Chapter Text

A Code of Her Own: Prologue

Then.

Golg, 20 BBY

Shirana had watched the figure carefully, from the moment they had been deposited (dropped, more accurately) on the floor by their captor. 

“Watched” was a relative term. She couldn’t really see her, given that Shirana had no eyes. But even if she had, she probably wouldn’t have been able to see the woman anyway, since the light in the cell was so dim as to be almost non-existent.

Instead, she had to see by sense, by taking an approximate measure of the layout of the room based on other sensory input – the temperatures around her, the scents in the air, and especially the sounds. Even in silence, Shirana could hear the echoes of the ambient darkness, and from it, construct a faint model of the layout of the room.

The figure was of a dark clad masked woman, laying limp, almost lifeless, breathing with strain. She appeared to be awake, but her movements were tentative and trembling. She was obviously in pain.

"What did he do to you?" Shirana asked.

Jolted back into the moment by Shirana's voice and suddenly remembering that she wasn't alone, the figure thrashed to try to get her legs underneath herself, fumbling like a wobbly hatchling whose limbs were too weak and spastic to support her weight. She succeeded only in flipping herself over to glare defensively through the darkness in the direction of her cellmate, and push herself about a foot further away.

"Relax," Shirana cooed. "I think it's safe to say that our current situation changes everything, at least for the moment. Until we can find a way out of here, we're better off calling a truce and working together."

"I don't nheeed your helph..." the figure started to speak, then paused, stunned at the weakness in her own breathy, shaky voice. 

"Don't get me wrong," Shirana continued. "I'm not crazy about the idea either, but we have to be pragmatic about this. Whatever it is about this place that is weakening us, it affects us both. It doesn't just block us from the Force, it is actually draining life from us in the process. We're shadows of who we were, and if we want out of here, we're going to need to work together."

"Not... not with y… hyou..." the figure cursed. Giving up on standing, the masked woman planted a trembling foot to the floor and used it to push herself away until her back was against the wall.

Shirana wondered a little about the person she had been imprisoned with. The only intel she’d had about her before encountering her on Golg was that a person of her description – the mask was quite distinctive – was rumoured to be a necromancer of some kind. But there was no sign of such sorcery now.

The immediately obvious explanation for that would be that the same thing that was blocking Shirana’s Force abilities was also blocking her skills. And that would suggest that her abilities were similarly derived from the Force. But the Dark Side of the Force, from the ways she understood it to be practiced throughout the galaxy, always exhibited in certain… flavours. It was a little difficult to describe, but she could usually discern a uniqueness in the manifestations, from the arcane ichor of the Dathomirian witches to the weighty emptiness of natural dark vergences. In the few moments when she watched the woman first approach the citadel on the Iegoan moon – the citadel in which they were now imprisoned – Shirana was able to taste some of the flavour of the reputed necromancer’s waning powers… and that flavour was the same as what she could sense on ancient Sith artifacts.

Sith.

Was it possible? The Sith were originally thought to have perished in the Jedi-Sith War, until the appearance of an apparent Sith Lord on Naboo. But there still was disagreement on what the reappearance meant, and how much threat there was. There were rumours that there were always two, but was she the master, the apprentice... or (more concerning) had the rule of two been abandoned? One thing was certain though: as Master Windu had cautioned her before she departed Coruscant, there had been a growing presence of the Dark Side of the Force in recent years. Even after so long, the influence of the Sith seemed to have persisted.

She had many questions. But she was also sure that her cellmate was not likely to be very forthcoming, and asking many of them would be pointless. She stuck to the obvious:

"So, what did he do to you?" Shirana repeated. 

The woman said nothing.

"Do you need that mask to live, or can you take it off?" Shirana asked.

"Don't touch me!" The figure seethed. Shirana had not made a move toward her, but she recoiled anyway. She was trying to collect her strength but with the Force inaccessible, it was taking longer than she'd hoped. The woman seemed confused. In the past, she'd been able to draw strength from pain; from hatred. This helplessness and disconnectedness was new to her.

"Relax," Shirana assured her. "I wasn't going to do anything. I'm just saying it might be a little easier to breathe without that mask on."

"You want to s… see my face," the woman accused. "You want to… know my identity.” Her breathing was coming in short puffs that were interrupting her sentences. 

For a moment, Shirana considered alleviating her fears by letting the woman know that she was blind – something her cellmate obviously didn’t realize in this darkness – but she hesitated. On the one hand, if she knew, it might give her all the more reason to discount Shirana’s value as an ally, thus providing this potential adversary the temptation to suffocate her in her sleep or moments of weakness. On the other hand, her stubborn insistence on wearing the mask was only going to hurt herself, and it would have to come off sooner or later.

‘Yes,’ Shirana thought to herself. ‘Maybe it’d just be better to leave things as they are.’

“You were f… following me here to k… kill me, weren't you?" the other prisoner asked.

Shirana shifted her weight. There was no furniture, so she was crouched on her legs, and they were starting to hurt. "I was sent here by the Council to investigate whatever is causing the void in the Force in this area, and to investigate anyone who might have had anything to do with it," she stated. "Although if I found anyone who turned out to be an agent of the Dark Side in some form, that was an option within my mandate, yes."

"And tell me," the masked woman scoffed, "if we do work together, when can I expect you to decide to turn on me and fulfill your duty?"

Shirana shrugged. "I really don't foresee any scenario in which you don't break our pact first," she stated. The masked woman snorted in disgust and cynical agreement.

"What did our captor do to you?" Shirana once again repeated. 

The figure paused for a moment, and thought about her options. Finally, she decided there was no harm in answering. "It's... it's some sort of device he uses," she spoke. "Just… pain. Searing pain through the body. Stabbing, shocking, searing.... It’s the sense of skin… being lacerated… and burned, ev- everywhere… all at once."

"Why?"

"I don't… know," the masked woman replied. "He didn't ask me... any questions. Didn’t care about… seeing my face. Didn’t demand… He didn't seem to… want anything fro... from me.” She settled back against the wall, accepting that for the moment at least, there was an impasse between them. "Too dark to… see anything, too… I almost think it was because... he liked it… There was no other… reason…."

"Well then I really would advise a truce. We almost certainly need each other alive, until we can find some answers, at least." Shirana reasoned.

"Why do you… think that?" the figure snorted.

"Because it might require both of us to figure out what’s blocking us from the Force, both of us to find the opportunity to rectify that, and both of us to escape," she said. “And frankly, because as long as we’re both alive, there is a chance that when he comes, he will take the other.”

The dark woman sat forward for a moment, and cast a distrustful glance toward Shirana. Through her mask’s scarlet lenses, she could see vague shapes in the scant ambient light – enough to know where the Jedi was, but not enough to see the band of cloth across the Miraluka woman’s eyes (or more precisely, her lack of eyes). Then, she took a deep breath and allowed herself to relax a little.

"I get the impression that you aren't too eager to experience what you just went through again." Shirana stood up and turned away, mostly in hopes that her fellow captive might let go of some of her tension. "I would give you my word that I won't harm you, but somehow I doubt that you would trust me. So in the meantime, you can have the reassurance that I need you alive too, for the same reasons."

The masked woman thought about this for a moment. Then she leaned back against the wall, took another deep breath, and almost relaxed for the first time since she had been returned to the cell.

Shirana was right. This would have to do.

For now.

Chapter Text

Chapter One, The Blue Girl

Now.

Canso, Lothal, 3 ABY

“Please help!”

If you are one of the few intended who can hear it, a Force-borne voice sort of reverberates, as though it’s emanating, yet still contained within your own skull.

There’s a bit of a hollowness to it, an echo, and you feel the pulse of the consonants against your cranium, overly thudding at the heaviest points, like breath into a microphone.

“If you can hear me, please help!”

Typically, you need to know the speaker. You have to have a personal connection with them. It helps you reach their mind, especially if they’re the type of person who is Force-aware and on guard against external influence.

It’s not typical for a random, unfamiliar voice to call out. Almost unheard of, in fact.

“Please! I don’t know what to do! I have nowhere else to turn! But I can sense that you’re out there!”

This was unheard of.

If you’ve heard the voice, though, you can focus on it. Triangulate. Reaching out toward the origin, you can feel the speaker fighting for breath, chest aching from exertion. They have been running for a long time.

Running. If you focus on it, you can hear and feel the footfalls. Pad pad pad pad. Synthetic rubber on leaves and twigs and the long Lothalian grass. Pad pad crack as a branch breaks under the weight of a foot.

The foot.

And the blue girl attached to it.

Alack Morah crashed through the brush, almost losing her balance and falling face first into the dirt. Her hip felt injured, hurt from her recent fall at high speed, when her pursuers shot out her speeder. 

She was just on the edge of town. She didn’t understand why, but she felt that she needed to be here, and not in one of the more populous areas, even though logically it would have made sense to try to be somewhere with plenty of eyewitnesses.

Her lungs ached from trying to catch her breath, and the strain of running for so long stretched painfully throughout her limbs and back. But she couldn’t stop. They were almost on her.

Alack attempted once again to reach out using the Force. She had cast her voice on a previous occasion, but she’d also had the time to relax and focus, rather than do so out of panic. And more than that, she had known at that time who she was calling to. She had none of that now. This time, she wasn’t entirely certain if she had managed it at all – or if so, how well. Aching muscles from the incessant sprint, the blue-skinned girl was casting outward, for some unknown Force user she had only suspected were out there somewhere. She had thought she sensed their presence. And now, she needed their help.

“Please!” she called, “I need help now, and haven’t much time, or fight left!” 

Calling out using the Force took energy, but she was glad she was not having to actually mouth the words, because it might not have been possible. She was gulping at air, turning occasionally to see if she had managed to lose the four figures that were tailing her. If she could even vocalize at all, it would have been half-choked vibrato and gasping.

She spotted an open maw in one of the rock faces nearby. There might be wildlife inside, but she needed a place to hide. Certainly, she couldn’t keep running much longer, so had little choice but to take her chances. She dashed for the opening.

She didn’t see anything immediately inside, but didn’t stop to look. The path inside was remarkably flat, as though it had been a footpath. She ran as deep into the cavern as she could and hid behind some rocks, trying to catch her breath without being heard. Her muscles felt elastic, barely strong enough to support her weight, anymore.

The Trandoshan entered first. Kessl stood easily a foot taller than Alack, and his scaly skin was a dark olive colour that had practically concealed him against the brush and foliage of the Lothalian landscape – but his silhouette was clearly discernible in the cave’s maw. The Devaronian and Duros crew members arrived together shortly afterward, and eventually Lus-Dann’s grey form trailed in behind them. Alack had actually liked the Weequay, and she considered whether she might have a chance at turning the gullible grey oaf against his crewmates – but there really wasn’t much time to plan what she would need to say, or any opportunity to do so without bringing the others down upon her.

The four fanned out, slowly and methodically spacing themselves to walk down different branches of the cavern, looking to the left and the right. Kessl sniffed the air, taking in the scents around him. He could smell her. But not just the Chiss girl…

“What is a Trandoshan doing exploring caves on Lothal?” came a voice from deeper in the cave. The voice was feminine, but a little raspy.

The woman who emerged looked to be in her sixties. She wore a head scarf that hung down too far, so that it draped over her eyes. Poking out from it, her hair was a mixture of grey, white, and a slightly orange ash. She leaned on a staff of gnarled wood that looked to have been polished with a glossy clear coat of lacquer. 

“I haff bussinessh here,” Kessl hissed with a slight lilt, giving the old woman less attention than the winding tunnels that hid his prey. “It iss you who are in the wrong placessh…”

She calmly, slowly strode over toward him, almost as though it were a challenge. “No, I can assure you, I am exactly where I want to be.”

As Kessl stopped, the other three also ceased advancing. “We’re jusssst here for the girl,” he sniffed at her. “Jusst gifff her to ussss, and we will leave you in peacsssse…”

She didn’t seem to be puzzled by the mention of ‘the girl,’ at all. “I am not the kind of woman who just hands over another without a thought to their well-being,” the old woman said.

“We don’t have the time for this,” the Devaronian growled, detouring from the fork in the cavern that he’d started to stake out, and instead striding over toward the old woman. Nondis had a notoriously short temper. He reached forward to push her out of Kessl’s way.

Despite how close the woman was to him, Kessl had still kept his eyes focused down the caverns, looking vaguely in the direction of where Alack was hiding. He instantly regretted doing so, because it caused him to miss the motion that the woman had made, and only snapped back to attention when he saw Nondis’ body sailing aloft over some rocks and into a stalagmite that abruptly collapsed under his weight. Instinctively, Kessl reached up to grasp the woman’s neck, threateningly.

His hand did not complete the journey. Instead, his arm was knocked aside by the staff, which then spun before him to come up under his chin, the top of it slamming into his jaw, knocking him back, slightly.

“Rana?” A voice called from within the cavern. “Rana, what are you doing? I told you not to do this.” A second woman emerged from the same direction as the first. She seemed entirely unsurprised by the standoff she had dashed into, or the four other figures that met her, but instead seemed only intent on coaxing the old woman to leave. 

The second woman wore a blackened cloak, the hood coming up over her head and hiding her face in shadow. In a moment, she made her way in between Kessl and the older woman, putting a red hand on “Rana’s” arm – part protectively and partly to get her attention, urging her to leave the conflict. Alack glimpsed this woman’s face briefly in the low light: she had piercing, bright yellow eyes and red skin. Her hand appeared to have some discolouration and scarring along the thumb and index finger, as though they had been burned.

By this time, Nondis had scrambled upright, and all three of Kessl’s crew members rushed toward the Trandoshan and the two women. Any qualms about using physical force had been dashed in their minds, at this point, and they charged.

What happened next appeared to be a surge of the four onto the two women, and then a sudden back-surge – like a blast – sending the attackers back into rock walls and stone outcroppings. The cavern shook with the impacts and the sounds of breaking stone. 

The old woman had been knocked to the cave floor, but as she struggled to get up, she projected her voice and gave a slight motion of her hand. “Imperials are headed for the docks! You would be wise to get to your ship and leave Lothal as soon as possible!”

“Imperialsss… Ridiculousss…” Kessl scoffed. But before he could say anything further, his Weequay and Duros companions fled the cave. Nondis paused, surging with anger momentarily, but then turned and followed them.

“I don’t know whhhat you did, but I am not ssssssso weak minded, old woman. Your tricksssss don’t work on me…”

“You’re letting them go?” grumbled the red-skinned woman to her companion. She had been much quicker to her feet, and surveyed the scene. Then her shoulders dropped in a kind of defeat. “Fine,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes with a modicum of disgust. She turned to the Trandoshan. “Maybe you’re not weak-minded enough to buy that, but I’d be willing to bet that your moronic companions are both stupid and scared enough to take your ship and strand you on this planet, if you don’t hurry after them.”

Kessl’s eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed in rage. He reared up and considered leaping at the women again, but paused. She was right. He knew she was right.

And so he turned and bolted out of the cave, chasing after them. He was slower and bulkier than the other three. He would have to work harder to catch up.

“Imperials, Rana? Really?” The second woman helped the first to her feet, brushing off her clothes and watching for signs of injury. 

“It’s been awhile. I’m not used to thinking up plausible ruses so quickly,” the first woman admitted.

“And on top of that,” the red-skinned woman continued, “you shouldn’t have let them go. Each one you release comes back at you twelvefold.”

Alack peered out from the crag she had been hiding behind. “Thank you,” she said, cautiously, not wanting to frighten them. “You must have heard me asking for help…” One of them must have been the Force user, she presumed – the one she had sensed and called out to.

The red-skinned woman turned and glared at her. The hood slipped a little, and Alack thought she could see the shape of a small horn on her forehead. Zabrak. The woman was Zabrak. “Of course we did,” she growled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone had heard you. You really should be more careful. There are still sometimes actual Imperials around here, and they can bring the Inquisitors.” She turned to her companion. “Rana, we have to go.” She helped the older woman to her feet.

Alack approached them, intending to help, but they had already gathered their bearings. “Can I help? How did you do that?” The questions started to flow.

The second woman regarded Alack for a moment, and said, “Before you assume you’re in the clear, maybe you should take a glance and make sure your friends don’t come back.”

“Yeah, sure, I suppose,” Alack replied, taking a short walk to the cave mouth to do precisely that. “What exactly is this place, anyway?” There was no sign of Kessl and his crew.

When she turned back, the women were gone.

“No! Please don’t go!” she called out again. 

“I’ve come all the way from Serenno! I need your help!”

She was met with silence.

Realizing that the women had come from inside the tunnels, Alack wandered further in. It was not comfortable for her to do so – her hip and shoulder still hurt from the fall earlier, and her legs were wracked with pain. But she tried to discern the direction that the women had gone, calling out after them. 

“Please!” she shouted. “I’ve been careful. I’ve done everything I can to avoid attracting attention. The only time I messed it up was with those four, back there, and that was only because they caught me stowing away on their ship. Well, and I stole one of their speeders. But I swear I’ve been careful!”

Still silence.

“Please! Or would you rather I go around asking everyone in town if they know an old woman named ‘Rana?’”

There was a slight shuffle deep into the distance, in the dark recesses of the caves. Then a pause. Then a faint ambient light appeared down one path, a long jog away and from around some bends.

“Then hurry yourself,” one voice called.

“And for flarg’s sake, be quiet,” cursed the other.

Alack ran as fast as she could, despite the strain in her limbs. “Ah!” she called out. “Thank you. You know, I’ve been searching for a long time.”

Given the flickering of the ambient light ahead, she surmised that the women hadn’t stopped to wait for her, and were still in motion. “I started out in Serenno. That’s where I grew up, really. Until I was seventeen. That’s when it happened.”

She must have been making some ground, because the light was getting brighter, and she could hear their footfalls, now. “You see, my brother, he’s a scientist. He specializes in kyber energy. He worked for the Confederacy. But after the CIS fell, the Empire conscripted him.”

She could almost see them, now, sometimes catching glimpses as she would round a corner, only to lose them again. “Conscripted is a… mild word. They abducted him, really. He resisted, so they destroyed our home. Killed our parents. I barely escaped.”

She was almost up to them, now. She couldn’t really see what was casting the light, but she could tell that the Zabrak was holding it. “That’s why I need help. I’ve been looking for a Jedi. You’re supposed to help people, right? I want to get my brother back.”

“Does it ever shut up?” the Zabrak asked her companion, dryly.

“I live in hope,” Rana answered.

“That wasn’t nice,” Alack commented, insulted. She decided she didn’t like the Zabrak’s manner very much. She was very cold and withdrawn – stern and patrician, with a hint of cynicism. “My name’s Alack Morah,” she introduced herself. “And I gather your name is Rana,” she pointed to the old woman.

She noticed that the elderly woman’s eyes were still covered by her head scarf. Alack thought she might be perhaps blind, yet she didn’t seem to have any difficulty navigating the caverns.

The older woman – Alack assumed that ‘Rana’ was a first name – was fairly tall, around six feet in height, and on the weak side of slim, in build. She wore a beige tunic, wrapped around herself and belted at the waist with a brown cord. The cloth descended to just below her knees, leaving the old woman’s sandaled feet to move unimpeded.

“And you are…” she asked the Zabrak. She was also fairly tall, but looked to be younger, perhaps in her early forties. Like many Zabraks, her face was tattooed, but only sparsely, with very fine, ornate lines that alternately traced around her features and connected them. Despite the hood, Alack could piece together from glimpses that she had two large horns at her temples, along with a slightly smaller but significant horn in the center – all three at the height of her hairline. Lower on her forehead, sort of halfway between each of the three, were two smaller, finer-looking horns. She had a thick shock of dark hair that cascaded out the sides of the hood, past her shoulders in waves.

The Zabrak woman didn’t reply. She kept her pace, her cloak rustling as she did. Her clothing was darker, blacks and browns, and her sleeves largely covered her hands, but Alack still caught glimpses of them, and what looked like burned skin around her thumbs and forefingers on both of them.

“Mercie,” Rana answered on her behalf.

“Mercie.” Alack repeated. “Your parents loved irony, huh?” 

“My parents died when I was an infant,” the red-skinned woman replied.

“Ah,” Alack said, momentarily cowed. “I’m sorry.” Then she muttered under her breath, “Apparently, they didn’t leave you a sense of humour.”

“Look, did you cross the galaxy just to insult us?” the Zabrak snapped.

“Right, right,” Alack returned to her initial plea. “Sorry. Anyway, I traveled to Alderaan, then Onderon …”

“Alderaan?” Rana interjected with a bit of urgency.

“Be glad you didn’t find your Jedi on Alderaan,” Mercie added. Alack still wasn’t sure what was casting the light. Mercie seemed to have it cupped in her hand, with the back of her hand blocking the view. Whatever it was seemed to have fits of static discharge.

“Yeah, that was…” Alack puffed a little. “It’s unnerving to think that I missed getting vaporized by a few weeks. So, I guessed at a few different places that I thought I might find a Jedi, and came to Lothal after I’d heard about the Spectres, and how they’d driven the Empire away. I thought, if anyone wanted to avoid the Empire, here’s where they would come. It took some time to get here, but I finally made it, and that’s when I sensed you.”

They stopped, abruptly. “How?” Rana demanded.

“I don’t know,” Alack replied, a little worried at their sudden response. “I just sense people. When they are strong in the Force. I feel it.”

“Not with us, you can’t,” Rana was stern.

“Even if they think they’re shielding themselves,” Alack continued, “I can feel it.”

“She’s a bloodhound,” Mercie said to Rana.

“If that’s true, you’re a danger,” Rana said to her. “To yourself as much as to us. If you’re not already an agent of the Inquisitors, then they will either bend you to their will, or they will break you into little pieces.”

“I know they hunt Force users…” Alack began to reply.

“No,” Rana said. “They exterminate Force-users. But people like yourself… have a much worse fate. Your brother notwithstanding, you’re better to stay far, far away from the Empire.”

“You can’t stay here,” the Zabrak stated. “There are no Jedi here. You have to leave.”

“You’re wrong. I know that one or both of you are Jedi,” Alack said. “I can feel the Force here.”

Mercie sniffed, indignant. “There are other ways of knowing the Force.”

“You have to help me,” Alack pleaded.

“No, I really don’t think we do,” Rana answered.

They stood for a moment, the two women not knowing whether to continue. They were reasonably confident that the blue girl was not an Inquisitor, but she could still represent a threat to them. Alack was 19 years old, stood about 5-foot-6 and had a lithe frame. Her red eyes would catch the light to create pools of scarlet. She seemed to have a free spirit, something that the two older women estimated could not have been faked by even the best actor among the agents of Citadel Inquisitorius – it would have been crushed from her spirit.

“You can stay with us one night,” the old woman said.

“Rana!” the Zabrak protested.

“It’s late, she has nowhere to go, and she’s this far already,” Rana explained, then turned toward Alack. “But then you have to move on, you leave the way you came, you never come back, and you forget that you were ever here.”

They resumed walking in silence, until they came up to a dead end in the path. Mercie and Rana took each side of a rocky panel and slid it to the side, revealing a door.

“What, this just opens up into your home?” Alack asked, incredulous.

“These caverns were built several centuries ago,” Rana explained. “The previous village that was here was built around them, and every home was connected. It’s thought that this was something the villagers built to withstand a siege, or to escape raiders. There may have even been a market in here at one time.”

----

It was close to sundown, and the crew of the Wobani Pathfinder had almost finished unloading their drop when they first heard the shouting. Some Weequay named Lus-Dann was yelling at random strangers on the docks that the Empire was about to crack down on the area, and that everyone should leave.

“Think it’s serious?” an Ongree labourer asked the ship’s captain, a Mandalorian woman who was watching the scene intently.

“The Weequay is a crackpot,” she observed. But that might not be all there was to it. She had seen when Lus-Dann disembarked  from his ship with the other crewmembers. There was quite a ruckus, with all of them streaking off in pursuit of a young Chiss or Pantoran woman, who apparently stole one of their speeders. The Weequay was an oaf, but the rest of the crew was a haggard lot, not given to random delusions.

But now, there was a cloaked stranger approaching the raving Weequay. She knew an agent of the Empire when she saw one. Even though the Empire had largely abandoned its presence on Lothal after the embarrassment wrought by the Spectres – one that had lasted awhile, due to Lothal’s overall lack of any seriously coveted resources – there were still agents everywhere, watching for fugitives and desired targets. The Pathfinder’s captain hoped that the blue girl wasn’t one such target. “It’d be a shame,” she thought to herself. “She was cute.”

“Sirky?” The captain shouted to a Selonian standing on the exit ramp to the ship. “Tell Vee to get a message to Jujjeg. Tell him to see if he can hurry up whatever meeting he’s got going on. We might need to make a fast exit.”

The Selonian darted into the ship.

“I thought you said he was a crackpot,” the Ongree commented.

“He is,” she replied. “But the attention he’s getting is what worries me. And until we get to Nar Shaddaa, I’d rather not have Imps sniffing around our cargo.”

Sirky returned from inside the Pathfinder, lisping in Mandaba. The captain understood.

The Ongree didn’t hear it, however. “What did she say?” he asked, curious.

“Ah, Jujjeg insists that he will be gone until sometime in the morning,” she replied. Having the young Hutt on the crew was interesting at the best of times – Jujjeg’s knack with technology had proven more than a little useful already – but he always had to take so long with everything.

She just had to hope that morning would be soon enough to escape whatever mess the lunatic Weequay might attract.

Then.

Golg, 20 BBY

Every day, he came for one of them. 

In the first few weeks, they always fought their captor — or at least as much as they could, given the electric shocks carried throughout the cell, which preceded the opening of the door. But without the Force and with the near-paralysis from the shocks, the two prisoners struggled. A vital part of their strength, skill and ability was gone, and their very life was being slowly drained. They fought with all the ferocity they had, but this monster… was much faster; much stronger.

They also had the darkness working against them. With her mask and the horribly low light in the cell, one of the women could barely see. For the other, sight was more… complicated.

As Miraluka, Shirana was born without eyes. Miraluka typically see using the Force – but without the Force, she was essentially blind. This was complicated in a positive sense, though: she still had some spatial sensory perception, much to her surprise. She had a sense of shapes, locations and depth. Without the Force, she was left with a kind of sonar, similar to that possessed by mynocks. Miraluka sight was not exclusively grounded in the Force, but until now, she hadn’t quite realized the other dimensions to her vision.

When he would come for them, the women fought their captor with a savage rage… but without the Force to back them, Shirana’s efforts were flailing and without confidence, while her cellmate’s moves became reckless and desperate. The latter only fed the other woman’s anger, and made her more careless.

Worse, the floor of their cell was made of stone, but a kind of stone that seemed to be able to conduct electricity. Before opening the door to their unfurnished cell, the pair were usually subjected to an onslaught that was not enough to electrocute them, but left them weakened and pained.

But the outcome was always the same. One or the other of them would be taken, and subjected to unspeakable pain, for hours. There was no reason to it that they could determine; there was no sense of it. It was like an exercise, or a hobby for their captor.

And at the end of it, whoever had been taken would be delivered back to the cell, tossed into its dark confines almost lifeless, sometimes bleeding, usually dripping with sweat and drool. Often, the person waiting in the cell would fight — despite the electroshock that preceded the opening of the cell door — to overtake their captor. But each time, they were rebuffed with little effort.

And this day, with the masked woman laying crumpled on the floor after having endured the senseless torture, Shirana crawled over to her.

“It’s over now,” she cooed. “It’s over, for now.” Shirana checked over her limbs and body for wounds that they would sometimes get from thrashing, looking by feel. She brushed at the skin gently, and then took a dampened cloth – the one she previously used to cover the bare flesh-covered recesses where eyes should have theoretically been – to apply to one of the abrasions. The woman’s shoulder felt dislocated, but Shirana wanted to give her a few more moments for the pain to ebb before causing her more when resetting it.

The dark woman still wore her mask. They weren’t really sure why their captor permitted it. Perhaps he even thought it was her face, or integral to her continued life, like a rebreather mask. But regardless, he never bothered about it, and the woman didn’t trust Shirana enough to remove it (or at least not while Shirana was in the cell) – and the Jedi had still not told her about her blindness. 

In some way, the other prisoner seemed to value the mask for depersonalizing the whole situation, as well. This bothered Shirana, of course, but to her, it was more important to respect her cellmate’s wishes, however weird and counterproductive the obsession seemed. In a time of such violation, it felt important to try to win her trust. The woman did partially lift the front of the mask herself – to eat or tend to her skin, for example – but only after she’d turned away from Shirana, and only to hurriedly chew or to wipe the mucus and snot and sweat and tears that were irritating her skin underneath.

Shirana continued cleaning the woman’s wounds. She needed to be strong enough to fight again, tomorrow. 

They both did.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two: Miraluka Sight

Now.

Lothal, 3 ABY

Alack was relieved to use the fresher. Stowing away on ships wasn’t exactly the best means of maintaining hygiene, and she’d sometimes have to go a few days without an opportunity to wash. Finding food was usually the top priority, second only to not being seen – otherwise known as “not getting spaced.”

She felt bad for taking her time, but she really wanted to let herself enjoy this. If the women really were going to send her on her way, tomorrow, it could be a while before she would have the opportunity, again. She especially took time to wash her jet black hair, which she worried had been getting a little greasy.

As she dried off, she could hear the faint voices of the two women – not quite arguing, but there was certainly a debate taking place.

“We’ve talked about this before, Rana. So many times. Compassion is not a luxury we can afford.”

“If we can’t have compassion, Mercie, then what are we? I mean, maybe this is easy for you, but…”

“It’s not a question of ease, Rana. We have everything to lose. Everything.”

“She’s only a girl, Mercie. And she needed help –“

“She was drawing attention! I especially don’t like that you let the crew chasing her go.”

“What were we going to do, Mercie? Kill them?“

“Each one you release comes back at you twelvefold. We came here to be away from the Empire, away from the politics and the authoritarianism and the mysticism. She’s… she’s going to have the Inquisitors all over this planet. We…” Mercie halted and her energy dropped. “We aren’t far enough,” she resumed, a little slower, almost defeated. “We didn’t go far enough.”

“There is nowhere that is far enough, Mercie,” Rana replied. “They will always be hunting Force users. You know that.”

“Yes, I do, and that is why we can’t afford your damned compassion. They’re ravenous, Rana. They can smell it. They can smell it from parsecs away. They count on a Jedi’s compassion. It makes them reveal themselves. I’d bet everything on that.”

“I was careful, Mercie. I took stock of what was happening before I chose to intervene. I knew she was no friend of the Empire. Neither were her pursuers. I knew that there were no spies following.”

“They have mouths, Rana. And how long do you think it will be before they run afoul of Imperial networks and draw attention to themselves? What if they decide to use a story about some old Jedi woman to barter for their release? I mean, for us to be so careful, only to throw it all away over some kid we don’t know… who might just be some troublemaker, anyway… I mean, I don’t even go into town, because I know how much a red skinned Zabrak stands out, around here.”

It was true. Canso was not one of Lothal’s major ports. Although it had a spaceport, it was still a moderate oceanside town that was traveled only because it was one of the few spaceports on the southern hemisphere, and at the nexus of several planet-side shipping routes. It didn’t command the intergalactic traffic of major locales like Jalath or the unimaginatively-named Capital City.

“That’s your choice, Mercie. There’s plenty of different alien sentients around here. You wouldn’t stand out the way you think you would.”

“They’re always hunting for women like us, Rana. If not because of Jedi nonsense, then because we’re different. You never know what will draw their attention, and have the Inquisitors banging down our –"

When Alack rounded the corner, the two women quieted and watched her cautiously.

Their home was relatively modest, carved into the same sandstone rock of the cavern, for the most part, with a curtained wooden wall facing outward. The ambient light of dusk filtered through the canvas drapes.

“Now that we can see you in better light, you’re obviously not Pantoran,” Mercie remarked. “You have Chiss eyes. ‘Alack Morah’ isn’t a very Chiss name, though.”

The small hallway opened up into their sitting room, floored with rich coloured wood and furnished with two chairs and a couch arranged roughly 60 degrees so that they roughly faced a coffee table in the center. Small ornaments lined shelves along the walls, along with a few small paintings and carvings.

“Morah'lac'klutarn,” the girl explained. “Alack is a core name, but shortened according to Serrennian convention. I’ll be honest with you: my parents posed as traders, but were really spies. They were on Serenno to keep an eye on the Confederacy, on behalf of the Klutarn family. But my mother shielded me from all of that, so I really don’t know much more than that. She said she always hated the politics. Found them exhausting, with all the master plans and controlled destinies.”

She continued. “So, I’m being entirely up-front with you. You haven’t been the same with me, though. You keep denying that you’re Jedi, and yet I saw for myself how Rana handled Kessl and his boys. Are you a Jedi also?” she asked Mercie.

Mercie cursed something unintelligible. Then, “I am sure as kark not some kriffing Jedi.” She practically spat the words out. “But the Jedi are gone. They’ve been wiped out.”

“Not all of them,” Alack asserted. “The Imperials have been hunting for them, but a few persist. I hear rumours. And when Lothal was liberated, I knew I had to come here. I knew that some of you would have been drawn to this planet after the rebels forced the Empire to vacate.”

“If you’re looking for anyone associated with the Spectres, then you’re on the wrong hemisphere,” Mercie growled.

“I was a Jedi,” Rana interrupted, correcting the girl. “It was a long time ago.”

“Rana!” Mercie protested. A kettle began to whistle in the kitchen, and after a pause, a defeated Mercie decided to tend to it.

“Oh hush,” the older woman chided, as the Zabrak stood to leave the room. “You know I’m a good judge of character, and I know we can trust her.”

Rana turned back toward Alack. “Anyway, come on in,” she motioned toward a cushioned futon in the sitting room. “Have a seat. As I was saying, I’m not really up to much anymore, as I’m sure you can see.”

“I knew it!” Alack had followed her signal and sat on the sofa, while the old women adjusted herself on her chair. “I haven’t just been searching for a Jedi, I’ve had this intuition all my life. I’ve always suspected it might be ability with the Force. Things like foresight, precision, insight… I’ve explored what I can, I just don’t know how to develop them further. It’s hard to do, on my own.”

“Are you here to ask me to train you?” the old woman asked.

“Well, I probably would have, but helping my brother is more urgent, right n…” Alack snapped to alertness, and reached up to snatch a rice cake that was about to soar past her ear out of the air. She turned to look where it had come from.

The Zabrak had hurled it from behind her. Mercie had rounded the corner and re-entered the room. She had been carrying a tray with more rice cakes, three cups and a kettle filled with moogan tea, and had set it down briefly to lob the tasty projectile.

Mercie’s eyes were squinted slightly like she was scrutinizing the Chiss girl. “Well, the foresight checks out,” she muttered.

For a moment, the two older women were silent but their attention was on each other, as though there were some sort of silent conversation taking place between them.

Alack frowned. She didn’t like being tested like that.

Mercie proceeded to pour drinks for them, Alack first, then Rana, then herself, before sitting in the remaining chair.

Alack noticed that the old woman no longer wore a veil, but was wearing a visor, similar to the cybernetics that blind people used. “Do you mind if I ask if…” she wasn’t sure how to ask it diplomatically. “Are you blind, or something?”

“She’s Miraluka,” Mercie replied on Rana’s behalf, somewhat dryly.

Alack became slightly animated. “Oh! I know about Miraluka! You see using the Force, right? How does that work?”

“That,” Mercie almost smiled, something that seemed out of character for her at this point, “is a very good question.”

The corner of Rana’s mouth displayed a brief frown, before answering. “There are different levels of Miraluka sight,” she replied. “For Miraluka who are least attuned to the Force, they have to rely on more sensory input. Base sight is more akin to sonar, using ambient sound to create a sort of volumetric sense of the room, although the range can be limited without generating your own deliberative sound, in order to reach greater depth and distance. For those who are more attuned, though, we can also take in the sensory aurae of the Force surrounding us, in a similar fashion. And for the most attuned, we can even take in the direct visual input of other living creatures around us. The latter, though, is a discipline that Miraluka tend to only learn if they’re living among sighted beings, and not primarily in Miraluka communities.”

“What, you mean you can see using our eyes?” Alack blurted.  She wondered what that would be like, seeing by looking back at herself.

“Something like that,” Rana answered. “But in order to get a reasonable perspective, you need to take in as many contributory views as you can.”

“At the same time?”

Rana smiled.

“If you’re really sincere about wanting to learn the ways of the Force,” Mercie said cryptically, almost as some sort of dare, “then this is the part where you ask the question...”

Alack was a little annoyed by Mercie’s interruptions, but said nothing, trying to remain polite. If Mercie wasn’t a Jedi, and was simply taking care of Rana, then Alack couldn’t really think of any reason she’d have much of value to add to the conversation. She especially didn’t know what ‘question’ it was that the Zabrak was prodding her to ask. So instead, she followed a tangent.

“You don’t see too many Miraluka around,” Alack commented. “But I remember one Miraluka who visited Serenno.

“Don’t get too wrapped up in the pageantry,” Ralock had cautioned her. “This is wartime diplomacy, and they are the enemy.”

The blue girl danced around excitedly, ignoring her brother’s admonition. “They’re so pretty!”

“This fixation you have with Jedi is absurd,” Ralock continued. “Even the Count himself, when he left that order, said that they were a regressive organization, too wrapped up in mysticism to maintain order in this galaxy.”

Being only six years of age, Alack hardly cared about the politics, however. She had heard that the Jedi were magic, and she had been discovering a little magic, herself. She had no one else to look to who represented what a life of that magic could look like.

She darted off into the crowd, attempting to get closer to the delegation as they would pass. The throng of Serennians had come out to see the diplomat that had come to negotiate Serenno’s role in the Republic, in light of its dissent, and the Confederacy that was tearing the Senate’s vision apart. From politicos and celebrity-watchers to protesters and security, a cavalcade of people had turned out for the arrival of Senator Bel Iblis and the two Jedi who provided security for him.

The arrivals strode closer, having touched down only five minutes earlier, and been greeted by House Serenno’s emissaries. They approached, first the Senator and the local diplomats, and then after a few strides of distance, the two Jedi women. The Jedi wore plain, modest robes, but might as well have been princesses, in Alack’s eyes.

The older of the two – Jedi Master Stass Allie, Alack would later learn from the local media – strode along confidently, the Tholothian’s bright smile standing out in the contrast against her dark skin, which was a shimmering brown with hints of blue highlights, depending on how the light caught it. She had white tendrils where Alack was accustomed to seeing hair, and she had it gathered across her hairline down to the nape of her neck with a leather band. The girl could swear that the tendrils sparkled.

The younger Jedi wore the braid of a padawan, hanging down over her right shoulder. Her robes, slightly lighter than her Master’s, looked freshly cleaned but with a fresh scuff of dirt on one elbow that had been overlooked before they disembarked. She had long, bright wavy orange hair with golden highlights and occasional flecks of red. Across her eyes was a band of brown cloth, suggesting that she was blind.

Ralock caught up to Alack as the dignitaries were passing

“Nonsense,” Master Stass said quietly to her padawan – not quite in a whisper, but close to it – “The Jedi Council has agreed, as do I and Master Bultar, that you have the grace and tact required for diplomacy, and are better suited to this, while it would be wiser for Barriss to train with Master Luminara. You will be perfect for the role. You need only remember when to resort to your grace, rather than your honesty…”

The padawan seemed to notice Alack, turned her face toward her and gave the child a pleasant smile, and then she and her master moved on. “I hope you’re right,” the student replied, as they passed beyond the range of the blue girl’s hearing.

“She saw me!” Alack bounced a little. It was hard to be sure, but the smile seemed directed toward her despite the Jedi’s blindness. “How could she see me?”

“She’s Miraluka,” Ralock explained inadequately. “That’s just her kind…”

“She was with Master Stass Allie, if I remember correctly. Shirana was her name, I th-”

Rana stretched back with that same smile Alack had seen years before, and the young Chiss woman suddenly realized the similarity in name.

“Shirana Nyst,” Rana acknowledged.

“You can’t possibly be her,” Alack scrutinized. “She looked to be only about twelve or fourteen years older than me. You would have to be something like twenty years younger, maybe more, to be her!”

“I am not as old as you think,” she smiled. “But life hasn’t been all that good to my body, either. And Jedi… sometimes they age quickly.” She took a long sip of her tea. “But thank you. It is good to know that someone remembers me. Even if the Jedi Council didn’t.”

Alack looked puzzled. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand the reference. How could they have forgotten…”

Mercie interrupted. “Shirana spent a number of years imprisoned on one of Iego’s moons, along with a Sith assassin. The Council abandoned her.” She sort of snarled the latter sentence.

“Really? Why? What happened?”

The pleasantness had disappeared from Rana’s face. “It was… not a good time for me. Let’s talk about something else. Like why you would come here all the way from Serenno, and why you would need the help of an old, feeble Jedi.”

“And why you know so much about Jedi, and how you found us,” Mercie added. She didn’t hide her suspicions. “Chiss are notorious for sympathizing with this new Empire,” she accused. “And for being distrustful and antipathetic toward the Force, for that matter. So why should we trust you?“

“Mercie…” Rana interrupted.

“No, that’s fair,” Alack admitted. “Obviously, not all Chiss think alike, but there does tend to be a cultural bias toward rigid order, and against the perceived chaos of the Force. It hasn't always been that way. In Cheunh, Force users were once called the Ozyly-Esehembo. The Sky Walkers. It was a reference to hyperspace travel, viewing the Force as the currents in the stars that make hyperspace travel possible. But the Force also brought tumult, and unpredictability. And that’s why we learned to distrust and shun it.”

“But that’s… that’s sort of the reason, I guess.” Alack continued, rubbing behind her neck because of a residual ache from the chase earlier that day, and the fall from the speeder. Then, she took a sip of moogan tea. “I discovered an affinity for the Force sort of by accident. And, well, I didn’t know what to do with it. But it didn’t feel right to just suppress it, like there’s so much pressure to do. I refused to feel ashamed of it. And when the person you are is in direct conflict with what your culture teaches you to be… well, you learn to question things. A lot. That’s when I started reading everything I could about Jedi, and experimenting with Force abilities.”

“I actually learned quite a lot about the Jedi,” she continued. “For example, did you know that it was a Jedi named Allya who was banished to Dathomir and became the first mother to the witches there?"

"That's a legend," Mercie interjected. "As with all legends, there might be a smattering of truth there, or there might not. We don't have enough surviving information to determine if it can be accepted as part of canonical history."

Alack looked at her puzzled, and somewhat annoyed at being contradicted. "What, are you some kind of historian?"

Mercie shrugged. "I spent several years as a... um..." she seemed to be reassessing her choice of words... "caregiver to an archivist who only had me for company, and who liked to talk a lot."

Alack: "Oh! So you were a caregiver for an archivist and now you're a caregiver for a Jedi!" She said it as though she were simply working out the relationship dynamic between the two women – but on a subtler level she also wanted to minimize the value of Mercie's input, by reminding her that she was not an actual Jedi, and all.

The two older women exchanged glances – Mercie with a look and nod, and Rana with a tilt of her head to one side, in acknowledgment of something. They seemed to find the comment somewhat amusing.

"Something like that," Mercie answered.

“Anyway, as for how I found you,” Alack continued, “that was part guesswork, and part sensory. After the galaxy heard about the Spectres and the Liberation here, I was sure that people resisting the Empire would gravitate to Lothal as a beacon of rebellion. Of course, I was hoping to land closer to the capital, but once we landed here, I could sense someone who was strong in the Force, so I called out to you.”

“So you already said. But if you were looking for a beacon of rebellion, maybe you should have tried Yavin 4,” Mercie commented.

“What’s at Yavin 4?”

“Haven’t you heard? It was a massive embarrassment for the Empire. Trillions of credits invested in making that kriffing planet-killing moon, only for it to be blown to bits by some rebels.”

“You mean someone destroyed it? That’s incredible!” Alack was visibly jubilant. And then, almost as instantly, visibly apprehensive.

After a moment of terror in her eyes, Alack collected herself. “Kriff, I hope Ralock wasn’t stationed there...” Alack paused for a few moments, collecting her thoughts, and trying to put the dread aside. “Maybe you wouldn’t understand.”

This time, it was Mercie who seemed to soften. “Actually, I understand how you feel quite well. I was separated from my sister at a very young age, and I’ve been trying to find her ever since. Things like this are not easy tasks, however.  The galaxy is vast, and I’ve more or less given up hope.”

The blue girl was starting to resent the Zabrak speaking up, instead of the person she was trying to convince. She spoke to Rana, instead: “Listen, I need to get my brother back, and he… his field of study is quintessence. It’s a kind of dark matter. They said it could greatly expand the capabilities of a weapon. Something about it being a star killer. I thought it was an exaggeration at the time, but after Alderaan, maybe this is literal? Could they really kill an entire star? Or if they’re expanding on that, maybe a whole star system…?”

She paused and looked at the two women intently. “I need help. I need your help, Rana.”

“I hate to tell you this,” Mercie stated, “but Rana can barely walk, some days. She’s not up to rescuing your brother, and she’s certainly not able to singlehandedly thwart a superweapon of that magnitude. And for what it’s worth, she came to Lothal to escape all of that, well before the Liberation. She’s not here to rally with others to fight against the Empire, and not a soldier for hire. You need some other hero.”

Shirana Nyst leaned forward, looking at Alack somewhat somberly, finally replying for herself. “It’s true. I’m sorry. This is far beyond my capabilities.” It wasn’t the answer the young Chiss woman was hoping for.

“Then train me,” Alack bargained. “I have some Force ability. You’ve heard me call out to you with it. I’ve been learning some things along the way. I just… it would be a lot easier to learn it from someone than by trial and error.”

Rana leaned back, considering.

“Please! There still need to be Jedi in our universe. Someone has to fight for peace,” Alack pleaded.

“Peace?” Mercie rolled her eyes again. “The sheer audacity of fighting for peace. More wars have been fought in the name of peace than over any religion, race, doctrine or creed. It’s not peace… it’s only the passions of men who have the idea that their vision for the galaxy should reign supreme.”

Mercie’s glowing yellow eyes practically burned into Alack’s, imprinting themselves. “No, I’m sorry, but peace is a lie.”

----------

It was near dawn, and Alack was roused from her sleep, roughly.

“Who did you tell you were coming here?” Mercie demanded.

It took her a moment to gather her bearings. The two women didn’t have a guest room, so as the night had drawn late, they had offered Alack the futon to sleep on.

“Who?” she demanded again, not wanting to wait for an answer.

Rana was on the move, too. She was gathering up a few things from the sitting room, then opened a stone panel in the fireplace, removing a small metal box that had been hidden behind it.

“No one. I didn’t tell anyone I was coming out here,” she struggled to answer, wondering what the sudden panic was about. “And anyway, we came in through the caves,” she reminded them. “I don’t even really know where ‘here’ is.”

Mercie wasn’t satisfied with that. She took Alack’s shoulder, spun her around and lifted her hair, seeming to look for something.

“Mercie!” Rana shouted.

“They might have implanted a tracker in–“

“It was probably the Trandoshan and his crew,” Rana said. “It has to be. They mentioned an old blind woman and the caves, and it didn’t take people much to work out the rest…” Rana fished two lightsabers from the small box hidden in the brick work of the fireplace, and put them in a pouch hanging from her waist cord.

“Kark on a platter!” Mercie stopped her harassment of the Chiss girl and cursed. “I told you, Rana. Each one you release comes back at you twelvefold.” Then she looked back toward the blue girl. “Get ready to go. They’ve found us!”

“What?” Alack was confused. “Who found us? What’s happening?”

“What’s happening is that you’ve led the Empire right to us.” Mercie was angrier. Alack didn’t think it was possible for the Zabrak’s red skin to get any redder, but she was clearly wrong.

“Wait… they have no presence on Lothal. They –”

“They’ll make a presence, if they suspect a Jedi is here,” Rana explained. “Usually it’s not this quickly, but they might have had a contingent in the vicinity. Either they followed you, or your friends back there have been drawing attention, or your call for help yesterday alerted someone. Whichever the reason, we have to leave.” By this time, Mercie had disappeared into the bedroom, gathering some more things.

Alack put her small backpack in order quickly – she didn’t have much with her as it was, a change of clothes, a few credits and a bit of food – and tried to mouth an apology. She started to tear up a bit, suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. “I didn’t mean to –”

Rana grabbed her arm, interrupting. “We have to go. Now. Get into the basement. The way we came in. Door down the hallway, on the right. Watch the stairs.” Alack rushed to do what she said, and Shirana followed closely behind. “Mercie?” she shouted. “We’re going!”

“I’ll be right there!” came the reply.

Despite the panic, there seemed to be some preparedness to the entire exercise. Mercie and Shirana seemed to already know exactly what they needed to get, and weren’t simply dashing in a panic. Each step had a purpose.

Descending the stairs into the basement, Alack she saw furniture sliding, seemingly unbidden, moving out of the way of the back wall, which slid open to reveal the tunnel that they first arrived in.

The furniture had appeared to move on its own. Likewise, the false wall, which looked like it must have been quite heavy, being stone, about five inches thick. Alack knew that Shirana must have been moving them with the Force, but the sudden and seeming independent movement seemed surreal. The Chiss girl and the old woman – carrying her staff but occasionally using it to steady or support herself – slipped into the tunnel. Footfalls sounded behind them, and Mercie caught up, carrying a sack, a backpack and a cloak draped over her forearm. The stone moved again after Mercie passed, settling back into its place in the wall.

“Keep moving,” Mercie said to Alack. “We can’t just stay here.”

Small sparks lit up like a tiny string of light threading down the tunnel, illuminating the way. “Are you doing that?” Alack asked Rana. It must have been something they had previously set up for a situation like this, she mused.

“Just go,” the older woman barked.

The passage was narrow, but tall enough for the women to stand, and winding deeper into the earth and stretching for some distance. As they proceeded further, the passage joined to a larger expanse, and the soil below their feet became moist and then muddy, suggesting that they had joined up at a point where an underground spring sometimes flooded into a natural cavern.

After they had proceeded far enough, Rana turned and looked back toward the home. Then, her shoulders drooped, sagging under the dejection of what she was leaving behind.

Mercie put her arm around Rana and held her for a moment, affectionately. “Rana, we have to go,” she reminded.

“I know,” the old woman sighed. And then, Rana stretched her arm out for a few moments. Alack could feel a slight tremble in the rock, growing into a stressed sort of rumble. The cavern started to shake. Then, dust and particles fell, followed by parts of the roof, collapsing to cut their home off from the remainder of the tunnels, and prevent any pursuit. They resumed the trek.

The string of sparklight threaded on, and Alack continued to follow it. “How do you even know there was anyone coming? I still haven’t heard anyo–”

The ground spasmed with a massive jolt, and the cavern shook, with something apparently cataclysmic taking place behind them. The three women kept moving, faster now, toward the tunnel’s yet-unseen exit, the string of light providing a clear path for them.

“That,” Shirana said, “wasn’t me. What you’re hearing are missiles from two walkers that they dispatched to bombard us.”

“How are you seeing this? Is this a Miraluka thing?” Alack asked. The women didn’t answer.

They continued on.

“If she can do all of this,” Alack whispered to the Zabrak woman, “how can she possibly need a caregiver?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” Mercie winced. After a sigh, she added, “She’s drawing her strength and energy from the Force. It’s not infinite, though, and she’s not superhuman. It’s going to catch up with her, and there will be a heavy price to pay.”

“What is the Force, anyway?” Alack asked. “I mean, I can use it, I can move rocks and things…”

Mercie rolled her intense yellow eyes back for a moment and mumbled dryly: “Impressive.”

Alack missed the sarcasm. “Thank you. Anyway, I can use it, but I’m not really sure what it is. Has she ever explained to you what it is? It seems like such a mystery.”

Mercie seemed to find the question amusing, but Alack couldn’t understand why. They kept making their way through the caves.

“The Force flows through every living thing. It is a collective essence that all life in the galaxy shares. It is the spark in all of us,” Rana spoke.

Without falling behind, Mercie reached into a pouch of her belt and produced a rolled cannagar. She cupped the thin cigarra in her hand, put the end to her mouth and turned away. There was a flicker and when she turned back it had been lit. Idly, Alack wondered where the match or ignition source was that she’d used, but Mercie proceeded to continue Rana’s thoughts.

“This isn’t really the time or place. But if you’re really in tune with the Force,” she said, bits of smoke escaping her mouth as she did, “the first thing you should be learning is to reach inside yourself, and feel your body, and then reach outward. Feel the blades of grass; the trees; the birds. At first, it will be like dipping in a pool. Later, you’ll discover that the pool is an ocean.”

Eventually, the path sloped back upward, and the gradual ambient light of morning became discernible. The thread of sparklight fizzled out, and the three emerged from a natural cave mouth, which looked over the dockyard. Alack recognized the port, which was where her chase of the previous day had begun. Fortunately, she didn’t see Kessl’s ship anywhere.

“There,” Rana pointed. “The YT-2400.” She had indicated a Corellian-built light freighter, with scorch marks along the curved face of the disc-shaped craft – the Wobani Pathfinder, it was labeled. The boarding ramp was down, and a Nautolan figure was carting some crates down on a hoversled. “I’ve been watching them since we left the house. I have a good feeling about the captain.”

Alack scrunched up her face in disbelief. “That’s impossible. You can’t have been watching them for that long, at that distance.”

“She can do a lot of things,” Mercie replied, slightly annoyed.

“How is that possible?” Alack blurted.

“There. That’s the question you should have asked Rana last night,” Mercie commented. “But there’s no time, now. You’ll just have to trust her.”

They weaved their way down the hillside, down into the dockyard and toward the freighter. “We don’t know who they’re looking for,” Rana commented. “You, for sure,” she said to Alack, “and probably me. I don’t know if they have an ID on Mercie, but she’d probably be the best person to go over and book passage.”

“Book passage? I don’t think this is that sort of a situation,” Alack interjected. “You have a good read of this captain? You want on this ship?”

“Yes,” Rana replied. “But we’re not going to stow –”

Alack had already darted off between the loaded skiffs, weaving her way toward the cargo lift and watching for a moment to slip in, out of view.

Mercie cursed. “We should just let her go,” she said to Rana and then took a long drag from her cigarra.

“This is still our best option, though,” the older woman replied.

“Fark,” the red woman winced. She tossed the smouldering cannagar, and then they followed.

Then.

Golg, 20 BBY

Shirana still hadn’t figured out what it was that their captor based his daily choice of victim on.

Each morning (they assumed it was morning, anyway, given that the dim lighting never changed), they fought, attempted to trap, attempted to hide, tried to flee, and each morning he subdued them both by electrifying the floor, and then made a deliberate pick. It wasn’t a specific alternation of victim, or ease of access, or amount of resistance, or anything that she was able to determine thus far that seemed to show any consistent pattern in who he chose. It was simply predetermined, it seemed.

That was probably a good thing, because if they had determined a pattern, her fellow captive would probably have sabotaged her so that she would have to deal with all of the punishment. She wouldn’t have been able to stand that.

There were still so many questions. They still didn’t understand why they were subjected to all of this pain, and what purpose it was supposed to serve. They still didn’t understand what was blocking their access to the Force, and if that connection could ever be regained.

And they didn’t know how long they would be here.

One thing was certain, though: the Jedi had abandoned her.

No one had come. She had thought in the first few weeks that it was only a matter of time, but days had grown to weeks – maybe even a month or two, it was hard to say how long, since there was no way to mark the passage of time – and there had been nothing. It’s not as though nobody knew where she was – she had been sent to this accursed moon of Iego by the Council – it’s just that as far as she could tell, no one had ever followed up to see how she was or to find out what had happened. She didn’t know if there was a reason for this, or if it were simply indifference. If the latter, it seemed totally out of character for them. But ultimately, these were just more questions for which there were no answers.

She thought on this as she cleaned the Sith woman’s wounds. Often, before returning to their cell, their limp bodies would be hosed down with water – the closest they could get to bathing – but it meant that they would be returned to the cell with wet clothing and things that could be used to clean their wounds with. It was hardly hygienic – quite disgusting, actually – but it was the best they could do in these circumstances.

The evenings (assumedly) were still the same. When the dark woman was taken then returned to the cell, Shirana would tend to her injuries, cleaning her abrasions, resetting her joints if needed, and then – for a few minutes at least – just trying to comfort her, and soothe her after the ordeal she had just suffered. And when Shirana was taken, tortured and returned to the cell, the other woman would ignore her, then later check to see if any joints needed to be reset, and then leave her on the cold stone of the floor suffering alone as she tried to regain her strength.

It wasn’t fair, of course. None of it was fair. But she would still tend to the woman’s wounds when it was her turn, and then try to bring her back to the moment with a little tenderness. There was no reason to do it – no reciprocation and certainly no obligation – but she did it anyway, or at least up to the point where the woman would push her away, rejecting any further help, annoyed.

This night, when the masked woman finally regained her voice, she had to ask. “Why do you do this?”

Shirana thought for a minute. “Because we’re all we have,” she answered. “Because there is no justice here, but this is the one thing I can do to try to change that.”

“Huh,” the woman scoffed. “You Jedi and your kriffing sense of ‘justice.’ My parents were lured to their deaths by promises of wealth. I was sold to brutes and grew up a slave, in Hutt worlds. The Pykes bought me and trained me to be an assassin. Never, in all my years, have I seen your so-called ‘justice.’ It does not exist,” she hissed.

Shirana was checking the discs in her back to make sure they were still aligned well enough. She thought on this for a moment, surprised at the woman’s sudden candor.

“Justice – like love – isn’t just some spirit that exists around us or some cosmic balance that sets things right,” she answered. “It’s a choice we have to make, in every moment, against all the reasons not to.” She considered the woman, shivering and still in a little bit of physical shock. “I can’t even fix this moment for us, let alone make your life right. But I can do this little thing, at least. And so I will.”

After she had finished tending to the woman’s wounds, Shirana took a few moments to look her over. She stroked her skin gently, applying very subtle, almost affectionate squeezes.

“Are you having fun?” the woman sniffed.

“Well, mostly, I’m looking for missed wounds,” Shirana answered. “I see better in this light with my hands.” She still hadn’t told her about her blindness, so she decided to make it sound like it was about light.

The Sith said nothing for a few moments, so she continued.

“And I know,” Shirana added, “after my turns enduring this torture, something I need is a little softness. To bring me back. Some reassurance. Human touch. It’s important.”

“If you want me to start having feelings for you,” her cellmate growled, “it’s not going to work.” She found her strength, and pushed herself away with her feet, sliding over toward the opposite wall.

Shirana let her go. “I’m just thinking in the moment,” she reassured. “We’re all alone. We’re all we have. This is survival. Nothing more.”

“You lie,” the woman said. “I can sense it. I know a touch of desire when I feel it.”

Shirana sighed. She wasn’t wrong. But it was still secondary to keeping their sanity.

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: Twitchy Fingers

Now.

Nar Shaddaa, 3 ABY

“Hurry!” the Chiss girl chided.

She skulked adjacent to the rear equipment lift as Rana and Mercie approached, being careful to keep out of sight. Then, she disappeared up into the YT-2400 freighter.

When the two older women followed her inside, they found themselves in the Engineering room of the craft. Instead of going into the main corridor, Alack darted to a second doorway and slipped inside. Mercie and Rana trailed close behind her.

The room they found themselves in was extremely humid, and the floor was somewhat slick. There was also a pungent, swampy odor that they all winced at. The room was apparently someone’s living quarters, but the climate control left something to be desired.

“Ew. We’re not hiding here, are we?” Mercie balked.

“No, give me a second,” Alack answered. She had stowed away on a similar craft before. “There should be a panel in the back. Ah! Found it.”

Tucked behind a lounger that looked like it was made for a Hutt, she opened a panel in the wall that led into a small corridor. They had to crouch a little inside, but were able to slip in, close the panel behind them, and move a little further back. Fortunately, the smell did not follow them.

“There really isn’t much room in the maintenance ducts on these,” Alack explained, “but some of these freighters have a little storage tunnel between Engineering and the escape pod. It’s a customized hidden space used for smuggling. It’s usually heavily insulated, providing a bit of soundproofing. Obviously, the ship’s captain and crew know it’s here, but the Lothalian authorities and any last-minute inspectors would likely miss it. We should be able to get off-world, at least. Of course, if there’s no food in here, then we’ll have to venture out, and avoiding getting spaced might be another matter.”

At the end of the storage tunnel was enough space for the three of them to sit in relative comfort. They were lucky: the Wobani Pathfinder wasn’t currently using the hidden space for much in the way of cargo – just some items in storage that they could sit on.

As soon as they had settled in, Alack had more questions for them.

“You were kidding, right? You hadn’t really watched the captain all the way from that distance, did you?” She at least had enough sense to whisper.

“I scanned the whole port,” Rana replied, confidently, but tired. She had leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor when they first settled in. Mercie and Alack sat down on either side of her.

Shirana was showing signs of weariness, now, and it sometimes looked like she was trembling a little. Alack was stunned by just how quickly the weariness seemed to overtake the old woman. “When I stretch myself… I can see for miles… and much at once.”

“Can you teach me to do that?” Alack asked. “Please. I would love for you to train me. Jedi are needed in this galaxy, and I need to find my brother. There are so many reasons…”

Rana paused, then gathered her strength, and leaned forward toward Alack, invading her space, almost head-to-head in a stance that seemed to strike deep into her soul. “You cost us our home. You led the Empire to us. You cost us everything, and could have cost us our lives.” She wasn’t speaking with anger, but with a kind of matter-of-fact calm that made her words feel even colder. Alack was not prepared for how bitter the woman’s reply would be, given the calm way she delivered it. “I will not train you. Once we are safely away from the Empire’s gaze, we will be leaving you at a port to find your own way to your next destination.”

Then, she leaned back against the ship wall, winced as though in some pain, and let sleep take her. Alack was startled by how suddenly it did.

Mercie and Alack sat quietly for some time, with Rana’s laboured breaths being the only sound between them.

“We should have brought some food,” Alack whispered. “And something to pee in, because I doubt they’ll just let us use their fresher…”

“Do you really have to talk so much?” Mercie asked with a little bit of a whispered snarl.

“Honestly,” Alack replied, “I’ve got nobody. Sometimes, it’s good to have someone to speak with.”

“Yes, I forgot. Imperials killed your family,” Mercie noted. She seemed way too dismissive for Alack’s liking. Didn’t she realize how horrible it was?

“They killed my parents,” Alack corrected. “They took my brother. They destroyed my home...” She realized she was being defensive, and forgetting what had just taken place, but she was also angry at the red woman’s indifferent attitude.

“My parents were murdered shortly after I was born,” the Zabrak said. “I was separated from my sister and never saw her again. I was raised a slave.” Her stare was icy, even moreso than Rana’s words had been. “There are worse injustices than the ones you’ve lived through, so get over yourself. Rana’s right: you cost us everything. You’ll find no pity here.”

Alack dropped her gaze to the corrugated steel of the storage room floor. “Listen, I’m sorry. I would never wish that on anyone, and certainly didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“No, of course not,” Mercie said, a bit of sarcasm slipping out. “You only got what you wanted: a Jedi who might be motivated to help you, out of necessity.”

“That’s not… I honestly didn’t want this to happen. I promise you that. I mean… I think more than anything, I’d just like her to train me. I wouldn’t be able to rescue Ralock as quickly as I’d like, but it’s still something, at least.”

“You don’t want it badly enough,” Mercie stated.

“That’s not true!” She was emphatic, but kept her tone hushed. “I want it more than almost anything. If my brother’s situation wasn’t so bad, I’d have probably set out to train anyway, but this has made things much more urgent.”

“You weren’t curious enough to ask the question,” Mercie commented.

“What question? Last night? Why are you so hung up about that?” Alack was puzzled.

“You’re Force-sensitive, and you’d just learned about something that completely revolutionizes how we think about the Force. That kind of sight is not something that is limited to Miraluka, and learning to embrace it is the difference between toying with the Force as some sort of mystically intuitive variable and mastering the Force in a way that is beyond what most Jedi have ever managed. And you didn’t even show a sign of the curiosity or ambition to investigate further. In my mind, that’s not a great sign of someone genuinely wanting to learn.”

Alack tilted her head to the side, slightly puzzled. “You’re not Jedi,” she pointed out, half-quizzical.

“No, and would you please stop asking that,” Mercie hissed, still in the hushed tone of someone not wanting to be found stowed in a storage tunnel. She hoped they would take off soon.

“Then what do you know about it?” Alack asked.

“I told you before,” Mercie replied, with a look of distaste. “There are other ways of knowing the Force.”

“Like what?” Alack asked. “There’s Jedi tradition. There’s Sith – but there are only two of those, the Emperor and Darth Vader. And there’s grey Jedi, and you don’t seem the ‘balance’ -worshipping type.”

Mercie rolled her eyes. “There are ways of knowing the Force, beyond those. What about the Daughters of Dathomir? Or the Dagoyan Masters? The Zeffo Sages? The mystics of Voss? But anyway, why do you need to follow some irrational code to know and use the Force? All that will do is ensure that you repeat their failures. Learn for yourself. Have a bit of scientific curiosity.”

“Science? The Force is sort of antithetical to science.”

“Only because people treat it that way,” Mercie replied.

“So I suppose you could teach me?” Alack wasn’t even sure herself if she was genuinely asking or being sarcastic.

“I can teach,” the red woman replied. “Whether you can learn is a separate question. I have my doubts. You have some skill, but not the temperament of a student.”

“Then train me,” Alack asked, this time more genuinely. She’d accept help from anywhere, at this point. “At least until we get wherever we’re going.”

Mercie stared at her sternly, scrutinizing, for over a minute.

Finally, Mercie replied. “A few ground rules. You will stop asking questions when I tell you to stop. You do not question my decisions. Got it?”

“But I’ll need to ask questions…” Alack protested.

“When I let you. But you stop when I tell you to stop.”

“Okay.”

“And there are certain things you are not to bring up around Rana,” Mercie continued. “You are not to talk about Iego. Or ask about what happened during her imprisonment or how she escaped the culling of the Jedi.”

“Can I ask you?”

“No.”

“I mean,” Alack continued, “I have to ask, because there’s one thing you’d said that will bother me if I don’t know for certain. You said there was a Sith imprisoned with her. Did he turn her, or something? Or did he hurt her? Because she’s sure changed a lot from what I know about the Jedi.”

“She,” Mercie corrected. “The Sith was her lover. She died during their escape.” Alack was a little surprised that the response was so candid. “I tell you this only because I want you to understand how important it is to not bring this up with her.

“Oh,” Alack voiced, with regret. “I’m sorry. I’ll never bring it up, again.” She looked at the old woman sleeping uncomfortably, leaning back against the wall and against the side of a crate, the corner supporting her precariously. She wondered about the pain she had experienced on the Iegoan moon, which led to her hiding out on a quiet little planet on the far side of the outer rim.

The door to the cargo hold flew open, and the captain of the Wobani Pathfinder barged in, followed by her Nautolan crew member. She trained her blaster pistols on the three women huddled in the storage room. The jarring sound of the door had startled Shirana awake.

“Alright, you had better tell me what you’re doing on my ship, and you’d better make it fast, because I’ve got very twitchy fingers…” she threatened.

It took the three women a few moments to assess their situation. “We need to get offworld,” Mercie stated.

“I don’t take passengers,” the captain replied. “Too much trouble.” By this time, more crew members appeared behind them – an Ongree, a Selonian and what looked to be an out-of-place retro-styled waitress droid. “Are you the reason all these bucketheads are crawling all over the shipyards?” she continued her line of questioning. Then, her eyes settled on Alack. She was cute, the captain thought to herself, but she was likely trouble. “You I recognize. You stole a speeder from the Trandoshan.”

“His crew were going to kill me,” Alack replied. “I had no choice. Listen, I won’t lie to you: you’re right, those Imperials are looking for us. Rana here is a former Jedi, and –”

“Oh, kark no, I don’t need a whole mess of trouble with Inquisitors,” the captain mumbled. She almost recoiled, and it looked like she was about to immediately leave and draw the attention of the Empire’s soldiers.

“Nobody saw us get on,” Mercie stated. “I can promise you that. But the moment we disembark, even if it’s for you to turn us in, they’ll be all over this ship. The Empire doesn’t exactly have a great track record of being nice to random informants that they haven’t groomed for themselves. And I’m willing to bet that there’s probably some cargo on here you wouldn’t want them to know about.”

The seeming second-in-command said something in Nautila to the captain, who paused, and fixed her stare on the Zabrak, considering her words.

“But,” Mercie continued, “we’ll be happy to part ways with you at your next stop, wherever it is, with no trouble from us. We just need safe passage away from Canso.”

The captain was reluctant. “If the Empire is going to venture to Lothal to look for you, then you’re too much trouble for my taste. And I certainly don’t have the fuel to take you wherever you want to go.”

“Where is your next port?” Shirana asked.

“My next shipment is bound for Nar Shaddaa,” the woman answered.

“Nar Shaddaa would be perfect,” Mercie stated.

The Nautolan began speaking again, also. Her language was lilting, replete with vowels and almost lyrical. The captain obviously understood it.

The captain made a sour face, but thought a moment. It was clear that she didn’t like the situation she was in.

Finally, she spoke. “Okay, but you’re staying in here until we’re offworld.” She eventually sheathed her blasters. Her eyes wandered back to the blue girl.

The corner of Alack’s mouth turned up slightly. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt drawn to the captain of the Pathfinder. She seemed a bit young for a ship’s captain – early twenties, perhaps – but had a tough edge to her that Alack admired. She seemed not just gutsy but also capable. She had a certain level of confidence that felt like it stemmed from experience.

“We’ll deal with introductions later,” the captain said. “And I’m going to expect a little work from you all to make up for the food you’re going to eat. The last thing I needed was three more mouths to feed.” She looked over her shoulder into the interior of her ship. “But it looks like our last crew member is back, so we’re ready to leave.”

And with that, the passageway closed again.

Rana began drifting back off to sleep. This time, Mercie cradled her, trying to provide some comfort. Alack thought about the ship’s captain for a moment, and then about Mercie’s swift defense that kept them from being turned in. It was the second time (the first was when she convinced Kessl to turn and follow his crewmates) that she’d witnessed the Zabrak’s ability to twist logic in a way that was clearly a threat, but worded so manipulatively that it sounded like she was doing the recipient a favour. She wasn’t sure if that was a trait that she should admire in a teacher.

----

It was probably close to a half hour before the ramp was finally closed and the Wobani Pathfinder lifted off the dry Lothalian soil of Canso’s open-air trading port. There had probably been a final authorization to obtain from the Empire’s soldiers, who had permeated the area.

The freighter rose, wobbled a little as ships were wont to do while still subject to planetary gravity, and then broke free into the expanse of space. The YT-2400’s artificial gravity kicked in fairly seamlessly and smoothly, with barely a blip of weightlessness being felt in the transition.

A moment of silence passed, then some shuffling in the corridor. The door to the storage tunnel opened.

“Come on,” the Ongree crewmember said. “Let’s make the introductions and find out what we’re dealing with, here.”

The Ongree was an odd sight to Alack. Ongree were always creepy-looking at a distance, and she decided they were much worse up close. He had two apparently prehensile eye stalks that emerged from either side of his head that moved independently of each other. Little tendrils hung from his chin like a thin beard of tentacles, apparently also capable of independent movement. His mouth – large and toothy – was positioned almost at forehead level, making it look like his head was on upside down. And the shape of it made it look like he was always smiling, in an unnerving manner.

“I doubt you’d last long in that hold, anyway, given the stench from Jujjeg’s cabin. It’s acclimated for a Hutt, but assails the nostrils of most of us regular folk.”

His eye stalks twitched a little when he turned to glance at them following him. “I’m Skako Divik. You might have heard of me. I used to be a famous bounty hunter.”

Mercie gently coaxed Rana awake and the three women emerged from the compartment, following the Ongree.

“I can’t say I remember the name,” Alack commented. “Part of a team, perhaps?”

“Not really,” Skako said. “Most of the people I worked with were pretty scummy. Not bandit team material, really.” An awkward grin spread out across his forehead. “The only really regular guy I ran with and trusted was this Rodian, up until he got gunned down on Tatooine, by some sleezebag skipping out on a loan.”

The ship’s lounge was a little cramped for the entire crew and the three stowaways – ten beings in total… made moreso by the fact that one of the crew was more corpulent than usual.

“Now there’s something you don’t see every day” Mercie commented: “a Hutt working as a smuggler.”

The rotund crew member in question shook as he laughed and spoke slowly. “Gooddé da lodia!,” he said, jovially. “It’s a common reaction.”

“Jujjeg is still pretty young in Hutt years,” the captain commented. “And eager to make a name for himself as a scientist. For him, part of that means seeing the galaxy. But please –” she motioned into the lounge, “come in and introduce yourselves.” Her gaze fell back on Alack enough times that her curiosity toward the blue girl was becoming obvious.

The women stepped into the lounge area, and a space was made for Rana to sit at the table, which was round with two curved benches arrayed around it. Mercie stood in the aisle at her side.

The captain of the Wobani Pathfinder wore a patchwork of beskar and durasteel armour that was distinctively Mandalorian in design, although her helmet was nowhere to be seen. She had intriguing eyes, and thick hair that hung to her shoulders.

Alack sat on the corner of the opposite bench. “My name’s Alack Morah. I came here to Lothal trying to find a Jedi, someone who could help me find my brother. I seem to have unintentionally drawn the Imps’ attention to these two with me.”

“Nah,” the ship’s captain clarified. “That was some Weequay idiot, panicking because he thought Imperial soldiers were coming. Naturally, if you show up in a port panicked about the Empire, the Empire’s spies get a little curious about why. But that’s what actually went down, as far as I could see.”

Mercie shot a glance at Rana, remembering her whole Imperials-are-coming ruse. The old woman had dropped her head forward and was massaging one of her temples, obviously realizing her mistake and what it had cost them.

“And Rana here is a former Jedi,” Alack added, nodding toward the old woman. “… and they’re still hunting the remains of the Jedi Order.”

This did not impress the captain. In her experience, anyone who openly called themselves a Jedi was usually a charlatan trying to scam people. But even if it were true, Mandalorians were not overly sympathetic to the causes of Jedi or Sith, given the way that the centuries of war between the two had destroyed Mandalore and scattered its people across the six sectors. Mandalorians had a deep distrust of them, in fact, just as they had of the Republic, and the Empire it evolved into. And the Confederacy, for that matter. And, well, red-skinned Zabraks.

The captain looked at Mercie. The Zabrak detected a slight hostility in the squint of the captain’s eyes. “And you?” Callisto asked.

“My name’s Mercie. I take care of Rana.”

“Take care of…” the captain turned back toward Alack, trying not to laugh. “Your ‘Jedi’ needs a nurse? You sure can pick them.” She scanned over all three stowaways. “So, I’m sure by now you know who I am,” she started to say.

“Well, we don’t have a name,” Alack grinned, “so we were just going to start calling you ‘Twitchy Fingers.’”

At this, the crew started to laugh, almost uproariously. They had reacted more than Alack had expected, and she wondered if the “twitchy fingers” quip was one they’d heard before. The Nautolan almost buckled over, and had to steady herself.

“Very funny. My name’s Callisto Rook, and I’m the captain of the Wobani Pathfinder. For as long as you’re on my ship, you will be honouring my rules, and keeping out of the way of myself and my crew, unless we ask you to help with something. When we land in Nar Shaddaa, you will be helping unload, then disembarking. At that point, we will go our separate ways.”

“That was the agreement,” Mercie replied. It suited her just fine.

She had given the abbreviated retelling of her life, of course. She could have gone into details, like how her name was actually “Calis’to,” or how despite her youth, she had tired of the Mandalorian creed that combat was divinity and life. But it didn’t change anything, so she glossed over the details.

Callisto was fairly tall for a Mandalorian woman, almost six feet in height. She had a bit of sparkle in her blue eyes. At the age of 22, she was younger than the rest of her crew, and idly, Alack wondered how she had become the captain of her own freighter.

Callisto turned to her side, and put her arm around the shoulder of the Nautolan woman beside her. “This is Vee,” she said. “She’s my second-in-command, and you will follow her orders as though they were my own.”

Vee had pale blue skin and gracefully curved facial features that included a tiny nose, and large, dark eyes with two sets of eyelids that closed over them: one main fleshy set similar to most humanoids, and an inner transparent membrane that closed in perpendicular fashion, keeping her eyes moistened and shining. The two sets of eyelids blinked just out-of-sync enough to seem a little macabre. Vee wore robes, rather than the more traditional leathers of the rest of the crew.

“You’ve already met Skako,” she motioned to the Ongree labourer. “I’m sure he’ll tell you that he’s the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived, but I think he’s kind of enjoying the quiet, uneventful life of a smuggler,” Callisto grinned and put a slight lilt on ‘uneventful,’ in what was an apparent ongoing in-joke between them. “And yeah, he knows about Skakoans. It’s just his name. He didn’t pick it. Deal with it.”

“Jujjeg Anjiliac Fomdru is my tech specialist,” she nodded toward the Hutt. Jujjeg was shorter than most Hutts the women had seen, and also had less mass, but was still quite girthy and slow-moving for a proverbial space pirate. Mercie showed an instant clear dislike to him, and eyed him suspiciously. “Jujjeg is also a bit of an historian, a talented slicer, and a collector of antiquities,” Callisto added.

“His assistant,” she gestured toward a short Ortolan, “is Netha Togo. You won’t see him much, but he’s always around doing repairs and tune-ups. When he’s not eating.”

“Nat ant at noot,” the little blue guy tooted.

The Selonian was next. She was a tall feline humanoid with an orangey-gold pelt, the fur brushed back from her face. She had tufts of white in places, frosting her features. When she wasn’t using it for balance, her tail would oscillate in time with her mood. “This is Sirky Besurro, my current head of security. She’s going to make a spot for you in Labakka’s old room.” At this, the crew responded in various ways, obviously stung by the unexpected mention. “Labakka was my previous head of security, who we recently lost. You’ll leave his stuff alone and treat it with respect. Got it?”

The women nodded.

“Waya is the ship’s protocol and navigation droid,” Callisto continued. Waya had clearly been recommissioned, as she had the distinctive look of a retro-designed waitress droid, who traveled about on a single wheel. Alack guessed that there must be a story behind how Waya had come to be a spacefaring protocol droid, since it was so far out of her original specifications.

Callisto continued. “I have one other droid, running about. 11-T2 is a mouse droid who just basically shuttles orders and tools around. Try not to step on him. Any questions?”

“Aren’t you a little young for a starship captain?” Rana blurted. Most of the crew struggled to stifle grins.

If she was insulted by the question, Callisto didn’t show it. “Maybe, but I was born into this life,” she replied. “A person tends to grow up pretty fast, in this biz.”

“I’m going to probably need to give Rana a hand in the fresher,” Mercie commented. “She sometimes has trouble with balance. Is there a good time when we should clean up?”

“Probably any time,” Callisto answered. “Jujjeg’s the only one who might need it in the next while.”

“Go ahead,” the Hutt offered. He seemed to detect some animus from Mercie, and wanted to be more obliging in hopes of smoothing over whatever was bothering her.

Sirky babbled a few syllables in Mandaba. “Sirky will get the room ready,” Callisto reiterated, as Mercie helped Rana up. The older woman was clearly still exhausted from their escape. “Skako, show them where the fresher is.” The crew started to disperse off to whatever task or pursuit called to them.

Callisto eyed Alack for a moment, pensively. After almost everyone else was gone, she spoke. “You probably figured this out already, but even though hyperspace lanes shorten journeys that would otherwise take centuries, they can still take days or weeks. So instead of sitting here being bored, how about we have a look around the cockpit of this bird?”

A smile stretched across the young Chiss woman’s face. “Absolutely.”

----

“Our captain seems to have taken a fancy to Alack,” Mercie commented, helping Rana out of her robe.

“Yes, it was a little hard not to notice,” the Miraluka woman smiled, slightly. “I think Alack might be curious, too.”

“So… when you insisted that we board this ship, of all the ones in port,” Mercie asked, “was it because you could tell that the captain was a lesbian?” She started to take off her own robe, and turned on the stream of water for Rana to step in.

“I actually thought she and the Nautolan were a couple,” Rana admitted. “And if we’re having to stow away, I felt more confident with them, because – given the chances that we would get found, having to scrounge for food and all – in rough situations, women like us will usually stick together.”

“Well, that’s optimistic,” Mercie chuckled a little, stepping in behind her.

“It makes sense that Twitchy Fingers would like Alack, though,” Rana commented. The Zabrak woman noted with some amusement the substitution of part of the phrase Callisto had said the moment they’d met, in place of the captain’s name. “Here, I can do this,” she changed the subject, offering to take the soap from Mercie. “I just need to keep my balance.”

Mercie side-eyed her. “You know I like taking care of you, though,” she grinned.

“You spoil me,” Rana smiled. “So anyway, I gathered you didn’t like the Hutt.”

“Was it that obvious?” Mercie asked. “I mean, I know this one isn’t at fault for it, but I haven’t exactly had the greatest history with them. The rest of the crew seem okay.”

“I’m not so keen on the Nautolan,” Rana said. “Personally, I always found the fish people kind of creepy.”

Mercie had started to lather up some soap before taking Rana’s arm in her hands. “Wait, what? Did you just say that?”

Rana nodded a bit sheepishly, embarrassed, but trying to shrug it off as nothing. “Yes, I know that’s racist. But I’ve always felt awkward around them, even since I was a young girl. Probably from that Howarphilps holo, Inzmuth’s Shadow.”

“Wow, Rana. Howarphilps was wildly xenophobic.” Mercie was weirdly amused by this. “I can’t believe it, you of all people, Miss Pure and Prude, and you’re racist? This is a side of you I’ve never seen before.”

Rana was a bit more embarrassed now, but obviously wanted to change the subject. “Well, if that’s the worst thing I’ve ever done…”

“My first boyfriend was a Nautolan,” Mercie pointed out.

“Yes, you told me. Can we change the subject, please?” Rana complied after Mercie motioned for her to turn around so she could wash her back. “One thing that I’ve been wondering,” Rana said, “is whether Alack searched for us in the same way that I searched for this ship.”

“What do you mean?” Mercie asked.

“I mean, consciously, she was looking for a Jedi,” Rana answered, “but maybe subconsciously, she was searching for a certain type of Jedi. I sense that she’s still figuring herself out, and maybe she needs us in a way we hadn’t considered.”

“Shush,” Mercie said, sliding in close behind Rana. “We may not get very many moments like this for awhile.” She planted a soft kiss on the Miraluka woman’s neck, then another, like an echo. “Let’s not waste it with yammering….”

----

That was about the point that Alack’s concentration had broken.

Twitchy had been called away about a concern with the cargo, so while Alack waited, she thought she would experiment with what the women had spoken about the previous night: seeing through another person’s eyes. It took some time, a lot of reaching inward and a lot of stretching out to find Mercie, but gradually, the darkness started to clear, and she could see.

She just wasn’t expecting what she saw.

“Caregiver, my ass,” Alack muttered.

The captain returned, a bit hurriedly. “Sorry about that. Skako seems to think I need to be involved in every decision.” she apologized. “He’s very loyal, but it can get annoying, sometimes.”

“Before you left,” Alack picked up where they had left off, “you’d mentioned that you need an arrival time to set a course to Nar Shaddaa. Why would you need a time component for that?”

“Well, for the most part,” Callisto replied, “systems default to the earliest possible arrival time, unless specified otherwise. But you have to keep in mind that the galaxy is always in motion.”

“Well then how can you have a star map at all?”

Callisto smiled. The two of them were seated in the bucket seats of the cockpit, near each other. “A galaxy-level map is easy, since the stars move mostly in a certain amount of relative symmetry around the core,” she answered, “but it’s a little more complicated when you’re calculating up and down the hierarchy: galaxy-level to system-level, and so on. Keep in mind that moons revolve around planets, planets around stars, and stars around the core. And basically, everything rotates. So, you’ll never have a true static map to refer to – only approximations. Instead, nav systems have to calculate destinations based on celestial positioning at any given moment… although they usually default to calculating based on the earliest possible arrival time.”

“I didn’t realize there was so much to it,” Alack admitted.

“That’s before you even get into hyperlanes,” Callisto smiled, drinking her attention. “They’re not just lanes you use to avoid collision and speed up the trip. You actually slip into hyperspace, sort of extra-dimensional currents within the galaxy that allow you to bypass some of the laws of space-time, and…”

The admiration showed in Alack’s face. “You’re really smart, you know?”

Callisto laughed. “Well, could you tell Vee, then? She always accuses me of thinking with my penis.”

While it was true that Vee had said that once, jokingly, Callisto mainly said it because she wanted to gauge Alack’s reaction. She didn’t want to focus too long on something that was different about her, but also didn’t want it to be a surprise. Before she went further, she wanted to make sure that this woman she was interested knew, and that she was okay with it.

For a moment, Alack was a little puzzled, then surprised. But she realized she wasn’t overly bothered by this new revelation. This was something different for her, but then so was everything about this journey so far. “You must really like your job,” Alack mused.

“It has its enchanting moments,” Callisto commented, relaxing a little. She found Alack attractive, yes, but there was also something else magnetic about her that she couldn’t put her finger on. She really shouldn’t trust some stranger she’d just met, yet her instincts were pushing her that way. “Have you ever thought about traveling the galaxy?”

“Well, I sort of have been…” Alack replied.

“No, I mean actually traveling, and not hiding in a cargo hold.”

“Well, I have thought it could be fun,” Alack confessed. “I have a thing for racing speeders, so maybe ships could provide a bit of a rush, too.”

“Space flight has its charms, for sure,” Callisto smiled.

“But I’ve got to focus on getting my brother back,” Alack added.

“That’s not going to be an easy task, you know,” Twitchy warned.

“Yeah,” Alack sighed, and stared into the distance.

“Hey, let me show you something.” Callisto turned and called out to the ship nav systems: “Daisy? Multi-grav Zone G.”

“Magnification?” asked the on-board computer.

“It accepts voice commands?” Alack asked.

“Point eight,” Callisto answered. Then, to Alack, “Yes, but only from Vee and I.” She stood up and walked over toward the entrance to the cockpit. “Come here. You should see this.”

Callisto put one hand on the starboard wall near the entryway. Then another hand. Then her leg and knee. Alack suddenly realized that Callisto was climbing the wall.

She reclined against it, and settled in.

“This ship is equipped with multigrav capability,” the Wobani Pathfinder’s captain smiled. “I mean, all gravity on a ship like this in space is artificial, so why not generate it multi-directionally, on multiple surfaces? If you set it right and respect its limitations, it can work… and serve an important function.”

“A lot of these light freighters and even smaller craft have to make some difficult trips,” she continued. “It’s not unusual for a smuggler to want to stay near the controls, but need to catch a nap when they can, too. So multigrav provides an alternative so they can rest and still be right near the helm when they’re needed.”

“Do you mean that’s an artificial gravity specifically localized to that wall?”

“It is,” Callisto grinned. “You have to be careful, though. If you try to stand up on this wall, you’ll fall to the floor. It extends only to about a foot and a half off the surface, at this magnification, since the primary gravity hasn’t been suspended. Here.” She was laying on the wall, totally relaxed, and invited Alack to come and lay in front of her so they could both look at the stars.

Alack hesitated. She could tell that the ship’s captain was trying to get close, but she’d never been in quite this situation, before. She wasn’t sure what she should do. But she also realized that she wanted this.

Alack climbed up beside Callisto, on the wall. Callisto indicated that she should face forward, and then called out to the nav system, again. “Daisy? Dash lights only, in the cockpit.”

As ordered, the room went dark, with just the speckled lights on the consoles visible and a little ambient light from behind them, in the hallway.

This made the large transparisteel viewport and the enormous starfield that it revealed much more prominent. Alack looked out at the infinite galaxy of distant flickers and sparks.

“Sometimes,” Callisto spoke, “I like to just lay here and think about just how vast that universe is. Think of the largest planet you’ve ever been on. It’s still just a speck of dust in a star system that is just a speck of light in that entire field. A ship like this has a beacon to ward against collisions with ships dropping out of hyperspace, but in reality, the chances of a truly random mid-space collision are infinitesimal, because we’re so small in scale, relative to an infinite universe.”

She started to slide her arm around Alack’s waist – gracefully, but also slowly enough to give her the chance to say no, if she needed to. As she did, she regretted that her next two stops were time-sensitive, since it meant she wouldn’t have the luxury of extending the trip and taking her time with the young Chiss woman.

“It can seem a little intimidating, at first, when you realize just how un-tethered we are from anything,” Callisto mused. “No solid earth beneath your feet. But it’s also a freedom, and eventually, you come to love it.”

She inched a bit closer to Alack, but Vee entered the cockpit area, interrupting. “Loo doo ah do la’ah…”

Callisto winced and sent Vee a pleading glance. “Can’t Sirky take care of it?”

“Noo da baana laal…”

Callisto slumped for a moment, and then climbed down to go respond to whatever crisis she was being called to. “Just wait right here,” she said to Alack. “I won’t be long.”

The two departed, and Alack continued laying on the wall, staring out the viewport, for a moment. Then, there was a rustle of clothing as someone else entered the cockpit.

“I sense your confusion,” Rana spoke gently. “Is everything okay?”

Alack smiled. “Everything is fine. Just… maybe a little awkward. But it’s okay.”

“Alright,” the old woman said. “If you need someone to talk to, let me know.”

“Thanks,” Alack smiled back, and Rana departed.

For a few moments, there was only the sounds of the ship’s air and nav systems, automated and reassuring in the darkness. Alack thought about how far she had traveled since she first stowed away on a cargo ship on Serenno. She had been looking for her brother, certainly, but she also wondered if she had been running away – not just from the Empire’s influence and the forces that had murdered her parents and destroyed her home, but also from the lifelong hegemonic poison of guilt and shame for the Force abilities she’d had to hide… and the attractions that she had felt.

Serennians had tended to frown on any relationship that didn’t produce children, and Chiss culture was doubly repressive in this, as well. She had been afraid to admit that she was just as attracted to women as to men, and hadn’t anticipated that her journey would not only give her the freedom to accept this of herself, but actually give her the chance to explore this. She felt a little confused… but she realized that that confusion was born from years of having to hide these things about herself.

“It’s also a freedom,” Callisto had said earlier, “and eventually, you come to love it.”

Alack realized that she was already starting to understand what she had meant.

Unfortunately, though, Callisto returned briefly to let Alack know that she was going to be longer than expected. She regretfully turned off the multigrav after the young Chiss woman climbed down, and then disappeared to see to the cargo bay.

Alack found her way to Labakka’s room, where the three stowaways would be billeted. There, she found Mercie and Rana sitting close beside each other, shoulder-to-shoulder, talking.

“It’s okay,” Alack said. “You don’t have to pretend that you two aren’t a couple, around me. Just…” she paused, “leave me out of it, okay?”

“How did you know?” Mercie asked.

“I had a few minutes to myself and thought about what you’d said last night,” Alack explained, “about seeing through another person’s eyes. So, I tried it, and had a glimpse through yours. But you two were pawing at each other in the fresher.”

“That’s not possible,” Rana protested. “Mercie and I keep up a constant block against other Force-users…” She stopped mid-sentence, and tilted her head, pivoting a little toward the Zabrak.

“I really didn’t think she’d try it, and certainly not that she’d succeed,” Mercie explained. “But also, if she did try it, I wanted to see if she would respect our privacy.” She frowned at Alack. “Obviously, she failed on that point.”

“Well, don’t worry,” Alack assured them. “I won’t pry. But for what it’s worth, between the amount of affection you two are usually showing toward each other and the comment Rana made a few minutes ago, it probably wouldn’t have taken long to figure out.”

Alack looked around the room. Then, she asked, “Are you still willing to teach me some things?”

“I told you,” Rana answered, “in no uncertain terms that –“

Mercie touched her arm. “Not you. Me. I told her I’d teach her a little before we arrive on Nar Shaddaa.”

Rana turned her head toward Mercie and the two regarded each other for a few moments, with a few head tilts and gestures. They seemed to be talking silently, between themselves.

Finally, Rana stood up. “It looks like they have a problem with a shifted load in the cargo bay. I’ll go see if they need help, and leave you two to it.”

Mercie scrutinized Alack for a few moments. “That’s quite the feat to just ‘pick up’ sight like that,” she frowned. She felt distrustful, but wasn’t sure what it really meant. “Many Force users never even get that far in their lives. And it’s especially unusual, given that Chiss don’t usually have a whole lot of Force ability, and it disappears in their teens.”

“Chiss suppress it, more likely,” she replied. “It’s very taboo. So, if you have it, you hide it, and if you hide it long enough, you become good at denial.” Alack sat down on the far end of the bed. Idly, she wondered if the three of them would have to share it that evening, or if she could, maybe, join Callisto, instead. “But anyway, once you’d explained it broadly, it was easier to figure out. I had some direction. That’s probably why.”

Mercie inclined her head back a little and at a slight angle, so that she was sort of looking down her nose at Alack. She studied her face, looking for some sign of deception. Then, finding none, she decided to proceed.

“So, let’s do this again, then,” Mercie challenged. “Try viewing from the point of view of someone in the cargo bay. Maybe the Selonian. Or maybe Twitchy Fingers.”

Alack closed her eyes to concentrate, but then Mercie interrupted her. “No. Eyes open.”

“What?” Alack was puzzled.

“Don’t close your eyes. You’ll need to be able to integrate what you’re seeing from both inputs, at the same time.”

“How am I supposed to do that?” she asked.

“You’ll need to layer the inputs,” Mercie explained. “At first, it will seem like you have two pictures in front of you, overlaid. As your mind sorts them out, your mind will start to sort everything into a multidimensional view of the space around you and around those you view from, simultaneously.”

“Why? Why not just shut my eyes?”

“That’s the easy way,” Mercie frowned. “Challenge yourself. It’s a discipline, and you become much more proficient if you start with your eyes open than by trying to integrate later. Push yourself. You will need to integrate far more than two visual perspectives, if you wish to pursue this. If you wish to truly see the way Rana sees, you’ll need to be reaching out constantly, to everyone, everywhere around you, and taking in the sensory input from all of them. You will start to see in three-dimensional space, and know the depth and position of everything around you. Remember how she had been watching everyone on Canso spaceport, while we were still in the caverns?”

“Isn’t that confusing? If I’m looking into another room, isn’t it better if I don’t have my own visual input confusing everything?”

“No,” the Zabrak was stern. “You can be deceived in a single view. You can be deceived in the Force. Your own eyes can deceive you. But it’s extremely rare that every view would deceive you in exactly the same way.” Mercie was feeling a little impatient. “This should be easy for you. Chiss already integrate the natural spectrum and the infrared, so your brain’s ability to integrate input is already second nature, for you — it should just be the inputs from differing points of view. And people also already do that to a smaller degree, with their own two eyes.”

Alack concentrated. She reached out, eyes open, and thought about Callisto. Sensed the direction she was from the room. The distance was only short, but..

… she could see it – the cargo bay. The load had shifted. They were all re-stacking crates and resorting them. There seemed to be three distinct shipments they wanted to keep from confusing. All the time, the Zabrak woman stared back at her. “I have it,” she reported.

“That’s the way,” Mercie reassured. “Now, keep looking at the same views you have now, but also add the Ongree.”

Alack lost her concentration. “Add?” She felt like two concurrent views was too much input.

“You’re picking this up very quickly. Let’s see how far you can take it” Mercie responded.

Alack focused again. Callisto was laughing with Vee. Something that the Ortolan had done or said. Could she hear them too?

“… eat half the cargo bay himself if he..”

A little. That was Callisto. Netha tooted in protest.

Now, the Ongree. He seemed a little foreign to figure…

… oh, this was different! He didn’t focus his eyes the way other sentients do. His eye stalks would move, twist, bend, offering two separate views simultaneously. And he was looking at the Ortolan and Twitchy Fingers at the same time. And she was looking at Netha.

“Seeing from the vantage point of the Ongree will be quite valuable for you as you learn,” Mercie advised, “since the way he sees from two independent eyes and sorts that into a three-dimensional space is very similar to what you must learn to do. I’d recommend that for as long as we’re on this ship, when you practice, you start with him.”

She kept stretching her vision. Oh, and Sirky! She found another perspective.

The views seemed to slide together. As she focused, she now had several points of view within the same volume of cubic space, which started to coalesce into a kind of cohesive whole, with her own view as an outlier, screened atop it all.

She started to develop a headache, and eye strain around her temples and eye sockets.

“That’s enough,” Mercie said. “You can strain yourself if you do too much, in the beginning.”

She wasn’t kidding, Alack realized.

“But you need to practice it often, and extend yourself regularly, until there is no strain and it becomes second nature,” Mercie told her. “It will take you months of discipline, long after we go our separate ways. But it’s something to focus on.” She thought a moment, then added: “And only with people who are out doing activities. Don’t go invading anyone’s privacy when they’re in their cabins.”

“I thought you’d be training me to use a lightsaber, or something,” Alack commented, closing her eyes for a moment to refocus.

“That depends on if we have enough time to get that far,” Mercie replied. “But when you do start to learn that, this part is crucial to combat. It’s how you’ll know exactly where everything is in multidimensional space. If you’ll want to be able to meet your opponent’s weapons, or deflect blaster bolts, you’ll need to know that. Our vision is limited in its ability to see depth and scale, so you need to be able to see in greater dimension. The… ‘Jedi’” – Mercie’s voice hesitated at the word – “that you seek often try to do this merely by instinct, by faith. But you, you’ll be able to do it with certainty, seeing exactly where and how near or far. It will be much clearer.”

Alack started to realize how far this new knowledge might carry her. It might be the only thing that Mercie would have time to show her, but what she could do with it might be limitless.

“That’s enough for now, though.” Mercie stated. “We should probably rest. We leave when we land.”

---

Not long afterward, most everyone had turned in. Waya was watching the cockpit, and the mouse droid could be heard shuttling across the floor periodically. It beeped several electronic apologies when it had collided with Alack’s foot in the hallway, partway between the fresher and her destination. And then it resumed its journey.

She knocked on the door, quietly, nervously. She didn’t want to wake anyone up, but just in case Callisto was up, she…

The door opened.

“Um, our room is a little crowded,” Alack muttered nervously. “Do you… have a little space…?”

“I’m…” oh, she was half asleep. “I, uh… yeah, sure. Come in.” She opened the door further and let Alack pass. “But I’m dead weight right now,” the captain said. “I’m probably not up to entertaining…”

“That’s okay,” Alack smiled. “It’s all I ask.”

Callisto wasn’t kidding. She had practically fallen unconscious before she had settled into her pillow.

Alack curled up behind her and stretched an arm around her.

This… this was freedom.

—-

In the days that followed, on their way to Nar Shaddaa, Mercie began her instruction of Alack in the use of the Force.

"Instruction" was probably the right word for it, because much of it was spoken, tasks given to Alack to perform, and information on how to go about them. Alack hadn't seen Mercie actively use the Force herself, and she was starting to wonder if everything the Zabrak was teaching her was secondhand knowledge picked up from her time with Rana. But Alack wasn't certain about that, since her teacher spoke with such confidence and familiarity with the subject.

There was some physical training, mostly using sticks for sparring, in the space available in the cargo hold. Much of it was about stances and flow of movement, but they also sometimes added what she had been taught about Miraluka sight, in order to better see her opponent and the fuller context of their distance from her. "If you're going to be deflecting blaster bolts," Mercie commented at one point, "you're going to have to be able to know exactly where they will be and exactly how much time it takes to meet them."

Mercie pushed her very hard on everything, and every time that Alack protested that she was being unnecessarily harsh, it was usually met by a comment along the line of "do you want to learn, or not?" or "You have a very short time to learn, so I recommend that you challenge yourself as harshly as you can, to make the most of it."

Any time that wasn't spent training was usually spent with Callisto, listening to tales of great Mandalorian battles, or ruminating about distant stars and places they had been or would like to see.

Their evenings -- they still sort of observed a calendar day on the Pathfinder, with some of the crew's days staggered to have at least one shift on at all hours -- were spent in Twitchy's cabin, as Alack explored some of the newfound freedoms open to her, and Callisto reveled in the company. It culminated in one last fine evening before their destination.

---

Morning arrived too quickly, and with it, Nar Shaddaa.

Callisto had awakened before Alack. She lay for a few minutes holding the blue woman close. But there wasn’t a whole lot of time, so she crept out of bed and went to the fresher. After cleaning up and getting dressed, she came back to waken Alack.

“Hey,” she spoke softly. “We’re going to have to land soon.”

Alack rolled over and looked up at Twitchy. She gave her an inviting smile.

“Ahhh, it’s a shame that we really don’t have time,” Callisto answered her. “Listen. The old ladies have to go. I don’t like them and I don’t trust them. But if you want to stay on…”

“No,” Alack answered. “I think I need to try to stay with them. I’ve been learning some really valuable things…”

“That’s too bad,” Callisto replied. “If you change your mind, though, I’ll give you my holocomm frequency.”

She did so, and then departed her quarters, leaving Alack to dress and get ready.

In the ship’s corridors, the crew were already readying for their delivery. Vee was already in the cockpit with Waya, and Sirky and Skako were readying the shipment for unloading. Mercie and Rana emerged from Labakka’s quarters, and Alack joined them moments later.

The Wobani Pathfinder touched down in a shipping bay in an industrial section of the ecumenopolis.

“Here’s where we part ways,” said Callisto Rook to the three women who’d stowed away on the ship. She walked with them and Vee to the entry ramp. Jujjeg made his way to the cargo bay.

“I’d say it was a pleasure to meet you,” Callisto said as the ramp lowered, side-eyeing Mercie, “but I’m not very keen on someone blackmailing me into giving them passage.”

They began to descend the ramp, when Vee began to babble. “Na’a loo bon ta bey…”

Callisto stretched her arm across the women, bringing them to a stop. She was suddenly in a heightened state of alarm. “Get back in. Now.”

“What is it?” Alack asked.

“The loading dock is deserted,” Mercie pointed out. “No dock workers…”

Vee turned and vocalized a warning to the crew.

Then.

Golg, 20 BBY

The masked woman dimly perceived Shirana’s crumpled body on the floor in the darkness.

She could easily strangle her, and Shirana wouldn’t have the strength to fight back. It would be so easy.

But not yet. The Jedi had been right, of course. Each time their captor took her away was a day that she didn’t have to suffer. That alone made it worth tolerating her, for now.

Shirana was sobbing. The masked woman sniffed. ‘She’s weak,’ she thought to herself. ‘She doesn’t deserve to make it out of this place.’

“Shut up, you stupid, bleating nerf,” she mumbled aloud, scornfully.

The Jedi was in obvious pain. At some point, she would probably have to check her over for joint injuries or dislocations. But for now, she sat back and tried to block out the woman’s sobs.

Her face itched. Her mask was designed to be worn for long periods of time, to let her skin breathe and all, but this was stretching the limits of that, even with having been taken off and cleaned those times that the Jedi had been removed from the cell. But she still insisted on wearing it when Shirana was around. As uncomfortable as it had become, it was still an assurance that whatever happened afterward, she still didn’t have to worry about her having knowledge of her identity, and any power that might give her. More than that, it still felt like a way to keep things impersonal, too – like an extra layer of insulation against coming to care for her cell-mate.

She probably should feel guilty, she thought, especially after how her cellmate had tended to her after her ordeals. But she had never asked for that, she reminded herself. And it wasn’t her fault if the little Jedi princess took it upon herself to take care of her, without reciprocation. It was her own stupidity. And weakness. And…

Okay. So she did feel a little guilty. But guilt is weakness. She couldn’t have that.

She rolled over into her own corner of the cell.

“Quit your mewling, child,” she seethed.

—

Close to an hour later, after the pain had subsided and Shirana was able to manage more than cries and groans, the Miraluka woman found herself able to manage some throaty words. “You really don’t have a heart, do you?”

Her cellmate paused, at first wanting to preserve the silence, then resigning herself to dip her toes in whatever discussion was being offered. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have two of them.”

Even with the pain, Shirana couldn’t resist raising an eyebrow at the release of what might possibly be some identifying information. “That’s not what I meant, though,” she continued. “I was talking about empathy.”

The Sith woman sat back, her body language closing, retreating to the silence. Conversation, she decided, was pointless.

“You know,” Shirana persisted, “we might be here for a very long time. We’re going to have to get used to the fact that we’re the only sentient contact that we’ve got.”

The Sith remained silent.

“Fine,” Shirana replied. “Then I’ll just regale you with another tale from one of the holos.”

The dark woman groaned. “Or you could just shut up.”

“No, you’ll like this one. When me and some of the other padawans managed to sneak out of the academy, we usually took in love stories — they were my favourite. But maybe a horror holo is more your speed. This one was called A Nightmare in Elmas Spaceport…”

“Must you?”

“Well,” Shirana replied, “I don’t exactly hear you holding up your end of the conversation. And we have to pass the time somehow…”

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: Pathfinder

Now.

Nar Shaddaa, 3 ABY

Callisto took a stance just inside the exit ramp around the starboard side, with Vee taking up position inside on the port. Alack stayed close to Callisto.

Rana and Mercie stood a short distance behind the Wobani Pathfinder’s captain. “I can see several Nikto,” Rana commented. There are two in the control tower, and three more in the foreman’s booth, along with a Pyke and… a Dashade, I think. Yes, it’s definitely a Dashade. There are several Nikto charging at the cargo lift from the other side of the ship,” she warned.

Of course, no one was immediately visible to the Pathfinder’s captain. “Look,” Callisto barked at Rana, “If this poor girl…” (she tilted her head toward Alack) “… wants to get scammed by some fake Jedi, that’s her business. But right now, nothing is going to be helped by you making stuff up.”

“You won’t mind if I go help the crew close up the cargo lift, then,” Rana replied. It wasn’t a question, and she disappeared down the corridor. But even as she was disappearing from sight, an exchange of blaster fire could be heard from behind them.

“Kark!” Callisto cursed. Then to Mercie: “Can you fight?”

“I can,” the Zabrak replied coolly.

“Good. Guard the front with Vee. I’ll head to the back.” She turned toward the same direction Rana had gone, and Alack followed her.

“Noo la bin koo tha!” Vee shouted to Mercie. She produced two lightsabers from a pouch on her belt and tossed one to the Zabrak.

Mercie frowned, catching the hilt in her hand. Vee lit her saber, flooding the area around the exit ramp with a yellow glow.

“When we’re done here,” Mercie shouted back to the Nautolan, “you’re going to explain where you got these.”

Mercie lit the saber she had been given and took her spot on the opposite side of the exit ramp. She looked at the green glow and winced in distaste.

---

Several Nikto had taken positions behind crates in the hangar and began to fire on the crew at the rear of the Pathfinder, in a sustained and heavy manner. This gave a small contingent of two Nikto and a Dashade the opportunity to charge onboard while Sirky, Skako and Jujjeg had to shelter behind the shipment they had been unloading. Because they hadn’t expected the barrage, they hadn’t been in position to fend off the invasion, or to fire on the three as they made their way inside the ship.

This changed a little as they got their bearings. Once the initial sustained fire had stopped, the three crew members were able to find a vantage from which they could fire back.  Skako rolled into position behind the ramp’s hydraulic arm, while Sirky leapt behind a smaller pallet. Because he was slower-moving and posed too large a target, Jujjeg stayed where he was and found a better sight-line.

Sirky was the best shot of the three, and had taken down two Nikto in the first volley of returned fire – one with a shot around the collarbone, and the other with a headshot. Jujjeg caught a third in the shoulder.

Skako was weighing his chances at making a run for a shipping container that would give him cover as he would work his way behind the invaders, when something caught his eye.

Rana’s dark tan robes furled abruptly and then settled calmly as she dropped down the cargo lift and strode out into the open.

The remaining Nikto began to open fire on her. Rana immediately lit her lightsaber, its yellow-orange glow cutting golden scars into the air as she parried the shots with seeming little effort. High, then low, then a circular arc, she found the blaster bolts and sent them back toward the crates that gave the Nikto shelter.

Sirky and Jujjeg held their fire, not wanting to hit the old woman. Skako was at far enough of an angle from her that he could safely take shots without worrying about her proximity. He began firing, hoping to give her a bit of cover.

One of the Nikto raised up to unload a series of bolts at the Miraluka woman, but was struck in the shoulder by Skako and sent sprawling onto the surface of the dock. Another attempted to run. This one, Sirky was able to take down without Rana being in her line of sight.

That left one, who stayed under cover as Shirana Nyst leapt onto the crates and swung her blade, dropping the crouching Nikto.

“There are still three that made their way inside,” she barked at the crew. “One of you watch the entrance and two go after them. I’ll take care of the others deeper in the facility.”

---

The three invaders had encountered Callisto and Alack in the corridor, and fired upon them, the captain returning fire. They advanced bit by bit, and the Chiss and Mandalorian women were forced back into the cockpit area.

One of the Nikto lobbed a concussive grenade. Although they were fairly sheltered from the blast, Callisto and Alack were knocked back toward the cockpit seats and the trespassers entered the cockpit.

“You’d be wise to surrender,” the Dashade cautioned the women.

“Huh. What do you know?” Callisto muttered. “Nikto and a Dashade.” Then, she demanded, “What do you want?”

“You. You’re going to come quietly, or we’re going to make a big mess of this ship and your crew,” one of the Nikto answered.

“Alright,” Callisto replied, setting down her blaster and raising her arms. Slowly, she rose from behind the seat.

“Let’s see the other one,” one of the attackers demanded, calling Alack to come into view. She raised her arms, and slowly complied.

“Daisy?” Callisto muttered relatively quietly. “Multi-grav Zone G.”

“Magnification?” asked the on-board computer. Alack realized that the three assailants were standing right alongside the starboard wall where she had laid with the captain, on the first night she was on board the Pathfinder.

A smile crawled across Callisto’s face. “Twelve.”

An instantaneous and collective gasp rose from the invaders as they suddenly and forcefully fell “down” onto the wall. Two had dropped their blasters. Alack leapt over to retrieve them.

Unfortunately, the Dashade retained his, and pointed it directly at the young Chiss woman’s skull. “This is your last warning. No more funny business,” he warned.

“Wait!” Callisto called out. “Alright. I’ll come quietly. Just don’t hurt my crew.”

Alack wasn’t a member of the crew, but realized that in the exchange between Twitchy and the raiders, they were counting her as such.

“My patience is at an end,” the Dashade warned. He had managed to work his way from the multi-grav -affected wall, and had gained his footing. “Let them down, and then we’re going to tell your crew to stand down.”

“Alright,” Callisto complied. “Daisy? Multi-grav Zone G. Magnification: off, but slowly.”

The two Nikto slid to the floor, one arriving head first.

They stood and retrieved their blasters, which Alack hadn’t had enough time to gather up.

---

When they had emerged from the cockpit, the assailants kept their blasters trained on the captain and Alack. Sirky and Skako had caught sight of them in the hallway, but Callisto ordered them to stand down. Then, they circled toward the front, and came up behind Mercie and Vee, who were likewise forced to drop their sabers and surrender.

One of the Nikto bound Callisto’s hands behind her back, and then threw a sack over her head. “Is this really necessary?” she demanded, the last word muffled as she disappeared under the hood. It was tied securely but not constrictively, at her neck.

“Where are the others?” the Dashade demanded of his companions.

The Nikto who had bound Callisto wasn’t waiting to find out, and secured his captive into the passenger seat of a nearby speeder, then climbed on. “Clean this mess up,” he barked to the Dashade. “I’ll deliver the package.”

With that, he kicked the speeder into gear and rocketed away from the dock.

The remaining Nikto handed some binding cable to Mercie. “Tie their hands behind their backs,” he ordered.

She dropped the cable. “Oh, sorry,” she said calmly, and stooped to pick it up.

“No tricks. I mean it,” the Nikto threatened, training his blaster on the Zabrak.

Rana stepped into view in the distance, leaving the foreman’s office. “Mercie? Do you have this?” she shouted.

Mercie had lowered to pick up the binding cable. She reached out her fingers toward a metal tread to steady herself. The track was one of several that reinforced the surface of the dock from the wear that it took from heavy equipment and freighters. Alack was certain that she saw some glints of light at her fingertips.

There wasn’t time to think about it. The Dashade began to spasm in an apparent seizure. The Nikto turned to see what the matter was.

This was Mercie’s opportunity. She sprung up and seized the Nikto’s head, twisting it sharply. With a sudden snap, he fell to the ground… almost at the same time as the Dashade, who had fallen unconscious.

Apparently aware from her distance away that the ship had been secured, Rana took a nearby speeder and departed after Callisto and her captor.

While the crew relaxed and considered their next move, Mercie picked up the Nikto’s blaster and fired a bolt through the unconscious Dashade’s head.

Alack was mortified by how cold Mercie’s actions were. The crew seemed less concerned, although a little surprised.

Mercie picked up the lightsaber that Vee had passed to her, and lobbed it back. “I’m still going to want to know where you got these,” she said. “But for now, I’m going after them. Rana and I will bring your captain back.”

“Are you sure that’s wise? I mean, I can fight, and have the Force with me,” Alack offered to go in her stead. “You’re, you know, a caregiver…”

“Really?” Mercie looked at the young Chiss woman, somewhat aghast. “Really! Because you did such a great job back there, right? First as a spectator, then as a hostage.”

“Give her a break,” Skako tried to intervene. “We were all caught off balance.”

Mercie continued, glowering at Alack, who realized her insult, but not the extent.  "And really! I have offered to train you in the Force, and you still think me to be a mere caregiver?”

Alack was frozen in a combination of confusion and fear as Mercie produced the hilt of her own lightsaber from her belt. There was a slight crackle of electricity radiating outward from the Zabrak, making the hairs on Alack’s body tingle. "Isn’t it obvious to you by now?"

The air felt icy and brisk. Alack felt a chill running up her back. The callousness of the Dashade’s death suggested it to her moments ago, but Alack was becoming even more keenly aware that she really didn’t know the Zabrak at all.

Mercie snarled. Her voice started to echo as though it were thunder. “I rose up from the slave academies to become an assassin. I was the second of a new branch of Force users who signaled the end of the Rule of Two. I bled my own Kyber crystals and pilgrimaged the Red Path on Moraband. Disciple of Tyranus, the Acolyte of Entropy. I am called the Reaver, Queen of the Dead. The Necromancer. Never formally given it, I have nevertheless earned the title of Dark Lord of the Sith, and would have every right to claim it.…”

"Not to mention also being a wee bit pompous," Skako mumbled, not really expecting anyone to notice, in the tension of the moment.

Her eyes burned, and her expression toward Alack was defiant. “You would do well to stay out of my way. You are not ready.” Mercie turned and took one of the two remaining speeders. In a moment, she was gone.

“Sith?” Alack muttered out loud. “That’s not possible.” And then, she remembered the sparks from Mercie’s fingers as she touched the reinforcing metal of the floor – the same slat that the Dashade had been standing on with his bare feet, moments before his seizure. And the trails of sparklights in the cavern on Lothal. And the light of indeterminate source held cupped in her hand when they first met. And the cacophony of their escape from that house, which probably wasn’t entirely Rana’s doing. And…

“The mess she made of these two suggests otherwise,” Skako offered helpfully, motioning to the Dashade and Nikto laying dead at their feet.

Jujjeg had only just caught up with them from having stayed near the back of the ship to defend the cargo lift.

And as was the Hutt’s fashion, he had apparently fixed on something entirely tangential to what had just happened: “Necromancer?” he asked.

-----

The massively overgrown urban sprawl of Nar Shaddaa had spread to completely cover the legendary moon, which existed in a near-constant state of daylight, lit doubly by the ambient light from the system’s central star, Y’Toub, and the reflected light of its planetary anchor, Nal Hutta. The massive city was literally stratified according to wealth, with the richest individuals, corporations and – as was often the case – cartels owning virtually everything built at the bright, towering heights, while the overpopulated poor were confined to the darker, lower sectors. Residents were keenly aware of living in a constant state of precarity, and that there was literally always lower levels one could sink to, if they weren’t careful. And above the city floated the casinos and attractions that had made Nar Shaddaa a gambling resort tourist attraction across the galaxy – a seeming world away from the shanties in the shadows below.

If you lived or spent much time on Nar Shaddaa and never saw the moon’s surface, you were fortunate, indeed.

Not all of the upper reaches were glitzy, of course. There were industrial sectors peppered with shipping docks – much like the one that the Wobani Pathfinder had docked in – which were largely cartel-controlled and provided a pathway on- and off-world that bypassed the major spaceports. This was critical for avoiding monitored trade and the reach of the Empire… especially given that the majority of trade here was extralegal.

The Empire, too, had their occasional footholds here, though those had to be negotiated with the Hutts, and their authority was limited. But the presence of Imperials wasn’t entirely unknown, here.

Speeders in the upper reaches were usually of a few specific varieties: the slow lumbering barges that often served as floating casinos and cantinas of their own, cargo shuttles, enclosed taxis, luxury craft, and racing bikes. The thing they all shared in common was that they were designed to stay in the upper strata, but without ever leaving the atmosphere. The distance to the surface below was irrelevant, because they were best suited to jet across the upper reaches and never visit the lower dregs, unless to make the darkest of deals and then slip away.

The speeders that departed the docks following the clash at the Pathfinder were all of the latter variety: fleet skyhoppers designed to jet around and over the structures, but not too high above the rooftops. They had to be kept in ideal operating condition, in order to avoid dropping onto penthouse balconies unexpectedly – or worse, down into the depths of the city shadows.

The speeder Alack was riding – the last one that had been parked on the dock near the Pathfinder’s landing site – was not in the best of operating condition. It sputtered occasionally and lost power before perking up again. It was very disconcerting. In a way, she sort of wished that she had let Sirky beat her to it and that the Selonian were dealing with the temperamental junker, instead.

But she had to try to help Callisto. She felt a bit responsible for the Pathfinder captain’s capture, given that Callisto had surrendered in order to spare Alack from having her skull unexpectedly ventilated. She had put her in a bad spot.

Someone she didn’t feel the same need to help was Mercie, who she still felt enraged about. She had been lied to, and about something that her teacher must have known (given her interest in all things Jedi) would offend her deeply.

“Sith!” she tried to curse, although no sound really came out. At the speed she was traveling, she could barely breathe, let alone speak. Worse, she had been hoping to learn the ways of the Force from this person!

But she followed Mercie. She had to. It was the only way she knew which way she was going. Mercie was probably using the Sight to perceive Rana, and maybe Callisto’s captor, but things were so scrambled and there were so many others around that there was no way Alack would be able to fix on them to do the same. So she had to follow Mercie. The Sith.

The thought had still confused her. How did Mercie put it? “I was the second of a new branch of Force users who signaled the end of the Rule of Two.” Alack had heard that the Sith had somehow survived their great battle in the Jedi-Sith War through the Rule of Two, and that the apparent consequence of that was that one of them was now reputed to be the Emperor of the Galactic Empire. She had surmised that this likely meant that the second was his champion, Darth Vader. So where did this other “branch” come from, and who was Darth Tyranus?

There was no time to think on it. As far as she could tell, they had traversed a large arc around several blocks and now were returning to a straightened course. She had to make another precarious jump across an intersecting flow of traffic. They weren’t really following the preordained laneways through the buildings of Nar Shaddaa, so every time she had to do this, it was partly a question of luck as to whether she would avoid a collision… and the rest of it was a question of altitude, which she could play with a little. Her speeder chose this moment to cough and sputter, though, so altitude wasn’t going to help her through this aerial lane jump.

Instead, the speeder started to drop. This put her out of the pathway of the vehicles, but she could feel the heat of their jets on her head, and she was at risk of losing control and falling to the streets below.

“Come on! Come on!”

It sputtered. Then coughed. And then caught again, coming back to life. The lurch almost toppled her from the speeder.

But Mercie was gone? Or wait: maybe she had landed. Where?

She tried to focus, although it was difficult, through the racing of her heart and the throbbing adrenaline in her skull.

Ah. She spotted her. Alack’s own eyes sufficed, fortunately, and found the Zabrak on the landing pad of another industrial building, heavily fortified. There were two other speeders besides Mercie’s, so presumably Rana, Callisto and the Nikto were already inside. She veered toward the pad.

As she came in to land, her speeder began to cough again, pause and then shake. Then, when it should have decelerated, it kicked back into gear, instead. The young Chiss woman had to jump for it.

She connected with the surface of the landing pad. She slid a little, although the face of it had been coated with an anti-slip texture. It scraped her skin, but she didn’t fall over the edge.

Her speeder wasn’t so lucky. Worse, it collided with two of the other skyhoppers, sending three of the four (minus several pieces of debris) to the city below.

Her scrapes hurt, but she ignored them, picked herself up, and headed inside.

It wasn’t difficult to do: the entry doors were askew from Mercie’s entry, and one simply had to follow the sounds of blaster fire and ricochets.

She had entered a storehouse, an apparent cartel-owned facility not used specifically for shipping, but for longer-term storage and various dirty works. Inside was a vast, vaulted warehouse area, sorted on one side with storage containers and stored cargo, biding its time until its intended end use. Along the other, there was an array of offices and sorting spaces. Dotting the middle were enormous columns reaching up to the support spans along the ceiling.

Mercie and Rana were each currently behind separate columns, occasionally darting from their vantage point to the next column, working their way toward the offices. As they would do so, they would use their lightsabers – Rana’s golden blade and Mercie’s a deep scarlet – to repel the blaster fire of several cartel figures taking shelter behind the doors and windows of the facility. Idly, she wondered if lightsabers were the best weapon here, given how dark it was and how dramatically they revealed the womens’ locations. But every time the sabers lit up, the bright plasma assailed her eyes and they needed to adjust; when they extinguished their blades, she similarly lost view of them until her sight compensated… maybe this was more beneficial than it at first seemed.

Alack realized that she would have a clear shot if she wanted to take out Mercie right now. It would be easy. And she thought about all she’d heard of the Sith, the bloodthirst, the viciousness, the cruelty… all of which was currently being borne out by the political machinations in the Sith-run Galactic Empire. They were an evil incarnate, an existential threat to the galaxy, and all she would have to do is pull the trigger…

Mercie was currently sheltering behind a pillar and immediately shot a stern look at Alack. That was when the young Chiss woman realized she wasn’t simply musing about taking the shot… she had actually been lining it up using the blaster she had stolen from the dead Nikto back at the Pathfinder’s landing site – and Mercie had seen her. Embarrassed, she readjusted her aim at the cartel operatives, and tried to fire.

She couldn’t fire. The trigger wouldn’t budge. She’d been in the sights of blasters many times, but had never actually fired one. She realized she must have been forgetting a safety or something that needed to be released before she could.

Mercie and Rana had moved on, and had almost covered the distance to the offices. Alack, meanwhile, didn’t immediately see what she was doing wrong with the blaster, and needed another plan. She didn’t think that anyone else had seen her arrival yet. Her thoughts, therefore, went to rescuing Callisto, instead.

Alack scanned the area, realizing that it was unlikely in this turmoil that the kidnapper would have managed to get their prisoner all the way to the far side offices before Rana had arrived, and that she could still be in the open space of the warehouse, somewhere. Her suspicions were confirmed when she noticed that – though bound – the Wobani Pathfinder’s captain had managed to squirm over to the area of crates and storage containers. Alack did her best to creep over to her.

Callisto was still hooded, so when Alack touched her shoulder, she flinched, not knowing who might have approached her. Alack reached behind her and quickly tried to unbind her wrists. Once finally freed, the Mandalorian hurriedly pulled at the binding and freed her head.

“I could kiss you,” she said to Alack, and then looked around to take in the situation. She took a moment to register the two women across the warehouse, and their skillful use of their lightsabers.

“Let’s get out of here,” Alack said, helping her to her feet, and then making toward the entrance.

They fled. Before slipping through the doors, Alack cast a glance back, and her eyes met Mercie’s. “Who cares for you, anyway?” the Chiss girl mouthed silently toward the Zabrak, and callously left the two women to finish the battle.

“Wait, there’s only one speeder,” Callisto noted.

“Yeah, I had an accident,” Alack admitted.

“I can see that,” Twitchy said, noticing the debris and skid marks from when Alack had landed. “But how are they going to get out?”

“They can figure that out themselves,” Alack snarled. “We’re going.”

“Wait a minute. They came here for me. I’m not leaving them behind. Whatever their deal is. And I’m not keen on running from a fight, anyway.”

“Mercie is Sith, apparently,” Alack told her.

“Wait, isn’t that like the opposite of Jedi?” Callisto asked.

“More or less.”

“What an incredibly farkled relationship that must be,” she mused. “But I’m still not leaving them behind.”

“They can take care of themselves!” Alack argued. She had already hopped on the skyhopper and fired it up – all she needed was her passenger.

Callisto thought of charging back in, but paused at the sound of three explosive blasts. Her arms were still numb from the position they had been bound in, and she didn’t have any weapons. “I hope you’re right,” she said, climbing on the back.

---

Alack had tried to retrace the route back to the Pathfinder from memory, but when she got to the part of a large circular arc around a sector of Nar Shaddaa, she decided to cut across, for expedience. As she did, Callisto shouted something at her.

She couldn’t hear very well because of the wind in their faces, which the windscreen did little to shelter them from – not to mention the din of traffic… although at least that was fading as they vaunted into the shortcut.

“I said, I think this is an… “ Callisto shouted again, her voice being drowned out toward the end.

“I can’t hear you,” Alack called back.

“I SAID…

“I THINK…

“THIS IS AN…

“IMPERIAL…

“INSTALLA—”

Something struck the back of the speeder, causing one of the two rear jets to explode in a shower of sparks and flame. They were almost jolted from their seats, but held on.

It was no use, though. They were going to crash.

The area below looked like a military base. Alack suddenly realized why the original chase had traced a wide arc around the area.

The speeder was finished. All she could coax it to do – when she wasn’t trying to contain its attempts to spin – was to use the remaining jets to slow their descent.

“Dive over there!” Callisto pointed to a region of the deck covered in dormant walkers. “It will give us some cover until we can think of what to do!”

She did. As the speeder was about to crash, the two women leapt, then rolled when they touched down on the surface.  Callisto came to a stop when she ran into a chain link fence, and was thankful that it hadn’t been electrified.

The alert was sounding, and red lights flooded the base. Gradually, doors and gates opened, and troops slipped out, finding cover, and then moved to closer vantage points when they thought it safe to do so.

“We need blasters,” Callisto called to Alack, who was scrambling painfully to her feet a short distance away. Alack realized she had lost the blaster from the Nikto, and wasn’t sure if it had clattered nearby or had fallen to the city below.

The two sheltered behind an inert walker. Alack thought for a moment about trying to pilot one, but ruled it out, given that it wouldn’t get very far on its own, and certainly not without drawing even more attention that they didn’t want. Anyway, the Imperials reputedly kept them grounded by requiring security codes to authorize any ignition of the clunkers’ jets. “What are the Imps doing with a base on Nar Shaddaa?” Alack asked. “I know they have their treaties with the Hutts, but they don’t usually permit actual military facilities…”

There was no time to think on it. They didn’t have a lot of options. They couldn’t exactly go through the installation and down to the streets of Nar Shaddaa, below.

There was an external landing pad across a clearing and through a fence, but it was elevated. The Empire seemed to have a fixation on visual theatre, so it had been built several hundred feet up from the tarmac, with snaking and criss-crossing ramps on either side leading down to the surface. This created a dramatic entrance for new arrivals, but also had the effect of making sure anyone accessing it, in or out, would be in clear view for security, for a great deal of time. The only quick way up would be to charge the centre below it, and scale several platforms to reach it. But the landing pad was empty, so it would essentially be a dead end for them, unless they decided to jump into the depths of Nar Shaddaa.

Their best option would be to find another skyhopper, but the Imps likely had them locked away in a hangar. None were in sight.

The loudspeaker blared: “Attention intruders! Put down your weapons and surrender! This is your only warning!”

The troopers were closing in, now, inching forward whenever they could find a closer bit of cover. Some had started to fire. The women were pinned down. It wasn’t looking good.

Then, some heavy cannon fire opened up.

Another speeder rained down onto the deck, and exploded into a fireball, likely struck by the aforementioned cannon. It looked like it could have held one to two people, and would have been perfect, Alack thought, regretfully. Then, she looked to see where it had come from.

There was a sound of blaster fire, and then Mercie and Rana dropped to the surface beside them.

Mercie shot Alack an angry look. “Who cares for you?” she threw the Chiss woman’s words back at her, and then added, somewhat menacingly, “We’re going to have a talk…!”

Alack wasn’t sure if the comment was sarcastic, serious or something else. For all she knew, they two women had only come to save Callisto. “Yes! We are!” Defiant, Alack tried to match the Zabrak’s rage. Mercie raised her chin a little and looked like she was going to say something more thoughtful (though no less angry), but then remembered the moment, and turned to face around the side of the walker’s base, where troopers were approaching.

Rana had produced a commlink, probably found among the goods in the cartel warehouse, where they’d found the speeder. She shouted into the comm, over the noise and blaster fire. “There’s a landing pad on the north face. Do you see it?”

One battalion had approached closely enough that Mercie darted out, weaving between bolts, lightsaber lit, its crimson blade cutting the troopers down. Then, repelling a few blaster bolts, she returned to cover.

“That’s the one,” Rana shouted. “It’s too small for the Pathfinder. You will need to hover and steady the ship, and lower the exit ramp to its surface!”

The Pathfinder? Callisto scanned the sky for her ship. Vee must be piloting, she thought, but she was a little puzzled at how the old women had accessed their comms frequency. They Pathfinder would need to stay low to avoid the cannons, but this put them at risk from the traffic lanes.

Mercie barked orders to the women. “We’re going to make a run for it, and try to springboard up the platforms, while taking fire. Think you’re up to it?”

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to make those jumps,” Alack protested.

“Good!” Mercie shouted back, as if she hadn’t heard her. “On my mark!”

“Wait, are you sure that Rana can manage this?” Alack tried to interject further. “How is she even standing, right now?”

Callisto grasped Alack’s fingers and gave them a gentle squeeze – partly for reassurance, and partly out of fear.

“Now!”

The four women darted across the tarmac – first Rana, then Alack and Callisto closely behind, and finally Mercie bringing up the rear. As they did, both Jedi and Sith spun to deflect blaster fire. As they reached the criss-crossing ramps and platforms, Mercie turned toward the firing squadrons. At her glance, the walkers tipped toward the soldiers, distracting them. There was a cacophonous scramble to evade.

Rana reached the platforms first, bounding up them seemingly effortlessly. She reached back, and stretched an arm toward Twitchy.

Callisto felt herself lift from the surface and almost hurl to the top platform beside Rana. Likewise, Alack was propelled unexpectedly. Mercie had a harder climb, as the troops regrouped before she got very far. The blaster fire became heavy, and she had to shelter in place a few times on the way up. Finally, she made one final leap and joined them.

By now, Callisto could see the Pathfinder. It wasn’t going to be able to land on the platform because of its size, and they didn’t have time for a relaxed extraction.

The exit ramp of the Pathfinder started to lower, and Vee carefully brought it toward the pad. The winds, meanwhile, picked up around the four women, and Alack thought she would be lifted off the surface.

And in fact, then they all did lift off the surface. But they didn’t blow over the side, like expected. Something was controlling what was taking place. Callisto looked over and saw Rana, arms outstretched, straining, screaming.

Alack suddenly flew forward, propelled through the Wobani Pathfinder’s half-open ramp. Then, Callisto lurched through the opening as well. Mercie followed, and finally Rana sailed in, all crashing into the bulkhead inside the ship and falling onto the floor in a pile.

“They’re on board!” Skako shouted. “Close the gate and go!”

They could hear Vee’s puzzled verbalizing from the cockpit. She was obviously baffled as to how that was possible.

“They just are!” the Ongree shouted back. “Go! Go!”

The exit ramp began to close and the ship rocketed away from the military base.

The Miraluka woman was unconscious from the exertion. Mercie found her bearings, crawled over to her, and took her in her arms.

Her shoulder and back hurting from striking the bulkhead on the way in, Twitchy stared glassily at old Rana. The Zabrak attempted to lift her up. "Someone help me get her to bed," Mercie growled.

"I'd be happy to help," Jujjeg offered.

"I bet you would," the dark woman muttered. The Hutt either didn’t notice the sarcasm, or ignored it.

Twitchy's eyes followed them, dazed, then lingered after they were gone. "So... Jedi…" she said, not taking her eyes off the corridor that Jujjeg carried Rana down. She said it as though it were finally sinking in.

“And Sith,” Alack added.

“I’m not an expert on religious mysticism,” Callisto commented, “but I’d have to guess that these are the real deal.”

They were silent for a few moments. Twitchy still dazedly stared into the distance.

Finally, she spoke. "So, I understand your reluctance about Mercie.” She puffed, still short of breath. “But… the way I see it, you went looking for one Force user, and you found two.”

Callisto continued to stare down the corridor after the women, glassy-eyed. “If you’re still set on finding your brother and this is the hand that fate is going to deal to you…" Twitchy finally broke from her stare and looked deep into Alack’s eyes, “… maybe, you should play it."

---

The holocomm played back some of the security footage.

“And where was this?” The voice belonged to one of the Inquisitors, hovered intently over the table, studying what she was seeing very closely.

“Nar Shaddaa, sir,” the agent replied. “They were passing over one of our bases, and the routine procedure was to shoot them down, but they had no forewarning about who they were dealing with.”

“I see what you mean. I’m glad that you brought this to my attention.” Her face in shadow, the Inquisitor revealed very little about what she thought of the footage, other than she was clearly engrossed by it. “The red blade is curious. That is a Dark Side trait, but I have no record of an Inquisitor or any other sort of authorized Force user in the area. And all of that notwithstanding, here this person is fighting alongside a suspected Jedi. This requires some investigation.”

“Well, of course, that’s not all, and that’s why I wanted to ask you specifically about her. I mean, the tattoos are obviously different, but the resemblance is uncanny. Is there any light that you might be able to shine on this situation?”

The Inquisitor stood up, placing her face under the cast of a pot light above. The red-skinned Zabrak woman frowned, clearly troubled.

“Yes,” she answered. “I have a sister…”

Then.

Golg, 20 BBY

The masked woman crumpled to the marbled floor where she had been thrown, in that dank, dark Iegoan cell. As the cell door closed, Shirana crawled over to her, hurriedly.

This was bad. This was very bad. She was barely breathing. She was almost too weak to speak; definitely too weak to move. Though Shirana couldn’t see her, she could feel her energy – or, that is, the lack thereof – in the form of her waning body temperature. This was bad.

Shirana reached to unlace the mask starting at the base of the wounded Sith's neck. They'd been through this before, though. The dark woman always rebuffed her, even though there was no rational reason for her to do so. Shirana paused to see if she would resist. "May I? I want to help..."

There was a stirring of realization in the masked woman at the request. As helpless as she was -- the sinew of her muscles hanging as loosely as straw -- Shirana was still asking. Ordinarily, the dark woman would interpret this as weakness. But in this moment, she recognized it for respect. Shirana’s desire for consent was only a vulnerability in the sense of will, not ability. Despite such disparate power differences between them in this moment, the Jedi chose a level of equal agency, out of a sense of caring -- something the masked woman had never experienced or understood, before. Of course, she didn’t really like it and was usually quite cynical about the Jedi’s motives, but she wasn’t going to protest, given that it was to her benefit.

"Please?" Shirana continued.

"Ye--" she puffed, and almost blacked out from the effort.

Shirana hurriedly unlaced the mask and pulled it over her head.

It felt wonderful for the woman to breathe air directly again, in all its fullness, and not through the chemical filters of the mask's respirator. She wheezed a little, then caught her breath again.

For a few moments, she lay there, taking in the cool air on her sweaty, itchy face. Then, she opened her eyes and tried to adjust to the light.

It was still dark in the cell, but without the scarlet coloured lenses of the mask, the Sith woman was able to perceive more ambient light, peeking in from their prison’s entrance. She looked at the corners of the room. She looked at her cellmate. She –

“Wh… where…? It almost looks like… you have no…”

“Eyes? No. I’m Miraluka,” Shirana acknowledged.

“Mira…” the dark woman took the thought in and rolled it between her fingers a moment. She had, after all, kept that stifling mask on because she didn’t want this Jedi to see her face. “When… were you going t… to tell me…”

“Probably when you stopped being so stubborn,” Shirana replied. She was expecting the dark woman to become angry, although she wouldn’t have been able to do much in her present state.

Instead, she did something unexpected. Weakly, for the first time since their initial capture, she started laughing. “Well played…”

Shirana started checking over her body for wounds and injuries. “Well, you were so insistent…”

“N… no…” the figure chuckled. “Don’t make excuses… This is the first… fir… first thing I’ve respected y… you for…”

Shirana tried to stifle a smile.

She carefully brushed the sweat-sticky hair from the wounded Sith's face. And then, of all things, in an impulse, descended to give her a long, urgent, merciful kiss.

Something about it... felt like life. It almost felt like energy flowed from Shirana into the discarded woman, giving her a new strength -- not a recovery, necessarily, but enough to have the will to breathe again, and recover strength on her own.

Shirana rolled back onto her heels and contemplated the woman's naked face.

Her red skinned, Zabrak face.

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: The Dead Woman

Now.

Nar Shaddaa, 3 ABY

The door to Labakka’s cabin opened partway and Callisto peeked in. “How is she?” she asked, not wanting to wake Rana.

“She’s exhausted,” Mercie replied. “She’ll be fine, but she won’t be doing much for awhile. She exerted far more than she should have. How is…?” The Zabrak couldn’t bring herself to finishing the question without becoming angry.

“Alack still needs to cool down. Listen, can I ask a favour?”

Mercie rose up and exited in the room, so they could speak without disturbing the sleeping Jedi.

“Seeing as traffic off Nar Shaddaa is being watched closely,” Callisto said, “we’ve docked in a Mando-controlled district, with some close, trusted friends of mine. I’m going to meet with some family, and Skako and Sirky need to make a pick up. After the setup we walked into earlier, I’d appreciate it if you could go with them. I’ll have Vee watch over Rana, and once we’re all back and cooled down, we can all clear the air on things.”

“You mean like what that ambush was about, and what those Nikto wanted with you?” Mercie asked.

“Yes. I’ll explain it when we get back. We’ve all got a lot to discuss.”

“Obviously,” the Zabrak said, dryly.

---

The four strode through the Corona cautiously. Skako and Sirky seemed fairly relaxed, but Callisto was still shaken. Mercie kept her hood low over her face, certain that there would be people looking for her, by now.

“Callisto!” A stocky patron at one table beckoned to her from a darkened corner. He was with three others who turned to look at her. The Pathfinder’s contingent approached them.

“There you are!” the stocky one cheered. “Lads? This is my brother, Callisto.”

“Sister,” Callisto corrected.

“Sister,” he stated, without missing a beat.

Callisto and Mercie traded a glance. Callisto shrugged. “Among Mandalorians, everyone is a warrior. Man… woman… no one gets hung up on how you live your life as long as you can fight, in whatever way you are able,” she explained. “In most clans, anyway. Anyway, follow Sirky,” she added. “The pick up is in the market next door. She knows where. I’ll meet you back at the ship, or come back here if there is any trouble.”

Callisto took a seat while the Zabrak, Ongree and Selonian threaded their way out of the bar and into the cluttered market.

“So, I gather that Sirky understands Basic, but doesn’t speak it,” Mercie commented to Skako.

“Right. And Vee can do both, but chooses not to speak it. It’s not typically a problem, though, because the whole crew understands both Mandaba and Nautila. Netha’s a bit of an exception – only Jujjeg and Waya can understand him completely. Callisto knows a bit of Ortolan, but that’s it.”

The market was filled with several small animals in cages, and the air was thick with varied scents tinged with urea and straw. Mercie scanned the denizens from behind the folds of her hood, trying to predict who their meeting was to be with.

“Ah! There.” Skako Divik found the shopkeeper, a massive Chevin merchant moving slowly, emerging from the back to take his place behind the counter, where he’d be carefully positioned to be able to keep an eye on everyone in the market. “Phygna. Callisto sends her regards.”

The shopkeeper snorted and replied. “Wise of him not to show his face personally,” the furry hulk turned and fished something from behind the counter wrapped in cloth. The Chevin had difficulty speaking Basic, and his speech was heavily accented.

“Now is that nice?” Skako asked. Mercie could never tell if he was grinning or if that was just the way his brow looked, naturally. “You know she’s a ‘she,’ now. Has been for awhile. Over a year, in fact. You can afford to show her a little respect.”

“It’s not natural,” the Chevin grumbled, setting the package on the counter and sliding it toward Skako.

“You liked her when she came through for your family on Mon Calamari. You got to eat, that season. Remember? And anyway, the galaxy is filled with entire species that change their sex, so are you seriously going to let this little thing sour you? It’s not even really any of your business.”

The Chevin scrutinized Skako intensely. “How can you really trust this captain of yours, if he doesn’t really know what he is?”

“She knows exactly who she is. That’s the point,” the Ongree stared back. “And I trust her completely.”

“Do you seriously believe a person really change their sex?” the Chevin grunted.

“Can a Jeby change its spots?” Skako grinned.

Phygna looked confused by the reference. This annoyed Skako, who decided to supply the answer: “Of course they can, if you make them laugh hard enough. Jeez. You have no sense of how vast this galaxy is, do you?”

Phygna snorted again. “This is the artifact that the foreman will require on Ossus,” he changed the subject. “I believe our business is concluded.”

“Fine, be sour,” Skako grumbled. “Your loss.” He turned and Mercie followed as he made to leave.

“Sirky?” Skako called.

The Selonian had stopped at a cage near the shop entrance. She was befriending a caged Loth Cat – kitten, really – and the two were sniffing, practically nose-to-nose, trading scents. Sirky seemed fairly animated, and muttered something in Mandaba.

“No, don’t start acting like he’s a den-mate. You shouldn’t get too attached,” Skako said. “You know they sell these animals as food, right?”

---

“So make yourself at home, little sister,” the stocky Mando reiterated to Callisto. “Stay for a few days. In our hangar, the Imps won’t see your ship. When you’re ready to go, use this transponder. They’ll read you as a different YT-2400. It was known as the Ballistic Wind. You can swap back to yours when you get to hyperspace. Guy who sold the transponder to me says it was brought down over Tatooine, but no one knows it’s off the books, yet. If luck is with us, no one will know the Pathfinder was on Nar Shaddaa.”

“Thanks, Randoer,” Callisto smiled. “I really appreciate this. My next delivery is to Imps, so I have to keep this manifest clean.”

“No problem.” Randoer signaled to the waitdroid. “You want a spicebrew, or rotgut?”

Another Mandalorian at the table spoke up. “You’ve got to try the Chandrilan raava.”

“Dennan here just acquired a new ship, so he’s buying,” Randoer ribbed. “And tonight, his tastes are a little expensive, too.”

The Mando who’d recommended the raava shrugged. “Yeah, sure. I can. This round, anyway. Why not?”

“Acquired as in bought, or lifted?” Callisto took a stool facing the booth.

“I won it,” Dennan grinned. “VCX series. It’s got one of them 434-FPCs, too. Can’t wait to try it out, have a big spread.”

“Nah, you’ve got to replace the chef droid,” Callisto stated. “Or wipe and reprogram it. It’s one of the first things you do. You never know if it’s been programmed to poison anyone taking over who it doesn’t recognize as the legitimate captain.” The waitdroid arrived, and Callisto paused briefly to order a spicebrew.

Mandalorian sentiment toward droids varied considerably, with the Basilisk war droid figuring prominently in their history… but given the long history of droids being used as instruments of treachery and death by Empire, Republic and Separatist forces, many clans had developed a deep distrust of them. Callisto was from one such clan.

“I’m not keen on having a lot of droids aboard my ship, but the ones I do have are repurposed. I mean, I use a mouse droid instead of an astromech, for example.” Callisto grinned, pausing to eye the waitdroid taking their orders suspiciously. “I don’t trust their pre-installed programming.”

As the waitdroid left, Callisto pointed at it. “For the main ship droid, I stole a waitress droid like this one, from Corlo Benge’s resort.”

“Benge?” Dennan replied. “That’s gutsy. He’d crap furbles.”

“See, here’s the thing. Just about every droid is programmed with some sort of military or spying tech. Med droids, protocol droids, nav droids… you can’t trust them. But these, they’ve got no combat programming and only a few spying subroutines you can easily overwrite or delete. You want something with a completely clean slate, that no one would have ever intended to be used in a military or clandestine capacity. These, they spy on patrons a bit, mostly to collect data that they can use to customize advertising – but you can wipe that easily.”

She leaned back and continued. “Anyway, Benge was paranoid enough to make sure all his droids were off-network and unaffiliated. And the droid wasn’t happy there, so there were no loyalty issues. I liberated her, so to speak, and had my slicer load her up with navigation, language translation, medical procedure… everything my ship needs, without all the other flarg. So we had full control of all her programming. We kept her personality matrix because nothing there was a threat, but that was it.”

“You know it’s an it and not a she, right?” Dennan asked.

“Eh,” Callisto shrugged. “I’ve got no problem calling her what she wants to be called. And machine or not, she’s still sentient enough to merit that.”

Dennan realized she was drawing from her own experiences and the disrespect she often got from people who knew her past. He felt a little embarrassed. “Ah, I get it.”

Partway through the question, they were distracted by a raucous noise from not far outside the club. It sort of sounded like a Selonian going apeshit.

“Hey, Callie,” Randoer changed the subject, “what kind of girl trouble are you getting into, lately?”

 Callisto couldn’t help but smile. “Ah, I found this cute Chiss girl. Or, she found me, sort of. She’s on the Pathfinder, right now. Might bring her by before we leave.”

Randoer leaned forward, a sly expression on her face. “Have you had a taste, yet?”

Callisto gave him a shaming glance. “You know I don’t tell stuff like that.” The waitdroid arrived and set her spicebrew on the table.

The furor grew louder, and there was some screaming. Callisto started to wonder if the voices belonged to Sirky and Phygna.

“Is it true,” Dennan asked, “that Chiss girls don’t have a… you know… a button….” Callisto was somewhat amused by Dennan’s awkwardness with the question. He was actually fishing for an answer to the question Randoer had just asked, but halfway into asking it, Dennan had realized that while he had no trouble asking such a thing from his clan brothers, he did feel a little weird asking it from a sister.

She decided to have a little fun with his embarrassment. “Clitoris,” she said. “It’s called a clitoris. Keep trying… you might find one, someday.” Everyone laughed.

They still waited for an answer, though, and realizing they were just going to keep pressing her, Callisto took a long drink and finally gave in. “No, it’s not true.”

“Aaahhhhh!” Everyone at the table cheered as though they had won something.

“Hey, with what happened, did you get those Pykes off your back? Or are they still going to be trouble?” her brother asked.

The cacophony outside the club was becoming annoying, but it sounded like whatever it was might be abating.

“Always some nutbar gotta stir up trouble,” Dennan shook his head after looking over his shoulder toward the din.

“Yeah, no, I don’t think the Pykes will leave things as they are. If anything, they’re probably a bit more upset. I think we left one of their warehouses a bit of a mess,” she answered.

Mercie, Skako and Sirky were re-entering the Corona, and Callisto could tell from their urgent expression that they should leave. “Listen, thank you, brother. I have to be going, unfortunately.”

“You’re not going to stay and get sloshed?”

“Nah. I can’t. I’ll try to come by and tank up later,” Callisto smiled.

As she stood up from the table, she noticed a Loth Cat crawling up and over Sirky’s shoulders, bounding joyfully across the Selonian’s pelt.

“Uh, what is that?” Callisto demanded.

“We have a cat!” Skako replied, with a sheepish grin.

“No, we do not have a cat! We’ve already got too many passengers as it is, and we’re not kitted up for a wild creature. It should stay in its natural environment.”

“Its natural environment is Lothal, and we’re not going back there,” Mercie stated dryly, reminding the Pathfinder’s captain why she disliked the Zabrak. “And unless you want to try convincing your Chief of Security that her new den mate is better off staying on Nar Shaddaa as someone's dinner, then I strongly advise you that you have a cat.”

Callisto scanned Sirky’s face. The Selonian was adamant.

She looked back at her brother and his companions, all of whom were trying to stifle laughter.

“Looks like you have a cat, sis,” Randoer said.

Her shoulders dropped in surrender. “Great,” Callisto muttered. “One more mouth to feed.”

---

The Loth Cat bounded over Rana, spinning in her lap, then standing up to put his paws up on her collar bone so he could sniff her chin.

“So what are you going to call him?” Rana smiled over to Sirky.

“Shirirka,” the Selonian answered.

She wasn’t sure what that translated to from Mandaba, but returned to petting the bouncy orange furball. He obviously enjoyed being out of captivity and around people – or at least around Rana and Sirky.

The crew and passengers had mostly gathered in the lounge. “Where’s the kid?” Skako asked Callisto.

“She’s still asleep in my quarters,” the Pathfinder’s captain replied. “I thought I’d let her sleep awhile. She’s got some other things on her mind besides what we need to talk out, here.”

“Speaking of which,” Mercie chimed in, looking over to Vee. “I still want to know where you got those lightsabers.”

“Loo aah da’na ah dan i…”

“She’s a collector. And a student of fighting styles,” Callisto translated for her. “We pick them up whenever we encounter them up for trades. She has four of them, I think.”

“Too noo lah,” Vee confirmed.

“Force abilities?” Mercie asked over the table to her.

Vee shook her head in the negative.

“Too bad,” the Zabrak replied. “In order to fully master them, you have to develop an affinity with the crystals. Ideally, Force users craft them ourselves, from…”

Callisto cut her off. “Sorry, we really need to get to what just happened. We can discuss things like that later.”

Mercie leaned back in the booth and complied. “That’s fine. I yield the floor to Twitchy Fingers.”

Callisto paused and tilted her head. “Uh, wait. Are people really calling me ‘Twitchy Fingers,’ now?”

There were some snickers among the crew.

She lowered her head in defeat, then raised it again to refocus on what she needed to discuss. “So, the Pykes think I owe them some credits.”

“Pykes?” Mercie interjected. “I used to work for the Pykes.”

“Dank farrik,” Callisto cursed. “How much is there that we don’t know about you?”

“It’s not…” the Zabrak paused to inhale, then sighed heavily. “I was raised a slave. Took care of an archivist for several years…” (at this, Jujjeg made a tiny squeal of delight) “then was bought by some Hutts.” (Jujjeg then heaved a sigh of disappointment). “When I killed them, Pykes moved in on their territory, I became theirs, and that’s where I met the man who eventually trained me in the use of the Dark Side of the Force. So, it’s not complicated,” she answered. “But I suppose it’s also not typical.”

“Not typical, no,” Callisto agreed. “They’re not looking for you too, are they?”

“No,” Mercie replied. “That was a long time ago, and my mentor… sorted things out with them.” It was an obvious euphemism, but no one sought clarification. “And my mentor was with the Separatists, not the Empire, so the Imps aren’t specifically looking for me, either.”

Twitchy gave Mercie a sideways glance, at that. “So, uh, if you were a Separatist, did you know a centuries old Gen'Dai Sep named Durge?”

Mercie narrowed her eyes a little at the name. “Ah. He had a thing against Mandos, didn’t he?” Callisto didn’t have to answer. Murdering Mandalorians had been Durge’s driving force, and it had earned him a particular loathing in Mando culture. “Yes. He and I fought together on a couple of occasions, and were even bedmates, once. Boneless beings are a strange experience, though.” She paused, remembering, then continued. “I'm not sure what happened to him, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Yeah,” Twitchy answered. “Nobody’s seen him for awhile, but we all assume he’s still out there.”

“That would be my guess, too,” Mercie agreed. “You'd have to jettison him into a sun to kill him. And even then, he’d probably turn up later, hunting smugglers."

Callisto refocused her attention back on the assemblage. “Anyway, the Pykes think I owe them a lot of money. It has to do with when I inherited this ship. The crew I was with at the time was doing a run for them when everyone but me was slaughtered. I got away with the ship, and twelve pallets of spice, which I dumped. Probably a dumb move, but I was traveling through closely-watched Imp space and didn’t need to get caught with it, at the time.”

She continued. “I acquired this crew later. I told Vee and Labakka when we first met, but the rest of you are only hearing it now.“ She turned to Rana and Mercie, who didn’t know this part of the story “A few months after I inherited the ship, the crew here were betrayed by their previous captain and dumped during a firefight. I stepped in and helped them, and they ended up joining me on the Pathfinder.” Then, she turned back to the rest of the crew. “Anyway, for the longest time, nothing seemed to happen, so we thought nothing of it, and we didn’t think it would be a problem. But now that they’ve gone to the trouble to set up a fake delivery to do all this, well…” she paused. “It’s obviously not forgotten, and it’s probably best if you all know about it. I understand if anyone wants to disembark and…”

“Ah, don’t be ridiculous, boss,” Skako grinned as his eye-stalks turned to view around the room. “You act as if we’ve never seen danger before. Of course, we’re staying. Right?”

The crew piped up to the affirmative.

“And you two,” she turned back to Rana and Mercie, “I really appreciate what you did last night, coming after me. If not for you and Alack, I’d probably be a carbon popsicle, right now. For the record, it wasn’t my decision to leave when the kid and I did.”

“We know,” Rana said, still doting over Shirirka, who was loving the attention. “There’s no hard feelings.”

“There’s something else. We’ll be traveling to an Imp facility for our next delivery,” Callisto added.

“Oh, that’s probably not a good idea,” Mercie reacted.

A collective murmur went up from the passengers and some of the crew – although it looked like a few of the latter already knew about this. “Now, I know what you’re all thinking,” Callisto added. “There’s no way we can risk trading with Imps after what happened. But hear me out. If you two – or anyone else – want to chance staying on Nar Shaddaa, I understand,” Twitchy stated, “but now that we’ve unloaded here, I don’t have to worry about any legalities with our cargo. Other than you two, we have a clean ship, now, and I think we can avoid any unwanted attention.”

She continued, “As you might remember, I’ve got two time-sensitive shipments which haven’t at all been helped by having to lay low here for a couple of days. One of them requires the item you three picked up earlier today” (she nodded at Mercie and Skako) “and after these two stops are done, I’ll be happy to take you wherever you want to go. You probably shouldn’t stay on Nar Shaddaa, with all the surveillance footage the bucketheads will have of you. Or…” she looked at the crew a moment, considering, “… you’d be welcome to join us. You’ve obviously got skills to offer.”

“What, no ‘more mouths to feed’ jokes?” Skako asked.

Callisto shrugged. “Hey, the three of them combined still eat less than Netha.”

“Noot,” the Ortolan tooted, in mild dejection.

“She doesn’t mean that,” Jujjeg reassured the Pathfinder’s pale blue mechanic.

Callisto added, “I have two time-sensitive deliveries coming up, and the first is to an Imperial excavation. It’s low risk, a camp, not a military base. It’s at the Jedi Temple on Ossus. Jujjeg can get anyone who needs it credentialed, security is very low, showing up on an Imp doorstep is certainly not something that would be expected of us, it’s good money, and there’s one added benefit that came up which I didn’t originally anticipate: it will give us the opportunity – perhaps the only one I can foresee – to do something for the kid.”

“What sort of thing?” Rana asked. “And never underestimate the Empire. Nothing is ever low risk.”

“Alack really wants to find her brother. Where we’re going, we should be able to have access to their payroll records, and the Imps have a horrible habit of copying every location with the same massive data file. While the financials are anonymized, names and locations are not.”

“You’re talking about finding out where her brother is stationed,” Mercie concluded.

“Exactly. I know it’s impulsive, but the stop had already been arranged before all of this business with the Pykes, and I gave it some thought. After what the three of you did to save me, I figured I shouldn’t pass it up.”

“Wait, this was her thing,” Rana clarified. “Mercie and I are not interested in being drawn into a quest against the Empire. We just want to find somewhere quiet and make a home for ourselves.“

“I’ll let the three of you sort that out. At worst, you can stay on board the ship while we do the delivery,” Callisto offered. “Same place you hid when you got on, even. And after the two time-sensitive shipments are done, you can pick your destination.”

“I actually wouldn’t mind seeing the Temple,” Mercie commented to Rana. “There’s a bit of historical significance for me, but I’ve never actually been there.”

“You’ll be disappointed,” Jujjeg stated. “It’s been so picked through over the years, that there’s hardly anything left. Even the floor was excavated and taken to Coruscant. I can’t imagine why Imperial Reclamations would still have a dig site there.”

“Is this important,” asked Skako, “or are we done here?”

“Sorry,” Callisto said. “Yes, we’re done. Everyone can go.” The crew rose and started to leave. Sirky beckoned Shirirka, and the Loth-cat leapt onto her fur and climbed to her shoulder as the Selonian departed.

“I should love to hear your thoughts on the Temple, though,” Jujjeg continued. “The very place is steeped in the history of Jedi and Sith, and I’m sure that there is much you could have to say about it.”

Mercie gave him a suspicious glance that made him feel like he could wither. The Hutt looked like he wanted to say something more, but then reconsidered and slithered away.

The din of the dispersing group gradually abated as Alack approached the lounge. She still trembled with the anger, feeling like she could shout at Mercie at the top of her lungs.

As she turned the corner and they came into view, though, Mercie was gently stroking Rana’s hairline. Alack wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying to each other, but something about the sight of it felt completely incongruous.

Alack had heard stories of the Sith, legends from centuries ago. Of Momin, the Sith Lord who had used a superweapon to obliterate a city, then froze the community at the height of the denizens’ greatest fear and agony so that their anguish could be preserved forever. Of Vitiate, who consumed the planets of Nathema and Ziost ending the lives of billions in an instant. Of Exar Kun, who cut a swath across the galaxy, and of Nihilus, who became a living wound in the Force and helped bring the Jedi Order to near extinction. The Sith were horrors, living beings who were pure ambition, destruction and cruelty.

But this… the context was all wrong. There was so much tenderness between Mercie and Rana. So much affection – not just in this moment, but throughout the entire time she had known the two women. None of this meshed.

She tilted her head to the side, as if expecting that to help her reconcile what she was seeing with what she was feeling.

All she could come up with was the thought: “how does someone go from Sith to… this?”

Alack paused. But she was still angry.

“You have some explaining to do,” Alack finally said, standing in the entrance to the ship’s lounge. No one had noticed her previously, so they had no idea how long she was there.

Alack was furious. All of this time, she had been searching for a Jedi, and instead found one person who had abandoned their ways and another who was their sworn enemy. She had been duped! Betrayed! And worst of all, she had actually been learning some of the ways of the Force from the Dark Sider!

“Ah! You masked your presence well,” Mercie noted, suspiciously. Had she? Alack hadn’t been conscious of doing so, but suddenly realized that she had. “Is this the part where you kill me?” Mercie asked.

“What?” Alack was puzzled by the question.

Rana said nothing, letting the two women sort things out between themselves. But she didn’t get up to leave, either, in case things escalated. Callisto stood silently near the entrance to the lounge for much the same reason. Otherwise, the lounge was now empty.

“You were sure thinking about firing that blaster at my head last night,” Mercie reminded her. “And Sith have a long history of being murdered by their students.”

There it was: the word that had caused such a divide between them. Sith.

“How could you not tell me?”

“Maybe because there was never a good time to,” Mercie suggested. “And maybe because we expected you to take it in much the same way that you are, right now.”

“I had a right to know!” Alack’s voice was more emphatic, now. “You had no right to keep that from me. Especially when you offered to teach me your ways.”

“Now hold on there,” Mercie pushed back. “I am not teaching you the ways of the Sith. I am teaching you what I promised: how to use the Force. No Jedi mysticism, no Sith tradition.”

“You lied to me!” Alack accused.

“Actually, I didn’t. I simply didn’t tell you the whole truth.”

“No, you lied to me. You told me that the Sith woman that Rana was imprisoned with died during their escape. It was you. Wasn’t it?”

Mercie was quieter, now. “Yes. But what I said was truer than you think…”

Alack cut her off. “Don’t give me any of this ‘the old person I used to be died’ crap. It was a flat out lie. How dare you?!? I came to you needing help to rescue my brother from the Empire’s clutches, and here you are, probably sided with the Empire!”

“Now hold on,” Mercie growled. “The Empire may be currently run by a Sith, but that doesn’t mean that the Sith and Empire are one and the same…”

“Bantha pag!” Alack shouted. “You’re just as horrible as they are. And just as cruel and hateful. Just as fascist. There’s no difference.”

Mercie backed away a bit, her expression colder, but her demeanor calmer. “You’re partly right,” she stated. “I’ve done some horrible things. But I am not a fascist, and I am certainly not an agent of the Empire.”

“How is that even possible?” Alack asked, throwing up her hands in exasperation.

Mercie’s eyes stared back at Alack, almost driving her next point home. “The Sith are no more the Empire than the Jedi were the Republic. The Jedi forgot that, and they paid for it with their lives.”

The young Chiss woman shot a glance at Rana to see her reaction to that comment, and the old woman quietly nodded. Callisto, meanwhile, said nothing, wanting to support Alack, but without taking sides against the two women to whom she probably currently owed her life.

Alack hadn’t completely digested the wisdom of what Mercie had said, when the Zabrak continued: “I was essentially born a slave in this galaxy. I fought for everything. I was punished for everything. I resent that sort of authority, whether it’s manifested in Republic colonialism or the Empire’s imperialism. I hate, definitely, hate a great many things and a great many people and ideals. I will never again serve people like that. Not for anything.”

“You don’t seriously equate the Republic with the Empire, do you?” Alack asked.

“Really?” Mercie was a little aghast at the thing Alack pushed back on. “Exactly how much changed between the Republic and the Empire when the Emperor assumed control? They’re not identical, of course, but the former was basically a soft version of the latter. Cruelty in nobles’ clothes. Poverty by any other name. They turned a blind eye to slavery and thought only of trade deals, expansion and their own ambitions. By the time the Emperor emerged, they were already eager to embrace what he offered them. What part of that do you think I would endorse?”

This time, Alack stood down. What she was hearing sounded on-point. Mercie was making sense, as much as she didn’t want to admit it. Her train of thought shifted. “I had read somewhere that the Sith had survived by observing the Rule of Two: one master and one apprentice. How did you fit into that equation?”

Mercie relaxed a little, feeling some of the tension defused. “My master believed that it was time for the Rule of Two to come to an end,” she answered. “He trained a number of agents, starting with a loathsome Dathomiri, me, a Kaleesh cyborg… there were a few others, but many didn’t survive their training. He hoped that one day, we’d prove our worth to his master, Darth Sidious, and that together, we would bring the Sith into a new era. He was Darth Tyranus.”

Mercie continued. “Everything I told everyone here moments ago was true, but probably not as detailed as I could have been. I was a slave until I was 17, when Tyranus bought my freedom. First, as a child, I was the servant-companion and caregiver for a doddering old archivist until he died, when I was 11. Then, Hutts purchased me. When I was 14, I killed them. The timing of that benefited the Pyke Syndicate, who acquired me and trained me as an assassin. That was how he found me.”

Mercie could still recall their first meeting with peculiar clarity. She had been summoned to the atrium – though to call it that probably overstated its elegance. Under the Pykes, the room had fallen into disarray, stacked full of discarded equipment, parts casings, droids in disrepair and grime almost completely obscuring the planters from which no foliage ever grew. The Syndicate mostly used this room to discuss backroom deals and contract hits, simply because its proliferation of benches made it possible to accommodate anywhere from one to twenty contract partners without any great effort required of the hosts.

Mercie had not often been present in the room during deals unless required as part of Syndicate security, since it was not customary for her to meet the clients who would require her services as an assassin.

“… you’ll see that she… ah, here she is, now.” Din, the Capo of the branch that employed Mercie – if employed is the correct word, considering her legal status as property of the clan – sat on one bench flanked by two enforcers, with a ledger-keeper nearby, readying a contract. Two Nikto providing security stood on either side of the door inside the room.

On another bench, facing Din but now turning to regard her was the elegant, cloaked figure of Count Dooku, a Serrenian politician of high regard. She had heard of him several times, referred to as a regular client of a different branch of the Syndicate, and who possessed much wealth and influence.

He stood as she entered. “Ah,” he said with a respectful bow, “she is as beautiful as she is reportedly highly skilled.” His voice was deep and resonant, yet almost silky – a basso profundo almost lyrical and thundering at the same time.

Din and his entourage laughed. “You do not have to bow to the help,” he noted. “She is just a slave here.”

“Well, given the things that I have heard about her, if it’s all the same to you, I would prefer to grant her the dignity,” he replied.

“So, we have brought her to you, as you requested,” Din began negotiations. “Now, it is your turn to discuss the task you would like to put her to, before we decide if we agree to provide her services, and what the cost will be.”

Dooku kept turning back to look into Mercie’s eyes, seemingly curious about her. “Oh, you misunderstand me, my friend,” he said to Din. “I am not here simply to hire her for a contract. You said that she is a slave here…”

Even as he spoke to them, she could also hear his voice a second time, in her head, overpowering all of the sound around her. It was the same contrabass timbre, yet only she seemed to be able to hear it. “I apologize for these circumstances, my friend,” he said to her. “They clearly do not understand or respect you. You deserve much better than this. I am here to make a proposition, but it is not to these… rabble. My proposal is to you, and you alone.”

Mercie’s eyes widened when she first heard his voice, and then her gaze darted around the room, to see if anyone else had detected it, or suspected that their discussion was taking place. Dooku’s voice, privately to her, continued. “First, I have come to offer you freedom. By this, I mean to have it done through all legal channels, and all of the bureaucracy that it entails. This is not a runaway fugitive sort of freedom I offer, but a legal freedom, on every planet in every system in the galaxy. I offer that to you with no conditions, regardless of the second part of this proposal.”

He continued parrying verbally with Din, but most of the time his eyes kept slipping back to her. She could hear parts of their discussion as though it were background noise. But the real discussion continued in that booming voice of his: “And secondly, I have come to offer you power. Yes, I have heard of your gifts – not just of assassination, but of the Force. Yes, that is what it is, your ability to move objects, to influence people… you appear to have discovered a great many applications, entirely on your own. This is impressive. But I am a man of much proficiency in the Force. I can train you.”

He said something that caused Din and his enforcers to laugh, seemingly mocking the stately man they sparred with verbally. She didn’t hear it, but didn’t really care. He went on: “I offer you not only your freedom, but also power – more than you could attain on your own. But first, I will require a demonstration.”

At that moment, she understood. But she let him spell it out. “I want you to kill these men. All of them. Yes, I know all about the control device, don’t worry about that – I will make sure he cannot use it.”

Her attention returned to the discussion between Dooku and the Pykes. “No, again, you misunderstand me. I am not here to purchase her, either.”

“Then what are you proposing?” Din seemed genuinely perturbed, by this point.

The elegant old man simply looked to the Zabrak and gave her a small nod. It assured her that she had not simply imagined the words he had said privately to her.

It was her cue.

Her sai were in her hands immediately, and she had one of the two buried in one of the Niktos’ throats before they had even noticed that she had moved. As the second reached for his weapon, she spun and her second sai plunged into his heart.

Din attempted to snatch the remote he used to trigger shocks in the back of her skull to keep their assassin in compliance. He managed to pick it up, but before he could press the button, the hand that held it flew across the room.

Only his hand.

She pivoted, extracting her blades and using one to deflect a blaster bolt from one of the enforcers. The other, she tossed like a dart sending it sailing to embed itself between another Pyke’s eyes. From the corner of her eyes, she saw that the Count had cleaved Din’s hand from his arm, and the crimson blade of Dooku’s lightsaber was held menacingly across the front of the Capo’s chest, warding him away from taking any further action.

She deflected another blaster bolt with the sai in her hand, and summoned the second from the now-deceased enforcer – but she had it glance off the other Pyke’s cheek on the way back, distracting him. It was enough of an interruption for her to close the distance across the room and swing a strong arc at his neck, cleaving his head from his shoulders.

It took simply one short, tight pivot to bring her up to Din, with both blades crossed, at his throat. His eyes were wide in terror.

She paused a second to see if Dooku would indicate that she should stop. He said nothing, so she cut the Pyke’s throat. Her former handler collapsed to the floor, his throat burbling and his mouth making sucking noises as he struggled for air. Dooku withdrew and extinguished his lightsaber, its services no longer required.

This left the ledger-keeper. Unarmed, he posed no threat to her, and he shook with fear as she approached. She felt a little sad for him. He had been kind to her, sometimes bringing her a little extra food, or occasionally negotiating something akin to a vacation for her. The ledger-keeper had a soft heart.

“All of them,” said Dooku, sensing her reluctance, this time aloud.

She readied her blade, slicked with the blood of its previous victims. And then she finished the demonstration.

The ledger-keeper had a soft heart.

“Impressive,” Dooku intoned, as the ledger-keeper slumped to the floor and the chaos in the atrium subsided. She caught her breath, but the adrenaline and the charge she felt from her victims still coursed through her body. “You’re drinking from their pain and fear, aren’t you?” he asked. “And nobody taught you to do that?”

“I heard legends about what Sith and Jedi could do from an old archivist that I was a servant to, for several years. I just worked out for myself how to make it happen.” This was the first she had actually replied to him in conversation. It almost felt weird.

“Your weapons… I have proficiency with many blades, but your fighting style with these two is quite captivating,” he complimented. I wonder what these weapons would be like when forged in cortosis and fueled by kyber.”

“Like your blade?” she asked. It was a curious thought.

“Come with me,” Dooku said. “I’m sure that we will have more of these people to deal with before we can leave this place.”

“He was quite… elegant,” Mercie reminisced. “I was actually a bit smitten with him for awhile.” She obviously still thought fondly of her former master.

“Mercie!” Alack chided, looking at Rana.

The Zabrak smiled. “That’s sweet. You don’t have to be defensive on Rana’s behalf. She knows I liked him. I’ve liked lots of people in my life. But no one will ever be an equal to her.” She continued with her story. “I don’t know exactly what happened to his other protégés, other than the Kaleesh. And frankly, I couldn’t possibly care less about the Dathomiri — part of me hopes that Tyranus killed her, himself — and horribly, at that. But obviously, they’re gone. Probably, the only reason I didn’t share that same fate was because of the years Rana and I were imprisoned together.” She looked at Rana, and Alack noted that puzzling tenderness between them, again. “It wasn’t until after we’d settled in Canso, on Lothal, that I heard what happened to my old master. I guess it would make sense that Sidious would set up his own apprentice to be executed for coordinating a fake Confederacy, in order to create the political crisis he needed.”

Alack tilted her head again. “Fake? The Confederacy? That was… Count Dooku. Tyranus was Count Dooku?”

“One and the same,” Mercie answered.

“You probably don’t want to know what things were like on Serenno after that, then,” the Chiss girl commented.

“Why?”

“The fist of the Empire came down hard on Serenno,” she informed them. “The great houses were mostly crushed. Vader himself had House Serenno nearly exterminated, save for a puppet ruler. Dooku’s land and holdings were obliterated, his staff executed. Every statue, every record, every sign that he ever lived was wiped from the collective memory, as martial law was instated.”

“Ohhh…” Mercie’s gasp was almost a sob. She looked away into the distance, trying to hide tears surfacing in her eyes for the fate of her mentor.

“I thought Sith killed their teachers,” Alack pointed out. “Having feelings for him isn’t really the response I would have expected.”

“Oh, if the time came, I could have fulfilled that duty, I’m sure,” Mercie collected herself. “But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t have felt anything – only that I overcame it.”

“So how do we go on from here?” Alack asked. “I still want to learn the ways of the Force, but I don’t know if I can, knowing the kind of person you are.”

The judgmental tone of the phrase “the kind of person” completely escaped Alack, but Mercie didn’t miss it. Her eyes grew angry again. “Well, you’re always free to decline my instruction.” She stood up from the booth to leave, stopped, and then turned back to face the Chiss girl, angrily. “Who are you to judge me, anyway? Who are you to say that if you had lived my life, you would have turned out any differently?!? You don’t get the right to judge me or be angry about who I am.”

“Well, I’m not a killer,” Alack hissed.

There was a visible crackle of electricity around Mercie, starting from one fingertip, radiating up her arm, across her shoulders and the back of her neck, and down the other arm. It terminated at her other fingertips, with a spark. The electricity was clearly a kind of sorcery that was intrinsically tied to the Zabrak’s temper. Mercie seemed to back up a little like she wanted to lash out, and something was building within her that she was having trouble containing. She obviously didn’t want to lash out, though.

Rana touched her shoulder. “Mercie…” The Zabrak spun around, walking away.

Then, just as quickly, she spun and returned, getting right up into Alack’s face. Although she couldn’t see it, she felt energy radiating out from the red woman.

“You don’t understand how this universe works,” Mercie raged. “You’ve been fed all these stories of noble Jedi and purity and the Light Side. It’s an illusion, and it’s going to come crashing down around you, and the worst part is that I see it and am trying to help you, and you don’t even know.”

“Mercie!” Rana cautioned, a bit more forcefully, this time.

Mercie backed off a little, a bit more cognizant that she was being threatening. “You keep pushing toward peace and noble ideals. That has not been my experience. When my parents were waylaid and I was sold into captivity, no Jedi sought me out and rescued me. I did. It was me. When life was darkest and freedom an impossibility, no noble thinkers tried to give me hope. I did. It was me. When Hutts made my life intolerable and made me want to die, no legal authorities stepped in and ended their terror over my life. I did. It was me. When I was faced with the choice to fight or to die, no Republic, no Empire, no deity or hero leapt in and spared me. I did. It was me.”

Mercie leaned in toward Alack to finish her point. “And when all of this – whatever this is we’re doing – is over and we go our separate ways – in whatever form that takes – it will be up to you to do all of that for yourself. I don’t care what you think about me or my past, but when all is said and done, when I offered to train you, it was in the spirit of readying you for that moment. I take that seriously.” She stepped back again, this time with some resignation. “I just wish you could bring a little more awareness to this too, and stop getting wrapped up in your shallow, petty good-versus-evil dung.”

Mercie stepped away to take a breather. Alack turned to Shirana. “And you? You’ve repeatedly said you’re no longer a Jedi. Does that mean you’ve embraced the Dark Side of the Force, as well?”

Rana tilted her head to the side. “You don’t really think it’s that simple, do you? Light and Dark are value judgments. I try to do good in this galaxy overall, but sometimes I have to make difficult choices. Mercie and I are both quite similar in this regard.”

“Train me. As a Jedi,” Alack demanded.

Shirana gently squeezed Alack’s shoulder. “I grew up in the Jedi academy, somewhat pampered. I was fed a universe of legends and noble ideals. The younglings who grew up to adulthood with me are all dead now.” She let go of Alack’s shoulder, but did not back away. “They thought they could exemplify the way that they thought things should be, and that it would inspire the galaxy to make it so. Instead, when the Empire cut them down, the people they thought they could inspire simply stepped back and watched, seduced by Imperial propaganda.”

“She grew up in the galaxy as it is.” Shirana nodded toward Mercie, who was now at a slight distance from them. “She learned from beings at their meanest. When we were imprisoned, it wasn’t my Jedi training and lofty vision that kept us sane. It was her strength.”

Shirana patted Alack’s arm. “You could not ask for a better teacher.”

Then.

Golg, 19 BBY

The pain was really too much.

Shirana just wanted to curl up in a ball and die. It was too much. Too much. She just couldn't take any more of this.

The Zabrak woman sat over on the far side of the cell, looking toward the dark wall as though she weren't here. She had been like that almost the entire time since her mask had first come off, despite that initial unexpected moment of laughter and impromptu kiss. No speech, no warmth, just cold silence.

Shirana rolled her knees up to her chest. This just made it all worse, this distance. She had hoped that maybe removing the Sith woman's mask would perhaps be a cue for her to open herself up a little. She had hoped -- when their captor had carried her out of the cell this morning -- that at least when she were deposited on the floor again, at least she might have some support to greet her.

The Zabrak woman simply stared out past the blackness of the wall into the infinite space of wherever her thoughts had traveled.

This was the darkest that the entire ordeal had been. The torture... well, she had almost come to expect it at this point. But this isolation, this cold response when she really needed someone... she couldn't take any more of this. Her shoulder felt like it was out of its socket and she couldn't move her arm, and she really needed...

Wait. The many-horned woman had moved. Where did she...?

Oh. Above her. The Sith stood above her, looking down coolly.

Suddenly, this did not seem to be a better situation. This was it. This was the woman’s chance to strike. Shirana was in severe pain and all but helpless. The Zabrak could kill her, and then wouldn't have to worry about fighting her, later. Now that she had known that Shirana was blind, she guessed, she must not see any reason to tolerate her, any longer.

The red woman crouched beside her. She was going to do it. She was going to cross her arm around Shirana's throat and crush her windpipe. She -

She started checking Shirana's body, tracing the path of her bones. She found the dislocation in her shoulder. She was helping her mend. She lifted Shirana's arm, and this was going to hurt, she knew, but...

No. It didn't, or at least not much. The bone slipped into place with a minimum of force, as though a simple motion would put it back where it needed to be. This puzzled the Miraluka woman.

Her back, too, needed adjustment. There was a disc that was... oh, that was quick. Was she better at resetting joints without pain than she had been letting on, all this time?

The red woman sat on the floor with her back to the wall, then slipped an arm under Shirana's armpits, across her body. Carefully, she pulled the orange-haired woman up so that her head rested on her cellmate's chest. And there was a slight squeezing sensation. Was she strangling her now?

No. Something seemed weird. Shirana couldn’t tell –

-- Wait. It was an embrace.

With as little strength as she had, and against all of the pain in her body, Shirana twisted a little so that she could wrap an arm across the red woman and clutch her side. She squeezed for all that she had in her, returning the embrace.

"Don't get too clingy," the Sith warned. "Or I'll go back to the other corner."

"Right, right," Shirana muttered, relaxing her grip. But she didn't let go completely, and her cellmate didn't cast her aside.

"Mercielaga," she said.

"What?" Shirana asked, unsure of the context.

"My name. You've asked me several times. It's Mercielaga."

--------

It had taken perhaps months to get to that moment, but as the days followed, they finally -- finally! -- drew closer.

They would spoon on the makeshift pile of cloth on the concrete, still not having proper seating or bedding conditions, fighting the strains in their backs and joints and the bruising from both the tortures and from laying on the unyielding stone of their prison. Their bodies kept each other warm, brought each other out of shock after the sessions, and gave them something – someone – to hold on to. They would tend each other’s wounds, and then, depending on what was available, try to bathe each other as best they could – even if just with a damp cloth and a bit of water that had come with their food. They would tell each other stories to pass the time.

Shirana told Mercie ("can I call you Mercie?" she asked in one moment) about growing up at the Jedi Academy. She was aware that she had been sheltered, compared to Mercie's life, and felt a little ashamed. But she related to her some of the literature she had read, some of the holo entertainments she had seen, some of the friends that she'd had, some of her missions as a padawan, and of finally becoming a Jedi Knight of her own stature. Depending on her mood, sometimes Mercie didn’t want to hear about any of it, and would tell her to stop. And sometimes, Shirana continued anyway.

Mercie's stories were much darker, and steeped in anger. But the life of someone raised in slavery was by its very nature inevitably bleaker, and more brutal. Shirana had to wonder, if their lives had been swapped, if she too would have rose up at the age of fourteen and slain her Hutt masters. She saw in Mercie’s cynicism and bitterness the same responses she probably would have had living the Zabrak woman’s life. "Did they abuse you?" Shirana asked.

"Seriously, how could someone live with that little power and not be abused by everyone around her?" Mercie replied. “It’s the nature of people.”

"That’s a horrible way to look at it," Shirana said – though she supposed that it was the only sensible conclusion that anyone who had lived her cellmate’s life would have come to. "I won't press for more," she said, wanting to respect her boundaries. "But I will listen, if you ever want to talk about it."

"What's that going to do?" Mercie asked. The reply hung between them, bitterly. "But it was a long time ago," she added, softening her initial edginess. "Acquiring power was the best way to move past all of that.” And then she thought for a moment. “Or at least it was, until this."

“Nevertheless,” Shirana offered, “I am willing to listen.”

Mercielaga sniffed. “I am not willing to trust. Don't mistake my sudden warmth for trust. People are not trustworthy, least of all the noble and self-righteous. Whatever is happening between us, I simply choose to have this experience. It's the best option. But it’s not trust.”

The Miraluka noted the caution. But regardless of what Mercie said, she thought, the tensions between them were at least still softening.

---------

“I don’t usually go anywhere without a veil,” Shirana commented, recognizing that they had long ago used every shred of cloth they had for cleaning and coping with the hygiene challenges faced by two badly-tended captives. “I hope it doesn’t bother you…”

“Nonsense,” Mercielaga replied. “You don’t have to try to cover up, around me. Besides, I like seeing your face – or as much of it as I can in this light, anyway.” She shuffled around and thought a moment before continuing. “For that matter, I don’t understand why Miraluka feel they have to accommodate everyone else by covering up for fear of making people uncomfortable. If anyone else has a problem, they should just farking deal with it.”

“Ah, it’s not just that,” Shirana said. “If people can tell that you’re blind, they consider you an easy mark for scams and larceny. Or other unwanted attention. I’d just rather not deal with that. At least with a veil, people around you are cautious and have some restraint.”

“You should get one of those visors,” the Zabrak commented. “They don’t help Miraluka, but it doesn’t have to be a functioning prosthetic. It’ll cover your eyes and also deter that sort of attention.”

“I wouldn’t want to give any of those companies any money,” Shirana replied. She had an ethical issue with that. “It may take an altruist to imagine a prosthetic for the blind and an engineer to design it, but it also takes a capitalist to mass manufacture it, and a cynical opportunist to charge people a monthly licensing fee to be able to use it. I can’t support Czerka’s business model.”

“Well, there are other ways to acquire one,” Mercie laughed. “You don’t have to do everything the honest way, you know…”

It was comments like that which reminded Shirana about how different she was from the Sith she had been incarcerated with. Out there, in the open galaxy, there was no way that they would be able to stand each other, since their ethical centres were so diametrically opposite. Things like theft and victimization were unthinkable to Shirana, but second nature to Mercielaga. Their morals were wholly incompatible. Yet here, in the dark, dank of their cell, they clung to each other. For Shirana, she couldn’t imagine doing any differently in this situation: in her blindness, with even Force sight inaccessible, she felt she needed sentient contact more than ever before. And that was in addition to just how completely vulnerable she already was to her cellmate.

This intimacy… this was a necessity, she told herself, and nothing more. She wanted to be ready for that moment when they had finally escaped or overcome their captor, and were now each faced with the question of what to do about the other.

—-

Mercie had taken to stroking Shirana's hair, especially at her hairline. There was something exceptionally comforting in it, especially after the sessions of pain. Maybe the sensation pulled Shirana's attention away from the pain in her wounds, or maybe it was the counterpoint of tenderness in all of this. But sometimes, it felt like she could melt to Mercie's touch.

She wasn’t sure if she should tell the Zabrak of the longing she felt. She was touch-starved, and while these small affections helped, she really craved something deeper – something more than simply comfort. She wondered if Mercie –

Mercie planted a long, tender kiss on her neck. Then another, as an afterthought, just a little further down. Her hand moved to Shirana’s breast.

“Please…” Shirana gasped, rapt in the moment.

“Please stop, or please go?” Mercie asked.

“Please…” Shirana repeated.

Then, realizing she hadn’t answered the question, she cupped her hand around the back of Mercie’s head and pulled her lips to her breast…

----

They drew closer, as a year passed on the prison moon.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six: Life, Death and the Midi-Chlorians In Between

Now.

Nar Shaddaa, 3 ABY

One thing Callisto hated about Nar Shaddaa was the over-commercialization. Everyone and everything a person interacted with had the singular intention to generate infinite ways to part you from your credits.

Such was the case when she and Alack left the Pathfinder where it was docked, in the ecumenopolis’ Mandalorian sector, and rented a speeder to see the city. She opted for an enclosed skyhopper, wanting to ensure that she and her Chiss companion were less likely to be spotted and identified by Imperials and the Pykes… and truth be told, she also wanted a bit of privacy, in case the excursion evolved into something a little more… personal. But of course, the rental price only got you the speeder for a period of time – if you wanted the skyhopper to have fuel and a full charge, well, that cost extra.

So it was that they didn’t get very far into their tour around the area before Callisto had to stop to fill the stupid contraption. And that was always a delight, because (again) everyone and everything a person interacted with had the singular intention to generate infinite ways to part you from your credits.

When she pulled into the filling station, she hoped it would be a quick fill and leave, but suspected that wasn’t going to be the case.

The charging dock and fuel pump, at least, were automated. She merely had to type in her account information, and could proceed to fill without interacting with people, something that was kind of rare in Nar Shaddaa’s marketplace districts. She tapped at the console, wary of the options presented to her, and watching the fine print closely. The Czerka Dart she had rented was a hybrid, so needed both charge and traditional fuel. She selected the lowest grade of the latter, plugged both in, and began filling.

Voices and light faded in unexpectedly, as a life-sized holo materialized in front of the speeder.

“How nice,” Callisto muttered under her breath. “They didn’t want me to get bored…”

Naturally, it turned out to be a life-sized, fully-interactive holo commercial, complete with stereotypical Coruscanti family seated at a dinner table, having the most idiotically pleasant and trite of meals.

“Do you miss having meals with the family?” the booming voiceover sounded. “They’ll all want to be home in time for…”

“Dank farrik,” Callisto cursed, louder. “Bug off.”

To her surprise, the holo interrupted. Apparently, the advertisement system was voice-interactive. An automated voice chimed: “I heard, ‘bugging out.’ Showing travel commercials.”

Another full-size holo fired up. Callisto rolled her eyes. She briefly glimpsed Alack sitting inside the skyhopper, staring off into the lights and structures of Nar Shaddaa, unaware of the ads and blissfully unaware of Callisto’s pain.

“See the galaxy!” a new voiceover began. “HAL Cosmic Tours can take you to over 9000 incredible destinations…”

She supposed that she should feel fortunate that this station wasn’t using eye detection, like so many other places that would pause the holocommercials and initiate a cacophonic skipping sound until you look back at them, but that wasn’t much consolation.

“I don’t want any farking commercials,” Callisto protested.

“I detect a complaint,” the automated voice interrupted the second ad. “Calling customer service.”

“Gah!”

“Your holocall is important to us, and will be answered in the order in which it was received,” the voice continued, before supplying data with halting precision:

“There are twenty…

“… Seven…

“… Thousand calls ahead of you. Please hold.”

“Disconnect!” Twitchy was practically shouting, now.

“Disconnecting,” the voice replied helpfully. “You have been billed forty-three credits for this service.”

Callisto thumped her head against the Dart’s outer shell. Then, worried that Alack might have heard, she glanced in and saw her still staring off into the distance.

Just as she started to think that the commercials had gone away, she detected light from the holoprojector space, and a voice. The speaker sounded like old Rana, from back on the Pathfinder.

“Alack is still very troubled,” the voice said. “She will need support and patience now, if you’re up for it.”

That didn’t sound like a commercial. Callisto’s eyes snapped toward where the holocommercials had played out.

There was nothing.

---

“Are you sure I can’t pilot this thing?” Alack asked, when Twitchy had climbed back in. “I love speeders.”

“You just flew us over an Imperial military base not so long ago,” Callisto reminded. “Maybe another time and another place.”

“That was the past,” Alack complained. “You’re living in the past.”

“Nar Shaddaa can be a little confusing,” the Mandalorian stated, as she put the Czerka Dart into gear and lifted from the station. “Maybe somewhere else, later,” she reiterated, and then changed the subject. “So, you don’t really think you’re going to just find your brother and carry him away to freedom, so you?”

“I’ve got to try,” the Chiss girl answered. “I’d want him to keep looking for me…”

“Yeah, but you don’t just walk onto an Imperial Star Destroyer or one of the Empire’s bases. And if he’s there long enough…”

“Are you trying to talk me out of it?” Alack asked.

“I’m trying to manage your expectations,” Callisto answered. “However you think this is going to go, it isn’t going to happen like that. I mean, maybe it’s time that you kick the ladder.”

“What do you mean?”

“Figure of speech,” Twitchy replied. “It means, you decide on what you want in life, grab hold of it, and then kick the ladder out from under you.”

“Sounds kind of like bad advice,” Alack chuckled.

“I’m serious. It adds a layer of desperation. It means that whatever you pursue, you put yourself all in it, and don’t expect to back away. Remove any temptation to retreat. If you’re going to be successful at anything, you have to live and breathe it. You have to pursue it with everything you have, to all abandon.”

“Well, in any case, it doesn’t apply to me,” Alack looked off into the infinite sprawling towers of the ecumenopolis. “The Empire kicked out my ladder.”

“Did they?” Callisto asked. “What do you want in life?”

“Well,” Alack thought for a moment, “for all my life, I wanted to be a Jedi.”

“So is your brother the thing you’re reaching for, or is he the ladder that you’re trying to get back under your feet?” Callisto asked.

Alack frowned for a moment, and thought. Then she scowled even more. “That’s horrible advice…!” she protested. “You think I should just abandon my brother?!?”

“The Empire changes people,” Callisto tossed her a glance in between navigating the aerial laneways. “He’s not going to be the brother you remember. And honestly, the Empire brings out the horribleness in people. You could put yourself at tremendous risk, only to regret it.”

“And what about family?” Alack asked. “I thought family was a big thing for Mandalorians.”

“Clans,” Callisto corrected. “They start with family, but things change. Sometimes, people grow apart. And sometimes, you find chosen family. You’re thick as blood with your clan, but your clan can sometimes change.” She cast another glance, trying to emphasize the point with eye contact. “My crew are my clan. So are the guys you’re about to meet. Randoer’s my fraternal brother, and Dennan and Corumine are clan brothers. But where I’m from, we don’t differentiate: clan is as thick as blood. I don’t know Corumine that well, but if he’s close with Rando, then he’s close with me, unless or until he does something to prove otherwise. Clans are the people who you put faith in and the people who’ve clearly earned it.” She cast another emphatic glance at Alack. “It seems to me like Mercie and Rana are more your clan now than your brother is likely to be.”

Alack seemed a little stung by the thought. She was still unhappy at finding out that one of the women she had escaped Lothal with – the one who was training her in the use of the Force, no less – was a Sith. It was hard to reconcile in her mind. What she really wanted to do, right now, was to pilot the Dart off into space (although it was doubtful that the skyhopper would be capable of hyper-terrestrial flight) and leave the two older women behind.

Callisto sensed her companion’s darkening mood. “Hey, it’s totally up to you what you do. It’s just something to think about, later. For now, I’m going to show you a good time. Sound good?”

She touched Alack’s fingers, and they didn’t recoil. That was reassuring, at least.

---

When they arrived at the Corona, the band was starting to assemble for the evening, but the droids at the Corona had decided to put on their own show.

The Corona had a waitstation for patrons’ droids to while away the time, and it had been equipped with a magnetic resonance field that helped to recharge them – but it had been amped up slightly. Several nightclubs did this, after a fashion, since the boost in electrical field – not enough to constitute a surge, but certainly enough to be felt by the droids – would alter their senses somewhat. It wasn’t exactly the same thing as intoxication, but the droids would sometimes seem “drunk” from the effect, and this sometimes provided the club with some entertainment value.

A couple of the droids had started to sing, somewhat off-key.

“The fire in my eye is fleeting,
Now your robot heart is bleeding...”

“Aw, frag,” Callisto grumbled, as she and Alack approached a booth near the back. Randoer, Dennan and another Mandalorian were already there, the table cluttered with empty tankards waiting for more spicebrew. Callisto pointed at the waitstation. “What’s all that about?”

“Yeah, I wish they wouldn’t put those things there,” Dennan complained. “But at least the band will be starting soon, and they’ll have to shut up.”

“Brothers, this is Alack,” Callisto introduced her, as they took seats in the booth. She turned to her companion, joking: “Randoer’s the round one, Dennan’s the square one, and Corumine’s… I’m not sure what shape Corumine is.” It was true: Randoer was a bit on the chubby side, Dennan was muscled and stocky, and Corumine had an odd body shape, triangular chest atop skinny legs.

“Alack? Don’t Chiss have farkled up names?” Dennan asked.

Alack smiled politely. “That’s the way that it’s shortened on Serenno, where I’m from.”

“You said she found you, earlier,” Randoer commented, sort of addressing the question to both of them. “Where did she find you?”

“Well, she sort of stowed away on my ship,” Callisto answered. “She and two others.”

“Ahh, are they all as cute as you?” Corumine asked Alack.

“The old lady might be your type,” Callisto answered for her, “but you might not be able to keep up.” They laughed.

“You’re lucky you three didn’t get spaced,” Randoer said to Alack. The waitdroid stopped by and took their drink orders.

The duo didn’t say anything about Rana being a former Jedi or about how Mercie had been Sith-trained and a necromancer. Given how the Empire had ears everywhere and was hunting Force users, Callisto had cautioned Alack to keep silent on anything that might even hint at those things.

The droids were getting harder to ignore, since more had joined in on the singing, some in Basic and others in whatever dialects or sounds were available to them. Even the astromechs were beeping along.

“Robots need love too;
They want to be loved by you.
They want to be loved by you…”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen droids do that before,” Alack pointed out.

“Ah, they can get even worse, falling all over themselves, and everything,” Callisto grunted. “But if they keep it up, I’m going to put some blaster bolts through them.”

She didn’t have to. The band struck up, at first seeming to accompany, then drowning out the droids at the waitstation.

Alack spoke to Randoer. “Twitchy Fingers tells me that you served on the Pathfinder, and left a little before what happened to the old crew.”

“What did you call her? Twitchy…?” Randoer squinted.

Callisto blushed. “They’ve started calling me ‘Twitchy Fingers.’”

The Mandos erupted in uproarious laughter.

“Aaaahahahahaha… is that from that thing you say all the time, or because you like women?” Dennan piped up. Obviously, Dennan didn’t have a filter.

Callisto looked at Alack and frowned a little. “I’m not really sure.”

“At this point,” Alack was smiling wryly, “it’s a little from column A and a little from column B.”

They laughed again, while the waitdroid returned with drinks, and filled the other tankards.

—-

The knock on the cabin door caused Mercie to grumble audibly. Between the crew’s activity, the unexpected incursion of the captain’s kidnapping by the Pykes, and trying to teach Alack to use the Force, it seemed like she and Rana never had enough alone time. It was an understatement to say that she missed their home on Lothal and the privacy it afforded them, of course, but she wondered why there couldn’t be at least a short break between the constant irritations.

She opened the cabin door to find Jujjeg waiting expectantly in the Pathfinder’s narrow hallway.

The Hutt cleared his throat and interrupted. “Erm, pardon the intrusion, but when you have a moment, do you think we could discuss this necromancy you spoke of?” His question was for Mercie.

Her expression was a bit sour, and annoyed. She wasn’t expecting the question, and stumbled for a moment, having to switch gears to process it. “Why? What business is it of yours?”

The rotund slicer and engineer smiled, almost embarrassed. “I’ve always had a certain… scientific curiosity about the Force and how it works. The idea of a Force necromancer seems entirely antithetical to that.”

Mercie rolled her eyes. “The Force flows through all living things. When a being dies, there are several stages of death. When their pneuma departs, the cells in their body, their organs, their processes – all depending on the cause of death, of course – are often still alive for some time. The Force is there, even after the living consciousness is not.”

“Would it be possible to go into greater detail? I am curious about how this works,” Jujjeg continued.

“No,” Mercie barked. “I will not be teaching this to anyone. Not now, nor ever.” She didn’t wait for him to come up with a rejoinder, and instead closed the cabin door.

—-

“Yeah,” Randoer circled back to Alack’s question about when he served on the Pathfinder, and he began to relate the story in question, “the Captain was from Alderaan. He’d crewed a mission to Wobani for their princess, that Organa girl, part of some ‘challenge of the heart,’ or something.”

“You know, there’s a rumour that she’s not a real Organa,” Dennan interjected.

Randoer shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. She’s alive now and they aren’t, so I don’t think anyone’s going to make an issue of it. Anyway, the princess went there as a diplomat, but when she saw the conditions people were in, she undertook a rescue of a hundred or so of the citizens. It messed up her father’s political negotiations, though. Naturally, he took it out on the crew, instead of the girl. When Captain Andoni stole the Pathfinder, he already had a price on his head.”

“He stole the Pathfinder?” Alack asked.

“Waaaall,” Randoer stretched out, “you know how these things go. He wheedled. It was legal and all, but sure wasn’t ethical, if you know what I mean. Anyway, he needed a crew, and Callie and I had been working for hire after Saxon turned Mandalore into a puppet state for the Imps. So, we joined up. Not long after I left them, someone decided to collect on the bounty on Andoni. Callie’s the only one that survived, and since the Captain had set it up that the ship would belong to the crew, she inherited the ship.”

“Sounds kind of messed up,” Alack said.

“Oh yeah?” Randoer challenged. “Tell her how you got your crew.”

The band -- three Geonosian musicians and a Toydarian vocalist -- played on in the background. Alack only vaguely noticed the refrain ("Ah-oooo... got you where I want you...") as Twitchy Fingers stretched out her arm along the bench behind her and settled in a little closer.

Callisto grinned, sheepishly. “Well, I kind of went on a bender after a delivery on Daiyu...”

… The cacophony of shouting wasn’t helping with the pounding in her head. Callisto blinked her eyes and tried to adjust to the intrusive piercing of the fluorescent lamps.

“What is the meaning of this?!” shouted a deep voice, somewhat guttural and throaty. The voice reminded her of several of the Hutts she had to deal with in the past.

She rolled over and tried to find her centre of balance. Callisto Rook couldn’t even remember what planet she was on, let alone where she was or what was happening, but she didn’t care: she just wanted to go back to sleep until the stabbing in her temples and sinuses subsided.

“I already told you,” came a second voice, “this is just a simple exchange. It’s just that we all needed to be in the open so there were no surprises.”

“No surprises?” a third voice sounded aghast. This one sounded more like a Whiphid struggling with Basic. “Then what do you call this?”

Callisto heard a few more voices in a few more languages. She recognized one language as Mandaba, which she had learned a little of on Onderon, and another as Nautila, which she had a better knowledge of, from a former crewmate under Andoni’s captaincy — but her mind was not clear enough at the moment to parse what either were saying.

“Look, Vee has drawn the attention of the Empire,” the second voice reasoned. “She’s become a danger to the ship and crew. If we want to do business in this galaxy, it has to be this way.”

The Whiphid’s voice answered. “What kind of captain sells out their own crew member when they become inconvenient?”

Callisto’s ears perked up. Whatever was going on, it wasn’t good, and she collected her bearings. While she and Rando hadn’t always seen eye to eye with Andoni, she couldn’t imagine her former captain turning one of the crew over to the Imps. The crew still had a sense of kinship and clanhood. It was one of the things she missed about having a crew.

The first, brusque voice added, “For what it’s worth, Vee has been far more loyal to us than you’ve ever been.”

“Look, we’re done talking,” a raspy voice piped in. “Is this a done deal, or do we gotta start blasting?”

The blink and whirr of an assault cannon powering to life as the Whiphid’s voice answered. “I, for one, am not standing by while you turn Vee over to a bunch of third-rate bounty hunters.”

The last part of that statement was almost drowned out by the chaotic sound of several blasters being drawn and shuffle of people taking cover. The tension escalated instantaneously, defused only by a cackling voice saying, “Third rate? Now, that just hurts.”

The wisest thing to do would be to stay hidden. This wasn’t Callisto’s business and wasn’t her fight. But she wasn’t always known to do the wisest thing, and it had been a little while since she’d had a good fight. “Would you people keep it down?!?” she shouted — mostly to let people know she was there, not wanting to surprise some overly trigger-happy, jumpy pug. A bit of levity was called for, too. “Some of us are trying to sleep!”

Callisto crawled to her feet and took her time walking toward the throng, who were stiffened into battle positions and sheltering behind whatever was available.

Ah! It was Daiyu, she remembered. She had wandered into a warehouse district on Daiyu, last night. Or at least she thought it was last night.

She played up her hung over state, letting her balance waver. It was always best to make people underestimate you before the real action happened. Although to be fair, her balance wasn’t really all that great, and her brain was swirling.

A VCX-700 heavy courier was visible outside the loading bay, perched on sturdy landing gear, her ramp lowered.

Presumably, this was the ship belonging to the captain and crew to Callisto’s right, who had mostly taken shelter behind some loaded pallets and cargo containers. She had been right about the Whiphid and Hutt voices: the long-faced and golden-furred Whiphid was the one wielding the assault cannon, and he stood in a wide-apart stance ready to fire, alongside a forklift. The Hutt was an unusual sight, given that Callisto was not accustomed to seeing one prepared to fight his own battles: this one wore an over-shoulder harness and belt which carried sensor equipment and (she assumed) the blasters he brandished, while sheltering behind a shipping container.

A Nautolan woman and a Selonian were also in cover, weapons drawn. Callisto wasn’t sure which one was ‘Vee,’ since most spacefaring Selonians one encountered were also female and would fit the pronoun she’d heard earlier.

The captain was the odd one out. Looking to be a human male in his forties, he stood in the open, halfway between the sheltered crew and the sheltering bounty hunters. He was probably trying to keep the situation from devolving into a firefight, but it was a poor choice of a place to stand.

There were four bounty hunters, in cover behind several crates and a speeder. Two were humanoids sporting heavy armour, and a third appeared to be Sullustan. The fourth, behind the speeder, was a goofy-looking Ongree, kitted up with several belt and wrist gadgets — Callisto spotted a cutting torch, whip cord launcher and a sleeve that likely carried a number of whistling birds. He brandished a vibroblade.

“Whoever you are,” one of the helmeted bounty hunters called back to Callisto, “you picked a bad time to wander out here. But if you want to get shot to pieces, be our guest.”

“Nobody’s getting shot to pieces,” the Ongree interjected. “It’s not necessary. We had a deal, let’s just do the deal.”

The Sullustan muttered something nasal and chattering, and the first humanoid shouted back. “Slag off. We’re done with deals.”

The captain had his arms outstretched, urging calm. “No, that’s not necessary. We do have a deal. Just put down your weapons. This isn’t fu—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. The Whiphid hit him with a volley from the cannon, turning the captain into an explosion of blood, flesh and debris.

Everyone — crew members, bounty hunters and Callisto alike — stared at him, stunned. Except for the Hutt, that is, who shrugged. “What?” he said, nonplussed. “We were all thinking it…”

“Crikes,” blurted the Ongree, who paused and then addressed the crew. “Listen, he had my word that nobody has to get hurt and we can still do this peaceabl—”

“For flarg’s sake!” The first humanoid spun and fired on his comrade. “Enough!”

The standoff erupted into all-out hails of blaster fire, some of which was between the bounty hunters themselves. Callisto dove for cover and rolled behind a pallet loaded with crates, alongside the Nautolan. “I’m trusting you, here, and hope you’ll do the same,” she muttered, not certain if she understood.

She peered out and took down one of the armoured bounty hunters with a shot, and then spotted the Sullustan raise a detonator in his hand and press a button. The sight told her to brace for something, and she urged the woman beside her to stay down.

The detonator triggered several explosives throughout the warehouse, resulting in plascrete shingles and durasteel beams to rain down on everyone. The roof itself, surprisingly enough, didn’t collapse.

By the time the smoke started to clear, two of the bounty hunters had vanished — leaving the one Callisto had shot (who appeared to be dead or unconscious) and the Ongree.

“Oh, druk.”

The loading bay door slammed shut and the lights turned out, leaving them in near total darkness.

“Listen,” the Ongree called out, “they’ve probably got this place locked down, already. At least, that was the plan if things went bad. But we came in through an underground hatch. I’ve got the code to get in, though. If I open it up, we all slip out of here, but then we go our separate ways, okay?” he bargained.

“Why should we trust you?” the Whiphid barked.

“Because I’m the only one here with their head on straight,” the Ongree grinned, tentacles twitching along his neck. “I mean, what choice do you have?”

“What’s in it for you?” called back the Hutt, distrusting.

“Well, I’d have to step out in the open to get there,” the bounty hunter replied. “I’d rather not get shot in the process.” He thought for a moment. “But for that matter, it’s kind of admirable to see a group willing to fight for each other than those sacks of sleemo out there…”

“Put down your weapons, then,” Callisto shouted to him.

He complied, vibroblade first, then a blaster.

“That’s not all of them,” the Mandalorian pointed out. “You must have a hundred gadgets in that armour of yours…”

“Seriously,” the Ongree chattered, “if you think my face looks funny, then you do not want to see me naked…”

Everyone’s attention snapped toward the loading door, or more precisely, the sound of the engines of ship behind it firing up. “They’re stealing the Palliser!” the Whiphid warned.

The Nautolan shouted a string of words. Callisto didn’t catch all of them, but she remembered that one was “torpedo” as she heard the whistle of one power up.

While they were distracted, the Ongree raced across the warehouse floor to the hatch entrance, and punched in the code. But he didn’t just jump in and abandon them. “Come on!”

Everyone raced to join him.

He managed to open it, allowing several people to jump to the tunnel below. The Whiphid went first, looking alert and expecting trouble inside. The Selonian followed, then the Hutt…

This time, the blast brought the warehouse down.

Callisto and the Nautolan — who she guessed might be Vee — fell into the tunnel behind their comrades. This left one voice crying out in pain from the surface.

“Farking fark…!”

Callisto exchanged glances with Vee. “If they came here for you, then it’s your call,” she said.

Vee darted up the ladder to help the bounty hunter, and Callisto followed behind her. They had to free him from some debris pinning his legs.

Before long, they had brought him down into the tunnel, injured, but alive.

“They know I know about this tunnel,” the Ongree struggled to warn, through the pain. “They’ll be watching at the other end…”

“We’re not going to have to worry about that. Get moving down the tunnel,” the Whiphid warned. “The captain and I had a contingency in case the Palliser was ever stolen, in the event that we were prepared to accept the loss.” He pulled out a detonator. “They aren’t going anywhere.”

They started racing as he pressed the button. Before long, they were outrunning a ball of flame.

“Wait, so Skako was one of the bounty hunters there to collect on the bounty on Vee?” Alack asked, surprised. “Why did you bring him on with your crew?” She had known that Callisto offered the crew to join her after they’d lost their previous ship and captain, but hadn’t known the circumstances until now, or that the Ongree who was so outgoing and magnanimous around the crew had once been their adversary.

“I let Vee make that call, too,” Callisto replied, “since she was the one who had the most reason not to trust him. She decided to give him a chance, and we’ve never regretted it.” She thought for a moment, then added: “By the way, don’t tell your friends about the bounty. I doubt your Jedi would do anything to hurt Vee, but she might tell the Sith witch, and I still don’t know how much I trust her.”

“What about the Whiphid? Was that Labakka?”

Callisto paused, apprehensive about talking more about her fallen friend, so Randoer answered for her. “Yep. That was Labakka. A bit hot headed, but a hell of a hunter. That’s a sad story for another time, I think.” He leaned back and changed the subject on Callisto’s behalf. “So are you shipping out tomorrow, sis?”

“Yeah. We’re already behind schedule, and I’ve got to get this run to Ossus done. I’ve never been keen on dealing with Imps, but now I’d really just like to get it over with..”

--

By the time they returned to the Pathfinder, Alack’s tongue had been loosened by spicebrew and Callisto was struggling to keep her eyes open, so the young woman made her way to Labakka’s cabin.

When she flung the door open, she had planned to demand some answers from the two older women, but the sight of Mercie sitting on the bed and massaging Rana’s feet only left her more dumbfounded. She stuttered, her question forgotten.

“Clearly, you’re drunk,” Mercie commented, before she could muster any words together. “I don’t see any point in teaching you anything tonight, so you had might as well go to bed.”

“I don’t understand any of it,” Alack finally blurted. “How can you be Sith? I mean, I know how it happened, but how can you, in conscience? And…” she waved at Mercie and Rana, “how does Jedi Master Shirana Nyst and Darth Mercielaga happen, for that matter…?”

Mercie started to rise to usher her out the door, but Rana touched her arm in a silent request to reconsider. This annoyed the Zabrak, but she relented. “With all you know about my life so far, how could I not take the opportunity to escape all that and train in the Force, when I had the chance? And why should I have any bad conscience over it?” She paused for a moment, and added: “It’s not ‘Darth Mercielaga,’ either. Although I’ve earned the title of Dark Lord, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve never actually been given it. You can’t really self-declare Sit’ari. And you don’t keep your name when you’re given the title. Your master decides on your new name, and all you can really do is hope it’s not something stupid, like ‘Darth Millennial.’”

Alack scrutinized the two older women, looking for clarity on who they really were. “How can you two… you know… not be sworn enemies, or something? Did you… embrace the light side of the Force?” She eyed Mercie. “Or did Rana embrace the dark?”

Mercie shook her head. “We’ve already told you. It’s not like that. Making it about sides ignores the full scope of what the Force is. And Rana and I, we… I learned to let go of my anger and self-absorption, and she learned to let go of her illusions of what people are and can be.”

Shirana had been silent until now, but spoke up. “We did what people in any relationship have to do: we realized that we have differences and we respect and give space to those differences, within certain boundaries.”

The older woman continued. “But I sense you know this on an intellectual level by now, though,” she stated. “Your struggle is not with understanding who we are, but with coming to terms with the cruelty of people, which is what the idea of ‘Sith’ obviously means to you, and the absence of good that ‘Jedi’ represented. You wanted to believe in a grander galaxy, a kinder universe… much like I once did. But the Republic has had nearly a thousand years to bring it to existence, only to have achieved stagnation, corruption, a patchwork democracy that tolerated slavery, and enduring inequalities and resentments that made for fertile ground for this Empire. It’s not easy to let go of that dream, but you have to, if you want to see things as they are.”

Alack looked distraught, so much so that she almost missed the irony of being told how to ‘see’ by a blind woman. But Rana was right. She had nailed down what she had struggled with.

“But why can’t there be a better way?” Alack stuttered. “I have to believe it can be better…”

“I don’t think it’s that it can’t be better,” Rana answered, “but that until we realize the limitations of our solutions so far and think larger, more collectively, and less black-and-white, it won’t be.”

Mercie shook her head slightly. “Well, we sort of differ on that. But the biggest problem is that all living beings, from Accipiptero to Zeltrons, are guided by a single, overriding instinct: you kill what you fear, and you fear what you don’t understand. And that impulse will always fuel hate, resentment, division and struggles for dominance.”

Rana sighed. “She’s looking for hope,” she reminded Mercie, then turned back toward their visitor. “And there is hope. But first, you must recognize that on your own, your reach is much smaller than you wish, and the change you want cannot be achieved alone.”

“Is that why you two gave up and hid out on Lothal?” Alack snapped back.

Mercie shot her an angry glance and Rana shrank back into her pillow. “That was unfair,” the grey-haired woman replied.

—-

Callisto was already asleep when Alack slipped into her cabin. She lay nearly face-down, face-in-pillow, both arms awkwardly behind her back, like she had carelessly fallen there.

Alack looked around the room for a moment. The Pathfinder’s captain had collected several different kinds of blaster pistols and rifles, as well as an assortment of body armour and hunting trophies. The distinctive helmet of a Mandalorian rested on a hook at the cabin entrance – Callisto hadn’t worn it during her everyday dealings as a smuggler, but it was clear that she maintained it and kept it at the ready.

The young Chiss woman slipped out of her clothes and into the bed beside Callisto, who stirred a little at the movement. “Sry… I fell …sleep,” Twitchy muttered, groggily.

“It’s okay,” Alack whispered.

“The old womnn answer yr… question?” Callisto asked.

Alack slipped in closely. “Sort of, I think.” She paused, then mused: “Do you think we could ever be as close as those two?”

“Not fair…” Callisto lisped. “We just met. ‘N’ they… they went through someth… …changed them.”

“How do we know we’re not going through something together right now that’s going to change us?” Alack wondered.

There was no answer. Callisto had fallen back asleep. Alack slipped her arm around her and nestled closely.

Then.

Golg, 18 BBY

“So how does one become a Force Necromancer?” Shirana asked. The question had seemed to come out of nowhere, during one of their silences.

Their captor had not come by to take anyone today (or at least they assumed from their sleep cycles and meal deliveries that it had been a day). It could mean that he would come by later, or it could mean that they would be left alone – other than the usual arrival of food, courtesy of the captor’s droids. If it were to be the latter, then they would need to find a way to pass the time and take their mind off their hunger, and Shirana was enjoying their talks more and more as she was getting to know the dark woman she had been interred with.

“Is the sweet, innocent Jedi now lusting for power…?” Mercielaga teased. She tilted her head and tensed her fingers against her cheek in mock horror mixed with genuine amusement. “Have I seduced you so easily?”

Shirana tilted her head slightly. “Got anything better to talk about while we’re stuck here?”

“The Sith have guarded their secrets for millennia – even hidden their existence for hundreds of years,” she chided. “Why would I tell a Jedi? And one who was despatched to kill me, no less.” Her tone of voice was always so straightforward that Shirana couldn’t tell if she were serious. “If I did tell you, then surely you know that I would have to kill you.”

That statement stunned Shirana somewhat. Some of it was the jolting reminder of the tension between them, but ironically, it was also the first suggestion that not killing her was an option. Was she having second thoughts?

“Then don’t tell me,” Shirana answered. “I’d rather we part on good terms when this is over, than some miserable fight to the death.”

Mercie laughed. It was a hearty, lengthy cackle, full of amusement and a little cynicism. Shirana wasn’t sure how to read it.

“Oh, get over here,” Mercie smiled wryly. “Maybe it’s the relief that he didn’t come today, or maybe it’s the exhaustion that all of this seems to be neverending. But I feel like nothing matters, here. Not anymore. Jedi… Sith… those old allegiances are meaningless, in this place. And if there’s an after, we’ll have to figure that out. But I think… there’s no more reason for the old rules, really.”

“You’re serious?” Shirana was surprised. She had only known the woman through snippets of information over the past year of their incarceration, but this seemed very out of character.

“Get over here while I’m feeling magnanimous.” Shirana could hear Mercie pat the floor beside her in the dark, beckoning her to lay close. “Before I change my mind.”

Shirana paused, doubtful, and a little worried that Mercie might not have been completely joking with the have-to-kill remark. But she approached and settled beside her. The candor was unusual for the Zabrak, and Shirana wondered if she was willing to open up because she was confident that Shirana would never leave the citadel alive, or if she thought that it was information that a Jedi could never use — a Jedi necromancer, after all, was unthinkable. But it did also feel like the Sith's resistance was slipping.

“Besides,” Mercie quipped, “can you imagine knowing the secret of life and death, but never having a friend to tell it to?”

For a moment, Shirana reflected on the suggestion that maybe right here, right now, in these twisted circumstances, she might have been the first person this Zabrak woman had in her life who she regarded as a ‘friend.’

Then, she shifted thought to the more significant part of her last sentence. “Life and death?” Shirana asked. “Now you’re being dramatic.”

“Am I?”

With Shirana laying on the hard floor facing her, Mercielaga paused, drew a long breath, and then reached over to the Jedi’s hair, to tease her red locks for a moment. Maybe she was searching for where to start. Maybe she was having second thoughts. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

“The Force flows through every living thing,” Mercie began. “Even though we are cut off from being able to touch it, the Force is still flowing through us, right now, even. When a sentient being dies, their body does not die immediately. If you are fast enough, and depending on the cause of death, their cells are still living, their organs still living, and any bodily processes that have not been impacted by their mode of death or ill health can still function, with just a little nudge.”

She could feel the Miraluka woman taking a moment to digest what she had said with interest. She smiled. “It’s not like exerting the Force outwardly to move their bodies: if their conscience has been extinguished, all you really have to do is supply the thought impulses that the body’s former owner no longer provides. It will do the rest. No telekinesis – just be the consciousness that the body no longer has, on a primal, instinctual level.”

Mercie continued stroking her hair. “And if you have a body that has been spared serious trauma and has had the consciousness severed, you can even nudge its life processes to continue, extending its usefulness beyond the point where normal rot and rigor mortis would become barriers… although there is still a certain amount of inevitable decay and loss of influence. It takes lots of practice, but it can be done. And because you rely on the bodies to do the work, the exertion is minimal until you start animating a lot of them – then, it can be a serious concentration exercise.”

“How did you discover this?” Shirana asked. Mercie’s toying with her hair helped relax her, and helped her focus a little more on what she was saying, and less on the undercurrents of why she might be saying it. “I mean, you couldn’t have just come up with it.”

“I started with experimentation, mostly just from idle curiosity, toying with random corpses during my missions. I was always a bit… morbid. But I had next to no success until my master caught me at it, after an excursion.”

“Dooku,” Shirana commented. Mercie had told her about him earlier, and she, likewise, related what she remembered of the former Jedi.

“Dooku. Darth Tyranus, yes. His master was Darth Sidious, who I never had the pleasure to meet, but who I understand to be very powerful. And Sidious’ master was one by the name of Darth Plagueis.”

Mercie liked having Shirana’s attention. She wasn’t really sure what it was. Companionship, probably, but also, it was just nice to be able to unburden herself of a lifelong quest that she had undertaken almost entirely in secret. “Plagueis was obsessed with learning how to cheat death. He wanted to know everything about it. He was also prone to doing morbid experiments, like I was. Dead vermin, lower sentients… He broke with earlier traditions by taking a highly scientific approach to studying dying creatures upon and after death, and then he recorded it all. Voluminously.”

Mercie laid back and stretched out, reminiscing. “My master was given access to Plagueis’ research, which was secreted away in a dusty storehouse on Wayland. Such a miserable place for such important materials,” Mercie mused. “Anyway, Sidious had hoped that my master could persuade some Jedi named Vos over to the Dark Side, using Plagueis’ journals.”

“Quinlan Vos?” Shirana asked.

Mercie paused. “… I… Maybe? That name sounds right. Anyway, Vos wasn’t interested, but Dooku had guessed that I would be. And he was right. I dug into all of it that I could. Voraciously.”

The Jedi rolled to her side and began to return some of Mercie’s ministrations while she reflected. “Oh, you should have seen it all, Shirana,” the Zabrak drifted into a memory. “There were thousands of volumes. Investigations of body functions and processes, of genetic lineages… Plagueis had writings that dated back to the necromancer king of Moraband, Dathka Graush, which went far beyond the Tsaiwinokka Hoyakut. He had even tracked down some much earlier genetic experiments, and even though they were never properly attributed, I’m pretty certain that they recorded data – not the original texts, that would be impossible – but the citations recorded data once gathered by the Rakata. Plagueis’ reach for research material was seemingly boundless.”

She paused to look back at Shirana, distracted by a thought. “If we weren’t so cut off from the Force, I could show you something…” Then, the Zabrak reached over and took the orange-haired woman’s hand, placing it on her left breast. “You feel this, right?”

“It’s your heart,” Shirana stated.

“It’s one of my hearts,” Mercie corrected. “Zabrak have two. We’re very hearty.” She grinned a bit, then felt sheepish about the bad joke and moved on. “If we weren’t cut off from the Force, I could show you how to reach inside me and feel it from the inside. But…” she considered how best to describe it without being able to show it, “when you do a mind trick, when you reach in and give that little nudge… you’re reaching in to the pneuma, their consciousness. You never go further because their own consciousness impedes you, but that’s the point at which you can actually reach directly into the centre of their being. When they are not conscious, or if they can cede consciousness, you can slip in, and feel everything. Their conscious processes, their unconscious processes… It’s like a pool. You dive in.”

“The applications are many. For example, it’s a common – almost cliché, really – practice of Sith to choke a person from outside, exerting pressure on the throat using Force. But what if you could –”

“That’s horrible!” Shirana protested.

“Yeah, probably,” Mercie shrugged. “But it gets results. Anyway, what if you could just interrupt the order that their pneuma – on a subconscious level, but it’s still the pneuma nonetheless – sends to their lungs to breathe? You could accomplish the same thing, with next to no exertion at all.”

“I still say that’s horrible,” Shirana pulled away a little.

“Think past the example to the full extent of it, though,” Mercie started to tease the line where her hair began on Shirana’s forehead again, massaging it gently, luring her back. “Once you slip in to where that pneuma resides, if you have no resistance from the body’s owner, you can reach in and feel everything. You can direct everything. You can accelerate entropy and you can accelerate healing. You can staunch bleeding by directing blood elsewhere. You can stop processes, and you can restart them. It’s not just death. It’s life, too. It works a little bit when someone is sleeping, too, but not as effectively, because their consciousness still interferes somewhat, and is still directing unconscious life processes like breathing. But it works well enough that you can make a sleeping person shit themselves.”

She said it to lighten the mood, and sure enough, Shirana paused, then started to giggle. “Have you done that?”

The Zabrak grinned, mischievously. “Now, how could I possibly pass up a prank like that? Of course I have, a few times. Once, I did it to a Sep officer who had fallen asleep at his post. It jolted him awake, and his buddies could tell what happened instantly, because of the smell.”

Shirana rolled back and howled with laughter, picturing it all. “Oh, that’s hilarious.”

“Here’s the best part,” Mercielaga leaned in, conspiratorially. “Plagueis was looking for the secret of life and death, and he found it… but he didn’t know it. The poor idiot failed because he thought that the secret of the Force resided in midi-chlorians.”

“But it does.” Shirana sobered up for a moment. It was what she had been taught to believe, too.

“No, it doesn’t. I mean, that's the prevailing wisdom, but it didn't bear out in Plagueis’ experiments. If you try to inject someone with midi-chlorian-rich blood, for example, they don't become stronger in the Force. Increasing midi-chlorians in the body doesn't change Force power. The idiot had it backwards. Correlation is not causation. It's not the presence of midi-chlorians that increase Force use. It’s the presence of Force use that attracts and multiplies the midi-chlorians. They're symbiotic, yes, but they’re more or less along for the ride, and only serving a minor function.”

Mercie rolled back to look upward into the darkness of the cell, distantly. “I mean, consider Force spirits. If a person's essence in the Force was dependent on midi-chlorians, then after their death, their spirit would dissipate as the midi-chlorians leave their bodies -- yet, we've constantly heard legends of powerful Force users who persisted in spirit form, long after their body was long gone. No body, no midi-chlorians.”

Shirana was rapt, and waited for Mercie to continue. “No, it’s deeper than that. I talked before about the Pneuma, but what is it, exactly? It’s one of the three parts that make up a being: the anima, pneuma and aperion. This is the critical part that Plagueis discovered. Anima is the part of the Force giving life but not sentience. Pneuma is sentience, but not life. Aperion is the matter and energy and power that binds it.”

Mercie turned to Shirana in a momentary aside before returning to her longer point. “I’ve been describing them a bit metaphysically, because it’s hard to explain them without showing you. When you slip into the mind, it’s like peeling away layers of an onion.”

She looked back toward the imperceptible ceiling. “But anyway, Plagueis found he could do a few things by manipulating midi-chlorians, but he was constantly stymied by results that weren’t what he expected. And at first, I was the same… until I realized that the way he was manipulating the midi-chlorians was by actually interacting with what was essentially the pneuma itself and the point at which it interacts with the body. That was the key. I had to slip deeper inward to interact with the dead. In order to have full control, it had to be after their own spirit -- their pneuma -- was gone, but anima life remained in the cells. The anima and aperion linger, and by replacing the lost spirit, you can use them to manipulate tissue and sinew and bone. I found I could mend tissue too, by drawing cells back to their intended configuration -- I could heal, in essence, using the body’s own knowledge of itself and the Force’s ability to confer life and health. But with the presence of one’s spirit, it was a much more difficult matter, having to work in spite of the conscious and unconscious exertions of another.

“You could heal and prolong life!” Shirana exclaimed. “A kind of healing that was internal and interactive, rather than external and merely intuitive. If you were to find a way to draw the pneuma back, while mending tissue through the rest...”

“You’re talking about resurrection. Why would you want to do that? It’s much easier to work with the dead,” Mercie commented. “There’s no interference.” She shifted her weight on the uncomfortable floor, while Shirana reflected for a moment on just how solitary a life the Zabrak must have lived to not have been close enough to anyone to be able to imagine wanting to resurrect someone after their death. “Anyway, after a lot of practice, and once I dealt with the problem of establishing balance when operating multiple bodies – including my own – I was able to generate entire armies of the dead... though not for long. Unfortunately, the amount of concentration that consumes, especially if you micromanage absolutely everything, is very taxing. There’s also the decay of the cells and bodies, which increases as your influence decreases.”

“You’ve had, what, entire zombie armies?” Shirana seemed incredulous.

“A couple times, I have” Mercie boasted. “And not zombies. They have a consciousness – yours. But it can be a task to control them all at the same time. The times I’d done it, I would start to lose myself in the Force. In the Dark Side. Pretty soon, it feels like I’m not manipulating them, but the Dark Side is manipulating me, instead. I’ve caught myself sort of dancing – probably like when you use your hands to focus and channel the Force – sort of twitching spastically, dancing like I’m a marionette on the strings of the Force. It’s a bit intoxicating.”

“I would think it would be scary,” Shirana commented.

“Oh, it is,” Mercielaga turned her head and winked at the awestruck Jedi. She loved the attention. The girl was hanging on her every word. “Of course, it’s scary. It’s like you lose yourself in the darkness. But then you use your fear, and it gives you power.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven: The Rakatan Lullabyes

Now.

Ossus, 4 ABY

“If you’re going to use that, you should probably be careful,” Mercie told Alack. “They’re a bit touchy about things in this cabin.”

Although hyperspace lanes allowed for faster-than-light travel, it was still a matter of days and weeks, rather than the usual decades or centuries it would have taken to travel distances like the one between Nar Shaddaa and Ossus. Consequently, they’d had plenty of time to train, and Mercie took full advantage of that, putting Alack through an intense week of physical sparring in the cargo hold, focus training and meditation, quizzes, conversations, explorations in the use of the Force, and then more sparring. The Zabrak was relentless, and the Chiss girl resented just how hard she was being made to work… but she endured.

Alack shrugged off Mercie’s caution. “I know. It belonged to their dead crewmate. I won’t hurt it, I promise.”

“It” was a statuette that had sat on the dresser in Labakka’s room. Mercie sat back in the armchair and Alack sat cross-legged on the bed. The young Chiss woman paused, focused, stretched her arm toward the statuette, and after a moment, it slowly started to raise up about a foot and hang in the air. Then, it descended slowly to the surface again.

Alack looked at Mercie, satisfied with herself. “See? I told you I can do that. I’ve done it many times. Easy.”

Mercie scowled. She always looked stern when she was teaching Alack, and it annoyed her. She should be proud, right?

“What’s…” Mercie raised her arm and wiggled her fingers a little, mocking Alack. “What’s with that?”

Alack was a little puzzled. “I’m using my arm to focus.”

Mercie shook her head. “Yeah… don’t do that.”

“Every Jedi does that,” Alack argued. She’d seen a couple do it, although she really had no way of knowing if her statement was quantitatively right. Come to think of it, she had even seen Rana use her hand as a focus, and it had been part of the reason that she had originally believed that only the older woman had been acting upon their surroundings during their escape from Canso, Lothal.

Mercie narrowed her eyes and looked at her incredulously. Alack realized the foolishness of justifying the gesture to a Sith by invoking the Jedi. “Okay,” she corrected. “Every Force user does that.”

Mercie tilted her head to the side incredulously. “Not every Force user does that. Seriously, the Sith survived for a thousand years by staying invisible, undetected. This…” she stretched out her hand and wiggled her fingers around again “… is a tell. It signals to your opponent that you’re doing something. If the Force is being utilized, it indicates to all observers who is causing it. You reveal yourself and your intentions. Don’t do that.”

“It helps me concentrate,” Alack argued.

Mercie leaned forward and stared right into her, that piercing, unnerving stare that stressed the importance of what she was saying. “This is the age of the Galactic Empire, now,” she warned. “If you are to survive, you must stay hidden. You must not project your intentions or your identity. It’s bad enough, using your hand as a crutch — but your very life can also depend on staying hidden. Now, do it again.”

Alack sat back and concentrated. Nothing happened at first. Then, the statuette started to wobble.

Mercie swatted at Alack’s fingers, which Alack had tried to raise clandestinely. “None of this. Again.”

Alack gave her an annoyed glance. Then, she realized that one of the books on Labakka’s bookshelf behind Mercie was spinning in the air. It didn’t look like Mercie was even aware of it, but she was obviously causing it.

She remembered the chaos of the house back in Canso, as they raced to the basement and the entrance to the cavern. She knew now that Mercie must also have been manipulating the spaces around them, and by not using a visible focus, Alack had completely failed to recognize this. Mercie was right: in a world that requires discretion, this was an important skill.

“Don’t picture moving it with your hand. Just picture it moving,” Mercie instructed. The book settled back into its space on the shelf.

Alack tried again. It took a few moments, but the statuette wobbled, then lifted.

Then, she set the statuette down gently, knowing she wouldn’t have the concentration to sustain it for what would come next. "Have you ever killed anyone?" Alack blurted, seemingly out of the blue. The question had been troubling her, but she hadn’t had the opportunity to bring it up, until now.

Mercie raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right? What kind of Sith has never killed anyone?” Mercie resigned herself to the fact that they were taking a break now, and relaxed, sitting back. “And you're asking a necromancer, for that matter. Where do you think I got the corpses, and what do you think I did with them?"

Alack looked embarrassed. "I mean, there are so many legends..."

Mercie frowned. "Listen, those Jedi you admired were killers, too. Of course, it's all dressed up in questions of who 'deserved' it or not, but that's all a matter of perspective. In fact, when Rana and I first met, one of her mission objectives was to kill me."

"Seriously?" Alack seemed shocked.

"The path you're asking me to take you down, as your teacher, is that of a Force wielder in a time of unrest and volatility. If you walk this path, there will be death. And either that death will be on your hands, or the death will be yours. This is not... a peaceful way, no matter what your intentions are."

Alack looked down. "I think I understand that, it's just... it's just hard to think about." She took a moment to process the realization, and then asked, "Do you ever regret the killing?"

Mercie withdrew, a little, uncomfortable. "When I look back, sometimes. Depending on who it was. There are a lot that I don’t. But I try not to look back.” She clearly wanted to end the conversation. “But enough of this. Try again."

Alack understood, and returned to the statuette. She considered trying to use her fingers to focus, but thought better of it.

In a moment, it was aloft again.

The cabin door opened and Callisto stepped in. “We’re arriving on Ossus. We…” she saw the statuette wobble in the air, walked over, snatched it up protectively, and shot the two women a stern look. “Vee and Rana have settled in, and the rest of us are gathering, up by the cockpit.”

---

The giant orange planet of Ossus had almost reached the intersecting point of its figure eight orbit around the twin suns of the Adegan system.

Because of its lemniscate path and moderate revolution, daylight on Ossus varied, depending on the time of the cyclical year. At the nadir, on both distant ends of its path, Ossus would have a single period of daylight during a single axial rotation, with the second distant sun being merely a background luminary, outshone by its closer twin. During the four intermediary arcs of the path, there were two overlapping periods of day, one brighter and one dimmer, which would grow longer in combination until the planet reached the midpoint between the suns. But at the intersection of the path, there would barely be any twilight at all, leaving the planet always illuminated to a greater or lesser degree, and hotter and drier than usual. The heat from the suns varied from medium bright to scorchingly bright depending on direction, given the differences in size, brightness and distance from Adega Prime and Adega Besh – but it was still a time of near perpetual light and heat, even if one was situated at the poles, and regardless of axial tilt.

Astronomically, this was always seen as a spiritually unique time, and the ancient Jedi Temple on Ossus was geographically located so that during chronological midday during the nexus, it would be perfectly aligned between the two suns. This was the Celestial Equinox, and it certainly must have had some significance to the ancient architects of the revered structure.

In the years since Emperor Palpatine assumed leadership of the former Republic, eradicating the history of the Jedi and shaping the resulting Galactic Empire to his liking, permits for excavations on Ossus were no longer being approved, except for the occasional investigative undertaking by the Empire itself. But even then, there was a certain amount of arms’ length that was kept from the planet. Imperials closely monitored and restricted ships that visited the planet, but they built and staffed very little on the surface itself. It was as though being in orbit was as close as they wanted to get.

But even the Empire couldn’t resist conducting studies about the significance of the Celestial Equinox, so a camp had been established outside the ancient ziggurat, and an urgent delivery had to be made in time to test a theoretical ritual in that ancient stone edifice.

The Wobani Pathfinder had arrived a day early, but this was still cutting it so close to Imperial Reclamation’s deadline that their archaeologists were anxious and abrupt.

“Commander Kord is not impressed,” came the voice over the ship’s comm system. “You were instructed to expect two days to pass the relevant landing procedures. Now, we have no choice but to forego some of our standard protocols in order to salvage the experiment at all. If you thought that this would force us to be more lenient on you, you are sorely mistaken.”

“We had a delay in obtaining the lens. It couldn’t be helped,” Callisto replied.

“Nevertheless, we’re going to have to conduct inspection now, and our search will have to be much more… thorough. Prepare to be boarded.”

Callisto cursed under her breath as the communication ended.

Rana was already hidden in the smugglers’ storage tunnel of the YT-2400, along with Vee. The space was resistant to scanning and they felt confident with the arrangement, but the crew took extra care to obscure the entrance.

Callisto had told them that the Nautolan had volunteered to look after Rana during the stay, but she, the crew and Alack knew that there was also the price on Vee’s head to worry about. The Empire considered Vee to be a terrorist. The ship’s Captain knew that sooner or later, the older women would find out about the bounty on Vee (and maybe even Skako), so she considered extending her circle of trust to the Jedi and Sith.

“Are you sure that Alack and I are okay in the open on this?” Mercie asked. “It isn’t really imperative for either of us to visit the Temple.”

“To be honest,” Callisto answered, “Jujjeg, Sirky, Netha and I are the only ones here who aren’t already wanted by the Empire. And they look the other way for Skako, because his record is minor, I guess. We’ve been able to function doing deliveries because our technologist is very adept at forging credentials. But he badly wants to see the Temple, and if we’re going to have a Hutt along, then I’d much rather have the two of you there for security. Jujjeg has secured identities and credentials for both of you, and he’s the best there is, when it comes to that.” Her story about wanting Alack there was tenuous, given that the Chiss woman had (to date) been more prone to cause problems than solve them, but the two guessed that it was an excuse so Callisto could keep her close.

“So why do Rana and Vee have to hide, then?” Alack asked.

“Rana and Vee are both high priority targets of the Empire, so it’s better to take the precaution. And Miraluka are by their very nature a Force-using race, so that makes them automatically under greater scrutiny by the Empire, regardless of how shining their credentials might be. I mean, they’re probably looking for all four of us after Nar Shaddaa, but only really have our general description – but with Rana being Miraluka, that more than anything else would get their attention.”

“And Vee?” Mercie chimed in.

“Well, Vee is badly sought by the Imps after some, um, minor acts of terrorism,” the captain answered. “So she usually sits these deliveries out.”

“I’ve been wondering,” Alack spoke up, “given that you had this stop lined up before we met, do you regularly do a lot of deliveries for the Empire?”

“Right now, in this business,” the Pathfinder’s captain replied, “if you don’t play nicely with the Empire, you’re not going to last. It’s a necessary evil.”

The ship was jostled by the boarding craft as it locked on to the Pathfinder’s porthole and began securing entry.

“Here goes nothing,” Callisto sighed, nervously.

“Don’t you fret,” the portly Hutt reassured her. “The credentials I made for you are impeccable. Alack should answer to the name Term'esuor'lirti, or Mesuorl, and Mercie is Dr. Elkani Natoxu.”

“Natoxu?” Mercie asked. “What, is that some kind of pun?” In Iridonian Zabraki, ‘natoxu’ meant ‘devil.’

“Pah,” Jujjeg replied. “You disrespect me. Both of your identities are derived from real people. Dr. Natoxu is a noted Zabrak archaeologist, who I happen to know is currently involved in a clandestine excavation and staying off the Empire’s radar. I doubt she’ll mind if you provide her with an alibi. And Mesuorl…”

He cut himself off as the porthole groaned and the boarding party was about to enter. Everyone took a deep breath.

The hatch opened and gave access to three stormtroopers who climbed down from the craft’s roof, followed by two officers. The troopers flanked the officers and the ranking official was the last to set foot on the Pathfinder’s floor. The crew awaited them, trying to look casual – too casual for the ranking officer’s liking, actually – with everyone but Netha and Waya in attendance.

“Now then,” the senior officer began, “I’m Captain Vintain and this is Lieutenant Otho. I trust everyone is in attendance?”

“I have a droid watching the cockpit, and my mechanic, an Ortolan, is in engineering,” Callisto replied. “Safety first, right? Otherwise, we’re all here, yeah.” And then she added, “Trust me, we want this over with just as quickly as you do.”

Vintain sniffed in derision. Then, he waved to two of the troopers to start looking over the ship’s contents. “Any contraband on board, Captain? Spice, proscribed artifacts, undeclared chemicals, anything like that?”

“Well, I know you’re not going to take my word for it, but no,” Callisto replied. “You should see it in your logs, but we’ve gone through searches before, and we have always passed.”

The Lieutenant started bringing up identification details on a ledger, and screening them against the attendees. He carefully studied the portraits, and then the faces of the crew.

“Your crew appears to have grown since your last inspection,” Vintain noted.

“Dr. Natoxu and her assistant are guests on this trip.”

“There was a Nautolan on your crew at one time, I see. What happened to her?”

“She left us quite some time ago,” Callisto answered. “At Denon, if it matters.”

“Denon, eh?” The Lieutenant made some notes, and then at Vintain’s signal, left to follow the troopers. Most of the crew were nervously running through their internal pre-Empire checklist, trying to remember if they had forgotten to stow away anything that might be considered illegal cargo.

“Hm,” Vintain mused, looking over some notes. “A mangy Selonian, assorted never-do-wells, a Hutt scientist – how amusing – and… ah! Dr. Natoxu. I read your paper on Rakatan symbology in Civil War -era Corellian carvings. Fascinating!”

Had the Commander not been glancing at his ledger, he might have noticed the crew and passengers draw an anxious breath, hoping that he wouldn’t start asking further questions.

“Were you surprised to find references to Zillo Beasts so far from Malastare?”

Callisto shot an angry glare at Jujjeg for having given the Zabrak an identity of someone who might be prolific enough that an official might want to discuss their works. It was reckless. Alack began to sweat, certain that their cover had been blown. Sirky gauged the distance to the armoury, in case the crew needed to secure weapons quickly.

“Well,” Mercie replied without missing a beat, “given the reach of the Rakatan Infinite Empire, and the way in which they had, in essence, seeded the galaxy with their various slave species — particularly with humans and humanoid races that were the result of their genetic breeding — it shouldn’t be terribly surprising to find that they had seeded other species, like the Zillo.”

“Hm,” Vintain responded. “I wonder what purpose the Zillo would have served on Corellia.”

He might have been fishing for an answer, but Mercie knew better than to say too much. She may have known plenty about ancient history, but she didn’t really know Dr. Natoxu’s particular take on ancient history. She allowed the discussion to trail away.

It took awhile, with the troopers dismantling some of the cargo packaging in the back to sift through the contents, and then ransack the various sleeping quarters. They took the Commander’s order to be thorough quite literally. Eventually, the Lieutenant and two troopers had returned from checking out the rest of the ship. The junior officer nodded to Vintain.

“Everything appears to be in order. Await our signal to proceed to the surface,” the Commander said. Then, the boarding party exited to their craft and prepared to depart.

“You handled that so well…” Alack gasped, after they had gone.

“Confidence,” Mercie replied. “I was a bit lucky in that I knew some things about the subject, but even if I hadn’t, it most likely would have been fine. If you can enter a space and project that you belong there, people will almost always follow your lead and act as though you do, unless or until you give them a reason not to.”

The captain and crew sagged and exhaled, relieved that everything had resolved without issue.

“Don’t get too comfortable, though,” Mercie reminded them. “We’re just getting started.”

---

It was not long after the boarding shuttle had departed that the Wobani Pathfinder had been given clearance to land on Ossus.

Rana felt horrible about hiding while the rest of them shouldered the risk. But she knew that Mercie was right – her visibility would be the greatest risk to the expedition, especially given that she could be too easily baited into revealing herself as a Jedi. (“They know how to use random acts of cruelty to flush out their targets,” Mercie had asserted, “and face it, Rana, you have a bad streak of good-heartedness...”)

Vee wasn’t much company, either. Although she understood Basic, she refused to speak it, so the two couldn’t really have much in the way of conversation. And Rana still didn’t feel overly at ease around Nautolans… although thanks to Mercie’s response the last time she voiced that, she remembered that that was her shortcoming, not Vee’s.

Shirirka was with them as well, since they hadn’t known if the presence of a Loth Cat might be considered “contraband.” Sirky’s den-mate had expended some of his initial energy from the excitement of being moved to the small space with the two women, and he now curled up in the Miraluka’s lap.

“You don’t think very highly of Jedi, do you?” Rana asked Vee.

The Nautolan simply looked back at her silently.

“It’s okay. I can see it. The suspicion. And I sort of understand it, too,” Rana said to Vee. “A lot of damage can be done in the name of puritanism. I’m sure it must be the same with Twitchy Fingers, as well, although she’s kind enough to not say it. The Jedi and their wars were horrible for Mandalore.”

The Nautolan let slip a slight smile at the nickname given to Callisto, before recollecting herself.

“I was horrified too, when I saw the holo,” Rana continued. “You know, the holo they showed everyone when word went out across the Empire that the Jedi had been outlawed. I didn’t see it until much later than everyone else, of course, but when I did, it was no less horrifying. To see him slaughtering the younglings in the Jedi Temple. No wonder that the galaxy turned on the Jedi and saw them as traitors and monsters.

“And the worst of it was that I knew the Jedi who was in the holo,” she continued. “Anakin Skywalker. Oh, when I knew him, he had his respectable moments, but there was a horribly hot-headed streak in him. He was always so self-absorbed, and had such a temper… Master Allie warned me to stay away from him, and for good reason.”

She leaned back. “I have never wished this of anyone else, but I hope he suffered. I hope Vader got him, and that he made it hurt. Of all the Jedi who perished the day the order went out, I hope he suffered the most.” She looked back toward Vee, with an anger in her expression that few ever saw from her. “I swear to you, nothing good will ever come from a Skywalker.”

From the storage tunnel, she could hear the repulsorlift skiff be readied to take the landing party up to the Jedi Temple. Sirky, Skako and the rest would keep watch on the freighter, and help make sure that Rana remained undiscovered, as well.

Given the Imperials’ inevitable distrust of most alien species, it was down to Callisto and Alack to make the delivery, with Mercie as security and the Hutt providing any historical expertise needed along the trip – although to be honest, they didn’t expect that any would be necessary: Jujjeg just wanted an excuse to visit the ruins and an alibi to bring Mercie along.

Vee still didn’t seem too interested in conversation.

“Mercie has been having the same disturbing dream a few sleeps in a row,” Rana tried a different subject, “in which we all died but her…”

Vee looked away.

Rana gave up trying to converse and waited, petting Shirirka, gently.

---

The blistering heat of the twin suns beat down on the four as they disembarked from the Pathfinder, which had landed several yards from the camp. The three humanoids wore loose robes and light cloth wrapped around their heads and partially masking their faces. Jujjeg had to rely on a pair of damp, oversized blankets that he draped over himself as best he could, to keep his skin from drying out. It was a routine he was familiar with, though, so he was able to handle the circumstances well enough and keep sheltered. The four of them disembarked using the Pathfinder’s flat terrestrial repulsorlift skiff, which had fortunately been fitted with a canvas canopy, to give them an extra layer of protection from the heat. The mouse droid, 11-T2, had come along to pilot the skiff.

They shuttled at a relatively slow pace, partly because the skiff wasn’t designed for speed, but also because of the need to maintain a non-threatening appearance for the Imperial troopers, who would certainly be already agitated from the heat.

“Judging from your response earlier, you must have learned a lot from that old archivist when you were a child,” Alack commented to Mercie. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d have got all that just from taking care of him.”

“Oh, it might have taught me more than you would expect,” she replied. “For most of those years, I was the only person he interacted with. If he needed something transcribed, I did it for him. If he needed a reference text, I needed to find it in the voluminous library he curated – and in later years, I also had to read it to him. And when he just wanted to reminisce about things, I was the only one he had to tell the stories to. I don’t have the sort of education they provide at the academies, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of what I’ve learned over those years are things that even the academies have forgotten.”

Jujjeg made a faint squeal of delight. “There are so many things I think we should discuss,” he said to the Zabrak. “It is fortunate that you had such an experience.”

If there was anything that the dour Zabrak was skilled at, it was the art of the conversation killer — a skill she demonstrated in her reply to the rotund technologist: “I’d feel much more fortunate about that experience if he hadn’t also been such a filthy lecher.”

The journey to the Imperial camp was quiet after that, until Callisto had some last minute instructions for them.

“Okay, so the Imps have a new policy requiring an interface with any droids that are allowed on the dig site,” Callisto informed, “so when they link with 11-T2, we’ve got to keep them preoccupied long enough for him to loop the link back. If we want access to the file with info on where Alack’s brother is, we’re going to need to establish that loop and keep it uninterrupted.”

The gate loomed ahead.

“And remember. We’ve still got most of the trip ahead of us. Stay alert, but keep cool.”

Their arrival was met by six sandtroopers, equipped with filtered helmets and cooling fans that – when they weren’t faulty – nevertheless failed to significantly reduce the temperature within their armour. A ranking officer also approached.

“They should be expecting us,” Callisto said to him. “We’ve brought the Tialvain lodestone from Dennogra, and a trinicot lens.”

“You’re late,” the gruff officer responded. “Reclamation has been shitting fizzies.” He looked over their paperwork, scanning quickly. “We’re going to have to interlink your astromech while you’re here,” he added.

“I don’t have an astromech,” Callisto replied. “We’re using the mouse droid.” She nodded toward 11-T2, piloting the skiff.

The officer walked over to 11-T2 and inserted a data spike. “It’ll just take a few moments to sync.”

“No problem,” Callisto replied.

“I hope they give you guys some decent breaks out of the heat,” Alack commented to some of the troopers, making conversation.

“Nah. This is the punishment detail,” one answered, before being sideswiped in the upper arm by one of his buddies for talking out of turn.

“Do you know what the experiment is that they plan to use these things for?” Callisto asked the officer, trying to draw his attention away from the mouse droid.

“No idea,” the officer replied. “It’s need-to-know, and I couldn’t tell you even if I did.”

11-T2 beeped lightly, and Callisto knew the Imps’ interlink had been established, but the droid probably hadn’t yet had enough time to loop back.

“Better give him a little longer,” she said to the officer. “He can be a little buggy.”

“Should get yourself an astromech,” he replied. “These things aren’t really designed for this.”

“Tell me about it. We’ll probably be getting an R4 after this job.”

“Nice,” the officer replied, only half interested. 11-T2 emitted a series of beeps.

“There, that should be it,” Callisto replied. “Can I deliver these things, now?”

“You’d better take them on up. You’ll find Commander Harmon Kord on fifth level.”

Before long, the Pathfinder’s procession continued onward to the ruins of the Jedi Temple itself. The skiff crawled slowly.

“Fifth level!” Jujjeg beamed. “We’re going to be going all the way to the top!”

“I thought you said this place has already been picked through,” Mercie reminded him.

“It has, but think of the history! The Praxium predates the Great Hyperspace War!”

“When do we find out where my brother is stationed?” Alack asked in a lower tone, even though they were now at some distance from the camp.

“11-T2’s already on it,” Callisto answered. “Aren’t you?”

The mouse droid piloting the skiff beeped pleasantly.

“He should receive the payroll file when the camp receives it. They read him as a packet node, now, thanks to the loop he’s set up. We’ve just got to stay cool, make our delivery and hope nothing goes wrong.”

“What if the Imps had just decided to take the things and deliver them themselves?” Alack asked.

“Wouldn’t happen,” Callisto said. “For one, Commander Kord’s name was on the requisition. I have instructions to deliver only to him. But for another, this place creeps the bejeesus out of the Imps.”

Mercie knew that it was true. She was also realizing that she hadn’t expected to feel so uneasy: the Force was certainly not inert here, and too much of it was attuned to the Light Side. She felt a strong sense of discomfort and briefly considered going back, but knew that doing so would raise too many suspicions.

As they reached the base of the ziggurat ruins, the group finally found themselves in some relative shade, though with the ambient light from twin suns, it was only a partial relief. They alighted from the skiff, and left it — and 11-T2 — to enter the half-collapsed archway.

“Is he going to be okay on his own?” Alack asked. “Maybe someone should watch the skiff.”

“That would raise suspicions too, though,” Callisto reminded. “No, we’ve got to have a little bit of blind faith here, and just remember that there aren’t too many creatures that wander around here.” She turned toward the group. “So, I probably don’t have to tell you all that you’ll have to watch your step, right? There’s not much light here, and the structures are crumbling badly in places.” She wrapped a band around her forehead to which her headlamp was affixed, and the other three took the cue to do the same.

The Temple had been constructed largely from Ossan stone and bronzium, though most of what remained was eroded raw rock and corrosion, with some invasive cacti finding home in periodic crevasses. The ground level of the Temple looked like a hollowed out cavern, with upturned rock where the floor had been dug up to be taken to Coruscant. “At the centre,” Jujjeg pointed, “right about there, once stood the Great Tree. It too was tens of thousands of years old, and had become Force sensitive. There are legends of the early Jedi communing with it, and that it was a living repository of knowledge.”

“Legends say a lot of things,” Mercie frowned, irritated. She could feel the presence of the ancient Jedi spirits still lingering in the space, and it was making her skin crawl.

They found the first stairwell and climbed, reaching the third floor before finding that the upper reaches of the stairwell had collapsed. They would have to cross the floor to a stairwell on the far side.

“The Jedi Temple was constructed in five levels,” Jujjeg expounded, occasionally pausing for breath. The stairs had been a challenge. “The levels were a mnemonic that were designed to teach the Light Side path. The landing represents the Force, upon which Peace is built. From Peace, you find Serenity, and from Serenity, Harmony. At the very top, above all of those foundations, you have Knowledge.”

“A lot of baggershand, in other words,” Mercie rolled her eyes.

The third floor – Serenity, by Jujjeg’s retelling – was enormous and hollow, their voices echoing somewhat. The vaulted ceilings disappeared into the darkness above them. The group had to watch for gaps in the floor, which had collapsed in places. Once used for meditative spaces, now, this floor simply ate up the meagre light cast by their headlamps.

“The art here has always made me curious.” Jujjeg had stopped to take in worn paintings on three alcoves. “I’ve only seen images, but it’s every bit as majestic as I’d imagined, in real life.” Though flakes of the paint had peeled away, there were still large sections of picture remaining, and some bits of text. “I don’t recognize the script,” he added.

“It’s an early Rakatan dialect,” Mercie said.

“Rakatan? Not modern Rakatan, obviously. But here?” The Hutt was dumbfounded.

“It’s definitely anachronistic,” she continued. “And puzzling. It refers to these murals as three lullabyes, and they’re stories of peoples who the early Rakatan civilizations weren’t really aware of, and during epochs long after their reign. These must have been left by a scholar, thousands of years since that civilization. Maybe a forgery.”

“Why lullabyes?” Alack seemed dubious.

“I don’t know,” Mercie replied. “It might be to do with the theme of serenity. The first is about the rulers of Moraband, and a purple piper who seeks their wisdom.”

“Sith,” Jujjeg acknowledged.

“Sith? Why would a Jedi lullaby be about Sith kings?” Alack was puzzled.

“Not Sith the religion. Sith the race,” Mercie explained. “When the Jen’jidai – the rebellious Dark Jedi – were exiled from the Jedi order, they settled on Moraband, but the planet was already populated by an indigenous population of red-skinned humanoids. You might have seen one or two, but they’re rare in this part of the galaxy. They often have bony features and cartilaginous facial projections, or fleshy tendrils around their mouths. You still occasionally see some of their descendants, but the Sith peoples have largely withdrawn from the galaxy.

She continued. “The Jen’jidai subdued the population, and over the centuries that followed, interbred with them, subverting their traditions and replacing them with the developing spiritual traditions, which came to be known as Sith lore. It was a cultural genocide, in essence, but for the Jen’jidai, they entered a Golden Age of growth and power.”

“What are they doing on the walls of the Jedi Temple… in a ‘lullaby?’” Jujjeg asked. He was shining his forehead lamp on the murals and taking scans of them, wanting to retain an impression of them for later study.

“A lot of lullabies have morbid origins. But it could be a cautionary tale, I suppose,” Mercie answered. “The second panel tells of a descendant of the Jen’jidai, a red queen. She…” Mercie paused to study the portrait more. “There’s a black queen who… loves her. She raises her from death,” the Zabrak continued, sounding a little confused. “But the red queen abandons the black queen to her own death, it looks like.”

“Is there a point to this?” Callisto asked. “We need to finish our delivery, get 11-T2 and get off this rock.”

“Have some reverence for the history and knowledge in this place,” Jujjeg chided. He continued scanning the second and third murals. “And its secrets. So many marvels…”

Mercie was transfixed by the third painting. Much of this one had been eroded, but in the skies, skeletal avians flew. In the oceans, skeletal fishes cavorted. On the land, a skeletal army marched, laying waste to a pink world. The red queen danced in their midst. In the background, an angelic juggler turned a grinding wheel, and a thousand horns sounded.

“A little morbid for a lullaby, don’t you think?” Alack sniffed.

“It’s a cautionary tale,” Mercie mumbled, still half-entranced, “about the perceived ‘error’ of the Dark Jedi, and warning that it could create a galactic cataclysm.”

Jujjeg interrupted her. “Are you sure you’re not interpreting it according to your own predilections…?”

The question was cut off by an Imperial official in the distance. “Hold! Why are you here?”

“We’ve got a delivery,” Callisto answered, shouting loud enough to be heard by the approaching figure.

“Let’s have it, then. I’ll take it to where it’s going. You four shouldn’t be in here.”

“I need to take these to Commander Harmon Kord,” Callisto stated, volume lower as the official neared.

“I’m Kord. You can give them to me.”

“I’ll need to see some credentials, then,” Callisto replied.

“You must be joking,” the officer was indignant.

“These items are critical, my instructions are specific, and I have a contract. I know for certain that Kord wouldn’t want them just handed over to someone claiming to be him.”

“Fine. I’ll escort you, then. He’s just up on the landing. But then, you must leave.”

The four were quiet after that, during the passage upstairs, while handing over the lodestone and lens, and then returning down the flights of stairs to the entrance of the crumbling Jedi Temple of Ossus.

--—

Eventually, Alack grew tired of the silence. She whispered to Mercie: “I have a question about Miraluka sight.”

The Zabrak glanced around, then answered. “Go on…”

“What happens in spaces where there is only my vision to access? Is there any way to broaden what I see when no one else is around? Miraluka seem to be able to.”

A smile tickled the corner of Mercie’s mouth. “There’s that curiousity I was hoping for,” she muttered, cryptically. Then, “you remember when I said that using your hand as a focus was a crutch?”

“Yes.”

“Well, using other peoples’ eyes to see is a crutch. But it was useful, to introduce the basic principle, and get you used to taking in sensory input from multiple sources and combining them into a volumetric view.”

“What do you mean?” Alack was puzzled.

“Seeing in the Force is not just about literal sight. And it’s not just about taking in the senses of sentient people, either. All life takes in sensory input — visual, aural, tactile… even something as basic as the slight draft of air on an insect can give information. Even if we are not conscious of those things, our unconsciousness sorts them into a wider understanding of our surroundings. What you need to do is reach into the deeper pool of life around you, and draw from all the senses to be found, constructing them into a sight greater than your own.”

“Does that work where life doesn’t exist?” Alack asked. “I mean, there’s no life in space, for example.”

“Oh, but there is life in space, even,” Mercie answered. “Tardigrades, bactili, emberflora that survive in the gases of a star… life is rare in space and most of it is unconscious, but there is still sensory input to be found. But that will be far beyond you right now. For now, knowing this, you need to start reaching further than simple sight to take in the world around you. Even when there are no people around, life is everywhere.” Then, Mercie remembered her surroundings. “But this isn’t really the place for a lesson, and it may not be safe to go into details, here.”

The silence resumed. They continued their descent.

“You know,” Alack piped up again, as the group neared the ground floor, “In the Csillan version of Shah-tezh, the opposing pieces are black and red, instead of black and white.”

Her voice was a bit louder, not seeking whispered communication with Mercie alone, but to the wider group. The comment seemed to come out of nowhere, snapping people out of their independent reveries, but without any immediate clarity about her point.

“I mean,” she continued, “culturally speaking, Chiss distrust all forms of Force use – Light Side, Dark Side, all of it. So in Shah-tezh, the opposing teams represent what was seen as the eternal war between the Jedi and Sith, like a game that would go back and forth, trading wins and losses, to the detriment of the rest of the galaxy. Neither side is white, since neither is seen as good.”

“What are you getting at, Alack?” Mercie asked, annoyed by the banter.

“Well, in those murals,” she explained, “that kind of seemed like you and Rana. You’d be the red queen, and she’d be the black queen.”

“Those paintings are thousands or even tens of thousands of years old,” Mercie reminded. “Whatever minor symbolism we might think we see in them, the original painters clearly intended them to have completely different meanings. Don’t read into them.”

“I’m not,” Alack replied. “I just thought it was curious.” As they reached the surface, she added, “You know what I don’t get? Why is archaeology so heavily prioritized in the galaxy? Is there really any point to living in the past so much?”

Jujjeg spoke up. “The thing you have to remember is that most of our technology, from hyperdrive on down, derives from ancient civilizations that were vastly superior in development to ours.”

“Like the Rakata,” Alack surmised.

“Especially the Rakata,” Mercie stressed.

“The end result is that we’re continually discovering and reverse engineering things that a superior species had devised in order to conquer and rule us,” the Hutt continued, “recovering old and lost technologies that fell into disuse as humans rose up and overthrew their masters.”

“Not entirely,” Mercie interrupted. “The only way the ancient humans were able to overthrow the Rakatans was by mastering and becoming fluent with the Force to a degree that their masters hadn’t. But that knowledge too has been forgotten, largely because the civilizations that followed were at constant war with each other.” They were nearing fresh air, so she fished out a cannagar and discretely lit it with an angry spark from her fingertips. “What’s the first thing a conquering civilization does to the conquered? Destroy the libraries and the repositories of knowledge. So, sentients across the galaxy have also been contributing to their own intellectual entropy, and then having to try to recover those things la—”

As they exited the Jedi Temple on Ossus, they discovered that the skiff and 11-T2 were gone.

---

“You’re absolutely certain that you have this under control, Captain?” the figure asked from the holocomm. “I can dispatch a team from the flagship, if you need help delaying them until I arrive.”

“We should be okay,” the officer replied. “They have a Hutt with them, so they won’t be moving too quickly in this heat. But Vintain has been alerted too, in case they do somehow make it off-surface.”

“Very well. I shall be there as fast as I can. And Captain…”

“Yes?”

“You’re absolutely certain that the Zabrak’s facial tattoos looked like the first image, and not the second, correct?”

“Pretty certain,” he replied, only partly second-guessing himself. “And she was certainly redder than in the second image.”

“I’ll be there shortly.” The holo figure dissipated as the communication ended.

“Alright, men,” the officer called to the soldiers at the camp. “Look alive. We’re going to have company, and your blasters might be getting a workout.”

---

Shirirka had fallen asleep in Shirana’s lap, but even in his sleep, he was purring.

“If you like,” Rana said to the Nautolan, “I can show you some combat techniques, sometime. I mean, I’ve never seen you fight, so you might already be proficient, but I’m sure there’s always something that might help.”

Vee just looked back at her suspiciously. She hadn’t spoken a word the whole time. She did help Rana, fetching her some water, making her comfortable, and such, but she still wouldn’t converse in any way.

The old woman had tried telling her about a Nautolan Jedi she had known named Kit, and his padawan Nahdar, who she had trained with at the academy — but Vee didn’t seem at all interested.

In some ways, she almost felt like a prisoner being watched, rather than someone being accompanied, protected or looked after.

“We can even see if I can show you how to be attuned with your sabers’ crystals,” she tried again.

Vee stayed silent.

Realizing she wasn’t going to do much to break the ice between them for now, the old woman reclined on the canvas chair that she had been given, and reached out to see how Mercie and the others were doing.

They had exited the temple and were about to return to the camp, but their skiff was missing. This wouldn’t be very easy for the Hutt, given the difficulty of slithering on the dry rock. He looked very concerned.

She didn’t like the look of the guards, either. They were on alert – very different than their tired, irritated attitudes, earlier.

“Vee?” Rana asked. “I think there’s going to be trouble.” She spent a few moments, looking further across the camp. “Correction. There’s definitely going to be trouble.”

This, the Nautolan heeded. She stood up, pried open the door a little, and called out to the crew to help them get out of the storage space. “Nee ah laa’a, en too bay nah sooo ba!”

---

The ruins of the temple opened up at the foot of a mountain ridge to a sizeable valley that had been scorched to sand, dirt and rock. The Wobani Pathfinder sat a few miles away, with the camp a little over half the distance away from them.

“I can’t see it,” Callisto commented. “How about you?”

“Scanning,” Mercie spoke, somewhat distantly.

“We have to find that mouse droid!” Alack interjected. “It’s important!”

“We’re working on it,” Mercie said to her. “But now would be a really good time for you to use what you learned about Miraluka sight, to help out.”

“Do you think it was the Imps?” Jujjeg asked.

“Most likely. I don’t see the skiff at the camp,” replied Mercie, “although I’m not able to get a full view. I can’t see in some of the tents. Does 11-T2 have a homing beacon?”

“He does, but to detect it, I’d have to get to the ship,” Jujjeg commented.

“Why didn’t we bring a tracker?” Callisto bellowed at him angrily.

“With all of the other tension, I forgot,” he answered.

“The guards all look like they’re on alert,” Alack noted, now attempting to remote-view what she could. “This is bad, isn’t it?”

“Something must have tipped them off that we’re not who we presented ourselves to be. It might possibly be just about Alack and I,” Mercie said to Callisto, “but you’re probably not going to get paid for this delivery, and might be fugitives, now.”

“Well, we knew it was a risk,” Twitchy acknowledged, though she was concerned about the expenses.

“Rana’s out of the tunnel,” Mercie said. “Does Vee have access to your financials?”

“Yeah,” Callisto replied. “If something happens to me, the crew will still need that.”

“Good. Rana’s going to tell her to move everything out of the Empire’s reach, ASAP,” Mercie said.

“Isn’t that a bit premature?” Callisto asked.

“Maybe. But if the Empire acts, you’re not going to get a chance later,” Mercie said.

“We’re going to need to make a run for the camp, aren’t we?” Jujjeg said, with dread in his voice. While Hutts’ skin was leathery and able to take the wear, their movement was very dependent upon the mucus and sweat that amassed on its surface. A moist, humid environment facilitated easy movement, and an agile Hutt like Jujjeg would be able to outrace any of his companions easily – but for an arid surface like Ossus, everything was like sandpaper and crags. And the probably once lush valley space between the landing party and the camp was now a parched badlands of sedimentary rocks, ravines, buttes, broken geological forms and jutting ridges that framed the single worn, beaten path that the skiff had taken to bring them to the Temple’s base. It was, for a Hutt, much worse than what running underwater would be like for a human.

“Can’t we have the Pathfinder come and get us?” Alack asked.

“Nowhere to land it, here,” Callisto replied. “And right now, the Imps don’t know we’re on alert. As soon as we do something out of the ordinary, they’ll have ships everywhere. We probably need to get as close to the ship as we can before doing anything happens that sparks them to act.”

They considered their options.

"I doubt we’ll travel very fast with someone who runs like a chooba," Mercie commented.

"Insults are not going to get me to run faster," Jujjeg replied.

"Obviously," Mercie sniffed. Then, she turned to Callisto. "Can we leave him behind?"

"I am not leaving my technologist, slicer and crewman behind!" she shouted back.

"Mercie!" Alack chided.

The Zabrak shrugged. "Well, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask."

“Don’t you people have some sort of invisibility magic, or something?” Callisto asked Mercie.

“Rana’s the stealthy one,” she replied. “I can keep myself hidden to an extent, but I don’t really have a technique that will help the rest of you.”

They could either run back down the worn path they came, or clamber over the rough terrain. The latter afforded a bit more of a straight-line path, but was probably impossible for Jujjeg.

But without the canopy of the repulsorlift above them, there was the additional complication of the heat to worry about, as well. It wouldn’t be a leisurely walk.

“I don’t see any option but to run,” Callisto said.

“No,” Mercie stopped them. “You wait here. I’ll make way across the rocks. They’ll give me a bit of cover, and hopefully after I’ve sorted out the camp, I can find something a little faster than that repulsorlift to come back and pick you up.”

“I want my skiff back,” Callisto interjected. “They’re expensive.”

Mercie ignored her. “Alack, I want you to keep looking for 11-T2. If you find him and you’re closer, then you’re going to have to make a trek for him. If I’m closer, tell me where he is.” Mercie turned and started off toward the scruff. As she did, she decided that it was best not to overheat, and shed her top, leaving only a band of undercloth to cover and support her breasts.

“How do I do that?” the blue girl asked… but no sooner did she finish the question when she froze at the sight of Mercie.

Mercie glanced back and answered: “The same way you did on Lothal. But just me, this time, and not to everyone in the area.”

It was at that point that Mercie realized that her companions were staring.

Mercie had a large wound and burn mark on her upper chest, above her breast. The skin was charred, much worse than the burns on her fingers, and for a larger, circular space the size of a fist. Part of her chest was recessed where the burned skin was as well, as though a portion of it had been vaporized, save for a bit of skin that had healed over the area.

“Isn’t that where your heart should be?” Alack asked, stunned.

“That would explain a lot,” Callisto muttered under her breath.

“Ah,” Mercie realized, and looked down at what they were staring at. “I guess when you spied on us in the fresher, you missed that part, because you wouldn’t have seen it from the vantage point of my eyes, eh? Still want to be a powerful Force user?”

The question was rhetorical. Mercie turned back toward the camp and forged ahead.

“Who spied on who in the what?” Callisto asked.

“Accidental. Long story,” Alack answered.

---

The InterGalactic Banking Clan was wholly under the Emperor’s influence, but the Hutt Clans had managed to negotiate a pact that had shielded them from Imperial rule. If you couldn’t do business with the Empire, you had to move your credits – while you still had them – to Hutt Space and the semi-corrupt bankers under their domain. Even in the Outer Rim, banks were little more than puppets for the Empire, but Hutts prided themselves on a relatively independent sphere of economic influence, subject to Clan justice.

Vee was active at the ship’s comms, having Callisto’s and the Pathfinder’s holdings transferred to accounts overseen by various Hutt benefactors.

“So our credentials have been blown, I would assume,” Skako commented to Rana. “Not that it bothers me, I expected it to happen sooner or later, but…”

“Right now, I’d imagine it’s all up in the air. It’s why Vee can still transfer funds – otherwise, it would have been seized already. Their primary objective would be to find Mercie and I, and possibly Alack… it’s kind of hard to tell which of us they’re looking for. They can’t really officially charge the Pathfinder’s crew with harbouring a fugitive — at the banking level, at least, where things have to be a bit more evidence-based — if there’s no indication to them that you knew that we were fugitives. As far as we know, no alerts have been sent.”

Skako Divik laughed. “You know as well as I that the Empire will do whatever it pleases.”

Rana nodded. “True, but the Empire has degrees of priority, and I doubt that the Pathfinder is very high on that list.” She was walking back toward the cargo ramp with the Ongree crewman. “I’m going to need you to keep the hatch open just barely enough for me to squeeze through, and then close it. They can’t see that anyone has left the ship.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Skako asked. “You have trouble moving around, and Sirky and I would be happy to…”

“Make sure that the ship is as close to ready to fly as it can be without alerting the Imperials,” she answered. “And prepare for a firefight on the way out.”

“Ah,” the Ongree crewman grinned. “The fun stuff.”

---

The terrain off the pathway was rough and uneven, and challenged the surest footfalls. Mercie’s ankles protested at the awkward steps and rushed jog. The soldiers at the camp knew that she was coming, but didn’t seem overly alarmed, since the other three had remained in sight. Obviously, they presumed she was coming to borrow a repulsorlift or some other sled – after all, they must have assumed, what could one Zabrak possibly do? But as she neared, she consciously worked to “accidentally” disappear behind the terrain periodically, using the rocks to obstruct their vision when possible, all while keeping her expression looking like that of someone who was relaxed and merely working their way to a destination.

At one point, she paused, tilted her head, sensing another person. Rana was approaching the camp too, from behind.

Mercie decided to play it coolly, and strode up to the camp as though she simply thought she was going to ask them for help. Better, she thought, if all of their attention was focused on her.

“Hey, uh,” she called out to the officer and the troopers lined up along the barricades surrounding the camp. “It’s just me. With the crew delivering the lodestone and lens. Our skiff appears to have been taken. Can we borrow one of yours?”

“Who are you?” the officer beckoned back at her. “You’re obviously not Dr. Natoxu.”

“Has Imperial Intelligence screwed up my file again?” Mercie bluffed, nearing the camp, still walking casually. “I thought we had this all sorted out.”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” the officer responded. “There is an alert out for someone with your exact facial tattoos. It must be serious, since they’re sending an Inquisitor.”

Well, kark. That didn’t sound good. Still, Mercie kept the act up for as long as she could, trying to get as near to the troopers as possible before conflict began. “No, we’ve been through this before. I’m starting to think the Empire’s bureaucracy is a bunch of bantha poodoo.”

“You’ll hold right there,” the officer ordered. Mercie finally stopped advancing, about three yards from the barricades and the troopers behind them.

A thud sounded behind them, as one trooper nearer the camp tents fell to the ground. Rana stood above and behind him. “Crap,” she muttered, as everyone turned to look.

Both women ignited their lightsabers, charging into the fray. It took only seconds for Mercie to close the gap on the troopers at the barricades, cutting them down while being at too close a range for their buddies to fire without hitting each other. Rana had to parry some blaster fire with her blade as she closed the distance and brought her saber up to the officer’s throat.

Within moments, it was over. The troops were down, and the officer had surrendered.

“Who all are they searching for?” Rana demanded.

“The Zabrak, a blind woman — you, probably — and that blue girl over at the temple,” was the reply.

“All of us, then” Rana winced, somewhat performatively for the officer’s benefit. She wanted him to think that ‘us’ was confined to the three, and that Callisto and her crew were unaware of who they were.

“Do you want me to do it?” Mercie asked, offering to dispatch the man trembling at the end of her blade, so she wouldn’t have to.

Rana extinguished her saber and gave the man a sudden punch to the face. It knocked him down, but hadn’t been hard enough to knock him out. “Crap,” she cursed again, this time striking him with her foot and finally leaving him unconscious.

“Each one you let go comes back at you twelvefold,” Mercie reminded. “Just like when you let the Trandoshan go. It cost us our home, Rana.”

“I’m not going to be party to indiscriminate murder,” the Miraluka woman replied.

Mercie sheathed her weapon and shook her head. She wanted to say more, stopped, looked at the crew at the base of the temple, and back at Rana. “There’s no time and I don’t want to argue.” Aside from their escape, for as long as the two women had been together, they had not had to fight alongside each other… until Alack had come along. Obviously, they had some talking things out to do.

“I’m not going to kill indiscriminately,” Rana insisted.

Mercie put a couple fingers to her lips, thinking — maybe even reminding herself to not speak rashly. Then… “Okay. But I still may.” She caught herself and added, “Not indiscriminately, you know there’s always a purpose, but you know what I mean.”

Rana nodded.

Mercie turned toward the tents and started to look for a lift or sled, or preferably a speeder. Rana gathered up the unconscious men and bound them in one of the tents.

Mercie emerged from one on a landspeeder, the cloth that had covered it still falling off one side. “Rana!” she shouted. “11-T2 and the skiff are inside. Get them to the Pathfinder. I’ll get the others.”

She sped to the temple, while the old woman retrieved the droid and repulsorlift.

---

It only took a few moments to make it to Alack, Callisto and Jujjeg, who were waiting in the scant, partial shadow of the Temple. When Mercie arrived, they piled on hurriedly, and sped back toward the ship.

As they neared the Wobani Pathfinder, a TIE/HU Hunter multi-role starfighter descended from the stratosphere, and began firing upon them. But as it drew closer, one of the ships engines seized and caught fire.

“All that’s going to do is bring it down,” Mercie warned them. She spoke as though she had some familiarity with whatever mechanical failure had befallen the Hunter, giving Alack the impression that the Zabrak had somehow caused it. “This fight is beyond you. Get on board.”

The Hunter shook and struggled, then dove along an angular trajectory into the rocks of the surface of Ossus.

Rana was already waiting on the cargo lift for them. “We’re ready to go, as soon as you’re all on board,” she called. Whoever it is, just leave them here and let’s go!”

Everyone charged aboard, and the cargo lift drew upward. Mercie stood at the ready, looking like she would charge out again on a moment’s notice, if she saw any reason to.

The Hunter’s pilot emerged from the wreck, and ignited her lightsaber, its plasma blade glowing a deep crimson, deeper and brighter than her own red skin.

“Mercie, she looks almost just like you,” Alack blurted out.

The ramp had almost closed and the Pathfinder lifted off the surface of the orange, arid planet. Vee took it in a trajectory that stayed low to the planet at first, flying a distance forward rather than upward, hoping to skirt past the flagships and fighters that were certainly scrambling in the atmosphere.

By the time the ramp had sealed, the rest of the crew had headed to various points of readiness for whatever firefight was to follow. But Mercie remained, staring at the ship wall, processing what she had seen. Rana approached and put her arms around the Zabrak.

Alack remembered that Mercie had been searching for her sister.

---

Alack wasn’t sure what she should be doing as the Wobani Pathfinder attempted to make its escape from Ossus. She knew that just jumping to hyperspace from inside the planet’s atmosphere was too risky – it was theoretically possible, but starships like the YT-2400 had safety protocols to prevent it. And so Callisto, Vee and Waya were busy in the cockpit trying to weave their way across the planet, to surface further from the Imperial flagships. Sirky and Skako were acting as gunners, and Jujjeg and Netha were busy in Engineering trying to make sure that the Pathfinder had all of the operating power and resources it needed during the escape, and to manage any troubles that arose. Rana and Mercie had retreated to Labakka’s quarters to discuss issues related to combat – some conflict had apparently come up that they needed to talk through. That left Alack, unsure of how to help, but also not wanting to be in the way.

The Pathfinder lurched, as something struck it. There was some shouting from the cockpit and Engineering simultaneously. Alack had almost been knocked over by the jolt, and made sure to keep a grasp on something as she moved throughout the ship. Gradually, she made her way toward the cockpit.

“We’re going to have to do it jump-by-jump,” Callisto directed. “If we specify a destination, we’ll be too committed. We need to keep our options open, so we’ve got to play it by ear.”

Vee responded hurriedly, in lilting Nautila.

“Yeah, I’ve got that, just keep us from getting too high. Jujjeg, have you overridden the failsafes, yet?”

“Almost. But you have to remember that there is a chance we could shake apart if we’re too low,” came the Hutt’s reply.

“Wait,” Alack blurted out. “You mean you really are going to jump to hyperspace from the Ossan atmosphere?”

“Jesus, kid,” Callisto said, only now noticing that Alack was there. “Grab something. This is going to get really bumpy.”

Alack didn’t like the way Twitchy had called her ‘kid.’ Callisto was only a few years older, so there was no good reason… and it was demeaning. She…

The Pathfinder was struck again. Alack nearly fell over.

“That hit topside. Sirky, are you okay?” Callisto shouted at the comms.

“Gunner has disengaged,” Waya chimed in a mechanical fashion.

“Alack, can you check on Sirky?” the captain asked.

She made her way to the ladders to the gunnery posts, one topside and one underside. Alack climbed up, watching carefully for any signs of danger. The first concern she noted was the Selonian’s hand hanging over the entrance.

When she made her way in, she found Sirky breathing, and no sign of blood. Hopefully, it was just a concussion. “She seems okay, but should probably visit medbay,” Alack shouted for the comms.

“Any chance you know how to operate a cannon?” Callisto asked.

Alack jumped into the gunner’s seat. She had explored them before and snooped around a little, but hadn’t actually fired before. She hoped it wouldn’t be like her attempt to use a blaster.

“It’s got repeating fire,” Callisto continued over the commlink. “You just have to hold the button down and try to point it at or in front of the path of TIE fighters.”

That’s when she saw them, like a swarm of angry grey Hrelan bees, coming at the ship. They were firing heavily, with the Pathfinder weaving in alternating directions to avoid being hit.

She jumped in the gunner’s seat and began firing. Great! Now to point the guns at the fighters in the other direction.

The seat swung around, and she did the best she could. She didn’t see anything taking damage, but at least they were trying to evade. That was good, right?

No, she had to find a way to improve her aim. She wasn’t predicting the ships’ paths well enough. It wasn’t enough to aim at them, she had to aim at where they were going. She started firing again.

This time, she fired several rounds and glanced one TIE, and it veered off course into a second. Better, but there were still far too many more.

She had to be predictive. She focused, remembering the sort of three-dimensional space that she could perceive using the Miraluka Sight, that Mercie had taught her. The Force Sight. Even in space, there was life, apparently, although she couldn’t really feel it. But she still had the eyes of the pilots, all of them, ignoring the foregrounds of their ship consoles and focusing on the volume of space they flew within…

It wasn’t a full volumetric view, but she was able to perceive their paths much better. Now, she just had to get in front of them, and use their positions and paths to predict where they would be. She swung the gunner’s chair, then let off a single shot.

It hit. The TIE exploded in a fiery wreck. She swung around for another.

Another single shot, another hit. This seemed much better than sustained fire. Another.

This time, she only glanced it, but it was enough damage to force it to veer away. Then another. And another.

“Jesus, kid. Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Twitchy’s voice came over the comms.

Jujjeg’s voice interrupted them. “It’s ready. But I strongly advise being further from the planet before –“

“Everyone hold onto something!” Callisto shouted. This communiqué could be heard across the speakers throughout the ship.

This was followed by a sudden jolt, increasing turbulence, a horrible shaking, a distension of stars, and then…

… oh. Hyperspace felt overwhelming. Alack looked at the blue tunnel, streaked with random colours and lights…

They returned to the starfield. Then, another distension of stars. And hyperspace. These must be the jumps that Callisto had mentioned. Then stars, then jump. And finally, another starfield. The Pathfinder slowed.

“Skako, help Alack get Sirky to medbay!” Callisto barked.

---

The Selonian was going to be okay, but she would have to be on light duty for several days.

Callisto and Vee stayed up at the cockpit watching for signs of the Imps, but Twitchy kept in touch with medbay over the comms, waiting for moment-to-moment updates.

“She has a contusion in the parietal, on the left side,” Waya pronounced. “It’s not serious, but concussions are not to be taken trivially. Please remind her to be more careful, next time.”

With the initial worries about Sirky alleviated, Skako and Alack made their way to the cockpit, where everyone was gathering to discuss the Pathfinder’s next move.

“… after the next stop, we might have to lay low on Toydaria for a bit,” Alack could hear Callisto’s voice as they approached. “Hutt Space is best until everything dies down, but we want to be sure we know how closely Nar Shaddaa’s being watched before we head back there.”

“Aw, boss, Toydaria’s a swampy mudball,” Skako protested.

“Yes, I know, but we will need a time out,” she answered, and then added, “after we finish our other delivery.”

“I don’t know,” Jujjeg’s voice came over the comms. “I’d really just appreciate a break right now, if it’s all the same.”

“We’re obviously not going to get paid for Ossus,” reminded Callisto. “So we’re going to need the credits. It’s time-sensitive, so it can’t wait, but at least it’s a quiet delivery. It’s not far, and this one won’t be on the Empire’s radar. In fact it’s on no one’s radar. Half the galaxy thinks the place is just a legend. Should be a nice relaxing getaway, after all of this.”

“What’s the planet?” Alack asked, leaning against the wall just inside the cockpit, leisurely. The cabin was packed, with Vee and Rana seated, Waya stationed in the far corner, and Mercie, Callisto and Skako having to stand.

“I doubt you’ve heard of it. It’s this little wandering dustball in the Extrictarium Nebula.”

Mercie, who had only idly been paying half attention until now, suddenly became very alarmed. “What’s the planet?”

Callisto seemed a little taken aback by the Zabrak woman’s sudden jolt to an alerted state. She frowned. “It’s called Iego.”

Then.

Golg, 19 BBY

They had no idea how much time had passed in the cell on the desolate Iegoan moon. All they knew was that the darkness hadn’t changed, the cold hadn’t changed, the smells of inhumane conditions hadn’t changed and the hardness of the floor hadn’t changed. Months? Years? It was starting to feel like the latter.

But their health had changed. Their backs and joints were in constant pain from the floor and from the tortures. It was not unusual for one or the other – sometimes both – to be sick. They were always hungry, and had lost a lot of weight. The tortures had abated slightly, and there were some days their tormentor didn’t come for them at all, but it was still hell, and no less maddening. They lived because they were determined to, and for no other reason. They kept their sanity by talking, passing the time in their isolation, reminding themselves and each other that there was a life outside the stone walls of their cell, and that there could be life for them too, again, one day. Hope was dim.

But they also discovered that since the old rules no longer applied, some things from the life before were no longer barriers to them.

“You know, I could never have done this before,” Rana confided, laying shoulder to shoulder with Mercie.

“Love a Sith like me? That just goes without saying,” the Zabrak replied.

“No, I mean be in a relationship. Especially with a woman. There was always so much shame, before.”

“You denied yourself the whole time?” Mercie seemed a little appalled.

“Well, I mean, Jedi are taught to forego commitments,” Shirana answered. “Sith too, I would bet. No attachments. They interfere with the role.”

“Yeah, but you can still get laid,” Mercie laughed.

“I don’t know. Maybe I just like the one-on-one. The connection.” She wasn’t sure how to explain it. “But it wasn’t just about Jedi teachings, either. There was also a lot of shame. I was never attracted to boys, but it was like I wasn’t supposed to be attracted to girls, and I wasn’t really able to reconcile that with the fact that I was. It felt like it was a character flaw, a failure on my part, that I could never talk about.”

“I can’t say I ever had that problem,” Mercie noted. “Men, women, it didn’t matter – preferably, the person was attractive. And that was probably a good thing, because the way I grew up, I wouldn’t have had a lot of choice about the matter, anyway.”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Rana felt a little embarrassed. “I guess what I experienced sort of paled to what you went through.”

“It’s not a contest. The experiences were just dissimilar,” Mercie commented. “This is a bit weird for me too, but for a different reason. I never really allowed myself the closeness, because it was always terrifying. Once I was finally able to have some agency in my own life, I kept things superficial by choice. It was always safer.”

Shirana agreed. “The teachings about attachments – Jedi, Sith, whichever – it’s like they’re both the same failure, but from polar opposite perspectives. We really should have been seeking connection, that whole time.”

I don’t know about that,” Mercie replied. “You really shouldn’t be trusting people that much. Maybe it was better that you didn’t have this before. I mean, look at how extreme things have to be for us to have been pushed together like this?”

Shirana shook her head. “I don’t know about that. I mean, look at you. You’re still the person you were before, you were just pushed into a situation where you had to let your guard down, and let me see the real you. But you were really soft inside all along.”

"You think so? Here's the thing. I’m not ‘basically good,’ no matter how much you might think so, right now. I just am as I am,“ Mercie stated. “The biggest problem with Jedi thinking is that you are convinced that people are basically good. Setting aside the fact that ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are subjective and relative to whoever's making the value judgment in any particular situation, the truth is that people are basically selfish. Sometimes they'll do things that make them feel good and righteous and all, but you can always depend on them to what is in their self-interest, and most often regardless of any harm it does to anyone else. As Sith, we understand this, plan for it -- exploit it, even -- and recognize that we must achieve what we need for ourselves. No one will ever do it for us."

"You're oversimplifying things," Shirana replied. "You left out the nuance. Jedi recognize that people are complex, have self-interests and unpredictable tendencies. We believe that people in a functioning society are best when governing themselves with an aim toward their better impulses, toward altruism when possible. It's about continually making the choice to be a better individual, with the knowledge that as others do the same, society becomes collectively better overall."

Mercie was playing with Rana’s hair. "That's still a whole lot of living with blinders on, sacrificing yourself for a 'greater good' that doesn't exist. Not to mention the stink of self-righteousness in that ‘better person’ thinking."

"Maybe, but it's actually not that different from what you do -- only a mirror of it."

Mercie paused. "Hardly. We deny nothing, and live our lives to the fullest." She thought a moment about where they were and added, “When we can, anyway.”

Shirana leaned in a bit more conspiratorially. "Do you? Really? Because I see a different kind of living with blinders on. I see living in the negative, expecting the worst, and shutting out those better impulses, with the expectation that if the world is going to be shitty to you, then you should just be shitty right back. There are things you miss out on in that paradigm. Friendship. Warmth. Love. This..." She reached out and gently squeezed Mercie’s hand.

Mercie wasn’t convinced. "Because sooner or later, life destroys those things. Sooner or later, your friends and people you love betray you. Those things always bring pain at the end, and the pain is always much worse after you have allowed yourself that attachment and that vulnerability."

"I thought you Sith loved pain. I thought you used it to draw strength in the Dark Side of the Force."

Mercie paused for a moment. Her voice cracked a little. "Not that kind of pain."

Shirana wrapped her arm around the Zabrak and pulled her a little closer.

"And look at this, now. Someday, I will lose you, too,” Mercie commented. “Or you will betray me."

"I won't betray you. You know that's true." She continued to hold her tightly.

Mercie stroked at Shirana’s hairline. "But at the very least, someday you will die and be gone."

"Not if I lose you first," Rana challenged.

Mercie thought a moment, and a pleasant half-smile crept across her mouth. "That would be okay."

Shirana gave her a light swat across the shoulder. "Maybe for you..."

They had no idea how much time had passed in the cell on the desolate moon. The darkness hadn’t changed; only the ways they passed the time had changed.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight: The Doldrums of Happiness

Now.

Extrictarium Nebula, 4 ABY

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” Mercie was raving. “We can’t go back there!”

They had retreated to Labakka’s cabin after having made no headway with Callisto, but Mercie was still manic and refusing to calm down.

“I get that whatever happened there was pretty bad,” Alack tried to reason with her. “But isn’t it something you need to face sooner or later, anyway?”

Mercie stopped pacing and glared at the blue girl. She pointed an accusing finger at her “You have no idea. You can’t even begin to understand…”

“Mercie,” Rana calmly stopped her, “you’re right: she doesn’t know. So you have to have some patience.”

It was the first thing the old Miraluka woman had said since the argument in the cockpit. She had a manner that was reserved, patient and reflective – the kind of outer voice that said little, but when it spoke, it was important.

And while she had been just as alarmed as Mercie when they first learned of the trip to Iego, she seemed much more serene, now. “Things like this rarely happen as coincidence, Mercie. Perhaps this is the design of the Force.”

Mercie balked. “Huh. The Force doesn’t have a brain or a will, doesn’t have a plan, this is just flat up random crap. Stop trying to see an ordered purpose to it.”

“Mercie, even you have to see it,” Rana spoke. “I mean, what are the chances that in all the things that could have happened when we fled Lothal, we’d have got on a ship that had already had a delivery scheduled for Iego, of all possible worlds? I mean… It’s hard not to feel as though that’s the will of the Force.” She thought for a moment. “It’s been almost ten years. Maybe she’s right. Maybe it’s time to go back.”

“Rana, my concern is especially for you,” Mercie answered. “I’ve had to force myself to do a lot of things. I can push through anything. But you shouldn’t have to. Not this.”

“I think I’m ready,” Rana stated. Then, she added as an afterthought, “Besides, if the place has been untouched, maybe we can find your sai. I always felt bad that they were important to you, and I inadvertently left them behind.”

“I doubt they’re still there,” Mercie commented. “And they’re not important enough to go back.”

The old woman sat back in her chair. Mercie had claimed her concern for Rana, yet she had just demonstrated her willingness to proceed, and Mercie was still just as upset. It had to be something more. “It’s okay to be afraid,” Rana said.

“I’m not afraid!” Mercie snapped. She knew instantly that she had overreacted, and it forced her to pause.

“Can you give us a few minutes?” the old woman asked Alack.

Alack left them so they could speak alone. “It’s the dreams you’ve been having, isn’t it? They’ve been making you irritable…” she heard Rana ask, as she exited.

---

“So, they’re still not feeling very good about this stop, then?” Callisto asked. It had already been several days, and wouldn’t be very many more before they reached their destination.

Alack flopped down on Callisto’s bed. “No, and I wouldn’t really expect them to. But they don’t really like talking about why in front of me. It’s… I mean, I can tell something really bad happened to them when they were imprisoned there, but…” She trailed off, unsure of how to finish her thought.

“Yeah, I suppose it would have had to have been pretty profound,” Callisto commented, “to bring those two together. And so closely. I’ve never seen them fight, even.”

“Oh, they argue, but they don’t raise their voices to each other,” Alack clarified.

“That’s probably Rana’s doing, though,” Callisto speculated. “She’s so quiet. Passive. She probably just accepts whatever Mercie says.”

“No, that’s not it,” Alack corrected. “She definitely speaks up. And when she does, Mercie just… backs down. Or more accurately, she doesn’t actually rear up to begin with. I asked her directly once, and she just said she’d rather lose the fight than get angry at Rana. There’s this softness… affection, dedication, it’s a bit uncharacteristic, but it’s very deep-seated.”

“Well, either way, I don’t think it’s something the two of them came to very easily,” Callisto acknowledged. “But… you know I never meant to reopen all that, right? I mean, I really didn’t think that even they would have heard of Iego, other than maybe as a legend. It’s probably the most remote dustball in the galaxy, outside of the Unknown Regions.”

“No one is thinking that was deliberate,” Alack reassured her. “Maybe a little frustrated that it didn’t come up sooner, but there was so much else happening, that it was probably going to blindside everyone, anyway.”

“Does it help that my delivery is on the planet, though?” Callisto asked. “They said that the imprisonment happened on one of the moons.”

“Trauma, or at least this kind of trauma, doesn’t work like that,” Alack replied. “Their minds will still be on everything that happened. It will feel too close, to them.” Her thoughts shifted a bit, since there was so much she didn’t know. “So what is so different about Iego, anyway?”

“Everything you can imagine is different about Iego. It’s not even a planet in the traditional sense,” Callisto said. “I mean, it doesn’t orbit a star, it wanders freely in the nebula. That’s why most of the galaxy thought that the planet was a myth, for centuries. And because there’s no star, it’s lit by the Extrictarium Nebula’s glowing gases. There’s no day and night cycles. It only ever really gets sunlight every few random decades or centuries, when it wanders close enough to Toong’L to perceive it as a semi-near star. There’s something about the nebular gases that will intensify that light in the right circumstances, a rare sunlight event. That’s what makes this delivery time-sensitive: my clients need a solar collector array to collect, measure and eventually replicate the light from Toong’L for an indoor greenhouse, since solar light works so much better for growing — but it also has to be measured from within the context of the nebula’s gases, because… long story.” Callisto realized that she was wandering and saying a whole lot that probably wasn’t relevant.

“Anyway,” she continued, more on track, “the place is fairly lush, but odd. It’s romanticized as a haven for wary travelers to live forever in good health and idle relaxation, but in reality, there’s a dark history. It is kind of sickly and there is a lot of strife. Most of the inhabitants are descendants of castaways who crashed there when the nebula was still unnavigable, and there was a period of colonization and genocide, too. There are a couple native species, though both nearly went extinct: the Maelibi live under the surface of the planet, and the Diathim have been slowly repopulating Milius Prime, the largest moon. The Diathim are sort of mythologized through the galaxy as angels, and are said to be the most beautiful sentients in the galaxy.”

“Rana and Mercie weren’t really imprisoned on Iego itself, though,” Alack reminded her. “It was one of its moons. So who would be there?”

“Well, which one, though? There are a thousand moons orbiting around Iego, and I’m actually not exaggerating when I say that.”

“Ah. That, I don’t know.” Alack laid back on the bed.

“Maybe we just need to wait on them until they’re ready to tell us what happened,” Callisto said.

“You’re probably right. I don’t know if we’ve narrowed anything down.” Alack cleared her mind and looked at Callisto teasingly. “Maybe since we have the time, you should show me why they call you Twitchy Fingers…”

Callisto guffawed. “Is that really what ‘they’ are going to call me, from now on…?”

Alack smiled, playfully. “That depends. How twitchy are they?”

---

A few hours later, there was a knock on the door. Sirky, who had returned to light duty, stopped by Labakka’s cabin with Skako to thank Rana for looking after her Loth cat while she recovered.

“Oh, it was no problem at all,” the old woman replied. “Besides, Shirirka and I had good conversations.”

Sirky laughed, at first, and then asked something in Mandaba.

“You can’t really talk to Loth cats, can you?” Skako translated.

Rana smiled. “I can speak with a lot of animals. Although speak might be overstating it. I commune with them. It’s sort of a primal, empathic communication. But he and I understand each other fairly well, yes. If you ever think Shirirka’s trying to tell you something important but don’t know what it is, bring him to me.”

The two crew members were impressed.

With the two still holding the cabin door open, Mercie spotted — and Rana sensed — Alack and Callisto emerge from the Captain’s quarters, a few hours after their previous heated debate in the cockpit.

“Excuse us, sorry,” Rana apologized. “We should probably talk to Callisto.”

Mercie still frowned, but said nothing, and the two rose up to follow after them. Skako and Sirky stepped back to allow passage.

Callisto saw them approach, and made an opening offer. “We don’t have to go anywhere near the moon where you two were imprisoned, if it helps,” she said. “I don’t want to stir up things that are that deep and painful.”

“Actually, we’ve been talking about it,” Rana replied. “If we’re going to be this close… we’d like to actually go back and see it.”

“’Like’ is a strong word,” Mercie interjected. “It’s more accurate to say that Rana feels as though we should.”

Callisto studied their expressions intensely. “You’re absolutely sure?”

Rana nodded. Mercie said nothing.

“We’ll make the delivery first. You’ll have to let me know which moon to locate, and when we land, we can all go with you, or all stay back, whichever you’re more comfortable with,” Callisto negotiated. “When you say we leave, we leave.”

“Thank you. That is appreciated,” Rana said.

“Did you ever get the data from the droid that you needed?” Mercie changed the subject.

“Yes!” Callisto smiled. “Alack’s brother is stationed on the Charybdis, currently on route to Saleucami.” Alack’s expression hadn’t changed, so she had obviously already heard the news. “I don’t really have a plan to help get to him, though.”

“I thought the two of you weren’t going to help me with that,” Alack asked the women.

Mercie’s expression had softened since the discussion about Iego. “We’re not committing to anything. But if there’s a solid plan and we’re still around… we’ll think about it.”

“Why the change?” Callisto asked.

Mercie shook her head slightly. “There isn’t really a reason, and we’re not promising anything,” she said. “I was just mostly curious if there was anything about the stop on Ossus that panned out.”

Callisto leaned her shoulder against the corridor wall. “Well, if it counts, Jujjeg wants to talk to you about something to do with that triptych in the Temple.”

“I don’t really want to talk to him,” Mercie replied.

Twitchy twisted her lips to one side in a brief expression of frustration, and then continued. “Listen, I get that you have a thing about Hutts… and probably if I knew more, I wouldn’t blame you. But Jujjeg’s not responsible for whatever other Hutts have done to you. I wish you’d put that aside. He’s a damned good crew member, and he doesn’t get many people with your grasp of history to chat with.”

“Yeah, well he just about cost us everything on Ossus,” Mercie growled.

Several people, including Rana, expressed their disapproval, in a moment of cacophonous protest. “We don’t really know what blew our cover,” Rana said, “but we can’t just assume that it was the credentials he gave us. They did get us in.”

Mercie looked like she wanted to argue, but then thought better of it.

Callisto changed the subject, this time. “Alack said something about the ship that crashed as we were leaving being piloted by someone who looked like she could be your sister? Is there anything we should know about this?”

Mercie scowled again, and then flashed Alack a disapproving glance. “The last time I saw my sister, she was only five years old, and I was a toddler.” Her eyes settled back on the Pathfinder’s captain. “There was some resemblance, but the odds would be against it.”

For a moment, the four women were silent and were lost in their different trains of thought, each glad for the moment of calm, but feeling a little awkward for the various tensions between them.

“If we go to the moon where you two were imprisoned,” Callisto broke the silence, remembering that the Zabrak hadn’t always been the most forthcoming person, “we might need to know a little about what happened. Care to enlighten us?”

Shirana Nyst sometimes wondered if she had been promoted to the rank of Jedi Knight prematurely. There would have been reason for it, given how the burgeoning Clone Wars had been spreading across the galaxy. As she had left Coruscant, for example, a new front had opened up, in the form of a Separatist blockade of Ryloth. With opposition spreading at this rate, the Galactic Republic and the Jedi who safeguarded it were becoming spread thin.

Of course, she knew that there was a theory about that. “Imposter Syndrome.” While not an ailment at all, it was a known phenomenon of people second-guessing whether they were worthy of advancements they had earned. Master Allie had been so proud of her, and that pride seemed so genuine. Shirana had to shake off her doubts.

Still, it seemed like when Master Allie left to hammer out details of the new treaty with the Hutts, Shirana was being given a minor, throwaway task that was too trivial for a real Jedi, instead. They had might as well have patted her on the head and said, “Here, you go do this while we look after the important things.”

Master Windu seemed concerned, though. How did he put it? It was a void in the Force like they had never sensed before – certainly not in recent years. It was growing, like a wound in the Force, something that had only previously been associated with the severance of a powerful Force sensitive. It could signal the existence of a terrible weapon against the Jedi in this desperate hour, or be something that had the potential to be used that way. “Whatever the reason, we need to investigate,” he’d told her. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let something like that fall into the hands of our enemies.”

She was reassured of the importance of the mission, too, when she spotted the stealth light craft slip into the grey moon’s scant atmosphere, and the masked woman – or at least she presumed that it was a mask, given the appearance of a rebreather in the front – emerged from it. “I don’t know what to tell you,” the holographic image of Kit Fisto returned on the holocomm. “Master Windu is still unavailable. Still, there have been rumours of a necromancer fitting that description. I would proceed with caution. Obviously, their investigation can’t be a good sign. If they’re affiliated with the Dark Side, you have sanction to do as you see fit to deal with their threat. Other than that, I can’t help you,” the Nautolan concluded. He even terminated the link abruptly, as though having more important matters to attend to.

She piloted her fighter out of the masking ionic gases of Extrictarium and approached the desolate moon of Golg, moving toward the other side of the entrance of what appeared to be a stone citadel carved into its surface, and carefully alighting out of view of the dark figure’s ship.

As she approached the citadel, something disturbed her tremendously. Her sense of everything was waning. Her sight faded. It wasn’t only the lack of eyes to borrow from, it was also the lack of the Force to draw from. They were right: whatever was causing it, the void was enveloping, and as she approached the entranceway, it had reached near totality.

At this point, she had become almost completely blind. The Council had made a mistake sending her, she realized – not because she was unworthy of the rank of Jedi Knight, but because she was Miraluka: she needed the Force to perceive, and its absence left her at a greater disadvantage than it would have left another Jedi.

She had raised the possibility to Master Windu before she left, but he dismissed it, calling it a product of Imposter Syndrome. But the Council should have had the wisdom to recognize the problem. Some of it, she knew, was Shirana’s own doing: all her life, she had been doing so much extra personal labour to accommodate everyone else through her blindness. She would turn her head toward people as though looking at them, respond to their silent gestures and expressions glimpsed only through the Force, doing everything she could to seem just like any other sighted person. But here, now, without the vision anyone else had and without the Force to provide in its absence, she had nothing.

No, not quite nothing. She had sound. She could reconstruct some of the space around her using sound. It was something familiar to her, something she did when without the presence of sighted individuals, but it was not something she had ever depended upon.

She cursed the Council, and Masters Windu and Fisto. She knew she didn’t seriously mean it, but in this moment, she felt a horrible vulnerability.

But wait.

As she approached Golg, she had been struck by how dark the barren rock had been. Without the light of any sun, bathed only in the half-illuminated and unstable gases surrounding it, there had also appeared to be no light coming from within. It was as though there was a darkness inside the rock-carved fortress that almost seemed to suck the light away into its cavernous maw.

Perhaps she wasn’t blind and vulnerable, here. Perhaps with her experience of blindness, she was better prepared for this experience than another might have been.

Shirana found a new wave of courage, and listened. The sound painted a volume of the space before her. She could hear the steps in the distance, presumably of the masked woman who had arrived not long before.

She proceeded inside.

“Care to enlighten us?” Callisto had asked.

“No,” Mercie replied, ever the conversation killer.

“It’s the moon known as Golg,” Rana offered. “Although ‘moon’ might be overstating. It’s barely an astronomical object, a barren rock circling Iego, with a lone stone citadel built upon it.”

“Vee?” Callisto shouted back toward the cockpit. “Can you look up Golg? It’s a moon in the Extrictarium.”

“Loo no da’a,” the Nautolan shouted back, in acknowledgment.

“We might need a bit more than that,” Callisto said to the women. “Are there any risks we should know about? What about wildlife? Or sentients?”

“There’s nothing alive on Golg,” Mercie answered. “Aside from scavenging rodents, anyway. Not anymore.”

Mercielaga was in awe. At first, she marveled at the space she stood in. It was a courtyard of a sort, which looked up into darkness. She knew that there had to be rock above her, but it was almost like an enveloping void that was even robbing the lit, thrumming red blade of her lightsaber of the light that it cast. The scarlet column wavered and trembled before this place. No, it was more than that: the lightsaber crystal was attuned to the Force, but in the absence of the Force, even it was weakened.

Tyranus was wise to send her here, she reasoned. There was something here of immense power.

She was aware of the void, too. Her ability to sense the Force at all was gone. She had to rely on her traditional senses – any energy associated with her attempts to use the Force felt as though it were being siphoned from her. She felt weak. She would be glad when this journey was over.

But there was obviously something here. Something living. She had to find it.

At the far end of the courtyard was a portion of a throne and throne room which looked back toward her. And to one side, an alcove, adorned with several artifacts. She approached it.

There was a scatter of crystals which, when she reached out to touch them, had a sort of electromagnetic radiance, and exerted a pull on the metals in her saber. She remembered a similar quality with meltmassif-infused crystals. Could that we what this was? It was so hard to tell in this darkness.

Ah. There were another larger object as well. It looked like someone had tipped two bells on their side and had fused them together at their widened lips. This. She could feel it sucking the light away. And essence. The Force? And the air from her lungs. This was the –

She vaguely remembers the sensation of something striking her head, in that moment.

“You’re positive?” Callisto asked. “So whatever imprisoned you and stole your power… we won’t have to contend with it?”

“We’re positive,” Rana answered. “I killed him. The object… the source of what contained and incapacitated us… Mercie destroyed it. The wound in the Force that it had caused has been gone since we left there, nearly ten years ago.”

“So, I don’t really want to belabour this,” the Pathfinder’s Captain said…

“So don’t,” Mercie snapped, in an attempt to intercept.

“… but I do need to know if there are any dangers,” she continued. “Did this person have any family? Tribesmen? What was he? Maelibi?”

The two women were silent.

“I’ve heard a bit about them,” Twitchy continued. “They’re supposed to be very tall, with horns, claws and sharp scaly skin that look almost like molten gold. Razor-sharp teeth… they’re like the stuff of nightmares. A fearsome presence, armoured and monstrous.”

“Is that what they say?” Mercie commented, looking off into the distance, as though she were preoccupied with fighting some other inner demon.

“Wait,” Alack spoke up. “Wasn’t there something that was said about angels?” Callisto thought she was talking about the conversation the two of them had had earlier in her cabin, but Alack was thinking about something Mercie had said when they first met.

“That was the Diathim,” Callisto replied. “Couldn’t have been one of them. They were said to be very delicate. Pale, beautiful, but sort of fragile and –“

“Fragile?!?” Mercie snapped out of her pained reverie, angrily. “Why is it that everyone is so quick to judge by appearances? In some cultures, they see red skin and horns, and see a devil. It doesn’t give someone else a whole lot of latitude to be anything other than the stereotype, and it surely doesn’t give you a whole lot of forewarning about some of the worst beings in existence.”

“No,” Rana commented. “Never, never assume based on appearances. The worst monsters wear saintly flesh.”

Shirana had to admit that whoever it was, they were graceful. Even with her heightened sense of sound, she hadn’t even heard him.

The dark woman had taken pains to be silent, but might as well have been thundering around given the way Shirana was able to hear her. But this being… he was like a ghost. Even when he had struck and taken down the dark woman, she had no idea where he had attacked from. There were whispers, echos, yet none of them seemed to indicate where he was. It was as though he were everywhere, and nowhere…

The impact in her chest sent her flying across the courtyard. Such power!

Her ribs felt as though they had been broken. She couldn’t breathe. She had been solidly winded. Where…?

Struck again, she vaulted over some stone work and collapsed on the far side of the plaza. How could it have moved so fast? She hadn’t even had time to get up, yet he’d crossed the expanse.

She still couldn’t breathe. She grasped for her saber, but it was gone. Winded, she felt blackness closing in. No! She needed to fight back. She swung out.

She hit something, but it was like punching durasteel. She –

“Are you telling me that he was Diathim?” Callisto asked.

“They are not what they appear,” Mercie answered. “Hope that you never meet one.”

“But they’re empaths!” Callisto protested.

“The most brutal of sadists,” Mercie hissed, tightening her lips, “want to feel your pain, as though it’s a game.”

Vee rounded the corner from the cockpit and spoke to Callisto. “Enh ah doo lanna el baac.”

Twitchy received the news and turned back toward the women. “Vee thinks she found Golg, but it’s so small and bare that she can’t imagine that it ever supported life.”

“That sounds about right,” Mercie said. “It wasn’t exactly a habitat. It was one individual’s own private stronghold, and that’s about all.”

Callisto narrowed her eyes, probing. “Are you sure you two don’t want to talk about what happened? Won’t it be less traumatic if you air out some of it now? Honestly, I’d rather do this now than have my crew have to respond in a moment where all the traumas are flooding back and triggering.”

Shirana screamed until her throat was raw and felt like it was shredded.

They had been enduring the tortures for months now, and yet each time, it still felt more painful than she remembered. In this moment, she wished – no, she’d have given anything, anything – for Mercie to be enduring all of this instead of her. She felt horrible for wanting that, especially given how much affection she was starting to feel for the Zabrak. It was a horrible sentiment. But she wanted that nevertheless. And she felt ashamed.

When he triggered the machine, it felt like her skin was ripping, like fire was torching her from inside. Before they had arrived on this desolate rock, she could have never imagined pain of this magnitude.

As he stood over her, she could feel his breath on her neck. She couldn’t see him, but Mercie had described him as horrifyingly beautiful, with an alabaster skin and smooth features that glowed faintly, with a milky radiance… when he chose to. Mercie said he was the only light in the chamber. All Shirana knew was that in between the tortures, she could feel his breath, and the heat from his body, in the cold vault.

And there was something else. They had speculated that he was doing this because he enjoyed it. But that wasn’t it. She could feel it from him: he was drinking their pain and anguish.

He was feeding on it.

“We’re not here to give you trauma porn, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mercie snarled. “We might tell you a little, but only what you need to know. You don’t need to know a whole lot of details. And honestly, there’s a lot that even we don’t know. We had to come to a realization long ago that there are some things about our imprisonment there that we may never understand, like the nature of the object that had cut us off from the Force, or the reason for our captor’s actions.”

“We wouldn’t even be doing this if we didn’t feel like there was some purpose to it,” Rana added. “Honestly, we just want to get to a place where we can forget.”

“Fair enough,” Callisto replied. “I get it. No more questions. I’m just trying to have an abundance of caution.”

---

As the Pathfinder made its way to the Extrictarium Nebula, Mercie and Alack sparred in the cargo hold – the only part of the ship with enough space – using sticks.

Alack was getting better at seeing her opponent, their weapon and projectiles in three-dimensional space; at getting a clearer sense of depth of field and timing, and at predicting her opponent’s moves… but her reflexes were still too slow.

Alack lunged, but Mercie parried effortlessly, and was so fast at it that the younger woman’s own momentum sent her forward in an arc that spun her back toward the Zabrak. Mercie had an easy drop on her, and she felt the tap of the stick on her shoulder.

“Too slow, and your balance was off. Again,” Mercie barked.

Alack was getting frustrated. Mercie wasn’t a horrible teacher. She had a bit of an impatient streak, but it was obvious that she was moderating it, trying to keep her instructive tone level. She was a bit terse, though, and Alack sometimes wanted to give up.

“Okay, stop. I…” She put her head in her hands. “I get it, I’m just… maybe I’m just inept or something.”

“Nonsense,” Mercie said, in what felt like a bit of a scolding. “Your senses are where they need to be, just not the physical conditioning.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just getting farkled, now,” she said, tossing her stick to the crates.

“Take a break if you must,” Mercie said. “But we’re not done.”

“I’m supposed to seek balance, right?” Alack tried to reason. “Right now, I just need to calm down.”

Mercie laughed. “No, the Force seeks balance. That doesn’t mean it’s a command. But yes, take your break.”

Alack sat on the pallet of equipment marked for Iego. “What do they mean when they say that the Force seeks balance, anyway? I mean, life sure doesn’t seem balanced, but everything I’ve read stresses it.”

“Bah,” Mercie sat beside her. “People misunderstand the balance that the Force seeks. It’s not some drab, milquetoast middle, it’s a continuing cycle of peaks and valleys, like a pendulum. Life is meant to have jubilations and distresses, darkness and light. It’s our sorrows that make our joys richer. It is our conflicts that give us purpose. It doesn’t mean that they’re all perfect or good, but that they’re a part of the ongoing journey life is meant to make.”

“I’d believe that more if there was more justice in the galaxy,” Alack replied.

“Ah, but the Force is not justice. It’s just life. It’s not a conscious being directing our lives – it is an unconscious, sub-instinctive web of impulses, much like the neural, atrial, limbic, respiratory and other systems that keep us alive. It is an oscillating network of changes. But it needs vibrance and intensity, since those are the things that inspire and drive us, not the doldrums of happiness. And because it needs vibrance and intensity, there need to be counterbalances for them. If we are to have victories, we must have tragedies. If we are to have loves, we must have pain.”

Alack tightened her eyes into a frown. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It will, someday. Anyway, are you rested up? Let’s go again.” Mercie stood and moved toward the centre of the cargo hold.

Alack groaned, and reluctantly stood up to retrieve her stick.

---

The delivery on Iego was thankfully uneventful. As Callisto had explained earlier, the cargo had been light sensing and replication equipment for a small scientific team on the Extrictarium’s wandering planet. They explained that as Iego came near enough to the Toong’L system, it would reach a stage where the nebular gases would significantly amplify rather than filter the distant star’s light, and that was a type of composite light which the team wanted to measure and become able to simulate. The Toong’L event on Iego had been the stuff of legend, being one of the few moments of actual sunlight on the planet, rather than the shifting light generated by the nebula’s gases, and consequently, it tended to bring a season of renewal to the indigenous vegetation.

The errand done, the Wobani Pathfinder soon approached Golg. As promised, it was a fractional moon, more akin to a common asteroid in size.

The complex they searched for was not immediately visible. It had been carved deep into the rock, with only the exterior staircase and doorway and blown-out hangar bay being overly visible during a near-view search, and even that was difficult since the citadel had been in disuse since the women departed it, ten years ago. Lunar dust had smoothed out the shaped structure, leaving the geometries appearing natural and random, rather than ones created by a sentient being.

The Pathfinder set down near the staircase, to one side, avoiding the decaying remains of one of the light craft that one of the women had originally arrived in.

The enormous stone doors to the citadel had been left open, and with the dust that had amassed, they didn’t move freely, anymore. They were, however, open enough to admit passage. While Vee, Skako, Sirky and other crew members stayed with the Pathfinder, Mercie, Rana, Alack, Twitchy and Jujjeg proceeded inside.

The expanse of the courtyard stretched before them as they entered, but this time, they were able to see it. Part of the cavernous ceiling had caved in, allowing nebular gaslight to cast colours and an ambient glow upon the space.

The courtyard stretched some distance, and seemed oddly carved, not of the stone of Golg, but of something imported and polished – though coated in lunar dust – with two wide, central pathways straddling an oblong fountain. Fountain! Mercie was certain that it had never contained water while on Golg, so it seemed like this were either more decorative than functional, or else was transported here from somewhere else.

Ahead stood a veranda, lined by several columns and adorned with a throne in the centre, everything else leading up to it. On either side stood two alcoves, featuring several displays, topped with an emblem, and containing artifacts. Some of them were trophies, and they appeared to be undisturbed – it didn’t look like anyone had been here since the women left.

“Ah,” Mercie smiled. She recognized them right away: her twin sai still rested in an offering-bowl on a dais near the alcove to the right of the throne. She picked up the two by their grips, looking like enlarged hilts with a scrolling arm on either side, curling forward. Alack thought for a moment that they were candelabrae, but then Mercie lit them up. Each had a short sword-length blade in the centre, with shorter blades on either side, not exactly parallel, but angling slightly toward the main blade. Mercie extinguished, hefted, spun, lit and twirled them, getting reacquainted with their weight and reach. “I think I’ve missed these…”

Jujjeg was entranced by the trappings of the courtyard. “This is incredible,” he gasped. He had originally joined the group in hopes of having a few moments to speak with Mercie, or perhaps to provide some support that would ingratiate her to him, given how aloof she continued to be. But he was instantly taken by the sights. “This architecture is not from here. This has been imported, with any missing portions painstakingly restored. This… there is a grander design to this. I am sure of it.”

He began inspecting the area for inscriptions, clues, anything that would tell him more. The Hutt’s curiosity obviously tended to overtake him.

Alack and Callisto stayed back, letting the women wander the space, watching to see if they would be needed, but wanting to give them space, until then.

Rana’s attention had fallen to two brass-looking bell-shaped objects laying carelessly on the stone floor. It was a metallic item that appeared to have been severed completely in half, along the long edge. She recognized it immediately.

When Mercie saw her expression, she joined her. “It was such a small thing to have caused us so much hardship, wasn’t it?” she asked.

“But what it almost cost you…” Rana started to say, cryptically. Then, she turned her attention away. “Mercie?” Rana asked. “I want to see it. I want to see the cell.”

Wordlessly, the Zabrak accompanied her. The two left through a hallway along the right. It passed living quarters – presumably the Diathim’s – then a kitchen. The hall to the left of the courtyard would lead to the hangar, then a den and a library (naturally, Jujjeg started off in that direction), but the passage to the right that the women took led past a workspace, then a furnace room, and there it was: the cell.

… They had come to expect that if he hadn’t come for them by the time their early meal was served, the day would be a reprieve – however, this was not such a day. He electrified the cell, and after ceasing – the women in their weakened state – he entered and took Mercie.

As weak as she felt, she did try to struggle, but it took him little effort to strap her to the durasteel table and tilt it to a sixty degree angle from the floor…

The door was still ajar since their departure. There was a foul smell, a composite of their horrid living conditions, dead rats, rotting rags, the stone floor that could be electrified, and trays of decayed food that the serving droid had continued to bring, long after Golg’s occupants had departed or died. The smell was overpowering, and they couldn’t stay.

Moving forward, they saw the chamber.

… As weak as she felt, she did try to struggle, but it took him little effort to strap her to the durasteel table and tilt it to a sixty degree angle from the floor. He then turned the grinding wheel, tightening her restraints.

It didn’t matter that she had tired of the routine. She knew what was next: the searing pain would not break skin, but would be so wracking that she would twist and fight until she pulled her own joints out of their sockets. He hovered over the console, and started to draw the lever down to begin her torments.

“Fuh… fuh…” Mercie tried to curse, weakly. She didn’t know why she kept trying to curse and reason and threaten the being who was causing her so much misery: he never spoke, not in all of these years.

Then, she realized that the strap on one hand was coming loose…

In the centre stood the restraint table, still at roughly a sixty degree angle from the floor, as it had been when Mercie had worked her way free. It was much like the interrogation racks that had returned to use by the Empire: durasteel, unyielding, cold. Above, the array that was used to inflict various forms of pain on the victim. Ahead, the console that controlled it all. It had all been left operational ten years ago, but had long since depleted the energy that had powered it.

Mercie activated one of her sai, taking it in a reverse grip – normally, this was to use it in more of a stabbing motion, but in this case, would provide a side to side cut that she could put the force of her own weight into, from behind the table. The plasma of her blades would cut the durasteel, but it was not an easy task, and she would need strength to slowly burn her way through. She cut a diagonal stroke from upper left to middle right that cleaved part of the table away, with additional ribbons sliced by virtue of the smaller blades on either side of the sai.

Once through, she started a second cut, this time from middle right to lower left.

Shirana was less particular. She ignited her lightsaber and struck at the console, over and over, finally impaling it and drawing the blade out of the side, in a shower of sparks.

When Mercie had finished with the table, she threw the other sai, now blazing, at the base that affixed the array to the ceiling. It struck, severing the various cables and joints that held it in place. As it fell, she stabbed it with her first blade, skewering it and smashing it to the floor.

Through it all, they had been uncharacteristically silent. Rana had displayed more anger, but their primary intent had been to make sure that the machine could never again be used.

Finally, Rana spoke. “He fed on it. Our pain, I mean. It was like a meal to him.”

“I know,” Mercie agreed. “But it’s over,” she reminded. “We can be sure of that, now.”

The Zabrak paused a moment, examining the mess of cut metal and smashed instruments, satisfied that they were irreparable. Then, she exited the chamber. Shirana followed.

Mercie proceeded in the other direction from which they had come. The hallway circled in an arc behind the alcove, and she vaguely remembered that it would meet up with the den and library, then the entrance to the facility’s hangar bay, on the other side.

Not far along, however, they stumbled across the collapsed remains of the citadel’s servant droid, out of power and in disrepair. It had continued to tend to the facility for several years after everyone had been gone, but didn’t have the power to continue indefinitely.

Rana grabbed Mercie’s arm and clung tight to it, suddenly horrified. She pointed ahead.

There was another cell.

“That’s not… no…” She couldn’t articulate what she was feeling.

Mercie did it for her, now similarly stunned and reluctant to go forward. “It never occurred to me that there might be other prisoners here.”

The door to the cell remained sealed. There were signs of trays of food that the droid had continued to bring, and the unmistakable smell of death within.

“We’re probably better not to look inside,” Mercie said. “We never have to know.”

Rana was half choking her words. “No.” She hesitated, struggling to answer. “I need to know. Or it will haunt me forever.”

Mercie lit her sai once again, and sliced between the door and the jamb, cutting the lock and mechanism sealing the cell.

“One last chance to change your mind.”

Rana ignored her, and pulled at the cell door. As it opened, the smell of death filled the hall.

There was a body inside, half decomposed, and sprawled awkwardly. It likely had once been a human male, and it looked as though he had died clawing at the stone of the cell door.

“Oh no!” Rana felt weak and steadied herself against Mercie, clinging tightly. “I recognize the emblem on that cloak!” Mercie turned around and held her closely. “He was a padawan at the Academy, at the same time I was there. His name was Parkanas!”

“We shouldn’t have opened the door,” Mercie whispered, and ushered Rana from the room.

“The Council did send someone to look for me!” she continued. “And I never thought to look to see…”

Mercie steadied her and touched her forehead to Rana’s. She wasn’t able to look into her eyes, so this was the way that she would draw the Miraluka’s attention and focus. “Listen to me. First of all, we are not responsible. Our captor is the one who imprisoned him here. And secondly, remember what things were like when we escaped. I couldn’t walk under my own strength, and your attention was needed, desperately. I was depending on you. Remember that?”

She hesitated for a moment, then she nodded.

“Rana, we had no clue, and we didn’t have the luxury of checking. Remember?”

She shook for a moment, and Mercie realized her legs were growing weak. The Zabrak woman took her in her arms again, holding her close and whispering in her ear. “You were keeping me alive. Remember?”

“I… I remember…” Rana whispered back.

“You weren’t responsible,” Mercie was firm. “Always remember that.”

“I want to leave,” Rana said. It wasn’t a request.

Some of Rana’s strength returning, the two women hurried through the rest of the hallway, back into the courtyard, and on the way to the front entrance.

Emerging into the courtyard, Jujjeg spotted them, and started to blather on about the architecture.

“There you are! I’ve been taking some scans and cataloguing some journals I found. Did you know that this place is a recreation of the courtyard of one of the regents of Moraband, using much of the original excavated structure? This is remarkable! What mind would conceive of such an undertaking?”

“The sort of mind that imprisons and tortures two women for ten years, perhaps?” Mercie shot back, bitterly.

Jujjeg’s enthusiasm deflated immediately, and he looked down, embarrassed. “Sorry,” he fumbled. “I didn’t mean to…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mercie cut off his fumbling apology. “Rana needs to get out of here, so it’s time to get back to the ship. Do you know where the others are?”

“I don’t…” the Hutt still seemed cowed and off-balance from his recent bout of unthinking obliviousness. “Twitchy and the girl are not far, I don’t think.”

“Should you start toward the ship now, or can you travel quickly on this dust?” the Zabrak asked.

“There’s enough of it and a low enough gravity that I can move much faster than you can, here,” he smiled, relaxing a little. “I can hurry Rana back to the ship while you look for the others, if you like.”

It wasn’t the plan that Mercie originally had in mind, but she looked at the distraught expression on Rana’s face and thought it might be wise to take up his offer. The old woman nodded. “I’ll be right behind you as soon as I can,” Mercie told her.

Jujjeg took Rana up in his arms, and the two women shared a kiss before he departed.

As he slithered off, Mercie started to walk in the direction of Callisto’s and Alack’s voices.

“Well, isn’t that sweet?” A voice grew from the shaded corner of the courtyard. A few footsteps sounded on the stone, echoing throughout the chamber, and the figure of a Zabrak woman, looking very much like Mercie, emerged. “You must be Mercielaga,” she mused.

“Dergoa,” Mercie replied. “I tried to find you many times over the years.”

“Oh, sob sob,” Mercie’s older sister mocked. “Is that supposed to soften me up? I admit, as a child, I used to blame you for our parents’ deaths, and everything else that came from it. But that was a long time ago. Now, I simply have a job to do. I couldn’t really care less about empty pandering to ideals about family, and all that.” She added a mocking lilt to the word family, sneering. “By the way, have you any idea how many of your moronic comrades I could have cut down on the way in? They really should be more careful…”

At this point, Alack had wandered cautiously back out into the courtyard, to see who belonged to the voice she couldn’t recognize.

“You haven’t hurt anybody, have you?” Mercie asked, suddenly worried.

“Oh, don’t worry, dear. Not yet, anyway. You see, you’ve piqued the curiosity of the Grand Inquisitor. You have Sith training. He wants to know if you can be turned, and if so, if you can be trusted.” She continued crossing the expanse of the courtyard toward them, her voice echoing within the cavernous space. “Of course, if you ask me, that’s a bit of a contradiction in terms. It appears to me as though you have been turned, and given that, should not ever be trusted. But,” she waved her hand around in a sweeping gesture, “in the spirit of his request, I kept my options open. Can’t be killing your friends if that’s going to be a conversation killer, now, can we?”

Mercie silently spoke to Alack, casting her voice using the Force: “Get Callisto back to the ship. Now. Make sure everyone is on board, and close the ramp. If you see her approach instead of me, leave immediately.”

Dergoa tilted her head, curious, as though she had overheard the conversation, or at least understood that some signal between the two women had taken place.

“Why sister,” Dergoa smiled, incredulously. “Do you have a padawan?!?” She put a taunting lilt on the latter word. ‘Padawan,’ of course, was a distinctively Jedi term for a student, and she deliberately chose it over ‘apprentice.’ “You do! You have a padawan….”

Fortunately, Alack departed to do as instructed.

“So I take that to mean that you’re not interested in hearing the Grand Inquisitor’s offer, then,” Dergoa smiled. By now, she was only a few steps away from Mercie, and came to a stop. “That suits me fine. But there is one thing we would like to know,” she added. “Exactly when and where could you have learned the ways of the Dark Side?”

“Do you ever shut up?” Mercie growled. “You’re worse than the kriffing kid.”

Dergoa grinned. “Well, he’ll be pissed, but I tried,” she muttered. “Have it your way.”

She swung her arm in a sweeping motion outward and then overhand, her lightsaber igniting as she was about to bring it down on Mercie’s neck.

Mercie had been holding her sai in a reverse grip, and stabbed upward with her left hand, lighting it as it caught Dergoa’s energy blade above her. She flipped her grip of the one in her right hand before ignition, and used it to ward her sister away.

Dergoa stepped back and laughed. “You brought tiny toy daggers to a swordfight! I have to say, sister, you’re really disappointing me, here.”

Mercie said nothing as she went into motion. Dergoa’s blade still cradled between two of her left sai’s three scarlet blades and against the cortosis frame, her reverse grip gave her some leverage as she pushed the blade to their side, and she flew forward, running a warning slice across her sister’s belly. As she moved to the opposite side of Dergoa’s blade hand, her left sai released it from its grasp, but that was fine. Mercie stayed close, bashing the hilt of her left hand on Dergoa’s chin as the Inquisitor felt the heat from the second near her back. Within moments, the older sister had been struck in five places from three motions. She knew that if Mercie had chosen to use her blades rather than her fist, hilt and elbow, she would have been badly wounded by now.

Mercie stepped back again, and leveled one of her blades toward Dergoa, warding her away. “This is your last chance to reconsider,” she warned.

“You’re pretty good with those things,” Dergoa smiled. “I’m impressed.” She understood it, though: as long as Mercie was in close contact to her, Dergoa’s lightsaber was too awkward to use. But as long as she had distance, that’s when she had the upper hand.

Dergoa flashed a figure-eight swing, followed by a wide flourish, forcing her sister backward. There: now, she had the space she needed. She engaged.

Dergoa attempted a flurry of blows, each parried by the younger Zabrak. After several, Mercie had snared her blade between both sai, controlling Dergoa’s arm as she neared, planted a kick to her midsection and sent her backward.

She had the space again, however. Dergoa launched another series of volleys, deflected variously by the two triple-bladed weapons. With the longer blade, Dergoa was able to strike with more power, and some of the blows were almost enough to knock Mercie off balance.

“Mercie!” Rana’s voice called out to her in the Force. She called out with alarm, and although not saying anything else, seemed to be beckoning her to run back to the Pathfinder.

Dergoa backed away, and once again seemed to sense their silent conversation. “Ah, that must be your Jedi I hear,” Dergoa surmised. “I saw her as you entered. She’s so old! Such low standards, sister,” she mocked. “I’m sure you could have done better.”

Mercie made a fluid flicking motion toward Dergoa. Too late, the elder Zabrak realized that she had tossed one of her sai, and it ignited right as it sank into her shoulder and collar bone, in three places. Then, with a reverse gesture, Mercie called the weapon back.

Dergoa stumbled, clutching her shoulder, in pain. Her fury rose, and the air began to crackle around her. Enraged, she unleashed a long, steady stream of lightning at her sister, projecting with all of her strength and anger.

The light was so intense that for a few moments, Mercie became lost in it, disappearing in the blinding stream.

Dergoa persisted, hoping to overwhelm her target.

When Dergoa stopped, she caught the sight of her sister still standing, arms forward, as though cradling something. Her hands were crackling.

It was as though the younger Zabrak had simply collected all of the energy that had been cast at her.

Then, in a single, instantaneous blast, Mercie sent it all back. The impact knocked Dergoa several feet across the courtyard, causing her to strike her head on a half-crumbled column. She fell to the stone of the courtyard, unconscious.

Mercie approached, this time lighting her saber, clearly intending to strike a finishing blow.

“Mercie! She’s your sister!” Rana shouted again, through the Force.

“She is a danger,” Mercie replied.

“She is your sister!” Rana repeated. “Don’t do this!”

Mercie stopped, but didn’t retreat.

“Everyone is on the ship. We can go,” Rana’s voice said.

Clearly torn, Mercie hesitated. And as she turned to leave, something unexpected happened.

The celestial moment the clients on Iego had been waiting for took place. The starlight from Toong’L suddenly grew very bright, so much so that it was almost as though a sunrise was taking place on Golg.

With portions of the citadel ceiling having collapsed years earlier, the courtyard flooded with light, and the darkness of their stone prison facility was banished to the furthest corners. The light was like a sudden spray of water that washed over everything, flooding it out, cleansing the place.

In the moment of illumination, ten years of darkness felt like it was washing away. It was liberating in a way that she never thought possible.

The last time Mercie had left this place, it was during a life crisis. She never had the chance to look back and realize that her ordeal was over.

In the flood of light, she knew, it was definitely over. Air filled her lungs. She felt weak, and almost wanted to drop to her knees and cry – but knew she shouldn’t delay.

She hastened back to the Pathfinder. In one last look as she left the doorway to the citadel, she glanced over her shoulders and spied two brass bells splayed awkwardly on the stone, gleaming in the sunlight.

---

“Sweep the ship!” Callisto demanded. They had already found one tracker on the repulsorlift, obviously planted there by the Ossan ground team while they’d had it stashed in their camp tent, but she wanted to be sure that the team from the flagship hadn’t planted others during their inspection, too.

Sirky and Skako were quick to comply, already having the same idea. Jujjeg said something about scanning frequencies to see if he could detect any other unexplained signals, and started toward Engineering. Alack glanced around, unsure of what she should be doing. Vee approached and gave a lilting report to Callisto indicating that Mercie and Rana had returned to the ship.

“Then let’s get this thing out of here,” she replied, dashing toward the cockpit.

Mercie rounded the corner and spotted Twitchy en route. “Before we get too far, see if you can spot her ship. We need to fire on it and disable it, so she doesn’t follow.”

“You didn’t kill her?” Alack asked, with a bit of snark in her voice.

“I don’t know if you were trying to be funny,” Rana said, rounding the corner behind the Zabrak, “but that is never a decision to make lightly.”

Mercie looked back at the old woman and then toward Alack. “No, not lightly, but I am regretting this particular decision already,” she admitted.

“They way I see it,” Rana said to her, “you dealt with her quite handily. You can do so again.”

“She vastly underestimated me and my abilities,” Mercie replied. “She wasn’t expecting my fighting style, she hadn’t anticipated my familiarity with sorcery, and she deliberately did not make an attempt to hurt you or the crew to get at me. She will not make these mistakes again. But anyway,” she looked back toward Alack, “given your quest to find your brother, I’m a bit surprised that you would expect that to be the best course of action to take with my sister.”

“I wasn’t saying you should,” Alack explained. “But isn’t that just how you always deal with people? So they don’t come back at you ‘twelvefold,’ and all?”

The Pathfinder had lifted off, and circled over Dergoa’s nearby fighter. The ship fired several shots at the propulsion systems, crippling it and leaving it in flames. Then, they did the same to the other two light craft that had originally brought Rana and Mercie to the desolate rock, decades ago.

“Ah,” Mercie said, realizing that Alack was taking the opportunity to moralize. “You’re young. You’ll see. But in the meantime, I need to be training you harder. You need to be ready for the next fight. We all do.”

“Should I put a braid in my hair?” Alack asked. “I mean, if I’m like a padawa-“

The Zabrak looked at her angrily. “Do not say that, ever again!”

Mercie stormed away, heading to the cockpit to make sure they wouldn’t be followed from Golg, and to see if Callisto needed help.

“A ‘padawan’ is a distinctively Jedi trainee,” Rana explained. “So don’t joke like that. She’ll find it insulting.”

“What’s the term for a Sith student?” Alack asked.

“An apprentice,” Rana answered. “You’ll notice that she never calls you that, either.”

Alack felt a little embarrassed and tried to explain. “I only brought it up because her sister said…”

“Well, her sister was probably deliberately trolling,” Rana pointed out. Alack moved to leave, but Rana snagged her sleeve with a finger, gently. “There’s one thing that Mercie won’t teach you that I hope you will understand and cleave to, wholeheartedly,” Rana said. “And that’s the importance of empathy and compassion.”

“Empathy has consequences,” Alack commented. It was a reflexive reply, almost contradictory to how she felt a few moments ago, but she was clearly struggling with this.

“Ah. Now, you’re starting to sound just like Mercie. Yes, there is a danger to empathy. It is risky. Just like love. It’s putting faith in people who perhaps don’t deserve it, but you do it, because in a fundamental sense, everyone deserves it. There is a danger in empathy, but a value as well.”

“Doesn’t the danger outweigh the value, a lot of times?”

“Alack, this is the age of the Galactic Empire, now. It’s cruel, it’s cynical, it’s horrible and it’s cold. Now, more than ever, if we want a better galaxy to ever come into existence, we need to inspire people with what that galaxy can look like. And the most critical thing a better future will need is compassion and empathy.”

“How do you know if you’ve had that effect on anyone, though? I can’t imagine anyone you show compassion to ever sticking around to show you that they got the message.”

“You’re right. You’ll rarely ever see if you’ve inspired anyone. You just have to have faith that you will.”

“Has anyone ever come back?” Alack asked. “Have you ever seen a radical change that you inspired in anyone?”

“Yes,” Rana answered, this time smiling warmly and turning her head toward the direction her lover had departed. “I believe you know her.”

Then.

Golg, 11 BBY

There was no doubt that years had passed. Was it six? Eight? Twenty? No, they had not aged that much, but they had certainly aged.

They had given up trying to lay in wait for him as he entered the cell, in hopes of finally ambushing him and gaining the upper hand. Their captor had now simply electrified the entirety of the cell — not just the floor — and for far longer, causing them to collapse, weakened and exhausted, their fight gone before he even opened the door.

Such was the case, this (presumably?) morning. They had come to expect that if he hadn’t come for them by the time their early meal was served, the day would be a reprieve – however, this was not such a day. He electrified the cell and after ceasing, with the women collapsed on the floor in their weakened state, he entered and took Mercie.

As weak as she felt, she did try to struggle… but it took him little effort to strap her to the durasteel table and tilt it to a sixty degree angle from the floor.

It didn’t matter that she had tired of the routine. She knew what was next: the searing pain would not break skin, but be so wracking that she would twist and fight until she pulled her own joints out of their sockets. He hovered over the console, and started to draw the lever down to begin her torments.

“Fuh… fuh…” Mercie tried to curse, weakly. She didn’t know why she kept trying to curse and reason and threaten the being causing her so much misery: he never spoke, not in all of these years.

It had been so long that she no longer thought to think of how strange it was that this slender, beautiful, shining white, fragile-looking, six-winged sprite was the cause of her suffering. She had come to know his hideous strength, his unearthly speed and his monstrous cruelt—

Wait. She realized that the strap on one hand was coming loose.

The Diathim at the console must have noticed it too. Halfway into pulling the lever, he stopped and moved quickly to adjust the strap.

He never made mistakes like this! Mercie moved quickly, trying to work her hand free. The Diathim didn’t bother to circle around the table – he reached across.

And then it happened. He hadn’t disengaged the lever completely, and it slipped slightly, causing the mechanical array above to activate. Only, instead of blasting Mercie, the energized machine unleashed its full force on her captor.

He’d managed to grip the strap before it struck, so she was still well-pinned and could only watch as the device continued its onslaught, their captor’s body spasming and contorting, unable to move from his position, unable to return to the console and reset the lever.

This remained the situation for quite some time. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Fifteen. Twenty.… Mercie had no idea how long it was, for certain. Even she had never taken such a blast.

“How do you like it, sleemo?” Mercie seethed. But the Diathim was unconscious, now, and just hanging in place because the blast had the effect of stiffening his muscles – unlike the women, who still managed to thrash under it.

Ultimately, the power waned. The array released the demented angel, he released her strap and fell to the floor.

Mercie recognized her chance – her one and only chance in possibly ten years. She managed to get enough play from the strap, freed her wrist, then the other, and then the remaining restraints that had held her.

She didn’t know how long he would be unconscious. She bolted, looking for an exit.

Down the darkened hallway, she passed some barely perceptible doors, then an open space that led into a den. It didn’t interest her.

Then, she found it: the hangar bay! The Diathim owned a light craft which looked like it would seat one or two. It looked like it had been kept in excellent condition.

She was free! All she had to do was climb in, hit the ignition, and leave…

Chapter Text

Chapter Nine: The Cruelty of Angels

Now.

The Slice, 4 ABY

Mercie wasn’t sure how she got here, or even where “here” was.

There had been a catastrophic battle, she could tell. Bodies were strewn across the… field? Through the smoke, it was hard to tell.

She recognized a few of them. Some of the crew of the Wobani Pathfinder were here. Vee lay sprawled across some wreckage, not moving. Nearby was a blue-skinned male. Alack’s brother? Why couldn’t she remember? And up ahead lay Twitchy. None of them appeared to be breathing.

She forged ahead, searching.

This appeared to be a ship – an Imperial flagship, if she wasn’t mistaken – but it was in ruins. Some of the war-beaten surfaces were stone? None of this was right. None of…’

She spotted Alack’s body partly visible, underneath some rubble. No! Mercie ran over to her, but she could already tell that she was gone.

Not far away, she spotted a hand, withered and aged. She panicked with fear. Rana!

She had to fight to clear away the stone and plasteel and debris. She was breathing! Mercie called out for help.

Hadn’t she been alone a moment ago? But now, droids were assisting. Rana was being moved carefully onto a palanquin, and carried toward a pair of doors.

Wait, this wasn’t a flagship, anymore. It was now a medcentre. The bodies were gone. Rana was being taken to an operating theatre staffed by a 2-1B and FX-7 – an odd combination – and a warden droid stopped Mercie from following. “You can’t go inside,” it told her. “We will call you when you can see her.”

She watched them carry the palanquin down the hall, which seemed to get longer as they proceeded. Eventually, they disappeared behind distant doors.

A flood of memories came back to the Zabrak. In the dank Iegoan cell, Shirana’s head rested on Mercie’s chest as the necromancer related to her all the secrets of life and death. On Lothal, they shopped in a local market for nerf, and the Miraluka woman laughed as one licked her hand. In their countryside home, they snuggled together near the fireplace as Mercie stoked the flames. On Golg, as Mercie collapsed to the stone walkway, she briefly saw Shirana, the Force returning to her in such a wave that her golden hair frothed in a violent wind and she arose, almost alight… the real angel…

2-1B opened the door to the operating theatre. “I’m sorry,” the droid said. “There is nothing we can do. You can see her now…”

Mercie raced in to find her lover on the table, barely conscious. “Rana!” she called out.

“Mer-“ The old woman gasped, struggling for breath and strength, and fumbling around trying to find her. “Mercie…”

“I’m so sorry, Rana…” she sobbed. “I had no idea…”

Shirana could barely hear her. She felt around the Zabrak’s face, first, reading her expression. Then, taking Mercie’s hand, Rana held it briefly, then trailed her arm toward her shoulder, touching the wound in Mercie’s chest. Realizing her mistake she moved her fingers across her chest, finding her second heart, under her right breast. She could feel it beating.

“Ah,” Rana smiled, whispering weakly. “There it is…. There’s my heart… I found it…”

She smiled contentedly as the life left her.

“Rana!” Mercie screamed, awakening with a sudden thrash.

Rana reached up and touched her arm. “I’m here,” she said, giving her a gentle squeeze.

“Augh…” Mercie gasped, taking a moment to remember where she was. It was dark. there was a bit of ambient light filling the cabin, from under the door.

Then, aware of Rana’s hand, placed her own on it, and held it tightly.

“Did you have that dream, again?” Rana asked.

She started to relax. Mercie sank back onto the bed and took a deep breath. “That’s the seventh time,” she answered.

“Do you think it’s a vision?” Rana asked.

“I doubt it. The setting is all messed up. I’m not seeing an actual time or place, it’s just my imagination,” Mercie estimated.

“The Force can sometimes speak in metaphors, though,” Rana reminded. “It doesn’t have to be 100% accurate to be a vision of the future.”

“I’ve never had visions before, though,” Mercie said. “I can’t see why I would start now. It has to be my imagination, and the stress.” Finally, she sat up and reached for a cannagar on the nightstand. She drew a spark from her fingertips and lit it, drawing a deep breath.

“Chest hurting too?” Rana asked.

“Aaa, it’s always hurting,” Mercie replied, but Rana had already known that. “Did I wake you?”

“No, I’ve been awake for awhile,” the older woman replied. “I can’t stop thinking about Parkanas.”

Mercie nodded, remorsefully. “Yes, I thought you probably would.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Rana sighed. “All this time… all this time, I blamed the Jedi Council for never sending someone for me. And instead, they had… and I abandoned him there…”

“We’ve gone over this, Rana,” Mercie took a deep inhale of smoke, waited, then let it out. “You remember what the circumstances were when we left. We needed to go. I needed your help just to stay alive. There had been no indication that anyone else was on that forsaken moon.”

“I know,” the Miraluka woman replied. “But I’ll always feel responsible, nevertheless. And when I think about him there alone for years, until the food stopped coming, then starving to death…”

“Well, to be fair, he probably went mad before he starved to death,” Mercie commented. She extinguished the lit embers of the cannagar in the ashtray, saving the rest for later.

“Mercie! You are not making this better…!” Rana protested.

“Rana, this isn’t on us.” The Zabrak squeezed her hand gently. “This is on the cruelty of angels. He imprisoned your padawan friend, just as he imprisoned us. I mean… we destroyed the capsule. He should have had his Force attunement back, by then. If he didn’t escape, then either he didn’t know, or he had already went mad by that point.”

“All this time, I hated Master Windu. I hated Master Fisto. I blamed them for abandoning me.” Rana sighed.

“Well, you can let go of that, now,” Mercie stated. “You’re allowed to have been wrong, though. You had no way of knowing.”

Rana smiled. “That’s a new one,” she said. “You, telling me to let go of my anger.”

“Well, the evidence calls for it,” she admitted. “I was wrong, too. I seriously thought they abandoned you there, also. In my experience, it’s what anyone else would have done.”

“You haven’t had very good friends,” Rana stated, then reflected for a moment. “This is going to take a long time to get over,” she said.

“I know. You always take these things hard. I wish I could make it better.” Mercie laid back in the bed and thought it might be best to change the subject. She could hear footfalls in the corridor outside the cabin. “It sounds like people are getting up already. We’ll probably need to join them soon. And with their time-sensitive stops done, it’s time to think about where we’d like to go.”

It was true. The Pathfinder had berthed at Toongl, and they needed to provide an answer right away, about where they wanted to part ways.

Rana touched her neck, reflectively. “Can you think of any place further from the Empire’s reach than Lothal?”

“Offhand, not anywhere that’s developed in ways that would be comfortable for us and where we’d fit in. And I don’t really know what’s beyond The Slice. We might be better in Hutt Space. Or somewhere nobody cares about, like Tatooine.”

“Ugh. A desert planet? Who would want to hide out there? No thanks.” Rana sat up and turned toward Mercie. “I just had a thought. What are we going to do about Alack?”

“What about her?” Mercie shrugged. “She’s going to have to decide what she wants. She can stay on this ship until she can figure out a way she can rescue her brother, or she can come with us and continue her training. But I’m not so crazy about the idea of her living with us. If we can manage a plot of land, like on Lothal, she’ll have to have her own place, either a separate home on it, or somewhere else entirely.”

“She’s going to want us to help rescue her brother,” Rana reminded.

“I’d want to hear the plan, before even committing to it,” Mercie replied. “She messed up our lives, Rana. She doesn’t get to demand anything of us.”

“I’m a little concerned about her,” Rana said. “She swings from overly moralistic to selfish and demanding. She’s… volatile. She could be going a dark path.”

“Do you think maybe you should teach her instead?” Mercie asked. “I know I’m pretty jaded. And if we’re talking about dark paths, well, I’m probably a horrible influence.”

“I still think you’re the better teacher. Just… try a little altruism,” she smiled.

Mercie laughed. “You’d might as well ask me to swim naked in an acid bath.”

Shirana smiled. “Well, I don’t know about the acid bath part, but the rest of that sounds not so bad.”

Mercie couldn’t help but grin in return. “Oh really?” She rolled over onto Rana and pinned her wrists to the mattress, playfully.

The door to Labakka’s cabin flew open and Alack barged in. “Twitchy thinks she might have a way to get onto the flagship where my brother is!”

“Can’t you see that we’re busy?” Mercie snapped at her.

Alack felt a little awkward at the sight of them. “Sorry. I… just had to tell you the good news.”

Mercie leaned forward and nibbled at Rana’s neck.

“Not while she’s watching, Mercie,” Shirana protested.

Mercie kept going. “She was just leaving. Wasn’t she?” She cast a glance at the invader in their doorway, then returned to her love’s neck.

“Mercie! You’re going to get me all gooey…” Rana whispered.

“Oooookay… You win! I’m leaving!” Alack exclaimed, feeling awkward. “But we’ll be talking about the plan in the lounge, when you two are… uh… done here.”

And with that, she was gone again.

Mercie paused, then dropped her head onto Rana’s chest, in defeat. “Farking fark. I just want us to go home and be done with all this…”

---

“So if we do this,” Callisto said, hesitantly, “and keep in mind that this is all conditional on if Mercie will agree to it…”

“She will,” Alack interjected.

“… if Mercie will agree to it, then we’re going to need a better plan to get out. You can’t just get on board a shuttle on an Imperial flagship and have them let you go…”

“Already working on it,” Jujjeg stated. “I’ve had some luck slicing into the Charybdis’ systems, and will let you know if I find a way to generate the necessary clearances.” Twitchy, the Hutt, Alack, Vee, Skako and Sirky had all gathered in the ship’s lounge, waiting for Mercie and Rana to join them.

“There’s also the credits to think about,” Twitchy continued. “Between the unpaid trips to Nar Shaddaa and Ossus and having troubles with the Empire and the Pykes, we’ll be running low, soon. Iego covers operating expenses for the short term, but food and fuel aren’t cheap. So if we’re going to involve ourselves in this, I’d like some reassurance that I’m going to have some help paying expenses, at the end of it.”

“We’d be glad to help,” Alack replied.

“Don’t go committing us to things,” Mercie said, as the two women rounded the corner. “You’ve dragged us into plenty enough, already. Our decisions are ours to make.”

“First things first,” Rana added. “What’s this plan to rescue Alack’s brother?”

“First of all, sorry for the early and probably overly abrupt summon,” Callisto shot a glance at Alack and then turned back to the two women, leaning forward. “I know you two needed some sleep. But Jujjeg had a look through the personnel files, using the payroll data we retrieved. We can’t approach an Imperial Star Destroyer with the Pathfinder, but the Charybdis uses shuttles – like all Imperial flagships do – for ferrying around officers who go on leave or make routine trips. The usual pilot for these recreational jaunts is a Dathomirian Zabrak named Mero Klinje, and the craft is staffed by two others.”

“Really?” Mercie was surprised. “You don’t see too many Dathomirian males outside the influence of the witches. How did one get conscripted by the Empire?”

“Who knows?” Twitchy Fingers continued. “There are a million stories in this galaxy. All I know is, that is who they have. And there is an officer scheduled to board from Saleucami, heading to the Charybdis. If we waylay the officer and crew planetside, we’ll be able to board the flagship – Mercie, Alack, Rana and I. Mero and one of the crew are male, so we’ll have to do a little disguise work. But we’ll be able to board, and the three shuttle crew can remain in the Forward Hangar without attracting too much scrutiny or interacting much with the crew. The risky part is that Alack will have to find her brother on her own, and get him back to the shuttle. We just need to figure out the clearances so we can get back out.”

“We want to act on the information we’ve got,” Alack added, “before Ralock gets transferred to another location or something.”

“Well, that’s more of a you thing, but…” Callisto started to correct her.

“Of course,” Mercie rolled her eyes. “So, in all of this, has anyone asked about whether Ralock really wants to escape the flagship?”

Alack seemed perplexed by the suggestion. Mercie explained: “His military service is not as simple as him having been abducted and forced to work. It’s like when I was a slave: there’s much more to indentured work – a whole bureaucracy – that keeps a person there. A slave can always escape, but there is a system of laws, identity checks, dangers and legal authorities that makes sure that they’re never really free. It may not simply be a question of getting him off of the Charybdis. And nobody has even talked to him yet about whether this is what he wants, or what complications there might be, that we’re not aware of. Keep in mind that your ‘rescue’ will essentially render him a fugitive for life.”

“I don’t think we really have the time to…” Alack started to say.

“Well, make the time,” Mercie cut her off. “If you’re going to board an Imperial flagship, you’d better have done your prep work.”

Callisto leaned forward. “Well, if anything, this would give her the chance to talk to her brother, and find out if he wants out or if we need a change of plan. That might even be the better objective, since we can’t just open a comm channel with an Imperial flagship. Everything there will be monitored, especially if he’s not an overly willing employee. But this only works if you two are in: we need a red-skinned Zabrak pilot, and are not going to be able to pass off Vee, Sirky or Skako as human personnel.”

Mercie looked toward Rana, and then back at the assembly. “I have to tell you, I’m not feeling all that great about this plan,” she muttered. “Unless you can do better than this, I’m out.”

“We’ll work out the kinks,” Alack smiled. “You’ll see.”

At that point, Mercie shifted focus and looked at Alack directly. “You’re not ready for something of this magnitude,” she said bluntly. “Especially not solo. You learn quickly, but you’re really not prepared…”

“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” she responded.

The meeting dissolved at about that point, and Mercie, Rana, Jujjeg and Vee all departed down the hallway toward the ship’s cabins, while Callisto and Alack stayed to scheme and Sirky left toward Engineering. “Erm,” Jujjeg called out by clearing his throat, “Mercie, would it be possible to have a word or two for a minute?”

Mercie and Rana had long developed a sort of communication between each other that was half Force speech and half non-visual, and it wasn’t certain if something was said between them or if it was the touch of Mercie’s finger on Rana’s hand that indicated that it was okay for the Miralukan Jedi to proceed without her… but that’s what happened. The Zabrak woman lingered while Jujjeg caught up to her. Rana and Vee proceeded down the hallway.

“I hate to bother you with this,” the Hutt scholar began. “But when we were back at the citadel on Golg, there was an insignia across the top of the alcoves that might provide some clue as to where that courtyard originally came from. Did your captor ever mention what it meant?”

“No,” Mercie replied, icily. Then, she added, “He never really spoke to us at all. It’s like we weren’t even living beings, just things to him.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” the Hutt looked down, embarrassed for asking.

Mercie scrutinized him for a minute, and then continued: “I didn’t really see the insignias when we were first imprisoned there, because the light was too low when we were in the courtyard. But on this trip, I did take note of them, and recognized them immediately.”

“Oh!” Jujjeg tried not to seem too elated at the news, and tried to approach his question carefully. “Is it okay if I ask what –”

“It was the seal of Dathka Graush,” Mercie answered before he’d even finished the question. “I recognized it because I’d learned a lot about him when I studied necromancy.”

“Oh! That’s curious,” Jujjeg continued, “because the mural on Ossus seems to be related to Graush, too. There seems to be a lot about necromancy in the Ossan lullabyes. And if that’s whose courtyard the Diathim rebuilt…”

Mercie looked him over for another moment, suspicious that he might be trying to manipulate her into further discussion by provoking her curiosity. She waited for him to make a pitch.

Sure enough, the Hutt did: “I would really very much like to…”

She had already turned around and started to walk away before he finished asking.

Jujjeg called after her, shifting his approach. “Listen, I’m sorry for what my kin must have done to you. I know that Hutts can be very abusive when given such disparate…”

But she was already gone.

---

As Shirana and Vee proceeded down the short hall, the elder woman spoke. “I understand that you can speak Basic, but choose not to,” she began. She was tired, and was consequently using her gnarled cane for support. “I can think of several situations that might drive a person to that, and I respect that. I won’t press. But I would be interested in conversing sometime, if you’re ever willing.”

Vee said something in Nautila that Shirana didn’t understand. Her tone of voice was acknowledging, and didn’t seem angry or rude.

“Hey, you collect lightsabers,” Rana remembered. “Would you like to have a look at mine?”

The Nautolan crew member stopped and eyed Shirana, uncertain. Rana pulled out the hilt of her saber and handed it to her, pointing the business end away from the both of them.

Vee took it tentatively, then examined it. She tested the weight, then pointed it away from everything and ignited it, looking at the beam. She made a slight motion with it in the available space.

“When we construct our sabers, Jedi are tasked to find and attune our own kyberite crystals,” Rana stated, in conversation. “I found mine on Ilum. Attunement happens through a period of meditation and purification. We leave a bit of our essence in them.”

Vee extinguished the blade and then looked back toward the blind woman, respectfully.

“The Jedi who created the lightsabers you own are probably long gone,” Rana continued, “but their essence similarly lives on in them.”

Vee looked a little doubtful now, and handed Rana’s lightsaber back.

“If you don’t mind,” the Miraluka woman continued, “I would like to study your sabers, sometime. It’s been so long since I felt contact with another Jedi…”

Vee snapped into an angry stream of Nautilan epithets and curses, suddenly enraged at Rana’s request. Rana was so stunned, she took a step backward, and almost didn’t sense Mercie approaching from behind her.

Vee cursed a little more, and then stormed away.

“I… I don’t understand what just happened…” Rana stammered.

“The Jedi who Vee’s sabers belonged to took part in a horrible battle on Glee Anselm, sparked by the Empire. They may have been turncoats?” Mercie was speculating on the latter point. “Either way, they helped kill Vee’s family, and many of her friends,” Mercie answered, stepping up to her. “She doesn’t collect lightsabers as curiosities, she collects them as trophies.”

“Oh!” Rana was shocked. She wasn’t used to such anger and bitterness toward Jedi, outside the things she had seen from Mercie over the years. “How did you know that?”

“She just told you,” Mercie answered.

“You understand Nautila?”

Mercie smiled. “You know that my first boyfriend was Nautolan…”

“So all this time, you’ve understood everything she said?” Rana was surprised to discover this.

“Mostly,” Mercie admitted. “I’m not fluent. But I’ve never said anything, because I prefer it that the crew think they can talk candidly with each other, without us understanding. Trust is fine, but seeing or hearing for yourself is better.”

“So,” Rana turned back to the matter at hand, “how do I go about things with Vee, now? I mean, we need to work together, so I’d at least like it to be amicable.”

“Well, a lot of that is up to her, of course,” Mercie replied, knowing that Rana would probably reach a similar conclusion on her own, eventually. All you can really do is try to reassure her that you’re not like the Jedi who she…” Mercie paused mid-sentence, and then looked back down the hallway. “That’s funny,” she mumbled.

“What’s funny?” Rana asked.

“I just had the mirror of that conversation, with the Hutt.”

---

“Well, Jujjeg could slice into their systems and forge a pass for Ralock, right? It would be like he’d have a scheduled departure on the same shuttle, I’d just have to go get him and let him know about it. The only one who should have any difficulty leaving would be me,” Alack schemed.

“Yes, he actually thought of that already, and was going to look into it. He’s a great slicer, but Imperial systems are not easy to get into, especially remotely. So… we’ll see. But we don’t even know yet if Mercie and Rana will agree to this,” Callisto reminded her. The two of them had retreated to Twitchy’s cabin, and the Pathfinder’s captain was brewing some Endorian caf.

“Well, they have to,” Alack smiled. “It’s why we’re all here, right?”

Callisto frowned in puzzlement. “You’re here because you stowed away on my ship and I haven’t seen fit to space you, yet,” she teased, “and they’re here because you disrupted their lives looking for a Jedi.” Then, a thought occurred to her. “You understand that you’re not what gives their lives meaning, right?”

“Yeah, but this is important,” Alack replied. “He’s my brother. And his research… I keep getting the feeling that it could be really dangerous if he succeeds and the Empire keeps their hands on it.”

Twitchy poured them both a steaming hot cup of the brew. She took hers black, but added double cream and a spoon of Yyeger sugar to Alack’s.

“Everything is important, kid,” she said. “I’m not sure you appreciate just how much everyone has already sacrificed for this mission of yours. We never asked for any of it. Rana and Mercie lost their home and their cover from the Empire. I’ve lost my ability to engage in trade with the Imps. Some of us have become targets of the Empire who hadn’t had that designation before, and my crew have been at risk. And that’s not including the financial cost. You seem to just take it for granted that we’re all going to just keep doing all of this for you, as a favour...”

“Stop lecturing me like I’m a child,” Alack frowned, “and stop calling me ‘kid.’ You’re only a couple years older than me, and I’m not a ‘kid.’”

Alack reclined on Callisto’s bed while the Mandalorian captain settled into the chair at her desk, sipping caf, frowning.

“Come on,” Alack invited. “Let’s put this aside for now, and have a little fun.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Twitchy responded. “Don’t get me wrong, the invitation is very tempting. But I think maybe you need to think a little bit more about what you’re asking us all to put on the line for you. I don’t think you appreciate just how much you’re expecting of everyone. We don’t owe this to you, and you’re not entitled to our help. You’re asking us to do something very dangerous.”

Alack sat up, angry. For a minute, she thought about throwing her cup, but she realized that she’d just be proving Twitchy’s point. She still needed their help, and wasn’t keen on the idea of doing anything that might alienate Callisto further. But she couldn’t help but feel a little rejected.

She set the cup of caf down on Callisto’s desk as she exited the cabin.

---

“Honestly, Rana,” Mercie said, “I’ve really just had enough of this ordeal. I don’t want to do this, anymore. We’ve been uprooted, we’ve become tangled in these peoples’ lives, and I just want to find another planet to start over, and get back to building our lives together, again. I can honestly say I don’t care about Alack’s brother. She brought all of this on us – she can deal with it. I’m tired.”

They were back in Labakka’s cabin, sitting on the bed. Rana cupped Mercie’s red, scarred hand in hers.

“I feel like we’ve been set on this path for a reason,” Rana replied. “The coincidences are what bother me. It really feels like the will of the Force.”

Mercie protested. “Rana, you’re beginning to sound like the Hutt, with his fixation on the Ossan murals. You know I don’t believe in all of that destiny crap. Sometimes, things just happen for no reason.”

“Yes, well, I can’t shake the feeling that we need to do this,” she said. “Not only for Alack’s brother. I sense something much more serious awaits.”

Mercie threw up her hands emphatically. “Oh great. Something bigger! Like we need that.”

“Do you trust my instincts?” the ashen-haired woman asked.

“You know I do,” Mercie responded.

“Then trust me when…”

There was a knock on the cabin door.

“Yes?” Mercie called.

“It’s me,” Alack answered from the hallway. Apparently, she didn’t want a repeat of the last time she barged into their room. “When should we get back to training?”

Mercie sagged in defeat.

Rana put her hand on the Zabrak’s arm. “Go to her,” she said. “You know that if they go through with this plan to board the flagship, she’ll be taking most of the risk. She needs to be ready.”

Mercie said nothing as she gave Rana a gentle kiss and exited the cabin.

“I didn’t expect you so soon,” Mercie said to Alack, as the door closed behind her. “Did you and Twitchy Fingers have a fight?”

“She says I’m being immature and selfish,” Alack complained.

Mercie shrugged. “Well, you are.” She said it matter-of-factly, but with a certain amount of indifference and detachment.

“Hey!”

Mercie stopped and scratched her eyebrow for a moment, choosing her words. “The road between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force is paved with the self,” she said. “Dark and light are not about subjective concepts of good and evil, but about self absorption and selflessness. When a person finds their power and their purpose, their first and biggest struggle will be about which of those two directions they should travel.”

Alack rolled her eyes.

“Don’t do that,” Mercie cautioned. “I’m not kidding. You had a sheltered life up until the Empire took your home and family. This moralizing, this impulsiveness, the temper, the appetite for power, the making things all about you… you even aimed a blaster at my head. You realize that these are qualities that a Sith would be happy to exploit in an apprentice, right? You’re at that crossroads, currently. And you’re leaning so far toward self-absorption, right now, that even I don’t like where you’re going.”

Mercie turned and proceeded toward the cargo bay, where they usually practiced Alack’s abilities. Alack followed, but wasn’t too comfortable with the conversation.

“Enough of that. We’re going to do some sparring,” Mercie stated. “If you’re so insistent on this mission of yours, regardless of when it happens, we need to prepare you more for physical combat.”

This they did for quite some time. Mercie focused especially on teaching her to deal with projectiles and hand-to-hand combat. She was merciless.

Eventually, they tired beyond the point of continuing. Mercie sat back and look a long breath, lighting a cannagar with a spark from her fingertips.

“I always see you doing that,” Alack commented. “Are you able to, you know, do things like shoot lightning, or something?”

“Something like that,” the older woman answered, massaging the pain above her breast.

“Why don’t you use that more?” Alack sat back on one of the crates in the cargo hold, stretching her legs out.

“It reminds us too much of Golg, and some of the things we experienced there,” Mercie answered. “Especially Rana. So I won’t use it in front of her, aside from sparks.”

“Ah. Sorry.” Alack felt a little embarrassed, even though she couldn’t have known. “Still, I wouldn’t mind learning how to do that.”

“That,” Mercie replied, “comes from a lifetime of rage and pain and sorrow.” She drew a deep breath from the cannagar. “I hope you never learn it.”

As he passed the cargo hold, Jujjeg spotted them. “Ah! Alack. Can you let the captain know that I found a way into the Charybdis’ systems, so I can forge a planetside authorization for your brother?”

Alack smiled. The plan was going to be a go. She was certain of it.

---

Mero Klinje leaned against the shuttle doorway, looking out into the hangar.

He wasn’t happy with being made to wait. He had a schedule to keep, and the thought of lingering on Saleucami while all non-essential personnel – and even many essential personnel – were being evacuated unnerved him. He didn’t know what the Empire had in mind for this irritating pink planet, but he knew it couldn’t be good, and he didn’t want to linger any longer than he had to.

“Captain?” Lieutenant Perrin approached Klinje from behind. “This is going to sound odd, sir, but we just received a distress call… from the Charybdis.”

Klinje’s face scrunched up in a look of puzzlement, and he quickly made his way to the cockpit.

Sergeant Kapnit was already at the console. “The distress signal stopped as soon as it began,” he stated. “I’ve tried hailing them, sir, but there’s no response.”

“Keep on it,” he barked. That was odd. Imperial systems were somewhat failsafed, so a distress call didn’t just typically happen by accident. The lack of a response was equally strange. What could be going on up there?

“Any word from the Chiss?” he asked. Despite being Zabrak himself, Klinje had adopted a habit of referring to other non-humans by their species, rather than their names, except to their faces. Non-humans weren’t thought of very fondly in Imperial circles, and he felt that by doing so, he fit in more with his peers… despite the fact that they probably acted the same way toward him, when he wasn’t looking.

“Nothing, sir,” the Sergeant replied.

“The officer you’re waiting for won’t be making this trip,” said a voice behind the shuttle’s captain and crew. “But then, neither will you.”

They turned to see four women facing them, blasters drawn.

“We’ll take those uniforms, though,” one said. “And you’d better hand them over fast, because I’ve got very…”

“… twitchy fingers,” two of the others finished the sentence for her.

Embarrassed, she hissed at them. “Shut up…”

Then.

Golg, 11 BBY

Mercie climbed into the craft.

The controls were familiar enough. The fuel stocks looked adequate.

Now. Now was her chance. If she didn’t take it, she would pay dearly for it.

The other seat, though…

No, this was silly. Their captor might awaken at any moment. She couldn’t afford any hesitation, and she couldn’t afford the attachment to the Jedi! She would pay for it, if she turned back — she knew it.

There was no telling how long she had. Their captor was formidable. She had every reason to believe he was just as resilient as he was strong and fast.

Mercie reached for the ignition.

The other seat looked empty.

She remembered Shirana’s soft lips, and her heart ached.

---

The cell opened. Initially, Shirana was surprised that it hadn’t been prefaced by another shocking barrage, but still expected to hear Mercie dropped to the stone floor, like she always had been before.

Instead, Mercie stood in the doorway. “Get up! He’ll be awake any moment!”

Shirana leapt to her feet. “You’re free! How…?”

“Just move!” the Zabrak called back. She did.

Halfway out the cell door, Rana smiled at her and admitted, “I honestly thought that if you were the first one to get the chance to escape, you wouldn’t come back for me.”

A twinge of guilt stirred in the Zabrak’s stomach, but she ignored it.

“I didn’t simply come back for you,” Mercie replied. “I need your help.” She strode back toward the chamber that stood between them and the hangar, expecting Shirana to follow the sound of her voice.

“We’re going to kill him,” the Zabrak said.

Mercie expected some protest… the usual annoying noble-hearted, optimistic tripe about the good that exists in everyone. “And I don’t want to hear any platitudes of the value of lif–”

“Okay,” the Jedi said, without hesitation.

A faint smile crossed Mercie’s lips.

The smile soon faded, however.

By the time they reached the chamber, the Diathim was gone.

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten: The Quintessence Prism

Now.

The Charybdis, 4 ABY

“Approaching shuttle, what is your –“

The communication ended abruptly. Callisto, Mercie and Alack exchanged worried glances. They hadn’t even docked yet, so anything amiss was concerning.

Rana sat back in the leather seat and looked tense as well. “I sense great unrest here,” she said.

The flagship hailed the shuttle again. “Captain Klinje, what is your status?”

Callisto used the voice modulator, as her voice was the closest in original resemblance to Mero’s. “Returning on schedule, authorization 6H12N42B. Awaiting docking orders.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” asked a second voice over the comms.

“Disregard that, Captain Klinje,” the first voice cut over the first. “Bay is assigned. We’ll engage the tractor and bring you in.”

Nervous glances were exchanged again. It was unusual to bring a shuttle into the bay via tractor beam unless the pilot was unskilled or uncooperative. And what was that interjection all about?

Still, given that they didn’t understand so much about what was happening, they had to be pragmatic. They continued to avoid doing anything that would raise suspicion, in case the undetermined situation was not about them. Seamlessly, the shuttle was brought in and set down.

“Be ready for anything,” Callisto warned, although everyone was already in agreement on that. They checked their weapons to make sure they were in place and ready for use, and gathered together at the exit door.

They weren’t really prepared for the sight that greeted them: the Forward Hangar was entirely empty. There were no personnel in sight, and there were far fewer ships docked than they thought might be typical. Escort TIE fighters were missing from their hooks and the regulation number of officer shuttles had been reduced to the one single shuttle they had arrived in. A lone forklift had been abandoned on the tarmac, its forks still cradling a shipment.

“I think we might have caught a break,” Alack smiled.

“Kark. Are you kidding me?” Callisto was dumbfounded by the comment. “Didn’t Nar Shaddaa teach you anything? This is bad news….”

“This is an Imperial Star Destroyer,” Mercie reminded. “This…” she gestured out toward the vacant bay “… this never happens. You know how obsessive the Empire is. Since when are they not micromanaging their own military facilities?”

Abruptly, they noticed one officer charge into the cargo bay. They expected him to come toward them, but instead, he ran across the tarmac, ascended into a TIE fighter, unlatched and left the Charybdis.

Alack brushed past them. “Well, we’ve come too far to just abandon things now,” she shrugged. “Whatever is going on, let’s use this opportunity. I’m the one putting her neck out, here, and I’m going ahead.” She strode across the bay without looking back.

“Kriff,” Callisto cursed. “Has she always been this rash?”

“You’ve known her for about as long as we have,” Rana reminded her.

Callisto winced. “You can see stuff, right?” Callisto asked the older woman. “Can you tell what’s going on, here?”

Rana shook her head slightly. “I see things, but don’t hear what goes with it. There’s a lot of chaos, but I don’t know the reason. They’ve broken ranks. There are some officers and soldiers at their posts, but they’re arguing with others – sometimes fighting outright. I don’t understand it. A few are taking the escape pods.”

“Something wrong with the ship?” Callisto proposed.

A small group of military personnel entered the bay, spotted the shuttle, and strode over toward them, intently. “Captain Klinje! Good timing. Ready your shuttle. We’re departing straight away,” an officer at the front of the group barked.

As they neared, he stopped to scrutinize Mercie. “You’re not Klinje,” he noted. The personnel drew their weapons. Then, he continued: “Whatever is going on here, we’re commandeering this shuttle. I advise you to cooperate…”

Having remained at the shuttle entrance, Callisto, Mercie and Rana took immediate cover inside as everyone drew their blasters and the firefight broke out. The contingent of officers, on the other hand, were all in the open. It was over in moments.

“They’re going to keep coming,” Rana advised. “Many of them are abandoning ship.”

Mercie charged forward. “Rana, you and Twitchy need to take the shuttle and get back to the Pathfinder. I’m going to make sure Alack gets to an escape pod, brother or no brother. Rana, keep watch on me, so you’ll know where we land on Saleucami. We might need a fast pick up.”

“How are we going to know which escape pod is yours?” Callisto asked.

“I can find her,” Rana reassured.

Mercie strode across the hangar. “Oh, so like a Jedi rapport thing?” Callisto asked, closing the shuttle door.

---

By this time, Alack was regretting her decision to charge ahead alone. She hadn’t been challenged by any of the soldiers she encountered so far, but that didn’t mean that everything was well. She had to duck out of an apparent firefight, and there were cries of distress in the cafeteria from someone who sounded like they were being assaulted. Every so often, she would encounter a checkpoint – she was able to skirt them without too much trouble, but given how many detours there were, she was beginning to doubt her ability to get to her brother’s deck, let alone the wing he should be at – assuming he was even still there. And then, she would need to find her way back, despite losing most of her sense of direction from all of the twists and turns.

A pair of soldiers brushed past her abruptly. Their helmets were missing, and there was fear in their eyes.

“We don’t have a lot of time, if we’re going to do this!” one shouted.

“I know! I know!” They had barely regarded her.

Then, they were gone.

She heard Mercie’s voice calling to her, within her mind. “There is a bank of escape pods starboard from the research wing where your brother is supposed to be,” the older woman intoned. “They are currently being guarded, although several people have amassed. Try to get there, and I will get us to a pod.”

She felt relieved to know that she was going to have help. She was similarly relieved to find an available lift with no one in it. “Please be on the right deck, Ralock,” she whispered.

And then, she realized, once she reached his wing, she wasn’t certain of what to do. Her schemes on that matter were woefully insufficient.

-—

As she strode through the corridors, Mercie seethed. She hadn’t liked being essentially railroaded into this mission, in the first place. It had been like some slow motion collision in which she had repeatedly been assured that she would have the opportunity to opt out, but then everything proceeded as though it would be a go, and the opt out opportunity never came. To be fair, though, Mercie could have insisted and stopped the process… except that a part of her was worried for her student, and wanted to still be in a position to help her if anything went wrong.

And it was certainly going wrong, although it was unclear as to why.

Mercie had kept wearing her disguise as Mero Klinje. It wasn’t overly convincing if anyone took a long look at her, but for the most part, few paid enough attention to her to take notice. This surprised her, since a red skinned Zabrak was an uncommon sight on an Imperial flagship. Either Klinje traveled the corridors often enough to be a familiar sight, or else whatever was taking place was so monumental that even the Imps’ xenophobic feelings about alien races were dwarfed by comparison.

The barricades were exceptions. The officers and soldiers stationed at them were hardline loyalists intent on restoring order to the Charybdis, and very quickly recognized that Mercie didn’t belong, in spite of her officer’s garb.

“You there!” an officer at one barricade accosted her. “Identify yourself!”

Mercie strode up to them, her eyes defiant.

“You don’t belong here,” the officer barked. Almost immediately, though, he displayed a look of alarm and uncertainty, as though he were being affected by some force that only he was aware of. He rose slightly, not of his will.

It was Mercie’s doing, of course, but it was her practice to not use gestures that might indicate that she were acting upon the situation. To all eyes, the officer’s own body was rebelling against him. Then, his head twisted suddenly, with a snap. The personnel around him watched in puzzlement.

He didn’t fall, however. He steadied himself, then turned and attacked one of the officers beside him.

“What the kriff!?!” one exclaimed.

In the event of a sudden death, Mercielaga could animate a corpse quickly, almost seamlessly. There were telltale signs that the body’s former owner was no longer present, such as an inability to make eye contact, or the initial loss of some fine motor skills. But for the most part, she had trained herself to be able to act quickly, and in doing so, she had turned the attention of everyone at the barricade away from her. She passed as they protected each other from the violence perpetrated by their comrade.

Mercie slipped into a lift, and the attacking officer suddenly collapsed to the floor, dead. Only then did the soldiers’ thoughts turn back to the Zabrak who had passed through.

---

Ralock hurriedly scrolled through the files on his supervisor’s console.

“Blast it!” he cursed. Celestial Power’s files had already been forwarded on to Imperial Command. Now, it was no longer as simple as mere deletion.

He hammered away at the keyboard, making rapid modifications to the files, and then queueing them to update. He had to overwrite the information that was out there.

His comm hissed momentarily, followed by a voice. “Lieutenant Commander Ralock! Commander Borgis requires you in his office immediately.”

Named Morah'loc'klutarn by birth, Ralock and Alack had the not uncommon problem among Chiss families of having similar personal names, and near-identical core names as a result — consequently, when Serennian officials adapted Alack’s name by local convention, the first consonant was dropped, to make the names more distinct. The “h,” unpronounced, was abandoned in both names. By Serennian convention, Ralock was identified as “Ralock Morah;” but in the Imperial military, only the true core accepted by the Empire (”Ralock”) was used.

“I’m currently being held up by all of this fracas,” he protested to the comms, trying to stall for time. “I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

“Immediately!” the voice barked again, then went silent.

His blue fingers danced across the keys frantically. He couldn’t leave any clue, or any indication that the files had been deliberately sabotaged. The files had to look like they were the legitimate conclusions of the team working on the project.

Nervously, he heard a sound and looked up, reaching slowly for the blaster he’d set beside the keyboard.

“Ralock?”

It took him a few moments to recognize who was standing in the doorway to his supervisor’s office. The context of the officer’s uniform didn’t fit with the face he saw. But then, Alack lifted her cap and her jet black hair fell down alongside her face to frame it.

“Alack?” Even as he said her name, he was still doubtful. How could she possibly be here? “Oh, basta’lah!” he exclaimed, beaming. He didn’t relax, however, and his stance was still intense and focused. “Sister, how is it even possible that you’re here? I would hug you, if I didn’t have to finish this!”

“Some friends brought me,” she said. “We’re getting you out of here.” When the rescue had been discussed on the Wobani Pathfinder, of course, they had decided on speaking with Ralock first, to see if he even wanted to be ‘rescued.’ But Alack had decided not to make it a question. She just wanted her brother off the Charybdis and out of Imperial clutches, immediately.

“Friends!” he smiled. “This is fortunate! I have need of your friends. We have work to do.”

“Ralock, we’re here to get you off this flagship,” Alack reasserted.

“That’s fine,” he smiled, “but before I go, there’s something that needs to be done. Trust me, once the rebellion knows what I’m doing, they’ll be fully in agreement.”

“The rebellion?” Alack was perplexed for a moment, and then realized that he misunderstood. “Oh, I’m not with the rebellion.”

“Seriously?” He stopped what he was doing and searched her expression with his eyes. She found it unnerving. “You mean… you had nothing to do with this?”

Alack frowned and gestured around her. “I don’t even know what this is. What is going on, here?”

He put his hands to his face, horrified. “By the Red Flame! You don’t know?!?”

The distress klaxon started to blare a long, steady siren howl, rising and falling in harmonic pitch, loud enough to throw up a barrier to conversation.

.....oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo.......oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo.......

“Attention, all personnel,” came a flagship-wide broadcast. Everyone is to return to their post. If you were not currently on duty, report to your typical duty post.” Alack looked up reflexively, even though the sound was merely coming from an overhead speaker. “By the order of Moff Benzin, anyone who does not return to their station will be considered a deserter, and deserters will be executed for treason.”

She looked back at her brother, pleading with him with her eyes to explain what was going on. His hands were still pressed over his face as he regarded her from between his fingers. Finally, he lowered his hands.

The klaxon continued to rise and fall.

“The Emperor is dead,” he answered. “And so is Lord Vader.” He realized that she still didn’t understand the full implication, so he gestured outward toward the hallway. “Nobody knows who’s in charge…”

---

Mercie strode determinedly toward the escape pods.

By now, she could guess some of what had happened. Something monumental had shaken the military’s faith in the Empire, wholesale. Many of the conscripted personnel, a few of the enlistees and even some of the clones – many of whom either hadn’t wanted to be here in the first place or else had become disillusioned with Imperial rule, over their years of service – wanted out. Others saw an opportunity to settle scores with their former superior officers or take revenge for sleights by rivals, over the years. And, of course, there had been hardcore stalwarts who would defend the Empire through anything, but who had been momentarily put off-balance by the immediate happenings or shocked at how quickly things had seemed to fall apart.

But those stalwarts were collecting themselves, and as they re-established their positions and reasserted their authority, they would ultimately regain control.

Alack was wrong: they had not stumbled into a fortuitous situation. They had wandered into the momentary disarray before a draconian clampdown.

“.....oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo.......oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo......” The siren was overpowering and annoying.

“You there!” one of the officers shouted at Mercie as she approached another barricade on the way to the escape pods. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m on orders,” she growled back. “We need to take back control of this ship, and that starts with dealing with the mobs at the pods.”

She was counting on her acting, and the anger seemingly radiating from her face to convince them of her sincerity. Fortunately, the situation was still too frantic for the officer to quibble over whose orders she was acting on.

“Very well,” he replied, letting her by, perhaps feeling like there was too much going on to get in the way of someone who seemed to want to help straighten it all out. “Show these bastards how we deal with turncoats.”

---

Ralock’s attention had returned to the keyboard, and he typed fiercely.

“How long is ‘this’ going to take?” Alack winced.

.....oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo.......oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooo....... The klaxon’s wail continued to sound, uninterrupted.

“Gar’ad, sister. Be patient,” he admonished. “I’m almost done here, but then I need to sabotage the hardware.”

“Impossible!” she protested. “We can’t stay here. We don’t have that sort of time.”

“Sister, you’re aware of what happened to Alderaan, right?”

“Who isn’t?” Alack replied. “If I had lingered there a couple of weeks longer, I would have been on Alderaan when it happened.”

“Then you must understand why I have to do this,” Ralock reasserted. “My work in quintessence had just come to fruition. With the advances we made, the Empire can not only wipe out a planet, they can obliterate a whole star system. I can’t have that happen – especially now that every two bit Moff is going to want to use every bit of power at hand so they can ascend to the role of Emperor and fill the power vacuum!”

“Kriff!” Alack swore under her breath.

Finished at the keyboard, Ralock rose, angrily. “You shouldn’t have come here. Or if you did, you should have at least brought people from the rebellion. At least I’d have had some help then, rather than having to worry about your safety...”

“I can look after myself, Ralock,” she replied.

“Do you even have a blaster?”

“Sure,” she replied, unholstering it and holding it forward.

“You don’t…” he reached forward and pushed her arm to the side. “You don’t point that at people unless…” He paused, looked at it, and then back at her. “You know the safety is on, right?”

“Of course, I do,” she smiled. Then, she looked at the weapon in her hands, doubtfully. She remembered the trouble she’d had with the blaster on Nar Shaddaa, and how she had been too embarrassed about it to discuss it with anyone. “Which… which part is the safety?”

“Gar’ad!” Ralock exclaimed, in two heavily emphatic syllables. He lurched forward, flipped the safety off and admonished her: “Don’t point that at anyone, unless you intend to use it on them.”

Then, he stormed out of the office. “Come on!” he shouted. “I need to report to Commander Borgis, to keep up appearances, and then I have a stop to make. You’re taking an escape pod, without me.”

---

By the time they were halfway to Ralock’s rendezvous with the Commander, they found themselves mobbed by solders and officers, fighting over access to this deck’s escape pods. Loyalists had set up barricades to keep the men in the corridor, making the area impassable. Worse, the tensions were starting to boil over into brawling.

“You have no authority here!” one of the men shouted at the officers at the barricade.

There were several cheers of assent, before the officer shouted back over the din. “You will return to your stations at once! Desertion is treason!”

Some of the milling soldiers began throwing things toward the barricade and the chorus of random shouts began to drown out the klaxon blaring overhead.

One of the officers at the barricade fired a warning shot.

This triggered a hail of blaster fire as the mob attempted to overrun the barricade, ready to pave the way to escape with their bodies, if need be.

Alack and Ralock had already made their way to the side of the corridor, hoping to sidestep much of the throng, but were now far enough in that they were unable to escape the fighting.

That’s when Alack heard the unmistakable sound of thrumming plasma, crackling as glimpses of glowing red flashed within the mob.

The officer heading up the barricade stood tall and shouted to the others flanking him. “Open fi –“

She saw it sail above their heads, a cortosis steel-formed object reminiscent of a candelabra. It was one of Mercie’s sai, and it ignited just before it struck the officer’s head. The two smaller blades sunk right into each of his eyes, while the central blade speared his skull. Then, it extinguished and flew back into her outstretched hand before his corpse hit the floor.

By this point, the mob was in a shambles, somewhat aware that there was more than two sides in this battle, but confused about where the third was or why they were involved.

Alack and Ralock were being crushed by squirming bodies but kept working their way gradually down the corridor.

As the bodies started falling, Mercie’s shape and the glowing scarlet blade she wielded became more apparent. Some of the officers fired on her. She parried the bolts, but needed a distraction.

That’s when some of the bodies started rising back up.

It wasn’t all of them. Some of the corpses were damaged in ways that it was impossible for a Force necromancer to use them. But there were enough at Mercie’s disposal to surprise and terrify the remaining soldiers, as they rose up and attacked. Occasionally, one shambling body would simply throw itself on another living body. Other times, they were more mobile and articulate.

Ralock and Alack were finding more freedom to move as some of the others near them fell, and others began to flee. They worked their way to the barricade, where few loyalists now remained, but had trouble climbing over some of the bodies.

Some of the others had a similar idea, and the two of them were met by a sudden rush of soldiers hoping to escape. Once again, the sizzle of Mercie’s blade sounded and there were flashes of red, much closer, now. The other soldiers began to fall away.

Ralock squeezed through, only to come face to face with the Zabrak, her scarlet lightsaber stopping inches short from his face. “Mercie!!! No!!!” Alack shouted, her voice guttural and desperate.

Ralock had frozen, petrified. His intention had been to make his way past the escape pods and further into the ship to the research facility, but he had become paralyzed by terror. Alack pushed him toward an escape pod, and he listlessly complied, somewhat catatonic.

“Sister…” he muttered, wide-eyed. “Who have you allied yourself with…?”

“Her name’s Mercie. She…”

“Yes, I know,” he gasped back toward her. “Mercielaga. The necromancer. We were support for some of her missions back when I was an officer in the Separatist armies. She usually wore a mask, but I would recognize her face anywhere. I know who she is.” He looked back at his sister and craned his neck forward toward her for emphasis. “Do you?!?”

Alack had unsealed the door to one of the escape pods and pushed him inside. Ralock had been too stunned to realize what was happening. They could have this conversation later, she thought to herself.

“Alack, I am serious. She is unspeakably cruel. I watched her interrogate Republic soldiers – some of the strongest wills I’ve ever seen – and had them in tears begging for death. I saw her dismember a family. She slaughtered an entire town, right here on Saleucami. She can’t be trusted, I swear this to you.”

“Have you said your piece?” came Mercie’s voice, from directly behind him. She had already entered the pod and stood in the doorway, directly behind him.

Ralock stiffened, in terror. “Sir! Yes, sir!” He responded in military fashion, hoping it would be deferential enough to avoid punishment for what he had just said.

Mercie rolled her eyes, and snarled with contempt. “Good. Then sit down, buckle yourself in, and shuuuuuut uuuuuuup…”

She had sealed the door to the pod, and the three of them sat along the outer walls, quickly harnessing themselves in for a ride that was certain to be rough.

Ralock couldn’t take his eyes off Mercie. He searched for any sign of whether she would be vengeful for what he had just said to his sister. He was afraid of what she might do when they landed. And then, suddenly, he remembered where he was and what he had been doing.

“Wait! I can’t leave here, yet! I’m not finished!!!”

Mercie slammed her fist on the button and the pod disengaged.

At first, it simply felt like they had been jettisoned into space, traveling at a rapid pace. But as the pod reached Saleucami’s gravity and atmosphere, it felt more like free fall, as the container shook with the turbulence. The sense of falling and the shaking only amplified as they descended, until it felt like the capsule could break apart. Ralock started to scream.

They felt the popping of bubbles in their ears as they descended, and Mercie’s voice soon joined Ralock’s, until she lost consciousness.

Ralock slipped into unconsciousness too, as the escape pod’s first parachute was released and repulsor jets engaged.

The chute and first set of repulsors were only designed to slow the craft until the second set of each engaged. As the first parachute snapped away, the second released and the second set of repulsors initialized. The descent slowed, but it still felt uncomfortably like freefall.

The capsule abruptly slammed into the pink soil of Saleucami. Ralock hung in his harness, appearing lifeless. Mercie, too, laid limp against the capsule wall.

Alack had managed to stay conscious all the way down. She studied her teacher’s red face, wondering how much she really knew about her.

Then.

Golg, 11 BBY

Shirana was still getting a sense of the layout of the citadel, between what little she knew of the path from the cell to the chamber, and the now-distant memory of when she had first arrived. It’s like the entry opened up into an enormous courtyard, while the actual living space traced a small arc behind the throne and alcove leading to a limited number of rooms, each with a designated function. She wasn’t sure of all of them, but besides the cell and the chamber, she thought (sensed, moreso) that there was also a kitchen, a living space with adjoining bedroom and fresher, a den with a library, and more down the other half of the arc. The echoes and the smells painted it out in vague strokes.

Mercie had seen more, having already raced to the hangar at the end, then back. She led Shirana to the open space of the courtyard. There was something about this space. There had to be an answer here.

The Diathim could be anywhere, given how fast he was. Being in the open was dangerous for them. But she vaguely remembered when she had first arrived, how the void in the Force felt strongest in this place. There was something in an alcove to the side. It was like it was sucking the life out of everything around it. There was an object, roughly a foot long on the longest axis, and three quarters of that on the circumference, a brassy, curvilinear diamond, looking like two bells joined at their mouths.

If they were going to stand a chance against this creature, they had to find the object. It was hampering their connection to the Force. They had to destroy it.

They tried to be quiet, not wanting to draw him out any sooner than necessary. They needed time, and they didn’t know what condition he was in. He could still be dazed. But then, given his almost supernatural strength and speed, for all they knew, he could be fully recovered by now. They couldn’t be sure of anything.

Mercie made out the vague shape of a sigil above the alcove. Had there been more illumination, she might have recognized it then, but the place was lit too dimly. The citadel light was limited to the leak of ambient glow from outside, where the nebular gases of the Extrictarium were at a low ebb.

They heard the sound of a scuff from the darkness. It was too late!

He had found them.

The sound had come from the darkened far side of the courtyard.

Maybe there was time. Shirana focused, and searched for the shape of the Diathim. She also tried to detect anything that could be used as a weapon, and anything that could be used defensively against his strength.

Mercie, on the other hand, had dashed for the nearby alcove. There had been a recess, and a bowl – almost an altar, of a sort – with some objects within it. There! She spotted them, her lightsaber, her sai, and the brassy object that she was certain had something to do with how they had been cut off from the Force.

Dashing toward them meant that Mercie had stepped out into the light, abruptly. Shirana knew that she needed some cover. She stepped into the light as well, at the distance away that she had found herself, near the fountain. “Here!” she shouted, trying to draw the attention of the being tracking them.

It worked. The being appeared from nowhere, slamming into the Miraluka’s body, throwing her into the bone-dry fountain. She scrambled to regain her balance so she would be able to attack once she’d regained her bearings.

He was gone, again.

Mercie had reached the objects. She briefly considered grabbing her lightsaber, but before all else, she snatched the object. Could it be shattered? Should she cut it with the saber?

Shirana Nyst’s lightsaber lit suddenly, plasma energy thrumming so loud that it shook the air of the courtyard in concussive waves. But it wasn’t Shirana who wielded it.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up as Mercielaga realized that the Diathim had already crossed the courtyard’s expanse, and the weapon — and its handler — were right behind her.

The realization was too late, as the yellow-orange energy blade pierced her back, emerging from her chest, vaporizing Mercie’s heart and piercing her lungs.

Chapter Text

Chapter Eleven: The Butcher of Ryutapei

Now.

Saleucami, 4 ABY

Ralock paced on the pink sands, looking up at the Wobani Pathfinder, then at her captain, then back at the YT-2400.

“I would have expected that a freighter named after a legendary rebel mission would be affiliated with the rebellion,” he commented to Callisto.

“Yeah, well, the previous captain served on that mission, and then got screwed over by the rebellion,” she replied. “It’s a long and unpleasant story, and ended with a lot of people dying. I doubt we have time for it.”

“Ah.” He looked back at the Mandalorian, studying her face, her young but angry eyes, the hardened frown, her disheveled hair. “Always so much war and death,” he sighed.

“And so many soldiers willing to play along,” Callisto quipped back at him, and then departed for the clearing.

Ralock’s shoulders dropped, and he sighed again.

After picking up the inhabitants of the escape pod, the Pathfinder — under the direction of Vee and Waya — had spirited everyone to a remote space, almost on the opposite hemisphere from where the Charybdis had been berthed, knowing they should stay close enough to the planet’s surface to avoid Imperial notice, but wanting to be far enough away to escape whatever searches went out for personnel who had escaped using the pods. Too, they needed to think, compare notes, and plan their next steps. After all that had happened, they felt the crew and passengers had finally earned the luxury of time.

Although not actually a pink-coloured planet, Saleucami was often facetiously called that. A temperate planet with a mixture of climes, Saleucami’s deserts often had an odd purple or pink hue to them, and many of the planet’s lakes did, as well. As a case in point, the clearing they had settled upon was at the base of one such pink lake, with a sand bar that led faraway out into the centre of the water. The lake-bisecting pathway was lined on either side by carved statues of pinkish salennite, erected by early Pantoran settlers to commemorate gods or heroes. The pink of the sand and the water came from bacteria-rich algae, which had recently become a major export from the planet, for its medicinal value. It didn’t smell very nice, though, so other than Jujjeg (who reveled in the area and relished both the slime and the statues), the crew of the Pathfinder didn’t really want to endure it for too long.

“We really can’t stay here,” Ralock said, approaching the others in the clearing. “It’s not safe to be on Saleucami, right now, especially with what the Empire had been planning for this planet,” he added.

Everyone had disembarked from the freighter, leaving Waya and Netha to see to maintenance, while they all took in the fresh… that is to say, the pungent air, and finally set their feet on soil that felt like it wasn’t subtly and uneasily moving underneath them. Some of the crew had carted out hoverchairs, and Mercie, Rana, Sirky, Skako, Alack and Vee sat in them, arranged in a haphazard three-quarter circle that sort of faced the lake and the path of idols. Callisto plopped onto the repulsorlift – the same one that had been used on Ossus – and lay back, looking up at Stisste, the oddly-tinged sun which shone down on them. The Hutt swam out into the pink, swampy lake.

Ralock drew Alack aside, hoping to speak in private with her for the first time since they ejected from the Charybdis. "Sister, I really wish you had got in touch with the rebellion. I mean, these people are... this is a bizarre collection you found. I understand you were desperate, but..."

"They're my friends, and I trust them," Alack asserted.

"You really shouldn’t trust Mercielaga. I implore you. And what is the story with her and your Jedi friend? It’s weird."

"They're lovers, Ralock," she stated bluntly. "They went through something horrible together, and it changed them both."

"That's disgusting!" he spat.

Alack took immediate offense. She knew what it meant. Her family didn’t care so much about the affairs of Sith and Jedi, but two women being in love… this offended them. For years, she had been afraid of her family ever finding out about her attraction toward other women, but at this moment, she was incensed, and just threw it at him: "Then you really don't want to know about me and the Captain." She wasn’t entirely sure that it was true at this point — things were a little uneasy with Twitchy at the moment — but that was beside the point, and she wielded the revelation with the intent to hurt him.

Ralock was speechless.

She stormed off.

Unhappy that people continued to ignore him, Ralock collected himself and strode into the open quarter of the circle. “Do you all remember what happened to Alderaan?” he asked.

Everyone in the galaxy had known about how the Death Star had destroyed Alderaan, before itself being destroyed by a few rebel pilots on Yavin 4. The question didn’t need an answer. He continued. “The work of my team was to improve upon that technology, to design a version that could destroy an entire star system.”

“Did the Empire build a monstrosity that could destroy a star system?” Skako blurted.

“Well, no, but..”

“Yay…” a few tired, bored voices in the assemblage half-heartedly cheered in something close to unison.

“You don’t understand,” Alack’s brother continued. “Before they were willing to spend the resources on building another space station of that scale, the Emperor wanted a test. And the only way to actually do such a thing was to design a much smaller scale version of the device that could demonstrate its capability proportionately. So we build a smaller-scale weapon. We accelerated the project way too quickly, and took far too many chances on it, but we did it.”

“What, so you built a Death Star superweapon on a Star Destroyer?” Rana asked.

“Well, not quite. Like I said, before they invest that much into it, they want to make sure the science is sound and that it can be done. Someday, it could result in these superweapons on every Star Destroyer, or Death Star -sized weapons that can destroy an entire system. But this one is of enough scale that it could still shatter or collapse the planet. We had the advantage of siphoning off some funding and technology from a project to develop the second Death Star, but the disadvantages that none of our superiors thought it would work. Plus, Commodore Xyston had to come up with a way to retrofit the Charybdis for a superweapon. So what we have right now is a prototype. It can do damage on a cataclysmic scale, but the greater danger is...”

Callisto interrupted. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the Empire is building another Death Star.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Ralock sighed. “Yes, they started building another Death Star. It was almost finished, but was just destroyed by the same Rebel factions that killed the Emperor and Lord Vader. But that’s completely beside the point. Pay attention.”

Rana had sat forward, tensed, more focused on the Chiss’ actual concern. She understood. “So you made the Alderaanian superweapon… compact and portable…? Why the flarg would you do that?”

“We did,” Ralock answered. “As to why, well, that was our orders.”

“A conscientious objector would have refused,” the blind woman snarled.

“A conscientious objector would be dead,” Ralock snapped back at her. “Anyway, we were here evacuating non-essential personnel from Saleucami because we were going to test it.”

“On Saleucami,” Callisto muttered, sitting up suddenly, alert. “Kriff. Uh, folks? We can’t stay here,” she warned.

“On Saleucami,” Ralock agreed. “The Empire hadn’t forgotten this planet’s role in the Confederacy, and the planet really doesn’t have enough strategic or resource value to dissuade them.”

“Not a lot of trading in pink slime, lately, eh?” Mercie quipped.

Ralock was getting frustrated. “You people are not listening to me. This current weapon, it can do massive damage to Saleucami, destroy ecosystems, territorial destruction, planetary collapse… but the real danger is in what happens if this test succeeds. If the test succeeds, then it proves the science. They will likely begin development on superweapons that can be mass produced. If this test succeeds, they will know that the science is sound, and that it’s infinitely exploitable. You can’t blow up information. The galaxy will never be safe.”

Ralock continued, “Saleucami’s been snubbing their nose at the Empire and defying directives enough that people elsewhere in the galaxy have been taking notice. It was thought that an example needed to be made. The last straw was when Taleucema announced that they were going to erect a memorial statue to that Jedi that was slain during peacekeeping missions here, Stass Allie.”

This was like a slap to Rana’s face. “What?!?” She had never known what had become of her former mentor, and to hear her name tossed out casually and in the context of her death was not something Rana was prepared for. She went pale, and Mercie moved closer to embrace her.

No one else noticed. “So the Empire plans to obliterate Saleucami over a statue?” Skako asked.

Ralock winced. “No. Haven’t you been listening? It’s not the statue, it’s the legacy of insolence. Of several planets, actually. And the need to make an example of the instigator. And, of course, the need to test the weapon.”

“Of course,” Skako repeated, mocking.

“So? The Emperor is dead, now” Alack reminded everyone. “The Empire is in disarray. Aren’t they a little preoccupied now by determining who’ll take power?”

“It’s not that simple, sister” Ralock replied. “The Empire is filled with aspiring tyrants, all of whom see an opportunity to advance themselves. Of course, they may even try to pretend that they Emperor is alive, at least in the short term, because they’re going to want to keep the Galactic Empire intact as much as possible. But behind the scenes, there are plenty of figures – mostly military personnel – who will be vying to be its new true figurehead. Mas Amedda, Gallius Rax, Raythe, Sloane, maybe Adelhard… By the time a selection process for a new leader emerges, they will want to be seen as the obvious choice. And anyone below their stature will want to be seen as important enough for a significant role in the new order. Moff Benzin is the type who would be likely to proceed with the test, both to prove himself as a loyalist, and to demonstrate the power at his command.”

Skako agreed. “He’s right. The Emperor being dead makes this a much more dangerous situation. Power vacuums make for extremely volatile times.”

By now, Rana had fallen deeper into her chair, her mind distant and distraught. Mercie held her, but knew that her thoughts were far away.

“You should have left me on the Charybdis,” Ralock stated. “I’ve altered most of the research data and records and it should be updating fleet-wide, but the device is still operational. As long as it exists, it can be used to undo any of my sabotage, and this technology will remain a danger. If you want to stop this weapon, it has to be demonstrated to be a colossal failure. The Empire must be dissuaded from pursuing this technology any further.”

Callisto noted the comment about wanting to stay on the Charybdis, and shot a glance at Alack, who shrugged in reply. “It got very weird, up there,” she said, making excuses for herself. “There wasn’t time for a conversation.”

An Imperial craft passed overhead. They watched it in momentary silence.

“By now,” Ralock continued, “I might be listed as a deserter. I don’t know. But I need to get back on board the Charybdis. The longer I am away, the more limited my options will be.”

“We don’t need a plan,” Callisto stated. “We need to get off this planet and get on with our lives. The scale of this…” she paused to rephrase. “None of us signed up for heroism. Heroism is shitty, and thankless, and will get you killed… and at the end of the day, next to nothing will have changed. Count me and my crew out. We’ve done far too much, already.”

Alack was disheartened to hear that, and thought it was probably related to her rejection, from earlier. She was losing Twitchy, and that hurt, since she had grown quite fond of her. She wasn’t sure how to salvage things between them, or even where it was that everything went wrong.

“We have a Jedi,” Skako suggested. “Does that help?”

Sirky said something in Mandaba, and Skako added: “That’s right. And a Sith, too.”

Ralock looked over at Rana and Mercie. He wasn’t sure why the Miraluka was so distraught, but he felt certain that she would be too old to be of much help in the coming fight. And the relationship with Mercie, who was currently huddled up with her, consoling her… that was just confusing.

“Twitchy is right,” Mercie added. “This is not our fight. We’ve already done far more than we promised. This is beyond us, and it is past time for us to decide our futures.”

Alack shook her head. “I think we have to try. Or at least I have to. I messed this up. I want to make it right.”

“This isn’t the time to be selfless, kid,” Callisto piped in, although she couldn’t help but feel a little proud of her wanting to take responsibility, despite the risk.

“No. We’ve given too much,” Mercie was insistent. “We’re not going to do this. Rana and I, at least, are not going to do this.” She looked at Alack. “And we strongly advise you to reconsider.”

Skako laughed. “You know what’s weird? I quit bounty hunting to become a smuggler because I wanted a simple life…” Sirky added something in Mandaba.

“We can do this without you,” Ralock scowled. “Mercielaga is a murderous psychopath, anyway. And as to your Jedi, anyone who would align themselves with her…”

“I aligned myself with her,” Alack interrupted him. "You don't understand, Ralock. She's very different, now. She..."

"No, let him say his piece," Mercie said. “Let’s do this.” She had been expecting the accusations.

"I don't want to hear it," Rana said, standing up, still uneasy from the news about Master Allie. She briefly touched Mercie's hand, squeezing it gently, reassuring. Then, she left, somberly walking back toward the ship.

Ralock seemed a bit surprised by Mercie's intervention, but took the opportunity to proceed.

“I served under this woman in the Separatist military,” Ralock told the group. “I am warning you all, people like her do not change. I’ve seen her torture people; slaughter them.” He turned to her, accusingly, and addressed her directly. “You act like you’ve undergone some sort of redemption, but there is no redemption for people like you.”

She smirked.

"If you want redemption, why don't you ask the people of Saleucami for it?" he challenged. Then he turned back toward the rest of them in a sweeping gesture. "Did you know that people in the region still talk about the butcher of Ryutapei? A town that she singlehandedly slaughtered. Men, women and children."

Mercie said nothing.

"I tell you," he implored, "you cannot trust her. She has a deep-seated evil that can't just be wiped clean with a few good deeds."

Finally, Mercie stood up. "Refresh my memory: aren't you the guy who invented a device for the Imps that could vaporize an entire star system?"

She had him there. Ralock moved his lips slightly, but couldn't find any words to put in them.

"Tell me," Mercie continued, "in the dying days of the Confederacy, did you happen to slip a resumée to someone, or get word out to the Empire, somehow, about your field of research?"

He stuttered a little now, but still wasn't certain how to respond. There was a growing look of alarm in his face. Most of the people assembled weren’t certain what the relevance of the question was, but to Ralock, it was his deepest shame.

"Because, you know…" Mercie approached, "in the event that the Separatists lost, it wouldn't hurt for the enemy to know of your value, would it? For when they started executing your compatriots, I mean."

"Ralock?" Alack stood up, her wide-eyes tearing up. She had clearly understood the implication.

Ralock looked at Alack, terrified, and sweating nervously. His eyes were tearing also, and he began to tremble. "I swear, I never imagined that they --" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"Ralock?!?" Alack was crying, now.

"You never imagined that they would be so interested in your resumée that they would show up on your doorstep one day, drag you away, murder your family and destroy your home," Mercie finished for him.

"Ralock!!!" Alack turned and fled.

Morah'loc'klutarn turned back to look at Mercie, his face wracked with sorrow and rage. "Schutta," he spat at her.

The assemblage was quiet, overwhelmed by the flurry of revelations and accusations and hostility.

Finally, Mercie continued. "I've never denied that I've done horrible things. Some out of survival, some when I was trying to find my way, some complicated, and some just inexcusably horrible. What sort of Sith wouldn’t have a past? I’ve probably lived a life more horrible than anyone else here.” She thought for a second, and then did a double-take, looking back at the Chiss officer. “Although if the Imps succeed in making that superweapon you designed for them, you might surpass me on that," she reminded him. "But I tend to think that if anyone else had lived my life... their choices probably wouldn't have been a whole lot different."

She moved back two steps. "I don't believe in redemption, either," she said. "But to be honest, I don’t seek it – nor do I feel as though I should have to. There are some things about my past I would change… but not as much as you would probably want. I do, however, believe in the inherent horribleness within everyone. And how that makes me equal to anyone here." She waved an accusatory finger in a sweep across the entire assemblage.

With that, she turned and left in the direction that Alack had run.

For a moment, no one knew what to say. The air hung with an awkward weight.

Vee, still sensing the urgent need to depart the planet, lilted a warning in Nautila: “Oo lahna toobay ji no kana…”

“Speak Basic,” Ralock snapped at her.

“You don’t talk to my First Mate that way,” Callisto warned.

Two more Imperial craft crossed the sky overhead.

----

Although she hadn’t heard any of what had transpired, Rana had sensed Alack’s sudden emotional turmoil. She sensed the young woman’s departure from a distance, and so she followed, using her gnarled cane for support. Mercie caught up to Rana in the brush.

“How did you know he looked for work with the Empire?” Rana asked, after her lover had brought her up to speed on what happened.

“It was just a guess,” Mercie admitted. “But my Master didn’t exactly advertise the expertise of his personnel. I couldn’t think of too many other ways that they’d have heard about him enough to want him that badly.”

When the Wobani Pathfinder had landed in the clearing, it had been not far from a village that awaited through a thatch of sparse forest. It was that direction that Alack had run – she hadn’t expected to get far, but she wanted places to hide, and options if they got separated.

“Mercie, this is off-topic,” Rana stated, “but I need to find out what happened to Master Allie.”

Mercie reached over and took Rana’s hand, giving it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. She wasn’t overly interested in the affairs of Jedi (except Rana, of course), but understood the bond that exists between teacher and student. She had felt the same measure of grief and trepidation on Lothal, when she’d heard from the townsfolk about the execution of Count Dooku.

“We can’t linger on this planet,” Mercie said, “but I promise we’ll find out one way or another. For now, though, we need to find Alack.” She didn’t want to seem heartless. Until this afternoon, Rana hadn’t even known for certain that Stass Allie had died, though she had suspected. The confirmation of it was obviously going to hurt. But like so many hurts in her own life, it had to be set aside until there was adequate time to deal with it.

The two had reached the village in fairly short order, but Rana needed to sit before going much further. They had come into the village near the market, and so the older woman found a bench, and signaled for Mercie to proceed without her. Guessing that Alack would remain in a fairly public space where she could be lost in a crowd, Mercie began checking the shops.

Rana cradled one knee, then the other. She remembered a time when she had so much more strength and energy, and hadn’t imagined ever feeling such constant pain from things so simple as standing and walking. Inwardly, she was restless, frustrated at how her frailty held her back. It alienated her, too: she felt like the same young woman she had always been, but other than Mercie, everyone looked at her with the pity reserved for grandmothers, and treated her like a generation apart. The only thing people valued her for, anymore, was her wisdom… if even that.

But it might have been that very wisdom that inspired Alack to slip out from wherever she had been hiding, and to take a seat beside Rana.

“Mercie told me what happened,” Shirana said to her.

“Are you going to tell me to forgive him?” Alack asked, a bit of anger showing in her voice.

“No,” she answered. “You’re entitled to what you’re feeling, and I’m sure that this pain is too fresh. These sorts of things take some time to work through. But in time, you may have to.”

“I know that Ralock hadn’t meant to put our family in danger, but…” Alack looked down as she shuffled her feet “… our parents are gone, and it’s his fault. I don’t… I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for that.”

“You don’t have to make any decisions now about forever,” Rana reminded her. “Just process what you’re feeling right now, for right now.”

“I don’t even want to look at him,” Alack stated.

“You’re going to have to,” Rana said. “We can’t stay here. We should really be getting back to the ship.”

As if to punctuate the point, another Imperial craft crossed overhead.

“I hate Mercie, too,” Alack admitted. “For how she sprang what Ralock did on us – on me. For all the horrible things she must have done…” She looked at Rana, unnerved a little by not being able to look into her eyes. “How do you live with all the things she did before you met?”

Shirana Nyst smiled. “The time we spent together on Golg showed me the real Mercie. We were both without power, without pretense. Underneath the rage and darkness, there was a woman who had been hurting for far longer than the time of our imprisonment. She gave me the strength to endure, and I showed her that a better world could and did exist. She gave me the knowledge of how to harden my heart when I needed to protect myself, and I gave her the knowledge of empathy.”

“Yes, but how do you live with knowing how horrible her past is?”

“I’ll be honest,” Rana replied. “I don’t dwell on it. But my Master taught me much about diplomacy, and one of the first things she taught me was that there was good in everyone. If we want to heal a horrible universe, we can’t just shun and punish the evils, we need to nurture the good – and because people are a bit of both, we need to give them the opportunity to do better than before, no matter who they are or what their past is. And part of that means giving her Mercie space to redeem herself.”

“Mercie doesn’t believe in redemption,” Alack reminded. It was something that the Zabrak had said on multiple occasions, in fact.

Rana smiled. “Well, the nice thing about redemption is that she doesn’t have to believe in it.”

Mercie approached them from behind, not trying to be so quiet as to surprise them, but not wanting to abruptly interrupt, either. When she detected her presence, Alack turned to look at her, a mixture of feelings in her expression.

“I’m sorry,” Mercie interrupted. “I know that this conversation is important, but this shouldn’t wait. Rana, one of the shopkeepers was talking about the statue of Stass Allie that Saleucami officials had been talking about making. It sounds like she knows some things about your former master’s death.”

“Where?” Rana started to rise up.

“Thirty degrees to your left, and straight ahead,” Mercie answered. The way she had described the direction rather than the storefront reminded Alack just how much the two women had learned to live with Shirana’s blindness, in ways that otherwise might not have occurred to her. Sometimes, Rana hid it so well that she forgot.

As Rana made her way to the market stall in question, Mercie took her place beside Alack. “I’m sorry how all of that happened,” Mercie told her. “Your brother was pushing at me pretty hard, so I felt like I needed to push back. But I didn’t mean for it to be that sudden or hurtful to you.”

There was a little part of Alack that found it weird that a Sith would be worried about her feelings, instead of just telling her to ‘get over it,’ but she didn’t linger on that. “I hate him, now,” Alack confessed.

“That’s understandable,” Mercie answered. “And you’re going have to go through the natural range of feelings that your mind is going to take you, over this. But… this is going to sound weird coming from me, but don’t linger too long in hate.”

“I thought hate was one of the driving forces of a Sith,” Alack said.

"Here's something that no other Sith would ever tell you," Mercie confessed, with a slight smile. "Hate is exhausting. Sith use it because it's not as fleeting as other passions, and you can sustain it forever. But it's exhausting, like a cancer that eats you away. It gives you power, but drains your identity. You think it gives you a will of durasteel, but only until you find yourself an empty shell.”

Mercie shifted a little in her seat on the bench. She didn’t feel comfortable admitting this, but proceeded, nevertheless. "I didn't realize this until I met Rana. She was the one who showed me that I could let the hatred go and find other ways to find my power. I had no idea how much it kills within you, until I finally let it go. It leaves you vacant, serving only the will of the hatred, and not your own will, or your needs. You think you’re doing what’s in your own best interest, but it’s just the best interest of the anger itself.”

She leaned forward and lit a cannagar. The pain from the wound in Mercie’s chest must have been building, again. "That isn't to say you can't use it. By all means, when you choose, when it's suitable, draw from it. And you have the prerogative to hold on to it for as long as you like. But my advice would be: don't live in it. Find ways to let go, or it will consume you.”

“Are you telling me to just forgive Ralock? Because I don’t think I can do that.”

“Forgiveness is overstating it. It’s your prerogative what you do. But don’t let yourself be consumed by your hatred… and given these circumstances, it might not be a good idea to take forever to decide.”

“That’s a pretty… generous attitude to have toward him,” Alack scowled. “He certainly doesn’t have that generous an attitude toward you.”

“Yes, but he’s right, though,” Mercie stated, drawing a long puff. “I’ve done some very horrible things. I don’t pretend otherwise.”

“Yes, we were talking about that,” Alack said. “Redemption.”

“Ah, redemption.” Mercie gave a twisted smile. “Rana’s an exception, but people generally lie about valuing and believing in redemption. They relish other peoples’ pain and suffering, but can only justify doing so if they have the illusion of an alternative. They only become truly interested in redemption when they want people to look past their own failures, often without them actually having to do something genuine to fix what they’ve done.”

“Now, that’s a pretty cynical way of looking at things,” Alack protested.

“It’s a cynical universe,” the Zabrak replied. “But think about it: redemption is purely relative. It’s as relative as the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil.’ I mean, think about that holovid that they broadcast across the galaxy to discredit the Jedi Council, of the Jedi Master who was cutting down younglings in the Temple. Could someone like that ever be redeemed in the eyes of the galaxy? Even if he did something universe-shattering – say he assassinated the Emperor, for example – still, how redeemed would he be in the eyes of the younglings he killed, and their families?”

“I would think you’d want to believe in redemption,” Alack said, still uncomfortable about some of the things she’d heard about her teacher.

“Tell me,” Mercie challenged, “what should a person have to do to redeem themselves?”

“Well, they should apologize, for one,” Alack replied. “And try to make amends.”

“A lot of times,” Mercie said to her, “there’s no good way to apologize, no receptive people willing to hear it, no way to truly fix anything… and very often, what happened is so nuanced and complicated, you’re not even sure if you’re sorry.”

“You’re referring to yourself, now, I take it?” Alack asked. “Did you really kill a whole town, here?”

Mercie sat back and reflected a moment, choosing her words and sighing. Then, finally: “Yes. It’s a little complicated.”

Alack narrowed her eyes. “It’s always complicated with you, isn’t it?”

For a minute, Mercie thought that her student would spring up and run off to hide, again.

“Master Tyranus was trying to get Saleucami to support the Confederacy,” Mercie explained, “but they wanted to remain neutral. To persuade them, he started by trying to win over some of the civic and district leaders. One of those was the Burghomaistra of Ryutapei.”

“Is that like a Mayor?” Alack asked.

“Yes, but of a City-State. He presided over the city and surrounding countryside, as well,” Mercie continued. “My master had sent me to Ryutapei to negotiate trade and discuss the terms of the Burghomaistra’s support… or so we thought. The Burghomaistra had other plans.”

Relaxing a bit, now that Alack was invested in the story and not primed to leap up and run off, Mercie leaned back onto the support of the bench, reminiscing. “For weeks before my visit, he whipped the public into a panic about me, as though I were some demon coming to conquer the city and demanding acquiescence. He had intended to drum up political support by seeming to vanquish me and looking like a hero and protector to the populace. When I arrived, he told me about his ruse, and that I could play along and be ‘arrested’ in exchange for his support of the Confederacy, or else he would simply order his men to overwhelm me, and I would be executed, instead.”

“Why didn’t you play along?” Alack asked. “It sounds like you could have got what you wanted.”

“He was not a man to be trusted,” Mercie answered. “And for what it’s worth, his propaganda had worked too well. By the time I arrived on Ryutapei, the antipathy from the public was so strong that he would have had to execute me either way, just to keep his people happy.”

Mercie sat forward, looking at Alack with a serious expression. “I make no apologies for cutting down the Burghomaistra there in the Civic Hall, nor the security personnel who attempted to mob me. But what came afterward, I don’t expect you to understand.”

As she exited the doors to the grand chamber, she was greeted by the sight of the people of Ryutapei, who had amassed in anger and apprehension. They understood from the way that Mercie had exited the Civic Hall alone that something horrible must have befallen their now-beloved Burghomaistra and his security detail.

At first, it was the soldiers and constabulary who had advanced on the necromancer. She deflected their blaster fire easily enough, and cut several of them down with her sai. The masked woman quickly whirled into close quarters with them, estimating that they would be restrained in firing their weapons, so as to not hit their comrades. But as more advanced, she realized that she would need to change her tack.

For a moment, her expression twitched, and there was a bitter unease in the air. A premature dusk fell upon Ryutapei, and she kept parrying their weapons, seemingly waiting for something.

Then, it happened. The Burghomaistra and his guards charged from the grand chamber in a sudden onrush, catching the people by surprise. At first, people thought that they might have guessed incorrectly – that their leader had not fallen, but that some deal had been negotiated, and they were in violation of it by attacking this woman. But this assumption gave way to confusion and fear as the local leadership and security fell upon the soldiers and police, attacking them with ferocity. People started to notice the blood on their faces, the wounds of their bodies, and the lifelessness in their eyes, which stared off into random places. The Burghomaistra and his men were indeed dead. Now, their bodies were doing the fire witch’s bidding.

This enraged the mob even more at the indignity, as much as it simultaneously terrified them. They rushed her in an angry throng, only to be intercepted by the corpses of the men they had turned to for their defense.

The most insidious part of having to fight their own dead, beyond the macabre horror of it, was that it caused the people to be reluctant. They didn’t want to fight their own security forces, their own fathers and mothers and siblings. They held back, the uncertainty of whether there was still life in their loved ones or a way to restore them somehow, causing them to switch from aggression to defense and tentative grief. This served to give the dead army ample opportunities to strike.

One by one, the people of Ryutapei fell to their dead kinfolk and neighbours, and as each fell, they rose again to attack more of the people of the city. The dead army could not be killed, only incapacitated… but as the living fell, the dead army grew.

And in the centre of it, there danced the masked necromancer, not in a dance of joy (though some might have interpreted it that way), but in a jerky-then-fluid spin that was simultaneously deflecting the attacks that came her way, yet also losing her own motor control in the flurry of controlling so many different bodies at once. In the beginning, when she controlled only a few of the dead, they were like marionettes for whom she simply had to occasionally pull the strings. But as the numbers grew, she became lost in the strings, tangled, dancing like a puppet herself, manipulated by the Dark Side. It consumed her, and it became as though she were lost in its frantic, spastic music…

“I’m sure there was a point at which I could have stopped,” Mercie said, “killing only those who had attacked me, maybe. But I’m still not sure where that point was. I became intoxicated. I was lost in the moment. I might even have liked it. I don’t remember. It was very complicated. I… I don’t really know if I could change anything that I did, let alone if I would… And the confusion of the heat of battle is often like that…”

“But children, even?” Alack wasn’t entirely convinced. “You know this is horrible, right?”

“Of course, I do,” Mercie answered. “I have no fondness for this memory. However, I feel helpless to change it now.”

Alack had always found Mercie’s piercing amber eyes unnerving, but she had learned to recognize sincerity in them, and she could see the remorse, even though it was equally paired with a steadfastness that was not willing to accept shame. She didn’t know how to feel about what her mentor was telling her. It simply was what it was.

Their thoughts were cut off by an Imperial light craft, streaking like a shot, very low in the sky, just above the trees around them, headed directly for the clearing where the Wobani Pathfinder was berthed. The sound of the jets shook the air and the ground trembled.

“Kark!” Mercie leapt up and ran for the clearing, shouting. “Rana?!? Rana, we have to go!!”

This was not good, Alack knew. She jumped up and followed, running as fast as she could.

---

All the way back, Mercie had cursed herself for not realizing the additional danger when she had shed her disguise on the Charybdis, as she intervened so that the three of them could board an escape pod. A red-skinned Zabrak of her description on security holos would have been immediately flagged. Although most of the Imperial fleet – or at least whatever wasn’t in a complete shambles, right now – wouldn’t have paid enough attention to the goings-on on Saleucami to be on the lookout for a YT-2400 freighter, Dergoa certainly would have been.

She had been assuming that abandoning her sister on Golg would have delayed her pursuit of them significantly. She was obviously wrong.

As the trees cleared before her, Mercie took stock of the situation. The crew had been carting the hoverchairs back to the Pathfinder, and upended the repulsorlift near the ship to take shelter behind it. Skako, Sirky, Ralock and Callisto were in cover, watching Dergoa slowly advance toward them, her saber drawn. None of the crew seemed to have their blasters with them.

There was also a second passenger from the craft, a male Rattataki with the lower part of his face covered by a casing of some sort. He had advanced toward the lake, where Jujjeg was racing back.

The next sight was unexpected. Jujjeg was on the Rattataki like a shot. Mercie was amazed how, in the right environment, the Hutt was incredibly swift and agile. She knew that he had formidable strength, but now, on the algae-pink swamps of Saleucami, he seemed to have been invigorated, and had been given the optimal setting in which to fight.

The Rattataki had attempted to draw his lightsaber, but Jujjeg was too fast. He bowled him over, knocking it from his hand. Then, he hefted the Inquisitor like a tuft doll, flinging him from side to side before smacking him into the mud at the edge of the lake.

“Idiot,” mumbled Dergoa, who noticed but did not stop advancing on the crew.

Vee emerged from the Pathfinder suddenly, igniting both of her lightsabers as she did. Dergoa stopped to size up her new opponent. The conflicting colours of the sabers – one yellow and one green – suggested to the Inquisitor that Vee hadn’t constructed them herself, but acquired them later.

“Interesting,” she stated. “I don’t really sense much of the Force in you,” she added. “Are you supposed to be a Jedi, too?”

The Nautolan leapt at her, trying to take advantage of the fleeting moment of surprise. Dergoa stretched up an arm and Vee was halted in midair.

“Sister!” Mercie shouted, close enough now to get Dergoa’s attention, and hoping to stop her before she could harm any of the crew.

It worked. Dergoa tossed Vee to the side, more interested in the Zabrak coming toward her. “Sister,” Dergoa repeated, somewhat sarcastically. “Now you want to be sisters? That wasn’t a very sisterly thing you did to me out in the Extrictarium.”

The Rattataki stirred, but Jujjeg sat on him. Callisto dashed over to check on Vee, while Skako darted into the Pathfinder to retrieve blasters.

“For that matter, you should have done our parents some dignity by dying with them,” Dergoa snipped. “Instead, you’ve become a mockery to everything they stood for.”

“I have no idea what they stood for,” Mercie shouted back, closing the distance between them.

“Ah, that’s right. You were too young to know anything about them, right?”

“Tell me,” Mercie said. It was partly a delay for time, but also partly a request for information she had been curious about all her life. As severed as she was from her past and untethered as her life had been, she did still harbour a regret for the lost links to her family.

“Why? You’ve probably deduced that our mother was a Nightwitch, and our father a Nightbrother. Of course, instead of domesticating him, our mother fell in love, and became a trader as an excuse to go someplace where father could be more than just a slave. Hm. Maybe it would be worthwhile for you to know that: their so-called love got them killed, just like it’s going to do for you and your pet Jedi.”

Mercie said nothing, she simply kept advancing, hoping to get close enough to strike.

“I managed to find out a little bit more of your history, though,” Dergoa added. “It hadn’t occurred to me to look so far back. You’re one of Dooku’s whelps, aren’t you? That means you're not really a Sith, just some Dark Jedi, then."

This inflamed Mercie. "This from an Inquisitor," she snapped at the hypocrisy. "You're no more than a lapdog who doesn't have the fire to take what she deserves for herself."

Dergoa ignored her, at first, continuing. "And a necromancer! Now that is interesting. That is a skill I would love to learn. I don’t suppose I could talk you into teaching me…?”

“It’s all over, Dergoa,” Mercie ignored the question. “Your Emperor is dead. The Galactic Empire is in shambles. There is no reason for us to fight.”

“Ah, but you’re wrong, sister,” Dergoa answered. “And about everything, because this has given me the opportunity to take what is rightfully mine. The Galactic Empire will persist in some form, and the line of Sith will continue. I will see to it. I’m even doing something new and taking on an apprentice.” She shot a look at her flattened Rattataki companion. “Although my current choice of student might need to be reconsidered,” she frowned. “I fixed the incessant yammering, but I’m not sure if I could fix that level of incompetence. I guess that’s what you get for enlisting slaves.”

Mercie heard the contempt in her voice when she spat out the word “slaves” but chose to ignore it. She also realized the Rattataki’s jaw casing was designed to silence him. She was a bit unnerved by how she felt from the unexpected reflection of the kinds of cruelties she had once perpetrated.

“But I will find a way to ensure that the line of Sith, engendered by the Rule of Two, carries on,” Dergoa continued her own blathering.

Mercie had come as close as Dergoa was willing to allow. The Inquisitor remembered that with the necromancer’s sai, Mercie’s fighting style required her to get in very close – so her sister was determined to keep a good amount of distance between them. She lit her saber and held it forward, keeping Mercie at bay.

Dergoa was a little surprised when, instead of sai, Mercie raised her own lightsaber and crossed it against her sister’s.

“What? No toys?” Dergoa asked. “I thought your sai were your signature. It sure seemed like it from what I read about your life as the masked necromancer.”

“If your apprentice babbles as much as you do, I can see why you gagged him,” Mercie stated, dryly.

Alack had arrived not long after Mercie, but was approaching cautiously, still several feet away. Dergoa winked at her, a gesture that the young woman was unsure how to interpret. Rana, meanwhile, was still struggling against her pain and the limitations of her body, amid the trees in the distance.

“Ah, here’s your padawan. Where’s your darling Jedi?” Dergoa sneered. “I should have known you to be Dooku’s cur, to go all soft on a Jedi like that. The man was a failed Jedi himself, at best. A disgrace as a Sith.”

Mercie tired of the banter, and took a swing. Dergoa caught it, then spun into a retaliation that collided with Mercie’s counter-swing.

Their blades hummed with energy, reverberating with a sizzle as they collided, casting tremors in the air. Each motion met a counter, syncopated, precise, confident.

Skako returned with blasters and tossed them to Sirky and Callisto. “If we get a clear shot, boss, should we take it?” he asked. “I mean, they’re sisters.”

“Take it,” Callisto answered. “But avoid a kill shot.”

Dergoa’s blade stopped Mercie’s in a downward swing, then pushed it away enough for her to deliver a kick to the necromancer’s chest. Mercie’s stance was stable; she didn’t retreat very far.

By this time, Rana was charging at them. She lunged and hoped to land a surprised blow.

Dergoa had seen her, and deflected with a blast that Rana hadn’t expected. It was sudden, and knocked her back into Alack. Rana had to extinguish her saber in order to avoid hurting the young woman during the collision.

“Tsk. Old lady reflexes,” she scoffed. “You’ll hardly be a challenge, will you?”

Her attack on Shirana angered Mercie, who swung a hard, reckless blow toward Dergoa. Her sister caught it, though, striking the blade hard enough to knock it from Mercie’s hand.

Unwilling to be disarmed for long, Mercie snatched one sai from her waist and promptly lit it. She raised it in time to catch another blow from her sister.

“Ah, there’s the little meat skewers. Or one of them, anyway,” Dergoa grinned. Then, she backed away. “I know this game. I have the reach. You can’t beat me.”

As Alack struggled to her feet, she noticed Mercie’s lightsaber moving on the ground – a tentative shudder, at first, and then, it started spinning, parallel to the ground.

Alack remembered the statuette in Labakka’s cabin, the spinning book, and the lecture about using her hands and motions as a focus. “This… is a tell,” Mercie had told her, gesticulating. “... You reveal yourself and your intentions. Don’t do that...” She realized that Mercie was manipulating the hilt of her lost weapon, yet not showing her intent.

Dergoa put all of her weight into a downward blow, which Mercie stopped. Then, she backed away to regain the benefit of distance, certain that it would give her the upper hand for the next strike.

Instead, it gave the opportunity for Mercie to use the spinning saber in a way that wouldn’t have been safe in closer quarters. It flew toward them, igniting as it passed between Dergoa’s legs, slicing both at about the knee. Then, it extinguished again as it flew into Mercie’s free hand.

Surprised, Dergoa collapsed to the moist pink soil of Saleucami. At first, she wasn’t sure what had happened. Then, she looked toward the pain, and realized her lower legs were no longer attached to her. There was no bleeding – the lightsaber had cauterized the cuts – but the wounds burned, and the severed nerves fired with ghost sensations.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!” she shrieked. “You midscuffer crink! I’ll kill you for this!!”

Mercie’s sister thrashed in the wet sands, her decorum forgotten in a wave of angst.

She tried to collect herself, but in her shock, still sounded somewhat irrational. “You have to spare me now, don’t you?” she taunted. “It’s the Jedi thing to do, isn’t it?” She spat. “You can’t kill a defeated foe. And I’ll be back. I’ll have prosthetics, and I’ll be on all of you, one by one.”

Rana and Alack had risen to their feet, and everyone but Jujjeg relaxed and moved from cover.

“I’ll roast your Hutt on the fire!” Dergoa fumed. “I’ll spear your Mando in the head! I’ll torture your old Jedi slut and make you watch! I’ll cut off your padawan’s arms and legs and use her for a pillow! I swear, I’ll…”

“I believe you,” Mercie said calmly, standing over her sister, igniting her saber for a brief instant, then extinguishing it.

Alack was confused by the gesture, but then realized that Dergoa had gone silent. The Inquisitor dropped to the ground, her skull speared right through.

“Mercie…” Alack gasped. “She was your sister!”

The Zabrak looked back at her solemnly. “My sister was dead. This… this mockery in her place was a danger to the people I love.” Then, she turned and checked to see if Rana was okay.

“The people I love,” she had said. Alack was caught off guard by the plurality of it.

“Erm, I could use a little help,” Jujjeg said, not wanting to move off of the prone Rattataki, since he wasn’t fully certain what he was capable of.

Mercie strode over to them, with Rana and Alack a couple steps behind.

“Let him up,” Mercie declared, once she was within arm’s length of them.

He clambered to his feet, looking anxiously from face to face.

“Let me look at you,” the necromancer commanded.

His eyes locked on hers. She seemed to be scrutinizing him, almost as though she were looking inside him.

“Ah,” Mercie finally spoke. “She used a caustic to fuse that thing to your face. I’m afraid your skin is going to be burned and scarred. There is nothing I can do about that. But I can give you your mouth back.”

Everyone around her had been braced for her to strike another killing blow, but at the comment, they relaxed and took a half-step back from the two of them.

“In the same way I can control corpses,” Mercie said to the apprentice, “I can manipulate some things about your body, but you will have to allow me. Are you willing?”

The Rattataki was uncertain at first, then nodded.

“You’re going to feel warm,” Mercie told him. “You’re going to basically sweat that thing off. Don’t worry, it’s just me causing it, and you will come to no lasting harm.”

A few moments passed, and sweat started to bead on his forehead. The sweating increased, and he was clearly uncomfortable. He started to pull back, but then realized that the jaw casing was slipping.

“Don’t fight me,” Mercie instructed. “We’re almost there.”

He was trembling, but part of that was because his body was soaked, and the sweat began to cool in the breeze, despite his continued perspiration.

The casing slipped, then hung semi-loose from his skin. He reached up and grabbed it, ripping it from the remainder of his skin. Mercie hadn’t been kidding: the skin on the bottom of his face was badly burned and seriously pockmarked, far beyond what bacta was likely to be able to heal.

That left the five of them staring at each other in a standoff, anxious about what was to happen next.

“The next move is up to you,” Mercie told him.

Furtively, he searched their faces, stepped back nervously, then ran to the Imperial light craft he had arrived in.

In moments, he was aloft, and sped away.

“He could double back and strafe us,” Callisto observed, walking up behind them.

“He could,” Mercie acknowledged. “I’m not very good at this compassion thing,” she added, “but as I understand it, it usually requires a little show of faith.”

Ralock had appeared from nowhere, and started stripping Dergoa’s body of her clothing.

Alack walked up to him. “What are you doing?”

Ralock frowned at her. “Don’t you get it? Mercielaga can get us back up to the Charybdis by posing as her sister.”

The Zabrak snapped at him. “I told you, that’s not going to happen.”

---

In short order, everyone had loaded the repulsorlift and hoverchairs into the Pathfinder and had climbed aboard. Vee and Waya navigated the freighter’s journey off the planet surface, avoiding areas of heavy Imperial infestation. The rest of the crew and the ship’s new inhabitants gathered in the lounge.

“While you were chasing after Alack,” Ralock said, “I came up with a way to get back so we can destroy the weapon on the Charybdis.”

“I told you,” Callisto interrupted. “I’m not putting my crew at risk again. This has been too much. We’re leaving, we’re going to restock our food and fuel, and we’re going to drop you all off.”

Alack searched Twitchy’s expression. She wondered if “all” meant that whatever relationship she had with the Pathfinder’s captain was now over.

“As long as this device exists,” Ralock said, “this whole galaxy is in danger.”

“And whose fault is that?” Twitchy Fingers interjected, again.

Vee interrupted, in a long string of Nautila, meant for Callisto. She went on at some length, and Twitchy’s expression was rapt, pained, and partially pleading with her friend.

“What did she say?” Alack asked.

Mercie hesitated, then spoke up. “She spoke of an Imperial mission led by compromised Jedi on her hometown in Glee Anselm. It killed her family. It’s why she first became an anarchist, and what drives her to this day: the thought of somehow stopping the Empire’s tyranny. She intends to help destroy this weapon.”

Callisto and Vee looked at Mercie, shocked.

Mercie shrugged. “My first boyfriend was Nautolan,” Mercie explained. “I’m sorry, but I’m not fluent enough to be able to speak it. But… I thought it was very eloquent, Vee. I thought they ought to know.”

“Vee’s right,” Rana stood up. “We have to do this. I will stand with her, even if no one else does.” The Nautolan looked at Rana, a little puzzled, yet a little grateful to have her support.

“No. If you do this,” Mercie warned, “some of you aren’t going to come back. Maybe all of you.”

Rana squeezed her arm. “The Force has been leading us here,” she said. “I’ve felt it. It must be done. And the galaxy cannot rest until it is. Only we know about this weapon. It has to be us.”

Then.

Golg, 11 BBY

It was a second frozen in time that felt like forever, even though it was probably only an instant.

The energy pierced her chest, and at first it was as though she could feel the energy, coursing through her body, shaking her.

But no, it was the chills of shock, the cold bead of sweat as the momentary blast of pain faded away and the blade cauterized everything around it into a round, melted mess through Mercie’s chest cavity.

She regretted not taking the craft and fleeing.

Yet, she didn’t regret going back for Shirana.

Shirana.

She could see her, now, her body tensed, realizing what had just happened. She thought her lover was screaming. But Mercie couldn’t hear it.

She couldn’t breathe. Nothing about her body was working. Her vision started to distend.

She thought about the things she had done, the people she had hurt, almost doing so religiously to pay back the universe for the hurt that had been done to her. But that was before Shirana.

It was fair enough – fair enough that she would die here, but the Jedi… her lover didn’t deserve this end. She wished there was something she could do.

But she held it. The object that brought the void in the Force, the thing that had made them powerless. She was so close…

Wait. She was so close! The blade was right there!

Mercie raised the object up with what little strength and coordination she had left.

As she raised it, the orange-yellow blade of Shirana’s saber – still protruding from Mercie’s chest – cut through the thing effortlessly. At the same time, the proximity of the saber was burning Mercie’s fingers, melting the flesh on her thumbs and index fingers, and singeing the others. But she could no longer feel it. She was shaking.

In a moment, it had passed right through, cutting the thing into two hollowed halves.

There was light and heat, and a powerful wind. The sound of ringing filled her head.

But that might not have been an actual sound. Her senses were evaporating and playing tricks on her. Mercie’s legs felt weak.

Realizing what had happened and thinking there was still time to prevent the object’s destruction, the assailant extinguished the lightsaber he wielded.

The Zabrak briefly saw Shirana, the Force returning to her in such a wave that her golden hair frothed in a violent wind and she arose, almost alight… the real angel…

Mercie collapsed. By the time she had fallen to the tiles of the floor, Mercielaga, Butcher of Ryutapei, was dead.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twelve: By the Shadow of the Iegoan Moon

Now.

Saleucami, 4 ABY

“Is anyone here familiar with quintessence?”

Ralock was explaining to the group gathered in the Pathfinder’s lounge what he intended to do if he could get back aboard the Charybdis.

“I am familiar with the Morabandian theory of the five elements,” Mercie answered. It was something that she learned from the old archivist as a child, and had resurfaced in her studies of Dathka Graush. “Soil, liquid, combustion, gas and aether. The five elements were later characterized the three states of matter, a frequent chemical reaction between them, and a representation of the spirit, sometimes referred to as quintessence.”

Ralock sneered with distaste. ‘Primitives,’ he thought. “No. Anyone else?”

Skako reclined back with his hands behind his head and looked bored. “Are you going to try to explain your whole field of study to us in one lecture?”

Ralock was terse. "No. Anyone else?"

He rolled his eyes when he didn’t get an answer. “In simplest terms, quintessence is a kind of dark energy related to the expansion of the universe, and the rate at which it accelerates. It is a rare form of energy which can interact with dark matter when...” He stopped and his eyelids drooped. “Gar'ad, this is going to be pointless to explain, isn't it?”

Ralock took a deep breath and refocused on a simpler explanation. “The reactor used in the Death Star's superweapon focused the energy generated by a hypermatter annihilation reactor through kyber crystals. By using quintessence as that energy instead, it was possible for us to produce similar results using a generator that was much, much smaller, yet also unlimited in the energy it could produce. At the scale of...”

Alack grew impatient. “How does this relate to what we need to do?”

The Chiss officer noted his sister’s irritability with some regret. She was still angry at him following the revelation that he had inadvertently caused their parents’ deaths. The ire was understandable, but he worried it would grow tedious. “There is a theoretical instability within quintessence that can cause it to surge catastrophically in a way that would destroy its generator and the ship that houses the prismatic focus. In reality, I've corrected for this instability, but I've erased record of how from the plans of the generator. It is my hope that the other Imperial scientists and engineers from my team don't know that.”

Their eyes still looked glazed over. He continued, more emphatically. “Please understand that we are not simply attempting to destroy this weapon. We are attempting to make it fail so catastrophically that we will discourage any attempts to replicate it in the future. We are going to artificially create the instability which will destroy the generator and the Charybdis, hoping that the remnants of the Empire decide that the use of quintessence for a superweapon – both now and in the future – is too risky.”

Vee spoke up. “Ooon du mahla na ghee toe nah ba choonah.”

“In Basic!” Ralock snarled.

“Don’t be such a ghest,” Callisto snapped at him. Then, she translated: “How do we know that eventually, the Empire won't return to it and still make their starkiller machine?”

“We don't,” Ralock admitted, bristling a little at the overly simplistic language. “All we can do is stage a persuasive argument for abandoning the technology, and hope that no one studies it too deeply. At the very least, we create a disincentive to build and use it in the short term, during an extremely volatile political period in the Empire.”

“Is there a medal for this, or something? Because this sounds like a whole lot of sacrifice for little reward.” Ralock’s arrogance had even soured Skako Divik’s usual goofy temperament.

“No. No one can know that we did this,” he emphasized. “Cutting off communications between the Charybdis and the rest of the fleet is the crucial first step. If they know we did this, then they know that it is not a failure of the science, and it becomes no deterrent at all. Then, we’ll have sacrificed everything, for nothing. The fortunate thing about this is that the startup of the generator typically interferes with outside comms anyway, so it will look like a natural consequence of using the Prism, rather than an anomaly to be questioned.”

“Prism?” Mercie asked.

“Sorry, that's just my shorthand for the name of the thing. The Pris –"

Callisto cut him off. "So, this is a suicide mission, and we don't even get to have any glory from it."

"Exactly," Ralock said, completely overlooking the scorn in the statement, and acting as though it were simple understanding.

Rana had to agree that it was worth doing. “It's a selfless thing that needs to be done to safeguard the lives of billions.”

“So, selflessness means suicide,” Alack replied, cynically. She was already determined to be a part of the mission, but there was still that itching streak of negativity that poked through, occasionally.

“Selflessness usually means some amount of sacrifice,” Rana stated. “In this case, yes, it would be essentially that. But you have to consider the value of what it means to people across the galaxy. This is worth our lives.”

The back-and-forth cross-talk was irritating Ralock. He turned to Skako, and asked, “How can you stand being the only man on a ship full of women?”

Several of those assembled shot him angry looks. “Excuse me?” Jujjeg interjected, while Netha tooted. Sirky said something in Mandaba, causing Ralock to shoot the Selonian an angry glance.

“No, I don’t think he’s the type to count the cat,” Callisto remarked to the Selonian.

“Enough!” Ralock shouted.

If the scientist had been any good at reading body language, he’d have known that he had a very unreceptive audience, at that moment.

“Not that I’m on board with this, but how do we create this instability?” Callisto leaned back and scowled at him.

“It's... ah, again, it's complicated to describe.” Or at least it was difficult to describe for such uneducated minds, Ralock thought to himself. “I had originally intended to alter the device itself, but I’m afraid we’re beyond that, now. The instability has been remedied, but there is a flaw in the way the Empire refines its kyber. It's a rare flaw, so much so that my team knew about it but didn't see a need to address it. When the Empire refines its kyber crystals, they are subjected to a type of compression that renders them brittle. There is a particular frequency of sonic pulse that can cause them to crack or even shatter, and if that occurs when in operation, it will feed the quintessence back on the origin, which will no longer be able to contain it. This pulse doesn't occur in the typical operation of a star destroyer, but it can be achieved using a device I built to the size of a small thermal detonator."

“How are you going to build this device?” Jujjeg asked. “We may not have the materials onhand or nearby.”

“Ah.” Ralock smiled as if this demonstrated his value to everyone. “It already exists. You don't really think I would contribute to building a superweapon of this magnitude without planning a way to prevent its operation, do you?" He hoped that this revelation would redeem him, but his words were still met with skeptical gazes. "I built it as my Plan B contingency months ago, and hid it on the Charybdis."

"Where?" Mercie demanded.

Ralock shot the Zabrak an intense glare. "No. This is my operation, and frankly, I don't trust you." He looked around the room. "All of you." His eyes fell upon his sister, and for a moment, he regretted what he had just said. But he didn't qualify his statement, and instead continued. "This is something I only trust that I can do. Your responsibilities will be to keep me alive and give me the cover I will need to accomplish this."

"What gives you the hubris to think that this is something only you can do?" Rana asked, her jaw almost clenching at the insult.

"The only way for a person to get close enough to detonate the device where the pulse will affect the kyber in the hypermatter generator will be for them to rappel down the flagship’s central reactor shaft, and the Charybdis has been specifically refitted in a way that blocks off the reactor shaft on most levels. To access the shaft, they will have to cross the most populous, highest-security level on the flagship. You would literally have to cross the training floor while drills are proceeding. You can't bully your way to this location. Blasters and flashy swords will doom us all. Only I have the sort of security clearance needed. Without me, everything fails. What I need from everyone – and from Mercielaga specifically – is to get me back on board.”

“Me?!?” the Zabrak was averse to anything of the sort.

“My plan to get back aboard the Charybdis only works if you pose as your sister,” Ralock explained.

“Then you’d better think of another plan,” Mercie stated. “I’m not sacrificing my life because some kriffing bantha pag wanted to build a better starkiller.”

---

The Wobani Pathfinder had touched down on a temperate moon orbiting Saleucami. Everyone was aware of the need to be off-planet, but they also felt that it would be easier for the team returning to the Charybdis to appear to be doing so from the planet’s surface than from a faraway locale.

The teacher and the student were sparring. Alack was getting better at parrying. She had developed excellent foresight for predicting where a blow would strike, but was still not entirely confident in choosing the right force to counter with.

Mercie stopped, recognizing that her student was getting tired. They had been sparring for over an hour. “Let’s stop there,” she said. “There’s something I’ve got to do that I’ve been putting off.”

“Sure,” Alack agreed. She sheathed her training lightstick, wondering how long it would be before she was ready for a lightsaber – training quality or real. Then, she stopped Mercie before her teacher could disappear back into the Pathfinder. “Has… has Callisto said anything about me? I mean, she hasn’t said much to me since Saleucami. I’m not sure where things stand between us.”

Mercie shook her head. “I haven’t heard anything. You’ll have to ask her.”

“I’m afraid I pushed too hard to get Ralock off the Charybdis, and now she’s mad at me,” Alack confessed. “And now that we have to get him back onto the Charybdis… I mean, I was so sure I was doing the right thing pushing him into that escape pod.”

Mercie smiled. “The problem with good judgment is that the best way to learn it is from failures.”

“Yeah, but… I’ve really messed things up, haven’t I?”

“Well, people are talking about a suicide mission now, where we could have just left him alone and allowed him to finish what he was doing, so I would say yes,” Mercie stated, bluntly.

“Gar’ad,” Alack gasped. “I never even thought of it that way. People might have to die, now, because of my bad judgment.”

“Someone would have had to die, either way,” Mercie said. “Your brother for sure, and possibly you and I, if the deed was done while we were first on the Charybdis. We just didn’t realize it, then. Now, the choice is between some or all of us, and billions of people on Saleucami – and who knows how many planets or star systems, after that. Your brother has made this a high-stakes problem, and his failure is extremely costly, now. But that’s not on you.”

Alack wanted to cry. “This is my fault…” her voice cracked.

Mercie came back and put her hand on Alack’s shoulder. “Don’t you dare take this on yourself. This was your brother’s fault. He designed the kriffing superweapon for the Empire. You made a decision that most of us would have made, without all of the information you needed at the time. People might be upset, but at the end of the day, we all understand your part in it perfectly, and most probably would have done the same.”

She started crying, anyway, so Mercie took her in her arms. “We can’t change it, Alack. We just have to choose our next steps carefully, and square all the theshes and cross all the dorns. And for that reason, we still need to keep it together and focus. Understand?”

She nodded.

“Go talk to Twitchy,” Mercie said. “Things are only going to get more awkward and strained, if time passes and you don’t.”

She nodded again.

Mercie loosened her embrace and assessed her. “There is something I have to attend to, but I suggest that you talk to Callisto as soon as you can. Promise?”

Alack nodded and wiped her eyes.

Mercie turned and entered the Pathfinder. She passed Vee, Skako and Waya chattering animatedly in the cockpit. She nearly tripped over 11-T2 darting down the hallway. She passed the door to Labakka’s cabin, where she knew that Shirana was still meditating over the loss of her former master. She strode by Sirky’s cabin, where the Selonian was grooming Shirirka — the Loth Cat preened in the attention. Finally, she entered the Engineering section, spotted an open chair, and dropped into it.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s talk.”

Jujjeg was stunned. Then, after a moment, he beamed. “Really?” Then, after he collected himself, he added, “I meant what I said before, I’m sorry about how my kin had treated you…”

“I’m not here to talk about that,” Mercie interrupted him. “I get it. You’re not them. I’m not abandoning my hatred of them, but I’m also not going to project it on you. You’ve earned that much. But you wanted to talk about Ossus.”

“Yes!” He was elated. “And Golg. If that’s okay. I think they’re related.”

“How can they possibly be related?” Mercie asked.

“There's a unique link in the form of the necromancer king, Dathka Graush,” Jujjeg answered. “Your captor appears to have been quite fascinated with him, in fact. He appeared often in the Diathim’s notes that I perused while we were on Golg, and his citadel appears to be a reconstruction, using several of the original ruins, transplanted from Graush's court on Moraband. You yourself identified Graush’s sigil. Meanwhile, the Ossan mural is told in three panels, the first of which also appears to point to Graush.”

“The Jedi on Ossus couldn’t possibly have known about Dathka Graush,” Mercie protested. “They would have painted that mural before he was even born.”

“And yet they described his reign in the first panel: the red-skinned necromancer king who replaced his heart with a crimson crystal imbued with Dark Side energies,” Jujjeg asserted. “But it’s not a prophecy about his life. It’s about his descendants.”

“Ajunta Pall ended Graush’s bloodline,” Mercie commented.

“Not blood descendants,” the Hutt answered. “Acolytes. The Ossan tale describes two generations of disciples. The first are an angel and a piper, both who seek the king’s voice but never hear it. The second generation are a black queen and a fire witch, one of whom gives life, and the other of whom commands death. They don’t seek his voice, but he speaks to them nonetheless.” He studied her expression, looking for a reaction.

“You think it’s a prophecy,” Mercie stated.

Jujjeg laughed, his belly shaking. “Until I put this all together, I thought prophecies were merely stories to manipulate people, childrens’ fancies, cautionary tales, or irrational ramblings. But there is too much to dismiss as mere coincidence.”

Until now, Jujjeg had been afraid to break Mercie’s gaze. It had been so difficult to finally get this conversation with her. But now that she was engaged, he felt a bit more comfortable. He advanced a little toward one side, where a small hookah awaited, and took a sip before continuing. “I mean, think about it. Tens of thousands of years ago, a mural is painted in a temple depicting a necromancer king who hadn’t been born yet. Tens of thousands of years later, a madman obsessed with him rebuilds his courtyard, and of all the people he confines there, it’s you — a student of necromantic traditions. And ten years after your escape, we come in contact with the murals on Ossus and revisit the citadel.” He looked at her with a serious, almost reverent gaze. “I am a man of science, but this is statistically… beyond anything. This makes me… almost makes me a believer in the Force.”

“You’re trying to make order out of a complicated set of things that happened,” Mercie shrugged. “You can’t tie these all together.”

“That’s what I thought too, at first. Now… I’m not so sure?” He took another quaff from the hookah. “The murals suggest a second character, too, a hypnotic piper known for manipulating galactic events. He seems to be a teacher to the fire witch, described as a long-faced, pale figure who almost unlocks the secret to life and death. Does this seem similar to your Count Dooku?”

Darth Plagueis — whose voluminous writings on necromancy she had studied — immediately jumped to Mercie’s mind. But she chose not to feed Jujjeg’s enthusiasm. Some of what the Hutt was telling her was almost tempting her to believe that something larger was taking place too, but she wasn’t ready to accept that yet, or to say anything to that effect. She kept her face expressionless.

“Rana thinks it’s a prophecy, too,” Jujjeg added. “And that it’s about what’s about to happen on the Charybdis.”

“Rana?” Mercie was puzzled. “When did you…”

“She spoke with me before we arrived at Saleucami. She said you were being troubled by dreams.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, between her eyes, as if staunching a headache. “I wish she hadn’t done that,” the Zabrak commented.

“Oh, don’t be upset with her,” the Hutt smiled. “I can be very persistent.”

“So, what do you think this so-called prophecy is, then?” Mercie asked.

“It’s not entirely clear,” Jujjeg said, at which point, Mercie threw her arms up in the air in frustration. “Wait, hear me out. The first panel is self-explanatory, the life and assassination of the red king. The second is of the failure of the first two disciples, but in their failure, they bring together the two women. The angel is even a clear reference to your captor.”

“You said you spoke with Rana,” Mercie reminded. “What did she say?”

“She said she believes in the will of the Force, and that It has been leading us.”

Mercie shook her head. “’Will’ is oversimplifying it,” she countered. “Rana doesn’t see the Force as some conscious being, but as interconnected currents that flow and ebb with a certain unconscious consistency. The Force doesn’t ‘will’ things to happen, but sort of 'tends' them to happen, in oddly recurring patterns."

"Yes! Yes, that is how she described it.”

Mercie decided it was time to draw the discussion to a close and carefully deflate the Hutt’s enthusiasm. “Here’s the thing about prophecies,” she said to Jujjeg: “they’re patently meaningless until we search for elements that we can twist to fit what we think the story should be. It’s not prescience, it’s all in the interpretation.”

“Maybe,” the Hutt replied. “I mean, as a scientist, I would be happy to agree with you there.”

“Then don’t vex yourself with the thought of prophecies,” Mercie said. “I understand that it’s curious, like a puzzle, but you can’t read so much into it.”

“True.” He seemed almost disappointed. “But there seemed to be some logical coherence to it that couldn’t otherwise be explained,” he added. “Like, the second lullaby made some sense of your captor’s actions.”

Mercie squinted a frown. “How so?”

“Well, it suggested that the angel tried to communicate with Graush through others’ pain. This is something that coincided with what I could decipher from your captor’s journals that I recovered from our stop on Golg. Diathim are empaths, aren’t they?”

“Are you suggesting he subjected us to pain… so he could feel it?” For a moment, she felt weak, as though her strength was leaving her.

“Not so he could feel it, so much,” Jujjeg answered. “So he could find it. Comparing it to what we know of Graush and of the Force, it seems like he might have been using pain as a way to commune, but without being subjected to it directly. Like he was trying to find a person’s locus of the Force within them. The portions of the journals that I was able to translate referred to it as the pneuma.”

Mercie put her hands to her face, shielding her expression. She turned pale for several moments. Accessing the pneuma was the key to necromancy, and even life and death. The Diathim was indeed trying to follow in the steps of Graush and Plagueis, in a completely unexpected way.

She was thankful for her chair. She was sure her legs would have given out, had she been standing.

She finally understood what her ten years’ imprisonment were about.

Moreover, the Hutt had missed the most astronomical coincidence of them all: that of all the people in the galaxy the Diathim would imprison to experiment on to discover the secret, he would inadvertently take the one person who already knew it.

Interconnected currents, indeed.

But why Shirana?

A thought occurred to her. The Force seeks balance. Perhaps in this moment, it made sense to bring together the person who had discovered the mastery of death… and the person who could turn it into a mastery of life.

“Are you okay?” Jujjeg asked.

She had decided to end the Hutt’s line of thinking, abruptly. It took all her strength to remain stone-faced and emotionless. “They’re just stories. Stop trying to make unconnected events today fit some nonsensical centuries-old legend.”

“Ah. I suppose you’re right.” He seemed disappointed. “But still, there is the allegorical value. In the Ossan lullabies, the Jedi described the two women as a sort of duality: the embodiment of the Dark Side and the embodiment of the Light; the master of death and the mastery of life; the self-serving and the selfless; the hateful and the loving. It’s as though, by coming together, the two embodied the balance that the Force seeks.”

Mercie smiled. “That sounds sweet.” She stood up to leave.

“It does,” he smiled with her. Well, it wasn’t a total loss, Jujjeg thought to himself: he wanted to be on a better footing with Mercie, and that seemed to have happened, at least.

Mercie stopped before setting foot outside Engineering, and turned to look back at the Hutt. “Out of curiosity, what happens to the women?”

“Ah, well…” the Hutt shrugged, “there’s a brief story expressed at the end of the lullabies, in which the black queen somehow gives a gift of life to the fire witch, but then the witch abandons her. She fails to act, the black queen dies, and death on a massive scale erupts, with the dead dancing under the fire witch’s fingers. Like you suggested, it’s probably a cautionary tale, maybe about hesitation.”

---

“I farkled everything up, didn’t I?” Alack asked Callisto, standing in the hallway of the Pathfinder.

Callisto looked around and motioned to her cabin. “Come on in,” she said, indicating that she wanted to speak privately.

Alack followed her into her room. “I understand what I did wrong,” she continued. “I ignored advice and the consensus, and brought Ralock back because it was what I wanted, and now…” she started to tear up “… now people are probably going to pay for that with their lives. I never meant for that…”

Callisto was a little surprised that her temperament had shifted so much in such a short time. “The blame is your brother’s, not yours,” Callisto reminded.

“That’s what Mercie said,” Alack replied. “But still, it’s my fault we’re here.” She leaned against the cabin wall. “We don’t have to make the trip back to the Charybdis, but I’m going, so someone else doesn’t have to.”

“Alack, no…”

“I mean it. I’ll help fix it. I want to. I just… I just want to make things better between us before I go.” Her eyes filled to overflowing, then spilled over.

“Come here,” Callisto stretched out her arms to her.

“By the way,” Alack said, “you were right about Ralock. He’s changed so much.”

“Yeah, the Empire does that to people,” Callisto replied.

“Thanks for not saying ‘I told you so,’” Alack said, sinking herself into the embrace. “You were right about something else, too. I was trying to get the ladder back under me. That was the whole point of saving my brother. I should have left it all alone. I’m never getting my family back.”

“Sometimes, you’re better off letting go of family,” Callisto said. “Chosen family often makes for the tightest clan.”

“You never talk about your parents,” Alack noted. “Did they die, or…?”

“No, they’re not dead,” Twitchy answered. “We just don’t keep in touch.”

“Is it because of, you know, you becoming a woman?”

“It’s not really a question of ‘becoming’ a woman,” Callisto answered. “I always have been, at least in spirit. It was just a case of sorting out my body and the way people interacted with me. But yeah, that was a bit of strain. There are other things. They don’t like that I take my helmet off around people, either. Mando sects are weird. Rando keeps in touch with them, but even for him, it’s strained.”

“Sorry,” Alack said, sort of apologizing for bringing it up and expressing regret at the same time. Then she asked, “What’s with the helmet thing?”

Callisto laughed. “It’s sort of complicated. The original Mandalorians were a dying race. The Taungs. They were a warrior-minded species, but for all their victories, their conflicts brought them to near-extinction. They decided that the best way to preserve their traditions and culture were to adopt other oppressed peoples who were driven to fight back: humans, Zabraks, Rattataki, Twi’leks… so they settled on a new understanding of the clan. When you became a child of Mandalore – or Mando’ade – you shed your old cultures and clothed yourself in the armour of the clan, becoming one of them. You didn’t show your old traits anymore.”

“Except to other Mandalorians, right? Or family?”

“It depends on how serious you took it,” Callisto chuckled. “And some sects take it very seriously. You can lift your helmet to eat and such, but you never show your face. Me and some others in clan Rook, well, we just found it too depersonalizing. Stifling.”

“I imagine it makes intimacy difficult,” Alack speculated. “And that’s a lot of time to be smelling your own breath.”

“Look, can we not talk about that?” Callisto asked. “If you’re really intent on going with your brother, at least let me show you a good time, first.”

“You just want to give me an incentive to stay,” Alack smiled.

“Something like that.”

---

Mercie tapped on the door to Labakka’s cabin, even though it was where she was residing. She knew that Rana was meditating on her Master’s death, and wanted to either let her know that she was coming in, or to give her a chance to tell her to come back later.

There was no sound, so she entered.

Inside, Vee was sitting in the chair across from Rana. Vee had handed her one of her lightsabers for the Jedi to examine, and Rana was turning it in her hands, transfixed. Vee held the other, waiting.

Rana smiled. “I’ve been telling her about Master Allie,” she said to Mercie. Vee seemed gracious, the anger of her previous interaction gone. She continued to examine the saber by touch, and by getting a sense of the crystal inside.

Mercie smiled. “That was pretty brave of you to charge my sister like that,” she said to the Nautolan.

“Oon daga leh noosama de maay’y,” Vee replied.

“Yes, I can tell you’re pretty protective of them,” Mercie said to her. “This crew has a lot of loyalty toward each other. I respect that.”

Rana handed the saber back to Vee. She had already examined the first. “The first saber, I did not get much sense from. The wielder must have been not very strong in the Force. And possibly very young. This second, though… this person was very dark. If they were a Jedi, then they had been corrupted. I sense a very violent nature.”

Vee received the saber, and replied. “Een vie tie loopan de’e ca’no bahn fahmay.”

“The Jedi fought alongside the Empire,” Mercie translated.

“Nahban tanah to mach deh kee bahna tow bik.”

“The one you identified as a darker person,” Mercie passed on, “he’s the one who killed Vee’s husband and child.”

Rana gasped. “Oh… I’m so sorry…” She wasn’t sure what to say.

“Tagah nazoo fee ni bin teesee.”

“Vee killed both of the Jedi,” Mercie related.

Rana nodded, sombrely. “I understand completely.” Vee held both sabers in her hands, and Rana placed one of her hands under Vee’s and the other on the sabers. “I know these are no substitute and can certainly never replace what you’ve lost. But they’re in far better hands, now. I hope they serve you well.”

Vee smiled politely and stood, giving a slight bow to Rana, then to Mercie. Then, she exited.

“I guess she didn’t want to leave things at the angry exchange you had the last time you talked to her,” Mercie said. “I’m glad she stopped by.”

“I am, too,” Rana agreed. “I used to be puzzled as to why people felt the Jedi were a dark, colonial presence, but now I understand it better. I’ll bet she has very a compelling story to tell. You should ask her, sometime. But she listened to me talk a little about Master Allie, and I don’t know if it helped her understand what most Jedi had hoped for the galaxy, but she listened with interest.”

“I’m sure she would have picked up on your reverence, and maybe sensed some of the idealism,” Mercie commented. “You do have your charms,” she grinned.

“According to the woman in the shop on Saleucami, Master Allie was ambushed by her own battalion, while patrolling the battlefield, where peace had recently been established. Why would the men she fought alongside suddenly turn on her like that?”

“I don’t know, Rana,” Mercie replied, sitting on the bed beside her. She wrapped an arm around her, and cradling Shirana at the waist. “There are a lot of things about these times that we’ll probably never understand.”

They sat like that for quite some time, shoulder against shoulder, arms around waists, their other hands holding each other, Rana’s head on Mercie’s shoulder.

“Rana?” Mercie broke the silence.

“What is it?” the older woman asked.

“You can never tell anyone this,” Mercie instructed.

“Of course,” she agreed. “What is it?”

For a moment, Mercielaga the necromancer looked off into the distance, as though she were searching for the words.

“I’m afraid.”

---

Mercie slipped out of the cabin, after time had passed and Rana had finally drifted away in a nap. Callisto had made a trip to Engineering to discuss some plans with Jujjeg, and spotted her on the way back.

“Hey, good, I was hoping we could talk for a minute or two,” the Pathfinder’s captain said, approaching her. “Alack is pretty adamant on putting herself at the forefront with whoever goes back to the Charybdis. I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Would she be ready for something like that?”

“You’re never ‘ready’ for a suicide mission the scale of what people are talking about,” Mercie answered. “For that matter, she wasn’t ‘ready’ for our last trip to the Charybdis, either.”

“Can you talk her out of it?”

Mercie smirked. “You tried and couldn’t, right?”

“She feels too responsible for what happened,” Callisto acknowledged.

“She listens to you better than she listens to me,” Mercie said.

“Fark,” Twitchy Fingers cursed under her breath.

Mercie changed the subject. “Alack was really worried about how things were between the two of you. Have you had a talk with her?”

“Yeah, we, uh… we worked it out.” A grin crawled across one corner of Callisto’s mouth.

Mercie smiled. “Good. She might have been a sheltered kid, but she’s having to grow up really fast.”

Callisto nodded. “I’m seeing that. Hey, do you know if Vee stopped in to see Rana? She had wanted to...”

Mercie nodded. Then, she added: “Vee’s pretty gutsy, isn’t she? I mean, the way she just charged at my sister…”

Callisto laughed. “Yeah. There’s… the story of how we met – the crew and all, I mean – is quite… well, it’s a bit long, but I hope I can tell you it, sometime. She and Labakka were some of the fiercest companions you’ve ever seen.” She paused. “I lost Labakka. I really don’t want to lose Vee, but I think she’s made up her mind. Speaking of which, are you still insistent on not going?”

“I just want to find a new home for Rana and I to settle down,” Mercie said. “That’s all. We asked for none of this. But… I think Rana might be intent on going, and I don’t know what to do to change her mind.”

“They’re trying to figure out a plan that puts the fewest people at risk, and will hopefully give some a chance to get out before the ship goes up,” Callisto said. “Maybe you’ll still get your little place together.”

---

When they finally convened in the lounge again, Ralock had decided he was in command.

“We are going to have to acquire a light Imperial craft from somewhere local on Saleucami. I will need Mercielaga to escort me aboard. If your slicer is capable enough to corrupt a few of the Charybdis’ intelligence files and surveillance footage, then we should be able to pass Mercielaga off as her sister, and create conflicting information about whether I had ever left the flagship.”

“I already told you that plan isn’t going to happen,” Mercie commented. “Anyway, the Rattataki I let go will probably have returned to the fleet and told them that Dergoa is dead.” She regretted allowing him to flee, but felt a little relieved that it provided her a reason not to try to board the Charybdis.

“Well, then you will have to bluff your way through and make it sound like he betrayed and abandoned you, won’t you?” Ralock ignored her refusal, focusing instead on what she had said about the apprentice. He had taken more of an arrogant and ignorant tone than in his earlier discussions with them, his patience clearly running short.

“There’s no need for the arrogance,” Rana chided.

Ralock rolled his eyes. “Oh, please. All you people have managed to do so far was to derail my attempt to sabotage the superweapon. All of you are a bunch of failures, plus one sadistic sociopath.”

“Hey!” Alack shouted. “I was the one who derailed things, not them – and I was trying to save you. If you’re going to be ignorant, then take it out on me.”

“Ah, sister,” Ralock looked at her, condescendingly. “If only you had found the rebellion. At least Republic loyalists would have had some tactical experience, political sense, and a sense of duty. Otherwise, you should have left me with the Empire. At least they understand order and can get things done.”

“If you’re done appreciating just how much your sister risked to try to rescue you,” Callisto snorted sarcastically, “then let’s get back to discussing how we’re going to get you back to your beloved Empire, so we can rid ourselves of you. Having an Imperial uniform walking around my ship isn’t exactly fun, you know.”

The elder Chiss stood up straight and studied the Pathfinder’s captain. “You say that like it’s an insult, but the Empire is not the problem. Whatever its faults, it’s an effective and orderly government. Under leadership with integrity…”

“Integrity?” Mercie laughed. “Integrity is merely a fictional and politically malleable ideal that is meant to embarrass conscientious people out of places of power, so that the sociopaths can have free rein.”

“That’s a really cynical way of looking at things,” Alack quipped.

The Zabrak looked back at her, and responded solemnly. “Be cynical,” Mercie replied. “Be as cynical as the crisis you face.”

“An interesting premise, coming from a sociopath herself,” Ralock responded to Mercie’s interjection.

“Is all of this necessary?” Skako shouted. “Just tell us the farking plan.”

“Yes, please,” Jujjeg added. All of the crew seemed unamused and impatient.

“Very well,” he resumed. “Mercielaga is going to fly me back to the Charybdis. She will be acting as her sister, and I will be on board. We will also need three volunteers to get to various places on the Charybdis – the Flight Control Deck, Communications, and the Command Deck. For those coming with me, your slicer will need to forge identities as an Imperial crew extracted from Saleucami. Once I have slipped on, I will set about addressing the weapon. The person assigned to communications will need to cut off transmissions to the fleet, and reroute troops. Another will have objectives overseeing the hangar, and Mercielaga will need to get to the bridge, where she...”

“You keep using Mercie’s old name,” Rana pointed out. “I don’t like you.”

Her comment was blunt and out of the blue, intended to rattle him, and it left Ralock a bit puzzled and stammering a little as he recalculated his instructions to them.

 “I’ll volunteer,” Alack offered. “It’s my fault that we have to go back, and I want to make it right.”

“No!” Ralock shouted. “Absolutely not. I failed our parents. I am not going to fail you.” He turned toward the others and waved his finger at Alack. “She is absolutely not accompanying us and sacrificing herself. That is not negotiable.”

Alack rose and strode over to him. She had to look up, as he stood several inches taller than her. “Stop being such an ass. You have been nothing but ignorant, accusatory and disrespectful since you got here, and refusing to accept responsibility for the fact that you’re the reason this farking superweapon exists in the first place! You’re the reason some of us are going to die! You’re the reason our parents are dead! You—”

Ralock slapped her suddenly, so much so that it seemed to stun even him.

In the length of a breath, Mercie had leapt across the table, sai blazing, and had Ralock pinned against the ship’s wall behind him. Six plasma blades were to the Chiss’ throat, three from each weapon, the heat of them starting to singe his flesh.

Everyone fell silent.

Ralock’s eyes darted from person to person, uncertain if he could count on anyone for help. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you,” Skako grinned, “but I am absolutely stoked about this plan!”

Mercie and Ralock remained perfectly still, in impasse.

“We need him,” Rana reminded her lover, gently.

Some of the tension left Mercie’s frame, but otherwise, the conflict was still not defused, and no one moved.

“No apology, huh?” Alack spat on her brother. He glared at her, but then out of fear resumed watching Mercie, hoping not to anger her further.

Alack returned to her seat. “I’m going, and that is not negotiable.”

“You’re going to have to let him go,” Rana reminded, again. Her voice seemed to be the only thing that could talk Mercie down. Ralock was a little perturbed, however, that the Jedi didn’t feel strongly enough about it to rise out of her chair, herself.

Finally, Mercie pulled back slowly, then more, then extinguished her sai.

Ralock finally relaxed and removed his back from the wall. He straightened the collar of his uniform. “None of you see that she’s a psychopath, do you?” he asked in a lowered tone, hoarsely. “At this point, it will give me just as much pleasure knowing that the galaxy will be rid of her as it will for us to finish this mission.”

“Can we get back to the specifics of the plan?” Rana asked, angrily.

Ralock nodded. “Yes, yes, but first I will need to know who is coming with me, and who I can count on.”

“Oon do ah lah bay,” Vee spoke up.

“You can count me in, too.” Skako Divik also stood up. “I’ve got the skills. I guess I should use them. Besides, who needs a quiet life?”

Ralock looked unamused. “This is all very touching, But how do you think we’re supposed to get a squidhead and this…” he gestured toward Skako and considered saying the word “thing,” but knew it would only spark another angry response. Instead, he skipped over using a word entirely: “… onto an Imperial flagship?

The Ongree’s snide grin stretched out above his twitching eyestalks. “Why? Do I look funny, or something?”

“Aliens!” Ralock protested. “The Empire does not enlist aliens for crew on a star destroyer. Cannon fodder in a war, perhaps, but this is not a setting where you’ll see a.…” Again, he struggled for a word, but shifted phrasing instead. “Humans and humanoids only, except in the case of known Inquisitors and collaborators. We need Mercielaga because of her resemblance to her sister, but besides her, there’s just me, the blind woman and your captain who they would expect to find anywhere on the Charybdis. Assuming the old woman can walk without her cane, that is.” Ralock was most emphatic: “I cannot stress this enough. The success of this mission depends on discretion.”

“Chiss are obviously an exception, right, brother? So I’m coming too,” Alack said. “I messed this up, so I want to make it right.” Callisto exchanged disappointed glances with Mercie.

“Absolutely not. Everyone knows I’m the only Chiss officer on board. You would stand out.”

“Our first trip was possible because I took the place of a Chiss officer from another part of the fleet. I can use those same credentials and say I’m escorting two alien prisoners,” Alack replied. She looked over to Jujjeg: “You can get the code clearances and craft the story, right?”

“It won’t be a problem,” the Hutt assented. “And in this case, honesty might be the best policy. The Imperials have been hunting Vee for a very long time, and as a known bounty hunter, I’m sure there’s some old grudges against Skako that I can turn into something.”

The expression on the blue man’s face was one of distaste as he mulled over the scenario. Alack was obviously just as adamant about going as he was about keeping her out of the danger. Finally, he relented. “This only works if you leave the landing bay in the direction of the brig. Which means that you three take, hold and guard the Flight Control Deck and the adjoining Security Centre, near the loading bay. It’ll be your responsibility to make sure that the rest of us can get out.”

Mercie was unhappy with that. “The entire Flight Control Deck? You realize the scale of it, right? It’s enormous, and with security systems easily accessible. Too much could go wrong. There’s only three of them.”

“It will take quite some time before they can leave the Forward Hangar,” Ralock answered. “By then, your Jedi will need to have accessed Comms, and inserted a code cylinder that your slicer and I have been discussing. It will essentially cut the Charybdis off from communications beyond the ship, and be capable of initiating a number of drills and subroutines. Most of those stationed there will be directed elsewhere. If they’re competent,” he said with a bit of scorn, “a group of three should be able to do it.”

“That suits me fine,” Skako grinned. “I, for one, am not planning on dying today.”

“But you will have to speak Basic,” Ralock added, looking at Vee.

“Oon schutta,” Vee snapped back at him.

“I know that word,” Ralock protested. “That’s Huttese…”

Callisto shook her head. “You’re not going to get her to speak Basic. But you need her nonetheless, and you can depend on her.”

“I already said it earlier, but I’m in, also,” Shirana said.

“Rana, no!” Mercie blurted, sitting back down beside her. “This isn’t our fight. We’ve done enough.”

She put her hand on Mercie’s shoulder. “This is everyone’s fight,” she said. “It is worth my life and more. And… maybe it’s time to live up to the ideals I once believed in.”

Mercie was angry, but also desperate. She looked toward Rana, about to say something, then turned away, thinking twice about it.

“Perfect!” Ralock interjected. “Then we have almost everyone we need.” He looked at Mercie, insistently.

“Not everyone,” Callisto stated. “I’m not going to be the Mandalorian who ran from a fight. I just wish it was a fight we stood a chance of winning.” She looked over at Alack and Rana. “Besides, someone’s got to make sure that some of you come back home. I still have to deal with the Pykes after all of this, and you’re not getting out of helping me that easily. But the Pathfinder stays with Sirky and Jujjeg. We’re going to need a different ship.”

“Taking this ship was never the plan,” Ralock commented. “We need to look like an evac shuttle from Saleucami. There are smaller Imperial outposts all over Saleucami. We’ll be borrowing a craft from one of them.”

But there was still something more pressing on his mind. He looked back at Mercie. “We need you to get us aboard. After that, I couldn’t care less what happens to you.”

Rana whispered in Mercie’s ear, not wanting to embarrass her. “I know you haven’t received much of it in your life until we met, but if I’ve shown you anything about empathy, then you know we need to act on it, now.”

Mercie nodded. “I know too much about the price of empathy,” she said, less discretely. She leaned back and lit a cannagar as they all watched. Ralock was shocked and mystified as she lit it with a spark from her fingertips, but no one said anything about it, so he held his tongue. Finally, Mercie exhaled, and acquiesced. “Fine. I’m going. But like Callisto, I’m making sure that most of you come back.” She turned to Ralock. “Except for you. You made this farkled thing; you can die with it.”

Alack’s brother nodded, sombrely. “Someone’s going to have to. I accept your terms.”

He then outlined the plan.

---

After Ralock had departed from the lounge with Jujjeg to sort out creating the credentials they would need and slicing protocols on the Charybdis, everyone else lingered quietly, in the heavy air and scent of cannagar.

Callisto was the first to speak. “It’s probably safe to say that some of us aren’t coming back. So… I just want to say that it’s been a pleasure to serve on this ship with all of you. Even the stowaways.” She looked at Rana, Mercie and Alack, and let out a grin.

“And I mean it when I say I intend to bring you all home. Kicking and screaming, if I have to.” This she directed at Vee. “We’ll win this one, and you can live to fight the Empire another day, too. Alright?”

Vee put her hand to Callisto’s shoulder, in a gesture of kinship. “lah dahnoo kay a’a feen too palou ma geen,” she said.

Callisto seemed lost for words at what the Nautolan had said, and could only reply with one word: “Sister.”

Vee turned to Mercie, and touched her shoulder, cordially. “Anh danah boon tay mala deh roos.” Mercie nodded, graciously.

The Nautolan reached out and took Rana’s hand in her left hand, and Alack’s in her right. “May the light of Jalor find you in your darkest depths,” she said, in halting Basic. It seemed an odd thing to say to a blind woman, but it was a traditional blessing among Nautolans.

Everyone was stunned. It had been known that Vee could speak Basic, but chose not to, mostly because of the arrogance of colonial agents like Ralock. But Rana and Alack didn’t understand Nautila. The fact that she made an exception – the first that anyone was aware of – was an indication of a respect that they hadn’t realized had grown between them.

“May the Force always protect and guide you,” Rana answered her.

Vee’s expression was one of brief discomfort, perhaps bristling a little at the same ideology adhered to by the renegade Jedi who had slain her family, but then collected quickly by remembering that Rana had said it in genuine grace and to wish her the best blessing that she knew. The Nautolan smiled politely, then regarded the three Force-adept women together. “Protect my captain for me.”

---

After the gathering had dispersed, Mercie and Alack found an empty part of the cargo bay.

“Her silvery beams will bring love’s dreams,” Mercie muttered.

“What?” Alack asked, not sure how to contextualize the comment.

“It’s nothing. Just something Rana used to say.” Then, she changed the subject. “We should probably take a few minutes before it's time to leave," she said.

Alack was puzzled. "Another lesson?"

"On the contrary," Mercie replied. "I think the time for lessons is over. Rana might have some things to teach you, and life, of course, never stops teaching. But as for you and I, I think the time for master and student has passed. I'm asking for a few minutes of us being two peers having a philosophical discussion, now."

Alack's mood picked up slightly. "Does that mean I've graduated?" she asked.

Mercie laughed. "Graduated? Granted, you learn quickly, but we’ve only had a very short time of training. You still have a long way to go. This is simply as far as I can take you. But I've never had a student before. I don't know how this works."

They found some isolated crates and took a seat. "What did you want to talk about?" Alack asked.

"Do you remember the Jedi code?" Mercie asked.

Alack started to recite: "There is no emotion, there is..."

"Oh, don't recite it," Mercie scowled in slight annoyance. "This isn't an exam. Besides, that one sort of hurts my ears," she quipped. "You remember it, though, right?"

Alack quickly ran it through her mind:

 There is no emotion, there is peace.
 There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
 There is no passion, there is serenity.
 There is no chaos, there is harmony.
 There is no death, there is the Force.

"Of course," she answered.

"And the Sith code?" Mercie asked.

This one jumped to Alack's memory almost as quickly:

 Peace is a lie. There is only Passion.
 Through Passion, I gain Strength.
 Through Strength, I gain Power.
 Through Power, I gain Victory.
 Through Victory my chains are Broken.
 The Force shall free me.

"That one too," she acknowledged. "Why?"

"Which do you think is true?" Mercie asked.

Alack scrutinized Mercie for a moment, wondering if this was a test of some sort. Mercie instantly recognized the look in her eyes. "No, I told you, there's no exam. This is philosophy between peers, now. There's no right or wrong answer. But which seems truer, to you?"

Alack thought for a moment, even though it's something that she had already reflected on more than a couple times. "I suppose there's some truth in both, but neither is entirely right."

She thought for a moment longer, then added, "Before my parents left Csilla for Serenno, they knew a historian who had lived for awhile on another world in the Unknown Regions, named Zonama Sekot. He had served as a diplomat to the Vong people, but told us stories about an ancestral group of Gray Jedi. And, of course, even though discussions of the Force were dreadfully taboo, I took in the stories with glee." Alack smiled in a rare moment of remembering her childhood. "These Gray Jedi had a code, too.” She recited it:

"Flowing through all, there is balance
"There is no peace without a passion to create
"There is no passion without peace to guide
"Knowledge fades without the strength to act
"Power blinds without the serenity to see
"There is freedom in life
"There is purpose in death
"The Force is all things and I am the Force."

When she had finished speaking, she realized Mercie was smiling at her. "What is it?" Alack asked.

"Nothing, really," Mercie replied. "Although maybe it's appropriate that in this moment, you're teaching me something. I'd heard stories of the Gray Jedi, but had never heard that code before. Is that what you believe?"

"Well, again, there's some truth there," Alack answered, "but it's not the entire truth. The Gray Jedi had a poor record of trying to play to the center of everything, mistaking that for balance. There is a lot of wishy-washy duplicity in that. That's only balance in times when things are not too far out-of-balance.  When the galaxy is out of balance, the ‘middle’ it tries to meet in is not ‘middle’ at all."

"Very true," Mercie commented. "The Jedi passively view the Force as something that must be directed, channeled. The Sith take a much more active approach, bending it to their will. And the Gray Jedi, as I recall, tended more to indecision, inconsistency or stalemate, than anything else."

"And what about you?" Alack asked. "You and Rana are also in between. How are you different from these?"

"We... we tend to ride the Force," Mercie replied. "We direct it when we need to, and we let ourselves be marionettes dancing on its strings, when we feel the need to let go. But all the time, we remain conscious of where we are going, and ready to change direction if discretion demands it. When passive, we are still actively engaged, and when active, we are still residing in its currents."

"What do you think the code should be?" Alack asked.

"Oh, I doubt there should even be a code at all," Mercie laughed. "More often than not, it's not a tool of focus, but something people tell themselves to try to fit what they experience into their overarching worldview."

"And the truth?"

Mercie looked back at her, seriously. "Peace is a lie. There is only Passion."

Alack seemed a bit surprised, hearing her revert to the Sith code, after all of that. She braced herself for the rest to follow.

The remainder of the Sith code didn’t follow, though. Mercie continued: "But the greatest of the passions is love. It is fragile. It is fleeting. In harder times, it's not even something you feel, but rather something you choose to do. The Jedi and Sith both fear it, and consider it weakness. And to a degree, this is true: it will make you vulnerable. And sometimes, like now, it will make you sacrifice far too much.”

"But," Mercie went on, "it will give you meaning. With meaning, you find knowledge. With meaning, you find serenity. With meaning, you find harmony. With meaning, you find strength. With meaning, you find power. With meaning, you will find a way to endure any chain that binds you, if not ultimately break it."

She looked away pensively for a few moments, and Alack digested what she had just said. She thought to herself that she didn't think she'd ever have a love as intimate and intense as the one between Mercie and Shirana.

“Anyway,” Mercie continued, “that’s been my experience. Yours might still be different. It’s something to think about. Use what makes sense to you. Discard what doesn’t. In time, you will develop a code of your own.”

A minute passed as they looked out across the landscape.

Then, Mercie leaned over to Alack and held out her lightsaber for the young woman to take.

"I don’t understand. This isn’t a training lightsaber." Alack asked, tentatively taking what was offered.

“We don’t have a training lightsaber. But on the Charybdis, you are going to need something more, anyway. So this will do, until you are ready to construct your own,” Mercie replied. “And I have my sai, which are more than enough, in my hands.”

“I shouldn’t need to tell you this,” Mercie continued, “but make sure you keep it pointed away from yourself and others unless you intend to harm them. It’s a lot more dangerous than a stick, of course. And don’t try to look into the blade emitter. That’s how the Jedi lost half of their padawans.”

Alack cocked an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

Mercie cracked a rare grin. “How should I know? Probably.” Then, a little more solemnly, she took Alack’s hands, still holding the lightsaber, in hers. “May this and the Force ever serve you.”

Mercie tightened her lips in an expression that was part smile and part sombre. She sat back and added: "Promise me something.”

"What?" Alack asked.

"If anything happens to me, promise me that you'll look after Rana. She would need someone," Mercie said. "I can't bear the thought of her being alone. And if something happens, make sure she gets on that ship to leave, even if that means leaving without me."

Alack reflected, for a moment. "You don’t think you’re coming back, do you?"

The Zabrak woman looked across the cargo bay as though she were staring off into the distance. "What we're about to do is very risky. There's so much that could happen," she answered. “To any of us.”

"She won't be alone," Alack replied. "Except for when she wants to be."

"Good," Mercie sighed. "Thank you.” She stood and stepped forward into the clearing, gesturing for Alack to follow her. “Now, you know how to fight with a stick, but there is more to using a lightsaber. It’s blade is pure plasma energy, and you need to know how to hone your own energy and bring it into alignment with the crystal that generates it. And my crystal… it might taste a little bitter to you…”

Then.

Golg, 11 BBY, the night before the escape

As she fell to the stone of the citadel floor, Mercie slipped back into the memory of the night before.

—-

On the night before their escape, a Jedi and a Sith lay spooning on the hard stone floor of a cell in the belly of a citadel hidden in the shadow of an Iegoan moon. The horned, red skinned acolyte wrapped her arms around the slightly younger, orange-haired Miraluka woman, protectively.

Over the years, they had combed every corner, every crevice of the cell, looking for a weak point that could be leveraged for escape. They inspected every aspect of the door, including the slot where their food was slid in, hoping for something that could be jimmied, pried or sabotaged in order to escape. They had used the utensils and trays from the food brought to them daily to try to scratch at the cell walls, floor and ceiling, all to no avail. The materials of the utensils were designed to dissolve in short order, making them not substantive enough to be a match for the cold rock of their prison — or as a weapon against their captor. There was nothing.

“Your silvery beams will bring love’s dreams…” Shirana sang out quietly, almost inaudibly.

“What?” Mercie was confused.

“Oh, it’s a song from an old holovid I watched as a child. Typical, overly dreamy romance story in an imagined world in which there was only good and evil – nothing in between – and people like us didn’t exist,” Shirana explained.

“People like us” could have referred to several aspects, but Mercie suspected that it had to do with their love, woman to woman. Holos about romanticized past eras tended to treat love between women as though it were either mere friendship or else unmentionably taboo and in need of being sanitized. The Jedi had clearly been heavily influenced by those holos — many of which she recounted for Mercie over the years, to pass their long hours imprisoned together — and still felt uncomfortable talking about their love out loud.

Shirana rolled over slightly to look at Mercielaga, changing the subject. “How about, after all of this, when we finally leave this place, we don’t kill each other?”

Mercie laughed.

“I’m serious. Too many holos about women like us seem to have to end in death, as though what we have isn’t meant to survive. I’d like to set a different example.”

“We’re mortal,” Mercie reminded. “Every relationship inevitably ends in death. Maybe you should set your sights lower. Ten years, maybe, or twenty…”

Shirana took a deep breath. “You’re missing my point. I’m saying that we don’t have to do that when we get out of here.”

“You know how this works,” Mercie cautioned. “Neither of us can go back to our old lives if we just go our separate ways and pretend we don’t have this in our past. Sith teaching is all about overcoming weakness, not having attachments. If I allow you to live, that is a weakness that someday, somehow, will surely be exploited. And in Jedi lore… you’re forbidden entanglements too. Not to mention that we’re so ideologically different.”

“Oh, come on, you and I both know that the ideologies are irrelevant, now. I doubt either of us would really be able to just go back to our old lives, after what we’ve experienced,“ Shirana frowned. “And you realize how much it’s going to hurt if we have to kill each other, right? One of us won’t have the heart to do it, and the other will, but will regret it for the rest of her life.”

“I know,” Mercie answered. “I’ve been there before.”

“What do you mean?” Shirana asked.

“My first lover,” Mercie replied. “The first that I chose for myself, that is. A Nautolan trainee. Lord Tyrannus had us paired together for months as we learned Sith ways. He had us do everything together, and were basically inseparable. And then at the end, during our ‘graduation,’ we had to fight to the death. Only one could survive.”

Mercie closed her eyes, remembering with some apparent pain. “He hesitated. I didn’t.”

“That’s horrible,” Shirana whispered. “Both that they made you do that, and that you did. You see that that is horrible, right?”

When she opened her eyes again, there was steely resolve in them. “It made me stronger. I learned not to depend on anyone.”

“Does it really, though?” Shirana asked. “In all of this, through this pain and this isolation, and this monster’s cruelty, am I making you weak, or am I giving you strength?”

For a moment, the Zabrak was speechless.

“We have to question it all, Mercie. Jedi legends, Sith indoctrination… all mythology in which people like us don’t exist. You’re the one that touts science, logic and analysis so much. What is it really telling you, right now?”

Mercie rolled back and disengaged from their spooning to stare into the darkness of the ceiling. A few moments passed.

Then, she rolled back over and took Shirana back into her arms, asking, “How about, after all of this, when we finally leave this place, we don’t kill each other?” It was rhetorical, of course, simply repeating the question that had been put to her, moments before. The Zabrak then buried her face in Shirana’s hair, placing her lips beside the blind woman’s ear, and whispered. “I promise you – I promise you – one day, I will fly us both away from this place. I promise…”

On the night before their escape, a Miraluka woman and an Iridonian Zabrak lay spooning on the hard stone floor of a cell in the belly of a citadel hidden in the shadow of an Iegoan moon.

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen: You and What Army?

Now.

The Charybdis, 4 ABY

They said very little as they stormed the Imperial-reserved shuttle bay of a Saleucamian spaceport. There were few guards, most of them locals, because of the Empire’s recent semi-withdrawal from the planet.

They said even less as the shuttle navigated its way off-world. The Charybdis was nowhere to be found.

“Wait, it’s gone!” Callisto acknowledged. “What do we do, now?”

“It just means that they’ve sped up their timeline,” Ralock stated, coolly. “What they’re about to do is likely to be very disruptive to the entire Saleucamian star system. They will have exited in the direction of Boonta. But we’ll need to hurry. If they power up the weapon before we board, it will change everything.”

“And if they do?” Mercie side-eyed him, distrusting.

“Then we improvise,” he answered. “Now remember, we need to get through the ship and toward our objectives as far as we can before they become alerted to our presence.” He glanced in the direction of Skako and Vee. “And at some point, they will become alerted to our presence. So move quietly, for as long as you can. Discretely. No blasters or lightsabers.”

Mercie scoffed: “What, are we supposed to do? Put people to sleep with a pinch to the neck, or something?”

Ralock simply glared at her in reply, and everyone fell silent, again.

Finally, Skako began to sing. "All hands on deck, we've run afloat, I heard the Captain cry..."

Rana leaned over and whispered in Alack’s ear. “If you have any unresolved business with your brother, now would be the time.”

Alack pondered it for a moment. “No. I’m good with whatever happens, now.”

Skako’s voice crooned on. "… A twisted path, our tortured course, and no one left alive..."

“Very optimistic,” Callisto called back to the Ongree.

“Hey,” he grinned. “I’m an optimistic kind of guy!”

—-

They held their breath as the Charybdis hailed the shuttle and took their credentials. Jujjeg was talented with hacking Imperial records systems, but they knew he wasn’t perfect.

After a moment, they had been cleared to land. “You’ll have to land in the attack hangar, though,” the response came in. The Forward Hangar is locked down.”

The communication ended and Ralock turned to them, displeased. “This isn’t good.”

“This puts us closer to the Flight Control Deck, doesn’t it?” Callisto asked.

“Oh yes,” he answered. “It overlooks the attack hangar. But it’s a massive difference in scale. The attack hangar typically houses 60 or 70 tie fighters, several tie bombers, an array of ground assault units, AT-ATs, and much of the personnel who are on standby to operate them. It is a fully militarized hangar. Security is significantly heavier than you might have experienced in the Cargo Hangar, and personnel much heavier than in the Forward Hangar, where we planned to go.” He looked toward Callisto. “We only have one person watching the ship.”

Twitchy grinned. “That’s all we need.”

“It also means,” Ralock continued, “that they are preparing to initialize the prismatic focus to charge the weapon. During initialization, all docking hangars except the attack hangar get locked down. Our planning will have to change. Shirana will need to exit first, because she will have to get clearance and make her way to Comms before Alack and the other two can go through security. Mercielaga and I will need to go second, because we have a lot of distance to cover. I’ll need to retrieve the detonator and get to the reactor shaft, and Mercielaga has to get to the Command Bridge to get me the clearances I’ll need. At that point, if they haven’t initialized the weapon, she will need to do so. And ultimately, I’ll need to access the reactor shaft from the crew deck, because it’s otherwise enclosed on most decks, on this ship.”

The Star Destroyer’s enormous underbelly attack hangar was protected by a magnetic shield, which allowed the shuttle to pass through, but otherwise kept the atmosphere and personnel from ejecting into the vacuum of space. Emergency airlocks would trip automatically if that shield failed. After the shuttle entered through the magnetic shield, a secondary energy field was enabled, providing the 'floor' of the attack hangar, and the shuttle had to settle there, until it was cleared to move into a docking bay. It meant that until they’d been cleared to fully dock, the ship and anyone in or around it was vulnerable to being spaced.

They waited nervously. Finally, their orders came through. “You’ve been cleared for Dorsal Bay 27. Welcome aboard, Sister. Your arrival has raised some questions. Report to Moff Benzin immediately.”

“They must mean you,” Ralock said to Mercie, but she had already surmised that and was preparing to disembark. “They obviously need to square your return with the Rattataki’s story.”

“Each one you release comes back at you twelvefold,” Mercie muttered, mostly to herself. She was regretting her decision to let Dergoa’s apprentice go. Maybe it was the contempt that her sister showed toward him, or the comment about him having been a slave that prompted her to show him that little mercy. But it could cost them all dearly, now.

Callisto navigated the shuttle to the firmer tarmac of Dorsal Bay 27, and lowered the exit ramp. Mercie departed right away. Rana exited with her, knowing that she had to get through clearance quickly.

The comms hissed back to life. “Lieutenant Commander Ralock! This is a surprise.”

The voice belonged to Commander Borgis. Ralock remembered that Borgis had tried to summon him, shortly before his sister intervened and he was pushed into an escape pod.

“Well, it was a bit of an ordeal getting back,” Ralock responded. “I was pushed into an escape pod by the throng, while I was on the way to your office.”

“Hurm…” Borgis sounded suspicious. “Nevertheless, we have unfinished business. See me, immediately.”

Ralock shrugged. It was an unwelcome delay, and if the Prism had already been initialized, that had already accelerated their timeline significantly. But he wasn’t overly worried. “I’ll sort it out,” he said to the others. “They most likely still feel as though they need me.” He hoped that Borgis would have his security check-in waived, like Mercie’s likely would be.

He disembarked.

The comms crackled once again. “Shuttle A34N2, we understand you have some prisoners aboard. Are they properly restrained?”

The cuffs that Vee and Skako wore on their wrists and ankles were standard issue durasteel restraints, but had been modified by Sirky for quick release, with the right type of pressure.

“They are,” Callisto answered.

“One officer escorting this terrorist is inadequate,” the voice replied. “Stay put. We’ll send a contingent of stormtroopers.”

Alack and Callisto exchanged glances. “What do we do?” the Chiss woman whispered.

“Stay put and wait for the solders, I guess,” Twitchy answered. “If they’re taking you to the brig, that’s right along where you need to go. And then, I guess… play it by ear.”

They waited for close to fifteen minutes until the soldiers arrived. When they had, they summoned Alack and her “prisoners” out of the shuttle.

“We’ll have to do your check-in later,” they told Alack. “Come with us. We’re going to need a full accounting of how you came by these prisoners.”

After they had departed, Callisto surveyed the attack hangar nervously. Ralock wasn’t kidding: it was massive, and troops were everywhere. She could barely see the end of it, and doubted that a person could walk from one end to the other in under three hours. She realized just how lucky their first visit to the Charybdis was. This… this was going to be very different.

She decided to wait inside the shuttle and out of sight, hopefully avoiding some of the routine security sweeps.

—

“Captain Trad’ol,” the officer recited, reading Rana’s code clearance. “How did you end up on Saleucami, if you were stationed on Zeltros, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I keep asking myself that same question,” the old woman quipped, making casual conversation.

“Indeed. If I was assigned to a pleasure planet, I’d never want to leave,” the officer grinned.

She felt a little jealous of Ralock and Mercie, both of whom breezed through security in an instant. Her timeline was particularly tight — perhaps even moreso, given how everyone else seemed to be accelerated through security — so it would not be good to be held up too long, here.

In the background, she could catch snippets of one side of a conversation over security comms:

“I don’t care.”

“No.”

“I don’t give a bantha’s flank about decorum.”

“Well, you tell Glup Shitto that if he doesn’t report in on time, Gomjabbar’s going to be pissed…”

“I suppose it’s not too bad,” the officer continued. “At least you’re not still on Saleucami.”

“I’m still not sure why all personnel have been recalled,” she commented, continuing to play her role.

“Ah,” the officer’s grin grew noticeably wider. “The rumour is that Saleucami’s about to get the Alderaan treatment.”

Rana tried to smile politely and seem casually indifferent, matching the nonchalance of the security personnel — but the smugness of the statement made her blood boil.

The officer’s console beeped. “Ah, there we are. You’re cleared. Guests are going to have to bunk on the crew deck, unfortunately,” he said. “Officer deck is filled to the brim, and you’re rather late. But see to the Deck Monitor, and they should be able to still assign you a bed.”

She thanked him, and proceeded onward.

—-

Most of the lower wedge of the Imperial Star Destroyer was filled with equipment, food and energy stores, assault craft and deployable land assault vehicles, machinery, sensor arrays, and the solar ionization reactor that powered the ship. Aside from the hangars, engineering and brig, most of the personnel and everyday activity took place in the upper dorsal tiers of the Charybdis. The barracks remained the lowest decks, with the ascending order being: the crew deck, officers’ deck, the medical and research deck, the command officers’ deck, and the three command decks at the uppermost part of the craft. Borgis’ office was on the medical deck, far into the research wing.

It was not far from where Ralock had done most of his work, and not far from the office where he had altered the project team’s notes. For a moment, he worried that they might have noticed.

Ralock had felt it wise to report promptly to Borgis, before retrieving the detonator he had stashed away in the wall of one of the deck’s freshers. It was best to keep up appearances.

He arrived promptly, and had stepped well into the office before noticing the troopers on either side of the door he had just passed. They closed the door behind him.

“So…” Borgis stretched out the opening, making Ralock sweat through the initial tension. “You say you weren’t deserting the ship during the, um… disarray… Pushed, you say.” He gestured for Ralock to sit in the chair facing his desk, and he complied.

“It’s true,” he replied. “You can check it on the security footage.” Ralock gambled a little that the security cameras would probably all have had their records wiped and / or been disabled by people wanting to cover their uprising and exits. But even intact, the footage would show him being pushed, or at least something like it.

Borgis eyed him cautiously, for a moment. Then, he leaned back. “Well, either way, it’s merely academic.”

“What do you mean?” the Chiss officer asked.

“Waal… you were a Sep before we recruited you, right? Confederacy of Independent Systems? As I understand it, we had to take you somewhat forcibly.”

He was referring, of course, to when the Empire sent a contingent to destroy his home and kill his family if he proved reluctant.

Borgis continued. “We have a policy for what we consider to be non-compliant personnel.”

“Now, wait a second,” Ralock protested. “It’s not like that. I’m proud of my work for the Empire.”

“So you say,” Borgis shuffled for a moment, taking a sip of caf. “But nevertheless, we have a policy. Your work with us has reached fruition…”

Ralock started to rise from his chair, recognizing that he was in danger.

“You probably shouldn’t have returned to the Charybdis,” Borgis glared at him. “But I suppose we would have found you, at any rate. In fact, during the earlier disturbance, we had actually intended to do this then – it would have been excellent cover.”

Suddenly, Ralock realized that his sister hadn’t simply prevented him from destroying the superweapon. She had accidentally saved his life.

“But either way,” Borgis continued, “it is not the Empire’s policy to allow non-compliant personnel to see the completion of their work. It…” he waved his hand casually “… it gives them too much opportunity to sabotage it.”

The fruits of Alack’s rescue, however, were about to be very short-lived.

The Chiss officer turned toward the door, only to be blocked by two troopers, brandishing blaster rifles.

Borgis rose from his chair. “Not in my office,” he instructed them. “But let his colleagues see it, as a warning. And make it hurt.”

The stormtroopers pushed him into the hallway. As he stumbled forward, Ralock was terrified. If he died now, no one would know how to find the sonic pulse detonator that was key to destroying the superweapon.

He saw some of his former co-workers passing by, then hurrying away, ashamed to meet his glance. Everyone seemed to know what was going to happen.

That was when the blaster bolts penetrated his chest, perforating his lung. Feeling a chill overtake him, Morah’loc’klutarn collapsed, then helplessly watched a wave of blood crawl outward from his body.

—-

The troopers weren’t kind to Vee.

Every few feet, she would be given a push, forcing her to take a larger stride than her ankle restraints would allow, causing her to fall to the floor. Then, given no help to climb to her feet, someone would strike her — sometimes with a hand, other times with the butt of a rifle — if she didn’t get back up quickly enough.

Judging from the comments that the soldiers around the trio were making, it was apparent that the rampage Vee had gone on following the murder of her family, had claimed the lives of several officers. The terrorist attacks she had undertaken on Glee Anselm afterward were no less costly to the Empire, either. Vee, it seemed, was far more notorious than Alack had expected, and news of her arrival on the Charybdis had stoked a lot of anger among the contingent sent to greet them.

The young Chiss woman wanted to intervene so badly that it hurt. It was clear from Skako’s expression that he felt similarly, although he also seemed concerned about possibly attracting the same treatment.

Alack could feel the hilt of Mercie’s lightsaber against her skin, tucked away in the only place she was relatively certain she could keep it concealed in the event of a search: along the bottom strip of her bra, underneath the folds of her breasts. It would be too awkward to reach for it now, but she wanted to take it out and cut them all down. She was tempted, but was certain she wouldn’t get very far before she was taken down by blaster fire. Too, the success of their mission depended on discretion.

The Empire was so cautious about Vee being on board that they had sent a contingent of twenty troops to escort them to the brig. There was no way she could be fast enough, Alack realized.

“Ah!” the blue woman cried suddenly, clutching her ribs. Something had suddenly caused very intense, sharp pains in Alack’s chest. She stumbled, her sense of balance gone. She braced herself against one of the corridor walls. She wasn’t sure where the sensations came from, but sensed that it had something to do with her brother.

“You don’t look so good,” the officer leading the contingent of soldiers said to her. “Maybe you should report to medbay.”

Alack remembered the advice she had been given from Mercie before their previous boarding of the Charybdis, about dealing with the Empire’s personnel. Project strength, and confidence. Weakness is not tolerated: it was important to show a commitment to order and discipline, at all times.

“No,” Alack answered, trying not to show her pain, even though it was not subsiding. “I have a duty to perform, and I intend to do it.”

She steadied herself, and a thought occurred to her. “But it would be best if we moved a little faster, and less of this…” she waved her hand at Vee “… toying with the prisoners.”

“Understood. Move along, men,” the ranking officer barked.

Vee cast Alack a grateful glance, but then realized that Alack’s stumble hadn’t just been a ploy. She was in some real pain.

Following along silently and as stoically as she could, Alack reached out with her thoughts, searching for Mercie. She had been taught a little about Force projection, and how to direct her voice to someone in particular, rather than carelessly, as when she first met her companions… but she hadn’t had a lot of practice.

“Mercie…?” she called out.

“I know,” her mentor replied. “I felt it. I can feel your brother. It’s…” she paused, uncertain of how to say it “… it’s not good. He’s alive, but he has only minutes, at most.”

“I was angry at him before, but I don’t really want him to die…” Alack told her.

“I’m sorry, but you know that there was no scenario in which he was leaving here alive, right? We have to stay on task, now. Keep focused.”

“Got it,” Alack steeled herself.

“Rana felt it too,” Mercie informed her. “Once she’s jammed comms, she’s going straight to him. But it means you’re probably not going to have help thinning the troops out, very much. You’re going to have to look for opportunities and use them carefully. Or… find a way to make some opportunities of your own.”

“Got it.”

She swallowed hard and looked at Vee and Skako. Her friends didn’t know it yet, but it would be mostly up to the three of them to deal with all of these troopers…

—

“Captain Trad’ol, is it?” The comms supervisor seemed confused. “Nobody told us about any comm systems training. And certainly nothing about any personnel from Zeltros Station.” He did a bit of a double take and regarded her for a moment. “You must know somebody very well-placed to get a post like that,” he ad-libbed.

Rana smiled, playing a little coy, knowing that if he thought she was somehow friend to or companion of a high-ranking official, he would tread carefully, and give her more space. But she knew it was wiser to plant the suggestion in his mind and tweak it, rather than claim it outright. In this instance, too, her age might actually be a benefit, suggesting that she had completed a long period of military service, herself.

“It’s okay,” she replied. “I’m a bit of a prodigy, so I can learn quickly on my own.”

“Do you need any sort of accommodation?” he asked, noting her visor. There weren’t too many blind personnel — usually, they were discharged from military service. If they stayed on, they were either important, or had powerful friends.

“No, it’s fine,” Rana answered, tapping the device covering her eyes (or, that is, the lack thereof). “I can see just fine.”

“Very well.”

After he moved on, she settled in at a vacant console. Slipping the code cylinder that Jujjeg had given her from her sleeve, she slotted it and waited for confirmation that communications had been cut.

That was when she felt it. She had been keeping a passive tab on Ralock, partly because he was critical to their mission success, but also partly because she didn’t trust him.

She exchanged a few silent words with Mercie. Rana was closest to the research deck, so it would be best for her to run to him, as soon as her primary objective had been achieved.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered an inaudible word of regret for Alack. She had planned to alter orders and reposition most of the personnel from the Flight Control Deck — but that would have taken considerable time. Now, Alack was going to have to find a solution on her own.

“Um, sir?” one of the other personnel spoke up. “I can’t seem to hail the fleet.”

Rana pocketed the code cylinder. Its work had been done, and now she simply needed to hide the trace of it.

“Me too,” another said. “I can only reach stations on the Charybdis.”

Rana worked quickly. The Charybdis’ superweapon was powering up at the Imperials’ initiative, so at least that took a significant bite out of her itinerary — but time was still short.

Still, there was one thing she could do for Alack. It only took a moment to isolate the security footage of the last hour within the Flight Control Deck and the brig, and replay them in Imperial systems on a loop. It was a trick she had learned from Master Allie. Alack’s team would at least have a chance to do what they needed to without any additional interference.

“I was cut off during a conversation with one of our patrollers,” a third chimed in.

Several others started speaking up, adding to the cacophony.

“I sense this is a bad time,” Rana said to the comms supervisor. “I can come back later.”

—-

Mercie knew better than to be too prompt in reporting to Moff Benzin. The Sith way was one of self-absorption. It would be out of character to not show at least a little contempt. She used the time to memorize the corridors of the Command Decks.

But after sufficient delay — knowing that too much time wasting could also put her companions in a difficult position — she reported to his office.

With Ralock no longer a factor, her role in this mission now was to disrupt the command levels, and stall the use of the superweapon until the sonic pulse detonator could be found and taken to the reactor shaft on the crew deck. She worried, though, that with the Chiss officer’s death, the disruptor might be lost, and with it, the entire mission. But still, some chaos might be helpful, and there was nowhere better to start than with the flagship’s ranking officer.

His office was arranged like a war room, consoles in every direction showing different holographic projections — of star systems, of the superweapon’s specs, of estimated statistics and financials.

Three diplomatic guards were also stationed in the room: two on either side of the entrance, and one beside the Moff.

“Ah. Sister Dergoa. How fortunate you could join me in our moment of triumph,” he grinned.

He stood and walked over to a wet bar sporting several crystalline bottles of ales. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“I will not dull my senses,” Mercie replied, dryly.

“I suppose that’s wise, for someone of your… talents,” Moff Benzin reasoned. “Too bad, though. Some of the galaxy’s finest liqueurs are right here for the sampling.”

“I have been informed that my moronic apprentice has been spinning tales,” Mercie huffed, gambling a little on what she had been summoned to discuss.

“Ah. Yes. That.” The Moff returned to his plush chair and swiveled toward his desk, gesturing to a chair across from him. “I have asked our security detail to round up the Rattataki and keep him under observation.”

Mercie sat, but didn’t let her guard down.

“I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but…”

“I made a poor choice of apprentice,” Mercie interrupted, “but I will be rectifying that, shortly.”

“Yes, well, the reason I called you here is that with all the recent changes that have happened in the past day or so, I would like to count my allies. I know the Sith and the Empire’s military establishment don’t always see eye to eye, but…”

Benzin froze. His eyes darted slightly, studying Mercie’s face.

She had been passing by everyone so easily on her way to this room — and from her previous excursion posing as Mero Klinje — that she had almost taken it for granted that Imperial officers didn’t care enough to distinguish aliens apart. One red-skinned Zabrak just looked like any other red-skinned Zabrak, it seemed. And certainly, Mercie had an excellent facial resemblance to her sister.

But the facial tattoos were different.

“Who are you…” the Moff asked, tensing and pushing his chair away as he rose to his feet.

Mercie smiled. The time for discretion was over.

—-

Ralock had been right: the path to the brig would take them right past the Flight Control Deck. Unfortunately, the escort was still too numerous to overwhelm, so they passed it by, and Alack and the armed stormtrooper contingent brought Vee and Skako all the way to the holding cells. They had reached the end of the line, and no opportunity had presented itself. If Alack didn’t act before Vee and Skako were interred, they would be down to a team of one. The two implored her with their gaze.

“You’re going to have to look for opportunities and use them carefully,” Mercie had said to her. “Or… find a way to make some opportunities of your own.”

Alack cast her gaze around, looking to see what she could try to do, using the Force. There wasn’t a lot that could be moved discretely that could…

… the troopers’ blasters. She had an idea. And this time, she wouldn’t forget the safety.

“Alright,” the officer in charge of the troops directed, “give me an open cell for this one.” He motioned a pair of troopers to push Vee toward a holding cell, and waited for one of the crewmen stationed at the consoles to lower the energy field.

One of the troopers’ blasters discharged, striking him in the foot. He collapsed to the floor, in pain.

“Kriffing son of a Hutt!” he cried out, cradling his foot.

“Soldier! Mind your weapon!” the officer barked.

Through the pain, the trooper tried to collect his thoughts, then reached for his holstered blaster, still crumpled on the floor.

“How could it discharge?” the officer demanded.

“I don’t know! I keep the safety on, I swear!” He unlatched it from his belt, and pulled it up to look.

Alack had been remembering what she had been taught about Miraluka sight. She watched the scene from the troopers’ — and only the troopers’ — eyes. She saw the handled weapon swing until it was unintentionally directed toward one onlooker.

The blaster discharged again. It struck another trooper in the neck. He gurgled and fell.

“I demand ORDER!!!” the officer screamed, his face flush. This time, several troops raced toward their fallen comrade, and most of the others rushed the downed trooper with the malfunctioning blaster.

It discharged again. Another trooper fell. This one was struck in the chest, collapsed and stopped moving.

A voice came over the comms. “We have detected blaster fire. What is your status?”

“Malfunctioning weapon,” answered a crewman, who had taken shelter behind his desk, but reached up to press the buttons needed to reply.

“Consider it handled,” the officer barked, worried about punishment for the obvious lack of discipline among his men. Then he turned to the troopers, waving his fingers as he called out the orders. “Get these to the medbay. See if this one is alive. And get this insubordinate sack of midscuffer scum a holding cell,” he said, pointing to the soldier whose blaster had fired.

They rushed to carry out his orders. In moments, Alack, Vee and Skako were only faced with two security crew, the officer, and two soldiers… if you didn’t count the one blocked in a holding cell and bleeding from his foot.

“I like these odds much better,” Skako blurted, a wide grin spreading across his forehead, triggering a puzzled look from the officer in charge.

—-

Ralock had been hoisted onto a narrow repulsor lift. He struggled for breath, but the troopers around him ignored it.

He coughed, then choked. His body was shaking, so cold. There was no strength to move, no feeling in his extremities.

He heard a woman’s voice. “I’ve been sent to finish this up. The commander wants you to clean up the blood in the hall.”

The troopers scampered away.

Ralock felt the pain lifting, his thoughts clearing. He was still struggling to breathe, but it was different: he didn’t feel the pain or terror of it, anymore.

He saw the old woman’s face.

“I can’t save you,” Rana said. “Your wounds are too much for what I can manage, right now. But I can make you go without pain. I need to complete the mission, though.”

“M… mens’ fres- fresher,” he choked out. “6D. Th… this floor. Th… third st… st… stall, r… right wall beh… beh… behind…”

“Behind the wall?” Rana asked.

“Ye…” he was fading.

She put her hand to his forehead. “Go in peace.”

For a moment, she felt bad about leaving his body on a disposal skiff, but then proceeded toward her next objective.

She had little trouble slipping down the passageways. Shirana Nyst was gifted somewhat with a talent for stealth. Moving along unassumingly, appearing confident, focused on her destination, people tended not to really notice her as she passed them by. For those who seemed a little more attentive, she would sometimes use the Jedi mind trick — usually in the form of a gesture — to mollify them, to lull them into indifference or complacency. Droids and security cameras were a bit different, but as long as she was dealing with sentient beings, she had a talent for passing by unnoticed.

An alarm startled her, though. She thought for a moment. Did she do something that security might have detected on camera?

“Attention all decks! There is an assassin on the upper decks. Be on the alert for a Zabrak woman, with red —”

Ah. She felt a little worried for her love, but realized that she had still escaped notice. She moved on.

The voice never continued, but the alarm continued to sound.

Fresher 6D. It actually wasn’t far. Rana slipped inside, aiming for the third stall along the right wall.

It was vacant, fortunately.

She was able to pop one of the panels of the flimsy metal wall out and moved it aside. Reaching in, she searched for anything the size of a thermal detonator.

She breathed a sigh of relief. The sonic pulse detonator was still there.

—

Vee had been the first to act. With the chaos of the “malfunctioning” blaster, she had paid close attention to the troopers’ weapons, their proximity, and the attention being paid to her. Vee deftly liberated a blaster rifle and began firing.

Her first shot was truest. She struck the officer in charge in the head, taking him down early. After that, though, she moved quickly — too quickly — leaving sprays of blaster bolts that sent people sprawling for cover.

Through the fray, Skako broke his bonds and secured one trooper in a headlock, spinning him around to put him between the Ongree and the three remaining Imperials. One of the security team fired, striking their fellow soldier instead of the bounty hunter.

This seemed to stir up a mania within Skako, who, still using the trooper’s body as a shield, charged the armed security officer. He fell upon the crewman, who dropped his blaster and winced under the weight of the Ongree and his fallen ally.

Skako grinned. “Ah, how I’ve missed this!” the Ongree exclaimed, and then unexpectedly planted a kiss on the crewman, followed by a punch to the face.

Alack had turned away to retrieve Mercie’s lightsaber, and as she did, she saw the other security crewman crawling over toward the comms. The last thing they needed, she knew, was more stormtroopers coming toward them. She ignited the saber, and then severed the crewman’s outstretched arm before he could signal for assistance.

The crewman looked up at her, in obvious pain and terror. For a moment, Alack was horrified about what she had just done.

“We have to stay on task, now,” she remembered Mercie telling her. “Keep focused.”

It was the crewman’s accusing eyes staring at her that Alack found most jarring.

So that’s where she thrust the end of Mercie’s lightsaber.

When she had turned around, she found that Vee had refocused, and taken down their remaining adversary. It was over.

A voice came over the comms. “We’re detecting more blaster fire. Stay put while we send a team to investigate.”

“Negative,” Alack answered. “It was another malfunction.” She ad-libbed quickly: “Is it possible that the test of the superweapon could be affecting our equipment?”

There was a pause.

“We have no reports of this anywhere else on the Charybdis,” the voice replied. “However, we are not seeing any unusual activity on camera.”

“Well,” Alack continued, “Be aware of it, because I wouldn’t be surprised if more malfunctions start happening.”

Vee cupped her hand over her mouth to stifle a snicker.

“I can hold this place down,” Skako commented once it was clear the communication had ended, reminding them that controlling security on this floor had been one of their main objectives. “But are you two enough to head back there and take the Flight Control Deck?”

Alack glanced around for a moment. What they needed was either help or a distraction.

An alarm sounded. “Attention all decks! There is an assassin on the upper decks. Be on the alert for a Zabrak woman, with red —”

Alack winced. She tried to reach out to see if Mercie was okay, but was interrupted.

“Welllll welllll…” came a voice from one of the prisoners in the holding cells. “Would you look at thissssssh…?”

She turned and her eyes met those of the Trandoshan, Kessl.

—-

The alarm was the first sign Callisto had that things were going wrong. “Attention all decks! There is an assassin on the upper decks. Be on the alert for a Zabrak woman, with red —”

At first, Callisto hoped she could hunker back in the shuttle and buy some more time. She hated being the person having to sit the fighting out: being the designated pilot was no role for any self-respecting Mandalorian. But she worried for her friends, too. She had to do it, for them.

But as it turned out, hiding would not be an option.

“Alert status,” declared a hangar announcement. “All non-essential personnel are to vacate the hangar bay. Security teams, take your positions and prepare to do a full hangar sweep.”

Of course, the Empire would have procedures for when there was an assassin on board, she grumbled to herself. The last thing they’d want to happen is for the perpetrator to find a way to escape. The first thing they would do is look for an access point, and accomplices.

Confrontation was inevitable, she estimated. And with the amount of personnel around, the fight was certain to be frantic. But the odds were terrible. The longer she could forestall things, the better the chances for her friends, she hoped.

She peered out the exit ramp and saw security teams searching from craft to craft, looking for any sign of collaborators and traitors. She recognized that it could be only a matter of time before they went over security footage and determined which shuttle the red-skinned Zabrak woman had used to come on board.

Sure enough, she spied a collection of officers huddled together over consoles at the forward check-in station. One looked up and pointed at Dorsal Bay 27.

She slipped further back into the craft.

She had thought to bring her DC-19 carbine blasters, which had sound suppressors that allowed them to operate in silence. But that only worked if her targets weren’t given the chance to fire back.

It was probably academic. Already, a battalion of stormtroopers was forming a semicircle around the exit ramp to the shuttle. She took a position near the back, guessing that the pilot’s chair would be the first place a search team would go.

After some moments of organization, a boarding party of three troopers ascended the ramp. Callisto pressed her back as far against the wall of the shuttle, to avoid being seen by any of them until they were entering the rear passenger space.

Sure enough, when the troopers split up, two went to the front. The third came back toward the rear.

As he entered the passenger compartment, his head was perfectly level with where Callisto had trained her blaster. With a silent bolt, he fell.

There was a thud, however, and this caught the attention of a second trooper. He approached more cautiously, stopping and crouching outside the entrance.

“No sign of anyone up front,” his fellow soldier commented. It was enough to distract him as he tried to signal that there was a danger in back.

It was distraction enough. Callisto had a split second to spin to face him, and plant a silent blaster bolt between his eyes.

The third trooper exited the forward compartment to see the Mandalorian facing him, two blasters trained on him.

“You’ll want to hold real still and quiet, now,” Callisto said, “because I’ve got very twitchy fingers.”

—

“What happened to Lus Dann?” Alack asked the Trandoshan in the holding cell.

“You know these people?” Skako asked.

“They were probably brought here for interrogation when Mercie’s sister was tracking Rana on Lothal,” Alack explained.

“The Zabrak witch killed him,” the Devaronian — Nondis — answered for him, impatiently.

Alack felt a momentary pang of regret. She liked the oafish Weequay, out of all of Kessl’s crew.

Kessl, Nondis and the Duros smuggler, Jensed, were in one of the holding cells, as were what appeared to be a Saleucamian farming family, a wounded Twi’lek and the stormtrooper who had been tossed into a cell moments before the fray. For the moment, they were still restrained behind the energy fields of the cells.

“Listen up,” Alack said to them. “The Charybdis is about to blow itself up, with a little help from us. You’re welcome to join us, and get a little revenge on the people who put you here. Or you can run, but there are no more escape pods left after the chaos from a few days ago. So your best choice is to help us, and any who survive can come with us when we leave.”

“Thisssss had betterr not be a mind trick…” Kessl warned.

Alack shrugged. “I don’t know how to do those,” she admitted.

“Each one you release comes back at you twelvefold,” Mercie had always said.

She wasn’t filled with a whole lot of faith in her newfound companions, but the Chiss woman hoped that this time, her mentor would be wrong. She opened all of the occupied cells, except for the trooper’s.

“We could leave some of these to watch the security console,” Alack whispered to Skako.

“Yeah, but can we trust them?” he whispered back. “This’ll be the easy job. I’ve got this. Go.”

—-

Mercie was surprised at how easy it was to cut a swath through the upper command deck, as long has she moved quickly and dodged a little blaster fire. For all their appearance of military readiness, the command decks were filled with aging officers and bored soldiers, complacent in plush but boring bodyguard assignments. They were in no way prepared for an assassin of her calibre. And as for the Moff himself… for as much brass as he accrued over his decades of service, his neck still cut like butter under her sai.

But she had forestalled the firing of the superweapon, at this point. The command decks were a shambles. Now, she had another destination. She made her way through the Research Deck. She had passed Ralock’s discarded body, but she hadn’t yet found Rana. She suspected that she would be on her way toward the reactor shaft.

Mercie recalled the dreams that had plagued her — the recurring dreams that she had been fitfully fighting every night. Rana was going to try to finish the mission. And she would fail. And she would die. And Saleucami would be lost. She had seen it.

But it wasn’t only the dreams. It was also Jujjeg’s stupid fixation on that ancient prophecy. The lullaby triptych on Ossus. The black queen who saved the fire witch, only to be abandoned to her death. She would not abandon Rana. Not in any circumstance.

She made her way onward, guessing the direction. She reached out to feel Rana’s presence, but the Miraluka was masking it. This was something she had never done before. The kriffing Jedi had shut her out! Her!

A lightsaber hissed to life, causing the muscles in Mercie’s body to tense. Her attention shifted to a figure in front of her, and she ignited her sai.

It was the Rattataki. He paused, looking a little confused. Then, his eyes widened in recognition.

He extinguished his blade, but otherwise didn’t move.

Was this a trick? Mercie waited.

She extinguished her sai, but remained alert.

The Rattataki moved back from his crouch to a stance that was more erect, or even leaning back a little. He turned to a ninety degree angle, head bowed, the stance of a soldier moving aside for a superior officer to pass. His eyes fixed upon the floor.

Mercie waited. There was tension in his body, but it wasn’t the tension of a man about to strike.

Carefully, she started to pass by.

He didn’t move. If anything, he relaxed even more. Mercie stopped when she was right beside him, and thought for a moment.

“There is a shuttle in the Attack Hangar, Dorsal Bay 27,” she told him. “Go there, and protect the captain and any of my friends who return to it.” She fought for a moment with self-doubt. Trust was hard for her. “When that shuttle leaves,” she added, “you should be on it. Understand?”

For a moment, his eyes darted up to meet hers. He gave a short series of subtle, rapid nods and then returned to looking at the floor.

Mercie moved on.

—

The hallway was where they were most visible and vulnerable. Alack, Vee and the recently freed prisoners made their way hurriedly back toward the Flight Control Deck, checking carefully around the corners. They didn’t want to alert more security with blaster fire, but worried that that might be beyond their control.

Fortunately, the distance was short, and the patrols hadn’t crossed their paths. The injured Twi’lek had difficulty keeping up, but managed to without being spotted.

They burst into the control deck in unison, Alack and Vee taking out the guards just inside the door, and Kessl and his crew firing upon the crew and security team inside the expanse. There weren’t enough recovered troopers’ weapons to equip the Saleucamian family and the Twi’lek, but they moved to claim blaster rifles and pistols from those who had fallen nearby.

A brief firefight ensued. The Duros, Twi’lek and two of the Saleucamians fell, as did several Imperials. Alack estimated that there were five to ten remaining.

She had taken shelter behind a console beside Vee. “Just so you know,” she whispered, “I don’t trust these people not to turn on us, down the road.”

Vee gave her a knowing nod and looked appreciative for the warning.

With the break in the blaster fire, Alack called out to the remaining personnel who had found cover. “Drop your weapons and raise your hands!” she shouted.

There was a pause, then a clatter, then another. Cautiously, everyone raised their heads above the equipment that shielded them.

Satisfied that the Imperials had all surrendered, Nondis opened fire on them, leaving a spray of blood.

Alack looked at him, aghast.

“You said revenge, right?” the Devaronian grinned.

Not all the crew had surrendered, however. Two surfaced above the consoles in the back and began firing.

Nondis had apparently drawn their attention first, for having fired on the others. One blast struck him in the neck and a second in the chest. As he fell, a third struck him in the head. Everyone else resumed cover.

The Saleucamian family huddled around their two fallen. One of those killed had been a teenaged male, and one looked like she could have been their mother. A panicking older male checked the boy, and then tried to resuscitate the woman. The teenaged girl was crying.

The sight wounded Alack. She thought of her own family, her parents gunned down on Serenno, her brother taken, her home bombed and burned. She wished she could make things better for them, yet here she was, being part of the reason that two of them were now dead.

“Stay on task…”

Alack collected her thoughts, remembering that there were still at least two armed crewmembers in the room. “Get back behind cover!” she whispered loudly at the family, trying to project her words to them alone.

The older one, probably the father, understood. He pushed his daughter toward safety and picked up a blaster rifle he had scrounged.

For a moment, the sound of the girl’s sobbing was the only thing that could be heard. Then, one of the crew charged toward the front, while the other fired ahead to give him some cover.

Vee picked him off, expertly.

There didn’t seem much point in asking the remainder to surrender. Instead, Alack reached out, looking to see what she could from the eyes of those within the room. There was only one other person remaining. From their view, it appeared that their hands were shaking.

The Chiss woman stood and walked confidently toward them.

The remaining Imperial leapt up and fired at her. Alack shifted quickly and parried it. She and Mercie had practiced with some projectiles in the Pathfinder’s cargo bay, but she hadn’t been sure she could actually do it. As it turned out, she parried the blast instinctively. The multidimensional view that she had, showing her exactly where the bolt was certainly hadn’t hurt.

She wasn’t going to let them fire again. She hurled her lightsaber. It cleaved the crewmember’s head from their torso, then clattered to the floor, extinguished.

I’ve got to learn how to make it return to my hand, Alack thought to herself.

“Commander, what is your status?” came a voice over the comms. “We’re hearing blaster fire.”

“Uh, we’ve had a weapons malfunction,” Alack stuttered.

“Is this the same person from the brig?”

“Fark.” Alack grabbed one of the fallen troopers’ blaster rifles and impulsively fired at the communications console, obliterating it.

Vee started calling out to Alack, animatedly. She was peering out of the observation glass into the Attack Hangar. Alack joined her.

Stormtroopers had formed a semicircle around the ramp to their shuttle. Callisto was in trouble.

“Stay on task…”

They worked quickly. Vee and Alack had been given some instruction by Ralock about what they would need to do once they had the Flight Control Deck contained. They locked down all the doors except the the one nearest the dorsal bays, where their team had exited and would be returning. They also turned off the energy shield providing a “floor” to most of the bay. This meant that when the time came, their shuttle would be able to pass through and escape, but they would also have to stay on the tarmac along the perimeter so they didn’t fall out into the expanse of space.

Then, there was an explosion, below.

They peered out into the hangar, alarmed.

—-

Callisto sheltered in the rear compartment, one blaster pistol trained on the trooper she had taken hostage and the other trained toward the exit ramp.

They had tired of waiting and sent another team. This time, there were six, and they entered together, in formation, at full alert, weapons trained in directions outward so that they had covered every view inside the shuttle.

The DC-19s were silent, but there would still be a flash. This was her last chance at any sort of surprise. She trained both blasters toward the invaders, firing as rapidly as she could. They fired back, and Callisto’s hostage jerked as their bolts struck his body. The weight of him shifted onto her, and she had to push him away to avoid being pinned. She dodged another volley, and fired again.

All six were down.

“Charge at will!” someone shouted from outside. “For flarg’s sake, get this blasted sleemo!”

Several stormtroopers charged the shuttle, all formation lost, firing wildly before even seeing where Callisto could be. She dashed against the wall of the shuttle as tightly as she could to avoid the fire.

“What a stupid way to go,” she muttered to herself.

The attack hangar trembled with the sound of an explosion.

The troopers stopped advancing, and stopped firing. They turned to look backward.

She wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. Callisto spun around and fired rapid shots at the troopers. Five more fell, the others retreated outside.

Another explosion. The hangar was in chaos. There was shouting and blaster fire. And another explosion.

Curiosity overtook her, and Callisto moved to a vantage point from which she could peer outside. The assemblage around the shuttle appeared to be dispersing, and it looked like the blasts were taking place in several parts of the hangar. She edged forward for a wider view.

Four AT-ATs had broken their moorings and trod along the tarmac outside the open expanse of the magnetic shield, heading away from the shuttle. They were firing upon the deck and sides, occasionally hitting tie fighters and other assorted craft, sometimes randomly striking something that would combust. Legions of personnel took chase, some clambering into crafts, hoping to approach the AT-ATs with more firepower.

Callisto was startled by two troopers who charged inside the shuttle. She wasn’t sure if they were after her, or wanted to shelter inside, or wanted to use the shuttle to fight or escape. It didn’t matter. Huddled as she was and distracted as they were, the troopers ended up stepping on her, then tripping and falling onto her in a pile.

From outside the shuttle, she heard the ignition of a lightsaber followed by the hisses of several strokes, the cacophony of troopers calling out in pain and surprise, and then silence.

The troopers on top of her struggled to their feet and one aimed a blaster at Callisto’s head. Their victory was short lived, however, as the whistling of the plasma blade resumed inside the shuttle. Both troopers fell to the floor, dead.

The blade extinguished. Callisto saw the pale Rattataki they had encountered on the surface of Saleucami pull the bodies off of her, then stepped further into the shuttle and took a seat.

“Well, okay, then,” she muttered. Clearly, he was not a threat to her.

She looked back out toward the rogue AT-ATs tromping away in the distance and the scramble of personnel to try to find a way to contain them.

“Is there anyone even in those things?” she asked.

The Rattataki turned to look at her. A smile spread across his face.

—-

Mercie tried to move quickly. She didn’t have Rana’s talent with stealthy movement, and it was certainly not in her favour that people were alerted to her presence. More than a few times, she had to repel blaster fire and impale various personnel who spotted her or tried to intervene.

Finally, she spotted a glimpse of Shirana’s silver hair, in the corridor up ahead.

“Rana!” she called out.

The old woman spun around, uncertain if she should race further ahead, or capitulate.

In moments, it didn’t matter. Mercie had caught up.

“Rana, you can’t do this,” Mercie stated.

“I’m finishing the mission,” Rana insisted.

“You can’t. I’ve seen it,” Mercie said to her. “You know it. If you do this, you will fail and they will all die.”

“Are you talking about your dreams?” the Miraluka woman tilted her head a little to one side, quizzical.

“Yes, but not only that,” Mercie answered. “The reactor shaft is enclosed on these decks,” the Zabrak woman informed her. “I double-checked the floorplans while I was upstairs, and Ralock was right. To get to the reactor shaft, the only way is to cross through the crew deck, and across an expansive training yard that is filled with thousands of troops at all hours, and under heavy security. Personnel sometimes number in the tens of thousands. Stealth or disguises are not going to work.“

“Then we are lost,” Rana fretted. “We’ve failed.”

“No, Rana.” Mercie held out her hand. “There is one way. I can do it. It has to be me.”

For a moment, Rana tilted her head slightly, puzzling what Mercie was saying. Then, a sob choked in her throat. “No… Mercie, no…”

“But this is only worth it to me if I know that you are safe,” the Zabrak told her. “I need you to be safe. I need to know that, Rana.” Mercie took Rana’s hands in hers.

“Let me come with you, then,” the old woman said.

Mercie shook her head. “She needs you. They need you. And I need to know that you will survive. More than that, I won’t have the concentration I’ll need, if I’m also worried about you. Go.”

Rana suddenly realized that Mercie had, during the discussion, slipped the detonator from her fingers, and now held it in her hands.

“Why does it have to be you?” Rana asked.

“Because what has to happen next needs to come from someone with no moral centre. And because you don’t have an army,” Mercie replied.

“But I do.”

Mercie turned and began to leave, and Rana felt paralyzed. All she could do was watch her lover hurry away.

The Zabrak looked back, then stopped. “Go to them!” she called back to Rana. “They need you to go. I need you to go.”

Rana’s legs collapsed underneath her. “I can’t…”

Mercie turned and sped away. All the Miraluka woman could do was watch her disappear into the bowels of the Charybdis.

—-

They watched the spectacle taking place in the Attack Hangar with some amazement.

This couldn’t have simply been Twitchy’s doing. Certainly, Imperial equipment had been designed to be able to operate and fire without a pilot, maybe even coordinated on a timer, but Alack was fairly certain that Callisto didn’t have that level of expertise.

Nevertheless, the personnel within the hangar were effectively diverted, at least for the moment. Their exit was secured, and Alack’s team had fulfilled their duty.

“Have you secured the shuttle’s escape?” It was Mercie’s voice, unmistakably.

“Yes,” Alack answered.

“Then it’s time to go, now,” her mentor said.

“Will you meet us there?”

“No.”

“I can come to you, if you need help,” Alack offered.

“No.”

“You don’t get to pull this on me. Where are you? I’ll be there right away.”

“This isn’t the time for insolent bravado,” Mercie replied. “I’m finishing this. You promised me you would look after Rana. She’ll need you. And Twitchy will need you. And I need for you to not be a part of my body count. So go.”

“Don’t do this.”

Silence.

“Mercie?”

She had shut her out.

Something felt knotted in Alack’s chest. Being cut off like that… hurt.

“Stay on task,” she reminded herself audibly.

Vee looked at her quizzically.

“It’s time,” the Chiss woman said. Then, she hailed the brig. “Skako? It’s time to pull out.”

“Understood,” cackled the Ongree.

—-

Miraluka have no eyes.

Consequently, they have no tear ducts. The sound of a Miraluka crying manifests as a sensation of extreme crushing in the chest, a stabbing in the ribs, with a little sickness and a lot of pain. To the observer, there is usually the wrack of pain on their face, the sound of sobs similar to someone gulping for air, or pulsating in crushing pain.

As Shirana Nyst navigated the hallways alone, she tried and failed to stifle the sobs, which came from her throat in gasps, like they were being squeezed out of her lungs.

The noise attracted troopers. There was no chance at stealth with the involuntary noises triggered by the pain she felt. As they would appear in sight, she would deflect their bolts, cut them down, all within a seeming haze, as though none of this could possibly be happening.

“But this is only worth it to me if I know that you are safe,” Mercie had said to her. “I need you to be safe. I need to know that, Rana.”

She understood that sentiment. She could certainly imagine saying it to Mercie if their situation had been reversed. But it was the cruellest thing her lover could ask of her: what Shirana wanted, more than anything, was that if they couldn’t survive this fight together, then they should die together.

Yet even that she now had to sacrifice, in order to grant Mercie’s final wish.

More troopers appeared. She sliced through them like a minor inconvenience, the pain in her heart and strain in her weakened body being more of a danger to her, now.

She wanted to turn back, to follow Mercie — out of sight if she must.

But Mercie would know.

And she was right: she would not have enough focus to raise and control the army that she needed, if part of her was worrying about Shirana. Mercie would still die — but she would fail and die for nothing.

And that was far, far worse.

The crushing in her chest made it impossible not to sob aloud on the way back to the shuttle.

—-

“Vee!”

Callisto threw her arms around the Nautolan as she climbed into the craft. “I seriously didn’t think you were going to come back,” she admitted.

“Ooon da bahn too lay pah,” Vee acknowledged. She hadn’t really planned on it.

Alack, Kessl and the two Saleucamians followed shortly afterward. Callisto was a little baffled by the presence of the Trandoshan and the others, just as Alack was by the sight of Dergoa’s apprentice. But Callisto launched herself at the young Chiss woman. “Am I glad to see you, kid...”

After a moment of embrace, they separated, and Callisto scrutinized her. “Have you heard from Rana?”

“She’s coming back,” Alack said. “I think she’s in pain.”

“Mercie…?” the Mandalorian asked.

Alack’s lips stiffened, and she found herself unable to reply. She gave a subtle, quick shake of her head, to say ‘no.’

Callisto’s expression became equally pained. She looked away. “Kriff,” she muttered, under her breath.

But there wasn’t time. She gathered her wits and brought the mic up to her lips. “Skako? You’d better get back here for the rendezvous.”

After a pause, Skako’s voice came across the comms.

“Um, about that…”

His voice sounded pained.

“What’s going on?” Callisto called back. “Do you need a couple minutes? Maybe we can send someone.”

“No. This is going to be the time you’ve got to cut your losses, boss,” Skako replied. “I stopped to make sure that the Flight Control Deck didn’t get retaken, and ended up getting pinned here by a battalion. I’ve…” there was a pause. “I’ve been hit. I don’t think I’m really going anywhere. And even if I could… well, I probably wouldn’t get very far.”

“Aw, Skako…”

“Don’t be like that, boss,” the Ongree said. “This’ll be a good death. It’ll definitely be better than any I’d imagined for myself. So if you’ve got the chance and everyone’s back who’s coming, then get going. I don’t know how long I can hold this place down. But I can at least keep the energy shield down, your path clear and the other fighters unable to launch, for a few more minutes.”

Callisto paused, unsure of what to say.

“Oh, and boss?” Skako’s voice came back, strained. “Thanks for letting me be a part of the clan. It’s been worth it.”

“We’ve been glad to have you,” Callisto replied. “Darasuum ner vod, nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la.”

“Now go. Goodbye, boss.”

From outside the exit ramp, Alack spotted Rana enter the hangar. She sprinted toward them, her limbs threatening to collapse. She deflected some blaster bolts with her lightsaber, but it looked like she was swinging it carelessly. She was not in a good state. The young woman snatched up a blaster and fired on anyone that took notice of her, hoping to give her cover.

—-

Skako Divik hunched down and readied himself for the final onslaught. They’d be breaching the door soon.

He’d been shot in both legs and his chest, the latter having generated a large pool of blood around him. He felt weak, shaky.

He heard the faint engines of the shuttle below as it powered up.

“Thanks for letting me be a part of the clan,” he had told Callisto. Skako remembered that afternoon, when she and Vee pulled him out from the debris of the warehouse and took him to shelter…

Then.

Golg, 11 BBY

By the time she had fallen to the tiles of the floor, Mercielaga, Butcher of Ryutapei, was dead.

In a frozen moment as Mercie collapsed, Shirana remembered the promise the Zabrak had made her only one night before.

“I promise you – I promise you – one day, I will fly us both away from this place. I promise…”

Her heart ached.

In the tales Shirana had heard about people who had been cut off from the Force, one thing had always been consistent: when the Force returned, it was with such an overwhelming intensity that it would feel like three times – maybe four – of the amount of power that one had ever felt before. It was like the recoil of a slingshot, but with a vividness and a strength that had been previously unknown to the person.

As Shirana saw Mercie collapse to the tiles — slain by Shirana’s own blade, wielded by their captor — she felt a sudden onrush that had seemed long-forgotten, and yet more monumental than ever before.

It was not just Mercie that had fallen to the tiles. So had the severed halves of the object… that presence… the thing that had blocked their connection to the Force. They hadn’t known what it was or how it worked, but that was irrelevant, now: it had been sliced in two and destroyed.

The Force. In her last act before her death, Mercie had freed them, and the Force flooded back. It felt exhilarating, returning with such a clarity of sight and sense that Shirana could feel the blood coursing through her body, the pulse sounding in her ears, the smell of flying dust and sweat and fear...

She could see.

And with such vividness! It had been so long…

And with it came such a wrath! As Mercie collapsed, lifeless, Shirana lifted the Diathim up into the air like a raggy doll, using only the Force. She could feel the colours and light of the Extrictarium filling the courtyard – was she doing this? – and a storm of electricity. She became inflated with rage. She wanted to fling the angel to and fro, slam him into pieces, and tear the parts into…

But Mercie.

She paused. Was there time? Was there a way to save her?

It didn’t look like she was breathing. She had been speared right through her chest, Shirana’s own blade lingering there for moments as it collapsed her lungs and vaporized her heart. She couldn’t be alive.

But she had to try. If this sudden surge in the Force might help in any way, it would be better used for healing than vengeance.

With barely a thought, she snapped the Diathim’s pretty neck and tossed him callously away.

She ran to her lover, trying to hold on to the supercharged volume of power that she had reacquired a connection to.

With each step that it took to Mercie’s body, Shirana tried to remember the things that Master Allie and Master Luminara had tried to teach her about healing in the Force. She had been so horrible with healing, even with minor injuries. Master Luminara was renowned for her healing, though. She tried to remember what she had taught her…

It was still dark in the cell, but without the scarlet coloured lenses of the mask, the Sith woman was able to perceive more ambient light, peeking in from their prison’s entrance. She looked at the corners of the room. She looked at her cellmate. She –

“Wh… where…? It almost looks like… you have no…”

“Eyes? No. I’m Miraluka,” Shirana acknowledged.

“Mira…” the dark woman took the thought in and rolled it between her fingers a moment. She had, after all, kept that stifling mask on because she didn’t want this Jedi to see her face. “When… were you going t… to tell me…”

“Probably when you stopped being so stubborn,” Shirana replied. She was expecting the dark woman to become angry, although she wouldn’t have been able to do much in her present state.

Instead, she did something unexpected. Weakly, for the first time since their initial capture, she started laughing. “Well played…”

No, that’s not right. Try as she might, she was being flooded with memories of Mercie, instead. Her love. Her strength. Her emotions were clouding her thoughts.

Shirana had reached her body, and rolled Mercie onto her back. She felt cold!

The red woman sat on the floor with her back to the wall, then slipped an arm under Shirana's armpits, across her body. Carefully, she pulled the orange-haired woman up so that her head rested on her cellmate's chest. And there was a slight squeezing sensation. Was she strangling her now?

No. Something seemed weird. Shirana couldn’t tell –

-- Wait. It was an embrace.

With as little strength as she had, and against all of the pain in her body, Shirana twisted a little so that she could wrap an arm across the red woman and clutch her side. She squeezed for all that she had in her, returning the embrace.

"Don't get too clingy," the Sith warned. "Or I'll go back to the other corner."

"Right, right," Shirana muttered, relaxing her grip. But she didn't let go completely, and her cellmate didn't cast her aside.

"Mercielaga," she said.

"What?" Shirana asked, unsure of the context.

"My name. You've asked me several times. It's Mercielaga…"

Another memory. It’s not fair! She needed to remember! This wasn’t helping!

There was no breathing. Mercie’s pulse was… so faint that she had practically faded away. If there was any hope for her at all, it was fading quickly. She absolutely had to act effectively now, or Mercie would be lost.

“I found I could mend tissue too,” Mercie bragged, “by drawing cells back to their intended configuration -- I could heal, in essence, using the body’s own knowledge of itself and the Force’s ability to confer life and health. But with the presence of one’s spirit, it was a much more difficult matter, having to work in spite of the conscious and unconscious exertions of another.

“You could heal and prolong life!” Shirana exclaimed. “A kind of healing that was internal and interactive, rather than external and merely intuitive. If you were to find a way to draw the pneuma back, while mending tissue through the rest...”

“You’re talking about resurrection. Why would you want to do that? It’s much easier to work with the dead,” Mercie commented.

Wait. What?

Oh, trying to heal Mercie in that sort of way was unthinkable. Mercie had only talked about it, in the course of explaining her abilities in Force Necromancy. Shirana had never tried it. She would have no way of knowing if she were doing it right. She might merely prolong her body, saving nothing that made Mercie the sentient being that she was. Or by trying and failing, she might cause her lover a whole lot of prolonged pain and suffering.

It might even be impossible. Even Mercie had admitted that what she could do with a body was limited by the current condition of that body and the absence of the body’s consciousness. Mercie’s heart had been totally destroyed by the lightsaber, and what good would it be to repair her body if her spirit were gone?

She paused to look back at Shirana, distracted by a thought. “If we weren’t so cut off from the Force, I could show you something…” Then, the Zabrak reached over and took the orange-haired woman’s hand, placing it on her left breast. “You feel this, right?”

“It’s your heart,” Shirana stated.

“It’s one of my hearts,” Mercie corrected. “Zabrak have two. We’re very hearty.” She grinned a bit, then felt sheepish about the bad joke and moved on. “If we weren’t cut off from the Force, I could show you how to reach inside me and feel it from the inside. But…” she considered how best to describe it without being able to show it, “when you do a mind trick, when you reach in and give that little nudge… you’re reaching in to the pneuma, their consciousness. That’s the point at which you can actually reach directly into the centre of their being. When they are not conscious, or if they can cede consciousness, you can slip in, and feel everything. Their conscious processes, their unconscious processes… It’s like a pool. You dive in.”

Oh! She had to. She pushed the doubts and fears aside. She had to try.

The mind trick. The nudge. Maybe it was because she was Miraluka, but it had been difficult to learn the mind trick. She didn’t have the advantage of being able to make eye contact. Instead, Shirana had to make a more direct but intangible form of mind contact. But once she’d learned it, she had never forgotten. It helps if the recipient is watching and can be mesmerized, but it’s not necessary. She focused on Mercie. “Like a pool,” she remembered, and dove in.

She could feel it, the weak pulse fading, the remaining heart struggling, failing. No, the blood needed to keep moving, carry what little oxygen she had to her cells. She put her hand to Mercie’s second cardiac organ.

“There it is,” she muttered. “There’s my heart.”

“Once you slip in to where that pneuma resides, if you have no resistance from the body’s owner, you can reach in and feel everything. You can direct everything. You can accelerate entropy and you can accelerate healing. You can staunch bleeding by directing blood elsewhere. You can stop processes, and you can restart them. It’s not just death. It’s life, too. It works a little bit when someone is sleeping, too, but not as effectively, because their consciousness still interferes somewhat, and is still directing unconscious life processes like breathing…”

Oxygen. Her lungs had collapsed. The burning of the saber’s plasma energy had cauterized everything around it, there were no leaks and little internal bleeding, but the lungs would need to be reinflated. Some of the air that had previously been in her lungs now had to be aspirated from the chest cavity around them. Could she do it just by triggering Mercie’s muscle and tissue from within, alone…? She tried. There was motion.

She didn’t wait. She bent forward and put her lips to the Zabrak’s. But she kept prodding, fumbling around clumsily, hoping that what she was manipulating from inside Mercie’s mind would help. She gave her a breath. Nothing. Then, another.

Reinflate, for flarg’s sake.

Ah. It was working. More!

There! There! Her lungs were taking air.

Her lung capacity had been significantly diminished. Not all of the air that escaped her lungs had been aspirated, yet. What’s more, some of the surrounding tissue and chest wall had been melded to the lungs from the burning of the saber. Could she slip deeper, working on a more cellular level to free the tissue enough for Mercie to continue breathing without Shirana’s support?

“… it’s deeper than that. I talked about the Pneuma, but what is it, exactly? It’s one of the three parts that make up a being: the anima, pneuma and aperion. This is the critical part that Plagueis discovered. Anima is the part of the Force giving life but not sentience. Pneuma is sentience, but not life. Aperion is the matter and energy and power that binds it.”

Mercie turned to Shirana in a momentary aside before returning to her longer point. “I’ve been describing them a bit metaphysically, because it’s hard to explain them without showing you. When you slip into the mind, it’s like peeling away layers of an onion.”

Layers. She wasn’t finding limits, she was finding layers. She could permeate her mind, flow though, slip through the webs of nerves and capillaries, and find the damage …

“The anima and aperion linger, and by replacing the lost spirit, you can use them to manipulate tissue and sinew and bone. I found I could mend tissue too, by drawing cells back to their intended configuration -- I could heal, in essence, using the body’s own knowledge of itself and the Force’s ability to confer life and health…”

None of this was anything without Mercie’s spirit, though. She called out to her, using the Force.

She knew that as Mercie returned to her body, Shirana’s own ability to heal her would be diminished. It’s why the Zabrak had preferred to work with the dead – they were empty, easy to manipulate. But Shirana didn’t want to risk hesitating long enough for the thread binding Mercie’s spirit to her body to become irreparably damaged or broken. Too, if there was anyone who could help with this form of healing more effectively than Shirana’s inexperienced, clumsy efforts, it was Mercie.

“Mercie?” she called, projecting her voice through through the vacant space that had once been the Zabrak’s consciousness. “Mercie? I need you. I have your body almost working… but I need you to check. See if I’ve missed anything. Please! You have to help me!”

She kept reaching within, while prodding her bodily processes to keep operating. She remembered Mercie talking about losing herself when manipulating so many bodies, but that it seemed to allow the Force to control them more directly, on a more intuitive level.

“I would start to lose myself in the Force. In the Dark Side. Pretty soon, it feels like I’m not manipulating them, but the Dark Side is manipulating me, instead. I’ve caught myself sort of dancing – probably like when you use your hands to focus and channel the Force – sort of twitching spastically, dancing like I’m a marionette on the strings of the Force. It’s a bit intoxicating.”

“I would think it would be scary,” Shirana commented.

“Oh, it is,” Mercielaga turned her head and winked at the awestruck Jedi. She loved the attention. The girl was hanging on her every word. “Of course, it’s scary. It’s like you lose yourself in the darkness. But then you use your fear, and it gives you power.”

She felt a little lost in what she was doing… could something similar help now?

She let go, let instinct take over, matching Mercie’s life processes to her own, aligning, dancing from injury to injury, blockage to blockage, repairing a thousand sites of damage simultaneously.

Oh, she was afraid. She was definitely afraid. But also, intoxicated. Dark Side? Light Side? She wasn’t sure and it didn’t matter – she just let it flow through her.

“Mercie? If you can hear me, please come to me! Please follow my voice! I need your help!”

As she kept the Force flowing through the Zabrak’s body, kept reaching stubborn parts of her body and pushing them to function, she felt a spasm that she didn’t cause. Was it a death process, or a sign of someone else taking control?

Oh, she couldn’t feel the working of Mercie’s lungs, now. Was she losing her?

The Zabrak’s body lurched with a cough.

“Mercie! Can you hear me? Your body is damaged. I’m trying to help, but you need to have a look. Make sure this is right.”

“Aaaah!” Mercie’s eyes shot open with a look of terror, then pain. “Aaa…” the pain in her face subsided, and she stared forward, her senses focused inward. It had worked! She was back, and finding what had been overlooked!

For a few moments, she stared away, concentrating inward. Shirana grasped her hand and tried to pass as much of the Force coursing through her as she could on to Mercie.

Finally, the clouds in the Zabrak’s tired eyes started to clear a little. She tried to speak, and croaked hoarsely.

She tried again, her gaze fixed on Shirana.

“You… you look… so old…!” Mercie was shaking, her eyes growing dark. “How… how much… of yourse- self did… you give…?”

And then she fell into unconsciousness.

Shirana looked around. The Diathim lay lifeless in a contorted heap, but she felt no remorse. Her lightsaber lay on the tiles nearby. Mercie’s was in a bowl with some weird candelabra-looking pieces of twisted durasteel. Her mask was back in the cell… would she want it?

She hurried, gathered the sabers and the mask up using as few seconds as she could. She wasn’t sure what the curled pieces of durasteel were, but decided not to bother with them. She looked toward the hangar, where their captor’s only shuttle awaited.

Mercie was still breathing. Shirana felt toward her using the Force, in the same way in which she had originally found her pneuma, that centre where her consciousness resided. She felt her. The Zabrak’s spirit.

She really did it. She was alive, though weak, occasionally faltering.

She was going to have to pick her up and carry her to the shuttle.

“Besides,” Mercie quipped, “can you imagine being stuck in a place where time has no meaning, and knowing the secret of life and death, but not having a friend to tell it to?”

“Life and death?” Shirana asked. “Now you’re being dramatic.”

No. She wasn’t. Not at all.

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen: The Necromancer's Last Stand

Now.

The Charybdis, 4 ABY

Dooku’s silky contrabass warmed her briefly as he intoned over the holocomm. As stern as he could be, she still always found his voice heartening.

“I take it that the Burghomaistra was uncooperative?”

“It’s not just that,” Mercielaga replied. “This whole exercise was a ruse. He was using us to score political points with the locals. There was the pretense of a deal, but it was wrapped in betrayal and contempt.”

“I see.” The words hung in the air for a moment, reverberating slightly off the marbled walls of the civic hall. Finally, he spoke again. “Well, if they will not support the Confederacy through diplomatic means, then give them a spectacle that they will never forget. Let them understand the terror reserved for those who betray us and think us ones to be trifled with.”

Mercielaga smiled. “Gladly.”

The holocomm blinked and went silent.

She had taken off her mask for the communication, but Mercielaga raised it to her face again, pulling it around her head and lacing it up in the back. It was cured, black Onderonian leather, stripped from the hide of a hragscythe and scalded in the fires of Mustafar. It contained large red lenses for her eyes, and a vertical slotted breathing mask with three channels on each side connected to respirators that were adaptable to a thousand environments beyond the tolerances of most humanoids. Tracing a ridge from her ear to the top of her head, then to her other ear, the mask sported spines that stretched outward, connected by a webbing, an expansive crest that mimicked several species that enlarge themselves to look more threatening, more fearsome.

The mask had become her signature, something that people were coming to associate with the growing legend of the necromancer. To be fair, she had first adopted it because the respirator provided some relief from the smell of ichor and decay when she worked with the dead. But now, it was starting to become iconic, and it was the mask that people would remember.

When she had secured her mask, she returned to the task at hand. The Burghomaistra lay in a heap at the foot of his chair at the head of his banquet table. The bodies of three security personnel were arrayed around him, and two more at the door.

She concentrated for a moment.

As she slipped inside their skins, there was a moment of feeling her way around, like fingers flexing within a new glove. There was something intoxicating about it.

“These hapless puppets…” she thought to herself. “It would be interesting to command a whole army of them.”

She spun, strode toward the exit of the grand chamber, and flung open the door to meet the people of Ryutapei.

Oh yes, there would be much terror. They would not soon forget.

—-

The alarm sounded on all decks.

The first communication across the Charybdis spoke of a Zabrak woman with red… well, it was unclear of what the colour was referring to, as the communication had cut off at that point. Skin? Clothing? But it had described her as an assassin. A lone woman didn’t seem all that threatening.

However, most communications across the upper three command decks had gone silent. There had been a few calls for help, some sightings, some warnings… and as they progressed, they became more confusing. There were stories of dead crew members walking, of soldiers being attacked by soldiers, officers having gone mad.

High Colonel Vasen wasn’t sure what to make of it.

But there were policies. They had a procedure to follow.

It seemed unlikely that the assailant would tarry long (if at all) on the crew deck, where there was an enormous population and likely heavy resistance. They certainly wouldn’t want to stumble into the expansive exercise yard, where several battalions had been conducting drills, before the alarm sounded. The troops here numbered in the hundreds, if not a thousand or two.

Nevertheless, it was Vasen’s responsibility to have each unit and associated room on his level lock down, then check in and present their status report.

He strolled casually up to the comms desk. Whatever annoyance it was, he was confident that someone would handle it. He took a breath, and settled in to do his job.

“Barracks A-1, report in,” he commanded.

“Barracks A-1, sir. All is fine. Lockdown initiated.”

“Barracks A-2, report in.”

“Barracks A-2, sir. All in lockdown. Nothing amiss.”

“Barracks B-1, report in.”

“Barracks B-1 on lockdown, sir. No worries here.”

“Barracks B-2, report in.”

“Barracks B-2 reporting, sir. We’re locked down, but there seems to be a commotion outside.”

High Colonel Vasen frowned. As secure as his deck was, he didn’t like the inconvenience of a disruption.

“Administration Post B, there is a report of a disturbance,” he signaled. “What do you see?”

Administration Post B did not report in.

Curious.

Administration Post C was between that location and the Exercise Yard. Vasen tried there, next. “Administration Post C, there is a disturbance forward from your position. Can you see anything?”

Silence.

“Barracks C-1 and C-2, have you observed anything outside your units?”

“Barracks C-2, sir. We’re trapped inside.”

“Barracks C-1, sir. Same.”

Vasen was getting anxious, now. He pressed the comms button more forcefully, slightly more than irritated. “Deck Security, I’m getting reports of a disturbance in the central corridor. Do you have eyes on it?”

Vasen’s heart beat a little faster when Deck Security did not report in. This was not simply a lone pair of soldiers at a single post.

“Crew Deck, this is High Colonel Vasen. We are receiving reports of a disturbance and are having difficulty establishing communications. If anyone knows anything about what is going on, report in immediately.”

He also spoke into the loudspeaker for the Exercise Yard. “Vasen, here. Lock all entrances. This is not a drill.”

The soldiers and officers broke from their drills clumsily and looked toward the comms desk, puzzled.

Vasen looked at the communications console, waiting for a response. Silence.

Then, one feed crackled to life, and there was a sound of clattering, like a comm link fell and was being picked up again.

“Sir?” The voice was a whisper. “They’re all dead, sir.”

“Who’s all dead?” Vasen demanded.

“Ssssh!” the voice returned. “You’ll get me killed, sir.”

“Explain yourself!”

“They’re advancing, and they’re all dead,” the voice continued to whisper. “They cut us down, and as soon as we fall, we rise up again to join them. And there’s a woman leading them. She’s wearing this black mask with glowing red eyes and looks like death itself. We…”

“You’re not making sense!” he shouted, angrily. “Who is dead?”

More silence.

Vasen was incensed, now. His men were battle-hardened. They were well and extensively trained. They should not be falling apart like this.

There was a commotion on the other side of the door nearest him. Several of the battle-hardened and well-trained men started screaming and crying and begging to be let into the Exercise Yard.

The stormtrooper minding the door reflexively unlatched it and opened the door to assist.

That’s when panic overtook High Colonel Vasen. “No!!!!!”

 —

Even with the strength gone from her legs and the wracking of her body with pain, Rana wouldn’t stop pacing. “Mercie, don’t do this. Please. If there’s any way…”

She appeared to be talking to herself, but her expression was also distant. She was probably trying to reach her love, to speak to her, using the Force.

Alack wondered if Mercie had cut herself off from Rana the way that she had shut her out, earlier.

Callisto shook her head and leaned in toward the Chiss woman, confidentially. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. I mean, if she stays like this, we might have to sedate her.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say.” Alack was aghast. “She’s mourning. You’ve got to let her do what she needs to do.”

Their shuttle sped away from the Charybdis, destined for a rendezvous with the Pathfinder. Everyone was still buckled in their seats, but the old woman had refused to sit.

“It’s not like that,” Callisto defended. “I mean, it’s not as though she’s just crying. We’ve all got reasons to mourn, today, but… it’s not like she’s just crying like the rest of us.”

“No, she’s Miraluka. She experiences crying as pain,” Alack reminded her.

“That’s what I’m saying. The only thing we might be able to do to help is to sedate her.”

“This is probably a bad time,” the Saleucamian man spoke from the passenger compartment in the back, “but are you taking us home?”

Alack turned to face the passengers. “We can’t go planetside until we know that Mercie has succeeded,” she explained. “The Charybdis is… it carries a superweapon with the power of a Death Star. They had intended to use it on Saleucami.”

At this, the father and daughter who had been released from the brig gasped in horror.

“We’ve left someone there who should be able to destroy both the superweapon and the Star Destroyer, but we have to make sure that they succeed…” she paused, knowing that she had to make them understand. “And this is important: nobody can know what we’ve done here today. All you can say is that you were freed from the ship.”

“I don’ttt undersssstanddd,” Kessl hissed.

“We weren’t merely there to destroy the weapon,” Callisto continued for Alack. “We had to make the technology appear too risky to use. We’re making it look like the superweapon itself destroyed the Charybdis.”

“No one must ever know otherwise,” Alack agreed. “This is crucial. If you tell anyone else anything different, it could endanger entire planets and star systems.”

Indeed, it was possible that one day, the Empire would return to exploring quintessence as a way to expand the Alderaanian superweapon’s capabilities exponentially. Planets and star systems could still be conceivably in danger, someday. But they hoped to forestall it as long as possible.

The Saleucamian man nodded, followed by the Trandoshan and Rattataki. The younger girl appeared to still be crying over her mother and brother.

Her father would make her understand, when she was ready. He had to.

—

They spilled in through the doorway, then another door, then more, a flood of dead troopers and officers and crewmen.

Their movements appeared somewhat random, although their actions could be occasionally quite articulate when necessary. But the speed and rage of them overwhelmed the personnel near the entrance, who were quickly crushed, beaten, or stabbed.

High Colonel Vasen gave the order to fire.

This led to some confusion. The soldiers who had been gathered in the Exercise Yard to conduct drills understood that they were looking other stormtroopers, officers, crew and allies. They were reluctant to fire upon their own.

And when they did fire, some had forgotten that they were still using blank rounds and training bolts. It took moments for them to pause and reset to live rounds and blaster energy.

The mass of troopers near the doorways convulsed collectively, disarray starting in tens of ripples within the throng, then spreading outward in waves.

The personnel near the doors fell quickly. Vasen abandoned the comms desk and retreated further into the yard. All the while, he recognized something terrifying:

You cannot kill the dead. Struck or not, they kept coming.

And as others fell, the ranks of the dead grew larger.

The forces near the makeshift front against the incursion fell into disarray. As the dead rose, they turned on their colleagues, attacking with a suddenness and a ferocity that struck terror into the living. It was more than dumbfoundment. The fact that their fellow soldiers were recently disemboweled, beheaded or otherwise slaughtered by the onslaught was bad enough, but they were trained to deal with that horror of war. This, though — of those same friends rising, headless, limbless, charging — this was incomprehensible. It couldn’t be processed.

The true power of Force necromancy was the terror it struck in those who witnessed it… and the reluctance to fight back.

The corpses, being dead, could not be killed any further. Nevertheless, the throng of military throughout the yard fired upon them, sometimes hitting their own colleagues instead, in the fear and chaos. At best, they might blast off a bit of sinew, to the point that the dead bodies became so damaged that the necromancer couldn’t use them anymore — but by then, they had been replaced by many more.

The inexplicable reality had settled in on the scene, of deadened soldiers who were somehow capable of striking their comrades, or leveling blasters at them and firing.

Then, she appeared: the woman in black, wearing a gruesome mask with glowing red eyes.

“Fire on the woman!” Vasen commanded. But he had stepped away from the comms desk. His voice had no amplification in this vast expanse.

He shook his head. There was a procedure for this. He turned toward his men and waved his arms, urging them to remember.

“Fire! On! The! Woman!” he shouted again, in syncopated punctuation.

The soldiers near him turned to those behind them. “Fire on the woman,” they repeated, as loudly as they could.

The order flowed back through the ranks.

“Fire on the woman…!”

Those with comm links spoke the order into their mics so that personnel who had clambered into the AT-STs and other training equipment could hear.

“Fire on the woman…!”

She moved with a frightening grace, deflecting blaster bolts with her glowing red sai, their three-pronged blades hissing with energy and slicing through combatants as though they were paper. Occasionally, she would throw one and it would impale someone, then return to her waiting hand.

This, High Colonel Vasen was determined, would be the necromancer’s last stand.

Everyone fired upon the woman. Munitions were expended rapidly until they were depleted, then reloaded and expended again. The artillery and heavy weapons targeted and fired with all of their capacity.

The entire area around her combusted in a dance of explosion, smoke, energy and flame.

And went silent.

She was down.

The dead had all fallen.

They had won.

The troopers took a few doubtful moments to pause, breathe, and steel themselves in case there was another attack.

“I want the injured quarantined,” Vasen barked. He couldn’t know if the spread of the dead were facilitated by some sort of infection, in which case, their troubles might not be over. “I want communications opened with the rest of the ship. Get me Command.”

The stormtroopers waited for moments in the disarray and horror, then finally stirred to life, starting to follow the orders given. A half hour ensued of reluctance, collecting themselves, and carefully approaching the slaughtered dead.

Nothing was helping them parse what they had just witnessed.

The High Colonel furrowed his brow. None of this made any sense to him, either. The attacker had first appeared on the Command Deck, as far as he knew. She had been in the most critical part of the ship. There was no reason for her to risk appearing in the most populous and most heavily armed space on the entire Star Destroyer.

What gain could there possibly have been?

Finally, one of the enlisted men approached the dead woman and removed her mask.

“Um, sir? I thought the assassin was a Zabrak.”

Vasen turned to look at him.

“It’s Lieutenant Colonel Dar’Qand.”

—-

“I cannot stress this enough,” Ralock had told them, during their planning. “The success of this mission depends on discretion.”

Mercie, fortunately, had heard him.

And for what it was worth, she would have gained nothing by actually participating in the melee itself. The more bodies she controlled, the less motor control she had over her own. Usually, this resulted in a kind of spastic dancing — something she chose to do safely this day, outside the doors of the Exercise Yard, while sending one of the dead in wearing her clothing and mask, to give the soldiers a target to fire upon.

She would not have been able to parry that many blaster bolts and munitions — and certainly not as she lost the coordination of her own body. Controlling that large of an army, she would only be able to dance randomly, forgetting her own body’s basic functions. Frankly, she was amazed that at the height of the numbers of dead, she hadn’t inadvertently released her own bowels and shit herself. It was the necromancer’s curse.

“The success of this mission depends on discretion.”

The most populated room of the most populated deck of the Star Destroyer also had the most checkpoints and armed personnel staffing them, to say nothing of the potentially tens of thousands of troopers who could be drawn toward a disturbance. A frontal assault was pointless. Likewise, attempting to bluff the checkpoints without legitimate credentials was pointless. The moment the slightest suspicion surfaced, it would have all been over.

The only approach that made sense was a diversion -- one so attention-getting and stunning that all the policies, procedures and discipline that the Empire could drill into its personnel would fall by the wayside.

Mercielaga, the necromancer, smiled as she breezed unnoticed past the final check desk and out the far side of the yard, her red, Zabrak face concealed by the helmet of a common stormtrooper.

As the door shut behind her, she walked unhindered onto an open platform overlooking the reactor shaft.

She pulled the sonic pulse detonator from her pocket. Ralock had planned to rappel down the side of the shaft until he was in close enough proximity to the quintessence device that the magnetic interference from the detonator would cause it to combust. She had no equipment for rappelling, so she would need to jump, and depend on the Force to tell her when she was close enough to trigger the detonator.

She was suffering from the overextension. She wanted to lay down and slip into sleep. But she was almost done. It was almost time, and she would finally be able to rest.

“Mercie, please don’t do this. If there is any way, any way at all, please come back…”

Rana was still reaching out to her in the Force. Mercie was too tired to shut her out, now.

“Rana,” she said.

“Mercie! Please don’t. Don’t make this goodbye.”

“It’s time, Rana.”

“No! Please! There has to be another way!”

“Listen to me. This is important. I want this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve done some horrible things, Rana. We both know it. The town on Saleucami wasn’t even the worst of it, although it’s probably the most remembered.”

“Oh, Mercie, please. There has to be another way…”

After their imprisonment on Golg, Mercie had first experienced empathy from Rana as a recipient, then learned not to be afraid to feel it. It took years to see empathy not as a weakness, nor as danger, but as something vital to sentient experience that years of brutality had taken from her. But as she learned empathy, the cruelties she had doled out in her lifetime (not all of them, but to the undeserving, at least) came back to trouble her. She dealt with them – or didn’t deal with them, as the case may be – by shutting them away as a past she could do nothing about, and Rana had been gracious enough to let her, declining to raise her past as a point of contention. But it occurred to Mercie that redemption was relative.

“I still don’t believe in redemption,” Mercie said. “But you’ve showed me something. I can’t unwrite the previous chapters. But I can write this new chapter.”

“Noo…”

“I want this, Rana. I need it. And I might never have a chance like this, again.”

“Don’t…”

“And I need you to go on. Try to be happy again.”

“I can’t. Don’t ask me for that…”

“Thank you, Rana. For everything. I only hope now that you’re able to receive what I am going to try to give back to you...”

She stepped off, into the void.

—-

Rana’s pacing had become frantic, despite how wobbly and weak her legs had become. “Mercie, please. Mercie, please. Mercie, please...” She kept repeating it like a twisted mantra. No one knew how to settle the old blind woman down.

Suddenly, she emitted an unearthly sound of pain, and collapsed to the floor of the shuttle.

This was followed by an anguished wail that continued until her throat was gravel and her breath was gone. Then, she inhaled and repeated.

Outside, through the shuttle’s glass, the Charybdis ignited in a tiny spark within the expanse of space, then was gone.

Then.

Golg, 11 BBY

Shirana Nyst strained under the weight as she carried Mercielaga into the cockpit.

“I’m going to try to be gentle,” she warned the half-conscious Zabrak. “But my strength is almost gone.”

With that, she started to lower the Sith into one of the leather seats, then felt her arms and legs give out at once, and they fell. As Mercie dropped into the padded chair, pain shot throughout her body, causing her to scream loudly.

“Oohh, I’m sorry,” Shirana pleaded. “Please be okay. Please be okay.” She struggled to her feet, having to pull her arms out from underneath the tensed woman in order to do so. Then, she tried to shift her a little in the chair in order to make her a little more comfortable. She fussed a little, her hands shaking. “But you need to wake up and help me, because I’m not sure if I got everything right,” she cautioned.

Mercie was certainly awake at this point — the sudden pain had made sure of that. She gasped and puffed a little. “… ‘Rana?” Her voice hoarse, she could only squeak out the last two syllables of Shirana’s name. Someday, it would be a name shortened out of endearment, and out of a need for discretion. But for now, “Rana” was simply all she had the strength to say. “… ‘Rana, this pain…”

“Mercie, you have to listen to me,” Shirana instructed. “I don’t know how much you remember, but I had to try to go in and mend you. The way you described to me, about when you animated bodies, and how you could heal them. But I’ve never done it before, and I don’t know if I’ve done everything right. So I need you to look inward, into your body, and make sure that it’s healing as well as can be. Make sure I haven’t done anything badly.”

At this, Mercie’s head lolled a little. She looked around at her surroundings, looked over at the artificially-aged face of her love, looked down at her body, and tried to make sense of it all. “There’s a hole in my…” She remembered. She remembered the lightsaber piercing her body, the escape, the Diathim, and Rana explaining earlier what she had done, and how she had called her back from the darkness.

“One of your hearts is gone,” Rana reminded. “It pierced your lung also, but the plasma from the blade cauterized it. It collapsed, but I reinflated it.”

Mercie’s head rolled downward dopily to look at her chest, and then her eyes glazed over as she drew her attention inward. “When it cauterized, it melded with my chest…” Mercie puffed. “It’s sticking, and hurts when I breathe.”

“That’s what I mean,” Rana replied. “What can we do about that?”

“Well, if I had access to the Force, I could…” her mumblings became incoherent, sleepy after that.

“Stay with me, Mercie,” Rana pleaded. She brushed some hair away and kissed Mercie’s forehead. “You do have access to the Force. It’s all over, everything that was done to us here… it’s all over. You should be able to feel the Force again…”

It was true. Mercie could feel the flow of it around her again. In fact, she wouldn’t have even been able to look inward like she had a moment ago, without it. It was just the confusion in all of this pain.

“I’ll try to detach…” she said. “There’s an artery, too… Not cut, but fused…”

“Please, please,” Rana felt relieved, knowing that someone more experienced than her in this moment was now looking after the wounds.

“Dank farrik,” Mercie puffed in astonishment. “How did you possibly do all of this?”

“I… simply had to, Mercie,” Rana looked at her seriously. There was a bit of a sob welling up in her throat, but for now, she fought it back, still feeling a need to keep focused. “I had to, or you would die.” She leaned forward, put her arm around Mercie’s head, being careful to avoid moving any injured part of her body, and took her into a gentle embrace. She moved forward for the embrace rather than pulling Mercie to her. Then she stepped back, and dropped into the other chair, exhausted.

Mercie’s attention shifted a little. She was still working on healing up, but also took a moment to study Rana’s face, the new lines in her skin, the reduced colour in her flesh, the grey and white and silver starting to permeate her hair. She had aged tremendously.

“Oh, Rana… how much of yourself did you give…?”

She had asked the question earlier, but this time, she stayed focused for an answer.

Rana turned her head toward her love. “You let me worry about that.”

“But why? Why did you do all of this?” Mercie was having a little difficulty understanding it all. Compassion and concern were not things she was accustomed to being on the receiving end of.

“I admit,” Rana exhaled, “part of it was selfish. I didn’t want to lose you. And I don’t. I really don’t want to lose you,” she stressed. “But also,” she added, “I just couldn’t bear the thought that after all we just went through, in that moment of our escape, you wouldn’t live to see anything that came after, or feel any of the relief, or the freedom…” She felt the sob welling up again, and held back.

“I… don’t underst…” Mercie struggled a little for breath.

“Maybe someday you will,” Rana answered.

Mercie was dumbfounded. “If our positions had been reversed, ‘Rana, I can’t say I would hav-“ She cut herself off.

Something changed at that moment. It was true: however long ago it was that she had fallen to the floor after being impaled on that energy blade, if their positions had been reversed, Mercie probably wouldn’t have done this much to keep Shirana alive. Being used to loss and the cynical, bitter taste of life, she probably would have accepted it, as much as it might have hurt, and then moved on. She might not have even realized in that moment that she could have kept Shirana alive.

But now, something was changing. She felt from this woman – from this Jedi, or ex-Jedi, or however she should be described at this moment – a kinship and bond that she had never thought possible. And she felt her spirit answering this loyalty from Shirana… with a sense of dedication that she never thought she could feel. Earlier that day, she might have not done the same for the Miraluka woman. But now… she couldn’t imagine not trying.

Shirana sensed the realization that had just taken place. A smile crawled along her wrinkled cheek.

Mercie coughed, suddenly, and her expression changed to alarm. “I th –“

She coughed, and blood came up. Something had ruptured. Her eyes rolled back as she tried to search for what went wrong.

Shirana panicked, jumped out of the seat and rushed close, then collected her thoughts and joined her too, holding her hand and trying to feel inside for the problem. Mercie had already staunched the bleeding internally, but she needed help alleviating the pressure that had caused it.

For a moment, they were silent, focused, hands gripping each other tight. Mercie calmed her breathing.

Finally, the crisis had abated. Between them, they’d managed to heal the damage and alleviate it.

Shirana collapsed into the seat beside Mercie, still holding her hand, and laid back, relieved.

A few moments passed. Everything seemed stable.

“We should get moving.” Shirana rose to exit the cockpit and depart the ship for one last errand. “I’ll go open the hangar bay door.”

“I’ve got it,” Mercie stretched out a weak smile. She stretched her arm forward, flipped a switch on the console and fired some lasers forward toward the door, puncturing it, then widening the hole.

“Ah, we’ll do it the fast way, then.” Shirana dropped back down in her seat, and pressed a button to retract the ship’s entry ramp. “I grabbed a couple things,” she commented, “but I didn’t scour to see if I got everything. Our lightsabers, your mask…”

“Did you get my sai?” Mercie asked.

“Were those the two weird-shaped pieces of metal I saw?” Shirana asked. “I didn’t know if they were yours or what they were for.”

“They’re highly customized…” she cut herself off from explaining. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care enough to go back for them.” She also didn’t have the strength to stand up.

“I can go back,” Shirana offered. “It’ll only take a moment.”

Mercielaga thought about it for a moment, and then considered that she needed to leave her past behind – all of it, not just the captivity. “Thank you, but no. Right now, I just want to fly us out of here. I don’t care what I leave behind.”

“Um, about that,” Rana began, “do you think you should be flying, right now?”

“I can manage okay for a few minutes,” she looked back at her companion. “Please. I promised...”

Rana reclined back, and relented. “I’ve got no further attachments here, either. Let’s go.”

Mercielaga powered up the light craft and took the stick, navigating through the punctured bay door and then accelerating forward, then upward. The ship sped from a steady clip, then faster, faster, reaching the limits that its propulsion systems would allow. The pale dusty grey-tan of the barren surface of Golg fell behind them. As they left the atmosphere, the ship started to shake a little as it broke past the gravitational forces exerting on it, and out into the expanse of space, accelerating, accelerating.

It was now hitting them, at this moment, what they were leaving behind. The years of pain, the agony at the angel’s whim, the isolation, the discomfort of the hard cell floor, the blandness of the food that left them hungry, the weakness, the void left by the absence of the Force…

It was over.

And as their ship accelerated, reaching light speed and causing the stars to distend before the jump to hyperspace, the two women started to release an exuberant whoop of relief. After roughly ten years of shared trauma, pain and hopelessness, they now felt something new, together:

Joy.

“HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU…!”

Then, their breath expelled, they fell silent.

Mercie was still accelerating. “Maybe before you use all of our fuel,” Shirana interrupted, “we should discuss where we’re going.”

Brought back into the moment, Mercie eased off the acceleration. “You’re right. You’re right. You should take it from here. It just felt so good…”

Shirana took control and put the craft into autopilot.

Mercie looked over at her. “I… I don’t know how we move on after all of this,” she said.

Shirana smiled, graciously. “When Jedi counseled victims of trauma, we usually encouraged them to look for new meaning and purpose. It helps them stop reliving the past.”

The Zabrak winced at the pain in her chest, and shifted slightly to alleviate it. “I… wouldn’t even know where… to begin on that. So much… of my meaning and purpose was… wrapped up in hate and craving power. Right now… I just want to curl up… inside myself and… evaporate.”

“Making a simple life can be a source of meaning and purpose,” Shirana offered.

“I guess… I guess you’ll probably want to go back to Coruscant,” she said, feeling a little dread about the possible answer. They had talked about this before and Shirana had indicated otherwise, but it felt like that was all a dream, and now that it was over and their reality had changed, all the answers too would be different.

“No,” Rana answered. “There’s nothing for me there. The Jedi Council abandoned me. I feel no loyalty to them. There is nothing for me on Coruscant.”

Mercie reclined back. Part of her thoughts were still focused on fixing the damage in her body, and contending with the (remarkably few) flaws and errors that Shirana had made, but she was still focused enough in the moment to consider the question. “Part of me wants to go to Serenno,” she said. “But I know how this life works: I can’t go back to my old life with the stink of weakness and failure on me. I’ve got nothing.”

“We wouldn’t make it to Serenno with this fuel, anyway,” Rana commented. “We certainly wouldn’t make it to Coruscant. And we have no credits to buy more fuel.”

“We could just steal it,” Mercie laughed.

“I can’t do that,” Shirana replied.

Mercie shook her head. “Why do you Jedi have to be so sickeningly pure? Gah! In that case, we’re stuck in The Slice or restricted to a quarter arc of the Triellus hyperlane. We could reach Jabiim, Raxus, Gand, Kubindi…”

“How about further out?” Shirana asked. “As far from the Republic as we can get. Away from the politics, and the imperialism, and the Confederacy, and all of it? Is there anything out past Mon Calamari?”

“Wait a second,” Mercie interrupted. “Does this mean what I think it means? We’re looking for somewhere to settle? Together?”

Shirana said nothing for a moment, but her expression was hopeful. And then she spoke: “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do, now. Our old lives are over. All we have is each other.”

Mercielaga felt relief. She hadn’t really wanted to admit it to herself, but she couldn’t imagine parting ways, either. She reached over and took Shirana’s hand, squeezing it weakly.

Shirana squeezed back, gently, reassuring.

Mercie’s eyes widened, remembering something. “I’ve got… got the place…. It’s in the furthest part of The Slice…. Lothal…. It’s self-sufficient, but not rich enough in resources that any colonial power’s going to be interested in it…. It’s temperate, and mostly grassy, moderately populated… smugglers like to make a stop there when they want to get away from the active life…. Once, I had to escort a CIS official whose life was under threat there so he could have a liaison with… long story. Not important…. Anyway, we could have a little acreage out there. Do some farming…. Raise some nerf...”

“Farming? Ranching?” Both concepts seemed pretty foreign to Shirana.

“Oh, you’ll love it… It will be quiet, and we can stay close enough… to a city or town to still have all the activity we want… and have access to a spaceport if we… decide we want to move on… or need to run.”

Rana thought about it for a few moments. “You’ll have to teach me, I guess. But that sounds… nice.”

Mercie leaned forward, wincing at the pain in her chest as she did. Damn – she’ll have to be careful about moving around impulsively for the next while! She entered the coordinates.

“As long as we stay off the radar, and don’t get involved in any local dramas or attract attention, we should be able to have our whole lives ahead of us,” she added, firing up the ship’s engines again.

“You’re going to love it.” The light two-seater craft shot forward into the expanse, readying for hyperspace – off toward Lothal.

“I promise…”

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen: Lothal

A light breeze brushed across the grass as the vegetation waved leisurely at the sun. The familiar fragrance of the clean, fresh Lothalian air wafted across the rolling field, gentle hills washing like a calm tide across the plain.

The breeze lightly jostled Shirana’s bright orange hair, which danced animatedly across her smooth cheek.

She could smell the perking caf. Even the scent of it tickled her awake.

She looked out across the grassy plain. It was everything Mercie had said it would be.

“I brought you some.” A cup of hot beverage was extended to her, from behind, so that she could reach over to the side and take it.

“You spoil me,” Shirana answered. “You don’t really have to dote over me like I’m some old woman needing to be taken care of, you know.”

“Yes I do,” Alack answered her with playful insolence. She lifted her chin and gave her a mock rebellious smile. “I promised.”

Relieved of the cup, the young Chiss woman dashed downward into the valley, activating and tossing two Marksman-H remote training droids up into the air. She ignited her lightsaber, and tested its weight, the crimson red plasma blade tracing an arc before her. As the remote droids began to fire simulated bolts at her, she parried them effortlessly. “Come on, Vee!” Alack shouted. “I still want that duel.”

Shirana watched from the hilltop, and smiled. The young woman had become quite adept very quickly.

“She’s a good kid,” a voice intoned.

“She should be,” Shirana answered to the Force spirit that manifested beside her. She smiled at feeling Mercie’s presence near. “She had a good teacher.”

Alack spun and weaved, deflecting the simulated blaster fire from both droids, moving in syncopated time. They were at full setting, but the droids might as well have been moving and firing in slow motion.

“You know, most Jedi who learned later in life never reached that level of proficiency,” Shirana commended, “let alone so quickly.”

“It’s the Sight,” Mercie reminded her. “And I never would have understood it well enough to teach it, if it weren’t for you.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask: when did you give her your lightsaber?” Shirana inquired. “It couldn’t have been very long before… couldn’t have been very long ago.”

“It was just before we split up,” Mercie admitted.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Shirana was a little angry that the Zabrak had expected her own death, and never told her as much. But she said it calmly, waiting for a reply.

“You understand why I couldn’t tell you, don’t you?” Mercie asked. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t tell Alack, either – although I’d suspect she sees it in hindsight.”

“I have nothing to remember you by,” Shirana stated. “You took your mask, your sai. You gave Alack your saber. I have some of your robes, but… they’re losing your scent.”

“I’m sorry, Rana.”

“I should have never let you do it,” Shirana said. “It should have been me. Or us, at least.”

“And we would have failed,” Mercie added. “It had to be me.”

The Nautolan crewman sauntered into the valley with her two sabers, phase-modified for training purposes, readied for a fight. Alack whistled through her teeth and the training droids stopped firing, and lowered to the ground a short distance from her.

“I miss you every night,” Shirana commented. “And this… these visits… it’s not the same.”

“I’m sorry, Rana. I needed to do it.”

“The people of Saleucami will never know. They can’t ever know, because it would undo the ruse that you died for. They don't even recognize the danger that they had been in. They still call for the blood of the Butcher of Ryutapei,” the orange-haired Miraluka woman stated.

“I wouldn’t expect that to change,” Mercie answered. “There’s probably even some poetic justice in that.”

Shirana turned toward her sadly. “You picked a horrible time to suddenly believe in justice,” she said.

Alack and Vee were dueling, now, Alack’s single thrumming blade fending off both of Vee’s capably.

“Twitchy wants Alack to join her crew, permanently,” Shirana changed the subject.

“They’ll be such a good couple if she finally decides to go for it,” Mercie smiled.

“She said she’ll only do it if I go with her, because you had her promise to watch over me,” Rana stated.

Mercie lit up, excitedly. “You totally should! It will do you some good. Certainly better than moping around here all the rest of your life. You know that if the Inquisitorius are re-established, they might decide to retrace to see if you returned here…”

"This helps me feel close to you," Rana replied.

“You know that it’s okay for you to move on, right?” Mercie asked. “The last thing I wanted was for you to spend your life alone…”

“I’m not ready to even think about that,” Rana answered quickly. “Besides, it would never be the same.”

“No, it would be different. Just like life is always changing. But it would be something, and you deserve it.”

Vee had dropped to her knees after a spin, finding that Alack had darted behind her. Alack stopped her swing that would have had Vee dead to rights. The Nautolan conceded the battle.

“So much of your youth has come back,” Mercie noted. “You look great. But I still have to ask, once again, how much of yourself did you give, to save my life?”

Shirana smiled. “I never regretted it. Not for a second.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Mercie pointed out. “I was dead to rights. The connection between my anima and my body had been severed. What usually happens is an inevitable decay. That’s not… that’s not something I have ever been able to reverse: it would have required sacrificing a part of my own anima – my own life – in order to maintain such a body.”

“I don’t really know it all well enough to put it into words, Mercie. I just acted. Whatever I had to do, I did.”

“Rana, you’d been keeping me alive for years. Did you know that? Not just the day you healed me, but on an ongoing basis. That’s what aged you so completely. And now that it’s past, with the richness that I sent back to you at the end, you’ve regained so much!”

“I have no regrets,” Shirana smiled, knowingly. Then, she added, “You understand why I couldn’t tell you, don’t you?”

She then turned to face the Lothalian horizon. “If I join Twitchy’s crew, will you stay with me?”

“You know I will, for as long as I can,” Mercielaga answered.

“Good,” Rana smiled. “Still, I wish you’d left me something to remember you by.”

“But I did,” Mercie answered. “You have her.”

Alack was roughhousing with Vee in the meadow.

At that, the Zabrak’s spirit faded.

Shirana’s orange hair waved slightly in the breeze. For the moment, she was content.

---

The rusted chains of prison moons
Are shattered by the sun
I walk a road, horizons change
The tournament's begun
The purple piper plays his tune
The choir softly sing
Three lullabies in an ancient tongue
For the court of the crimson king…

- King Crimson, In the Court of the Crimson King