Two minutes after Vythia sent transmitted the coordinates, the Havoc Marauder entered hyperspace. Quinlan watched the swirling streaks of blue for a few moments before checking to make sure that the comm channel was shut.

"Comms deactivated," Tech confirmed, standing up from the pilot's seat.

"Good." Quinlan turned on the hyperspace plotter. "Now, where the heck are we headed?"

Tech adjusted his goggles. "To Malachor, of course."

Quinlan raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, Tech. Thanks. Where is Malachor?"

"In Wild Space." Tech leaned over to turn on the holomap. "Vythia sent us the coordinates to the edge of the Chorlian sector, so I presume it is there."

"Only to the edge," Quinlan noted. "Huh. Either she doesn't want us knowing it's exact position yet, or she doesn't know it herself."

"Or," cut in Crosshair, "we'll have to fly there manually."

"Right." Quinlan tapped the holoprojector. "I'm not liking how long this flight is."

"Me either!" agreed Wrecker. "Two whole days with nothin' to do!"

". . . That wasn't exactly what I meant," said Quinlan. "I was thinking more of the fuel situation – especially if we have to travel at sublight speed across the entire sector."

"Oh," said Wrecker. "Don't worry about that. We've got fuel cells stored on the lower deck already."

"Yeah," said Hunter, getting to his feet. "We have more than enough to refill the Marauder twice. Well – let's finish unpacking the supplies. Tech, you're on watch for now."

Tech nodded, and the others headed to the cargo bay.

Hunter drew his vibroblade and slashed open the first box of rations. "I'm glad we sold those trip mines. They'd been sitting there for weeks."

Crosshair nodded absently. "Never had much use for them."

"Aw," complained Wrecker. "I'd have used them!"

"On what?" Crosshair retorted.

". . . I dunno. Something."

Quinlan picked up a collapsible lantern. "Where do you want these?"

"We'll take care of those tomorrow," Hunter said, balancing another meal pack precariously atop the pile Wrecker already held. He eyed the stack, then added three more. "Okay, Wrecker."

Wrecker, his face hidden behind the pile, muttered something and marched off to the galley.

After the rations and water had been shelved and secured, Hunter took over guard duty and told the others to get some sleep.

When Quinlan entered the barracks, Tech was perched on a locker, reading, while Wrecker did sit-ups in the center of the room. Crosshair, in the meantime, was gazing sourly at them from where he was slouched on one of the upper bunks.

Probably because they looked relatively lively, while he'd gotten only an hour or so of sleep the night before, since he'd stayed on guard into the dawn watch.

Quinlan pulled his blanket out of his pack and tried to unfold it. When that didn't quite work, since it had been crammed in the bottom of his pack for some time, he gave it a few vicious shakes. Then, for no particular reason, he used it to flick Tech in the side of the head.

Tech batted it absently aside, blinked at Quinlan, and said, "What is Malachor like?"

"Couldn't find anything on it, huh?"

"Not in the GAR database. I've expanded my search to the holonet. Malachor is mentioned only in relation to the Mandalorian Wars, and then only vaguely . . . There is very little data on Malachor's physical appearance and structure."

"Pity," said Crosshair. "Now why don't you turn off the lights."

Tech stared at him uncomprehendingly, then looked back at Quinlan. "Do the Jedi have any records of Malachor?"

"Yep." Quinlan tossed the blanket on the floor near the side wall, lay down, and cushioned his head on his arms. "Night."

Tech didn't take the hint. "Why did the Sith settle on Malachor, specifically?"

"I'll tell you what I know. Tomorrow."

Tech sighed loudly and went to turn off the lights.

Quinlan shut his eyes and attempted to meditate. He wasn't sure how much Vythia and her crystal could sense about him, and he didn't want to find out. Meditation was important if he intended to keep his shields flawless. The downside to that, of course, was that meditation was very difficult when his mind was preoccupied with questions.

I'm always in the middle of one case or another . . . he complained to himself. You'd think I'd be good at ignoring questions by now. But nope.

The others fell asleep quickly enough, but Quinlan could not. Eventually he got up and headed quietly down to the lower deck. His lightsaber was here, and he hadn't done katas in a while.

Moving meditation, it was called. Some Jedi were good at silencing their minds and reaching into the Force. Other Jedi found it far more effective to use their mental energy in moving from one position to the next, keeping their focus on maintaining the proper balance at all times.

Quinlan had found that keeping his mental energy focused on something simple allowed his other thoughts to clear. As he moved, going through the forms of Ataru more slowly than he would ever use them in combat, he sank further into the Force until he was scarcely aware of what he was doing.

He could sense the lifeforms around him – Tech, Crosshair, and Wrecker asleep above him; Hunter in the cockpit, brighter than the others because he was awake; and, as Quinlan expanded his awareness, two flickering forms somewhere behind the Marauder.

Quinlan lost his focus and stopped mid-swing, jolted out of meditation by the realization. Tech had scanned Vythia's ship directly before they'd entered hyperspace, and reported only one lifeform aboard. Maybe he'd been wrong . . .

He clipped the lightsaber to his belt and hurried to the cockpit. "Hunter. Can you run a scan on Vythia's ship?"

Hunter recovered from his surprise quickly. "What am I looking for?"

"Lifeforms."

"Okay." Hunter locked the scanners on Vythia's ship. "I don't know how accurate scanners are in hyperspace."

"We're in the same lane, and we're close enough – it should work fine . . ."

The scanner beeped.

"One lifeform," said Hunter. "Just like earlier."

Quinlan sat down in the co-pilot's seat and sent his awareness outward, toward Vythia's ship. One lifeform.

Hunter was watching him. "Vos, what is it?"

"I could have sworn there were two people onboard just now," he muttered, staring out into the flowing hyperspace lane.

Hunter frowned. "You mean you sensed them?"

"Yeah. Or I thought I did." He stood up, tapping the fingers of one hand against his saber hilt. "But now I can't. Vythia's there, but no one else."

Hunter looked bewildered for a moment before tilting his head to one side as though thinking. "You couldn't have been seeing a – vision? Jedi have those, right?"

He sounded so confused that Quinlan couldn't help a smirk. He had been meditating, after all . . . "Yeah, maybe it was a vision," he said, and turned to leave. "But if it was, it sure didn't make any sense."


The next day, after breakfast, the commandos shoved everything in the cargo hold over against one wall, clearing a fair amount of space. They brought their armor into the room, laid it out on the floor, and set to work. One piece at a time, they cleaned the armor, examined it for integrity, and then, if need be, touched up the paint job. As each piece was finished, it was laid on the crates to dry.

Meanwhile, Quinlan sat in one corner with the pile of lightsabers: seven in all, including his own, which he clipped to his belt. He pulled off his gloves and wrapped one hand around the first saber, shutting his eyes so he could see more clearly.

Betrayal. They'd begged for her help, but it was a trap. Failure. She knew she would never make it out alive. Determination. She would try all the same. She would give the others time . . . Cries and shouts as she fought her way through the enemy. Red flashes of lasers – darkness.

He opened his eyes with a jolt. Who had this woman been? He ignited the blade, and the green beam flickered a bit unsteadily. The emitter had been damaged. He took a few minutes to situate it properly, then set aside the weapon. Perhaps Master Yoda would know who had owned it.

He picked up the second. There was no memory connected with it, only a vague sense of accomplishment, of happy pride. It had been well-constructed, and there wasn't a single mark on the hilt. Quinlan set it down slowly.

The third and fourth lightsabers felt and looked similar. Quinlan ran his fingers over them, frowning. If he was right, these lightsabers had been the first sabers of a group of younglings, and the younglings had barely owned them long enough to leave an impression on the crystals.

Earlier, Quinlan had thought that he'd be quite happy never to return to Nar Shaddaa, but now he wasn't so sure. As soon as he got back to Coruscant, he'd find Madame Nu and ask her whether there were any younglings who had disappeared immediately after completing the Gathering. If there had been, he was going back to Grakkus' palace.

"Hey," said Wrecker's gruff voice as the big clone stopped beside him. "What's wrong?"

Quinlan cast him a brief glance. "These three lightsabers belonged to kids, that's what's wrong."

Tech gestured at the lightsabers with his soldering iron. "You mean Grakkus had them killed?"

"I don't know for sure." Quinlan set the three sabers gently to one side. "If he did, they weren't holding their sabers when they died – that, or they had no reason to suspect danger."

"Maybe the lightsabers were stolen," suggested Hunter.

"Maybe, yeah . . ." Quinlan, still thinking about the younglings, absently picked up the fifth lightsaber. A panicked scream in the back of his mind made him startle and drop it.

Taking a breath, he shut his eyes and grabbed it again.

"Wake up! Wake up!" Three younglings lay silent on the ground before him, and his lightsaber trembled in his hands. Why had his friends left the shuttle? They were supposed to keep it locked while Padawan Aneeya helped the farmers. A laser flew at his head – he deflected it, then another. Something burned through his spine, and he gasped, still clutching his lightsaber. Footsteps sounded behind him.

"Ah, we have another one," a voice said.

She was going to kill him, but he couldn't make himself turn –

When the vision went dark, Quinlan dropped the saber again, then stared at it for some moments. The youngling hadn't recognized the presence or the voice, but Quinlan had recognized both.

Quinlan looked up to see that the four commandos were watching him . . . probably wondering why he'd been unresponsive or something. "Make that four younglings," he said grimly, by way of explanation.

Hunter set down his helmet. "They were all in one group?"

"Yeah. That last one – he was awake. I think the others were lured out and poisoned too fast for them to realize the danger." He touched the first lightsaber again. "I'm pretty sure this one belonged to Padawan Aneeya, who was guiding them at the time. She was led into a trap and killed."

"All for five lightsabers?" asked Tech. "Would Grakkus really risk doing that?"

"You tell me." He paused. "It was definitely Aurra Sing who made the killing shot on that boy – she shot him in the back."

"You think she was working for Grakkus at the time?" Hunter asked.

"Back in the palace, when I traded a lightsaber to her, she wanted it more than she wanted to turn us in."

"Right . . ." said Hunter questioningly.

"Which means she didn't already have one. The only way that's possible is if she couldn't get her hands on one after killing those younglings. And the only way that's possible is if she had to turn them in to her employer. I doubt Grakkus bought them from another of her employers."

He sighed, brushing his hair away from his face. "Least I have a name . . . It'll be easy enough to find them."

"You think they're still alive?" asked Wrecker.

"No. Aurra's got a personal grudge against Jedi." He put the fifth lightsaber with those of the other younglings. "I meant it'll be easy to find out who the kids were. Too bad I didn't get a chance to use my psychometry on these while we were still in the vault."

Crosshair shot him a look. "You wouldn't have let Aurra go if you'd known."

Quinlan frowned. "Even Ventress doesn't kill younglings . . . Not so far, anyway." He stared at the last lightsaber, the green-bladed one with the black defender hilt. He hadn't held it without gloves since giving it to Hunter, but Vythia had. She'd only had it a moment, and she wasn't Force-sensitive, so there was very little chance of her having imprinted a memory on it. Still, it was worth a try.

He shut his eyes and picked it up. A momentary flicker of black faded into a hazy memory of trees and flowers. Acceptance and resignation of approaching death, and then anticipation . . .

The memory was peaceful. Although this lightsaber had ended up in the hands of Grakkus, at least the woman who owned it hadn't been killed for it. In fact, it was most likely that she had died of old age. Still – Grakkus, the filthy old krayt dragon, had no right to it. It belonged at the Temple, or perhaps with the woman's family.

Quinlan started to get up, then paused. He'd forgotten to check the crystal he'd removed from the lightsaber he'd given Aurra.

He pulled it from the sealed pouch on his belt. All he could tell from touching it was that it had been bonded to a female Force-user, and that it was old – no, ancient – far older than Master Yoda.

Curious, he settled back down and set his own saber on the floor before him. He reached into the Force, separating the weapon one piece at a time until all the components floated in the air, each tilting slowly on its own axis.

Careful to maintain his focus, Quinlan reached for his own crystal and replaced it with the ancient one. Slowly, the pieces came back together, until at last the lightsaber was whole again. He released his focus, and the hilt fell into his outstretched hand.

Standing, Quinlan ignited it. A bright, crackling gold-yellow blade hissed into existence, and the hilt vibrated in his hand as the kyber crystal hummed, almost too powerful for his lightsaber's emitter.

He shut it down and went through the process of dismantling his lightsaber one more time, this time inserting his own crystal. He hadn't sensed anything unusual about the saber he'd given Aurra Sing, and it hadn't looked old at all. Perhaps a Jedi had come across this crystal and tried to integrate it into their own saber.

It took him a moment to realize that the hold was completely silent. Blinking, he looked up. The four commandos were standing in a line, only a few feet away, watching intently.

"Uh . . ." he said. "What?"

Crosshair looked away as though suddenly disinterested. Hunter rubbed the back of his neck, probably a bit embarrassed that he'd been staring at a general, or something like that.

Tech and Wrecker, in the meantime, continued to look absolutely intrigued.

"How'd you do that?" Wrecker demanded.

Tech bounced once on his toes. "That crystal made a yellow blade. Was it originally from a Jedi Sentinel's lightsaber?"

Quinlan handed it to him. "I think so. It's very, very old."

"Can you sense anything about the owner?" Tech asked, tilting the crystal this way and that.

"Only that she was powerful and remarkably balanced in the Force."

Wrecker frowned. "How do you know that? You just – sense it?"

"Well – sort of." Quinlan gestured at the kyber crystal, which Tech was now holding up to one of the glowpanels. "It's too powerful for my own lightsaber. Also, although I can tell it was bonded to the Jedi for years, that crystal has no imprint of her personality."

"Is that unusual?" asked Tech. "Does that have to do with how old the crystal is? Is it possible for the imprint of the owner's personality to wear off through the years?"

Quinlan shrugged. "Honestly, I couldn't say."

"To which question?"

"Any of 'em."

"Oh." Tech studied the crystal for a moment more before giving it back. "What will you do with it?"

"For now?" He slipped it into the pouch on his belt. "I'll keep it with me. Someone at the Temple might know who it belonged to."

"What about Vythia?" Hunter asked. "Earlier, you were concerned she'd sense your own crystal."

"Yeah." Quinlan frowned. "I had this feeling that she could, but while you guys were talking, I paid close attention to her. There's no way she'd be able to sense them, or who they belonged to, or anything. She's about as Force-sensitive as you guys."

There was a brief pause.

"Wait," said Tech. "How Force-sensitive are we?"

"You're not."

"Ah." Tech's inflection indicated a mild disappointment.

Crosshair, on the other hand, looked very much relieved by Quinlan's answer. He took out his toothpick and remarked, "Good thing. Imagine Wrecker being Force-sensitive and going on one of his rampages."

Hunter winced.

"Hey . . ." said Wrecker. "Yeah! That would be awesome."

Tech sniffed. "Well, the destruction level certainly would be."

Wrecker grinned, completely unoffended by the thought. "Got that right! I could throw grenades a lot farther!"

"Yeah," said Hunter, attempting to turn the conversation. "So, Vythia's not at all Force-sensitive. What about that red crystal of hers?"

"I have no idea." Quinlan handed him the defender hilt. "To get a good read on it, I'd have to touch it. I don't see that happening."

"No . . ." Hunter spun the hilt around one hand. "You are going to keep a lightsaber with you, right?"

"Yeah, I'll keep mine in my pack." He picked up the other five and wrapped them in a length of cloth. "These can stay here until we return to Coruscant."

He put them in the secret compartment and sent a quiet thought of farewell into the Force for the dead Jedi.

Straightening, he folded his arms and turned to face the clones, who were still watching him. "So! How's the armor painting going? Need any help?"

"Thanks all the same, but – no," said Hunter, clipping the lightsaber to his belt.

Quinlan shrugged equitably and returned to his previous station, where he set to work cleaning and reloading his hold-out blaster.


After the paint dried, Hunter and his squad mates moved their armor to the storage racks in the bunkroom.

"Okay," said Hunter. "Packs next. You know the drill."

"We should," laughed Wrecker. "We've done this enough."

"I don't," said the Jedi, hoisting his own pack.

"You've never packed for a mission," repeated Hunter disbelievingly.

"Oh. Yeah, lots of times." Quinlan followed Wrecker back to the cargo hold. "You guys have a specific way of doing it?"

"Checking our gear is first," Hunter told him. "We also restock on medical supplies, food, water, and add anything we might need that is mission-specific."

Crosshair, who had decided to use the pushed-together crates for his floorspace, looked at Vos and said, "That means replacing out-of-date ration bars."

The Jedi paused. "Crosshair, are you going to remember everything I do and say so you can use it against me later?"

Crosshair did an admirable job of looking confused. "Not my fault if you provide ammunition."

"True enough, I guess." Quinlan seated himself on the ground across the room from the others. "Oh – by the way, I think I've figured out why you like heights. You can look down on everyone better that way."

If Wrecker had said something like that, there would have been a brawl, but for some reason Crosshair only looked amused.

Of course, it probably helped that Vos was so obviously teasing, whereas Wrecker sounded like he meant what he said – and enforced it with a lot of roughhousing. Still, Crosshair and the Jedi had been squabbling plenty yesterday. It wasn't as though they were really getting along right now, either, but it was almost friendly.

After a moment of consideration, Hunter shrugged it off. He had other things to think about, and no doubt those two would start up their real bickering again as soon as they got bored enough. Might as well take the peace while it lasted.

Hunter set to work emptying his pack neatly onto the floor. "Vos, what can you tell us about Malachor?"

"Oh, yes," said Tech, suddenly distracted from the broken comlink he'd been fiddling with. "You said you would tell us."

The Jedi, who was polishing his vibroblade, nodded absently. "I'll tell you what I know, which is everything in the Archives. But there isn't much of that."

He sheathed the knife and leaned back against the wall. "Malachor was settled by the Sith thousands of years ago – no one seems to really know when. Many academies were built there, and the Sith also built dozens of temples over the surface of the entire planet."

"Academies?" Tech asked. "What kind?"

"Sith academies," replied Vos. "Basically where they trained Force-adepts to become Sith. Kind of like the Jedi Temple teaches Jedi?"

"Ah, I see."

Hunter set down the grappling hook he'd been examining. "If the academies served the same purpose as the Jedi Temple does now, then what were the Sith temples for?"

"Uh – good question." Quinlan frowned. "Like I said, there aren't a lot of records available. But, if I were to guess based on what I know of temples on other planets. . . In a lot of cases, the temples were built as monuments to Sith Lords. Korriban, one of the tombworlds of the Sith, has nothing but monuments there."

Crosshair set to work carefully unwinding one of the cable spools. "The Sith build tombs for themselves?"

"Well, the people who'd been conquered by them did the actual building, but yeah."

Wrecker tossed a pair of cable snips to Crosshair. "Are we going into one of those temples?"

"I hope not." The Jedi drummed his fingers restlessly against his knees. "Vythia said the artifact she was after was rumored to be in a labyrinth . . . Far as I know, that fits more with what I know of academies."

Crosshair cast him a frown. "A labyrinth? You think that would be less dangerous than a temple?"

"Look, I've never been in either. I told you, I probably know just about as much as you guys."

"Which isn't much," said Tech.

"No kidding." The Jedi went back to polishing his knife. "Where was I?"

"You were telling us what Sith temples were used for," said Hunter.

"Rituals. Human sacrifice. Worshipping dead Sith . . . I don't know what else."

"That's weird," Wrecker announced.

"That's because Sith are weird," Vos told him seriously.

Hunter raised an eyebrow. "Presumably none of these Sith are still around."

"Right," said Vos. "I was getting to that part. Okay. So, from what I know, as time went on, the entire planet became incredibly strong in the dark side. Sith went there to meditate and increase their own power. Hundreds of years after the Sith Empire settled Malachor, they built the Trayus Academy – by far the most infamous of all the old Sith academies. We don't know much about that academy, except that at one point all the dark energy on the planet was centered there."

He paused thoughtfully. "I'll skip a thousand years or so to the Mandalorian Wars, which culminated in an immense space battle above Malachor. The Jedi Revan laid a trap there for the Mandalorians, who were allied with the Sith . . . He stationed a huge number of his ships above the planet, tricking the enemy into thinking that the whole Republican fleet was there."

"The Mandalorians and Sith attacked with the full strength of their fleets. Revan defeated Mandalore the Ultimate in single combat, but the Jedi fleet was losing. Before Revan could bring forward the remainder of his ships, which he'd held back, Jedi General Surik ordered a weapon known as the Mass Shadow Generator to be activated. It crushed every ship in the planet's orbit, Jedi, Mandalorian, and Sith."

Tech leaned forward. "Then why did the general order it to be activated?"

Vos sighed. "Again, the records are unclear. I don't think she knew what the generator was really capable of. I don't even think the inventor knew what it was capable of – he was strongly on the side of the Republic, which ended up losing most of its fleet as a result of his invention. The shadow generator was only active for a few minutes before exploding under its own power, but it caused millions of deaths."

"And the planet?" asked Hunter.

"Huge areas of Malachor's surface, especially around the equator, were damaged by the falling debris. Its structure and orbit changed – I don't know how much. Like I said, the generator was only active for a few minutes. Eventually, the planet became habitable again, and the Sith returned . . . They grew stronger than ever, because of the massive amounts of Force energy that had been released when so many Force-users died."

Quinlan rested his arms across his knees. "Almost four thousand years ago, the Sith started attacking the Republic again. The Jedi traced them back to Malachor and decided to invade it in hope of destroying the Sith once and for all. They landed on the planet with thousands of knights, masters, padawans . . . From what I know, it was the largest-scale battle between Force-users in the history of the galaxy."

Hunter stopped working entirely as he tried to imagine a battle between thousands of Force-users, both light and dark, all with their glowing, humming blades.

Vos continued. "Despite the Jedi's disadvantage in fighting on a planet so steeped in the dark side, they were winning. The Sith had lost all their major strongholds, including the Trayus Academy. So, in the end, Darth Tanis finished the battle in what would be known as the Great Scourge of Malachor."

Quinlan Vos paused, and Hunter noticed that none of his squad mates were working, either.

Vos drew his knife and toyed idly with it. "Turns out, the Sith would rather perish themselves than let themselves be defeated. Darth Tanis knew that once the Sith started invading the Republic, the Jedi would find out about Malachor and attack it. He wanted to ensure that they lost the same way the Sith had earlier lost, so he built a superweapon, powered by the dark side and by one of the largest kyber crystals ever discovered. He waited for weeks as the battles went on, just in case the Sith did manage to win. Then – he set it off."

". . . What did it do?" Hunter asked into the sudden silence.

"It petrified every living thing on the planet's surface," said Vos. "What remained of the two fleets fled the system. The Sith vanished for hundreds of years. The Jedi ordered the Malachor system erased from galactic maps everywhere, and no one had any reason to argue that decision. Malachor was considered a cursed planet."

He narrowed his eyes. "After that, as far as I was aware until this mission, no one ever returned. Apart from the whole curse thing, finding your way through intersystem space without coordinates is incredibly dangerous. But someone must have, at some point, for Vythia to think she knows where this artifact is."

Tech shifted. "If someone was really determined to find Malachor, it wouldn't be very hard. The Chorlian sector is already inhabited, after all."

"Yeah," agreed Vos. "The Zyggeria system is there, and those guys are always looking to expand their realm. Maybe some of their explorers may have landed on Malachor at some point – they might even have mapped out some of the larger buildings that are still standing."

"Then there's a possibility that we'll run into other people," said Hunter.

"An extremely small possibility," Quinlan said. "I don't think even treasure hunters would want to hang around such a planet for long." He glanced down at the ground and narrowed his eyes. "Honestly, I'm a lot more worried about who – or what – might have survived through the ages since the Scourge. Sith . . . they don't always stay dead."

Hunter felt a chill go up his spine. He'd thought that things or people coming back to life after they'd died was nothing more than a mildly frightening story, something to talk about when one was on a long, boring patrol. "Vos, what are you trying to say?"

"I'm trying to say that we'll be on a planet that is legendary for the evil associated with it. I can speculate all I want, given what I know, but in the end speculations might be absolutely useless."

The others were silent. Wrecker glared heavily at the ground, and even Tech's curious expression had faded into a guarded one.

"I don't like this," said Crosshair flatly.

Quinlan stared at the floor, frowning as though in sudden realization. He stood, gaze flitting from one commando to the next until he met Hunter's eyes. "I should have told you guys all this before."

Wrecker shrugged. "Wouldn't have changed nothin'."

"We were sent to help you, Vos," Hunter agreed. "And we knew you were headed for Malachor."

"Yeah, but you didn't know what that meant, did you?"

"And we didn't ask. Besides, it doesn't sound like you're entirely sure, yourself."

"Fair . . ." He paused. "I was just – thinking over how I've gone about the mission so far. The only reason I asked for special forces was because Master Yoda said I shouldn't complete the mission alone."

"Right!" said Wrecker. "And Cody sent us, 'cause we're the best."

"Well, that," interrupted Tech. "And because we're the only commando unit not officially attached to the Grand Army of the Republic."

The Jedi raised an interested eyebrow. "Hey, no kidding. So . . . you're more or less free to pursue whatever missions Cody sends you on, for however long those missions take, and you don't have to report through the usual channels after?"

"Pretty much," said Hunter. "I get that Jedi would probably be better equipped for this mission, but we're the ones who were available."

Quinlan sheathed his knife with a sudden motion. "Hunter, that's not what I'm talking about at all. As far as the mission goes, Jedi would be at a disadvantage in areas like Malachor."

And you're a Jedi, Hunter thought, exchanging a look with Crosshair.

Vos continued speaking as though that point hadn't occurred to him. "I meant that I didn't initially intend to drag you guys to Malachor with me. If Vythia doesn't know what she's doing, we could end up dead before the first day's over."

"We might end up dead on any mission," said Hunter. "A laser'll kill quicker than just about anything else."

"And quicker's better, right?" Quinlan shook his head, ignoring Hunter's attempt at humor. "My original idea was to have you guys help me sneak into the warehouse, grab the Prince and whatever artifacts we could find, and get back to Coruscant."

"But the situation kept changing," Hunter finished for him. "So you kept adjusting the plan."

Quinlan nodded. "Yep. You know what . . . I kind of pride myself on considering all the angles of a problem. I'm beginning to wonder whether I thought far enough ahead on this one."

"We can't back out," said Wrecker. "Not now."

"Listen, Vos." Hunter folded his arms and rested his weight on one foot. "Instead of you going to Malachor with Vythia and a group of bounty hunters who aren't trustworthy, you're headed there with us. I don't see the problem."

Tech straightened, brushing tiny pieces of wire off his clothes. "Neither do I. I don't recall any of us asking you not to move forward with any part of your plan."

"Yeah!" said Wrecker. He crossed the cargo hold in two steps and patted Vos roughly on the back, sending him staggering forward. "If we really didn't want to go along with it, you couldn't have made us!"

"Wrecker . . . " Hunter shook his head. "That wasn't exactly what I was trying to say."

Vos opened his mouth to speak, then paused as though uncertain. Before he could collect his thoughts, a toothpick bounced off his chest and clicked to the floor.

Everyone turned to look at Crosshair, who gazed back unrepentantly. "Are we going to stand around talking, or get the rest of this packed?"

Vos stared at him, huffed, and kicked the toothpick back in his direction.

"Crosshair . . ." Tech rolled his eyes. "You're the one who still hasn't finished with that cable."