Several minutes after he got out of detention, Ben had been returned to his dorm by Master Tionne personally; neither of them said anything to each other on the way there. He waited for five minutes after Tionne left him alone before he opened the door and peeked out in either side of the corridor; he made only a passive Force-scan and felt that, indeed, she was gone from this level of the Jedi Temple. So, with that, he stepped out of his dorm, closed the door behind him, and began his search for the mysterious new girl who had unspecified special needs, according to Tionne.
Although Ben didn't like to spend any time with any of his fellow students, he still knew, for the most part, whose dorm belonged to whom in the Temple. As such, he passed by several doors just on this level without having to make a Force-scan to gather that Vestara Khai wasn't in any of them.
No, Ben thought. If there was going to be a place where Tionne would put someone with "special needs" in the Temple, it would be somewhere out of the way, where there would be little to no foot traffic. Thus, a good place to look for Vestara would more than likely be within the Temple's lower levels; Ben knew that very few Knights and apprentices resided within those areas, and the rest were reserved for Jedi who were out on missions elsewhere in the galaxy.
Had Ben been an average nine-year-old boy, thoughts like these wouldn't have crossed his mind. But because of his time on the dark side-infused world of Ziost, where he had been forced to kill his Bothan hunters to survive, mere months ago, he had developed an insight that most of his peers wouldn't have developed at this stage in their lives. And that insight was what prompted him to take one of the emergency stairwells instead of any of the turbolifts; he was less likely to run into any Jedi that way.
Sure enough, after a few minutes of travelling down that stairwell, he had reached one of the lower levels. Here, to save on electricity for the more sparsely-used areas of the Temple, the lighting in this corridor had been dimmed to minimally-perceptible levels for the human eye. Nevertheless, Ben stuck to the shadows in the corners of the corridor in which he was in as he sneaked down through it; a part of him made him feel like some nocturnal predator, and it made him feel just a bit better about himself.
It also gave him a reminder of that week on Ziost that, instead of eliciting feelings of fear or anxiety, brought about a mixed feeling of thrill and even some tinge of joy. The sense of power that he got in something like this, even when all it was was just him stalking down a dimly-lit corridor, negated whatever horrible feelings he would have felt at the inadvertent reminder of Ziost.
As Ben continued this slow stalk down the corridor, he periodically initiated a Force-scan of the area ahead of him just to see if there was anyone else. Few times did he come across a Jedi in their dorm, and even then, they were either so deep into a meditative trance or otherwise preoccupied with something—whether it was a comm call, studying, or something else entirely—that they didn't feel the nine-year-old child just outside their dorms.
Three minutes into this Force-scan, though, Ben finally came across a presence that perked up in response to his own. He almost recoiled from the scan, only to feel a sense of mild curiosity coming from the other person. Gingerly, he allowed his Force-probe to stretch out again, and, sure enough, the other presence was as inviting as it was familiar; it was Vestara.
Ben quickened his pace slightly as he headed toward the girl's dorm. Upon reaching it, he gave a quick physical look at his surroundings to see if anyone had spotted him; there was no one else. So, with a renewed sense of confidence, he turned to the door and pressed the button next to it that unlocked it. With a press of another button, the door slid open, and he stepped inside before he let it shut behind him.
The room into which he entered was as sparsely-decorated as most Jedi dorms, including his own. However, what set this one apart was the only other occupant, who currently stood in the center of the living area looking right back at Ben.
"Hello," the girl, Vestara, greeted him evenly.
"Hi," he replied in the same tone.
"I remember you," she said. "You're Ben, right?"
He nodded. "I am. And your name is Vestara. Vestara Khai."
"Correct. So, Ben, why are you here?"
He pursed his lips in thought. "I don't know why. I just wanted to see you."
Vestara grinned slightly. "Sounds like you know why, then."
"Yeah," he replied awkwardly. "I guess it does."
"Any particular reason you wanted to see me, Ben?"
He paused. "I... I guess I wanted to get to know you, Vestara."
"That so?" She took a few steps forward. "What makes me so interesting that you wanted to get to know me?"
"Well... um... I guess..."
"You guess what?"
"I guess... I guess I wanted to know why Tionne is making you lie in front of the class. And why she won't allow you to play at recess."
"Oh. I see. Sounds like you're smarter than anyone else in any of our classes if you picked that up."
"Thanks," Ben said with a soft smile.
Vestara mirrored his smile. A pregnant pause ensued between the two of them, where they did nothing but just stare at each other, neither of them knowing exactly why, for several seconds before Ben said, "So, um... why did you lie? You're not... you're not from the Jensaari Defenders, are you?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm not."
"Then what are you? Really?"
She tilted her head in a way that made her smile just a bit less pleasant somehow. "Why don't you take a guess, Ben?"
His mouth dropped slightly as he probed her through the Force. A tangible sense of darkness—a mere taste of what he had experienced on Ziost—encompassed Vestara's very being, and she made no effort in trying to hide it from him.
"You're... you're a Sith," he whispered with some mild horror.
Now Vestara tilted her head to the side as she gazed directly into his eyes. "Does that scare you, Ben?"
"A little," he admitted with some trepidation.
"A little? Why not a lot?" she asked as she took a few more steps forward until she was mere inches from Ben's face. Then she began to slowly circle his stationary form as she continued with, "We Sith are mortal enemies of you Jedi. I would think you'd feel more fear than you do right now, Ben. Yet, strangely, as I sense in you now, you're not scared. In fact, I sense that a part of you is somewhat... relieved." She finally stopped directly in front of him as she asked, "Why is that, Ben?"
He gulped as he thought about the answer. Indeed, the fact that the girl before him was a member of the Sith wasn't something that made him recoil in fear gave Ben a sense of being adrift within a sea of emotions. It took his mind a few moments before he could even start to think about why he was so conflicted about what he felt right then; and when his nine-year-old mind started to get even a minor grasp of rationality over his feelings, the first thing he thought of was the sense of odd comfort he felt when he was inside that Ship that took him away from Ziost.
"Ship?" Vestara asked aloud.
That startling pronouncement prompted Ben to step back from her as his eyes widened in shocked realization.
"You were in my mind?" he asked, the horror he felt before now coming to the forefront of his conflicted feelings.
"Well, yes," Vestara replied calmly. "I was trying to help you. I was trying to make you understand why you felt the way you did. And when I sensed that you were thinking of this ship, I thought-"
"Keep outta my head, Sith!" Ben exclaimed angrily.
Vestara took two steps back as she brought both hands up defensively. "I'm sorry, Ben! I'm sorry! I-I didn't mean to-"
That was when the door to Vestara's dorm slid open, and Tionne stepped in with a mixed expression of fear and anger on her face.
"What is going on here?!" she practically shouted.
Ben whirled on her as his own anger toward Vestara was then completely replaced by the fear that he had for the Jedi Master in that moment.
"Ben!" Tionne cried out. "Why are you in this room?!"
"Master Tionne, I... I..." Ben stammered.
Before he could formulate the words to explain his reason for being in Vestara's room, Ben's wrist was grabbed by Tionne and she wordlessly hauled him out. The door slid shut, cutting Vestara off from his vision.
And it was only then as he was dragged down through the corridor, where he had previously gained the sense of being a predator, did Ben suddenly get a clarifying sense that he felt bad for lashing out at Vestara when she was only trying to help him. But now Tionne wouldn't give him the chance to apologize, and he knew then that he might not see Vestara again even in one of their classes.
"You are in serious trouble, young man!" Tionne intoned; neither her pace nor grip on Ben's wrist slackened as she spoke. "Just wait until your father and Master Hamner hear about this!"
But instead of being instilled with a sense of fear by those words, Ben couldn't help but think, Good. Let them hear about it. Let them know about how a Sith made me feel more comfortable, even for a moment, than the entire Jedi Order since I came back from Ziost.
. . .
In the privacy of his Firespray, the Family Honor, which currently remained in its dock in the Drescus spaceport where he had set it down just three days before, Mandalorian mercenary Opak Djalnis activated his holocomm and put out a simultaneous call to his clanmates across the stars. As expected, it only took a few minutes for all six of their holographic representations to appear before his ship's control console.
"Do all of you have your encryption lines running?" Opak asked all of them.
One by one, each of them reported an affirmative. When they were done, Opak commenced his own check, which took all of five seconds, before he said, "Very well. Let's begin.
"I have just been given the sum total of one hundred thousand credits by an anonymous client who wants us to pull off a very special job. And that job is to destroy Centerpoint Station, located between the worlds of Talus and Tralus in the Corellian system. A job like this would be hard enough as it is even if the Corellians were in their default state of standard security for that station. But I've heard about this visit that is being paid by the nests of this Killik Colony to that system; apparently, from what the Corellian Prime Minister has allowed to go out in the HoloNet, they and the Killiks are cooperating in a joint venture into maintaining that station's security specifically.
"So, my vode, does anyone have any suggestions as to how we can pull off this job with all this heightened security around our stated target?"
One of the Mandos raised his hand; it was Opak's 23-year-old son, Majis.
"Yes?" Opak asked.
"We can try a false flag op," Majis suggested. "Try to get one of the powers of the galaxy into attacking the Corellian system. And we could do that by, say, blowing up a ship belonging to either the Galactic Alliance or the Imperial Remnant, make it look like it was the Corellians who did it, and then that'll prompt either the GA or the Imps into attacking the system. From there, we can-"
"I'm gonna have to stop you right there, Majis," Opak interrupted. "A false flag op, especially as you suggest it, would not proceed as simply as you think it would. Think about it. Yes, the Corellians haven't been on the best of terms with the Empire or the GA back when they were the New Republic, but they would have no reason to launch any kind of attacks on either of those governments. Or any other minor government in the galaxy at the moment, ad'ika.
"And even if they did, neither of those governments would just brazenly launch an attack on the Corellian system without first going through some formal osik to make sure that it isn't from some fanatic faction that the mainline Corellian government could easily disavow. Aruetiise like Gilad Pellaeon and Cal Omas are too careful about just starting wars without first making sure that nothing's amiss."
"Then perhaps we don't have to manufacture a conflict, buir," Opak's 28-year-old daughter, Sayji, spoke up. "Maybe we can exploit one that could already be brewing in the Corellian system."
"And what might that be, ad'ika?" Opak asked.
"Well, I don't know if any of you keep up with Corellian politics," Sayji started, "but this new guy they got to replace Thrackan Sal-Solo as Corellian Head of State, Gejjen, is as pro-human and anti-alien as Sal-Solo was. Oh, he won't come out and say it, but since he took office in the three months since the Chiss War ended, pretty much nothing has changed in how he runs Corellia and Centerpoint. Selonians and Drall still aren't treated so kindly when it comes to getting jobs or integrating them with the human Corellians, and everyone who works directly for Gejjen doesn't diverge from his own species."
"I think I know where you're going with this, Sayji," Opak said. "You hope to somehow use Gejjen's likely hatred of the Killiks occupying his system to our favor?"
"Yes, buir," she replied evenly.
"Sounds all well and good on the surface," Opak said. "Only problem is, how do we contact Dur Gejjen? Not an easy man to just call up; especially not without alerting CorSec and tipping our hand."
"We could get help from Jaing Skirata," Opak's youngest son, the nineteen-year-old Moulg, suggested. "He could help us contact Gejjen directly with his comm work. If there's anyone who can get through whatever encryption lines that CorSec would've set up, it'd be that old Fett clone."
"Jaing Skirata?" Majis asked. "You think he'll cooperate with anyone outside his own clan?" He looked at his father. "Buir, you know as well as I do that the Skiratas are recluses! They'd never-"
"They're Mandos, ad'ika," Opak interrupted again. "Just like us. Even they are willing to work with others when money is involved. No doubt Jaing Skirata can work with us as soon as we offer him a slice of our hundred-thousand-credit uj cake."
"Yeah, but, buir, it's such a pain in the shebs to get in contact with-"
"Ignore the pain in your shebs, son, and get to it. Find a way to contact Skirata within the next twenty-four hours, or you're out of this clan. Is that clear?"
"Y-yes, buir," Majis stammered. "I will. I will find him."
"Then why are you still on this call? I said get to it, you miserable chakaar!"
Majis immediately signed off.
"So," Opak said, "unless anyone has any other suggestions, may I assume that we all feel comfortable with saying that this meeting has reached its natural conclusion?"
Everyone else remaining in the call gave a short affirmative answer in response.
"Then we reconvene again at this time tomorrow for when Majis has contacted Skirata." Opak then killed his end of the holocomm call.
