THROUGH HIS OWN reflection on the passenger-seat window, Kanan beheld the whole of Calcoraan Depot. He’d seen other such sights in his travels: enormous examples of Imperial ingenuity and excess. They seemed to get bigger every year.

But his focus was on his reflection—and the question he now asked himself. Caleb, what are you doing?

He hadn’t gone by that name in years, and he didn’t consider it relevant to the person he was now. Yet whenever Kanan stuck his neck out further than was comfortable, Caleb Dume was usually the culprit. Caleb, the little Jedi cut off before his date with destiny, his career as a galaxy-saving superhero stunted. He couldn’t believe now that he’d ever been that person. That kid didn’t know what real life—or real fun—was like. That boy was a nobody, a never-was. An unwelcome squatter in the back of his gray matter. Whenever Kanan had an idea that Caleb Dume would have agreed with, it was usually better to stay inside and order a double.

As much as the Emperor, Caleb was responsible for making Kanan’s early adolescence miserable with his constant regrets. Caleb was all counterfactuals and what-ifs, all mental replays of the deaths of Depa Billaba and the other Jedi, always looking for some way disaster could have been averted. It was just as well that he was avoiding other people then, because it had made the young fugitive unbearably morose. While the other teenagers in the hangouts he’d tried to blend into were thinking about podracing, he was off in the corner trying to figure out how Jedi Master Ki-Adi-Mundi could have better protected himself on Mygeeto, or Master Plo Koon on Cato Neimoidia. Every name he’d found out about in those days had just set the whole thing off again, making it impossible for him to forget.

A waste of time. Except for one thing: All that thinking and hiding in those early days had trained him to analyze situations quickly and thoroughly. The tactical smarts Hera seemed to like had sprung from there. In that case, he thought, there was one good thing that had come of it. Because looking at her in the pilot’s chair now, he determined that he’d follow her anywhere.

If he didn’t get her killed first. Or if she didn’t do the same to him.

Hera was chipper as she braked Expedient. “Told you we’d catch up,” she said as the ship neared the tail of the freighter convoy. It had been open to question whether they would arrive at all. Expedient had left Cynda just as the straggler freighters were following Ultimatum into hyperspace. Kanan, who had never used the ship’s hyperdrive before, had worried that it might not work at all. Ships on the lunar run were there for the very reason that their long-haul days were past. But the fact that none of the other ships was better off made them catchable for the right pilot, and Hera had talked nicely to Expedient, getting her way. She did that a lot.

It had worked that way with him, too. He liked that Hera had direction and drive. All women were magical creatures to Kanan, but there were happy forest nymphs, and then there were wizards. There was so much more to Hera, and it might take days or weeks or years to find out what was motivating her.

Time, he had—but he wouldn’t stick around long if it meant constantly letting Caleb Dume call the shots. Hera had seemed to sense that old dutiful instinct in him, and had gotten him to come this far by appealing to it. The problem was, that person was someone he’d never really been, and could never be again. Okadiah’s death deserved an answer, yes, and Gorse needed to be protected if possible. But both were responsibilities of a kind he had avoided for years. He intended to keep avoiding them.

Hera was clever, and pretty, and he loved her voice. If the only way to keep hearing it, though, was to play at her cloak-and-dagger games, he might have to be on his way, with thanks for the memories.

“Okay, you’re up,” Hera said.

“Hmm?”

“I’m not the pilot of record,” she said, sliding out of her seat. They were approaching the outer security perimeter, an invisible energy shield surrounding Calcoraan Depot. TIE fighters circled the station, demarcating the location.

“Right.” Kanan squeezed past her—a not unpleasant experience—to take his usual seat. Grabbing the control yoke, he slowed Expedient to a stop just short of the barrier indicated on his viewscreen.

A gruff female voice came across the comm system. “What’s your identifier?”

“Moonglow-Seventy-Two,” Kanan replied.

“Not anymore.”

The response startled Kanan for a moment. “What do you mean?” He pushed a button. “Here, I’ve switched on the ID transponder. You can see who I am. I’m from Moonglow—”

“And I said not anymore,” the woman answered. “You’re now Imperial Provisional Seventy-Two. Name, license, and personnel.”

“Kanan Jarrus. Guild license five-four-nine-eight-one.” He paused to look back. “Passengers, three laborers.”

“That’s two more than you’re supposed to carry.”

“We’ll get loaded up faster,” Kanan said. “What do you care?”

“Not at all. Continue on your heading to landing station seven-seven. Follow the lights, and go slow.”

Kanan did so. Expedient cruised into one of the largest assortments of starships he’d ever come across. Every Baby Carrier he’d ever seen in the skies between Gorse and Cynda was here, and more from elsewhere. And yet, unlike on the lunar run, all the ships were moving in an orderly and precise fashion. He soon realized why, as Expedient shuddered and he felt the control yoke go dead in his hands.

“Tractor beam parking attendants,” Kanan said. “Nice. I hope we won’t owe anyone a tip.” He sat back, a passenger again like all the others.

Hera watched as Expedient circled the facility. “Are we going to have a problem getting back out?”

He shook his head. “Doubt it. These beams are for traffic manipulation. This place is so well protected, they wouldn’t need tractor beams rated to yank fleeing ships from the sky.”

“That’s a relief.”

Kanan stood up to stretch his legs—and thought back. There was one thing the controller had said that had disturbed him. “Weird. They changed our call sign.”

“I know why,” Zaluna called. Kanan turned to see her on the chair across from Skelly. As soon as they’d left hyperspace, she’d gotten her datapad out and started looking for news on the public channels. “They changed your name because there is no more Moonglow.”

“What?”

“Moonglow has been blamed for the big blast on Cynda.”

Across the aisle, Skelly gawked. “That’s not true!”

Zaluna shook her head. “It was a Moonglow team that found your first bomb, remember?”

Kanan rolled his eyes. “I was there. Don’t remind me.”

“I was in the Transcept monitoring room when the word went out on that,” Zaluna said. “They called it a natural occurrence, so nobody would get spooked about the mining company’s practices—”

“Or would see that a dissident existed,” Hera put in.

“Right. Now they’ve totally changed that story, saying that the collapse earlier this week and the giant explosion were both Moonglow’s doing. The company has been dissolved, with its assets placed under Imperial control.”

“Nothing like stomping all over someone’s good name after you’ve killed them,” Kanan said. Lal Grallik had been nice to him. Count Vidian was starting to roll up some big numbers in the debt column.

Expedient traced a long arc toward a massive disk-shaped landing station connected by huge spars to the rest of the facility. Several open ports revealed a sprawling loading area.

The comm system came to life again as the vessel cruised into the landing bay. “On landing, debark and begin loading product as it arrives on the conveyers. Take standard precautions—you’re on our turf now.”

“Great,” Kanan said when the transmission ended. “Now I guess I work for the Empire.” He looked to Hera. “What’s the plan?”

“The plan is, you do what they tell you,” she said, standing up and checking her comlink. “Load the ship. And wait for my call.”

Kanan’s eyes widened. “Wait. You’re leaving?”

“That’s right,” she said, adjusting the blaster in her holster. “I’m going to destroy the station.”