Disclaimers--Star Wars isn't mine. Don't sue me. I have nothing you'd want. Unless you want my job. In which case, e-mail me. Fast.

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Thelea struggled out of the heavy life-support harness and stretched her arms out above her head. Free of the extra weight, her back straightened and grateful muscles relaxed in relief. "At least the air's breathable."

Rurik, poised atop his fighter and scanning their surroundings, said, "So far, that's about all this place has going for it."

Giriad, sitting atop the rounded cockpit of his Interceptor, sneered, "I would think you'd be right at home, Rurik."

"Drop dead." Rurik jumped down from the wing strut he'd been using as a vantage point. "There's nothing around for a good ways. Looks like they figure we're as good as dead."

"Let's keep it that way for a while, all right?" Thelea suggested. She looked at her fighter and grimaced. "I don't think we're going anywhere any time soon." She tugged open the survival kit she'd retrieved from beneath her seat. "I wonder what they put in these things."

"Given that most TIEs don't survive crashes, probably not much." Rurik had already started investigating his. "Let's see--a couple flash-starters. At least those might come in handy for a fire tonight."

"I have those, plus a survival cape. Three emergency ration packs, probably expired. Oh, and an emergency glow rod."

"Same here, minus the cape," Giriad said. "Someone ought to start checking these more often."

"I wonder what would kill us faster," Rurik mused, "starvation or what's in these ration packs."

"We ought to see about some kind of shelter, a little removed from these fighters," Thelea said, ignoring the gripes. She studied the three Interceptors, awkwardly perched on their solar panels like unstable insects. "If someone's looking for us, they'll spot these first."

"Too bad the kits don't have camo nets." Rurik repacked the kit and slung it over his shoulder. "Should we ditch the flight suits, too?"

"So long as you're wearing something underneath them." There were always jokes, rumors and simple crude stories around the fighter wings about what went under the flight suits the pilots wore. Thelea had never put much stock in them, but faced with the prospect of finding out, she sincerely hoped they were only stories. "I'm getting rid of mine, anyway." She proceeded to match actions to words, conscious of Rurik's comical attempt at a lewd grin and Giriad's deliberately averted eyes. "I'm wearing off-duty gear underneath, gentlemen. Please control yourselves."

Rurik chuckled. "It's taking a lot of willpower, Commander." Following her lead, he shed his own heavy flight gear, revealing a utilitarian khaki shirt and trousers underneath. "I think we ought to take the utility belts from the flight suits."

"Probably a good idea. You both have blasters?" They nodded, and Thelea scrambled up the side of her fighter's cockpit. "Won't be a moment." Her black shift, belted at the waist, and the black trousers were much easier for climbing than the heavy suit had been. She found the little niche where she'd secured her personal weapon and retrieved it, clipping the silver handle to her belt.

"What's that?" Rurik pointed to her new accessory.

Thelea hesitated. She'd never shown anyone the gift Mith'raw'nuruodo had sent her before he left for the Unknown Regions, the gift he'd sent on behalf of her mother, or so he claimed. She wasn't sure herself how to use it, or whether she even could. A few hours of clandestine examination, here and there, when she could get away, did not qualify her as an expert. Still, if she needed it, better to explain it now. . . ."It was a gift--a legacy, really, from someone I never knew. You have to swear you'll never tell anyone about this, though. I could be in serious trouble." I could get killed.

"We promise," Rurik said quickly, trying not to think exactly how illegal that might be. "Right, Giriad?"

"Right," but their wingmate sounded less certain.

"Fine." Thelea unhooked the handle from her belt. Hoping she didn't push the wrong button and accidentally blow them up, or whatever this was capable of, she touched the smooth black button that sat just above her thumb when she held it in a comfortable grip. Rurik leapt backwards from her as the pale gold, incandescent blade appeared between them. The low hum rose and fell from the Doppler effect as she turned the weapon for their examination.

Giriad's eyes went wide. "Is that what I think it is?"

Rurik drew in a slow, long, breath. "I didn't think I'd ever see one."

"It's a lightsaber." They had already figured that out, but she needed to say it out loud, more to convince herself.

"Where did you get that?" Rurik breathed, still transfixed by the glowing blade.

Thelea shrugged uneasily. "As I said, it was a legacy."

"Your mother was a. . ." Giriad couldn't bring himself to say it.

"A Jedi?" Again she shrugged. "I said a long time ago, I never knew my parents. I don't even know their names."

"Isn't knowing your own name a start?" Rurik asked. When he had first met Thelea three years ago, she had gone by the surname tal Kyrn, which was apparently the equivalent of having no name at all. Her race seemed to set great store by their families, and she had been very happy when Vice Admiral Thrawn had told her that her name was....Rurik still stumbled mentally over the rolling alien syllables.

Thelea shrugged. "I know who my mother's family must have been. That doesn't help a lot." She touched the button again and the lightsaber's blade vanished. "In any case, none of that is relevant at the moment. We have to figure out how to get off this planet without getting killed in the process."

"Announcing that we're Imperial officers and demanding aid doesn't seem like the best idea, does it?" Rurik said, leaning against the solar panel of his fighter.

"Not given our reception, no. And I think it's obvious that my fighter, at least, isn't going anywhere any time soon." Thelea settled down to a crouching position, supporting herself on her fighter. "We're going to have to find another way off-planet."

"There's no way we have enough money to buy passage, even if there were someone who'd fly us to Imperial space." Giriad sighed, looking almost comically dolefully at the thought of money. "I'd bet they wouldn't take Imperial credits, anyway."

"Out here, you need hard currency--real metal, or goods, to trade," Rurik said with confidence born of a Rim upbringing. "I don't think we're in a very good bargaining position."

"What do we have that we could trade?" Giriad asked.

Thelea's glowing eyes looked upwards. "Much as I hate to say it, what about our fighters?"

Giriad turned white. "We can't sell them! That's theft of Imperial property."

"And the Empire will be any better off if we die on this rock and they're left to scavengers? Be serious, Giriad," Thelea snapped. "We have to survive and report back. Otherwise who will know what happened to the Aris Val?"

"Thelea's right." Rurik put in his two credit's worth. "Besides, if we don't sell them or the parts and we never get off this rock, the fleet loses the fighters anyway. See?"

"I guess." Giriad sounded less than certain.

Thelea sighed audibly. "That solves our first and smallest problem. The next is how do we find a buyer without attracting too much attention? If we fly into the spaceport we're liable to get blasted to pieces. If we leave the fighters here, someone might find them."

"I could stay here and keep guard," Giriad volunteered immediately, sounding a little too enthusiastic.

"That scares me even more." Much as it irked her, he did have a point. Leaving the fighters unattended was asking for trouble. Leaving Giriad alone seemed much the same thing, but on the other hand she and Rurik were far less likely to be noticed in a Rimworld spaceport, and someone had to guard the fighters. "However, it just might be the best plan."

"Huh?" Rurik couldn't help the surprised exclamation.

"He has a point," Thelea said. "Someone has to guard the fighters. You and I will stand the best chance of not being noticed. We can bargain for the fighters and then come back for him." She frowned at the sky, which was turning a deep indigo on the horizon. "We will, however, have to do that tomorrow. We'd best get a camp set up. I, for one, am not sleeping in my fighter."

Thelea used the lightsaber to cut some of the branches from the woods for a fire. In the back of her mind she wondered if it was respectful to use a lightsaber to chop wood. She decided that the 'saber's old owner probably wouldn't care anymore, so she shouldn't worry about it, either. Rurik then used one of the flash-starters to get the branches burning, and Giriad demonstrated a surprising knack for warming the ration packs over the fire and making them if not palatable, at least edible. He snorted derisively at their surprise: "What, you don't think we have camping on Ashera?"

Thelea didn't argue with him. She broke off a piece of the bar and nibbled at the corner. At least heating it seemed to dissipate the flavor. "How are we going to get to a settlement tomorrow? We'll need to leave at least one fighter here that works, just in case Giriad needs to get out of here quickly, and I'm afraid mine isn't going anywhere any time soon."

Rurik shrugged. "We can always try to fit two of us into a fighter."

"No thanks. That's a little too tight." There was no way they'd fit, not without being more than too close for Thelea's comfort. "Do either of you have a pair of macrobinoculars?"

Rurik went prowling in his fighter's emergency kit again. "I don't know how old these are or how well they'll work, but here they are."

The pair was small and hopelessly outdated, but they did work. Thelea scanned the rolling horizon, and sure enough, the macrobinoc's sensors picked up heat blooms large enough to be settlements. A few were even visible through the woods. "The largest city seems to be that way, about...." She squinted to read the painfully small readout. "Ten klicks. It'll take us most of the day on foot."

Giriad smirked. "Have fun."

Thelea turned a frighteningly unreadable stare on him. "While we're gone, Lieutenant Quoris, you can see what can be done to repair the fighters. All three of them." His face fell, and she turned back to Rurik. "We'll need to keep a low profile."

"With all due respect, Commander," Rurik said in that irritating mock-respectful voice, "that isn't going to be easy. You don't exactly blend in well with the crowd."

Thelea lifted an eyebrow and fixed the glittering red gaze on him. "We are near what you call the Unknown Regions, Rurik. You may find that you're the one who does not blend in." She shook out the survival cape from her fighter's kit and wrapped it around her shoulders. "I can use this tomorrow, too. It should obscure my face enough that I won't attract too much attention. Chiss females don't travel off-world often, but when we do we usually cover our faces."

"Chiss?" That was when she noticed she'd slipped. Rurik's attention was fully on her now. "Is that what your. . .people. . .call themselves?"

Thelea muttered a thousand curses to whatever gods might be paying attention, and sighed. "It's who we are, yes."

"Why did you not tell us?" Rurik couldn't help the hurt tone and tried to cover with indignity. "I've known you three years. Don't you trust me?" He didn't notice his slip from the plural to the singular, but Thelea did. "I'd think that you'd at least tell me that much."

"We don't like to talk about ourselves to offworlders." She pulled the cloak tighter about herself. "We're a very private race."

"Then what are you doing here?" Rurik countered.

"I'm hiding out, if you must know," she snapped, losing her composure as much as she ever did. "Our world is not an easy place to be an orphan. If you don't mind, let's change the topic, all right? We have more important things to do than discuss xenoanthropology."

Rurik would have disagreed with her, but he knew her too well. She might get out the lightsaber and use him for practice, and she might not. With Thelea one could never tell. "Anyway, we have to have something to use for walking-around money. Do you have anything small we could sell?"

"Nothing." Casually, their eyes turned to Giriad.

He squirmed uneasily. "Why are you looking at me?"

"You are the wealthy son of a disenfranchised computer magnate. You must have something valuable that we could sell." Rurik eyed Giriad speculatively. The other was wearing khaki fatigues similar to what Rurik had on, and the pockets did look empty. "Come on, nothing?"

"Well. . ." He shifted edgily. "I kind of have this." Digging into his pocket, he produced a flat credit chit. Rurik had lunged for it faster than even Thelea could have moved.

"This is for a thousand credits! Why didn't you tell us you had this?"

"It never came up!" Giriad protested. "It was supposed to be for emergencies. I guess this qualifies."

"You can say that again." Rurik turned the silver card over in his hands. "This should do fine for walking around."

"You're assuming they'll take more kindly to Imperial credits than they did to Imperial fighters," Thelea pointed out quietly. "You did say they'd like hard currency." That cast a damper on the conversation for a few minutes.

"Maybe we could trade it for local currency." Rurik didn't sound quite as confident as he had.

"Someone will likely want it," Thelea agreed, "although whether they'll trade or simply take it remains to be seen." The light was fading, and the aquamarine sky was darkening to violet. "I suggest we take turns getting some sleep. Who wants to take first watch?" The only sound was the crackling from the dwindling fire. "Don't all volunteer at once. I'll do it, and I'll wake one of you in a few hours."

"Which one?" Giriad asked suspiciously, undoubtedly sensing unfairness and seeking to head it off, as always.

"Whichever I'm feeling more annoyed with. It's my prerogative as your commanding officer." Thelea pulled her cloak tight. "Now get some sleep, both of you. Tomorrow will be a long day."

It didn't take Giriad long to obey, but she could see across the dwindling fire that Rurik's eyes remained open long after she'd ended the conversation. Neither spoke quite some time. Thelea let her gaze rest on the sparking red-gold embers of the fire, so close in glowing color to her eyes. In the trees beyond the edge of their little encampment, she could hear branches and leaves rustling, and the eerie wails and whistles of night creatures on the prowl. She tossed another log onto the dying fire and the sparks shot upward.

"Thelea?"

She looked across the fire to Rurik. His dark eyes were still wide open and he showed no signs of falling asleep. "What is it, Rurik?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

She resisted the urge to correct his grammar and said, "What?"

"Your eyes. Do you see things the way we do? Humans, I mean."

It wasn't the worst question he could have asked. At the Academy, she'd heard far worse from her instructors and cadre commanders every day. "I don't know how you see. I've never seen out of a human's eyes."

He propped himself up on an elbow. "Well, the fire. What color are the coals to you?"

"Red."

"Then you do see the same way."

She shook her head. "It's not that simple. I see what I call red. My concept of red and your concept of red may not be the same. Also, I may just be using the closest Basic word I can find for a concept that doesn't translate well. You would have to literally look through my eyes to know whether I see things the way you do."

Rurik frowned. "But if I call it red, and you call it red, then wouldn't you say that we see the same thing, at least close enough that it doesn't matter?"

"Even if red looks the same to us, maybe red doesn't mean the same thing to both of us." What was it about fires that brought out the philosopher in people? Whether she saw the same as a human or not, she certainly was getting the same kind of headache. "What brought that on, anyway?"

He shrugged. "I've just wondered about that, but I never really had a chance to ask before. Back on the ship--well, it would be out of line."

"I am still your commanding officer, you know," she said mildly. "Even out of uniform, on planets that are stars-only-know-where in the Rim."

"I know." Picking up a long twig, he poked at the embers and watched the sparks fly upward. "Maybe I was hoping after you go to sleep, you'd forget I asked. But then you don't sleep, do you?"

She'd had enough comparative biology for one night. "Not exactly. You do. Go to sleep, Caelin. We have a very long walk tomorrow."

He rolled over so his back was to her, and for a few minutes she thought he had gone to sleep. Then, faintly, a voice asked, "Thelea?"

Valiantly resisting the urge to shoot him where he lay, she asked, "Yes, Rurik?"

"About your skin. . . ."

"Good night, Rurik. Say another word and I'll make you and Giriad go into the city and I'll stay here."

For the rest of the night, their camp was blissfully silent.

***

The walking was not that difficult--the hills were rolling, but not too steep if you watched where you stepped and avoided the sinkholes. The spacious grassland was a little too open for Thelea's taste, though-the azure sky stretched out forever, meeting the horizon in every direction. The hilly terrain prevented her from seeing too far ahead, but provided an illusion of openness that could be dangerous-an opponent could sneak up on them too easily. Her holdout blaster was back at her side, her lightsaber hidden under her tunic. Even here, walking around with a weapon from an outlawed religion might not be the most prudent course of action.

Thelea was leading the way, her brown cloak fluttering behind her in the breeze, while Rurik brought up the rear. Where Thelea opted for subtle weaponry, Rurik had a Rimworld sensibility-his DL-44 was questionably legal by Imperial standards, but it worked. The credit chit was tucked securely in his breast pocket, less a testament to her trust in him than to the fact that her tunic didn't have pockets. Rurik couldn't actually complain about Thelea-she had certainly been more talkative in the past twenty-four standard hours than she'd been in almost the past three years.

Not today, or so it seemed. Twice he'd tried to engage her in the most inane of conversations, once about the weather and once about the open spaces around them. She hadn't responded to his first attempt, and to his second, she'd snapped, "Save your breath for walking, Caelin," and then followed her own advice. If human females were a mystery to him, so much more of an enigma was Thelea, and she wasn't helping him at all to figure her out.

Then, in the distance, he caught the glitter of metal reflecting the sun. "Does that look like what I think it looks like?"

Thelea raised the macrobinocs and focused on the source of the reflected light. "That looks like buildings, all right. Not much, but it is something."

"I just hope they have food. Another one of these ration bars and I'm going to choke."

"No one's forcing you to eat them."

Rurik ground his teeth--audibly, he was sure, but he was past caring by this point. "Well, I do prefer them to starvation. Some of us have to eat, you know. Some of us aren't carved out of duracrete. Some of us are human."

That stung, maybe a little more than he'd intended. She started walking faster. Technically, since he was a head taller, he should have been able to overtake her easily. Instead he was taking two steps to her one and still not keeping up. "Thelea, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I'm tired. Damn it, we've walked almost ten klicks, all day, and you only stopped twice. How can I help being angry?"

"It's not much farther now." She didn't look back. Her voice sounded very alien, very cold. "I'm sure someone will have something you can eat."

"Thelea, I didn't mean it!"

She stopped dead in her tracks and he nearly collided with her. "I'm not angry, Rurik. Why would I be? You are absolutely right. I am not human. You are. Perhaps I've more stamina than you. I've never stopped to wonder. Would you like to sit down? Perhaps you do need to rest."

"Thelea, I'm fine. I didn't mean any of that. I'm just tired. I'll be fine when we get indoors." He drew in a long, steadying breath and willed his cramping legs to stop their protest. Thelea didn't reply. Great. Just great. Just when she starts to open up, you go and stick your foot all the way down your throat, never mind your mouth. He grimaced and followed her over the next hill.

The town was a collection of small buildings made from red clay earth and baked in the sun. There was, much to their surprise, a spaceport--a small one, to be sure, with only a few, short-range shuttles, but it was a start. "We could at least get an airspeeder to the main spaceport and get transport there."

Rurik couldn't help a longing look at what was unmistakably a tavern near the spaceport. "Thelea--"

She might have rolled her eyes. With her it was difficult to tell. "All right. I did say we could get food." Pulling the cowl of her cloak tight about her face, she turned in the tavern's direction.

The dark, smoky room was not crowded--given the size of the settlement, that wasn't surprising. What did surprise Rurik was the range of alien life. Besides himself there were perhaps two humans in the tavern, one at the bar and the other in a corner booth. Among the alien races, he recognized a feline Togorian and one of the cream-furred Bothans, looking considerably less elegant than those to be found in Imperial Center's trade exchanges. The other aliens were a mystery to him, ranging from a serpentine creature with metallic green scales who seemed to breathe through a filter mask to a pale-skinned, wispy white-haired creature who studied him with pearlescent white eyes before returning to his...her...drink.

Thelea seemed nonplused, but he couldn't see her face so he wasn't sure. She strode to bar confidently enough, anyway. "Excuse me." Her voice was lower than usual and her accent strange.

The bartender, a short, gray-skinned alien with slitted greenish eyes set into a bulbous head, turned slowly to face her. "Yesss?" it lisped through a lipless mouth. "How can I serve?" He had the same accent as the Dhageshi controller had.

"We're looking for transport off-world," Thelea said quietly. "Do you know where we can find it?"

The green eyes narrowed even further, if that was possible. "Chiss, are you? The flight into Chiss space is dangerous, very dangerous. Not many pilots would risk that, not without much money."

Rurik thought he saw Thelea cringe, but he couldn't be sure. "We want to go the other direction, actually. We need transport to an Imperial world."

The creature's eyes darkened. "Imperial, you say? Very dangerous, very dangerous. No one here would take you, I tell you that right now. Perhaps you reconsider your destination, yes?"

"I'm afraid we can't do that. Are there any pilots here? Perhaps they would consider our offer."

"Perhapsss. But I doubt it." He gestured with a thin, tentacle-esque appendage. "Some of those are pilots. You would like something to drink?"

She glanced at Rurik, and he nodded. "Whatever's good and safe for humans," she told the bartender. "We have only Imperial credits, though."

"Creditsss?" The bartender seemed to be considering this. "We don't see many of those here. Something to trade, perhaps?"

"Nothing that would interest you." Not in this lifetime are we losing a weapon here.

The bartender's eyes widened, and the tentacle wavered slightly. "Well--credits can be traded. Others would not be so generous. But you are new to our world. I will give you a deal--two Imperials to one local."

Thelea frowned. "Even trade."

"That isss not the exchange." The eyes narrowed. Rurik began to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot.

"I'm afraid we cannot afford a two-one exchange. Two to one and a half." Her voice was level.

So was the bartender's. "Two to one or we have no deal."

A new voice suddenly broke into the conversation. "One to one will be fine." The voice was soft and female, and it came from the hooded figure who had been seated in the far corner. Somehow she had approached them without making a sound. The bar was not so loud that they would have missed her approach.

Her appearance had an odd effect on the bartender to say the least. "One to one will be fine," he echoed, his eyes widening blankly.

"Give them their money now."

"I will give you your money now." He took the credit chit and went to make the exchange.

Rurik and Thelea stared at their benefactor. She wore a dark brown robe with a cowled hood that concealed her features. Her hands were folded back into her sleeves, resting in front of her. "Thank you," Thelea managed to say. "May I ask--"

The woman reached up and pushed back the cowl of her hood. "My name is Aleishia," she said. Her motion revealed the face of a human woman, lined more by stress than by age. Her dark eyes cut piercingly into Rurik's, and he would swear he was being somehow measured. Her hair was dark brown, save a lock starting above her left brow that was silver-white.

Thelea shivered. "My name is Thelea. This is Rurik." Her voice was oddly constrained. She was obviously shaken as well by this strange woman.

"Please, excuse Soldas's tight-fisted behavior. He's not really a bad sort, but out here it's a stretch to make ends meet. Not like it is on Coruscant."

Rurik blinked. He knew the old name of Imperial Center, of course, people on the Rim still tossed it about occasionally, but he'd never heard anyone just say it before, as if that was its name and always would be. "Yeah, well, it's not always easy to get along there, either."

"You talk like a Rimworlder," Aleishia noted, but her odd dark eyes had never left Thelea. Rurik felt a surge of--envy? Jealousy? It had taken him months, years even, to be able to look Thelea in her glowing eyes without flinching. This strange woman met Thelea's gaze straight on after only minutes, looking confident enough to stare down Grand Admiral Thrawn himself.

"Thank you for your help," Thelea said. Between the manners of her so-called "guardians" on homeworld and the discipline of the Academy, the manners superceded even her surprise. "I do not wish to seem ungrateful, but what do you want?"

For some reason, Aleishia seemed to find that highly amusing. "What makes you think I want anything? Maybe I just felt like helping two off-worlders out of a jam."

"You live here, then?" Rurik asked.

She shrugged a little. "Now and then. I've lived a lot of places. Enough to know when someone is out of their depth."

Thelea bristled. "We appreciate your help, but not the insults." The bartender returned then, and placed a stack of silver square-shaped coins on the bar in front of them. Thelea scooped them up and made a pretense of counting them. "As I said before--two drinks, whatever won't kill humans."

"Try the jhalrhi," Aleishia suggested, and the bartender went to get the drinks. "It's something like a dry kaeral wine, but a little sweeter."

Thelea made a slight grimace. "Hopefully you mean a good year, not--" Then she remembered. "How did you ever happen to have kaeral wine? As far as I know, we've never traded that off-world. No human's ever-" She stopped; she was starting to babble. "How did you--"

Aleishia smiled serenely. "I'm very well-traveled." The drinks arrived and Rurik took a tentative swallow from his.

"This isn't bad," he commented. "Better than the officers' mess."

"That's not very difficult." The drink did in fact taste something like a young, sweet kaeral wine, a taste that brought back memories, not entirely pleasant.

Rurik forced his attention back to their benefactor. "So, how did you end up here? I mean, we crashed. Are you actually here of your own free will?"

Aleishia smiled thinly. "Not entirely." Her gaze rested a moment on her folded hands. "I'm not entirely welcome where I come from."

Thelea was watching her surreptitiously. There was something very unusual about this Aleishia, something oddly familiar about her. The feeling was not unlike that which had overcome her when Thrawn had confronted her with the hologram of the medallion aboard his old flagship. Then she'd caught a glimpse of herself, being carried by a woman wearing the gem. Now, another memory was surfacing dimly, even more clouded--She was very, very, cold and afraid, and she knew that something was terribly wrong. She was crying, not like humans did, with tears, but sobbing nonetheless. No one was coming--why weren't they coming? Someone always came when she cried....Then there was a face, a woman's, framed by brown, always brown she was, and her presence was always sad. The woman picked her up, crooning to her in that strange, alien tongue and whispering how she had to be brave, how very brave she would have to be...

Thelea blinked; Aleishia was speaking again. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

Aleishia smiled patiently. "I was asking how you came to be here. What are Imperial starfighter pilots doing so far from their own territory?"

"As I said, we crashed-"

Aleishia cut her off. "I meant so far from the Empire."

"We are, I might remind you, still within the Empire's jurisdiction," Rurik said.

Aleishia flung back her head and laughed, revealing pearlescent, somewhat crooked teeth. "Really, Lieutenant? I find that quite hard to believe. If you're so confident of the Empire's supremacy here, why are you both out of uniform and inquiring in cantinas for pilots?"

Thelea shot Rurik a glare. "To tell the truth, we weren't supposed to be here at all. We were part of a convoy and the freighter we were escorting was destroyed. We have our fighters, but we'd never make it back to Imperial space with them." She realized that she had no business telling a civilian, any civilian, about their problem. They were Imperial officers. Strangely, that didn't seem to matter.

"How was the freighter destroyed?" Aleishia interrupted. Her dark eyes were suddenly intense.

Rurik spoke before Thelea could frame a reply. "I've never seen a ship like it. They yanked us out of hyperspace and disabled the fighters before they killed the freighter--and even the Death Star couldn't have done that! It just fired one blast." He shuddered, remembering the sparkling dust of the Aris Val spreading across the starscape.

Aleishia leaned forward intently. "What did the ship look like?" Thelea found herself flinching from those seemingly ordinary human eyes. "A dark ship, with no real shape?"

Thelea shook her head. "No, no, this ship had a shape--there were spines. It reminded me of an insect."

Aleishia nodded slowly, her gaze fixed on the bar's grimy surface. "Yes, that would be right."

"You know who these...people...are?" Another Imperial might have automatically said "these aliens." Technically that would be correct. After three years with Thelea, Rurik had learned to be careful.

Suddenly the older woman was evasive, her face becoming a stern, smooth mask. "I've heard traders tell stories about such ships preying on those who venture too far from the trading lanes. I've never heard of Imperials encountering them before."

"But you have?" Rurik asked. There was something he distinctly disliked about this strange woman. Her face was serene to the point of being carved in marble. Her dark eyes, on first assessment calm and steady, seemed suddenly veiled to him. "Who are they?"

There was a long pause. "They have no name." Her voice was barely a whisper. Then, abruptly, she drew herself up to her full height-not considerable, although she was perhaps half an inch taller than Thelea. "Do you have a place to stay the night?"

The change of subject threw them for only an instant. "We hadn't planned on staying here the night," Thelea began. "We hoped-"

"To get to the spaceport?" Aleishia laughed. "No one will be leaving until tomorrow. It's late, and besides, you must both be tired." She set her glass down with a firm crack. "Come along. I've plenty of room for you both. Tomorrow we can worry about finding you transport, and about retrieving your companion. I'm sure he can't be enjoying himself out on the plains. Now come with me. You've had a long day, and you need your rest."

Rurik was quite tired, he realized-the sweet wine was numbing the ache in his legs, but not dispelling it. His eyes had been wide open, but now the lids felt as though they were three times their normal weight. A look at Thelea revealed, much to his surprise, that she, too, seemed to be drooping, her shoulders slumped and her red eyes perhaps a bit dull of their usual glow. "She has a point, Thelea."

"Yes," and there was no mistaking the drowsy tone in her voice, "she may have at that. Aleishia, if you would extend your hospitality to us, you would have our and the Empire's gratitude."

Aleishia's lip twisted. "Spare me the Empire's thanks," she said. "But I'll accept yours. Come along, children." With a gesture she guided them toward the door. As they stumbled out, neither thought to wonder at the sudden offer of shelter from this near-stranger, and neither remembered that never once in their conversation had they mentioned Giriad, waiting alone on the plain.