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“If the revolt never has a chance to erupt, it won’t look like anything,” Daala replied, with every word more convinced that this was the right thing to do.

“If it does? Needmo’s Devaronian journalist seems to be everywhere these days.”

“If it does, and Vaandt or anyone else picks up on it, the holonews picks up on it, who’s to say we hired the Mandalorians?”

“Ma’am?”

“You’ve told me that Blaudu Sextus is a mining colony, correct?”

“Yes, but what—”

“So find a mining company to work with. We’ll wash payment through them. If the holonews goes after the story, it will just look like a legitimate corporation is trying to protect its interests.”

“Ah, I understand. I’ll get Desha Lor right on it.”

“I’d rather you do it, Wynn.”

“Desha has proven herself quite capable of—”

“Mandalorians. Desha.”

“I see your point. I’ll get right on it, then.”

Wynn Dorvan sighed. The small pet chitlik perched on his ear nibbled at his hair. He let her. He stared, but did not see the off-white walls of his office, or the safe art on those walls. He saw a Mandalorian gunning down an unarmed apprentice who had come out under the idea of truce. And now Daala wanted to use them again?

A tentative knock on the door. He knew who it was. “Come in, Desha.”

The Twi’lek girl poked her head in. Her eyes were swollen; she’d been crying. He wasn’t surprised, and was pleased that she had clearly gone to some effort to restrain the emotions that went with such a soft heart.

“Sir, it’s the Solos again.”

“Of course it is,” he sighed. Orders had been issued to bring them in as soon as the siege began, but of course, they had dropped out of sight. They had been trying to contact him through untraceable means ever since the siege had begun, but Daala would have none of it. She had left very clear instructions that “I intend to speak to no one from that family until the current situation is under control or they’re safely in custody.”

He couldn’t imagine what choice words they would have for him and Daala now that an apprentice had been brutally murdered right on the steps of the Temple.

On the steps of the Temple. He frowned. Something about the phrase … He shook it off. It would come to him later.

He knew what Han and Leia would say, and found himself agreeing with most of it, but concurring with them would do no good at this point.

“Tell them I’m not able to talk to them right now. And patch me through to Belok Rhal.”

“Yes, sir,” Desha said, closing the door behind her as she left. Pocket was now nibbling on his ear. He picked her up gently and put her back in her small nest on the corner of his desk. She rolled over, exposing her belly, and he rubbed the soft fur there with an index finger while he mentally shook his head at the fact that he was about to tell a Mandalorian to assemble a team to put down a pacifists’ “revolt.” He lifted the chitlik and placed her in the right-hand pocket of his jacket, still petting her.

His stomach rumbled, reminding him he had not eaten breakfast and lunchtime was fast approaching. It would seem, whatever the mind had to deal with, the body still stubbornly had its own needs and made them known.

A few moments later, the cold, almost emotionless voice on the comm said, “Rhal. What?”

“Commander Rhal, this is Wynn Dorvan, Daala’s chief of staff. I am speaking to you with the full authority of the Chief of State. I need you to—”

His eye fell on the chrono, and then it all clicked into place.

The steps of the Jedi Temple. Lunch.

In less than fifteen minutes, on an ordinary day, Raynar Thul would be coming out, as he had every single day since he had first embraced his freedom, to have lunch on the Temple steps. Dorvan had joined him for many of those lunches.

And he knew in his gut that something as trivial as being surrounded by a bunch of Mandalorians willing to gun him down was not going to stop Raynar Thul from having his lunch where he had always had it.

“Dorvan. Continue.”

Dorvan felt sweat break