It was a few days' ride to Euceron and not a big ship, which meant that Tahiri had two options: lock herself in her cramped guests' cabin and never come out, or take some time to talk with the two beings with whom she'd just entrusted her mission, her life, and a considerable amount of credits.

She wasn't in the mood to make new friends, but she recognized the latter choice was still smarter, so she made an effort to be present in Mandala's central crew lounge. Captain Muro gave her a wide berth at first, but the co-pilot, Vjarna, was a bit more forthcoming.

Apparently Muro had already filled the little Bimm in on Tahiri's true identity, because the first thing Vjarna asked once they were through with basic pleasantries was, "Do you still have your lightsaber? I've never seen one."

"I do have it." Tahiri felt defensive and she wasn't sure why. "It's some place safe."

"I'm not going to try and steal it," Vjarna chuckled. "I'm sure I could get a good price for it, but I'm not that greedy."

"I didn't mean to imply that!" Tahiri said at once. She'd more or less forgotten the stereotype of Bimms as greedy haggling traders.

Vjarna, though, took it with good humor. "Don't worry, Jedi, I don't mind."

"I'm not a Jedi," Tahiri shook her head. "So please don't call me that."

"Then what are you? You still have your lightsaber and you still use the Force, right?"

"That's right." She'd forgotten that Bimm considered Jedi to be something like folk heroes and tended to be abnormally up on Force-user affairs. It was surprising, then, that he didn't seem to have heard of her.

Vjarna went on, "So what you're saying is, you're not working for Luke Skywalker."

"No, I'm not working for him. I'm not working for anyone."

"So you just hired us to take you to some Vong-formed planet for kicks? Or were you getting nostalgic for the last war, because I never thought that was possible."

"Trust me, I'm not nostalgic for it. At all."

As soon as she said it she knew it wasn't true, not exactly. The war had been awful in so many ways for a few brief, shining months she'd been together with Anakin, and their new love had managed to outshine all the darkness of the invasion they'd been fighting. She'd been trying to get back to that light for years since, and only gotten further away.

"This isn't about nostalgia," she repeated, because in this case, at least, it was true. "The worlds they left behind have been filled with all sorts of Vongformed life and technology. Some of it's been cataloged and surveyed. Some of its been removed, especially on planets like Coruscant."

"But nobody cared enough about Euceron to heal it," the Bimm nodded. "I understand completely. The Vong took Bimmisaari too, you know. First they just enslaved us, but then they tried bringing in all their strange plants and animals. They didn't get that far before the war ended, but it was still enough to mess up the continent I was born in. The Alliance put together reclamation teams to strip away Vongformed life after the War, but like you said, it mostly went to planets like Coruscant, Brentaal, Commenor. Places people care about."

"So you're saying you can't go home again?"

"No," Vjarna shook his head. "But who can?"

Tahiri swallowed. "So is that why you ended up a spacer? Because the Yuuzhan Vong ruined your home?"

"I was a refugee. I had to work to survive. And it wasn't easy." Vjarna added a smile that lightened his tone. "I got lucky though, when I ended up with Rahley."

"How long have you and she been partners?"

The Bimm screwed up his face in thought. "Must be… Eight years now."

"That's a good partnership." Tahiri tried to remember if she'd stayed at any place with any group of people for that long. She couldn't come up with anything.

"She was generous. Gave me fifty percent of the earnings from the get-go even though were using her ship and her supplies. Most captains aren't like that. She's a good woman, Rahley."

Tahiri hummed agreement, but it was hard for her to feel much warmth for the captain. The older woman seemed to be doing her best to avoid Tahiri, and they hadn't had a long conversation since their first sit-down at Junction Station.

Tahiri found that she needed to rectify that, all the more once she and Vjarna started developing a minor repore. The Bimm was talkative and non-judgmental, and his ignorance of anything related to galactic politics was frankly refreshing. With Rahley Muro, though, Tahiri constantly felt like she was being judged, and she had no idea if she actually was being judged of if it was just another case of an overactive conscience.

Since Muro wasn't going to force anything, Tahiri decided she had to instead. She waited until Muro was alone in the ship's cockpit, running checks on the navigation computer from the pilot's seat. The co-pilot's spot beside her was too small for Tahiri to fit into so she settled with leaving casually against the curved frame of the cockpit door. Muro, though, was concentrating on her work and didn't seem to notice, and Tahiri found herself awkwardly frozen in place, uncertain of what to say but unwilling to retreat.

Finally, Muro looked over her shoulder and asked in an unsurprised voice, "Do you need something?"

"No. Well, nothing immediate. I just wanted to say something, if you weren't too busy."

Muro leaned back in her chair and swiveled it around to face Tahiri head-on. "I suppose not. What's on your mind?"

"I just wanted to assure you that I'd never do anything to put your ship in danger. When we get to Euceron, we can scan the planet for low orbit. Once I find what I'm looking for you can even drop me to the surface in an escape pod."

"Do you think I'm scared of the planet just because it has Vonglife on it?"

She founded faintly offended, and Tahiri was amazed at her own ability to mess things up so fast.

"I didn't mean to suggest that. I just wanted to assure you that there's no reason to worry about your own safety on this mission. I'll be the only one going down to the surface. I'll be the one taking risks. If you think your ship really is in danger, feel free to run."

"And leave you behind?"

"That's right. I'll transfer all the funds for the first half of the trip in advance."

"Miss Veila, are you asking to be abandoned?"

"No, I'm not." She waved her hands and wondered what other ways she'd find to muck this conversation up. "I'm just saying that I don't want to risk you and Vjarna. I've put too many people in danger already and I don't want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt."

Muro's expression softened a little. "I can appreciate that. All right. If things look dire I'll leave you to die. But if they don't I'll stay and pick up the second half of my payment."

"Of course." Tahiri smiled a little. Muro didn't return it, but her expression relaxed.

"Is there anything else?" the older woman asked.

Tahiri stuffed her hands in her pockets. "I was just wondering what you could tell me about this ship."

"Are you curious?"

"I am. It reminds me of… a friend's ship. It looks like it's seen a lot of work. Vjarna said he joined you eight years ago. Did you have a co-pilot before then?"

"I ran through a bunch of short-term ones after the Vong War. Some flaked out on me and left, and a couple I had to fire. None of them were very good. But Vjarna, I could tell he was serious. He wanted to work and he knew how, and he didn't have any place else to be."

"Is that why you offered him a fifty percent cut up front?"

Muro smiled a little. "It was actually forty-five percent. Revli's just being kind."

"How long have you had this ship?"

"Oh, about… Seventeen years now."

"That's quite a while."

"Well, it wasn't my ship." She paused. "I started out in the co-pilot's seat. Not Revli's seat, obviously, but a co-pilot's seat. Mandala ended up being an… inheritance."

"What happened to its original owner?" Tahiri asked, though she already had a guess.

"He was killed in the Vong War. Close to the end, at Lantilles." She paused, looked down, and added, "He was my husband."

"Oh." Tahiri said. "I'm so sorry."

"He died long time ago."

So had Anakin, but time didn't matter, not when it was someone you loved. "I'm still sorry. If I'd have known that, I wouldn't have-"

"Wouldn't have asked me to take you to a Vong-formed planet?" Muro looked up at her. "Miss Veila, I was the one who answered your advertisement. I have no problem with this mission. And frankly, if I get the excuse to blast some Vong hold-outs, so much the better."

"Oh. Well, okay then."

Muro shifted in her chair. "Vengeance isn't supposed to be a Jedi trait, is it?"

"Not particularly."

"Well," she said, "I'm glad I'm not a Jedi."

There wasn't much to say after that. Tahiri slunk out of the cockpit and Muro went back to checking the nav computer. As she walked down the halls, tracing her fingers along the curved corridors so like the Falcon's, Tahiri found herself wondering what this kind of life could have been like, free from responsibility to the Jedi Order, the Alliance, the well-being of the greater galaxy, going wherever she pleased and living only for herself.

To her surprise, she found herself envying Rahley Muro. She didn't know what that meant for her going forward, but it was something to think about.

Tahiri had been so many things in her life- Tusken, Jedi, Yuuzhan Vong, Sith- but she couldn't think of a time when she'd truly felt free.