"Hey," she says, her voice quieter than she means.

"Hey," he says.

Then a cloud passes in front of the sun, and a shadow moves into the room and then he's gone. Returned is the Brentin of now: He's thinner, his eyes are set back more, and that wry twist becomes a dark line.

"I'm late," he says. And he is.

"Yes, you are. So is your son. Have you seen him?"

Brentin twitches at that-a fog seems to fall upon him. "I...no."

She has no time to try to shine a light through that muddle, and even if she did have the time, it might not matter. Brentin sometimes seems like he's dozens of parsecs away. Like he's still in that prison pod. All she can do now is lay out his clothes-a simple, formal white suit given to her by the chancellor's people-and help him get into it.

He seems to brighten for a moment. "I'm sure Temmin will join us."

"At the last minute, no doubt."

"He's so much older now," Brentin says as she hands him a pair of shined brown boots. As he buckles the tops, he adds, "I regret missing...all of that. Him growing up. You joining the Rebellion in my stead. Gods, the Rebellion isn't even a thing anymore." Then he looks up at her from the bed and his eyes are clear and bright but lined with trouble when he says: "I love you, and I'm sorry I missed all of it. Are we okay?"

She's frozen. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out of her. All this time she's been waiting for a moment just like this one. Some tiny glimmer of who he was. Some semblance of recognition regarding what came and then passed. And now, here it is. Laid out before her, as if on a serving tray, and all she can do is stare at it and gape. Her heart feels like an animal in a net. Her vision clouds from behind tears she quickly blinks away.

Then it all snaps into focus.

They're going to be okay.

She tells him as much, stroking his cheek. "We're going to be okay. We may not be now, but that's okay. Because we'll get there. All of us."

He offers a small smile and nods. "Okay. I believe you."

Norra stoops to kiss her husband. He's shaking just a little. Or maybe it's her shaking. Or both of them. The kiss is soft and slow. It isn't one of the romantic, passionate kisses of their youth-stolen under one of the market tents as rain pounded the ground and everyone huddled there to stay dry. It is a wiser, stranger, altogether more hesitant kiss. But it's all the sweeter, too.

"We have to go soon," she says, kissing him again-this time, more quickly. Just a peck.

"I'm sure Temmin will meet us there," he says, repeating himself from before. Almost mechanically so. Norra flinches at it, but it's probably nothing. She clutches his hand and gives it a squeeze.

"It would surprise me if he didn't."

- Temmin kicks out again-his feet slam against the inside of the box. The crate rattles and the frame shakes, but the box is made of some kind of heavy, compressed wood. It's not budging. And it doesn't help that his whole body feels like it's been worked over by a drunken Besalisk boxer-four arms punching him like he's just some sack of kodari-rice. That stun blast hit him hard, left him hurting.

My father shot me.

What does that even mean? Why would he do that?

Temmin stays still, snaps his fingers idly as he tries to imagine why Brentin would do that to him. Maybe, just maybe, Dad did it because he was trying to protect his son. He didn't kill Temmin, after all. Maybe he knows something. Maybe he did a bad thing in service of a good thing...

Or maybe, it's not his father at all. Could it be someone else? Someone masquerading as Brentin Wexley?

Temmin almost hopes that's the case. It would make this easier.

Again he growls and renews his struggle against the box. Bam, bam, bam. The box shakes and shifts. But it's no good.

Something's wrong. Something's going on. Something- Something is shaking.

Beneath him, a faint vibration rises.

Someone is coming.

"Hey!" he shouts, slamming his heel against the underside of the box's magna-sealed lid. "Hey! I'm in here! Help! Help!"

No more sounds. Quiet stretches out.

And then he hears a weapon warming up: the slow thrum to power. The box shakes, and sparks rain down on him. Temmin screams, covering his eyes with his forearm, scrunching up into himself as the top of the box is burned through with a bright vibroblade and flung aside...

"I HAVE DISCOVERED YOU," comes the mechanized warble of Mister Bones. "THIS WAS THE LONGEST AND MOST PROTRACTED GAME OF HIDE-AND-SEEK, MASTER TEMMIN. BUT AGAIN I AM THE VICTOR. SHALL WE PLAY AGAIN?"

Temmin springs up out of the box and hugs his skeletal droid. "It is so good to see you, Bones."

"IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU HAPPY."

"I'm not happy. My father shot me."

"THAT IS UNFORTUNATE, MASTER TEMMIN. I WILL SCATTER HIS ATOMS IN RETURN."

"Not yet. First things first, we need to get to Mom."

"ROGER-ROGER. WE WILL FIND MASTER TEMMIN'S MOM."

"She needs to know that something is going on." And I don't know what it is. But Temmin aims to find out.

- The door to the shuttle remains closed.

Sloane needs a moment.

Behind her she has four of her own people, and that's it. She has two Royal Guards-neither were Palpatine's original guards, but the menacing red cloaks and hood-helmets remain the same. She has the pilot, Ensign Karz Damascus. And she has her own attache, Adea Rite.

Trusted, necessary Adea. So trusted and so necessary that Sloane almost didn't want her to come. Just in case.

Even now, she says to Adea: "This could be a setup."

"I don't believe that it is," Adea answers.

"Rax could be testing us."

"Rax is always testing. So let's pass his test."

Sloane scowls. "He may have sent us here to fail."

"What sense would that make? Then you would just tell the New Republic who he was. You could give up Imperial assets. Him putting you in their hands would be foolish if he believed this to be a danger."

She's right, of course. Sloane knows this. She's thought this out. Just the same, she fears what will happen. The tendons in her neck are pulled taut as a tow cable. Something isn't right. None of this is right.

You're just afraid. You're that girl again on Ganthel, surrounded by enemies. Don't run this time, Rae. This is the time to stand and fight.

"They might just take us into custody soon as we step off this shuttle," she says to Adea.

The girl nods. Her eyes show a glimmer of fear at that, too. "They might. But Admiral Rax believes them to be foolishly optimistic enough not to. Let us trust in his assessment just this once."

"Yes." What choice do they have, anyway? To the pilot, Sloane says, "Open the door, lower the ramp."

And he does. The door lifts. The ramp descends in twin plumes of steam-like the breath from a rancor's nostrils.

The brightness of the day reaches her eyes and she winces against it, shielding her face as she steps off. She expects a flurry of movement-guards coming for her, blasters up, staves crossing.

But instead, she steps forward and is met by Chancellor Mon Mothma. A tall woman with a wine-stem neck and hair the color of copper-stone. The chancellor dips her head. "Admiral Sloane. Thank you for this."

"Chancellor." She'll give that woman no more than that.

Behind Mothma is the rank and file: soldiers, guards, and of course various New Republic generals and admirals. Ackbar isn't here, to her surprise. Nor is the Alderaanian traitor, Leia Organa. She wonders why-then it hits her. They aren't here just in case this is a trap. If this shuttle were rigged to explode, then certainly- Her chest tightens.

What if it is rigged?

It would take out the chancellor. And a wave of soldiers and officers.

And her. It could be what Rax wanted all along. It could be- No, no, no. That's absurd. She had the shuttle checked. And surely they did prelim scans before they let her land, too, looking for any kind of explosive residue or unusual chemical signatures.

"We have quite a day planned," the chancellor says, jostling Sloane out of her grim reverie. "We have a celebration ongoing, and then at dinnertime you and I will retire to begin our talks."

Sloane braces. "I did not come here to have a party, Chancellor. I would prefer to move straight to business."

"Your attache said your presence here deserved pomp and circumstance as is the way of one sovereign entity greeting another."

Sloane shoots Adea a look. The girl made a mistake and she will be chastised for it. Now, however, is not the time. Instead, Sloane turns, forces a smile: "Yes. Perhaps she is right. We are all owed a moment of leisure. Thank you for hosting these talks, Chancellor. Shall we begin?"

The transport eases in through the mouth of the hangar bay, settling into the belly of the Star Destroyer Dominion. Jorrin Turnbull-or, rather, Sinjir Rath Velus, once again borrowing the identity of an Imperial agent who died on the Endor moon-eases back on the throttle, his teeth gritting so hard he's afraid they might be ground to a fine white powder.

"This is a terrible plan," he says to Han Solo-Solo, who crouches down so as not to be seen. Han Solo, the jerk. The very handsome, very charismatic jerk. "And I hate you very much."

"Relax. This is going to work."

The transport thuds dully against the hangar bay-Sinjir isn't much of a pilot, and his landing is clumsier than a drunken dragonsnake the way it just sort of flops down. But nobody cares, blessedly, and in moments the ship is surrounded by a whole bloody battalion of stormtroopers. Oh, and what's this? Here comes Admiral Orlan himself. Well, then. Orlan must be eager to collect his prize: the prize of the rebel hero, Han Solo.

In the back, behind the sealed door separating the cockpit of the transport from the hold, comes the sound. It's a sound Sinjir has been hearing during the whole flight from the surface of Kashyyyk-a susurrus of shifting and clicking. Each time he hears it, he flinches.

"You ready?" Solo asks.

"No. Not for this." He blanches. His guts feel like water. His skin prickles. "I should've known this was a bad plan as soon as you told me what 'captives' we'd be transporting. You're a dangerous man."

Solo shrugs.

Outside, a thumping. A stormtrooper pounding on the side of the transport. Over the comm, the voice of Lieutenant Yoff: "Open."

"Here goes," Solo says.

"Yes," Sinjir says grimly, then opens the door.

Sinjir winces and waits.

He flips the exterior hatch-port cam on, though he really doesn't want to see. But it's like looking at a speeder crash: It's hard to look away.

On the screen, Orlan seems confused at the lack of anything happening. (Though surely by now he's hearing the sounds. Those terrible sounds.) Instead of flinching away like a smart person, the fool actually leans in. It happens so fast, Orlan doesn't even get to scream.

He reels back, clutching his eyes as if something was flung into them. Hairs, Sinjir knows. Flung from the legs and thorax of the massive webweaver spider that now pounces on Orlan.

The spider is not alone: Others join it, leaping and scuttling forth, bristly legs pinning stormtroopers to the deck of the bay. Glistening chelicerae click and chitter as fangs emerge and punch holes clean through white armor. The screams of troopers dissolve into gargling bleats as they flail and fall. The spiders scuttle and shriek and pounce.

The admiral tries to run. Sinjir watches him out the front window of the shuttle. But Orlan, he's blinded. And the spider does not care to relinquish its prey. It knocks him down and- Two fangs crunch through the officer's skull.

"Spiders," Sinjir grouses. "Why exactly are we using spiders, again?"

Solo shrugs. "Wookiees said it would work. Wasn't too much of a thing to secure this gaggle, and-well, look." He spreads his arms out to behold the bedlam. Stormtroopers fruitlessly fire their blasters as officers flee. Spiders fling themselves bodily against them. Screams and flailing ensue. "All right, this distraction won't last long. Let's do this."

He slides into the cockpit and mans the weapons controls. The sides of the shuttle bang as the laser cannons flanking the cockpit emerge.

Ahead, a pair of ship-sized turrets wait to take out any trespassing crafts. And next to them sit the hangar bay shield generators.

Han pulls the trigger once, twice, three times- Red light screams above the bodies of the spider-pinned stormtroopers, and both the turrets and the shield generators explode in a rain of white light. Parts of them rain down in a clatter.

Sinjir signals to the comm: "Halo, door's open. No need to knock."

"Come on," Solo says.

"I'm not going out there."

"Yes, you are."

"There are spiders out there. Not little spiders. Spiders as big as my grandmother. And while my grandmother was a fairly small woman, she was still considerably larger than any other spider ever."

"They're occupied."

"Occupied?"

"Eating stormtroopers."

"Did I mention I hate you?"

"Maybe once or twice."

Sinjir growls, then gets up-they pop the door between the cockpit and the transport hold. His breath catches in his chest and won't release because spiders, spiders, there are so many spiders. Willing his legs to carry him outside the transport feels like a truly heroic act. Yet somehow he manages-and sure enough, there is one of those webweavers.