On her first night, Leia worked late. Her “office” was a tiny cubby just off the Apprentice Legislature rotunda, hardly bigger than a closet; she knew most apprentices used the rooms more as lockers than as places to do work. But Leia had a place for her things here on Coruscant, and she liked work. So she’d wedged in a tiny chair and desk and now sat scrolling through various screens of data.
She wanted to get a head start on things, and besides—she wasn’t in a hurry to return to the emptiness of Cantham House.
Having completed the dossier on Arreyel, she scanned through a few other documents to see what was worth considering. A word caught her attention and made her scroll back; once she’d read it, she sat up straight.
Calderos Station.
Still, she’d heard nothing about the attack. The Empire clearly wanted to hush it up. So how was this in her files?
A quick review turned up the answer: Calderos Station was referenced in an older file, one that hadn’t been updated to reflect the events of the past few weeks…or deleted to erase those events, either. The data before her summed up shipping in that area, as part of the background for a tariff debate they’d take up later in the session.
But whoever had attacked that station must have arrived disguised as any old cargo convoy—
Leia began searching through the data for the most common vectors of space traffic through Calderos Station in its final months. Most of the worlds were larger ones like Bilbringi and Arkanis—no surprise there—and a few shipments still went to Wobani, however infrequently.
But a couple of unlikely planets kept coming up over and over. First there was Crait, which she’d never heard of; when she pulled it up from memory banks, she saw why. It was a salt-covered rock in the middle of nowhere. How did that planet have any trade, much less enough to have repeatedly gone to Wobani? And Itapi Prime was a world very near Coruscant, prosperous in its own right and wholly loyal to the Emperor. What it wasn’t was a major exporter of goods to distant planets like this one.
Didn’t I hear someone mention Itapi Prime recently? Leia frowned. She’d figure out when and where later.
For now she only knew that the traffic patterns through Calderos Station in the past few months had been abnormal—not so much that they’d draw immediate attention, but noticeable after the fact. Was it possible that those patterns were linked to the attack?
If so, these were traces of people who were rising up against the Empire, but in the most terrifying way possible.
Leia knew she should bring this to her father. Or maybe even to her mother. Or she could bury the files deep in databanks, hiding them so well nobody would ever know she’d reviewed them.
Instead she pulled up star charts that revealed travel lanes to Itapi Prime, and to Crait.
Alderaan never seemed so beautiful to Leia as when she had returned from Coruscant. After that world’s metropolitan crush, she always welcomed the feeling of freedom that swept over her when she saw her world’s snowcapped mountains, shimmering glacier lakes, and broad blue sky.
Usually she celebrated her homecoming by taking a long walk outdoors, or even going for a dip in one of the lakes. This time, much more important tasks demanded her attention.
First Leia found one of the Wobani families she’d spoken to several days prior; she caught them on the eve of their departure, already preparing for their trip to Itapi Prime. “Why, yes, Your Highness,” said the father of the house. “My cousins have done a fair bit of trade through Calderos Station. I haven’t heard of that planet you mentioned—”
“Crait,” Leia repeated, hoping it would stir a memory.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t know that one at all. But Wobani and Itapi Prime, yes, very active through that station.”
“I don’t suppose you know exactly what trade they were active in?” She raised an eyebrow.
“Not at all, though I suppose I’ll find out soon. Going into the family business.” He smiled broadly; if he was lying to her, he was doing a good job of it.
As she’d anticipated, Breha was too wrapped up in plans for the next big party to welcome her daughter back home. The knowledge stung, but less than it usually did. Nothing comforted Leia as much as having work to do, or a puzzle to solve.
That night in the library, sitting beneath one of the star-globes, she reviewed the Calderos Station findings she’d been able to salvage. And salvage was the right word. When she’d gone into the senatorial databanks in search of more recent data, she found everything had been deleted, going back months before the attack on Calderos. Leia was used to information suddenly “disappearing”; Palpatine’s government was blatant in its erasure of history. This time, however, she thought the Empire might not be the ones to blame.
If some people are actually organizing to take action against the Empire, she reasoned, they’ll cover their tracks as well as they can. If those people were using Calderos as a vector for trading ships and armaments, they’d try to erase any data that could lead back to them—and they might even choose the base as a target. Cripple Imperial traffic in the area and conceal themselves, all at the same time: it’s a smart move.
Leia caught herself. She hated the Empire, of course, but that didn’t mean she should just pick up a blaster and start shooting at the first thing that made her mad. Her father had always stressed the importance of their work in the Senate, the need to fight for change through the law. Could she condone these people resorting to violence? Casualties at Calderos Station had been limited to a few injuries, but that kind of large-scale action would ultimately lead to loss of life.
How many people die because of Palpatine’s rule every year? Is it deadlier to fight against that kind of tyranny or to let it flourish? When is it time to give up on peace and take up arms?
She didn’t have answers to those questions. Probably she wouldn’t even if she had a degree in philosophy. Leia knew only one thing for certain: she wanted to know more.
There could be no question of taking the Tantive IV on a secret mission. Instead, Leia commandeered the Polestar and asked for a crew of only one.
“Crait?” Ress Batten frowned at the star charts. “I’ve never even heard of that system.”
“With good reason,” Leia said. She wore a pale coverall and had already stowed hiking gear on board the yacht. Finding activity on a planet as desolate as Crait might take a while. “There’s nothing there—or there shouldn’t be. I’m on a fact-finding mission for the Apprentice Legislature.” Since she was an apprentice, and the one in search of facts, she figured that didn’t count as a lie.
Batten wasn’t convinced. “I didn’t know you guys had fact-finding missions.”
Okay, add a little more detail. “I’m tracking a couple of shipments that headed out that way.”