In his quarters aboard the Independence, Kyle logged back in to FleetNet. All too soon he had no choice but to vindicate the Twi'leks in Intel. The timestamp of the High Command dispatch placed it early in the morning rotation, right when Kyle was beginning his med-eval aboard the Redemption. If it was a prank, it would have been scrubbed by now.

But it was no prank. It was real. The whole thing. FleetNet had exploded with discussion nodes on what was already being called the "Madine scandal." It was from these, rather than High Command's dispatch, that Kyle parsed some of the details.

Emphasis on some. Though he read until the glare of the datapad screen seared his eyes like plasma wash from a Jeron fusion cutter, his head whirled with progressively more and more questions, and a deep, remote part of him wasn't sure how badly he wanted the answers.

Major General Crix Madine, Alliance Special Forces, had most recently been posted on Kolaador, where a Rebel base was hidden among the crystalline mega-landforms. The facility housed several quick-strike units along with a sizable stockpile of weapons, but also doubled as a safe haven for refugees and for the families of Rebel personnel. Though Madine's primary duty there was to manage training and deployment of SpecForce units in the Outer Rim, he'd taken on additional responsibilities, including quartermaster, assistant chief of security, and deputy resettlement/acclamation officer.

It was the latter position that had given him direct access to the civilians.

Most pertinently the children.

High Command's dispatch had been frustratingly vague, citing only the regulations Madine had violated.

The discussion nodes were something else.

Someone with the user name Quamjet transmitted, Kolador base junior acclamation dept. assistant here. Im getting swamped by civvies, theyre absolutely furious. Ive been listening and filing testimonies all day, its horrifying. This man positioned himself like a kindly gentle uncle figuer to these children, picked up alot of slack in our dept. but he betrayed us, I can t believe this was going on for months and noone noticed, noone said anything. I dont know how Im going to sleep tonite.

There were seven or eight nodes like that, all started by people stationed at Kolaador Base, and constantly being bumped to the top by new subcomments. Once in a while a new node having nothing to do with Madine would appear on the feed, only to drop to the bottom like a stone falling into the bottomless mines of Gromas XVI.

A certain Joh_Thayn, whose avatar was a drawing of a kloo horn, transmitted this: I'm friends with one of the refugees. She's been taking her 8-year-old son to the counselors because he stopped speaking months ago for no obvious reason. Now she knows why. And she wants justice.

Not naming names (said RealGrondornMuse in another node) but I know someone from Intel at Kolaador Base, and they say Madine hacked people's code cylinders, altered security holocam footage, and changed work logs to cover up what he was doing. What are the implications for the Alliance's security systems if one man could do all that?

Kyle pushed out a breath. That was a very good question.

Better check his portcomp and datapads, one subcomment said.

Another account: This guy kept visiting the play-concourse. He'd chat with the parents, get them to introduce him to their kids. Gave them handfuls of tepasi taffy and mints, told them to call him Candy Man Crix. It seemed a little weird but I thought he was just good with kids. It didn't click with me that he preferred the refugee families, esp. the ones with no dad. Right now I hate myself for not realizing something was wrong. Am I the only one?

I was proud of my flight badges until today, said someone with a green Alliance Starbird for a profile, calling him- or herself Q_Krantian_OutterSky61. This kriffing boy-raping freak is the one who pinned them to my uniform and now I want to throw them in the kriffing garbage. Kml.

Somebody right under that said, GOLD SQUADRON PILOT HERE. LET ME TALK TO MY CO, WE'LL GO ON A CONVOY RAID OR SOMETHING. JUST LOAD MADINE INTO MY TORPEDO TUBE. PROBLEM SOLVED.

The longer the discussions went on, the more they resembled that last one... blind, screaming, and often grammar-torturing rage. Kyle found it annoying. In fact, he had always hated FleetNet. He almost never transmitted anything himself. Checking official information and updates was the only reason he had an account. He didn't know who was responsible, but allowing Alliance personnel to use this network for casual or recreational purposes was a terrible idea. How much time had the Rebellion's soldiers and pilots wasted, gossiping and transmitting stupid holovids back and forth? If you spent just a standard hour or two watching the feed, you'd think these people didn't even know they were at war.

As he waded through the sewers of subspace-digital sludge, Kyle managed to lock his mind into the same attitude he had when out on assignment. He was tense, all right, but his hands were steady and his eyes focused like tri-light laser sight. He was on recon, running a search pattern. All he wanted was the facts, actual details from people at Kolaador Base... but the nodes were flooded with commentary from across the Alliance Fleet, a tidal wave of disgust and anger and disbelief... and ignorance. The saturation multiplied with each passing hour, and Kyle was forced to dive deeper and deeper just to find the people who seemed to actually know what had happened.

It sure didn't help that High Command was apparently out to lunch. The official node announcing Madine's removal was still pinned to the top of FleetNet (bulging with over two thousand replies), but that was it. Apparently they still were not prepared to comment any further at this time.

One person demanded to know where Crix Madine was being held, and Who at Kolaador was helping him? Who the kriff was covering, who knew what he was doing and said nothing? Give me one standard hour alone with this schutta, and I'll have a list of names... And we'll know how the kriff to deal with them. Attached to the comment was a close-up of a Devaronian in an Alliance Army uniform, posing with his DH-17.

When Kyle glanced back at the same transmission a minute later, it was blank, but with a new subcomment attached. The handle was R5-Z1, preceded by a blue Starbird overshadowing a glowlamp. Most of the FleetNet monitors were droids. It read:

Attention: this transmission violated the FleetNet Terms of Use and the Code of Conduct. Threatening, intimidating, or harassing behavior is absolutely prohibited, whether explicit or implicit. Violators of this policy will be reported to their COs as well as High Command.

Better think twice before you transmit, meathead, thought Kyle. There's always somebody watching.


"Commander Murleen, please report to deck seven. Repeat, Commander Murleen, please report to..."

The voice from the intercom roared through the Independence's cavernous main concourse like a thunderous barrage of fusion rockets. Notwithstanding, the talker sounded like he was talking in his sleep. Kyle ignored it as he sauntered through the crowd, weaving between flight-suited pilots and grease-spattered technicians, warbling little R2 units and strutting starch-uniformed officers. Walkways stacked upon walkways towered on every side, beings and droids thronging between massive doors emblazoned with the Alliance crest. At every junction there were several smaller tertiary doors, frost-white and narrow.

If one was going to go through the concourse, there was no rougher time to do it than 0700 hours because everyone, meaning everyone, had somewhere to be at that time. Kyle jostled through his route undaunted, counting the sector markers and following the walking lines painted onto the gray mirrorchrome floor. He was locked on to a certain tertiary door just a thermal detonator's throw away. At 0703 that door would open—

Which it did, and out strode the one being who, alone among the nearly seven thousand aboard the Alliance flagship, out of the countless thousands and millions of Rebel soldiers, pilots, and operatives fighting the Empire across the galaxy, Kyle Katarn privately had to admit this one might just be his equal. Not so much in brawn, but in brains and in spirit, which even a rough-edged son of a ruskakk like him knew counted more than anything.

The face of Jan Ors was lovely and keen, dynamic in every way that Kyle's was chiseled and unyielding. If you were good enough for her, her smile would put repulsorlifts on your feet. Piss her off, and she could castrate you with a look. She was shapely and athletic, with a runner's legs, and her silky dark hair, knotted into a ponytail, whipped behind her as she marched. Long cream-colored sleeves, a brown combat vest and pants, and merqaal hide boots were her most common garb. A glove sheathed the durasteel of her cybernetic right hand.

Kyle came in on her three, spun, and fell in beside her as smoothly as he would bring the Moldy Crow into a fleet formation. The look Jan gave him was dangerous. "Just got back from the Redemption, huh?"

"No, it was last night. Sorry I didn't com. I guess I lost track of time."

"You never forget to call me when you're in trouble."

That was true, and it stung. On his assignments, extraction points were almost always hot, and no matter how bad it was—whether Imperial troopers and walkers hemming him in, or a flight of TIEs screaming in from above—Jan had never let him down. Not once. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Jan glanced at him. The hardness in her eyes was gone, and only now did Kyle notice the dark circles beneath them. "I wasn't free anyway. Intel kept us until 0100 decoding packets from the Cron pipeline."

Kyle frowned as they skirted around a hoversled full of equipment. The driver honked his alarm liberally. "You're still working on that?"

"We've been slowed down by some assignment rotations," she admitted. "The new guys from Klatooine aren't all settled in yet."

She didn't elaborate, and Kyle let it go. Mechanically, he told her how his visit to the Redemption had gone. But when that was done, sure as a black hole would draw in a quasar, the conversation was drawn to Crix Madine.

"It's awful," Jan said. "Just awful. Nobody would stop talking about it yesterday. It's all over the FleetNet, and I keep getting e-mails from people asking about it—as if I know anything special just because I'm in Intelligence. No, I'm with the Alliance Fleet. I only ever met Crix Madine once, when he defected a year ago, I don't know anybody at Kolaador Base..." She shook her head. "I don't know what's wrong with people, maybe it's just me, but... But from the way everyone's flapping their drag fins, it's almost like they're excited. Like they're happy that Crix's been mixed up in this."

Kyle nodded as he listened. He'd been up almost as late as Jan, sifting through FleetNet until his eyes felt like scrambled iridium mountain gorg eggs, and a lot of subcomments hadgiven him the same impression. A certain nonzero percentage of the Alliance's rank-and-file seemed disturbingly interested in the Madine case. From the tone of their transmissions, it was hard not to think that they somehow relished it—relished in expressing their disgust and outrage. It struck Kyle as bizarre. He'd never seen anything like it on FleetNet before... Meanwhile, reports on Imperial abuses and atrocities were coming in almost every day—new planets occupied, settlements razed, non-humans enslaved, onerous taxes and regulations imposed, liberties stripped away. Weren't those enough? Why was it different with Madine?

Jan wasn't quite making sense, though. "What do you mean, mixed up in this?" asked Kyle. "Do you think he's innocent?"

Jan hung her head as though to consult her mirror image in the polished floor, then led Kyle to the nearby wall, through one of the white doors. The tech room inside was deserted, but someone had left the imagecaster table on. There was little light except the ocean-blue glow of some starship schematic floating in the ether. The smell of some freshly-sprayed cleaning agent irritated Kyle's nose.

Jan took a deep breath and spoke. "I don't know what I think. I... I want him to be innocent. I really, really want him to be." She gazed up at Kyle with eyes deep and pleading, as if he was some higher being with the power to undo this awful revelation, to alter reality and make her denial into truth. As he glimpsed the hurt in Jan's face, the hurt she so often hid away, Kyle wished that he was.

"Crix is a hero," she went on. "He's done so much for the Rebellion. Hell, just you and me, we owe him big for helping us take down Mohc. All the lives he risked himself to save, the good things he did..."

"He did terrible things too, for the Empire," Kyle had to point out. "The storm commandos were his project. And he helped deploy the Candorian plague on Dentaal. Wiped out that whole planet."

"That's... not the same," Jan said after a heartbeat. "Following orders, killing people you think are the enemy—and even something like Dentaal, rigging up some chemical bombs and then pulling out... That's something a good man can rationalize. He knows that it's wrong, but he can silence the voice inside that tells him that and go ahead, even knowing it'll cost him... cost part of his soul. Crix didn't see the people that plague killed, not up close. Even then it finally turned him against the Empire. It was what drove him to defect. I can't believe that he would do those— Those things. To little innocent children."

Rage simmered in her, impossible to contain completely. The cramped tech room forced them so close together that Kyle could feel Jan's heat even through his blast jacket. "I don't want to believe it either," he said, remembering the shuttle ride from the Redemption, the datapad in his strangling grip. "But it's not looking good for him. There's a whole lot of chatter coming out of Kolaador Base, lots of people who seem to have evidence against him. I read Cracken himself's heading the investigation," he added, though he supposed Jan knew this already. General Airen Cracken was the Chief of Alliance Intelligence. "I've got to believe he'll get to the bottom of it."

"He will," Jan said, "but I wonder if he'll ever figure out why. Why Crix did it, if he is guilty. It's so cruel, so senseless... The man has got to be insane. Crazy."

"Yeah—crazy," murmured Kyle, but his eyes shifted aside. Somehow the words tasted wrong. What's more, in the past day he'd suddenly had a lot of memories crowding his thoughts. Stuff he hadn't thought about in months or even years. Moments from Vergesso and Orinackra, even from Sulon, the moon where he had grown up the son of a farmer.

Jan checked her wrist chrono. "Need to move, Kyle. I've got a briefing in ten."

"Right."

She left her anxiety there in that tech room.. Out in the bustling concourse, she was back to the durasteel-tough freedom fighter that Kyle had first glimpsed, and found so uncannily captivating, when he'd first laid eyes on her... even though that had been during a raid that he had led on a Rebel asteroid base called AX-456, before his defection from the Empire.

War was a funny thing, all right.

"Hopefully they don't keep you too late again," he told her as they hustled along, unsure of what else to say. "The Moldy Crow's still getting worked on, but I have nothing else to do. Mon Mothma's still got nothing for me—and lost time is lost credits."

Jan grinned at him. "Well in that case, why don't you come with me? I'm sure Intel can come up with something for you to do..."

"What, staring at code ciphers and messing with comm equipment all day? I'd rather dip myself in nerf lard and wrestle with a rock-viper."

Kyle wasn't kidding, but Jan rolled her eyes and laughed. "Of course you would, Rimmer."

"Say we try for dinner again? 1900?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

Kyle very nearly smiled for the first time that morning.