Location:
    The Sarn-Kobanks Dig, a privately-funded archaeological expedition
    the planet Glissex IV
    the Outer Rim Territories of the Galaxy
Time:
    The Interregnum
    9 years, 8 months, 32 days (Imperial Center Standard) after the assassination of Emperor Palpatine


The pungent aroma of charred meat pervaded the tent, and to his horror, archaeologist Dovic Sarn realized the burning flesh he smelled was his own. Above him in the dark, two eyes peered down without compassion, from beneath a heavy black hood. “W—w—what do you want?” Sarn whimpered.

“The holocron,” a gruff female voice replied. “Where is it?”

Sarn’s mind, distracted by his mounting pain, reeled in confusion. “The... We didn’t—”

With a frustrated sigh, the woman removed the tip of her lightsaber from Sarn’s side, and held up the red-white blade horizontally, mere centimeters in front of his eyes. He quieted, half-blinded by the brilliant beam of coherent plasma suddenly filling his vision. Then, in a blur of motion, the woman drew the weapon back and plunged it into his side again, slowly pushing it in even farther this time, millimeter by excruciating millimeter.

Sarn howled in agony. “The… cataloguing… tent!” he bit out, between gasps. “We take everything we find to the cataloguing tent!”

The woman glared at him. “I don’t care about fossil fragments and shards of pottery,” she snapped, “only the holocron! Did you find a crystal star, in the tomb? A perfect, stellated dodecahedron, cut from luminous red crystal?”

Suddenly, hope welled up inside Dovic Sarn: the day before, his team had retrieved an artifact that fit the woman’s description exactly! Lailah - one of his graduate students - had been working in the main reliquary chamber when she discovered it: a fist-sized starburst of red crystal, which was strikingly beautiful, faintly luminescent, and surprisingly sharp along its many edges. She’d burst into the mess tent, smiling, and she’d asked her teacher in an awed whisper if the star might be one of the nigh-mythical holocrons - the holographic chronicle devices once used by the Jedi and Sith Orders to preserve the teachings of important masters, even beyond death. Sarn had taken one look at the object and had dismissed the idea. The few holocrons mentioned in the historical record were all cubic in shape, and certainly none were stellated like the star in Lailah’s hands, with so many acute angles. He’d suggested the piece might be some sort of decorative funerary statue, and had sent his overeager grad student back to work, much abashed. As he remembered Lailah’s sad look of disappointment, Sarn couldn’t help but wonder if the sweet young woman was dead, along with the other members of his team.

Even as Sarn had the thought, his attacker pushed her blade of superheated plasma even farther into his side, forcing him back to the present moment. You made a simple mistake, his pain-addled mind reassured him. An incorrect initial categorization. The important thing is, you have what this woman wants! Give it to her, and she’ll let you go! “Yes!” he moaned. The sound came out perversely erotic. “We found something like that! Yesterday. A crystal star, yes! It’s in the cataloguing tent, just as I said.” He smiled plaintively, his pain twisting the expression into a pathetic grimace.

“And where is the cataloguing tent, exactly?” the woman growled, altering the angle of her thrust slightly. Beneath the ambient humming sound made by the legendary Jedi weapon, Sarn could hear the sizzle of broiling.

“The large, domed tent, at the edge of the excavations! You can’t miss it!” Darkness was closing in around him, but Sarn still clung to hope. He had cooperated. He’d answered all her questions. She would let him go, now.

“Good,” the woman said impassively. “Good.” And without another word, she pushed the lightsaber all the way through Sarn’s body and swept the blade up into his skull, letting him go at last.

Location:
    Kuat Crystal Corporation main offices
    Kuat
    the Core Worlds region of the Galaxy
Time:
    9 years, 10 months, 3 days after Palpatine’s death


The next morning, Zaq was waiting patiently in the lobby when Mistress Kaylika and the other executives arrived. “I think I’ve figured it out,” he said, and after a brief exchange of wide-eyed glances, the trio of women led him to Kaylika’s office.

“Well?” the redhead prompted, once the door to her private sanctum was closed.

“It’s simple, really,” Zaq said. “We just extend the contract with the Imperials.”

Ms. Smyth looked confused, and Mrs. Daloway bit her lip as she turned to see how Kaylika would react. “Weren’t you the one who said the Thrawnists were coming here only to cancel their contract?” Kaylika asked acidly, as she sat down behind her massive desk.

Zaq nodded and shook his head at the same time. “We allow the Imperials to publically distance themselves from Kuat Crystal – let them make a stink in the interstellar press, let them decry the hypocrisy of the New Republic, a collection of usurping terrorists benefiting from slave labor just like the legitimate ruler they assassinated and defame, etcetera – but secretly we extend their contract, and promise to keep it a strictly private matter. Nobody needs to know.” He shrugged eloquently.

“They could continue to wholesale crystals at a magnificent price,” Smyth said, nodding.

“But still get the propaganda victory they need,” Mrs. Daloway added, clapping her hands together in her excitement.

“Not bad, Hawkes,” Kaylika said after a moment. “Not bad.” She twirled one lock of burnished-copper hair with her index finger, deep in thought. For a moment the fearsome boss-lady seemed… vulnerable. Human. “Have you told anyone else about this scheme of yours?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good. Be sure you keep it that way,” she said savagely. The moment had passed. “Now, all of you, leave me alone.”



On his way back to his office, Zaq passed a group of Muuns and Humans in the distinctive banker’s-shawl-and-pendant that marked them as representatives of the InterGalactic Banking Guild. As he passed the gaggle of bank agents, he recognized one of the two Humans in the group from his school days at the Kuat City Academy. “Danqa Tierce?” he asked, hardly recognizing the tall, confident-looking woman, since she’d apparently shaved off all her hair: she was as bald as the Muuns.

“Zaq Hawkes!” she squeaked. “It’s so good to see you.” Her smile was still infectious, even if she was missing the lustrous blonde hair Zaq remembered from their school days. “Gentlebeings,” Danqa said to her colleagues, “this is Zaq Hawkes. One of the smartest people I know; we were at the Academy together. Of course, I haven’t seen him for years… I had a crush on him, you see, but he wouldn’t give me the time of day.” The rest of her party smiled politely at the characterization.

“Aw, Danqa. I was just testing your resolve. If you’d only asked me out one more time, I’m sure I would’ve said yes,” Zaq lied politely. The bankers moved on down the corridor, some nodding approvingly and some smiling knowingly. Danqa Tierce hung back for a moment. “The Banking Guild, eh?” Zaq prompted.

“That’s right,” Danqa said, brushing at her eyebrow as if she suddenly remembered the dramatic change in hairstyle she’d adopted since the last time she saw Zaq. “We were just here going over your books – Kuat Crystal’s accounts, that is. You guys have a lot of crystal in that vault downstairs, Zaq. It’s all very impressive, but it makes the Muuns nervous to have so much… material wealth, shall we say, concentrated anywhere other than one of their banks.” She smiled. “But, now I know you’re here, I’m reassured that all those crystals are quite safe.” She winked. “Well, look, I should be going. But if you’re ever considering a career change,” she added, digging a flimsiplast business card out of her pocket, “look me up. Rising to the dizzy heights of power and prestige in the corporate world is possible in the IGBG too, you know.” She flashed one last smile, and jogged away to catch up with her coworkers.

Zaq pocketed the business card, and smiled. Nice to be appreciated, he thought to himself. And then he went back to work.

Location:
    outside the Kuat Crystal Corporation main offices, and then Kalat Kanu
    Kuat
    the Core Worlds region of the Galaxy
Time:
    9 years, 10 months, 5 days after Palpatine’s death


The next morning, Zaq caught Mr. Lekin leaving the office, just as he himself arrived. “You were right,” he said at the bottom of the marble staircase, his breath condensing into mist in the cold air. “You were right.”

The old janitor merely stared back in response.

“Why do you want to steal from the company?” Zaq asked, directly.

Lekin’s right eyebrow shot up in surprise, and his eyes flitted left, as if he were about to turn around. The moment of panic was brief though; he didn’t turn. “Well now, who says that I want to do that?” he asked gruffly.

“Hypothetically,” Zaq said, his eyes narrowing.

Lekin kept staring, and then his lip turned up into a grin. He began to limp away, and Zaq followed a pace behind. Before the young man could speak again, Lekin answered: “Theft and war, Mr. Hawkes,” he said, between wheezy breaths. “The two most reliable sources of income in the Galaxy are theft and war.”

Zaq harrumphed, hugging himself in the cold as they walked along. “Oh? Are we at war?”

The old man spun around, and jabbed a finger into Zaq’s chest. “Yeah. Or do you think it’s right, the way those women treat you? You’re all friends, eh? Allies?” The eyebrow arced up again. “Besides which, in two years I retire, and the pension that KuCrys will pay out is very small indeed.” He turned to keep walking. “I want to fix that.”

“A gender warrior and a mercenary, eh?” Zaq asked. To his surprise, he found himself smiling at the old janitor: Lekin was a rogue, but charmingly earnest.

“That’s right,” the old man said, nodding. He sounded tired, and completely serious.

It was all ridiculous, and they were slowly getting farther and farther away from the office. Zaq stopped in his tracks. “How do you know I won’t turn you in?” the younger man asked.

Lekin turned to face him. “We’re still speaking hypothetically, right?” the old man retorted.

Zaq looked at the pavement, suddenly sheepish. “How do you even know you could pull off such a thing?” he asked.

“Because, Mr. Hawkes, I have a plan. My apartment is just around the corner, here. If you’re really interested, follow me.”

Mr. Lekin limped away, and after a minute of shuffling his feet in indecision, Zaq followed.



Mr. Lekin’s flat was on the eighth floor of a shabby-looking pre-fab residential building that was near the KuCrys Main Office, but in a noticeably rougher neighborhood separated from the main financial district by a broad, busy thoroughfare down which speeders and hover-trains whizzed. The lift was not working, and the stairway reeked of mildew.

“Home, sweet home,” Lekin quipped, as he unlocked his door with an electromagnetic key card and pass-code.

He removed his coat and flung it on a low table in the apartment’s vestibule, then turned to take Zaq’s, which he handled with surprising care and hung gingerly in the hall closet. “Come in, Mr. Hawkes,” he urged, before sitting at a rickety-looking wooden table situated under the living room’s only window.

Zaq sat across from him in the dingy little apartment, and crossed his arms. “So what’s this genius plan, Mr. Lekin?”

“It’s simplicity itself, Mr. Hawkes,” the old man said, slowly stretching out his leg under the table. “At midnight each night, Security locks the front doors, which means that for six hours, no one can go in or out of the building,” he explained, picking up a battered-looking datapad and sliding it across the table to Zaq. There were floorplans of the KuCrys office on the small screen, with attached notes and technical drawings. “The next morning, when the day-shift security folks arrive and we night cleaners are ready to go home, they open back up, an hour before the office officially opens. You know that, of course: you’re often there early enough to see it,” he said with a raised eyebrow. “Now, overnight, they increase their security coverage considerably by activating several dozen night-shift guard droids on the ground floor, but on the subterranean floor down here by the vault,” he said, “they just keep these two guards, near the lift.” Lekin pointed to two specific points on the digital blueprint, and stared into Zaq’s eyes. “And the lift is the only point of entry to the lower floor.”

Zaq’s brow furrowed. “You can’t be thinking of hitting the vault,” he scoffed.

Mr. Lekin quirked his head to one side. “That’s where they keep the crystals, Mr. Hawkes.”

“Is this a joke,” Zaq asked incredulously, “or are you insane?”

The old janitor pretended not to hear him. “My routine is the same every night. I spend the first few hours collecting rubbish and doing general cleaning and light maintenance on the offices on the upper floors, like yours, working my way down. Then I’m escorted to the sub-basement, where I prep the mop bucket and floor buffer before moving on to the lower floor of the building. The whole time I’m down there, I work basically unattended. Maybe once every other hour, someone will pop down in the lift to check up on me. But for about two hours every night, I methodically clean a sterile marble corridor, which leads to a large circular metal door, on the other side of which is one of the biggest collections of riches in the Galaxy.”

Zaq shook his head. “Yes, but you can’t open that door, not without the access code! The code is nineteen digits long, it’s changed weekly, and it’s only entrusted to two people.”

Lekin nodded, his eyes gleaming. “Ms. VanBurm, a lifelong and unwaveringly-loyal company servant who runs the day-to-day crystal appraisal operations at the main office. And, of course, Mistress Kaylika of the Kanu, Chief Executive Officer of the Kuat Crystal Corporation and self-appointed queen of the interstellar trade in gemstones and industrial crystals.” His tone was witheringly sarcastic.

“Okay, you’ve done your homework,” Zaq allowed, trying not to smile at the old man’s characterization of the self-important redheaded CEO, “but you haven’t answered the proverbial sixty-four-thousand-credit question: how do you intend to get the vault’s access code?”

“Well, that’s where you come in, Mr. Hawkes,” Lekin said. Zaq frowned in confusion, and leaned forward unconsciously as Lekin continued: “Originally, I’d planned on this being a solo mission, but that’s no longer possible.” He shook his head, annoyed. “The first night I started here, three weeks ago when the janitor’s union transferred me to this building, I discovered – quite by accident – that Mistress Kaylika kept the week’s code on a slip of paper in her desk drawer. Not an unpopular place to store notes-to-self, I’ve found,” he added wryly. “At first I thought the long string of numbers and letters was just nonsense, but then I realized: it was the exact same length as the display on the vault.” He was nodding, slowly but repeatedly, and his smile was calmly confident. “It was the vault code. And at the start of every work week, it was a new set of numbers, on a new slip of paper, until just this past week. I’ve looked and looked since then, but there’s no slip of paper anymore.” He frowned.

“If you had the code, why didn’t you use it?” Zaq asked suspiciously.

“I know! I’ve asked myself the same thing, a million times. I was complacent, I guess? And cowardly. Cowardly complacency. But, look, my hesitation is your opportunity, Mr. Hawkes – that’s my point!”

“My opportunity,” Zaq echoed sourly, leaning back in his chair. “And what exactly do you want from me, before I get to cash in on this ‘opportunity?’” He regarded the old man carefully.

“Nothing much,” Lekin said with another surprisingly youthful-looking smile. “Let’s call it… proof of your conviction. This evening, the company is hosting a party at New Kalat Kanu, for the delegation from the Imperial Crystal Exchange Authority. You’re attending, aren’t you?”

“I was invited, yes,” Zaq said, his mind churning. “But you can’t really think Kaylika keeps the code at home, unsecured?”

“When you get to the party, find her private study. Look in the top right drawer of the desk – the same place you keep your own private notes.”

“This is absurd,” the young Manager said, shaking his head and pushing himself up out of his chair. “Even if she does keep a slip of paper with the code on it - which seems unlikely, given how stupid such a habit would be - and even if I somehow manage to sneak away from the party and get hold of that slip of paper - which seems more easily said than done - and even if you could then somehow manage to slip into the vault without being seen - no small feat, given the guards and holocameras and all - how in the Galaxy were you planning on getting the crystals out of the building?!”

Mr. Lekin held up his hands in a gesture of supplication, and slowly pushed himself to standing. He limped over to the table over which he’d thrown his coat, and removed a metal thermos from one of the deep pockets. He unscrewed the cap, and handed it to Zaq. The smell of potato-leek soup wafted out.

Zaq hefted the inconspicuous container, deep in thought. “How much would this hold?” he wondered aloud.

“How much do you want it to hold?” Mr. Lekin asked pointedly. “How much is your revenge worth? Would a million credits suit you?”

Zaq’s eyes widened, as he imagined that much wealth, hidden in such a small, humble container. “Each?” he whispered.

“I shouldn’t think that’d be too hard to do. Tiny things, cut crystals.”

“They probably wouldn’t even notice this many had gone missing,” Zaq said bitterly, letting his outstretched hands sag a bit with the weight of the metal thermos.

“Or at least, by the time they do notice,” Mr. Lekin amended, “I’ll be retired and you’ll be fired.” He snatched the thermos back from Zaq’s hands suddenly, and met the younger man’s surprised eyes with a stare of his own. Again, Lekin seemed momentarily to be a much younger, much livelier man.

“Why should I trust you?” Zaq asked.

“We have the same objective, Mr. Hawkes,” Lekin replied evenly. “We have no choice but to trust each other, if we want to achieve our goal.”

“Your confidence is infectious,” Zaq said, turning to retrieve his coat from the closet.

“Is that a ‘yes?’” Lekin asked.

“No,” Zaq said, putting on his coat, “it isn’t.”

“I see,” Lekin said solemnly, and he limped over to the door to let Zaq out. “Well, be sure to wear something nice,” he said as Zaq crossed the threshold. The younger man turned around on the staircase landing and shot Lekin a confused expression. “At the party tonight,” the old man clarified with a wink, and then he shut the door and locked it.



The Kuati word Kalat translated into Galactic Basic as “castle,” or “palace,” and the ten Great Families of Kuat – the aristocratic dynasties which dominated the planet’s rigid caste system – each maintained at least one of the huge estates. The Kanu Family was no exception. But the Kanu were no longer based out of their traditional Kalat, the building that had become the Kuat Crystal Corporation’s main office. Instead, their home address was a glitzy, newly-constructed mansion perched on a hill overlooking Kuat City. And as he approached this showy new Kalat of the Kanu, which was all aglow for the party, Zaq Hawkes reflected on the history of the Family, and the circumstances which had inspired its leadership to construct the new building.

When the Empire was driven off-world after the so-called Fourth Battle of Kuat, the New Republic exiled all of the heads-of-household of the Families with close ties to the Palpatine regime, including Wyl Trykon of the Kanu. The Family’s matriarchs had been quick to reclaim the Kanu holdings after Trykon’s banishment, but they had been quicker still to decide that the old Kalat had been tainted by the residency of Trykon “The Pretender.” Kaylika was elected the new head-of-household just a few months into the New Republic occupation, and she immediately decreed that a new Kalat should be built, to reflect the rebirth of the House of Kanu, as a Family bound to serve the reborn Republic.

As head-of-household of the Kanu, Kaylika controlled the Family’s wealth, and since that wealth was primarily invested in the Kuat Crystal Corporation, the company which she headed as CEO, she often threw gala entertainments at her new Kalat for the benefit of important KuCrys clients, potential business partners, or government regulators of the crystal trade. The reception festivities for the delegates from the Imperial Crystal Exchange Authority were no exception. Since Zaq was a senior Manager, he was frequently invited to these soirees, especially when Kaylika was entertaining guests from more patriarchal planets or companies, and so he’d walked through the front doors – garish portals carved from thick sheets of synthetic red crystal, sand-blasted to display the Kanu coat of arms and the KuCrys logo – many times before.

But each time he did, he shuddered involuntarily. It was a small thing – a sudden feeling of being cold when he crossed the threshold – and every time before, Zaq had shrugged it off and promptly forgotten it.

But in that moment, on that night, as he took that step through the doorway and mentally prepared himself to charm the Imperial representatives, suddenly Zaq was awash in a chilling wave of bitingly detailed memories. He felt the discomfort of entering, as usual, but it was magnified by the remembrance of all the times which had come before. He shivered violently. And with this clear-as-ice déjà vu, understanding came too, as if a great truth were being transmitted directly into Zaq’s brain from some external source of objective wisdom: as impressive as the new Kalat was, and as cheery and welcoming as the party decorations seemed, the place was a symbol of everything Zaq hated about New Republic rule. The former rebels claimed to fight (and kill) for freedom and equality, but Zaq’s career prospects had not exactly been improved by the New Republic’s coming: for him, equality of opportunity and freedom to work for a fair wage seemed to be little more than hollow slogans. And for every atrocity the Republic’s propagandists accused the old Empire of perpetrating, it seemed the corporations and militaries of this new galactic government were determined to commit crimes against sentience which were just as heinous. Or were the deaths of hundreds of Itzorian slaves worth nothing, when compared with the thought of ever-more profits?

As he neared the foyer’s door, where the reception line ended and the ballroom began, the ambitious, disillusioned young man nodded grimly, a frown of determination darkening his handsome features. Tonight, he would make them pay, these hypocrites and liars, these cheaters and these murderers. After years of playing by the rules and dutifully moving their team forward at great personal cost, tonight he would reject the rigged game and start playing one with rules of his own devising. And he would win, eventually. With this resolution reiterated, Zaq smiled.

“Mistress Kaylika, the Kalat has never looked so lovely,” Zaq flattered, as he reached the head of the reception line, where the CEO stood fidgeting with her mild-mannered telbun at her side. “You have outdone yourself!”

“Indeed, Mr. Hawkes,” the redheaded woman said dubiously. She sounded bored. “You are most welcome to the home of the Kanu,” she said formally. Beside her, her companion slave sniffed snootily, and gave a stiff, abbreviated bow.

Ignoring the male slave, Zaq bowed to his employer, and moved past the pair and into the main ballroom.

As always, the room took Zaq’s breath away. Kaylika had spared no expense in building her new Kalat, and the ballroom was unquestionably the mansion’s crown jewel. The long rectangular room had double doors at each end, all sand-blasted red synth crystal like the building’s front portals, and alternating panels of windows and mirrors stretched down its full length. Three truly gigantic crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, casting cheery, prismatic, rainbow lights down on the proceedings. Most arresting of all, though, was the ballroom’s floor: the twinkling lights from the chandeliers shone down on a thousand thousand gemstones, sparkling back up from under thick plates of transparisteel in a kaleidoscopic riot of color, each individual stone seeming to vie for attention. It was a wantonly ostentatious display, and even though Zaq knew that the crystals and jewels were all fakes - even Kaylika’s wealth had limits - he had to admit that he couldn’t really tell by looking at them, through the thick protective barrier and in the imperfect light. He couldn’t help but gasp.

“Never fails to make an impression, eh?” asked a soft voice from behind him.

Zaq turned to find Mrs. Daloway smiling shyly up at him from over the rim of her nearly-empty cocktail glass.

“By design, Mrs. Daloway,” Zaq said with a nod and a thin-lipped smile. “By design.”

“She once told me that there’s one for every populated planet in the Galaxy,” the old woman said conspiratorially, gesturing with her glass to indicate the gem-strewn floor.

“And she walks across them all every time she goes from her front door to her hall bathroom,” Zaq said.

“By design, Mr. Hawkes,” Mrs. Daloway echoed, tapping her glass with a finger thoughtfully. “By design.” She drained the drink with one gulp, and then began to shake her head. “Mmm, that’s a rare sight,” she said, staring across the room at a slender, middle-aged man who was embracing Kaylika while her telbun looked on uncomfortably.

Zaq didn’t recognize the man, who wore an expensive-looking suit cut in the Kuati fashion.

“Mr. Lysander Dromos, in the flesh,” Mrs. Daloway went on, anticipating Zaq’s unasked question.

“Ah,” Zaq said, recalling the name, “the chief guarantor of Kuat Crystal.”

“Our very own insurance kingpin,” the old Chief Operations Officer agreed, her tone surprisingly harsh. “I wonder what brings him out tonight?”

Zaq recoiled at the venom in Daloway’s voice, and wondered if it was just more sexism coming to the surface. “Perhaps he’s just worried about all the crystals we’re hoarding in the company vault,” Zaq said lightly, thinking of Danqa Tierce and her group of concerned-looking Muun bankers, all so nervous about the ‘material wealth’ stockpiled in the KuCrys basement. He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“I doubt it,” Daloway continued sharply. “Dromos isn’t the sort to lose sleep. It really is distasteful, having a person with his history here. And to think, he’s Kuat Crystal’s last line of defense in case of disaster. Disturbing.” She shook her head, and made to take another sip of her drink. She seemed surprised to find her glass empty.

Zaq just stared dumbly.

“What, you don’t know?” Daloway asked when she noticed his vacant look.

He shrugged again, sheepishly.

“Lysander Dromos was a telbun, before the Liberation,” Mrs. Daloway said, drawing out the syllables of the man’s name and almost spitting out the word for companion-slave. “And not just any telbun: he was a common guttersnipe, until he caught the eye of The Pretender.”

“Dromos was Wyl Trykon’s telbun?!” Zaq couldn’t hide his astonishment. He knew all about Trykon’s public life - or rather he knew as much as the heavily-revised historical record would allow - but he knew precious little about his hero’s personal life.

“Can you imagine?” Mrs. Daloway asked, her voice dripping with contempt. “His family isn’t even of sufficient rank for him to test as a proper telbun; by all accounts Trykon simply liked the look of him and bought him off the street, thereby throwing away centuries of tradition. Not to mention the scandal of having not just one man running the Kanu Family, but two of them.” She sucked in a breath, and forced it out through her nose, loudly. “Of course, Trykon got what he deserved with all of it. The former pauper there cut some kind of deal with the New Republic; his master was exiled, while he came out of the transition with a significant personal fortune.” She sighed. “Which he’s subsequently used to set himself up as an insurer. Our insurer, in point of fact. As I said: distasteful and disturbing.” She frowned.

Zaq was frowning too, but not for the same reasons. He no longer cared if Kuat Crystal’s insurance was being provided by an unreliable source, and he wasn’t scandalized at all by the thought of a caste-defying telbun. No, he was scowling at Lysander Dromos because, if Daloway’s judgmental biography was accurate, then the middle-aged man in the flattering suit had betrayed Zaq’s role model. Wyl Trykon had lifted Dromos out of the lowest tiers of the caste system and had made him his own mate, gender roles and sexuality politics be damned, and Dromos had repaid Trykon’s kindness by turning on him and siding with the invaders: it was a monstrous story of selfishness and ingratitude, almost unbelievable. But as he looked at Dromos’s smug, insinuating smile and too-familiar mannerisms with Kaylika, Zaq knew it was all true. And he agreed with Mrs. Daloway: he found Lysander Dromos distasteful and disturbing, too.

Before Zaq could think of something appropriate to say in response, though, Mrs. Daloway suddenly stiffened, and declined her head in a slight bow. Zaq followed her line of sight and saw Kaylika of the Kanu striding toward them, her telbun in tow. And behind the redheaded CEO and her companion-slave, he saw several Human males in Imperial uniforms: the Thrawnist delegation had apparently arrived.

“It is my great pleasure to introduce Moff Doxos Prag, acting Chief Administrator of the Imperial Crystal Exchange Authority,” Kaylika cooed, nodding deferentially toward the tallest of the Imperial men. “Chief Administrator Prag, this is Mrs. Daloway, my second-in-command,” she continued, “and Mr. Zaq Hawkes, one of our senior Managers.” Kaylika didn’t skip a beat: “If you would excuse us, please, Mr. Hawkes,” she said with a fake-looking smile.

“Of course, Mistress,” Zaq said, bowing formally. “It’s an honor to have met you, Moff Prag,” he said in parting.

Well, that’s it, he thought to himself as he melted back into the crowd. Kaylika will make the pitch to the Imperials, now, and she doesn’t want me around. He glanced back at the tableau - two aging KuCrys matriarchs in evening gowns skulking in a corner with three uniformed old men and a disempowered slave - and he scowled. Fine then. If they’re so intent on keeping me out of the loop, he mentally whinged, I might as well go check out Kaylika’s study, since they’re too busy putting my plan into action to even notice my absence.

As Zaq strode out of the ballroom, he found himself surprised by his own anger. It felt righteous and justified and electrifying and right… but also frighteningly intense, as if at any moment it could erupt, beyond his control. Don’t get angry, he admonished himself lightly. Get even.

Kaylika’s study was at the end of a long hallway. With the hum of conversation and soft music nearly inaudible behind him, Zaq squared his shoulders and tried the door.

It opened, unlocked. No alarms sounded. The room was empty, and Zaq saw neither droids nor security cameras. Still, as he stepped into the austere home office he felt acutely aware that he was trespassing in one of Kaylika’s private rooms: the bare, functional decor was clearly not meant to be seen by the same guests who were invited to dance on a showy faux-crystal floor. His stomach clenched as he realized that if someone happened upon him poking around, he had no plausible excuse prepared to explain his presence.

“Let’s get this over with,” he muttered to himself. Kaylika’s desk was over by the far wall, and Zaq crossed quickly to check the drawers, as Mr. Lekin had suggested. He took out a handkerchief, and made sure to keep the fabric between his fingers and the shiny desk, wary of leaving fingerprints. With slightly trembling hands, he gingerly pulled open the top right drawer of the desk…

…and gasped out loud.

In the drawer was a single sheet of paper, and scrawled along the top was a 19-digit number.

Zaq had to enter the long sequence of numbers into his personal datapad three times before his shaking hands managed to get it right. With his heart pounding in his ears, he closed the drawer, pocketed his datapad, and retreated from the room. Back in the ballroom, he made weak excuses to a couple of his coworkers, complaining that he wasn’t used to drinking alcohol anymore, and then he fled the Kalat altogether.

Location:
    Kuat City
    Kuat
    the Core Worlds region of the Galaxy
Time:
    9 years, 10 months, 7 days after Palpatine’s death


It was another chilly winter morning on Kuat, but for once, Zaq Hawkes didn’t feel cold as he walked to work.

For once, he felt… good. The sun was shining cheerfully, and if all had gone according to plan, Mr. Lekin was just about to leave KuCrys with a thermos full of cut and polished crystals, an untraceable stash worth a couple million credits. For the first time in a long while, Zaq felt optimistic about his future prospects. For once, he felt like he was in control of his own destiny.

Zaq walked through the office’s double doors, their green-and-purple coloration still undulating as their never-ending oxidization process continued, and when the security guards greeted him warmly, he responded in kind. Nanci and the others seemed calm; no alarms were going off. Zaq couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. The old man pulled it off! he rejoiced, just as Mr. Lekin appeared, limping across the security foyer to sign out.

“Good morning, Mr. Hawkes,” the old man said as he typed in his ID code and clocked out.

“Morning, Mr. Lekin,” Zaq said quietly. The old janitor gave no outward sign that anything was amiss as he walked out the door, thermos in his hand. Zaq took a deep breath, let it out, finished clocking in at Nanci Fram’s desk, and then went to his office to start his work day.

Instinctively, he went to water Gary, but the plant’s leaves were still charred and blackened. Zaq felt a twinge of sorrow, and regret. How did that even happen? he wondered sadly. With some reluctance, the young manager picked up the dead potted planet, and dumped it in the waste basket.

Minutes later, Zaq heard running footsteps outside his office door, followed by raised voices. The words were indistinct but the tone was unmistakably agitated. “What the hell?” he wondered aloud. Curious - and with a mounting sense of foreboding - he stepped into the hall.

The appraisers - the fifty low-level employees who spent their days sorting through rough crystals, determining which could be cut, and how - were walking past his door toward the exit, and beyond the steady stream of people, Zaq could see that several women were gathered in the lobby, including a couple of the company’s executives. He followed the crowd, his confusion growing.

In the lobby, Mrs. Daloway was standing off to the side, her face white as a Star Destroyer, while the workers shuffled out the front door. When they had all gone, Ms. Smyth crossed to the security desk. “Is Kaylika in yet?” she demanded. “Is she in yet?!”

Nanci Fram backed away a few centimeters, startled. “No, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

KuCrys’s CFO whirled around and left in a huff.

The only people left were Zaq, Mrs. Daloway, and the front desk’s security guards. Zaq took one look at the COO’s dazed expression, and decided to give her some space. He stepped up to the security desk, and asked Nanci Fram: “What’s going on?”

The broad-faced woman shrugged, and shook her head, obviously troubled.

“Come with me, Mr. Hawkes,” Mrs. Daloway said from behind Zaq. He turned to face her. “I’ll show you.”

The woman walked slowly away, and Zaq followed. His heartbeat raced faster and faster, as she led him into the lift, and then down to the lower level: the vault floor. When the doors slid open, she began to speak. “I remind you that you have signed a confidentiality agreement, Mr. Hawkes,” she said weakly. Zaq just nodded dumbly. “Under no circumstances will you discuss… what you are about to see. Not with anyone below executive management! Is that understood?” Her voice had built in intensity, until she was almost yelling.

“Yes, ma’am,” Zaq managed, as they rounded a corner and came to the vault corridor. But as alarming as Mrs. Daloway’s strangeness was, what he saw next was truly astonishing: the large metal door at the end of the long marble hallway was standing ajar. Inside the vault, beyond the big open ring, he could make out the outlines of long tables… but nothing else.

Unconsciously, he picked up his pace, until he was almost jogging. After what seemed like an eternity, he stepped into the vault…

…and saw that it was empty.

Horrifed, Zaq spun in a circle, his eyes sweeping the small, metal-walled room for the tell-tale sparkle of crystal. But it was fruitless: the entire vault had been picked clean. Dozens of metal trays lay scattered across the tables and floor. Normally, Zaq knew, the trays were neatly arranged on the tables, and each one held a sizable mound of rough, uncut crystals, ready for appraisal. Not anymore. Gone, too, were the cut and polished crystals: the far wall was lined in velvet, and was very well-lit, but the mountings which protruded from it at regular intervals were all empty. The bulk of Kuat Crystal’s industrial-grade stock, and all of its priceless showpiece gems, had vanished.

After a time, Zaq realized that his jaw had fallen open. He swallowed, and licked his lips, before finally breaking the profound silence of the tomb-like room. “Two tons of crystals,” he whispered. “There were two tons down here.”

Footsteps echoed from the corridor. Nanci Fram, visibly shaken, stepped into the vault. “Mistress Kaylika has arrived. You’re both wanted in the conference room, right away.”

Mrs. Daloway hurried out, and after one final, incredulous look at the vacant mountings and empty metal trays, Zaq followed.



The meeting was very different than the one which had been called on the morning of the Itzor Massacre, the week before. It was much more intimate, and even more emotionally tense.

Zaq walked into the conference room and found he was the only Manager present. Kaylika and Ms. Smyth were standing on the far side of the table, and Mrs. Daloway, who’d come in just ahead of Zaq, joined them. On the near side of the table, Zaq saw Nanci Fram and two of her security guards, standing attentively. And to the side, escorted by Kaylika’s secretary droid, stood Lysander Dromos and a Human male Zaq didn’t recognize.

Without preamble, Kaylika sat, and everyone else followed suit. Zaq studied the face of the unfamiliar man, as Kuat Crystal’s CEO began to speak. “In case any of you don’t already know, this is Lysander Dromos, from the Kuati Insurance Syndicate, our underwriters. We’ve discussed the… incident, and he was good enough to come here himself. We’re agreed that our most important priority must be to maintain the appearance of normalcy: if we report a theft, there will be a police investigation, and we’ll lose everything… The news media will pick up the story, and regardless of the outcome of the investigation, public confidence in the company - and by extension in the crystal trade itself - will vanish. And so, we are going to handle this with discretion.” She looked at the two visitors. “Mr. Dromos,” she said, gesturing for him to take the floor.

“Kuati Insurance has been behind Kuat Crystal since its founding five years ago, after the liberation,” the former telbun said, “and today is no different.” He turned to the man beside him, the one Zaq didn’t recognize. “That said, it’s my pleasure to introduce Mr. Daryl Jans, the Syndicate’s top Insurance Investigator.”

“Thank you, Mr. Dromos,” Jans said in a delicate, coolly controlled voice, “and good morning to you all.” The investigator made eye contact with every person in the room as he continued, his words coming slowly but clearly: “There is no need to panic, everyone; we will find the crystals.”

Veronika Smyth scoffed. “No need to panic?!” she screeched. “A sector’s-worth of crystals has disappeared into the ether, including the prize pieces of our collection, and you’re telling us not to panic?”

Mr. Jans’s nose twitched, but he didn’t dignify Smyth’s outburst with a response. “We should begin,” he said mildly. “If we could please call the night staff back in, and I’d like to see the vault.”

Kaylika herself led the insurance man out, and Dromos and the security women followed.

“We’d better hope that investigator knows his business,” Mrs. Daloway murmured. “Dromos will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying the claim. He’s the Syndicate’s majority shareholder: if they’re forced to pay out he’d fall back into the gutter, where he began.” Ms. Smyth, for her part, just sat down at the conference table dejectedly.

“What should I do?” Zaq asked Mrs. Daloway.

“Coordinate with the droid,” she replied gruffly. “Call the janitorial staff and get them back!”

Zaq nodded, and gestured at the droid for it to follow him. As he walked the short distance to Kaylika Kanu’s outer office, where they could place the calls, Zaq wondered if Mr. Lekin would even answer. He was a proven liar and a thief of apparently supernatural ability: would he have disappeared along with the two tons of crystal? With a worrisome frown, Zaq did what came naturally: he went to work.



To Zaq’s considerable surprise, Mr. Lekin answered the call almost immediately. After a brief pause while the connection was established, the old man’s face materialized from the desk’s holoemitter. Lekin was grinning, which only made Zaq frown more intensely.

“Sorry to bother you at home, Mr. Lekin,” Zaq said carefully, acutely aware that the protocol droid was in the room, watching the exchange, “but there’s been an… unforeseen development, here at the office.”

“A what?” Lekin’s holo asked, feigning ignorance well enough, except for the smile etched into his face.

Zaq’s eyes flashed with anger, but he kept it in check. “I said there’s been an unforeseen development,” he said with exaggerated patience and clarity. “A bit of an emergency, really. I’m sure it will all work out fine, but upper management would like you to come back in, to help sort it out. As soon as possible.”

“Well, I can never resist a good mystery,” Lekin said with a wink, the hologram stuttering a bit as the connection lapsed momentarily. “I’ll be back right away.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lekin,” Zaq said. A glint of light drew his attention to the side of the room, where Kaylika’s silver-plated secretary droid had begun to walk toward the door. It wasn’t clear why the droid was leaving, but Zaq decided to take the opportunity to speak more openly with Lekin. The moment the droid had gone, he turned back to the transmitter. “How?” he demanded, careful to avoid saying anything too obviously incriminating. “Why?!”

“Careful, Mr. Hawkes,” Lekin warned, his grin turning into a grimace. No doubt he too was worried about the call being recorded and reviewed at a later time. “Like you said, everything will work out fine.” The grin returned.

For half a second, Zaq could almost believe it. He wanted everything to work out fine, certainly. But then reality came crashing back: he was an accessory to the theft of two tons of crystals, and he knew that such an audacious crime would result in serious consequences for someone.

“Fine?!” he asked shrilly, so constricted with worry that he was unable to choke out more than one syllable.

“Fine,” Lekin confirmed solemnly. “You need to calm down, Mr. Hawkes. I’m sure whatever the problem is, it’s not that bad. I’ll leave now. I’m sure I’ll see you ‘round the office.” And without another word, Mr. Lekin cut the transmission.

Just as he did, the droid came back in. “Your presence is requested in the conference room, Mr. Hawkes. Urgently,” the droid added.

What now? Zaq asked himself as he moved toward the door.

“I suppose I will finish the calls to the night staff by myself,” the droid said as Zaq left.

“You do that,” Zaq snapped back, as he headed down the hall to see what more could go wrong.



This time, there were even fewer people in the conference room, and the mood was even more intense. Zaq walked in to find Kaylika, Ms. Smyth, and Mrs. Daloway on the far side of the table, and a short Bothan male in formal dress standing on the near side, talking.

“If you choose to purchase the inventory, you must alert me of your intention,” the Bothan purred in its feline voice. Zaq stood still and focused, intent on piecing together what was going on, even though he was arriving midway through a conversation. “I will then relay my client’s instructions regarding method of payment, and after receiving confirmation that payment has been processed, my client will relay the location where you may take possession of the inventory. It is important to note that I am to be kept ignorant of all details regarding any arrangement between my client and yourselves.” He produced a piece of flimsiplast, folded in quarters, and handed it to Kaylika. “This note, which I have not read, in accordance with my client’s instructions, specifies the inventory and my client’s terms of purchase.” His memorized speech complete, the Bothan took a deep breath and let it out, waiting patiently for a response.

“Mr. Bek’tu,” Veronika Smyth said quietly, “do you really expect us to believe that you don’t know who your client is?”

The Bothan seemed genuinely confused by the question. “I do not know the identity of my client,” he reiterated with an awkward shrug, a gesture Zaq knew was not native to his species. “Nor do I know what the inventory is. My client was very clear that I was to be kept ignorant of all details, as I said.”

Kaylika unfolded the flimsiplast note. Her jaw muscles worked furiously as she read it, and her off hand balled into a fist. “We will be in touch, Mr. Bek’tu,” she said curtly, and the Bothan’s hair bristled at her tone. He drew himself up to his full height, bowed with a wounded air, and walked out.

“What does it say?” Mrs. Daloway asked, wringing her hands.

Kaylika read the note again, this time aloud: “Now available for purchase: a selection of rough crystals, and several cut and polished crystals, net weight approximately two metric tons. Price: 1.2 billion Imperial Credits, or 1.4 billion New Republic Credits.”

“Emperor’s bones,” Ms. Smyth cursed under her breath.

“That’s all it says?” Mrs. Daloway asked weakly.

“This deal won’t last,” Kaylika continued to read, shaking her head in disbelief, “so act now while you still can. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Sale ends tomorrow.”

“Oh my,” the COO whimpered. “It’s a ransom note.”

“Do you want me to stop that ratty little alien lawyer before he slips away?” the CFO asked savagely.

Kaylika shook her head violently. “The Bothan doesn’t know anything!” she yelled. “Can’t you see we’re dealing with professionals? Just go tell Mr. Jans what’s happened, and somebody get me Lysander Dromos on the holo!” She stormed out of the room, and Smyth followed right behind her to carry out her order.

Everything was happening so fast. Zaq could barely keep up. Somehow, Mr. Lekin had stolen every crystal in the vault, which was an undeniably impressive feat but also incredibly stupid, since it only served to draw attention to the theft. And now, he was apparently sending lawyers with cryptic notes, in a bizarre effort to extort billions of credits? It didn’t make any sense. Zaq knew he needed more information, and just before Mrs. Daloway left, he thought of a way to get some.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Daloway?” he called, stopping the ashen-faced woman at the door.

“What is it, Mr. Hawkes? You heard: I have to call our shady insurer back in.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry. I just wanted permission to liaise with Mr. Jans on the investigation. Serve as a sort of representative of the company, if you will.” And make sure he doesn’t discover that I stole the vault code and gave it to the thief, he pointedly avoided adding.

“Why?” she asked distractedly, still wringing her hands.

Zaq hesitated, inventing a reasonable concern on the spot: “If we really have to give these madmen an answer by the end of the day, well then we all need to be communicating with each other as efficiently as possible, don’t we? And I can help with that.” It sounded pretty thin, but then he had another idea. “And besides, Mr. Jans was hired by the shady insurer, wasn’t he? We don’t want Dromos’s man wandering around unsupervised.”

Mrs. Daloway just sagged, as if she couldn’t even find the energy to shrug properly. “Fine, Mr. Hawkes. It can’t hurt. I’ll tell Jans right after I call Dromos.”

“Excellent,” Zaq said. “I’ll go find him then, and get to work.”



Zaq found Daryl Jans in the vault corridor, surrounded by a dozen droids of various makes and models, all busily moving about: small ones were surveying and recording the crime scene, while big industrial ones were hard at work drilling holes in the walls and digging up the floor. A fine white dust clogged the hallway, and Zaq coughed as he stepped off the lift. “What’s… what’s going on down here?” he asked, hacking.

“Mr. Hawkes, is it?” the insurance investigator asked through the haze. The man wore a breathing mask over his mouth and nose, which muffled his voice and lent it a nasal quality.

“Yes,” Zaq said, slowly getting control of his breathing. “Mrs. Daloway was going to speak to you… I’m to help you with your investigation.” He cleared his throat, loudly. “I’ve been placed at your disposal.”

The investigator seemed to study him for a moment. “Yes,” Jans said, squinting, “very good, Mr. Hawkes. Ms. Smyth was just down, and she told me about the ransom.” He handed Zaq one of the breathing masks. “If you’ll slip this on, I’ll walk you through our findings so far. It seems we’re on a deadline, now.”

Zaq slipped the mask over his nose and mouth, and adjusted the straps to fit. Soon he could breathe normally, which only made him more acutely aware of the fact that his eyes were itchy and watering.

“Better?” Jans asked.

“Better,” Zaq said gratefully.

“Good,” the investigator said. “The dust is a mixture of marble and permacrete and durasteel shavings, kicked up from the drills and digging machines you see all around.”

Zaq nodded. “Have they found anything?” he asked, over-enunciating to compensate for the mask.

Mr. Jans shook his head. “Not yet, but they will. The lift is the only way in or out, but the crystals were not removed by using the lift. We know this because every activation of the lift is recorded, and leaves an electronic time stamp in the security command center’s computer core. Last night, the lift was activated four times, as usual. Once to bring the two basement guards down, once to bring the night janitor down, once to bring the night janitor up, and once to bring the guards up. And in every instance, the lift returned immediately to standby mode on the main level.”

Zaq nodded again, working through the information in his head. “So the lift was never standing still long enough to load two tons of crystals.”

“Exactly,” Jans said. “The only remaining possibility is that the thieves tunneled in. And eventually, the droids will find that tunnel.”

Zaq inspected one of the giant gashes in the wall. Under the thin layer of marble there was a slab of thick durasteel plating, and then a deep band of permacrete before the raw soil began. How could Lekin have tunneled through all of that, Zaq wondered. “If they tunneled through all of this,” he asked aloud, “how could they do it unseen? There are cameras all around down here.” He looked down the hallway toward one of the holocameras, which was observing the demolition impassively, and then back at the inspector.

Mr. Jans seemed to sneer under his mask. “Somehow, they managed to turn off the recording system last night. And while there is a closed-circuit system, transmitting images from the cameras directly up to the command center, that system has a flaw: only half of the cameras can be shown on the monitors at once. With recording off, every camera was effectively blind for a full minute, every other minute.”

Zaq feigned surprise and horror, and made a show of taking a moment to consider the ‘new’ information. “But still,” he said finally, “one minute isn’t a lot of time.”

“It would appear to be enough time to slip in undetected,” Jans said bitterly. “Now, if you’ll notice the vault itself, the interior is intact and the door was not forced. They tunneled into the basement, Mr. Hawkes, timed their arrival to coincide with a minute during which the relevant cameras were blind, and then they simply opened the vault and walked in.”

“You think they cracked the vault code?” Zaq asked, his voice rising in pitch.

Again, Jans just paused, staring intently at Zaq as if taking his measure. “I’m ready to present my initial report to the executives, Mr. Hawkes. I’ve had a message from Mr. Dromos, and he is apparently coming back for the meeting. If you’ll follow me, I’ll tell you all what it is that I think.”

Zaq swallowed heavily, and nodded in acquiescence. Nervously, he followed the tall insurance investigator out of the dusty corridor and into the elevator. And as the lift climbed back up to the main level, Zaq tried desperately not to fidget, as nightmare scenarios ran through his head and he silently rehearsed an impassioned plea for mercy and forgiveness.



When Zaq and inspector Jans walked into the conference room, they found the executives and Lysander Dromos had already started the meeting.

“This should tide you over until the crystals can be recovered,” Dromos was saying, as he slid a few large credit chips across the table toward Kaylika.

The redheaded CEO stared at him with contempt. “Ten million Republic credits,” she observed dryly. “That’s what you’re giving us?”

“Oh, come on, Kaylika,” Dromos said, adjusting his fitted suit coat prissily. “You oversee every major trading center across the Galaxy: the second the thieves try to fence even one of those crystals, you’ll have the rest of them within a few hours. Try to relax.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed, and the muscles around her right nostril twitched. “You listen to me, Dromos,” she said slowly, her voice dangerously soft. “Kuat Crystal is the chief supplier of industrial- and gem-grade stones to the New Republic, the Imperial Remnant, and the Hutts. This office supplies a dozen sectors directly. The mere suggestion that we can no longer supply would be ruinous. A few credits are useless. We need the crystals back!”

Lysander Dromos leaned back in his chair, a sour expression spoiling his boyish good looks. “These lowlifes are playing you. There’s no way of knowing that they’ll give you back the crystals, even if you do give in to their demands. And either way, if we give them billions of credits, it will only make it more difficult to catch them.”

Before Kaylika could object, Dromos noticed Jans and Zaq standing awkwardly just inside the room, and waved them in. “Let’s hear what Mr. Jans has to say. Perhaps it will change our perspective, eh?”

The tall insurance inspector stepped up to the table, laid a datapad down as reference, and began to declaim. “It is quite obvious that the theft was perpetrated by one or more employees of Kuat Crystal Corporation.”

Zaq’s stomach contracted, but he gave no outward sign of distress as Jans continued his report.

“I believe the guilty party disabled the recording system for the building’s security holocameras last night, either manually or by remote, and that they also obtained the 19-digit code to the vault some time before they acted. Given the circumstances, I suspect they stole the code from Kalat Kanu, during the recent gala. Teams have been dispatched to lift fingerprints from the Kalat, the vault, and the security command center.”

Zaq had to focus very hard, just to keep breathing normally.

Lysander Dromos had steepled his fingers across his chest. “And what were you saying, Mr. Jans, about the most likely motive?”

“I believe the robbery was politically motivated, sir,” the investigator replied immediately.

What? Zaq wondered, his head spinning.

“And what makes you say that, Mr. Jans?” Dromos continued, still looking smug.

“If they were simply looking to make a profit,” Jans reasoned, “then a few handfuls of crystals would have been quite enough to satisfy that goal, and would have been much easier to get away with.”

Dromos nodded. “And which political factions are the most likely suspects, Mr. Jans,” he said with exaggerated patience.

The insurance investigator titled his head to the side for a moment, then replied. “The Thrawnist Imperials, the Bothan isolationalists, and the Abolitionist anti-slavery activists. The Imperials may be trying to take over the galactic crystal trade, the Bothans may wish to destabilize the New Republic’s economy in order to more easily break away as an independent polity, and the abolitionists may be responding to the so-called Itzorian Massacre.”

Lysander Dromos smiled thinly. “And are any KuCrys employees affiliated with any of these three political groups?”

Jans looked at his datapad again. “Seventeen droids working in the building were built during the Imperial occupation of Kuat, one ex-Stormtrooper works as a security guard, and no fewer than five employees have expressed sympathetic views towards the abolitionist movement, including…” he hesitated, glancing at the three executives on the opposite side of the table, “including the company’s Chief Operations Officer, Mrs. Jayne Daloway.”

Mrs. Daloway started, as if she’d been physically struck. “What?” she asked. “Me?”

“What are you implying?” demanded Veronika Smyth. She put a hand on Mrs. Daloway’s shoulder, in an unmistakable gesture of reassurance and solidarity.

“This is ridiculous,” Mrs. Daloway said weakly. “Just because I don’t like every single thing this company has ever done, it doesn’t mean I’m some sort of fringe activist. And it doesn’t mean I’m a thief!”

“Enough of this!” Kaylika bellowed. She pointed a finger at Dromos. “You’re screwing us? Screwing me?!”

The handsome former telbun shrugged, as if to say, ‘it’s nothing personal.’ “We have to allow Mr. Jans to complete his interviews of the staff,” he said, his apologetic tone eerily mismatched with his mirthful eyes. “Until we can rule out any kind of fraud, conclusively and completely, the Kuati Insurance Syndicate won’t even consider full settlement of your claim.”

“You… worm!” Kaylika said, rising out of her chair. “You know the claim’s legitimate! Your own investigator has told you that much! This is baldfaced greed, Dromos. As the Syndicate’s main underwriter, you stand to lose your ill-gotten fortune, or isn’t that true?”

“True that I’m a worm? Pah!” Dromos shot back as he too stood. “You’re something else, Kaylika. You dare call into question my business practices, when you’re the woman behind the most extensive slave trading network outside Hutt Space? I’m the greedy one? Pah!”

“We’ve paid you huge sums of money, every month, for five years, Dromos!” Kaylika ranted. “And we did it so that we would be safe, even if the unthinkable should happen. Well, the unthinkable has happened, Dromos. What has our investment gotten us?”

Dromos pushed away from the table, and began to put on his overcoat.

“Nothing,” Kaylika said, stunned. “Your response is nothing.” As he began to leave, she started shouting: “I’ll devote the rest of my life to ruining you, Dromos. I have powerful friends; you’ll regret this. Do you hear me! I’ll ruin you!”

But Lysander Dromos had gone, and Kaylika of the Kanu was screaming at no one in particular. Embarrassed, Zaq and the other executives slipped out of the conference room, leaving her alone to vent her rage.



Zaq left the conference room shaken. Kaylika of the Kanu, reduced to a jibbering wreck. The Galaxy had turned upside-down.

He wandered the halls of the KuCrys building, processing his lingering confusion and working through his shock. Why’d you do it, Lekin? he silently asked, over and over as he paced the corridors. And how?!

Maybe Jans was right. About everything. The man had already worked out that the robbery had to have been an inside job. He knew the vault code had been stolen during the party at Kaylika’s Kalat. He knew the recording system had been switched off, and the crime timed to coincide with the resulting camera blackout. Could he be right about Lekin’s motivations, too? Was the old janitor some sort of idealist, or patriot, or spy?

Without making a conscious choice about his destination, Zaq found his pacing had brought him back to the CEO’s outer office. Kaylika’s silver secretarial droid was inside, interfacing with the computer terminal fussily. Abruptly, Zaq made a decision, and stepped into the office. “Are the night staff still here?” he asked the automaton.

The droid looked up at him, its static expression somehow managing to convey surprise. “Mr. Hawkes?”

“The night staff!” Zaq repeated. “The janitors and the security guards from last night… are they still in the building?”

The droid’s photoreceptors darkened, then came back on, in a sort of blink of understanding. “Mr. Jans and his team completed the initial interviews almost one hour ago. The members of the night staff were sent home, pending further investigation.”

Zaq nodded, thinking.

“Was there something you needed, Mr. Hawkes?” the droid asked dutifully in its metallic voice.

“No. Thank you,” he said, withdrawing from the office and leaving the machine to its business. That was all I needed to know, he thought, as he went to his office, slipped on his overcoat, and left the KuCrys building.



Zaq jogged all the way to Mr. Lekin’s apartment, and he was out of breath when he got to the run-down building. Panting, he found the call box and pressed the appropriate button. Idly, he wondered if the battered-looking intercom even worked.

Just that moment, though, the door opened, revealing Mr. Lekin, still grinning.

“Oh!” Zaq said, taken aback. “I wasn’t… I just rang for you… I wanted… Look, we need to talk.”

The old man nodded, chuckling softly. “Why don’t you come on up?”

They made the slow ascent in silence, the old man pulling himself up the stairs using the handrail, and the young man brooding behind.

But as soon as Mr. Lekin closed his apartment door, Zaq began asking questions. He’d built a dam to contain his emotions, fearful of letting the investigator or his coworkers see his mounting panic; now, away from prying eyes in Mr. Lekin’s shabby apartment, that dam broke.

“We’re doomed!” he yelled piteously. “They’ve already figured out so much; soon they’ll know everything! That inspector, Jans, he knows the recording system was turned off, and he knows the code was stolen from Kaylika’s study during the party. He’s even worked out that you must have dug a tunnel down to the basement, to get the crystals out of the building.”

Mr. Lekin scoffed. “Smart man,” he said almost contemptuously, as he lowered himself into a chair.

“Yes, he is a smart man,” Zaq warned, “and he’s going to figure out the rest! What did you tell him, about last night?”

“I told him I went to work as usual. Waxed the floors, emptied the waste baskets, ate my sandwich. A typical night,” he said. “I lied.”

“You’re quite good at lying, Mr. Lekin,” Zaq snapped. “You told me you were only going to take a handful of crystals! Fill up your damned thermos!”

The old man nodded, and gave a little shrug. “I did,” he acknowledged.

“You did!” Zaq yelled. “Don’t you realize that by taking all of them, you’ve rendered the stones worthless? KuCrys is the only buyer in the Galaxy, and they’ve put the trading centers on alert… the crystals can’t be sold, now. Not one of them! If you try, they’ll arrest you.”

“Indeed, Mr. Hawkes,” Lekin said. “Which is why I have asked for a ransom.”

“They won’t pay it!” Zaq screamed, all his tension erupting as rage. “They can’t! There’s no money! Wake up, damn you: we’re both going to go to jail for the rest of our lives, if we don’t do something, and I mean right now!”

Lekin just looked up at Zaq, his lips pursed in an expression of bemusement. “And what do you want to do?”

“We have to come clean, tell them what we did. I’ll go to Kaylika, or maybe Mrs. Daloway: tell them we’ll give them back the crystals in exchange for our freedom and our silence. They’ll accept that deal. They’re so terrified of the theft being made public, they’ll agree to anything to keep it all a secret. I can get us out of this, Mr. Lekin, I can. You just have to tell me where the crystals are.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Hawkes,” Lekin said, shaking his head sadly. “I want to help you, but I don’t plan on negotiating with those people.”

Zaq’s breathing was ragged; he felt close to tears. “What is this all about, Mr. Lekin?” he asked. “Who’s behind it all?”

“It’s just me,” the old man said quietly. “Only me.”

“Fine,” Zaq said, changing tack, “you have political convictions - a cause - I can understand that. But the Insurance Syndicate is trying everything they can think of not to pay the claim. Your deadline is only a few hours away, and I’m sure they can delay at least that long. What do you think happens then, when your deadline passes and KuCrys has no funds to pay your ransom?”

“I require the money in full, Mr. Hawkes, and Kuat Crystal can, in fact, pay it. That is why they were so well-insured, after all.”

“This is madness! You’ll get nothing but a lifetime in jail, damn you. Is this cause of yours worth that?”

“Oh yes, Mr. Hawkes,” Lekin murmured, his eyes unblinking. “It’s worth everything, to me.”

Zaq shook his head, incredulous. “You leave me no choice, then. I have to turn myself in.”

The old janitor laughed, loudly and without warning. “Oh yeah? You’re just going to walk up to them and confess, without knowing where the booty is? Without any kind of bargaining chip? You’ve spent your whole life clawing your way up the social ladder, sublimating your desires and forgoing personal opportunities to serve this company, doing their dirty work for them and never complaining, all in the hopes that one day, it would pay off. You’re really going to throw all that away, now, just to spite me?”

Zaq reeled, swaying on his feet as the words hit home. But I have to do something! he said to himself. “Okay, Mr. Lekin. You’re right: I would need a bargaining chip. And since you won’t tell me where the crystals are, I’ll just have to find them myself.”

The old man smiled again. “Oh you will?”

“Yes,” Zaq promised, “I will. I will find the crystals. I’ll save the company, and save my job. Count on it.” He turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

But all the way down the stairs, Zaq could hear Lekin’s supercilious laughter booming behind him.



Zaq went straight back to KuCrys, signed in quickly at the front desk, and rushed to his office. Purposefully ignoring the empty shelf where Gary used to live, he crossed to his desk and logged into his computer terminal, pulling up all of the investigation files Daryl Jans’s team had compiled. Blueprints of the building’s basement scrolled across the screen, along with dossiers of the company’s workers, including the night janitor, Lionel Lekin. I’ll beat you, Zaq said to the old man’s portrait, which stared back at him dispassionately from the monitor. You’ll see: I will win!

A soft knock at his door made Zaq start. “Come in!” he called.

It was Daryl Jans. “Is this a bad time, Mr. Hawkes?” the investigator asked politely.

“Not at all, Mr. Jans. Please,” Zaq responded, standing up to wave the slightly older man in. He pulled at the sleeves of his coat nervously. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Jans said, slipping into the visitors’ chair Zaq had indicated. “I’ve been working my way through personnel, as you know, but it occurred to me that I haven’t yet talked to you.” He settled his piercing gaze on Zaq’s face, and the young Manager’s heart skipped a beat. “But when I came here, about an hour ago, I couldn’t find you. I checked with Security, and Fram said you’d just left the building, so I told her to page me the moment you got back.”

“I’m at your disposal,” Zaq said, as breezily as he could manage.

“Very good,” Jans said. “Out of curiosity, where did you go, after Dromos walked out of the meeting?”

“I needed some air,” Zaq said stupidly, his mind desperately searching for a plausible alibi. “It was upsetting, you see, seeing Mistress Kaylika so… upset.” He cursed himself silently.

“Uh huh,” Jans said. He sounded unconvinced. “Shall we begin our interview?” he finally asked.

“Sure,” Zaq said, wishing he could get a glass of water without looking conspicuous.

Jans took out a datapad. “You were born… here in Kuat City, were you not? To… working-class parents?” He looked up from the pad to hear - and watch - Zaq’s response.

“Yes,” Zaq said, grimacing apologetically. The caste system was fairly rigid on Kuat, and his humble origin was a constant source of embarrassment and shame, especially in the realm of interplanetary business. “My mother was a domestic servant, and my father a shipping clerk.”

“I see,” Jans said quietly. He checked the datapad again. “And after just five years with Kuat Crystal, you’ve worked your way up to senior Manager?”

Zaq’s chest swelled a bit. “Yes sir, that’s correct.”

“You’ve done well for yourself,” Jans said, fixing his shrewd eyes on Zaq’s.

“I like to think so,” Zaq said evenly, matching the man’s stare. “I certainly have no complaints,” he lied.

Jans smiled thinly. “Good. Well, if you don’t mind, I’m afraid I have to ask you if I may record your fingerprints. It’s only a formality, of course. We just want to rule you out as a suspect,” he said, his wan smile never fading, “conclusively.”

Did I leave a fingerprint somewhere in Kaylika’s private study? Zaq asked himself, the voice of his internal monologue shrill and panicked. Or worse, did I lose a hair in the drawer of her desk? Or is this guy just grasping at straws? “Yes of course,” was all he said aloud, though. He couldn’t believe it when he’d stopped speaking and his voice hadn’t cracked.

Jans slid the datapad across the desk. “Please place each finger on the screen, in the indicated box, as the program prompts you,” he said.

Zaq did so, placing each of his digits on the pad in a predetermined order, one after the other. As the machine whirred quietly through its preprogrammed sequence, Zaq wrestled control over his emotions. You have nothing to be afraid of, he admonished himself. If Jans knew you were involved he would act. Show a little courage and ask him some questions. Pick his brain, piece together the clues, and solve this mystery! “You can’t really suspect kindly Mrs. Daloway of stealing two tons of crystals, can you?” he asked, keeping his tone calm, earnest, and almost friendly.

Jans seemed surprised by the sudden question. “Of all the people at the gala, she was the only one Kaylika truly trusted,” the investigator said, “and she knew the Kalat’s layout intimately. She could easily have gotten in and out of her boss’s study without being seen.” Again, his eyes seemed to study Zaq’s. “The question is, was she brave enough to do it. Does she have the necessary drive? The ambition...”

“I can’t imagine a person who could commit such an audacious crime,” Zaq said, surprised by how much truth was in that statement. What did he really know about Lionel Lekin, anyway? The old man was a mystery, his motives unimaginable.

“No, you understand ambition, Mr. Hawkes,” the inspector said, matter-of-factly. “And I find it hard to believe your imagination is quite so limited as you purport.” Just at that moment, the datapad beeped three times, announcing the completion of the fingerprinting program. He smiled again. “All done, now. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“My pleasure, Inspector,” Zaq said, pulling his hand back as Jans retrieved his datapad.

Jans looked over the scans thoughtfully, tapping buttons and scrolling through images Zaq couldn’t see from his vantage point. At length, the inspector sighed heavily. “Well, go on, Mr. Hawkes,” he said. “Tell me how you did it. How did you get more than a billion credits of crystals - two tons of stones - past a sealed door, durasteel-lined hallways, a holocamera surveillance system, a lift that can’t be overridden, and dozens of security guards, both mechanical and biological? I still haven’t found any tunnels downstairs, so why don’t you just tell me: how did you do it?”

Fear coursed through Zaq’s veins, chilling him to the core, but somehow he maintained his composure. “I’m really not that smart,” Zaq said evenly. “I wish I were: if I could figure out how it was done I might save my job.”

Mr. Jans let out a single chuckle. “Your job,” he echoed. “Maybe you made a pact with the Imperials? You get to run their new cartel after Kuat Crystal implodes?”

“I’m not the villain in some cheap holodrama, Inspector. I know what you’re doing. You’re testing me: evaluating my responses to stressful stimuli and trying to uncover some hidden guilt. But it won’t work, Mr. Jans, because I’m not guilty of any crime. The truth is that I haven’t done anything wrong, and that’s why you haven’t arrested me.”

“Maybe,” Jans said with a shrug, squinting at Zaq. He paused, as if considering his next words very carefully, and then threw up his hands. “We found a partial print at the Kalat,” he said, “but it was inconclusive. There’s no trail left to follow. No suspects to interrogate. No tunnels to explore. The building is about to close for the night, and in about an hour the deadline for the ransom passes. And there’s nothing I can do.”

Zaq swallowed. He nodded. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jans,” he said. And he meant it.

“Go home, Mr. Hawkes,” the inspector said with a sigh. “We’re both exhausted… and there’s nothing more for us to do here.” And without another word, the defeated inspector stood up, and walked out of Zaq’s office.

Zaq waited until he was sure the man had gone, and then let out a huge sigh of relief. “That was too fucking close,” he muttered to himself. “Fuck.”

He sat in his chair a while, waiting for his hands to stop shaking long enough to pull his overcoat on. While he waited, he couldn’t help but replay the tense conversation in his head.

No tunnels to explore, Jans had said. How did Lekin manage to get the crystals out, without a tunnel? Zaq wondered.

About an hour until the deadline, the inspector had said. Time’s running out, Zaq worried. I have to solve this soon or I’ll be joining the janitor in a prison cell.

We’re both exhausted, Jans had said. I really am feeling drained, Zaq realized.

But as the thoughts replayed themselves in his head, the words started to echo, and Zaq suddenly bolted up in his seat. Tunnels. Janitor. Drained. He grabbed his coat, his hands suddenly rock-steady. Tunnels. Janitor. Drained. With a determined look on his face, he walked out to the lobby. Tunnels. Janitor. Drained. He signed out, took the external stairs two at a time, and jogged away from Kuat Crystal, in the general direction of Mr. Lekin’s apartment.

After three blocks, he found the place he was looking for: a nondescript stretch of pavement that he’d noticed the day before. It was almost midnight, and the street light overhead had burned out, but Zaq knew he was in the right spot. He dropped to his knees and groped around in the darkness until he found it: a bent-back sewer grate that left an opening just large enough for a Human adult to squeeze through. Tunnels, Janitor, Drained! his brain exulted. “Yeah, yeah,” he whispered to himself, as he peered into the absolute blackness. He took a deep breath to try to buck up his courage, and he almost started to cough, the maintenance shaft stank so badly. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he murmured, before lowering himself into the sewer and being swallowed up by the dark.

Location:
  The Citadel, headquarters of the Imperial Jedi Order
  The planet Lopen
  somewhere in the Unknown Regions of the Galaxy
Time:
  9 years, 9 months, 15 days after Palpatine’s death


Wyl Trykon leaned against the heavy door to the Citadel library until it closed softly behind him, and then he froze for a moment with his hand poised above the lightsaber clipped to his belt, listening. He could hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, loud and fast, but nothing else: the dark corridor was deserted. He let out the breath he’d been holding and allowed his hand to fall to his side, empty. “Everything will look better in the morning,” he muttered under his breath, in a tone that was equal parts sarcasm, bitterness, and stubborn hope, and then he padded away as quietly as he could.

Throughout Wyl’s childhood, on the planet Kuat, his mother had repeated that mantra, in a misguided – and largely vain – effort to cheer up her perpetually melancholy son. In light of his current situation, and after the course his life had taken, the whispered refrain seemed to Wyl to be criminally misleading. But still he found he couldn’t truly blame his mother. After all, he thought ruefully, the words are comforting, even now, despite the fact that these days I should really know better.

With an effort, Wyl pushed away thoughts of his past, and focused on the dangers of his present. He hurried through labyrinthine hallways and down out-of the way staircases, carefully avoiding the well-traveled routes frequented by the other members of the Imperial Jedi Order as he made his way inexorably (if circuitously) through the Citadel – the ancient, monumental, spired edifice which served as the Order’s training school and headquarters – toward the relative safety of his small sleeping chamber. At one point, he came upon a half-open door, and as he tiptoed past, he heard the faint sounds of someone crying. Everything will look better in the morning, he silently repeated to himself, and, fists clenched, he picked up his pace until the sobs - and the feelings of compassion they stirred within him - had faded behind him.

Life in the Citadel had always been dangerous and cruel, what with the rivalries between masters and the general competition between apprentices, but over the course of just four weeks, matters had become much, much worse. Compassion - always a liability - was now closer to a fatal flaw. Now, you can feel the malevolence, all around, Wyl thought grimly as he paused at another intersection to listen for sounds of pursuit. The air is pulsating with malice. He could hear nothing, so he continued. Which makes sense, I guess, given everything that’s been happening.

“Everything” had started some four weeks previously, when the Order had mobilized for war against the so-called Reborn Jedi Order – a rival faction of darksiders – and had fought a pitched battle on the planet Copperline. During that single battle, the two most powerful masters of the Imperial Order went missing, and many other members were slain by the perverse, unnaturally-empowered conscripts the Reborn employed en masse: sentient beings who’d been... imbued, somehow, with the raw, destructive energy of the Dark Side of the Force. Wyl himself had fought one of these Reborn abominations, in a desperate, horrifically violent duel. During that contest, he’d at last opened himself fully to the Dark Side, and with that terrible power coursing through him, Wyl had managed to murder his foe. But the struggle left him grievously wounded, and psychologically broken... his next memory was of waking up in the Citadel’s medical suite, a week later.

He’d woken up only to find his world turned upside-down. The two masters who had mysteriously disappeared during the Copperline debacle had been the highest-ranked, most-powerful Dark Jedi in the Order, and it was only their combined might and outwardly-maintained unity of purpose which kept the diverse factions of the shadowy organization together. With both of them presumed dead, the power vacuum was too tempting for the ambitious cult leaders to pass up: the Lord of the Sith and the Lady of the Krath had gathered their disciples together to push their individual agendas, and the Order that Wyl woke up to was riven along sectarian lines.

And to top it all off, sometime during Wyl’s recovery his Mistress, Fai Simsin – expert on the ancient Krath and self-proclaimed Dark Jedi Master – had left Lopen on some mysterious errand of her own. At first, Wyl had celebrated the news, seeing Simsin’s departure as a welcome break from the grueling crucible of mental and physical abuse that she called his “training,” but he soon realized that the mere presence of a powerful master was a kind of deterrent, on Lopen: masters, whether out of sympathy or (as in Simsin’s case) out of a twisted sense of possessiveness, tended to discourage others from killing their apprentices. Without Simsin, Wyl was left without her implicit protection, and in the savage, seemingly zero-sum environment of the Citadel, that made him terrifyingly vulnerable. Adepts of the Imperial Order were keen on proving themselves by defeating others, even more so after Copperline, and with Simsin gone, Wyl’s peers could focus all of their attacks on him, free of the fear of a master’s reprisals. Almost immediately after he was released from the medical suite, the bullying began, and it didn’t take long before the verbal abuse evolved into physical assaults.

At first Wyl had held his own, giving as good as he got, despite being small and slightly built, and relatively old compared to his peers… but that was before the ever-mounting tensions between the high Knights and Lords of the two opposing cults had inspired most members of the Order – even the lowly adepts – to wear a lightsaber at all times. Wyl had never excelled at saber work, and though most of his peers had access only to non-lethal training weapons, a few carried true, fully-powered lightsabers… “giving as good as he got” was no longer sufficient to ensure his survival.

And so, as he slunk ignobly through the maze-like interior of the Citadel, Wyl tried to remember that his cautiousness was a manifestation of prudence, rather than cowardice. But despite the unprecedented events of the preceding weeks, and the palpable tension in the air, the Kuati apprentice had difficulty convincing himself that the distinction mattered.

Prudent or cowardly, he thought to himself, frowning, having to sneak around means the same thing: I’m weak.

There was nothing Wyl Trykon hated more than the feeling of powerlessness, but, as distasteful as it was to admit, his conclusion was inescapable: he was weak. For weeks, he’d followed the same routine: wake up, sneak some food from the kitchens, sneak into the library and study in a half-hidden alcove far from the entrance until after dark, and then sneak back into his bed. He slept in his clothes for days at a time; Simsin’s old lightsaber was clipped to his belt, always. Every time he heard voices from around a corner, his heart would leap into his throat. Every time he passed someone heading the other way, whether or not their robes of rank were the same white as his own, he broke into a cold sweat. Weak, weak, weak, a mocking voice echoed in his memory. You’re weak, slave.

But as he turned a corner and linked up with the hallway that led to his room, he set aside his self-loathing long enough to marvel: As crushing as it may have been for my self-esteem, this avoidance strategy has worked! It was a small victory, but under the circumstances it would do: he was still alive. Wyl’s lips twitched up into a half-grin at the thought.

And then he finally reached his room, and the smile – along with any sense of accomplishment – vanished. His door was standing ajar, with its locking mechanism charred and slightly askew. A fresh surge of terror and frustration heightened his senses, and he reached out with the Force to probe the darkened little bedroom. Beyond the half-open portal, he could sense three familiar minds, waiting impatiently in the dark…

They were familiar, but decidedly not friendly.

Wyl swallowed in a suddenly-dry throat. He took a deep breath, unclipped Simsin’s old lightsaber from his belt, and drew himself up to his full height, before addressing the leader of the trio of interlopers through the open door: “Something I can help you with, Garek?”

Slowly, the door swung inward, and as the dim light from the hallway spilled into the bedroom, it illuminated three young Humans – boys, really – wearing matching white robes, just like Wyl’s. The biggest and tallest of the three, with the angry eyes and pouting lips, was the one to answer: “There is, actually, old man,” Garek said quietly, sizing Wyl up with a glance, his gaze lingering on the lightsaber hilt the older adept held ready in his right hand.

Idly, the thirty-year-old Kuati tried to imagine what the hate-filled teenager saw, looking at him. No doubt he can see my weaknesses, Wyl intuited, though perhaps he overestimates his advantage. I’m more than just a skinny, sleep-deprived, effeminate former plutocrat, past his prime. The thought tugged at the corners of Wyl’s mouth again, but this time he resisted the urge to grin.

Wyl’s musings were cut short as Garek continued: “My master thinks I need more dueling experience, before I can become a Knight.” The youth’s eyes burned with fury at the memory. “And so I was hoping that you could help me. Let’s fight.” He paused, and no one moved for a long moment. Then one of his flunkies shot him an uncertain glace, and Garek frowned, tilting his head to one side. “What’s the matter, old man,” he taunted, “are you afraid?” To either side, the other boys chortled dutifully.

Wyl sighed. He was afraid, but not in the way Garek was intimating with his sophomoric insults. The younger adept was fit, and the Force was with him, but Wyl had defeated a Reborn soldier on Copperline, and for months he had endured the tortuous “lessons” and painful “chastisements” of his Mistress, one of the most powerful and volatile Dark Jedi on the planet (and therefore in the Galaxy); Wyl was confident that he could withstand whatever pain awaited him on the other side of a duel with a teen bully. Indeed, after months spent delving into the darker depths of his psyche, learning to harness his fear, anger, and hatred to access the seductively empowering Dark Side, and after the terrifying-yet-exhilarating breakthrough on Copperline, when he’d finally surrendered to that seduction, Wyl was much more concerned with losing his own humanity than he was with the threat of physical pain. Suddenly, realization dawned: for weeks, Wyl had been hiding, not to avoid getting hurt, but rather to avoid situations wherein he might have to hurt others.

I will not be a murderer, he promised himself. I am not a monster. But even as he had the thought, he could feel a rush of adrenaline wash over him, eroding his defenses against the rising tide of the Dark Side. His fear increased along with his sense of raw power.

“Fear is my friend,” Wyl said softly, repeating the phrase with the same unnerving, childlike sing-song tone that Fai Simsin had used when she first taught it to him, “and anger is my ally.” On the final syllable, he pressed the activation button on Simsin’s old lightsaber – the weapon she had built years before, during her time as a member of the old Jedi Order – and the bright green blade arced into being with a terrific crashing hiss. A split-second later, his foes followed suit, and the dull red glow from their three training blades filled the small dark room on the other side of the door. “I thought you wanted a duel,” Wyl muttered, his grey-green eyes darting from side to side to indicate the other two blades Garek had brought to the fight.

“Changed my mind,” Garek said with a shrug.

Many of the doorways throughout the Citadel were narrow, pointed, ogival arches, including the portal to Wyl’s bedroom. This meant there wasn’t much space for Garek to attack from either side, but there was plenty of vertical clearance for saber movements. It was unsurprising, then, when the teenaged apprentice's first attack was a simple, downward-arcing cut, designed to neatly bisect Wyl’s head along its axis of symmetry. Such a straightforward move was easily blocked, and Wyl obligingly raised his saber to parry, but he was unprepared – as indeed he had often been in training – for just how much power was behind the blow. His own blade gave way much more than he’d intended as he absorbed the brutal impact, and as he pushed back against it to withdraw, he smelled the unmistakable odor of burnt hair. Not an encouraging start, he thought.

Before he could think beyond that, though, Garek’s friends stepped through the doorway, sabers raised in defense. Then, together, they tried a probing attack of their own. Wyl exhaled in a wordless guttural moan as he batted away one attacker’s swing and side-stepped out of the path of the other.

Garek watched from inside the room, his sulky mouth twisted into a sick, satisfied smile, made more unnerving by the red light which bathed his face but left the rest of his hulking form in shadow. “This is going to be fun,” he announced, even as the kid on the right stabbed again at Wyl, and the older adept staggered back another pace. Garek snickered, and stepped through the archway.

The sight of the three teens huddled together, filling the not-narrow-enough hallway with sabers en garde, was enough to give Wyl pause.

He spared a glance behind him: his room was at the end of a twenty-meter-long hallway, too far away from the nearest intersection to easily escape. Another swipe – this time from the flunky on the left – brought Wyl’s eyes back to his front. Damn, he thought.

His fear brought him focus and energy, but Wyl knew that connecting with his anger was the best way to tap into the Dark Side of the Force, and thus the surest path to victory. Giving in to anger, though, had its own dangers: after his experiences on Copperline, Wyl wasn’t sure he could control the Dark Side, once he let it in.

But as Wyl’s three opponents advanced together, red blades swinging in at him from all angles, his brain didn’t have time to debate such high-level strategy. Wyl’s body responded automatically to his enemies’ moves with appropriate counter-tactics, on muscle memory alone.

Three blades to one were long odds, though, even for experienced swordsmen. And Wyl was decidedly not one of those. Despite all his practice, he knew he was nowhere near competent enough to hold at bay multiple opponents… not for any appreciable length of time

Sure enough, Garek and his friends pushed steadily forward, scorching long gashes down the length of the hallway as they pressed their attack. Their low-powered training blades were still burning the stone walls; Wyl could well imagine what they would do to his skin. Motivated by such imaginings, Wyl managed to deflect or avoid every swing and thrust, but only by constantly giving ground. In what felt like no time at all, he could sense space opening up on either side of him, and he realized with dismay that he’d reached the T-junction: hallways stretched out on both sides, offering much more space for his foes to maneuver. And once they could spread out and surround him, Wyl knew he was finished.

“Have I taught you nothing?” a contemptuous voice asked, startling him. He looked left and right, but the halls were empty. He brought his eyes forward and saw the trio still pacing toward him, blades held out threateningly, but it didn’t look as if they’d heard the sudden question. “Yours is a Lucid Body, my apprentice,” Fai Simsin’s voice said again, seeming to come from everywhere at once. “Force the Force to do your bidding; take from it the abilities you require.”

Wyl knew what his Mistress meant, but he feared to do as she instructed.

The Lucid Body was his Mistress’s term for the set of talents that came naturally to them both: they could sense the Force within themselves much more completely than could most other Jedi of the Order. For Simsin and Trykon, their bodies were like clear-walled vessels in their minds’ eyes: they could “see” the flow of the Force within themselves, in great detail.

As supernatural abilities went, having a so-called Lucid Body wasn’t a particularly useful one. Other Jedi could shoot lightning from their fingertips, move things with their minds, or utterly dominate other beings with telepathy. Faced with the humiliating, worrying disparity between her own meager ability and those far-more-impressive talents of the various Jedi around her, Simsin had spent her life developing a new and different way of using the Force, which she called the Lucid Body Technique. And it was the Technique that her disembodied voice was urging Wyl to use against Garek and his friends.

Over the course of her lifetime, Simsin had built on her ability to sense the flow of the Force within herself, and she had learned how to alter those currents of energy, forcing her very essence to realign itself into different configurations, each designed to allow her to access a different aspect of the Force, and she had taught this Lucid Body Technique to Wyl. By pushing their natural talent in an unorthodox way, Fai and Wyl could “unlock” any Force-based talent imaginable. Telekinesis, mind tricks, electrical manipulation… there were no limits, if you were willing to continually twist and shape your very soul into whatever state was necessary at any given moment.

But as exhilarating as it was, taking hold of the raw Force and redirecting it through his body according to his own designs, Wyl also found the process to be almost existentially painful. It required him to hollow out of his sense of self, and attain a state of near-emptiness Simsin called “neutrality.” With his own personality and habitual energy patterns gone, the sliver of his consciousness that remained would then restart the flow of the Force in his body, wrestling the energy into predefined patterns, each of which facilitated a specific set of supernatural “powers,” like telekinesis or telepathy.

The effect was powerful, but it felt… wrong, somehow, as if Wyl were violating some divine law. Wrong, and dangerous. It was like diving too deeply into an impersonation of someone else, each time, and Wyl often feared that he was near to losing his own identity permanently.

So, yes, Wyl knew what Simsin’s voice was suggesting. He could use the Lucid Body Technique, and thereby blast his foes into a wall, or shock them with lightning, or turn them against each other. But Wyl’s every instinct screamed that doing so might someday prove irreversible, leaving his internal flow of energy – his very identity within the Force – irreparably altered.

But despite Wyl’s worries, when the three teenagers attacked again, their three-pronged assault decided the issue. As one blade sliced down at Wyl from above, and a second chopped at his left side, and a third thrust at him from the right, the older adept’s self-preservation instinct kicked in, and without conscious choice he dropped his consciousness into his Lucid Body, and started Simsin’s Technique. It was, after all, the way he’d been taught to respond to danger.

Time seemed to slow as his attention focused in on the flow of the Force within himself. Faintly, as if muffled by a great distance, he could hear Simsin’s familiar, cruel laugh. He ignored her, and concentrated on the energy swirling within him. Two primary currents pulsed through him: one flowing downward, and one upward. These dual rivers of light gathered in seven whirlpools – seven vortexes arranged in a line from the top of his head to the base of his spine. Each of the pools swirled at a different pace; each was a different color in his mind’s eye. The lowest, located at the bottom of his spine, clenched spasmodically, growling and spitting. Wyl knew from Fai’s theories and his own experience that this vortex of red, primal energy was the home of fear in the human body. He had also learned that it was the defining vortex of his own identity: the Force, in Wyl Trykon, manifested primarily through fear.

But the higher-level Force-based abilities – the Dark Side talents used for attack – required more than simple fear. Anger, for example, had been quite useful, in Wyl’s experience. And when anger and fear were combined, hatred was produced.

And hatred, when sufficiently cultivated, nurtured, and let free, was almost indistinguishable from the Dark Side itself. With hate flowing, a Force-user was capable of literally anything.

With Garek and his lackeys mid-charge, Wyl planted his feet in a wide stance, and directed the flow of the Force to change within him. He pushed the energy down though his spine, and it washed away the spastic spiral of fear, bringing his very being into a state of absolute stillness and emptiness: what Simsin termed neutrality. The process took only a moment, but it was unspeakably violent: the Force screamed through him as if it resented being so crudely thrown around and manhandled, and it scoured away the internal landscape of Wyl’s identity. The currents and courses of energy which had taken a lifetime to establish themselves were flushed out, leaving a still, cool reservoir of pure potential. Wyl felt the familiar agony as his selfhood drained away, and it took all his concentration to hold on to a tiny thread of self-awareness. But hold on he did, and he was left with a truly lucid body: clear of all defining characteristics, he was poised to adopt any pattern of energy-movement that he chose.

And so he chose the pattern that produced hatred.

From his placid, neutral state, Wyl focused on the centermost vortex – the one surrounding his heart – and fed Dark Side energy into it. Again, he was rocked by a supernaturally intense pain, but the Force responded: at once, Wyl awoke to full consciousness. He could feel the power coursing through him, and see with exaggerated clarity the three lightsabers continuing their mathematically-perfect arcs toward him. But with the Technique complete, and his hatred set free, three training sabers wielded by children were no longer any threat.

Wyl reached out with his left hand and stepped forward a pace, toward the attacker on that side. His foes hesitated at the sudden, unexpectedly-aggressive move, and Wyl took the split second opportunity to swipe his nails across the leftmost kid’s face. The boy screamed and spun away, bleeding, and his saber hilt fell to the floor. But Wyl was still in motion, twirling his own blade to meet Garek’s, which he deflected down and into the attacker on the right, so it sliced into the teen where his shoulder met his neck, burning into the artery. Horrified, Garek deactivated his blade, but it was too late: the other boy went down without a sound, the deep burrow of burnt flesh carved into his neck still smoking.

Seconds passed in quiet, while the burned boy’s brain slowly died, utterly deprived of blood and oxygen.

Garek was silent, hunched over one dying friend while the other whimpered a few paces behind, trying without much success to hold together the wet, ragged pieces of his own sliced-open face. Wyl stood above them, saber raised, with fury in his eyes and an almost orgasmic sense of accomplishment stirring in his veins.

“Good,” Fai’s voice cooed in his ears. “Good.” Her tone of approval was creepily incongruous as it overlapped with the incoherent mewling of the maimed teenager at Wyl’s feet.

As if in response to that dissonance, Wyl’s own personality suddenly reasserted itself, reversing the effects of the Technique with a wrenching speed. His habitual, fearful patterns switched on, and after an excruciated few seconds – during which the energies inside him crashed up against each other until they came to a new balance – Wyl felt once again like himself. The drug-like euphoria of hate faded, and he awoke into a nightmare, yet again. Confronted with the gruesome sight of what he had done, Wyl felt hot tears burn their way down his cheeks.

“You’re ready, my apprentice,” Fai’s voice continued.

Garek still did not hear her. The young man cradled the head of his dead friend in his lap, unmoving.

Wyl disengaged Fai’s old lightsaber, and the bright green blade retracted with a hiss.

“Come to my chambers,” Fai’s voice ordered.

Still crying, Wyl backed away from the wailing child he’d blinded and the silent, macabre pietá, and moved to obey his Mistress.



Outside the Citadel, superheated air currents blew spirals of dust miles into the sky as the planet Lopen cooked under the midday sun, but deep within the spired structure, the hallway leading to Fai Simsin’s chambers was dim, and preternaturally cold, and seemed possessed of the kind of absolute stillness only found in certain striking predators moments before they made a pouncing kill. But despite the sense of dread which seemed to deepen with his every step, Wyl Trykon did not turn away from his course, nor did he slow his advance until he came to the door at the end of the hall.

He knew his Mistress was expecting him, and through the Force, he could feel Simsin’s presence on the other side of the heavy metal door. But Simsin’s mind– always somewhat unpredictable – was at that moment a jumble of frantic, agitated thoughts, almost unrecognizable. And her anticipation was roiling at a feverish pitch, overshadowing everything else. She was anxious. Scared, even.

What now? Wyl wondered fatalistically. He sighed, and swiped at his eyes nervously, making sure no trace of his tears remained. But as his fingertips pressed against his eyelids, suddenly Wyl could see Garek again, holding one friend in a tangled heap of white-robed misery while the other keened piteously… the memory flashed quickly – a de-saturated holograph, bled of all color and life – and then faded, leaving only the hallway and the door to Simsin’s chambers. Wyl took a deep breath, and let it out. He noticed dried blood under his fingernails.

I am here, Mistress, Wyl thought, sending the silent announcement through the door. He was careful to infuse the message with a sense of subservience to mask his trauma and his mounting fear.

He felt the room beyond flash quickly with a sense of surprise, and a cold brightness he identified as a sharp stab of guilt, and then the confusion and fear he’d detected abruptly vanished. So you are, Simsin thought back at him, managing to convey disinterested sarcasm even via telepathy. Enter.

Wyl pushed open the metal door, and found his Mistress and her chambers to be just the way he remembered them. In a dark room that was all angles and corners, beneath a vaulted ceiling which stretched into shadow, a petite humanoid shape stood watching him. Fai Simsin’s familiar dark eyes stared out hungrily from her sharp-featured pale face, fixed on Wyl’s eyes.

But something about her seemed… off. Wyl hadn’t seen her in weeks, but he didn’t remember her grey-streaked hair ever looking quite so unkempt, and her black robes had never before been so ratty-looking and shapeless. What have you been up to? Wyl wondered.

But even as Wyl observed the discrepancies, Simsin seemed to grow in magnificence before his very eyes, until she was nothing less than the personification of pure power. She was suddenly… majestic.

Wyl knew on some level that it was all a trick – posture changes, mixed with mental manipulation and illusion tricks accomplished via the Technique – but he couldn’t help but be impressed by the display.

He dropped to his knees, and bowed his head. “You summoned me, Mistress,” he said, carefully maintaining the formal mode of speaking that she preferred.

“I did?” she asked quietly, her tone confused. “Why would I… I did?”

It wasn’t the response Wyl was expecting, and, despite the risk that she was playing some sort of wicked conversational game with him, he risked raising his head to look at her. Simsin had screwed her face up into a befuddled frown, and she was kneading her hands together anxiously. The commanding presence was gone; Simsin looked like a lost child. “Well… yes, Mistress. You did,” Wyl confirmed, still cautious.

Again, a sudden change came over Simsin. She leaned toward him at the hip, her legs slightly spread. “Of course,” she said, lasciviously licking her lips.

Revulsion and bewilderment competed for supremacy in Wyl’s mind. Why was she acting so strangely? She knew he liked boys.

As if she could read his thoughts, the behavior changed again. The confident, aristocratic air returned, and Simsin once again stared into his eyes. “Of course,” she repeated more matter-of-factly. “You have done well in my absence, youngling,” she said, the backhanded compliment comfortingly familiar. Simsin was back. “It is time for you to journey offworld, and face a trial, my apprentice. It is time to trade your white robes for brown, perhaps, or else to meet your destiny.”

Wyl’s heart skipped a beat. He had known from very early on during his captivity on Lopen that the only way he would regain his freedom would be to work his way through the Order’s ranks until they recognized him as a full Dark Jedi Knight. But in the hell that was the Citadel, hope was almost as poisonous as compassion, and so Wyl had put thoughts of the journey out of his mind. But if Fai Simsin were to be believed, the time for trial – and possibly for freedom – was at hand.

He chose his words with care. “I am honored, Mistress,” he said. “What must I do?”

Fai clenched her hands into fists, and sweat broke out on her brow, but her voice betrayed none of the struggle her body was showing when she answered: “There is a crystal, somewhere in the Galaxy, called Aleema’s Heart. It was lost long ago, and I…” she paused, as if editing herself as she spoke, “…I want it. Bring me Aleema’s Heart, and you will prove yourself a Knight.”

Hundreds of questions fought to be asked. The one that won was, “And I will be free to leave Lopen, and live my life as I see fit?”

Simsin’s jaw muscles worked as she ground her teeth. “Anything you desire!” she snapped. “Just get me the crystal!”

The outburst was only one in a series of strange behaviors, but Wyl’s curiosity was piqued. “Why is this Aleema’s Heart so important?” he asked.

“It is an heirloom of Aleema Keto,” Simsin said with a thin-lipped smile. “I want it for my collection. You used to be a collector, Wyl,” she said, using his name for the first time that he could recall. “You understand.”

Everything was so weird! Unconsciously, Wyl shook his head. “Why send me?” he asked. “Why not get the crystal yourself?”

Simsin’s balled-up fists began trembling. Wyl took a half-step back, and Fai seemed to notice his fear: she slowly relaxed her hands. “Aleema’s Heart has been lost for a very long time,” she said with exaggerated patience. “Finding it will be a challenge, and I thought it would make for a good test of your abilities, my apprentice.” Her forced smile was mildly nauseating.

“Alright,” Wyl said dubiously. “Where exactly should I start looking for this… Aleema’s Heart?”

“That is up to you,” Simsin said quickly, the words coming in a staccato patter. “You used to collect crystals, didn’t you? Find your old contacts, your dealers, your auction-rivals. I don’t care; just find me that crystal!” She was almost screeching by the end of her little motivational speech.

Wyl carefully schooled his expression. “Yes, Mistress,” he said. “I will find the Aleema’s Heart and bring it back. I will trade the white robes of an adept for the brown robes of a knight. I will no longer be an apprentice. I will be free.” The last statement was almost a question.

“Yes,” Simsin said tiredly, her manner once again slipping into that of a small, helpless child. “Yes, anything you want. Just get me the crystal.”

Wyl bowed one final time, and then left the room. With the metal door closed behind him, he paused.

What in hell was wrong with Fai Simsin? And how in hell was he going to find one particular crystal, lost thousands of years before in a Galaxy that encompassed hundreds of billions of star systems?

Location:
    Wayfarer-class Medium Transport Wanderer
    somewhere in the Unknown Regions of the Galaxy
Time:
    9 years, 10 months, 12 days after Palpatine’s death


Putting together the lightsaber had taken just slightly longer than one full standard day.

By the time the process was complete, Wyl was exhausted. He sprawled out on the floor of his quarters, the finished weapon in his hand, and just… let himself breathe. He closed his eyes. The muffled chugging sound of the Wanderer’s engines – little more than a faint vibration in the deck plating, really – was soothing beneath his skull.

He could feel a hard lump under his right calf, and he realized it was the small hydrospanner he’d used to open up Fai’s old lightsaber and remove the various bits. Those inner workings were scattered all around him, he knew: the Clone Wars-era power cell which had powered the weapon, several strands of wiring, and the three emerald-tinged gems which had given the original blade its bright green coloration.

Idly, Wyl wondered what color the new blade would be.

He thought about the three crystals he’d chosen to put in his refurbished saber, and tried to imagine what part of the visible spectrum would show when energy was sent through them and focused into a beam. The diamond probably wouldn’t affect the color at all, he reasoned, and the durindfire gem would make for a silvery, metallic hue, he had read somewhere. But the third crystal was a real mystery: it was a pure, clear Adegan gemstone, cut into a unique shape of 58 facets. What color blade would the one-of-a-kind Tetan III produce?

A troubling thought came next: choosing to put Aleema’s Heart in his lightsaber meant that more than just the blade’s color would be unpredictable. If the crystal was self-aware, as Wyl feared it was, then could it… refuse to channel the energy from the power cell? Could it sabotage the simple circuit of the lightsaber, and thereby prevent the weapon from working?

“Only one way to find out,” Wyl muttered. He opened his eyes, sat up, and pushed himself to standing. How many days had it been since last he slept? He tried not to think about it, and focused on the task at hand: testing his new lightsaber.

The hilt was cool and balanced in his hands – more balanced than it had ever felt before. He wondered at that for a moment. The parts he’d swapped out were almost identical to the originals, in terms of size and weight, and the hilt itself was unchanged, save for some polishing to remove the patina of age. Why, then, did the lightsaber feel so different? So much better?

Wyl remembered a passage from one of the books in the Citadel’s library: “A Jedi, carefully manipulating the Force, binds the components together – linking them on something more than a mechanical or material level, so that they work with unimagined efficiency. He bathes the lightsaber with the Force, and as he does, subtle transformations take place in the weapon. Elemental bonds shift, allowing more and more energy to flow throughout the weapon. The changes are as much the will of the Force as the will of the weapon-maker, and at the same time as they are being made in the lightsaber, they are being made in the maker too. A lightsaber, then, is attuned to its maker, and the Jedi in turn is attuned to his weapon.” For the first time, Wyl knew those words to be true. He had done what the book instructed, and he could feel the results.

But still, he hesitated before thumbing the activation button. Beyond his fear of Aleema Keto and whatever sliver of her consciousness she had managed to entrap within her crystal Heart before her death, Wyl knew there was plenty of danger in the simple act of igniting a new lightsaber. Again, the library text came to mind: “If the Jedi skips this careful seasoning and conditioning of the lightsaber through the Force, the blade will be flawed and will fail him. And if he does it wrong, the weapon may well blow up on its first activation.” The possibility of sentient crystals aside, the historical warnings were clear: the slightest misalignment of any of the components could have disastrous consequences. And with the energies involved, failure was likely to result in a deadly explosion.

Wyl ground his teeth in indecision for one last moment, and then sighed. “Here goes,” he said, and he pressed the button.

The familiar snap-hiss sound of a lightsaber igniting filled the small room, and a slender beam of silvery green energy arced into being from the hilt in Wyl’s hands. It was beautiful: a never-steady range of colors from viridian to platinum to jade to emerald, burning and melting and fusing together, rippling up and down the length of the blade. The saber hummed loudly, as if it was… excited. It sounded eager.

Wyl tried a few exploratory cuts through the air. The thing sang as it sliced. It was effortless. Even the gyroscopic effect endemic of all such weapons seemed somehow to be more manageable.

He held up his off hand until it was mere centimeters from the silvery green edge of the blade, but he could feel no heat. The arc-wave was working; none of the immense power was radiating beyond the strictly-defined area that made up the blade itself. He nodded approvingly, and realized there was just one more thing to test.

He took a breath, and then spun around and brought the lightsaber down and through the metal desk. It cut through easily, without any noticeable resistance, and the two halves collapsed onto the deck with a terrific crash. Wyl waited for the racket to subside, until it left only the cheerful, fervent humming of the saber.

Smiling, Wyl thumbed the activation button again, and the glorious blade retracted with a spitting, hissing noise that sounded like some beast struggling against being caged. And then there was silence.

Wyl stood in the middle of the small room for a minute, filled with an unfamiliar feeling: joy.

He felt Zaq coming before he heard the knock at the door. “Come in,” the Dark Jedi Knight called out to his apprentice.

Zaq opened the door, and reacted almost immediately to the state of the room: “Rise and shine, old… what the hell happened in here?!”

Wyl could only imagine what the scene looked like from Zaq’s perspective. But for some reason it only made him smile more. “I built a new lightsaber,” Wyl explained, as dead-pan as he could.

He could see Zaq trying to process that information. “Okay… well, I just wanted to tell you–”

“That we’re about to come out of hyperspace on our last leg,” Wyl interrupted, nodding appreciatively. “Thank you. But I already know… this journey is complete.”

Zaq looked at him funnily, the young man’s confusion evident. But he couldn’t disagree with what Wyl had said.

The journey was over. They had reached Lopen, and their destinies awaited them on the surface.