“We are for now. Good job on the repairs, by the way.”

“The kid monk helped me. But, that freighter—Leox, that looked like a fragment of a passenger craft.”

Leox sighed. So much for breaking it to her gently. “Yeah, it was.”

“There would’ve been hundreds of people aboard. Maybe even thousands.” Her face was stricken; moments like these reminded him how young Affie really was.

“Horrible way to die,” Leox agreed. Might as well hit her with all of it up front—even if she was still a kid, she could handle the truth better than she would any lie. “Listen, I can’t be sure, but going over the readouts…that looked a hell of a lot like wreckage of the Legacy Run to me.”

Affie’s dark eyes widened. “But—the Legacy Run is a Byne Guild ship. Scover travels on it sometimes.”

“I didn’t say it was the Legacy Run. They’re similar. Maybe not the same. Just—you oughta brace yourself. All right?”

She nodded, already attempting to focus herself back on the matters at hand despite the febrile reddish light of disturbed hyperspace all around them. His heart went out to her. Not every girl could throw herself into her work when she’d just found out her momma might’ve died.

Scover is fine. Scover is absolutely fine.

Affie repeated this to herself as she settled back into the copilot’s seat. Scover Byne rarely traveled on Guild runs; she preferred to remain on their hub planets, overseeing their fleet in its entirety. She hadn’t mentioned any recent plans to do otherwise. So Affie refused to panic.

Even if Scover wasn’t on board (and she wasn’t), the destruction of the Legacy Run was bad enough. The Republic’s arrival in their sector had driven shipping to feverish levels of activity; everyone wanted to move cargo before it could be taxed, tariffed, or outlawed. Settlers wanted to reach the frontier badly and paid for transport by the thousands every day. Every single ship went out packed with as much living and inert freight as it could possibly contain. Even the Vessel had traveled to Coruscant with so many crates of denta beans that Geode hadn’t been able to get through the corridors. Any loss would be a major loss. And the Legacy Run…there would’ve been hundreds of families aboard, thousands of people, even small children.…

“The ship’s still acting weird,” she said, both to snap herself out of worrying and because it was true.

“That’s because hyperspace is still acting weird, though now I think it’s got more to do with the freighter wreck throwing absolutely everything outta whack. I mean, look at this.” Leox gestured at the readings. “Debris is flying all over hyperspace. Navicomputer’s shutting down lanes faster than we can count them.” He shook his head. “We’re changing course.”