Even with the Ebon Hawk's air scrubbers on at full, the engine room stank. It was always the same thing with starship repairs: a damp, molten-metal stench that seeped into your clothes and skin and wouldn't come out for at least two standard weeks. Crawling backwards out of the hyperdrive service duct, Atton stood up with a groan and peeled the welding goggles from his face.

"Okay, it's in," he said to the Remote. "Make sure it's one hundred percent, then get ready to start diagnostics."

The floating ball buzzed affirmatively and disappeared inside. Dropping his tools on a nearby cart, Atton shuffled from the engine room, just missing Ecksee as it hovered noisily from the cargo hold, its spider-leg arms nearly taut with the weight of components it was carrying.

Fleeing the stench of the engine room, Atton went to the cockpit, powered on the station next to comms, and pulled up the map he'd brought with him when he "got back." Matched with the jump records from the Hawk's navicomputer—records which were nearly impossible to fake—it formed the only piece of hard evidence available to the Republic that a resurgent Sith Empire existed.

The map centered around a quarter of the galactic disk which was left more or less blank on all Republic charts. What they called the greater Unknown Regions was a product of the Galactic Barrier, a nebulous tangle of cosmic disturbances that inhibited hyperspace travel as well as hyperwave communications, effectively cutting the galaxy in two. There were stories of explorers and smugglers finding ways through or around the Barrier—and ten times as many of people turning themselves to space dust while trying.

So it had long been assumed that because nobody knew how to safely get to the greater Unknown Regions (or to get there and back), nothing of interest was actually there. Hence the Republic's confidence that its reprisals after the Great Hyperspace War had driven the ancient Sith Empire to extinction. Their Ancestral Worlds in and around the Stygian Caldera, Korriban and all the rest, were practically on the edge of the galaxy already. With their planets scoured by Republic and Jedi forces alike, the Sith had nowhere to go—assuming that they hadn't found a way through the Barrier.

Which, of course, they had, and that was the one hyperspace route that was highlighted in red: Tenebrae's Way, joining known and unknown. The survivors of the Republic's revenge a millennium ago had created a tunnel through the Galactic Barrier by linking one world that was strong with the Force to another on the other side. The starting point had been Malachor V, and it ended at a world called Exegol, which the new empire would eventually make its capital.

The need to attack Malachor V, and particularly to destroy it with such absurd thoroughness, had stemmed from a conjecture on Atton's part. He didn't pretend to fully understand how the Sith refugees and their leader Tenebrae had altered a cosmic phenomenon that had frustrated the galaxy's best scientists for eons; all he'd wanted to know was how to frack it up, and he'd gone with his best guess. If the tunnel was sustained by Force energy flowing between the nexuses on two planets, then removing one of them would presumably disrupt the link, and the tunnel would begin to close.

That the true Sith had yet to arrive these months later told Atton he'd guessed right, but there was no pretending it was a permanent solution. If they had created a tunnel in the Galactic Barrier once before, then they could do so again. Whether the Republic had been bought months or years of time to prepare was impossible to tell, but Atton was smart enough not to bet on the latter.

The only question was which planet they would use to establish the new link, their new arrival point. That was the question that had gotten Sulen Tusser captured on Vaal.

Atton switched the display over to a Republic star chart and zeroed in on the Sith Ancestral Worlds, most of which were partially sheltered from coreward approach by the Stygian Caldera nebula. The whole region was well within Sith Remnant territory. The practical choice was Thule; from the data they'd stolen over Torque, it was now known that the academy there had become the de facto headquarters for the Remnant Sith Order, and it was close to Ord Radama, which was their political and industrial capital.

Then again, the Sith in the Unknown Regions might not have known that, and in any case there were many other worlds they could choose, places of symbolic significance which might or might not still be held tight in the Force's inscrutable grip. Korriban and Ziost, the first empire's homeworld and capital, respectively. Khar Delba, Dromund Kaas, even Dromund Fels...

Atton ran through the possibilities in his head, but it was more by rote than real effort. He'd already done this and passed his guesses on to the admiral. It would have been great to have more than guesses, but if the Sith ever had a backup plan in case something happened to Malachor, he'd never been told.

Best case scenario, this campaign succeeded and the Republic Navy wrecked the Sith Remnant, found where the true Sith were arriving, and blockaded the system. That would make Revan's job a lot harder, but her armada was vast; they had spent the better part of a millennium building it. There would simply be no containing them for long. This war, the real war, was going to spill across the Rim. There would be fighting in as many systems as there had been during Jedi Civil War. More systems.

The Republic needed an advantage, a weapon, a strategy, something that could be brought to bear across the whole front—and for all intents and purposes, Atton was the only one who seemed to really get that. Atris could sit and mumble to herself in her chambers all day. Cole could gripe and moan about the danger all he wanted, until he finally worked up the guts to jump ship like he'd said he would. Kaevee could look Atton in the eyes with all her worthless Jedi compassion and pity and tell him You can't take responsibility for all this. None of it mattered.

Because—whatever this was, responsibility was not the word Atton would pick for it. And he hadn't taken it. At least, it didn't feel that way. It felt more like he'd woken up one day and simply had it. Couldn't just drop it or give it away; life didn't work like that.

Footsteps started up the corridor. From the gait, Atton knew it was Kaevee.

"Atton. Hi."

He half-turned, leaving the galaxy map on. "Hey. Something up?"

"I talked to that fleet inventory officer again. He said those parts for the thrusters won't be in until tomorrow. Maybe the day after."

"That figures."

The girl tilted her head. "How's the hyperdrive?"

"The same story, more or less." He faced her squarely. "What do you need, Kaevee?"

Because she couldn't make it any more obvious there was something she wanted: standing there, fidgeting, flicking her green eyes this way and that—and smiling. Kaevee didn't smile, practically didn't know how to, and she also didn't drop by to chat with Atton because she liked his personality.

She nodded sheepishly, and Atton knew he had guessed right. The perfunctory smile crawled away and died. "I spoke with Atris, and she, I... We want to try something."

Atton waited, wearing the question on his face.

"Do you remember how Atris found out about me? On Dantooine?"

"Yeah, I was there. She meditated—hard. Went into some kind of a trance, didn't come out for a day and a half. When it was over, she said she'd seen Dantooine, and a Jedi there who could help us. Turned out it was you."

"Yes, it was me—and that's called farsight. It's a very powerful Jedi technique. It can be used to peer across space and time, to see people or events occurring far away. Even to see possible futures or, well, that's what some claimed. Anyway, it's very demanding. Atris and I..." Kaevee took a breath. "We want to combine our Force ability, then try to use farsight to find more Jedi. More survivors."

All at once it clicked. "No you don't," said Atton, deadpan.

Kaevee blinked. "Huh?"

"Atris doesn't want to do this farsight thing." He nodded port, toward the old woman's dormitory. "She knows it's not reliable—that searching the universe for a couple of people who may not even exist is infinitely more difficult than Jedi mystical talk makes it sound. I'm betting she knows this because she's tried it already on her own time, more than once, since we put this crew together. And she probably told you that when you suggested this, but you won't take no for an answer. You twisted her arm until she agreed to let you pitch in one time—so if you come up with nothing, which you probably will, you'll be able to let it go and move on."

Without enjoying it, he paused to take in Kaevee's slack-jawed stare. "Does that pretty much cover it?"

The former Padawan shook her head, idly laying a hand on the nearby wall. "How did you know?"

"I used the Force to read your mind— I'm kidding, I'm just kidding," Atton added quickly, when he saw Kaevee start to react. "I don't need the Force. Why read your thoughts when I can guess what they are?"

Kaevee took a moment to compose herself. "Okay, yes. You're right. This is my idea... and we can't do much with the ship right now, so that gives us a window to try, if farsight really takes that much time."

"All right, but what's this got to do with me?"

"We—" The girl caught herself. "I want you to help."

A prickling ice-cold feeling formed between Atton's shoulders and traveled down his spine with frigid little insectile feet. "You want me...," he repeated slowly, "...to help you with this farsight thing."

Kaevee nodded.

"To sit in a circle with you two, so we can all join our minds and Force energy and whatever else to peer across the galaxy and see if we can find any more Jedi."

"Atris says it's possible—boosting each other's abilities. It's called a meld. Sort of like the Force bond that forms when Jedi train together, except a lot more intentional, stronger, and temporary." Kaevee folded her hands together, and her gaze became that steady, strange mix of heartfeltness and posturing that always unwittingly got under Atton's skin. "I know you were never a Jedi, but you're a lot stronger with the Force than me, and you seem to know more about it than I do. I think you really could help with this."

Knowing Kaevee, that wasn't empty sweet talk. She meant it. She trusted him.

Didn't matter, though. Only a very small part of Atton was there in the cockpit to hear those words, to feel some shadow or echo of gratitude.

Another, more substantial part of him was trapped in a force cage beneath the frozen plateau on Telos IV, shriveling as the old witch dug into the back of his skull with invisible hooks and claws.

Another part of him was bent over the sprawled, battered form of a Jedi whose name he didn't know, snarling and weeping as his hands squeezed her throat and one of her bloody hands pressed to his cheek, and he loved her even though she was killing him, or maybe it was the other way around...

Another part of him was part of Meetra, had been since she'd walked into the detention area on Peragus, through the fighting and the lies, to that night in the grove on Dantooine, to the dais in the Trayus Core, into the dark unknown out there where the Sith still reigned, and finally to that burning white valley in the badlands on Exegol, and to the knife in his hand and the window shattering—the part of him that didn't know what Atton was, couldn't tell him apart from Meetra or Visas or the Massassi bodyguards or the manic-eyed priest or the things in that valley that scattered his thoughts like ash in a hurricane—

Atton said, "No."

Then he said, "Hell no."

Kaevee's steady, strange gaze crumbled, and she was back to looking more like herself, less like the Jedi she'd wanted to be. "I... I'm only asking."

"I know you're just asking, and you know what? Thanks. That's very polite of you. Hell of a lot more than I'd usually get from Jedi, but the answer's no. I'll keep you alive, teach you whatever you need to know, how to use the Force and all that, but I've got— I've got limits." Atton realized that he'd taken a step toward her at some point. He tapped his head with a finger. "There's a reason I don't leave the door open. This is mine, and it's pretty much all I've got. I'm not going to let Jedi or ex-Jedi or the Force go rummaging around inside my head."

"That's, that's not what we're going to do," Kaevee stammered. "We just need your help."

"No. Means. No." Atton took another step, and Kaevee backed into the doorway. She looked confused, hurt—and sorry, sorry for him. "And you don't need my help. If there were any Jedi still out there, the Republic would've found them, or I would have, or someone. Even if there are any, it's not going to be enough. Winning this war is going to take something else, some other solution that nobody's thought of before."

Kaevee's fists clenched. They'd had an argument not unlike this one on Belsavis, months ago, but she was not quite the same. "If it's not going to be the Jedi, then who? What other solution is there?"

Atton bit his tongue.

"Well?"

He could only choke down his pride (and most of his anger) and say, "I haven't figured that out yet."

At once the tension went out of them; there was no holding onto it. He could have accused her of slipping back into her comforting old delusions, her need to believe that the Jedi who'd abandoned her with their extinction were still out there, were just waiting to show themselves and swoop in and save the day at the very last minute. All because you're scared to move on, he had scoffed on Belsavis. That's really what this is all about.

But that wasn't what this was all about for Kaevee. Not entirely, not anymore.

"I'm doing everything you want me to do," she said quietly, her eyes downcast. "You and Atris."

No denying that. She was learning, training, doing things Atton's way. "I know, kid."

Usually Kaevee got mad when someone called her that, but she didn't even react. "I have to do this, Atton. I have to try. There's nothing else I can think of."

That summed it up right there. In a way, they were in the same spot, except that Atton hadn't come up with anything to try yet. Her idea wasn't a good one, but when Atton thought about how his life had been going since Peragus, could he really blame someone else for trying even when it was hopeless?

Besides, what had he told her a minute ago? When the farsight thing didn't work, maybe the fact there were no more Jedi would sink in for her, and she would finally be able to leave the Order in the past.

And maybe, on some level, Kaevee had known that before Atton said it out loud.

"Then try," he told her. "Do whatever you can and see what happens."

They began early the next morning in the port dormitory. Kaevee didn't know what she had expected, but she was surprised at how little preparation was required, and at the simplicity of Atris's instructions.

For a time they meditated together as they always did: cross-legged on the floor, simply feeling the pulse of the universe in themselves and each other, and in the muted hum of their surroundings. In time that hum, that energy, became more present to Kaevee than the physicality of the starship and the planet Indosa. This was the Unifying Force, the underlying truth of all things, binding the life that was Kaevee to the life that was Atris, and to every other life—and, as her mentor had explained, binding everything that was to everything that might yet be.

After the better part of an hour, when Kaevee felt calm and centered, Atris spoke. "I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. As it is with you."

Heartbeats passed, and Kaevee repeated, "I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me."

The hum she felt around her changed in pitch, intensity. It was Atris, reaching to Kaevee's mind in invitation as she would offer her hand to a friend. The old woman shone in a way that Kaevee rarely saw: almost the same way she would expect a Jedi Master to. Quickened, almost enamored, Kaevee reached back immediately. Like a stream flowing into a lake, her power flowed into Atris, and the Force within two became one.

Calm.

Atris had not spoken it, and her command was not truly a discrete, articulated thought, yet the general meaning unraveled itself in Kaevee's mind, and she hastened to obey.

You must cast your eagerness far away from us, the old woman had instructed beforehand. In farsight, one plunges into deep and mercurial waters, into currents vaster and subtler than any mortal can comprehend. Being part of the Force, we affect it. It may show us truth... or it may show us only what we wish to see, what we wish to be true. If there is anything—anyone—for us to find, we will only do so through tranquility and quiet.

Kaevee was surprised at how quickly she reined herself in, until she realized Atris must have been aiding her in that, as she had during the firefight on Vaal and the ordeals on Malachor V. Seconds passed... many of them, perhaps a full minute... as Kaevee waited, steady and balanced but nevertheless on the very razor's edge of tranquility.

"Now then," said the old woman, "let us begin."

But she needn't have bothered, because Kaevee could already feel—through herself and through Atris, almost secondhand—the Ebon Hawk, her own clothing, even her own body, everything physical drifting away, etherealized by the titanic mystery of the Force. Carnal hearing ceased, sight turned to blindness, and knowing became unknowing.

A wave of panic rushed through Kaevee and threatened to carry her away, back to Malachor where the Nautolan Sith Lord had pulled her mind out of her body and gone rooting through her thoughts, and nothing she could do had been able to stop him—

Do not fear, Atris urged, the words now as clear as her own thoughts. I am with you. We are one in the Force.

Overjoyed and relieved, Kaevee sheltered herself in the once-Jedi Master's light, which had become her own as well. The meld strengthened, and as the physical universe fell away entirely, so did Kaevee's fear, leaving just her and Atris alone with nothing.

And everything.

Everything from the tiniest particle to the most sprawling galaxy, every insentient bit of matter and every rational soul, all of existence, flowed past them and around them, carried along on inscrutable currents. The images, voices, and moments were so multitudinous that they blurred together into an unintelligible panorama, useless until the two former Jedi sharpened their focus.

The Jedi, willed Atris, and Kaevee with her. Where are the Jedi?

The expanse reacted to their intention, rippled like the surface of a troubled lake, briefly coalesced before their patient but searching gaze...

A sleepless city as ancient as the Republic itself was lit against a deep night by airlanes of speeder traffic and the glows of elegant skyscrapers. Though Kaevee had never been to Coruscant, she recognized it both from holos and from the recognition she felt in Atris's mind. In the same way she recognized the ziggurat and tower of the Jedi Temple. Its cavernous halls were empty, the archives and vaults and training rooms and meditation chambers sealed like so many tombs. In the summit of its tower, the Center Stone of the High Council Chamber stood marred by the stroke of a lightsaber.

The scene changed to another night, starless and shrouded, yet even in that darkness Kaevee knew the plains and hills of Dantooine, the dim outline of the Enclave's bombed-out ruins, and the laigreks prowling the sublevel. There seemed to be no light on that world except from the dim fires of the salvager camp just a mile away. It might remain there, Kaevee thought morosely, until there wasn't a stone left in the Enclave for the salvagers to turn over.

Then there was a vast and rolling landscape, once verdant and strong with the Force, now scorched barren by cataclysmic heat. A massive shape loomed in the pitiless bronze sun-glow, a shattered mountain perhaps—until Kaevee felt the pulse of old love and sorrow from her companion and realized: this was Ossus. The "mountain" had once been the Jedi Praxeum, the Great Library, the very heart of the Order for over a thousand years.

Traditionally, Jedi were separated from their natural families in childhood or even infancy, to be trained and raised by the Order. Such was their way. Dantooine was Kaevee's home, the world which would always be at her center, no matter how many years passed or where her travels took her; she realized then that the world in Atris's center was Ossus.

The scene faded and gave way to new visions, one after another. There were temples secluded in forests or mountain ranges, watchtowers and chapter houses nestled into bustling cities, habitation domes sheltering against poisonous atmospheres, space stations glinting over forgotten moons. They were the scattered outposts and storehouses of the ancient Order. Atris knew most of them—

Ilum... Dorin... Teya... Telos... Alaris...

—and Kaevee had to stifle her reverence as she heard the old woman's recognitions; the names of these planets felt sacred. Yet there was pain to keep at bay, too. Many of these keeps and hideaways were shattered or scorched like the ruins of Dantooine and Ossus, but even those that weren't felt equally desolate, empty. Wrongly empty.

Where are the Jedi?

Time passed without measure as the images came and went. Kaevee's general ignorance remained, but increasingly even Atris found it more difficult to pin down the distant worlds and moons that they saw. Structures that were recognizably Jedi ceased to appear as well, replaced by solitary shacks and campsites, cramped interiors of rundown starships. Yet in these places they saw no robed figures meditating or training, or doing anything else. There was nothing except that swallowing, ever-present emptiness.

The current of the Force that carried them along rippled. It was Atris moving against it, starting back toward the surface, back toward the physical world, and the light that belong to the two of them was going the same way, tugging Kaevee with her.

Kaevee thought, No. We have to go on.

We cannot for much longer, was Atris's reply.

Something in Atris's reply struck Kaevee as indulgent, almost condescending, and it stung. There was no time in this place; what did much longer mean? And what did it matter, compared to what they were trying to do? The Force was everywhere and infinite. Wouldn't it show them something if they kept going, if they didn't give up?

Where are the Jedi? asked Kaevee helplessly as they continued to ascend.

Kaevee, please...

Where are the Jedi?!

This time she aimed her cry not at her mentor beside her, but at the Force all around them. The light that was their meld faltered; as though it was a barrier holding back the ocean of the Unifying Force, a fissure opened, and a torrent crashed against her even as Atris continued to buoy her up and out.

A hall in the Jedi Temple—

Hyperspace, coruscating through an unfamiliar viewport—

—back to back they stood, their blades of light whirling and sparking as they fended off jabs and slashes of vibropikes and blades and electrostaves, wielded by black-garbed assassins, silent as death behind their masks with red-eyed lenses—

—already running, lightsaber in hand.

Hyperspace.

Pyramids and obelisks towered in the desert, dead a millennium but still alive with the power of the Sith—

A bloody red lightsaber flashing in the dark—

She got her wits back and leaped up, but the cage had already slammed shut.

The sun was scorching, and the wind scourged him with whips of hot sand.

From a height like a mountain Kaevee fell, and fell, and fell, and slammed back into her body. She was sprawled not on the floor but one of the cots in the port dormitory, sweating, aching, exhausted. Atris was hunched over in the chair beside her, holding her hand.

Moments passed as Kaevee collected her thoughts and her heart settled. At last she regarded her mentor, saw the old woman's face shadowed as it always was, and shame lanced her heart. "Atris, I'm so sorry, I..."

The rest of her words were choked away. Her mouth was too dry to speak. Instantly, though, Atris provided a water bottle, which Kaevee drained in mere seconds.

She tried again. "I'm sorry, Atris. It was so— It felt like an eternity, just nothing, and I wanted to find them..."

Atris's hand touching hers brought her to silence again. The former Jedi Master's sigh had the air of a teacher, perhaps chastising, yet all she said was, "I know, Kaevee. I know."

Neither of them moved. There were things to say, perhaps, but none of it felt urgent just then.

Finally Atris took her hand away and sank back into her chair. "Please... This has been taxing, and I must rest. You should get dinner."

Kaevee sat up, blinking at her wrist chrono in disbelief. "Dinner? It's dinner time?"