The first month or so of their confinement aboard Silencer Station, Cray and Nichos had worked together on the tasks that had been forced upon them. Nichos' degeneration had made that more and more difficult, but there were still days that he felt strong enough to help for hours at a time. The muscular tasks he could no longer do, even on his good days, but Cray relied on him heavily for programming and debugging, so Nichos dug deep and found the strength he needed to help.

She worked so hard, and he would not let her work alone. Especially not now, when they were fighting to find ways to keep up their appearance of usefulness… while still looking for ways to sabotage the Empire. As of now, he noted, their code passed muster with the programs, but it was elegantly obtuse, rickety, and rife with repeating errors. The longer it ran, the worse it would work.

He needed, he added silently to himself, to find a way to ensure that Cray would survive. Because Nichos Marr would find a way for her to survive. He would.

His fiancé's workspace, such as it was, was a far cry from the expensive, expansive, and immaculate facilities they had at the Magrody Institute. While Silencer Station had grown, the space allotted to her work had not, and the shelves were littered with old, failed prototypes. It had originally belonged to a scientist named Bevel Lemelisk and been built to his specifications… though Cray assumed that the locks on the outside, and the vents linked to canisters of anesthetic gas, had not been part of his original design.

Now the center of the serpentine conduits, lab benches, and spartan seats was a simple chair, moderately cushioned and with high armrests. A monitor was affixed to one of the armrests, providing a conduit that the Silencer Station AI could use to send command information to the person in the chair. Above the chair, in a little rack that Nichos had built on a "good day" of greater physical strength and coordination, sat the command interface prototype that had not failed.

It wasn't much to look at. It had the appearance of a typical blast-shield helmet, with protection for the eyes, but on the inside of the shield were additional monitors and an array of neural-links which would allow instant mental commands to the station's AI, and instant feedback from that AI. It was a masterpiece of cybernetic technology, a melding of the merely human with the massively artificial.

Emperor-in-waiting Irek Ismaren sat nervously in the chair. A teenager who had not yet reached full human maturity, there were times that Irek looked even younger than that. He was of slightly-above-average height, with black hair and blue eyes—eyes that had a tendency to follow Cray as she moved, Nichos noted with a small amount of amusement.

The Emperor was accompanied by a pair of towering droids, of the same kind that Nichos had seen with the Emperor Regent. The DT-model assassin droid was being produced in large numbers now, and was an increasingly common sight aboard the station. He and Cray hadn't had many unobserved moments they could use to plot sabotage, but he was sure that she had also spent hours considering it. But, unless she had come up with a plan more creative than his—not an unlikely possibility—they simply didn't have any good options.

Killing Irek would be much easier, but Nichos wasn't sure what it would accomplish. It would be easy, though, to sabotage Cray's interface and use it to overload the teenager's synapses…

"I want to try again," Irek said, the depth of his voice mature even as the tone was not. He seized the interface and placed it on his head, turning to sit on the command chair. He was too small for it—it had been sized for Cray, and she was taller than Irek was—and Nichos was struck by just how small he looked in that chair. Like a child playing dress-up, he thought. A very dangerous child, playing with very dangerous toys.

He should try a different tack first, before resorting to murder, Nichos decided.

Irek pushed with a thought and the screens on the interior of the helmet blinked to illuminated life. Sudden rows of text scrolled across the screen, far too quick for Irek to follow, and a sudden sense of pressure was all around him, as if the helmet was contracting around his skull. There was a sense of crackling static in his ears and nose and mouth and Irek's body arched back in the chair, almost lifting up as his arms pressed hard to the armrests, his fists going suddenly taut.

He felt the urge to scream and bit it back, nearly biting on his tongue instead, and tore the helmet from his head. His eyes were squeezed shut but he could still see explosions of light on the inside of his eyelids.

When he was finally able to open his eyes, he stared angrily at Cray. She had recovered the thrown interface and was examining it for damage. "Why won't it work!" he snarled.

Cray shook her head. "It works for me, at least to establish a connection," she said, sounding puzzled more than scared—or ashamed for her failure. "The helmet itself is working, so the problem must be connecting to the Silencer AI," she mused. "But why would I be able to make the connection while he can't?"

The question was not intended for Irek. Nichos Marr coughed. Slumped in a couch to the side of the room, the crippled scientist was contemptibly weak, and Irek wasn't sure why Cray insisted on bringing him to their sessions. "Let me see the error report," he said feebly, his voice hoarse.

If a stun blast could have such a dire effect on him, Irek thought sourly, he can't have long to live.

Cray handed Nichos a datapad, then helped him hold it when he proved unable to keep his grip. Irek watched, with mounting annoyance. "Is there a point to this?"

"Nichos and I are a team," Cray said, with patience that bordered on condescending. "And when it comes to debugging, it's always a good idea to have a second pair of eyes—"

"There," Nichos said weakly. "Line forty-seven ninety-eight."

He slumped back against the couch; Cray laid him down gently, then straightened. As usual, Nichos was struck by the slender beauty of the woman. But she was silent, intently reading, and he grew impatient. "What does it say?"

"Nichos is right, the problem isn't with the interface," Cray said. "The connection is being rejected by the Silencer AI."

"Why would it reject me and not you?" Irek complained. "I'm the Emperor!"

"It wouldn't let me give it commands because I'm not the Emperor," Cray pointed out. "So it's something about making the initial connection."

"You said," Nichos wheezed weakly, "that Roganda told you that the Force was required for the connection?"

That caused Irek's head to lift. He stared at Cray, seeing her suddenly in an entirely new light. "You're Force sensitive?"

Cray shrugged helplessly. "I don't even know what that means, much less how it could help commanding an AI." She shook her head. "I'll be right back. I need another cup of caf."

The workspace had an adjoining office with a caf machine. Irek was still grappling with the idea that Cray was Force sensitive as she vanished through the door. She's Force sensitive?

His mother had taught him many things, but the most important thing was that he was special. They were special. They had a gift, one denied to most people in the galaxy. One that made them better. The Force was all the power of the galaxy, distilled into a form that could be accessed by those worthy of its power… and Irek and his mother were worthy.

"I think," said Nichos weakly from his place, prone on the couch. "That you too can use the interface, if you have the right perspective."

The interruption was unwelcome, and Irek turned a scornful gaze on Nichos. It was wasted on the man, whose eyes were closed and breaths came slow. Annoyed, Irek pouted. "And what is that supposed to mean?"

"The Force is not just a matter of power," Nichos sighed, sounding exhausted but determined, "but also a matter of focus. Do you know how to listen?"

"What do you mean, listen?" Irek asked, curious despite himself. What could this man know of the Force? "I am Emperor. If there is any listening to be done it is people hearing my wishes and carrying them out!"

Nichos just nodded blandly. "Empty your mind," he encouraged. "Don't think of your desires or your needs. Empty yourself of those things. Then activate the interface."

If this didn't work, Irek thought sourly, he might just kill the man. But… he returned to the command chair and placed himself back upon it. Closing his eyes, he did his best to clear his mind; he found it was easier with Cray not in the room. Then he reached and put the command interface on his head.

Electricity once more crackled around him, tingling over his skin. His hair went frizzy and the pressure started to build, filling his ears and nose and brain. His heartbeat went rapid as the lines of text scrolled before his eyes, flashing, and he felt a sense of sudden invasion and presence, his brain recoiling, almost fighting against it—

And then it all stopped. Pain receded back to pressure, and the text scroll slowed to a stop.

COMMAND INTERFACE ESTABLISHED. SILENCER-7 AWAITING INTERLINK.

The words gleamed in green against a black background and sudden, joyous success roared through him. "Yes!"

He wasn't sure if he'd said the word aloud. He thought he heard talking, somewhere in another life, but he was laser-focused on commanding the Silencer AI, for it would make him Emperor in truth, and not just in name.

Show me!

The system hesitated for a moment, parsing that order. He realized, belatedly, that he needed to be more precise in his commands. A map of the system appeared, with the label K-3-947. The system's star was in the middle, and Silencer-7 was marked over the fifth planet, slowly consuming it for resources. TIE Droids were dotted over the map by the squadron, though most of them had been taken by Halmere for his assault on Poln Major.

Automated, droid-commanded transports streaked across the system occasionally. The system indicated that they were carrying necessary supplies from Entralla and other Imperial military bases.

In the back of his mind was a twinge. His brain took a moment to interpret it, and then he recognized it was an alert conveyed through the command interface. He wasn't sure how to respond to it, and it took him another minute to figure out how to use the interface to bring up more information.

On the map in front of him appeared a new symbol. A slightly elongated triangle, it was labeled Invincible. As it grew closer, it started to blink red, and a small status alert marked it as HEAVILY DAMAGED.

The sprawling halls of Silencer Station were dark and maze-like on purpose. Irek was not intimidated by the DT-model droids that were responsible for the Emperor-Regent's protection; they had, after all, been designed specifically to serve his mother and himself, and graven into their circuits were commands that would prohibit them from ever doing him harm, no matter what Halmere might intend.

Anger mixed together with an intense desire to gloat. Halmere had taken their fleet—twelve Star Destroyers was a not insignificant amount of the New Order's strength—and had lost almost all of them. No doubt his mother would take Halmere to task for his failures when she returned, but until then, Irek was Emperor.

He did not wait for the door to open. Using his override code, he commanded it to do so, and it obeyed. Striding into the Emperor-Regent's private quarters, he stopped in sudden surprise as he entered and found himself in a space utterly unlike anything he had expected.

A lavish apartment, perhaps, with ancient Sith artifacts, not unlike the rooms his mother maintained. Or a room fit for royalty, like those he had observed in his younger years.

Instead, he stood in a small-scale planetarium. The space was largely spherical, lit darkly, and filling the space was a holo-projection of the galaxy. Mostly a disk that captured the galactic plane, it also had extra-galactic objects and numerous, gray lines of varying widths that connected star systems. He could see where those lines coincided, and realized that those locations were key star systems, like Coruscant and Corellia, and the lines were hyperlanes. Some of the thinner lines constantly flickered, in and out.

An arm clamped around Irek's neck and he flailed in surprise. He was jerked backwards, his head knocking against Halmere's armored form. Flailing, he grabbed at Halmere's arm, but a second arm locked around him, holding him in place, pressure growing on his neck. "Hasn't your mother taught you not to enter where you are not welcome, boy?"

Panicked and furious—how dare Halmere lay a hand on him!—Irek lashed out with the Force. Rage fed his power and the burst of telekinesis exploded out from him, breaking Halmere's grip. But Halmere's footing was steadier, and instead of blowing the Emperor-Regent backwards, as he had intended, Irek found himself flung forwards, flying through the hologram of the Galactic East with a staticky fuzz towards the far well.

Blue lights flared in front of his gaze, dazzling his vision as his head passed through the Bothan sector. Momentarily blind, Irek reached out into the Force, abandoning his senses. His hand moved without thought, guided to perfectly deflect one of Halmere's fists, but he moved too slow to block the second, which slammed into his stomach and drove the breath out of his lungs.

Irek doubled over, gasping for air.

A thick arm snaked up around his neck once more and he was wrenched backwards, thudding against Halmere's chest. Scared and stunned, he kept his eyes closed—the hologram of the galaxy was still projected at near eye-level, and opening them was searing. "Was there something you wanted from me, my Emperor?" Halmere growled contemptuously into his ear.

It might, Irek reflected as he gasped weakly for breath, be best not to antagonize Halmere by commanding that he sanitize his mouth. "I have… succeeded…" he managed to husk, panting for shallow breaths, "in… issuing detailed commands… to Silencer-7…"

He realized, belatedly, telling Halmere this might not be the best idea. As the Emperor-Regent's iron-muscled arm clenched harder around his neck, ridding him of the ability to take even shallow breaths, it occurred to him that Halmere might interpret his words as a threat. The world started to turn black and he tried, again, to use the Force to free himself, and for a moment he thought he succeeded when he collapsed to the floor like a gaffed fish.

He took a single full breath, then swiveled to slam his leg into Halmere's midsection with a rising kick. His unarmored leg struck Halmere's apronlike cuirass, and his plans and anger dissolved into a shock of pain.

Halmere stood over him, his cold blue eyes burning like frozen fire. "Your mother has made a lot of promises, boy. Promises to me. Promises to you. Promises to the Moffs, and promises to herself, about what she can do, and about what you can do." One hand reached down and Irek was yanked to his feet roughly. "So far she has kept none of them. She promised the Empire that Silencer-7 would turn the war in our favor. She promised that it would build us a fleet and an army that would defeat the New Republic. Her failures have given us defeat after defeat." Halmere's hand gripped Irek's jaw and tilted his face up. "You say you can command Silencer-7? Good. Now give me the TIEs I was promised a year ago."

A burst of Force-power pushed Irek towards the exit. Humiliated and furious, he considered turning back to challenge Halmere once again… but something in his gut, something in the Force, told him that if he did, he would not be leaving this room alive. He started to move towards the exit.

"Boy."

Irek stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

"I knelt with Vader at Palpatine's feet," Halmere said flatly, his pale blue, almost white eyes staring at Irek with the ferocity of daggers. "I know what his power was like. His was superior."

A half-dozen retorts flashed through Irek's mind, but that nagging sense of danger, of acute danger, did not pass. He did not nod. He did not say a word. He merely turned, and left.

Once he was safely outside, his pace quickened to a near-run, and Halmere's DT Droids stood silent sentinel over his flight—unable, or unwilling, to protect him from his own regent.

Roganda Ismaren landed in a small, out of the way hangar on Nar Shaddaa, deep in what had, in archaic times, been the Industrial Sector. Now several thousand years removed from its heyday, the Industrial Sector was a hodgepodge of poverty, homelessness, and destitution. Even the smugglers endemic to Nar Shaddaa—the 'Smuggler's Moon'—usually avoided the Industrial Sector. There was simply no reason to go there.

The only reason to so much as set down was if you were conducting a business deal that you wanted to remain completely secret, or if you were one of the unfortunate sentients who had found themselves trapped on Nar Shaddaa without credits or the means to make credits. The only industry left was a flourishing, underground hydroponics sector who produced just enough to feed the locals and make a few of them petty monarchs of the destitute.

That was all right with Roganda Ismaren. She respected those industrious enough to rise to the top of their own little dungheaps. That took strength and guts.

She didn't need to worry about a crew. Roganda had never worried about a crew. During her time as Emperor's Hand, she had always managed on her own. Crews were liabilities. They were traitors in waiting, or incompetent; the Empire was filled with such things. Only she'd had the Emperor's true trust, she knew… and because of that, he had always supplied her with agents she could trust.

The metal of her small army of droids was painted black. Constructed anew by Silencer-7—another droid, programmed to be loyal to the Empire and to her personally—her DTs were an advanced design based on the ones the Emperor had once provided her. Untraceable, lethal assassin droids, the DTs had been her protectors and her agents, and she would settle for nothing less than perfection.

Once she had the artifact she sought and her army was complete, the loyalty of the Empire would be completely assured. She and Irek would rule, never needing to worry about the ambition of a Tarkin, the obsession of an Isard, or the dithering cowardice of a Pellaeon.

The combat droid she had designated as her aide-de-camp, DT-130, made an unintelligible sound, and then dinged once. The second sound was one she had programmed into the droid to tell her when she had received a message via the HoloNet. Now that they were on the ground, her transport had automatically linked to the Y'Toub System's HoloNet node. A second ding—this one slightly lower in pitch, and drawn out for a full second—indicated that the message in question was from Irek.

She smiled. He was so well-mannered, her son. The Jedi had been wrong about the importance of proper breeding—their insistence that Jedi not bear children had been one of the Order's greatest weaknesses, especially given that Force-strength was often inherited—but they had been exactly right about the importance of training from birth. She had been trained by the Jedi from birth, after all, and those lessons about discipline and serenity had not been entirely misguided. So many of the young Inquisitors—like that whelp Brakiss—had lacked the early Jedi training, and it showed.

Her son appeared on the flatscreen. His expression immediately killed her good spirits—he was flat and emotionless, as he often was when bearing bad news. "Mother, the Emperor Regent took our fleet and attacked Poln Major," he said, without preamble. "He was forced to retreat with heavy losses. Both the fleet and the TIE droids performed abysmally. I will take personal responsibility for persuading our resident cyberneticists to ensure that our TIE Droids perform better in the future."

Roganda's fist clenched until her knuckles went white. Anger—not rage, not yet, she would not give into the rage that boiled in her stomach until she had a target deserving of it—lit bright in her heart. Halmere, you fool.

The self-destructive moron.

Halmere was capable enough. His Force talents were acceptable, and he was competent… within his area of expertise. But he had always been a second, never the leader. As an apprentice he had failed to earn the attention of a Master, as an Inquisitor he had lived for years in Tremayne's shadow, and after Endor he had languished as Jerec's administrator, while Jerec (like Roganda) sought ancient artifacts and places of power that he could use to impose his will. Now they were both dead, and that left Halmere—poor, timid Halmere—despite his size and outward mein and mantle of manly warrior strength as the leader of the Inquisitors.

Halmere had always been capable. He could administrate. He could oversee. He could manage. But he could not lead. Roganda, you fool, she thought to herself bitterly. You knew you still needed him, and still you let your contempt get the better of you. You drove him to this with your needling.

She relaxed her fist and reminded herself that it didn't matter. If she could find the Emperor's prize on Nar Shaddaa then she would not need Halmere. She would not need the Empire and all those competing egos and biological inefficiencies that had ground it to a juddering halt. All she would need was Irek and her droids; their loyalty and their competence was unquestioned and unquestionable. She would be the Empire.

As if expecting that thought, Irek told her exactly what she wanted to here when she resumed the message. "I have good news as well. I have successfully activated the Silencer-7 command interface. It is only a matter of time before I have mastered it."

The breath Roganda released was one she had not realized she was holding. Had been holding, in fact, for quite a long time. Irek's inability to issue commands to the Silencer-7 AI had been an inconvenience, but not a deadly one. Once she delivered the seed, once she accomplished that final merger between the technology of the Empire and the ancient secrets of the Dark Side of the Force, she was not fully sure what Silencer-7 would become. The Emperor had intended to command it himself, and Roganda had always needed Irek to ensure its obedience to her will.

He had finally succeeded and she was on the verge of finding the seed. All was provenance.

The transmission died, and Roganda gave a small nod of approval. Her son seldom bothered to end messages with any empty platitudes.

"Acknowledge receipt of message," she said in her flat, Coruscanti accent. "Tell the boy to treat the woman and the cripple gently; they will break if too firm a hand is applied and their expertise is still necessary. And give him my personal congratulations for his success. Then we hunt."

The depths of the old Industrial sector were dark. This part of Nar Shaddaa had never undergone the extensive renovations of a few thousand years before, which had cleared out old buildings and brought much of the moon closer to its true surface. Here the towers were clustered even closer together, and the closer to the ground you got, the more they became an interlocking maze. Old, decrepit buildings, wall to wall, block to block, filled with destitute and dangerous wildlife and old, still vital planetary utilities systems maintained by droids constantly fighting back that wildlife. She could look up and see old lighting systems which had long since lost their glow. Without that glow there was almost no light at all, and no natural light. This far down, the natural, orangish-brown sky of Nar Shaddaa was entirely invisible, and there was no real distinction between "outside" and "inside." It reminded her a bit of the maze-like interior of the depths of Silencer-7.

Her droid companions were unbothered by it. Roganda actually found the entire experience… invigorating. She had always enjoyed the hard work of archaeological endeavour. The Emperor's assignments had never been burdens—she expected that was why he had chosen her, why she had been the one given these assignments which now would define both her future, and that of the galaxy—but glorious puzzles to solve. Even when she had been a child, with the Jedi Order, she had enjoyed puzzles, and the multitude of Force-manipulation games put aside for the younglings had been a perpetual joy.

This puzzle would take her some time to solve, she knew. But she had the time.

She started by narrowing her search. As best she could tell, the object she had found amongst the ruins of Drommund Kaas had been recovered from Nar Shaddaa. Further research had provided little in the way of precise information, but ancient records had pointed her towards the Industrial District, and to the likelihood that the best indication that she was getting close to her quarry would be territorial droids. Droids were common in the Industrial District—the Hutts utilized small armies of them, and mercenaries, to routinely travel down and clear out threats to the extensive, ancient infrastructure near the ground—but most of those droids had missions that it was easy to identify. This team of droids was specifically defending an old water filtration plant. That team of droids was responsible for the power generator that was still used, despite its age, to provide energy to much of the neighboring districts. So what she was looking for was droids—without—an obvious mission.

Granted, that wasn't enough to narrow her search entirely. Some of the teams of droids had been sent by Hutts a few centuries before, or even longer. With a few maintenance units, they could in theory sustain themselves almost indefinitely. She found a small cadre of droids which was still defending a building which had no apparent purpose. The droids were old, but not so ancient that their designs were unrecognizable, so Roganda had been pretty sure they weren't what she was looking for… and indeed, once her own combat droids had cleared the building, she'd found them defending what had once been a luxury apartment, with a well-protected safe. She hadn't bothered to look inside.

Days later, and much deeper down into the district, her scout droids gave the first indication of something truly interesting. A surveillance droid—a floating unit, small and inconspicuous but one that her own modern units spotted with relative ease—kept watch on her team as it had cleared one of the buildings. Intrigued, she ordered her droids to clear other nearby buildings, and note when they were watched and when they were ignored. Then, as she continued to explore the buildings around the ones that were watched, her team reported two surveillance droids… and then three.

She tracked them back to the midl-levels of a particular structure. This was one of the older buildings—Hutt records suggested at least seven thousand years—and it appeared to be comparatively well-maintained, with no sign of serious structural flaws… which was interesting, given that it had received no maintenance to speak of. It was also enormous, a sprawling structure which linked into a network with a dozen other buildings, she she continued to narrow her search. Once they were inside the surveillance droids had vanished—perhaps whatever intelligence governed them realized that she had been following them back to their source—but that was alright. Her team of combat droids was more than capable of searching the entire building, and with their power sources they could operate autonomously day or night without need for rest.

It had been an unexpected surprise when her aide droid beeped an alert at her. "Combat engagement reported," her datapad announced, complete with a red exclamation and a summary.

"Where?" she asked, tapping the device. Dutifully, it responded that one of her search teams had been attacked while examining one of the corridors in the building she was searching. Right that moment there was a battle going on between her modern unit and a team of droids. The datapad provided schematics, but they weren't anything she recognized… and that was good. "Come with me," she ordered her aide. "Send reinforcements. Tell them I want that corridor searched!"

When she got there herself, she found herself in the middle of a furious blaster battle. Her DT droids marched into the corridor, their armor protecting them from the blaster fire coming their way, but not entirely. Several units were damaged, and several others had been destroyed. Scattered in the corridor were the metal corpses of their foes, slain in much greater numbers. She used the Force to take one of the metal bodies out of the line of fire to examine it; her aide droid stood watch, blaster at the ready.

Linking back to her ship, which was connected to Nar Shaddaa's HoloNet node, she began a slow query back to the Ubiqtorate base on Yaga Minor, which hosted all of the Empire's records. That would probably take hours, so instead of waiting she examined the droid herself. She knew quite a lot about droids—she was no cyberneticist, but her preference for assured loyalty meant that she insisted on maintaining her units herself, and was familiar with contemporary models and maintenance. These droids had numerous systems designs that were completely archaic. She could parallel them to modern designs—that must be a power generator, and this must be a primary motivator—but beyond that, they were opaque.

"I think we have found it," she said to her aide.

DT-130 beeped with satisfaction.

"Bring all units here," she ordered. "Tell them to fight on."

Six hours later, she had become sure of two things. First, she was definitely in the right place. Second, she may not have brought enough droids.

Her units were decimating the enemy with relative ease. But they never stopped coming. Her droids had pushed them back farther and farther, deeper and deeper into the bowels of the structure they defended… towards the artifact that Roganda was sure was driving them. But as many as she destroyed, there were more still coming, and her forward units announced that their numbers had abruptly doubled.

An artifact that could create an endless army of droids, she reminded herself, bitterly self-castigating. An endless army, Roganda. But you didn't believe that it would create that army here and now, before you even had it in your hands! You were a fool.

If Halmere found out about this, he would humiliate her. She wouldn't even be able to hold his debacle at Poln Major against him. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment at the thought. "Retreat," she ordered her aide, wanting to preserve as much as her combat power as she could while she came up with a new plan. There must be some construction facility hidden away, some power generation source—maybe that generator that was still powering the nearby district was also providing power here.

Her droids obeyed, falling back in an orderly retreat. Perfectly coordinated and timed, they did not flee as men would, panicked and confused. They kept up constant fire, slaying the enemy droids by the score as they fell back. But the enemy droids kept coming, kept coming in even greater numbers… and even after they had retreated to the point where combat had first begun, they did not stop.

Roganda found herself cursing as she ducked blaster fire. She was a capable fighter, anyone who was Palpatine's chosen Hand was a capable fighter, but that had never been her true purpose and she had no business trying to fight off an army of droids! The Rangers at Belsavis had taught her to fight with any weapon at her disposal, but their emphasis had always been on hand-to-hand combat and running to survive. She fired her blaster as she fell back, her aide following her loyally, always keeping its bulk between her and the enemy. Luckily, the enemy did not seem interested in her personally, its attention consumed with hunting down and destroying her smaller droid army. Leaving her aide behind to cover her escape, she returned to her airspeeder and jetted into the sky, silently cursing her own stupidity.

Below, the unleashed army of droids finished exterminating her DTs… and then, it started hunting new prey.