"He."

The figure corrects Devika, speaking a word that has not seen much use in this star system for a long, long time.

He chuckles. Looks right at her. "You should not have come back."

Deskyl hisses lightly under her breath as she signs to him. Sith. These are mine.

"Hhraaa-hhhgggg... hhraaa-hhhgggg..."

If the signs mean anything to him, his doesn't give any indication so.

She directs a command to DZ, and the droid repeats the message in the sibilant harshness of the Sith language.

Still nothing.

...seriously.

    "Deskyl has claimed these people for herself. If your training is so meager that you don't even recognize your ancestral language, raw power won't save you if you challenge her."

He pauses, considering.

Then he extends a hand to Deskyl.

"Join me," he says. "With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict."

She takes a moment to think it over herself.

    "Perhaps. What are your goals?"

"Bring order."

"Motivate them."

"Escape."

    "Deskyl is an engineer; she intends to reinvent the hyperdrive."

He draws a couple more ragged breaths, at a seeming loss for words for a great many seconds.

"I see." When he finally does respond, though, his tone is nonchalant. "A powerful ally."

She doesn't relax.

    "Indeed."

    "She intends to repair the rift between the dragons and the colonials, and then claim a quiet territory for herself. She sees no reason to challenge you if you don't interfere with that, or author any other atrocities," DZ gestures past him to the cloning facility, "that come to her attention."

"She--err, he?--is sending us a data packet." Devika puts the data up on the left wall of the cockpit. It's a set of navigational coordinates and the schematics of another clandestine facility. "It's a macrofab. A good one. Beyond cutting edge."

The figure makes a satisfied sound.

To Deskyl he says: "I am here to put you back on schedule."

She nods.

    "Very good. Do you have the capacity to evacuate this facility without loss of life?"

"Indeed."

    "We'll make our way to the macrofab, then. How shall we contact you?"

"Search your feelings."

The hologram winks off.

The cockpit speakers go quiet.

Deskyl hisses again and shudders, hard, deflating a bit as she does.

    "That was another Sith, and a very powerful one," DZ explains, not waiting for Deskyl to sign. "We're safe for the moment, probably; that was a very polite exchange, and she has something he wants. But you shouldn't trust him."

Deskyl re-orients herself and signs.

    "We'll pick up Drishti and be on our way."

"Another like you? A powerful Sith?"

After what she's seen and heard of the younger Sith's exploits, Shreya has a hard time imagining anything or anyone more powerful than Deskyl.

Devika maintains a steady position relative to the dysofrag, making it easy to stabilize the umbilical between the back of the SLAYER and the top of the facility, and relays Deskyls instructions to the technicians aboard ("send Drishti Kaur up through the airlock, await evacuation by support units.")

Her mind is racing, but she doesn't waste breath on any of her more tangled thoughts.

    "Another like her, yes. The most powerful she's seen, but not the most powerful she's heard of. But they might be able to work together; he seemed surprisingly stable."

The hatchway in the back wall of the cockpit swings open and a stocky leon clambers out into the padded enclosure.

"H-hello?" she says. "You called for me?"

"Yes, Ma'am. We've arranged for an evacuation team, but it will still be safer for you to come with us."