The Millennium Falcon's smuggling compartment was the product of many years of clever space-making. Solo and Chewbacca had on several different occasions re-arranged the Falcon's interior, taking advantage of the compartmentalized nature of the YT-1300 design to add hidden areas unique to the Falcon that a typical customs enforcement officer would overlook.

While the ship was in flight, this compartment—nestled between the ship's outer hull and its major thruster assembly, in a narrow space just barely wide enough for a human being—would be deafeningly loud. But Iella and Mara had fit snugly inside after Han had set the ship down (and locked out the engines so that it would take a team of techs several hours at least to get the Falcon moving again).

They waited.

"I was a CorSec enforcement agent," Iella groused. "And now I'm hidden in one of the Millennium Falcon's smuggling compartments. This ship was notorious at the academy." She sighed, wiggling to try to get just slightly more comfortable. "At least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that Solo's going to have to rebuild the interior of this bucket all over again, just to fit in some new hidden compartments that I won't know about."

"You've been with NRI for a while now," Mara pointed out. "Surely you've used smuggling compartments before."

Iella smiled wryly. "Not only that, my CorSec partner went and married a smuggler. But it's the principle of the thing. Besides, I have to complain otherwise I'll lose my reputation for being tough on smugglers." She twisted, attempting to stretch. "I've got a crick in my back and it's starting to really hurt," she muttered. "Can we get out of here yet?"

Mara closed her eyes, reaching out in the Force. This had been difficult, or even impossible, not that long ago, but in the last year her sensitivity had improved, better than ever. She could feel each mind as it traveled through the Falcon, feel their focus or distraction. The closer they came, the easier it became to sense each mind, candle flames in the dark. "No," she murmured. "There is still a detachment searching the ship. They're looking for hidden compartments like ours, but it doesn't seem like they're having much luck."

"I hope they didn't hire a CorSec inspection team" Iella muttered. "We know the YT-1300 inside and out. There are only so many places you can put a hidden compartment given its internal geometry."

"They're competent enough," Mara said, her eyes still closed as she concentrated. "But they don't have military discipline. Mercs, probably. Or other Fringers, maybe even former prisoners."

Iella frowned. "Do you think they'll find us?"

Mara opened her eyes, taking a second to withdraw her extended Force-sense, compacting her awareness back to its normal reach. "I have no idea," she said bluntly. "But if they do, we'll at least have forewarning."

Iella wiggled, trying to get comfortable sandwiched between the Falcon's inertial dampeners and the coolant line for the Quadex power core. "That's something, I guess." She sighed and slumped, finding a place to sit and rest her knees. "How long are we going to be hidden in here?"

"I don't know that either," Mara replied. "These guys seem diligent, but not paranoid." She offered Iella a small smirk. "If I were in charge of searching the Falcon for intruders, I'd just flood the ship with something like Trion gas. It wouldn't kill us, but it'd force us to evacuate or fall unconscious."

"I hope they're not as clever as you are," Iella muttered. "Speaking of which, do we have our masks?"

Mara pointed at the box in the corner, stuffed with as many supplies as she could snag without leaving obvious items missing. "Over there." Mara too sank down to the floor, groaning as she let herself relax. The Force would warn her if they were in immediate danger, she knew. "Might as well relax and just wait it out." She winced, the hard floor already becoming uncomfortable. "As much as we can, anyway."

"How'd you end up in CorSec?"

The searchers were quite stubborn, but not very smart. It'd been two and a half hours since they'd landed, and Mara and Iella had started to run out of lighthearted conversation topics. Mara, somewhat reluctantly, had let the conversation stray into topics which had the potential for more depth.

It wasn't that she didn't like to talk to people. She could have friendly conversations. But real, deep conversations about her past, her present, her future? Those were reserved to a small handful of people. Karrde, on rare occasions. Skywalker. Leia, when the Councilor used her incredible conversation finesse to slip them into deeper waters before Mara had a chance to extract herself. Solo, exactly once. Madine too now, she supposed.

The list was growing.

Iella shrugged. "I didn't know what else to do. I had a friend back home growing up who was taking the exam—her father was a CorSec investigator, pretty junior. So I went with her, took it on a lark. She failed the exam, I passed with flying colors." She grimaced. "That was the end of our friendship, but it gave me a career path."

Iella glanced over at Mara, who was curled into an awkward sitting position, one of the Falcon's maintenance hatches pressing annoyingly into her side. "I've read your file."

Mara nodded, her expression carefully blank. "I don't have much of a recruitment story. Not one I remember, anyway." She leaned back into the hatch, shifting a bit so it prodded a different spot for a while, a needling ache that matched the one Iella's comment evoked.

"Why did you leave the Empire? After Palpatine's death, I mean."

"It wasn't an Empire worth serving anymore," Mara said bluntly. "I'd never had a high opinion of the sycophants and sociopaths that Palpatine surrounded himself with. As far as I was concerned, he was the Empire, everyone else was just necessary grease for the gears of state." She thought back to those chaotic hours, after Palpatine's last command had imprinted on her brain, leaving her near-catatonic on the floor of the Imperial palace. "They considered me a threat, and they were right to. Isard locked me up and I have no doubt she would have killed me, just to make sure I didn't get in her way. I had no allegiance to her, or to power-hungry upstarts like Thrawn or Pestage. So there was nothing to stay for, and every reason to leave."

Iella nodded, and to Mara's surprise she offered Mara a sympathetic smile, a ghost of old pain leaving lines across her face. "I wasn't all that fond of Isard either."

"I doubt any Rebel operatives liked her much."

"My grudge was personal." Iella stretched out her legs, found that position didn't help at all, tried again. Her combat-booted feet extended towards Mara, leaving the two women vaguely facing each other in the small space. "She killed my husband."

Mara thought back to the pictures in Iella's apartment. One in particular—the older man, in the black-bordered portrait which was nearest Iella when Mara had come in. He had looked kind, almost soft.

"Diric," Iella said, with an old fondness that bespoke both happiness and pain. "Old Corellian name." She stretched, or tried to, and winced as something prodded her. "He was kind and patient, and at the time I was overcaffeinated and bitter. He provided stability I'd never had before, certainly not at home. He came from old family money, and growing up the way I did, that felt like heaven, but he didn't have the crass self-satisfaction that coming from wealth can sometimes give people." She leaned back and seemed to find her new position more comfortable. "He was a roving lecturer, but somehow he ended up inviting himself into my CorSec offices and ended up a sort of ad-hoc advisor to Corran, Gil, and me. He always thought we'd missed something important." She chuckled. "Usually we had. It was horribly aggravating." Her voice grew fond, but the pain hung on every exhale. "He was home."

Was this normal? Sometimes the Wild Karrde's crew would talk about their relationships, but Faughn was always tight-lipped about hers, and Chin, Aves, and Dankin had different ideas about what constituted relationships—at least, that they were willing to share. She'd seen Leia and Han together, a handful of times, but in the Imperial Palace it had always seemed like every relationship was an arrangement, high politics by alternative means. That wasn't what Iella was describing at all.

"Isard took him," Iella said quietly, anguish heavy in her voice. "Lusankya."

That one word was enough to make Mara grimace. Lusankya. It had been Isard's prison, her lair, her Super Star Destroyer. It was where she took her prisoners and implanted commands deep in their subconscious, turned them against themselves—and everyone they loved.

"I don't think he'd ever picked up a blaster in his life before that last night," Iella said quietly. "I didn't even realize who he was until after I'd already shot him." The Corellian curled into herself, putting her forehead down into her knee.

Mara swallowed. Sorrowpoured over Iella in waves, but it was scarred over; numb, without the agony of a fresh wound. The emotion swirled even still, love and pain and loss all mingled together. It was fresh and new, shocking and real and painful and Mara found herself both sympathetic and oddly jealous. "I'm sorry," she said. That was what you were supposed to say, wasn't it? It seemed woefully inadequate.

Iella offered her a weak smile. "At least Isard's paid for her crimes."

Isard had been the wiliest, most double-dealing person in the whole Empire, with a twisted brain full of contingency plans. Mara wanted confirmation. Iella's hurt cut deeper than Mara's own, but Mara had spent five years on the run, living in poverty, dodging Isard's agents before she'd finally decided she was done hiding and had fallen in with Karrde. She felt uncomfortable asking, but she had to know. "Are you sure she's dead?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Iella said with certainty. "But you're right to ask. We thought she was dead at Thyferra, but she popped up again a few months ago. And not just her. The real article, and a clone."

Mara sat up, horrified. "What?!" At Iella's sober look, Mara groaned. "Bad enough that I had to kill a Skywalker clone, there was another Isard, too? Are you sure they're both dead?"

"Wedge killed the clone," Iella said with grim satisfaction. "She tried to escape the same way the real one had at Thyferra, but Wedge recognized the double bluff. He hit her with a concussion missile." Iella glanced over at Mara, and her eyes were hard. "I killed the real one. She wounded me, but my blaster took her in the gut." Iella firmed her lips together with a ferocity that Mara recognized. She'd seen it on the face of particularly outraged Imperial officers.

She'd seen it on her own face.

"I watched her bleed out, then we spaced the corpse." Iella's voice was cold.

"So that's how she went," Mara said with no small amount of satisfaction. Isard had deserved no better. "I had wanted to kill her myself. When we get out of here, I'll have to send you and Antilles both a bottle of Whyren's Reserve."

Iella laughed. "Don't bother buying two—or do, and just send them both to my place. Wedge doesn't have his own apartment on Coruscant anymore, so when we're both on-world he stays with me."

The implications of the statement took a moment to process. "You and Antilles?" she asked, surprised—and oddly relieved. "I thought he was just a fighter jock. You know, live fast, die young and leave a tremendous explosion?" She had met Wedge Antilles a few times, but only briefly each time. Mara mostly remembered that he'd seemingly lacked all skill in subterfuge. She knew Skywalker considered him a close friend, though.

"It took us a while to get there," Iella said, "but, yeah. Wedge and I are together." She sighed. "Even if we're almost never actually together." She adjusted her posture again, grimacing. "I'm getting horribly stiff," she muttered. "And don't underestimate Wedge. He may have spent his entire adult life flying X-wings for the Rebellion and the New Republic, but he's got depths. You remember all those drawings back at my apartment?"

Mara thought back. Yes, she thought. She did. There had been one of Coronet City, at least judging from the landmark buildings that framed the skyline. And another of a playground at the famous Treasure Ship Row, another Coronet City landmark. And other Corellia-based landmarks: The Gold Beaches, the great Victree Falls, still others she hadn't immediately recognized. There'd been at least one of a small space station, probably a fueling station from its design, which had seemed incongruous with the others. "Antilles drew those? I didn't know he had the talent."

"If our lives had turned out differently, he probably would have ended up an architect working on projects in Coronet. I'd bet a project manager, he's an excellent leader." Iella smiled fondly. "He's a good man. More comfortable inside a cockpit than he is outside one, but a good man." Her voice faded slightly. "And I love him."

Mara could feel the sincerity in those words, and she could feel wisps of the emotion beneath them. The affection, the longing. Iella missed Wedge, missed his company and companionship, missed the sense of togetherness and place they had when they were together.

A pang snuck into her gut. A phantom pain of something that she was sure could never hurt her, because she'd never had it to begin with. But the pain was there, mixed with longing and desire and now was not the time to grapple with it.

Iella laughed, and the sound was so unexpected that Mara's head snapped up. "It's funny really," Iella continued. "After Diric died, Wedge was there for me. He and Corran helped keep my head up, helped keep me going. Made me want something more than just Isard dead at my feet, and eventually I started to think… started to imagine, even expect that we'd fall into a relationship. That we were already in a relationship that neither of us had thought to acknowledge. But I could never push past Diric's memory, I wasn't ready yet, wasn't comfortable. I was waiting for some sign that it was time to move on, to start over." She smiled wryly at Mara. "I expected Wedge to give me that signal, and he never did. He didn't want to put pressure on me, didn't want to do anything that might be unethical, so he just hovered, waiting for me."

Mara found herself curious. "So what happened?"

"It was after I killed Isard. After we both did. During that mission he and the Rogues went undercover and part of that cover was faking their death. I didn't know he wasn't really dead and all I could think was I lost another one. You think it would hurt less because we were never together but—" she shook her head "—trust me, it doesn't. Then he was alive again and we were together again on Coruscant and," Iella shrugged, "we were together, and alone, and I just kissed him." She smiled at Mara. "Not much changed really. We'd already been together in all but name. The Rogues had a pool going. Ooryl won." She smiled fondly. "Nothing changed, and everything changed."

Mara was quiet. Imperial stormtroopers had never shared intimate details of their personal lives on missions before. Karrde's people were tightlipped about such things too, or flamboyantly open about it, and neither described this conversation with Iella. She was reminded of Gorb, who had taken her in and given her a room to stay in—and told her how the room belonged to his dead son, who had died in battle. It had been an intimate conversation, one that she hadn't really appreciated at the time. She had been the Emperor's Hand then, still learning who Mara Jade would be without Palpatine.

Iella's foot nudged hers, and Mara's attention returned to the Corellian. "Whenever you want to share your stories, I'll listen."

Mara understood instantly what Iella was doing. It was classic small-unit doctrine, building camaraderie between members who had to be able to trust and rely on one another. It was also perhaps the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. She didn't really have any stories, exactly, but for now a nod was enough. As an afterthought, she stretched out with the Force to check on the people still searching the Falcon for stowaways, and found none. "It seems like we're all clear."

"Oh, great," Iella said, grimacing as she struggled to her feet, wincing as joints cracked and muscles ached. "Let's get out of here," she muttered. "There's only so long I can be locked in a smuggling compartment before I get angry and frustrated."

Mara checked her blaster's power pack as Iella saw to her own weapons. Fully charged. "I couldn't agree more."

The hangar wasn't empty. There was a guard standing watch at the end of the ramp, an old blaster rifle slung lazily at his side. He was fiddling with a datapad, not keeping a very close watch, but they'd searched the ship and Mara figured he must feel sure there was no one left aboard.

She shifted towards Iella. "One guard at the bottom of the ramp," she murmured. "I don't sense any others nearby, but there are people on the floors below us."

They were both wearing breathing masks. Kessel's thin atmosphere was breathable but not without difficulty, and the particulates in the air could be irritating to both the skin and eyes with prolonged exposure. The Millennium Falcon sat atop one of Kessel's many semi-covered landing pads, with an overhang that offered a modicum of protection to the ship's more sensitive systems. The blue-white star that the planet orbited cast dim light that would stress the human eye.

All in all, Mara thought, there were worse planets in the galaxy, but not many.

Iella peeked around the corner, then nodded at Mara and pulled her light brown-blonde hair back into a tighter ponytail before checking her blaster rifle again. "We should avoid a fight if we can."

"I think we can," Mara agreed softly. Poking her head back to peer at the guard, she debated trying a mind-trick and decided against it. "I'm going to distract him," she murmured, "and then we're going to duck down the ramp. Do you have a light step?"

Iella grinned. "Do you? I always used to wonder if Corran was going to give us away when we went skulking around a smuggler's den."

"I used to skulk around the Imperial Palace," Mara scoffed. She focused on the hangar, then reached out with the Force. There was a piece of metal, old and rickety, dangling precariously from the overhang, not that far from the exit that led into the Correctional Facility building. It took her two attempts before she could pluck it in a mental grip. Curling her fingers back towards her, she tugged and—

The metal, which originally had been part of the particulate shield that prevented freighters like the Falcon from suffering engine damage while on the ground, fell. It clattered to the ground, bouncing on its edge before twirling around before falling still.

The guard jumped, dropping his datapad. "Shavit!" he exclaimed as the pad cracked, and his groan was audible from the Falcon. "What was that?!" He bent down and retrieved the pad, then started to walk over to the fallen metal, peering up and shading his gaze with a hand, wincing as the blue-white light scorched his eyes. "I kriffing hate this place," he muttered to himself.

Mara and Iella waited until he was at the edges of their view, still peering up, then took quick steps to the top of the ramp. Iella swung over, dropping down and ducking behind one of the Falcon's landing struts. Mara followed quickly and they huddled together.

"Serth to control, one of the hangar shades has fallen," the guard was saying into his comlink. "It almost hit me! Damn thing bounced like five meters!" They could see his legs as he walked first towards the exit, then started pacing between the exit and the Falcon's ramp. "Do I get hazard pay for this?"

They could overhear the tinny voice on the other side of the guard's comlink. "Are you getting shot at?"

"Well, no. There's no one here."

"Then you don't get hazard pay. This isn't a charity," the voice came back, sarcastic and staticky on the other end of the link.

"This whole planet ought to be enough for hazard pay," the guard retorted. "Between the sun, the air, and the people it's amazing anyone survives for long. You know, when I signed on with Tavira I didn't sign up to garrison Kessel."

"People usually don't survive on Kessel for long," the guard's superior responded dryly. "That's kind of the point. And when you signed on with Tavira, you signed on to do whatever she asked you to do, and you did because the pay is good and the perks are great."

Mara reached up with the Force and found a second loose metal overhang, pulling with the Force and—

"Stang!" the guard exclaimed, jumping and dropping his datapad a second time as the second metal panel struck the floor. This one fell flat, the sound of its impact with the floor a thunderous bang. "Another one fell!" He stepped around, out of their sight towards the fresh panel.

Iella nodded at Mara and the two women darted across, keeping the Falcon between them and the guard, now faced away from them, still complaining loudly on his comlink. Their quiet footsteps were drowned out by his voice as his anger and annoyance grew louder and more pointed, and the responses of his superior grew equally so. By the time he turned back around, pacing angrily, now nearly shouting into the comlink, they were ducked into the corridor.

"Now what?" Iella asked.

"We need computer access," Mara replied softly. "We need to access Vorru's communications records, figure out what they did with Solo and Chewbacca, and see if any of my old Imperial codes work here to help us plan an escape."

Iella nodded.

The corridor branched in multiple directions, and Mara and Iella took the ones where Mara couldn't sense sapient life. The metal deck-plating looked like it came off an Old Republic transport, which given the age of the facility, it might actually be of the same make. The floors were scuffed with age and use, but the air much better than it had been outside and they both removed their masks. "We need an officer's terminal," Iella murmured. "Maybe one of the residence dorms, or secure offices."

"It doesn't seem like the people who took this place from the Empire have made full use of the facilities," Mara murmured, comparing a map of the facility with her own sense of the living creatures that filled it. She'd gotten much better of late doing this, using her spatial senses and Force powers to give herself a mental map of potential (living) threats, better even than she'd been at it while she served Palpatine. "Let's try over here," she murmured, gesturing at what the map said had been an officers' dormitory, but which the Force told her was abandoned.

It was a ten-minute walk, and they'd had to stop and wait for passers-by more than once. "It seems like Doole has lost control," Iella said softly after the second group of guards marched on past, with a step that was more stormtrooper imitation than genuine article. "Vorru and Tavira may be letting him run this place still, but all the guards we've seen so far look more like pirates than former prisoners."

"From what I know of Vorru," Mara replied softly, "he'd prefer to co-opt than overthrow. I don't know anything about Tavira though, what's her history?"

"She was a concubine of the Moff of Ado sector," Iella replied quietly. "Assassinated and connived her way into the role herself, then used her new position to try to advance herself further. She lost control of the planet a few years ago, and has been working to re-establish herself ever since."

"Sounds dangerous."

Iella shrugged. "She's definitely charismatic," she replied. "And resourceful, and conniving."

"Sounds like Isard."

"More charismatic, but in a personal appeal kind of way. Isard had a way of making people believe in her ability to dominate the galaxy that Tavira lacks. And Tavira is much less clever when it comes to conniving. She doesn't think big enough."

Mara nodded. There were few people who were as clever as Isard when it came to conniving, which was why Palpatine had tolerated her. Or so he'd told Mara, anyway. "We're clear." They jogged some of the way, dodging two more patrols, then ducked into a lift that would take them up to the dormitory levels. "These feel abandoned," Mara explained, watching the numbers of the lift shift as they rose up. They each took one side of the lift door, and exited cautiously when it finally arrived.

There had been a battle on this floor, and it had never been fully cleaned up. There were blaster scorches all along the walls, some gouged quite deeply by heavy weaponry. The air was thinner too, and Mara and Iella put their masks back on. "They must not bother maintaining the air up here," Iella said. She gestured at the battle damage. "This was part of the fight between the Imperials and the prisoners when Doole staged his revolt?" she asked Mara.

"I think so," Mara replied. "These would've been the Imperial officers' quarters, so when the Doole's people took over they would've come up here to kill them and loot their possessions."

"I hope they didn't pull all the computers out of the wall," Iella muttered.

The old Imperial garrison barracks had been looted beyond recognition. The walls had been pried open to rummage for expensive components; doors were laid off their hinges within or outside of different quarters. Blaster scars and worse darkened the old metallic structure. The building had been old and worn down even before Doole's uprising, but the corridor-to-corridor fighting during that conflict ensured that this building would never be used again. There were too many loose components, sparking wires, weakened walls. Doole and his supporters had taken up residence elsewhere, parlaying their Spice-based fortunes into renovations of less grisly scenes.

Even still, there were places in the garrison that had been largely untouched. At the end of one of the halls was a set of senior officer quarters. These had been more heavily reinforced than the regular quarters, and while there were many signs that Doole's men had attempted to breach them (their doors were scarred from blaster fire), it appeared that one of them remained sealed.

"Whoever lived here must not have been home when the uprising started," Iella murmured as Mara pried off the outer casing of the door controls.

Mara nodded as she worked. These door latches were Old Republic vintage, which meant they should lack some of the more modern security that had been built into Empire-era facilities. Luckily, the controls were still powered; some of the buttons on the panel still gleamed green, though most of them had worn off. With a yelp she drew her hand back, the mild electric shock leaving her fingers tingling.

"What are you trying to do?"

Mara looked over at Iella, tilting her head to the side. "Is that hairpin you're wearing made of wood?" she asked.

Iella frowned in confusion, then reached back and pulled the pin from her hair. She handed it to Mara as she tied her hair back into a new ponytail. "Here."

Taking it, Mara wedged the wood against the console, using it to prod the controls carefully. "Palpatine had override codes programmed into just about everything," she muttered softly.

"But this place predates the Empire," Iella pointed out. "So there shouldn't be any—"

The door popped open. Mara turned towards Iella, handing the Corellian back her hairpin. "Palpatine was Chancellor before he was Emperor," she said. "And he was a Senator before that." She stuck her fingers into the space between the two sliding parts of the door and pulled, forcing the door open halfway.

Iella stared at her. "That's pretty scary," she muttered, putting her hairpin back.

Mara shrugged, turning sideways to slide into the room. It was dark within—the lights didn't respond when activated—so Mara activated the light on her blaster and swept it across the room. A second light joined hers as Iella slipped inside. They both stopped on the computer console in the corner, a small red light blinking to let them know it still had some power supply. "Hopefully its connection to the main computer didn't get cut," Mara said.

Iella nodded, walking over to the side of the room and pulling open the shades covering a window. Harsh blue-white light shone into the room, and they both winced and turned away. "I'll search this place and see what I can find," Iella volunteered. "You see what you can do with that terminal."

"Right." Mara holstered her blaster again, pulling the old chair out from the desk and settling into it. The terminal took a while to start, and by the time it was ready Iella had returned. She put a pair of goggles on the desk next to Mara. "What are these?" asked Mara.

"Infrared goggles. Probably for being able to see down in the Spice Mines," Iella responded. "I found them in the closet, along with a few commander's uniforms and some other private possessions."

"Go grab me one of his rank plaques, there's ID information encoded in those," Mara suggested as she started to search through the extent of her computer access. She grinned as she found what she was looking for. "Good news. This system is still networked with the facility's main computer, and that's networked with both the HoloNet and traffic control."

Iella handed Mara one of the officer's rank plaques. "Here."

Mara took it, examined it, then broke it open. From the split metal chrome she pried out a small cylinder, then plugged it into her datapad. "Commander Edverse," she said. "Looks like he was one of the officers commanding the Spice mine security detail. Young for his rank, but he must have displeased someone to get assigned this detail." She nodded at the infrared goggles. "Explains why he had those."

"He must have died during the uprising," Iella said.

Mara turned back to the computer, inputting the dead Commander's information into the system. "It looks like Doole never purged all the old Imperial codes from the system," she murmured. "From here, and with that," she nodded at the chip she'd pulled from Edverse's rank plaque, "I can override some of the security systems in the mines… that might come in handy later, although—"

One of the buttons on her keyboard started blinking green. "What's that?" asked Iella.

"The holocomm is active," Mara replied, already typing furiously. "Let's see… if it was built after Palpatine served on the Senate's military procurement committee, then—" There was a fuzz from the speakers. Mara grinned, working some more.

". . . you ought to be able to handle a human and a Wookiee on your own, Captain Nive," said a female voice, her tone bearing more than a hint of sarcasm. "Even if they are Han Solo and Chewbacca. It's not like you had to deal with a Jedi."

"Yes ma'am," said a familiar, professional semi-military voice. "They're in custody now. Doole had them sent to the Spice mines."

Iella leaned towards Mara. "That's the man who forced us down," she murmured in Mara's ear, listening. "Same voice."

"I would prefer nothing happen to them," said a new male voice with a smooth Corellian accent, confident and precise.

"And that's Vorru," murmured Iella. "I think the first voice must be Tavira."

"Solo and the Wookiee are valuable assets," Vorru continued. "They could be worth a great deal in ransom, and at the moment we're not looking to make the New Republic an inexorable foe. They discovered us on Coruscant but we escaped, and I believe we escaped without causing any loss of life among the New Republic's forces, which is a state I would prefer to maintain for now."

Tavira sighed audibly. "Are you sure they're there searching for Vorru?" she asked.

"Yes," said Nive's voice. "We confirmed that with a glitterstim interrogation of Solo, which Doole conducted."

"I expect to be well compensated for the stress it put on me," came Doole's voice for the first time.

"Your glitterstim addiction is not my responsibility," Vorru said coolly, "and I will not subsidize it. Captain Nive, if you would, please show Administrator Doole to the exit. I would like to speak with you privately."

"Now wait just a minute, we had a deal—" there was the sound of scuffling and protesting, a door closing, and then all was quiet.

"He's been removed, sir," said Nive.

"Jacob," came Tavira's voice, like silk. "I want you to pick your two best squadrons and send them to meet Invidious at the local rendezvous. You know the place. Repairs on Invidious are complete and I believe it's time for your pilots to receive long-overdue promotions. I also have some new clutch starfighters for your replacement pilots."

Mara and Iella glanced at one another. "The local rendezvous?" asked Iella quietly.

Mara shrugged. "Good operational security. Nive is probably the only one here who knows where it is. Unless we can get aboard one of their ships, we're not going to be able to trace them back to their source."

"I wonder if we can get a tracking device aboard," Iella mused.

Nive was speaking again. "Yes, Admiral," he said. "I'll send one of our flight cruisers. What do you want me to do with Solo and the Wookiee?"

"It would have been better were they not sent to the mines," said Vorru. "The dangers down there are real. If anything happens to them, the New Republic will come down on Kessel with a fury. But what's done is done. Hold them for now, they may be useful bargaining chips later."

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry sir, Doole insisted."

"Do try to make nice with Doole, if you can," Vorru added. "His spice addiction does not addle him as much as it might appear at first, and he is an able administrator. More importantly, the New Republic does tacitly accept him as the legitimate ruling authority on Kessel."

"Yes, sir. I'll try, sir."

"If you can't, and the New Republic decides to take Solo's imprisonment personally, make sure Doole receives the blame. You can point out he gave the order to imprison Solo in the mines, and that your men never fired on Solo when he arrived."

"Yes sir."

"You have done well, Jacob," said Tavira. "I'll be sending you and your people a large bonus for your work."

"Thank you, Admiral."

There was a click and the HoloNet link was terminated. Mara leaned back in the chair, Iella standing beside her with a thoughtful expression. "So, what now?" Iella asked.

"We can't leave Solo and Chewbacca in the mines," Mara said. "And I'd like to try to get out of here and surreptitiously follow Nive's pilots when they head off to their rendezvous with Tavira."

Iella turned and sat on the desk, frowning. "Our overall objective is to capture Vorru and Eliezer," she said. "Ideally Tavira also, but Vorru and Eliezer are more important. Right now we know they're together, and we know they're aboard Invidious, so some way to keep tabs on their position would be ideal." She sighed softly. "But we do need to get Solo and Chewbacca first," she said with reluctant assurance. "I promised Councilor Organa Solo I wouldn't let anything happen to her husband."

Mara doubted Skywalker would be too happy either. "Maybe we will have an opportunity to slip a tracking device onto one of their ships on the way back out," she suggested. "In the meantime, let's see what else I can use this computer to do to help us get Solo and Chewbacca back."

Author's Notes

Twelve chapters left now.

Thanks for reading, and for those of you who have left reviews, thanks for the reviews! Responding to reviewers:

• Wes George: Thanks for reading! As for how many more new faces there will be, I'll just say that I left a handful of names off the Dramatis Personae, but not that many names. I had considered including Kyp's name from the start, but then people might've been annoyed that he didn't appear until 2/3rds of the way through the story. As for overcoming threats... *shrugs* we'll see!

• Tarado: thanks for reading as always! And they're not out yet...

• Guest: I was wondering how many people would see Kyp coming. (And, earlier in the story, how many people would guess the Tevas-kaar's identity based on the scant hints I offered). And yes, Han's POV on Mara is fun! Han was not a huge part of the story prior to now, but he's a major character for Act III.