"I was." Khedryn's expression softened, and he leaned against his swoop. "Mara was kind to me, to all of us. I was saddened when the vids reported her death."

Jaden flashed on his vision, the sound of Mara's voice in his ear on the windswept surface of the frozen moon.

"As was I. Your parents?"

Khedryn's expression turned blank, but Jaden saw the pain beneath it.

"They died there, before we were rescued."

"I'm sorry."

Khedryn waved a hand to shoo away the memory.

"Long time ago. Since then, I've been doing a little of this, a little of that, but I'm mostly settled on salvage these days."

The roar of swoops flying over the hangar drew their eye, and both pulled blasters. Jaden's free hand went to the hilt of his lightsaber. The running lights from half a dozen swoops and speeders buzzed past, blotting out the stars.

"Reegas's thugs?" Jaden asked.

"Could be. Let's get these aboard and get out of here," Khedryn said.

Junker's hold was packed to the crossbeams with storage containers, raw materials, unusable pieces of electronics and vehicles, and two landspeeders.

"Over there," Khedryn said, nodding at an open space in the hold.

Once they had the speeders in the hold and secured, Khedryn lifted the landing ramp.

"You used the Force to affect that final sabacc hand?"

"I did. I would've changed the outcome of the hand when you lost the crystal, but Reegas or one of his lackeys nearby had some kind of handheld electronic cheater. By the time I realized that, you'd already lost."

Khedryn slammed a fist on the seat of the swoop.

"That spawn of a diseased bantha was cheating? And he called me a cheater?" He regarded Jaden from under his heavy brow. "I guess I owe you then, eh?"

Jaden did not bother to answer.

"This still isn't a firm deal, though. Business is business."

Marr's voice broke over the ship's speaker. "Ready for launch."

Khedryn spoke into his collar comlink. "We are on our way up."

When they reached the tight confines of the cockpit, Marr was already seated and working the instrumentation.

Jaden took in the consoles, the scanners. Junker had an amplified sensor array, probably to allow more thorough reception and scanning at longer distances. Jaden eyed Marr, trying to get a better sense of his Force sensitivity. He determined it was faint. Marr probably had no idea.

Khedryn sat, activated the communicator. "Farpoint Tower, this is Junker. We are hot and gone."

He did not wait for an acknowledgment before flying the freighter out of the lit hangar and into the dark. Thrusters angled the ship skyward, and the night sky and its field of stars filled the transparisteel cockpit window.

"Chewstim?" Khedryn asked Marr.

The Cerean removed a square of chewstim from one of the dozen or so pockets in his jacket, offered it.

"Thanks." Khedryn unwrapped it, chewed, blew a bubble, popped it. "And we're off." Junker's engines fired and the ship pelted toward outer space and, Jaden hoped, toward answers.

Khedryn and Marr flew Junker outside the orbit of Fhost's moons, clear of gravity wells. The ship and cockpit took on the quiet serenity of a craft moving through the vacuum.

"What is our course?" Marr asked. The Cerean looked first to Khedryn, then to Jaden.

"About time for that talk, eh?" Khedryn said to Jaden, and swallowed his chewstim.

Jaden nodded. "About time."

"Come into our office," Khedryn said, and he and Marr led Jaden to the galley in the center of the ship. Neither Khedryn nor Marr had removed his blaster. Jaden understood their caution. He would have to earn their trust.

A large, custom viewport in the galley's ceiling offered a view of space. The stars blinked down at them. A metal dining table and benches affixed to the floor afforded seating. A bar and built-in cabinets dominated one of the walls.

Khedryn went to the bar, took a caf pot large enough for a restaurant from an overhead storage bin, filled it with water, dropped in three pouches of grounds, and activated it. In moments the red brew light turned green. Khedryn removed the lid, and the smell of caf filled the galley. He poured two large mugs full and waved a third at Jaden.

"Caf? The ship and her crew run on it."

"Yes, thank you," Jaden said, and composed his thoughts.

Khedryn returned to the table with three steaming mugs of caf. Jaden took a sip and tried not to recoil at its bitterness.

"We prefer it strong," Marr said.

"Any stronger and you'd have to eat it with a fork," Jaden said.

Khedryn put his hands on the table and interlaced his fingers. Jaden noted the scars, the calluses. Marr put his hands under the table, near his blaster.

"Before we start," Khedryn said. "Let me ask you something. Back in The Hole, when you stopped me in the common room, did you use the mind trick on me?"

Jaden saw no point in lying. "I did."

Khedryn stared into his face, his eyes askew. "Don't do it again."

"All right."

"Now, what's your proposal?"

Jaden dived in. "The coordinates Reegas wanted. I want those, too."

Both Khedryn and Marr tensed.

"I figured," Khedryn said. He leaned back in his chair and threw an arm over its back, striking a casual pose. "You a salvager, Jedi? Or is there something else there?"

Jaden did not answer the question. "The rumors in Farpoint said the signal was an automated distress signal."

"We think," Khedryn said. "But there's no life down there. Nobody for a Jedi to save."

Except myself, Jaden thought.

"We don't know that," Marr said. "There could be life. I did not perform a thorough scan."

Khedryn stared at Marr as if the Cerean had just admitted to being a Sith. "Right. Thanks, Marr."

Jaden said, "I understand it originated on a moon at the far end of the system."

"And?" Khedryn asked.

Jaden tried to hold his calm even while he flashed back on his Force vision. He realized with alarm that he could be wrong, that Khedryn and Marr might have found a moon, but not the moon from the vision. He tried to read their faces as he said, "It's a frozen moon orbiting a blue, ringed gas giant."

Khedryn and Marr shared a glance.

"You have been there?" Marr said.

Jaden exhaled, relieved. "No. But I've seen it."

"What?" Khedryn asked.

"Tell me about it," Jaden said. "What drew your attention to it? How'd you pick up the signal?"

Marr took a long draw on his caf cup. His short, graying hair formed a ruff around the mountain of his skull. He furrowed his brow as he thought back, the lines forming cryptic characters on his forehead. "We were returning from another… situation and had to take a roundabout course back."

Jaden understood the Cerean to mean that they had been involved in something illicit, that it had gone wrong, and that they'd had to run. He gestured for Marr to continue.

"We stopped in a remote system so I could recalculate our course and we caught a signal of the kind you described."

Jaden's skin turned to gooseflesh. "Did you record it?"

"Of course," Marr said. "But I haven't yet been able to break its encryption."

Khedryn drained his cup, set it down on the table. "Let's slow down here." He ran a hand through his dark hair, sniffed the air. "Stang but I need a shower. I smell like The Hole."

Jaden ignored the conversational detour. "You want to get back to the why."

"No," Khedryn said. "I want to get to the how much. That'll tell me what I need to know about the why."

Jaden cleared his throat, studied his hands, finally said, "I can offer you two thousand credits now and another seven thousand after I confirm the moon is what I'm after and we return."