Carth fought for his life the craft was being surrounded by fighters, finding no available exit from the cloud of enemies. Ooya and Tolyan had mounted the upper and lower gun turrets, in a desperate attempt to escape. It was all to no avail. Mission fought with the navicomputer to try to get it to jump to lightspeed but it failed to comply by stating that there was no available entry. Carth struggled around the swarm, choosing to use the ships superior shields to try to ram through the wall of fighters. They were now in a chase around the star forge as Carth hung close to the space station, hoping that the fighters would not fire in fear of destroying their construction site. The ship was able to find an opening of space and after a quick punch and download from the navicomputer, the ship shot into hyperspace, and the fighters quickly following.

It had been about three days since Carth had escaped from the Star Forge; he sat in the central seating area, playing a holographic board game with T3-M4. Ooya, Tolyan and Mission were busy in the workroom, trying to upgrade their knives, blasters, and armor to maximum capability. Carth didn't see the point. It wasn't like they would ever be able to use them. If they were able to land somehow, the fighters would just swarm them, and they'd be dead before they could even get a shot off. He just sat there, spending his last few hours alive in the best way he could. After admitting defeat to the little droid he walked into the workroom. He decided to sit in the back, pretending to fiddle with the ship's computer as he watched the women work. He couldn't believe how Mission had changed since he had rescued her from Taris. It was truly amazing. When he had met her, he found her to be just extra baggage. She was a formidable fighter, and could be somewhat handy when they needed to hack a computer but always had a lot of spunk and wasn't very serious on al subjects. The Wookiee that came with her was good though. There was no more spunk left in her. Sure she would make a funny comment every once in a while, but she had hardened, there was no more of that young girl look in her eyes. As he was daydreaming, Carth didn't notice that Mission had walked up and was sitting right beside him.

"Hey sleepy, what's up?" she asked, half joking

"I don't know, something just seem wrong, but I don't know what. I mean, yeah we were able to get out, but, after everything that's happened there, everything that's happened with us, it just seemed that the minute that we drop out of hyperspace, it'll all be lost."

"I've thought of that too. At first was worried like you are, but then I realized, first off, we've have made it this far, who says that we can't get through this? All we have to do is move towards a planet, hope for fast clearance, and when the ships try to follow; they'll be shot out of the sky. We'll have to do it fast but we can do it. And even if we can't, look what we just did! We escaped the Star Forge! The center of the very evil we were fighting! We're the survivors, we're the ones that made it through!"

"The only ones. Just think of it. There were ten of us. Right now, the ones left are you, T3-M4, HK-47, Canderous, Revan, Bastila, and I. Everybody else, Juhani, Jolee, Zaalbar."

Mission let out a quiet sob at the sound of her best friend's name "I know it's been hard. I haven't gone through a day where I haven't thought of Big Z, how he'd probably go up and rip the arms off most of the men in that lounge, of what he'd say if he found out what we just did. But then I think, if this force thing is real, then he must be part of it. He's still there, helping me. Well, we're going out of hyperspace in about an hour, I better go the cockpit and get ready."

Mission gave Carth a light kiss on the cheek and went off to the front of the ship. Carth wiped his face and looked at his hand. Had Mission just kissed him? Why did that not bother him? Carth shook the thoughts out of his head and headed off to the cockpit as well.

"Preparing to drop out of lightspeed," reported Mission "Activating shields"

Carth put his hand on the lever "Dropping in 3…2…1… Hit the engines"

The ship shuddered as it adjusted to the sudden speed drop and accelerated again. The rear viewscreens indicated that the enemy ships had also dropped out of hyperspace; one jumped out a little too far ahead and caused another ship to crash into it, destroying about 5 fighters in total. Carth used the confusion the move into the busy traffic lane and send out an emergency signal to the planet below. He deactivated his engines and shut down all of the unnecessary systems. The ships wandered around confused, scanning for a heat signature of the tiny ship. Finally, the planet gave a response.

"This is the security supervisor of Alderaan, what is the status of your condition?"

Mission opened a small closed beam channel to the frequency "We are under attack from Sith forces, requesting asylum for a temporary amount of time"

The channels crackled "Please stand by…Asylum approved; please land at Security bay 145, uploading coordinates now."

Carth instantly powered up all systems and shot towards the planet surface, it took no more than 5 minutes for the small frigate to land at the open bay. As the group exited the bay, they were brought to a small room by a group of Alderaan's security force. Soon after, a man walked in

"I am Jos Frensicus, security advisor, what was happening up there?"

Mission and Carth went on to explain the story of how they had ended up here and described their current situation.

:"Hmm… all very interesting. We have received a message from the Canderous you have mentioned demanding that we turn you over to him. A group of forces is on their way to guard us against any attack so you are welcome to stay until this situation is resolved

They were led down a hallway and showed into different rooms. Carth and T3-M4 took one; the three girls took the other. Carth immediately hopped into the shower, he hadn't had one in days. T3-M4 plugged himself into a power outlet and began recharging his cells. After exiting the shower, Carth wrapped a towel around his waist, hopped on the bed, and activated the holo-net projector in his room. The news was all over about the daring escape of Carth Onasi and the Twi'leks. They showed several videos of Alderaan and the force surrounding it along with the Sith forces, hiding behind Alderaan's moon. He shut down the projector and lay back on his bed, falling asleep.