He made his way down the decks as quickly as he could, finally arriving at the reactor level. Innamin looked up, his face covered with sweat, so relieved he looked like he was going to faint.

“Hold it together,” Bright said to the junior officer.

The station shook again, and didn’t stop.

“We have no time,” Innamin said.

“Clearly,” Bright said. “Show the droid the sequence.”

“It has to happen when this gauge goes into the red,” Innamin said, a scenario conveniently happening at exactly that moment. He tapped a quick run of five button-presses on the console, and the gauge slipped back a few notches. Not to green, but to orange, and that would have to do.

The sequence was not complicated. Bright got the order just from seeing it once. Evidently the droid had it memorized, too. It moved forward, taking Innamin’s place at the console, waiting for the next opportunity to enter the commands.

“Go, right now,” Bright told his subordinate. “Get to the Longbeam.”

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I want to make sure the droid can do this,” he said. “Just go. Help Peeples. The light only knows what he’s doing up there.”

“Thank you, Captain, it…it means a lot.”

“We’re all the Republic,” Bright said.

Innamin nodded and ran off, out of the reactor chamber, toward the nearest deck ladder.

“All right, you beautiful machine,” Bright said, turning back to the pill droid. “Show me you understood.”

The gauge slipped into the red, and the pill droid moved fast and sure, tapping the five buttons. The gauge fell back—less than it had the previous time, Bright noticed—and the station seemed just a bit less likely to shake itself apart.

“Okay, it’s all yours,” Bright said. “I gotta run. It’s been wonderful working with you.”

This time the droid did not respond, which Bright decided to take as a sort of resigned agreement. He turned and raced out of the room, following the path Innamin had taken. He reached the ladder and put his boot on the first rung.

This will work, he thought, more wish than belief.

And then he sensed it—or rather, his tentacles did, with their ability to pull out pheromones from even the most polluted environment. There was another being here, someone alive. Alive and hurt, if his receptors didn’t steer him wrong.

Bright followed the scent trail, and there, behind a panel, was a Twi’lek, male, heavy, bruised, bleeding, and unconscious. He was dressed in the uniform of the station, and Bright didn’t know if Innamin hadn’t thoroughly searched this deck because he was distracted by the damaged reactor, or because the injured man was mostly hidden, or…well, it didn’t matter, did it?

Just to see, Bright crouched down and attempted to lift the Twi’lek. His muscles strained, but the unconscious man was deadweight. He barely moved.

No, he thought. No way.