Dez knew the quiet on the station was fragile, that he was needed to patrol and preserve the calm. Yet he had to remain on the Vessel for a few moments, to try to make some sense of what Cohmac Vitus was telling him. He asked, “What do you mean, you were transported?”

Cohmac shook his head. “I do not mean that my literal location in space changed. But my consciousness was not here. I was someplace dark and terrifying. Staring down into a terrible abyss. My soul ached with a kind of anguish that could have torn it in two. Why, I cannot say. But the pain was very real.”

Dez considered this. “You were investigating the ancient artifacts at the time, weren’t you?”

Cohmac nodded. “Throughout the galaxy, there have been legends of objects imbued with the dark side. Of amulets and crystals and even glaciers that contained as much malevolence as any living creature. Some said that the most powerful Sith of old were able to do that—to infuse their own darkness into the objects around them.”

“Do you think the artifacts could be marked by the dark side in the same way?” Dez asked.

“Such things are generally no more than legend,” Cohmac said cautiously, “but all legend is rooted somewhere in truth. At least one dark side artifact is known to have existed. So we cannot discount the possibility.”

“If it’s not the idols,” Dez reasoned, “then the darkness has to be emanating from the plants aboard the station.”

Cohmac made a scoffing sound. “No. I’ve encountered trees deep in the dark side before; I know what it feels like. The sensations can be powerful, but this was…focused. Targeted, even. There was intelligence behind it.”

Dez frowned. “Intelligence? Without a sentient being behind it?”

“It sounds odd,” Cohmac admitted, but he was deep in thought. “But it is possible, especially if—”

“If what?”

Slowly Cohmac said, “If the idols serve as a kind of…warning beacon. If they communicate an intelligent message, namely, that we must stay away from the darkness enclosed within them.”

“At the moment, we’re very much not staying away from them,” Dez pointed out. “What do we do?”

“Nothing. We need someplace for everyone to shelter while the hyperspace lanes are closed. This is the only possibility within the system.” Cohmac breathed out heavily, rubbing his temples.

Dez took this in. “So you’re saying the dark side is present—”

“And we are trapped here with it,” Cohmac finished.

What can I do? That was the question Master Jora had trained Dez to think of first. In this case, however, warnings or no warnings, there wasn’t much at all he could do about a vague threat of the dark side’s presence. If that darkness made itself manifest, then he’d act. Until then, he’d focus on the tangible aspects of their mission.

The memory of Master Jora made Dez realize what should come next. “Take it easy for a few minutes,” he said to Cohmac, who inclined his head in concession. “I’ve got to find Reath.”

Reath had spent the majority of his Padawan training immersed in the Archives, but he’d been on rescue missions before. Once he’d helped clear passengers from a badly malfunctioning transport in the Brield system. Another time, he had joined a Jedi team assisting in evacuations from a burning tower in Coruscant itself. The second, in particular, had been difficult, even death-defying. He didn’t lack experience.

However, he’d never seen—and was convinced he would never see—any group of people so ungrateful for being rescued as the station refugees were. Even many days into their stay on the Amaxine station, they remained as obstreperous and unpleasant as ever.

“First you park us next to Mizi scum!” snarled the Orincan captain. “Then you tell us we have to turn over all our food! Who do you think you are?”

A human in a satin-and-fur cloak stroked his goatee as he proclaimed, “Obviously our passengers paid in advance for the deluxe menu, prepared by our famed chefs with premium ingredients, so we couldn’t think of depriving them of what they rightfully purchased.”

“None of you knows how to share!” retorted Nan, who stood in the middle of them with her arms crossed against her chest. Thanks to her stubborn chin and her diminutive height, she appeared more like a little girl than the young woman she was. The elderly Hague, behind her, kept his hand firmly on her shoulder. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?”

The Mizi captain looked down his long nose at her. “No.”

“Everyone needs to stay calm,” Reath said for what felt like the eightieth time. He stood amid a huddle of most of the passengers, datapad in hand, trying not to show his irritation. (Probably that was why Master Cohmac had stuck him with this task. It was a test of patience.) “We’re all in this together, and we don’t know for how long. We could get the signal to leave in an hour—or in fifteen months. If you’re wasteful or selfish now, there’s every chance you’re going to regret it, severely.”

Silence. They didn’t look entirely convinced, Reath thought, but at least they’d stopped arguing for a second.

“Howdy.” Leox Gyasi strolled out of the Vessel’s airlock door, hands in his pockets, his multicolored beads swaying with each step. “Man, oh, man. Gorgeous in here, ain’t it? Spectacular. Like an island getaway, except instead of an ocean we’ve got open space.”

Some of the refugees exchanged glances. This seemed to be a standard reaction to meeting Captain Gyasi.

“Sure could be stranded a lot of worse places than this,” Leox mused as he strolled beneath a thick canopy of leaves. He sniffed a yellow flower and grinned. “Coulda been stuck on a desert planet. Or a volcanic one. Or just dead space, alone, sitting around wondering if we’d run out of air before we could ever get away.”

Reath reflexively took a deep breath. He wasn’t the only one who did.

Leox leaned against a tree, mellow and easy. “See, we can look at this one of two ways. One, we didn’t get where we wanted to go as fast as we’d like. That’s unlucky. Not really that bad in the scheme of things, but unlucky. Or two, while hundreds or thousands of people died in a terrible disaster, we were delivered to safety—hell, not just safety, but someplace beautiful. That’s lucky as all get out, don’t you think?”

A few people nodded. Nan didn’t, but Reath caught the shadow of a smile on her face. Even the Orincans began to shuffle a bit on their feet as they relaxed their usual battle stances.

“So instead of looking at our little bit of unlucky, I say let’s celebrate the huge amounts of good luck we’ve had,” Leox said. “We’re coming at this from a place of strength. Why not act like it?”

The luxury ship captain paused only briefly before saying, “Honestly, most of our meals could be comfortably halved and still provide the nutrition of a meal. We do have some to share.”

Not to be outdone, the Mizi captain chimed in with, “As it happens, we’re transporting a shipment of repair parts. Some of them may be of use to those who took damage in hyperspace. Our insurance will cover the losses to our client.”

The Orincan captain grunted, which wasn’t exactly a friendly sound but suggested she and her people would cooperate.

After that, Reath was able to put together an overall manifest of food and other meaningful supplies fairly quickly. At the end, as everyone strolled away, he turned to Leox, who was still leaning against the tree. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, kiddo. Sometimes we all need a reminder to focus on the good things in life.”

Even a few days before, Reath would’ve been reluctant to believe that he could learn anything (besides basic ship mechanics) from a person like Leox Gyasi. He was glad to have discovered differently.

As Leox continued his meditative stroll through the greenery, Reath was left alone for the first time since the abortive looting of the Amaxine station. It was an unwelcome solitude. If he didn’t have to concentrate on an immediate issue, his mind had time to wander back to the moment he’d faced off with Nan’s would-be kidnapper—

The sound of the lightsaber—the heavy thud of the severed limb on the floor—

Reath was startled out of his reverie by rustling in the ferns, which parted to reveal Dez Rydan stepping through. Dez smiled, but Reath knew why he was there even before Dez said, “How are you feeling?”

“Shaken,” Reath said. “Not…guilty, exactly, but not not guilty, either, if that makes sense. I just—I just keep thinking about that moment, and wondering if I could’ve done something differently so that man would still have his arm.”

Dez sat cross-legged on a patch of soil. An 8-T droid laboring nearby scanned him swiftly, must’ve determined he posed no risk to any roots, and kept on working. “Probably there was something else you could’ve done,” he said. Reath felt it like a lash. But Dez kept speaking. “You don’t know what that would’ve been. Neither do I. In that moment, did you feel like that was necessary in order to rescue Nan?”

“Yes. Otherwise I’d never have done it.”

“You know,” Dez said, “every couple of years or so, an apprentice gets into trouble for being too aggressive. Using a lightsaber instead of words, resorting to action when diplomacy or negotiation would’ve better resolved the situation. You wouldn’t be brought up on that kind of review, Reath. It was a dangerous moment. The threat was clear. Your response was proportionate to the risk to Nan.”

It helped a little to hear Dez say that. But not that much. “I keep thinking about it—replaying it over and over in my head, trying to think of a different way it could have ended.”

“Good. It takes strength to question your own actions. Just don’t dwell on the past to the point of forgetting the present.”

Reath managed a crooked smile. “You’re good at this.”

“Tell Master Jora that sometime.” Dez grinned back. “She won’t believe it.”

Already Reath’s spirits had improved. The weight of what he had done would linger, but only in the ways that would help him learn from the experience. Still, he couldn’t stop wondering: “That guy—the one I—how is he?”

Dez replied, “Oh, he’ll live. Unless Orla Jareni finishes him off.”

“It’s a clean severing—right at the joint, so you can move to a prosthetic quickly—and the wound was instantly cauterized,” Orla said as she saw the painkillers finally taking full effect on the red-scarved man. “You don’t have to worry about infection.”

“Infection’s not what I’m worried about! I’ve lost my arm!” the man bellowed. Full consciousness had returned, with fury not far behind. “You Jedi are responsible for this—”

“Just as you are responsible for the attempted abduction of a young woman.” Orla got to her feet, taking care with the small confines of the Vessel’s utility bay and making no effort to disguise the contempt in her voice. “You were warned to stop. You could have stopped. But you chose not to, because you thought a Jedi Padawan wouldn’t be able to prevent you from stealing the girl. You’re reaping the consequences of being very, very wrong about that.”

The man knew he was guilty, obviously, but he was unwilling to let go of what he considered the righteousness of his wrath. “Don’t get all high-and-mighty with me. Don’t the Jedi abduct children, too?”

It took all Orla’s training to cast that flash of anger aside. “Families willingly give their Force-sensitive children to the temples, so that they can be trained in the ways of the Jedi. It’s their free choice.” She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. It only partly worked. “For future reference, when a young girl’s screaming for you to let her go? She gets a free choice, too. If you ignore that, then you can’t complain about the results. Now, assemble your crew and get your ship away from this station within the hour, or we’ll do that for you.”

The red-scarved man blanched. “You’d cut us off from air? From food?”

“You’ve surely recirculated enough air by now to breathe for a few weeks. We won’t let you starve. But we also won’t allow kidnappers to roam freely.” Orla snapped the medpac shut. “In other words, get out.”

Once the criminal vessel had detached itself from the station, and an orderly division of goods was underway, Cohmac Vitus felt he could spare a few minutes to center himself.

The ominous darkness aboard the station continued to trouble him—but in order to explore that more fully, he needed his strength in the Force. Meditation was a necessary prelude to action.

Carefully he noted the positions of every other person assigned to the Vessel—Reath and Dez on the station with Leox, Orla in the mess, Affie resting in her bunk, Geode apparently in charge of the bridge—before seeking a place of quiet and privacy. He found it in the very back of the ship, in front of a sealed-off cargo container. (Interesting that the Vessel crew would apologize so often for the smallness of their makeshift quarters while still reserving so much space for cargo they hadn’t even mentioned.) Cohmac laid down his heavy blanket, folded into a kind of meditation mat, then knelt on it.

I behold the world within myself, he thought. I behold the world without myself.

The mantra had helped soothe him for many years; he liked the balance of it. But it had become too literal, now, to serve as a mantra.

I am a Jedi. I have always been one. It is my identity, one I have never sought to change.

But the Order does not answer the questions that linger within me. The questions only grow over time.

Darkness abides upon this station. It is…too familiar to me now. But the shape it takes here is different and unsettling. Consciousness without a corporeal being. What created this? How did the dark side take form in this place?

How does the dark side take form anywhere? Sometimes I think we, the Jedi, must be somehow to blame. We who refuse to look at the Force in full, to examine the darkness as well as the light. If the dark side were not so alien to them, Cohmac suspected, they would more readily understand the nature of the idols.

How can we split the Force in two? How can we justify such an act of violence—and it is violence, such a dividing, even the darkness divided from the light.

Affie gave Leox all the credit for getting their fellow refugees to calm down. But she had to admit, the Jedi were quick to give everyone a common goal—namely penetrating the lower rings of the station. That goal happened to neatly match her own.

They’d accepted her report on the upper rings easily enough, which was fine because her report was true. It was not, however, the whole truth. Affie was keeping the smugglers’ code, and her thoughts about it, to herself for the time being.

It makes zero sense for this to be a regular Byne Guild portal, she reasoned as she prepared to head down to the lower rings with the rest of the volunteers: Reath, Nan, Dez, and a long-limbed Mizi who, like all Mizi, preferred to be nameless to strangers. It’s out of the way, and it doesn’t have any obvious advantages. But what if there’s a secret society within the Guild, one that’s operating behind Scover’s back? They could be skimming off the top, stealing small amounts of cargo or money, falsifying records to hide it from management. The preprogrammed location could’ve been downloaded from another ship, one that’s in on it.

She didn’t have to ask whether Leox was in on it; he would never.

As angry as that theory made Affie, it was by far the most plausible she’d come up with. Scover wouldn’t hide something like this from her, so somebody had to be hiding things from Scover.

Her chest swelled with pride as she imagined finding the proof, presenting it to Scover, hearing her say, Well done, Daughter—

“All right,” said Dez Rydan, bringing her back to the present. The scouting party stood around him near the entrance to the lower ring. They all wore their own versions of utility gear, except for the Jedi, whose workaday garb seemed good for all occasions. “We can’t get any specific readings on what might be down there—only that it’s not solid metal. If it’s storage, there may be items of use to us…which will be equally shared among the entire group. As long as everyone understands that, and accepts the risks, let’s get started.”

“Should you do this?” Reath quietly asked Nan, who barely came up to the Mizi’s waist.

“I’m fine,” Nan retorted. She showed no signs of trauma from the kidnapping attempt; Affie wasn’t sure she could be equally cool under those circumstances. “Besides…Hague can’t climb. One of us should be here. So it’s got to be me.”

“You take good care of him,” Reath said.

Nan smiled. “He returns the favor.”

Enough Flirtation Theater. Affie refocused her attention on the tunnels that led to the lower rings.

Unlike all the other tunnels, these showed signs of damage from their long years of disuse. While the outer structure remained intact, vines and roots from the arboretum had grown down through them, turning what had been clear passageways into thick, thorny mazes deep in shadow. It wasn’t anything Affie couldn’t have explored on her own; she’d have preferred it that way, in case more of the smugglers’ code was written down there. However, the twisty tunnels were ominous enough that she could see the upside of having company along for the trip.

Dez took the lead, lowering himself through the tunnel. Its gravity was on the fritz, which meant the pull was coming from the rings below. Luckily the craggy roots served as a makeshift ladder. Affie gripped on tightly as she lowered herself down.

For a few seconds, she was surrounded by both tree roots and a vast field of stars—a contrast that delighted her in its strangeness. No time to linger and enjoy it, though: the Mizi above her was in a hurry to descend, so much so that he was cutting away vines to clear his path even farther.

She heard the beeps and whines of a droid. Glancing upward, she saw an 8-T scooting along, its treads gripping the outer wall of the tunnel. Huh, she thought, those things are thorough.

A snap echoed through the tunnel, and Reath made a sound of discomfort. Peering down, Affie could see that his foot had gone straight through a slender root. No big deal.

Or so Affie thought, until the 8-T whirred past her toward Reath, then hit him with an electric shock.

“Ow!” Reath shook his hand as though it stung. “What the—”

The Mizi yelped in pain. Affie looked up to see another 8-T extending pincers toward the Mizi, snapping at his fingers. Farther up the tunnel, at least three more 8-Ts were descending toward them.

She could hardly believe it, but there was no other explanation. “We’re being attacked!”