by Claudia Gray
“Right away, madam. I’ll include packets on our special upgrades, as well.” The droid rolled away to transfer the full data packet, leaving them alone amid the holographic image of a ship that did not yet exist.
“Buying freighters in bulk?” Affie began. “Republic freighters? Are we really doing that well?”
Scover always preened a bit when she got to talk about her ever-increasing profit margins. “We have seen a substantial increase in business lately. Yes, the Legacy Run disaster has caused delays, but these are temporary. Many people wish to move cargo soon, rather than after the Republic expansion, for various reasons with which we need not concern ourselves.”
“You’re sure of all our pilots’ loyalty, then,” Affie said. “Cargo isn’t, uh, coming in short?”
That got Scover’s full attention. “Do you have knowledge of dishonesty within the Guild? Is this about Leox Gyasi?”
“No. Leox is clean, totally. It’s just—” The story spilled out of Affie then: the Amaxine station, the lines of strange code, the symbols of the Byne Guild, and the fact that an otherwise empty system had its coordinates preprogrammed within the Vessel’s navigational computer. Scover listened with keen, silent interest, saying nothing until Affie finally took a pause long enough for it to seem plausible that she was done.
“This is not evidence of a corrupt wing within the Guild,” Scover said. “Such written code is occasionally used by pilots in locations where standard messages would be difficult to deliver. The practice is mostly archaic by now, but it lingers in certain locations, including the Amaxine station.” Her explanation was as impersonal as any a droid would’ve offered. That was how Scover always talked, and usually it wouldn’t have struck Affie as odd.
But this felt…off.
“I’m glad nobody’s trying to cheat you,” Affie said, genuinely relieved. “Still—that station is dangerous, Scover. The helix rings, the poisonous plants, even the little gardener droids attack you, and that’s not even getting into all that dark side stuff.” Maybe that was nothing but Jedi mumbo jumbo, but given the terrible luck they’d had on the station, Affie was beginning to wonder if they were on to something. “Our pilots shouldn’t be using it.”
“It is their free choice,” Scover said, “to use the station as they see fit, or not. I do not dictate methods to pilots who prove their capability.”
Which was true. Affie had always thought it showed remarkable open-mindedness; like most Bivalls, Scover valued rules, definitions, precision. The fact that she gave her pilots freedom meant she could see things from multiple points of view.
For the first time, Affie realized—it also meant that sometimes Scover didn’t have to ask questions that might have difficult answers.
“It is only a way station,” Scover said. “You are still shaken by the experience and so giving it undue importance in your mind. With time you will gain greater perspective. Put it out of your mind for now.” She smiled. “Would you like to get some buttersweet puffs? I know they are your favorites.”
Affie managed to smile. “Sure. Sounds great.”
But she couldn’t forget what Scover had unwittingly told her, by denying something she had not been asked to deny:
The Amaxine station, whatever else it might be, was much more to the Byne Guild than a way station.
As isolated as Reath had been before, he wished he were alone again.
He sat at the edge of the briefing, saying nothing, and yet he might as well have been bathed in a spotlight. The other Jedi kept a respectful distance, so markedly aware of his bereavement that they magnified it. Reath felt as though he had to simultaneously show the full weight of his sorrow and hold it together.
No one here is judging you, he reminded himself. This wasn’t yet another exercise he could practice to the point of mastering. He’d always prided himself on his ability to excel, but no longer. Who cared? Why had he ever thought that was worth caring about?
He and Dez had attended a briefing together in that room once, perhaps three years before. What had it been about? Raiding parties harassing Kashyyyk? Reath couldn’t recall. All he could think of was the easy way Dez had sprawled in his chair, confident in his new Knighthood, while Reath had wondered whether he’d ever feel that brash, that assured of his future.
Dez’s future had ended in the middle of nowhere, for no reason at all.
Master Adampo walked to the front of the chamber, and the crowd went still. Gratitude swept through Reath. Once the lecture began he could finally escape the echo chamber of his thoughts for a while.
“Today we must examine an enemy element that has caused great trouble on the frontier—a marauder group known as the Nihil,” said Adampo as the room fell dark. “Although the Republic had already identified the Nihil as a significant threat to settlements and shipping, it has now been established that the group certainly caused the Legacy Run disaster.”
Reath sat upright as murmurs of dismay filled the room. If the Nihil were capable of that, what else could they do? That didn’t matter as much as what they’d already done, not to Reath.
If not for the Legacy Run disaster and the subsequent conflict with the Nihil, Master Jora would still be alive.
It was as though the rage descended on him—he wouldn’t have believed he had the capacity for that kind of hate in him. They killed my master, whispered an unfamiliar, undeniable voice in his head. The Nihil murdered her. His entire body tensed until he nearly shook.
Turn away from hatred. This is the dark side, whispered a more familiar voice—not his own, but Master Jora’s. It was only Reath’s memory of her, but that was a lifeline to the light.
Slowly he exhaled. Banishing all the tension was impossible, but he resolved to direct that energy toward learning more about these raiders who had caused so much harm, and not only to Master Jora.
“Therefore the group requires more in-depth study than has been conducted of late,” Adampo continued. “The Nihil’s origins are mysterious; they comprise numerous species from widely disparate worlds. However, we have no solid count on the species included or of the proportions represented, due to their masked faces.” Adampo brought up the first holo, an image of a fearsome Nihil warrior with a huge breathmask strapped to his head, storming some hapless ship. The Nihil wore blue battle stripes painted from his hairline down to his chest, over the mask itself. Reath was reminded, bizarrely but affectionately, of the blue streaks in Nan’s hair.
Maybe he had become too fond of her.
“Nihil ships are uniquely dangerous because they can join together or separate into smaller sections,” continued Adampo. “Therefore no opponent can be sure whether he will be facing a storm of small fighters or a massive dreadnought. The ships are generally constructed from pieces of other vessels, like this.”
Another holo filled the space, this one showing a pieced-together patchwork spacecraft—one that was far too familiar.
Reath’s eyes widened as he realized, That looks like Nan and Hague’s ship.
Looks exactly like it.
Their vagueness about where they came from. The violent deaths of Nan’s parents. The carbon scoring on the plates of their ship. The blue streaks in Nan’s hair.
He whispered, “They’re Nihil.”
A luxury hotel on Coruscant made the “luxury” of other planets look like rags and ashes. In the Alisandre Hotel, rooms were situated at the highest levels of the highest buildings, complete with personal landing decks, bath pools, and servitor droids dispensing the finest wines, meals, and desserts. Affie, who spent the majority of her days in her tiny, bare-bones bunk on the Vessel, spent a solid five minutes running her hands over the silky sheets of her utterly enormous bed.
“The beds are required to be this size,” pointed out Scover as the servitor droids put away her things. “Although they are extremely large by the standards of most humanoid species, nothing smaller than this would feel luxurious to a Gigoran, or even be sufficient for a Trodatome.”
<
br /> Affie flopped back into a nest of pillows, relishing the unaccustomed softness. “Okay, you’re not impressed. So why bother staying in a place like this at all?” Scover’s home was nice but hardly grandiose, and she was always careful with money.
“Important industrialists and politicians stay in such hotels, particularly here in the Federal District,” Scover replied. “These may be our future clients. I will be able to set up multiple meetings in the club levels below.”
“Leave it to you to find the perfect excuse.”
It wasn’t an excuse—it was Scover’s real reason, as Affie knew—but it sounded enough like teasing that it made Scover smile and ruffle her foster daughter’s hair.
Convinced of Affie’s contentment, Scover thought little of leaving an hour later to begin working on some of those meetings. Affie lay still in the balcony’s antigravity hammock for several minutes afterward, pretending to watch the clouds drifting by just above eye level. Almost idly, she reached out with one hand and swatted the control that would put all the servitor droids into dormant mode.
The moment their mesh eyes went dark, she jumped up. Heart thumping, she dashed across the suite to the wardrobe where Scover’s things were stored.
I may be the worst daughter ever, Affie thought as she picked up one of Scover’s infopads. I ought to trust her. I shouldn’t poke around in her stuff. The entire time she was thinking this, her fingers were deftly typing in one of the top-level passcodes, one Scover had shared without a second thought.
As soon as the full memory capacity of the tablet was open to her, Affie input the sector codes of the Amaxine station, the same ones that had been preprogrammed into the Vessel. (She had them memorized; after several days of seeing them glowing on the Vessel’s dash, they were practically seared onto her brain.) She held her breath for the instant it took for more information to scroll across the screen. Certain phrases jumped out as though written in crimson:
Transport Hub/CONFIDENTIAL
Revelation to Competing Guilds Punishable by Expulsion
Incentives Include Double Bonuses/Forgiveness of Ship Purchase Price Interest/Shortened Indentures
“Indentures?” Affie whispered. “The Byne Guild…uses indentured workers?”
She tried to navigate further into the “transport hub” part of the records, but those were closed even to her passcode. They must be for Scover’s eyes only.
In her mind, Affie pictured the long lines of smugglers’ code—especially the small, downturned bird of prey. Quickly she tapped in Kestrel’s Dive.
This information wasn’t protected by any layers of security; Affie could’ve pulled it up with no passcode at all. That was how little Scover felt she had to hide.
But as Affie read on, her hands began to shake, and she wished that she’d never opened the tablet at all.
“Many people of various species dye their hair or fur—”
“I’m telling you,” Reath insisted, “they were Nihil.”
There was a time—in fact, his entire life up until the past three minutes—when Reath would never have dreamed that he might stand up in the middle of a briefing by a member of the Jedi Council and announce that he had important information. But there he was. Later, he’d be embarrassed. For the moment, he was busy trying to convince several skeptical Masters, the remains of the briefing crowd, that the Jedi had already encountered the Republic’s newest, deadliest enemy in the form of a young girl and an elderly man.
A protocol droid piped up. “Requested transmission from the Vessel incoming, masters.”
Thank the Force Leox was on the ship to get the message, instead of lolling around in some spice den, Reath thought. Or…could Geode have sent it?
Before he could wonder about a rock’s ability to handle intership communications, the images were projected on-screen. He pointed at Nan and Hague’s ship. “Look. See? It’s definitely Nihil design.”
“The Nihil cannot be the only ones who make ships out of component parts,” reasoned Master Rosason. “Especially not on the frontier, where shipyards and supplies are more difficult to find. However—the similarities are striking.”
“And there’s carbon scoring,” said Master Adampo, pointing it out before Reath had to. “Proof that it’s seen relatively recent battle, although on its own, it hardly looks like a ship that would pick a fight.”
“Exactly.” Reath focused on details that had eluded him before. How had he not seen it? “This join, right here? It’s a weird version of an airlock, but if it were customized to work with other ships rather than with a station—”
“Yes, I’ve seen similar on holos of other Nihil ships.” Master Rosason closed her eyes with an expression Reath found hard to read, then realized was relief. “Even if they were only two, you were very fortunate they decided not to pursue aggressive action on the station. We might have lost more than one soul. As it is, it would appear we escaped very lightly.”
This was going to be the hard part. “Um. About that.”
Master Adampo’s fur stood on end. “You don’t mean—do you think the Nihil had something to do with Dez Rydan’s death?”
“No,” Reath said. “I don’t see how they could have.” Nan had been no closer to Dez than Reath had been. “But while we were marooned there, Nan and I had several conversations about, well, the Jedi. And the Republic. And Starlight Beacon. Plus future shipments to the area.” He wanted to somehow travel back in time and shake his former self, so easily flattered and persuaded. Nan had tricked him into betraying the Order at the very moment when, many systems away, Master Jora was dying. “I thought she was just curious. I wanted to represent us well to a new area of the galaxy. Now I realize she was…pumping me for information. Which she got.”
He had expected dark, disapproving stares as the first, and probably lightest, aspect of his punishment. Instead, the Council members only looked resigned. Master Rosason said, “I wouldn’t have suspected them, either, especially with as little information about the Nihil as you had. And you couldn’t have given away any classified material.”
“It’s still useful information the Nihil didn’t have but now do,” Reath said. “It’s my fault. And I want to set it right, if I can.”
The Masters exchanged befuddled looks. “What do you mean?” Master Adampo said.
“Hague and Nan had to stay behind at the Amaxine station. They were still finishing repairs, thanks to help we gave them.” Chagrin brought a flush to Reath’s face, but he didn’t slow down. “She said it would take a while for them to finish. Maybe Nan was lying, but at the time, I didn’t suspect anything, so she didn’t have any reason to deceive me. Deceive me even more, I mean.”
“You wish to confront them,” said Master Rosason. “To what purpose?”
Reath couldn’t believe it wasn’t obvious. “They’re Nihil! They learned intel about us; we could learn about them! We could hold someone accountable for what happened to the Legacy Run! We might even be able to make an arrest, if their ship can be connected to any of the attacks.”
“They’re only two people,” Master Adampo pointed out.
“They’re on the Amaxine station,” Reath said. “In other words, the place where the idols were put to contain the dark side. To me that suggests there’s something interesting about the station—something about its history we haven’t learned yet. Potentially something powerful. If so, I don’t think we should leave it for the Nihil to find.”
Rosason tilted her head. “All valid points. But they are also hypothetical points. I do not know that at this time of crisis, we can afford to send Jedi away to investigate a mere hypothesis.”
The frustration was burning within Reath. “So you want to just let them go?”
Master Rosason put her hand on his shoulder so gently that he was reminded of Master Jora. As he swallowed hard, she said, “If you had learned their identities while still on the Amaxine station, yes, you would’ve been right to take them into custody if possible. But at th
is point it would mean sending people we need through hazardous hyperspace lanes to a dangerous station, only in the hopes that Nan wasn’t lying to you and their ship has not yet departed. It’s too much risk for too little reward.”
Maybe that made sense. All Reath knew was that he couldn’t accept it. “May I put in a formal request to travel back on my own?”
“You may,” Master Adampo said, “but it’ll probably be denied.”
Master Rosason added, “You have lost your master, and your friend. You need new purpose, constructive action you can take, and you need it quickly.”
“This isn’t about me and my feelings,” he insisted, then questioned it. “It isn’t only about that, anyway.”
“If it were that simple, we’d let you go,” said Master Adampo. “But it is a complicated time, and a complex situation.”
He spoke so kindly. They all did. It just made Reath more determined to put in that formal request. And if he was denied…
He might have to find out just how far he was willing to deviate from the Council’s orders.
Leox relaxed in the Vessel’s mess, wreathed in honeyed smoke and feeling pretty fine. The Guild had been fair about their delay and had even kicked in a little hazard pay. That was thin on the ground in the Byne Guild; he suspected he had Affie to thank. At any rate he was not a man to spurn largesse purely because of its rarity. The next day he might stroll into one of those fancy Coruscant shops, get himself a new pair of boots—Geode might desire a good polishing—
This pleasant train of thought was interrupted by a small voice. “Leox?”
He looked up to see Affie standing in the doorway. She had on the exact same coverall as before but had let her hair down. That one small change couldn’t account for how much younger she looked. How much smaller. “What’s the matter, Little Bit?”