With some help from Remote, Kaevee plugged the datacard into the ship's main computer and started the SIS decryption program. The little ball-shaped droid tootled and buzzed, promising to alert the crew when the program was completed. Kaevee thanked it—its response was noncommittal—and left for the port dormitory.

The mood she found Atris in was dour and not at all conversational. In a perfunctorily warm tone the old woman thanked Kaevee for the visit and then sent her away: "Forgive me, but I am weary. I must meditate. We will speak again soon."

After what had happened in Telthek Nest, Kaevee might have thought she was the one who needed rest, but she took Atris's word for it. Though the once-Jedi Master had left her exile behind on Belsavis, she seemed to have grown no less covetous of solitude. Kaevee felt distinctly that, far more than mere privacy, what Atris really sought in those long hours of union with the Force was healing, both of body and soul. That she needed both was beyond doubt.

Meetra gave her those wounds, but she got away by a fluke, Atton had said once. It was one more story that Kaevee had yet to hear.

In any case, she left her mentor's presence disappointed. Gulvitch had given her something to puzzle over, and she'd have been comfortable sharing it with Atris. Far less so with the men in the cockpit, Cole least of all.

Remembering that they'd be reentering hyperspace soon, she hurried to the medbay. Just inside on the left wall, a black, star-shaped blaster mark testified to the time Atton had been startled by a stowaway laigrek. All of the supply cabinets were full, having been restocked on Ord Vaxal, and they took some rifling through.

Just as she found what she was after, Atton's voice came over the intercom: "Hyperspace in ten." Kaevee leaned against the cabinet and screwed up her face. Presently a muted boom from the engines signaled the jump, waking butterflies in her stomach. The nausea only ever lasted for a moment, so she usually just put up with it. However, with three to five more quick jumps on the order for the next standard day or so, enough was enough.

She glanced over the label on the bottle and wondered who came up with the names for medicines as she picked off the seal.

THYAHIPTOLAMINE — 5 mg

USES: Temporarily relieves nausea and migraines related to hyperspace transitions and/or travel.

DIRECTIONS: Take one (1) tablet at least two (2) standard hours before hyperspace travel. Effect lasts for one (1) standard day.

WARNING: Do not use for more than one (1) standard week consecutively. If symptoms remain or get worse, stop use. Not for use by Non-Humans or Near-Humans outside of .8-degree range. If pregnant or breast-feeding, consult a health professional before use.

Realizing that no one else on the ship needed the pills, she took one and brought the bottle to the starboard dorm, where she put it in the drawer under her bunk. It fit with the clutter of possessions she had accumulated: a few changes of spacer's clothing, a blaster and accessories, comlink, datapad, and all the rest. The only thing that stood out at all was Master Vrook's lightsaber—or what was left of it after the emitter matrix had been severed back on Dantooine. Until Atton or Atris finally agreed to help Kaevee repair it, it was little more than a memento. Though she did her best to take care of her possessions—particularly the blaster, at Atton's insistence—the inoperable saber was the only thing that felt like it was really hers.

After eying it for a long moment, she shut the compartment and sat on the cot, her back against the bulkhead.

Her thoughts returned to the cantina on Gulvitch, to the moment when Dono had drawn a scatter gun on Atton, Cole, and the two Intelligence agents. Upon reflection, Kaevee could see that she'd acted as she had—subduing the alien with the Force, trying to not kill him—based on a feeling, a split-second intuition that it was the Jedi thing to do. Along with the fact that it had caused her to hesitate, what bothered her in hindsight was that she did not know what "the Jedi thing" actually meant, or exactly what her decision had to do with it.

Five Republic spies had met on Gulvitch. Had things gone differently at the critical moment, less than five would have lived to walk out of that cantina, and all because Kaevee had felt compelled for some reason to try to preserve Dono's life. As it happened, she had succeeded, assuming the head injury she'd accidentally given him wasn't a severe one. She hoped not. And it struck her as odd that there had been little or no similar compulsion when it came to the Gran mercenaries.

The first person who came to mind when Kaevee thought of the word Jedi was always her Master, Emon Corsio. Would Emon have wanted her to take chances like the one she had? To go out of her way to spare an enemy even if it might cost her or her... well, maybe not friends, but allies—dearly? She didn't know. She didn't remember being taught that that was the Jedi way. She just felt it.

But Emon was long dead, the Order was gone, and she had forgotten their lessons, not to mention most of the Code. After her ordeals on Malachor, she'd been able to admit that she was no Jedi, and that she could not be one until she found someone who was able to train her. Or until Atris reconsidered her apostasy, though Kaevee wasn't holding her breath waiting for that.

There's no one to talk to, nowhere to go, and no intel ready to read yet.

Deciding she had no excuses, Kaevee tucked her legs beneath her, lowered her head, and closed her eyes. Gradually the Force gathered around her, gently tugging her beyond the muted roar of the Ebon Hawk's hyperdrive. The ship itself was dead, nothing but artless, soulless metal, and the handful of lives it carried stood out in her mind like stars gleaming in the void, and the brightest of these she recognized as Atris.

The old woman's instructions on meditation were at once familiar and foreign: To listen to the silence, you must silence yourself. Do not use words and thoughts, incantations, beliefs—these are distractions, all of them. Don't presume to speak to the Force and to tell it that it is light or dark, ice or fire. What is the Force? What do you know? If you let it be, perhaps you will begin to learn.

Whenever Kaevee asked what had been wrong with the thoughts and beliefs of the Jedi, or any other questions about the Order, the old woman only told her, You are not ready to hear of such things. Such restraint was perplexing, considering the tirade Atris had gone into when they first met on Belsavis. Meanwhile, all the lessons she had offered thus far were fit for younglings: admonitions for Kaevee to open her mind, to not pass judgement, to find her own balance.

It was all frustrating and vague. Kaevee realized that they were both new to this arrangement, but that was cold comfort. The hours of meditation hadn't made her stronger in the Force, not in any way she was aware of. Nor was it helping with the nightmares, in which Malachor V's terrors had been added to those of Dantooine.

It's not helping yet, she told herself. It's not making anything clear yet. It's just a beginning.

As usual, she had little choice but to be content with what she had.