My father had told me all kinds of stories about the Sith—his main focus had been moldy old Jedi artifacts, but I’d always been more fascinated by his tales of the dark side. Long-lost Sith artifacts were generally characterized as more… destructive. Deadly. Bringers of chaos. In other words, they were at the cross section of so many of my interests! And there was always gossip flying around in archaeological circles about where to find them…if they actually existed…

I had so many questions I wanted to ask the Dark Lord, but after witnessing his treatment of Utani Xane, I thought it prudent to keep those to myself for now.

Yes, that’s right—I just described a decision I made as “prudent.” Try to contain your shock.

I led Vader to the area of my ship where I keep a lot of my droid projects, tinkerings, works-in-progress…and tried to play it by ear.

APHRA:

Welcome aboard the Ark Angel, Sir Darth Vader. Big fan. Huge!

How can I help?

DARTH VADER:

This is private business. I recently destroyed some of your reactivated droids. They impressed me.

APHRA:

Thank you, Mr. Lord Vader.

Uh, sir? Your majesty? Your illustriousness?

Honestly, no idea what to call you. I’m a rogue archaeologist, not a protocol droid. Getting the right protocol droid is the reason I was here.

How did you find me, anyway?

A weighted beat of Vader’s ominous breathing.

APHRA:

Actually…I don’t want to know, do I?

APHRA (narration):

Wow, I was playing it so cool. But inside, there was this fluttery-jittery thing happening in my stomach—most people would probably call that thing fear.

I call it excitement.

I love the beginning of this kind of puzzle. Gathering all those observations and tiny bits of information about someone, filing them away for later—to be deployed exactly when you can use them.

I didn’t want his lordliness to know what I was thinking, of course—he didn’t need to know that my brain was working overtime, whirring away like one of my beloved mechanical contraptions.

Luckily I am a total master at acting like nothing matters—especially when something really, really does.

So I kept going through the motions of what I was planning to do next anyway. I downloaded the Triple-Zero Matrix into the Ark Angel’s main computer, offering Mr. Vader my ever-entertaining commentary so he wouldn’t think I was trying to, like, escape or something.

APHRA:

This is the Triple-Zero Protocol Personality Matrix. Had a few bugs.

Twitchy coupling. Neurocybernetic glitches. Tendency to drain organics to collect their blood. That kind of thing.

But it speaks languages that no one else does, and that’s what I need…

Problem is that it’s code-locked. I’ll need a few hours to break in, so I can set that to work, and then see what I can do to help you…