The modified droid's command left no room for debate. As TIE Fighters screamed toward the crash site, the crew scrambled aboard the Low Altitude Assault Transport, hauling the Wraith Core with them. The LAAT's doors sealed shut and the gunship banked hard, skimming the junkyard terrain as blaster fire streaked past its hull. At the controls was Nicks, a droid of unclear make—part assassin, part protocol unit—who flew with a calm precision that bordered on unsettling.
Nicks guided the LAAT into The Sinkworks, a vast underground scrapfield city buried beneath the industrial outskirts of Worlport. The cavern opened into a sprawling maze of repurposed wreckage and salvage markets, lit by flickering jury-rigged lamps and the glow of welding torches. Here, far from Imperial sensors, the crew caught their breath for the first time since the gala. It was then that Nicks revealed his purpose: he had been hired by Marra Voss, a name that meant nothing to the rest of the crew—but everything to Echo.
Marra had been part of Echo's crew before his memory wipe, one of the few survivors from the original operation. Through a secure channel arranged by Nicks, Echo made contact with her. The reunion was bittersweet. Marra confirmed what the astromech had long suspected: his past had not simply been erased—it had been hunted. Sparks Tob, another member of the old crew, had been captured by Imperial agents on Lothal eight months prior. He was interrogated for the coordinates of a hidden cache—coordinates that had been encoded into a droid before the raid that scattered them all. When Sparks couldn't provide the information, the Empire executed him. They knew the coordinates existed. They knew they were stored in a droid. They just didn't know which one—yet.
The weight of the revelation hung in the recycled air of the Sinkworks. Marra and Echo agreed to meet in person on Ryloth in a few days' time, where they could speak freely and plan their next move. But first, the crew needed a way off Ord Mantell.
Deeper in the Sinkworks, they found a solution. A Jawa tech seller, eyes gleaming at the sight of the Wraith Core, offered a deal: the core in exchange for his crew repairing Tharal's YT-1300 to full operational capacity, plus a cut of credits on top. It was a steep trade—the core was worth far more on the black market—but with the Empire tightening its grip above and no ship to fly, the crew had little leverage. They shook on it.
With their ship being patched together by a dozen chattering Jawas, the crew turned to their final obstacle: reaching it. The YT-1300 was still docked in Spacer's Row, deep within the Imperial Protection Zone. Echo and Tharal went first, approaching a security checkpoint with the kind of practiced composure that only a career diplomat and an astromech could manage. Tharal's Chiss features and confident bearing carried them through without a second glance. Inside, they found the ship—battered, ugly, and now fully spaceworthy. Tharal fired up the engines and lifted off, flying low across Worlport to the entrance of the Sinkworks, where Thrar and Frenki were waiting. Nicks remained behind in the Sinkworks, his mission to make contact fulfilled.
The ramp lowered. The crew boarded. And for the first time since this whole mess had started, the ship climbed freely into Ord Mantell's polluted sky without anyone shooting at them. As the stars stretched into lines and the freighter jumped to hyperspace, something shifted aboard the old YT-1300. It wasn't just a borrowed ride anymore. It was theirs—and the galaxy had just gotten a whole lot bigger.