"Did he know?" Jom snarls, pointing at the ex-Imperial. Then, accusing Sinjir directly: "Did you?"

"I did not," Sinjir answers, a bit testily.

"I did."

They all turn. There stands Temmin, beaming.

"What?" he asks, showing his palms defensively. Norra sees a glimmer of his father in the boy's eyes, just then: a playful, puckish gleam. "Jas trusted me and said it was the right thing to do. She said I had to be ready."

Norra gapes. Her son lied to her. (Again, she reminds herself.) She does her level best to tamp down the sudden flux of anger rising inside, but she feels suddenly, woefully out of control. Like things are slipping out of her hands and spiraling away. Her son. This team. This mission.

So when Jom points to her and says, "Control your boy," he is the unwitting recipient of her fury, lashing out like a crackling vibro-whip.

"I'm the leader of this team," she says, her words hissing through clenched teeth. "Not you. I'll handle him how I choose."

"Maybe you shouldn't be leader," he says with a half shrug that somehow manages to be aggressive.

"Well, she is our leader," Jas says, shoving past him. "You don't like it, go find another starship to hitch your grav-raft to. I'm sure SpecForces would be glad to have you back, stinking up their air with your ego. Now get out of my way, Barell. I need to get that bacta shot and some gauze for Mister Calamari-Arm over there."

At that, Sinjir pouts. "That hurts my feelings. More than a little."

Norra wheels on her son and pokes him in the chest. "You," she says under her breath. "You and I will have a conversation about this."

"Uh-oh," he says.

"Uh-oh is right."

She's hoping for now the fight is done, but it's far from over. Even as Jas excuses herself to search the bunkroom for another medkit ("Preferably one with a bacta shot"), Barell follows after, still barking mad.

"Wait right here," Norra tells her son, then goes to break up the fight once and for all.

"I knew I should never have trusted you," he says, standing in the doorway as Jas roots around in one of the underbunks. "Bringing some bounty hunter on board? Antilles must've had his head knocked around real good while caught in the Empire's clutches-"

Jas laughs, finally finding a capped bacta shot. "You've got it spun around, Barell. This team needs someone like me. They don't need some thick-skulled law-bound brute who has all the imagination of an overturned mine cart. We need moral flexibility."

"I'm flexible. I've got imagination." He storms into the room, fists at his side. "I'm not just one of your marks. I can handle myself."

Whap. Jas slaps him hard with an open palm.

"Can you? Really?"

He reels for a moment, rubbing his face. His jaw crackles and pops as he moves it left and right. That moment is over fast.

"Why you little-" He growls and steps into a fighting stance. Two fists up in front of his face, legs placed apart. Jas begins to pace the half circle in front of him, her limbs down and loose. He bats at her, but she blocks it. She kicks out with a leg and he turns inward, taking the hit on the outside of his knee. The two of them move around each other like a pair of wild-eyed creatures shoved together in the same cage.

Norra shouts: "Quit it. Both of you. You're not a couple of mating murra, locking horns-"

The SpecForces officer slaps at Jas with a wide paw, but she bows her back, handily letting it catch open air. The bounty hunter moves fast, hooking her leg around his and wheeling herself onto his back. Her arms tuck under his pits and her fingers lace behind his neck.

Jom roars. He tilts back, his boot jabbing out and connecting with the door controls-and the bunkroom portal slams shut.

When Norra tries to open it, she finds it locked.

Inside, the clamor rises. Something falls, bang. A rattle. Grunting.

Suddenly the space outside the door is crowded. Temmin to her left, Sinjir to her right. The droid, Bones, humming some mad song behind.

"Can either of you get this door open?" she asks. She tries the button again but the door won't budge.

"Man, they're really fighting," Temmin says.

Sinjir tilts his ear toward the door. His eyes narrow. "Well. They were fighting."

"Still sounds like they..." But the boy's eyes go big as moons. "Oh."

Even Bones whistles-a warbling, discordant note.

Which means that Norra is officially the last one to figure out what's going on. They're not in there fighting at all, are they? Beyond the door, something bangs, then rattles, then falls. Jom growls. Jas laughs.

Kissing sounds.

Those are kissing sounds.

"I choose to ignore all of this for now," Norra says, taking a deep breath. "Tem, go plot for hyperspace and get us back to Chandrila. And take...him with you." By "him," she means Bones. The boy and the droid wander off, leaving Norra and Sinjir standing in front of the door.

"I never got my bacta shot," Sinjir says.

"I think you're going to have to wait."

"If I wait much longer I fear the arm might pop like a bladder-bug. It really hurts." He pouts. "It's really gross."

Norra sighs. "Fine. Come on. Let's go see if there's another medkit in the second bunkroom."

In a singsongy voice, he answers: "Thank you, Mom."

"Don't call me that."

"You're no fun."

"That is becoming abundantly clear, Sinjir."

- The Halo drops out of hyperspace.

There, looming into view, is Chandrila-a small, blue-green planet, now the home of the nascent New Republic. Nearly idyllic, Norra thinks, with its calm seas and rolling hills. The weather is mild. The seasons are present, but never dramatic. The people are peaceful-if a bit haughty and pedantic and over-invested in every political maneuver and measure that proceeds through the Galactic Senate.

This would be a good place to call home, she thinks, then looks over at her son. "Are you good?" she asks.

He cocks an eyebrow. "I'm golden."

She doesn't think he's lying, but her skill at reading people fails to match that of Sinjir, who can cut you into your constituent parts with a half-second glance.

"I need you to trust me," she tells him.

"I do." He narrows his eyes. "This is about the Jas thing, isn't it? Mom, it's like she told you-"

"Life is a series of moments-" Norra suddenly stops talking, then pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs loudly. "Gods, I'm about to give you one of those talks, aren't I? I hated when my mother gave me these talks and usually I went out and did the opposite of what she told me to do, and that's what you're going to do because you're my son. So stupid."

"Fine." He rolls his eyes. "It's not stupid. Go on. Give it to me. I promise I won't, like, barf into my hands or anything."

Norra hesitates. "It's just...I just want you to be good. To be good with yourself and to know where you belong. Not where you think other people want you to belong, but where you really belong. In here." She puts her hand on his chest and he makes a goofy face because this is really very mawkish and sentimental and they both know it. "You sticking with Jas-you're not a bounty hunter. You don't have to be like her. You can be a soldier but-" Again she bites her tongue and growls past it. "You know what? You don't have to be a soldier, either. I just want you to be you and not worry about what the rest of the galaxy thinks you should be."

"I think the galaxy wants me to be a crazy-rich droid manufacturer living in a palace out on the Outer Rim."

There again, his father's playful twinkle flickering in his eye.

"Then go be that," she says, laughing.

He cups his hand to his ear. "Or maybe the galaxy is saying to become a lounge singer in a backwater space station cantina. I can belt 'em out."

"Now, I don't know about that."

"Oh! Oh wait! I think I'm going to be a Jedi."

"Now I know your brain is busted." She gestures toward the viewscreen. "Take us down to Hanna City. Gently, this time? Or Wedge will have your head and maybe mine."

- The arm looks, well, better. But not much. The angry redness has cooled down to a somewhat aggravated pink. The blisters have faded, but have been replaced with craters of dry, puckered skin. Sinjir's arm looks like old meat left to hang too long on a butcher's hook.

At least it has all its feeling back. He wiggles his fingers. The skin feels uncomfortably tight. Blessedly, Norra found some painkillers.

"Hello, hand," he tells his hand.

"Hello, Sinjir," he makes his hand tell him back.

From around the corner of the main hold comes the sound of a door hissing open. And who should waltz out but Jom Barell.

"Your hair is a bit of a mess," Sinjir says.

"Hm?" Jom's gaze rolls up, where his hair is sticking out. "Oh."

"Here. Let me help you." Sinjir stands, and fast as a spark is standing right in front of Jom. He gently begins to move the man's hair back in place.

"Well, isn't this romantic."

"Ah. Yes. Speaking of romance-I'm really glad you brought it up, Jomby-did you have a nice fight with our resident bounty hunter?"

"She knows how to, ah, fight."

"Oh, I'm sure she does." As Sinjir continues to adjust the man's hair one strand at a time-and by now Jom is starting to look more than a little uncomfortable-he lets a vicious foxlike grin stretch across his face. "Curious bit of trivia: As you know, when I served at the pleasure of the Empire, I served as a loyalty officer, and sometimes extracting loyalty from my fellows took a bit of doing. I learned that the human body has four hundred thirty-four trigger points of pain. I know it lacks humility to say, but I actually discovered another three all by myself, although amending an Imperial training manual is like trying to move a boulder with a spoon, you know? All this is a very long road to a very simple destination: I am excellent at causing pain."

Jom pulls his head away from Sinjir's grooming efforts. "Are you threatening me, Rath Velus? It sure sounds that way."

"I am, and for good reason. I want you to know that if you hurt Jas Emari in any way-emotionally, physically, I mean, even if you accidentally step on her foot-then I will personally make sure to find all four hundred thirty-four, oh, sorry, I mean four hundred thirty-seven trigger points on your body. Are we clear?"

A strange calm settles over Jom-which Sinjir finds rather unexpected. He suspected that his little speech would goad the man into fighting. Barell seems hotheaded, after all. But that's not what's happening here, is it? Instead, Jom crosses his arms and nods.

"Your loyalty to her is commendable," the commando says. "I'll take your, uhh, words of wisdom under advisement. Though if I'm being honest, I suspect if anybody will get hurt in this arrangement, it'll be me."

"Likely."

"And that wouldn't bother you at all?"

Sinjir gives a half shrug.

"All right. Fine. Lemme ask, though: What's your deal with her? I was led to believe you and she would not be...romantically compatible?"

"This isn't about that. I value her tremendously. I feel connected to her. I think she's a 'friend,' or the closest thing to." He says that word friend like it's a foreign word in an alien tongue whose full contextual meaning he has not yet grasped.

"For a time I thought maybe you had your eye on me." Jom is just goading him, but he decides to play along.

"I did. It's the facial hair. But I'm spoken for now."

Jom smirks. "Really?"

"Really."

"Good for you, mate."

Sinjir puts one more stray hair on the commando's head back in place. "Have fun with Jas. And remember the number: four hundred thirty-seven." The Halo starts to shudder-the walls are shielded, but still the sudden warmth bleeding off them is telling even as the ship bucks along clouds like a stone skipped across a pond. "Sounds like we're down. Better secure the prisoner, Jomby."

- Landing Platform OB-99. In one direction are the rolling hills and sweeping meadows of Chandrila: the soft balmgrass and spiky orcanthus are already turning from red to green with the coming of spring, and the sun and clouds cast shifting, shimmering shadows over the land. In the other direction is the Silver Sea, its placid waters as calm and gray as slate. Out over the water, bands of dark clouds roll, spitting rain and pulsing lightning. Another symptom of the seasons shifting from winter into spring.

Standing off to the side and leaning against a stack of crates is Wedge Antilles. Temmin is first off the ramp, and he runs over to Antilles-the two of them clasp hands and embrace.

"Hey, Snap," Wedge says-a nickname he's given Temmin because of the boy's finger-snapping habit.

Bones trots after, his skeletal arms going wide. "I TOO WILL SHARE AN EMBRACE WITH MASTER ANTILLES TO SIMULATE JOY." Wedge leans away from the "hug" as the droid wraps his many-jointed arms around the captain, looking less like a human sharing camaraderie and more like an insect trying to eat the face of its mate. "OKAY," the droid says, apparently satisfied. It lets go and begins dancing around the landing platform in dramatic swoops, plies, and pirouettes.

"Sorry," Temmin says, shrugging. "He's trying to learn how to be more...human? And less..."

"Singing, dancing murder-bot?" Wedge asks.

"Yeah." Bones has been Temmin's bodyguard and friend now for a while-and once he rebuilt his pal from spare parts (thankfully rescuing the data-brain from the New Republic soldiers who secured the Akivan palace), he was surprised when the droid declared a desire to fit in better with the crew. (Apparently it was something Sinjir said to the droid about how he creeped them all out.) Temmin fears that the droid's attempts have only made him more creepy, but uh, yay for effort? "Oh, man, Wedge, you should've seen me out there. I was piloting the Halo, right? And we were swooping along the edge of Slussen Canker's mountaintop fortress and-"

"All right, Snap," Wedge says, laughing. "Ease off the throttle a minute. I need to talk to your mom. You can tell me more from the seat of my X-wing tomorrow morning. Deal?"

"Whoa, yeah, yes. Deal." Wedge has been giving Temmin time in the X-wing. He said Temmin has a natural gift for piloting a fighter, like his mother (though Norra wasn't exactly happy about her son following in her steps as a pilot). Wedge lets the boy run training exercises out over the Silver Sea. Last time he said to the kid, "I'm cooking up a little something called Phantom Squadron. Maybe by the time you're spaceworthy, you'd be interested in joining up." Temmin hasn't told his mother about that yet.

He's not even sure that's what he wants, either. Sometimes Temmin's mind drifts and fantasies play out-okay, no, he doesn't really want to be a lounge singer in some crummy cantina, but the bounty hunter life sounds pretty great. Go where you want, track down the bad guys, get paid to do it. But being a pilot gives him a thrill like no other: Cutting clouds with the scissor-foils of Wedge's old X-wing is the scariest and most amazing thing. And then again, he still misses his black-market dealings on Akiva-the danger of the deal, the joy of the sale, the buzz from peddling illicit weapons, parts, and droids to thugs and criminals who might kill you for looking at them wrong. Temmin doesn't know what he wants to be.