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The droid’s tone ran from high to low in a fair imitation of a sigh.

“No, of course I still need it.” Corran frowned. “You should have caught it, Whistler, not me. I can climb back up here by myself. It can’t.” Even as he said that and slid toward the S-foil’s forward edge, it occurred to him that he’d not heard the hydrospanner hit the ground. That’s odd.

Peering over the edge of the wing, he saw a smiling, brown-haired woman holding the hydrospanner up in his direction. “This belongs to you, I take it?”

Corran nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She handed it to him, then climbed up on the cart he’d used to get up on top of the S-foil. “Need some help?”

“No, I’ve pretty much got it handled, despite what the droid says.”

“Oh.” She extended her hand toward him. “I’m Lujayne Forge.”

“I know, I’ve seen you around.”

“You’ve done a bit more than that. You flew a dupe against me in the Redemption scenario.” She leaned her slender body against the side of his fighter, bisecting the green and white wording that indicated the X-wing was the property of the Corellian Security Force. “You put the Korolev down.”

Corran tightened the hydrospanner over the primary trim bolt on the centrifugal debris extractor and nudged it to the left. “That was luck. Nawara Ven had already taken the shields down with his missiles. It was more his kill than mine. You still did well.”

Her brown eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “I guess. I have a question for you, though.”

Corran straightened up. “Go ahead.”

“The way you took that bomber after me, did you do that just as part of the exercise, or was there something more to it?”

“Something more?”

Lujayne hesitated, then nodded. “I was wondering if you singled me out because I was from Kessel?”

Corran blinked in surprise. “Why would that make any difference to me?”

She laughed and tapped the CorSec insignia on the side of the fighter with a knuckle. “You were with CorSec. You sent people to Kessel. As far as you’re concerned, everyone on Kessel is either a prisoner or a smuggler who ought to have been a prisoner. And when the prisoners and smugglers liberated the planet from the Imps, well, that didn’t change anything in your eyes, did it?”

Setting the hydrospanner on a safe spot, Corran raised his hands. “Wait a minute, you’re jumping to a lot of conclusions.”

“Maybe, but tell me, you didn’t know I was from Kessel?”

“Well, I did.”

“And tell me that didn’t make a difference to you.”

“It didn’t, honest.”

“I bet.”

The firm set of her jaw and the way she folded her arms across her chest told Corran she didn’t believe him. There was a fair amount of anger in her words, but also some hurt. Anger he could deal with—there wasn’t a smuggler or criminal who hadn’t been angry when he was around. The hurt, though, that was unusual and made Corran feel uncomfortable.

“What makes you think I hold your coming from Kessel against you?”

“The way you act.” Lujayne’s expression softened a bit, and some of the anger drained away, but that just let more anxiety and pain bleed into her words. “You tend to keep to yourself. You’re not associating with the rest of us—beyond a narrow circle of pilots you think are as sharp as you are. You’re always watching and listening, evaluating and judging. Others have noticed it, too.”

“Ms. Forge, Lujayne, you’re making meters out of microns here.”

“I don’t think so, and I don’t want to be judged for things over which I had no control.” Her chin came up and fire sparked in her eyes. “My father volunteered to go to Kessel under an Old Republic program where he taught inmates how to move back into society upon their release. My mother was one of his students. They fell in love and remained on Kessel—they’re still there, along with most of my brothers and sisters. They’re all good people and their work with inmates was designed to make your job easier by giving criminals other skills so they’d not return to crime when they were released.”

Corran sighed and his shoulders slumped. “I think