A half-eaten bowl of cold noodles in the corner. Spiderwebs woven on the windowsill. Water damage on the ceiling. Cracked duracrete and petrified air. Electric blue and pink light worming in through the broken blinds. With the light enters the sweet-sick smell of blood, earthy sweat, bitter death. And across an alley and behind a wall, loud enough for everyone in the slummy flat to hear every move of the action, rumbles the voice of a pit fighting announcer thundering out the latest round's results.

"And again Big Red is too much for his foes! A three-on-one and he is still standing! Will he ever be defeated? Is there a single beast on Taris that can stand up to this demon in kath hound form? Don't worry folks: He'll be back tomorrow when—"

Ahsoka slams her hands on the naked concrete wall. "Gah!" she shouts. "Do they ever take a break?"

"Let's all just settle down," says Obi-Wan, looking between her and Anakin. Looking especially at Anakin.

But patience and calm are the last things Anakin wants right now. He has a lightsaber and the Force. Three Jedi between them, plus Rex, R2, and whatever Captain Typho can throw into the pot. That's more than enough to take all of Taris, by his estimation—and if that's what it takes to storm the governing palace and pluck Padme away from those wretches who overran it, so be it. Or, if Obi-Wants to keep waiting down here, then fine. Anakin can do it alone if he has to. "We don't have time to mess around," he growls, pacing over the cold, hard floor of the abandoned apartment room Rex secured for them. A decent enough place to get lost in these past few days in the Lower City, but it's time to leave this slum behind. "The senators up there are in danger. That's all that matters." And, frankly, Bail Organa doesn't matter much to him at all.

"Guy on the news said they're all being penned up in the palace," gruffs Rex from the corner. He looks to Typho. "Got any idea how much of a mess security'd be?"

"I chanced a fly-by before I came to find you all," says Typho. He looks no less ready to storm the palace himself: Eyes narrowed, brow furrowed, his lips strained and hardly moving as he speaks. Something about the man annoys Anakin—always has—but the Naboo officer is an ally for now. He'll let it go.

"What did you find?" says Obi-Wan.

Typho nods to R2 and the astromech droid brings up a holoprojection of a squat obelisk of a tower. "Here," he says, indicating a rectangular plaza in front of the building, "is the main entrance, where the break-in occurred. Heavily defended, with speeder patrol. To the left and right, however—" he points here, then there— "are exposed lines, one which looked like a sewer or water pipe, the other which might be a garbage processing chute. Both run near-vertical for a half-dozen or so stories until they end abruptly. I'm guessing they enter the building there. I saw speeders also converging near the tower pinnacle—maybe a hanger or private landing pad—but I couldn't get close enough to spot anything solid."

"How bad does 'heavily defended' mean?" asks Anakin.

Obi-Wan tosses him a look of annoyance. "We're not storming a veritable garrison with five people and R2-D2."

"We might stand a chance," muses Rex.

"We'd destroy them," adds Anakin.

"I repeat, not doing that. These lines," Obi-Wan says, pointing to the sewage and trash tunnels, "look far more promising, assuming they do enter the tower. We could slip in past most of the security, and, at worst, only trip a few alarms and have to worry about guards once we were inside. We would simply need to figure out how to enter them."

Ahsoka shrugs. "Look for where they dump their trash."

"Easier said than done."

"Just get me to a city maintenance station near there. I can find out."

Anakin laughs. "That easy, huh?"

"Eh—yeah. Same trick with the comms tower oughta work. That was easy enough, right Rex?"

The clone captain nods. "Guess so. You did the heavy lifting, Commander. I was mostly sightseeing."

"If they were laying traps for us before, they'll definitely be on guard now. Going in through the sewer's the oldest scheme in the books, second maybe to the ventilation shaft," growls Anakin, returning to pacing as he looks over the tower. "What if we fly in? Go in from the top and make our way down? That way we'd have easy escape once we have the senators."

"And have the entire city watch us make our grand entrance?" says Obi-Wan. "Very stealthy."

"Hey, I don't really care about stealth. They're already after us. Let 'em come."

Obi-Wan raises one eyebrow and narrows his other eye. "Save the flashy heroics for another time, Anakin."

Anakin looks away, irritated. He wants to blow through waves of Tath minions and battle droids—hopefully there will be battle droids—en route to cutting through the palatial tower. That's what they get for taking Padme, and that's what the Taths will get for making fools out of them all. For using them like tools in their political gamesmanship. Because, in Anakin's mind, that's what this is: The Arkanians don't even have the respect to make this personal. The Jedi, the Senate—just means to their own power-grubbing ends. Maybe that's what they want, but they sure made it personal to him when they got Padme involved.

Winning the others over to his idea is another story. Rex looks tired, his face haggard, as if they want nothing more than to get off of this planet as soon as possible. Ahsoka looks as if she is ready to lash out at something, all right, but that could just as well be the din of the Lower City driving her to her wits' end as it could be this situation. Obi-Wan just looks like himself. The always-critical master of Anakin's Padawan years. The Clone Wars have lightened him—or perhaps Anakin getting distance from him now and then has done them both good—but that same old nitpicking personality has a way of coming out right when Anakin's temper is straining.

This time, however, Anakin won't fight. Fine. Fine. We can disguise ourselves as trash, then. "So, what," he says, "we climb up the shaft, get in, get out? Sounds way too easy."

"Seen you do crazier things, General," says Rex. "Although even that won't help us fly off the planet. Why don't Typho and I stage a distraction, draw off some of the guards, and secure a ride out of here? Maybe we can even find our ship if they haven't scrapped it by now."

They better not have, thinks Anakin. He's come to quite like the Twilight ever since he and Ahsoka found the old hulk. "Good thinking, Rex. Just the two of you think you can handle it?"

"I can go with them," chimes in Ahsoka. "That is, assuming you and Master Kenobi can handle breaking into the tower on your own."

"We could use R2," says Obi-Wan. "Remind me to thank the senators for bringing him. He'll make it easier to locate anything important once we're inside—and that will be easier to do if you can manage to create a big enough ruckus, Ahsoka. Just try not to blow anything too serious up, this time."

"Hey, I didn't blow anything up the first time."

"Whatever you're blowing up, just make sure you can be there when we need you," interjects Anakin. He's had enough of talking. Enough planning, enough discussing. Let them be done with it all and get to work. "Everyone fine with this idea? Good. Then let's get set for a good old prison break."

"It's a palace, not a prison, Master," says Ahsoka.

"You know what I mean."


The inky dark of space, eternal, endless. Stars twinkling in the black like souls twisting in the infinite. The vastness within which so little light shines. But here it does—here upon this little green-tan world, a safe haven amid the cosmic dark, a place where life might rise, thrive, survive. And above it—where life might die. Where the immortality of the cosmos is thrown aside and mere mortals with their petty concerns of rulership and ideology thrash and howl amid laser fire.

The limitless possibilities of space reduced to the very base nature of this cold, dark expanse. There is nothing but death here.

And Taron Malicos knew that before his ships had even come out of hyperspace.

The Jedi Master grimaces and pulls up on his interceptor's throttle as he accelerates mere meters above the turbolaser-scorched hull of the Might of the Shield-Bearer. Fire explodes so close he can almost feel the heat, hear the roar, know the carnage and the pain. A direct hit blasts an ammo pod for a turret and the ensuring eruption catches one of the ARC-170 clone fighters on Malicos's tail, enveloping the ship in a cloak of flame and leaving behind only wreckage and echoes of the men who piloted it.

There is nothing but death here, and the Jedi Council has sent him to it.

Malicos veers away from the ship as General Grievous's flagship, the Invisible Hand, pounds the star destroyer with point-blank fire. He will not miss the warship. He will not miss Commander Card. But none of this had to happen. He looks past Grievous's ship to the surface of Teyr, a backwater even here in the well-populated Colonies region of the galaxy. This is no Coruscant. Despite the Council's fervor this is no point in defending this world.

As if they even had a chance to defend it. Malicos had, for only a moment, considered the possibility that he was mistaken about the situation when his fleet had emerged from hyperspace to see Jedi Knight Danba Nago's meager Republic fleet engaged with what appeared to be the saddest Separatist vanguard ever cobbled together, a flotilla so paltry a Padawan could've trained against it. Maybe a few real capital ships at best, the rest retrofitted Trade Federation cargo haulers and Corporate Alliance junkers.

But his tactical mind took over, and he knew: Nago, and he, had walked into a trap. The Separatists had confirmed that mere minutes later when Grievous's real war fleet had blasted out of hyperspace behind Malicos's ships, cutting them off from retreat, pressing them against Teyr, and now smashing them against the world like a hammer crashing down an anvil. Relentless. Pounding. Each turbolaster bolt from Grievous's ships another blow.

Malicos keys his Jedi starfighter's comm as the Invisible Hand cracks Might of the Shield-Bearer in two with a sustained volley. "Nago," he says, trying his best to reach his fellow Jedi in the rapidly collapsing battlespace. "Nago, can you find a vector for retreat?"

"Master Malicos," the fighter's comm cracks with the beleaguered voice of the Aqualish Jedi Knight. If only he hadn't listened to the council. If only he'd resisted coming here like Malicos had, then neither of them would be in this mess. "Master, I have more droids boarding every minute! They've taken most of the outer corridors and seized most of the heavy weapons, and—" the comm cracks, and for a moment Malicos thinks he's lost Nago before the Jedi Knight's voice returns— "swarming through! We've opened our main hanger to release what fighters and shuttles we could, and I'm holding the bridge for now."

"Get to the hanger," Malicos orders. "Nago get—"

Again the comm crackles. A sound like a buzzsaw cuts in, making Malicos wince so hard he involuntarily jerks his fighter away from a flight of inbound droid fighters that slice through his escort squadron. Some things in battle come down to luck.

But luck turns so quickly, and when the comm returns once more Malicos knows his luck is running out. "Taron Malicos," snarls a mechanical voice from the other side. Someone has cut into their comm channel. Someone cruel, cold, calculating. Someone unmistakable. General Grievous. "Just who I've come to this worthless planet to see."

"Grievous," snarls Malicos, dodging a pair of vulture droids and lancing laser fire into a hyena droid bomber. He pushes through the flame and debris, curls around the wings of a Separatist frigate, and says, "I don't see you fighting out here, monster."

"I'd be happy to crush you, Jedi. But you're going to have to hurry, otherwise by the time you'll get here I'll have found Danba Nago and his pitiful little Padawan, and all you'll find are their mangled bodies right alongside all of the clones I've already slaughtered. Don't keep me waiting."

Malicos slams his hand down on the comm. Enough. He will meet that cyborg in battle, and if anything good can possibly come from this madness, it will be killing Grievous. If he cannot save any lives today, perhaps he can save those who would've died tomorrow. It's all he can salvage from this now.

Pushing all power to the engines, Malicos dives over the top of the Separatist frigate and makes a beeline towards Danba Nago's star destroyer. Half a dozen droid assault craft are clamped to the burning Venator's hull like parasites riding a whale fall into the abyss. Malicos blasts pasts clone starfighters under fire, averts his eyes from a Republic corvette peppered by a whole host of droid bombers. Only one mission. One goal. One thing to do now.

Kill Grievous. Kill Grievous.

Vulture droids dip into the hanger bay of Nago's star destroyer just as Malicos does. He blows one apart as he veers down towards a flight bay and clips another with his wing, sending it crashing against a bulkhead. In the pressurized docking hold several clones exchange fire with a whole battalion of battle droids. No time for guns: Malicos launches his starfighter into its final acceleration, blows the cockpit, and leaps out as his craft plows into the droids and smashes into a parked gunship. Pluming fire, crashing metal: He has no idea who or what he has killed or destroyed, but he cannot think about that. Lightsabers in hand he takes off at a sprint, deflecting an errant clone blaster bolt into one of the few droids left standing, too focused to bother checking to see if the clones are all right. They're clones: They were made for this, just like the battle droids. They don't need him. He doesn't need them.

When he enters the ship corridors, Malicos checks his wrist commlink. Nago's signal—descending down the bridge tower. Maybe he really is trying to get to the hanger bays like Malicos ordered. Maybe there's hope for him after all.

Hallway after hallway. Squad after squad of droids. It is as if the entire army contingent of Grievous's fleet has descended onto Nago's flagship, such great numbers that the star destroyer may as well be in Confederate hands already. Malicos takes to evading them whenever possible, not simply to keep himself alive, but also to hurry. Fighting droids takes time, and if Grievous is here, he does not have time.

Call me again, Malicos thinks. Call me again, Grievous. I'm right here. Fight me. Fight me, man on cyborg. One on one. I will hammer you into all this durasteel, pound you back into the formless metal that made you. And if I die too, at least I accomplished something worthy of history, worthy of great men. Forget the Jedi archives. The universe will remember me. Let me die in the flames of glory and stand at the apex of all great warriors.

He is coming up on Nago now. Hallways away. Now meters away. So close. Then Malicos turns a corridor to find a pair of droids shooting point-blank at a short, platinum-haired human girl armed with a blue lightsaber. She ducks, weaves between fire, deflects a bolt at one of the droids, and slashes the other from shoulder to hip. The girl turns towards Malicos, her eyes huge, and he knows that she knows: They are all going to die here.

"Pella!" a gruff voice calls. "Pella, wait!"

A hulking Aqualish runs out behind the Padawan, Pella, with lightsaber in hand. He turns, spots Malicos, and lets out a breath of relief. "Master Malicos!"

"Nago," says Malicos, switching off his lightsabers and starting down the hallway towards the two Jedi. "The battle's lost, man. Grievous is aboard. I have to find him. I have to kill him."

"Grievous? Here? But—" Nago pauses. He turns. Looks towards the wall. Bare durasteel. Military austerity. Spotless save for where Pella's lightsaber carved a scorching line in the metal as she cut down the droid. "Wait," says Nago. "I feel—wait!"

He holds up a hand to Malicos. Shoves his Padawan aside. Activates his lightsaber. Then the wall explodes.

The blast throws Nago back, but not down. He stumbles and regains his footing just in time to face a devil crashing down on him.

Grievous.

Fire wreathes the cyborg. He plows through the flame with two lightsabers raised high, bringing one down on Nago's blade and throwing aside the Jedi Knight's defense like a grown man swatting down a child's hand. With the other he gores Nago through the chest.

"No!" screams Pella. Nago's Padawan raises her lightsaber and charges Grievous. "Master!"

Malicos watches. A scene of futility. Pella does not even manage to swing her blade before Grievous splits one of his droid arms in two and grabs the girl around the neck, his fingers a vise. As he raises her off his feet he crushes the dying Nago's head with his foot, Pella crying, shrieking for her master.

"Grievous!" thunders Malicos. "I'm right here, you coward! Get over here and die!"

General Grievous turns. He laughs. No mirth. No humanity. Cyborg or not, there is nothing left alive in that mechanical beast. "Malicos," he taunts, dangling Pella by her neck as the girl gasps for breath. "One Jedi down. Stand there and watch helplessly as I crush the life out of this pitiful girl. Then I will kill you."

Malicos snarls. He raises his lightsabers. Then he runs forward like a man possessed, like a predator, a carnivore bearing down on his prey, with the last thing in this world that matters pounding in his head. Kill Grievous. Kill Grievous.

Anger. Hate. Where do they lead? He does not care anymore.

Grievous tosses the Padawan aside and intercepts Malicos's charge. The two lock blades. "Pathetic," Grievous hisses.

Malicos yells and attacks, again, again, again. He bashes Grievous's defense with wild abandon, bringing down his lightsabers like they were axes, like mauls. He drives Grievous back, step by step, matching every inch of the cyborg's skill and power with his own anger, his own rage.

Use the Force. Let it flow through you. Then grab it, take it, and bring it down on your enemy with all your might.

Yet Grievous is still laughing. As Malicos swings. Grievous grabs Nago's destroyed body with one of this feet and flings the corpse. Malicos dodges. Whirls. Turns that rotational momentum into a forceful swing.

But Pella, who has backed away after escaping Grievous's grip, now breaks at the sight of her master's body flung about like a toy. She cries out and rushes Grievous once more, and Malicos can do nothing but watch as Grievous intercepts her. The same tactic, the same result: He keeps Malicos's offense at bay just long enough to swat Pella aside and grab her before launching her into the path of Malicos's lightsabers.

Malicos halts mid-swing and catches the Padawan with his chest so as not to hurt her, but that moment of vulnerability is his doom. Grievous bats aside one of Malicos's blades, splits his arm to ignite a third, hidden lightsaber, and slices off Malicos's left arm.

Pain. Hate. Kill Grievous. Kill Grievous.

Malicos howls. Pella shrieks. Grievous ignores the Padawan. Pushes her aside like trash. As Malicos clutches at his sizzling stump of a left arm, Grievous kicks him squarely in the chest and launches him down the hall. Breaking bones. The wind flying from his lungs. Pain, pain. Malicos crumples in a heap as a pair of battle droids to his right raise their blaster rifles.

Even in his battered state he has enough wherewithal to raise his remaining lightsaber with his right hand and knock aside the droids' fire, but it's sloppy, ineffective. As Grievous bears down on him, Malicos's anger churns inside of him like a forge. Get up. Fight. Get up and kill him.

"Blasters to stun!" booms Grievous.

Malicos looks to his left in time to see a squad of battle droids open fire with stunning blasts. He has failed. The Jedi Council has failed him.

The Force has failed him.


Tea. Simple, mundane, but familiar—and the familiar is tantamount to a friend in a place as mysterious and dark as this ancient Jedi library on Ossus. Here roost shadows and dwell memories. Here roam the ghosts of Jedi lost; in databanks scroll names forgotten. It is a tomb, a sepulcher of wisdom, an ossified chronicle of so many great and abandoned things locked away for all time in the barrows of the galaxy.

And all Sae can do is make tea and look on.

Tamri slumps over a databank half-asleep. At least the girl got some of the old computers running: Sae could do no more than punch buttons and stare at dark, dusty screens, but all it took Tamri was some re-wiring and a few hours on their first day here to get at least a little infrastructure up and running. It's a start. But days later a start is still all they have.

"Here," Sae says, setting the collapsifoam cup of tea by Tamri's arm. "This ration pack had the tea you thought was okay." Tamri murmurs an acknowledgement, but her eyelids flutter. "Find anything?"

"No," mutters Tamri.

"Hey. Forget the tea. Instead, why don't you get some sleep? You've been sitting in front of that thing ever since you got up."

Tamri stirs. "What else is there to do?" she mumbles. "There's nothing important in any of these terminals, Master. It's just training sims and archive stuff and maps and all that. There's nothing on Sith Lords."

"There has to be something," says Sae, nursing her own cup of tea. Terrible stuff. Survivor's rations—energy and vitamins cobbled together in a barely-palatable drink. But at least the tea powder overpowers the sour metal taste of the water that the handheld vaporator produces. And it's not as bad as the dried food. "Ludo Kressh. Have you searched for him?"

"Yes, Master. You've asked that every day. There's just some history stuff about a war."

"Well, that's what we're looking for. Sort of. Like a weapon, or a…a…" Sae trails off. The Council was too vague in their orders: Information security in their words, needless discretion from her point of view. Find anything you can about the Sith Lord Ludo Kressh, anything he might've worked on to turn the tide of a war. A weapon. A tool. A will. Find the ancient Jedi library on Ossus and learn its secrets. So far all she's learned is the fastest way to make vaporator tea. "Tam, just get some sleep. The computer will be here when you wake up. We have time."

Her apprentice shakes her head. "We don't have enough food for forever, Master."

"You were the one who said we should go back to the ship when we got hungry."

"Yeah, but now we're down here. I can keep looking."

In the end, Sae has to pry Tamri off of the data terminal. "You're going to miss things if you're tired," she says as Tamri slumps down on an old couch—surprisingly plush and comfortable despite the thousands of years this vault has gone without visitors. "Just sleep. I'll be here and I'm not going anywhere."

Once Tamri falls asleep, Sae watches her from the computer station, eyes flitting back and forth between her apprentice and the archive terminal. They are lost down here. Not physically, perhaps, but intellectually, emotionally. The only two Jedi on Ossus and they are as clueless as undergraduates. Whatever Skywalker found on Empress Teta, whatever has the Council worried, it feels as far away as anything civilized or alive down here. If they really are searching for something that can change the fate of the war, Sae imagines they won't find it in a place so far from the battlefront.

She scrolls past information on the terminal, archival listing after listing that may as well be in Huttese. Barely any different than the Jedi Temple back on Coruscant. A galaxy of knowledge and wisdom at her fingertips and all she can feel is frustration. As if she and Tamri have become lords of some forgotten castle of ignorance whose walls will never be assailed and will never let them leave.

No, she thinks, picking up the holocron she found on the pedestal. Days later and she still has not gotten it to activate. Not a castle of ignorance. Let the Force guide you. Remember the Code. "There is no ignorance, there is knowledge," she mutters with the level of enthusiasm she usually reserves for performing cleaning duties back at the temple.

For a moment she thinks she sees the holocron flicker and quake. A trick of the light, surely. But there is hardly any light here in this shadowy library where all the lights died out millennia ago. Maybe she's the one who needs sleep. "There is no ignorance, there is knowledge," she repeats, a little louder. Never hurts to knock twice.

In her hands the holocron blooms.

As Sae looks on in amazement—was a simple line from the Jedi Code really the key to activating this thing?—the data cube rises into the air, turns, and splits into tiny octahedrons, like illuminated crystals floating just above her fingers. A soft blue light glows from the center of the arrangement like a sun in miniature, the various split pieces of the holocron revolving about the light in their meandering orbits. Sae walks away into an empty corner of the archive so as not to wake Tamri—and as she finds privacy, the light glows brighter, brighter still, and then above Sae's hands emerges the holographic form of a Draethos figure in Jedi robes.

"Hello," the figure says in a serious yet amiable voice. "I am Jedi Master Odan-Urr, founder of the great library on Ossus, and creator of this archival vault. I leave this holocron as a repository of knowledge should the worst come to pass. I have seen a vision of Ossus's fate and a great destruction to come. I have seen that the Sith shall rise again and again. And I know that I am but one Jedi. The Force is my guide. Knowledge and history came before me and shall long outlive me. I only hope that the galaxy shall never need such an emergency archive. I hope that the galaxy will never know the kind of turmoil that I have forseen."

Sae hesitates. Emergency archive? This isn't even the actual great Jedi library on this planet? Apparently the scholars excavating this place before the war were completely off the mark. Great. Bad luck strikes again. She slumps her shoulders in frustration. She thinks she might've heard the name Odan-Urr at some point during her early training—all those hours as a youngling studying and learning, and how much has she forgotten since then?—but she has no idea if anything he has left behind will help. If they're not even in the right place, have they just wasted days rooting around here for nothing? Is this all a waste of time?

She looks over her shoulder. The Force, or something, beckoned her here. Those visions she had leading her here were not for nothing. Weren't they? The Force is my guide. A sentiment that Obi-Wan and the other Masters would share with Odan-Urr here, but does it work for her, too, or is her luck just this bad? Has it always been this bad the whole time? Was there ever even a point?

The sound of Tamri's snoring stirs her to press on. The archive computers have been worthless. She doesn't want to wake her apprentice, and she has nothing better to do. Might as well see what this ancient Jedi has to say.

Minutes pass into hours. Sae slumps over on a couch, nursing ration tea while half-listening to Odan-Urr drone on about the lessons of his master. The Jedi's soft but low voice is enough to lull her to sleep. Her eyelids grow heavy and she focuses on the lukewarm tea to stay awake. There has to be something here. Don't let it all be for nothing.

Another hour. Another. Then, as Sae is almost ready to pitch the holocron across the room, old Odan-Urr says something truly interesting: "My lessons faded," he drones on, "when we faced down Sadow's Sith forces on Kirrek."

Sae sits up. Kirrek is a planet on the Empress Teta system. It isn't much, but it's the first clue that something here might connect to what Skywalker found. Sleep fades. She gathers her attention and her focus as the venerable Jedi Master goes on to recount a lengthy but eventful recollection of a battle during the Great Hyperspace War, another piece of the puzzle Sae can at least grasp—an ancient conflict between a much younger Republic and the Sith Empire of legend. Sadow. Sadow. She thinks she remembers that name from one of Master Yoda's lessons.

"In my vision I saw Sadow fall," Odan-Urr's holocron-bound likeness says. "I saw his clash with his Sith rival, Ludo Kressh, above Korriban. Despite the destruction they wreaked upon the Republic, I cannot help but wonder if they were not more of a threat. The Jedi took hostage Kressh's apprentice, Harson Vei, who spoke of a world-ending danger Kressh took to his grave to keep out of Sadow's hands. That grave is too on Korriban according to Vei's testimony, far beyond my reach, and yet I cannot help but wonder at what Kressh had. Was it a weapon? An insight? A grasp of the Force beyond our understanding? Should the Sith come to power once more, I fear the prospect of ending up on the wrong side of such power. I know the Dark Side permeates the very fabric of a Sith world like Korriban, and yet I cannot help but yearn to know what horror may have been—if only to protect those who will come long after I am gone."

Sae has heard enough. She hurries—runs—over to Tamri and shakes her awake. "Tam. Tam! I found it."

Her apprentice blinks and shudders. "Mm. What?"

"Wake up. I found something."

"What is it?"

"Listen to Odan-Urr. He's talking about our man."

"What are you talking about?"

Sae pauses. She must sound like an idiot, especially given that Tamri is still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and yawning. Yet the prospect of actually gaining something out of this expedition has her excited in what feels like the first time in forever. Finally, finally, all this skulking around pays off. Finally all her investigation experience leads to something that might be important. Finally she isn't just rooting criminals out of the lower levels of Coruscant but actually on the verge of making a difference. If only she can figure out what this old Jedi Master on the holocron is talking about.

Korriban, the ancient Sith world. An old tomb of an old lord. It's not much to go on, but it's a start—and they are stuck down here in this library with nothing but time on their side.

Once Tamri has roused and eaten, Sae fills her in. "It's not just nothing," she says, marveling at the holocron. "Skywalker really was on to something."

"But what, exactly?" says Tamri.

"I don't know entirely. But the Jedi who made this holocron—"

"Odan-Urr was a historian long ago. I know who he was, Master. Sort of."

Well, shoot. At least someone listened as a youngling. "Well, yeah. Absolutely. Spot on. But he put together this whole place. He's responsible for all the knowledge that's gathered here. Ossus is known as an ancient Jedi library world because of this Jedi, and we have a holocron of his right here. If there's anything to be found, we can find out. I know it."

Tamri frets. "Are you sure?"

Sae feels irritated. What doesn't she get? Right here. This holocron right here. This is proof that they came out here for something. Belderone, the clone commandos, whatever happened to that Rastic guy—at least they didn't go down for nothing. Right? Right here. It's proof. "Odan-Urr said Kressh took his secret to his tomb on Korriban. We look there, we might find something even more conclusive."

"Korriban is…it's not a good place," says Tamri, looking far more concerned. "I don't even know if we can get there—I wouldn't even know how to get there, and I doubt Jedi are even allowed to go—but I don't think we should even try. Let's just listen more and keep looking, Master. If nothing else, we shouldn't jump to conclusions rushing off to a place like that."

Sae grits her teeth. She has no idea how to get to Korriban either, in truth, and she has heard every legend. The capital of the old Sith. A world so teeming in Dark Side energy it can warp the minds of the strongest Jedi. A place forbidden to the Jedi, as Tamri noted, and even erased from most Republic galactic maps. A world quarantined, like a sickness upon the galaxy. But…it can't be for nothing. She has to keep going. She has to find something. All the deaths and losses she has seen can't be in vain.

Master Gallia would want her to go on. Wouldn't she?

But as Sae stews over the future, the present comes rushing back in the worst way. While she prepares her argument to persuade her apprentice of their mission, the sound of footsteps distracts her. "Hear that?" she murmurs, tucking the holocron away in a pocket of her tunic.

"Is someone here?" asks Tamri. She holds a hand to her mouth. "Hello?"

"Quiet. Just listen for a second."

"Is it Lendon and Neelotas?"

"I don't know. Just listen."

Stillness. Silence. Then footsteps return. Finally Sae spots movement: From out of the ventilation shaft above drops a cloaked figure. He falls slowly, as if guiding his descent by the Force, before landing with nary a sound. Then he steps into the meager light.

And Sae knows it is time to leave.

Count Dooku. Clad in black robe and silver boots. As spotless and regal as the portraits in Separatist propaganda. Other Jedi have clashed with the Sith Lord—Obi-Wan, Skywalker, Master Yoda—but Sae has never so much as been in the same system as the man since he left the Jedi Order long ago. Now they are face to face. Sae has no idea how he found them, no idea what he wants, no idea who or what he has brought with him. But she knows that she and Tamri have no one to back them up. And she knows they stand no chance against him in a fight.

"Greetings, Jedi," says Dooku, clasping his hands behind his back and walking up with all the calmness and self-assurance of royalty. "Let us talk."