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By Root 605 0

in and in them found a truth. In the whole of his three and a half years with Rogue Squadron, the emphasis had always been on helping others. It didn’t matter how difficult the mission was, they went out and did it because they were making life better for someone, somewhere. Sacrificing our futures so a bunch of other folks had their own futures secured always seemed like a solid bargain. Krennel and people like him never would see it that way because they saw themselves as more important than anyone else.

Which is why we have to stop him.

Gavin ran his hand down over the fur on Asyr’s spine. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but it seems to me that Mon Mothma’s announcement and Krennel’s answer means that having evidence of this station’s existence is going to be very important. I figure we’ve got a bunch of snoop-and-scoot missions in our future.”

He stood and stretched. “It’s about time for me to run some brush-ups on piloting a T-Six-Five-R, so I’m heading down to the simcenter. Anyone else wants to join me, I’d love the company.”

18

Iella Wessiri shifted the toolbelt on her waist so the hydrospanner banged along her right thigh instead of against the back of her leg. The toolbelt, duraplast helmet, and gray-and-blue striped coveralls completed a disguise that started with her dyeing her hair jet black and putting in bright blue contact lenses. Everything worked together perfectly to make it appear as if she were a worker for Commenor Holocom, which was a common enough sight to let her pass unnoticed.

Mirax, on the other hand, had colored her hair a bright red and had donned a red business suit with black blouse beneath it, which attracted a lot of stares. She carried a datapad in her left hand and used a stylus in her right to point Iella this way and that, giving anyone watching the impression that she was Iella’s supervisor making a quality-assurance run with her. The situation clearly pleased neither of them, as was evidenced by muttering on the part of both parties.

Various and sundry sapient characters on the street gave both of them a wide berth.

Iella had wanted to head out to Commenor within three weeks of her conversation with Mirax, but Corran’s discovery on Liinade III had given New Republic Intelligence a brand-new focus. She’d spent the better part of a month pouring over data on Krennel’s Hegemony worlds, looking for a possible shipyard for the Pulsar Station. She hadn’t been able to pinpoint one, and sincerely doubted one existed, but the lack of data on some of Krennel’s worlds disturbed her.

The world’s pacification gave her a bit of a break, so she and Mirax headed out for their mission to Commenor. Their first stop had been the Errant Venture, the Imperial Star Destroyer Mirax’s father had won from the New Republic for his role in the liberation of Thyferra. There Mirax had talked Booster Terrik into using the ship’s facilities to manufacture fraudulent documents to get them into Commenor, and Booster had even managed to find them passage to the world with another ship. Iella had reluctantly agreed with Booster that the Pulsar Skate was too well known a ship to get them onto Commenor unnoticed.

They entered the lobby of a large office building and paused at the holodirectory. With the air of a bored executive, Mirax punched up the data for the offices of Wooter, Rimki, and Vass, Attorneys at Law. The directory noted the offices were on the eighteenth floor and closed for the weekend, but Mirax punched a button to summon a turbolift to carry them upward.

“The offices are closed, Supervisor. They’re not working on the weekend, as we shouldn’t be.”

Mirax spitted Iella with a hard stare and poked her in the shoulder with the stylus. “If you had not cross-melded two lines, we wouldn’t be working on the weekend and they could be.”

One member of the janitorial staff, a Trandoshan, winced, while two insectoid Verpines just waggled antennae at each other. Iella trailed after Mirax rather dejectedly, keeping her eyes cast down at the ground. Wordlessly she entered the turbolift and the