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while a droid checked his vitals. His furred face lit up when he saw them.
    “Keets! I saw you hit.”
    “They can hit me, but they can’t kill me,” Keets replied.
    The med droid rolled closer, its sensors blinking. “Weak vitals. Sit on pod.”
    Keets moved to a pod next to Curran and sat. “Gladly.”
    “We’ll leave you to it,” Dex said. “If you’re cleared to join us, we’ll be in the galley.”
    “I’ll be cleared,” Keets promised.
    “Negative, vitals too weak,” the droid said.
    “I’ll be cleared, you clanking heartless hunk of sensors,” Keets said. “Now fix me up, quick.” He lay back and closed his eyes, finally giving in to the exhaustion
and the pain.
    After they got to the hallway, Dex chuckled. “He looks half-dead, that Keets, but I wager he’ll be up and about in no time. Now come this way. I’ve been cooking up my special
relish, and I can still dish up some sliders.”
    Trever pushed away his third helping. Dex had insisted that they not discuss what was happening while they ate, and although it had been hard for all of them, they’d
managed to eat something without their stomachs churning. Trever was still worried about Ferus, furious and scared, but at least he’d managed to eat. Dex had regaled them with stories during
their meal, stories about the street they were living on. It was called Thugger’s Alley, using sub-level Coruscant slang for lowlifes and thieves. Nobody on the outside was quite sure who
lived there; mostly they kept their distance.
    Dex, however, knew who lived here. Some lowlifes, surely, he said with a chuckle, but more of those like the Erased, those who despised what the Emperor represented and declined to live under
his rules. So they set up elaborate security and so far the Empire had left them alone.
    “Of course we can’t fight them,” Dex said. “But we’ll see them coming.”
    “I wish I could say the same,” Solace said.
    “Now, enough of that,” Dex said kindly. “No looking back, isn’t that the Jedi way?”
    “Something like that,” she replied. Her gaze was remote.
    “Hmm…what’s next to do, then? You don’t know where they took Ferus?”
    “Just that he was arrested.” Trever felt his stomach lurch. He shouldn’t have eaten all those sliders after all. They felt sour in his stomach now.
    One of Dex’s four hands came down on his shoulder with surprising gentleness. “There isn’t a place in the galaxy we can’t find him, so don’t you worry.”
    “That’s right,” Solace said. “We’ll start with likely prisons and move out from there. We’ll need transports; I don’t have a hyperdrive on my
ship.”
    “Transports we can get for you,” Dex said.
    “That’s a random plan,” Trever pointed out. “By the time you find him, he could be executed a dozen times. What we need is information.”
    Solace looked at him, startled. She wasn’t used to being questioned, he guessed. But if a plan was stupid, somebody had to say so, in his opinion.
    “Do you have a better idea?” she asked, looking down her nose at him.
    Trever felt his irritation flare. “Just give me a minute—it won’t be hard.”
    “Now hold on here,” Dex said. “Solace, with due respect, Trever is right. If you go from prison to prison, it could take years. The Empire has more prisons than banthas have
ticks. What we need is infiltration.”
    Trever noticed that Curran and Keets had quietly entered the room. Curran looked stronger, his glossy hair now smoothed and pulled back into the thick metal ring. His small, furred face was
alert. Keets had a bacta bandage on his side and winced as he sat down in a chair.
    “It’s time for exposure,” Dex said.
    He looked at Oryon, Keets, and Curran. “We’ve lost good friends on this day,” he continued. “The other Erased have gone underground again. I have a sweet spot here, and
you’re welcome to share it. It’d be safe, I guarantee that, at least until the Empire feels like