The Maw

"The two Jedi managed to escape," the reporter was saying. "There has yet to be any word of their whereabouts," she continued.

Corran frowned and turned off the broadcast and turned toward Luke.

The older Jedi Master shook his head. "I haven't heard back from them. I believe the dark man is behind this, and Allana and Thrace have to believe that, too."

"So they're hiding in the Force," Ben reasoned.

"Dif's gonna use this whole thing as an excuse to come after us," Corran said grimly. "We need to be gone before he decides to arrest us. If we resist arrest it will only make us look guilty. And if we allow ourselves to be arrested… we won't be able to investigate whatever's going on here."

"That would make us an easy target for the Sith," Luke said.

"Or Dif," Ben suggested. "He was pushing for that Alpha Red stuff near the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War."

Luke sighed. "And if he had enough public support, he wouldn't need to be covert about it, either."

"And then it's only a matter of time before Scaur decides the Jedi Academies are a threat," Corran said. "Dif was more than willing to murder Yuuzhan Vong children. So we need to move them."

"Just putting it out there," Ben said. "What if we put the academy on the Errant Venture?"

"You mean that big, red Star Destroyer?" Luke asked.

Ben frowned. "I see your point."

"It could still work," Seff Hellin said. "Season four, episode seven of Tumbler Tuggers. Basically, a tutorial on how to get paint off of a starship. The Errant Venture was painted that color, right?"

Corran nodded. "Mirax won't like it. But she'd like a lot of dead Jedi a heck of a lot less."


It was a bizarre sight. Freighters and other ships belonging to the Jedi and some of their friends flitting around the Errant Venture, firing temporarily modified ion cannons. But the crimson paint flaking off the Star Destroyer's hull made it apparent that it was working.

Coruscanti Phoenix: Orbiting Adumar

Admiral Nek Bwua'tu currently had a fleet stationed at Adumar over concerns that the nearby Imperial fleet that had been at Dathomir for the past three days was preparing to take the world. Adumar was still far less advanced than many other planets. And thus was a reasonable target.

Only hours ago, Dif Scaur had contacted Bwua'tu with the news that Allana Solo had murdered Chief of State Turk Brand. Bwua'tu had mentioned that Allana had been cloned, hundreds of times over, and that one of the clones was likely the culprit, but the Director of Intelligence would not hear it. The man was so hateful of the Jedi that he wouldn't care what the truth was. Dif was possibly even glad that the Chief of State was assassinated since it would give him an excuse to hate the Jedi. The Jedi would never be responsible for, or sanction such a thing. Not unless Dif was some sort of Sith Lord; he certainly acted like one at times.

Nek Bwua'tu shook his head. If he stood by the Jedi, then that could give Scaur a reason to come after him. But unless Scaur had someone who could replace him…

Coruscant

After the devastation of the previous year the former capital of the Galactic Alliance had been reduced to a planet sized slum. Most of the cityscape covering Coruscant now resembled ancient ruins. In one of these decrepit buildings, with its wings folded up, rested a Lambda-class shuttle. Allana and Thrace sat on one of the vessel's shuttles bench seats.

"It's starting to look like I'm not meant to be the queen of Hapes," Allana suddenly commented.

"You're already going to be the Queen of the Jedi," Thrace said.

Allana sighed. "Not if I get killed first."

"I won't let that happen." Thrace squeezed her hand. "We ought to get some food. I'm sure there are some makeshift restaurants around."

"We don't exactly blend in," Allana said with a frown.


Allana and Thrace traveled through a series of grimy corridors and hallways. Located within the depths of the planet-sized city that was Coruscant, the Underworld as it was called was fraught with danger. There were native creatures such as slashrats and others resulting from genetic experimentation, and not just from this galaxy but also from the galaxy that had long ago been home to the Yuuzhan Vong. Also courtesy of the extra galactic race were predatory plants. And lastly there were the sapient beings which had devolved into non-sentience or near non-sentience. It was in one of these vile recesses that the slum that was Stagnation was situated.

A sickly yellow-green light illuminated sickly yellow-green walls. In most of the cracks lived some sort of lichens or fungi. And the stagnant breeze did little to alleviate the oppressive humidity in this area of Coruscant's bowels. Every once and a while a critter resembling a mass of thin, needle-like legs would scuttle out of one crevice and into another. Or a set of antennae would poke out of a crack only to be pulled back in. Allana, who generally didn't mind such creatures, felt itchy.

There were very few people in this area, making it extremely unlikely that anyone would recognize the two Jedi as fugitives. Most of the beings stuck on Coruscant wouldn't even know of the Chief of State's assassination. But according to Murdoch's Law, had Allana and Thrace been daft enough to leave the Underworld without adequate camouflage, they would certainly cross paths with one of the few people who had heard the news.

"It was good doing business with you," said the shop owner, a male Togarian named Dorgan. He wore dark gray boots and a brown robe sashed around the waist by a thick belt. A heavy blaster hung from one side, and some rifle from the other.

"Likewise," Thrace told the male Togarian. He felt a Force nudge from Allana and nodded in agreement.

"You're going to forget you ever saw us," the two Jedi said in unison.

"I'm going to forget I ever saw you," whispered the Dorgan conspiratorially.

Dorgan frowned at the two hooded figures exiting his store. He looked down at his comlink. The two of them had at least paid. But why couldn't he remember them? He shrugged; they couldn't have been that important.


"Ever had a slashrat burger?" Thrace asked as he and Allana walked toward a nearby diner. His danger sensed suddenly screamed at him.

"Well, there was this one restaurant called Dirk's. I ordered what was supposed to be a nerf burger, but it tasted-" Her last word devolved into a shriek as she fell to the ground with a net of blue energy dancing across her body.

Thrace reached out in the Force and slowed her descent. And the blue lightning died away. Another bolt came toward Thrace and he deflected it into the ground with his lightsaber. At the same time, he used the Force to whip his robe off; it wouldn't do for it to get stuck on something. Another blade, this one red, snap-hissed to life. Thrace Force-yanked and a woman in a black jumpsuit rolled out of the shadows and came up in a fighting stance. The woman had long dark hair and a small scar at the side of her mouth that sort of made her look like she was smiling. Vestara Khai.

Thrace batted back another volley of Force lightning and grabbed Allana's blaster with the Force. Vestara began to block red lances of energy as the Chiss Jedi opened fire. He felt his opponent reaching toward him in the Force and put up a shield to keep her from telekinetically snapping his neck.

The Sith slashed at him and he spun away, firing at her behind his back and blocking an arc of blue lightning as he finished the spin. Thrace twitched his right pinkie finger and Allana slid back behind him. He then charged at Vestara, blocking blue energy with his lightsaber and firing red laser bolts.

Aided by the Force, Thrace leapt into the air and slashed down with his lightsaber. Vestara blocked fiercely and Thrace pushed down with his lightsaber, adding more force to his flip.

A multitude of tiny panels began shifting on Thrace's prosthetic left arm and his hand, which had dropped the blaster, was replaced by a blaster muzzle. As he came down to the ground he twisted to face the Sith Saber. A silver burst of energy shot out of the muzzle and though she was able to block, the force of the impact knocked her to the ground.

As he charged forward, Thrace used the Force to drag the Sith closer to him, and farther from Allana. He fired another burst of silver energy and Vestara caught it on her crimson lightsaber. She used the Force of the impact to aid in a backward flip that brought her to her feet.

They leapt toward each other and lightsabers clashed, throwing off a shower of sparks. The Sith Force-pushed further off of the ground and slammed her knee into Thrace's chin. Still in the air he began to fall backward. He put up a shield of Force energy to lessen the effects of the Force lightning that came a second later. He hit the ground with a thump, and barely managed to use the Force to keep his head from slamming into the ferrocrete. As Thrace blocked another bolt of Force lightning the Sith brought her lightsaber toward Thrace's head. Using the Force she yanked his lightsaber from his grasp.

Panels on Thrace's prosthetic left forearm shifted again, and the muzzle of the plasma cannon was replaced by a long beskar blade. As it clashed with the incoming lightsaber it began turning a tiny bit orange. Of course. Many of the lightsabers produced on Kesh, Vestara's homeworld burned hotter than most; they could cut through stronger materials. Including beskar, he decided as the red lightsaber slowly began cutting through his blade.

Thrace saw a small dagger with an elegant glass blade float out of a small boot holster and sail toward his neck. He reached out in the Force and grabbed the shikkar, to kill her with it instead. As the two fought over the shikkar the Sith's red blade continued to cut through his beskar blade. Thrace would tire before his opponent did. Then he'd be dead, and so would Allana.

Suddenly, Vestara flew backward on an arc of dark blue Force lightning. Thrace glimpsed a man chasing her into the shadows. There was the buzzing of clashing lightsabers and flashes of blue lightning. Then footfalls.

A blue hand reached out to Thrace and helped him up. He half ran, half stumbled over to Allana's unconscious form.

"My ship the Sarlagesus is coming. She'll be safe there." He stooped down and picked Allana up.

Thrace looked up to see a large black vessel descending from the sky. It resembled a freighter version of a B-wing, with the cockpit at the top of a blade-shaped ship. It leaned to the right, and continued until it came to hover a meter or so above the ground. It consisted of a cockpit like that of a YT freighter attached to a long, tapering cone. A curved section started at the rear of the cone and flared outward until its pointed tip terminated a few meters across from the approximate middle of the cockpit. It was clearly a custom job. Situated just aft of the cockpit was a docking ring, similar to one on the Millennium Falcon. A ramp lowered itself to the ground from the 'bottom' of this docking ring.

"She has an EV droid brain," the older man said. "Perhaps, you've heard of EV 99."

"Of course," Thrace said. A programming glitch had made her cruel. And she had enjoyed torturing other droids.

"This one's friendlier," he addressed Thrace's disapproving look. "Her name's Evelyn."

Thrace followed him up the boarding ramp, and was greeted by a destroyer droid. He stared at it. The last time he'd encountered one of those things it had tried to kill him.

"The droideka's under Evelyn's control. As are the eleven buzz droids."

Thrace followed the Chiss man up the ramp. He placed Allana in the rear left seat and dropped into the pilot's seat.

Thrace took the seat next to him. "That was Vestara Khai," he said as the Sarlagesus lifted into the sky.

The stars suddenly started rotating. Thrace glanced to his right. There was a pair of grooves. His eyes followed the track up and over to the left, beyond the mysterious Chiss man. The effect was that of the rotating cockpit of the B-wing, except that it was only the seats inside which rotated. And then Thrace noticed that the front of the cockpit was clear, except for the alloy of the support structure, like an observation dome. A few minutes later, the vessel was in hyperspace.

Thrace stared at his and Allana's rescuer a few moments. The man wore black jeans and a black coat with metal studs on the shoulders. His hair and beard were long and unkempt, though clean. He looked like a member of a speeder bike gang who made credits as a drummer in a grunge band. In the Force Thrace could feel quite a bit of darkness in the man. But it wasn't the hateful, angry darkness of the Sith woman who'd just tried to murder him. It was more of a sad, lonely darkness.

And then Thrace tried to imagine the man without his long beard and mustache. The face he pictured in his mind was Thorden's. But he had died the year before when his Star Destroyer, the Duinwoguin had crashed into the Vanquisher. And Thrace hadn't detected the least bit of Force sensitivity in him.

Thrace suddenly had a vision of this same Chiss man, though younger, standing beside a dead Chiss woman. There was a lightsaber wound where her heart was. Someone else was there, too. Someone in a black robe. Thrace could not see his face. "You're my…"

"Father? Yes."

"You… did kill her." Part of Thrace wanted to reach out and tear the man's head off. But another part realized that there was more to the story. More he needed to know before he reacted.

"I didn't have a choice."

46 ABY

Thorden could feel Darth Plagueis' dark, undead presence inside his house. His wife Chaf'aria'nagaru was also there, frightened almost to death. Thorden leapt up out of his seat and scrambled over to the left airlock. The door opened a moment later, and the Chiss fleet commander jumped several meters down to the ground. His twin lightsabers were snap-hissing to crimson life before his boots even made contact with the grass. The lightsabers' humming heightened slightly in pitch as the blades turned silver and lengthened. Thorden called on the Force to enhance his speed as he ran toward the log cabin. He focused on the front door as it came into view, and it exploded into hundreds of thousands of wooden splinters.

Fariana stood pinned against one of the walls by an invisible net of energy. Several cooking knives were hovering around her. Darth Plagueis stood nearby, his lightsaber humming softly. "What in the Void is this!" Thorden demanded angrily.

Even without the Force, he'd have been able to feel her primal terror and profound confusion. How were those bloody knives levitating? What was her husband doing with the robed nutter holding the red glowing thing? And what were those silver things her husband had in his hands?

"I think you know," Darth Plagueis said. "You need to devote yourself fully to your appointed task."

"That doesn't mean she has to die," Thorden pleaded. "I can erase her memory. She won't remember me. And I'll never come back."

Plagueis shook his head. "But over time it would all be undone by your son. She would eventually remember that you're the boy's father. Nor could we simply take the child away. The child is too much a part of her life for that to work." The knives moved closer. One of them scraped against Fariana's cheek, drawing a small amount of blood. "I can do it for you," the dark man offered. The knives came even closer, and one of them pressed into her shoulder. "But it will be slow. Painful. Or you can do it, however you like. The choice is yours."

"Why are you doing this?"

"It is a test, to see if you'll be able to do what's necessary."

Mith'ord'envar felt a lump form in his throat. Plagueis had told him that he would eventually have to give up his attachments. But, he had never dreamed that it would mean this. To murder the woman he loved, the mother of his son. But he had to do it; if he didn't…

Thorden looked at his wife, and then at Plagueis. There was no way he could fight this… this undead man and win. He walked over to Fariana, and gently stroked her cheek. Fariana calmed down slightly as the knives fell to the floor. He looked into her beautiful crimson eyes. "I never thought this would happen," he told her. "I'm so sorry." He glanced at Plagueis and then turned back to Fariana. "I have to do this or... he will."

Mitth'ord'envar wiped some of the tears from Chaf'aria'nagaru's eyes, and embraced her. He shut off one of his lightsabers and then held the pommel against her chest, over her heart. His wife wasn't angry with him, just terrified and sad. Thorden kissed her, and then pressed the activation stud on his lightsaber. Fariana gave a startled cry as the red blade snap-hissed to life, burned through her heart, and out of her back. Thorden held on to his wife as her life force faded into oblivion. He had just murdered his soul-mate.

His son Mitth'rae'sevris just happened to walk out into the hallway, to see his father laying his mother's dead body onto the floor. The boy suddenly screamed and began to cry. Darth Plagueis was there beside him, almost in an instant. "Wait!" Thorden shouted.

The Sith Lord turned his absence of a face toward his apprentice. "The child saw what you did," he said darkly.

"He doesn't have to remember," Thorden pleaded. "You can't take my son from me, too. I'll have no reason to help you." Darth Plagueis had told him of the Grand Plan, of how it would eventually bring peace to the galaxy. Thorden had wanted that, if not for Thraes, then for his children. A galaxy in which they could grow up and not have to worry about war, or terrorism.

"Wipe his memory, then," Plagueis said. "But he must never learn what happened here. If he does…"

"I know." Darth Plagueis stepped away as Thorden walked over to his son. He picked Thraes up and put a hand on his son's forehead. Thorden talked to the child a moment, and the boy's eyes became heavy. The Chiss fleet commander held his son as he drifted off to sleep, and then gently placed the child on the floor.

"We must go, before he wakes up," Plagueis prompted.

55 ABY

"You were working with a bloody Sith Lord," Thrace said, accusation in his tone. His father frowned at the floor; Thrace could practically smell the guilt wafting off of the man.

"I had all this power," Thorden said, "and... I didn't know how to use it. So I reached out, for someone to teach me. And... Plagueis was the only one who responded. I wanted to use that power to protect my family, and my people. If I'd known what he was going to make me do...

"He told me that I'd have to make a sacrifice. I thought that meant that I'd have to go away and perhaps never see you or your mother again. And I was willing to do that if that was what it took to protect you. But the Sith had something else in mind. He had me do horrible things. I realized I couldn't go on like that anymore. He told me he'd be waiting when I changed my mind, but I never did. I'm so glad someone taught you the right way to use the Force."

Thrace found himself speechless, and felt the heat of his anger begin to cool. He'd despised his father for so long. He hadn't understood, and hadn't wanted to, what the man had gone through. Thrace glanced over at Allana. She was the most important person in his life. He couldn't imagine how it would destroy him if someone forced him to kill her.

Thorden followed Thrace's gaze. "Plagueis... wanted me to kill her. He threatened to kill you if I didn't do it. But then I sensed that someone had found you."

"Luke Skywalker and his son, Ben," Thrace said. "Allana told me about you, said you made her nervous."

"Plagueis said she was going to be the Queen of the Jedi, and that if something wasn't done about her that the galaxy would be doomed to eternal war."

"Darth Plagueis is the dark man, then," Thrace said, somewhat to himself.

"Well, he was literal darkness," Thorden said, slightly perplexed.

"Luke Skywalker had a vision about Allana and this dark man fighting for the Throne of Balance," Thrace explained.

Thorden looked slightly mortified. "If I had killed her..."

"the Sith would end up ruling the galaxy," Thrace finished. "And I have a bloody good feeling the dark man would be worse than Palpatine."

"I sense a strong bond between the two of you," Thorden said.

Thrace nodded. "Allana was captured by the droids; that's how all those clones were created. I was on a team of Jedi who rescued her. She was dying so I created what I thought was just a Force meld in order to save her. But it turned out to be a Force bond."

"And you didn't know whether or not your feelings for each other were just because of that Force bond."

"Right," Thrace said. "So you're saying that's it's not just the Force bond."

"Correct. Don't wait too long. We never know how much time we'll have with the people we love."

Thrace looked back at Allana's sleeping form again. He knew he loved her, but he'd thought it was more like love between a brother and sister. A very cute sister. "So," he said after a moment of silence, "I'm related to Thrawn and Formbi."

"Formbi, yes. But not Thrawn. I'm the son of his adopted brother, Thrass," Thorden explained.

"Well, that's a relief," Thrace commented. "I obviously didn't get my Imperial accent from you."

"What Imperial accent?'

"I guess I sort of lost it. Happens when you're around people that talk funny."

Thorden nodded. "Your mother was a liaison to Moff Reige, and had spent a few years as an Imperial citizen. Chaf'orm'bintrano was among the few people who knew of our marriage. It would've been very bad had if a relative of Thrawn had been discovered to have any sort of connection to the Empire. So we decided to live in a rural area, where there weren't many people.

I look forward to any feedback. Constructive criticism is welcomed.