The meal ended in silence.

Shannon couldn't sleep that night. Hearing voices from her parents' room, she crept to their door to listen.

"The Alliance is desperate for equipment, Nell!"

"Do you think I care? Johan, that Alliance will never feed my family or give Shannon an education that'll get her off this station?

"But the Empire..."

"... Owns this system, and everything in it. Including us. And they have ways of disposing of traitors. Accidents. Johan, do you honestly believe it was a coincidence your brother died in that reactor malfunction less than a week after he'd repaired those Rebels' ship?

Nothing is worth the safety of my family, Johan, nothing. Not the Alliance, not Alderaan..."

"Not even Deen?"

Shannon didn't stay to hear her mother's answer.

Deen left the next morning after a tense, silent breakfast.

"If you change your minds," he began.

"We won't," his aunt said. "Now drop the subject."

"But if you do," Deen persisted, "I'll be in-system for a few days.

Here's a signaller you can use to contact me," he said, dropping the hand-held electronic device on a table near the door. "May the Force be with you."

"Destroy that signaller," said Nell after the door had closed.

"I'll do it, Mom," said Shannon, snatching up the device and darting to the reclamator. The appliance disposed of the morning's trash with a satisfying "crunch"-but the signaller remained hidden in Shannon's pocket.

The elder Voorsons behaved as if Deen had never come; if Shannon mentioned his "friends" or his request for aid, she was sent to her room without discussion.

"I can't understand it!" she said to herself on one such occasion.

It's not as if the station doesn't mix stuff up all the time, she thought. Mother's always complaining about this-or-that going missing.

Bugs in the station net-that's what she always says.

If she gave Deen that generator, everyone would just think it was another computer mistake...

Rolling out of her bed, Shannon flipped on her computer.

A few minutes and slices later, she had the list of upcoming exports scrolling across her screen. There it is, she thought, a CC-23669 generator, to be picked up at loading dock 42, at 1430 hours, five days from now. All right, she thought, if I change the pickup date, Mother will surely notice and stop us. Can't change the dock number either, that would make a huge fuss. But if I changed the time... How long does it take to link a driver to a barge? Daddy says he can do it in less than an hour-would two hours be enough?

She changed the pickup time to 1230 and hoped her mother wouldn't notice. Then she pulled Deen's signall'er from under her pillow.

"Who are you?" asked the security guard.

Shannon gulped and tried to look cute and harmless.

"Shannon Voorson, ma'am," she said.

"Oh, Shannon," the woman said, recognizing the child, "why aren't you at school yet? What're you doing here?"

Shannon knew that "I'm running away to join the Rebellion," would not be a popular answer to that question.

Fortunately, she had come prepared with a lie.

"My daddy forgot his lunch, so's I'm bringing it to him before I go. A bhillen sandwich-see?" She set her portable computer down and opened the thermabag to thrust it into the guard's face so that she was sure to catch the aroma of Bestinnian tang-root.

"Oh, ah, yeah, sure," said the guard, pulling back and blinking.

"Go find your daddy. I'm sure he'll love it."

"Thanks," said Shannon. She bolted off, thinking that raw tang-root was pretty stinky, but there was no way that guard was going to dig past it and find Deen's signaller.

She continued down the corridor toward her father's work area for a few more steps, ducked into an alcove, peeked out to see that the guard was gone, and then doubled back toward dock 42.

The techs hadn't arrived at the dock yet that morning, so Shannon had no trouble slicing her way into the cargo container with a few connecting cables from her portable computer. After a surprisingly long crawl over, under, and around the generator to the front of the container, she settled down with her book-chips to wait for Deen.

"You sure this'll work, Deen?" said Boo Rawl, captain of the Rebel barge driver Long Run.

"For the thousandth time Boo, yes! My aunt is the docking supervisor at this port. She wouldn't have signalled for us to come if she didn't have everything at this end arranged. I didn't live through the evacuation of Echo Base just to get blown out of the sky by my own family."

"I'm not nearly as worried about your family as I am about what you've done to my sublight engines," said Boo.

"I didn't do a thing to your precious engines, Boo," said Deen, "all I did was add an ST box so the port will read our transponder signal as the Imperial driver's. Standard Operating Procedure, straight out of Cracken's Field Guide-I do it all the time."

"Yeah, well, you seemed to be getting pretty close to my cobulators with that hydrospanner..."

"Oh, quit griping and hail the port-we're practically on top of them."

Boo Rawl shrugged and opened a channel. "Kuat Freight Port, this is Drive Craft 36DD, requesting permission to link with the barge in.

.." Boo paused to check a datapad. "Loading dock 42."

"Drive craft, your transponder signal is unclear, "said a cold voice from the station, "Please transmit clearance code to confirm your identity."

Boo gave Deen a pointed stare as he sent out the code.

"Uh, sorry about the transponder, Kuat," he said, "new tech on board was tweaking the sublights, obviously got a little carried away."

"Identity confirmed," answered the controller, uninter-ested in Boo's explanations. 'Driver DeeDee, you are early.

Link techs will be at dock 42 at 1430."

Boo turned again to Deen, who gestured innocence but said nothing.

"Ah, are you sure about that, Kuat?" asked BOo. "My orders say pickup at 1230."

"I will check, DeeDee," said the controller.

Boo shut off the comm. "Isn't that one of your aunt's people?"

Deen nodded.

"Then what's the problem?"

"I dunno..."

Kuat hailed the driver: "It seems you are right, driver DeeDee," said the controller. "You are listed for 1230..." Deen smirked at Boo.

"However, there will be a slight delay-the techs' orders say 1430.

They will be back on duty within the hour."

"No problem, Kuat, I'll wait," said Boo. He shut down the comm again.

"Now what?" he asked Deen.

"We wait for the techs to finish lunch, like you said."

Boo rolled his eyes. "What if Security decides to visit us while we're waiting?"

"Boo, you worry as much as my friend Voren," said Deen.

"Security'll be on break too."

"Yeah, off playing Whack-a-Bothan, or Bobbing for Calamari." Boo sighed. "I hate waiting," he said.

"Finally! I thought they'd take forever!" said Boo as they received the signal that the last of the linking clamps had secured the cargo container to the barge driver. "Kuat, this is driver DeeDee," he said, cutting off the latest scarlet-rated offering of Billi B and the Paradise Gang and hailing the station. "I've linked up to the barge here, and I'd like to check the cargo before I leave."

"Go ahead, DeeDee."

"All right, Deen," Boo said as he cut the comm. "She's all ours.

Let's take a quick peek and vanish before the real barge driver DeeDee shows up."

Deen entered the airlock connecting the access hatch on the cargo container.

"Is the generator all right?" asked Boo as Deen entered the hold.

"The generator is huge-you don't really want me to spend two days inspecting... Wait a..."

"What?"

"I saw something move..."

"Hi, Deen!" said Shannon, popping into view. "Is this the generator you wanted?"

"Shannon!"

"Who's the kid?" Boo asked.

"My cousin... Shannon, does your mother know you're in here?"

"Of course not. We'd better get moving."

"We?" said Deen. "What do you mean, we?"

"I'm joining the Rebellion," she answered, hauling out her portable computer. "Now come on, we've got to go,"

"Absolutely not," said Deen.

"You are going straight back home."

"How?" said Boo. "The dock's been depressurized, and I'm not too thrilled with the idea of calling the techs back, having them unlink us and re-pressurize the dock, explaining the kid to Security, and then waiting to get linked up again. I'm not crazy about dragging some poor kid into danger, but we have no choice. She's on for the haul."

"He's right," said Shannon, climbing into the driver cab. "Close those hatches and let's go!"

"But..." Deen began.

"The Imperial driver will be here in... less than 30 minutes," said Shannon, checking her chrono. "Set our coordinates for hyperspace, comrade," she told Boo.

"Name's Boo. Now keep quiet, kid, I gotta talk to your mom's folks."

Shannon nodded. Deen stood in shock.

"Kuat, this is barge driver DeeDee. My cargo is secure and I'm ready to go."

"Affirmative, Driver DeeDee," said the controller. "You may leave port when ready; thank you for choosing Kuat Engineering and please be careful of repair drones on your way out."

"No problem, Kuat," said Boo, "and thanks for everything."

He began piloting the barge away from the dock.

"This is almost too easy," he said. "Deen, your aunt is the best.

"What did she have to do with it?" asked Shannon. "I set the whole thing up!"

"What do you mean, you set it up?" asked Deen.

"Mom was too scared to help you-you knew that, Deen," Shannon said.