It is a period of civil war. The Empire’s oppressive rule has alienated a growing number of planets, and the burgeoning Rebel Alliance has welcomed beings from those disenchanted worlds to help fight the tyrannical Emperor’s forces across the galaxy.

One of the Rebel outposts is a deep-space base called Aparra — a former science station that has become a refuge for enemies and exiles of the Empire as well as a secret Alliance base for intelligence gathering.

A small Rebel strike team out of Aparra has been assigned to a sensitive mission that could help restore freedom to the galaxy …

(For best effect, insert the above text into the Star Wars crawl.)

Vancejin Bectat and his rusty mech assistant R6-Z7 were tinkering with a broken speeder motivator when the door to his little shop opened. The younger-than-he-looked human tech wiz stood up and looked across his cluttered workshop to see a motley quartet of sentients file into the place: a squid-headed Mon Calamari, a towering black and brown Wookiee, a horn-headed Zabrak and a beautiful red-haired woman.

It was an odd-looking crew, but not really any odder than most of the smugglers, mobsters and other shady visitors Van had seen in the few months he had been operating on the backwater jungle planet of Zabril.

“Can I help you?” Van asked the group.

The Mon Cal looked up from a device he had been consulting and said in raspy Basic, “Oh, hello. Uh, yes, we’re looking for, uh, someone named Dublo.”

There was an awkward pause. Dublo? That name sounded familiar to Van. Oh, right, that shifty guy Doyl who was in his shop the other day had mentioned that name. Van barely knew Doyl, a fellow fringer who had been on Zabril for a couple of months doing odd jobs and ostensibly looking for a ship crew to join. He had told Van a friend named Dublo might come by to order something. “He’ll ask how many holomaps you can make for him in a month. Just say seven.”

Well, Van had not yet seen or met this Dublo guy. And now this crew was looking for him. A strange coincidence that clearly was nothing of the sort.

As Van quickly processed the name, the Zabrak whispered something to the Mon Cal, who seemed confused. Then he spoke again, “Uh, I meant to say I am Dublo.”

Meanwhile, the Wookiee had taken the device from the Mon Cal and was walking around the shop — looking for the source of the homing beacon that had led them here.

Before Van had time to decide what these sentients were up to, he had more visitors: a fellow named Granger and a couple of his thugs, all employed by an underworld group called FAXio that Van had done some work for a couple of times since he had made himself at home on Zabril.

The Mon Cal’s quartet eyed the newly arrived trio, who had the typical menacing look of mobsters. Granger told the other group to leave. “We have business with Mr. Van Bectat.”

The woman obliged, gracefully walking out the front door. But the others remained. Granger spoke again, a little more testily: “As I said, you can scram.” The Zabrak responded, “We have business with him, too, and you can have him once we’re finished.”

Granger’s henchmen drew their blasters, but so did the Zabrak. Then shots were exchanged, with the Zabrak hitting one of the thugs.

Van, annoyed that a firefight was beginning in his shop, reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a stun grenade, which landed perfectly among the FAXio men. As it burst, Van realized his time had run out on Zabril. He grabbed his pack of gadgets from a nearby shelf and headed out the back door.

Gamaliel, the Wookiee, quickly followed — sweeping up Van’s droid in his arms. The Mon Cal, whose name was Vakim, not Dublo, and Kohl the Zabrak followed. Outside, Slyvannia the redhead spotted a couple of new thugs running toward the shop and she took out a holdout blaster and shot one of them. Then she ran.

Granger and his men recovered from the stun shock and ran out the back door in pursuit of Van and the others. Granger radioed to his other FAXio thugs to head off the tech fringer and his new friends.

Vakim, trailing the others, stopped to ask some passersby directions back to the landing pads that passed as a spaceport in this smuggler’s nest. He quickly realized the foolishness of that as blaster shots ricocheted around him and one grazed him. So he resumed running after the tech fringer, the Wookiee and the Zabrak.

Kohl radioed ahead to their ship, Makado. “Crae, we’ve got hot pursuit and could use a pickup.” The human pilot replied, “Roger, will be right there.”

Meanwhile, as they continued to move through the streets with FAXio men chasing and shooting at them, the Wookiee spotted something in the air. He pointed to the red winged creature, which seemed to beckon them down a side street to the left.

“Is that Slyvannia?” asked Vakim, who knew the redhead was a shapeshifter but had never seen her use the power.

The Wookiee roared affirmative, and Kohl shouted, “Follow her!”

Blaster shots zipped past them and one nicked Vakim again before they got to their turn. Kohl returned fire, hitting one of their pursuers.

A couple more turns following the winged Slyvannia and suddenly a ship loomed above them in an open square. The ramp lowered far enough for them to hop on — and the bird-like Slyvannia swooped in behind them.

The Makado — Vakim’s personal MC-25 scout ship (a gift from his father) — then rose high above the little jungle town and accelerated toward the upper atmosphere of Zabril.

On board, Kohl tried to put some binder cuffs on Van, who evaded him and threw a magnetic grenade to the ship ceiling. He said any attempt to disarm it would result in its detonation, and he would set it off using the control panel in his arm if Kohl attempted to bind him. The Zabrak reluctantly let him go.

Van told the crew to expect some interloping fighters during departure from the planet. He was right as four of FAXio’s ships engaged Makado. Kohl manned the laser turret and clipped one of the fighters as Crae plotted hyperspace coordinates and deployed the Makado’s rear-defense ion net, which caught and disabled two fighters while a third had to swerve to avoid getting caught.

After they were safely in hyperspace, Van just shook his head at his poor luck. He had been content working on the out-of-the-way jungle planet the past few months. And, in one fell moment, he was in the space lanes again, looking for another gig.

“You guys owe me for abandoning my shop to help you,” he told the Mon Cal. “What do you want anyway?”

“No one said we needed your help,” the Zabrak sneered. The Wookiee growled his agreement as he fiddled with R6-Z7.

“Hey, what are you doing to my droid?” Van asked Gamaliel, who ignored him as he fished for something in the R6 unit’s data ports.

Vakim, whose blaster wounds were being tended by human-shaped Slyvannia, winced and tried to get the code language right this time, rasping out, “How many holomaps can you make for me in a month?”

Van paused, his eyes scanning the Mon Cal, the Wookiee, the Zabrak and the woman. Then, shrugging, he said, “If you’re Dublo, the answer is supposed to be seven.”

Vakim, a diplomatic sort who was still flustered about the whole firefight and chase as well as hurting from the blaster stings, tried to remember if that was the correct code response. He looked over at Slyvannia, who nodded slightly.

“Ah, good, nice to meet you, Doyl,” a suddenly confident Vakim said to Van, who laughed and shook his head, “I’m not Doyl.”

The Mon Cal was suddenly confused again, glancing from Van to his companions, who seemed equally befuddled.

The Wookiee then intoned something as he held aloft a datacard he had extracted from the droid. He handed it to Vakim, who looked unsure what to do with it.

“Gamaliel says that is what the homing beacon was pointing to,” Slyvannia said. “Do you know what is on it, mister?”

Van offered a clueless shrug. Sly took out her datapad and slid the card in, only to be greeted by an encryption. She typed in a few of the Alliance codes she knew. Nothing.

“Anyone else know any Alliance encryption codes?” she asked her crew. Blank looks around. No surprise, she thought, since they were all pretty new to the Alliance. Not that she was a seasoned vet either, having joined the movement about a year ago as she sought to help her Kenuku people and her planet — the mineral-rich sand world of Zorsbak — escape Imperial rule.

Van, suddenly even more curious now that this seemed related to the Rebel Alliance, held out his hand. “Mind if I try?”

Sly eyed him suspiciously, but Kohl the Zabrak said, “Might as well let him. He’s not going anywhere.” That was true, as they hurtled through hyperspace toward their home base, Aparra Station.

Van slipped the card into his own datapad and started working through various encryption models. He had cracked all kinds of codes over the years and found that most Rebel and Imperial codes were not that difficult. That proved true in this case.

The card held a report from Doyl, the Rebel agent the quartet had been sent to collect. They all read it: “FAXio has uncovered a new technology. I think they are wise to me snooping around, so I passed on the info via the utility droid of Vancejin Bectat. The technology involves some kind of teleportation — seems to be a rediscovery of an old tech. Alliance can circumvent FAXio if we can find a smuggler chief named Talon Karrde, who apparently knows the location. Unclear whether FAXio has found the location or is seeking out Karrde as well.”

“What’s FAXio?” asked Vakim, who had led a sheltered life of luxury on Mon Cal and was new to intergalactic intrigue.

“They’re a local crime syndicate, running spice and weapons and other illicit goods,” Van explained. “Not a crew you want to be on the wrong side of, at least in their backyard. Those thugs who came into my shop were from FAXio. Not sure what they were after though, thanks to the Zabrak’s happy trigger finger.”

Kohl took some offense to that. “Hey, it’s the solo rule: Always shoot first!” The Wookiee rumbled a laugh, though no one knew why.

Van scanned the group again. “So, where are we headed now?”

Vakim was about to reply, but the cautious Slyvannia spoke up, “A very quiet corner of the galaxy. Whether you get to leave depends on what our commander thinks of you.”

Sly didn’t trust the gray-haired techie. She wanted to see what Commander Ghery thought of him.

Vakim sat in the copilot’s seat next to Crae, the Alliance pilot who had been flying Vakim’s ship since the Mon Cal had arrived in the an-Turek system. Streaks of light suddenly morphed into singular points as the Makado left the surreal time warp of hyperspace and re-entered realspace.

The ship approached a nearby asteroid field and, with no hesitation, cruised straight into the stony storm. If Vakim had not made this trip with Crae before, he would have thought the pilot was making a severe navigational blunder — tantamount to suicide. But Crae knew what he was doing, and Vakim knew that.

Vakim watched Crae double-check the sensor readings before he selected one of the preset flight plans that would take the Makado safely to the other side of the asteroid belt. Crae still would have to monitor the trip, just in case he needed to make manual adjustments, but the ship’s navigation computer should do most of the work.

Vakim hated this approach, but there was no other way to get to the an-Turek system and Aparra Station. The solar system – what was left of it — was bordered on one side by the asteroid field, on another by the massive Rham Nebula and on the third side by a black hole. The three astronomical phenomena had combined to ravage the an-Turek system so much that all that remained was a fading white dwarf star and the barren, windswept, sun-scorched planet of an-Turek.

An-Turek was the ideal system for Aparra Station – a hard-to-reach, out-of-the-way place perfect for research … and for asylum.

The station had begun as a base for scientific study and frontier exploration. Over the years, it also had become a way station for enemies and exiles of the tyrannical Empire. Now, as the galaxy-wide Rebellion had begun to grow, Aparra also served as a base for intelligence gathering.

So far, the Empire had not discovered this little hole in the galaxy. A two-day hyperspace jump from the nearest Imperial system, an-Turek was far enough on the Outer Rim that the Empire had either no knowledge of or no interest in the area.

Crae let the Makado follow the programmed route, winding through the scattered field of dust and floating stones. As usual, Aparra’s sensors had predicted the best route through the field and plotted accordingly. After about 15 minutes, they emerged on the other side. Crae immediately cut to port to give the black hole a wide berth. Then the Makado headed for an-Turek and the orbiting Aparra Station.

Once they had docked and cleared the station’s bio-scan and weapons protocols, they headed for Commander Ghery’s office for debriefing.

After Ghery read Doyl’s report, Van — hoping to create some goodwill so he could get off this station — volunteered some information: He worked with the smuggler Talon Karrde a couple of years ago and said they might be able to find him on Bespin, Abregado-Rae or Ord Mantell.

After the group debrief, the commander dismissed all except Sly, who had become a trusted scout and spy thanks to her shape-shifting ability.

“What do you think of Master Bectat?” the middle-aged commander asked her.

She shrugged. “Don’t trust him. He was working on a smuggler’s drop, doing work for gangsters. How do we know he’s not a plant from that FAXio gang?”

Ghery nodded thoughtfully. “I hear you. But it sounds like he’s a pretty good techie. Thinking of seeing if he wants to help us on the next job, especially since it will take you to Bespin, where you might be able to contact this Karrde fella.”

Sly raised a skeptical eyebrow, but Ghery carried on: “This is a potentially mammoth take for the Alliance, and we could use a computer wiz like Bectat. There is a high-stakes sabacc tournament in Cloud City soon. The grand prize is 1.5 million credits, and I want to fix it so the Alliance wins. On top of that, an Imperial benefactor from Coruscant will be playing in the tournament and then claiming some very valuable artifacts from a dealer before leaving. I want your team to take him out of commission, you to take his place at the tables and then get those treasures.”

“Is that all?” Sly rolled her eyes.

“It’s a tall order,” Ghery nodded, “but we’re talking about possibly millions of credits for the Alliance. We’ll need every edge to take them.”

The redhead nodded in understanding. “OK, commander, but you still have to talk him into it. And I’m not sure he’s the type who will want to help out of the goodness of his heart.”

A little while later, Van sat in Ghery’s office, getting the same pitch. “We could use a tech wiz like you, Master Bectat. Will you join us?”

Van considered the short military man for a moment. “It’s an ambitious undertaking, commander. I’m not sure I’m interested in joining the Alliance, but I might be interested in this for a cut.”

Ghery’s lip twisted as he considered this proposal. He asked Van’s price, which was far too high, and then counter-offered: “The best I can offer is 100,000 — plus your freedom. But you have to help rig it so we win the grand prize and you need to get us in contact with Talon Karrde.”

Van agreed to the deal. Before he left, Ghery added, “You might already know this, and it would explain why you are hanging out in fringe space like Halendine, but as a gesture of goodwill, I thought I would let you know we found an Imperial bulletin on you. You’re wanted in Bothan Space for a sabotage job on an Imperial Star Destroyer a few months back.”

Van didn’t know about the bulletin, but he was not surprised. He had had a bad feeling that gang would waste his great holo-program and potentially rat him out. But the pay had been good: It got him off the crappy smuggler’s rock he had been stuck on for weeks and earned him a nice vacation until he landed on a slightly better smuggler’s paradise, Zabril, in the Halendine System.

The next day, Ghery had the full team — Sly, Van, Vakim, Kohl and Gamaliel — back in his office to go over the full Bespin plan.