"Sir, Leary Trest has returned from Corellia alone," the voice from Thrackan Sal-Solo's desk comm reported. "She claims that something went wrong with her mission and that Hushk Grendel and Ferris Jeckut are both dead."

Sal-Solo swiveled his chair around from facing the wall behind him—which displayed an artistic rendering of Centerpoint Station from a talented Corellian human artist—and stoically answered with, "Send her in."

And just like that, he had his left hand pressed up against a red button upon one of his desk's lower corners; should his hand release it for any reason, the room would fill up with a knockout gas that wouldn't clear out for several minutes. Only after everyone in the room, including Sal-Solo himself, was knocked out would his men enter to take charge of the situation, like apprehend a certain Force-user who might wish harm to the Corellian Head of State.

Two minutes later, Trest entered his office; she was wearing wholly different clothes than the ones she wore when she last left Centerpoint. She looked as if she had raided an old woman's wardrobe, as the sunflower dress looked like something that a human woman in her sixties or seventies might wear.

And she was also barefoot.

After Trest stopped two meters away from his desk, Sal-Solo asked, "What happened?"

The woman looked panicked; a convincing performance, Sal-Solo thought.

"It was Corran Horn!" she blurted out. "He killed both Hushk and Ferris! I just barely got away! And, let me tell you, Thrackan, it wasn't easy getting off the planet. I mean, I had to raid this old woman's wardrobe just to get some decent-smelling clothes after breaking into her apartment; don't worry, I didn't hurt her, I wouldn't do that to a fellow human Corellian. Then I had to steal a cab driven by a Selonian—I knocked him out with some of that knockout gas I was equipped with—and then I had to hijack a transport just to get here. Took me the last of that gas just to do it and not attract any attention from the orbital authorities!"

"Knockout gas, you say?" Sal-Solo asked quizzically. "I don't remember equipping you, Hushk, or Ferris with any knockout gas."

"Oh, well, it was from the safe house Ferris brought us to, I got it from there. You didn't know about it?"

"No, I didn't," Sal-Solo replied with a shake of his head.

"Well, it was there," Trest said without missing a beat. "And I used it."

"And you got to it while running from Corran Horn?" Sal-Solo asked, the skepticism in his tone rising.

Trest nodded nervously. "Just barely."

"I see. So tell me; how did Horn die?"

Trest looked shocked. "Corran Horn is dead? That's news to me! Did the HoloNet reports say how he died?"

"The cause of his death hasn't been disclosed to the public, my dear. But it was confirmed in the news that he died in that same safe house where Hushk and Ferris were killed. So you really don't know anything about that?"

"Thrackan, I legitimately do not know how that happened. All I know is that Hushk and Ferris are gone, and I barely got back here to..."

For a moment, as Leary was speaking, something in Sal-Solo's mind almost convinced him that she was telling the truth, strange and suspicious as it was. But once she trailed off, it was only then that he realized that the woman was just using the Force to try to influence his mind to get back on his good side; she must have stopped when she realized what his trump card here was.

"Nice try," he said. "But I'll have you know, my boys will have waked me up before you recovered. And by that point, my dear, you'll be trapped in a stasis field elsewhere in this station where your Force-powers can't help you one bit. If you kill me, you'll be dead before you wake up; my guys obviously won't take kindly to you killing their boss. And if you can sense whether or not I'm telling the truth with the Force, you'll know I'm not bluffing, so don't try anything here."

"How did you know?" Trest asked with a growl.

"Security cams in the safe house. And now that you know that, you gotta tell me something. Honestly, of course."

"What is it?" Trest asked resentfully.

"Are you one of these Sith I've heard so much about?"

There was a moment's hesitation before she reluctantly answered with, "Yes."

"So was Hushk?"

"Yes."

Sal-Solo breathed out through his nostrils at that. "Okay, then. What do you want?"

"To get this station operating."

"But not for us Corellians; for your Sith Masters, right?"

"Right."

"For galactic domination and the extermination of the Jedi?"

"Correct."

Sal-Solo sat back in his seat, though his finger remained pressed upon the button, as he thought about what to do with this confirmed information.

"I wanna talk to your Masters," he finally said.

"What makes you think they'd wanna listen to you?"

"Because I'm in control of a space station that has the ability to fire on stars in distant systems of this galaxy."

"An ability it currently doesn't have."

"Not for the next several months, maybe. But in time, before the year is out, it'll have that ability, you see. So if you wanna leave this room alive, honey, you get me in contact with your superiors."

"And why should I do that? You'll just kill me once I'm of no use to you."

"I wouldn't wanna risk pissing your Masters off. No, what I want is to make some negotiations with them."

"Negotiations, huh? Like what?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. You get in contact with them, and you might not only get to live, but you'll get to still walk freely. Is that a deal?"

After a moment, Trest said, "Sounds like a deal."

"Good."

Then Sal-Solo released the button, allowing for both himself and Trest to fall unconscious within moments of the knockout gas flooding the room.

. . .

When the New Purpose dropped out of hyperspace in the MZX32905 system, Darth Judicar's expectant gaze dropped into a horrified frown. The Home, the asteroid base where she had trained as a Sith under Lumiya, was gone, and in its place, a field of smaller asteroids floated about here and there. Among the rocky debris were also the charred remains of certain electronic devices and installations that Judicar had seen before in her previous visits to the Home.

It was destroyed, she realized with horror. She had feared that that would be the case, especially after she had been unable to contact Lumiya through either the Force or by hypercomm in the few dropout points between here and Kesh. But now, after seeing it firsthand, Judicar actually felt at a loss over what to do now.

She had hoped that Lumiya could come up with a plan, such as maybe take over the mind of another Galactic Alliance military captain like Matric Klauskin, or something, anything, that Judicar could use to get to Shedu Maad and have a chance at getting to Ben Skywalker. Futilely, she reached out through the Force, feeling for her Sith Master.

There was nothing.

But that couldn't be, Judicar thought. If Lumiya had died, she would have felt it even from Kesh and the regions of Wild Space where she and the Lost Tribe of the Sith were pirating vessels. No, something else was going on here.

If Lumiya wasn't dead, there were few other options as to why Judicar couldn't contact her. Either the older Sith was deliberately masking herself through the Force and was in hiding for some reason, or...

Or she had been caught by the Jedi and was now being held in a Force-repressing field—an ysalamir or some other method, perhaps—on either Shedu Maad or some other Jedi base.

If that was the case, Judicar thought darkly, then they were both on their own.

Before that thought could fully sink into her mind, an audible thunk! collided with the the Purpose's underside. Judicar abruptly piloted her ship away from the debris field, turning it around in the process so that none of the floating rocks on their various trajectories had a chance at puncturing her hull. When she was several thousand kilometers outside the densest part of the debris field, only then did she settle her vessel in place so that she could think about what she could do at this point.

She couldn't go back to the Lost Tribe now even if they weren't so eager to have gotten rid of her; presently, they weren't powerful enough to make an invasion on a Jedi Order that had the aid of the Hapes Consortium. Without Lumiya, Judicar wasn't going to have such an easy time posing as Noonya Niazh or some other alias to get the help of some other GA military commander when it came to going after the Jedi, who were their allies against the Chiss. And there was no way in all Nine Corellian Hells was she going to get the help of the Killiks even if she didn't have a problem with them, as they would probably want her dead as much as they wanted the Jedi and Chiss destroyed.

But then, before she could have allowed herself to scream in frustration and defeat, Judicar froze in place. That idle thought, of the Corellian Hells, combined with the image of the Home reduced to the debris field behind her, gave her an idea.

Centerpoint Station. Yes. If she could somehow gain control of the station that had the ability to destroy stars in distant systems, then Shedu Maad would be...

No, she thought with mental deflation. Centerpoint wouldn't be useful; without her late brother Anakin's DNA to activate it, it was little more than an extra home for the Corellians.

Unless...

It was a long shot, Judicar thought, and there may not even be any of his DNA left on it, but... what about Anakin's lightsaber?

The last time she saw it, her father Han had partly buried it into Chewbacca's memorial site on Kashyyyk after the Yuuzhan Vong War ended. Of course, the reason that it was a long shot was because, in the years since Anakin died, that 'saber had been wielded by several others: Ganner Rhysode, Shimrra Jamaane, Luke Skywalker, and, as mentioned, Han. Judicar would have had a better chance at somehow getting any of their DNA off of that weapon's pommel before she could have extracted her dead brother's DNA from it.

But there was one thing about that lightsaber that was unique to Anakin: the Vong lambent crystal that he placed in it to replace his traditional focusing crystal while he was saving Tahiri Veila from the Shapers on Yavin 4. If Judicar had any chance of getting anything of Anakin's DNA from that crystal, then it was her best shot at gaining control of Centerpoint.

It was, indeed, a long shot, but it was the only one she had.

So, with a new course set, Judicar set the Purpose for the quickest lightspeed route to Kashyyyk and engaged the hyperdrive.

. . .

Unbeknownst to Darth Judicar, her departure from the MZX32905 system triggered an alert from the console of the Z-95 Headhunter Far Wanderer. The ship's pilot, Jedi Knight Jaden Korr, dropped out of hyperspace into the middle of an empty system and saw that the magnetized tracking beacon he left behind there was now attached to a ship heading somewhere through the Mid Rim.

As he had been assigned by acting Grand Master Hamner, Jaden went to investigate the MZX32905 system to see if there was anything that could be discovered of the destroyed asteroid base from which Jacen Solo fought the Sith Lady Lumiya. He found nothing salvageable, but he left behind a beacon that would gravitate toward any object with metallic content higher than anything that was already occupying the system; in other words, it would be attracted to any ship that came and went from MZX32905.

If there was anything that Jaden knew about Sith, the Rule of Two was among that knowledge. And if Lumiya had an accomplice, such as an apprentice who was still out there, that apprentice might want to come back if she was out of contact with her, given her continued imprisonment in Shedu Maad's Jedi Temple. Thus, if Lumiya's hypothetical apprentice came into MZX32905 and left, having found that their Master's base was destroyed, then Jaden's tracking beacon would have affixed itself to the apprentice's ship.

Of course, Jaden couldn't discount the possibility that the beacon might have affixed itself to the hull of a ship that had nothing to do with Lumiya. For all he knew, if he was going to follow where this beacon was going, he might very well be following a simple scavenger, and he'll have wasted time that could have been better spent on finding out if Lumiya was holding out any information that the Jedi should be privy to.

Yes, the Sith Lady may have been caught, and she could tell them any number of things, such as, "Oh, you caught me, damn you, Jedi, you foiled all my plans," or some other such things to make the Order think that they had quashed whatever threat she represented to them or the rest of the galaxy. But seeing as how she studied under Palpatine himself, even the more bureaucratic Hamner wasn't going to take any chances that her threat started and ended with her.

That, and Jaden had a feeling that, maybe, there was something more than what Hamner told him. There were rumors circulating in the Jedi Order that Lumiya's apprentice could very well be the disgraced Jaina Solo herself, who was also rumored to have killed Mara Jade Skywalker. For Jaden, it was a stretch to believe, even though it was confirmed that Jaina had been the one to kill Master Saba Sebatyne in the Unknown Regions over a year ago.

If Jaden was following Jaina, he had every intention of seeing whether or not the daughter of Han and Leia Solo, the niece of Luke and Mara Skywalker, was indeed capable of the things that she was said to have done. And if she was, then he would have no hesitation in striking her down.

. . .

In the Chanzari Den of Selonia, Mirax Terrik Horn waited with her arms crossed over her chest as a male Selonian walked toward her and her meeting partner with a metal box in both hands. The Selonian carefully placed the box down between Mirax and her partner, and then the latter bent down and opened up the case.

Inside was a simple black handblaster that didn't look any different from the standard DL-44. But upon picking it up, Mirax saw that it was much lighter than a DL-44, and it had a special green button on top that she pushed.

In an instant, the bottom of the handle extruded a black velvety material that wrapped up the entirety of her hand. Two seconds later, she wiggled her fingers, seeing that she still had some mobility there.

"As promised," Mirax's partner—a male Chev named Onyx—stated. "Someone tries to pull that gun out of your hand, they'd have to lop it off if they wanna separate you from this baby. May I?"

Mirax nodded and allowed Onyx to try to pull the gun out of her grip; it wouldn't budge, as Mirax's arm was always following.

"See?" Onyx asked. "What'd I tell ya?"

Then Mirax cocked the blaster and pulled the trigger without hesitation.

But instead of a blaster bolt lancing out into Onyx's face, a brief wave came over him. When it passed, there were only a few seconds of silence between him and Mirax before he turned around and vomited upon the ground.

"Sorry about that," Mirax said. "I just wanted to make sure that its disorientation function would actually work."

"Well, you got the proof," Onyx said resentfully as he stood back up to his full height and wiped the traces of vomit away from his mouth. "I hope you're satisfied."

"I am," Mirax replied evenly.

"Now the money?" Onyx inquired.

Mirax nodded at the briefcase next to her. "Combo is 969."

The Chev bent down to the other briefcase, input the combination, and it opened up.

"Hot damn, you came through!" he exclaimed before slamming it shut and picking it up. "Pleasure doin' business with ya, Mrs. Horn!" He shook her free hand with his own free hand, his resentment on the weapon being used on him completely forgotten.

"Likewise," Mirax responded with a polite smile.

Then Onyx and the Selonian who brought the blaster turned around and walked away. Mirax then regarded the weapon in her hand before pressing the green button that sent the black material back into the bottom of the holster.

Now this would be quite useful on a Force-user like Tahiri Veila, she thought.