Dalvin's ship was a crude, bulbous craft covered in a chaotically assembled mess of sensors, guns, and many apparatuses Ren could not identify in the least. As Ren approached it, he felt a sense of mangled genius, much like what he felt from Dalvin himself. Dalvin was waiting for him at the ramp that led down onto the planet's surface. Several remotes floated behind him and attached to them were various pieces of mandalorian armor, such as the boots, the gloves, the arms, and one fairly large remote was suspending the chest plate by little robotic arms. Even a rifle was being suspended in the air by two remotes.

"It's a good idea," Dalvin said. "I'm surprised I didn't think of it myself."

"That's alright. You thought of everything else." Ren tapped the special amplifier Dalvin had attached to his wrist computer. "I assume you used a powerful explosive."

Dalvin's one eyebrow frowned slightly. "I chose something that wouldn't accidently go off in a fire fight, but still strong enough to incinerate your body in one shot. Corodite. Two milliliters divided into three small chambers in the circuitry."

"That would probably do it," said Ren.

"How long have you known?"

"I suspected from the instant you gave me this, but after I saw more of how you think, I became certain you would have taken precautions. You were worried about me being possessed from the beginning."

"Yes, the possibility occurred to me before we entered the portal. There was also the fact that I knew very little about you other than that you were a dangerous young man who wielded the dark side of the Force."

"Good thinking," said Ren. "Unfortunately, if I know then Kalethian knows. I'm not sure how that will play out if possession is his ultimate goal."

Dalvin gave him a dark smile. "Perhaps we could conduct an experiment? I could set it off right now and we could see what Satral's god does about it."

Ren chuckled. "Does it bother you that we're all dancing to the rhythm of a being we can't see?"

"A little, but I find mitigation in that fact that no matter how deep and subtle Kalethian's powers are, I am more intelligent than he."

Ren chuckled again. He grabbed the breastplate and slipped it over his simple robes. "I hope you live, Dalvin. You're one of the only three friends I have in the whole universe."

Dalvin stared at him for a moment, then said: "I could make the exact same statement of you."

Just for an instant, Ren's senses leaped through the impossible speed of Dalvin's mind and saw into him. There was terrible loneliness there, accompanied by rage. Unlike Neeka and Cathock, Dalvin could make no peace with what he was. The droid components of his brain were endless receptacles for knowledge – all knowledge. He could call up with perfect crystal clarity every detail of every microsecond of his life and he could process all of that information collectively, along with millions upon millions of other pieces of data, in less than the time span it took a normal person to perceive what color something was that they were looking at. Dalvin had mental ability beyond reason, but he could never turn it off – never stifle the endless noise of information.

Ren slipped on the leggings, hiding his lightsaber in a small groove Dalvin had conveniently thought to provide. Then he slipped on the bracers, the boots, and the gloves in silence as he vaguely imagined what it would be like to have a computerized mind. The thoughts were troubling, yet thrilling. Still, Ren didn't have a great deal of time to think about anything other than the coming onslaught. He retrieved the three light sabers he had taken from the twins and held them out to Dalvin. "Can you launch these into the air in my general direction if I ask?"

"I could land them on your individual toes," said Dalvin, reaching out and taking the weapons and tucking them into his coat. "They'll be ready if you need them."

"Thank you," said Ren. He continued to appreciate Dalvin's competence in many areas. He went back to fastening the clamps on his armor.

"Just a few more minutes now," said Dalvin. He seemed oddly relaxed. "They're less than five kilometers away and closing."

"I know," said Ren, vaguely sensing the enemy. "Darth Sarak is with them."

"Do you think he'll be able to sense you on the battlefield?"

"I don't know – possibly if we get close enough." Ren slipped the mandalorian helmet on over his face. He immediately saw the world through a bronze tinge.

"That armor isn't going to protect you from much, but it shouldn't interfere with your command over the Force at all. I did include a prototype of a modified body-shield generator I've been working on. It has seven charges, each one lasting three hundred seconds. I don't know how well it will stand up to light sabers, but you should be able to take at least four direct hits from a blaster rifle per charge without the slightest bit of damage to your body."

"Thank you, Dalvin," said Ren.

"Take care, Ren. Try to stay alive if you can."

"You too."

Ren turned and walked back toward the mandalorian ship. Outside of the craft, Cathock was standing in front of perhaps thirty armed soldiers, shouting instructions on how to fight Sith: "If you see a light saber that doesn't belong to one of ours, concentrate all your fire on it. They can only deflect a few shots at once."

Ren approached his alien friend from behind and Cathock whirled around and glared. "Why aren't you in formation, sold—Ren?"

Ren was barely surprised that Cathock's preternatural senses could identify him through a suit of armor. Ren stiffened and saluted, saying: "Private Asango reporting for duty, sir."

Cathock's mouth twitched into a small, knowing smile. It had taken him only a second to figure out Ren's plan. "You should probably stay close to me then. Between the two of us, we can hopefully do a lot to shave down their numbers. Hell, maybe we can even take that bastard Sarak down."

Ren doubted the latter possibility but he nodded and fell into front rank with the mandalorian soldiers. No one questioned him, or even paid him much attention. As Ren had noted many times, Mandalorians were wonderfully focused and disciplined.

Neeka's voice came rather suddenly through Cathock's wrist computer. "I'm in the cockpit and the ship's weapon's are fully operational."

"As are mine," Dalvin's voice said.

"Ours as well, sir," said a voice Ren didn't recognize, but he assumed to be someone on board the mandalorian vessel.

"As soon as they're within range, fire at your own discretions," said Cathock. "Stay low for now, but after the battle starts take to the air when you feel it's appropriate."

"Yes, sir," said the mandalorian voice.

Neeka's voice came in with a touch of playful sarcasm as she said: "Yes, uh, sir."

Ren's focs slipped away from his surroundings as he saw, within his mind's eye, the mass of soldiers and hover tanks and cannon chariots coming their way. Behind them all was a massive black ship – bigger than all three vessels in Ren's camp combined – floating just over the mossy ground behind the army. Darth Sarak was at the center of this army, standing on a hovering black platform along with a tall and muscular gray-skinned Iridonian dressed in Sith robes. Walking on either side of this platform were eight others wearing Sith garb and carrying light sabers, five of whom were human, one of whom was a Twi'lek, and two of whom looked to be of a strange, brown, six-armed arachnid-like species Ren didn't recognize. Each of these strange aliens was carrying four light-sabers.

"We're in trouble," Ren whispered, as if to no one.

"Yes we are," Dalvin's voice whispered back through the sound system in the helmet. "Well, we might as well say hello."

Ren suddenly saw a flash of brilliant yellow light behind the hills that was nearly blinding accompanying a horribly loud tearing sound. He gazed again with his mind's eye instinctively and saw at least fifty soldiers killed in the span of half a second as an expanding wave of energy ripped through them.

"Diopan plasmotic wave," said Dalvin. Not as destructive as some explosives, but I can mask the generators within the natural radiation patterns of the planet, which makes them nearly impossible to detect."

Ren felt a hot pulse of anger tear across the mental plane of the Force. "Sarak is furious," he said.

"Excellent," said Dalvin. "Alright, I see a lot of shields going up. Ren, I have the sense that this Sarak will easily sacrifice his own men in order to win."

"That's correct," said Ren without even stopping to consider.

"We should see a lot more dead bodies in just a moment then."

The enemy army appeared on the horizon then, coming around a large hill. They came like a great tide of black and shining metal over the mossy green surface. Ren could immediately sense a primal fear in the mandalorian soldiers around him. The Sith were renowned as the most ruthless army in the galaxy. Their brutal, efficient methods had produced greater results in a relatively short period of history than any other militant group the galaxy have ever seen. Outnumbering the mandalorians by nearly eight-to-one and having superior armaments and a massive armored ship, they certainly justified a sense of terror. By most measure of intelligent analysis of the situation, the Sith were going to slaughter everything in their path. Ren gazed at the tanks with their massive blast cannons and wondered how well he and his companions, with all of their special abilities, could even the odds before too many mandalorians were wiped out.

The army drew closer and the first shot was fired directly at the mandalorian ship from by one of the tanks. They had likely chosen the ship because it was the easiest target to hit. The green streak of plasma burned through the air and slammed into the blue, translucent, glowing shield around the vessel. The ship immediately fired back with its own even larger cannon. It missed the tank but managed to kill three nearby soldiers in one quick, searing burst of energy.

It seemed then that every tank and every soldier took aim at once at the ship. Ren knew more than enough about plasma weapons to understand that such concentrated fire could break through even a ship's shields. Just then the ground at several points in front of the Sith army exploded upward in burning red blasts. Ren felt pain, horror, and death through the Force, and he knew that Dalvin had set up a very well placed minefield.

Some of the tanks still fired on the mandalorian ship, but many faltered, and the soldiers were even more disoriented. The confusion gave Neeka, Dalvin, the mandalorian ship itself, as well as all the soldiers around Ren time to begin a heavy concentration of return fire. Three of the ten tanks were blasted to shrapnel by the ship guns in a few seconds. At the same time, soldiers on both sides began to die as bright blasts tore through the air.

Ren decided it was time for him to act. He reached out with the Force into the dark stone beneath the mossy planet's surface. He stretched his psychic tendrils around what he judged to be a three-ton chunk of the rock and lifted it upward, cracking it off from the stone around it. The massive boulder lifted and several of the mandalorians around Ren gasped in confusion and started gazing about. He ignored them and willed the boulder up and away from them. It soared at rocket speed in the air, arching down directly at Sarak on his platform.

Ren watched in his mind's eye as the great Sith lord turned in anger and stopped the boulder in mid air with a simple gesture of his hand. Ren had counted on this. He applied a second burst of Force energy directly in the center of the boulder and willing it to explode outward. The boulder shattered into numerous large, heavy fragments. There were too many for Sarak to control at once, even with all his power, and chunks of rock rained down on many of the men around him. Ren sensed numerous injuries and at least three deaths.

Ren felt Darth Sarak's full attention fall upon him. He had earned the anger of this great Sith lord, but also a measure of bitter respect. In a flash of insight Ren understood the precision of power and focus he had exercised over the kilometer or so between them was not something Sarak himself could have managed.

"That was impressive," Ren heard his mother whisper to him through the Force.

"My powers have been improving since my exposure to Kalethian," he said back through their mental link. "I don't fully know my own limits."

"Whatever they are, you're going to need to press as hard as you can against them and probably through them if you want to live."

"I know," said Ren.

The enemy drew nearer at an accelerated rank. The ground soldiers had broken into a hard run. Ren could sense from their mental state that they had taken some kind of chemical stimulants. They pushed their bodies hard, doing so with very little fear for their own lives. The seven remaining tanks kept pace with them, as did the platform upon which Sarak stood. The massive black vessel rose above the hilltop then, it's hulking mass appearing as a great blot on the horizon. It immediately began firing upon all three ships at once from separate gun clusters on its hull. At that moment the battle became something more than an abstract game of wits as perhaps Ren and Dalvin had been treating it, but a great storm of death.

"Hold!" Cathock growled at his men. "We'll kill every one of them!" Ren heard the fierce conviction in his friend's voice, but also sensed the fear. Neeka, Dalvin, and whoever was operating the mandalorian ship's weapons began to return fire.

"Damn that thing has thick armor," Dalvin's voice hissed. "Ren, Cathock, you guys are on your own against the ground forces for at least a little while. I've left a few more surprises for the enemy, but just try to stay alive for a bit until I take care of this monster of a ship. Before I go though-" Ren heard a series of clicks and beeps carry through Dalvin's communication field and then his eyes moved instinctively to the thanks. Two of them rather abruptly turned their guns and fired on the tanks next to them. "They're unmanned and controlled from the ship," said Dalvin. The first shots from the tanks did enormous damage to their opposites, and all the soldiers around the tanks turned and stared in confusion at what was happening. By the third round of shots, as the two victim tanks caught fire and the men realized what was happening and began to react. They fired on their own tanks, but Dalvin's controlled vehicles turned and fired on them with significantly more power, burning some twenty armored men into charred corpses in seconds. The remaining three tanks turned and fired on Dalvin's tanks. The hacked war machines were destroyed in the next few seconds, but they managed to take two more Sith tanks with them. As Dalvin's ship rose off the ground, only one tank remained where there had been ten.

"Thank you, Dalvin," both Ren and Cathock said at nearly the same time.

"If you have any competence between the two of you, you'll slaughter the rest while I'm gone," was the reply.

Ren and Cathock looked at one another and found themselves exchanging a sharp nod. They turned and looked together at a significantly diminished, but still significantly more numerous army than their own.

The black-clad soldiers moved over terrain like a great wave. Here and there a handful of them would strike one of Dalvin's hidden mines and be blown up or incinerated or frozen. The main body never broke stride for them though. They were moving toward Cathock's very meager main Force of fewer than thirty men. The Sith were planning to overtake them by sheer attrition. At the rate they were going they could still accomplish this without even utilizing their Force adepts.

Cathock and his men were laying down heavy suppressive fire on the oncoming soldiers, but the majority of them had already activated body shields. They were rushing in, hoping to overtake Cathock's group with close range weapons. Every Sith that Ren could see carried a vibroblade at his wrist or behind his back, and Ren could sense from their collective minds that this Sith Force trained very heavily in melee weaponry.

Ren felt the time was perfect to finally utilize one of Kalethian's powers in combat. He summoned the Force to his will and reached out across the battlefield, careful to pretend to aim his gun as he did and clumsily fire into the oncoming army. Then he called forth the flames. The air ignited exactly where he focused his mind and a great eruption of fire burned into a handful of soldiers. Their armor partially protected them but despite whatever pain-blockers they were on they let out screams of agonizing pain and dropped to the ground.

Through the helmet visor Ren's eyes shifted to the towering figure of Sarak in the distance. The towering Sith lord had not descended from his platform, nor had his apprentice. They cared nothing for the battle or the men who were dying left and right for them. They were only interested in Ren, and the Force induced bursts of flame had caught their attention. Ren was elated to find that neither of them seemed able to trace the power back to him. They were searching around the corners of the battle, assuming that Ren was concealed somewhere away from the soldiers.

Ren thought of attacking Sarak directly with his power, but immediately knew better. The great Sith lord would not be simple to kill, or even injure, and Ren had a much more pressing requirement of his powers right in front of him. He judged from the pace of the Sith soldiers that they would be upon his group in roughly a standard minute. The bodies of mandalorians were already starting to pile up around him.

"I have to die now," Ren said, turning to Cathock.

"What?" Cathock said.

Ren didn't have time to explain. He hadn't been sure how the battle would go and this plan had only been one of several possibilities he had invented. He hoped Cathock would be able to figure out his purpose. He dropped down to the ground rather abruptly, falling amidst the other mandalorian corpses. Almost immediately he suppressed his heartbeat and vital signs so heavily with his mind that he would show up as dead to all but the most thorough scan. At the same time he kept his mind alert and active. This next part was fairly risky.