The Present...

"Up! Up! Everyone up!" the Major screamed as he passed through each troopers respective sleeping area, "Come on, Skier! GET THE @#%$ UP!"

John grumbled to himself, but the Major didn't seem to notice. Right away, John knew something was seriously wrong. Usually there would have been some loud, hate-filled response by the Major. And he always heard what people said, mumbles, and muttered.

Glancing at his squadmates, he saw that they shared similar feelings. John pulled back his sleeve, and glanced at his watch. It was a full hour and a half before they were supposed to awake. In a training program where you were often lucky to get half a day's sleep in a single month, that was a lot.

The troops staggered from their portable sleeping rolls. They slowly rolled them up and stuffed them back into their packs. It was another three minutes before everyone was once more ready to march. While this was a fast time for troopers who were so exhausted, the Major shot them piercing stairs as soon as they found their way over to him.

"When I say up, you get the hell up!" the Major shouted, "I don't even want to hear any half-assed excuses! Now listen up! The brass has reported some increased activity near the planet's atmosphere. Our sensors aren't picking up much, but the higher-ups are expecting the worst. It could be some lost smugglers, it could be an Imperial probe droid. We have no idea.

It is our unit's job to investigate this activity immediately. We are ordered to excerise extreme caution. Now lets move out!"

Just then, a ship flew overhead, heading toward the Temple that served as a headquarters for the Rebel Alliance on Yavin 4. It was soon followed by another ship, Y-Wing in class, if it could even be called that anymore. It looked banged up beyond repair, and John could hardly believe it was still flying.

The Major put a comm link to his ear. We all knew what that meant. He was speaking with the brass again. He whispered inaudibly for a little while, then clicked off the channel.

"Alright, listen up!" he said a moment later, "The first ship has apparently checked in with the Temple and has been given clearance to land. Ship number two, the half-dead Y-Wing, seems to have veered away from base at the last moment and crashed not too far off. Our main objective is ship number two! Follow me!"

During the hike, John was give more time to think about the past...

The Past...

The plan had gone off without a hitch. John and the others who had left Helix had made it out of the system, and the young Helixian had faith that Jeremy would not give them away. From there they had landed on the planet Tanaab, its claim to fame having once been a planet annualy plagued by raids from bandits from Norulac. Lando Calrissian, having been on-planet during one of those raids, agreed to fend off the raiders.

It had also been chosen as a stopping point for that reason. Lando Calrissian was notabely pro-Rebellion, and the planet itself shares the same views that their former savior did.

It was there, he had met her...


The Present...

John was jerked from his memories suddenly when the Major held up his hand in a signal for the rest of the squad to hault. The Major went on alone for half a minute, and then came back even more cautious. He signalled for the rest of the training patrol to continue on, and it was not long before they came upon the site of the crash.

The Y-Wing had been buried halfway into the ground. Looking upon the trashed ship, John applauded the crash. the ship wasn't even on fire. That took some skill. Standing next to the ship, there was a single man. He didn't seem very concerned about the status of his ship. In fact, John could've sworn the man had actually smiled.

John saw it happen, but he couldn't really do anything to stop it. One of his squadmates, Castro was his name, put his foot down a little too hard on a long twig. It made a SNAPing noise, and the man by the Y-Wing wheeled around, a blaster pistol aimed at them.

"Make one move" John heard the man say, "And I will shoot you. What is it you want?"

Every member in the unit instinctively raised their rifles. Each one had enough firepower to blow the man back into his own wreck of a ship. It is needless to say that everyone in the unit was pretty confident in the odds. It seems the man had noticed this too, and had quickly aimed his weapon at the Major.

"What is it we want?" the Major asked, "It seems to me that you just crashed your ship into our soil. And right now you've got seven men aiming high-powered rifles at your chest...or maybe face, right now. Each one of them are quite capable of using them."

John wasn't so sure about that. Many of the men in the unit hadn't yet seen war, and he was unsure if any of them were capable of killing just yet.

"I suggest you stop asking questions, and start answering them," the Major continued, "Who are you, and why the @#%$ did you mess up this nice ground and a perfectly good Y-Wing?"

* * * * "No... still the wrong one.." With a sigh, Damalis Skywalker tossed down another set of papers. Tapping her nails on the arm of the captain's chair in which she sat, the blond frowned, trying to remember. It had seemed a good idea at the time, to hide the name of her contact, in code of course, within the orders she had recently. Knowing she'd probably get so nervous she'd forget the man's name had prompted this but the thought hadn't gotten so far as to make sure she remembered which actual page she'd stuck the code into. Of course, it was horribly silly of her to use paper at all, but it seemed to help her files stay in order better than keeping them solely inside a machine. Damalis felt safer somehow, having that hard copy instead of just saving to a datapad.

* * * * It was just a matter of looking over each paper in front of her closely, but with her svelte-class shuttle, Delirious, quickly closing in on the coordinates given to her it was becoming pretty pressing to find it again. She was nervous enough without thinking that she'd be showing up in the Yavin system with no clue who she was supposed to meet. In fact, she only knew where she was going because the computer told her so, but she'd only been given the specifics of where she was going a short while ago. It was somewhat disconcerting, but also strangely exciting. So much subterfuge, something Damalis' every day life never touched on, as she herself was very honest, as well as running her business that way. But this was something she believed in, this Rebellion against the Imperials, but it wasn't until recently that she thought there was a thing she could do to help. Seriously, what did she, a person who designed fabric synthetics as a hobby and ran a small growing fashion business, have to offer people who were daily embroiled in war?

* * * * Apparently more than she ever thought, or at least a man named Johnathan Skier had told her so. He'd been the one to put her in touch with certain contacts who'd also became convinced she could help. Damalis was a little overwhelmed by it all, as it all seemed to revolve around a strange quirk in her wiring that let her see things. She'd been told this was a Jedi power, or trick some called it, but Damalis didn't put much stock in that. Having flunked right out of the Jedi academy after only three months made her feel more than justified in thinking this. There her best hadn't been good enough. She was useless with a light saber, even with such a patient teacher as Leia Organa, and in fact, her inability to learn how to turn the weapon on had prompted her to give it away a few years ago. Even the most basic of Jedi training had been beyond her abilities so she was certainly loath to credit what she could do to anything to do with being a Jedi.

* * * * This none withstanding, if she was able to help using it, Damalis really wished to give it a try. Luck and fortune, along with a little bit of forethought, seemed to be in charge now. In fact, it had already played a major part in her life so far, no less so than when she'd first met Mr. Skier on Taanab. It boggled the mind that she was on her way to Yavin to join the Rebellion all because a sorry rent-a-robot she'd hired had caught fire.

* * * * Damalis had only gone to Taanab in the first place because she'd gotten messages from a potential client. That the boutique had turned out to be a bunch of slimy little cretins determined to cheat her out of her own merchandise hadn't begun her day well at all. They wanted everything at rock bottom prices, which Damalis wasn't against giving to them, but when they tried to get her to sign a contract that would, essentially, end up costing her more money to deal with them than she would make in profits from the deal, she'd left. Taking the little rent-a-bot with all her fabric samples inside along with her, as well. Normally she'd leave samples behind, but she wasn't feeling in a generous mood. Damalis didn't often leave her very cheerful and perky normal state of mind, but when she did, it could certainly appear to be a very black mood in deed.

* * * * It wasn't helped by the fact that, just as she was walking up the ramp way to the docking area, the bot caught fire. More precisely, her fabric inside caught fire. By the time she'd noticed, most of the samples were ruined but at the time, she hadn't stopped to think about that. Her most pressing problem had been how to put the fire out but that was when a man had ran up and extinguished it. He turned out to be Johnathan Skier.

* * * * "Are you all right?" He'd asked, circling the bot to make sure there was no more flames to put out.

* * * * "I'm fine... but my rent-a-junk just bought the farm, I would say." Sighing, Damalis had shaken her head and fought the urge to kick the machine. She remembered that feeling well, that was for sure, as she'd been quite ready to jump all over the machine.

* * * * "I'd say. I'm Johnathan." Offering his hand, the man had the look of a person wishing to get away from a bad situation, but without actually leaving someone in a lurch.

* * * * "Damalis Skywalker." It was a testament to how distracted she was that Damalis hadn't explained she wasn't from the family of THE Skywalker's, and she missed the way Skier's brow rose. But right at that moment, the tall blond was more interested in what she was going to do with a smoking heap of junk in front of her.

* * * * "Pleased to meet you.." Standing back and surveying the machine, Johnathan had offered his services one more time, while giving himself an escape as well. "Look, I was heading over to the ship to leave and if you like, I can tell the guys at the tower where you are and to contact the company to come get their droid." Waving in the vague direction his ship was in, Damalis completely missed out on the fact that he seemed to be pretty uninformative. She didn't notice this till later, when she was thinking back over the scene.

* * * * "Would you please? I'd be really grateful." Damalis had suddenly beamed brightly at the fellow, then she'd searched through a briefcase she'd been carrying, hunting for the receipt that had the rental places name and number on it. Then she remembered. "Oh damn! I had all the information inside the darn robot..."

* * * * "Well that makes it a little rough, not knowing the information. Can you remember any of it?"

* * * * "Taanab Rental Emporium, Receipt #2345-F8C Robot #4693-56TH, Rental Agreements A-1 and G-5." Rattling off the sudden answer for Johnathan was the easy part, once she knew the question of course, it was explaining Damalis always found a little hard to do. As always, she could never predict what questions she would suddenly know the answers to, or what future happenings would pop into her head.

* * * * "Now that's a mouthful. The company name should be enough though. I'm impressed you could remember all those numbers." Nodding the man had moved to head off, leaving Damalis behind to answer weakly:

* * * * "I didn't know the answer till you asked the question." As she realized he was walking away, Damalis suddenly noticed she'd been awfully rude. "AND thank you so much, Mr. Skier!"

* * * * A simple enough statement, and at the time Damalis had honestly not thought it would cause such a problem, but looking back now she knew it would have made anyone suspicious. After all, he'd never told her his last name before that point. Johnathan had walked back to her then, looking more distrustful than surprised. Damalis had tried to wave it off, explaining she did that sometimes to people, which had earned her another strange look. How do you clear up a misunderstanding by telling a person you sometimes saw future events and could answer questions you'd never known the answer to before?

* * * * It was possibly due to the fact that she hadn't told him she wasn't a true Skywalker, her family had adopted the name some generations back in order to hide from something Damalis hadn't figure out yet, or maybe it was because, without realizing it, Damalis had the most openly honest pair of eyes on anyone any where, but Mr. Skier hadn't questioned her further. Or maybe he was just in a hurry that day. Either way, he just nodded then walked off. She'd never seen him again.

* * * * Later when she'd finally reached her ship with a new rental robot and a very under-estimated price for all of her damaged goods, Damalis had found a message waiting for her. Once she'd finally managed how to get it to play for her, she'd been surprised to find that Mr. Skier had contacted her ship in her absence. He had some friend's he thought she should meet and hoped that the meeting would turn out to everyone's mutual benefit. One day Damalis hoped to meet Mr. Skier again and ask him what it was he'd seen in her that made him do what he'd done, but until then, she'd be content with the knowledge that someone had saw something useful in her. Mostly people only looked at what she seemed to be on the surface, an extremely gorgeous long legged blond with a bright smile and perpetually cheerful personality, and assumed there was nothing more to her. It was refreshing that someone had seen more based on such a short meeting.

* * * * Of course, Mr. Skier's friends hadn't seemed so sure, which of course this hadn't been helped by the fact that at their first meeting they had thought to be meeting someone interested in the Rebellion, while Damalis had assumed she was meeting potential business clients. Or, she'd also thought it could be a blind date, as she'd ended up on a couple a few times before under a similar guise. Once they'd finally determined why they were there, Damalis had gotten extremely nervous and excited at the same time. She knew she did see things, real things that came true, but it wasn't like she could produce something on command. It just didn't work that way. Having already checked out her background completely, the Rebel recruiters already knew about her Academy drop out, and Damalis surmised this was probably why they even showed up to meet her at all. It wasn't like they could sit out on street corners and ask people to join, you never knew who could be an Imperial, but she must have checked out because they'd shown.

* * * * It had taken her a little longer to convince them she was useful, however. Not until she'd answered a few random questions by the man and woman there. Knowing their parent's names had surprised them, knowing their birthdate's had impressed them a little more, but when they'd started firing questions at her so fast, expecting more and more so quickly, Damalis had felt the wall come down and knew nothing could help her find the right answers then. But that had obviously been enough, as she was on her way to meet with Davin McCorda on Yavin.

* * * * "Davin McCorda!" With a little woot, Damalis laughed happily, now that she'd remembered the man's name all on her own. It was of course a waste of a good little code, she'd written down 'Having Miss Curden for Lunch' in one of her appointment slots for two weeks ago. Never mind that then, as suddenly she was hailed from the planet below. She'd been given instructions about where to go and at what time to be there, so she wasn't surprised to have this happen. Damalis had been very truthful when she'd admitted she wasn't a good pilot. Her little Delirious flew itself on autopilot, a happy little slave unit surrounded the console in which Damalis knew nothing about how it worked, but while she could doing landings and take offs, she preferred not to.

* * * * "Hello.." Nervously Damalis answered the hailing with a complete lack of knowing what she was actually supposed to say. "I was told to be here, right here, so I'm assuming you know who I am already... anyways... could you please land me now?" Damalis didn't mind one wit that she'd probably just cracked up a whole tower with that, but really, she hated doing landings. She always bashed something.

Morgan was somewhat confused by the response from the unknown vessel. As Morgan looked at the schedule she had a feeling this might be Damalis Skywalker, the woman that Captain Davin McCorda had informed her would be arriving around this time.

"Identify yourself." Morgan said as she replied to the transmission.

"Uh... this is Damalis.. Damalis Skwaylker. I'm supposed to meet Captain McCorda." Damalis replied wondering why they didn't know who she was.

"Access granted Damalis Skywalker, uploading coordinates for auto-pilot landing." Morgan said as she tapped a few buttons on the command console directing the Delirious to the pre-designated docking bay.

Damalis sat there as the Delirious followed the pre-determined coordinates to the docking bay where she would meet Captain McCorda.

Meanwhile on Yavin 4 Davin McCorda stood there at the entrance to the landing pad waiting for Damalis' arrival, as usual two rebel troopers, one on either side, stood behind him with blaster rifles ready. Davin McCorda looked down to the chrono on his left wrist. "Any minute now..." He whispered to himself as he fidgeted back and forth impatiently.

Davin saw the ship off in the distance descending slowly upon the temple top which had been turned into a landing pad. After a few moments the ship landing smoothly on the surface, and a few more moments after that Damalis Skywalker herself exited the ship and stepped out onto the landing pad. Davin McCorda had walked over to greet her at this point.

"Welcome to Yavin 4 Damalis!" Davin McCorda said with a huge smile.

"Thanks Davin.." Damalis replied with a smile of her own.

"I'll give you the grand tour of the Headquarters Damalis and then I'll show you where you'll be staying." Davin said as the two walked off the landing pad preparing for their tour of Yavin 4.

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp "I'd really like that." Damalis nodded, still smiling brightly as she avidly looked about her. She'd been a little startled to find two men with blaster rifles greeting her along with the Captain, unaware this was procedure and didn't really have anything to do with her. There was probably very few people here on Yavin 4 who had less knowledge of military protocol than Damalis, which is why she spoke to the two fellows, instead of ignoring them.

"Uhh.. hello to you two as well." Her smile a little shaky now, she nonetheless waved a little greeting to the other two men, hoping they didn't take that as a threat or something. However, if anyone looked less like a threat than Damalis, they'd have to be dead. In honor of the occasion she'd dressed in what she considered very somber attire, a well cut suit in a soft grayish material, but as always, Damalis was still Damalis. The skirt was just a tad too short for any where except the hippest clubs but as Damalis carried herself with self assurance, as well as looking really good in the outfit, it didn't seem out of place. Topping out at six feet, with the heels on her shoes she graced six foot two, so her height gave her a much needed look of command that the outfit didn't quite give to her like she'd hoped. However, on her, anything else would have seemed out of place but the general all around effect was all business with the skirt telling people she was just as fun as her smile said she was.

"I wanted to ask, before I did something stupid, is there any rules I need to know right now?" She asked, hoping to stave off some horrible incident where she offended someone or broke some horrible cardinal rule on a rebel base. Having never been near one, Damalis just wanted to be sure she didn't bungle anything on her first visit there. It was not totally impossible for her to do this, since she knew she was completely capable of making the wrong gesture to an alien or saying something to break some ancient taboo. It always seemed way too easy for her to bungle her way into a situation like that.

(*EDIT* this is Anderson, forgot to switch accounts. Sorry)

Seven men. He'd seen worse odds, but usually it was from the comfy position of the side with the better chances. Those were high-tech guns, a bad choice. The men had energy-packs, grenades, the works, dangling from their rifles and suits. Anderson was able to look carefully at each in turn from the concealing vision of his flight-goggles. One good shot would take them all out, but Anderson wouldn't do that.

The blast might frighten all these little animals. And that wouldn't be fair, would it?

The men had rebel insignias, so he might as well lower his pistol. With a sigh, he said. "Anderson Myln - No laughing, I'm stuck with the name - formely of Iota. This ship of mine might of dug a little hole in the ground, but believe me it's nicer then crashing into the @#%$ temple. You guys ever heard of camoflauge? Blending into the environment? I mean Damn, if you're not going to have any defences the least you could do is to hide around a little."

Anderson turned back to the bird-bat thing, which had finally cut a hole in his ration pack. A few other, younger creatures hopped forwards, chewing on the small pieces of food that wern't ruined. The men behind him might be a little annoyed, as he was more interested in the animals then them. Finally, one of the soldiers stepped forwards-

"What are these things called?" Anderson asked, as he moved a curious finger towards one.

There was no response.

He sighed, and finally said "You want to know why I'm here, right? I'm here to see your boss. And I hope he didn't order you guys out to do this personally, because if so then that guarentees he doesn't know the first thing about starting a rebellion. Maybe I can help him there."

Frowning, he decided to leave the mystery of the bat-creatures for another day. He then lifted his goggles, revealing one normal eye, and one pale, pure-white one. He was blind in one eye, and his functioning one swivled with expertise to appraise the look on each soldier.

"Shall we?"

Alexei slowly climbed out of the cockpit, taking stock of the situation. His gaze took in two men, one of them a lower ranking Admiral by the looks of his uniform, and the other person next to him is probaly an aide, Ferrier decided. He checked his complement of weapons, which, being a pirate meant that he had quite a few of them. He had his main rifle, an E-11 taken from the hands of a stormtrooper he'd killed himself, and a DL-11 blaster pistol tucked away in his pants. He also had a small Vibro-dagger with a sheath on his belt. With the weapons check done, he shut down the starfighter's systems, and emerged from the craft. He listened to the Commander's critique, noting it with a small secret smile tugging at his lips. Of course I could have been killed. There's always risk involved anything you do. If not, then what's the fun in doing it?. Alexei was then led off by the two men to see his quarters. He would unload his cases after he saw what type of room he was getting. Probaly just a bunk and refresher station, if even that. Usually starfighter pilots don't get real good quarters, unless they are high ranking officers. And even then, in the case of a Rebellion like this, they may not get good quarters.

Some time later, after they had reached the quarters, and he had unloaded and unpacked himself, Alexei Ferrier decided to take a little walk in order to familiarize himself with his new home. He visited the Cafeteria, the rest of the barracks, the refresher stations, and finally, the hangar bay. As he approached the bay he sighted a man with two troopers moving away from the bay and into a hallway. And being escorted by the three men, was a drop dead gorgeous woman of the likes Alexei Ferrier had seen before. Quickly Alexei ducked into a refresher station to make sure he didn't smell, and comb his hair down. Having finished that, he went into the hallway, and took off after the party. He doubt she would take him seriously, but he would still like to introduce himself and get to know her anyways. Besides, look at how short her skirt is! Woo-hoo!

Davin let out a small chuckle. "So you'd like to know about the rules? Fair enough." He said still smiling as they continued into the Massassi temple which had been turned into the visitor's docking bay. He paused when they got inside the building, the ceiling several meters above them. Various starfighters and cargo ships lined the interior of the building which was basically intact as the Massassi had left it.

"First, be careful. You're in the jungle now. If you stick close to Headquarters you'll be fine but if you venture too far off who knows what you'll run into." Davin McCorda paused as he tapped a button on the comm unit on his wrist and leaned slightly forward to speak into it. "Morgan.."

"Yes Captain McCorda?" The response came almost immediately.

"Please send Davis to Damalis Skywalker's quarters." He replied, Damalis still standing there not knowing exactly what was going on.

"Right away Captain." She responded.

"Thank you." He said as he switched off the comm unit. Damalis had a puzzled look on her face. "Being as you're new to the Headquarters I'd like to have Davis accompany you if you don't mind." He asked although it was apparent that it wasn't much of a request.

"Sure.." She replied not feeling as if she had an option but not necessarily displeased at the gesture.

"The Headquarters is broken into several of these Massassi temples which we have retrofitted to fit our needs. We're in the guest hangar, which is where your ship will be for the remainder of your stay. Don't worry we'll take good care of 'er." McCorda said, Damalis smiled but gave no reply. "Your quarters will be in the barracks, which is in another temple a few kilometers away. Most of the living quarters here aren't what you would call luxurious. But in speaking to Marin he's taken extra care to ensure that your stay here will be as comfortable as possible."

McCorda slowly began to walk back out of the hangar as Damalis followed him.

"The Command Center itself is located in one of the larger temples and is the base of operations for the entire moon. Traffic control, surveillance, you get the idea." McCorda said as Damalis nodded in agreement.

"All of the temples are linked through a system of pathways which allow you to navigate from temple to temple safely and quickly. The base is pretty spread out, we use speeder bikes to travel from temple to temple." He explained.

"The pathways are pretty narrow and allow one speeder on each side, one coming and one going. If you want to use one of the paths you contact Morgan and she'll make sure the path is clear before allowing you to take off. But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself, if you'd like to go anywhere Davis will make sure you get there. You'll catch on pretty quickly."

"We have a small cantina located in one of the temples which is by no means a Coruscant night club but rather a place for soldiers to unwind after a tough shift. There isn't a whole lot to do out here so Marin wanted to make sure that there was a place to hang out after hours." McCorda glanced down at his chronometer.

"Damn.. I've gotta get going. I'll show you to your quarters, I'll have your bags delivered to you so you can unpack. Basically you've got free reign of the Headquarters, if there's anything you want to see or do just let Davis know, he knows his way around."

With that the two walked away as Davin lead Damalis Skywalker to her new home. Hopefully the luxurious quarters Marin Faulker had provided her would make her feel right at home.

Charlot had gladly returned from the capital social hurricane to her studies of ancient nomadic peoples, whom she knew and understood far more that he understood the stars. She had worked on this project since her days at Tuis, slowly, steadily accumulating her evidence, pointing toward (he thought, rather obvious) conclusion that the great ecological factory of the steppes of Tuis had spun forth or stimulated virtually every great movement in history. Eventually she would turn it all into a book; indeed, she already had well over two thousand pages of text on disk. In his eyes, part of his wife's charm was this dichotomy: resourceful mother without, bulldog scholar within.

The Comm rang three times before Charlot could travel from the patio to answer it. Her voice came through the open bedroom window facing the river.

"I'll find him," She told the caller.

Sighing he stood, pushing on the corduroy covering his bony knees.

"Raven!"

"Yeah?"

"Riley from Segun, Are you available?"

"Sure," He said, less reluctantly. Riley was not a close friend, merely an aquaintance, but over the years they had established a pact, that each would inform the other of interesting developments before most of the scientific community or the general media had heard of them. Raven climbed the path up the bank in the dark, knowing each root and slippery patch of mud and leaves, whistling softly. Holt bounded through the ferns.

Marty watched him owlishly from the edge of the lawn, under the wild plum tree, the monkey puppet hanging loose and grotesque on his hand.

"Is Holt with you?"

The dog followed, ears and eyes locked on the monkey, which he wanted passionately.

"When can we get the telescope out, Dad?" Marty asked.

He grabbed Holt's collar and bent down to hug him fiercly. THe dog yelped and cranned his neck to nip air as the monkey's plastic face poked him in the withers.

"A little later. Tell Mom."

"She'll get it?" Marty was passing through a stage of doubting his mother's technical skills. This irritated him.

"She's used it more than I have buddy."

"All RIGHT!" Marty enthused, releasing the dog, droping the puppet and running for the steps ahead of Raven. Holt immediatly grabbed the monkey by the throat and shook it, growling. Raven followed his son, turned left in the hallway past the freezer chest, and picked up his office extension.

"Riley, what a suprise," he said affably.

"Raven, I hope I'm the first." Riley's voice was a higher tenor than usual.

"Try me."

"Have you heard about Tevis?"

"Tevis?"

"Tevis. Renal's fifth moon."

"What about it?"

"Its gone."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Theres been a search. The Realst's still strong out there, but it hasn't been aimed at Tevis for weeks. The Local long range satilites have turned cameras to where Tevis should be, but there's nothing big enough to photograph. If it were there, it would come out of occulation again in about ten minutes. But nobody expects to see it. Calls from ameuters have been flooding in for sixteen hours."

Raven couldn't shift gears fast enough to think how to react.

"I'm Sorry?"
"It's not painted black, It's not hiding, It's just gone. Nobody saw it go either."

When it became apparent that he could not catch up to the group as they advanced down the corridor, Alexei came to a stop, and instead decided to look around for a little while longer. He came upon a wide open space, and immediatly recognized it to be a shooting range for praticing marksmanship with a wide variety of blaster weapons. He walked up to one booth, and saw that mounted onto it was a Light Repeating Blaster Cannon mounted on a dual v pod, but with a empty power pack. He looked around until he found a small storage bin that contained some packs of various sizes. He found the one that he was looking for, and walked back over to the gun, inserted the cartridge, cocked the gun, then called up a holo projection for a group of five holo targets. He switched the gun over to full autofire, and with a roaring noise, opened fire. The gun jerked backwards as it let loose, and Alexei stiffened his legs in order to stop it from getting out of control. He let go of the trigger, then looked at the results of his sloppy firing. The top two targets had been hit, while there was a fair amount of fresh blaster scoring on the walls above the group of targets.

Grimacing, Alexei switched the blaster cannon over to stutterfire, then called up a different set of targets, these ones moving. He sighted along the sights on the cannon, then waited a few moments before opening fire. He fired in bursts of five to six laser bolts per a press of the trigger. After one hundred shots or so, he ceased firing, and looked at his handiwork. Of twenty five targets, he had hit twenty four, and near missed the last one. Not too shabby thought Alexei as he ejected the empty cartridge. But for now he was bored of blasters. He wouldn't mind finding a simulation course that let him practice his Vibro sword skills. Or maybe even fight someone. On the way out of the room, he sighted three men entering it, other pilots, by the looks of them. Alexei exited the room, and headed down another corridor. He entered another large room, this one different in the sense that it wasn't a shooting gallery. This one was filled with various kinds of starfighters simulators. Next to the simulators were a variety of computers. He walked up to one, hacked in with his portable datapad, and began to type in codes. I wonder what the reaction will be when someone sees or flies the new simulation scenario I've added, called Quick reflexes 101, centered around the slaughter of my fellow pirates. thought Alexei as he continued his work.

"Thank you for your time." Damalis told McCorda as they walked along. "I think I've got the general idea, it was pretty straight forward. And if you really need to go, I'm sure I can find my way with some directions." She was still confused at what she was supposed to be doing personally, but maybe they intended to give her a few days to settle in before telling her what that was.


After all, her general brand of help didn't come on a schedule. She never knew when something was going to pop into her head and be useful, but that thought did give her one more question. "A quick one before you go... who do I report to, duty wise?"