Consciousness approached nervously and from a distance. Arkwright had lost it quite a few times in this line of work, and it was beginning to think he didn't care about it any more. Always with these awkward reunions in medical bays ... quite distressing really.

Arkwright had been quite understandably worried that this time it wouldn't come back at all. The last thing he noticed before it left him lying on the Karah Wind's embarkation ramp was that this time he'd been shot intolerably close to vital organs. As he now felt it return, he welcomed it with open arms.

"Congratulations," it said. "It's a boy."

Arkwright opened his eyes far enough to be squinting. Consciousness appeared rather ugly.

"Hi, Rince," he said.

"Hey," the Widowmaker replied, waving at him with a hand bearing only a thumb and a pinky from the foot of the bed.

"What happened to you?"

"Old friend got jealous of my new appendages, decided to keep them."

Flynn blinked. He felt woozy.

"Bummer."

"Aye. Could be worse, though. I could be the patron saint of ten billion sheep."

The signal didn't come through very clearly. "Who'd that happen to?"

Rince donned a shit-eating grin. "You. Well, not really you. Your body double."

"Oh ... right."

"Everyone in that village saw you shot in front of Walker's kid and thought it was the man himself. We caught a transmission on our way out of the system, Wereling tells me - apparently he's already a martyr and spreading like wildfire."

"Gee," Arkwright said. "Wonder how they'd react if they knew he'd died unceremoniously in the cab of a dump truck."

"Or that his last command was to ensure his son was smuggled safely offworld before the whole planet went to slag."

Flynn groaned. "Oh, hell. The kid. Where, uh -"

"Kohana's keeping him occupied in your cabin. She thought you'd need at least some time to continue ensuring our survival after you woke up."

Arkwright looked up, appearing oddly vulnerable. He was wounded, and actually had some hair on his head, but his eyes spoke of ... almost fear.

"Does he ... ?"

"She hasn't told him. We were in agreement on that job being yours."

Arkwright nodded. "Yeah." Sith-slagging mother of a ... "It would be.

"Guess I gotta get to the bridge, though," he added, struggling to activate limbs and stand with effort as obvious as that which he'd put into changing the subject. "So, where are we, anyway?"

---

"We're currently skirting the Perlemian trade route," Auriga said, turning the captain's chair to face him, "just over the Darpa Sector line. Wereling sent a few tight-beam transmissions to locations in active Alliance territory with the best chance of hearing us before he turned in."

Arkwright nodded, moving stiffly towards a station seat at Auriga's right hand. "And we're not in hyperspace because we're expecting to hear back any time now."

"That's right. So now we wait," Auriga said, leaning back in his chair on the otherwise-deserted bridge.

"No arguments," Flynn said, and made pained noises as he placed himself slowly in the chair and sat back. There was a visible bulge of bandaging under his shirt. "Why couldn't their fearless hero have looked like you?"

Auriga grinned. "This is Fate at work, Flynn. What's it feel like to be singled out by the Maker?"

"Meh," Flynn replied, gazing absent-mindedly at the lights on the console next to him. He laughed once and winced. "It's times like this I wish his aim weren't so lousy."

Auriga nodded, more aware of the Maker at this moment in his life than any previously. "Well, we've done good work. It may be hard to swallow in the short term, you know," Auriga said with sincerity, "but they've tasted real freedom. They've found a reason to keep going."

"Yeah," his exec said, nodding in return. He still wouldn't look up and meet his eyes. "Die on your feet, serve on your knees, etcetera. Still ..." He took a deep breath. "Sometimes what's right don't always seem it."

"No, that's very true," Auriga said, still holding his gaze. "That's why it can be so hard to uphold it. I hate to sound like an Alliance recruiting holovid, but those who wish to reap the blessings of liberty must undergo the fatigue of supporting it," Auriga said, again with sincerity.

He immediately berated himself. You needn't preach to your exec, Caius. He knows the fatigue as well as anyone.

"I ... think somebody famous once said that, or somethin'," Auriga said after only the briefest of pauses.

Arkwright didn't seem to take too warmly to the words, although not for lack of trying.

"Bet he said that right before an Impstar turbolasered him into a hole in the ground. I hear what you're saying, though, I mean ... not to be sour grapes," he said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "The guy that shot me, though ... he blamed us for bringing the whole war there. Said that at least they had peace before we came. I think he lost some family or something, I don't remember it too clearly. But he said to me, he says, 'I'm going to kill you in front of your son, so he can know what his father did for us.'"

Flynn finally looked up at Auriga. "If he'da given me thirty seconds to respond ... I tell you."

"Yeah, I know. There will always be the misguided. The appeasers. The willing subjects. And you can't fault him and his ilk for seeking peace, but you know me, Flynn. What good is peace without liberty? What good is order without rights? What good is life without being able to really live it?" Auriga shook his head. "Maybe I'm an idealist, or a willing patsy of our propaganda writers, but I believe it. And I think that crowd that thronged us at your near-assassination believed it, too."

"If they had lost what you and I have," Arkwright said, "I wonder."

An indicator lit on the console, heralded by a beep.

"Got somethin'?"

"Looks like it. Apparently someone was home." Arkwright reached across with his far hand, leaving the nearer elbow on his knee, and poked the button.

"This is Lieutenant Commander Him, CRS-71 Silent Water, calling CEC-616 Medusa."

"Commander, lovely to hear you," the Captain decreed. "CEC-616 acknowledges signal; standing by for instructions."

There was a pause as the signal crossed the galaxy and came back.

"Not as lovely as it is to hear you, sir. You don't know how happy you've just made some of the other people in here. What's the sitrep on you and the rest of the crew?"

"Sitrep is grim, but salvagable," Auriga replied, regretting the necessity of putting a positive spin on such high casualties. "We're looking at an additional 10 KIA from dirtside operations on Ralltiir. The Medusa's a little rough for wear, but she's all we've got right now.

"I'll brief you in full when our paths cross next, but you can pass the following along to the intel spooks: Ralltiir is in open rebellion, and is in desperate need of support. The blockade is disorganized, but that won't last. Time is of the essence; I'm personally requesting that allied shipments bordering the Core divert to Ralltiir immediately. They'll say that's impossible, Him, but you've got to press them. This is a chance for a Core beach head--we can't let them get Base Delta Zero'ed."

"Open rebellion, huh?" Him's faraway voice asked. "Sounds like you sure made the most of your visit."

"You know me, Commander. I like to make friends on all my vacations," Auriga said, smirking to Arkwright sitting across from him.

Arkwright half-smiled back, then sat up in his seat. "This is a secure transmission, right Commander?"

"It is, narrow-band burst. Glad to hear you're all right, by the way, sir."

"I've been better, Him," Flynn replied bemusedly. "Listen, if that's the case, I have to know ... what happened to the Liberator?"

There was another pause, longer this time. Auriga looked at his exec, who was sitting with a fist pressed nervously against his mouth. They'd expected their escape to be bittersweet, since the best word they could reasonably hope to receive about the old tub was news that she'd been scrapped and abandoned, her crew reassigned.

"Well," Him replied at length, "here's the good news: both the Silent Water and ... what was left of the Liberator survived the battle in orbit."

"Mmhmm."

"The surviving crew, which numbered about 400 excluding you all, were taken aboard the Silent and brought back to the Alliance."

"Mmhmm," Arkwright repeated.

"And the ship herself?" Auriga asked, equally pensive.

"The Lib's forward section couldn't be feasibly towed across the Expansion Region, so it was powered down and set adrift somewhere that the Empire wouldn't find it."

Arkwright's hand swung down and thumped the console angrily, and he turned blue puppy-dog eyes on his Captain.

Auriga practically guffawed. "Wait, you set it adrift? Who made that decision? It could've been hauled away by now, claimed by squatters or a salvage crew ... That ship has logs, charts, and datafiles on practically every major Alliance operation taking place this side of the Corellian Trade Spine. I can't guarantee the radio room supervisor was able to complete the shred-and-burn procedure before we punched out--somebody might well have essential operational files right now," he said rapidly, clearly taciturn. "Why wasn't she scuttled outright?"

"Well, sir, we made sure to do a damn good job hiding it. Enough that it would never be stumbled across without precise coordinates. I'm transmitting them right now."

Arkwright whipped his gaze back to the console. "Wait, transmitting what?"

"The location of the Liberator, Commander. I convinced Wolfe that you would turn up again, and that when you did every last member of the crew would be more than willing to repair her and fly her back to the Alliance."

Arkwright threw his head back and began to laugh out loud. He immediately clutched the bulge in his shirt in pain, but kept laughing.

"Him, you beautiful bastard!"

Auriga couldn't help but mellow, and immediately regretting being so heavy-handed with his third-in-command. "Outstanding work, Him," Auriga said in genuine appreciation as the complicated coordinates began scrolling across Arkwright's display. "Slagging good work."

"Thank you, Sir. I thought you'd be happy with it."

Arkwright began reviewing the data. "So how long'd you have to lay into that hardass before he saw reason?" he asked.

"I'd like to point out to the good Commander," said a new but familiar voice, "that I'm also a part of this transmission."

A wide-eyed Flynn looked sharply over his shoulder at Auriga and bit his lip.

Auriga blinked once, shook his head ever so slightly, and spoke again. "I'm sorry, Him, I, uh, think we're getting some overlap or interference. Intersecting other transmissions, I'd say. We didn't read your last, and, uh, Kooroo knows what you're probably picking up," he said, signalling to Arkwright to fumble with the burst beam controls. "We'll signal again when we reach the designated coordinates. May the Force be with you!"

Arkwright leaned over the mic and made a harsh, white-noise hissing sound before stabbing a button. The display went dark.

"Oh darn! I lost them, Sir."

"Just when it was getting good, too," Auriga said, tilting his head back to survey the ceiling. Sensing his exec was about to make an apologetic statement, Auriga cut him off. "No, don't apologize. He is a hardass, and it can't hurt for him to be told it once and awhile."

"Hadn't planned on it, Cap."

Auriga leveled his gaze and cracked a grin. "So let's go get our ship back."