Author's Note: Surprise! I found a new beta reader in Colo Kid! So now this fic may continue after all!

Since the Sith attack on Shedu Maad three months before, the Maad system's defenses were fortified by a pair of Hapan Battle Dragons and six Nova-class cruisers. One Dragon acted as the foremost defensive warship while the other was the last line of defense against any potential intruders. The cruisers, meanwhile, were all sandwiched between the two larger capital vessels throughout the debris-strewn corridor that was the only to and from Shedu Maad.

With these defenses, it now seemed as if the matter would be downright impossible. But in the months since he returned to Shedu Maad, he had thought about how he could escape and rejoin the Lost Tribe—and, more importantly, Vestara Khai—even as he pretended to be taken back into the fold of the light side of the Force among the Jedi.

Had Master Tionne Solusar not been overcome by grief for her husband and the Jedi who died from the Sith's invasion, she might have been able to sense Ben's true intentions. But as it was, through Tionne's perpetual self-distraction—which was still shared among the students and few higher-ranking Jedi who lurked around the Temple—Ben was able to convince Tionne that Kam's self-sacrifice was, indeed, part of what made him become more compliant with her Jedi teachings again.

Through that deception that Ben doubted that he could have pulled off had Tionne or any of the other Jedi been much less aggrieved, he sneaked around the Temple—most often in the dead of night on some days—and took a few small things here and there from the great structure's machine shop that he smuggled back into his family dorm. For the first several weeks, Ben had been worried that he would get caught and that, eventually, Tionne or one of the other older Jedi would call him out on his thefts. But when it became clear that no one had missed what he had stolen—especially when Tionne and her fellow teachers seemed lethargic and even downright apathetic in what they taught to their students on most days—it became apparent that his escape attempt would be easier than he thought.

Of course, the part of Ben who had been very familiar with the Jedi before the Sith took him—and he thought of Jaina and Lumiya rather than the Lost Tribe—wondered about why the Jedi around him had allowed their grief to fester and build up rather than work through it as they would have at this point. And mere weeks before he decided to enact his escape attempt, Ben found himself passing by a fellow student in one of the Temple's halls—a female Rybet named Gerussa Hickla—and, for no particular reason that he could think of, grabbed Gerussa's arm to stop her in her tracks.

"Why is everyone here still so miserable, Gerussa?" he asked. "I woulda thought that Master Tionne of all people would've been able to work through this by now."

Gerussa gave a human-like shrug in response. "I dunno, Ben. Maybe it's what we've all been feeling in the Force lately."

Ben raised an inquisitive eyebrow before realization dawned on him. Yes, he thought, it hadn't just been mere grief for the Jedi who had died under the Lost Tribe's hands months ago; it had also been because of what Abeloth had been doing throughout the galaxy since she appeared. With all of the deaths that she had been doling out through her assimilation and outright killing—not to mention her indirect responsibility for the collateral damage she brought down upon so many innocent people with the Galactic Alliance bombarding cities and whole planets to glass—it had been as if she were siphoning the will of the Jedi through the Force.

And if this was what she could do to the Jedi, Ben realized, then he wondered what she could do to the Sith and Vestara.

After that brief exchange with Gerussa, Ben once again kept to himself and practically slept through most of Tionne's subsequent uninspired lectures until he finally completed the device that he had been working on for so long: something that he liked to call a lifesign-cloaker. Through what he learned from a technical manual from the same machine shop where he had stolen these parts—which he didn't think was as complicated as most other nine-year-old human children would have thought—Ben had created a machine that was small enough to conceal within either wrapped fist that, when activated, could conceal the lifeform signatures of any given organic being as if they weren't really where they were at all.

Had he been more patient, though, Ben would have waited for an opportunity to test just how well the lifesign-cloaker worked. But he knew that for him to gain that kind of knowledge, he would have needed access to at least some technology that could have read it, and he didn't want to wait. Instead, Ben had turned it on one day before he sneaked into the Jedi Temple's hangar bay where a Hapan shuttle was offloading supplies; he had swiftly Force-dashed between the parked ships in the bay to avoid adult eyes before he stopped and crouched just beneath the shuttle's lowered landing ramp.

From his vantage point, Ben could see the booted feet of the Hapan workers unloading the crates of foodstuffs and other miscellaneous supplies—he hoped none of them were to replace what he had stolen—and the legs of the one Jedi watcher, a dark-skinned male human Knight in his mid-twenties named Blaw Veck.

The hidden boy grimaced; he knew he wouldn't be fast enough to avoid Veck's watchful eyes. And for all of the apathy that had descended upon the Jedi lately, he wouldn't rely on it to use for his escape; Veck would undoubtedly stop him in his escape attempt to report Ben to Tionne, who would almost certainly punish him after she learned why.

But, of course, just as Veck had the Force, so did Ben. And with a little thought and effort, Ben exerted just the right amount of pressure upon one of the foodstuff crates and sent it toppling to one side; its contents spilled out along the deck, and as soon as Ben saw Veck's legs move away to help the workers clean up the mess, the boy swung out from beneath the ramp and Force-muted the sound of his footsteps as he ran into the shuttle. It only took him less than a minute before he found an oxygen mask from the shuttle's supply closet—he only hoped that none of the workers on the ship would notice that one of their masks was gone—before he dashed to one of the cargo spaces from which one of the crates had been taken. Then, with Force-assisted effort, he bound up to the low ceiling of the space and quickly extended his arms and legs out so that he could wedge himself there.

A few minutes later, the door to the crate-space, as Ben thought of it, closed. He allowed himself to finally drop to the deck below; again, he Force-muted his landing so that none of the workers could hear that they had a stowaway. Once Ben was seated firmly on the hard but smooth deck, he placed the oxygen mask over his face and settled in for the trip that would take him out of here.

Only once he felt the shuttle's telltale rattle into hyperspace did he know that his lifesign-cloaker had worked like a charm on the Hapan Battle Dragons and Nova cruisers; he did wonder, though, how long it would take Tionne or any of the other Jedi to find out that he was gone from them again.

. . .

Following Luke's swap of Jacen to the Sith for Vestara Khai, it was agreed by the Grand Master and Vol of the perfect place to entrap and finally kill Abeloth.

"Dagobah?" Vol had asked before the agreement had been reached. "I have never heard of it."

"Oh, you'd love it," Luke told the Grand Lord's holographic representation over the Solo Quest II's comm console. "It's a planet mired in the dark side. Admittedly, though, I wouldn't exactly call it a decent vacation resort even for Sith." In response to the questioning raised brow that Vol gave him, Luke elaborated, "It's very... marshy is the best way I'd describe it."

"It's a swamp planet," Vol said disdainfully.

Luke nodded. "But like I said, it's steeped in the dark side of the Force. And I have no doubt that Abeloth will be especially drawn to it with you and I acting as bait, like you suggested."

Vol's eyes narrowed in contemplation. A moment later, he said, "Very well. We will make way for Dagobah. Safe trip to you, Master Skywalker." He then looked over to the girl who sat in the Quest's copilot seat as Luke was now the pilot. "Tyro Khai, remember that you are a representative of the Sith and you will act as I have told you."

Vestara Khai nodded obediently. "As you command, Grand Lord Vol."

Vol returned the nod and then cut off the communication.

"I take it that when he told you to act as he commanded," Luke said as the Lost Tribe's ships moved to make a jump into hyperspace, "that you were to be cooperative with us and not sabotage anything on this ship?" He glared at Vestara as he said those last several words.

"You know as well as I do, Master Skywalker," Ves said diplomatically but defensively, "that the Grand Lord wants nothing to let this alliance between our peoples be compromised while Abeloth is still alive. Surely, your powers of perception tell you that given that you're the self-proclaimed Grand Master of the Jedi Order."

Luke regarded her suspiciously. "How do you know about that?"

"Your son told me. While he was with us, of course."

"If you mean to imply that you were somehow in contact with Ben after his aunt and uncle rescued him from your people, then I have to tell you that I know that's not true at all; communications from Shedu Maad are strictly monitored, especially after your father's invasion."

"I meant no such implication, Master Skywalker," Vestara responded in a tone that wasn't quite mocking but wasn't quite sincere either.

Luke's gaze deepened. "What else did Ben tell you?" he asked with a low growl.

Vestara smirked. "I think we can have this conversation after we've entered hyperspace, don't you?" She nodded to the viewport where several of the Sith ships flashed away into lightspeed.

Luke repressed a grimace before he wordlessly returned his attention to the viewport and began inputting coordinates for the Dagobah system.

. . .

Before the Shikkar's Edge and the other Sith ships jumped to Dagobah, Jacen was escorted by two Sabers to what was Vestara Khai's cabin aboard the ChaseMaster frigate; when he stopped at the threshold, he found it to be completely spartan and hard to believe that a child could have lived in here. A part of him wondered if he was led into an adult Sith's cabin instead and that whomever occupied this space before was the one to actually stay in her cabin while she was aboard the Solo Quest II.

But then he remembered that this child was no ordinary child; she was a Sith, and one with whom he had some passive familiarly when he and Jaina, while she was still Darth Judicar, were hunting her and her late Master, Lady Rhea.

"Yes, this is very much Tyro Khai's room," a smooth masculine voice said from behind Jacen.

The Jedi swiftly turned around and saw a Zeltron—not a Keshiri, but a distinct Zeltron—standing there. By then, Jacen's Saber escorts had already made themselves scarce, leaving him alone with the familiar humanoid before him.

"We Sith tend not to make our young like most other children in the galaxy," the Zeltron stated further. "We make sure they don't fritter away their time on pointless distractions, whether they be these vapid boy bands or holodramas or whatnot. So, indeed, this is Tyro Khai's room."

"You," Jacen said distractedly. "I remember you."

The Zeltron nodded. "Adumar, yes. I was with the Zabrak whom you and your sister dueled; you tried to blow me away and I ran. Of course, by then, I didn't have a real lightsaber; I was only meant to rely on my own Force-powers. But now..." He trailed off as he quickly unhooked a lightsaber from his belt and activated its crimson blade so that it was held vertically between himself and Jacen; the latter restrained himself from flinching. "I've been promoted to Saber."

Only after the Zeltron deactivated his blade and replaced his weapon back to his belt did Jacen remark, "I guess that explains why you abandoned your Master to die."

The humanoid grimaced. "Which one of you did it? You or your sister?"

"Would it matter if I told you?"

The Zeltron grinned bitterly. "I suppose not, no."

"Then what was the point of this conversation?" Jacen asked.

The Sith chuckled mirthlessly. "Just to remind you that I was here, Jedi."

"You've reminded me," Jacen said. "Is there anything else?"

"I do have one question, and this time, it might matter a little if you told me," the Zeltron said. "Where is your sister?"

"Wow, you ask that so blatantly, I wonder how you got promoted so quickly to the rank of Sith Saber," Jacen said dismissively. "Then again, with everyone Abeloth must've killed, I could see how desperation-"

The Zeltron growled as he lashed out with a fist to Jacen's face; the Jedi, however, caught him in a two-handed grip around the wrist even as he pivoted out of the way of the strike and pinned the Sith face-first to the wall next to the cabin. This, naturally, caught the attention of the five passing Sith in the corridor who immediately activated their lightsabers and rushed to help their Zeltron companion.

"Back off!" Jacen exclaimed as he held his captive in a choke-hold before all of the Sith, prompting them to stop instantly. A part of him thought it strange that a group of Sith would be so willing to help one of their own (even if he wasn't originally from Kesh) instead of watch from the sidelines; but when he reminded himself that the Lost Tribe was much more sentimental than the average Sith, it made sense to him.

Then, in a more calmed tone, Jacen said, "I was just reminding your friend here to play nice with me. 'Cause, remember, Abeloth is a greater threat than any of you realize, and you're gonna need all the help you can get in stopping her. So let's put aside this petty schism between us and remember to cooperate." He then shoved the Zeltron forward and out of his grasp before he concluded with, "Okay?"

After recovering from his forward stumble, the Zeltron turned and leered at Jacen maliciously; the Jedi only gave an unimpressed glower in return.

"This isn't over, Jedi," the Zeltron said as the other Sith finally deactivated their lightsabers, replaced them upon their belts, and resumed their previous courses in the corridor. "Before you die, you will know that the name Eelos Elbas will be your killer."

Jacen didn't bother to respond; he turned away, stepped into the cabin, and closed the door. Elbas stood in the hallway for a moment longer before he returned and headed back for his own cabin just as the Edge jumped into hyperspace.