The stop over in Velkos Eridini was supposed to have been a quiet chance for the Goldrunner’s crew to catch their breath. Velkos Eridini was also supposed to be abandoned.

“Unidentified freighter please transmit your transponder codes now and maintain your current orbital distance. Failure to comply with either of these directives will be place you in violation of the terms of the Covenant of Landfall,” the prim voice of a young human male said.

“What’s the Covenant of Landfall?” Sali asked.

“Ugh,” Ayli groaned. “Not them.”

“Can’t really be anyone else,” Zindiana said. “Not out here.”

“Who’s them?” Nix asked, not sensing anything amiss from the voice on the comms, but well aware that ‘not dangerous in the Force’s estimation’ and ‘not a problem’ were vastly different things.

“The Preservation League,” Ayli said. “They work out here on the rim mostly, but they’ve claimed a few worlds in towards to the core too.”

“They lay legal claim to abandoned or ruined worlds,” Zindiana said. “On the surface it’s for a noble cause, they’re focus is on restoring the worlds to a habitable state through slow natural processes.”

“And those natural processes involve fertilizing the ground with the blood of countless enemies?” Sali asked.

“No. Worse,” Ayli said.

“The restoration of the planets is above board – sort of,” Zindiana said. “Their techniques are simple, involving mostly manual labor by sapients and the long time spans needed for ecosystems to achieve the equilibrium the Preservation League desires. The problem lies in how they arrange for the manual labor to be performed.”

“Slaves?” Nix guessed, though that didn’t seem quite right. 

“Criminals,” Ayli said. “They buy criminals and make them work off their sentences.”

“That sounds disturbingly above board,” Sali said. “What’s the problem?”

“The problem comes from the fact that they don’t trust their workforce out of the range of a stun stick,” Zindiana said. “They put everyone in thermo-collars, have one security droid for every ‘worker’, and a rulebook so long that even the droids can’t remember it.”

“And whenever you do anything with them, you have to do it exactly how their rulebook says.”

“Or what?” Sali asked.

“Or the thermo-collars blow up,” Zindiana said, miming an explosion at neck level.

“How is that allowed?” Nix asked, knowing she shouldn’t be surprised given the galaxy she lived in, but still disturbed by how open and accepted the arrangement seemed to be.

“Not a lot of laws out here on the Rim,” Zindiana said.

“And even in the core, criminals convicted of galactic crimes lose a lot of their rights,” Ayli said. “Also, the ‘workers’ technically volunteer for that treatment.”

“Oh sure, because people facing time in a galactic prison aren’t under any coercion there at all,” Sali said.

“Unidentified freighter, this is your second warning,” the man said. “The third warning will come in the form of disabling your ship and selling it for parts to pay for your trial and incarceration. Should you wish to join the Preservation League, I am required to instruct you that a criminal conviction is not required and that applicants with a clean history in both local and New Republic jurisdictions are eligible for special signing bonuses which are forfeit should hostile actions be taken against Preservation League holdings.”

There was a trace of forced cheer in the man’s voice but Nix thought she heard a trace of genuine amusement there as well.

“You people are the worst,” Ayli said after hitting the transmit button, “Transponder codes sent and orbit locked in.”

“I could blow them up,” Goldie said, after, Nix noticed, the transmit light switched off.

“Tempting,” Ayli said.

“But probably not a good idea,” Zindiana said.

“They’ve only got the one ship up here with us,” Goldie said. “I’m pretty sure I can hole their jump drive from here and even if we miss, we’d be able to jump before they got in range to do any real damage.”

“Do you really want to kill everyone on board that ship?” Nix asked without admonishment.

“That depends on whether they plan to stick thermo-collars on your necks or not,” Goldie said.

“That’s fair,” Sali said.

And it wasn’t at all worrisome that the fledgling machine intelligence was calibrating its moral compass to be in line with a pirate queen.

“They won’t be putting collars on us,” Zindiana said. “They’d have to purchase us first.”

“Aren’t you technically an escaped fugitive?” Sali asked.

“Technically we all are,” Zindiana said. “In practice though, the Preservationists only deal with criminals convicted in galactic courts. Local laws are too varied to be sure the convictions will be honored in other jurisdictions.”

“We’ll need somewhere we can set down to make repairs,” Nix said. “Are they going to let us land?”

“Depends what state the planet is in,” Zindiana said.

“And how much we’re willing to pay,” Ayli said.

“I don’t recall any of us being terrible flush with funds at the moment,” Nix said.

“Speak for yourself,” Sali said. “I’ve got a nice little hoard back on Calerpris.”

“Do you?” Ayli asked, as though Sali was forgetting a small but vital factoid.

“Okay, I had a nice little hoard,” Sali said. “Now a whole bunch of other people have my hoard. Doesn’t change that it’s still my hoard.”

“That hoard sucked and you know it,” Nix said. “Each coin you had was costing you two coins worth of sanity and three coins worth of sleep.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Sali said, turning away to stare at a random point on the readout that was showing the ships current waste reclamation levels.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ayli said. “We’re not paying them. Not even if a room full of credits plopped into our hold from out of nowhere.”

“Paying them wouldn’t make things easier?” Nix asked, imagining some of the loan sharks former captains had been in debt too. Payments were always demanded and never enough.

“It’s never a direct payment with them,” Zindiana said. “It’s always a donation.”

“And then you’re on their donor rolls. For life,” Ayli said. “Which they advertise to everyone.”

“They have a lot of other methods of profiting off an ‘official business relationship’ as well. Including things like selling your current location, no matter where that is,” Zindiana said.

“And framing you for crimes so they can seize your assets and buy you into their workforce,” Ayli said.

“They sound just lovely,” Nix said.

“I’ve got the shot now,” Goldie said. “I can put a meter wide hole through their jump drive and their ion drive. They won’t be able to do anything.”

“They’re not the ones we need to worry about,” Zindiana said. “Ping out a scan for ion trails around the moons.”

A moment later the long distance scanners flashed with over a dozen new “potential” contacts.

“They don’t operate alone, but they do lay traps for raiders,” Zindiana said.

“That’s a lot of ships,” Sali said. “Oh is that a Providence-class Destroyer?”

“Refurbished most likely,” Zindiana said. “They made out well in the bidding on the Trade Federation’s assets after the Galactic Civil War ended.”

The inter-ships comms crackled to life again before Nix could ask how a group like the Preservationists had been tolerated by both the Empire and the New Republic.

“Welcome to the Velkos Eiridini system Goldrunner. My name is Thirty-Two XJ7. What reason would you like recorded for your visit to this controlled territory?”

“Refuge,” Zindiana said before anyone else could speak up.

“No!” Ayli groaned after muting the comms. “Now they’re going to want a full witness statement.”

“Oh, refuge? Today might be interesting after all,” Thirty-two said. “Would you like to fill out the short form for temporary lodging or the long form for a permanent residence?”

“Neither,” Ayli said. “We’re just passing through.”

“That’s wonderful. Travel through controlled space requires a visa and identity registration from one of the participating planetary governments. If you have those items duly notarized, you can, of course, transmit them now and I would be happy to forward them on to our customs review board. If not, we can start with the Declaration of Identity forms for all sapients on board or who have traveled in your company in the last seven standard rotations.”

Nix could sense that Thirty-two was enjoying this. Not because he enjoyed paperwork, or held any love for the system he worked under. That sort of joy would have held a different weight to it. No, from what Nix could tell, Thirty-two was simply delighted that someone else was going to have to experience the bureaucratic misery which composed the majority of his life.

“Transmitting Visas and Identity registrations now,” Goldie said on the inter-ship comms. “We have them in Seventh Core format, with the latest security patches as of the scheduled update cycle for this annum. If you require a newer security level, please advise.”

Ayli muted the comms again. “What did you just send him?”

“The new Republic has specs on the credentials he asked for. So I generated some for you. Well, not your real identities, but unless they ansible back to Coruscant for confirmation, the signatures I used should stand up,” Goldie said.

“And if they do check with the central banks you impersonated?” Zindiana asked.

“Oh, then the game is definitely up,” Goldie said. “We can claim corruption in the transmission except that there’s no chance a corrupt security seal would have the right self-verification information.”

“You had Visa’s ready for this system?” Thirty-two asked. “And you’re seeking refuge here?”

It wasn’t that he’d found fault in the documents. Not yet at least. He wasn’t even unhappy that they had the documents on hand. Quite the contrary. He sounded oddly pleased instead.

“Yes,” Ayli said, and left it at that.

“And you are confident these will pass our Customs Review Board?” Thirty-two asked.

“They’re legit, so unless your Customs board is a glitched out astromech droid or something, this is just wasting our time,” Ayli said, annoyance drowning the lie. 

The Force wrapped itself around her words, amplifying the certainty she put into them so that they sounded convincing even to Nix, who knew for a fact where the lie was.

“Oh,” Thirty-two said as though noticing Force embellishment the words carried. “Well in that case you should be able to leave orbit in six standard hours, once the Review Board has validated the files.”

“Six standard hours is enough time to contact Coruscant isn’t it?” Sali asked off-mic.

“It is. And they will,” Zindiana said. “It’s their best bet for making a profit. And for taking us on as ‘untrusted contractors’ since falsifying galactic identity information is a galactic crime.”

“I don’t think Thirty-two is interested in a profit,” Nix said. “He’s looking for something else.”

“He probably wants help escaping,” Zindiana said. “What he wants is sadly irrelevant though since it’s the Preservationist rulebook, and the security droids who are enforcing it, that are calling the shots.”

“Well, we’ve got six hours to figure out how to fix that then,” Goldie said. “Or we can fight.”

“You have a crazy ship here if it wants to fight a Providence-class Destoyer,” Sali said.

“Oh that one, I’m planning to run away from,” Goldie said. “Mom did not give me shield sufficient to repel that kind of firepower.”

“Ah, someone who acknowledges their own limitations,” Zindiana said. “That’s a breath of fresh air.”

“Maybe she’s right,” Nix said, the beginning of a plan starting to form as a collection of disconnected pieces in her mind.

“You think we should fight too?” Ayli asked. “No, wait, you’ve got something else in mind. Something sneaky.”

“How can you tell?” Nix asked, wondering if Ayli was growing more sensitive in understanding the Force.

“You’ve got a gleam in your eye that’s just like when we blasted off from Calerpris,” Ayli said.

“I hate this plan already,” Sali said.

“You hate it now,” Nix said. “If it works out though, I think you’re absolutely going to love it, Admiral.”