Behind the Veil (Rhea)

[Corias Bonaventure]

EPISODE I:
BEHIND THE VEIL

It is a time of tyranny and terror. One
by one, the free planets of the civilized
galaxy have fallen to the armies of
the GALACTIC EMPIRE. Only the remote
and savage frontier worlds remain
untouched by the Emperor’s greed.

Driven by the industrial demands of the
military and the Admiralty’s lust for glory,
fleets of IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYERS
prowl the borders of the Empire in
search of new worlds to conquer.

One such fleet has entered the
gaseous cloud known as THE VEIL to
investigate rumors of a primitive
spacefaring race that inhabits the
nebular mists…


Nebula NGC-381, Frontier Space. Twenty-five years before the Battle of Endor.

The Imperial Star Destroyer Impunity was a shark in clouded waters. She rumbled laboriously through a soup of volatile nebular gases so thick they occluded the light of all but the nearest stars. Even the engine contrails of her few support craft looked pale and feeble from the viewports. Behind her, the Impunity left a boiling wake a hundred miles long as her tapered prow cut through the natural turbulence of the nebula.

“Blasted fog. It’s a wonder anything lives out here. Even primitives like the Fyrokkians.”

Post Captain Aregan Slade turned moodily from the panoramic main port on the Impunity’s bridge to the quarterdeck railing. Leaning over the edge of the catwalk, he sneered at the team of harried technicians in the cubicles below. “What the devil’s wrong with your scanners? We’ve been out of contact with the fleet for an hour!”

The tech sergeant, a pup too young to be sergeant of the latrine squad, quailed under the captain’s glare and stammered, “The nebula’s garbling all our telemetry, sir. It’s the background radiation—it’s t-too much for our sensors to filter out.”

“Don’t blame the instruments for your own incompetence, Mr. Dekker,” Slade said acrimoniously. “What about the SWACS? Our FORCAP units? We still have a full TIE squadron in the vanguard; what about their telemetry?”

“They’re, uh, beyond our main sensor range, sir,” the sergeant replied. “We’re still getting routine transmissions from our TIEs, but the radiation c-could pose a hazard to our pilots, sir. Maybe we should recall—”

“Thank you, Mr. Dekker, and let me know when you have something useful to tell me.”

Slade prowled back to the helm quarter of the bridge where a rough-looking man in civilian clothing stood under armed guard. “Mr. Grayson, you said you’ve navigated this region before.”

Grayson’s face tightened in a mercenary scowl. “I did,” he replied, “with a Fyrokkian guide. You don’t cross it any other way. There’s a reason the ‘Rokies call this part of the nebula the Desert. The gas here is so ionized your scanners ain’t gonna read nothin’ but static. Then the false readings and sensor echoes start, and your nav computer goes schizophrenic on you. Once that happens, all you can do is pick a direction and hope you make it out before an ion storm leaves you dead in the water, or worse.”

Slade raised his chin by a degree. “This is an Imperial-class Star Destroyer, not the Corellian rattletrap you used to fly. If there’s a way to cut through the background noise, we’ll find it.”

“That’s the problem,” Grayson persisted. “There is no way to cut through the interference, not electronically. The Fyrokkians don’t fly by scanners. They go by instinct, by the way the ship’s handling in the currents. While you’re mucking through your sensor garbage, they could be running circles around you with their eyes closed.”

Slade lofted a condescending eyebrow. “Don’t make the mistake of underestimating Imperial technological expertise. I assure you we are more than a match for these primitives in any arena.”

“Like frell.”

“Please keep a civil tongue in your head while you’re on my bridge, Mr. Grayson. You’re here because Admiral Karlof thought your expertise on the Fyrokkians was worth postponing your arraignment on Taloraan. I, however, am not so convinced. Persist in trying my patience, and I’m sure these gentlemen will gladly conduct you back to the brig.” Slade gestured meaningfully at the pair of stormtroopers flanking the smuggler.

Grayson chewed on his lip and glowered back at the captain, but he held his peace. He’d thought playing tour guide to an imperial battle group on a military excursion would be preferable to slogging through the felony courts on Taloraan, especially if it earned him a pardon. Now he wasn’t so sure. Slade was too arrogant to follow his advice and too overconfident where the Fyrokkians were concerned.

“Captain, we have contact with our SWACS shuttle,” Dekker reported enthusiastically. “They say they’ve got a fix on the Timocracy just fifteen thousand kilometers off her projected coordinates.”

“Very good, Mr. Dekker,” Slade replied, throwing Grayson a self-satisfied smile. “So you see, Mr. Grayson, we are not so lost as your expertise would have us believe. Our sister ship is barely a cosmic spitting distance off-course. Mr. Dekker, confirm our position with the skipper of the Timocracy.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Dekker replied. A troubled frown crossed his face as he drummed at his controls. “Captain, Timocracy is not responding.”

“What?” Slade bolted to the quarterdeck railing. “Boost the signal!”

“SWACS reports the signal is at full strength, sir,” Dekker said helplessly.

“Do they have a visual on the Timocracy?”

“Coming through now, sir,”

“Then let’s have it!” Slade snapped impatiently. “Tactical viewer!”

A distorted image flickered to life on the free-standing screen aft of the quarterdeck, and it skipped and jumped as the tactical computer struggled to resolve it. Slade could faintly make out the elongated wedge of an Imperial Star Destroyer tipped rakishly against a field of red-orange gases. At last, the picture settled into computer-enhanced clarity. Timocracy hung like a dead thing, her steel-gray hull scored and charred, her conduits bleeding fuel and oxygen, her engines torn open and dangling behind her like the entrails of a disemboweled beast.

“Good Force!” Slade swore without a bit of reverence. “Survivors?”

“Reports c-coming in,” Dekker stammered. “There might be escape pods, but we can’t tell with all the debris. Negligible power readings. Whatever life support they have left is failing. Reactors are at critical, power relays overloaded and leaking radiation. Probability of survivors on board is… minimal.”

Slade turned and glared accusatorially at Grayson. “The Fyrokkians couldn’t have done this!”

“No,” Grayson agreed, “but they could’ve led them into an ion storm. One solid discharge with gunports open… their relays would carry the charge straight into their reactor housings. That’s all it’d take.”

“The storm would’ve destroyed the Fyrokkians, too!” Slade argued.

Grayson took a long look at the shattered remains of Timocracy and shook his head.

Dekker’s control panel squawked a warning, and the tactical viewer went dead. Dekker looked fearfully up at his captain. “We’ve lost the SWACS, sir!”

“Scramble the FORCAP squadron!” Slade barked. “Order them to engage all unknown bogies on their scanners!”

“Aye aye, sir… Sir, squadron commander reports negative on target acquisition.”

Slade stared down the bridge out the forward viewport where flashes of weaponsfire glowed in the mists ahead. Several larger flashes signaled the violent disassociation of engines and fuselages. In less than thirty seconds, the flashes stopped.

“We’ve lost the vanguard!” Dekker wailed.

Captain Slade’s throat bulged with ire. “Steady, Mr. Dekker! We won’t be intimidated by a bunch of primitives. Lieutenant Jeers, sound general quarters. Out guns, scramble our remaining squadrons. We’ll make these blackguards pay for the Timocracy!”

[Sharkeid Alharaba]

Plaza Cueva de Luce, Santiago District, present-day Coruscant. 1300 hours, local time.

Sharkeid Alharaba stood in the center of a modest first-floor apartment. The battered furniture and spartan walls belied a low economic status, but the room was kept tidy, homely. There wasn't much furniture; just a tattered sofa against the wall, a table and a couple chairs, a sturdy little trunk, and a modular kitchenette, and a small bedroom with a closet and bathroom attached.

The nineteen-year-old human male strode cautiously around the apartment, shadowed by a Gran and a Nausicaan. Sharkey stabbed his hands into the pockets of his trenchcoat and took a deep breath.

"Trash it," he said.

The Nausicaan and the Gran worked quickly. They threw the table on its side, splintering one of the legs, then smashed all the glassware they could find in the kitchen, which wasn't very much. They took a knife to the sofa and ripped out thick handfuls of upholstery stuffing, spreading it liberally across the carpet. Books went flying, drawers were turned inside-out, the wastebasket was emptied in the middle of the room. They even unrolled the toilet paper from the bathroom and left it lying all over the place.

While the maelstrom raged, Sharkey searched every corner of the apartment. After a few minutes, he came upon the trunk in the corner. He opened it and rummaged around--there were various items whose significance he didn't understand. There were only two things he'd been told to look for. One he couldn't find. The other he did.

He yanked out an old robe--a Jedi robe. There was no mistaking it, even for his street-trained eyes. Sharkey walked into the bedroom and lay the robe out flat on the bed. He set a sheet of paper with a hastily-scrawled note in the center of the robe's back. Then, taking an eight-inch hunting knife, he stabbed through the paper, through the robe, into the mattress, pinning it there.

Emerging, he nodded to his companions and said, "We're finished here. Come on."

They left the apartment in shambles--no explanation, no demands, nothing other than a note written in red ink:

"Mommy and Daddy say 'hi.'"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea Kaylen pulled the fraying hems of her old jacket closer together in a futile attempt to shut out the bite of the wind. She hurried along the inky black avenue, shuffling home on sore feet from her night-shift. She cast habitual, sharp glances around her to ensure she was the only person following her particular route home. At times like this, Rhea half-wished she weren't a woman...men certainly had less to fear in the ghetto.

The guttering, lurid holo-sign announced her safe arrival at the run-down apartment building Rhea called home, the Plaza Cueva de Luce. Having lived in the ancient complex for more than half her life, Rhea had grown used to its grimy, graffiti-smeared duracrete structure and the unpleasant smells that seemed always to hang about the place. Not that she'd grown any more fond of them.

The small Imrani woman quietly entered the Plaza and made her way down the poorly-lit first floor corridor to the door of her apartment. She began fishing through her coat pockets with a sigh, searching for her card-key.

All told, Rhea felt pretty lousy. The suspicious stomach-ache which had begun early that afternoon had not abated, and she feared more than anything a virus which would cause her to miss work. She couldn't afford it. The sixteen hours a day she was already pulling was just enough to support her; a sick day would get her out on her ear in no time flat. Her whole body hurt, she could barely see straight, and both her bosses were unadulterated yr'ganovi. Rhea was exhausted, and very much looking forward to a hot shower and her pillow for the next six hours.

Rhea located the errant plastic key, and swiped it through the electronic scanner before pushing open her apartment door.

Instantly, a wave of cold, tingling sensation washed over Rhea's entire body, sending her stomach reeling nauseously. She staggered, clamping a hand over her mouth to keep from retching, and quickly scrambled for the light-switch, wondering what the Force was wrong with her.

Brash light flooded her tiny apartment, and suddenly the question in her mind was answered. She went still, even her fluttering stomach, for an infinite second, time ceasing to move, space collapsing to singularity as her weary eyes focused on the wreckage before her.

Everything, everything was a shambles. The chaos was too much to even take in at one time--shattered glass and shredded paper and all manner of other flotsam littered her apartment in drifts and swaths. The entrails of her couch were everywhere; every one of the books from her shelves was on the floor, most with their pages torn and julienned like confetti. What she'd left that morning as a home had been turned upside down and transformed into a war-zone.

It was a full two minutes before Rhea could even move. She finally forced her feet forward, feeling as if she were trudging through water, so she could take stock of the rest of the apartment. Nothing had been left untouched; her kitchen cabinets were gutted and their contents strewn about the vicinity. The table was overturned and splintered. She did not see anything that was not broken.

Walking was a bit easier, now, and Rhea moved quickly into what remained of her living room. She'd just thought of her trunk. The ruined sofa and even the books she stepped over were of small importance compared to...

The lid of the trunk had been thrown back, and the keepsakes inside had been rifled. Rhea had barely the presence of mind to note that, even if it was untidy, the trunk had not been barbarically sacked, as had the rest of her apartment.

Whoever had done this had been looking for something, and he'd known it was in that trunk.

Rhea collapsed to her knees in front of it, hastily rummaging through everything there. Immediately she saw that her mother's Jedi cloak was gone, and a cold fist clenched her heart.

Soon it was clear that nothing else had been taken. Rhea frowned. That didn't make sense. That cloak wasn't worth a thing, except sentimentally. It was old and torn, and all Jedi wore such garments. Why would a burglar come storming into her home looking for a cloak?

Rhea could not make sense of it. She stood again, dazed, and picked her way across the room again to the doorway. She looked up and down the hall, but saw no sign of the cloak. Then she glanced up and saw the darkened doorway of her bedroom, into which she had not yet ventured. Honestly, she was a bit afraid to.

Slowly Rhea walked down the hall to her bedroom, flipping on the light but not stepping inside. The burglar could still be in the room.

The overhead light flickered on, revealing no lingering thief but plenty of strewn garbage. The bed was mussed and the pillows ripped, the curtains had been torn down, but in the midst of it all, like a morbid centerpiece, Rhea found what she'd been looking for.

The cloak was spread out on the bed, dark against the quilt.

It had been stabbed through with a knife.

Rhea felt her head spin and her stomach lurch again. Her legs trembled uncontrollably beneath her; for a moment she thought she would faint. Then she stumbled forward and clutched at the edge of the bed, spotting a scrap of paper impaled on the knife. Her hand shaking, she tugged the blade out of her mattress and slid the paper away.

"Mommy and Daddy say 'hi.'"

Black ate away at Rhea's sight; her stomach heaved, and she knew no more.

---------

Two hours later, Rhea had recovered sufficiently to sit upright. She had been reading the awful note over and over again, slowly coming to realize the words' horrible meaning.

She'd found the note on top of her mother's Jedi robe. Her parents had been dead for years, and now whoever had ransacked her place was sending a clear message.

Your parents died for a very specific reason, and if you're going to take up their cross, then you'd better be ready to hang on it just like they did.

Rhea had no idea who could have done this--wait. Yes she did. She lived in a building owned and operated by this area's biggest crime lord, Gucchi. And not too long ago she'd gone galavanting off to the Jedi Temple in an attempt to help a friend.

For a crime boss, even that little connection would probably be enough to want to make her see who she was messing with. The Jedi were the police, to all intents and purposes, and Gucchi didn't want any of his less-virtuous practices to be aired, even accidentally, in their presence by some no-account woman with a big mouth.

But...this note conveyed more than that, Rhea suddenly thought, horrified. This note showed clear knowledge of exactly what had happened to Kay Aronden and his wife all those years ago, and why. Did that mean...was Gucchi...?

It seemed obvious, but Rhea had no concrete proof, even with the note. But suddenly the anxious ache in her stomach took on its true meaning--she was in danger, or at least would be if she stepped out of line again.

Rhea knew then that the decision she'd been struggling with for the past couple of weeks needed to be made now. In her mind's eye Rhea saw her Uncle Kal's face in the holographic wedding invitation he'd sent her two days ago, begging her to get to Imran however she could for the ceremony. She'd been wondering if, now that she was entirely without a friend in the Plaza with Kale at the Temple, she should just pack up and accept her uncle's invitation, leave Coruscant, and never look back.

Now she knew the answer: Yes.

Unfortunately, no public transport ever went to Imran. No one off-planet really knew the way, save for Rhea Kaylen and one other man.

Luckily, that man just happened to be a friend.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Ben Zedi Public Spaceport, Long-term Starship Hangar B7, Coruscant. 0115 hours.

Corias Bonaventure, pilot, prospector, astrogator, tinker, purveyor of rare antiquities...

And still unemployed.

The spacer was sprawled out on the disheveled surface of the bottom bunk aboard the Iolanthe, a converted intrasystem scoutship that he'd called home for the past six years. She kept him oxygenated and pressurized, and he kept her maintained as much as he could afford. The two of them had waltzed all over the known galaxy and into a significant portion of the Unknown Regions as well. But the adventurous life hadn't been nearly as lucrative as Corias had hoped.

He'd been mostly grounded for six weeks now. He'd sent out his résumé to a dozen firms of varying reputability, including the fledgeling Outer Rim Adventure Tours, Ltd., which now seemed to be hopelessly embroiled in court battles over transit permits and safety regulations. Six more stable enterprises had sent him flat refusals; three had given him unconscionable offers, and the last two hadn't responded.

So now he was paging through the classified ads on holonet with a hand-held datapad, stylus dangling from his teeth, praying that some sap needed the services of an able spacer for fifteen thousand or more, up front if possible.

Air show? 'Lanthe was a tough old girl, but she wasn't a snub fighter.

Cargo hauler? Too big an operation.

Birthday party thrill ride? Gag me.

At this rate, he'd need to take out another loan from his dad.

Corias flopped down on his mangled bedsheets, still clad in a pair of rumpled khakis and a beater-style tanktop. He stared blearily around his diminuitive quarters, which definitely bore the mark of a bachelor's tender loving care. While in flight, he kept things tidy to make sure they didn't bounce around when he hit hyperspace turbulence. But for now, there were clothes draped over the sparse furniture, a couple Dos Equis bottles on the floor, datapads strewn across the small table with an assortment of take-out boxes and dirty dishes, and maintenance equipment under the computer desk.

Hi-diddly-dee, a spacer's life for me...

He was asleep in fifteen minutes, and he slumbered fitfully until the buzzing of the comm. unit rudely awakened him.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea rubbed her eyes and yawned before reading over the short, terse note printed on her comm-screen. It was abrupt and probably rude, but at this point it was Rhea's last lifeline, and she didn't really give a care how it sounded.

Corias,

I need to talk to you. Meet me at Yog's Bar and Grill at noon today. Please, be there.

Sorry,
Rhea

Rhea sighed, her heart heavy, and, whispering a silent prayer that he would be there, she hit the send key.

[Corias Bonaventure]

0314. Corias gave the flashing comm. screen a dirty look. Urgent message, my eye. Ten-to-one it's a creditor.

Reluctantly, he pulled himself up out of bed, scratched at a meandering itch, and stumbled over toward the terminal. "Display messages," he grumbled.

One urgent message from Rhea Kaylen, the computer droned.

"Rhea?"

Corias was wide-awake now. They'd met a few times now--dinner, drinks, a cinema... They hadn't known each other that long, but he was pretty sure she wouldn't send an urgent message that late unless she really meant it was urgent.

He scanned over the message--not too many clues, except maybe by the nature of its brevity. Hitting the "reply" key, he banged in a quick response.

I'll be there, kid.

Corias

[Rhea Kaylen]

Well, that was it, then.

Rhea quickly went over the past hours in her mind, making sure she'd missed nothing. As soon as she'd received Corias' message, like a missive from heaven, she'd relayed a final electronic letter to the only person who might miss her when she left--Kale. Then she'd hastily packed up what she could salvage from her apartment (incidentally, it had all fit in her trunk), and checked herself into a cheap motel on the other side of the Temple from Gucchi's domain. She had tried to sleep but could not, and later called both her employers to inform them she would not be returning to work. Ever.

It was now four minutes to twelve. Rhea dipped her hand in her pocket, feeling the five large-amount credit chits there. She'd emptied her bank account a few moments ago, and with that, had completely cut all ties she'd ever had to Coruscant.

It had been a remarkably quick and easy thing to do.

Now she was staring at the simple, welcoming facade of Yog's Bar and Grill, wondering fleetingly if she'd miss the place, and walking through the front door into the exuberant, noisy mass of life inside.

Rhea's eyes took longer than usual to adjust. They prickled with lack of sleep; she'd been unable to so much as doze after what had happened more than twelve hours (almost an eternity, now) ago. The woman knew she had dark circles under her eyes, knew her hair was rather disheveled and unclean. Her clothes were rumpled and her posture limp; Rhea wished Corias did not have to see her like this. If ever the man had thought of her as anything other than a skinny ghetto mouse, her appearance now would most certainly purge that thought from his mind.

Rhea only hoped she didn't look so awful that he was likely to deny her request.

After a moment of looking around, Rhea saw him, sitting on a stool at the bar, facing the door to see everyone who came in.

No doubt he'd already spotted her. Rhea moved toward him.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias had tossed on a T-shirt and his thick, blue flight jacket. He had a two-day shadow on his neck underneath the more fully grown beard--he realized belatedly he should've trimmed up before coming over, but he'd slept in late. He'd put a cup of black caff in his system to keep himself from yawning, but it was apparent the past few weeks hadn't been especially kind to him.

But his self-consciousness disappeared when he saw Rhea.

"Holy... Rhea, you okay? You look like you stole meat from a nexu."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Yep, she really did look that bad.

Oh, well. "That's about how I feel, I'm afraid," she replied, unable even to conjure a smile as she dragged herself onto the barstool next to Corias and lowered her head to her arms crossed on the bar. She looked up at Corias, noticing belatedly that he didn't look so well, himself. Rhea knew the man had not been having luck lately with finding himself another job; it seemed his misfortune was beginning to take a toll on him.

"I'm really sorry I dragged you out, Corias," she said softly, her taut muscles and wound-up brain all beginning to unkink for the first time that day. Something about Corias' presence, maybe just his familiar face, put her at ease and made her begin to see that her life wasn't as dismal as it had looked all morning. "I wouldn't have bothered you, but you were the only person I could call."

[Corias Bonaventure]

It didn't take a Force-user to tell there was something weighing heavily on Rhea's mind. But, for the life of him, Corias couldn't imagine what it was that had made him her only resort.

He shifted his seat on his stool, took a deep breath, and chuckled nervously. "Okay," he said. "Just tell me who the guy is, and I'll set him straight."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea laughed suddenly, feeling most of the weight left on her shoulders lifting.

"It's nothing like that, Corias, though I deeply appreciate the offer. It's a favor, actually, that requires your particular talents."

Rhea took a deep breath, preparing to plunge. "I need you to take me to Imran."

[Corias Bonaventure]

The levity slowly drained away from Corias's face. He leaned over the bar and scratched at his beard, then looked back askance at Rhea. "You're serious..."

She was. Dang. He felt really bad having to turn her down.

"You know, Rhea," he said cautiously, "I'd love to help you out, but that's not exactly a drive to the park. I don't think I could afford the fuel, much less the provisions, the maintenance, the time... There must be some starliner service, or at least a freighter company heading out that way every once in a while. That'd probably be a lot cheaper than what I'd have to charge you."

His curiosity caught up with his business sense. "Why do you want to go?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's heart stopped, and her whole body began to feel like lead again. Oh, Corias, no...

"Umm..." Rhea breathed, trying to keep her voice steady, "Well, Corias, to be perfectly honest...er, I've got to go to a wedding."

Rhea couldn't decide whether to close her eyes or smack her head on the bar as she waited for Corias to start pummeling.

[Corias Bonaventure]

"A wedding?"

Corias furrowed his brow. That was, um... an odd definition of urgency.

"Well... that's all well and good, but if it's any time within the next month and a half, you'll probably just have to miss it. Even if you could catch a starliner, a round trip ticket would cost you at least two grand."

He shrugged apologetically.

"I mean... it's not yours, is it?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea shook her head. "My uncle's. Corias, maybe you don't understand, a wedding's a really big deal for us..." Oh, never mind.

The woman gestured animatedly. "Look, Corias...I have to get off-planet." She looked the man straight in the eye, begging him mentally to understand.

[Corias Bonaventure]

If she was sending any sort of special message, it wasn't getting through. Corias was beginning to get a little agitated.

"Rhea, I'm not sure you understand. Starships are expensive to fly. Every trip I take has to be an investment. So unless there's something I've got I can sell on Imran, or something on Imran I can get cheap to sell here..."

He spread his arms expansively, inviting her to offer any candidates. He couldn't think of any.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea gnawed her lower lip. Oh, if only this had gone a bit better...

"No, really, Corias, I know I'm asking a huge thing here, I know I should never have spoken of it, I'm sorry I sound so ignorant. But you are the only person who can get me to Imran. Really; the only one. And I'm not asking for a free ride, I promise."

Rhea pulled the credit chits out of her pocket and spread them out between them like a token of good will...or a white flag.

"I know, I know, it's only five hundred, but it's all I've got on Coruscant. Once we get to Imran, I can get you more." Rhea suddenly thought of something. "Oh, and my family has some things, heirlooms, that would be valuable to the Jedi, I know it."

She was trying frantically to come up with something else, anything else, that would sell Corias on the idea. Finally, it came to her.

"Corias, there are mechanics on Imran who would fix your ship again. Perfectly." She paused for emphasis. "For free."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Credits... helpful, if she really could afford it like she said she could. Five hundred would cover the cost of setting out, at least.

Heirlooms... um... artifacts, maybe? Corias had a soft spot in his heart for those, as risky an investment as they were.

But it was the third item on the list that really pricked his ears.

"Mechanics... for free?" he repeated. "We're not talking neighborhood grease monkeys, right? We're talking real, live, professional, hyperdrive-certified starship mechanics?"

The thought of giving Iolanthe a thorough maintenance sweep and tune-up was an enticing one with all the jury-rigging he'd had to do over the years. But he'd always figured it'd cost close to ten thousand for parts and labor, at least in the Core worlds.

He leaned forward toward Rhea, an odd sort of sparkle in his eyes. "For free?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Bingo. Apparently, Rhea had found the magic words; that strange, slightly manic glint in Corias' eye was exactly what she'd been looking for.

Trying to hide the enormity of her relief, Rhea leaned toward Corias in a conspiratorial way. "For free, Corias. And, yes, they're hyperdrive-certified, or Imran's equivalent. You could have your pick of any expert repair team in Aranio City, which is, I'm sure you'll recall, the capital and largest city of not only Imran, but of the entire Aranio system. Is that basically what you had in mind?"

Rhea suppressed a smile. Maybe, just maybe...this gamble would pay off.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias scratched at the scalp underneath his bandana. "Well," he said presently, "that'd be an investment. Now, it wouldn't cover all the overhead..."

He glanced back at Rhea, and for some reason, he just couldn't help himself. He smiled roguishly and said, "But with a little bit of gambler's luck, I could make up the difference. Anyway, it'd beat hanging around here with nothing to do. It's a deal."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea blinked in disbelief; she'd fully expected Bonaventure to take more convincing than that.

Then it sunk in: He'd agreed!

Rhea squelched her first impulse (to hug him) and instead politely shook his hand, beaming. "Thank you so much, Corias! You don't know...I owe you a huge favor. And I promise this'll be worth your while. Imrani weddings are actually week-long festivals, so there'll be a party waiting for you while your ship gets fixed."

Though what she'd said was true, Rhea was only mentioning it to hide how very relieved she felt, knowing she was leaving Gucchi, his tactics, and his ghetto behind her forever.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias felt his ears buzzing at the jubilant outburst--restrained though it was. Sure, he knew weddings were major to-dos in some cultures, but this seemed just a bit over-the-top.

Oh well... maybe she really liked her uncle.

He warmly accepted the handshake and shrugged. "Sure... well, when were you planning to leave?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea sobered immediately. This just might be prickly...

"Um...just as soon as you can leave, actually."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Must be some wedding," Corias muttered. "Well, let's see now..."

He fished a pen and a spiral notebook out of his coat pocket and began scribbling out a list. "If I run a few errands today... Order a refuel and run a quick maintenance check... Get my berth fees up to date... Put myself on the flight schedule, assuming it's not too busy... How does tomorrow morning sound? Say... meet me at eight o'clock, Ben Zedi Spaceport, Hangar B7?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea mentally sighed with relief, ignoring the wedding comment.

"Sounds perfect," she replied, standing and stretching. Now that her fears were abated and her situation vastly improved, Rhea was beginning to feel the lag of sleeplessness. "Thank you again, Corias. I truly appreciate it. Is there anything I can do to help you prepare? It would be the least I could do."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Well..." Corias tucked his pen back behind his earlobe. "Try not to pack more than about fifty kilos... I hope you can eat freeze-dried mealpacks. If you want to bring something else non-perishable, be my guest. Other than that, it's mostly stuff I have to take care of anyway. Speaking of which, I'd better get started."

The spacer stood up from his seat and turned to pay for his caff. "So... Eight o'clock, then. Should be interesting."

Now, what had he just gotten himself into?

[Rhea Kaylen]

Ben Zedi Spaceport Docking Bay, the following day, 0800 hours Coruscant local time

Fifty kilos...ha! Rhea smiled ironically at the thought. Well, he should love me for this.

Rhea was actually carrying her trunk herself, wandering into the docking area of the Ben Zedi Spaceport and looking for the correct hangar. The whole parcel didn't weigh more than thirty-five pounds, and most of that was the weight of the wood itself, not the few things stowed inside. Hopefully this way she could quash any "females don't pack light" jokes that Corias might have up his sleeve.

The woman adjusted the tattered strap of her shoulder bag (which also weighed next to nothing) and finally spotted the right place--the hangar outside of which Corias Bonaventure stood peering up at the hull of his ship and scratching his head in puzzlement.

Rhea tried not to giggle. He looked vaguely cute with that expression on his face.

Not that she'd ever tell him that.

[Corias Bonaventure]

He was wearing a pair of jeans and dirty tee-shirt, his hair was damp with sweat, and he was gripping an adjustable pipe wrench so hard it hurt. Seemingly at wit's end, he raised a pair of grease-covered hands imploringly before Iolanthe's stoic prow.

"What is it this time? Your intake ports are clear, your relays are open, I scrubbed out your induction manifold this morning... so why aren't you giving me juice from the hyperdrive?"

Corias stood there a couple moments as if he fully expected an audible answer.

"I swear, if I hadn't already blown a fortune on your sensory cortex--"

A faint noise from behind alerted him, and he spun around to see Rhea approaching with a bemused expression on her face. "Oh! Rhea! I'm, uh..." He gestured sheepishly toward his ship. "Just working out a few last-minute kinks."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea clamped her teeth on her bottom lip in an attempt to get rid of her unworthy perception of Corias. His abashed face was not helping.

"So I see," she replied lightly, lowering her trunk to the ground and flexing her shoulder, stiff from carrying it. She glanced over to the large craft crouching in the hangar next to them.

Whoa.

Rhea's first, overwhelming impression was of the imminent possibility that at any moment the thing might fall apart. She blinked and reassessed, seeing that, in fact, the ship was not actually that old, judging by the model (though there were so many added-on arrays, ports, and scraps it was difficult to define an exact year). But the scoring and pocking which marked the ship's hull spoke of half-a-century's worth of spacefaring and travel, and even cleaned and prepped she looked tired and unwilling to fly.

Rhea just wondered how unwilling she was. Apparently, she was already giving Corias headaches, and they hadn't even left yet.

"So...this is the ship?" Rhea queried, trying to sound optimistic.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias looked back up at the ungraceful hulk of fuselage and nodded. "This is my girl," he said. "There's nothing to worry about; she's just being a little temperamental right now."

The spacer ducked underneath a landing strut and popped open an access panel on the starboard engine pod. He stuck an arm inside clear up to the shoulder and rummaged.

"I'm just trying to get test levels from the hyperdrive. Everything checked out last time I looked, but now all I'm getting is a warning light."

There was a loud clank as he flipped a breaker back and forth, then a sizzling energy discharge. Corias yelped and whipped his hand back out, shaking it furiously.

"Like I said, temperamental," he grumbled, squeezing a pair of singed fingers.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea jumped at the minor explosion of sparks and eyed the ship incredulously. You've got to be kidding me...

The woman craned her neck and looked up again at the craft, half in disbelief and half in a sort of pity...for the ship. She hadn't known, when she'd asked Corias to take her on this trip, that she would be imposing on some poor derelict ship.

Rhea glanced back down at Corias still favoring his fingers, and noticed something off about the fuselage five feet behind him. Rhea frowned and slipped under the belly of the ship to inspect it.

A small, insignificant-looking access panel was cocked open. Rhea saw the faded red letters F-U-E-L printed on it.

"Um, Corias? Is this supposed to be open?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias turned with a furrowed brow, wondering just what it was Rhea had found. He circled back around the engine pod for a closer look.

He blinked incredulously at the open fuel port, then tugged the hatch back and gave it a slam.

HsssSSSS ka-CHUNK! Whrrrrwhrrwhrrwhrrwhrr...

Once the fuel cap had pressurized and locked into place, a satisfied purr resonated from Iolanthe's mechanical bowels.

Corias stared at the wayward fuel port for a few moments, then glanced sideways at Rhea. "Thanks."

He closed up the panel he'd been working in and headed to the ventral gangplank. "Come on aboard, and we'll get you settled," he said, wiping his hands on a loose rag. "I'm afraid the cabin's still a mess... I didn't have a chance to finish cleaning up."

Corias led the way up the gangplank into Iolanthe's belly. The ship was compact--the gangway opened into a small bay with an EVA locker and a docking cowl and airlock to port. To aft was engine access; starboard led into a hold filled with probes and other sensory equipment; the ship's cabin was forward, and a steep stair led to the cockpit module up top. The whole thing was a bit bigger than Rhea's apartment, but a great deal of the space was taken up by machinery.

The pilot pulled the cabin hatch open and stepped inside. He'd gotten rid of the empty food canisters, but the room was still fairly well jumbled. He stooped to pick two socks off the floor (not from the same pair) and tossed them into a pile in the corner. The cabin was a modest affair--two bunks in the forward wall, a desktop computer terminal surmounted by several shelves of books, a mini-fridge and infrawave oven, a small dining table, an old wooden dresser, and a tall, cylindrical aquarium fastened against the wall. "Set your luggage anywhere for now. It'll have to be secured before takeoff. That door's the lavatory, and there's the pantry. And that's Nelson."

He pointed to the aquarium where an exotic-looking white-and-brown-striped fish was fanning out its huge, feathery fins above a plastic coral reef.

Corias stood back as Rhea took it all in--truth be told, he was nervously anticipating her reaction. 'Lanthe was a rusty bucket, and there wasn't much of a way to get around that--but she was also his home.

"She's not much to look at, I know," he said preemptively. "She's seen better days. But she'll still get us from point A to point B."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea leaned down and hefted her trunk again, turning to follow Corias up the gangplank and into the ship. He led the way into the compact cabin and moved aside to let Rhea pass.

She slipped by and raised her eyes to look around. Oh, my...

Corias wasn't kidding when he'd said the ship had seen better days. They must have been ages ago, however. If the outside had looked weathered, the cabin appeared truly ancient. No amount of cleaning would ever return any original gleam the panels once held.

And yet, even untidy, it was home. And Rhea had the distinct impression that it was truly Corias'. Sure, it was a rattletrap, and, sure, it bore the distinct odor of a man and a spacer (machine oil mixed with cologne, underscored vaguely by hamburger grease). But Corias had every bit as much invested in this ship as Rhea ever had in her apartment--truth be told, probably more. So Rhea was willing to accept it--and resolve to try to surreptitiously clean it while Corias wasn't looking.

She turned back to smile at him. "Nice place, Cor."

Wait a minute. When did he get to be Cor? Rhea didn't know, but it seemed to fit, so she left it. "What's she called?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias knew she was just being polite. It was a nice smile--a little too nice considering the wreckage before her, and it didn't cover the slight droop in her shoulders as she surveyed the little cabin.

Aw, what the heck. He'd take what he could get.

"Thanks," he replied, sounding relieved. "I have been meaning to redo the walls, but... well, I'm the only one who's had to live with them for the past few years, so I never got it done."

He strode over to the bunks and straightened up the sheets on the bottom bed. "She's called Iolanthe," he said. "It's the name of an ancient literary figure. Just some old story I remember reading when I was a kid. Before I got her, she was an intrasystem survey vessel scheduled to be shipped to Ord Mantel for scrap."

Corias turned again and leaned against the bedframe. "I'd offer you your choice of bunks, but... well... I'm kinda used to the bottom."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea grinned again, more sincerely this time. "That's alright. I don't mind." She glanced back over the cabin again, unable to dispel the notion that maybe the ship should have gone to scrap when it was slated to do so, but she wasn't about to let Corias know that. She was imposing on him enough already; it was none of her business how he maintained his ship.

Iolanthe. What a beautiful name. Rhea wanted to repeat it, it was so delicious, but she refrained. The ship got points for the moniker, though.

She set down her trunk, scooted it against the wall, and slung her light satchel onto the top bunk. Rhea nodded to the exotic fish floating lazily in the tank across the cabin, her mouth twitching.

"Nelson?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias chuckled.

"I got him on Mon Cal, but he came from a water world on the mid rim called Dournay. I named him after my uncle. They're both as vain as a Medusan crescent bird."

Nelson drifted toward the glass, eyeing the newcomer suspiciously until he caught sight of his own reflection. He charged it, bounced off the glass, and settled back into peaceful piscine abandon.

"I'll let you get settled in," Corias said presently. "I'd better finish running through my checklist. Be back in a minute."

He slipped past Rhea and clambered up the aft stairs into the cockpit module.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Corias disappeared up the hatch, leaving Rhea and Nelson equally taciturn in the cabin.

While the fish basked under his heat lamp, Rhea looked around her again, frowning. She'd ridden spacecraft enough to know how to stow things for flight, so she quickly secured her own things and quietly shuffled around the cabin, finishing the clean-up job Corias had begun heaven-knows-how-long-ago.

She left his pile of dirty laundry, only because she didn't know where he wanted it put, but everything else was easy to guess or remember. Hopefully Corias would not find her entirely useless on the trip; she had no desire to be a freeloader, and was capable of just about anything he might need done, even minor repair. Major things would have her clueless, but most odd jobs she could do. And she was willing to do anything he needed doing.

It was the least repayment she could make.

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Hyperdrive levels, there we go. Lube pressure is good. Batteries are good. Warning lights, diagnostic sensors, come on, talk to me... looks good."

Corias leaned back in his pilot's seat and checked the overhead console.

"Nav deflectors, long-range sensor package, secondary comm. antenna, emergency beacon..."

He spun to port. "Atmospheric control, viewport defog, gravity attenuator, detox..."

Finally, he turned to a small control deck behind the main flight controls. "And last, but not least..."

With a flip of a switch, the four speakers in the cockpit frame pulsed with an operatic baritone voice and orchestra:

Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave, black flag I fly
Than to play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart!

With grin of satsifaction, Corias leaned back in the leather-padded bucket seat and let his eyes droop shut. It felt good to be heading out into the stars again, even if he was taking a passenger. He trusted Rhea and all, but he couldn't help feeling there was more to this anxious desire to get to Imran than a delayed wedding invitation.

Either way, he was in it now. He switched off the operetta in the middle of the first chorus of "I am a Pirate King!" and opened a channel to the control tower. After some agonizing dialogue with a Bothan whose Basic was less than fluent, he confirmed an 8:56 departure time--a half-hour earlier than he was expecting. He fired up the main thrusters, then bounced back down the aft ladder and into the cabin.

"We're lifting off in twenty--"

Oh... the cabin was looking tidier than when he left it.

"'Scuse me. Twenty minutes. Let me give you a hand here."

Corias looked around and saw she already had her trunk secured in a baggage rack in the closet. All that was left was to dump his laundry into a rollaway bin and make sure the knicknacks on his desk were secure on their magnetic bases.

"Okay, we're running tighter under the wire than I thought we'd be, but it looks like we're doing all right... I'd better get back to the flight deck. There's a bench seat with a safety harness in the back of the cockpit if you want to join me."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea jumped violently as something or someone began crooning melodiously up in the cockpit. Surely that wasn't Corias...

She wrinkled her nose at the lyrics, which were presently cut off mid-vibrato. A few minutes later, Corias thumped onto the floor beneath the cockpit hatch. When he announced their imminent takeoff, Rhea was surprised. It usually took a decade to get flight clearance off of Coruscant. It seemed luck was with them.

Rhea blinked at Corias' invitation. "Um, sure. Okay." Rhea squared off a last small stack of papers and dropped them into a drawer, slamming it shut with her bony hip. She glanced about to ensure she'd missed nothing, then nodded to Corias.

"After you."

She followed his lanky frame up the ladder, tentatively poking her head out the top to assess the cockpit. Small, utilitarian, with what seemed an excessive amount of wires dangling like tentacles from the overhead control panels. The main board was lit up like Coruscant's Club Strip and provided most of the lighting in the cockpit.

Rhea pulled herself up with a grunt and slid onto the narrow bench behind the main cockpit. Latching her restraint around her skinny waist, she watched Corias' movements anxiously, eager to be away.

[Corias Bonaventure]

A high-pitched turbine whine filled the cockpit as Iolanthe's dormant engines rattled to life. Corias powered up the repulsorlift generators and took the safety off the landing gear controls, then finished keying his flight path into the nav computer. Only thing left to wait for was the control tower's signal.

The pilot drummed his fingers restlessly on the console as he eyed the air doors in the roof of the hanger overhead. They should've opened five minutes ago. "Control, this is Iolanthe. We're scheduled to lift off in four minutes, but the air doors are still closed. Is there a problem?"

There was a sputter of static from the radio. Then a heavily accented voice mumbled, "Pleased to be standing by."

Corias gave Rhea an aggravated shrug and settled back to standing by. There was a mechanical groan, and the doors lurched apart for about five meters. Then they ground to a halt, started closing again, and finally opened up the rest of the way, leaving nothing above them but the blue Coruscant sky.

"Control to Ee-oo-lon-tay. Clearing to depart, sank you."

"I guess that means we can go now," Corias muttered. He gripped the repulsor yoke and eased the throttle open. "Iolanthe departing hangar B7 now."

The bulky ship rose from the ground and suddenly assumed a grace that belied her ramshackle construction. This close to the ground, she bobbed gently like a leaf floating on water. Slowly, she climbed up out of the murky hanger, through the air doors, and into the sky, and the morning sun beamed through the canopy glass. The Coruscant skyline began to sink all around them, and the eyesore that was the Ben Zedi Public Spaceport disappeared from view.

"Hang on to your seat," Corias said incidentally, reaching for the main throttle.

Before Rhea could inquire, the main thrusters blasted them into flight speed with the acceleration of a high-performance sport speeder. Stratoscrapers sped behind them as Corias eased the ship into one of the endless streams of traffic looping up into the stratosphere.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea didn't even have time to open her mouth to ask What-did-he-mean,-"Hang-onto-my-seat?" before Iolanthe's remarkably smooth hover revved into honest-to-goodness flight speed without missing a beat. Rhea swallowed her heart back into her chest, strangling on a gasp as Corias masterfully swung the hulking scout ship into planetary escape trajectory.

Rhea would never have guessed Iolanthe could fly so fluidly or so fast. She might have been a bucket of bolts to look at, but, frell, was she ever a good ship! Rhea watched intently as the hazy morning skyline slid out of view towards the bottom of the viewscreen, sinking away and taking with it the last of Rhea's concern, stress, and fear. Her life here was over, maybe forever. And that knowledge was like a weight lifting from her soul.

She sighed happily and stretched as well as she could in the harness, watching the ships in front of Iolanthe turning off into different directions, their metal hulls gleaming in the sunlight. The crystalline sky above grew darker and darker, fading down the spectrum of blue into azure, navy, indigo, black. Soon, bright pinpricks of light started winking around them, and Rhea, despite the fact she was relieved to be rid of Coruscant, wished fleetingly that she could see it shrinking behind them. It was a sight not to be missed, the planet one enormous corusca gem glowing gold and silver and black in the infinity of velvet space. Rhea had only seen it like that twice, and could never grow tired of it.

Eventually Rhea heard the tell-tale drop in the engine's sound, more than she felt any perceptible reduction in their speed, and knew Corias was positioning Iolanthe for a hyperspace jump. She was exceedingly curious about it, and craned her neck to watch his hands flying over the control panels, but she bit her tongue against any questions, having no desire to bother him.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Oh, that felt good. Coruscant was the town where everything happened, but, for a spacer, it got awfully claustrophobic after a while. Space was big. There was plenty of room to roam, and a lone pilot could travel for weeks without any sentient contact. For some, the prospect was terrifying. For Corias, it was soul-cleansing.

Present company excepted, of course.

For the moment, he was engrossed in his calculations. Plotting a jump into the Unknown Regions was always a bit hairy. He had to incorporate his own knowledge of the local interstellar features to cover the gaps in the navigational database, and that always increased the margin of error. But in less than two minutes, he was ready for the first jump.

"We'll make a total of three jumps," he explained. "The first waypoint will be Kaph's Star; that'll get us about halfway to Imran, and it'll be easier to calculate the rest of the distance from there."

He took the safety off the hyperdrive controls and started shunting power through the induction coils. A full-throated hum began building in Iolanthe's aft quarter as the hyperlight engines warmed up.

"Might be a little bumpy at first," Corias advised. "The inertial damping matrix is a bit spotty."

As if to prove the point, 'Lanthe began rattling profoundly as the stars in the canopy glass smeared into long streaks of light. The hyperdrive roared into action, and a dimensional distortion made Rhea's vision double. The starlight spun crazily and shifted blue, the deck seemed to lurch in every direction at once, and, finally, the roar dissipated, the shaking stopped, and Iolanthe was sailing smoothly through the vortex of hyperspace.

Corias leaned back in his seat with his hands behind his head. "Ah, not a bad jump."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea was inclined to disagree. She clutched at the overhead panel, trying not to fall sideways. Presently she regained enough equilibrium to sit upright.

"Kaph's Star?" she queried, trying to unrattle her brain. She blinked several times until the star-lines of hyperspace straightened and reorganized properly. Rhea glared sideways at the near wall, perturbed at Iolanthe. The metal gleamed back stoically.

"What's the second point? Or will you figure that out when we get there?"

Rhea had never thought to ask Corias whether he had the proper starcharts or maps in his onboard computers. She could have gotten them for him, had she not been in such a fire to get off Coruscant. Oh, well, she supposed she'd just have to trust the spacer.

[Corias Bonaventure]

At first it seemed that Corias hadn't heard her. He went on fine-tuning the induction mixture to hold for a multiple-day jump. Then, with a few keystrokes on the navigational computer, he pulled up a local star chart on the starboard VDU.

"That's Kaph's Star," he said, pointing to a bright, white orb. "We'll probably head from there to Alioth, then either Marzebul or Vrr'dun. I know that's not the usual course to Imran, but this way we won't have to sidetrack twenty lightyears galactic north to get around the Barzanoi Cluster."

He knew what kind of reaction that revelation would get, so he quickly added, "Don't worry, I've got it figured out. We'll still be well clear of the pirate territories on the spinward side."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea really did trust Corias...really. She hoped he did know what he was talking about, however, as wandering anywhere near Hawk pirate territory would make one very busted-up ship the least of their concerns.

Unstrapping herself and standing, the woman studied the star maps Corias had pulled. They were incomplete but, as far as she could tell, accurate. She recognized many of the landmarks Corias had listed, though the route seemed a little risky. It wasn't a commercial route at all; but then, he didn't have the proper hyperspace coordinates for this trip. He was simply recreating the last time he'd stumbled across the Imrani homeworld.

"Won't this flight route take us awfully close to the Veil?" Rhea suddenly wondered, frowning. She indicated an area of space on the viewscreen marked by a thin, undulating red line. It enclosed a small portion of the map on the edge of the Unknown Regions' border, and its plainness on the map belied its vicious atmospheric nature.

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Yeah, and that's the beauty of it," Corias replied. "The pirates stay clear of that sector, so our chances of running into trouble with them will be a lot lower. And if we do wind up drifting into the nebula, my scanners ought to be powerful enough to lead us back out without any problems."

He locked in the flight controls and stood up out of his pilot seat. "Sorry, I didn't think to mention it earlier, but shaving off those twenty light years will be a lot less strain on my... well... your... budget. And you'll have a lot better chance of making that wedding of yours on time. We're all set here if you want to head back below."

With that, he headed toward the aft ladder.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea eyed the instruments again, suspiciously. It wasn't a brilliant idea to scrape so close to the Veil, despite Corias' confidence in the superior quality of his instruments. But...he knew what he was doing, Rhea guessed, so...

She turned and lowered herself down the aft ladder again, trying to shake off a lingering sinking feeling. Corias could handle it, she felt sure. Just let him do the job you hired him to do.

Rhea landed lightly at the foot of the ladder and went to the closet to retrieve her bag.

"Thank you, again, Corias, for your help. You have no idea what this means to me."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias strode into the quarters and opened the fridge. "You know, you're right, Rhea. I really have no idea whatsoever. But I'm okay with that." He reached in, pulled out a can of Dr Thunder, and opened it with a snap and a hiss. "I mean, how often does a guy like me get a chance to rescue a damsel in distress?"

The spacer chuckled and crossed to the table and sat down to enjoy his soda. "Well, it's going to be a fairly long trip. If you want to read something, be my guest." He pointed to the line of books sitting on the shelf above the desk--everything from astrophysics textbooks to thriller novels. "I know I could save space with datapads, but I guess I'm old-fashioned when it comes to entertainment. I've also got some old movies on my computer, but... well, I don't know if that's your sort of thing."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea looked over her shoulder at him, coloring slightly. Damsel in distress...right. Still that was awfully close to the truth, despite him having said he had no idea what he was doing for her, and Rhea was very grateful to him for helping her out anyway. She didn't know whether to be grateful that he wasn't going to pry into her exact circumstances: she really didn't know if it were better to keep that to herself or if she should tell him.

The thought of what she was going to do for the coming days had not really occurred to her until that moment, and suddenly she was stuck. What was she going to do to entertain herself? The last time she'd made this trip, she'd done a lot of thinking and a good deal of reading, particularly about Coruscant, so that she'd be able to navigate as much of the city as would be neccessary while living there by herself. Now she had nothing to study for, and little to think about besides how glad she was to be going home again.

"No, thanks," she told Corias. "Maybe later, though. I'm not sure what to do, honestly. Don't bother about me though, pretend I'm not here. I'll find something to keep me quiet, promise."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Suit yourself," Corias said, leaning back against the bulkhead. "But it's not like I never get time to myself when I'm on this bucket. I might as well try to enjoy the company while you're here. I think it could even be a lot of fun."

He rolled his head forward and chuckled. "Come on, don't tell me you never thought you could use a little excitement in your life. I know there's a spacer in there somewhere just begging to come out for a spin through the stars in a skiff like Iolanthe."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea rolled her eyes. "I don't know about that," she replied. "But...yeah, I guess there's a little part of me that's adventurous. Maybe not spacer-caliber adventurous. But I've always kind of wanted to see more of the galaxy myself. I just never got the chance to." Rhea grinned devilishly. "Not that wandering around the galaxy can possibly be good for me--in fact it killed all my family. So maybe it's better I didn't crave your brand of excitement."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Killed all her-- what??

Corias jerked up in his seat, and some Dr Thunder trickled down the wrong pipe. He gave a mighty cough, thumped his chest, and set the aluminum can back on the table.

"Er, sorry.... what was that? There's not something you're not telling me, is there?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea laughed a bit nervously, suddenly thinking that maybe she shouldn't have brought this subject up. Something told her Corias might take it a little more seriously than she did.

"Well," she said, smiling in an attempt to make light, "see, my family...that is, there are some people who think my family is...well, cursed. They say that my great-great-grandmother came under a curse because she left Imran."

Rhea could see confusion on Corias' face, so she tried to explain. "See, Imrani are really...homebound, you know? They like being on Imran, most wouldn't want to leave. But see, my great-great-grandmother was kind of adventurous, and left Imran, and married a human...and there are certain Imrani who actually think that leaving the planet was a deadly mistake. She died quite young, and never saw her home ever again. So some people cooked up this curse, and when her daughter, my great-grandmother, went insane and died, it kind of seemed to prove their theory."

Corias was beginning to look, by degrees, more and more pale. Rhea's idiotic smirk dissipated, and she quickly decided not to go any farther into the gruesome tale. He looked like he might try to pitch her overboard if he thought she really was cursed.

"But really, it's just a handful of really ignorant radicals. Really. This curse business is just a bunch of nonsense. I don't believe it." She said it in a way that implied if she didn't believe it, it couldn't possibly be true. She hoped Corias would be satisfied with that, and turned, pretending to be busy with something in her satchel.

------------------

Three days later, Rhea had managed to find enough to occupy herself that she wasn't driving herself (or Corias, thankfully) batty. In fact, much as her pragmatic personality hated to admit it, she was actually managing to have fun. Corias was fun to talk to, and, between saying something totally unexpected and plotting suicidal flight courses and generally being unpredictable, he was making this trip enjoyable for her, intentionally or not.

Tonight, he had told her, he wanted to show her something. His hint had been sufficiently vague to pique her curiosity, but he'd specifically said she had to wait until after supper.

Darn him.

[Corias Bonaventure]

They'd just left Kaph's Star, a modest white lantern with nothing more than a ring of cosmic dust to its name. Once he was satisfied that Iolanthe was running smoothly, Corias bounced down the aft ladder and cracked open the rations locker. Most of the food he carried on Iolanthe was in reconstitutable, chemically-heated mealpacks--crack the seal, let the reactants in the packaging warm up the entree, mix, and serve. They weren't half bad, especially if you threw in some extra spices to mask the metallic taste of the package itself.

"What's your pleasure?" he called back while rummaging through the stacks of mealpacks. "Let's see, we had the meatloaf already. Neimoidian stew... um... better let your stomach settle from the last jump, first. Oh, Swedish meatballs. Didn't know I still had some of these."

He grabbed two packages and strode into the quarters, holding the mealpacks front-side-up so Rhea could see the romanticized depiction (serving suggestion) of the meal contained within.

"Ahem... uh... you might think this is a weird question, but does that picture remind you of anything? It's just a theory of mine."

From the look he was getting, he figured he'd probably better elucidate.

"I can't really explain it, but every sentient race I've encountered has its own version of these Swedish meatballs. Every one of them. I have never been able to figure out why, whether it's a throwback to some ancient alien race that used to dominate the galaxy, or something that's actually encoded within the genetic sequence of each sapient species..."

He tossed one of the packages onto the table. "Anyway, bon appetit."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea stopped the skidding mealpack and turned it so she could further examine the front. Hmm...not ringing any bells...though it did seem vaguely reminiscent of...something.

Oh, well. She tore the packaging and peeled back the cover, then set it aside to wait for the contents to warm.

"Every sentient race? That seems a little hard to swallow...no pun intended," she grinned. Rhea prodded the thawing noodles with a fork as Corias sat down with a grunt opposite her at the small table. She twisted a noodle around the prongs of her utensil and tried it. She was expecting the typical, tasteless fare most humans seemed to favor--all the food she'd eaten on Coruscant had actually tasted the same for nearly two years after she'd moved back.

Rhea was shocked to realize she had eaten this before! Admittedly, it was bland, but this was just like...

"Calovian Wheat Stew! I don't believe it!"

[Kale]

Gah! Wrong account.

[Corias Bonaventure]

The spacer chuckled as he cracked his own pack open and began stirring up the noodles and sauce in his fork. "Me neither. But it's never failed yet."

Corias always seemed to eat quickly. When Rhea had asked him about that earlier, the only answer he could give was that he'd had several meals rudely interrupted before, so it had gotten to be a habit. He scooped up the last of his noodles and gravy and dispensed the tin in the refuse processor. Then he pulled out a book he'd been reading and settled back in his chair while Rhea finished up.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea had since come to learn that Corias' wolfing down food was not intentional rudeness, just customary for him. For her part, Rhea knew Cor wouldn't mind her taking a more leisurely amount of time to eat.

As she polished off the food with relish (it had been probably close to a decade since she'd had wheat stew, and while it wasn't really an all-time favorite, she definitely liked it; now she was reminded of home), Rhea glanced over at Corias' book: La Puissance de l'Espace. Huh. She'd never heard of it...come to think of it, she couldn't even identify the language. Perhaps it was the same as the foreign tongue he'd used earlier, when he'd given her dinner.

Rhea tossed her trash into the processor and nodded at the novel. She was curious, and also unwilling to out and just remind Corias he'd had something he wanted to show her. Maybe she could just kind of...prod him. She didn't want to be rude, but the suspense was starting to get to her.

"What's your book about? I can't read the title."

[Corias Bonaventure]

"Huh? Oh."

He rotated the book in his hand, just enough to let her see that it was all in the same tongue.

"Just an old novel. A man who grew up on an agrarian world finds himself thrust into an unforgiving interstellar economy. It's kind of angsty."

He returned to his reading, smiled at something in the text, then read on a bit more contemplatively.

"It's not a very good book... There's a much better one in the same language on the shelf up there, and it's a lot older, too. Les Misérables. Haven't read that one in a while."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Freshly interested, Rhea stood and moved to the shelf. She ran over the titles with her eyes until she located the right book...at least, she figured it was, but the title was spelled nothing like the way Corias pronounced it.

Pulling it out, Rhea enjoyed the smooth, textured leather spine and lovingly caressed the fading title inscription. She gently cracked the old volume to a random page (there were plenty to choose from--the tome was massive) and squinted at the writing. She couldn't make a thing of it, nor make any kind of guess as to the pronuciation. There were a lot of funny-looking dashes over some letters and curls under a few of the others. She tried mouthing a few of the bizarre words but only dissolved in a laugh.

"This is insane. What language is it?"

And don't think you're getting out of showing me whatever-it-is. I haven't forgotten.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias glanced up from his book, and he looked miffed.

"Hey, now. It's a very beautiful language. It's called Français--I don't think there's a name for it in Basic. But it's a lot more graceful than Basic. For instance..."

He held up a finger and did some quick mental composition.

"Vos yeux, ils sont comme les étoiles du matin et de la soir."

Corias let the melodic words drift on the air a little. "And that's just a common, everyday phrase."

He glanced down to his book again. Then, a few moments later, he glanced back up. "Uh... were you waiting for something?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea hadn't meant to offend him--not that she minded ruffling his feathers a little. She listened to him spin off the phrase, which flowed from his tongue in an utterly beautiful fashion. Very nice indeed; he was right, it was more graceful than Basic. While that wasn't saying much--Basic was extremely clunky, and even Imrani was more graceful, and beautiful--this...Français was quite lovely indeed.

She wondered vaguely what he'd said, but at his impertinent question, Rhea pursed her lips and replaced the old volume on the shelf. She hadn't wanted to be rude, but she had the feeling he was being purposely obtuse.

"Actually, yes. You said there was something you wished to show me. Can it be of importance, I wonder, if you've already 'forgotten' to do so?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias saw Rhea's patience was burning fast. With a sheepish grin, he clapped the book shut and said, "Oh, yeah. You know, I had the funniest feeling something had slipped my mind..."

He rose and dropped the book on his countertop, then walked over, of all places, to Nelson's tank. Bending over, he opened the wooden cabinet underneath and reached inside. "Just sit down, and I'll be with you in a moment. Oh, and, uh... no peeking until I'm ready, okay?"

He cleared away the pumping tubes and fish food and lifted a floor panel from the bottom of the cabinet. There was a safe there under a combination lock. Once he'd popped it open, he reached down inside and rummaged until he retrieved a smooth, oblong object in a velvet bundle. He closed up the safe, put the floor panel back, and shut the cabinet, then came back to the table and set the object on the tabletop. He unwrapped the bundle, revealing what looked like a black, ovaloid stone, just barely translucent, with a row of fingertip-sized dimples across its crown.

Corias swallowed back a measure of consternation as he turned the stone around and pushed it toward Rhea. He wasn't sure if this would work, but he was really hoping it would.

"Okay, now, you're going to have to humor me, here," he said. "I want you to hold it with both hands--just ease your fingers into those divots there. Okay, good. Now, close your eyes and think of a place... your favorite place in the galaxy. Think of as many details as you can. Go ahead, try it."

[Rhea Kaylen]

"Slipped his mind," indeed, Rhea thought. But she obeyed him and sat and closed her eyes. She listened as he rummaged about across the room, wondering what in Astrel's name he could be hiding under a fishtank.

When she heard him place the object with a gentle clack on the table, she opened her eyes. Her breath caught at the quiet beauty of the smooth black stone. She had no idea what it could be, and cocked her head as she examined it, a hundred thousand questions springing to mind and tongue.

Corias instructed her, carefully placing her fingers in their resting spots. His hands were warm. Rhea saw, amused, that there was a boyish glint of ardor in his eyes. He was as anxious to see what was to happen as she was. Of course, that also meant that he didn't know what was going to happen, a fact which, when it occurred to her, made Rhea worry just a little.

But she did as she was told. It took her a long moment to decide on her absolute favorite place in the galaxy--somewhere on Imran, certainly, away from Coruscant's hot, smoggy atmosphere and constant bustle and din. Somewhere cool, and familiar, and safe.

Home.

Rhea's eyes slid closed, and a picture sprung up from the darkness there. Memories wove together like tendrils of color.

Light streamed down through a circular skylight onto a well-worn stone tabletop. A panel of the skylight was open, and the breeze blowing through it gently moved the cloth wall hangings. The sun was the only light in the room, but it was enough to illuminate the shelves of brightly-colored spices and grains, all in gleaming jars neatly lined up. They were within easy reach of a pristine cookstove (Rhea's grandmother was fastidious in the kitchen), and the potent Imrani herbs in the jars gave off, Rhea remembered, the most heavenly smells, which mingled and settled into everything that spent any time in the kitchen. Grandmother's clothes had always smelled of agae, "rock spice". The wooden shelves and cabinets bore a myriad of lovely odors; Rhea had mourned when the smell of yd by la, or "lady tress", had faded from her hair after she moved to Coruscant.

The Imrani woman was surprised at how sharp the memory was for her. She could see every detail--the small, old inscriptions on the pale stone walls, the soft weave of the hand-made green-and-gold tablecloth, the faint charred marks on the otherwise spotless range which she recalled were evidence of her disastrous first attempts at cooking. It was all exactly as she remembered. All perfect.

This was the kitchen in which Rhea had spent many, many of her days as a girl, surrounded by the talk and laughter of her family, or what remained of it at the time. Her grandmother was always cooking, it seemed; her grandfather would be rearranging things on the shelves or reading a book or writing a letter. Rhea's Uncle Kal did most of the talking in the household, chattering happily or orating fervently or laughing uproariously.

Grandmother had tried very hard to make as much of a lady as she could of the skinny, awkward little girl Rhea had always been. Rhea recalled cooking lessons that were more dances with a fiery death than anything close to culinary education. Long hours spent mixing, kneading, and stirring--stirring--stirring had finally managed to turn Rhea's hazardous endeavors into satisfactory meals. But she could still remember being very small, trying hard to follow Grandmother's practiced movements, being far too short to see much on the stove at all...

Rhea saw it all in her mind's eye, her real eyes still locked shut until Corias gave the word. All the fond and warm memories attached to this room made it Rhea's favorite place in the whole universe, she decided.

But what did this funny-looking stone have to do with anything? Was it making her memory more complete, more strong? Perhaps. It was difficult to say.

Rhea only reveled in the richness of her memories, watching her family pass her by in thought only, watching her child self cook, and smiling unconsciously.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias waited in complete silence--he even held his breath as he watched Rhea. Her eyes were darting back and forth behind closed lids like a dreamer's, and he saw her smile in reverie. But, to his disappointment, it looked like that was all that was happening.

Or was it?

There was a faint glow within the stone like a small, pink star trapped in a glassy, black void. As Corias watched, the star grew until it filled the stone with light. Then, intangible tendrils lanced out from the stone's surface and curled over every surface in the quarters--the table, the deck grating, the desk, Neslon's tank. And without a sound, the whole room began to change.

The gunmetal gray of the bulkheads faded to rose-colored stucco. The floor became baked clay spread with homely rugs. The computer terminal was now a cookstove with something lovely simmering on the front burner, and the bookshelves were lined with cookery and crockery. In the ceiling a skylight opened under a broad, azure canopy, and the tapestries that adorned the walls began billowing in a gentle breeze.

It wasn't an exact replica of the kitchen in Rhea's home--there wasn't room in Iolanthe's quarters for that. Where support struts intruded on the natural space of the kitchen, the image visibly bent around them like a video projection, but, somehow, Rhea and Corias themselves didn't intrude on the reproduction.

Corias couldn't help mouthing a silent "wow" at the transformation. He'd never seen such a rustically beautiful representation from the stone. Rhea's memory was quite acute; he could easily get lost in the details for as long as the illusion lasted. The smells alone...

"Okay," he said. "You can open your eyes."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's eyes opened, but the vision remained. She blinked several times in confusion, but she was still in her grandmother's kitchen on Imran! A small cry escaped her, and, after a moment, she tore her eyes away to look at Corias for an explanation. Somehow, the sight of him in her grandmother's kitchen shocked her more than seeing it in the first place, and she jumped and blushed simultaneously.

"Corias..." she finally murmured, standing and looking back at her surroundings. Now that she'd gotten mostly over the surprise, she could see anomalies in the...projection? Reproduction? the kitchen had bends and walls where it shouldn't have, and the picture warped accordingly to follow the topography of the cabin. But besides that, everything was amazingly real. Rhea realized belatedly that even her memories of smells had been recreated--the "kitchen" was redolent of them.

"What is--" She got no farther, as suddenly something moved out of the corner of her eye. Across the room, in front of the cookstove, materialized two figures. Rhea felt her mouth fall open.

It was her grandmother, a ghostlike, vaguely translucent vision with all those beloved features.

And...oh. It was her. An illusory reproduction of her seven-year-old self. The small child was reaching up on tiptoe to plop a slice of vegetable into whatever was on the stove.

Rhea remembered this: her first cooking lesson. That must have been why she saw it now.

"What is this?"

[Corias Bonaventure]

Always the explorer, Corias was as interested in Rhea's reaction as he was in the image itself. He'd only shown the stone to a few--a very few. But he had a theory that whoever used it would find something of him- or herself in the images it generated, whether consciously or not. It wasn't like a holovid--it was closer to raw perception. It was probably the closest Corias could ever get to seeing through someone else's eyes.

"I can tell you what it's not," he said, smiling. "It's not holographic. It's not computerized. If this is technology, it's a form unlike anything else I've seen in the galaxy."

He rose from the wooden stool he was sitting on, and the rugs shifted crisply beneath his boots. He felt the resonance of durasteel paneling as he stepped and winced. The illusion only reached so far for him; it usually stopped at sight, and rarely included smell and sound. He wondered if Rhea could see, hear, smell, and feel more than he could--he wouldn't doubt it.

"I got it on an jungle world in Wild Space. I found it more by chance than design--practically crashed there, actually. The natives are primitive by NR standards--stone and mud buildings, grain mills turned by water, many of them are hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers. They make these things. They tell stories with them. Communicate over long distances. I don't know how. I don't know how it works, whether it reconfigures the way surrounding surfaces reflect light, or whether it actually establishes a telepathic link with any sentient being in range..."

There he went again--Rhea probably didn't want to hear him theorize all over her incarnated reverie. And then he saw the images of an old Imrani woman and a young girl stretching to see over the top of the stove. He'd been able to produce images of people, but never so lifelike. Rhea had done it on the first try without even trying.

He turned back toward Rhea, suddenly self-conscious. He hoped she didn't see this as an intrusion into her memories.

"Do you, uh... do you like it?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Corias seemed nervous; unsure of her reaction, perhaps? He needn't have been. Rhea was so lost in the vision that she almost didn't hear Corias' explanation of it. Typically, he had started to rabbit-trail, following his own theories and curiosities, but Rhea didn't find them boring. She was an Imrani. Finding out new things was as real an experience to her as the sating of physical hunger.

And she was so overwhelmed by this thing he had shown her--as if he'd brought up her best emotions and memories from the depths of murky oblivion, airing them again for her because she couldn't always do so herself. It was wonderful. And Rhea was extremely grateful.

"Like it? Oh, Corias. This is perhaps the best gift I've ever been given." She felt a prick at her eyes but blinked it away and looked at the man before her. She sketched a bow, knowing it looked odd but unable to express herself with any other gesture. "Thank you."

She looked around again, fixated on the woman and child. The little girl was crunching on a bit of vegetable and Grandmother trying to impress the correct instructions into that flighty, immature mind. Rhea had not recalled this for years. She was glad Corias was the one to help her remember.

She smiled at him. "Fortune seems to smile on you, Corias Bonaventure. You just happen to land on planets with extraordinary gifts to bestow."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias shrugged as he leaned back against an earthen wall. "Extraordinary, yes. Sometimes I wish I could just settle for something ordinary... a couple readily exploitable lithospheres, maybe even a corp that isn't trying to deep-six me with contractual loopholes."

He glanced down at the imaging stone. "It's funny. If I could figure out how this worked... even if I could get a supply of a couple hundred of these, I could probably get richer than my dad." Then he sighed heavily. "But I couldn't do it. It isn't meant for that. It'd just be the next sensational craze for tycoons living in Coruscant penthouses to spend their credits on."

He stared at the stone a few moments longer, then he ran a weary hand through his hair. The image wouldn't last much longer; already it was growing more metallic and less earthy. It would fade like a dream on the edge of memory; then it would be hard to imagine that the Iolanthe's sterile cabin had once housed a homely, Imrani kitchen.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Corias' tone had grown bitter, and Rhea was very sorry she'd darkened his mood. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, silent, noticing patches of the pale stone table fading to the color of metal. The vision was disappearing. Somehow, it was small consolation that, soon enough for Rhea, the kitchen wouldn't have to be an illusion. She'd be seeing it for real.

But it wouldn't be the same.

Still, what Corias had said rang painfully true. This stone was a pure, innocent relic, representative of another time, place, and civilization. But if someone, anyone, were to be greedy enough to capitalize on it, it could become another drug for the wealthy, and it would be corrupted. Such a thing could never come to pass; Rhea would rather Corias took it now and hid it away again, never to be used for a cheap thrill.

She was honored Corias had shown it to her, though. And what he'd said, his honesty and integrity, convinced Rhea absolutely of the man's trustworthiness. And she knew that the "heirlooms" she had promised him as pay would, in his hands, get to the right people, and not be exploited. At the same time, she hoped, the Jedi who were to receive those "heirlooms" would help Corias along a little on his apparent quest to become "richer than his dad."

After all, in her opinion, he deserved it.

Rhea lifted her eyes in silence, noticing that one of the portholes along the cabin was no longer veiled by her living memory. Outside, the warped blue-white tunnel of hyperspace sped by, hurrying Iolanthe and her two inhabitants across the galaxy, through regions known and unknown. Rhea had a sudden feeling of helplessness, of being pulled inexorably onward by an unseen force toward a fate not as clear as it should have been. She shook it off and looked down again, pressing her hand to the warm, black stone on the table.

Corias' ill mood must be wearing off on me, she reasoned, and resolved to forget about her misgivings.

[Corias Bonaventure]

The Past. Nebula NGC-381, Frontier Space.

The ISD Impunity limped through the gaseous morass of the Veil, her engines leaking, her hull pierced in dozens of places. Her flotilla of support craft was gone, and her primary communications array had been blasted into oblivion. She was blind, wounded, and bleeding, and she was very much alone.

Captain Slade rubbed at his red-rimmed eyes as he studied the garbled telemetry on the tactical viewer. The bridge around him was filled with a smokey haze despite the best efforts of the atmospheric filtration system. Here and there were scorched panels and overloaded relays--testaments to the trials of the past three days. The Fyrokkian fighters had been dancing on the edge of the Impunity's effective sensor range, darting in to bite at her flanks, decimating every launch from her hangar bay. Like wolves traling a moose, they were wearing her down inch by inch.

"Report, Mr. Dekker," the captain snapped, his voice raw and dry.

Sergeant Dekker was in worse shape than his captain. The Veil had defied all his efforts at the sensory station to locate either the Imperial fleet or their Fyrokkian assailants; the electromagnetic distortions flooded his instruments with ghosts and sensor echoes. "Still nothing, sir," he mumbled.

"Maybe they've left us," one of Dekker's techs whispered.

"Who? Dekker asked. "The Fyrokkians or the fleet?"

"Both," the tech answered hopelessly.

"Belay that!" Slade snarled. "This is an Imperial Star Destroyer, for Force's sake! You'll do your duty, or I'll remove you to the brig!" He paced up the quarterdeck and leaned over the cubicles below. "Those starfighters the Fyrokkians are flying may be too small for our sensors to detect in this mess--very well. That means they're too small to be autonomous. They must have a mobile base nearby. Find that, and we'll avenge ourselves and the Timocracy once and for all."

"If there is a Fyrokkian cruiser nearby, you won't see it until it's already too late," Grayson said.

Slade wheeled predatorially on the smuggler. "I've had enough of your cowardice, Grayson! If you have anything of use to contribute, please do so. Otherwise, keep your pessimistic prattle to yourself!"

Unintimidated, Grayson stepped forward and kept his voice low. "I told you it was crazy going into the Desert, but you didn't listen. I told you we shouldn't waste time hunting the 'Rokies on their turf. Now I'm telling you they're leading us into a trap. Every lead you've found has taken us deeper and deeper into this mess. Better to set a course and hope it leads us out. Drop some beacons behind us as a bread trail. But if we waste any more time on this mynock chase, I wouldn't give us a frell's chance of getting out alive."

Slade scowled even darker. Slowly, his eyes traced the smoldering rents in the bulkheads around them, the darkened panels, the naked relays. His eyebrows furrowed deeply. "Very well. We'll set a course--"

"Captain, contact dead ahead!" Dekker announced.

Slade hastened to the quarterdeck rail. "What sort of contact?"

"Cruiser-sized, sir," Dekker replied. "Displacement of seventy thousand tonnes. It's on a perpendicular course to ours, sir, heading two-one-zero mark three-eight."

"That's our target!" Slade crowed. "Put it on tactical viewer."

The sensor readout bloomed on the viewer. There was a sillhouette at eleven-thirty, indistinct, but unmistakeably a vessel.

"Adjust course to three-two-zero mark four-seven," Slade barked. "There's an ionized cloud of vapor between us and them. We'll use it as a cloak. Rig for silent running. Ready the starboard batteries."

"Slade!" Grayson hissed. "What are you--"

"TC-114, escort Mr. Grayson from the bridge," Slade snapped. "I'll no longer be needing his expertise."

Grayson knew better than to protest as the white-armored stormtrooper seized his arm and conducted him out into the corridor.

Slade watched in satisfaction as his bridge crew tackled the new task with the efficiency of a well oiled machine. The, lethargic, melancholy haze of a few minutes ago had lifted like a heavy fog.

Impunity crept into the cloud, and all her sensors went dark. Slade peered at the small bubble on the tactical viewer that represented Impunity's effective scanning range. Cosmically speaking, it was little better than blundering into a dark room with your hands held out in front of you. "Mr. Dekker, launch a probe. I want to extend our short-range scanners as far as possible."

The probe hurtled forward as far as the sensor crew could stretch their telemetry. For several tense minutes, there was nothing. Then the heavy mists before the probe began to dissipate.

"Signal is off the starboard bow, sir," Dekker reported eagerly.

"Alter course to two-eight-zero mark one five," Slade said. "Give me a firing solution for all starboard batteries."

"Ready, sir."

Impunity was now riding on the inner edge of the ionized cloud, gradually drawing nearer to the enemy cruiser. Slade could see her sillhouette on the tactical viewer once more, gradually resolving into greater clarity.

"Steady..."

Dekker nearly shook with nervous anticipation. Then he flinched. "Sir, they're moving off."

"Bring us out of the cloud," Slade replied. "Fire all starboard batteries. Give them a volley."

A fusillade of long-range weaponry roared out of the dark haze as Impunity broke out of the clouds herself. The cruiser was not so nimble as to escape all of them. Brilliant flashes of green and crimson split the mist as heavy turbolasers blistered through the cruiser's deflectors and scored deeply into the hull.

"We got them!" Dekker shouted--as surprised as he was jubilant.

Under the circumstances, Slade could forgive the breach of decorum--but something was nagging at his senses. For all his bravado, he hadn't expected to hole the enemy cruiser in a single barrage. Then the sensor image on the viewer began to resolve further. There on the plasteel screen was the image of an Imperial light cruiser writhing in a halo of fire.

"Krasst, that's one of ours!" Slade murmured. "But how--"

"Sir!" Dekker shouted. "Incoming fire--"

The Impunity shuddered as a hail of particle weapons erupted from the cloud she had just departed. The mists separated and not one, but two prong-hulled Fyrokkian frigates sliced out of the cloud. A swarm of fighters darted from behind the ruined Imperial cruiser and closed the trap from the other side.

"All gunners, fire at will!" Slade roared. "I want those frigates!"

"The--the fighters are targeting our weapons," Dekker stammered. "We're losing batteries."

"Engines failing," another tech reported. "Two reactors are approaching critical levels!"

"Portside deflectors are down! Primary tactical scanners are compromised!"

The Fyrokkians closed in around the wounded Impunity, and she was flagging under their assault. As if guided by some arcane sense, they all struck at the same weak points--the points they had been softening up over the course of their hit-and-run raids.

The Impunity's bridge was in shambles. A thick, acrid smoke flooded the air, choking the crew as they scrambled to organize the ship's failing defense.

Slade reeled as the world collapsed around him. It was all wrong. The Fyrokkians were primitives by Imperial standards. They barely had the infrastructure to maintain a few satellite colonies. For his part, he had followed his orders to the letter. Yet he had played right into the Fyrokkians' hands. The image of the shattered Timocracy was fresh in his mind as he ordered his crew to abandon the bridge.

The command staff dispersed to the various auxiliary control stations aboard ship; Slade and a contingent of officers made all speed for the secondary bridge. They'd been boarded; the captain could hear gunfire as they hurried through the corridors to the next safe haven.

As the small convoy rounded a corner, a pair of particle blasts met the two stormtroopers in the vanguard. Slade made out a dozen or so alien forms in dusky armor and cloth head coverings advancing on the Imperials with frightening speed before another pair of stormtroopers seized him and conducted him along another route.

After a lengthy detour, they arrived at the emergency bridge. It was already occupied.

The stormtroopers acounted for two Fyrokkians before they were cut down. Three more Fyrokkians charged at Slade, and he fired madly with his service pistol--he struck one in the thigh before he caught a blast in the shoulder, and he went spinning down to the deck. Before he could get his wits about him, a Fyrokkian leapt over a bridge console and landed squarely on his chest, pinning him.

The Fyrokkian unwrapped the turban and visor that covered its face to reveal a narrow, leonine muzzle. It was the first Fyrokkian Slade had ever seen face-to-face, and he was vaguely aware in that instant that this one was female. Her graceful, catlike features were twisted in a feral snarl, and her black lips parted to reveal long, curved canines. But the most arresting part of the specter was her eyes. They were wholly inhuman--bestial--predatory--liquid topaz orbs that blurred the distinction between sentient being and carnal brute. Slade was at the mercy of an animal.

The Fyrokkian glared spitefully at her prey and spat something in her tongue--"Rud et-k'shakh!" Then she pulled back a heavy paw. The last thing Slade saw was the flash of two-inch claws.

[Corias Bonaventure]

The Present. Two days out of Alioth.

"So, naturally, I thought they were just being hospitable. You know, it's not every day the locals throw a huge banquet in my honor, so I was willing to live with it. The food was great, and they had this sort of wine made from berries that grow in the mountains--it's like nothing else I've ever tasted. So then, the chief's daughter hands me a cup of wine, and, well, what am I gonna do? I take a drink, just trying to be polite. Next thing I know, the chief shouts, and the rest of the people shout, and music plays, and everyone starts dancing. The daughter yanks me out of my seat onto the dance floor, and it was all I could do to keep up--not like I could argue with an eight-foot-tall reptilian female anyway. So, the rest of the day I was whisked off to ceremony after ceremony, and the best I could figure is that the two of us somehow got married."

The trip had been smooth sailing so far, and Corias was regaling Rhea with another one of his lengthy and desultory narratives. The two wayfarers just finished lunch--a couple chicken sandwiches nuked in the infrawave oven--and they were lounging in the cabin with little better to do.

[Rhea Kaylen]

Once Rhea had gotten used to the sleep cycles, the hyperspace turbulence, and the slightly stale recycled air in the cabin, space life had been kind to her. She was almost--almost--sorry that she and Corias were mere days out of Imran; she was having a little too much fun to quit now.

After lunch two days beyond the lightspeed jump at Alioth, Rhea listened with a growing smile to Corias' fevered story about another misadventure on a far-off world, her journal out and pencil scratching his words down as he spoke them. She had since realized that she should try to record some of his tales for rereading and retelling. In all likelihood, once this trip was over, Rhea would never see the man again (a fact she didn't think on too much), and she didn't want to lose his brilliant yarns to her unreliable memory.

Absently, she added the finishing touches to a small, cartoony caricature in the margin, of an oversized lizard waltzing with a frazzled-looking Corias, and smiled thinly. "Family man, eh?" she quipped, biting her lip to keep from laughing. Her mental image of a dancing reptilian alien was replaced rapidly, first by a vision of the lizard in a wedding gown, then by one of Cor surrounded by about fourteen little scampering dinosaurs in diapers. Rhea snorted.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias leaned his chair back against the wall and laughed. "Well, let's just say I wasn't quite ready to settle down at the moment, particularly with a dinosaur who already had a harem of seventeen boyfriends, especially when said boyfriends have sharp claws and sharp teeth and serious inferiority complexes. So here's what I did..."

He stopped his story short--something had happened to Rhea. She folded, doubled, then came back together again in the blink of an eye. Before Corias realized there was a distortion wave coursing through the cabin, it hit him, too, and he felt his stomach lurch in ten dimensions. The wave passed from the hyperdrive to the bow, then doubled back on itself--then all frell broke loose.

Iolanthe jerked like a fish on a line, and everything inside that wasn't bolted down--including the passengers--bounced around in the cabin. The blue glow of hyperspace melted into a spinning starscape. 'Lanthe's frame complained vociferously at the stress, half a dozen klaxons went off at once, and the smell of ozone was thick in the air.

Corias's head pounded as he picked himself up off the deck by the computer. After a moment's disorientation, he came to his senses and regained his equilibrium. "Krasst... frell, frell, frell!"

He leapt over Rhea, who hadn't yet found her feet, and bolted up into the cockpit. It took another few jolts to regain altitude and azimuth controls, and, one by one, his flickering instruments recalibrated themselves. But the story they told was not a happy one.

"Krasst..."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea was only vaguely aware of a dozen things happening at once. In the space of an eyeblink, she went from looking at her journal page and listening to Corias, to having her insides pulled north and south at once, then feeling as though someone had thrown her into a martini shaker.

Then she was raising her head off the floor and wincing as a flash of momentary pain lanced from the bridge of her nose to her temple. She scrunched her face, gasping as Corias suddenly went sailing over her prostrate form and careering across the shuddering cabin. At first she thought he had lost his balance, then she realized he was headed for the cockpit.

He quickly disappeared up the aft ladder as Rhea pulled herself off the metallic floor. Regaining her footing was not nearly as easy as it should have been; the whole ship was rocking and shaking and groaning, unnervingly as if Iolanthe was being pulled in two. Rhea braced her feet apart and grabbed the table for support as the craft lurched again. She looked wildly out a porthole and saw, shocked, that the neon blue of hyperspace had turned black again, studded with stars that seemed to jerk about.

But it was Iolanthe that was jerking. Violently.

When she felt some of the jagged vibrating subside, Rhea raced across the cabin to the tune of screeching warning sirens, past Nelson being swished uncomfortably about in his tank, and clambered up the cockpit ladder with all the grace of a drunken monkey.

Somewhere between the floor and the ladder she'd realized what must have happened.

Pirates.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias heard Rhea struggle up the ladder and plop down in the bench aft of the cockpit, but he was too busy reining in Iolanthe's ravaged systems to spare her a glance. His fingers were a blur as they fiddled, toggled, recalibrated, and rebooted most of the jury-rigged electronic components aboard the scoutship.

"We hit a hyperspace mine," he said in delayed explanation. "Fortunately, we didn't take the brunt of it, or we'd be dead in the water. 'Lanthe picked it up on her nav scanners and jolted us out of the way of the main blast. I didn't think the Planet Hawks mined this far off their normal hunting grounds."

He stabbed the hyperdrive re-initialization button, and the relays spat a shower of sparks at him.

"Sonuvagundark..." Corias heaved up out of the pilot's seat. "Take the wheel. I have to go below. Call me if the scanners pick up any incoming ships."

[Rhea Kaylen]

It couldn't have been anything else but pirates, Rhea knew. And only the Planet Hawks would bother sticking hyperspace mines in random areas this far from the Unknown Regions.

Which meant they were in serious trouble.

Suddenly Corias had vaulted back down the ladder, leaving Rhea dumbfounded and gaping, with the admonition to take control of Iolanthe.

The woman was jolted rudely into attention by another hideous shiver that ran through Iolanthe's hull, and she jumped from her seat and dropped into the pilot's chair. For a moment, she stared, overwhelmed, at the controls spread out before her, like so many baubles. Then her dusky, long-dormant memory snapped into focus, and in two instants Rhea had familiarized herself with the ship's handling.

And not a moment too soon, for next instant a proximity warning was dinging in her ears, and several tell-tale blips started blinking on the radar screen.

Rhea wondered if she should call Corias up when she heard something slam heavily far below her. The sound was followed by a rude Rodian expletive, and Rhea thought better of it. Leaning over the comm, she depressed the call switch.

"Cor, we've got incoming ships. Hang on, I'll try and keep 'em off."

Her only reply was a banging sound of metal on metal, and she left it at that.

Here they came. A long-range recon craft and its accompanying contingent of hornet-like fighters bore down on Iolanthe from the port side. As they neared, their scarlet hull paint became clearly visible. Yep, pirates.

"Drin'mor," Rhea murmured, her eyes skating over the ship's readouts as she tried to guage how much she could get out of the engine. Luckily, thanks to Iolanthe's scanners, the hyperspace mine had not dealt heavy damage to the sublight engines, so Rhea quickly opened up the throttles and grabbed the steering bar in a death-grip.

'Lanthe responded well, skirting around the approaching fighters and swinging away in a wide loop. If she could get behind the reconnaisance ship, she could use it for cover as she made a quick escape. Rhea could feel the deep thrumming of extraordinarily powerful engines beneath her; if she could quickly outmaneuver the much more agile but much less powerful fighter craft, outrunning the pirates would be simple.

But the Planet Hawks were nothing if not extremely skilled pilots, and it was unlikely to be an easy task to pull the wool over their eyes.

Rhea was going to need all the help she could get, she realized as she gritted her teeth and concentrated on a particularly adventurous and trigger-happy incoming fighter. Rhea smiled grimly and held her course instead of trying to avoid the ship--not what the pirate would expect a civilian craft to do. Rhea saw the fighter barrelling toward Iolanthe, challenging the much larger and better-shielded ship in a remarkable display of bravado and outright stupidity.

Iolanthe won that match of "chicken."

Rhea whooped happily when the fiery remains of the decimated fighter went spiraling off into one of his fellows. Both fighters floated away pathetically in a tangled mass of charred hull.

But luck could not be counted on, especially where Rhea Kaylen was concerned, so the woman divided her attention, keeping firm control of her ship but allowing herself to sink inward, searching and feeling for the tidestream of energy that would aid Rhea enormously.

She found it. The Force rolled over her in a wave, expanding her senses, sharpening her reflexes and memories of evasion tactics, focusing her eyesight and intuition on this one, all-important goal of escape.

Rhea wrapped herself in the energy field and visualized it seeping down through the hull into Iolanthe's inner working parts. Instantly, the ship jumped in response, the engines growling and revving and accelerating.

So far, so good; the fighters were falling behind and the viewscreen ahead was clear. But they were still in pursuit, and as much of a powerhouse as 'Lanthe was, she would be uselessly out-maneuvered if the pirates caught up.

Mentally, she urged Corias to hurry.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias worked feverishly in the narrow confines of the Iolanthe's maintenance crawlspace. He'd flushed the drive conduits free the residual ionization--now he was welding a fresh plasma conductor to the starboard power coupling to replace the one that had busted. When Rhea pulled a gut-wrenching turn, he slipped and banged his elbow on the hyperdrive casing.

"Ow! What the frell..."

What was Rhea doing to his baby?

Whatever was going on out there, Corias knew he had to hurry. He finished the connection and sealed up the access panel. Reaching around to the top of the hyperdrive casing, he flipped the main power breaker. The engine core shuddered and hummed to life.

"That's it! I'm on my way!" he shouted over the intercom as he scrabbled on his hands and knees out of the maintenance duct.

A laser blast on the starboard deflectors pitched him against a bulkhead, but he kept his balance and staggered up the ladder. Rhea was still at the helm, and she was handling 'Lanthe's touchy controls with a lot more grace than Corias had expected.

"Keep us going; I'll start the nav computer--we need to jump out of here pronto."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea was so focused on the task at hand she barely took notice of Corias' reappearance. She was dimly aware of him hovering over her right shoulder, stabbing at the hyperdrive controls as she tensely readjusted their course. The recon ship had opened fire, and while its mid-sized turbolasers were not an imminent threat, too many direct hits like that last one could put Iolanthe in a world of hurt.

Rhea tried to make them an elusive target, but Iolanthe, unfortunately, wasn't really the elusive type. She was far too bulky. The Imrani woman slowed her breathing and wrenched her concentration onto the movements of the small reconnaisance craft behind them. Employing the Force this way was not easy; she was growing weary and it was difficult to focus.

But at least it was helping. Rhea felt the next strike before it happened, and quickly swung the ship to port. The plasma strike bounced off the shields, lowering their strength by a handful of percentage points. Suddenly Rhea became horrifically aware of two things at one time: a single fighter--no, a pair of them--had caught Iolanthe up...and directly ahead, slightly above their current course, a looming shape was beginning to materialize on the viewscreen.

A Hawk frigate.

"Astrel!" Rhea cried, unaware at this point that she was hodgepodging her languages. "More sorgon-ae frelling yr'ganovi doravi sun!" Frantically she looked to her right.

"Corias!" she rather screeched. He was still trying to chart a course. "Just punch it!"

While that was a spectacularly bad suggestion, and both Rhea and Corias knew it, there was no time left. The man swore, glanced up at the viewscreen, then looked back down. Rhea followed his eyes to the hyperdrive controls...

And Iolanthe, with another groan and a nasty jostle of turbulence, jumped to lightspeed.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias grabbed for a handgrip on the ceiling just a nanosecond too late. Under that sort of duress, it was all the inertial dampers could do to keep the sudden swing in momentum from turning Iolanthe's organic cargo into spicy salsa. The leftover g-forces pitched Corias off his feet and flung him hard against the aft bulkhead. Dizzied by the blow, he staggered forward and nearly fell over the back of the pilot's chair just as a fresh wave of turbulence hit them. It was like crashing through a row of brick walls one after another--that wasn't hyperspace turbulence. They were hitting matter.

Desperately, Corias swiped out at the emergency stop lever, and Iolanthe dropped out of lightspeed almost as abruptly as she'd jumped into it. The scoutship dipped forward on her nose and tumbled end over end. A spray of sparks erupted from the upper control deck, and the cockpit lights went utterly dead.

Corias was on the deck now--darned if he knew how he'd gotten there. At least it meant artificial gravity was still working. There was something trickling down his forehead into his left eye. Dazed, he climbed unsteadily to his feet and looked about the tomb-dark cabin.

There was light in the canopy glass. But it wasn't starlight.

A lurid red haze filled the glass--twisting, cloying vapors, thick as an ocean fog. Corias couldn't tell whether they were still moving. The engines were quiet below, and the faceless shroud before them gave him no clues.

His head was throbbing. He leaned back against a bulkhead and wiped the smeary, sticky--whatever it was--from his face.

"Rhea? You all right? Rhea?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Someone was calling her name, from very far away, it sounded. Rhea vaguely wondered why someone would be saying her name from such a distance...

Then she snapped her eyes open, causing a unconscious groan to filter up from deep in her chest. What in the name of the Force had happened? She remembered the pirates, the jump to lightspeed, and a lot of really awful turbulence of some kind or another.

"Rhea?"

Corias! The woman's vision focused unsteadily, to be greeted only with hazy, blood-red clouds in her line of sight. What the...?

Carefully, Rhea raised her head from Iolanthe's shattered control board and sought for her pilot. She found him, slumped against the wall, looking at her concernedly. He was skewed--no, Rhea was sprawled forward and smashed against the paneling. She righted herself, painfully, and blinked at Corias. His face was covered in something dark. Blood.

"Astrel ov Force..." Rhea murmured. "You're hurt, ad'gan-da."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias rubbed his forehead again and found a stinging cut just under his hairline. It wasn't deep, but it was smarting like all get out now that he'd dragged his grimy hand through it.

"Ow. Well, that's nothing to worry about. Hang on just a second--"

The emergency lights hadn't come on yet--he leaned over the control panel and hit the breaker. A dull, yellow glow flooded the cabin--it was enough to make Corias squint, but at least now he could see Rhea.

"You don't look that good yourself," he replied, concern creasing his bloodied brow. He brushed back a lock of white hair from Rhea's face where it had stuck to the burn on her cheek.

The spacer bent down and pulled a medkit from a bin at floor level. He popped it open and tossed Rhea a bacta patch. "Go ahead and patch yourself up. I'd better make sure we still have life support. Don't worry about me, ma chérie. I've had worse"

There was a shadow of a smile on his lips--he hadn't missed the Imrani address Rhea had paid him. He didn't know what she'd meant, but he liked to think he'd just paid her the equivalent regard.

As he consulted Iolanthe, however, he grew sober again. "We've got life support, but that's about all we've got--that and maneuvering jets. I'll have to see how bad the damage to the engines is. Scanners... they're operational, but I'm getting all kinds of intererence. I could probably cut through it with a little effort."

He stared gravely out at the swirling fog beyond the canopy glass. "The good news is we're well outside the pirate territories. Bad news is we're inside the Veil. Your guess is as good as mine how far."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's native concern wished Corias would allow her to treat him with the same kindness and startling gentility he had shown her, but she knew better than to argue and quickly applied the patch to the burn she had not noticed before. Quietly she watched, standing and rubbing her arms to restore some warmth (the cabin seemed to be growing cooler) and to still her sudden trembling.

They were lost, and of all places inside the Veil. Armies of well-trained Imperials and veteren starship navigators had suffered unknown fates inside this consuming, all-concealing ionic cloud, were never seen again by fellow man. Now they, too, were at the mercy of the grasping smoky tendrils that had swallowed them whole.

[Corias Bonaventure]

It had grown colder. Iolanthe still had three months of consumables, and, as far as Corias could tell, there weren't any serious breaches in the insulation, but it was colder nonetheless. Corias offered Rhea an extra flight jacket--it was rather large on her, but it sealed up well and trapped heat far better than the light blazer she was wearing.

As soon as Rhea's injuries were reasonably tended, she'd insisted on fixing up the cut on Corias's head. They compromised--she cleaned and dressed the wound while he sat and tried to cut through the noise flooding the sensors.

Corias wasn't having much luck. Finally he set his elbows on the charred controls and wearily rested his face in his hands. "I made progress, I think. Can't really tell because there's nothing out here to scan. All I can tell you is there's gas all around us for at least a lightyear."

He sighed heavily. "Rhea, I'm--I'm sorry. This wasn't part of the plan. I should've taken the commercial route."

He sighed again, then looked up with a melancholy smile. "I think you're going to miss your uncle's wedding."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea carefully finished daubing away the last of the smeared, caked blood on Corias' cheek, not responding at first to his apology. She concentrated on cleaning his weary, colorless face, creased with worry lines, finding perhaps perverse pleasure in the knowledge that maybe one or two of those lines marked worry for her.

Presently she sighed, not sadly, but lightly, and a ghost of a smile tugged her mouth up. "You feel guilty about the oddest things, Cor," she said softly. "If this is anyone's fault, it is mine. I dragged you out here, I forgot to give you the maps that we use." She lowered her head, finished tending Corias' cut, and gently placed her fingertips on the back of his gritty hand to ease his concern.

"I'm the cursed one, remember?" She wasn't joking. "Do not worry. You will find a way out of here, and we will be on Imran well in time to forget this ever happened."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias glanced down at Rhea's hand on his hand, then up to Rhea, and his mouth turned up into a lopsided grin. "Cursed one? You said you don't really believe that--what did you call it? That nonsense. I mean... it seems like a pretty harsh penalty for wanting to see a little more of the galaxy."

He turned his hand over and gave hers a little squeeze. Before she could respond, he turned back to the onboard computer console and ran a diagnostic on the engine systems. "We probably shook loose all the repairs I've made to the hyperdrive since putting in at Coruscant, but they were all jury-rigged anyway. Won't take more than a day or two to put it all back together. In the meantime, I don't recall ever seeing any general surveys of the Veil. I'll set the scanners running and see if they pick up anything interesting."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea was rendered utterly speechless by his gesture, but he'd begun talking again before she could do anything.

"Survey of the Veil?" Rhea said skeptically, rolling her eyes. Always the entrepreneur...but at least he was making the best of a dismally bad situation. "What would be the point? I mean, sure the nebula is lovely and maybe even laced with valuable substances--doubtful--but you'd have one frell of a time convincing anyone with any knowledge of the place to come within a lightyear of it. And they certainly wouldn't be sticking around here longer than absolutely necessary, what with storms and sensor scrambling and...well, the rather depressing fact that no known person has ever gone into the Veil and been seen again. Rather a deterrent, Cor." But she smiled. The thought of prospecting the Veil was, actually, genuinely amusing, for some perverse reason.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias laughed. "What can I say? I'm an explorer. It's a curse."

The scanners bleeped frantically, and all the levity disappeared from Corias's face. He leaned over the tactical display, aghast.

"What the frell... That can't be right. We've got incoming signals on radar!"

Once more, he hunched over the scanners and put them through every diagnostic he could think of in twenty seconds--which was quite a lot. But they were adamant. There were ships coming. In the hazy conditions, Corias couldn't make out any proper silhouettes, but they were coming just the same.

"Burn those pirates, I would've thought they'd left us for lost in the Veil... okay... okay. Here's what we'll do. I'm shutting down all systems except scanners, life support, and one maneuvering thruster. There's a lot of background radiation in this cloud; I'll tune the sensor outputs to mirror those frequencies. With just a bit of luck, the radiation will mask our power output. If I can't cut through this interference, I can't imagine they can."

The ubiquitious hum of Iolanthe's sublight engines quieted to a nearly inaudible murmur, and the cockpit lights dimmed once more. But the signals still approached.

Corias gripped the flightstick until his knuckles flushed white. He fired the maneuvering jet once--twice--three times. Short bursts, almost undetectable, but enough to move the silent Iolanthe out of the direct path of the incoming signals.

The signals passed by through the region 'Lanthe had occupied minutes ago. Then they turned toward her again.

Corias swore under his breath and cut the scanners completely, halving Iolanthe's power output. But had he thrown off their pursuers, or had he merely blindfolded the two of them for their executioners?

They waited, staring anxiously at the inscrutible red curtain that hung placidly behind the canopy glass. Corias's left hand hovered over the main power switch. If they were found, he needed to fire up the main thrusters and give them at least a fighting chance of outmaneuvering their assailants. But he knew, if the pirates had already chased them all the way from their own territory, there would be no escaping them now.

[Rhea Kaylen]

In spite of the frenetic alarms going off and Corias' sudden necessary flurry of activity, for some reason time seemed to be slowing down gradually for Rhea. Something was niggling at the back of her brain. Whatever it was had been tickling her perception almost from the moment she had awakened, and it had quietly been growing in solidity and definition. Still, she could not grasp it quite yet.

Around her, the lights went low and the thrum of the engines ceased as Corias took action to cloak their existence from the oncoming craft. But Rhea barely noticed; she was frowning silently, attention drawn inward as she tried to pinpoint the weird tingling that goaded her senses, trying to make her see...something.

Iolanthe bumped gently as Corias fired the maneuvering thrusters, startling Rhea from her contemplation. She glanced down at the radar, watched the tiny blips fly past, then turn and come their way again.

She looked, wide-eyed, out the viewscreen, the scarlet mist outside obscuring everything from view. It was impossible to discern anything through the fog, with either sensor or naked eye; Iolanthe and her pilot were both totally blind. Rhea could feel Corias sitting very tensely next to her. She could sense his anxiety, almost hear his muscles tautening.

In fact, she could hear them! Like twanging harpstrings they were, less audibly detected than intuitively sensed. And she could hear his heartbeat, too, knowing it was not her own because her own temples were throbbing out of time. Rhea started as she realized she could feel his body trembling slightly, from two feet away, could see and hear and smell a hundred different things at once that she had never realized before were there. Like a burst of light she became aware that the tingle she had felt before was a bizarre heightening of her Force perception.

It was not much, really, but it was enough to awaken several nerves and cells that had never been active before. Rhea stifled a gasp as she realized what had been happening to her, having only a second or two to wonder, baffled, what could be causing this before a tiny alarm went off in her brain.

"Corias," she breathed, still staring out the viewscreen at nothing. "Those...aren't pirates." She did not know how she knew, and was more than a little unsure of her own prediction. But something was not quite right. She could feel it.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Nonplussed, Corias turned toward her. "They aren't pirates?" he repeated. "Then what--"

A flash of motion caught his eye. Something passed by the canopy glass, impossibly close, standing in bold relief before the Veil. In the split second before it disappeared beyond his field of vision, Corias made out a blunt, dagger-shaped fuselage surmounted by a cockpit, a set of bulky intake ports, and a rack of missiles. It was small, probably the smallest possible structure for connecting a pilot to an engine with weapons. For an instant, he spotted Iolanthe's dim reflection in the canopy of the other ship, betraying just how close she had passed--if Corias had been sitting out on Iolanthe's forward sensor array, he probably could have reached out and slapped it.

"Holy..." Before he could finish the ephithet, another ship passed the other way, this one farther out in the mist. Her knifelike body left no visible wake in the vapors that surrounded her.

"I think you're right," Corias said. "And I think we'd better get out of here. Hang on."

The board lit up like a Christmas tree as Corias brought main power back online. He thrust the flight yoke forward, pitching Iolanthe's nose down, then hit the main thruster ignition. She was sluggish from the ordeal with the pirates, but she lurched forward and began creeping away from the circling fighters.

But the fighters weren't ready to give up their find. 'Lanthe jerked again as a particle blast struck her a glancing blow. Corias veered off again, only to be hemmed in by another fighter off the portside. A roll and another dive earned them two more blasts. Iolanthe was being contained, or maybe herded. Either way, injured as she was, there was no escaping the phantoms that surrounded her.

[Rhea Kaylen]

This was a kind of fear Rhea had never felt before. Here in the Veil, all was silent, suffocated by lurid nebular cloud. And now, ships that resembled nothing so much as black ghosts, arrow-shaped and swift as birds of prey, had suddenly materialized around them, black specters that seemed content to simply circle Iolanthe, waiting for something.

The tension was awful. This was not like coming home to a ransacked house, with a threat obviously stated in ink, or being pursued by pirates with obvious intentions, a firm goal of escape clearly in mind. No, now there was no ultimatum, no surety of purpose or clearly defined malevolence in the ships that now hemmed them in. Sure, they had fired on Iolanthe several times and were definitely trying to keep her from going anywhere, but the shots had not been to kill, and the invisible barrier formed by the fighters was only a fence, not an attack force.

At least, not yet.

But the unstated, unclear threat was far worse than a blaring neon sign advertising certain death and destruction. No, these most definitely weren't pirates. And, for whatever reason, at least for the time being, they wanted Iolanthe kept safe, sound, and unquestionably under their own control.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias released the controls and sat back, letting Iolanthe drift listlessly in the nebular current. If he put everything the poor ship had into a mad dash, he could probably break out of the corral the strange assailants had created, but the tiny fighters had already demonstrated their considerable prowess in nebular space. Any attempt to give them the slip would be foolhardy.

"Just stay calm," Corias said--he wasn't sure if it was for Rhea's benefit or for his. "I'll try raising them on comm. channels."

Every frequency he tried came back as static--he hailed them in every language he knew, then let the computer try several dozen digital codes. Nothing--but he finally ran across a few clipped messages between the fighters in a language he'd never heard before. They were short, blunt--they sounded almost more like growls and snarls than sentences.

"They might be discussing something, but it sounds more like they're issuing and taking orders," Corias said finally. "They're not listening to us, anyway--wait. Another ship coming in."

A large, bulky mass drifted into sight through the clouds. It was four times Iolanthe's mass--a rough block of hull rigged with cranes and brackets. Some sort of cargo hauler.

And before Corias could flinch back toward the controls, it had grappled them--not with a tractor beam but with some sort of harpoon and tow cable. Iolanthe shuddered as two more harpoons struck her hull. They were stuck fast, and the hauler was reeling them in like a fresh catch.


***

Corias leaned forward with his hands bridged under his chin. It would probably be possible to break free from the grapple tug, but it would probably mean ripping out chunks of Iolanthe's fuselage, and then there were still the little fighters forming an effective picket line around her. They were caught, and good.

Abruptly, he heaved up out of his chair. "I'm gonna get me a beer. You want anything, Rhea?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's jaw dropped. "Are you serious? We're being dragged in by a strange starship, we're surrounded by alien starfighters, we could die any minute now, and you're going after beer?!" She stared at his back over her shoulder, then took another glance out the viewscreen at the rough-looking freighter ahead of them. Rhea frowned and slumped in her seat.

"Yeah. Orange soda, thanks."

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Orchag-Maur, Redclaw Station. Vairaja system.

The canopy glass didn’t open fast enough. Arajah Ramanuja forced the curved pane up over his head, and grinding servo motors whined with the strain. As soon as there was enough clearance to squeeze his lithe body out of the tiny cockpit, he disembarked from his Spearhead and ripped the flight mask from his leonine face. The small-bodied technicians hurried out of the pilot’s way as he growled and snarled across the flight deck to the nearest exit and out into the broad corridors of Redclaw Station.

Though the great spaceborne structure was still unrivaled by any other piece of Fyrokkian astronautics, the wear of many decades of attrition and neglect was painfully apparent. The reddish interior lights were dull, and the air was kept cold to stretch the longevity of a dying reactor. Carbon scars and breached bulkheads, relics from countless battles the station had weathered, had long gone unrepaired; most technical problems had to be bypassed rather than solved. Redclaw Station had become a withering hulk, an aging lion with its teeth pulled and its claws plucked out.

Arajah knew it. And unless his father was a fool, he knew it, too. The fabled fortress of the Ramanuja clan was failing. It was only a matter of time before their enemies knew, too.

"Arajah! Socha-nin teruda pat’maj!"
"Arajah! I didn’t know you’d be back so soon!"

The youthful voice barely registered as Arajah barreled on through the crowded corridor. There was a flood of maintenance workers on their way to the hangar to tend the wing of Spearheads that had just arrived, but they all parted out of the way of the angered prince.

"Donjar! Vedu!"
"Brother! Wait!"

Arajah’s ears perked back toward the sound, and he turned a moment later to see a petite figure struggling her way through the Fyrokkian tide. She slipped out of the merging crowd and into the circle of open deck Arajah occupied. She was a slender, young sotya, a scant sixteen cycles out of her mother’s womb. Her pale, orange fur was now caught in the transition between the plush, spotted pelt of a kitten and the shining, smooth coat of an adult, and her limbs were thin and wiry.

"Taya, su-tagh shui reni?"
"Taya, what are you doing here?"

Her exuberance faltered briefly at the growl in Arajah’s voice. "I got tired of waiting in the citadel. I heard the Spearheads were coming back, so I came."

Arajah’s face softened, but only for a moment. He turned and continued down the corridor. "And did you hear why we were returning?"

Concerned, Taya rushed to keep up with her brother’s long, loping step. "You won, I thought."

"We should have won. We would have won."

Taya’s brow furrowed. "I don’t understand."

"We had caught Samudra by the tail. Their defenses were sluggish and badly organized. In half an hour, they would have surrendered, and the water mines would be ours. But we were called off before we could finish the job."

"But why?" Taya asked.

"I don't know!" Arajah snapped back, doubling his pace. "But I intend to find out."

"'Rajah, wait!" Taya scurried to keep up with her brother. "Please, I don't want you to fight with patta again."

"He leaves me no choice. He has made far too many concessions and retreats in this war. Father or no, I will not help him lead this clan to its extinction!"

"At least calm down a bit. It will do no good to get him angry."

Arajah only snarled and bulled his way into the nearest lift.

It was a long walk to the audience chamber of the Patriarch of the Ramanuja Clan. The court would be arrayed to hear the report from the Spearhead offensive, but Arajah had no intention of standing on ceremony. By the time he arrived at the chamber doors, he had rehearsed all his arguments to the point of exhaustion, but his wrath was still in full boil. He barreled past the armored guards before the front gate and marched to his father's throne unheralded and unsummoned, and he shattered the venier of courtly propriety with an outraged snarl: "Why were we called off the attack?"

Lord Arushi Ramanuja rose from his throne as quickly as his arthritic joints would allow. The graying Patriarch glared at his son with an unabated fire in his yellow eyes.

"You have some gall, son--"

"Answer me! Why did you call us off?"

"Because it was not an authorized attack!" Arushi bellowed.

"Not authorized?" Arajah stepped toward the dais, his paws clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Since when do Spearheads need authorization to attack Samudra targets within our borders?"

A third voice broke out from the shadows behind the throne. "My lords, if you please. This belligerent display is hardly appropriate for the court."

Arajah's eyes narrowed to jade slits. He despised answering to a shanakh--particulary one such as Sarojin. He could not guess how that leech had gained his father's confidance.

"And what business is this of Kimatra's?" Arajah growled.

Sarojin stepped beside Arushi, his black, sacerdotal robes shimmering in the court's dull artificial light "As a matter of common welfare, it is exactly Kimatra's business," he replied evenly, placing a paw on Arushi's shoulder. "Especially now that my order has arbitrated a new treaty between the clans of Ramanuja and Samudra."

Arajah's jaw fell open, and his ears twitched. "A treaty? What kind of treaty?"

"One that will build a bridge toward peace if young rakha'im like you and your Red Guard don't blow it apart," Sarojin said, leading Arushi back to his throne. The fire in the Patriarch's eyes smouldered and dimmed, and he sank wearily back onto the cushioned seat. "Samudra has agreed to a ceasefire in exchange for certain concessions."

"Concessions," Arajah repeated, seething. "Like the water mines which our people drilled in the Makhedi Asteroids fifteen years ago?"

"If you don't learn to compromise, there will be no end to this war," Sarojin rebutted.

"And you would have us compromise our way into slavery!" Arajah roared back. "Ever since you arrived, you have weakened us. You have advised us to retreat where we should have fought. You have surrendered territory and resources we could not afford to lose. Are you working for Kimatra or Samudra, Saroji--"

His voice gave out. There was sudden pressure on his throat, and he could not breathe.

And then Sarojin lowered his paw, and it was over. "Learn some respect, petya," he spat. "There are many things you do not understand. There is more to the universe than battle. Now, go. Your father is weary."

Arajah blinked and took a step back. His mind was clouded. Go? It was time to go--wait.

The prince squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head, and glared back at Sarojin. "You weary me as well, Sarojin. But you do not fool me. We will speak of this again."

Arajah turned on his heel and stalked out of the chambers.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias returned to the cockpit and flopped back into his bucket seat. He handed Rhea her orange soda, then pressed the cold glass of his Dos Equis bottle against his sweaty forehead.

"Not much to do but wait. If they wanted to kill us, they probably would've done it by now." He glanced out toward the bulky alien ships. "Never heard about ships prowling in the Veil. But if they aren't pirates, who are they?"

He glanced back at his companion. "You all right, Rhea? You seem kinda... distant."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea's gaze, which had been focused blankly somewhere far beyond the viewscreen, snapped back to her surroundings as she shook her head a little. She was vaguely aware of Corias' speculations and his question.

"Yeah, I'm alright. But distant...that's a good way to put it." She looked over at her companion. "I don't know, Cor. I've got a bad feeling about this. I mean, yes, if they'd wanted us dead, we'd be dead, but still..." Rhea rested one hand on her slightly achy stomach. Stomachaches were never a good sign. "We're not safe, yet."

Truth be told, Rhea was both distant and drawn into herself. Her newly-heightened Force senses were pricking her in all different directions, and she couldn't get them to behave long enough to read them. They wouldn't arrange themselves into a clear picture, but of what Rhea could make out she was certain that the ships all around them were in some way inhuman. How she knew this was very unclear, even for her. But there was no way she could argue with her own intuition.

And something else was just tickling at her brain. About ships in the Veil. But it was like trying to recall the barest shred of an overheard long-ago conversation, a vague early-childhood memory long washed out by other, more important things. A danger she could not define.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Well, that was cryptic. It dawned on Corias that this feeling of Rhea's might have something to do with her connection to the Force. The Force was something he couldn't deny--of course, there wasn't a lot he could deny after all he'd seen gallavanting around the galaxy. But he didn't understand it. A sense for danger was all fine and dandy, but what was the use of vague premonitions and foreboding feelings without some sort of idea of how to avoid the danger?

Not that it was Rhea's fault. She'd never claimed to be a Jedi Knight.

"Relax," Corias said. "Believe it or not, I've been in situations like this before." And each time I felt just as helpless as I do now.

He glanced back at the canopy glass--the grapple-tug had tucked Iolanthe up against her belly and secured them fast. Now there was a low, throaty rumble bouncing through both ships, and the nebula ahead of them rippled and blue-shifted.

"Woah! Hold on to your can!"

He didn't mean it anything but literally as he put a tight grip on his own bottle, but there wasn't much time to work out the semantics before the tug and the surrounding fighters lurched into hyperlight. But the vortex that surrounded them was green, not blue, and the ride was far bumpier than usual for a hyperspace cruise.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Arajah took his lunch in solitude on the mess deck nearest the Patriarchal audience chamber. The workers that patronized the small eatery knew enough to steer clear of the prince when he was this angry. The ruddy-furred Fyrokkian tore into his shank of petrij with a fury borne of rage as well as hunger.

Burn that snake Sarojin, and burn Arushi for drinking so deeply of his venom! Arajah had often argued with Arushi before, but he'd never had a reason to mistrust his father before the new prophet arrived. What was the Samudra clan offering in return for three sectors of Ramanuja territory? Their word of honor to seek an alternate area of expansion. And once they had exhausted their alternatives, they would return to Ramanuja space. Was his father so blind?

"Is this spot taken?"

Arajah looked up to see the stormy gray face of Sanchay Padmakar, his lieutenant in the Red Guard, hovering above the table. Without waiting for a response, Sanchay straddled the bench on the opposite side and plopped himself down.

Arajah snorted and set his meat back on his pewter plate. "It is now."

Sanchay grinned, flashing a vicious array of pointed teeth. "This'll cheer you up, I promise. We just got word from the third patrol wing."

"Never mind that," Arajah growled. "Whatever target you've found is now unauthorized. After all, we wouldn't want to endanger the bridge toward peace with our friend Samudra."

"'Ndochi, listen to me," Sanchay persisted. "This has nothing to do with Samudra. Except, of course, that we found it before they did."

Arajah's brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

Sanchay leaned in close and held his voice to a whisper. "I'm talking about an alien ship. From the Void."

"A derilict?" Arajah asked.

"Very much alive," Sanchay replied. "We have a full wing of Spearheads on her, and the grapple-tug Shamgar is pulling her in as we speak."

"Breath of the Veil," Arajah swore. "Who else knows of this?"

"No one but the Red Guard. I thought it best to come to you directly." Sanchay extended a foreclaw and speared a riceball from Arajah's plate. "Are you planning to tell your father about this?"

Arajah shook his head. "Not yet. I want to assess the situation for myself first. When does the Shamgar dock?"

"Four hours," the gray Fyrokkian said around a mouthful of rice. "I can see to it that the proximity sensors don't pick up the alien power signature."

"Do it, then," Arajah nodded. "And, thank you, 'ndochi. I will meet you in the hangar bay at sixteen hundred."

Sanchay licked the last of the rice and meat juice off his claw. "It will be done. You know you'll probably get in trouble for hiding this from your father."

"We're already in trouble, Sanchay," Arajah replied. "But if it pleases the Winds, this may give us the edge we need against Samudra, and Sarojin."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias had given up sitting in the cockpit and staring at the rolling green vortex after two hours. There was no way of telling how long they'd be in transit, or where they'd end up on the other side of the jump--Iolanthe was senseless in the grip of the alien grapple-tug. So he and Rhea had ended up back in the cabin. The spacer was slumped in a chair by the table cradling an empty pretzel bag.

As much as he tried to hide it, Corias was worried. Every yarn and legend he'd heard about starships disappearing in the Veil had started to filter back through his mind, from Arkelian survey craft to Vaad spice runners. He'd always figured they'd been exaggerrated for his benefit--sure, maybe an Imperial scout wing was lost in the region at one time or another. That thing had been known to happen. But they all seemed just about as likely as what had befallen the Iolanthe in the past three hours. He tried to keep his thoughts to himself, but he couldn't shake the feeling that Rhea saw straight through his screens.

"Well," he said out of the blue, "there's one good thing in all of this. If you weren't here with me, there'd be nobody who'd believe me if I told 'em about it."

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea threw her head back and laughed. "Well, then that makes you the lucky one," she said, grinning at him. "Because, trust me, fellow eyewitness or no fellow eyewitness, nobody back home is going to believe this happened to me or anybody else."

Rhea knew that Corias had only been half-kidding. After all the assessments were over, there was every probability that the one good thing Corias had found in this situation was the only good thing about the whole debacle. But his remark had caught her off-guard; she was as aware of his uneasiness as she was of her own. She found it surprising that, for all of his talk of having experience with crises such as this, he still seemed very concerned, very unsure, very...vulnerable. Maybe almost as scared as she.

Or maybe she was just misreading him altogether; between his natural perplexing quality and Rhea's inability to tell whether her own intuition were getting better or going haywire, she wasn't sure he was really as worried as he seemed.

But she liked to think she wasn't the only one.

Suddenly, Iolanthe rattled and seemed to drop straight down, as if into a rut in the road. Rhea's teeth clattered and she grabbed the nearest support, the metal frame of the bunkbed, holding on for dear life. The green light-tunnel outside the viewport wobbled and disintegrated, returning the sky outside to star-studded black.

The grapple-tug had dropped from lightspeed, gods knew where, still dragging Iolanthe and her shaken passengers limply behind.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias felt the rumble before the lurch, and he knew exactly what was happening--he knew how the deck shook when Iolanthe was finishing a rough jump, so he braced himself in time to keep from being pitched off-balance. As soon as down was down again, the spacer leapt from his chair and up the ladder into the cockpit again. The sensors were still impaired, but he could see fine out the canopy glass.

Before them loomed the growing disc of a planet's dark side, and beyond the planet was an aging red sun set in a pocket of incandescent nebular gas. The planet itself looked like one of Dante's nightmares--the diffuse solar radience illuminated a cracked and scorched surface at the planet's edge, and cracks of naked lava glowed hellishly across the shadowed side. Three moons spun torpidly around the fiery world, and the nearest of them presented a backside crisscrossed with city lights.

"A nebular star system," Corias breathed, awestruck. "I've seen a couple, but they're rarely habitable. These guys must be really desperate to colonize a place like this."

Oops--not the best thing to say. For a moment, he'd genuinely forgotten the danger they were both in.

The little convoy angled for the north pole of the magma planet, and, as they passed the city-moon, they saw smatterings of other craft--mostly transports and utility craft, Corias wagered, but there was also a pair of predatory frigate-sized ships of the same sort of alien design that had begotten the spear-shaped starfighters and the clunky grapple-tug. All of them looked like they'd been thrown together from spare parts. If there was any aesthetic that guided their utilitarian construction, it was one of intimidation.

"This isn't just a smuggler's hideout or a refugee camp," he said. "There are probably a couple million beings in this system--whatever they are. But how the frell--"

As they crested the twilight region of the planet, a vast, orbital construction pivoted into view.

"Force--is that what I think it is?"

There, hovering over the rilled surface of the planet, was a gargantuan, gray hull with rusty brown structures and scaffolds blanketing it like barnacles on a whale. But even under all the patches and piping, there was one of the most unmistakeable, ineffable vessels in the known galaxy.

An Imperial Star Destroyer.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Arajah hurried down to the Red Guard's private docking bay on the portside quarter of Orchag-Maur--the main docking bay on the ventral side was larger, but that would attract too much attention. The Shamgar had been instructed to approach from the dark side of Vairaja Prime. With just a little luck, the greatest Fyrokkian salvage discovery in the past seventy cycles would go unnoticed--for now, anyway.

"Glad you could make it, Captain," Sanchay greeted him at the door.

"What's the situation?" Arajah asked.

"The Shamgar is making her approach now. The only ones left in the docking bay are Red Guard. No word from the citadel." Sanchay's broad face split in a smile. "So far, so good, n'dochi."

"Pray they stay that way," Arajah replied, punching a quick access code into the door panel.

The spacious docking bay opened up before them. Fighter racks that once housed TIEs now were configured for Spearheads and other Fyrokkian small craft, but the majority of the central docking space had been cleared. A dozen or so Fyrokkians in the livery of the Red Guard were arrayed in battle armor while two more manned the hangar control booth. The space doors yawned open into the black abyss of Redclaw Station's shadow. Only a kinetic force field held back the breatheable atmosphere from rushing out into the rarefied fog.

"Time to dock?" Arajah snapped.

"Six minutes, vachu," one of the Guard's techs reported.

The Shamgar's forward lights burned distantly in the mist, then slowly, slowly grew until at last its chunky prow peeked out of the haze. As the grapple-tug came into view, it released its hold on the prey at its belly, and the harpoon lines slackened like the arms of an octopus.

"Toyu!" Arajah ordered. The hangar bay's tractor beam lanced out and grabbed the limp Iolanthe and drew her in. She hovered for a moment in the caress of an artificial magnetic field, then slowly descended to the flight deck with a clunk.

A murmur arose from the Fyrokkians at the sight of the strange craft. Alien--not like the old drawings of the Invaders' ships, like the vessel that was now Orchag-Maur, but more like the traders that had preceded and followed the invaders. Several warriors leveled their sidearms at the ship's inscrutable prow, but Arajah waved them down.

"How many are aboard?" he asked.

"Our scanners indicate two life forms," Sanchay reported, "but there may be a third. The alien ship has a powerful sensor array that is interfering with our own scans."

"Spies, then," Arajah growled.

"It's possible," Sanchay agreed. "Shall we go in and slay them?"

"I want them alive," the prince replied. "Three life forms should not be much of a threat. I will go in after them."

"But if they're Invaders, vachu," one of the younger warriors, Riahjin, stammered. "If the stories are true..."

"Ah, yes," Arajah said, approaching the young soldier. "I'm sure they all look alike and think alike, and that, if you cut one of them in half, two more grow to take his place. I suppose they also feast on the souls of those they kill, for they have none of their own, and their very breath corrupts the air and turns it to poison."

The prince leaned over Riahjin with a steely-eyed glare. "These are tales to frighten myerghren into bed. Save them for your cubs. Even the Invaders bleed, and if these aliens resist me, I shall prove it to you."

"There's still no sense in going alone," Sanchay said. "Even a bleeding alien can be a dangerous one if it's trapped like a vortag in its own lair. I will watch your back. That's an order." He gave an ironic shrug, then added, "Sir."

Arajah shot his lieutenant a wry look. "Very well. Red Guard, stand ready. Just in case our souls get eaten."

The two Fyrokkian warriors drew their sidearms as they climbed up Iolanthe's boxy fuselage to the hatch on her cockpit module.

[Rhea Kaylen]

So far, Rhea had thought she'd done okay.

Pirates? Well, almost a given in this area of the galaxy, and as such no more than an irritation, really.

Getting lost in the Veil? Unpleasant, to be sure, but not in and of itself a hideous experience, considering Iolanthe's powerful scanners and Corias' infectious confidence.

Being abducted by aliens? Frightening, but the orange soda helped.

It was the Star Destroyer that made Rhea threaten to lose her composure for the first time that trip.

Star Destroyers were always a terrifying sight, even to someone who, like Rhea, had lived their life utterly untouched by the Empire's influence. But something about the fact that the massive ship had been cannibalized, reconstructed, and, essentially, glued together by intelligent life-forms to create an inhabitable satellite had sent Rhea's heart plunging. She and Corias weren't just dealing with a rogue band of Veil-hopping pirates or mercenaries anymore. They were heading into what was likely enemy territory peopled by aliens capable of taking down an Imperial Star Destroyer. She knew nothing about any such colony in the Veil, so she had no idea what to expect.

And that, more than anything, made Rhea incredibly unsure of what was left of her splintered, frayed bravery.

Once the initial shock of seeing the ravaged alien planet had worn off, it had been replaced by gnawing, growing anxiety. Rhea and Corias had said nothing during their approach. Rhea wouldn't have been able to find words enough to voice a coherent thought.

The alien grapple-tug inched toward the looming maw of the Star Destroyer-station's docking bay, their progress made seemingly slower than it really was by the swirling nebular mist that still enshrouded Iolanthe and everything else around them. The docking port became, by degrees, more and more visible, until, without Rhea really realizing it, they were right outside the docking bay. The grapple-tug jerked its towing lines free of Iolanthe's hull and sailed inside. For the space of about a heartbeat, Rhea wondered what was happening, and then an invisible force clamped onto Iolanthe and wrenched her inside the bay after her captor.

Corias had muttered something nasty about the treatment his ship received as she was plunked down in the docking bay just like so much flotsam. Rhea peered out the canopy glass to try to get a glimpse of their captors, but they were out of sight under and behind the ship...if they were there at all. She swallowed uncomfortably, her heart racing.

This is why I never wanted to be a spacer, she thought. I'm too big a coward.

Which is why, when she and Corias heard the harsh hiss of the ship's hatch being forcibly opened, she gasped sharply and pressed herself back against the control panel, momentarily petrified with fear.

There was a heavy thunk in the lower part of the ship--their guests were on board.

[Corias Bonaventure]

Corias heaved up from his seat and spun toward the aft hatch of the cockpit. He could feel his heart pounding in his ears--he could feel the adrenalin surge, the electricity of anticipation. There was nothing like finding oneself in the capture of an unknown alien force. All his baser instincts urged him to fight or flee, but neither was an option now.

He glanced toward Rhea, suddenly huddled against a bulkhead, and his head cooled. He had more to think about than his own hide. He'd gotten her into this, and he had to see her out.

Turning, he put his hands on her shoulders and gave them a firm squeeze. "We're in this together, Rhea, all right? Now, we're going to go down and say hello. We have to let them know we're not a threat."

Stepping back, he dug into his belt holster and drew his Rummel P-16S. He pulled up a small floor panel and dropped the sidearm inside--just in case he needed it later--then sealed it up and headed toward the aft ladder. "Just remember--no sudden moves. Stay behind me, and I'll handle the talking." If they even understand me.

If Corias could have chosen, he'd have met them in the cabin--there was less chance of the boarders feeling cornered if he and Rhea weren't coming at them from a higher deck. But the best he could do was to advance quietly--but casually--back to the quarterdeck.

"Hello? We're coming out. We're unarmed."

There were footsteps below--light, almost inaudible, like the whisper of leather-soled shoes, or maybe even bare, callused feet. The hazy yellow light from the hangar was bleeding in through the open ventral hatch, enough for Corias to see a pair of lanky shadows cast on the wall.

He turned and motioned Rhea to stay where she was, then slowly stepped down the ladder onto the quarterdeck.

No sooner had his boots hit the deck grating than a strong limb gripped his arm and thrust him against a bulkhead. A hairy forearm pinned him there, and he caught a glimpse of a broad, animalian face before a blast of hot breath stung his eyes.

The creature leaned its muzzle close to him, its yellow-green eyes pinched narrow and its nostrils swelling. It--he--was scrutinizing him. Corias could see little of the creature other than the large, feline head and the heavy paw on his shoulder, the claws biting into the leather of his bomber's jacket. Craning his head around, he could see the other one lurking in the hatchway--bipedal, but the arms were long and thick enough that they might recently have been forelegs in the race's history. He had digigrade hind limbs and a long, thickly furred tail. He wore a carapace of hardened leather armor fringed with white fur, and his pelt was glossy gray--a stark contrast to the beast looking Corias over, whose fur was a variegated yellow-brown with reddish accents. Both creatures wore vicious-looking sidearms fastened at the wrist, surmounted with a katar-like bayonette.

The yellow cat said nothing--he regarded Corias with a disgusted fascination, the breath rattling deep in his throat. Then the gray one spotted Rhea at the cockpit hatch and said, "Vachu, krich!" He leapt over the ladder railing--a good seven feet up--and seized her by the shoulders.

Vachu, if Corias's suspicions were correct, looked up at his friend and his catch, then ticked his head toward the other open door on the deck--the hatch to the cabin. "Kechu-sei. Rugh!"

Corias was turned roughly and shoved toward the door--he lost sight of Rhea, but he imagined she was also being conducted none-too-gently down the ladder to the cabin. The two prisoners found themselves forcibly sat down on either side of the table. Vachu began hunting through the cabin while the gray cat, who was significantly bigger than the yellow, stood imperiously in the hatchway.

Corias rubbed gingerly at his arm where the yellow cat's claws had needled him. Glancing over at Rhea, he whispered, "You all right?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea sat, staring with wide, glazed eyes at nothing in particular as her breath came in rapid, shallow jerks. She nodded nervously, not looking at Corias. Her heartbeat, arrested at the sight of a man-sized, leonine...animal...leaping into the cockpit and staring into her frightened face, had seemed to finally start again. Now it was beating a furious tattoo against her ribs.

She was scared. Her shoulder was stinging and, she knew, bleeding from the grey-fur's long razor claws. But she could not, she refused to allow her fear to master her. Now was not the time or circumstance; she would be of no use to Corias as a petrified, quivering child. So she only lifted her eyes, horrified yet fixated, to the towering, scowling (it was scowling, right?) figure standing watch over them.

"I'm--I'm fine," she whispered to Corias, breaking out of her stupor. "Any idea what these th--"

But she was rudely interrupted by their captor, the ochre-furred Vachu.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

"Sagei!"
"Quiet! Arajah snapped at the two captives. He had pulled open the drawers of the built-in dresser and was sifting through the assorted garments. They were all cut to fit aliens, but, if nothing else, the fabric could be recycled for Fyrokkian needs. There were far, far more clothes than any two people should really need, he thought. There was a blaster cleaning kit in one of the top drawers. The aliens must have hidden their weapons.

"Found anything?" Sanchay asked.

"Not much," Arajah grumbled back. "Clothes. Trinkets. Books. Mostly worthless things. If they were carrying anything important, they probably hid it before we brought them aboard."

"We'll find it soon enough once we get a strip crew in here to take this ship apart," Sanchay replied. "But, to be honest, they don't look much like shock troops or spies."

"No, they don't," Arajah allowed. "But watch them closely. Their kind is treacherous and deceptive. They have weapons on board, I assure you of that."

His eyes roved over the computer terminal--it looked considerably more advanced than the old systems that ran Redclaw Station. Perhaps it could help restore the station's ailing computer core, but it would be delicate work. Even the outdated Imperial systems were well beyond native Fyrokkian computer science; it would take time to study how to merge the alien computer with their own. Perhaps the alien pilot himself could help if properly persuaded.

The prince stalked down the starboard bulkhead to the glass tank on the far side of the desk. It was brightly lit and decorated with colored stones and fake plants, and inside was an aquatic creature with broad, stippled fins. A food source, perhaps? But it seemed an awful lot of trouble to keep fresh an animal with so little meat on its bones. Curious, Arajah lifted the lid of the aquarium and carefully dipped his paw into the warm water.

[Corias Bonaventure]

There was little Corias could do as Vachu set about ransacking the humble cabin--at least, as far as he knew, he didn't have much to hide. But Corias's heart skipped a beat when the yellow cat opened the lid of Nelson's tank. If he didn't do something, things could get ugly fast, and not just for Nelson.

"Hey, don't! The spines are poisonous!"

The gray cat flinched at the outburst and looked questioningly to his superior. But the yellow one pulled his paw out immediately and stared at Corias with wide eyes.

The spacer hadn't even sighed in relief when he took a breath of realization. "You do understand me. Don't you?"

The felinoid scowled as he shook the water from his paw, instantly regaining his steely composure. "I do," he said in Basic--a startling mix of humanoid and animal tones. "Your tongue is one of the gifts your people left us when last you visited our space. What are you doing here? Who sent you?"

"No one sent us," Corias said. "We were on our way to the Aranio system, and the Planet Hawks drove us off-course."

"Really," the cat said, thoroughly unconvinced. "What is your name, outsider?"

"Corias Bonaventure."

The cat nodded. "Corias Bonaventure. You mean to tell me it was an accident that you came to our borders and sent high-powered scans into our territory?"

Corias furrowed his brow. "We didn't know this was your territory; we were just trying to find our way out. A high-powered scan is the only way I could cut through the background radiation."

"And then you tried to conceal yourselves when we found you," Vachu challenged.

"That's because we thought you were the pirates!" Corias rebutted. "We didn't even know the Veil was inhabited."

The cat's face darkened. "What?" he hissed, towering over the spacer. "You didn't know? Did you think you had exterminated us?"

"I don't know what you're talking about--"

He moved like lightning. Before Corias could flinch, the cat seized his face by the jaw and thrust his head back until he could feel his cervical vertebrae grinding in their sockets. "Don't insult me!" he roared. "Do you not know who we are? Have you forgotten what your people did to us?"

The pain was extraordinary--Corias's vision blacked, and he feebly grasped at the cat's wrist, but he couldn't break the iron grip. Then the gray cat stepped forward and laid a firm paw on his friend's arm. "Arajah, tuk-shi makh!"

Vachu--or Arajah, was it?--released Corias and glared at the gray. "Puj mun-tak, khumei!"

"Puj munin, vachu," the gray replied steadily.

Corias's breath was ragged as he gingerly rubbed his throat. He didn't know what just passed between the two aliens, but he regarded the gray one gratefully.

Arajah glowered at the two prisoners. "I will have your secrets, Corias Bonaventure, even if I have to cut them out of you. Sanchay, kechu sotya."

Arajah hauled Corias roughly to his feet, Sanchay grabbed Rhea, and the two Fyrokkians dragged their prisoners out into the hangar of Orchag-Maur.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

"Shakh t'Khaias--shi por!"
"Breath of the Veil--it's true!"

"'Mvijis rei-kam keessi tei khukhon."
"They look more like mice than demons."

"Uj gagdi has-ghish!
"Or hairless apes!"

Riahjin and another young warrior whispered furtively to one another until an older Fyrokkian smacked the back of Riahjin's head. But all the Red Guard were curious about the alien prizes Arajah and Sanchay had caught, and they surrounded the prisoners, each vying for a better look at the strange creatures.

"Look well, cousins," Arajah announced imperiously, forcing Corias under the glare of the hangar floodlights. "These are creatures from the Void. The first in over seventy cycles to cross into the Veil and be taken alive. The Winds favor Ramanuja today. Maugris, Anksha, put a scanning crew together. Search their ship for anything we might be able to use. Kedrash, go to the healing bay and get Healer Turaul. Tell him to bring his diagnostic kit."

Sanchay had somewhat relaxed his grip on Rhea, satisfied that she wasn't going to make a break for anywhere. Approaching his captain, he said, "Arajah, how long do you intend to keep these two a secret?"

"Until I find out why they're here," Arajah replied. "You know what will happen if Sarojin catches wind of this. He will find some technicality of the law or of doctrine to rob us of our prize."

"It won't take him long," Sanchay warned. "And he's the one to tell your father you took in an alien vessel behind his back--"

"That's why we must move quickly," Arajah said. "I need to know all I can about these creatures so I can argue our case against that worm."

[Corias Bonaventure]

Accompanying him was a smaller, brown-furred cat in a roughspun tunic. The newcomer stopped at the sight of Corias and Rhea, and Arajah urged him forward. Wide-eyed, the new specimen approached Corias, set down a leather bundle, and took the spacer's head in both paws. Corias fought back the urge to resist and allowed the alien to examine his eyes, his teeth, his hands.

"Just a routine examination," Corias whispered to Rhea. "They'll check their records to see if they have our species on file. Maybe check us for--"

A small instrument in the medic's paw stung his arm, and the transparent tube at its back filled with blood.

"...Pathogens," Corias finished. He rubbed gingerly at a reddening welt on his arm, but there was little excess bleeding. The brown-furred alien stowed the tube in his case, then snipped some of Corias's hair where it curled up from his temples under his bandana. The hair went into a platic pouch, and the medic repeated the examination process on Rhea. Corias watched the alien carefully, but his bedside manner was the same--too detached and objective to be threatening. Rhea flinched a little as the same probe pricked her, and a vial of fractionally darker Imrani blood joined Corias's. Rhea lost a few centimeters of hair right along one of the splits between black and white.

The medic conferred with Arajah in their snarling tongue. Corias wished he knew what they were saying, but the brown's back was turned, and Arajah offered no clues. Finally Arajah stepped forward and regarded his two captives.

"So, are we healthy?" Corias asked.

Arajah curled his lips, baring a startling array of teeth. "You insist that you did not expect to find us here?" he said.

"That's right," the spacer replied. "I'm sorry if that offends you."

"You deny that your people has had contact with ours?"

"There are a lot of my people in the galaxy," Corias said. "Some of them probably came here before. I just haven't heard about it."

"Then you expect me to believe that an entire war has escaped the notice of your loremasters?" Arajah said, his voice low and dangerous as he stalked toward Corias. "That you know nothing of the fleet that invaded our space and decimated our colonies? That it was not your people who built this very vessel?"

"This vessel--" Corias swallowed and hesitated. He had to be very careful how he proceeded. "Listen to me. My people are not all united. This vessel was built by the GalactiC Empire. We're from the New Republic. The Empire is our enemy." There was no relenting in the scowl on Arajah's leonine face. "I'm telling you the truth!"

Arajah bent down and seized Corias's lapel, bringing the spacer's face close to his. The cat's nostrils flared, and he released Corias with a snarl.

"I do not trust you," he said. "You are a dishonest man, Corias Bonaventure. You breathe deception." His green-gold eyes turned toward Rhea. "I want to hear her say it. Why are you here?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

It was in a sort of daze that Rhea was brought roughly from Iolanthe in the unloving grasp of the hulking grey-furred alien. He was not treating her nearly as badly as his leader was handling Corias, however--probably in direct relation to Rhea's smaller size and considerably less volatile attitude. In fact, Rhea was all but in a trance, and couldn't have been a threat to the aliens had she been a four-hundred-pound bodybuilding rancor.

Her haze was rudely broken by another alien's--medic's, Rhea realized--insistent proddings. She felt it wise to simply allow him free rein (but, oh, how she hated needles!). At least the hair sample would be of little impact; her cut--or lack thereof--was so shaggy and jagged anyway, a snip out of the bottom wasn't likely to be an eyesore. Unlike Corias, who came up with amusing half-bangs, half protruding shards.

But Rhea couldn't seem to muster the effort to smile.

Rhea closely watched the aliens around her--and they closely watched her in turn. The exchanged stares, theirs completely unabashed, Rhea's slightly more so, were less calculating or watchful than they were blatantly curious. Though Rhea had lived on Coruscant for years, these creatures were unlike any she'd ever seen before: not modern, wearing the latest Coruscant fashion trend and walking alongside of humans incongruously. These animal-like creatures, taller and broader than men, were clothed in strange garments of their own significance, wore jewelry of a design unlike any Rhea had ever seen. As if they were and always had been completely untouched by everything which Rhea took to be common and everyday. Yet they walked about, maybe even lived, in this ship-station, the remains of one of humanity's greatest examples of unbridled power and control.

And, to them, Rhea knew she was more than just an outsider--she was a creature that shouldn't have existed. A being of tales, who only lived in the eldest grandsires' memories or the youngest children's imaginations.

Suddenly Corias' voice bit Rhea's ears, and she snapped her head back to see him staring defiantly up at the alien leader. Rhea did not much care for the way the two of them were looking at each other. With a fear she dare not show, Rhea listened to Corias try to explain their situation, obviously to Vachu's displeasure.

Rhea could not stifle a cry when the beast grabbed Corias by his jacket, but when Vachu's feral, slitted jewel-eyes turned on her, no sound would leave her gaping mouth.

[Corias Bonaventure]

A pit opened up in Corias's stomach as Arajah stalked toward Rhea. Whatever custom or prejudice it was that made the felinoid prefer her testimony to his, now wasn't the time to freeze up.

But he wasn't sure which was more dangerous--to keep quiet or to repeat what the alien captain didn't want to hear.

"Leave her alone! She's not even human; ask your doctor!"

A bare-chested warrior lunged forward and pinned Corias against the wall where he sat.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Narrowing his eyes predatorially, Arajah reached down and lifted Rhea's chin with a pair of fingerpads, his claws barely velveted. "Why," he repeated, "are you here?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Blood rushed into Rhea's face and her insides ignited at the alien's subtly threatening touch. She couldn't turn her head to see if Corias was okay; in terror Rhea heard a slight groan from his direction. Suddenly her tongue was loosed--to her peril or to her salvation remained to be seen.

"My home, the planet Imran, lies just beyond your borders," she breathed, eyes locked inescapably in Vachu's gaze. "Corias Bonaventure is in my employ; he is my pilot. We were attacked by the Planet Hawk Pirates that ravage the region around your kingdom, and forced into the Veil by their ambush. Our blundering into your home was foolish but entirely accidental. We never meant to come into your territory, but the decision to make this journey was mine!"

Please, believe me. Believe me, punish me, kill me if you must, but let Corias go!

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Arajah studied the alien female's face. Her fear was plain enough, strong in his nostrils--he had the impression she might wilt if he breathed on her too hard.

Yet she was claiming responsibilty for their error--of a sort. At any rate, she was not a spy, nor a warrior. Now that he'd cooled his head a little, the pieces of their story were falling into place.

His features softened by a quantum.

"This Empire your pilot speaks of," he said. "What has become of it?"

[Rhea Kaylen]

Rhea could not read the alien's features well, but the wrinkles in his brow seemed to smooth fractionally, and his anger toward her, pricking her senses like hot needles, ebbed away just a little.

She took a breath. "The Empire who sent this ship of death into your realm has been overthrown. The evil emperor was destroyed, his captains and commanders imprisoned, and his ranks broken and demoralized. They still exist, in small corners and pockets in certain parts of the galaxy, but they have ceased to be the force that invaded your kingdom. The government of the New Republic now rules most of the galaxy." As a sudden afterthought, Rhea quickly added, "The New Republic does not have an active interest in your people or your lands. In fact, I had never even been made aware of your people's existence until now. The Republic has no desire to repeat the Empire's atrocities."

Rhea knew she was playing with fire, now. Much of what she had just said was only supposition or assumption, though it was all reasonable speech. One thing was certain, though: the New Republic had no idea that these aliens existed, of that she was sure.

No one had ever escaped the Veil alive to pass along that information.

[Arajah Ramanuja]

Overthrown...

Arajah's face vasillated between wonder and disbelief. Could it really be that the fabled enemy of the Fyrokkian people had been vanquished in an unknown conflict many years ago? It seemed unthinkable. By all accounts, the old Confederacy drove the Invaders out only by the grace of the Winds. Arajah did not believe the goblin tales that had grown up around the Invaders among the peasants, nor the apocalyptic visions of the aliens from the Void that Sarojin and his colleagues in the Order of Kimatra used as a doctrinal cudgel, but he knew the civilzation that had built Orchag-Maur was a powerful one--far more powerful than the clan lords who now controlled the Veil. The new overlords of the Void--this "New Republic"--might be an even greater menace.

Why, then... why would they not have heard of it? Unless the failed invasion of the Veil had been, for the Empire, a trifling matter...

Arajah's ears flattened against his skull at that thought. It was a possibility, but not one he was willing to entertain. But whether the story was true or not, none of the clan lords would dare send ships out into the Void to see for themselves.

Galactic politics aside, it was becoming more and more apparent he hadn't captured an advanced scout or enemy spyship at all--he'd only intercepted a pair of wayfarers who'd happened to blunder into Ramanuja territory.

But they could still be useful. Intelligence on outsider affairs was non-existent within the Veil since Kimatra decreed the closure of Fyrokkian borders. And there was still the matter of their ship.

Arajah Ramanuja eyed both his captives warily and, without another word to either of them, turned to confer with his fellows.