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.