9

SPACE STATION PROMISED UTOPIA

IN THE NABOO SYSTEM

IN THE CHOMMEL SECTOR OF THE MID RIM

The arrestor clamps latched onto the Questionable Success from the starboard side and pulled the ship into mooring position. Service and maintenance hoses attached themselves to the Success’s side, and finally they were reeled into Docking Bay 17. The bay door closed, and a few seconds later they received a chime on their console that said the bay had been successfully pressurized and energy-shielded. They were free to depart.

“Putting our engines on standby mode,” Kevv said, flipping the three power-down switches before settling back into his seat. “Well, we made it. We dragged tail for six thousand lightyears and made it in just before everything overheated and blew up on us again, and the ship is now officially scrap. But we made it.” He sighed and wiped his brow. “Is it too late to tell the AIN I’m not interested in being one of their agent-couriers, and that I want to go back to being a combat pilot?”

Namyr smiled at Kevv. She had been watching him ever since they made the last jump to lightspeed, cutting across dark space—another name for areas of space where no established hyperlanes existed—and the guy looked positively bedraggled. Kevv was a damn good space combat pilot, and those kinds of people hid their nervousness well, but he had been looking uncharacteristically tense the whole flight here. She was hoping the system they had happened to limp towards would allow for some rest and relaxation. Outside the cockpit’s viewport, they saw the bay door, but there was a huge window next to the door that looked out at the pristine blue-and-green world of Naboo.

With any luck, we’ll have the downtime we were promised by Commander Fera, she thought. Few places better to spend downtime than Naboo. At least, she had heard it said. Namyr had been through this system a couple times before, but always on business for the Alliance Intelligence Network. Not once had she partaken in Naboo’s expansive, bucolic vistas.

“I think if you left the AIN, Kevv, the Empire just might win,” she said, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “All hope for the Rebellion fades once Edreezel Kevv gives up.” Namyr unstrapped herself and went to the back to check on the circuitry bay. “Yep, definitely shot. We’re lucky all of this didn’t fry on us before we exited hyperspace.”

Kevv came up beside her. “Yeah. Could’ve come apart, and all our molecules scattered to the ether.”

Namyr shivered inwardly at the thought. Hyperspace travel was so ubiquitous and relatively easy that people often forgot just how fraught it was, how very close to death one was when they were inside a metal container flying through a warped dimension of space. “I feel sorry for the owner of this ship. Hopefully once we leave it here, the station administrators will be able to find it and send it back to them. Maybe Commander Fera can even compensate the owner later.”

“Not likely. Last I heard before we left Rendezvous Green was that AIN was getting tight on credits. But speaking of the commander, I just found a message waiting for us on the space station’s HoloNet junction. It’s encrypted like the last one, same alpha-sequence. She must’ve sent it out to all nearby systems, knowing we’d pop up in one of them sooner or later.”

“That sounds like the commander. Let’s hear it.”

Returning to the cockpit, they sat and listened to the short message from Commander Fera, which sounded innocuous enough. She spoke of finding time to go on vacation, of heading out soon to find their old friend Kraskus, somewhere in the Corusca sector, and that she was thinking of bringing her father along to meet her new boyfriend. It was all code, made to sound like nothing special in case Imperials intercepted it. But Namyr knew the meaning, some of the words were meant to represent numbers, or letters of the Aurebesh alphabet, and spelled out destinations and coordinates. And after taking a minute to work it out, she looked over at Kevv and said, “Did you get the same thing I did?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What the blazes is Endor?”

“I’ve heard of it before,” she said, tapping a few keys to bring up the Moddell sector on the console’s main screen. Then she summoned up articles from the HoloNet to fill them in. “Right, some kind of forested moon, mostly wild, no real colonies to speak of. Couple of indigenous beings called Ewoks…tribal…fiercely territorial. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Why does Fera want us going there?”

Namyr tapped her teeth, thinking. “The last part of the message indicated she would tell us more once we’ve secured more reliable transportation and are on our way.” She paced a bit. “I was hoping for something more on Ossus.”

Kevv nodded. “You’re hoping that they’ll find something, and that they’ll send you.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. Would that be so bad?”

“Only if I don’t get to come with you.”

“Just a minute ago you said you weren’t so sure about being a spy anymore.”

“I say a lot of things,” Kevv said, flipping a switch to test coolant levels. All of them had redlined. “But if this is a chance to fly to a planet nobody’s had access to in four thousand years…well, how the blazes do I pass that up?”

* * *

THEED

CAPITAL CITY OF NABOO

TWO DAYS LATER

Securing transportation was much easier here than during the hasty exit they made from Malastare. Here, they had a bit of time. Down in the capital city of Theed, they got to stroll along the ancient stone pathways, beneath the statues of dead queens that had served the planet for ages, sort of stewards for the tremendous amounts of exports Naboo produced for the galaxy at large. A few Gungans walked openly in the streets—that was a major change, the Gungans had despised the Human Naboo population only a couple decades ago. She was sure she’d read about that. But the two peoples had come together to fight off an invasion of the Trade Federation’s droid army, repelling a militarily superior force. To Namyr, just looking at the Gungans intermingling with the Humans made her aware that the Rebel Alliance really did have a chance. A real chance to win this thing. Because if the Gungans and Naboo can set aside differences to cohere into a united fighting force…

But as they sat at their table of the outdoor tapcaf, each of them scanning the crowds for spies, Namyr had a thought that maybe, just maybe, the Battle of Naboo had been the true start of all the galaxy’s problems.

Palpatine is from here, after all, she thought. And he used the victory against the Trade Federation to advanced his political career. The sun was shining, and the umbrella above their table provided cool shade. Such a beautiful place, and it produced that monster. And that battle made Queen Amidala such a darling, and practically made Senator Palpatine a shoo-in for Chancellor, a position that was freed up, conveniently, just before he took it.

If none of that had happened, if the Trade Federation had never provided the critical moment for Palpatine to take advantage of a split Senate, it was quite possible, even likely, that the galaxy would never have come to this. In fact, when viewed like that, the timeliness of Chancellor Valorum’s downfall, and Palpatine’s ascension, almost made it seem as though it had all been planned, like it was part of some grand scheme to—

“Heads up,” Kevv said. He nodded behind her.

Namyr acknowledged with a hand signal, then stood up slowly and started walking towards a food kiosk run by a droid. Browsing the coshka fruits, which the tourist ads said were in season, she was joined by one other customer, a pink-skinned male Twi’lek, who paid the droid attendant a few credits for bread. As he walked away, he mumbled to Namyr, “The droid has it. Good luck.”

Namyr perused a moment longer, then bought a few coshkas. She paid with too many credits, and so the droid handed her change. The change the droid gave her was from the same money the Twi’lek had just given it. Namyr walked away, performing a surveillance-detection run until she met up with Kevv again at a different tapcaf across the city. They sat at the back of the room and read the message that was written for them on the back of the currency she had been given. It was simple directions, with a single name: Guriyen.

They followed the directions to a small speeder repair shop on the outskirts of the city. There they found an Ithorian proprietor polishing a 777a Xemhault speeder bike. He raised his hammerhead-shaped face to look up at them, and spoke in Ithorian, and a translator collar on the side of his head interpreted his harmonic words into a smooth, calming Basic: “I am honored to have you.”

“Guriyen?” Namyr said.

“Yes.” He shook their hands. “May the Empire rot and fall, and may a new dawn rise. Your ship is ready, my friends. Let us be away.”

* * *

The Ithorian seemed well connected, and it was obvious why the AIN had recruited him. There was a series of old subterranean tunnels that wound labyrinthine beneath the city of Theed, and he apparently had them all mapped out, leading them with a single glowlamp. They kept mostly in silence until they were in an ancient repulsor-train station, filled with dust and partially caved-in tunnels and collapsed train cars. Guriyen, once he started speaking, seemed unable to stop. He began telling them how happy he was that the two of them had made it, and that he was afraid that they had not gotten the message from “Mother” (codename for Commander Fera).

Guriyen spoke like a hermit that had been too long away from society, lecturing on the architecture of the tunnels. He knew their histories, could tell you about the designs of the first Assembly of Architects, the name given to the people that had first founded Theed thousands of years ago, before the first hyperdrive was ever invented. He pointed to old signs on the walls, written in various languages other than Basic and Aurebesh, and gave what he claimed were rough translations.

“These tunnels,” his translator node said, “are no longer known to anyone but me and a handful of others. Knowledge of their existence was given to my mentor, a merchant and historian named Hol Garuum, who moved here from Corellia during the Clone Wars. He himself mentored under a Naboo man who claimed to be the last living descendant of any of the Assembly of Architects. His lineage has been preserving these tunnels for generations, not wanting anyone to know about them, lest tourists bespoil them. They have become an advantage for myself and the Rebel sympathizers on Theed, who still remember when Queen Amidala spoke against the forming of the Galactic Republic. We think she would be delighted to know that these tunnels now serve to keep her dream of a return to democracy alive. Of course, she died too young, a mere day or two after Palpatine dissolved the Republic and declared himself dictator. Still, her formal dissent is forever immortalized in the papers she and Mon Mothma sent to the Senate just after Palpatine’s radical action, and we believe these tunnels,” he said, gesturing around to the ancient walls, “these tunnels are serving her will still.”

Namyr saw lights up ahead, and drew her blaster. Kevv saw this and also drew his. But then they saw a group of five or six people running across a dark junction up ahead, each of them carrying torchlights. There were children among them, a mix of Humans and Twi’leks.

“Easy, my friends,” said Guriyen. “These are refugees. People running from Imperial persecution. I have other friends, agents I have allowed to know about these tunnels, and we move Naboo’s persecuted through here, a place the Empire doesn’t even know exists.”

The Ithorian gestured to a tunnel off to his left.

“This will take us outside the city walls. I have a ship waiting there for you. It has three false transponders which you can switch between easily, along with a pair of false ID slates, ready for you to imprint new identities onto them. It is fully fueled and has food and supplies for many months, should you have need to remain in the black void of space, off the beaten path of any hyperlanes.”

“We thank you, Guriyen,” Namyr said. “We can repay you for any inconvenience once the War is over. We can—”

But already the Ithorian was waving off her thanks. “Destroy the Empire, leave it and its Emperor in shambles, turn it all to ash, and you will have repaid me.”

“What did they do?” Kevv abruptly asked.

In the dark, Namyr gave him a warning look.

But the Ithorian merely answered, “Do?”

Kevv shrugged, and struggled to keep up with Guriyen’s fast pace. “It seems to me the Empire must’ve done something to make you commit yourself like this. Just handing over a fully fueled starship to a bunch of strangers? Mighty big risk.”

One of the eyes on Guriyen’s large stalk-like neck turned slightly in Kevv’s direction. “Must they have offended me personally for me to hate them? Must the Empire have killed someone I loved, or arrested someone I knew, in order for me to stand against them? Truth be known, friend, my personal life and business have both thrived during the Empire’s reign. But just because my business thrives and I want for nothing does not mean that I am both deaf and blind to the pain and misery of others. And even if I were so foolish, I am not so stupid that I do not realize that if they aren’t stopped now, then one day…it will be me in their interrogation rooms. It will be you. It will be all of us.”

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Namyr hoped Kevv’s question had not offended Guriyen. The Alliance could take all the help they could get. It was people like Guriyen that helped defeat tyrants. It couldn’t just be the oppressed that fought back, or their families, or the zealots fighting on the front lines, it had to be even those that had flourished under the tyrant’s rule. You had to recruit help from everywhere. If you wanted resources to fight evil, at some point you had to begin recruiting people who were successful under tyrannical rule and yet still had a good soul.

Without people like Guriyen of Naboo, rebellions of any kind don’t get very far.

They came to a ladder that went up a dark, thirty-meter vertical shaft, and after an exhausting climb, they opened a hatch and stepped into a dark hangar bay. It was wide and expansive, and at the center of it sat a silver, crescent moon-shaped SoroSuub Kilaktu-4000, a five-passenger ship Namyr was familiar with because it was one of the more popular modern cargo ships in the galaxy. This one looked almost brand-new, with perhaps a few dings and scrapes, but was otherwise shiny and with a fresh paint job. It had a single underbelly turret and two forward laser cannons for defense. And once they were onboard, Namyr noticed the hyperdrive was not the type that usually came with a Kilaktu.

When she made mention of this, Guriyen said, “You have a good eye for ships. It has a Class-point-five, not standard for this type of vessel. Usually these are bought by cargo haulers for their reliability, not for their speed. So this ship is deceptive. Come, I’ll show you several hidden compartments where you can store anything you don’t want found.”

There were removable panels in the floor, in the walls, underneath the beds in the crew’s quarters, and even in the landing gear and parts of the ceiling.

The ship was crescent moon-shaped, and on each of the points of that crescent was a cockpit. “There are two cockpits for greater coordination in flight,” Guriyen explained. “There is no single pilot or copilot. You both operate simultaneously with a fully-functioning control board and command center. A pseudo-droid-brain has been installed and will take both of your commands into account, prioritize them for analysis, and in almost a nanosecond it will determine which of you has the wisest course of action—it will alternate between the two of you, and give you both tips on how to better coordinate with one another, and will occasionally override both of you to make piloting decisions of its own. It also comes with a fully outfitted infirmary, along with an automated operating table and bacta tank, with enough bacta for one person to fully soak in for a week.”

“This is…amazing,” Kevv said, running his hands appreciatively along the triple-reinforced bulkheads. “I had heard SoroSuub was building these. Didn’t think they were out yet.”

“They’re not. But I know a few people working the assembly lines. This one’s a prototype. So take care. The Empire has only experimental versions of this. I hate to part with it, but you are in need, and I wish to see you safely away.” He patted them both on the shoulder unceremoniously and left out the cargo ramp. “I will open the roof doors in a few minutes. You may lift off then. But understand, once you are gone, I must shut the doors and you cannot come back. And if you are captured, I will deny I ever met you, and will not offer further aid. I will alert anyone else I’ve told about these tunnels, I will detonate the explosives I have hidden within these walls, and, as much as it will sadden me, I will destroy all the tunnels. If that happens, you will never see me again. Good luck, and may the Force be with you.”

* * *

The ship’s name, according to her manifest, was called Lady of Hope Ascendant, and once Namyr and Kevv got over the strangeness of having dueling controls in opposing cockpits, she handled like a dream. They broke through atmo and had just cleared a course with Naboo’s space-traffic control when a Star Destroyer came in-system, popping out of hyperspace a hundred miles to port. The Lady of Hope Ascendant (which Namyr and Kevv just called Ascendant) had already worked out a course for the jump to lightspeed. Her navicomputer was faster than any that Namyr had ever worked with, and even Kevv, who had flown just about everything, was immensely impressed.

They each sat in their own cockpits. Namyr had the starboardside cockpit, and could look through the window on her left at Kevv in his portside cockpit. They had their headsets on, but those were only for emergencies in case power ever went out, because (and here was a lovely little detail Guriyen left out, perhaps because he had been in a rush) it turned out that the two of them could simply speak to the other from anywhere aboard the ship, and microphones embedded in every wall picked it up and relayed it to the speakers in the other’s room.

A ship built for perfect communication, at all times, no matter the conditions.

It turned out the Ascendant also had powerful shields, a type that oscillated frequencies quickly and were usually only present on Lambda-class Imperial shuttles that ferried about important diplomats.

“All right,” Namyr said. “Coordinates are all set. Want me to punch it?”

In the other cockpit, Kevv looked over at her and gave a thumbs-up.

“You know, I can hear you, dummy,” she laughed. “You can just talk.”

“Oh, heh, right. Er, sure, go ahead and punch it, boss lady. You have the honors.”

Namyr set in the course for Endor. Slowly ramping up the power, she barely felt any shift in gravity or from the inertial dampers.

Just before they made it to hyperspace, a ping came on Namyr’s console. She was sure Kevv saw it, too. They both read it. It was another encrypted message from Commander Fera, her team’s analysts had combed over the Ossus data and all of them concurred: it was genuine, nothing in there was meant to be a false lead, the Hutts truly had found something out there. The last sentence in Fera’s message was once again innocent-sounding, talking about a rainy day that ruined her vacation.

The message’s intent was clear. After Namyr and Kevv finished their recon on Endor, they were to head immediately to Ossus, verify the Empire’s presence there, and, if possible, search for the remains of the Great Jedi Library and remove or destroy anything that might prove valuable to the Emperor.

Namyr looked over at Kevv in his other cockpit. He wore a look that said Here we go again.

The starlines elongated and the Ascendant’s hyperdrive barely made a sound louder than a distant hum when they were flung into hyperspace.

* * *

ASTEROID XXK-1-CORELLIA-3304491 “ARISEN”

THE CORELLIA SYSTEM

The intel packet was flagged and so immediately Mynyra opened it on her computer and began running through the strings of code. Mynyra was a Bothan, and a gifted signals specialist, and she had helped run the operation during the “Bespin Incident” with Commander Fera the year before. She and the others from that operation had been tasked to this station as soon as it became clear that it was going to become Fera’s primary mission.

The intel Mynyra was looking at now came in from Sullust, and it immediately piqued her interest. Her furry ears fluttered as she ran a wavelength merger to confirm that the information she was looking was accurate, and that it had not been tainted during transmission. But then she detected something she was sure the sender had neglected to highlight. Neglected it because they didn’t know to look for it, she thought.

“Commander Fera!”

The Mirialan set her cup of joffa down and crossed the Command Room at once. “Got something, Mynyra?”

“Ma’am, we just received an info dump from Mynock Team Red. That’s the psy-ops group in Sullust—”

“I remember. What do they have for us?”

“Well, what they sent was a simple confirmation that the floaters have been picked up.”

“Excellent,” Fera said. “That ought to be helpful for our next wave at Sullust.”

Floaters was a term for dead bodies the Rebel Alliance left purposely floating out in the vacuum. Brave Rebel soldiers who had agreed that, upon their deaths, their bodies may be used further to fight the Empire. They were taken in and placed in a rich bacta bath and preserved, made to look like they’d only just died. Mynock Teams Blue, Red and Gold had all been tasked with preparing a few of these bodies to appear recently deceased, and placing documents filled with false intel on the corpses. The Imperials were known to pick up dead Rebels after a battle and search their bodies for anything that might help them fight the Rebel Alliance.

It had been Fera’s idea to leave the floaters sprinkled across battlefields where the Alliance was forced to flee. “Packages” of these floaters were prepared for each ship in a task force, between five and twelve men and women that had died bravely, had their bodies reclaimed by their comrades in the Alliance, then prepped for the deception. It was called Operation Fond Farewell and Commander Fera had enacted it almost as soon as she pitched it to Director Eeja. “It’s a cold, and disturbing, concept,” he’d told her in their private meeting on the matter. “But I’ll be damned if it’s not a good plan.”

Mynyra had just gotten confirmation from Mynock Team Red who were all left behind when the task force fled Sullust; at least eleven of their floaters had been picked up. “But one of them was picked up by a non-Imperial ship,” Mynyra said. “It was a YT-2400. They spotted it on their sensors just before it went to lightspeed. Its drive signature was conducive with a ship called the Hard Leaf.”

Commander Fera perked up at that. Hard Leaf was a cargo ship used by a shipping company on Cloud City, a company that belonged to Carjukk the Hutt. The ship had last been spotted leaving Bespin, believed to be piloted by none other than the Imperial assassin Ageless Void. The reason Hard Leaf’s exact engine exhaust and drive signature were both known so well to the Alliance Intelligence Network was because Fera and her team had been there to record it as it fled Bespin, narrowly escaping the TIE fighters and tractor beams of the Super Star Destroyer Executor.

“Ma’am?” Mynyra said. “What should I do?”

Fera looked around the room. “Share this with no one else. This is between you and me.”

“Commander?”

“I want you to scan the data, and see if what Mynock Team Red sent you can in any way give you an idea of the drive signature’s location above Sullust before it made the jump to hyperspace. If it can, see if you can extrapolate its probable trajectories.” She thought for a moment. “Once you’ve done that, ready an intel packet to be sent to Mordenta and Swift as soon as they reach Endor.”

The Bothan’s ears twitched. “Ma’am,” she whispered. “Are you thinking of…sending them to kill him?”

“I simply want confirmation that it’s him,” she said. “We haven’t laid eyes on him since he left Bespin. He’s been helping us by handing us Imperial spies to act as double agents, but who the hell knows which way his loyalties truly swing? If we have to take him out someday, best to start tracking him now.” She looked down at Mynyra in her chair. “Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Fera walked away from Mynyra’s station. When she did, she passed a window that looked outside the asteroid, out into that thick field of space dust and asteroids. In the reflection, she caught sight of her face, and the new redemption-arc tattoo. In a flash, she was reminded of why she had wanted to believe in Ageless Void’s redemption: it was because she wanted to believe wholeheartedly that if he could change and be embraced by the Alliance, then so could she. Fera wanted some sign that it was possible to truly, completely change, and be accepted for it.

But some part of her—the realist—knew that one day, perhaps someday soon, she might need to silence Ageless Void forever.

She didn’t want to say it, she didn’t even want to think about it, but someone once told her that running from a truth never put it far behind. Truth stayed exactly where it was. Fera knew this. And she knew that Mynyra would have mixed feelings about it. That’s why she didn’t want the Bothan sharing this intel. If the day ever came when she had to end the AIN’s relationship with Ageless Void, well, the fewer people that knew about it, the better.

But if anyone knew anything about keeping secrets, it ought to be Commander Lorna Fera, and she ought to have known that no secret stays buried forever. Indeed, she did not even know that, even as her order was obeyed, even as Mynyra extrapolated the last known trajectory of the Dathomrian Curse, and sent the message across an encrypted line, the signal was being picked up by a deep-space Imperial spy vessel, painted all in black, with a powerful new cloaking device making it practically invisible against the cosmic microwave background. It was parked fifty million kilometers away, its exact task to search for Rebel listening outposts just like Arisen.

Though, this ship was not able to locate Arisen’s exact position, it did intercept the signal and decrypt part of it, and its crew relayed what they had to the Victory-class Star Destroyer Endless Vigil, parked directly above the planet Corellia on a standard patrol throughout the system. A section chief for the Imperial Intelligence Service happened to be aboard at the very moment Mynyra’s partially decrypted message came through.

He relayed the message to Coruscant.

* * *

CORUSCANT

EIGHTH LEVEL OF THE 932nd MEGABLOCK

SAFEHOUSE FOR ISS OPERATIVES

The signal’s significance was immediately identified by the intel analysts, who ran it up to the man in the Black Office. That was how he was referred to, by the windowless office he sat in, with its black walls and black floors and black ceiling. His identity was unknown to all but two people in the Imperial Intelligence Service, but his codename was known to every one of the Service’s operatives: the Voice of Ether.

The man in the Black Office dealt with the Kingdom’s agents, what few were left that had not betrayed the Empire by going in with former agent and department head Hej Zumter’s scheme. He sat with eight computers running all around him, attended by a single droid that saw to all his needs. No one was allowed to speak to this droid, and the droid spoke to no one but the man in the Black Office. Together, the two of them conducted dozens of operations happening simultaneously throughout the galaxy. The assassinations of high-value targets, the decapitation strikes against Rebel cells embedded in the Outer Rim, the sabotage of Rebel facilities, the seizure of banks holding funds being laundered by the Rebel Alliance, the seeding of lies throughout the Rebellion’s command structure.

But when the contents of the signal from Arisen appeared on one of his holoscreens, the man in the Black Office winced. For if it was true, there could be a problem.

It was only a partial decryption, so the whole context of the message could add more illumination, but at present, what it said was this: Ageless Void possible sighting…[MISSING]…last known trajectory heading from Sullust, possibly heading to…[MISSING]…find him soon, confirm his whereabouts before…[MISSING]…

Now this was interesting for several reasons, not the least of which was this message’s coding was timestamped mere hours ago. If the message was authentic, then it meant something was badly wrong here, because Ageless Void had said he was in the Phaeda system awaiting instructions on how to proceed with Loriss Gaffrey.

The key phrase there “if the message was authentic.” The Rebel Alliance had proven more than proficient at planting false leads to sew distrust among the Imperial ranks.

Is this another trick? the man in the Black Office thought. It’s a subtle one, if so. So subtle. Perhaps part of a long-term strategy to make us doubt the loyalty of our agents?

It was possible. It was very possible.

But the man in the Black Office had not gotten as far as he had by leaving anything to chance. There was a reason the IIS and ISB entrusted him with communicating with their agents, especially the Kingdom agents. You cannot let them have too long of a leash. Not only that, but their skill sets were manifold, and if they wished to turn those skills against the Empire, the effect could be devastating to say the least.

He considered just sending a message to Ageless Void, wait for him to receive it, and then trace where he was. But if Ageless had somehow fooled him, he might have means to deceive the man in the Black Office’s systems, bouncing his signal through other, more clandestine proxy servers.

If that’s the case, then I would only be wasting time, and if he detects my trace attempt, I would only be letting him know that I’m on to him.

So, without having to give it more than a few seconds’ thought, the man in the Black Office’s fingers played across the keys of his computers, and sent a command to one of the four major assets he had in the Sullust region of space. It was a trio of Kingdom operatives that worked together as a group: codenames Saber Unsheathed, Vicious One, and Old Miser.

At the moment, they were working undercover on Sullust, looking to infiltrate any hidden Rebel cells that might still be in the area. The man in the Black Office retasked them to follow the last known coordinates that the Rebel message claimed Ageless Void had traveled on. It ought not take them long, perhaps only a few days. Old Miser and his team were among the best, as implacable as Ageless Void himself, and if Ageless Void was indeed lying about his whereabouts, then the man in the Black Office would know why.

With that done, he turned his attention to a report from Endor, as well as a dozen other operations reporting in from around the galaxy. The Rebellion never slept, and so neither did he.