Despite his chirping voice and diminutive frame, Kyrr Esch was able to convey a sense of authority even when reduced to a quarter-size holographic transmission. It was, Allana thought, one of the reasons he made an effective Chief of State.
"I will pass your report directly to the Defense Committee and the Supreme Commander," he told Allana as she sat in her chamber in the Jedi Temple on Ossus. It was a visitor's room, designated as hers for as long as it took to recover from the injuries she'd sustained fighting Abeloth.
She'd told Kyrr Esch about Abeloth and everything else related to her mission in the Unknown Regions. On her last appearance fifty years ago the near-immortal being had nearly brought down the Alliance. Mere mention of her name had caused Esch's tone to deepen in dread.
"Tell me," the Mrlssi said. "What will you do now, Allana?"
"I'm set to recuperate." She smiled weakly and held up her broken arm, now stiffly bent in its cast. Bacta had healed the effects of her brief vacuum exposure but bones would take longer to heal.
"And the Jedi?"
"We'll be sending more search teams to try and find Abeloth."
"You're certain she's still alive, tsi?"
"We can gather she had at least two Erath bodies- one male, one female. We only destroyed the first one."
"Do you think she'll be able to muster another invasion fleet?"
"I can't say. Losing a body injures Abeloth and we killed two. After that she couldn't control the raiders at Sevok-358. My guess is that she might be able to muster more but she'll need to heal first."
"Then the time to strike is soon."
"Can I make a bold proposition, Kyrr?"
"Tsi, I'd be disappointed if you didn't."
She smiled softly. "My proposition is this: send some armed ships to Karn'erath. The Jedi will provide you with the location."
"You said the Erath homeworld is a wasteland."
"Exactly. They've been struck hard by a plague. I promised them I'd help. If the Alliance sends its best medical personnel to research a cure-"
Esch raised a down-covered hand. "I understand. A mercy mission with armed backup, just in case."
"Exactly."
"I believe I would be able to send a small relief force using my executive authority."
"I knew I could count on you. Tell whoever you send to expect Jedi. We'll be sending people there too."
"Your first step in searching for Abeloth?"
"Pretty much."
"I understand. I'll instruct our team to give the Jedi any help they ask for."
"Great." Allana glanced at the chrono on her bedstand. "I'm sorry to cut this short, but I have another meeting to go to."
"Busy even when recovering, tsi? You Jedi are durable beings."
She couldn't feel warm at the compliment; the memory of the battle at Sevok-358 and the brutal deaths of over a dozen knights was all too fresh. She did her best to smile anyway. "Thanks, Kyrr. I'll speak with you again."
She shut off the transmitter and rose from her chair. Her whole body ached as she moved. As she threw on her brown Jedi robe she watched her stiff movements in the mirror, watched her face. It looked heavy and lined and sunlight through the window caught the gray in her hair. The last time she'd been badly injured was when that Vong shaper had stabbed her at the climax of the Senex-Juvex Crisis. Recovery from that poisoned blade had taken a while but eventually she'd felt healed, young. Recovery was slower now. She was in her fifties and youth was a long time gone.
There was a knock on the door. She shuffled over and opened it to see Tanith Zel and Jade Skywalker right behind her. Jade had arrived from Fengrine just a few hours ago; Allana immediately spotted the impatience in her eyes and her grim determination in the Force.
Without smiling Jade said, "It's good to see you're all right."
"I've been better, but thanks." Tanith stepped aside so Allana could wrap the younger woman in a tight hug. Jade was no longer the restless teenager she'd help train in the Force; she was a woman with a husband and two sons, losses and accomplishments in her name. Despite that a part of Allana would always think of her as the girl she'd been; vulnerable, hesitant, needy for guidance.
They left Allana's room and began walking through the Temple's halls. Jade said, "The others are waiting for us. I've talked with Lowbacca and Master Saav'etu already. And Jedi Qemar."
"Then you know everything we know about Jodram."
"Pretty much. I know he's still alive. I'd feel otherwise. But as to what the Sith are doing to him-"
"Try not to think about that," Allana said. "Tanith, anything from Hapes?"
"Nothing new. Queen Demia held a ceremony to honor her granddaughter. Our spies say she was very shaken up by it. We still don't know how Serissa died, though."
"Nothing about the Sith?" Jade asked.
"No, but there's never been before. We're not even certain the Sith are on Hapes."
"Of course they are. After what they did there already."
Tanith nodded grimly; they'd both lost parents when the Sith-assisted coup expelled the Jedi from Hapes. Allana said, "The Sith might have Jodram but there's no guarantee they'd take him back to Hapes, or any other base. They took him aboard an Erath ship. That says to me they're trying to find Abeloth's base of operations."
The implication was that searching for Abeloth meant searching for Jodram. It also meant searching for Sith. Fifty the Jedi had fought both those enemies at once; Allana had been forced to take a life for the first time during that desperate struggle, when she was only seven years old. She'd watched another dear friend sacrifice his own.
She wanted to tell Jade to have hope and trust the Jedi would rescue Jodram and defeat both those foes, but the younger woman wouldn't believe it either.
-{}-
The Jedi gathered in a meeting room on an upper level of the Temple's pyramid. Even when she'd lived on Ossus Jade had come here only rarely. It was the chamber her father had used to convene with the Jedi Council and other Masters. They sat down on the cushioned floor now: Jade next to Allana, Grand Master Lowbacca still emanating grief for the loss of his daughter, the old Bothan Yaqeel Saav'etu and the similarly grey-furred little Chandra-Fan Tekli. A life-sized holo image projected the form of Tahiri Veila, currently on Zonama Sekot, and another showed Jade's aunt Jaina on Bastion.
The last knight was one Jade was unfamiliar with, a blue-skinned female Duros. She sat cross-legged in front of a closed rectangular case about a third of a meter long. It seemed to be made of a very old, chipped wood with metal hinges and frame.
Instead of explaining what the case was for, they began recounting experiences of facing Abeloth. Allana summarized her battle aboard the Erath flagship. Jaina spoke of the time she, Luke Skywalker, and Corran Horn had fought one of her bodies on Coruscant fifty years ago. Tahiri had the most interesting story; she'd fought Abeloth twice, once when she'd possessed the fast-decaying body of an Imperial officer, and again when her life force had seeped into the circuits of a computer core.
"I had a lot of help both times," Tahiri said, "And Master Sebatyne was the one who really took out the computer core. But the other time what really destroyed Abeloth's body was the thermal detonator I used." A thermal detonator wasn't a mere grenade; it vaporized absolutely everything within its blast radius. "What really saved me was that the body Abeloth used was so weak it was already falling apart. The other bodies were different."
"Force-users' bodies are more durable for her," Tekli said. "They can withstand Abeloth's great raw power."
"So you're saying the more powerful the Force-user, the longer the body will last," said Jade. "That means the Erath she took over must have been very strong."
"I've noticed something else too after listening to your descriptions." Tahiri's blue holo-image looked to Jaina's. "When you fought her Coruscant, wasn't she using a Sith's body?"
"Yes, and no matter how much damage we did we couldn't take her down. Ben had to do that in the Maw."
"If you'll remember, Wyn Dorvan killed another of her bodies with a few close-range shots from a hold-out blaster," Tahiri said. "That one belonged to another non-Jedi."
"Then a stronger Force-user is also more difficult to kill," said Tekli. "It does make sense. From what we've heard it was very hard to kill..."
The Chandra-Fan trailed off awkwardly. Master Saav'etu said, "Sothais was a very powerful Jedi. And Abeloth touched him when he was a child. Just like she touched me, and a lot of other Jedi."
Allana asked softly, "Can you describe a little of what that was like?"
The old Bothan hunched in on herself. "It felt like… a dream, in retrospect. A nightmare. We suddenly became absolutely certain that the Jedi around us- our friends and family- were impostors. We knew deep as we'd known anything that what was around us was a delusion and the only way to get to the truth was to get back to her."
Lowbacca gave a low, mournful growl.
"So she could take our bodies," Saav'etu admitted. "We're lucky most of us were far away from her when she tried to take hold of us."
A grim silence settled over the group. Allana said, "To reel things back a moment, we agree the first body we faced was so hard to kill because it was Master Saar's. The other body we fought was just as powerful. Isn't Abeloth supposed to be weaker after you kill one of her bodies?"
"That's the way it seemed before," Jaina said.
Lowbacca growled that, given what happened to the raider fleet, Abeloth had still been weakened significantly.
"I agree," said Tahiri. "As for how hard that second body was to kill…. My guess is that Abeloth just possessed an extraordinarily powerful Force user."
Two, Lowbacca reminded them. A king and a queen.
"Okay," Jade sighed. She knew this was an important discussion to have but she was restless to go after Jodram. She'd barely slept since he'd gone missing; every part of her was waiting for the pain of his death to tear at her through the Force. "So we have an idea of how incredibly powerful Abeloth is. When we do find her, what are we supposed to do? I remember what my grandfather said he did the last time. He left his body and went to the Maw and entered some… shadow realm where he fought Abeloth's true form."
"With the help of a Sith," Jaina added grimly. "Darth Krayt."
"I don't want to sound pessimistic, but if the two most powerful Force-users in our lifetimes couldn't kill Abeloth for good, what are we going to do?"
Lowbacca gave a low roar and extended a furry hand to the Duro who'd been sitting quietly this whole time.
"I think," said Tekli, "We should let Master Ohali Soroc explain."
"Masters Lowbacca and Tekli are the ones who made it possible," the Duros said. "They helped Raynar Thul communicate with the Killiks and learn the story of how Abeloth came to be."
"Wasn't she from a planet in the Maw?" asked Jade.
"That was where she'd been imprisoned millenia ago. But she began as a mortal being who served three powerful Force-entities called the Ones."
"Your great-grandfather encountered them during the Clone Wars," Jaina said. "They were on a free-floating monolith called Mortis. There was a brother who exemplified the Dark Side and a sister who exemplified the Light. And there was a father who kept balance between them."
"Abeloth wanted to become the mother," Tekli continued. "She became immortal like them but was locked away by the ancient Celestials. When the Ones encountered Anakin, the father tried to get him to be the new balance-keeper. In the end all three of the Ones were killed, leaving Abeloth alone."
"I remember now." Jade said. "That's why she kidnapped my father. She wanted to use him to create the family she never had."
"She reached out to your grandfather too," Jaina added.
"Whenever she reaches out to you, it's like a cold tentacle of… need," Saav'etu added darkly. "She's desperate and lonely. That's the worst part. It's what fuels her power."
Jade asked Soroc, "What does all this mean? How does it help us get rid of her?"
"According to the story about Anakin Skywalker, the Ones were killed using a special Force-imbued dagger. After he defeated Abeloth, your grandfather assigned ten knights to search the galaxy until they found Mortis and recovered the dagger."
Soroc carefully pulled back the lid of the case in front of her. Jade leaned forward to see, as did the other Jedi. They might have known Soroc's story but all of them bristled with anticipation to see what they'd never seen before.
The Dagger of Mortis was an old metal blade, two-sided and as long as Jade's forearm, with what looked to be a wood-wrought handle. It was such a simple thing, visible worn at the edges and primitive compared to lightsabers or vibroblades, but looking at it Jade felt a strange certainty that this was more than just an old weapon; the object had been imbued with some Force power she could never understand.
"Where did you get this?" she asked.
"It's a very long story," Soroc said. "Almost twenty-five years, in fact, but we found it. We found Mortis and we retrieved the blade."
The pride was obvious in Soroc's voice and Force aura. The long search for this object and its eventual retrieval was more than just her greatest accomplishment; it had become her purpose as a Jedi.
Jade looked at Lowbacca. "Do we know this will kill Abeloth?"
The Wookiee moaned that her grandfather had believed. That wasn't certainty, but Jade knew it was as close as they'd get.
"So we take the dagger with us to Karn'erath," Jade said. "You all know I'm going. Who else?"
"I think we can agree that it's dangerous for me to go," Saav'etu said.
"I would go," Allana said, "But Lowbacca insists I stay here and recuperate."
Tahiri added sourly, "He also insisted Jaina and I aren't in the condition to brawl with Abeloth again."
Lowbacca trilled that none of them were as young as they used to be. Jaina scowled and said, "Not all of us age with the grace of a Wookiee, sorry."
That got a brief huffing chuckle from Lowbacca. It warmed Jade to see the Grand Master hadn't lost all his humor, even in grief. What came next surprised her. He roared loudly, announcing that he would go with them to Karn'Erath.
Soroc added, "I'll be going too. To watch over the Dagger and help in any other way I can."
"I'm glad," Jade said and turned to Allana. "I have a request, since you'll be here. Look after Kol and Nat, please."
"Of course. It would be my honor."
"And please..." It was hard to think, hard to say. "If something happens to me or Jodram, or both of us, I don't know how it will affect the boys."
She only knew how losing her mother had affected her. Allana knew it too, and nodded gravely. "I promise. They'll be my first priority."
"Trust Allana to take care of them, Jade, then focus on your first priority," Jaina said. "Do what can be done. Let the Force guide you and don't get distracted by what's behind you or what could have been."
Long ago she'd given advice like an old sage lecturing a child. Now she spoke as an adult to an adult; a woman weighted with the fresh pain of her husband's loss, speaking to another who might face the same.
Jade felt something well in her throat and swallowed it down. "Thank you. And I know. When the time comes… I'll do whatever has to be done."
She held her aunt's stern holo-replicated gaze. They didn't need proximity and the Force to pass full meaning between them. For the rest of the Jedi on the team, the first priority was to find Abeloth and use the Mortis dagger to kill her. The second priority was to deal with whatever Sith they found hunting the same prey.
For Jade those were both secondary goals. Her greatest purpose was to rescue Jodram and save her children from the agony of their father's death. No matter how ancient and powerful Abeloth was, no matter the danger she represented, she'd never be more important to Jade than Jodram; her husband, her best and oldest friend.
-{}-
He could remember how it had happened, a long time ago. For the two of them, at least, it had been a lull in the middle of the Senex-Juvex crisis. They'd returned from their mission to Varadan with more mental scars than physical ones. Jade had gone off to Zonama Sekot with her father to figure out a way to defeat Darth Xoran and her superweapon, leaving Jodram and Wharn behind.
Not having Jade around was hard; it had been during those weeks that Jodram had finally forced himself to admit that he thought of her as more than a longtime friend and fellow apprentice. Her absence had been a constant ache and he'd tried without success to put her out of his mind.
Jodram had been able to tell that Wharn missed Jade as well, but it was a different kind of longing. For the young Chiss, she had been his best link to the larger Jedi order he'd so hoped to be a part of. Her mere presence had been a sign of comfort, of solidity; now that she was gone he was left to face all the questions and doubt he'd been able to hide away.
Jodram had understood that without Wharn ever having to tell him. At first the Chiss boy had gotten on his nerves; because he was stiff and stuck-up, because he refused to be impressed by Jodram's Jedi skills, because he pressed himself too hard and took it out on others when he failed; because he too wanted to be close to Jade. Yet he was also wracked by doubt, and the guilt he felt over Master Mjalu's death of Varadan had bowed his spirits like a lodestone. It was during those weeks on Ossus that Jodram came to another realization: that he considered Wharn a friend. For all their differences, they were in the same boat.
He remembered one time specifically; they'd been practicing sparring under the watchful eyes of Master Lowbacca and had allowed all their pent-up frustration to boil over. They'd battered each other nearly off the practice mat a dozen times over and worked themselves into a panting sweat before Lowbacca raised a furry arm and called the match a draw.
By then day had turned to evening. Jodram and Wharn had wandered away from the Temple into the rocky barren hills. They'd tried very hard to meditate and touch the great cosmic flow of the Force beneath all those stars, as they'd used to do with Jade.
After a long time of silence a cool wind had passed between them and Wharn had said, "It will never happen again. I won't let it."
"What?" Jodram had asked.
"What happened to Master Mjalu. The way she died, because I failed."
It was the first time he'd admitted the guilt he clearly felt aloud, at least to Jodram. "She died because she was fighting a Sith Lord. It's not your fault."
"I got captured. She died saving me. I can't forget that."
"It's not your fault," Jodram had repeated, knowing it wouldn't do any good.
"Next time I'll be better. Stronger. When we face the Sith again I won't fail."
As he said it he'd seemed so much older than his teenage years implied. Not in the stiff, mildly pompous, very Chiss manner he usually had. He'd sounded beaten, tired, bitter. But above all that, determined.
And then the next time had come and Wharn had plunged into a black pit and died with the Barabel Sith Lord who'd sheared off Jodram's arm. That was what Jodram had thought for many years. Then, suddenly, he'd found himself staring into a familiar blue face and red eyes and he'd realized he'd gotten it all wrong.
After his first conversation with the one who called himself Darth Terrid, Jodram had another realization. He'd been right the first time. The Wharn who'd been his friend was dead.
There were still hints. That was the disconcerting part. The way he tilted his head sometimes; the downward inflection on his voice. The angry scowl that settled over his face as he leaned close to the Jedi captive he'd shackled arms and wrists to a bulkhead in the small storage room of the Erath shuttle they'd commandeered.
"You know the identity of the creature we were fighting in the mess hall," the Chiss said. He stood two meters apart from Jodram. Hands were clasped at the small of his stiff back. His eyes were narrowed in concentration but Jodram couldn't feel anyone prying into his mind with the Force.
"I have a guess," Jodram said.
"And you why the Erath all abandoned ship at once?"
"Another guess."
"The creature. Is it dead?"
He didn't know how far this half-familiar Chiss would push. He knew he didn't want to find out. "Probably not," he said. "Defeated. But not gone."
"Does it have a name?"
He felt it then; tendrils of thought touching his mind, feeling for the truth in his thoughts. Faint stabs of pain jutted into his mind; he winced and said, "You don't need to karking do that."
"Do I?" The Chiss tilted his head in curiosity, so Wharn-like.
"It's Abeloth. You've heard of her, right?"
He saw Darth Terrid's eyes widened; his small Force attacks immediately disappeared, like he'd actually been taken by surprise.
"You remember, don't you?" Jodram couldn't keep himself from asking. "They told us about her at the Jedi Academy. Ben Skywalker fought her. So did Master Solo Fel. You do remember."
The narrow eyes came back, the scowl. It was the first either of them had intimated aloud what they both clearly understood.
"That was another life," Terrid said, "But I do remember."
"And now we're on this Erath shuttle. What are you hoping, they'll lead you back to her? Well, they're probably not going home. Jedi have already been to their planet. It's a plague-stricken wasteland. Abeloth did it. She ruined the whole planet when they wouldn't worship her."
"We will find Abeloth. And we will destroy her."
"Sounds like a plan. Think you can count me in?"
"Is that a serious request?"
There was only one alternative and they both knew it. "I'd rather die fighting her than die here."
"I'll keep that in mind." Darth Terrid turned for the door.
"Hey, wait!" Jodram called. "What are you going to do now? Go talk to your boss, your Sith boss? I thought your kind was supposed to be masters of your own fates."
Terrid glanced back without turning. "You know nothing of the Sith."
"I know the Sith killed my first Master. And I had a friend who blamed himself over it, really bad, and swore he'd do everything he could to hurt the Sith after that."
"He was just a boy. He didn't understand."
"What didn't he understand? What could make him join sides with the people he hated more than anything?"
Terrid kept staring like he was coming up with some answer for that question. Then he walked straight out the door without a word, leaving Jodram to hang captive on the wall.
It was disappointing; he'd genuinely wanted to know. All he could do now was guess, and ponder, and wait for when his former friend decided to kill him.
-{}-
It really might have been the will of the Force. When Darth Terrid had pinned the captive Jedi to the deck of the ascending escape shuttle he'd looked into that familiar face- narrowed by time but still with the same blue eyes and bright hair- it had felt like the most impossible of coincidences. But perhaps it was more.
The Jedi were the ones who talked about the Force moving events of its own will. To the Sith the individual's will was all that mattered; the Force was the thing from which they wrenched their power. But for him to encounter Jodram Tainer here, in this way, after so many years, made him wonder if it was the Force's will that he meet Jade again too.
The prospect frightened him. That was the only word for it. His return to his part of the galaxy, his encounters with other Chiss, hadn't moved Darth Terrid at all, but this was different. Jodram Tainer threatened to bring back shades of Ran'wharn'csapla he'd thought long murdered. Terrid knew he should kill the Jedi right now, while he was defenseless. It would be the simplest, easiest thing.
But not yet. There was still more to learn and Jodram had been surprisingly forthcoming so far. Abeloth. He remembered the stories from his Jedi apprentice days; he'd frankly thought them legends or at least exaggerations, no matter how much old Jaina Solo Fel had insisted otherwise. The Sith did not speak of that Force abomination often, but he knew Lord Krayt had once battled it, and that it had used and mostly wiped out Darth Avanc's Lost Tribe of the Sith.
Avanc had clearly been stunned and appalled to see it returned. The Jedi seemed to know more. He'd have to pry that information out of Jodram; it bought the Jedi a little more time alive.
He had no desire to go back in the storage room with the Jedi for any reason. He marched down the shuttle's short corridor to the cockpit, where Serissa Lohr was waiting. Three Erath remained in their seats, operating the piloting consoles. When Terrid had stormed the shuttle, killing all who tried to fight back and disarming those who didn't, he'd managed to corner a few crewmen who'd understood snippets of Cheunh. His instructions had been simple: Keep flying to wherever you are going. Do not contact any of the other shuttles.
They were too frightened to do anything else, especially with Serissa constantly looking over their shoulders. The rest of the captive Erath were bound and locked in the main cargo hold; those who'd died fighting had been expelled through an airlock. Once the living outlived their usefulness, the captives would join the dead.
Serissa's face was full of questions but Terrid asked his first. "Have you found how to work their communications device?"
"I think so. Are you ready to try calling Intruder?"
"Of course." The Erath pilots were watching with the edges of their multi-faceted eyes but Terrid didn't care; none of them understood Basic.
As he moved toward what Serissa marked as the comm console, the young woman asked, "Did you kill the Jedi?"
"Not yet. He needs to be questioned further."
"Does he know what the thing we saw on the ship was?"
"He does."
"I don't suppose we've seen the last of it."
"How do you know what?"
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Otherwise we wouldn't be on this ship, chasing who-knows-what."
"I'll explain in a minute, or perhaps Darth Avanc will be gracious enough to do it first. Did you input Intruder's comm code?"
"I entered what you told me to. Are we ready?"
"We are," he said, and tapped the button.
Whatever technology the Erath used was at least partially compatible with Intruder's; no holo-image appeared in the cockpit but Darth Avanc's deep familiar voice said, "Speak, Lord Terrid."
"We've commandeered a ship. We're en route to our destination… wherever that is."
"Excellent. I don't suppose you've learned any more about the place."
"No. I did not." He should have mentioned the Jedi but hesitated. He said instead, "I need to know what to expect. What enemy we're facing."
Avanc's deep breath crackled over the comm. "You've been told of Abeloth."
"I have."
"Then you already know the nature of the enemy."
"I don't," Serissa interjected. "What is this… Abeloth?"
"I think you'd best explain," he told Avanc.
"Abeloth is a very ancient, very powerful entity. Her spirit can infest multiple bodies and she craves power and praise above all things. She feeds on fear. I can only imagine that she was the heart of this raider group. When the Jedi killed her bodies aboard the flagship, the raider fleet broke apart."
Serissa scowled. "Then why are we on this ship?"
"Because this race, the Erath, lie at the heart of it," said Terrid. "The rest of the raiders might scatter back to where they came from, but if anyone can lead us back to Abeloth, it's them."
"And why are we chasing Abeloth if she's an ancient unkillable monstrosity?"
"Sith do not run from threats," said Terrid. "We face them and defeat them."
"Are Sith also suicidal? You saw that monster on the flagship as well as I did."
Avanc's dry chuckle sounded on the comm. "I have been in contact with Shedu Maad. More Sith are on the way to help track and kill Abeloth. You, Darth Terrid, are to follow where clues lead you, but you will not engage Abeloth by yourself."
Serissa snorted. "I should hope not."
"When you reach your destination, relay it to us on Intruder and we will join you," Avanc continued.
"I understand," said Terrid.
"There's one more thing, Darth Avanc," Serissa interjected. "You should know, when we escaped the flagship we captured a Jedi on the way out."
Terrid felt a spike of anger toward her but restrained it. He should have told Avanc that from the start. The Keshiri asked," What have you done with it?"
"I've begun interrogations," said Terrid. "The Jedi, too, are hunting Abeloth."
"Is it still alive?"
"I'll interrogate him further and learn all the Jedi know."
"Good. Break him fully but do not kill him."
"You want me to keep him alive?"
"Yes. That will not be difficult, will it?"
"Of course not," said Terrid, wondering the reasons. Perhaps Avanc didn't trust him to learn the full truth, or to tell everything. He hadn't wanted to kill the Jedi but should have. This reprieve was no relief. "Is that all?"
"For now. Until later, Lord Terrid."
The line clicked off. Terrid looked away from the console to see Serissa regarding him thoughtfully. He tried to sense her mind in the Force but found it hard to read. She'd been learning how to guard herself.
"You were going to tell Avanc about the Jedi, weren't you?" she asked.
"Of course. Did you think I wasn't?"
"I'm not sure." Her brows drew together. "Darth Avanc said you used to be a Jedi yourself."
"Another life." It was what he'd just told Jodram.
"I don't suppose you know this Jedi."
A lucky guess, or good perception. He suspected the latter and decided not to lie. "I remember him."
"And he remembers you?"
"Yes."
"I see. Do you want me to interrogate him?" She was full of surprises.
"I will do it myself."
"I can do it. I'm offering." Honesty bled through in the Force; she meant what she said. She wanted to do it, to prove to her new masters that she could.
"I will break the Jedi. You will watch the prisoners and make sure they do nothing untoward."
Disappointment softened her expression. "If that's the way you wish it."
"I'm your Master. You are my apprentice. You will do as you're told, apprentice."
"Of course," she nodded stiffly.
"Then stay here. And leave the rest to me."
