“They really should have taken their hyperdrive off line before the shooting started,” Nix said. “And no. We’re still far enough off that their scanners will be ignoring us. If we move in, both sides will assume we’re with the other and place us on their ‘To Be Exploded’ list. I know you’re tough, and I know you want to rescue Ayli as much as I do, but neither her nor I want you to get at all exploded, okay?”

“No,” Goldie grumbled in a tone that offered more agreement than her word did.

“Good, because if you two are willing, I think it would be worth trying to sense where Ayli is with the Force,” Nix said.

“We can try,” Rassi said.

“We can find her,” Solna said. “Rassi is really good at that.”

“You’re better,” Rassi said.

Nix let them argue back and forth while she led them back to the cargo hold. There wasn’t anything stopping them from trying the meditation in the cabin, except for how distracting checking the scanners would have been.

As they walked back to hold, Kelda spoke to Nix silently.

“If you have any fears, you will want to find what peace you can with them,” Kelda whisper to Nix in the Force.

“I know. I could affect that they see if I let fear or anger into our communion,” Nix said. “Letting go of those is easier said than done.”

“As a wise old Jedi master allow to assure you that with all your training, that will still be true. Ask me how I know.”

“Even a thousand years as a ghost doesn’t take the edge off things I take it?” Nix asked.

“Maybe two thousand is the magic number. We’ll see.” Kelda winked at her. “That said, our training does help. Use what you know and you all will be fine.”

“Thanks,” Nix said. “For everything so far. I know your condition isn’t exactly optimal, but I don’t know if I’d still be here if not for you and Ravas.”

“I doubt we would be either if not for you and Ayli,” Kelda said. “So just remember that we are with you. Always.”

They arrived at the cargo hold and sat down together in a closer circle than the one they’d danced.

“Okay, I think I understand what Ravas and Kelda are suggesting,” Nix said. “It’s important that you know that you don’t have to do this though. And I don’t just mean now. If you start to feel uncomfortable and want to stop, draw away, break the link. That’s not just for you. Negative emotions can cloud this sort of sharing and quickly twist it into something it shouldn’t be.”

“Like what?” Rassi asked.

“Seeing a vision of someone else, or somewhere else is an incredibly inexact process,” Nix said. “Fear could swing our vision around to the source of the fear or an image of how it might manifest. I’m worried, for example, that we can’t sense the ship because it’s crashed and they’re all dead. If I bring that into our meditation, we might see a vision of the ship in pieces on a planet and dead bodies all around it. It won’t be true, not necessarily, but it will feel true and that can lead to more fear and even worse visions.”

“How do we get rid of our fear then?” Rassi asked.

“You don’t,” Nix said. “There’s a time and place to reject fear and move past it by sheer willpower. That doesn’t banish the fear though, only time will really do that. Instead, for this, you want to acknowledge your fears. Some of them might be silly, but some may be well founded too. Remind yourself that you will deal with all of them but for now you don’t need the warning they’re giving you. You’re working on something else and will get to them when its their turn.”

“That sounds like we’re treating them like children?” Solna said.

“Sure. That’s a fine image for them. Picture your fears as little kids jumping around your ankles. They’re all certain that what they have to tell you is the most important thing in the world, but you know they don’t understand things like you do. You know they can wait and be good little toddlers for just a little bit.”

Rassi laughed and a the ghost of a smile graced Solna’s lips.

Nix closed her eyes and began to center herself, feeling the girls do the same beside her.

Extending her hands, Nix felt their minds join together at the shared touch. Neither Rassi nor Solna had quite mastered the fears but Nix could tell that they were both doing their best to find some distance from the worst of their imaginings.

“Let me show you Ayli,” Nix said, slowly forming an image, purely visual at first, of the woman she felt like she’d known her whole life and at the same time had only just met.

“Stars, she’s beautiful!” Solna said. Which, Nix felt was inarguably true, though she suspected some of her own appreciation of Ayli might have been leaking into the image Nix was sharing of her.

“She’s blue?” Rassi said with a giggle.

“And very strong in the Force,” Nix said, adding the impression of Ayli’s life energy to the image, which drew gasps from both Rassi and Solna. “Do you think you can find her?”

“Yes,” Rassi said.

“Let’s do this,” Solna added and she felt the two of them read out to the stars.

What they found however was not Ayli.

Within the star system but on the opposite end of the battle which raged before them, there was a presence, searching planets and the space between them just as they were.

Tentatively, the presence reached out, seeking the shape and source of the awareness Solna and Rassi were projecting.

Who are you? the presence asked.

Seekers, Nix answered, placing herself in front her wards.

We are seekers as well, the presence asked. There is no darkness in you?

There is darkness in all things, Nix said, but we do not bend to our darkness.

Nor do we, the presence said, we seek my partner and the one who abducted him.

We seek my wife and the one who abducted her, Nix said, gambling on trusting the presence largely because she felt the Force’s approval of them.

Your wife is a Jedi is she not? My partner is a Phantom Stalker.

My wife has Jedi training, though is not perhaps a Jedi exactly. And you and your partner are Padal Horizon Knights are you not?

Nix felt the walls between them fall down.

We should speak with ship comms, the presence said.

Agreed. Less taxing and quicker. Let’s rendezvous on the sunward side of the battle, Nix suggested.

Agreed, the presence said and withdrew.

“What was that?” Rassi asked as the three of them opened their eyes and broke the meditative link which bound them.

“We found someone else who’s looking for Ayli,” Nix said. “Monfi’s partner is out there, probably with her apprentices. We’re going to meet up so we can talk with laser comms and not be overheard by the battle over there.

“Laying in a course now,” Goldie said.

“You know where to go?” Nix asked.

“I’m guessing it’s the single ship that’s heading around the battle and well away from it?” Goldie asked. “I might have gone into active scanning mode since no on in the battle is going to notice anything sort of a target lock, and maybe not even that.”

Nix rolled her eyes, not so much at Goldie but at herself for not anticipating that.

To Goldie’s credit though, the scan did prove to be helpful and the course she worked out kept them well away from the battle’s ever shifting fringes while making quick time to the rendezvous point.

“Goldrunner, this is Corvid 1256,” the voice and image of a Xabrak woman said as a connection between the two ships was established.

“Greetings Corvid 1256, this is Goldrunner, Nix Lamplighter speaking,” Nix said, intrigued by the generic designation for the Horizon Knight’s ship. While it would have sounded boring to most people, to Nix it suggested they did a lot of more undercover work than she would have imagined there was call for.

“Greetings, I am Lasha and I believe we may have information which could be of use to one another.”

“Indeed. We’ve come from the Praxis Mar system, where I am pretty sure the ship which kidnapped our people was heading and they have no arrived there yet,” Nix said. “I’m hoping you’ll have better news on where their trail went.”

“Sadly, that’s what I was hoping to get from you,” Lasha said. “We followed their trail from Halphi to here. We found signs of them in two systems leading here, but we lost them in the Haldoni system.”

“That’s one jump before here,” Goldie put in helpfully.

“Yes,” Lasha said. “I can’t sense them here at all though.”

“There aren’t any other good hyperspace lanes out of Haldoni,” Goldie said.

Nix inhaled, breathing in calm and clearing her thoughts.

Ayli was alive.

She was out there.

And she needed help.

“Then we’re going to have start looking at the bad ones,” Nix said.

There’s a thing about someone insisting that they had to see you and just not taking “no” for an answer, a thing Nix had learned early on in her career – those are the people you usually just do not want to meet at all.

“If Praxis Mar is calling to you, why are we heading away from it at maximum sublight speed?” Kelda asked.

“Because the nav computer hasn’t worked out the jump coordinates yet,” Nix said, doing her best to put everything out of her mind. 

Ideally she only wanted to shut out the booming, wordless voice of the planet that had been swallowed by the Dark Side, but it was loud enough that she could either close out everything or let the planet’s call crash through her loud of to rattle her bones.

“I’m inclined to agree with her decision here,” Ravas said.

“We’ve had poor luck with running away before,” Kelda said.

“And poorer luck with Praxis Mar,” Ravas countered. “If we do have to face Paralus there, we’d be better off all together.”

“Point taken,” Kelda said.

Nix cast a glance over at Rassi and Solna, who’d settled into the comms and engineering chairs behind her. Neither of the girls looked like they were doing especially well and Nix’s guess was that their condition had nothing to do with the near death waltz they’d danced.

“Leaving seems good,” Solna said. “We shouldn’t be here. Nothing should be here.”

“She’s not wrong about that,” Ravas said.

“What is that thing?” Rassi asked, huddled in on herself.

“What you’re feeling in Praxis Mar, a planet which has been lost to the Dark Side of the Force,” Kelda said.

“We spent a few centuries there,” Ravas added. “It’s as unpleasant as you’re imagining.”

“They may be getting it worse than any of us did,” Nix said. “The people of the Silent Enclave are incredibly sensitive to the Force. What they’re feeling from this distance is probably what we were feeling at ground level. Or possible even worse.”

“How could you stand to be on a planet like that?” Rassi asked.

“You’ve grown up in the enclave which is so quiet in the Force that I couldn’t even sense Nix when she was there,” Kelda said. “The rest of the galaxy is, not quite so calm.”

“It’s all like this?” Solna asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Ravas said. “This is monumentally bad. Short of the site of an in-progress massacre, you won’t find anything that comes close to be as unpleasant.”

“Which isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of places where the Force is twisted and gnarled and you will feel like misery is pouring down on you like rain,” Kelda said.

“How do you even handle that?” Rassi asked.

“It varies,” Ravas said. “I can assure you that trying to grab as much powerful as possible so that you can force the galaxy to align with how you believe it should be is, most assuredly, not the right answer though.”

“Nor is shutting everything else out and trying to meditate yourself to a higher plane,” Kelda said.

“You take it as you go,” Nix said. “If you want the real secret to adulthood there it is. We’re all just bumbling along as best we can. Some people like to make endless plans, some react mindlessly and hope for the best, some cast aside all responsibility and belief that faith in whatever they can find will make everything turn out right. Everyone else, which is pretty close to everyone, we make it up as we go and do what we can.”

“That doesn’t sound like it’s enough to deal with something like this Praxis Mar place,” Solna said.

“It’s not,” Nix said. “That’s why we’re running away.”

“Got the jump coordinates when you’re ready to go Mom,” Goldie said.

“Probability that our target system is the one Ayli’s prison ship would have gone through?” Nix asked before hitting the lightspeed jump button.

“High 90’s,” Goldie said. “The next nearest system with a hyperspace lane here is another seven systems past us. Assuming they didn’t overshoot and come back around by an unnecessarily long road, we should find them in the target system.”

“Let’s hit it then,” Nix said and punched the Goldrunner in hyperspace.

The moment the stars began to shift, she heard a despairing wail as Praxis Mar fell impossibly far behind them.

Once the familiar blue swirl of hyperspace filled the front viewport, the crushing weight of the planet’s insistent call dropped away leaving Nix’s thoughts clear once more.

“When we arrive, go to full active scan okay?” she asked, calling up the star charts for their destination.

“That’s going to attract attention,” Goldie said. “Are we picking a fight?”

“From what Ayli was able to convey, it’s a fight that we’d lose,” Nix said.

“Why didn’t we bring Thirty Two then?” Goldie asked.

“Well, first of all, we can’t just take command of Sali’s fleet,” Nix said.

“Aunt Sali would be fine with that,” Goldie said. “And Aunt Zin would smack her if she wasn’t.”

Nix laughed.

“While that is probably true, Sali has her fleet blockading Praxis for a good reason, and I’d rather not let Paralus bring in whatever reinforcements that blockade is holding at bay.” Nix suppressed the small pang of longing for Sali’s presence. Sali had reached the point of accepting that the two of them were not cut out to be a romantic couple, in part because Sister Zindiana was a much better partner in crime, and in part because Sali and Nix fit together so much better as friends than they had as lovers. Not that being lovers had been terrible, but as friends there was just a little bit more sanity in there relationship than there had been.

In the face of possibly losing Ayli and having to deal with the overwhelming might of a Dark Side planet though, Nix was tempted to think her life could use a bit more of Sali and Zin’s unique brand of madness.

“A thought,” Kelda said. “If the ship’s scans will draw attention from the locals, why not ask our young friends for their input. As you said, they are quite gifted in sensing the Force.”

“They’ve never met Ayli though. They wouldn’t know what to listen for,” Nix said, having thought of and already rejected that possibility.

“But you do,” Ravas said.

“I can’t just tell them though,” Nix said.

“Of course not,” Kelda said. “You’ll show them.”

“You did say they were both especially gifted in sensing the Force,” Ravas said.

“What would we have to do?” Rassi asked.

“And why can’t you reach your wife now, you were talking to her before weren’t you?” Solna asked.

“It wasn’t exactly talking,” Nix said. “Not with words.”

“Well, whatever it was, can’t you just do that again?” Solna asked, fidgeting her seat as though the answer might be enough to corrupt her.

Or maybe it was her desire to understand that she was afraid was corrupting her. Nix put a pin in that thought. She and Solna and Rassi were going to have a long conversation at some point about what ‘corruption’ really meant and how they needed to be honest with themselves rather than allowing themselves to be strangled by dogma.

“It’s tiring for her,” Nix said, banishing the frustration from her voice. They were moving towards Ayli as fast as Goldie’s engines could take them, which meant it was a time for patience, and with the girls she wanted, above all else, to show them they could trust her. “I held onto her for as long as she could manage it but communing with the Force inside a Dark Side Nexus is like tearing yourself in half. Part of you needs to be open and part of you needs to shut out the urges and impulses the Dark Side will flood into you.”

“Can you feel her at all?” Rassi asked, her whole face an expression of unmasked concern.

“No,” Nix admitted with a shake of her head. “Or, not like I want to. I know she’s still alive. I know they’re not hurting her. Not yet, but I can’t imagine that’s not a tool they plan to break out if they need to compel our behavior.”

“It’s not a tool we’re going to give the opportunity to make any use of,” Ravas said.

“That’s the plan,” Nix said. “I don’t know if I’m comfortable including Rassi and Solna in it though.”

“Why? What’s wrong with us helping?” Rassi asked.

“We can do it,” Solna said, which surprised Nix given the girl’s overall discomfort with anything even Jedi-adjacent.

“You have the ability, absolutely,” Nix said. “But there’s danger in looking for someone in general. The local pirates or law enforcement or whatever they call themselves may not be able to detect you scanning a system looking for someone, but other Force users might be able to and they might be able to lay traps.”

“We know to avoid corruptions in the Xah,” Solna said. “We weren’t entirely sheltered.”

“There’s corruptions, pockets of the Dark Side, and then there are traps with are specifically intended to go unnoticed until that can do something nasty, like show you what you’re afraid you might see, or reveal your location to the person who set the trap.”

“How do you avoid those?” Rassi asked.

“I have no idea,” Nix said. “I’ve only read about them.”

“When I was a Jedi we would simply trigger the trap,” Kelda said. “That was usually the best method of finding the person who’d put it together. A frightening vision is nothing against a prepared mind, and if they knew where we were, so too would we learn their location.”

“More than a few Jedi fell into Sith clutches thanks to that sort of hubris though,” Ravas said. “And the ones who didn’t were trained in the sort of mental games the Jedi and Sith play with each other since they were children.”

“Which is why I don’t think it’s a good idea for Rassi and Solna to help out here. A general system is dangerous enough but this would be looking for someone we know is trapped in a Dark Side nexus.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Rassi said. “We can do this.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” Nix said. “You’ve been through enough and this isn’t your fight.”

“I think it is,” Solna said. “If I moved the Xah to bring you to us to help us escape, you had to be following it because we fit into your life in a way that would balance things. This might be why we’re here.”

“Nope,” Nix said. “You’re here because you’re choosing to be and that’s it. You don’t owe me or the galaxy anything else. Your happiness doesn’t come with a price tag.”

“Solna’s right,” Rassi said. “You helped us because that’s who you want to be, even if the Xah or the Force isn’t telling us to help you, I think that’s how we become who we want to be.”

Nix drew in a long breath and let it out in a sigh.

This wasn’t an argument she was going to win. She didn’t need the Force to tell her that. She had plenty of memories of being a teenager to know how stubborn young humans could be.

“They needn’t be as exposed as you imagine,” Ravas said.

“Indeed. If you are joined together, they can offer you their sense so that if you do encounter anything it will be your defenses which stand against it first,” Kelda said.

“Or more precisely, ours,” Ravas said.

“I am still stretched a bit thin,” Kelda said. “Dispelling Paralus’ shade was a bit taxing.”

“Then you’ll this to me,” Ravas said. 

“Whatever you’re going to do, I would get ready,” Goldie said. “We’ll be dropping out of hyperspace in about ten seconds.”

Nix turned her attention back to the passive scanners as the stars slammed back into place, only to find she didn’t need the sensors right away. 

Not when the lights from a fantastic battle between two armadas were exploding in the distance.