Shannon heard voices through the thin pre-fab walls of her room; someone had entered the apartment, and her parents were greeting the visitor. Deciding to investigate, she saved the Star Destroyer files under the password "dumbnames" and shut down her computer's code program.

The Voorson family had been techs at Kuat Freight Port for generations.

Most of them had spent their entire lives aboard the station-they were born in the company Wellness Center, educated in the company school, apprenticed to and then hired by Kuat Port Support Services.

They married co-workers, raised their families in company housing, and rarely left the station, even to go so far as the planet Kuat itself.

There was no reason to leave-the company stores on the station provided everything they needed, the pay and benefits for KFP workers were among the best in the system, and they had the pride and satisfaction of knowing that, as members of the Kuat Engineering conglomerate, they were helping build the finest starships in the galaxy. Still, every so often a Voorson would look beyond the comfortable walls of a station apartment to see what the rest of the thousand-thousand worlds had to offer. Shannon's cousin, Deen, was one of these wandering Voorsons.

"Deen!" she squealed excitedly at the sight of the u young man embracing her father. "Oh, Deen, it's you!

You're finally here! Where have you been? What have you been doing?"

Shannon leapt at the guest.

Her cousin turned to catch her. "Hey, Little Bit, I've miSSed you!

Oof!" He 'grunted, as he tried to lift her off the floor.

"You've grown, Little Bit let me look at you!

You're so tall now, and your hair is so long-when I left, you were a baby, with braids only to your ears, and Aunt Nell had you sleep with a scarf on to keep them from standing straight up in the morning!"

Nell Voorson nodded, and smiled wryly. "Now I have to keep her from chewing the ends."

"Oh, Deen," said Shannon, "I've missed you so-come and see my room!

It's all different now and I have my own computer and everything!" She tugged on his hand.

Deen smiled indulgently at the child. "I've missed you, too, Little Bit, but don't you think your parents want to talk to me too?"

"Oh, go with her, Deen," said Nell. "You can talk while Johan and I get supper on."

"I can't believe you're really here," said Shannon, hopping up and down in the center of her room. "It's been four whole years! What have you been doing?"

"Slaying dragons."

Shannon laughed. "No, Deen, really!"

"Really! Well, sort of. Helping to slay artificial drag-ons-I've been working as a tech." He took a seat next to Shannon's computer.

"Where?"

"Oh, different places," he said. His dark eyes wandered over the room.

"Are you still reading those old stories grandmother gave you?" he asked as he spotted the story platform on her computer.

"Yep," said Shannon, "even though Mother says I should outgrow them, like dolls."

"I don't see many dolls here," said Deen.

"Yep. I like computers now. I'm a slicer. I can slice into anything."

"Anything?" Deen asked, chuckling.

"Anything. So who do you work for? What kind of work do you do?

Do you get paid a lot? Do you fix droids, or ships, or what?"

"Hey," said Deen, "one question at a time! I work for some friends I made, right after I left here. They're good friends. I don't get paid a lot, but I like what I'm doing.

Mostly I work on ships..."

"What kind?"

"Small starcraft, mostly, but some larger ones, and anything else that my friends need fixed. I have to be flexible."

"What's the hardest thing you've ever had to fix?"

Deen paused. "Well," he said, glancing at the closed bedroom door, "a few months ago, I had to adapt some airspeeders to operate at 20 degrees below freezing..."

"And did they work?"

"Well enough... That's Vici of Alderaan, isn't it?" he asked, pointing to the story platform on the computer.

"Yup, it's still my favorite. Vici is so brave."

"One who has the Force need have no fear," Deen murmured.

"That's what Vici's grandfather tells her. Say," Shannon asked, "did you get a chance to visit Alderaan? Before..."

Deen shook his head. "No. I never did. I wish I could have.

But I never had the chance."

"It's not fair," said Shannon, settling on the floor.

"That I never got to Alderaan?" asked her cousin.

"That they blew it up. Stupid Empire. Why'd they do it?

Grandmother always said Alderaan was a planet of peace and beauty.

There weren't any weapons there. Why'd they do it?"

"Because of that," said Deen, pointing.

"Because of my story platform?"

"Because of that story," said Deen. "That story, and others like it.

The stories of Alderaan were more dangerous to the Emperor than any weapon."

"How can a story be more dangerous than a weapon?" asked Shannon.

"Because of the ideas in it. On Alderaan, people still believed in the Force. On Alderaan, people remembered the Jedi Knights and the Old Republic. The people of Alderaan remembered the way things were in the galaxy before the coming of the Empire, before the days of hate and fear. And their stories, libraries and universities held all of the ideas that can destroy the Emperor-that love is stronger than hate, that people are stronger than weapons, that combined together the people in this galaxy have a strength the Emperor can never oppose."

Deen's eyes were shining.

"So the Emperor," said Shannon, "destroyed Alderaan to destroy all these ideas?"

"He tried," said Deen, "but he didn't succeed. He can never succeed.

The only way for him to control all the ideas in the galaxy would be for him to kill or enslave everyone in the galaxy, and that's impossible. He can't win. The more crimes he commits, the more people will stand up to fight him... "

"Deen," asked Shannon, "are you a Rebel?"

Deen put a hand to his mouth.

"It's all right," Shannon added, "I won't tell anybody.

Not even Mom and Dad. Here," she said, switching to the computer, "look what I found today. Just before you got here. I'll give you a copy if you want..."

"How did you access this?" Deen asked, staring at the list of Star Destroyers. "Do you have any idea..."

"It's easy to slice into Imperial files; they have computer-rigged pass-names. I make up my own codes myself. Usually animal names, like 'nerf,' or 'bhillen,' or even 'dog.""

"I can't believe this," Deen said, still reading the data-screen.

"Do you know what this is worth-do you know what will happen to you if someone catches you at this?"

"No one's ever gotten past my codes," said Shannon proudly.

"Maybe no one's ever considered investigating the files of a nine-year-old girl," said Deen. "You've got to stop this-you'll get yourself killed!"

Shannon bit her lip. "Does that mean you don't want copies of the files?"

Mistress Voorson called them to dinner, cutting off D een's answer.

Gathered around a pot of stewed bhillen, the family discussed the last four years: Shannon's schooling, Nell's promotion to senior docking supervisor of Kuat Freight Port, Johan and Deen's work as techs. Johan complained about impatient starship captains expecting miracles.

Deen told horror stories of combatting heat, cold, humidity, dust, ice, offensive flora, fauna, microbes, and every other threat to machinery on backwater worlds he neglected to name.

"You actually found moss growing in the ships' coolant coils?" asked Johan.

"Yep," said Deen. "Two hours before launch."

"Did you get 'em cleaned up in time?"

Deen grinned. "Skin of our teeth."

"The Force was with you," his uncle said.

Nell frowned slightly. "It's good to have you home, Deen, after so long. I was beginning to think you'd left us for good. And now," she said, "here you are. Are you in trouble, Deen? Do you need anything?"

"Nell," her husband protested, "can't a boy fly in without an ulterior motive?"

Deen stared at his plate. "Actually," he said, poking his custard with a spoon, "I was wondering..."

"Ah, here it comes," said Nell.

"My friends," Deen continued, "the ones I work with... They've had some problems lately, lost a lot of equipment..."

"Lost?" asked Nell.

"Uh, yeah, damaged. Beyond repair."

"How?" asked Johan.

"Well... there were a lot of asteroids, and-it's a long story, but the point is, we need a Colony Class 23669 power generator, and.

"Why don't you contact the factory, then?" asked Nell.

"If you put your order in now, you could have the generator in six months or less, barring rush orders from Imperial Procurement."

"We need it sooner than that, and we've heard a generator's being shipped out of here to an Imperial outpost within two weeks."

"I don't see what that has to do with you," said Johan.

"Well, see, Aunt Nell, you control the docking stations, and we figured if we could arrange docking clearance, you could slip in our barge driver in place of the Imperials'..."

"I cannot believe," Nell said, "that YOu are sitting at my dining table talking about hijacking 25 million credits worth of power generator as if you were asking to borrow a speeder."

"But Aunt Nell..."

"You're talking about stealing that generator, aren't you?"

"But... we could pay you..."

Nell's mouth fell open. Johan found his voice. "Deen, do you hear what you're saying? This isn't just another prank, like the time you sliced into the school comm-system with phony evacuation drills.

"This is treason," Nell finished. "Deen, I don't want to hear another word about these so-called friends of yours.

Now, because you're my nephew, I'm not going to turn you in and we're all going to pretend this conversation never happened. Is that perfectly clear?"