Thanks to Steve Holy, whose song Rock-A-Bye Heart was the inspiration for the song in this story. Finally, many thanks go to LordGoldenArrow and Texas Fett: you are a welcome breath of sanity in the midst of these crazy fictional characters, and I appreciate all your help (particularly with the ETA and keeping me grounded in reality).

"–So anyway, Mom and Dad, that’s what I’ve been up to. Your turn. What’s been going on back home? Did Talsh ever come for a visit like he said he would? Is he still–"

Flight Officer Darin Stanic stopped just inside the door to his quarters when he noticed that his roommate, Flight Officer Hentil "Quiver" Yanilr, was making a message to send home. Feeling a dull ache inside, Darin did his best not to disturb his wingman. He quietly went over to his desk along the opposite wall, grabbed a couple of datacards to take to the hangar and work on, and was turning to leave when Quiver noticed him.

"Hey, Darin, hold up!"

Darin paused, expecting Quiver to stop the recording and come tell him something about work. Instead, Quiver turned to his computer console’s recorder and said, "Hold on a second," and without stopping it, he stood and came over to Darin, motioning once with his head back toward the recorder. "Come say hi to everyone."

Darin blinked once in surprise, but he got over it quickly and said softly, "That’s okay, Quiver. I don’t want to interrupt." He started to go, but Quiver grabbed his arm and pulled him over to the console on Quiver’s desk.

"Come on. I’ve told my family so much about you, and they all want to meet you. You’re never around when I record these. I bet they think I’m making you up." He forced Darin down in the chair and then knelt beside him, his height still making him nearly eye-level with Darin. Quiver amiably draped an arm across Darin’s shoulders, turned back to the recorder and said, "Everyone, I want you to meet my wingman and roommate, Darin. Darin, this is everyone." He gestured with his free hand.

Of course, all Darin was looking at then was the computer’s little recording device. "Uh, hi, everyone."

"Tell them a little about yourself."

Darin felt really uncomfortable, and he couldn’t figure out why. It seemed worse than his usual shy tendencies, and the only thing he could really define was the lonely ache that reminded him he had no one to send a letter to. His family was gone, and he had long ago decided not to risk sending messages to other people in his hometown since it was now under Imperial control. He swallowed and said, "Well, I’m from the Craci System–"

"–One of the reasons we call him ‘Thumper,’" Quiver interrupted with a smile.

"–And I’ve been with the Coronas for something like nine months now. Um, that’s really all there is to know about me. I, uh, hope you’re all doing well, and I’ll keep an eye on Quiver for you."

"See, Lillen?" Quiver said smugly to the recorder. "I told you that was my nickname. It’s not just something CC likes to call me."

Darin turned to look at him in surprise. "They don’t know about your nickname?"

"They do. All of them, especially my cousin Lillen, just think it’s funny that people actually call me that."

"Oh." Darin turned back to the recorder. "Well, then, I’ll keep an eye on Hentil for you instead. Hopefully he’s not as much trouble as Quiver is."

Quiver half-snorted at him. "You wish." Then Quiver’s eyes lit up, and he whirled back to the recorder. "Oh, yeah! I forgot to tell all of you about this prank I pulled the other day! It was great!" Darin started to quietly excuse himself and get up, but Quiver pulled him back down on the chair with a grin. "Stay here, Darin. You have to show them the face you made when you found out. There’s no way I can imitate that and do it justice."

Darin felt a little embarrassed, but then Quiver dragged Darin’s shipping crate chair over to sit on and began his humorous, embellished narrative of the prank. During that time, Darin began to relax a little. He was still nowhere near what he considered to be comfortable, but he loosened up enough to add a few details and throw a couple friendly gibes at Quiver every so often.

Even after the retelling of the prank was over, Quiver kept Darin there and made him help with the letter. Darin was secretly curious about whether the Yanilrs would be able to follow it: Quiver would start out by asking them a question about something, then in the middle of it he would turn to Darin and quickly explain the background behind the question and why he was asking it, and then he’d face the recorder again and finish his query as if there had been no interruption. Once in a while Darin would ask Quiver something about the current topic for clarification, and if Quiver didn’t know the answer he would make Darin ask it in the letter directly, ignoring the fact that the question was already recorded when Darin asked Quiver about it in the first place.

Even though he knew his wingman liked to talk to other people, it still amazed Darin at how much Quiver had to tell his family and wanted to know in return, even while always avoiding specific city names and surnames and such on both their end and his in case the Imperials got hold of the transmission somehow. In fact, when Quiver ultimately stopped the recording, Darin suspected he did so not because he ran out of things to say, but because they had to get to their daily squadron briefing.
 
 

Chapter One

"Well, Mom and Dad and everyone else, probably the biggest news with the squadron lately is that for the last few days, our commander has been making us take some refresher courses for officer training. Apparently the career-military types like him don’t like the haphazard, anything-goes, on-the-job crash course kind of training the Rebellion provides, and they try to remember how they were taught in the academies wherever and teach us that way. Sometimes it’s not so bad, but this particular training has been so boring that I bet it would put you to sleep in a heartbeat, Lillen. The main reason it’s boring for me is that I already know everything about being an officer. It’s simple, really. When you’re an officer and you have to do something, you just find some enlisted grunt and tell him to do the work instead. What’s so hard about that? But at least it’s almost over. Then we can go back to something more exciting."

"Okay, Coronas, let’s get started," Commander Quentell Mackin said from the front of the briefing room as he looked out over his squadron. The assembled pilots’ private discussions gradually quieted down. They all knew the drill.

Darin glanced around the room at the same scene he saw every day at this time, 1400 hours to be exact. The Corona Squadron pilots, ten in all, were gathered in the pilot briefing room of the Rebel ship Crescent Star. The seating arrangement was the same as always.

Commander Mackin stood before them all, somewhat stocky and plain-looking but with intelligent, dark blue eyes that Darin swore could see inside each pilot’s soul. Mack preferred to hold the reins of the squadron in a light grip, and that was usually all it took since his subordinates respected him so much. He never let the squadron down, and the military experience he had obtained before joining the Rebellion was invaluable to them. Darin remembered hearing once that Mackin had flown Z-95's for his homeworld’s military before his squadron, the Bluehills, got loaned to the Rebellion. When the Bluehill pilots were later given the opportunity to transfer back home, Mack had stayed with the Rebels along with some of his squadmates and had then been transferred into the Rebels’ newly-formed Corona Squadron. He’d only been a flight leader in Bluehill Squadron at the time of his transfer, but due to his experience and the rampant attrition in the Rebellion’s pilot ranks then, he soon found himself in command of the Coronas.

Sitting at the front of the room near him was Lt. Steen "Snubber" Weas, the Coronas’ XO. The brown-haired pilot emphasized self-discipline and expected nothing less than perfection from each of them. Darin figured that between Mack and Snubber he was getting a good, well-rounded education, difficult and demanding though it may be.

Darin himself was sitting in the middle of the room next to Quiver, and on the other side of Quiver was CC, or Flight Officer Chryse Cerac. She had shoulder-length black hair and beige eyes that seemed to be constantly laughing as though she loved everything about life. By comparison, Quiver would take any excuse to laugh, and usually did. He was tall and lanky with a blond crew cut that could best be described as sloppy: it had a messy, almost spiked appearance from being a bit longer than the typical crew cut, and it often made it look like Quiver had just woken up. Darin’s blond hair was longer to the point of having bangs, and he was more of an average height with a medium build.

Quiver, CC and Darin, or "the Trio" as Mackin called them, were nearly inseparable, and Quiver and CC always knew how to have a good time. Darin loved listening to the good-natured banter that was constantly flying back and forth between those two, and the other pilots evidently enjoyed the pranks Quiver and CC pulled. Most of the time, the victim was Darin.

In front of CC sat the only pilot not slouched in his chair: her wingman, Lt. Shaun "Scoop" Pellicer. Darin recognized his choice of seats as progress: a couple of weeks ago he had still been sitting a few rows up, off by himself. CC had been working hard in the three months since Scoop had joined the squadron to make him relax and feel at home, and she usually invited Scoop along when she, Quiver and Darin did things together. At first, Pellicer had always politely declined the invitations, but lately he’d been accepting them more often.

Pellicer had been an Imperial TIE pilot before secretly defecting and becoming a Rebel, and a few months after that, he had been assigned to the Coronas. Thumper wondered if Pellicer had been as uneasy about his new squadmates when he joined as Darin had been about him. It had taken Darin a while to become comfortable with the idea of flying with a former enemy, but he was past that now and was starting to enjoy the time he spent with Scoop. After Mackin and Weas, Darin figured he could learn the most about being a good leader from the man with the dark brown crew cut sitting in front of CC.

On the other side of the room sat the other four pilots. Toward the front was Lt. Tictintco Tnis, always called "Slurry" by those who knew him. He was a Bilgana, a short, slim humanoid species with four arms, four eyes, charcoal-colored skin and "backwards"-bending knees. He also had a very thick accent, which had made it hard for Darin to understand him when they first met.

Every day Ikoa sat with someone else, and she was sitting with Slurry today. Lt. Ikoa Fyndcap had the seldom-used callsign of "Rancor," but she was one of the sweetest people Darin knew. It was like the small woman’s face wasn’t capable of doing anything but smiling. If he’d just met her on the street, the last place Darin would have placed Ikoa was in a starfighter cockpit, yet she was a skilled fighter pilot.

Going from one personality extreme to the other, Chopper and Kalre sat in the back of the room together. Chopper, or Lt. Jayke Forsgren, was a solidly-built man who believed he was tougher than duracrete. His wingman, Flight Officer Kalre Unatel, had such a similar personality that they could have been brothers if it weren’t for the little fact of Chopper being a human and Kalre being a Rodian. If there was a fight going on or a chance to show off their flying skills, they were there. If they could do both at once, so much the better.

Darin grinned to himself a bit as he looked at all of his friends. They might be a strange group, but one pilot’s weakness was another one’s strength, and when they worked together, there was little they couldn’t accomplish. Besides, they knew how to have a good time in their off-duty hours too. He wouldn’t trade this squadron for any other.

By now the room had quieted, and Commander Mackin was ready to start his daily briefing. Mackin ran a hand through his black crew cut and said, "I only have one big thing to talk about, so I’ll let Snubber go first and then I’ll finish up. Steen?"

The Coronas’ Executive Officer stood up and made his point quickly. "We have an adjusted patrol and sim schedule coming up due to the activity that Commander Mackin will be briefing you on momentarily. Since it will involve us being off the ship for a few days, we obviously won’t be doing our patrols during that time. Enjoy the respite while you can, because the Quakes will be doubling up to cover for us here, and we’ll be returning the favor immediately after we get back.

"This brings me to my next point. While we’re gone, our X-wings will be remaining on the ship. For the patrols during that time, the Quakes are going to be doing some training in our X-wings while we’re not using them, and in exchange we’ll be doing some Y-wing training in their fighters when we return."

"Great. My seat’s going to be all messed up," Quiver grumbled under his breath.

Either Weas didn’t hear him or he simply ignored him. "We want our snubfighters to be in good shape for them, so before we leave, I want all of you to clean out your cockpits." Weas addressed the entire squadron but looked directly at Darin as he did so, who got the hint and blushed a little. "I want them neat, clean and orderly. There’s no excuse for them being otherwise."

As Weas wrapped it up and returned to his seat, Darin muttered to himself almost inaudibly in frustration, "Leave some datacards and food wrappers in there one time and you’re blacklisted for life." A moment later, when Mackin asked if anyone had anything to bring up and Quiver’s hand shot up, Darin knew he’d made a mistake saying that out loud and wished he could go back thirty seconds and keep his mouth shut. Apparently he’d just made Quiver forget about being upset that another pilot would be adjusting his cockpit’s seat.

"Commander," Quiver said with a mischievous gleam in his pale blue eyes, "Darin just said he has so many food wrappers and datacards and who-knows-what-else in his cockpit that he’d like to be excused now to get a head start on cleaning it."

Chopper never missed a beat. "He can clean out mine, too, while he’s at it."

"If the rookie needs practice keeping the inside of his snubfighter clean, why not have him clean them all out?" added Kalre. "This is sounding better all the time."

Pellicer turned to Darin and said sympathetically, "You’re in for it now. They smell blood."

"Wait, come on, guys," Darin protested. "I–"

"Drinks three for person every whose cockpit he does clean not." Slurry’s lipless grin looked particularly evil, even for a Bilgana.

Chopper projected his voice. "All in favor?" All of the seated pilots’ hands went up except for Darin’s. Chopper looked at Darin and shrugged as if to imply helplessness. "Sorry, Thumper, but your superiors have spoken. We expect full and satisfactory maid service before we leave for wherever we’re going. To anyone whose fighter is not cleaned well enough, you owe three drinks of that pilot’s own choosing."

Darin sighed and glared sidelong at Quiver. "This is all your fault," he grumbled quietly.

Quiver grinned back, clearly not sorry in the least. "Yup. It’s tough being the rookie, isn’t it?"

"Don’t be surprised if your cockpit is suddenly and inexplicably filled with a mound of table scraps from the mess hall come Inspection Day. That might be worth the cost of three drinks."

"What was that, Darin?" CC’s voice was louder than normal as she leaned forward to look at him from her seat on the other side of Quiver. "You said you want some K.P. duty as well?"

The other pilots snickered, and Darin groaned and covered his face with one hand. "I’ll just be quiet now."

Shaking his head hopelessly, Commander Mackin cleared his throat to attract his pilots’ attention again, and then he started his topic. "Leadership training. The last few days have gone fairly well, I thought, and we just have one more project to finish it all up." The pilots seemed happy about that, and Mackin continued. "It’s all well and good to sit you down in a classroom and tell you how an officer should act, but now we’re going to get a little hands-on activity. For lack of a better term, call it community service."

Those two words quickly changed the mood in the room. A large moan sounded from the Coronas, and Chopper asked, "Community service? Commander, how come? Can’t we do something else instead?" Chopper looked positively indignant.

The volume of Mackin’s voice dropped a little, and it had an edge to it when he spoke again. "We’re going to a Rebellion safeworld, where the people are living very hard lives. Most have had to flee there for safety, either because they are close to someone in the Rebellion and the Imperials are also aware of that, or because their homeworld was occupied or their cities bombed into nonexistence and they have nowhere else to go. On this particular world, money and luxuries are rare and so is any sort of extended free time. The best way to think of it is like a fledgling colony world where the benefits of technology are not always available, and people have to work hard. We’ll be volunteering for four days in places where the people are desperately in need of a break. By doing so, you’ll be learning that an officer’s primary duty is to serve others, both the people he commands and the people he protects."

A dose of guilt swallowed the moan, and the room fell quiet. Mackin broke the awkward silence a moment later after everything sank in, and he began going over details such as when they would get there and where they could volunteer.

The small Citadel-class cruiser continued its lonely flight. Hyperspace bathed the spacecraft in a soft blue glow, at the same time highlighting the craft’s name of Silver Dart, which was emblazoned on the outer hull. The ship had been on this journey for a few weeks now and had visited numerous systems along the way.

Inside, the lone occupant sat in the pilot’s seat, restlessly drumming her fingers on the forward console and staring out the windows at the all-too-familiar sight. When she could stand it no longer, she rose and walked toward the aft, into the room that served as her quarters.

Keely rummaged through a pile of datacards on her desk, found the one she was looking for a minute or two later, and sat down with it and a datapad. She forced her attention to the information on the datacard–public service bulletins as well as dry, technical military reports, which said everything and nothing all at once.

As always, it wasn’t too long before her mind started wandering. Like every other time this happened, Keely eventually found herself looking at the holo she kept on her desk. In the holo, her brother stood tall in his uniform, a proud smile on his face and not a single hair of his dark crew cut out of place, right after receiving his commission. He was next in the growing line of a distinguished military family, and his potential as an officer and leader was boundless. She only hoped she would see him again. They’d had no contact with him for a long time, and not only did she miss him terribly, but she was also very worried about him.

Like every other time this happened and her mind wandered, the reminder of her brother gave Keely enough motivation to go back to the horribly dry report. After all, this was the reason she was out here. Maybe this was the report that would tell her where to head next to find him. Maybe this was the one that would finally lead her to him.
 
 

Chapter Two

"Heh, asking you that question about Tori reminds me of Darin. They’re a lot alike in some ways, the most noticeable one being how easy it is to get them into trouble or talk them into doing something. Don’t ever tell him this, but one of my personal goals is to see how many different odd jobs I can make Darin do without me being the one who actually tells him to do it. This can be a challenge at times, but the easiest way I’ve found to do it is to plant the seed in another pilot’s brain that, hey, we don’t want to do this job, so let’s make the rookie do it. For as long as I’ve been here, even before Darin showed up, that’s always been a popular idea. Once the squadron agrees that the rookie should do it, there’s no talking them out of it. Lately Darin’s gotten a little better about sticking up for himself, but overall he still doesn’t put up a big fight about it. That’s one of the reasons it’s so much fun to get him into trouble, too. He might glare and act annoyed with me for a short time, but he won’t really say anything. I think he secretly enjoys it on some level, and that’s really why he puts up with me and CC to the extent that he does. I couldn’t ask for a better roommate. Oh, that reminds me, CC wanted to tell you something..."

Darin couldn’t tell if it was the light entering the room or the tantalizing smell of food cooking that first woke him up. Once he fully realized there was food cooking, though, he no longer cared about the cause of his newfound consciousness. He opened his eyes and sat up as his stomach began to growl.

He felt some mild confusion initially when he found himself inside an unfamiliar room, but once he got his bearings, things started coming back to him from the previous night, and he relaxed. A glance across the small room revealed Quiver, who was sound asleep and lying on a pile of worn blankets on the floor like Darin was. In spite of the odd surroundings, seeing his roommate and friend there made Darin feel a little more comfortable, like nothing had changed and they were still onboard Crescent Star.

The Coronas had had a series of delays during their trip to the Rebellion safeworld, first caused by delays in loading the supplies they were bringing for the safeworld’s city, and then worsened by having to take an unexpected detour around a small group of Imperial ships, all of which caused their shuttle to reach the safeworld much later than originally expected. When they finally landed, it was close to 0100 hours local (0300 Galactic Standard), and the places where they were supposed to stay that night, which were mostly supposed to be the same places where they would be volunteering for these few days, were long since closed or the people had fallen asleep. Commander Mackin met up with his contact on the planet, who scrambled around trying to find households to take the pilots in at that late hour. Finally, all the pilots had hosts for the night, and they were due to report for work in the morning.

Darin didn’t remember a whole lot about last night other than it had been close to 0200 local when he and Quiver were taken to someone’s house. Thumper thought hard for a minute and then remembered the homeowner’s name: Mr. Pel Tinnan. He was an elderly gentleman who lived alone, and he was small and stooped but had sharp eyes and a keen mind. At least that was Darin’s bleary impression of him from the previous night.

Stiffly climbing to his feet, Darin looked around the small room. He and Quiver had been too tired last night to do more than shuck their boots and drop their duffle bags before collapsing onto the pile of blankets each was given for a bed, so this was the first good look Darin had at the place. The furniture in the room, a table, two chairs and a set of shelves with some ceramic pots on it, looked rough and handmade, yet sturdy. The walls had a similar appearance. The room wasn’t clean, but it wasn’t really dirty, either. There was a soft whistling sound coming from the large window, which was the main source of light in the room when the curtains were open, and when Darin went over to find the cause of the noise, he felt some air blowing in from between the edge of the dinged-up glass and the wall. It ruffled the curtains slightly. He idly told himself to check in the shuttle before they left the planet to see if there was some sealant they could use to fill in the gap.

While standing at the window, he partially parted the curtains to look outside and had to blink hard against the sudden onslaught of light. The sun was up, and people were roaming the dirt streets either on foot or on the backs of various large animals. Very few speeders could be seen. As people walked, they called to each other and waved, their cheerfulness a stark contrast to the dreary-looking world. Patches of grass were few and far between, leaving everything else to be hard-packed dirt. The other buildings looked much the same in terms of handiwork as the inside of this room did.

Darin’s stomach growled again, so he pulled back into the room, this time momentarily going blind from the sudden darkness. When he could see once more, he quickly changed and got ready. After he was done, he noticed two cups of water just inside the door. He took one, gratefully downed half of it, and then nudged Quiver with his foot. "Hey, Quiv. Breakfast."

Still half-asleep, Quiver rolled onto his side and covered his eyes with an arm. "What’re we havin’?" he mumbled.

Darin was sorely tempted to dump the rest of his water on Quiver’s face to retaliate for all that extra time spent cleaning the squadron’s X-wing cockpits and a host of various pranks, but he figured he shouldn’t do that in someone’s home. Plus, it wasn’t imaginative at all when compared to Quiver’s pranks, and he wanted to do something clever and funny for his revenge. Instead, he simply replied, "Real food, apparently."

Quiver became a little more awake at that, blissfully oblivious to how close he’d come to being woken up more violently. Rolling onto his back and sitting up, he gave a huge yawn and then sleepily peered at his wingman. "Real food? Honest? Hey, no fair, you’re already ready. Wake me up sooner next time when there’s real food involved."

"And have you get there first and eat it all? No way," Darin said with an evil grin. Then he lightened it and nudged Quiver once more. "Hurry up, you pokey bantha. I’m hungry." Quiver didn’t need to be told again.

Soon they had walked into the kitchen, where they saw Mr. Tinnan cooking. "Something sure smells good," Quiver said, hungrily eyeing the steaming metal pans on the cooker.

Tinnan looked at them and smiled. "Good morning! You’re just in time. This’ll be ready in a minute, so make yourselves comfortable."

"Can we help, sir?" asked Darin. "I don’t want us to be–"

"No, no, have a seat," Tinnan interrupted. "You’re my guests." Quiver again didn’t need to be told twice, though Darin hesitated before sitting down at the table himself. Thumper watched Tinnan while he finished up, and the pilot did not fail to notice the nearly empty food cabinets their host looked through at one point for something; however, the dish Tinnan put on the table a few minutes later was loaded with food.

"Here we go. Dig in."

"Thanks!" Quiver took his plate and eagerly helped himself. "Mmmm, real homemade food. Just like Mom makes. This is all worth it right here."

Darin likewise took a dented metal plate but again hesitated. He ended up putting a modest amount of food on it, but that only prompted Tinnan to offer him the serving utensils again.

"Come on, son, eat. I expect this dish to be empty by the time breakfast is done, okay, boys?"

"I like this guy," Quiver said to Darin between mouthfuls while pointing at Tinnan with a fork. Turning back to the elderly man, the lanky pilot said, "This is really good. Where’d you learn to cook like this? I’ve never seen sinnen root used this way. It’s great."

Tinnan shrugged while he served himself. "I learned from my folks, longer ago than I care to remember, and around here you have to get creative with your limited ingredients. I’m glad you like it." His voice was filled with pride although he kept his expression humble. Then he shook his head and added, "I can’t imagine what sorry excuse for food they give you on those ships or bases or wherever you two are stationed. I’ve learned throughout the years that bad cafeteria food is a universal constant."

Quiver chuckled. "We made a conscious decision to stop trying to imagine what they served us. It was bad for morale."

"And for your insides too, I bet!" Tinnan’s slightly wheezy yet hearty laugh joined with Quiver’s easy laughter.

Darin laughed a little as well, but it was more of a conscious effort on his part. He was a bit envious of his wingman’s ability to fit in so quickly with people he didn’t know and be comfortable with them. Quiver was obviously hitting it off rather well with Mr. Tinnan, but all Darin could think about were the bare food cabinets and how many days’ worth of meals had just been served to them, all of which just made the quiet pilot even more uneasy. As usual, he ended up letting Quiver do most of the talking during the meal.

The food was excellent, and Darin was still hungry after finishing his first helping. Though he felt guilty with each scoop, Thumper took a little more food in an attempt to satisfy his hunger as well as their host who, for his part, smiled genuinely and encouraged Darin to take even more. When he served himself an amount that Darin felt was a fair compromise, he began eating again and spoke up during a lull in the conversation. "Sorry we weren’t that great of company last night."

Tinnan waved his concerns away. "You boys were tired. It was perfectly understandable. Did you sleep okay? Sorry the accommodations weren’t better, but as you can see, it’s all I can offer."

"Yes, sir. I mean, I slept fine, sir. I have a feeling that Quiver did, too, given how hard it was to wake him up this morning."

"I hope you didn’t mind sharing a room."

"Oh, no," Quiver said dismissively. "We’ve always been roommates. We’ve got it all worked out: Darin acts as my alarm clock, and I don’t complain about his snoring. It’s a decent compromise, though he gets the better end of the deal."

Tinnan laughed a bit, and Darin kicked Quiver under the table. "I don’t snore and you know it," he muttered.

Ignoring his wingman, Quiver said to Tinnan in a mock serious tone, "If his snoring kept you up last night, please tell me. The Alliance has identified this as a cruel and unusual infliction on both the general population and service members alike, and they are willing to compensate those who have suffered because of it. Unfortunately, a bunch of credits won’t help ease the trauma nor its detrimental effects, but it’s all we can do at this point."

Tinnan responded in kind. "Thank you for your concern, but I left my hearing aid out last night. I guess it’s a good thing that we can’t get the corrective surgery out this way and I still need the aid, isn’t it?"

Quiver shook his head. "No, sir, it sounds like you were just lucky last night. Lack of hearing has never prevented the trauma before: it’s that bad. I guess it was just an off-night for him, which means a good night for you."

Both of them started laughing, enjoying the game. Darin just rolled his eyes, a habit he was picking up from Quiver without even realizing it.

Once the laughter had settled, Darin tried to figure out how Quiver could be so relaxed. Darin himself felt artificially stiff and formal, especially compared to Quiver, and he just couldn’t make himself feel at home here; it felt too strange being in an honest-to-goodness house after all this time, particularly one that didn’t belong to him or to someone else he knew. It was also making stray thoughts of his old house on Craci Four rattle in his brain. Who lived there now? What did his room look like? Did they find the stash of toys he had secretly placed behind that loose wall board when he was a little kid?

Maybe the secret to being relaxed was to just talk, like Quiver always did. In an attempt to push the distractions away, Darin said, "Thank you for letting us stay here last night, Mr. Tinnan. It’s very kind of you."

The old man waved that away as well. "It’s the least I can do for boys like you who are fighting for my freedom." He said it gruffly, but with a friendly smile. "A few years younger and I would have been right alongside you, but we gotta leave the big stuff to you younger folks. Same as my grandson," he continued, his voice again filling with pride as he pointed in the direction of an adjacent room. "He’s in the Rebellion, in the ground forces. Comm specialist."

Reflexively, Darin looked toward the room where Tinnan pointed, and from his seat in the kitchen Darin could see part of the far wall of that room through the open doorways. He noticed the edge of a holo on the wall, and when he leaned back to see the rest of it, he indeed saw the image of a young man in a Rebel army uniform. It was displayed so prominently and Mr. Tinnan had pointed it out with such pride that it caused Darin to wonder, not for the first time, what his own family would have thought of his decision to join the Rebellion. Would they be proud of him? Disapproving? Pleased? Supportive? Uncertain? He believed he knew, but he honestly would never be able to find out for sure. He had never had the chance to ask since he joined the Rebellion as a result of their deaths. Darin couldn’t believe how much he still missed them even over a year later.

Above, below and beside the holo of the grandson were other ones, apparently of the rest of Mr. Tinnan’s family: young couples, old couples, children. A few more and the number would have rivaled that of Quiver’s extended family. Feeling like everyone in the galaxy had a family except for him, Darin bit his bottom lip and turned back to the table, tuning into the conversation again just in time to hear Tinnan say, "I’m glad you boys got to stay here. This ramshackle house and I have been without someone to take care of for much too long."

Turning to Quiver, Mr. Tinnan added, "You know, come to think of it, you kinda remind me of my grandson. About the same age, and he has the same...quirky sense of humor that you do. Runs in the family." Tinnan grinned.

Quiver’s response was something that made both Quiver and Tinnan laugh, but Darin didn’t hear what it was. He was concentrating too hard on trying not to let this all get to him, and on trying to outwardly appear normal so Quiver wouldn’t notice and question him about it. He couldn’t tell which was harder.

Keely grabbed one of the tasteless ration bars to eat while she sat down and logged her latest progress. She was out of real food and would have to resupply soon. She’d hold off on that for right now, though, because she’d just met with some sensor specialists who’d had a little data she could use after some sweet-talking on her part, and she was anxious to spend some time looking it over. After a quick glance at her brother’s holo and a couple other family holos she had brought along, Keely began to incorporate that data into what she already had to see if it changed anything or if it reinforced her current direction.

She had never been accused of being a patient person, but to her credit, she was breaking her old records of the length of time she was staying focused on one task with this long journey made of nothing but a milligram of information here and another puzzle piece there. Keely also knew that nothing short of the deep concern she felt for her brother (or potentially any other family member, for that matter) would have made her keep going with this for so long, following this elusive trail to find him. It helped that her family supported her on this and did their best to answer her questions or send her extra money when needed. Though they remained back home, they did what they could for her, knowing that everything they did went toward helping Keely find their missing family member. Her parents had told her they were proud of her for doing this.

It warmed Keely inside to know that and to finally be able to do something meaningful for her brother, something to show him just how much she cared about him and admired him. She was proud of her brother for doing his part to keep their home safe and make the galaxy a better place. On the flip side, though, she was also afraid for him. Life in the military was fraught with dangers, after all, especially on the front lines as he had been. Had those dangers caught up with him? She was afraid they had–otherwise he wouldn’t have been out of contact for so long.

Keely also knew that he was proud to be doing his duty, but that duty may have cost her brother his life, or worse. She had to find out.
 
 

Chapter Three

"Hey, Mom, you would have been really proud of me. I only had one candy bar for breakfast the other day instead of two, and I even had some fruit with it. Of course, it’s not because I was trying to eat healthier. Please don’t cry, Mom. It’s really because I’m trying to ration out these candy bars you sent so they last as long as possible. I could get almost anything I wanted if I tried to barter them because things like this are so rare on the ship, but I don’t. They’re too good. Please send more. You know, it’s support like this from home that really helps us out here. Not that I’m trying to guilt-trip you into sending enough for the whole squadron, but it’s good for morale. Besides, when I only get a couple candy bars I don’t want to share them, and then the others guilt-trip me, especially CC. I swear, she’s so good at it that she could make me regret being born if she wanted to. So you can spare me that trauma and just send more candy bars, right? Please? For the sake of your favorite son, who’s out here so far from home? Hey, I never realized I could channel guilt-trips like that before. Was that a Jedi skill? Was Great-Uncle Minnah Force-sensitive, perhaps, or was he just crazy and eccentric like we’ve always thought? Oh, but getting back to the candy bars. . .Mom, I still could never understand why you think that my belief that candy bars are a perfectly acceptable breakfast food would have made me a bad babysitter. That’s the kind of babysitter I would have wanted."

"Again, I can’t thank you enough for doing this," the tall, blond woman said as she ushered the two pilots inside after a quick tour of the town.

Lieutenant Ikoa Fyndcap smiled, a warm expression as soft as the brown hair framing her face. "We’re glad to be of help." From one step behind her, Darin nodded agreement.

Liy, the woman escorting them, looked like she had been run so ragged that she had forgotten the meaning of the word "sleep." "I’ll warn you now, they can be quite a handful at times, but that’s how kids are." Just inside the front door, Liy stopped them in the common room, a large area with a makeshift couch and chair, an outdated holoprojector, a small playpen, and handmade toys scattered everywhere across the floor. Smiling apologetically, she said, "This town is probably a bit different than what you’re used to living in."

"Actually, I grew up on a colony world very similar to this," Ikoa said. "Almost feels like home." Darin had grown up with a higher standard of living than this town enjoyed, but he didn’t comment.

Liy nodded and pointed to four separate doorways in the room in turn. "That’s the ‘Grown-up Room,’ as we call it. There are two cots in there for you two and some drawers to put your belongings. Feel free to move anything in there if it’s in the way or if you need more closet space, and Nel’lan and I will put it back when we get back. That room," she continued, pointing to the next doorway leading from the common room, "is the children’s bedroom. That one is the refresher, and I suggest you get up early unless you want to fight six kids in the morning to use it. I doubt even your dogfighting experience will have prepared you for such a brutal battle. Finally, there’s the kitchen and dining area. They’re all in there right now finishing up breakfast. They eat a lot. I hope one of you can cook."

The helpless glance that Ikoa gave Darin made it clear that he’d be the one in the kitchen the most. He mentally shrugged. Oh well. It’s not like I never cooked meals for my sister while growing up. Out loud he said, "Yeah, it’s not a problem," before looking back at the kitchen.

Darin could easily hear the laughing voices coming from that room, and the innocent happiness was somewhat contagious. These four days won’t be that bad, he thought, feeling better than he had earlier that morning at Mr. Tinnan’s house now that he was growing more accustomed to this world’s selfless hospitality. The Coronas were already the big news in the town, and just about everyone he had met there so far had gone out of their way to offer them help. Even Liy was being more helpful than he’d expected with getting him and Ikoa prepared for this.

When Darin had tentatively brought up that very topic earlier, Liy had explained that the mentality of the safeworld was that as long as a person living there did something sufficient to pull his or her own weight and also contribute something substantial to the town, he or she was welcome and others would provide that person with most of the rest of the things needed to live. That was how Liy and Nel’lan, the other adult there, were able to stay at the orphanage the whole time and not worry too much about growing or buying most of their food. Instead of credits, the currency was generally service or bartering. The philosophy was simple: help, and be helped in return, because all the safeworlders really had was each other. Add that to their knowledge that the strangers in town were really fellow Rebels on the front lines who had come to help out for a few days, and it was easier for Darin to understand the people’s gracious attitude toward them.

When Mackin was explaining the community service options to the Coronas back on Star, Darin had jumped at the chance to volunteer at the safeworld’s orphanage. He’d helped take care of his sister while growing up, and he enjoyed being around children. Ikoa had volunteered with him. CC had put on her best sad, pathetic, pleading expression and had convinced Quiver to work with her out at the livery stables, a place where people could borrow animals for a day or two to ride or pull carts, depending on their needs. Grinning to himself a bit as he listened to the children’s laughter, Darin realized he’d get to spend the week playing with kids while Quiver was probably knee-deep in manure at that very minute. Maybe there was some justice in the galaxy after all.

The pilots dropped their duffle bags in the Grown-up Room and came back into the common room. When they did, Liy said, "I forgot to tell you: don’t worry about their schooling. This will be a good break for them, and we’ll just pick it up again with the teachers when we get back. So, are you ready to meet the crew?"

Ikoa nodded. "Sure. Then you two can head out and have a few days off."

Liy smiled a tired smile. "A break that’s badly needed, too. Even with two of us, taking care of six kids and a baby is an around-the-clock job." She looked toward the kitchen and called, "Nel’lan, bring the troops out here to meet our two friends."

There was a sudden clamor of chairs being pushed back and utensils being dropped onto plates, then a group of children ran into the room. Curious at first, now that they saw the two strangers some huddled together, suddenly shy. A couple younger ones came up to the pilots, nearly bouncing with excitement and wanting attention. A lithe pink-skinned Twi’lek male followed them out of the kitchen, carrying a two-month-old human baby. The Twi’lek shushed the excited kids, walked over to the two pilots and shook their hands awkwardly while holding the infant. "Hello, I’m Nel’lan, the other half of this operation. Thank you for agreeing to stay with the kids for a few days."

"Nice to meet you," the pilots told him.

Liy turned to the children and said, "Kids, these two nice people are Ikoa and Darin. They’re going to be watching you for a few days. Remember we talked about that yesterday?"

The kids nodded, and one young boy started asking all sorts of questions ranging from what town Darin and Ikoa were from, to whether or not they were married, to if he could be in charge until Liy and Nel’lan got back. The boy was told that, sadly, he couldn’t be in charge until he was older, and then Liy and Nel’lan introduced each of the kids to Ikoa and Darin. A quick glance at Ikoa in the midst of it showed Darin that, like him, she couldn’t keep track of all the introductions even with her best efforts.

Once that was completed, Liy sent the kids on the task of cleaning up the breakfast dishes while Nel’lan showed the two Coronas where the baby’s supplies were. He elaborated on the details of caring for little Jilli until he seemed certain that Darin and Ikoa had a handle on it.

Finally, Nel’lan and Liy showed them the emergency contact information posted in the kitchen.

"Comm us any time, day or night, if something comes up or if you need some help. We’ll be in the local area. Our comlink channels are here with the other emergency information. Now, is there anything else you need, anything at all?" Nel’lan asked.

Ikoa shook her head. "I don’t think so. Liy already went over the daily schedule with us and gave us some tips on how to work this. She also took us to the medical clinic so we know where that is. So unless Darin has any questions–" When he shook his head, Ikoa continued, "–It looks like you two can go have a break. We’ll take over from here."

"All right. Again, thank you for doing this. We’ll be back soon." Nel’lan handed Jilli over to Ikoa, who rocked her and cooed to her while Liy and Nel’lan went to get their bags from the Grown-up Room. Coming back to the common room, they gave each child a hug and said, "Everyone be on your best behavior for Ikoa and Darin, okay? Be nice to each other. We’ll be back in a few days." With that, they said another round of thank-yous and goodbyes, and left.

The pilots took a deep breath, then exchanged a green-eyed glance with each other and looked at the huddle of children. There were two human boys: a brown-haired five-year-old (the youngest of the whole group, excluding Jilli) and one that looked to be on the small side of eight with a mop of black hair. One human girl had black hair and was eight or nine, another was a blonde and closer to ten or eleven years old, and then Jilli was an infant. There were also two nonhumans in the group: a male Mon Calamari with dark pinkish-brown skin, and a female Twi’lek with powder-blue skin. Darin could tell they were young, but he couldn’t judge the aliens’ ages very well, and he had no idea how quickly each species matured.

The kids’ clothing was handmade, functional and apparently rather durable, but there were also various food and grass stains on it to suggest that the kids played very hard in these sets of clothing and also perhaps that they didn’t have many other sets to wear. The kids were as healthy as, if not healthier than, most of the people Darin had seen on this planet, which meant they obviously weren’t living on one of the Core Worlds but they at least had basic medical treatment and vaccines. Could be better, could be worse, he thought.

Finally, Darin knew they had all lost their families because of the Empire. Either the parents and known family members were dead, or they had been separated from the kids in an attack and were not yet located. It sickened him that such young kids would have to go through the same trauma he remembered all too well, but he also felt a kinship with all of them which reminded him that he really was not the only person without a family. For a brief moment, he wondered if he would have ended up in a place like this had the occupation of his homeworld happened a few years earlier. Then he considered that it actually would have likely been an Empire-run orphanage or foster care on his homeworld, and then what would have–

"Well," Ikoa said to the children, snapping Darin out of his thoughts, "it looks like the first thing we need to do is learn everyone’s names."

The five-year-old boy immediately ran through each name while pointing at the person he was naming, but that was even faster and less helpful than the initial introductions had been. Plus, it didn’t help that now that Liy and Nel’lan had left, more of the children were more subdued, most of them just staring at the two strangers and not saying a word. One girl started sniffling a bit, softly saying, "Liy..."

Hoping to distract the kids from missing Liy and Nel’lan, Darin grinned and said to the five-year-old, "Thanks, buddy, but we can’t make you do all the work. How about we make a little game out of it?" Darin walked over to the center of the room near the wall, moved a toy aside, sat cross-legged on the floor and said in a friendly tone, "Everyone come over and sit in a circle." He patted the floor beside him invitingly.

"A game, a game, a game!" The five-year-old eagerly bounced over and flopped on the floor. "Everyone make a big circle starting here! From me!" The Mon Cal was right on his heels and sat down beside him.

The other children were more hesitant, but they did as they were told. When the six of them plus Ikoa (with Jilli) and Darin were seated in something resembling a circle, Darin spoke up again. "Okay. Do you all know your alphabet?" The kids nodded a little. "Great. Now what we’ll do is everyone will say their name, and then they’ll think of something they like that starts with the same letter as their name. We can help you out with the letters if you need it. All right? I’ll go first." Darin smiled and said, "My name is Darin. That starts with a ‘d,’ so I have to think of something I like that also starts with a ‘d.’" He paused a moment to come up with something. He was glad Quiver wasn’t there because his wingman would have immediately piped up with "Drinking!" even in front of the kids.

Thumper started over. "My name is Darin, and I like droids. See how that goes? Now, who’s next?" He looked at the small eight-year-old boy sitting on his left. "Want to give it a try?" Darin coaxed.

The dark-haired boy was shy, and he looked at the floor while he answered quietly. "Um, my name’s Hilaj, and I like, um, I like...having pillow fights."

Some of the younger kids giggled and agreed, and Darin could see a little bit of tension leaving. It got better with every child who took a turn, and especially when they got to Jilli and the Coronas encouraged all the kids to think of things Jilli liked that started with a "j." A couple kids even leaned over to their neighbors and asked what they were going to say or what letter something started with. The two pilots worked hard at committing all the names to memory as they heard them. Their retention of the information was much better now.

Silver Dart flew along on a new heading. Hyperspace remained the same; the only difference was the letters and numbers found on the ship’s navigational displays.

Keely read the transcript of the original exchange again, just on the off-chance that she’d missed something the first few hundred times. It mentioned her brother’s name, and it was what started off her search for him. All the names were bouncing around in her head: her brother’s name, the names of the squadrons and the ship, the planet’s name, everything...and then more names as she followed up on the first ones and got some additional leads, more recent ones. She was following the names. That was all she could do until she found something more solid to go on.

Names...They were fascinating in their power and simplicity. Keely had long since learned that her own family name had some weight attached to it. Sure, it wasn’t nearly as influential or as powerful as some others she knew, but it was sufficient to cut through some of the insanely frustrating bureaucratic red tape at times. More than once on this trip, Keely had been delayed by "the system," the same system that didn’t seem to be as concerned about her brother as she was. Times like that were when she was glad her father had taken her and her brother to various military receptions while growing up. Their father, a naval officer, was well-liked and respected in his circles, providing the family with a good networking capability. Their grandfather had also joined the service in a smaller capacity a few years before their father had, which helped even more. Both had joined when the siblings were very young, so Keely had met a lot of military officers over the course of her life.

She wasn’t afraid to use this knowledge, either. Once Keely was frustrated enough with runarounds and delays in a given planetary system, she started dropping certain names. If her own family name wouldn’t accomplish what she wanted, she dropped another one, one that was more well-known. She continued this until one made an impact with the person stonewalling her. Each time, she was amazed at how that expedited her requests for information.

Keely also figured that once her brother was found and returned home, he would be a hero after whatever ordeal he was going through now. People would really notice their family’s name then.

Names were powerful things.
 
 

Chapter Four

"So is Rilana still seeing whats-his-name? Oh, and what’s this I hear about her going on a business trip to you-know-where? Tell her that is completely unacceptable. You know and I know that she’d have way too much fun there, and it’s under the guise of going to work? No way. She’s not allowed to have fun at work. The journal I worked for before all this came up never sent me to neat places like that. Did they ever say, ‘Hey, go do a story on this upper-class resort’? Nooooooo. Blast, but you don’t know how jealous I am. The unfairness of it all is making my head spin."

Quiver grinned as he stepped into the large common room with Ikoa and CC and took a minute to observe his wingman. Four kids were sitting in a circle on the floor, watching Darin and obviously having fun. Darin, meanwhile, was standing in the middle of the circle and spinning around. A small, giggling five-year-old kid was sitting on his shoulders with his legs looped tightly around Darin’s neck and his arms wrapped tightly around Darin’s head. Darin held onto the kid’s legs with one hand to keep him put, and Darin had looped his other arm around the waist of another boy to hold him off the ground. This boy was facing the direction of the spin and was parallel to the floor. Between the kid’s outstretched arms and Darin’s accompanying vrooom noises, Quiver figured that the laughing boy was pretending to be some sort of speeder.

"He’s been like this the whole time," Ikoa whispered to Quiver with a smile while she held a sleeping baby in her arms. "I never realized he was so good with children."

"You’re forgetting that he spends all his time with Quiver," CC whispered back.

Quiver gave CC a dry look and stuck his tongue out at her. When CC did the same to him, Quiver whispered in a whiny voice, "Ikoa, CC’s picking on me."

CC playfully matched his tone. "Ikoa, make Quiver stop!"

"She started it!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!" Quiver stuck his tongue out at CC again, then smirked at her and turned his attention back to Darin before she could get another comment in. He raised his voice slightly to be heard over the laughter of the children and Darin’s vrooming. "You’re having way too much fun in here, Thumper."

Darin looked up when he heard Quiver and slowly came to a stop. "Hi, guys." He put the first boy down and then futilely tried grabbing the one on his shoulders. "Remi, you have to go down now."

"I don’t wanna," the five-year-old said, not sounding too concerned. "Start spinning again! That was fun!"

"I’d better not–I’m pretty dizzy."

"Hee hee, Dizzy Darin!" said one of the seated children.

Darin looked like he was about to ask someone for help in getting the boy off from around his neck, but Quiver was already there and had taken hold of Remi, trying to gently pull him off his wingman. "Okay, buddy, time to come down," said Quiver.

Remi grinned. "No. I like it up here!" He let go with his arms, but he didn’t unloop his legs from around Darin’s neck.

Darin simply tickled the bottom of one of Remi’s feet, causing the child to shriek with glee and jerk his feet away, quickly unlooping his legs out of necessity and nearly hitting Darin under the chin as he did so. Quiver pulled the laughing boy off and set him gently on the floor.

"Thanks," said Darin as he rubbed his neck a bit. Then he turned to Ikoa and said, "Ikoa, you told Quiver that he’s not allowed inside the Grown-up Room due to his maturity level, right?"

Quiver just rolled his eyes, an action that seemed to confirm Darin’s assessment. "Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard them all."

Darin gave his wingman a smirk before asking, "So what’s going on?"

"CC and I were just taking a quick break from the ever-enjoyable task of cleaning the animal stalls, so we thought we’d come over and see how things were going," answered Quiver. "I’m not sure I like what I see, though. Now Darin, you know I watch out for you. I’m your friend. Your wingman. I can tell that the laughter I heard just now and the happy expression on your face are just facades. And because I watch out for you and have only your best interests in mind, I’ll selflessly trade volunteer assignments with you so you don’t have to go through this."

CC gave Quiver a glare that was somewhere between playfully indignant and downright threatening. "I’m going to smack you as soon as we’re out of sight of the young, impressionable children. Although, maybe teaching all of them to hit you would be a good thing."

"Come on, CC," Quiver said. "Look at this–they’ve got toys!" He reached down to pick up a toy near his feet. "Tell me you’re not jealous that these two get to spend the week with a houseful of toys." As he held the toy out to her as an example, he paused and studied it in puzzlement. The item he was holding was a stiff tube about twenty centimeters long, and one end had a half-meter-long straight piece of some type of soft, colored foam sticking out of it, the same diameter as the tube. "Wait a minute, what is this?"

"That’s mine!" Remi ran up and tried to grab it, but Quiver held it out of the boy’s reach while he studied it for another few moments.

"That’s mine! Give it here!" Remi jumped a couple of times to try to reach it, and once Quiver was done looking at the oddity in his hand, he lowered it just enough for Remi to jump up and snatch it.

Once Remi had it in his hands, he ran off and jumped up on the couch. Holding the foam toy high above his head, he announced, "I am the great Jedi Remi! I have super powers to beat up the mean Sith Anrak!"

"See?" CC muttered under her breath to Quiver. "He could beat you up. He should."

"No fair!" the young Mon Cal yelled back at Remi. "I’m always the bad guy! I wanna be the good guy this time!"

"No, you can’t, ‘cause I’m the great Jedi Remi, and I say so!" Remi leaped off the couch and started bopping Anrak on the head with the foam part of his toy. "I’m gonna beat you up with my lightsaber!"

Darin grabbed the toy "lightsaber" out of Remi’s hands just as Anrak jumped up and said, "Not once I get my lightsaber! I’ll beat you up then!"

Anrak ran for the doorway to the kids’ room, but in order to get there he first had to go past Quiver. As he did so, Quiver reached down, grabbed Anrak around the waist, and lifted him up. Anrak shrieked, which sounded strange in a Mon Cal’s voice, and as Quiver held him, the pilot said in a deep voice, "Ah, yes. At last Darth Quiver has found an apprentice. Together we shall crush all who oppose us. Listen well as I tell you my evil plan. We shall defeat the good guys, my young apprentice, by tickling them. Oh, we are mean, aren’t we?"

Quiver began to give his most villainous laugh, which Anrak giggled at and tried to imitate, but Quiver stopped and looked up when he heard Darin pointedly clear his throat. Darin was standing in front of Quiver, pinning him with a cool expression while holding the tube section of the toy in one hand and slowly and deliberately hitting the palm of the other with the foam "blade."

In the meantime, Remi was reacting to Quiver’s evil plan to take over the galaxy. "No! No tickling!" Remi squealed. He started jumping up and down by Darin and tugging on his arm. "Gimme my lightsaber back! I have to stop them! They’re gonna tickle!"

Darin didn’t answer Remi, and his expression never changed as he quietly told Quiver, "If you get them all wound up right now, I’ve got a lightsaber here that says you’re going to regret it."

"Why?" Quiver asked. "Can’t you handle a few rowdy kids? I told you I was offering to swap to be nice to you. Looks like I was right. You do need help." Quiver smirked at Darin and put Anrak down.

"No," Ikoa said. "We don’t want them too excited right now because it’s just about time for their nap."

The kids all moaned loudly, and CC laughed. "Hey, they sound just like our squadron!"

The older, dark-haired boy who had been the "speeder" sat on the floor beside Thumper and wrapped himself around Darin’s leg like an anchor. "Darin, we don’t want to go to sleep! Can’t we stay up a little longer? Pleeeeeease?"

"You’re right! It’s uncanny!" Ikoa said to CC with a grin.

Darin stopped repeatedly hitting his palm with the toy lightsaber, and as he looked down at the boy clinging to his leg, his voice shifted to a more friendly tone. "Come on, Hilaj, naptime. All of us pilots like taking naps. Don’t you?"

"No."

"That’s too bad," Darin said. "Stories are best when you hear them in bed. I was going to finish the story we started this morning, but I guess we can’t now if you don’t want to go to bed. I wonder if Thenni the Thumper will find the magic flute in time to save the forest."

"What?" Hilaj said. "That’s not fair!"

"Yeah," the blond-haired girl said. "We weren’t in bed when you started the story. We don’t have to be in bed for you to finish it."

Darin shrugged helplessly. "The ending is so much better when you hear it in bed that I can’t even bring myself to consider telling it to you anywhere else. I’m not that mean."

Quiver put an exaggerated look of disbelief on his face and stage-whispered to the kids, "Yes, he is." When Darin shot him a look, Quiver quickly erased the expression and replaced it with one that just dripped innocence. Some of the kids giggled.

The Twi’lek seated on the floor asked, "You promise to tell us the rest if we go to bed?"

Darin nodded. "I promise I’ll start it again as soon as everyone is in bed and ready for their nap. Otherwise, we might never know if the gorza beast finds the flute first. If that happens, the breezesingers will never remember how to sing, and Thenni’s forest will become a dark, gloomy place."

The Twi’lek stood and walked over to Hilaj. She yanked on his arm and said, "Come on, I want to hear the rest!"

"Okay, okay," Hilaj muttered as he got to his feet. The rest of the children followed, some looking a little more eager than they had before, or at least less reluctant.

The last one in line was the youngest human girl. She took Darin’s hand and began trying to pull him after the others. "Come on, Darin!"

Darin looked helplessly at his squadmates while he let himself be pulled along. He handed the lightsaber to Ikoa as he went past her. "Duty calls. I guess I’ll see you guys later, okay?"

"Sure. Have fun with the Coronettes," Quiver said with a grin.

Once Darin was gone, Quiver turned to ask Ikoa to let him see the toy lightsaber again, but before he could even open his mouth, he was cut off with one word from CC: "No."

A little while after CC and Quiver left, Ikoa quietly stepped to the doorway of the bedroom where the kids were taking their afternoon nap. Jilli had fallen asleep a short time before Quiver and CC popped in, so she had beaten the older children to Dreamland. The lights were out in the room, and Darin had finished his story a short time ago; however, while it was nearly quiet now Ikoa could still hear his voice, and she was coming to ask if he needed help with something.

When she reached the half-open door and looked inside the darkened room, she paused. In the soft glow of a nightlight, Darin lay on one of the small beds on top of the covers, and he was sitting back against the headboard. He had to slouch a bit since he was on the bottom bunk of that set of bunk beds, and his head didn’t have much clearance beneath the top one. Under the blankets and contentedly snuggled up next to him with a doll and closed eyes was Melene, the little girl who had pulled him into the room. She was maybe nine years old, had long, curly black hair, and from what Ikoa had learned of her that day, she was a sweetheart, if a little shy. Ikoa also secretly suspected that Melene had a little crush on Darin.

Thumper had wrapped one arm comfortingly around Melene’s shoulders, and now Ikoa realized why she was hearing Darin even when his story was over and the rest of the kids were asleep–he was softly singing a lullabye. He hadn’t yet seemed to notice Ikoa, so she merely waited and listened.

"...This world is full of joys and tears, you’ll have your share throughout the years of happiness and stumblings, giving and needs. Fly up above, fall to the ground, or skip and dance your way around, no matter what, wherever you are, you will always find me here. So close your sleepy eyes, let gentle warmth fill you inside and feel my love protect you in the night. The stars will set, the sun will rise, you’ll see your dreams fill up the skies, so softly rest your hopes inside the precious love you feel, and lay your wishes in my heart..."

Darin suddenly noticed Ikoa’s presence, and he looked up to see her looking back at him with a gentle smile while leaning with her head resting against the doorjamb. His face went bright red as if he hadn’t been expecting an adult audience, and he quickly looked away. Ikoa quietly came over to him and sat in a chair beside the bed.

"She said she couldn’t sleep," Darin whispered sheepishly, still not looking at his squadmate. "I think she’s asleep now, though."

"Don’t be embarrassed," Ikoa whispered in reply. "I think that was incredibly sweet. Where’d you learn that song?"

"My mom." Darin shifted his gaze to Melene’s peaceful face. "She used to sing it to my little sister. She said she sang it to me, too, but I was too young to remember it then."

"But you remember it from your sister. Was there a big age gap between the two of you?"

"About seven years."

"That much? Did you two get along?"

"Oh yeah," Darin said wistfully, still looking away. "Shiori always wanted to spend time with me, and it was a rare occurrence for me to say no. I was her Big Brudder, a nickname left over from the time when she couldn’t even pronounce the word correctly, and she was my Little Squirt. I know a lot of siblings don’t get along while they’re growing up, but we did."

Ikoa’s soft smile became one of sympathy, and she studied Darin for a moment. "You miss them, don’t you." It was more of an observation than a question.

Darin nodded a little. "She reminds me a lot of Shiori," he said, indicating Melene with a slight motion of his head. "Looks a lot like her, and sometimes acts like her too. It always hurts at least a little, but times like this make me remember just how much it can still hurt and how lonely it is." He finally looked at Ikoa. "Never forget how lucky you are to have a family."

"You’ve still got a family, Thumper. It’s just a little different, that’s all." She moved to sit on the edge of the bed and ducked under the top bunk, all while trying to be careful to not wake Melene as she eased her weight down. She put her arm around Darin’s shoulders in turn and explained, "It’s an adoptive family instead of a biological one. Mack is like a stepfather who’s always getting his kids out of trouble. Quiver’s the big brother who’s always getting you into trouble. Snubber’s like the uncle who everyone knows better than to cross because he’ll write you out of the will in a heartbeat. We may not be related, but that doesn’t mean we’re not all in this together like any family is."

Darin sighed softly. "I guess. But...it’s just not the same."

"It’ll always be different," Ikoa said gently. "It won’t be exactly the same as the kind of family you’re thinking of, but this family will always be here to help you out, just like you’ll be here for us. Biological or adoptive, that’s what any family is about, isn’t it? Being there when you need them, unconditionally, no questions asked?"

Thumper merely nodded. Ikoa gave his shoulders a small squeeze and then said, "I’m going to go try to clean up the common room. As long as they’re all asleep, why don’t you take a break?" When Darin nodded again, Ikoa carefully got up, gave him another soft smile, and left.

Darin watched Ikoa go out of the room. He knew she was trying to make him feel better, but right now it was just reminding him of how much he missed his parents and sister. At that moment, he suspected he would have sold his soul to just have one more chance to see them all again and to apologize for not being there to protect them those last times when it really mattered. Home seemed very far away, and Darin felt very much alone. He was having lots of fun with the kids here, but Darin hadn’t anticipated how much this volunteer assignment would affect him on deeper levels.

He looked down at Melene next to him, and for just a moment he let himself pretend it was his sister he was protecting from the blackness of the darkened room, not someone he had only just met that day. It eased the pain a little, and for that he was grateful.

Often, especially at night in bed before she fell asleep, Keely would imagine the moment she would see her brother again: where he would be, what he would look like, if she would have to call in help to rescue him or get him out, what she would say when she saw him, what he would say to her, and so on.

Some of her imaginings actually frightened her. At times like that, she had to clamp down on her fear, her pain and her dread, and resist the urge to turn on the light and bring reality back. Those were the times she was sorry her brain chose bedtime to start down those paths, when her room was dark and the windows were shut against the blue glow from outside or to block the light from the star she was orbiting.

Keely couldn’t remember a time while she’d been growing up when she hadn’t been afraid of the dark. While she lay in bed in the blackened room on Silver Dart, she thought about those nights back home as well and how the only times she hadn’t needed a nightlight were when her brother had been there in the room with her. Now, the grown-up Keely no longer needed that comforting light because her big brother had protected her from the shadows on the wall and had shown her that she’d be all right. He’d saved her from the dark.

Remembering that and feeling comforted, she would close her eyes to go to sleep. Space was dark. So were the other places her brother was likely to be. She’d return the favor at least once.
 
 

Chapter Five

"Two weeks ago, I played another prank on Darin. CC helped me reprogram the lights in our quarters so that they could be turned on and off by using a small remote. She even made it so that the regular light switch panel wouldn’t work as long as the remote was turned on. Anyway, this is basically how each instance went. Darin and I would be sitting in our quarters chatting while doing work at our desks. In the middle of a conversation I’d secretly turn on the remote, hit the button and pow! The lights would go out. So I’d accuse Darin of turning them off and angrily tell him to quit fooling around and turn them back on because I had finally gotten on a roll doing work, and how was I supposed to do that in the dark? He’d be all bewildered and swear he had nothing to do with it, which of course I said I didn’t believe. He’d try to turn them on, but neither the switch nor the voice activation would work, and he’d tell me the lights were broken when I’d secretly turn them back on with the remote. So I’d tell him to cut it out, he’d apologize in the midst of his confusion, and we’d get back to work when it would happen all over again. Not even a day later, he had taken the light switch panel apart and was trying to figure out how to fix the lights because he was so paranoid that I thought he was responsible for the lights’ behavior. Some of the things he’d say to try and convince me that he wasn’t the one messing with the lights were hilarious, and overall, it was a great prank. You’ll say I’m mean, Lillen, but I don’t care. Like all the others, it was done in good fun. Besides, it was funny, and if you’d seen it, you’d agree. Hmm. Maybe I should record the next one..."

The next day, Melene came over and grabbed Darin’s hand. "There’s someone at the door." She started pulling him in that direction.

Darin was on the far side of the common room at the time. He tried to follow, but between Anrak sitting on his shoulders and Remi sitting on one of his feet and holding on around Darin’s leg to stay put, he couldn’t move very fast. Each step he took with that leg required Thumper to literally lift the child off the floor on his foot. He’d already learned that he’d be wasting his breath and time to ask Remi to get off. "Go ahead and answer it," he told Melene. "I’ll be right there."

Melene dutifully ran back to the door and opened it. "‘Lo?"

"Hi," Darin heard Commander Mackin say in a friendly tone. "Is Ikoa or Darin here?"

"Darin’s right there." Melene pointed at him. "Ikoa’s in the backyard with Jilli and Hilaj."

"Come on in, sir," Darin said as he finally came close to the door.

Mack did so, and when he saw Darin’s situation he just stopped and stared. He looked like he wanted to laugh.

Darin got in front of his squadron leader at last. "Hello, sir," he said with a half-grin.

Anrak must have recognized Mackin from his short visit the previous day since he gave Mack a salute, though with the wrong hand. Mackin seemed positively tickled by that and returned the salute with a smile. Anrak beamed back.

Melene tugged on Darin’s sleeve. "Should I go get Ikoa?"

Mackin answered for him. "No, that’s okay. I’ll only be here a minute, but thanks."

"Okay." She looked at Darin and said, "I’m going outside by Ikoa."

"All right," Darin answered. Melene skipped off to the back door through the kitchen.

After she left, Mackin said matter-of-factly to his subordinate, "Darin, you’ve got a growth on your leg."

"Really?" Darin looked down like he hadn’t even noticed, and Remi giggled and hid his face behind Darin’s leg. "Oh, it’s just one. You should see it when there’s one on each of my legs, sir."

"I can imagine. How are you and Ikoa doing?"

"Just fine. We usually–oh, no! Commander, where did you go?" Anrak had put his webbed hands over Darin’s eyes, and Darin played along. "The whole room is dark! Did someone turn out the lights?" Anrak took his hands away, and Darin sighed in relief. "There you are, sir. I couldn’t find you for a minute there. Anyway, we usually each watch a few kids for a while, then we gather them all together and one of us will take a short break. It’s–" Anrak covered Darin’s eyes again, causing Thumper to say, "Huh? Oh, look, it’s nighttime! Time for bed." He slumped a little and made snoring sounds. Anrak and Remi giggled, and then Darin’s eyes were uncovered. Darin yawned and straightened up. "Oh, good morning, sir! How are you today?"

Darin was sure that Lt. Weas would have been annoyed with him had he been there instead, but Mack seemed rather amused by Darin’s actions. Then the commander cocked his head thoughtfully, leaned in closer to look at something on Darin’s face and asked, "Darin, is that lipstick you’re wearing?"

Darin’s eyes widened fearfully, and he hurriedly wiped at his mouth. "Sorry, sir," he mumbled in embarrassment during the brief instances when his hand and sleeve weren’t wiping his lips. "The girls really wanted to play ‘makeover,’ and Ikoa was still gone with the others. Luckily she got back only about ten minutes after we started so I could pass them over to her instead. I thought I got this all off."

He also remembered how hard of a bargain Ikoa had driven at the time, too, because she had known how desperate Darin was to not continue with the makeover. Ikoa had even grinned evilly and mentioned something about how much Quiver would want to see a holo of that, which had made Thumper even more desperate to get out of it. He knew she was just having fun with him, but it also served to remind him of how someone who was normally so compassionate could end up with the callsign of "Rancor" and not have it be a solely ironic nickname such as calling a tall person "Shorty." He gave his face one last hard rub with his sleeve.

Meanwhile, Mackin was just laughing. "Tell them to go a little easier on the blush next time. Your whole face is red."

Darin didn’t doubt him for an instant because he could feel it burning. If only he could go back and take one more look in the mirror before Commander Mackin had come..."Yes, sir, I’ll do that."

"Anything you expect to need today, tomorrow or the day after?"

"No, sir, not that I know of."

"Well, it looks like you two have things well in hand. I’ll–"

A loud clatter suddenly sounded from the kitchen area, startling them. When they looked over, the pilots saw a white cloud of flour billowing up from the floor and expanding. The older blond girl and the female Twi’lek ran out of the kitchen to Darin, and they were covered head-to-toe in flour as well.

"Darin!" the Twi’lek called plaintively. "Sinsi dropped the flour, and now it’s all over the place!"

"No I didn’t, Nima!" Sinsi yelled back. "It’s your fault too! You were supposed to help me pour it! Besides, you’re the one who stepped on the bottle of syrup and squirted it everywhere!"

"Liar!"

"Tattle-tale!"

Mackin just gave Darin a twisted, evil grin, as if he had been in Darin’s position all too often. "Carry on, Thumper." He left just as the flour cloud spilled out into the common room, turning everything in its wake white. Remi gave a happy cry and bounded into the flour cloud, apparently thinking it would be great fun to become bleached like Nima and Sinsi were. He jumped up and down, stirring up the floating flour even more. Darin sighed and began breaking up the girls’ argument.

In the next system where Keely’s search took her, it took a little longer than usual to get her information because the inhabited planet was celebrating a local holiday, and some of the government offices were closed. Snow was falling gently, but the inhabitants didn’t seem to mind. Festivities and food were everywhere, and the multitude of treats for sale along the roads and in marketplaces brought to mind the fights she and her brother had had when they were kids and they’d both wanted to be the one to bake the cake for the lifeday or whatever occasion their family was celebrating. At times like that, it seemed like more food had ended up on the floor and on each of them than in the bowls and pans. Looking back now, she could laugh.

She bought some pastries from a streetside vendor to satisfy her sweet tooth and continued on toward the government buildings and military offices, hoping to find at least one person who could help her or show her where else on the planet to go for her information. She smiled to herself as she bit into a pastry: she’d always been a better cook than her brother, whether he admitted it or not. Keely decided a homemade cake would be a good thing to have at his Welcome Home party.
 
 

Chapter Six

"You haven’t told me yet how the family holiday party went. I want details, complete details, with nothing left out. Unfortunately, I’m sure it can’t be as much fun now that all of the cousins have grown up, and we aren’t running screaming around the house and yard anymore. We always had so much fun together as kids. Heh, remember all those times, Lillen? Tell your brothers and sister and the rest of the cousins that I miss the havoc we wreaked. The total chaos of having relatives my own age to run around with and cause mayhem with sometimes made me wish for a brother or sister of my own, at least until I realized I’d have competition then and my parents would no longer be able to spoil me exclusively. So I had to settle for all you crazy cousins. Though looking back at all the fun we had, the holiday party is probably more fun for everyone else now that we’re all grown up, huh? And Lillen, no comments here about physical versus emotional or intellectual maturity, because I’ve heard them all and even made up a few of my own. But anyway, details. I want details."

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

"Remi, you don’t need to scream," Ikoa called offhandedly. She was in the common room, going through some simple mathematics and counting exercises with some of the kids.

Darin was also in the common room, lying on his stomach on the floor, propped up on his elbows and distracted with trying to fix Sinsi’s toy. It had broken sometime yesterday after the Flour Incident, probably during the full-scale pillow fight that had raged through the house before the pilots could put a stop to it. Or maybe it was during the Mine! No, Mine! Incident, or the Can’t Catch Me! Game, or the Who Can Jump the Farthest Off the Couch Contest, or the...

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" The excited, ear-splitting shriek caused by nothing but pure energy never lessened as the boy ran from the kids’ bedroom into the common room with Anrak chasing him and laughing.

Obviously annoyed, Sinsi put her hands over her ears and shouted, "Remi, be quiet!"

The two runners had already made half a lap around the room before Darin could say, "Hey, you two, no running inside. You’ll trip and get hurt."

"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaah!" Remi adjusted course and ran toward Darin. At the last second, he dove forward and flopped onto Darin’s back.

"Oof!" The force of the child landing on him knocked Darin flat. Anrak was hot on Remi’s heels but didn’t jump like Remi had; instead, Anrak tripped over them and landed on them all in a heap. Darin thought he heard Ikoa trying to stifle some laughter at Darin’s predicament.

Anrak gave a happy, gravelly-sounding laugh and just rolled off, then scrambled over to sit on the back of Darin’s legs as the pilot lay on his stomach. "I got you now, Darin! You can’t get up!"

"Yeah, no kidding," Darin wheezed as he pushed himself back up on his elbows. "Settle down, okay, you two?" Though technically, Darin reflected, they were no longer running or screaming, which was good.

Still on top of Darin, Remi brushed his brown bangs out of his eyes and shifted around so he could lay forward on Darin’s back. He rested his chin on Darin’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around Darin’s neck, and then he watched Thumper fiddle with the broken toy for barely an instant before saying, "Tell us a pilot story!"

Sitting on the floor in front of Darin, Sinsi protested, "No. He’s fixing my toy now."

"It’s all right, Sinsi, I can do both at once," Thumper told her. Continuing to work on the toy, he addressed Remi. "So you want to hear a pilot story, huh?"

"Yeah!" Anrak said. "About how you fly and zoom and zap those ene–emem–bad guy ships!"

"I don’t know..." Darin sounded uncertain to egg them on a bit for fun. "It might be kinda scary for you..."

"I like scary!" Remi said enthusiastically. "Like Sinsi–Sinsi’s really scary!"

"Stop it, Remi! I am not!"

"See? She’s scary!"

"Okay, everyone, relax," said Darin, hoping to head off the fight he knew was coming. "All right, let me think of a good pilot story for you."

Thumper’s first thought was to tell them about a mission, but all of the missions he briefly ran through in his mind he didn’t feel were appropriate story material for young kids. He finally settled on a sim run the Coronas had done against each other, but he added, deleted, tweaked and embellished things at his will to make it into a simple action story of the Rebels against the Imperials that was more of a race than a dogfight. Parts of it ended up sounding like something Quiver would have come up with, and he hadn’t realized how much of an influence Quiver had been on him until now.

About a quarter of the way through the story, he had shifted into a more normal sitting position on the floor against a wall and had finished fixing Sinsi’s toy. The others had postponed their math game to come listen to the story as well. Ikoa joined them, and after figuring out what Darin was doing, she just grinned knowingly and listened in amusement for a while, offering a made-up detail here and there before leaving to fix a snack for everyone. Sinsi volunteered to watch Jilli while Ikoa was in the kitchen.

About halfway through Darin’s story, the two boys and Anrak were excitedly jumping around, pretending they were starfighters and trying to reenact the scene Darin was describing. At first, Darin saw that and began throwing even more action into the scene in an effort to tire the boys out, but there was one little problem with his plan: Melene was attached to Darin’s arm and looked like she was anxious about whether Darin and the others would come out of "the mission" all right. That made Darin tone down his action tale and simply extend the "race" parts some more.

Finally, by the time the story was coming to an end, the kids were worn out from the running or sleepy from the snack or both, and they were either asleep on the couch or had begun using Darin as a pillow for an impromptu nap.

Glad he hadn’t remained on his stomach, Darin couldn’t move without waking up the kids sprawled on him, so he just sat there on the floor against the wall, holding Jilli and enjoying the quiet. The only noticeable sounds were those made by Jilli as she drank from a bottle that Ikoa had given to Darin for her. Now Ikoa was in the bedroom taking a break while all the kids were with him.

Just as Jilli finished her bottle, Remi slowly blinked his eyes open and sleepily looked at Darin. With a half-asleep smile, Remi whispered, "Sounds fun bein’ a pilot."

"Yeah, it is," Darin whispered back.

"You fly everywhere."

"Yeah, we go to lots of different places."

Remi sighed contentedly and closed his eyes. As he drifted asleep again, he softly said, "When you go everywhere and find my mommy and daddy, tell ‘em I wanna find ‘em. My daddy is big and strong and his name is Daddy."

"I’ll remember that." Darin was surprised he got the quiet words out past the lump in his throat.

Keely pointed the optical receiver of the small recording device at the mess of wires in the console she had taken apart. "Does this look right?"

The datapad she had with her was patched into Dart’s communication system. The recording device fed the image of the wires through the datapad and through the comm system real-time to the mechanic on the receiving end of the transmission.

The signal Keely was receiving from him was displayed on the datapad. She saw him squint at his screen, which was showing him the wires in Dart’s console, and then he nodded. "Yeah. Looks right. I double-checked with a few of the guys here, and they agreed on how I told you to reroute the wires. Just be sure to turn that console off when you’re not using it, and the repairs will hold until you can replace the router. It should work now."

Keely turned the recording device so it was facing her, and she smiled. "Thanks. What would I do without you guys telling me how to fix this old ship when it breaks?"

The mechanic grinned in reply. "Just tell your dad to put in a good word for us when promotion time comes around." He looked off-screen for a moment, then turned back. "Is there anything else you need? Otherwise, some damaged starfighters need a little attention. Sarge is getting that look on his face again."

Keely shook her head. "No, I think Dart and I are good for now. Don’t want you to get in trouble with ol’ Sarge. Thanks, Corporal."

"Any time. Good luck out there." The transmission ended.

Keely closed her end of the transmission as well, and then she started putting the covers back over the console. She was glad the mechanics on the ship where her father was stationed were willing to help her and tell her how to fix Dart when something broke or shorted out. Otherwise she would have never gotten this far; she wasn’t very mechanically-inclined.

This last incident could have been really bad if she didn’t have that help. An electrical problem had caused her hyperdrive to shut down, and she could have been stranded in the middle of nowhere for a very long time. When she realized that, the universe suddenly seemed enormous, and she seemed very tiny.

That same lesson had been taught to her over and over again on this journey while she searched for her brother. Before she set out, she hadn’t realized just how big the galaxy was and how small one person was. Everything had been reversed out here: the sky was black instead of the soft blue of her homeworld; a star that at first had looked so tiny became a huge, blinding ball of gas when she entered a system; and now a person that had been such a large part of her life was drowned in the vastness of the universe, too tiny to find. But Keely would keep trying, even if she had to exhaust every resource at her disposal and ask every person in the galaxy to let her know if they’d seen him.
 
 

Chapter Seven

"Sorry I keep yawning. In the last week we haven’t had a normal night’s sleep once, due to one thing or another. When are people going to learn that it’s not nice to reverse day and night on a guy? You’d think they believe that everyone should be awake whenever it’s most convenient, regardless of what time it is. See, Darin’s lucky–he can turn control over to his astromech and take quick, impromptu naps in his fighter while we’re out on really long patrols and nothing’s happening, but you all know I’ve never been able to sleep in small vehicles like that. Sometimes when I get really sleepy and jealous of him, like the last time we had an 0-dark-30 patrol, I’ll wait until his astromech says he’s asleep, and then I’ll yell something over the comm to him in a panic, like a Star Destroyer just came out of hyperspace on top of us. That wakes him up."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

Darin squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to wonder what time it was. He buried his face in his pillow and prayed someone else would get up and see to Jilli so he could go back to sleep. After only three days with the kids, he was beat. He couldn’t imagine how Liy and Nel’lan did this all the time.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

"Darin," Ikoa muttered, half-asleep, "go."

Darin mumbled an inarticulate plea and buried his face deeper in the pillow, which prompted Ikoa to throw a datapad at him to wake him up. It hit the mark. "Ow!" He lifted his head to glare at Ikoa over on her cot, not realizing she probably couldn’t see his expression in the dark.

Even if she did see it, she was too tired to care. "You promised me two full nights of Jilli duty in exchange for getting you out of that makeover. That still includes tonight. Don’t think I’m going to let you out of that, rookie."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

"Okay, okay," Darin grumbled. He forced himself out of bed and stumbled barefoot out of the Grown-up Room and into the kids’ room.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he stepped up to Jilli’s crib and reached down to pick her up. As he did so, even in the dark he could tell the diaper had to be changed. "Aw, blast it," he muttered as he wrinkled his nose. The pilot brought her to the changing table and swapped the dirty diaper for a clean one, but that didn’t stop the wails.

"What else is wrong? You hungry?" Darin asked as he held Jilli again and gently rocked her in an effort to improve her mood. He brought her into the kitchen and did everything he could think of to get her to stop crying while the bottle warmed up: he rocked her, talked to her, tickled her, even made funny faces at her, but nothing seemed to help.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

"I know, I know," Darin said through a yawn as he took the warm bottle and went to sit on the couch in the common room to feed the bottle to Jilli. It quickly became obvious that she wasn’t hungry, though, as she kept refusing the bottle and then her pacifier as well. Darin was at a loss for what to do. He wasn’t that familiar with babies, and he was running out of tricks. He tried them all again with the same results as before.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

"Jilli’s having a bad night."

Darin looked up in slight surprise at the sleepy voice and saw Melene standing in the bedroom doorway in the dark, watching him. He whispered, "Yeah, she is. I can’t get her to quiet down."

"You’re doing it wrong." Melene came over and held her doll in the crook of her elbow while she shifted the position of Darin’s arms slightly. "She likes it when her head is held better. She should quiet down soon now if you rock her, and if she doesn’t we have a song recording she likes that puts her to sleep lots of times. That’s how you do it. It’s not so hard."

Thumper chuckled and said, "Thanks, Squirt. I–" He stopped abruptly, bit his bottom lip, scolded himself for slipping and calling Melene by the old nickname he’d given Shiori, and then started over. "Thanks, Melene. As you can see, I’m not too good with babies."

"Jilli’s an easy baby most of the time. We all know how to take care of her."

Melene climbed up on the couch next to Darin, then sat down and leaned against him while hugging her worn doll. As Melene had predicted, Jilli’s crying finally started to lessen.

"Yeah, sure seems that way," Darin whispered in a delayed response as Jilli quieted for the most part and started swatting at his nose. "You all seem to know how to do a lot on your own. It’s good that you can all help Liy and Nel’lan."

"Some of us do. Remi never does–he just makes messes."

"Well, Remi’s still a little boy. Little boys do things like that."

"Yeah. He has to grow up still."

Growing up. . . Darin waved his finger over Jilli, and she grabbed it in her tiny hand. The moment there with Jilli and Melene in the quiet, darkened house was so perfect in its simplicity that he was almost able to forget what kind of person growing up had made him become. He missed the carefree days of being a kid when his biggest worry had been if they could scrounge up enough players for a pickup game of donri. Now Darin was grown up, and he had duties, obligations, responsibilities, people to protect and lead and serve. It seemed like there was always something weighing on his mind, always something else to do, always something else that should have been done.

Enjoying the easy simplicity there on the couch in the dark, far away from the life-and-death situations, he smiled softly while waggling his finger some more and said, "Sometimes growing up is overrated."

"Over-what?"

"Never mind." Darin grinned sidelong at Melene. "Hey, aren’t you supposed to be in bed? It’s late."

Melene snuggled against him a little more. "Jilli woke me up."

"Think you can get back to sleep now that you showed me how to hold her and she’s quiet? Ikoa and I were thinking of taking everyone to the park in the morning if it doesn’t rain. Liy told us they have some playground equipment there and a nice field of grass. You’ll want a good night’s sleep so you can have lots of fun."

"Yeah, I can go to sleep," Melene mumbled softly. She closed her eyes.

Darin laughed quietly. "No, not here on the couch. In your bed."

"But I wanna stay out here with you."

"I’m not staying out here, though. I need to put Jilli back in her crib, and then I’m going back to sleep on my cot, so I can’t be your pillow out here. I’m sleepy, and this couch isn’t very comfortable."

Melene sighed. "Do I hafta?"

"Yeah, sorry. Time for bed again."

"Okay..." She reluctantly slid off the couch and headed to the kids’ room. Darin followed with the baby once he’d put the full bottle back in the cooler.

After putting Jilli back in her crib and praying she’d fall asleep soon and not cry anymore, Darin tucked Melene in again, and then he went back to the Grown-up Room, flopped on his cot and promptly fell asleep. His scattered dreams in the few hours before sunrise involved him taking care of his sister, Shiori (who sometimes became Melene), in a place much like the orphanage, but his memories of the dreams flitted away with the first rays of light shining through the curtains.

In the middle of the night, Keely woke up from a dream about her brother. In it, she had found him, and the two of them were going home together. The military base was holding a celebration for his return, and their father and grandfather were there in their uniforms, proudly welcoming back their family’s next generation. It would be one of the happiest days they had ever seen. The party would make such a mess, but she’d worry about that later. All that mattered was that her brother was finally found...

And then she’d woken up, coming back to a universe where her brother was still out there somewhere, lost. Keely wiped away a tear as she realized all that was just a dream, but she vowed it would be one dream that would come true. Somehow.
 
 

Chapter Eight

"One of these days, if we’re ever in the area and we get R&R, I’m going to come back home for a visit. I’ll bring along CC and Darin so you can meet them in person and they can meet you. But the best part will be that I won’t tell you I’m coming; I’m just going to walk in the door one day and surprise you, just like any other day getting back from work or class, just like nothing ever happened and I was never gone. Then just like always, Mom, you can ask me who these strange people are who I brought home and then insist they stay for supper before I even have a chance to tell you their names. Of course, the one thing I’d want to change from before is the part where I have to clean up the table afterward. Then the next day we can have a big party. I’ll start working on the guest list. Hopefully some of my old buddies are still in the area. You ever hear from Cam? What’s he been up to?"

Melene pulled a dinner plate out of the water-filled sink and began working at it with a sponge while Darin dried another plate. At first he had hated the fact that the orphanage didn’t even have a washer for the dishes and it had to be done by hand almost every day, but when he discovered that the kids, especially Melene, were generally either willing to offer their help with the chore or would do it when told, it wasn’t so bad. Of course, the "help" sometimes consisted of water fights and swatting each other with towels and the like, but during the times the kids behaved, it was a nice way to spend time with them.

"What’s your favorite color?" Melene continued their question game. "Mine’s pink."

"Green," said Darin. "How ‘bout you, Hilaj?" he asked as he handed Hilaj the dry plate to put away.

"Rainbow," he said immediately as he took the plate to a cabinet.

"That’s not a color!" Melene protested.

"Is too! It’s all the colors," said Hilaj.

Darin chuckled at the answer, then he asked, "What’s your favorite season?"

"Summer," answered Hilaj.

"Fall," said Melene.

Darin smiled. "Mine, too."

A few questions later, an excited shout came from the common room where Ikoa and the others were tidying up. "Liy and Nel’lan are back!"

"Liy!" Melene dropped the plate she was washing back into the sink, causing some of the water to splash on Darin. Melene never even noticed, though, because she and Hilaj were running into the common room.

Darin wiped the water off and gave a little sigh. It was a bittersweet moment, because even though he was really tired from babysitting and wanted to go fly again, he also would really miss these kids. He’d developed a soft spot for Melene in particular over these four days, which hadn’t really surprised him, and he knew he’d have a hard time saying goodbye. Thumper finished drying the plate in his hand, set it aside and then joined the others in the common room.

Nel’lan and Liy were on the receiving ends of lots of hugs and also looked a bit overwhelmed as all at once, all of the children excitedly tried to tell them everything they’d done with Ikoa and Darin. After a couple of minutes, the male Twi’lek and the human woman were able to disentangle themselves from the kids momentarily, and they came over to where the pilots were standing together.

"Well, looks like you two made it through," Liy said with a smile. "How did it go?"

"Everything went really well," Ikoa said. "The kids were really good. Remi hurt his knee at the park today, but it’s just a scrape. We cleaned and bandaged it. I think he’s already forgotten about it."

"Comes with the territory," Nel’lan said. "It’ll be fine, I’m sure."

"You two look better," said Darin. "You were able to relax a bit, I take it?"

Liy nodded. "Yes. The first day I was worried and kept getting the temptation to comm you and see how things were going, but then I slept really well that night, which really helped me unwind. It was a very welcome, very nice break."

"Where are we in the schedule right now?" Nel’lan asked.

"We just finished supper," Darin answered. "I’ll be done with the dishes pretty soon, and Ikoa was cleaning up in here just now. The kids played pretty hard at the park today, so they might go to sleep early for you."

"I’ll help you with the dishes," said Nel’lan. "I don’t feel like unpacking yet, and I need to get back in this mindset anyway."

"All right, if you want." Darin looked at the two women and was about to ask if they’d be okay with watching the kids, but before he could open his mouth, the children scampered into their bedroom while talking excitedly amongst themselves. He shrugged, and Ikoa motioned for him to go finish up.

Back in the kitchen, Darin took the sponge and began tackling the dirty dishes while Nel’lan dried them and put them away. After a minute of work, Darin quietly said, "Nel’lan, some of these kids...their parents haven’t been found yet, right?"

Nel’lan stole a glance at the blond pilot and then went back to drying the dishes. "Right. Some are confirmed dead. It’s possible some others may still be alive somewhere, but they were separated in an occupation or during an attack, and the kids were brought here if the situation was very dangerous and no family could be found. We’re looking for the parents or for other family members, but it’s a big galaxy."

"How much information do you have on the relatives who could be alive?"

"It varies. Sometimes just a name, sometimes as much as a holo and occupational data to go with the name."

"Listen, I–I can’t guarantee anything, but in my line of work I end up in a lot of different systems," Darin said. "If I know what to look for, I can keep my eyes open...just in case."

Nel’lan smiled, and the tip of one lekku, or brain tail, waved slightly. "Anything you could do would be appreciated. I’ll get you a summary of the info as soon as we’re done here."

Darin smiled in return. "Thanks."

"No, thank you. It also seems like the kids had a good time with you two, which is something else I’m grateful for."

"And we had a good time with them. I have to give you and Liy tons of credit, though: I don’t know how you can do this all the time. It’s exhausting."

Nel’lan laughed a little. "Well, once you forget what something like sleep is, you don’t miss it much anymore."

Soon the two were done with the dishes. A knock came at the door, and when Ikoa answered it, Chopper and Kalre were standing there. They had been part of the group that was helping construct and repair buildings, and they looked tired and a little dirty. "Mack told us to come pick you up since you two were on our way," Chopper said as they stepped inside. "Everyone else is already heading back to the shuttle."

"We’re almost done here," Ikoa answered. "Just give us a few minutes to pack and finish up."

"All right."

Remi came up and looked curiously at Kalre. "You’re green," he said with a grin.

Looking down at the boy with his huge black eyes, the Rodian said, "I am, am I?"

"Yeah," Remi answered. "How come?"

"Remi, behave yourself," Liy said.

Chopper spoke up. "He’s green because he eats lots of vegetables."

"Chopper, behave yourself," Ikoa scolded. To Remi she said, "Don’t listen to him. That’s not true."

Darin watched Remi for a moment. The boy apparently hadn’t paid attention to Ikoa, and it looked like he was torn between wanting to never get within ten meters of a vegetable again and thinking that turning green would be an incredibly fun thing to do. Finally he giggled, squealed and ran back into the kids’ room.

"Now look what you did," Ikoa said to Chopper. "You don’t need to make this harder on everyone. Kids can be fickle eaters to begin with."

"Hey, if someone had told me that when I was a kid, I would have eaten a lot more vegetables," Chopper replied. He ended the conversation by reaching down into the playpen he had just noticed and lifting Jilli out. He held her securely in his arms and cooed to her, "Well, hewwo dere. You wike veggie-tables, don’t you?" He gently beeped her nose with a fingertip. "Yeah. Dey’re nummy-nummy. We wike ‘em. And don’t wowwy, dey won’t turn you gween—"

Chopper suddenly stopped, likely from remembering he wasn’t alone in the room. Darin was simply staring at the lieutenant, and from the corner of his eye, Darin could tell Kalre didn’t know what to make of the scene before him. Chopper gave Darin a withering look and said, "Something I can do for you, Flight Officer?" He made it sound like a challenge.

"Uh, no, sir," Darin said.

"Don’t you have some packing to do?"

"Um, yes, sir."

Darin saw Ikoa trying to hide a grin at Chopper’s actions and defensiveness, but Chopper only shot her a glare and didn’t say anything to her.

Darin and Ikoa went to pack their duffle bags, and a few minutes later they were finished. Nel’lan gave Darin the information he requested, and the pilot secured the datacard in a pocket.

When everyone was gathered once more in the common room, the kids started exchanging looks with each other and whispering, and finally someone pushed Anrak forward when he didn’t get the previous hints. Anrak came up and tugged on Ikoa’s sleeve, then he handed her something. "We made this for you." Then he turned to Darin and gave him something as well. The kids watched proudly and expectantly.

Ikoa and Darin had each been given a piece of flimsi. On them, all of the kids had scribbled pictures of whatever had come to mind–a house, an animal, stick figures labeled with misspelled names and doing an activity that particular child had found especially fun during the pilots’ stay, and more. Darin was completely at a loss for words as he looked at it. Shiori was the last person to give him something like this, and he’d forgotten how moving those kinds of drawings could be.

Nima broke Darin out of his thoughts. "Do you really have to go?"

Nodding, Ikoa said gently, "Yes, we do. But thank you all for this wonderful picture." The small, slim woman smiled warmly and put it carefully in her duffle bag.

"Yeah, thanks, everyone," Darin said once he was sure his voice wouldn’t waver. "I’ll hang it up in my room when I get back." He too put it carefully in his duffle bag, trying not to crease it.

Liy gave them each a hug, as did all the kids, then Nel’lan shook Darin’s hand and hugged Ikoa. "Thank you so much for all your help," Nel’lan said. "It meant a lot to everyone here."

"And to us, too," Ikoa said. "Thanks for letting us do this."

"You’re welcome here any time," said Liy. "I hope you keep in touch."

During the adults’ short conversation, Melene had quietly sidled up next to Darin, though no one had really noticed until she spoke. "Darin?" she asked softly as she slipped her hand into his. "Can I come with you?"

That stopped Darin cold. The other pilots watched as it took him a moment to recover, then he dropped down to his knees so he was closer to eye-level with her. "Sorry, sweetie," he said gently as he brushed a wayward lock of black hair out of one of her eyes, "but you have to stay here with the others."

"Please can I come with you? I’ll be good!"

"I know you would be good," Darin said, "but it’s not safe for you where I live."

"You’re going back to fight in the war," Hilaj said, almost accusingly.

Looking up at the boy, Darin answered softly, "Yeah, I am."

"People die in wars."

Darin certainly wouldn’t miss the blunt, unfiltered truths that children spoke. "Yeah," he answered regretfully and even more softly, "they do."

"Are you going to die, Darin?"

Thumper forced a smile to his face and a laugh to his lips. "Who, me? Are you kidding? Those Imperials will never be good enough to catch me. Right?"

Hilaj smiled a little. "Right."

Darin gave Melene a final hug and then stood up. Every minute they stayed was just making it harder to leave. "Everyone be good, okay? And watch out for each other."

The children nodded, then started up with sad-sounding choruses of "Bye, Ikoa! Bye, Darin!" The two pilots returned the farewells from the children and adults alike, and then slung their bags on their shoulders. Chopper handed Jilli back to Liy with one final nose-beep, and the four pilots headed out.

The sun had set, and the light was fading from the sky. While the four of them walked down the street to the Coronas’ shuttle, Ikoa hung back with Darin, who was silent, very distracted, and content to let Chopper and Kalre outpace them while he chewed on his lip.

After a couple minutes of walking, in a quiet voice Ikoa said to him, "I can’t tell if you’re trying to talk yourself into it or out of it." When Darin didn’t answer and just looked at the ground in front of his feet, Ikoa continued, "Come on, Thumper. I know what that little girl means to you, but you know it would never work."

"What if there was a way to make it work?" Darin asked hesitantly. "Maybe there is. It would be better than the life she has here on this world."

"On a warship? A warship is not a place for children. What would you do with her when you’re out on patrol or on a mission? Lock her in your quarters? Here she has friends her own age, some schooling, space to run and play and grow. She’d have none of that on Star."

"She doesn’t have a family of her own here. That’s something I can offer her that this place can’t right now. Maybe I could turn in my wings, maybe find a job somewhere like here–a planet, not on a ship or a base." Even as he said the words, he didn’t sound too enthusiastic or convinced that he should do what he just said, and the conflict made him fidget a little.

Ikoa sighed. "Yes, that’s an option. And honestly, Darin, if that actually was your sister, I’d encourage you to do that, but it’s not. It’s a completely different person, and you have to remember that. It wouldn’t be fair to Melene to make her into Shiori. Besides, are you really ready to make the commitment of raising a child alone, one that you had no prior obligation to? You’re still young, and you have a promising yet demanding career ahead of you. Think about where and how you’re most needed."

Darin had no answer to that, and the two of them walked the rest of the way in silence. The more he thought about it, though, the more he reluctantly realized Ikoa was right. But if Ikoa was right and it was best that Melene didn’t go with him, why did he feel so lousy about leaving her behind?

Keely remembered hugging her brother goodbye at the gates to the military academy. "So my big brother’s going to be a fighter pilot," she had said to him. "He’s going to go off and protect the galaxy from every evil. You get all the excitement. Can’t I come with you, Cadet?" She had emphasized the last word proudly as it carried with it the beginning of an honorable career for him.

He’d laughed easily and returned the hug affectionately. "Maybe later. When the galaxy’s a little safer."

Their father reached out his hand when the siblings had released each other, and the two men shook hands firmly. "You’ll make sure of that. I’d wish you luck, son, but you won’t need it. This kind of service is in your blood. Make your old man proud." He smiled.

"Just you watch, Dad," her brother had said with a confident smile of his own. "I’ll have my own squadron before too long."

"That’s my boy. Remember, graduation is just a few years away. Study hard. The time will fly."

Soon after that, her brother had turned and walked into the academy. It all seemed so long ago now–that hug, his graduation, even the last letter received after he’d begun his tour of duty. Part of the reason those memories seemed so distant was that the time had been artificially stretched out by the uncertainty and worry about his fate. But soon now, he’d be safe, even if the galaxy wasn’t any safer than before.
 
 

Chapter Nine

"Oh, Lillen, Depli asked me something in the last letter that I’ll answer now while I’m thinking of it. If she’s not watching this with you, please pass it along. If she is, then hi, Depli. Anyway, she asked why I left my comfortable little literary career to become a fighter pilot, a profession that’s so full of danger. Knowing her, she was just venting an ‘I-can’t-possibly-comprehend-your-bizarre-mind’ question, but it intrigued me so I’ll answer it anyway. Cover your ears, Mom, because you won’t want to hear this. They covered? Good. Yes, this is a very dangerous line of work. I know that. I’m zooming along at breakneck speeds in the middle of hard vacuum while being shot at by people who are determined to reduce me to my fundamental particles and get another kill marker on their fighter for the glory of the Empire. I’ve flown so close to Star Destroyers that if a crewman onboard had walked from the side of the ship nearest me to the opposite side, the SD would shift enough to hit my fighter. And I go out and do this day after day because there is absolutely nothing quite like that challenge and that adrenaline rush. That’s why I was always so fascinated by the pilots at home, and even that was nothing compared to what I’m experiencing now. My old line of work could never amount to this, no matter how much longer of a life I could have while doing it. This way, I feel like I’m actually doing something and making a difference to protect the galaxy. Besides, when you’ve got squadmates as good as mine, you don’t even really think that you won’t come back from a mission. My wingman protects me, and I protect him. That kind of trust and security leaves a lot of room open to feel that complete and utter thrill that even I can’t adequately put into words. Okay, Mom, you can listen again. Dad, tell her she can listen again."

"It’s not safe for you where I live."

"Nine, you got one on your tail, be careful!"

"You’re going back to fight in the war."

Darin’s lasers tracked along the path of the TIE fighter in his sights, but it was more of an afterthought, and he kept missing. Most of his attention was focused on trying to evade the TIE shooting at him from behind.

"People die in wars."

An admittedly lucky shot caused the Imperial in front of him to explode into a burst of deadly light. A second later, the canopy windows of Darin’s X-wing caught the reflection of the fireball that the TIE behind him had become, courtesy of Quiver.

Another TIE fighter came streaking toward them, and its lasers opened up on him.

"Are you going to die, Darin?"

Darin couldn’t move out of the way quickly enough, and before he knew it, the vast majority of his shields was gone, as well as his hyperdrive and primary life support. The TIE finished its strafing run and silently zoomed past.

Quiver followed Darin when his wingman broke off to get temporarily clear of the fighting, and he called, "You okay, Nine?"

"Fine, Ten," Darin answered distractedly as he hurriedly input commands to seal off any possible leaks and tried to regroup.

"Are you sure?"

Quiver’s voice jerked Darin out of the jumble of recent memories, and he forced himself back to the present. "Yeah, I’m fine," Darin repeated. "Why?"

"Because we were supposed to land ten minutes ago."

Thumper hadn’t realized he’d zoned out that badly. He was a bit shaken by that, considering it had happened while he was piloting a starfighter. Blast it, focus! "Sorry." He turned the Y-wing back toward Crescent Star and called in their position and a request for landing clearance.

Once they were headed in from their close-quarters patrol, Quiver piped up from the back seat of the wishbone, "Hey, you know what Scoop told CC he found out?"

"No, what?"

"Remember that skirmish we got into the other day with the Imps? Oh, of course you do. You had to buy drinks for the squadron for having the most damage."

"Last time you made me buy drinks for having the least damage," Darin pointed out.

"Anyway," Quiver continued, "Star took some damage for which we need some extra parts and material, so according to rumor, we’re heading to some space station to get them. Scoop heard Snubber mention something about us getting some time off while we’re there."

"Really? That would be nice."

"Yeah." From the gunner’s aft-facing seat, Quiver tried to look at Darin behind him but the structure of the double-seat cockpit wouldn’t let him do it easily. "You seem to need it, too. You’ve been kind of out of it lately. Those kids last week must have really worn you out."

Darin sighed quietly, annoyed that when he was really distracted with thinking about something that he couldn’t hide it better and act more normal. He didn’t want to get into that discussion because it would just remind him of his family and make him feel worse. At least Quiver had just provided him with a good, innocent excuse for his recent behavior that he could use to avoid the real reasons. "Well, you know how it goes. Between babysitting then and doing double patrols now, and then having that dogfight thrown in there, yeah, I’m kind of beat."

"I think that’s part of the reason you got so shot up in that last fight," said Quiver. "You’re tired and not thinking clearly. You need a break. When we get to that station, we’ll go relax. Just you and me and CC, and I’m sure she’ll invite Scoop too. I’ve got it all planned out already."

Darin had to laugh a little at that. "Relaxing according to a schedule? Is that possible?"

"Of course it is: I’ll show you when we get there. Now quit chitchatting and put in a little more juice. We’re going to be late for the briefing."

"It’s 1400 already? Oh, no. Wonderful, just wonderful." Darin throttled up a bit to quicken their approach. He had to stop thinking about those orphaned kids and everything that went with that topic. He wasn’t focused on his job here and now, and in his line of work, that could be fatal.

They landed easily in the hangar of Crescent Star and quickly powered the Y-wing down. They were a solid ten minutes late by that time, so they jogged over to the pilots’ briefing room near the hangar, not even bothering to get out of their flight gear.

Commander Mackin stopped his talk and looked their way when they entered. "Well, look who finally decided to join us."

"Sorry, sir," Quiver said as they went to their usual seats without slowing down. "Darin forgot how to land a Y-wing, so it took us longer than expected to get back in."

"Really." Mackin raised an eyebrow at Quiver, completely unconvinced. "And tell me, why didn’t the senior officer on board take over then and tell him what to do?"

"If I had done that, sir, he wouldn’t have learned anything," said Quiver innocently. "The leadership training we did the last couple of weeks inspired me to help Darin learn to take command and take responsibility for what he has been placed in charge of. Experience is the best teacher, both in landing snubfighters and in leading missions. I was letting him work it out on his own."

"You can give it up, Ten. I’m not buying it."

"I figured I’d try anyway, sir."

Mackin checked his chrono. "Ten minutes times two credits per minute means each of you owes the Squadron Pot twenty credits."

"Yes, sir." Quiver discreetly elbowed Darin in the side, leaned over and whispered, "Hey, can I borrow twenty credits?"

"One of those candy bars will be an acceptable substitute as well," Lt. Weas said; however, the expression on Qu