For almost an hour in his prison cell, Kam was jostled within the loose circle of four rowdy Sith Sabers who prodded him with their electro-pikes. Each time he was zapped, he was, naturally, engulfed in a brief but powerful bout of pain that caused him to see pure white; and he was only allowed a couple seconds or so of seeing one of those Sabers' leering faces before the white came back to be his reality again. On and on and on, this went, and these sessions had been this way for the past several days, which had been not long after his meeting with Darish Vol. Kam wondered, in between all these zaps, how long it would take for him to finally snap and turn to the dark side of the Force as these Sith wanted from him.
Indeed, that was among their insults. "Come on, Jedi poodoo, quit holding back!" "Turn to the dark side, you weakling! It's the only way to get out!" "Can you even embrace the dark side again? Do you even have the power?!" Variations of these were what Kam was able to hear day in and day out, and at first, he had been steadfast against embracing his darker emotions and tried to use only the light side to escape his captors' clutches; but they were always too fast for him and they beat him down quick before resuming their torture sessions with him.
But this time, something was different. Somewhere in the middle of these white flashes, he saw a mild tinge of red. And with each passing zap, that red grew darker and darker and darker until, eventually, a red that seemed as thick as human blood encapsulated the entirety of Kam's zap-visions.
And when it seemed that the red couldn't get any darker, he bellowed a primal scream that preceded a torrent of Force-lightning that emanated from his whole body rather than just from his hands. Instantly, each of the four Sith were blasted back to the bulkheads behind them.
Once the storm of lightning from Kam's being passed, he stood there for only a few seconds before he slumped to the deck on his side and began panting from the exertion. Once he noticed that shadows covered his body, he looked up and saw the four Sith, whose clothes were all smoking, bearing down on him with genuine anger mixed with lingering pain from his Force-attack.
"Okay," one of the Sabers said angrily, "now we'll really give you something."
Then all four of them washed him with their own bouts of Force-lightning, and the white lasted much longer in Kam's vision.
. . .
Settling in a system several hundred lightyears outside the Transitory Mists, the Millennium Falcon and its convoy of Jedi StealthX fighters convened for a meeting during which all parties communed via hologram.
In the Falcon's recreational area, Han and Leia were seated at the dejarik board. But instead of the game's miniaturized holographic monsters being displayed there, shrunken representations of the heads of each of the other Jedi in the convoy were shown; and alongside them was a broad-scale map of galactic space from outside the Transitory Mists. Indeed, this meeting was taking place after looking through multiple likely hiding spots in the galaxy—namely in the Mid and Outer Rims—and finding no trace of the Lost Tribe of the Sith or the Jedi children that they had taken.
So, for the past two hours or so in which this meeting took place, the Solo spouses and their Jedi escorts were debating about the possibilities as to where the Lost Tribe of the Sith could have taken the Jedi younglings from Shedu Maad.
"What about the Peshvit Nebula?" Zrendak Felds asked with some mild impatience. "I don't see why that's an impossibility."
"A Galactic Alliance search party had combed through that nebula well over a month ago, Jedi Felds," Leia answered diplomatically. "No ChaseMaster frigates or any other known Lost Tribe ships were found there."
"It's not even typically used by smugglers," Han piped in. He shrugged before he added, "At least, not back in my day."
"That might not mean they aren't there now," Felds countered. "After the search there died down and they suspected that the GA wouldn't waste anymore time and resources on Peshvit, I'd expect the Sith would move in on it from wherever they scattered."
"That might very well be the case," Han conceded evenly. "Of course, I'd think a bunch of ChaseMaster frigates all going in on that nebula would be noticed by someone, even if it's not by the GA."
"Not unless they moved in on the nebula at different times after the GA left it," Nelani Dinn suggested.
"Could be, could be," Han said with a nod. "And the Peshvit Nebula is well outside GA territory, in Wild Space even. Might be worth a look, after all."
"But if the main body of the Lost Tribe is there," Leia interjected, "we can't just storm them like this. We wouldn't be powerful enough; we'd have to get the GA."
"And to do that," Han added, "they'd need some recon data. I doubt Bwua'tu or anyone else is gonna be happy about goin' back to a nebula that was already searched and found not to have Sith."
Leia nodded to her husband before she looked back at the Jedi holograms. "Alright, everyone. You all stay put here. Han and I will go ahead and scout the Peshvit Nebula and see if the Sith have taken refuge there. If they are, we'll leave the nebula and comm you to relay that information directly to Admiral Bwua'tu himself. We'll even provide his direct contact information; just give me a moment." She then picked out her datapad from her belt, activated it, and brought up Bwua'tu's contact information. From there, she plugged the 'pad into one of the ports beneath the dejarik table and pressed a button on the 'pad to transmit the info to all of the StealthXs in this system.
"Do all of you have it yet?" Leia asked after a few moments.
All of the Jedi simultaneously confirmed that they had received Bwua'tu's contact information.
"Alright," Leia said. "May the Force be with you all."
"As with you, Princess Leia, Captain Solo," Felds said. The other Jedi nodded in agreement before Han ended the transmission.
Several minutes after the Falcon departed the system for the Peshvit Nebula, however, the Jedi in the waiting StealthX convoy began their own private conversation.
"Did either of the Solos feel right to any of you before they left?" Nelani asked.
"To be honest, Nelani," Felds said, "they didn't."
"Not to me either," one of the other Knights—a female Shistavenen named Ghexan Vummul—said.
And in quick succession, each of the other nine Knights voiced their agreement just as they had when Leia asked them if they had received Admiral Bwua'tu's contact information.
"Okay then," Nelani said warily. "So I'm not crazy after all. Their presences in the Force felt all wrong. Like they weren't who they said they were."
Again, the rest of them nodded in unison.
"They are, indeed, imposters," Felds said gravely.
"What should we do then?" Ghexan asked worriedly.
"We go and see if Master Skywalker can do something about it," Felds said.
"No, I don't think so," Nelani said. "Master Skywalker's presence didn't feel right to me, either, when he made his last announcement on Shedu Maad. No, wherever the Grand Master is, he's not in the Maw as the imposter said he'd be. So if we're going to do anything, we should... we should..."
An uncertainty came over Nelani right then; what was she saying? She had thought that Master Skywalker was an imposter ever so briefly on Shedu Maad, yes, but that sensation had passed her, and he felt like his usual self again.
Still, though, the uncertainty remained. But what she was certain of was that whoever the man headed to the Maw was—whether he was Master Skywalker or an imposter—he had to be confronted.
"What do you think we should do, Nelani?" Felds asked.
"I think," Nelani said with resolve, "that we should go the Maw instead."
"But what about the younglings?" Ghexan asked.
"The younglings can wait," Felds spoke up. "Something bigger is going on here, and I believe that it is in the Maw. Don't you agree, Nelani?"
Now the uncertainty was mixed in with the guilt of abandoning the younglings to whatever fate that the Sith had in store for them. After failing to save them and the ones who were slaughtered by those Sabers back on Shedu Maad, Nelani was reticent to not atone for that failure.
But even so...
"Well, Nelani?" Felds asked impatiently.
She responded with determination: "We head to the Maw."
Mere minutes after, they had oriented themselves well away from where the Falcon jumped to lightspeed and the twelve rogue Jedi entered hyperspace.
. . .
For the remainder of the trip to Sinkole Station, Luke secluded himself in his guest quarters aboard the Solo Quest II while Jacen and Jaina scarcely roamed the rest of the ship. For the most part, the twins remained in the cockpit and not much else had deviated from their usual routine, though Jaina did feel much more frightened at passing Luke's quarters every now and then. Jacen, meanwhile, placed food and water at his uncle's doorstep but didn't even see if he would open the door to get his nourishment.
Finally, though, after several days of travel, the Quest and its contingent of StealthX fighters—each piloted by one of the Jedi Knights on this mission—and two Blastboats—one with Kyp Durron and Octa Ramis, and the other with Kyle Katarn, Tresina Lobi, and K'Kruhk—made it to the system that Jacen informed them had Sinkhole Station.
"It really does look like Centerpoint," Kyp commented via comm to the rest of the convoy. "How come you never told us about this before, Jacen?"
"It wasn't particularly important when I came back from my sojourn," Jacen answered somberly. "Lotta other things were happening then." He didn't have to elaborate on the Killik Crisis and everything that happened from there as a consequence.
As Kyp fell respectfully silent, Kyle asked, "Where's Master Skywalker? Shouldn't he be here with us and let us know if it's alright to head to the station?"
Jacen was glad that this was a voice-only communication so that he didn't have to repress his cringe; he was only glad that Jaina was in her own quarters at the moment so that she wouldn't have to be faced with the awkward situation of seeing her uncle so soon after what transpired between them in the Quest's galley .
Only after he schooled his expression back to one of Jedi professionalism did Jacen say, "I can go get him."
Moments later, he knocked on his uncle's door and said, "We're here, Master Skywalker."
A long moment of silence followed before Luke's voice returned with, "Then what are you waiting for? Take us there."
"Master Katarn wants your approval," Jacen countered, "and I think the rest of the convoy does, too."
Another silent moment later, the door slid open and Luke's blank expression mirrored Jacen's own. Then the Grand Master stepped past his nephew and headed to the cockpit; Jaina wasn't there, which was alright by him. He thus sat himself in the copilot seat, opened up the convoy's channel, and stoically said, "Let's head to the station, everyone."
Five minutes later, the Quest, both Blastboats, and all six StealthXs had found a dock on Sinkhole and all of their inhabitants disembarked to enter the station proper.
For the Quest party, Luke led it, with Jacen directly behind him and a worried-looking Jaina bringing up the rear. It didn't take long after for the three of them to meet up with the other eleven Jedi in one of Sinkhole's dark and abandoned corridors.
"You said there were Mind Walkers here, Jacen," Kyp said. "Where are they?"
"They aren't here, apparently," Jacen said as he looked around with the others. "I can't feel them in the Force. Even if they were all deep in meditation, I'd have felt them by now."
"Perhaps they're all dead?" Octa suggested. "Where would their corpses be?"
"I can lead you to the meditation chamber," Jacen said.
"By all means," Luke spoke up; his tone betrayed nothing of what happened between him, Jacen, and Jaina.
Jacen said nothing in response; instead, he waved them all in one direction of where he had meditated with the Mind Walkers several years before.
When they got to the meditation chamber, they found no one there, not even corpses or remnants of clothing; it was as if the chamber had never been occupied in the first place.
"Let's see what we can find," Luke said, "of what happened to these Mind Walkers."
Several minutes of searching this section of the station—including the meditation chamber—later, it was the Solo twins who found a communication room. There, after they sat themselves at a comm station side-by-side, they found a record of a transmission that had gone out to a link of comm buoys that had littered the Maw.
"I didn't even know that the Maw had these comm buoys," Jaina spoke up; it was probably the first thing she said that had nothing to do with her fall to the dark side.
"It came about not long after the Yuuzhan Vong War ended," Jacen explained. "Apparently, some smugglers thought that what the Jedi did in making the Maw a safe place from the invaders was a good idea. And with the likes of the Hutts and other criminal enterprises falling thanks to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Maw started to look like a really good place to hide out in, even with all the black holes and gravitic anomalies."
"Let's see where this transmission went out to," Jaina said before she brought up the recording.
The recording was that of a male Gotal—whom Jacen almost immediately identified as Seek Ryontarr, one of the Mind Walkers he knew during his stay on Sinkhole—talking to a human male bartender on none other than the world of Drescus, the very same planet where the late Herush Klass had taken Darth Judicar from Jacen. Over the course of the recording, the twins learned that Ryontarr had arranged passage for himself and his fellow Mind Walkers to depart from Sinkhole to Drescus.
When the recording ended, both Jacen and Jaina nearly jumped when Luke's voice asked from the comm room's threshold, "What did you find?"
The twins regarded their stoic uncle warily before Jacen said, "I think you may want to see this, Master Skywalker."
The Grand Master stepped forward while his niece and nephew stood up and gave him a wide berth. Once he was done viewing the recording, he turned to Jacen and asked, "Now why would they want to leave this station, Jacen?"
The Knight shrugged. "I don't know, Master Skywalker."
"I think I do," Luke said darkly.
