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“I need a copy of the current tactical briefing memorandum.”

“Of course. You can use the comm pad at my station—right over here—”

“I need you to retrieve it for me,” Luke said. “I’m here on a sensitive matter, and I can’t have my location revealed.”

“Got it,” said Manes. “No problem. We get the teebeam twice a day. I’ll bring the latest one up for you.”

“I need a copy I can take with me.” As he spoke, Luke reached out with the Force and gave the senior specialist a gentle nudge.

Manes stared blankly for just a moment. “What am I thinking,” he said. “You’ll want a copy you can take with you. I’ll get a datacard.”

“Thank you.”

Less than five minutes later, Li Stonn was climbing into his rented speeder, the datacard securely tucked away. But he did not immediately drive away. Sitting at the controls, Luke reached out into the listening post and found its two occupants excitedly discussing their surprise visitor.

The event had given both such inexplicable pleasure that he hated to take those memories away from them, but he had no choice. He had already blocked the machine records of his visit from being written to the logs. Compressing a nerve here, a blood vessel there, Luke brought on a moment of unconscious paralysis, and in that moment swept the memories from their minds.

Akanah had not yet returned to the skiff, nor had the service depot’s tow dolly come to claim it. Taking advantage of the privacy, Luke locked himself inside while he reviewed the information on the datacard.

The situation in Koornacht Cluster had escalated to a high level of precariousness. New Republic forces had clashed with a Yevethan fleet at Doornik 319 while trying to enforce a blockade, and dozens of Fleet recon probes had been destroyed on deep penetration missions. Five battle groups of an expanded Fifth Fleet had actually moved into the cluster, and smaller units were actively searching for the former Imperial shipyards. So far the Yevetha had not responded to the intrusions, but it seemed inevitable that they would.

But the real source of concern for Luke was the first confirmation that J’t’p’tan—referred to by its catalog name, FAR202019S—had been involved in the fighting. The recon ship sent there had identified a Yevethan thrustship in orbit before being fried; though the probe had completed only thirty-four percent of its ground scan, the destruction of the H’kig commune, estimated at thirteen thousand strong, was listed as “probable.”

Balancing that bleak prospect, at least in part, was the report from Doornik 319 that the Yevethan warships were carrying hostages taken from the destroyed colonies. If the Fallanassi had not died on J’t’p’tan, they were now prisoners of the Yevetha, aboard one of the more than six hundred ships of the Duskhan League fleet—a fleet that could at any moment be hurled against the New Republic forces challenging Nil Spaar’s sovereignty.

Suddenly Luke’s journey to Koornacht seemed joined to Leia’s crisis at home, and in a way he had not anticipated. If he had a part to play in what was coming, the flow of the Current pointed to J’t’p’tan, not Coruscant. Perhaps everything that had happened was part of a larger tapestry he had not yet been able to glimpse. But even without that understanding, he knew that he had to go on, not turn back.

With both his and Akanah’s day bags slung over his shoulder, Luke rode the slidewalk back to Starway Services, where the lights and sounds emanating from the covered work bays told him that some of the mech crews were chasing a completion bonus. A few minutes later, depot manager Notha Trome awoke with a start from the nap he was taking on his office floor.

“Li Stonn’s ship should be given top priority,” he said aloud, as though it were a revelation that had come to him in his sleep. A minute later, he repeated that declaration in front of the yard boss.

“I want half,” is all the yard boss said, taking the berth slip and signaling for the tow dolly.

Outside the depot, Luke nodded to himself, satisfied. Then he turned and looked