The delegation consisted of two scientists, and only one of them had eyes.
Darren learned that thirty seconds into the interview, when the woman standing beside the window identified him without turning around.
The meeting room overlooked a lower bridge city, towers and transit lanes suspended over cloud so deep Darren’s Earth-trained sense of height had stopped translating it.
Eren Vosik arranged datapads across the table.
The woman beside the transparisteel had her back to the door, dark hair tied loosely behind her head and woven cloth covering the place where Darren expected eyes.
He entered quietly out of habit rather than intention.
“Mr. Vale.”
Darren stopped with one foot still inside the doorway.
Eren looked up while the woman remained facing the window.
Darren checked the room panel and polished table edge for a reflection or camera.
He found neither.
The woman turned with exactness that made approximation impossible, her covered face aligning with where his eyes were.
Memory supplied a game, a woman in red and a species whose relationship with the Force had once existed for Darren as lore on a screen.
Miraluka.
Recognition brought the same dislocation as his first hyperspace jump.
On Earth, Miraluka had been fictional information.
Here one stood across the room with a hand extended.
“Dr. Seris Vaal.”
Darren took the offered hand a fraction late.
Warm skin, ordinary pressure, no revelation; the normality made the encounter stranger rather than less so.
“Darren Vale.”
“I know.”
“I gathered.”
Behind her, Eren closed a datapad.
He was human, probably in his late fifties, thin, gray-haired and wearing a jacket that seemed fitted for somebody healthier.
“Professor Eren Vosik.”
Darren nodded to him.
“Professor.”
“Doctor is technically correct,” Eren said.
“Professor sounds older and therefore more expensive.”
Darren liked him immediately, an opinion that survived Eren pointing a stylus toward Seris.
“She does that to people.”
Seris turned toward him as if the correction deserved her full attention.
“I introduced myself.”
“You frightened him.”
“I was not frightened,” Darren said.
Seris answered without hesitation.
“Your pulse accelerated.”
Eren smiled.
“That also.”
Darren looked back at Seris.
“Excellent. We are beginning with privacy violations.”
The corner of Seris’s mouth shifted, not quite enough to claim as a smile.
“Sit down, Mr. Vale.”
“You knew where I was standing.”
“Yes.”
“Precisely.”
“Yes.”
He looked at the cloth across her face and decided that trying not to stare was more conspicuous than curiosity honestly managed.
“Miraluka?”
That earned the first pause before Seris answered.
“Yes.”
Confirmation removed the distance memory provided.
The Force was no longer attached to distant Jedi; a woman who used it to perceive the room was waiting for him to continue.
Seris tilted her head slightly.
“Are you familiar with my people?”
“Familiar is generous.”
“You knew what to ask.”
“Stories.”
“What kind?”
Darren chose the narrowest true answer available.
“Badly remembered ones.”
She considered him for a moment.
“Useful answer.”
Mara Kel arrived two minutes later with Darren’s application and a Republic Institute badge, looking like a woman who considered introductions a preventable delay.
“Koro Dess rated you satisfactory.”
Darren closed his eyes as the old annoyance returned.
“This will follow me forever.”
Mara frowned, and Seris supplied the explanation.
“He dislikes the word.”
“I do not dislike it.”
“You reacted negatively.”
Darren pointed at her without quite realizing he had done it.
“You and I are going to establish boundaries.”
“That would be appropriate.”
Eren laughed; Mara remained unmoved.
“Contract window is six days,” Mara said.
“Scheduled transit is three. The remainder covers departure delay, rerouting and handover contingency. Your responsibility ends when Doctors Vaal and Vosik are formally transferred to Institute security on Corellia.”
Mara continued before they could improve the joke.
“Six hundred credits. One hundred fifty advance. Passage, berth and meals covered.”
“What is the threat?”
“Undefined.”
His hand stopped before touching the contract.
“Then define what you can.”
“Doctors Vaal and Vosik spent seven weeks conducting independent analysis of structural failures in three suspended industrial facilities on Cato Neimoidia.”
Outside the window, a bridge city crossed the cloud layer between stone columns.
Darren found himself looking at its weight differently.
“Failures as in maintenance problems?”
Eren answered by opening a diagram.
“Metal fatigue, gravitic-compensation irregularities and two partial deck collapses.”
“Deaths?”
“Seventeen.”
Seventeen.
Darren’s attention left the cloth across Seris’s face and settled on the structural diagram.
“Cause?”
“Still under review,” Seris said.
Darren followed immediately.
“Your working model?”
“Multiple causes interacting.”
Eren enlarged the structural diagram.
“A subcontractor supplied load-bearing members outside the declared material specification. That should have produced accelerated fatigue and maintenance failures.”
“But not the collapses by itself,” Seris added.
“The gravitic compensation network also operated outside documented tolerance during several load cycles.”
“So poor material plus a system being pushed harder than the paperwork says.”
“Potentially,” Eren said.
“Which is precisely why we are not presenting the conclusion as settled.”
“Who benefits if you never get to present it at all?”
Mara answered by opening a second file.
“Vaskor Structural Systems. Reeve Industrial Holdings. Three subcontractors. Two insurers. Municipal authorities who signed compliance approvals.”
Darren studied the list.
“That is a healthy number of people to annoy.”
“No direct threat has been made,” Mara said.
Darren continued, “Indirect?”
“Temporary laboratory break-in.”
Darren’s attention moved immediately to her.
“When?”
“Four nights ago. Nothing obvious was stolen.”
“Data?”
“Redundant off-site storage.”
“Physical samples?”
“Some had been moved.”
“Personal property?”
Seris answered, “My travel case was opened.”
“Anything missing?”
“No.”
“What was inside?”
“Clothes.”
“Nothing else?”
She faced him with enough precision to make ordinary eye contact useless as a measure of attention.
“That is generally what clothes means.”
Darren almost smiled before clarifying.
“I am asking whether the person might have been searching for something small enough that you would not notice its absence.”
“I know.”
“I have noticed.”
Mara swiped to the next incident.
“Two days later, someone attempted to access Professor Vosik’s private travel schedule through an external service.”
“Successful?”
“No. Institute authentication rejected it.”
“Origin?”
“Commercial anonymization provider.”
“Local police?”
“Report filed. No result yet.”
Darren kept the pieces separate: break-in, opened luggage, attempted itinerary access, financially exposed organizations.
He still had no explicit threat, known assailant or proof that the incidents shared an author.
Industrial espionage was plausible.
So were intimidation, an insurer’s private investigator and coincidence.
Darren disliked the last mostly because coincidence made planning feel rude.
“Your research already exists elsewhere?”
“Yes,” Seris said.
Darren nodded toward the research file.
“So killing either of you does not erase the analysis.”
“No.”
“Could delay publication?”
“Yes.”
“Could complicate testimony or discredit the work?”
Eren gave him a tired look.
“People attempt that without killing scientists with impressive regularity.”
“Healthy civilization.”
“Debatable.”
Darren turned back to Mara, using the contract to force the problem into a boundary he could work with.
“What exactly am I responsible for?”
“People.”
“Not research, samples or data?”
“Institute information security handles the research. Your contract is personal safety during transit.”
Darren wrote the boundary at the top of his notes: people, not research.
Then he signed.
The hundred-fifty-credit advance arrived while Mara sent the travel credentials.
Seris rejected his first security plan in under four minutes.
Darren started with seating.
“Transit lounge. Professor Vosik against the interior wall. Dr. Vaal beside him. I take the outside seat with line of sight to both entrances.”
“No.”
He looked at Seris, who had not moved.
“Which part?”
“Seat Eren against the wall if you want. I prefer open space.”
“That increases exposure.”
“For you.”
Darren waited while Seris folded her hands on the table.
“Your plan assumes we perceive threats in the same way.”
Darren set the seating sketch aside.
“Explain what I should be planning for instead.”
Eren stepped behind Seris and, without warning, let his stylus fall.
Her hand moved before Darren heard the plastic strike anything.
She caught it beside her hip and set it on the table without turning.
Darren forgot to breathe for a fraction of a second.
The action was almost insulting in its simplicity: no gesture, no spectacle.
She had simply known where the stylus was behind her.
Eren looked delighted with himself until Seris turned toward him.
“I am not your demonstration.”
“He needed a demonstration.”
Seris left her hand beside the stylus.
Darren returned to the seating sketch.
The Force did not arrive with music.
It had just caught a piece of office stationery.
Seris’s head turned slightly toward him.
“Mr. Vale.”
“I am fine.”
“You are not.”
“I am professionally fine.”
Eren leaned toward Mara as if she might provide an institutional ruling.
“Is that a category?”
“No.”
Darren ignored them and forced his curiosity into a form the contract could actually use.
“Limits.”
Seris became more attentive at the change in Darren’s question.
“Of my perception?”
“Yes. Not philosophy. Operational limits.”
“Living beings are usually clearer than inert material,” Seris said.
“Physical objects are present, but not in the same way visual detail is present to you.”
“Walls?”
“Many obstacles do not prevent perception of a person behind them.”
“Both variable. Attention matters. Environment matters.”
“Weapons?”
“Sometimes shape or position. Do not ask me to identify a blaster model through three walls.”
“Color?”
“No.”
Darren glanced at a status light on the table.
“That indicator?”
“I know something is illuminated there. I do not experience amber.”
“Droids?”
“More difficult than living beings.”
“Cameras?”
“Inert.”
“Explosives?”
“Inert.”
“Someone behind me?”
“Usually easy.”
He nodded slowly, revising the terminal layout in his head.
“This is going to ruin several professional habits.”
Seris’s mouth shifted toward amusement.
“Adapt.”
Darren laughed once, more relieved by the edge of humor than he expected.
“I am beginning to suspect you interviewed me.”
“I did.”
Mara glanced down at the application.
“She approved you before I did.”
That pulled Darren’s attention back to Seris.
“Why?”
“You asked Mara about the break-in before you asked what I could do.”
Darren glanced at his notes.
He had nearly filled the first page before asking about the Force.
Darren changed the plan.
Eren would take the protected seat; Seris would keep room to move.
Darren would cover physical access, baggage and devices.
Before they left, he asked both scientists to open their travel cases.
The visual check found nothing he could distinguish from ordinary luggage.
The revised arrangement lasted eleven minutes before Seris said, quietly, “We have been followed since the second concourse.” Darren kept walking without giving the corridor behind them any visible attention.
“Where?”
“Twenty meters behind us, approximately.”
“Human?”
“Yes.”
“Male?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Armed?”
“I cannot tell from here.”
“What is he doing?”
“Walking.”
Darren resisted the urge to turn.
“That is not a crime.”
“No.”
“Emotional state?”
Seris hesitated this time, making the boundary itself part of the answer.
“That is a more intrusive question.”
“Can you answer it broadly?”
“Yes.”
“Then broadly.”
“Nervous.”
Nervous could mean surveillance, a reporter chasing a quote, a thief who felt noticed or a passenger late for a connection.
“Keep our pace. Tell me if he closes the distance.”
Seris turned her covered face toward Darren.
“I can watch him without turning.”
Darren exhaled.
“I am going to hate working with you.”
“I doubt that.”
Eren, walking between them, lowered his voice.
“She is enjoying this.”
“I know.”
“How?”
Darren glanced at him with deliberate innocence.
“Human perception.”
A polished advertising display stood ahead.
Darren used it instead of turning around.
The reflection showed a young human male with a messenger bag and no visible weapon.
He noticed Darren using the display and looked away too quickly.
Suspicious, Darren thought, or merely embarrassed.
Darren changed pace and watched him adjust.
At the next concourse Darren stopped beside a beverage kiosk.
The man continued past, made it fifteen meters, then turned back.
Darren shifted into the approach line before the stranger reached them.
“That is far enough.”
“Doctor Vaal?”
Seris sighed.
Darren waited for a name.
“Mr. Pehl.”
Darren looked at her instead of the reporter.
“You know him.”
“Junior correspondent.”
Pehl reached into the messenger bag.
Darren shifted between him and Eren, his hand stopping short of the blaster as a recorder cleared the opening.
“Doctor, one statement about the Vaskor findings—”
“No.”
“Professor Vosik, there is a report that your model excludes operator error—”
“It does not,” Eren said.
Pehl pressed immediately.
“So you confirm the equipment—”
Eren drew breath to answer, and Darren touched his forearm lightly.
“Professor.”
The scientist caught the reminder and closed his mouth with visible pain.
Pehl shifted targets before the silence could close.
“Doctor Vaal, Vaskor says the Institute falsified load-cycle assumptions—”
Seris walked past him, and Darren followed with Eren, placing himself between the reporter and the delegation until Pehl finally stopped trying to turn pursuit into an interview.
When they reached the next concourse, Seris said, “He has been refused interviews all week. I suspect he expected you to threaten him.”
“I almost did.”
“I know.”
Darren looked at her and found the beginning of a smile.
“Boundary.”
She said nothing, which was probably worse.
Darren kept Pehl’s name with the incident notes.
Nervousness alone would have made the wrong entry.
Seris did not find the first tracker.
Darren did, which improved his mood far more than professionalism justified.
At the boarding checkpoint, a luggage trolley lifted Eren’s document case level with Darren’s waist.
He asked the professor not to lift it off yet.
Eren tolerated the second inspection like a man watching his dignity be itemized.
Darren ran two fingers along the underside of the professor’s document case.
Something moved beneath his fingers, and he stopped immediately.
A black disk three centimeters wide sat against the case frame under magnetic backing, convincing enough to pass for part of the luggage.
“Do not touch the bag.”
Eren froze while Seris turned toward them.
“What?”
Darren crouched without putting his hand near the disk again.
“Unidentified attachment.”
He called terminal security instead of removing the device himself.
Two officers cleared the immediate area and examined the disk before isolating it.
Their reader identified a passive commercial locator: it answered a compatible short-range interrogation signal.
No explosive charge was found.
The disk had no means of broadcasting to another planet or following them through hyperspace.
Eren stared at the case as though it had personally betrayed him.
“That was not there this morning.”
Darren looked up at him.
“Certain?”
“My case was on my desk.”
“That is not the same question.”
Eren started to answer, stopped and examined his own memory.
“No. I am not certain.”
“Good.”
Seris stood beside the bag and considered the sealed device.
“I would not have noticed it.”
“Because it is inert?” Darren asked.
“I perceive inert objects. I do not inspect every inert object in my environment merely because it exists.”
Darren looked at the recessed case frame.
During his first check, the bag had stayed flat on the table.
He smiled, and Seris noticed immediately.
“Why are you pleased?”
“Professional relevance.”
“Your ego.”
“Adjacent concepts.”
Terminal security logged the locator.
Similar units were sold for cargo tracking, asset recovery and personal location.
Its serial number had been abraded, making innocent use less likely without identifying who planted it.
Mara joined by secure comm and went directly to the decision.
“Do we delay?”
Darren looked beyond the checkpoint at the passengers boarding the Sable Meridian.
“Can the Institute hold them somewhere secure on Cato Neimoidia?”
“Yes.”
“Safer than the ship?”
Mara hesitated before admitting, “Not clearly.”
“Then I would keep the schedule.”
Seris turned toward him, asking for the part that mattered.
“Reasoning?”
“We have a berth and security aboard. On Cato, your laboratory has already been entered. I wouldn’t trade the ship for a room here unless the Institute can give us a better reason than delay.”
Eren frowned at the departure lanes beyond security.
“And if the person responsible is aboard?”
“Then leaving Cato won’t end it. The ship’s chief needs this report before departure.”
Seris rested a hand on the trolley.
“And you can’t tell us the ship is safer.”
“No. I can tell you what security it has. There could be somebody aboard with a reader.”
“For all three of us to worry about,” she said.
“Four,” Eren said.
Darren looked at him, briefly confused.
“Who?”
“The person you are clearly hoping tries something stupid.”
A smile escaped Darren before he could stop it.
“I like scientists.”
Mara did not laugh; instead she returned them to the contractual boundary.
“The clients decide.”
Seris turned toward Eren.
“They are already telling people what our report says. I want to be there when we present it. I prefer to continue.”
Eren looked at the sealed tracker.
“So do I. I have spent seven weeks with Neimoidian hotel breakfast. If somebody wants me to stay longer, they have misunderstood the threat model.”
Darren nodded.
“Then we board.”
The Sable Meridian was large enough to make Darren miss cargo.
Passenger decks stacked above service corridors, lounges and dining areas while crew routes threaded through only partly public maps.
Two hundred people created more uncertainty than twenty-eight containers simply by wanting coffee.
There were too many corridors, too many doors, too many uniforms Darren had not learned and, most irritatingly, too many droids.
Koro would have enjoyed telling him that people were harder than boxes.
Darren hated that he could already hear the Herglic’s answer.
The tracker remained with terminal security.
Darren photographed the isolation receipt, sent it to Mara and made sure ship security received the incident report before departure.
The report included the terminal officers’ device profile and the limits of the inspection so far.
Only after the incident report was transferred did he check the cabins.
Seris and Eren had adjacent rooms; Darren was across the corridor.
He had asked for connecting accommodations, and the transport company had interpreted adjacent generously.
A crew representative offered a connecting pair for ninety credits, but no room for Darren nearby.
He kept the adjacent cabins.
From his door he could cover both.
Seris stood in the corridor while he checked locks, emergency exits and the ventilation panel.
“You do not have to inspect every screw.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No.”
Darren looked down from the access panel.
“How many screws?”
“Six.”
He counted six and climbed down without the satisfaction of finding anything wrong.
“This working relationship is becoming abusive.”
“I did not.”
“You were going to.”
Eren opened his cabin door while Darren was still putting the panel tool away.
“Does anyone want dinner?”
“After departure.”
The professor sighed with the weariness of a man already regretting the contract.
“This is why I prefer laboratory security.”
“You had a break-in.”
“Yes.”
“Excellent example.”
For the first time Seris laughed openly enough that Darren did not have to infer it from the shape of her mouth.
Her laugh made the corridor feel, briefly, less like a protection problem and more like somewhere people would actually live for three days.
Hyperspace came two hours later.
Darren watched from an observation window, already familiar with the vibration that reached the deck before the stars stretched and still waiting for it anyway.
Seris stood beside him with one hand resting near the observation rail.
Only after the blue-white tunnel filled the viewport did Darren understand the obvious problem.
“You do not see this.”
“No.”
“Anything?”
“Yes.”
He waited instead of filling the silence.
Seris smiled slightly at the shape of the question.
“That is a very human question.”
“You are Miraluka.”
“Yes.”
“I am still allowed to be bad at this.”
“That appears to be happening naturally.”
Darren laughed, then returned to the part curiosity could use.
“What changes for you?”
She rested one hand lightly against the railing.
“The transition changes how the ship feels in the Force. The people aboard as well.”
“Feels how?”
“Would you explain blue to someone who had never possessed sight?”
Darren looked back toward the tunnel.
“Badly.”
“Yes.”
He lowered his voice before saying the word that still felt larger than ordinary conversation.
“The Force.”
Seris turned toward him.
Saying it to someone who used it ordinarily stripped away another layer of distance.
“You rely on it constantly.”
“Yes.”
“You are not Jedi.”
“No.”
“Never trained as one?”
“Not as one.”
“And what you do is normal for you.”
“For me, yes.”
Darren watched reflected hyperspace move across the dark fabric covering her face.
On Earth, the Force had reached him through stories about exceptional people.
Seris used it to find a chair or hear his pulse change.
The ordinariness unsettled him more than spectacle would have.
“No offense.”
“Usually what precedes offense.”
“On my first hyperspace jump, I realized I had spent years thinking of this as something abstract. Then the deck moved under my feet.”
Darren could not say fiction.
The pact with the woman from Apeiron marked that boundary more firmly than any law.
“And me?” Seris asked.
“Same problem.”
“You thought the Force was abstract.”
Darren felt one hard beat of his heart and knew she had probably noticed that too.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
A reasonable question with an impossible honest answer.
“Long story.”
“I am a scientist.”
“That is exactly why I am not telling it.”
She laughed softly and turned toward the window.
Darren looked at the hyperspace tunnel, aware that none of his memories had prepared him for what the same view meant, or failed to mean, to her.
Ship security contacted Darren thirty-seven minutes after the jump.
The message arrived through his contractor channel while he was reviewing the delegation’s movement plan.
SECURITY INQUIRY — PASSENGER PROTECTION CONTRACTOR VALE
A Gran appeared on the secure display, three eyes fixed on Darren beneath a passenger-security collar.
“Mr. Vale.”
“Chief.”
“We received the terminal incident report concerning the locator recovered from Professor Vosik’s baggage.”
“Yes.”
“Terminal security retained the device?”
“Yes.”
“Then we have a problem.”
Darren straightened.
“Which problem?”
“Our sensors logged a polling signal eleven minutes ago. Its handshake matches the locator in the terminal report.”
“The device stayed on Cato Neimoidia,” Darren said.
“Searching for the same kind of device?”
“Yes. There may be another compatible locator aboard.”
Darren looked across the corridor toward Seris’s cabin, then Eren’s.
“Where was the interrogation signal?”
“Passenger Deck Seven.”
Darren was on Deck Seven.
Of course.
“How precise?”
“We can place its source within an area roughly thirty meters across.”
“How many passengers on Seven?”
“Two hundred six registered across the deck section.”
Darren rubbed one hand over his face.
Cargo had been easier because cargo rarely hid another piece of cargo inside its coat.
“Can you sweep for the locator?”
“Yes. Without another pulse to work from, we have to search for the hardware. That can take hours.”
“Source of the interrogation?”
“Also uncertain. Low power, short duration.”
Across the corridor, Seris’s door opened.
She stepped out and immediately turned toward him.
“You changed.”
Darren kept the communicator near his ear.
“What?”
“Your breathing.”
He raised one finger.
Not now.
She stopped.
The Gran asked, “Do you want your clients moved?”
Darren looked down the corridor.
Staying preserved routine but left them on the searched deck; moving them exposed ship security’s concern but reduced uncontrolled access.
“What secure spaces do you have?”
“Two compartments on crew level.”
“Controlled access?”
“Yes.”
“Independent cameras?”
“Yes.”
“Droids?”
“Yes.”
Seris spoke more quietly than before.
“Someone is standing around the corner.”
Darren went still.
The Gran heard her through the open channel.
“What?”
Darren lifted a hand toward the communicator.
“Wait.” Then he turned fully toward Seris.
“How far?”
“Perhaps twelve meters.”
“Human?”
“Yes.”
“Moving?”
“No.”
Darren’s hand settled near his blaster without drawing it.
“Eren stays inside.”
Seris acknowledged him with a single nod while Darren placed himself between her and the corridor intersection, keeping enough distance from the wall to move either direction.
“Can you tell what they are doing?”
“No.”
“Armed?”
“Nothing I can identify from here.”
Footsteps reached him a few seconds later.
A middle-aged human cleaner came around the corner in ship-service gray, carrying a kit.
Darren moved aside to leave her a clear path.
She saw him standing between Seris and the intersection with his hand near a weapon and stopped.
“Oh.”
Darren lowered his hand immediately.
“Sorry.”
The cleaner stared at him for a moment, then walked past, keeping her kit between them.
Darren waited until she was clear before turning back to Seris.
Seris folded her arms.
Darren looked at her.
“Not one word.”
“I said nothing.”
“Your face covering is judgmental.”
The locator report remained open on his screen.
The cleaner had passed; the polling signal still had no explanation.
“Chief, move us.”
Seris tilted her head.
“We’re moving?”
“That is my recommendation.”
“Because of the woman?”
“No.” Darren glanced at the report.
“We still have this.”
“At the terminal we had a passive tag. Now something aboard has searched Deck Seven for a compatible locator. That changes the risk.”
Seris nodded.
“Tell Eren. We should move.”
The chief said, “I will send two officers.”
“Human?”
“One human. One security droid.”
Darren looked at Seris.
“One for each blind spot.”
“Exactly.”
They woke Eren, who responded to the possibility of active surveillance with less outrage than he showed at being awakened.
“I had just fallen asleep.”
“Someone aboard may be searching for another tracker.”
Eren sat up.
“That seems more serious.”
“It is.”
“Still terrible timing.”
Ten minutes later, the delegation moved through crew-access corridors toward the secure compartment.
The human security officer led.
Eren and Seris walked in the center.
Darren followed, with the security droid behind him covering the categories living attention might miss.
Darren kept the group in sight while the droid watched the corridor behind them.
Seris moved without touching the walls, her covered face angled slightly toward turns before they reached them.
Darren watched her for half a second too long.
She turned toward him without breaking stride.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Your pulse changed.”
“Boundary.”
“Then stop looking at me.”
“You know I am looking.”
“Yes.”
Darren faced forward.
“That remains horrifying.”
“I have been told.”
The human officer keyed the secure compartment.
Eren went inside first.
Seris followed.
Darren stopped at the threshold.
Somewhere among passengers, crew and service machines, a transmitter had searched for a locator like the one left on Cato Neimoidia.
Darren stepped inside as the door began to close.
Seris turned toward the room before the lights fully rose, Eren found the nearest chair by sight, and the droid extended its scanner toward their bags and clothing.
The door sealed.