Not many people would have suspected that the middle-aged dark-haired woman and the nine-year-old girl sitting next to her were Sith, but Lady Olaris Rhea and Tyro Vestara Khai were exactly that. Seated at a table in an outdoor cafe on Commenor, the two females sipped idly over their drinks and occasionally said something innocuous to one another whenever someone passed close by to them; things such as the girl talking about her schoolwork or a crush that she had on a certain boy and other inane things like that. A laugh was thrown in every now and then for the sake of the cafe staff to throw off suspicion over the two females' true reason for being here.

And that reason was about five minutes late for their meeting. Nevertheless, the olive-skinned man they were meeting had arrived and, despite the impatience and agitation that both Rhea and Vestara could read in his Force-presence, had a broad smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Hey, honey," the man said as he leaned down to kiss Rhea on the cheek. "Ready to go?"

"Yes, we are, dear," Rhea replied with a mirroring smile. She left a few credits on the tabletop and stood up with Vestara.

Once all three of them were in the man's close-topped speeder, with him at the helm, Rhea in the passenger seat, and Vestara in the back, only then did they drop their facade and adopt stoic expressions.

"What kept you?" Rhea asked the man.

"Traffic," he replied evasively.

Both Rhea and Vestara knew he was lying; he had woken up a mere twenty minutes before after a session of overnight binge-drinking and was still nursing a massive hangover. If anything, the traffic for him had been really good this morning, and he was only impatient that his superiors wouldn't let him sleep in.

But neither Sith was willing to call the anonymous driver out on his deception. He had his uses still, so they would tolerate his lack of efficiency and prudence... for now.

If only they could work with more reliable people these days...

Twenty-five minutes later, they reached the abandoned warehouse where their scheduled meeting was to take place. Rhea and Vestara stepped out of the speeder with the man and scanned through the immediate area with the Force. After a few moments, they looked back at each other and nodded in silent agreement; the Force told them exactly what their eyes did: there was no one who had followed them.

They then followed the male driver inside, and there, across the vast empty space of the abandoned warehouse, half a dozen male aliens—an Aqualish, an orange-skinned Rodian, a black-furred Wookiee, a Gran, a yellow-skinned Zabrak, and a Barabel—waited behind a wide table. Upon that table were three loads of briefcases each stacked five high.

Once Rhea, Vestara, and their driver made it to the table, the human man joined the aliens behind it, leaving the two Sith alone on their side. Without any words exchanged between them and the men, Rhea nodded at Vestara, prompting the latter to take one of the cases in both hands and set it down to the floor at her feet.

Rhea, for her part, remained silent and vigilant as she looked among each of the men in turn.

Vestara opened up the briefcase and, after a quick moment of appraisal, announced, "Five sets of GA military concussion grenades." She then closed the case back up and set it off to one side before she returned to her full height, grabbed another briefcase off the table, placed it on the floor, opened it up, and declared, "Six BlasTech DT-12 heavy blaster pistols." Again, that case was closed and set next to the first one before Vestara repeated the process for the next container that she took.

And on and on, she repeated this process, announcing the types of weaponry that were present in each briefcase until the table was completely cleared. When she was done, she stood silently next to Rhea and stared back at the seven men.

"Everything is present and accounted for," the woman announced after a long pause. "And, as promised, I will present to you your payment, gentlemen."

Rhea pulled out a datapad from the folds of her light beige robes and simultaneously pressed both of the 'pad's sides. The device's top popped open and she poured the surprising amount of credits out onto the tabletop until the false 'pad was completely empty.

"Count it," the Aqualish said to the Zabrak.

The latter nodded before he hurriedly set to work. In quick succession, he counted through all of the highest-billed credits first before sifting through the next highest, and on and on down for the next two minutes until he was finished and declared, "And not one decicred missing, sir."

"Excellent," the Aqualish commented. He reached a hand across the table towards Rhea. "Pleasure doin' business with ya, ma'am."

Rhea was about to offer her hand before both she and Vestara stiffened in place.

They had been found.

A bare second after that realization, both the front and back doors of the warehouse were broken into, followed shortly by the breaking of what few glass windows remained. And pouring in from all of these entrances were scores of armed and armored members of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances' military police force, GAG (Galactic Alliance Guard).

As the seven male criminals on their side of the table brought their hands up in immediate surrender, they levelled accusatory glances toward the stunned Sith females across from them.

"How did this get past you?!" the Aqualish asked Rhea angrily.

Before she could answer, one of the GAG ordered, "Don't move!" just as he and all of his colleagues found their places and trained their weapons on the nine criminals whom they surrounded.

Silence dominated the warehouse for several long moments before two sets of footsteps echoed off the walls. A line of GAG parted to allow two Force-users—one male, the other female—to step through and approach the two Sith from behind them.

"Did you really think that dye job could fool me, Rhea?" the male Force-user asked.

"Jacen Solo," Rhea declared; her arms, like Vestara's, remained by her sides. "I thought that after your last few failed attempts, Master Hamner would've assigned someone else to come after me."

"Make this easy on yourself," Jacen said, ignoring Rhea's attempts at banter, "and just put your hands on your-"

As expected, Rhea erected a Force-shield around herself and Vestara and quickly extended it outward to knock down everyone around them, including the seven weapons dealers.

In response, Jacen and his Force-using charge each anchored themselves in place even as the GAG around them were thrown off their feet without any of them firing off a shot. Once Rhea's Force-wave passed, Jacen and his charge quickly unhooked their lightsabers from their belts, activated them, and hurried in toward Rhea and Vestara.

Naturally, the two Sith swiftly turned around and had their own lightsabers out and active.

And while Rhea's blade clashed with Jacen's, Vestara's blade clashed with that of Darth Judicar.

Upon the opening clashes, Rhea exerted an extra amount of Force-effort to push Jacen back before she opened up with a series of vicious strikes in a concerted effort to take him out. The Jedi, meanwhile, went on the defensive as he walked back several paces before finding his ground over a dozen meters away from where Judicar and Vestara still held their blades in place.

And just as Jacen found his ground, that was when the seven weapons dealers recovered from Rhea's Force-wave, and the human among them brought out his blaster and fired toward one of the GAG soldiers who was just getting back up.

"No, you idiot!" his Aqualish boss urged as he lunged toward him.

But it was too late; the human had fired a lethal shot that, though it went wild, prompted the other recovered GAG soldiers nearby to open fire upon all seven of the weapons dealers.

The human and tAqualish were the first to be felled by the soldiers while their remaining five compatriots quickly scattered from their places and began firing their own blasters at the GAG around them. Within moments, those last five weapons dealers, without much room to find cover, were also gunned down.

As that was all going on, Judicar and Vestara continued to stand in place with their blades locked against the other. The older Sith gave the little girl a look of disappointment that bordered on shame even as Vestara looked back up at her with sadness, betrayal, and incredulity.

And that was all highlighted by the fact that Judicar was wielding a purple-bladed lightsaber instead of a red-bladed one.

Before either of them could say a word between them, Rhea managed to disengage from her duel with Jacen by swiping his blade off to the side and flipping back several meters. Then, with her free hand, even as Jacen rushed in to close the gap between them, Rhea used the Force to swipe Vestara away from Judicar.

The girl went sailing back and up through the air so that she flew well over all of the GAG who had either gotten up from Rhea's opening Force-wave or were still recovering.

Run and hide, child! Rhea conveyed through her Force-bond with Vestara.

The Sith Tyro registered that right before she instinctively erected a Force-shield around herself that protected her from being cut up by the glass window that she had flown towards.

But once she was out in the open air, that was when she felt that Lady Rhea's life-force was extinguished.

So distracted was she by this revelation that Vestara didn't have the wherewithal to erect another Force-shield before she crashed through the window of the next building over and passed out.

. . .

While Rhea had been preoccupied in Force-flinging the child well away from the warehouse, Jacen wasted no time in taking advantage of the Sith's distraction and, within the final second before she would have fully turned her attention back upon him, Force-sped up to her and ran her through with his lightsaber; given that his target had been her heart, she was dead almost instantly.

Once he had seen that the life in her eyes was gone completely, Jacen deactivated his lightsaber, let Rhea's corpse drop to the floor, and looked around at the GAG surrounding him; by now, they had all returned to their feet from Rhea's Force-wave.

"Follow me!" he ordered. "We need to catch that Sith child before she gets away!"

Jacen then looked over at the Sith who fought for him instead of against him; her back remained to him.

"C'mon, Judicar!" he exclaimed angrily.

She looked back at him with resentment.

"I'm coming," she muttered.

She joined his side as he led the GAG soldiers out the door.

Not even fifteen minutes later, they found Vestara Khai lying unconscious in the home of a poor working class family who had been living in the apartment building next door. Immediately, Vestara, who was immediately treated for her wounds from crashing through that last window, was placed in Force-restraining stuncuffs well before she woke up; no one in the poor family offered any resistance to the half-squad of GAG troops that Jacen brought inside with him and Judicar.

When Vestara had awakened, she was restrained to her seat via fiberchord around her torso in the GAG troop transport that had been parked half a klick away from the warehouse where Rhea died. Along with the soldiers who sat side by side with them, Jacen and Judicar, seated across from Vestara, regarded her with stoic, guarded looks.

The Sith Tyro growled at Jacen. "You killed Lady Rhea!" she exclaimed. "You killed her!" She struggled vainly in her seat.

From her right, a syringe was plunged into her neck by one of the GAG troops, and Vestara started to feel woozy.

"Lord... Judicar," the little girl said sloppily. "Why... did... you... betray..." She fell unconscious before she could finish her question.

The rest of the transport's ride back to the spaceport went completely silent.

. . .

In the vast garden of Shedu Maad's Jedi Temple, Grand Master Luke Skywalker sat in silence on a stone bench with his legs folded beneath him and his eyes closed. Before him, on the sheared grass, his nine-year-old son, Ben, mirrored his posture both physically and through the Force.

It had been three months since the end of the Chiss War, and even longer than that since Luke and Ben lost Mara, their wife and mother respectively. Since then, they had come a surprisingly long way to healing the emotional scars that served as the fallout of the machinations of the deceased Sith Lady Lumiya, whom Luke had killed to defend Ben.

Unfortunately, a long way still meant that a lot of progress needed to be made. Because at this moment, Luke's stoic expression fell into a frown, prompting him to open his eyes and regard his son with a look of saddened disappointment.

"Ben," he said.

His son's eyes flashed open. "Yes, Dad?"

"I can feel your anger coming through again. Now is not the time to be discussing these things with Master Kam or Tionne. The whole point of this exercise is for you to embrace your positive feelings and memories. If you allow your darker emotions to seep through into your meditations, you will never truly heal from all of the bad things that you went through."

Ben's expressions scrunched into frustration before he stood up. "I can't help feel the way I do, Dad! It's so hard!" he exclaimed, as if a dam suddenly burst from his being.

"Ben, settle down," Luke commanded sternly. But even as he said that, he felt as if he was seeing the beginning of an inevitable chain reaction that would undo about a quarter of a year's progress.

"Don't tell me to settle down! Mom's gone, and Jaina's still alive and free! She's part of the Jedi Order again, Dad, and you're just going along with it!"

"First of all, Jaina is not part of this Order again, Ben," Luke reminded him stiffly. "She is merely serving her time with us. And second off, you really need to calm yourself. I know that what you've gone through was-"

"You don't know what I've gone through! You don't know what it's like!"

"Ben, please-"

"No! No! I'm tired of this! I'm tired of trying to stuff everything I have deep down inside! I'm tired of talking to Kam and Tionne! They can't know what happened to me anymore than you can, Dad! No one can!"

Ben turned and began running off to the distant forest.

Without hesitation, Luke reached out through the Force and anchored Ben into place before he could get ten meters away from him.

"Let me go, Dad!" Ben exclaimed. "I don't wanna do this anymore!"

"You might not think you want this, Ben," Luke intoned, "but you do. You need this. Without it, you could very well end up like Jaina!"

That stopped Ben's futile attempts at struggling in his father's grip. Once he calmed down, Luke released the Force-hold on his son, and that prompted Ben to turn back to him of his own volition.

"Now, once again," Luke said more softly, "resume your seat and we will start over."

But just as Ben took his seat again, he didn't have the chance to join his father in closing his eyes before a feminine voice called out, "Master Skywalker!"

Luke looked behind him with mild impatience as he saw the human female Jedi Knight jog toward him.

"Yes, Nelani?" Luke asked as he tried to keep the impatience out of his tone.

"Master Hamner wishes to speak to you immediately," Nelani Dinn answered once she reached his side; she was slightly out of breath. "I tried contacting you on your commlink, but-"

"I had it turned off. I wanted no interruptions while I was with my son."

"Oh, um, I'm sorry, Master Skywalker," Nelani replied in a flustered tone. "It's just that-"

"What did Master Hamner wish to speak to me about?"

"He wouldn't say, Master," Nelani replied dutifully. "He only said that it was urgent and that it couldn't wait for your session with your son to finish."

"I see," Luke said. "If you'll excuse me for a moment, Nelani."

"Of course, Master Skywalker," Nelani said before she took a step back.

Luke then stared back ahead; he regarded Ben, who now looked more curious than resentful, for a moment before he closed his eyes and reached out through the Force.

You could've contacted me this way, Kenth, Luke sent.

I'm sorry, Luke, Kenth Hamner communed. I just thought that it would be less intrusive than sending Nelani to do it.

Luke thought about it for a moment; indeed, he might have felt more resentment if Hamner had cut into his meditative trance because with a physical interruption, like the one that Nelani provided, Luke would have retained a more intimate psychic privacy. After all, it would have been bad form for Hamner to have learned about whatever Luke might or might not have been thinking when he was meditating (even though meditation usually required the doer not to think).

Alright then, Luke conceded. If you really need to see me so bad, you don't mind loaning Nelani to look after Ben?

I've already given her permission, Hamner returned.

Then I'll be at your office right away.

You mean your office. I'm just keeping it warm for you.

Luke couldn't help but smile at Hamner's remark, despite the uneasiness that he was feeling from the other Jedi Master.

Right, Luke sent. All the same, I'll be there.

He stood up and looked at Nelani. "Take care of him."

Nelani nodded. "I will, Master Skywalker."

Luke returned the nod and headed for the Jedi Temple.