"You know that already, Captain," Jaden said.

Khedryn gave no ground. "I know it is to you two. To me, this is just another job, and it's gotten too hairy. Do you know why I don't have weapons on Junker, Relin? Because I run." He wagged a finger between himself and Marr. "We run. I am a salvager. This is a salvage ship."

He realized that he was breathing heavily, that his tone was overly sharp. He took a moment to control himself. Between the calmness of the Jedi and the placidity of Marr, he felt like he was the only one who grasped the danger they had been in.

Jaden started to speak, but Khedryn pointed a finger at him as if it were loaded.

"And don't you even consider trying that mind trick nonsense on me again."

Jaden half smiled, put his hands on the table, and interlaced his fingers. He studied them as if they were of interest, then looked up at Khedryn. "You were going to take me down to the moon. We had a deal, Khedryn."

That hit Khedryn where he lived. He did not renege on deals. "I know. But… "

Jaden continued in his infuriatingly calm voice. "But our agreement aside, I want you to step back and consider what has happened here. You and Marr discovered a distress beacon on a backrocket moon in the Unknown Regions."

"Chance," Khedryn said, but Jaden continued.

"I received a Force vision of that same moon. In it, voices pleaded with me for help." His voice intensified a degree. "For help, Captain."

"You received a Force vision?" Relin asked. "Did you see anything that suggested my presence or Harbinger's?"

Jaden had eyes only for Khedryn as he drove home his point.

"We meet under extraordinary circumstances in Farpoint, then journey here, and at almost the exact moment of our arrival an ancient Sith ship appears."

Relin piled on. "And that ship bears an extremely dangerous cargo."

Khedryn's response was knee-jerk defensiveness. "So you say."

"So I say?" Relin said, heat leaking into his tone.

Jaden held a hand up. "Please, Relin."

Khedryn shook his head. "Look, this was supposed to be a simple job. Instead it's… "

"Something bigger," Jaden said.

"I was going to say complicated," Khedryn said. "But if it is about something bigger, then that makes it a Jedi concern. Not mine. Not ours. Right, Marr?"

Marr drummed his long fingers on the table, taking it all in. He gave a noncommittal grunt that Khedryn liked not at all.

"No, this isn't just a Jedi concern," Jaden said. "It concerns you, too. Consider all the things I mentioned, the synchronicity of them. It is not chance that we are here together at this moment."

"It could be chance," Khedryn said half-heartedly, but he did not believe his own words. "Marr could put a probability to it, had he a mind. No, I am not doing this."

Relin slammed his fist on the table with the suddenness of a lightning strike, startling them all. Caf and tea jumped over cup brims. "You are a stubborn fool, Khedryn Faal."

Khedryn could handle anger more easily than Jaden's inexorable reasonableness. "Better a live fool than a dead fanatic, which is the course you've charted for yourself. You've got radiation poisoning, broken ribs, a severed arm. You haven't even paused long enough for treatment. You haven't even asked for some pharma for the pain or bacta to help the healing."

Relin rose to his feet, anger in his eyes. Khedryn's mouth went dry but he held his ground and made certain nothing on him shook.

"I do not stop for treatment because I will not shirk doing what needs to be done. Even if it causes me pain. You cannot always run, Khedryn."

Khedryn stared into Relin's haggard face, saw there a deeper pain than that of his wounds. He wilted under its weight, sighed, sat.

"You spilled your tea," he said quietly.

Silence took the head chair for a time, everyone letting time deflate the tension. Relin sat, too, his anger at Khedryn seemingly dispelled as fast as it had appeared.

"Marr is Force-sensitive," Jaden said. "Did you know that? Did either of you?"

Khedryn spilled some of his own caf. "What?"

"How do you know that?" Marr said, and Khedryn thought he did not sound overly surprised.

"I can sense it. Relin can as well, I am sure."

Relin nodded absently, mostly lost in the depths of his teacup.

Jaden looked to Marr. "I apologize for springing this on you. I thought I would tell you after we returned to Fhost. If I mentioned it at all."

"What does that even mean, Force-sensitive?" Khedryn asked.

"It means he has an intuitive connection to the Force," Jaden said. "Were he younger, it would mean he was trainable. But given your age, Marr, even with your mathematical gifts, training is probably out of the question."

The possibility, even if remote, of losing Marr to the Jedi Order opened a hole under Khedryn's feet, and he started to slip. He held up his hands. "Whoa. Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves a bit?"

"Yes, we are," Marr said, and looked at Jaden. "Why did you tell me this now?"

"Because I want all of us to realize that the Force brought you to that signal. You may not have known it, but that is what happened. You selected the route back to Fhost, didn't you? Didn't you?"

"He's the navigator," Khedryn said.

"I chose the course," Marr acknowledged.

Jaden nodded, obviously unsurprised. "It was not chance that you chose this system. The Force is moving through you, through all of us."

"Not through me," Khedryn said before he could wall the words off behind his teeth. He knew they sounded petulant. He felt the odd man out on his own ship.

Jaden put a hand on Khedryn's shoulder, and that only made it worse. "The Force touches all of us. Look at us. Look."

Khedryn did, and had to admit that it would have taken an odd coincidence to bring all of them together, at that place, at that time.

Marr, staring at his hands, said, "I do not wish any training."

Jaden did not seem surprised. "Understood. I simply wanted you to see what is happening here. I want all of us to see it."

"Jaden is right," Relin said.

Khedryn tried to get his head around events, but could not. He faced the fact that perhaps Jaden was, in fact, right. Could he simply run as he usually did?

"Time is our enemy," Relin said. "Khedryn, please."

Khedryn downed the last of his caf, pleased to find the final sip heavy with bitterness from the pulkay. He was almost to the point of surrender. "What are you asking us to do?"

"Help us accomplish what needs to be accomplished," Jaden said. "I need to get down to the surface of the moon. There is someone down there who needs help."

Khedryn fired the last of his ammo. "And if you go down there and there's nothing? Have you considered that? I've seen that happen before."

Jaden shook his head, a bit too fast, a bit too forcefully. "That won't happen. Something is transmitting that signal."

"Jaden-" Khedryn began.

Relin cut him off. "I cannot go down to the moon."

Khedryn set down his caf cup and stared across the table. "No, you want to get aboard the cruiser. You said that. It remains crazy even when repeated often. Antique or not, that ship packs more firepower in its shuttles than we do on all of Junker."

"Relin," Jaden said. "I don't think-"

Relin held up his stump, perhaps forgetting that it had no upraised hand attached. "You seemed surprised when I mentioned Lignan earlier." He swirled his cup. "Were you?"

"Yes," Jaden said.

"And that tells me that you have never before heard of it or its power. Yet Khedryn mentioned Sith, so I know they still exist in this time. Putting the Lignan in their hands would be dangerous, yes?"

Jaden nodded. "It would, if it does what you say."

Relin's voice frosted. "You felt it. Do you doubt what I say, too?"