“She was caught by the Empire and imprisoned at the garrison,” Alder said. “She managed to escape. In that escape she also rescued five members of the underground. One of them was killed, but she got the others out.”
“One of them was Vira,” Alder added.
Clive felt a bit sheepish. Flame truly was a hero. He had wasted his time. Time he should have been spending on Coruscant, helping Astri to rescue Lune. Everything had checked out.
So why didn’t he feel better?
“Flame told Toma that her family owned some of the biggest factories on Acherin,” Clive said. “And her funds do seem enormous. There can’t have been that many family-owned industries. Is there a database I can check?”
Alder shook his head. “All of our records have been destroyed.”
“I always thought…” Halle’s voice faltered. “No, never mind.”
“What?” Clive urged.
“Well, Flame was a good pilot. If we had a job that required flying, we gave it to her.”
Clive nodded. He knew this about Flame, too.
“And once she’d mentioned to me that her father had died right before she came to us. Her grief was fresh.” Halle hesitated again. “Yarrow Industries was a big manufacturer of luxury airspeeders and cruisers. Evin Yarrow died of natural causes shortly after the Empire took over his business. I know he had an adult daughter. Eve. I would imagine that a daughter raised in that industry would be an exceptional pilot.”
“Yarrow Industries,” Clive said. Once again he felt a distant chime inside him. Whatever memory he was chasing was elusive. Why couldn’t he remember? “It sounds familiar.”
“Most of their sales were confined to this system, but they were trying to break into galactic sales,” Halle said. “Like most of the corporations, they sided with the Separatists. They wanted the support of the Trade Federation and the Commerce and Banking clans. I remember that Evin Yarrow kept an apartment in Galactic City on Coruscant so he could lobby the Senate.” “Was he married?”
She shook her head. “His wife died when the girl was young. I read an article about him in a holo-zine years ago… I remember being impressed with how he said he raised his daughter himself, took her with him everywhere - factories, trade shows, the Senate… She was a young girl then. I think there was a holo-image, but I don’t remember it clearly.”
“Wouldn’t someone have recognized Eve Yarrow?” Clive asked.
“Not really,” Alder said. “Eluthans didn’t travel much to Sood.”
“I don’t know anything else about Eve. Our holo-news industry and all the information infrastructure collapsed around the time Flame joined us,” Halle said. “We didn’t ask anybody too many questions at that time. I know that the Empire eventually moved Yarrow Industries off-planet.” She shrugged. “I’m probably wrong about Eve.”
“Is there a reason you’re asking these questions?” Alder asked.
“I need to find out if Flame is trustworthy,” Clive said. “Lives depend on it.”
“I would trust her with our lives,” Alder said. “We did trust her with our lives.”
Clive nodded. Made sense. But his itch was still there.
What about Halle’s quiet resolve to stay and rebuild her homeworld? What about the other citizens, sticking it out, trying to rebuild with bits of plastoid and tarps?
Why had Flame left? Why had this one woman decided that she would be able, single-handedly, to create a galaxy-wide resistance movement?
Could she be Eve Yarrow? If that was true, she would have traveled the galaxy with her father. He’d had an apartment on Coruscant. What had she said again? Never been there. She didn’t like crowded planets. She said.
Of course, he knew better than anyone that resistance fighters never told the truth about where they’d been and what they’d done.
She’d called it Imperial City, though. That bothered him. Of course Palpatine had renamed it. But every member of the resistance still called it by what they considered its rightful name, Galactic City. At least when they spoke to one another.
Well, that wasn’t much to go on.
“Those people she rescued from the garrison,” he said. “Can I talk to them?”
“There is only one left,” Alder said. “The rest have been killed since that time, or arrested. His name is Warlin. I can contact him for you. I’m sure he’ll agree to a meeting. If he’s here.”
“He goes to Sood undercover fairly often,” Halle explained. “His daughter is married to a Sood, so he travels to see her. It’s very dangerous, but.. she’s his only family.”