As the Guardian and Lifesaver soared through hyperspace to the last known coordinates of the Widowmaker, Tahiri stepped into the office of the Chiss Star Destroyer's human captain. Jagged Fel sat alone at his dining table with two plates of steaming fish with which Tahiri was unfamiliar, with one of the plates waiting near the vacant seat. When Tahiri appeared, he stood up and smiled warmly.

"Jedi Veila," he said, "may I call you Tahiri?"

"Am I allowed to call you Jag, Captain Fel?" Tahiri asked.

"Only in private. I can call you Jedi Veila in front of the others if you'd prefer."

"Sounds like a good idea. In that case, thanks for accepting me aboard your ship, Jag."

"Anything for a friend of Jaina's." He waved her over to the empty seat. "And thank you for accepting my invitation for lunch. C'mon, sit down. The food's getting cold."

"Smells like fish," she said as she took her seat. "Something from Csilla?"

Jag shook his head. "From one of the other colony worlds. Gem Dlok, if my memory's serving me well. One of the few foods both humans and Chiss can eat."

Tahiri cut up a piece of the fish and ate it. "Tasty," she said flatly after she swallowed and before she took another bite.

After a quiet moment, Jag said, "So, after hearing about what happened down on Hlest, Captain Hesklon thought you were drunk when it happened?"

"It's what he thinks, even after I clarified that all I had was a sip of something. Probably why he allowed me to come aboard your ship before we set off."

"Pass the drunken problem off to me," Jag said with a smirk. "Well, you don't have to worry about my trusting you, Tahiri. I know you're a good Jedi."

"Thank you."

"Jaina's been doing very well, in case you're wondering. Bagged quite a few number of pirates since Sekot took off from Coruscant. Her parents have been doing well, too. They've helped resettle some worlds the Yuuzhan Vong took. Not sure about Jacen, though; last I heard, he's still on his sojourn to look for other Force-sects."

"I hope he finds what he's looking for."

"Yeah, whatever that is."

A little bit more time passed between them as they continued with their fish before Tahiri said, "So... how have you been doing?"

"Oh, well, I only made captain about last year. Miss flying clawcraft, though. I got Shawnkyr—my wingmate, Shawnkyr Nuruodo, I mean—as my first officer, so that's a good carryover. What about you? How have things on Sekot been?"

"It's nice most of the time."

Jag allowed a moment to pass before he asked, "But other times?"

Tahiri grimaced slightly, as if her food had gone bad. "It can be difficult."

"Problems with the Yuuzhan Vong?"

Tahiri nodded.

"Well, hopefully, they don't cause too many problems while you're gone."

"The Ferroans have got them under control. And if worst comes to worst, the Extolled will help them corral the former Elites since they're the most likely to start trouble."

"That's good."

"You know, speaking of Yuuzhan Vong, I just remembered that I have to ask: you wouldn't happen to know anything about how the Vagaari could know about me, could you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you see, before I was detained down on Hlest, I had this one Vagaari at my mercy, and he called me the Jeedai-Who-Was-Shaped. He killed himself before I could find out how he knew that."

"That's what the Yuuzhan Vong call you, right?"

Tahiri nodded. "I doubt something would have happened, like the Vagaari Empire finding Zonama and putting everyone there in danger, because I would've sensed it through the Force. At this point, I could probably sense something like that even lightyears away. Still, I can't help but wonder how the Vagaari know what the Vong call me."

Jag's eyebrows lowered in curiosity. "I thought you didn't like when people said 'Vong' instead of 'Yuuzhan Vong.'"

"Oh. Yeah, well, I'm kinda past that now. Matter of fact, I kinda had a similar conversation with Danni Quee about it before I left Zonama for this mission."

"Well, I guess that's something. Finally moving on, right?"

Tahiri hesitated two seconds before she said, "I guess so."

Not sensing that hesitation from her, Jag said, "Well, I think I may have an idea as to how the Vagaari could've known about what the Vong call you. You see, the Chiss Ascendancy, since we keep tabs on what Vagaari we can find, had discovered that, apparently, they have Vong technology, some of which was given to them before the Vong started their invasion."

Tahiri's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Really?"

Jag nodded. "We've discovered several Vagaari ships equipped with dovin basals and magma cannons, just like the Vong. From the Vagaari we captured and interrogated, it turns out that they had been looking to come out as allies with the Vong by the time their invasion corridor reached the Unknown Regions. We also learned from those interrogated Vagaari that they've had correspondence with the Vong on a fairly regular basis during the invasion. No doubt that's how the Vagaari learned about you and what the Vong called you; they probably also know about Jaina's stint as the Trickster goddess, among other things."

"I never knew about any of this. I've had implanted memories as Riina Kwaad, a warrior no less, and I had no idea that the Vong and Vagaari had that kind of a relationship."

Jag shrugged. "I don't think you should be too surprised about that, Tahiri. It was probably something that those at the highest echelons of the Vong's Elite knew about. Though, when I think about it, I do wonder how well the Vong would have treated the Vagaari if they had made it as far out in space as here. I mean, do you remember the Ssi-ruuk? The Vong had been using them as pawns when it came to Bakura."

"I'd rather not think about Bakura, Jag."

Jag's face dropped in realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot about... Yeah, okay, I'll drop that."

"Thanks." She went back to eating her fish and tried to forget that Bakura had been where she had finally collapsed into a coma so that her persona as Riina Kwaad would try to overwhelm and take over her identity. And though that ultimately ended up with her being a stronger person for it in the end, Tahiri didn't like thinking about that anymore than she thought about what happened over Myrkr so many years before...

After a little more time, by which they were almost done their food, Tahiri finally sighed and asked, "I'm sorry, this is awkward, isn't it?"

"You think it is?"

"Well, how could it not be? You and I barely know each other, Jag, and that's really only because of Jaina."

He looked confused. "Is that a bad thing?"

"Well... not really, I guess. It's just that..."

"What?"

"It's just that..." She sighed as if in defeat. "Look, really, I'm glad you brought me aboard and away from Hesklon's judgment, but... I dunno, it just seems weird that you only invited me to eat with you because I'm Jaina's friend or whatever."

Jag shrugged. "Well, I just thought it'd be nice to do something for a friend of hers. Especially since you don't really have anybody."

Tahiri glared at him. "What makes you think that?"

Jag stiffened. "Well, it's just that..."

"What?"

"Did you... did you find anybody on Sekot? I mean, the only other human there would be Danni Quee, and last I checked, you weren't-"

"Why is that any of your business?"

"I guess... it's not, but-"

"But what? Why would you even ask something like that?"

"Tahiri, calm down. I was just making idle chitchat."

"Yeah, it might be chitchat for you. You who already has someone."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Tahiri took a breath as if she were about to say something, only to deflate with a frustrated exhale. "Nothing. It doesn't mean anything." She put the last piece of food into her mouth, and while still chewing on it, she stood up, walked to the door, and said, "Thanks for the fish. Lemme know when we get to the Widowmaker."

When she was gone, Jag's mouth hung open with more confusion than anger.

. . .

The next day, after the Guardian and Lifesaver dropped out of hyperspace several parsecs from the Widowmaker's last known coordinates, Tahiri stepped onto the Chiss Destroyer's bridge and stopped at Jag's right as they and Commander Nuruodo—who stood to Jag's left—stared at a holographic display in one of the crew pits; everything that had been said between Tahiri and Jag had been forgotten for the moment.

"Jedi Veila," Shawnkyr said, "this is a live feed from one of our remote drones, which we've deployed to the system where the Widowmaker is currently located. As you can see, the planet is, as Captain Yage described, a predominantly icy planet, not unlike Csilla itself. This world, however, has a total of six moons, none of which are habitable for most species in this galaxy. We have yet to locate the Widowmaker on its surface, but we did find something interesting here."

She typed something beneath the display and brought up a sidebar showing red wavy lines accompanied by a persistent pinging.

"A signal," Shawnkyr elaborated, "coming from behind one of the moons. We have discovered that this signal is Vagaari in origin."

"A pirate signal," Jag stated with mild disgust, "left by one of their own remote probes. It hails to any and all Vagaari ships within ten parsecs of any non-Vagaari ships that will have entered a system like this, letting them know if there's someone or something to plunder."

"Thankfully, our probe has a suitable cloaking mechanism, so it shouldn't have alerted the Vagaari's," Shawnkyr stated. "But now that we know that these pirates would be waiting for us should we jump in, it is obvious that we cannot simply jump in to find Captain Yage and the remainder of the Widowmaker's crew."

"So what do you propose we do?" Tahiri asked with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Well, given your talents with the Force, Jedi Veila," Jag said formally, "you will be the one to go in to find the remnants of the Widowmaker's crew. And when you have found them, you will signal us and we will locate you while dealing with whatever the Vagaari will throw at us."

"You will be given one of our shuttles, which we will outfit with an escape pod," Shawnkyr explained. "Unfortunately, our cloaking capabilities don't extend to anything as large as one of our shuttles, so alerting the Vagaari will be inevitable. So when they arrive, you will arm the shuttle's self-destruct function, and just as it explodes, you will be in the escape pod and direct it down to the planet."

"And hope that the Vagaari don't find me through that explosion and tractor me in," Tahiri added dryly.

"Indeed," Shawnkyr confirmed just as dryly. "Though it seems unlikely, since the pod won't have any thruster emissions that would alert the Vagaari of your presence."

"They could still spot me from a viewport," Tahiri pointed out evenly.

"Then you better hope they don't," Jag said.

"From there," Shawnkyr continued, once you find the Widowmaker survivors, you will activate this signal." She handed Tahiri a small transponder beacon that fit within her palm. "We'll be on our way to rescue you then."

Two hours later, Tahiri was in that shuttle and dropped it out of hyperspace for the system where the Widowmaker had crashed. She began soaring for it, hoping that she could get there in time before any Vagaari ships dropped out of hyperspace, despite what Shawnkyr told her.

But as she was still several hundred kilometers from breaching the atmosphere, the shuttle's sensors alerted her to the arrival of a rather large vessel from hyperspace, coming up from behind the unified orbit of the icy planet's moons. Tahiri groaned as a large Vagaari pirate vessel dropped out of hyperspace. A few seconds later, her comm board alerted her to an incoming transmission, which she ignored as she piloted her vessel toward the planet; hopefully, she can get just close enough to it before that pirate ship drew close enough to tractor her in.

She was less than a hundred kilometers from facing the friction of atmospheric entry before she was abruptly halted in place; she strained in her crash-webbing and looked at her rear sensors just as the shuttle began going backwards, as if by its own volition.

Quickly, Tahiri undid her webbing, pressed the self-destruct button that began a one-minute countdown, and headed to the shuttle's rear. With mechanical precision, she opened up the escape pod's hatch, entered it, sealed it shut, and waited for the remainder of the minute to pass before she deployed.

Once the shuttle was five seconds from its destruction, Tahiri literally punched the button that shot the pod out into space and for the planet. She gripped her armrests tightly as the world's gravity soon took over, and just as the concussive wave of the shuttle's explosion rocked her where she was. Once that passed, though, she immediately took control of the pod via the yoke in front of her.

Then Tahiri's heart clenched in fear as the pod halted in its rapid descent. Five seconds later, it started to gradually pull away from the planet. And five seconds into that, the pod's comm system pinged for her attention.

Despite her decision to ignore such a hail before, Tahiri couldn't help herself as she activated it now, if only to confirm her worst fear.

From the other end, a Vagaari voice said something in his own language that Tahiri couldn't understand but still got the meaning of. Regardless, she said nervously, "I only speak Basic."

"In that case," the same voice said in the same language, "don't resist any further. You have got nowhere to run. You and everything you have on you are now property of the Vagaari Empire. So enjoy these last moments of freedom before we welcome you aboard." He shut off the line.

Tahiri breathed in and out in anticipation for what was about to come. When the pod's ascent stopped and it rocked briefly in place as it docked in the Vagaari ship's hangar bay, she stood up, drew her lightsaber, and adopted a defensive stance as she waited for the door to open from the other end.

And once it opened, she activated her lightsaber and Force-jumped out through the narrow space as she made herself into a human corkscrew; her weapon skewered one blaster-wielding Vagaari before she slashed her way through his torso and turned to begin deflecting the lasers that were now being fired upon her.