The Erinyes diligently prowled the empty, forgotten reaches of the galaxy, her sensors scanning over megalithic asteroids and the millennia old wreckages of ancient warships for any trace of her prey. She sent out several rounds of probe droids looking for them, finding at worst only small-time smugglers and unlicensed mining ships. Criminals all, but irrelevant ones. The real foe was still out there, somewhere. It was hard to say what this elusiveness meant. Perhaps for every hour that ticked by, the raiders were in flight, getting farther away from them. Perhaps they were simply maneuvering into a position to strike to inflict the greatest possible damage. It was impossible to say.

As a result, those long days on board had somehow grown longer.

Guerrera kept Beta Squadron in the simulators for hours at a time. He no longer flew himself, and instead spent his time endlessly pouring over every point of minutiae that the system provided. His criticism was constant, both flowing easily and precisely targeted. Cyn's accuracy in the last run was 23.4%-it had been 24.7% the run before. His turning radius had loosened a fraction of an angle. What happened? The answer was, of course, that Cyn was exhausted and weary, but he knew that such an answer would never cut it. Instead, he took solace drinking from a foil pouch, filled with some sort of coffee byproduct. It tasted foul, but the caffeine soothed his headache. Moments later the reprieve was lost to another simulation.

When the squadron wasn't training in the simulators there was still plenty of work to be done. More often than not the work was maintenance. TIE Fighters, despite their fragility, were complicated machines that needed almost daily tune ups to fly at their highest potential—and at their highest potential, one could maximize the pilot's chance of survival. The engineering staff did a decent job, but their incentives weren't as high as the pilots. Or so Reneaux told Cyn. He was standing on a stepladder, his upper torso deep into a removed panel on his TIE's underbelly, loudly clanging away at some ion relays. Cyn sat below him, rewiring a blow motivator. "It's just shocking, you know?" Reneaux said, his voice a metallic echo ringing inside the fighter, "It must've been terrible to see that attack in person. I just read about it in the official docs, but to actually see it must've been… Intense."

Cyn accidentally tapped a wire with his index finger, earning a shock. He jerked his hand back and shook it a couple of times. "More or less."

"I mean, it was just so unnecessary. I don't get the mindset at all. Robbing and stealing—well, yeah, sure, that's easy enough to wrap your mind around. But why go out of your way—hey, can you pass me a turbospanner?—why go out of your way to go about killing people like that? Why murder the workers after you take their stuff if you're going to leave a beacon behind anyway? What does it get you? I just don't understand that mindset at all."

"It's likely for the best that you don't," said Cyn, passing the tool up to Reneaux, "More people know it than the galaxy needs. Sometimes, I think there's something rotten in the hearts of men."

Reneaux slid out from the fighter. His face was coated with engine grease, his face humorless. "Y'know, Dialan, I think you said that to sound all cool and deep, but it really just makes you sound gloomy."

Cyn rolled his eyes. "I don't pick out my words to sound cool."

"Sure you don't. C'mon, most everyone does, and you strike me as the type to do it more than most."

A beat. "What's that supposed to mean?" Cyn asked.

Reneaux's expression changed to one of a man who knows that he said something he hadn't intended and was quickly looking for a way out. Thankfully, this time, the universe conspired with him. "Cynnen! Reneaux!" called an approaching voice.

"Hey, Kaarz!" Reneaux said.

Talinn Kaarz approached with Stone, carrying palate stacked with trays of vacuum-sealed rations. She looked tired: moss green bags saddled the normally jade skin below her eyes. Regardless, she offered them a smile. "How's the work coming along?"

Cyn gave her a nod of recognition. "Well enough."

"Dinner at last!" said Reneaux, wiping off his face as he hopped to the floor. "What've we got?"

Kaarz looked at the labeling. "Looks like… bear."

Bear. "Again?" said Cyn, unable to hide his disappointment.

Reneaux, similarly, was frustrated. "Why do we have so much bear!? Nobody likes bear!"

"Must be that some world farms them cheaply. Or someone high up in central supply is in close to a… Bear meat contractor, I suppose," said Kaarz, handing the trays to her wingmates, "But it's not so bad. At least we have meals."

Cyn peeled the seal off his rations. A slab of recently reheated meat wallowed in a sea of oil-like gravy. The vegetables were alien and unidentifiable. "I'd rather starve than eat bear," Reneaux muttered, yet opened his meal all the same.

Stone crossed his arms, and Kaarz's mouth thinned. "You'd do better with a more positive attitude. I even was going to offer you two the extra tray."

"Why'd you get an extra?" asked Cyn, working up the courage to face the meal.

"It was supposed to be for Duraq," said Kaarz, looking across the hanger bay, "But he wouldn't accept it."

It made sense, somehow. Cyn rarely saw Duraq eat—he really had no idea when the former raider did so. It wasn't as though he lacked an appetite, either. While Duraq was lazy, arrogant, and flippant in essentially all social situations, he put in an incredible amount of effort when it came to the simulations and maintenance of his craft. Even now, he was working on his own fighter on the other end of the deck. He had arrived before Cyn and Reneaux had, and would likely stay well past the time he left. It simultaneously made Cyn respect the man's work ethic, but worry about the fact that such energy always seemed to stem from the promise of battle.

Stone started off towards his TIE, and Kaarz began following towards hers. "We've got to get to work. I'll see you later," she said with a wave.

Cyn looked away from Duraq and waved to Kaarz as well. Reneaux was still glowering at the bear meat. "Whoever heard of eating bear? No one eats bear."

"So," Cyn said, changing the subject as he started with the vegetables, "Are you ever going to clarify what Talinn said, back at the commission dinner?"

"What about?" replied Reneaux, still poking at his food.

It should've gone without saying. "That your father was a prince."

"Oh. Right. That," said Reneaux, rubbing the back of his neck, "Prince isn't the right word. Dad's a margrave. We're all from Onderon. There's still a bunch of nobility there, so it's not like it's unusual to bump into some kind of titled person or another."

"So, margraves are common, then?"

"Well, no, not exactly," said Reneaux, "There are three other families with the title, outside of the Reneaux. I guess it's sort of a prestigious position. We have a nice manor and, like, half of one moon and a third of another. I can show you sometime, once we're though with this and get some time off."

Cyn's brows shot up. "You own half a moon?"

"I don't own it," Reneaux said, correcting, "Dad does. I'm a seventh son. I'm not going to inherit any of the moons or manors. Best I can get out of it are a bunch of connections and comfy vacations. Could've gotten into some of the ventures or businesses too, if I'd wanted to, but I'd go crazy with a desk job like that, y'know? Say, Dialan, how's the bear?"

"What kind of businesses are you talking about?" Cyn asked, ignoring the food.

Reneaux gave an embarrassed frown. "Anyone ever tell you that you can be nosy, Dialan?"

The comment caught Cyn off guard. He had, in fact, been told that. A lot. Barnes and Ria would make fun of him about it, back in brighter days. Reneaux gave a great sigh. "Okay, fine. So, my dad was a seventh son too, and stuck out on his own to make his fortune. Most of the nobility look down on working in finance and industry, but again: seventh son. What are you gonna do? Then there was a whole lot of political intrigue, and suddenly the Reneaux Margraveship skips six heads and goes to him. No one expected it. But now there's all kinds of capital loggerheaded up for my brothers to divvy up."

Cyn wanted to ask another question. Reneaux was going to think him nosy. He did so anyway. "Why did the title pass to your father?"

"Clone Wars. Bad time for Onderon. Sorry, Dialan, don't want to talk about it," he said, breaking eye contact and poking at his meal, "And that's the condensed story. Yes, my dad's nobility, and no, it doesn't mean that I've got any of it to spare."

Reneaux was blushing. Cyn shook his head. He clearly was poking a sore nerve. "Sorry. I was just curious. We don't have titles or nobility like that on Jerijador."

"Nah, it's okay," Reneaux said with a large, exaggerated nod, "I get why you'd ask. You're one of the good guys anyway, Dialan, so there's no real harm in telling you about it. But enough about me. What about you?"

"Me?" asked Cyn.

"Yeah. You're getting my life story. I figure there's something to yours as well. Reciptrocity."

"That's not how you pronounce reciprocity," said Cyn, cutting the bear meat.

"Well, is how you dodge a question," Reneaux said, his tone faux-snooty.

Cyn tapped his tray twice with his fork, then began. "I'm from a small, rim world that no one's heard of," said Cyn, with the cadence of a memorized speech, "My father is upper-middle management in a shoe-kit manufactory, and my mother's a housewife. I shipped cargo on freighters for a few years. Then I enlisted. There's really nothing to say."

"Really?" asked Reneaux, "Because, you don't give off the vibe of someone with nothing to say."

"Don't I?" said Cyn, now uncomfortable enough to seriously consider eating the bear meat.

"Not at all. There's something dark and edgy and brooding about you, y'know? You just broadcast it. Like you're some character from a holo. I figured there's some sort of tragic backstory there. Something like a dead lover or—"

"That is too much." Cyn's words were firm and strong, with none of the halfhearted evasiveness that the earlier conversation had.

A moment passed without speech, the only sounds being the clangs and buzzes of the hanger bay around them. Reneaux looked directly at his feet. "I was just trying to joke."

Cyn gave a deep exhale through his nostrils. "No, that's on me. Sorry." Perhaps Reneaux was right about the nosiness after all.

Another moment passed quietly. Reneaux cut off a square of meat and looked at it resolutely, but before he did anything he shot a furtive glance Cyn's way. "Well, listen, I will say this. My family is sort of nobility, but while being a margrave might mean a lot on Onderon, it isn't such a huge deal in the greater galaxy. But there's someone on the Erinyes with a bloodline way older and more important than mine."

The promise of gossip did wonders to level out Reneaux's mood, and more information on the crew always put Cyn on the alert. "We've got another noble on board?"

Reneaux nodded, "Sure do. I thought you might've already placed it together. There aren't a lot of dynasties older or more celebrated than Thul."

"Artemsia Thul," Cyn said, lowering his voice, "She's an Onderanian noble, too?"

"Onderon? The Thuls? Not so much," said Reneaux, bringing his voice to little more than a whisper, "They're not from Onderon. They were from Alderaan."