Zak Arranda slept for several hours after Dr. Zaposug got done looking at him. When the kid woke, he insisted on talking to "the guy in charge here", which was just as well, because Shaparo was equally eager to speak to him.

Adjacent to the medical bay, there was a small room of uncertain original purpose that was decorated haphazardly in earthen tones. Zak Arranda had an entire sofa to himself there, as well as a large mug of hot boma tea. Seated around him were Jan, Kyle, Wade Vox, and R2-Q8, who was needed to make a holorecord of the interview. Shaparo had a chair directly across from Zak, but often left it to pace as he listened, slowly whittling down a cigarette all the while.

The presence of Wade Vox, for Kyle, was not as unwelcome as it could have been. Since he'd been instrumental in Zak's rescue, it made sense. Even setting that aside, though, Wade didn't seem quite like himself. He looked tense and coiled, like a Tenupean snake-bird.

If Kyle had to be honest, he was bracing himself too. The fact that Jan seemed to be holding herself steady was reassuring to him, and perhaps to the boy as well.

"I realize we're asking a lot of you, young man. Let me assure you, arrangements are already being made for rescuing your sister and dealing with Utric Sandov. Before we take action, though, we need all the information you can provide. I'd like you to start by telling us how you came to be on the Rebel Hospital Platform to begin with."

Shaparo's manner was dry, circumspect, and approached coldness while managing to stop short of it. Considering the course of his life and the fact he had been an interrogator by trade, Kyle supposed that was as close as the former Intelligence captain would ever get to being gentle.

A few hours' sleep seemed to have done Zak some good, for what it was worth. While obviously lightyears from being okay, it no longer seemed like he was struggling just to keep from bolting out of the room, and the bottomless, haunted look Kyle had observed aboard the Moldy Crow, though perhaps still present, had dwindled. In fact, he looked slightly calmer than Wade did.

He took a deep breath and balanced the boma tea on his lap. "You know Brint-wo Colony?"

"An independent space colony in the Koradin sector," Shaparo said, perhaps for the benefit of Kyle and the others. "It's very close to the Hospital Platform, and the Alliance has eyes there."

Nodding, Zak said, "Yeah, we knew that. Our uncle said it should be a safe place to stay for a while."

"A safe place? Do you mean to say you were on the run?"

Zak hesitated. "Uh, kind of. We Arrandas, we don't get along well with the Empire."

"Nor do we," Shaparo agreed. "But who is this uncle of yours?"

Zak tasted the tea and made a face. "Uncle Hoole. He's an anthropologist who studies alien cultures. He's always researching something or other, so we travel the galaxy a lot. Mostly the Outer and Mid Rims. He's not human. He's a Shi'ido, so he's only part of our family because his brother married our Aunt Beryl."

Kyle traded puzzled looks with Jan and Wade. This sounded like a very strange family arrangement. Among other things, Shi'ido were a race of shapeshifters, and better at it than similar species such as the Clawdites. They were known the galaxy over for their effectiveness as imposters, spies, and even assassins. The idea of one pursuing the mundane career of a researcher was hard to believe, but Kyle grudgingly had to admit it wasn't impossible.

Still, this all put an unsettling feeling in his gut: two human children traveling the Rim, accompanied only by a man to whom they were only tenuously related, who called himself their "uncle"...

"Where's the rest of your family, then?" he asked with more than a little suspicion.

"They all died on Alderaan." The mention of that world, reduced to an asteroid graveyard by the Death Star's superlaser, spread a pall over Zak's listeners; Wade, a fellow Alderaani, looked stricken; while even Shaparo, who was pacing, went still for a brief moment. Zak said it plainly enough, though, like it was something he'd made peace with. "Uncle Hoole came to take care of us after that, and we've been with him ever since."

"What happened to Hoole? Is he on the platform now?" asked Shaparo.

"No, he left us at Brint-wo. He said he had some important errand to take care of and disappeared. Wouldn't tell us where he was going or what it was about, just that it was important." Zak tested the boma tea, more carefully than before, and shrugged his shoulders. "He does that a lot—goes off on mysterious errands."

When nobody said anything to that, he glanced around in apparent confusion. "What?"

Wade spoke up for the first time. He had his hands joined, knuckles pressed together. "Zak... it's not normal for an adult to leave kids alone on a space station in the Outer Rim."

To Kyle's astonishment, Zak Arranda laughed for the first time since they had picked him up on Nar Shaddaa. "I never said anything about us being normal. But Uncle... Uncle Hoole..."

He stuttered, looking at each of them again and—noting their troubled expressions—grew indignant. "Hey... Hey, whatever you're thinking, it's not like that. Uncle Hoole's not a bad man—he's prime. He cares about me and Tash a lot, and he's very brave! Practically everywhere we go, we run into danger, and he gets us out of it. I can't even tell you how many times we'd have gotten killed if not for him! We were almost eaten by swarms of drog beetles on the planet S'krrr— On Hoth we would've frozen to death— And, and right before Brint-wo, Tash and me almost drowned on Manaan, trying to get to this artifact on the ocean floor, but Uncle Hoole turned into a firaxan shark and saved us! And before that—"

Boma tea lapped over the edge of Zak Arranda's mug, splashing his hands, pants, and the sofa, but the boy didn't notice. Jan edged closer and opened her mouth to speak, but it was Shaparo who ended the tangent, showing the palm of his hand.

"Young man, we're getting off track. What happened after Hoole left you at the space colony?"

Zak looked disappointed and even offended, but settled down after a few deep breaths. "Nothing much. He told Tash and me to stay out of trouble, and for once we did. But he said he'd only be gone three or four standard days, or else he'd send us a message, but... There was nothing. We got worried, so we hitched a ride to the Hospital Platform. We figured if anyone could help us find out what happened to Uncle Hoole, it'd be the Rebels. But as soon as they found us there, with no parents or guardian, they decided we were war orphans. They didn't listen to anything we said, just processed us and dumped us in the Refugee Commons."

The boy scowled and drank some more tea. "It wasn't a bad place. Crowded, lots of other kids there, but we got bored pretty quick, and then..." His face began to pale, emotion draining like blood from a mynock skewered on a Thyrsian solar pike. "Well, that's when the bad things started happening to us, like they always do."

Now Kyle really did have to brace himself. "Uncle Hoole" sounded like a suspicious character—an irresponsible guardian, if nothing else—but they could forget about him for now. They were now approaching the heart of the matter: its black, rancid, swollen, cancerous heart. The unsettling movement in Kyle's gut from before returned and coalesced into a twist of nausea as he recalled what he'd seen on the datapad of Deena Demarakesh, and in the Madine files a year ago.

Kyle Katarn was a hardened mercenary, arguably Mon Mothma's strongest soldier, but even approaching this subject was worse than the anticipation that preceded any firefight. For Zak Arranda, it was clearly bringing him to a place of psychological danger beyond Kyle's understanding. No wonder he had been spouting ridiculous tales only a moment ago in that fit of near-delirious excitement; it had to have been part of a crude structure of coping.

Merely having this conversation with the kid was obviously perilous, but Kyle understood Shaparo's reasoning. Before the Bryar Force could move, they needed all the information Zak could supply.

In many ways, the scenario he then described was a repeat of the one that had played out with Crix Madine. Though not as famed as the late major general, Utric Sandov boasted an impressive background as a Bothan spy and now enjoyed a post as a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Alliance Security Task Force. The workload of a post like that could keep any sentient busy for every waking standard hour of the day, and yet this Bothan had a number of additional, unrelated duties on Alliance Hospital Platform BW-1. Most relevant, his degree in Humanoid Youngling Psychology had gotten him a "senior advisory position" in the Alliance Medical Corps there, allowing him to direct the processing of unaccompanied subadult refugees who turned up aboard the station.

Of course, there had seemed nothing amiss in the case evaluation interviews. This chocolate-furred Bothan, Utric Sandov, and his assistant, Deena Demarakesh, were simply two more self-important adults, ordering Zak and his sister around, dismissing their talk about Uncle Hoole as the tall tales of over-excited and mischievous children.

Then Sandov had them locked up.

It was as cruel as anything Kyle had ever heard. One day, Zak and Tash were simply milling about one of the main halls of the Refugee Commons, chatting with the handful of new friends they had made, when Demarakesh and several guards came and took them to the Medical Wing. Utric Sandov, it turned out, had used his authority to diagnose them with schizoid personality disorder—violent, delusional, in need of constant surveillance and supervision. The Medical Wing had an entire section for younglings like that: Special Sentient Needs.

The Arranda siblings were separated, taken to different cells, and then...

Shaparo may have been aloof and impersonal, dispassionately intense, but he guided Zak's recounting with surprising care and incisiveness. They already had the sordid, nauseating details from Demarakesh's datapad—as if any sane person would want them—and they had no desire to force this terribly hurt, sensitive young man to relive those events.

"I know this is difficult, but we need you to focus. Stop whenever you feel you have to, but we need the facts around what happened to you: when, where, who."

Zak nodded seriously at Shaparo's instructions. As he gave his narrative, his voice was low and beige, his dark brown eyes those of a prey animal again. Many times he paused to stare off into space, and the mug gripped in his hands would shake. But Kyle eventually realized that the strain riveting Zak's features during these lulls was from concentration as much as trauma. The effort he was putting in to help them was impressive.

To compound Kyle's outrage, though, that effort didn't add up to much. Zak related the bare facts of his abuse, the first few times it had happened. "It was only Sandov the first time," he said. "I bit him. I almost made it out of the cell. After that, he always brought the other Bothan in to..." He trailed off again.

When left alone, he did whatever he could to get out. He tried to break the door or the lock. A security guard or a droid would amble by once in a while, but of course they paid no attention when Zak screamed to him. Special Sentient Needs could be a noisy place, especially during the day period; a deranged youngling shrieking for help or babbling incoherently was seen as no cause for concern. After all, why would it? These were troubled young sentients, and there were qualified, professional personnel on station who were in charge of caring for them.

Caring for them.

Kyle's fists clenched so hard he heard his knuckles crack like a barrage of scatter-gun bullets.

It was a fluke (miraculous, some would say) that the door to Zak's cell malfunctioned one day when he was being brought food. Bolting past the startled guard, he made it as far as the main Medical Wing, where he found a terminal, logged in to Alliance FleetNet, and managed to type out the incomplete message which would later bring him to the Bryar Force's attention.

"You have R2-Q8 to thank for that," Shaparo interjected, and the astromech twittered modestly, its dome swiveling.

Naturally, brutally, horribly, Zak was soon recaptured and brought back to his cell. As he continued his account, the boy's pauses increased, along with his apparent frustration.

"Everything's all jumbled up in my head," he grumbled. "Like drog beetles in a power converter. I'm trying to remember, but it keeps feeling like... dreams, or things that happened when they didn't happen. When those Bothans were—"

"You don't have to—" Jan started.

More tea sloshed out of the cup. "No, you don't get it. I saw other people— Or things, other things on the walls or the ceiling. Aliens made of light, like holograms or..." The boy shook his head, hissing almost in anger. "I don't know. I could've been having nightmares while I was awake, or... Well, I could also be crazy. We've seen crazy things, Tash and me." He made a sound like he was trying to chuckle, but what came out was closer to sobbing. "I don't know, Mister Shaparo, I'm really sorry. Everything I remember is just like that: crazy stuff, nightmares. I mean, until after Kyle and you all rescued me."

R2-Q8 emitted a series of beeps. Shaparo nodded, ejecting a tangle of smoke from his lips, and translated: "That neural disruptor Kyle found on your neck may have interfered with the formation of coherent memories." He paused for another drag. "Is there anything else you can tell us, Zak? Who do you remember meeting on the station? Did you ever see anyone talking to Utric Sandov, besides the other Bothan, anyone who might have been complicit in what they did?"

Zak Arranda chewed on his lip for a long moment. Finally he said, "The guard who walked past my cell was always the same guy, some human. And I remember a few people in the Medical Wing, Mon Calamari... droids, there was a 2-1B, I think, but... I'm sorry, I really don't remember them talking to the Bothans or anything else. I wish I could help more..."

The kid hung his head, looking suddenly exhausted.

"Zak, you've already helped us a lot," Jan told him. Then, turning a hard expression toward their leader, she added, "And I think Shaparo owes you a few answers now."

Disposing of the corpse of the cigarette, Shaparo returned to his seat. "Indeed I do."

He summarized the nature of the Bryar Force, the reason for its necessity, and the events that had catalyzed its formation. Zak Arranda seemed to shrink as he took all this in, and a part of Kyle cursed the fact that the boy was entitled to this information, that they had to tell him. The Rebel Alliance was seen as the sole beacon of hope in a galaxy clutched in Palpatine's tyrannical, merciless grip... most of all by innocent sentients who had lost homes and families to the cruelty of the Emperor's various and sundry underlings, just as the Arrandas (like Wade Vox) had lost theirs and been turned out into a cruel galaxy by the destruction of Alderaan.

To tell Zak that that same beacon of light, the last holdout of prosperity and freedom under the ancient Galactic Constitution, was itself in the grip of a conspiracy so dark and depraved that even Palpatine might balk at it... That this band of freedom fighters was so deeply corrupted that its institutions and leaders could not be trusted to protect innocent younglings from the unspeakable appetites of predators and deviants...

We need to get out of here, Kyle thought as he watched Zak Arranda's worldview collapse into stellar dust. We need to stop these people now, before it's too late...

"That transmission I sent out on FleetNet," Zak said when Shaparo was finished. "You know, it wasn't just for anybody. When I typed that, I really hoped... I hoped Luke Skywalker would see it."

Kyle raised a brow. "Skywalker?"

He started when the boy raised his head. Inexplicably, uncannily, there looked in that moment as if the universe had never harbored a life form as soft, as young, as scared, as timid, or as confused as Zak Arranda was in that moment. "Luke Skywalker and his friends—Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, their droids. I've met them. They saved us from D'vouran— This planet, the planet was alive, and it was eating people, but they saved us in the, the Millennium Falcon. That was only the first time, too. I thought they would see the message, that Luke Skywalker would come to rescue me and Tash... They, they seemed really prime and... so good." His lips quivered as he tried, tried so hard, to smile. "Tash really likes that guy. I think she's got a crush on him."

Emotions collided within the mind of Kyle Katarn like rogue asteroids. Skywalker again, he thought. The living legend, the man who was going to take down the whole Empire himself, somehow. That was how adults talked about him, grown sentient men—like Wade Vox, who was studying Zak with a look of rapt admiration, perhaps even jealousy. That a child like Zak would latch onto the image, the myth, in such a way, was just as blameless as it was natural.

On a more peripheral note: similar to the ridiculous way everyone talked about Skywalker, it was perplexing to Kyle in particular how every third or fourth Rebel he knew had a story about running into the so-called Jedi or helping him on a mission or getting rescued by him (and sometimes by the other Heroes of Yavin as well). The guy seemed to be everywhere at once, and yet somehow, despite actually being connected to Skywalker via the capture of the Death Star plans, Kyle Katarn had yet to cross paths with him.

Shaparo's voice refocused him. "I'm certain that Skywalker and his friends have nothing to do with our enemy. They would be a great asset to the Bryar Force, but currently they are... out of reach. We'll have to carry on without them for the time being."

Zak only sighed at that, and the illusion of cosmic youth was dispelled. He again looked his age, and brittle and broken besides.

"Young man," Shaparo told him, standing again, "You have our thanks and our respect for your bravery. But now, we need to continue with preparations to infiltrate the platform."

Zak looked up. A new, hungry light was in his brown eyes. "Oh, when are we leaving?"

Shaparo cleared his throat. "Kyle Katarn will be departing with his team as soon as they've gathered their equipment and prepared a ship. You will remain here, where we can keep you safe."

"Oh, no. No way am I staying. I'm not staying here when my sister is in trouble."

Kyle Katarn leaned toward him. "Zak, you need to damp down your power core right now. You're staying here, and that's final."

"Why?" demanded Zak, glowering. "Because I'm just some kid?"

Kyle knew that this young man didn't deserve rough treatment after the monstrous things those Bothans had done to him, but there was no way to be nice about it. "Yes, because you're a kid. This is an actual mission, the kind of dangerous thing that actual Rebel spies carry out, except we're technically carrying it out against a Rebel facility. Listen, you don't have anything to worry about. Jan and I, we've busted Imperial bases and prisons before. We're professionals here, and we're going to handle it. We're getting your sister back to you, safe and sound."

His voice hardened to durasteel as he and his teammates stood up. "We're going to make sure Utric Sandov never hurts anyone ever again. And he will pay for what he's done. I promise you that."

The medical bay was a dry, dreary place, poorly lit and gray enough to look dusty even though the air was well-circulated. Kyle stood in a semicircle with Jan, Shaparo, Wade, and R2-Q8 before a small analysis container of thick dynaglass. Within, the hypopen Kyle had taken from Deena Demarakesh was cradled within a low-power repulsor field. Above the container, a ghostly blue holo-display showed a diagram of the hypopen, surrounded by data points generated by the container's sensors as well as Dr. Ktrame Zaposug's notes.

The Ruurian himself was nearby, perched atop a stool; with his labcoat flowing down over the stool's legs, he had the illusion of appearing slightly taller than his bipedal audience. Zak Arranda was gone; the lagomorphic gunslinger, Maxis Makinene, had appeared and escorted the boy to some quarters that had been prepared for him.

"I have completed my analysis of this device, Master Shaparo," the doctor began, "and there are two pieces of data which are of particular interest... though, regretfully, both raise more questions than they do answers."

"Proceed, Doctor," Shaparo said calmly.

"First: this hypopen's injection matrix contained microscopic traces of the last substance that it was used for. My examination of young Master Arranda found minute traces of the same substance in his bloodstream. At first I thought it was Collafa spice, but its chemical structure turned out to be much more complex. It is definitely a potent hallucinogen of some kind, but the databases we have access to have not been helpful in identifying it."

Shaparo laced his fingers and touched his chin, thinking.

"Then they... were drugging Zak. They kept that poor kid drugged while they were..." Jan didn't need to finish the sentence.

"Apparently so. But for what purpose?"

Jan looked at Shaparo like the question itself was an obscenity. "What do you mean, for what purpose?"

"No, he's on to something," Kyle put in. "It wasn't to keep him from resisting, because—"

Wade interrupted. "Yeah, that's right. Zak had a neural disruptor on his neck when we saved him. Why would the Bothans drug him when they could have used that?"

Shaparo hummed contemplatively. "Perhaps it was a matter of preference for them. Or they did not acquire the neural disruptor until later. Or they did not wish to use it while on the platform; an injection could be plausibly explained away as medicine. In any case, this appears to explain Zak Arranda's memory problems and his hallucations—or nightmares, as he called them."

"Not to mention those crazy stories he was telling," Kyle muttered.

Wade frowned at that. He probably believed everything Zak had said about a planet that ate people and a swarm of sentient-eating bugs, and being rescued by the Heroes of Yavin not once but multiple times.

"Maybe so," said Shaparo, lowering his hands, "but until Utric Sandov is in our custody, we have only speculation. In the meantime, though, if we can identify this spice, or whatever it is, perhaps that will shed some light on its purpose. R2-Q8, I want you and the others to try to slice into the Imperial Narcotics Database. There's a good chance that will help."

The droid tootled, promising to do its best.

"What else did you learn about this hypopen, Doctor Zaposug?"

The Ruurian twittled several sets of his spindly fingers together. "That it is more than merely a hypopen, Master Shaparo. That in itself is not unusual. For example, BioTech Industries manufactures many cheap, portable, multipurpose devices used in the medical field. This model, for instance, can extract a sample of a sentient's blood and conduct several types of analysis with the use of special miniaturized sensors."

"Then what's special about it?" asked Wade.

"This particular device," said the doctor, "has been specially configured to estimate the concentration of midi-chlorians in a sentient's body."

Kyle Katarn's body turned to stone.

"Midi-what?" said Wade. "What are those?"

"Microscopic organelles found in practically all organic life, in some respects similar to mitochondria. The galactic scientific community agrees that midi-chlorians are linked with cell regeneration, fighting off disease, and so on, but they are not well-understood."

Shaparo crossed his arms. "After twenty-five thousand years of galactic civilization and scientific advancement? I find that hard to believe. How could so little be known about something so ubiquitous?"

"Because the Empire has heavily restricted all information about midi-chlorians," explained Dr. Zaposug. "There are only the facts of their mere existence and what I've already mentioned. Independent research into the subject is considered a crime, and no respectable scientific journal will touch a paper to do with them."

"So... they're something Utric Sandov is interested in," hazarded Jan. "He wanted to know how many there are in the Arrandas... and what they actually are and do is something the Empire doesn't want anyone to know about. What does that mean?"

Shaparo broke the cold silence that followed her question. "As he said—more questions than answers. Thank you, Doctor. If you discover anything else, make sure to inform me."

With that, he headed back to the inner circle's office with R2-Q8. Kyle Katarn did not move until Jan touched his shoulder. "Hey, nerf-herder. You awake?"

He stared at her like someone out of a dream. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here."

"Then let's get the Crow ready."

"No, I..." Kyle blinked, trying to force away the vague thoughts that swirled in his mind like space detritus. "I need to swing by the armory."

Jan stared at him, unconvinced, and he added, "We didn't have time to restock before Nar Shaddaa, remember?"

Her expression softened. "All right, but don't dally. Shaparo said we're going with a team, right? And every minute counts. The sooner we're underway, the better."

Kyle couldn't agree more.

Orion IV's sun blazed with a golden-purple halo as it began to sink past the horizon, letting the indigo heavens pass slowly into shadow. The lone human racing beneath that gathering night had seen many alien skies and landscapes, but he found the beauty of this rustic world to be marvelous, and he counted himself lucky that he would be spending enough time here to get used to it. Protected from noise and debris particulates by ear mufflers and ultrashielded field goggles, he roared along on a speeder bike he'd purchased from an unregistered, family-owned dealer on the edge of a small settlement—the best kind of vehicle, in his opinion.

The human's name was Kentamine Farwanderer, and he'd have preferred to be known as Kent. He loved flying and he loved racing, loved everything about the experience: the rising line of dirt kicked up by his afterburners like the tail of an Anthusian cometfox, the feel of roaring wind as it rushed through his hair, the airy sense of the repulsorlift... Kent loved all of it, but even on this peaceful evening there was something to temper his enthusiasm. Though he hadn't been here to see it, there was no forgetting that Orion IV had been a battleground not long ago, and that many good men and women had been turned to smoke here under Imperial laser fire.

Few signs remained of the tragedy, beyond the hollowed remains of the original Rebel base some kilometers away... and yet, in unguarded moments, Kentamine felt a somberness from the planet as if he knew, just over the horizon, that there lay a graveyard that he had been passing by since childhood.

Such unguarded moments were rare, though. Kentamine was a Rebel officer, a pilot—and, if he could say so, a damn good one at that—and though he sometimes did feel things that seemed to slip other beings' scanners, he knew how to stay focused. Right now he was only riding the perimeters around Searchlight Station, inspecting the subtle furrows and rises in the terrain.

No doubt about it, the compound was vulnerable. Its shield dome, once activated, would allow it to withstand aerial bombardment for a short time, hopefully long enough for Shaparo and his people to get aboard the Bloodshark. But with no dedicated ground-to-air defenses and with such a shortage of personnel, that wouldn't make for a good bet.

Kentamine brought his speeder bike to a stop on one of the larger hills. Idling on its repulsors, lit from behind by the glorious alien sunset, he squinted at the collection of prefabricated buildings (originally civilian, mind you), sitting exposed in the middle of a vast, rocky plain. Shrank by distance to the size of a youngling's ferroplastic playset, its fragility was all the more apparent.

His mouth pursed into a firm line, and his head gave a slow nod. Well, at least I'll be here, he thought.

But it was too easy remember the defeats, when he and his wingmates hadn't been there in time. The worst of all had been Anchorhead Base, where he'd done his first Rebel flight training courses in a rickety T-16 Skyhopper. Having finished up training elsewhere in the Rim, he had just gotten his commission as an X-wing pilot when he found himself back home, racing down a desert canyon to respond to an Imperial raid. But Blue Squadron was too late, and Kent lost the first friend he'd ever made in the Alliance: Lieutenant Turland Hack, who handled Tac-Comm control in Anchorhead Base with incredible dedication, never once abandoning his post... until TIE Fighters reduced the facility to slag.

Not again, Kentamine vowed to the stars. If the time came, he would be here... and he'd be ready. With a twist of the control yoke, he pointed his speeder bike toward the compound and gunned the engines.

Searchlight could never really feel busy—not enough people for that—but Kent thought he felt a general sense of anticipation as he brought the speeder bike into the hangar and powered it down.

He was a human of average height who'd had a slow but demanding youth on an Outer Rim moisture farm. The powerful legs that had chased down unruly dewbacks in the Badlands now suited for outrunning Imperial stormtroopers and Viper probe droids. The hands that had cranked rusty vaporator valves and ripped out calcified components could handle an X-wing's flight stick as easily as a toy. With tall bantha hide flight boots, black pants marked by the Rimmer's Airvents (not to be confused with the Corellian Bloodstripes), a matching shirt, utility belt, and off-yellow swoop jacket, he cut a figure that would have passed for fancy, even swaggering, back home. His short brown hair, dark when he was a kid, had picked up a lighter shade from the desert where he'd spent his teens. His parents had warned him that if he took a tumble down one dune too many, the sand might never come out.

Leaving his field goggles hanging from the speeder bike's control yoke, Kent slapped dust from his swoop jacket, approached the disassembled Lambda shuttle, and asked the mechanics where he might find Commander Katarn.

"Shaparo's sending him out with a team," explained the Pantoran, Natalie Darr, as she wiped grime from her forehead.

"Must be about that Arranda kid," Kent mused aloud. Shaparo had told him about the Nar Shaddaa operation during their brief meeting. That had been only a few hours ago, before he went out on the speeder bike. Had he known things would be moving this fast, he'd have stuck around. "I was hoping to talk with him. Are they leaving right now?"

"Not yet, but it won't be long. They're takin' his ship, the Moldy Crow." Darr nodded toward a small Hawk-series light freighter that sat twenty meters away.

Moldy is right, thought Kent, staring. So that was Katarn's ship? That rusty, slouching piece of junk, with the landing struts that looked ready to snap? He'd genuinely thought it was salvage—that Darr and the others were going to slice it up for spare parts for the shuttle. In front of it stood Lieutenant Ors (Katarn's partner) speaking with a bipedal droid.

The Wookiee Quagga brayed from the disassembled shuttle's innards, making Natalie Darr jump. "Yeah, yeah! I'm comin', you big walking carpet...!"

Kentamine went over to Lieutenant Ors, taking it in stride when she didn't recognize him. Their first meeting had been brief, after all. "Kyle went to the armory with Wade Vox," she told him. "If it can't wait, you might be able to catch him on his way back, but be quick about it. As soon as they're here, we're leaving."

He thanked her and hurried off.

The armory was a slate-gray duracrete room much larger than the Bryar Force's meager stockpiles necessitated. The corridor leading to it was wide and undecorated, and both echoed. Kent was still a good way off when he picked out a conversation going on inside. One of the voices was gruff, and he immediately recognized it as that of Kyle Katarn.

"Hey, check this out," said someone else—Wade Vox.

"What?"

"This here, it looks like a... Yeah, it's a wrist-mounted energy slingshot. They make these in the Corporate Sector. I swiped one from an Espo once, but it was on my ship when, uh..."

"That thing's only a stunner, right? No permanent damage?"

"Yeah, nice and portable too. See, it fits right under my sleeve."

"Is anybody's name on it?"

"Nope."

"Then keep it. It might come in handy. If we end up shooting aboard that platform, best not to kill anybody."

Kentamine came up beside the door and paused there, unsure whether to interrupt. Level out, recon pattern, he decided silently.

Katarn went on. "And if that Tash kid gets into trouble and we need to get her out of it, we're not gonna trust the Force for one of your trick shots, you got that?"

"You know what?" Vox interrupted himself. "Ah, never mind. You're right. No more Force stuff. I'm keeping the slingshot, that's a good idea. Looks like this power cell will fit."

Kent frowned, still listening. That last part hadn't sounded like a friendly exchange. Again he doubted whether this was a good time. Besides the two men talking, he could hear metal scraping and plastisteel clicking and locking together. Obviously the two hadn't come here for conversation.

"Hey, you need a hand with all this?"

"No, I've got it. Just head back to the Crow. I'll be right behind you."

"Fine. See you in a parsec."

Footsteps. Wade Vox left the armory so fast that he didn't even see Kent. His heavy longcoat swirled behind him down the long hallway. Inside, the sounds of equipment moving went on.

Kent hesitated a moment longer. Then he thought, Well, I already came this far, and headed inside.

In a nearby corner, Kyle Katarn had assembled a veritable inventory already, and he was rifling through the storage shelves and cabinets like he'd only gotten started. Equipment belts and sacks, sterilization pill canisters, rolls of thermal plastifoil, hull patches, crash foam refills, spark pads, replacement fuses, proton packs, circuit-breaker modules, mini-transmitters, datapad accessories, bundles of fibercord, insulation packets, a headlight, wound glue, bacta patches, cleats, energy sinks, blaster cleaning tools, air scrubbers, hand-held diagnostic sensors, survival knives, and at least eight different types of power cell were all stuffed into cubes of semi-seethrough plastisteel, racked together on two hovercarts which Kentamine strongly doubted a lone humanoid could handle at once.

He cleared his throat. "Commander Katarn? Do you remember me, sir?"

The other man eyed him, hesitating. He raised a hand as though grasping at the memory of their first meeting. "Sorry, ah... Rookie One, right?"

Kentamine Farwanderer stepped into the handshake and said, "That would be me." He didn't blame Katarn; he was used to this.

Everywhere he went, sentients had trouble not only with his name but his very identity. A decorated Rebel pilot and occasional covert agent, Kent had built a reputation which, due to a number of unfortunate coincidences, led to a plague of misunderstandings which followed him across space.

The first of these had been a number of people confusing him with Luke Skywalker, misattributing the Rebellion's near-miraculous victory over the Death Star to Kent. He'd spent years explaining to them that while he was from Tatooine, he hadn't flown at Yavin at all. While Skywalker was saving the Alliance there, Kent had been earning his own (first) claim to fame in the battle of Yarin on the other side of the galaxy. If there was any such thing as a baptism by fire, Blue Squadron had gone through it at Yarin, helping to stop an Imperial task force bent on wiping out a Rebel installation there. Still going by the callsign "Rookie One" since his flight classes at Anchorhead Base, Kent had taken charge of the squadron after Blue Leader was shot down, finally leading an attack run that crippled the Imperial force's centerpiece: a nasty siege platform called a torpedo sphere.

He hadn't done it alone—he'd have been cooked if not for his wingmates Ru Murleen and Thurlow Harris, not to mention Captains Merrick Simms and Jake Farrell—and he wouldn't compare that torpedo sphere to a Death Star. Still...

Still, you'd think they'd stop calling me Rookie after that!

But for whatever reason they hadn't, nor after Kent and Ru had taken down the Empire's Phantom TIE project a few years later, under Rear Admiral Krane's direction. No sooner had he gotten that achievement under his belt than he discovered that he'd been getting mixed up with another Rebel ace pilot, one with the astronomically improbable name of Keyan Farlander (who, incidentally, actually had flown at Yavin with the other guy). Once, while on leave, he'd even gotten jumped outside a cantina by some one-armed Aqualish who had a grudge against Skywalker.

Kentamine Farwanderer didn't quit easily, but he knew when to jump to hyperspace. For whatever reason, "Rookie One" was what people remembered, so that was what he went by these days.

Again, he'd gotten used to it.

"It's all right, Commander—we only had a few minutes to talk the last time," he said, smiling. He knew a few things about Kyle Katarn, though; this man had a reputation of his own. Frowned upon by some as abrasive or unsavory, he nevertheless was indisputably one of the Alliance's greatest and most reliable assets... and now was the same for Shaparo's Bryar Force. Apparently he was a dirt farm Rimmer as well, so Kent had a natural respect for the man; they spoke on the same comlink frequency by default. "It's good to meet you again."

"Thanks. Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Well, I..." Kent cleared his throat. "I only just heard Shaparo's sending you on a mission. I wanted to see you off, sir—good luck."

Katarn's smile looked off, the same way dawn on Tatooine would look if only one of the Twin Suns had showed up. "I appreciate it. But I'm kind of in a hurry here, so is there anything else?"

Well, there was something else...

Kent glanced at the two hovercarts. "Not really. Would you like a hand with this stuff, though?"

The mercenary studied his inventory and concluded, "Sure. I'd appreciate it."

It took a few more standard time parts before Katarn felt he had ransacked enough of the armory. By that time, both hovercarts were carrying eight or nine kilos over their recommended capacity, but when Kent pointed this out, Katarn scoffed. "They'll hold. I've handled these things before. They're tougher than the manufacturers want you to think."

"If you say so, Commander."

"Look, it's okay if you just call me Kyle. Titles make my skin scrawl."

Kentamine didn't miss a beat. "Then you've got it, Kyle. Lead the way."

Single file, they pushed the hovercarts out into the hall. After a moment, it was Kent's turn to correct the other guy.

"So tell me, Rookie, what—"

"I'd rather you call me Rookie One."

He hoped he didn't seem childish for insisting on it, but if the callsign was going to stick better than his actual name, he'd rather people use the full thing. Besides, if he couldn't get out of being called a rookie, it felt better to at least be number one.

"Sorry. Anyway, Rookie One, what are you up to here at Searchlight? Are you still in the Starfighter Corps, or what?"

"Yes, sir. As it happens, I've been able to swing it so my duties to the Alliance and the Bryar Force line up. You know Admiral Krane?"

"Yeah, he's the guy in charge of Orion Base, right?"

"Right. Well, I know him—professionally, I mean. I was part of a big operation he pulled off against the Empire, along with, uh, Ru Murleen. She was one of my instructors, now she commands Bandit Squadron here. Anyway, Krane was impressed with me, so he approved me being transferred to a post at Orion Base. It's finalized and everything, so starting tomorrow I'll be commanding Diamond Flight, doing air patrols—right over this region."

"So you'll be able to come help out if Searchlight is attacked, is the idea?"

"Exactly."

"Hm... Well, that's a good thing. This compound can definitely use some extra protection."

So Katarn had noticed Searchlight's inadequate defenses as well. Kent smiled at that. The guy knew his stuff.

The conversation fizzled out after that, trying to resurrect itself in occasional fits and starts as they shoved their loads of cargo along through the compound.

The truth was, there had been something Kent wanted to discuss... Or rather, he wanted to ask Katarn if he'd be willing to discuss it after returning from his mission. After what he'd heard Katarn say about the Force to Wade Vox, though, Kent was leery of raising the subject with this mercenary. He knew Wade was a believer and had heard rumors to the effect that Katarn was as well, and might even know something about the Force that others did not. Now it seemed like he wouldn't want to talk about it.

Well, I'll just have to stow it in the cargo hold for now. Won't do any good to pout about it, Kent thought to himself.

"There's more to it, though, isn't there?" Katarn asked suddenly.

"To what?"

"To Admiral Krane. Shaparo thinks he's a potential asset. Is that why you're at Orion Base?"

Kent was blindsided at first. Then he remembered the map of persons and places of interest on the wall in Shaparo's office; Krane was on there, so Katarn must have seen it. "It's one of the reasons. I don't know if you were aware at the time, but back during the Madine scandal, Krane openly criticized General Cracken and all the Intelligence people involved with the investigation. Publicly questioned their integrity and everything. Took heat for it from the Advisory Council like an Urandian whisp-hawk on Mustafar, but managed to keep his rank—"

"And shut up about it real quick. I remember. It was all over FleetNet."

Again Kent was impressed. "Yeah. Shaparo's not sure what to think of the admiral. Whether that means he's on our side or not. There's a lot of resources he could use to help us, but for the time being I'm only supposed to keep an eye on him."

"That's smart. Whatever we're up against, it's deep in the Alliance hierarchy. Trying to recruit anyone with a rank like he's got would taking a big risk... Too big, if you ask me."

Kentamine nodded, his thoughts grim as he recalled the days of the Crix Madine scandal and how raw, how personal it had felt—among other things, because the epicenter of the youngling rapist's crimes had been Kolaador Base, the very same facility where Kent himself had completed his flight training under Ru Murleen. He'd gotten himself permanently banned from FleetNet, demanding transparency from Alliance Intelligence's investigation, and it was this that would eventually bring him to the attention of Shaparo's inner circle.

For a while they were silent again. As they came within a few corridors of the hangar, though, Kent recalled the last sentient he'd spoken to there and allowed himself a tenuous hope. "Command— Kyle," he began, "If it's not too much trouble, there's a little thing I'd like to ask you."

They stopped, panting slightly from the exertion of shoving the heavy cargo. Katarn faced him. The shrug of his bulging shoulders, exaggerated by his thick blast jacket, was like the subtle movement of twin mountains on Nam Chorios, upset by the planet's famously unpredictable seismic activity. "Shoot," he said.

"It's about Ru, I mean Bandit Leader, Commander Murleen. Captain Shaparo wants me to figure her out, see if she could be an asset to the Bryar Force. "

"What's that got to do with me?"

"It's just... I mean, she was my flight instructor, and we've flown together, gone through some hot situations, I mean battles together. She's a great pilot, a straight shooter. She's smart, funny, nice, beautiful... Well, forget that. I'm just lucky to know her and be able to fly with her." Kent restrained the urge to wince. Why was just thinking about Ru enough to make him stutter and ramble like this?

He could tell that Katarn was noticing, too, but there was nowhere to fly but straight ahead. "The thing is, I never heard her talk about Crix Madine, so I don't know where she stands on all that. But even if I did... Look, I'm sure Captain Shaparo gave you the spiel, right? You join this outfit, it's more than having TIEs or stormtroopers gunning for you. We're putting our careers with the Rebellion, our lives, everything at stake just by being here. How are you supposed to know someone can do that? How do you know if a sentient can be trusted completely?"

Katarn surprised him with what sounded like a genuine chuckle. "I'd never have thought an X-wing jockey would need to ask someone else that kind of question."

Suppose I walked right into that one, Kent thought, then asked, "Well, what about Lieutenant Ors?"

"Huh? What about Jan?"

"I heard it was you that the captain brought in first, then her. And the two of you had done a lot for the Rebellion already, right? Same as me and Ru. So how did you know she would commit to something like this? How could you be sure?"

Katarn mulled this over for what felt like several full standard minutes. His eyes drifted to a place that seemed as dark and remote as the Unknown Regions. Agitation creeped across Kentamine Farwanderer like the coils of a Deluvian slitherserpent. It might not have been the Force, but he had enough time to wonder if this was something he shouldn't have brought up either. This was why Kent always preferred to have wingmen: so he wouldn't pick battles at the wrong coordinates—or the wrong time...

Katarn waved his hand and broke the silence. "Listen, Rookie One, I'm sorry, but I don't really know what to tell you. Jan was right there with me when the Madine scandal broke, and she saw it driving me halfway crazy. She learned everything I did at about the same time, so keeping her out of the loop was never really an option, even if I'd wanted to. As for this Ru Murleen... Take your time, and don't be stupid about it—but at the end of the day, you've just got to decide whether you trust her to do the right thing. Sorry I can't be more helpful."

"Hey, no problem, Kyle. It's all right..." But Kent was saying this to Kyle's back as he resumed the trek up the corridor. Kent got his own hovercart moving again with a grunt, and before long the stink and noise of the repair work still going on in the hangar began to reach him.

Waiting at the Moldy Crow were Lieutenant Ors and the same droid as before, along with Wade Vox and Dr. Zaposug. From their chatter, Kent deduced that the Ruurian was a member of the Alliance Medical Corps's Doctors Without Sectors program. Between Katarn and the four of them, they didn't seem to need any help loading the ship up; by the time Kent had wiped the sweat from his forehead, his hovercart was a third of the way to being emptied.

Katarn thanked him and gave him a handshake. "No problem, sir," Kentamine said. "This is probably the last time you'll see me face to face for a while, but remember—Diamond Flight will be your friends in the skies."

He left them with that. Half of him felt like he'd been a bother to Katarn with all his chatter, and in any case no good came from dragging out a farewell. Instead of leaving the hangar right away, though, Kent found an out-of-the-way corner where he sat down on an old plastisteel container. For another minute or so he watched the team Shaparo had assembled mill about Moldy Crow like a couple of a Jawas... In fact, Kent thought that he saw someone about the size of a tall Jawa there, darting between one of the mangy old freighter's wings and a piece of equipment.

Sure enough, though, when he blinked, the mysterious figure was gone.

Just a daydream, that's all.

Kentamine rubbed his eyes and cupped his chin in one hand as he watched them board the Moldy Crow and its engines came to life, glowing a brilliant blue. Impressive—he'd had doubts that thing would even get off the ground, but it sure did now, and as it left the bay behind and shrank away into a sky as black as pitch, he watched it go and thought about Ru, wondering what he'd say to her the next time they met for lunch.

CHAPTER COMPLETE

PASSWORD: FLOATER