Lost and Found Chapters 15-19

“To say that Revan’s little undercover operation is dangerous would be a pretty severe understatement, Padawan.”

Visas nodded as she walked next to Master Jolee Bindo. The side of her face under her veil was growing hot and itchy in the sunlight through the western windows of the Jedi Temple.

While the Council had said as much when she had informed them of Celyn Onasi’s second vision, they had not reached any conclusion. And while they had also said they needed more time to formulate a position on what Visas had told them, Master Bindo had other ideas.

“Is the girl all right?” Bindo asked. He was an odd glow; dark shades of brown and grey, occasionally blue and occasionally red but never either for very long.

“She is not physically damaged,” Visas replied.

The old Jedi snorted. “I meant scared, Padawan Marr. Is she frightened or upset?”

Visas wondered why he was asking when they were on their way to see the child anyway— something the Miraluka was not looking forward to doing again.

After her last vision, Celyn had demanded that Visas “stop showing her Mommy like that”. Visas had tried to explain to the child that she could not see Revan like anything without Celyn and that the little girl was producing these images on her own. The Miraluka hadn’t known that that much noise could come out of something so small.

She had never been so grateful for her classes with the younger Padawans and apprentices the next morning. Obedient, studious little Padawans who sat quietly and absorbed whatever images came to mind without interruption or complaint—

Granted, none of the younglings were seeing images of their mothers dressed up like Sith torturing innocents.

“The child was…not pleased to see her mother in any capacity beyond the role of caretaker, if that is what you mean, Master,” Visas finally said.

“Would you be?” Bindo retorted. He did not block his thoughts as heavily as most members on the Council did. Visas could sense his self-image clearly; bald and wrinkled, with a trim white beard that he occasionally stroked as they walked.

“Do you believe that Revan may become a threat to the Jedi Order again, Master? Do you believe she has fallen?”

“If she had fallen, she wouldn’t need the makeup, would she?” the old Jedi snapped. He sighed heavily, clasping his hands behind his back.

“She’s stayed true to the redeemed identity the Jedi built up for her for almost a decade now. Now me, if I was going to fall back, I would have done it a long time ago. But that could just be an old man’s wishful thinking.”

The air among the Council members had been thick and humid, heavy with this new threat to worry about; the danger of Revan’s intentions becoming muddled through her methods.

“Now, perhaps it might be best if you hang back for a minute, Padawan Marr,” Bindo murmured as they neared the apprentice dormitories. “You’re probably akin to the boogeyman for Celyn at this point.”

Visas complied and stopped just outside the doorway. By this time of day, all the younger apprentices would be finishing up their exercises and preparing to return to their dormitories. The long room filled with sparse beds and nightstands, however, was entirely empty save for Celyn Onasi, sitting on the floor between two beds.

Master Bindo was only able to see the top of the child’s head, but Visas’s vision was not restricted by inanimate objects. Through the dull grey outlines of the wall and the bedframe she could see a few unidentifiable parts being hurriedly gathered up by the little girl and shoved underneath the bed.

Celyn stood, poking her head of brown curls up to see who had entered the room.

“Jolee!” she exclaimed happily, running up to him. The old Jedi mussed her hair.

“My, my, and not a glob of grease on her. What kind of respectable Jawa isn’t at least a little dirty, eh?”

The little girl smirked like she knew something Bindo didn’t. Visas was willing to bet it had something to do with the parts shoved under the bed.

“So, how do you like the Jedi Temple?” the old Jedi continued, sitting down on the edge of one of the beds, Visas could hear the barely audible crack of his knees. “You having fun around here?”

“It’s boring,” Celyn answered. “Everybody leaves in the morning and they don’t come back until nighttime, and when they play they play with the Force and I don’t know how so I can’t play with them.”

“At home I’m the only kid with the Force,” the little girl added begrudgingly.

Bindo chuckled, putting his hands on both knees.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, kiddo- those apprentices are mostly around the same age as you. And yeah, they’re learning about the Force because they’ll be Jedi someday. But since they’re young they’re also learning more rudimentary things, like reading and writing and basic math and all the other stuff you were probably just starting to learn on Telos. You’ve been out of school for long enough; you can start going to those lessons.”

“I still can’t play with them,” Celyn muttered.

“Oh, I bet you could follow a couple of the training classes as well as any of the apprentices too,” the old Jedi added. “I’m pretty sure your pop wouldn’t kill me if I let you learn how to float a datapad or something harmless like that. You could surprise your mom when she gets back.”

The child brightened at the suggestion.

“Father promised he’d bring her back.”

Bindo’s amused smile fell, and he looked seriously at the little girl.

“Listen, squirt, I want to explain something to you. You listening?”

Celyn nodded. Bindo reached out and grasped the child’s shoulder.

“Your dad’s been through a lot in his life, Celyn. Falling in love with your mother fixed him when he was kind of broken. So finding her is very important to him. Because he loves her, he’s not willing to accept some things. And he made a promise to you that he shouldn’t have made.”

Celyn Onasi looked horrified.

“No, no tantrums now,” Bindo said firmly. “You’re a brave girl, I know you are.”

For a moment, Visas thought the little girl would be her usual stubborn self; squirm out of the old Jedi Master’s grip and go tearing through the halls of the Jedi Temple to sulk somewhere.

But instead, Celyn took a deep breath and bit her lip, clasping her hands quietly behind her and looking up at Bindo, almost cringing like she knew what was coming.

“Now I can’t tell you whether your mother’s coming back or not. No one can see what she’s doing out there except for you, and you can only see it when Padawan Visas helps you. Tell me, Celyn, what do you think your mother’s doing?”

“She’s trying to fight Sith,” the little girl replied automatically. “She doesn’t want them to come back here and hurt people. But…she’s doing bad things to keep people from doing bad things.”

Visas could feel the child trying to make sense of this in her head and becoming frustrated at the fact that she couldn’t.

“Visas…” The Miraluka heard her name quiet and soft from Celyn Onasi’s lips like she was a fearsome monster of legend or a hero to grace the archives of the Jedi. “Visas said Mommy was only pretending to be bad, and that she doesn’t really want to do those things. Is that true?”

“Well, Celyn, tell me: who’s the only one who might be able to answer that question?”

“Me,” the little girl answered. Bindo nodded.

“That’s right. And if you want to know what’s happening to her and what she’s doing, you’ll have to keep working with Padawan Visas to try and see her.”

Visas took that as her cue to step into the doorway of the apprentice dormitories and slowly make her way towards the old Jedi Master and Celyn Onasi.

The little girl’s emotions and facial expression were trying to be politely grateful, like she had expected candy and gotten vegetables.

“Be good, kiddo,” Bindo added as he pushed himself up from the bed with a grunt.

She’s all yours, Padawan, the old Jedi added to the Miraluka as he passed her. Celyn leaned over to the side, peering around Visas and watching Bindo until he had disappeared around the corner.

“It appears as though you may have less time to spend with me in the future,” Visas said, tilting her head downwards towards the child.

“It’s okay,” the little girl shrugged. “I like school.”

She stood there in front of Visas for a moment, twisting her hands around in front of her and shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“You want to see something?” Celyn offered with a mischievous smile. She turned around and hurried back over to where she had been sitting between the two beds. Visas followed, kneeling next to the little girl where she was half buried underneath the bed.

Celyn Onasi pulled out the parts of the object she had disassembled- one of the small apprentice lightsabers.

“At home I’m not allowed to touch these,” Celyn whispered loudly. “Mommy says they’re dangerous. She hides hers and Dustil always has his with him. But I was really careful.”

Visas gently pawed through the empty hilt, the broken lens emitter that the girl must have forced out, the crystal lying on the marble floor, no longer glowing.

“Your mother is correct. You should not have chosen this particular piece of equipment to take apart.”

Celyn frowned, gathering up the pieces and snatching the lens emitter out of Visas’s hand like the Miraluka might take them all away from her.

“I was going to put it back,” the little girl muttered under her breath. “I always put things back together.”

Celyn sat back on her heels, looking around the room for something else she might show Visas.

“Do you do the same thing with all the other kids?” the little girl finally asked. “Do they try to watch people too?”

“In a way,” Visas replied. “Sometimes I lead guided meditations where the children sit and try to grasp images and block them much as you and I have done. None of them have received any from so far away through a familial bond, however.”

Celyn nodded. “It’s kind of like Mommy’s sending me letters.”

“Father and Dustil sent me a letter,” she added, leaning towards Visas and grinning like it was a secret she wasn’t supposed to tell.

Does the child want me to read it to her? the Miraluka thought incredulously, wondering why the little girl hadn’t yet asked about the veil covering her face—

“I ­know how to read,” Celyn interrupted sharply, frowning. “I’m five years old.”

The little girl’s complete disregard for the privacy of a sentient’s thoughts was becoming irritating, although Visas could not entirely blame the child. She had never been taught, after all, that the Force was not simply something you had and used at your whim.

“You become extremely upset when someone implies you don’t know how to do something,” the Miraluka remarked.

“I don’t like it when I don’t know things.” The child’s voice was a soft lilt, a recitation of something someone had told her before. “I don’t like it when I can’t understand stuff.”

Celyn Onasi reached under the bed again- apparently her secret hiding place –and pulled out the datapad.

“It’s not the kind of letter you read anyways.”

Without asking Visas whether or not she cared to listen, the little girl placed it flat on the floor between them and pressed a button.

“Jedi Knight Dustil Onasi, transmitting from the Jedi Chaser,” a young man’s voice began, giving the standard codes so that the message would make it successfully through the Temple’s scramblers and interceptors. “…go ahead, Father.”

“Sorry it took so long, sweetheart,” an older man began. His voice sounded like it should have been seamless and smooth if only he could get the barely noticeable scratching out of his throat. “Me and Dustil have been a little busy lately, but that doesn’t mean we forgot about you. How’s my Jawa? I know it’s probably rough being around all those Jedi, but don’t worry, Celyn. We’re…really close to finding Mommy—“

Visas had never met Carth Onasi, nor had she ever heard his voice before. It was years of listening that told her it was an outright lie that they were close to finding Revan.

Celyn Onasi didn’t react to it beyond burrowing further into her shoulders and the warmth of her father’s voice. Either she didn’t recognize the deception or she chose to ignore it.

“I promise we’ll be home soon, Jawa. Until then, be good and don’t break anything at the Temple,” the Admiral said, laughing through the intermittent static and degradation that a message transmitted from the depths of space to the Core worlds accumulated. “Breaking something of the Jedi’s would probably cost a lot of credits. I’ll bring you something to take apart and I’ll have lots of stories for you when we get back. Love you, Celyn. Here’s your brother.”

“Guess we can’t make fun of Father in our heads this time,” Dustil Onasi added. “He’s pretty naïve to think you haven’t broken anything already. Go fix it, huh? And, um, give Tova a hug or something for me, will you? See you soon, Jawa.”

The recorded message ended with a loud, clear beep.

“They’re not close to finding Mommy, are they?” Celyn murmured, looking up at Visas. “Mommy would know, wouldn’t she? She always knows when Father or Dustil are coming home before they get there.”

“You know of the only way to find out,” the Miraluka replied calmly. Celyn nodded, squinting her eyes shut.

The little girl was getting better at finding the images of Revan on her own; Visas had to do very little searching before she found the former Dark Lord exactly where she and the child had left her.

As always, she hesitated. Her heart pounded against her ribs. She thought of pulling out her lightsaber and slicing Sila’s head off. She thought of how she could cut swathes through the entire complex if she were so inclined, stop this before it spread any further.

Then you really will be one of them. You really will be what you were.

The Dark Lord Revan, because killing solves everything.

Katrina thought of overdoing a flash of lightning, maybe putting the poor Force-sensitive man before her out of his misery (he was practically fried from her last attack anyways). She thought of outright refusal.

Because this was getting to be too much.

The evening before she’d sat on her ship tapping the edges of her fingers on the top of the desk. The surface was littered with half-filled datapads of her findings for the Order, parts of her lightsaber, eyedroplets and stims for her disguise. Her coloring was already beginning to fade- the greys were turning back to a pale ivory, and by morning she would look like her old self again.

She was curled up in the red and gold Anellian shawl Carth had bought her a few years ago. It was her favorite present from him. The irony of finally being willing to face her past yet being exiled from the planet of her birth had not been lost on her all those years. And Phineas was reluctant to discuss anything that had happened before he’d become successful again on Chael—

“Uncle Phinny’s funny,” the child commented. “Can Mommy see me too?”

“It does not appear so,” Visas replied. “I do not believe she is even aware that you are watching her.”

“I bet if Mommy knew I could see her she wouldn’t look so scary,” the little girl reflected.

She didn’t know why she didn’t just let herself think of them- Carth, Celyn, Dustil -everywhere. There was absolutely no reason to believe the Sith (or the Jedi, as long as that was what they were calling themselves) couldn’t sense her just as easily outside the complex on her ship as they could inside of it standing amongst them.

But it really was impossible not to think of them when she got back here and there was T3 and HK and her dreams, which she had no hope of controlling. She had to sleep sometime, after all.

Every night Katrina compiled what HK brought her, wrote down what techniques, if any, she had learned or performed on someone, and wondered if it was enough. And each day she convinced herself it wasn’t, woke up in the morning and turned back into Lord Revan.

Half of it was just denial; telling herself that she still didn’t know enough about this place to leave it behind with a clear conscience was really just trying to ignore the fact that she didn’t know how she was going to leave.

By now they had to have known that she was not what she appeared to be, if they hadn’t sensed it the second she’d come walking in, almost trembling underneath her black armor with an un-mind-wiped HK at her side, struggling to hide things with the only techniques the Jedi knew- primitive compared to what she had seen here.

Besides her assassin droid popping up in unauthorized places and letting her mind wander freely each night on her ship, Katrina tempted fate every time a ship landed from Remli Prime or elsewhere.

As Malak had told her, they did not know the way to Republic space. They had no coordinates, no star maps, no navigational devices. Any ships they had stayed strictly in the Unknown Regions.

But she had given them the means to send messages. And the messages they sent reached other enterprising Sith and bounty hunters in the Outer Rim, on worlds like Remli Prime. Sith and bounty hunters who were more than capable of rounding up Force sensitives and Jedi to send back for conversion.

While they didn’t seem overly interested or equipped to begin a mass scale assault on the Republic or the Order, they were actively seeking how to reach both. Each time a ship landed Katrina would destroy the homing devices and tracking equipment before the Sith or bounty hunter vessels left.

She could not do anything about the Force users they brought in. Robust, self-righteous Jedi fresh from failed attempts on Remli Prime were dropped off here confident that after that planet, they could face anything.

Katrina had smirked, rolling her eyes at the memory of the overly buff Evzen trying to make her want revenge on herself. Remli Prime had been like a crash course in being a Jedi again. Because face it: you didn’t exactly get much practice living on Citadel Station with a four-year-old and a Republic Admiral whose biggest occasional crisis nowadays was losing his hat.

She missed them. Even Dustil. It was hard to remember at night with her shawl and her droids and her dreams why she had ever left—

You were no good to them like that, she told herself.

She had tried for months to deny it. It was easy to make resolutions to leave, to go on death-defying missions of incredible bravery against some mysterious Sith threat in the Unknown Regions when Celyn was just a voice in her dreams, a foot pushing against her stomach.

But once Celyn had brown curls and she was giggling and standing all by herself and running around on her shaky little legs and trying to repeat words and calling her “Mommy” outside of the subconscious, resolutions suddenly seemed a lot easier to forget, to put off.

But you were no good to her like that, Katrina repeated, wrapping herself up tighter in her shawl. Good mothers aren’t sad all the time. Good mothers don’t scare their little girls.

All it took was two words to convince her.

Katrina started screaming, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

The soldier grasped the edges of her robes, pleading with his empty eyesockets for her to grant some mercy. Lightning danced merrily into his chest—

Carth’s head lifted from where he was sprawled on the floor, having fallen off the edge of the bed, startled out of sleep by her explosive awakening. He pushed himself up with a groan, quickly moving back onto the bed to lean over her.

“Fracking hell, Katrina—“ His voice was shaking worse than his hands on her shoulders. His hair was sticking up all over his head.

Begging me, begging me for their lives and I took them away—

“Katrina,” Carth repeated, still groggy, forgetting her name, slurring his words as his fear and worry and irritation washed over her, slimy like the lining on a Selkath’s head. “Stop it, gorgeous. It was just a nightmare—“

She hadn’t had a nightmare like this in years. She hadn’t woken up screaming like this since before she’d made him call her Revan. The two facts slowly seeped in but they did nothing to stop her.

“Shh, beautiful, it was only a dream…you’re going to—“

Another, different kind of sound cut through both his voice and her high, piercing shrieks. It was crying, the most familiar crying Katrina knew.

You’re going to wake up Celyn.

She instantly stopped, holding out her arms for the little bundle of trembling curls and wide brown eyes and little salty tears who had heard her mother screaming bloody murder and come running. Whether she had shared the dream or not Katrina didn’t know.

“It’s all right, Celyn,” Katrina called, trying to make her voice less hoarse, more gentle, trying to make her breathing even.

Celyn whimpered and shrunk back. Carth glanced at Katrina and pushed himself to sit at the foot of the bed, away from her. Celyn ran to him, turning her face away from Katrina, burying it in Carth’s chest.

“Jawa, it’s all right,” he repeated. “Mommy’s just scared. She had a bad dream. You have bad dreams sometimes. It’s the same thing—“

He tried to put her in Katrina’s outstretched arms.

“No,” Celyn wailed, trying to climb up over Carth’s shoulder, wrapping her legs around his ribs and her hands around his neck. “Mommy’s scary.”

The tears hadn’t come then—

Celyn Onasi’s lower lip quivered and then twisted into a frown.

“I…I made Mommy leave?” she said, more dumbfounded than sad or afraid. Visas realized that this idea had never occurred to the little girl. “I didn’t want her to leave—“

“A combination of factors made your mother leave,” the Miraluka rushed to assure her. “Her guilt over frightening you was only one of them.”

Celyn had awoken the next morning and was perfectly willing to be held by Katrina. A day or so and she couldn’t even remember what had happened. The tears hadn’t come then, but the resolutions had.

You were no good to them like that, she reminded herself fiercely.

Good mothers don’t scare their little girls. Good wives don’t wake their husbands up in the middle of the night, screaming because they remember all the men they’ve killed. Good people don’t just leave in the middle of something big that could save the Jedi Order and protect the Republic, even if they are in way over their heads and scared to death that if they don’t get out soon, they may never be able to.

All she’d been wondering these past few months was why if they knew she was not Lord Revan, still in command of the Sith in Republic-controlled space, they hadn’t just killed her. Or captured her and tried to convert her like everyone else. And the only conclusion she could come to was that they thought they could convert her— without any manipulation at all.

Without giving her visions of Carth and Celyn and Dustil dying somehow without the saving grace of violence and revenge, without showing her how things might have turned out better if she had just killed someone or given into the more angry urges she had had during the Star Forge mission.

It was an uneasy balance between both parties suspecting what the other’s true intentions were and still trying to meet their own objectives. She was beginning to get the feeling that she was an experiment for them—and their control was that they knew she would not leave.

For one, if she tried to leave they might just kill her after all. For another, they might decide to convert her the old fashioned way. And if she saw visions like Dustil had, without anyone around to pull her out of it, there would be no coming back for her. Not again.

And if you die, right here on the cold black floor a million parsecs from home, what will that accomplish? If you die because this isn’t right, if you die because you refuse to do this—

It wouldn’t stop anything. These Sith would continue their work. This would go on until they reached Republic space, until they reached the Order. And the Order would fall into extinction, into darkness, unable to stand against a threat they knew nothing about. All because she wanted to die a Jedi.

And which is more selfish? That I crushed the galaxy once because I was Lord Revan, or that I’d let it be crushed again because I want to be Jedi Revan?

You left them for this. Don’t let it be in vain-

Not yet, she hissed at herself. The Force-sensitive had pushed himself up from the floor, from under her lightning. He stood dazed and confused, unable to know that she was mired in her thoughts from the night before and momentarily distracted from what she was supposed to be doing to him.

Katrina felt Sila’s calm, steady gaze on the back of her black hood. She knew he would consider this another victory, another push back down the dark path for her.

She knew that he was partially right.

She looked for the stimuli Sila had mentioned; the things she had in common with this man. She found the Force sensitive’s memory of his daughter, a young accident that he loved intensely despite getting him kicked out of some prestigious academy. She made the daughter grow up. She made the daughter a Jedi- not Sila’s kind, but hers.

She made the daughter die—

Visas hesitated, cutting off the flow of images for a moment. Was it right to expose the child to more of this? She had been put among the Jedi to be protected, and the Miraluka was beginning to fear that the sight of Revan had already scarred the little girl beyond words—

“It’s okay,” Celyn said softly, cracking one eye open and then the other. “Mommy’s good. I know she’s good.”

But seeing the white glow around the child’s face, feeling the loneliness that tasted so familiar and the stubborn hope that was entirely new, Visas knew it would be worse if she left the child alone with only the pain of both Revan and her victims for comfort.

“I won’t cry, I promise,” the little girl added, closing her eyes again. Visas knew what the weight of a promise was to Celyn Onasi.

Okay, Katrina thought. Now.

Don’t think about how Celyn used to ask you each morning if you were gone yet, and you would reply that you were, and she would get right up in your face with her little brown eyes and her crinkled nose and you would spring awake and wrap your arms around her-

The Force sensitive saw only the Jedi robes his daughter wore, saw only that she died. He saw nothing of whatever killed her in the vision. In his mind, in the future that she showed him, the equation only went from passivity and inaction to death.

She had one more moment.

Don’t think about how he had morning rituals with you too, although they weren’t as innocent; how he would kiss you and you would open your eyes and murmur, “Morning, Admiral” and he would reply “Morning, gorgeous”-

The Force sensitive’s eyes opened. They were a mottled shade of orange.

“Lord Revan,” he wheezed, unable to make it a low murmur or a standard greeting to one of his new commanders.

I’m sorry-

Sorry for what? Sila’s voice in her head was sharp and unforgiving, despite her success.

Sorry I could not convert him sooner, she replied smoothly. It’s all a matter of finding the right subject. Discovering what it is that means the most to him, what he could lose by choosing the wrong side.

He would lose his daughter. A precious thing, the Sith Lord answered.

She cleared her mind of the words ‘daughter’ and ‘precious’, made herself forget what they meant.

She allowed herself one moment of weakness when she was in their presence. That moment could only be when she was sufficiently buried enough in the mind of another to hide it from Sila and the others.

Those moments were only when she was doing the most horrible of things- when she was converting good men and women into Sith.

---

The pocket of his jacket was vibrating against his chest, and Carth struggled for several seconds to balance what he was carrying in one arm while trying to free the other to answer the ringing comlink.

Dustil just stood watching with his own bundle of supplies.

“You want to wipe that smirk off your face and help me?” Carth said, exasperated, laughing in spite of himself.

His son put his bundle down and moved to take his father’s as Carth pulled out the comlink and flipped it open.

The spaceport’s background noise was a soft rumble that made him feel like his boots were vibrating against a moving floor. Krett was definitely the busiest planet they’d found so far. A steady stream of shoppers, other spacers, officials from the planet’s port authority and probably security force officers passed them where they stood in the middle of a long, tan corridor that connected the docks to the rest of the city of Nantu.

“The Hawk’s landed,” Carth informed Dustil.

His son nodded blithely, watching another of the humanoid creatures with long, flat flapping stalks attached to the tops of their heads go by. Carth had seen so many of them that he was beginning to think they must be the Krettans, or Kretti, or whatever they called themselves.

Dustil hadn’t said much since they’d landed. Dustil hadn’t said much in general since a few nights ago. Another fight. Another argument. They hadn’t had one in a while, but each time felt as familiar as Fleet protocol- something with a set routine you had to go through now and then like clockwork, to keep the machine running smooth.

Carth hadn’t even meant to provoke him. He had just been having trouble sleeping. That was nothing new.

He had been awake all night, grunting in frustration, pounding the pillow into yet another shapeless form and twisting around, trying to find a more comfortable position. The motions had only served to get his legs twisted up in the sheets, and he finally lay flat on his back with his hands at his side, sighing.

Sleeping in a bed alone…eight years ago, maybe, it might have felt normal, if unnatural. Lying tangled up in the abrasive sheets that were standard issue on a starship with only the cold cycle of the Chaser’s air filters for company, however, definitely did not feel normal.

It felt empty.

He’d been in Admiral-mode for the better part of the last two weeks; preparing messages and coordinates to send back to the Republic. He’d written official reports on the capabilities and available resources of Remli Prime. He’d worked with the Exile via comm channel on making sure the lists of lost Jedi were organized and complete to send back to the Order. With any luck, the Republic would send a contingent out soon to shut the entire place down and arrest the Sith conversion artists and former assassins.

But he wouldn’t be on that mission. Because he hadn’t found Katrina yet.

They hadn’t gotten the coordinates for Verte. So they were back to a slow drift through the Unknown Regions, following the trail of the homing device he’d stuck on her ship to where it had abruptly stopped transmitting.

Damn that droid, Carth had thought grumpily, imagining one of the several ways he eventually planned to dismantle HK. She never would have found it without him. She doesn’t know anything about alluvial dampers, let alone where they are

He wondered where she had been when she destroyed it, or shut it off, or let HK shoot it like she said she had. Was she just in the middle of dead space, without a planet for a couple hundred parsecs in any direction? Was she just outside this Verte place the Sith on Remli Prime had supposedly tried to send her to?

Was she all right?

Carth rolled over on his side, blowing air up against his face to try and get the hair out of his eyes. The strands moved in inches across his forehead until he got frustrated and pushed them back with his hand.

Katrina always slept draped over him, practically on top of him, practically using him as the bed instead of the actual mattress. It had gotten annoying after a few years, to the point that he would let her fall asleep like that and then untangle himself. It wasn’t that he didn’t like holding her; it was just hard to sleep sometimes when there was a limb or two wrapped around you—

And now he was feeling bad for every time he’d pushed her over to the other side of the bed, every time he’d gotten in a fight with her, every time he’d called her Revan with venom behind his teeth.

This isn’t your fault, he told himself lamely. He knew why she’d left. He knew why putting the Fleet on alert and trying to lock her in the Citadel wouldn’t have made things any better.

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Carth,” she’d said one night before she left, touching his neck with those feather-light fingers, barely there and fluttering against his skin. “I’m not trying to punish you or Celyn. This isn’t about you—“

“You’re right, gorgeous,” he’d replied evenly. “You’re only punishing yourself.”

“I think Rand’s angling for a cantina trip,” Carth said as Dustil handed him the bundle of supplies, taking his own up again as they turned and continued towards the Jedi Chaser’s dock. “Maybe we could use one.”

“Frack the cantina. All I need is a drink,” Dustil muttered. His bundle was so large that he had to tilt his head back so that his chin would rest on top of it.

Carth frowned but kept his mouth shut. Admittedly they were probably all overdue for a drink or two. There were things that needed forgetting.

He missed her arms tossed over his chest or his back or sandwiched between his bicep and ribs. He missed her nails scratching his skin in her sleep and her legs wrapped around him or tangled up with his. He missed getting strands of her hair in his mouth as he was yawning. He missed the heat of her body making him sticky and uncomfortable underneath both her and the blankets.

Yeah, Onasi. This is definitely going to help you sleep, he thought, mashing a fist into the pillow again.

When it became clear that he had successfully replaced his fatigue with restless irritation, Carth had pushed himself out of bed, rubbing his temples and padding out of the captain’s quarters.

Dustil sat in the cockpit with his feet propped up on the console, clad in sleeping pants and his brown Jedi robe. A half-eaten pack of rations balanced on his legs.

“Can’t sleep either, huh?” Carth had murmured, dropping into the chair next to him.

“Not with what you’re thinking about.”

“Sorry,” Carth added with an unapologetic smirk. “Can’t you just think of Tova and cancel my thoughts out or something?”

“Tova’s not conducive to sleep.” Dustil shoveled another bite of the bland rations into his mouth. A few crumbs fell off of the fork onto his son’s bare chest.

Carth decided not to tease him anymore. He’d been pretty merciless earlier when Dustil had recorded his letter to his fiancé after they’d finished the one to Celyn.

“What?” Dustil had demanded as Carth chuckled and folded his arms, watching his son as he finished sending the letter.

“Shouldn’t you have told her you missed her?”

He’d left the room, of course, when Dustil had begun his letter to Tova to give his son some privacy. He’d listened right outside the doorway too.

Dustil had begun all right; calling her “Miss Vin”, using that cocky I-know-I’m-the-greatest-thing-since-orange-juma-juice voice to make jokes and ask her how she was. But then his son had launched into an extended report on their trip: the landing on Teren (he’d made a rambling mess out of the barfight story trying to turn it into the level-headed Jedi Knight Dustil Onasi restraining the out-of-control pilot Atton Rand); his capture by the crew of the Screamer; and their daring escape from Remli Prime.

“She knows I miss her,” his son had replied, cocking an eyebrow at Carth like he didn’t know the first thing about girls.

“Yeah,” Carth acknowledged. “But she might like to hear it.”

“Tova would like a good scoop on the Unknown Regions better than me going all beautiful and gorgeous-y on her.”

Carth had only rolled his eyes. Someone would have to set the barfight record straight with his future daughter-in-law when they got back.

“We’re almost out of rations,” Dustil mumbled between his chewing.

“Yeah…I guess I figured this trip would be a lot shorter,” Carth said, sighing and rubbing his eye with the heel of his palm. “We’ll have to stop at the next planet we find and pick up more supplies.”

“And better food,” his son added, making a face, pulling the fork out of his mouth and inspecting it like it was somehow to blame.

“I’m sorry, Dustil. I really didn’t intend on being out here this long. I thought…well, I don’t know…” Carth trailed off. “I guess I thought finding her would be easier than it’s turning out to be.”

Somewhere in the past few years he’d started to believe again that if he wanted something hard enough, it was going to happen.

Carrying the supplies of rations, blaster maintenance parts, hyperdrive tools and other assorted odds and ends became a juggling act again as Carth lowered the gangplank to the Chaser with his free thumb and maneuvered himself and the bundle up into the ship and towards the cargo hold. The Chaser’s hold was more like a small closet, but it was big enough for the job since the ship only ever carried passengers anyway.

He watched Dustil stack things on top of each other, his face bland and expressionless.

“I don’t think this ship’s ever had so much junk on it,” Carth murmured, rubbing his hands together.

“She’ll have a lot of parsecs on her stardometer after this,” Dustil added, finishing with the supplies and closing the door to the hold.

Whenever ‘this’ ended. Somewhere in the past few years, he’d started to believe again that endings usually turned out happily.

Dustil leaned over, dropping the tray with the remains of his meal onto the floor. His son’s arms had dangled against the side of the pilot’s chair, watching the stars go by with a frown on his face.

“If we do find her, Father—“

When, when we find her—

“You might not be able to just pick her up and head back towards Republic space. There might be…things might be different.”

“Different how?” Carth said, narrowing his eyes.

“They’re supposedly the most powerful Sith left in the galaxy. You do the math.”

It was his meeting with Dodonna all over again. Don’t tell him that all these years you’ve been terrified by the fact that you’ve never suspected Katrina- Revan of anything. Don’t tell him that the fact that you trust her completely and love her unreservedly scares the hell out of you.

“She’s not going to do that, Dustil. No matter what they—“

“They can be very convincing.”

Dustil’s body was a little stiff; the muscles in his chest tightening with whatever memories were being relived. Carth hesitated before asking his next question.

He always hesitated before bringing up Korriban.

“How…did they make you turn?”

Dustil’s head rose sharply and he stared at Carth. He could already see those careful strings of Jedi control tightening around his son’s face.

“They didn’t make me. I chose to join them.”

“They had to have done something to convince you. What was it? Did they…torture you or threaten you or—“

“You don’t understand,” his son said firmly. “I was angry, Father. I was angry at you and the galaxy and the Republic for not saving…Telos. I wanted to make sure no one could ever do that to me or…or anyone else I cared about again. All the Sith had to do was point me in the right direction.”

“No, I don’t believe that, Dustil—“

“You don’t have to believe it. It’s what happened,” Dustil interrupted.

“I got asked to join the Sith—”

“Really.” His son forced the word through his tightly closed mouth, looking away, up toward a bulkhead that didn’t have any buttons or controls on it.

“By Saul,” Carth added sharply.

The man was dead. There was no reason why saying his name should hurt anymore, no reason at all—

“You remember Admiral Karath? He knew me before you were born, before I met your mother, when I was younger than you are now. He knew us for years. He used to bring you decommissioned rank pins and junk from the Fleet, remember?”

Dustil nodded. There was something faraway in his eyes that hadn’t been there when Carth had called Karath ‘Saul’ instead of Admiral.

“I trusted him. Hell, I…I almost believed him when he said the Republic was weakening. But I still said no—“

“I get it, Father,” his son hissed. “You’re a better person than I am—”

“No, that’s not what I meant at all...” Carth sighed, rubbing his forehead. “I just don’t understand how anyone could join up with the Sith after everything you learned, no matter how angry or hurt or lost you might have felt. To just give up everything else for a cheap, easy, wrong solution…I might not have been around much, but I didn’t teach you that, Dustil. Your mother didn’t teach you that either—“

“You have no idea what it was like, Father, so just shut your fracking mouth,” Dustil replied icily.

Now, three days later, the awkward silence still lingered as Dustil folded his arms and Carth continued to rub his hands together, if only for some kind of sound to break the long pause—

“What do you like to drink, Dustil?” Carth said finally, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t thought of his son in terms of having an ale at the local cantina yet. The older Dustil got, the harder it was for Carth to see him in terms of anything beyond the grinning kid with mussed brown hair who used to pretend to drive a speeder with him on the plains of Telos.

“None of that fruity mixed junk they serve at those stupid HoloNet parties Tova drags me to,” Dustil said, making a face. “I don’t care what she says— we’re having plain old Corellian Whiskey at my wedding.”

“Good,” Carth nodded, breaking into a smile. “Cheaper for me.”

Dustil getting married, thoughts of home. Happy stuff. Topics that weren’t going to lead to that hard look on his son’s face—

Carth felt the back of his throat tighten— insulted, hurt. Being irritable from lack of sleep and missing his wife probably wasn’t helping in dealing with his half-dressed twentysomething ex-Sith son. He narrowed his eyes disapprovingly at Dustil like he was a mouthy twelve-year-old again.

“I don’t care how old you are, Dustil Onasi. You don’t talk to me like that—“

“You know, not once since Korriban have I asked you what the frack you were thinking jumping into bed with Revan, Father,” Dustil snapped. “Not once.”

You have no idea what it was like, Dustil, falling in love with her and then finding out—

The disgust in his son’s glare was sadly familiar. They’d had a whole series of these conversations years ago, and they’d all turned out the same way. Something small would set Dustil off and they would get into a shouting match over Katrina until Dustil stormed away and returned the next morning with a grudging apology and his Jedi control like glue over his features. There was just no resolution, no way to end it. It played over and over again like a malfunctioning holocron.

“Revan, the Jedi who turned against the Republic and destroyed Telos,” his son spat, pushing himself out of the pilot’s chair, his fists clenched. Carth rose with him. “You remember Telos, Father? Not now, not when it’s half rebuilt and everything’s green and pretty and people can pretend nothing ever happened. How about when the bombing started and everyone was dead or dying and the buildings were all in ruins and there were Sith storming through the rubble taking whoever and whatever they could?”

“Oh right, I forgot- you weren’t there!” Dustil snarled, throwing his arm up in the air; his face so close to Carth’s that tiny dots of spit landed on his nose.

The automatic Fleet officer in him, seeing a hot-head and knowing he had to do something about it made Carth reach out and grip his son’s bicep. Dustil shoved him off, turning his back.

“I thought…you…” Carth trailed off weakly.

“What, you thought I forgave her?” Dustil interrupted witheringly, glancing over his shoulder. “She teaches me a couple of Jedi tricks and makes me laugh now and then and I’m supposed to completely forget about what she did to Mom?”

‘Mom’ rung off the metal bulkheads of the Jedi Chaser and echoed ‘Morgana’ in Carth’s head. His son stared at whatever blank expression was on his face and sighed heavily.

“I’m not helping you find her because I miss her. She’s my Master, but…look, the only reason the Council made her my Master was to force me not to kill her. Between Master Juhani and everything else, they didn’t think the…thing between the two of you would be enough to stop me.”

Dustil ran both of his hands up to rub his eyes and then back through his hair.

“They might have been right. I don’t know anymore. If I had to choose between Revan and…and Mekel Jin,” he sputtered, grasping for a name. “I’d choose Mekel every time. But you need her and Celyn needs her, and that’s more important than me and….”

His son stopped before reaching whatever words had been hanging on his lips.

“Being a Jedi means I’m through with anger and hatred and revenge,” he finished quietly. “It doesn’t mean I have to forgive her.”

Carth watched him turn and pad silently back down the corridor to bed, the edges of his brown robe catching in the steady stream of air from the Chaser’s conduits and trailing after him.

I feel like I’m failing him all over again. He waited for her fingers on the back of his neck, her calm, no-nonsense assurances that he wasn’t. There was no answer. All she was now was absence. The return of that ache in his chest he’d thought he’d gotten rid of years ago.

He was running out of time. Dustil had a life that Carth wanted to watch him live. There was Celyn, the Fleet, and Telos waiting for him back home. He couldn’t stay out here forever.

How good of a father, Admiral, or leader he would be without Katrina was another story entirely.

Carth grasped the back of the pilot’s chair, turning it towards him and sitting down. He folded his arms and closed his eyes.

I’ll find her soon, he told himself as he drifted off. Then I’m going to drag her back home and never let her out of my sight again.

Then, after three tense days, they’d found Krett. The Ebon Hawk hadn’t been far behind.

The sound of familiar voices echoed up the gangplank, and Carth and Dustil went to meet them.

The crew of the Ebon Hawk waited. Mical stood behind his Master. Carth noticed a fading scar on the side of Sarii’s neck. The bounty hunter Mira had her arms folded, taking in the outside of the Chaser (immaculate compared to the Hawk)and whistled, obviously impressed. Atton Rand had one arm leaned up against the side of the ship, that cocky smirk on his face.

Carth groaned inwardly. He had a feeling the former Sith assassin was going to milk breaking them out of that tunnel on Remli Prime for all that it was worth.

“Now I know you’ve probably got some grand plans for snooping around and asking a lot of questions and generally making us as conspicuous as possible, Admiral,” Rand began, still leaned up against the ship. My ship. Carth resisted the urge to push the pilot’s arm off and then scrub the part of the hull he’d touched just to make a point.

“I should probably stop trusting my gut after all this time, but Krett isn’t Sith central. It looks pretty average. Aside from all the sweating you had to do to make us land on it, pilot-boy,” Mira remarked, shooting a queasy glare at Rand.

Carth winced, remembering his own entry into the planet’s atmosphere. The city they’d landed in- Nantu –reminded him more of Taris than Coruscant. There were a lot of buildings, but they weren’t high-risers or vast, expansive forests of duracrete that covered the planet’s surface. For one thing, the hurricane-like winds that blew through the atmosphere would likely level anything taller than a Citadel Station module. The city of Nantu was a series of large, open areas connected by long corridors with skylights. Occasionally you could see pieces of debris from failed landings or uprooted plants pass through the transparisteel windows, blowing wild in the gusts outside, clean-up droids that must have been magnetized to the buildings scurrying to clean the debris off the roofs.

Landing required precise entry at the exact moment the port authority told you to approach, without any creative deviation. Even then Carth felt like he was arm wrestling a Wookiee trying to keep the Chaser level and on a straight path into the docks.

“We should not forget the primary goal here, Atton,” Mical said. The Jedi Padawan couldn’t see the eyeroll that Atton was giving Dustil.

“Finding information on the Sith to send back to the Republic and the Order,” Sarii finished.

Carth didn’t like the look she was giving him. It wasn’t exactly hostile, but it wasn’t exactly friendly either.

He supposed he wouldn’t be too happy with a person either if the reason he was out here getting tossed around by a mediocre pilot and tortured by trained Sith conversion artists was because they wanted his help in finding their wife. Who happened to be Revan.

“Yeah, true Sith, Dark Lords…whatever,” Rand said, pushing himself off of the Chaser and waving his hand dismissively. “In the meantime, I was promised a drink. On the house. For saving us all.”

“And cracking the hull in the women’s crew quarters so it depressurized and now we have to share with you? All part of your plan?” Mira said, raising an eyebrow.

“Don’t forget half the sensors,” Sarii murmured.

“And the gun turret is currently offline as well,” Mical added.

For a moment, Carth thought about switching ships. He was conflicted between not wanting the poor Ebon Hawk to suffer any more abuse at the hands of her new and apparently inept pilot, but sure as hell not wanting to put the sleek Jedi Chaser under his control either.

“And I thought Revan was a bad pilot,” Dustil said under his breath, a wry smirk on his face.

“Don’t worry, kid. I’ll still buy you whatever they drink around here,” Carth reassured Rand, who was glowering at the rest of his crew.

Despite what he’d done to the Hawk, and knowing he’d once been that cold, apathetic Sith who’d quietly sipped his drink on Remli Prime, it was growing harder to remember that Atton Rand had once been the enemy. Not when he reminded Carth of Dustil. Not when he reminded him of himself.

“The cantina’s back that way,” Carth continued, gesturing back towards the city and beginning to head in that direction. Maybe once he gave the pilot his promised juma, he’d shut up about breaking a couple of branches. And maybe they could get back to what was important—

Sarii Zhen’s gaze was heavy on Carth’s back. He was probably about due for an argument there too.

---

Funny how the cantina still reminded him of her.

The sign above the door was written in a circular, curving language that Carth had to assume was Kretti, or Krettan, or whatever they called it. Underneath it, for the benefit of all the visitors to the Nantu city spaceport was the translation in Basic: Remme’s Dive.

Katrina had forgotten half the languages she’d known during the Star Forge mission; the ones she’d teased him in and traded barbs with aliens in various native tongues- in cantinas that produced lucky breaks like Canderous and Mission. The only language that it was useful to know on Citadel Station was Ithorese. You didn’t need to understand ancient Rakatan to raise little girls on Telos. The Jedi Council and the various tasks they came up with didn’t require a working knowledge of Bocce. You could forget how to do anything if enough time went by.

What Katrina couldn’t forget were the things she had done, regardless of whether she was still capable of doing them.

Remme’s Dive wasn’t a dive at all. It was clean, tidy, more like a place you’d go after a long day than somewhere you’d hit up in the late hours of the night. It was somewhat crowded at this hour, and Carth turned sideways to let two Krettans pass.

He noticed they hadn’t even brushed against his stomach although they had squeezed between him and Dustil- he was losing weight.

Must be all the damn running and sweating, Carth thought, partly disgruntled but mostly pleased.

Sarii and Mical had already seated themselves at a table. They were trading raised eyebrows and nodding heads that would have usually gone along with words had their mouths been moving. Carth recognized Jedi conversations now far too easily. It took a second to find Mira but there she was, drink already in hand and embedded in the cantina like she was an actress hired to play just another stock bounty hunter.

Next to Dustil, Atton Rand was making some lewd comment about the Twi’lek dancers just ending a show.

“So what happened to the Exile?” Dustil said to the pilot. “You not threatening people over her anymore?”

Rand narrowed his eyes at Carth’s son.

“Don’t go getting any ideas, kid. Especially with that supposed girlfriend of yours. Is she a fracking Jedi Knight too?”

Carth glanced over at Sarii, who wasn’t paying any attention to the three of them as they sat down at the bar. He almost felt bad for Rand. Almost.

“She’s not a Jedi,” Dustil answered. “Her name’s Tova. Tova Vin.”

Rand glanced up at Dustil and then snorted.

“You should have quit while you were ahead, kid. Like I’m gonna believe you’re fracking—” Carth gave him a sharp look. “Erm, dating that morning HoloNet blonde.”

Dustil ignored the pilot as the Krattan bartender approached. “Corellian something. Whatever you have.”

Those long stalks shook and clapped against each other as the bartender nodded and reached for a glass. “Twenty credits.”

“Twenty? I could get three bottles of Corellian anything for twenty back home—“

“You want imports from somewhere as far away as Corellia, son, you’ll have to pay the price,” the bartender replied, holding the bottle in one hand and the glass in other like he was waiting for Dustil’s decision. “This stuff doesn’t come in regularly.”

“Now, see, I might have bought that you had a girlfriend. You’re not exactly glowing bright blue like our friend Mical over there,” Atton Rand continued smugly, already having gotten his drink from the Krattan’s droid assistant. “But Tova Vin? Right, kid. In your sweaty dreams, maybe.”

Dustil glared at the pilot and pulled out the credits.

“And you, sir?”

“Tyrusian Red Ale,” Carth replied.

The bartender abandoned Dustil’s drink and poured Carth’s as fast as he could, almost recoiling from the filled glass. The drink smelled like burning rubber right out of the bottle. Dustil made a face.

“I don’t know how you can drink that swill…”

Carth gulped down half of it and gently turned the glass in his palm, thankful that Dustil was now looking away from him. He’d developed a taste for it right after Telos had been destroyed.

“Looks like your old man’s going to get more than either of us anyway,” Rand added to Dustil, gesturing with his glass towards the end of the bar.

Carth’s head turned on instinct. A dark-haired woman with black eyes sat with her hands folded under her chin, staring at him like he was a gift that was only missing a bow. Carth quickly looked back down at his drink, but it was too late. She was already misinterpreting a moment of eye contact and heading towards them.

“I almost wasn’t going to come over,” the woman said. “You really ought to think about changing your choice of drink if you want to have any luck with women.”

Carth took another sip, staring at the back of the bar and trying not to look at her. “Didn’t seem to stop you.”

Dustil scoffed next to him, gulping his ale with an incredulous shake of his head.

“No, but I happen to like a challenge.” The woman’s voice had a constant teasing quality to it, like she already knew what he was going to say and it amused her to no end. “I’m Lora.”

“Carth,” he returned, without any elaboration.

That was how you got them to leave you alone. You were terse and apathetic until they gave up or gave you a lecture. The first part of his life he had frequented bars he had learned how to pick up women. The second part he had learned how to make them go away.

Lora laughed. Her dark hair fell over her shoulders and Carth could see her smirking out of the corner of his eye.

“You’re surly enough to be a Gamorrean. Am I bothering you that much?”

Unfortunately, you could only be rude for so long until inbred manners kicked in.

“Just a little preoccupied at the moment,” Carth answered, finally glancing at her.

She had either black eyes or really dark brown ones. They combed thoroughly over Dustil and then Rand before returning to Carth.

“Well you’re no Gamorrean,” Lora said, putting her glass on the bar and tilting her head to study him. I’m still preoccupied trying to figure out what you are, Carth.”

“He captains our freighter,” Rand offered from the end of the bar, giving Lora an inviting smirk. The woman ignored him.

“Captain,” Lora corrected, touching his arm.

He hadn’t been called Captain in a voice like that since…well…a long time ago.

“He’s a soldier. Real famous one. Got a lot of medals and everything,” Dustil informed the woman, ignoring Carth’s frown.

“Really?” Lora’s fingers danced their way over Carth’s bicep. “You must be one brave guy.”

“Or a really stupid one,” he replied with a polite smile.

“Handsome and modest. I’m a lucky girl.”

Dustil snorted into his drink and turned away so the woman wouldn’t see him laughing.

“So, Captain,” Lora continued. “What brings you into our fine establishment? Just passing through?”

“His wife left him,” Dustil answered. Carth shot him as close to a glare as he could muster.

Lora moved closer to him. Her chin slid onto his shoulder and her breath was warm against his ear.

“That’s a shame. She must be crazy to leave a handsome hero Captain.” Her fingers were halfway under his collar now, touching his increasingly hot neck. “Maybe I can help you forget her.”

A year and a half without Katrina meant a year and a half without—

Carth ended that thought right there.

“Maybe next time I pass through.” He managed a smirk and a rakish wink as he pushed himself back from the bar. “Right now though, I’ve got a few things to settle with my crew.”

He gripped the back of Dustil’s clothing and practically hauled him off the bar stool, pulling him into a table near the back of the room and trying to ignore Lora’s gaze. Rand trailed after them.

“Knock it off,” he hissed at his son, sliding into the booth. “I know you’re probably still mad at me, but that doesn’t mean—“

“She’s still watching us,” Dustil interrupted, shoving Rand over so his elbow would fit on the tabletop. “And I could think up a lot better ways to get back at you then helping some woman hit on you.”

“What the hell was that, then?”

“There’s something off about her,” Rand mumbled into his glass. “She eyed up Dustil more than she eyed up you.”

He’d been avoiding eye contact with her, so if it was true, Carth hadn’t noticed.

“What are we supposed to do about it then? And don’t suggest what I think you’re going to suggest,” Carth said, holding a hand up at Rand’s amused smirk.

“For one, Admiral, you shouldn’t have freaked out and hauled us all over here. You’re good at that freaking-out thing, apparently—“

“Owner of the Ebon Hawk?”

Carth glanced up at a trio of uniformed Krettan, their stalks coming out from under their hats like an elaborate headdress that didn’t exactly go with their plain, pale green clothing.

“Yeah,” Atton Rand answered. “Who wants to know?”

“We’ve been having some trouble with your ID signature, sir. We’d like for you and your crew to come to the port authority offices and help straighten it out.”

Carth couldn’t even imagine how many times the ID signature on the Hawk must have been changed, altered or hacked. It had to be degraded by now.

Rand grumbled and pushed himself up from the table, motioning towards Sarii and Mical to join him. Mira had already headed over.

Another Krettan entered the bar with a datapad, handing it to one of the uniformed officers standing over them and murmuring something in their native tongue.

“I’m afraid the Chaser’s ID hasn’t cleared either, sir,” the officer said apologetically to Carth. He had sharp, angular features under pebbled skin. Combined with those hard, thick stalks coming out of his head, he looked like a rough sketch of a person rather than a polished sculpture. “If you could—“

“No problem,” Carth said, sighing and getting up to follow the officers and the Exile’s crew out of the cantina.

There were three additional uniformed Krettans waiting for them outside. They wore the same unalarmed expressions as the three who had entered it to retrieve them. The only difference was that these three were armed.

“Please hand over your weapons, sir, and we’ll have this whole matter cleared up presently,” the Krettan officer said without blinking an eyelid.

“We’ve been entirely cooperative,” Carth replied, trying to keep his hand away from his blaster so his argument was more convincing. “There’s no need to—“

“Standard policy, sir. With so many travelers passing through Nantu, some of a more unsavory nature, it’s become regulation to confiscate weapons whenever there is a question of impounding a ship.”

Being asked to give up his weapon still made him suspicious, but these officers had been polite. They reminded him of the TSF in a way, just trying to do their job and protect their spaceport. Carth finally nodded and handed over his blasters.

The rest of the crew followed. Rand stared hard at one of the officers for a moment or so before begrudgingly tossing him his blaster. Mira purposefully took her time removing the rocket launcher from around her wrist. Dustil raised an eyebrow at the guard who had confiscated Sarii and Mical’s lightsabers, but finally relented and handed his over. When all of the weapons had been collected, the officer with the sharp, pointed nose nodded and gestured down a long, thin hallway that went behind the cantina.

“We’ve been having issues with a lot of ID signatures lately, so it may just be a computer error,” the Krettan informed him. “I’m sure this will take no more than a few minutes and both the Ebon Hawk and the Jedi Chaser will be cleared for departure.”

Carth nodded. He wanted to waste as little time as possible on a planet that didn’t have anything to do with Katrina. The shipwas stocked and—

He hadn’t registered it as the Jedi Chaser. They’d been going under only the Chaser everywhere except Remli Prime.

“Keep moving, please.” Carth glanced over his shoulder at Dustil, who had stopped dead in his tracks at hearing the full name of their ship.

Either the officer leading them realized his own slip or noticed the look on Carth’s face.

“This is a fine blaster you have here, sir. You seem to have put a lot of work into it,” the Krettan said, inspecting Carth’s weapon in his hands before charging it. “It would be ironic if I was forced to kill you with your own ingenuity, so I advise you to cooperate.”

 

---

Sarii hadn’t needed to hear the Krettan officer slip up on the ship’s ID to know that something was very wrong. It was easy enough to figure that out when the hard barrel of a blaster jabbed into her back.

Onasi had looked at her over his shoulder. You didn’t need the Force to read his thoughts—they were clear enough from his pointedly raised eyebrows, the furrowing and unfurrowing of his brow as he calculated odds, compared probabilities, and promptly rejected whatever desperate tooth-and-nail escape he’d been planning.

You also didn’t need the Force to know that while the Krettan gang masquerading as officers weren’t leading them to the local customs kiosk, they weren’t leading them to their deaths either. At least, nothing like what lay at the end of a dark alley on Remli Prime.

Their path wound around the back of Remme’s Dive to a line of access and delivery doors for the storefronts on the opposite side. The elevator at the end of the back alley carried them down at least two or three levels before stopping, leaving room for a few minutes of uncomfortable silence. Dustil Onasi shifted his weight. Mira cleared her throat.

None of them seem to have the Force. Would that rule out the Sith in these regions having orchestrated this? Mical asked as the doors of the elevator opened up and the Krettans directed them down a short hallway.

We must serve some purpose for them or they would have shot us on sight, Sarii answered somewhat belatedly. At least, intelligent kidnappers would.

Sarii could think all the answers she wanted but the Force cage prevented Mical from hearing any of them. He continued to stand straight up with his hands folded behind him and a look on his face that was somewhere between curious and mildly put out. He, Sarii, and Dustil Onasi were all in separate Force cages along one wall. On the opposite, Atton, Mira, and the Admiral were enclosed in their own.

Atton leaned against the base of his cage with his arms folded and his legs crossed. Sarii wondered how many times in jail this totaled for him.

“What the frack did you do, Rand? Pay the docking fee with counterfeit credits?” Mira called from across the room. She put a hand on her hip but quickly lowered it again after her elbow brushed the sparkling blue of the security field.

“So is somebody going to come along and explain this soon?” Atton murmured to the guard who was standing between the doorframe and his cage.

“Keep your mouth shut.”

“Look, buddy, my girl over there isn’t going to be too happy with me if we keep her locked up for very long. So how about you tell me what’s going on and I’ll make it up to you when I get out of here?”

“Like I’d touch a credit from your worthless fingers, Jedi scum.”

“Jedi?” Atton repeated disgustedly. “Hey, I’m no Jedi—“

“Look,” Admiral Onasi broke in, moving as close to the security field as possible without actually making contact with it. “There’s got to be someone around we can talk to, someone who can at least explain what it is you want from us.”

The guard ignored him. Onasi frowned and ran a hand through his hair.

Next to Mical, Dustil Onasi was in much the same pose as Atton, leaning back with his arms folded as if this was the temporary inconvenience they’d been told it was. His head craned backwards, and he stared straight up at the circular generating unit that was powering his cage. Sarii glanced up at hers and didn’t notice anything special.

Before she could attempt to make another appeal to the guard for some explanation, the door slid open and the uniformed Krettan who had led them here stepped forward. He stood at the end of the line of cells as if he was inspecting them all for purchase. At his side was a human woman, with dark hair and black eyes and a grave expression on her face.

Either grave, or extremely angry.

“I have to say, I’m a little impressed,” the uniformed Krettan murmured, his hands clasped behind his back as he walked forward. “The disguises, the backstory…you’re starting to put forth some effort.” He glanced from Atton to Sarii and back to Mira, sizing them up one by one. The flat stalks protruding like hardened hair from his scalp made a faint rustling noise. “It won’t keep me from filling the room with null gas if need be,” he added, “But the effort is appreciated regardless. It shows Krett really does mean something to you.”

“Lora—“ Admiral Onasi called the dark-haired woman by name. “What’s going on here?”

Lora shifted on her feet. Two fingers traced the handle of a blaster pistol as she watched.

“Your crew is being interrogated, Captain,” she answered Onasi sweetly.

The uniformed Krettan smiled, congenial. “You’ve already been introduced to Lora. She operates primarily out of my bar. Or my ‘dive’, to be exact.” He gave her a rakish smirk over his shoulder and she returned it, hefting her blaster to rest on her shoulder.

Dive… Remme’s Dive. So the uniformed Krettan called himself Remme.

“We already know why,” Remme continued gravely. “The how becomes more apparent every day. What I’m seeking from the six of you is the when and where.”

He smiled, thin. “Whether it will take all six of you is another question entirely.”

Dustil Onasi rolled his eyes as if this was a badly-performed version of what was supposed to be a very good play. Sarii exchanged a glance with Mical.

“So.” The Krettan held out his arms in invitation. “Does anyone want to begin?”

Both Sarii and the Admiral opened their mouths, but it was Atton who got there first.

“How’s this for a beginning: I want out of this one-star hotel. Now.”

Remme shrugged and motioned to the guard standing between Atton’s cell and the doorway. The guard nodded, pressing a button on a wall-mounted control panel. There was a hissing sound.

Atton’s face grew pale. He swayed on his feet, glaring murderously at Remme.

“Leave him alone,” Sarii snapped. The Krettan only lifted an eyebrow at her.

Lora shrugged. “He wanted out. We aim to please.”

“If I were you, sister, I’d knock off the scare tactics,” the Admiral said authoritatively, holding out a hand in a perfect imitation of a Force push. The dark-haired woman’s tilt of her head as Remme exchanged a glance with her over his shoulder showed how much authority Onasi had here.

Atton gave both of them an I’ve-got-it-under-control­ look as his cheeks began to turn a faint blue.

“We will answer any questions you have, so long as you leave us all capable of answering them.” Mical’s voice was calm, as if Atton had hours of oxygen left rather than precious seconds rapidly hissing away.

Remme stood unmoving for another long moment, and finally nodded to the guard. The hissing reversed in pitch and Atton began inhaling desperately.

“You have my attention, Master Jedi,” the Krettan murmured, stepping past Sarii and Atton, (who was now bent over with his hands on his knees), to stand in front of Mical’s cage. Lora followed. “So answer me this: why are you here in Nantu?”

Her Padawan gazed at them with the seasoned, perpetually amused look of a Master. “My companions and I are on an intelligence mission. Neither Krett nor Nantu were chosen as specific destinations; we are here merely to replenish supplies and gather what information we can from an unexplored planet.”

“Unexplored planet? You’re on a mission of exploration then.”

“Only to a certain extent. Mapping the Unknown Regions is a secondary goal, however.”

Remme nodded and pursed his lips in thought. “Would you be so kind then, Master Jedi—“ his voice was an overly correct imitation of Mical’s, “— as to tell us what your primary goals are?”

Mical shifted in his force cage. The dark-haired woman’s eyes followed his movements.

“Naturally, I cannot reveal the particulars of our mission parameters—“

“Naturally,” the Krettan repeated.

“In short, we are looking for something.”

“Looking for something,” Lora mocked. Her blaster sat in the grasp of her hand, the handle resting on top of her shoulder and the barrel pointed ninety-degrees towards the ceiling. “Would that something happen to be another independent planet you can overrun?”

Sarii watched Mical’s face frown for a moment, insulted. “The perception of the Jedi throughout the Unknown Regions is based on Sith masquerading as Jedi. The true Jedi Order is—“

“A band of murderers. The Jedi destroy and leave things behind to rot. The Jedi twist everything they touch into something terrible.”

Sarii would have liked to think that these accusations were unique to the Unknown Regions . Having heard them before, however, on planets like Onderon, Telos, Nar Shaddaa and Dantooine, she wondered if they weren’t half true.

“No.” Mical shook his head patiently. “The Jedi Order is based upon the principles of restraint, focus, and non-violence. The actions of the Force-users misrepresenting themselves as Jedi are not the actions of a Force user dedicated to the light side of the Force—“

“They’re very good with words, aren’t they?” Lora commented to Remme, gesturing lazily somewhere between Mical and Sarii. Her upper lip curled into a sneer. “But when you’re pleading for your life, the lives of your loved ones, the freedom of your culture—they suddenly go mute.”

“You’ve got us pegged all wrong,” Admiral Onasi broke in impatiently. “The people you think are Jedi might carry lightsabers and use the Force and call themselves Jedi, but they’re not—“

Remme tilted his head in thought. “Funny how quick sentients are to cast off their identities when faced with the consequences of them.”

“Look, if a few of your head-stalk brigade decide to…oh, I don’t know, take me and my crew hostage and threaten to cut off my oxygen if I don’t give them answers I don’t have,” Atton motioned with his chin first at Remme and then at the guard who had worked the controls. “Well, I just wouldn’t dream of classifying the whole species as a bunch of paranoid skull-slappers—“

“You think it’s funny?” Lora hissed, taking a few steps away from Mical’s cage towards Atton’s. “Sents dying left and right, the economies of entire planets being wiped out for failure to comply with the Jedi’s requests?”

“Is there a Jedi Order subsidiary I don’t know about?” Atton asked Sarii with widened, mocking eyes.

“We are Jedi as we know ourselves to be, not as you know them,” Mical continued, impatient. “We are not part of the group of Force-users in these regions terrorizing local governments. In our regions of space, the Jedi use the Force for the protection of all sentient life and the pursuit of knowledge—“

Lora stormed forward, pressing a few buttons at the control panel near the base of Mical’s cage. There was sudden surge in the hum of the field, and it pulsed around the Padawan like a living being. Mical was sucked back against the base of the cage as though magnetized. The circular field surrounding him shrank, concentrated entirely around his torso, pinned to the steel back of the Force cage.

Lora slammed the barrel of her blaster into his forehead so hard Sarii was surprised it didn’t come out the other side of Mical’s head.

“Protection of sentient life?” she repeated, each word stressed a little more incredulously than the last.

“Lora—“ Remme unclasped his hands from behind his back and was reaching one out towards the dark-haired human woman.

“Jedi bring death. Jedi bring destruction. Jedi don’t listen when you get on your knees and plead for mercy.” Lora’s hand trembled on the trigger of the blaster, pressing it harder into Mical’s forehead. Sarii’s Padawan winced, his eyes closed and a few strands of his blond hair falling around the metal circle of the blaster.

“Jedi see an obstacle and remove it.” Her voice shook more than her hand. “That’s all they care about. All they do.”

“Lora.”

The Krettan’s voice was firm this time. The faint rustle of his headstalks was the only sound for a moment.

Lora’s chin bunched and then smoothed. Her shoulders stiffened and she stepped away from Mical, smacking a hand down on the controls. Mical fell forward onto his hands, barely missing the blue energy field as it circled back around the cage.

Remme reached for Lora’s hand as the human woman passed him, squeezing it once without looking at her. The Krettan exhaled heavily and glanced up at Mical again.

“Master Jedi, this elaborate ruse is quickly losing its appeal. I want an explanation of how the Jedi plan to infiltrate and control Krett’s economy. I want to know exactly what step in this process you are here to facilitate.”

“Now,” he added, as if that wasn’t obvious.

“We…have no knowledge…of the Sith’s plans for Krett,” Mical replied, breathing heavily, wiping a few beads of sweat from his forehead.

“You keep using that word as if I should react to it.”

The further they traveled into the Unknown Regions, the less distinction was made between Sith and Jedi. Now it seemed as though there wasn’t any, right down to the signifiers.

“This is getting ridiculous.” Admiral Onasi stood as close to the blue energy field as he could without brushing it. “Look, I’m no Force user. You can let me out of this cage and we can go somewhere and talk like civilized sents.”

“And your being let out of the cage is necessary for this?” Remme murmured.

“No.” Onasi eyed Atton and then Mical. “It would make it a hell of a lot less frustrating, though.”

The Krettan’s head tilted in thought. His headstalks made a hard smack when he turned his head towards the guard. The field around the Admiral’s cage dissolved into white static and then vanished. Onasi stepped out, rubbing his neck and smoothing back the static electricity in his hair. He nodded briskly at Remme.

The lines of the Krettan’s uniform (stolen? Earned? Taken off a real dock security officer?) were straight and clean. Despite the Admiral’s stubble and the grime his orange jacket was beginning to collect, the way the two men carried themselves made their exit look more like the beginnings of a peace accord than an interrogation or, possibly, the Admiral walking off to his death.

Lora lingered for a moment, her dark eyes still focused intensely on Mical, almost through him. Remme glanced over his shoulder at her as he and Onasi went through the doorway. Something passed between them and then Lora finally turned and followed, as if she already knew some kind of treaty was coming.

If Sarii hadn’t just watched her question Mical with a blaster behind the haze of a Force-disrupting security field, it might have been easier to believe it.

---

Aside from one other guard, who had been waiting on the other side of the doors, Carth was alone with Remme and Lora. It made him wonder just how big of an operation this was. It almost gave him a false sense of security. Like he’d gained their trust.

More likely, they knew that three armed sents against an unarmed one were impossible odds. Maybe his blaster had been dismantled by now. Hell, Remme might still be carrying it, for all he knew. There were enough places on the Krettan’s uniform to stash it.

Carth wasn’t entirely sure what he’d had in mind when he’d volunteered to be interrogated. But he was sure he’d accomplish more than Rand’s smart mouth or Mical’s unintentionally inflammatory rhetoric.

“Look, I’ll level with you,” he told Remme. “You’re probably not going to believe my story any more than you believed Mical’s.” Probably because they’re the same—

“The truth of any story depends on the listener, Captain. Though the teller can influence it to a certain degree.”

“I’m not a Captain. I’m an Admiral. Admiral Carth Onasi.”

The Krettan smiled without looking at him. “Well, I’m afraid you outrank the port authority guard who’s a little too fond of Shesharillian vodka and happened to be my size.” He led them down the dimly-lit corridor, stopping to tap a code into the keypad of an access door which revealed another corridor.

“So. Level with me, Admiral Carth Onasi. What is a man like yourself, with a genuine military background and a fairly evident sense of ethics, doing with a traveling troupe of Jedi?”

For a moment, Carth was ready to begin explaining Mical had already said.. Everything was backwards out here. The Jedi were sworn to protect the Republic. They were (or tried to be, anyway) the defenders of the innocent and the maintainers of galactic peace.

He tried to picture himself back in his uniform, back on Coruscant, listening to someone with headstalks trying to tell him that the Jedi were an cold, merciless order who didn’t understand the concept of freedom or the consequences of their actions.

He tried to remember that it wasn’t true.

“The Jedi are helping me find something.”

“Power? Influence? Credits?” The disgust in the Krettan’s voice grew with each possibility.

“My wife.”

Remme lifted an eyebrow at him. The movement made his brow and the headstalks connected to it rise, sliding against each other, making a soft clicking sound that echoed crisply in the hallway.

That look was becoming more and more the standard reaction to his story. Pity. Like everyone else already knew what he was going to find—or what he wouldn’t.

“I thought your wife left you,” Lora murmured, following close behind them. Carth didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that her blaster was still in her hand.

“She did,” he muttered, looking away and frowning.

“Your Jedi friends didn’t seem too sympathetic.”

“And you acted like you were. Maybe they’re not what they seem either, sister.”

Remme stopped in front of another doorway, pressing a thumb against the door controls and stepping inside what looked like a large office--if your everyday office had neatly stocked racks of disruptor rifles and frag grenades lining the back walls.

The Krettan smoothly crossed to the desk, sitting down in the chair behind it and unhooking the collar of his uniform. He gestured to a much less comfortable chair on the opposing side. Carth took it, aware of the guard standing watch at the doorway behind him, and Lora taking up a post over Remme’s shoulder, her blaster still very far from its holster.

“Here we are, Admiral,” Remme murmured, gesturing with both hands at the room around them. “Two civilized sents on either side of a table. I can’t think of what else might make you more comfortable. Some caffa? A massage?”

“Can we count on a discussion that won’t involve a blaster in my face every time I say something you might not agree with?” Carth asked, glancing at Lora.

Lora shifted. Her nostrils flared. “You can count on the barrel shoved up your—“

Remme, without turning his head, lifted an arm up behind him and took the blaster from Lora, putting it on the desk. He tented his fingers in front of him, staring across the desk at Carth pointedly.

“All right,” he exhaled. “I’m going to start with why we’re out here…”

---

The Admiral had been gone for maybe a good fifteen minutes. Sarii wanted to pace, but you couldn’t take more than one step in any direction inside the cages. Next to her, Mical was still trying to rub the imprint of the blaster barrel out of his forehead.

“We need to get out of here,” she said quietly. Her Padawan lifted an eyebrow through his disheveled hair and the blue haze of the energy field as if that weren’t obvious.

At the end of the row, on the other side of Mical, Dustil Onasi was crouched down, examining something at the bottom of the cage. He glanced in the direction of the guard, who was looking through one of the storage lockers that presumably held their belongings. Dustil slowly stood up.

“I think I can bust us out,” he whispered.

Mical regarded him warily. “How?”

“There’s a design flaw in these cages,” Dustil explained in a low voice. “The emitting beams only go to about an inch away from the base, to avoid scoring and shortages. A few prisoners on Korriban escaped once, and there was extra credit in it for any student who could figure out the manufacturer’s mistake.”

“And you were the student?”

Dustil shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal. I lost equivalent prestige the next day for contraband. Fracking Jin decided to put his stash in my footlocker during a surprise inspection.” He shook his head as if vowing silent revenge. “They put in a new order and all the cages were replaced within the week.“ He put his palm against the flat metal of the base. “Luckily for us, they haven’t seen the latest Czerka catalog out here.”

The younger Onasi looked in the direction of the guard again, who was now eyeing the three of them suspiciously, hands curled around his blaster rifle.

“Can’t do it if he’s watching, though,” he added.

Mical turned his head in the direction of the guard. His blue eyes narrowed in thought. “How much time do you require?”

“Thirty seconds.”

Mical nodded. Without the Force and the uninterrupted flow of the Master-Padawan bond, Sarii couldn’t tell what was going though his head.

“Certainly you must be tired of standing there,” he called out to the guard. “Does your master think you suitable for nothing else?”

Something crazy, apparently…

---

“That’s all this is, Remme. I swear to you.”

The Krettan blinked at Carth across the desk. He rested on his elbows, his hands folded in front of his mouth.

“So you’re looking for your wife and information on those who may be holding her on Verte,” he murmured. “And that’s all?”

Carth hadn’t realized how simple it sounded, maybe even was, until now. That was all he wanted; to find Katrina and go home. The information on the true Sith was secondary, even inconsequential compared to that one goal.

He nodded. “Where we come from, Katrina’s…she’s done some bad things. Things she feels guilty for.” There wasn’t any other way to explain it. There was no way Remme and Lora would understand.

“We’ve all done some things we aren’t proud of,” Remme said quietly. He straightened up, unclasping his hands and laying them on the desk. “I believe you, Admiral. And I want to help you find your wife and get back to your little girl. But I also want to help keep you from making a big mistake—from doing something that someday, no matter what it gets you, you won’t be proud of.” His pebbled skin seemed darker with the determination on his face.

“The people you’ve chosen to help you are not what you think they are. They have abilities…beyond anything you or I are capable of, and they’re strong in the Force, I’ll give you that…but it’s their abilities that fuel their beliefs. The Jedi are after only one thing: control. They think sents like us can’t manage our own lives, can’t use our own resources, can’t govern our own people. If you put your trust in them, they’ll abuse that trust. You may find your wife, and they’ll decide for you that she’s not worth the risk—never mind whether it’s your risk or theirs.”

“No...things are different where we come from. The Jedi and the Republic work together, they’re not—“

“You may believe it’s a cooperative union,” the Krettan interrupted sharply, “But I’ve seen what they can do. They’ll ingrain themselves so far into a society that the society becomes dependant on them. Eventually sents are so afraid of the alternative to that control that they’ll convince themselves they agreed to it.”

His voice had become as iron as his aquiline features by the time he finished speaking. Remme exhaled, his headstalks clicking softly.

“We will do whatever we can to help you find your wife, Admiral. I can offer you information if you’ll agree to sever ties with the Jedi. We can offer protection to you and the rest of your crew—“

“No, you don’t—“ Carth sighed in exasperation. “The Force users you’re thinking of, the ones out here--they’re called something else where I’m from. They’re Sith.”

“Sith,” Remme repeated. He paused. ”The Jedi used that word as well.”

“With good reason. The Jedi and the Sith are…” He gave Remme a pained smile. “Well, collaboratively anyway, they’ve done everything you’re afraid of…”

---

“Master,” the guard repeated after Mical derisively, shaking his head. “That’s all you Jedi understand—the threat of someone stronger.”

Mical snorted, shaking his head. Sarii wondered if the plan would backfire—and the guard would irritate Mical enough to distract him instead.

“Violence and coercion appear to be all the Krettan people understand. I don’t suppose you would consider correcting me on that point?”

The guard rolled his eyes and didn’t respond.

“Perhaps you’re incapable of it,” her Padawan added doggedly. “After all, the extent of your economy appears to be dockside bars and entertainment. I even wonder at there being anything more substantial in this godforsaken outpost.”

He got no reaction except the continual buzz of the security fields. Atton folded his hands behind his head and leaned back against the base of his cage, watching them with a lazy, amused smirk on his face. The guard turned his head away and frowning, humming something in a jerky, off-key rhythm.

Dustil Onasi gave him a withering glare. “This isn’t the debate team, Mical. You’re supposed to piss him off.”

“Did I appear to be attempting something else?” Mical shot back. He furrowed his brow at the guard again. The Krettan narrowed his eyes at the Jedi and cocked his assault rifle.

“Maybe talk about the Jedi again,” Sarii suggested quietly. “They don’t seem to like hearing anything good about them.”

In the same way that Jedi didn’t like to hear about Sith, in the same way that the Republic didn’t like to hear about the Mandalorians, in the same way that anyone didn’t like to hear the truth.

“You know,” Mical began, his voice taking on a different tone. “Your resistance has no chance. A few blasters and vibroblades aren’t anything compared to the Force—“

“A few cruel-hearted, mouthy prisoners aren’t anything without the Force,” the guard replied without missing a beat.

“Cruel? Cruel? I suppose this is the thanks we get,” Mical remarked loudly to Sarii. “To step upon the garbage pit that was Teren, and revitalize the economy into an organized, productive factory—“

The guard’s skin was speckled a pale blue over an increasingly dark slate. “More men and women have died on Teren since breeding and raising tateks became the only means of survival. You find that particularly productive?”

“The weak perish. The strong survive. The sentients who were meant to learn this lesson early.” Mical’s voice was a dry, indifferent sneer that Sarii had never heard before. Dustil Onasi glanced over his shoulder at the base of his cage, slowly moving backwards until he was resting against it.

The guard’s jaw tightened and he glared intensely at Mical for a moment.

“You do understand that, don’t you?”

“Shut up,” the Krettan snapped.

“The will of the Force is indomitable,” Mical continued, impassive. “We merely follow where it leads us. Death is a necessary balancing tool—“

The guard’s headstalks slapped against each other violently as he forced his head away. Dustil glanced at Mical, hands behind his back, presumably ready to do whatever it was that would disable his cage.

“A sentient is never truly gone. They go on to serve a far more glorious purpose—joining the living presence that is the Force and adding to the power the Force is capable of—“

The Krettan guard’s head whipped around. He charged over to a storage locker, reaching inside and pulling out what looked to be an ordinary pair of rubber gloves. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and marched towards Mical. He wound back an arm as if he was going to deck the Jedi.

Sarii fully expected his hand to meet the crackling blue of the field, fizzing and hissing around his knuckles. Instead, it went cleanly through the field as if it were no thicker than kolto gel. The Krettan reached in as far as the glove allowed him—enough to grip Mical’s collar, who lifted his eyebrow in a weary not-this-again expression.

“Here’s some balancing for you. There are six of you in this room. Five’s got to equal whatever you’re worth—“

“He really didn’t mean it,” another voice murmured, no longer distorted through the glow of three energy fields. The guard turned his head and met Dustil Onasi, standing behind him.

The Jedi’s face was subdued despite the success of his thirty-second escape routine. “Try to remember that when you wake up,” Dustil added, clocking the Krettan across the face.

---

Remme’s fingers were tapping on the desk. His mouth was screwed up in a thoughtful purse. Carth wasn’t sure if he had maligned the Jedi or raised them up on an unthinkably high pedestal. Reconciling his own opinions with official ones, (of which he wasn’t even entirely knowledgeable), and trying to define the Sith at the same time--without mentioning Dustil and without taking a detour back through his role in the Mandalorian and Sith Wars—not to mention the Star Forge—had left him feeling a little dazed.

And the look on Remme’s face didn’t improve his confidence any.

“Do you get what we’ve been trying to tell you?” Carth prompted.

The Krettan cocked an eyebrow. “A Rurylis blossom by any other name. I understand, Admiral. What I still don’t know is if I believe you.”

“Whether you believe me about the Jedi or not, you need to realize that I’m not your enemy.”

He couldn’t help glancing at Lora, standing with her back to them and her arms folded, regarding a shelf full of repeating autoblasters as if they were more sympathetic than either Carth or Remme could ever be.

“Our primary goal out here isn’t to stop the Sith now, but we’re going to try, as soon as we return to Republic space. The Republic has resources, they can help Krett—“

Remme held up a hand, shaking his head. “Were I in any position to make the decision, Admiral, I would decline. A multi-planetary union headed by a group of elected delegates and supported by Force-users who aren’t regulated or controlled by any kind of public body? The Republic doesn’t sound like much of a step up from our Jedi or from your Sith.”

That was a smack in the face. Carth wondered if it would sting as much if he hadn’t devoted his entire life to the protection of that multi-planetary union, to maintaining its stability, to putting it above each and every thing he loved—right down to his former-Sith-turned-Jedi son, sitting in a Force cage a few rooms away.

His son who was missing out on what was left of his life because his father wanted his wife back.

Carth cleared his throat, shifting in his chair. Maybe he should tell them about Dustil. Maybe they should know just how much the Jedi and the Sith hit home—

“Has it stopped?”

Both Carth and the Krettan across from him turned to look at Lora, who hadn’t said a word since Remme had taken her blaster. It was still lying on the desk between them, silent and cold.

“Has what?”

“This.” Her dark hair fluttered as she gestured with her chin. “The killing. The dying. The persecution and the control. After all the years of war you said you’ve seen, with your good Jedi and your Republic—has it stopped?”

“No.” Will it ever?

There would never be a time when there wasn’t something to fight. There would never be anything monumental enough to negate the past—both his and Katrina’s. Revan’s.

Maybe he never should have left.

“I lost my first husband to them,” Lora finally murmured, glancing over her shoulder at him. Her black eyes would seem bottomless if Carth hadn’t seen the same depths they had.

“I lost my first wife.”

Lora nodded without asking for elaboration. She must have understood that the circumstances weren’t important—only that the person was gone.

Remme watched her with a sober, sad smile. “Lora and I met out of shared hatred,” he murmured to Carth. “I suppose it says something about the nature of the galaxy that we eventually married as well.”

With her back still to her husband, the return of that same pained smile on Lora’s face was visible only to Carth.

“Well. If this is a mistake, Admiral,” Remme began, looking back at Carth, “then it won’t be the first I’ve made. I’ve got a proposition for you…”

---

“Don’t offer to help or anything, gentlemen,” Mira grumbled as she assisted Sarii in lifting the unconscious Krettan guard into a now-inactive Force cage. He was heavy, even without the large assault rifle, which was now slung over Dustil Onasi’s shoulder as if he actually knew how to use one.

Atton and Mical went straight for the security lockers, rifling through them for their belongings. Dustil paused for a moment, white light glowing around his bruised knuckles as he healed them. He shook his hand out, reaching with the other for his lightsaber.

“All right,” he breathed, running a hand through his hair. “We grab Father and make a run for it.”

“After, you know, navigating our way out of this secret underground lair and avoiding any guards and not getting captured again,” Atton said.

Mira scoffed, finally propping the Krettan guard up in the cage and reactivating the energy field. “You’re just mad you didn’t think of it. Onasi Junior’s one-upped you again.”

Mical extended his lightsaber, turning it over in his hands as if he could detect frequency shifts by eyesight alone. Sarii tried to get used to the foreign hilt of hers, constructed and used by another Jedi long dead or converted back on Remli Prime.

Nice job back there. The Force had returned, and Mical could hear her approval. He glanced up at her, nodding. His own thoughts were uncharacteristically subdued.

Your Padawan learns something new every day, Kavar commented lightly, as if there had only been a brief pause in his lecture. And not just about the galaxy around him.

Sarii already knew that. It was one of the reasons she’d originally chosen Mical for her Padawan—his appetite for knowledge and his open-mindedness towards new or different ideas. She smiled to herself. Is there a reason you keep pointing out the obvious to me?

There was no response. Outside of the living Force, Dustil was leading them out of the room, back down the same dimly lit corridor they had been directed through. “We took a left here. Right?”

“No, left,” Mira whispered.

“That’s what I said. I think right’s got to lead to offices or quarters or something like that—“

“Or a guard’s lounge,” Atton supplied.

“Which way do you want to go, Rand? Straight?” Dustil pointed to the dead-end wall in front of them.

“How about you both quit arguing before—“

Mira’s admonition was completed by the sudden, bright flashing of a red emergency light over their heads. The requisite sound was a faint, out of tune wheeze, as if the alert system needed new batteries.

“Nice,” the bounty hunter exhaled, glowering at the two men.

---

“…that doesn’t sound too hard, Remme. But what do we get out of it besides being released?”

The Krettan smiled mirthlessly at Carth. “I wouldn’t call it a reward, but . . . .” He reached for a datapad lying atop a pile of papers and held it out.“Coordinates to Verte. They’re yours—“

His hand reached for the datapad eagerly. Too eagerly. Remme tilted it back towards his side of the desk, just out of Carth’s grasp.

“—if you’re sure you want to take the risk. If you’re certain it’s worth it.” The Krettan turned the datapad rightside up, looking over it carefully. “I can’t tell you anything about Verte except that it’s where they are. And no one goes there by choice if they’ve got something to lose. Do you?”

He thought of Dustil. Of Celyn. Of what might be waiting for him on Verte. Of what he might lose just by finding out the truth.

Maybe it was better to go home. Go home and keep hoping—if he never found her, he never had to accept that she wasn’t coming back.

Then he thought of coming all the way out here, getting this close, and then turning around and giving up.

“I have to try,” Carth answered.

Remme nodded, resigned. “We appear to have an agreement then, Admiral.” He extended a hand.

Carth took it. “Thank you. Maybe when the Republic starts sending scouting expeditions out here, we’ll meet again.”

“If your Jedi don’t get here first,” the Krettan replied.

“Just keep an open mind when they do—“

Remme’s office was suddenly aglow in a wash of red light. The Krettan’s eyes narrowed at an emergency beacon above their heads, the harsh crimson color making the speckles on his face and the dark hair on Lora’s head stand out. The pair exchanged a glance. Carth strained to hear the sirens he’d expect to accompany the alarm, but all he could hear was a faint ringing.

Remme headed straight for the door, Lora right behind him with blaster in hand.

“What’s going on?” Carth asked, following. Neither responded, turning corners and navigating hallways with focused, intense looks on their faces. He got the feeling this wasn’t the first time the alarm had gone off.

Further down the corridor, they could hear noises, some scuffling and yelling, which quickly turned into a few scattered blaster shots—punctuated by the sharp crackle-hiss of lightsabers. Remme and Lora broke into a run.

When they rounded the corner, a stray blaster shot nearly hit Remme in the face. He stopped short, glancing at the scorch mark it left in the wall and then turning to look at the owner.

Atton Rand lowered his blaster, breathing heavily and waving a flap of his jacket as if to cool himself. A few unconscious guards (Carth hoped to hell they were only unconscious) lay scattered between more angry-looking Krettans and the rest of their crew. In the foreground stood Dustil, the Exile, and Mical. All with lightsabers blazing.

His son did a double take over his shoulder, turning around a little awkwardly because of the guard’s body with the nose bleed under his feet. Carth wasn’t sure if his red lightsaber had always been that bright, or if it just appeared that way because of the flashing emergency lights overhead.

“Father,” Dustil breathed. “We were just coming to rescue you.”

There was an audible smack when Carth’s palm hit his forehead.

---

“I hope you like seafood, Master Jedi.”

Sarii nodded vigorously.

The buttons on Admiral Karath’s uniform glinted a bright gold against the ferracrystal wine glasses. “I didn’t want to risk a menu withrahk on it,” he told the rest of the table. They all laughed, some politely. Mandalorian slurs didn’t feel quite socially acceptable yet. Sarii sipped from her wine glass and tried to slow her beating heart.

Joining the contingent of Jedi who were going to aid the Republic in the Mandalorian War effort had, at first, seemed like it was going to be a heartwrenching, divisive ordeal. Master Kavar hadn’t spoken to her since she’d left the Temple. None of the Jedi sitting at the table even lived there anymore—the Republic provided them with military quarters. It felt like someone had taken her off of Kamino and stuck her in Tatooine.

But now, sitting at a table in dress robes, surrounded by top officials from each branch of the Republic military, Sarii felt like this maybe wasn’t the worst career move she could have made.

Admiral Karath had addressed her directly, as Master Jedi. It had felt almost as good as when General Veers had informed her that her experience made her an excellent candidate for ground deployment, with the honorary rank of General. The grin had broken onto Sarii’s face before she could throw a veil of Jedi serenity on.

Revan had smirked.

She sat at the center of the table, Malak at her side, giving occasional reassuring smiles to Sarii and the other Jedi, freshly titled with the Fleet or the infantry. She didn’t look out of place at all, despite the Jedi robes, the plain braid of hair, the lack of shiny medals or insignia. She looked men like Admiral Karath and General Veers directly in the eye when she spoke to them.

“Knowledge of Mandalorian customs and culture might not be something we want to entirely avoid, Admiral.” She took a bite of her food.

“No, nor would I suggest it. Knowing your enemy is the first key to destroying them.”

It was strange, hearing words like ‘enemy’ and ‘destroy’ with the tinkle of ferracrystal and Tempari all around them. The whirr of the servodroids almost complemented the faint stringed soundtrack coming from speakers in the vaulted ceilings.

“The latest reports indicate they’re massing along the Althiri border,” General Veers commented.

“That would suggest an attempt to take control of the Althiri sector,” Malak said. He’d had tattoos imprinted on his shorn head, grey and block-like. Combined with his voice, he sounded even wiser. “Their pattern has tended to move in stages; overrunning outlying settlements and posts until they’ve surrounded the larger infrastructures.”

Commander Piett scowled. “Barbarians.”

“Intelligent barbarians,” Revan clarified. “The Republic isn’t thinking along the same lines as a Mandalorian. While we sit here letting them shock us, they’re thinking up new ways to do it. The more audacious they are, the more timid we become.” She held her fork upright with one hand and sliced methodically with the knife in the other.

“The Republic cannot imitate their attacks, Jedi Revan. If we are to retake the conquered planets, we need to defeat them strategically. The Mandalorians are merciless. They have no regard for the freedom and cultures of other systems—“

“Exactly.”

Revan replaced her knife neatly next to her dish. Her gaze lifted. “An eye for an eye, Admiral. One Serroco for another.” She took a bite.

The table was quiet. Everyone chewed thoughtfully.

Sarii woke up in a cold sweat, huddled against the bulkhead that formed one side of her bunk. The room was silent, except for the steady hum of the Hawk’s engines.

She swung her legs out and sat on the edge of the bunk, rubbing her arms and trying to wipe the sleep from her eyes. There wasn’t much else to do besides sleep, now that they were on the last leg of their journey to Verte. She had already recalibrated her patchwork lightsaber and meditated enough to last her a lifetime.

She should have been counting her blessings that her biggest problem right now was having a bad dream. A few days ago on Krett, that hadn’t been the case. They’d spent forty-eight hours helping Remme and his group plan and execute a break-in to the Nantu Central Security Base, to retrieve records of communications and transactions to Verte. More port authority uniforms had to be stolen. Mical had ended up with one two sizes too small. Atton had tripped a heat shield. Admiral Onasi had been concerned about breaking into the security force of a government the Republic hadn’t established any kind of relations with yet, but they’d done it anyway.

And now they were following the missing part of Revan’s trail, creating their own dotted line from the coordinates Remme and Lora had given them, speeding towards Verte. Towards Revan.

Sarii slipped her boots on, pushing the blanket back on the bunk and padding past Mira, asleep in the bunk opposite hers.

The corridor leading to the women’s crew quarters stared directly down the length of theEbon Hawk to the men’s. The door was open, and Sarii could see Mical sitting on the floor, legs folded and eyes closed, deep in the throes of meditation. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking about. He hadn’t said much since Krett. She decided that interrupting him wasn’t going to change that.

She continued through the common room and towards the cockpit. Atton Rand’s boots were the only part of him she could see, resting on the top of the console, the toe moving a switch back and forth that Sarii hoped operated something completely unimportant.

“No asteroid fields yet?” she asked, sitting down in the co-pilot’s chair next to him.

Atton’s head lolled towards her, his eyebrow lifted as if her being there was an anomaly. “Not yet,” he finally answered.

“I don’t feel like we’re ready for this yet. Like we need another planet to land on or a harder firefight or something first,” Sarii murmured.

Atton snorted. “Excitement? Adventure? A Jedi gets their rocks off not on these things.”

Experience and preparedness, more like. Not feeling like you had long relinquished control of your life to someone else, and the finish line was dead ahead.

“Did you hear anything about this place?” Sarii asked, glancing sideways at him. “When you…when you used to hear about Remli Prime?”

Atton shook his head. “Not a word. Wouldn’t have surprised me, though. Revan and Malak had tricks practically falling out of their sleeves.” He bent his leg towards him and brushed a piece of dirt from his boot. “Compared to a constantly regenerating starship factory, I think a planet full of ancient Sith is a little unimpressive.”

“Sith don’t impress you at all?”

He glanced sideways at her. “Now I wouldn’t have joined them if that were true, would I?”

Sarii looked back out at the cockpit window. Stars streaked past in long blue and white lines, stretched into infinity by hyperdrive.

Atton had been at her side through five planets and six Jedi Masters. But almost everything she knew about him was secondhand, hissed through a back alley Twi’lek’s filed teeth or handed to her in a perfunctory report by Admiral Onasi.

“Why did you join them?” she asked.

“I didn’t,” he answered curtly. “I’m not a Sith. Never was.”

“But you—“

“Did work for the Sith. Dirty work. But it’s not like I was going out for Acolyte or Lord or anything. It’s not like I know anything a good Sith’s supposed to know.”

“Except how to kill Jedi.”

Atton stared at her. “Yeah,” he scoffed, turning back to the stars. “That I do know.”

The Ebon Hawk was deteriorated enough now that she made enough noise to almost fill a silence. The engines hummed beneath their feet. Various indicator panels let off soft, intermittent beeps. Every so often, the ceiling creaked as though the wires were straining to provide power.

“Why did you join them?” Atton’s voice jarred the rhythm, sending everything a beat or so off.

“Why did I follow Revan and Malak?” Sarii repeated.

“Yeah.” His hands slid across the controls, not so much manipulating them as making sure they were smooth. “I mean, we all know why I did; because I’m a heartless bastard without a brave bone in my traitorous body, but last time I checked, you had a spine.”

Was the last time he’d checked been when she’d snapped back at Atris after they’d crashlanded on Taris? Had it been in the Sith tomb on Dxun? Or was it later, on Malachor V, refusing to look at the dead hulks of starships and short-range fighter corpses littered around them?

Because it certainly hadn’t been in the last few months: textbook instructing her Padawan, submitting to the will of the Jedi Council, wandering deeper and deeper into the Unknown Regions to find Revan after Sarii had insisted to everyone that asked (and even those who didn’t) that she wanted nothing more to do with Revan the traitor, Revan the Sith, Revan the Lord.

“She and Malak were going to stop the Mandalorians. It made much more sense then—“

Atton snorted. “No, it didn’t.”

“The means didn’t justify the end. What was happening to them should have been obvious. When you’re just barely out of being a Padawan, you don’t think. It was an error in judgement—“

“No, it wasn’t. You still think you’re right. You still think that following her was the right thing to do, and if you could do it all over again, you’d still flip the Council the banshee bird and go filet yourself some Mandalorian hide.”

“I wouldn’t—“

“But for some reason, you’re doing everything you can to make sure nobody finds out,” Atton interrupted, turning his head to look at her. “Why is that? Everybody fracking knows already, Sarii. You fought. You were at Malachor V. You were exiled, Exile.”

“And I don’t want it to happen again,” Sarii snapped.

The pilot rolled his eyes. “Sure you don’t.”

Maybe years of hunting Jedi had given Atton the ability to see through a Jedi’s calm, cool, collected veneer of platitudes and statues.

“Lust, impatience, cowardice…most Jedi awareness doesn’t cruise beyond the surface feelings, to see what’s deeper.”

Maybe years of meticulously maintaining his own veneer had made the cracks in Sarii’s all the more apparent.

“I don’t think my decision was wrong,” she began quietly, “But I regret what it helped to bring about.”

“Oh yeah?” Atton drawled. “Like what?”

“Like the rise of two Sith Lords who destroyed countless planets and ended millions of lives. Like the loss of half of fleet at Malachor. Like the entire Sith War, like every lost Jedi, like…”

His smile was mirthless. “Like me?”

Like you. “Like Mical. He’s decades behind where he should be. And I’m the one that stuck him there.”

“I don’t understand why the Council is going against their own teachings, Master,” Sarii added resolutely. “The Republic needs us. It’s our responsibility to help.”

The countless midnight conversations and secret whisperings between training sessions among the eldest Padawans and the recently promoted knights had all led to the same conclusion: The Republic was in trouble. They were Jedi. You didn’t need to be a Jedi Master or one of the two leaders in promoting the call to war to realize what that meant.

“Your motives do you credit, as they do all Jedi who are outraged by the actions of the Mandalorians,” Kavar continued patiently, “But you forget that we are also the guardians of peace. You forget the Code: there is no ignorance, there is knowledge. We cannot defend against something we know nothing about-“

“The Mandalorians are attacking the Republic. They want to take over the galaxy. They’ve slaughtered thousands already- what more is there to know?”

“You spoke of sacrifice, Sarii,” Master Kavar’s voice was gentle now, like when she was a child and first chosen as a Padawan. “You and the others don’t realize the extent of what you may lose in this war.”

“I’m a Jedi now, Master Kavar. And that means I can’t stand by when there are people who need help.”

But there was something she had to do first. Something she had to end before it had even begun.

Sarii rounded the corner into the padawan blocks. It was the last few weeks of Trials season. Padawans took their trials and were knighted—or given jobs within the Temple. Sarii had already seen some of them tending the grounds, shelving books, greeting visitors. Trying not to look like their nightmares had come true.

As the padawans turned into knights, the apprentices turned into padawans. Today must have been one of the moving days. Eight to thirteen year-olds with fresh Padawan braids and crisp, never-worn robes were carrying small footlockers or bags to their newly inherited rooms.

Sarii wove around them, glancing in each room for blond hair and blue eyes.

“Master Zhen!”

He found her first, after moving effortlessly through a crowd of padwans. His arms were empty, so he must have finished moving in. Efficient and ahead of everyone else, as usual.

Sarii waited for the Padawans between them to move and approached him.

“Mical.” She couldn’t think of a way to begin. “How are you?”

“Well.” He nodded like she might not believe his word alone. “I’ve been reading the Book of Practical Lightsaber Technique and practicing with Master Bacara. I wasn’t sure what you wanted me to prepare for, so I’ve been doing a little of everything.”

His voice had changed somehow between the last time Sarii had spoken with him and now. Was he a little taller too? His head reached her chin. Before long he would be taller than her.

But she wouldn’t be here to see it. Mical was watching her intently, ready to hang on her every word. Sarii felt terrible.

But there were people dying, under the oppression of a power they couldn’t fight. That was more important. That was the responsibility of a Jedi. And Sarii couldn’t think of a better way to teach Mical that lesson.

That didn’t make starting any easier.

“Padawan—Mical.” Sarii touched his shoulder, lightly. Not quite comfortable yet. “Our lessons will have to wait. I’m leaving.”

Mical’s face didn’t fall. His expression stayed frozen on his face even as he nodded.

“You understand, don’t you? The Mandalorians grow more ruthless and aggressive every day. The Republic is being threatened. The Jedi must intervene. It’s my duty—it’s our duty to protect the defenseless.”

Lines she’d never imgagined herself saying, justifications that were more worthy of an aged Councilmember were now coming out like they had always been there. She wondered if Master Kavar would be proud.

“I understand, Master.” Mical h