Beyond - Legends Before - Legends Legacy of the Force: Refoundation (an AU with Old Republic-inspiration)

Title: Legacy of the Force: Refoundation
Author: Lordban
Timeframe: Legends timeline, 40 ABY -
Characters: Jacen Solo, TBA
Summary: Lumiya isn't the one who lures Jacen Solo to Lorrd and beyond during the events of Betrayal. A far more ancient Sith Lord has gotten invested in converting the young man to their cause, one all but forgotten in the day and age of the Galactic Alliance.

Notes:
None of the content in this thread belongs to me.

This story begins after the first 27 chapters of Betrayal, which won't be repeated here because there would only be minor alterations and serious copyright issues... What alterations there are will surface later. We pick up on Lorrd, where Jacen pursues his investigations following the trail left by Brisha Syo, who is also wanted for her involvement in a recent lethal incident in the Corellian crisis, accompanied by his apprentice Ben Skywalker, and by Nelani Dinn, a younger Jedi Knight stationed there. Jacen has identified one of the tassels left behind by Brisha Syo as clues where nobody else could - and knows it is of Sith inspiration. He has also dealt - often in ruthless fashion - with a number of incidents along the way.

This story is AU - before and beyond the saga.

'v'
​

Lorrd City, Lorrd

With the meaning of the tassels offering the Jedi clues but no clear path to follow, and with the Toryaz Station shuttle and the mystery of the Jedi-related terrorist encounters lingering in Lorrd City, Jacen put off his departure from Lorrd.

And it was only a day later that the mystery encounters continued.

First, in the morning, the Lorrd Security Forces received an anonymous communication that the kidnapped daughter of a prominent businesswoman was being held in steam tunnels beneath the School of Conceptual Design. The security operatives, after scanning plans of the tunnels, found no access that would give them an approach to the child's prison chamber without getting the girl killed. So the Jedi were called.

Examining the same plans, Jacen noted that the diameter of one of the steam pipes, while insufficient for a full-grown man or woman to slither through, would provide a tight access for an average-sized adolescent. So the security forces had the steam cut off to that pipe, and after it cooled, Ben crawled through, cutting his way out of the pipe at an appropriate point, dropping into the kidnapped girl's chamber, and defending it against all corners for the three minutes it then took for Jacen, Nelani, and the security forces to storm and secure the hideout.

The kidnapping's mastermind, a frustrated radical who wanted to replace the Lorrd planetary government with something ruled by logical, pitiless legal-analyst druids, died during the attack, but his surviving allies said that the girl had appeared to him in his dreams and recommended the kidnapping in the first place.

Later that day, a man dressed in Jedi-style robes and carrying a nonfunctional, pre-Clone Wars era lightsaber he'd stolen from a museum, climbed to the summit of the main university's administration building and perched there, threatening to leap to his death unless he was admitted to the Jedi order. Jacen, Nelani, and Ben went to deal with the situation. Jacen climbed to the summit to talk to the man while the other two remained at ground level.

As it turned out, the desperate Jedi applicant had no Force sensitivity whatsoever, and could not bring himself to believe that Force sensitivity could not be taught. Mindful of Nelani's desire that he talk things out more with the desperate people who provoked such encounters, Jacen argued politely but fruitlessly with the man for over an hour.

"Tell me" the man finally said, "how to do your Jedi tricks—one Jedi trick—or I'll step off this roof."

"I'm tired of talking, and I don't have the energy to lie convincingly right now" Jacen said. "Go ahead and jump."

The man did.

Nelani, assisted by Ben, caught him, slowing his descent with the Force, and the worst he sustained from his twenty-story plummet was a broken ankle. Security agents bundled him off for medical evaluation, and still he shouted that the Jedi had betrayed him. But Nelani hugged Jacen, when he reached ground level again, for doing his best to argue the man out of a bad decision.

As they stood there, security agents keeping the crowd and the press at bay, a comlink beeped. Jacen and Nelani sighed and reached for their respective communications devices... but it was Ben's that had sounded. He pulled it out of his pouch.

"Ben Skywalker here... Really? Did she put up a fight? All right, we'll be there in half an hour or so." He sought Jacen's face for confirmation, got a nod, and concluded, "Out."

"You know" Jacen said, "the more like a Jedi Knight you act, the more likely your father is to send you off to put down a planetary insurrection or delve into the mystery of a Sith Holocron."

Ben flushed. "This was stuff I'd been communicating with him about."

"Him?"

"Lieutenant Samran. That woman showed up. Brisha Syo."

"The shuttle pilot?"

"Yeah. She's in custody."

"Let's go." Jacen led the dash for the speeder.

'v'​

The human woman sitting alone in the secure interrogation room did not look like a criminal, at least on the surface. Clad in a black jumpsuit that suggested both money and a preference for simplicity, she looked somewhat older than Jacen, perhaps in her late forties or early fifties. The woman was small and lean, and had rather long, coppery hair held in a ponytail. Her features were sharply defined, oddly reminiscent of a bird of prey’s.

She was far from unattractive, but her beauty was a predator’s. Her bearing gave off the impression of a soldier at attention despite the fact she was sitting. Alone in the interrogation room, she did not look bored, but had schooled her expression into an unemotional one, reinforcing the impression of her somehow standing guard despite being a prisoner.

The chamber the woman waited in featured a one-way reflective panel that showed her a mirrored surface, while the Jedi, on the other side, could look through it like a view port. Ben had the unsettling feeling that she was restraining herself from looking at the Jedi - that at any moment she would look up and lock eyes with one of them, despite the physical impossibility of her seeing them. Ben knew better than to assume that the woman's appearance and her impassibility meant she was a dangerous person, but he remained aware it was a very distinct possibility. His upbringing had grounded him in principles of both logic and the Force, and both disciplines knew that appearances could be misleading. Still, he detected no malevolence in her.

"Perhaps she just isn't feeling wicked right now" Jacen said.

Ben looked up at hint "Huh?"

"Your thoughts are very much at the surface. Still, they're good thoughts. You're keeping sharp." He shrugged. "Let's go in."

A Lorrd Security guard led them into the interrogation chamber. Jacen waited until the guard had exited, then sat and gestured for Nelani and Ben to do likewise. They took the chairs on the opposite side of the table from the woman, who squinted a little, her piercing, electric blue gaze lingering on each of her three visitors.

"A pleasure to meet you at last" she said, her voice casual. "Knight Solo, Knight Dinn, Padawan Skywalker."

Jacen decided not to bring up the mode of address. "You know us" he said.

"Of course. I've been interfering with your actions for some time."

"You admit it."

"I admit to that, yes."

"You admit to inciting people to acts of violence and terrorism."

"Certainly not."

"Then you're denying that you had anything to do with the actions of Ordith Huarr, Movac Arisster, the Lorrd Logistician Liberation League, and..." Jacen frowned, trying to remember.

"Borth Pazz, Jedi candidate" Ben supplied.

"No, I admit that. Certainly."

Jacen gave the woman an exasperated look. "Your confession and your denial are mutually exclusive."

The woman raised an eyebrow. "Of course they aren't" she stated. "I admitted to having something to do with the actions of some precise people, most of whom later went on to commit acts of violence or terrorism, which certainly does not constitute incitation. This is nuance I would have expected a child of your mother's to pick up on."

"My mother has nothing to do with this." Then he gave in to curiosity. "You know her?"

"Do I need to know her personally?"

Jacen shrugged. "Probably not. So what's your story? A story that magically involves you in all the tragedies I've mentioned, yet leaves you blameless?"

"I'm Force-sensitive."

"I'm shocked."

The woman smiled for the first time, eyes twinkling with amusement. "I really should introduce you to my protocol droid."

"Does it have anything to do with your involvement with the people and organization we cited?"

"It has to do with your biology."

Jacen exchanged a look with Ben.

"She's good" the teenager said.

Nelani was not as impressed with the woman as Ben was. "She's stalling. She knows she can only be interrogated and held for so long if she doesn't incriminate herself."

"How about I give it my best shot?" Nelani levelled a scowl at her, which was responded to with another amused smile. "I’m Force-sensitive, with a condition that precludes me from seeking the teachings of the Jedi. Let us say that I am in the vicinity of people thinking evil thoughts. 'I will kill that woman.' 'I will make them understand, and if they don't, I'll wipe them all out.' In some cases, my mind will act as an echo chamber for such intents; there they will intensify and then be reflected back at their originator, potentially strongly enough the person considering the act will feel compelled to proceed. In the end, simple mental contact with me has made things worse, without my needing to speak a word or move a finger."

Ben watched as Jacen fell silent, considering the woman's words for a long moment. Ben knew that the Force could manifest in many different ways in someone who was untrained, though he’d never heard of the Force exerting this kind of corrupting influence.

"What was your involvement with the events at Toryaz Station?" Jacen eventually asked.

"I was there to observe you in preparation for a meeting face to face – I will admit to having envisioned different circumstances". The woman offered Jacen a self-deprecating smile, and then she went on: "I used my arts to stay out of the sight of the Jedi and the station's security forces, and I spied on you. Then everything went wrong, and I decided that I needed to get out of the way until that mess was settled for the time being. I left something to lead you to me-"

"The tassels."

"Yes, of course."

"You were pretty confident that they would lead me to you."

She nodded. "I knew one would speak to you and you alone. And from my own research I already knew that this collection of tassels would inevitably point to Dr. Rotham on Lorrd for decipherment; any other so-called experts in the field would eventually refer you to her. So you'd be here, sooner or later."

"You killed the security captain, Tawaler."

She shook her head. "I saw him killed, from a distance. One of the men from the shuttle spaced him through an air lock. Knowing that the Jedi investigations would lead to that air lock, I chose to leave the tassels there. Then I walked out of the Narsacc Habitat before security measures closed off the corridor to the main station."

"And you coincidentally ended up in the same shuttle by which the soldiers arrived at the station."

Another smile, but this one was without mirth. "No coincidence. I used my own resources to track it down. Not tricky at all, since I assumed it would go to the Corellia system; and there it was, in a hangar at the main Coronet City spaceport. I confronted its pilot, but of course he attacked me rather than answer questions, and I was forced to kill him. Which left me in possession of the shuttle. When I ran its identification numbers, I found that it had been stolen on Commenor a few months ago, and the title had been vested in its insurers after they'd paid off its value to the company it had been stolen from. I bought it from them, clean and legal."

"How did you kill the pilot?" Jacen asked.

The woman gave him a flat look. "I've survived the Empire and the Vong invasion as a Force-sensitive, I'm not defenseless. And I buried the pilot. No sense in involving the authorities on Corellia when the authorities on Corellia would be the ones who sent those killers to wreck the Toryaz Station meeting in the first place."

"You're assuming."

"I'm speculating, based on available evidence and motives."

"And then you came here, because you knew that the tassels would lead the Jedi who found them to Lorrd."

She shook her head. "Not the Jedi who found them. You, Knight Solo."

"You almost ended up with my sister running down their origin."

"I took that possibility into account. She would have given up the pursuit eventually, and you would have picked it up, against orders if need be."

Jacen took a moment to digest that.

"Why me?"

"Because only you could read and understand one of the tassels, and only you would approach its originator with an open mind."

Ben studied Jacen's face. His mentor gave nothing away with his expression. But Ben remembered that there was one tassel Jacen had been able to translate when even Dr. Rotham hadn't - the one from the Sith world. He felt a little chill of unease.

"All right" Jacen said, "let's put all this into some sort of context. Let's have your story from the start."

"Knight Dinn correctly pointed out we don't have that kind of time. It would also be far more convenient to move this conversation to a different locale, if only for proper contextualization."

"On Commenor?"

"I reside in a much closer locale, as galactic distances go - my abode is on a planetoid in a former mining star system close to Bimmiel. We could take your shuttle or mine."

"No, thanks."

"A shame. I would have rather enjoyed a long and unhindered conversation, and I think you've already realized it could help further broaden your knowledge of the Force, Knight Solo. I'll grant it would be beyond both your companions, and would only make your current and former Padawans uncomfortable."

"I could decline."

Brisha Syo offered him another amused smile. "I think we both know you would return for answers to your interrogations before long, Knight Solo. In the mean time, I would probably spend a day in jail, then be freed, ordered to stay on Lorrd while my involvement at Toryaz station could be investigated. And I wouldn't mind staying on such a lovely educational planet for a while - I'm pretty certain it would take me a long time to run of new horizons to explore."

"I could just decide that you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and then kill you."

The woman's smile did not falter. "No, you couldn't."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because to kill me you'd first have to kill Nelani here. Wouldn't you?"

Jacen and Nelani exchanged a look. Jacen's face was as free of emotion as it had been for most of the interview. Nelani's expression, hard to read, had elements of determination and sadness to it. Ben could feel her emotions, though, naked and unconcealed - a hope that Jacen would make "the right choice", a grim determination to face him if he did not, an underlying attraction to Jacen that was increasingly sad.

Ben backed away from that surge of feelings. They were too complicated, too intermixed. They unsettled him.

Jacen stood. "Let's talk outside" he told Nelani and Ben, and left. They followed.

Once in the corridor, Jacen spoke. "I'm going to travel with her to her abode."

Nelani shook her head, not taking her eyes from Jacen's. "Why?"

"I have to know how she spoke to me through the tassel" he explained. "Does she know something about me I don't myself know? Or is it a method she could use on other Jedi, perhaps to lure them into traps? I can't just ignore this, or assume that imprisoning her would eliminate the risk she may represent."

"But it's a trap" Ben protested.

Jacen gave him a dismissive look. "A trap to do what?"

"Well... kill you, I guess."

"Ben, she was able to lure me to several different scenes of violence over the last few days, and she clearly knows a lot about the Force. If she were going to kill me, wouldn't one of those situations have been enough? Pack enough explosives into the aquarium and we'd all be dead. Find a sniper combat droid to shoot me from half a kilometer - I wouldn't feel any emotional intent; there's a good chance such a plan would succeed. Why lure me out to some planetoid?"

"I don't know." Something about Jacen's confidence suddenly annoyed Ben. "And neither do you. Just because you can't figure out what she's up to, doesn't mean it isn't bad."

"Ben's right" Nelani said. "What little we know of the woman's story is too weird and complicated, so there have to be important omissions, and possibly quite a few lies, in it. Going to where she's the master of the environment is just a bad idea."

"Nevertheless, I'm doing just that."

Nelani looked even unhappier. "Then I'm going with you."

"You can't. Bimmiel is outside your jurisdiction."

Nelani shook her head. "I don't have a jurisdiction. I'm just assigned to live on Lorrd. It's fine for me to investigate something as near as Bimmiel. Especially when it involves the safety of another Jedi, and a mystery that involves the Sith world of Ziost. Do you think Master Skywalker would object to my going? I suspect he'd insist on it."

"All right." Jacen shrugged. "I just think it's a bad idea for you to go."

"Is that the Force talking to you, or your gut?"

Finally, he smiled. "My gut."

'v'
​

Divergences will keep increasing until nothing in the plot looks the same - I'm not going to stick with existing chapters for long Note also that it's been a decade since I've had the time to immerse myself into the Legends Expanded Universe - I'm going to miss some things, and probably chalk it up to this being an AU

 

Star system MZX3290S, near Bimmiel

'v'​

On the viewscreen, at maximum magnification, Brisha's abode was a hemispherical, light gray bump, a blemish on an irregular dark gray surface. When Jacen stepped the viewscreen down to a medium magnification, he could see the entirety of the asteroid as a dark shadow in the midst of a sea of stars, and, beyond it, the tiny, dirty-orange glow of this star system's sun, not far from the Bimmiel system, whose fifth planet was notorious for its slashrat population and for being the site of an early Yuuzhan Vong surveying expedition.

Nelani, hovering over Jacen's shoulder, stared at Brisha's asteroid and let out a "Lovely." She turned back to Brisha, who lounged in the seat behind Ben, who sat in the copilot's position. "I can imagine you enjoying day after day here, sitting by the shores of the lake, watching the glorious sunrises and sunsets..."

Brisha's face was reflected in the transparisteel of the forward view-port, and Jacen saw her offer Nelani an amused smile. "It's private,” she said. “I like privacy."

Jacen ignored them, and ignored the sensor readouts before him. Instead, he concentrated on sensing the Force.

On that planetoid, there was something active within the Force, something strong and vibrant... but not alive. Jacen had once had a sense of something like that when, in a restful hour on a visit to a dead coral bed, he'd tried to sense it in the Force and had succeeded. The bed had held dim feelings, like faint, blurry memories, of the accretion of lives that had made it. What was before him now was stronger, more complicated, with more personality... and there was a lot of dark side energy in its vigor.

"It's a big iron asteroid" Ben announced. "It's got a little gravity, but not enough for an atmosphere. We're going to be floating around a lot."

Brisha shook her head. "The habitat has artificial gravity. The generators will start up once your shuttle is docked."

"Aww." Ben's was a noise of exasperation. Jacen grinned. He imagined that the boy had been looking forward to a low-gravity environment.

The docking bay was large enough to hold four shuttles, or the Millennium Falcon and one or two smaller craft. Entry to it was at the base of the ten-story-high habitat. Inside, the bay was lofty, the outside wall curved, the inner walls angled, making a near-trapezoid shape. The walls were riveted metal painted a soothing sky blue, and everything was remarkably clean. A fighter-craft reminiscent of a TIE-Defender was hangared there, as well as a heavily-modified Gamma-class escort shuttle.

As Jacen's shuttle settled into place in the berth nearest the doors into the habitat proper, the big bay doors slid into place laterally behind them. Jacen felt himself settle deeper into his seat as the habitat's artificial gravity dialed up. Without being asked, Ben dialed the shuttle's own gravity down correspondingly, an exercise, and did a fair job of keeping the gravity close to Coruscant standard. Jacen gave him an approving nod.

But Jacen's mind was elsewhere, part of him still seeking the source of the Force energy he felt.

He saw Brisha smile at him in the viewport reflection. "All the answers you're looking for are inside" she said.

Jacen nodded. "Which is not the same as saying everything we want is inside... or that we're safe inside."

"That is correct" Brisha said. She rose.

'v'​

A flexible air lock corridor attached itself to their exterior hatch. Inside, the air was cold, but little eddies of warmth moved through it, evidence of the habitat's heaters beginning their business.

The hallway, off-white and featureless on the inside, led them to a cross-corridor in the same sky blue as the bay interior. Jacen suspected from the corridor's curvature that it was a complete circle around the habitat, providing access to the chambers up against the exterior wall.

Ben looked around, blinking. "It's really clean. I thought this was a mining station."

"And what do you think this is, then?" Brisha asked him.

"Maybe it was the station's owner's habitat?"

The woman nodded approvingly. "Quite close to the mark, Padawan Skywalker. There are areas here which used to be reserved for the owning company, with large chambers where they could have lavish dinners and entertainment. On an everyday basis, a few administrators and their families lived there."

"In terms of design, it's like an early-model Sienar Mobile Command Post" Jacen added, "but older. Maybe centuries older." At Brisha's slight nod, he continued. "It would have been assembled in space, near where it was to be set up originally. Tugs would have placed it on foundation columns built at its landing zone. But it was a valuable piece of equipment. When the operation was done, its foundation clamps would have released, and it would have been towed off to its next station. Not left here."

Brisha smiled. "Quite so." She looked at Nelani. "Why do you think it was?"

"My best guess is corruption. Someone must have greased palms to arrange for the habitat being left behind" Nelani answered, looking back at Brisha through narrowed eyes. "You're treating this conversation like a teaching exercise."

"I miss teaching students of your calibers." At the first side corridor, Brisha turned left, toward the habitat's center, and the others followed. The blue walls continued, interrupted by doors suitable to private chambers or small offices. The doors were curved at the top, an antiquated design element.

Jacen quickened his pace to catch up to Brisha. "There would be quite a bit of arranging involved. This would have been lot of money for a company just to forget about."

"Yes, it would have been. But the administrator who arranged it was capable of coming up with the bribes and persuading people to look away. He was, after all, a Sith."

Ben was fastest. "Why would a Sith be an administrator in a mining company? isn't their job to try conquering the galaxy or hunting down all Jedi, or something?"

"An administrative position is something."

"It's not what a Sith would do!"

The party reached a turbolift near the habitat's center. Brisha called it down, then turned her gaze on Jacen. "How come your Padawan has such a narrow view of the Sith, Knight Solo?"

Jacen shrugged. "Familial bias."

"He's not wrong" Nelani said. "Sith crave power. A Sith Lord would never be satisfied with being part of a mid-level business' management."

"Hm."

Brisha led them into the turbolift. They rode up four floors in silence, and reached a circular chamber twenty meters across. The ceiling was fifteen meters above, a curved surface made of a thick layer of transparisteel; scratched so much over the centuries by minor meteorite impacts that it seemed frosted in places, it was still clear enough to show a glorious starfield beyond.

The chamber itself could have been an extension of Dr. Rotham's quarters. Its walls were lined with shelving, and there were narrow catwalks along the shelving at three-meter height intervals, with black metal staircases providing access between the catwalks. The shelves were thick with books, rolls of flimsi, flickering holocubes, statuettes, stone and metal busts, kinetic art, and looking out of place in a central position, the worn-out front-piece of a Mandalorian helmet, its slit-like visor pointed straight at the turbolift doors through which they'd entered. There was furniture at floor level, mostly long, dark sofas. They looked hard and uninviting, but Jacen recognized them as a modern brand whose surfaces inflated and deflated according to the movements and postures of those who sat upon them.

The room fairly reeked of Force energy - in equal parts light and dark side energy. But as strong as it was, this was not the source of all the power, all the dark influence Jacen had been detecting since their arrival. That lay below them, a long way down.

Why does dark side power always seem drawn to the depths? he wondered. Is there something intrinsic that associates it with the deep places, the gorges, the cracks? Even after decades of study, he'd never figured that out.

As Jacen stood in the turbolift doorway, taking in the sensations of Force power like a hungry man sampling scents in a restaurant, Nelani moved into the room's center, her hand on the hilt of the lightsaber at her belt. She spoke, her voice artificially, mockingly light: "So you're some sort of Sith."

Brisha shook her head and moved to settle on the nearest sofa, her back supported by one end. The sofa puffed up a little under her weight. Her posture was significantly more relaxed than it had been at the station on Lorrd. "I am not quite what you think I am. If you pay the slightest bit of attention to what you're feeling, you will have detected the light side here, as well as the dark side. In these relics, and in me."

Jacen couldn't be sure if the last statement was true. Brisha hadn't manifested any sort of Force energy beyond the energy with which any living being - other than the Yuuzhan Vong - resonated. But he could definitely detect the waves of light-side energy here, intermixed with the dark side.

"So if you're neither Sith nor Jedi, how do you define yourself?" he asked. He moved forward, torn between curiosity - part of him wanted to race among the shelves, looking at each item in turn - and caution.

"A student" Brisha said. "A student of the Force in all its aspects. And yes, I have accumulated decent knowledge of the Sith... and on utilizing their techniques without greed, without self-interest, to make things better, the same way the best Jedi use the light-side techniques."

"Then you've been corrupted" Nelani said.

Brisha gave Jacen a disappointed look. "I would have thought you a better teacher."

"I had little knowledge of the Sith ten years ago."

"You had ample knowledge of the dark side already and could use it without succumbing to its corruption."

Nelani butted in "We know we can't. The Jedi know you can only avoid corruption if you stay away from the dark side."

Brisha let out a soft chuckle. "Knight Dinn, wielders of the Force all face possible corruption, and many of them give in. It's just the form that the corruption takes from dark side to light side that differs. The corrupt dark-siders surrender to the emotions which fuel their power, to the point they can no longer think, only feel, react, and lash out. The corrupt light-siders become hidebound, so governed by regulation and custom that they can no longer think, no longer feel, no longer adapt. Such corruption ran rampant though the Jedi Order twice during its history; both times, the Jedi deliberately estranged themselves from normal people, and they were wiped out. That's how Palpatine and Vader could destroy the Jedi so easily."

Nelani made to reply, but Jacen cut her off. "She's not the first person I've heard suggest a sort of light-side ossification. But that doesn't prove that prolonged use of the dark side doesn't inevitably lead to corruption."

Brisha sighed and crossed her arms before her. "What is corruption, Knight Solo? A hard-line light-sider will say that any use of the Force for personal gain is 'corrupt'. But someone who balances altruism with self-interest in reasonable measures isn't corrupt; he or she is just behaving according to the nature of the species."

Now she, rather than the items on the shelves, had Jacen's attention. He moved over to stand before her. "Explain that."

"I'd love to. But first, some context."

Jacen heard Ben sigh. Jacen grinned, and Brisha's smile matched his. Ben was as well behaved as anyone could expect, but his impatience with adult concerns such as providing context for a complicated issue matched that of any adolescent.

"This planetoid was populated long before the miners came. A species of creature settled here. Desiccated bodies I've found in the deep places, and signs I've seen through the Force, indicate that they were akin to mynocks - silicon-based, invertebrate, subsisting on stellar radiation and silicate materials. The ones here evolved or mutated into a sapient species, over a number of millennia I can't speculate, and developed a society involving cultural hierarchies, stratification as we see in human cultures."

Jacen nodded. "And the remnant Force energies I'm feeling originated with them?"

"Yes. Their records - for they invented a form of record keeping, a sort of information-imbued sculpture, some forms of which I've learned to translate-"

"One of the tassels?"

"Yes, one your expert probably couldn't read. These creatures' records indicate that at one point a ruling class exiled a whole sub-society, sealing them within caves and caverns of this asteroid, cutting them off from the stellar energies that sustained them. They lived there, slowly dying of starvation, sustaining themselves poorly off the mineral content of the stones within the asteroid. And it was there that one of their number learned to detect, and then manipulate, the Force. That one eventually became leader of the other exiles, then led them to break out of the asteroid interior and conquer the others."

"So why aren't all mynocks now Force-wielding star travelers ruling the galaxy?" Nelani asked.

Brisha shrugged. "I can only guess. In their writing, there's a reference for the Home, this asteroid, plus mentions of the Return, suggesting that they could not spawn - or divide, as the mynocks do - anywhere but here. If that's true, then they couldn't spread too far through the galaxy, and a fatal contagion or similar disaster here could wipe out the entire species within a matter of years. The point, though, is that for quite a while they were a species led by a caste of Force-users, who eventually became a caste of dark side Force-users. They learned techniques related to their mynock natures, such as the ability to leech energy from living beings, including their own kind, at great distances, and associated skills with communicating instantaneously at those distances, a phenomenon the Jedi sometimes experience. They wielded tremendous amounts of dark side energy, and a lot of that energy was eventually radiated into the cavern system that had been their home during the exile, and which had subsequently become a sacred place to them.

"Eventually they died out" she continued, "and centuries or millennia later, an operation settled here to mine this asteroid belt. And it wouldn't have begun mining underneath the directors' habitat, except someone discovered the caverns and all the metal-bearing ore lodes that had been denuded by the mynocks eating all the silicon-based stone out from around them."

"I can guess some of the rest" Jacen said.

"Go ahead."

"Prolonged exposure of the miners to a well of dark side energy led to weird incidents. People seeing things, Force-sensitives manifesting odd abilities. Perhaps channeling your mynocks, behaving like them, and being considered insane."

"Very good." Brisha nodded. "The director of that time hushed up the reports, closed down that mine - the rest of the operation in these asteroids was unaffected - and kept things tightly under wraps. He, too, was a Force-sensitive and had been experiencing things, experimenting, acquiring and testing new powers. When this asteroid belt eventually became less profitable as a mining operation, he closed it down, carefully mismanaged things so that the habitat would be left here and forgotten... and then, leaving it behind, he went out into the galaxy, finding the Sith, apprenticing himself, eventually becoming the Sith Master Darth Vectivus."

"Never heard of him" Jacen said.

Brisha had an amused smile. "He'd heard of you. Darth Vectivus passed into the Force twenty years ago."

Nelani sighed with evident relief. "Now we know you're lying."

"Oh?"

"The Jedi would have found out about him. We search everywhere for Force-sensitives. A Sith Master would have left enough evidence of their evil to find it."

"... or?"

Jacen nudged his apprentice. "This one's yours."

"What?"

"How could a Sith Master exist and not leave enough evidence of their evil?"

"I don't know. Maybe they died before they started to do really bad things?"

Brisha nodded approvingly. "Precisely. Darth Vectivus' evil deeds were no worse than any ordinary sentient's. He didn't attempt to conquer the galaxy, try to wipe out the population of a star system, or start an all-out war with the Jedi. He just existed, learned, enjoyed his life, and died of old age, surrounded by family and friends."

Nelani gave her a skeptical look. "How come his family left all of Vectivus' treasures in this place with you, if he died only twenty years ago?"

Another amused smile. "Who says they did?"

"You killed them and took this place for yourself?"

"Is that a question or an accusation?"

"It is a fair question" Jacen pointed out. "The collection on display here is far too extensive and valuable for anyone to have accumulated it in the past couple of decades."

"Or in the past couple of centuries."

"Indeed, or in the past couple of centuries."

"Most of it also wasn't Darth Vectivus', but his own master's."

"Is this important?" Ben asked, and Brisha smiled at him.

"Not too important, but Knight Dinn is anxious to find a valid pretext to stop further conversation between your master and me, which is why she's creating possibilities for self-incrimination."

"There are very good reasons to be worried about why you wanted to bring Jacen here" Nelani said quietly.

"Would you feel easier if I offered you refreshments?"

"I think you're aware this would require an unreasonable level of trust in someone who has admitted to having studied Sith teachings" Jacen said, earning a small grateful smile from Nelani and a grin from Ben.

"A shame."

Brisha turned her head away from the three Jedi. Jacen followed her gaze, and was surprised to see a worn, rusty red bipedal droid standing close to the turbolift's exit. The droid didn't seem all that interested in the visitors. It addressed Brisha, its red eyes lighting up in cadence with its speech.

"Expletive: Damn it, Master! I am not a waiter droid!"

"A pleasure to see you too, HK. Knight Solo, Knight Dinn, Padawan Skywalker, meet HK-47, my trusty old protocol droid."

"Polite greeting: it is a pleasure to make the acquaintance of meatbags of such great importance as yours."

"He's a protocol droid?"

"Explanation: it's just that you have all these squishy parts, Padawan Skywalker. I still don't understand how my master hasn't been driven insane after all this time. Perhaps I should take advantage of the availability of three additional meatbags to conduct a comparative psychiatric evaluation."

"Did you just call your master a meatbag too?"

"He always does. I have grown rather fond of it."

"And nothing facilitates conversation like monikers and casual insults" Nelani mumbled.

"Satisfaction: I am glad you approve, Knight Dinn."

"As if this whole situation needed to get even creepier."

"Can we get back to Darth Vectivus?" Jacen said, and Brisha nodded. "From what you said, he was a businessman who didn't let his ethics get in the way of acquiring what he wanted. How did he keep from being ruled, and ruined, by greed when he had so few compunctions already?"

"I did describe the man as manipulative, and he certainly followed his desires in acquiring this habitat for himself unconventionally, but you would be mistaken in believing the man was corrupt when he began his Sith training. His ethics may have been rather unconventional, but he had developed a strong ethical code before he ever felt any pull from the dark side. He was an adult, a hardheaded businessman with a keenly balanced sense of both profit and fairness, and when temptation whispered in his ear he could ignore it as easily as he could ignore the importune warnings of equally destructive soft-heartedness." She glanced at Nelani as she spoke those last few words, then returned her attention to Jacen. "The Sith who were famous for being bad, Knight Solo, were the way they were because they were badly damaged men or women to start with. Not because they were Sith. Usually, they were weak, or deluded, or greedy to begin with. Like your grandfather. I knew him when he was about Padawan Skywalker's age, you know."

"In the same way you know my mother?"

"Oh, no. I met him personally, although he did not pay much attention to me and probably would barely have remembered meeting me. I provided a few answers about a deviant Force tradition his master, Knight Kenobi, needed for one of their missions, and then we went our separate ways."

"You look a bit too young for the person of eighty years you'd have to be."

"Might I not know some Force techniques that would allow an old woman to keep a youthful body? Oh yes, I knew your grandfather and his Jedi master, and I did not look all that different when I met with them."

Jacen shook his head. "How could I know? I don't know anything about you."

"You wouldn’t. My name wouldn’t tell you anything about me; between the Jedi, the Emperor and the Yuuzhan Vong, I have known more than my fair share of purges. Sticking to my birth name would have been a fatal mistake."

"And so you're implying that you didn't lure us here to kill us."

"Correct."

"And it wasn't because you're lonely, or just wanted to show the place off."

Brisha's smile turned genuine again. "No."

"Then why?"

"Because you've known this galaxy has been headed for a full-blown civil war ever since you failed to kill Thrackan Sal-Solo on Centerpoint station, and that it won't be stopped from happening by a Jedi."

"So you are trying to make Jacen fall to the dark side." Nelani's lightsaber flew to her hand, staying unlit, and she shifted to a combative stance, unconsciously imitated in that by Ben. Jacen and Brisha, however, kept their positions.

"Query: Master, is it time to engage aggressive negotiation protocols?"

Brisha smiled, a predator's smile. And Nelani realized that she and Ben were trapped between what was actually a battle-scarred droid and a dark side adept of unknown power, capable of mental manipulation. And the worst part was, she didn't know whether Jacen was going to fight or on which side...

'v'​

 

'v'
​

Nelani had one source of comfort: Ben shared her sense of urgency. The teenager had spontaneously assumed a guarded stance that would allow him to keep an eye both on Brisha and on her droid, his own unlit saber in hand.

"Jacen, I really think we should leave."

"I'm not done here" the young man replied brusquely.

"She's trying to keep you pinned down here long enough to explain to you she wants to turn you into a Sith, even if that means killing us" Nelani protested.

"Brisha knows I would fight her if she attacked either of you, and I'm pretty certain she doesn't want that. She invested far too much time and effort to bring me here."

"Because she wants to turn you to the dark side!"

"I'd thought you were paying a bit more attention than that, Knight Dinn" Brisha said mockingly. "But you are correct in one thing: I have you pinned down here, and both you and Padawan Solo could die if I chose to take you out."

"I wouldn't let you kill them" Jacen said calmly.

"I wouldn't have to. I am a Force-user of passable skill and experience myself, more than capable of curtailing your chances at shielding the pair of them constantly, and HK-47 could make short work of both your companions given a few opportunities to deal with them."

"But you don't want that to happen."

"I don't."

"Then we seem to have reached an impasse."

"Only if neither your companions nor I are willing to give ground."

"Is this seriously happening?" Ben said, panic creeping in his voice. "Brisha is just as bad as Dad feared. She's trying to turn you away from the Jedi - maybe even into a Sith; on top of that, she admits she's trapped us, like we said she would try to, she's even threatening to kill us, and you're still not going to lift a finger against her unless she attacks?"

The predatory smile on Brisha's face turned into one of amusement. "Your Padawan learner is perceptive."

"You're not denying any of what Ben said" Jacen remarked.

"Because he is correct with regards to most of his points. I am very dangerous. I have trapped you as you'd all anticipated. You still aren't about to lift a finger against me. I was not, however, threatening to kill him, nor Knight Dinn, but making a few statements of fact about the likely outcome should I opt for a fight to the death erupt here and now, and about who would be dealing the lethal blows."

"Your droid."

"My droid. If HK stays and a fight breaks out, its logical progression leaves you engaged against the both of us and unwilling to listen to anything else I might say. If he leaves, however, I am alone against an opponent of considerable skill and supported by two very adequate fighters. I would be deliberately placing myself at a disadvantage against two Jedi who have already decided I should be arrested, and a third who may yet arrive at the same decision."

"Like you're ever going to tell your droid to go away" Nelani said sarcastically.

"As a matter of fact, this is exactly what I'm going to do." Brisha's head turned to the droid standing at the entrance. "HK, go station yourself down at the gallery lodge, and do not come back until I call for you."

"Indignant protest: Master, you are depriving me of a rare opportunity for entertainment!"

"Existence, even as a droid, is full of disappointments. Now go."

The rust-colored droid entered the turbolift, leaving behind a tense Ben and a surprised Nelani.

"You actually sent him off?"

"You weren't willing to break the impasse. I was."

"You still shouldn't listen to what she has to say, Jacen" Ben insisted. "We've got to arrest her and bring her back with us."

"Before we decide anything, I want to hear what else Brisha has to deny about what you accused her of."

"Padawan Skywalker" Brisha said patiently, "did you pay attention to what I said about the upcoming civil war?"

"We don't know that there's going to be a civil war."

"Your master knows. Ask him. He has foreseen what will happen should the Jedi stand alone with the Galactic Alliance in trying to defy the current separatist crisis."

Ben turned to Jacen. "Did you actually see that?"

Jacen sighed heavily. "I knew with certainty there would be a civil war if Thrackan did not die on Centerpoint when we infiltrated the station. Whether he lived or died was a shatterpoint. His survival has locked the future in a way which will have made a war inevitable."

"You would have killed him" Brisha said matter-of-factly.

"I didn't get the chance."

"It was already too late when you realized."

"It was."

Both Ben and Nelani looked at Jacen in horror.

"I can't believe this" the young Knight said. "You were going to kill a man because of visions of what he might do?"

"I didn't say Thrackan would be the one to plunge the galaxy into civil war; that's not why I was going to do it."

"Jacen, you know what dad says about the future. It's always in motion."

"It is in motion. But sometimes, all possible futures that can happen if one particular event has a specific outcome result in the same type of tragedy happening at some point. I didn't see in which particular way the civil war will start, or when, or who will fire the first shot - it could be anyone, any way, at any time. But it will happen, one way or another. That much the Force has shown me, and I was too shaken by what I saw I needed to do to act in time."

"You did not choose and act, and the choice was taken from you."

Jacen's head swiveled back towards Brisha.

"You didn't choose this formulation at random."

"I'm pretty certain you heard similar phrasing from my old student at one point or another during the time you spent under her tutelage. It was one of the lessons which left the deepest impressions on her. Do, or do not. There is no such thing as 'try'. Choose, and act."

"Who is she talking about now?" Nelani asked Jacen, a slight tremor in her voice.

"It doesn't matter", Jacen replied.

Brisha shook her head negatively. "I think it does, and I will give you a name. Vergere was the one she used at the beginning of your Sith training, was it not?"

"Vergere was training me to survive" Jacen said. He thought of his onetime mentor, the diminutive bird-like alien who'd been born in this galaxy but had lived for years among the Yuuzhan Vong, accompanying them back when they swept into the galaxy on their mission of conquest and destruction.

"Yes" Brisha said. "To survive. The Jedi of her time trained themselves for self-sacrifice, for union with the Force, and they could afford to be suicidal, because there were so many of them. She didn't learn the lessons she taught you from the Jedi of the old order, before she went into exile among the Far Outsiders. The Sith, however, have always trained to survive."

It was Ben who was the first to put the pieces together. "That's what the real trap is" he stated definitively. "You want to turn Jacen into a Sith."

Brisha smiled with evident satisfaction. "Like I said earlier, Padawan, you are perceptive. I led Jacen here to try and convince him to adopt the ways of the Sith."

"But not us."

"No, not you. Neither of you are ready to follow that path. It would only lead to your self-destruction."

"And I'm sure you'll enjoy explaining to the Jedi Council why you want to lead Jacen to his own destruction" Nelani said harshly, and her lightsaber snap-hissed to life.

Jacen frowned, but Brisha only smiled at the younger woman. "You're too good a girl and too doctrinal a Jedi to attack me when I have yet to give you a pretext to use force."

"You've just admitted to being a Sith, that's all the reason I need to strike you if you resist arrest."

"I certainly haven't admitted to that. I am not Sith, nor am I Jedi."

"What are you, then?" Ben asked, his own unlit saber pointed in her direction.

"I am Revan. That is enough."

Both Nelani and Ben were left nonplussed by that admission, but not Jacen, who could recall one surviving holoimage of an ill-shaven, scarred face under a Jedi hood.

"That could only be your assumed name. By what accounts survived the purges, Revan was a human male who lived between thirty-seven and forty centuries ago."

"I have been a man in my earlier incarnations" Revan said placidly. "Gender and species tend to lose significance for the definition of one's identity after enough time has passed; so do labels like 'Sith' or 'Jedi'."

"It doesn't really matter what you call yourself or who you're pretending to be" Nelani said with regained determination. "Just wanting to turn a Jedi into a Sith is reason enough to arrest you, and that's what we're going to do."

Jacen's eyes turned to his cousin, who nodded grimly. "Nelani's right. We've got to arrest her."

"I have, indeed, given you sufficient motive to justify arresting me, and might even consent to being arrested should I be given sufficient motivation" Revan stated, catching the three Jedi off-guard once again. "But before the three of you commit to such a course of action, I feel compelled to ask you: have you considered all the possible ramifications? Is arresting me truly the wise choice? Or is it only a way to assuage your own fears at the price of something far greater than yourselves?"

"You need to shut up" Nelani hissed. But Jacen shook his head, frowning. He had already been casting his senses out like a net, sampling both present and future.

The Jedi Knight closed his eyes. Pathways led in all directions, but in each of them one of three of the people present fell dying, Ben being the only one spared in all of the visions. Jacen, burnt and charred by Force lightning. Revan, Nelani's lightsaber cutting her in half. Nelani, her heart speared by Jacen's lightsaber. Jacen, stabbed from behind by Ben, the boy's shocked features making it clear that he had never intended to strike his cousin down. Revan, swept into a marble wall by Jacen's control of the Force, her skull shattered-

Jacen shut his eyes against the parade of tragedy. He opened them to view reality. "She's right, at least in that we need to consider the immediate consequences of our actions. I can't see a path that doesn't lead to death if we attempt to arrest her right now. Let us revise our circumstances for a moment or two, and see what comes out of the changes."

"Jacen, Brisha, or Revan, whoever she is, she's admitted she wants to turn you to the Dark Side" Nelani said urgently. "You can't just keep listening to her as she keeps lying to you."

"She isn't quite correct" Revan calmly countered. "Listen well. Every question I ask is a trick, yet everything I tell you is a truth. You will find no lie in me. Even should you believe my ultimate aims to be nefarious, you may rest your faith on this."

Jacen frowned at these words, the twisted echo of a statement made by the teacher whom, according to Revan, had once started him on the path of the Sith. "Regardless of whether that statement is truthful, there is one thing for certain. You did know Vergere."

"And we now know Vergere misled us" Nelani said sternly. "We've heard more than enough. We need to arrest her."

The young man shook his head. "Give me one more moment to think."

'v'​