Reath had spent the majority of his Padawan training immersed in the Archives, but he’d been on rescue missions before. Once he’d helped clear passengers from a badly malfunctioning transport in the Brield system. Another time, he had joined a Jedi team assisting in evacuations from a burning tower in Coruscant itself. The second, in particular, had been difficult, even death-defying. He didn’t lack experience.

However, he’d never seen—and was convinced he would never see—any group of people so ungrateful for being rescued as the station refugees were. Even many days into their stay on the Amaxine station, they remained as obstreperous and unpleasant as ever.

“First you park us next to Mizi scum!” snarled the Orincan captain. “Then you tell us we have to turn over all our food! Who do you think you are?”

A human in a satin-and-fur cloak stroked his goatee as he proclaimed, “Obviously our passengers paid in advance for the deluxe menu, prepared by our famed chefs with premium ingredients, so we couldn’t think of depriving them of what they rightfully purchased.”

“None of you knows how to share!” retorted Nan, who stood in the middle of them with her arms crossed against her chest. Thanks to her stubborn chin and her diminutive height, she appeared more like a little girl than the young woman she was. The elderly Hague, behind her, kept his hand firmly on her shoulder. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?”

The Mizi captain looked down his long nose at her. “No.”

“Everyone needs to stay calm,” Reath said for what felt like the eightieth time. He stood amid a huddle of most of the passengers, datapad in hand, trying not to show his irritation. (Probably that was why Master Cohmac had stuck him with this task. It was a test of patience.) “We’re all in this together, and we don’t know for how long. We could get the signal to leave in an hour—or in fifteen months. If you’re wasteful or selfish now, there’s every chance you’re going to regret it, severely.”

Silence. They didn’t look entirely convinced, Reath thought, but at least they’d stopped arguing for a second.

“Howdy.” Leox Gyasi strolled out of the Vessel’s airlock door, hands in his pockets, his multicolored beads swaying with each step. “Man, oh, man. Gorgeous in here, ain’t it? Spectacular. Like an island getaway, except instead of an ocean we’ve got open space.”

Some of the refugees exchanged glances. This seemed to be a standard reaction to meeting Captain Gyasi.

“Sure could be stranded a lot of worse places than this,” Leox mused as he strolled beneath a thick canopy of leaves. He sniffed a yellow flower and grinned. “Coulda been stuck on a desert planet. Or a volcanic one. Or just dead space, alone, sitting around wondering if we’d run out of air before we could ever get away.”