With the Aureate Spire in lockdown, Tharal and Echo found themselves trapped in the demonstration hall as Imperial security forces swept the crowd, scanning comlinks one by one to trace the intercepted message. Echo, blending in as hotel staff, slipped away to the ventilation shaft and quietly unlatched the grate—an escape route, should things go wrong. They did. Commander Jessik Bryne, already suspicious of the last-minute Chiss diplomat, sent one of her grey-uniformed officers to frisk Tharal directly.
Thinking fast, Echo feigned a loud droid malfunction, drawing the crowd's attention just long enough for Tharal to slide his comlink into the pocket of a nearby government official. The security officer reached him a heartbeat too late—finding nothing. When the search concluded, the unwitting fall man was dragged away protesting his innocence while Tharal and Echo rode the main hyperlift down to the ground level. They stepped out to the sound of an explosion.
In the loading bay below, things had gone sideways. Thrar and Frenki attempted to ambush the train conductors but were spotted before they could close the distance. Thrar detonated a prepared cache of detonite, the blast engulfing the bay in black smoke and staggering the Imperial patrol long enough for both of them to sprint for the perimeter fence. Lorda Nara's men were already cutting through the links. As blaster fire erupted behind them, the group escaped on speeder bikes into the streets of Worlport.
On the move, Frenki and Thrar scrambled to form a new plan. The Wraith Cores would be transported by armored train through subterranean tunnels to the Imperial Protection Zone at the Spacer's Row spaceport—the last stop before being loaded onto a lander bound for Moff Walriss' Star Destroyer in orbit. Their only chance was to intercept the train underground. They messaged Echo and Tharal to rendezvous at one of the tunnel entrances.
But the Empire's eye in the sky proved relentless. The Star Destroyer's thermal imaging had tracked the speeder bikes fleeing the explosion and followed them straight to the tunnels. When Echo and Tharal arrived by taxi, they found an Imperial personnel transport already parked at the entrance and a squad of heavily armed troopers preparing to breach. The two raced to a secondary entrance, hoping to link up with their allies underground.
In the labyrinth of tunnels, both pairs searched for each other—until an Imperial trooper stumbled upon them at a three-way junction. They took him down, but not before his blaster fire echoed through the corridors, signaling their position to the rest of the squad. Outmatched and outmaneuvered, the group was forced to abandon the tunnels entirely.
With no plan and no options, they regrouped at Frenki's Greasy Franks, his old food stall in Spacer's Row. The crew scattered to regroup: Echo went searching for a mysterious contact who had previously expressed interest in a droid like him. Frenki tried desperately to arrange passage offworld, only to find Nara's enforcers stationed across the district, ensuring he wouldn't leave until the Hutt Lorda had her prize. Tharal, exhausted and frustrated, retreated to his broken-down YT-1300 freighter to think, with Thrar standing guard outside.
Aboard the ship, Tharal buried himself in a personal project on his terminal, questioning how he'd ended up entangled with criminals and indebted to a Hutt. Then one of Nara's men, stationed inside to watch him, pointed out the cockpit window. The armored train had arrived at the Imperial Protection Zone. As Tharal watched in disbelief, Moff Theodane Walriss stepped off the train flanked by eight Death Troopers, the Wraith Cores loaded behind him onto an Imperial lander. The heavy ship lifted off and climbed toward the Star Destroyer visible through a break in Ord Mantell's polluted sky. It was over.
Until the stars began to move.
A squadron of X-Wings dropped from the upper atmosphere in attack formation, hammering the lander with heavy blaster fire. The ship began to smoke and list. The Star Destroyer scrambled sixteen TIE Fighters in response, and the Rebel pilots broke off pursuit—but not before the crippled lander plummeted into the vast junkyard desert surrounding Worlport.
Seizing the moment, the crew commandeered two speeder bikes from Nara's enforcers and raced toward the distant crash site. The Imperial response was still in disarray, with only a single squad of stormtroopers deployed to secure the wreckage. Echo took position at range with a Hutt sniper rifle while Frenki and Thrar made strafing runs on their speeders, dropping grenades among the troopers fanning out through the debris. Tharal wove between the burning wreckage, searching for the Wraith Cores—and found them.
Time was running out. The X-Wings had jumped to hyperspace, and more than a dozen TIE Fighters would soon descend on the site. The stormtroopers had recovered from the ambush and a sustained firefight was building—one the crew could not win. Then, descending from the clouds like a guardian angel, a Low Altitude Assault Transport opened fire on the Imperial troops and touched down amid the wreckage. From its ramp stepped a modified droid—something between an assassin and a protocol unit—calling out to Echo by name.
"Get on the ship. We don't have enough time."