Though her every instinct had told her to rush back to her people, Tamar Skirata had forced herself to slow down. She knew she needed to review her copy of Mordran Krux's data and to think of what steps to take.

Parsing through all his information was difficult. He kept account ledgers without specifications of the materials transacted, only the credits. However, when compared to another list tolling every ship to dock and undock at Broken Moon she was able to identify the pattern. Once every two weeks, on the exact same date he would disburse the biggest payments from his accounts, a BF-11X hauler would appear at Broken Moon and discharge cargo. It must have been Savyar's; in fact, Tamar knew she'd used ships of that or similar types to drop defense equipment on Fengrine. In theory Tamar could find that ship, download its travel logs, and determine where it was carrying those shipments of glitterstim from.

That was what Arlen Fel wanted to know. She had to remind herself that was secondary. The most important question for Tamar Skirata hadn't changed since Nyal's murder. She had to learn, for certain, whether it was the Jedi or the Sith who had done it. If she could figure that she felt everything else would fall into place: what Savyar really was, what Gevern Auchs knew, and what role she herself should have in all of this.

She'd thought hard about comming Dorn and explaining what had happened, but she didn't trust the line to be private. The things he had to know she could only tell it to his face. She'd have explaining to do once she got back to Waystation Xesh, she knew that. Auchs would instantly distrust her, not that he'd really trusted her from the start.

That would be hard to face, but she'd have to face it. Tamar kept comm silence for the entire ride back to Senex-Juvex. She spent the time instead reviewing Krux's records, familiarizing herself with his ship, and thinking hard.

Krux's ship didn't have the pathways through the Shroud plotted into its computer like her lost Beskad, and she had to rely on memory to find the entrance into the great spread of nebulae and stardust. Once she was inside it became a little easier, and three more short, cautious hyperspace jumps brought her to site of the Mandalorians' largest base. Even if Dorn and Auchs weren't at Waystation Xesh, she could easily learn their location there.

When he dropped out of hyperspace she barely avoided the gnarled hunk of debris drifting dead ahead of her. She turned on her shields and dropped speed before she surveyed the scene. Waystation Xesh was gone. The space station's flat disc looked like it had been punched through the center. Its arms were broken and the black husks of dead ships – Crusader II-class corvettes, Teroch-class frigates- drifted through the void.

It was incredible. No enemy should have been able to find Waystation Xesh, let alone destroy it and all these Mandalorian vessels. Half their task force from Karfeddion had been wiped out in an instant. She checked her scanners for life sings but found nothing. The dead ships were as cold as vacuum, which meant this attack had happened days, even weeks ago, probably when she and Dorn were at Broken Moon. Her cousin was alright, then, which was a relief, but there was no denying that thousands of her people must have died here, maybe even the Mand'alor himself.

She pushed aside her shock and anger to search the debris more thoroughly. She spotted the wreckage of TIE fighters here, and what looked like pieces of a Kuati frigate. It must have been some Imperial attack, retribution for Karfeddion maybe, though how they'd found this place was still a mystery.

She tried to think of where to go from here. She remembered there was an exit pathway direcly above where the station had been, but that led to a lightyears-wide empty pocket of desolate planetoids and space rock. Waystation Grek was a few jumps from here and she tried to remember the route. One slip of memory could send her tumbling into the mass shadow of a planetoid or choked by radiated gas; she had to be careful.

As she scoured the site one more time her sensors located one more ship that had almost drifted into the gas. It was a cargo vessel, not Mandalorian. As she got closer her scanners verified it: a BF-11X.

Her first thought was that it couldn't be the one she sought; that was an astronomic coincidence. Then she wondered if it really was. Savyar's cargo fleet wasn't big, a few dozen ships at most. The BF-11X was not a common model.

There was only one way to find out.

She kicked her spacecraft in little nudges until it was right alongside the drifting hauler. Krux's ship was small but quite well-equipped, and she was able to magnetically clamp her airlock to the portal nearest the hauler's cockpit. She doubted the thing had air, so she made sure her beskar'gam was vacuum-sealed before opening the door and entering.

She'd scoped out abandoned ships before and they'd always spooked her. This was no exception. There was no artificial gravity and she had to bounce in slow-motion from tilted wall to tilted wall as she made her way to the cockpit. She turned on the glowlamp she'd attached to her helmet and the first thing she saw was a cold and desiccated corpse wedged in an open doorframe. She tried hard not to look at it as she ducked beneath and kept going.

The wall to the cockpit was sealed. That wasn't a surprise, which was why she'd brought her lightsaber along. She flicked the weapon on and used its soundless blue-white blade to cut through the door.

The cockpit might have been sealed from the inside, but it hadn't saved the dozen or so crewmen. Some bodies drifted free in the cabin, while others remained in their crash webbing. She checked the sensors attached to her suit and saw heavy carbon dioxide traces. So they'd suffocated slowly in a broken ship without air recyclers. The vacuum would have been kinder.

A quick look at the bodies affirmed that these were Savyar's people, not Mandalorian. Tamar ignored the ghoulish corpses and focused on hardware. When she found the ship's navigation console she made careful cuts with her lightsaber to peel away the outside paneling, then looked at the computer inside. It wasn't large, and without gravity it was weightless besides. As long as it hadn't been burned through by an energy surge during the attack it should still be usable once plugged into a power source on Krux's ship.

Once she removed it from the cockpit she bounced and drifted her way back to the airlock. Artificial gravity made the computer much heavier and she temporarily disabled it until she'd hauled the cargo back to the cockpit. Once there she re-enabled the grav field, closed the airlock, and pushed her ship away from the dead one. She didn't like being next to that ghoulish thing any more than necessary.

Waystation Grek would be her next stop, but first she wanted a look at what was inside this nav computer. So, knowing it would take a while, Tamar took off her beskar and got something to drink from Krux's store. Then she sat down with the computer and her cup of caf and got to work.

She planned to take her time. She needed to do it right.

-{}-

Arlen had wanted to cut the quickest route back to Coruscant, but Chance had insisted on a different course. He'd left the capital aboard the pleasure cruiser owned by Retor of Kuhlvult and he planned to return the same way. Arlen had argued for haste; Chance had pointed out that Starlight Champion had been badly battered during the mission to Broken Moon and might not even make it home intact. Reluctantly, Arlen had admitted the point.

Kuat Drive Yards was famous for its angular and brutal war machines, but apparently it made very elegant space yachts too. Retor's personal pleasure cruiser was three hundred meters from nose to tail, with an alabaster hull made of curved organic lines that made it look closer to a Mon Cal ship than a star destroyer. When Starlight Champion found him, the Kuati had conveniently been about to set course back for the Core.

Retor had promised that his techs would look over Champ and fix anything that needed fixing. He'd also mentioned, with a smile, that he'd bill Chance for it, which in turn had set Chance glaring at Arlen for the first day of the return trip. A few days later they were almost at Coruscant and the repairs had ended up being mostly minor, so the overall mood was better.

Chance had often chided the Jedi for being monastic, but compared to Retor, Chance himself was monastic. The pleasure cruiser had a dining hall you could have fit a squad of Tri-wings into, there were playing courts for sports Arlen hadn't even heard of, and there was even an on-board aquarium that sampled life forms a dozen different worlds, each submerged in water whose chemical compounds specifically matched those of the native habitats.

It was so overwhelming it all threatened to drag Arlen's attention away from reviewing the data they'd gotten from Krux. He was sitting in front of a tank of Mon Cal pygmy whaladons, datapad in hand and trying to do both, when Chance found him. He'd taken advantage of the travel time to clear the dye out of his hair and shave his beard off; Arlen's was just starting to grow back.

"I was wondering where you were," Chance said. "Like the view?"

Arlen looked at the ten-meter-high transparisteel panel separating them from the whaladons. "I wish my friends were disgustingly rich."

"Your friends have magic powers. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Sure, but why not both?"

"Really? A dozen private credit accounts and Force skills?"

"Good point. That's recipe for a Sith."

"Speaking of Sith," Chance said in a low voice, "I think we need to pay a little visit to Tomar Greshk."

Arlen nodded grimly. The man had betrayed them to Krux and nearly gotten them killed. Something had to be done. "How do you want to handle it?"

"I don't know. Odds are he's heard about Krux by now, which means he may have gone into hiding. He'll definitely know we're looking for him."

"Can you look up and see if he's still on Coruscant?"

Chance raised a brow. "What, you expect me to just call his office and ask for an appointment?"

"Good point. How about your friend with the big fancy ship?"

"Retor? What do you expect him to do?"

"Do you think he might place a call to Greshk for us, maybe to set up a meeting?"

Chance looked reluctant. "I've already asked a lot of favors from him. And he's not going to want to get his company mixed up in any of our business."

"He's your friend, isn't he?"

"Some people don't let their friends shamelessly leech off their good graces, Arlen. Some people even-"

"Okay, okay," Arlen held up his hands. "How about something else? How about we don't ask for a meeting. Just ask Retor to comm him about, I don't know, anything, just to confirm that he's still on Coruscant. Or find out where he's gone if he hasn't."

Chance sighed. "I can try. He won't like it, though."

"Come on." Arlen stood up. "Let's have a chat."

They found Retor in one of the lounges placed at the fore of the cruiser. Broad windows curved halfway around the chamber to show off the flashing light-show of hyperspace. The Kuati was having drinks with a lady friend, but when Chance and Arlen showed he politely excused himself and stepped over to them.

"Well, gents, we'll be back on Coruscant in less than six hours," Retor said. "Is there anything else I can do for you before then? Anything else with your ship?"

Arlen shook his head. "Something else, actually. We'd like you to make a call on our behalf. Just a call, nothing else."

Retor frowned and looked to Chance. "What kind of call? And who to?"

"So you see, we've got to have a chat with a business partner of mine who's given me, let's say, a bit of dirty dealing."

"Is he related to what happened with your ship?"

"In a way. The point is, he's been giving me the slip, and we were hoping you could give him a hail just to see if he's still on Coruscant or gone someplace else."

"That's…. an interesting request. Not something the KDY Board would approve of."

"You are the Board," Arlen reminded him.

"One-twelfth of it. Who is this you're trying to contact? I may have heard of him."

"Guy named Tomar Greshk," Chance said. "Head of Gemstone Shipping."

Retor's brow creased. "I know that name. Why do I…. Wait a second." He went back to the table where his lady friend was patiently waiting to retrieve his datapad. When he went back up to Arlen and Chance he brought something up on the screen and handed it to Chance.

"Fresh off the news nets," Retor said. "Tomar Greshk, dead in his office. They say it looks like a suicide."

Arlen saw the headlines on the datapad. "Stang it," he breathed.

"Apparently they're looking into his accounts now," Retor said. "According to that article, there's talk of some…. Questionable business activities. I hope you're not tangled up in those, Calrissian."

"No, sir." Chance handed him back the pad. "Not the way you mean."

"Can I do anything else?" asked Retor.

"No," Arlen sighed. "Sorry to keep you."

They waved Retor off and let him go back to his woman. As they walked out of the chamber Chance whispered, "Suicide? You believe that?"

"Not especially. What do we do now, Chance?"

"I don't know. That's a dead end, literally. But we can still get Krux's data to the Alliance. So let's look it over one last time. Once we hit Coruscant we'll have to move fast."

-{}-

When Tamar arrived at Waystation Grek, they refused to let her land her unfamiliar ship until Dorn had confirmed she was who she claimed to be. When she dropped down in the hangar she was unsurprised to find a half-dozen Mandos in full armor had come to meet her along with her cousin.

The rest of them were faceless behind their helmets but Dorn was nothing but happiness and relief. She could tell it on his face and in the Force. When they met at the bottom of the landing ramp their armored chestplates clanked together in a firm hug.

"Fierfek, I thought you were dead!" Dorn said. He stepped back, hands on her shoulder-plates, and looked her over. "You look like you came out fine."

"It was pretty touch-and-go for a while, but yeah, I made it out." She did her best to grin. "The Jedi destroyed my Beskad."

"I know. I lost your signal and picked up traces of an explosion. How did you make it out?"

"That's a story we all need to hear," another voice said. They looked back to the line of six Mandos to see that Shalk Jeban had joined them. He was seated in a repulsor-chair with his white jointed casts around his broken legs. He looked strange without his armor but still formidable.

"I'm glad you're all right," she told him.

"Why wouldn't I be?" he said brusquely. "After the jeti shabuire broke my legs and Dorn thought you'd both been blown up, we hauled it back to Senex-Juvex. Didn't expect you to show up. Didn't expect you to take your time either."

"Well if you want, I can tell you everything."

"Of course you will." Jeban snapped his finger and the six warriors behind him hefted their rifles.

"Whoa, what's going on?" Dorn snapped. One hand hovered over the butt of the pistol at his belt.

"Don't get in the way, boy," Jeban grunted. "And don't think we won't land a headshot at this range."

Dorn looked back at Tamar but her eyes were locked on Jeban's. Her chest was tight, her hands shaking. She tried not to betray her nervousness as she said, "This wasn't the welcome back I was expecting. I know you have questions and I was about to answer them."

"You still are, but first I'm gonna need your weapons."

"You can't be serious!" Dorn said.

Jeban snapped his fingers again. Two of the Mandos behind him lowered their guns and stepped forward. Tamar's thoughts raced; she could try and run, but four more of them still had guns raised and Jeban was right, they wouldn't miss at this range. A Jedi might have been able to shove them all away with the Force but she was nothing close to that.

In the end, all she could do was raise both hands in the air. The Mandos holstered their guns and patted down her armor. They took off her utility belt and the holstered pistol with it. They removed the vibroblade she kept above her right wrist. And then, of course, they took off the pouch with her lightsaber, leaving her without weapons. Finally one of them took off stun-cuffs and locked her wrists in front of her.

"Is this really necessary?" Dorn asked.

"You're damned right it is." Jeban snapped his fingers again and the four warriors behind him parted, leaving the path to the door open. "Go on, Skirata. March."

"Where are you taking me?" she scowled.

"Where do you think? The Mand'alor wants to see you."

She tried her best to cling to hope and dignity as they walked her down the halls. On Jeban's insistence, Dorn was forced to stay in the hangar, which robbed Tamar of the last shred of moral support she might have.

"I was a long time getting here because I went to Waystation Xesh first," she told Jeban. "What happened there? How did the aruetii destroy it? Did we catch the bastards?" She asked because she wanted to know, and to remind Jeban that she was still one of them.

"We've had an Imp frigate inside the Shroud since Karfeddion," the man said sourly. "It's been picking off our ships in hit-and-run attacks for weeks. They took out all of Waystation Xesh, plus six frigates and seven corvettes."

She stopped and stared. "That's a third of our shabla fleet. One frigate did all that? Tell me we've killed them."

His scowl got deeper. "They're somewhere in that expanse over Xesh. We think their hyperdrive is down but there's too many places to hide. Word just came from the Mand'alor to let them starve there. We've placed sensor buoys at all exit zones from the expanse. If they do jump out, we'll know."

That was, she thought, a very practical but un-Mandalorian way to handle a ship that had already dealt damage far beyond its size. It probably said something about Gevern Auchs. "Do we need the rest of our ships somewhere else?"

"Enough chat, Skirata." Jeban's repulsor-chair jerked to a halt. He snapped his fingers again and the warrior closest to the door opened it.

They walked Tamar into a windowless metal box of a room and sat her down at the table in the middle. Jeban scooted his chair to one corner. Two more warriors stayed by the door and the other filed out. Jeban said nothing but Tamar knew what came next. She could sense Gevern Auchs in the Force before he stepped into the chamber. His aura of cold determination was unmistakable.

"Welcome back, Skirata. I was wondered when you'd show." He sat down on the other side of the table. Tamar could see her curved reflection in the T-visor of his silver and green helmet.

"I can't say I appreciate the welcome." She placed her cuffed hands on the tabletop.

"Those stay on for now. Tell me what happened after Shalk and your cousin left Broken Moon. I'm especially interested in two parts: how Mordran Krux died and what your part in it was."

"What makes you think I had a part?"

"Because word travels fast nowadays. Specifically, word about how you were seen walking the Jedi into Krux's office minutes before he got killed."

Her chest tightened. She'd built up on story in her head and told it to herself over and over until she could say it like it was true, but Auchs had been ahead of her the whole time. He'd had Jeban acting as a go-between for Savyar and Krux for some time and naturally he'd have other contacts within Broken Moon. She'd been stupid to think otherwise.

She decided to improvise with something close to the truth. "My ship got blown up inside the moon. I went EV, sneaked onto the Jedi's ship, and took him and his friends captive. I marched them back up into Krux's base and took them to see him. That jar with your sources?"

"So far," Auchs said evenly. "Go on."

"I karked up. You happy? I underestimated the Jedi. He got the best of me and stole my lightsaber. His friend restrained me while he interrogated Krux."

"So your ba'buir's Force powers weren't good enough. I think I believe that part, at least. Go on. Why are you still alive if he's dead?"

"The Jedi didn't kill Krux. His Twi'lek slave did." She looked at Jeban. "You remember her, don't you? Little blue piece. She was the one who helped the Jedi escape. Came back to kill her old employer. Can't say I really blame her, Krux was a total chakaar from all I saw."

"She's right about the Twi'lek, Mand'alor," Jeban said a little reluctantly. "At least, she was there."

"And about Krux being a chakaar?" Auchs asked with faint amusement.

Jeban shrugged. "I've heard worse opinions."

"Okay, then. So you're telling me the Jedi let you live out of the goodness of his heart, and in the chaos you stole one of Krux's ships."

"That's about right. I know you don't believe it but it's true. Jedi aren't bloodthirsty."

Auchs snorted. "Tell that to Savyar. Say it to that half-pretty face of hers."

Her heart pounded in her chest. "Is Savyar here?"

"No, she's on the worldship, but I bet she'd be interested in hearing from you."

"What's there to hear? I just told you to the truth, Mand'alor. I swear on my family, my aliit!" His faceless mask looked back at her and she lurched forward in the chair. "What is it? What more do you want from me? I swear I am as loyal to Mandalore as I've ever been."

"Interesting turn of phrase," Auchs grunted. "You Skiratas… I don't know if it's the jeti blood or the Jango Fett genes but you've always been a little bit apart."

"Why won't you trust me?" She pounded the table, rattling her chains, but Auchs didn't flinch.

"Because you could have been back days ago if what you said is true. But instead you took your time."

"I wanted to keep comm silence. I went to Waystation Xesh first and saw what's left of it. Then I figured you must have fallen back here."

"Still doesn't explain the amount of time you took. What aren't you telling me, Skirata?"

Her eyes darted to Jeban's hard face, the visored masks of the guards. If the Jedi was telling the truth about Savyar, Tamar would never leave that meeting alive. She didn't want to die, not in agony at the hands of a shabla Sith, and Gevern Auchs was the only one who could grant her a reprieve.

"I had to think, sir. We're allowed to do that, aren't we? Thinking?"

"Depends about what," the Mand'alor said.

"I heard what Krux said when the Jedi interrogated him. They use the Force and pulled things out of his mind and make him talk."

For a long moment Auch's just stared at her with invisible eyes. Then he said, "Jeban, take the guards. Let us talk in private."

Jeban nodded, hesitant, and snapped his fingers again. The two guards left the room, and his repulsorchair followed.

When the door slid shut Auchs said, icily calm, "Go ahead, Skirata. What did he say?"

She swallowed and wondered whether she'd even live to see Savyar, but she had to take the risk. Whatever Gevern Auchs did to her it would never be as terrible as what a Sith would. She wished she could gleam more from the Force off him but it was just the same cold intent as always.

She decided to try dangling something in front of him. "Krux said he didn't just get visits from us. He said Savyar was sending another emissary, separate from ours. He said it was a big Barabel, very fierce-looking. Does that sound familiar?"

Auchs said simply, "Go on."

"He said this Barabel also had special weapons, like lightsabers only with red blades. Like what a Sith would use."

Slowly, maybe skeptically, Auchs said, "The jeti must have loved that."

Maybe Auchs knew about this Barabel, maybe not. She decided to try her last card, the one she'd uncovered after spending hours sifting through the data she'd taken from the dead freighter's computer. Once she'd been able to access the stored logs from the ship's external cameras it had just been a matter of going back to the right times.

"Krux knew where Savyar is making the glitterstim," she said. "Did she tell you?" Auchs just stared a cold lethal silence. "It's in that Vong worldship. That's what he said I thought, well, that's obvious, isn't it? The whole thing's an organic self-contained environment. If whatever shaper or Vong tech expert they've got could turn it into a superweapon he could probably fix up a habitat where those spiders from Kessel could survive naturally."

Auchs still stared. She still could gain nothing from the Force so she leaned forward a little more and dared ask, "How much of this did she tell you, Mand'alor? About the Vong? About the Sith?"

His hand lashed out, slapping her hard across the cheek. His chair screeched across the floor as he got to his feet. She winced against the pain and asked, "You knew, didn't you? You knew some of it, right?"

"What I knew is not your shabla business, Skirata."

"That attack on her corvette, the one that killed Nyal, that wasn't Jedi."

"Did your friend from Broken Moon tell you that?"

"Jedi don't fight like that. They never have."

"So what, a Sith broke onto the ship, killed your vod and a bunch of other people, what, to kill another Sith? Get your shabla story straight or keep your mouth shut."

"How much did you know? Tell me!"

"We're done here," Auchs hissed. "You're going nowhere, Skirata. I'll let Savyar decide what to do with you."

It was the worst kind of death sentence. She felt anger and despair and when she looked at Auch's faceless mask she felt raw hatred. She let those things flow through her, let the Force flow through her, and remembering what her grandfather had taught her she reached out with an invisible grip and grabbed hold of the Mand'alor's throat. She saw one hand go to his neck, heard him choke, and savored his spike of panic in the Force. No cold determination for him, not now.

Then he kicked the table from beneath, knocking it into her face. She cried out, spilled out of the chair, and landed on the floor. Auchs kicked her hard in the side, slamming the side of his boot against her unarmored ribs. She tried to curl up into a ball but he kicked her again and again until all she felt was pain. When he walked out of the room she was still lying there on her side, cradling her battered body and wondering how many bones he'd broken. Beskar only did so much against a man who knew where to hit. The pain seemed to be everywhere at once and no one would come to help her, and that wasn't even the worst of it. If he was calling Savyar right now then the worst was yet to come.

-{}-

Darth Kheykid bent on one knee, lowered his head, and waited for the killing blow.

He heard Darth Xoran's boots crunch on the rocky ground of the worldship. From the Force, he felt nothing beyond displeasure. She'd be within her rights to take his life for his failures. He did not want death- there was still so much work to do, so much vengeance to take- but he tried not to fear it either. He waited for the sound of Xoran's lightsaber to come, but instead the tips of her boots settled at the edge of his lowered vision.

"Look up, apprentice," she said.

Kheykid raised his eyes. She was glaring down at him, her face divided in halves, one smooth and green, the other darkened and scarred. He'd seen the damage the Jedi had done on the holo but it looked more savage here in the flesh.

"The Jedi has escaped and Mordran Krux is dead," she said. "Broken Moon is in chaos. There's no one we can trust to distribute our glitterstim now. Do you comprehend the magnitude of your failure, Darth Kheykid?"

He bowed his head again. "I offer my life in exchange, Lord Xoran."

"Look up," she hissed. "Don't grovel. You have work to do and mistakes to fix."

"What must I do?"

"You're in some small luck. One of the Mandalorians we sent to Broken Moon has returned separately from the others. She's clearly encountered the Jedi and heard what he had to say. She also discovered that we've been farming glitterstim in the worldship. How she knew that, I don't know." She crossed his arms over her chest. "According to Geven Auchs, this woman is also from a line of Force-users, which may explain why she survived. Auchs has placed her in confinement at Waystation Grek. I'm sending some of my partisans to retrieve her. You will make sure they succeed and then you will break that woman's mind and learn everything the Jedi know. Then you will kill her. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Master."

"Then you will come back to the worldship. We have more to prepare for."

"Like what, Master?"

"There is discontent," she snarled. "The leaders of the Free Worlds have become uncomfortable with the way I've won their war for them. An emissary from Varadan- one of Moran Gnoll's disciples- has gone to Coruscant to beg them to intervene."

"I thought we'd cowed the Alliance."

"Darth Kroan will ensure the senate votes against authorizing force. The Alliance is not our concern. Dissent from the Free Worlds is. The Mandalorians have been losing ship after ship to an Imperial frigate somewhere in the Shroud. Word of their weakness is spreading. The leaders of the Free Worlds may take this as incentive to act against my authority."

"But you have the worldship, Master, and they know you're prepared to use it."

"If these beings were fearful they'd never have risen from under the Houses' heels in the first place." She bore her teeth. "But we'll break them one way or another. Even they are not our real threat."

"The Jedi," Kheykid said simply.

She placed a hand on her scarred face. "They know of our presence now. This isn't like Hapes. What happened on Varadan was my failure, Darth Kheykid, and like you I need to clean up my mess."

Cautiously he asked, "What manner of failure?"

"It was a few apprentices and a Master," she explained. "We caught a boy first, a Chiss. I could taste him in the Force, his anger and his righteousness. I thought I sensed the raw materials for a Sith." She ran her fingertips down her scars. "I let myself become distracted. Instead of killing him I toyed with him. And when his master came I underestimated her. These scars are no one's fault but my own. I won't be overconfident again."

There was nothing for him to say, so he waited until she waved a hand in the air. "Rise, Darth Kheykid. We both have work to do."