"Your father died well," Ren's mother said as they neared the ships and their comrades. "He was a fine warrior – the best I have ever fought save Sakar himself."

Ren felt what he could from his mother's emotions. She did not have his level of mental talent in the Force, yet her thoughts were ordered and tightly controlled. She had a strength of will that Ren found nigh impossible to penetrate. He caught only fragments from her, but one of those fragments now told him that she did in fact care for Ren's father in her own detached way.

"What did he mean to you?" Ren said.

"He was your father," she whispered in a soft rasp. "All that is in you that is not of me is of him."

"Did you love him?"

There was a brief silence, and then she said: "No." She took several steps, then said: "I would see him avenged though. He was worthy of respect."

Ren thought of Sakar slicing into his father with that enormous red lightsaber. Everything the two of them might have shared, everything that Ren might have learned from knowing the parent whom he had been kept from his entire life had all been wiped out in one deathly stroke by that wretched Sith creature. Ren wanted to kill Sakar slowly and brutally for that.

"Yes-s-s," his mother said, and Ren felt her hand move to his shoulder. "I have always known you have a great Sith within you beneath all your layers of compassion and empathy. The dark side could protect you from all the pain you feel right now. You could just let go – simply give in." He felt her fingers clutch tightly into his skin. "I felt you defeat Tikon, Sakar's legendary apprentice, and I was so very proud of you. The darkside coursed through you, wild and terrible. You could be free like that all the time if you wished."

"Is that what you want for me?" he said, his voice dry and sober.

"It always has been."

"I don't believe you, mother," he said. "I think it's because of who I am that I'm the only thing you've ever loved in your entire life." He felt her stiffen at these words. He cleared his throat and continued: "I never expected you to be willing to sacrifice your life for me."

"You're a fool then," she whispered. "And you are wrong. I loved my father once, long ago."

This caught Ren's attention. His mother had never spoken of her family before. "Who was he?"

"Not a Sith," she said. "He had the gifts all miralukai have, but little more. He was a kindly man – a doctor actually. He loved life in ways I can scarcely imagine now, and he utterly adored me."

"What happened?"

"My master cut his head off," she whispered, her voice carrying very old and very deep anger. "He did it right in front of me. He toyed with my father for a bit first, to build my fear for him, and then he made a quick slice with his lightsaber and changed my entire existence. I was five years old at the time – old enough to remember every detail of the moment. I loved my father far beyond—I'm sure—

anything you've ever felt for me."

"You don't know what I—"

"I do, Ren," she said. "You should have been like a beast after the way I raised you, but you weren't. I've always felt your affection for me and I've always tried to drive it out."

"Why?" said Ren.

"Because nothing in the universe was as painful as that moment... when I watched my father die, though it took more than that to imbue me with a Sith's heart... much more. I tried to spare you from all of that. To truly love is to be vulnerable to suffering beyond imagination."

Ren was nearly speechless at this insight into mother he had never known or even remotely guessed at, when the Force suddenly gave a great yank to his consciousness. He turned automatically to Neeka's ship and saw, from the sky far above, Darth Sakar dropping through the air from his great black vessel. Terror coursed through Ren and he began to move toward Neeka, but there were still several hundred meters between the vessel and himself. Even Ren's mother, who could move significantly faster than he could, was unable to close even half the gap when Sakar struck the ship. He didn't land on top of it, but ripped through a charred spot in the hull with the Force and dropped inside.

A sickening wave of pain tore through every fiber of Ren's being as he saw, in his mind's eye, Sakar's massive lightsaber going through Neeka's stomach. She didn't die instantly, but the trauma to even her engineered body was too much and she was rendered utterly helpless. Sakar backhanded her in in the skull once to knock her fully unconscious, hitting her hard enough to send her sailing into the cockpit wall were she made a dent and then bounced unconscious onto the floor.

Ren's vision shifted back to his human eyesight, and he watched as Sakar leaped back out through the hole he had made with Neeka on his shoulder. His vessel was lowering quickly out of the sky. Ren's mother leaped – as he had never seen anything leap – toward Sakar, but his great hand shot out and hurled her back in mid bound. Then Sakar himself was jumping with enormous Force energy up toward the open cargo doors of his ship.

"NO!" Ren shouted, and he reached out with the Force to stop Sakar, but there was what seemed to be an impenetrable sphere around the Sith lord that blocked Ren's power – some Sith defense Ren had never before encountered. Sakar was able to pass freely up into his ship and Ren watched in terror as the great black doors of Sakar's ship closed, locking Neeka inside.

"No!" he grunted again, and this time he reached out to Sakar's ship itself. Enormous Force energy closed around the massive black vessel and Ren to pull it out of the sky, despite the full thrust of its engines fighting against him. He might have brought it all the way to the planet's surface, but the ship's one remaining gun turned and aimed at him. A blast too massive for any lightsaber to bat away hissed through the air at Ren. He raised another hand, readying himself to take on the plasma blast. He would not let them take Neeka, whatever he had to go through. The blast came on, but Ren felt a tremendous impact on his left arm that pushed him out of the way just in time to save him. As a crater was burned into the ground where Ren had been standing, his mother stood over him, gritting her teeth. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew that if she had even a hair slower he would have been burned alive.

"Did he kill her?!" Dalvin's voice hissed electronically, vibrating with rage and fear.

"No," Ren said, panting, "I can still feel her life-Force."

"Is he going to kill her?" Dalvin cried.

Ren's mother answered in a calm voice: "If Darth Sakar simply wants someone dead, they die. He has another purpose."

Cathock's great, armored body, scorched all over with blaster fire, came toward them with a massive leap. "What happened?!" he said, his great, cat-like eyes open with pure fear. "Where is she?!"

"Sakar took her," Ren's mother answered.

Cathock let out a roar so loud and fierce that Ren felt his very bones vibrate. A few seconds later, Dalvin's ship came whipping down and landed hard on the mossy surface only a few meters away from them. He leaped out and glared at Ren and said in a sharp voice: "How did he know to go after Neeka, Ren? Your gray-skinned friend must have told him about your relationship! He took her to get to you! This is all about you!"

The words cut through Ren's heart, for he knew instantly that they were true. Kalethian was pitting Sith against Sith and giving each side an advantage: Ren with power and Sakar, who already had power, with knowledge of his enemy. Far more insidious though was the notion that Neeka as a hostage could be a specific aspect of Kalethian's plan. Could Neeka, the kind girl who had told Ren she loved him, have been stabbed through the stomach with a lightsaber and taken aboard a Sith ship, probably to be tortured and very possibly to be killed, simply as a means to manipulate him?

"We can't go after her," Dalvin hissed. "None of us can beat that Sith lord, and even if we could he could easily kill her before we get near. It's perfect really – the perfect way to stop all of us. And what can we do? Have you ever heard of Sith releasing a hostage? I happen to have a significant portion of the republic's data archives in my brain and I can tell you that less than two percent of Sith captives ever survive captivity."

"Yes, the girl is dead," said Ren's mother in a sickeningly matter of fact sort of way. "We should not have any illusions about getting her back alive."

Dalvin turned his glare on her. "Who in the hell are you to be talking about what we should do?"

"Someone with a great deal of knowledge and experience in Sith matters," she said, unperturbed by Dalvin's anger. "You are correct that Sakar took her to get to Ren. He will use her to try to make Ren surrender himself, most likely torturing her and sending us evidence. If that doesn't work, he will simply kill her in order to provoke Ren into a fight."

The words rendered both Dalvin and Ren speechless. Ren felt his insides twist with horror at what would be done to his Neeka. Neeka – he could still feel the warm, gentle caress of her lips. He recalled her embarrassed smile as she said: "That's why I love you." The thought of her being tortured on his account, or of all the incredible beauty of her life being snuffed out of existence was too horrible to imagine.

"I'll turn myself over to him," Ren said, his voice cracking in his throat.

His mother made a hissing sound of anger. His mind was distracted, and thus he did not sense her blow coming. It took him in the stomach, her fist knocking all the air out of him. He involuntarily keeled over, wheezing.

"Stupid boy! Do you think your friend would live even if you did that? Sakar is the most vicious Sith alive. Once he's killed you he'll hunt down all your friends, one-by-one, and execute them slowly. He will do this because they – because we have stood against him and killed his men. He would not be Darth Sakar if he allowed us all to leave this place alive."

"She is correct," a soft, feminine voice said from off to the left. They all turned to see Malanctha as she shimmered out of a stealth field into visibility. "There is no point in surrendering yourself, Ren."

Ren saw his mother's lips curl ever so slightly into what he guessed was admiration for Malanctha. She turned from Ren, as if the blow she had landed upon him had never happened, and said: "So you are the one who made Sakar retreat. I am not sure anyone has ever done that before."

"And you are Magretta Asango. I have heard your name whispered with great fear and respect in the darkest, most dangerous corners of the galaxy. I have looked forward to meeting you ever since I met your son."

These words were news to Ren. Malanctha had indicated no specific knowledge of who he was at any point, but Ren had sensed almost immediately that she was not the kind to reveal her thoughts unless she wanted to. He wondered what else she knew about him, about their enemies, and most about what she had discovered deep within the planet.

Cathock snarled: "We have to save Neeka!"

"Of course we do," said Malanctha, her voice as calm as ever. "That is going to be next to impossible, but we must."

"Sakar will be expecting you to try," said Ren's mother. Ren noticed she said "you" rather than "we," which seemed an indication that she would not support any attempt at Neeka's rescue. When she had leaped at Sakar only moments before, he wondered if it had only been for the sake of killing.

Dalvin's mechanical eye flashed blue for a few seconds, and then he said: "They haven't left this planet's atmosphere. They're somewhere on the other side of this world. That big black piece of dung has a surprisingly sophisticated cloaking field, but I can still decipher its location within a forty kilometer margin of error." Dalvin cleared his throat. "I suggest we press our advantage. We have already established that Sakar's fortitude has limits – that he can be backed down, at least to a certain degree. And we can blow up the planet's core at any time."

Ren's mother turned to Malanctha and said: "Did you find anything alive down there?"

All eyes turned to Malanctha, and she hesitated, looking coldly around. "You must all understand," she whispered softly, "that that information must be kept from Sakar at all costs. I cannot take the risk of informing any of you, lest one of you might fall into Sakar's hands, giving him a chance to rip it from your minds."

There was a long silence, and then Ren's mother said: "The girl is like your daughter, is she not? Why else would one so clever as you risk standing before me with the intention of not giving over information I desire?"

"If anything I had discovered would give you advantage over Sakar, I would tell you."

"Would you?" said Ren's mother, a sarcastic edge resonating in her voice. Ren sensed the muscles in her aged body coil, readying ever so subtly to attack. "Perhaps I should be the judge of what would and would not represent an advantage."

"Everyone calm down," Cathock said, his low voice tense. He was at least as adept as Ren at sensing the biological signs of aggression.

A cold state of calm washed through Ren in that moment. His chances of ever seeing Neeka alive again were incredibly slim, but if his alliance fell apart then there would be no chance at all. He spoke mechanically: "There is no body down in the heart of this world. You found an empty vessel, and you were most likely able to get through its defenses with Dalvin's help." All eyes turned to Dalvin for an instant, and he only stared back silently, which to Ren was as good as a confirmation of what he had just said. "Most likely, you found an enormous degree of wealth in jewels and precious materials, but more importantly you found ancient Sith artifacts, holocrons, and tomes. You don't really know what they are, but you gathered what you could of what seemed to be the most valuable pieces. They are on your ship right now. You're playing the strategy that no one knowing what you have will create an aura far more significant than the truth."

Malanctha's eyes revealed nothing and her mind was ever shut, but Ren needed nothing from her to confirm his interpretation. The words simply felt true as he spoke them, and with each piece of knowledge gained and confirmed through the Force, Ren felt more in control of the impossible situation. "Sakar will have guessed as much, but he's not yet desperate enough to take the chance that you might be hiding something much more significant." He stared at Malanctha hard and said: "You're intelligent enough to have thought of this already. I'll tell you something you don't know: Sakar is dying."

All eyes turned to Ren and he could feel all the focus of his mother's dark, terrible mind focused upon him. "I'm not sure when I picked it up – it was just a shadow of an impression during our... fight, but I can see it clearly now. One of his enemies managed to poison him – something incredibly severe. He's only alive right now through a combination of drugs and an extremely focused application of the Force. It won't last though. He has only a few weeks at best. I'm sure you can figure out what that means."

"He's desperate," Malanctha said. "He won't stop at anything to get ahold of Kalethian's power if only to try to save himself."

"The timing of this is quite convenient, as are all the other circumstances around here," Ren's mother said.

Dalvin sighed. "Yes, if there was any doubt that Sakar was brought here just as some of us – perhaps all of us – were to play Kalethian's game, I think this removes it."

"This is bad," said Cathock. "He'll be willing to try anything, and given how powerful Sakar is-"

"All we have to do is convince him that killing Neeka will guarantee he doesn't get what he wants," said Malanctha. "We have the explosives at the planet's core."

"To what end?" said Dalvin. "The portal is going to close in one hundred and sixty-two point four hours. We can keep Neeka alive for a few days more at best."

"Yes, I have trouble envisioning a scenario where we take Neeka back and all return to our galaxy unmolested," said Malanctha.

"There is only one," Ren whispered. "Sakar dead." He felt all of their eyes shift to him, though all he could do was stare at the ground. In a distant compartment in his mind, he could hear Neeka, his beautiful and wonderful first friend in the universe, asking him to stay away from the portal. "I have to face him," Ren whispered. Of course he did. Nothing he had done had changed his destiny in the slightest. In fact, everything that had happened had brought him to this conclusion.

He turned to Dalvin and said: "I need you to come up with an extraction plan to get Neeka out of that ship. I'll try to get Sakar to agree to a one-on-one battle on the ground. With him away, you should be able to cut through any resistance to get to her."

Ren felt his mother's hand reach out and grip his shoulder from behind, though he did not turn around. "He'll kill you in seconds, Ren," she whispered. She paused, then added: "At least as you are now."

His mother's line of thinking was not difficult to follow. He had defeated Tycon, Sakar's supposedly renowned apprentice, in single combat. If Kalethian and his puppet kept to the rules of their own game with him, Ren was due another infusion of knowledge and power. Nearly the instant he realized this an image of Satral waiting for him in a nearby cave flashed vibrantly into his mind's eye.

"I believe I've missed something," Malanctha said, staring at Ren, her reptilian eyes seeming to measure his every movement and expression. "Perhaps something to do with the Sith lord whose death I was unable to verify?"