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familiar touch of the dark side, his increasingly attenuated connection to the light side, and, bridging the two, his Master's words: the Force is a tool, neither light nor dark.
    "How can that be? A tool? Nothing more than that?"
    R6 beeped confusion.
    Jaden waved a hand distractedly. "It cannot be," he said, answering his own question. The Force had been Jaden's moral compass for decades. Reducing it to a tool, mere potential, left him…rudderless. He looked at his hand, the hand from which he had discharged Force lightning.
    "There be dragons," he muttered, deactivating his lightsaber.
    R6 whirred a question.
    "I am trying to discern the vision's meaning, but I am…uncertain."
    He had been uncertain since the Battle of Centerpoint Station, though he had been struggling with doubt before that. His certainty had been one of the unrecorded casualties of the battle. He had…done things he regretted. The Corellians had simply wanted their independence. In hindsight, Jaden saw the whole affair as a political matter unworthy of Jedi involvement. He had killed over politics. The Jedi Order had killed over politics.
    Where did that leave them as an Order? How were they different from the Sith? Hadn't they used the light side to engage in morally questionable acts? And where did that leave Jaden? He felt soiled by his participation in the battle.
    "Once, we were guardians of the galaxy," he said to R6, and the droid stayed wisely silent.
    Now the Jedi seemed guardians of particular politicians. What principles did they stand for anymore?
    The Force is only a tool.
    He shook his head as he pulled on his robes. The Force had to be more than that. Otherwise he had lived a lie for decades. His lightsaber was a tool. The Force was…something more. It had to be.
    He feared the Jedi had come to think that because they used the light side of the Force, everything they did must therefore be good. Jaden saw that thinking as flawed; even dangerous.
    Since the battle for Centerpoint, he had isolated himself from the Order, from Valin, from Kyle. He felt purposeless and unwelcome. He thought his doubt must be plain to them all. He knew he would be transparent to the Masters. He had no one with whom he could share his thoughts.
    "No one but you," he said to R6.
    His blaster and the small, one-handed hilt of his second lightsaber lay on his side table. He strapped on a holster, put the blaster to bed in it, and hooked his secondary saber to the clip at the small of his back. He did not know why he kept the old lightsaber, holding it close to him like a good-luck charm. He supposed its blade was the purple tether that connected him to a simpler past. He had crafted the blade when the Force had been nothing to him but a word. He had possessed no wisdom, yet he had utilized the Force to build a blade.
    Didn't that mean that Kyle was right, that the Force was simply a tool, free-floating energy for anyone to use, no different from a loaded blaster? He shied away from the notion, because if it were true, then the light and dark side meant nothing in terms of moral and immoral, good and evil.
    "I do not accept that," he said to R6. "I cannot."
    Help us. Help us.
    The voice from his vision echoed in his head, reminded him of who and what he was. He had stood on a frozen, dark moon in the Unknown Regions, communed with dead Jedi while evil had rained down, and someone had called to him for help. He would help. He must. Moral clarity lived in aid to others. He grabbed it like a lifeline.
    What you seek can be found in the black hole on Fhost.
    The words were nonsense. There was no black hole on Fhost or anywhere near it. But he had to learn what the words meant; because that would allow him to find what he sought.
    "Arsix, link with the HoloNet."
    The droid whistled acquiescence, extended a wireless antenna, and connected.
    "Call up mapped or partially mapped sectors in the Unknown Regions," Jaden said.
    R6's projector showed three-dimensional images of