"Given the rumors of espionage rings that surrounded Skywalker immediately after his defection - indeed, given the setbacks and defeats our Empire suffered at the time - it must be argued that his initial change of loyalties was anything but whole-hearted. Is it truly inconceivable that he believed in Organa just as unconditionally as she seems to have believed in him?"
- Hominara Alaqar, 'But This We Hold True': A Reconsideration of Leia Organa and the Second Jedi Order, Chandrila Upper University Publishing House (banned: Imperial Board of Culture)

Captain Fantastik: New plan, men. We blast our way to that reactor and blow it sky-high.
Lieutenant Drai: Why do your plans always end in explosions, sir?
- Captain Fantastik and the Thunder T.I.E.s, Episode 216 "The Ghosts in the Jungle"

The Circle
Chapter Ten

Ever since the disaster at Bespin, Han had made a point to avoid close encounters with the Empire. He wasn't always successful, but on the rare occasions when he hadn't been able to outrun, outfly, or outshoot whichever unfortunate batch of Imps happened to be chasing him, he had proven more than up to the task of outsmarting them.

He hadn't realized just how much his reputation had preceded him.

"Don't you think you're overdoing it?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth, peering down the transport's boarding ramp into a hangar bay filled to the brim with stormtroopers.

Lieutenant Archimedes quirked her lips into a small smile. "Think of it as a challenge, Captain Solo. Now please exit the transport. I'd prefer not to stun you and drag you out by your ankles, but I will if I have to."

She probably would, too. From what little Han knew about her, she was a stickler for following orders. If she had been told to get him to the Star Destroyer, then that was exactly what she would do, one way or another.

All things considered, he decided to exit the transport with his dignity intact.

He stepped off the ramp and into the hangar bay, taking quick stock of the exits. This was one of the newer Star Destroyers, built after Leia had died and the Rebellion had been cut down from serious threat to minor nuisance, so many of the security flaws and loopholes he was so used to exploiting just weren't there anymore. It was also unique in the fact that the crew was hand-picked. The captain, Jarus Kraiz, had all the charm and personality of a dishrag, but he was a good strategist and tactician. Like almost everyone else on the ship - right down to the most inexperienced stormtroopers - he was from an Outer Rim world.

The result - according to all the briefings and intelligence reports Han had seen and all the rumors he had picked up in bits and pieces around the galaxy - was that the Retaliator didn't quite work like a normal Imp ship. That made it very dangerous and very hard to predict.

And the reason it was allowed to get away with as much as it did was walking towards Han through a parting sea of white helmets and blaster rifles.

Han forgot all about looking for nonexistent escape routes. "Luke," he said before he could stop himself.

Luke - not Luke, Han reminded himself - seemed about as nonthreatening as he had the last time Han had seen him in person, long decades before. He came to a stop a few paces away and stood with his hands clasped behind his back, wearing what looked like a simplified black version of an Imperial officer's uniform.

He didn't look like a different person. Leia had mentioned that. "Even his eyes," she had said, as if that had been particularly troubling to her. "Even his eyes are the same."

Han thought he understood why that small detail had bothered her so much. It was easy to pretend someone was just another random Imp from halfway across the galaxy. It was another matter entirely when that person was just steps away, wearing a look that belonged less on the Emperor's attack dog and more on a frazzled junior officer who hadn't had the time to sit down with a proper cup of caf.

"Hello, Han." Even his voice sounded tired and put-upon rather than frightening. "What are you doing here?"

Han shrugged expansively. "Dunno. Why don't you ask your friend back there in the transport?"

His only answer was a frown. Then Luke - Rage, Han reminded himself, because it made it that much easier to keep the man in front of him separate from the stupid idealistic kid he'd last seen on Hoth - then Rage turned his attention to Hal and Sasha, whom Archimedes was only now prodding down the ramp.

Hal stopped dead as he caught sight of Rage. All the blood drained out of his face and he took what must have been an instinctive step backwards, only stopping when his back hit one of the ramp's support struts.

"I'd heard you were gunrunning with Corran Horn's son," Rage said to Han. "This is him, isn't it?"

Hal's eyes narrowed and his lip curled back in a defiant snarl. "That's right," he ground out, each word rough and thick with anger. "Corran Horn was my father and you can go to hell for - "

"Hal!" Han snapped.

His answer was a particularly murderous glare, but at least Hal shut up.

Rage rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I think I see the resemblance," he muttered before glancing over at Sasha, who was frozen in place next to Archimedes. She must have decided the person who had just threatened to maim her was the lesser of two evils. "And you would be the girl from Tatooine."

Archimedes poked her in the shoulder. She nodded once, stiffly.

"I don't suppose you know where your brother is."

Sasha's eyes went very wide and she shook her head so fast that her braid whipped behind her.

Han didn't need the Force to see the look Hal threw at him. Not only had Melody and Artoo managed to elude capture so far - as evidenced by the fact that no one had tried to blow up the power core or do anything equally ridiculous and unhelpful - but so had Ben. Rage didn't even know Ben wasn't Sasha's brother.

He gave Hal a glance that Leia or Chewie would have instantly understand as 'shut up and play stupid'. It took a few moments for Hal to catch on, and even then his face smoothed into the worst and most unconvincing sabacc face Han had ever seen.

Not that he could blame him. Han knew plenty about the Alliance and was the father of the last Jedi, so he had a date with an interrogation droid in his future, no doubt followed by a firing squad. But Hal was in for much worse and they both knew it. Han had seen his copilot's future in the string of old students and friends Leia and been forced to fight and sometimes kill - Imperial operatives with familiar faces and red lightsabers.

Force-users who fell into the Emperor's hands had a habit of turning into something terrible in the end. The proof of that was standing right in front of him.

The only person who had a prayer of anything - escape, asking for help, even just getting a warning to Anakin and the Alliance leadership - was Sasha.

Rage knew that too, of course. He had been looking from one prisoner to the other as if debating what in the galaxy he was supposed to do with them. "Lieutenant Archimedes," he finally said. "Take the girl to one of the debriefing rooms and have one of the crew quarters prepared for her. Keep a guard on her, but don't move her to a detention cell unless it's necessary."

It was a concession, Han knew - but it was also a warning intended for him. Plenty of children younger than Sasha wound up in detention bays. Whether or not Sasha stayed out of one undoubtedly depended on Han's good behavior, cooperation, and general willingness to answer questions.

"Take Horn to Detention Block C and have the guards follow the protocols we discussed," Rage continued. "I'll accompany Solo to Detention Block A myself."

If Han hadn't been looking right at Archimedes, he would have missed the way her mouth tightened and a muscle worked in her jaw. All she did, however, was nod her head with mechanical military precision. "As you wish, my lord."

Han watched her and a squad of stormtroopers begin to lead Hal away.

"Hey!" he called. "Hal! Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

He had enough time to see Hal look over his shoulder and give him what was probably meant to be a fed-up look before he was gone.

For someone who actually wanted to get captured, Melody seemed to take far too much pleasure in trying to kill stormtroopers. She took down two of them with her stolen blaster rifle before she was tackled, at which point she produced a vibroblade from somewhere and made a spirited attempt to stab everyone in arm's reach. It wasn't until one of the Imps managed to club her over the head that she subsided into mumbled incoherent profanity - and even then, despite the fact that there was blood running down the side of her face and she was having trouble focusing her eyes, she took the time to snarl in Ben's direction.

"Tell that one I'm coming for him next!" she snapped, followed by a string of slurred obscenities Ben had never heard from anyone except the Darklighter garage's scariest and most questionable customers. He reminded himself that it was just for show - or at least he hoped it was - and managed to push himself into a sitting position. Whatever Melody had done to him still made it hard to breathe.

"Easy there," someone said next to him. A stormtrooper completely indistinguishable from all the others crouched down next to Ben, who did his best not to recoil, and clapped him on the shoulder. "You all right?"

Ben made a wheezing noise that he hoped would be taken as an affirmative and took the opportunity to look around. Melody was being dragged off to the transport by what looked like half a battalion Imps and being threatened with stuncuffs by the sound of things. The rest of the stormtroopers were checking on their wounded or dead comrades - and on Miri, who lay in an unmoving heap where she had fallen. Beyond all that, near the exits, some of the people of Ludlii were starting to gather in quiet frightened clumps.

The Imp who had been checking on him gripped him by the arms and all but hauled him up to his feet, shifting his weight so Ben could stagger against his shoulder. "Think you can stand on your own?" he asked in an undertone.

Ben shrugged, hardly listening. He watched as the Imps retrieved emergency stretchers from somewhere on the transport and ordered the growing cluster of onlookers to stand back. A red-haired boy who might have been one of the brothers Miri had mentioned spotted her and let out a strangled yell, but was grabbed and pulled back into the anonymity of the crowd before the Imps could do more than turn in his general direction.

Ben wondered how many of the stormtroopers collecting their wounded had been part of what had happened at Draco's Well - if somewhere among them was the person who had killed Aunt Olivea. He wondered if it was the very one supporting his weight now, and then he tried not to because the thought made him feel sick.

"Captain!" the stormtrooper called. "He's wheezing and barely keeping himself on his feet. Permission to take him to the transport and get him patched up?"

Another seemingly-identical stormtrooper made a gesture that must have been some kind of yes, because the next thing Ben knew he was being half-led, half-carried to the transport. It still hurt to breathe. Talking - or communicating at all, really - was out of the question.

Which was why he had to frantically thump the helpful Imp's shoulder and gesture at the Icarus. That was the ship he was supposed to be on. The whole plan depended on it.

But the Imp just shook his head. "What about it? No one's getting on that thing until we figure out if it's booby-trapped or not." Before Ben could protest - or at least make a wheezing attempt at it - he was hauled up the ramp and into the transport and led to what turned out to be a very small bathroom tucked into a small alcove. Once inside, he was eased down so that he was sitting on the deck, his back propped up against the sink.

"Better?" the Imp asked.

Ben tried to answer. His voice dissolved into a coughing fit.

"Hey." The Imp tilted his helmet to one side in a way that Ben might have called concerned, at least if he hadn't been an Imp. "Take it easy. Breathe. You're damn lucky she didn't kill you."

He made a rasping noise that he hoped would be taken as agreement.

"Was anyone else with her?"

Instead of trying to talk, he opted to wave his arms around to convey the rough height and shape of an astromech droid.

The Imp just snorted. "Never mind, I'll wait until you can talk. You might as well stay here until you get your breath back." He clapped Ben on the shoulder in much the same way Old Farstrider had back in Draco's Well, which only served to make Ben hate him a little and deeply miss home. "Sneak out and cover the rear hatch before we land. The captain won't notice."

Ben nodded and tried to cough in a thankful way. He wondered if Old Farstrider was still alive.

The Imp gave him one more thump on the shoulder before he left, leaving Ben completely alone for the first time since before his aunt had died.

And for the first time, he realized that he had no idea who the other dead settlers were.

He would have known them no matter what - neither Draco's Well nor Noon Ridge were big enough for strangers - but he didn't know which neighbors were gone, which familiar faces had vanished forever while he and Sasha hid at Hermit's Hut. Maybe they were the mothers Aunt Olivea liked to gossip with or the friends Sasha had dragged around in search of adventure and space battles. Maybe one of them was Old Farstrider's grandnephew Dev, who had tried to use to call Ben a space bastard in Sasha's presence and gotten a tooth punched out for his troubles. Maybe two of them were Keeto and Marr, the Rodian twins from the moisture farm out past Noon Ridge, who had been the only children even close to Ben's age when he was very young.

In some ways, it didn't matter. Even if the Emperor himself personally walked into the transport, Sasha and the crew of the Icarus in tow, and announced that it had all been a giant misunderstanding, it wouldn't be the same.

That world - the quiet unassuming world that Ben had loved so much - was gone forever.

He had enough presence of mind to lock the bathroom door before he sat back down on the deck, took off his helmet, and squeezed his eyes shut.

Stop, he ordered himself. Stop it and think. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. Right now he was the only person Sasha could count on, which meant he wasn't allowed to think about the hole in his heart where the safety of home was supposed to be. He was a practical person with things to do, he told himself. Practical people didn't sit in a hidden corner of an Imp transport, wearing a dead stormtrooper's armor and carrying a weapon they didn't really know how to use and feeling much younger than eighteen.

Sasha needed him. Captain Solo and his crew needed him. That was the beginning and end of everything that mattered at the moment. That was his new world for the moment.

He could do this.

Thought firmly in mind, he opened his eyes and really looked at where the Imp had put him.

It was...well, it was a bathroom. But it was a bathroom on a ship and it had a hatch in one wall, just big enough to fit a hand in and probably only there in case someone needed to rewire the light fixture.

That didn't matter. Machines weren't like people. They were logical, even the most shoddily-constructed ones, and the only difficult thing about unfamiliar ones was painstakingly drawing their maps of wires and pipes and circuits.

Or at least that was the difficult thing for most people.

Ben pried the cover off the hatch and stared at the tangle of wires for a long moment. Then he reached inside.

And just as every machine always had, the ship began to draw its map for him.

The walk to the detention block was silent, which was fine with Han. He was looking for escape routes again - an unguarded hangar bay door, a stormtrooper sleeping on the job, anything at all. But the Retaliator was a well-built and well-run ship and the promising possibilities he saw were few and far between.

He expected to be left alone in his cell, but instead Rage dismissed the stormtrooper escort and followed him inside. Not entirely sure what to do, Han settled to sitting on the cell's bench with as little care and concern as he could convey, ready to fight or bolt if he had to.

Instead Rage just slumped against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. "You know you're going to be executed, don't you? I can't stop that."

"You mean you won't," Han shot back.

"I meant what I said." Rage's expression darkened. "I'm not Vader. I don't have the kind of power he did. There are limits to what I can do."

Han refused to dignify that with an answer. "Then why draw it out?" he asked instead. "Why not shoot me now and get it over with? We both know you've got no problem killing your old friends. You've got no problems trying to kill my son."

For a long moment Rage said nothing. He frowned down at the deck as if looking for answers there. "You've been hiding from the Empire for years, Han," he said at last. "You were mostly forgotten. Why risk everything now?"

"Dunno. Why'd I bother saving you on Hoth? Hell, why am I bothering to talk to you now?" Han shrugged. "What can I say, kid? I make stupid decisions."

That got something that might have been a smile, come and gone before Han could be entirely sure. "I knew Leia and I picked it up from somewhere."

The very last thing he wanted was to talk about Leia. "Why're you here talking to me anyway?"

"I need to know where that message is," Rage said.

He knew there had been a reason for this little chat besides the galaxy's most painful nostalgia trip. "So you can give it back to that emperor of yours?"

"So I can see what he's so desperate to hide. Just because I don't believe in the Rebellion anymore doesn't mean I trust him any more than you do."

Han leaned forward, elbows propped on his knees. "Even if I knew - and I don't - what makes you think I trust you enough to tell you?"

I'm not Leia, he didn't say. He didn't need to.

He had no idea what to make of the expression on Rage's face. Hell, he had no damn idea what to make of Rage at all. He had seen firsthand the things he had done, had heard stories of Anakin's narrow escapes, but he wasn't Vader, dark and horrible. It would have been easier if he had been - if there hadn't been traces of the farmboy Han had once thought of as something like a kid brother so plainly visible.

Rage's face hardened. "I'll be sending an interrogation squad later. Anything you tell them needs to be reported to the Emperor."

So would everything else, eventually. Even if Rage didn't intend it to. Han had absolutely no illusions about that.

"Then I guess we're done here," he said.

Rage curled his hands into fists and pushed off the wall. For a moment Han thought he was going to attack him, but all he did was turn and stalk out of the cell.

Maybe that was why Han couldn't resist one last parting shot. "Leia always thought you were on her side, you know."

Rage didn't turn around.

"So did I," he said, and the cell door slid shut between them.

The Naboo, fond as they were of curving graceful shapes and warm colors, had little time or patience for the blocky functional style so popular within the rest of the Empire. Queen of Mercy was no exception, being a sleek silvery dart of a vessel registered as a diplomatic ship and built to look the part. It was armed to the teeth, of course - Lucéa had seen to that - but officially it was as unassuming and gentle as her people were supposed to be.

It was also most welcome after the general unpleasantness of Mustafar, so the second it had slipped past the planet's security scanners and leapt into hyperspace, she relocated to the communal area and made a sort of nest for herself in one of the chairs, practically cocooning herself in blankets and throws. It was extraordinarily tempting to sink into them and close her eyes - to forget her Jedi passenger and the questions he posed - but she resisted the urge and dug through a stack of datapads instead. While she might have officially been on holiday in the Lake Country and free from her government responsibilities, that was far from her only job.

Naboo's ruler and prime minister were chosen by the sector moff and a committee of Imperial loyalists, but the people were allowed to choose their own deputy prime minister. Lucéa had been elected when she was fourteen and had held the position ever since.

She had been a Rebel conspirator for much longer, of course - ever since her mother had taken her by the hand and quietly explained the importance of keeping secrets.

"Mistress Lucéa."

She looked up from the datapad to find herself presented with a cup of tea and a plate of sliced fruit from the Queen of Mercy's kitchen unit, courtesy of Anakin's droid. The old protocol unit had taken a particular liking to her, doubtless because she was far easier to understand than a Jedi fugitive.

"Thank you, Threepio," she said as she carefully set the tea and fruit next to the datapads. "Is Anakin in his cabin?"

"Master Anakin did not want to be disturbed," Threepio said in a tone that managed to convey concern and disapproval at the same time. "I believe he might be meditating."

Yes, that sounded like him. "He's overthinking, you mean."

"I'm afraid I'm not quite sure, Mistress Lucéa. He did seem rather less peaceful than usual."

Lucéa sighed and reluctantly extracted herself from her blanket cocoon. "I'll check on him."

The Queen of Mercy only had a few cabins, but they were comfortable and well-appointed, never mind that Lucéa's hid secret communications equipment and a variety of blasters. Anakin's was next to hers. She opened the door without bothering to knock and found, as she had suspected, that he wasn't so much meditating as sprawled on top of his bed with his clothes and boots on, eyes half-closed, face pointed at the ceiling.

"You know," she said as she settled herself on one of the cabin's chairs, "when my mother and grandmother told me stories about the Jedi, they somehow neglected to mention their remarkable dead gundark imitations."

Anakin opened his eyes long enough to attempt to give her a serene and composed eyeroll. He very nearly succeeded.

"They also neglected to mention protocol droids," she continued. "Why does a Jedi need a protocol droid?"

He lifted his hand to tick points off his fingers. "First, I'm not really a Jedi. Second, why wouldn't a Jedi need a protocol droid?"

"I like you better when you're being annoyingly cryptic about Force visions," Lucéa said. "Now answer the question."

"You're no fun at all," Anakin said amiably. "And he runs in the family. I inherited him from my mother."

She decided that was as good an opening as any. She liked Anakin, even if he could be murderously frustrating to understand, but sometimes stringing a conversation together was impossible. "I'm curious about your name," she said. "We have several resettled Alderaanians living in Theed. I was under the impression naming children after one's ancestors was a tradition."

"You want to know why I'm Anakin and not Bail."

Not precisely, but it was a start. "Yes, I suppose."

Anakin went silent. He peered up at the ceiling for a long time, his brow furrowed. Lucéa folded her hands in her lap and waited.

"If you wanted to send a message to someone," he said at last, "to the people of Naboo, what would you name your child?"

That wasn't the cryptic non-answer she had almost been expecting. "That might be a better question to ask my mother. She's actually done it."

Lucéa wasn't a Naboo name, although it had been hammered and shaped into something that almost fit. It wasn't even supposed to be a girl's name. It was taboo for Naboo parents to know the gender of their unborn child, but Lucéa had always suspected that her mother had expected a boy and had needed to make some quick last-minute adjustments.

She would never be able to prove it, but she was almost certain - almost - that had she actually been a boy, she would have been named Luke.

And didn't that invite all kinds of questions?

But Anakin didn't know any of that. "I didn't ask about your mother," he said. "I asked about you."

Lucéa didn't make a face at him, because that wasn't the sort of thing deputy prime ministers and secret revolutionaries did. "I would name a boy Jafan," she said, remembering childhood stories of the legendary hero-king. "And I would name a girl Amidala."

"Why?"

"To remind my people that there is still strength in Naboo and that they are capable of resisting."

Anakin smiled in a particularly knowing and infuriating way.

This time she did frown at him. "You knew I was going to say something like that," she accused. "Why ask if you already knew the answer?"

"Because it's nice to hear my mother's logic coming from someone else."

"Your mother."

Anakin just grinned at her.

"That's why your mother chose your name? To send a message?" She felt more than a little dumbfounded. Apparently Leia Organa had been even more confusing than her son. "Did it work?"

She wished she hadn't asked, because his expression sobered immediately.

Talking to Anakin was like walking through a minefield sometimes. Not because she might anger or offend him - whatever else he was, he was the calmest and most patient person she had ever met - but because the burdens her mother had entrusted to her were nothing compared to what had been placed on his shoulders.

"I don't suppose you would like some fruit?" she said, voice falsely bright. "Threepio's been in my kitchen unit again."

"I should probably give him to you," Anakin muttered. "I think he likes you better than me."

"Perhaps that's because I don't drag people to awful planets and lay around like a squashed mynock," she retorted.

She waited for Anakin to smile, but he didn't.

The Imp transport was halfway between Ludlii and the Star Destroyer when, without any warning whatsoever, every single light went out.

A cacophony of alarms went off, each louder and more annoying than the last, and the entire transport lurched violently. It shuddered once and then began to wobble back and forth, sending equipment and cursing stormtroopers careening from bulkhead to bulkhead.

Melody, more or less in one piece thanks to the bacta patch someone had halfheartedly slapped on her head and used to the Icarus's temperamental grav systems, braced herself in place instinctively. She made a grab the Imp next to her, hoping to somehow snatch the key to her binders, and then found herself gripping the edge of her seat as the entire transport lurched again and began to slowly roll over.

Everything was pitch-black and very loud. She could hear more curses, muffled orders, and then a crash and a horrific shriek of pain as someone slammed into the bulkhead hard enough to break bone. The Imp next to her was still hanging on, but he was just contributing to the chaos, shouting into the noise like everyone else.

"Uncuff me," Melody snapped at him.

The Imp stopped demanding to know what the hell was going on. "Shut up!" He sounded young and frightened instead of intimidating, so she decided to use that.

"I'm about to fall," she ground out through gritted teeth. The transport was starting to tilt drastically now, the front rising and the back sinking as if caught by Ludlii's gravity, and the only reason she hadn't tumbled down to join Artoo and most of the Imps was the fact that she had managed to hook an arm around what had once been the headrest. "I don't have armor or a helmet, fragface. I drop now, you get to explain to Rage that I smashed my head in and bled to death because your kriffing pilot can't fly!"

For a long, tense moment she thought he wasn't going to do it. Then he made an irritated noise and fumbled for her binders. A bit of inventive swearing later, they were falling towards what was becoming the floor of the transport and Melody had her hands blessedly free.

"Thanks!" she said brightly.

Then she hooked her arms around her makeshift handhold and used her legs to kick him loose from the seats.

In the chaos, the sound of one Imp hitting the floor harder than most went more or less unnoticed.

The ship had rotated past ninety degrees now and was starting to flip upside-down. Below her, an Imp who sounded more competent than the others was ordering everyone to brace themselves and telling whoever was trapped in the bathroom to try and kick the door down. The bulkheads shuddered as the gravitational controls struggled to reassert themselves, and the alarms had reached a frantic fever pitch.

Moving by feel, Melody scrambled up the seats like a ladder, making her way toward what she hoped was the cockpit. "Artoo!" she bellowed, and then promptly ducked a blaster shot someone sent in her direction. "Whatever the hell you're doing, cut it out and get the kriffing cockpit door open!"

In answer, she got a chorus of muffled and mostly-indecipherable beeps. The general gist of it, though, seemed to be that he wasn't doing any of this on account of the restraining bolt and also being buried under a pile of unconscious and possibly dead Imps.

So this wasn't part of some brilliant droid escape attempt. Frag.

A gloved hand made a grab at her. Melody took advantage of the way the ship was rolling to push whoever it was in the general direction of the Imp pileup somewhere far below. She could hear the one she had mentally labeled as Competent Imp telling everyone else to forget the prisoner and get to the emergency controls, but judging by the hail of haphazard blaster bolts she had to dodge, no one was listening to him.

"Fragging threefaced whoreson of a - would you stop that!" Melody glared down into the darkness. "I'm trying to get to the cockpit and right the ship, you sithspit wastes of space! I don't want to die any more than you do!"

Competent Imp was the one who answered her. "Where are you?"

"Halfway up the chairs and trying to use them as a ladder."

"Is there anyone up there with you?"

"If they are, they're not saying anything." She climbed up another chair. "Tell me how to get past the cockpit door."

"It only opens from the inside when we're transporting prisoners," a grumpier and more female-sounding Imp said. "Might be better to sit and wait until the Retaliator notices we're behind schedule and comes for us."

Melody seriously considered trying to spit on her. "And how long's that gonna take?"

"Can't be more than half a click," Competent Imp said, "but it's hard to tell with the emergency beacons out. It'll be faster if we can get those back online. We've got wounded down here."

She decided to ignore the part he left unsaid - namely, that it was Melody herself who had caused some of those wounds. Her arms were starting to cramp up. "Then one of you fragging geniuses turn them on."

"Emergency beacons are in the cockpit," Grumpy Imp said, because of course they were. It had probably been more efficient or cost-effective to put them there, and it wasn't as if the Imp desk jockey who had commissioned this thing would have cared about saving soldiers' lives. Stormtroopers were expendable and easily replaceable cogs in a machine. That was why Melody had planned to disguise herself as one.

She braced herself against the seats long enough to try to shake feeling back into her arm. "Is there any other way in?" she called down into the darkness.

Grumpy Imp was the one who answered her. "Don't know. You might be able to hotwire the door, but it's going to take light and more time than we've -"

The ship lurched again. Melody barely had time to cling for dear life as something above her came loose in a shower of sparks and sailed past her. It hit somewhere far below, down in the depths of the pitch-black vertical mine shaft the transport had become, with a heavy metallic crash that turned into another scream.

Then she heard the hissing.

"Find my damn droid!" she yelled, failing to keep the growing panic out of her voice. "We don't have half a click! We're venting air!"

Competent Imp started barking orders below her. She blocked out the noises of the stormtroopers trying to jury-rig life support systems by feel and continued her scramble up the seats. The whole transport tilted further. If this kept up she was going to be hanging upside-down.

And then the damn settler kid's voice came out of nowhere, still hoarse from when she'd hit him in the throat. "Send the droid into the bathroom! I think we can access the cockpit controls from here!"

Melody cursed under her breath. What was he even doing on this ship? More to the point, what was he doing tinkering with cockpit controls in the fragging bathroom?

If this was his idea of stupid heroics, she was going to eviscerate him.

The ship seemed to have stopped, or at least more or less stabilized itself. She allowed herself one more muttered string of profanity before she climbed the last few chairs. That put her up against the bulkhead, trying to find the door controls by touch. It was already starting to get colder and harder to breathe, and she didn't have the equipment that the Imps did to protect herself if the ship suddenly decided explosive decompression was a great idea. "Artoo!" she snarled down into the darkness, smashing her hand against the bulkhead in a futile attempt to beat the controls into submission. "Cockpit! Now!"

And then, miracle of miracles, she heard the cockpit door slide open above her.

Melody let out a breath she hadn't realized she had been holding and heaved herself inside.

There was still some light, courtesy of Ludlii's distant sun shining through the viewport. It was enough to give her a good look at the fried short-circuited controls and what was left of the man strapped in beside them.

"The pilot's dead!" she called down through the door, which at this point was more like a bottomless black pit dug into the wall-turned-floor. "Electrocuted, looks like."

There was a flurry of dismayed sounds and swearing from down below before Competent Imp spoke up again, all business. "The beacons?"

"Everything's out but the repulsors. That should be enough to get us back to your Star Destroyer as long as you can keep us from breathing space," she added, then allowed herself a smirk. "But you're not gonna like the landing."

"We'll brace ourselves," Competent Imp said flatly.

Melody gave him a mocking salute he couldn't see anyway and then scrambled back to the ruined controls, pausing only to kick the pilot's body into a corner.

Oh well, she thought as she switched on the repulsors. At least it's not Nar Shaddaa again.

With one last stomach-turning jolt, the transport began to lumber towards safety.