When we last saw them, Ania Solo and her friend Sauk were running from security forces for trying to pawn a lightsaber, Imperial Knight Yalta Val was impersonating the man in the iron mask, and some unknown person, probably evil, was impersonating Val on his mission to get the Carreras System connected with the rest of the worlds under the Galactic Triumvirate. Things were not looking good for the home team or for the safety of Carreras.
Note: This recap may contain spoilers!
As this issue opens, Yalta Val’s absence has been noted in another far-flung communications outpost by Jao Assam, another Imperial Knight who knows that some kind of message from Val should have reached them by now. He relays his concern to the powers that be in Coruscant, but the Empress dismisses them, admonishing him to continue with his work — the Galactic Triumvirate cannot afford any mishaps that might make them appear weak. Little does Jao know how much trouble the other knight is in. Imprisoned in a Sith dungeon, Val finds out what his captor’s plan is — keep him imprisoned in the helmet-like mask until his hatred is so great that he turns to the Dark Side and becomes a Sith apprentice, just like what was done to his captor before him.
While Val remains in trouble, most of this issue revolves around Ania and her growing involvement in the larger plot. When we first see her and Sauk, they are leading Carreran security forces on a chase through the sewers. Their craft’s weapons are not working, so Ania sends Sauk to the back with the lightsaber to try to fend off their pursuers. Despite his ineptitude, Sauk manages to hold them off and cause a crash, allowing him and Ania to escape back to the junkyard.
Their respite is short-lived, however. Val’s impersonator berates the governor of Carreras for her lack of security — a young girl managed to evade her forces with a contraband lightsaber, after all — and takes matters into his own hands. He confronts Ania at the junkyard, two thugs in tow, and demands that she return “his” lightsaber. She won’t, of course, invoking her right of salvage, so he uses the Force to pull it from her hand. With the lightsaber safely back in his possession, the imposter knight leaves, giving his thugs orders to kill Ania and Sauk. They escape, of course, and another chase ensues, this one on foot through the junkyard. They are saved by a droid known as AG-37, a regular customer of Ania’s.
After all the excitement is over, Ania and Sauk hitch a ride off-world with AG-37. The old droid is troubled by the behavior of the Imperial Knight on Carreras, and has misgivings about the Galactic Triumvirate if that knight is representative of the whole. Finally, Ania goes to apologize to Sauk for getting him into this mess and finds him working on the comm droid. They have a “Luke in the garage on Tatooine” moment when the droid suddenly shows them a hologram of the duel that it witnessed between Yalta Val and the Sith lord. They are trying to figure out why the familiar-looking lightsaber is being held by someone other than the knight who “reclaimed” it from them on Carreras when the ship’s alarms start going off. There is a fleet of ships ahead, and no way to tell yet if they are friendly or not.
Seeing as how this is the cliffhanger ending of this issue, my money is on not…
