She's being carried. A mirrored mask regards her. She starts to struggle, but the segmented arms tighten around her in a vise grip.

Her head twists to look for something, anything that can help her. And she sees the circular windows peering into closed chambers. Pods sculpted into the walls. Hard to see from below-but these were the blue lights, the portholes seen. She sees faces pass her. A Rodian. A woman she doesn't recognize. Sinjir! Oh, gods, no, Sinjir-his eyes are shut, his mouth slack, a tube snaking toward and pushing up his nose- Then something sticks into the side of her neck again.

A flush of fatigue washes through her, empties everything out.

They carry her toward an open chamber.

And she sees one more face as she passes-it's him. It's Brentin. Staring out from behind the window. His eyes are open. His mouth is working soundlessly in a scream. But she can hear his voice in her head: Why didn't you ever come for me, Norra? You never looked. You never came. But now you're here to join me at last...

- Outside the windows of the control chamber, Bones is besieged. The droids are mobbing him, capturing his limbs before he can strike. One of their arms whips around his neck, lifting the B1-Temmin watches as Bones wrenches upward, about to be torn off his spine.

But then Bones pulls his body up, kicking out with both legs-those wretched feet sinking claws into the masks of two drones. With a scissor motion, Bones smashes the droid heads together. The lash leaves his neck and Bones drops to the ground in a crouch-but quickly he's mobbed anew.

He doesn't have long.

Temmin has to move fast.

"Kid, I hope you got some kinda idea," Solo says. "Otherwise, you're trapped in the fishbowl with us."

"I...sure, yeah." He has no idea. They can see that. He didn't have time! Outside, Bones screams a mechanized sound- One of his arms clatters against the window. Separated from his body.

Think, think, think!

He can't think. All he can do is panic. He can't do this. His droid is getting torn apart in front of his eyes. His mother isn't here. He's trapped in this...room and he doesn't have the power to change anything.

Wait.

The power.

Power.

That was the key to Aram's compound, wasn't it? Cutting the power. How is this place powered? Is it offsite? If it is- "I say we shoot our way out," Jas says.

Solo nods. "I can get behind that."

"Wait!" Temmin says. "Hold on. Look-look-look." He points out the window, snapping his fingers-there, along the far side of this room, nestled in the wall joint and running up along the eaves is a thick bundle of cable. As it gets higher, those cables break from the bundle and spread out like the branches of a tree-leading to a series of pods lining the ceiling, pods that...

Oh, no. Those pods contain people. Faces stare back. Distant, but plain to see now that he's looking at them.

Those are the prisoners.

Jas says it before anybody else does: "They're powering the ship with the captives. They put them into stasis and they become...generators."

"Human gonk droids," Solo says. "Disgusting."

And genius, Temmin thinks. "Which one of you is the better shot?"

Jas and Solo both raise their hands at the same time.

"Aygir-dyski," Jas curses with a sneer. "I am."

Han waves her off. "Keep dreaming, honey. I'm the crack shot around here. Hell, maybe I have the Force. I should have Luke check."

"Never mind," Temmin says. "Both of you, get out there and shoot that cable. Now."

- It's like sinking into dark water. Norra can't breathe. Panic chews through her like parasites. She feels herself settle into some kind of cradle. There's a tickling sensation up her jawline, up her cheek, toward her nose. In front of her comes the hiss of a door closing- It's my tomb sealing up.

Thoughts chase one another in her mind like starving rats.

Temmin. Brentin. Leia and her child. Solo, Jas, everyone, anyone. I'm disappointing them.

She remembers a game as a child, a handheld game where you played these adventures and you got to choose where to go next-fight the monster or run from it, go through the swamp or run through the forest, choose a blaster or a sonic knife, be a pilot or a pirate...and now she realizes life is just like that. Just a series of choices. Sometimes you make the right ones and you get the good ending to the adventure. Other times you're eaten by a rancor in the dark.

She never did those games right.

Maybe she didn't do her life right, either.

Then, up through the darkness, a sound.

No. A voice.

The voice is distorted and mechanized- She knows that voice. It belongs to a B1 battle droid.

Her son's creation-a cobbled-together robot monstrosity that will protect her child to the point of its total obliteration. Just as she would. Just as she must right now because-Temmin's here, isn't he?

She couldn't save Brentin. But she can save her son.

She fights her way through the dark water of her own drowning mind-Norra swims up through that septic layer of regret and fear, and she wills some part of her, any part of her, to wake up, to move. Her hand twitches and then the arm follows-before she even knows what she's doing, she's catching the door of her cradle just before it closes on her. She forces her eyes open, an act that is far more epic than it should be-but she manages it just the same. Her other hand flies to her face, where it grabs the tube snaking its way toward her nostril and yanks it away.

The ship's voice cuts through the air- "SOL-GDA has identified a perilous course of action and asks that you refrain from further violence against Ashmead's Lock. Please lie down on the ground now with your hands at your sides. Thank you for your understanding." Then she repeats it in a language Norra can't understand, nor does she care to try. All she can think about is finding the processor matrix of this IPU and emptying her blaster into it.

Norra struggles out of her chamber, pushing the door wider- One of the mirrored droids appears. Its arm is tipped with another needle, and it plunges it toward her- Norra skirts to the side, and the needle sticks into the cushion just behind her. Then she growls one word-"No"-and leaps.

She tackles the droid. Unprepared, it scrambles to stay clinging to the pod, but it's off balance-and its arms catch only open air as the two of them fall.

Norra winces, the air rushing up around her. She pivots so the droid is beneath her-and just in time, too, as it slams into the railing on one of the staircases. The droid's back snaps with the sound of a tree breaking in half, and next thing she knows, she and the shattered droid are tumbling down the steps, end-over-end-over-end until- Wham. They hit the bottom floor. The air blasts out of her lungs, leaving her gulping for breath. The droid beneath her hitches and twitches, its head bent at a ninety-degree angle. Norra tries to stand- Pain lances through her side and she collapses.

She lies there on her back, clutching her middle. The world blooms around her in light and dull sounds. She hears her son yelling-and then blasterfire and booming slugs tear apart the air over her. A droid descends upon her, its whipcord arms slashing at the air-and it's suddenly knocked aside by Bones. Bones, whose one arm is gone and whose leg is bent at a funny angle. Bones, whose own side is cratered in, dented like a kicked can. The B1 droid tries to say something but the sound only comes out as a garbled scream. Above them all, SOL-GDA narrates a constant warning for them to stop, lest they be destroyed.

Next comes a flare of light-and a crackle of little lightning filling the air above her. Norra rests her head, and once more, all goes dark. And yet- She's awake.

She didn't go dark. The ship did- The power has gone out.

Temmin grabs her hand. "I'm here, Mom. I'm here."

And with that, Ashmead's Lock goes dead and SOL-GDA goes silent.

The jagged campanile towers of the Ubdurian homes lie shattered. Bodies lie underneath, crushed, shot, lanced. Dozens of them. The stink in the air is strong. Rot-wings form blurry clouds above the corpses-the insects buzzing with endless hunger.

Tracene Kane pulls the white cloth over her mouth. Her nostrils are rimed with salt-dust; Commander Norwich said it would help prevent the smell from reaching her, and though it has diminished it considerably, still she smells the pickled, rotten stench of the dead.

She lifts a finger and waves Lug toward her. The Trandoshan stomps over. None of this seems to bother him. He's fond of telling her about life among his people: hunting and killing and reveling in death. He's not like that, not like the other reptilians, but it was still part of his childhood. "You want the shot set up, boss?"

"Right here," she says, holding the cloth over her face. "Get that collapsed wall in the frame." It has a dynamic shape-the tower broken, the wall shattered in just the right spot, and one body slumped over it.

Lug grunts a command to the cam droid-it's an upgraded model, ruggedized and battle-hardy. The little floating droid with one telescoping eye hums along, pulsing flashes as it takes a series of still shots to frame out the hologram. Foomp, foomp, foomp. It burbles and bleeps.

"I'll get Norwich," Lug says.

"No," Tracene says, shaking her head. "Go get someone...more common. We need to sell this to the common citizen, and that means putting the common citizen on cam. Get me a soldier, a private, a trencher." As the big reptilian grunts and starts to walk off, she catches him by the arm. "How's my hair?"

"I don't know. It's hairy?"

"I'm going for battle-frizzled, but still...well kept, you know? An order to the chaos. A well-designed non-design."

"Sure?"

She rolls her eyes. "Thanks, Lug."

"You got it, Trace." He winks one of his eyes-an unnerving gesture, as a nictitating membrane slides sideways over the eyeball. It's meant to be playful, but it only comes across as monstrous. He saunters off.

Things have changed for her in the last months. She's gone from the cushy platform of safe worlds and out into the galaxy-the war between the Republic and the Empire has gone hot. The New Republic keeps pushing the Empire back, and the Empire grows more and more desperate, like a cornered feral. Plus, the HoloNet's mandate has changed-with the Imperial controls on what can be broadcast broken, the network is free to show the real story, free to get into the middle of the fight and reveal the truth.

Tracene said she needed to be on the front lines.

So, by all the gods of all the stars, they put her on the front lines. Now it's her and Lug out here in the thicket of war.

Nag Ubdur in the Outer Rim-home to the native Ubdurians plus the transplanted Keldar and Artiodac refugees-has seen a brutal pushback by the Empire. That, most likely because the bedrock of Nag Ubdur is flecked with zersium, an ore essential to the making of durasteel. The Empire has strip-mined this world down to its nub, and still it keeps finding ore. As such, they're not keen to give it up-so they've bitten down hard and won't unclench.

Norwich said he suspects that the forces here aren't really under anyone's command beyond what exists in the Ubdur system: meaning, they're cut off from the Empire proper. Making this yet another rogue Imperial remnant hunkering down, taking control, and either waiting for backup or carving out their own mad little fiefdoms.

As such, the Imperials here have grown more and more brazen-driven, it seems, by desperation and fear. The massacre here in Binjai-Tin is just one such example. They came in, swept through like unholy fire, killing everything in their path. That is unlike the Empire. The Empire has always been known to keep its populace in check-punish 10 percent to keep the 90 in line. This is not that. This is a whole other level: murderous and foul.

Right now, she knows that only ten klicks away, over the tussock and past the sedge, the Imperials have dug in. They've excavated trenches. They've got walkers, TIEs, a new garrison. A fight is coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. And Tracene will be along for the ride. Her and Lug, filming it all so the galaxy can see the valiant Republic against the venomous Empire.

Speaking of her Trandoshan cam operator, Lug returns, hauling a New Republic soldier by the arm. It's some young, wide-eyed Kupohan-his face pelt hangs bound up in a series of braids, helmet askew and pushing forward his eyestalks. He looks lost. Shell-shocked, even.

"What's your name?" she asks. He blinks at the camera, then at Lug, then at her. The Kupohan has the look of a lost child. She pats his arm. "It's okay. We're not on cam yet. Can you tell me your name?"

He says, "Rorith Khadur. Private in the NR." His voice is a tremulous growl. He's not comfortable. But he'll have to do-the rest of the soldiers are counting the dead, setting up triage, building a camp. More women and men of the Republic keep trickling in, and will over the next several hours, given the long line of them outside the city's shield-gate.

Without warning, she holds up three fingers, then counts down-Lug raps a knuckle against the cam droid, and its eye-lens goes from red to green. "And we're on," she says.

The soldier looks flummoxed, but then he nods.

"Tell me about yesterday, Private Khadur," she says.

"Yesterday." He blinks. "Right. We encountered Imperial forces on the Govneh Ridge-it's a, like a plate shift where the ground bulges, and these tall crystals grow alongside it, and the Imperials were...they were waiting for us. They came out of nowhere. It was intense. My squad leader, Hachinka, she got it in the neck-a blaster shot hit her and the spray caught me in the face and-" He has to take a second. She lets him. It's good drama. The cam droid has a high enough resolution, too, that it'll capture and confirm what Khadur said: In his face she sees the flecks of dry blood that belonged to his leader. "We got her out of there and she's still holding on. We lost a lot of good men and women, but we did it. We took the ridge."

She holds up a finger and as the cam droid pivots toward her she instructs it: "Mark it. Run segment: 'Govneh Ridge footage.'" She already edited together a package of clips from last night-the cam droid will auto-splice it into this interview and send when they uplink to the HoloNet servers. Khadur seems confused as to what's happening, but she just smiles as reassuringly as she can. Tracene gives the droid a second as it runs through a catalog of beeps, then continues. "Private Khadur, can you tell me where we are and what you believe happened here?"

His tongue licks his lips-it makes a raspy sound-and he says, "This is an Ubdurian city. A merchant city. Binjai-Tin. A mostly Ubdurian population. The Empire, they came in here and-" His voice cracks. "They slaughtered everybody. These people weren't soldiers. They were already...under the boot, you know? Weren't allowed to carry blasters. Had to give a percentage of all earnings to the Empire. And what did it get them? This. A massacre." The Kupohan soldier flares his many nostrils.

Tracene sees that he's at the edge of breaking. It's not his fault. She decides that this is good enough-the footage will speak for itself and anything else he has to say won't come close to the impact in the way he said that last word. Massacre. She tells him he can go, and thanks him.

As he starts to walk away, Lug steps in front of the Kupohan and gives him an awkward hug. The Trandoshan isn't good at affection, really-the "hug" is stiff and uncomfortable and has all the warmth of a protocol droid romancing a tree stump, but she supposes it's the thought that counts. Then Lug hands the man a small token: a tooth broken off a zlagfiend, which she understands is some kind of...many-mouthed, dagger-fanged hell-predator? Lug killed one when he was a boy, still hunting for his pack. He kept the teeth, of which there were many. Lug says to Khadur, as he says to all the soldiers with whom they speak, "It's good luck. Take it. I tied it to a length of gut-cord so you can wear it around your neck or wrist or...Just take it."

Khadur nods, then clasps Lug's hand before walking off.

"You're nice the way you do that," she says, a wry smile on her face.

Lug shrugs and offers a growl-hiss. "Mnuh. They have it hard enough." He almost looks sheepish about it.

She laughs. "All right. We need to get an uplink on the highest point." She gestures toward a guild tower-it's half collapsed, but even broken it's still pretty tall. "Get the beam-com set up there."

"That's high."

"And you can climb."

Another disappointed hiss. "Fine, fine, yeah, yeah."

He turns, starts walking-no spring in his step, of course, because Lug has two speeds: slow, and slower-and she turns to look back at the gathering soldiers coming into the city square. Setting up tents and generators. A gonk droid meanders about. Two soldiers splice a pair of cables together with a shower of blue electricity.

Then their eyes turn heavenward. Panic registers on their faces.

Before she can turn, Tracene hears the sudden sound- TIE fighters. Twin engines shrieking.

She turns to look-and sure enough, a dozen of them framed against the purple sky. Coming in, and coming in fast. Tracene expects the obvious: lasers cutting across the city, digging furrows in the cobble-rock, tearing through soldiers and maybe even her if she's not lucky.

But no lasers.

And yet, the TIEs keep coming.

She turns, screams for everyone to get back-they're setting up weapons and turrets but it won't matter. Tracene grabs the cam droid and tucks it under her arm, running like hell toward Lug. Yelling for him to run, too, now, fast, go, go, go- Wham. The first TIE fighter hits the ground about 150 meters away. It plows into the wall surrounding the Binjai-Tin city square, and a massive fireball belches into the air-stone and scrap rain down around her and the ground shakes like it's throttled by a quake.

It's the first, but it's not the last. The Imperial starfighters punch into the city, one after the next. Suiciders. Wham. Wham. Wham. The ground shakes so hard she loses her footing-the cam droid tumbles away, its lens cracking. She hears screams and sees the space above smear behind a gauzy haze of superheated air. And then she closes her eyes, her ears ringing.

It keeps going-until it goes no more.

In the darkness behind her eyes all she can do is think: How desperate they must be to send these pilots on a suicide mission. Because that's what this is. TIE fighters flung to the surface? Each a weapon unto itself?

Those bastards.

She tastes dirt and blood. Tracene has no idea how many TIE fighters hit or how long it took. With a groan she lifts herself up on wobbly arms. Where the soldiers were entering the square is now a TIE interceptor, smashed into the ground, fire crackling and circuits popping. Bodies lie around. Others are alive, running for cover, weeping, or mobilizing in case it means incoming troops. She sees Khadur not far away, standing in the middle of it all. Dizzy and bewildered. One of his arms is missing. Sheared off, it seems, from a piece of fighter debris stuck in the ground nearby.

He waves at her. Such a strange gesture.

But in her short time out here, she knows that trauma will do that to you. It'll leave you spinning like a top.