He owed no one anything and The Exchange would never find him, even if they somehow realized that he was still alive. He owned land, a home, and had enough credits left over to hire a crew that could help him turn the land into a decent winery within a year or two. Or maybe he’d convert the farm and grow tabac. Months earlier, he could not have imagined such a life for himself.

Grinning like a fool, he sat down in the center of his plot of dirt and watched the sunrise.

A black dot above the horizon drew his eye.

A ship.

He watched it, unconcerned until it started to get larger. He could not yet make out its lines, but he could see its course.

It was heading in his direction.

A flash of panic seized him but he fought it down. His eyes went to the house, where Arra slept. He turned his gaze back to the ship.

He disliked unidentified ships descending from the sky in his direction. They always reminded him of the gully jumper he’d watched crash into the Jedi Temple. They always reminded him of Aryn.

“They could not have found us,” he said. “It is nothing.”

The ship grew still larger as it closed the distance. It was moving fast.

From the tri-winged design he made it as a BT7 Thunderstrike: a multi-use ship common even out on the Rim. He stood as it closed. He could hear the deep bass hum of its engines.

“Daddy!”

Arra’s voice turned his head around. She had come out of the house and sat in the wooden swing chair on the covered porch of the house. She smiled and waved.

“The rain’s gone!” she said.

“Get in the house, Arra!” he shouted, pointing at the door.

“But Daddy—”

“Get inside right now.”

He did not bother to see if she complied. The ship probably had not seen him yet. The trellises and their veins of browning vines would have concealed him from an airborne viewer. He ducked low and darted toward the edge of the field, sheltering as best he could behind one of the trellises. He pulled some dead vines from it so that he could look through to the open area at the edge of the field where the ship was likely to put down.

If it was coming to his farm.

He spared a glance back at the house and saw that Arra had gone back inside. He reached down to his ankle holster and pulled out the E-3 he kept there, then reached around to the small of his back for the E-9 he kept there. He chided himself for not wearing his ordinary hip holster with its twin BlasTech 4s. Arra disliked seeing the weapons, so he’d taken to wearing only those he could carry in concealed holsters. But little E-series popguns would have trouble doing much to someone in ablative armor.