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.