Su'cuy! Thanks to all my fans for their continued interest in the Galactic War books! As usual, comments are welcomed and greatly appreciated. Luckily I've been on kind of a writing sprint for the past few weeks so I've gotten a ton of chapters written; now I'm just proofreading (ugh :-P) Anyway, this chapter develops a theme I'm exploring with the twins. Hope you guys like!

Note: the chapter title was inspired by the Chinese saying: "Same bed, different dreams" [In case you haven't noticed I really like to incorporate Asian concepts (such as martial arts, proverbs) into my stories] The opening quote is kind of a clarification that the Kenobi twins are not directly related to Obi-Wan, as Aedan mistakenly believes. The story behind their last name will be explored later in Syzygy.

The section in the dream where Aedan relives the memory of playing tag with his sister is previously glimpsed in the beginning of chapter 12, book 3 (The Front Line), but up until this point that little fragment was the only part in the entire series that has even alluded to the fact that the twins' back story is relevant to the fundamental plot in Galactic War.

Mando'a words:

Osik – Basically translated as "Oh, crap!" a term for excrement.

Shab – An extremely harsh curse.

Shabla – Translated as "screwed up"

Chakaar – Generic insult; basically it means "lowlife" or "scum"

Disclaimer: I did not create Star Wars or Mando'a; George Lucas gets all the credit for creating the former, Karen Traviss is credited for developing the latter. The plurality of characters, and some of the planets and species shown in Galactic War, are of my own creation.

Chapter 3

"No, Aedan and Andora are not in any way related to the famous Obi-Wan Kenobi…at least, not that I know of. Aedan only likes to say that Obi-Wan is his brother because it makes him feel important to be related to a Jedi Master. As if there is any resemblance between Obi-Wan and Aedan!" – Adriaan ell Talaan, to the members of the Varactyl Clan.

✶ the Fortitude, 0200, 407 days ABG ✶

Where am I?

"Aedan."

Shut up, GOOD, I'm trying to dream about killing GOOD females and eating their brains…oops, I forgot that girls don't have brains. Maybe I'll dream about zombie babies or the day when I fulfill my destiny becoming the ruler of my WICKED empire by enslaving hot chick robots who will seduce the population to bow before me…

"Aedan."

"You'll pay for this, ell Talaan!" Grievous, the evil cyborg General of the CIS army, yelled as Adriaan swiped off his legs with a cavalier deftness and sent the droid parts plummeting to oblivion. "Someday, you and your little brats will die miserably for this outrage!"

"We're not her brats!" Aedan said indignantly. "My name is Aedan, though my real name is WICKED WICKED TRULY WICKED AEDAN KENOBI WICKED KING OF WICKED OF WICKEDS, and you'd better not forget it!"

Grievous wasn't listening; he and Adriaan were in a staring contest, glaring at each other murderously. "I suppose you don't remember me, do you, Adriaan?" Grievous said softly.

"I do, Qymaen jai Sheelal, Hero of Kalee," she answered quietly.

Then she Force-pushed Aedan and his sister off the edge, let go of the antenna and jumped off the CIS station after them.

"W-W-W-I-I-I-C-C-C-K-K-K-E-E-E-D-D-D!"

Aedan lost his stomach as he nosedived for the ground, the wind rippling the skin on his face. It was an uncontrolled drop, his body flipping over and over through space. He had never felt so helpless, so utterly GOOD and weak and alone…but then he sensed his sister, flipping wildly somewhere in Aedan's vicinity of the infinite space. And he also sensed the stupid blond Jedi, Adriaan, who seemed bizarrely stable and fixed in one place as she followed the twins' plummet to their doom. He called out to her through the Force, asking her what to do. The jump they had made had been pure suicide; not even a Jedi could land without splattering all over the duracrete like a bag of womp rat guts.

He felt his Master's return call as she struggled to locate him in the blinding vacuity of the air. He answered with a surge of the Force, and then felt strong, long fingers digging into the bone of his ankle as his Master caught him in midair. He immediately curled over and joined his sister, clinging to the woman with all their strength. And somehow, with his head pressed against Adriaan's chest, her adrenaline-energized heart hammering hard and fast against his eardrums, Aedan knew that everything was going to be all right, that she had them…

And then he realized it – he would certainly never admit it to her, a female – he always felt safest with Adriaan at his side. If ever he needed a teammate, he would choose one of his WICKED cohorts, but that was only because his pride prevented him sometimes from following his gut instinct, which told him deep down that he could only trust Adriaan and his sister to watch his back. His almost-filial trust in the reticent Jedi was inexplicable; he honestly did not understand it, why the word "mother" always brought her tragic young face to mind. He knew she was not his real female progenitor; oh, he remembered his true mother's face quite well, actually, but Adriaan…Adriaan had done more for him, had loved him more than his biological parents had.

Hiding his face against Adriaan was an intrinsic instinct, the product of memories he had thought had faded – fallen away like his baby teeth – for they were so old, so long ago…

A sharp face, hidden by a dark cowl, through which amber eyes gleamed forth, like stars in the night. "Adriaan, they have no one left for them; you must be their mother now. Swear to me, vow that no matter what happens from this moment on, you are going to spend the rest of your life protecting and guiding them as if they were your own children."

"I promise! I'll do anything!" A young, low voice fraught with grief pierced the stillness. "Anything, just to make sure you'll be safe." He was silent, and that made her falter. "You will come back, won't you?"

"Their safety is your only concern now," he said heavily.

"No, please, you have to realize that even I have a limit, that my life without you would be like a planet without a sun –"

She was suddenly cut off by the rough, passionate, encompassing embrace of the man. The woman clung to him fiercely, her chest heaving with a great, hiccuping sob as she bit back tears inappropriate for a warrior to shed. As some great effort of will tore the couple apart, Aedan felt himself pressed into the trembling arms of the teenage girl, who already clutched his sister tight to her breast.

"Goodbye, Adriaan," the man said sadly, and then he was gone, falling into the darkness of the pit at the woman's feet, and Aedan never saw the man again, never…after that he only remembered a terrible purplish, crackling, flashing light blinding him, burning him, eating him alive, tearing mature screams from his infant body, breaking his eardrums and heart with the agonized wails of his baby twin sister…

The blue and white snakes raced over his body again as the memory rose, biting and blinding him, yanking his bones out of the sockets, burning muscle tissue and shredding nerves and shrinking his brain and sending him writhing, raving, rolling into that black cesspit…

Wwwwwwiiiiiicccccc…he tried to scream one last defiant "wicked" before he died, but the lightning had fried his voice. His hair hissed and curled and blackened in the heat; his eyes began to melt from the blinding roar of the blue fire…

"Stop!" the girl said, and then he saw a lithe figure crouching in front of him, her normally soft face hardened in a feral snarl, her perfect teeth glittering savagely, popping out from the red of her full lips. Her blue eyes had decayed into a poisonous green lit with the yellow fire of a hunter, and the veins burst from the rigid muscles in her arms and legs and back. "I vowed that my life and death is their haven and shield; if you come closer, I'll kill you."

His thoughts faded back, rewound, to the first moments of that fateful day.

"Tag, you're it!" Andora laughed, tapping him on the back.

"I'm going to get you! I am an evil rancor, and I'm going to catch you and eat you for dinner!" he yelled as he chased her around the courtyard. The breeze blew lightly through his blond hair, refreshing him and drying the sweat from the back of his neck.

Her hair fanned out behind her in a long stream – dark brown as the rich earth underneath their feet…

Then he saw his mother walking toward them…

The blue serpents zipped toward him, poison snapping from their dragon-like mouths…

"I said stay away!"

His protector's hands shot out in front of her, long fingers extended to their full length, and he screamed and buried his head in his hands as her fingertips absorbed the electricity and shot it right back at his mother, whose blue eyes and red cheeks were so often stained with starry tears, and were now sparking and snapping with a red-yellow miasma of madness…

The floor dissipated, and his gaze fell, he fell, fell down into the space the floor opened up to reveal. The space had not the comforting, warm closeness of darkness or twilight, but an essence of bare, clean, pitiless white…not just white, but the very absence of color. The light was bright to blinding point, too cruel to soothe the eye with even the smallest, softest of shadows to flatter the hard shape of the slab-like bed that stood with military-like formality and austereness in the precise center of the colorless, flat landscape.

He had always hated white. It hurt his eyes, with its overbearing purity; its arrogant, boastful chastity. Yet how easily white was stained, how weak and vulnerable it was despite its ascetic starkness. Black was a better symbol for cleanliness, he thought, for it did not stain so easily, but endured. Purity was a strong virtue, so logically it should be characterized by a strong color, not something so wan and fickle as white. White was the color of hospital rooms, white made every space look bigger than it was – and Aedan had nosocomephobia as well as a fear of big, open spaces. So white was the symbol of all that was terrifying to him, all that had the power to reduce him to a quivering, whimpering, gelatinous pulp of emotions.

So he was glad to see the inky stain spreading across the piercingly immaculate sheets of the bed, glad to see some relief of color in the unforgiving whiteness. The color was raven moisturized with a silver rain, and spread out like a dark corona from an oval sun, whose face was hideously pallid from long illness and an interminable separation from sunlight. As he watched, twin, parallel sunspots appeared on the star's surface, and then the head and shoulders rose. Pale, thin feet slid out of the whiteness and hit the equally unpigmented pavement with a dull slap, the characteristic sound of naked skin hitting stone. The woman rose from her cot and began to pace what turned out to be a very confined space, back and forth, three steps to the right, pivot, three paces backtracking. Her head was downcast, her eyes observing the floor, her neck bent wearily, as if she wished for peace but could find none in the restlessness of her heart. Her graying hair fell about her face like a mourner's veil, flowing down past her shoulders and hips till it swept across the floor like a paintbrush across an empty canvass. She was clothed in that nasty colorless hue, making her frail, thin form blend into the infinite constraint of the room. As she paced up and down her prison, his heart filled with an emotion he had never experienced, and the pure tears of pity fell unchecked from his normally cold blue eyes. A glistening teardrop fell across the picture of the hospital-prison, momentarily distorting the image, as if the drop had hit the glassy surface of a still lagoon.

The motion seemed to have made some sound that alerted the prisoner, for as the vision cleared she looked up, and Aedan suddenly found himself confronting her eyes, which were a ghostly, soulless white, devoid of any ambition, dreams, or hope. The very absence of color revealed the deficiency of any desire to live, of the woman's goals and dreams which had been utterly and finally crushed by cold reality. But even as he returned her gaze and so glimpsed the colorlessness of her very soul, a faint spark of light briefly ignited the woman's eyes, and her chalky lips cracked open, splitting the skin of her lips, which had dried up from long disuse, and releasing a flow of bright red blood as she murmured, "Aedan."

Mother.

His eyes snapped open and faced the dull grey of the dying hours before dawn. His spine tensed and straightened, and he sat bolt upright in bed, the image of those horribly empty albino eyes branded in his mind. He closed his eyes and sat cross-legged on his bunk for a moment, tuning in to the soft, even breathing of his companions to help him relax. After several minutes, his heart-rate had slowed and his muscles had mostly relaxed, but the vision remained just as bright and untarnished as it had been before.

"Oh, stop being such a GOOD," he whispered to himself. "Go back to sleep and forget all about it."

Taking his own advice, he lay back down, but for some reason, he lost command of his eyelids, which refused to close for more than a few seconds. He glowered angrily up at the bunk above him for several minutes, his arms folded across his chest and his will steeled to force himself to sleep. Suddenly, the breathing of his teammates in the room seemed to be as loud as a podrace, and he fancied he could even hear his companions' eyes rapidly flutter in their sockets as they dreamed about imploding buildings, screaming females, and all-you-can-eat Nubian buffets. At last, he could stand the obnoxious silence no longer; with an irritated grunt, he tucked his knees into his chest and kicked the bunk above him as hard as he could, churlishly jolting the occupant awake.

"Ow! What's the big deal, GOOD?" Andre's disembodied voice floated angrily from above.

"What do you think the GOOD old deal is?" Aedan demanded loudly, causing the other occupants in the room to shift uneasily in their sleep. Luckily, they were all used to Aedan's random fits in the middle of the night, so they had all learned to sleep like the dead.

"Well, if you really must WICKEDLY know, it was Nic who put that bantha-pie into your chili the last night," Andre murmured sleepily.

"I knew that, you GOOD!" Aedan snapped, filing that tasty bit of intelligence away in his brain. I'll have to rub his bunk with some Oavi oil before tomorrow night. He grinned at the thought of how his revenge would be thus sweetly accomplished; the oil was extracted from the Oavi vine, a plant which caused an awful, blistering, itchy rash to erupt across every centimeter of skin that rubbed against it. With the extract rubbed all over his bunk, Nic was sure to accumulate one WICKED rash. Aedan rubbed his hands with glee, but checked as the colorless eyes again pierced his brain. Ugh, you GOOD, stop staring at me! He glared and pummeled the bunk above him again.

"What!" Andre shouted. This time Jahn Pal tossed his pillow over his head, muffling his unintelligible, half-asleep grumbling.

"You were in the midst of a confession," Aedan prompted.

"Confession, Huttspit!" Andre retorted contemptuously. "I have nothing else to GOODLY report, so if you don't mind, I'll wish you a GOOD night!" He turned over onto his side, and a few minutes later Aedan was disappointed to hear the soft snoring of his companion as he swiftly dropped off to sleep.

"Their safety is your only concern now."

"I vowed that my life and death is their haven and shield; if you come closer, I'll kill you."

He shot upright and slid out of bed, pulling on an outer robe as he cautiously pushed the door to his room open and stepped out into the dimly lit hall. Wide-eyed and alert, he strode silently and purposefully towards his Master's quarters, which were situated just a few rooms down. She had always insisted sharing the same barracks as her inferiors; she had no desire to inhabit the officers' quarters. She had always emphasized that even though she was the designated leader and instructor, in domestic matters she was on equal footing with her subordinates. Aedan had to admire her humility, but he knew that if he was in her place, he would take full advantage of the benefits offered to those of his prestigious rank.

Another one of her policies was that her "office" hours were unlimited; she did her best to make herself available to her students and soldiers at all times, even at 0200 in the morning. Aedan had never seriously taken advantage of her inexhaustible service – of course, he had tested her patience by waking her up in the deadest hours of the night for the most utterly ludicrous reasons, such as asking if she supposed his hair was dirty blond or brown, or if Hutts truly were hermaphrodites – and though she had swiftly chased him out of her presence, she dismissed him only after she had wearily yet with forced politeness answered his pointless and inconsequential questions. But now he sought her counsel in earnest, and he sincerely hoped that she would not remember his past visits and so deny him an audience because she assumed he came only with another paltry question.

Therefore, his knock lacked the forcefulness and authority he normally exhibited, instead coming off as rather timid and hesitant. He shivered a little in the dark hall, his ears straining to catch any sound coming from the other side of the door.

"Do synonymous rationales draw us thither to solicit the counsel of our tutor, womb mate?" a low voice murmured in his ear. Aedan leaped, and whirled to confront the moonlike face of his sister, who stood close by his side.

"What the GOOD are you doing here?" he stuttered in a hoarse whisper.

"Did I not make an identical query, albeit dictated more cordially?" she answered.

Aedan was about to retort with a characteristic, WICKEDLY rude response, when the door hissed open, and new, older voice entered the conversation. "Well, these are two faces I did not expect to see this time of the night. Well, not your face, Andora," Adriaan amended, the glowlamp she held revealing her wry facial expression as she glanced at Aedan. "You are too solicitous to disturb me during the more inconvenient hours." The boy shifted uncomfortably, remembering how he had so sedulously abused her generous succor so many times before.

"Master ell Talaan," he said, calling her by her formal title and omitting all "wickeds" from his speech to insinuate his grave mood, "I come to you this time in dead earthiness."

Adriaan covered her mouth to stifle her snorting laugh, while Andora corrected dryly, "I ween you connoted 'earnest' – earthiness can be rendered as a boorish and bawdy mien."

"I apologize; I was not aware," Aedan said meekly, pushing down the hot retort that rose to his lips. His greatest pet peeve was being criticized by the self-righteous Andora, who was so virtuous she was almost sinful.

"'Apologize' – I think that's the first word longer than two syllables I've ever heard you say," Adriaan said, her hard gaze relenting. She stepped away from the door, beckoning them in. "I sensed both of your uneasiness, anyhow, so there is no need to explain. Please, come in."

"The 'Book', too?" Aedan asked, a bit unwilling to confess his dream in front of his excessively judgmental sister.

The woman paused. "That is, if you do not mind. If it is a private matter, Aedan, you will have to wait; ladies' first and all that osik, you know."

"It is of no consequence to me, as long as Aedan pledges not to reiterate what he has heard within the margins of your quarters," Andora said gravely.

Aedan, not much liking the idea of being left in that dark hall all alone, compromised. "I agree, as long as the GOOD old Book…I mean Andora makes the same promise."

His sister solemnly nodded her consent, and the two entered the room in tandem.

The Jedi sat cross-legged on the floor and motioned for the two to imitate her position. There wasn't much by way of furniture – just a round meditation seat and a mat on the floor for a bed, but Andora seemed at home in the austere surroundings, settling down without complaint on the mat, facing Adriaan with a pensive face and stiff spine. Aedan rolled his eyes at his sister's properness and threw himself on the chair, slouching in a sloppy Jedi meditation pose.

Luckily for him, Adriaan never cared for correct posture outside military formation; she only had excellent posture because her Master had drilled it into her until it had become connate to sit up straight. Using the Force, she levitated a bottle and a few stacked mugs perched on her work-desk and brought them to her hand. Twisting the cap off, she swirled the contents of the bottle so the twins could hear the bubbly fizz of the fruity, carbonated drink. "Fizzade? Or I have tea and caf in some emergency thermoses on the desk," she said invitingly.

Aedan licked his dry lips, suddenly realizing he was parched. "I'll have some WICKED…I mean fizzade," he said gratefully. She poured him a glass, then looked questioningly at his companion.

"Andora, if you refuse, I swear I'll write a report that you were given sick leave on account of a sore throat, and then leave you on board this ship while the rest of us continue the mission without your…invaluable assistance," Adriaan said, when she saw that Andora's mouth was in the stages of forming an inordinately polite version of "no, thank you".

"But I do not have an inflamed pharynx, mentor," Andora protested, shocked at her Master's proposal.

"But you will, if you do not drink something; you look dryer than the sands of Tattooine," her teacher said.

"Tea, then, prithee," Andora said stiffly, and this time the officer got up and poured the child a mug of the steaming hot beverage. Then she returned to her seat on the floor, nursing the cup of caf she had prepared for herself. Aedan, slurping away at his soda, had to resist the urge to belch, and thus spoil Adriaan's good temper. He found that his Master's unexpected warmth of reception had relaxed him, and helped calm his nerves, so he now felt completely at ease. Even Andora, clenching her teacup almost defensively, seemed a little more lax in her posture. The warm drink had toppled her defenses, unmasking her weariness as she slightly hunched over in her seat.

"Now, then," ell Talaan said, removing the caf from her lips, "who wants to talk first?"

Andora immediately stiffened; Aedan took another swig of his fizzade, trying to disguise his unease as the dream awoke refreshed in his memory. The twins looked at each other, then the boy – who always liked to be first – opened his mouth and said:

"I've been having these dreams –"

Aedan stopped, for it was not his own voice that he was hearing. He turned to glare at his sister, whose eyes had swiveled to gawk at him with an equal amount of astonishment. Never before had the same words in the same sequence uttered at the same moment had ever been known to come from their mouths, and now that it had happened they were stunned into silence. If they had been any less shocked, one of them might have observed that the mild look of surprised amusement only flashed for an instant across Adriaan's features, quickly replaced by a shadow of sadness and internal pain which darkened her countenance and lent a new gravity in the way her sharp eyes observed them. It was the heavy sigh that escaped from the very depths of her heart which brought the twins crashing back into real time.

"So, you have been having…dreams," she said slowly, in a deep, serious tone as her eyes – which had darkened to a weird teal color – flicked from one face to the other. "That is typical, for everyone has dreams."

"But these ones are so tangible," Andora said emphatically.

"And I keep dreaming about the same thing; it's always about mom," Aedan added, finishing the thought that his sibling had begun.

His sister turned to him, her eyes communicating the unspoken question, "You, too?"

So they both had dreams of their mother.

Their Master was silent, her gaze prompting them to speak. "Well, go on," she said, clasping her hands around her caf mug. "Tell me."

And they told her; Andora began, giving a detailed, factual account, so accurately portraying the dream she shared with her brother that her Master began to suspect that her memory was eidetic, and Aedan constantly interrupted her narration, adding the emotions and mental sufferings he had experienced in the vision, and little did either of them know, but the description of the dreamer's sensations struck home with Adriaan more than Andora's precise account did. When it was all told, the twins joined the Jedi's taciturnity, breathlessly anticipating her reaction.

At first she said nothing; she had shut her eyes after Aedan's first interruption – which had been only to elaborate on the grotesque expression on Adriaan's face as she had stood between them and their attacker – but the twins had both assumed that had been out of mild annoyance. However, she had remained in that state until the conclusion of their report. As they breathed in the silence, they suddenly became aware of the radiating ball of Force energy, coming directly from the Jedi sitting before them. Even Andora could not fully fathom the power and energy a Jedi could acquire through meditation, and it awed them to see their own tutor in such a state of equilibrium of raw power.

And then, suddenly, her eyes were opened, and she breathed – was it for the first time in several minutes? They could not tell. "How long have you been having these visions?" the blond asked, putting emphasis on the last word, as if to spotlight the sobriety of the situation.

So this is WICKEDLY serious, Aedan thought, for even he knew that visions were regarded with reverence and respect in the Jedi Order.

"Well, I haven't been fantasizing the terminal scene until about a few months heretofore," Andora said thoughtfully. "I've had homologous apparitions anteriorly…but less periodically, and undeniably not as graphically exigent as the ones I have been subjected to for the past several weeks."

Adriaan looked at Aedan. "Has it been the same for you?"

The youth nodded in assent. "I've dreamed of the lightning and playing tag…for as long as I can WICKEDLY remember," he said.

"Is there any variance in the dreams? Or is each vision a clone of the other?" she persisted.

"They are reasonably analogous – intermittently the scenes are out of concatenation," his sibling answered after some thought.

"Minir and Terry and Na'thin and Kien are in mine, sometimes," Aedan said.

Adriaan nodded, as if she had been expecting that. "We often dream of the past – mostly traumatic events, I'm afraid. Our dreams are also a medium in which the present and possible futures – or futures if the past had been different, et cetera – are shown to us. The Force only amplifies the potency and depth of dreams, and depending on the content of your visions, this can be a mixed blessing. Know that you are not the only ones who suffer." She paused. "You know, for the past two years I've had the same dream every night – some nights it is the only dream I have, others it precedes or follows another, or several. But I can always expect it to be there. If it is a warning, it is this: do not repeat your mistakes."

"But what does it mean? That woman, does she need my WICKED help?" Aedan asked.

The Jedi looked him right in the eye. "Aedan, I do not know; that is something you must determine on your own. Take care, for by interfering you may do more harm than good."

"And until then, I must suffer," Aedan said miserably.

"No, not entirely," the Knight said. "Think. Meditate. Divert your mind with your training and studies. Talking about it with someone certainly helps. If you are uncomfortable confiding in me, you are welcome to talk to anyone else about it." She halted.

"Master?" Andora said, her brow darkened in a puzzled frown. "I deem you to be trepidatious. Is there something concerning our dreams that explicitly agitates you?"

"Yes," Adriaan replied, then immediately checked herself, "I mean, no, there is not anything that particularly distresses me, Padawan. It only makes me remember things, and wonder…Aedan and Andora, do you know how long I have known you two?" she asked suddenly.

"No," Aedan said, baffled at Adriaan's abrupt going off on a tangent, but nonetheless interested to hear the answer. For as long as he could remember, Adriaan had always been a cardinal factor in his life. "Why, GOO – I mean Master?"

"I was the one who brought you two to the Jedi Temple," the warrior announced solemnly.

"Oh." Andora colored for a moment, taken aback at this precipitous enlightenment. "Thank you," she said, for lack of a better reply.

Aedan reacted less genially. "Huttspit!" he said. "That's a load of bantha-pies!"

"Aedan!" Andora scolded, inhaling to prepare a launch of one of her infamous tirades.

"How long?" Adriaan asked, ignoring the boy's outburst and the girl's impending sermon. "How far back do you remember me?"

"I vowed that my life and death is their haven and shield; if you come closer, I'll kill you."

"I remember…one of the first things you ever said, was to a man who held me," the Wicked King said finally.

Something in her expression changed, became more wild and urgent. She stood up suddenly, leaned forward and looked into his face. "And?" she asked breathlessly, the yellow light returning to her irises. "What did I say?"

"You said, you said that your life –" Aedan faltered.

"– That your life and death was our haven and shield," Andora finished.

The Jedi inhaled sharply, and she whirled quickly away as something glassy fell from her eye – a tear? No, for Adriaan rarely cried. Then she turned back, and with a strange calmness asked if there was anything else she could do for them. Overwhelmed at the raggedness of their Master's scarcely concealed emotions, the twins said no and thanked her, going gratefully off to their beds. They were troubled no more that night by any nightmare, but when Adriaan finally went back to bed she cried herself to sleep.

She arose at dawn after a fitful night, plagued with both the recurring dreams of her Master and memories of her old friends long dead. She rolled out of bed and shuffled off to the barracks refresher, stripping off her underclothes and throwing them in the laundry bin as she stepped into a freezing cold shower. Growling a mixture of Huttese, Bocce, Mando'a, and Mando Shag profanities through gritted teeth as the gelid fluid mercilessly cascaded in torrents down her naked back, she rubbed the shampoo and conditioner roughly into her hair and brutally scrubbed every inch of her skin with an abrasive, soap-infused cloth. Her very toes curling away from the nearly frozen water, she stood under the cruel onslaught of iciness and shivered herself into alertness. She hadn't experienced the relaxation of a nice, hot shower in years; her Master had given her a lecture on the countless benefits of a cold shower, leading her to believe that bathing in freezing water improved physical endurance, toughening her up to fierce elements. Adriaan still hadn't noticed any significant upgrading in stamina, but the proclivity had stuck with her nonetheless.

Her breath blew from her lungs like smoke, and her blue-tipped fingers withdrew into her flimsy sleeves as she curled up into a ball on the hard, cold snow and shivered uncontrollably. It is impossible, this cold…it cannot be real, she thought, crying out in pain as her feet and hands began to throb.

"Adriaan, we have to keep moving," the cloaked, palpitating figure said, leaning wearily on his hands and knees. With a grunt, she tried to force herself on her feet by pushing against the snow with her palms, but her muscles refused to obey her. She couldn't feel her hands; they were too numb. Did she even have hands anymore? She fell back, etiolated, against the snow.

"Adriaan?" Jacen asked, his sonorous voice cracking from cold and concern for his Padawan.

Her stiff, frozen lips tore open to speak, but all she could do was croak hoarsely, "Huh."

The snow was so blindingly white, so white…she closed her eyes to shut out the blizzard. She pressed her head against her knees, hardly feeling her nose being shoved into her kneecap. Her numb ears dully alerted her of the crunch, crunch, of something being dragged across the snow, but she didn't care if it was dangerous or not. She just wanted to get out of the damn cold.

And then she felt warmth; beautiful, heavenly, surreal, priceless heat, pressing her closer, closer into the core of a volcano. She went gladly into it, her breath returning as strong arms squeezed her tight and forced her lungs to expand. Then, she felt something hot and wet graze her ear, followed by a warm puff of air as her Master breathed, "You have to stay awake. Don't succumb to hypothermia. Breathe. Focus on me. Look at me, Adriaan; look into my eyes. It's going to be okay." Her eyes cracked open, and gradually converged on twin, glowing umber eyes, solid black coals alive with the earthy heat and intensity of magma.

"Focus…"

Her eyes snapped open, and she gasped painfully as a particularly freezing volley of water hit her as she inhaled. She buckled over, her cold, dripping hair slapping heavily against her face. "Shab," she groaned. The cold water was doing nothing for her this morning. She looked at the water faucet, her hand poised irresolutely over the knob marked "Hot" Hot, her brain murmured longingly. But did she dare…?

She scoffed at herself aloud. What a fool; why was she so afraid to take a hot shower, as if at any moment her Master would come charging in and demand why she was indulging in the forbidden heated bathing fluid? She was now the Master; there was no superior around to tell her what temperature her shower water should be at. Without further thought, she cranked the knob all the way to the left, sighing with pleasure as the icy liquid gradually switched to delicious, wonderful balmy water.

Oh, Force, she breathed, luxuriating in the taboo sultriness. This is just sublime.

Then she yelped as the water turned from sunny to scalding.

"SHAB!"

She leaped out of the shower and flung a towel over her throbbing shoulders, shrieking and throwing a volley of curses at the steaming liquid. She stopped, out of breath, and suddenly whirled around the empty room and scowled, fancying she heard her Master's mocking laughter. Curse you, Jacen, she fumed, shaking the droplets out of her dripping hair and combing the tangles so that it all hung in a neat, long, heavy braid down her back. To haran with you all who played a part in my past. You're all ruining my future by haunting my memories. I can't even take a shower without being plagued by your hideous, self-absorbed faces.

She rubbed her body dry, stuffing her long legs into the stretchy material of her black-and-silver jumpsuit and shrugging her arms through the sleeves, zipping up the outfit so that the material hugged the contours of her lean, Junoesque body. Melancholily, she slammed her feet into her boots and trudged out into the hallway, pulling her utility belt tight against her waist as she simultaneously tried to raise her Padawans and soldiers on the squad comm. "Assemble on the command bridge," she barked at them. "And don't you dare show up with your pajamas still on," she added as a warning to the Wicked Club. She heard a snicker coming from several of the links as she hung up. Despite herself, she grinned; it seemed as though Aedan hadn't been too badly affected by the nightmare he had had last night. If only I was as resilient as he is, she thought sadly, childhood memories surging unbidden. Frustratedly, she pushed them down, focusing her attention instead on some less distant object. Instinctively, her hands coiled around the oval-shaped yellow crystal she always kept in a secret compartment on her utility belt. Her fingers clenched it tight, feeling the warmth and bliss of the Force radiating from within its core. She pulled the crystal egg out of its hiding place, admiring its bright, faceted surface. Many wouldn't guess it, but it was actually a lightsaber crystal – a rare, indestructible type, found on only one planet in the galaxy – and it had belonged to one of the lightsabers her Master had carried. The other lightsaber of the pair he wielded had also been unique, having a black blade. Unluckily, the black crystal had been lost, so though Adriaan had replaced her Master's hilt with a generic blue crystal, and this was the primary weapon she wielded. In times of intense conflict, she brought out the lightsaber she had built, which was red.

The increasing flow of traffic in the corridor indicated that she was swiftly closing in on the command bridge, the center where all the action was directed. As she approached the doors to the bridge, the security detail saluted and stepped aside to allow her to pass, for most – if not all – of the troops on the Fortitude recognized her as General ell Talaan of Invader Regiment and Ade Verda Brigade. Shoving her unasked-for officer code cylinder back into her jumpsuit, she strode right into the midst of the whirl of activity as naval officers scurried back and forth, calling out instructions over the constant crackle of comm chatter and bleep-beeping of various robots and computer monitors. She dodged a clone crew member as he hurried past, his face buried in streams of codes issuing forth from his wrist datapad, and sidestepped in order not to disrupt the perfect formation of a clone squad as they marched away from the bridge officer, Commander Tem, who was busy relaying a series of instructions to a particularly cheeky R2 unit.

The Commander turned and acknowledged Adriaan with a curt inclination of the head as she approached. A clone of Jango Fett, Tem was one of the better naval officers Adriaan had dealt with in the course of her experience in the GAR. He was the only one who didn't overestimate the abilities of either himself or his fleet, and not only that, he didn't have that court accent that always got under Adriaan's skin. She couldn't stand people who talked in stilted, "proper", tinnie-like voices. Klamin unfortunately picked that accent up during his time at the Zylxxian court. No wonder I hate it so much; as if the Shi'Odo's nasally, sanctimonious voice wasn't peeving enough.

"Don't lie; you despised court accents even before you met Klamin. You hate court twangs because Jacen hated court twangs. You adopt more and more of your Master' eccentricities as the years go by."

"Up rather early, General," Tem observed, dragging her from her reverie. He indicated the R2 unit, which had just plugged itself into the database. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, but that no-bit tinnie is determined to give me one haran of a time getting him to do anything."

The droid whistled obnoxiously, drowning out the Commander's explanation. Tem glowered at the droid and whispered to Adriaan, "I think your Padawan shabla him; that bucket of bolts hadn't given me any trouble before your Apprentice got ahold of him."

Adriaan looked at the Commander's disapproving face in surprise. "My Padawan? Which one?" she asked, slightly put-off by Tem's galled attitude, as if he held her personally responsible for the droid's uncooperativeness.

"Who do you think?" Aedan's proud, smug voice floated from behind. Adriaan turned and looked down at the boy, whose feet were planted wide underneath him as he folded his arms across his chest and smirked at her.

"Aedan, why did you mess up this droid? Now we're going to have to scrap him," Adriaan said, with a touch of impatience. And this is the thanks I get for helping him out last night?

Aedan snorted. "Scrap him? WICKEDLY why? I didn't screw him up; I merely tightening a couple bolts I thought were loose, so I helped you guys out by improving him."

The droid whistled an indelicate retort in binary. Tem raised his eyebrows in mild shock.

"Who programmed those new words in his vocabulator?" he asked.

"Adriaan," Aedan replied without batting an eye. "She has a GOOD old Hutt mouth."

Luckily for him, the rest of the team came rushing up before the General could knock some sense into her ungrateful student. Struggling to compose her apoplectic facial features, Adriaan ducked her head and aimed a kick at the astromech, startling the hooting droid into jumping the correct charts onto the holoscreen.

Adriaan jabbed a finger at the moving red dot on the tracking reticule. "Two hours until it drops out of hyperspace," she said.

"Awesome," Kay said. "That gives us plenty of time to suit up, hook a ship and cruise on over to the RV point."

"Yeah, sure, except I'm the only one accomplishing this part of the assignment." Adriaan announced abruptly.

The twins' dream hadn't been the only troubling thing that had kept her awake almost all night; she had thought the assignment through very thoroughly, and intercepting the Mandalorians alone seemed the best option in her eyes. All her soldiers and Apprentices were extremely qualified, but they lacked a vital component necessary to complete a live capture assignment. They didn't have the resolve to play cat-and-mouse, to torture – well, torture wasn't an entirely accurate description, but Adriaan didn't know what else to call it – their prey into submitting. No, a teammate would only get in her way; after the loss of her Master, Adriaan just didn't have much heart to collaborate with team members.

"No, I'm taking this mission," Aedan argued. "I'm WICKEDLY starving for some action and excitement."

Adriaan shook her head, smiling a little at her trouble student's unwonted eagerness. Gotta love his passion for some good hard fighting. That Aedan's got his quirks, but at least he knows when to cut the clown act. Unlike someone whose name I will not mention, but I'll give you a hint: it starts with a "K" and ends in an "L-A-M-I-N" "Sorry, Aedan, but you're going to have to starve for a little bit longer; this concoction of 'excitement' is a tad too strong for someone your age."

"What makes you say that, GOOD?" he demanded. "You have a thing against males or something? You one of those GOOD sexist people or something?"

The Jedi snorted outright. "Quirks" was putting it a little too lightly, perhaps…"Um, excuse me, Master I-won't-let-girls-in-my-club-because-I-think-they're-stupid, I don't think you have any room to be making those kinds of accusations. This is an X13 assignment, which means that team members under the age of thirteen are automatically disqualified from participation."

"I've never heard that rule before," Andora, who studied the GAR field manual religiously, remarked suspiciously.

"It was ratified by the Jedi war council just last week. Too many Padawan fatalities have been pouring in lately," Adriaan said, refraining to mention that although the statistics were true – that, indeed, minors were being slaughtered left and right – the Jedi war council hadn't really adopted that rule yet; she had made it up herself only a few hours ago. But what my Padawans don't know won't kill 'em.

"Does that include us as well? Because we're only seven chronologically," Nano said before his gung-ho brothers could silence him.

"Now that you mention it, yes," the General said with a puckish smirk. As all the troopers began to audibly protest, she explained, "I plan to fly solo for this objective; I do better alone anyway. Don't worry, you guys can participate by monitoring the Mando ship while I hijack it, so you'll get a front-row seat if I end up getting blown to pieces or something."

"Don't say that, Ree," Kay berated sternly.

"Yes, don't scare the little children," Marya snickered.

"I'm not trying to scare anyone, I'm just laying out the facts," Adriaan replied evenly.

"Since we're laying out facts, I think it wise that you should take someone with you as a precautionary measure," Klamin broke in.

The Jedi sighed. "First of all, your thoughts are not facts; they are only your own bizarre opinions which are fortunately not shared by the plurality of the galactic population. Secondly, I suppose that you suggest this companion should be Kay?" she asked sarcastically, well-knowing the person he thought most suitable for the mission.

"Of course not!" Klamin said, not catching on. "Kay is still officially walking wounded, so it would be foolish to put her back on the field until she has made a full recovery. No, I naturally recommend yours truly to be at your service."

"Now, hold on just a minute," the Alpha Padawan fumed. "I am quite well by now, thank you very much, and if you are going to be walking around classifying me as 'walking wounded', then you aren't very qualified for this assignment either because I distinctly remember you complaining about feeling under the weather just yesterday."

"I do not know what you are referring to," the Shi'Odo said, affronted. "I think I am the best classified for this assignment due to my race superiority. I can handle this objective alone, but as my Master insists on accompanying me, I shall not try to dissuade her."

Everyone on the team stood up at once and began shouting and arguing, outraged at his egoistic and racist remark. It very nearly came to blows with Klamin and Kay; they were standing millimeters from each other, Kay Lee's nose practically poking a hole in the Shi'Odo's paunchy gut – she was so short she barely came up to his waist – as the two screamed insults at each other.

"I'll show you race superiority if you're going to get snotty about your ability to shapeshift –"

"Bah, how can you – a mere human who is dwarfish even by her own punitive race's standards – be in any way superior to a three-meter-tall Shi'Odo Force-sensitive shapeshifter?" Klamin scoffed. "Perhaps these 'special abilities' you humans allude to possess are your exceptional corruptibility, megalomanism, and obsession with invading and gradually destroying foreign planets like so many intergalactic parasites. You humans are a plague."

"Hey, speak for yourself, snakeskin; even your skin is incapable of being loyal – it's as shiftless as the yellow-bellied, gelatinous being it was cursed to encase," Cor guffawed.

"You tell him, WICKED!" Aedan hollered encouragingly.

"I must fulminate –" Andora began, but no one was in the mood for her sermons.

Adriaan looked around; all activity on the bridge had come to a standstill, things with the Invader team had become so obnoxious in voicing their disagreements that the crew members could no longer concentrate – or at least pretend to concentrate – on getting their work done. The crewmembers, including Commander Tem, stared stonily the heated performance raging on within the very brain of the ship. The CO – and that meant Adriaan – had to do something, and quick, before things escalated to killing point.

"Parasite!" Klamin bellowed.

"Snake!"

"Void brain!"

"Chakaar!"

"ENOUGH!"

Adriaan and Ember moved quickly, the clone grabbing the incandescent redhead while the Jedi secured the slimy Shi'Odo by the ear, jerking him roughly back off his feet in spite of the fact that she was half his height and weight. Seeing the tall, Amazon-like woman – who nonetheless dwindled to the size of a petite elf when standing next to the massive morpher – manhandle the gargantuan alien as if he were no more than a nerfsteak, everyone was cowed into a sudden, awful silence. Aware that all eyes and ears on the bridge were completely focused on her, the enraged Jedi took advantage of the platform to announce, "After that remark, Mr. Superior Race, you are lucky I'm not blasting you back to the Jedi Temple on strict embargo while we complete this assignment without you. As I have stated before, egoistic, sexist, and racist remarks of any sort are banned from my command. Is that understood?" Her peripherals registered the naval commander's grim face nod in approval, but she kept her gaze locked on the shapeshifter's shifty eyes until Klamin sullenly yielded, jerking his chin down to acknowledge that he understood. "Now, I have changed my mind about riding solo and have decided to take Kan Enik with me, as long as he thinks he can handle the pressure." She looked to him, and he grinned and fist-pumped to show his satisfaction and pleasure at being selected. At least someone's happy today. "Good; you can log into the computer database and read the mission objective while Ember briefs you. All but the gray, overweight alien are dismissed." The clones and Padawans saluted and exited quickly, while everyone else hastily turned their attention back to their respective duties. No one was eager to be near an infuriated Jedi, particularly if the Jedi was a tall blond hyper-fit big-voiced female with a name that was tricky to pronounce and fatiguing to spell.