Pan Eyta and Lourna Dee had wanted to throw Kassav out of the hall right then and there—the hard way—but Marchion Ro had voted to keep him around, to give him a chance to fix his mess. Said something about how his experience might be useful, since he was an old-timer, and how his Tempest was so loyal to him…maybe it wasn’t a good time for unrest in the crews. Mostly, though, since Kassav didn’t get a vote it was her and Pan against Marchion’s two votes, and since by Nihil tradition ties went to the Eye…Kassav was still around.

The second reason this mission was so important was because of something Marchion Ro had learned from one of his Republic spies—the primary aide to that blowhard Outer Rim senator you always heard blathering on the HoloNet, Noor. According to the spy, the Republic investigation had turned up some pretty strong clues that the reason the Legacy Run blew up in Hetzal was because it encountered a Nihil ship in the hyperlane, traveling along a Path. Marchion had run some data, and it all seemed plausible. Pretty unwelcome surprise, that.

And now the Republic had built some kind of super-droid that could run high-level hyperspace analyses. It gave them the time and location of all the upcoming Emergences, including some where the Legacy Run’s flight recorder might show up. If the Republic investigators found it, they could probably use it to get definitive proof that the Nihil were connected to everything—not just Kassav’s botched job in Eriadu, which you could argue would have happened whether he was there or not, but also every death in Hetzal, the deaths in Ab Dalis, and the rest. Jedi had died in Hetzal. If they knew the Nihil were the reason…well, Marchion Ro seemed pretty wary of the Order, and Lourna Dee didn’t much like the idea of them coming after her, either.

The whole Nihil operation could be at stake. The Republic could not be allowed to find that flight recorder. They had to destroy it, and there was really only one Tempest Runner for the job…Lourna Dee with her stealth-equipped battle corvette.

So here she was, lurking in the system Marchion Ro had sent her to via a Path, staying hidden, waiting to see if this Emergence would give her a target, or if she would need to move on to the next spot on the Eye’s list.

“It’s not the recorder,” Belial said, looking at his screens.

The Devaronian was just a Cloud, not yet a Storm, but Lourna Dee thought he’d level up pretty soon. The guy was smart, capable. Cool in a crisis. Unemotional. People like that fit right into her organization.

“Looks like one of the passenger compartments.”