"Sounds like he's a Soresu practitioner," Ahsoka said thoughtfully in the transient privacy of the crew quarters on their freighter, "especially with the stance at the end."

Sareena had been intently observing the Trandoshan's actions throughout the conflict, with the hope of describing them well enough to get Ahsoka's input. Finally, one of her decisions was paying off. "What does that mean?"

"Oh, sorry. It's a thoroughly defensive lightsaber style. Let me guess: He deflected the blaster bolts with calm changes to his motion, and few of the bolts seemed to hit anything in particular?"

"They seemed to fly around randomly, in fact. He certainly didn't fight like you."

"Yeah, Shien is all about the counterattack, particularly with blaster shots. I don't doubt he could do the same in less strenuous circumstances...But I'm sure you have more pressing questions."

Since she was inviting questions likely to annoy her..."Couldn't you sense the Inquisitor or something?" Sareena asked.

Ahsoka rolled her eyes and shook her head. "It's not that simple," she responded with a slight air of protest. "It's much easier if it's someone I have a personal connection to, or someone particularly strong in the Force; but ultimately it's up to the will of the Force whether I can feel their presence in a populated area like this."

Sareena took a deep breath. "Strong in the Force like...you?"

Ahsoka shot a glare back for a split second. "I've discovered a talent for hiding from this sort of attention. I'd be long gone otherwise, and I certainly wouldn't drag any of you with me. And a conscious attempt to find someone would make me easier to find; I already tried within the limits of safety and didn't find anyone Force-sensitive."

It sounded like a special kind of guessing game, more than anything else. But rather than see how that comment was taken..."Since I'm sure Beril's going to be telling us what she found from her recon equipment soon, one last question: What exactly are the Inquisitors, anyway?"

Ahsoka turned her head slightly. "Officially, the Inquisitorius is a branch of Imperial Intelligence, with the special tasks of tracking down Jedi and providing...'enhanced interrogation', for those occasions where conventional torture isn't up to the task. But they report directly to the Emperor."

Sareena paused for a moment. She knew what that meant. "So unofficially, they could do anything in his name."

"Pretty much," she confirmed, "the Emperor and others reporting to the Emperor are their only real restraints. As to their abilities as individuals, they vary wildly; I've seen everything from erstwhile bounty hunters to failed Jedi Initiates. My guess is the Emperor's criteria are too restrictive for him to be picky. I've only noticed two things they all have in common. One, they're skilled with the dark side of the Force, though not impressively so."

"And the other?" Sareena asked after another brief pause.

"They're no match for me." Ahsoka answered firmly.

It sounded like arrogance to Sareena's ears. But she'd recently been thrown across a room by one of those lightning-throwing darksiders, as she later learned they were called...after she'd been shot in the shoulder of course, which put a haze of searing pain over her recollection. That was how she met Ahsoka, who didn't even seem annoyed by the threat. Ahsoka could very well be more powerful than Sareena could imagine, if only because she didn't know enough to imagine the full scope of the power involved.

And of course, Ahsoka was there precisely because she could deal with such unconventional threats. If all the team had needed was a mechanic, there were candidates far less likely to draw attention to themselves for Sareena to have chosen from. "I hope you're right," Sareena said with a hint of worry, "though not as much as I hope you don't have to prove it."

Ahsoka paused for a second. "Well either way, I won't let you down."

If nothing else, she didn't have to worry about the strength of Ahsoka's motivation. "I know."

A soft beep accompanied the door sliding open, and Beril waltzing in. "I've got good news," she said cheerily. "I am awesome."

Sareena rolled her eyes. Just what she needed right now, another ego. "You'll have to be specific."

"You're no fun. Your guy started talking to his ship before he was out of range, so I found out which ship it was. It was on the list that survived Laani's filtering, but that isn't the awesome part."

Now it was Ahsoka's turn to roll her eyes. "If you keep this up, I'll have to question whether you're actually awesome."

Beril scoffed. "Did you determine his comms encryption was a simplistic algorithm? Or match the recorded sound to the recorded traffic to decrypt it? Or hear the guy on the other end of the once-encrypted conversation specifically mention the area where they picked up 'that sublight engine'?"

"...no?" Ahsoka replied noncommittally.

"Didn't think so."

Sareena sighed in relief. "Finally, all this trouble is getting us something. Where?"

"'Like that sublight engine we got about six parsecs off Eriadu?', is what he said. Eriadu, of course, is where several hyperspace trade routes intersect, so having it nearby would be highly convenient if you're in the business of selling or reselling."

"Eriadu is also Grand Moff Tarkin's homeworld," Ahsoka added darkly.

Beril glared at Ahsoka, but only for a fraction of a second. "As much as I'd love to argue with Laani, she's right. Cavorting around a Grand Moff's pet sector is a problem waiting to happen for anyone who's not a friend of the Empire...like, us."

Sareena looked at Beril. "And I suppose we'd have to check all the systems five-to-seven parsecs from Eriadu in every direction, and hope the salvage depot we're looking for isn't well-hidden. Except of course, these guys are also pirates so they'd have a hard time operating near a major system without being well-hidden."

"Right. Enough merchant traffic goes through Eriadu itself that we could get there without much suspicion, but a system-by-system sweep is another matter entirely."

"Well, that settles it. Our next stop is Eriadu."

Beril and Ahsoka both looked at her. "And then what?" Beril demanded.

"I know a guy," Sareena explained. That wasn't counting the time she helped staff the local resistance's hospital, though..."Actually several. They'll know the region, and we'll need to be in the general vicinity anyway, so it's worth a shot. In any case, get our course plotted now; the sooner we get away from lightsaber maniacs, the better."

"I hear ya," Beril agreed as she turned around and left the way she came.

Ahsoka didn't speak until a couple seconds after the door closed. "I hope you're right about losing him so easily."

Sareena took a deep breath. She was expecting something indignant about being called a maniac. "Me too. But he couldn't have seen you since you were in here the whole time, so why would he even consider tracking us? No sense worrying about him finding us instead of preventing him from finding us."

"True enough."

Beril sighed. "Do I have to stay on the ship?" she complained at the other two occupants of the cargo bay, which had somehow become the unofficial meeting area.

"Yes, you do," Rian said firmly as he crossed his arms.

"Well I won't stop you," Laani said, "but there's nothing worthwhile out there for us."

Beril rolled her eyes at Rian. "So Sareena gets to go out for fresh air while I'm cooped up...we're cooped up here?"

Laani snorted. "If Eriadu's resistance is cautious enough that they wouldn't care if she vouched for us, they're probably not the partying sort. And as the person who hasn't set foot off this ship since we left Alderaan, I can assure you that whatever scent wafted in while the cargo bay door was open, it was not 'fresh air'."

"Typical," Beril said patronizingly as she slowly shook her head. "Natives of Alderaan, Corellia, Shili...Maybe if you came from a modern world like Nar Shaddaa instead of fetid nature-dominated planets, you'd have a better appreciation of what civilization is supposed to smell like."

"Let me know when Nar Shaddaa stops importing food from those so-called 'fetid' places," Laani countered snidely. "And the ultra-urban Coruscant didn't impress me, but its air still managed to smell like air instead of chemicals."

"Well duh, Coruscant is a world for bureaucrats; all they do is look progressive without any progress. Real progress is real creation, and you can smell real creation."

"Funny, that's how I feel about fresh air. Weren't you saying that's what's outside the door in this little corner of the spaceport?"

"Yes, because I know what fresh air actually is. And it's not the stale stuff circulating in here, or the fragrance-masked stuff I had to tolerate back on Alderaan. Sure, it does the job air is supposed to, but it's strictly substandard."

Laani paused for a second, then looked askance at Beril. "Are you really so bored that you're arguing about air pollution standards?"

"Why, would you rather talk about Coruscant instead?" Beril countered sarcastically, ignoring the accuracy of Laani's comment.

"It'd be a short speech," Laani responded, "a handful of sprawling estates floating on an ocean of urban towers. The Navy didn't hang around on the surface enough for sightseeing, you know."

Beril's mind raced. During the trip she'd gone over the records she acquired from the Empire, and the biggest overlap in Laani's and Ahsoka's records was at Coruscant. A prime digging point if ever there was one. "Not even the...Jedi Temple? What'd that thing look like?"

Laani paused, but only briefly. "Like five horns rising out of a metal block," she said softly, "watching the rest of the planet without seeing they were never part of it."

Rian rejoined the conversation. "Not a fan of the Jedi, I'm guessing?" Good, he caught the hint she didn't have to give now.

Laani turned her head sharply to face him. "Well they were supposed to keep maniacs with red lightsabers from running around and killing as they pleased." She then turned back towards Beril. "I'm not impressed with the quality of their performance. Are you?"

Beril shivered. She had heard about and seen video of those guys, but it was a very different sort of apprehension to actually be in the same room with one. People who walk into firestorms, eviscerate whoever they like, and leave unharmed; just as easily as she breathed..."Heck no. And the Jedi worked with the Republic, which is now the Empire that's fielding those guys. Someone in one of those horns screwed up big time."

Laani sighed. "They most certainly did."

That wasn't particularly informative, with what Sareena said about that Ahsoka being framed by another Jedi she would have a dim view of the Jedi leadership herself. Maybe throwing her on the spot would knock something loose..."Do you happen to know that woman the bounty's actually for?"

A scowl immediately formed on Laani's face. "Why?" she demanded. "The Emperor's human, do you happen to know him? Maybe you'd like to ask if I met Shaak Ti, too?"

"Well since you apparently know how to pronounce their names off—"

"They're not outlandish Togruti names," Laani interrupted vehemently, "and no. Despite the other assumptions that all Togruta who share a skin color automatically know each other—"

"—That's not what—"

"I was never assigned directly under either of their commands, though course I had heard of each of them! Are there any other stereotypes you'd like me to disabuse your technophiliac self of, or are you good?"

"...sorry?" Beril offered sheepishly. Whether she'd overextended her attention or just been outwitted, subtlety was out of the question for the near future and it'd be best if she didn't admit that.

Rian sighed deeply as he shook his head in disapproval. "Shortsightedness aside...Where were you actually deployed?" Was he rubbing it in or trying to help her recover? She couldn't tell the difference anymore.

Laani took a deep breath as she slowly turned to face him. "Well, the world I remember the most is Felucia. Giant phosphorescent mushrooms everywhere...now that was a fetid nature-dominated planet."

Time to dodge attention. "Weren't you sent there a while back, Rian?" Beril said.

"Yeah, they needed some muscle to cover the extraction of some refugee village. Poisonous lifeforms, hostile lifeforms, poisonous hostile lifeforms, the occasional Imperial blaster...Ranged from 'obnoxious' to 'nothing my powered armor can't handle'."

"Is your armor really that good?" Laani asked, her attention suitably dodged.

"If CorSec wanted it back," he declared, "they should have gotten it before failing to kill me. And when your job is raiding criminal hideouts, your armor better be tougher than a few pistols or knives."

"...and they needed you to extract a village?" Laani asked skeptically.

"That's what they said. But for how small the village was, there was a lot of cargo being loaded and the walkers were overkill. Maybe Sareena knows what the operation was a cover for, there have to be professional snipers they can tap before calling her in for a marksman role."

Wait, what? "Walkers?" Beril repeated. "Sareena? You didn't tell me either of those were there!"

Rian scoffed. "You never asked. Sareena was already there, which I assume is why I was assigned in particular; and we took down their command speeder elsewhere to draw off the AT-STs, we never actually fought them."

"So why didn't you ask her? I wanna know now!"

"Sareena wouldn't tell me while it was going on, it didn't matter after I left even if she would tell me then, and now that you know about it you're going to try slicing it out when we get back to Alderaan anyway so what difference does it make?"

"Am not!" There weren't going to be actual records on a connected system if there was a cover story in place throughout. She'd have to do an actual investigation, and that sounded like work.

"Good. You exercising self-restraint would be refreshing."

"Guys," Laani said loudly. "This is turning into kind of an awkward dialog to be overhearing, so how about we talk about something less...personal? Like how we're going to find our Pantoran hostage at the pirate base."

Complete distraction...perfect. "Weren't you with the Navy when they did this kind of thing?" Beril asked.

"As I'm sure you can imagine, the Navy was into orbiting fleets. And fleets that dropped off the infantry and vehicles which actually did the ground operations. This isn't quite the same thing."

"I guess not," Beril said. "Well, assuming one of those nature planets with a single hidden base...My preference would be to descend into the atmosphere well away from their base powered down, and once we're in the air we go live and approach the base low to the ground. Depending on the geography we could land within walking distance without them ever having a chance to detect us with scanners. Standard scout-and-infiltrate from there."

"Assuming he's still there," Rian added pointedly.

"Not really," Beril countered. "If he's there, we get him out. If not, we find our next lead. We have to check the place out regardless, it's just different sorts of hassles after that."

"What worries me," Laani said, "is what happened to everyone else. He was a passenger, and we haven't even heard if there were any other passengers, much less what happened to the crew."

"We'll see when we get there," Rian responded.

"True, I suppose."

A chime, indicating an incoming transmission, cut the conversation short before Beril could come up with a response. "I'm back," came Sareena's voice over the speaker on the nearby terminal, "open the cargo door."

Beril slowly walked over to the terminal, lost in thought. Once in front of it she sighed, disappointed that she couldn't come up with some new way to tease Sareena on short notice, before hitting the button to respond. "Got it, opening," she said as she entered the command for the cargo bay door to open and the ramp to extend.

As the door slowly opened, she chose to offset her failure of imagination by imagining a fanfare playing in the background, trumpets signaling the arrival of someone distantly related to some important dignitary who happened to be her boss. Sareena's disgust at the mocking extravagance would be hilarious.

"What did you do?" Sareena asked with a suspicious eyebrow creased.

Apparently she'd imagined Sareena boarding while Sareena was boarding, and the smile she imagined on her own face was actually on her face. "Nothing!" she answered too quickly and too playfully to be believable.

Sareena's eyes moved a little to the side, glancing over where Rian and Laani were. "Anyway," Sareena continued as she rolled her eyes in annoyance, "We've got a location. Close the door, and get ready to take off."

As Sareena watched the blue mottling of hyperspace out the cockpit window from the command seat, the view shifted to a burst of streaking lines, which soon resolved themselves into individual stars.

"And here we are," Beril announced from the pilot seat, "back in realspace."

"Comm channels are clear," Ahsoka said from a terminal to Sareena's left, "and that looks like the planet your contact described: Stormy, mostly ocean, irregular rocky islands dotted with jungle. No ships showing up on passive scans."

Only passive scans? "I take it you're not actively scanning?" Sareena asked.

"No," Ahsoka answered. "Odds are very good that the pirates will detect an active scan, and without anything worth scanning for—"

"They'll think we're onto them and be on their guard," Sareena concluded.

"No sense broadcasting that we're onto them," Rian agreed from a seat to Sareena's right.

Sareena took a deep breath. "I was ready to try fast talking a ship into letting us land. Since there's not one here...Beril, what's your recommendation?"

Beril sighed. "Since you didn't manage to get coordinates for the precise location, I'll have to determine exactly where we're supposed to sneak up on. And since it turns out the storms are intense enough to block our passive scans, I'll need to write a program to piece together passive scan data from the clear portions of the atmosphere, until we have something resembling the island the base is on. That'll take days if the weather isn't cooperative, and odds are they'll have 'guest' ships spotting us if we're here that long. So we'll have to do active scans to have any real chance of success, unless Laani has some brilliant idea."

"Sort of," Ahsoka said. "Act like we're doing some basic planet assessment. Go into orbit, send generic 'anyone there' comms, do active scans of the surface, and head off to one of the life-hostile planets in the system."

"And then we slingshot around it," Beril added to the proposal, "approach this planet unpowered, and head toward the base in-atmosphere. They'll think we left the system, the fools."

"Getting ahead of yourself, aren't you?" Rian asked patronizingly.

Beril shook her head with an exaggerated neck motion, which Sareena could only tell by the jet black hair peeking out the sides of the pilot seat. "Big deal, it sure beats sitting around in space long enough for our unwitting pirates to become suspicious pirates...like could happen any moment now. Setting course."

No sense waiting around, then. "Go for it," Sareena said.

"Since we headed straight here," Rian said as the ship's forward motion began, "can you explain why we have a hassle instead of actual coordinates now?"

Sareena mentally pieced all the information together. "The resistance isn't actually supposed to know there's a base here. The base is built in a cavern system inside a mountain, with the hangar situated behind a natural cave opening, and with all the rock in the way it doesn't output enough power to show up on ships' sensors during normal operations. They only found it existed because one of their freighters was trading supplies with another freighter out here, and spotted a starfighter-sized vehicle disappearing into a mountain without leaving a crash site."

"And since they lazily assumed there was nothing of interest on the planet," Beril continued with annoyance, "they didn't go to the negligible effort of establishing a navigational frame of reference for it."

"Whatever the reason," Sareena jumped in before Beril went on a tirade, "the guess of the base's location with respect to the planet only narrowed it down to about an eighth of the entire surface, so the scanner image of the island it's on is the best reference we have."

"At least we know it's on the half of the planet we're facing right now," Ahsoka added.

A rapid beeping filled the cockpit for a moment. "Speaking of guest ships," Beril said, "one just jumped out of hyperspace behind us. Looks like a Gozanti freighter, the Tranquil Star, heading towards the same planet we are."

"Imperial?" Sareena asked with some concern.

"Nah, this is the classic pre-Clone-Wars model. Severe hassle if you're trying to capture it, but doesn't have the speed to chase anything down."

"Wait," Ahsoka said to no one in particular, "'Tranquil Star'? That sounds familiar..."

"No sense being bashful now," Sareena said. "Beril, see if their comms are open. And be ready to outrun it all the way into the atmosphere, just in case."

"Got it," Beril replied.

"Umm..." Ahsoka said uncertainly. "It's familiar because that was one of the ships docked back at the asteroid. Transponder codes match."

Beril quickly peeked her head out from her seat. "Back like when we were tracking down the engine?"

"Back like just now," Ahsoka responded.

"That's not suspicious at all," Rian's sarcasm contributed.

Sareena took a deep breath. This wasn't the time to panic.

Beril withdrew into her seat again. "No standard channels are open," she declared. "Want me to try...other channels?"

Ahsoka slowly rose out of her seat. She was looking forward, but Sareena noticed the eye looking straight at her. Sareena turned her head slightly towards Ahsoka, and in response Ahsoka crossed her arms. The motion was deliberate, except for when she practically slapped one of the platinum bracers on her forearms.

The bracers she kept her lightsaber in.

Sareena turned her head farther. On that ship? she silently mouthed. Ahsoka gently nodded in the affirmative.

OK, this still wasn't the time to panic, but that he'd somehow followed them here would at least make panic understandable.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Sareena declared. "Laani, head back to the engine room in case there's fireworks we need put out. Beril, get us some more distance from our visitor."

"No," Beril countered coldly as Ahsoka wordlessly walked out of the cockpit.

Sareena blinked. It was so rare for Beril to take things seriously that it always came as a surprise. "Why not?"

"We're already gaining distance, they're holding speed, and they've got no chance of hitting us once when we get in the atmosphere. I'm not rushing a shootout in their favor."

"They're holding while we're gaining? Must be counting on something at the other end."

"I'm sure it's a trap, but that doesn't change our options. Rian, I have the shields ready, push the button when the fireworks start."

"Acknowledged," Rian said as he faced the terminal at his seat.

"I'm in position," came Ahsoka's voice over the ship's comm.

Everything was primed. "All that's left now, is to wait for the trigger." Sareena announced.

For a few seconds, the only sounds Sareena heard were the air softly whistling through the ship's air circulation system, the gentle rumble of the sublight engines, and the firm pace of her own heart. She had no idea how the Inquisitor could have known they were here, much less how he could have followed them; but it seemed clear he didn't come this far to be reasoned with.

"And there it is," Beril said, "starfighters launching from the planet. Showtime."

There wasn't time to even wonder what that entailed. Sareena was pushed backwards against her seat as the ship's inertial dampers struggled to counteract the sharp acceleration, and the slowly growing image of the planet out the window expanded with alarming speed. Laser fire screamed from behind, but no shots connected.

It didn't take long for shots from the front to commence, as the fighters realized they were being rushed by a ship they couldn't know was unarmed. In the small fraction of a second Sareena could clearly see the fighters before Beril charged through the middle of their formation, she noted their main feature was a long beige rectangle, and not the twin gray hexagons of TIE fighters.

There was a brief pause in the sounds of blaster fire, as the view out the window made the subtle transition from direct to ambient lighting as they entered the atmosphere; but sparse firing resumed amid the roar of the ship's engines, presumably from a couple fighters intent on pursuing them.

As the view leveled off from a straight dive, revealing a rainy gray sky and a cluster of colossal trees rising out of an island ahead, Sareena found her anxiety had become palpable. The artificial gravity had been specially enhanced precisely because Beril could operate at this speed, but the negligible shift in momentum meant Sareena's only physical indication of their direction was out the window...and the motion blur on the ocean below meant they were moving faster than she'd ever be comfortable with. It didn't help that the firing sounds were her only clue of pursuers. Next time she ran a mission, she was going to insist that readouts be available directly from the commander's chair.

It didn't take long to realize they were headed directly towards one of those gigantic trees. "Are you really—"

"Busy," Beril cut her off with a detached, but loud, tone.

As if on cue, the room shook violently with a soft boom, and the ship briefly lurched to the right.

"That was one of the port engines," came Ahsoka's level voice over the ship's comm. "I've compensated for now, but we better land soon."

"Got it," Beril responded. Sareena hadn't even noticed a reduction in speed...which spoke of both Ahsoka's skill and Beril's recklessness.

With a sharp counterclockwise motion that Sareena could almost feel, the view out front turned on its side, as the ship deftly flew just past the trunk of one gigantic tree, and narrowly avoiding another. Trees that until that moment, Sareena was unaware were many times larger than their ship. A series of explosions rang out behind them.

Followed by one to her left, violently shaking the entire ship around them.

"...and that was the other port engine," Ahsoka calmly reported. "Nice work splashing the patrol, but now we're landing soon whether we like it or not. Probably not."

"Options!" Sareena demanded, hoping the terror she was feeling didn't show.

"We crash," Ahsoka replied evenly, "or we crash with style."

"Style," Beril declared coldly.

With nothing she could do, Sareena clenched her mouth shut and watched the view ahead. Now that they were past the trees, it looked like the ship was racing parallel to the edge of a cliff, and slowly losing altitude and speed. The angle was wobbling unsteadily, but Sareena eventually recognized it as Beril manipulating the aerodynamics to eke out as much distance as possible. There was a trick the typical space pilot wouldn't know how to pull off.

The ship started veering to the right towards a beach near the face of a cliff, though Sareena couldn't see why. Judging from the placement of the wide-mouthed cave, there was no way the beach was long enough for them to—

Cave?

She wouldn't...what am I thinking, of course she would.

As the interior of the cave was lit by the activation of the ship's forward lights, Sareena gave up, closing her eyes and hoping Beril actually knew what she was doing.

It was only a second before the ship made contact, grinding and scraping and dragging and jumping against the ground. After a few seconds that felt like an eternity in an earthquake, the motions and sounds finally stopped.

Sareena consciously controlled her breathing to avoid hyperventilating, as she assessed her surroundings. Shattered screens, loose panels and emergency lighting aside; the cockpit seemed intact. Rian was undoing his seat restraints, the exterior lights still functioned, and the view out the window showed that they had stopped short of actually colliding head-on with the rock wall of the cave.

"Status report!" Sareena yelled once she had enough breath.

"Ready for duty," Rian reported. He looked disoriented, but that was to be expected.

"No harm done," Ahsoka said...causing Sareena to turn her head to verify that she had entered the cockpit. She didn't even look perturbed by the ordeal.

A snort issued from the pilot's seat. "I...am...awesome!" Beril declared in her usual energetic voice, which probably qualified as psychotic in this scenario.

"She has made worse landings," Rian admitted as Sareena undid her own seat restraints and went to check Beril's physical status.

"I give you a nine for the dive," Ahsoka said, "but a two for the landing."

"Whatever!" Beril protested.

Sareena sighed, trying to keep the situation in perspective. "As pleased as I am that we're all in good spirits, we don't have time to waste. Beril, you alright?"

"You mean besides my piloting being—"

"Beril!"

"Yes, I'm fine, sheesh!"

Apparently she was the only one still soaked in stress. "Sorry. Beril and Laani, you two triage the ship, see exactly what we have to work with. Rian and I will secure the perimeter in case someone else followed us here."

As fragments of ideas whirled through her mind, Sareena found one thought foremost past the immediate concerns: They were down half their engines before they hit the ground. If the ship couldn't be made spaceworthy, or at least airworthy, calling the crash a "complication" would be a ludicrous understatement.