It took her a moment to understand the meaning of the words he’d just used. She shifted her gaze to look at his masked face, at the swirling storm carved into it. She knew he was smiling behind it. She could hear it in his voice.

“The flight recorder mission,” she said. “You gave the Republic the information on my ship. That’s how they found me. How they were able to attack me.”

“Technically, Jeni Wataro gave it to them—but I gave it to her.”

“You wanted me to fail. Why, Marchion?”

“The Republic needed the flight recorder so they’d figure out where to send their fleet to look for us. If they didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have been able to sacrifice Kassav’s Tempest. Now they’ll think they destroyed us. They’ll relax for a while. They’ll stop hunting us.”

Lourna Dee didn’t care that Kassav was dead. Not in the slightest. But the audacity of what Marchion Ro had done, the casual way he had just sent a third of the organization to certain death…who was this man?

“You think that’ll work?” she said, her eyes returning to the lightsaber blade. Maybe she could throw herself backward, get her blaster out in time. Maybe.

“It will, Lourna Dee. I’ve got it all figured out.”

He deactivated the lightsaber, and she said a silent prayer of relief. Not that he couldn’t just turn it on again. She knew she remained in extreme danger. What she was realizing was that she always had been, from the moment Marchion Ro—and his father, for that matter—had come to the Nihil.

“We are all the Republic,” he said, spitting out the words. “Whether we like it or not, eh?”

He looked at her, the eye in his mask seeming to glow.

“I never told you much about my family, and I doubt I ever will—but I came from something I wanted to escape. This ship was part of it, actually, until it all went bad. My father and I both got out. We worked hard, and we had a plan…for the Paths, for the Nihil…for all sorts of things.”

He gestured at his mask.

“It was always gonna be like this. Since the day I was born. I thought I escaped. I didn’t, though. Not really.”

Lourna Dee shook her head. She just…

“I don’t understand why you sent me out there after the flight recorder, Marchion. If you wanted the Republic to have it, why did I have to go after the damn thing?”

“So your Tempest would see you fail, Lourna Dee, and start thinking about new leadership,” Marchion said. “And so you’d have nowhere else to go. I’m going to need you, I think.”

“For what?”

Marchion Ro tilted his head, and she knew he was smiling again.

“You’ll find out,” he said.