Chapter 16

The tunnel in which Foyi and Rayf found themselves was as dark and treacherous as the rest of the labyrinthine passages they had been traversing in the bowels of Resh 9376. The terrain was uneven, the floor seeming to jut upward merely to trip the travelers, who already walked across it on uncertain footing. Side tunnels snaked off from their main passage, too small for most humanoids to enter but just the right size for the diminutive and ancient mining and astromech droids that were most likely responsible for the mines they passed through. They had to traipse through fifty meters or more of the tunnel before its meandering path diverged, which became an easier journey the farther they went, putting greater distance between themselves and the artificial gravity generators that regulated Point Nadir's proper. Foyi kicked aside a stone in her path that must have weighed nearly nine kilograms, watching it bounce and clatter across the floor, as if it were as light as the feather of a convor. Her stride did not need to be long for her steps to carry her far, and she found herself hopping and skipping across the treacherous floor more often than walking across it. One of those hops brought her to the mouth of a tunnel that peeled off from the main passage, where Rayf was already standing silently beside, staring into the darkness ahead, the lights on his helmet only illuminating the next few meters beyond the opening.

Foyi added her own lights to the illuminated space, revealing another cramped and rough-hewn passage moving onward into further darkness. She checked the readouts on her helmet's HUD, and found her oxygen tank starting to dip toward disturbing levels. The atmosphere in this portion of the comet's guts was no longer sustainable for life, as the oxygen content had grown too scarce, and the temperatures had nearly approached the absolute zero of cold vacuum. This most likely meant there were tunnels and caverns nearby that opened out into space itself. Rayf looked back at her, though she could see little past the lights shining from his helmet. "You don't suppose there's some sort of tunnel around here that curves back to the shadowport, do ya?"

Foyi shrugged, then looked back the way they had come. They had lost contact with the general comm channel used by Vri and Sura's mercenaries over an hour ago, either due to damage done to those systems, the mercenaries, or the distance and ore-filled walls of rock separating the two groups. Neither had Foyi picked up any of their surface thoughts or presences in the Force over that period of time, so it was unlikely they would encounter the surviving mercenaries again in the veritable maze of mining shafts and tunnels. Even so, retracing their steps was not an option, as there was too much of a risk that many of the mercenaries had survived, or there were still more of the vicious arachnids lying in ambush at unknown locations. Not to mention the possibility of running afoul of Zietta the Hutt's patrols that their captors had suggested randomly explored the tunnels, looking for valuables, looters, and trespassers. "The only one we know is the one from whence we came," Foyi answered. "Unless you also happen to have an extensive knowledge of this section of the comet."

Rayf snorted. "Sorry, sweetheart. I've never been in the Mines myself...supposedly, no one comes here 'cause Zietta's declared the Mines off-limits. In practice, she and her scum rarely have any real presence here, letting the threat of her decree and the legends of those Nadir spiders we found back there scare people off. You get the occasional spacer or grifter searching for Fische's Treasure down here, but we left the most comprehensive record of these tunnels back with Sura. We could end up wandering around in these tunnels for ages and never find our way back."

Foyi sighed. "Thanks for the encouragement and positivity, Rayf. I suppose we'll just have to find our own way back. We don't have the time or oxygen to waste wandering...Tama doesn't have the time either."

Rayf's hand groped behind his back, touching the oxygen compartment strapped to his back. "Of course those Ganks didn't have the common decency to provide us with extra tanks."

Foyi gestured with her disruptor rifle. "At least they provided us with weapons."

Rayf looked down at the A280 Blaster Rifle he cradled between his hands, and while she could not physically see his face through the faceshields of their helmets, she could feel his dubious signature in the Force. "I'll try to remain grateful of that fact when I'm clutching this blaster as I slowly choke to death inside this suit."

"How are your oxygen levels?"

"Not great. Yours?"

She did not need to say anything for him to be supplied an answer. He sighed, a static-laden noise through the localized comm channel they were using. "Let's get moving then. Hopefully, we can find a tunnel that might lead us back to Point Nadir."

"I don't want ours and Tama's fate to rely on blind luck as we wander through these tunnels."

"That's not what I was suggesting. You told me earlier to trust the Force, and that's what I intend to do." He gestured at the opening of the tunnel diverging from their previous passage. "And the Force is telling me to go this way."

Foyi arched her brow in suspicion. She would have submerged herself in the Force to see if her feelings and instincts coincided with his, but she could not bring herself to touch it at this moment. Not so soon after her latest balancing act upon the very lip of oblivion that was the Dark Side. "I thought you had a problem with purely trusting the Force; something about how much it annoyed you when you were told to do so by an old Jedi Master."

Rayf shrugged. "Sure, it annoyed me, frustrated me when I was just a youngling. But I'm not too proud to admit Tholme and Zao were always in the right place and right time. If the Force is truly looking out for us, maybe we'll get pure sabacc for once."

Foyi began to stride down the indicated tunnel, grumbling into her comlink, "I wouldn't hold my breath."

"You might have to in the next couple hours if we hope to survive."

They proceeded down the new tunnel Rayf assured her was advantageous to getting out of their current predicament, though Foyi was fairly certain he knew almost nothing of what he was doing. The tunnel grew wider the further they traveled, gently sloping upward. There were more craters, fissures, and pockmarks in the walls here where ores had been harvested by long dead or defunct sentients and droids, leaving nothing but gaping holes and dusty refuse in their wake. The sound of her own breathing was loud in her ears, echoing within the helmet and giving her an eerie feeling, as if she and Rayf were the only two people left in an entire galaxy of silence. She had never had problems with claustrophobia before, but she was beginning to feel the sheer size and weight of the stone enclosing her like a palpable presence weighing upon her mind. Her eyes kept flicking to the side, glancing at the oxygen readouts nervously, a niggling, darkling voice in the back of her mind whispering that this comet would be her tomb. A tomb of rock, ore, and depravity hurtling through the void.

Rayf stumbled over some detritus ahead of her, and he paused to stare down at it. Half buried in dust and sand, an ice slick keeping it fastened to the floor of the tunnel, were remnants of a mining droid. The metal parts were so corroded and worn with age and exposure to radiation that they were nearly unidentifiable; for all Foyi knew, they could have belonged to Salovan Fische's protocol droid, assuming a space pirate had any use for a droid nattering on about proper etiquette. She merely assumed the parts were once portions of a mining droid, and left her ruminations at that. She cast a glance at Rayf, who shrugged and continued on. Foyi did a short, floating hop over the debris so that she would not catch her feet and fall, then followed behind him, only to nearly run into him when she realized he had stopped again. She grunted in annoyance and looked past his shoulder to see the tunnel had opened into a small cavern, little more than a lobby for the divergence of four more tunnels, as well as almost a dozen smaller passageways made byskittering creatures or automata. There were a few gaping holes near the ceiling of the roughly-hewn cavern that looked suspiciously like mynock nests, though Foyi's subdued senses caught no presences denoting nearby creatures. Cautiously, she reached out into the Force, creating a ripple that meandered outward and into the immediate surroundings, but the only signatures in the Force she felt was Rayf's. Rayf stood with an introspective stance, looking in turn to each of the openings. There was a crackle across the comlink, and his voice came to her ear. "Well...whaddya think?"

Foyi concentrated, her eyes roving between the different openings, sinking beneath the waters of the Force. She let a small gasp out as she did so, however, for the waters of the Force were clamoring and crashing against her mind and spirit. At first, she believed she had come to a place where the Force was in turmoil, perhaps standing upon the site of some ancient Dark Side act, making it nearly impossible for her to utilize or even feel it in any meaningful way. But it only took her a moment of introspection to realize that the Force was merely reacting to her own emotional turmoil. It was only when she was truly at peace that she could focus enough to merge with the Force and bend it to her will. She momentarily remembered how the Dark Side fed off raw emotion, how it grew within her, made her powerful when she gave into her inner struggle, and she shied away from it, as well as the Force altogether. Rayf must have sensed her pain and indecisiveness, for he turned to her, illuminating her quivering form with the lights on his helmet. "Hey. You okay?"

"Stellar," came Foyi's predictable lie. "Why don't...which way do you think we should go?"

Rayf continued looking at her for a moment, then swiveled back to face the dark maws representing their menagerie of choices presented them. His arm came up to indicate the opening the farthest to the left. "I've got a good feeling about this one."

Foyi shrugged and hefted her disruptor again. "Well, as long as you've a good feeling, we might as well try it."

Rayf's voice was wry as it buzzed through the comlink. "'Do or do not. There is no try.'"

Foyi had been proceeding toward the tunnel her companion had indicated, but she paused to glance back at the human. "What's that? Some sort of Matukai wisdom?"

"Just something another Jedi Master I knew before getting kicked out of the Temple used to say to the younglings. He was of the opinion that you either do something, or don't. You succeed or fail. He had a...very black and white view of the galaxy, to say the least."

"Sounds like he was rather narrow-minded."

"And infuriating. And green." Rayf sighed, lost in his distant past, in a time period where the Jedi existed and the shadow of the Empire had yet to fall over the galaxy. "He was one of the wisest men I ever knew."

The pair fell into silence as Foyi led the way through the tunnel Rayf had selected. This tunnel was far more narrow than the previous one, the walls and ceiling jutting toward them in random fingers of stone, scraping across the heavy fabric of their suits and clanging against their oxygen cartridges when they stooped to pass the stalactites. At one point, the Twi'lek had to crawl on her hands and knees to squeeze through the narrowing confines, slipping through a hole that was little more than a slit in the rock before her. She tumbled through the other side, hitting the ground on the other side in a soft fall, stirring up a cloud of dust and ice fragments in her wake. She looked up to see that the tunnel had now widened into a small cavern, narrowing ahead again into a proper tunnel. There were more broken droids and mining equipment in this brief cave, as well as the remains of what appeared to have been a mynock. She scuttled out of the way as Rayf squeezed himself through the opening to deposit his form on the slick, icy, floor. They pushed themselves up to their feet, Rayf absentmindedly dusting himself off before looking about the cave. Foyi nervously checked her HUD again, and saw that her oxygen levels had dipped down to thirty percent. She felt an ice-cold fist of panic grasp at her heart, but she forced herself to continue breathing normally, slowly, and peacefully, in the hope that such action would help conserve her remaining oxygen. Whether it would or not had yet to be determined, as she knew almost nothing about vacsuits, considering this was the first time she had found herself in an environment requiring one.

"How's your oxygen?"came Rayf's voice in her ear, apparently sensing the origin of the rising trepidation in her Force presence.

"It's hovering at thirty percent," she replied, trying to keep a quiver from her voice. She lengthened her stride, putting more urgency into her movement and letting the low gravity carry her father and faster than she had been moving previously, down the continuing, cloying darkness of the tunnel ahead. "We need to keep moving. We're probably still kilometers away from the spaceport, and if my directions weren't completely karked up by that ride in the back of the speeder truck, then we're still moving away from Point Nadir."

"Which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, considering how many people want to wear our heads as hats back there. Though I wouldn't be too happy about leaving The Flamusfracta behind."

"Neither would I. So far, it is our only way to reach Tama...once we find out where this 'Shepherd' took her." She glanced back over her shoulder, though the helmet's nigh-complete lack of peripheral vision made it difficult to see Rayf beyond the vague silhouette of his form. "You've quite a few contacts in the underworld of the galaxy. Have you ever heard of 'the Shepherd' before?"

"I would have told you if I had," Rayf replied. "I mean, it sounds kind of familiar, but as big as the galaxy is and as much scum is in the underbelly of civilization, there's probably more than one sleemo who goes by that monicker."

Foyi sighed, her outlook grim on the future course of actions she knew they would have to take. "Then we'll just have to persuade Yuelo to fill us in on his business associate."

"Look, I know we've both taken some stun blasts and repeated blows to the head since docking with this comet, but I've still enough faculties to remember that Yuelo...doesn't like us very much."

Foyi gave an exasperated snort at his sarcasm. "As do I. But Yuelo's a Hutt, a cantina owner, fight organizer, and slaver part-time, which means he's making deals with people who want to kill him, or people he wants to kill, all the time. I'm sure we can all come to a mutually agreeable arrangement that will not result in any more unnecessary deaths."

Rayf laughed. "You really are new to the galaxy, aren't you? Thinking a Hutt can be reasonable..."

"That sounds rather prejudiced-"

"That's the truth, sweetheart. Besides, what have we to give that Yuelo would want, besides our lives ending slowly in the jaws of some rancor?"

Foyi grunted in frustration as she vaulted over a large outcropping of stone that was more akin to a cave collapse than a stalagmite. "I'm grasping at straws here, flyboy. Yuelo knows where and how to find this Shepherd and Tama; there's got to be some way to convince him to share that information with us." She paused, feeling an eddy of shame shiver through her subconscious. "Without shooting up his place again...or beating anyone to a pulp."

Rayf took a light hop forward, drawing to her side now that the tunnel had opened up enough for the pair of them to walk shoulder to shoulder. His gloved hand came up to rest on that shoulder, and she could feel a soft current of encouragement and comfort lapping at the edges of her mind. "I'm very glad to hear that, Foyi. I mean, I don't mind teaching a murglak a lesson when he really needs it, and I've no problem with giving thugs and Hutt goons a taste of my wan-shen when backed into a corner. But you are right to admit that your actions of late have been more...extreme than they probably need to be. 'Course, I'm not blaming you entirely; I'm at fault as well, considering there was a lot I could do to stop you, and didn't. I saw you back there, with Ak-vir. I could feel your anger, your rage, your hatred for that sack of bantha poodoo, but most importantly, I could feel how badly you wanted to splatter him all over the wall with that disruptor. Many would say you had the right to do so, and I'm not arguing that you didn't; but such an action would have taken you to the Dark Side. And that's a slippery slope most do not come back from. I'm not sure if we've known each other long enough for this to matter, and the chances of us suffocating in this comet are pretty good so I doubt it's much consolation, but I just wanted you to know that I'm proud of you. The galaxy is too steeped in darkness as it is; the Light Side's going to need every Force-user that still survives outside of Palpatine's black gaze."

Foyi did not know how to respond, so she said nothing at first. While it was true that she and Rayf had not known each other long, and she had initially seen him as merely a means to an end through which she might be reunited with Tama, she did find his words comforting. But this sense of pride and belonging lasted for only a moment, for the images of Lido's mangled and blaster-scarred body swam into her foremost thought, and the guilt she felt could not be contained as it engulfed her consciousness. In the decisive moment with Ak-vir, when she had had the bastard completely at her mercy, she had managed to stave off the allure of the Dark Side, but she was already tainted by it, for she had succumbed to its power and her own evil impulses. Even now, as she attempted to keep herself closed off from the Force, she could feel the grimy, oily undercurrent that bore the Dark Side's corruption, just below the surface of her subconscious. It was there, waiting for her to call upon it, to immerse herself in its power and tear apart the entire galaxy if necessary to find and reunite with her sister. She rolled her shoulder to dislodge Rayf's hand and continued to stride forward and past him. She could not bear to speak to him, much less have him touch her after he had shown such faith in her. She was not deserving of his praise, and hearing it only made her feel worse about herself and her past actions.

Rayf caught up with her in only a moment, concern in his aura, but did not make a move to touch her again. "Foyi? Something's wrong, isn't it? Was it something I said?"

Foyi shook her head, though her helmet barely moved from its sealed, rigid position. "I-I'm sorry...I'm sorry that you had to see me like this. That...you saw the things I did. I'm glad to hear that you still think highly of me, though I don't deserve it. I've done...some terrible things. Things I'm not proud of, and I've used Tama to justify the actions that go against every personal principle and code of the Zeison Sha." She felt an unbidden tear slip from the corner of her eye, and her lekku shivered uncomfortably with emotion. "I—I just want her back...so badly. She's all I have in this miserable galaxy, Rayf, and if she dies...I don't know what I would do."

She could get little sense of Rayf's presence or his emotions as he became introspective for a lengthy moment. They were just rounding another bend in the tunnel before Rayf finally spoke again. "When I first began my training to be a Jedi-"

"The training you failed at?"

"Yeah, that one. Thanks for reminding me. Anyway, one of the first lessons we were taught about the Force and our relationships to others was that we were to avoid attachment. In fact, it was one of the major tenets of the entire Jedi Order. As Jedi , we were to give up all possessions, and the most meaningful relationships we could form with other people, even our fellow Jedi, could never go beyond casual friendship. Passion, possession, commitment were all forbidden, for as Jedi, the negative consequences of entering into such relationships could be catastrophic to oneself and all they cared about. At least, that was what we were told, and I believed it wholeheartedly." He was quiet for a moment, peering back through the annals of his past, looking for how his experiences could provide his companion insight. "The Matukai, however, had a different philosophy regarding attachment. While they were similar to the Jedi on many of these stances, Matukai taught that personal relationships, and even attachments, could be sources of strength to Force-users. My master taught me that as Matukai, we were to attain a perfect balance between the physical and spiritual aspects of our existences. To be a Matukai is to walk through daily life with the Force sustaining your body just as blood and oxygen does, and to keep oneself in balance with the multiple aspects of one's physiology, spirituality, and mentality. In this respect, Matukai are ultimately expected to be self-sufficient, and yet totally reliant on the Force. But no man is a planet, and to deny oneself attachment and close relationships in a galaxy full of trillions of sentient beings is to do oneself a great disservice. This was one of the major problems the Matukai teachings took with the Jedi's stance on attachment. They found their attitude elitist, cold and aloof, but more dangerously, could lead the Jedi to become estranged from those they deemed to help in this galaxy of turmoil. The Jedi Masters used to preach that attachment ultimately led to jealousy, and that was of the Dark Side. But I can't help but wonder if the lack of attachment, of personal involvement and stake with others, wasn't one of the reason so many Jedi fell to the Dark Side over the past millennia."

Foyi sniffed, wishing she could wipe away the tear that was now drying on her cheek. "Which philosophy do you think is correct?"

She could almost feel the shrug he made when he answered. "I don't know; if I did, I think I would be wise enough to avoid getting myself into a situation like this, or the rest of the fiascoes I've barely survived over the years. I just wanted to present both of these philosophies I've learned regarding the Force and relating to others in one's life. Of course, there are probably a million different views on this subject from all kinds of Force-using traditions...most of which you can't ask these days, thanks to our good ol' buddy the Emperor." He cleared his throat, a loud burst of feedback over the comm channel. "The point I'm trying to make, Foyi, is that I can clearly see that you love your sister, and you want her to be safe, and happy, and carefree, and I believe that is a good thing, a great thing, in fact. I believe your relationship with Tama is a source of strength, probably for both of you, considering you are the only family either one of you have. However, I would suggest that you examine your own motivations for wanting to reunite with Tama. Do you feel a sense of responsibility for her since she is your younger sister and there is no one else to guide and care for her? Do you consider her to be an essential part of your life, and the two of you are better and stronger together than you are apart? Or do you want to find her because you see her as 'yours', and the thought that someone stole her from you angers you? Do you fear to face life without her because she has always been with you? Love, Foyi, is a beautiful and healthy emotion, but it can also be an ugly and jealous thing that consumes you if you let it. I am with you in this, Foyi; I want to see you and Tama reunited. I just want to make sure you want to see Tama again for all the right reasons, and I want you to prepare yourself for the possibility that we may find her too late."

Foyi mused over his words, many of them making sense, others stinging her deeply, cutting her to the core as keenly as any lightsaber would. She turned her head to the side to look at Rayf, and she could see his eyes sparkling behind his faceplate, staring intently at her. While their eyes met, she could feel his Force presence, his mind reaching out to hers, respectfully trying to get some reading of her thoughts, though she kept herself closed off from the Force. She cracked an awkward smile she did not feel. "Okay, 'Master' Rayf, when did you get so smart?"

She could hear the grin in his voice. "Always have been, Foyi. I just don't act like it 'cause it's easier to blend in with the crowd. Look, we're going to find Tama, and we'll hang Yuelo by his tail if that's what it takes to get to her, because ultimately, she is an innocent victim in all this. Just keep your mind on helping your sister, on seeing her again, and you'll be fine. The galaxy is a dark place, Foyi, but you don't have to lose yourself to the darkness, and you don't have to face that darkness alone."

Foyi turned away, feeling a true sense of calm for the first time since she had set her eyes upon Ak-vir Vri. She would not openly admit it, but the fact that she would not have to look for her sister in a galaxy she did not comprehend on her own was one of the most soothing aspects of this entire search so far. She had not known Rayf long at all, but she had received a complete sense of him in the Force near constantly since traveling with him, and she felt like she had known him for years. That she had found a kindred spirit. She cleared the emotion growing in her throat, then squeaked, "Thanks...thanks, Rayf."

"No problem, Foyi."

She faced forward, down the tunnel that was slowly undulating upward, the floor climbing up in ragged steps, as if the mining droids of ancient times had haphazardly tried to cut a set of stairs for any bipeds that may have followed them. The pair of them stumbled up those ridges and small ravines, hopping over stalagmites and meandering around collapsed sections of the tunnel. Foyi glanced at her HUD again, and saw that the ambient temperature was dropping rapidly the farther they moved up the tunnel. Meanwhile, the composition of the atmosphere in the passage was thinning as well, to the point that they would survive only a minute or so without their envirosuits. She triggered the comlink, concern leaking into her voice. "I don't think we're any closer to Point Nadir."

"No. But we're closer to a way to get around this stang maze we're lost in."

"What do you mean?"

The tunnel ahead turned a gradual corner to the right, where it bisected with several meandering passages, forming a sort of intersection. Most of the tributary tunnels branched off into darkness, some curving around corners, others sloping down into the comet, while others meandering upward. One of those tunnels ended in a gaping, cave-like opening that showed a different kind of darkness, more like a cold, silver twilight than the midnight blackness of the others. Foyi was about to point it out, but Rayf passed her and half-hopped, half-strode toward the opening, soon coming to the lips and clambering out, bumping his shins, elbows, and oxygen pack in the narrow confines. This elicited a string of curses as he did so, but then his voice rang through the comlink, breathless and excited. "Come on, Foyi! We made it!"

Foyi scrambled up the slope behind him, the floor curving up into a jagged wall where her hands and boots found purchase to lever herself up and through the opening. She slammed her knee against the side of the fissure, but the low gravity and the effort in her arms pulled her through and into a world of silvery light beyond. The walls and ceilings soared away from her as she no longer found herself within the claustrophobic mines, but rather on the outside of Resh 9376, emerging from a mineshaft at the bottom of a crater, the gray-silver walls of the the stone rising a few meters above her, creating a rough circle that framed an entire universe of stars. She gasped with a combination of wonder and horror at the starfield wheeling above her, occasionally obscured by spinning shards of ice and stone as they whizzed past in their erratic orbits. Rayf was already pushing off the floor of the crater from the lip of the cave opening, his inertia sufficient to escape Resh's substandard gravitational pull. He had angled his flight to bump into the edge of the crater above him, his hands scrabbling for purchase before he altered his flight, doing a flip with the crater's edge as his fulcrum, slamming his booted feet on the comet's surface. He turned to look down into the crater at his companion, offering a hand. "Come on up. The weather's great up here."

Foyi struggled to her feet, then shoved off just as he had. Her limbs flailed awkwardly with the sudden weightlessness, and that motion set her into a sudden uncontrolled spin that only served to propel her further up and out of the crater, on a journey that would speed her to the outer reaches of the comet's atmosphere, and possibly into the cold, endless embrace of space itself. However, she suppressed the instinct to panic, instead reaching down into the depths of the Force and expanding her consciousness. She found Rayf's spike of concern through the Force, and used it as an anchoring beacon to direct her efforts as she willed herself toward him. Suddenly, her spin began to straighten out, and she found herself in the embrace of the Force as she floated down toward the edge of the crater, finally touching upon the surface beside Rayf with a cloud of dust that began to float several meters away before settling back in the depths of the crater. Rayf reached out with a steadying arm, but withdrew it when he realized the Twi'lek did not require the aid. She glanced around to look at the uneven, jagged terrain stretching to a grimy gray horizon around them. The crater they emerged from appeared to have been blown into the peak of a stony ridge, from which point tumbled craggy slopes, ridges, and needle-like spires of rock jutting up into the void of space. The slopes falling away from them were slicked with ice, descending in a series of random, tiered ridges, sheer drops, and ice-slicked gradations that fell away into the larger expanse of the comet's mass. Thrusting up around them at random levels were jagged peaks above and below them, attempting to spear the miniscule pinpricks of light that floated through the black void. From small openings and craters pockmarking the comet's surface exuded jets of compressed gas and freezing ice shards, forming geysers of escaping atmosphere that devolved into plumes drifting through Resh's nonexistent sky. Foyi strode forward carefully, the tips of her boots meeting the lip of a ledge that dropped down hundreds of meters to lower slopes and peered down, where she could barely see the edge of the gaping maw that was the Jackrab Hole, kilometers away.

She turned to Rayf with incredulity and trepidation evident in her tone. "You're not seriously thinking of having us walk down to the Jackrab Hole and back into the Tethers."

"Why not?"

She looked to her oxygen readout again and found it hovering at about twenty-five percent. She could already feel the atmosphere in her helmet growing stale and heavy with carbon dioxide. "That's kilometers away, not to mention however long the tunnel from the Jackrab Hole to Fische's Cove is. We'll be choking on fumes long before then."

"Not if we hurry. Besides, you want to wander around the Mines until we die of carbon dioxide poisoning?" When he received no reply, he continued. "First spacewalk, right?"

"Yeah." She could already feel her body quivering with apprehension as she stared down that slope.

"You'll be fine. Think of it as a walk through the parks of Corellia, only there's a big chance you'll float away if you jump too high."

Foyi let shock ripple through her Force presence. "Is that supposed to be comforting?" But she received no answer, as Rayf leapt free of the cliff, kicking his feet back slightly so that his flight was horizontal, his head lowering more than his legs as his flight began to draw him down toward the ridges and layers below. He was flying by the miniscule gravity and tiny nudges of the Force that slowly angled him down to the surface far below, while moving his limbs to bank left, then right, as he avoided the outcroppings of rocks and the plumes of gas and ice erupting from the scattering of geysers. Foyi watched him as his body diminished in size, becoming a gray speck in a world of grays, silver, and black. She let out a heavy exhalation, then stepped off the ledge and into open space. It felt as though her stomach had dropped out through the soles of her boots as she left the familiarity of solid ground, though she felt a slight downward pull as Resh refused to completely release its gravitic hold on her. Foyi's trepidation became a brief spike of exhilaration as she realized that she was flying, like she was free of any restrictions or inhibitions, completely weightless amongst the endless stars. She dipped her body to the side, and began to drift in that direction. She leaned to the left, kicking with her legs like she was swimming underwater, and she began a slow spin in the direction she leaned, which allowed her to avoid the rocky face of a spire emerging before her. She passed within a few meters of its icy face and received a brief glimpse of striated layers of ore covered in ice, sparkling like corusca gems in the lights from her helmet. She turned her head to look ahead, then imitated Rayf's movement by dipping her head below her chest, while twisting her feet above her to arrow down toward the lowest regions of the surface below her. She could not see Rayf below and ahead of her, his form having blended in with the silently turbulent face of Resh 9376 stretching as far as she could see before her. But she could still feel his presence in the Force somewhere ahead, his life force like a star glinting upon the surface of existence she swam through. And the impression he got from him was one evoking excitement, suffusing his presence as if this were the single greatest experience of his life.

Foyi withdrew her senses from the focus upon Rayf and concentrated on drawing closer to the surface below her. She sent waves of the Force like a tide out at the rocks, could feel the pressure on her feet when they rested upon solid ground. She felt those waves splash against something solid before her, and she opened her eyes in time to see the spire of stone standing like a sentinel's forcepike. She whirled her body to the right, but instead of spinning out of control, she gathered the Force around her to slow and control her inertia. She flew within centimeters of the stone structure, but was not concerned, fully immersed within the Force and knowing with certainty she would not collide with it. She let her eyes drift closed again as she descended for several meters, and could feel the geyser of ice and gas erupting in her path several meters before she drew within range. Another languid roll altered her path of flight, and only the barest fingers of the resulting plume lashed against the outside of her vacsuit. Foyi opened her eyes again, and now the details of the ridges, craters, and crannies of the comet's surface were much sharper in her vision, rushing up to meet her. She sank deeper into the Force, using it to fashion a sort of bubble about her, a cushion that struck the fallen rocks and uneven ground and slowed her descent. She felt a brief moment of pride when she landed feet first and remained upright, though she stumbled for a mere moment as her legs required a few seconds to reacquaint themselves with the feeling of standing upon solid ground.

There was a cloud of dust and shards of ice, and Rayf was suddenly by her side, clapping her on the back with a hearty whoop assaulting her ears over the comms. "And who said Twi'leks couldn't fly? You're a natural, Foyi! I don't think I've seen better low g maneuvering since I tangled with those V-Wings over Kril'dor!"

Foyi let out a shaking breath, but ultimately, she felt fine, the Force still buzzing within her. She stood straight to see the cliff that denoted the lip of the Jackrab Hole only a kilometer or so away. She turned and looked back up the veritable mountain they had emerged from, and despite the near-limitless possibilities granted her by the Force, she still found it difficult that she had covered such a distance in so little time. She looked at her oxygen levels again, then refocused her mind on the task of returning to Point Nadir, for they had little time or oxygen left to dawdle. "We can fly when we need to. Now, we should probably get moving before all this talking and flying runs us out of air."

"Great point. While walking across the surface of a comet has always been one of my life aspirations, I can't say suffocating in a vacsuit ranks as high."

The two of them began to hurry toward the scar of darkness slashed into the comet, the enormous esophagus known as the Jackrab Hole, inviting them into its depths even as the falling percentage of their oxygen meters motivated their flight. The low gravity turned their desperate run into a series of long leaps and short periods of gliding, Foyi alternating which of her feet she pushed off from the surface. They leapt over ridges and fissures, wending their way between fields of geysers that erupted with jets of vapor spiraling out into space. More than once, both Foyi and Rayf had to call on the Force to avoid floating too far from the surface, and their enhanced senses warned them seconds before a large sheet of ice and loose stone beneath their feet swelled and broke away from the comet's mass. Foyi's feet seemed to find slabs of ice and boulders with which she could gain purchase, before pushing off from them to land on the surface again, past the sudden tear in the ground. She cast a glance back to see the shards of rock and ice spinning away into the void, just another small portion of the comet being sheared off to join the tail that trailed Resh 9376 across its interstellar voyage. Rayf was still in midair, having sailed off a slab of ice the size of a landspeeder, before turning a slow, graceful flip and landing on his feet beside her, having used the Force to draw his errant body back to the ground. He tossed her a rakish grin but continued past her in another great bound. She could feel his Force presence shining brilliantly, like another star emerging in the infinite sea of darkness, and she could only shake her head in a combination of admiration and exasperation at the fact that he was thoroughly enjoying their spacewalk. At least someone is.

Another field of treacherous ice and loose stones later, and they found themselves drifting to a stop at the very edge of the great cavern the locals of Point Nadir had named the Jackrab Hole. She had thought the hole in the side of the comet large when she had witnessed it through the Flamusfracta's viewports, but standing at the very edge, looking down into the darkness like the mouth of a great exogorth, she felt small and queasy just thinking about falling down into its depths. She knew the hole to be about five hundred meters across, but it was only now that she could appreciate the size of the expanse. She braced her palms on her knees as she bent forward, straining her eyes to see any details within the cavern and the tunnel she knew to lead into Point Nadir proper, but the darkness was too complete. Rayf landed a few moments after her, then carefully tiptoed to the edge and looked down into it with her. Her comlink crackled with his voice. "You ready? We've still got quite a ways to go..."

Foyi let out a slow, calming exhalation. "I don't see that we have much of a choice." And without further word, she stepped off the edge and began a lengthy plummet into the total darkness beyond. Her helmet lights were mere beams of dust-choked light in the blackness surrounding her, not having the power to shine far enough to illuminate a wall or stone outcropping or piece of space debris. She was floating into oblivion, knowing that she must be falling toward one of the tunnel's sides, but not receiving the sensation of actually moving. For all she knew, she could be hanging midair, trapped in the void, doomed to hang motionless until her oxygen was exhausted and she finally gained a brief modicum of motion with her frantic death throes. Despite the apprehension she felt at not knowing whether she was moving or where the contours of the tunnel were in relation to her, Foyi found herself sinking beneath the calming sea that was the Force. She felt deeper into its depths, the depths that were within her, and found the calm and relaxing center she so yearned for. She let the isolation, the sensation of weightlessness, insignificance, pure nothingness reinforce that center, flow into it, merge with it, and finally spread throughout every fiber of her being. Images of Tama being kidnapped, of Ak-vir's snarling smirk, of Lido's bruised and bloodied face swam past her conscious self, but as soon as they arose, she let them go, letting the waters of the Force carry them far and away. Each image, each memory, each emotion she had felt since Tama's kidnapping, both those she had expressed and those she had suppressed beneath her skin finally washed away, leaving just her. Just Foyi, and the Force.

Foyi gave a sigh of relief that she heard not, but felt as the molecules of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and other gases fled her lungs and those of oxygen slid back in to refresh them. Her mind was barely attached to her physical form anymore, instead reaching out to encompass the space around her, to reach out and see her environment how it truly was, in both a physical sense and a spiritual one. The contours of the tunnel began to form around her; she could not see them, but she could feel them. She could feel her body mass displacing the dark matter of the void around her, could feel the particles of ice and dust bouncing off the rough protective layers of her envirosuit. She was still moving under the influence of her inertia as well as the comet's invisible grip on her form, drawing her toward a side of the tunnel that fluctuated in random ridges and outcroppings. The carcass of an unidentifiable starship arose in her awareness, one of its mangled wings rising up like a blade, directly in her path. She pushed away from it with a gentle eddy in the Force, and she felt her body drift through the darkness. She never drew close enough to that starship to touch it, but she felt the distance grow between her and it just as certainly as she would have felt it if she had passed a living being. More wreckage emerged in her consciousness, spinning languidly through the void, not unlike her. She drew up into a fetal position and pushed with the Force, and she spun slowly beneath the shrapnel of hull plating, passing within a hairsbreadth of its razor-sharp edge but remaining unharmed.

Foyi finally sensed the sides of the tunnel rising up to meet her, and she stretched her body out, letting her limbs dangle free and loose. Gravity and her momentum carried her against the rock face, where she impacted with barely any pain of contact, bracing herself on her palms and the toes of her boots. Foyi opened her eyes to see her helmet lights creating a pair of vaguely circular splashes of silver across a floor that appeared to have been rubbed smooth, as if by hundreds of years of raging waters coursing through the comet's depths, though she doubted this was the case. She brought herself to her knees, then instinctively looked above her, her lights framing the form of Rayf, who was just settling softly in the dust a few meters behind her. He landed on his feet, then patted himself down, checking for rents or tears in his vacsuit. Finding none, he strode toward her. Above and behind them was a hole in the darkness, framing a vague circle of black sprinkled with stars, already hundreds of meters away. Rayf drew up beside her and gave her an encouraging pat on the oxygen pack strapped to her back. "Well, that was fun."

"You're enjoying this way too much."

"I'm operating on about eleven percent oxygen now. My brain might be starving."

"I hope 'brain damage' won't be your excuse for any of your antics in the future. 'Cause as excuses go, it's pretty lame, no matter how accurate."

Rayf scoffed as the two of them continued their loping, bounding walk forward, deeper into darkness only partially illuminated by the dim lights effused from their helmets, the beams sparkling as they glinted off the refractory surfaces of ice particles revolving through the black space. "Hey, gimme a break. Not all of us can have extra brains dangling off the back of our heads. I've only got the one brain I can sustain damage to..."

Foyi checked the oxygen readout on her HUD, which was dropping dangerously close to ten percent. Neither one of them should be wasting their precious time and oxygen talking and jesting, though if they could not make it to the Slips in time, it probably would not matter if they wasted their last few precious breaths in camaraderie instead of suffocating gasps. "You know, for someone who has been in tutelage to illustrious Jedi Masters and Matukai Adepts, you are woefully ignorant."

"It's probably the brain damage."

Foyi cut her laughter short as they continued their trek through the long, winding dark. Her movements felt as though she had become detached from her body, her mind still surfing the cool waters of the Force. She was barely using the lights on her helmet, hardly relied on her eyes at all, for she could still feel the contours of the tunnel, hundreds of meters around her on all sides, as well as the rocky protrusions, terrain hazards, and wreckage from starships that rose in her way, or spun languidly upon their own inertia, sometimes coming close enough to her that she had to readjust her own inertial flights and leaps to avoid them. And she could feel Rayf, keeping easy pace with her, his breathing shallow and controlled as it whispered through the comm channel they shared, calling upon the Force and his Matukai training to keep his oxygen intake even and conservative. They said little more to each other as they crested ridges, maneuvered around debris and wreckage, and utilized the low gravitational pull of Resh 9376 to their advantage to propel them hundreds of meters in a single bound, so as to cover the winding and twisting length of the Jackrab Hole in as little time as possible.

Foyi had not realized she had settled into such a comfortable rhythm of sightless forward momentum, letting the currents of the Force be her guide, pulling her forward like the insatiable grasp of an undertow, until Rayf snapped her out of it with words over the comlink, words she did not discern. She opened her eyes, though it did little for her sight, for the interior of her helmet's viewscreen had mostly fogged over due to the predominance of carbon dioxide suffusing the interior of her suit. Her HUD told her she had about five percent oxygen left...no, make that four, but she risked speaking anyway. "What was that?"

Rayf ignored her, for he was speaking with someone else, having connected his comlink to another channel and an unknown receiver. "No, I ain't jerkin' your choobies, man. My cousin and I took a wrong turn out the Slips, and now we're stuck down at the bottom of Fische's Cove, right beneath your green butt. So why don't you do what you say you do, and send a taxi down to get us?"

Foyi craned her neck up as far as the hermetic seals on her helmet would allow her, and through the scuffed, marked, and fogged glass of the helmet, she could see intermittent rows of flashing lights far above her, some stationary, and others moving, describing the contours of docking umbilicals, cargo conveyor belts, hangars protruding from walls, and flying vessels, some small as skiffs, others large as freighters and heavy transports. She blinked again, hardly believing they had already emerged from the grandiose length and winding turns of the Jackrab Hole; if she remembered correctly what Rayf had told her regarding the geometry of Point Nadir, they were now in the cavernous opening known as Fische's Cove, standing on its rough floor of stone and ice, probably somewhere below the haphazard docking facilities known as the Tethers. She gave a short exhalation of breath as her readout dropped to three percent, and she had to admit, she was becoming lightheaded and unsteady on her feet. Almost unconsciously, she called upon the Force, asking it to still her breathing to fill her lungs with oxygen, to keep her awake and alive for just a little longer.

Foyi heard the crackle of an alien voice on the comm channel, its buzzing, burbling words sounding suspiciously like Rodese, though she was only familiar with the language in her ability to identify it. Rayf waited for the response, then replied in an exasperated and irritated tone, "Of course we'll pay. Just get down here; we're right by the entrance to the Jackrab Hole. A human and a Twi'lek in vacsuits...you can't miss us." He waited as whoever he was speaking with gave another babbling retort, and he sighed again. "Absolutely we're cousins. Didn't I say that already? Don't be a nerfherder; just get down here."

There was a click on the comlink, and Rayf gave another sigh, born more of exasperation than desperation or difficulty breathing. Foyi drew in a shuddering breath and whispered, "Who...who was that?"

"Just a guy that runs one of the many taxi services from the Tethers to the Souk. I've had to hitch a few rides with him on some of my previous visits, before my connections with Epsis got me preferential docking in the Slips and I stopped having to deal with all this sithspit, though I doubt he remembers. He was the first guy I thought of, 'cause he's reliable and rather cheap. He'll be along in a few moments and then we can get back to the Slips."

Rayf's confidence in the mysterious shuttle pilot turned out to be well-placed, though his arrival was right down to the wire, as Foyi's oxygen readout claimed she had but a little more than one percent of oxygen left in her tank. She could not hear the approach of the boxy, inelegant, and puttering hoverbus that descended from on high to save them from the fate of oxygen starvation, but she saw its lights as they drew closer, the enclosed speeder wheeling downward in a spiral to hover almost a meter off the dusty, icy floor before them. The hoverbus looked to have been meant for atmospheric use originally, but had gone extensive retrofits to include a small airlock where its door had once existed, so that it could be hooked to the airlocks of spaceworthy vessels and the myriad umbilicals and gantries of the Tethers without exposing the interior to the hard vacuum of space. Rayf proceeded through that oblong and protruding airlock without hesitation, and Foyi followed, her pulse quickening as the airlock cycled behind them and finally let them into the interior of the craft. The hoverbus' rows of torn, grimy seats stretched back before them, none of them occupied save for the pilot's chair, in which sat a Rodian man of indeterminate age, dressed in his own vacsuit, should the vessel suddenly be exposed to the void of space, his multifaceted eyes scrutinizing them as they came aboard. Rayf easily removed his helmet and gave a small sigh of contentment upon filling his lungs with the fetid, heavily-recycled air of the vessel, but Foyi's desperation to be out of her suit and her inexperience with such devices made her clumsy, proving difficult for her to remove her helmet, so Rayf reached over and popped the seals free. Foyi pulled the uncomfortable helmet free of her head and the seals about her neck and heaved a desperate gasp, while twitching her lekku intermittently as she tried to work out the itchy pressure on her appendages imposed by the confines of the helmet. She felt tired, the events of the day and the stress she had suppressed finally starting to catch up to her, and she gratefully dropped into one of the seats near the front of the craft. The Rodian gave her a skeptical glare, then jabbered something at Rayf, who dropped into the seat next to Foyi with a chuckle born of remaining alive. He gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "Yeah, yeah, I'll pay you when you take us to the Slips. Can't exactly pull my credit chip when I'm still in this vacsuit, now can I?"

That seemed to satisfy their Rodian pilot, who opened the throttle on the hoverbus and angled the vessel upward, ascending back into the upper reaches of Fische's Cove, curving in a great midair arc toward the rows of lights outlining the well-kept hangars of the Slips. Rayf nudged Foyi's shoulder with his fist, a boyish grin on his face. "Told ya we'd make it, cousin."

Foyi was too tired to validate his smugness with a response, so she merely shook her head and smiled, enjoying the simple act of breathing again.