By the time Han had squeezed through the limited cockpit of his Interceptor and wriggled free, the kid was already out, down from the gantry and striding towards Indo, who had been waiting in the hangar.

"Don'teverinterfere with or countermand my order again!" As he yelled, Luke threw his helmet across the hangar floor, fuming.

Indo was, as ever, unmoved. "You expect me to leave you in a combat situation with insufficient back up?"

"I expect you to do as I order. I don't need your protection-I don't need anybody's protection!"

Indo glanced once to the helmet as it skittered across the floor. "Don't throw your equipment around like a child in a tantrum."

"What the hell were you doing countermanding my order? I said no back up."

"I am, I believe, still responsible for your safety until otherwise instructed by the Emperor. I considered one wingman insufficient. Captain Roth agreed."

The kid had reached Indo now, still livid. "I had my reasons, and it's immaterial anyway. I said no back up. I could have taken them all out myself at any time, and you know it."

"And the corvette?"

"I was out of the corvette's range! If you knew combat vessel statistics, you would have known that, but you don't."

"That's hardly the point."

"That's exactly the point! I gave an order in a combat situation-a situation you weren't directly involved in and had no detailed knowledge of-and you overrode it without the authority to do so. I'm not a child any more."

Indo tilted his head just slightly. "Then stop acting like one. If you had an intention…"

"Of course I had an intention!"

"Then you should have informed me. If you don't tell people what…."

"No." The kid shook his head. "Immaterial. I still outrank you."

"I hold a direct mandate from the Emperor himself."

"And I don't?"

Indo glanced about. "This isn't the place."

Luke reined himself back slightly, voice dropping though he was still fuming. "I was in the air, directly involved, with specialist knowledge. You had no idea what was going on, yet you still overrode me. You constantly push me to make that assessment, take the initiative…and when I do, you undermine me."

"You lost the fighter. You could easily have lost your…"

"I didn't lose it, I tagged it."

Han had the rare treat of seeing Indo momentarily stumped. "…What?"

"I tagged it. I knew they'd come for it-it was dead in space, you think it hadn't already sent off an SOS?"

"You tagged it?"

"Obviously they'd send back-up. They can't afford to lose ships or pilots like that. But we'd already been trawling the edge of the asteroid field, so the pilot knew we were here. We had to react…but as routine! As a Destroyer and its crew going through the motions. What do you think a wing of gunboats would have looked like, trooping out of the bay?"

Indo glanced briefly to Han, who remained silent, though this was news to him too.

"When exactly did you tag it?"

"When the pilot was watching Solo. I took a Seinar 560 homing beacon and stuck it on my own hull before takeoff, then used the Force to transfer it to his. I slid it into the multicap grill plates of the foil block-no one'll find it unless they disassemble the drive, and a 560 doesn't operate unless it's in an oxygen-free atmosphere-deep space. It won't transmit when it's in their bay, so they won't be looking for it. I want to know where that X-wing came from…which is probably where it's returning to right now."

"If you had told me of your intent…"

"I made the decision on the way to the bay. I didn't want to do it over ship's comms once we were out there, and much as you don't like it, it's not my job to tell you everything I intend. I'm not answerable to you…only to Palpatine." Luke lifted his hand, finger outstretched. "I had the situation under control. Don't undermine or countermand my orders again."

He didn't wait for a reply, turning about to walk from the bay without pause.

.

Han held Indo's gaze for a second before he turned to leave at the kid's side. As he did so, Luke's helmet, still where it had landed halfway across the bay, lifted and launched smoothly towards the kid's outstretched hand. They were out of the bay before Han murmured, "Did you know those other fighters were gonna arrive when they did?"

"Hell, no. I thought we'd be long gone by then," the kid replied without turning round.

"Thought so," Han nodded, not even slightly surprised.







By the time Han and the kid had changed and made it up to the bridge, the Immortal was back at the original point where they'd seen the isolated power spike. Interestingly, none of the officers or pit crew seemed too impressed by the fact that a sixteen-year-old kid had just flown a TIE Interceptor in combat and escaped unharmed…but then, Han remembered Gorn mentioning once that the Immortal was their 'usual ride.' Clearly, though no one knew quite what he was, they all knew what he wasn't-your average sixteen-year-old.

Now, Luke was standing before the run of triangular viewports again, staring at the tumbling drift of asteroids as the Immortal waited to see if they'd get another power signature.

They'd been here for over two hours, waiting, and stoic as Captain Roth undoubtedly was, he was looking to get moving again.

"It could have been a ghost," he said confidently from Luke's side, as he stared into the asteroid field. "Or a sensor aberration, from seismic activity within one of the higher metal content asteroids…"

Luke turned slightly to the Captain. "So what you're saying is, you don't know."

Roth straightened slightly. "I'm saying that given the brief nature of the pulse and the fact that it hasn't repeated, it's unlikely to have been by design."

Han watched the kid continue to stare out of the window at the Drift without acknowledging Roth, eyes scanning. Eventually getting the signal the kid was all but blaring, Roth moved off, jaw tensed.

Han too turned to stare, aware that they'd reached an impasse. Though they were at the same position that they'd gotten the brief signal that morning, the view had completely changed as the natural drift of the asteroids had turned and tumbled them about, bringing some forward and removing others completely.

Indo stepped closer to Luke, his voice quiet enough that even Han barely heard it. "Luke, you need to move this situation forward."

"I'm thinking."

Han half-turned to throw a dry look the Viscount's way; apparently Luke's explosion an hour earlier hadn't done anything to dampen Indo's willingness to nag the kid. How the hell was he supposed to move forward when he had nothing to go on? They were still waiting for the first burst from the tracker which Luke had planted on the Rebel fighter. Wherever it was, it would have to come out of lightspeed, and the fighter would have to be back in space-or at least a bay open to space and therefore oxygen-free-before its transmitter triggered, and it wasn't, yet. Until it did, they were playing a waiting game, 'cos the fact was, you couldn't make things happen out of thin air. There was no real way to…

The kid turned to Captain Roth. "Contact theImperialPalace on Coruscant. Have them send a message to Project Nine, requesting an immediate response. They need Project Nine to repeat any message sent in the last week; a sustained signal back to Coruscant for one minute."

Han frowned, knowing now that Project Nine was the code name for the Maw Installation. He looked quickly to Luke, realizing that the kid was still trying to tie all that had happened, back to the dead spy on Coruscant; the Maw Installation ran its comms to Coruscant through Sinto Base, and Luke was looking for a common link.

Han stepped in, keeping his voice low as the Captain moved away to give the order. "You think something's out there?"

Luke glanced to him briefly, then back out into the slow tumble of the Drift. "Why else would an X-wing be this far out in the middle of nowhere?"

"Maybe this was just where his drive system gave out." He didn't say the obvious; that if they'd taken the pilot in, instead of tagging him, they might have known by now.

Luke shook his head. "He was here for a reason. Whatever it was, he'd already done it, because he couldn't believe his own bad luck at his engines having failed, and then our arrival… And the three Spearheads-they came out of hyperspace hot, weapons armed. They knew we were there."

"The X-wing had been fully powered down when we arrived," Han said. Fully powered down, with its engines so cold that they hadn't shown up on scans. Which meant that it had been without power for a while. And if it had sent any kind of comm off, the Immortal would have picked it up immediately anyway, long before it picked the actual X-wing up on even long-range scans. "There's somebody else-there's someone else out there who sent the message as soon as we came out of lightspeed!"

At that moment, the comm officer spoke out. "Sir, I have the signal again! Four point five clicks from its previous position."





It turned out to be a shielded listening base in one of the deeper craters of the asteroid they'd originally identified, when the first small power surge had briefly flared. With the sustained burst communiqué from Maw Installation keeping it active for a full minute as the base systems automatically responded to the incoming signal, they didn't have any problems locking its position down. It was small-in fact it was tiny, no more than a double-story airtight prefab half-buried below ground, and a receiving dish, all painted a broken camo black to melt them into the surrounding shadows.

Luke had already pushed to have two TIE bombers do a fly-over whilst the assault shuttle loaded up with stormtroopers, requesting that the bombers destroy any transports they saw but leave the prefab intact. He was heading off the bridge, intending to go down onboard one of the assault shuttles, when the pit comm officer spoke up. "Sir, you have a communiqué from Coruscant."

He turned, surprised. "Source?"

"I have a code only-nine-six-two."

Luke nodded, setting back instantly to the rear of the bridge. "Patch the communiqué through to Comm One, I'll take it there." He glanced once to Captain Roth. "And tell your men I want prisoners-I can't interrogate a corpse."

Han watched Indo set off the bridge a step behind the kid…then followed, rushing to keep up.

Comm One was the largest holo on the Destroyer, generally used to project starcharts for inter-ship tactical analysis, so Han was familiar with the size of the dark-walled chamber-a good three stories in height and roughly circular. It had no chairs-if you were a pilot on a briefing, you were expected to stand. After some of the more long-winded briefings Han had attended on an assortment of tours of duty, he suspected it had been to stop you from falling asleep.

Today only Indo and the kid were ahead of him as he entered, the holoprojector already active but not transmitting, and the raised circular transmission platform glowed in a fine band about its edge, indicating that it was active. Luke paused at the small console to the edge of the room to input a code-probably a cipher-then stepped calmly forward.

He should have known; should have realized who it was when the kid stepped onto the transmitter and dropped to one knee, head down. Still, when the Emperor's face appeared a second later, taking the entire height of the projection area so that it loomed over Luke, Han still took an involuntary step back.

"Tell me the details," the Emperor intoned, as if this were the remainder of a half-finished conversation.

Luke straightened without hesitation. "Master, we tracked the lead back to the Cron Drift, in the Outer Rim. There's a Rebel base hidden at the edge of the asteroid field-just a few people. Troops are going in now."

"The Rebel fighter?"

Han turned to glare at Indo, sure the Viscount must have contacted the Emperor whilst he and Luke were returning to the ship, since Luke had sent no transmissions since. As it was, the kid nodded casually, as if this too were part of an ongoing conversation. A stray memory fired, of the kid saying that one of the other Emperor's Hands had the ability to contact the Emperor over extended distances using the Force-of Luke's admission another time that the Emperor had taught him too to 'hear' voices, and to tune into his Master's mental sense in order to block them out. Could the kid do that over extended distances, as he'd said the other Hand had been taught to do?

"I allowed the fighter to escape, Master. We're waiting to pick up a signal from the homing beacon."

"And your connection between the Rebel base and Sinto?"

"The Cron Drift base must have been set up to infiltrate and monitor the communications line between the Maw Installation and Coruscant. We had the Maw send a test transmission, and it came into the Rebel base in the Cron Drift almost simultaneously with Coruscant. Once they had this base running, they would have needed the ciphers to decode what they had, so they had to recruit someone inside Sinto Base to get the codes out. We can confirm this when we download the Rebel base's logs."

"How long was the base running; have they passed on information already?"

"I'll be able to tell you more precisely when we get the Rebel prisoners from the base onboard the Immortal, Master."

Palpatine's chin twitched in annoyance. On this scale, those ochre eyes passed on every nuance of their caustic displeasure. "Interrogate them. I want all the information by morning. When you're done, if they're still alive…kill them."

Han glanced to Indo, who stood to the edge of the room beside him, but the Viscount remained still and silent, expression inscrutable as ever. Before him, the kid dropped his head in a standing bow. "Yes, Master."







The small, bare interrogation cell on the third level of the detention center was painted drab gray, with one standard chair, in front of which was a small table, and another, larger upright chair to the center of the room, fitted with restraints. Han had stepped in beside the kid before he even realized what it was, watching Luke take a datapad from an officer outside without comment, head down as he scanned it whilst the door before him lifted.

They always made the doors on Imperial cells low, so that you had to stoop to get inside the cells. Psychology, they said. As it was, the kid didn't need to bother, so slight was he.

The Rebel, one of two taken alive, was already there when they entered, stripped of his clothes and wearing a gray jumpsuit that no one had bothered to fasten, the restraints set into the arms and legs of the interrogation chair already locked, holding him still.

Luke looked up only once from the datapad, and that was to dismiss the two stormtroopers who stood to either side of the door. He sat in the chair opposite the Rebel as Han hovered to the back of the room, deeply uneasy. Unlike the kid, he couldn't help but glance to the bound prisoner, frowning and looking down as the man's eyes lifted to him, a bruise already darkening where someone had landed a blow to one side of his head.

Luke remained silent for a long time, reading, as the man pulled subtly at the restraints on his wrists, deeply wary, and probably uncertain just what exactly a kid was doing here. Han's thoughts went uneasily back to the previous time the kid had faced a prisoner, on Sinto Base, and in the extended silence he could feel his stomach wind slowly tighter. Finally the kid looked up, his tone brusque and businesslike but not unpleasant.

"Okay, from what we can see, you broke into the S-T commsat chain near Gand and installed your own stolen and altered Imperial satellite, set up to transmit to your station in the Drift. I just need to verify how long you've been set up, how much data you've passed on, and what it was."

The man remained silent. Man-he wasn't much older than Luke, maybe twenty at the most. When had wars become this; kids, dragged into an adult world too soon, veterans before their teens were out. Han wasn't quite thirty and he felt old, watching this meeting of seasoned enemies.

Luke straightened to place the datapad down, taking unnecessary time to allign its outer edge to the edge of the table. "You understand-you didn't manage to erase your station's system. It'll take us a day or so to put the information you just tried to blank back together, but we will. Every piece. So all we're really talking is a time scale of a few days. Either you tell me now, after which I put you back in your cell and report to my superiors, and we both get a good night's sleep tonight, or this gets the kind of messy that involves blood and bone…not mine."

Luke gave him a good long time to answer, but the Rebel remained silent, holding his eye without flinching. Eventually he leaned forward to scroll down the datapad. "Your friend has Commander Isman next door. You have me, which is…unfortunate. It's unfortunate because I've worked with Commander Isman before, and I know for a fact that he'll keep your friend alive at the very least through the night. Knowing that I have Commander Isman and your friend to fall back on, I may not be nearly as conscientious."

Silence… Luke looked up to the man, who flexed his jaw, lips narrowing. The kid sat back and sighed, giving another long pause before he spoke.

"See, the fact is, I don't particularly like Commander Isman, so I have no intention of letting him come out of his interrogation session with more information than I get out of you. Call it conceit, call it competitive spirit, call it professional pride…call it plain bad luck on your part. Call it a foregone conclusion. But we are gonna win." Luke glanced down to the datapad, then looked up again, amused. "Keev Kline…really?"

"Kutabare."

Han didn't know the language, but an insult sounded like an insult no matter where in the galaxy it came from. Luke let the silence hang a heartbeat, and Han felt his own throat constricting as the tension upped a notch. Remaining seated, the kid tipped his head, coolly dismissive.

"Now why would you do that-why would you throw insults, in a situation in which you know they won't be tolerated? Why do that, when you know there'll be reprisals? Didn't they teach you how to withstand interrogation, Keev? That you never antagonize the man who has the power of life and a very painful death over you."

"Kutabare, o baka ze."

Luke placed the memopad carefully back on the edge of the table before glancing down to rub at his eyes for a second, as if weary… He looked up sharply-

The restraint chair that the man was strapped to jerked violently back the length of the room to hit the far wall heavily as the Rebel doubled over forwards, his body folding as if the blow had hit him with enough power to send both himself and the chair reeling. The chair's impact dragged him momentarily upright to whiplash back so that his head hit the wall behind him with a heavy thud, before he doubled back over, struggling to drag in rasping breaths against the shock of the invisible blow.

Luke remained still, waiting without emotion as the man gasped, trying futilely to lift his hand to his face where his nose had started to bleed…and the kid just watched. Han's heart was pounding, his own breath coming short, body locked to the spot as the kid waited until the hunched Rebel lifted his head.

Kid smiled just slightly. "Want to say that again?"

The man remained silent, his labored breathing spraying the blood which flowed unchecked from his nose out in a fine spray before him to speckle across the knees of the pale gray prison-issue jumpsuit he wore.

Luke rose…and the restraint chair dragged quickly forward with an ear-rending screech over the polished floor to stop directly in front of him at the very moment that he bent down, arms extended with perfect timing to rest on the shocked prisoner's bound wrists as the chair jerked to a halt. "Namen ja neyo, Keev-kakko tsukenna-yo. Because I know what you're saying…in fact, I even know what you're thinking-which is why I know you speak Basic. But then, to me, thinking something and saying it are the same thing anyway, and whilst you've learned the great good sense to keep your mouth shut, you can't close your mind-not to me."

The chair rocked unsteadily on the spot and the man stiffened and let out a broken, breathless yelp as he braced-against what pain, Han didn't know. His chest locked for long seconds, eyes wide, every muscle taut…before his head finally dropped loose in release as he fell to heavy, broken gasps. Luke remained just inches from his face, completely unmoved, waiting until he seemed to have enough awareness of his surroundings to try to lift his head again.

"Remember that I told you it was unfortunate that you had me, Keev? What I meant was, it's unfortunate that you have a Sith. An actual Sith. Someone who can, and will, make your last hours in this galaxy the most gruelling, agonizing experience of your life. Myself, I couldn't care less either way, but you might want to change that. And you can, very easily." His icy voice became calm with coaxing reason. "All you have to do is tell me how long the listening post has been there and what you've passed on. That's it. Nothing about your Rebellion, nothing about its locations or its numbers-just that. That buys your life, Keev. Because believe me, if you don't tell me, then the man in the other interrogation cell will, to buy his own life. And that makes you not only surplus to requirement, but the awkward one. The irritating one. The one I'm gonna vent all my frustrations on-probably once I've brought your friend in here, just to make sure he understands how bad it can get. All for the sake of a day…one day. We'll have the information in one day anyway. You're not helping anyone by keeping hold of it, Keev. You're certainly not helping yourself."

"No…" The man's voice was a wounded gasp, but he pulled it up from the depths of his spirit and Han knew he meant it-that this was the start.

Hands still on the chair arms, Luke leaned back slightly, head tilting to try to catch his eye, though he wouldn't lift his gaze. "No? Wrong, wrong answer, Keev. Kind of answer that hurts…"

The man braced…and Han pushed abruptly off from the wall of the cell. "Just take it-take the information from his mind! You can do that, can't you? Just do it. Make him think about it and just take it out! Stop tormenting him!"

It was only when Luke had straightened to stare, shocked at the outburst, that Han realized just how loud he'd shouted. He stared at the kid, wide eyed, the only sound in the room the heavy, cracked gasps of the Rebel.

He wanted to say it again; to tell the kid to stop, to actually look at what he was doing on someone else's order-a kid, who shouldn't even know places like this existed, let alone excel in them. But he knew all that; Luke already knew all that-had known the moment Han had thought it-and that was what was worst of all.

He turned and pushed clumsily at the door release, stumbling to step underneath that damn door, unable to get away fast enough. From this-from the kid.







The door to his quarters slid open, though Han remembered locking it, so he knew without turning who was there, casting a long shadow across the darkened room. He took a draft from his drink in silence and without turning, but the kid neither entered nor left him alone, waiting at the threshold. Eventually Han shook his head, not angry, just...telling the truth. Kid would know it anyway…and if he could make sense of what Han felt right now, then he was doing better than Han himself. "Just…go away, huh? I don't want to…I don't want you here right now."

"I had my orders," Luke said quietly.

He couldn't turn-couldn't even look at the kid. "That's not a reason-not enough."

"An order from Palpatine is," Luke murmured quietly.

Han could only shake his head, knowing he couldn't get through to the kid and wondering, in that moment, if he ever would. If it was even worth trying.

The kid moved slightly in the doorway, and Han watched his shadow shift as he lifted his hand to his mouth, chewing compulsively at his thumbnail. Han looked out into the Drift again, draining the glass he held. "Is he dead?"

The shadow twitched slightly, lifting its head. "Yes."

"Did you do it?"

"…Yes. If you want someone dead, it should be by your own hand."

"Palpatine tell you that?"

"No." There was no defense in his quiet voice, only a restrained statement of the facts. "I worked it out myself when I was eleven years old, doing…doing this on Palpatine's command."

It was a second or two before realization percolated into Han's brooding thoughts just what the kid was admitting to-that having been in that situation too often himself, he wouldn't ever take the easy route and just transfer that burden of guilt elsewhere. Not that Palpatine would have had any, but Luke…Luke clearly must, which was why he couldn't pass that order on. And guilt meant that somewhere in there, no matter how battered down or torn between absolute loyalties and private misgivings…was a conscience.

He turned, but the kid had already stepped back, letting the door close to douse the room in darkness again. Bringing his hand up, Han dragged it across his temple and back through his hair, a mighty headache making him clench his jaw. In that moment, he felt like he deserved it.











There turned out to be a lot of information waiting when Han reached the bridge the following morning, in time for his duty shift. Indo was already with the kid, of course, speaking quietly. Outside, as Han had seen from many viewports now, the maelstrom of lightspeed rolled in twisting chaos, casting bright shafts of light across the bridge and crew pits. Luke didn't turn as Han came to a halt behind him, but kept his attention on the tech station to the outer side of the crew pits, calling up a few screens of information and studying them with exaggerated interest as he spoke to Indo.

"The Rebel listening station was receiving transmissions from a reprogrammed satellite that turns out to have been from a batch stolen a few weeks back over Orron III. The freighter Pheonix, which held the stolen commsats, and the Lambda shuttle Wilsey ,a known Rebel vessel, were reportedly spotted by the SD Intrepid docking alongside a Rebel Cruiser named Maximus,two weeks ago. The Maximus has been spotted on two occasions flying in formation with an MC80 Mon Cal Cruiser."

"Do we have an ID on the Mon Cal Cruiser?"

"No, but it was an MC80 Star Cruiser. How many can the Rebellion have? It has to be the Independence."

"Do you have confirmation on that?"

Luke looked down. "No."

"You can't work on suppositions, Luke."

The kid looked up coolly. "There are ninety-four MC Eighty Star Cruisers in existence-I checked. I can account for ninety of them through regular channels. Of the last four, one is listed as believed used by Black Sun, and one was listed as having been destroyed in the Boralic Nebula two years ago; there was sufficient debris, mechanical and organic, for official channels to be willing to list it as destroyed, all hands lost. That leaves two. Names are irrelevant, but one is almost twenty years old, so there are minor differences in design as technology's changed. Whilst they're both listed as MC80's, one of the unaccountable crusiers is an A class and the other a D. Mon Cal Cruisers are all organic in build; no two are the same-but I looked very closely at the specs last night. Whilst it's possible that the Alliance have two, of the several sightings we've had of Rebel MC Cruisers, it's always been an 80D, in every report or image I found. Sufficient circumstantial evidence?"

Indo didn't reply, but instead stepped closer to study the huge Mon Cal Cruiser, its organic, irregular lines clumsy to human, if not Mon Cal, eyes. "What else do you know-any other possible links to the Pheonix?"

Always pushing, Han knew. And the kid seemed more willing to let him today, probably still sore at Han for last night, and falling back on old routines.

"Well, theIndependencehasn't had many direct engagements, but it was probably…." He paused, correcting himself. "Statistically, Intel believe that there's a high likelihood that the unidentified Mon Cal Cruiser which was in a skirmish over Turkana, where it faced down Imperial Destroyers using T-65 X-wings, was the Independence…so it may not be a coincidence that our damaged Rebel fighter at the Cron Drift was an X-wing. The Independence was also involved in the Brigia fiasco, when Operation Strike Fear was beginning to lose the initiative." Luke glanced subtly about himself, lowering his voice though there was no one close. "If this pans out, and the X-wing is from the Independence, then we may well have placed a tracker on the Rebellion's new headquarters frigate, because something as big as an MC80 Cruiser isn't going to be used for small-time haulage. That's the ship they're going to show up in to impress and to drum up support. If they're doing that, then they're likely to be carrying their ringleaders onboard…which means that if the X-wing tracker keeps transmitting, this could be an opportunity well beyond closing down an information leak."

"Have you informed the Emperor?"

"Not yet. I want to see if the X-wing returns to the Independence first."

"How long until we have co-ordinates?"

"We got a brief signal from the tracker in the early hours, which means that the X-wing's hyperspace jump onboard the freighter was well under a day's travel. They presumably transferred the X-wing to its unit's home ship, which is when we got the signal, then it accelerrated to lightspeed soon after. Timewise, that puts them inside the Hydian Borderlands corewards, or Hutt Space, rimwards. We're triangulating now, but making a general jump towards the Halla sector, in Hutt Space."

"Because?" Indo prompted.

"Hutt Space borders on the Tion Hegemony. The Rebels were forced out of that sector by Operation Strike Fear, but they may well have maintained ongoing operations in Hutt Space. I checked the last three months of local system logs, and the Rebels have been all over that area, with repeated attacks on supply convoys, prison vessels, munitions destroyed…communications satellites stolen. I'm surprised there hasn't been a task force assigned already. I cross-referenced the dates that we know the communication satellites were stolen, against the Death Star information which went from the Maw to Coruscant between then and the Sinto spy being caught, and if that's their only source, then they don't have enough intel to go on yet, so they're fishing. They obviously know something's happening out here, they just don't know where exactly, and our removal of their listening post makes it impossible for them to find out any more that way. They have enough information to know that the Death Star's deployment is imminent, but they need more, and they know it. Past information came from Hutt Space…so that's where they'll try first." The kid paused, then shrugged and said it anyway, giving a brief sideways glance to Han without meeting his eyes. "Just a hunch."

As he turned, Han noted the dark circles under Luke's eyes and the paleness of his skin. It hit him now that Indo was looking to be brought up to speed just as much as Han was, whilst the kid had obviously spent a good while on this already. The signal from the tracker had come through in the early hours of the morning, he'd said, and it sounded pretty much like he'd gone to start research immediately. Probably hadn't slept yet, Han realised. And he didn't seem particularly inclined to slow down yet, as he glanced back to the tech panel behind him.

"We'll exit hyperspace from the rough jump in minutes. If we're lucky and this is where they were heading, then the X-wing may be in realspace too, and we'll get another transmission. If not, we're statistically well-placed for when it next transmits."

Indo nodded, mollified, and glanced back to the screen to point at the image of a Rebel freighter. "And the Wilsey?"

"Nothing, really-or rather, a lot of small engagements. The involvement of theWilsey with the Pheonix ,and therefore the stolen communication satellites, confirmed rough dates before which any information leaks were highly unlikely, though."

"Which you can verify from the cleaned up and reconstructed Rebel logs, right?" Han asked, speaking up at last.

"There were no remaining logs," the kid said simply, still without turning to Han. "The system shred and core dump that the Rebels made before the stormtroopers got in was successful-we have nothing to reconstruct."

Han stared at the kid, aware of what he'd told the Rebel prisoner last night. Of the ease with which he'd lied, completely fooling Han, who knew him well, never mind the Rebel.

"We do have a name on the Rebel X-wing pilot though," Luke continued casually, turning back to key new images onto the tech screen. "I ran the voice print from our little chat through known resources, and identified him with around ninety percent accuracy as one Biggs Darklighter, an ex-Imperial pilot trained at the Prefsbelt Four Naval Academy, and coming from some dirtball planet in the back of beyond-Tatooine, in the Arkanis sector. Apparently he mutinied from the Rand Ecliptic, taking not only one D. Klivian-the Rand's executive officer-with him, but also the Rand Ecliptic itself."

"Gets around, huh?" Han murmured, studying the official Imperial ID headshot of Darklighter.

"Let's hope he does so onboard the Independence," Luke said.

He nearly turned that time, Han noted. Another few minutes and…

The Immortal dropped out of lightspeed in a lurch of constrained power, internal gravity popping Han's ears and shifting his weight before it caught up. Immediately the pit crew came to life, running through standard procedures as the first buzz of information came in.

"All stop," Captain Roth said from the front of the bridge as a matter of course. "Ops?"

"All systems online, Sir. Controls returned to the bridge. Reversion puts us on target, five thousand cubits from the Halla sector."

Han listened as the ship settled back into sublight routines, knowing that the individual ops stations needed to check in and confirm status before anyone could scan for the homing beacon's signal. Beside him the kid returned to the tech board, keying the console there to scan for the beacon's frequency, too impatient to wait.

"Sir," the comm officer lifted his head towards Captain Roth. "We have incoming updates and…"

"Got it!" Luke exclaimed under his breath, grinning. "Close by-very close. We can triangulate easily from this distance."

Indo leaned in, keeping his own voice low. "How long?"

"Seconds…it's narrowing the signal now."

A run of co-ordinates came up on the screen as Han moved closer, drawn in. "Well?"

Luke pulled up a navigation chart of Hutt Space and pasted the co-ordinates, watching as the system ticked…

Straightening, he looked up with pride-and it was Han that he turned to first, not Indo. "Danuta," he said triumphantly. "They're over Danuta."

In the crew pit, the comms officer stood up, voice tight. "Sir, we have an incoming alert from Danuta, in the Colovas system. The Imperial garrison there is under attack!"