There were, reflected the captain of the Super Star Destroyer Executor, few sights more impressive than a naval force of the Galactic Empire. Visible through the forward viewports of his own massive vessel's command bridge, beyond the 20,000-meter expanse of gray metal and bristling turbolasers which formed his ship's hull, were three Victory-class Star Destroyers, majestic as they drifted at varying angles through the deep blackness of space; and there, too, off to the side, was a larger Imperial-II Star Destroyer, the likes of which represented the bulk of Imperial presence in the galaxy, and whose mere silhouette was enough to strike fear into the hearts of malcontents and lawbreakers everywhere.

The captain frowned. An impressive task force, indeed ... now if only he knew its purpose. The Empire's shrinking fleet was spread very thin lately. Their mission, then, had to be of great importance. With five war vessels allocated to its completion—one being a Super Star Destroyer, no less, one of only four in the entire Navy—anything else was unthinkable.

Then again, maybe it was just bad resource management. It wouldn't have been the first time Han saw Imperial command make a bad decision.

A familiar voice, deep and cultured, emerged from behind him.. "Are you enjoying the view, Captain Solo?"

Captain Han Solo turned halfway to acknowledge the speaker with a wry grimace. "Sure. Real pretty."

His superior officer and longtime mentor came to a stop beside him, clasping hands as blue as the rest of him behind his back, a faint smile on his purplish lips. In the dim lighting of the bridge, the shrewd, glowing red eyes on his hard angular face stood out even more prominently than usual, providing a colorful contrast to the impeccable white of his uniform and the blue-black of his hair.

Han remembered the first time he'd seen the Chiss, while he was still a student at the naval academy, almost a decade earlier. A nonhuman wearing the uniform of an Imperial officer—and teaching human recruits—had been jarring at the time, considering the Emperor's anti-alien policies; but Grand Admiral Thrawn had proven himself more than worthy of his title, particularly in recent months, standing very nearly as the only obstacle between the Empire and its enemies.

The two stood there at the viewport for a moment, watching the task force drift through the vacuum. When Thrawn spoke again, it was quietly and gravely. "We've received an update from the fleet, in Shelsha sector."

Han tried to keep his voice casual despite the dread suddenly clawing up his throat. "And?"

Silence. Then: "They are pulling out."

Han's chest tightened beneath the captain's rank bars on his gray uniform. It felt as though, every day, another part of the galaxy slipped out of their grasp. He was getting sick of it. "We should have been there," he said darkly, knowing it was poor protocol but not really caring. Thrawn has always been more indulgent of his outspoken behavior—and stubbornly unkempt dark brown hair—than anyone else in the officer corps, the majority of whom scorned him for his perceived lack of culture. "Not—here." He gestured vaguely out the viewport. "Wherever here is."

"I assure you, Captain, I did not pull these Star Destroyers off of the frontlines lightly," Thrawn said softly. "I would not have done so without a very good reason."

Han took in a deep breath, exhaled slowly. Of course he knew that. Years of learning military strategy directly from the Chiss had taught him that much. But Thrawn operated on a different, more complex plane of mental function, one Han didn't have the patience for, and all he could see were five Star Destroyers that should have been fighting for an imperiled sector. "I know," he said, managing to keep exasperation out of the words. "We're going to be told that reason sometime soon, right?"

Thrawn gazed out at one of the Victory-class Star Destroyers for a second longer-the Judgment, Han tentatively identified it. "Now, as it happens," the Chiss admiral said, swiveling on his polished heel and beginning to walk briskly back down the length of the bridge walkway. "This way, if you would."

Han, taken aback, could at first only stare at Thrawn's retreating form; and then he recovered his composure and followed, hastening his first few paces as surreptitiously as possible to catch up.

The crew pits on either side of the walkway were a hive of activity, even when the Executor was at a standstill. Countless reports were always streaming in from every department of the vessel, from engineering to fighter aviation, from the stormtrooper platoons to supply acquisition. Crewmen working at their stations tapped busily at their computer interfaces, conversed in low tones, and cut purposeful routes to wherever their duties took them, often carrying datapads with relevant information.

One of these men, a smooth-faced youth, looked up at the passing officers. He couldn't have been a day over sixteen, but Han was in no place to complain; he'd joined the Navy young, too, and in any case, the Empire was taking any recruits it could get nowadays. "Incoming transmissions from the task force commanders, Admiral," he called out.

"Thank you, lieutenant," Thrawn replied without breaking step or so much as looking down in the young man's direction. Han's lips twitched upward into a crooked half-grin. The admiral's ability to memorize every subordinate under his command never stopped being impressive. "I will receive them at the aft comm station."

Han's mind raced all the way to the semi-circular collection of displays and consoles that made up the bridge's aft communications station. Hiding the mission's objective from the captain of an involved ship; pulling those ships out of the hotspots of a grim and increasingly hopeless war—all signs pointed to an objective of a highly sensitive nature.

It had been three months since Han was made the Executor's captain. In that time, he had been frustrated by the inglorious skirmish battles his vessel had been assigned to, so achingly far from the worst of the fighting. He understood the need to keep a ship like his around as long as possible, and how war vessels were chewed up quickly in the major confrontations … but he still felt a stirring of excitement at the thought that, maybe this time, his command would truly be able to make a difference.

That was, after all, why he'd signed up in the first place.

Thrawn stepped onto the circular holo-transmitter that would allow his likeness to be relayed to the individuals on the other end of the communication. He nodded his head toward the identical transmitter beside him, signaling for Han to position himself on it. The captain obliged, and, at another nod from the blue-skinned Chiss, pressed a button on the nearest interface.

Instantly, four shimmering blue holograms flickered into life on a raised console before them, standing at a quarter of the size of their actual senders. Han recognized only one of them personally, standing on the rightmost side of the group: the dignified-looking Captain Gilad Pellaeon, of the Star Destroyer Chimaera, with sharp eyes glaring out under the shadow of his officer's cap and a bristling silver mustache covering his thin upper lip. The other three, of the Victory-class Star Destroyers, were unfamiliar to him, beyond their brief introductions hours before, but they all fit the usual profile of an Imperial officer, with severe expressions, clean-cut hair, and ramrod-straight military postures.

"Captains Awler, Hansen, Pellaeon, Trenton," Thrawn greeted them solemnly, nodding to each in turn. "I presume your ships stand ready, as per your orders."

There was a chorus of affirmation. Thrawn turned his glittering red eyes to the holographic depiction of Pellaeon. "And the refitting of the Chimaera?"

"The modifications are installed and functioning properly," Pellaeon replied, smoothly enough but sounding a little bemused.

Modifications? Han frowned. More information he hadn't been aware of.

Pellaeon, meanwhile, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. "With all due respect, admiral, when will we be—"

"Informed of their purpose?" Thrawn supplied for him, voice mild.

Pellaeon pursed his lips, gave a curt nod. "Yes, sir."

Thrawn's gaze swept over the four holograms. "As I was just telling Captain Solo—" A blue hand indicated Han. "—the time for secrecy has passed."

All eyes turned to Han for a moment, and he unconsciously adjusted his uniform under his colleagues' disapproving appraisal. They'd seemed friendly enough before, but now he could have sworn he felt resentment from them. Did the idea of the officer corps' very own mutt getting first claim to information bother them?

His eyes locked momentarily with Pellaeon's. The two were longtime rivals, having both been taken under Thrawn's wing, leading to an endless competition to be his finest protégé. No doubt, Han thought with an inward smile, Pellaeon suspected that Thrawn might have told him the secret already. He wondered how the older captain would react if he tried to explain that they were in the same boat on this one. In all likelihood, the response would involve a great deal of huffy skepticism.

Thrawn coughed politely; attention returned to him, Pellaeon's eyes dragging themselves as if with great effort away from Han. "Gentlemen," the Chiss announced, "it is my pleasure to inform you that we have obtained the current location of the Rebel Alliance leadership."

The reactions were immediate and varied. Pellaeon's was the least pronounced, his muscles tensing visibly. Two of the smaller ship captains managed to contain their surprise enough so that they only stiffened, one of them breathing in sharply. The fourth captain was less fortunate, looking up like a nerf caught in the landing lights and making a spectacular show of dropping a datapad that was being handed to him from outside his transmitter circle.

Han nodded slowly, his heartbeat picking up. So that was it—they'd found the insurgent leaders, at last. They'd been at war with the Rebel Alliance for an interminably long time; the conflict had always been damaging, but had been especially so over the last couple of standard years. A fair amount of Imperial Intelligence resources had gone toward finding the heads of the organization and incapacitating them, but always the effort had been in vain, with the Rebels having honed their fugitive lifestyle into an art form.

"That explains the secrecy," he muttered, dimly aware that he was speaking aloud. "If word had got out…"

"Yes," Thrawn confirmed, nodding. "Too many operations against the Rebels have been compromised by internal leaks. We could not afford that risk now."

There was a brief and chilly silence. Han resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Typical Imperial pride. The captains—with the exception of himself and, almost assuredly, Pellaeon—had chosen to take offense at the implication that any one of them couldn't be trusted with such sensitive information. If the Empire had one weakness, it was the small-mindedness of so many of its leaders.

Wounded pride wasn't enough to dampen the mood for long. Captain Awler, of average stature and with a pronounced jaw, clenched and unclenched his fists excitedly. "Finally," he breathed, his accent the same as every other Core world enlistee, clipped and elegant. Han had always rather felt that it encouraged a good punch to the face. "We can crush the Rebel scum and push them aside. With them out of the way we will quickly turn all this around."

"This…intelligence," another of the captains, Trenton, said slowly—and a little stiffly, Han thought. Perhaps the tall, dark-faced man was still nursing the wound from Thrawn's perceived slight on his honor. "Are we certain it's reliable, admiral?"

"What does it matter?" Pellaeon retorted. "If there's even a chance of cutting off the head of the Rebel Alliance, would you not take it?"

"We're losing worlds every day," Trenton snapped. "For us to go on a wild bantha chase while—"

"The intelligence," Thrawn said, softly but with a coolness that instantly cut off further debate, "comes from a source whose information has proven most fruitful in the past. I do not believe this instance will be any different."

"Yes, admiral," Trenton mumbled. It didn't look as though the assurance had done much for him, but even the most brusque members of the officer corps knew that getting into a debate with Grand Admiral Thrawn was a losing proposition.

"This is a rare chance we've been given," Thrawn went on, crossing his arms over his chest. "The leaders of the Rebel Alliance are rarely gathered in one place, to avoid giving us just such an opportunity.

"The objective, of course, is to incapacitate them and either capture or destroy the data they have accumulated within this base. The Emperor would prefer that we take prisoners alive for questioning purposes, but if that proves impossible, their deaths are acceptable."

"The Emperor?" Captain Hansen, nearly as tall as Trenton but with a much less impressive frame, seemed to pale. It may have been a trick of Han's eyes, or erratic behavior from the hologram transmitter. "He's—involved? Personally?"

"The eyes of the Empire are on you, Captain Hansen," a new voice said from beside Han, one that immediately sent a chill down his spine. "As they are on all of you."

It was the booming mechanical voice of Darth Vader.

Turning his head, Han saw the Dark Lord—intimidatingly tall, shrouded in his black cloak, matching black armor gleaming in the dim lighting, his rhythmic breathing lending itself to the soundtrack of activity on the bridge—taking up residence on the remaining transmitter at the comm station. Every captain displayed via hologram managed somehow to stiffen even more than they had at the revelation that they would be assaulting a Rebel headquarters; several audible swallows sounded from their direction.

Han didn't blame them. He respected Vader—every Navy man did—but there was a coldness to him, a real and undeniable distance. He was an entity apart from the rest of them, the very nature of his role in the Empire nebulous; was he the Emperor's enforcer? Was he the heir apparent to the throne? Or was he leader of some secret Imperial agency that none of them were privy to? Whatever the case, he was a universally recognizable symbol of Palpatine's New Order. There were rumors that he could even kill a man without moving a muscle. Han, prone to disregard such nonsense, couldn't comment on such gossip regardless; he'd never met Vader face-to-face before taking him on board the Executor when they'd left Imperial Center, two days before, and after a brief and cordial introduction the Dark Lord had retreated to his private quarters, not emerging until now.

For his own part, Han showed none of the signs of tension that his peers did, past the initial chill. He would never have chosen a fight with Vader, but he'd always found him to be a melodramatic and unnecessary attempt at scaring the galaxy's citizens into obedience, the kind of ploy he disdained. Admittedly, it was harder to dismiss him as such when he was standing so close, filling the bridge with his presence.

There was not even a twitch of surprise from Thrawn at the unexpected appearance. If the Chiss had ever been surprised, Han had yet to see it. "The Emperor has every reason to be invested in the success of this mission, Captain," the admiral said, addressing Hansen and the others. "Success here could be the difference between the continued survival of the Empire we all serve and its downfall. The Rebel Alliance may well never recover from losing so many of its most vital leaders in one swoop, and that becomes a near certainty if we are able to obtain valuable secrets through questioning those individuals. Failure is unacceptable."

"Yes, sir," all of the captains—with the exception of Han— said with uncanny synchronization. Maybe Vader wasn't redundant. A little intimidation was apparently all it took to whip Imperial officers into shape. It was as good a reason as any for the Emperor to have sent the Dark Lord along.

"Good," Thrawn said approvingly, his arms falling from his chest so that he could clasp his hands behind his back. "Now listen closely. Here is how we will proceed…"

Once upon a time, Luke Skywalker might have found the cramped corridors and close quarters of AOH-113 to be unbearable, downright irritating, having grown up on the open, endless deserts of Tatooine.

Now, though, it was just another part of the routine. Years of serving with the Rebel Alliance had given him a crash course in dealing with uncomfortably tight physical conditions. AOH-113 was the most recent base he'd been stationed on— this one built atop a sizable asteroid, which, in turn, was hidden in an asteroid field—but there'd been dozens of others in the last year alone. It was the constantly moving life of the insurgent, unwelcome on any law-abiding world, unable and unwilling to get too comfortable at any one location.

And it was sure a far cry from life on Tatooine.

Then again, the young Jedi Knight thought to himself with a sardonic smile as he weaved through the small groups of idealists and freedom fighters milling through the asteroid base's hallways, maybe he hadn't come so far after all. He'd left Tatooine as a wide-eyed farmboy, ready to fight the injustices of the Empire; and now he was a wide-eyed Jedi, locked in a bitter and unending conflict with that same Empire, hiding from prying eyes on a little planetoid not far from his homeworld.

Sometimes it feels like we're not moving forward at all. Like we've been drowning in quicksand—no, not quicksand.

Darkness.

Ever since Endor. Ever since a sweeping, yawning shadow had swept into the galaxy, threatening to swallow them all whole; his friends, the men and women he'd been fighting with and for since this all began, even his enemies—

Even his father.

Luke shook the foreboding idea from his mind, as he'd been forced to do with increasing frequency of late. It wouldn't do to get caught up on dread, not when his friends still needed his help. Not when everyone had their own fear to conquer, without adding his on top of the mix.

He reached the hangar bay—making worse time than he really should have, thanks to the heavy corridor traffic—and took a quick scan of the situation before arriving. Good; he wasn't late. By the looks of things, he needn't have worried about trailing behind the others. The small group waiting to greet the incoming shuttle was still assembling, no more immune to packed hallways than he was.

A few familiar faces were gathered already. Luke felt an irrepressible grin breaking across his face as he strode across the scuffed metal floor of the hangar, ducking under the wing of the occasional parked starfighter. "Lando!"

AOH-113's—indeed, the Alliance's—resident gambler, entrepreneur and lady's man extraordinaire turned away from the hazy blue light of the hangar entrance to shoot a dazzling smile in Luke's direction. Dark-skinned, with rich black hair and a perfectly trimmed mustache that was equal parts business and playboy, Lando Calrissian fit into the ragtag Alliance through virtue of his incongruity; when one thought 'freedom fighter,' someone like him rarely came to mind. "There you are," he said, reaching out and giving Luke's upper arm a squeeze as the Jedi drew closer. "Was starting to think you'd forgotten."

"That wouldn't be very Jedi-like, would it?" Luke countered.

Lando's expression became speculative. "No, I guess it wouldn't." He nodded out toward the starscape, where the light reflected off a small shuttle's hull was drawing closer. "She didn't sound too happy when they called in for landing clearance."

Luke's grin faded. Now that Lando mentioned it, he could sense upticks of concern coming from the ship. It was nothing urgent, but it remained nonetheless, like a nagging doubt that refused to be quashed. "Something's bothering her," he agreed softly.

"Pardon me, Master Luke, but she did just endure a week's voyage," a prim and tinny voice volunteered. "Perhaps she is merely feeling the physical impacts of such confinement."

Luke's lips ruefully twitched upward again. "Hey, Threepio," he greeted the golden protocol droid, C-3PO, standing nearby with his omnipresent companion, a meter-tall white-and-blue astromech droid named R2-D2. "Hey, Artoo. Yeah, maybe that's it."

It wasn't, of course. But that didn't need to be said aloud. Threepio was just trying to be helpful, as always.

A few minutes later, the appropriate officials had joined the group and the boxy little shuttle had settled down onto its landing struts inside the hangar. While gases hissed out of exhaust ports and the aging engine whirred its way to deactivation, a small delegation of Alliance guards trooped down the landing ramp, weapons holstered, as well as several engineers; and behind them, dressed in a simple brown jumpsuit that managed somehow to look elegant on its wearer, came Princess Leia Organa.

The former Imperial senator, soft brown hair cut short, bangs pushed lightly aside, gave nods of greeting to the officers and leaders of the group, but her warm smile was reserved for Luke and Lando. Up close, the concern radiated from Leia more clearly than ever. Still, she endured the diplomacy of her reception with her usual diplomacy. After what felt like ages, the well-wishing was done, and as the bulk of the group wandered back to respective postings, she walked over to her friends.

"Leia," Lando, eyes twinkling. When she drew close enough, he drew her into a friendly hug. She returned it, pulling back after a moment with her nose wrinkled slightly.

"What is that smell?" She asked.

Lando somehow managed to grin even wider. "New cologne I picked up during that op on Kuat," he replied, flourishing his hands and inhaling theatrically. "It's called Flower of Duro."

Leia raised an eyebrow. "Duro? As in the planet Duro?"

"Yeah, I guess." Lando blinked. "Why?"

"Lando, Duro is one of the most polluted planets in the entire galaxy," Leia told him patiently. "I doubt flowers can even grow there."

Luke ran a hand over his mouth to disguise a smile. How he had missed the odor emanating from the consummate gambler, he didn't know; it really was an off-putting scent, subtle but increasingly noticeable the longer one remained in its proximity, a combination of smells that had no place in a grooming product. On the other hand, a Hutt might have found it pleasing.

Lando's lips quickly polarized direction. Looking from one amused friend to the other, he pulled up his collar and took a freshly tentative sniff. "Well, I thought it smelled good," he said defensively.

Shaking her head, Leia turned to Luke and embraced him. A thousand thoughts ran through Luke's mind, as they always did when he was around her.

Sister. She was his sister. Years after learning the fact, it was still strange, to think that twenty years of his life had passed before he'd known he had a sibling.

A sibling hidden away on the other side of the galaxy, to keep them safe from a father who'd fallen to the dark side and an Emperor who would have devious interest in their Force sensitivity.

And now she was troubled. Was it something he'd done? After all, he'd started to teach her the basics of Force usage a few months ago. A doubt he was growing accustomed to flickered through his mind. Was he really ready to teach anyone the ways of the Force? His own education had been so haphazard, so incomplete; he was still so desperate for knowledge, hunting the galaxy for surviving Holocrons, archived data, of the old Jedi Order, whenever he had a chance. What he'd found so far was so scarce, too little to give him any certainty.

There was no room for sloppiness in the teaching of a Jedi. There were too many disasters that could result if it went wrong.

The dark side was a tempting lure for a Force-sensitive without discipline.

"Are you okay?" He asked aloud, releasing Leia from his grip.

Leia's eyes met his, clearly aware that her doubts were not her own around him. "I'm fine," she sighed. "Really, I am."

"How did it go?" Lando asked, all traces of levity gone. His ability to switch from easygoing to businesslike in an instant had impressed Luke the day they met, in Mos Eisley, over five years ago. It still impressed him now. He often wondered which side of him was the more natural.

Leia closed her eyes, massaging her temple with one hand. "Fine," she said thoughtfully. "We were worried for nothing, apparently. There was absolutely nothing out of place. The complications look real enough, and innocent. But…"

"You still don't like it," Luke guessed, frowning. Leia had left over a week ago to check on the preparations of the next hideaway the Alliance was planning to use as a headquarters, preparations which had been moving far more slowly than usual.

"No," Leia admitted, hugging her arms to her chest. "I don't. We're far too exposed right now. You two are here, I'm here, Admiral Ackbar is here, along with a lot of our best mid-rank officers. We should've had more bases set up in this region a long time ago, to spread ourselves out. The delays seem innocent enough, but—I don't know. I just have a bad feeling."

"What exactly is holding them up?" Lando asked suspiciously. "I don't remember it ever taking this long to set up new bases before."

"Everything you can think of," Leia said wearily. "I got every reason, from the war making prospective systems too unstable, to materiel not getting shipped in fast enough, to outright sabotage, all the way down to disagreements between coordinators on where to set up."

"The war is pretty bad right now," Luke said, but it was a token observation and the doubt in his voice was obvious even to him. "But it's starting to look suspicious. You met with Pedric Cuf, didn't you?"

"Cuf," Lando echoed distantly. "That's the Imperial deserter, isn't it? The guy who came out of nowhere after Endor and gave us all kinds of juicy intel?"

"That's the one," Leia confirmed. "His information got us out of so many jams that everyone up to Mon Mothma trusts him implicitly. I did, too, even though I never met him until last week. Never had a reason not to, and the way everyone talks about him…"

The concern that had been nagging at her was now sending pronounced waves through the Force. Luke furrowed his brow. "Sounds like something changed your mind."

"What did you expect?" Lando scoffed. "Guy gets a reputation like that, he's bound to disappoint you when you finally meet him."

"He gave me all of those excuses, for one thing," Leia said. "I've been in a lot of negotiations with every type of being you can imagine, and I'm good at reading people." She paused, as though considering how to frame her explanation. "He talked too smoothly," she said after a second. "Like a politician, or a really good liar."

Lando's face darkened. "Sounds like your friendly neighborhood Imperial," he growled, and Luke remembered the reason Lando had been on Mos Eisley to take him off of Tatooine in the first place: his business venture had been taken over forcefully by the Empire, leaving him bitter and looking for revenge. That wound seemed doomed never to heal. "We sure this guy's really put the Empire behind him?"

"The story he gave us when he joined up checked out, or he wouldn't still be in the Alliance," Leia pointed out. "But I'm sure he avoided the same kind of background check most deserters get, both because of the war keeping us all so busy and because his intel was so helpful." Her eyes flicked to Luke. "But it's not just the way he talks. He—" She hesitated again. "He doesn't feel right, Luke."

Luke nodded slowly, fleetingly proud—Leia was keeping herself open to the Force's promptings. Maybe his instruction wasn't so bad after all. "Can you explain it more than that?" He urged gently.

Leia seemed to think about it, brow wrinkling, and then she shrugged helplessly. "No. I'm sorry, I can't. Right now I can't get much more than vague impressions from people, little pushes here and there." She pursed her lips. "He was—wrong, though, Luke. Something about him was just…off."

Suddenly Luke was overwhelmed with an urge to find some quiet corner of the galaxy and simply take a nap, far away from all the intrigues and suspicions and shadowy double intent that surrounded them more every day. "I believe you," he assured Leia, noticing that in his silence her expression was growing worried. "I wish I'd gone with you so we could pool our resources and get a better feel on the guy. Do you think I should go check him out?"

"Or we could just bring this to Ackbar," Lando suggested. "He may not be able to feel the things you two do, but he's seen enough to trust your instincts. Maybe he can get things moving without Cuf's intel guys."

"No," Leia said, her usual firmness and confidence back in her voice. This was politics, a playing field she could handle better than almost anyone. "The Alliance is suffering enough infighting as it is without adding suspicion about Cuf into the mix. We need a little certainty right now, and asking people to stop trusting him just like that wouldn't be healthy." She ran a hand through her hair. "My gut—or the Force—" she glanced wryly at Luke, smiling a little. "—is telling me that we should wait a while. With the whole galaxy so distracted right now, maybe staying here longer than usual won't hurt."

There was a brief silence, broken, predictably, by Lando. "Well, alright," he said with an air of resignation, throwing his hands up. "The Force hasn't steered me wrong yet. But let's keep our eyes open, yeah? If Cuf really is still with the Empire…"

"I know," Leia said uncertainly. "We could be in trouble."

A few minutes and more casual conversational topics later, Luke parted ways with his friends, rejoining the flowing crowds of AOH-113's narrow, dull gray durasteel corridors, and he wondered if anyone else realized just how much trouble they were already in.