Corran knocked on the cabin door and waited for Tahiri to answer it. He was surprise to look down and see R2-L616 blocking the door. It beeped and whistled a long complicated sentence at her before turning its dome to look at him.

"No, I don't want any arguments this time. Let Master Horn in and you go wait for me in the main hold." He heard Tahiri say from inside the cabin. He could see her sitting up in her bunk with a data pad in her lap. The droid let out some sour sounding notes as it pushed past Corran. Tahiri gave him a loop sided grin that she must have picked up from hanging around the Solo's all these years. "Sorry about that he has developed a protective streak towards me."

"Yes, Whistler has the same feeling towards my family and I." Corran said carefully hiding his amusement, he had a hard job to do here and he didn't want her to mistaken why he was here. He turned on a recording device and set it down on her desk. "Do you feel ready for a debriefing?"

"Yes Master Horn." Corran notice through the Force that she had braced herself mentally but outward she never stirred.

"Very well, let us start at the beginning. You can start by you giving me the details of your actions since leaving Zonama Sekot." Corran said sitting on the edge of her bunk and crossing his arms. It took about an hour for her to explain what she did and why, she even had the droid pull all relevant logs and communication and down load them in to a data pad which she gave to him. She didn't waste time trying to explain why she did what she did; she just laid it all out and allowed him to come to his own conclusions. "How were you discovered?"

"I just don't know, I reviewed the files with the natives communications after we were discovered. The droid told me that a native had found the modified data pad sliced into the information hub and removed it. How they discovered it in the first place or what made them look in that area, I just don't know. The droid was more worried about getting down to us to monitor communication channels closely."

"Why 3 concussion missiles?"

"It took 2 missiles to blow open the door. Just before he blew it open I had him target the roof of the complex to slow down any reinforcements coming in behind us. There were about 25 troops stationed inside the complex blocking the door with 10 outside. They were either killed or injured by the initial blast. The second blast mostly injured the 4 squads closing in behind us. I saw many of the troops laying on the ground stun by either the blast or the failing rocks."

"They weren't all stunned, were they?" He said pointing to her injuries.

"True, but having only a couple troops firing was better then having four squads worth. It was not that the slugs were harder to deflect, it was just the numbers that presented the problem."

"That was the same problem that the Widowmaker was having with the natives attacking them."

"Yes, like the Ewoks at Endor, these natives there had superior numbers not superior tactics or weapons. And considering the damage that the Widowmaker had suffered during the crash it was only a matte of time before their shield failed. I'm impressed that the Imperials had been able to keep their shields up with the condition of their ship and all the junk the natives were throwing at them." She stopped and looked down at the covers. "They never told me about the main power reactor nor about their plans to self destruct the Widowmaker. I'm not sure how that would affect my plans had I known. The droid recorded the explosion on the way out. It is under file heading W-089, I watched it about a hundred times."

Corran brought the file up; on the small screen he could see a view of the Widowmaker as they lifted up into the sky. He could see the shield flash as hundreds of small and large slugs slammed into them. Then the explosion had overwhelmed the scanner briefly but when it cleared he saw a wave slam into the crafts out on the water. After the wave past them none of the craft were visible on the surface. The island itself was a black and smoking ruin. It was clear that none of the invading forces had survived.

"There had been hundreds on those ships and 50,000 troops on the island. I wanted to minimizes death and destruction while rescuing the crew."

"The Imperials never hinted at their plans after they left the island?"

"Nope."

"Well if there is a next time you know what questions to ask, don't you?"

Her head snapped up and she was searching his face for some clue to what he was thinking of.

"Now Jedi Knight Veila, can you tell me were you made mistakes?" Corran said in a formal tone.

"It is just Tahiri now." She said off handily as she squirmed into a more conferrable position.

"Let's not get off track Veila, answer the question. Where did you make your first mistake?"

"I don't believe I made a mistake Cor." She said, adding stress to his name. Corran knew that she was letting him know what she thought of him using her full name. He clamped down on his irritation; there were more important lessons to be learned here.

"This is official interview Veila, and as you know being recorded, so I wish you to show some respect and use my full name and not some childish nick name."

"Then please show me some respect, Master Horn. I'm not 'Tahiri Veila' anymore nor am I 'Riina Kwaad', I'm Tahiri."

"Jedi Veila, let us not get off on a irrelevant track here."

"Master Horn, it is not irrelevant to me, you wish for respect. So do I, please call me Tahiri."

"I will treat you as you as deserve, quit acting like a little child and I'll treat you like a adult. Now then where did you make your first mistake?"

"I do not believe I did make any mistakes." She grounded out.

"Oh really! So you did everything perfectly? That is pretty childish attitude don't you think."

"No," she was growing more restless, "I would done some things differently. I would have taken more weapons …"

"Oh weapons yes that is a mature response for a child to make."

"… So we wouldn't have to use the grenades in defense." She said talking over his response. "I also would have attempted some kind diversion to draw away more troops away from our escape route. Once we were discovered logically the Level One Sector A was the only way out."

"So you would still went it with no regarded for the lives involved? You had to be the great Jedi waving your light saber around like some holo-drama character."

"No, I didn't." She grounded out in an even huskier voice. Corran could feel the anger building in her. "Why are you acting like this?"

"So you won't sit back and do some planning?" He said ignoring her question, "You would still went in charging like a little child, not caring who got hurt or who died as long as you could be the hero!"

"I didn't want to be a hero! All I wanted to do is get the Imperials home safe! All I wanted was to correct a mistake I made on Zonama Sekot! I didn't know how else to do it, I didn't know the Imperials were going to blow up their Khapet ship!"

"Oh so now it is the Imperials fault, you have no responsibility for what happened!"

"Everything that happened was my responsibility!"

"Then where did you make your first mistake child!"

She started talking quickly and angrily in Yuuzhan Vong, he could feel her reach the boiling point. He sat there on the edge of her bed, bracing himself for what ever would come. Then as quickly as it started, it died. He heard her take a deep breath and then look sharply at him. She studied him for a few minutes, not saying a word, and then she slumped back on her bunk and closed her eyes.

"Khapet," she said still not looking at anything. After a long pause she continued, "My first mistake was I lost my temper with Ensign Hertz when I was trying to contact Master Skywalker for help. If I had not lost my temper I wouldn't have been blocked and I could have tried to contact them again later after Hertz was off duty."

"Yes," Corran said softly, "that was your first mistake. What made you realizes it?"

"As I was calling you names, the whole conversation struck a cord in my memory. Suddenly I was reliving the whole thing again with Ensign Hertz. That is when I noticed what you were doing; you were trying to show me how I screwed up by making me repeat the mistake. I saw very clearly how if I hadn't let my anger get the best of me I wouldn't be laying here right now and I wouldn't have caused so many deaths."

"I'm sorry about that but I needed you to figure it out on your own. Lessons learned from experience are the best, analyzing why you did what you did is best learned then on your own then having someone explain it to you. Now that you see what you had done, how could you make sure that doesn't happen again?"

"I have to work on not letting people get under my skin, I have to get a tighter rein my anger." She said sitting back up and opening her eyes and looking at Corran. "My second mistake …"

"No," Corran held up his hand stopping her from continua ling. "Here is the paradox, everything thing you did after that was correct."

"I don't understand?" She said shaking her head and not even trying to hide her confusion.

"Like I said it is a paradox." He got up and started pacing the small cabin. "Tahiri, you spend two days gathering intelligence on the complex so you could hit it when they were the most vulnerable, you held down your impulses and took extra time to insure that you would not be discovered early. You had R2-L616 modified a pad so he could have access to their computers to assist you. You even took a special amphistaff along so you didn't have to risk shooting them with a stun blast. By using that staff you presented them with something that they could not understand, they couldn't know that they were under attack. To them it was just some animal that somehow crawled into the complex. If you had shoot one the other could have gotten off an alarm. They would have known that they were under attack; their training could have saved them long enough to alert the rest of the base. Also the sound of the stun blast could have alerted other that you were there, imagine trying to fight your way out from the prison cells? Yes, carrying extra blasters would have been better then using a grenade in the stair access. And how they found the data pad that sounds like bad luck, luck on a mission such as this one counts as much as intelligence, sometimes it just happens. For someone who has almost no intelligence or commando training, you did extremely well. Tahiri, you really impressed me and Luke."

"What about the Widowmaker?" She didn't react like he thought she would, normally she would be blushing at the thought that she had impressed him. She had grown up a lot since she had been gone. Now she seems more interested in learning from him then impressing him.

"That was not your fault," he said with a sigh and sitting back down, "Captain Yege was acting like a Imperial officer. You don't have the experience with them like Luke or Han or I would have, to you they have been allies and not to different from us. But to an Imperial Captain, to leave a ship like that behind for the natives to use would have gone against everything they had been trained to do. Where we would destroy the computer cores and any other potential source of information, the Imperials would make sure the entire ship was useless to anyone. It comes from the Rebellion where we would salvage any wreaked ships. Also, as in this case, it is a bit of revenge. They figure if someone forced them to abandon a ship, they should pay a high price for embarrassing the Empire."

"What about the power core?"

"I talked to the chief engineer of the Mon Mothma, we both looked over the data that R2-L616 had forward to Luke, and it is true that the power core was going to go soon. How soon is up to debate, it is very possible that we couldn't have gotten there in time to stop it form exploding anyways. Did she have to stay on to make sure it didn't explode before you were clear is also unknown?"

"Wait!" she said looking very confused, "Are you saying that I could have been in negotiation with the natives and have that power core blow anyways killing everyone, including the Imperials, on that island?"

"Yes."

"Are you saying by doing the wrong thing I was actually doing the right thing?"

"Yes." he said with a nod and a very tight smile.

"Fas!" She said slumping back and covering her eyes with her hands. "Then how the hells am I supposed to know what to do!"

"Well first watch your mouth, Jedi aren't supposed to sound like spice smugglers." He said with a small chuckle. Tahiri uncovered her eyes and gave him a mock glare. "Second, it is training. Although sometimes it doesn't become clear until after the action is over. Third and most important trust in the Force."

"Yes Master, thank you Master." She said crossing her arms in a very Vong like manner and gave him a bow. "And I try to clean up my fas languages." She said with a small grin.

"I don't know what you said but I can take a good guess." Corran replied while rolling his eyes. "Anyways, I had already made a recommendation to Luke about extending your training. He is not happy about it but we should have a answer by the time we get back."

"Will you be my new Master?"

"No, Tahiri. I have my hands full with Valin already. Besides I can't give you the training you need. For you someone better then I will teach you what you need." Corran said getting up and walking to the door.

"None of the other masters can help me like you can."

Corran could hear a trace of disappointment in her voice.

"You would be surprise Tahiri." He opens the door and motioned two medics in to the room. "But first you need to heal we will take about it later."

Tahiri wiped the last of the bacta from her hair and as she listened to the doctor give her detail instructions on how she need to take it easy on her right shoulder for the next couple weeks. Well she kind of listened; she was mostly nodding her head at the correct times to hurry up the doctor. She felt extremely uncomfortable in the medical robe and wanted to get changed into her normal ship clothes. The droid, somehow and it was very sweet of him, had a black combat suit brought to her room for her to change into once she got out of the bacta tank. She made a mental note not to get hurt again and have to be dunked. It took Master Horn and 3 medics four hours to convince her to get into the undershirt and short pants; she wanted to go in wearing a jumpsuit. But no, they tried to explain that the bacta worked best when it didn't have to fight through clothes. Because of her side wounds they originally wanted her to go in naked. They had to send security out to catch her when she ran out of the medical bay after that suggestion had been floated.

Getting naked? In front of all these people? No way! Lucky Master Horn, after seeing her turn five shades of red, sided with her. The short pants and undershirt was the compromise that they finally came up with. She remembers that Commander Ritk, who was still in the medical bay being treated, had found the whole thing amusing.

"Are all Jedi this, how should I say, committed to certain beliefs?"

"No," Master Horn said looking at her with a sour and strained patient look, "but Tahiri has always been more thick headed then most."

Tahiri, while floating in the tank, could just imagine all these people walking by to gawk at the Human/Yuuzhan Vong and her bare skin. She knew that Master Horn would never allow anything like that to happen to her but she couldn't shake that view.

"… So do you understand?" The doctor said closing down his data pad.

"Yes."

The doctor crossed his arms and glared at her.

"Oh so you will rub oil over your body and do the 'happy' dance with the Ewoks?"

"What?" She looked at him as if he suddenly sported a shaper's head snakes.

"For the past 3 minutes I been explaining to you how you should travel to Endor for 3 weeks and dance with Ewoks. I wanted to see if you were paying attention." He uncrossed his arms and punched some buttons on his pad. Tahiri, looking sheepishly, just shrugged her left shoulder not even trying to talk her way out of it. "You are not in the Navy, so I can't order you to follow my advice. But if you don't follow these directions you will end up back here for another dunk." He pulled out a data chip and handed it to her. He also gave her a stern look as she took the chip. "And if you come back in here for me to fix your shoulder, this time I will make sure you go in naked; understand Jedi Tahiri?"

"Yes doctor," she said wincing, somehow she didn't think he was joking. "I will make sure I follow all your orders."

"Then you are released form Medical, you can get dressed and go back to your ship." He said shaking her left hand.

When Tahiri finally left (escaped) the medical bay, she headed down to the main bay. In a few hours the Mon Mothma would drop out of hyperspace near Coruscant. The Imperials and Mon Mothma would continual to Yaga Minor while the Double Trouble, with the Horns, would head towards Denon were Master Skywalker would be waiting for her. She wanted to give her ship a once over before they left. The Imperials had done some patchwork to the Double Trouble on their way to from the planet. They had been good enough to get them to safety but once she landed the techs on Mon Mothma wanted to a more thorough job. The droid had made sure that they didn't go into certain parts of the ship, such as the 'escape pod', citing security concerns. The pod actually was in poor shape and would have to be replaced, but she wanted to have it replaced with the same equipment. So it would have to wait until they got back to Denon. Of course most of her Yuuzhan Vong weapons had been stored in the pod, those would have to wait till she went back to Zonama Sekot.

When she walked into Landing Bay Alpha she saw her ship parked near the launch hatch, sitting alone with the starboard personal ramp lowered waiting for her return. You couldn't see the damaged that had been done to her; the techs had welded the hull and slap some new paint on her. Walking around checking the landing gear and looking for any other visible signs of damage she was surprise just how excited she was about flying again. Before when she flew it was to either escape or cause death. Since she left Zonama Sekot she had been flying in search of life. And while doing that she found the joy of flying that Anakin and the others had always talked about. The freedom and responsibility that came with absolute control over your destiny was intoxicating. As she walked up the ramp a thought hit her out of nowhere. Once she gets a new master she may never have this freedom again. That thought made her stop half way up the ramp, many of the Jedi are now relying on other to ferry them around the galaxy like the records shown that many Jedi had done in the Old Republic. Only a very few such as Master Skywalker, Jade-Skywalker and her had their own ships, that did their own flying. Even Master Horn and Durron, both excellent pilots, allowed themselves to be ferried around now. It made her sad to think that she finally found something that made her happy just to have to give it up. But she knew that if her new master told her to give up her ship she would, there were something that were more important to consider. She had to get a grip on her powers; she was a bigger risk to the galaxy as a half trained Jedi. So if her duty requires for her to give up the newfound joy of flying, she would do so. After all her new training wouldn't last the rest of her life, one day she would get to fly again.

She headed to the bridge area where she could hear the droid talking to himself. When she walked in she saw him already plugged in to the ship's computer, running a check on the systems. His dome spun around and he beeped and whistled a greeting to her. She gave him a warm smile and tapped her left ear, a signal that she didn't have her tizowyrm in place yet. After she sat down and put one in her ear he repeated his statement.

WELCOME BACK TAHIRI, ARE THE REPAIRS COMPLETE?

"Thank you, yes my injuries are all healed. Although the doctor gave me a list of exercises to help strengthen my shoulder." She said as she took the data chip out and uploaded it in to the ship's computer. "How is our ship doing?"

ALL REPAIRS, EXCEPT TO THE COMMUNICATION AND INTELLIGENCE GATHERING POD, ARE COMPLETE AND CERTIFIED BY THE MON MOTHMA MECHANICS TO BE WITHIN STANDARD FOR THIS CLASS OF SHIPS. I'M INITIALIZING PRE FLIGHT PROTOCOLS.

She sat back in her chair and watched him for a while in silences, she was sure she had the right name for him now. He was definably developing a personality; he was resourceful, always worrying about her. He was reminding him of her friend.

TAHIRI, HAVE YOU BEEN INFORMED OF YOUR NEXT MISSION?

"Not yet, Master Skywalker wants to wait till we get back to Denon before he tells me."

HAVE YOU HEARD WHAT WILL BE COME OF ME?

Tahiri could swear he sounded worried when he said that, she leaned forward and ran her hand over his shinny dome. She was thinking how cool it was to the touch but he had a warm heart in that cold metal body.

"No matter what you and I are partners. Where I go you go. If my new master has any problems with that, well I just have to turn down that assignment. I give up the Double Trouble, I give up my joy of flying and my independences but I won't give up you."

THANK YOU TAHIRI. Tahiri could almost hear relief in his tones.

"In fact I think I found the perfect name for you." The droid spun his dome to face her, "My friend Anakin had a call sign that he used on missions. And you remind me of him and to honor his memory and to honor you, I wish to call you by that name."

WHAT IS MY NEW NAME?

"I want to call you 'Little Brother', is that ok with you?"

I AM LITTLE BROTHER.

"Do you like that name?"

YES!

"I'm happy Little Brother." She said with a grin and patted his dome. She then leaned back in her chair and started out the view port, wondering what the future holds for her.