When Zekk woke up he found himself floating in bacta. He recognized the liquid soft caress against his skin and the smell picked up through the ventilator mask that clung to his face even as he bobbed in the glass tube. Through its curved face he could sometimes make out figures shifting in the white-walled room beyond. One he could tell was a medical droid from its silver body and spindly limbs, but other times he was sure he saw humanoid figures beyond the glass.

Through his semi-conscious haze he could reach into the Force and sense emotions from them, mostly a vague and slightly detached curiosity. Whatever that meant, he had no idea, but as time went by and he passed again and again from waking to sleep and back again, never encountering a familiar presence, he came to understand that he was not among friends.

He had no idea how much time had passed since the battle at the Throat. He had no idea whether Jaina was still alive, or Jacen, or anyone else he'd ever known. He tried to reach out with the Force but felt nothing; perhaps they were gone, perhaps he was too far away physically. Perhaps all his senses were simply addled from his injuries. He remembered, at least, how he'd gone spiraling out of his starfighter after that attack run on Anakin Solo. The successful attack run. Everything to have come after that was an incomprehensible haze.

He passed in and out of sleep until finally, after some interminable time, the medical droid began to drain the bacta from his tank. He'd been in tanks before and he knew what came next. He'd been in the warm liquid, near-naked, for days, and his entire body began to shudder with chills. The droid's hard mechanical vice-grip took him by the shoulders and led him from the tank; he spread his legs wide to keep from slipping on the smooth floor and accepted the white towel from the droid.

He surveyed his surroundings. He and the droid were alone in what seemed to be the well-appointed medical bay of a spaceship; he could feel the vibration of distant engines, but he heard no sound, which might have meant they were in hyperspace. He was sure he'd seen beings outside his tank, but right now, for his long-awaited emergence, the only thing in the room besides him was the droid.

"Where am I?" he asked. "What ship is this?"

The light in the droid's photoreceptors still glowed, but it made no sound. Zekk knew medical droids like this could speak, but this one, apparently, had been ordered to stay silent.

He definitely had a bad feeling about this.

"Can I at least put some clothes on?" he asked, tight-ening the towel around his waist. The droid made no sound, but it extended one thin arm to point to a reached on the far side of the room where some white clothes seemed to have been folded.

He nodded and went across the room. It was simple enough: a plain jumpsuit with a few pockets and nothing else. It occurred to him to wonder for the first time what had happened to his flight suit, or for that matter his lightsaber. The realization made him feel suddenly vulernable.

He looked around the room for security holo-cams. He spotted one spherical bug-eye above the bacta tank and scowled at it; he was sure somebody must have been watching him.

Yet at the moment, because he was still addled or cranky or both, he found he didn't care about the holo-cam. Whoever was watching him would make their presence known whenever they damned well pleased, and if they wanted him to put on a show, so be it. He threw the towel away and began changing into the jumpsuit.

Zekk was a big man, lean and tall and wide-should-ered, but this jumpsuit, at least, seemed to fit him. He'd just finished sealing it, all the way up to his neck, when he heard the door swish open behind him.

He turned around, pulling strands of long wet black hair from his eyes, and stared at the newcomer. The creature standing next to the medical droid was at least twice Zekk's side, just as tall but far wider. Baragwin, with their high humped backs, thick necks and beady faces, were a common sight in spacelanes throughout the galaxy. People often took them as slow-witted thanks to their lumbering bodies and homely faces but Zekk knew they were as canny as any beings to be found in the spacelanes. As far as he knew, there were none among the Jedi and there certainly weren't any among the Hapans or Imperial forces.

"You seem well," the Baragwin observed in accentless Basic.

"The bacta did the trick," Zekk said, and it was true. As he'd put his clothes on he'd noticed multiply patches of pink tissue denoting mending scars and healing bruises, but that was all.

The Baragwin shuffled a few steps closer. "That's good. How is your right arm?"

Zek glanced at it. It seemed as normal as anything else on him; he flexed it, twisted it, and asked, "What happened to it?"

"It was broken. We set it in a splint. It seems to have mended excellently. Our droid does excellent work, doesn't he?"

Zekk glanced at the mute metal facemask behind the Baragwin. "He does. Did you program him not to speak with me?"

"Yes, actually," the Baragwin said casually. "I wanted to have the first chance to talk."

"Did you now?" Zekk crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm really thankful you pulled me from my ship, but I'd like to know what's going on. Are you this ship's captain?"

"First officer. Call me Chazdrul Harn."

"All right. I'd like to speak to your captain. I have a lot I need to talk about."

"Captain Praelyx will see you when he is ready. Right now, I'm to see you to your quarters."

"I don't mean to be rude, but I'd rather not bother with quarters. I'd like to get off this ship as soon as I can."

"And go where?"

Zekk blinked. "I'd like to get back where I came from. I'm…. I have people who are waiting for me."

"I'm sure you do," Harn said dismissively. "We know you're a Jedi, by the way. The lightsaber was a give-away."

"My lightsaber? What did you do with it?"

"The captain has it at the moment. He's always been fascinated with Jedi."

"Well, he can talk to a real one any time he wants."

"That's true, but right now he doesn't want to."

Zekk sighed and tried to keep calm. He didn't feel like he was in immediate harm, though Baragwin were always hard to get on a read on, even with the Force. "Listen," he said, "I have people I care about. I just want to know if they're okay."

Harn made a sniffing noise; it sounded like some-thing was scraping deep inside his head. "All right, Jedi. The war is over. Jacen Solo is dead."

Zekk felt dizzy. He had to brace himself against the nearest bulkhead. "What about his sister? What about Jaina?"

"Sister? Ah, I believe I heard it said that she killed him. Such an unfortunate family."

"You don't know the half of it"

"You do?" Harn asked, curious.

Zekk frowned. He'd said too much. "What about the other Jedi? What about the Hapans? What about-"

"All in good time." Harn removed a small datapad from the robes that hung over his broad, hunched form. "The latest news updates. I believe they'll provide excellent reading material while you recuperate."

"Until your captain decides to see me, you mean."

"Yes," Harn sniffed again, "Until then."