If no answers present themselves, that means Solo is-what? Investigating that region for his own daft giggles? Perhaps he's truly gone back to the smuggler life. Succumbed to the pressure of adult life and bailed on the wife and the coming child. Perhaps Solo kissed the straight and narrow goodbye and he's gone off to have his own illicit adventures.

It's what Sinjir would do.

It's what Sinjir did, at least.

Hm.

Still, Shale is lying. He can tell she's withholding.

It's strange sitting here, interrogating someone of Shale's stature. Though he supposes her stature has fallen considerably. Not in his mind, though. Interrogating her-and that's what this is, just a more polite version of it-makes him feel rather uncomfortable.

He tries not to show it, though.

"Do you miss it?" Shale suddenly asks.

"What's that?"

"The warm embrace of the Empire?"

"Ah, an embrace as warm as a hug from a slab corpse." He taps his thumbnail against the side of the teacup. Tink, tink, tink. "No. I don't miss it. I don't miss who I was or what I did in its service. I miss who I was once before the Empire turned me into me. Not that I much remember that version of myself, but I'm quite confident he existed. He may have even been nice."

"I don't miss it, either. What we did formed a scar across this galaxy, and I'm not sure it will ever truly fade." She sighs. "You should go and ask Tashu. I don't know anything, but he and his other sycophant advisers seemed awfully enamored of that region. Good luck finding whatever it is you seek, Loyalty Officer Rath Velus."

And with that, they are dismissed.

- Wedge squirms and kicks under the clicking limbs of an Imperial probe droid-not a viper, but one of the smaller Prowler models. The droid's flat, disk-shaped body suddenly glows red around the margins and emits a high-pitched trill. Norra recoils from the sound, her ears ringing-it's a noise so terrible it feels like it's trying to bore into her skull.

All she can do is steady her hand, take aim, and- Her blaster shot slams the probe droid back, sending its top popping off. Its spider legs, free from the body, come away in Wedge's hands and he flings them to the ground before kicking them away with his one good leg.

His hair is a mess. His cheek is bleeding. Norra rushes over, grabs a kerchief from her pocket, and dabs at it. "Hold still," she tells him. Thankfully, it's not serious-just a scrape from one of the thing's limbs.

The droid sits in the corner, sparking and smoking. The red light shines bright one last time then goes dark. At least the sound is gone. What was that sound? Self-defense mechanism?

The two of them are left sitting and staring at it.

"Why is there a probe droid out here?" he asks, panting.

She helps him stand. "Searching the wreckage like we were?"

"Could be. But why remain out here? That's a Prowler probe. They don't travel long distances. They're local."

"They forgot it," she posits. "It's easy enough to leave behind. Especially if things got violent."

"That doesn't sound like the Empire."

"Maybe not the old one. But in its current state? They're different now. Less efficient." Her brow wrinkles. "Hey, those probes don't travel far, but how's their transmission range? Could it have been...?"

Wedge grabs his cane and uses it to move toward the droid. With the toe of his boot he lifts it. Sure enough, on the underside is a modular comm array: a little transceiver dish that would've been hidden by its limbs.

That dish is blinking green.

"It's still transmitting," Norra says.

"What could they possibly be-"

From the cockpit, a proximity alarm. Its presence could mean only one thing: incoming ships. Norra rushes out of the hold and into the cockpit, spinning the chair and plonking herself down just in time to see a Star Destroyer cut through space like a spear-tip.

- Drool drips from Jom's chin as he grunts, pushing himself up on shaky arms. He falls back down, pain radiating through his old shoulder injury. With one hand he fumbles gamely for the blaster rifle hanging on his back-but the toe of a boot pries his hand away and gently steps on it.

It's Jas's boot. Her hands are still up. She looks down at him and shakes her head, clucking her tongue. "Now now. Stay still."

"Jas..." he moans.

"Shh."

And with that, they are surrounded.

Ridge-browed Niktos emerge, hand-cannons held aloft, beam-sights all targeting Jas. Their nose-slits flare, as if sniffing for her scent. Blunt-toothed mouths gnash and clamp open air.

They ease apart as a new player enters the scene: A woman, by the look of her, face hidden behind a rust-pocked metal mask. The mask is curved, and the top of the metal is curled into the facsimile of curved horns. A pair of trillium lenses whirr and buzz as they focus in on Jas. The woman tilts her head and says: "Hello, Emari."

"Underboss Rynscar," Jas says. "Been a while."

"That's because you've been avoiding me. Playing Suzee Goodgirl with the New Republic, I hear."

"Job's a job. And last I checked, I need credits."

The masked woman stiffens. "You do. To pay me. You have debts."

"My aunt had debts."

"And now they're yours!" Rynscar barks, suddenly furious. "But since you don't seem to be able to pay, I have little choice here but to bring your head back to Boss Gyuti. Black Sun demands money or blood, bounty hunter. Will it be blood? There is a bounty on your head."

Jom thinks: I won't let this happen. He again starts to lift himself up-but Jas slams her foot down on his back. She hisses at him: "Stop. They'll kill you and kill me and then what? I'll handle it." Then, to Rynscar: "Who sold me out? It was the Hutt, wasn't it?"

"The Hutts are in disarray. Nyarla has come back to Black Sun."

"I will pay you what I owe."

"We've all heard that one before."

"I'll make you a deal."

Rynscar sniffs behind the mask. The Niktos gathered all share looks and laugh. "What deal could you make me?"

"I'll pay you twice what I owe. And failing that, I'll turn myself in. And the group I work with."

She'd really betray us? He again starts to get up, protesting- And she grinds her heel against the back of his neck.

"Interesting," Rynscar hisses. Her head tilts at a curious angle. "And all I have to do is let you scamper away, out of my grip?"

"Actually," Jas says, offering a nervous laugh, "there's one more thing. I need information."

"Don't we all." The underboss hesitates. "What is it?"

"I need to locate someone. The smuggler, Han Solo."

- Imperial adviser Yupe Tashu was, is, and forever will be a wild-eyed religious zealot. His capture on Akiva did little to dampen his fervor, and in fact seems to have allowed it to further infect his mind.

That presents Sinjir with two problems.

First, Tashu's devotion to the Empire-or, more particularly, to Palpatine himself-is so intense it utterly overwhelms his fragile sense of self-interest.

Second, he's as mad as a spark-drunk mynock.

It's very hard to interrogate one who suffers from one of these problems, much less both of them. The deranged only offer cryptic or nonsense answers, while the self-sacrificial will gladly immolate themselves in the service of keeping their trap shut.

Sinjir hasn't gotten anywhere with Tashu since they brought him in. And by the look of his cell, things have only gotten worse.

The man stands there behind the buzzing laser shield. He paces the cage like a pilgrim who has lost his way, wandering the world with a vague sense of purpose and faith but no actual destination. The walls have been marked up in his food waste. Strange symbols and maps and other indecipherable gibberish are drawn there. Temmin stares. Sinjir sees that this is upsetting the boy.

That's interesting. Something about Tashu has gotten to him. It's cracked the boy's veneer of false confidence.

"I don't think I can do this," Temmin says.

"You don't have to," Sinjir says. "Run along."

"But-"

"Temmin. It's okay. Go."

The boy cannot seem to tear his gaze away, so Sinjir helps him by turning the boy in the other direction and urging him forth with a gentle push. It's enough. Temmin leaves.

The only other one that's left now is the guard: a Chandrilan man with a swoop of blond hair and a light scar along his chin.

"Is Tashu usually like this?" Sinjir asks.

The guard regards Sinjir with cold gray eyes, then reluctantly offers a curt nod. There's discomfort there, with the guard-and Sinjir's left to wonder why. Maybe the guard doesn't trust him.

That's fine. He shouldn't.

"Open the cage."

"I..."

"You have your orders, do you not?"

But still the guard hesitates.

And there, Sinjir realizes, is the glorious-yet-nave failing of the New Republic. It isn't a fully fledged government. It isn't a proper military. In the Empire, you didn't turn down an order. You didn't hesitate. Hesitation meant reprimand. Failure meant Vader making three long strides into your office and pinching your windpipe shut with the power of his mind.

In the Empire, the chain of command was everything. Someone above you told you to drop your pants and spin around three times, you did it. You didn't ask questions. Here, though, individuality rules the roost. That was, at least on paper, a benefit, right? You get to think your own thoughts. Do your own good. If something doesn't sound right or smell right, you speak up.

But when that happens, order breaks down.

The saying might be Too many admirals, not enough ensigns, but here that's not precisely true, because in the New Republic there aren't enough admirals, either. And given that Mon Mothma has already begun trying to figure out how to demilitarize the galaxy...

How long before it falls apart? Before it spins off its axis and bounces away? It wouldn't take much. The Empire couldn't even keep it together and in that gap, the disease known as the Rebel Alliance formed-a disease that is presently killing its host. How long before the New Republic suffers the same gap? How long before the Empire returns the attack with its own infection?

The Empire pushed too hard.

But maybe the New Republic isn't pushing hard enough.

Ugh, he needs a drink.

Sinjir lends a Jom Barell growl to his voice and says: "You open that cage, guardsman, or I open your head."

"Fine," the guard says, staring balefully. He opens the cell.

"Thank you," Sinjir says, then steps inside. He tells the guard to turn the shield back on, which the man does, if reluctantly. Gently, Sinjir folds his hands behind his back. Best to give the veneer of authority here. Stand like an officer and maybe, just maybe, Tashu will fall into an old pattern-he'll conjure the sense memory of what it was to serve in Palpatine's Empire and he'll nod and smile, bow and scrape, and give answers to the questions that Sinjir will ask. "Hello, Adviser Tashu."

"I remember you."

"Yes. I imagine you do. Now, I'd like to ask you a little something about Imperial prisons."

"I know nothing of those."

"We shall see, Adviser." And so Sinjir weighs in-trying to pluck at the man's strings, hoping dearly to get him to confide (one ex-Imperial to another) just where the Empire might've taken a theoretically high-value target like Chewbacca, or if there's something, anything out there Solo might be looking for. And all the while, the man in front of him continues to break down mentally-until he's crumpled into himself, the barest human shape gutted of its stuffing. His shoulders rock as he laughs quietly to himself before that laughter dissolves into weeping. His hands pluck at each other. They pick at the nails until they've gone bloody.

Sinjir just stands idly by, watching.

He didn't have to do any of this. He didn't lay one finger on the man's messy, sweat-slick head. Tashu wound himself up to a complete and total freak-fit, babbling about how he keeps trying to "open himself" up to something, because we're all "bound in its web," but he cannot "hear its voice," cannot "feel its tremors." And how all he can do now is trust in his gut and trust in the "instructions" he was given.

And that's it, Sinjir thinks. The game is over. He won't get anything of value from this gabbling freak.

Sinjir's communicator pings.

"Pardon me," he says to Tashu, then steps out of the cell. The guard with the shock of blond hair watches as Sinjir talks into the comlink. It's Jas on the other side.

"I have information," she says.

"Good, because I'm not getting anything from this human methane fire. I would get better results if I asked a rain puddle."

"What I have isn't complete. Ask Tashu about Irudiru."

"Is that some kind of delicacy?"

"It's a system near Wild Space."