Chapter 34
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CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR:         “So let me get this straight. You’re a visitor from another galaxy who got lost here while trying to investigate something on one of the Empire’s DEATH STARS.”

“Exactly.”

            Zannah fell over onto her side in a fit of cackling. “Oh, okay . . .” she struggled to compose herself. “Okay, wait—when you did this, you managed to avoid the tractor beams and the turbolasers because the battle-station’s power systems were offline, right? You must have one hell of a powerful ship to disable a DEATH STAR.”

            Marc folded his arms in mild frustration at the Lemorian’s teasing. Truth be told he didn’t blame her for doubting his story; he had figured that his own tale would seem as unbelievable to these people as their talk of the “Force” had been to him. Still, he gave Zannah a playful poke in the ribs and folded his ears back. “We don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m sure there were other forces at work. As I said we were running—“

            “—an engine experiment,” Zannah finished for him, finally managing to banish her fit of giggles. “Yes, yes, I remember that part. Some new hyperdrive you were fiddling around with when something went ‘horribly wrong.’” The playful derision in her voice was obvious.

            The captain wrinkled his nose, growing weary of her jeering. “You know . . . if you’re just going to sit here and make fun of me, I just won’t tell you the story.”

            Sovereign Kain, who had up until then been silently listening to the conversation, turned a withering glance to his female apprentice. “You’d do well to at least hear him out, Zannah,” he spoke in a gentle rebuke. “I sense no deception from him, even if his story seems a little  . . . outrageous.”

            The Lemorian sat up and nodded to Kain. “That’s putting it mildly.” She crossed her arms. “So, you got aboard the DEATH STAR, past the thousands of storm troopers, patrol droids, officers and sensor equipment to get to the reactor core. What did you do, teleport in or something?”

            The irony of her question gave Marc pause, “Well, as a matter of fact—“

            Zannah threw her hands in the air. “Well, there you go! It all makes sense now!”

            Even the Jedi Master seemed perplexed for a moment. “Teleportation is impossible, especially for living matter.”

            “Alright, look.” Xavier flicked his tail in annoyance. “I’m telling you, that’s how it happened. I’m not going to sit here and debate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle with you guys. As I said, things are different where I come from.”

            “In the—what did you call it, Federation?”

            “Yes,” Marc nodded. “The United Federation of Planets.”

            “. . . Which is in another galaxy . . .”

            “Yes.”

            “I dunno, Kain.” Zannah leaned back onto her haunches. “Seems like a fairy tale to me.”

            Xavier shot her a look. “You know, that’s ironic coming from someone who’s all about this mystical power of The Force.”

            The Lemorian opened her mouth to retort, but the glimmer of something bright out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. She looked out a window of the palace and caught sight of what looked like a small meteorite tumbling down through the clouds, burning like a hot filament and casting a chain of black smoke and ash in its wake.

            Zannah’s sudden change of focus prompted Marc and Kain to look aside as well. The trio watched in curious silence as the fiery object tore a streak through the afternoon sky and came to ground somewhere beyond the outskirts of Kadan City. It took a few seconds for the thunder of its impact to reach the palace, but the sound was loud and low enough to shake its walls.

            Kain’s expression turned dour as he surveyed the rising cloud of dust and smoke in the distance. “This star system has no asteroid belt or planets with rocky rings,” he said quietly. “That couldn’t have been a meteor. Something is wrong.”

            Zannah was at the window by then, leaning out into the open air and squinting toward the distant object. “Whatever it is, it must have made quite the crater. It’s a good thing it landed outside the city.”

            Marc pushed himself up to a knee. “Maybe we should go check it out.”

The Lemorian gestured toward the billowing smoke as she replied. "Couldn't hurt. Looks like it landed in a bog just beyond the river. From the smoke alone, finding the impact shouldn't be difficult."  She turned to Kain.  "If it's all right with you, Master?"

"You had better." The Sovereign took a breath and furrowed his brow. "I have a bad feeling about this. Take your friend and investigate . . . I will try to get in contact with the Empress in orbit. Doubtless her fleet will have some answers as well."

"I should hope so.” Zannah nodded and pushed away from the sill, fixing the strike's location in her mind. "C'mon, Marc."

Captain Xavier stood with a nod and gathered his knapsack off of a nearby table. Ruffling around through it for a few moments, he made sure his tricorder was inside and then grabbed his phaser rifle.  

————————————

Lieutenant Commander Cyber T. Hare sat down with a bowl of cold cereal at one of the smaller tables of the FELIX’s mess hall. Less lavish than the StarSyde Lounge, the Officer’s Mess was basically a cafeteria with a line of replicators along the far wall. The room was bustling with the sounds of tired officers mumbling to each other and gathering food at the start of a new day.

Cyber had picked up her spoon and was just about to dig in when someone stepped forward from a nearby group of officers.

“Mind if I join you?”

The hare looked up at Lanna Tigris and nodded with a warm smile. “Oh, sure!”  She moved her tray aside so that the lieutenant could set down her plate of chilled gagh.

“Thanks.” The tigress nodded and took a seat.

The two women passed a few minutes in silence as they started their meals Cyber spoke again. “It’s good to see you back.” She gave an awkward smile. “I came to see you while you were in sickbay, but you were still under. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to say ‘hi’—things have been a little busy lately.”

Lanna shook her head. “No need to apologize.” She shrugged. “I’ve been up to my ears trying to get a handle on things in Engineering. That petáq vonKlatt took over my desk while I was gone.”

Cyber chuckled. “Are you serious?”

The engineer waved a hand. “Well, he wasn’t doing it on purpose. He had to fill in while I was gone, and he’s . . . well, he’s just a mess. I’ve had Dute sorting out his papers from mine for the past day.”

The hare took a sip of her orange juice. “It must be nice to have ensigns around to do your bidding.”

Lanna gave a toothy grin. “You have no idea. But it’s not all it’s cracked up to be . . . sometimes I think the newbies aren’t worth the trouble. For example, there have been some strange things happening with the lateral sensor array the past few days and it seems like I’m always the one that has to fix it or it never gets done right.”

Cyber flopped an ear. “Ah. So that’s probably what it was about.”

The tigress looked at her curiously. “What?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Cyber raised another spoonful of cereal from the bowl and paused, as if studying it for a moment. “One of your ensigns must have been working on the system during the late-shift the night before last.”

Lanna quirked a brow. “Not with my authorization. Why?”

The blue hare blinked. “Oh, we registered a computer glitch with one of the tachyon scanners. Set off a proximity alarm when nothing was there. I thought maybe it was one of your guys working on the system.”

The engineer shook her head. “No, not one of mine. Do you know which palette it was?”

Cyber glanced up a moment to recall what she had read on the tactical console that night. “Low-band tachyon scanners,” she nodded. “It was uhh . . . subsystem 131.038.”

A brief look of confusion played across Lanna’s face. “Hmm, I’ll check it out. Anything else?”

The hare paused a moment and considered telling Lanna that Rumsfield had been late and acting a little strangely yesterday morning, but shook her head. “Nothing worth mentioning.” Cyber looked down to her cereal. “But if something comes up, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

————————————

Zannah wrinkled her nose at the awful scent of burned marsh grass. "Phew, what a reek.” She fanned her nose. “We've got to be close now." She slogged forward through the mud, her arms pushing wild tree vines away from her face, hoping that she wouldn’t accidentally step in a pool deeper than her boots.

A thousand different noises echoed through the thick marshes. A particular buzz or hiss caught Xavier’s ears every so often as he glanced at the readouts on his tricorder. Some of the sounds of the swamp were almost familiar in their similarity to noises he had heard in bogs on Earth. Others were thoroughly alien and unsettling. He had just looked aside to identify the source of a particularly insidious murmur when a swamp beetle decided to alight on the tip of his muzzle. "What the—?"

The Lemorian flicked her ears, catching the strange whine that did not sound entirely natural to the swamp.  "Wait a second . . . do you hear . . . ?"

Marc flicked the bug off of his nose and made a face. "Ah don’t worry about it." He waved his hand dismissively. "Just some bug I gu—"

Xavier didn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before the earth suddenly dropped out from underneath him. Something had caught his leg and in an instant snatched him down below the surface of the murky water.

Zannah whirled around to face where Marc had been standing a second before, igniting her lightsaber in a flash. The captain was nowhere in sight and the swamp was quiet. Even the insects and small animals that had been chirping and buzzing a moment before had suspiciously fallen silent. A predator, the Lemorian thought. She reached out with her senses to see if she could locate her fallen companion, slowly turning in place to study the horizon. She had barely completed a half-circle before she spotted Xavier’s arm breaking the surface of the bog, his hands clawing at the base of a nearby tree.

With obvious effort, Marc pulled his head above the water and gasped for breath. The captain’s struggles made it obvious that whatever had caught him had not yet let him go. Something was splashing about in the marsh near his foot, twisting and writhing through the mud and trying to pull him back under.

Zannah leapt over and spun her lightsaber, the blade flashing a spectrum of color as it severed the tentacle that held Xavier’s leg. The oozing, blistered limb slipped free and flopped across the marshy waters like a fish out of water. The rest of the beast retreated into the swamp with a horrendous roar and the sound of animals scattering echoed through the trees around them.

The captain dragged himself back to where the swamp was shallower, refusing to let go of the tree for a few moments. He was covered in black mud and all manner of compost, disoriented and coughing for breath.

Zannah darted to his side, patting his back and wiping the sludge from around his eyes. “Are you al—?”

“What the hell was that thing?!” Marc exclaimed.

The Lemorian paused and then disarmed her lightsaber. "Hard to say for sure, since I didn't get a good look at it." She looked around wearily. “Probably a dianoga or something related to one. They live in this type of environment, and they like swamps almost as much as sewers."

Xavier nodded and after a few minutes began to settle. Okay, diagona equals ‘bad thing,’ he made a mental note to himself. Marc leaned his back against the trunk of the tree and let out a long sigh, but his relief was short-lived. He sat up abruptly, looking first to Zannah and then around the bog. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Zannah glanced about as well.

“My tricorder,” Marc immediately set about feeling through the shallow marsh. “I must have dropped it . . .”

The Lemorian watched him move back toward the area where the creature had grabbed him. “Are you sure you want to go wandering back over there . . . ?”

“Watch my back better this time.”

“Yeah, okay.” Zannah frowned and folded her arms. She looked off to the side. “Here, there’s something over there.” The Lemorian stepped aside a few paces and grabbed long metallic object from under a nearby brush. “Is this it?”

The captain sat up and blinked. “No, that’s the phaser. The tricorder is that scanning device I told you about. But good, I don’t want to lose my gun either.”

Zannah rolled her eyes. “’Phaser’, ‘tricorder’. It’s a blaster and a scanner! Don’t people from the Federation ever give things normal names?”

“You’d be surprised,” Marc murmured back. “Ah, here we go!” He lifted his muddy hands from the marsh and held up the device. “Looks all right.” Marc did what he could to wipe the sludge and grime from the device’s controls, giving a slight nod as he recognized the infrared readouts on its tiny display. “In fact I—wait.” He crouched low and motioned for Zannah to do the same.

The Lemorian dropped to her knees in the mud. “. . . Do you hear that?”

Marc waved his tricorder in the direction of the sound.

Her ears flicked, picking up a not-quite-natural whine in the distance. "Sounds like a repulsorlift . . . that doesn't make any sense out here, though."

"A what?"

"Ah . . . the things that keep a landspeeder off the ground," Zannah oversimplified. "We're near the city, but not that near, and people usually don’t travel through the marsh . . . too dangerous.”

“Really? I never would have guessed . . .” Xavier glanced back down at his tricorder. “Well there’s definitely something out there. Something about this marsh is keeping me from getting a clear reading, though. I’m detecting heat signals, electron echoes, and low-level graviton disturbances, but I can’t get an exact fix.” A shadow moving through the trees caught his attention. He moved quietly through the marsh over to Zannah’s side, keeping close to the ground, and pointed over a nearby bush. "There. About fifteen meters that way. Look up, slowly . . ."

Zannah looked where Marc was pointing and spotted the thing he had seen through the trees. The rounded dome and spindly metal limbs drawn up beneath it were instantly familiar. In a brief delivery stint on Tatooine, a jawa junk dealer had tried to sell her a similar droid. Though that one had been smashed and missing a limb or two, the construction was the same. "Sithspawn!" she cursed. "That's Imperial technology, a probe droid. No wonder Kain sensed something wrong."

Marc closed his tricorder and hooked it to his belt, knowing that it wasn’t going to do them any more good in whatever interference field was preventing him from getting a better reading. He grabbed his phaser rifle from Zannah and took a knee in the marsh to adjust its settings. "If you’re right, then there's a good chance they already know we're here."

"And all those ships in orbit."

Xavier flipped up the targeting sight of the weapon and brushed the mud out of it. “Great, just great . . .” He paused a moment and gave Zannah a weighty look. Marc centered himself, slipped his other hand around the forward grip of the weapon and shot to his feet, leveling the phaser at the floating, spindly droid.

He pulled the trigger and the probe droid shuddered a moment, tilting awkwardly in the air before letting out a high-pitched wine. The sound echoed through its metallic black chassis until it exploded in a ball of flame, sending fire and shrapnel in all directions.

Marc dropped back down to his knees and shielded his eyes, waiting for the brief hail of charred parts and machinery to stop before he spoke. "That's odd . . .” he furrowed his brow. “I only meant to disable it. It must have had a self-destruct."

Zannah's ears swiveled back up as the echoes of the explosion died away. "Probably to keep anyone who spotted it from capturing it and tracking its signal back to whoever sent it out." She stood, hooking her saber to her belt. "Let's get back to the palace, and fast. We've got to let Kain know about this. It could be a few days or only hours until an Imperial fleet drops out of hyperspace on top of us, but they will come."

————————————

Lanna Tigris strode into Main Engineering and ran a hand through her thick, curly hair. It was still early and many of the officers on duty still fresh for the morning, Lanna included. The entire place was a beehive of activity as usual, with various officers divvying up the different tasks of the day needed to keep the FELIX operating in peak condition.

Several of the officers, junior grade lieutenants who had earned the right to address her so early in the morning, nodded slight greetings that the tigress tolerantly returned as she passed them.

Lanna found Ensign Dute Wilier in her office, leaning over two piles of PADDs which he had stacked on either of the chairs in front of her desk. He jumped when he realized someone was behind him, the sudden movement causing one of the towers to tip to the side. Fortunately, the ensign was able to scramble around and catch it before the PADDs tumbled to the floor.

“Sir—uhh—good morning, sir!” Dute managed as he tended to the stack. “I’ve gotten all of your files separated from Lieutenant vonKlatt’s, just like you asked.”

Lanna’s brow tweaked with annoyance, something Dute did not expect. “What did you say?”

Ensign Wilier blinked a moment, trying to figure out his error, and then snapped to attention. “Sorry sir. I’ve gotten all of your files separated from that damn lion’s pile, just like you asked.”

The tigress gave a wry grin. “Very good, ensign. Take Khajja’s files back to his office and tell him that he’s lucky I didn’t dump them in a recycling unit.”

“Sir, yes sir!” The young officer immediately scrambled out, balancing the tall pile of PADDs in his arms. He made it about a dozen or so steps out of Lanna’s office, halfway to the warp core, before he tripped and scattered them all over the deck.

Lanna stifled a slight snicker and closed the door. “Computer.”

The system beeped in acknowledgement.

“Review sensor logs for the last thirty-six hours. Has anyone been in section 131 of the lateral sensor maintenance crawlspace?”

“Negative.”

“Hmm.” She took a seat at her desk and rubbed her chin. “And confirm that an auto-diagnostic was performed on the subsystem during that time?”

“Confirmed. A Level 4 Diagnostic was performed on the entire lateral sensor array system at exactly 0304 and sixteen seconds on Stardate 49243.7.”

“Results?”

“All systems were reported to be operating within normal parameters.”

“Then what caused the proximity alarm?”

“Unknown.”

Lanna let out a sigh of consternation. So it’s a mystery, she thought to herself. I hate mysteries. “Computer, begin a Level 2 Diagnostic of the lateral sensor systems. Notify me upon completion.“

A pounding on the door to her office interrupted Lanna’s train of thought. She looked up to see the frame of Khajja vonKlatt shadowed through the frosted glass of her door. He was yelling about something, most likely the mess of PADDs strewn about the floor of Engineering, but she couldn’t hear more than a muffled accent and the occasional expletive through the thick door. It was fairly obvious, though, that he wanted to be let in.

The tigress let out a brief chuckle and contently watched Khajja work himself into a frenzy. “Computer, confirm previous command.”

“Confirmed.”

After a few moments she finally relented, having had her fun, and opened the door. “All-right, all right you big oaf, come in.”

————————————

Arthur Sunrider sat waiting on one of the plush couches outside of the Capital Briefing Room of the Empress’ cruiser, the TENSHII. Unlike the austere interior of the Rebels’ captured Imperial cruiser, the halls of the Yuufusion flagship were decorated and pleasing to the eye. Soft, colored lights transformed the pale ceilings, and exotic plants hung from small garden troughs that lined the hallways. As the meek scientist looked at his surroundings he momentarily forgot that he was in space and not on a lush planet.

The mouse looked down at his lap and neatly folded his hands across it, perking one large ear toward the sound of approaching footsteps. The professor looked up and watched as a pale blue female wolf dressed as an attendant approached the guard’s desk and sat down with a handful of documents. Feeling somewhat overlooked, Arthur cleared his throat to gain the woman’s attention.

The attendant glanced up as Arthur coughed, blinking and removing her bifocals. Arthur recognized her as Charis, one of Empress Vortex’s honor guard. “Ah, professor.”  She gave a brief smile, her face flushed with embarrassment. “I’m sorry I—“

Sunrider adjusted the rim of his own glasses, which were much larger and thicker than the wolf’s, and nodded. “No, no it’s quite all right,” he reassured her. “Sometimes I think I’m not so easy to notice . . . I think I prefer it that way.”

She opened her mouth to say something else apologetic and then decided against it, instead opting to brush away a lock of her flaxen hair. After a quick glance down at her papers again, she looked up and frowned, “The Empress wont be in today either, I’m afraid.”

The professor looked disappointed. “Still no word on when she plans to return to her schedule?”

Charis shook her head, taking the moment to gnaw on the back of a pen. “I’m as in the dark as you, Arthur.”

“Well I—“

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she looked flustered again, “Professor Sunrider. I meant no disrespect,” she explained. “It’s just you’ve been here for the past several—and well I thought I—”

“No, no, it’s all right,” the mouse smiled, “I don’t mind. Call me Arthur.”

Charis shook her head, “Oh no, I don’t think so. It wouldn’t be proper.“ She glanced aside and spoke in a softer tone, obviously embarrassed. “After all, you’re such an accomplished and respected theoretical physicist—“

“Poppycock,” he waved his hand. “It’s just a label.”

“Still,” she insisted. “It’s not appropriate for me to be so informal. Some of the most prestigious scientists of our universities would be astonished by your work, your accomplishments—”

“Accomplishments,” Arthur echoed, looking at the ground and giving a bitter chuckle. After a moment he gazed back up at Charis. “Are you at all interested in theoretical physics?”

The Amazon blushed yet again. “Well, I . . . actually I’m studying ASFLUX technology at the Kawaiian Institute. It’s one of our more esteemed schools.”

Sunrider nodded. “I would hardly call any of my blunders an ‘accomplishment.’ Had my most recent experiment not exploded I suspect things might be very, very different. There’s no hope for my research, now, I suppose.” The mouse sighed.

But as Arthur’s ears began to droop at the discouraging prospect, a voice called out softly from behind him. “There’s always hope. Otrera taught us that in the midst of sorrow and despair, hope rises with a new day.”

The two looked aside to find the Empress standing near the bulkhead, her eyes slightly puffy and her voice hauntingly low.

“Empress!” Arthur exclaimed.

“Sonno joi.” Charis stood and bowed.

Violet gave a weak smile and stepped forward. “You’d do well to let her call you ‘Arthur,’ professor. I suspect my guard may be somewhat fond of you.”

Charis looked mortified and glared daggers at the Empress, but when she spied the professor looking at her from the corner of her eye she turned bright red and looked down at her papers again.

Arthur flicked an ear slightly. He hadn’t thought of that . . .

The Empress knelt so that her eyes were level with the professor’s. Not only was Violet quite tall—even for a Yuufusion—but Arthur was quite short, even for a Chandrilan. “So I understand you’ve been seeking an audience with me?”

Sunrider looked embarrassed, and for a moment fumbled for words. “Erm—well yes.”

“I remember speaking with your ‘General Tiharr.’“ She nodded, recalling. “He told me something about experiments that you were conducting on your old base?”

Arthur nodded.

“Then here,” she stood, motioned to Charis to unlock the doors to the briefing chamber, and soon after stepped inside. “Come along,” she called, her voice still small. “I’d like to hear more of it—I’ve listened to far too many stories of fighting and death these past few days. Perhaps a physics lesson will be a much-needed change.”

“—And basically from that we hoped to create a Novin-Faberstien topology between two distinct points in this and another contiguous space-time. In effect, such a bridge would be both a wormhole and a timehole potentially linking any two points in the universe. We had hoped to stabilize the closed timelike curve of the dimensional gate through the use of negatively energized trio—“

Empress Vortex let out a distinctly unladylike yawn as she stretched her arms into the air. She glanced away and only reluctantly returned her boredom-stricken eyes to the babbling professor, resting her cheek in her hand. “This is technobabble, ne?”

That comment caught Sunrider off guard so much that he stopped talking altogether, opened his mouth to explain himself, and then finally nodded in assent. “Well, I—well yes, I suppose it is.”

Violet sat up and gave the professor a reassuring smile. “Not to say it’s not . . . interesting, Arthur. But I think these things are better suited to Charis’ expertise, ne?”

The professor tried to hide his chagrin as he fumbled with his glasses. “Well uh—yes, that much may be true. Not to say that it’s over your head or anything, Your Highness.”

Your ‘Highness’, she chuckled to herself. I never thought . . . what a terrible thing to call a Yuufusion. She waved the comment away. “But basically what you’re saying is you’re trying to make a time-portal.”

“Not only trying, Empress,” Arthur sat up. “I think we were on the verge of a breakthrough. Had my lab not blown up I’m sure I could conclusively validate my energy flow models and—“ he paused, catching himself. “I’m sorry, I’m technobabbling again.”

Violet only smiled, giving the professor time to rethink.

“The DEATH STAR.”

“Yes?”

“General Tiharr explained that it might have been damaged by the overload of my experiment.”

“Hai.”

Sunrider took a breath. “I believe the battlestation was caught between dimensions for a short time. Nothing we had at our base could even approach the energy necessary to relieve a DEATH STAR of its main power systems, so it’s the only explanation I can reasonably think of. It also fits with a theory I’ve had of the gateway’s interaction with hypermatter.” He adjusted his glasses, “think of it like a giant magnet. The gateway was drawn to the power core of the DEATH STAR in the same way opposing poles of a magnet pull together. When the two met it basically shorted the core out. That is probably why the station was vulnerable to our attack.”

Violet took a moment to sigh and nodded her head again. “Hai.”

Arthur was a scientist to the core and had never been particularly skilled at picking up on body language or mood changes unless the alterations were blatant. Despite that, the mouse was aware of the Empress’ feelings about the war against the Imperials and was willing to use that knowledge to his advantage. “I know how you feel about what happened during the battle. I don’t agree with it, but I have a brother who’s a doctor on Chandrila, so I certainly understand your point of view. But Empress, with all due respect, it seems at your current juncture you can either abandon the Rebel Alliance or fight alongside it. Either choice will come with bloodshed. Now, I know my theories may seem a little far-fetched, but this might be a first step toward a third option.”

The Empress gave Sunrider a heavy look, her normally soft gaze seeming unusually focused on the diminutive professor. He had struck a nerve with that comment, because there was nothing that Violet wanted more than a way out of this situation that wouldn’t end up in carnage. “Perhaps there is some truth to what you say,” she sat up. “I will speak with Charis of this. If what you say is true, then you will have the resources of the entire Yuufusion scientific community to assist—“

A flat hologram appeared at the center of the table where the two were speaking and took the form of Lais, another one of the Empress’ honor guard. “Sonno joi.” The image of a honey-furred vixen bowed slightly, her sculpted curves accented beneath a tan duty uniform that was obviously too tight. The woman paused a moment and gave a momentary wink at Arthur, who glanced aside abruptly and pretended not to see her. “Apologies for interrupting, Empress, but I believe we have a problem.”

Violet let out a quiet sigh. “Now what?”

“We picked up an unidentified object that crashed outside of Kadan City about twenty centads ago. We thought it was a piece of space garbage, and it never was never in danger of landing in a populated area so we ignored it until now.”

“What changed?”

“We just got word from Kain, who has people on the ground. They say they discovered an Imperial probe droid where the object crash landed. Our safe haven here has likely been compromised.”

Chapter 34
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