The Mubon system had been charted by scouts of the Galactic Republic some six thousand years before the destruction of the Death Star at the Battle of Yavin, and settled by an expedition from the Corellian system a few centuries later. As a result of one of the Alsakan Conflicts, ancient wars which had repeatedly plagued the Old Republic, Corellia ceded control of their outlying colony to Hosnian Prime (one of just three times they ever gave up a colonial possession in those wars). The ordinary citizens of the Hosnian system cared very little for their new possession, and as a result the denizens of the Mubon system's various worlds, most of whom were descendants of the original freethinking Corellian colonists, were largely left to their own devices.
This arrangement worked out well for a long time. The Mubon system, as a Hosnian possession, lacked representation in the Galactic Senate, and only sent delegates to the Hosnian government. By the time of the Clone Wars, Hosnian Prime had essentially abandoned the Mubon system to the pirate gangs which roamed the Outer Rim Territories.
The passions of Separatism did not burn in the hearts of the system's inhabitants and the Mubon system was spared the worst of the fighting, though an isolated skirmish halfway through the war did take place. After the end of the Clone Wars, the system's citizens welcomed soldiers of the new Empire, who chased away the troublesome pirate gangs and created a long-absent feeling of security. The Mubon system was close enough to important trade routes to merit a constant, if not really all that large, Imperial presence. The various governors who had managed the system since the end of the Clone Wars ruled with a soft enough touch that none of the system's inhabitants were provoked into supporting first the early anti-Imperial resistance cells, and later the Rebel Alliance. Word of Imperial brutality elsewhere trickled into the solar system, sure, but only through word-of-mouth, and therefore slowly. There was order without oppression and business was good under the Galactic Empire, so what reason did the people have to upset this beneficial arrangement?
Ferb Fletcher had arrived in the Mubon system. His destination was Ivort 4, a moon of the gas giant Ivort Prime, which had somewhere between one and two million inhabitants.
Ferb worked as an independent contract hauler, using the YT-series freighter he had stolen from Kamino (now registered with the Imperial Space Ministry, under the new name Sunspring, to Ferb's invented alias "Coryn Polo'') to carry freight to wherever the job required. His reason for being on Ivort 4 was delivering a cargo of dental equipment to a distribution center in Mann City that sold medical supplies to isolated clinics which serviced the mining settlements and farmsteads in the moon's outback.
After the cargo had been unloaded, he went to the tiny bar open to the concourse and ordered a nerfsteak and a Photon fizzle. He wasn't really sure what he was doing-just waiting around. The months since his escape from the Empire on Kamino had been spent aimlessly wandering the hyperlanes with AZI-3, taking on whatever odd jobs they could and avoiding the heavily-populated, major worlds lest Darthenshmirtz's agents capture him again.
He had dyed his hair and begun cutting it regularly to keep it shorter; Ferb Fletcher's hair had naturally been green and scruffy, but the hair of "Coryn Polo" was brown and neat. He was practicing changing his easily-recognizable Core Worlds accent, and had even considered a risky procedure to change his eye color.
After altering the ship's transponder code himself and bribing a guild official on Ord Mantell to change the ship's name in the Imperial registry, Ferb had the hull of the newly-christened Sunspring painted in green livery. After all of that he had burned through the last of his credit stash, which had been the contents of the previous captain's lockbox and money stolen from Kan Be's thugs on Kamino. He had started taking small jobs after that.
Ferb watched the main concourse in the spaceport while he ate his meal. Across the way two officers of the Mann City Spaceport Police talked with an Imperial Navy Trooper. Nearby, three human spacers were conversing with a three-legged, four-eyed alien belonging to a species Ferb didn't recognise.
Two Delphidans, a human, and a Bravasian were sitting at the table to the right of Ferb, while the one to the left of him was occupied by a lone Ithorian trader. The final table, the one closest to the bar, was taken by a tall, kindly-faced human man with light skin and bushy hair. A Rodian and a few humans were sitting at the bar itself, making no conversation with each other or the green-skinned barmaid. An officer of the Spaceport Police walked past and paused to look at them. Ferb became tense, but relaxed when she continued her patrol.
Ferb had felt so confident during his escape from Kamino. Darthenshmirtz, and Diminutive, Lieutenant Yaami and Colonel Crefet, all of those war-droids and Stormtroopers, Kan Be and his gangsters, even the creepy Perry clones and the Inquisitors-none of them had been a challenge. It was very odd when he thought about it now- at his age he would be a mere apprentice to some Jedi Master were the Jedi not all but extinct.
He and AZI-3 had spent the first week after escaping extragalactic Kamino (once they'd taken the freighter down the Zareca String, past Rishi, and back into the main galaxy) in the middle of deep space, far from any inhabited systems. The freighter hadn't needed repairs-the smugglers who'd had it before him must have employed a good mechanic-but Ferb wanted to go through it himself and make sure everything was working.
AZI had requested to be deactivated for a while, as he had spent nearly twenty years in constant operation in the lower levels of Tipoca City, so Ferb had been left alone to think.
It really had been insane for him to escape so easily. Heinz and Diminutive were both fully-trained, if not altogether competent, Sith Lords, but not only had Ferb been able to best them, he had actually killed the latter. All too easy, his escape was.
He tried meditating on that. Master Kenobi, who had given him limited training in the ways of the force back on Tatooine, before the war uprooted everyone, had always spoken of meditation as the perfect way of discerning the will of the Force.
And every time he did, he kept coming back to that lightsaber and the strange vision he'd had when he picked it up. Doctor Tanmi, the strange geneticist, had featured prominently in them. The same Tanmi who'd later showed up in Kan Be's lair, seemingly acting independent from his boss Darthenshmirtz. Ferb still puzzled over that. Every time he thought about Tanmi's odd doings, he felt the Force try to warn him of danger.
In Ferb's limited interactions with him, Tanmi had always been odd (Darthenshmirtz's other henchmen were odd too, yes, but in clearer ways; Lieutenant Yaami simultaneously eager to please, and exasperated with, his boss; Colonel Crefet, determined to his job yet at the same time resigned to his unimportant position in life; the droid NORM, simply incompetent due to some programming error). The Kaminoan doctor was always quiet, which Ferb had found a nice departure from the rambunctious and bizarre behaviors of Darthenshmirtz and his minions in the few times they had brought him out of his cell, but there was always something vaguely troubling about him, a sinking feeling in Ferb's stomach the young man couldn't quite define.
And Doctor Tanmi was connected to the lightsaber.
So, once he had satisfied himself that the future Sunspring was in good shape and had meditated enough, he had come to the decision that the lightsaber was suspicious. Darth Diminutive had ranted about some sort of "great power" in the Force radiating off of Ferb before his death, and Ferb knew that probably couldn't be just from him (unless his time under the influence of Darthenshmirtz's 'Sith-inator' still affected him, but that was a whole other can of worms). The only other things Ferb had on him then were a stolen blaster pistol and his wrench-neither of which could give off any kind of Force signature.
Ferb got up, paid the bar's proprietor for his meal, and walked out of the spaceport with no real goal in mind.
So it had to be the lightsaber. Because the only other explanation…
...that he had used the Dark Side…
No. That could not happen not again.
So it had to be the lightsaber.
When the young free-trader, Isabella, told her that Han had finally gone and left the Rebel Alliance, Leia did not feel shocked. Han had always been complaining about how 'it wasn't his fight', or something along those lines. He'd gone off on his own before. Really, it had just been a question of 'when', not 'if'.
She didn't have time to think about the Corellian smuggler. A pan-galactic war left precious little time for such distractions.
"Our offensive in the Mid Rim is coming dangerously close to stalling." General Dodonna announced to the various officers and dignitaries gathered in the conference room off the Freedom's bridge. "We can't replace our soldiers and ships at the same rate the Imperial forces can."
"What about that mobile shipyard Skywalker and Solo stole from the B'rappio Cartel near Kardif?" Lieutenant Commander Grek asked. "Wasn't that supposed to put a few ships back in action ahead of schedule?"
"The engineers are having trouble getting it working." Commander Bor answered. "Most of our mechanics are still working on those ships stolen from that dismantling station a few months ago."
The strategy meeting continued in this way for another 45 minutes or so, with officers going over various strategic objectives and logistical issues, and other officers interrupting every now and then to inquire about some specific point.
When they were done, she left and walked out of the chamber, heading for the nearest turbolift. General Draven followed her.
"Captain Solo didn't receive any intel." he said as they waited for the lift. They both knew this. "The privateer Freenz intended to turn him over to the Hutts."
"I'm aware. I read Isabella's debriefing."
"As did I. Rebel Intelligence's allies in the local branch of the Tenloss Syndicate corroborated Garcia-Sharpiro's version of events."
Leia frowned. "It's strange isn't it? Openly working with elements of the galactic underworld."
The elevator doors opened. It was empty, and the two of them stepped in.
"With our constant dearth of manpower relative to the Empire, we do what we must. You've seen combat firsthand. You've helped to plan the battles. I know you understand."
She did. She didn't feel comfortable with it, but she did.
"The basic structure of the superlaser's focusing dish remains unchanged." Darthenshmirtz announced to the room "It's, uh, larger, obviously, 'cause y'know, the new Death Star is supposed to be larger. We won't have to enlarge the hypermatter reactors though. Doctor Erso's team and I have found a solution-"
"I saw. Brilliant work, Heinz," Krennic interrupted. Everyone present at the meeting who could understand the technobabble in the hypermatter reactor designs had already seen them; no reason to go over the technical language further. Especially not if someone as prone to verbal stumbling as Darthenshmirtz was doing the presenting. "I think that's everything. We are done."
The attendees offered insincere goodbyes to one another and drifted out of the conference room until only Krennic, Darthenshmirtz, and Lieutenant Yaami were left. Darthenshmirtz shut off the holoprojector and removed from the access port the datacube containing the information he had been presenting. He placed it in a briefcase, then locked the metal box.
"Lieutenant, take this to my ship," Darthenshmirtz said to Yaami, handing the case to him. "I'll be along shortly." The younger man nodded and left the room.
"How goes the search?"
Darthenshmirtz scowled. "Ugh. I still haven't found it! You'd think a lightsaber wouldn't keep getting lost like that, but I always mix it up with my flashlight! It's-!"
"I mean the boy," Krennic interrupted patiently. He had long grown accustomed to Darthenshmirtz's ranting.
"Oh, Ferb." the man paused. "No luck."
"Admiral Versio mentioned to me when I was last on Scarif that the Emperor is growing impatient."
"Bah." Darthenshmirtz said. Krennic's eyes widened slightly, but otherwise he did not react.
"Again I remind you, be careful what you say. I don't want to risk jeopardizing the project by having you earn the Emperor's ire."
Not to mention, risk jeopardizing his own career because he had to associate with someone who would casually make such seditious remarks.
"Bah!" Darthenshmirtz repeated, with emphasis. "He wants to turn Ferb. Make him into another tool. He is obsessed with the dark side of the Force."
"And you're not?"
Unspoken was the implication that such a sentiment was unexpected from a Sith, even one as middling as Heinz.
"Eh. It's a means to an end, y'know?"
Krennic chose not to press further.
"Regardless, you need to find him. "
"I know."
"He saw the inside of your facilities, he's aware of the platypus commando initiative, he-"
"Hold that thought, the meeting ran long so I gotta pee now."
Before Krennic could object, Darthenshmirtz had left the conference room in a sprint. The Director sighed in exasperation, but was unsurprised. Krennic had dealt with Darthenshmirtz's eccentricities long enough to know to be patient. He gathered his things and went to head Heinz off in the docking bay his distinctive wrench-shaped starship was parked in.