"Good morning, class," Tionne said with a bright smile.

"Good morning, Master Tionne," nearly all of the thirty children in the small room said in unison.

The only ones who didn't say anything were Ben and the new dark-haired girl who sat in the desk two rows to his right.

"Now, before we get started," the Jedi Master said, "I would like to let you all know that we have a new student in the class. Vestara, if you would please come up and introduce yourself."

The new girl did nothing for nearly two seconds before she silently stood up and walked to the front of the room so that she could stand next to Tionne and stare back at the rest of the students.

Along the way, though, she spared a brief glance at Ben; she didn't make eye contact with anyone else.

"Hello," the girl next to Tionne said with a flat affect. "My name is Vestara Khai. I was a part of the-"

As obvious as the abruptness of the girl's cutoff statement was, Ben also noticed the slight twinge on Tionne's face right around the same time Vestara stopped speaking in that moment. Had he had his Force-senses more attuned, he would have also noticed a note of Force-contact between the girl and Tionne; as it was, though, he was only left confused.

"I was a part of a different group of Force-users," Vestara said in a friendlier tone, "before I came here. I was an apprentice of the Jensaari Defenders."

"Whoa, wizard!" an orange-skinned female Rodian student named Yesla exclaimed. "Can you tell us all about 'em?!"

"I'm afraid we won't have time enough for that today, Yesla," Tionne interjected smoothly.

Yesla and several other students audibly groaned in disappointment; Ben simply regarded Vestara with some mild suspicion.

"Is there anything else about yourself that you'd like to tell the class, Vestara?" Tionne asked.

"No, Master Tionne, there isn't," Vestara replied with the same friendly tone.

"Well, then, you may take your seat," Tionne replied.

Once Vestara complied, she and Ben traded another expressionless glance before Tionne announced, "Alright, class, now for our first lesson..."

. . .

Jacen and Judicar walked through the crowded streets of Sedju, one of Drescus' several backwater, rundown cities, and the rumored site of Herush Klass' last-known location. To not draw attention to herself, Judicar, by her brother's permission, allowed her face to appear as smooth and normal as his was.

Ten minutes had passed in their walk from the spaceport where the Solo Quest II had been docked before the siblings walked into a cantina that somehow made any one of the cantinas on Tatooine look like five-star bars in comparison. The whole place was a mess, with multiple alcohol stains and blood peppering the floor, tables, and chairs, and multiple broken windows surrounded the siblings and their fellow cantina patrons, all of whom lounged lazily and drunkenly with their pints from where they were.

Jacen and Judicar walked right up to the counter; the male Ithorian on the other side regarded them disdainfully and asked through his translation vocoder, "What do you want?"

"Couple pints of the cheapest thing you got," Jacen said sternly.

"Comin' right up," the bartender replied before he turned to get a bottle.

"What are we doin' here?" Judicar whispered to her brother.

"We picked up a tail a few minutes ago," Jacen whispered back. "Figured a cantina would be more natural than if we were to hide in an alleyway or something like that. I estimate they might be here in another couple minutes or so. Then again, if they were following us and saw that we entered this cantina, I suspect they'll give us a few extra minutes to inebriate ourselves before they'll wanna take us. You sense anything?"

"I was just following your lead," Judicar replied. "I didn't think I needed to-"

"No, I mean now," Jacen interrupted. "Do you sense anything now?"

Judicar straightened in her seat and her face set itself into a concentrated expression as she reached out through the Force. A moment later, she dropped out of her Force-scan of the immediate area around the cantina and said, "I sense at least three presences headed our way, two of whom are obviously cloaking themselves. Or trying to, anyway. I don't think they know I sensed 'em."

"I doubt they did," Jacen said. "They'd feel alarmed, which I can sense through their cloaking attempts that they aren't. It's not much of a substitute compared to making yourself small through the Force. And what about the third, what are you gettin' from him?"

She looked at Jacen. "It's Klass. And, no, he doesn't have the Force, so he's not a Sith."

"But he might be in league with 'em," Jacen reasoned. "We know the Lost Tribe's allied themselves with non-Force-users. Klass could be one of 'em."

"You wonder why that could be?" Judicar asked.

Jacen shook his head. "We'll see. That is, if we can take him alive."

Judicar nodded. "Would be interesting to see why he's posing as a Sith Saber."

"Yeah, that it would," Jacen replied stiffly.

"Sorry for the wait," the bartender said just as he came back to the counter with an unmarked bottle. "Took me a while to find the cheapest stuff, as you said." He then reached under the counter and produced two glass mugs that he set before the siblings.

"It's fine, just pour," Jacen said.

The bartender complied without comment.

"Thanks," Jacen said. He picked up his mug and started downing the flat booze from it.

"Drinking on the job, eh?" Judicar commented disdainfully. "I'm sure Hamner would love to hear that."

"Even if he believed you if you told him," Jacen said once he downed half the mug, "you forget, I can detoxify poisons from my system. One of the things I learned by the end of the Yuuzhan Vong War. You saw it, after all."

"That I did," Judicar agreed evenly. "Too bad you didn't teach me that."

"It's bad enough what I did teach you," Jacen said sternly. "Now drink your stale booze; we gotta look natural before your boy-toy and his friends show up. I'll help purge it from your system before they arrive."

"Yes, sir," Judicar said resentfully before she brought the mug up to her lips. Once she had three-quarters of her ale down, she said, "You know, if we're leading a tail here, don't you think it's a bit irresponsible to endanger all these people in case something goes down?"

"You're gonna lecture me about the irresponsibility of endangering others?" Jacen retorted after he took another sip.

"Is the self-righteous Jedi evading a question about morality?" Judicar countered with a mirrored tone.

"I'm not evading," Jacen replied. "I just refuse to engage in any meaningful dialogue with you until I sense that you feel something genuine about what you've done."

"So because I'm still a Sith, you refuse to answer a perfectly logical question?"

Jacen looked at her with thinned lips for several tense seconds. Then he sighed in defeat. "Alright, look, if something does go down, and these people are in danger, I'll do what I can to save them."

"Of course you will." Judicar shrugged nonchalantly. "Then again, you'd do more if we just waited in some alley or something like that."

"Like I said," Jacen enunciated, "I didn't want to draw suspicion from either our tail or whoever else might be watching."

"So you're saying that this is the best of a bad situation?" Judicar asked.

"That's what we Jedi try to do. And it's something you obviously forgot."

Judicar gave an unpleasant smile. "Oh, no, I didn't forget, dear brother."

"Could've fooled me," Jacen replied bitterly.

"Well, I'm sorry I gave you that impression," Judicar responded sarcastically.

Jacen sighed in frustration.

"Something on your mind there?" Judicar inquired.

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"You sure about that?"

"Quite."

"Okay then," Judicar replied with a flighty air in her tone. "Whatever you say. Whatever you say is just alright, dear brother."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jacen asked pointedly.

"Oh, nothing, nothing," Judicar replied, still with that flighty air.

Jacen recognized then that he was being baited into an argument about Jedi ethics and the hypocrisy surrounding them; her penultimate sentence was obviously meant as a jab at his perceived moral certitude. So instead of following along, he said, "Good." Then he turned back and took another sip of his drink.

He could sense the annoyance radiating from his Sith sister, who, evidently, really wanted that argument, if only to vent the frustration from her system. Jacen couldn't help but feel slightly glad that he thwarted her attempt to get under his skin.

Then, just as Jacen was in the middle of a sip, Judicar asked, "So how are Tenel Ka and Allana doing these days?"

Jacen nearly choked on the alcohol, prompting him to regurgitate it back into his mug. He set it back down and eyed Judicar hatefully; she looked back at him coyly.

"What?" she asked knowingly. "Can't a sister know about her brother's wife and daughter? Oh, wait, you and Tenel Ka aren't married, right? Hapan royal customs and all that poodoo forbidding the two of you from really getting together."

"I asked you not to bring that up and you-"

"No, no, you threatened me not to bring it up," Judicar interrupted. "That's not asking."

"Is that supposed to make me feel bad?" Jacen said. "You have no right to-"

That was when Jacen's danger-sense spiked, and he immediately turned in his seat to project a Force-shield around himself and Judicar just as blaster bolts were suddenly fired in their direction.

Stupid! Jacen thought to himself. He let himself get dragged into pointless emotionally-laden bickering with Judicar when he should have been on the alert for their coming tail, and now all three of his and sister's stalkers were shooting their blasters at them.

After several seconds of allowing the bolts to be absorbed into his own shield, Jacen used his natural hand to shove Judicar out of her seat and onto the floor even as the bartender and the patrons all around them scrambled for cover.

"Go, hide!" Jacen exclaimed as he struggled to maintain his invisible defense.

"I'm not that drunk, you idiot!" Judicar exclaimed before she pushed herself back up to her feet.

With a quick flourish, she unhooked and activated her lightsaber from her belt. Then, in one Force-assisted leap, she covered the distance toward the three shooters.

But just before her feet could touch the floor, the leftmost and rightmost shooters—one light-skinned, the other dark-skinned—dropped their blasters and brandished red-bladed lightsabers to block Judicar's purple blade simultaneously. Almost immediately, she began engaging both Sith with fast, quick movements meant to make sure that they couldn't circle her.

The centermost shooter—the one that Jacen thought was Jagged Fel for some reason—immediately ceased firing on the Jedi just as Judicar's duel with the two Sith began. Then he turned and hurried out of the cantina.

Now that there were no blaster bolts being fired in his direction, Jacen leaped across the cantina, brandishing his own lightsaber in the process, and struck at the dark-skinned Sith. The latter quickly disengaged from Judicar and deflected Jacen's strike so that they could both engage in their own duel.

Thus, once Judicar was left in her own duel with the Sith before her, she almost immediately increased the viciousness and intensity of both her defensive and offensive strikes. And within a matter of seconds, she began delivering more offensive strikes that her foe was growing desperate to deflect as he also started to backpedal away from her.

Jacen, meanwhile, stood his ground with purely defensive strikes. As the seconds passed, though, he allowed his posture to slacken slightly without taking away from the effectiveness of his defenses. For an added touch, he even allowed a bored expression to fall over his face; he even conveyed that same sense of boredom through the Force to his opponent.

Naturally, the Sith's teeth gritted in anger and frustration, and Jacen didn't need the Force to know that he was getting to his opponent psychologically. He was a younger man, and coupled with his Sith upbringing, it was readily apparent that Jacen's foe was getting aggravated, which should make him more aggressive but sloppier, and soon...

About a little over half a minute into the duel with his Sith, Jacen parried away an overextended thrust and, at the backswing, decapitated his opponent.

And that was at exactly the same time when Judicar had defeated her own opponent with a similar maneuver and with the exact same swing at the exact same area of his body.

But where Jacen stood calmly and with controlled breathing, Judicar slouched tiredly and with ragged breaths.

"My Sith was older and a bit more experienced," Judicar rationalized as she nodded at her opponent's decapitated corpse. "Much more difficult to take out."

Jacen shook his head disapprovingly. "You know, you don't always have to-"

He was cut off again as his danger-sense spiked yet again. Quickly, he turned back to the doorway and saw the Jagged Fel lookalike reenter the cantina, but with a different-looking blaster; one that had some fine black material wrapped around his weapon-wielding hand.

And when he pulled the trigger, in lieu of a bolt of lethal light arcing out, an invisible wave fell over Jacen, and he almost immediately stumbled back from an attack that neither his Force-powers nor lightsaber could deflect.

A few seconds later, he closed his eyes as a disorienting wave overcame his vision and he collapsed to his knees.

The next thing he felt was a boot up along his jaw, and he blacked out.

. . .

At around the same time that Jacen and Judicar had their confrontation with Herush Klass and his two Sith associates, the same Gotal from Sinkhole Station had met up with a contact in a different cantina in a different rundown city on Drescus.

This contact was seated behind a scuffed, alcohol-stained table, and wore red-colored armor signifying that he was honoring at least one parent as a Mandalorian.

"You're Opak, I assume?" the Gotal asked as he sat down across from the Mando.

"I am," the mercenary replied. "You got a job for me?"

The Gotal nodded. "But not just for you. I was hoping if you could get some others."

"How many others?"

"However many it would take to infiltrate and destroy Centerpoint Station."

"Sounds expensive. Got the money?"

Again, the Gotal nodded. "Would you like it all up front now?"

"Oh, you're that straightforward, huh? Fine. I can deal with that. It'll cost you at least a hundred thousand credits."

The Gotal produced a datapad from within his robes and tapped away at it for several seconds before he presented it to the Mando. In response, the latter produced his own 'pad and they hooked their devices up. A moment later, they detached the machines and, after he put his own 'pad back into his belt, the Mando stood up and said, "Pleasure doing business with ya."

"So you won't ask how I got all that money?" the Gotal asked after the merc took two steps away from him. "As you can tell by my modest dress, I'm not very wealthy."

"Why should I ask?" the Mando retorted before he resumed his walk out of the bar.

The Gotal grinned. No, why should he? If there was one character trait that he, Seek Ryontarr, liked about Mandalorians, it was how many of them just did their jobs without asking too many questions. So Seek appreciated that the Mando didn't care to know that, with a very extensive mind-probe into a particularly weak-minded media mogul who lived in one of the better cities of Drescus, he was able to get 150,000 credits to pay for a Mando job on Centerpoint just three days earlier.

Seek also very much appreciated that this merc, Opak, didn't know what he would help unleash upon this galaxy if he pulled that job.