Rain on Vjun was a terrible thing. Acid drops swirled and spattered in every direction, the howling wind carrying them every which way, battering structures and leaving them dilapidated and broken, and slaying all but the hardiest plants as they grappled for life in the poisoned dirt. Deprived of nutrients by the biting rain, the plants that remained only gave the illusion of life, a spreading green moss that would devour the skin off an unconscious man, if given half a day to do so.
It was an evil world. Kam did not think such things lightly—he had been to many worlds during his time as an Inquisitor, and had seen many acts of greed, hate, or spite so powerful that they had left an imprint of the Dark in their wake. The plants continued to grow, but shriveled and twisted, a dark mirror of their healthy selves. The animals grew mean, attacking even when it was unwise—even if it meant that every last member of the pack would fall to blaster fire, or to a lightsaber. Such places were common in the wake of the Inquisitorius' efforts, for they carried pain and death, hunting and slaying, each corpse of a Jedi a void where life had once thrived, even in hiding.
Each corpse of a Jedi mirroring that of his father, even the ones he himself had left behind.
That was Vjun. All of Vjun. A world gone mad, the stories had said at the time. Slaughter and mayhem, an impossible infection that had carved through its population. The world was drenched in the blood of its former inhabitants, not even the acid rain strong enough to wash it all away. It soaked into the moss, filled the storm clouds, and ran free through the rivers. Vjun was not a world any longer, Vjun was the emptiness where a world, once full of life and joy, had been lost to the galaxy forever.
Vjun was where Darth Vader had made himself at home.
Kam glanced sideways. Mara and Slips were at the pilot and copilot seats, trying to decide where to set Tempered Mettle down, looking for something that might offer the freighter at least a little protection from the corrosive effects of the rain. Beside them, Luke peered through the forward windows, his expression tight. Mara paused in her litany about the dangers to her ship to look up at him, and her hand carefully left the controls to interlace with his. Luke pulled himself away from his observation of Vjun to look down at her and offered her a reassuring smile. "I'm all right," he said.
Mara watched him a second longer before nodding and releasing her grip so she could take the controls back. "How far are we from Bast Castle?" she asked Kam.
The maps that Kam had been forced to memorize were etched into his brain. "It overlooks the beach, on the other side of the mountain range," he said, gesturing at the swell of peaks that stretched out before them. "There was a city up the coast from it that was abandoned during the catastrophe." Lightning scorched the sky, slashing down at the ground and at Tempered Mettle, but the ship's shields absorbed the blows.
"There are people there," Luke murmured softly. "At the castle." He leaned forward towards the forward windows. "At least one of them is Force-strong," he added, sounding distant and focused, the strain of effort showing in his expression.
"Inquisitors," Kam said, certain. "Perhaps some of them occupied Vader's castle after his death."
Luke and Mara wore matching frowns now. "We're not looking for a fight," Mara said, pulling back on the controls to end their forward motion. The freighter hovered in the air on its repulsorlifts, the mountain peaks blocking the view of the ocean beyond. Splatters of raindrops fell around Tempered Mettle, vaporizing when they made impact with the ship's shields. "If there's a contingent of Inquisitors here, right now, that means we're outnumbered and probably outgunned. We might want to consider aborting the mission, or doing more extensive recon before we attempt an infiltration."
"I don't remember you being so cautious before we infiltrated Thrawn's Star Destroyer to rescue Karrde," Luke said. There was a hint of tease in his voice, Kam thought, but it was buried under concern and focus; Luke's attention was still locked on the castle he could not see.
"We had a deadline," Mara reminded him. "And at the very least I knew we were going aboard a Star Destroyer. They're all the same." She wrinkled her nose and shrugged. "Or they were."
"I don't think we can wait that long," Kam found himself saying. Luke and Mara both turned towards him with expressions of polite question and he swallowed, feeling unaccountably nervous. "I don't know why," he admitted warily. "There's something the Force has been trying to tell me, something calling me here. Something important. I don't think this… insistence… I feel is the kind of thing a—" he hesitated before using the word "—Jedi should ignore."
Whether he felt worthy of the title or not was irrelevant. A Jedi listened when the Force called. He lived in the moment, he accepted the guidance it offered. He followed. And the Force was leading him—leading them—to Bast Castle. There was a reason for that.
To his surprise, it was Mara who conceded first. "Fine," she muttered, wrinkling her nose. "But we're not going to be able to just fly up to the castle and land like we expected. We're going to need someplace to put down, someplace acid rain won't eat my ship's hull armor while we're gone. Then we're going to need to trek through the rain without losing our skin, infiltrate the castle, and find whatever it is that the Force wants us to find, all while being stalked by Inquisitors." A hint of amusement showed on her features. "Not the worst assignment I've ever had. All right, Slips, bring us around to the north, we're going to look for someplace to land where it won't take us a month to hike back down."
Artoo whistled mournfully as they made their way through the blackened night sky, circling a mountain peak. As they passed through the low-lying clouds an endless, acidic ocean emerged in front of them, dark waves crashing against the shore as the tide came in, pulled by Vjun's large, gleaming moon. It was beautiful, Kam thought, if somewhat lonely. Silver light illuminated the long beach below as it stretched along the mountain spine that followed much of the coast. In the far, far distance he could see the tallest peak, the one upon which Bast Castle was mounted, all the rest mere hills by comparison.
Along the coast were an array of deserted houses. Structures melted to slag by years of acid rain. Lonely walls, standing alone with no roof to cover them. Fallen towers and abandoned farms, overgrown by the carnivorous moss. Civilization did not last long without people there to sustain it, Kam thought.
There was a ping on Mara's console and she swore. "We've been spotted," she announced unceremoniously. "They're pinging our IFF. I'm not seeing any targeting scanners—"
"Unidentified freighter, this is Bitter End, identification code Gamma-One-Zero-Echo-Dash-Isk-Senth. Identify yourself immediately."
Artoo whistled mournfully, wheeling forward and back as he plugged into the ship's computer. Mara held up her hand. "Quiet!" she ordered. "Artoo, revert us back to the manufacturer's IFF." She didn't wait for the droid to respond, instead pressing her thumb down on the blinking button. When she spoke again, her native Coruscanti accent was more intense than normal; Mara usually spoke without any identifiable accent at all. "Bitter End, this is L6000-H-82688. Authorization code Delta-Five-Five-Echo-Dash-Isk-Senth. Requesting landing and provisioning. Confirm authentication and report status." She lifted her thumb from the com pickup. "Don't say a word," she murmured to Kam and Luke.
The voice that came back was annoyed, with a clear hint of exhaustion. "L6000, this is Bitter End. Your authorization code is valid but expired. Confirm."
Mara grinned thinly. "Bitter End, your authorization is valid but expired." She adopted a put-upon tone, but one with just enough force behind it to imply that her patience had strict limits. "Let's not play these games. Direct me to a landing pad, preferably one that offers protection from the rain."
The freighter tilted its nose downwards, homing in on the source of the communication. A small village was settled up against the coast, the roads that had once led to it all washed away and overgrown. Two landing pads were visible now, as well as two hastily-constructed gunnery towers, the twinned turbolaser batteries swinging to point in their direction. Kam reached for but didn't bring up Tempered Mettle's firing controls—activating the array would surely be noticed by the people on the ground, and Mara evidently thought they could talk their way through this.
"That's an ISB authorization code," Mara murmured as she reduced their velocity further, now hovering high above the pair of landing pads. From this distance, they could see the structures here were in better shape than any others they had passed, with thick roofs that stood up to the constant spatter of the acid rain and were elevated off the ground to avoid storm surges. "This ship used to be ISB, and after a few unpleasant run-ins with their operatives Palpatine took steps to make sure I could blend if I had to." She gestured at herself. "Catriona Lavalle." She pointed at Kam and Luke. "Lackey One and Lackey Two. Stay out of sight and let me do the talking. If one of you has to be seen, make sure it's Lackey One."
"Why do I have to be Lackey Two?" Luke murmured playfully.
"Because he's taller and scarier looking," Mara retorted. "Yes, that is actually the reason. That and they'd recognize you."
Kam considered pointing out that at least Luke hadn't been an Inquisitor.
The com flickered back to life, the hiss of static dissipating quickly. The voice on the other end of the line was now more respectful. "L6000, you are cleared for landing."
"Thank you, Bitter End," Mara said, a hint of annoyed sarcasm in her voice.
"You know we're not going to have much in the way of provisions."
"I am well aware, Bitter End. As you are well aware, if I had a viable alternative I would be anywhere else but here. This isn't exactly what I would consider a vacation spot. If you have a replacement YKL fuel shunt on hand, have it delivered when I land. If not, I'll want a full inventory of what you do have available. L6000-H-82688 out."
With confident skill, Mara and Slips brought the freighter down onto the landing pad, then slid the ship back under a simple overhang that offered rudimentary protection from the acid rain. "We're going to need to give the ship a full overhaul when we're back on Coruscant," Mara murmured, shaking her head with annoyance. "Alright then. We all need to change, but especially me. I have gear in the armory."
Mara's flight from the Empire had been unplanned. The Emperor's death had been a sudden, furiously unexpected blow. The sudden severing of her bond to Palpatine, on top of his frantic last command impressing itself upon her mind, had left Mara near catatonic. When she had woken it had been in a cell, with one of Ysanne Isard's goons interrogating her.
She had never had a chance to return to L6000-H-82688, which she had since given the name Tempered Mettle as a declaration of her present resolve and a concession to Karrde's preference for puns. Instead she had run, casting herself adrift into the galaxy. Then came the wandering, lonely and confused, looking for purpose in a galaxy gone mad. Palpatine had been her touchstone, her anchor. In his absence she went on, doing the best that she could, surviving—until she had stumbled across Karrde and asked for a job.
The life she had lived as Emperor's Hand had been left behind her—for good, she thought—and she had begun a new one. A better one. One where her life was her own, and then more recently shared with Luke and not Palpatine, and where the sharing was equal and honest, not one-sided. One she could leave if she wished. One she could use to keep investigating the insistent question that had dogged her for so long and likely would for the rest of her life.
Who is Mara Jade?
So when she pulled open doors to her armory, revealing the array of equipment that she had been forced to abandon in the wake of Palpatine's death, it was with decidedly mixed feelings.
The next part was simple. She removed the armor of the Emperor's Hand and put it on. The outfit began with a comfortable, snug layer of blaster-resistant synthfabric. Then a set of light, flexible armor which could be covered easily with a casual outfit. High boots, a weapons belt, and unobtrusive knee pads finished the gear—not counting the blaster on her right hip and the vibroblade sheathes hidden in her boots. Reluctantly, she left her lightsaber behind, placing it in the armory on the provided hook. It wasn't the kind of weapon an ISB operative would carry.
She turned towards Luke, found him watching her with an expression that revealed the debate going on behind his eyes. Much to her consternation, Luke was one of the few sentients in the galaxy who found her scowl attractive, a fact about him she would never understand, and Mara dressed to be deadly only heightened his attraction to her. But he knew as well as she did—maybe even better than she did—how hard she had fought to leave the Emperor's Hand in her past.
It didn't matter. She needed to be an Imperial to make this work, so an Imperial she would be. "Stay on the ship," she instructed him. "We shouldn't have gotten rid of our disguises after Bespin, but there's nothing to be done about it now."
"We were expecting my father's empty castle," Luke said with a shrug. "We didn't know the Inquisitors and ISB decided to turn it into a delightful summer retreat." His gaze was intent, affection and concern swirling together in his heart as he stepped near. He took her hands in hers. "Be careful," he murmured.
"Luke," Mara said with a sigh, rolling her eyes even as she stepped into his embrace, her arms twining around him. "I'm about to walk into an ISB contingent with nothing more than my armor and an old cover. Being careful isn't exactly an option here."
His fingers ran up her spine, sending a shiver through her. Her fingers tightened on his back and she leaned up, kissing him with slow determination. I'll be alright. This is what I do.
"Kam and I are available for quick backup," he murmured against her lips as he held her close. "And we've got the ship and my X-wing."
"I'll be alright," she reassured him confidently. It helped that she was as confident as she sounded. She kissed him again, then walked past him, carrying his love with her as she immersed herself in the person she needed to be. Colonel Catriona Lavalle. ISB. Coruscanti.
She slapped the hatch release, the ship's forward ramp lowering. Outside there was the sound of whipping rain and breeze, and Mara pulled on a pair of protective goggles, just in case some of the acidic rain was blown under the flimsily-constructed hangar. There were three people waiting for her. The leader was an ISB officer wearing a Captain's rank insignia—that was good, it meant her persona had the advantage of rank—and he was flanked by two ISB stormtroopers.
She stalked down the hangar, summoning the irritation and demanding self-confidence typical of ISB senior officers, especially in the presence of subordinates. "Do you have my fuel shunt?" she demanded, leaning into her native Coruscanti accent and pointing at the ceiling. "I certainly don't intend to remain on this pitiful rock for any longer than my repairs demand." She pointed at the officer in the middle. "Name and ISB Ident."
The officer was caught off guard by her command of the conversation. "Captain Linscome," he replied. "Zeta-Alpha-Gamma-Zero-Zero-Five."
Mara placed her hand on her ear, as if receiving confirmation from either a member of her crew or from her ship's main computer. "Good enough," she muttered. "So, do you have it?" She pointed at the two stormtroopers. "If the answer is yes, go fetch it. If the answer is no, what do you have I can use to fix my ship?"
"My pardon, Colonel," Linscome awkwardly tried to re-insert himself into the conversation. He nodded at the two Stormtroopers. "Go fetch our spare parts for the Colonel," he confirmed. As they trotted back into the acid rain, he returned his attention to Mara, who was now studiously ignoring him as she examined Tempered Mettle's supposedly-damaged engine. "Colonel!" he called, hurrying after her. "Colonel, I need your ISB Ident. And the main database is also requesting you provide a status update." He looked awkward. "Frankly, ma'am, the system says you haven't reported a status update in almost six years. It's quite insistent that I give it something."
"Epsilon-Beta-Beta-Nine-Nine-Seven," Mara replied breezily, without turning to look at him. She removed the outer casing on Tempered Mettle's engine, lifting the heavy metal covering and placing it down carefully. Then she glanced around, saw a stool sitting in the corner of the hangar, and went and grabbed it. As she pulled it towards her ship's engine, she spared Linscome a glance.
He was an older man, much older than Mara herself. He was junior for his age, but not as junior as his rank suggested. ISB had preferred to keep its officers—even its senior-most officers—at relatively low ranks, with almost no one ever exceeding the rank of Colonel. ISB personnel had delighted in being Colonels that could command Admirals, or Lieutenants that could intimidate Captains. An ISB Captain being permanently stationed here on Vjun suggested that their presence was considered important by at least someone in their decentralized hierarchy—although that might just be Linscome himself.
She needed to figure it out quick.
"Ma'am?" Linscome prodded.
"Hmmm? Oh," Mara replied, turning from her seat on the stool. She pushed her hair back, scowling with annoyance. "To be blunt, I've been operating off book." She nodded at him. "You're familiar with the explosion at the Bank of Heurkea? The one that destabilized the Dac economy for the better part of four months? Or the assassination of the Patriarch of the Dza clan four years ago?" She paused, holding up a hand and ticking off a litany of events. "The execution of Grand Admiral Grant? Or the betrayal and disappearance of Soontir Fel?" She shook her head. "I had a line on Crix Madine, but I couldn't pull it off."
Linscome was staring at her. "All of those were ISB operations?"
Mara scoffed. "ISB operations. Hardly, Captain." She shook her head, then glared at him. "To be blunt, current ISB leadership is an embarrassment, compared to the officer corps we had at our height. We never recovered from the death of Colonel Yularen at Yavin. They're ISB operations in the sense that I'm ISB, and I've been carrying out those operations." She pointed at him. "Feel free to put that in the computer." She put all the remembered righteous anger of the Emperor's Hand into her expression and voice. All the determined intent, all the self-confident belief. "I'm sure Grand Moff Kaine, the coward, would be happy to know that someone has been doing ISB's work the last five years." She tore a piece of the engine out angrily. "Someone has to fight for the New Order, and if I have to do it my own damn self, I bloody well will."
The ISB Captain was watching her warily, but not as warily as he had been. ISB, more than any other Imperial institution other than maybe the Inquisitorius, had operated in independent cells. An ISB Colonel, like the identity Mara had co-opted, had enormous latitude to operate on her own authority, and Mara suspected that with the death of the Emperor that had become only more true. A rogue ISB operative, on her own, carrying out ISB missions, was all-too-plausible.
The list of operations she gave were suspicious accidents. The "bombing" at the Bank of Heurkea, one of the major Mon Calamari financial institutions, had been (to the best of anyone's knowledge) nothing more than an accident. Grand Admiral Grant had defected to the New Republic years before and gone into quiet retirement—but he could have been quietly murdered, and the New Republic not admit it for fear of discouraging future defections. Fel, of course, she knew from Wedge had vanished and never been found.
The ISB man's greatest wariness came when she attacked Grand Moff Kaine, but apparently Linscome had heard such sentiments from other ISB officers before. "Yes ma'am. I'll update your file, but if you would fill out a formal set of mission reports—"
The look Mara sent him was positively venomous.
He laughed awkwardly. "Yes. I'll do my best based on your summary." He frowned. "Ma'am, if you don't mind—how did you find out about this facility? Our presence here is only a year old, and you've been out of contact with ISB for much longer than that."
"I'm from the Imperial Security Bureau," Mara said. For the first time in the conversation, she offered the man a particularly winsome smile. "We always know, Captain." She gestured at her ship. "This won't take me long to fix with the proper tools. I'll need a meal and a proper shower, and ideally I'd like to restock my blaster power packs and get a new supply of explosives—whatever you have available, the higher the grade the better." She winked, putting no levity into it. "I may have a few more targets in mind."
"I'll reach out to the Inquisitors," Linscome promised. "They have more supplies than we do, and Vader apparently left a lot of equipment behind. I'm sure we can get you whatever you need."
"Tell me, Captain," Mara asked, dismissively turning back to continue 'fixing' her ship's undamaged engine. She thwacked it with a hydrospanner—if they checked it now, it would be broken, but not broken enough to prevent her from flying. "How has it been, working more closely with the Inquisitorius?" She turned to peer at him with the narrowed, intent gaze of a skilled interrogator. "I hope they're being properly respectful."
This line of questioning brought a look of intense discomfort to Linscome's face. "It is a work in progress," he admitted. "To be honest, they rely more on us than we do on them—their numbers are simply too small to provide much institutional support."
Mara scoffed. "They have you hunting Jedi, do they?" she asked. That had to be what he meant—the Inquisitorius' only charge was to hunt and destroy Jedi or their lore. Such agents usually had to be Force sensitive—that was the easiest way to identify Jedi attempting to hide their Force sensitivity—which, combined with Vader's notorious tendency to slay his own assets, had kept their numbers small. So if ISB was providing Inquisitors with support, that had to mean they'd taken up some of those Jedi-hunting responsibilities for themselves.
Linscome was clearly torn between his increasing belief that she was an ISB agent, and not quite knowing what to do with an ISB agent who had been rogue for half a decade. She tilted her head at him, challengingly, as if daring him to refuse to tell her, and he stiffened. "There are no Jedi, other than the pretenders on Coruscant," he replied. "But they have pointed us towards possible Jedi artifacts and relics, and teams of ISB agents and Inquisitors have been traveling to each one. We've destroyed five such sites in the last year."
He practically glowed with pride, and Mara rewarded him for his story with a smile. "Well done," she said approvingly, the kind of professional sanction a general might offer a promising junior officer.
"Yes, ma'am," he agreed. "Our last joint operation was at a place called Exis Station. There wasn't much left there, but we did manage to capture a Force-strong scavenger and a few other artifacts that the Inquisitors seemed… excited… to have in custody." He shrugged. "Have you ever heard of something called a holocron?" he asked.
Mara shook her head. "My focus has been on traitors, not Jedi." That was a gentle chastisement, as rooting out traitors was ISB's directive—the threats to the New Order from within—but she didn't speak it as one.
"Apparently they're Jedi magic," Linscome explained, either not catching the rebuke or deciding to ignore it. "Pasiq says they hold Jedi wisdom, training, and secrets. She's attempting to draw its secrets out. If she can—" Linscome's voice went hard "—then perhaps we can use it to win the war."
Mara doubted it, but she'd seen the way one powerful Force user and one genius could rewrite the rules of galactic politics in a matter of months. She shrugged, using her hydrospanner to hit her ship's engine again, repairing some of the damage she'd inflicted as she whacked the metal back into something closer to its appropriate shape. "What will win the war," Mara said with dark passion typical of ISB operatives, "is good, loyal soldiers of the Empire, commitment, and the death of all traitors." She hit the engine again, harder this time. "All of them, Captain."
There were two kinds of ISB operatives: the ones who served because it brought them wealth, power, and status, and the ones who served because they believed in the New Order. Colonel Catriona Lavalle was the latter.
"Yes ma'am!" Linscome agreed, snapping to attention.
Behind him, the two stormtroopers who had been dispatched to bring spare parts returned. "Finally," Mara groused, hopping off her stool and going over. She peered through the collection of parts, snatching up the replacement part. "Perfect. I'll seal this back up, then have a meal and a shower and a good night's sleep, then finish the repairs and get back out of your hair in the morning," she said.
"We have techs who can fix the ship for you, ma'am."
"The only person who touches my ship," Mara hissed at him, "is me. Clear?"
Linscome winced. "Clear, ma'am."
Mara tossed the hydrospanner into the crate with the parts. Outside, the rain had temporarily let up, reduced to a trickle instead of a maelstrom.
Following Mara through the Force was not as difficult as it had been the first few times they had tried this. The sensation of sharing her vision, of seeing what she saw, hearing what she heard, was disorienting, but the more they tried it—or the longer they were together as a couple—the easier it had become. Luke murmured to Kam, the two of them plotting out a map of first the hangar facility, then of the hastily-constructed (but still clearly the recipient of ISB's usual lavish investment of funds) ISB operations facility.
"I haven't seen very many people," Luke continued. "The two stormtroopers and the ISB captain so far…" he paused, following Mara's vision as she glanced down hallways, quickly tracing the layout he saw. Mara entered a cafeteria, which was empty but had enough tables to seat about sixteen people, if people had packed into it all at once.
Probably a staff of four officers, Mara thought to him, the cadences of her thoughts identifying them as hers, tinged with the comfortable edge of intimate affection that had come to characterize all the thoughts and emotions shared via the invisible string that bound them together. Then I'd guess eight stormtroopers, maybe ten, maybe six, depending on how active this operations team is. This strikes me as a coordinating center, more focused on integrating ISB and Inquisitorius operations than running their own independent teams.
Luke relayed the information to Kam. In the cafeteria, Mara grabbed a stash of Imperial ration bars, a flash-frozen meal, and a double-sized cup of caf. The ISB captain who had been watching her departed, but one of the stormtroopers remained, keeping a watchful eye. Should I be concerned? he asked.
He could feel as Mara subtly observed the stormtrooper as he subtly observed her. Probably not immediately, she returned after consideration. My cover should hold up to initial scrutiny, but when they go digging they'll realize I look identical to the second-in-command of the Smugglers' Alliance. I'm not as low profile as I used to be. The stormtrooper watched Mara nonchalantly as she ate her flash-meal and drank her caf. Mara, in turn, ignored the stormtrooper, except in the awareness offered by her peripheral vision and the Force. You saw the liftspeeder doors I passed on the way in?
I saw them, he confirmed. Between Mara's entry to the base facility and her arrival at the cafeteria, one of the hallways she passed had featured two wide, sealed lift doors. Wider than a usual turbolift, it probably represented the entrance to a liftspeeder—a high speed turbolift that would travel along at ground level at airspeeder velocity—that traveled along the coast to Castle Bast farther up the beach.
Mara stood and stretched, before placing her tray in the disposal. I think I can get you access to it, she sent. Once you're inside, you and Kam can go investigate Bast Castle while I keep the ISB team distracted. I just need to get access to the main security terminal. He could feel her reaction to his sudden wariness, the soothing affection and mild annoyance that was her typical response to his desire to keep her out of danger. Skywalker, she scolded gently. I have my ship. I'll be fine. A hint of disdain replaced her affection. It's just ISB. Nothing I can't handle.
Luke followed her through the Force as she was led to a spare room, with all the typical amenities for a visiting officer, including a computer terminal. She thanked the stormtrooper, then shut the door in his face.
What do you want us to do? he asked once she was safely ensconced.
Wait.
Randel Linscome rather detested Vjun. Working with the Inquisitorius wasn't so bad—he'd actually come to like and respect them more than he'd expected when the orders had first come down from on high—even if he thought the work they were being asked to do was outside of ISB's proper purview. Moments of excitement were few and far between, the hunt for a new artifact or Jedi talent usually wild bantha chases across the galaxy, accomplishing little. That wasn't always the case, as the mission to Exis Station just a few days before had proven, but it was mostly the case.
Colonel Catriona Lavalle was easily the most interesting thing to happen at the Bitter End Imperial Security Bureau station since he'd established it a little more than a year before, as part of Grand Moff Kaine and Colonel Carias' reorganization of ISB.
Her record was exemplary if erratic. He tabbed through the summary file—mission reports, all years old now, which described an exceptional if bizarrely atypical ISB agent. She had been recruited out of Imperial Intelligence and put into accelerated training at an extremely young age, then operated largely autonomously. Dedicated to hunting down treasonous elements, she had targeted enemies of the New Order and eliminated them—always without making her assassinations obvious. An accident here. A sudden illness there.
Since Endor, and ISB's further fragmentation as the Empire's central hierarchy fell apart, she had not bothered to report to anyone. He checked each of the stories she'd told him, and each fit Lavalle's operational profile: quiet, unheralded deaths or accidents that had outsized impacts, always harmful to the Rebellion in one way or another.
If she was genuine, she was one of ISB's finest.
The problem was Randel Linscome was pretty sure she wasn't.