"What did I lose? My best friend is halfway across the galaxy who knows where. Everytime I meet someone new they're either killed or taken away somehow. So, you tell me. What did I lose?" I fell silent and looked at Stern and then back to Bon.

"And this guy is right. We need more."

--------------------

“Right, man, right!” he called. “You lost it all, man, you lost it all!”

He danced a small circle, raising his right hand above his head and patting his tummy with his left. He stopped spinning and faced Stern.

“And you are both right, man, this is not enough, not enough! We need more ships, more guns, more troops, more brains… the one thing we got is money, man, money! Oppression takes funding, and so does being oppressed. We turn the funding around on ‘em, man, and live it up. But where do we get more ships? Where?”

Bon danced his dance one more time, this time stopping to face Jebbua.

“We gots to get the word out, man! We gots to let the oppressed know that they are not alone! We gots to get down with the brothers and sisters and those of no gender, man! We gots to find someone who can translate that!”

Bon pointed at a glass case sitting on a desk nearby.

"I think I might know some people who could help us. I haven't seen them in ages and who knows where I could find them. But the keyword might. I know they have no love for the Empire, but it doesn't mean they'll help us."

I looked to Stern.

"What about you? Do you have any suggestions?"

--------------------

“You have friends?” he said. “Man, you gotta tell me what that’s like, man! I’ve always wanted friends, man, but they just don’t grow on trees, you know? Well, unless you’re on the veggie planet, but hey, man, that’s another story.”

Bon walked over to the case and waved his wands in the air around it.

“This is it, man, this is the answer. Found months ago by a team in the fringes, man, looking for ways to fight the oppressors. Oh sure, you look at it and say ‘man, it’s just a box’ but I tell you, it’s more than just a box. It’s what’s in the box, man. It’s a book, man, a book. But it’s got words that nobody here knows, it’s got letters that defy geometry. It’s got pictures or things that would blow your mind. And it’s old old old, so old that olds doesn’t begin to describe it. But the pictures, man, those are the things. Ships, man, ships!”

Bon took a deep breath, holding it for dramatic pause.

“But it’s got something new, too, man. It’s got new sheets of paper in it, with hand written notes. It was found on a planet, man, way out there where nobody goes. And the damnest thing is, man, that the goofball who found this and brought it to me forgot to log where the heck he was, and then he got himself killed before we could help him remember. So here we got a book with pictures of far out ships, things that could fight the oppressors, man! And we got notes from someone who studied this crap, man. But we got no location, and we got no person to go with the notes, and the notes are all coded, man. All we got is the box it got found in, man, charred like from a ship dusting off.”

Bon walked back to the other two men.

“Yeah, so it’s like this guy had this box, but left that planet in such a hurry that he left that box behind, then blasted off in some old ship that really charred up that box. There’s a piece of ID tag left, but most of it is ruined, man. All we can make out is this:”

Bon grabbed a tablet from the desk next to him and drew out a very close representation of the ruined tag. On it he wrote the letters “DANTARE”.