CONTACT NAME: TROYCULE RYTHCEMA III

SPECIES: RUURIAN

SEX: MALE

LOCATION: BYPASS FIELD, KRYLON — COORDINATES ENCLOSED

CAUTION: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO LAND WITHOUT TRANSMITTING ENCLOSED CODE-SIGNAL

Even from orbit, it was clear that Krylon was sick. What Kaevee imagined to have once been a standard terrestrial surface was now blighted by vast streaks of desert, as though a new, dead world was being painted over the old. Modest population centers clung to the shores of bluish charcoal seas, and orbital traffic lanes were monitored by only a handful of small patrol ships. As with their arrival on Gulvitch, it hardly seemed necessary to use the scrambler; Krylon was another world of peripheral importance at best, and the Remnant was not going to expend much of its limited resources in keeping it secure.

The Ebon Hawk broke atmosphere over an amber desert marked every few hundred kilometers by grids of decaying metal sprawl—abandoned factories and the like. However, active power signatures from landed freighters, ground vehicles, and prefab shelters showed that the ruins were still of interest to somebody.

"They sure screwed the huurton with this planet," mused Cole from the comms seat. "Least it'll make some business for salvagers and scrappers."

Kaevee could not share his sentiment; to her, the word "salvager" always brought to mind the sentient vermin who had picked over the ruins of Dantooine after Darth Malak's attack. Of course, there was no comparing the Jedi Enclave to the wreckage of some planet's generic industry, but to willingly spend one's life skulking through abandoned places for the sole purpose of making credits struck her as supremely ignoble.

She did her best not to think about the irony of her team's callsign.

Cole transmitted the code-signal provided by intel just as Bypass Field came into view. The reason for the precaution soon became apparent, as from the compound's center there jutted a sturdy-looking tower crowned by a gleaming, twin-barreled anti-air turret.

"You don't go in without knocking first," Cole said.

There was no other small-talk as Atton switched to repulsorlifts and set the Ebon Hawk down. With Atris absorbed in her meditations and the two droids instructed to scan the hull for trackers, Kaevee left the Hawk with the two men. Lagging behind them a bit, she breathed deeply and savored the air—or did her best to. It tasted dry and sulfurous, but atmosphere was atmosphere, and that was something to be grateful for. Stark plains stretched for miles in every direction, and the only vegetation in sight was a kind of straw-colored grass that sprouted in fist-sized clumps from cracks in the harsh earth. Kaevee thought the Force had to be very stubborn on Krylon to make anything grow in these wastes.

They had landed just outside a slotted metal wall that enclosed the compound. As they approached, a rectangular seam in the barrier pushed itself outward with a painful-sounding clank, then slid aside.

At first sight of what slithered out to meet them, Cole recoiled a step, nearly elbowing Kaevee in the ribs as he half-reached for his blaster. For her part, Kaevee felt foolish for being only slightly less startled. Raised among the Jedi though she had been, most of the aliens she'd met in her life had at least been bipedal. Why didn't I think to look up what a Ruurian is?

Just over a meter and a half in length, the contact lay, or stood, perhaps, closer to the ground than a laigrek. Instead of clothing, he sported a woolly natural coat colored in thick bands of black and dark reddish brown. Creeping over to Atton on sixteen limbs, he reared up on their back three rows—bringing him barely level with the pilot's chest—and offered a front one. A trilling, high-pitched laugh pierced the air. "Welcome, Fenn Moru! A mutual friend told me to expect you. I am Troycule Rythcema III, at your service."

The Ruurian's "hands" had four mutually opposable digits and were obviously not meant for a Human-style handshake. Nevertheless Atton leaned over and gave it a try, seeming not to notice as the featherlike antennae attached to Troycule's head flicked and swished about his forearm throughout the process. If he was uncomfortable, he did a good job of hiding it; there was only a bit of a strain in his smile. "Yeah, nice to meet you," he said. "Glad you could make time for us."

"Certainly, certainly. Come in, friends. Let us be acquainted, and then we can talk business."

"How can we be friends if we're not acquainted yet?" asked Cole. He was standing unusually straight, hands buried in the pockets of his jacket.

Troycule didn't turn to look at him. Flanking his vertically slitted mouth were two clusters of shimmering, blood-red compound eyes; apparently he was looking adequately at all three of his visitors at once. Bringing his hands together and twiddling his many fingers, he explained, "I am friends with everyone except for the Sith. Luckily, they were never customers of mine anyway."

Rather than going in a straight line, the Ruurian zigzagged every few meters as he led them into the compound. Permacrete-gray prefab structures squatted against the inside walls. Their stark, undecorated faces put Kaevee in mind of a prison complex, particularly with the anti-air turret looming above like a guard tower. The open ground surrounding that—presumably the eponymous field of Bypass Field—was strewn with junked vehicles ranging from ground-crawlers and speeders to small starships.

Some of the wrecks were being swarmed over by labor droids, which used squalling plasma welders to extract components or sections of hull before lugging them off to a storehouse. Past the anti-air turret, the buildings on the far side of the compound turned out to be a row of hangars, perhaps large enough for six or seven vessels.

The labor droids weren't the only ones about; there were dozens more, most of them kinds that Kaevee didn't recognize, and diverse enough to make one think Troycule had robbed a museum. Some were treaded while others had repulsors, and not a few of the bipeds had back-bent legs like those of a bol or a piket. Some security units carried modern blaster rifles, while others had bulky, harder-to-identify weapons built in. Probes and surveillance drones meandered about in lazy arcs, chittering and mumbling to themselves. All in all, Bypass Field seemed just as busy as it was unsightly.

Troycule explained that his haunt had once been a supply depot for Krylon's security forces; its abandonment had been a result of, as he put it, "Some war or another. There is nothing grand about it, but I am a humble creature running a modest business. Enterprising friends bring me weapons and armor, droids, ships, other equipment—all machines for me to fix or to tinker with. We trade and haggle, make deals."

A small drone approached as he spoke, studying the newcomers with a whirring black photoreceptor. Kaevee was uneasily reminded of the droid that had tracked them in Telthek Nest. When it floated off, Cole asked, "You got any actual people working with you?"

"I could hire some help, but I have no wish to. Much as I enjoy guests and customers, I'm a solitary creature at heart."

"Whatever works for you," Cole said, shrugging. "Just keep 'em memory-wiped, and you should be fine."

One of the prefab shelters hosted a large, dimly lit workshop where benches and tables were piled with tools and parts, most of them scattered haphazardly. The stench of burnt metal was uniquely pungent, not just strong but also palpably old. Compared to the bustle outside, the quiet here was almost jarring.

"If you will forgive the mess," commented the Ruurian as they neared a door on the far end. "Business is very good; it has been for many years. I have always had too much merchandise to properly store, let alone organize. Whether I'm a collector or merely a hoarder, you be the judge."

"Where's all this stuff come from?" asked Kaevee.

Atton and Cole each gave her a look as if the question were in poor taste. Then again, it probably was when it came to criminals.

It didn't seem to offend Troycule, though. "Hardly anything my friends bring me is new. Almost everything is surplus or salvage from the wars with your Republic, the Mandalorians, or the Sith... or the Sith before them, or the Sith before those ones... In any case, there are countless worlds across the Rim where the machines of war are left behind to rust, and so those like me will always have business."

While finishing this monologue, he brought them into a well-lit office, though it took a moment to recognize as such. Instead of a desk, Troycule had an odd, vaguely tree-shaped metal framework, with datapads and various other effects either dangling from its branches or fixed to it with magnets. He flowed smoothly up the trunk of the contraption to settle in a padded nook. When Atton, Kaevee, and Cole had each taken a chair, they had to look just above eye-level to meet—or attempt to meet—his multitudinous gaze.

"You know my name, and I know Fenn Moru's," he said. "And the rest of you?"

"Kira Minn," said Kaevee, her hands folded in her lap.

"Cole Terrick," said Cole Terrick, who sat with one arm slung over the back of his chair. I don't need a fake name, he'd griped back on Ord Vaxal.

The Ruurian's antennae flicked upward. "Splendid. I told you before that I'm no friend of the Sith. And since Lannik Mai brought us together, neither are you; he said you would have need of my help for what he termed 'some treasonous activity.' "

Atton inclined his head. "Pretty much. Though I guess you can't really call it 'treasonous' if you're not a citizen of whatever you're, uh, treason-ing against."

"Perhaps not, but politics is only a secondary concern of mine. Anything that does harm to the Sith Remnant is pleasing to me—such as your Republic battering at the gates. But life for me will go on as before, even if they conquer the entire Gordian Reach."

"Wouldn't you expect a better life without the Sith ruling you?" asked Kaevee.

As before, no part of Troycule moved except for the ambiguously bobbing antennae. "The underbelly is the underbelly, no matter who sits in the governor's office. Besides that, wise Ruurians do not often show themselves in Republic space. Not since we had to side with Revan during the Jedi Civil War."

Kaevee's frown deepened. "What do you mean, you had to?"

"Surely you've heard of a world called Telos IV." Troycule actually glanced at her as if to emphasize his point. A ripple passed through his coat. "Ruuria is close. Very close. And so the hierarchs offered Revan our factories and our resources—lommite, zersium, korfaise. We did not wish to share the Telosians' fate."

The mention of that world was like a spell; silence gathered in the room like a fog, and Kaevee found herself swept up by a memory that she had not recalled in at least a decade.

Though not the first battle of the war with Darth Revan, Telos's destruction was its first atrocity. Kaevee had been ten years old at the time, not yet Emon's Padawan, and like the other Initiates she was forbidden to watch or read anything about the war that the Enclave Council had not approved; the Masters did not want to frighten them. But evidently not everyone shared their concern, because Kaevee remembered watching a news holo about the Telos attack one night with several friends. Somebody's Padawan had shown it; she couldn't remember exactly who or why, but the footage had made her feel sick for days: a whole world scorched clean of life, its oceans boiled into continent-sized clouds of vapor. Just one holovid, one image, and suddenly the war felt real.

Not as much as it would two years later, though.

"Smart move... I guess." Cole's voice dispelled some of the fog around Kaevee's thoughts. When she looked askance at him, he looked back, but didn't quite meet her eyes. "Well, what else are you gonna do, huh? If you can't fight or run, you bargain. And hey, Telos—those poor bastards had the Republic fleet to come running to the rescue. Didn't mean skrag, for all the good it did them, but a lot of planets didn't even have that."

The words were harsh, crass, ugly, unfair—and true. But Kaevee suspected, as she put her own memories away, that there was something else to Cole's remarks. Almost on a whim, she reached out with the Force to touch his mind, just briefly. Under his indifferent veneer, Cole was seething—as much with pain as with anger.

Kaevee's own thoughts ran away from her as she drew back. What had made Cole into the man that he was? She remembered having to watch in helpless panic as turbolasers fell on the Jedi Enclave like lightning; eleven years of reliving it in nightmares made the sight crystal-clear. Was there another world, another home, that Cole had been forced to watch in the same way? Another atrocity that the Jedi and the Republic hadn't been able to prevent?

"Correct you are, my friend," Troycule was saying. "Such a pity that we live in a dangerous galaxy, where the need to survive obliges one to do distasteful things..." He trailed off, and his fur rippled again. "But I suppose you are weary of this chitchat, Captain Moru. I only told you this so you may understand: given that you are involved in 'treasonous activity' against the Sith, I will be more than happy to assist you free of charge."

Atton cleared his throat. "We appreciate that a lot. But we're kind of on a timetable here, so..."

And that, Kaevee decided, was the better course: to pay attention to where she was and do what she was told. At Atris's advice, she'd already promised herself months ago to not indulge in pointless curiosity about her companions' past lives. And she didn't need—or shouldn't have needed—any reminders that Cole Terrick didn't want attention of any kind from her, pity least of all.

"We're trying to get in someplace where we don't belong," said Atton. "Where high-level Remnant government stuff takes place. The most important thing we need is a ship that looks like it could belong to a Sith. Something ominous and exotic. You got anything in those hangars that could work?"

"I very well might. Most of my starships are antiques and rarities, designs that went out of manufacture long ago. There are one or two that could pass for exotic."

"And it'll need to have a transponder code or an ID packet that matches. I can help you slap together one that looks real enough for us to land."

Troycule gave out an excited little chitter. "That will be child's play. What else might you need of me?"

"A couple odds and ends," said Atton, producing his datapad. "I've got a list."