Chapter 35: Chapter 35

A Young Girl’s War Between the Stars

Hyperspace, 39 BBY/961 GSC. En-route from Simpla-12 to Vanqor.

As soon as the ship was in hyperspace, I set the autopilot and checked the timer on the route Nobis had given me. It looked like it would take a little over four days to get to Vanqor, since we would have to take the hyperspace lane equivalent of a back road, then go off road for the last leg of it.

Moving back to check on Siri, I found the sonic shower had cleaned her up nicely, so I shut it off and picked her up, carrying her back to the spare bunk. I had just turned away when I felt a pull at my belt and a flash of danger in the Force. I started to dive away, only for a purple lightsaber to ignite right beside my head.

I remained still and, after a moment of silence, she asked, “We’re on a ship. Where are we going?”

“Vanqor. Presumably where Master Qui-Gon and Obi are being held.”

I felt a flash of anger from the girl before she crushed it down. “Don’t call her that.” A pause, then, “That lightsaber. Where did you get it?”

I slowly started lifting my helmet and the lightsaber tapped the side in warning, sparking at the contact but not doing any real damage to the beskar coating. “Let me take off my helmet and I’ll show you.”

I felt her suspicion, but after a moment, the lightsaber shifted away slightly. “Slowly.”

Nodding, I removed it. I felt her incredulity the moment the helmet cleared my neck and my hair started falling out of the back. Pulling it the rest of the way off, I slowly turned around, meeting the blonde’s gaze with an amused look. “Now if you don’t mind, could you turn that off so we can talk?”

Siri dully shut off the lightsaber, before easing back and sitting on the bunk with a thump. “Tanya? What,” reaching up, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “What’s going on.”

Reaching out, I undid the restraints around her wrists and slipped them onto my belt, before moving back to my weapon locker and starting to remove my armor and equipment. “I believe you and I are on the same mission and we didn’t realize they were connected.”

Sighing, Siri put away her lightsaber, watching me undress with a mounting annoyance. “What do you mean? What mission are you on? We were sent to find Master Qui-Gon and Obi when they stopped reporting in.”

“Yes. That was at my request,” I confirmed, hanging up my chest piece and moving on to the lower body. “After Master Noor R’aya stopped reporting in, newly minted Knight Luminara Unduli was sent to check in on him. She found a trail leading to Simpla-12. After speaking with my Mandalorian contacts, I learned Master Qui-Gon and Obi had been out of contact for a while. I asked a friend in the Temple to check in on them as a favor. They stopped checking in shortly after landing on Duneeden. They were apparently pursuing a lead regarding the disappearance of the Force sensitive son of a member of the Galactic Senate.”

Frowning, the blonde thought it over for a few moments before asking, “Master Gallia and I found their ship. Some clues led us to Simpla-12,” she murmured. “And that bald bounty hunter? Why were you working with her?”

Finished with the armor, I pulled on my robes over the body suit, leaving it on since it was very comfortable and I couldn’t be bothered with it at the moment. I answered as I closed up the locker, then moved to take a seat on my own bunk, across from Siri. “My own investigation showed she was involved, helping some mad scientist kidnap Force sensitive people to study for experiments dealing with the Force. I was attempting to earn her trust and find an opportunity to question her when the two of you showed up. She offered me credits to capture and transport you both to the woman who hired her. I adjusted the plan to account for the opportunity you presented. You were there for the rest.”

“And now she has Master Gallia,” Siri pointed out, and I nodded.

“Yes, and I imagine one of two things will happen. Either Ona Nobis will slip up and Master Gallia will escape and regain control of the situation on her end, or she keeps your Master tranquilized for the entire journey. Either way, we plan to move forward under the worst case scenario.”

Sending me a skeptical look, the blonde asked, “Do you have a plan?”

I chuckled, “Admittedly, I am a little fuzzy on the specifics. But I have a general outline.”

“Uh huh. And that is…?”

“When we land, I’ll cuff you again, but you’ll be conscious this time—you just have to play unconscious. We’ll let her lead us to where they’re keeping the others, then turn the tables. You should be able to free yourself from the cuffs using the Force, and I’ll have your saber on my belt, so you can reclaim that and we can proceed from there according to the situation.”

Siri frowned, “Can we use the Force on the bounty hunter to just get the information out of her? Put her temporarily under our control while we sort this out?”

I raised an eyebrow, sending her a skeptical look. “She’s taken down at least four Jedi now on her own. She’s most likely resistant to Mind Trick. Now if you’d like to work together and just brute force it, hold her down with Telekinesis and squeeze until she becomes cooperative…” ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ novᴇlfire.net

For a moment, Siri seriously considered the option. Eventually, she shook her head. “That sounds too much like torture.”

I held her gaze for a moment and Siri sighed, then looked away. “We’ll go with your plan. It’s probably our best play at this time. I do have a question, however. How did Nobis manage to subdue a Master and Padawan at the same time? How did she subdue Master Gallia? She can’t be that good.”

“That assumption could be what led her to defeating them,” I pointed out. “But I believe there’s more to it. We didn’t see how she subdued your Master. They obviously fought, but that doesn’t tell us how the fight ended. I believe I know how she won, however.” At Siri’s motion for me to go on, and her impatience practically shouting for me to spit it out, I told her what I had learned on Simpla-12. “Knight Unduli was ambushed by normal thugs, who took her out with gas. She’s probably using something similar.”

“And what do we do if that’s the case?”

I shrugged. “My helmet seals and my suit has its own internal air supply.”

The blonde shot me a look that silently asked, ‘What about me?’ I considered her for a moment before pointing to the weapons locker. “I’d had mundane methods on hand for dealing with chemical weapons for a while now. There are a few self-contained breathing units in the locker. You can carry one under your robe and, if they deploy gas, you’ll have it. It obviously doesn’t absorb through the skin, or Nobis would have gassed herself by now.”

“Okay, that could work,” Siri murmured, nodding. “How long do we have until we get there? Can we contact the Temple and request backup?”

“A few days, and no. We have to assume that her ship is capable of intercepting our transmissions. We do that and we lose the element of surprise. Nobis is already wary and looking for a way to cut me out for her own greed. I had to convince her that I wanted to keep you to myself for nefarious purposes to allay her suspicions. I fully expect a last minute betrayal when we go to hand you and Master Gallia over.”

Siri let out a quiet huff of a laugh at that. A small smile pulled at her lips. “I’m going to tell Obi what you said, when we finish with this.”

“Please don’t,” I sent her an annoyed look. “She’ll never let me live it down.”

The blonde’s smirk told me that was exactly what she was hoping for. Standing, she stretched and looked around. “What are we going to do while we wait? There’s not really enough room to spar properly.”

I considered for a few moments, before standing and opening a compartment to reveal my copied holocrons—the less sensitive ones, and the ones that could be copied, given that I hadn’t been able to duplicate Revan’s holocron. “I’m going to study medical techniques I recovered from Tython. It may come in handy when we find them, if they’ve been injured. I believe there was a technique for purging poisons and toxins, and that would be perfect if they’ve been kept sedated.”

“What are the others?” Siri asked, looking curious.

I sent her a considering look before taking down the other holocron containing techniques from Tython. “This contains exercises and techniques for sensing via the Force. I’ve done a little digging into it and the techniques it has are very useful.”

Siri caught the holocron and nodded, settling in to begin using it while I moved away and did the same. As she used it, she locked herself into the handcuffs and began practicing to free herself.

The next few days passed slowly, mostly in comfortable silence, save for the sound of the radio—or space equivalent. I had come to loathe what most would call ‘cantina music,’ but there were a few stations that broadcast in the clear in normal and hyperspace and played decent enough music.

Siri was quiet and focused the entire time. There were intermittent moments of worry, presumably for Obi and her Master, but those were always smothered with more study, meditation, or physical training. She wasn’t a big conversationalist, but I was fine with that. Long stretches of silence didn’t instill me with a need to fill them with pointless natter.

That’s not to say that we didn’t speak at all, or that the thing we did the entire time was training. No, proper mental rest is just as important as sleep for absorbing and retaining information and maintaining one’s mental health. Our conversations tended to happen around meals or at night, before bed, and generally revolved around mundane things. The planets we had been to were a favorite subject of those talks. When we weren’t talking, Siri borrowed one of my tablets and quietly read one of the books I had stored on them—another thing she enjoyed talking about. Given just how much free time a Jedi, or prospective Jedi could have, it was no surprise that she was as well-read as she was.

One evening, three days into our travel, I finally got a hit on a technique I had been trying off and on since I’d learned Obi and her Master were missing. I had been regularly attempting clairvoyance to discern her location and check up on her directly, but things had been going poorly. For some reason, Obi at this current time and place was hard to discern and it took some backtracking and a bit of work to figure out why. Any attempts to see her in the future were either hazy or so fragmented by possibilities that I didn’t bother, while attempts to see her right now were obscured.

I’d had to do a bit of gazing into the past to the last time I’d actually seen her and then follow her from there, in fact. And the last place I’d seen her was on Coruscant. The why of her being hard to find in the Force was actually simple to understand once I found her there. The same Force nexus that veiled the Jedi’s senses had also somewhat cloaked the presence of those affected by it in the Force, making them harder to discern.

But once I picked a time and place I knew she would be to start looking, it was easy enough to follow her through the intervening time to the present. And once I found her in the Force, I had a bearing and a range—and doing a bit of math and astronavigation on my computation orb, I put her on Vanqor, confirming what I’d suspected.

Pushing my senses outwards, I observed her location and current state with a frown. She was in a holding cell of some sort, strapped to a bed with an IV in her arm, pumping her full of sedatives. Looking around, I studied the cell and frowned as I spotted a camera in the upper corner of the room.

Okay, so I can’t tamper with anything yet. That’s fine. I can still use this.

Moving forward, I studied the layout of the place, making plans as I scouted ahead. The holding cell was not actually a holding cell, it was just part of a roomin a wing of some facility that had been converted into them. Leaving her cell, I found several others in the room and poked my head in to check their contents.

In one cell, I found a group of four children, all on their own bed, all sedated. In another, I found a Mirialan female who matched the image sent over for Knight Unduli, likewise sedated. I found another group of older children of different species, before leaving the holding cell area as I found the rest of the cells empty—though one looked to have been in use recently.

In the next room over, I found what appeared to be a menagerie of some sort. Lots of animals, taken from all over. Some of them I even recognized, including some cat-like critters I was pretty sure were Sith creations. All of them seemed to be aware of my presence as they stopped whatever it was they were doing and perked up, falling silent as their eyes followed the point where my body would be if I were projecting myself.

I left the room quickly and moved deeper into the facility. It wasn’t long before I found what appeared to be the main lab area—drawn there as I was by feelings of intense pain and the occasional yell of an entirely too familiar voice. I recognized the blonde Dr. Jenna Zan Arbor standing at a computer as she took notes, occasionally reaching over to a control console and adjusting a slider.

“Subject is highly resistant to pain and appears to be actively healing, albeit slowly,” she murmured, typing away as nearby, Master Qui-Gon thrashed and yelled in pain under the effects of whatever torture device he was strapped into—a device that looked to my Japanese, doujin and hentai exposed sensibilities, more like a high tech BDSM set than something I’d expect to see in a lab.

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Moving closer to Master Qui-Gon, I waited until the mad scientist was occupied before whispering, “We’re close. Just hold out for another day or two.”

Master Qui-Gon smiled at that, letting out a quiet chuckle. The woman turned and stared at him, frowning. “Oh? Have you finally lost your sanity?”

“Not at all,” the man groaned out, fixing her with a stare as he fell silent.

“Hmm. I see,” she murmured, shaking her head and going back to her work.

As soon as she was looking away, I whispered, “Be ready.”

Master Qui-Gon nodded minutely and I pulled my senses back to my body. Looking over to Siri sitting on her bunk and reading, I told her, “I’ve found them.”

Siri’s eyes snapped to me and she sat up. “You did? How? What condition are they in?”

As I explained, her emotions shifted into a low simmer of anger, before she forced it away. Finally, she nodded. “Can we plan around your knowledge of the interior layout of where they’re being kept?”

I nodded, a smile pulling at my lips. “Absolutely. Now that I know where it is, I’m going back in. I’ll map the place out so we know what we’re getting into.”

Five days into our trip, my ship’s computer began beeping, letting us know the timer before we dropped out of hyperspace was nearing its end. With an hour to go before dropping out of hyperspace, I began preparing.

Closing my eyes, I projected myself ahead—not to the lab, but to the converted mining facility turned pirate base where it resided. Making my way into the generator room, I quickly found what I was looking for. Buttons pressed and switches flipped as I started a safe power down sequence for the facility’s generator, timed to shut down shortly after we arrived.

Next, I slid through the walls to the lab. Finding the madwoman’s computers, especially the one connected to her lab security system, I projected my senses inside and used the Force and a bit of lightning to disable them in a blast of sparks that sent the scientist into a shrieking fury as she began cursing the facility’s shitty infrastructure. With Zan Arbor suitably distracted, I moved through the walls to the cells. Once inside, and with the security now disabled and thus unable to record what I was about to do and warn her ahead of time, I began removing the IVs from everyone.

As soon as that was done, I made my way first to Master Qui-Gon. Focusing on the Force technique I’d learned for neutralizing poison, venom, and other chemicals, I got to work. Within only a few minutes, he began to stir, before sitting up groggily and looking around. Noticing that his IV was off, he asked out loud, “Is it time, then?”

Mustering a bit more Force to project an image of myself, I nodded. “Almost. We’ll be arriving shortly. I’m going to rouse Knight Unduli as well, then Obi if I have enough juice left over.”

Nodding, he moved off the bed onto the floor, where he sat and fell into meditation. I left him there, cutting out the projection of my body, and moved to do the same for Knight Unduli. As soon as Master Qui-Gon heard her moving around, he called out and let her know what was going on as I moved to help Obi. By the time she stirred, I was wiped and forced to pull my senses back.

Siri looked to me as I stood on wobbly legs, helping steady me. “Are you alright?”

“Just need a few minutes,” I nodded, reaching into my computation orb and setting a silent timer to go off a few seconds before the lights went out. “I’ve sabotaged the base and the prisoners are ready for extraction.”

Taking a few moments to brew myself some tea, I downed two cups and sighed as the Force within them gave me a bit of a pick-me-up. I left the kettle on to brew some more to take with us, given how useful the stuff was for knocking the cobwebs loose.

Moving back to my gear locker, I got dressed in my armor again and tossed Siri the cuffs, slipping her lightsaber onto my belt and taking my seat in the pilot’s chair after filling up a thermos with the rest of the tea. Closing my eyes, I opened myself up to the Force and began meditating, trying to refill my reserves in what little time we had left.

When we dropped out, Nobis sent my ship a set of coordinates and I followed her in as Siri stood behind me, looking over the scans from the planet and our destination.

Vanqor was a rocky, crystalline planet with a blue-gray hue. Scans indicated a high concentration of silica dust in the atmosphere and storms of the stuff swept the planet, visible from space. As we passed through the cloud layer and got lower, it became clear that the landscape was actually rather colorful, with its large crystalline formations, deserts, canyons, highlands, and the occasional bit of plant life adapted to survive in the environment hidden away in valleys shielded from the silica storms. Surface water was few and far between, however.

In short, despite it being technically habitable, it was decidedly inhospitable. It was the worst combination of desert and planet-wide bio-hazard. The planet’s sapient inhabitants, of which there were surprisingly many, didn’t tend to live out on the surface and those that did resided in hardened structures if they didn’t want to deal with what was effectively glass dust getting into literally everything.

“If we have to go outside, make sure to wear that rebreather,” I warned Siri as we looked over the scans, and the girl nodded.

The Rusted Silver followed Nobis’s ship down to the surface, then below the surface as a hangar opened at our approach. We touched down with a thump and I shut off the engines but left the ship running. Scanning the interior of the hangar as the hatch rose and close again, I locked in the parts of the structure holding it up. “Arthree, keep the ship ready. We may need to leave in a hurry. Keep an ear on the comms and be ready to shoot out those two locks with the turret, then shoot anyone who tries to make a break for one of the ships and isn’t carrying a lightsaber. The facility is going to lose power soon, so we’ll need those destroyed and that hatch open if we’re going to leave.”

The droid beeped its confirmation and I left my chair, making a last check of my gear before slipping on my helmet and giving it the command to seal up and start running off of the helmet/suit air supply. Slipping an extra two masks into my pouch just in case for Master Qui-Gon and Obi, I sent a questioning look to Siri, who nodded and closed the cuffs on her own wrists. “Ready.”

“Alright,” I nodded, and hefted her onto my shoulder. “Can you get to the saber from there?”

I felt her shifting around and heard an annoyed breath. “Cloak’s in the way, but I can get to it. I just wish I didn’t have your ass in my face right now.”

I rolled my eyes. “It can’t be helped. I’m going out now, so be still.”

Siri went limp and I carried her to the hatch, opening it and triggering it to close behind us as I stepped out into the dusty hangar. Looking around, I took in the place we’d found ourselves. It matched everything I had seen when projecting my senses to this location. It was apparently a pirate base of some sort, though I got the sense it was just a stopover to do some minor repairs and trade.

Given the eclectic collectionof poorly maintained vessels around us and the people sizing us up with hostile intent, the moment the lights went off this place was going to devolve into chaos. I made a mental note of which ones to kill first as I made my own assessments of those most likely to start trouble, or be trouble for us once the fighting broke out.

“Pirates. Lovely,” I grumbled audibly enough for Siri to hear.

Nearby, Nobis dragged Master Gallia out of her ship by a chain attached to a slave collar, her hands shackled behind her back. When she spotted me, the Tholothian woman glared and took a step towards us. “What did you do to my Pad—ahh!”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Nobis chuckled as the collar shocked the Jedi woman until she collapsed on the ground and began thrashing. As she did, Nobis stared at me the entire time, radiating expectation and suspicion. On my shoulder, I felt Siri stiffen and a flash of anger pour off of her, but a squeeze of her thigh in my hand and a directed empathic burst of calm towards her caused her to still and loosen up.

After a few moments, the collar stopped what it was doing and Nobis frowned, looking away from me to the woman on the ground. “We’ve been through this already, Master Gallia. Now, get up and walk or you’re getting another.”

The Jedi on the ground panted, but after a moment managed to push herself to her feet and walked quietly behind Nobis. Her anger quickly burned away as she focused and slipped into meditation, the woman radiating determination.

“How far is this place?” I asked as Nobis led us into a hallway. Whatever the facility was now, it had clearly once been a mining outpost, going by the fading signage and the machinery I had seen scattered about in my reconnaissance exploration.

“Lower level, across the facility,” Nobis answered absently as we made our way through the light crowd, picking up a few strays along the way who followed behind us, clearly plotting violence to my senses. Given the way she met the eyes of some and nodded at others, I was beginning to suspect another attempted double-cross.

Glancing back over her shoulder at me, she asked, “I didn’t see a collar on that one. How’d you get her under control?”

I snorted, putting as much derision as I could manage into my tone. “Unlike some, I don’t need technology to make up for a lack of skill.”

“Heh.” Chuckling, the bounty hunter’s eyes flicked behind me, her lips twitching into a grin, before she turned away—anticipation and excitement running through her.

“Oh. So those are your friends behind us, then.” She tensed at that, nearly stumbling, excitement giving way to paranoid fear. “If they get within three yards of us I’ll kill them all, but I’ll start by crippling you. You can’t draw that laser whip and get it up before I can put a hole in your spine with this blaster. I told you, you’re not going to fuck me out of my payday.”

“Tch. Fine,” Nobis grunted, before waving over her shoulder. The men behind us gave off feelings of disappointment and anger, many of them shifting the focus of their violent feelings from me onto Nobis as they began mentally weighing the odds. Slowly, they peeled off, scattering and leaving us to continue on unmolested.

Nobis led us into an elevator that would take us below and we settled in for the short ride down. I felt the woman staring a hole into the side of my head, before she finally commented, “Trust gets you killed in this line of work.”

“Then you’re using the wrong kind of trust,” I shrugged. “I trust most people to act in their own self-interest, either for greed or to advance some goal that may be at odds with my own. I’ve found that trusting them to pick the most inopportune time to attempt a betrayal tends to work out for the best.”

The elevator opened up and we stepped off, into a long hallway leading to the lab. We were halfway down when the ten second timer went off on my computation orb. I directed a burst of violence at Siri and felt her tense on my shoulder, her hands moving slowly up my back and taking her lightsaber. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Master Gallia jerk her head to the side, eyes landing on Siri as I spun up a targeting formula.

The lights went out. Above us, I felt chaos erupt. Murderous intent, anger, panic, pain, rage, fear, and more as the pirates turned on each other.

I heaved Siri off my shoulder as she undid her cuffs and flicked her lightsaber on. Spinning to the side to put Siri out of the line of fire, I drew the blaster at my left hip, and fired, the white-silver bolt flashing in the dark and hitting Nobis in the chest, sending her flying off to the side. I felt her shock, anger, and pain, and fired again—this time aiming for the head. She got her light whip up and on, but was unable to intercept the bolt before it landed with deadly precision and pulped her skull.

At the same time, Siri’s lightsaber flashed out, cutting through the shackles binding Master Gallia’s wrists behind her back and pulled her to the side. Master Gallia raised an arm to try and shove me away with the Force, only for Siri to knock her arm to the side. “Master, stop!”

“One of us,” Siri explained as I turned on the floodlights on my helmet.

Kneeling down, I collected Nobis’s light whip and shut it off, then Master Gallia’s lightsaber. Digging around in her pockets, I found a blocky looking remote control. Tossing the woman the lightsaber, she studied me warily for a few moments. I shook my head, moving closer as she ignited the green blade. Clicking the remote control to release the collar, I told her, “We don’t have time to argue. The lab is this way.”

Master Gallia pulled the collar off and cut it in half as it fell through the air. “How do you know where the lab is?”

“The clairvoyance aspect of Farsight,” I answered as I reached the door at the end of the corridor. Finding it powered down and locked on the other side, I gestured to the other two as I dropped to my knees nearby. “The locking bolt is on the right side, above the panel. Lightsaber through the wall, wiggle it around to cut it, then you can open the door. One of you take care of the door, the other cover me while I push ahead for a moment.”

“Who put you in charge—”

“Now,” I cut Master Gallia off, closing my eyes and projecting myself forward. Behind the door, several mercenaries—really just pirates Zan Arbor had hired—had already broken out floodlights and weapons, and were setting up firing positions on the door as they watched Siri’s purple saber burn its way through the lock.

“Don’t open the door yet,” I warned, “the enemy are going to fire as soon as it opens.”

I moved quickly past them. Finding what I was looking for, I grinned as I collected four lightsabers hidden away in a separate part of the lab. Levitating them at ceiling level, I moved them quickly to the prison area, stopping only long enough to throw the doors open on all of the animal cages for maximum disruption.

Materializing a projection of myself, I started handing out lightsabers to the Jedi in the room. “We’re on the other side of the lab. Zan Arbor has mercenary pirates working for her and they’re guarding the door. They won’t be expecting an attack from the rear. When you attack from behind, we’ll come through the door and pincer them. Oh, and watch out for the lab animals! I set them loose.”

“Tanya?!” Obi yelped, catching her lightsaber as I flung it through the bars of her cage, then cut the projection.

“Alright, the other Jedi are armed and about to make their escape. When they cause a commotion, that’s our cue,” I told Siri and Master Gallia as I stood. Raising my carbine, I shut off my helmet’s lamps, switching it to low-light mode. Remembering the potential for gas, I pulled out a mask and tossed it to Master Gallia. “Masks on, just in case they deploy gas.”

The pair got ready as, on the other side, we heard shooting break out. I waited, counting down from five in my head as I pulled a grenade off my belt and primed it. “Breach!”

The pair of Jedi ripped the doors open and I flung the grenade in, before opening fire. The pirates were too distracted by the blaster fire to notice the grenade landing in the middle of their group—a mistake many of them didn’t survive as it went off and took out the cluster it’d rolled into. I fell into the familiar rhythm of combat as I moved forward quickly, snapping off shots as my targeting formula lit enemies up.

Siri and Master Gallia rushed forward, cutting through the enemy ranks as behind them, angry lab animals tore into their back ranks, and former captive Jedi intercepted their backup rushing to reinforce the front. Things became a hectic, strobing blur as red, blue, green, and white-silver blaster bolts filled the air, along with the thrum and motion of green, blue, and purple lightsabers. Things quickly devolved into a melee scrum of vibro weapons against lightsabers as the hall became too chaotic to trust firing my blaster into the mess and I switched to my saber, joining Siri and Master Gallia in the fray.

Until finally, seemingly all at once, the sounds of combat died off entirely. Taking a breath and centering myself, I shut off my saber and hurried ahead, leaving the others in the corridor as I went on the hunt—opening up my senses and locking in on the feelings of fear, annoyance, and anger coming from nearby. Quickly finding a hidden exit, I ripped it open with the Force and rushed down it. The blonde form of Jenna Zan Arbor stood out in my low light vision as she turned and hurled a grenade at me.

I shoved it back at her using the Force and she only had a moment to yelp before it went off, blasting a cloud of gas into the corridor around her. The woman stumbled, coughing, before falling over unconscious. Raising an eyebrow at just how effective the stuff was, I hurried over and checked her for more. Pocketing the three grenades I found, I slapped my space set of cuffs on her hands and threw her over my shoulder. Bringing up my map of the place, I reached out and pinged the surroundings with a detection formula.

This passage leads straight to the hangar above. Nice.

Looking over my shoulder as the glow of active lightsabers filled the corridor, I waved at them. “This way. This passage will take us straight to the hangar.”

“Do we have transport out?” Knight Unduli asked.

“We’ll need a fairly large ship, it seems, given the number of children with us,” Master Qui-Gon pointed out.

I nodded as I turned on my lights again and took point, the other Jedi shutting off their sabers. “We should be able to commandeer a few of the pirate vessels parked in the hangar. Arthree is keeping an eye on things.” Glancing over to Knight Unduli, I asked, “What about Master R’aya? Did you discover what happened to him?”

The green woman nodded once, a frown on her face. “Killed in Simpla-12 by that lunatic,” she eyed Zan Arbor thrown over my shoulder. “What are you going to do with her?”

“We’ll turn her over to the Republic,” Master Qui-Gon suggested, and I nodded.

The journey up to the hangar was spent in tense silence after that, as even the children in the middle of our group kept quiet. The sounds of combat from the rest of the base filled the tunnel faintly coming through the walls, but thankfully none of it reached us.

As we neared the end of the tunnel according to my map, I opened a comm channel to the ship. “Arthree, is the hangar clear?”

When the droid beeped the negative, I handed off my prisoner to Master Qui-Gon then pulled my knife from my belt and shut off my lights again, before applying my camo formula. “Stay here. I’m going hunting,” I told the others, then slipped out before they could say anything to dissuade.

Staying low, I followed my empathic senses to the few people still inside the hangar—most of whom had barricaded the door leading deeper into the base. Slipping up behind the first straggler, I covered his mouth and slipped the knife into his throat. Letting the body drop loudly to the floor, I launched myself at the next closest straggler as a few of them turned to see what the noise was and began to panic.

A mage blade took his head off, drawing their attention to me as I dropped the optical camouflage formula. Screams rang out, only to be silenced by the report of blasters as they opened fire and I dove to the side, drawing my pistols and gunning down the three left over—two heads popped and one whose torso exploded from the blast from the pistol in my right hand.

“Arthree, fire up the engines!” I broadcast to the droid as I reached out for the hatch leading to the passageway and pulled it open with the Force, already running for the Rusted Silver as I felt more pirates approaching from down the corridor. “Hurry up, we’ve got company!”

The others split up into two groups—Master Qui-Gon, Obi, and Knight Unduli heading for one ship, Master Gallia and Siri heading for another, with the children divided between them. I waited until they were inside their ships and the hatches closed before heading into my own. “Arthree, blow those supports,” I called, throwing myself into the pilot’s seat as the hatch closed behind me.

The double barreled cannon mounted on the top of the ship fired, taking one the one on the right, before traversing left and knocking out the other. The deck shuddered beneath me as the huge exterior hatch fell open, into a full on dust storm that had blown in while we were inside—just in time, as pirates began flooding into the other ships.

It took a few moments to get comms up between our three ships, but we managed it with line of sight and soon enough we were all in the air and heading for space. A few of the pirate ships looked like they wanted to pursue, but Arthree on the gun convinced them to back off long enough for us to jump to hyperspace.

Relaxing back into my seat as the adrenaline crash hit, I pulled my helmet off and just listened as the other Jedi talked. Yawning as I felt myself starting to drift, I forced myself to stand and let them know I was going to sign off and crash, and my intention to split off from the group and return to my course for Serenno once we hit the Hydian Way. Promising the other Masters that I would fill them in on my end of the events leading up to finding them when I woke up, I cut off the comm link and made my back to start taking care of my gear.

After a quick run through the sonic shower, both in and out of my suit to clean it and myself, I tossed the garment into my locker and collapsed into my bunk for some well-earned rest.

I wonder how Master Dooku is doing. He must be bored helping with the reconstruction. On the other hand, he may just be enjoying time catching up with his sister. Away from the Senate, the Order, and politics in general. Seeing his hard work rewarded with daily progress and proper gratitude. Yes, I’m sure things have been nice and quiet. A proper vacation after decades of service.