"The best way to achieve constant focus is to pick something neutral, and think about it whenever an emotion begins to surface."
Juhani drew in her breath. At that moment, her focus was on Ahto City, about as neutral a place as she could imagine.
"I see it. The white architecture, endless blue sea..."
It didn't take long for Masadar to determine what she was referring to. "That's not what I meant by… Nevermind, stick with that."
Using some guidance from Visas, he took the moment to look over at Surik in the cockpit, who was quite obviously grinning at them despite appearing to be focused on flying the Ebon Hawk itself, and being some distance away from them. Choosing to take it as a sign of encouragement, he looked back to Juhani while resuming his meditative posture.
"You exist, the object… place exists, and the Force exists. There is no harm, no fear, no danger."
There was a flinch from Juhani
"You are alone in the void. The Force flows between you and the place, drawing away passion, leaving behind peace."
Juhani herself opened her eyes for a few moments, needing that moment to readjust herself to a more comfortable arrangement. When done, she closed her eyes again.
"You breathe in, the Force breathes out."
And she did just that, taking long breaths, letting the turbulent thoughts at the back of her mind wash away into the waves of Manaan. For all of a few seconds until the moment was broken.
She hissed to herself in a downward glance, muttering something in her native language, then began the uncomfortable task of untangling her legs again. And yet, she still took notice of Masadar's expression of failure on his part.
"My apologies, for a moment there I did feel peace. I think it will take more than a few attempts to have any lasting effect."
"It's quite alright. I've only had a few years to really develop it from study after all. So long as it works to begin with."
The familiar jolt of leaving hyperspace made both stumble. Shortly after, the faint sense of dread began to creep in.
"It seems we've arrived."
Masadar followed her out of the starboard quarters back to the cockpit, hesitating for a moment when she moved out of the way for him to approach Surik herself.
"Not much to look at, but seeing as this is your first visit Masadar, why don't you take a seat."
He did just that, brushing his lekku in front of his shoulders before settling into the copilot chair. Ahead lay the foreboding red wasteland of Korriban. Even after years of working towards mental balance, and readying himself over the past week since the call, he still felt apprehensive.
Juhani's reaction was just the same, her breath cold while she tried not to think too hard about what she had felt there earlier. "The in-fighting must have been terrible indeed. It did not look nearly as desolate when those of us with Revan left."
"They've had five years to tear the place up and take what they can. I'm still a little surprised that Sith got stuck there to begin with. Not to mention the irony."
"What irony?"
"You know, Sith stuck on the Sith homeworld, asking for Jedi to rescue them…"
Surik ignored the awkward silence that followed by focusing entirely on the surface approach. Dreshdae looked even worse than it had been a month earlier on her last visit. Metal sheets and other structural pieces had been torn off and strewn across the place. Some were piled up at specific places which she soon realized were doorways. Barricaded from which direction she couldn't tell at that altitude.
Getting lower down only seemed to remove options for landing zones. The original spaceport was in a poor state, not impossible to use, but still bad from a tactical standpoint. After all, she couldn't take the Sith entirely at the word.
The first fly-by only confirmed the dreary assumptions made on the approach. Beyond the building itself lay a trashed colony. Some of the damage had been done by lightsaber, some by fierce beast attack, and some apparently by sandstorm of all things.
Her search soon began to expand beyond the colony walls, headed away from the valley. Not far beyond the outer gate was a relatively clear area. "I don't particularly feel like hiking back up to the academy. Eyes out for beasts, and whatever else is left."
There was an unmistakable chill that passed through when they landed on the surface. For Masadar, it carried more than just the constant concern about tangling with the dark side. Something far more tragic.
"A lot of people died at Sith hands here. Just, ordinary people." He pulled his composure together to rise from his seat with a bit more confidence, looking to Surik for a bit. "I didn't sense any of this around Algwinn when he arrived. He must have been here long enough to learn to ignore it."
She glanced back at him while making final arrangements to lock down the ship. "I don't think any of us want to wait around that long anyway." Once done, she brought up the transceiver controls. "Ebon Hawk to Rescue Aure and Rescue Besh; landed safely, no immediate sign of life. Hold orbit until next transmission."
Before leaving the ship itself, she motioned for HK-47 in the maintenance hold to follow, letting the other two move out ahead of her.
"Stand guard outside viewing angles of the settlement. If anyone tries to sneak aboard, stun them only. And no complaining about killing them instead, understood?"
"Exasperation: Oh, if you insist Master. It truly shames me to have my talents remain squandered on 'guard duty'."
Surik rolled her eyes."There might be some beasts lurking around, you're free to kill those. I think they'd be challenging enough."
She left before he could protest, catching up to the pair who by then had reached the outer gate. Now finally up close, the various marks of destruction were very obvious. Beasts, weather and weapons fire had all run rampant through the settlement at some point. It was also a lot easier to determine that the gate itself had definitely been reinforced from within.
"Revan killed off the terentatek here, right Juhani?"
Juhani glanced over with a short look of concern. Her hand was tracing through a particularly large claw mark. "We did, with great effort and some useful tricks from Canderous. That one is definitely dead."
The doubt wasn't lost on Masadar, who instinctively felt for his lightsaber. "And by 'that one', you mean there could be others about anyway."
After examining the mark further, Juhani sighed and moved on in her search for a weakness in the barricade. "That was merely the worst of the Sith beasts. I would not be surprised if there are lesser species wandering the surface."
She drew her lightsaber when such a weakness was found. A few careful cuts created a hole large enough for them alone to pass through.
As if the barricade itself wasn't grim enough, the various skeletal remains of people both humanoid and alien were scattered throughout the colony itself. More worryingly was the lack of bestial remains.
What was as expected was the complete lack of weapons or useful items. Every corpse had been picked clean a long while ago.
The morbidity reached its peak at the spaceport building itself. The barricade there was facing outward, bearing metal lengths crudely sharpened into spears, and no small amount of dried blood beneath the dust. Below the spears were yet more bones.
"Barbaric. As if leaving them outside to die of thirst was not horrific enough."
Masadar rested a hand on Juhani's shoulder. The disgust she felt was gradually mellowed out by his inner calm, passing the struggle onto himself for her sake.
"They'll be judged accordingly. Don't forget that."
"Over here, quick."
Both looked past the barricade to where Surik had moved to. By then, she had gotten to work in opening up a crawl-through that had since been covered over.
"They didn't do much to block it up. And it was cut from the inside." She made a cautionary glance into the room beyond before crawling through. After finding an empty room, she ducked back down to call for the others. "Come through carefully. I'd rather that we not startle them."
Masadar went through next, wincing briefly when he grazed his lekku against the top of the crawl-through. Once back on his feet, he was met with the bleak sight of the reception area, again stripped of useful components and the like, but otherwise free of blood and bodies.
"Czerka must have held out against the colonists who tried to flee. Which begs the question as to why Sith were left behind."
He got no answer from either of the two women, who were both more concerned about making their way through the spaceport cautiously. With a shrug, he followed on after them.
Compared to the outside world, the relatively clean, albeit dim corridors of the spaceport itself felt more suspect for that fact. There were clear signs of fighting in the colony, and doubtless they would find more at the academy. And yet, the only place that allowed escape from the planet seemed to have escaped the worst in spite of logical value.
After finally reaching an intersection, Surik stopped. "If you sense anyone, call out to them. I don't want this to end in a bloodbath because someone got spooked. Now, where do we go from here?"
Juhani moved ahead to look down both corridors, and at the door directly ahead, hummed to herself, then pointed to the left. "This way leads to the cantina and academy I believe. The other would lead back to the internal landing zone."
"You sure?"
"No, but passing years after a single visit is not good for the sense of direction in an unpleasant place." She approached the doors ahead, noting a small gap between them that allowed her to see what remained of a store. "Left is definitely the way, I am certain now."
It was made irrelevant by the doorway down the left corridor opening up anyway. From the top of the ramp, they could only see the legs and boots of someone in an Imperial uniform.
"Why didn't you come from the valley?"
All three looked to each other in turn. That was undoubtedly Rilana's voice. After some confused gestures, Surik finally motioned for the others to stay back while she made the descent.
"Didn't feel like another hike. Took a while for you to notice if you have lookouts. Some sort of hidden sensor up at the colony entrance then?"
She had a pretty clear view of Rilana at the bottom of the ramp. A younger Twi'lek than she had expected from the conversation over a week earlier, and yet the actual rank pins on her uniform were way above what she could have possibly attained. Even considering the obvious disarray, that fact stuck out to her as odd, almost as much as her calm demeanour.
"How many Jedi then, here right now? I'm not letting any of my people walk into a trap here."
Surik stopped just before the threshold of the cantina. From there she could see Rilana's eyes, entirely lacking the telling red or amber of Sith. She spoke as if in charge, and still had a limited connection to the dark side. Strange indeed.
"Three, including myself."
"I want to see them. No stealth fields, no tricks."
The smirk returned when she looked back up the ramp, nodding to Masadar and Juhani. While still very much concerned about things that weren't adding up, agitating Rilana with that kind of look wouldn't be a good move.
Unfortunately, agitation was exactly what came over her when she saw Juhani.
"You, you were with Revan! When he came through and murdered my friends and tutors!"
Juhani looked to Masadar, who readied himself, then back to Rilana once she was at Surik's side. "I do not recall seeing you here. And might I remind you that we were not the instigators to begin with."
"That's not an excuse!"
Her hands clenched. A faint flare of red began to emerge from her pupil. The black lightsaber on her hip edged out of its hook.
That was enough reason for Masadar to take action, moving a step ahead of the other two, hands well away from making any kind of tricking gesture.
"You need to calm down. We really are here to help. Whatever happened in the past is irrelevant, this is the time for-"
A cold gust blew around his lekku when Rilana glared at him directly. The red in her eyes began to spread.
"Stop it! Whatever you're doing! Get out of my head!"
Rilana went for her lightsaber, despite being hopelessly outmatched.
That was all Surik needed to conclude her suspicions. She held the moment of action for as long as she could, projecting her plan to the others so that they could all react in sync. A way to safely disarm her without any harm done.
Her hand whipped out to grab the lightsaber right from Rilana. Juhani hurled her up against the wall to their left with a concentrated gesture, leaving Masadar to keep her restrained under a stasis projection.
"Desperate move." Surik slid the lightsaber behind her back while she moved over to look at Rilana directly. Her eyes had lost the red tint altogether. "Well? Explain yourself."
She didn't expect tears to begin welling up in the young Twi'leks eyes, but there they were.
"Don't kill them… Please, don't kill them."
Masadar gasped when the emotional shift hit him. Rather than the expected bitterness, anger and revulsion he had found in other Sith, he was feeling overwhelming fear for others. The sort he had often felt around Bastila when caring for her son.
"By the gods…" He dropped the stasis projection, catching Rilana when she fell from the wall. "We're not child killers, Rilana. Regardless of how they've been brought up, we have to help them."
Surik grabbed his shoulder. "Child… There are children here? On Korriban?"
Rilana tried to struggle free of Masadar's hold, to little avail as he was surprisingly strong. Tears were now streaming down until she ended up burying her face into his arm.
That didn't stop Surik from prying her away by a fierce hold on her shoulders. "Answer me Rilana! Why are there children here? What was Darth Malak planning to do with them?"
"Surik stop! She's about to faint!"
There was a notable heat lingering on her fingertips when she let the Twi'lek go at last. It wasn't from how hard she had grabbed her either. While she didn't show it, there had been a moment of anger that she had given into without even realizing.
She stepped back altogether, leaving Masadar to be the consoling presence while she went to find her centre of peace again. There was hardly any surprise when Juhani approached with her ever questioning glare.
"I'm alright… I really don't like being here." Her hand clenched up a few times, then finally relaxed out when she reached that peaceful place in her mind again. "The Neo-Crusaders loved to slave off children of all species to the Hutts. I suppose it's a wound that needs more than a decade to heal."
"It took two decades for me."
Surik's hand went to her face, partially obscuring the groan at her own failing. "I'm sorry, I completely forgot, I didn't mean-"
"Of course you didn't. I am actually rather reassured that Jedi who fought the trade then are still around now. But that is a discussion for later."
After another sigh, she turned back around and looked to the two Twi'leks. Rilana had calmed down thanks to some consolation from Masadar, whether it was through use of his talent or use of less hostile words she couldn't tell.
He was quick to notice the attention on them again. "She's only twenty three, the remaining Sith abandoned Korriban altogether about a year ago, and until Algwinn arrived she was the oldest one here since then."
"That explains the overly ranked uniform." Surik frowned in thought, almost ready to call up the Temple and rip into Algwinn instead for holding back information. The situation itself demanded her attention more than that however.
"Alright. We all go to the academy and assemble the others there. The ships land in the valley, and we can discuss the long and short once we're back on Coruscant. Giving the others a ship of their own is off the table now."
Rilana nodded quietly, still shying away from Surik, but no longer terrified of her. "Some of them think they're going to be separated from their siblings and own children."
The last implication disturbed Surik more, but she again put it out of her mind. "We're not splitting families up, I am very determined about keeping that promise. Right now it's a matter of getting off this wretched planet"
Juhani moved forward at that with a renewed tone to her voice. "Rilana, I can say with confidence that those here will not be met with uncompassionate hearts. Bastila knows this sort of pain, she would never put others through it. You have my word also on that."
Masadar tightened his lips and gave a belated shrug. "I've got nothing."
All three pairs of eyes were turned on him, which brought up a bit of expected discomfort on his part.
"I came here to keep Sith in a calm and reasonable state." He looked back at Juhani and Surik in turn when they looked at him with more intent. "Adult Sith, not children raised by them. This is untested waters for me."
For a moment, the corner of Juhani's lip tugged into something of a smile. "You do have a calming presence, and appearance for that matter, something that is greatly needed. I will admit that Cathar do not look friendly at a glance, especially to young minds who have been left frightened by all that has been their home for so long. I would not be of much use in preparing them for their overdue rescue."
He frowned at that in turn, thinking it over for a few moments, before looking back at her. "You're no good with children either!"
"Perhaps that too."
Surik ended the small argument with a gesture of her hands for silence, having brought out her communicator again. "Ebon Hawk to Rescue Aure and Rescue Besh, proceed to designated coordinates, preferably land as close to the academy as you can get. Besh crew remain ready, circumstances have changed." She looked to Rilana at that. "They'll need someone to pilot the ship after all."
