Force Exile IV: Guardian/Part 4

7
The flat, broad-winged freighter shot from hyperspace as it rapidly decelerated from superluminal velocities. The glowing blue sublight drives at the ship’s stern took over from the hyperdrive, propelling the ship through empty space towards the planet hanging silently before it, a dull brownish-green globe of a world that seemed almost featureless from orbit, save for thin white streaks that represented scattered clumps of clouds. The freighter’s trajectory took it almost lazily into a low orbit around the world, a tiny speck of metal against the curvaceous bulge of the horizon. The world itself looked ill, plagued with some sort of disease that could ravage the surface of a planet, and it gave off an uneasy essence in the Force. Perhaps it was the lack of sizable settlements despite the fact that the world was clearly habitable. However, most of the planet’s continents seemed to be covered by a tan-green plant of some kind, robbing it of the diversity one might expect of a vegetated planet with a healthy ecosystem. No, the land was almost perfectly monotone in color, offset here and there with the deep brown wrinkles of foothills and mountain ranges or splotched with the deep blue of a sea or lake.

This was Honoghr. Vos’s brief account of the world that he had transmitted to Selu and Milya along with its coordinates, described the planet as sparsely inhabited, having a tropical climate replete with thick forests. Something had clearly changed in the nearly twenty years since the Jedi Master had been there, as the verdant tangle of trees and smattering of shades of green that characterized most forests was missing, clearly evident just from orbital observations.

Selu turned to check the stern sensors, making sure that no Imperial ships were riding the Hawk-bat’s ion trail. To his relief, the scopes-painstakingly calibrated and upgraded often by Selu and Sarth-showed no ships tracking them. However, as he returned his attention to the flight controls, the communication light lit up on the console; they were receiving a transmission from the planet’s surface. Leaning forward, he accepted the signal, playing it through the ship’s audio system.
 * “Unidentified ship, state your name and business,” mewed a gravelly sounding voice, evidently some sort of space traffic controller.
 * “This is Agent Takk Chizoroen on the freighter Blood Carver,” Selu replied stiffly. “Of Imperial Intelligence.”

His answer was met with silence. Selu wondered if the voice on the other end was looking into his credentials, or merely giving time for a ground-to-space weapon to track and fire upon his ship. His fingers slid around the flight controls, anticipating the possibility of weapons fire, tensing to throw all power to thrust and shields while getting them outbound as quickly as humanly possible. A long, quiet moment dragged on, while Selu waited with less than perfect patience. YGI had taken care to carefully slice this record and false ship overlay into the Imperial database, and unless their efforts had suddenly been exposed, it should have worked. After all, several other missions’ successful outcomes had arisen by using this sort of electronic forgery. They’d never before had their covers blown due to a faulty ship overlay. Then again, Selu reflected morbidly, there was a first time for everything.

Selu drummed his fingers lightly on the ship’s console, waiting for a reply. Each passing second seemed harder to bear and only increased the likelihood that their cover was not being believed. Summoning years of self-discipline learned during his Jedi training, he exhaled the tension he felt, willing himself to be calm and serene. Vos’s account described the Noghri as outright unreceptive, and yet they had been willing to communicate first instead of blasting.

Finally, there came a hissing sound from the speaker. At first, Selu mistook it for interference, but soon sensed that the sibilant sound was in fact someone’s attempt to converse with him.
 * “Agents of the Lord Darth Vader, your ship appears in the Empire’s database,” said a different voice, one which held the same gravelly undertones. “Why are you here?”
 * “We’re here to conduct a land survey,” Selu answered, layering his speech with the clipped, indignant tones of an Imperial officer emulating a Coruscanti accent. “And also collect botanical specimens.”

Another pause, this one thankfully shorter.
 * “Do you require escort?”
 * “No, that won’t be necessary,” Selu replied.

There was a silence after he spoke, as if the individuals on the other end of the transmission were expecting more, so he continued lamely, “Thank you for your offer.”
 * “You are free to land on Honoghr, servants of the Lord Darth Vader,” came the answer, rather unpleasantly. “Nystao out.”

The transmission ceased and Selu was left alone in the cockpit. He eased the ship down into a descent, programming the flight computer to guide the ship through Honoghr’s atmosphere.
 * “Friendly types,” he muttered sarcastically under his breath.

The synth-leather upholstery of his pilot’s chair creaked as he shifted his weight, keeping hands firmly on the controls. The inky black of space gradually receded, becoming more bluish as the Hawk-bat re-entered atmosphere. Selu kept the deflectors angled to dissipate excess heat built up by the ship’s re-entry, his focus on what he could see through the bridge viewport and what the displays told him. Apprehension plagued him for some reason, a feeling he couldn’t quite shake, and it was enough to cause his hands to become slightly sweaty under his flight glove. Still, the re-entry was smooth enough, unhampered by mechanical failures. After the Hawk-bat had descended to about sixty kilometers above the planet surface, he switched fully over to repulsorlift power, lowering the ship’s velocity so the Hawk-bat cruised along a little under the standard speed of sound. To lend credence to their cover, he extended several external sensor arrays and set the ship’s computer to scan the surface.

Rising from his chair, he donned the black Imperial Intelligence issue cap that went with the uniform he was wearing in order to make him look like an Imperial Intelligence agent. When he had first put on the uniform, Milya had smiled at his appearance, saying he looked so somber and youthful without his goatee, which he had shaved as part of their latest disguise-a pair of Imperial Intelligence agents. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he left the bridge and headed back through the ship’s neck towards its aft.

Seated in one of the form-chairs that Selu and Sarth had placed in the crew lounge during one of the Hawk-bat’s many refits was Milya, also wearing the black uniform of Imperial Intelligence. Selu softened his steps as he approached; his wife was in quiet contemplation, her eyes closed. A metal mug from the ship’s food prep unit was resting on the table next to one of her hands, still faintly steaming of something hot, with a distinctly herbal smell to it. Selu quietly drew up a chair next to her and sat down, waiting patiently as she continued whatever it was she was doing.

In the mean time, he regarded her quietly, watching for any clues or indications. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, and Selu knew that even so much as lightly brushing his fingertips against the back of her hand might disrupt her. She was awake, that was for certain. Finally, his patience was rewarded as the crease of a smile made its way across her mouth and her eyes opened.
 * “What is it?” he asked.
 * “I found who we’re looking for,” she answered.
 * “Where is he?”
 * “Selu,” Milya reproved mildly. “You know better than I do that the Force usually doesn’t work in coordinates.”
 * “Yes, dear,” Selu replied dryly. “Shall we proceed forward to the bridge so you can fly us down to our destination?”

Milya gave him a sidelong look, followed by a mischievous smile.
 * “Perhaps,” she said. “But you’ll be doing the flying. I just give the orders.”
 * “Don’t I know it,” he chuckled ruefully, then added with just enough mock weariness inflected into his voice to get the desired reaction. “Yes, dear.”
 * Nar Shaddaa

The modal bass thumping reverberated through the crowded nightclub, making those patrons who were still coherent and sane enough to appreciate sensory functions such as good hearing cringe at the nonstop pounding. That number, however, was limited to a handful of people- almost nobody entered this particular establishment unless they wanted to be there. It was a place renowned more for its atmosphere than the quality of its intoxicants and stimulants or the general class of its clientele.

The air was thick with the smoke from a dozen different kinds of cigarra, hookah, and possibly even a tabac pipe or two. Sentients more inclined towards liquid refreshment were seated on stools at a long bar whose shining wavy-curved metal surface ran along the length of the room’s east side. The bar was covered with a wide variety of drinks in various states of consumption, and some of whose caretakers seemed intoxicated to the point of being dangerously close to collapse or were near complete stupefaction. A swarthy Swokes Swokes was one of several bartenders whose services seemed to be in constant demand, being called, hissed, cheebled, grunted and squealed for by the patrons, a motley assortment of humans and aliens ranging from diminutive furry Chadra-Fan to a giant scaly Trandoshan.

To say that the club was dimly lit was an understatement. The main sources of lights were from dim floor-mounted glowpanels scattered throughout the club and small multi-colored ceiling lights that swung and swayed in dizzying patterns around the south side of the room. Adding to the visual seizure playing out in the room, some of the lights obnoxiously blinked or flashed as they gyrated around the room, inducing faint senses of nausea in some of the more photosensitive species, who quickly began regretting entering the deafening environment of the club. The focus of the lights’ attention was on that southern end, where about twenty sentients, most of them young and already on their third or four drinks, were dancing wildly to the heavy isotope thundering through the room, which the music jockey crooned was a classic tune. Bodies of various species and genders rocked and swayed violently, some of them undulating sensually against other dancers. A lithe Togruta female clad in rather revealing attire-if a few bits of leather and fur could be called attire-stood on a small elevated stage, the red skin of her mostly bare torso jerking around crazily as she danced, apparently rapt at the attention she was receiving-though the slender choker around her neck, complete with electric leads, indicated she was most likely a slave.

It was not the sort of place Spectre Kraen enjoyed, yet here he was, moodily nursing a fogblaster, a foul drink that he despised, which he’d barely sipped from in the past two hours. Seated at a small table underneath the balcony that ran along the western side of the building, he faced the main entrance at the north, waiting for his contacts to arrive. He had arrived early in order to scope out the place, and kept to himself, ignoring the two Lethan Twi’lek females who, obviously young and full of drink, had tried to occupy his attention for about three minutes before giving up in the face of his inattention and curt, brusque, monosyllabic responses to their chattered questions. His eyes darted from point to point, sweeping the room for possible threats. Aside from the drinkers and dancers, a few others, like a group of boisterous Devaronian males, were huddling around their tables, playing sabacc, which was beyond Spectre’s comprehension, as the noise made it impossible to hear anything. Other sentients just seemed to be standing around or tucked away in corners and alongside pillars, discreetly talking to each other in groups of twos and threes. Of course, it was impossible to fully see anything in this Force-forsake dive, but Spectre hadn’t gotten as hold as he was-or as he felt-by not being alert. No doubt the two Twi’leks were actually on the payroll of the Zann Consortium-they’d certainly been frisky enough about where they tried to stick their hands that they no doubt would have been able to locate the weapons on his person had he not shooed them off. In fact, Spectre would have been quite surprised if almost everyone in the nightclub wasn’t somehow tied to the Zann Consortium. The place stank of debauchery, hedonism, and especially swilled beer.

However, just because the setting had been arranged by the Consortium hadn’t stopped Spectre from taking more than a few precautions, just in case the Zannists were especially sloppy or planned a double-cross. YGI had a full four-man team stationed in the club, and all indications were that they’d managed to get into position without being detected. They had also been inoculated with a chemical agent that would render inert the effects of a certain gas which was now concealed inside several grenades placed inside the ventilation grid of the club. Should any trouble arise, a single code phrase from Spectre or any of the YGI agents would be transmitted through bead comlinks they were wearing to activate the grenades. Furthermore, while the burly Tunroth bouncer had carefully run a weapons scanner over each individual who entered the establishment, his scanner was useless against weapons that had been smuggled into the ventilation shaft and then retrieved by one of the YGI team on a trip to the refresher for distribution to the others. The pistol that Spectre had surrendered to the bouncer was a decoy-nobody walked around Nar Shaddaa without some form of self-defense. Spectre himself was unarmed, lest anyone run a weapons scanner over him again, but took comfort in the knowledge that, mag-locked to the underside of the balcony, right under a support where the shadows covered it, was a holster disguised as a light fixture that contained both a small vibroblade and a fully-loaded S-5XS pistol, the preferred sidearm of choice of YGI. The weapon fired small magnetically accelerated rounds made of a durasteel-tungsten alloy and was utterly silent except for a small whirr-chirp, as well as lethal.

Spectre felt distinctly out-of-place in the raucous club, especially in his attire, which while befitting a fairly wealthy albeit unscrupulous businessman, was not nearly as comfortable to him as his uniform. The eyepatch he wore and the fake scar running across his cheek itched. Furthermore, the two shirts, vest, and coat he wore were utterly disagreeable in the stifling atmosphere of the club, soaking him with sweat. Still, he endured the discomfort, maintaining a stoic outlook on the situation, except when the thought of Sarth sitting his place burst into his mind. Amused by the idea, he had afforded himself a small smile and a brief chuckle before returning to his stony survey of the room.

At long last, two beings shouldered their way through the crowd to his table, followed by a pair of hulking Trandoshans that could only be the dumb hired muscle. The first was a narrow-faced human male with long gray hair falling around his face-definitely an authority figure-judging by the way he walked. As the man approached, Spectre took in the scarred, hardened expression on his face and the distinct Zann Consortium insignia emblazoned across the man’s jacket, inhaling sharply as he realized he was in the presence of crime lord Tyber Zann himself. That meant that the huge alien towering over Zann while keeping a watchful eye on Spectre was a Talortai warrior named Urai Fen. Spectre’s mouth went a little dry as he kept his eyes fixated on the retinue approaching his table; he would have to be extremely careful here.

Zann sat down at his table with a complete disregard for formality, though Spectre, having had certain habits of etiquette ingrained into him for official occasions, rose halfway from his chair out of respect. As for Zann’s companions, Urai Fen took up position behind the crime lord, his green alien eyes glittering in the dim light as he continued to eye Spectre suspiciously. The two Trandoshan brutes stayed farther back, apparently at a signal from Urai. It was time to talk.
 * “Welcome to Nar Shaddaa . . .” Zann said, affably enough, and it was obvious from the way his speech trailed off that he was expecting a name in reply.
 * “Tenzor. Matrik Tenzor,” Spectre filled in. “I’m a senior official for Kraechar Arms.”
 * “You’re not who I expected to meet,” Zann answered, some level of surprise evident on his face despite his attempts to keep a cool countenance.
 * “Nor did I expect you,” Spectre countered, just as placidly. “Yet here we are.”

Zann, however, appeared to tire of the verbal banter and wordplay.
 * “So, you have access to old Separatist weaponry,” he said bluntly.

Spectre smiled thinly as he gave his response, “So we do.”
 * “How much?” the crimelord asked.

He was nothing if not direct.
 * “Credits, or hardware?” Spectre asked nonchalantly. “I have far too few of the former, but I suspect you would be happy to trade some of my hardware for more.”
 * “Hardware,” Zann replied flatly. “Let me put it to you this way: What are you willing to sell me?”
 * “We refurbish and manufacture a number of items that were once employed by the Separatists,” Spectre answered evasively. “I’m sure we can reach an agreement.”
 * “Then I’m sure you’ll answer my original question,” Zann stated, an edge that was previously nonexistent creeping into his voice. “What are you bringing the table?”

Spectre was well aware of the heightened tension, even without Fen’s somewhat menacing step forward in his direction. He would have to play very carefully here-perhaps it was time to show some of his hand, now that he knew what the crime lord was after. Reaching into his smartly-cut jacket, he withdrew a slim holoprojector from an interior pocket and placed it on the table.
 * “I have been authorized by my superiors to show you a small selection of our arms and weaponry,” he said.

Pressing a small button on the projector, small three-dimensional images projected into the air above the projector were brought to life, images of various types of weaponry.
 * “We have a limited but diverse selection of Separatist-era products that still have active assembly lines,” Spectre said, affecting the air of an elite businessman casually showing off luxury goods to a wealthy customer. “Based on what we knew of Consortium weaponry and tactics, we put together a short list of combat droid systems to offer you-at an exclusive price. Our smaller droid classes include pistoekas and droidekas, though we have to keep our manufacture of these small in order to avoid attracting unwanted attention from the Colicoids.”

The Colicoids, the original manufacturer of the two droid medals Spectre had mentioned, were vicious, bloodthirsty insects native to the world of Colla IV. Spectre had faced death numerous times at the Clone Wars thanks to some of their creations, particularly the droideka, an autonomous killing machine that rolled into a ball for rapid movement and deployed four repeating blasters under the protection of a potent energy shield when in combat stance. The pistoeka, a diminutive tripedal sabotage droid often referred to as a buzz droid, was a starfighter pilot’s nightmare, as the little droids were often released in deadly clouds during a battle. The droids would then latch on to nearby hostile starfighters and rapidly tear them to pieces. Tyber Zann’s forces were rumored to use both of them.
 * “Wise move,” Zann commented drily. “Even if the Colicoids are under close Imperial supervision.”
 * “Some insects have long memories,” Spectre remarked in reply.
 * “What else do you have?” Zann asked.
 * “Our larger weapons platforms include self-propelled Heavy Artillery Guns and Armored Assault Tanks. Older systems, but still effective against everything but professional militaries.”

The two vehicles, which had been key parts of a Trade Federation invasion of Naboo three and a half decades prior, appeared to be known to Zann, who grunted in reply.
 * “Anything larger?” he asked.

Spectre put on a charade of confusion.
 * “Anything larger would require a shipyard or a full-scale fighter production facility. Our operations aren't quite that large.”
 * “Pity,” Zann answered drily in return, distrust evident in his eyes. “How much are you willing to sell me?”
 * “We can deliver one hundred droidekas a month at the present moment,” Spectre said. “Along with two thousand pistoekas. As for the larger vehicles . . .”
 * “Forget those. I’m sure your prices are far too excessive for far too little product, given the paltry amounts you’re talking about,” Zann said, cutting him off with a wave of his hand. “I’ll take all of the smaller droids.”

Spectre was surprised at how readily the crime lord had jumped on the offer. Spectre hadn’t even had time to discuss conditions or prices. And then he understood why Zann had chosen a location filled with his people. It was very obvious who had the upper hand in these negotiations. Still, he couldn’t just let Zann walk all over him.
 * “And the transport?” Spectre asked in the same cool voice, lifting one eyebrow fractionally.
 * “What was that?” Zann asked, evidently irritated by the question.
 * “Where would you like your goods delivered to?” Spectre repeated.
 * “Leave a way for us to reach you,” Zann answered flippantly. “My people will set up a series of designated times and locations.”
 * “Acceptable,” Spectre replied slowly. “I think.”
 * “What do you mean, ‘I think’?” Zann said sharply.
 * “Most of our shipping of this nature is done through Bexpress, Inc. You gave them quite a scare at Bespin not long ago.”
 * “And what does that mean?”
 * “They’ll be a little reluctant to deal with you,” Spectre answered evenly. “They won’t want to travel very far.”

Zann chuckled evilly in reply.
 * “A lot of people are reluctant to deal with me, Mr. Tenzor,” Zann said with a wickedly bemused look in his eyes. “Doesn’t stop most of ‘em from doing so.”
 * “Of course not,” Spectre managed, all too keenly aware of how much he disliked this sort of cloak-and-vibroblade trickery, especially right now. “Still, the transport . . .”

Zann waved the matter off nonchalantly.
 * “I’ll arrange my ships to meet Bexpress’s at a number of deep space locations,” Zann offered reasonably. “They’ll be isolated, away from Imperial patrols, and you have my assurances that they’ll all be within five parsecs of Bespin to keep your spineless business partners happy.”
 * “I’m sure that will be acceptable,” Spectre said.

Zann’s offer was in fact better than Spectre had expected to hear from the crime lord and Spectre figured Zann must really want that weaponry, badly enough to do most of the shipping himself. Of course, it was entirely possible that the crime lord didn’t trust Bexpress to do the work.
 * “Good,” Zann said, rising from his seat and turning as if to leave.

A look of faint alarm passed across Spectre’s face-there was still one last matter for them to discuss, and, if Zann was big into strong-arm tactics, mentioning it now would not only go over poorly, but also possibly elicit an aggressive or hostile response. Still, though he suspected Zann was pretending to forget the matter only to provoke him, the Yanibar Guardsman knew that his role demanded that he not let it go.
 * “There is one but matter left you seem to have glossed over,” he said, lacing his voice with a hint of a sting.
 * “And what would that be?” Zann asked icily, though Spectre knew from the crime lord’s eyes that Zann knew exactly what he was talking about.
 * “The price,” Spectre answered.
 * “You expect Tyber Zann, the leader of the Zann Consortium, to pay for such a puny purchase?” Zann replied indignantly. “That pathetic order isn’t worth the credits.”
 * “Then you won’t be getting a single delivery,” Spectre replied coldly, his eyes glittering with challenge.

He was impressed with how quickly Zann had turned from the congenial if distant host to a defiant challenger. Such were the ways of the underworld.
 * “Is that so?” Zann asked, turning back to regard Spectre with evident unfriendliness. “What makes you think you can get away with that?”
 * “Something,” Spectre replied vaguely, taking great care to look directly at the crime lord. “That would give you a great deal of discomfort if you knew about it. You might even kill me for it.”

Tyber Zann froze in his tracks-something that rarely happened. Very slowly, very deliberately, he placed his hands on the table and leaned down until his sharp, pointed nose was less than a meter from Spectre’s face, scrutinizing the other man.
 * “You weren’t born as Matrik Tenzor,” Zann commented. “You’re a clone, aren’t you?”

Spectre said nothing, but continued to meet the crime lord’s stare with one equally icy of his own. Zann started vaguely in recognition as he realized who Spectre reminded him of, then covered his surprise with a thin smile.
 * “You’re a clone of Jango Fett,” he said.

It was not a question.
 * “That’s right,” Spectre said evenly, with great effort. “And you know what that means.”

The two men stood quietly, the noisy background of the nightclub drowned out by the silent tension between them. Each clearly disliked the other and neither was willing to back down or show weakness. Urai Fen shifted from his position, dropping into a barely discernible fighting stance-if Spectre made a wrong move or Zann gave a signal, the Talortai would attack. Spectre knew he was playing a dangerous game. If he pushed too far, Zann might react violently, but he was sure the crime lord was still just testing him.
 * “Do tell,” Zann replied at last.
 * “That means I can kill you before you blink and not even think about it,” Spectre said with a distinct dearth of tact, meaning every word of it.

Zann chuckled again, an unpleasant sound that had a sinister air about it.
 * “I’m sure you could,” he answered, but there was a modicum of respect in his voice now. “Not many people dare to threaten me. Even fewer get away with it.”

Spectre had no ready reply for that, but he tensed slightly, preparing for action. Instead, though, Zann stood back up, his fierce stare relenting as he brushed the table’s grime off his hands.
 * “Fett had a pretty good reputation back in his day. So did his clones,” Zann said, the word clone spoken with a hint of distaste. “I suppose that counts for something. Name your price.”
 * “Nothing too unreasonable,” Spectre said, trying to switch from hostile to casual as easily as Zann had. “Ten million credits for all of it.”
 * “Don’t be ridiculous,” Zann replied. “That’s not worth nearly that much and you know it. Half that.”
 * “I’m almost insulted by an offer so low,” Spectre replied, recognizing the bantering as nothing more than casual bargaining. “Eight and a half million, and that includes the fee to Bexpress for shipping, as well as the bribes for Bespin’s customs officials.”
 * “Six and a half million,” Zann shot back.
 * “Seven and a half,” Spectre persisted.

Zann thought it over, pretending to contemplate the matter melodramatically, just to draw out the suspense.
 * “It’s a deal,” he said, sticking out his hand.

Spectre started to reach out his hand to clasp the crime lord’s hand, and was suddenly overtaken by a wave of apprehension. He had just agreed to sell weapons, highly destructive droids, to one of the most notorious crime lords in the galaxy. Yes, the ruling council had approved it. Yes, this deal would help provide for the families in the Yanibar refuge. Yes, all the decisions had been made beforehand, but it still didn’t sit right with Spectre. He was making a deal with the devil, with one of the scum of the galaxy that he often sent covert teams of the Yanibar Guard to discreetly eliminate at key moments. The duplicity of it all struck him as wrong. He saw Zann’s eyes flash towards his expectantly and slowly, his arm rose stiffly to meet it. Spectre knew that his mission, the assignment he had been given, was more important than his own personal misgivings, even if he was the ultimate decision maker. However, he had come this far, and this was what he’d been ordered to do, so he chose to finish what he had started.

Spectre shook Zann’s hand and received another thin smile from the ill-tempered crime lord.
 * “That wasn’t so hard,” Zann jested sardonically. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

Spectre nodded in reply; he couldn’t bring himself to say the same to Zann. He devoutly wished he had voiced more opposition to this plan earlier, but it was too late now. Something deep in his gut, perhaps even intuition from the Force told him that this was a bad idea, and that he should not have come. Worst of all, he had the distinct feeling that not only he, but all of Yanibar, would regret this decision. For the moment, though, Spectre mentally shrugged aside his misgivings-he needed a clear mind now; the danger wasn’t over yet. He would talk this over with Selu, Milya, Sarth, and Cassi when they returned. Returning to the present, he saw Zann murmur something discreet to an attendant before turning back to him.
 * “In honor of our profitable business deal,” Zann said cheerily. “I’m prepared to be quite amiable.”
 * “Really?” Spectre said, trying to sound intrigued when all he really wanted was to leave.
 * “Yes,” Zann said. “Enjoy yourself, Mr. Tenzor. You’ll stay here for the night.”
 * “That’s not necessary,” Spectre said, suddenly wary.
 * “I insist,” Zann interrupted smoothly, the tone of his voice telling Spectre that he would brook no argument. “No harm will come to you, if that’s what you’re worried about. My men will see to it.”
 * “How very kind of you,” Spectre answered. “But it’s not-,”

Zann was still not listening.
 * I’ve spoken to the proprietor,” the crime lord continued. “He’s under orders to treat as you as an honored guest. Anything you want from the bar or hookah station is yours.”
 * “Thank you,” Spectre replied, giving up the argument for lost.
 * “Oh, and one last thing,” Zann answered. “As a parting nod to our new agreement.”

He beckoned sharply, and all of a sudden, Spectre sensed rather than saw someone approach the table, someone filled with a great deal of fear, as well as anger. Expecting a ruffian of some kind, he was surprised to see the barely-clad Togrutan dancer from earlier standing there beside him, looking subservient.
 * “Sehsaak here is quite a treat,” Zann assured him. “The best in the house. She’ll be your . . . attendant for the evening.”
 * “I’m overwhelmed with gratitude,” Spectre said, not meaning a word of it.
 * “Then I’ll let you enjoy yourself,” Zann answered. “Just relax.”

The crime lord, flanked once more by his two Trandoshan flunkies, turned and made his way off through the tables and the nightclub’s patrons. Unsurprisingly, most gave him a wide berth, except for a drunk Elomin who stumbled into their way and was swiftly shoved aside by a Trandoshan. Urai Fen lingered a minute longer to stare at Spectre with his green alien eyes, then gave him a small nod, as one warrior would to another, before he turned and stalked off after Zann. Spectre shuddered as they departed, relieved he was finally free of the underworld leader.

However, he turned to see Sehsaak standing beside him, looking expectantly up at him. He sighed inwardly. This was not a complication he had the time or patience for.
 * “You don’t have to stand there,” he said to her.
 * “I’m your attendant,” she said, confused. “I’m here to provide whatever you desire.”
 * “That won’t be necessary,” he said.
 * “Should I show you to your room?” she asked sultrily, and Spectre began to wonder if anyone in this blasted nightclub listened to a word he was saying.
 * “Fine,” he grumbled, if only to have somewhere quiet to get rid of this Togrutan shadow that had been forced upon him.

Snatching up the still-unfinished fogblaster as well as his holoprojector, he allowed himself to be led up a flight of rickety stairs to the balcony. Making their way through the crowded tables there, Sehsaak led him towards a door that opened into a hallway lined with doors-the hidden side of the nightclub’s business, and one that was all too common on Nar Shaddaa. Spectre was vaguely aware of the jealous looks he got from several young males over the attention Sehsaak was paying to him, but ignored them. He couldn’t wait to get off this Force-forsaken rock. He waited impatiently while Sehsaak opened the door and admitted him to a dingy-looking suite, locking the door behind her. Spectre took in the battered furniture-the desk, the rather sad-looking dresser, the high-backed chair, the small rattling conservator unit. The centerpiece of the furniture was a large bed, the one thing in the room that appeared clean and somewhat new. He peered around the corner into the refresher station and found that it was similarly dilapidated. Charming.

Plopping down wearily in the chair, he set his fogblaster down on the desk, rubbing the acrid smoke from his eyes. Sehsaak took that as some sort of invitation to slip up behind and start gently kneading his shoulders. The action of her hands on his tight muscles was therapeutic, working out some of the tension in his upper back. His muscles relaxed and he grunted softly as she applied pressure to a particularly large knot. Then Spectre suddenly realized where he was, and he whirled around sharply.

The Togruta shrank back, hands raised, in response to the dark look he gave her. She was frightened, he saw, and his scowl softened somewhat in response.
 * “I do not require you to do anything for me,” he said.

That answer did not seem to satisfy her, though, and she stood there downcast, as if waiting for him to strike her.
 * “Look,” he said, a little more gently. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
 * “Some say that,” she whispered, a haunted look on her face. “Never mean it.”
 * “I do,” he said. “I’m a married man.”
 * “Didn’t stop ‘em before,” she said quietly.

Spectre decided that he did not have time for this. He was highly tempted to simply apply a sleeper hold to the Togrutan, leaving her mercifully unconscious, but he had already promised not to hurt her. While he wasn’t above lying when he had to, the Jedi training Selu had instilled in him emphasized the importance of protecting the weak, not rendering them unconscious.
 * “You can have the bed,” he said. “I’m not planning on sleeping anyway.”

She shied back as he stood, but then managed to stand stock-still, trembling.
 * “No need to be jumpy,” he said. “Are you hungry?”

Hesitantly at first, then more eagerly, the Togrutan nodded, clearly torn over her obvious hunger and her distrust of Spectre. Seeing her response, he rose and activated the room’s communications unit, ordering two bowls of Alderaan stew. When an indignant attendant tried to tell him that he was in a nightclub, not a restaurant, Spectre frostily told him how displeased Tyber Zann would be if he found out that Spectre had been mistreated and furthermore suggested that the attendant make himself of more use by calling a nearby restaurant of no little disrepute and having the stew delivered, along with some flatbread. Or else. The flustered attendant had hastily muttered apologies and, thoroughly chastened, replied that the gentleman’s stew would be delivered to his room as soon as possible, along with flatbread. Would the gentleman like anything to drink? Water, Spectre had told him. Bottled and impurity-free. Or else. The attendant had stammered once more his assurances of how hastily the desired items would be delivered, along with profuse apologies for his earlier rudeness. Spectre, tired of his blathering, had clicked off the intercom.

His head was throbbing from all that heavy isotope-the sounds of which could still be heard through the walls of the room, though significantly muffled. Had he ever actually liked that stuff when he was in the army? He knew he had, but yet now he had a hard time justifying his previous affinity for it. A lot had changed about him since that time, he reasoned. However, Spectre knew that, once again, his introspection had to wait. For the moment, he was not safe and there was still a distraction in close proximity. A petite Togrutan one standing off to his side.
 * “Look,” Spectre said as diplomatically as possible. “You must be exhausted from all that dancing. Not to mention dirty. Why don’t you clean yourself up? The food will be here by the time you’re done with the ‘fresher.”

Seshaak bobbed her head in an eager, but still suspicious nod, and started walking briskly towards the refresher station as if Spectre had been a superior officer who’d just given her a direct order.
 * “Wait,” Spectre said, his words halting her in mid-stride.

She turned to face him, worry written across her face, and Spectre realized that she must have been severely traumatized for her normally predatory Togrutan nature to have been knocked into this frightful servility. He walked over to the dresser and pulled it open, rummaging through it to find-among various products and items of clothing not fit for polite conversation-a large bathrobe, his size, monogrammed with the logo of the nightclub. Someone had obviously been observing him during his hours in the club.
 * “Take that,” he said. “It’ll keep you warm.”

He did not tell her the other reason for giving her such a bulky robe. Her abbreviated dancer’s costume showed enough of her to be thoroughly distracting; though he had no desire to disgrace his marriage, on a purely instinctual level, she was attractive. Also, giving her the robe would prevent the awkward scenario of her misinterpreting his intentions once more and emerging from the refresher naked. Spectre forced that particular image from his mind, attempting to keep his mind on the mission.

Seshaak took the robe and went into the ‘fresher. Spectre closed the door behind her. Then, once he heard the water of the shower running, he walked to the opposite corner of the room from the entrance, pulling out his comlink. Carefully, he instructed the YGI team to pack up their surprises and surveillance of the nightclub’s interior discreetly, and handle a few other matters. The gas grenades in the ventilation shaft could wait until after the establishment closed, some time early in the morning.

A few minutes later, Spectre could hear the sounds of some belligerent-sounding drunk making his noisy way through the upper hallway. He smiled at the nonsensical, slurred profanities the man was shouting. Soon enough, there was a loud pounding on his door. Spectre slid the door open to reveal one of the YGI agents standing there-sort of. The man was slouched over, leaning heavily against the door as he stared blearily at Spectre while clutching at something.
 * “Here, take shees, Lisssa,” the man slurred, clearly delirious.

He tossed several items into the room past Spectre.
 * “Didja mish ‘em?” asked the agent drunkenly. “Didja kriffin’ mish ‘em?”

There was a clatter of footsteps as a youthful looking attendant, no doubt the one Spectre had spoken to earlier, came running down the hall. Out of the corner of his eye, Spectre saw the attendant pale upon seeing him, scurrying forward to seize the agent’s arm and lead him away.
 * “My apologies, sir,” the attendant said frantically. “I’m so very sorry this man disturbed you. It won’t happen again, sir.”

The “drunk” man allowed himself to be led off by the attendant and, when the attendant wasn’t looking, gave a sly wink at Spectre.
 * “Don’t worry about it,” Spectre told the attendant evenly. “He told me a rather funny joke. Just take him outside and send for an airtaxi to take him back home.”
 * “Yes, sir. Will do, sir,” babbled the attendant as he half-dragged, half-led the agent down the hall.

Spectre suppressed a smirk and then turned back to retrieve what he’d been given, closing and locking the door behind him. Scooping his vibroblade, S-5XS pistol, stimulant pills, and all-purpose mini-scanner from the floor, he stuffed them away into various pouches in his coat. True, there was another S-5XS in the hands of the bouncers at the front desk, who’d required him to surrender the weapon upon arrival, but now he was armed in case of trouble.

A few minutes after the agent had made his delivery, there was a polite rap on the door. Spectre opened it to reveal the attendant, considerably more disheveled than the last time Spectre had seen him, standing beside a delivery droid carrying a tray loaded with two bottles of water, a cloth wrapped bundle inside a basket, and two sealed containers that no doubt contained Alderaan stew. Spectre took the tray, tipped the droid and even the obsequious attendant, and then once again closed the door. Setting the food on the desk, he carefully ran the miniscanner over all the items, making sure that there was no poison in the meal. Not content with simply scanning, he extended his Force senses, trying to sense any danger. This time, there was no problem with his connection to the Force, and its auras did not seem to indicate any threat from the meal.

Spectre dug into his food eagerly, and was surprised to find that it was actually decent-tasting. There were real chunks of meat in the stew, and it certainly tasted like nerf, which was what good Alderaan stew was supposed to contain. The flatbread was still warm and toasty, and its chewy texture supplemented the stew well. The water, too, though not the purest he’d ever seen, was satisfactory, serving to wash down the stew and bread. Not long after he began eating, Seshaak emerged, wearing the robe. Spectre beckoned her close, and she sat on the edge of the bed as he laid the tray with her meal on it beside her. She eagerly dug into the food, eating as if she hadn’t had a decent meal in weeks. Then, she stopped in the middle of tearing into a particularly large chunk of nerfmeat with a carnivore’s hunger, to stare up at Spectre, stew broth dribbling down her chin.
 * “It’s not drugged,” Spectre assured her, assuming she was once again suspicious of him.

She shook her head, then explained, “Thank you.”

Spectre grunted a reply, the irony not lost on him that it had been he who was assuming the worst now-and about himself. Glancing over at the Togruta, he saw she was still wearing the collar that she had worn while dancing. She saw his look and ducked her head, pulling up the lapel of the robe to hide it.
 * “Why do you wear that?” he asked.
 * “Have to,” she mumbled, her Basic coarse and heavily accented.

Now that she was no longer talking in the rote phrases that had no doubt been drummed into her for her. . . occupation, her speech was fragmented and stilted, as if she didn’t often experience normal conversations.
 * “What do you mean?” he asked.
 * “Itsa sign of owning me,” she said hesitantly. “Letsem . . . letsem . . .”
 * “Control you,” Spectre finished, to which she nodded mutely. “You’re a slave, aren’t you?”

Once again, she nodded, a little more despondently. Spectre’s blood boiled at her admission. The Yanibar refuge did not tolerate slavers or slavery, and Spectre had made a point of ordering numerous covert operations against slavers, along with rescue missions to free slaves, many of whom had come to live on Yanibar after being freed. Despite his gruff exterior, Spectre had a soft spot for enslaved beings; he couldn’t stomach the idea of owning another sentient.
 * “How did it happen?” he asked.
 * “Captured me one day, when I was on the streets,” the Togruta replied. “Forced me to come here. Said I was a treat.”
 * “How old were you?”
 * “Six, maybe? Seven? I dunno,” she said.
 * “How long ago was that?” Spectre asked her, appalled at the depravity he was hearing.

True, he was no stranger to the depths of the galaxy’s least upstanding, but it wasn’t everyday that they sat in front of him talking to him.
 * “Ten years, maybe more,” she answered offhandedly. “Time not really a big deal around here.”
 * “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, at a loss for further words to console the girl for the horrors she had endured in her young years.
 * “Whatsat mean?” she asked, cocking her head to the side curiously.
 * “What? Sorry?” Spectre said, momentarily puzzled, fumbling for an explanation that would make sense to Seshaak. “It’s-it’s when someone wishes something hadn’t happened. People say it when things weren’t as they should have been.”
 * “Ain’t nobeing ever said that to before,” she commented.

Spectre sat silently for a moment, his hands folded together and resting on the scuffed-up desk, brooding on his course of action.
 * “I’ll try and get you out of here,” he said suddenly. “But not right now.”
 * “Why wouldja do that?”
 * “Because I can,” Spectre said firmly. “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

He devoutly wished Selu were here. With his mastery of the Force, Spectre figured that Selu’s talents would come in particular handy right now.
 * “Don’t worry ‘bout me,” she said. “I’m dead already.”
 * “Not yet,” he replied fiercely. “We’re getting you out of here.”
 * “What about others? Girls like me,” Seshaak said. “Lotsa more.”
 * “We’ll get as many of them as we can,” Spectre promised, while one detached corner of his mind asked him if he knew what he was getting himself into.
 * “When?”
 * “Soon. Just rest for now, and keep quiet. Don’t tell anyone anything about what I just told you. I’ll tell them what they need to hear in the morning to keep away any suspicion.”

Seshaak looked at him with a look that somehow combined apprehension, bewilderment, and a small level of trust. She gingerly climbed into the bed, looking over her shoulder to see if Spectre had been making some sort of cruel joke before, leading her on before betraying her trust and showing his true callousness. However, the Yanibar Guardsman remained at his chair, quietly watching both the door and Seshaak out of the corner of his eye. Taking a stimulant pill, he waited until she was safely asleep before pulling out his datapad and adding several more entries to it, his mind buzzing with any number of schemes that, had Tyber Zann seen them, would have greatly displeased the crime lord. He had struck this deal with the devil, but that didn’t mean he had to dance with him.

8
The Hawk-bat soared through the streaky low-lying clouds of Honoghr, racing across the bluish expanse of the world’s sky. Swooping down over one particular landmass, the freighter descended to an altitude of only a couple klicks above the wrinkled greenish-brown surface of Honoghr’s plains. Guided by invisible signals tracing its origin from somewhere on the ground, the Hawk-bat cruised towards a set of foothills, its repulsorlifts rumbling through the atmosphere. Finding a piece of reasonably smooth land in the middle of the brownish sea of grass, the freighter set down, its landing gear deploying and sinking into the soft soil of the steppe.

Morgadh clan Kel’nerh froze quietly as he heard the ship approach. Scanning the horizon, his keen eyes soon made out the tiny speck of an oncoming craft. He had been at a nearby spring, filling his battered water flask with enough pure water to last him the rest of the day. Scrambling to his feet, he tucked the flask away, one clawed hand gently grasping the hilt of his knife. Were they looking for him? Who was in the ship? It didn’t appear to be a Noghri vessel. Perhaps it was an Imperial craft. He sniffed the air gently, but the winds carried no message for him. He would need to get closer.

Stealthily, the diminutive hunter crept through the fields of grass, approaching the ship which had set down. He was less than a kilometer away from them, but the tall fronds of kholm grass made it difficult to see anything. At any rate, he wished to have a closer look at whoever it was that the ship had brought to startle his routine, if more than a little meager, existence. He barely made any disturbance in the stalks of grass as he moved; years of practice combined with his natural hunter’s instincts making him nearly invisible as he moved. Soon, his knife in hand, he was close enough to make out the strangers. They both seemed to be humans, dressed like the servants of the Lord Darth Vader that he had once seen in Nystao, long ago. Before his exile. Though Kel’nerh had never seen a human female in person before, the texts he had studied as part of his commando training had granted him enough knowledge about humans to know that there was one male and one female walking around in the grass-heading towards him.

Once again, he froze, barely daring to breathe, but they were both steadily making their way toward him. How could they know he was here? His mind reached out to touch theirs, trying to see into them, to see if they knew where he was, to see if they would find him.
 * “Did you feel that?” Milya whispered to Selu as they trudged through the knee-high grass.

He nodded, then replied, “Yes. It’s strong in the Force. An alien mind, just like you said.” They continued forward. Selu’s hand casually dropped towards his belt to where his lightsaber dangled, his Force senses alerting him to the fact that they were being watched. The hair on the back of his neck was standing up and he looked around, but was unable to see any trace of another living sentient beside him or Milya in the vicinity. She saw his motion and her own hand slipped down to the saberstaff gently bouncing along her hilt.
 * “He’s here,” he confirmed.
 * “Wait,” Milya said. “I’m going to try something.”

Kel’nerh watched the two intently from his makeshift hunter’s blind. They were less than thirty meters away from him. His obsidian black eyes glittered, noting that they both seemed to recognize they were being watched. They both reached for something on their belts, possibly some sort of weapon, that resembled a short-hafted metal club. The female took another step toward him, and suddenly, there was a voice in his mind, which took him completely by surprise.

''Don’t worry. We’re not going to hurt you. You can come out.''

He tried to reply, tried to shake the words out of his head, but was unable to do that. Looking up, he saw the female’s eyes were closed. Was she somehow forming the words in his head? He grasped the knife nervously, highly tempted to hurl it at her, just to make the words stop. Then again, if these were servants of the Lord Darth Vader, he would risk calling down the wrath of the Empire upon himself and betraying all the oaths of allegiance taken by the Noghri people.

''Yes, you see us. We just want to talk with you.''

Slowly, hesitantly, Kel’nerh rose from the ground, knife still in hand. Both humans immediately turned toward him-for all their skill in tracking him this far, they’d both been looking in a slightly different direction. Approaching them, he thrust his knife back into his belt and knelt deferentially towards them, splaying out his arms to the side as he had seen the clan dynasts do for representatives of the Empire, for the Lord Darth Vader, and for the Lord Grand Admiral.
 * “Greetings, servants of our Lord Vader,” he said. “I am Morgedh clan Kel’nerh. To what honor do I owe thy visit?”

From his kneeling position, he saw the two humans shoot each other a look at his mention of Vader’s name, and sensed some sort of mental reaction from them. The emotion was quickly damped down, but present nonetheless. Interesting.
 * “Rise,” said the male. “My name is Selu and this is Milya. We are honored to meet you.”

Selu wasn’t entirely sure if he meant those words. The fact that the stocky alien standing before him had managed to conceal his precise location from a Jedi Master and had invoked Darth Vader in his introduction didn’t exactly bode well from his point of view. Still, there was no sense in starting the conversation confrontationally.
 * “Is there any service I can provide you?” the young Noghri asked.
 * “Not exactly,” Milya said. “We actually came looking for you.”
 * “You have great potential,” Selu added.
 * “Then I am to serve the Empire?” Kel’nerh asked.

Another exchange of looks.
 * “About that,” Selu said. “Let’s just that there’s a lot to discuss.”

Kel’nerh stared blankly at him.
 * “What is there to discuss? I would be honored to join the ranks of those who serve the Lord Darth Vader. It is all I’ve ever wanted.”
 * “That’s the thing,” Milya said slowly. “We don’t work for the Empire, or for Vader.”
 * “But here you are . . . in the clothes of his servants,” Kel’nerh said slowly, then he snarled and stepped back from them as the realization hit him. “Spies!”
 * “In a manner of speaking,” Selu said evasively.

Kel’nerh had drawn his knife and started to slowly circle them, hissing in some type of angry challenge.
 * “Just put the knife down,” Milya said. “We don’t want to hurt you.”
 * “Were we nearby a Noghri village, I would have already sounded the alarm,” Kel’nerh spat. “As it is, I will kill you myself and hope that the deed will help me regain my honor.”

Selu, focused in on what the young warrior was saying, found himself distracted by Kel’nerh’s speech enough to not notice the Noghri’s sudden springing forward, knife slashing for his throat. However, his Jedi reflexes were still with him, and he managed to barely bat away the knife arm, though the impact of Kel’nerh against him bowled him over and the blade’s edge scored his uniform tunic, tracing a painful line of red fire across his right shoulder. No sooner had he hit the ground than the Noghri had already landed lightly on his feet, whirling to stab at Selu with his knife. The alien was fast, far faster than Selu could have expected. For her part, Milya had drawn her lightsaber, but was uneasy with the idea of rushing into the melee; she stood a good chance of injuring Selu if she wasn’t extremely careful.

However, Selu, had had quite enough of this combative little alien. Summoning the full power of the Force to him, he let its power guide his hand, dipping it into his belt to draw the silvery hilt of his lightsaber faster than the human eye could see. Even Kel’nerh’s expert reflexes were not enough to allow him to fully anticipate the motion, and the green lightsaber blazed to life, cleanly slicing off the blade of Kel’nerh’s knife a few centimeters above the hilt. The Noghri gaped for a second at the glowing red stub he’d been left with, then lunged inside at Selu, attempting to get so close that Selu would be unable to effectively use the lightsaber. Selu, however, had anticipated the maneuver, and with a casual gesture of his hand as an outward expression of his intent, sent Kel’nerh flying back with a wave of telekinesis. A second later, the Noghri found himself inexplicably floating in the air, separated from his broken knife, and staring up at him was a rather perturbed Selusda Kraen.
 * “Let’s not be so hasty,” Selu said sternly, then he softened. “We would just like a chance to explain.”
 * “There is nothing to explain,” Kel’nerh spat. “You are enemies of the Empire, and therefore my enemies.”
 * “What if we had proof that the Empire was not worth your loyalty?” Milya said, trying a different tack. “I sense you are a noble person. Would you reject us out of hand?”
 * “I do not desire you to feed me with lies,” Kel’nerh replied defiantly. “The Noghri people owe everything to the Empire.”
 * “Perhaps,” Selu said. “But do you owe anything to the Noghri? You seem to live alone.”
 * “That is not by my choice,” Kel’nerh answered sharply, wondering why he was telling the strangers this. “And it does not change our enmity.”
 * “We came to find you,” Milya said. “To help you. We had to use these uniforms to reach the surface, but all we’re asking is that you give us a chance. Give us ten minutes, and hear what we have to say. Talk to us. Is that asking so much?”
 * “Maybe,” Kel’nerh glowered.
 * “Well, we’re never going to get anywhere like this,” Selu said. “If I set you down, will you promise not to attack us?”
 * Why should I promise you that?” Kel’nerh snarled, vaguely aware of how helpless he felt suspended two meters off the ground, as unable to move as if he’d been grabbed by an invisible hand.
 * “Because I sense your discomfort,” Selu replied calmly. “I’ll let you go as long as I don’t have to worry about you trying to kill me again-at least, not until you’ve heard us out.”

Kel’nerh mulled it over for a minute, but realized he wasn’t like to have many other options present themselves. The two strange humans had easily destroyed his weapon and left him floating in the air helplessly even despite his best efforts to kill them. If they wanted him to hear them, they had the opportunity to do so. And since they did have the upper hand, he stood to gain more by at least having the use of his limbs again.
 * “I promise,” Kel’nerh said begrudgingly. “I will hear what you have to say.”
 * “Good,” Selu said.

Kel’nerh felt himself being lowered to the ground, and was reassured to find that the invisible hand seemed to have released him. Once again, firm Honoghr soil was underneath his feet.
 * “Now, what is it you would have me hear?” he asked distrustfully.
 * “We are Jedi Knights,” Selu said, stretching the truth somewhat. “Years ago, our kind used to guard peace and justice around the galaxy. However, we were unsuccessful in doing so. War broke out. There was fighting on many planets-including here.”

Kel’nerh stood quietly, listening to them intently, but his face betrayed no emotion.
 * “I’m sure your people have some kind of records of this,” Selu continued, undaunted. “There were two Jedi, with the same kind of weapon as I carry, followed by humans in white armor.”

Though Kel’nerh made no reply, Selu saw recognition in his deep black eyes and knew that the topic was known to him.
 * “They escaped this planet, but the damage was already done,” Selu said. “I’m sure your people remember what your world was like before. Back when there were trees and animals, a vibrant ecosystem. That was because of the galactic war.”

Selu waited for a response, and Kel’nerh reluctantly acknowledged the truth of what he was saying.
 * “Yes,” the Noghri admitted. “The elders tell us that the skies shook with fire and lightning, and then life on the planet began to die off. But it was the Empire who saved us, the Lord Darth Vader who kept our people alive.”
 * “Really?” Milya asked incredulously.
 * “Yes,” Kel’nerh said. “The elders say that they tried to attack him, but while they defeated his underlings, our Lord Vader was unstoppable. In his mercy, he allowed them to live and even sent aid to us, to keep us alive.”
 * “I see,” Selu answered drily. “Vader’s mercy. I’m quite familiar with the matter, believe it or not. What did he get in return?”
 * “What do you mean?” Kel’nerh asked, clearly puzzled.
 * “What did the elders promise Lord Vader?” Selu inquired. “What did they offer him?”
 * “Nothing less than the service of the Noghri warriors in anything that the Empire might ask us to do,” Kel’nerh said proudly.
 * “You offered him your lives?” Milya asked disbelievingly, astonished at the idea.
 * “There was little else we could offer at the time,” Kel’nerh said defiantly. “And our skills are considerable.”
 * “We don’t doubt your skills, Morgadh clan Kel’nerh,” Selu said. “Or those of your people.”
 * “Nor should you doubt our loyalty,” Kel’nerh added venomously. “Your words will not sway me.”
 * “Why were you exiled?” Selu asked bluntly, ignoring the Noghri’s previous comment.

Kel’nerh froze, and stood their eerily, a stony expression on his face, causing Selu to wonder if he had provoked the warrior into a rage again or if this was a typical Noghri idiosyncrasy. His hand drifted to his lightsaber again. Then, Kel’nerh exhaled slightly in the Noghri equivalent of a sigh and gave his response.
 * “I am different from the others in my clan,” he said, his eyes flashing with anger. “Faster, stronger, more skilled. They said I did not belong.”
 * “They expelled you for being better than the others?” Milya asked, again stunned by what he was saying.
 * “It is not just that,” Kel’nerh said. “I crippled another warrior-on accident-during a sparring match. I did not mean to hurt him, but it was not the first time these things have happened. The maitrakh . . . she said my scent was off. So I was sent away.”
 * “Let me ask you another question,” Selu said. “Did you ever consider striking out against the others? Think about rebelling? Attacking them? Avenging the insults they gave you?”
 * “That would be foolish,” Kel’nerh said, his voice showing that he clearly resented the question. “I would never smear my honor or that of my clan like that?”
 * “Why not?” Selu challenged. “They obviously didn’t want you.”
 * “You lie,” Kel’nerh hissed. “It was my fault that I was sent away.”
 * “So, to maintain your honor, you accepted your judgment, right? You didn’t try to take revenge?”
 * “Such an act is beneath a true Noghri warrior,” Kel’nerh said derisively. “I would not betray those of my clan.”
 * “Then what would you say if I told you that the Lord Darth Vader had once done so?” Selu asked slowly, making sure to keep eye contact with Morgadh as he enunciated each syllable.
 * “That you are lying,” Kel’nerh scoffed angrily, but Selu sensed that the Noghri hadn’t completely rejected what he was saying.
 * “I’m not lying.” Selu said sincerely. “You have a gift, an extra sense. I know, because the Jedi have the same gift. Look into my mind as I speak and see if I’m lying.”

Kel’nerh stared at him with obvious suspicion and distrust, but Selu felt a barely perceptible alien mind, mostly uncontrolled, touch his, and began probing him. He relaxed his mental guard, letting Kel’nerh get a feel for his mind and allowing to him to test his sincerity.
 * “Darth Vader was once a Jedi,” Selu explained. “I knew him, a long time ago.”

That had stung. Even twenty years later, admitting that he had once considered Vader a brother-in-arms conjured up unpleasant memories. Not Vader, Selu reminded himself. Anakin.
 * “He was one of the best of us,” the Jedi continued. “He was something special in himself. If it hadn’t been for him, we would have lost the war several times. Probably more than that. And yet . . . one day, he turned on us.”
 * “Why would he do that?” Kel’nerh asked, curiosity overcoming his disbelief.
 * “I don’t know,” Selu said reflectively. “He was corrupted somehow, and the next thing I knew, he was leading an army to attack us in the middle of the night. I remember it as if it was yesterday.”

He conveniently left out that his memory retention rate was sufficiently high that he remembered almost everything that way, but there was no need to go into that
 * “He was just as unstoppable fighting other Jedi as he been when he fought with us,” Selu said gravely. “I watched him as he and his men killed everyone-from the oldest Master to the little children too young to wield a weapon. I barely managed to escape. He betrayed and murdered the Jedi.”
 * “That is impossible,” Kel’nerh said, but his voice lacked his earlier conviction.
 * “You’ve been searching my mind this whole time,” Selu answered. “Have I been lying? We both know that I’ve told you the truth. I think the bigger question is whether you’re willing to admit that you’ve been serving a soulless monster.”
 * “The Lord Vader has been merciful to the Noghri,” Kel’nerh grated out. “He saved us.”
 * “I’m sure he did,” Selu said. “So your warriors would do his dirty work. Would you believe me if I told you that Vader had stood by while millions of people were incinerated?”
 * “I would not,” Kel’nerh said resolutely.
 * “It’s true,” Milya said. “He had a planet completely destroyed, an inhabited one. Millions of people were there. Families. Children. It was a peaceful world.”
 * “I know this is a lot to hear at once,” Selu added. “But your people have been horribly tricked into serving Vader.”
 * “Why should I believe you?” Kel’nerh asked.
 * “Because we’re telling the truth,” Selu said earnestly. “We want to help you.”
 * “And why would you do that?” the Noghri replied. “What brought you to this world above all?”

Kel’nerh saw it again, that exchange of looks between the two humans. The one that served as a portent for something unpleasant. The gesture was quite telling, but aside from give him a sense of foreshadowing, it was not very helpful.
 * “The gift you have,” Selu said finally. “It’s called the Force. If one is practiced in using certain aspects of it, they can . . . see things.”
 * “We had a vision of you,” Milya said. “You were given a choice between serving the light and serving Vader.”
 * “Is this my choice?” Kel’nerh asked dismissively. “To trade the life of a Noghri warrior for following two humans who lie and tell impossible tales?”
 * “It would seem to me that the choice of becoming a Noghri warrior has already been taken from you,” Selu said mildly, indicating their surroundings. “Look at where we are.”
 * “Either you will serve Vader as a tool of evil, or you will serve the light,” Milya said. “I’ve seen that much in your future.”
 * “If you had truly seen me, you would know that I would not betray my oaths so lightly,” Kel’nerh said.
 * “And if the oath had been made with falsehood by one side?” Selu asked. “Would that still be so sacred?”
 * “No,” Kel’nerh admitted slowly, reluctance entering his voice. “It would not be.”
 * “I have told you the kind of person that Darth Vader is,” Selu summarized. “You know that we’re not lying to you. We just want to help. You can come with us to another world, learn how to use your gift to help people, instead of being enslaved by the Empire.”
 * “What of the rest of the Noghri people?” Kel’nerh asked. “Would you save them, too, or do you also just want me for my gift?”

Selu sighed.
 * “If we tried to speak to the Noghri, they would have us imprisoned and sent to the Empire. We wouldn’t even get a chance to explain,” Milya said. “If we could help them, we would.”
 * “That is not so,” Kel’nerh argued. “We would not act so rashly.”
 * “This from the one who tried to knife me not five minutes into the conversation,” Selu said, his mouth twisting up in a wry smile.

Kel’nerh said nothing in response to that, which was as good as a concession of the point from the reticent warrior.
 * “I’m sorry,” Selu said, this time with more regret. “If there was a way to reach all your people, I would gladly take it. Would they listen to you?”
 * “Not likely,” Kel’nerh said, with the first trace of humor they’d seen in him. “After all, we are out here.”
 * “Is there something else we can do to prove our sincerity?” Milya asked.
 * “No,” Kel’nerh said bluntly.

They stood quietly for another minute, the sound of the wind blowing across the plains the only sound. Kel’nerh stood stock still, mulling over what he had been told. Selu and Milya let him think, knowing that he would have to make any decision on his own. His world was being shattered, the illusions pulled away from his eyes, and the process would be difficult, even if he chose to believe them.
 * “You would ask that I leave everything behind to accompany you?” Kel’nerh questioned suddenly.
 * “I would,” Selu said honestly. “If you come with us, you’ll be given the opportunity to be with others like yourself, who have a similar gift. You’ll learn to use that gift to help others.”
 * “And if I choose to stay here?” the Noghri asked.
 * “Then your fate will be quite different,” Selu replied. “No matter if you live your days here, or if the Empire has its way with you. This is a chance to learn how to use your power honorably-and it will probably be the only one you get.”

Kel’nerh was silent for a moment longer, his jaw set. Selu and Milya again had to have patience as they waited for the warrior to make up his mind. Kel’nerh wondered if they even knew how much they were asking of him. They expected him to turn his back on everything he had grown up knowing based on their words, but then again, everything about them said they were sincere. He could hear the pain in Selu’s voice as he talked about Vader’s betrayal. He felt the sincerity in Milya as she told him of her vision. They were telling the truth, and deep down, he knew it. He just had to be willing to admit it. He surveyed the endless plains around him. If he went with these two humans, he would probably never see Honoghr again, never again have the possibility of returning to his clan dukha. Never again would he take his place among the elders of his clan. However, he also realized that his status as exile meant that those things were lost to him anyway. As much as he hated to admit it, his homeworld, his people-they had rejected him, and he didn’t belong among them.
 * “I accept,” he said, at last, the words slowly falling off his tongue.
 * “What was that?” Selu said.

Kel’nerh knelt again in front of them, then began to speak solemnly.
 * “With Honoghr as my witness, I swear by my honor and blade as a Noghri warrior. I hereby renounce my ties to the Empire on the grounds that my oaths to it were rooted in deception and betrayal. I will be loyal to you and to the Jedi, on pain of my death and dishonor. You have my word.”

Selu and Milya were momentarily taken aback by Kel’nerh’s unexpected vow. However, swearing that oath seemed to give Kel’nerh some sort of emotional release, Milya observed as she quickly sized up the situation. Her intuition, both her read of the Noghri’s body language and her Force senses, said that he was sincere, and had just made a solemn vow before them. Recognition of the moment’s gravity was in order.
 * “We bear witness to your oath,” she said quietly. “And we accept it in the spirit in which it was sworn.”
 * “Rise, Morgadh clan Kel’nerh,” Selu intoned formally, taking a subtle mental cue from Milya. “You’ve just taken your first steps into a larger world.”

Kel’nerh followed them back into the Hawk-bat and Selu and Milya began making preparations to raise ship. Both inwardly breathed a great sigh of relief at having been able to persuade Kel’nerh to join them, particularly without any interference from the Empire. They would have a great deal to tell the Noghri on the way to Yanibar-though they would still take precautions. Even though Selu and Milya believed Kel’nerh was sincere in his oath, they were also distrusting of outsiders to the point of near-paranoia. For the time being, information would be slowly dribbled out to Kel’nerh, and a vigilant watch maintained on the Noghri at all times. Once they returned to Yanibar, where Kel’nerh would be placed in the training academy for Force-sensitives, they could truly relax. However, even with their unrelenting caution, Selu and Milya inwardly rejoiced at having at least come this far, and especially at having saved another Force exile from the clutches of the Empire. That alone was a victory.
 * Bespin

The Rebel armada decanted from hyperspace, ship after ship seamlessly transitioning from faster-than-light velocities. A swarm of fighters, followed by larger ships, surged forward towards the planet of Bespin, descending into the hazy orange miasma of the world’s billowing cloud cover. Starfighter pilots wove their craft through the formations, or faced temporary restriction to flying by instrument as they navigated through the brume.

Rocketing ahead of the main formation were the elite starfighters of Rogue Squadron, their X-wings and A-wings accelerating on contrails of hot ion exhaust. In their wake, numerous other groups of starfighters approached, followed by lumbering transports and menacing gunships. Swooping through the air towards the Tibanna refineries and storage platforms around the graceful floating disk of Cloud City, the Rebel fighters watched the tiny dots of the hovering facilities grow larger as they approached.

Each pilot, each crewer knew that the stakes were high. The Alliance needed a successful raid here at Bespin in order to capture the vital Tibanna gas they would need for the next step of their campaign, one that could win the war. The snubfighters that rocketed toward the emplacements were decorated in manners that reflected the free-spirited nature of their pilots, emblazoned not only with just squadron colors and stripes, but also kill markers denoting downed Imperial craft as well as claws, teeth, and other imaginative designs that evoked ferocity and independence. Strike foils on X-wings and B-wings shifting from their normally closed flight configurations, opening up to reveal surfaces laden with cannon. What the Rebels lacked in sheer numbers, they made up for with motivation and talent. Each of them was a volunteer, having readily given up much to fight the Empire and generally prepared to give up even more.

The same could not be said of the Imperial crews manning the defensive stations. Many of them had been conscripted, forced into Imperial service on pain of death. Others had been kept in service for years beyond what they had originally signed up for, a source of considerable disgruntlement among the ranks. The fact that many officers had been executed by Lord Vader after an embarrassing raid had been perpetrated by lawless delinquents not long ago did little to improve their enthusiasm. Many of the replacements for said officers knew that their conduct in this attack would determine whether they lived to see another of Bespin’s glorious sunrises-not only could their lives be endangered in the battle, but the aftermath could see grisly repercussions visited upon them by their superiors, chief among them a certain Dark Lord of the Sith whose last visit was all too freshly remembered by those who had been unfortunate to witness it. Their trepidation was evident even as they detected the waves of Rebel craft approaching Cloud City.

Alarms wailed in Imperial bases and defensive platforms, summoning their occupants to action. Black-suited pilots scrambled to board the swift but frail and expendable TIE fighters and interceptors that the Empire threw at its foes in vicious swarms. The air was soon filled with the high-pitched whining from the TIEs’ twin ion engines as they launched. Armor clattered as columns of white-armored stormtroopers made their way to defensive stations. Laser cannon batteries swiveled on their pintles as gunners strove to place the oncoming craft into their sights. One tight-lipped officer, gaunt and balding, kept a lone vigil at the main tactical display in the main Imperial garrison’s command center. The commandant of the garrison, responsibility for its defense would ultimately lie with him, and even if they survived, he would be the first to die if Lord Vader or other high-ranking Imperials were displeased by his conduct.

The cloud of TIEs coalesced into a cohesive flock of the tiny craft and, on the orders of a wing commander, rose to meet the Rebel attackers. The two groups of starfighters surged towards each other, ready to do battle. Final orders were squawked out through comlinks, last-minute prayers were silently uttered, teeth were clenched as the two hordes swept towards each other. Adrenaline levels on both sides shot up as each combatant prepared for the savage chaos of battle. There was no backing down now.

Strapped securely into the cockpit of his X-wing, Wes Janson’s mouth curved into a feral slash of a grin as the TIEs approached. Let ‘em come, he thought as his gloved right hand tightening around the trigger on his X-wing’s control stick, setting his lasers to dual-fire for faster recycling between pulses. Selecting a target from the swarming cloud, he gently placed his sights on the Imperial craft and prepared himself to plunge into the exhilarating, deadly joyride of aerial combat. The X-wing’s computerized sights, designed to assist pilots in aiming their weapons while hurtling through the sky at hundreds of kilometers per hour, indicated he had a clear lock and Janson gleefully pulled the trigger, sending paired laser cannon beams at his target.

And just like that, battle was joined. Streams of laser cannon bolts, mostly red from the Rebel craft, and green from those belonging to the Empire, flew back and forth between the attackers and defenders. Some found a mark, dissipating on the protective energy barriers that protected the Rebel craft, while others burned through solar panels and strike foils, fuselages and cockpits. Bespin’s sky lit up with explosions and raining pieces of flame and shrapnel from starfighters suddenly reduced to hot debris. Fighters whipped around in death-defying turns, flying loops and twisting, weaving patterns in a deadly two-way game of hunt-and-seek.

However, the Imperial formation was cleanly knifed through by the lead squadrons of Rebel X-wings and A-wings, which tore through the heart of the Imperial craft. The sheer robustness of the X-wings allowed them to sustain numerous hits as they blew apart TIE after TIE. The A-wings, less sturdy but endowed with astonishing speed from their twin Novaldex J-77 Event Horizon engines and a pair of swiveling blaster cannons, reaped kill after kill as they sliced through the clustered TIEs, clearing a path for the transports and support craft in their wake.

That was not to say that the lead group of Rebel craft were utterly able to eliminate the TIEs that rose to challenge them for control of the skies. Numerous Rebel fighters were left as burning hulks as Imperial laserfire stitched burning lines through their hulls. Nor were all the Imperial craft eliminated in one pass. The fight soon degenerated into a chaotic melee, with pilots taking opportunistic shots, wheeling, diving, clawing for altitude, anything to survive. As the atmospheric brawl moved inexorably closer to Bespin, the balloon-mounted repulsorlift defensive platforms which had been deployed as a last line of defense for the Tibanna facilities added their own fire to the volume of laser lines crisscrossing through the clouds.

Green laser bolts sailed by a formation of B-wings that steadily flew through the melee. Some of them, glancing off reinforced deflector shields, rocked the craft of their pilots. Hasla Almani bit down a curse as she fought to keep control of her craft in the face of the near-misses rattling her cruciform craft. The sky and the battle it encompassed spun around her as she threw her B-wing into an erratic whirling spiral, one that was made all the more disorienting by the fact that the rest of her ship was counter-rotating relative to the gyroscopically-stabilized cockpit. The maneuver was intended to throw off Imperial gunners and, Hasla reflected as she armed her weapons and locked onto the nearest defensive platform, seemed to work pretty well, judging by the reduction in laser fire she was receiving.

Several of her squadmates, their own craft battered by the defensive batteries, were now returning fire, strafing the defensive guns with cycling red laser bolts followed by blue jolts of ion energy from their weapons. The B-wing’s chief advantages were its survivability and tremendous firepower and Ice Squadron now sought to unleash that edge against the Imperial defenses. Laser cannon batteries hit directly exploded into small clouds of fiery shrapnel while ion pulses skittered across targeting sensors to overload their circuitry. Several guns were silenced in the face of the Rebel firestorm. However, the Imperials stubbornly defied the gaggle of Rebel fighters, their guns continuing to pulse defiant green laser bursts after the B-wings. Hasla watched, horrified, as her wingman, Ice Seven, banked right into a particularly savage burst, which chewed through his engines and detonated his fighter into an angry red fireball whose shockwave rocked her craft. Even as the Ices came around for a second run, they were caught in crossfire from multiple platforms, a verdant hell of doom exploding around them. If they had to take out each platform this way, the casualties would be staggering.

Swooping around for a second run, she deftly sideslipped to port and down while chopping her throttle back sharply just in time to avoid the full fury of a belligerent TIE Interceptor. Caught off guard by her sudden maneuver, the slim fighter shot past her, right into Hasla’s gunsights. She smiled grimly-the Force had been with her, warning her of the impending danger and allowing her to set up her trap. Triggering her nose laser cannons, she was rewarded to see red lances of energy reduce the TIE to flaming wreckage. Her maneuver had carried her below the firing line of the nearest balloon gunship, giving her a view of the sturdy support struts that connected the laser battery-equipped platform to the gently curved balloon and-the three repulsorlift pods that held it aloft. Hauling back sharply on her control stick, she bracketed the pods in her sights and opened fire. The laser bolts blew through them almost instantly, and she was rewarded to see the entire balloon platform sustain a massive explosion and began plummeting down into the depths of Bespin’s murk. The platforms were obviously not military grade, she realized, probably some sort of civilian vehicle co-opted for Imperial use as a stop-gap measure. They hadn’t been reinforced with adequate shielding for their repulsorlift pods, and that meant that they could easily be taken out.
 * “Ice Eight to Squad,” she called on the squadron frequency. “Swoop under the platforms and attack from below! Their repulsor pods are vulnerable-it’ll kill the the whole balloon.”
 * “Good eye, Eight,” her comm crackled back at her with the distinctive voice of Captain Bowman Gavin, the squadron leader. “Follow Eight’s lead, Ices, and some of us just might survive to tell about it.”

The squadron complied, and soon, balloon platform after balloon platform was rapidly converted into a falling hulk with a trail of flames and wreckage in its wake. Other Rebel units, apprised of Hasla’s discovery, soon followed suit and their loss demoralized the Imperial defenders further. While they were not the most lethal component of the Imperial defense-the TIEs were actually much more effective-they were visible symbols of defiance, and their loss was unnerving. Soon, Imperial fighters were withdrawing in clear disarray, seeking respite in the arrival of additional squadrons being scrambled from bays on Cloud City itself.

The Rebel squadrons pressed their advantage, pushing forward to allow fat-hulled Gallofree transports to advance on the Tibanna platforms in order to disgorge boarding parties that would seize all the Tibanna they could. In the mean time, it was up to the starfighters to maintain the assault on the Imperial forces and fend off any stray TIEs that attempted to strafe the transports or the pair of Corellian gunships covering them. As the X-wings, A-wings, and B-wings surged forward, leaving TIE wreckage in their wake, the Imperial fighters retreated, giving hope of a quick victory. Unfortunately for the Rebellion, no sooner had the TIEs disengaged and gotten free than they began regrouping over the farther platforms hovering closer to Cloud City, no doubt hoping to make another stand there and possibly gain supporting fire from the batteries on the city itself.
 * “Keep popping off the platforms, Ices,” Captain Gavin relayed. “We’ve got to clear the skies for the transports so they can get to the gas storage platforms. Pick a target and light ‘em up.”

Hasla clicked her comlink in acknowledgment even as she watched a quartet of fighters bearing the distinct color scheme of Rogue Squadron slip down into the harrowing labyrinth of buildings that jutted up from the top of Cloud City, apparently to strike some target concealed within the artificial crevasses. She plunged back into battle and managed to knock down three lumbering TIE bombers that had foolishly decided to break through the Rebel fighter screen unescorted to attack the transports. As she brought her craft around in search of another balloon platform to attack, she noticed a small civilian transport. While yes, there was and had been a selection of various civilian ships, airspeeders, skimmers, skiffs, and cloud cars buzzing around frantically in the midst of the battle, this particular one caught her eye, for more reasons than one.

It was a sleek-looking craft that recalled older Nubian designs, some kind of private yacht, and one that was strangely familiar. Moreover, she sensed someone or someones on the ship with significant Force abilities-their auras were laden with its power. Finally, there was the matter of the dorsal quad-laser turret that had popped up from a concealed hatch to send blistering purple bolts of brilliant laserfire at its pursuers. Wait-that was it. Only one faction that she knew of fired purple laserfire. It was from Yanibar, more specifically, and she belatedly recognized it as the Silent Surprise, the private yacht of Sarth and Cassi Kraen. Hasla had no idea why they were on Bespin, but she knew that it was her job to help them fight off the TIEs.

Diverting more power to thrust, she swung her ungainly B-wing over towards the Surprise, reaching down to fish distractedly for her private comlink in a pants pocket of her flight suit. Finding the device, she pulled it into her hand and activated it even as she closed on the Surprise, although she first made sure that her fighter was not transmitting. The Alliance would not look kindly on her double allegiance were she discovered. The comlink chirped as its encryption algorithms activated and synchronized with those on the Surprise.
 * “Ice Eight here, codename Agent Redbird,” Hasla said. “Moving to assist you.”

Leaving the comlink on and tucking it into a chest pocket on her flight suit, she returned her full focus to closing in on the black and gray TIEs pursuing the freighter. A minute later, a static-filled reply filtered through her comlink.
 * “Redbird, we appreciate the assist. Didn’t realize we’d dropped in during the middle of a Rebel attack.”

The voice was female, no doubt belonging to Cassi Trealus and sounded vaguely strained.
 * “Happy to help,” Hasla replied.

Sighting on one of the TIEs, whose attention seemed to be focused on pelting the Surprise with laser fire, Hasla fired her laser cannons and blew the TIE away, literally sawing off its port solar panel. Switching targets, she hit another target with a snap shot, but the nimble interceptor danced away with a smoking wing for her efforts. The Surprise’s turret nailed another fighter and after that the others broke off in search of other, easier prey.
 * "Thanks, Redbird,” Cassi said via the comlink.

Hasla clicked her comlink in acknowledgement and then shut it off, watching through her viewport as the Surprise began descending towards the city proper, no doubt headed for YGI’s Bespin headquarters centered at the Bexpress Shipping complex.

She glanced at her sensor screen, and while the Rebels had once again broken up the TIE formation and were engaging the Imperial craft in tense dogfights, there were still plenty of Imperial ships out there, and plenty of streams of green laserfire rising from the city towards the Rebel ships. As long as the Rebels held the TIE squadrons in place over Cloud City, though, fewer Imperials could strike at the transports, so the Ices, the Rogues, and all the other squadrons held position over the city, burning down defensive platforms and engaging in fierce duels with their Imperial counterparts. For her part, Hasla led her flight against one of the last remaining defensive platforms in the now tried-and-true method of attacking from below, out of line of fire of its guns. Streams of laser fire erupted from the three B-wings in her formation, drilling into and igniting the repulsorlift pods. However, a slight miscalculation on her part forced her to break hard to port to dodge a piece of falling debris, temporarily separating her from the others. Even as the g-forces of her maneuver pressed her into her pilot’s couch, Hasla realized the unnecessary danger she had placed herself. Swearing under her breath, she immediately began trying to form up once more with her flight. Where had they gone, anyway?

Suddenly, her B-wing shuddered, and her danger sense screamed. Without thinking, she threw the craft into a sharp, spiraling turn as a single interceptor began pelting her stern with laser cannon fire. The acceleration slammed her back into the pilot’s couch as her inertial compensator strained to disperse the forces she was taking. She considered calling for help, but no other Rebel fighters were in the vicinity. Green streaks of laser light flew past her cockpit, but some of the blasts connected with her ship, reducing her already weakened shields until they flared and dissipated. Damage lights began illuminating rapidly on her craft as the sturdy B-wing began absorbing punishment. She dove towards a cluster of glimmering white spires, whipping around them with enough speed to shatter windows in her wake, and then suddenly decelerated. As she had hoped, the maneuver dropped her ungainly B-wing neatly behind the TIE and allowed her to pierce it with crimson laser fire. However, as she tried to pull up out of the shallow attack dive she had taken, she noticed that the controls were nonresponsive, and there was still no sign of her erstwhile wingmen.
 * “Oh, Sithspawn,” she swore.

She tried shifting power to the repulsorlifts, and was rewarded to see them come online even as her sublight engines drove her towards the cityscape. Hasla quickly killed power to the sublights; otherwise, they’d speed her toward making a rather permanent impression on some building. Unfortunately, her controls were still sluggish beyond all imagination-apparently her laser-blasting, as well as the stresses she’d sustained in her slingshot maneuver had managed to lock up or damage enough control surfaces and vector plates so that she could barely wrestle the control stick around. The top of Cloud City began rushing up at her with unpleasant speed, and she belatedly noticed that her repulsors were only functioning at ten percent power. They’d obviously been damaged too.

Switching back on her fighter’s comm system, she called a quick mayday while she prepared for impact.
 * “Ice Eight to Lead. I’m hit bad. Going down! Going down!”

There was no reply. Possibly her communications system had been hit. She jettisoned the remaining fuel from her fighter, as well as the last two proton torpedoes in her magazine. Hasla hated to waste the expensive weapons, but they would do her little good if they detonated underneath her upon impact. Bailing from the fighter was not an option-better to take the crash cushioned by her fighter than chancing her soft, flimsy body against the hard metal of Cloud City. She managed to wrest her fighter into a nearly even keel even as her altimeter showed she was merely tens of meters above the surface at airspeed of about two hundred kilometers per hour-a survivable speed. Finding an area of city surface along the roof of a warehouse that seemed fairly level, she began bringing the fighter down.

The long, trailing ventral airfoil of the B-wing began scraping the surface, tearing off the weapons pod there. The fighter began bucking even more and Hasla was thrown violently around in the cockpit. The control stick, possessed of a mind of its own, clipped her chin as she lost control of the fighter. Unfortunately, B-wings were incredibly top heavy and even in her tossed-about state, Hasla realized that the cockpit was pitching forward. She tried to apply more power to the repulsors to counter this effort, but the starboard repulsors failed. Pieces of the fighter flew past her and she could hear the loud screeching of metal as the jagged stub of her ventral foil met the roof of the warehouse. She tried not to contemplate the consequences of the warehouse being filled with volatile Tibanna gas. Her port repulsors had managed to avert her nose-forward motion, but had spun the craft down on its starboard side, crumpling that S-foil. The B-wing, trailing showers of sparks and debris from where the ruined starboard and ventral foils met the roof, carried on like that for another fifty meters before the warehouse’s roof abruptly ended, dropping the entire fighter down another ten meters in a drop that sent Hasla’s stomach into her throat and utterly ruined the airframe.

The impact was bone-jarring and she sat dazed for a moment before coming to her senses again. Her head hurt-she no doubt had a concussion from banging it on something or other during her crash-she would not ascribe the term “landing” to what she had just pulled off. Popping the hatch on the cockpit manually, she climbed out of her ruined fighter and scrambled away from the hulk, drawing her blaster as she did so. The Imperials still owned Bespin and they would be more than willing to exact a modicum of revenge from a downed Rebel fighter pilot, and probably in a very slow and painful manner. Pulling out her personal comlink again, she activated it and staggered off in the direction of the Bexpress Shipping complex.
 * Bexpress Shipping
 * “Is it over yet?” Annita asked Jorge over the comlink.

The Corellian, out of all the staff at the Bexpress office, had clambered up to the roof of the complex with a pair of macrobinoculars to observe the battle. In the mean time, the other employees, Annita, and Sarth and Cassi Trealus, who had scrambled inside after setting down the Surprise at a private landing pad, were huddled in the lowest level of the offices in a storage room in case Bexpress Shipping came under attack or was hit by debris. Power to the city was down, and so the only lighting in the dank storage room was from a pair of emergency glowpanels that barely gave off any illumination. It was crowded and uncomfortably warm as well, but its occupants preferred that to dodging strafing runs and burning wreckage.

Up in the sky, the Rebel fighters, their mission accomplished, broke off their duels with the TIEs and began heading up and out of Bespin’s atmosphere behind the transports. The lumbering, ungainly craft were fully loaded with the Tibanna gas vital to the Alliance’s war effort, and already had enough of a head start that the remaining TIEs would be unable to catch them without flying through their Rebel fighter escort. The garrison commander, tallying up his losses and staring incredulously at how few fighters he had left, decided he’d had enough for one day and opted to recall the remaining fighters. The battle was over, though Cloud City was far from back to normal. The Rebel attack had completely disrupted traffic and strikes on the generators had knocked out power to parts of the city, while other parts had lost power as all available auxiliary generators were diverted to power either defensive systems or the city’s repulsorlifts.
 * “Just about,” Jorge replied to Annita’s question regarding the battle, surveying the distance. “The Rebel fighters are all heading for space and the Imperials that are left don’t seem inclined to chase them.”

Annita breathed a sigh of relief.
 * “We’ll give them a few more minutes to make sure it’s really over,” she said.
 * “Probably a good idea,” Jorge concurred. “Just to be safe.”

However, after waiting several more minutes, resumption of the hostilities did not seem to be forthcoming, and Annita dismissed the staff to go check for damage around their assigned areas in the Bexpress Shipping complex before giving them the rest of the day off. Jorge soon rejoined her, and they, along with Sarth and Cassi, headed upstairs to the main office, where Bespin’s sun provided some natural light. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be much damage at all.
 * “Nice of you to drop by,” Annita said. “Sorry we didn’t have a better welcome for you.”
 * “We were just glad we made it,” Sarth replied. “Is it normally this exciting around here?”
 * “Not usually,” Jorge replied. “Until now, that is. Ever since the Empire took over, we’ve been raided twice and had problems with the Ugnaughts.”
 * “They were enslaved,” Annita explained. “And even though Baron-Administrator Calrissian returned to defeat the Empire . . . the Empire doesn’t take defeat lightly.”
 * “Luckily for us, that’s meant plenty of information to pass along,” Jorge said. “We make weekly reports now, some of it more useful than others. This Rebel raid will interest YGI, that’s for sure.”
 * “How’s Akleyn?” Annita asked, changing the subject to Sarth and Cassi’s son.

Cassi hesitated for a moment, a pang of longing for Akleyn, who had been away at school for nearly a year now, running through her.
 * “He’s adjusting,” Sarth filled in for her, though he, too, missed Akleyn. “He’s bright and studious. He’s made a few friends there so far, and Bryndar’s been helpful, he says. Also, his teachers have sent nothing but complimentary reports on his academics.”
 * “Sounds like both his parents rubbed off on him in that respect,” Annita remarked wryly.
 * “We couldn’t be more proud,” Sarth said with a broad smile that was mirrored, albeit to a lesser extent, on Cassi’s face.

It had been hard for her to let Akleyn go, to journey across the galaxy to a private school. Though it was a far better institution academically than anything Yanibar could have offered-and Cassi knew a mind as sharp as Akleyn’s would crave the challenges he would face there-she had not been ready to be parted with him for prolonged periods of time. Even though she knew that he was sixteen years old, nearly grown up, to her, Akleyn was still her little boy, even if he was practically an adult. However, her momentary introspection passed as she remembered her surroundings. Realizing that the conversation was on the verge of an awkward silence, she recovered her voice in order to ask about Annita’s and Jorge’s son, who was at the same school.
 * “How is Bryndar?” Cassi asked, referring to Jorge and Annita’s seventeen-year-old son, who was away attending school at the same world as Akleyn.
 * “Oh, he’s doing fine,” Annita replied. “He’s doing well enough in school, though his classes don’t excite him. Oh, and he just made the zone-ball team this semester.”
 * “Must’ve picked up that talent from my side,” Jorge said with a mischievous grin.
 * “Whatever,” Annita replied, rolling her eyes at her husband before returning her attention to Sarth and Cassi. “But we should stop wasting your time with small-talk. Were you just in the neighborhood, or is there something we can help with?”
 * “Both,” Sarth answered. “But more of the latter.”
 * “We were on Corulag investigating the disappearance of the Magrody family-Professor Magrody is an old friend of Sarth’s, a scientist,” Cassi explained. “We found evidence that they were kidnapped.”

Annita perked up. “Evidence? What kind of evidence?”
 * “Your kind of evidence,” Sarth assured her, withdrawing the sealed plastine bag with the drinking bulb. “Complete with fingerprints.”
 * “Anything you could tell us from it would be good,” Cassi said.

Annita accepted the proffered bag from Sarth and held it up to the light streaming through the windows.
 * “Hmm,” she said. “Well, there’s a couple bloody fingerprints on it. I’ll definitely take a look at it-once we get power back to run the instruments in my lab.”
 * “Thanks, Annita,” Sarth told her gratefully.
 * “Oh, no problem,” she replied even as she continued to eye the contents of the bag. “This is fun for me. It’s not every day I get to play detective again.”

While they waited for the power to return, Annita ushered her guests into a comfortable lounge, where they relaxed in form chairs, sipping kopi tea that had been fresh-made at the start of the attack for potential clients. They exchanged small talk, discussing pleasantries mostly, though Sarth and Cassi also shared the story of their search for the Magrodys and the strange paths it had led them.

Finally, though, the glowpanels and ceiling strips flickered and came back to life as the city’s power grid was finally restored to its normal functions.
 * “Well, that took long enough,” remarked Jorge. “One of the generators must have been hit or something.”
 * “Yeah,” Annita agreed. “Let’s head down to the lab, though, take a look at your drinking bulb.”
 * “Go ahead,” Jorge said. “I’ll keep an eye on things up here.”

Sarth and Cassi readily agreed, following Annita down another flight of stairs into a small lab that she kept stocked for possible use in her work for YGI, though it had many of the same devices she had used during her time with Commenorian law enforcement. Shrugging on a pair of sanitary gloves, Annita opened the bag and set the drinking bulb down on a shiny metal examination table. Taking some of a sticky film off a roll, she applied a patch of the clear film onto the fingerprints, pressing it down firmly to get a good impression. Once that was done, she removed the film and placed it on a reader arm, which she set to begin searching known databases for a match with the fingerprints.

Meanwhile, Annita focused her attention on the bulb itself. She took a full holographic image of the bulb, and then applied a chemical analyzer to the blood sample on the surface. Once the analyzer’s instrument head beeped completion of its scan, she plugged that into her database as well, allowing the analyzer’s computer to begin processing the analysis.
 * “Rather unsurprising,” Annita reported, glancing at the results from the analyzer. “Two kinds of DNA here-Arkanian and human. Make that Arkanian female and human male.”
 * “Any idea whose blood it is?” Sarth asked.
 * “Not yet,” Annita answered. “These things take time. Same with the fingerprints.”

However, in the end, neither process took that long to return more definitive answers. Annita had set both machines to query the databases on Corulag first, and both had returned replies in fairly short order.
 * “According to the analyzer, the Arkanian blood belongs to Shenna Magrody. No results on the human’s. The fingerprint scan confirms that one of the fingerprints is Shenna’s also, and . . . interesting.”
 * “What is it?” Cassi inquired.
 * “There is a name listed for the Human male. Jos Teklevi, a native of Corellia. According to records that I obtained from Corulag’s customs records, he was on Corulag about a month and a half ago on business-says here that he works for Custom Solutions, Inc.”
 * “That’s probably a cover business,” Sarth suggested.
 * “No doubt,” Annita agreed dryly. “Imperial Intelligence should make their names a little less obviously euphemistic. Anyway, they’re apparently located on Corellia.”
 * “So, he went back to Corellia?” Cassi asked.
 * “I didn’t say that,” Annita said, walking back over to the analyzer. “I had the analyzer check for contaminants in his blood. There wasn’t much to work with, but I did find something-it’s a virus, apparently, and I doubt it was from Shenna. This sort of retrovirus doesn’t affect Arkanians.”
 * “What is it?” Sarth asked.
 * “I’m not sure yet,” Annita replied lightly. “Give me a minute, though. It’s not native to Corulag-the database there isn’t yielding anything.”

Annita tapped away at a set of keys on the analyzer, altering search parameters, cross-referencing the virus across various databases. Finally, she found what she was looking for.
 * “It’s Asymmetric Retrovirus R192A71-C,” she said at last.
 * “What is that?” Sarth asked.
 * “Spaced if I know,” Annita shrugged. “Database says it causes something called the Kedalbe flu, which is apparently a minor inconvenience of an illness.”
 * “Run a search for Kedalbe,” Sarth said. “Maybe that’s a planet name.”
 * “Good idea,” Annita replied, entering the search.

A minute later, the results came back.
 * “No, it’s not a planet,” she said. “It’s a city. On the planet of Mandalore. Your friend here had apparently been there not too long before-it’s not contagious enough for him to have caught it anywhere else, since it’s only native to that planet’s indigenous wildlife.”
 * “Do you think he went back there?” Cassi asked.
 * “Possibly,” Annita said. “With high-profile kidnappings like this, Imperial Intel likes to keep the number of people who know about such jobs down to a minimum. It’s possible he helped set up a prison on Mandalore to contain the Magrodys.”
 * “How can we be sure?” Cassi asked. “This could be a dead end.”
 * “Not if I check in with the Kedalbe spaceport,” Annita said. “Mandalore isn’t exactly Coruscant; there’s only one real spaceport and I bet it doesn’t see all that much traffic. All I have to do is search for the type of ship which Mr. Teklevi left Corulag in, arriving around the time it would take to make a few decoy jumps and get to Mandalore.”
 * “Still,” Sarth persisted. “It’s a rather long shot that he’d go right back to Mandalore.”
 * “But one that paid off,” Annita said, a triumphant smile lighting up her face. “The Force was smiling on us today.”

Turning the screen to show Sarth and Cassi the results, she displayed the arrival logs from Kedalbe’s spaceport. Sure enough, right around the time Annita had predicted, a ship matching the one Tenlevi had left Corulag in had arrived on Mandalore.
 * “Wow,” Cassi said.
 * “I know,” Annita agreed. “I’ll pull up any other relevant information for you, to help with your search.”
 * “Thank you,” Cassi said gratefully.
 * “So that’s where they are,” Sarth mused. “We can be there in a couple days.”
 * “Mandalore is sparsely populated. You should be able to find them fairly quickly,” Annita said. “And ever since the locals took out the Imperial dictator and blew up his little prison, there’s no major Imperial presence. Some areas are still controlled by Imperial sympathizers and you might see a stormtrooper or two, but not a whole lot. The Empire lost its major foothold there when the City of Bone was destroyed. Some of them support the Rebels, but there’s no steady allegiances there.”
 * “Well, you do stay informed,” Sarth commented, impressed by Annita’s knowledge.

She shrugged.
 * “Part of the shipping business is staying on top of galactic events. Had a couple freighters pop in from Mandalore not too long ago, and they told Jorge and myself about it. Word of mouth is that the Rebels were involved.”
 * “As long as we’re not walking into a battleground,” Cassi said.
 * “No, it’s fairly calm right now, if a bit uncivilized,” Annita answered. “Can’t guarantee that there’s not scattered fighting somewhere-these are Mandalorians, after all.”
 * “True,” Sarth agreed. “Spectre’s told me a bit about their lifestyle and methods.”
 * “Then you’ll know not to flash your lightsabers around,” Annita warned. “They have this big-time grudge against Jedi.”
 * “Good to know,” Sarth said. “We’ll certainly keep that in mind. Thank you very much for your help, Annita. Yanibar is lucky to have friends like you.”

She shrugged off the compliment.
 * “I do what I can. I’m just glad I could help you find your friends,” she replied.
 * “You’ve certainly done that,” Cassi said.
 * “When are you leaving?” Annita asked.
 * The ship will have to be refueled, and probably re-provisioned. If we can get the supplies, a couple hours at most and we’ll be ready,” Sarth said.
 * “It won’t be so simple,” Annita warned.
 * “Well, we need to get there as quickly as possible,” Cassi said. “The Magrodys’ lives might be at stake.”
 * “I understand that,” Annita replied. “Having once been held hostage myself, I know that all too well. But the city already sent out a public service message saying that no ships will be leaving until tomorrow morning at the earliest. I’m sorry.”
 * “That’s that, then,” Sarth said dryly. “I don’t feel like outrunning Imperial fighters again.”
 * “Me neither,” Cassi agreed.
 * “On the plus side, you can both stay with Jorge and me,” Annita said. “I’ll even make you dinner-something from home, from Commenor.”
 * “Sounds delicious,” Sarth said. “We might as well.”
 * “Thank you for the invitation,” Cassi said.
 * “Are you kidding? I’m always happy to see you guys,” Annita said, laughing.

Annita’s comlink chirped, forestalling any further concentration, and she fished the device out of her pocket.
 * “What is it, Jorge?” she asked.
 * “Security holocams show an armed intruder sneaking into the compound,” Jorge said. “I’m going to check it out, but I could use some backup.”
 * “I’m coming,” Annita replied.
 * “No, wait,” Sarth said. “Cassi and I can go. You’d probably be better manning the security cams in case they’re not alone.”
 * “Sarth’s right,” Cassi said. “Our Jedi training will give us some advantage.”
 * “All right,” Annita nodded. “But you three former Hawk-bat crewmembers better not take off on some wild adventure without me.”
 * “We won’t,” Sarth assured her.

They quickly headed up the stairs, back to the lobby, where Jorge had picked up a blaster rifle and had pulled on his personal shield backpack. For their part, Sarth and Cassi were content with the lightsabers they had withdrawn from concealed inner pockets in their jackets. Heading out the back entrance which led to the rest of Bexpress’s holdings, they began scoping out the dimly lit corridors that wove between shipping docks and warehouses. Annita guided them towards the intruder, using the cam feeds to maneuver the trio to intercept whoever it was. They approached a T-intersection which the intruder was moving toward, and Jorge readied his blaster rifle as the three lined up against the wall just out of sight.
 * “He’s right around the corner,” Annita told him via his earpiece comlink. “He’s stopped-he might be aware of you. Wait, now he’s moving toward you again-but slower.”
 * “Understood,” Jorge said, hefting his rifle.

Sarth and Cassi didn’t need Annita’s words to tell them of their quarry’s actions-they could sense them with the Force, and their perceptions told them far more than the grainy holocam images could relay.
 * “It’s a she,” Sarth said slowly. “She doesn’t feel quite human.”

At that point, the person in question rounded the corner, to find herself staring down the muzzle of a blaster rifle, which was held by a sizable Corellian man flanked by two figures bearing fully ignited lightsabers with brilliant blue blades. However, she was far from perturbed by the welcoming committee she received. In fact, her face betrayed no surprise at all.
 * “I’m Agent Redbird,” the woman, an Arkanian female dressed like a Rebel fighter pilot and loosely carrying a blaster pistol, said. “The code word of the day is ‘Black Bantha.’”

Jorge lowered his weapon.
 * “You were supposed to have reported back awhile ago,” he said.
 * “I know,” Hasla answered. “There were . . . complications.”
 * “Hasla?” Cassi asked. “Is that you?”
 * “It’s me,” she replied. “Long time no see.”
 * “Thanks for the assist in the sky battle,” Sarth said. “That was you in the B-wing, right?”
 * “It was,” Hasla said. “I recognized your ship and thought you could use the help.”
 * “What happened?” Jorge asked.
 * “Kinda obvious, isn’t it?” Hasla said impatiently. “I got shot down. Managed to crash-land my B-wing on the other side of the city. Spent the better part of the last hour dodging stormtroopers and finding my way over here. All the while trying to find a medkit for my concussion.”
 * “You’re hurt,” Cassi noted, her voice filled with concern. “Let’s get you back to the office and take care of that.”
 * “All right,” Jorge said, keeping an eye out for any others in the area. “Just keep it quiet.”

With Hasla leaning on Sarth’s shoulder for support, they made it back to the Bexpress main office, where Sarth, Annita and Cassi took Hasla to the back office to check out her wounds.
 * “It’s not too bad,” Hasla said, wincing as Annita’s fingers probed at a bruised rib. “Bruised ribs, concussion. Various other cuts and scrapes. More quantity than quality.”
 * “Lucky for you,” Sarth remarked. “Not everyone walks away from a starfighter crash.”
 * “I was going pretty slow when I hit,” Hasla said. “It was falling off that warehouse roof that did most of the damage.”
 * “Well, you can rest now,” Cassi said as she wrapped a bandage around a five-centimeter gash on the back of Hasla’s left hand.
 * “Not quite yet,” Hasla replied.

Fishing in the pants leg pocket on her grease-stained flight suit, she withdrew a datapad and handed it to Annita.
 * “You can retrieve all the data in there while I rest. There’s technical specifications, assembly line plans, the works,” she explained. “I also noted the location of where the wreck is, if you want to try and salvage parts of it.”
 * “Wait, you’re the agent getting us the B-wing plans?” Sarth asked.

Hasla nodded. “That’s me. Didn’t quite work according to plan.”
 * “Why not?” Annita asked.
 * “Well, for one, my cover was intact and I was still collecting information,” Hasla said. “For another, the Rebels needed me.”
 * “Your latest orders were to bring back the fighter,” Annita reminded Hasla. “That was weeks ago. Don’t look so surprised; I’m pretty high up the chain of YGI.”

Hasla tried to stay expressionless, but was unable to do so. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest, giving her an air of defiance.
 * “I felt that the situation called for modification of my orders,” she said.
 * “Based on what?” Annita asked.
 * “My gut instinct. My perceptions in the Force,” Hasla replied lightly. “The same reason I plan on going back to the Rebels as soon as I can.”
 * “Out of the question,” Annita said. “You’re going back to Yanibar.”
 * “No, I’m not,” Hasla said firmly. “Not yet.”
 * “I’m not making recommendations,” Annita replied, an edge slipping into her voice. “I outrank you.”
 * “The Elite Guardians often operate outside the normal rank structure,” Hasla countered. “I just happened to be attached to YGI.”
 * “I’m sure Director Tayrce would gladly confirm those orders,” Annita said icily.
 * “Actually,” Sarth interjected. “Selu and Milya were off on a mission to Obroa-skai for some urgent matter. They’re not available right now.”
 * “See?” Hasla said. “Anyway, I’m going back, and you’re not going to stop me.”
 * “Hasla,” Cassi said soothingly, trying to calm down the agitated fighter pilot. “Why is it so important that you go back? You accomplished your mission, right?”
 * “It’s not just about the mission,” Hasla said. “There are people counting on me there, and the Force keeps telling me that something big is about to happen. Something that involves the Alliance.”
 * “Say that I’ve had the same vague feeling,” Sarth said. “Why are you specifically important to the matter? The Rebels have done pretty well, all things considered, without too much of Yanibar’s help. I mean, you don’t see Admiral Slayke leading the fleet to fight alongside them.”
 * “I don’t agree with everything the Guard leadership does,” Hasla replied. “But I know this-there are pilots with the Rebellion who are counting on me. Hoping that I’ll come back. And I know that whatever the Rebellion is planning, they’ll need every good pilot they can get. That means I need to be there.”
 * “You sound like a Rebel,” Annita commented sourly.
 * “Maybe I do,” Hasla said uncertainly. “Maybe I am a Rebel. They’re good people, fighting for a good cause. I admire that-they remind me of my brother Jahlel.”

Cassi was surprised by the conviction in Hasla’s voice, the steel behind her words. Hasla sincerely felt that she would be of more use fighting with the Rebellion, and though Cassi didn’t understand her belief, something told her that it would be wrong of her to try and restrain the Arkanian Force-sensitive. The words she was going to say, the ones that would have advised her to think of her home on Yanibar, slipped from her mouth unsaid, replaced by a simple question.
 * “What does your heart tell you?” she asked.
 * “That the Rebellion needs me,” Hasla answered resolutely. “This may be their greatest hour yet, and I want to help. I want to be a part of it.”
 * “Even if it means utter defeat?” Sarth pressed.
 * “Yes,” Hasla replied with only an instant’s consideration. “I’m willing to give my life to fight the Empire. This may be my best chance to take that fight to them.”
 * “Then you should go back to the Rebels,” Cassi said, to Annita’s shock and annoyance.
 * “You’re not serious, are you?” Annita asked. “That’s a court-martial offense.”
 * “I don’t care,” Hasla answered quietly.
 * “Annita,” Sarth said hesitantly. “I tend to agree with Cassi. I’ve sensed something similar in the Force-the war between the Rebels and Empire is coming to a head. They may need her help.”
 * “I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Annita said exasperatedly.
 * “Look, I would consider it a . . . favor if you were willing to show some leeway here,” Sarth said.
 * “It’s not that easy, Sarth,” Annita explained. “I’m sort of expected to follow orders, just as Hasla is. It’s part of being in Yanibar Guard Intelligence.”
 * “We’ll smooth it over with Selu and Milya,” Sarth promised. “Being related to them has to count for something.”

Annita considered the matter, and then shook her head ruefully. Something inside her wanted to agree with Sarth and the others, but her pragmatic nature and her reliance on YGI precepts told her that nothing good would come of it.
 * “This damn foolish idealistic business is not a good idea,” she said. “I don’t know why I’m going along with this, but I won’t try and stop you, Hasla. You can spend the night here-but you’re finding your own way back to the Rebellion.”
 * “That’s fine,” Hasla said evenly. “You’ve been more than generous.”
 * “Thank you, Annita,” Cassi said earnestly. “If it makes you feel any better, I think you did the right thing.”
 * “Don’t tell me that,” Annita replied drily. “Tell my superiors.”
 * “I’ll talk to Selu and Milya,” Sarth said. “It’ll be fine.”
 * “You won’t regret this,” Hasla added.
 * “Maybe not,” Annita said somberly. “But you probably will. You can’t live two lives forever, and you can’t keep telling everyone around you a lie.”

Hasla had no ready answer for that.