Restrained in stuncuffs, Garis had been led back to the Jade Shadow's prison cell by Luke and Mara for the trip back to Denon. Tahiri, meanwhile, had fallen into an unresponsive, catatonic state from the rape that Garis brought upon her. Thus, Jacen took it upon himself to take Tahiri back to the Solo Quest and return her to Zonama Sekot with Danni and Tekli.
With the wedding reception having been ruined by the rape, all of the guests left the community center incredibly uncomfortable; and it was obvious that Jaina and Jag would have to postpone their honeymoon for at least a week in light of what had happened.
A few days later, the Jedi (with the obvious exceptions of Tahiri and Tekli, who were returned to Zonama Sekot) and their friends and family returned from the Unknown Regions to Denon. Garis was almost instantly placed in one of the Jedi Temple's cells by Mara, who offered no word or comment to the rapist. Garis, in turn, offered no word to anyone following his quick defeat at Jacen's hands.
Jacen himself, meanwhile, found himself seated in one of the guest chairs in his uncle's office. Luke sat on the other side of the desk, facing his nephew with a shared look of grimness.
"So," Luke said, "what do you think should Garis's sentence be, Master Solo? Incarceration here in the Temple, in a Galactic Alliance cell, or back on his homeworld of Nam Chorios?"
Jacen already had his answer; he had been thinking about it since Garis had been led away by stuncuffs. "If I had it my way, I think that if he were to be judged guilty, Garis should be incarcerated here in the Temple, Master Skywalker."
"Why not in a GA holding facility?" Luke inquired. "Or back on Nam Chorios?"
"Mainly because of how close this is to Jedi affairs," Jacen said. "There are two reasons why Garis shouldn't be held in a GA prison; one, while it is very easy for the authorities to have Garis's abilities repressed by an ysalamiri, I think it's safer if there were also Jedi who could properly take him on at a moment's notice should something go wrong. Two, the second reason, since Tahiri isn't a Galactic Alliance citizen (officially, anyway), Garis technically didn't commit a crime to someone like that, but he did commit a crime against a Jedi; hence, I think it would make more sense if he were held here, on a legal basis at any rate."
"Then shouldn't Garis be sent to a prison on Zonama Sekot since he committed a crime against a Sekotan citizen?" Luke asked.
"While it's possible, I think we should keep the furthest distance between Tahiri and Garis as we can at this point," Jacen argued.
"Fair enough," Luke said. "But why shouldn't Garis be sent back to Nam Chorios?"
Jacen hesitated and sighed. "Because if we do, we'll have proven Taru Durn right; that we couldn't handle Garis and that he should have never been accepted as a Jedi."
"Jacen," Luke said, "Taru Durn has already won. He has been proven right."
"Yeah," Jacen said, looking away from his uncle.
"You think, on some level, you can still help Garis?" Luke asked.
Jacen looked back at Luke. "Maybe."
"Well, we'll have to discuss this more with the other Council members," Luke said, "but personally, I think that Garis should be sent back to Nam Chorios."
"If the majority of the Council agrees with you, Master Skywalker," Jacen said, "then I won't object to Garis being sent back to his homeworld."
"Good," Luke said. "Dismissed." Jacen then stood up and left the office.
.
After Denon's sun had set over the side of the planet that the Jedi Temple was situated on, Garis received his expected dinner: a plate with a pile of mush that served as basic nutrition for him and a bottle of water that was slipped through the slot at the bottom of the door.
Mentally, Garis had to drag himself over to the bland gruel and water bottle. He picked the plate and bottle up, headed back over to his seat, and began to chew his way through the mush while occasionally having a sip of water.
By the time he had finished the gruel, he found a sheet of flimsiplast laying on the plate. He picked the sheet up and read the handwritten Basic message that said: "Keep away from the door; when it blows, we will free you."
Garis rose an eyebrow in scrutiny as he continued to stare at the flimsi for another moment. But then he set the sheet back down and patiently waited for the expected door explosion.
A few minutes later, Garis felt his Force-awareness return. He knew that there had been an ysalamiri located in some oxygenated nook that lay in between the walls of this cell and one of the cells on either side, a place that was both out of reach for Garis yet close enough for him to lose his powers.
If he had his powers back, he thought, then either the ysalamiri was taken away or outright killed. In any case, it was entirely convenient for him, as he was at least able to sense the impending door explosion before it happened. And when it did, he wasn't surprised to find two humanoid figures, both clad in all-body black uniforms to mask their identities, rush into the cell. Between them, they held a large device that looked like a miniaturized concussion missile.
The figures placed the device in the center of the cell so that the warhead-like section of the machine was facing the ceiling. The figure to Garis's left pressed a button on it the device, and then the warhead-like section, which turned out to be a real, powered-back warhead, literally rocketed up to the ceiling, blowing a wide hole.
And beyond that hole, as Garis saw once the dust cleared, were several more holes that reached to the topmost level of the Jedi Temple.
When Garis looked back to the two figures, the one on his right waved him over to step onto the pad that was left in the rocket's wake. Without questioning even his own doubts, Garis promptly joined them, and the figure to his left pressed a button in the center of the pad that led to a long rod with a wheel to surface. That figure then took hold of the wheel and pulled it upward.
Less than a second later, the pad hovered a few inches off the ground.
"Hang on," the figure to Garis's right told him. The individual had a deep, masculine voice that Garis judged to be human, and he was already grabbing onto the rod beneath the wheel that his comrade was wielding. Without hesitation, Garis followed the right figure's lead.
And just like that, the pad blasted off through the multiple holes that several Jedi were only now looking up and down through. They instantly backed away as the pad with the three people flew at breakneck speed for the exposed sky above.
Once the pad was completely cleared off the Temple, a shuttle bearing the marks of the Galactic Alliance military flew for Garis and the two figures. When the shuttle was finally close enough, it turned so that its side was facing the rapist and his rescuers, and there, the ship's boarding ramp was down.
"Go," the figure who wasn't piloting the pad told Garis.
The former Jedi apprentice then leaped for the boarding ramp and climbed up into the ship. The figure who wasn't piloting the pad followed suit, and when it was the piloting figure's turn, he simply allowed the pad to tumble back toward the Jedi Temple below. The ramp closed up as soon as the last figure was aboard.
.
Jacen and Luke, along with a few other Jedi, had arrived in Garis's abandoned cell and looked up to find the descending pad.
In an instant, Jacen felt the danger that the pad represented. So he reached a hand up and used his Aing-Tii teleportation technique to transport the bomb somewhere in the outward orbit of Denon's sun.
The subsequent explosion from the pad, which wouldn't be reported by GA media for at least half an hour, was enough to have taken out the entire Temple. Instead, it exploded harmlessly in the Denon system's outer orbit.
As that happened, Luke was on his commlink. "Master Sebatyne, I want you to take a squadron and go after that military shuttle!"
"Already on it, Mazter Skywalker," Saba hissed from the other end. "Do you want it taken intact and the occupants alive?"
"Yes," Luke said.
"Very well. Master Sebatyne out." The line clicked off from the other end.
Luke then established a new frequency as he, Jacen, and the other Jedi with them began heading back to the Temple's hangar bay; there, they would wait for Saba's squad to return with the shuttle so that Garis would be returned as a prisoner along with his rescuers.
"Chief Omas," Luke said once he and the other Jedi were in the turbolift for the hangar bay, "can you please tell me why one of the Galactic Alliance's military shuttle is ferrying off a Jedi prisoner?"
"What are you talking about, Master Skywalker?" Cal Omas's concerned voice came from the other end.
"You don't know?" Luke asked. He could sense that the Chief of State wasn't lying.
"No," Omas confirmed. "What's happening?"
Luke quickly explained the situation to him as the turbolift opened up and he and his followers headed for the hangar. "Can you talk to Admiral Kre'fey or anyone else in the military and ask them if they know anything about this?"
"I'll do just that, Master Skywalker," Omas answered.
"Good. Master Skywalker out." He clicked off the communication.
.
In the cockpit of her StealthX, Master Saba Sebatyne saw the GA shuttle speeding through Denon's airlanes ahead of her and her squad. She quickly signaled Luke's comm frequency.
"Master Skywalker, we have the shuttle in our sights. We are gaining pursuit."
"Good. Remember, knock out the engines, but make sure the hover jets are still active," Luke reminded her.
"Understood," Saba acknowledged. She heard the end of the line go off from Luke's side, and then she gave her squad the order to catch up on the shuttle.
But seconds after they gained pursuit, the shuttle unexpectedly dove beneath the airlanes and in between a block of buildings. Saba matched the fleeing ship's trajectory and headed right for the alley that it had landed in.
Slaving her ship to automatic piloting, Saba disengaged her harnesses, opened up her StealthX's canopy, and launched herself down fifty feet, using the Force to cushion her landing as she landed in a crouch on top of the shuttle. During her descent, she managed to unhook her lightsaber from her belt and activate it.
Upon landing, she plunged her glowing green blade through the roof of the shuttle, cut a sizable circular chunk out of it, and then dove feet-first inside. There, she quickly looked around and extended her senses with the Force to find out if anyone was still aboard.
When she found that there were no presences here, she soon found another cut-out hole in the center of the ship in front of her. She looked down through it to find that not only had that section had been cut, but also the ground below, which led into the sewers.
Again, Saba jumped in and immediately looked to her right, where she could see the vague shadows of four figures hurrying away.
Boric and his rescuers, Saba thought.
She headed after them, but stopped as soon as her danger sense tingled. She flipped back from the explosion that sent a section of the sewer's ceiling and the walls beside her tumbling down to create a rough but effective blockade from pursuing the escapees any further.
However, one of the chunks of debris smacked her straight in her furrowed forehead once she landed, a strike that not even her danger sense was able to warn her about in time. Saba then collapsed into unconsciousness from the blow.
.
Two hours later, Garis and his rescuers - which included the pilot who flew the escape shuttle - surfaced from the sewers in one of Denon's slum areas, far away from the Jedi Temple. The pilot himself didn't wear the all-body black uniforms that the other two rescuers wore, and Garis saw that the exposed rescuer was a red-skinned Twi'lek male, dressed in black smuggler's attire, who had similarly dark tattoos running across his head and arms. Garis noted that the tattoos depicted the bodies of different types of krayt dragons.
Garis never spoke a word to his rescuers as they walked through the sparsely-populated streets of the slums; though he didn't know who they were, he felt like they were kindred spirits for some reason, and he was grateful for them saving him from imprisonment.
His fellow escapees waved their hands at the few passerby who bothered to take notice of them, and those passerby shook their heads as if they were trying to remember something.
Force-sensitives, all of them embracing their inner darkness, Garis thought. They all felt as if they were holding onto all their hate and anger for the galaxy around them... just as Garis himself was now doing.
The foursome traversed the streets, each of them keeping their Force-presences hidden, before Garis let them lead him to what appeared to be a rundown apartment. One of the all-body-disguised figures produced a key from one of his pockets, inserted it into the apartment door's keyhole, and opened it up.
"Get in," the pilot commanded Garis.
The former apprentice didn't argue; he complied instantly.
"You will be sent for," the pilot told Garis. "Until then, keep your Force-presence hidden. I will return to let you know that the time will have come for you to join us."
"And may I ask who I'm joining?" Garis asked with more of a curious tone than a concerned one.
"That will be for the Master to tell you," the pilot said. He then shut the door without further comment.
Garis then turned away and looked around to find what was indeed an abandoned, rundown apartment.
All that was left now, he thought, was just to wait to find out who his saviors were and what they were a part of.