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That was more than
    she could say for half the real people she had worked with since graduating from the
    Imperial Academy on Corulag. Together they checked over the ship in a record time,
    noting only a few small carbon scores on its port side and, near the aft sensor
    array, a blaster burn that had been weakened so much by the shields, it would barely
    have fried an egg.
    When they were done, she dismissed the droid, telling him to go take an oil bath or
    whatever he did for relaxation, and then set off to her quarters to work on the
    mission report she insisted had to be completed.
    That wasn't entirely a lie. She did need to report in detail to Lord Vader, just as
    she had on every mission she'd ever flown for him. The thing was, she didn't really
    need to do it right away. It could wait a standard hour or two, or even until the
    morning. But there was something else on her mind, something much more important
    that really couldn't wait any longer.
    Is there a psychological profile in there, too? she had asked the droid before
    they'd set out on their first mission together.
    Yes, the machine had told her, but it's restricted.
    That fact had burned in her all the way to Nar Shaddaa. It came as no surprise that
    such a file existed somewhere in the vast bureaucracy that was the Imperial Navy.
    Everyone probably had one, except Darth Vader and the Emperor. What rankled was that
    it was being talked about. PROXY knew where it was. The wretched machine might even
    have read it, for all his protest about it being restricted. A droid capable of
    impersonating Jedi Knights might have unknown capacities for deception.
    She wanted to know what that profile contained. What was it telling people about
    her? What secrets did it reveal to the galaxy in general-about her early life, her
    father, her career? About Callos?
    Her mouth was set in a determined line when she reached her quarters on the
    forty-first deck and activated her datapad. Hand-picked for special duties by Darth
    Vader himself, she had a certain degree of access to files normally hidden to those
    of her rank. Would that be sufficient for her to locate and read the file she
    wanted? There was only one way to find out.
    Carefully, and thoroughly, she began slicing into the flagship's data banks.
    The first files she found concerning her contained nothing unexpected, little more
    than the brief bio PROXY had given Starkiller in the hangar bay. She skimmed over
    them in seconds, probing deeper through the architecture of the data banks, seeking
    forgotten or overlooked corners of information. More snippets emerged. One talked
    about her mother, a woman she barely remembered who had been killed in crossfire
    between Imperial loyalists and insurgents on their home planet. She had been a
    teacher. The file contained a holo Juno had not seen before, an image of her mother
    with her with her long blond hair pinned back by a brooch made from a round black
    stone. Her eyes looked lively and amused. She seemed terribly young to be a mother,
    and dead.
    Among a list of high-ranking Corulag graduates, she came across her name appended to
    her complete academic record. The list of subjects and grades filled her with pride,
    as it always did, but with that emotion also came sadness. She had worked so hard
    and achieved so much, not just for herself, but for her father, too. A distant and
    strict man, especially after the death of his wife, he had been a fierce admirer of
    those serving the Empire. A civilian engineer, he would have signed up for the
    Academy himself had he not lulled the physical. So he should have been proud of his
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    daughter, who had graduated with such honor and gone on to achieve everything he had
    ever wanted. Why, then, had he not even shown up at her graduation? It didn't make
    any sense.
    That was an old, familiar hurt. The profile could talk about that aspect of her life
    as much as it wanted and she