Rursus Iterum

[Kiera Sontebren]

She'd sent the message to him unencrypted, without any sense of urgency or fear in her tone.

"Captain Quez, this is Lieutenant Sontebren with Alliance R&D. I'd like to schedule a rendezvous with the Novgorod for the purpose of seeing to your tracking arrays. There've been some problems noted in similar setups to your own and we would like to prevent any mishaps from occurring while you are on active patrol. Apparently light freighters might be able to avoid your tractor beams given the proper environment. Make due haste for these coordinates. Lieutenant Sontebren out."

And now she was here in a drab little personal shuttle, waiting for the only person she knew who could possibly do anything about the information she had found, in time for it to mean anything.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"What jis thjis?"

Captain Cirrsseeto Quez sat at the table in his quarters, not really sure what was in the bowl in front of him. He probed the murky portion with his spoon, a chunk of something solid-ish bobbing just below the surface of whatever it swam in. Whatever it was, Lyanie had insisted that she make it for her turn at handling dinner. Cirr eyed his rrou'aiha's portion across the table. She hadn't eaten any of hers, and was instead leaning over the table slightly, propped on her elbows as she watched him. Her eyes gleamed with something either sweet or mischievious. Or both. It had been over half a year and Cirr still found himself at a loss to decypher his mistress's inscrutable twinkle that she liked to throw in his direction.

"Well, jI'm rreasonably surre jit's not pojison. You'd come at me djirrect jif jit came to that. So then? Somethjing spjicy then?"

His face suddenly grimaced.

"jIt's not that Soyprro thjing agajin, jis jit?"

[Lyanie Quez]

Her fingers laced under her chin, she watched with considerable interest as Cirr tried to once again decipher what it was she had made without so much as introducing the clearest hints that flavour would give into his mouth. It wasn’t nice of her, really, but considering how he’d taken the agedashi soypro (she’d gotten some sort of perverse amusement out of it even if she had felt sorry for him, after) she liked to let him stew a little. It was easy to make things she knew he liked, but the pull of being able to expand his horizons was… irresistible.

Lyanie tried and failed to not laugh when he brought up the soypro ‘incident’, and shook her head gently over her fingers.

“No, sweetie. No soypro.” She confirmed for him, a small, pleasantly amused smile cropping up on her face. “Just tip-yip in the dumplings.”

She didn’t know if he knew what that was, but if he was still wary, he’d ask... or make a face... or perhaps, make a face and then​ ask.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Beyond the probing stage, he actively scooped a helping of whatever-it-was in his spoon, determined not to be unmanned by whatever tjip-yjip might be. A guarded and serious face stared over the slowly-dripping spoon which was carefully-carefully eased into a mouth of trepidation. Lips closed around the metal handle for a tense moment...and suddenly the spoon was pulled free from his mouth - spotless - as the Cizerack's eyes closed in epicurean ecstasy.

"Oh sai'tuur'ai va..." and a splotch of sauce dripped from his mouth to his chin as he fumbled the act of chewing and singing praises at once. Hurriedly swallowing, Cirr retrieved his napkin to clean away the stain of his deficient table manners, then redoubled his efforts for more of Lyanie's mystery cooking.

"jI don't know what you djid...(bite, chew chew chew, gulp)...but keep jit comjing, please."

Realizing that dinner & conversation with his wife was in danger of becoming a one way conversation with gluttony, he reluctantly slowed his assault on the stew to a more balanced approach.

"Oh, and beforre jI forrget, jI was meanjing to ask you somethjing about ourr trrackjing arrays. Have we been havjing any varrjiance prroblems lately?"

This sort of shop-talk might have been seen as a mood killer to most, but fortunately the Quez's shared the same passions on more than one front.

[Lyanie Quez]

Once her beloved finally dug in, she did too, taking a big spoonful of tip-yip dumpling and some broth, and shuttling it into her mouth. She was hungry, so she was glad when Cirr finally took to eating. Lyanie knew what tip-yip (also known as Endorian Chicken) was like, and had eaten this dish before. It was a comfort food for her, as her parents raised Endorian chickens in addition to nerfs, mesa goats, and so on.

She beamed when he praised her cooking, and told her to keep it coming. She loved his approval, loved how he lit up.

“Oh… the tracking arrays?” She started, after swallowing her most recent spoonful. Had there been any issues? The engineer had to think for a moment, as there were so very many things for her to keep track of on the Novgorod that she had to flip back through her mental inventory of everything she had either done herself, or had someone under her sway in the department take care of.

She looked thoughtful, chewing away at another dumpling, and nodded when the right memory came to her.

“Yes. One of the junior techs checked it out, recently… oh… yesterday?... as per routine. And I double-checked myself when reports came in and I saw there was a problem. So we went about recalibrating ‘em, and re-checking…” Her brow furrowed. “...things just wouldn’t quite line up right.”

Lyanis scooped more soup from her bowl, mostly broth.

“Why do you ask?”

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

She'd caught him mid-chew, and while he tactically delayed answering under the auspices of swallowing the morsel in his mouth, he used the moment of silence as an excuse to raid the larger family-style serving bowl between them, topping off his own bowl with a ladle, bringing half-empty to all-full.

"jI don't thjink jit's an jisolated case. Mjight be somethjing we have to pull wholesale and rreplace."

Finally with his mouth free to talk, Cirr put aside his spoon for a moment. Neither of the two engineers relished the process of a complete reinstall. It was a point of pride usually. If it can be fixed, even if it means foil and chewing gum crinkled together to make it work, it would get fixed before it would be replaced.

"Got a comm frrom Kjierra thjis morrnjing, and apparrently Rr&D arre pushjing a rrush orrderr forr a rrecall. She's actually comjing herre on an expedjited assjignment."

Captain Quez's ears angled upward slightly, curious what his wife would think of that. She had a bit more history with Kiera than he did.

[Lyanie Quez]

Lyanie delicately sipped the broth from her spoon, after asking, out of curiosity, why her husband was asking. When the word ‘replace’ came out of his mouth, she gave him a look that said in no uncertain terms, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’

Swallowing the broth, and setting her spoon down, Lyanie sighed. This was going to be a pain in the…

"Got a comm frrom Kjierra thjis morrnjing, and apparrently Rr&D arre pushjing a rrush orrderr forr a rrecall. She's actually comjing herre on an expedjited assjignment."

...ass. But mitigated by the involvement of…

“Kiera?” She volleyed back, clearly happy at the prospect. She settled back into her chair and loosely crossed her arms, as another realization came over her, and the happiness in her expression halved. “Well, that’ll be good.”

She looked down at the table, at… well, nothing in particular, pinning half her lower lip between her teeth. She’d only gotten to know Keira because of Ben, and Ben wasn’t talking to much of anyone, these days, and he used to tell her everything. A lot of things had changed in the past year, and very little of it had been anything she expected. Everything that had occurred in that time brought out the best or the worst in people… or had changed them altogether. Raising her head, Lyanie looked across the table at Cirr and smiled, doing her best to look assured of the prospect of seeing Keira.

“It’ll be good to see her.” Lyanie said, finally, nodding a little, putting more confidence into her words. “Yes, it’ll be nice.”

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Keep herr frrom fjixjing whateverr doesn't need fjixjing, Lyanjie."

He wagged his ears up conspiratorially, knowing that his favorite engineer was just as headstrong as he was. Friend or no, they weren't going to have some dweeb from research decide that something that passed muster in simulation was suddenly the bees knees. Still, she was a friendly dweeb. Someone they could trust. Probably.

"Ought to be ljike old tjimes, gettjing most of the gang back togetherr at least. Haven't seen herr sjince we bumped jinto Ben and that Nehantjite popsjicle."

[Lyanie Quez]

Lyanie’s smile grew into something rogue-ish and a lot more real. The Novgorod was her baby… their baby, and no way was some R&D wackjob going to stick fingers in everything and… no, just no. He was right. There was a line that couldn’t be crossed, even if they were friends.

“I’ll smack’er hands with a ‘spanner if I have to,” She playfully retorted, sitting up. “Ain’t nobody messin’ with my girl, if I can help it.”

But at his mention of the last time they’d seen Keira, and the circumstances of that time, her playfulness subsided, and she picked up her spoon once again… not so much to eat, but more to just hold on to it. Some of the playful amusement in her face recovered after a moment, when she recalled just how the Nehantite acted, how Ben had been needled into embarrassment, and that her (sort-of) cousin had been there. She wondered, for a moment, how Sindy was doing.

“Yeah. Like old times.” She agreed, dipping the spoon into the tip-yip dumpling soup that still mostly filled her bowl, but she did not lift it out again, instead canting her head partly to one side and looking at Cirr quizzically. “You think we should have her for a drink, or dinner?”

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

His palms turned upwards in a universal gesture of if that'll make you happy, sweetie. Universally-known among husbands across the galaxy, it was especially sacred language to a Cizerack.

"Surre. Should do us good to have company. No telljing when we'll be pulled off to some lonely ljittle sectorr and won't have the chance."

His eyes suddenly brightened a bit, and he jabbed at his bowl with his spoon for emphasis.

"You've got to make herr thjis!"

[Lyanie Quez]

She nodded, in complete understanding. The last time they’d been off to some ‘lonely little sector’, it had turned out they weren't so alone. That experience had really, really impressed on them, on everyone (she liked to think) just how precious time was, and how opportunities weren't to be taken for granted. When he again showed his enthusiasm for the soup, she laughed.

“When you like something, you really like it, don’t you, love?”

Looking down at her bowl, she lifted the spoon, full of broth and dumpling, and moved it into her mouth, forming a smile around the mouth full of soup and spoon. It was quite good, though… but she wasn't one to brag.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"You rreally know how to spojil me ljike a trrue forrda, rrou'aiha. jI can only hope you love me just as much when jI eventually become fat and rround on account of jit."

Cirr winked with a big smile as he hogged another bite, and his free hand reached across the table, swallowing up her own.

"You know, we prrobably have a good hourr beforre Kjierra makes rrendezvous. Why don't we -"

"Captain Quez. We're picking up Lieutenant Sontebren's transponder on proximity. We'll be coming out of hyperspace in two minutes."

Slack-jawed and defeated, the air went out of Cirr's ears as they drooped. Giving Lyanie's hand a squeeze, he reluctantly let go.

"...orr Kjierra found a shorrtcut, then. Oh, Saanjarra."

Captain Quez tapped the comm on the wall as he stood, shuffling a bit as his cybernetic leg lagged slightly on his neural impulse, catching up with his bidding.

"Underrstood. jI'll be rrjight therre."

The felinoid returned to Lyanie's side of the table, helping her up into his arms as he afforded himself a kiss while they had time. Their lips parted sweetly, and Cirr carefully reached down to the table to pilfer one last bite of tip-yip. Dabbing with a napkin, he winked at his wife, and exited his quarters to head to the bridge.

[Kiera Sontebren]

The Novgorod, a somewhat dated if still sleek and menacing Marauder-class corvette, exited hyperspace right before her eyes. She shifted in her seat, and immediately hailed the ship.

"Novgorod," she said, her heart racing but able to hide it from her voice. "This is Lambda shuttle Tyrion, Lieutenant Sontebren of Alliance Research and Development pilot and only passenger, requesting permission to dock. Transmitting codes now."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Lieutenant Kyner took the inbound hail, matching clearance codes with the Alliance Navy transponder master key.

"Code clearance granted for dock. Slaving navigation control for docking umbilical ascent. Rotate seventeen degrees, and engage thrusters at one quarter."

Working with Ensign Altair at the helm, the two bridge officers prepared to align Novgorod's external docking umbilical with the Lambda shuttle, which was too large to conventionally berth in her hangar. With a few quick bursts of thruster, the shuttle pitched slightly, then began to line up to the awaiting docking interface.

"Cut thrusters. Fire deceleration burst at three half second intervals. Five meters, three..."

A muffled thump could be heard in the distance.

"Docking interface locked and seal is green. Welcome aboard Novgorod."

[Kiera Sontebren]

She was at the umbilical before the Ensign could finish saying 'aboard'. Once at the door, she stopped and steadied herself, calming her features into a relaxed if still professional mien.

Only then did she press the key to allow her onto the ship.

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

She met Captain Quez halfway in the corridor of his own ship. He paused in mid-stride as he nearly bumped into her coming around a corner with Lyanie, and his ears cocked askew to betray his awkwardness at the unexpected arrival. The genetic code to open the door for a lady was wired pretty damn hard in Cirr's system, and his eyes unconsciously glanced behind Kiera to the now-open door as a kind of unrealized goal. Still, she was here, so might as well get on with it?

"Ja irra, Ljieutenant. jIt's been a long tjime."

He extended a hand to shake, only to see at the last moment both of her hands were encumbered by baggage and cases she was lugging aboard. Again, things he was hard-wired to do...the offered hand turned upwards.

"Let me get that forr you."

[Kiera Sontebren]

"Cirr, Lyanie." Kiera smiled and nodded to both of them before remembering herself and saluting after setting one her bags down.

"Let me get that forr you."

Kiera shook her head and picked the bag back up. Was there anywhere close by she could... ?

"All necessary components and some redundant parts are in the shuttle. I told one of your peons to get them moved over to the maintenance stations already. When will we be going to hyperspace again?" A thought occurred to her, and she frowned. "Can we go to hyperspace with the shuttle docked like it is?"

[Lyanie Quez]

Lyanie simply smiled when her husband and captain greeted their friend, letting him speak for them both. Without all the implicit decorum, she’d have hugged Kiera somethin’ fierce… but aside from that, the lieutenant from Alliance R&D was weighed down with her luggage and doing as such would be awkward and cumbersome.

"Can we go to hyperspace with the shuttle docked like it is?"

Her brow creased slightly at the question, and her smile faded a little.

“I wouldn’t suggest it.” She said, smiling bemusedly. “But, hey, it’s good to see you.”

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

It was an unusual request that betrayed urgency he was unaware of. Cirr exchanged a glance with Lyanie as she rightfully recommended against such a maneuver.

"jI can have one of ourr pjilots take the contrrols, and we can plot a parrallel courrse jif you'd ljike? Havjing to jet off jin a hurrry?"

Kiera looked anxious, glancing left and right as she shouldered all of her luggage.

[Kiera Sontebren]

Kiera shook her head in response.

"Doesn't need to happen just yet," she said. They were still out in the corridor, and crew members were around, moving the equipment and parts she had brought out of the shuttle and into the ship. It was too exposed. "Though once the repairs and upgrades are done, that would be appreciated."

She needed to get Cirr and Lyanie alone, with the relative safety hyperlight travel afforded them. Either that, or she'd need to cut transmissions from the ship completely. She'd planned ahead for that. The spot she'd chosen was isolated, with nearly no real traffic of any kind nearby. This wasn't out of the ordinary, as ships sometimes needed to refit out on patrol with little distraction or threat to them while they were in the process. And tracking arrays didn't necessarily have an effect on communications, but sometimes a 'reboot' of sorts was necessary to get integral systems working together.

"It shouldn't be too bad. Minor variances and problems with transmitting data from tracking systems to the beam emitters. Could cause some head-aches, especially with those new chaff systems freighters are equipping. Another patrol boat accidentally locked its tractors onto one of its A-wings and nearly crushed it after a freighter dropped some and ran."

[Lyanie Quez]

Lyanie grinned, then. It was unfortunate that such things were happening, but at the same time, humour was where humour was.

"Well, then why don't we get done what needs doing?" She suggested, with mild urging. She had rather been enjoying dinner, and the segue into further evening activities that had been interrupted by Keira's arrival... so she was really in a mood to just get things over with, no matter how much she liked seeing their friend again. "Then after all is said and done, maybe we could grab a drink or something and catch up?"

Yes, that sounded good.

"Well... unless there's any other reason to wait around, of course."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Cirr was in agreement with his better half, nodding along.

"Let's tend to the worrk, then."

He gave Lyanie an expectant smile, hoping that she'd allow him to turn a spanner or two to help. Of course, she was the Engineer, and it was her kingdom, and she'd kicked him out on more than a few occasions, giving him an earful along the way. Something about stubborn Dantooine girls.

"What's ourr fjirrst step?"

[Kiera Sontebren]

"Well it's mainly software upgrades, though new nodes in the tracking array will need to be installed to deal with higher demand for resources the software needs, and some converters to route power more efficiently to the tractor beam emitters. I even brought some shinier new emitters just in case."

The Corellian motioned to them, and reached into a bag to pull out a large screen datapad. Thumbing it on, the state of the art mini-projector in the upper right corner of the pad displayed the Novgorod above it. On the its screen, information began scrolling down. She grinned.

"Neat, huh? It's even got gesture controls, though sometimes it's a bit wonky with where you position your fingers. Gotta have them right over the sensors or it won't read properly. Anyway, the software installation has to take place in the engineering module, but we'll need someone on the bridge to make sure the systems are monitored correctly, and the node installation goes... you know all this. The converters though have to be spaced out a little. They're high end with good independent cooling systems, but they can run hot when the tractor beam is set to its higher strengths, so keeping them close together will probably make for some issues down the hyperlane."

She gestured over the datapad and the lines of circuitry and power relays and converters in the Novgorod were highlighted. Another gesture, and three red circles appeared in different areas of the ship. One over the bridge, one over the tracking array itself (a series of circuits and wiring and sensor nodes that resembled a circulatory system carrying power instead of blood), and the last over the engineering module.

"Sorry to be so long winded, but our first step is to get all the pieces — the nodes, converters, and if you want, the new emitters — installed. Then we install the software, and bang! You have yourself a state of the art tractor array system that won't have as much trouble with troublesome freighters and their chaff systems. You might even be able to draw in larger ships like larger shuttles or medium transports then, too."

Kiera looked at each of them.

"Ready to get to it?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

"Let's get at jit, then."

Kiera had her usual bubbly optimism, and Cirr followed the two women through the corridors that would lead them toward the actual tracking array hardware interface. Lyanie tossed Cirr a suspicious narrowing of eyes, and he neatly deflected with an innocent shrug. He wasn't meddling! He was doing a very Captainly duty in seeing to the dispensation of a major upgrade. He even let Kiera's layman's explanation lay on the table untouched and unprodded by the fifty or so questions he really wanted to ask. Instead, he wisely deferred to Lyanie, letting his chief engineer pick apart the details. The Captain nodded on cue, and waited patiently for whenever one of the two actual engineers cared to hear his opinion, which was rare. In his rare and lonely position, Cirr took what he was given, including an unfettered view of the work that was being done - which is probably the best part about it to begin with.

At last, they reached the isolated below-decks section that housed the emitter node they needed to physically interface with. A careful unpacking of tools began, and Cirr tried his best to look casual with his hands stuffed into pockets, rather than reaching for tools himself. A difficult temptation to avoid.

[Kiera Sontebren]

Kiera, for her part, managed to seem completely at ease; even though she wasn't an engineer, she'd studied and refined the technology they were implementing, and so she had more than some inkling of what she was doing. In the time that they worked, she and Lyanie had talked like they hadn't been able to for a while, and she felt a bit guilty it took something like this to bring her out here to talk to her former lover's best friend.

'A few messages now and then at least are in order,' she resolved to herself.

With Lyanie's care, and Kiera herself dictating the steps the bridge crew needed to take in conjunction with the installation in the lower decks that they were finishing, the task was finished.

"Okay," Kiera said as the last tool was put back where it belonged. "Now all we need to do is reboot the systems and check to see everything's working all right. It should take about fifteen minutes for the reboot to finish, and there won't be any communications to or from the Novgorod around it. That should be it, though. Is that all right? We should let the crew know."

She waited while Cirr relayed the authorization for the procedure, and smiled in relief as the internal comms went down. She leaned back, and looked at both Lyanie and Cirr.

"Hey, I have a question," she started, suddenly hesitant. "You guys know Ben better than I do now. What sort of guy is he?"

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

Going dark in deep space was a pretty nervy undertaking, but if somebody was looking for Novgorod before and couldn't find her, they were almost certainly not going to be able to find her now. Cirr gave the order, and you could almost hear the energy on the ship diminish to a whisper. With no window to the outside world other than a literal window, space became bigger and more foreboding.

As Cirr and Lyanie worked with Kiera to put away tools from the upgrade work, the Captain's expression turned to guarded curiosity. It wasn't a secret how close they all were to Ben. It was probably inevitable that they'd get on about talking about the common Alderaanian in their lives. Still, these days nothing regarding Ben was ever easy, and Captain Quez had developed well-needed caution. Lyanie sensed the change easily enough, standing at her husband's side.

Something about Kiera's question seemed alarmingly vague.

"He's...carreful."

Cirrsseeto frowned at the near uselessness of his cryptic comment.

[Kiera Sontebren]

Kiera blanched.

"While all this was necessary, I came to talk to you guys about him. He's in deep, Cirr, Lyanie. Real deep."

She leaned back against a panel and reached down onto her belt, pulling off the datapad and a datachip. Inserting the chip, the datapads microprojector whirred quietly to life, and Ben's head appeared, framed by large block letters:

WANTED ALIVE - BEN MERASSKA - LOCATION UNKNOWN
ALLIANCE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
HIGH PRIORITY - AURESH

Person of interest, Ben Merasska, sighted on New Alderaan speaking with Frotha Sparin, scientist associated with Alliance Missile Program Starkiller.

Kiera looked up at Ben and Lyanie, worried. The holo flashed, showing a looped holorecording of Ben entering a building with a cloaked and hooded figure beside him.

"This is the image captured of Ben and an unknown person entering Sparin's building. They leave fifteen minutes later, and Sparin is found the next day, hung from a beam in her lab. It looks like suicide, but... but she was one of the Alliance scientists who worked on the planet killer missiles. She knew where at least some of them were, if not all of them. It's a leak that has a lot of people very scared."

Kiera didn't show them the image of the dead Sparin.

"But Ben's been wanted for questioning for some time now. Someone's been going around using Denton Hadrana's name and gathering up his belongings and effects, and people have been going missing and ending up dead. You guys know who Denton Hadrana is, right? Well, he's a legend to the Alderaani community. Folk hero, that sort of thing. The Alderaani government even gave him a holiday with paid time off for their employees, and he's only been dead for a couple years at most. Ben's not far behind him in the folk hero aspect, actually."

Kiera smiled fondly. Let the berk try to say he wasn't a hero now. She had a holo of a statue waiting to prove him wrong. That is, if she could get to him without him being in a cell.

"The Alderaanian government is up in arms about it; some of the stuff was in museums and was stolen. Ben was wanted for questioning about it, but now... now it looks like Alliance Intel thinks he's behind it; that he's moved on from disaffected to dangerous, and that there's a danger the missile sites won't be secret for much longer. He's never been a big fan of the Alliance, I know, not since Yavin, but why? Could Ben do something like... like this?"

[Lyanie Quez]

The news sent her mind on a bit of a reel, but her face didn't go anywhere worse than pensive, if perhaps a little concerned. She started to shake her head...

"No, Ben would never..." she began, but her words died off as she turned her head and looked first to Cirr, then back to Kiera, sighing with a weight she hadn't felt since... well, things were okay now. Lyanie fixed Kiera with a look that with her eyes said more than the rest of her expression did - worry. Lots of it. "...well, I don't know, Kiera. I don't..."

Her brow knit tightly. There was this expanse between her and the pilot she used to call one of her best friends. When was the last time they had talked? Hell, when was the last time they had and the conversation had been honest? She wasn't sure.

"...I don't know how well any of us know the man called 'Ben Merasska', anymore."

[Cirrsseeto Quez]

This had gone far beyond the bit of special maintenance he'd expected. Far beyond the inevitable Ben gossip into something foreboding and terrible. Cirr's ears sank as the news rang in them.

"You thjink Ben Merrasska..."

What? Could be a murderer? A terrorist? The Captain's face twisted into a visceral rejection of such a notion, but something gnawed at him deep in his belly. Cirr thought back on that fateful encounter he'd had with Ben and that Enedra woman. He'd known that Ben was up to something, and Ben had lied to his face about it. The only thing that saved Ben was Cirr's reluctance to put himself in a position to catch the Alderaanian red-handed. He wanted so desperately to give the man a pass he surely deserved.

The betrayal made him feel nauseated. And instead of facing it, Cirr again tried to deflect it.

"Therre's no way. No."

His voice found firm backing as he scowled at the thought, so repulsive and alien.

"Look, Ben occasjionally has some prretty bad judgment. jI'll gjive jyou that. He must've gotten mjixed up jin somethjing too bjig."

No matter how stern he tried to dress up his denial, he couldn't quite convince himself. Ben was the canary in the tibanna mine, and had been for years. He'd never been sure that the rebellion would amount to anything more virtuous than the empire. How far could that conviction push someone?

[Kiera Sontebren]

Kiera tried to frown, but the expression was more of a distasteful grimace than anything else.

"I think you're both right," she said. "After all, there was... six years between Yavin and when he signed on to the Supply Corps. A lot happened in that time. To everyone. Not just him."

She fiddled with the datapad, and a depiction of Ben's ship, Alderaan, hovered between her and the two of them. Little blocks of text scrolled into view, lines linking them to the ship, denoting distinguishing characteristics and known nuances. More than a few though also carried notes on ways to easily destroy the ship completely.

"We don't know if he could, but Alliance Intelligence isn't taking chances. They've sent out agents to capture him, but all of them have orders to kill if he runs. And running is pretty much what Ben does best. Even if he..." she paused, and closed her eyes as if afraid that speaking the next made it true, "If he has done these things, then he has to face justice. He has to see that the Alliance isn't just another government suborning good people to do what it wants, but that it's filled with good people trying to make the best of a bad set of cards."