Chapter 141 · No Quince

For almost eleven minutes, Eli remained extremely pleased with himself.

It was, Stent would later decide, approximately ten minutes too long.

The Faded Glory had settled into hyperspace with the smoother vibration she had acquired after the repairs at the salvage station, her reinforced ventral frames no longer producing the occasional shudder that made Stent look personally offended by structural engineering.

Eli sat in the co-pilot’s chair with his datapad propped against one knee, working backward through old administrative records from the *Chimaera*. Most of them were useless now: supply confirmations, duty assignments, fleet transfer notices, obsolete authorization chains. He had kept them because deleting information had always felt vaguely irresponsible, and because an aide who discarded records eventually discovered that the one thing he needed had been contained in the file he had decided would never matter again.

Now that particular habit was paying off.

“There.” He expanded an old postal transaction and swung the projection slightly toward Stent.

The record was almost a decade old, but the underlying Imperial system had preserved everything that mattered: sender registration, parcel class, origin node, forwarding permissions, destination routing, fleet reassignment protocols.

Stent gave it a brief examination. “This was sent by Commodore Faro’s mother.”

“Yep.”

“Through a garrison postal entry point.”

“Which is the important part.” Eli enlarged the sender authorization attached to the old record. “Civilians can hand parcels directly into the Imperial military mail network if they have a designated-family credential linked to a serving Navy member. Parents, spouses, whoever the officer registered. Faro had her mother listed.”

Stent studied the credential code. “So the garrison accepts the parcel as authorized personal correspondence and enters it directly into Naval distribution.”

“Exactly. No civilian carrier in between. Once it’s in the system, it follows her service record wherever she’s been reassigned.”

“And her mother’s credential remains part of the shipment metadata.”

“Every time,” Eli said. “Which is what we need to reproduce.”

The package had entered the Imperial correspondence network on Faro’s homeworld, passed through three automated sorting hubs, been redirected twice as the Chimaera changed assignment, and finally arrived through a naval logistics node usually around three weeks later.

Stent’s gaze stopped on the transit duration.

“Twenty standard days.”

“She was moving around.”

“It remains inefficient.”

“It’s mail, Stent. Nobody launches a cruiser because someone’s mother wants to send jam.”

“That would indeed be disproportionate.”

Eli scrolled to another entry.

Same sender identification. Same origin account. Same civilian parcel category.

Different Imperial destination, followed by another chain of automated redirections until the shipment caught up with Faro.

Then another. And another.

Eli grinned.

“This is better than I remembered.”

“You intend to replicate the sender credentials.”

“Eventually. I don’t need access to her personal account if the mail hub accepts a manually entered external consignment and I can insert the right metadata farther down the chain. The parcel doesn’t have to survive a forensic audit. It just has to look boring enough that nobody performs one.”

Stent considered that. “And once entered into the Imperial distribution network, the system will redirect it toward her current registered assignment.”

“Exactly. We don’t need to know where she is.”

“Assuming she remains formally registered.”

“She will. Faro could be commanding three ships out of an asteroid with no life support and she’d still submit her personnel updates on time.”

Stent gave the old records another look. “You are confident.”

“I worked for her.”

“You worked near her.”

“I processed some of these packages. She was usually too busy to care until I put them in her office.”

That was not entirely fair. Faro had cared. She simply possessed the particular kind of military professionalism that allowed a person to be deeply pleased that her mother had sent her food while simultaneously objecting that the crate had been placed twelve centimeters too close to an operational display.

Eli remembered that very well.

He scrolled through the product manifests attached to the old shipments: Meiloorun preserves. Meiloorun preserves. Spiced meiloorun preserves. One shipment of dried fruit. More meiloorun.

“She really did send a lot of it,” he murmured.

“Then the substitution should be immediately apparent.”

“That’s the whole point. We use the same kind of parcel, same routing profile, something close enough in weight and scan profile to pass through without attracting attention. Faro opens it expecting the usual thing and finds the one thing her mother never sends.”

“Lysatran quince.”

Eli smiled. “Exactly.”

Stent shifted one hand over the controls, making a minor course correction before returning his attention to the old parcel record.

“What quantity do we possess?”

Eli’s smile remained in place for perhaps half a second. Then it faded. “What?”

“Of Lysatran quince preserve.”

“I know what you meant.”

Stent waited.

Eli stared at him. Then at the datapad. Then back at Stent. “We don’t have any.”

“I had inferred that. That’s why I asked.”

“Why would we have any?”

“You built a plan requiring it.”

“I built the important part of the plan.”

“The physical contents appear important.”

“They are.”

“Then where do you intend to acquire them?”

Eli opened his mouth. Nothing useful presented itself.

Stent’s expression changed almost imperceptibly. That was worse than if he had smiled.

Eli looked down at the old shipment manifest as though Imperial logistics from eight years ago might rescue him. “Oh, kriff me.” Stent said nothing. “I didn’t think about that.”

“No.”

“Thank you.”

“You selected a regional agricultural product from your homeworld while positioned near Lothal.”

“I know where Lysatra is.”

“Your procurement strategy does not reflect this.”

“It was a conceptual plan.”

“It requires a physical jar.”

Eli pointed at him. “You liked the plan.”

“I still like the plan.”

“That sounded suspiciously close to enthusiasm.”

“The plan is strategically sound. Your supply chain does not exist.”

Eli sank farther into the chair.

Quince preserve had never seemed exotic when he was growing up. It was simply food. There was always a jar of it somewhere in the kitchen at home, usually already open, and he had lost count of how many afternoons he had come back from school and eaten it spread thickly over bread with fresh cheese.

There had even been a huge quince field beside his primary school. For years, the trees had simply been part of the landscape to him: rows of low branches beyond the perimeter fence, heavy with pale yellow fruit when the season came. As a child, Eli had never thought of quince as something regional or unusual. It was just there.

Families ordered cases from local processors. Freight companies carried them alongside grain, machine parts, household goods and whatever else was moving offworld that month.

His mother preferred one producer. His grandmother preferred another and considered this difference important enough to discuss at length.

Eli had spent most of his childhood assuming that everyone knew what quince preserve was and approximately what it should taste like.

Apparently he had carried that assumption across half a galaxy.

“We don’t need fresh fruit,” he said after a moment. “Actually, fresh would be worse.”

“Agreed.”

“Preserve is stable, normal for Faro’s mother, and less likely to trigger agricultural controls. We need a sealed commercial product with a legitimate origin trace.”

“From Lysatra.”

“Yes.”

“Not merely manufactured according to a Lysatran recipe.”

“Yes.”

“Because Faro may verify the product code.”

“Probably not, but she might. And if she does, I don’t want the whole plan collapsing because I bought fake regional jam.”

Stent inclined his head. “That makes acquisition more difficult.”

Eli pointed at him again. “You can stop improving the problem.”

“I am defining it.”

“Well, define it less.”

He reached for the local commercial network, then stopped. They were still in hyperspace; until they dropped back into realspace, the civilian communication relays were useless to them.

“Fine,” he said. “We search when we come out.”

Stent glanced at the chrono. “We should eat first.”

“I already checked my glucose. I’m fine.”

Stent had not yet said anything.

Eli caught the look. “Yes, I know. You were going to.”

“I was going to suggest lunch.”

“That’s what I said.”

“It is not.”

“It was spiritually identical.”

Stent regarded him for a moment, then rose from the pilot’s chair. “Lunch.”

“Lunch,” Eli agreed, following him toward the galley. “And then we discover just how badly I underestimated the galactic distribution of quince.”

A little over two hours passed before the Faded Glory dropped back into realspace.

By then they had eaten, Stent had checked the next navigation sequence twice, Eli had checked his glucose once more just to prevent commentary, and Tee had spent most of the interval reorganizing something in the aft compartment with enough metallic clattering to suggest either maintenance or a personal grudge.

The jump ended cleanly. Stars snapped back into place beyond the viewport, and the civilian relay station appeared on sensors a few minutes later—small, overworked and close enough to give them access to current commercial traffic.

Eli settled back into the co-pilot’s chair.

“Right,” he said. “Time to discover how bad this idea actually is.”

He opened the local commercial network.

The system connected through a civilian trade relay, lagged twice, recovered, and eventually produced a search interface.

Eli entered:

LYSATRA — QUINCE PRESERVE — ACTIVE COMMERCIAL STOCK

The result took several seconds.

NO CURRENT LISTINGS WITHIN LOCAL TRADE RADIUS.

Eli frowned. He widened the search. The system processed again.

NO CURRENT LISTINGS.

“Fine.”

He expanded it to several adjacent sectors. Three results appeared. His face brightened. The first was an agricultural archive. The second was a gastronomy database describing traditional preservation methods on Lysatra. The third sold something called Lysatran Heritage Quince Spread.

Eli opened it immediately: produced on Garel. Ingredients included cultured sweet-root, yellow marsh pear and synthetic quince aromatics. He stared at the display. Then stared harder. “It doesn’t even contain quince!”

Stent leaned closer. “It is marketed as Lysatran.”

“That makes it worse.”

“It contains quince flavoring.”

“It contains lies.”

Stent looked at him.

Eli caught the look and pointed at the ingredient list with genuine outrage. “No, seriously. This is offensive. They’ve taken marsh pear, dumped artificial flavoring into it, and decided that putting Lysatran on the label somehow makes it legitimate.”

“It is a commercial approximation.”

“It is an insult.”

“To whom?”

“To quince.”

Stent’s expression remained perfectly neutral.

Eli sat back, still visibly affronted. “All right. Imagine that hot sauce you used to like on Naporar.” That got his attention. “The one you said was properly hot. The good one.”

“Yes.”

“Now imagine somebody on the other side of the Ascendancy mixes sweet root paste with red coloring, adds synthetic spice compound, sticks Traditional Naporar Hot Sauce on the label and starts selling it as the real thing.”

Stent went very still. Eli watched the offense arrive. “That would be fraudulent.” Stent agreed.

“Thank you.”

“And misleading.”

“Exactly.”

“It would also fail to reproduce the correct flavor profile.”

Eli pointed at him triumphantly. “Now you understand.”

Stent looked back at the listing. “It contains no quince.”

“Not a molecule.”

A brief silence.

Then Stent said, with considerably more severity than before, “Close it.”

Eli did.

“No. Different kind of fraud.”

“Of course.”

He closed the listing.

Agricultural wholesalers produced nothing useful. Luxury food merchants produced several results much farther inward, but none that could confirm current inventory. Specialty regional distributors gave him one apparently promising hit.

He opened it.

MEILOORUN PRESERVE — TRADITIONAL LYSATRAN EXPORT PRODUCT

Eli stared at the orange jar rotating slowly in the product holo.

Stent read the listing.

“This is from Lysatra.”

“Yes.”

“It is a preserve.”

“Yes.”

“It therefore satisfies two of your requirements.”

“And fails the only one Faro will actually notice.”

“Because her mother normally sends meiloorun.”

“Yes.”

Stent nodded once. “Then it is unsuitable.”

Eli closed that listing too.

Tee rolled into the cockpit just as the search results disappeared. The droid paused beside Eli’s chair and gave a questioning series of beeps.

“No.”

Tee chirped.

“We have not found the fruit.”

Another chirp.

“We have discovered a logistical flaw.”

Tee turned his dome toward Stent.

“The flaw was always present,” Stent said.

Tee produced a low warble.

Eli looked down at him.

“I know. I’m glad everyone finds this educational.”

Their next fuel stop possessed three things Eli considered encouraging: a functioning market, a civilian cargo exchange and enough transient traffic that obscure goods occasionally appeared simply because somebody had carried them there by accident.

Stent considered the station primarily notable for its deteriorating docking infrastructure.

They were both correct.

The installation had been built around an old ore-transfer spindle above a small moon whose principal exports appeared to be industrial minerals and dust. Half the original docking ring was sealed behind pressure warnings. The functioning berths were crowded with aging freighters, local haulers, passenger shuttles and two Imperial customs cutters whose crews appeared to have found more urgent matters than customs.

The Faded Glory settled into a berth near the outer rim.

Eli checked the docking charge. Then checked it again. “That’s gone up.”

“By eighteen percent compared to the last station.”

“I noticed.”

“Fuel prices have increased as well.”

“Wonderful.”

Stent brought up the station’s commercial board. “Two nearby navigation junctions are operating below capacity.”

“That explains the traffic.”

“It also explains the fuel cost.”

Eli unfastened his harness. “All right. We refuel enough to get to the next affordable stop, find the preserve, and preferably avoid spending our remaining money on parking.”

“You assume the preserve is here.”

“I am cultivating optimism.”

“You have criticized me for less.”

“And now you understand how irritating it is.”

The market occupied three levels beneath the docking concourse.

It was larger than Eli expected and noisier than he wanted, full of food stalls, repair shops, freight brokers and transient merchants trying to sell whatever cargo they had failed to move elsewhere. Digital product boards flickered above narrow shopfronts. Automated kiosks competed with live vendors. Somewhere nearby, something smelled aggressively fried.

Eli saw the first food importer less than a minute after entering. “Good start.”

Stent followed.

The stall displayed sealed jars and vacuum-packed produce from perhaps twenty different systems. Eli scanned the product tags.

No quince.

He queried the terminal. “Lysatran quince preserve.”

The vendor, an elderly Rodian, looked up from his inventory console. “Lysatra?”

“Yes.”

The Rodian entered something. A product image appeared. Bright orange fruit.

Eli stared at it. “That’s meiloorun.”

The Rodian nodded enthusiastically. “Lysatran meiloorun.”

“I need quince.”

The vendor searched again. Another result. Spiced meiloorun preserve.

“No.”

The Rodian tried a third time. Meiloorun and muja blend.

Eli closed his eyes.

Behind him, Stent said, “We should continue.”

“I’m giving him one more attempt.”

The Rodian looked through the database. “Jogan?”

“No.”

“Quince-flavor spread?”

“From Lysatra?”

“No.”

“Very similar.”

“It isn’t.”

Stent placed two fingers lightly against Eli’s upper arm and redirected him away from the counter before the discussion became philosophical. “The vendor attempted to provide substitutes.”

“He offered three different ways of not giving me what I asked for.”

“He possesses a broad meiloorun selection.”

“That is becoming part of the problem.”

They tried another importer. Nothing.

A grocery specializing in Outer Rim products had preserves from half a dozen worlds, including several fruits Eli had never even heard of, but no quince at all.

The large automated market database claimed there were eleven items matching the word *Lysatran*. Eight were meiloorun products. One was a spice mix. One was a commemorative beverage produced for a trade festival twenty-two years earlier.

The last was a decorative serving dish.

Eli stared at the results. “This is targeted harassment.”

“It is an inventory query.”

“It knows what it’s doing.”

The third live vendor had heard of quince but believed Lysatra was somewhere near Bothawui.

The fourth corrected his geography and then informed him that no one had brought genuine Lysatran produce through the station in years.

The fifth finally made Eli stop.

She was a human woman running a compact import business from a shop wedged between a parts exchange and a droid repair booth. Unlike most of the market, her product database was organized properly.

Eli immediately trusted her more than anyone else they had met.

“Have you ever heard of Lysatran quince?” Eli asked.

“Yes.”

“Actual Lysatran?”

“Yes.”

“Preserve?”

“Yes.” She looked at him with sudden interest. “My brother used to haul that route.”

Eli leaned closer to the counter. “Seriously?”

“Grain, preserves, machine components. Whatever paid.”

“Do you have any old stock?”

She laughed. “No.”

Eli’s shoulders fell.

“Haven’t seen Lysatran food this far out in years.”

“How many?”

She considered. “Five? Six?”

“That’s not encouraging.”

“Direct routes stopped making economic sense. Regional cargo gets consolidated farther inward now.”

Stent stepped beside Eli. “Where?”

The vendor rotated her terminal toward them and brought up an old freight map.

“Used to be three distributors handling most of it. One collapsed during the war. One got absorbed into a larger Core company. Third one moved operations closer to the main commercial lanes.”

“Still active?” Eli asked.

“Last I heard.”

She pulled up a corporate registry. The entry was current.

Eli copied the identifier. “There.”

Not the preserve. But a lead. An actual one.

For the first time since leaving the Faded Glory, he felt they had moved forward.

The woman glanced at the search history still displayed on her terminal.

“You’ve really been asking everyone for this?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a vendor two rows down with Lysatran meiloorun preserve.”

Eli stared at her.

She grinned. “You already know.”

“I am beginning to hate that fruit.”

“Cheap this season.” she shrug.

“Of course it is.”

Stent turned away.

Eli caught the tiny movement at the corner of his mouth. “You laugh and I’m leaving you here.”

“I did not laugh.”

“You almost did.”

“Intent is not action.”

“Tell that to a court martial tribunal.”

They continued searching anyway.

Eli was not entirely sure why.

Perhaps because leaving the station after finding only a corporate registration felt like surrender. Perhaps because there was still a chance some old jar had survived in a forgotten shop.

Or perhaps because he had become personally invested in proving that the galaxy could contain something other than meiloorun.

It did.

Unfortunately, most of it was also useless.

They found preserves from Naboo. Fruit pastes from Corellia. Jogan jam from orbital agricultural cylinders. Three varieties of muja conserve. A synthetic product claiming to reproduce quince flavor without containing any actual quince. And, with increasing inevitability, more meiloorun than Eli had previously believed the galaxy capable of producing.

Not one jar contained actual quince.

Then they found a speciality grocery on the lowest commercial level. Its shelves carried products from dozens of regional food producers, each item linked to an origin record and import history.

Eli searched the inventory.

QUINCE PRESERVE — LYSATRAN METHOD

His pulse jumped. He opened the product details. The same artificial non-quince paste.

Stent read the information beside him. “It says quince.”

“No.”

“It follows a Lysatran production standard?”

“No way.”

Stent looked at him.

Eli folded his arms. “If I’m going to falsify a package from someone else’s mother, I’m going to do it properly.”

“That is an unusual ethical boundary.”

“I have standards.”

“You are attempting to send a package from the wrong sender.”

“With standards.”

The shopkeeper had been listening from behind the counter. “So you really do mean Lysatran-origin product,” she said at last. “Not something made under license, not a local imitation, not a recipe somebody slapped the name on. You want the actual thing from the planet.”

“Exactly.”

She looked at Eli for a moment, then at Stent, plainly trying to decide what kind of problem required that degree of specificity. “And this is for what, exactly?”

Eli paused. He had thought through explanations for Imperial officials, customs clerks and anyone who might ask why two couriers were particularly interested in postal routing. He had not prepared one for a grocer. “It’s a gift,” he said finally. “A very specific one.”

The woman’s eyebrows rose. “Must be for someone you either like very much or dislike intensely.”

“It’s complicated.”

“That usually means the second one.”

Stent turned his head toward Eli.

Eli ignored him.

The shopkeeper gave a small, knowing grunt and went back to her terminal. “I haven’t had genuine Lysatran stock in years. Mostly preserves when I did. Restaurants bought most of it, specialty kitchens, a few people from that side of the Rim who were homesick enough to pay import prices.”

She worked through several archived transactions, filtering out dead suppliers and obsolete registrations. “Here. This company handled most of the shipments I received.”

Eli leaned closer as the identifier appeared. “That’s the same distributor someone upstairs gave us.”

“Then at least the trail is consistent.” She opened the current corporate registry. “They’re still active, but they moved operations inward. Much farther inward.”

The map expanded.

Eli’s first reaction was simply to stare.

The distributor’s present trade region sat well toward the Coreward routes, far beyond anything that could reasonably be called a short detour.

“Hm. Thank you anyway.”

They had nearly reached the lifts when Stent slowed. “One moment.”

Eli stopped and turned.

Stent had already stepped toward a small confectionery stall tucked between two food vendors. Its display held neat rows of translucent fruit pastes, cut into small cubes and dusted with fine sugar. Corellian, according to the product tag.

Eli watched in mild surprise as Stent studied the selection with considerably more attention than he had given most of the market.

“You want those?”

Stent glanced at the price. “They are inexpensive.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Stent ignored that and selected a small mixed packet.

The vendor sealed it and passed it across. Stent paid two credits, tucked the packet into one hand, and resumed walking as though nothing remotely noteworthy had happened.

Eli fell into step beside him.

After a few meters, Stent opened the packet. The pieces inside were jewel-bright, soft-looking squares in shades of amber, red and pale green.

He took one.

Eli looked sideways at him.

Stent ate it.

A second later, he offered the packet without comment.

Eli smiled and took a piece. It was soft and intensely fruity, with a floral edge underneath the sugar. Good, definitely—but very sweet.

He ate half, then glanced automatically toward the sensor on his arm. “That’s really good,” he said, “but probably too sweet for me.”

Stent looked at the remaining half in his fingers. Eli held it out. “You want it?”

Stent took it immediately and ate that too.

That was when Eli’s smile widened.

“What?” Stent asked.

“Nothing.”

Stent gave him a suspicious look.

Eli nodded toward the packet. “I’m just learning things.”

“You have learned that Corellian fruit paste is acceptable.”

“Sure.”

“That is all.”

“Absolutely.”

Stent folded the packet closed and slipped it carefully into his pocket.

They reached the lift. The doors opened.

Stent stepped inside, then, after a moment’s consideration, took the packet back out and selected another piece.

Eli said nothing.

He did, however, grin all the way down to the docking level.

Back aboard the Faded Glory, the commercial district vanished beneath the cockpit as the station slowly rotated away from their viewport.

Eli dropped into the co-pilot’s chair and transferred the distributor’s location into the nav system. “All right. Tell me how bad it is.”

Stent expanded the surrounding route network.

It looked considerably worse on their own charts than it had as a simple corporate address on the shopkeeper’s terminal.

Old navigation data disagreed with current civilian reports. Several hyperspace junctions that should have made the journey straightforward were operating below normal capacity. Imperial traffic restrictions covered parts of two major approaches, while the most efficient secondary corridors carried warnings for delayed beacon maintenance and heavy commercial congestion.

Stent studied the available routes for several moments before speaking. “Seven to eight weeks, if we are fortunate.”

Eli leaned his head back against the chair. “Of course.”

“That assumes no significant closures while we are in transit. Fuel will also become more expensive as we approach the disrupted junctions, so continuing to accept courier work would be advisable.”

“That part I can live with. We’re heading Coreward anyway.”

“Yes. The distributor merely gives us a more specific direction.”

“And somewhere farther in we stand a better chance of finding an Imperial mail hub that can actually route a package to Faro.”

Stent enlarged one of the sector advisories. “There is another concern. Several regions along the useful approaches are reporting changes in local traffic authority.”

Eli looked over. “Imperial?”

“Nominally.”

That word carried considerably less reassurance than it once would have.

Eli studied the map again. The galaxy they had emerged into after the Chaos had seemed broken at a distance: failed navigation beacons, refugee traffic, abandoned infrastructure, Imperial broadcasts insisting on authority over places that had plainly stopped listening.

Now they were about to travel directly through those fractures.

He gave the route another long look. “So, to summarize: unreliable lanes, higher fuel prices, traffic restrictions, questionable Imperial jurisdictions and probably several weeks of courier jobs.”

Stent inclined his head. “That is a reasonable summary.”

“All for a jar of quince.”

“We require the journey for other reasons.”

Eli turned toward him. “You’re helping me justify it now.”

“I am defining the broader operational value.” Stent’s expression remained perfectly composed.

“That is exactly what I was doing.”

“You were retroactively converting a procurement failure into mission planning.”

Eli spread his hands. “And apparently I was right.”

Stent did not concede the point, but neither did he argue.

Tee rolled into the cockpit and stopped beneath the projected route. Its dome tilted upward. It gave a questioning whistle.

“That,” Eli told him, “is where we’re going.”

Tee chirped.

“Yes, it’s farther than we were planning.”

Another chirp.

“No, we are not going all the way to Lysatra.”

The droid rotated his dome toward Stent. “That would be significantly less efficient,” Stent said.

Tee produced another sequence.

Eli narrowed his eyes. “We are not changing the plan.” Another beep. “And no, we cannot use meiloorun.”

Tee responded at considerably greater length.

Eli leaned forward. “Because meiloorun is what Faro normally gets. The whole point is that she opens the package and immediately knows something is wrong.”

Tee looked at Stent.

“We have explained this repeatedly,” Stent said.

The droid emitted what sounded suspiciously like exasperation.

“Traitor,” Eli muttered.

Stent began calculating the first viable jump.

Eli watched the route assemble across the forward display.

The absurdity of the whole situation settled over him again.

Somewhere ahead, beyond damaged trade lanes, failing Imperial administration and whatever new problems the galaxy had invented while they were away, there might exist a jar of preserved fruit whose sole strategic purpose was to make Karyn Faro open a package and think: My mother would never send me this. It had to be odd enough to have her questioning why instead of tossing it into the nearest garbage chute.

Thrawn would either have appreciated the plan or regarded Eli in silence until he began questioning every decision that had brought him here. Probably both.

“Course ready,” Stent said.

Eli looked once more toward the station hanging beyond the viewport.

Somewhere inside it were enough meilooruns to supply a Star Destroyer.

Not one acceptable jar of quince.

“Go.”

Stent engaged the hyperdrive. Stars stretched into light. The station disappeared behind them.

The Faded Glory surged toward the Core carrying two officers, one increasingly judgmental droid, a strategically questionable grocery problem—

and no quince whatsoever.