When Acheron awakened, she found herself in a blank grey room, suspended two meters in the air by a white force field that kept her limbs in place. The flower-decorated dress that she wore upon returning to Centerpoint Station was replaced by a standard prison uniform.

And, more importantly, she found that she couldn't access the Force.

Ahead of her, the door opened, and Thrackan Sal-Solo walked inside, followed closely behind by a tall, muscular human man of olive skin who carried a portable holocomm in both hands. The door shut behind them, leaving the three of them alone.

Both men stopped a meter away from Acheron, and Sal-Solo asked, "What's the number to contact your superiors?"

"Go to your Hells," Acheron growled. "You betrayed your promise. You said I could go free."

"I didn't say you could go free right away," Sal-Solo pointed out. "I'm not takin' my chances with you; at least not until after I've finalized my deal with your Masters. Now what's the number?"

Acheron growled in frustration before she reluctantly rattled off the comm number for her contact, who was stationed somewhere that she didn't know about.

Sal-Solo input the number into the holocomm; when he was done, the muscular man lifted it up so that it was roughly at the same level as Acheron's face.

Soon, a holographic representation of a tattooed male Twi'lek regarded her.

"Lord Acheron," the alien said. "What have you to report?"

The female Sith looked briefly at Sal-Solo, who only nodded wordlessly. When she looked back at her contact, she said, "Thrackan Sal-Solo wishes to cut a deal with... our organization."

The Twi'lek's eyes widened. "He is listening in on this conversation?"

With a brief motion of Sal-Solo's left middle and index fingers, the larger man brought the holocomm down so that it was facing his boss.

"Yes, I am," Sal-Solo said. "And if you don't want anything to happen to your little agent here, you're gonna listen to what I have to propose."

The Twi'lek looked angry. "How dare you, filthy vermin! You would presume to be on the level of-"

"Oh, spare me," Sal-Solo said. "If we start callin' each other filthy vermin and go from there, we won't get anythin' done. So how 'bout you shut up and listen; that sound good?"

The Twi'lek grimaced, but after a moment, he said calmly, "Very well. Speak."

Sal-Solo nodded. "Now I know you Sith are dangerous, and I know why you want a prize like Centerpoint under your thumb. At the same time, I'm not very keen on sharing; this station is meant for Corellia, not for some dark Jedi or whatever you are. So here's my proposition: you stay out of our affairs, we'll give you back Lord Ass-her-on or whatever her name is in one fine piece, and we can go our separate ways. I personally don't even mind you taking over the rest of the galaxy, just keep the Corellian system out of it."

"Acheron," she growled impotently.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever lets you sleep at night, toots," Sal-Solo dismissed with a casual wave of his hand, and without even looking at her. Then he addressed the Twi'lek with, "So what do you say? Do we have a deal?"

There was a great pause before the holographic alien laughed, much to Sal-Solo's confused chagrin.

"Go ahead and kill her," the Twi'lek said. "She failed us. And you've just sealed your own fate, Head of State Sal-Solo. We know how long it would take for Centerpoint to become active again. Don't think you can't be replaced."

The alien then signed off from his end, leaving the three of them in total silence.

When Acheron echoed the Twi'lek's laugh, Sal-Solo looked up angrily at her.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"You're so screwed," she said between laughs. "And it won't matter how much you watch your back; sooner or later, the Sith will come for you, Thrackan. Oh, yes. They will come."

Sal-Solo looked at the man carrying the holocomm, who remained stone-faced throughout the whole exchange with the Twi'lek.

"Wait outside," the Corellian Head of State commanded.

The larger man wordlessly obeyed.

The door closed again, and then it was just Sal-Solo and Acheron.

"So your Masters have left you for dead, huh?" the man asked.

"That's the way of the Sith. If you thought you could use me as a hostage or bargaining chip, well, you just learned the hard way that won't work."

"Yes, I have," Sal-Solo agreed reluctantly. "But that also means that you're unemployed, too."

Acheron's eyebrows lifted. "Is that a job proposal?"

"I guarantee you that if you act as my bodyguard, you'll get the best pay out of anyone working in the Centerpoint Party. How's that sound?"

"Sounds interesting. When do I start?"

A brief moment passed before a knowing smile crossed Sal-Solo's face. Then he bellowed out his own laugh.

Once he finished, he said, "You know what, never mind. I see how it is. Soon as I let you down from there, you'll just snap my neck with your Force and then try to get outta here, maybe even try to get back in your Masters' good graces after. Uh-uh. No way. I can ready myself against your Masters with this station."

"Yeah, but you'll never see 'em coming," Acheron pointed out in a casual tone; she made it sound as if her life wasn't on the line. "Believe me; if the Sith want you dead, you will die. And it won't matter what preparations you'll have made; even if you kill a few of us, more will keep coming. And we get smarter, too; my fellow Sith will be able to learn, to circumvent whatever traps you'll have in place. And then, one day, just like that, your neck will probably be broken anyway. Or maybe you'll be cut down by a lightsaber. Either way, when it comes to the Sith, a violent end is what you'll meet, Thrackan."

Sal-Solo scoffed. "You Sith make it sound like you're boogeymen. You and the Jedi may have special powers and whatnot, but you're not invincible. After all, look at where you are. We normal people? We aren't as helpless as you might think."

"Obviously not. But you're being extremely arrogant and outright stupid if you think you can repel the Sith indefinitely whether or not you have the galaxy's biggest gun in your hands."

Sal-Solo walked up to her and stood next to the electronic panel that controlled the stasis field holding Acheron in the air.

"And I suppose you're gonna tell me you're my best bet at avoiding them?" he asked her with a mocking tone.

"That's what you thought before you reconsidered," Acheron pointed out evenly. "I was only accepting your offer."

The two of them stared at each other for an uncomfortably long time before Sal-Solo wordlessly turned away and walked out the door.

Well, that's a good sign, Acheron thought. The fact that Sal-Solo didn't outright kill her meant that he was at least considering options that he didn't want to completely cut off; and if that was the case, then perhaps she would be able to walk freely after all.

. . .

Upon dropping out of hyperspace into the Corellian system, the Hawk Runner returned to its dock inside Centerpoint Station without any trouble or delay. From there, the supplies that they brought from Qiilura were offloaded, with Jacen, still posing as one of the ship's crew members, Candak Hecluse, helping out.

After the Runner's crew finished their task, Captain Slenas gathered his subordinates into their ship's lounge and declared, "Alright, listen up, boys. I just got off the comm with Bedja, and he just confirmed that with this last shipment, we got our pay for the month. So if you would all access your accounts and run it by me that you all got your money, we can all start our shore leave ASAP."

As Jacen complied as he took out his own datapad with his fellow shipmates, he figured that he got lucky that he caught the Runner's crew on their last shipment before their scheduled shore leave. Had that not been the case, such as if they had to ship back out almost immediately for another run, he would have used the contents of the vial that he had in one of the pockets of his utility belt to induce a temporary illness in himself to get some sick leave. That way, he would have had an excuse to stay behind on Centerpoint and see if he could sneak around to find a way to get the information that he wanted.

That, and it would have given him time to see if there were any Sith on the station; yes, he was aware that Tahiri may have something to do with the Centerpoint Party, but even if that were the case, he couldn't discount the possibility that there were other Sith that had infiltrated the station's namesake governing body.

In short order, everyone in the Runner's crew reported that their bank account statements said that they had their expected deposits; Jacen was the last one to confirm it, and only after a brief moment where he almost forgot Hecluse's pin number.

Only Druff seemed to have noticed the insignificant slip-up, but with a microscopic movement of his right index finger, coupled with some minor Force-manipulation, even that was purged from the simple man's mind.

"Great! See you all back here in two weeks time!" Slenas said. "Thus, I declare you all dismissed!"

Nothing further was said by either the captain or the rest of the crew before they cleared out of the lounge and then out of the ship itself. Once they left the hangar bay, they dispersed into different corridors, with Jacen taking one that led directly to the nearest library.

Once he arrived, he sat down at a holoterminal and placed a specialized code cylinder into one of its access ports. Upon seeing that the cylinder's light glowed a soft green, Jacen assured himself that it meant that he could now access Centerpoint's HoloNet search engines without attracting any red flag functions. From what he understood of what Dr. Toval Seyah told him before he went on this return mission, anything he searched that could be flagged as suspicious by the governing Centerpoint Party, such as the security details of the station (especially its more sensitive areas, like its weapon control room) would be scrambled and seen as nothing more than a harmless glitch in their systems that might even be overlooked by their security techs.

So, with that out of the way, he went to access just the publicly accessible information on the station's security schematics, just to start off safely. According to what he found there over the course of the next several minutes, there were, apparently, no security updates or redesigns of the station, not even at the weapon control room where Jacen had spoken to that droid that thought that it was Anakin mere weeks before.

He shuttled that thought to the back of his mind; now was not the time to think about it, or the effect that it had on his parents when he showed that conversation to them. Right now, he had to remain focused; so, without further thought to the droid that called itself Anakin Sal-Solo, Jacen soldiered on.

After he was confident that he got everything that he was going to get from the publicly accessible information, he first stretched out with his Force-senses to get a read on whether or not anyone was watching him. He only got a swath of disinterested or otherwise preoccupied sentiments that came his way.

But even so, Jacen felt the need to briefly look around the library to see if anyone was watching him; the idea that there could be undercover Sith that could cloak their intentions through the Force wasn't something that he wanted to chance.

No one so much as glanced his way.

With that tentative self-assurance, Jacen pulled out another code cylinder and slotted it into another access port. This one was meant to make sure that if he were to access more sensitive sites or documents—such as those that might concern the Centerpoint Party or even the systemwide Corellian government overall—not only would this cylinder bypass any red flags, but it would also decode the passwords that would be kept by some of the highest political figures here.

When Jacen had heard this in his briefing prior to leaving Shedu Maad, Dr. Seyah himself told him, "Keep in mind, Jacen; this one in particular is experimental. You can't be sure that this one will work completely, so all I can say is be careful while using it. Keep those Force-senses of yours up, because if you feel anyone coming for you, abort and get outta there quickly."

At this point, as the second code cylinder worked its magic, Jacen waited with abated breath before its light glowed green. He let that breath out after less than half a minute once the green showed up.

So, with that, he accessed the more sensitive documents and information that even his second cousin Thrackan would have had access to.

Several minutes later, he found out that, apparently, even the more sensitive documents didn't reveal that much more than what was publicly accessible. Oh, sure, there were significantly more detailed pieces of information, much of which flew over Jacen's head since he was more or less a layman when it came to the technical aspects of the station's construction. He couldn't help but think that if Jaina were here, she might have been able to understand at least some of what he just read.

Jaina. Where could she be?

Again, he had to shake his head to clear his thoughts for the present. What he did pick up from what he read was that in spite of Anakin Sal-Solo's self-sacrifice, he wasn't able to completely purge all of the traces of Anakin Solo's DNA from his database. Apparently, there had been a backup database that the droid was unaware of; according to a note made by Thrackan himself, it was made as a contingency in case the robot ever turned on the party.

Jacen couldn't help but smile bitterly at the additional note stating that even with the contingency, the utilization of the backup DNA had set the party back by several months when it came to getting Centerpoint operational as a weapon again. At the very least, his brother—or the droid that had his brother's memories—was able to frustrate Thrackan, if nothing else.

So now that he had gotten his preliminary investigation of the station's updated security measures—or lack thereof, as he discovered—Jacen knew that the next part of his mission was to contact a Galactic Alliance computer hacker, someone that Seyah knew, who could arrive on Centerpoint incognito and find a way to plant false information into those sensitive databases.

From there, that false info might be able to spread over to the Sith, who, in turn, might pass it onto Admirals Iosha and Ulaska. And from there, the GA military could potentially trap them in a battle in the Corellian system while the Jedi could corner them into at least exposing them as Force-users to the Chiss Ascendancy.

Jacen could only hope. He signed out of the databases that he signed into and promptly pulled out both code cylinders before he placed them back into his utility pouches.

But when he stood up and turned around, there were two gruff-looking Centerpoint security guards standing there with their hands on their holstered handblasters.

"Say there, pal," the one to Jacen's left said, "what'd you got on those cylinders?"

Jacen mentally chastised himself. He should have taken Seyah's advice to heart; he should have kept his Force-senses alert should anyone come after him instead of focusing entirely on the info he was surveying.

Still, he said nothing before he flicked his fingers without moving his hands; each guard suddenly felt a physical flick across their noses, distracting them just enough for Jacen to run past them.

But once the guards recovered, they turned and began chasing him out of the library.