Chapter 1

“Captain, there is an intruder aboard ship.”

Laika looked away from where she had been reviewing the details of their destination and her preparation for landfall, rubbing her head to ease the tension she felt. She was currently sat at the pilot’s station, that being as good a place as any given they were in hyperspace and there wasn’t much else for her to do. S1, her droid, sleek, slender, androgynously female, and encased in plain white plasteel, was sat beside her in the co-pilot’s chair, monitoring the ship’s systems, whose input made no sense. “What do you mean an intruder?”

“There is a humanoid female in the mess room. She has accessed your supply of energy bars and is currently drinking a carton of dalgossan milk. Hastily’,” it said, emotionless as always, there being no more urgency than if it had been listing the items on the shopping list for their next visit to a port.

“Show me.”

“Captain,” S1 confirmed, it’s hand darting over the controls as the view screen to the right of the main window blinked into life. Sure enough, there was a definitely someone there, humanoid, female, young, dressed in some kind of anonymous short kaftan in cream with darker sleeves and trousers, and a pair of black knee-high boots. As Sir had said, Laika could see her, gulping down blue milk between taking almost panicky bites of one of the energy bars she had found.

“How ... odd,” Laika began. Clearly, this should not have happened. her ship’s internal sensors should have registered her the moment she had set foot aboard, but somehow they had not. Equally, Laika should have known the instant any sentient being was aboard, even something as non-sentient as a lower order mammal or reptile, but there had been nothing. Centring herself for a moment and reaching out into the Force, Laika was shocked to discover she couldn’t sense anything. An android, perhaps? Except that didn’t make sense, androids didn’t eat and whoever she was, she was certainly eating. A cyborg, then, but again, if she were, both she and S1 would have detected her long ago, and why couldn’t she detect her still? “S1, lock the ship down until I get there.”

“Yes, Captain,” S1 answered, internal locks activating as it spoke.

“Once I get there, unlock only the door into the mess.”

“Understood, Captain,” S1 confirmed as it turned back to looking at the readouts on the small screen it had been using, the lettering written in the internal code of the ship’s systems and utterly meaningless to Laika without a droid to translate for her. Presumably something in there showed the status of the ship’s doors.

“Time to meet our unexpected guest,” Laika said to herself as she got up, unclipping her lightsabre from her belt, nodding to S1 to temporarily release the cockpit door as she slipped through and headed around the upper corridor to the mess. It wasn’t far, her ship wasn’t big, but worryingly she still wasn’t able to feel anything or anyone in the Force either. There were a multitude of ways that could be done that she knew of, some with tech, some simply with willpower, but this didn’t seem to be any of them. They all had something to them which, if you were sensitive enough, you could notice, like you can tell when something is missing. This was not that. And that worried her.

Any more introspection was interrupted as Laika found herself standing in front of the door into the mess. Taking a moment to centre herself and prepare for anything and everything, she said aloud, knowing she was being monitored. “S1? The door please?”

“Yes, Captain,” came the disembodied voice over the ship’s internal speaker systems as the door audibly clicked before, a moment later, Laika stepped forward, triggering the door’s sensors as it swished open. There inside was the stowaway, still sitting on the table, cross-legged, grinning in a way that said she knew she had been caught but wasn’t too worried about it. To her side was the carton on milk, now empty, and with a wink the young woman began to hastily chew on the last of her stolen energy bar.

“Oopsie,” she smiled as she swallowed, seeming both unthreatening and unthreatened.

“And you are?” Laika asked, curious how, even this close, she still couldn’t sense the young woman. If that was what she was.

“Probably in trouble? Maybe not as much as I was going to be though?”

“And you are?” Laika repeated, slower, moving her arm out from her body a little, not because she felt she needed her lightsabre, but to make sure the young woman saw it.

“Oh! You meant names? I’m Arlaud,” she said, smiling proudly. “Hi. Nice ship.”

“Thank you. And tell me, Arlaud, how did you get on?”

“No name?”

“How did you get on board my ship?”

“You’re going to be like that? Okay. Me too. How? Sneakily.”

“And get past the station droids? My droid?”

Arlaud shrugged.

“And past me?”

“Ooh. That part’s the best part. Because I can. Also, sorry if you’ve had a headache or anything—”

“—How did you know?” Laika interrupted, surprised, sure she was hiding her discomfort.

Arlaud shrugged. “Same way I’m here. I hid. But if you can do what I can do, I can give you a headache. Not on purpose, it’s just, you know, a side effect. If I’m not careful. So I have to be careful,” she whispered.

“You’re still being careful.”

“Mostly.”

“And what is it you can do?”

“Hide, of course.”

“I see, and now you’re not hiding, why shouldn’t I kick a stowaway out of the airlock?”

“Pity? Humanity? Charity? Pretty please?” she smiled.

Laika sighed. Whatever else this Arlaud was, she clearly didn’t pose too much of a threat, apart from the continuing headache. “And you’ll tell me how you do ... this?”

“You don’t know? Oh. You don’t, do you. Wow. Maybe. Depends what’s happening about that airlock you mentioned.”

“That depends on what you tell me about what’s going on here. Come on. Full story.”

“I needed to get off Comisetti. You were my best chance. So I took it.”

“And you call that a full story?” Laika asked, beginning to be a little charmed by Arlaud’s confidence if nothing else. Most people found Laika to be much more intimidating when facing her in such a situation, and she was pretty sure she was not losing her edge, making Arlaud’s assuredness all the more charming.

“Oh, you want the full story? Well you see, about fifteen standards ago I was born, just another daughter of a struggling family—”

—Laika couldn’t suppress her smile. “Less full?”

“They were going to sell me on to someone who I found out was not nice. No more dancing for me. Well ... he wanted me for the ‘other’ kind. You know—”

“—I can guess.” Laika interrupted, not needing to hear that part of her story and curiously not wanting to put Arlaud through the telling of it. Cute kid. “And so you stowed away?”

Arlaud nodded. “Because of you.”

“Me? What about me?”

“Oh. Aren’t we supposed to talk about it?” Arlaud asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“Talk about what?”

“You know. You’re one of them.”

“One of what?” Laika asked, only slightly theatrically clipping her lightsabre back onto her belt.

“You know. My people call it the rengan, you know, the glue that holds everything together. Don’t know what you call it but I know you’re good at it.”

“Do you now?” Laika asked, wondering what else this young woman knew that she shouldn’t have known. Laika was very careful to keep things like that hidden unless she had no other choice, and here was Arlaud, seeing through it all as if it were nothing.

“Yep. So, you, haha, want a cabin girl? Apprentice? That kind of thing?”

“What makes you think I need either of those things, and from a stowaway?”

“Ah. Yeah ... When you put it like that, I don’t have much of a chance, do I?” she asked, again, very unconcerned.

“Especially as I still don’t know how you are able to hide from me.”

“Oh. That part? That’s easy for my people. Our planet? Trangar IX? You don’t know it? Okay, well anyway, the thing is, it’s a great place to grow up and live, no visitors, nothing those with the really big ships want, haha, but it’s harsh there, mostly on account of all the predators. So long ago my people learned how to use the rengan to hide ourselves. We can’t do it permanently, but if there’s a predator coming for you, or if you’re sneaking up on them to even the score, it’s something we can do, kind of like wrapping it around ourselves so you can’t see through to where we are. I...” Arlaud paused as she looked at her drink, empty, and the wrapper of her snack, not even crumbs were left. “I needed to eat.”

“This ‘hiding’ of yours? Do you think you could teach me how to do that?” Laika asked, it being a skill which, if teachable, would be very useful to her.

“You want to be my apprentice?” Arlaud laughed.