LORICA WAS ONLY a few cells away from Mattis, and she heard him yelling and muttering. She was worried about him. He wasn’t the strongest of their little group (she considered herself to be) or the cleverest (also herself). She’d done what she could to help him in their time in the detention center, but she couldn’t help feeling she’d failed him. Though she felt that he’d failed himself even worse. Still, she wished she could have done more. Mattis just made it so difficult sometimes. He didn’t realize that the Zeltron people, due to their unique nature, experienced amplified versions of the feelings of those around them, especially those they cared about. And against her better judgment, she cared about Mattis. His anxiety, his fear, and his general disquiet were all magnified in her when she was around him. But, then, so was his belief in his friends and in the general goodness of all people. And his sense of adventure. And his unwavering desire to help the galaxy. She was overwhelmed with affection when she was with him because he had affection for just about everyone. Ugh. Being a Zeltron was difficult. Experiencing emotions was difficult.

Now Lorica’s emotions were a confusing mess. Thoughts got mixed up with feelings and all of them barreled around a track in her head like the podraces she’d watched back on Kergans, crisscrossing and bumping into one another so pieces broke off and memories flitted in and out of coherence. She was trying to get her head straight when Jo appeared at her cell door.

“Lorica,” he said, jarring her out of her own jumble of thoughts.

“You coming in?” she asked. If she could get him to open the door, and if she could get him to step inside the cell, she knew she could fight him and win. Jo was strong and disciplined but, right now, Lorica might be stronger. Maybe she could entice him in the way she was working on mind-itching Ingo. She stood and approached the cell door. Jo just rested his hand on the bars.

“I’m not coming in,” he said. He seemed unaffected by her. It made sense. Of any of them—including the droid—Jo was the least emotional.

“Then leave me to sleep.”

“I’m going to get you out,” Jo said seriously.

Lorica wasn’t sure what to think. She’d argued with Mattis when he told her that Jo was a traitor to the Resistance. She’d spent more time with Jo than the others had; she felt she knew him, though, really, didn’t she only know what he’d shown her? He was angry and militaristic. Those qualities served the Resistance expertly, but couldn’t they equally well serve the First Order? Lorica lived inside others’ emotions, although she was only just becoming aware how much. Surely she’d have known if Jo was lying to them, back on the Resistance base or on Vodran. And if he were a traitor and a spy, wouldn’t he have just let them die in the sarlacc pit? She had trouble reconciling all the various versions of Jo Jerjerrod in her mind and in her memory: the leader, the hero, the suitor (and the suited, too), the spy, the traitor, the son of the First Order.

“I’ll stay here, thanks,” Lorica finally replied.

Jo began to speak, but Lorica stopped him with a sharp gesture.

“We don’t need your help,” she said. “We’re doing just fine.” She didn’t tell him that both she and Mattis were working on their own escapes. She didn’t trust him. She couldn’t.

“Lor,” Jo breathed. “I’m out here working for you.”

“Yeah. Out there. You turned around awfully quickly, Jo.”

“What good would I be if I were trapped in a cell with you and Mattis? Out here, pretending to be a First Order spy, I can keep Wanten and his soldiers away from you two. I can buy us some time while I figure out a way to spring you. And Mattis. And Aygee.”

Lorica shook her head. It was true that she and Mattis had mostly been spared any attempts at information extraction by First Order soldiers, but Jo claiming credit for that was unprovable to her. More telling was his mention of AG. Jo had never liked the droid and must know that AG had been reprogrammed. Removing AG from Vodran as part of some vague escape plan would likely set off all kinds of alarms. And what would taking AG with them accomplish anyway? He’d have to have his memory wiped and be reprogrammed again; he wouldn’t be the droid that Dec called his brother anymore.

“Sorry,” she told Jo. “We choose to stay.”

From a few cells down, they heard Mattis fretting.

“He’s not going to last very long,” Jo said. It might have been the most honest thing Jo had told her. “He’s losing it in there.”

Lorica nodded.

“You have to believe me, Lor,” Jo said. She didn’t like when he shortened her name. Her mother used to do that. She hadn’t liked it when her mother did it, either.

“I don’t. I can’t.”

“What choice do you have?” The way he said it was brittle, and Jo realized it immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, really. But the circumstances are dire. I’ve kept Wanten distracted this long, but he’s getting restless. He wants to impress the First Order. It’s—it’s a complicated story, but he has a long history with them and needs to make good. He thinks information from you and Mattis—more you than Mattis, to be honest—he thinks Mattis is kind of a dolt….”

Lorica laughed at both Wanten’s assessment of Mattis and Jo’s old-fashioned slang.

“But he thinks you know something worth finding out, and he’s not afraid to torture you to get it out of you.”

“I can stand up to torture,” Lorica responded, sounding tougher than she felt.

“Mattis can’t. Wanten will go after him, too, just to get you to talk. I’ve told Wanten as many inconsequential things about the Resistance as I could. Like the kinds of droids they’re using.” Jo laughed dryly. “Wanten’s attention drifts off when I start talking about droid specs, and he interrupts to ask about how he should redecorate the throne room. He really doesn’t like to think about droids. So I try to talk about droids a lot. But pretty soon, he’s going to demand more.”

“Try talking about ships,” Lorica suggested. “The First Order knows we fly X-wings, mostly, so just go on and on about them. Pretend you’re Dec.” She wasn’t sure why Dec popped into her head at that moment—probably because he loved the tech of X-wings, and pretty much any mechanical thing, so much—but it made her miss him. They were often at odds back on the Resistance base, but they’d turned a corner on Vodran. She didn’t think they’d ever be good friends, but Dec was a formidable sparring partner, both physically and verbally, and she liked that she never felt any dire affection or neediness from him, either. He just accepted her as another person, another foil, another squad mate. She was sorry he was dead. It hadn’t struck her in any real way that he was until that moment.

If she accepted that Dec and Sari were dead, that AG was lost to her, that Mattis was losing his mind, then all she had left was Jo. Which meant she had to believe him, didn’t she?

“What do you need from me?” she asked. She still didn’t trust him, not completely, but she needed a contingency plan should Ingo get cold feet when the time came to release her.

“I need to know what you know,” Jo said. “I’ve already told Wanten every insignificant detail I can think of. I need to be able to mislead him. Lorica…” Jo reached through the bars and touched his fingers to hers. “Do you know the location of the Resistance base?”

Lorica was not a stupid person. In fact, she was clever, crafty, and always noticed anything that might help her later on. She did know where the Resistance base was. She’d put it together shortly after they’d arrived, based upon the route of the shuttle that had collected the new recruits, the weather on the planet, and the flight patterns of some of the X-wing squadrons that had come and gone. The Resistance base was on D’Qar.

“The Resistance base is on Endor,” Lorica told Jo.

Lorica wasn’t stupid at all, which was why, though she had to trust Jo right then, she knew she could only trust him to an extent. She couldn’t arm him with actual information with which to run back to Wanten.

“Endor?” Jo asked. “Isn’t that a moon? The place with the—the little fellows.”

“Ewoks.”

“Why didn’t we see any? Ewoks?”

“Because then you’d know we were on Endor. And the location of the base wasn’t for us to know. I mean, you’re the one who told me that.”

“So how did you find out?”

“I went for a run one morning before training,” Lorica lied. “And I ran right into an Ewok who was sneaking onto the tarmac. He—it—tried to eat me.”

“Ewoks eat people?”

“I guess. I punched it right in its furry face, though, and ran like a demon back to base.” Lorica shrugged. “I don’t know how General Leia brokered a peace with those little creeps, but that’s the only encounter I know of with one of them. I guess she told them to leave us alone, and they did.”

“Endor,” Jo repeated thoughtfully, and Lorica nodded. “I’m going to tell Wanten a lie. I’m going to tell him the Resistance base is on…” He considered. “What’s far enough from Endor but is realistic to have a base on?”

“Cole-Haddon?”

“It’s inhospitable. No one would believe it.”

Lorica tried again. “Hreeshi?”

“Hreeshi is nice, but as the home for a Resistance base? Maybe too nice. What about D’Qar?”

Lorica tensed. Was he onto her? Nothing in his face betrayed as much, but, again, Jo had always been difficult to read.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. Apparently, Lorica was easier to read than Jo.

“Nothing.” She tried to wave away his concern and project an air of innocence. “Do you think he’d believe it, though? D’Qar? Are there resources there?”

“I’m just picturing a map. And D’Qar makes sense.”

Lorica nodded slowly, resigned to acceptance. Jo had settled on telling Wanten the Resistance base was on D’Qar, which was where it really was. It was possible he’d known this all along, but Lorica didn’t know what to think anymore. Was Jo playing her? If so, he was certainly with the First Order. Or was he truly innocent and looking to deceive Wanten? If that was the case, then he might indeed be loyal to the Resistance. Lorica didn’t know what to do.

The only thing she could think of was hastening her escape.

Jo touched her hand again and told her to remain optimistic. He’d feed the information to Wanten, hopefully distract the commander in that way, and then get Lorica and Mattis out of there. AG, too. Jo’s face was lit up with what Lorica understood to be hope. She wished she felt it, too. Instead, all she felt was that swarming confusion as she turned back to her bunk. She listened to Jo’s receding footfalls; they sounded like raindrops, and she stuck out her hand because, fleetingly, she thought maybe they were raindrops. She shook her head. Why was she so confused? Why was everything such a jumble?

“Are you confused, too?”

The voice came from within her cell. Lorica jumped back, slamming her shoulder blades against the upper bunk behind her. “Ow!” she cried.

Cost pulled the blanket off her head in the bunk opposite Lorica. She smiled, showing all her rows of teeth.

“Cost!” Lorica whispered. Lorica shook her head again, dispelling the cobwebs that had gathered there. Lorica must have magnified some of Cost’s emotional turmoil.

“You saw your friend,” Cost said. “But I didn’t see him any.”

“Jo, you mean? He might not be my friend.”

“He’s your friend,” Cost affirmed. “He wants to help Lorica and Mattis. I want to help, too. Help Cost.”

Help Cost. Her cellmate’s plea was so simple. “We have plans in action,” Lorica assured her. “When we get out of here—and we will get out of here—we’ll bring you with us.”

“You won’t.” Cost shook her head sadly.

“Cost.” Lorica took the slim woman by her narrow shoulders and braced her, looking into her eyes. If she could make Ingo swoon and become malleable, then she could impart to Cost the truth of her statement. “We will. You’ll come with us.”

Cost nodded slowly, but she said, “I don’t know.”

“I do.” Lorica let her go, and Cost disappeared again into the bedding. She was so slight that once the blanket was over her, she was gone. “Get some sleep. Rest your mind. Think of tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Cost repeated. She fell asleep repeating it.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.

It was all Lorica could think of as she, too, fell into restless slumber.

When Wanten was handed his assignment on Vodran, he suspected it might drive him around the bend. He didn’t think, however, that it would happen so soon. Since his arrival, not only hadn’t he eaten a decent meal—his major indulgence and, for the past thirty years, his only pure happiness—but the walls had been talking to him. He feared, at first, that it was his imagination, but Wanten recognized that he didn’t have a very good imagination and ruled out that possibility. He was left with the notion that there was something living in the walls of his new home. A creature, some remnant of that obscene Hutt, running about Wanten’s throne room, Wanten’s cells—even Wanten’s dining room! The creature, whatever it was, might foul Wanten’s food!

He tasked his personal guards with locating the creature. It took a fair bit of effort to convince them it existed, but after he made the guards sleep on the floor in his throne room (while Wanten slumbered in the quilted bedstead of the deposed Hutt), the guards agreed. There was something living there that Wanten hadn’t brought with him.

His guards scoured the kitchen on the presumption that whatever was squatting in their palace was hungry. They made an ambitious mess, blasting a hole in the side of the kitchen, without much more success than a fleeting glimpse of the diminutive intruder, just enough to identify it. Its isosceles ears and gaping snout and, most of all, its woolly exterior classified their pest without question as a nanak from the planet Egips.

Wanten would have it destroyed. The interloper caused him to lose sleep. It mocked him from hidden places within his throne room, the throne room he’d stolen fairly from the Hutt. It told him he was worthless, that he’d squandered any potential he might have had under the Empire. It told him that the First Order didn’t respect him and that they saw him as a crumbling relic of the former regime. The First Order pitied him.

It was possible that the nanak was just muttering an oddball salad of words and phrases, but it was what Wanten heard, and it angered him. As if his job weren’t difficult enough! These stormtroopers were so by-the-book and not creative thinkers, not like in his day. They were eager, perhaps too eager. They too often fired first and didn’t worry about the big picture, like plasma-blasts wrecking his walls.

What’s more, the facility he’d been tasked with turning into a detention center, Harra the Hutt’s former palace, possessed a number of architectural problems. Most pressing and frequently addressed was the perimeter fence, which needed constant maintenance to barricade against the beasts that used to make the palace their home. Just the day before, one of Wanten’s force—a keen stormtrooper with the call sign VC-2123, to whom Wanten had warmed—was gobbled up by a tawd. Wanten was sorry to see VC-2123 go. But the occurrence wasn’t unusual. He lost stormtroopers too often to the hungry creatures in which the Hutt had trafficked. His facility also suffered frequent damage from that loosed menagerie. Luckily, Wanten had prisoners to rebuild the detention center. It kept them busy, which was another advantage, and if the prisoners were busy, they wouldn’t notice what a meager crew Wanten had on Vodran. Wanten lived in constant fear of being overthrown by his prisoners, few of them as there were.

And then there was the arrival of the youths from the Resistance. Wanten disliked them. They made his stomach feel weak. They were such believers in their mission. It reminded him of himself, back in the old Empire days. He missed that young Wanten, though not enough to attempt to become him anew. He was too old, too tired, and had seen too much hypocrisy and bureaucracy. He knew too much about the way the galaxy worked. He wished to be rid of these young people. They exhausted him. Even the Jerjerrod boy, whose family Wanten knew and for whom he mustered a modicum of respect (leveled with a healthy dose of repulsion at the upper classes of the First Order officers), exhausted him. Jo Jerjerrod talked and talked—a lot about droids but also about spaceships and other things. Farming? Perhaps. After a certain point, Wanten’s attention wandered, but he knew that, thus far, the boy hadn’t told him anything useful. At least nothing that made him sit up straighter. When that happened, when Wanten’s interest was piqued by some bit of information and his spine unfolded, he would know that he had something that would impress his superiors in the First Order. Wanten suspected that the Zeltron girl knew more than the Jerjerrod boy, but he wanted to give the boy a chance. After all, should it become public that he was dismissive of a son of the First Order, no information that he might offer would make a difference in his career.

“We have to catch that nanak,” Wanten choked out to the stormtrooper nearest him.

“Sir?”

“I think that’s our most critical issue right now, don’t you?”

The stormtrooper wasn’t one of his usual personal guards. “I don’t know, sir,” he said.

Wanten frowned, fleshy folds enveloping his lips. “I do,” he told the guard. “What’s your call sign, trooper?”

The stormtrooper turned to tell him but was interrupted by the appearance of Ingo Salik in the throne room.

“Commander Wanten,” Salik hailed him as he entered.

Wanten didn’t like his second-in-command. Wanten didn’t really like anyone, but Salik was young, which was one good reason to dislike him, and physically fit, which was another. He was also well liked in the First Order hierarchy. Wanten wasn’t sure why, then, Salik had been sent to Vodran with him—they’d told him something about “earning his stripes” and “doing the job of two men,” Wanten vaguely recalled—but he really didn’t care. Salik’s confidence and matter-of-fact manner irritated Wanten.

“What do you want, Salik?” Wanten sighed. He looked around for something to occupy him—a beverage or some tassel on one of his pillows.

“A couple of things. The scouts we deployed a week ago have returned, sir.” The way Salik said “sir” made Wanten’s skin feel too loose.

“I thought they were dead.”

“We lost two ships, that’s true. But the pilot of the third ship is here now. Shall I show him in, sir?”

Wanten shifted. “Yes, yes, I don’t know why you didn’t just bring him in with you.”

“I didn’t know what you might be doing in here, sir.”

Wanten looked at the stormtrooper he’d berated a moment ago, but the trooper just stared blankly back at him with those black lenses and shrugged.

“I was telling this waste of armor to catch that blasted nanak who’s been causing so much trouble.”

Salik already had his back turned and beckoned the pilot to enter. The pilot was a young man, too. Wanten despised him on sight.

“Tell Commander Wanten what happened, Humphris,” Salik whispered. “But keep it brief. The commander has a tendency to…get distracted.”

Wanten wished he hadn’t flushed upon hearing his second’s hushed warning, but it was nothing. His underlings respected him. That was why they felt they could joke around with him. He would make a special effort to pay attention throughout the pilot’s report.

“What happened?” he asked.

The pilot, Humphris, carried a jacket over his arm. He handed it to Salik, who passed it to Wanten. “I chased the rogue shuttle through a debris field to this—there’s a moon out there, sir. It doesn’t get picked up on scans. I don’t know why. It’s populated by droids.”

“Droids!” Wanten repeated in disgust.

“Yes, sir. They destroyed the rogue shuttle when I arrived and they told me that they tore its pilots to pieces. All that was left was that jacket.”

“That happened a week ago!” Wanten said in realization. “Why didn’t you return immediately?”

“The droids, they took me, sir.” The pilot hung his head. “They locked me in a subbasement in their bunker. I was the only human there. They wanted to know if I was from the First Order.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them nothing. Finally, after all of this time, I escaped. I knocked over an astromech droid and fled to my ship.”

“Why didn’t they destroy your ship as well?” Salik asked.

“They said it was good for parts that they could use to repair themselves. They said First Order ships are the best ships. I remember they said that several times.”

Wanten nodded. That was true. First Order ships were the best ships. “A moon full of droids, eh?” Wanten said. “This bears consideration. But, as long as they’re up there, and we’re down here, then we needn’t worry about them.”

“Sir—” Salik made to argue, but Wanten held up a meaty hand.

“I don’t wish to engage droids, Salik,” he said. “Besides, our pilot here says we won’t find that moon anyway. I don’t have the manpower to send a bunch of shuttles up there searching, do I?”

Salik agreed he did not.

“Thank you, um, pilot,” Wanten said, unable to remember the pilot’s name. “That will be all. Salik, was there something else?”

“Yes, sir,” Salik answered through a set jaw. He waited for the pilot to leave before he continued. “The Genhu prisoner wants to speak with you.”

Wanten pretended to distract himself by scratching his neck, which was sweaty, and then looking around for somewhere to wipe the sweat before deciding upon the pillow with the pretty tassels. In truth, he was trying to remember who the Genhu prisoner was.

“Bring the prisoner in,” he said.

“She’s nervous,” Salik told him.

“She needn’t be! I’m so nice! I’m really so, so nice.” Wanten opened his arms wide in an effort to appear welcoming, but it made him tired, so he dropped them again.

His second-in-command turned and ushered in the rail-thin Genhu prisoner. Wanten remembered her now. She was his informant; it was the Genhu prisoner’s job to tell Wanten what the other prisoners were plotting. It was so much easier than Wanten torturing them himself.

“What have you learned, prisoner?” Wanten asked. He was confident that there was syrup in his voice. He didn’t like the way Salik blinked one eye when Wanten spoke, as if he were looking at a bright sun.

The Genhu prisoner’s wide mouth moved, but Wanten couldn’t make out her words. Before he could signal Salik to move her closer, his second-in-command scuttled her forward.

“Speak up, prisoner,” Wanten said imperiously, but also, he hoped, generously. She should think she would be rewarded for betraying her fellow captives. She wouldn’t, but she should think she would. That was Wanten’s clever secret to maintaining tranquility in his detention center: to make promises he had no intention of keeping.

The informant stood before the commander of the detention center and bit her lower lip. Her mind had a habit of drifting away. Her teeth tapered into sharp points, and the tiny pain she felt from jabbing her own lip always brought her back to the present. She’d been confused since they’d arrived, the First Order and their piggy commander, and they took advantage of her confusion. They promised her more rations and more blankets if she would tell them what the other prisoners were saying and doing.

Cost told them, but she couldn’t remember if she ever received those prizes. Her thoughts were a hurricane of confused activity, and they took advantage of that. The idea was fleeting; soon it was gone.

“We have a blanket waiting for you in your cell,” Wanten told her. He grimaced in a way that Cost thought was supposed to make her calm. Instead, it made her queasy. Because Wanten looked queasy.

“Jo Jerjerrod doesn’t like you,” she said.

“That’s not valuable information,” Wanten said to Ingo Salik, who sometimes took care of Cost. Ingo talked a lot with Cost’s cellmate, Lorica. Cost wondered if she should tell the piggy commander about that talk-talk-talking. Cost liked Lorica, though, and if she told the commander about the talking, maybe Lorica would get in trouble. Lorica had told something to Cost, though. Something that made Cost feel warm and thankful. What was it? If she could remember, Cost would tell the First Order people.

“Tell the commander something valuable,” Ingo ordered Cost. His voice wasn’t like a heated towel the way it was when he talked with Lorica. It was like rocks.

“Jo Jerjerrod likes the Resistance,” Cost said. “He’s going to free his friends.” Cost swallowed hard as the ideas in her head closed into a point that she could read and recognize: she’d made a mistake. There was no taking it back. She’d doomed her new friends, the people who said they’d take care of her. She’d tried to tell Lorica that Cost would only help herself, that the First Order manipulated her, but the words had come out a jumble and Lorica hadn’t understood. So now Cost did the only thing she could think to do: she kept talking. “After they escape,” she said, “they’re going to return and explode this place.”