"Maybe we both have debts that credits alone cannot pay."

She shrugs. "Maybe we do."

He sniffs and winces. This conversation has gotten far too serious, far too dour. "How'd you find me, anyway?"

"Conder told me."

"And how'd you find him? I didn't know you knew."

She smirks. "I know everything. I'm good at my job." She twirls her blade and shoves it back into the sheath at her side. "Which reminds me, we have a job. Norra called."

"I thought we had a few days of R and R."

"This is your idea of R and R?" she asks, gesturing toward the two figures at the other end of the bar. One of those figures is Browscar, who is belly-flopped across the bar top, flung there like a dead fish. Around his head are the broken remnants of a mug and the cooled puddle of liquid that was in it. The other is Scowlface, who lies supine in the sand, a bar towel held firm to her bloody nose. The woman moans.

"At least both of them are still breathing," Jas says.

"I'm not a murderer."

"What'd they do, anyway?"

He sighs. "They were rude."

"C'mon, Sin. Let's get to work."

Sloane comes up out of The Pit and steps outside, craning her neck and rolling her shoulders to get the tension out of them. How long was she in there, anyway? (The precise answer matters little, as the real answer is: way too long. So long that the lack of her presence on board the Ravager will be noticed by someone.) What strikes her immediately is: It's dark.

That would be sensible on any other world, because it's late-or at the least, really, really early-but the thing about Coruscant is, it's a world that never sleeps. The power never goes out. The dark comes and the whole planet lights up. But here, in the Verity District, it's dark-dark.

It's also quiet.

The skin on her neck prickles. Something's wrong.

She has to move. But where? Her plan was to find herself one of the departing subgrav trains-the Black Line would take her right to the Federal District, after all. But if there's no power up here, what about down there? And finding a taxi won't be an option...

Far down the block, three figures run between buildings. Ducking and darting until they're out of sight. They're not troopers-she doesn't hear the familiar clatter of their boots and armor.

We're under attack. The insurgents are here. Right now.

The only recourse is to get to her ship.

She hasn't been in action for what feels like too long-but the blade of her instinct hasn't gone dull. She feels suddenly hyperaware, and her mind goes through the cold, dispassionate calculations that are all too familiar: Stay away from open streets, move between buildings, keep your head down, get your blaster out. A grim realization crawls up inside her: This is what life on the throneworld is like now, isn't it?

Sloane moves fast. Across the street. Sliding through the alley between a commissary and BRAC (base realignment and closure) building. Ducking behind a compacting trash machine as she checks her blaster, then she's back up and moving. She winds around a med station, alongside a repair bay, under the black shadow of a communications array.

Whoom. Ahead, far ahead, the air lights up with a pulsing explosion-lightning crackles in its white-hot center, and then it's gone. Alarms sound in its wake. Down a nearby street, an ISB transport roars past, heading toward the source of the explosion. Sloane thinks: I hope that wasn't my landing platform. She takes a step forward, her eyes still adjusting to the white streaks pulsing across her vision. A sound behind her. She wheels- Something clips her across the side of the head and she goes down. A boot presses on her hand and the chrome blaster slips from her grip. Another boot kicks her weapon away from her.

An absurd, defeatist part of her thinks: This is fine. The New Republic soldiers can take her in. Let it all be over. She will make a fine catch for some bush pilot or some hick commando-a guaranteed medal.

But a fire warms in her belly. Her heart goes supernova. This is my Empire, she thinks. She won't leave it to these brutes. And she damn sure won't let someone like Rax crash everything she's worked for right into the heart of some star. No. Not tonight. Not if she can help it.

Sloane rolls toward her own pinned arm-causing no small pain-and reaches up with her free hand to grab at whoever is holding her there. Her fingers find the attacker's belt and she pulls hard, yanking him down to the ground. It's not even a New Republic soldier-she sees a dark dress and a blue-and-gold rag bundled around the arm. Local resistance.

The man, practically a boy, cries out for help. Other shapes move in toward her, but Sloane is up now in a crouch. Her body is coded with the memory of how to fight. Back in the Academy, she practiced and competed in NCB: Naval Corps Boxing. She was good. Never won the belt. But she always ranked.

And Sloane has kept up with it.

The first insurgent who comes at her does so with the inelegance of a drunken man groping for a kiss-she sidesteps him and jabs with a fist, catching him right in the eye. He flails and staggers backward as another one, this one in rough armor and a face-shield, steps in to fill the void. Sloane kicks out this one's leg, and her enemy drops, so she drops with her enemy, catching the person's arm as they fall. Sloane pivots herself into an armbar and yanks back on the insurgent's wrist hard enough that the arm dislocates with a grungy crunch. The terrorist yells-and it's a woman's voice crying out in pain. Sloane kicks off the face-shield, then scoops it up and flings it at the next person coming in- It catches the incoming terrorist in the face, and they spin and tumble. But Sloane is too slow and outnumbered. Someone tackles her from the side, and her shoulder crashes hard against the plastocrete. The breath blasts from her lungs as she scrambles against the ground.

Something presses hard against the side of her head.

A blaster.

"Don't move," comes a shaky, uncertain voice. That same voice calls out: "We got one. Imperial. Pilot by the look of her."

Sloane goes through a new set of calculations. She could fight back. But if they take her, will she play the role of Grand Admiral Rae Sloane, or will she instead aim to be Dasha Bowen, harmless pilot? The former has value, the latter almost none. What will serve her best?

Someone else moves in-a big man, half his face hidden behind a swaddling of blue-and-gold fabric. He reaches down with a wide paw and flips her so she's staring up. Sloane shows her hands. The woman with the blaster stands and stares, her face sooty, her eyes deeply set. "Get her up. We'll take her in. Garris will know what to do with her."

"We could just deal with her here," the big guy says. Others start to gather in behind them. Men, women, young and old. Half a dozen.

"Deal with her?"

"Yeah. Deal with her."

"That's not who we are."

"Maybe it's who we need to be."

Someone else from behind them, a gruff voice: "We're not soldiers. We're just taking back our home."

The blaster pointed at Sloane's nose wavers.

A new figure joins the group. Someone tall, thin. Arms extended out-a pair of batons held in hand. Hard to see anything but the cut of his silhouette. The batons twirl in his grip.

"What've we got here?" he asks.

"Caught us a fish," the big guy says.

But then someone asks: "Wait, who are-"

The new arrival moves like a cyclone. He ducks and spins, jabbing each baton into a different insurgent. The batons bang like slugthrowers going off, and it's a giveaway-those are concussive batons. And they are the signature weapon of someone Sloane has come to work with, recently: The bounty hunter, Mercurial Swift.

The woman pulls her blaster out of Sloane's face to concentrate on the new attacker-and it's a mistake. Sloane gets up behind her and locks her arm tight around the woman's throat. Tighter, tighter, until the woman slides to the ground.

Swift, meanwhile, is up and down like a puppet on yanking strings, the batons jamming under chins and against ribs. Each time this happens, the baton cracks like localized thunder, and another enemy drops.

Until the only two left standing are Sloane and Swift.

"You," Sloane seethes. "You followed me."

"Do we have the time to discuss this right now?" The bounty hunter twirls his batons and clips them back on his utility belt. "I don't think we do. We need to go, Admiral. Unless you want to run into more of your friends?"

She does not. "You can get me out of here?" she asks.

Swift grins and licks his teeth. "It would be my pleasure."

- The speeder skims the tops of the buildings along the Verity District, hugging it so close, Sloane is afraid Mercurial is going to scrape bottom and scrap the craft in a plume of fire. But he assures her-this makes them hard to see and, more important, hard to hit.

She smells burning ozone. And smoke. And hears blasterfire from somewhere behind them. Coruscant is a war zone. Has the Verity District fallen to the local resistance? Or is this just another random act of violence?

In the distance, the Imperial Palace. A massive, jagged thing. Like a mountain swallowed up by bruise-colored light. Spotlight spires shining up into the sky, painting the bands of dark clouds hanging far overhead with swatches of white. Suddenly two TIE fighters scream above them.

"You can tell your people that the resistance fighters are using the old cargo tunnels, the ones that run parallel to the subgrav tunnels." He glances at her, waiting for her reply.

What, though, could her reply be? The most pointed one, the one that sticks in her mind like a nail, is that these are not her "people." That is a thought that thickens and chills her blood, because what it means is that there does not exist one Empire anymore. There are several-fragments of the mirror broken. All reflecting something similar, but broken apart...

And, she worries, impossible to repair.

All Sloane can say in reply is, "Thank you." Two words that sound hollow. The bounty hunter must detect how little she means it.

"You seem not to care very much that I just saved your hide."

"I care. I also care that you have been following me."

"You summoned me, didn't you?" He flashes his white-toothed smile.

She turns and with a sudden surge of rage says: "When I summon you, I expect you to come as your name suggests: swiftly. Not skulk after me like a tooka waiting for a taste of milk."

They pass over the end of the Verity District and into the Federal-where the lights are still on. None will dare to breach this region, she suspects, lest they meet the full force of the Imperial Security Bureau. But then again: At the end of time, all mountains crumble and fall. They become hills and then dust and then the winds of change take them away. Most mountains erode slowly, but sometimes a tectonic shift can speed up its inevitable destruction. The galaxy is undergoing just such a shift.

"You have a job for me?" he asks. "Last one went fine. Our friend, the vice admiral, found that his addiction was just too much to bear. Nasty habit, that spice."

"I need you to find someone."

"I assumed that." He looks like he's about to say more-some snide or narcissistic remark. Even he is smart enough to know not to push the perceived head of the Empire too far. He clears his throat. "Who and where?"

"Brendol Hux. He's on Arkanis, at the Academy."

"Arkanis. Didn't the New Republic take that?"

"Not yet, but soon. It's under siege."

"You need him done in before then. Understood."

"No, not understood. I don't need him 'done in.' This one, I need brought back alive. And with good care."

He barks a laugh. "You want me to guarantee safe passage to someone on a war-torn planet? I'm a bounty hunter, not a nanny."

"Then you'll be disappointed to learn that he has a son, and you are to retrieve the child as well." The Empire needs children... and with that, her mind flashes to the image seen back in the archives: a young boy on the cusp of manhood, standing there in an ill-fitting suit next to Palpatine himself.

"I'll need more credits."

"I can double the usual fee," Sloane says.

"Triple it."

"Or I could turn all the resources of the Empire against you. You would run and we could chase you. You would find no safe haven, and none would dare hire you for fear that the black miasma around you would capture and choke them, too."

"Bit of an empty threat, isn't it?"

"Is it? Do you not fear a resurgent Empire with me at its head?"

Moments pass.

"Double it is, then," he says.

"Good. Get me to the Imperial Palace. Then contact me when the job is done, and payment will be arranged."

Eleodie stands on the bridge, regarding their target.

It must be quite a surprise, zhe thinks, watching the Corellian CR90 ahead of them buck and shudder as the tractor beam lashes it. Poor fools don't know what's coming. They think it's the Empire. And why wouldn't they? A Super Star Destroyer cuts through space like a sword tip, its shadow falling over your ship-well, traditionally, that meant one thing. You were getting boarded. You were now guests of the Empire. You are no longer free people. Zhe knows that sensation. Eleodie belonged to the Empire once. In a way.

But those days are gone.

And we are not the Empire. Forming an empire is quite different from the Empire, after all.

Eleodie looks over at her second: an Omwati, Shi Shu, his splindly fingers running through the crown of feathers atop his head. Zhe asks him, "Remind me again what we're looking at, hmm?"

"The Starfall," he says. "Senatorial ambassador onboard-Tia'dor Emshwa."

Eleodie hums. "And also remind me why we are picking a fight with the New Republic so soon." The pirate's head is full of details and data, rife with debts and assets, thick with the names of those who betrayed zher. Eleodie is trying to seize an opportunity here-the slow death of the Empire and the rise of the revivified Republic leaves pirates and criminals such as zherself scrambling for a foothold. But Eleodie doesn't just want a foothold. Zhe wants the whole mountain. "This seems...unwise, and one hopes that here the juice is worth the squeeze?"

"It is," Shi Shu says, nodding. "They are on a mission to Ithor, hoping to, ahh, seduce them into joining the New Republic. As part of the seduction, they bring with them a ship full of wonders: reclaimed Ithorian artifacts, but also food, meds, and a bounty of tech. It would give our flotilla quite the edge. Even here, we stole this ship, but we still need to keep it stocked..."

"Good, good. And the ship is properly subdued?"

"It is."

"Comm array?"

"Fried like ksharra bread."

"No mistakes. Not like last time. The Rangs almost had us because someone forgot to seal the breaching airlock-"

"It is all handled."

"Then let us plunder."