Standing there, on the bridge of his Nebulon-B frigate, the pirate Urias Xhaxin clasped his cybernetic left hand to the small of his back with his right hand. He stared straight ahead at the tunnel of light into which his ship, the Free Lance, flew. Given the nature of the frigate's design, with the bridge far forward, he felt as if he were flying there alone, making his way deep into the territory of the Outer Rim where no one in his right mind would be found.

He glanced back over his shoulder at the Twi'lek working the navigation station. "Time to reversion, Khwir?"

The Twi'lek's long lekku twitched. "Five minutes."

Xhaxin turned on the comlink clipped to his jacket's collar. "All hands, all hands, this is Xhaxin. Red and Blue Squadrons, prepare for launch. You will be moving to the outbound vectors and disabling the smaller yachts. Gunners, we will aim for the escorts. Everyone look sharp and this may be the last run we ever need make. In and out, clean and easy. You'll all do well, I know. Xhaxin out."

A dark-haired woman stepped up beside Xhaxin. "You really think this haul will earn us enough to retire?"

"It depends upon the quality of retirement you desire, Dr. Karl." The white-haired, white-bearded man turned and smiled at her. "Your skills will earn you a good living almost anywhere in the New Republic, and your share of this raid should be enough to buy you a new identity or two."

Anet Karl frowned. "Ever since the peace between the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic six years ago, we've been forced to go after smaller and smaller targets. The New Republic never condoned what we did, but they turned a blind eye to it while the Imperials were still a threat. Pickings were good as unreconstructed Imperials fled out here to the Remnant, but that trade has been trickling off. Is this raid going to be different?"

Xhaxin pursed his lips for a moment, then lowered his voice. "It's a fair question you ask. The answer is yes, I can feel it in my bones. This raid will be like nothing we've seen in the last five years."

Anet smiled mischievously, her brown eyes sparkling. "You're not going Jedi on me, are you? The Force tells you about this raid?"

"No, I'm far more practical than the Jedi, and more dangerous, too." He spread his arms. "We've nearly nine hundred crew on this ship -- nine times the number of Jedi in the whole of the galaxy. And while they have the Force to aid them, I have two powerful allies with me: greed and arrogance."

"Oh, your plan was good."

"Correction, my plan was brilliant." Xhaxin laughed. "We let a couple of ships go free because they're traveling together, then I set up a guy who says he can organize convoys through deep space to the Remnant. We had people demanding positions in our convoy. In fact, they paid well for the privilege of traveling safely."

"But no refunds, correct?" The doctor smiled. "The credits they've spent are just a down payment?"

"Exactly. They gathered at Garqi, have headed out, and the last of them should be hitting the rendezvous point in ten minutes. We'll round up what's already there, then pick off the last one and go." Xhaxin smoothed his mustache with his flesh-and-blood right hand. "It's been a grand run. This last raid -- it will be remembered. I would have had history recall me in other ways, but this will be good enough, especially if all of you can be rewarded for your hard work."

Anet Karl looked at the various humans and aliens busy at their duty stations on the bridge. "We had no love lost on the Empire either, Captain. We owe you our thanks for keeping us alive and allowing us to pay them back all these years. We'd keep going, too--"

"I know, but the New Republic has made peace with the Remnant." Xhaxin sighed. "One cannot underestimate the allure of peace. I think, perhaps, we've finally earned some ourselves."

"Ten seconds to reversion, Captain."

"Thank you, Khwir." Xhaxin waved a hand toward the viewport. "Behold, Doctor, our destiny."

The tunnel of light shattered into countless stars of varying hues. They'd come out into the middle of nowhere, literally -- a point in space that had been selected only because gravitational forces made it perfect for speeding the way from Garqi to Bastion in the Imperial Remnant. This place is supposed to be empty.

Empty it was not. Aside from the burning wreckage of a twisted freighter spinning madly, life pods and yachts darting about, a large object hung there in space. Xhaxin thought at first it had to be an asteroid because of its appearance, uneven surface, and torpid pace. Other smaller asteroids seemed to orbit around it, then streaked out on attack runs on the yachts.

And now they're orienting on us! Xhaxin spun away from the viewport. "Full shields up, now! Deploy the fighters. I don't know how some fool managed to fit a hyperdrive core to an asteroid, but he's not stealing our ships! Gunnery, get a firing solution on that big rock and open it up."

"As ordered, Captain!"

Even as he issued orders and pondered making a planetoid somehow mobile, Xhaxin knew that that line of reasoning did not explain the smaller rocks that moved like starfighters. "Sensors, what's going on out there?"

A Duros looked up through holographic displays of data, his long face wearing an expression that was even more morose than usual. "Gravitic anomalies, sir, everywhere."

"Tractor beams? Gravity-well generators?"

"Different, sir." The Duros frowned as a wash of data filled his holograph with overlapping spheres of color. "Focused, tighter beams, more powerful."

The Free Lance's turbolaser batteries opened up, sending long streams of sizzling red bolts at the asteroid. The shots looked to be on target, then deviated sharply in their flight. The bolts sharpened their angle of attack, coming together nearly half a kilometer before they hit the asteroid. Xhaxin expected the beams to flash through that new focal point and still hit the target, but instead they vanished.

"What happened? Guns, sensors, what happened?"

His gunner, an Iotran named Mirip Pag, shook his head in disbelief. "We had firing solutions, Captain. We were on target."

The Duros, Lun Deverin, stabbed a quivering finger at a small sphere in a holograph. "A gravitic anomaly pulled the shots in. It's as if they're using a black hole to shield themselves."

Xhaxin turned to look at the data and watched as the sphere in question expanded and moved toward the frigate. At the moment of contact, a jolt ran through the ship. Alarms began to sound, announcing that the starboard shield had collapsed.

"Come about to a heading of 57 mark 12, ahead full. Shear off whatever that beam is."

"Another one coming in, Captain. It will take the aft shield ..."

Pen Grasha, the Free Lance's starfighter control officer, shouted above the warning sirens. "Captain, our fighters are having their shields stripped. Their blasters and lasers are not getting through to the enemy."

The Duros waved a hand, then grabbed his sensor station in a tight grip. "Brace for impact. They've fired upon us."

Impact? Xhaxin turned toward the viewport and saw a sizzling golden ball of something -- plasma? -- flash past. It caught the frigate in midmaneuver, hitting just port of center. The port shield caught the blast, but collapsed in seconds, sending a shower of sparks through the bridge and skittering one crewman across the floor. A heartbeat later whatever had gotten through the shield slammed into the Free Lance's armored hull.

Thank goodness we have extra armor. Xhaxin had devoted a lot of resources to reinforcing the armor on the frigate. It had stood up to shots from an Imperial Star Destroyer before, and they'd lived to tell about it. We also ran away so we could tell about it.

The impact momentarily knocked the ship's artificial gravity generators out of phase, so Xhaxin flew from his feet and into Dr. Karl. Within a second, gravity returned, dropping both of them to the deck, but neither landed too hard. Xhaxin rose to one knee and helped the doctor up into a sitting position as he turned to look at the Duros. "What was that?"

"I don't know, Captain, but it's still eating into the hull." The blue-skinned alien paled. "I project a hull breach on deck seven in twenty seconds."

"Evac the area and close the bulkheads."

"More shots incoming!"

No! This can't be happening! Xhaxin's hands, both flesh and metal, convulsed into fists. He pushed aside the despair and panic raging through him. Time to be the sort of man that causes a crew to be so loyal.

"Pen, recall our fighters. Load those without hyperdrives first. Khwir, plot me a jump out of here."

The Twi'lek's lekku palsied. "The gravitic anomalies are constantly shifting. Calculating a jump solution is impossible."

"Are they enough to prevent us from jumping?"

"No, but--"

Xhaxin snarled, then staggered to a knee as another shot from the asteroid shook the frigate. "Then jump blind. Send the coordinates to our fighters, but jump blind."

"Captain, a blind jump could kill us."

"A blind jump might kill us." Xhaxin stabbed a finger at the viewport. "They will kill us. Do it, Khwir, do it, now!"

"As ordered, Captain." The Twi'lek started punching coordinates into the navicomputer. "Ready to jump in five seconds, Captain. Four, three ..."

Xhaxin looked at the viewport and saw a glowing golden ball expanding to fill it. He didn't know who his attackers were, why they were there, or how their weapons functioned. As he pondered those things the view of space exploded. In that moment, somehow he knew that while having the answers to his questions might bring him some inner peace, the same would not be said of the New Republic.

Copyright © 2000 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™