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Face said, “Like I told you, I thought it was Phanan’s. I turned my comm transmissions way down and told him. We smuggled it back to his quarters so Wedge wouldn’t see. And we found his bug still in its cage, so we knew it was another prank. And how had the prankster gotten my cockpit open without leaving a trace? It was someone who knew the pass code … and after I cleared Cubber and Kell, that left only someone with the skills of a code-slicer.”

Grinder grimaced. “A case of being too perfect. What about the scratching noise?”

Face tapped the pocket where he’d put away the speaker. “Kell worked the little gadgets up. He was tired of the pranks, too. He put some in your room. He also got up into the ductwork and lowered a couple with comlink controls down into the gaps between bulkheads. We could have made it sound like the creature was crawling all around outside or inside your room if we’d wanted. Kell also built the sensor that told us when you switched your lights on and the little mechanism that swung down into your face when you came out of your room, and he killed the power to your quarters. Which he restored right after you screamed, by the way.

“The encyclopedia entry was something I did, just entering it with my comm center access. If you’d sliced into the entry records, you’d have seen those items were recent additions to the encyclopedia. I got the real data off the datapad that came with Phanan’s creature. Phanan did a medical scan on his insect for the graphic. We made up all the text on the Crystal Deceiver; there is no such thing.”

Grinder sighed. “Well, maybe that does make us even.” He glared at Phanan. “But that doesn’t mean you can drug me, knock me out. That goes over the line.”

The doctor smiled. It was a sinister expression. “I didn’t.”

“Who did?”

“No one. Or, in a sense, you did. Grinder—you fainted.”

“No.”

Phanan nodded. “Brave Wraith Squadron pilot fainted dead away. Now, can we consider your career as a prankster at an end … or shall we tell everyone how you faint when bugs come at you? That’ll be an interesting topic of discussion among Bothan females in the New Republic armed forces, I bet.”

“You—you—”

“You bet? You have a deal? Just what are you trying to say?”

Grinder slumped, defeated. “You have a deal.”

“Well, then. I imagine that when you wake up in the morning I’ll be able to certify you fit to fly.” The doctor rose and stretched. “In the meantime, I’m going to get some sleep in the hours we have remaining.”

“Mynock.”

“Stop muttering, Grinder. It’s bad for your mental health.” Grinning in a fashion Grinder found completely irritating, Phanan led Face from the sick bay and switched out the lights.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

“Face! Come back here and pick up your little toy!”

It was the most elaborate deception they’d attempted to date.

Captain Hrakness was in the command seat of Night Caller’s bridge, but he was dressed in one of Darillian’s uniforms, his hair dyed to match Darillian’s. This was so that if one of the other ships in Admiral Trigit’s fleet pointed a visual sensor at Night Caller’s bridge, it would see something matching Darillian’s description—something matching the hologram the ship broadcast whenever in communication with the others.

Face was on station in the comm center, acting out Darillian’s part whenever communication was necessary. His broadcast was replayed on the bridge’s main monitor, and the increasingly irritable Captain Hrakness tried, whenever possible, to ape Face’s motions.

At ten minutes until departure from hyperspace, the pilots were in their cockpits, going through start-up checklists. Wedge, Falynn, Janson, and Atril were in the TIE fighters, with the rest in the X-wings.

They emerged from hyperspace a hundred light-years from the Morobe system, into a system with a white dwarf for a sun.

Night Caller was the last ship on station. Already in formation were the Imperial Star Destroyer Implacable, the Imperial escort frigate Provocateur, and the Corellian