Pikka Adren stretched, feeling her muscles ease a little. She wanted to ask Joss to rub her shoulders, but the thirty-ninth Emergence was set to happen soon enough that she didn’t want to risk him being out of the pilot’s seat when it happened. They still had a few minutes, but there was no reason to take a chance.

Her husband could give her a massage later. Assuming “later” ever actually arrived. Somehow, they’d been swept up in the efforts to solve all the backscatter from the Legacy Run disaster, and that was all well and good—they were getting hazard pay and doing something noble besides. But they were supposed to be on vacation. She had booked them a trip to Amfar once their shift helping to build the Starlight Beacon was over, and those days had come and gone. She’d lost the deposit, and had no idea whether the Republic would let her expense it, and—

Ugh. She was annoyed at herself for focusing on something so petty. She and Joss were literally saving the galaxy here. Or at least a good chunk of it.

But still. She was supposed to be on a beach right now, wearing something tiny, sipping something delicious, lying next to her handsome husband who was also in something tiny, thinking about later, when they would both ditch even those tiny things and think of inventive ways to make each other feel good.

“You ready, my darling?” Joss said.

He sounded excited. Clearly he wasn’t thinking he’d rather be on a beach. He lived for this stuff.

But really, she thought, so do I.

Couple of spanner-slinging contractors out saving the Outer Rim Territories, doing it together, doing it in style. Not so bad.

“Ready, my darling,” she said, putting her hands back on her console.

“I just checked with the rest of the team,” Joss said. “Everyone’s good to go. Whatever pops out, we can handle it.”

Pikka murmured in agreement, pulling her mind away from Amfar and back to the task at hand. Somehow the Republic had figured out how to predict where the Emergences were going to happen—she’d heard a story about some sort of mega-processor made out of tens of thousands of droids linked to the Force that could predict the future, but that surely had to be nonsense. In any case, they had identified three spots as the most likely candidates for where the Legacy Run’s flight recorder would emerge, and had set up a team to intercept them, one after the other.