As soon as the full memory capacity of the tablet was open to her, Affie input the sector codes of the Amaxine station, the same ones that had been preprogrammed into the Vessel. (She had them memorized; after several days of seeing them glowing on the Vessel’s dash, they were practically seared onto her brain.) She held her breath for the instant it took for more information to scroll across the screen. Certain phrases jumped out as though written in crimson:

Transport Hub/CONFIDENTIAL

Revelation to Competing Guilds Punishable by Expulsion

Incentives Include Double Bonuses/Forgiveness of Ship Purchase Price Interest/Shortened Indentures

“Indentures?” Affie whispered. “The Byne Guild…uses indentured workers?”

She tried to navigate further into the “transport hub” part of the records, but those were closed even to her passcode. They must be for Scover’s eyes only.

In her mind, Affie pictured the long lines of smugglers’ code—especially the small, downturned bird of prey. Quickly she tapped in Kestrel’s Dive.

This information wasn’t protected by any layers of security; Affie could’ve pulled it up with no passcode at all. That was how little Scover felt she had to hide.

But as Affie read on, her hands began to shake, and she wished that she’d never opened the tablet at all.

“Many people of various species dye their hair or fur—”

“I’m telling you,” Reath insisted, “they were Nihil.”

There was a time—in fact, his entire life up until the past three minutes—when Reath would never have dreamed that he might stand up in the middle of a briefing by a member of the Jedi Council and announce that he had important information. But there he was. Later, he’d be embarrassed. For the moment, he was busy trying to convince several skeptical Masters, the remains of the briefing crowd, that the Jedi had already encountered the Republic’s newest, deadliest enemy in the form of a young girl and an elderly man.

A protocol droid piped up. “Requested transmission from the Vessel incoming, masters.”

Thank the Force Leox was on the ship to get the message, instead of lolling around in some spice den, Reath thought. Or…could Geode have sent it?

Before he could wonder about a rock’s ability to handle intership communications, the images were projected on-screen. He pointed at Nan and Hague’s ship. “Look. See? It’s definitely Nihil design.”

“The Nihil cannot be the only ones who make ships out of component parts,” reasoned Master Rosason. “Especially not on the frontier, where shipyards and supplies are more difficult to find. However—the similarities are striking.”

“And there’s carbon scoring,” said Master Adampo, pointing it out before Reath had to. “Proof that it’s seen relatively recent battle, although on its own, it hardly looks like a ship that would pick a fight.”