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Lara’s first jump had just taken her clear of the Kidriff system. Her second, initiated after she’d had a chance to consult her astromech Tonin’s memory, would take a while to complete. It would bring her back to the Halmad system, where she and the other Wraiths had once pretended to be a band of pirates called the Hawk-bats.

In abandoned Hawk-bat Station, she’d be able to refuel, to initiate a new communication, to make some modifications to Tonin.

But for now, she was left with her thoughts.

Her one thought.

Lara Notsil is dead.

Lara had been a temporary identity. Something to keep her out of the hands of the New Republic while she figured out a way to persuade the warlord Zsinj to employ her. Then it had been a convenience, a means to infiltrate the Wraiths in order to improve her worth in Zsinj’s eyes. Then, when she’d come to realize the depths to which her early teaching had programmed her to accept Imperial ideas of rule as infallible, when she’d realized that she could never serve Zsinj or the Empire again, Lara Notsil had become a gradually eroding shield between her and the day the Wraiths would turn against her.

That day had come. Lara Notsil was no more.

Who was she, then? Not Gara Petothel. That was the name she’d been born under, but Gara had been such an unhappy creature, a servant of Imperial Intelligence, a young woman with no goals of her own. With no future.

No one, no family member or friend, who’d known her under that name still lived. So Gara Petothel was dead, too.

But Kirney Slane—an identity she’d worn for a few weeks when she learned many of the techniques of the intelligence agent. Kirney was nothing but a young woman wandering through the wealthy-officer stratum of Imperial culture on Coruscant. She’d attended dances, flirted with officer candidates, shopped.

She had been worthless. But she had been happy.

Lara wondered if she could take that long-abandoned identity and give her some worth. And even, perhaps, retain some of her naive cheer, her certainty that life was worth living.

Gara Petothel is dead. Lara Notsil is dead. I will answer to those names. But they are no longer mine.

I am Kirney Slane.

I have no life yet.

I will make one, or die in the attempt.

She thought about Donos. He, too, had attempted to kill Gara, with at least as much reason as she had.

He’d been right. They were more alike than she had realized.

“You don’t think,” Wedge said, “it could have waited until we returned to Mon Remonda.”

“No, sir,” Face said.

“She had plenty of opportunities to vape me or any of the rest of us prior to today. That ranks her pretty low as a threat.”

“With all due respect, sir, I thought about that. If we think that way, we have to presume that Lara was not working for Zsinj or the Empire. Because if she was an agent, she could have been following her employers’s plan or schedule. I mean, Galey the cook also had plenty of opportunities to stick a vibroblade in you or the general. So, if we follow your logic, the fact that he didn’t attack someone between the day Mon Remonda returned to space and the day he killed Doctor Gast means he was trustworthy all those days.” He offered Wedge an expression of regret. “Sir, I did what I thought was right for the unit.”

“What does your gut tell you?”

Face looked away for a long moment, then returned his attention to Wedge. “My gut says she was telling the truth. That she was a loyal Wraith.”

“But you didn’t believe your gut instinct.”

“Yes, sir, I did. But I didn’t rely on it. If I had, and I’d been wrong, whatever she did would have been my fault.”

Wedge nodded. “All right. Face, off the record, I think you fouled up, and this situation could have been resolved in a less catastrophic fashion if you hadn’t.”

Face nodded, his expression glum.

“But there’s nothing wrong with your logic. It wasn’t entirely a bad call. Just one made on incomplete data. I need you to understand that an officer who can’t rely on his own gut instinct is an officer who shouldn’t be commanding others.”

Face considered that. “I imagine