Author: Timothy Zahn
Date: 2013-01-02T08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Star Wars; Science Fiction; Fiction; Audiobook; Fantasy; Space Opera; Science Fiction Fantasy; Adventure; Media Tie In; Novels
Description: To make his biggest score, Han’s ready to take even bigger risks. But even he can’t do this job solo. Han Solo should be basking in his moment of glory. After all, the cocky smuggler and captain of the Millennium Falcon just played a key role in the daring raid that destroyed the Death Star and landed the first serious blow to the Empire in its war against the Rebel Alliance. But after losing the reward his heroics earned him, Han’s got nothing to celebrate. Especially since he’s deep in debt to the ruthless crime lord Jabba the Hutt. There’s a bounty on Han’s head—and if he can’t cough up the
Publisher: Del Rey

Scoundrels

Zahn, Timothy

Ballantine Books (2013)

Tags: Star Wars, 0 ABY
Star Warsttt 0 ABYttt

To make his biggest score, Han’s ready to take even bigger risks.
But even he can’t do this job solo.

Han Solo should be basking in his moment of glory. After all, the cocky smuggler and captain of the Millennium Falcon just played a key role in the daring raid that destroyed the Death Star and landed the first serious blow to the Empire in its war against the Rebel Alliance. But after losing the reward his heroics earned him, Han’s got nothing to celebrate. Especially since he’s deep in debt to the ruthless crime lord Jabba the Hutt. There’s a bounty on Han’s head—and if he can’t cough up the credits, he’ll surely pay with his hide. The only thing that can save him is a king’s ransom. Or maybe a gangster’s fortune? That’s what a mysterious stranger is offering in exchange for Han’s less-than-legal help with a riskier-than-usual caper. The payoff will be more than enough for Han to settle up with Jabba—and ensure he never has to haggle with the Hutts again.

All he has to do is infiltrate the ultra-fortified stronghold of a Black Sun crime syndicate underboss and crack the galaxy’s most notoriously impregnable safe. It sounds like a job for miracle workers . . . or madmen. So Han assembles a gallery of rogues who are a little of both—including his indispensable sidekick Chewbacca and the cunning Lando Calrissian. If anyone can dodge, deceive, and defeat heavily armed thugs, killer droids, and Imperial agents alike—and pull off the heist of the century—it’s Solo’s scoundrels. But will their crime really pay, or will it cost them the ultimate price?

Star Wars: Scoundrels is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2013 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & or ™ where indicated.
All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.
Excerpt from Star Wars: Crucible copyright © 2013 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization. Excerpt from Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void copyright © 2013 by Lucasfilm Ltd. ® & or ™ where indicated. All rights reserved. Used Under Authorization.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

This book contains excerpts from Star Wars: Crucible by Troy Denning and Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void by Tim Lebbon. These excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN: 978-0-345-53657-0
www.starwars.com
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Jacket art: Paul Youll
Jacket design: Scott Biel
v3.1

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dramatis Personae

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

About the Author

Books by Timothy Zahn

Excerpt from Star Wars: Crucible

Excerpt from Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Into the Void

Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

Excerpt from Star Wars: Choices of One

Introduction to the Old Republic Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: The Old Republic: Revan

Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Outbound Flight

Introduction to the Rebellion Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Death Star

Introduction to the New Republic Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Heir to the Empire

Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: New Jedi Order: Vector Prime

Introduction to the Legacy Era

Excerpt from Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Betrayal

Excerpt from Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast

Star Wars Novels Timeline

dramatis personae

Han Solo; smuggler (human male)

Chewbacca; smuggler (Wookiee male)

Lando Calrissian; gambler (human male)

Bink Kitik; ghost thief (human female)

Tavia Kitik; electronics expert, ghost thief assistant (human female) Dozer Creed; ship thief (human male)

Zerba Cher’dak; pickpocket, sleight-of-hand expert (Balosar male)

Winter; living recording rod (human female)

Rachele Ree; acquisitions, intel (human female)

Kell Tainer; explosives, droid expert (human male)

Eanjer Kunarazti; robbery victim, funding (human male)

Avrak Villachor; Black Sun sector chief (human male)

Qazadi; Black Sun vigo (Falleen male)

Dayja; Imperial Intelligence agent (human male)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.…

The starlines collapsed into stars, and the Imperial Star Destroyer Dominator had arrived. Standing on the command walkway, his hands clasped stiffly behind his back, Captain Worhven glared at the misty planet floating in the blackness directly ahead and wondered what in blazes he and his ship were doing here.

For these were not good times. The Emperor’s sudden dissolution of the Imperial Senate had sent dangerous swells of uncertainty throughout the galaxy, which played into the hands of radical groups like the so-called Rebel Alliance. At the same time, criminal organizations like Black Sun and the Hutt syndicates openly flaunted the law, buying and selling spice, stolen merchandise, and local and regional officials alike.

Even worse, Palpatine’s brand-new toy, the weapon that was supposed to finally convince both insurgents and lawbreakers that the Empire was deadly serious about taking them down, had inexplicably been destroyed at Yavin. Worhven still hadn’t heard an official explanation for that incident.

Evil times indeed. And evil times called for a strong and massive response. The minute the word came in from Yavin, Imperial Center should have ordered a full Fleet deployment, concentrating its efforts on the most important, the most insubordinate, and the most jittery systems. It was the classic response to crisis, a method that dated back thousands of years, and by all rights and logic the Dominator should have been at the forefront of any such deployment.

Instead, Worhven and his ship had been pressed into mule cart duty.

“Ah—Captain,” a cheery voice boomed behind him.

Worhven took a deep, calming breath. “Lord d’Ashewl,” he replied, making sure to keep his back to the other while he forced his expression into something more politically proper for the occasion.

It was well he’d started rearranging his face when he did. Barely five seconds later d’Ashewl came to a stop beside him, right up at his side instead of stopping the two steps back that Worhven demanded of even senior officers until he gestured them forward.

But that was hardly a surprise. What would a fat, stupid, accidentally rich member of Imperial Center’s upper court know of ship’s protocol?

A rhetorical question. The answer, of course, was nothing.

But if d’Ashewl didn’t understand basic courtesy, Worhven did. And he would treat his guest with the proper respect. Even if it killed him. “My lord,” he said politely, turning to face the other. “I trust you slept well.”

“I did,” d’Ashewl said, his eyes on the planet ahead. “So that’s Wukkar out there, is it?”

“Yes, my lord,” Worhven said, resisting the urge to wonder aloud if d’Ashewl thought the Dominator might have somehow drifted off course during ship’s night. “As per your orders.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” d’Ashewl said, craning his neck a little. “It’s just so hard to tell from this distance. Most worlds out there look distressingly alike.”

“Yes, my lord,” Worhven repeated, again resisting the words that so badly wanted to come out. That was the kind of comment made only by the inexperienced or blatantly stupid. With d’Ashewl, it was probably a toss-up.

“But if you say it’s Wukkar, then I believe it,” d’Ashewl continued. “Have you compiled the list of incoming yachts that I asked for?”

Worhven suppressed a sigh. Not just mule cart duty, but handmaiden duty as well. “The comm officer has it,” he said, turning his head and gesturing toward the starboard crew pit. Out of the corner of his eye he saw now that he and d’Ashewl weren’t alone: d’Ashewl’s young manservant, Dayja, had accompanied his superior and was standing a respectful half dozen steps back along the walkway.

At least one of the pair knew something about proper protocol.

“Excellent, excellent,” d’Ashewl said, rubbing his hands together. “There’s a wager afoot, Captain, as to which of our group will arrive first and which will arrive last. Thanks to you and your magnificent ship, I stand to win a great deal of money.”

Worhven felt his lip twist. A ludicrous and pointless wager, to match the Dominator’s ludicrous and pointless errand. It was nice to know that in a universe on the edge of going mad, there was still ironic symmetry to be found.

“You’ll have your man relay the data to my floater,” d’Ashewl continued. “My man and I shall leave as soon as the Dominator reaches orbit.” He cocked his head. “Your orders were to remain in the region in the event that I needed further transport, were they not?”

The captain allowed his hands, safely out of d’Ashewl’s sight at his sides, to curl into frustrated fists. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good,” d’Ashewl said cheerfully. “Lord Toorfi has been known to suddenly change his mind on where the games are to continue, and if he does, I need to be ready to once again beat him to the new destination. You’ll be no more than three hours away at all times, correct?”

“Yes, my lord,” Worhven said. Fat, stupid, and a cheat besides. Clearly, all the others involved in this vague high-stakes gaming tournament had arrived at Wukkar via their own ships. Only d’Ashewl had had the supreme gall to talk someone on Imperial Center into letting him borrow an Imperial Star Destroyer for the occasion.

“But for now, all I need is for your men to prepare to launch my floater,” d’Ashewl continued. “After that, you may take the rest of the day off. Perhaps the rest of the month as well. One never knows how long old men’s stamina and credits will last, eh?”

Without waiting for a reply—which was just as well, because Worhven didn’t have any that he was willing to share—the rotund man turned and waddled back along the walkway toward the aft bridge. Dayja waited until he’d passed, then dropped into step the prescribed three paces behind him.

Worhven watched until the pair had passed beneath the archway and into the aft bridge turbolift, just to make sure they were truly gone. Then, unclenching his teeth, he turned to the comm officer. “Signal Hangar Command,” he ordered. “Our passenger is ready to leave.”

He threw a final glower at the aft bridge. Take the day off, indeed. Enough condescending idiocy like that from the Empire’s ruling class, and Worhven would be sorely tempted to join the Rebellion himself. “And tell them to make it quick,” he added. “I don’t want Lord d’Ashewl or his ship aboard a single millisecond longer than necessary.”

“I should probably have you whipped,” d’Ashewl commented absently.

Dayja half turned in the floater’s command chair to look over his shoulder. “Excuse me?” he asked.

“I said I should probably have you whipped,” d’Ashewl repeated, gazing at his datapad as he lazed comfortably on the luxurious couch in the lounge just behind the cockpit.

“Any particular reason?”

“Not really,” d’Ashewl said. “But it’s becoming the big thing among the upper echelon of the court these days, and I’d hate to be left out of the truly important trends.”

“Ah,” Dayja said. “I trust these rituals aren’t done in public?”

“Oh, no, the sessions are quite private and secretive,” d’Ashewl assured him. “But that’s a good point. Unless we happen to meet up with others of my same lofty stature, there really wouldn’t be any purpose.” He considered. “At least not until we get back to Imperial Center. We may want to try it then.”

“Speaking only for myself, I’d be content to put it off,” Dayja said. “It does sound rather pointless.”

“That’s because you have a lower-class attitude,” d’Ashewl chided. “It’s a conspicuous-consumption sort of thing. A demonstration that one has such an overabundance of servants and slaves that he can afford to put one out of commission for a few days merely on a whim.”

“It still sounds pointless,” Dayja said. “Ripping someone’s flesh from his body is a great deal of work. I prefer to have a good reason if I’m going to go to that much effort.” He nodded at the datapad. “Any luck?”

“Unfortunately, the chance cubes aren’t falling in our favor,” d’Ashewl said, tossing the instrument onto the couch beside him. “Our tip-off came just a bit too late. It looks like Qazadi is already here.”

“You’re sure?”

“There were only eight possibilities, and all eight have landed and their passengers dispersed.”

Dayja turned back forward, eyeing the planet rushing up toward them and trying to estimate distances and times. If the yacht carrying their quarry had just landed, there might still be a chance of intercepting him before he went to ground.

“And the latest was over three hours ago,” d’Ashewl added. “So you might as well ease back on the throttle and enjoy the ride.”

Dayja suppressed a flicker of annoyance. “So in other words, we took the Dominator out of service for nothing.”

“Not entirely,” d’Ashewl said. “Captain Worhven had the opportunity to work on his patience level.”

Despite his frustration, Dayja had to smile. “You do play the pompous-jay role very well.”

“Thank you,” d’Ashewl said. “I’m glad my talents are still of some use to the department. And don’t be too annoyed that we missed him. It would have been nicely dramatic, snatching him out of the sky as we’d hoped. But such a triumph would have come with its own set of costs. For one thing, Captain Worhven would have had to be brought into your confidence, which would have cost you a perfectly good cover identity.”

“And possibly yours?”

“Very likely,” d’Ashewl agreed. “And while the Director has plenty of scoundrel and server identities to pass out, he can slip someone into the Imperial court only so often before the other members catch on. They may be arrogant and pompous, but they’re not stupid. All things considered, it’s probably just as well things have worked out this way.”

“Perhaps,” Dayja said, not entirely ready to concede the point. “Still, he’s going to be harder to get out of Villachor’s mansion than he would have been if we’d caught him along the way.”

“Even so, it will be easier than digging him out of one of Black Sun’s complexes on Imperial Center,” d’Ashewl countered. “Assuming we could find him in that rat hole in the first place.” He gestured toward the viewport. “And don’t think it would have been that easy to pluck him out of space. Think Xizor’s Virago, only scaled up fifty or a hundred times, and you’ll get an idea what kind of nut it would have been to crack.”

“All nuts can be cracked,” Dayja said with a shrug. “All it takes is the right application of pressure.”

“Provided the nutcracker itself doesn’t break in the process,” d’Ashewl said, his voice going suddenly dark. “You’ve never tangled with Black Sun at this level, Dayja. I have. Qazadi is one of the worst, with every bit of Xizor’s craftiness and manipulation.”

“But without the prince’s charm?”

“Joke if you wish,” d’Ashewl rumbled. “But be careful. If not for yourself, for me. I have the ghosts of far too many lost agents swirling through my memory as it is.”

“I understand,” Dayja said quietly. “I’ll be careful.”

“Good.” D’Ashewl huffed out a short puff of air, an affectation Dayja guessed he’d picked up from others of Imperial Center’s elite. “All right. We still don’t know why Qazadi is here: whether he’s on assignment, lying low, or in some kind of disfavor with Xizor and the rest of the upper echelon. If it’s the third, we’re out of luck.”

“As is Qazadi,” Dayja murmured.

“Indeed,” d’Ashewl agreed. “But if it’s one of the first two …” He shook his head. “Those files could rock Imperial Center straight out of orbit.”

Which was enough reason all by itself for them to play this whole thing very carefully, Dayja knew. “But we’re sure he’ll be staying at Villachor’s?”

“I can’t see him coming to Wukkar and staying anywhere but the sector chief’s mansion,” d’Ashewl said. “But there may be other possibilities, and it wouldn’t hurt for you to poke around a bit. I’ve downloaded everything we’ve got on Villachor, his people, and the Marblewood Estate for you. Unfortunately, there isn’t much.”

“I guess I’ll have to get inside and see the place for myself,” Dayja said. “I’m thinking the upcoming Festival of Four Honorings will be my best bet.”

“If Villachor follows his usual pattern of hosting one of Iltarr City’s celebrations at Marblewood,” d’Ashewl warned. “It’s possible that with Qazadi visiting he’ll pass that role to someone else.”

“I don’t think so,” Dayja said. “High-level Black Sun operatives like to use social celebrations as cover for meetings with off world contacts and to set up future opportunities. In fact, given the timing of Qazadi’s visit, it’s possible he’s here to observe or assist with some particularly troublesome problem.”

“You’ve done your homework,” d’Ashewl said. “Excellent. Do bear in mind, though, that the influx of people also means Marblewood’s security force will be on heightened alert.”

“Don’t worry,” Dayja said calmly. “You can get through any door if you know the proper way to knock. I’ll just keep knocking until I find the pattern.”

According to Wukkar’s largest and most influential fashion magazines, all of which were delighted to run extensive stories on Avrak Villachor whenever he paid them to do so, Villachor’s famed Marblewood Estate was one of the true showcases of the galaxy. It was essentially a country manor in the midst of Iltarr City: a walled-off expanse of landscaped grounds surrounding a former governor’s mansion built in classic High Empress Teta style.

The more breathless of the commentators liked to remind their readers of Villachor’s many business and philanthropic achievements and awards, and predicted that there would be more such honors in the future. Other commentators, the unpaid ones, countered with more ominous suggestions that Villachor’s most likely achievement would be to suffer an early and violent death.

Both predictions were probably right; the thought flicked through Villachor’s mind as he stood at the main entrance to his mansion and watched the line of five ordinary-looking landspeeders float through the gate and into his courtyard. In fact, there was every chance that he was about to face one or the other of those events right now.

The only question was which one.

Proper etiquette on Wukkar dictated that a host be waiting beside the landspeeder door when a distinguished guest emerged. In this case, though, that would be impossible. All five landspeeders had dark-tint windows, and there was no way to know which one his mysterious visitor was riding in. If Villachor guessed wrong, not only would he have violated prescribed manners, but he would also look like a fool.

And so he paused on the bottom step until the landspeeders came to a well-practiced simultaneous halt. The doors of all but the second vehicle opened and began discharging the passengers, most of them hard-faced human men who would have fit in seamlessly with Villachor’s own cadre of guards and enforcers. They spread out into a loose and casual-looking circle around the vehicles, and one of them murmured something into the small comlink clip on his collar. The final landspeeder’s doors opened—

Villachor felt his throat tighten as he caught his first glimpse of gray-green scales above a colorful beaded tunic. This was no human. This was a Falleen.

And not just one, but an entire landspeeder full of them. Even as Villachor started forward, two Falleen emerged from each side of the vehicle, their hands on their holstered blasters, their eyes flicking to and past Villachor to the mansion towering behind him. Special bodyguards, which could only be for an equally special guest. Villachor picked up his pace, trying to hurry without looking like it, his heart thudding with unpleasant anticipation. If it was Prince Xizor in that landspeeder, this day was likely to end very badly. Unannounced visits from Black Sun’s chief nearly always did.

It was indeed another Falleen who stepped out into the sunlight as Villachor reached his proper place at the vehicle’s side. But to his quiet relief, it wasn’t Xizor. It was merely Qazadi, one of Black Sun’s nine vigos.

It was only as Villachor dropped to one knee and bowed his head in reverence to his guest that the significance of that thought belatedly struck him. Only one of the nine most powerful beings in Black Sun?

Just because the Falleen standing in front of him wasn’t Xizor didn’t mean the day might not still end in death.

“I greet you, Your Excellency,” Villachor said, bowing even lower. If he was in trouble, an extra show of humility probably wouldn’t save him, but it might at least buy him a less painful death. “I’m Avrak Villachor, chief of this sector’s operations, and your humble servant.”

“I greet you in turn, Sector Chief Villachor,” Qazadi said. His voice was smooth and melodious, very much like Xizor’s, but with a darker edge of menace lurking beneath it. “You may rise.”

“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Villachor said, getting back to his feet. “How may I serve you?”

“You may take me to a guest suite,” Qazadi said. His eyes seemed to glitter with private amusement. “And then you may relax.”

Villachor frowned. “Excuse me, Your Excellency?” he asked carefully.

“You fear that I’ve come to exact judgment upon you,” Qazadi said, his voice still dark yet at the same time oddly conversational. The gray-green scales of his face were changing, too, showing just a hint of pink on his upper cheeks. “And such thoughts should never be simply dismissed,” the Falleen added, “for I don’t leave Imperial Center without great cause.”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” Villachor said. The sense of dark uncertainty still hung over the group like an early morning fog, but to his mild surprise he could feel his heartbeat slowing and an unexpected calm beginning to flow through him. Something about the Falleen’s voice was more soothing than he’d realized.

“But in this case, the cause has nothing to do with you,” Qazadi continued. “With Lord Vader’s absence from Imperial Center leaving his spies temporarily leaderless, Prince Xizor has decided it would be wise to shuffle the cards a bit.” He gave Villachor a thin smile. “In this case, a most appropriate metaphor.”

Villachor felt his mouth go suddenly dry. Was Qazadi actually talking about—? “My vault is at your complete disposal, Your Excellency,” he managed.

“Thank you,” Qazadi said, as if Villachor actually had a choice in the matter. “While my guards bring in my belongings and arrange my suite, we will go investigate the security of your vault.”

The breeze that had been drifting across Villachor’s face shifted direction, and suddenly the calmness that had settled comfortably across his mind vanished. It hadn’t been Qazadi’s voice at all, Villachor realized acidly, but just another of those cursed body-chemical tricks Falleen liked to pull on people. “As you wish, Your Excellency,” he said, bowing again and gesturing to the mansion door. “Please, follow me.”

The hotel that d’Ashewl had arranged for was in the very center of Iltarr City’s most exclusive district, and the Imperial Suite was the finest accommodation the hotel had to offer. More important, from Dayja’s point of view, the humble servants’ quarters tacked onto one edge of the suite had a private door that opened right beside one of the hotel’s back stairwells.

An hour after d’Ashewl finished his grand midafternoon dinner and retired to his suite, Dayja had changed from servant’s livery to more nondescript clothing and was on the streets. A few minutes’ walk took him out of the enclave of the rich and powerful and into a poorer, nastier section of the city.

Modern Intelligence operations usually began at a field officer’s desk, with a complete rundown of the target’s communications, finances, and social webs. But in this case, Dayja knew, such an approach would be less than useless. Black Sun’s top chiefs were exceptionally good at covering their tracks and burying all the connections and pings that could be used to ensnare lesser criminals. In addition, many of those hidden connections had built-in flags to alert the crime lord to the presence of an investigation. The last thing Dayja could afford would be to drive Qazadi deeper underground or, worse, send him scurrying back to Imperial Center, where he would once again be under the direct protection of Xizor and the vast Black Sun resources there.

And so Dayja would do this the old-fashioned way: poking and prodding at the edges of Black Sun’s operations in Iltarr City, making a nuisance of himself until he drew the right person’s attention.

He spent the rest of the evening just walking around, observing the people and absorbing the feel and rhythms of the city. As the sky darkened toward evening he went back to one of the three clandestine dealers he’d spotted earlier and bought two cubes of Nyriaan spice, commenting casually about the higher quality of the drug that he was used to.

By the time he was ready to head back to the hotel he had bought samples from two more dealers, making similar disparaging observations each time. Black Sun dealt heavily in Nyriaan spice, and there was a good chance that all three dealers were connected at least peripherally to Villachor. With any luck, news of this contemptuous stranger would begin filtering up the command chain.

He was within sight of the upper-class enclave’s private security station when he was jumped by three young toughs.

For the first hopeful moment he thought that perhaps Black Sun’s local intel web was better than he’d expected. But it was quickly clear that the thugs weren’t working for Villachor or anyone else, but merely wanted to steal the cubes of spice he was carrying. All three of the youths carried knives, and one of them had a small blaster, and there was a burning fire in their eyes that said they would have the spice no matter what the cost.

Unfortunately for them, Dayja had a knife, too, one he’d taken off the body of a criminal who’d had similar plans. Thirty seconds later, he was once again walking toward home, leaving the three bodies dribbling blood into the drainage gutter alongside the walkway.

Tomorrow, he decided, he would suggest that d’Ashewl make a show of visiting some of the local cultural centers, where Dayja would have a chance to better size up the city’s ruling class. Then it would be another solo excursion into the fringes, and more of this same kind of subtle troublemaking. Between the high classes and the low, sooner or later Villachor or his people were bound to take notice.

He was well past the security station, with visions of a soft bed dancing before his eyes, before the police finally arrived to collect the bodies he’d left behind.

Han Solo had never been in Reggilio’s Cantina before. But he’d been in hundreds just like it, and he knew the type well. It was reasonably quiet, though from wariness rather than good manners; slightly boisterous, though with the restraint that came of the need to keep a low profile; and decorated in dilapidated scruffiness, with no apologies offered or expected.

It was, in short, the perfect place for a trap.

A meter away on the other half of the booth’s wraparound seat, Chewbacca growled unhappily.

“No kidding,” Han growled back, tapping his fingertips restlessly against the mug of Corellian spiced ale that he still hadn’t touched. “But if there’s even a chance this is legit, we have to take it.”

Chewbacca rumbled a suggestion.

“No,” Han said flatly. “They’re running a rebellion, remember? They haven’t got anything extra to spare.”

Chewbacca growled again.

“Sure we’re worth it,” Han agreed. “Shooting those TIEs off Luke alone should have doubled the reward. But you saw the look on Dodonna’s face—he wasn’t all that happy about giving us the first batch. If Her Royal Highness hadn’t been standing right there saying good-bye, I’m pretty sure he would have tried to talk us down.”

He glared into his mug. Besides, he didn’t add, asking Princess Leia for replacement reward credits would mean he’d have to tell her how he’d lost the first batch. Not in gambling or bad investments or even drinking, but to a kriffing pirate.

And then she would give him one of those looks.

There were, he decided, worse things than being on Jabba’s hit list.

On the other hand, if this offer of a job he’d picked up at the Ord Mantell drop was for real, there was a good chance Leia would never have to know.

“Hello there, Solo.” The raspy voice came from Han’s right. “Eyes front, hands flat on the table. You too, Wookiee.”

Han set his teeth firmly together as he let go of his mug and laid his hands palms down on the table. So much for the job offer being legit. “That you, Falsta?”

“Hey, good memory,” Falsta said approvingly as he sidled around into Han’s view and sat down on the chair across the table. He was just as Han remembered him: short and scrawny, wearing a four-day stubble and his usual wraparound leather jacket over yet another from his collection of flame-bird shirts. His blaster was even uglier than his shirt: a heavily modified Clone Wars–era DT-57.

Falsta liked to claim the weapon had once been owned by General Grievous himself. Han didn’t believe that any more than anyone else did.

“I hear Jabba’s mad at you,” Falsta continued, resting his elbow on the table and leveling the barrel of his blaster squarely at Han’s face. “Again.”

“I hear you’ve branched out into assassinations,” Han countered, eyeing the blaster and carefully repositioning his leg underneath the table. He would have just one shot at this.

Falsta shrugged. “Hey, if that’s what the customer wants, that’s what the customer gets. I can tell you this much: Black Sun pays a whole lot better for a kill than Jabba does for a grab.” He wiggled the barrel of his blaster a little. “Not that I don’t mind picking up a few free credits. As long as I just happen to be here anyway.”

“Sure, why not?” Han agreed, frowning. That was a strange comment. Was Falsta saying that he wasn’t the one who’d sent Han that message?

No—ridiculous. The galaxy was a huge place. There was no possible way that a bounty hunter could have just happened to drop in on a random cantina in a random city on a random world at the same time Han was there. No, Falsta was just being cute.

That was fine. Han could be cute, too. “So you’re saying that if I gave you double what Jabba’s offering, you’d get up and walk away?” he asked.

Falsta smiled evilly. “You got it on you?”

Han inclined his head toward Chewbacca. “Third power pack down from the shoulder.”

Falsta’s eyes flicked to Chewbacca’s bandoleer—

And in a single contorted motion Han banged his knee up, slamming the table into Falsta’s elbow and knocking his blaster out of line as he grabbed his mug and hurled the Corellian spiced ale into Falsta’s eyes. There was a brief flash of heat as the bounty hunter’s reflexive shot sizzled past Han’s left ear.

One shot was all Falsta got. An instant later his blaster was pointed harmlessly at the ceiling, frozen in place by Chewbacca’s iron grip around both the weapon and the hand holding it.

That should have been the end of it. Falsta should have conceded defeat, surrendered his blaster, and walked out of the cantina, a little humiliated but still alive.

But Falsta had never been the type to concede anything. Even as he blinked furiously at the ale still running down into his eyes, his left hand jabbed like a knife inside his jacket and emerged with a small hold-out blaster.

He was in the process of lining up the weapon when Han shot him under the table. Falsta fell forward, his right arm still raised in Chewbacca’s grip, his hold-out blaster clattering across the tabletop before it came to a halt. Chewbacca held that pose another moment, then lowered Falsta’s arm to the table, deftly removing the blaster from the dead man’s hand as he did so.

For a half dozen seconds Han didn’t move, gripping his blaster under the table, his eyes darting around the cantina. The place had gone quiet, with practically every eye now focused on him. As far as he could tell no one had drawn a weapon, but most of the patrons at the nearest tables had their hands on or near their holsters.

Chewbacca rumbled a warning. “You all saw it,” Han called, though he doubted more than a few of them actually had. “He shot first.”

There was another moment of silence. Then, almost casually, hands lifted from blasters, heads turned away, and the low conversation resumed.

Maybe this sort of thing happened all the time in Reggilio’s. Or maybe they all knew Falsta well enough that no one was going to miss him.

Still, it was definitely time to move on. “Come on,” Han muttered, holstering his blaster and sliding around the side of the table. They would go back to the spaceport area, he decided, poke around the cantinas there, and see if they could snag a pickup cargo. It almost certainly wouldn’t net them enough to pay off Jabba, but it would at least get them off Wukkar. He stood up, giving the cantina one final check—

“Excuse me?”

Han spun around, reflexively dropping his hand back to the grip of his blaster. But it was just an ordinary human man hurrying toward him.

Or rather, most of a man. Half of his face was covered in a flesh-colored medseal that had been stretched across the skin and hair, with a prosthetic eye bobbing along at the spot where his right eye would normally be.

It wasn’t just any eye, either. It was something alien-designed, glittering like a smaller version of an Arconian multifaceted eye. Even in the cantina’s dim light the effect was striking, unsettling, and strangely hypnotic.

With a jolt, Han realized he’d been staring and forced his gaze away. Not only was it rude, but a visual grab like that was exactly the sort of trick a clever assassin might use to draw his victim’s attention at a critical moment.

But the man’s hands were empty, with no blaster or blade in sight. In fact, his right hand wouldn’t have been of any use anyway. Twisted and misshapen, it was wrapped tightly in the same medseal as his face. Either it had been seriously damaged or else there was a prosthetic under there that had come from the same aliens who’d supplied him with that eye. “You might want to see about getting a different eye,” Han suggested, relaxing a bit.

“I need to see about a great many things,” the man said, stopping a couple of meters back. His remaining eye flicked to Han’s blaster, then rose with an effort back to his face. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he continued. “My name is Eanjer—well, my surname isn’t important. What is important is that I’ve been robbed of a great deal of money.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Han said, backing toward the door. “You need to talk to the Iltarr City police.”

“They can’t help me,” Eanjer said, taking one step forward with each backward one Han took. “I want my credits back, and I need someone who can handle himself and doesn’t mind working outside law or custom. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping I could find someone who fits both those criteria.” His eye flicked to Falsta’s body. “Having seen you in action, it’s clear that you’re exactly the type of person I’m looking for.”

“It was self-defense,” Han countered, picking up his pace. The man’s problem was probably a petty gambling debt, and he had no intention of getting tangled up in something like that.

But whatever else Eanjer might be, the man was determined. He sped up to match Han’s pace, staying right with him. “I don’t want you to do it for free,” he said. “I can pay. I can pay very, very well.”

Han slowed to a reluctant halt. It was probably still something petty, and hearing the guy out would be a complete waste of time. But sitting around a spaceport cantina probably would be, too.

And if he didn’t listen, there was a good chance the pest would follow him all the way to the spaceport. “How much are we talking about?” he asked.

“At a minimum, all your expenses,” Eanjer said. “At a maximum—” He glanced around and lowered his voice to a whisper. “The criminals stole a hundred sixty-three million credits. If you get it back, I’ll split it with you and whoever else you call in to help you.”

Han felt his throat tighten. This could still be nothing. Eanjer might just be spinning cobwebs.

But if he was telling the truth …

“Fine,” Han said. “Let’s talk. But not here.”

Eanjer looked back at Falsta’s body, a shiver running through him. “No,” he agreed softly. “Anyplace but here.”

“The thief’s name is Avrak Villachor,” Eanjer said, his single eye darting around the diner Han had chosen, a more upscale place than the cantina and a prudent three blocks away. “More precisely, he’s the leader of the particular group involved. I understand he’s also affiliated with some larger criminal organization—I don’t know which one.”

Han looked across the table at Chewbacca and raised his eyebrows. The Wookiee gave a little shrug and shook his head. Apparently he’d never heard of Villachor, either. “Yeah, there are lots to choose from,” he told Eanjer.

“Indeed.” Eanjer looked down at his drink as if noticing it for the first time, then continued his nervous scanning of the room. “My father is—was—a very successful goods importer. Three weeks ago Villachor came to our home with a group of thugs and demanded he sign over his business to Villachor’s organization. When he refused—” A shudder ran through his body. “They killed him,” he said, his voice almost too low to hear. “They just … they didn’t even use blasters. It was some kind of fragmentation grenade. It just tore him …” He trailed off.

“That what happened to your face?” Han asked.

Eanjer blinked and looked up. “What? Oh.” He lifted his medsealed hand to gently touch his medsealed face. “Yes, I caught the edge of the blast. There was so much blood. They must have thought I was dead.…” He shivered, as if trying to shake away the memory. “Anyway, they took everything from his safe and left. All the corporate records, the data on our transport network, the lists of subcontractors—everything.”

“Including a hundred sixty-three million credits?” Han asked. “Must have been a pretty big safe.”

“Not really,” Eanjer said. “Walk-in, but nothing special. The money was in credit tabs, one million per. A hip pouch would hold them all.” He hitched his chair a little closer to the table. “But here’s the thing. Credit tabs are keyed to the owner and the owner’s designated agents. With my father now dead, I’m the only one who can get the full value out of them. For anyone else, they’re worth no more than a quarter, maybe half a percent of the face value. And that’s only if Villachor can find a slicer who can get through the security coding.”

“That still leaves him eight hundred thousand,” Han pointed out. “Not bad for a night’s work.”

“Which is why I have no doubt that he’s currently hunting for a slicer to do the job.” Eanjer took a deep breath. “Here’s the thing. The business records Villachor stole don’t matter. All the people who worked for us were there specifically and personally because of my father, and without him they’re going to fade away into the mist. Especially since the credit tabs were on hand because we were preparing to pay out for services received. You don’t pay a shipper, he doesn’t work for you anymore.”

Especially if that shipper was actually a smuggler, which was what Han strongly suspected was behind the family’s so-called import business. He still wasn’t sure if Eanjer himself knew that, suspected it, or was completely oblivious. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You want us to break into Villachor’s place—you know where that is, by the way?”

“Oh, yes,” Eanjer said, nodding. “It’s right here in Iltarr City. It’s an estate called Marblewood, nearly a square kilometer’s worth of grounds surrounding a big mansion.”

“Ah,” Han said. Probably the big open space in the northern part of the city that he’d spotted as he was bringing the Falcon in. At the time, he’d guessed it was a park. “You want us to go there, break into wherever he’s keeping the credit tabs, steal them, and get out again. That about cover it?”

“Yes,” Eanjer said. “And I’m very grateful—”

“No.”

Eanjer’s single eye blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got the wrong man,” Han told him. “We’re shippers, like your father. We don’t know the first thing about breaking into vaults.”

“But surely you know people who do,” Eanjer said. “You could call them. I’ll split the credits with them, too. Everyone can have an equal share.”

“You can call them yourself.”

“But I don’t know any such people,” Eanjer protested, his voice pleading now. “I can’t just pick up a comlink and ask for the nearest thief. And without you—” He broke off, visibly forcing himself back under control. “I saw how you handled that man in the cantina,” he said. “You think fast and you act decisively. More important, you didn’t kill him until you had no choice. That means I can trust you to get the job done, and to deal fairly with me when it’s over.”

Han sighed. “Look—”

“No, you look,” Eanjer bit out, a hint of anger peeking through the frustration. “I’ve been sitting in cantinas for two solid weeks. You’re the first person I’ve found who gives me any hope at all. Villachor’s already had three weeks to find a slicer for those credit tabs. If I don’t get them out before he does, he’ll win. He’ll win everything.”

Han looked at Chewbacca. But the Wookiee was sitting quietly, with no hint as to what he was thinking or feeling. Clearly, he was leaving this one up to Han. “Is it the credits you really want?” he asked Eanjer. “Or are you looking for vengeance?”

Eanjer looked down at his hand. “A little of both,” he admitted.

Han lifted his mug and took a long swallow. He was right, of course. He and Chewbacca really weren’t the ones for this job.

But Eanjer was also right. They knew plenty of people who were.

And with 163 million credits on the line …

“I need to make a call,” he said, lowering his mug and pulling out his comlink.

Eanjer nodded, making no move to leave. “Right.”

Han paused. “A private call.”

For another second Eanjer still didn’t move. Then, abruptly, his eye widened. “Oh,” he said, getting hastily to his feet. “Right. I’ll, uh, I’ll be back.”

Chewbacca warbled a question. “It can’t hurt to ask around,” Han told him, keying in a number and trying to keep his voice calm. A hundred sixty-three million. Even a small slice of that would pay off Jabba a dozen times over. And not just Jabba, but everyone else who wanted a piece of Han’s head surrounded by onions on a serving dish. He could pay them all off his back, and still have enough for him and Chewie to run free and clear wherever they wanted. Maybe for the rest of their lives. “I just hope Rachele Ree’s not off on a trip somewhere.”

To his mild surprise, she was indeed home.

“Well, hello, Han,” she said cheerfully when Han had identified himself. “Nice to hear from you, for a change. Are you on Wukkar? Oh, yes—I see you are. Iltarr City, eh? Best Corellian food on the planet.”

Chewbacca rumbled a comment under his breath. Han nodded sourly. His comlink was supposedly set up to prevent location backtracks, but electronic safeguards never seemed to even slow Rachele down. “Got a question,” he said. “Two questions. First, have you heard anything about a high-level break-in and murder over the last month or so? It would have been at an import company.”

“You talking about Polestar Imports?” Rachele asked. “Sure—it was the talk of the lounges about three weeks ago. The owner was killed, and his son apparently went underground.”

“Well, he’s bobbed back up again,” Han said. “Is the son’s name Eanjer, and was he hurt in the attack?”

“Let me check … yes—Eanjer Kunarazti. As to whether he was hurt … the article doesn’t say. Let me check one of my other sources … yes, looks like it. His blood was found at the scene, anyway.”

“Good enough,” Han said. He hadn’t really thought Eanjer was pulling a scam, but it never hurt to check. “I mean, not good, but—”

“I know what you mean,” Rachele said, with what Han could imagine was a sly smile. “Second question?”

“Can you run a few names and see if any of them is in spitting distance of Wukkar right now?” Han asked. “Eanjer’s offered me the job of getting back the credits that were stolen.”

“Really,” Rachele said, sounding bemused. “You been branching out since I saw you last?”

“Not really,” Han said. Fighting a battle or two for the Rebel Alliance didn’t qualify as branching out, he told himself firmly. “He just likes the way I do things.”

“Doesn’t everybody?” Rachele countered dryly. “No problem. Who are you looking for?”

Han ran down all the names he could think of, people who were both competent and reasonably trustworthy. Considering how many years he’d spent swimming through the galaxy’s fringe, it was a surprisingly short list. He added three more names at Chewbacca’s suggestion, and pointedly ignored the Wookiee’s fourth offering. “That’s it,” he told Rachele. “If I think of anyone else, I’ll call you back.”

“Sure,” Rachele said. “Did your new friend mention the potential take? Some of these people will want to know that up front.”

Han smiled tightly, wishing he were there to see her expression. “If we get it all, we’ll be splitting a hundred sixty-three million.”

There was a moment of stunned silence at the other end. “Really,” Rachele said at last. “Wow. You could practically hire Jabba himself for that amount.”

“Thanks, but we’ll pass,” Han said. “And that number assumes Eanjer lives through the whole thing. You should probably make that clear, too.”

“I will,” Rachele said. “So it’s all in credit tabs, huh? Makes sense. Okay, I’ll make some calls and get back to you. Does he have any idea where the credit tabs are?”

“He says they’re with someone named Villachor,” Han said. “You know him?”

There was another short pause. “Yes, I’ve heard of him,” Rachele said, her voice subtly changed. “Okay, I’ll get started on your list. Where are you staying?”

“Right now we’re just bunking in the Falcon.”

“Well, you’ll eventually need something in town,” Rachele said. “Of course, everything in sight’s already been booked for the upcoming Festival. But I’ll see what I can come up with.”

“Thanks, Rachele,” Han said. “I owe you.”

“Bet on it. Catch you later.”

Han keyed off the comlink and put it away.

Chewbacca warbled a question.

“Because I don’t want him, that’s why,” Han said. “I doubt he’d show up even if I asked.”

Chewbacca growled again.

“Because he said he never wanted to see me again, remember?” Han said. “Lando does occasionally mean what he says, you know.”

A motion caught the edge of his eye, and he looked up to see Eanjer moving hesitantly toward them. “Is everything all right?” Eanjer asked, his eye flicking back and forth between them.

“Sure,” Han said. “I’ve got someone looking into getting a team together.”

“Wonderful,” Eanjer said, coming the rest of the way to the table and easing into his seat. He must have seen the end of that brief argument, Han decided, and probably thought it had been more serious than it actually had. “This person is someone you can trust?”

Han nodded. “She’s a low-ranking member of the old Wukkar aristocracy. Knows everyone and everything, and isn’t exactly thrilled with the people who are running the show right now.”

“If you say so,” Eanjer said. He didn’t sound entirely convinced, but it was clear he wasn’t ready to press the issue. “I think I’ve come up with a perfect time for the break-in. Two weeks from now is the Festival of Four Honorings.”

Han looked at Chewbacca, got a shrug in return. “Never heard of it,” he told Eanjer.

“It’s Wukkar’s version of Carnival Week,” Eanjer said, his lip twisting. “Anything Imperial Center does, someone here has to do better. Anyway, it’s a seven-day event with a day each devoted to stone, air, water, and fire, with a prep day in between each of the Honorings. It’s the most important event on Wukkar, with people coming from as far away as Vuma and Imperial Center to attend.”

“And probably pickpockets from as far away as Nal Hutta,” Han murmured.

“I wouldn’t know,” Eanjer said. “My point is that Villachor hosts one of the city’s biggest celebrations on his grounds.”

Han sat up a little straighter. “On his grounds? You mean he lets people wander around right next to his house?”

“More a mansion than a house,” Eanjer said. “Or perhaps more a fortress than a mansion. But yes, thousands of people come and go freely over those four days.”

Chewbacca warbled the obvious point. “Of course he’ll have beefed-up security,” Han agreed. “But at least we won’t have to get over any walls and through an outer sentry line. How do we get an invitation to this thing?”

“None needed,” Eanjer said. “It’s open to all.” The half of his mouth that was visible curved upward in a bitter smile. “Villachor likes to style himself as a philanthropist and a friend of the city. He also likes to show off his wealth and style.”

“That’s okay,” Han said. “Some of my best deals came from people who thought they were better and smarter than everyone else. This might actually work.”

“Then you’ll help me?” Eanjer asked hopefully.

“Let’s first see what Rachele comes up with,” Han said. “I’ve got some ideas, but like I said before, this isn’t our specialty. But if we can get the people I need, we should at least have a shot.”

“Make sure they know what’s involved,” Eanjer said. “A hundred and sixty-three million.”

“Yeah, I got that part,” Han said. “Give me your comlink number, and I’ll call when we’ve got more to talk about.”

“All right,” Eanjer said a bit uncertainly as he dug out a data card and handed it over. “When will that be?”

“When,” Han said with exaggerated patience, “we’ve got more to talk about.”

They were back at the Falcon when Rachele’s report came in.

As usual with life, the results were mixed. Many of the people Han had hoped to contact were out of touch, out of the immediate area, or temporarily out of circulation. Others who might otherwise have been possibilities would take too long to get hold of, especially with the two-week countdown to the Festival that Eanjer was looking at.

And there were a couple who were unavailable themselves but had people they could recommend. Mazzic, in particular, had already grabbed the initiative and informed Rachele that he would be sending two new recruits who matched the skills of the ones Han had asked about.

Chewbacca wasn’t at all sure he liked that. “Yeah, me neither,” Han agreed, frowning at the note Rachele had sent. Still, Han had known Mazzic for a number of years, and he and Chewbacca had occasionally run cargoes for him and his small smuggling organization. Mazzic had shown himself both trustworthy and competent.

More to the point, he was notorious for not trusting anyone himself until he’d thoroughly checked out the candidate. If he was okay with these recruits, they were probably safe enough.

Unless he was trying to get back at Han for something. But that was unlikely. Han hadn’t done anything to Mazzic, not that he could remember. Certainly not lately.

Chewbacca grunted a question.

“I guess we go hunting,” Han told him, levering himself to his feet. “Go fire up the Falcon. I’ll see about getting us a liftoff slot.”

The rooftop defenses were intriguing.

The long slide down the syntherope was exhilarating.

The window security was a joke.

Bink Kitik shook her head as she focused the medical laser beam through the transparisteel onto the alarm connector. Most amateur thieves who got this far, she knew, would use the laser to slice all the way through the link, successfully disconnecting the primary alarm but at the same time activating the impedance circuit that would trigger the secondary. Bink’s more subtle approach, burning the connector just enough to melt the wires into a short circuit, would leave all the warning bells intact but quickly and smoothly drain the alarm’s power cell and render it useless.

She finished her cut and put away the laser, checking the time as she did so. Twenty seconds, no more, and the alarm should be deactivated.

“Sitch?” Her sister’s strained voice came over the comlink clip on her shoulder.

Bink smiled fondly. Tavia hated Bink’s work—hated every single minute, every single aspect, every single job. But even with all that, she was still far and away the best groundliner Bink had ever worked with.

Tavia also worried like a mother hen—this was her fourth situation check since Bink had emerged onto the roof. “Sitch go,” Bink assured her. “Twenty to pen.”

She gave it thirty seconds, just to be on the safe side. Then, activating her vibroscalp, she began cutting gently through the transparisteel, wondering idly whether the people who designed such wonderful medical instruments ever realized how useful they would be to a resourceful ghost burglar. Probably not.

She finished her cut and exchanged the vibroscalp for a probe, easing it in through the new opening and tapping the window release. It slid open, nearly but not quite catching the probe as she hastily withdrew it, and she was in. She pulled herself up on the sill, making sure not to tangle her harness—

“Whoa! What the—?”

Reflexively, Bink grabbed for her hold-out blaster. “Tav?” she whispered urgently.

“It’s okay,” Tavia said, the startlement mostly gone from her voice. Mostly. “I was just—it’s okay,” she repeated. “Everything’s crankapacky. Just keep going.”

Bink frowned. Crankapacky was the correct private code word for no problem. But what in the galaxy could have made her normally cool if overly judgmental sister jump like that without being a problem? “Should I bail?”

“No, it’s crankapacky,” Tavia repeated. “Just hurry it up.”

The safe was harder to crack than the window, but not seriously so. Bink had it open in two minutes flat, clucking disapprovingly under her breath the whole time. Some people just didn’t deserve to be rich.

The plan had been to take a few minutes to size up the safe’s contents, picking and choosing which gems were worth taking and which would be too easy for the governor’s soon-to-be-outraged chief accountant to track down. But with Tavia’s startled exclamation ringing through her mind, Bink decided she would just grab what she could inside of a twenty-count and then call it a night. Snapping open the gem boxes at random, mindful that such boxes were usually tagged and couldn’t be taken as is, she started shoveling their contents into her hip pouch. One of the more interesting-looking boxes had a lock of its own, which the fingersnips attached to the undersides of her fingernails made quick work of.

Her twenty-count ran to zero. Closing the safe, she hurried back to the window and made her exit.

The plan had been for her to return to the roof and exit as she’d arrived, via the building’s stairway. But the rooftop anchors were expendable, her syntherope dispenser had more than enough line to reach the street, and suddenly she wasn’t feeling like hanging around this neighborhood any longer than she had to. Closing the window behind her, she released the lock on the dispenser and rappelled her way down the side of the building.

Halfway to the ground, she drew her blaster. Just in case.

Tavia, as expected, had spotted the unplanned descent and was waiting when Bink came to a smooth halt on the walkway. “What happened?” she asked anxiously. “I thought you were going back to the roof.”

“You and your startled yelp happened,” Bink said. “I thought I’d better expedite matters.”

“I said crankapacky.”

“I heard you say crankapacky,” Bink agreed, looking around. A figure had appeared from the doorway where Tavia had been handling her groundliner sentry duty and was striding toward them. He was human and male, and even with the streetlight throwing his face into shadow he seemed familiar. He continued his approach, his swinging hand brushing past a holstered blaster with each step. Bink tightened her grip on her own weapon …

And then, as the man passed through the light of a home security lamp, she got a clear look at his face. She exhaled in a puff, feeling the tension drain into limp relief. No wonder Tavia had been startled. And no wonder she’d said crankapacky. “Hey, Solo,” she greeted the newcomer. “What are you doing on Kailor?”

“Looking for you, Bink,” Solo said calmly. “Nice to see you’re keeping busy.”

“We are,” Bink said. “Only I’m Tavia, not Bink. We decided I finally needed to learn the dirty part of the job.”

For a long second he looked like he was going to buy it. His eyes flicked between the women’s faces, searching for a clue as to which face belonged to which twin.

He wouldn’t find one, of course. Not even if they’d been standing in a brightly lit room instead of a nighttime city street. Bink and Tavia had pulled this same trick countless times over the years, and their past was strewn with the red faces of those who’d fallen for it.

But Solo was smarter than most. And if he couldn’t find any visible proof that Bink was lying, he knew her well enough to make an educated guess. “Good idea,” he said, looking her straight in the eye. “I need you and Tavia for a job on Wukkar. Interested?”

“Could be,” Bink said. “Decent payoff?”

“Very decent,” Solo confirmed. “Come on back to the Falcon and we’ll talk about it.”

“Let’s meet at our ship instead,” Bink suggested. “Docking bay twenty-two. Go on in and make yourselves comfortable. We’ll be there soon—got a stop to make first.”

“Make it quick,” Solo warned. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

He turned and strode off into the night. As he approached the end of the block, another figure, this one taller and shaggier, stepped into view. Chewbacca, playing his usual backup.

Smuggling partnerships didn’t always last, Bink knew, and when they ended they usually ended violently. It was nice to see that this one was still holding together.

“We should go,” Tavia said, her voice even more disapproving than usual.

“Right.” Bink used her fingersnips to cut the syntherope free from her harness, and they headed for the spot where they’d parked their landspeeder.

“You going to take the job?” Tavia asked as they walked.

“Probably,” Bink said. “We’ll hear him out first, of course. But probably.”

“You realize that the payoff’s probably not nearly as big as he implied,” Tavia warned. “Things like this practically beg to be exaggerated.”

“I know,” Bink said. “But we’ve got nothing else planned, and pickup jobs can be fun.” She shrugged. “Besides, it’s Solo. What could go wrong?”

Tavia snorted. “You want me to give you a list?”

“No need,” Bink said ruefully. “I’ve got my own.”

The grand market at Jho-kang’ma was known mainly for two things: the freshest produce and animal products on the planet—due to the army of indentured farmers and herdsmen held in thrall just beyond the hills bordering the market—and the number and quality of performers hired to stroll through the grounds for the shoppers’ amusement.

There were a lot of them out today, Han noted as he and Chewbacca walked along the wide straw-covered corridors between the vending tents. There were jugglers, musicians, ribbon dancers, and one large being who seemed to be eating and then spitting low-power blaster bolts. That was one Han hadn’t seen before.

But the most popular acts, certainly the ones that seemed to draw the biggest crowds of chattering children, were the magicians.

Some of them had little movable stands that they would set up in out-of-the-way corners for a five- or ten-minute performance. Others simply wandered around with their entire show in pocket or hip pouch, making coins appear and disappear, creating living plants that grew and flowered from pots that also appeared from thin air, creating and releasing small birds, or doing simple but bewildering tricks with decks of sabacc cards.

They found Zerba Cher’dak in the center of one of the largest crowds, dressed in a bright yellow clown-type suit with a brown vest over it, flipping small sticks between his hands and making them change color or length seemingly at will. Like most Balosars Han had seen on human-run worlds, Zerba had retracted his antennapalps and concealed them within the fluffed waves and heavy lacquering of his hair to blend in better with the dominant population.

Chewbacca rumbled a comment.

“One of the best,” Han agreed as Zerba continued to play with the sticks, occasionally turning one of them into a glittering gemstone to the giggling delight of his audience. “At least, the best we could get.”

Chewbacca rumbled again.

“No, I’m not going to tell him that,” Han promised patiently. He did know how to use tact, despite what Chewbacca seemed to think.

The show ended, and with a final flourish of twin fistfuls of sticks Zerba waved the children back to their parents. The audience melted away, and Zerba stuck his hands in his vest pockets and strolled over to Han and Chewbacca.

“If it isn’t the notorious Han Solo,” Zerba said, inclining his head in greeting. “I was just thinking about you.” He touched the spot on his petrified hair where his antennapalps were hidden. “We’re very sensitive to evil and criminal thoughts, you know.”

“I’ve heard that,” Han said. “I figure your ears work pretty good, too. Let me guess: Jabba refreshed the bounty on me?”

“Basically,” Zerba said, sounding a little deflated. “If you’re looking for somewhere to hide out, this place is an excellent choice.” He looked Han up and down. “Though without any entertainment skills, you’d probably be set to work with the herds. Still, I know at least three other Wookiees who help manage—”

“We’re not here to hide,” Han interrupted him. “We’re here to offer you a job. A big one.”

“Really?” Zerba asked, clearly surprised. “You want me?”

For half a second Han was tempted to go ahead and tell Zerba that he was actually number eight on his particular skill list, just to see how the other would react. But he pushed the thought aside. Zerba probably didn’t have a ship of his own, and Han had no desire to have a depressed Balosar moping around underfoot the whole way back to Wukkar. “Absolutely,” he said instead. “I’ve been working on a few different plans for this thing, and all of them will need sleight of hand, a quick-change artist, or something else in your bag of tricks. So. Interested?”

“Yes, of course.” Zerba looked furtively around. “Is this job, ah, off-world?”

Han nodded. “Wukkar, to be exact.”

“Ah.” Zerba pursed his lips. “The thing is, as I may have implied earlier, I’m lying low at the moment. But that security comes at a bit of a cost.”

Han rolled his eyes. “Let me guess. Your current employers won’t let you leave.”

“Let’s just say they like keeping track of me.” Zerba waved a hand over his yellow outfit. “Hence the chicken suit. They take the indentured nature of their performers very seriously.”

Han looked at Chewbacca, saw his same thought reflected in the Wookiee’s face. They’d already worked their way down to number eight on the list. They really couldn’t afford to work it down any farther. “How much will it take?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s not a matter of credits,” Zerba said, slipping out of his vest. “But thank you for offering. Here, take this, will you? Any chance you could give me transport? I don’t have a ship of my own.”

“Sure,” Han said, frowning as he took the vest. It was heavier than it looked. Probably filled to the top of each pocket with Zerba’s magic stuff. “But you just said—”

“Wonderful,” Zerba interrupted, taking off the multipocket belt that had been concealed under the vest and handing it to Chewbacca. “Let me collect my things and I’ll meet you at the spaceport.”

Chewbacca rumbled a question.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Zerba said. “They don’t watch me that closely. And I’ve been prepared for this day for quite a while.” He looked around. “I just need to make sure none of them is right here.…”

“One other thing,” Han said. “The things you’ll be collecting include that old lightsaber you used to have, right?”

Zerba’s head snapped back, his eyes darting between Han and Chewbacca. “Wait a minute,” he said suspiciously. “Is that what this is about? All you need is my lightsaber?”

“No, we need you, too,” Han hastened to assure him. “Besides, if I wanted a real lightsaber, I know another guy who’s got one.”

“What do you mean, a real lightsaber?” Zerba huffed. “Mine cuts as well as anything else you can find out there.”

“I mean a lightsaber with a blade longer than this,” Han said, holding his hands twenty centimeters apart. “Yours is more like a lightdagger. Or a light-breadknife.”

“Yet it seems to be worth you coming all this way to get it,” Zerba countered. “Why? What do you want with it?”

“To cut something,” Han said, fighting back his impatience. This wasn’t exactly the right time or place for this conversation. “I don’t know what yet. But there’s always something that needs cutting.”

For a long moment Zerba stared at him in silence. Han stared back, trying to remember where exactly number nine on their list was at the moment.

Then, to his relief, Zerba nodded. “Of course,” he said. “And yes, I still have it. Though the blade length’s down to about fifteen centimeters now. I don’t know why it keeps shrinking.”

“That should be fine,” Han assured him. So Zerba wouldn’t be moping, but he’d probably be paranoid and suspicious the whole way back. Not much of a gain. “You with us or not?”

“I’m with you,” Zerba said. He glanced around one final time, then reached into his pocket and pulled out something the size and shape of a small egg—

And in a single blink of an eye, his yellow suit turned into a long, dark red jacket, a patterned blue shirt, and baggy tan trousers.

Chewbacca barked a startled expletive.

Zerba smiled and cocked his head in an abbreviated nod. “Like I said, I’ve been ready,” he said. Turning, he disappeared into the crowd of shoppers.

Chewbacca rumbled again.

“Hadn’t seen that one before, huh?” Han asked as he headed off through the crowd in the opposite direction. “Someone told me once that it’s just a silk outfit with tear-away seams and connecting threads that yank all the pieces off and into that egg thing he was holding.”

Chewbacca seemed to think that one over a moment. Then he growled again.

“Well, yeah, I’m sure it sounds easier than it really is,” Han said. “Boil it down, and all we do is move cargo from one place to another.”

Chewbacca rumbled.

“Right,” Han conceded. “Without getting caught.”

The big, burly man was too far away across the spaceport landing field for Han to hear what he was saying. But from the way his arms were waving as he faced the Rodian half of the conversation, he wasn’t very happy.

Judging by the way the Rodian’s green-scaled hand was resting on the grip of his holstered blaster, it didn’t look like he was very happy, either.

Beside Han, Chewbacca growled a question.

“Because we need a front man,” Han told him. “Someone who can pitch a good story and make him believe it.” He nodded toward the arguing duo. “Dozer’s got the presence, the confidence, and even a hint of a Corellian accent.”

Chewbacca rumbled an objection.

“Yeah, but thug is the look we’re going for,” Han reminded him. “He’s a little rough, but he could pass as someone who’s worked his way up through the ranks. Besides, none of my other choices was available.”

Chewbacca rumbled again.

Han got a firm grip on his temper. Was Chewie never going to drop this subject? “Sure, Lando could probably do it better,” he said with forced patience. “And no, we’re not calling him. End of subject.” He glared up at the Wookiee’s stubborn expression. “And I mean end of subject. Got it?”

Glowering, Chewbacca rumbled a grouchy affirmative. Han turned his attention back to the distant and, from the looks of things, increasingly turbulent conversation.

The really irritating part was that Chewbacca was right. Lando Calrissian would be the perfect front man for the scheme he had in mind—no Corellian accent, but smoother and more urbane than Dozer Creed could manage on even his best day. But after the Ylesia incident, Lando had told Han in no uncertain terms that he never wanted to see him again. The fiasco with the Yavin Vassilika statue had done nothing but strengthen that animosity.

Maybe Lando would eventually cool off. Maybe he wouldn’t. Only time would tell, and Han wasn’t in any hurry to find out.

The conversation across the landing field was growing louder. Han watched Dozer’s wildly waving arms, wondering if it was time for him and Chewbacca to step in. If either party decided to raise the stakes by drawing, this thing could run flat into a wall in record time.

And then, suddenly, it was over. The Rodian handed Dozer a small pouch, Dozer picked up the travel case beside him and handed it to the Rodian, and both turned and headed off their separate ways.

“See?” Han said, gesturing toward the big man. “No problem—just talked his way through it. Come on, let’s see if he’s free.” He started toward Dozer—

And stopped in his tracks as something hard dug into his back.

“Don’t turn around,” a quiet voice came from behind him, just in case the blaster barrel hadn’t been enough of a message.

Han stopped, exhaling a little sigh. He should have guessed it wouldn’t be this simple. “Take it easy,” he soothed the man behind him as he slowly moved his hands away from his sides. “We’re just passing through.”

“Maybe,” the man said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to wait, nice and quiet, until that thieving son of a Ranat comes over here. And don’t even think about trying to warn him.”

“Hey, no problem,” Han assured him. Across the field, Dozer had spotted his visitors and changed direction toward them. “What happens then?”

“Then he gives me my ship back,” the man said. “Or I kill him.”

“Fair enough,” Han said, studying Dozer’s face. The other was watching Han and Chewbacca—mostly Chewbacca, really—with a slight frown on his face. But it was a curious frown, without any alarm or suspicion mixed in.

Which meant he hadn’t noticed the gunman behind them. “You sure he’s the one who did whatever it was that happened to your ship?” Han asked, listening carefully.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t ask too many questions,” the man advised. “If I get even a hint you’re working with him, you might not walk away from this.”

“Yeah, got it,” Han growled. He’d been right: the voice was definitely coming from his left and a couple of centimeters above his ear. Which meant the man was too tall to be hiding behind him.

Which meant he was hiding behind Chewbacca.

“And go easy on the threats, okay?” he continued. “The Wookiee here has a bad heart, and excitement isn’t good for him. Too much of it and he might have an attack.”

“Yeah, right,” the man said sarcastically. “I hear about Wookiees with heart trouble all the time.”

“I’m not kidding,” Han insisted. “He had seumadic fever when he was a kid.” He reached up and touched Chewbacca’s arm. “You okay?”

Chewbacca gave a plaintive trill and rocked a little on his feet. Good—he was on to the plan. “Hang on, buddy, hang on,” Han urged. “Can I at least get him his medicine?” Without waiting for an answer he dug into his side vest pocket.

And froze as the blaster again jabbed into his back. “Hands at your sides,” the man snapped. “You—Wookiee—stand still. Blast it, stand still!”

“He can’t help it,” Han said, gripping Chewbacca’s arm tightly. The Wookiee was really getting into his role, weaving back and forth like a tent in a hurricane. If Han hadn’t known better, he would have sworn his partner was on the verge of collapsing in a heap.

Their assailant thought so, too. Han could hear him swearing in anxious frustration as his walking shield threatened to move far enough to one side or the other that he would be exposed to Dozer’s view. Han could hear the faint scuffling of boots on duracrete as he tried to match Chewbacca’s movements.

And with the gunman’s full attention focused on keeping himself hidden, Han half turned, swept his left arm backward to knock the blaster out of line, and rammed his right fist into the man’s gut.

With an agonized cough, the gunman folded up and dropped to his knees. Chewbacca spun around and grabbed their assailant’s other arm, steadying and pinning him while Han twisted the blaster out of his limp grip. He was a lot younger than Han had guessed, despite his height. Not much older than Luke, with a lot of the same air of wide-eyed gullibility. “You want to explain this?” Han asked mildly, hefting the blaster in front of the kid’s eyes.

The kid glared but remained silent.

“Let’s try it again,” Han suggested, shifting his grip on the blaster to point the weapon at the kid’s face. “You just pulled a blaster on two total strangers. I want to know why.”

“Well, well.” The bemused voice came from behind Han. He turned, tensing, then relaxed as he saw it was only Dozer, strolling almost casually toward them. The big man’s hand was resting on the grip of his blaster, but he was making no move to draw. “What have we here?”

“We have someone who isn’t very happy with you,” Han told him. “He’s too choked up to explain. You want to give it a shot?”

Dozer shook his head sadly. “Jephster, Jephster,” he admonished the kid. “I already told you: your ship’s over in the North Quadrant.”

“I looked,” the kid ground out, the words coming out with obvious effort. “Bay two-fifty, just like you said.”

“Two-fifty?” Dozer sighed theatrically. “Jephster, I said two-fifteen. Two-fifteen.”

The kid looked up, a stricken look on his face. “Two-fifteen?” he repeated weakly.

“Two-fifteen,” Dozer said firmly. “I’m sorry—I really thought you’d heard it correctly. But no harm done, eh?” He pulled out his comlink. “Tell you what. I’ll call over to the gate supervisor, tell him you got confused, and have him confirm it for you. All right?”

“No,” the kid said hastily, struggling back to his feet. “No, that’s okay. I’ll just go over and … I can find it myself.” He looked at Han. “Sorry,” he added.

“Next time make sure you know what you’re doing before you start waving your blaster around,” Han warned as he reversed the weapon and dropped it back into the kid’s holster. “Other people don’t bother asking questions before they start shooting.”

“Yeah,” the kid wheezed. “Sorry.” Nodding weakly, he turned and limped away.

Dozer waited until the kid was out of earshot. “Nice job,” he murmured. “That could have been messy. It’s Solo, right?”

“That’s me,” Han confirmed. “Forgotten us already?”

“Oh, I never forget a face,” Dozer assured him. “I just have trouble matching them up with their proper names. What brings you to this corner of the galaxy?”

“I’ve got a job,” Han said. “Not smuggling this time. More along the lines of a vault robbery.”

“Really,” Dozer said. “And what, you need a ship or two for the scheme?” He waved a hand at the field all around them. “Anything you see here, I can lift it for you.”

“I was more thinking of having you play front man,” Han said. “You’ve got the presence and smooth talk we need.”

“Ah—so there’s some con work involved, too?” Dozer said. “Interesting. I’m in.”

Han frowned. “Don’t you want to hear the take first?”

“You wouldn’t have come all this way if it wasn’t decent,” Dozer pointed out. His eyes flicked to the kid. “Besides, getting off this rock for a while would probably be a good idea.”

“Probably,” Han agreed. “I take it you’ve already sold his ship?”

“Actually, it was never his in the first place,” Dozer admitted. “I find my profit margins are so much more satisfactory when I can sell the same merchandise twice.”

“Easier to do in your line than mine,” Han said. “Just out of curiosity, what would you have done if he’d let you talk to the gate supervisor?”

“And have people know he’d been stupid enough to draw on total strangers after he’d misheard a number?” Dozer shook his head. “Not a chance. Young men of his age will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid being embarrassed.”

“Lucky for you.”

Dozer shrugged. “You did already have his blaster,” he pointed out. “Still, as I believe a great poet once said, discretion is the foundation of continued existence. Ready whenever you are.”

“Good,” Han said, gesturing toward another part of the field. “The Falcon’s this way. Unless you’d rather bring your own ship.”

“Never actually owned a ship of my own,” Dozer said. “Maintenance costs are way too high.”

“You said it,” Han said ruefully. “Come on, let’s get out of the sun before the kid comes back.”

Eanjer was waiting in the Iltarr City Spaceport docking bay as Han, Chewie, Zerba, and Dozer filed out of the Falcon. Han handled the introductions, and while Eanjer was polite enough, Han had the distinct feeling that he was a bit startled at the size of the group. Possibly he was starting to wonder how many times his pile of credits was going to be split before he got a piece of it for himself.

Fortunately, whether he’d expected a crowd or not, he’d come prepared. Instead of a standard four-seat landspeeder, he’d brought a ten-passenger speeder truck.

“Is everyone else here?” Han asked, wincing a little as Eanjer maneuvered them out of the parking area and onto the crowded street. He still didn’t know how well Eanjer could see out of that prosthetic eye, and driving in city traffic with a single hand was tricky at the best of times. But he’d made a beeline straight for the driver’s seat the moment they reached the vehicle, and Han hadn’t yet figured out a diplomatic way to get him out of it.

“No idea,” Eanjer said, “since I don’t know who else you might have coming. So far we have three: Rachele, plus the young man and woman Mazzic sent. Oh, and the twins—Bink and somebody? They arrived just as I was leaving to pick you up.”

“Bink’s sister’s named Tavia,” Han said.

“Right—Tavia,” Eanjer said, nodding. “So is that it?”

“That’s it,” Han assured him, looking around at all the traffic. Rachele had warned him that, with the city filling up ahead of the Festival of Four Honorings, she might have trouble finding them accommodations. “So was Rachele able to get us a room?”

“Yes.” Eanjer smiled slyly. “And no.”

Sure enough, she hadn’t gotten them a room.

She’d gotten them a huge, two-floor suite.

“I’m impressed,” Dozer commented, looking back and forth at the various furnishings as Rachele gave them the grand tour. One of the rooms was all shades of brown, with a hardwood floor and adjustable recline chairs around a glass-topped and holo-equipped table. Another room was done up in light blue, with a round game table, a stand-up bar, and floor-to-ceiling artwork. “And Han can tell you that’s not easy to do. I can boost ships all day long. How in the Empire do you boost real estate?”

Rachele shrugged. “It’s not hard when you know how.”

“That doesn’t tell me anything,” Dozer said.

“It wasn’t intended to,” Rachele assured him.

Dozer inclined his head. “Fair enough.”

“Bink and Tavia arrived about two hours ago,” Rachele said as she led them to a wide spiral stairway leading to the floor above. “They’re unpacking and setting up their gear in one of the bedrooms. Mazzic’s people have been here since yesterday.”

“Did Mazzic bring them himself?” Han asked.

“Actually, no one brought them—they flew in commercial.” She smiled faintly. “We can throw chance cubes to see which of us gives them a ride when it’s time to leave. Come on—they’re in the upstairs conversation room. I’ll introduce you.”

She started up the stairs. Han followed, mentally shaking his head. Not only a suite, but even a suite with a view of Villachor’s Marblewood Estate.

The really crazy thing was that this was just a hobby for Rachele, something she did as favors for friends or to amuse herself. If she ever decided to quit her regular life and turn to a career of crime, the Empire would never be the same.

Given the type of person Mazzic typically hired, the man and woman conversing quietly over a datapad were something of a surprise. For one thing, they were younger than Han had expected, no older than their early twenties and possibly younger. For another, neither had hardened, suspicious eyes and expressions, like the majority of the criminals Han had run into over the years. However it was they’d entered Mazzic’s service, they probably hadn’t been born or indentured into it.

“You must be Han,” the woman said as the group filed up the stairway behind him and Rachele. Despite her youth, her hair was an almost shimmering pure white, and Han wondered briefly whether it was natural or some strange affectation. “My name is Winter.”

“Winter what?” Zerba asked.

The woman flicked him a look. “Just Winter,” she said.

“She’s right,” Han agreed before anyone else could speak. “We stick with first names from now on. Safer that way. This is Chewie and Rachele, Zerba, and Dozer. Rachele says you’ve already met Bink and Tavia.”

“The ghost burglar and her sister,” Winter said, nodding. “Yes, we have. An amazingly close set of identicals.”

“They’ve also met our employer,” Rachele added.

“Good.” Han gestured to the kid sitting next to Winter. “And you?”

The kid had been staring at the rest of the group with fascination or revulsion, Han couldn’t tell which. Now, thrust suddenly into the center of attention, he seemed to snap himself back to reality. “I’m Kell,” he said.

“And you do …?” Dozer asked.

Kell frowned. “Do?” he echoed.

“What’s your specialty?” Dozer said. “What do you do that makes you worthy to sit here among all this greatness?” He waved a hand around the room.

“Oh,” Kell said, his face clearing. Easily bewildered, Han decided, but just as quick to get on track again. “I’m pretty good with explosives—make ’em, plant ’em, set ’em off. I know a lot about droids, too.”

“Of course,” Dozer said dryly. “A knowledge of droids is essential to any good caper.”

“Actually, in this case, it is,” Rachele told him. “Villachor’s vault security includes a set of guard droids.”

“Oh,” Dozer said, sounding a bit off-stride. But like Kell, he recovered quickly. “Well, that’s good to know. What about you, Winter?”

“I know a fair amount about security systems,” Winter said. “I also have an eye for detail.”

Kell snorted gently. “An eye, and a brain,” he said. “She remembers everything she sees or hears. Everything.”

“That could come in handy,” Han commented, eyeing Winter. He’d heard of people with that kind of memory, but they were few and far between.

“It already has,” Rachele said. “We’ve been watching Villachor’s mansion—” She broke off as a pleasant chime came from across the room. “Oh, good, he’s here,” she said, hurrying toward the door.

Han frowned, doing a mental count. Him and Chewbacca, Zerba and Dozer, Kell and Winter and Rachele, with Bink, Tavia, and Eanjer elsewhere in the suite. That was everyone he’d invited.

So who was Rachele expecting?

He turned, dropping his hand to his blaster. Rachele reached the door and opened it.

And striding in past her as if he owned the place came Lando Calrissian.

“Hello, everyone,” he said, smiling that easy smile of his as he looked around the room. His gaze flicked to Han, turned quickly away. “So what is this job, exactly?”

It took Han a second to find his voice. “Rachele, can I see you a minute?” he asked, forcing his voice to stay casual.

A slight frown creased her forehead, but she nodded and headed toward an alcove off to the side that had been set up as a study. Han followed, listening with half an ear as Lando and the others began renewing acquaintances or making introductions as needed.

Rachele stopped just inside the study and turned around. “Yes?”

“What’s he doing here?” Han demanded in a low voice.

Rachele’s frown deepened. “You told me to invite him.”

Han stared at her. “When?”

“I got a message three days ago,” she said, her voice suddenly gone mechanical as she belatedly caught on. “Right after you messaged that you’d picked up Bink and Tavia.” Her face screwed up in a wince. “You didn’t send it, did you?”

Han sighed. Chewbacca. Or maybe Bink—she’d always had a thing for Lando. Maybe even Mazzic, figuring that loaning them Winter and Kell gave him the right to help with the rest of the guest list. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Did I happen to mention that he hates me?”

“I don’t think he does,” Rachele said. “Not really. He told me he’d been thinking it over, that maybe what happened wasn’t completely your fault.”

“Completely?” Han retorted, feeling anger stirring inside him. Not a single microgram of either of those fiascos had been his fault. “Nice. Good thing we don’t need him. You brought him, so you can go back in there and tell him—”

“He needs the credits,” Rachele said quickly.

Han snorted. “Lando always needs credits.”

“I’m serious,” Rachele said. “I think this time he’s genuinely desperate.”

Desperate enough even to work with a man he hated? Han turned and looked back at the group, still in the midst of friendly chitchat. If Lando was desperate, it sure didn’t show in his face.

But then, it never did. If there was one thing Lando was good at, it was hiding whatever dark secrets were churning around inside him. Which was what made him such a good—and annoying—gambler and con man.

And, he admitted reluctantly, why he would be such a good front man for this job. Far better than Dozer.

“You can take his payoff out of my share,” Rachele offered. “Like you said, he’s here because of me.”

For a moment Han was tempted. But it really wasn’t Rachele’s fault.

Besides, if this worked, there would be plenty to go around. “No,” he told her. “Whatever we get, we split it equally. That was the deal.” He took a deep breath. “You were starting to say something about Villachor’s mansion?”

“Yes,” Rachele said, and he could hear the relief in her voice. That had been a very awkward position for her to be in. “He’s been having visitors—”

“Don’t tell me,” Han interrupted, putting his hand on her back and guiding her gently back toward the conversation room. “Tell everyone.”

It took a minute to close down the conversations and get everyone seated, and two minutes more to collect Bink, Tavia, and Eanjer from the other ends of the suite. “As I started to say earlier,” Rachele said when everyone was finally assembled, “Winter, Kell, and I have been watching the traffic in and out of Villachor’s grounds, and we’ve spotted an interesting pattern. First, a group of three heavy landspeeders goes in through the western gate and they all park by the south wing’s private entrance. One person gets out of one of the vehicles—which vehicle it is seems to be random—and goes inside.”

“Could you tell who he is?” Dozer asked.

“Who, or what?” Bink added.

“He was humanoid, but that’s all we could get,” Kell said. “The entrance’s awning was always deployed, and the landspeeder drove right up beneath it. All we could get from this angle were shadows, and they weren’t clear enough for anything beyond basic shape.”

“Can we use a punch sensor?” Tavia suggested. “If the awning’s thin enough, that might get you a better view.”

“Punch sensors are traceable,” Dozer said. “We don’t want Villachor backtracking us here.”

“We’re far enough away, and in the middle of a group of high-rise buildings,” Tavia pointed out. “As long as you keep the punch short, odds are slim that he could find us.”

“It doesn’t matter, because punch sensors won’t work,” Winter said. “Marblewood has an umbrella shield that extends all the way down to just above the outer wall. If turbolasers can’t get through, punch sensors certainly won’t.”

Dozer waved a hand. “Of course they won’t,” he said apologetically. “Sorry—I should have figured he’d have something like that in place.” He nodded to Rachele. “Please, continue.”

“Ten to thirty minutes after those landspeeders arrive, another landspeeder comes in, a different one each time,” Rachele said. “A single person gets out and goes in through the main entrance. Those visitors we’ve gotten clear looks at, and so far they’ve always been important officials connected to either the government, industry, or financials. About an hour later that visitor comes out and drives away. Ten to fifteen minutes later, the passenger from the other landspeeder comes out through the private entrance, and the convoy also leaves.”

“It’s been happening three to four times a day,” Kell added. “There’s usually an early morning visit, then one around midday, one in the evening, and one day there was also one just before midnight.”

“The interesting point is that they’re the same three landspeeders each time,” Winter said. “The ID tags are different, but the landspeeders are the same.”

“As are the passengers, we assume,” Rachele said.

“How do you know they’re the same landspeeders?” Zerba asked.

“They have the same small scratches, dents, and other marks,” Winter said.

“You’re sure?” Dozer asked.

“Very sure,” Winter said. “Rachele has good electrobinoculars, and those details come through very clearly.”

“Sounds like Villachor’s playing host to some kind of ongoing meetings,” Bink suggested.

“He’s trying to find a slicer to steal my credits,” Eanjer said blackly. “Probably brought in someone from off world who’s taken advantage of the Festival crowds to slip into the city. If we don’t get in there quickly, we’re going to lose everything.”

“Steady,” Bink soothed. “Rushing off before you’re ready is a recipe for disaster. Besides, if this visitor is Villachor’s personal slicer, why isn’t he staying at Villachor’s place instead of coming and going?”

“And why the parade of local officials coming in to see him?” Tavia added. “No, there’s something else going on.”

“How do these officials look when they come out?” Lando asked. “Happy, angry, depressed?”

Winter and Kell looked at each other. “Nothing, really,” Kell said. “They just look—I don’t know. Normal.”

“You say there’s usually a midday visit?” Lando asked, standing up and walking over to the window. “Which direction do they come from?”

“Northwest, usually,” Winter said, going over and standing beside him. “They come into view along one of those streets up there, then head down the wide avenue along the outer wall, then go in through that gate, the one in the southwest corner.”

“And they leave the same way?”

“They leave through the same gate, but then take various routes back to wherever they’re ultimately going.”

“Have you tried following them?” Han asked.

“I didn’t think it would be safe,” Rachele said. “I’m guessing they have someone running high cover, and we need to have more than just a couple of trackers if we’re going to tail them without being spotted.”

“Well, we’ve got a decent-sized group now,” Han said, crossing to the chair beside Bink and Tavia and sitting down. “Winter, keep an eye out—see if they run their usual schedule. The rest of you, come over here and let’s see what Rachele’s found out about Villachor’s place.”

“It’s going to be a short demo, I’m afraid,” Rachele said as the others came back to the conversation area and sat down. Lando, Han saw with private amusement, was heading toward the seat between Bink and Tavia until Tavia noticed and scooted just far enough toward her sister to close the gap. Lando didn’t even hesitate, but smoothly changed direction and sat beside Zerba instead.

“Here’s the basics,” Rachele said when everyone was seated. She did something to her datapad, and a large multifloor schematic appeared in the air over the holoprojector. “Villachor’s mansion was originally built a hundred fifty years ago as the sector governor’s new home. You’ll note the rough aurek shape of the building: straight-edged north and south wings facing west, with northeast and southeast wings branching off from the center section behind them.”

“Let me guess,” Dozer said. “The governor’s name began with that letter?”

“His wife’s name, actually,” Rachele said. “The governorstead was moved again eighty years later, and the mansion went through a variety of owners until Villachor bought it eleven years ago.”

“Are these schematics up to date?” Bink asked.

“Mostly,” Rachele said. “As far as I can tell, none of the previous owners did anything drastic to the building. The biggest renovation was those skylights over the entry atria and the wings, which were installed about fifty years ago. But none of the basic structure or layout was changed until Villachor took over.” She keyed her datapad again, and the view zoomed in on a large ground-floor room near the southern end of the building’s south wing. “This is the junior ballroom. Villachor’s first—and biggest—renovation was to turn it into his vault.”

Lando whistled softly. “What does he keep in there, small starships?”

“I gather that most of it’s still empty space,” Rachele said. “We know he’s armored the walls and ceiling somewhat. Not all that seriously—I looked at the old material requisitions, and I’m guessing there’s no more than four or five centimeters of warship-class hull plate in place, with the door made of the same material. Nothing to sneer at, but not as bad as it could be. Unfortunately, the whole vault’s also magnetically sealed, and there’s probably a layer or two of sensor shielding in there, too.”

“You said the armoring is just on the walls and ceiling?” Dozer said. “Nothing on the floor?”

“There might be some down there, too,” Rachele said. “But given that the entire south wing sits on ten meters of solid stone, I doubt he bothered.”

“The walls shouldn’t be a problem,” Zerba said, one finger prodding thoughtfully at his lower lip. “Even at your upper estimate it shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes for me to carve us our own door.”

“Even with the magsealing?” Kell asked.

Zerba nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“What could be a problem is if the plating is honey-trapped,” Bink warned. “Even something that thin has plenty of depth to work with.”

“What’s a honey trap?” Eanjer asked.

“Honeycomb-style booby traps,” Bink explained. “You put pockets of explosives, acid, or pressurized poison gas inside your walls so that whoever’s behind the cutting torch gets a lethal surprise halfway in.”

“It’s all the rage among the better class of paranoid criminal bosses,” Dozer added dryly. “What about it, Kell? You have any experience with those? Or do you just blow things up and leave the defusing to others?”

“No, I can do both,” Kell said, his forehead wrinkled in thought. “I can probably handle any explosive traps we find, provided Zerba doesn’t set them off before I can get there.” He wrinkled his nose. “Not so sure about the acid and gas, though.”

“Actually, I doubt the walls will be our biggest problem,” Rachele said. “It looks like what he’s got inside the room will be the real challenge.”

“And what exactly would that be?” Lando asked.

Rachele made a face. “That’s the problem,” she admitted. “No one knows. At least, no one I can get to.”

There was a moment of silence. “No problem,” Han said. “Just means the first job is to get someone inside to take a look.”

“Yes,” Rachele said uncertainly. “Only no one’s allowed in there. There are guards on duty at the vault doors around the clock—armed and armored—and Villachor’s the only one they’ll let in.”

“Or Villachor and a friend,” Han said. “It has to be set up so he can bring someone else in if he wants to.”

“Only one way to find out,” Dozer said. “Which of us gets to be Villachor’s new best friend?”

“No contest,” Lando said, smiling at the twins. “I nominate Bink.”

“Why, thank you, sir,” Bink said, smiling sweetly back at him. “I just love making new friends.”

“You really think he’ll fall for that?” Eanjer asked, sounding confused.

“I’m quite certain he won’t,” Tavia said stiffly, countering Lando’s smile with a frosty look of her own. “May I suggest instead that we send in Zerba and his lightsaber to cut a peephole in the wall? We could set up a recorder and see what exactly goes on in there.”

“How are you going to get him that far into the mansion?” Kell asked, pointing at the schematic. “I’m seeing the mansion’s outer wall and another interior one before you even get to the vault.”

Chewbacca rumbled.

“Chewie’s right,” Han agreed. “Even if the crowds Villachor’s letting in for the Festival aren’t supposed to go inside, his security’s bound to be stretched thinner than usual. We’ll find a hole.”

“Or make one,” Dozer said.

Han nodded. “Or make one.”

“At least we’ll know where to start looking for those holes,” Rachele said. “Marblewood’s been a Festival venue for the past six years, and it’s had extensive coverage, official and unofficial both. I’ve taken a look at the various records, and there are a lot of things Villachor seems to do the same way every year.”

“I thought the pattern and order of the Honorings were always the same anyway,” Dozer pointed out.

“I’m talking about the details,” Rachele said. “Like where he positions the food pavilions, or how he dresses all the service and maintenance droids in coordinated and themed overgarments for each day of the Festival. Little things like that.”

“Patterns are good,” Lando said. “Like in sabacc, when someone always bets the same—”

He broke off as, across the room, Winter suddenly snapped her fingers. “Here they come,” she announced.

There was a mad scramble as everyone jumped out of their seats and rushed to the windows. “Where?” Zerba asked.

“Those three landspeeders two blocks away,” Winter said, pointing. “No—don’t,” she added as Dozer started to open the door leading onto the long balcony. “If someone’s watching, we’ll be way too visible out there.”

“Where are those electrobinoculars?” Lando asked.

“Here,” Kell said, pressing a set of the oversized viewers into his hand. “Rachele?”

“I’ll get the other one,” Rachele said, and hurried away.

The room fell silent. Han watched the landspeeders maneuver to and through the gate onto Villachor’s grounds, noting that the vehicles barely even slowed down before the guards waved them through.

“Here,” Rachele murmured in his ear.

“Thanks,” Han said, taking the electrobinoculars from her and pressing them to his eyes. The landspeeders were even more impressive close up than they were at a distance: black and heavy-looking, obviously armored, with tinted windows concealing the passengers.

“Boost-equipped, looks like,” Lando murmured. “See the reinforced lower edge plates?”

“Yeah, I see ’em,” Han confirmed. The vehicles might look like normal landspeeders, but with the hidden boosts they could instantly become airspeeders anytime they wanted.

“So why are they bothering with the streets?” Zerba asked. “Why not just fly in?”

“The airlanes in Iltarr City aren’t much faster than the landlanes,” Rachele said. “Besides, they’d have to come to ground to get in anyway. The umbrella shield, remember?”

“And if you’re the paranoid type, you might like having one direction that you can’t be shot at from,” Lando added.

The vehicles tracked along the pathway between the hedges, bushes, and small trees and finally came to a halt by the covered entrance at the mansion’s south wing. Han held his breath, holding the electrobinoculars as steady as he could, wondering if this would be the day the mysterious visitor made a mistake.

He didn’t. The awning over the entrance completely blocked their view of him as he left the landspeeder and headed inside. And with the sunlight streaming down from nearly overhead, there weren’t even any of the tantalizing shadows Kell had mentioned.

“They’re slick, all right,” Lando commented. “How soon did you say the next wave is due?”

“Ten to thirty minutes,” Winter said.

“So just enough time for a snack,” Lando concluded. “Do I smell carni chips and glaze sauce coming from somewhere?”

“Yes,” Eanjer said, sounding a bit taken aback by the sudden change in subject. “And also some kamtro grassticks. But shouldn’t we be watching Marblewood?”

“I’m watching it,” Lando assured him, turning back to the window. “Winter, tell me when you see a likely landspeeder. Bink, would you do me a favor and get me a small plate of those carni chips?”

Bink sent Tavia a wry smile. They knew Lando all too well. “Sure,” she said, and headed toward the kitchen.

Han started to turn away, stopping as a hand caught his arm. “A word?” Dozer said quietly.

They stepped a few meters away from the others. “Problem?” Han asked.

“More of a question.” Dozer nodded toward Lando, who had pulled a chair over to the window and settled himself in it. “You told me that I was going to be front man on this scheme. Now that Calrissian’s here, I assume that’s changed?”

“Probably,” Han said. “But don’t worry—there’ll be other stuff for you to do.”

“Uh-huh,” Dozer said. “And the split?”

“Same as before,” Han assured him. “Everyone gets the same share.”

Dozer pursed his lips, and it wasn’t hard to read the calculation going on behind his eyes. The shares might be passed out equally, but an even split among eleven was still smaller than an even split among ten.

“That going to be a problem?” Han pressed.

Dozer’s expression cleared. “No,” he said. “Just wondering.” With a little nod, he turned and headed over to where Tavia and Rachele were standing.

There was a rumble from behind him, and Han turned to see Chewbacca standing there. “You heard?”

The Wookiee rumbled again.

“He’ll be all right,” Han assured him. “Dozer wouldn’t let hurt pride get in the way of a paying job. Besides, I’m pretty sure he knows Lando will do better as a front man than he will.”

Chewbacca warbled one final time and moved away.

“He’ll be fine,” Han murmured to himself as he turned back toward Dozer. “Trust me.”

Ten minutes later and halfway through Lando’s first helping of chips, the expected visitor cruised through the gate and onto Marblewood’s grounds. Han, having already turned his electrobinoculars back over to Winter, watched from the side as he munched mechanically on a plate of kamtro grassticks. Something big was going on here, something way bigger than Eanjer and a stash of stolen credit tabs.

The two big questions were whether they could figure out what Villachor was up to and whether it was going to affect their own operation.

He’d left the window and was off in the corner, discussing the finer points of lock-picking with Bink, when Lando gave a warning whistle. “He’s coming out,” he called.

Once again, there was a brief scramble as the group reassembled by the windows. Han strained his eyes, but at this distance all he could see was a human male stalking down the steps to the waiting landspeeder. The man climbed in, the door closed, and the vehicle turned and headed back down the pathway.

“Interesting,” Lando murmured, lowering his electrobinoculars. “That man just lost something.”

“What did he lose?” Dozer asked.

“I don’t know,” Lando said. “It could have been credits, prestige, or power. But the changes in his expression and body language were very clear. Whatever he lost, it was something he wanted to keep.”

“Wasn’t enough time for a high-stakes sabacc game,” Zerba said thoughtfully.

“But plenty of time for a serious conversation,” Han pointed out. “Especially if one side was doing most of the talking.”

“You think Villachor threatened him?” Tavia asked.

“Or blackmailed or extorted,” Dozer said. “Those are the main three ways of controlling someone without having to fork over credits to pay them off.”

Chewbacca warbled a question.

“No idea,” Winter said. “He wasn’t in the group of holos Rachele gave me.”

“I only gave her the top-level players in Iltarr City’s power structure,” Rachele explained.

“Maybe we should go down a tier or two,” Zerba suggested.

“Agreed,” Rachele said. “I’ll see what I can pull together.”

“And while you do that,” Dozer said, “let’s see if we can figure out who the other visitor is. I think we’ve got enough people now for a proper tail. Shall I go out and get us a few landspeeders?”

“No need,” Rachele said. “Eanjer was able to scrape together enough credits to get us a few rentals. We have three of them downstairs, plus the speeder truck, plus two airspeeders in the rooftop lot.”

“Good,” Dozer said. “It’s probably too late to get in position before he leaves, so we’ll have to pick him up later tonight.”

“Assuming the drama gets a repeat performance,” Bink said.

“It will,” Winter assured her. “These people like to think they’re being clever, but they’re very much into patterns.”

“Great,” Dozer said. “Who’s up for a little drive?”

“You should ask Han,” Eanjer said. “He’s the one in charge.”

Dozer blinked, then smiled wryly. “Of course he is,” he acknowledged, turning to Han and inclining his head. “Sorry. Too many years of working for myself. So who’s going?”

Han looked around, doing a quick assessment. “You, Bink, Zerba, and me in the landspeeders,” he decided. “Lando and Chewie will coordinate from the airspeeder.”

“Sounds good,” Dozer said.

“I’d like to go along, too, if I may,” Eanjer said. “I want to help.” He looked down at his medsealed hand. “Though I’m not sure what I’d be able to do,” he added ruefully.

Han hesitated. They had a lot of reasons to keep Eanjer happy. A hundred sixty-three million of them, to be exact.

But he was an unknown quantity, and Han had no idea how he would react in a crisis situation. If something went wrong, one panicked person could easily run the whole thing straight into a wall.

To his relief, Chewbacca had followed the same line of thought and was already on it with a tactful suggestion.

“Good idea,” Han said. “Chewie says an extra pair of eyes would be handy in the airspeeder.”

Dozer gave a small snort. “A pair of eyes?”

“I meant an extra observer,” Han corrected, glaring at the ship thief. Eanjer was aware enough of his handicap without someone drawing attention to it. “You can go with him and Lando, Eanjer.”

“Thank you,” Eanjer said. He looked at Dozer, a hint of fire in his single eye. “And my current prosthetic works well enough, thank you,” he added icily. “I plan to get something more aesthetically pleasing when I get my stolen credits back and can afford to fix the rest of the injuries Villachor caused me.”

“That’s settled, then,” Lando said cheerfully into what could have been the start of a long and awkward silence. “Chewie will fly, you and I will watch, and by the time we settle in for the night we’ll have gotten to the bottom of this little mystery.” He beamed a smile around the room. “While we wait, anyone for a game of sabacc?”

The man’s name was Crovendif, and he thought of himself as an up-and-coming crime lord.

He wasn’t, of course, and never would be. True, he had the clothing and style down, and had even made an effort to get the rhythm and pitch of his voice to match those of prominent holodrama criminals. But what he didn’t have was the empty eyes and utter soullessness that Dayja had seen far too often in the humans and aliens he’d dedicated his life to bringing down.

No, Crovendif was just a lost kid who’d fallen in love with the idea of being a crime lord, or maybe had seen that as his path to contentment, security, and respect. Sooner or later those half-formed dreams would fade, and he would accept the fact that a crime lord’s street manager was all he would ever be.

All of that assuming, of course, that he survived the next few minutes.

“You’ve been dancing a challenge through my territory for nearly two weeks,” the would-be crime boss said, his voice low and menacing, his head raised slightly so that he could stare down his nose at his prisoner. He even had the holodrama stance down cold, Dayja noted. “Give me a reason why I shouldn’t have you killed right here and now.”

“I’m not looking to take over your territory,” Dayja said mildly. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.”

Crovendif’s expression slipped, just noticeably. Expecting bluster and defiance from his prisoner, he wasn’t prepared for a quiet, conciliatory response. “Really,” he said sarcastically. “And what impression should I have gotten?”

“I’m looking for a partner,” Dayja said. “I have some product that’s worth a lot of credits. But I don’t have the time or resources to set up the distribution end of the business.”

“And what makes you think I’d be interested in such a deal?” Crovendif scoffed.

“Not you,” Dayja corrected. “Your boss. I have far more product than your six or seven blocks can deal with.”

Crovendif’s face darkened. Maybe he’d had a brief hope that this was his ticket to greatness. “If you think I’m going to bother anyone else with such a ridiculous story—”

“He’ll want a sample, of course,” Dayja continued smoothly. “May I?”

Crovendif hesitated, then nodded to the two men currently pinioning Dayja’s arms. “Left,” he ordered.

Silently, the thug on Dayja’s left side released his grip on that arm. Dayja slipped two fingers into his side pocket, pulled out a small vial, and tossed it across to Crovendif. The other caught it with a nimble quickness that suggested he’d started as a blade fighter before joining up with Black Sun. Yet another reason he’d probably never get any higher than he was already. “Glitterstim, obviously,” he said as Crovendif looked closely at the vial. “But with a difference. Mine is artificial.”

“Then it’s not glitterstim,” Crovendif said.

“You’re right,” Dayja conceded, inclining his head. “I misspoke. What I should have said was that it’s genuine glitterstim, created by genuine Kessel spiders. But not spiders currently living on Kessel.”

There was a pause as Crovendif apparently worked that through. “You have spiders here on Wukkar?”

“Let’s just say they’re nearby and creating glitterstim as we speak,” Dayja said. “Bottom line is that I can make the product for a fraction of what it costs to make it on Kessel, and that doesn’t even take the lower transportation costs into account.”

“And you expect me to just take your word for all this?”

“Not at all,” Dayja said. “Take the vial to your boss, give him my offer, and ask him to run some tests. If he’s interested, great. If he’s not, no harm done—there are lots of other fish in the river. Either way, he can keep the sample with my compliments.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You mean if you decide to keep the vial for yourself, sell the product, and make yourself a bit of extra cash?” Dayja asked. “If that’s what you want to do, I certainly can’t stop you. All I can say is that you’re not your boss’s only street manager. If you don’t want to bring this opportunity to him, I’m sure someone else will.”

For a few seconds Crovendif continued to stare at his prisoner, frowning as if weighing the possibilities and coming to a decision. But it was all for show. Dayja had him, and they both knew it.

“Very well,” Crovendif said at last, making it official. “How do I find you with his answer?”

“I’ll be in touch.” Dayja nodded to the thug on his right. “Now, if you don’t mind …”

Crovendif gestured again, and the man holding Dayja’s right arm released it. “Thank you,” Dayja said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

He was sitting in his nondescript landspeeder half a block away when Crovendif and two of his men slipped out of their warehouse headquarters and climbed into their own vehicle. Dayja gave them a one-block head start, then settled in to follow. He was 90 percent sure that Crovendif was taking the vial to his boss, and he was another 90 percent sure that that boss was Villachor. But it never hurt to make sure.

Sure enough, Crovendif drove straight across Iltarr City to the Marblewood southwestern gate. Not the brightest move if he was trying to conceal his affiliations, but Dayja had already concluded Crovendif wasn’t the brightest star in the sky.

Still, the purpose was to pique Villachor’s interest, and as long as Villachor got the vial of glitterstim, the details of the delivery weren’t important. All Dayja had to do now was sit back, wait for Black Sun’s chemists to analyze his gift, and then accept Villachor’s inevitable invitation for a meeting.

Once inside the mansion, of course, the real challenges would begin. But he would deal with those as they arose.

Crovendif was still sitting at the gate, probably trying to convince the guards that he was one of Villachor’s people and that his errand was important enough to pass up the line. Dayja drove casually by, glancing back and forth among the various landspeeders as he passed them.

He paused, his eyes flicking a second time to a dark blue landspeeder parked just inside one of the cross streets. Unlike most of the parked vehicles in the area, this one wasn’t empty. A man was sitting in the driver’s seat, attempting to look casual.

And he was watching the southwestern gate. Very closely.

Dayja continued on without slowing, turning at the next corner. Odds were that the man was another of Villachor’s guards, stationed there as backstop in case there was trouble.

But he hadn’t seemed the Black Sun type. And the last thing Dayja wanted was for someone else to grab Villachor’s attention. Especially someone from a rival gang.

And so, instead of heading back to the hotel as he’d planned, he found a parking space within view of the mysterious watcher and settled down to wait. If the man was a guard, there would probably be a shift change somewhere in the next few hours.

If he wasn’t, Dayja had no intention of letting a gang war start. Not here, and certainly not now.

Pulling out the thermajug of Karlini tea he always brought with him on drives like this, just in case, he poured himself a cup and settled down to wait.

Eight minutes after the early evening visitor left Marblewood, the now-familiar three-landspeeder convoy also headed out.

Han and his blue landspeeder were right behind them.

Beside Lando, Chewbacca rumbled under his breath.

“I’m sure he knows,” Lando assured him, studying the map of the area he’d pulled up on his datapad. The convoy had headed south, which meant they were traveling along Packrist Avenue …

“What does he know?” Eanjer asked from the backseat. “What did Chewie say?”

“He was warning Han not to get too close,” Lando said. “I told him Han already knew that.”

“Oh,” Eanjer said, sounding nervous. “Shouldn’t we be going?”

“Going where?”

“Following the landspeeders,” Eanjer said. “I thought that was why we were up here.”

“No, we’re up here to watch for their backup,” Lando said, listening with half an ear to the running commentary going on through his comlink. Han had broken off the chase now, just as he was supposed to, and Bink had the convoy in sight and was preparing to pick it up.

“Oh. Right.” There was a soft hiss as Eanjer shifted in his seat. “Sorry. I’m afraid this isn’t my area of expertise.”

“That’s why you hired us,” Lando reminded him patiently.

Still, if the man had to be somewhere, he might as well be parked up here with them and out of the way.

The convoy turned, and Bink picked up the tail, moving in ahead of them and alerting Zerba to the change of direction. “May I ask you a question?” Eanjer asked.

Lando suppressed a sigh. Maybe he should send Eanjer across to the edge of the roof and tell him to watch for the convoy from there. “Go ahead.”

“Why do you hate Han?”

Lando wrinkled his nose as the obvious answer popped into his mind. But obvious didn’t necessarily mean correct. “I don’t hate him,” he said, picking his words carefully, painfully aware that Chewbacca was listening closely from half a meter away. “Not exactly. There was a deal—a couple of deals—where he ended up stiffing me out of what he’d promised.”

“Doesn’t sound right,” Eanjer murmured. “No wonder you hate him.”

“I don’t hate him,” Lando said, irritated. “I already said that. Besides, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it probably wasn’t all his fault. That he was stiffed along with the rest of us. But that doesn’t change the fact that he was the one who pulled us in and made all the big promises.” He looked sideways at Chewbacca, wondering how he was taking this. But the Wookiee was gazing out the side window, his face turned away. “I don’t hate him, but I don’t want to work with him anymore,” he concluded. “If he hadn’t specifically asked for me on this job, I wouldn’t have come.”

“I see,” Eanjer said. “Well, I for one am glad you came. I know you’ll be a great help to the team. And for whatever it’s worth, your share of the proceeds should make it possible for you to never have to work with him again.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Lando said. Shaking away thoughts of Han, broken promises, and future riches, he focused his attention back on the running comlink conversation.

“They’ve turned again,” Zerba reported, his voice uneasy. “Same direction.”

“Break off,” Han ordered.

“Already done,” Zerba said. “I don’t know, Han—there’s something’s screwy here. If they’re on to us, shouldn’t one of the chase cars have broken off to check us out?”

“Maybe they’re stalling,” Dozer suggested darkly. “Stringing us along while they bring in extra backup.”

Chewbacca rumbled, tapping Lando’s arm with one hand and pointing with the other.

Lando looked along the straightened finger to another rooftop parking area three blocks away. “Let’s find out,” he said, pulling out his electrobinoculars and training them on the vehicle Chewbacca had marked, a landspeeder parked right at the edge of the roof.

The Wookiee was right—it was the same type as the ones in the convoy Han and the others were currently tailing. There were two human men sitting inside this one, both with electrobinoculars pressed to their faces, their heads moving back and forth as they scanned the airspeeder traffic moving past above them. A few meters away, a third man was crouched at the edge of the roof, his electrobinoculars focused on the streets below.

Lando smiled tightly as he keyed his comlink for transmission. Earlier he’d considered sending Eanjer to watch the street. The pair out there had apparently had exactly the same idea. “Everyone, break off,” he ordered. “Repeat, break off.”

“What is it?” Han demanded.

“We’ve found their spotter,” Lando said, eyeing the men in the landspeeder. They looked to be just as comfortably settled as he, Chewbacca, and Eanjer were. And if they weren’t expecting to have to take off into the air on a moment’s notice …

“New positions,” Lando continued, dropping the electrobinoculars into his lap and picking up his datapad. The parking area was … right there. Which meant—“Han, go to resh-seven on the map. Bink, take the side street one block north of him. Zerba: senth-seven. Dozer: senth-eight. Find parking places and wait.”

“On my way,” Bink acknowledged.

“Me too,” Zerba added. “Hope you’re not in a hurry—the traffic down here is horrendous.”

“What’s the plan?” Han asked.

“The spotters are sitting about three blocks away, not moving and not looking like they’re about to,” Lando said. “I’m guessing they’re watching the end point of the drive, making sure no one’s hanging around waiting to ambush their boss.”

“You sure they’re part of this team and not someone else’s?” Bink asked.

“Pretty sure,” Lando said. “They’re in the same model landspeeder, with the same style boost system installed.”

“Worth a shot,” Han said. “If it doesn’t work, we can always try again tomorrow.”

“Unless they’re already on to us,” Dozer warned. “In which case, they’ll have some nasty countermeasures ready.”

“So let’s make sure we get this right,” Lando said.

The minutes ticked by. Han and the others reported their individual arrivals at their designated spots, then went silent.

Chewbacca rumbled a suggestion.

“Good idea,” Lando agreed, sliding down in his seat so that his head was below the level of the windows.

“What did he say?” Eanjer asked.

“He said we should slouch down out of sight,” Lando translated, propping his electrobinoculars on his seat’s shoulder support. Using the reflection from one of the building windows a block away, he should be able to keep track of what the spotters were doing. “So far it doesn’t look like they’ve checked this direction, but if they do, we don’t want them seeing us.”

“Ah,” Eanjer said, and Lando heard the soft hiss of cloth on leather as the other also slid out of sight. “Yes. Good idea.”

Lando craned his neck around to where he could see Eanjer out of the corner of his eye. “Don’t you have any Wookiees on Wukkar?”

“Of course we do,” Eanjer said, sounding a little defensive. “But most of them are laborers, bodyguards, or hired muscle. I’ve never—” He broke off.

“Thought it was worth learning how to understand them?” Lando suggested.

The half of Eanjer’s mouth that wasn’t hidden by medseal twisted in an uncomfortable grimace. “I suppose,” he said reluctantly. “Not that I didn’t … well, no. I guess I just … I guess I should have.”

Lando looked at Chewbacca, whose taller frame had forced him to slouch down even farther and more uncomfortably than Lando and Eanjer. There was some annoyance simmering in his eyes, but mostly he just looked resigned. It was all too common these days for his people to be treated as little more than convenient labor or expendable fighters.

Or as forgettable and throwaway slaves.

More minutes ticked by. Lando was starting to wonder if he’d guessed wrong, and was working on an alternative plan in case the convoy’s boss was onto them, when the spotter’s vehicle suddenly activated its boosts and rose into the air.

“Got ’em,” Han said. “Convoy just pulled into view.”

“Spotter’s on the move,” Lando said, easing his head up for a clearer look. The man who’d been at the edge of the roof was still in position, watching the street below. “Everyone, stay put—spotter’s on the alert.”

“I’ve lost them,” Han growled. “Around a corner, heading north. Anyone else?”

“Not here,” Bink reported.

“Or here,” Zerba said.

“Same,” Dozer said. “Lando? Looks like it’s up to you.”

“Right,” Lando said, wincing as he sat up straight in his seat and motioned Chewbacca and Eanjer to do likewise. If those spotters over there were worth their pay, the minute Chewbacca lifted off and headed that direction, they would be instantly in the center of unfriendly attention.

But if there was no other way, there was no other way. “Okay, Chewie—”

“Wait a second—I’ve got them,” Bink said suddenly. “Heading straight up—blast, those are good boosts—looks like the service alley between Twentieth and Twenty-first, western end.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when Lando had to grab for his datapad as Chewbacca kicked the airspeeder to power and shot toward the flow of traffic above them. The Wookiee twisted the vehicle to the right—

“Hold it—that’s the wrong way,” Eanjer warned. “The alley is two blocks to the left.”

“And the spotters will be watching for anyone heading that direction,” Lando told him. “He’s doing it right.” Twisting around in his seat, he brought up his electrobinoculars.

There they were: three black landspeeders, rising swiftly alongside a tall, blocky building. “I see them,” he said. “What’s that building, a hotel?”

“Yes—the Lulina Crown,” Bink confirmed.

“There’s a covered airspeeder parking garage on the top floor,” Rachele put in. “Secure entrance, residents and guests only. Let me see if I can pull up their current occupant list.”

“Bink, can you see the front?” Han asked. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll turn on their lights when they hit their rooms.”

“What if their rooms are in the back?” Eanjer asked. “She won’t be able to see those from the street.”

Again, Lando grabbed for his datapad as Chewbacca warbled a suggestion and made a sharp climbing turn, slipping the airspeeder deftly between two other vehicles in the next lane up.

“Chewie says we’ll watch the back,” Lando said, looking down and trying to orient himself after too many rapid changes of direction. The Lulina Crown … there it was. “Rachele, is there any way to boost the range on these things?” he asked, lowering the electrobinoculars for a quick look at the zoom control.

“Try turning the clarity control all the way up and raising the contrast,” Rachele suggested. “That should help.”

“Thanks.” Lando made the adjustments. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than what he’d started with. “Bink?”

“Looks like they’ve landed,” Bink reported.

“I think I see your spotters now, too,” Zerba added. “They’ve left their roof and are heading across toward the hotel.”

“I see them,” Bink confirmed. “Those are really nice boosts.”

“Easy, kiddo,” Dozer said. “You be a good girl, and when all this is over you can pick out one of them for your very own.”

“Like we’ve got room for one of those aboard our ship,” Bink muttered. “Though I guess I could store it in Tavia’s cabin.”

There was a faint and unintelligible comment from somewhere in the background. “Tavia says there’s already too much of your stuff in her cabin,” Rachele relayed. “She says if you want to bring a boosted landspeeder aboard, you should start by cleaning out your wardrobe closet.”

“I need every one of those outfits,” Bink said primly. “Just because she never goes out on the town—”

“Hold it,” Lando put in. In the distance behind and beneath them, a group of windows at the rear of the Lulina Crown had just brightened. “I’ve got fresh lights in the windows. About a third of the way up, midway from either end.”

“Can you tell which floor?” Rachele asked.

Lando squinted, trying to count as the airspeeder moved steadily farther from the hotel. “Looks like the sixth,” he said. “It’s a little hard to tell—there are a bunch of trees in the way.”

“Probably a WilderNest garden,” Eanjer said. “That’s a small park with various types of trees and other plants, often wild ones that you don’t usually see inside cities, the whole thing ringed by tall crescent or twistbark trees. Hotels with multiple buildings like to put them in the centers of their complexes.”

“Checking the sixth floor now,” Rachele said. “Let’s see … yes, that entire center section is an eight-room suite. Bink, you seeing anything?”

“Nope,” Bink reported. “Not on the sixth or anywhere else. If they’ve got any rooms on this side, they’re being coy about it.”

“They must really like parks,” Dozer commented. “I’d think the outside rooms would have a better view.”

“I don’t think a view is what they have in mind,” Bink said thoughtfully. “Rachele, any chance of getting us a room somewhere near that suite?”

“I’ll try,” Rachele said. “No promises, though—with the Festival coming up, pretty much every room in the city was snatched up weeks ago.”

“Are we done out here?” Lando asked.

“Yeah, we’re done,” Han confirmed. “Everyone head on back. Time to figure out our next move.”

To the complete lack of surprise of everyone—except possibly Rachele herself—Rachele did indeed get them a room.

Though it wasn’t exactly what Bink had hoped for when she’d turned Rachele loose on the job. She’d envisioned a room she could use as a base of operations for breaking into the place. Something right next door or, even better, something directly above or below. But even Rachele’s computer wizardry and network of high-level connections could only do so much.

Still, if the place wasn’t perfect, it could have been a lot worse.

“Is that it?” Tavia asked, stepping up to the window beside her and brushing a stray lock of her black hair behind her ear.

“That’s it,” Bink confirmed, gazing across the little pocket park at the other building. Two of the suite’s windows were blocked by the trunks of the big trees lining the greenery, but the rest were clear and visible.

“At least you’re not going to be rappelling down to it,” Tavia said. “Not from here.”

“You’re right on that one,” Bink agreed. Of all the aspects of Bink’s job that Tavia hated, watching her sister slide down the side of a building on a thin syntherope line was probably the part she hated the most.

Not that this would be a whole lot better, at least not from Tavia’s point of view. Still, swinging from tree to tree on a grappling harness wasn’t as bad as that long, barely controlled fall from a rooftop.

“Wow,” Kell said under his breath from somewhere behind the two women. “And you just moved us in here?”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Rachele assured him. “I noticed the couple who were supposed to move in here tonight are registered with the Wilderness Order, so I arranged for them to be offered a free safari in the Megrast Preserve down in Ancill Province. Simple, really.”

Kell shook his head in amazement. “I still say wow.”

Bink felt her lip twitch. Kell could be as impressed as he liked, but he really should stop being so vocal about it. There were enough swelled egos in this business as it was.

She sent a casual look over her shoulder at the others milling around the room. Maybe Winter would be willing to give him a few lessons on playing things cool. The white-haired woman was clearly just as impressed at Rachele’s achievement as Kell was, but was hiding it a lot better.

“Trouble?” Tavia murmured.

“No, it’s fine,” Bink murmured back.

Theoretically, it was. Solo was a pretty good judge of character, mostly. So was Mazzic, even if Bink didn’t always see eye to eye with him. If Mazzic said Winter and Kell were okay and Solo accepted that judgment, then they probably were.

But there was something about the two recruits that bothered her. Kell struck her as way too young, not just in age but also in experience and mental toughness. At the same time, she could see unnamed ghosts lurking behind his eyes. Something unpleasant in his past was driving him, maybe farther than he was really equipped to go.

Winter, oddly enough, was almost the exact opposite. She wasn’t much older than Kell, but her eyes held a startling depth of age and maturity. She had a natural poise, too, the kind of grace and self-assurance that Bink could also see in Rachele. Did that mean Winter, like Rachele, was a member of some world’s aristocracy? And if so, what in the Empire was she doing with a gang of thieves? Was she in it for revenge?

“Here,” Solo’s voice brushed into Bink’s musings. She blinked the thoughts away and found him holding out one of Rachele’s fancy electrobinoculars. “Rachele says we’ve got until tomorrow afternoon to get out of here. You think you can get us in by then?”

“Of course,” she said, taking the electrobinoculars from him. If there was one thing she’d learned in this business, it was to never tell a client you couldn’t do something.

Turning back to the window, pressing the electrobinoculars to her eyes, she got to work.

There wasn’t a lot to see over there. And what there was wasn’t very encouraging.

But it would be possible. Not easy, but possible.

She lowered the electrobinoculars and turned back around. In the intervening minutes, the rest of the group had found chairs or couches to sit on and were talking in low voices among themselves. “Here’s the deal,” she announced, walking over to the empty seat beside Rachele and sitting down.

The room went suddenly quiet.

“The hotel’s windows have built-in security systems, but the occupants seem to have disabled them,” she continued. “That means—”

“They disabled the security systems?” Kell asked, frowning.

“Central security systems are way too easy to slice into,” Tavia told him. “Especially hotel systems, which aren’t exactly known for sophistication. Our friends over there were probably afraid someone would take over the systems and use them to spy on them.”

“Which we absolutely would have,” Bink agreed. “You’ll also note they picked a sixth-floor suite on the garden side of the building, with big trees that would hamper any attempt to get to their windows via airspeeder. Both of those bespeak a certain paranoia.”

“Sounds about right for people who deal with Villachor,” Eanjer muttered. He was sitting a few meters away from the others, staring broodingly across the park, his left hand absentmindedly massaging his misshapen right hand through the medseal wrapping.

“And having disabled the hotel’s version of security,” Bink continued, “what could be more natural than that they would set up their own?” She waved toward the suite. “Their first line of defense was to bolt a set of transparisteel plates onto the inside of the normal glass of the windows. The good news on that is that the plates aren’t very thick, so I should be able to use a mono-edge wheel to cut through whichever one I want.”

“Or you could just use Zerba’s lightsaber,” Dozer suggested. “Be a lot faster.”

“Well, there’s just one teeny little problem with that,” Bink said. “Their second line of defense is a set of power sensors.”

“You sure?” Lando asked. “Usually power sensors are set up out of sight.”

“I’m positive,” Bink said. “The ripple pulse in the glass is unmistakable. You bring anything with a power cell within five meters of any of the windows and you’ll trigger alarms from one end of the suite to the other.”

“Cute,” Dozer grunted. “No way to disable them, I suppose?”

“Not from out here,” Bink said. “But I think we’ve got a manual crank drive for the mono-edge.” She looked at Tavia. “Right?”

“Yes,” her sister said, her mouth set in a thin, unhappy line. “How exactly were you planning to get close enough to use it?”

Bink braced herself. Tavia was not going to like this. “It’s going to have to be tree to tree,” she said. “Harness and manual grapples.”

Tavia’s thin lips compressed a little tighter. “Manual grapples don’t set as solidly as powered ones.”

“It’ll be okay,” Bink assured her. “I’ll just make sure I have a good anchor on whichever tree I’m swinging from. If the grapple fails, I can just pull myself back and try again.”

“How about using powered ones halfway across and then switching to manual?” Rachele suggested. “You should be able to use power along this building and at least halfway along the side set of trees. As long as you switch to unpowered before you get close to the suite you should be all right.”

“Not worth the effort,” Bink said. “Powered grapples are an integrated system. I’d have to strip off the harness, leave it draped over a branch or something, and pick it up on my way back. Besides, that five-meter range I quoted on the power detectors is only a guess. They may have focused detectors aimed in random directions that have two or even three times that range. I’d look pretty stupid if I reached the window to find half a dozen men with blasters waiting patiently for me to get there. Don’t worry—the manual system will work just fine.”

“Let’s say it does,” Lando said. “Once you’re there, then what?”

“Ah,” Bink said, lifting a finger. “That’s actually the easy part.” She lowered the upraised finger to point over her shoulder out the window. “Smack in the middle of that room over there is a Jaervin-Daklow floor safe. Probably bought here in the city—it looks new. They’re big, heavy, nearly impossible to break into, and have a touch-pad coder that’s virtually impossible to slice.”

“Unless?” Solo prompted.

“Unless you can see the pad while the code’s being entered,” Bink said, feeling a mischievous smile tugging at her lips. “Our friends over there were smart enough to set up the safe facing away from the window so no one could watch from, oh, say, right here.” She flicked a finger against her forehead. “What they weren’t smart enough to realize was that the room’s inside wall is facing the safe from less than three meters away. And said wall has a fresh gloss-white coat of paint.”

For a moment the room was silent. “You’re joking,” Zerba said.

Bink shrugged. “You turn sticks into butterflies and change clothes faster than people can blink,” she reminded him. “Jedi could supposedly lift rocks with their minds and make people forget their own names. We all have our specialties. This one’s mine.”

“The individual button lights on a keypad are never exactly the same,” Tavia said. “Differences in the emitters, plus bits of dust and finger oils, all shift the color and optical texture a bit. When one of the buttons is pushed, that light is blocked and the pattern on the wall behind is changed.”

“What do you need to work it?” Solo asked.

“I need to be at the window when they start keying in the code,” Bink said. “The rest is just reading reflections.”

“And shadows,” Tavia added. “If we can figure out whether the operator is left- or right-handed—and we usually can—the way the shadows shift when he hits individual keys can also be read.”

Bink rolled her eyes. “Tavia, you’re not supposed to tell people how the trick works,” she said mock-severely. “They’ll lose all respect if they know how simple it is.”

“Yeah, that’ll happen,” Solo said dryly. “When can you be ready?”

Bink looked at Tavia. “Two hours?”

Her sister didn’t look happy, but she gave a little nod. “Two hours,” Bink confirmed, turning back to Solo. “If Villachor has another late-night visitor, and if our friends across the way are invited, I can be by the window when they get back. After that, maybe half an hour to get in and crack the safe, see what’s inside that’ll tell us who they are and what they want with Villachor, then ten more minutes to seal up again.”

“What if Villachor’s already closed shop for the night?” Zerba asked. “If he sticks to schedule, he won’t have another meeting until tomorrow morning.”

Bink shrugged. “Then we do it tomorrow morning.”

“In broad daylight?”

“Not a problem,” Bink assured him. “There’s enough foliage out there to hide me from most people.”

“It’s the ones who aren’t most people I’m worried about,” Zerba muttered.

“I may be able to buy us another night here if we really need it,” Rachele said doubtfully. “It’ll be tricky, though.”

“Hold it,” Lando said, straightening suddenly in his seat, his eyes on the window. “Looks like they’re on the move.”

Bink turned around, craning her neck. The room’s light was on, with enough of a shifting shadow on the far wall to show that someone was over there opening the safe. She lifted the electrobinoculars to her eyes and focused in on the shadow.

Yes, it would work, she decided. She would have to be right up against the window to read the movements and decipher the keystrokes, but she was planning to be there anyway. The light and shadows shifted, marking the opening and closing of the safe door. The man back there emerged into view—

She stiffened. Only it wasn’t a man. The face that passed briefly through her field of view was green-scaled, with a mass of black hair tied and flowing down his back.

From somewhere in the area where Kell and Zerba were sitting came a sharp gasp. “Is that—”

“It’s a Falleen,” Eanjer confirmed, his voice grim. “What in the Empire is a Falleen doing here?”

“Take it easy,” Solo advised. But he didn’t sound any more thrilled than Eanjer did.

Or any more thrilled than Bink felt, for that matter. There were Falleen all over the Empire, of course, just like there were Rodians and Duros and even Wookiees. But this close to Imperial Center, the odds were unpleasantly high that any given Falleen would be working for—

“Take it easy?” Kell demanded. “Falleen mean Black Sun.”

“Not necessarily,” Winter said. Of all of them, she seemed to be maintaining the best semblance of calm. “Besides, Prince Xizor isn’t the only Falleen voice in the galaxy these days. Most of them have nothing to do with Black Sun. In fact, there are groups who are actively trying to restore honor to the Falleen name by bringing him down.”

Chewbacca rumbled.

“Well, sure, most of those groups are probably on Vader’s payroll,” Solo agreed. “Doesn’t mean they’re not out there.”

“And I’ll bet they’ve got Xizor really worried,” Kell muttered.

“You’re welcome to bail if you want,” Zerba offered.

Kell set his jaw. “No,” he said. “Thanks.”

“If it helps any, I think there’s just the one Falleen in the suite,” Rachele offered, peering at her datapad. “Looking at the room-service records, I see only a single order per mealtime that a Falleen would be likely to choose. The rest of the food is more suited to humans.”

“How many humans?” Lando asked. “What kind of numbers are we dealing with?”

Rachele’s lips moved as she did a silent count. “I’d say ten to twelve, plus our Falleen.”

“Maybe the Falleen isn’t the one in charge,” Tavia suggested.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Dozer said. “If it’s Black Sun, the Falleen is definitely in charge.”

“From what I’ve heard, Black Sun has plenty of humans in its ranks, too,” Eanjer pointed out. “So if it is Black Sun, what does that mean for our plan?”

“Right now, nothing,” Han said. “We still have to figure out what his connection is with Villachor, and for that we still need a look into that safe. Bink?”

“I’m game,” Bink assured him, standing up. “And now, you’re all invited to take yourselves and your conversation elsewhere.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Kell insisted.

“Oh, yes, you are,” Bink said firmly. “I need to lay out and test my equipment, and I don’t want a bunch of big nervous feet walking all over it.”

“Besides, we all have jobs of our own to do,” Solo added, getting to his feet. “Rachele, what’s the hotel’s security like?”

“Not too bad,” Rachele said, again manipulating her datapad. “Looks like all you need to get up from the lobby is a keycard. There don’t seem to be any security holocams except in the lobby and meeting areas, either.”

“That’s handy.” Solo looked at Zerba. “You think you can get us a keycard?”

Zerba puffed contemptuously. “With guests walking in and out all the time? In my sleep.”

“Good,” Solo said. “Rachele, I want you to go back to the suite and watch Villachor’s compound. Let us know when the Falleen and his convoy arrive and when they leave.”

“Sounds like I get the boring duty,” Rachele said.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got another job that should keep you busy,” Solo assured her. “Winter, Eanjer, you go with her. Chewie, you and Lando stay here with Bink and Tavia. Zerba, Kell, Dozer—you’re with me.”

“I’d like to stay here instead of going with Rachele, if I may,” Winter spoke up.

“Any particular reason?” Solo asked.

“As I said earlier, I know a fair amount about security systems.” Winter inclined her head toward Bink. “Not as much as Bink and Tavia do, of course. But three sets of eyes are better than two, and I might spot something they missed.”

Solo looked at Bink and raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“It’s fine with me,” Bink said, eyeing Winter. The white-haired woman was right about the correlation between success and the number of knowledgeable eyes on the scene.

Besides, Bink didn’t like working with enigmatic people. Keeping Winter here might give her an opportunity to get a better feel for her.

“Okay, then,” Solo said. “Chewie, Lando—keep an eye out for trouble. Everyone else, we’ve got places to go. Let’s get to them.”

The sky had darkened to full night, though the streets and buildings of Iltarr City were as bright as ever.

Which, Winter thought as she stood well back from the window, could be a problem.

Not that Bink in full camo gear was particularly easy to see. In fact, even knowing where she was, Winter had a hard time keeping track of her position. Most of the time she was pressed close to one of the tall trees out there, the outfit she’d chosen blending almost perfectly with the spots and shadows of the city’s lighting. It was only when she was swinging between the trees that she was really noticeable, and those moments passed quickly.

But the moments were still there. And there was something about the brightness of city lights combined with the instinctive fear of the night that made that combination particularly dangerous.

“Seems to be doing all right,” Tavia murmured from her side.

Winter nodded. Outwardly Tavia was as cool as Bink had been as she slipped out the window and began her trek around the edges of the park. But beneath the calm exterior, Tavia was worried about her sister. Winter could see it in the other woman’s anxious glances out the window, in the silent drumming of her fingers, and in her slight back-and-forth rocking even when she was trying to stand still.

The others could see it, too. Across the room, Chewie rumbled soothingly, and Lando looked up from his datapad. “She’ll be fine,” he assured Tavia. “She’s done this a thousand times.”

“I know,” Tavia said tightly. “But usually I’m right there with her. Not with her, but—you know what I mean. Wired in and watching to make sure it goes all right.” She shook her head. “I feel helpless just watching. Helpless and useless.”

“You two been doing this long?” Winter asked.

“Since we were ten,” Tavia said. “Not the ghost burglar stuff, not at first. But the whole life-on-the-fringe thing.” She looked sideways at Winter. “We didn’t have a choice,” she added, a defensive edge in her voice. “Our father was killed in the Clone Wars, and Mom died a few years later. We had no other relatives and no friends. It was this or starve to death.”

“Luckily, Bink proved to have some hidden talents in the field,” Lando murmured.

Winter eyed Tavia, noting the tightness around her mouth. “And she also discovered she liked it?”

Tavia lowered her gaze. “Why shouldn’t she?” she said. “Everyone likes doing the things they’re good at.” She smiled wanly at Winter. “I’m sure you do, too.”

“I suppose,” Winter said, looking back toward the window. There was a flicker of movement, and Bink had made it one more tree toward her goal.

Yes, Winter enjoyed her job. Or at least she had once.

But there was enjoyment, and there was passion, and there was duty. Right now, all Winter had left was duty. Duty, and a simmering hatred she didn’t want and couldn’t afford to feel.

Alderaan. Her home, her friends, a lifetime of memories. All of it, all of them, gone.

A haze of red flowed across her vision, flickering with a thousand faces she couldn’t forget and a million memories that would now forever be stained with fire and blood. Princess Leia and the other leaders of the Rebel Alliance had always been in awe of Winter’s perfect memory, of her ability to memorize shipping manifests with a glance and reproduce details of the most complex schematics or transfer operations without effort. None of them had truly grasped the horrible downside of being unable to forget anything.

Long ago, Winter had occasionally tried explaining the reality of her gift to some of the people around her. Now she no longer even made the effort.

The one exception to that rule was Leia. The Princess had enough troubling memories of her own that she might actually understand and appreciate Winter’s burden.

If she was still alive.

More images flicked across Winter’s indelible memory, pictures and events of all the times she and Leia had worked or played or gotten into trouble with Leia’s father, Bail, while they were growing up together.

Had Leia been on Alderaan when that insane monster Tarkin had destroyed it? That was the crucial, horrible question. Leia had been in the area around that time, but she might have been sent on some other mission before her world was destroyed. Winter desperately needed to know the truth, one way or the other, so that she could either get some relief or else add Leia’s face to the collection of bloodstained images in her mind. For her, uncertainty was a killer, an enemy that sapped focus, strength, and determination.

Only Winter had no way of finding the truth. All she knew was that Alderaan was gone, that there were rumors the Death Star was gone, and that neither the Imperials nor the Alliance had quite figured out how they should react to the doubly unexpected situation.

But who had died and who had lived, Winter had no way of knowing. The people she worked with in Procurement had been deliberately isolated from the Alliance command structure and all direct lines of communication. Until some kind of official word came down from Imperial Center, or until she received the less official but usually more accurate information from Alliance HQ, all Winter could do was hope, worry, and pray.

And continue to do the job she’d been given. For now, that meant maintaining her cover as a smuggler’s assistant and doing whatever Mazzic told her to do. Even if the task had nothing to do with bringing down the Empire she had learned to despise.

By the time Rachele reported that the three-landspeeder convoy had once again left Marblewood, Bink had reached the far corner of the park. By the time Han reported from outside the Lulina Crown that the convoy had arrived, she was two trees away from her target window.

She was resting more or less comfortably in her chosen tree, three meters back from the window, when the lights in the suite came on and the Falleen they’d seen earlier strode back into the room.

“Don’t worry, she’ll pull it off.” Lando’s voice came softly from behind her.

Winter looked around. He’d come up from the other end of the room and was standing between her and Tavia. Closer than he needed to be, far closer than Winter liked strangers getting.

But his eyes weren’t on her. They were on the windows across the park. “I’ve seen her pull off crazier stunts than this,” he continued. “Like I said before, she has talent.” He pulled his gaze back long enough to flash Winter a charming, slightly roguish smile. “Both of them do,” he amended, resting his hand on Tavia’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Winter said, turning her own gaze back to the window. It was annoying, though hardly surprising, that Han had been smart enough to insist on the group sticking to first names. There were no fewer than fifteen Landos in the criminal databases she’d memorized over the years, most of those files unfortunately without any decent holos in them. Briefly, she wondered if this Lando was one of those fifteen or someone who hadn’t yet caught the Imperials’ attention.

The Falleen across the way had taken off his coat, revealing an expensive-looking thigh-length tunic beneath it. Winter studied his neck, hoping there would be a clan or loyalty tattoo somewhere that might give some clue to his identity or affiliation. Some groups of Falleen went in for that sort of thing.

But there was nothing, at least nothing she could see from her distance. The Falleen dropped his coat on a low table beside the room door, then reached into a hip pouch and pulled out an odd-looking datapad, setting it beside the coat. Hunching his shoulders once, as if shaking away the residual weight of the coat, he stepped to the safe and disappeared around its side.

Winter frowned at the datapad. Something about it seemed familiar.

Abruptly she stiffened. “Electrobinoculars,” she snapped, tearing her gaze from the datapad and looking wildly around. Where had the devices gotten to?

“Here,” Tavia said, pressing a set into her hand.

Winter jammed them to her eyes, her fingers keying in the focus control. The image settled down; then an alien hand appeared from the side and snatched the datapad out of her field of view. Before she could refocus, the Falleen had again disappeared around the side of the safe, taking the datapad with him.

“What is it?” Tavia asked tightly. “What’s wrong?”

“That datapad,” Winter said, lowering the electrobinoculars and looking over at the section of floor where Bink and Tavia had laid out their equipment. “I need a closer look to be sure. But if it’s what I think it is, we’ve got trouble.”

“But Bink can’t bring it here,” Tavia objected. “The power sensors—”

“I know,” Winter cut her off, thrusting the electrobinoculars back at her and hurrying over to the equipment. “I’ll have to go to her.”

“How?” Lando asked. “Bink has the only unpowered harness.”

“So I’ll have to improvise.” Winter picked up the powered grapple harness and gave it a quick assessment. If she removed the central framework, then unplugged the shoulder-mounted targeting rangefinder …

The Wookiee growled a question.

“It’s more than just important,” Winter said. “It’s absolutely vital.” She got a grip on the framework and glanced around for a knife—

And twitched back, startled, as the Wookiee stepped to her side and plucked the harness from her hands. Three seconds later, he’d pulled off the framework, the rangefinder, and a section of trim that she hadn’t realized was powered. He thrust it at her, gestured for her to put it on, and unlooped the bandoleer from his shoulder.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Lando asked. “That’s a long way.”

Chewie gave an impatient roar.

“Okay, okay,” Lando said hastily, holding up his hands, palms outward. “Tavia, get the window open.”

The light had gone out in the room across the way by the time they were ready. Chewie and Winter stood facing each other in the open window, Winter secured in her harness with the harness’s outer anchor straps wrapped securely around the Wookiee’s massive shoulders.

He looked down at her, murmured a last-chance question.

“I’m ready,” she said, nodding. He nodded back.

And an instant later, he leapt out of the window into the night air.

Winter gasped despite herself, her hands clutching reflexively at the hair around Chewie’s ribs. An elongated second later her grip was nearly jerked loose as his hands and feet slammed into the nearest tree. For another instant it felt like they were going to slide off and plummet to the park below. Then there was another jerk as the Wookiee somehow caught them. Winter started to take a deep, shuddering breath—

And with a shove and violent twist of his body, the Wookiee flung them away toward the next tree in line.

Winter had been wrong. She was not in any way ready for this.

But one of the side effects of a perfect memory was that she could quickly adjust to new experiences, especially repetitive ones. By the time they reached the end of their building and turned the corner she knew when to brace herself, when to grip her harness, and when to let herself go limp. She also knew exactly how many trees stood between them and Bink, which meant she was able to count down the number until the ordeal was over. Psychologically, knowing the end point helped immensely.

Even so, for most of the trip she kept her eyes tightly closed.

Bink saw them coming, of course. And it was quickly clear that she wasn’t happy about it. “What are you doing?” she demanded in a loud whisper as Chewie settled onto the final tree.

“The datapad in there,” Winter said, struggling to turn around in the strictures of the harness. Bink, she saw, had the outer window open and was in the process of cutting a small circular hole in the transparisteel barrier behind it. It was hard to tell from her angle, but it looked like she was most of the way through. “Did you see it?”

“Yeah, I saw it,” Bink said. “So what?”

“I need a closer look,” Winter said. “It’s important.”

Bink’s lip twisted, but she nodded reluctantly. “It better be,” she warned. “Okay. Give me two minutes after I’m inside, then you can come in. You can get her to the window, Chewie?”

The Wookiee growled an affirmative. “Fine,” Bink said. “Just don’t make any noise once you’re in there. And don’t break anything.” Turning around again, she got back to work on the window.

Winter had done a fair amount of breaking and entering during her years with the Rebel Alliance. But most of those sorties had been into low-security areas like foodstuff or spare-parts warehouses, and most of the time she’d had someone more experienced along to help. Never had she tried to break into a place with this kind of security.

Lando had been right. Bink definitely had a talent.

Carving a hole in the transparisteel barrier was only the first step. After that came the use of some gummy substance to get the circle out of its place. A pair of long probes slipped through the opening tweaked aside a pair of trackers, while a jumper cable on the end of an even longer probe bypassed some kind of detector Winter didn’t recognize.

Finally, when all the backup sensors and detectors had been stifled, confused, or distracted, one final probe tripped the release and swung the transparisteel plate out of the way. Getting a grip on the sill, Bink unhooked her harness from the adhesive anchors she’d fastened to the outside wall and climbed nimbly through the opening and into the room. She closed the window and transparisteel plate most of the way, flashed Winter a look, and slipped around the side of the big floor safe.

“How do we work this?” Winter murmured to Chewie.

In answer, he motioned toward the nearest branch. “I was afraid of that,” Winter said, wincing as she got a firm grip on the branch. Chewie waited until she was ready, then slipped the harness straps one at a time off his shoulders. Moving carefully and, for her, unusually awkwardly, she moved around and climbed onto his back, reaching over his shoulders and catching hold of the clumps of hair over his collarbones.

She’d read once that those were the safest and least painful ways to hold on to a Wookiee. Fervently, she hoped the author of that particular article hadn’t gotten it wrong.

Bink’s two-minute countdown ran down. Chewie rumbled a warning, then threw himself away from the tree toward the window. His hands caught the lower edge, and his body slammed into the side of the building with a jolt that nearly broke Winter’s grip.

Luckily, the Wookiee had already anticipated that danger. Even as she struggled to hold on, he bent his knees and brought his feet up beneath her, giving her something to brace her own feet against. Waiting until she had resettled her grip, he bent his elbows and pulled them both face-level with the lower edge of the window.

Winter had a grip on the window and was starting to open it when, across the room, the door opened and a big, rough-looking man strode in.

She froze, knowing how horribly exposed she was, but also knowing that any movement would instantly catch the man’s eye. Chewie apparently knew that, too, and also froze. The man walked past the back of the safe to a pair of chairs flanking a small table, pulling out a datapad as he did so. He started to sit down, turning his back briefly to the window—

An instant later, Winter’s view was cut off as Chewie took advantage of the man’s turned back to drop them back down to a hanging position, where everything but his fingertips would be out of sight.

But she’d seen enough. The good news was that the man had clearly not been suspicious. The bad news was that he’d had the look of someone about to settle in for a while, either to read, do some work, or maybe just take a nap.

All of which would leave Bink trapped on the far side of the safe.

Winter craned her neck to look behind her. At this distance, and with the trees partially blocking her view, she couldn’t tell whether or not Tavia and Lando had spotted the problem. She could only hope fervently that they had.

And that they could come up with something to do about it.

“Got it,” Dozer acknowledged. Clicking off his comlink, he pulled open the stairwell door, exchanged nods with Zerba, and strode out onto the plush carpet and into the delicate scent pattern drifting through the Lulina Crown’s sixth-floor hallway.

And as he walked, he smiled tightly to himself. Calrissian might have the looks and the smile and the easy charm, and maybe that was all Solo wanted for this job. Or at least all he thought he wanted.

But Calrissian was nothing more than a smuggler and occasionally lucky gambler. Boosting ships was the job that took real con artist skills.

Time to show them how a professional did it.

The doors at the Lulina Crown Hotel had nice little bell buttons beside them for visitors to use, buttons that no doubt created nice little chirping or twittering sounds inside the suite. Dozer bypassed the button in favor of pounding on the door with the edge of his fist. “Hello?” he called. “Delivery.”

Nothing. Dozer pounded again, hoping the lack of response didn’t mean Bink had been caught and everyone in there was too busy to answer the door. “Hello?” he called again, putting some serious volume into it this time. “You want to get the door? I haven’t got all night.” He raised his fist again—

With a suddenness that caught him by surprise, the door was yanked open and he found himself staring into the muzzles of a pair of large, mean-looking blasters.

“Hey, hey, hey—take it easy,” he said quickly, opening his hand to show it was empty. The men behind the blasters, he noted, were every bit as large and mean-looking as their weapons.

“What do you want?” one of them demanded.

“Quickline Courier Service,” Dozer said, nodding toward the gold nameplate fastened to his jacket. “I’ve got a delivery for Mencho Tallboy.” Carefully, he lifted the small security case in his left hand. “Is he here?”

The man’s eyes narrowed, and with an effort Dozer kept his breathing steady. Tallboy was the name Rachele had pulled from the room service orders, but she’d had no way of knowing whether it was a real person or simply a convenient alias the Falleen and his troop used for such mundane matters. A supposed delivery to a nonexistent person would do nothing to ease anyone’s suspicions, and that was the exact wrong direction Dozer wanted this conversation to go.

“Yeah, he’s here,” the man said, drawing his blaster back a few centimeters and reaching out his other hand. “I’ll take it.”

“Are you Master Tallboy?” Dozer asked, wincing back like a man who knows he’s about to deliver unwelcome news to an armed man. “I’m really sorry, but the order was very specific. I need to deliver the package personally to Master Mencho Tallboy.”

“Whose order?” the man asked, his hand still outstretched.

“The sender’s,” Dozer said, letting more nervousness and a little confusion creep into his voice. “I’m just a courier. I just do what I’m told.”

For a couple of heartbeats the two men continued to stare. Then the one with his hand outstretched twitched his fingers. “Datapad,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir,” Dozer said, fumbling the security case to his right hand and pulling out his datapad with the other. The second man holstered his blaster and took the datapad, frowning intently as he began punching keys.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dozer saw a small black sphere appear through the half-open stairway door and roll down the corridor toward him at a far better clip than an object that size had any business doing on carpet this thick. It bounced off the far wall and angled back in his direction.

And a second later exploded in a brilliant blast of fire and a cloud of roiling black smoke.

Bink was nearly through the safe’s combination when the door across the room opened.

Her first thought was the obvious and horrifying one: that the gig had just come to a crashing halt, and she was about to be in a fight for her life. Pressing herself against the safe, she slipped her right hand into her hip pouch and got a grip on the mono-edge cutting wheel. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was the best she had.

To her relief, the opening door was accompanied by only one set of footsteps, and leisurely ones at that. Someone just wandering into the room for some other purpose than hammering an unwelcome ghost burglar?

A fresh jolt of tension washed over her as she suddenly realized that Winter should be climbing in the window just about now. But the footsteps showed no indication that the other woman had been spotted. The visitor strolled casually past the other side of the safe, and Bink heard the faint sound of cloth on leather as he sat down in one of the reading chairs.

Which now left her officially trapped.

She licked some moisture onto suddenly dry lips. Getting caught in the act was one of the ever-present dangers of this job, but so far she’d managed to mostly avoid such unpleasantries. With a Falleen and possibly Black Sun involved, a confrontation here was to be avoided at all costs.

She hoped Tavia had something extra-special up her sleeve.

Eighty seconds went by. Bink counted and examined every single one of them, her mind tumbling as she tried desperately to come up with an escape plan of her own in case Tavia didn’t come through.

Then, across the room’s silence, came the faint murmur of a distant voice, as if coming over a comlink clip. Bink couldn’t make out any of the words, but suddenly there was a second cloth-on-leather creak as the visitor got abruptly to his feet. Bink squeezed the mono-edge wheel tightly, but the footsteps merely tracked briskly back across the room to the door. Another opening and closing …

Cautiously, she peeked around the edge of the safe. There was a motion at the edge of her vision, but it was only Chewie hoisting himself back into view and Winter pulling the cracked window the rest of the way open. Breathing a quiet sigh of temporary relief, acutely aware that whatever was going on elsewhere in the suite wouldn’t hold the thug’s attention forever, Bink ducked back to the front of the safe and returned to work.

She was nearly done when Winter appeared at her side. “Almost,” Bink whispered, mildly surprised that the other woman had made it through the window and across the room without making any noise. Maybe Winter was more experienced in criminal activity than Bink had thought.

She keyed in the final number, and there was a soft click from the mechanism. Mentally crossing her fingers, hoping there wasn’t some hidden alarm she hadn’t spotted, she rotated the lever—

From somewhere in the distance came the faint sound of an explosion. She twisted her head toward the door—

“That must be our diversion,” Winter whispered. “Hurry.”

Clenching her teeth, Bink leaned back, throwing her full weight on the lever. The heavy door swung ponderously open.

Bink felt her eyes widen. The safe was empty.

No; not quite. On the middle shelf was an odd-looking datapad. “What the—”

She broke off as Winter reached past her and picked up the device. She took a step to the side, moving into the light, and briefly turned the datapad over in her hands. Then, stepping back again, she returned it to the safe. “Time to go,” she whispered, and headed back toward the window.

“No kidding,” Bink whispered sourly to herself. A datapad. She’d risked her life for a kriffing datapad.

Closing the safe, she resealed it and followed Winter back across the room.

A long minute later she was safely outside, the transparisteel plate back in position, the window closed, and the plugs she’d cut out of both of them back in place. For the moment the plugs would be visible, but three more minutes and the adhesive she’d used to glue them in would have everything melded back together, leaving not even a hint that either plate had ever been cut. The rock putty anchors she’d fastened to the side of the building for her harness were the last to go, their adhesive melting away with a few blasts from her solvent spray bottle.

And with that she was on her way back, following Chewie and Winter, firing her grapples and swinging to each tree as quickly as she could. She’d lived through yet another operation, and the sooner she was safely back inside their room, the happier she would be.

She could only hope that whichever of Solo’s people had provided the explosive diversion back there would likewise make it back in one piece.

The bomb was a tiny one, a little squeaker charge that Kell had put together for the occasion, all smoke and sound and very little actual fury. It wasn’t nearly powerful enough to knock Dozer over.

The man with the blaster, on the other hand, was. Dozer landed flat on his back on the thick carpet, the man’s left palm pressed hard against his chest the whole way down, his blaster pressed equally hard against Dozer’s left cheek. Somewhere along the way, the sound of the blast was echoed by the sound of the suite door being slammed shut.

Dozer had intended to yelp something terrified-sounding, something that would fit in with his innocent-bystander persona. But the impact with the floor left him barely enough air for a choking gasp. Out of the corner of his eye, beneath the tendrils of smoke and past the knees of the man now kneeling beside him, he saw two more armed men charging toward the stairway, their blasters drawn and ready.

Mentally Dozer shook his head. Brave men, and undoubtedly very tough. Also very stupid. They had no idea whether there was one man or twenty lurking in the stairway they were heading toward. If he’d been in charge, he’d have sent either a five-man squad or no one at all.

But it was a Falleen calling the shots in there, and Falleen weren’t known for caring about any species other than their own.

Down the corridor, the stairway door thudded open as the two men charged in, prepared to kill or die at their master’s command. Luckily for them, this time they had nothing to worry about either way. Between Kell’s squeaker and Zerba’s spring-loaded timed kick launcher, those stairs had been long since deserted.

“Don’t worry, we’re going to get your friend,” the man leaning over Dozer said. “It’ll go a lot easier for you if you talk now.”

“I’m just a courier,” Dozer managed, putting a good healthy shaking into his voice, as a truly terrified man would. “I’m just here to deliver a package.”

“And get us to open the door so your friend could roll a bomb in at us?”

“I don’t know anything about any bomb,” Dozer protested, putting a little more trembling into his voice. It wasn’t all that difficult, not with that blaster grinding into his cheek. “Look, I was standing right there with you. You think I want to get blown up?”

The man grunted. “Gorkskin? Talk to me.”

“Looks legit,” someone outside Dozer’s field of view said reluctantly. “Got a businessmark here that checks out with the Iltarr City data lists. And there’s a delivery order here for Mencho, tagged with time and place.”

Dozer’s guard grunted again. “Open it.” He raised his eyebrows. “Any objections, courier?”

Dozer considered reminding him that the box could legally be opened only by the proper recipient. Under the circumstances, he decided that would be extremely out of character. Not to mention dangerously stupid. “No,” he said.

“Good. Gorkskin?”

“It’s locked,” Gorkskin said.

“You sure?”

There was a quick double snap-and-flash of blaster shots, and Dozer winced as the heat washed over his face. “I guess not,” Gorkskin said sarcastically. There was another crunch as he broke open the damaged security case. “Well, well. You’re going to love this, Wivi. The box is filled with cash. Five or six hundred credits at least.”

The blaster at Dozer’s cheek dug in a little deeper. “Well, well,” Wivi said, his voice deceptively casual. “I wonder who likes Mencho enough to send him credits.”

“All coinage, too,” Gorkskin said. “Not some nice, easily traceable credit tab.”

“Of course not,” Wivi said. “Let’s try this again, courier. Who sent you?”

“I told you,” Dozer said, throwing as much fear and confusion into his voice as he could, wondering uneasily if he’d bitten off more than he could swallow. They’d seen the whole fake backdrop Rachele had planted in the datapad and city records, and they still weren’t buying it. If Solo had more evidence, he’d better get busy and trot it out. “I’m just a delivery man—”

“For Quickline Courier Service,” a new voice put in calmly.

Dozer felt his stomach tighten. On the surface, the voice was quiet, peaceful, and quite civilized. But that air of civilization was molecule-thin … and beneath it was something cold and dark and very, very evil.

“With all respect, Lord Aziel, you shouldn’t be out here,” Wivi said, his voice suddenly deferential. “Not until we’ve secured the area.”

“There’s no danger,” the voice said. There was a hint of something different in the corridor’s scent flow, Dozer noticed.

And then, to his surprise, he felt his heartbeat slowing and a new calmness flowing into him. Maybe the newcomer, this Lord Aziel, could do something about his predicament.

“The attacker, whatever his purpose or plan, is long gone,” the voice continued. “And this man is as he claims: a mere courier.”

“Sir, we haven’t yet confirmed that,” Gorkskin said.

“Then let us do so,” the voice said. “Allow him to stand.”

Wivi gave Dozer one final frustrated scowl. Then, reluctantly, he pulled the blaster away from Dozer’s cheek and got to his feet. After another second’s hesitation, he reached down and stretched out his hand. Dozer hesitated, too, just the fraction of a second that a still-terrified bystander should hesitate, then reached up to the proffered hand and allowed Wivi to haul him upright.

And as he started to straighten his jacket, Wivi half turned him around and he found himself face-to-face with the Falleen they’d seen earlier from across the park.

Only the alien wasn’t nearly as threatening as he’d seemed back then. In fact, as Dozer gazed into his green-scaled face and dark blue eyes he couldn’t even remember why Solo and the others had thought he was someone they had to worry about in the first place. This was a gentleman of the highest order, hardly someone who would engage in anything as vulgar as criminal activities.

“Are you indeed a courier?” Aziel asked.

Dozer swallowed, a flood of guilt and regret washing over him. The Falleen standing before him was honorable and caring. To even think about lying to such a person felt like a betrayal of all that was right and proper about the universe.

And yet a small, nagging part of his mind remembered that there was a reason that Dozer was here. Something about all this that was vital he keep secret from even this splendid Falleen. Vital to other people’s lives as well as Dozer’s own.

Maybe he could have it both ways. Dozer had certainly brought the security case in here at Solo’s request. So … “Yes,” he said. “I’m a courier.”

“For Quickline Courier Service?”

Given that Quickline didn’t really exist and Dozer was literally its only employee: “Yes.”

“Did you have anything to do with that explosion?”

The squeaker had been Kell’s handiwork, the delivery system had been Zerba’s, and the plan had been Solo’s. “No,” Dozer said.

“Very well,” Aziel said. He looked at the two glowering thugs—for that was all they were, Dozer realized now: low-living creatures who barely even qualified as sentient compared to the nobility of their master—and gave a small gesture. “Return his case, and allow him to go his way.”

“And the credits?” Wivi asked.

“The delivery order says they’re to go to Mencho Tallboy,” Aziel reminded him. “So shall they be delivered.” His eyes glittered. “And he can then explain the source and purpose. At any rate, the courier may go his way.”

Dozer felt a rush of gratitude as Wivi silently handed him the damaged case. There were so few true gentles in the Empire these days. It was an honor to have met one of them.

It wasn’t until he was in the turbolift heading back to street level that the feeling began to fade, and he slowly began to realize what had just happened to him.

And how with just a hair less care on his part he might have given the whole thing away.

He was still shaking when Han pulled their landspeeder back into the flow of late-night traffic.

“It’s called a cryodex,” Winter said when the group was once again assembled in their suite overlooking the Marblewood Estate. “It was an old Alderaanian encryption device, built into a specially modified datapad. Unlike normal encryptions methods, which use software and overlays, the rotating single-spark patterns here were built directly into the machine.”

“Sounds tricky,” Lando commented.

“Not to mention inefficient,” Tavia added. “If the encryption becomes obsolete, you’d have to scrap the whole device and build a new one.”

“In theory, yes,” Winter said. “But the system had two advantages. First, a message encrypted by one cryodex could be read on any other cryodex. That meant you could have one device at each end of your diplomatic channel without worrying about transmitting the encryption pattern back and forth or trusting a courier to deliver it.”

“A thief could still intercept the message itself,” Tavia pointed out.

“True,” Winter agreed. “But it wouldn’t do him any good … because the second advantage is that a cryodex-encrypted message can’t be decrypted. By anyone. Ever.”

“Really,” Lando said, a hint of polite skepticism in his voice.

“Really,” Winter said, with an edge Han hadn’t heard from her before. “In over two hundred years of use, no cryodex encryption was ever broken.”

Han nodded to himself as part of her aura of mystery came clear, and he suddenly understood the air of tension and sadness about her. “You know this from personal experience?” he asked.

Winter turned to face him, and for a moment they locked eyes. He watched as she fought a brief battle within herself and came to a reluctant decision. “Yes,” she said quietly. The brief moment of edge was gone, leaving only the sadness. “I was connected with the royal palace on Alderaan.”

There was a moment of silence as the others digested that. The official details surrounding the Death Star’s single tour of duty were still sketchy, Han knew, but Alderaan’s destruction was all over the HoloNet. “I’m so sorry,” Rachele murmured at last.

“Thank you,” Winter said, back on balance again. Briefly, Han wondered how she could put it out of her mind so quickly. He’d seen how deeply Princess Leia and the others at Yavin had been affected, and even though Han himself hadn’t lost a bunch of friends or family, it had still been a severe gut punch to fly through a swarm of rocks that had once been a thriving world. Either Winter had terrific self-control or she was really good at suppressing memories. “I didn’t tell you that to elicit sympathy,” she continued. “I told you, as Han said, so that you’d understand that I know firsthand what I’m talking about.”

“So where did this particular cryodex come from?” Zerba asked. “Any idea?”

Winter’s lips compressed briefly. “There were a hundred thirty-seven cryodexes known to be in existence as of—” She broke off. “All but eight of them were on Alderaan,” she continued. “Of those eight, seven were in upper-level diplomatic hands.” She hesitated. “The eighth went missing four years ago, presumed stolen.”

“Three guesses as to which of the eight this is,” Kell murmured.

“You have any idea who stole it?” Bink asked.

“A possible thief was identified,” Winter said. “But we never found out whether he did in fact steal it, and if he did, who he then delivered it to.”

“I assume that the others were shut down when that one went missing?” Lando asked.

Winter nodded. “They were still occasionally used for minor purposes, but all top-level diplomatic encryption was immediately shifted to other methods.”

“Wait a minute,” Tavia said, frowning suddenly. “You said only one cryodex was stolen?”

“She’s right,” Zerba said, sitting up a little straighter. “You just said you need two to send a message. What use could anyone have for just one?”

“Maybe he already had access to one of the diplomatic instruments,” Bink suggested doubtfully. “No, that doesn’t work. If he already had one, why bother stealing another? He could just decrypt whatever diplomatic dirt he wanted to read and send the message to whoever else wanted it.”

“I don’t know the motivation behind its disappearance,” Winter said. “The reason we never learned what happened was that the presumed thief died shortly after being arrested.”

Kell shivered. “Lovely.”

“What did you expect?” Dozer muttered. His voice was dark, his brooding eyes locked on the tall glass of ale he’d poured himself the minute they’d arrived back at the suite. As near as Han could remember, those were the first words the man had spoken since they’d all driven away from the Lulina Crown Hotel.

“What do you mean?” Tavia asked.

“I mean of course he died in custody,” Dozer growled, glaring at her. “I’m surprised he didn’t die on the way to custody. These people are evil, Tavia—pure, unstrained evil. They’ll kill anyone who gets in their way.” He dropped his gaze back to his drink. “Including us.”

“Whoa,” Bink said, peering closely at him. “Is that Dozer the formerly nerveless ship booster I’m hearing?”

Dozer shook his head. “You weren’t there, Bink,” he said. “You didn’t face him. Didn’t hear him. Do you know that I came within a sabacc wheel of giving the whole thing away? And for no reason other than that he asked nicely.”

“You didn’t give us away, did you?” Zerba asked anxiously.

“You think we’d all be sitting here if I had?” Dozer bit out. “But I came close. Way too close. And I’ll tell you something else.” His gaze flicked around the room, settling at last on Eanjer. “I’m not sure this is worth it anymore. If they figure out who we are and what we’re up to, we’re dead. We’re just dead.”

“They’re not Jedi, Dozer,” Eanjer said soothingly. “You ran into Falleen pheromones, that’s all. They use them to manipulate you into—” He waved his good hand. “I don’t know. Their best friend, their slave—whatever. The point is that you didn’t break, and now that you know what you’re facing you can fight it.”

“What if I can’t?” Dozer shot back. “Or what if one of the rest of you gets picked up and you can’t?”

“We’re still talking a hundred sixty-three million credits,” Bink reminded him. “For that kind of score, I, for one, am perfectly capable of resisting a whole roomful of Falleen.”

“Are you sure about that?” Dozer countered. “Because I’m not.”

Chewbacca rumbled.

“Yeah, let’s not jump off any roofs here,” Han agreed. “Dozer’s right—having a Falleen involved could mean trouble. But Bink’s also right—there’re a lot of credits on the line. Enough for all of us to make brand-new lives for ourselves if we want.”

“It’s like when that perfect hand comes along,” Lando murmured. “You have to see it, recognize it, and bet big.”

Han frowned, wondering if that was some sort of dig at him. But Lando was merely gazing thoughtfully down at the center table.

Anyway, Lando was the least of his worries right now. All of Dozer’s ranting about his newly minted nervousness was starting to seep into the rest of the group. If the man didn’t shut up, he might unravel the whole thing.

And if the group fell apart, so did the job. They would all scatter back to their own lives, and any chance for Han and Chewbacca to get free of Jabba would be gone.

He wasn’t going to let that happen. Not just because a Falleen was involved. Absolutely not because Dozer had taken delivery of a case of cold feet.

“Let’s take a few minutes,” he suggested. “Go wander around the suite, stare out at the city, get a drink, do whatever you want. Think about it, and we’ll meet back here in an hour. Okay?”

“Sounds good to me,” Lando said, standing up.

“And if anyone has a contact in law enforcement, you might try calling them,” Rachele suggested as the rest of the group rose from their chairs and couches. “Now that we know we’re dealing with a Falleen, there may be some official information out there as to who and what we’re up against.”

“Good idea,” Han agreed. “You’ll be calling some people, too?”

She gave him a tight smile. “I already have a list.”

Dayja’s plan, once he reached the balcony, had been to attach a probe link to the window, listen to whatever the people inside were saying, and try to figure out who and what they were.

He wasn’t expecting to arrive at his destination just as the party was breaking up.

But breaking up it was. The whole group—nine humans, one Wookiee, and one near-human, probably a Balosar—were on their feet, wandering off in different directions across the conversation room, apparently heading for different corners of the suite.

Dayja muttered a curse as he backed to the side of the balcony, out of view from the windows. The car he’d spotted had been watching Marblewood, all right, and had followed an unidentified convoy from there to the Lulina Crown Hotel. The tracker had then returned here, after which he and most, if not all, of his gang had left and reassembled in the hotel across the park from the Lulina Crown. Some had then left, others had gone around to the front of the hotel, and finally the whole group had returned here to the suite, which Dayja had tentatively identified as their main headquarters.

That was a lot of running around for one day, especially given that it hadn’t produced any results that Dayja had spotted. And if it hadn’t been for that late evening explosion at the Lulina Crown, Dayja might have decided he had better things to do and left the group and their activities for the local police to deal with.

But the explosion had taken that decision off the table. Bombings were typically associated with theft, kidnapping, murder, or serious property damage. But this blast hadn’t been connected with anything on that list. That fact pushed the odds inexorably toward the conclusion that the incident had been a diversion.

But a diversion for what? D’Ashewl was currently sitting in their hotel suite sifting through the police data, but so far he hadn’t spotted any crime that the blast might have been intended to confuse, distract from, or cover up.

Still, Dayja had no doubt that these people were involved. So he’d tracked down their suite, found a currently empty room three floors above them, and rappelled down to their balcony.

Only to find his would-be unsuspecting informants closing down for the night.

He was still trying to decide what to do next when he noticed one of the suite’s occupants, the one with the medsealed hand and half-medsealed face, heading toward the balcony door.

Dayja dropped his hand to his hidden knife, his mind racing. He could run, he could hide, or he could attack.

Or he could do what he’d come here to do.

He waited until the other man had come all the way out onto the balcony and settled down with his elbows on the railing, gazing at the lights of Marblewood across the way. Then, keeping an eye on the window beside him to make sure they weren’t interrupted, Dayja took a couple of steps toward the newcomer. “Good evening,” he said quietly.

For a fraction of a second the man didn’t react, as if his ears were having trouble sending a warning to his brain. Then, like a sudden gust of wind, a shiver ran through the man’s body. He twisted half around toward Dayja, his single good eye going wide. Either the man had the slowest reactions in the galaxy, or else he had so much pain medication in him that he was living in a permanent fog. Given the sheer area of medseal involved, Dayja guessed it was probably the latter.

“Who are you?” the man demanded, his voice tight. “No—stay there.”

“Relax—I’m not going to hurt you,” Dayja soothed, taking another couple of steps forward. “I just want to talk.”

The man’s single eye flicked a glance toward the glass, the prosthetic eye implanted in the medseal glittering hypnotically in the haze of city lights. “About what?”

“You.” Dayja gestured toward the empty conversation room. “Them. Your interest in Avrak Villachor. That sort of thing.” He raised his eyebrows. “You are interested in Villachor, aren’t you?”

The man’s tongue flicked briefly across his upper lip. “Are you one of his men?”

“Hardly,” Dayja assured him dryly. “My name is Dayja. What’s yours?”

The man’s eye flicked to the window again. “Eanjer.”

“A local name, I see,” Dayja commented. “Interesting. How about your friends? Most of them are from out of town, aren’t they?”

Eanjer frowned, his eye darting around the balcony as if he’d suddenly remembered where they were standing. “Where did you come from?” he asked. “How did you get up here?”

“Oh, let’s not talk about me,” Dayja chided. “Let’s talk about you and your friends. What are you all doing in Iltarr City?”

Eanjer’s face hardened. “Looking for justice.”

“That’s good,” Dayja said encouragingly. “That’s very good. You see, I’m also a seeker of justice.” He focused on the pupil of Eanjer’s remaining eye, knowing that the first and most honest response would come there. “I’m with Imperial Intelligence.”

Again Eanjer’s eye widened. This time, Dayja was close enough to see the pupil widen along with it.

Widen, but then quickly return to its former size. The revelation had startled the man, but he’d recovered quickly. “Can you prove it?” he asked.

“Yes,” Dayja said, throwing a look of his own through the glass. Sooner or later, one of the others was bound to wander back in. It wouldn’t do for him and Eanjer to be standing here chatting when that happened. “Tell me, are you confined to this suite? Or can you come and go as you like?”

Eanjer snorted under his breath. “The latter, of course,” he said. “Did you think I was a prisoner?”

Dayja shrugged noncommittally. “Do you play pool?”

Once again Eanjer’s single pupil widened briefly before returning to normal. “Yes. Why?”

“There’s a table in the library downstairs: second floor, just off the tapcaf,” Dayja told him. “It’ll be a nice, private place to talk.”

“I’m sure it will,” Eanjer said, a hint of nervousness in his voice.

“Don’t worry, I just want to talk,” Dayja assured him. “Maybe compare notes a little. I have the feeling you have information I could use.” He smiled slyly. “I know I have information you can use.”

Eanjer took a deep breath and straightened to a decision. “All right,” he said. “I’ve got an hour before we’re supposed to reconvene.”

“Good,” Dayja said, backing toward the end of the balcony and the ghost burglar harness waiting for him there. “I’ll meet you in five minutes. If you get there before I do, rack up the balls and choose yourself a cue.”

Over the years, Dayja had spent a fair amount of time in pool and five-pocket rooms like the one off the hotel tapcaf. But given the fact that most of those visits had been to gain information or do surveillance on a suspect instead of actually trying to master the game, he’d never gotten especially good at it.

Still, against a man with a medsealed and possibly alien prosthetic arm, he figured he had a pretty fair chance.

To his mild surprise, he didn’t. Not even with Eanjer playing left-handed and having to balance the end of the cue awkwardly across his bandaged wrist.

But that was okay. In fact, it was more than okay. Dayja had long since learned that competitive sportsmen talked more freely when they were winning.

And Eanjer’s talk was well worth listening to.

“A hundred sixty-three million, eh?” Dayja commented as he watched Eanjer set up for another shot. “That’s an awful lot of credits. And you said it was going to be split eleven ways?”

“I said it was going to be split evenly,” Eanjer corrected. He tapped the cue gently against the chaser, and Dayja watched as the white ball bounced into the stripe-three and sent it dropping neatly into the corner pocket. “I never said there were eleven of us.”

“My mistake,” Dayja said. “Still, it seems to me that you should get more than just a single share, given that they were your credit tabs to begin with.”

Eanjer shrugged. “A hundred percent of nothing is nothing,” he said as he walked around the end of the table. He lined up the cue against the chaser, aiming for the stripe-six this time. He drew the cue back to shoot, but before he could do so there was a flicker and the stripe-six abruptly went black. Simultaneously, at the other end of the table, the blackball flickered and became the stripe-six.

Eanjer swore beneath his breath. “Too bad,” Dayja commiserated. “But it could have been worse. I’ve seen the blackball turn just as the shooter was about to hit the chaser, with no way he could stop in time. At that point, all the shooter can do is curse as he follows through and watches his own shot lose him the game.”

“And then listen to the cackling of his opponent, I suppose,” Eanjer said, giving Dayja a baleful look as he repositioned his shot. “Let’s slice to the end, shall we? Are you looking to make the deal a twelve-way split?”

“Not at all,” Dayja assured him. “I’m not interested in Villachor and his ill-gotten credits. All I’m interested in is his visitor … and his visitor’s own little treasure.”

“And what exactly might this mysterious treasure be?”

Dayja pursed his lips. This would be risky, but not as risky as taking on Villachor and Qazadi all by himself. “I’ll make you a deal,” he offered. “I’ll tell you all about the prize, and lend you any quiet support I can, provided you bring it to me once you’ve raided Villachor’s vault. In return, you’ll promise not to tell the others where you got the information, and you’ll keep me informed of your progress.”

Eanjer eyed him closely. “And you’ll let us stay with our plan? You, a law officer, are going to just let us walk in there and rob him?”

“Yes, because I was planning on doing the exact same thing,” Dayja said. “This way, we can pool our resources and information and hopefully help each other.”

“With my group taking all the risks.”

“And getting most of the rewards,” Dayja pointed out. “Besides, after that stunt you pulled at the Lulina Crown this evening, I could run you all in right now if I wanted. As you said, a hundred percent of nothing is nothing.”

For a moment they gazed at each other in silence. “All right,” Eanjer said at last. “Let’s hear it.”

“Certainly,” Dayja said, laying his cue on the edge of the table and gesturing toward a row of seats off to the side. “Let’s sit down, and I’ll tell you about a criminal organization known as Black Sun.

“And about their secret and highly lucrative collection of blackmail files.”

Han stared, feeling his stomach tighten into a hard knot. “You’re joking,” he said flatly.

“Does it look like I’m joking?” Eanjer countered. “I know it sounds incredible, and I admit right now that I don’t really know if it’s true. But my informant definitely believes it, and he’s never been wrong yet.”

“And your informant’s name is …?” Tavia prompted.

“Sorry,” Eanjer said. “For the moment I have to keep that confidential.”

“And he’s really sure Villachor’s working with Black Sun?” Dozer asked, his voice dark.

“He is,” Eanjer said. “Though again, I can’t prove that.”

“You don’t have to,” Rachele said quietly. “It’s true.”

Han turned to her, aware that everyone else in the room was doing the same. “You knew?” he demanded. “And didn’t tell us?”

“I didn’t know,” she said, a little defensively. “But like everyone else in the Wukkar upper strata, I’ve suspected the connection for several years. When you came to me with Eanjer’s problem—” She hunched her shoulders. “I hoped we were all wrong, I guess. That Villachor was just an ordinary, local criminal slime.”

“Actually, this makes a lot of sense,” Lando said thoughtfully. “Not who Villachor is, but that the core of Black Sun’s political power comes from blackmailing high-level officials. Much easier and cheaper than having to buy them off.”

“And keeping those files in a set of portable data cards is just perfect,” Bink agreed. “Even if one of Xizor’s enemies managed to get through all the scared officials running interference for him and tried to grab them, he wouldn’t even know where to start looking.”

“Any idea how many cards there are in the set?” Han asked.

“My contact says there are supposed to be five, tucked away in some kind of fancy hand-enameled wooden box that no one outside Black Sun has ever seen,” Eanjer said. “The whole thing should be small enough to fit in a satchel or even a hip pouch. Like Bink says, easily portable.”

“It explains the cryodex, too,” Winter said. “Perfect, unreadable encryption, and the only time you need to bring the two together is when you want to show someone the specific dirt you have on them.”

“So why keep the cryodex in a downtown hotel instead of in Villachor’s vault with the files themselves?” Zerba asked. “Bink just proved how much less secure it is there.”

“Like I said: keeping them apart means no one knows where to go looking,” Bink said. “You always want to keep the key and the lock away from each other if you can.”

“And in this case, no one even knows what they’re looking for,” Eanjer added. “I’m pretty sure even my informant doesn’t have the slightest idea there’s a cryodex involved.”

“There may be another reason for keeping the cryodex there,” Han said, a new and interesting idea starting to form in the back of his mind. If the cryodex was being kept away from Villachor’s place because the Falleen didn’t trust him, an entirely different angle might be opening up in front of them. “Winter, could you make us a cryodex of our own? Not one that works, just something that looks right?”

“Certainly,” Winter said, eyeing him thoughtfully. “It would be a relatively simple modification of an old Comp600 datapad, assuming we can find one.”

“Bound to be a few around town somewhere,” Rachele said. “I’ll hunt one down for you.”

“Wait a second,” Tavia spoke up warningly. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, the answer is no. Bink’s not going back in there. Not after Kell and Zerba’s little bouncy-ball game out in the hallway.”

“Too bad she didn’t grab it when she could,” Kell murmured.

“She couldn’t,” Tavia said. “The power sensors, remember?”

“She could have pulled out the power cell.”

“We didn’t know, it’s too late now, and we’re not going to talk about it,” Han said firmly.

“And it wouldn’t have mattered if she had,” Lando said. “Half an hour after the cryodex disappeared, the files would have been off Wukkar and heading back to Imperial Center.”

“At least they wouldn’t have been able to use the files against anyone else,” Kell pointed out.

“Of course they would,” Lando scoffed. “You think Xizor’s dumb enough to keep all his barks in one kennel? He’s bound to have a backup cryodex squirreled away somewhere.”

“There was only one reported stolen,” Winter reminded him.

Lando shrugged. “So?”

“Which is why we’re going to concentrate on the files and not the cryodex,” Han said. “Tavia, how fast could you put together a full-spec spit-mitter, and how small could you make it?”

Tavia shrugged. “Couple of days. How small do you need it?”

“The size of a data card,” Han said.

“That’s pretty small,” Tavia said, frowning off into space. “But I think I can make it work. Of course, for something that size the receiver will have to be pretty close. A hundred meters, maybe less.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Han assured her. “Now—”

“What’s a full-spec spit-mitter?” Eanjer asked.

“Full-spectrum sensor cluster with integrated recorder and burst transmitter,” Bink told him. “You slip one inside the place you want to burgle, and it spits you out the relevant details about security, guard stations, and everything else. If you pick your frequency right, the signal will slip right through the target’s sensor-block fields.”

“And by sending it in a short burst you don’t have to worry about a transmission net catching it,” Tavia added, her eyes steady on Han. “Of course, it does have to be inside the vault to do any good. You got some idea how to pull that off?”

“I’m working on it,” Han assured her. “Okay. First job is to find out what these data cards look like. Rachele, you said you knew some of the people who’ve been going in and out of Marblewood over the past few days. Anyone there you might be able to get talking?”

“I don’t think so,” Rachele said, wrinkling her nose. “Most of them I only know by sight.”

“I may know one of them,” Eanjer offered. “What were some of the names?”

“Well, there was Tark Kisima,” Rachele said, her eyes defocusing slightly as she thought back. “He was one of the first. I also saw Alu Cymmuj, Donnal Cuciv—”

“Donnal Cuciv—I know him,” Eanjer interrupted.

“Who is he?” Dozer asked.

“The man in overall charge of incoming passenger and shipping lists at the Iltarr City Spaceport,” Rachele said. “Supposed to be a pretty upright citizen. I wonder what Villachor has on him.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Eanjer said. “I know him, and I’m sure I can get him to talk to me.”

“Can you get him to talk about the data cards without tipping him off?” Han asked.

“Especially without him going straight to Villachor about it?” Lando added.

“Leave it to me,” Eanjer said, standing up.

“Sure,” Han said, frowning. It couldn’t possibly be this easy. Could it? “Chewie, Dozer—you go with him.”

“No,” Eanjer said, shaking his head. “Sorry, but I need to do this alone. Donnal’s a very private person. He’s not going to say a single word if there’s anyone there except me.”

“You should at least have someone along for the ride,” Rachele said. “You’re probably still on Villachor’s hunt list.”

“Don’t worry, I know how to stay out of Villachor’s way,” Eanjer said, his voice edged with bitterness. “I’ll be fine.”

Han looked at Chewbacca, but the Wookiee just rumbled a reluctant agreement. “Just make sure you keep your comlink on,” Han said. “And call if you even think there might be a problem. You said this informant of yours doesn’t know about the cryodex?”

“Correct,” Eanjer said. “Actually, I don’t think he’s got the slightest idea how the system works. All he knows is that the files are probably here, and if they are, then Qazadi’s got them.”

“Good,” Han said. “Let’s keep it that way.”

“Right.” Eanjer turned and headed toward the door.

“Just a minute,” Dozer said suddenly. “Before he goes, I want to get something straight.”

“Sure,” Han said, motioning for Eanjer to stop. “What?”

Dozer’s lips compressed. “I want to make sure we’re all still in this together,” he said. “I mean, we’re talking Black Sun. That’s not what any of us signed up for.”

“Fair enough,” Han agreed, looking around the room. And here was where it all either held together or fell apart. “Anyone want to say something?”

There was a brief silence. “There’s still a hundred sixty-three million in the vault, right?” Bink asked at last.

“Of course,” Eanjer said.

“Then we’re still in,” Bink said. She nudged her sister. “Right?”

Tavia didn’t look very happy, but she gave a dutiful nod. “Right.”

“Plus whatever the blackmail files are worth,” Winter spoke up. “Depending on who we can attract as a buyer, that could easily triple our final take.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Zerba said.

“Me too,” Kell seconded.

Han looked at Lando, who nodded silently. “That just leaves you, Dozer,” he said. “If you’re having trouble with this, now’s the time to say so.”

Dozer’s gaze flicked around the room. Then, lowering his eyes, he hissed a breath out between his teeth. “No,” he said reluctantly. “If everyone else is on board, I guess I am, too.”

“You don’t have to be,” Han said. “You want to bail, no one’s stopping you.”

“No,” Dozer said, more firmly this time. “Besides, I need the credits.”

“So we’re settled?” Eanjer said impatiently. “Wonderful. Can I go now?”

Han waved permission. Eanjer turned back to the door, and a moment later was gone.

“We’d better get to work on that spit-mitter,” Bink said, standing up and motioning Tavia to follow. “Chewie, you want to give us a hand?”

The Wookiee warbled assent, and the three of them headed to the twins’ room for Tavia’s gear. As if their departure had been the signal for the party to break up, Winter, Kell, Rachele, and Zerba also rose from their seats, said a mutual round of good-nights, and headed toward their own rooms. Dozer followed behind them, not speaking to anyone as he made his brooding exit.

Leaving Han and Lando alone.

“He didn’t sound convinced,” Lando commented.

“He’ll be okay,” Han said, peering off in the direction Dozer had gone. But Lando was right. Dozer was running shaky—shakier than Han had ever seen him. “That thing with the Falleen has him a little rattled, that’s all.”

“You know him pretty well?”

“Well enough,” Han said, looking back at Lando. “I thought you knew him, too.”

Lando shrugged, gently swirling the remains of his drink. “We’ve crossed paths a couple of times, but that’s about it. Zerba I only worked with once, on that Tchine thing. Winter and Kell I don’t know at all.”

“Mazzic recommends them.”

“Mazzic’s been wrong before.”

“They’re okay,” Han insisted. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

“I like it here.” Lando smiled faintly. “Besides, you need me.”

Han thought about denying it. But unfortunately, it was the truth. “So what have you been up to lately?”

“Not much,” Lando said, waving a hand vaguely. “Winning some, losing some. You?”

Han shrugged. I picked up some crazy passengers, rescued a princess, fought stormtroopers and TIE fighters, helped save the galaxy, and got my reward snatched right off my ship by pirates. “Not much,” he said aloud. “Why are you here?”

“Rachele said you invited me.”

“Yeah. Why are you here?”

Lando pursed his lips. “To be honest, I’ve been thinking about … you know. All the stuff that went down between us. I’ve been thinking that maybe it wasn’t as much your fault as I thought at the time. That it wasn’t so much you deliberately stiffing us, but more like you just being rotten at picking the people you could trust.”

Han grimaced. “Yeah. I have that problem sometimes,” he admitted.

“I’ve noticed.” Lando nodded toward the door. “How well do you know this Eanjer character?”

“Met him for the first time eight days ago. But Rachele looked into his story. Seems solid enough.”

“Did he ever mention that Villachor was Black Sun?” Lando asked pointedly. “Or did that part somehow get forgotten?”

“He didn’t say anything about it,” Han said. “But you heard Rachele. Even the top locals didn’t know. He probably didn’t, either.”

“Maybe,” Lando said. “But we know now. You still want to do this?”

“It’d be nice to have Jabba off my back for a change,” Han said. “Credits are the only thing that’ll do that.”

“So you’re going to trade angry Hutts for angry Falleen.” Lando shook his head. “Not sure how good a deal that is.”

“You play the hand you’ve got the best you can,” Han said, frowning. “You trying to get me to bail on the job?”

“I’m trying to make sure you’re not in over your head,” Lando said. “You’re a smuggler, Han. I’m a gambler. We’re not con artists or thieves.” He jerked his thumb toward the other end of the suite. “As far as I know, none of them has ever done anything on this scale, either.”

He was right, Han knew. This whole thing was rapidly climbing to heights he’d never dreamed of when he’d gotten it rolling. The fact that he was having to trust this many other people to know what they were doing just made it worse.

Still, it wasn’t the first time he’d had to trust people. Usually it worked out all right.

Usually.

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But together we’ve got all the skills we need to pull it off. All we need is the right plan, and a little confidence.”

“Both of which you’re going to supply?”

“With help from Chewie and Rachele and Bink,” Han said. “And you, if you want to put in your half credit’s worth.”

“Of course,” Lando said with one of those innocent looks he did so well. “We’re old friends here to do a job together, right?” He lifted a finger. “One other thing, before I forget. Assuming everything goes according to plan, I want the blackmail files as my share.”

Han stared. “You want what?”

“You heard me,” Lando said. “I know a guy who’ll pay good money for them.”

“We won’t have a cryodex to toss in with the deal,” Han warned.

“He won’t care,” Lando assured him. “But the guy’s a little touchy. It’d be better for me to approach him alone than for us to do it as a group.”

“Uh-huh,” Han said, nodding as the pieces fell together. “So which Hutt is it?”

Lando made a face. “Durga, if you must know,” he said reluctantly. “He’s still pretty steamed at Xizor and Black Sun over the whole Ylesia thing.”

“That happened a lot at Ylesia.”

“So I’ve heard,” Lando said with only a hint of sarcasm. “Deal?”

Han thought it over. Even given Durga’s humiliation at Ylesia, he seriously doubted the Hutt would pay more than a few thousand credits for a set of unreadable data cards.

But it was entirely possible that Lando knew more about Durga’s current situation and mood than he did. If he thought his chances were worth giving up his share of Eanjer’s millions, he was welcome to give it a shot. Han certainly had no interest in adding another Hutt to his own list of potentially unsatisfied customers. “Sure, why not?” he said. “Cards instead of credits.”

“Thanks,” Lando said. He took a last swallow from his mug and leaned back. “So. Tell me about this plan.”

It had been a long day, and as was his custom, Villachor had gone outside onto the balcony of his private suite for a few minutes of quiet and relaxation.

It was a cool, calm night, with no clouds and only a fitful breeze. The lights of Iltarr City glittered around him—around and above, since most of the buildings at the edges of his estate were much taller than his own modest four-story mansion. On most nights he reveled in the view, imagining himself to be on the dais in some Old Republic fortress, giving orders to an army of retainers standing around him in their humble silence.

Tonight, though, the dark light-flecked towers seemed to brood down on him. And instead of a lordly master, he felt like a target in the center of the practice range.

Something was going on out there. Something was lurking in the city streets, perhaps gazing at one of his gates at this very moment. Something that could potentially bring down everything he’d bribed and blackmailed and murdered to create on this world and in this sector.

And he had no idea what it was.

The indicator panel on his railing blinked a request: Sheqoa, his head of security, was at the door to his suite, requesting admittance. Flipping up the top of his armrest, Villachor keyed him in, making his usual private bet with himself that this time he would hear the man’s entry onto the balcony behind him.

Once again he lost the bet. Former Imperial shock troopers, after all, weren’t known for making unnecessary noise.

“I have a report from Riston, sir,” Sheqoa said, his voice coming from barely two meters away. He’d reached the balcony, and then some. “He says Crovendif’s glitterstim is the genuine article, and he’s pretty sure it didn’t come from Kessel.”

“Pretty sure?” Villachor countered. “What is this pretty sure Sithspit?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Sheqoa said, his voice respectful but firm. “But Riston says there’s no way to be a hundred percent sure, not with something grown organically. Too much variation in the spiders themselves. All he can get is an eighty-five-percent certainty.”

Villachor scowled, his first impulse to get up, march down to Riston’s precious little lab, and shake the analyst’s thin neck until he came up with something more useful.

But that wouldn’t gain him anything more than momentary satisfaction. Sheqoa’s primary job was Villachor’s protection, but over the years the big ex-commando had also taken on the unofficial task of acting as buffer between his boss and the rest of the staff.

Which was probably a good thing. When there was something to be gained by threats or violence, Sheqoa was right there at Villachor’s side, handing him weapons or doing the job himself. But when there wasn’t, he would likewise be there to keep his boss from wasting people. Especially competent people.

If Riston said there was nothing more to be gleaned from Crovendif’s sample, he was probably right.

With an effort, Villachor forced away his reflexive thoughts of murder. “What about Crovendif himself?” he asked instead.

“He’s worked for us for ten years, eight as a seller, two as a street manager,” Sheqoa said. “Decent record. Nothing spectacular.”

“Smart enough to pull a scam like this by himself?”

He could feel Sheqoa’s frown. “He’s barely bright enough to pull his correct percentage,” the big man said. “You think this is a scam?”

“I think the timing is highly suspicious,” Villachor growled. “Vigo Qazadi shows up; and then, barely nine days later, someone pops up and offers to sell us glitterstim below Black Sun’s rates?”

Sheqoa was silent a moment, apparently trying to digest that. “Got to be the galaxy’s unluckiest scammer,” he said slowly. “Odds of that happening are … really low.”

Villachor glared out at the city lights around him, once again forcing down the urge to strangle. He hadn’t expected Sheqoa to understand the subtleties of the situation, and the security chief had lived right down to his expectations.

This wasn’t coincidence. Not a chance. Either someone was tweaking Qazadi and Black Sun, which was an extraordinarily foolish thing to do … or else the mysterious stranger was one of Qazadi’s people, and the glitterstim offer was a test.

A shiver ran up Villachor’s back. A test. But a test of what? Villachor’s loyalty? Fine—Villachor could pass any such test.

But which direction was he expected to jump? Was he supposed to tell Qazadi about the glitterstim peddler and wait for the vigo to tell him what to do? That might show weakness and indecision on Villachor’s part, hardly qualities Prince Xizor wanted in one of his sector chiefs. Should he instead look into the matter privately, bringing it to Qazadi’s attention only after the investigation was complete? But if Qazadi caught him midway through the process, it could look as if he were planning to make a deal behind Black Sun’s back. That would be the path to a quick, anonymous grave.

What if there was no right answer? What if Xizor had already passed judgment on him and this glitterstim test was nothing more than a way of letting Villachor choose the path of his own entrapment? Xizor hardly needed an excuse to eliminate one of his subordinates, but he might do it like this purely for the entertainment of watching the doomed man squirm in a net from which there was no escape.

Such thoughts should never be simply dismissed, Qazadi had said about Villachor’s qualms at their first meeting, for I do not leave Imperial Center without great cause.

Villachor scowled. Qazadi had explained that the reasons for his visit were threefold: to remove the blackmail files from Imperial Center, thereby throwing off Vader and Xizor’s other enemies; to get Qazadi himself out of range of various intrigues those same enemies were preparing to launch; and to use the files to generate a few more reluctant slaves from among Iltarr City’s elite and the dignitaries who would soon be arriving on Wukkar for the Festival of Four Honorings.

Three reasons to make the trip from Imperial Center. If there were three, why not four? Could the fourth reason be to engineer Villachor’s destruction?

And then there was the incident at the Lulina Crown Hotel, where Qazadi’s assistant Aziel had been at the center of some strange semi-attack. “Is there anything new on the Lulina Crown incident?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Sheqoa said, his tone oddly reluctant. “Not really.”

“Not really?” Villachor echoed sharply. “What does not really mean?”

“The police have closed the file,” Sheqoa said, sounding pained. “They’ve written it off as a prank.”

Villachor shifted halfway around in his chair and glared up at the other. “A prank?” he demanded. “A bomb goes off in a hotel hallway and it’s a prank?” He turned back around, glaring at the city lights as he pulled out his comlink. Apparently it was time to remind Police Commissioner Hildebron of the level of service that Black Sun’s bribe credits had bought from him.

“It was Commissioner Hildebron’s order,” Sheqoa said doggedly. “After he received a call from Master Qazadi.”

Villachor froze, the comlink halfway to his lips. “Master Qazadi called off the investigation?”

“So it appears.”

Slowly, Villachor returned the comlink to his belt. But that was insane. Why in the galaxy would Qazadi call off the investigators? Aziel was a fellow Black Sun official, a close colleague, and—as far as Villachor had been able to tell—as close to a friend as Falleen ever got. By all logic, Qazadi should be down at police HQ right now, pumping Hildebron’s office full of pheromones and insisting that the threat against his colleague and the cryodex key codes be neutralized—

Villachor’s throat tightened. Of course. The cryodex codes.

Because being a Black Sun boughtman didn’t mean Hildebron wasn’t good at his job. He was. And a truly proper investigation might easily expose the fact that Aziel was in Iltarr City as guardian of half of the key codes that activated the cryodex Qazadi had locked up in his suite.

Of course, an improper investigation might lead to the theft of those same codes if whoever was trying to steal them decided to give it another try. But apparently Qazadi was willing to risk that.

Maybe he was right to do so. Aziel had to come to Marblewood to assist Qazadi in activating the cryodex before each of Villachor’s blackmail sessions, but the cryodex and the files themselves were never at any risk. If Aziel’s codes were stolen or destroyed, it would simply mean Villachor couldn’t use the files against potential targets. An inconvenience, but hardly a serious problem.

But whether the attack had failed or been a prank, the fact of the matter was that a Black Sun official had had his evening ruined in the middle of Villachor’s territory. That wasn’t something that could simply be ignored or swept away.

And if the glitterstim was a test, maybe this was, too. “Do we have anyone over at the hotel?” he asked.

“No,” Sheqoa said. “I thought Master Qazadi ordered us to stay away.”

“That was before his people were attacked,” Villachor growled. “I want a squad in place over there by midnight. Put at least two men on that same floor and the others in whatever rooms they can get above and below Lord Aziel’s suite.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheqoa said hesitantly. “May I remind you, sir, that we’re going to be stretched thin as it is for Festival crowd control? Removing a full squad from our roster will make it worse.”

“I don’t care,” Villachor said tartly. “As long as we keep a full quota on the vault, that’s all that matters. If someone wants to use the Festival as cover to sneak into the house and steal a few spoons, he’s welcome to try. Anything like that can be dealt with later.”

“Understood,” Sheqoa said, clearly still not happy but knowing not to argue the point further. “I don’t suppose you could persuade Master Qazadi to bring Aziel and the others here instead? It would make security a lot easier.”

Villachor felt his stomach tighten. Yes, it certainly would. Villachor had in fact pointed out that very fact to Qazadi at their first meeting.

But Qazadi had brushed off the suggestion, invoking a Black Sun policy of keeping the blackmail files and the cryodex coding separated unless one of the files was in the process of being read. Villachor had listened to that reasoning, nodded politely, and pretended to accept it, even though he wasn’t any more satisfied than Sheqoa was. It had always struck him as less an explanation than a thinly plated excuse.

Maybe there was another reason for Qazadi to keep Aziel away from Marblewood. Maybe Aziel wasn’t just here to handle the key codes, but was also waiting in the wings to move in and take over as Villachor’s successor once Villachor failed Qazadi’s test.

If that was the case, it would hardly be in Villachor’s best interests to knock himself out stretching his resources to protect Aziel.

Tests within tests within tests. And Villachor still didn’t know which way Qazadi wanted him to jump.

But there was one thing he was sure of: if Qazadi was hoping for a quiet and civilized transfer of power, he could forget it. “Go back to Riston,” he ordered Sheqoa. “Tell him I want him to keep running tests until he can tell me with certainty where that glitterstim came from.”

“I don’t think there are any more tests he can run, sir,” Sheqoa said.

“Then he’d better invent a few,” Villachor shot back. “Go.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheqoa said. He didn’t look happy, but he knew an order when he heard it.

“And you’re not to tell Master Qazadi or his people about any of this,” Villachor added. “Not until we’re sure.”

“Yes, sir,” the big man said. “Good night, sir.”

He turned and slipped away as silently as he’d arrived. Villachor turned around again, watching until Sheqoa’s shadow had crossed to the door at the far end of the suite. Then, with a thoughtful hiss, he turned back to the cityscape.

Of course Riston wouldn’t glean anything new. But ordering more tests would buy Villachor some time—enough, he hoped, to sort through the possible traps that had been laid so tantalizingly in front of him.

Meanwhile, the Festival of Four Honorings would begin in three days, and with it crowds of the great and small of Iltarr City would descend on his grounds and courtyard. Villachor had displays to build, entertainment to prepare, food and drink to coordinate, and a large number of officials to be quietly taken inside his mansion and bribed, threatened, or blackmailed.

By the time the Festival was over, he promised himself, even Xizor would have to concede that Villachor, and Villachor alone, knew best how to run Black Sun’s operations in this sector. If Qazadi’s plan was still to take him down, he would find Villachor a much more difficult target than he’d thought.

And if the glitterstim lure was someone else trying to move in on his territory …

Villachor bared his teeth at the towering lights. If someone out there was really foolish enough to take him on, that someone would regret it. Very, very badly.

The lock clicked and the door opened, and with a weariness Dayja hadn’t permitted himself to feel until that precise moment, he walked into the suite.

D’Ashewl was waiting up for him, sitting at the desk in the office. “How did it go?”

“It worked,” Dayja said, wading through the thick carpet to the closest comfortable chair and dropping gratefully into it. It had been a long, long day. “Master Cuciv never saw me coming, and is currently sleeping off the Speakeasy drug.”

D’Ashewl grunted. “I hope you know the chance you were taking with that,” he warned. “An eighty-percent heart failure rate is not something to be taken lightly.”

“I know,” Dayja said, wincing at the memory of watching the elderly spaceport official fight his way through the drug’s initial surge before his heart finally stabilized. “But there was no choice. We needed to know about the blackmail file data cards, and we couldn’t leave Cuciv with any memory that he’d been questioned about it. That meant interrogation droids were out, along with Bavo Six, OV 600, or any of our other repertoire of drugs.”

“And if he’d died?”

Dayja shrugged. “Eanjer had two other names. One of them probably would have survived the procedure.”

D’Ashewl grunted again. “But you did get it?”

“Yes,” Dayja said. “Standard data card size, matte black, with the Black Sun logo emblazoned across the front in a shiny black.”

“Subtle,” d’Ashewl said wryly. “Artistic, too. Not what you’d expect of Xizor’s thugs. How big is the logo?”

“Well, that’s the one small speck of gree in the grease,” Dayja conceded. “Cuciv was just a hair vague on that point. Eanjer’s going to have his team make up two or three versions and hope one of them is close enough to pass.”

“Not ideal,” d’Ashewl said. “But you can probably make it work.”

For a moment the room was silent. Dayja unloaded his knife, comlink, and hold-out blaster from his pockets onto the low table beside the chair, trying to decide whether he was too tired to eat or too hungry to sleep. The latter, he concluded. Getting back to his feet, he headed toward the food station beside the entertainment cluster at the other end of the office. “Any luck tracking down my new best friends from the holos I sent you?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Not really,” d’Ashewl said. “I never cease to be amazed at how few criminals have anything more than just their names in their police files. Even the ISB records don’t have much.”

“The high-level ones apparently employ slicers with way too much time on their hands,” Dayja agreed.

“So it would seem,” d’Ashewl said. “Has he asked the obvious question yet?”

“Why I don’t just whistle up a legion of stormtroopers and descend on Marblewood in force?” Dayja asked sourly. “Not in so many words, but he’s hinted at it. I’ve tried to give the impression that we’re being required to stick to proper legal procedures. The whole civil liberties and warrants thing.”

D’Ashewl snorted. “Liberties and warrants. Right.” He sighed, the sound audible all the way over at the food station. “I hope you realize how very thin the ice is that we’re walking on, Dayja. The Director is having serious problems with the court right now, and may be on his way out whether we get him the blackmail files or not. If we’re tied to him when he goes over the edge—and as of nine days ago, we are—it won’t be pleasant for any of us.”

“There’s still time,” Dayja said firmly. “If he can find out which of his enemies are on Black Sun’s payroll, he can turn that association against them.”

“Maybe,” d’Ashewl said, not sounding convinced. “But whether he pulls out of his dive or not, our futures are still balanced on the edge. If we get the files, we’ll be heroes. If we can’t, it may not matter whether the Director goes or not. Xizor will be furious that an attempt was even made, and with his blackmail capabilities intact he’ll be a formidable enemy.”

“Life’s a gamble,” Dayja reminded him, keying for something that would be quick to prepare and equally quick to eat. “Intel work even more so. Don’t worry, this will work.”

“I hope you’re right,” d’Ashewl said. “What are you going to do with the glitterstim gambit? That’s already in the works, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it can be put on pause for a few days,” Dayja said. “No one but that street manager, Crovendif, knows what I look like. As long as I stay off his streets I’ll be fine.”

“So you’re letting Eanjer and his team take point?”

“For now,” Dayja said. “I assume Qazadi will be here for the entire festival. If Eanjer isn’t able to get the blackmail files, I should have time to go back to my original plan.”

“This is an extremely dirty group of hands to be placing our lives into,” d’Ashewl warned.

“It’ll be all right,” Dayja assured him, permitting himself a tight smile.

D’Ashewl’s concern was touching and certainly not misplaced. But they both knew that his choice of pronouns was merely a courtesy. D’Ashewl had been in service long enough and had amassed enough friends and allies that even Xizor would hesitate to take him on. Certainly not over an espionage effort that had ultimately failed.

No, d’Ashewl’s life wasn’t in Eanjer’s hands. But Dayja had no such high-powered backing. What happened over the next few days would make his career or would end it. Permanently.

But the risk had to be taken. Black Sun was an evil that had been gnawing at the roots of the galaxy for a long, long time, and it had to be stopped. If the Emperor wasn’t inclined to take action and Lord Vader was too preoccupied, then the job would fall to lesser men.

And if those lesser men also fell … still, as he’d said, life was a gamble.

The dice had been rolled. He would just have to wait to see how they landed.

For a few minutes after Lando trudged off to his room, Han remained where he was, gazing out the window at the clump of lights of Villachor’s mansion. With the relative darkness of the Marblewood grounds surrounding it, the mansion almost looked like a small star cluster drifting all alone in space.

And every pilot in the galaxy knew how dangerous star clusters were.

Lando was right, of course. Han was a pilot and a smuggler. What did he know about con artistry?

Nothing, really. But he knew people. He knew how people thought and reacted, especially people driven by greed and the lust for power. He’d seen it with Jabba and Batross, he’d watched it happen with Imperial officials, and he’d felt a twinge of it himself on occasion.

Maybe that was what he liked most about Leia. As a princess of Alderaan, she’d had plenty of power, more than most people could ever dream of. Yet she’d tossed it aside for what she considered to be a higher and nobler cause.

Whether it was a higher cause, of course, or whether it was just a fancy way of committing mass suicide still remained to be seen. But that wasn’t Han’s problem. His problem was that he’d more or less promised justice for Eanjer, and shares of 163 million credits for everyone else.

And Lando was right about another thing. Sometimes Han’s trust in people turned out to be badly misplaced.

He thought about it a while longer. Then, prying himself out of the chair, he went in search of Dozer. Considering how the other had been acting when he’d left the conversation room earlier, there was only one likely place to start looking. He found Dozer in the kitchen, munching on an enormous sandwich.

“Am I interrupting?” Han asked as he walked in and sat down.

“No,” Dozer said. “Is this about Lando being front man? Because if it is, forget everything I said before. Far as I’m concerned, he can have the job.”

“Glad to hear it,” Han said. “Because there’s another job I want you to do for me. Something that might take you a few days.”

Dozer’s eyes narrowed. “You trying to get rid of me?”

“Course not,” Han assured him.

“Because if this is about me being worried about Black Sun earlier, I’m okay with that now,” Dozer persisted.

“I know,” Han said. “This is just something I’ve thought of that we’re going to need, that’s all.”

“Uh-huh,” Dozer said, still looking suspicious. “Does it involve facing that Falleen again?”

“No Falleen,” Han said. “It’ll be a little tricky, but it should be safe enough.”

For another few seconds Dozer continued to study his face. Then he carefully set his sandwich down on the plate and brushed the crumbs off his hands. “Okay,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “Tell me all about it.”

For the next three days the team stayed close to home. The twins’ room quickly became an electronics shop as Bink, Tavia, Chewbacca, and Winter worked to build spit-mitters that would fit into the limited space inside a data card. Unfortunately, Eanjer’s friend Donnal Cuciv hadn’t been able to give them the correct size of the Black Sun logo on the data card that Villachor had showed him, which meant they were going to need at least three and possibly as many as five to safely cover the range of possibilities. With Winter and Chewbacca also building the fake cryodex, the timing was going to be tight.

Still, Chewbacca was on it, and the Wookiee had never let Han down yet. Han wasn’t expecting this to be the first time.

The others had plenty of work of their own to do. Kell set up an explosives shop in the room next door to the twins’ and spent the three days creating charges of various sizes and shapes. Zerba busied himself with the quick-change tear-away outfits Han had commissioned from him, with frequent breaks to rest his eyes and practice his sleight of hand. Eanjer, in contrast, had little to do but wander around the suite, ask questions, and otherwise make a nuisance of himself.

Lando and Han spent most of their time in the conversation room, staying out of everyone else’s way and reading through the ever-increasing volume of material Rachele was able to pull up on Villachor, his staff, his mansion, and the people he most often dealt with, many of whom were probably also associated with Black Sun.

At times Han found the sheer amount of data a little overwhelming. Villachor had his fingers in practically every aspect of life in Iltarr City, with half the police and probably more than half the governmental officials apparently ready to drop everything at his command. It was a sobering confirmation that the team had set up shop in the middle of seriously hostile territory.

Lando, typically, didn’t seem bothered by that. Possibly, as a gambler, he was more used to facing tables full of enemies. Possibly he was just better at hiding his uneasiness. He went through Rachele’s data quickly and methodically, occasionally making comments about some particularly insightful or useful bit of information. Sometimes he experimented with various accents he thought might serve him when he finally met Villachor face-to-face.

It was a little irritating to see him so calm, but Han had to admit that maybe Lando had the better take on things. Jabba and the other Hutts weren’t all that different from Villachor and Black Sun, except that their influence was more or less open and obvious instead of being buried in a maze of underground roots. Han had survived Hutt intrigues and animosity. He could get through whatever Villachor threw at him, too.

Dozer was the main exception to the others’ general stay-at-home pattern. From the first time Tavia sent him out for some fresh power cells, he settled into the role of unofficial messenger boy, fetching everything from detonator components to fresh medseal bandages for Eanjer to Rodian carryout one evening when Zerba suddenly had an overpowering craving.

Rachele joked once that he was spending more time outside the suite than inside, and wondered aloud if she could get a discount for his part of the rental fee. It was an exaggeration, of course, but everyone had noticed that Dozer was often gone for hours at a time, tracking down his current objective.

Han just hoped none of them suspected the real reason for the man’s lengthy absences.

And as they worked, Villachor’s grounds far below were in the process of being turned into something that was half street fair and half exhibition grounds. From the sky, the displays and pavilions beckoned with the promise of a return to Old Republic magnificence.

From the ground, they more than delivered.

“This is amazing,” Bink commented as the group walked along the drive toward the mansion. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And I’ve been everywhere.”

“This is just the first day, too,” Kell reminded her, sounding even more awestruck than she was. “Who knew there were so many ways to move rock and dirt?”

“Stone,” Dozer corrected dourly. “It’s the Honoring of Moving Stone.”

“Rock, stone—same difference,” Kell said, still looking around.

“No, one is correct and the other isn’t,” Dozer insisted. “You want to sound like a wide-eyed tourist?”

“We are wide-eyed tourists,” Lando pointed out calmly. “So are probably half the people here.”

“If not this bunch, then the ones who’ll be here later,” Han agreed, looking at the streams of people on both sides of them. It was barely midday, with the event not even officially supposed to open for another two hours, and already hundreds or even thousands of people were here, with more streaming through the gates, all of them staring and oohing with the same amazement as Bink and Kell.

To be honest, Han couldn’t blame them. Overhead, miniature solar systems drifted through the air, their planets, moons, and asteroids moving swiftly or lazily around their glowing suns. Some of the systems had tiny, sparkling ships moving through them, and occasionally one would flicker as if jumping to lightspeed and reappear in a different system dozens of meters away. Alongside the road, tethered near clumps of sculpted trees, were twisting sand tornadoes, their tall funnel shapes spinning with carefully confined fury. Farther away, he could see the cones of something Rachele had called cold-lava volcanoes, which seemed to erupt randomly, with even more violence and harmless ferocity than the tornadoes.

Han had seen more impressive sights in his travels around the galaxy. But seldom had he seen a display delivered with this kind of flair. It was easy to get caught up in the glitz and the carnival atmosphere.

It was a lot easier to resist the pull when he remembered that the whole thing was funded by blood credits.

“Fine,” Dozer growled. He, at least, was in no danger of getting caught up in the spirit of the Festival. “Whatever. I just want him to show a little dignity. You know—dignity?”

“Sorry,” Kell said, his earlier excitement noticeably muted.

Han looked sideways at Lando. The other looked back and gave a small shrug. Dozer hadn’t wanted to come to Marblewood with them this morning. But at the same time he’d refused to be left behind.

“There’s one,” Bink said, nodding to the side.

Han looked in that direction and saw a droid standing motionlessly beside the road, probably put there to give directions or advice to first-timers. Unlike pretty much every other droid Han had ever seen, this one was wearing clothing: a long, stone-patterned gown with leggings down to its feet and sleeves and even loose gloves on its hands. Its head was covered with a draped cowl that had holes for the eyes and mouth and no other openings. It looked for all the world like a pile of rocks that just happened to be stacked in the shape of a droid, which presumably was the whole idea.

“Impressive,” Lando murmured. “Slightly ridiculous, but still impressive.”

“I can’t wait to see the outfits for the Honoring of Moving Air,” Bink commented. “Something flimsy and airy, no doubt. Rachele’s right—there’s not a chance of figuring out what kind of droid that is through all that.”

“From the shape, I’d guess it’s either an SE 4 or SE 6,” Kell said. “Its voice might give us a clue. You want me to try that?”

Dozer snorted. “Yeah, good luck,” he said, craning his head to peer over the crowd. “I can see at least a dozen droids right from here, and that doesn’t even count the servers at the pavilions and whoever’s stoking the volcanoes and geysers. You want to play question-the-Quarran with all of them?”

“Let’s just stick to the plan,” Han said.

“So what’s our timing here?” Lando asked. “I assume we’ll want to mill around a little and take in the sights before we make our respective moves?”

“Sounds good,” Han agreed. “The minute you move on Villachor you’ll be at the center of attention. Might as well use our anonymity while we’ve still got it. Let’s take an hour, get the lay of the land, and then get to work. And remember that some of those floating planets up there are probably cam droids. Play everything like you’ve got an audience, because you probably do.”

“And keep an eye out for Villachor,” Lando added. “There’s no guarantee he’ll be out and about this early. If he doesn’t show, this whole trip will be for nothing.”

“I don’t know that I’d call it nothing,” Bink said, sniffing at the air. “There are still the food pavilions.”

“Mind on the job, Bink,” Han admonished. “One hour. And watch yourselves.”

Marblewood’s guest suite complex took up nearly a third of the top floor of the mansion’s northeast wing and was equipped with all the finest amenities and décor that the Empire had to offer. In many ways, it was more magnificent even than Villachor’s own suite, since Villachor’s was intended merely for comfort while the guest suite was designed for comfort and to impress its occupants. The suite had played host to dozens of officials and Black Sun colleagues over the past eleven years, and by all accounts it had succeeded admirably in both goals.

But up to now, none of Villachor’s guests had been so impressed by the suite that they’d refused to leave it.

As usual, there were two Falleen guards flanking the suite door when Villachor arrived. “Sector Chief Villachor, requesting an audience with His Excellency,” he announced formally as he came to a halt a couple of meters away.

“The purpose of the audience?” one of the guards asked.

Villachor suppressed a snarl. It was the same arrogant and demeaning challenge he’d put up with for three straight days now. Yes, Qazadi was a vigo, but there was still no call for a simple bodyguard to talk to a Black Sun sector chief with such obvious lack of respect. Not even when the bodyguard was one of Prince Xizor’s precious Falleen. “I want to invite His Excellency to the presentation balcony for the Festival’s grand opening ceremonies later,” he said between clenched teeth. “He’ll have a much better view of the geyser eruptions from there.”

The guard pulled a comlink from his belt and spoke briefly into it. There was a reply, and he returned the device to its loop. “His Excellency thanks you for your offer,” he relayed. “He believes he can observe the events of the Honoring of Moving Stone quite adequately from his own balcony.”

“I see,” Villachor said, managing with a supreme effort to keep his voice civil. “Please thank him for his time and consideration.”

Sheqoa was waiting by the turbolift where Villachor had left him. “Will he be coming, sir?” the security chief asked.

“No, he will not,” Villachor bit out. “He apparently has no interest in anything except his own room and his own people.”

Sheqoa gave a small grunt. “Maybe he doesn’t have any interests,” he said, “but his people sure do. Dorston and his patrol caught two more of them last night, this pair in the kitchen.”

Villachor swallowed a curse. Qazadi’s guards had been all over his mansion in the past three days, poking their noses and fingers everywhere. There’d already been several tense confrontations between them and Sheqoa’s people, one of those altercations nearly reaching the point of drawn blasters.

And like Qazadi’s self-imposed isolation, the skulking and prying had started the same night Crovendif had brought in that mysterious glitterstim sample.

“Did they say what they were doing?”

“Just that they wanted to look around,” Sheqoa said. “But I think there was more to it than that. He said they were in the east-central end, near the dumbwaiter, and that one of them had a sensor probe with him.”

Villachor scowled. The dumbwaiter was a leftover of the previous owner’s time in the house, a narrow vertical lift shaft for carrying food or other items from the first-floor kitchen level to the fourth floor, where the basket or tray could be transferred to one of two horizontal conduits that led to either the main guest suite or Villachor’s own master suite in the southeast wing. Apparently the owner had wanted a way to have meals delivered without having to open his door to servants or droids. “What were they doing with the probe?”

“I don’t think they’d actually started anything yet,” Sheqoa said. “As usual, they claimed that the freedom of movement you gave Qazadi also applied to them.”

“Of course they did,” Villachor said. It was a molecule-thin excuse, and he and Sheqoa both knew it.

But there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Qazadi had to be given the run of the mansion—he was a vigo, after all. And once he’d been granted that autonomy, there was no way Villachor could restrict his bodyguards without looking petty or suspicious.

If there was one thing Villachor knew for certain, it was that petty and suspicious weren’t labels he could afford to have attached to his name right now.

“I want the nighttime patrols doubled,” he ordered Sheqoa. “And put an extra guard in the kitchen, somewhere where he can watch both the pantry and the dumbwaiter. With all the food prep we’re doing for the Festival, we should have another man down there anyway.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheqoa said. He didn’t sound any happier about the situation than Villachor felt, but it was obvious he didn’t have any better ideas or suggestions.

“After you do that, I want you to get in contact with that street manager, Crovendif,” Villachor continued. “I want him here, every day of the Festival, wandering around and keeping his eyes open. If the glitterstim peddler shows up, I want him.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheqoa said again. “Whenever you’re ready to go outside, Tawb and Manning are waiting at the west portico.”

Villachor glanced up through one of the skylights as one of the floating solar systems drifted past. He wasn’t all that excited about going out there right now, out among the simple and stupid, forced to smile and chat with hundreds of his fellow Iltarr City citizens and pretend he actually cared that they existed. Especially not in his current mood.

But the new Minister for Trade Relations would be dropping by in less than half an hour. Villachor needed to be on hand to greet him, casually invite him into a more quiet, more private room inside the mansion, and explain to him the true realities of government service on Wukkar.

“I’m ready,” he told Sheqoa. “You’d better get out there, too. This is one year we don’t want any problems or incidents.”

“Understood, sir,” Sheqoa said grimly. “Don’t worry. There won’t be.”

As usual, the crowds had already started streaming onto the grounds, even though most of the other Festival venues around the city and the planet weren’t even open yet. But despite the numbers and the fact that the food service was really only now beginning, the crowd seemed happy and polite. As each visitor or group spotted their host approaching they stopped their activities or conversation, offered nods of respect or gestures of thanks and good cheer, then courteously moved aside to make way.

Sheep, every single one of them. But at least they were polite and friendly as Villachor and Black Sun stripped the wool and flesh from their bones.

He’d made his first circuit around the inner yard and was following the fresh stream of people heading toward the food pavilions when Tawb stepped close and touched his arm. “Sir?”

“What is it?” Villachor asked, exchanging nods with a Koorivar wearing a merchant’s cowl and making a mental note to have someone check on the alien’s status and travel plans. Many Koorivar traders also engaged in weapons smuggling, and Villachor could always use another such pipeline.

“I just had a report from one of Master Qazadi’s guards,” Tawb said, lowering his voice. “He thinks he’s spotted the man from Quickline Courier Service who was at Lord Aziel’s suite during the Lulina Crown incident.”

“Really,” Villachor said, frowning. The morning after the incident Aziel had told him that he was convinced the courier had been an innocent bystander. So why were Qazadi’s people watching for him? “Where is he?”

“Near the northwest pavilion and volcano.”

Which was also the closest public display to the mansion’s north wing entrance. Coincidence?

Actually, it probably was. The cold-lava volcanoes were already proving to be a crowd-pleaser, and that particular pavilion was the one serving white sausage, a favorite of many of the locals. Certainly a common courier’s presence here was nothing to raise eyebrows—one of the grand traditions of the Festival was that it was open to royal family and lowly worker alike.

Still, Villachor had no intention of taking any chances. “Have security keep an eye on him,” he told Tawb. “No approach or detain, just observation.”

“Yes, sir,” Tawb said, and as he drifted back toward his guard flank position, he was already speaking quietly into his comlink clip.

With an effort, Villachor put his smile back in place. Qazadi and Aziel were playing some kind of game under the table—that much he was sure of. Whatever that game was, he was determined to cut himself in. Whether they wanted him in or not.

Dozer was eyeing the white sausage at the blue-topped food pavilion, wondering if Solo’s orders to look around could be stretched to include a proper tasting tour of the grounds, when he realized he was being watched.

The first signs were subtle, as such things usually were. There was a glance from a hard-faced man that lingered just a bit too long. Another hard-faced man loitering near the pavilion looked in Dozer’s direction, then turned away, his lips moving as if he were talking to himself. One of the two uniformed security men standing by the mansion’s main entrance, who were probably there just for show, nudged his partner and nodded in Dozer’s direction.

Dozer had been spotted.

With an effort, he forced himself to continue his casual wandering, his heartbeat thudding suddenly in his ears. He’d been spotted, but what did that mean? Were Villachor’s men looking for an opportunity to sneak him out of the crowd and haul him inside for interrogation? Maybe even to face Lord Aziel again? He’d survived Aziel’s last questioning purely through luck, Rachele’s skill at creating cover stories, and the fact that Aziel had already been convinced of his innocence before they began their little chat. There were no guarantees that he’d get off so easily the next time around.

Steady, he cautioned himself. For starters, there was no reason a lowly courier company employee shouldn’t be here. In fact, there were probably dozens or hundreds of Iltarr City citizens Villachor and his men knew by name or sight or reputation on the Marblewood grounds right now.

For another, this was a happy, cheerful planet-wide festival. Surely Villachor wouldn’t do anything to wreck the mood until and unless he had some solid evidence that Dozer was up to mischief.

And if they had such evidence, surely they would have moved on him already.

He took a deep breath, feeling the tension draining away. So they knew he was here, they knew he was someone who’d interacted with Aziel under unusual circumstances, and they were going to keep an eye on him just in case.

That was fine. Dozer wasn’t planning on making any mischief. At least not here and now.

But as long as they were watching him anyway …

Midway between Dozer and the guarded door were a couple of youngish men wearing the neat but plain tunic-and-trouser outfits that pegged them as working-class types who’d put on their finest clothing for their visit to Villachor’s party. Both were holding cups, and from the way they were chattering and gesturing, it was likely that they’d had more than a couple of samples from the drink pavilions. Watching as much of the area around him as he could, Dozer headed toward the door.

The response was instant, nicely subtle, and extremely revealing. Both uniformed door guards and all three of the plainclothes ones he’d tagged suddenly seemed to have eyes only for him. Dozer saw one of the door guards say something, either to his partner or into a collar-clip comlink, but none of the others so much as moved their lips.

Which wasn’t to say they weren’t communicating. On the contrary, as Dozer kept walking toward the door, he saw the three men slipping through the crowd in a well-coordinated move that would put two of them between him and the door and one directly behind him in backup position. At that point, they would have several options on how to deal with him, none of which would likely be pleasant.

They were nearly to their chosen positions when Dozer reached the two men. “Hey!” he said affably, stopping beside them and raising a hand in greeting. “Thought I recognized you. You’re friends with Cadger, aren’t you?”

The men turned to him, their alcohol-creased grins taking on a slight edge of puzzlement. “Cadger?” one of them asked.

“Yeah,” Dozer said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the two security men pause, one of them holding position while the other edged a little closer to the conversation. “Well, we call him Cadger. Always borrowing stuff, never remembers to return it—you practically have to call out the Tweenriver garrison to get it back.”

One of the men’s faces cleared. “Oh,” he said knowingly. “You mean Esmon.”

“Yeah, Esmon,” Dozer confirmed. “We always just call him Cadger. Listen, this is my first time in this venue. You guys know when those pavilions stop serving? I can’t get close enough to ask anyone.”

“Don’t worry about that,” the man assured him. “You’ll scrap out long before they do.”

“Just make sure you don’t bleep so much that it’ll take you more than a day to dry out,” the other man added, raising his cup for emphasis. “ ’Cause the day after tomorrow is the Honoring of Moving Air, and Villachor serves the best whipped liqueurs on Wukkar. You’ll want to be here bright and early for that.”

“You bet,” Dozer agreed, slapping the other genially on the shoulder. “Thanks. When you see Cadger—Esmon—tell him Blather said hi.”

Turning, Dozer headed away from both the men and the door. Glancing casually around, he saw that the security men were likewise moving back to their earlier positions, the alert apparently having been rebranded as a false alarm.

Still, he had no doubt they would continue to watch him as long as he was here.

Which was fine. In fact, it was perfect.

Dozer had never been entirely comfortable with the thought of being front man on this job. A certain level of con work was necessary in any branch of thievery, of course, and ship boosting was no exception. If necessary, he could have done a fair job with this one, too.

But it would have been a fair job, not a spectacular one. Going up against a man like Villachor, Dozer knew, would require something better than just fair. Though he would never admit it, especially not to Solo, he’d secretly been relieved when Calrissian unexpectedly showed up at the suite door.

So let Calrissian grab the glory and the danger that went with being front man. Dozer had his own set of skills, skills none of the rest of them could match on their best day.

Turning south, he headed toward another of the pavilions, beyond which, not so coincidentally, was another of the mansion’s doors. By the time the team reassembled at the suite, he promised himself, he would have a complete handle on Villachor’s Festival security setup, their encirclement system, and their alert ripple paths.

Let Calrissian and his fancy smile top that.

There was an art and a science to bumping into people. Fortunately, Bink had long since mastered both.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, darting her hands up and letting her eyes widen with embarrassment and chagrin as she spun around to face the man whose chest she’d just gently bounced off. “I’m so sorry. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her, giving her a small and slightly frosty smile.

“I’m so sorry,” Bink said again, looking him up and down as if she were somehow expecting that whatever massive bruises her nudge had caused would be visible through his clothing. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t spill your drink, did I? Please let me not have spilled your drink.”

“Not a drop,” he assured her, some of his stiffness easing. As well it should—this was Bink’s best dippy-girl act, guaranteed to spark feelings of amusement, sympathy, or protectiveness in the majority of the male population. “See?” he added, holding his cup out for her inspection.

“Thank heavens,” she breathed. The cup was about half full of Carlem brandy, she saw, about the right level for someone who’d been slowly savoring it for the past half hour or so. “That looks really good. I’d hate for someone to waste it. Especially me being that someone.”

“It is, and you didn’t,” he again assured her.

“I’m so glad,” she said. He was lying, of course, at least about the first part. The cup might be only half full, but there were no drops or other traces of liquid on the cup’s rim or inner sides. It had been half full right from the start, and he hadn’t taken so much as a sip.

He also had a collar-clip comlink, the slight bulge of a concealed blaster beneath the right side of his tunic, and the equally subtle bulge of a knife strapped to his left forearm beneath the sleeve. The lack of drinking alone would have tagged him as one of Villachor’s people. The hard eyes and the weapons clinched it.

Of course, so did the fact that his face matched the holo Rachele had pulled up of Lapis Sheqoa, the head of Villachor’s household security force.

Holos really did take the fun out of this game.

“Just try to be more careful,” he said, offering a slightly more genuine smile this time. “Looking behind you when you’re walking is a bad idea, especially in a crowd like this.” He leveled a warning finger. “Besides, next time you might walk into someone’s seafood fork.”

“And it would serve me right,” Bink declared mock seriously, matching the tone with a wry smile as she backed away from him. “See you.”

She spent the next half hour strolling around the grounds, admiring the displays, striking up casual chatter with a couple of the other women in the crowd, getting herself a cup of something fruity to drink, and making sure not to keep the slightest track of where Sheqoa was. He would almost certainly be watching her, at least off and on, and it couldn’t look like she was doing the same.

When it was time, she didn’t expect to have any trouble finding him again.

She judged she’d waited long enough, and gave it ten minutes more. Then, joining the celebrants at one of the serving tables, she loaded up a small plate with a sampling of the snacks, carefully creating just enough imbalance to make the plate difficult to handle without making the imbalance obvious. With the plate in one hand and her cup in the other, she headed out to find Sheqoa.

As she’d predicted, there was nothing to it. Barely two minutes after leaving the pavilion she spotted him through the crowd, still doing his casual wandering act as he watched for trouble.

Time to kick things up a level.

The first step was to come to a sudden and awkward halt, her eyes on her plate and the suddenly tottering stack of glazed pental crackers there. Next came her requests to passersby for help, all of her increasingly frustrated entreaties completely ignored by everyone as they walked by.

Of course, the reason for that was that she was moving her lips but not making any actual sound, which meant none of the people passing by had the slightest notion that she was having any difficulty. But Sheqoa had no way of knowing that, not at his distance and with the low roar of the crowd and the moving stone displays all around them.

She kept up her pantomimed calls for help for several seconds, until her gut told her that that part of the charade had run its course. Still dodging passersby, she began studying the ground at her feet, as if trying to figure out if there was any safe place where she could set down her cup—

Abruptly, and a couple of seconds sooner than she’d expected, a hand appeared from the edge of her vision and plucked the cup from her hand. “Here—let me help,” Sheqoa offered.

“Oh, thank you,” Bink said, letting her pretended anxiety and frustration roll out in a flood of relief as she rearranged the pental crackers into a more stable configuration. “Thank you,” she repeated, looking up. “I was—oh. You.”

“We do seem to keep running into each other, don’t we?” he said, offering a more genuine smile this time.

But it was still a guarded smile, with a thick layer of vigilance behind it. “At least this time I didn’t try to turn your whatever-it-was into one of those volcano things,” she said. “Thank you so much for your help. Those pental crackers are just too good to waste as ground clutter. I’m Katrin, by the way.”

“Lapis,” Sheqoa said. “This your first Festival?”

“First one here,” she told him. “I did the Barrange venue twice when I was living in Opolisti.”

“I’ve heard that one’s pretty nice,” he said.

“Not as nice as this one,” she said ruefully. “Not that I got much chance to enjoy it. I had the same kind of boss back then that you do.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, frowning.

“Your comlink,” she said, pointing to his collar. “You’re on call, right? Off duty, but still on call, and he could yank you away on half a second’s notice.”

“Something like that,” he said. “So how come you know that setup? Are you police? Military? Med tech?”

Bink snorted out a laugh. “This’ll kill you. I’m an accountant.”

“An accountant?”

“Isn’t that just insane?” she agreed. “Come on—when was the last time someone called an accountant after working hours and said”—she dropped the pitch of her voice into a caricature of a stern, humorless boss—“ ‘We need you to rush in and examine some numbers right this very minute’?”

He chuckled, some of his reserve fading away. “Most of the numbers I know are perfectly happy to wait until business hours,” he agreed.

“And the crazy thing is he actually did it,” Bink told him. “He actually hauled me in twice for things that could have been left until the next day without anyone in the universe except him caring. One of those times I got the call right in the middle of an opera.” She shook her head in reminiscence. “The looks on people’s faces as I stumbled past them. If the Empire wants to kill Rebels, they should talk to those folks. Some of those looks could fry banthas at fifty meters.”

“The opera, huh?” Sheqoa said. “I would never have tagged you as that sort.”

“Oh, I’m not,” Bink said. “But the guy I was with at the time really liked them. I’m more the three-stroke glitz type. What about you? I assume you’re not an accountant, unless my ex-boss has opened an Iltarr City branch.”

“No, no, I’m something far less interesting,” Sheqoa said. “I’m with Master Villachor’s household security.”

Bink let her eyes widen. “Oh. Wow. Did I—I didn’t say anything bad about anything, did I?”

“You said Master Villachor runs a better Festival than Master Barrange, that my drink looked good, and you didn’t want to spill pental crackers all over the ground,” Sheqoa said. “The cleaning staff will be especially pleased about that last one.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “Because I really am enjoying this. I’d hate to be banned from the rest of it.”

“Just try not to run over anyone else and you should be fine.” He held out her cup. “And now I need to get back to my duties.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Bink said, accepting the cup back. “Thank you again. Quick question: someone told me once that Master Villachor has the original Sunright Feinhomm glitz instruments. Is that true?”

“It is,” Sheqoa confirmed. “Maybe I can show them to you someday.”

“That would be so great,” Bink said, giving him her most dazzling smile. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Lapis. I’ll probably see you around.”

“I’ll be here,” Sheqoa said, smiling and giving her a sort of abbreviated wave. He was still smiling as he turned and wandered away into the crowd.

Taking a sip from her drink, Bink headed toward one of the seating areas. Yes, that had gone well. He was totally into her.

He was also totally on to her.

She smiled to herself. Perfect.

The crowds were already substantial, and it seemed like every third person who spotted Villachor wanted to come over to greet him, thank him for his hospitality, or chat a moment with him as if he were an actual friend.

But if there was one thing Lando had learned at the sabacc table, it was patience. He cultivated that patience now, strolling around the edge of Villachor’s entourage, studying the man and his bodyguards. The locals used particular words and gestures in their greetings, all of which he noted while at the same time trying to sort out Villachor’s own telltales for signs of interest, impatience, or boredom.

Finally there was a lull. Villachor paused, looking around as he murmured something to one of his bodyguards. Slipping around a pair of hammer-headed Ithorians, Lando moved toward the group.

Villachor spotted his approach, and Lando caught a brief twitch of his lip before his face broke into yet another of his counterfeit smiles. “Good afternoon,” he said, probably hoping that by getting in the first word he would be able to control the duration of the conversation. “Enjoying the Festival?”

“Very much,” Lando said, giving one of the polite nods that seemed to be associated with the upper-class Iltarr City citizens. “I imagine something like this is extremely expensive to run.”

Villachor’s smile slipped, just a bit. Apparently, most of the people he’d talked to had known better than to bring up such a crass subject. “It’s well worth the cost,” he said evenly. “The pleasure the Festival brings to the average citizen is something that can’t be measured.”

“Indeed,” Lando said. “And of course, I expect the Festival provides unique opportunities to meet with people. Some of whom may bring you interesting offers.”

Villachor’s smile broadened even as it cooled a few degrees. “I’m sorry, but all new business discussions are paused during the Festival,” he said. “But feel free to contact my office after the Honoring of Fire is over.” He inclined his head and started to turn away.

“I understand,” Lando said, taking a long step closer, aware that the two bodyguards were already moving to intercept. “Let me just say one word. Cryo—”

He broke off as both bodyguards grabbed him, one of them throwing a warning forearm across his throat as they started to pull him away from Villachor.

“A moment,” Villachor said, stopping them with an uplifted finger. “Very well,” he continued, his voice studiously casual. “One word.”

The guard lifted his arm fractionally from Lando’s throat, ready to clamp down again if necessary. Lando cleared his throat. “Cryodex,” he said.

He counted out six heartbeats before Villachor spoke again. “Bring him,” he said shortly. Spinning around, he strode back toward the mansion, heading in the direction of one of the smaller service doors. The bodyguards released their grips, one of them nudging a silent order into Lando’s back.

Not that he needed any prompting. He set off briskly after Villachor, adjusting his pace to slowly catch up to the other. There were dozens or possibly hundreds of extra people and droids moving in and out of the mansion today, he knew, resupplying the pavilions with food and drink and handling other chores. It would be instructive to see exactly how Villachor had arranged the door locks to allow for such traffic while at the same time preventing random strangers from wandering inside.

It was, as it turned out, distinctly anticlimactic. Villachor merely marched up the flagstone walkway to the door, gripped and turned the handle, and pushed open the door without any fuss, bother, or challenge.

Lando suppressed a smile as he and the two bodyguards followed him in. Like one of Zerba’s magic tricks, there was more to this one than it appeared. Villachor had gripped the handle, but right before he’d turned it, he’d bowed just slightly at the waist. Some kind of electronic trigger, then, with the receiver in the handle mechanism and the activator concealed somewhere in Villachor’s shoulder or neck area. Possibly the fingertip-sized rectangular glazed-stone pendant he’d noticed riding a small choker chain around Villachor’s neck.

And, he noted now, riding his bodyguards’ necks as well.

They had their way inside. Maybe.

Villachor had stopped a few steps inside the door and was waiting for them beside two more guards. “And now,” he said, even the false warmth gone from his voice, “let’s go someplace quiet and have a little talk.”

The various displays that Villachor had put together for the Honoring of Moving Stone were uniformly impressive, Han had decided early on during his private walking tour of the grounds. But for him, the sand tornadoes were the most interesting, the most photogenic, and, ultimately, the most potentially useful. He went from one tornado to the next, standing for a couple of minutes at each, admiring the twisting shapes and pretending to take endless pictures with the fake holocamera Chewbacca had built for him the previous night.

He wasn’t alone in his activities, either. Lots of others were doing exactly the same thing, and Han usually found himself in the middle of a small crowd as he snapped his pretend holos. Most of those crowds involved families with younglings, all of whom treated the miniature storms with a combination of amazement, delight, and solemnity that only very young children could pull off. The more adventurous of the younglings dared to step closer, a few recklessly, the rest cautiously, reaching out to touch the edge of the swirling sand and then rushing, giggling, back to their parents. The parents, for their part, seemed to trust Villachor’s engineering, assuming that the tornadoes’ designers had made sure the tethering and repulsor-field encasing would keep the sand from leaking out and endangering their offspring.

They were mostly right. The first four tornadoes Han checked out were as isolated and protected as if they were just holos floating above the ground. The children could still get to the spinning sand, but each touch released only a few grains from the fields, which dropped harmlessly to scatter across the ground. Han spent as little time at each of those as he figured he could get away with, considering his role as holo-crazy tourist, before moving on to the next.

It was at the fifth tornado that he finally hit pay dirt.

Literally.

Something had gone wrong with that display’s confinement field. Not seriously wrong, not even all that obviously wrong. But whereas the ground by each of the others showed only the light scattering of sand released by the probing of small human and alien fingers, this one had an obvious ring of escaped material that had gathered about a meter away from the tornado’s edge.

The ring wouldn’t be there long, he knew, not with cam droids floating past overhead and security men roaming the grounds. Sooner or later, someone would spot the problem and call it in, and maintenance droids dressed in those ridiculous moving-stone outfits would hurry out to fix the leak and clean up the sand.

But the ring was here now, and that was all Han needed.

He’d made sure to keep track of the time he’d spent at the other displays, and had no intention of drawing attention by spending significantly more or less at this one. But this time he eased his way a little closer to the tornado as he took his pretend holos, listening closely to the chatter of conversation around him.

Just to his left was a middle-grade child asking her parents for permission to touch the tornado. Still snapping away with his holocamera, Han edged closer to the child. The parents discussed the matter briefly, then gave their permission. The girl scampered adventurously forward—

And as she brushed past Han’s elbow, he jerked his hands as if she’d slammed into his arm, losing his grip on the holocamera and sending it arcing right into the middle of the ring of sand.

“Meelee!” the girl’s mother gasped. “Look what you did!”

“It’s okay,” Han hastened to assure her as he stepped forward and knelt down by the holocamera. The girl, for her part, had already stopped and turned around, clearly confused by the outlandish result of what she knew had been barely a sleeve-on-sleeve touch, and equally confused by the grief she was getting for it. “Don’t worry—these things hold together real good,” he added. He reached down and got his hand on the holocamera.

And as he closed his fingers around it, he surreptitiously pressed the hidden button.

He’d told Chewbacca to make the vacuum pump quiet, and as usual the Wookiee had taken him at his word. Even kneeling directly above the device Han could barely hear the scratching noise of the sand being sucked in through the baffle vent, and the pump itself was completely inaudible. The rest of the crowd, three meters or more away, couldn’t have heard a thing.

“See?” he said, picking up the device and turning back to the anxious parents. As he did so, he moved one foot casually across the sand, erasing all signs of the small crater the pump had made in the neat ring. “No problem. It’s fine.”

And with a friendly smile at the still confused girl, he slipped through the crowd and strode casually away.

He visited two more of the volcanoes, just to clear his backtrail, then headed off for his rendezvous with Kell.

He found the kid waiting in a seating area between two of the pavilions near the northern end of the mansion and Villachor’s oversized landspeeder and airspeeder garage. “Any trouble?” Kell asked as Han came up and sat down across the table from him.

“Nope,” Han said, patting the vest pocket where he’d stashed the holocamera. “You ready?”

In his opinion, Kell still didn’t look ready to knock over a child’s coin bank, let alone a crime lord’s private vault. But his nod was firm enough. “Let’s do it.”

“Okay,” Han said, reminding himself yet again that Mazzic had vouched for the kid. He looked around and spotted a pair of droids busily collecting discarded plates and cups from one of the nearby tables. “Give me a five-count lead,” he instructed. “And watch your timing.”

The droids were still clearing the table when he got there. “Hey,” he said, coming up to one of them. “Can you tell me when they stop serving lunch stuff and switch to a dinner menu?”

“There is no set time for food exchange,” the droid said, turning its hooded face toward Han as it continued to gather the tableware. The cowl covering its face fluttered in the breeze, giving an unsettling masquerade-type atmosphere to the conversation. “The various dishes change at different times throughout the day. If you wish, the servers in the pavilions can provide you with a schedule for each switchover.”

“Yeah, well, I’m mostly looking to see if you’re going to have braised kiemple,” Han said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kell approaching the table from his right. “You know what that is? Never mind,” he said before the droid could answer. “I’ve got a holo here somewhere from last year’s Festival,” he went on, pulling out his holocamera and fighting back a sudden surge of doubt.

I can do this, he told himself firmly. The timing was going to be close, but he and Chewbacca ran close timing every time they flew the Falcon. This would be like a normal smuggling day. “Here it is,” he continued, thrusting the holocamera in front of the droid’s mask. Beside him, Kell stepped up to the table.

And as the kid reached past the plate the droid was aiming for, Han tapped the holocamera’s release and dumped the sand he’d collected straight down the droid’s glove. As the hand closed around the plate and Kell’s wrist there was a soft crunching noise—

“Hey!” Kell protested. “Let go.” He grabbed the hand, as if trying to pull it off, but instead squeezed the mechanical fingers tighter together around his wrist. He yanked his arm back, jerking the droid along with him. “Let go.”

“Oh, dear,” the droid said in a pained voice. “I’m terribly sorry, but I appear to be stuck.”

“Great,” Kell growled. “Hey—you.”

“What? Me?” Han asked.

“Yes, you,” Kell said. “Go find someone to get this thing off me, will you?”

“Is there a problem here?” a new voice put in.

Han turned. One of Villachor’s security types was striding toward them, his eyes flicking over the scene.

“Yes, there’s a problem,” Kell bit out. “I was trying to get to my cup there and this thing grabbed me and won’t let go.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” the droid said again. “My gears appear to be jammed.”

“Yeah,” the security man said, gingerly pulling the edge of the droid’s glove away from the arm and peering down it. “Probably got sand in there—there’s sure enough of it flying around.”

“Great,” Kell muttered. “So what do we do?”

“We get it off,” the guard said calmly, gesturing toward the mansion. “Come on—there’s a droid repair room right off the garage.”

They headed off, Kell grumping, the droid apologizing, and the guard probably wishing his shift had ended half an hour earlier. Han watched them go, a glow of satisfaction running through him.

Like he always said, it was all in the timing.

The room Villachor led Lando to was small and windowless, and contained possibly the most intimidating working desk Lando had ever seen. Two more guards were waiting just inside the door, bringing the grand total of armed men up to six. “Sit down,” Villachor said, pointing Lando toward a large padded chair in front of the desk as he walked around behind it. “Perhaps you’d like a little refreshment?”

It was probably a genuine offer, Lando knew. But it was also a test. Villachor was prodding at him, trying to get a feel for his speech, reactions, manners, and patterns. It was the same genteel dance that also accompanied every game of sabacc, and Lando was used to it.

It was just that the stakes usually weren’t this high.

“No, thank you,” he said, easing down into the chair. It was even more comfortable than it looked, the soft arms and cushions yielding to his weight and settling in around him. If he’d been planning a quick, unexpected exit, he would have been out of luck. Probably the reason for the chair’s design in the first place. “I know your time is valuable.”

“Indeed it is,” Villachor said, settling into his own chair.

“But more valuable even than time is information,” Lando continued. “And I’m fairly certain you don’t want what I’m about to tell you to be heard by anyone except your closest, most trusted people.”

Villachor smiled thinly. “If I didn’t trust these men, they’d have been gone long ago.”

“Of course,” Lando said. “But there’s trust, and then there’s trust.”

For a moment Villachor eyed him thoughtfully. Across the room the door opened, and the man Rachele’s data pulls had identified as the security chief, Sheqoa, entered. Villachor glanced at him, looked back at Lando. “Fine,” he said. “Tawb, Manning—wait outside. The rest of you, return to your duties. Sheqoa, you’re with me.”

As silently as Sheqoa had entered, the rest of the guards filed out. Villachor waited until the door was again closed, then gestured for Sheqoa to go stand behind Lando. “All right, you have your privacy,” he said. “Rest assured that if this is some kind of bad joke, my face will be the last thing your eyes will ever see.”

“No joke,” Lando assured him. He was used to being threatened, but there was something in Villachor’s voice that sent a chill up his back. “Let me begin by telling you a few things you already know. You’re a high-ranking member of Black Sun, you’re playing host to an even higher-ranking member, a vigo named Qazadi, and Master Qazadi has a set of blackmail files you’re using to gain or cement leverage on various Wukkar citizens and probably some of the off world visitors to the Festival.” He paused for air.

“You’re at the very least an amusing storyteller,” Villachor commented, his face giving nothing away. “Please, continue.”

“The blackmail files are, of course, heavily encrypted,” Lando said. “The device used to decrypt them is called a cryodex. Alderaanian by design, and only a few still exist.”

“Or possibly none at all,” Villachor suggested.

“No, there are at least two,” Lando assured him. “Master Qazadi has one.” He cocked his head. “I have another.”

Villachor’s eyes flicked to Sheqoa, then back to Lando. “I gather from your overly dramatic tone that you expect that to mean something to me.”

“I do,” Lando agreed. “And since we’ve both agreed that time is valuable, let me set my cards on the table. I represent a group of people who’ve taken on the task of scouring the Empire for those of like mind whose talents and ambitions are being underused or, in some cases, completely wasted. When such people are found, this group offers them better situations. Sometimes this involves a position with a different organization, one that values them more. Other times it means assisting them to strike out on their own. Sometimes a middle road is indicated, an indenture-ship or perhaps chartered autonomy.”

“And if the person is perfectly happy where he is?” Villachor asked.

Lando gave a small shrug. “In my experience, no one who’s working beneath his abilities is ever perfectly happy.”

“Unless he knows that his current situation is the best he’s ever likely to have.”

“There’s always something better,” Lando said. “It’s simply a matter of recognizing the opportunity when it comes along.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Villachor said dryly. “And so lacking in potential danger. Tell me about this supposed cryodex of yours.”

“As I said, the cryodex is the key to reading the blackmail files currently stored in your vault,” Lando said, keeping his voice steady. Han’s whole plan depended on him selling this. “Those files would be of immeasurable value to the people I represent.”

Villachor’s smile was dark, brittle. “And all I have to do is hand over the files and wonderful opportunities will descend on me from the sky?”

“Wonderful opportunities, indeed,” Lando confirmed. “You’d literally be able to command your own chosen price.” He shook his head. “But we both know it wouldn’t be just opportunities that would descend. Prince Xizor himself would likely lead the expedition that came for your head.”

“And yours,” Villachor pointed out. “Because they would certainly pull every name, face, and memory from me before I was permitted to die.”

“Oh, I have no doubt,” Lando agreed grimly. “Which is why you’d be a fool to steal the files, and why I would be a fool to suggest it.”

A slight frown creased Villachor’s forehead. “In that case, why exactly are you here?”

“To offer a safer alternative,” Lando said. “Not to steal the files, but to copy them.”

Again Villachor’s eyes flicked to Sheqoa. “Copy them,” he repeated flatly.

“Exactly,” Lando said. “You have the files; I have the cryodex. We meet in your vault, decrypt the files, and copy them onto standard data cards, perhaps overlaid with our own chosen encryptions.”

“Our encryptions?”

Lando held up a hand. “A slip of the tongue. Your encryptions, of course.”

“That’s good,” Villachor said, in a voice that once again sent a chill up Lando’s back. “Because any attempt by you to make a copy for yourself would require me to kill you on the spot. For the sake of argument, suppose I had copies of the files. What then?”

“I’d introduce you to the gentlemen of whom I spoke,” Lando managed, his throat suddenly dry. “You’ll work out a mutually satisfactory deal, and your rise to your full potential will have begun.”

“Yes,” Villachor said thoughtfully. “Let me tell you what I think. I think you’ve never even seen a cryodex, let alone possess one. I think you have no organization behind you, certainly no one with any power. I think you’re here purely as a test to see if my loyalty to Black Sun can be swayed by such a ridiculous and simple-minded story. And I think that, just to be on the safe side, I’m going to have you killed.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Let’s try it again. Who are you, and who do you work for?”

“There’s no need for threats,” Lando protested mildly, some of the tension draining from him. The threat was real; but oddly enough, that was actually a good sign. If Villachor hadn’t been interested or at least intrigued by the offer, he would simply have had Sheqoa throw him out. “My name is unimportant, but you can call me Kwerve. As for my employers—” He shrugged. “For the moment they must remain anonymous.”

“Too bad,” Villachor said. There might have been a twitch of his eyebrow at the name, but it was small enough that Lando might have simply imagined it. “It would have been useful to know where to ship your body.”

“Of course you don’t wish to make any commitments now,” Lando continued. “I wouldn’t expect that. Let me make a suggestion and an offer. Two days from now is the Honoring of Moving Air. At that time I’ll bring my cryodex to show you. You can select one of the blackmail data cards, and I’ll decrypt one of the files for you. After that, we’ll talk further.”

“Assuming we’re both still able to converse?”

“Why shouldn’t we be?” Lando countered reasonably. “You’ve made no statements and taken no action that’s in any way disloyal to your Black Sun masters. All you’ve agreed to do is see if a stranger claiming to have a valuable artifact does indeed have it. If I do, it could easily be that your intent is to purchase the artifact and send it to Imperial Center as a gift for Prince Xizor’s collection of rarities.”

“Perhaps,” Villachor said, his eyes probing Lando’s face. Lando sat quietly, waiting for him to work it through.

When it happened, it happened suddenly. “The day after tomorrow, fifth hour past midday,” Villachor said abruptly. “The bound tempest will be presented at that time, drawing the visitors’ attention to the northwest part of the grounds. You’ll come to the door you’re about to leave through and wait until it’s opened to you. You will, of course, bring the cryodex.”

“Of course,” Lando said. He started to stand up, wiggling his hips to extricate himself from the overstuffed chair arms.

And abruptly dropped back as Sheqoa’s hand pushed down hard on his shoulder. “If you plan betrayal,” Villachor continued, his voice low and deadly, “I strongly urge you to instead leave Wukkar by the earliest transport.”

“Understood,” Lando said. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow at five hours past mid.” He craned his neck to look up at Sheqoa. “May I?”

For a moment the big man just stared down at him, his expression wooden. Then he released his grip on Lando’s shoulder. With more effort and wiggling, Lando finally got free of the chair.

“The men outside will see you out,” Villachor said, remaining seated. “Until then, Master Kwerve.”

“Until then,” Lando confirmed. “One final observation, if I may. Nothing in this universe lasts forever. Not power, or position, or allies.” He inclined his head. “Not even Black Sun.” He turned the incline into a polite nod. “Good day, Master Villachor.”

Sheqoa walked him to the door and murmured a few words to the bodyguards waiting outside. One of them gestured silently to Lando, and without a word they escorted him along a wide corridor, through a pair of hand-carved doors, and to an unassuming door set in a thick but otherwise unassuming wall. Lando was ushered through it and found himself at the southern end of the mansion’s south wing.

The very door, in fact, where Aziel always made his entrance.

Which meant that, assuming Rachele’s schematic had been correct, he’d walked right past the junior ballroom and Villachor’s vault.

Maybe in two days he’d get to see inside that vault, where even Rachele and her incredible spiderweb of contacts and sources hadn’t yet been able to go.

Maybe in two days he’d be dead.

“Yeah, it’s the sand,” the tech said disgustedly as he led Kell and the droid still clamped to his wrist through a maze of workbenches and waist-high tool cabinets toward an uncluttered bench seat near the back. “Third one today, and the Honoring’s barely even started.” He turned Kell around and sat him down. “You—bend over,” he ordered the droid.

Obediently, the droid bent forward at the waist, putting Kell’s wrist and arm at a more comfortable angle. “At least it’s only one day,” Kell pointed out. “The rest of the Honorings should be easier on them.”

“Don’t you believe it,” the tech grumbled. He peeled away the top of the droid’s glove and peered down at the frozen joint. “The moving air stirs up dirt and dust and whatever sand the EGs didn’t get swept up, the moving water gets places even the sand doesn’t, and don’t even get me started on the fire and the fireworks.” He clucked his tongue. “Yeah, I see it. Hang on—I’ll have you out of there in a jiff.”

He walked over to an open tool cabinet and peered into it, muttering under his breath. As he did so, Kell looked casually around the room.

It was an impressive place, better equipped even than most of the professional droid repair facilities he’d been in and out of over the years. One of the side walls was nothing but high-end Cybot Galactica maintenance equipment, the machines interspersed with spare part bins and tool racks. Hooked into the machines or laid out on the nearby workbenches were partially dismantled sections of 434-FPC personal chefs, EG labor droids, and PD- and 3PO-series protocol droids. The equipment on the other side wall seemed to be dedicated to Industrial Automaton, SoroSuub, Changli, and GlimNova products, with a couple of SE4 servant droids and ASP-15 laborers on the tables. Tucked to one side, looking rather forlorn, was a WA-7 service unit that was probably a leftover from Republic days, most likely awaiting spare parts that Kell guessed were long since out of stock.

More ominously, a whole section of the back wall was devoted to 501-Z police droid equipment. A partially disassembled Zed was stretched out on one of the tables, and Kell took special note of its unusual upper arm, thigh, and waist sheathings.

“Here we go,” the tech said as he plucked a long, thin probe from the cabinet. Returning to Kell, he slipped the probe down the droid’s glove. A few seconds of silent fiddling, and suddenly the grip on Kell’s wrist loosened. The tech pried the mechanical fingers a few centimeters apart, and Kell slipped his hand free.

“Wonderful,” Kell said, massaging his wrist. “Thanks so much—I was afraid I was going to have to spend the whole Honoring stuck in here.”

“No, that would be me,” the tech said sourly. “Next time you see a droid grabbing for something, do me a favor and stay out of its way, okay?”

“You got it,” Kell promised. “That way out, right?”

“Right,” the tech said. “The guard outside will take you back out to the courtyard.”

The grand geyser eruption was the climax of the entire day, and it was as spectacular as the designers and techs had promised it would be. A multiple-stream spewing of sand and small pebbles burst from the largest of the cold-lava volcanoes, the various streams rotating and intermixing, with lights, sparklers, and glowings blazing among them, all to the accompaniment of music specially commissioned for the event. The crowd was as animated as the geyser itself, cheering and clapping and hooting their appreciation for every fresh nuance and unexpected switch-up. It was the crowning glory of the Honoring of Moving Stone, seen by thousands and sure to be talked about by thousands more in the days and months to come.

Standing alone on the presentation balcony, Villachor barely noticed the show.

Kwerve, the mysterious visitor had called himself. An innocuous name, certainly. A name that the vast majority of people wouldn’t find the least bit unusual or interesting.

But Villachor wasn’t most people. He was a Black Sun sector chief, and people in his dark line of work kept close tabs on one another. Bidlo Kwerve had been one of Jabba the Hutt’s top people, until Jabba decided to make him the first official victim of his new rancor pet. A creature, if the stories were true, that Kwerve himself had found and helped present to the corpulent gangster.

So why had Villachor’s visitor chosen that name? Was he saying he was working for the Hutts? That he wasn’t working for the Hutts? That the ultimate goal of this operation was to bring down the Hutts?

If so, was part of that goal to set Villachor up in the organizational vacuum that Jabba’s death would leave?

The insane part was that it would actually be possible. Xizor’s blackmail files were hardly Black Sun’s only weapon, but they were certainly one of the most potent. Being able to tag that population of Xizor’s silent army could give a rival immense leverage, whether that rival chose to draw some of the hapless victims away or merely to expose them and thereby eliminate their usefulness to Black Sun.

Kwerve was right about another thing, too. At the moment, Black Sun was at the height of its power, but that position wouldn’t last forever. Crime lords and organizations rose and fell like the tides, either destroyed by hungry rivals or corrupted and imploded by their own greed. That same chaos and death had brought down Sise Fromm, Alexi Garyn, Jorj Car’das, and countless others. Someday Jabba would fall, too.

As would Prince Xizor himself. Probably even sooner than Jabba, Villachor guessed, given his bitter rivalry with Lord Vader. Many crime lords underestimated Vader, or dismissed him as merely Palpatine’s lap-dog. Villachor knew better.

And when Xizor fell, where would Villachor be?

Alive, well, and someplace safe, he promised himself firmly. He would make sure of that. He would survive Black Sun, and if possible even prosper in the process.

Was Kwerve’s offer the doorway to that freedom? Or was it simply another sadistic test, and its supposed doorway leading nowhere but sudden death?

He didn’t yet know. But he was going to find out.

One way or another, he would end the Festival in a better position than when it began. Either he would have power and freedom or he would have a spare cryodex to offer to his master on Imperial Center. A cryodex, and very likely a freshly severed head.

Let Qazadi dare to test him then.

In the distance, the grand finale of Villachor’s Honoring of Moving Stone was little more than a slightly blurry cloud of twinkling lights. “It’s probably more impressive at ground level,” Eanjer offered.

“Probably,” Han agreed. “You ever been to one?”

“One of Villachor’s?” Eanjer shook his head. “No. Just assuming. I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

Eanjer paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “I realize that you and the others know more about these things than I do. But it appears to me that there are some serious problems with this plan that you seem to be ignoring.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the fact that this Sheqoa fellow seems to be on to Bink,” he said. “She as much as admitted that he’d seen through her act.”

“He’s a security chief,” Han reminded him. “He wouldn’t be very good at his job if he fell for something that obvious.”

“Yes, but—”

“Don’t worry, it’s covered,” Han said. “Whether he falls for the scam or not, he’s still going to play along. That’s all we need.”

“But why?” Eanjer objected. “Why would he do that?”

“Because so far she hasn’t done anything illegal or even threatening,” Han explained patiently. “He’ll want to give her enough line to trip herself up, and hopefully tag whoever she’s working with while she’s at it.”

Eanjer shook his head. “Seems risky.”

“Sure, but that’s how men like that think,” Han said. “Next?”

“Next what?”

“Next problem. You said there were several.”

“Oh. Right.” Eanjer paused again, apparently re-collecting his thoughts. “There’s also the droids. I don’t see why Kell’s so happy about knowing how to disable all the simple ones when he admits we can’t touch the police droids. I mean, it’s not like we’re going to have to fight our way through a phalanx of Three-pee-ohs or something.”

“I hope not,” Han said dryly, thinking back to that first ride with Luke and his two droids. “Three-pee-ohs can be really annoying.”

“I’m serious,” Eanjer growled. “Those Zeds are bound to be Villachor’s first line of defense at his vault. How are we going to get the files and credit tabs with them standing in the way?”

“Easy,” Han soothed. “We’re still in the opening moves, remember? In two days we should have a better idea what we’re up against. Then if you want to panic, you can go ahead.”

Eanjer turned to face him, a baleful look in his eye. “You’re incredibly confident,” he bit out. “You know that? Especially for a small-time smuggler who’s never pulled off a heist like this in his life.”

“Who says I’ve never done this before?” Han countered. He hadn’t, of course, but that was beside the point. “Besides, it’s not about me. It’s about getting the right people for the job.” He gave Eanjer a lopsided smile. “And then giving them good leadership.”

“Joke all you want,” Eanjer growled. “You’re not going to crack Villachor’s vault with charm. Yours or Bink’s.”

“It’s not about charm, either,” Han said, gazing at the half-bandaged face as Lando’s doubts about the man flashed to mind. Eanjer was seeking information and assurances. How much should he give him?

None, he decided. “It’s about information,” he continued. “Dozer and Kell got us some this afternoon. Lando and Zerba will get more in a couple of days. Let’s just hang loose, and not panic, until we see the whole picture. Okay?”

For a long moment Eanjer continued to stare. Then, slowly, he turned back to the window. “I’m not convinced,” he muttered. “But it’s your show. We’ll see if you can pull it off.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Han said, trying to keep most of the sarcasm out of his voice.

Eanjer nodded toward Marblewood. “Looks like they’re done.”

Han turned to look. Sure enough, the distant light show had ended, and the visitors were starting to flow out through the gates. “Yeah,” he agreed. “So tomorrow is breakdown and reset, and then we get the Honoring of Moving Air?”

“And the moment of truth,” Eanjer said grimly. “I just hope Winter and the others will be ready in time.”

“They will,” Han promised. “Like I said, the right people for the job.”

The Honoring of Moving Stone had been impressive. The Honoring of Moving Air, in Lando’s slightly surprised opinion, was even more so.

By all sense and logic, it shouldn’t have been. The Festival’s first Honoring had included a lot of different materials for Villachor to work with: dust, sand, rocks, cold lava, and several motion sculptures that Lando had eventually concluded were stone-layered droids. It was hard to envision how simply moving air around could compete with a hand like that.

But Villachor’s engineers had pulled it off. Part of the trick was to make the air visible, with tiny, glowing particles light enough to be suspended in the forced breezes of the air geysers, twist fountains, and cascaderies. Several of the basic geyser and volcano setups were being reused for those, resources Lando guessed would also be utilized for the other two Honorings.

But the main approach the engineers had used was to also bring the other senses into play. Delectable aromas wafted on the breezes, drifting across the grounds or spinning off the geysers and twist fountains, the mixtures continually changing and always complementary. Sounds had also been added: high-pitched bird calls accompanying the forced-jet cascaderies, complex music compilations from the various air geysers, with the volume and instrument balance shifting depending on where one stood. The sense of touch wasn’t forgotten, and as Lando walked with Zerba toward the house, unexpected puffs of air occasionally tickled the hairs on the back of his neck or played gently across his cheeks and hands.

The droid outfits didn’t look nearly as impressive as the moving-stone ones they’d worn two days earlier. But they made up for that with small air jets and aroma waftings of their own.

The whole show was so obviously designed for humans that Lando found himself wondering how the different aliens in the milling crowd were perceiving it. But as far as he could tell, they were enjoying it as much as he was. The handful of Wookiees towering over everyone else, in particular, seemed to revel in the air jets that ruffled through their fur.

Only later did it occur to him that there were probably color patterns and aromas in the mix designed specifically for aliens, embellishments his human senses were completely unaware of.

Rachele’s data on Villachor had warned that he prized punctuality in his associates and demanded it in his subordinates, and Lando had carefully timed their arrival to be precisely on the five-hour mark that Villachor had specified. They were nearly there, and the crowd at the far end of the mansion had suddenly erupted into excited cheers, when the door swung open to reveal a silently glowering Sheqoa.

He didn’t remain silent for long. “Who’s this?” the big man demanded, his eyes on Zerba as he stepped into the doorway to block Lando’s entrance.

“My assistant,” Lando explained, gesturing behind him. “He carries the item for me.”

Sheqoa’s eyes flicked to the heavy-looking case hanging from Zerba’s hand. “I’ll carry it,” he said, starting forward.

Lando took a quick step to the side, blocking him in turn. “He carries it,” he said firmly. “I’ll explain why once we’re inside.”

For a long moment the two of them locked eyes. Then, reluctantly, Sheqoa moved to the side. “Fine,” he said, gesturing them forward. “For now.”

Lando looked back at Zerba and nodded him forward, and the two of them walked through the doorway. Sheqoa closed the door behind them, cutting off the distant cheers, then brushed past them and led the way along the corridor the other guards had escorted Lando through two days earlier. This time, though, they got barely twenty meters before Sheqoa turned to the right, pushed open another door, and motioned them through.

It was a large room, of the type Lando had seen a thousand times before: wide and open, with curved and exquisitely decorated walls, chandeliers hung from high ceilings, and a hardwood mosaic floor. It was a gathering anteroom, the sort of place the rich and powerful built outside their ballrooms. It was the ideal place for guests to take a break from the music and dancing to chat with friends, renew acquaintances, or perhaps drift off to one of the side rooms for private talks and whispered deals. Virtually every large-scale sabacc tournament Lando had participated in had taken place in someone’s version of a ballroom, and 90 percent of them had included an anteroom like this.

Most of those anterooms, however, hadn’t included a phalanx of ten armored 501-Z police droids standing shoulder to shoulder, two rows deep, directly in front of the single door leading inward from the anteroom. In fact, now that Lando thought about it, none of them had.

“Who are you?” Villachor’s voice came sharply from the side.

Lando looked over to see the crime lord striding toward them from another door at the north end of the anteroom, Lando’s two guides from his previous visit striding along at his sides. “Master Villachor,” he said, bowing his head. “Your timing is—”

“Who is this?” Villachor cut him off, glaring at Zerba. “You were ordered to come alone.”

“Your pardon, Master Villachor, but I wasn’t,” Lando said, respectful but firm. “And my associate is an important part of the demonstration.” He raised a warning finger. “And I wouldn’t get too close to him if I were you.”

“This is my house,” Villachor retorted. “I make the rules and give the orders, not you.”

“Of course,” Lando said, noting that, despite his bluster, Villachor and his escort chose to stop a cautious five meters away. “My point is simply that I want to make sure my case doesn’t leave here without me. At least, not in one piece.”

In retrospect, he decided, he probably should have eased into the subject in a more diplomatic way. The words were barely out of his mouth when Sheqoa and Villachor’s two bodyguards had their blasters out and pointed at the visitors.

“Easy,” Lando said hastily. “It’s only a small charge, just enough detonite to destroy the case and its contents. Nothing more.” He pursed his lips. “At least, that’s the theory,” he added. “That’s why I have someone else carrying it.”

For a moment he gazed into Villachor’s eyes, trying to ignore the blasters pointing at him. Then Villachor stirred. “Also why you’re not standing too close to him, I assume?”

“Exactly,” Lando said. “There are advantages to rising through the ranks.”

“Indeed,” Villachor murmured. He lifted a finger, and to Lando’s relief the blasters were reluctantly lowered. “Open the case. I want to see it.”

Lando turned to Zerba and nodded. Zerba nodded back and set the case gingerly down on the mosaic floor. He did something complicated-looking with the fasteners, then swung open the top and turned the case around toward Lando and Villachor.

There, in all its quiet glory, was their counterfeit cryodex.

Lando held his breath, forcing his expression to stay calm. He’d never seen a cryodex before—even Rachele hadn’t been able to find any holos of them. He only had Winter’s assurances that their version was even close, let alone a perfect copy.

To his relief, it apparently was. “Very nice,” Villachor said, taking a couple of cautious steps forward and craning his neck for a closer look. “Of course, anyone can fake a casing. What matters is what’s inside.”

“Which we’re ready to demonstrate,” Lando said, gesturing to the door behind the Zeds. “Shall we?”

“Not we, Master Kwerve,” Villachor corrected. “I’ll get the card. You’ll wait out here.”

“My instructions are to never let the cryodex out of my sight,” Lando said.

“You’ll wait out here,” Villachor continued with strained patience, “while I retrieve one of the cards and bring it to you.”

He headed for the door, leaving his two bodyguards behind. “It would be simpler for all of us to go in there together,” Lando offered. “I think it highly unlikely that either of us would try to steal anything.”

“You can wait out here alive, or you can wait out here not alive,” Villachor said. “Your choice.”

“Point taken,” Lando said, feeling a twinge of annoyance. Dozer and Bink had insisted that a really good con artist should have no trouble talking his way into Villachor’s vault, especially with the cryodex as bait. Bink had gone so far as to offer to bet Lando fifty credits that he could do it, with Zerba acting as judge as to how hard he’d tried.

Lando had turned down the bet. Now he wished he’d taken it.

Still, while a look inside the vault would have been helpful, it wasn’t necessary. Han had assumed that Villachor would keep them out, and the plan took that into account. At least he and Zerba were going to get a look at Villachor’s entry procedure.

Most vault owners used some combination of keypads, voiceprints, and visual recognition to gain access to their property. But Villachor had come up with an added twist. He walked up to the nearest of the Zeds, held his hand directly in front of the droid’s face, and waited. The droid stared at the hand a moment, then gave a short bow and stepped out of the way. Taking the cue, the rest of the droids similarly moved to the sides, leaving the entryway clear. Villachor walked through the group to the door, folded down a keypad from the wall beside it, and punched in a series of numbers. An almost inaudible background hum faded away as the magnetic seal cut off, and with a deep thud the door swung inward. Villachor walked through the opening, tapping something on the wall as he passed, and the door reversed direction and thudded closed behind him.

Lando eyed the guards, wondering if a casual question or two might give him a clue as to what the Zed had been looking for with his scan. But none of them seemed like the small-talk type.

He obviously couldn’t ask the Zeds themselves, either. In fact, at this point even approaching the droids was out of the question. Along with heavy blasters holstered at their right hips, each of them also carried a coiled neuronic whip lashed to its belt with quick-release straps.

Lando winced as memories flickered back. He’d run into neuronic whips before—sometimes quite literally—and while they were primarily used as interrogation and slave-control devices, they also made terrific close-range weapons. This particular model, he knew, had a primitive droid brain of its own built into the handle, which would take a quick electronic echo sample from whatever skin or hide the whip was touching and instantly adjust the electric discharge to the precise frequency and pulse pattern for maximum pain to that particular being’s nervous system.

He wasn’t sure what the whips’ maximum setting was. He wasn’t anxious to find out.

They’d been standing there for about five minutes, and Lando was visually tracing a complex knot mirror on the wall to see if it had indeed been woven from a single thread, when Villachor returned, a black data card in his hand.

“Excellent,” Lando said, walking toward him and holding out a hand. “As we agreed, I’ll decrypt one file, drawn at random—”

He stopped as Villachor twitched the data card out of his reach. “Something you should bear in mind,” the other said quietly. “I know the sound the cryodex makes when it’s simply reading and decrypting a file. I also know the sound it makes when it’s copying an entire data card. If I hear that latter sound, I’ll kill both of you. Do you understand?”

“Of course,” Lando said. Winter had implied that she’d seen cryodexes in operation back when she’d worked the royal palace on Alderaan. But he had no idea whether it had occurred to her to add the proper sound effects to her tricked-out datapad. “I have no intention of copying the card or trying any other tricks,” he said as sincerely as he could manage. “Why would I take such a foolish risk when there are much higher profits waiting down the line?”

“If I agree to work with you.”

“You will,” Lando assured him. “Those higher profits are there for you, too.”

For another moment Villachor stared at him. Then he held out the data card. “One file,” he instructed. “And I want to see the readout. Do you have to enter an access code first?”

“I do, and it’s already in place,” Lando said, wondering uneasily if that had been a test. Winter hadn’t mentioned anything about an access code.

Of course, she hadn’t said there wasn’t any coding, either. Presumably that was something a diplomatic tool would have as a matter of course.

He headed back to Zerba, glancing casually at the card as he walked. Matte black, with the proper-sized Black Sun logo in shiny black in the center. Perfect. “Any particular item number you want?” he asked as he handed Zerba the card and then stepped back away from him.

“Surprise me,” Villachor said dryly.

Lando gestured to Zerba. “Surprise him.”

Zerba nodded and keyed the cryodex. There was a soft, almost chuckling sound, and with a small flicker the display came on to show the bony-ridged head and flabby jowls of a Houk. Lifting the cryodex from the case, Zerba held it out toward Lando. “Here we go,” Lando said, peering at the display. The guards’ blasters were still pointed at the floor; Winter must have gotten the sound effects right. “A Houk named Morg Nar. He’s currently employed by a crime lord named Wonn Ionstrike who runs an operation out of Cloud City on Bespin.”

“What about him?” Villachor asked.

“Ionstrike seems to have it in for Jabba,” Lando said, trying to ignore the warning bells going off in the back of his mind. There’d been something odd in Villachor’s voice just then. “He’s paralyzed—moves around in a hoverchair—and has apparently dedicated himself to putting Jabba out of business. Nar is the strongbeing who gets to do all his heavy lifting.”

“And?”

“And it seems that Nar is actually on Jabba’s payroll,” Lando said, mentally crossing his fingers as he scrolled through the file the fake cryodex was pretending to read from the unreadable data card. Han had supplied the pointer toward Nar, keying off a few bits of gossip he’d picked up in Jabba’s place on Tatooine, and Rachele had used her sources to fill in some of the gaps. But there was no way to know if the gossip or Han’s assessment of it had been accurate. “He’s supposedly helping Ionstrike throw out the Hutts, but behind the scenes he’s helping Jabba close down some of his operations in an orderly way, while shifting the rest to other venues that Ionstrike doesn’t know about.”

“And Black Sun’s interest in all this?”

“It doesn’t say, but they’re obviously looking to play the third hand in the game,” Lando said. “It looks like Prince Xizor hasn’t made a move on Nar yet, but he’s probably just waiting for the right moment.”

“Interesting,” Villachor said. “There’s only one problem.”

Steeling himself, Lando turned around. “Which is?”

“There’s no possible reason that particular file should be on that particular data card,” Villachor said calmly. “That one is osk through usk, and neither Nar, Ionstrike, Jabba, Hutt, Bespin, nor Cloud City begins with that letter.”

And suddenly the blasters were no longer pointed at the floor. “And now,” Villachor continued quietly, “you’ll tell me what’s really going on.”

From the whistling and churning sounds coming from the northern end of Marblewood’s grounds, Dayja surmised that the Grand Tempest spectacle that was supposed to be the early evening highlight was in full swing. From the approving roars coming from the crowd, it seemed to be fully living up to Villachor’s promises and the audience’s expectations.

For Dayja, though, the far more interesting show was going on somewhere past the mansion’s southwest door fifty meters away.

Only he had no idea how that show was going. Or even exactly what it was.

He scowled to himself, taking a sip of the sour-tang drink he’d been nursing for the past hour. Eanjer had been remarkably cagey about the identities of his co-conspirators in this little con game they were running. He’d refused to give Dayja any names or even the participants’ areas of expertise.

But Dayja had seen all of them the night he’d dropped onto their balcony, so he at least had their faces.

And two of the group had gone through that door fifteen minutes ago. Under escort from Villachor’s head security man.

He eyed the door, wondering if there was some way he could talk or hotwire his way through it, or whether he should even try. The last thing he wanted was to find that he’d been scammed himself, that Eanjer and his gang were actually working for or with Villachor and Black Sun.

The second-to-last thing he wanted was for the gang to get themselves killed. Especially if they mentioned Dayja and his interest in Qazadi before they died.

“Hey,” a voice came from behind him. “You.”

Dayja turned. The two men walking up to him had the look of hired muscle, with the suspicious expressions and solid, confident strides he’d long since come to associate with men on a mission who were carrying concealed blasters.

But neither of them was wearing the glazed-stone key pendants he’d spotted on all of the official Marblewood security men. Extra thugs Villachor had hired for the occasion? Or something else entirely?

He had a fraction of a second to decide on his persona. Under the circumstances, he decided, slightly oblivious visitor would be his best approach. “Me?” he asked, putting on a blandly cheerful expression.

“Yes, you,” one of the men said. He took a couple more steps forward, leaving his partner standing backup behind him. If they were thugs, at least they were well-trained ones. “What are you doing here? You’re missing the big show.” He pointed toward the sounds of the crowd.

“I know,” Dayja said with a sigh. “But my lady friend needed to use the ’fresher. I’m waiting for her to come out.”

The man glanced around. “What ’fresher?”

“There,” Dayja said, pointing to the mansion door. “The ’fresher’s in there, right?”

The man stared at him, probably wondering how anyone could be this stupid. “The ’freshers are over by the west courtyard,” he said, again pointing toward the distant noise. “North and south of the main food pavilions.”

Dayja dropped his mouth open a couple of millimeters. He threw a startled look at the mansion, then turned back. “But she said the south—” He broke off and sent another look at the door. “At the Covv’ter venue, the ’freshers were always inside.”

“This isn’t the Covv’ter estate,” the man reminded Dayja patiently. “South ’fresher’s about a hundred fifty meters that direction.”

“You’d better get there before she gives up and finds someone else to enjoy the Honoring with,” the second man added.

“Oh, no,” Dayja breathed, letting his eyes go wide. “No. She wouldn’t—oh, blast it all. Excuse me.”

He turned and hurried away toward the crowd and the refresher stations, making sure to use the most inept shambling trot in his repertoire. A carefully controlled stumble gave him the chance to glance behind and see if they were following.

They weren’t. They weren’t interested in Dayja. They were interested in that door.

And whatever the reason for that interest, he suspected Eanjer’s team wasn’t going to like it.

A couple of security types had chased a lone visitor away from the area around the otherwise deserted garden area by the southwest door, but aside from that there hadn’t been any activity south of the twist fountains since Lando and Zerba had gone into the mansion twenty minutes ago. Readjusting the electrobinoculars pressed against her face, Winter refocused on the nearest of the building’s skylights—where there was nothing to be seen—shifted her view to the massive crowd watching the Grand Tempest—where there was way too much to be seen—and then returned to the door.

“Did you spot Bink?” Tavia asked, coming up to the window beside her.

“Sorry—I lost her in the crowd,” Winter apologized. “But she seemed fine half an hour ago when Sheqoa left her for the meeting with Lando and Zerba.”

“You’re sure?” Tavia asked. “You remember her distress signals, right?”

“Yes,” Winter assured her, passing up the obvious reminder that she would carry that list of subtle hand signals to her grave. “There were no signals. In fact, as near as I could tell from the body language, they seemed to be getting along quite well together.”

“Of course they were,” Tavia said with a sigh. “Another of Bink’s many talents is getting people to do what she wants.”

Including you? “It’s a useful skill in your line of work,” Winter said instead.

“I know,” Tavia said. “And I don’t mean to be prickly. I’m just … people say you can get used to anything. But I’ve never gotten used to this. I don’t think I ever will.”

“Maybe this is the last time you’ll have to,” Winter suggested. “The credits from this job should let you quit the business for good.”

“It should,” Tavia said tiredly. “But it won’t. Bink’s promised a hundred times to quit, practically every time she thinks she’s looking at the big score. But somehow the credits are never as good as they looked going in, or the fence steals them, or we have to abandon most of the take, or there are other complications. There are always complications.”

“Sometimes life itself seems to be nothing more than a series of interlinked complications,” Winter agreed, forcing her mind away from the horrible complications that Palpatine and his Empire had forced on her and Leia and so many, many others. “All of them doing their best to get in the way of what you expected or wanted.” She lowered the electrobinoculars, giving her eyes a moment to rest. “What were you expecting to get out of life, Tavia?”

“To be honest, just more of the same,” Tavia said. “More poverty, more living hand to mouth, more of the two of us running and fighting the universe and trying to make it through one more day. What I wanted …” She smiled suddenly. “Remember I said that Bink liked what she does because she’s good at it? That’s what it is for me and electronics work.”

“You can make a good living that way,” Winter murmured.

“And I’ve tried,” Tavia said, her smile fading. “I’ve tried, and tried, and tried. But every time I get a foothold somewhere, Bink manages to find something wrong with the job. Either it doesn’t pay like it should, or the boss is rude, or the jobs I’m getting are menial or insulting, or my co-workers drink their soup too loudly. There’s always something.”

“Life’s also sometimes a series of compromises.”

“And I’m willing,” Tavia said. “I try to tell Bink it’ll be all right, that I can work through the problem. But you know Bink. Before I know it, we’re back out on the street and she’s breaking into someone’s private office looking for that next big score.”

Winter nodded ruefully. She knew people like that, many of them, men and women who could feel alive only when they were risking everything and defying the odds.

They had their place, certainly. In fact, without them the Rebellion would probably have come to a screeching, bloody halt long ago. But at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel intensely sorry for them.

One day this war would be over. Maybe one day all wars would end. Distantly, she wondered what such people would do then.

“But at least we don’t have to live one day at a time anymore,” Tavia continued with a touch of wry humor. “Now it’s more like month to month. Definitely an improvement. Maybe after this it’ll be decade to decade.”

“We can only hope,” Winter agreed, turning back to the window and raising the electrobinoculars back to her eyes. Still nothing.

She could also only hope that, whatever was going on in there, Lando was on top of it.

There were times, Lando reflected, when you were outnumbered, outgunned, with all exits blocked, and holding a losing hand. In situations like that, there was only one option.

Bluff.

“Interesting,” he said calmly. “Are you sure?”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Villachor demanded.

“Am I?” Lando countered, putting an edge on his voice. He was a high-ranking member of a shadowy criminal organization, after all. Men like that didn’t intimidate easily. “I saw that card, Master Villachor. I don’t remember seeing any letters on it.”

“They’re not on the card itself,” Villachor said. “And you’re stalling.”

“Then what makes you think this card has anything to do with those letters?”

“Master Villachor is asking the questions,” Sheqoa growled.

“Master Villachor is angling for a second free sample,” Lando said bluntly. “First of all, there’s no reason for Prince Xizor to organize his blackmail files according to such an obvious system. In fact, I can think of a dozen reasons for him not to do so. An unauthorized person searching for a specific file could search until Imperial Center goes dark without finding it.”

He let his face harden. “And second, I happen to know that one of the Falleen slang terms for Hutt is slivki. Which starts with the letter senth, which does fall in the osk to usk range.”

Villachor’s eyes flicked to Zerba, back to Lando. There was still suspicion in his eyes, but there was also a growing uncertainty. “Slivki,” he repeated. “You’re certain of that?”

“Quite certain,” Lando said frostily. “I was there when a Falleen called a Hutt that to his face. It took the owner of the place three days to clear out the wreckage.” He gestured toward the door. “Go ahead and look it up if you want. I’ll wait.”

Villachor looked at Zerba again. “Perhaps later,” he said. “Morg Nar, you say.”

“Yes,” Lando said. “And that’s all I’ll say. You’ve had the sample I promised. You’re welcome to check that out as well. But the moment of decision has come.”

For another moment Villachor gazed at him, his face expressionless. It seemed to be the man’s favorite pose, probably designed to keep the recipient off-balance while he thought something through. “One decision, at least, is at hand,” he amended. He lifted his finger, and once again the three blasters were lowered toward the floor. “I’m no longer ready to kill you where you stand.”

“I think that’s a decision we can all get behind,” Lando agreed.

“But the decision of whether or not to deal further with you is still in the future,” Villachor continued. “Before I take any such step, I need to know more about your operation and how I would fit into it.” His eyes narrowed. “For one thing, I need to know what you get out of any such deal.”

“I’m what you might call a talent scout,” Lando said with an off-handed wave. “I study the field and find those I think could do better elsewhere. If I’m right and the person joins the group, I’m paid a small fee.”

“That fee being dependent on the value of the client?”

“Something like that,” Lando said.

“And that value would be enhanced if the client brought valuable objects or knowledge to your superiors?”

“Most likely.”

“Good,” Villachor said briskly. “Then you won’t mind if I speak directly to your superior. After all, who can better define the value of these files?”

Lando suppressed a grimace. Han had warned him that the conversation would probably end up here. “My superior usually doesn’t like to make direct contact this early in the negotiations,” he said. “I assure you that I have full authority to answer any questions and make any deals.”

“I’m sure you do,” Villachor said. “You’ll nevertheless bring him to me.”

Lando pretended to consider, then gave a little shrug. “Very well. I’ll contact him tonight with your request and bring you his answer tomorrow.”

“That answer had better be yes.”

“I’ll bring you his answer tomorrow,” Lando repeated.

Villachor’s lip twitched. “Not tomorrow,” he said. “Bring the answer in two days, during the Festival of Moving Water. Your visit will be less conspicuous that way.”

“Again, whatever you want,” Lando said, inclining his head in a bow. So Villachor wanted Lando’s visits to get lost in the Festival crowds, did he? Maybe he was genuinely starting to consider defecting from Black Sun.

Or else he was just trying to make Lando think that. Mind games, unfortunately, were a multidirectional spacelane. “One last question, if I may,” he said. “Simply for my own curiosity. If the data card wasn’t marked, how did you know which one it was?”

“It came from that slot in the file box,” Villachor said.

“Ah,” Lando said, nodding. And a spread of seven letters per card also implied there were five of them, just as Eanjer’s contact had said. So far, this mysterious informer had been dead-on with everything he’d said. “Again, that makes perfect sense. Your other invited visitors presumably see the card as their rather bleak futures are being read to them, and you don’t want them knowing how the information is organized. Speaking of which …” He half turned and held out his hand. “Bib?”

Obediently, Zerba pulled out the data card and stepped forward. He handed the card to Lando, then immediately backed up again and carefully lowered the cryodex back into its case. “Your property, Master Villachor,” Lando said formally, offering Villachor the card.

Silently, Villachor took it, the bulk of his attention on Zerba as he manipulated the booby-rigged case. “You call him Bib?” he asked.

Lando shrugged. “A small joke. Recognizable only to those who are already familiar with Jabba’s history.”

“Yes,” Villachor said. “Kwerve and Bib, together again.”

“Indeed,” Lando said. Bib Fortuna and Bidlo Kwerve had been two of Jabba’s highest-ranking servants, always jockeying for power and position until Kwerve’s death and Fortuna’s subsequent promotion to majordomo. Han had suggested that bringing Hutt history into their aliases would add an extra layer to Lando’s story that Villachor might find intriguing. From the expression on Villachor’s face, it looked like Han had been right. “I’m glad you appreciate it.”

“I do,” Villachor said. “Two days, Master Kwerve.”

“Two days,” Lando promised, giving another small bow.

Ninety seconds later they were once again out in the clean air, with the rumbling of the Festival crowd refreshingly welcome after the dangerously tense silence of the vault anteroom. “Well?” he asked quietly.

“Well what?” Zerba answered. “Did I switch the cards, or have the data come through yet?”

“The first,” Lando growled, annoyed in spite of himself at the other’s flippancy. Zerba’s neck had been as much on the line in there as Lando’s had, after all.

Or maybe not. It was possible that the extra senses Balosars claimed to have had given Zerba some insight into that face-off that Lando hadn’t picked up on. Could Villachor’s threat have been pure bluff, nothing more than a probe to see if Lando would bend under unexpected pressure?

“Yes, I switched the card,” Zerba said calmly. “Actually, the answer to the other one is yes, too. Whether Bink and Rachele will be able to get anything useful out of it is a different question.”

Lando shrugged. “We’ll find out soon enough.”

“So is slivki really an insulting term for Hutt?”

“Not that I know of,” Lando said. “But that’s the great thing about slang. There are so many versions and varieties—in anyone’s language—that you can never be sure you’ve gotten all of it. Villachor can search the archives for the rest of the month without ever being able to prove I was bluffing.”

“Nice,” Zerba said. “I’ll have to remember that one. Ready to head back?”

Lando nodded. “Let’s go.”

“I think not,” a deep voice muttered in his ear as a set of strong fingers locked unexpectedly around Lando’s right arm. “Nice and quiet.”

Lando twisted his head around and found himself looking up at a pock-marked human face half a head above his own, a floppy-brim hat pulled down almost to the eyebrows. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What in the—”

“He said quiet,” another voice cut him off.

Lando turned in the other direction, to see that a second man had similarly taken hold of Zerba’s arm. “Whoever you are, I suggest you let go of us immediately,” Lando said coldly. “We’re special guests of Master Villachor himself. One shout from me to any of the security men roaming the grounds—”

“Oh, you wouldn’t want to do that,” the first man admonished. “My little friend hates loud noises.”

Lando winced as the hard muzzle of a blaster pressed into his ribs beneath his right arm. “I suppose we should try to keep him happy,” he murmured.

“That’s the spirit,” the first man said encouragingly. “We’ll be heading around the south end of the house and going out the southeastern service entrance. Much quieter over that way. Folx, be a good man and relieve your friend of that heavy-looking case, will you?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Lando said quickly as the second man reached for the cryodex case. “Especially since your little friend hates loud noises.”

The second man paused, his hand touching the case’s handle. “Wolv?” he asked.

Wolv hesitated, and Lando could sense his shrug. “He can keep it,” he said. “We’ll figure out something at the other end of the ride.” He dug his blaster a little harder into Lando’s side. “Come on, step it up. We haven’t got all night.”

“We’re going on a ride, then?” Lando asked as the group picked up their pace.

“A nice little ride to a nice quiet room,” Wolv said. “Where we’ll have a nice little talk.”

“And after that?” Lando asked.

“After that—” Wolv shrugged again. “Well, that’ll be up to you.”

“Yes,” Folx agreed, his voice dark and ominous. “Mostly.”

“They’re heading for the southeast gate,” Rachele’s tense voice came over Han’s comlink. “They’ve already started around the end of the mansion.”

“Yeah, got it,” Han said, striding along the edge of the crowd watching the Grand Tempest, ducking past the people gathered around the food pavilions and trying desperately to strike the balance between speed and caution. If this was a genuine kidnapping attempt, he needed to get there as fast as he could.

But if it wasn’t genuine—if it was a trick of Villachor’s to draw out any allies Lando and Zerba had hidden in the crowd—then rushing full throttle to the rescue would do nothing but play perfectly into his hands.

“They’re opening up the distance,” Winter warned from her observation spot in the suite. “If you don’t hurry, you’re never going to catch them before they hit the gate.”

“We can’t go any faster,” Dozer’s voice snarled over Han’s comlink. The ship thief sounded even more frustrated than Han felt. “We do, and they’ll tag us for sure.”

“What a wonderful idea,” Bink cooed over the comlink, her voice still perfectly matched to her air-brained persona despite the tense danger facing them at the moment. “I haven’t been shopping there in ages. When do you want me to meet you?”

“Just stay where you are,” Han ordered her. “You’re too far away to help, and we can’t have you blowing your cover. Is Sheqoa there?”

“No, no,” Bink said, still cooing. “I can hardly wait to tell you about this new guy I’ve met.”

“Yeah, we can’t wait, either,” Dozer growled. “Come on, kid—we need to know whether he and the rest of Villachor’s people are in on this.”

“Ooh—got to go,” Bink said, pumping some extra excitement into her voice. “Here he comes now. You’re going to love him, Jessie—he is so hot. And so cool.”

Han snarled an old curse under his breath. Bink’s impromptu verbal code was hard to wade through, but so hot and so cool had to mean that she couldn’t tell whether Sheqoa had any of the tension telltales that would indicate the abduction was Villachor’s idea.

More delay and more uncertainty. And all the while Lando and Zerba were getting farther and farther out of range.

And then, suddenly, it was too late. “Dial it back,” Rachele’s tense voice came over the comlink. “You’ll never get there in time now. Not without sprinting across open ground where they’ll be bound to tag you.”

Reluctantly, Han slowed from his fast walk to a slower one and shifted direction instead toward the southwest gate. “At least tell me Chewie’s on it.”

“He’s on it,” Rachele confirmed. “He headed for the roof the minute they were grabbed. Maybe he can get one of the airspeeders in the sky fast enough to follow them.”

“There they go,” Winter cut in. “Looks like an Incom PT-81 airspeeder—dark red, with yellow pinstripes around the front and canopy.”

“Heading?”

“East,” Winter said. “They’re lifting … they’re in the lower airlane. Lifting again …”

“Chewie?” Han demanded.

Even someone like Eanjer who didn’t understand Shyriiwook would have had no trouble recognizing the anger and frustration in Chewie’s roar. He was in the air, but the kidnappers were already gone.

“Too late,” Rachele said, sounding close to tears. “We’ve lost them.”

“Well?” Han demanded.

“Nothing,” Rachele said, her head almost touching Winter’s as the two of them peered together at Rachele’s computer display. “There are just too many dark red PT-81s in the city’s records.”

“And the pinstripes are probably aftermarket add-ons,” Dozer muttered. He was sunk deeply in one of the chairs, staring morosely at the tips of his boots.

Han looked around the room. Tavia was peering at another computer display, her face grim. Kell was sitting across from Dozer, tapping the fingers of his left hand soundlessly on the padded arm of his chair and fiddling with a blaster power pack with his right. Eanjer was standing at the window, framed against the lights of the city, staring out into the night as if his prosthetic alien eye could pierce the darkness and spot the missing airspeeder.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Winter offered hesitantly. “For whatever that’s worth. I could see some scratches and dents in the sides.”

“But that kind of minor damage won’t be in any official records,” Rachele said.

Like Han hadn’t already known that. “Tavia?”

“Sorry,” Tavia said, shaking her head. “Those hats were blocking most of their faces. The bits I could see just weren’t definitive enough for a search. And the ID tag had some kind of sparkledust on it that made it impossible to read from this distance.”

Han nodded heavily as he keyed his comlink. Dead ends, all the way across the board. Whoever these guys were, they knew what they were doing. “Chewie? Anything?”

The Wookiee’s report was short, frustrated, and as negative as everyone else’s.

“Well, keep at it,” Han told him. “It’s sure as Kessel that none of the rest of us are going to spot him from here.”

Chewbacca acknowledged and keyed off.

“Maybe we should go out,” Rachele suggested hesitantly. “We’ve got another airspeeder on the roof, and Dozer could probably boost a few more off the street.”

“And then what?” Han demanded. “Zoom around at random and hope we spot them?”

“It would beat hanging around here waiting for them to come get us,” Dozer muttered.

“For who to come get us?” Kell asked.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Dozer bit out. “We don’t have the slightest idea who they are. And until we do, we haven’t got a hope of tracking them down.” He jabbed a finger at Han. “You ask me, the thing to do now is get out of here. And I mean right now. Sooner or later, one of them will break. We need to be somewhere else when that happens.”

“No,” Han said firmly before anyone else could voice an opinion. “If they get loose, they’ll be coming back here. We stay.”

“If they get loose?” Dozer retorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. Who do you think they are, Revan and Malak? I’m telling you, they’re hammer squash. And so are we if we stay here.”

“So go,” Han said, waving at the door. “But you walk through that door and you’re out.”

“Oh, really?” Dozer snarled. He bounded to his feet and grabbed for his blaster—

And froze, the weapon halfway out of its holster, his eyes wide as he found himself staring down the barrel of Han’s fully drawn blaster.

“Really,” Han assured him quietly.

Dozer flashed a look around the room. Whatever he saw in the others’ expressions apparently wasn’t very encouraging. “Fine,” he muttered, lowering his weapon back into its holster and flopping back down into his chair. “So what’s our next move?”

That was, Han knew, a damn good question. In a single heartbeat this whole grand scheme had gone sideways, and suddenly he was flying blind. How this would end he couldn’t even begin to guess.

Except for one thing: they were going to get Lando and Zerba out alive. Guaranteed. Han had lost enough people for one lifetime. He would see Villachor in hell before he lost anyone else.

“We change course,” he said, putting away his own blaster. “Rachele, forget the airspeeder. Lando and Zerba were talking to Villachor. Start making a list of people who might not like that.”

“Got it,” Rachele said, and turned back to her computer.

Han threw a look outside at the deceptively cheerful lights of the city. Somewhere, somehow, they needed to catch a break.

And they had better catch it soon.

“You’ve certainly been busy little banthas,” Wolv commented as the airspeeder wove its way through the nighttime traffic. “I understand this was your second audience with Master Villachor.” He cocked his head. “Or was it your third? That glitterstim peddler was one of yours, wasn’t he?”

“I didn’t realize Master Villachor’s guest list was under such scrutiny,” Lando said, feeling his forehead creasing. A glitterstim peddler? When had a glitterstim peddler come into any of this?

“Everything Master Villachor does is under scrutiny,” Wolv said. “Especially when it interferes with his proper business activities.” He pointed to the case on Zerba’s lap. “So is that the fancy glitterstim? Or is that the payout?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lando said with as much haughtiness as he could manage. “But I promise you that when Master Villachor learns about this, he is not going to be pleased.”

“Oh, I agree,” Wolv said, an evil smile flicking briefly across his face. “The only question is whether or not you two are going to go down with him.”

“I wouldn’t count him out just yet if I were you,” Lando warned.

“And I wouldn’t count on him digging you out of this,” Wolv shot back. “Your best bet right now is to open that case and hand over whatever’s inside. You do that, and I promise you’ll walk away.”

Lando shook his head. “I have my orders.”

The other snorted. “Fine—have it your way. But I’ll tell you right now that when we get where we’re going we’ll be meeting someone who can get that thing open without scattering it over the downwind half of the city. My offer lasts until then, and only until then. Think about it.” He looked pointedly at Zerba. “Both of you.”

He held his pose another few seconds. When it was clear that neither of his prisoners was going to say anything, he shook his head in disgust and turned back around to face forward.

Lando looked sideways at Zerba. Zerba twitched an eyebrow and looked down at his binders. Lando followed his eyes and saw the small gap at the binders’ connection.

So Zerba had already gotten his restraints open. No surprise there.

Unfortunately, with the binders connected to chains anchored to the airspeeder’s floor, there was no way for Zerba to get to Lando’s without their kidnappers noticing.

Zerba had obviously figured that out, too. He opened his hand slightly, giving Lando a glimpse of a small three-prong lockpick he’d been hiding somewhere, and twitched his eyebrow again in silent question.

Lando sighed. Equally unfortunately, he’d never mastered that particular school of lock picking. He shook his head, following it up with a short hunching of his shoulders. Zerba wrinkled his nose in sympathy and closed his hand again around the lockpick.

Still, the day wasn’t lost yet. If Zerba could take advantage of his freedom to jump out of the airspeeder the second they touched down and manage to get himself and the cryodex to safety, Lando might be able to bluff or bargain his way to at least a temporary reprieve. Any breathing space he could buy would give him time to come up with something more permanent.

Or would give that same time to Han and the others.

He hoped they were working on a rescue plan. He hoped it very much.

“Can they be traced back to you?” d’Ashewl’s voice came from Dayja’s comlink.

“I don’t know,” Dayja said, scowling at the PT-81 zooming along eight vehicles ahead. Something about the way it was moving warned him that they were about to turn again. “I don’t think so. But that’s not the point. The point is that if Eanjer and his team slide off the edge, this whole operation is likely to slide down with them. I may not be able to restart my own game in time to get into Marblewood before the Festival ends.”

“There’s no indication that Qazadi intends to leave immediately after that,” d’Ashewl reminded him.

“There’s also no indication that he doesn’t,” Dayja countered. Ahead, sure enough, the airspeeder turned right and dropped into a lower, slower airlane. Dayja matched the maneuver, then dropped one level more. He still didn’t know whether they’d spotted him or whether all this weaving in and out and around the city was just their idea of being cautious. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to let them get a little more distance on him.

“If it slides, it slides,” d’Ashewl said with a hint of impatience. “I’m sorry, but I can’t let you move in on this. And I absolutely can’t let you call in any Imperial authorities.”

Dayja ground his teeth. But d’Ashewl was right. If Qazadi got even a hint that Imperial Intelligence was on his back trail, the whole group would scramble, and he and d’Ashewl would be going back to Imperial Center empty-handed.

But if Dayja couldn’t interfere directly …

“Got an idea,” he told d’Ashewl. “I’ll get back to you.”

He broke the connection before d’Ashewl could reply. The airspeeder’s tag had a subtle coating of sparkledust that was highly effective at disguising the letters and numbers from ordinary electrobinoculars. But Dayja’s electrobinoculars were hardly ordinary.

If he and d’Ashewl were the only two Intelligence agents in Iltarr City, that didn’t mean they were all alone. Not exactly.

Steering with one hand, trying to judge the best moment to climb back into the kidnappers’ airlane, he keyed his comlink.

“Onith three besh,” Eanjer repeated, gesturing toward Rachele. “Anything else? … All right. Thanks.” He keyed off.

“That was your contact?” Han asked.

“Yes,” Eanjer said, his eye holding Han’s gaze for only a second before he turned back to Rachele.

Turned with what looked suspiciously like a flicker of guilt or discomfort on his face.

Han wasn’t the only one who noticed it, either. “Funny how he just happened to witness that airspeeder taking off,” Dozer commented, his voice thick with suspicion. “And was close enough to see the tag with his own unaided eyes.”

“Because there’s no other way he got that number,” Tavia agreed. “Not with sparkledust all over it.”

“He has access to certain resources,” Eanjer said. “What are you complaining about? We got the ID, didn’t we?”

“That’s not the point, is it?” Dozer countered. “Call me paranoid, but I like to know a little something about the people I’m working with. Especially since free information usually has hooks in it.”

“Oh, we didn’t get it for free,” Eanjer said ruefully. “Trust me. I’ll be paying through the nose for this little gem.”

“Here it is,” Rachele spoke up. “Well, well. It seems our kidnappers are running around in an unmarked Iltarr City police car.”

“The police are on to us?” Kell asked, sounding stunned. “Oh, that’s just great.”

“Maybe not,” Tavia said. “Remember how many local officials are on Black Sun’s payroll. This could be some ploy of Villachor’s to get more information out of Lando.”

“But why snatch him from the grounds instead of just keeping him inside and squeezing him there?” Winter asked. “Unless Han was right about him trying to see who else Lando might have with him.”

“I don’t know,” Rachele cut in, her fingers still dancing over her keyboard. “But here’s the interesting part. I’ve heard whispers about a quiet and very unofficial police interrogation setup in an abandoned factory in the industrial area about ten kilometers east of the spaceport. Ten to one that’s where they’re headed.”

“I don’t know,” Eanjer said doubtfully. “My contact said they’re just flying around. If they have a place to go, why not just go there?”

“Because they need to make sure they’re not being followed,” Tavia told him.

“It’s better than that,” Han said, an idea starting to take shape in his mind. If they really knew where the kidnappers were going, and if he and the others had time to prepare before they got there … “They need to whistle up a bomb expert to get that case open.”

“You’re right,” Kell said, a hint of growing excitement in his voice. “If they’re waiting for him before they land, maybe we can beat them to the factory.”

“Makes sense,” Rachele said. “As soon as they land, they’re vulnerable. This way, they’re in motion all the way until they’re ready to slice the case.”

“I don’t know,” Dozer warned, looking around at the others in the room. “No offense, but even at seven-to-two odds, I don’t like our chances.”

“It’s more like three to two,” Han told him. “You, me, and Chewie.”

“Hold on,” Rachele warned. “If you think the rest of us are just going to sit this one out, you’re badly mistaken.”

“She’s right,” Winter said firmly.

“Not about herself she isn’t,” Han said, just as firmly. “Rachele’s way too well known around this city. Anyone sees her, and she’s under the hammer for sure.” He gestured. “That goes for Eanjer, too. And with Bink still over at Villachor’s, we can’t risk anyone finding out she’s got a twin, Tavia, so that lets you out.”

“Which still leaves Kell and me,” Winter pointed out.

“Right,” Dozer said sarcastically. “And your areas of combat expertise are?”

“I know enough to know we could use some airpower,” Kell said. “If you can get me some kind of atmo-fighter, I can fly it.”

Dozer shot a frown at Han, then looked back at Kell. “You’re kidding.”

“Not at all,” Kell said.

“He can,” Winter seconded. “I’ve seen him fly.”

“Unless you don’t think you can boost something like that in time,” Han said. The nebulous plan was starting to coalesce …

Dozer squared his shoulders. “Where do you want it delivered?”

“Just boost it and then keep it somewhere at the spaceport until I call for you.” Han keyed his comlink. “Chewie? I need you back here. You’re picking up Dozer and Kell and heading to the spaceport. We’ve got a plan.”

He got an acknowledgment and keyed off. “Rachele, I need you to find me some heavy automatic weapons. Tavia, I need you to rig up some remote triggers for them.”

“No problem—I already have a bunch of remotes,” Tavia said, getting up and hurrying toward her room.

“Good,” Han said. “Rachele, can you track down some weapons?”

“No need,” Winter said. “I already know where there’s a cache.”

Han stared at her. “Really? How?”

She shrugged. “I did get here a full day before you did,” she reminded him. “I wasn’t just sitting around doing nothing.”

“I guess not,” Han conceded. “What kind of security has it got?”

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Winter said. “It’s the demo stockpile of a Rodian who fancies himself an up-and-coming weapons dealer. It’s small, but we should be able to find what we need.”

Tavia reappeared, a black belt bag in hand. “Here are eight of them,” she said, handing the bag to Han. “I hope that’ll be enough.”

“Thanks,” Han said, peering into the bag. Standard trigger-switch type, comlink-enabled. “Winter?”

“Eight should do fine,” she confirmed.

“Good,” Han said, closing the bag again. “Come on—we’ll take the other airspeeder. Rachele, see if you can pull up some floor plans for that factory. If you can, shoot them to me and Chewie.”

“Got it.” Rachele bent again over her computer.

“You’ve all got your jobs,” Han told the others. “Get busy.”

The factory was old and dilapidated, three stories tall, with peeling paint and windows layered with decades’ worth of dust and wind scratches. It was the kind of place that no one would look at twice, no one would want to go into, and absolutely no one would ever put down good credits to rent.

Which made it the perfect place for a police force to set up an off-the-line interrogation room.

“You realize you’re going to have to fire these things blind,” Winter warned as they set up the fifth of the six E-Web heavy repeating blasters they’d appropriated from the arms dealer’s supply shed. “You try linking those triggers into electrobinoculars and cross targeting, and the data stream will be way too obvious for the other side to miss. They’ll chase it straight back to you, and that’ll be it.”

“I know,” Han said. “Good thing I don’t care if we actually hit anything.”

She paused long enough to flash him a look. “You aren’t planning on hitting anything? Then what in space did we bring them for?”

“ ’Cause they’re great little noisemakers,” Han said, crouching down and hooking one of Tavia’s triggers onto the firing mechanism. “Something to get everyone looking in all the wrong directions. Chewie and Kell will be doing all the real damage.”

“Hopefully only where they’re supposed to,” Winter murmured.

“Chewie can handle it.” Han eyed her over the E-Web’s barrel. “Question is, can Kell?”

“I told you, I’ve seen him fly.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t say you’d seen him fly combat,” Han reminded her. “How well do you know him, anyway?”

Winter shrugged as she finished anchoring the E-Web’s tripod and climbed back into the airspeeder. “He joined up with Mazzic about six months ago, two months after I did. He seems competent and loyal enough, but I get the feeling he’s got some history. Family stuff, probably.”

“Yeah, well, who doesn’t?” Han growled as he got into the airspeeder beside her. Keying the repulsorlifts, he lifted and headed for the spot he’d picked for their final emplacement.

“And he hasn’t specifically said so,” Winter added hesitantly, “but I think he’s also Alderaanian.”

Han felt his lip twist. Leia had put up a good front, both during the Death Star escape and afterward. But through it all, even when she’d been cheering him and Luke for their victory at Yavin, he had seen the deep and lasting pain behind her eyes.

He’d recognized the same pain in Winter. And now that he thought about it, he realized that she was right. Kell was carrying that same burden of memory.

Han had tasted that same pain, though not nearly to the extent Leia and Winter and Kell had, and he knew all too well that it did things to people. Sometimes it made them depressed, uncaring, and lethargic. Sometimes it made them permanently angry and unable to care about anyone or anything for a long, long time.

Sometimes it made them recklessly suicidal.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be all right,” Winter reassured him. “He knows what’s at stake, and he understands his duty. Whatever you told him to do, he’ll do it.”

“Well, if he doesn’t, he’ll answer to Lando,” Han said. His comlink signaled, and he slipped it from his belt. “Chewie? What’ve you got?”

For once, the news was good. “Great,” Han said, scanning the sky. The main city airspeeder traffic to the south and west was as thick as ever, and there were steady lines of intercity traffic flying back and forth across the less populated areas north and east of them. But nothing seemed to be heading in their immediate direction. “You and Kell wait for my call. And send Dozer out here right now—he might as well help with the E-Webs.”

He got an acknowledgment and keyed off.

“Dozer would probably rather hang back at the spaceport,” Winter pointed out.

“I wasn’t giving him a choice.”

“Maybe you should,” Winter said. “Of everyone in the group, he’s the one I worry about the most.”

“He’s okay,” Han said. “He’s just feeling a little out of his expertise, that’s all.”

“A ship thief who hasn’t had any ships to steal until now,” Winter said, nodding. “So why did you bring him in?”

“He was going to be front man until Lando showed up,” Han said, swinging the airspeeder around and setting down beside a broken and rust-covered conveyer belt motor.

“Does that mean he resents Lando?” Winter pressed as she hopped out and got a grip on the last E-Web’s barrel.

“Not Dozer,” Han assured her as he grabbed the other end and helped her lift the weapon out of the airspeeder’s cargo bay. “You give him the same credits for half the work and he’ll laugh all the way home. We’ll set this one up on the other side of that regulator.”

They were halfway through the E-Web setup when Han spotted an airspeeder dropping out of the night sky toward them. For a bad moment he thought they’d run out of time, but as the vehicle came closer he saw it was one of theirs.

It settled to the ground, and Dozer climbed out. “How we doing here?” he asked as he strode over to them.

“Almost done,” Han told him. “Chewie said you got Kell something?”

“Better than just something,” Dozer said, shading his eyes from the mass of city lights to the west as he looked at the factory. “I found him a Z-95 Headhunter. AF-4 version, even, with all the bells and toots you need to turn old buildings into piles of dust.” He gestured. “Though if that’s the target, I probably could have given him a couple of sonic pistols and called it a night. Where do you want me?”

“There,” Han said, pointing toward a half-collapsed shed. “Should be enough room for you and the airspeeder in there. You’ll be handling the two E-Webs on this side. Winter and I will be on the other side with the other four.”

“Okay,” Dozer said hesitantly. “So we’re attacking as they’re coming in?”

“Nope,” Han said. “We wait for them to get inside.”

“Ah,” Dozer said, even more hesitantly. “And once we open fire, we keep the whole thing from collapsing on top of them how?”

“Actually,” Han said, “we don’t.”

“There,” Wolv said, pointing out to their right. “That must be them now.”

Lando followed the other’s finger. In the distance, two airspeeders had left the main traffic airlanes and were headed downward, aiming somewhere off to the left.

“About time,” Folx grumbled. He turned the airspeeder into a tight curve, shifting around toward the others’ projected grounding point.

Leaning toward the middle of the seat, Lando craned his neck to look between their two captors. They were flying over an industrial area, only about half of which seemed to be still in use. Directly ahead, their most likely destination was a three-story monstrosity of a building, standing all alone amid piles of rubble, that looked like it had been abandoned on day one of the Clone Wars.

“You watch that kind of talk,” Wolv warned darkly, slapping his partner with the back of his hand for emphasis. “When the chief sounds scared, we’re talking someone you don’t want to mess with.”

Folx snorted. “The chief’s an old Ugnaught,” he said scornfully. “One crime boss is pretty much like the next.”

“You want to say the wrong thing and get your brains fried, go right ahead,” Wolv countered. “Just do me a favor and save it for when you’re with Cran or Baar instead of me, okay?”

Folx snorted again. “You’re an old Ugnaught, too.”

“Maybe,” Wolv said. “But the way an Ugnaught gets to be an old Ugnaught is by being smart. So do me a favor. Be smart.”

Folx shook his head, and Lando could imagine him rolling his eyes. “Fine. If it’ll make you feel better.”

Aside from a couple of holes in the factory’s upper windows, the place didn’t seem to have any openings at all, and for a moment Lando dared to hope that the rendezvous would take place outside. There weren’t a lot of places to run to out there, but at least running would be an option.

But as they approached the building, a wide door behind a partially collapsed loading dock began to ponderously roll up. The other two airspeeders were already heading in, the first barely even waiting until the opening was big enough before threading the gap with a nonchalance that bordered on the arrogant. The second airspeeder gave the door an extra couple of seconds, then followed.

Lando looked at Zerba. First airspeeder has the bodyguards, he mouthed silently.

Zerba nodded and hunched his shoulders. Where are they? he mouthed back.

Lando gave him a wink and turned away. There was, after all, no reason why Zerba should worry, too.

Because he was right. Han and the others should be here by now. Chewie should be crouched by one of those collapsed equipment sheds with his bowcaster, carefully picking off segments of their repulsorlift cluster to drive Folx into a rapid but still controlled landing. Han should be somewhere closer to the docking bay, firing away with that overrated BlasTech DL-44 of his and keeping the other two airspeeders busy. Another of their group, maybe Dozer or Kell, should be pumping out cover fire for both of them, while someone else—anyone else—should be roaring up in an airspeeder for a fast grab and a faster getaway.

But there was nothing. No one was out there shooting. No one was even visible. No vehicles of any sort, anywhere. Plenty of sheds and hiding places where someone could lurk, but none of them with the kind of quick hit-and-fade capabilities a rescue like this required.

Because a hit-and-fade was the only way this would work. Once he and Zerba were inside the building, all bets were off. Lando was no structural engineer, but even from out here it was painfully clear that launching a firefight in that place would have an even chance of bringing the whole thing crashing down on whoever was inside.

Lando looked ahead at the door still grinding its laborious way open. Was it possible that there would be no rescue because the team didn’t know where he and Zerba were?

Ridiculous. Winter and Tavia surely had witnessed the kidnapping from the suite, and Rachele surely must have been able to track the airspeeder somehow. Folx had been flying them around town for over an hour, more than enough time for Han to put together something clever.

Unless there would be no rescue because Han had decided not to bother.

Lando took a careful breath. No—that was crazy. Han wouldn’t do something like that. Yes, Lando had told him off good the last time they’d parted company; and yes, he’d mentioned something about never wanting to see Han again. But Han had invited him into this job, and Lando had already backed off of that whole never-meeting-again thing. And Han certainly had seemed to accept Lando’s apology.

Besides, even if Han wasn’t ready to forgive him, surely Chewie wouldn’t turn his back on two teammates in trouble. That wasn’t like him.

At the very least, someone in the group ought to care enough about Zerba to try for a rescue.

So where were they?

“Take a good look,” Wolv advised, waving a hand around. Lando snapped out of his dark thoughts to see that they were nearly to the open door. “It may be the last view of the outside world you ever see.”

“Don’t worry,” Lando said as calmly as he could. Men like him, he reminded himself firmly, didn’t intimidate easily. “We’ll be coming out again just fine. The question is, will you?”

Wolv just snorted.

And then they were through the doorway, heading across an impressive expanse of dimly lit open floor, the sound of the airspeeder’s engines echoing off the high ceiling. Ahead, the other two airspeeders had landed, and a half dozen large men were standing around them, blaster rifles held at the ready. Folx brought the airspeeder smoothly to the floor at a respectful fifty-meter distance, and he and Wolv climbed out, leaving Lando and Zerba alone.

“Now?” Zerba murmured. He twitched his fingers, bringing his three-prong lockpick into view.

“Not yet,” Lando murmured back as their captors strode over to the waiting group. “The other guards are watching us.”

“Right,” Zerba said, his voice shaking just a little. “We’re going to need a distraction, aren’t we?” He gave the case in his lap a significant tap. “I figure we’ve only got one. But it’s a doozy.”

“Easy,” Lando cautioned. “I’m not ready to cash in on the game just yet.”

One of the guards gestured to the second airspeeder. The door opened, and a short elderly man climbed out. The bomb expert, probably. He moved aside to make room for a second figure—

Lando stiffened. Climbing out of the airspeeder behind the old man was a Falleen.

“Lando?” Zerba asked urgently.

“Not yet,” Lando said, wondering why he was even bothering. He didn’t know if that was the same Falleen that Dozer had tangled with at the Lulina Crown, but it almost didn’t matter. He was a Falleen, he was almost certainly Black Sun, and suddenly a quick death by detonite didn’t seem all that unreasonable anymore.

But Lando was a gambler. A true gambler never folded when he still had cards left to play. “Not yet,” he repeated. “Han may still come through.”

Behind them came a sudden dull thud. Lando looked over his shoulder to see that the roll-top door had slammed shut, sealing the factory away from the rest of the universe.

Han hadn’t come through.

He and Zerba were on their own.

Across the field came the faint boom as the factory door closed. “Now?” Winter asked.

Han clicked his comlink. “Chewie? Kell? Dozer?

“Now.”

Finally, finally, the order came.

Practically before that single long-awaited syllable had finished coming through his comlink, Kell had the Z-95 in the air, the combination of repulsorlifts and main engines jamming him back into his seat, the indicator lights on his control board looking like a bleed-through of the stars above and the city lights to both sides.

The waiting was over. He was going into battle. Maybe not the intensity of combat that haunted both his dreams and his nightmares, but combat nonetheless.

And with the end of the waiting came the end of at least some of the doubts.

He’d worried that he would hesitate or, worse, freeze. He hadn’t. He’d worried that he might not be able to handle a ship that, for all his earlier confident assurances, he’d had little experience with outside of game simulators. It seemed to be working fine. He’d worried that he might turn tail and abandon the mission. So far that hadn’t happened, either.

He’d worried that he might not be able to face death for the sake of his teammates. That one, unfortunately, still lay ahead. And if and when it came down to that, he still had no idea how he would react.

But he didn’t have to know. Not yet. Courage wasn’t a matter of taking the whole mountain in a single massive leap. Courage was taking it one step at a time, doing what was necessary now, preparing for the next step, and refusing to worry about whether some step in the future would be the one that would break him.

He was in the air, flying his fighter with adequate skill, and heading in the right direction. Three steps down. One at a time to go.

He keyed the Z-95’s comm. “Chewie?”

There was an acknowledging roar, wordless confirmation that the Wookiee was in position behind him.

And maybe that was the real secret to courage, Kell realized suddenly: someone at your back, and the assurance that you weren’t facing the mountain alone.

He straightened his shoulders. Enough philosophy. He had a fighter beneath him, a set of weapons at his fingertips, and teammates who needed rescuing. “Stay with me,” he told Chewie. An order or a plea, he wasn’t sure which. “I’m going in.”

Wolv and Folx had been cleared by the Falleen’s men, and the conversation had shifted over to the Falleen himself, when a group of ground-floor windows exploded inward, and the whole factory lit up with a multiple blaze of sustained blasterfire.

“No, no, no,” Zerba moaned, hunching down as if trying to disappear into his seat. “Lando, what’s he doing?”

“Getting us out of here,” Lando said between clenched teeth. “Here—get these off me.”

“Get us out of here how?” Zerba demanded, twisting his hands free of his binders and leaning over to work on Lando’s restraints. “In body sacks? He’s going to bring the whole place down on us.”

“He’s got a plan,” Lando insisted, peering up at the ceiling. So far the blasterfire was just tearing up the windows and flying harmlessly over everyone’s heads. Was all the noise and fury supposed to be a diversion, with Han expecting them to grab their airspeeder and make a run for it?

Because if that was the plan, it was a rotten one. None of the broken windows was nearly big enough for their airspeeder to get through. Even if it was, this particular vehicle’s design meant he or Zerba would have to get out of the backseat and go around to the driver’s-side door to get to the controls, and he doubted that Wolv or Folx or the Falleen would just sit by and let that happen.

Speaking of whom …

“Hurry it up,” Lando bit out, craning his neck to look through the airspeeder’s canopy. At the first salvo, the bomb expert and the Falleen had dived back inside their vehicle, with the rest of the group taking up defensive positions. Wolv and Folx had joined them, but now both were looking back toward their own vehicle.

And even fifty meters away, with all those flashes glinting off the airspeeder’s canopy obscuring their vision, Lando could see that they’d spotted the fact that one of their prisoners was free of his binders and the second soon would be.

“Why?” Zerba countered. “You got someplace else you want to be?”

“Yeah—anywhere but here,” Lando shot back. Wolv was looking back and forth between the different vectors of blasterfire sizzling the air above his head, probably looking for a pattern. The minute he figured out the safe timing, Lando suspected, he would be heading their way.

Across the factory, one of the building’s mid-wall supports abruptly snapped as the fire through the adjacent window sliced across its edge. The section of roof directly overhead slumped a couple of meters, the sudden change in pressure snapping two smaller supports and sending pieces of metal shrapnel arcing across the open space to rain down bare meters from the three airspeeders.

“Anywhere but here sounds great,” Zerba snarled. “Only how are we supposed to get there? This place is—” He broke off as another support snapped and scattered itself across the landscape. “Is a deathtrap,” he finished. “What’s Han trying to do, kill us?”

Lando was still trying to come up with an answer to that one when, with a deafening crash, a group of windows below the ceiling blew in. The place was coming down, all right, and while the Falleen’s airspeeders were probably armored, his and Zerba’s definitely wasn’t. He looked up toward the blast, wondering if any of the debris was coming toward them, wondering if he would see the chunk of wall or girder that would end up killing him.

The fireball of the explosion was still swirling through the cloud of smoke when a Z-95 Headhunter shot through the opening into the factory.

Kell winced as bits and pieces of the wall he’d just blown open slammed and rattled against the Z-95’s canopy. He’d definitely cut that one a bit too close. Something to remember for the next time.

Assuming there was a next time. He’d barely cleared the blast debris when he was suddenly being hammered by heavy blasterfire raking across his underside. His first reflexive assumption was that Han or Dozer had glitched their targeting, but a second later he realized that the attack was coming from the men crouched beside the other two airspeeders down there.

A heavy attack, too. Those were seriously high-powered blasters they were firing, way too powerful for civilian equipment. Even the Z-95’s armor, designed for full-bore space combat, was creaking and popping under the onslaught.

It would have been highly satisfying to zoom to the other end of the factory, spin his fighter around, and nail them all with a counterbarrage from his KX5 laser cannons. But he didn’t dare. The E-Web attack had showed how dangerously unstable the factory was. The engine backblast and flash heating required to pull off that kind of attack could bring the whole place down. It would be a pretty pathetic rescue if Lando and Zerba ended up crushed to death because they were stuck in that eggshell of an airspeeder.

Fortunately, that problem was about to be fixed.

“Bogies at sixty-five and seventy-six,” he called out, pitching the fighter a few degrees as he shot past for a better view of the factory floor. He took a moment to glance at his display, at the factory schematic that Rachele had sent and the targeting grid Chewbacca had overlaid on it. “Friendlies at fifty-eight. Drop target: sixty-seven. Repeat: drop target, sixty-seven.”

The far wall was coming up fast. The plan was for him to fire another burst, make a new hole, and get out before he got himself shot down. Instead, he pulled back on the throttle, doing a quick skid turn to kill his forward momentum and coast to a stop. It was risky, and Chewie probably would have something to say about it later if they all survived.

But Han’s plan was so insane, and the execution so impossible, that he just had to stick around and see for himself if it actually worked.

Some things in life really were worth risking everything for. The rest … well, it was always a judgment call.

Kell had blown through the wall and disappeared inside, he’d called out the targeting zone to Chewie, and the E-Web covering fire hadn’t yet brought down the whole factory. So far, things were going according to plan.

And now, from out of the gloom, blazing its way across the night sky, was the Falcon.

Han clenched his hand into a fist. Chewie was one of the best pilots he’d ever seen, but this was the sort of gamble even Han would normally dismiss out of hand.

But when you had no other choice, you had to go with it. “Come on, Chewie,” he muttered under his breath as the ship shot toward the hole in the wall Kell had made. The opening was way too small for the Falcon to fit through, of course, and there was no way any of them was going to try enlarging it, not with the shape the building was in. Even letting Kell in and out had been a calculated risk.

But Chewie didn’t need to make the hole any bigger. All he needed to do was to play a single round of the galaxy’s biggest game of hit-the-Hutt.

And he had exactly one chance to get it right.

The Falcon was gaining a little altitude now, and Han could hear Chewbacca easing back on the throttle as he fine-tuned his run. A quick surge of frustration and guilt washed through Han as he watched—by all rights, that should be him up there. He should be the one flying his ship and making this work.

But if he’d taken that job, who would he have left to organize the ground action? Dozer? Winter?

No. For better or worse, whether it made sense or not, he was the leader of this group. Down here, where the blaster bolts were flying the thickest, was where he needed to be.

Nearly there. A little more altitude … a bit less … slowing just a fraction more … shifting the approach vector just a shade …

And then Chewbacca was there, yanking up the bow with a fraction of a second to spare, the ship angling up and over the edge of the building and shooting off toward space.

And only because Han was specifically looking for it did he spot the squat metal cylinder that popped out of the rear of the ship and arced neatly through the smoking hole into the factory.

Lando’s first horrible thought was that the rumble approaching from outside was a missile, heading in to level the building and disintegrate every shred of evidence of what had happened here. But at the last millisecond the dark bulk flashed past the ragged opening the Z-95 had made, angling upward and roaring over the roof. He felt the whole place shake with the backwash, and a fresh rain of debris began falling on them. An extra-big piece of ceiling tile hit Lando’s side of the canopy, shattering it and sending bits of transparisteel flying.

Without warning, something big and solid slammed into the floor directly between their airspeeder and the Falleen’s men, the impact sending up a huge cloud of dust and duracrete chips. Lando winced back, wondering if it was in fact the missile nose cone he’d been anticipating a few seconds earlier.

It wasn’t a missile. It was a CEC Class 1 escape pod.

The kind carried aboard the Falcon.

And with that, he finally got it. “Come on!” he snapped to Zerba, forcing open the airspeeder door and rushing out into the dust and falling tiles and metal shards. Running bent over at the waist to stay out of the blasterfire still pouring through the windows, he headed for the escape pod.

He was halfway there when Zerba caught up, the cryodex case clutched tightly to his chest. “Where are we going?” he panted.

“Inside,” Lando told him. He dropped to one knee beside the pod and cycled the hatch. “It’s Han’s idea of armored sanctuary.”

“But it’s only a one-passenger pod.”

“It’ll be tight,” Lando agreed as the hatch popped open. “You can stay out here if you’d rather.”

Zerba didn’t bother to reply.

“They’re in!” Kell shouted toward the comm. “Hatch is sealed.”

“Great,” Han called back, and for the first time in hours Kell could hear some actual relief in his voice. “Kell, Dozer—take it down.”

With a suddenness that caught Dayja completely by surprise, the multiple E-Web blasterfire hammering the factory shifted from covering to demolition.

His comlink signaled. “Dayja, what’s going on out there?” d’Ashewl demanded. “Police nets are lighting up from here to Grackleton with reports of a firefight in your area.”

“Oh, it’s definitely a firefight,” Dayja confirmed, peering at the factory from what he hoped would continue to be a safe distance. “But at the moment, it’s seriously one-sided. E-Webs on the outside, a Z-95 Headhunter on the inside.”

And some variety of Corellian light freighter, he didn’t add, frowning as he searched the sky. The freighter had made a single run at the place and done nothing except veer off at the last second, then had headed off and hadn’t been back. Either he was on some really wide return circle or he’d turned tail and made a run for it.

The first didn’t make much sense. The second seemed way out of sync with what he’d seen of Eanjer’s group.

And then he got it. The freighter pilot hadn’t gotten cold feet. He’d done whatever he was supposed to do for the operation—distraction, reconnaissance, whatever—and then had taken off because he was hurrying to get back to the spaceport before the police and port authorities reacted to all the noise and started paying attention to what was happening in the sky above them.

Which meant the freighter was the one item Eanjer’s team had brought out here that they weren’t intending to abandon after the rescue.

Interesting. He wished now that he’d gotten a better look at it.

With a distant whoof a section of factory roof caved in, followed immediately by a partial collapse of the north wall. The attackers seemed to be deliberately bringing down the building, which begged the question of how they expected their kidnapped teammates to survive.

Maybe they were already dead. Maybe that was what the freighter and the Z-95 had been sent in to confirm.

Another section of the roof went, this piece apparently hitting some old tank on the way down and sending up a plume of gas that looked green and vaguely evil in the reflected light from the blasterfire. A second part of the northern wall collapsed.

And with that, the kidnappers had apparently had enough. Even as the blasterfire continued to wreak havoc, Dayja saw the three airspeeders shoot out from the freshly gaping holes and claw for altitude.

This time he was ready and got some good image captures with his electrobinoculars. Whoever they were, he should be able to track them down.

“Dayja? What’s happening?”

“Looks like it’s mostly over,” Dayja said as the E-Web fire came to a halt. The Z-95 had now emerged and was settling to the ground nearby, and he could see three figures hurrying toward the wrecked building from different directions. “But it wouldn’t hurt to keep the police away from the area for a few more minutes. Can you manage that without showing your hand?”

“My hand, yes,” d’Ashewl rumbled. “But your team’s hand may already be dead. If the kidnappers were indeed corrupt police, I don’t know how they’re going to spin this incident without Villachor and Qazadi concluding that Eanjer is connected with someone official.”

“I don’t know, either,” Dayja said. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”

Lando already had the hatch open and was working his way out of the escape pod when Han and the others reached them. “You okay?” Han asked, offering a hand.

It seemed to him that Lando hesitated a fraction of a second longer than he needed to before taking the proffered hand. But his grip was solid enough. “Thanks,” he grunted as Han helped him out. “Nice move, by the way. I gather that was Chewie in the Falcon?”

“Yeah,” Han said, looking around. The devastation looked even worse in here than it had from the outside. “Figured if you got winged by the pod, you wouldn’t be as mad at him as you would have been at me.”

“Probably not.” Lando half turned. “Zerba?”

“I’m here.” A thin hand popped into view through the hatch. “A little help, please?”

“Hand me the case,” Dozer instructed, crouching down beside the pod.

The hand disappeared and reemerged with the cryodex case. Dozer took it and handed it behind him to Winter, then helped Zerba out.

“Thanks,” Zerba puffed. He turned a baleful eye on Han. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“Which part?” Han asked. “Shooting the bad guys off your back, or saving your life?”

Zerba considered. “Okay, good point,” he conceded, sounding marginally mollified. “Can we get out of here now?”

“Sure,” Han said. “Dozer, take them to your airspeeder and get them back to the suite. Kell can go with you, too.”

“We leave the gear?” Dozer asked.

“All of it,” Han confirmed. “Winter and me’ll go to the spaceport and wait for Chewie.”

Some orders, he reflected, only had to be given once. Dozer was already picking his way through the debris, Lando and Zerba right behind him.

“Interesting tactic,” Winter commented.

Han turned. She was staring at the dented escape pod, an odd expression on her face. “They’re designed to handle deep space, atmo penetration, and bumpy landings,” he reminded her. “I figured they could hold off anything the kidnappers had with them.” He waved a hand upward at the stars showing through the wrecked roof. “And that, too.”

“It did seem to do the job,” Winter agreed. “I was thinking more of what would have happened if Chewbacca had missed.”

“Lando would probably never want to see me again,” Han said. “Come on, let’s go see if Chewie’s made it back down yet.”

“So you have no idea who they were?” Tavia asked as she handed Lando a drink.

“Only that there was a Falleen in the group,” Lando said, taking a careful sip. Cognac was a notoriously unpredictable drink, the taste and quality varying widely between systems and often even across different regions of the same world. Thankfully, Tavia had picked a good, smooth one. “No idea whether it was Dozer’s friend Lord Aziel, or this Qazadi person Eanjer’s contact claims is hiding in Marblewood.”

“Not sure it matters which it was,” Kell said. “They’re both on the same team, aren’t they?”

“He wasn’t either of them,” Zerba said. He was gripping his own cognac glass with both hands, clearly still shaken by the evening’s events. “He was probably someone’s bodyguard.”

“How do you know?” Lando asked, thinking back. He hadn’t noticed any weapons or body armor that might have led Zerba to that conclusion.

“He was young,” Zerba said. “Way too young to be anyone with that kind of prominence.”

“He ran back inside the airspeeder when the firing started,” Lando pointed out.

“He got the bomb guy into the airspeeder when the firing started,” Zerba corrected. “Then he got in. But he left the door open.”

“So that he could direct their return fire,” Winter murmured. “He did a decent job of it, too. Even firing blind, they were able to take out one of the E-Webs before Kell got inside.”

“Well, whoever they were, they weren’t with Villachor,” Bink said positively. “Neither Sheqoa nor any of the other security guys I saw showed the slightest indication that they knew something big was going on.”

“They must not have been monitoring the police comms, then,” Tavia pointed out. “The whole network was going crazy with all the reports. I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t drop the hammer on you before you got out of there.”

“What, charge in on a Black Sun interrogation?” Lando countered. “Not likely.”

“So what does all this mean for the mission?” Eanjer asked. He sounded calm, but the restless twitching of his fingers betrayed his tension.

“Nothing, really,” Han said. “Whoever was behind it, all he knows is that Lando’s got an impressive organization behind him. That’s the story we were pitching in the first place.”

“Except now that Lando’s been tagged he needs to lie low,” Bink said. “I guess Dozer’s up next. Or you, Han.”

It seemed to Lando that Han’s lip twitched, just a bit. “Probably,” Han conceded. “We can talk about that later.” He turned to Rachele. “You ready?”

“Yes,” Rachele said, her eyes looking troubled. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“Ready with what?” Zerba asked.

“The analysis of the sensor data from the card you planted,” Han told him, looking around. “Dozer?”

“Right here,” Dozer said, emerging from the kitchen hallway with a sandwich in his hand. “Rescue work makes me hungry.” He dropped onto the couch beside Tavia, forcing her to scoot to the side to make room. “Ready.”

Han gestured to Rachele. She tapped her datapad, and the image of a mostly rectangular room appeared in the air above the holoprojector. “Villachor’s vault,” she identified it. “As we’ve already noted, it was built into the junior ballroom—note the curved corners and conversation alcoves.”

“Which are probably guard posts now,” Lando murmured.

“Mostly,” Rachele confirmed. “Also note the high, undulating ceiling. That’s the ballroom’s original glitter coat up there, by the way, with the layer of armor plate we discussed earlier set into the between-floors gap above it.”

“Glitter coat, huh?” Bink asked sourly. “Terrific.”

“What’s glitter coat?” Kell asked.

“The fancy man’s interior décor of choice,” Bink told him. “Nice, smooth, resilient, glitters in every type of lighting—you get the idea. Problem is, it’s impossible to cut through without scattering clouds of white sparkly flakes all over the place.”

“Which means no popping in, grabbing the loot, and popping back out without anyone noticing,” Tavia added. “Once we start the operation, our footprints will be all over it.”

“What kind of security has he got inside the vault?” Bink asked.

“Oh, you’re going to love this,” Rachele said. She keyed her datapad again, and a dozen figures appeared around the edges of the vault. “Remember those Zed police droids Kell said Villachor’s got? Here’s where they hang out.”

“Plus the ten on guard outside the door,” Lando said. “Armed with blasters and TholCorp OT-7 neuronic whips, just to make things interesting. Getting past that group is the first step in the entry procedure.”

Chewbacca turned to Han and warbled a question.

“I don’t know,” Han said. “Kell? You know any way to knock out a Zed?”

“I’d have to look into it, but I’m sure it’s possible.” Kell waved a hand. “Of course, anything’s possible. It’s in the execution where you get hung up.”

“A high-power jab in the motivator or memory core will do it for most droids,” Bink pointed out.

“Hard to do through the kind of armor Zeds have, though,” Kell said.

“And don’t forget the whips,” Lando added. “Those things pack a serious punch, and Villachor would hardly give them to his guards if they could be used against them. That implies extra electrical shielding.”

“Actually, it’s worse than that,” Kell said. “Remember I told you the Zeds I saw had sheathings on their upper arms, thighs, and waists? Those limb parts are where the droids have thin parallel cylinders instead of a single wider limb part, and the waist is where the torso also gets extra narrow.”

“So?” Bink asked.

“So with those sheathings in place, you can’t tell whether they’ve got the original parallels and torso tube, or something wider,” Kell said. “In other words, you can’t tell whether or not that’s really a Zed.”

“Whoa,” Dozer said, his sandwich momentarily forgotten. “Are you saying some of those Zeds might actually be armored human guards?”

“Exactly,” Kell said. “It’s really pretty clever. You go in with a tight-spectrum motivator punch like Bink said, all set to knock out a droid. Only the human inside the armor isn’t bothered in the slightest and knocks you on your butt.”

“While something designed to stun or paralyze a human won’t work on a droid,” Han said.

“And only Villachor will know which are which,” Kell said.

“Speaking of droids, is there any way to deal with those floating cam droids outside?” Dozer asked. “I don’t like the idea of someone in a monitor room watching everything we do in there.”

“Not a problem,” Tavia assured him. “We’ve got a gadget designed to fog their view. Not enough to trigger any alarms or self-diagnostic sequences, but enough to wipe out facial recognition. With all the dust, extra body heat, and repulsor containment fields they’ll have out there, they should assume that’s all that’s bollixing their holocams.”

“Is that going to be good enough?” Dozer asked, looking at Han.

“It should be,” Han said. “We’ll just have to make sure we don’t stand out of the crowd.”

“Until we need to,” Lando murmured.

“Right,” Han nodded.

“So how do we get it into the grounds?” Kell asked.

“Already done,” Bink said calmly. “I planted it two days ago, on our first trip in.”

“You could have told us,” Dozer growled.

Bink shrugged. “I assumed it would be obvious.”

“Let’s get back to the Zeds,” Zerba said. “Do we have any idea whether those were droids or humans outside the vault? More important, do we have any idea what kind of entry code they were running? There wasn’t anything obvious I could see.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t obvious,” Rachele agreed. “Turns out there was a scent on Villachor’s fingers that the Zed was sniffing.”

“A scent?” Lando echoed, feeling his mouth drop open. “You mean like perfume?”

“Cologne, actually,” Rachele said. “Either Rezi Eight or Rezi Ten—the two formulas are very similar.”

Kell looked at Tavia. “You’ve got to be kidding. You put in a scent sniffer?”

Tavia shrugged. “Han said full-spectrum,” she reminded him. “We gave him full-spectrum.”

“Though we were mostly looking for airborne material cues,” Winter added. “We didn’t expect to pick up Villachor’s preferences in vanity adornments.”

“Just as well you did,” Rachele said. “Unfortunately, I’m guessing the scent cue changes every day, and unless we can get into his private ’fresher cabinet I don’t know how we’re going to figure out which one we need.”

Kell shook his head. “This just gets better and better.”

“We haven’t even started,” Rachele warned. She keyed her datapad, and a large sphere connected by a short pillar to a wide, flat platform appeared in the center of the room. “Here’s the safe itself,” she said. “It’s a six-meter-diameter sphere, the outer part made of duracrete poured over a hullmetal mesh.”

“A sphere?” Winter asked. “Sounds a little crazy.”

“Crazy like a Twi’lek,” Zerba said sourly. “A square or rectangle has corners you can cut off for quick entry. A sphere doesn’t. Even with a full-length lightsaber it’d take you forever to whittle off enough to get inside.”

“And you’d probably run into honey traps along the way,” Tavia added. “Poured duracrete is perfect for tucking in hidden gas pockets and shaped detonite charges.”

“You said the outer part was duracrete,” Han said. “What about the inner part?”

“That’s even worse,” Rachele said. “At the center of the sphere is the actual safe: a rectangular, closet-sized cabinet made entirely of Hijarna stone.”

Lando looked around. From the puzzled looks on the rest of the faces, the others weren’t any more familiar with the term than he was. “Which is?” Dozer prompted.

“A hard, black stone that’s exceptionally hard to cut and absorbs blasterfire without even noticing it,” Rachele said. “The most prominent example is a partially ruined fortress on the planet Hijarna. The point is that even Zerba’s lightsaber isn’t going to get through that. Not in the amount of time we’ll have.”

“Well, Villachor doesn’t cut his way in each time,” Bink pointed out. “Why should we?”

“Exactly,” Tavia agreed. Her face held her usual quiet disapproval for these things, Lando noted. But at the same time, he could see some professional interest starting to peek through. This was a tactical challenge, and if there was one thing Tavia liked, it was a challenge. “Can you run us through his routine?”

“Sure,” Rachele said. “He comes into the vault after being vetted by the Zeds outside—”

“Or by the human guards,” Lando murmured.

“By whoever or whatever’s inside the armor,” Rachele agreed. “The vault’s magnetic seal goes off when he opens the door, of course. He crosses the floor to the hover platform, and—”

Chewbacca gave a sharp rumble.

“Oh—right,” Rachele said. “Sorry, I forgot to mention that part. The safe is set onto this ten-meter-diameter platform that hovers about a meter and a half off the floor on repulsorlifts and slowly moves around the room. I don’t know whether it follows a constant circuit or runs a random path.”

“Okay, now it’s just getting ridiculous,” Dozer said.

“Not really,” Tavia said. “Back when we first started this thing someone mentioned the possibility of tunneling in from underneath. The other obvious approach is to cut through the ceiling and try to drop onto the safe from above without the guards spotting you. With the safe constantly moving around the room, both of those tactics are now useless.”

“Those must be really impressive repulsorlifts,” Bink commented. “A sphere of duracrete that size probably weighs upward of a hundred fifty tonnes.”

“Easily,” Rachele said. “And yes, the repulsorlifts are extremely powerful, so much so that they have their own fusion generator built in, probably in and below that thirty-centimeter pillar attaching the sphere to the plate.”

“The guy’s smart, all right,” Bink agreed. “So he walks to the hover platform?”

“As he approaches the platform, the nearest set of stairs unfolds from beneath it,” Rachele said. “By my count, there are fifty of those. Because while the platform is moving around the room it’s also slowly rotating.”

“Randomly, I assume?” Winter asked.

Rachele nodded. “I caught two small shifts in rotational speed while he was moving across the room. It’s a slow rotation, but the speed isn’t really important. The bottom line is that because of the rotation, the average intruder won’t have any way of knowing where the safe’s actual entrance is.”

“But we do, right?” Bink asked.

“I think so,” Rachele said. “There are multiple sets of paired finger-sized holes, spaced about four centimeters apart, all the way around the sphere at about chest height. Villachor goes to the proper set and inserts the first two fingers of his right hand, and the lower part of one of the sphere segments unfolds down onto the platform, leaving a gap about a meter and a half wide and two meters high through the duracrete that extends all the way in to the Hijarna stone center.”

“Is the cabinet exactly in the middle of the sphere?” Zerba asked.

“No, it’s about half a meter farther back,” Rachele said, looking puzzled. “Why do you ask?”

Zerba shrugged. “Just curious.”

“Do we know if the holes are fingerprint keyed?” Tavia asked.

“I don’t think so,” Rachele said. “The finger positioning seemed casual, and he never held them steady enough for a good print reading. Best guess is that it’s a body-heat trigger, and you just have to know which ones to use.”

“Or you do all of them,” Zerba said.

“No need,” Winter said, pointing. “There are two small scuff marks over the pair just to the left of the ones he’s using.”

“I see them,” Bink said. “What’s next?”

Rachele again keyed her datapad, and the holoprojector image zoomed in on the sphere, where a segment unfolded the way she’d just described. “We now have a short tunnel,” she continued, “at the end of which is the door to the inner closet, another slab of Hijarna stone with a standard alphanumeric keypad set into it.” The image zoomed in yet again, giving a close-up of the keypad.

“Done up in High Galactic letters, I see,” Zerba commented.

“Aurebesh is for the common folk,” Lando said dryly. “Snobs like Villachor are way too upper-level for that.”

“We did get the code, right?” Tavia said.

“We’ve got this afternoon’s code, anyway,” Rachele said. “But given the rest of his security, I imagine the code changes regularly.”

“Probably twice a day,” Bink said, standing up and moving forward for a closer look at the image. “That particular model allows for a preset pattern with twice-daily changes.”

“What do you mean by preset?” Kell asked.

“I mean that instead of some computer elsewhere in the house spitting out a random set of numbers every day that has to be transmitted to the safe—”

“And memorized by Villachor,” Tavia added.

“And memorized by Villachor,” Bink agreed, “he can precode the safe for weeks’ or even months’ worth of changes.”

“How does he keep track of all of them?” Dozer asked.

“Two likely possibilities,” Rachele said. “First, one of the Zeds inside could also have the sequence, and it feeds him the code on his way in. I didn’t see that happen, but my angle might not have been right.”

“Sounds risky,” Kell said. “Especially since the droids probably get swapped out regularly for recharging and repair.”

“And transmitting the sequence to a droid is no better than transmitting it directly to the keypad,” Tavia added.

“Agreed,” Rachele said. “The more likely possibility is that the sequence relates to some pattern Villachor already knows. Dates from family history, names of old girlfriends, vintage years of the wine in his cellar. Something like that.”

“So now we have to read his mind, too,” Dozer said heavily. “Great.”

“Not his mind,” Winter corrected calmly. “Just his history. And we have a known code to start from.”

Dozer shook his head. “Still sounds like a candle in a canyon to me.”

“True, but it’s only one canyon,” Winter said.

“And once we get through that,” Rachele continued, “it looks like everything in the safe is exit-tagged.”

“What does that mean?” Eanjer asked.

“It means that taking anything past the mansion’s walls will trigger alarms all across Marblewood,” Zerba explained.

“More than just alarms,” Rachele said. “From the old purchase records, it looks like Villachor has also installed a spike-ring fence around the mansion. It’s like a forest of close-spaced vertical poles a few centimeters apart that pop straight out of the ground when triggered,” she added, looking at Eanjer. “The posts usually carry enough current to stun or kill.”

“High-security places sometimes use them as a last-ditch defense against theft,” Bink said. “You need an airspeeder to get over one, and even then you can’t get too close or the current will arc up to you and fry your repulsorlifts.”

“Depending on how high this one is, it may squeeze you close enough against the umbrella shield that you’d be effectively trapped inside,” Tavia said.

“So we’ll definitely want to shut the system down before we make our move,” Eanjer concluded, nodding.

“Which we probably can’t,” Rachele said. “This kind of system usually includes a fine mesh throughout all the walls, which runs a low-level electrostatic field through all the doors and windows. It’s self-contained and decentralized, and the only way to knock it out is to basically cut back the wall for about two meters around whatever door you plan to use.” She considered. “Of course, once you do that, I suppose you really don’t need the door anymore.”

“So what we need to do is make sure that when the alarm goes off no one’s in any shape to respond,” Zerba said. “Maybe we could gas the place.”

Bink shook her head. “You’ll never get that much gas in without getting caught.”

“And it wouldn’t work on the droids, anyway,” Kell added. “We’ll also need enough detonite to blow up a section of the fence, and enough time to plant it.”

“So we just make sure they’re all too busy to respond?” Lando asked, looking at Han. “Is that the plan?”

“Mostly,” Han said. “Is that everything, Rachele?”

“Yes,” Rachele said. “Oh, except that the room directly above the vault is the guard ready room, where Villachor’s security people hang out when they’re not on duty.”

“Luckily, most of them will be on duty during the Honorings,” Han pointed out. “Thanks, Rachele. At least now we know what we’re up against.”

“Yeah, I’m sure going to sleep better tonight,” Dozer growled.

“Glad to hear it,” Han said in that innocent, not-quite-sarcastic tone he did so well. “That’s it for tonight. Better get some sleep—tomorrow’s going to be busy.”

Standing up, he walked over and sat down beside Rachele, murmuring to her and gesturing at the holo. The others, taking the cue, got up and filed out.

Lando waited until everyone else was gone. “A word?” he asked.

“Sure,” Han said, turning away from his quiet conversation.

“You want me to leave?” Rachele asked.

“No, I’d appreciate your input,” Lando said. “Bink said earlier that you or Dozer was going to have to take my place.”

“Yeah, she did,” Han agreed. “You want to put in your vote?”

Lando nodded. “I vote for me.”

Rachele blinked. Han’s face went into unreadable sabacc mode. “You just got grabbed,” he reminded Lando.

“And got sprung,” Lando countered. “I’m with an organization who doesn’t think twice about luring senior Black Sun officials away, remember? A failed kidnapping shouldn’t even throw me off my stride.”

Han turned to Rachele. “What do you think?”

“He has a point,” she said reluctantly. “Especially if Bink’s right about Villachor himself not being involved. Whoever was behind the grab will still have to work around Marblewood security, and they’ll now have to work around Lando’s group as well. And since they don’t know the size or extent of his team, they’ll need to tread carefully.”

“But you’ll certainly need more security.” Eanjer’s voice came from the hall.

Lando turned, feeling a flicker of annoyance. Hadn’t it been clear that he’d stayed behind because he wanted to talk to Han alone?

Apparently it hadn’t. At least not to Eanjer.

“Something we can do for you?” Han asked, way more politely than Lando would have.

“I was thinking about security for whoever goes back into Marblewood,” Eanjer said, coming the rest of the way into the room. He looked like he was planning to sit down, but he glanced at Lando’s expression and apparently thought better of it. “It occurred to me that the weapons cache Winter found for you might also have some smaller blasters we could borrow.”

“We don’t need any more blasters,” Han assured him. “Whoever goes in will just take Chewie with him.”

Eanjer’s single eye widened. “Chewie?”

“Sure, why not?” Han said. “There were plenty of Wookiees there the other two days.”

“Wookiees are in high demand as bodyguards for the Iltarr City elite,” Rachele confirmed.

“Yes, but—” Eanjer clamped his lips tightly shut. “Look. I know you have to play confident in front of”—his eye flicked to Lando—“everyone else. But this is insane. You can’t possibly believe that we can quietly break into something like that.” He nodded at the holo floating overhead.

“You got a better idea?” Han asked.

“A direct, frontal assault,” Eanjer said bluntly. “We bring in more of your friends, hit the place while security’s busy with the Honorings—”

“Whoa, whoa,” Lando interrupted. He’d never really liked Eanjer, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on exactly why. Now he knew. The man was an idiot. “Who do you think we are, the Five-oh-first? An attack on Marblewood would be instant suicide.”

“Of course it would be risky,” Eanjer countered. “But remember the payoff at the end. You can hire a lot of mercenaries for a hundred sixty-three million credits.”

“Credits on hand, yes,” Lando countered. “Credits promised isn’t so good a draw.”

“I know,” Eanjer said. He huffed out his breath. “But I don’t see any other way to get in.”

“Me neither,” Han said. “Lucky for us, we don’t have to.”

“What do you mean?” Rachele asked.

“I mean we don’t have to get in,” Han repeated patiently. “All we need is for Villachor to bring everything out.”

“What?” Eanjer demanded, his eye narrowing. “Oh, come on. Villachor’s not going to just bring the credits and files out and hand them to you.”

“I didn’t say he was,” Han said. “But if he thinks the vault’s under threat, he’d have a good reason to move everything to a safer location. That’s when we take it away from him.”

“No,” Eanjer insisted. “We can’t do it that way.”

“Why not?”

Eanjer’s eye flicked to Lando. “Because it won’t work,” he said, speaking as if trying to explain something to a five-year-old. “He might—might—move the blackmail files if you worry him enough. But he’s not likely to bother moving the credits.”

“Well, then we just get the files,” Han said. “I thought we decided they’re more valuable on the open market than a few credit tabs anyway.”

“Not without a cryodex they aren’t,” Eanjer insisted. “No, if we’re going to pull this off, we have to actually get in there. We have to.”

“Fine. Opinion noted.” Han looked at Rachele and Lando. “Anyone else have thoughts they want to add to the pot?”

Something in his tone warned Lando that the proper answer was no. “Maybe later,” he said. “I’m thinking I’ll grab a quick snack—assuming Dozer’s left anything for the rest of us—and get to bed.”

“Me too,” Rachele said, tapping her datapad and shutting off the holoprojector. “Except for the snack part. Good night, all.”

Lando half expected Eanjer to follow him into the kitchen and try to argue some more against Han’s new plan. Luckily for Eanjer, he didn’t.

Lando and Eanjer disappeared down the hallway. Han waited a couple more seconds, just to be sure, then turned back to Rachele. “Can we be ready in two days?”

“Not a chance,” she said. “Zerba’s still working on the silk tear-away outfits, and Tavia and the others only have about half the scramblers they’ll need.”

“And there’s still no way to test them?”

“Not unless you want to try one out during the Honoring of Moving Water the day after tomorrow.”

Han shook his head. “Too risky. What we get to see, they get to see.”

“Yes.” Rachele studied his face. “It’s starting to come apart, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Han admitted. “Maybe a little. I never bought into this whole Qazadi story that Eanjer’s buddy pitched, at least not the part about him being one of Xizor’s top people. But if he’s really the guy in charge now, he might bring down the hammer faster than we thought.”

“But it might also force Villachor’s hand,” Rachele pointed out. “I realize that this whole side-switching offer was just so we could get Tavia’s data card into the vault, but if we can genuinely talk him into defecting, we might get the credits and files with a whole lot less work.”

“Not a chance,” Han said firmly. “Not now that one of the Falleen has stepped in. Whoever it is, he’s pretty well showed that he can commandeer Black Sun’s assets on Wukkar. If he even suspects that Villachor’s thinking about jumping ship, that’s it for Villachor. He has to know that.”

“I suppose,” Rachele said, still eyeing him closely. “Which also means there’s no way you can talk him into transferring the files elsewhere, because that move would look exactly the same as him absconding with them.”

“Nope, no chance of that, either,” Han agreed.

“So why did you tell Eanjer that was the new plan?”

“Mostly to see his reaction,” Han said, standing up. “I’m heading to bed. Don’t let Tavia sleep in—we’ve only got four days until the fire honoring, and we’re going to need all the scramblers we can get.”

“I’ll make sure she and the others are up with the sun,” Rachele promised. “What are you going to do about Villachor? He’s expecting to meet Lando’s boss at the Honoring of Moving Water the day after tomorrow.”

“I guess I’ll have to stall him,” Han said. “We can work that out tomorrow.” He headed toward the hallway and his room.

“So did you?” Rachele asked.

“Did I what?”

“Did you find out whatever it is you were looking for with Eanjer?”

Han grimaced. “Yeah, I think so,” he said. “Turn out the lights on your way to bed, okay?”

The work of gearing up for the Honoring of Moving Water had been going on all day, and from the occasional glimpses Dozer had caught through the suite windows it looked like it was going to be as spectacular as the previous two Honorings had been.

But that was for tomorrow. Right now, for the next few minutes, the only thing on Dozer’s mind was the Marblewood security guard getting tiredly out of his landspeeder in front of his home in a middle-class part of the city.

Han had assured him the man wouldn’t simply shoot him down on the spot. That wasn’t the way even Black Sun dealt with people doing odd but nonthreatening things. Han had promised that the man would simply listen, take the package, and let Dozer walk away.

Han was always persuasive. But he wasn’t always right.

Especially given that they knew nothing about the guard except that he worked the early morning shift at Marblewood. They didn’t know his name, his history, or anything else. They hadn’t even known his address until Dozer followed him home.

Fortunately, with Rachele and her computer available to backtrack the address, they now also knew his name was Frewin Bromly.

He was working on getting a satchel out of the backseat, his bright blond hair shaded by the airspeeder’s roof. Dozer walked up behind him and cleared his throat. “Excuse me?”

Bromly was every bit as good as one would expect from a man who worked for Villachor. He dropped the satchel back onto the seat and spun around in a smooth, fluid turn that left him facing Dozer with his hand in easy grabbing distance of his holstered blaster. A single, equally fluid glance took in Dozer and the entire area around him. “Yes?” he asked, his tone perfectly neutral.

“Quickline Courier Service,” Dozer said, tapping his nameplate. “Got a package for Frewin Bromly. That you?”

“Yes,” Bromly said, his eyes narrowing. “I haven’t ordered anything.”

“All I know is that I was hired to bring this to you,” Dozer said, lifting his security case and popping the lid. “Here we go.” He pulled out a small wrapped package and held it out.

Bromly made no move to take it. “What is it?”

“How should I know?” Dozer countered. He held out the package another second, then squatted down and set it on the driveway. “Fine. You don’t want it, just leave it there. I’ve got a schedule to keep. Have a peaceful evening.”

He straightened up, gave Bromly a polite nod, then turned and started back down the driveway toward his landspeeder.

“Hey!”

Dozer stopped, his throat tight. “Yes?”

“I don’t want it,” Bromly called. “Come back and get it.”

“Can’t do that,” Dozer said. “You don’t want it, give it away or feed it to the fish. Whatever you want.”

He started walking again, his entire back a mass of tense muscles. Sooner or later, probably before Dozer was out of sight, Bromly’s curiosity would get the better of him and he would open the package.

And while five hundred credits didn’t qualify as a windfall, it should be more than enough to grab some serious attention. Both from Bromly and, eventually, from Sheqoa and Villachor.

He half expected Bromly to chase him back to his landspeeder. But again, the man had been well trained. Either Dozer was an innocent courier, in which case confronting him wouldn’t gain him anything, or else he was part of a serious bribery team, and anyone who so blatantly tried such a thing on a Black Sun guard surely would be smart enough to have arrived with backup.

No, Bromly’s best move right now would be to take the package inside and immediately call in the incident to his superiors at Marblewood.

Or he could just pocket the credits. But that really would be too much to hope for.

Still, Dozer had two other guards on his list to follow home as their shifts ended. Maybe one of them would be gracious enough to accept the bribe.

Hopefully, none of them would be discourteous enough to shoot him in the back.

Sheqoa had never liked the Festival of Four Honorings. Even as a kid he’d found the spectacle too long, the venues too crowded, the food too weird, and the shows alternating between bombastic and boring. As an adult, he’d learned to enjoy some of the food and, even more, some of the drinks. Still, he’d continued to find the shows long and predictable.

As head of Marblewood security, he’d learned to utterly hate the event.

He understood why Villachor liked to host one of the celebrations. It raised his status among Wukkar’s upper echelons, which in turn brought more unsuspecting flies within range of Black Sun’s webs. The Festival also provided perfect cover for clandestine meetings with those flies who were already trapped, as well as giving anonymity to potential new contacts with arms dealers, smugglers, and spice merchants. If the price for all those meetings had been merely the cost to feed and entertain a sizeable fraction of Iltarr City’s population, he would have considered it credits well spent.

But the food and fireworks were only the snowy crest of the mountain. Having crowds of unwashed citizens wandering around the grounds strained Sheqoa’s security forces to the limit. The oblivious or drunk pounded on locked doors, tripped over furniture, damaged serving droids, and sometimes started fights. At least once per festival his men had to roust a pickpocket or two and relieve various thieves of items both valuable and petty.

It was an extra strain and cost that Villachor never considered. And it was a cost that, if Sheqoa did his job properly, Villachor shouldn’t even notice.

Except this year. This year was grimly, darkly different.

The mysterious glitterstim merchant. The cryodex man. The flash bomb incident outside Aziel’s suite at the Lulina Crown Hotel. The still-unexplained firefight at the half-abandoned Golavere Industrial Complex, which might or might not have had something to do with one of the other three.

And now, just earlier this afternoon, the bizarre attempts to bribe three of his men.

It was Qazadi’s fault, of course. Sheqoa had no doubts on that score. Whether the Falleen and his entourage had done something directly to cause all this chaos or whether their mere presence had sparked it was largely irrelevant. Either way, Qazadi was still the focal point.

And so, as he had most of the previous nights, Sheqoa had drifted off to sleep with unfriendly thoughts of Qazadi and his people floating through his mind.

Which, he dimly supposed, made it only fitting and proper that Qazadi’s face was the first thing he saw when he was jolted violently out of that same deep sleep.

“You will be silent,” Qazadi said, his voice soft and yet utterly vicious as Sheqoa’s hand reflexively tried for the blaster under his pillow. A wasted effort; his arms were already pinned solidly to the bed. “I will ask questions. You will answer them. Or you will die. Do you understand?”

Sheqoa nodded, a barely perceptible movement of his head that was all he could accomplish with yet another hand entwined in his hair and a blade resting against his throat.

“Good,” Qazadi said. “Tell me about the two men who came to see Master Villachor yesterday in his vault.”

“He didn’t—” Sheqoa broke off, fighting to work moisture into his mouth and fighting even harder to keep his voice from shaking with fear. A small part of him recognized that his terror wasn’t real but was being driven by Falleen pheromones. But that knowledge did him little good. “He didn’t take them into the vault,” he managed. “Just to the anteroom.”

“What did they do there?”

Sheqoa swallowed, his throat brushing unpleasantly against the knife blade, wondering fleetingly what he could say. Villachor was his superior, and Villachor had ordered him and the others not to say anything about that visit.

But he had no choice. A lie, or even a half-truth, and his own gushing blood would be the last thing he ever saw. “The visitors claimed they had a cryodex,” he gasped.

Something in Qazadi’s expression changed. “And did they?”

“Yes,” Sheqoa said. “Master Villachor had them bring it to him so he could test it and see if it actually worked.”

“Test it how?”

Again Sheqoa struggled with his conscience and his orders. But orders were one thing. Death was something else. “He brought a data card from the vault,” he admitted reluctantly. “He wanted to see if their cryodex could decrypt it.”

Qazadi’s eyes flashed with anger, and Sheqoa braced himself for death. But the blade against his throat didn’t move. “And could it?”

“Yes,” Sheqoa said. “They decrypted the file of a Houk named Morg Nar on Bespin. He’s supposedly trying to drive out Jabba’s people but is secretly working with him.”

“I presume you checked this out?”

Sheqoa started to nod, remembered the knife. “Yes.”

Qazadi looked briefly at someone outside Sheqoa’s field of view, then turned back. “Tell me about Dorston, Bromly, Uzior, and Tallboy.”

Sheqoa frowned, trying frantically to figure out what those four particular guards had in common. But he couldn’t think of anything. “Well, the first three had bribes delivered to them this afternoon,” he said, stalling for time. “But Tallboy didn’t—” He broke off as it suddenly hit him. “He was bribed, too?”

“Possibly,” Qazadi said. “All I know is that the first bribe was sent to him.”

“I don’t understand,” Sheqoa said. “He never reported it.”

“Because he never knew about it,” Qazadi said. “At least, not about this particular bribe. Unbeknownst to him, Lord Aziel had appropriated his name for use in various transactions at the Lulina Crown Hotel. The incident six days ago, when the small bomb was thrown at his suite, also involved a messenger delivering what appeared be a bribe to that name.”

Sheqoa felt his eyes narrow as some of the stranger aspects of that event suddenly became clear. “That’s why you had the investigation halted,” he said. “You didn’t want the bribe part to come out in case Tallboy was actually involved in something.”

“Correct,” Qazadi said, an edge of unspoken threat in his voice. “And I still don’t want it coming out.”

“I understand,” Sheqoa said.

Qazadi’s eyes narrowed as he again glanced briefly away. “But Tallboy himself is of no especial importance,” he said. “The larger question is not which of your guards received bribes and reported them, but which ones received bribes and didn’t report them.”

“My men are loyal, Your Excellency,” Sheqoa said, again fighting the quaver in his voice. He already knew what happened to people in Black Sun who betrayed their loyalty.

“I’m certain they are,” Qazadi agreed. “But are they loyal to Master Villachor, or are they loyal to Black Sun?”

Sheqoa swallowed again. “Surely those loyalties are the same,” he said as firmly as he could.

“Perhaps,” Qazadi said. “Perhaps not. Now that Master Villachor has confirmed that the strangers’ cryodex is indeed genuine, what are his plans for it and for them?”

Finally, some relatively safe ground. “He’s leading them on, hoping to learn who they work for,” Sheqoa said. “If he can’t draw them out for destruction, he should at least be able to obtain a spare cryodex for Prince Xizor.”

“A noble goal,” Qazadi said. “Yet yesterday he had the cryodex in a mansion full of armed men. Why didn’t he take it then?”

Sheqoa swallowed again before he remembered not to do that. “The cryodex and case were booby-trapped,” he said. “Detonite.” He felt his eyes widen as another piece fell into the puzzle. “That firefight at the Golavere Complex. You were able to get the case open?”

“No,” Qazadi said, and Sheqoa’s already pounding heart picked up its pace a little as the other glared off into space. “I had ordered the services of two of the local police to take Master Villachor’s visitors for questioning. When I learned of the detonite I also brought in Master Dempsey.”

So that was where Villachor’s explosives expert had disappeared to, and why he’d been so nervous and shaken when he returned to his lab in the north wing a few hours later. “Only their friends intervened?”

“For the first and last time,” Qazadi said, his voice heavy with menace. “The only question remaining is whether they will die quickly or slowly.” He cocked his head to the side. “Is there anything more you wish to tell me? Others, perhaps, who might be involved in this conspiracy against Black Sun?”

“There’s a girl,” Sheqoa said. “A human woman. Young, black hair, very—well, attractive to human eyes.”

“And you think she wouldn’t be attractive to my nonhuman ones?”

“I’m—I don’t know,” Sheqoa said, hurrying to get off the subject. “She’s attached herself to me, probably hoping I can get her inside the mansion. She says her name’s Katrin, but it’s undoubtedly an alias.”

“And you believe her to be with the cryodex merchant?”

“I don’t know,” Sheqoa said. “She might just be a regular thief hoping to rob the mansion. We get some of those at every Festival.”

“You’ll keep close watch on her.” A faint smile briefly creased Qazadi’s lips. “You’ll see to that personally.”

“Of course,” Sheqoa confirmed. “Perhaps we should—”

He broke off as the knife suddenly pressed harder against his throat. “Silent unless asked a question,” Qazadi reminded him coldly. He looked past Sheqoa again and twitched his head in an unspoken order. There was the sound of movement from that direction, a shuffling of multiple feet.

And out of the corner of his eye Sheqoa saw Villachor step into view, an armed Falleen on either side of him.

“Congratulations, Master Villachor,” Qazadi said with ironic courtesy. “As you said, your people are indeed loyal.”

“As am I,” Villachor countered with the same hard-edged courtesy. He was standing stiff and defiant, but Sheqoa could see a sheen of sweat on his face. “And as you heard—again—my goal is and always has been to find out who this Kwerve and Bib are and whom they’re working for. Nothing more.”

“Perhaps,” Qazadi said, his tone still courteous. “Still, the temptation to take the blackmail files for yourself must be nearly overwhelming. Especially with those files currently accessible only to you.”

Sheqoa cleared his throat quietly.

“I believe Master Sheqoa was about to make a suggestion,” Villachor said. “I’d like to hear it.”

Qazadi considered, then looked down at Sheqoa. “Speak,” he invited.

The knife eased back a fraction. “I was going to suggest that if Kwerve and Bib are trying to steal the files, perhaps we should simply move them,” he said. “So far, all their activities have been under cover of the crowds at the Honorings. If we move the files tonight, when no one’s watching, any future efforts they might make will be against an empty vault.”

“Have you a suggestion as to where they should go?” Qazadi asked.

“Your ship was secure enough to protect them for the journey here,” Sheqoa pointed out. “There’s also Master Villachor’s country estate in Baccha province. The safe there isn’t as secure as the Marblewood vault, but the thieves would never think to look for the files there.”

“How do you know?” Qazadi countered. “How do you know such a transfer isn’t exactly what they’re hoping for? How do you know they don’t have people already in place at Baccha and Iltarr City Spaceport, waiting for us to deliver the files straight into their hands? How do you know they don’t have people lying in wait outside the Marblewood wall even now for the airspeeders or landspeeders that would take the files away?”

“I …” Sheqoa looked helplessly at Villachor.

But Villachor wasn’t looking at him. Villachor was looking at Qazadi. Thinking, measuring, perhaps scheming. Looking for a way to reinstate himself in the Falleen’s good graces.

Trying to save himself.

“You make a good and valid point, Your Excellency,” Villachor said. “Until we know the full extent of our enemies’ reach, we can’t afford to make any assumptions.”

“On the contrary,” Qazadi said. “There are two assumptions we can certainly make. First, they’ve offered you a functional cryodex. Therefore, they hope to lure you into treason against Black Sun.”

“Which won’t happen,” Villachor said firmly.

“We shall hope not,” Qazadi said darkly, and again Sheqoa felt his heart rate briefly increase. “Second, we know they’re trying to subvert your security force.” He looked down at Sheqoa. “And that they may have succeeded.”

Never, Sheqoa wanted to say. But he remained silent. One warning about unsolicited comments was all he was likely to get.

“Since we can no longer trust your men,” Qazadi continued, “you will immediately withdraw all human guards from the vault. From this point on, only the 501-Z droids will be stationed in that area.”

Sheqoa felt his breath catch in his throat. That was a terrible idea. The whole point of mixing droids and humans was that potential intruders wouldn’t know which they were facing at any given time.

SoroSuub claimed their Zeds were impossible to break or deprogram. But nothing in the universe was truly impossible. If Kwerve’s people found out that the vault was guarded solely by droids, they might find a fatal weakness in their mechanism or programming and exploit it.

From the expression on Villachor’s face, it was clear he was thinking the same thing. But it was also clear that he had no intention of arguing the point. “As you wish,” he said. “I’ll give the order immediately.”

“Good,” Qazadi said. “The guards can be reassigned to Festival duty. Perhaps a few extra eyes will provide a better view of those who seek to rob us. You did say immediately, did you not, Master Villachor?”

Villachor’s lip twitched as he pulled out his comlink and gave the night duty officer the order for the guard change. “Will there be anything else, Your Excellency?” he asked as he returned the comlink to its holder.

“Not for now,” Qazadi said. His eyes flicked down to Sheqoa, back to Villachor. “The Honoring of Moving Water begins in eight hours. You should both get some rest.”

He turned and strode out of Sheqoa’s view, followed by the Falleen flanking Villachor. A few seconds later, the knife at Sheqoa’s throat and the hands gripping his arms and hair also disappeared. There was the sound of a door opening and then closing.

And Sheqoa and Villachor were alone.

Sheqoa looked up at his boss, trying to come up with something to say. If Villachor took Sheqoa’s admissions to Qazadi as a betrayal, he was dead.

But the words wouldn’t come. And even with Qazadi and the Falleen’s pheromone tricks gone, his pulse continued to pound in his neck.

Because, down deep, Sheqoa knew his statements to Qazadi were a betrayal.

Finally Villachor stirred. Sheqoa braced himself.

“He’s right about the Honoring,” Villachor said calmly. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Without another word, he left.

Sheqoa took a deep breath, staring at the closed door. Something critical had just happened, he knew. Villachor had come to a decision.

Only Sheqoa had no idea what that decision was.

Slowly he rolled over onto his side. Like he was really going to get any sleep now.

It had been said that there were only three absolutes in life: death, taxes, and bad liquor. But as Lando strolled across the Marblewood grounds, he decided he could add a fourth to the list. When you traveled with a Wookiee, people would move out of your way.

Of course, Chewbacca’s two-meter-plus height also made the two of them easier for Villachor’s security men to spot as they moved through the crowds. But then, that was the whole idea.

Chewie rumbled.

“Yeah, I see them,” Lando said, making a face. He’d expected the entire Marblewood security force to be on their tail today. He hadn’t expected to find himself also being watched by a pair of Falleen.

He especially hadn’t expected one of those Falleen to be the would-be interrogator from the factory incident two nights earlier.

Chewie rumbled again.

“Don’t worry, they aren’t going to try anything,” Lando assured him. “Not here.”

Chewie warbled a not entirely confident comment.

“Sure they’re probably mad,” Lando agreed. “But they want to question us, not kill us. At least not right away.”

Or so he hoped. The logic certainly tracked, and most of the people Lando had faced across sabacc tables over the years would follow that same line of reasoning.

But there were species out there who would unhesitatingly pass up profit and vested self-interest in favor of immediate revenge. The Hutts tended that way. Maybe the Falleen did, too.

Still, they were on Villachor’s grounds, and in the middle of one of his favorite bits of self-promotion. Surely he would keep them in line.

Which wasn’t to say he and Chewie should press their luck. “Over there,” he said, pointing away from the loitering Falleen. “That hanging waterfall looks interesting. Let’s wander over and take a closer look.”

Chewie growled.

“Right,” Lando confirmed with a tight smile. “Looks like there’s a spot right beside those other two Wookiees.”

“I have to say,” Bink commented as she peered up into Sheqoa’s face, “that you really look tired.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “You look lovely, too.”

“You’re too kind,” Bink said, smiling cheerfully. She let the smile fade into concern. “But I was being serious,” she continued. “I guess people don’t realize how hard something like this is on the folks who run the show. How long since you’ve had a real night’s sleep?”

“It’s been a while,” he conceded. “Like you said, things get pretty busy during the Festival.”

“Well, you need to make that time,” she said firmly, reaching over and taking hold of his right upper arm. “If you don’t get your rest—”

She broke off as he twisted his arm back out of her grip, simultaneously pushing her hand away with his left hand. “Gun hand,” he said shortly. “Never do that.”

“I’m so sorry,” Bink apologized, screwing up her face into her best embarrassed wince. “Look, I can see you’re not in the mood to just relax and have fun. Maybe I’d better go and let you concentrate on your work.”

“No, that’s all right,” he said hastily as she started to back away. “I’m just a little twitchy this morning, that’s all.” He took her hand and gently pulled her around to his left side. “Come on, let’s go see if they’ve got the ambrosia steamer up and running.”

“All right,” Bink said, wrapping her hand possessively around his left arm. This time, he didn’t push her away. “But only if you promise to relax and have one of them with me.”

“A small one only,” he said.

They got two steps before he suddenly changed direction. “On second thought, let me show you something else first,” he said, angling off through the crowd. “The hanging waterfall is one of the Honoring’s highlights, and it’s about to go into its quarter-hour show. We’ll watch it and then go get the ambrosia.”

“Sounds interesting,” Bink said, a small red flag waving in the back of her brain. He was up to something.

New orders via his collar-clip comlink? Probably. Shifting her grip on his arm, Bink snuggled in a little closer. If the comlink’s speaker hadn’t been focused correctly, she might be able to get in close enough to hear what was going on.

Unfortunately, Villachor’s tech people hadn’t been that careless. But even as she eased casually away again, a hint of an odd scent touched her nostrils. Not enough for her to identify, but enough to tell her that she’d smelled it before. And that it was something significant.

It would be risky to move that close again so soon. But she had time. The scent was on Sheqoa, and Sheqoa had clearly been ordered to keep her close. There would be opportunities later to chase it down. More important right now was figuring out this sudden change in his schedule.

And then, just ahead, a pair of Kubaz moved aside, giving her a momentarily clear view of the hanging waterfall Sheqoa had mentioned.

The waterfall, and the big furry shape of Chewbacca towering over the crowd.

Apparently whoever had been watching Lando had decided it might be fun to throw Bink at him and see if the two of them knew each other.

Mentally, she shook her head. Of all of Han’s group, she and Lando were probably the two least likely to show any of the reaction Sheqoa was hoping for.

Still, points for effort. Patting Sheqoa’s arm, prattling on in the breezy, carefree way she knew he’d come to expect from her, she settled her mind for the immediate task ahead.

“—over by the hanging waterfall,” Villachor was saying into his comlink as Han sauntered into eavesdropping range. “Take the girl over, spring her on him, and see if they recognize each other.”

Han felt his throat tighten. He’d known ahead of time that Villachor would be taking it up a notch today. And if Villachor didn’t, then Qazadi or Aziel certainly would. Trying to figure out how the various newcomers into their lives were connected was the obvious first step.

Still, throwing a ghost thief at a professional gambler would probably be a complete waste of time. Both Bink and Lando were more than capable of controlling their expressions and behavior.

Now it was Han’s turn.

He squared his shoulders. He could do this. He’d faced down Jabba the Hutt, Imperial Commander Nyklas the sadist, and any number of other thugs and bandits. Villachor was just the latest in a long line. A couple more greeters and well-wishers wandered up to Villachor, babbling their thanks for the show under the watchful gaze of his two bodyguards. Han waited until they moved on, then walked over. “Nice show, Master Villachor,” he said.

“Thank you,” Villachor said, giving him a quick up-and-down look. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“I hear you have a really nice collection of airspeeders and landspeeders,” Han continued, gesturing toward the garage at the north end of the mansion. “Any chance you’ll be bringing them out to show us?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Villachor said with the same forced smile he was giving everyone else. “Not until an Honoring of Moving Vehicles is added to the Festival.”

“I suppose not,” Han said. He moved a step closer and lowered his voice. “What about the blackmail files? You going to bring them out?”

Villachor’s smile vanished, and both bodyguards shifted their hands to their concealed blasters. “Excuse me?” Villachor said quietly.

“Easy,” Han soothed. “I’m just here to talk.”

“Then talk fast,” Villachor snarled, hissing out the last word. “Did you bring the item?”

“No, and I’m not going to,” Han said. “Not after what happened two nights ago.”

“That wasn’t my doing,” Villachor insisted. He was starting to recover, and Han could see the little computer chips in his mind starting to spin again. “Are you the boss Kwerve promised to bring me?”

“No, and you’re not going to see him, either,” Han said. “If that wasn’t you, who was it?”

“A misguided colleague,” Villachor said. “Someone who felt we needed to know more about you before our discussions continued. If you didn’t bring the item and we’re not discussing terms, why are you here?”

“Mostly as a courtesy,” Han said. “I wanted to warn you that another player has joined the game.”

Villachor’s face changed, just enough to show that the guards had indeed reported Dozer’s off-duty visits. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” Han said. “Someone’s going around bribing your guards.”

“Trying to bribe them,” Villachor corrected. “All the men who were approached turned in the credits.”

“You sure about that?” Han countered. “Because the numbers I’m hearing say that at least five of them took the packages and kept their mouths shut.”

Abruptly a blaster muzzle jabbed into Han’s ribs. “Who?” Villachor demanded. “Give me their names.”

“I don’t have their names,” Han growled, glaring at the guard pressing the blaster into his side. “I told you, it’s someone else who’s doing that.”

“A girl, perhaps?” Villachor suggested. “Black hair, medium height?”

“I … don’t … know,” Han said, biting out each word. “We don’t know who they are.”

“Or maybe they are you?” the guard growled.

“Use your head,” Han growled back. “Our group is trying for a nice, quiet, civilized recruitment. Why would we risk that by throwing credits at employees who don’t even matter?” He raised his eyebrows. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Villachor said. “Put it away, Tawb.”

Reluctantly, the bodyguard returned the blaster to its hiding place.

“Enough small talk,” Villachor continued. “Here’s the bottom line. Before I make any decisions, I will meet with someone who has the authority to make me a deal. And I want to see the cryodex work one more time.”

“You already got one sample,” Han reminded him. “Didn’t it pan out good enough for you?”

“Oh, it panned out quite nicely,” Villachor assured him. “The inquiries I sent to Bespin have confirmed this Morg Nar person your man identified is indeed working for the Hutt.”

Han felt his stomach tighten. And if he knew anything about the way Black Sun did things, the inquiry alone was going to blow Nar’s cover straight out the airlock. Jabba was not going to be happy about that.

And when Jabba wasn’t happy, everyone connected to him paid the price. The faster they got Eanjer’s credit tabs and Han could pay off his debt, the better.

“But any one-time winner could just be luck,” Villachor continued. “A second sample will make things more definitive.”

“That’ll be up to the boss,” Han said. “And before you ask, yes, he’s already on Wukkar.”

“Then what’s the holdup?”

Han looked him straight in the eye. “He’s waiting on confirmation that whoever grabbed Kwerve and Bib is under control.”

“I can assure you there’ll be no repeat of that incident.”

“No offense, Master Villachor, but he’s not looking for confirmation from you,” Han said. “He’s looking for confirmation from us. Don’t worry, we’re working on it.”

“I see,” Villachor said, his voice subtly shifting tone. “Any idea when you and he will deem the time right for such a conference?”

“Soon,” Han promised. “I’m hoping I can bring him in two days from now during the Honoring of Moving Fire.”

“And if you can’t?”

“We will,” Han assured him. “If that doesn’t work—”

“Excuse me a moment,” Villachor murmured, his eyes flicking somewhere over Han’s shoulder as he pulled out his comlink. “Sheqoa? Anything? … Never mind. I’ve been informed that a man who may be yesterday’s mystery courier is on the grounds.… Yes, that’s the one. I think you should take your friend over there and see if they’d like to say hello to each other.” He listened another moment, then closed down the comlink and turned back to Han. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

“I was saying that if we can’t secure the area by the end of the Festival, we should be able to set up a meeting for a day or two afterward,” Han said, keeping his voice and expression calm and unconcerned. So security had spotted Dozer, or at least thought they had, and Villachor was sending Sheqoa and Bink over to confront him.

Problem was, while Han could trust Bink and Lando to handle the non-recognition game, he wasn’t nearly so sure Dozer could pull it off without dropping any of the cues that Sheqoa would be watching for.

But there was nothing he could do. Villachor was watching, and if he made the slightest move to warn Dozer or to cut short the conversation, the other would be all over it.

In fact, that was probably the reason he’d made the call in Han’s presence in the first place. Any reaction, and they would have the link between him and Dozer that Villachor obviously suspected.

Han could do nothing.

Luckily, he didn’t have to do anything.

“But if you have a moment,” he continued smoothly, “I have one other thought my boss wanted me to float past you.”

“Certainly,” Villachor said. “Come. Let’s walk.”

“Uh-oh,” Winter said under her breath.

She thought she’d said it quietly enough not to be heard, but Rachele’s ears were obviously better than average. Halfway across the room, standing on top of the low serving table, the other woman still caught the muttered word. “Trouble?” she asked.

“Nothing serious,” Winter assured her, shifting the electrobinoculars a little as she pulled out her comlink. “Looks like Sheqoa’s attempt to get Lando and Bink to react to each other has gone flat. So he’s going to try it again with Bink and Dozer.”

“With Dozer?” Rachele said, sounding worried. “That’s not exactly nothing.”

“Hold still,” Zerba said testily. “You’re going to pull out those arm seams again.”

“I was just trying—”

“It’s okay,” Winter soothed, keying the comlink for Kell. Dozer was being watched, which meant she couldn’t call and warn him without the timing looking suspicious. But Kell was under no such surveillance. “Kell, you need to get Dozer out of there,” she said when he answered. “Can you do it without alerting his security playmates?”

“Sure,” Kell said. “You want him all the way out, or just somewhere else on the grounds?”

“Better make it all the way,” Winter said. Dozer had wanted another look at the Marblewood security setup, but with Sheqoa on the prowl it would be safer to just pull the plug.

“You sure?” Kell asked. “He could play hide-and-search for a long time without Sheqoa ever catching up with him.”

“Out, and now,” Winter said tartly, her memory flashing with the faces of all the Rebel operatives she’d seen push their luck too far.

“Okay, okay,” Kell said defensively. “You don’t have to shout. You want me out, too?”

“Only if you’re spotted,” Winter said, scowling to herself. She shouldn’t have let the memories get the better of her. Especially not with Kell, who was going through the same agony of loss that she was. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll get him out.”

“Don’t be too hard on him,” Rachele said as Winter put away the comlink. “He’s young. The young always believe the dice are on their side.”

“Enough reason right there to go hard on him,” Winter countered, focusing the electrobinoculars back on Dozer. “I want him to live long enough to grow out of that phase.”

“Or long enough to learn how to make the dice work for you,” Zerba said. “How’s it look?”

Winter’s first impulse was to remind him that she had work to do, that she wasn’t exactly loafing over here by the window. But Kell had been alerted in plenty of time, Bink had Sheqoa reasonably under control, and Lando, Chewbacca, and Han all seemed to be doing fine. She could probably spare a glance at Zerba’s masterpiece.

It was well worth it. The last time Winter had seen the outfit, it had been mostly a stack of delicate pieces of red silk. Now, two hours later, Zerba had transformed the pieces into an elegant red formal-wear dress that could have held its own at one of Queen Breha’s formal receptions.

In fact, except for the deeper waistline, higher collar, and slightly different shade, it was identical to one that the queen had worn at Princess Leia’s twelfth-birthday celebration.

“Well?”

With a jolt, Winter realized she’d been staring as the memories flooded over her. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “The color suits you, Rachele.”

“Thanks,” Rachele said wryly. “I’d curtsy, except I’d probably pull out more of Zerba’s seams.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

“Tavia’s busy, Bink’s busy, and you’re their size,” Zerba reminded her.

“I know,” Rachele said with a sigh. “But there’s something fundamentally wrong about asking a woman to stand for a fitting when she’s not going to get to wear the dress.”

“Tell you what,” Zerba offered. “When this is over, I’ll make you one of your very own.”

“You mean that?”

“Absolutely.” Zerba ran his fingers gently across the silk. “And I’ll even make it one like Tavia’s that you can wear more than once.”

Rachele chuckled. “That would be nice,” she said dryly.

Winter turned back to the window and refocused her electrobinoculars. Dozer was on the move, drifting casually through the crowd and heading toward the double stream of people moving in and out of the grounds. Two of the security men were paralleling him, staying well back but keeping him in sight.

Mostly in sight, anyway. There was a spot, just before the gate, where the positioning of the trees and hedges would temporarily block him from their sight. Keying her comlink to Dozer’s number, she got ready.

“So what exactly do you do for Mazzic?” Rachele asked.

“Procurement, mostly,” Winter said. “I track through shipping manifests and warehouse throughputs and find him things he needs and people who are trying to hide their merchandise. The latter he can approach about smuggling work; the former he simply steals.”

“Sounds like the kind of job where you sit at a computer and don’t get shot at,” Zerba commented wistfully. “Must be nice.”

“It’s not quite that easy,” Winter told him. “I also handle security systems and alarms for him. That means being on-site for a lot of the work. But you’re right—we mostly don’t get shot at.”

“I hope he pays you well,” Zerba said. “You don’t seem the type who lives for the thrill of the challenge.”

Winter shrugged. Mazzic’s pay scale was fairly tepid, actually. What kept her at the job was the fact that she could use his resources to find and break into supply and weapons storehouses, let the smugglers take what they wanted, and leave the way clear for her Rebel Alliance associates to slip in behind them and gather up the rest.

She was pretty sure Mazzic at least suspected her secret affiliation. But he’d never said anything. Apparently he was smart enough to see the mutual advantages of their relationship.

Though maybe that was why he paid her as little as he did.

“Not really,” she told Zerba. “But it’s worth it.”

Dozer was nearly to the gate now, walking alongside a group of long-eared, buck-toothed Lepi, their arms gesticulating wildly as they strode along, chattering among themselves. Winter checked the positions of the security men, then double-checked the covering flora and prattling aliens.

As Dozer slipped momentarily out of sight, Winter tapped her comlink’s call key. Without breaking stride, Dozer shrugged off his brown jacket, flipped it inside out to show the blue-and-silver jagged-slice pattern on the other side, and put it back on. As he settled it over his shoulders, he pulled a fold-up hat from the jacket’s pocket and jammed it onto his head.

A moment later he had passed through the gate, past two security men who were starting to look puzzled as they scanned the crowds marching along in front of them.

Winter smiled in satisfaction. There were undoubtedly still cam droids floating around up there beneath Villachor’s umbrella shield, and someone in the monitor room had probably caught the quick change. But the inevitable communication delay between monitor and gate had given Dozer just enough time to slip out.

Of course, now they knew he wasn’t just an innocent courier but a part of the mysterious gang throwing bribes at Villachor’s people. But that was all right. That part of the plan was over. Hopefully, it had accomplished its goal of making Villachor doubt his guards’ trustworthiness.

Her smile faded. Trust. That was indeed the duracrete foundation of every organization. Along with commitment, trust was what ultimately defined whether a group rose to victory or fell to destruction.

She trusted her friends and associates in the Rebel Alliance. Trusted them implicitly. Could she say the same about this assemblage of thieves and scoundrels that Han and Rachele had put together?

She smiled again, a very private smile this time. Yes, she could trust them.

Because Han was more than he seemed. Much more. And before this was over, she promised herself, she would make sure she got the whole story.

“What’s happening?” Rachele asked.

“He’s out,” Winter said. “They’re—looks like they’re sending someone outside the gate to see if they can spot him.”

Zerba snorted. “Fat chance of that.”

“Not with the zigzag he set up to get back,” Rachele said, breathing out an audible sigh. “That was close.”

“And we’re all glad it’s over,” Zerba said, starting to sound testy again. “Now, will you please kindly hold still?”

“Think of it as an insurance policy,” Han said. “Your own set of blackmail files, already decrypted and ready for your personal use.”

“You mean for my personal execution,” Villachor said darkly. “If I had such copies and Black Sun ever found out, I’d be dead within hours. Possibly within minutes.”

“Probably,” Han agreed. Villachor had mentioned Black Sun’s quick retribution twice already in this conversation. From the rumors Han had heard over the years, he was pretty sure that was no exaggeration.

But Villachor was still listening.

“On the other hand, there’s no reason they ever have to find out,” Han went on. “I bring the cryodex in, we make copies, and you put the copies someplace secure. Maybe mix them in with all your other encrypted documents.”

“Yes,” Villachor murmured. “You realize, I presume, that your associate Kwerve has already made that suggestion.”

“I know,” Han said. “I thought it was worth making again.”

“Worthwhile from my point of view, perhaps,” Villachor said. “You offer what appears to be an attractive deal, yet ask nothing in return?”

Han shrugged. “It’s a good-faith gesture,” he said. “Sure, we’re interested in the files, but we’re much more interested in you personally. If that kind of deal gets you to join us, we’ll figure it was a worthwhile long-term investment.”

They walked a few more steps before Villachor spoke again. “Let me offer a compromise,” he suggested. “When you bring your boss, you also bring the cryodex. I’ll watch it work once more and allow you to make copies of five files, which you may take with you.” He smiled thinly. “Consider that my good-faith gesture.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Han said, nodding slowly as if thinking it over. The cracks were starting to form in Villachor’s resolve—he could hear that much in the man’s voice.

But those cracks weren’t very big. Unless something drastic happened in the next two days, there was no way Villachor was going to be ready to desert Black Sun, or even move the blackmail files out of the vault.

Which meant they were going to have to go through with the original plan after all. Eanjer would be pleased by that.

“All right,” he said. “Let me consult with my boss and see what he says.”

Villachor snorted. “More delays.”

“Can’t be helped,” Han said. “If it helps any, we’re as anxious to wrap this up as you are.”

“I’m sure you are.” Villachor exhaled loudly as he came to a stop. “I trust you’ll have some word for me by the Honoring of Moving Fire the day after tomorrow?”

“Absolutely,” Han promised. “If I can’t bring the boss to see you then, I’ll at least bring an offer on when you two can meet.”

“Very well,” Villachor said. He looked into Han’s eyes, and for a moment Han was startled by the intensity there. “We stand on the edge, my friend. Riches and power beyond compare, or a long and terrifying death. Be very certain you wish to continue.”

With an effort, Han matched the other’s gaze. No, he didn’t want death, fast or slow. But he didn’t want riches and power, either, at least not the kind Villachor was talking about. All he wanted was to be free of Jabba, and then to be free to do what he pleased.

But this was still the path to that goal. “I am,” he said firmly.

“Good.” The laser intensity of Villachor’s gaze faded away. “Until the Honoring of Moving Fire, then.”

Han nodded. “Good day, Master Villachor.”

He forced himself to walk sedately the whole way back to the gate. The security guards there obviously had been alerted, and they watched Han closely as he passed. But none of them made any move to stop him.

Just the same, he was careful to follow the zigzag path that Dozer had created for travel back to the suite. Just in case.

Sheqoa tried to hide it, but from the changes in his expression over the past hour, Bink knew the afternoon had been a bust.

Not that she was really surprised. She and Lando had played their parts perfectly, walking the balance bar between guilty recognition and the opposite but equally suspicious complete ignoring of each other. She’d had some concerns about Sheqoa throwing her at Dozer, but from what she’d been able to glean from Sheqoa’s side of his comlink communications it sounded like Dozer had made it out of Marblewood before anyone could pin him down.

Given Sheqoa’s increasingly dark mood, Bink decided as she babbled away cheerfully, he would probably appreciate a good, warm hug.

“So anyway—oh, my stars, look at the time,” she said, peering at her watch. “I’m sorry, Lapis, but I have to go. My boss has some Anomid clients in town and wants me to help take them to a high-class restaurant. You know how curious Anomids are about new cultures.”

“If he wants to show them Wukkar culture, he should bring them here,” Sheqoa said, his mind clearly on other things.

“That’s what I said,” Bink said, waggling a finger for emphasis. “But he’s stubborn, and he’s always looking for an excuse to eat fancy. You’ll be around for the Honoring of Moving Fire, won’t you?”

With a clear effort, Sheqoa brought his eyes and attention back to her. “Of course,” he said, giving her a faint smile. “Will you?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the galaxy,” Bink promised. “I’ll see you in a couple of days, then.” Stepping close, she wrapped her arms around him—making sure not to pin his right arm—and pressed herself against his chest. “I had a wonderful day,” she murmured into his neck. “Thanks for everything.”

His first reflex was to go stiff with surprise. His next, a fraction of a second later, was to start to relax and enjoy her touch. His third, an even shorter fraction of a second after that, was to remember he was on duty and gently but firmly push her away.

And in and among all those reactions, she finally tracked down the scent she’d noticed earlier.

“I’ll see you then,” he said, his hands on her shoulders as he held her at arm’s length. For a moment he gazed at her, then turned and disappeared into the crowd.

Bink turned, too, and headed for the gate. So along with not trusting her—which he certainly shouldn’t—Sheqoa had decided to go all cute on her. The smell she’d picked up had been tracking dye, an invisible coating of stain that would leave indelible splotches on wandering fingers that would blaze into view under ultraviolet light.

Not surprisingly, Sheqoa suspected that her rapt attention was solely so that she could get hold of the key pendant on the choker chain around his neck, and he intended to have proof of her guilt if and when she made a grab for it. Simple, diabolical, and virtually foolproof.

Bink smiled to herself. In some ways, she almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

The grand finale was in full swing, the thundering corkscrews of water roiling and cascading over the cheering crowd filling the Marblewood grounds. The sparkles and glitters in the streams flashed and glowed and erupted, foreshadowing the huge fireworks display that would highlight the Honoring of Moving Fire at the conclusion of the Festival in two days. The fountains and tendrils leapt halfway to the sky, shot out to the sides and back in again, all of it carefully controlled and contained by the shifting repulsor fields that ensured that not a single drop fell on the audience below.

Standing on the presentation balcony, drinking in the noise and sights, Villachor permitted himself a moment of quiet gloating. So Kwerve and his secret organization were dragging their feet, were they? Hoping, no doubt, that the temptation of their cryodex, combined with the pressure from Qazadi, would force him into a swamp from which there was only a single means of escape. Theirs.

But they were wrong. So was Qazadi. Villachor didn’t have to choose between the known power and ruthlessness of Black Sun and the ambiguous power and freedom of Kwerve and his group of unknowns.

Because there was, in fact, a third route. A path that neither of them would ever dream he might travel.

For that matter, he wasn’t convinced himself that he wanted to travel it, let alone that he needed to. But options were life, and this was a path that basic caution insisted he at least explore.

He waited until the very climax of the water show, when virtually all eyes and thoughts across Iltarr City were focused on his presentation and the similar ones at the other Festival venues. Then he pulled out his comlink and punched in a number.

It took Donnal Cuciv nearly half a minute to answer. Probably busy watching a similar ceremony at one of the other venues across town. “Cuciv.”

“Avrak Villachor,” Villachor identified himself. “You may remember our conversation of a few days ago.”

The silence was just long enough to confirm that Cuciv did indeed remember that awkward, embarrassing, painful session. Villachor had seen blackmail victims respond with fury, embarrassment, and terror, but he’d never seen one who had left Marblewood so completely and hopelessly broken.

Qazadi had speculated at the time that Cuciv would simply go home and kill himself, though the Falleen hadn’t sounded like he really cared one way or the other. Villachor had reminded him that suicide was a shameful act in Wukkar culture and that Cuciv would never add such additional debasement to his name. So far, Villachor was right.

“I remember,” Cuciv said, his voice strained but steady. Apparently he’d made peace with his situation and had resigned himself to the fact that he’d be spending the rest of his life beneath Black Sun’s hammer. “What do you want?”

“Something quite small, I assure you,” Villachor said. “I’ve heard that a member of the Imperial court is in Iltarr City. I want everything you have on him: his name, his precise rank and position, his means of arrival, his current location, and the best way to contact him privately.”

There was another pause. Across the grounds, a giant waterspout formed, then split into five branches, each with its own color of flashing sparkles. “What are you going to do to him?” Cuciv asked at last.

“That’s not your concern,” Villachor told him. “You just get me the information.”

He heard Cuciv’s sigh even over the crowd. “You want it tonight, I suppose?”

“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” Villachor said. “Just make sure it’s accurate.”

“Everything I do is accurate,” Cuciv said, professional pride momentarily eclipsing his shame and resentment.

“Good,” Villachor said. “Tomorrow, then.”

He closed down the comlink and put it away, permitting himself a small smile. Yes, Kwerve might think his cryodex was the ultimate lure. Qazadi might think Black Sun was the ultimate threat.

But there was another hand in this game. A hand that almost certainly would outlast them both.

Because if it came down to life or death, Villachor could do worse than abandon Black Sun, bring his knowledge of the organization to the Imperials, and see what kind of protection they could give him.

It was time to see what sort of bargain Lord Vader would be willing to offer.

The recording of the comlink conversation ended, and Dayja looked up from his datapad. “You must be joking,” he said flatly. “He must be joking.”

“It does sound like a joke, doesn’t it?” d’Ashewl replied thoughtfully. “But if it’s not, this could be the beginning of the end for Black Sun. A sector chief like Villachor will know all sorts of dirty secrets. And if he can bring Qazadi’s blackmail files with him …” He raised his eyebrows.

“Maybe,” Dayja said warily, staring down at the datapad. It couldn’t be this easy. There was a hidden claw in this somewhere. “I notice that for all the words he spouted, there’s a distinct lack of any solid statements or promises.”

“Which isn’t unreasonable for someone who’s merely testing the waters,” d’Ashewl said.

“Or someone angling for a one-sided deal,” Dayja said. “This could also be a ploy to get us looking in the wrong direction.”

“Possible,” d’Ashewl agreed. “But whatever’s going on, we have to treat it as if it’s a genuine offer.” He smiled tightly. “If only because the deeper we get into whatever scheme he’s working, the more of it we’ll see and the better our chances of turning it back on him.”

“Unless the scheme is to draw out and kill a couple of Intelligence officers,” Dayja warned.

“I never said I actually trusted the man,” d’Ashewl said with a shrug. “I’ve already sent the recall order to Captain Worhven. He and the Dominator should be here by nightfall.”

“And then?”

D’Ashewl pursed his lips. “Given that Villachor still doesn’t know about the connection between us, I’m thinking it might be time for the two of you to have a face-to-face. Possibly as part of the glitterstim scam you’ve already set up.”

Dayja thought it over. “Maybe,” he said. “Though that might bump into whatever Eanjer and his team are up to.”

D’Ashewl snorted. “If Villachor comes over, we’ll have no need of Eanjer and his collection of scoundrels.”

“If Villachor’s just blowing soap bubbles, we might,” Dayja countered.

D’Ashewl waved a hand. “You’re the agent on the ground,” he said. “Whatever you want to do about Eanjer, I won’t second-guess you.”

“Thank you,” Dayja said. D’Ashewl was right, of course. This was Dayja’s mission, with d’Ashewl only along for support and camouflage. All decisions were ultimately his.

So were the consequences of those decisions.

“Who are you calling?” d’Ashewl asked as Dayja pulled out his comlink.

“Eanjer,” Dayja said, keying for echo to d’Ashewl’s comlink and then punching in the number. “I can’t believe Villachor just woke up this morning and decided he was tired of working for Black Sun. If he’s being pushed, maybe Eanjer’s team is doing the pushing. It might be a good idea to find out what exactly they’ve been up to.”

The comlink made the connection. “Yes?” Eanjer said.

“It’s Dayja,” Dayja identified himself. “Can you talk?”

“Just a moment.” The comlink went dead for a moment, then came back on. “All right, I’m clear,” Eanjer said, his voice gone quiet.

“I’m calling for an update,” Dayja said. “And to deliver a possible warning.”

“What kind of warning?”

“You first,” Dayja said.

“As far as I can tell, the plan’s moving along properly,” Eanjer said. “There’s some talk about trying to push Villachor into moving the files elsewhere on Wukkar, but I can’t see him panicking enough to go that route. Failing that, we’ll have to go ahead and break into the vault.”

“I see,” Dayja said, smiling grimly to himself. So that was the angle Villachor was playing. “The Honoring should certainly provide enough distractions for a job like that.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Eanjer said. “Now, what’s this about a warning?”

“Villachor may be trying to do an end sweep around you,” Dayja said. “He’s been making overtures to a member of the Imperial court who’s currently in town. If he actually decides to defect, whatever lure or press you’re prodding him with will suddenly become irrelevant. When that happens, you and your team may be in trouble.”

“I see,” Eanjer said slowly. “Thank you for the heads-up. When will you know whether or not that’s going to happen?”

“So far they’re in the very preliminary verbal dance,” Dayja said. “If anything changes, I’ll let you know.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Eanjer said. “Got to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

The connection broke.

“Interesting,” d’Ashewl said, lowering his own comlink.

“Indeed,” Dayja agreed. “And suddenly Villachor’s offer has a whole second thread attached.”

“He’s thinking about moving the files, all right,” d’Ashewl said. “But he knows better than to move them without adequate security.”

Dayja nodded. “And what better security than a full Imperial escort?”

“What better security, indeed?” d’Ashewl agreed. “So he pretends to defect, has us escort some trivial equipment or personal items elsewhere, and then suddenly changes his mind.”

“And since there’s no way he can do that without Qazadi misinterpreting his move and taking his head off halfway along,” Dayja added, “it follows that Qazadi is also in on the plan.”

“So the files get moved and secured, and Eanjer’s team is left empty-handed,” d’Ashewl concluded. “And as a bonus for Black Sun, a couple of Intelligence agents are tagged.”

“And possibly dealt with in their traditional pleasant manner,” Dayja said sourly. “So much for Eanjer’s approach.”

“So it would seem,” d’Ashewl agreed. “Question is, do you restart yours?”

Dayja tapped at his lip. “I suppose I have to,” he said. “If Villachor is really planning to defect, it doesn’t make much sense to muddy the water further. But if it’s just a scam to get us to do the heavy lifting for him, then we’ll still need a vector into Marblewood.”

“And you’ll need it before he moves the files,” d’Ashewl warned. “Because wherever he gets us to take them, he’ll be ready to spirit them away to some other location where we’ll never find them.”

“Unless we can take them en route, like Eanjer was obviously hoping to,” Dayja pointed out. “But he’ll have thought of that, too.”

“Absolutely.” D’Ashewl eyed him. “So?”

“So I guess I’ll be attending the Honoring of Moving Fire at Marblewood tomorrow,” Dayja said, heaving himself out of his chair. “Better go put together another sample package to wave under Villachor’s nose.”

“You’ve got a day to think about how you want to tailor your approach,” d’Ashewl reminded him. “And don’t forget, the Dominator will be here by then. If you need backup, it’ll be available.”

“Only if we want to blow the entire operation.”

D’Ashewl shrugged. “If it comes to that point, the operation will already be blown,” he said. “Better a dead operation and a live operative than the alternative.”

“You have such a soothing way of putting things,” Dayja said dryly. “You’ll be wanting me to attend you during lunch, I assume?”

“If you have time,” d’Ashewl said. “If not, I can explain your absence.”

“No, we need to keep up appearances,” Dayja said. “I’ll see you for lunch.”

“What was that all about?” Bink called across the conversation room.

Standing framed by the window and the cityscape beyond, Eanjer turned to face her. “Sorry?”

“That call,” Bink said. She started to point at the comlink he was putting away, apparently remembered in time that she’d already pulled out stitches from two of the seams Winter was laboriously trying to finish, and nodded instead toward the comlink.

“It was my contact,” Eanjer said. “He wanted to warn me that—”

“You’re telling your contact about our plans?” Bink interrupted.

“He already knows,” Eanjer said patiently. “He’s the one who told us about Qazadi and the blackmail files in the first place, remember? Anyway, he wanted to warn me that Villachor may be getting in some more Zed police droids.”

Bink looked down at Winter, and Winter could see the uneasiness in her eyes. “How many?” Bink asked.

“And how soon?” Winter added.

“He didn’t know,” Eanjer said. “He’s not even sure Villachor’s actually getting them, or whether he’s just thinking about getting them. He’ll let me know if he hears anything more.” He gestured down the hall. “I’m going to the kitchen. Either of you want anything?”

“No, thanks,” Bink said.

“Me neither,” Winter said.

“Okay.” Eanjer hesitated. “Let me know if there’s anything I can help with.” He left the room.

“A few extra Zeds aren’t going to hurt the plan, are they?” Winter asked.

“They shouldn’t,” Bink said. But she didn’t sound 100 percent convinced. “One Zed or fifty, they all work off the same master control system.”

Winter nodded. She’d assumed that was the case and was pretty sure Han had it covered. But he’d been keeping his cards pretty close to his vest, especially since the kidnapping, and she wasn’t absolutely sure how or where he might be tweaking his plans. Eanjer, from what she’d been able to glean, was even more in the dark than she was.

On the other hand, if Eanjer was blabbing freely about their plans to this unknown contact, it was probably just as well Han wasn’t telling him much.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to Tavia lately,” Winter said as she studied the seam she was working on. She had no idea what kind of eye for detail Sheqoa had, but better to be safe than sorry. “Is she doing all right?”

“She’s fine,” Bink said.

“You sure?” Winter pressed, moving on to the next seam. This one, she knew, had to be a little crooked if it was going to match the one on the other dress. “She seemed pretty tired when I saw her at dinner last night.”

“Tired, but happy,” Bink assured her. “Sitting around putting electronics together is what she lives for. Even when it’s the very same electronics, like now, being put together the same way over and over. Boring, if you ask me. But, hey—differences are what makes the galaxy spin, right?”

“So I’ve heard,” Winter agreed. “It does sound like she prefers the quiet life, though.”

Bink was silent long enough for Winter to finish with that seam and go on to the next one. “I gather she’s been talking to you,” she said at last. “Interesting. She must like you—she doesn’t open up to just anyone. I suppose she’s been telling you how much I enjoy the whole ghost-thief lifestyle and how I’m never content to stick to anything else for long?”

Winter hesitated. “She said you’re very good at what you do,” she said, deciding on the diplomatic approach. “We discussed a little about how people usually enjoy the things they’re good at.”

“And I suppose she told you how good she is at electronics?”

“None of us needs to be told that,” Winter said, hoping to deflect the conversation with a little humor. “We’ve all seen what she can do.”

“Oh, she’s good at her work, all right,” Bink said. “What she’s not so good at is realizing just how nasty the universe around her really is.”

Winter frowned up at her. There was a deadly serious expression on the young woman’s face, one that Winter hadn’t seen there before. “I don’t follow.”

“Let me give you an example,” Bink said, an edge of bitterness in her voice. “I assume she told you about the Rivordak Electronics Company?”

“Not by name.”

“It’s the one she usually trots out as an example of me scuttling every decent thing that comes into her life,” Bink said. “The pay was good, the boss was happy with her performance, and she really enjoyed the work. On the surface, it seemed perfect.”

“So what was wrong with it?” Winter asked. “Did they drink their soup too loudly?”

“What was wrong was that the place didn’t exist,” Bink said heavily. “Or at least the place she thought she was working at didn’t exist. The whole operation was nothing but a front for one of the Hutt syndicates. They were funneling spice, smuggled weapons, even slaves through the business, the whole thing prettified by innocents like Tavia.”

Winter winced. She’d seen plenty of operations like that while scoping out likely places for the Alliance to hit. “You could have told her.”

“I could have,” Bink agreed with a sigh. “Maybe I should have. But she’s so innocent that—look, I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I have enough cynicism for both of us. Probably would have enough if we’d been triplets. I just don’t want her to become like me.”

“I understand,” Winter said.

And, oddly enough, she realized that she genuinely did. She and Princess Leia had both had that same youthful innocence wrenched from their souls by the struggle against the Empire.

“I want her to be happy, Winter,” Bink went on earnestly. “I really do. But I also want her to eat regularly, and I don’t mean in a Kessel prison cafeteria. Until we have enough to set her up someplace safe—” She shrugged. “I have to keep doing this.”

She seemed to suddenly come to herself. “Sorry. Did I pull out any of the seams just then?”

“No, you’re fine,” Winter assured her. “But don’t do it again.”

“Right,” Bink said. The darker mood had vanished, and she was back to her old cheerful self. “Sorry.”

The room once again fell silent. Winter settled back to work, pondering how the universe could look so different to two so similar sets of eyes.

Wondering, too, if this would be the score Bink and Tavia were both hoping for. The score that would finally give them freedom.

Or whether tomorrow would be the last day they would ever have together.

The morning had dawned in full, cloudless sunshine, with all indications of a glorious day ahead. A few white clouds had made an appearance around noon, but they’d cleared out by early afternoon. Now, with the sun nearly to the horizon and the sky to the east already starting to darken, there was every indication that the fireworks that would bring the Festival of Four Honorings to an end would play out against a full starry background.

It was, Han thought, a good day to make 163 million credits.

It would not be such a good day to walk away empty-handed.

It would be a really bad day to get shot.

He scowled as he strode along with the cheerfully jabbering crowds, listening to them ooh and aah at the flame spurts and fire tornadoes whipping across the air above the Marblewood grounds. His mood had been all over the charts today, ranging from the insanely optimistic right down to the frozen fear that they were heading into catastrophic failure. Right now, as he walked toward the mansion framed by the taller city buildings beyond it, his mood was hovering near the really-bad-feeling end of the scale.

Which didn’t make any sense. He’d done everything he could. The equipment was ready, he’d been through every detail of the plan, and through skill or plain dumb luck he’d managed to assemble the perfect team to pull this off.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the team was too good. Aside from the overall planning, there wasn’t really much for Han himself to do. Once he delivered the specially prepared data card to Villachor, in fact, his part was going to be over. He would go back to the suite, sit down in a comfy chair by the window, and watch it all unfold below him through electrobinoculars. He would have all the waiting, all the stress and worry, and none of the action.

He scowled a little harder. He’d been the one at the helm when he and Chewie did the Kessel run. He was the one in the gun turret when there were pirates or mercenaries that needed to be shot off the Falcon’s back.

And even though he’d spent most of that Yavin thing sitting quietly with the sun at his back, he’d known that if and when the time came, he would be the one who came blazing in to shoot those determined TIE fighters off Luke’s tail.

Sitting around and waiting while someone else had all the fun wasn’t what he was used to. But for once in his life, he would have to settle for that.

As usual, Villachor wasn’t hard to find. All Han had to do was look for the spot with the most elaborate fire displays and figure out which way people were going when they weren’t looking at the fire or heading toward the food and drink pavilions. Like most of the big shots Han had known, and pretty much all of the crime bosses, Villachor liked to be fawned over.

Sure enough, the man and his two bodyguards were hanging out at the edge of a crowd that was mostly staring in openmouthed fascination at a fire fountain that seemed to be matching precisely the flow and movements of the water fountain that had been there two days earlier. A nice trick, Han had to admit as he waited for the line of well-wishers surrounding Villachor to thin out.

Finally there was a lull. “Ah,” Villachor said as Han walked up to him, his voice sounding a little odd. “I wondered if you’d show up.”

“I said I would,” Han reminded him. “I brought you—”

He broke off as one of the guards stepped around behind him and something hard pressed suddenly against his side. A second later, the other guard had joined his buddy, and both of Han’s arms were being tightly held.

Han looked at the men, then at Villachor. “You’re kidding.”

Villachor’s lip twitched. “Quietly, if you please,” he said. Turning, he headed toward one of the service doors of the mansion, the bodyguards and Han following.

Han didn’t spot any of the other security men along the way. Apparently Villachor wanted this kept quiet even from his own people.

The reason for that quickly became clear. Waiting a few meters inside the door were three Falleen. The one in the middle was dressed in an elaborate layered robe with a long, tooled sash. Probably the Qazadi character Eanjer had mentioned, especially since the two Falleen flanking him had the hard-edged looks of bodyguards. For the first half second Han thought about trying to get in the first word, decided calm silence would be the better way to play this one.

Probably just as well, since Qazadi clearly wanted that first word for himself. “There he is,” he said before the door had even closed behind the little group. “The human who in arrogance and pride thinks he can subvert a Black Sun official from his sworn loyalties.”

Han looked at Villachor. The other’s expression was steady enough, but there was sweat on his forehead. “I’m just an employee, Master Qazadi,” Han said, turning back to the Falleen. “I’m not allowed to have arrogance and pride. I just deliver messages.”

“Perhaps I should deliver a message of my own,” Qazadi suggested calmly. “Your body, for example, shredded into small bits of flesh and bone. Would such a communication be a clear enough message of the cost of challenging us?”

Han swallowed. He could feel his heart racing as the fear flowing through him edged rapidly toward panic.

It was the Falleen’s pheromones, he knew, that were driving that emotion. But knowing that didn’t do a bit of good. “I’m sure there are better ways to get what you want,” he said, keeping his voice as calm as he could.

“What I want?” Qazadi asked, raising his eyebrows in feigned surprise. “What makes you think I want anything except your death and the death of everyone in your organization?”

“The fact that you’re talking and not shooting.” Han lifted his hands, about all the gesturing he could do with Villachor’s bodyguards still holding his arms. “So?”

Qazadi smiled thinly. “He is indeed a clever one, Master Villachor,” he commented. “Very well. I want the cryodex.”

Even knowing that would be Qazadi’s demand, Han still felt a fresh ripple of fear run through him. “And in return?” he asked, knowing what the Falleen’s answer would be to that one, too.

He was right. “A quick death,” Qazadi said. “Or, depending on what you can tell me about your people and your assets, there is a very slim chance that you may in fact walk out of Marblewood with your life intact.”

“Sounds like a reasonable deal,” Han said. “I’ll need to call my contact.”

Qazadi made a small gesture, and the guards released Han’s arms. Pulling out his comlink, he punched in Lando’s number.

Lando wasn’t going to like this. Not one bit.

“But why take him inside?” Rachele asked worriedly, her electrobinoculars pressed to her face as she stood by the conversation room window. “All he had to do was deliver a data card. Why couldn’t they do that outside?”

“Maybe Villachor wanted privacy,” Lando said, wondering if it sounded as lame to the others as it did to him.

It did. “Since when?” Winter countered. Her voice was under better control than Rachele’s, but Lando could hear the same concern. “Up to now he’s always preferred keeping us outside whenever possible. Changing that pattern is a bad sign.”

Chewbacca warbled ominously.

“Easy,” Lando cautioned. “Han’s a big boy. Whatever Villachor’s got in mind, I’m sure he can talk his way out of it.”

At his side, his comlink signaled. Lando pulled it out and clicked it on. “Yes?”

“Hey, Kwerve.” Han’s voice was just a little too casual. “Got a situation here.”

“What kind of situation?” Lando asked, beckoning to the others as he keyed the comlink’s speaker to wide focus.

“I’m at a meeting with Master Qazadi,” Han said. “He’d like to see our cryodex.”

Uh-oh. “You mean he wants to see it work?” Lando asked carefully.

“Yeah, something like that,” Han said. “I think it would be in our best interests to show it to him.”

Lando glanced at the others gathered around him. Rachele and Tavia looked stricken. Winter looked controlled and calculating. Dozer looked jumpy. Chewbacca looked ready to go on a rampage. And Eanjer—

Lando frowned. Eanjer looked oddly guilty.

What exactly could Eanjer have to look guilty about?

“I can ask the boss,” Lando said into the comlink. “He’d have to be shown there would be a decent payoff for it.”

“Let’s just say there’ll be some pretty nasty payoff if he doesn’t,” Han said grimly.

For an instant Lando flashed back to that awkward scene on Nar Shaddaa, back after the Ylesian fiasco, when he’d been so mad at Han that he’d threatened to put a blaster bolt in his friend’s head. Han tended to spark that kind of reaction in people.

But Lando had spoken in the heat of rage and frustration and betrayal. Qazadi’s threat was cold and calculated and very, very serious.

“I’ll tell him,” Lando promised. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I have his answer.”

“Make it quick,” Han said. “Master Qazadi doesn’t strike me as the patient type.”

“Got it,” Lando said. “I’ll get back to you soon.”

He clicked off. “Well, that’s made the day more interesting,” he commented. “Any thoughts?”

Chewbacca warbled threateningly.

“Of course we get him out,” Rachele agreed tightly. “I think the question is how.”

“Actually, the first question is why, as in why the bottom is suddenly falling out of this thing,” Lando said. “Eanjer? You got something to say?”

Eanjer started. “What do you mean?”

“You got a call from your contact yesterday,” Winter said. “Did he say anything about this?”

Eanjer swallowed hard. “I—” He stopped. “I mean—”

Chewbacca took a step toward him. Eanjer twitched back, then seemed to shrink in on himself. “I’m sorry,” he said, almost too low for Lando to hear. “I didn’t think … he mentioned that Villachor had been making overtures to the Imperials.”

“And you didn’t think this was worth telling us about?” Tavia bit out. “Blast it, Eanjer—if he makes a deal with the Imps, we’ve got no hold over him. He can play us without ever having to put any chips in the pot, knowing he’s got a pass if his hand doesn’t pan out.”

“I know, I know,” Eanjer said, looking even more pained. “I just didn’t think anything could happen this quickly, that’s all.”

“I guess it did,” Dozer said heavily. “So now what?”

“You heard Chewie and Rachele,” Lando said. “We get him out.”

“How?” Dozer retorted.

“Somehow,” Lando said with strained patience, his mind scrambling for a plan. “Winter, are there any other weapons caches lying around town we could raid?”

“There are two that I know of,” Winter said. “But anything small enough to be smuggled in through the gates wouldn’t be nearly powerful enough to get through the mansion’s doors, walls, or windows.”

“Not to mention all the security men,” Dozer pointed out.

“The umbrella shield will have to be shut down for the grand fireworks display later,” Rachele pointed out. “Maybe we could get something big enough to breach the wall from up here.”

“We can’t wait that long,” Lando said. “I don’t know how much patience Qazadi has, but I doubt it’s going to last more than an hour or so.”

Eanjer cleared his throat. “I have an idea,” he said hesitantly. “Winter, how accurately did you duplicate the other cryodex?”

“Completely,” Winter said.

“I mean, really accurately?”

“What part of completely don’t you get?” Lando growled.

“No, no, I understand,” Eanjer said. “I was just thinking … if we let Qazadi see the cryodex, and if he’s seen Aziel’s enough times up close …” He paused, looking around expectantly.

Rachele got it first. “He’ll think it’s Aziel’s,” she said. “And that Aziel … no. Would he?”

“What, think Aziel’s behind Lando’s bid to get the blackmail files?” Winter asked. “Sure, why not?”

“She’s right,” Tavia agreed. “If he suspects Villachor of possible treason, why not Aziel?”

“Playing the corners against each other,” Lando agreed. Eanjer might be on to something here. “So if we can convince Qazadi that Aziel is a traitor …”

“He won’t just let Han go,” Tavia said slowly. “But he’ll definitely figure he’s worth more alive than dead.”

“Especially if he thinks Han can fill in the details of Aziel’s plan,” Rachele added. “It should at least buy us some time.”

Chewbacca rumbled a warning.

“Good point,” Lando agreed grimly. “It only works until Aziel shows up at Marblewood with the real cryodex.”

“Which means we have to get to Aziel—right now—and steal the real one,” Rachele said.

“What about the guards and the window alarms?” Dozer objected.

“We’ll just have to take the risk,” Rachele said. “If Villachor sees the two cryodexes together, Han is dead. Tavia, do you think Bink can pull it off?”

“I don’t know,” Tavia said, her face screwed up in thought. “This fast, and before full dark … I don’t think so. But if it’s the only way, I know she’ll be game to try.”

“If we pull her out now, we may lose our chance at Villachor’s vault,” Winter warned, picking up the electrobinoculars and going back to the window.

“Han’s worth more than all the files in the galaxy,” Rachele called after her. She sent a quick glare at Eanjer. “And all the credits, too.”

“Let’s not make it an either-or just yet,” Lando said. “Winter? Can you see her?”

“Yes,” Winter said, shaking her head. “Sorry—she’s already hooked up with Sheqoa. If we pull her out now, especially with him probably already suspicious, it’s over.”

“Unless we can get her back in time,” Dozer said.

“Not a chance,” Tavia said.

“Which leaves only one other shot,” Winter continued calmly. “Dozer and I don’t have anything else to do right now. We’ll go to the Lulina Crown and keep Aziel there.”

“Whoa,” Dozer said, his eyes going wide. “Us against—? No. Not a chance.”

“Relax,” Winter said. “I’m not suggesting we hammer him and his collection of bodyguards. We just have to keep him locked down in his suite at the hotel.”

“Oh, yeah, that’ll work,” Dozer said sarcastically. “He wouldn’t have a comlink or anything he could call Qazadi with. Not a chance.”

“Hang on,” Lando said, the first bit of hope stirring inside him. “Winter’s right. Calling Qazadi doesn’t do Aziel any good. Of course he’ll say he still has the cryodex. But he’d say that whether he did or didn’t.”

“So how do you pin someone in his room?” Rachele asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Lando said. “Let’s run a quick inventory of what we’ve got on hand and see if we can come up with a plan.”

“Unless you’re still too afraid of the Falleen to do this,” Rachele added to Dozer, an edge of challenge in her voice.

Dozer flashed a glance at Winter’s back and squared his shoulders. “Let’s find a workable plan first,” he said. “As far as gear goes, I’ve got some vehicle remotes, some universal door decrypt openers—”

“Excuse me,” Winter said, still standing at the window. “Any of you know if Han smokes?”

“Not that I know of,” Lando said, frowning. “Chewie?”

Chewbacca rumbled a negative.

“Maybe a long time ago, but not lately,” Lando said. “Why?”

“Because I think,” Winter said thoughtfully, “he may just have sent us a message.”

Han keyed off the comlink. As he started to put it away, one of the guards plucked it out of his hand.

“Okay, I sent the message,” Han said to Qazadi. “I guess we wait.”

“Yes,” Qazadi said. “We shall hope your superior considers you more valuable than his cryodex.” He smiled thinly. “Especially since underlings are so much more easily replaced than rare artifacts.”

“Not the good ones,” Han countered, looking back at Villachor. The man was about two paces away. It should work. “I suppose I’m going to be your guest for a while?”

“A short while only,” Qazadi said. His eyes flicked to Villachor’s bodyguards. “You two, escort him to the guards’ quarters across from my suite. The closet there is lockable. Put him inside.”

“Manning can take him,” Villachor said firmly. “Tawb will stay with me.”

“They’ll both take him,” Qazadi said.

For a second he and Villachor locked eyes.

And in that second, Han made his move.

The bodyguards were still gripping his upper arms, but both forearms were free. Giving his left shoulder a little hunch as a distraction, Han dipped his right hand into his side pocket and got a grip on the data card there. In a single smooth motion, he drew it out and flipped it toward Villachor.

He had just enough time to see Villachor reflexively reach up and catch it before the two bodyguards yanked him backward and slammed him down onto the floor.

“Take it easy,” Han said hastily, wincing with the sudden pain in his shoulders as the whole room seemed to sprout blasters. “It’s just a delivery from my boss. I was ordered to give the card to Master Villachor.”

For a long moment no one moved. Out of the corner of his eye, Han could see Villachor turning the data card over in his hands.

“What is it?” Qazadi asked.

“The details of his offer,” Han said. “Not that it matters now, I suppose.”

“I never said I was going to join you,” Villachor insisted, tossing the card back at Han as if he were getting rid of a baby gundark.

Han gave a little shrug. “Like I said, I was ordered to deliver it.”

For a few more heartbeats no one moved or spoke. Han held his breath …

And then Qazadi stirred and gave Han a small smile. “I admire a man who spends his last breath carrying out his orders,” he said. “Let him up.”

The hands pinning Han’s arms to the floor reversed direction, pulling him upright again.

“And I’ll take that data card,” the Falleen added, almost as if it was an afterthought. “Dygrig?”

One of Qazadi’s guards retrieved the data card and handed it to his boss.

“You have your orders,” Qazadi continued, eyeing the card thoughtfully.

“Sir?” one of Villachor’s bodyguards asked.

“Yes, go ahead, Manning,” Villachor said with a hint of a sigh. “Tawb, go with him.”

“Move,” Manning growled in Han’s ear as the hands tightened around his arms again. His breath carried a hint of tabac; apparently the man was a cigarra smoker.

They led him down a long hallway and up three flights of steps to the fourth floor. Along the way, Han noted with some interest, they passed exactly one other person, an older man in a chef’s outfit hurrying toward the kitchen area. Apparently all of Villachor’s people were either outside or on duty in the mansion’s various working areas.

“Where are we going?” Han asked, glancing up at the skylights above him as they headed down the corridor into the northeast wing.

“You heard His Excellency,” Tawb growled.

“Yeah—a closet in his guards’ room.” Han looked sideways at Manning. “I don’t suppose you could give me a cigarra to help pass the time.”

Manning snorted. “Yeah. Sure.”

“No, really,” Han pressed. “I really need one, and I know you smoke—I can smell it on you. Come on, give me a break. I really need it.”

“You really need a smoke?” Letting go of Han’s arm, Manning took a long step forward and fell into step beside him, pulling a long, thin cigarra from his pocket. “Like this one?”

“Watch it,” Tawb warned. “Qazadi’s not going to like it if you get smoke in his rooms.”

“I won’t,” Manning assured him. He lit the cigarra and puffed out some smoke. “Smoke like this?” he asked Han, puffing out another cloud.

“Yeah, like that,” Han said, straining against Tawb’s grip as he tried to get closer to the twisting tendrils of smoke, hoping he could mask his actual disgust for the stuff. “Come on, let me at least smell it.”

“Because I’d be in real trouble if I gave you anything,” Manning continued, walking backward as he inhaled more smoke and puffed it back at Han, always keeping just far enough away that Han could only get a whiff from the edge of each cloud before it drifted up to the ceiling. “Especially a cigarra. Especially in Qazadi’s suite.”

“Come on,” Han pleaded. He could practically feel his nose hairs curling as he inhaled the smoke, and his lungs were hovering on the edge of a violent coughing fit. But he had to make this look real if he wanted Manning to keep up the game.

“Enough,” Tawb snapped. “Come on—we’re too close as it is.”

“Relax,” Manning soothed. He gave one final puff and then slipped a cap on the cigarra to extinguish it. “I’ll save the rest for later,” he said, dropping it back into his pocket. “Enjoy the memories.” He stopped at an open door and gestured inside. “In here.”

“Sure,” Han said. Winter and Rachele would be up in their suite right now, keeping a close eye on the mansion and grounds, and an odd pattern of smoke puffs in one of the skylights should be just the sort of thing one of them might notice.

Or they might miss it completely. But if they did spot it, they might figure out that Han was pointing them to the part of the mansion where he was being taken.

It was a long shot. But sometimes long shots paid off.

The room they ushered him into was surprisingly large, equipped with a small table and four chairs, a couple of floor lights, and six beds spaced around the living area. Guards’ quarters, all right, furnished for men or Falleen who would use the room for little except sleeping. Manning led the way across to a wide door on the side wall that had an oversized keypad beside it. He punched in a simple code—one, two, three—and the door slid open to reveal a large walk-in closet. Tawb walked Han over to it and gave him a shove inside.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Han protested as he regained his balance and looked around. No clothing, no storage boxes—the closet was completely bare except for a couple of long hanging rods along the side walls, some moveable shelves, and about a dozen hangers. “How about you at least give me one of those chairs?”

“How about we don’t,” Tawb said, giving the closet a quick once-over of his own and then backing out. “Enjoy your stay. We’ll be back when Master Villachor calls for you.”

“More likely when Master Qazadi calls,” Han called as the door slid shut. “He seems to be the one running things now.”

There was no comment from either of them. Han hadn’t really expected one.

The closet was pitch-dark, but Han had spotted a switch by the door on his way in. He tapped it, and a set of soft lights went on along the closet’s upper edges.

He spent the next couple of minutes looking around the room, hoping there might be something useful that he’d missed on his first sweep. But there was still nothing. The hangers were high-class types, polished hardwood with chrome hooks—marginally useful as clubs, but nothing that would do any good against a heavy wooden door. The shelves and clothing rods were the same polished hardwood, again not offering much in the way of escape material. The walls and floor were also hardwood, a different kind from that of the shelving but just as solid. The ceiling—

The ceiling.

Han looked up. The ceiling looked to be made of some kind of ceramic. But back when Rachele had been talking about the vault, she’d mentioned a gap between the ceiling and the floor above it. If the same design was in play up here, that ceiling shouldn’t be supporting any weight, and might not be all that thick.

And if the between-floors gap was big enough for him to fit into …

It took a couple of minutes to take down the shelves and set them up against the side walls, angled from floor to ceiling in opposite directions to create a sort of makeshift scaffold. Picking the sturdiest-looking of the wooden hangers, he climbed up onto the shelves and gave the ceiling an experimental tap.

Nothing happened. He tapped a little harder, then a little harder, wondering if the noise was going to draw unwelcome attention. But no one rushed in. He kept at it until finally, with a medium-hard tap, the hanger broke through the ceramic.

He’d been right—the material wasn’t very thick. Working along the spiderweb of cracks radiating outward from the impact point, he broke off enough to make a twenty-centimeter opening. He climbed the rest of the way up his scaffolding and eased his head through.

There was a between-floors gap, all right. Unfortunately, it was no more than twenty or thirty centimeters deep, with a narrower framing above the closet door. Bink might have been able to get through, especially with proper climbing gear, but there was no way Han was going to.

But if he could tear away enough of the ceiling outside the closet, he might be able to use one of the clothing poles to work the keypad and open the door. The one-two-three code Manning had punched in was probably a default setting and would be easy enough to duplicate.

Climbing back down, he moved his scaffolding to a spot right in front of the door and got to work.

From everything Dayja had read in the visitor brochures, the Honoring of Moving Fire was the climax of the Festival, the day when the various venues around the planet worked the hardest to outdo each other. Someday, Dayja decided, he would have to take the time to come here and actually watch it.

But today wasn’t that day. Today he had eyes only for the crowd wandering the Marblewood grounds.

There were eleven people on Eanjer’s team, he knew. Peeking in from their balcony nine days earlier, he’d seen them all in their suite’s conversation room. And though he’d seen one of the women only from behind, he’d had clear views of all the others’ faces. Today, right now, was their last and best chance to breach Villachor’s mansion and get into his vault. They should be here, ready to play their parts in whatever scheme Eanjer had come up with.

He’d already spotted three of them. Two of them, the team’s youngest human male and the shifty-eyed Balosar, seemed to have the same job: to stroll around and surreptitiously attach something beneath the flame-patterned gowns of the various serving and maintenance droids. Restraining bolts, Dayja guessed, or possibly small detonite charges. The third team member, a black-haired young woman dressed in a long and vibrant red gown, had attached herself to Sheqoa, the Marblewood security chief. She, obviously, was setting up to be the diversion.

So where in blazes were the other eight?

Off to his left, a sudden geyser of blue-yellow flame burst up toward the sky, sending a wave of warmth across the assembled crowd. Dayja gave the fountain an absent-minded look, then changed direction and headed toward the drink pavilions. The sun was just about down, with full darkness and the climactic fireworks display maybe an hour and a half away. He would give Eanjer that first hour to make his move, he decided. After that, if there was still nothing happening, he would go find Villachor and try to pick up the threads of his original penetration plan.

In the meantime, the Marblewood food and drink pavilions were still impressively stocked. He might as well take advantage of that.

The room ceiling just outside the door was as easy to break through as the closet ceiling had been, though Han winced at each snap and crack that the ceramic made as the pieces came loose. He could see that the room door was partially open, and he was mildly surprised that no one out there had noticed the noise he was making.

Still, as he’d already noted, most of Villachor’s people were busy elsewhere. That, plus the noise of the crowd and the show outside, was apparently enough to cover his activities.

The first snag came when he realized that the clothing poles were too long to maneuver through the holes, into the between-floors gap, and down through the hole outside the door. They also stubbornly refused to break, even when he angled one of them against the wall and jumped on it.

But there were still the fancy hangers. By hooking them together, he was able to make a flexible chain long enough to dangle through the opening and tap against the keypad.

Not that it was easy. It took a multitude of attempts and more patience than Han thought he had. But in the end, he got the door open.

Luckily the main room was still empty. Holding one of the hangers ready like a club, a small part of his mind recognizing how ridiculous such a weapon would be against knives, neuronic whips, and blasters, he crossed the room and eased a look outside.

And found himself well and truly blocked. Fifteen meters down the hallway, standing on opposite sides of one of the doors, were the two Falleen bodyguards he’d seen earlier.

Evidently Qazadi was the one person in Iltarr City who wasn’t outside watching Villachor’s fire show.

Mouthing a curse, he eased back from the door. Okay, so he was trapped in here. But that wouldn’t last forever. As soon as Lando showed up with their fake cryodex, Qazadi would surely go downstairs to take a look. Where Qazadi went, the bodyguards would also go.

And with the rest of Villachor’s people out and about, once the Falleen were gone Han basically should have free run of the mansion.

Assuming Lando did indeed bring the cryodex.

Get this through your head, Solo, Lando’s angry words whispered through his memory. We’ve been friends in the past, so I’m not going to do what you so richly deserve and blow your head off. But don’t ever come near me again.

Lando had told him earlier that he’d cooled down since that rant, that he’d grudgingly realized Han hadn’t stiffed him on purpose. Given their long history together, Han had accepted the cease-fire as genuine.

But what if it wasn’t? What if the not-quite-apology had simply been the words Lando figured he had to say in order to get a shot at Eanjer’s 163 million credits?

In that case, all Lando had to do was stick with the original plan, help the others raid the Marblewood safe, and leave Han to whatever Qazadi decided to do with him. Neat and clean, with no need for Lando to dirty his own hands.

And it would pretty much guarantee that he’d never have to worry about Han coming near him again.

Han took a deep breath. No, Lando wouldn’t do that to him. Not that way. Definitely not with Chewie breathing down his neck.

He just had to wait. That was all. Just wait.

Backing across the room to one of the beds, he settled down onto the floor behind it, slouching enough to put his eyes just above mattress level, where he could see the hallway but wouldn’t be immediately visible himself unless whoever was passing took a careful look.

Lando and the others would come up with something. He just needed to be ready when they did.

Carefully, Lando settled their fake cryodex into its case and sealed it. “Everyone ready?” he asked, looking around the room.

A chorus of affirmatives ran through the group. They certainly looked ready, Lando decided. Even with a brown floppy hat obscuring half her face and the tension of anticipation lying before her, Tavia was stunning in her demure brown dress. Rachele had moved her computer over to the window, ready to provide whatever support anyone needed, whether it involved data fishing or high-sky visual work. Winter and Dozer were dressed in outfits that wouldn’t draw a second glance on the street but which were tailored to allow ease of running, dodging, or shooting. Chewbacca, typically, just looked impatient to get going.

“Okay,” Lando said, carefully adjusting the edge of the nondescript silk tear-away jacket Zerba had made for him. “Let’s do this.”

“Hang on!” Eanjer called from down the hall.

Lando turned, wondering irritably what the other man wanted now.

He felt his mouth drop open. Eanjer had put on a long dark blue coat, its upturned collar hiding much of the medseal that covered the right half of his face. Draped jauntily across his head was a wide burgundy beret with a side spray of drooping feathers at the lower edge that hid most of the rest.

“What are you all dressed up for?” Lando demanded.

“I’m going with you,” Eanjer said, his voice firm. “It’s my fault Han’s in this mess. I’m not going to just sit here and do nothing.”

“What if Villachor’s people recognize you?” Tavia asked.

“They won’t,” Eanjer assured her.

“And if they do?” Tavia persisted.

Eanjer’s single eye looked like something cut from flint as he slowly turned to face her. “Then you and Bink will have an extra bit of diversion to do, won’t you?”

Chewbacca growled and gestured impatiently toward the door.

“Yes, and we don’t have any to waste,” Lando agreed reluctantly. He didn’t want Eanjer in there with him. But unless they threw binders on the man’s wrists or ordered Rachele to sit on him, there wasn’t any practical way to keep him in the suite. “Fine. But.” He leveled a finger. “You’ll stay in the background, do only what one of us tells you to do, and will not make yourself a diversion of any kind. Understood?”

“Understood.” Eanjer smiled cynically. “After all, if Villachor gets me, your hundred sixty-three million suddenly shrinks to eight hundred thousand. Can’t have that, can we?”

“Never mind the shrinkage,” Lando growled. “We know what we’re doing. You don’t. So stay out of the way.”

“Trust me,” Eanjer said softly. “I have no intention of dying today.”

“Good,” Lando said. “Because neither do the rest of us.” He took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s go.”

There was another round of muted agreement as they all headed for the door.

As he joined them, Lando felt a frown crease his forehead. It had been hard to tell through all the rest of their murmurings. But he could have sworn Winter had just said—

“Winter?” he asked.

“Yes?” she said, looking at him.

Lando felt his lip twitch. “Nothing,” he said, and kept walking.

Because, really, no one said May the Force be with us anymore. No one but Rebels and religious nuts.

And if Winter was one of either group, he really didn’t want to know about it.

Dozer settled the airspeeder down onto the rooftop landing area half a block from the Lulina Crown Hotel and cut the engine and lights.

“In position,” Winter reported into her comlink. She listened a moment, then nodded. “Okay. Let us know when.”

She clicked off and put it away. “The others are heading in,” she told Dozer. “Lando will call when he wants us to make our move.”

Dozer nodded, staring through the gathering darkness at the entrance to the Lulina Crown’s airspeeder garage floor. “Great,” he muttered.

“You ready for this?”

Dozer clenched his teeth. No, he kriffing well wasn’t ready for this. And if Winter had any brains, she wouldn’t be ready, either.

Because that was a Falleen in there. A Falleen. More than that, a Falleen who’d already once brought Dozer to the edge of saying things he didn’t want to say.

And he’d done it just by smiling, asking nicely, and filling Dozer’s lungs with biochemical poison.

Dozer had always prided himself on being in control. Always. Even when he was working for someone else, there were still important bits of freedom that he possessed and would never give up. He was the one who chose whether to obey questionable or dangerous orders. He was the one who decided when and how to close the deal he needed to close. He was the one who knew when he needed to stick with it and when he needed to bail.

With the Falleen, he no longer had those freedoms. The Falleen could take all of them away from him.

He looked sideways at Winter. She was gazing straight ahead at the garage entrance, but he knew she could feel his eyes on her.

And there was no fear in her face. Nothing but calmness and determination.

Dozer felt his lip twist. She was barely half his age. Certainly no more than half his size. But even she should be smart enough to be concerned about the odds of going up against a Black Sun official and his bodyguards.

Maybe she was nervous. Maybe she just wasn’t showing it.

Or maybe she just didn’t care. Maybe all she cared about was getting the job done.

And Dozer would be damned if he let a half-baked girl show him up.

In fact, come to think of it, the whole bunch of them had been pretty much ignoring him from the day this whole thing started. He’d been scheduled as front man, and then Calrissian had showed up and been handed the job. He’d expected to have to boost airspeeders, but Eanjer had just gone out and rented the things. Aside from the Z-95 and that other job Han had asked him to do, he’d basically done nothing to earn his slice of the pie except pass out bribes that everyone knew Villachor’s people wouldn’t even take.

Well, that was going to change. He, Dozer Creed, was going to make Eanjer’s 163 million look like pocket change. And when he did, the others would treat him with more respect. A lot more respect.

“Yeah,” he growled to Winter. “I’m ready.”

And to his mild surprise, he found that he actually meant it.

A hissing curl of flame rolled past directly above them like a flaming snake. Lando ducked reflexively, even though the fire was contained by a repulsor field and a good two meters above his head. Chewbacca, who was even closer to the flame, didn’t even flinch.

But then, Chewbacca was seriously focused right now. Having seen him in that mood before, Lando was just as glad the Wookiee’s focus wasn’t on him.

The fire blew past, and Chewbacca rumbled.

“He’s here,” Lando said.

“Where?” Eanjer asked.

“Over by the security station at the south end of the children’s play pavilion,” Lando told him.

Eanjer grunted. “I’m a little surprised he was willing to meet out in the open like this.”

“I wasn’t offering him any choice,” Lando said grimly. “I doubt he’s very happy about it.”

“We don’t always get what we want,” Eanjer said philosophically. “Is Qazadi with him?”

Chewbacca rumbled again.

“No sign of any Falleen,” Lando reported. “Okay. Ten more steps, and it’ll be time for you and Chewie to break off and go find Bink.”

“Wait a minute,” Eanjer objected, frowning at Lando with his good eye. “I thought I was going with you.”

“I don’t know where you got that idea,” Lando said. “You’re going with Chewie.”

“But—”

“And if you give either of us any static about it, he’s going to toss you over his shoulder and carry you out of here like a child throwing a tantrum,” Lando told him. “Clear?”

Eanjer threw a look upward at Chewbacca. “Clear,” he said reluctantly.

“You came here to get Han out,” Lando reminded him. “That’s Chewie’s job, and I know he can use your help.”

Chewbacca warbled his opinion of that.

For once, Lando decided it would be best not to translate. “Me, I’m just delivering a package and then getting out,” he said instead.

Which wasn’t quite true, either. Again, Eanjer didn’t need to concern himself with the details.

Chewbacca growled a warning.

“Time to go,” Lando said, underlining his order with a firm push against Eanjer’s shoulder. “Good luck.”

With a curt nod, Eanjer veered off into the crowd, Chewbacca striding along behind him. Lando waited until the Wookiee was just a head bobbing along above the crowd, then pulled out his comlink. “Rachele?”

“Looks like a total of eight bodyguards in the clump,” she reported. “But there are at least four more security types loitering in a ring twenty meters out from the main group. There might be more that I haven’t tagged.”

Lando nodded. He’d expected Villachor to come heavily prepared, and he’d been right. “Qazadi?”

“No sign of him. Villachor may be planning to take you inside for that part of the meeting.”

“I’m sure he is,” Lando said sourly. Going inside the mansion was what had gotten Han locked up, and Lando had no intention of offering Villachor a two-for-one special. Especially given what he was wearing beneath his tear-away outfit. “Did Tavia make it in okay?”

“She’s in, and hanging around the main flame geyser setup,” Rachele said. “Hold it … Yes—she’s seen Chewbacca. Starting to move southeast … okay, I see Bink now, coming out of the drinks pavilion with Sheqoa. Chewie and Tavia are drifting to intercept.”

“Good,” Lando said. He thought briefly about having Rachele give Tavia a quick call to remind her about the newly tweaked timing, then decided against it. She and Chewbacca knew what they were doing, and Bink already knew to wait for their lead. As long as they didn’t push it, the timing ought to be all right. “Okay, I’m going in,” he said. “How’s the north end of the children’s pavilion look?”

“Clear, as far as I can tell,” Rachele said. “But I can’t tag all of Villachor’s people from here. Watch yourself.”

“I will,” Lando said. “Don’t forget, odds are Villachor hasn’t spread my face around too widely, not even to his whole security force.”

“That may be what your calculations tell you,” Rachele said darkly. “Me, I’m not so sure.”

“I’ll be fine,” Lando said. “I’ve got those squeaker charges from Kell’s pack. If worse comes to worst, I can start tossing them around and try to get away in the confusion.”

“Just don’t make it too confusing,” Rachele reminded him. “The last thing we want right now is a full-blown panic.”

“I know,” Lando said. “I’ll check in again after I make the drop.”

The children’s pavilion was easy to identify, full of colorful play equipment and bursting with excited shouts and laughter. Lando approached the north end cautiously but didn’t see any hard-eyed men hanging around. Through the maze of colorful climbing and play structures he caught occasional glimpses of Villachor and his clump of guards, waiting for Lando at the south end, where Lando had told them to wait.

Villachor wasn’t going to be happy about being stood up this way. But people didn’t always get what they wanted.

As he walked past the pavilion he dropped the case casually inside the northwest corner’s vertical support pillar.

He walked for another minute, weaving in and out of traveling clumps of people, at one point slipping through a double line as they moved back and forth between one of the flame fountains and the drink pavilion. Only then did he pull out his comlink and punch in Villachor’s number.

The other man answered promptly. “Villachor.”

“Kwerve,” Lando identified himself. “The package is waiting for you at the northwest corner of the children’s pavilion.”

There was a brief pause. “I thought we were going to have a face-to-face discussion like civilized gentlemen.”

“I know,” Lando agreed. “My boss decided there wasn’t really anything more we needed to say to each other right now. He also wants to know when we can expect his other employee to be released.”

“After we’ve checked out the device,” Villachor said. “And if it isn’t where you say—or if there happens to an explosion when we open it—I promise you his only release will come from a very slow death.”

“There won’t be any explosions,” Lando promised, wincing. Chewie’s plan for getting Han out had better work. “My boss told me to tell you in turn that if any of his people are harmed, you’ll be the one who’ll die very slowly.”

“I’m sure he did,” Villachor said with deceptive calmness. “Tell him I’m looking forward to meeting him someday.”

“Someday,” Lando promised, trying to match the other’s tone. “Enjoy the package. We’ll look forward to seeing our friend soon.”

When it happened, it happened all at once.

One minute the hall outside Han’s room was as dead as a Hutt’s list of friends. The next it was suddenly hosting a parade. Keeping as low as he could, he watched as six humans and three Falleen went marching past, one of the Falleen dressed like he was getting an Imperial citation, the other Falleen and the humans armed right up to their collarbones.

Somewhere out there, Lando had apparently delivered the cryodex.

He waited until the procession had passed, and gave them another minute after that just to make sure. Then, easing up out of his slouch, he headed silently to the door. A quick check in both directions showed that the hallway was again deserted. Trying to watch both directions at once, he headed back toward the central section of the mansion.

There wasn’t much he could do yet, he knew. Not until the plan kicked off in earnest. With no weapons, allies, or comlink, all he could do was find a place to go to ground for a while.

Fortunately, having had some time to think about it, he’d come up with the ideal spot.

Only the major rooms on Rachele’s schematics had been labeled, but her analysis of this particular second-floor cluster of small rooms had suggested they were probably a security station. At the moment, with the Marblewood guard contingent stretched thin, it stood to reason that the smaller substations were likely to be deserted.

The main security room part of the cluster, where the equipment and weapons were probably stored, was solidly locked. But the lounge area to the side was open and empty.

Best of all, it was conveniently located right down the hall from the main guards’ quarters and ready room, the room right over the junior ballroom.

The room where, if all went according to plan, the team would be assembling to breach the vault.

There was a good chance, Han knew, that no one would disturb him until the unexpected entertainment Kell and Zerba had arranged started up outside. But just in case someone did …

The lounge turned out to be stocked with plenty of snack foods and bottles of water, fruit juices, and caf drinks. Finding a tray, Han took it to the sideboard and loaded half the drink bottles and half the bowl of fruit onto it. Then, positioning himself with his back to the door, he slid the hanger he’d taken from his closet holding cell into his belt where it would be handy.

A roving guard would probably be instantly suspicious of a stranger wandering the mansion’s hallways. He shouldn’t be nearly so suspicious of a simple worker who had come to restock the snack selection.

With luck he’d remain unsuspicious long enough for Han to get in the first shot.

Eyeing the snacks, wondering if it would look suspicious if a guard caught one of the food-service workers eating on the job, Han settled in to wait.

Dayja was still circling the grounds, looking in vain for the rest of Eanjer’s team, when he finally spotted one of them.

Not that the discovery was anything to be especially proud of. The Wookiee towered over all the humans and most of the other aliens mixed into the crowd—tall enough, in fact, that he and the others of his species were probably in danger of being singed by some of the lower flowing-fire exhibits. He was heading northwest, Dayja saw, striding through the crowd with a determination that confirmed he wasn’t just aimlessly enjoying the show.

Smiling tightly, Dayja plotted himself an intercept/tracking course and headed off to see what the Wookiee was up to.

He’d gotten four steps when a hard object abruptly jabbed into his ribs, bringing him to an equally sudden stop. “Well, well,” a voice murmured in his ear. “About time you showed your face.”

Dayja swallowed a curse. In all that had happened over the past few days, he’d nearly forgotten that voice. “Hello, Crovendif,” he said casually. “Enjoying the show?”

“Enjoying it a lot more now,” Crovendif growled. “Master Villachor’s been all up on my back, wanting more of that glitterstim you foisted off on me. Only you never showed. Anywhere.”

“I’ve been busy,” Dayja said, looking casually over his shoulder. If he could twist himself out of Crovendif’s line of fire, he should to be able to take him down quietly enough that the crowd flowing around them wouldn’t even notice.

Unfortunately, that lack of awareness probably wouldn’t extend to the two Marblewood security men watching him from a few meters away.

He’d tagged Crovendif as too stupid or too careless to secure backup before confronting a potentially dangerous suspect. Clearly he’d underestimated the man. “I trust Master Villachor found the sample intriguing?”

“I don’t know,” Crovendif said. “What say we go ask him?” He pressed the blaster harder into Dayja’s side. “Right now.”

Villachor had been glowering across the children’s pavilion for nearly two minutes, planning in exquisite detail exactly what he would do to his prisoner if Kwerve was lying, when confirmation finally came. “They’ve got it,” Manning announced quietly, leaning a little closer to his comlink clip. “Same case he brought in before.”

The same case. Did that also mean the same booby trap? “Did they open it?”

“No, sir,” Manning said. “They’re taking it to the guardroom.”

Where Dempsey and his bomb-scanning equipment were already set up. “Good.” Villachor glanced around, half expecting to see Kwerve watching him from the fringe of the crowd. But the man was nowhere to be seen. “Back inside,” he ordered. “Alert His Excellency that we should have the cryodex in the southwest foyer within a few minutes.”

“He’s already there,” Manning said uncomfortably. “Bromley says he looks impatient.”

Villachor swallowed a curse. Of course Qazadi was impatient. He wanted someone dead.

But at least that someone wouldn’t be Villachor. Not once he proved that Kwerve really had shown him a cryodex.

Though why Kwerve had given it up so easily still bothered him. Was their prisoner worth that much to his boss? Or was there something else still going on beneath the surface?

“Do you want us to go after him, sir?” Tawb asked. “Or shall we send out a full alert? We have Kwerve’s description.”

“But not his face,” Villachor growled.

Tawb winced. “No, sir.”

Villachor shifted his glare to the sky above him. Cursed useless cam droids, and the techs still hadn’t figured out why they couldn’t take decent pictures. “Forget it,” he decided. His two bodyguards and Sheqoa were the only ones who’d actually seen the man, and right now he needed all three of them to stay exactly where they were. “There’s no serious damage he can do out here. Not now.”

He gestured to the other security men. “The rest of you, return to your patrol areas,” he said, raising his voice over the noise of the crowd. “And keep your eyes open.”

Someone else, even another crime lord, might have expressed his impatience by pacing back and forth across the foyer. But vigos didn’t pace. At least this one didn’t. Qazadi was standing perfectly still as Villachor and his two bodyguards walked in through the doorway, his eyes cold as he stared at and through Villachor.

“The cryodex is in our hands, Your Excellency,” Villachor announced. “It’s being checked for traps as we speak.”

“And this Master Kwerve?” Qazadi asked.

“He skipped the meeting and left the case in a different spot,” Villachor said. “He’s probably already left the grounds.”

“Without his companion?” A hint of an icy smile touched Qazadi’s lips. “I think not. Alert your guards to watch the doors carefully. Sooner or later he’ll attempt to enter the mansion.”

“The guards are already on alert,” Villachor said, trying not to scowl. He didn’t need a vigo to tell him how to run his own territory. “The doors are quite secure.”

“Good,” Qazadi said. “I wish to see this alleged cryodex. How soon until the check is complete?”

Across the foyer, the guardroom door opened and Dempsey emerged, his gait an ominous mixture of urgency and reluctance. He was holding the cryodex in front of him in both hands as if it were a priceless work of art.

“I would say it’s complete right now,” Villachor said, beckoning to Dempsey. “Bring it here,” he called. “I gather there were no explosives?”

Dempsey’s eyes flicked to Qazadi. But instead of answering, he merely picked up his pace.

Villachor felt a stirring of fresh anger. He wasn’t accustomed to having his questions ignored. “I asked if there were any explosives,” he repeated harshly.

“No explosives, Master Villachor,” Dempsey said as he came to a jerky halt a few meters away from the group. He seemed now to be trying very hard not to look at Qazadi. “But there was a trap: a pressurized gas canister set to explode in a cloud-spray pattern when the case was opened.”

So Kwerve had had one last lethal trick up his sleeve. He and his people would pay dearly for that. “What kind of gas?”

“I’ll need to take the canister back to my lab to run a proper chemical analysis,” Dempsey said. “But the label—” His tongue swiped across his upper lip. “The label identified it as white fieljine.”

A violent hiss exploded from somewhere in Qazadi’s group, a sound unlike anything Villachor had ever heard before. He jerked in reaction, twisting around to look.

He’d thought he’d seen Qazadi angry before. He’d been wrong. This was what an angry Falleen looked like. “Your Excellency?” he asked cautiously.

“You will find this human Kwerve and bring him to me,” Qazadi said in a voice that sent a shiver through Villachor’s body. “Then you will find everyone in his organization and bring them to me, as well.”

“I understand, Your Excellency,” Villachor said, wishing like hell that he did. He spun back to Dempsey. “What in the galaxy is white fieljine?”

“It’s a poison,” Dempsey said, visibly shaking now. “That only kills Falleen.”

Villachor stared at him, feeling the blood draining from his face. In a single heartbeat this had gone from business rivalry to something bitterly personal.

Kwerve was dead, all right. So was everyone in his organization, and probably everyone his organization had ever dealt with.

And unless Villachor nailed the son of a Sith, and fast, he very likely would join them. “I see,” he managed. “Well—”

He broke off again as the door behind him suddenly opened. He spun around, half expecting to see Kwerve and a heavily armed assault team charging in to rescue their comrade.

But it was only two of his security team, Becker and Tarrish, standing in the doorway, an unknown man wearing field binders pressed between them. “What?” he snarled.

“Someone outside named Crovendif told us to bring him to you, sir,” Becker said, his professional demeanor cracking as he picked up on the tension shimmering across the foyer. “He said it’s the man who gave him the glitterstim sample a few days ago.”

Villachor felt a trickle of relief. Finally, some good news, and the timing couldn’t have been better. “You asked for Kwerve’s organization, Your Excellency,” he said, motioning them in. “Here’s the first of them.”

“Really,” Qazadi said, eyeing the newcomer. His brief burst of rage had apparently ended, Villachor noted uneasily. With Falleen, he knew, that could be a bad sign, or a very bad sign. “Bring him to me.” Qazadi beckoned to Dempsey. “And the cryodex.”

Villachor nodded confirmation of the order. Becker and Tarrish walked their prisoner over to Qazadi, stopping a few meters away as two of the Falleen’s bodyguards intercepted them and silently but firmly took the man into their own custody. At the same time, Dempsey walked gingerly over to the group and likewise handed the cryodex to one of Qazadi’s Falleen, who in turn handed it to Qazadi.

“As you can see, Your Excellency, it’s indeed a cryodex,” Villachor said, watching as Qazadi studied the instrument. “And as I also told you, my sole intent was to draw out him and his organization—”

“What is this?” Qazadi snarled, his rage suddenly back again. “Where did you get this?” He sent the prisoner a laser-edged glare. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” the prisoner protested, wincing back from the Falleen’s fury. “Whoever these people are, I’m not with them—”

Abruptly, Qazadi took a long step forward and slapped the man hard across his face. He staggered back, only the guards’ grips preventing him from toppling onto the stone floor.

“Your Excellency, what is it?” Villachor asked carefully.

Qazadi turned vicious eyes on him. “This is not some random cryodex,” he bit out. “This is Aziel’s. Aziel’s!”

“Aziel’s?” Villachor echoed, thoroughly confused now. “He has his own—?”

And in a sudden, horrible rush he understood. Aziel didn’t have the key codes to a cryodex that Qazadi kept in his suite, the way Qazadi had told him. He never had. Instead, Aziel was the keeper of the cryodex itself.

But if this was Aziel’s cryodex, then Kwerve’s offer to copy the blackmail files …

He caught his breath. It was impossible. For an aide to a Black Sun vigo to even think about betrayal was utterly impossible.

And yet there it was, handed to them by Kwerve himself. Aziel’s cryodex.

Or something that looked like Aziel’s cryodex. “It has to be a copy,” he said into the taut silence. “A forgery.”

“How?” Qazadi demanded. “There are marks on the back that only his cryodex has. Marks that no one else would ever see. Certainly that no one else would ever notice. Why would they have been included?”

“I don’t know,” Villachor said. “But it has to be a trick. Because if it’s really Lord Aziel’s cryodex—” He broke off, realizing he didn’t dare say it.

Qazadi had no such compunctions. “Then Aziel is a traitor,” he said quietly. “And so, perhaps, are you.”

“No,” Villachor said quickly. Possibly too quickly. “If I were planning something with Lord Aziel, he and I would hardly need to go through all this complication. I could have given him the files long ago.”

“Perhaps you did,” Qazadi said. “Perhaps this was merely your preferred method of drawing my interest to this matter and then arranging my death.” He lifted the cryodex slightly. “Certainly once I was dead it would be unlikely that the true ownership of this device could ever be proven.”

Villachor felt his stomach tighten. The whole thing was utterly insane.

But a Black Sun vigo didn’t need courtroom-level proof to make decisions and pass judgments. He could do it purely on his own suspicions.

“But I don’t think poison suits your style,” Qazadi continued. “If not you, perhaps one of your men has been acting in collusion with the traitor.”

Villachor’s first impulse was to deny it. His men were loyal, hand-screened by Sheqoa himself.

His second impulse was to keep his mouth firmly shut. If Qazadi’s threat of death was pointed at someone else, it wouldn’t be pointed at him.

Qazadi knew that, too. “I see you don’t deny the possibility,” he commented.

“Unfortunately, anything is possible, Your Excellency,” Villachor said, choosing his words carefully. “Before today, I would have said all of my men were unquestionably loyal to Black Sun. Now—” He shook his head.

“Yes,” Qazadi said, the word coming out as a snake’s hiss. “You’ve removed all human guards from the vault, as I ordered?”

“Yes, Your Excellency,” Villachor confirmed. At the time, he’d thought the order dangerously stupid. Now he was very glad he’d obeyed it. “And I checked the vault after they left. The data cards were still in place.” He nodded at the prisoner, who’d pulled himself mostly back to his feet and was sagging between his guards. “What do you want me to do with him?”

“I will deal with him,” Qazadi said, eyeing the man coolly. “You say you aren’t with these people, human?”

“I’ve never even heard of this Kwerve person,” the man said, his voice strained, his breathing shallow and rapid. “Or this Aziel, or a cryodex, or any of the rest of it. I just have a good source of glitterstim, and I’m looking for someone to distribute it for me. I even brought another sample—he’s got it right there.” He started to lift one hand to point to Becker.

And gave a strangled gasp as Qazadi’s guard bent his arm against the elbow joint. “I’m not with them,” the prisoner moaned. “I swear.”

For another moment Qazadi stared at him. The man squirmed under the Falleen’s gaze, avoiding his eyes, looking like he was on the verge of tears. A far cry from the arrogant, overconfident drug dealer Crovendif had described, Villachor thought contemptuously.

“Take him to my quarters,” Qazadi said at last. “What was he carrying?”

“A comlink, a holocamera, and a small vial,” Becker said. “Maybe the glitterstim. No weapons.”

“Bring them here.”

Again Becker glanced at Villachor for confirmation, then stepped forward and handed the items to one of the men holding the prisoner. “Take those to my quarters as well,” Qazadi ordered. “Wait for me there.”

“We obey, Your Excellency,” one of the guards said. He nudged the prisoner, and the three of them headed toward the service turbolift at the rear of the foyer.

Qazadi watched them go, then turned to one of his four remaining human guards. “Take two others and my airspeeders and position yourselves in observation sites around the Lulina Crown Hotel,” he ordered. “I’ll order Lord Aziel to bring his cryodex here. If Master Villachor is right and this is merely some clever copy, he’ll answer the summons without hesitation or fear.”

He looked at Villachor. “If Master Villachor is wrong and this is indeed Aziel’s cryodex, he will attempt to run. By his own actions he will be condemned.”

The guard bowed. “I obey, Your Excellency,” he said. Pulling out his comlink, he strode briskly from the foyer, heading in the direction of the garage.

“May I offer the assistance of my own security forces?” Villachor asked hesitantly.

“Are there any you can trust with your life?” Qazadi countered.

Under the circumstances, Villachor knew what the correct answer had to be. “No,” he conceded.

“Then your men may not help,” Qazadi said. “I’ll let you know the results of my interrogations in due time.”

He turned and headed toward the stairs, the two Falleen and three humans forming a moving box around him.

Villachor watched him go, a hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach. In the nearly three weeks since Qazadi and his entourage had arrived, he’d seen the Falleen’s guards take up such an obviously defensive formation only on the rare occasions when they moved from the safety of the mansion out onto the grounds. Clearly, Qazadi no longer felt safe inside Villachor’s home.

Villachor could hardly blame him. If the cryodex was a fake, how had it been done? If it was real, what could possibly have possessed Aziel to make this insane bid for power?

Unless Kwerve’s people hadn’t been targeting only Villachor. Maybe they’d been working both sides: Aziel for his cryodex, Villachor for the files themselves.

Or perhaps there was no treason at all. After all, he had only Qazadi’s word that Kwerve’s cryodex was identical to Aziel’s. Could this be Qazadi’s way of painting Villachor with the suspicion of treason?

If so, there was likely nothing he could do about it. He was a sector chief; Qazadi was a vigo. Whether Aziel was genuinely a traitor or whether Qazadi was manipulating nonexistent evidence to implicate Villachor, it was one side’s word against the other’s.

And there was no doubt at all which of them Prince Xizor would believe.

Suddenly, a deal with the Imperials was looking better and better.

“Sir?” Tawb said.

Villachor snapped out of his dark thoughts, fresh determination flooding through him. He wasn’t going to go running off to Lord d’Ashewl, Darth Vader, or even the Emperor himself. He was going to stand his ground and fight for the power and territory that he’d worked so hard to build. The power and territory that were rightfully his. How could he even have thought about giving in?

And then he realized how he could have thought about it, and he bared his teeth in a vicious snarl.

Curse Qazadi and his Falleen pheromones, anyway.

“Sir?” Tawb repeated, more urgently.

“What?” Villachor snapped.

“I’m getting reports of a commotion outside,” the bodyguard said urgently.

“What kind of commotion?” Qazadi’s voice wafted across the room.

Villachor turned around. The Falleen and his guard had paused near the foot of the stairway and were looking back at Villachor and the others.

Villachor turned back to Tawb. And curse Tawb and his big mouth, too. “You heard him,” he growled. “What kind of commotion?”

“It appears—” Tawb frowned and leaned closer to his comlink clip. “It appears that some of the droids are … going crazy.”

The sky was darkening, and Bink was wondering if something had gone wrong, when she finally spotted Chewbacca drifting casually toward them.

She breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Sheqoa’s comlink clip had been spitting out new orders or updates every few minutes for the past hour, and though she couldn’t hear any of them distinctly as she nestled against his side, she could tell by his facial muscles and body tension that something wasn’t going well in Villachor’s little corner of paradise. The fact that Sheqoa apparently was ignoring the updates in favor of continuing to wander the crowds and pretending to enjoy Bink’s prattle confirmed that Bink was still his current assignment.

Which was, of course, exactly how she wanted it.

Chewie was moving closer, his attention apparently on something off to the side. Bink hadn’t seen Tavia yet, but she had no doubt her sister was moving up behind her, exactly as she was supposed to.

Casually, she extricated her right hand from Sheqoa’s left arm, reaching up to brush a lock of hair out of her eyes and taking the opportunity for one last visual check of the fingersnips fastened all but invisibly beneath her nails. They were set and ready to go. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Chewbacca moving in from her left …

And suddenly there he was, angling sideways straight into her as he looked at something off to his own left. Bink jerked away from the big furry wall bearing down on her and ducked sideways in front of Sheqoa. She pivoted around to face him as she continued her evasive motion, her left hand clutching at Sheqoa’s shoulder, her right pressed briefly against his upper chest as she breathed a startled and panicky gasp into his face.

As she continued around to his other side, the fingersnips on her right hand deftly cut through the small chain connecting the key pendant to the choker around his neck. The fingertip-sized glazed stone dropped into her hand, and as she palmed it, she continued on to Sheqoa’s right side, grabbing his right arm with both hands.

Which was his gun hand, which he’d already warned her not to grab. Sure enough, before she could even get her feet planted, his forearm lurched reflexively up and back, throwing off her hands and sending her falling backward into the flowing mass of people behind her. She half turned as someone grabbed her, caught a glimpse of a brown dress and floppy hat and Tavia’s face. As the two of them spun around, fighting for balance against Bink’s momentum, Bink’s flailing right hand came up beneath the brim of Tavia’s hat, flipping it back and off her sister’s head. As the hat sailed up into the air, Bink’s left hand slipped into a fold of her skirt and caught hold of Zerba’s magic egg. She squeezed the activator—

And in the blink of an eye, as the two of them toppled to the ground, Bink’s red silk dress was ripped instantly away into the egg, leaving her dressed in a duplicate of Tavia’s brown dress, as Tavia’s brown dress similarly vanished to reveal the copy of Bink’s red one.

Their twirling movement as they fell had landed Bink on the bottom of the two-woman heap. Tavia was off her in an instant, rolling away so as to give Bink the necessary freedom of movement to flip over onto her stomach and get her face turned away from Sheqoa. She finished the roll, then got her hands under her and pushed herself shakily up onto her knees. A second later, half a dozen hands closed around her arms, another half dozen grabbed Tavia’s, and a moment later both women were back on their feet. Standing behind her sister, listening tensely for the cues that would mean Sheqoa hadn’t been fooled by the trick, Bink brushed herself off and drifted farther into the crowd, murmuring her assurances to the anxious people around her that she was fine. Someone handed her Tavia’s floppy hat as she passed; she smiled her thanks and set it carefully onto her head.

“You okay?” Sheqoa said gruffly from behind her. Bink tensed—

“I’m fine,” Tavia said, sounding breathless. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”

“It’s okay,” Sheqoa said. His voice was still gruff, but Bink could hear that the growl was coming from embarrassment, not suspicion. “Stupid clumsy oaf of a Wookiee. Did he hurt you?”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Tavia said again. “I thought for sure he was going to run me straight down.”

“It’s okay now,” Sheqoa said, and Bink could visualize him taking her arm and pulling her gently but firmly back to his side.

Somewhere in the near distance, audible over the roar of the crowd and the hissing of the various flame jets, came the sound of crashing tableware. “Uh-oh—sounds like someone’s going to have some cleanup to do,” Tavia commented. “I guess Wookiees aren’t the only clumsy oafs here today.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when two more crashes sounded across the grounds, each of them coming from a different direction. A half second later, an even louder crash echoed off the mansion wall, this one accompanied by a woman’s or child’s scream.

“That’s not someone being clumsy,” Sheqoa bit out. “Come on.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Bink saw them head off quickly in the direction of the latest crash, disappearing within seconds into the crowd.

She smiled tightly to herself as she made a more leisurely departure from the area. So much for her worries that something had gone wrong.

The plan was back on schedule. Chewbacca and Tavia had done their jobs, and from the ever-growing cacophony of crashes, screams, and shouts it was clear that Kell and Zerba had done theirs.

Time for Bink to do hers.

The others would be waiting for her at the garage door. Picking up her pace, wondering just how big a mess the droids were making, she headed north.

Dayja had never been hit by a Falleen before, and if Qazadi’s slap was a representative sample of their work, he was pretty sure he never wanted to be hit by one again. That single blow was still throbbing through his cheek, his head, and most of the upper half of his body.

But the residual effects from the slap paled in comparison to the mental dizziness that had been created by the revelations ricocheting across his brain.

A cryodex. So that was how Xizor had encrypted his blackmail files. Imperial Intelligence had managed to collect alleged bits of those files over the years but had never been able to crack the encryption or even to figure out how it was done. There were many analysts, in fact, who flatly rejected the idea that those bits were genuine Black Sun files and assumed they were simple disinformation designed to keep Intelligence running in loops.

A cryodex explained everything. And if the blackmail files, why not other sensitive information? In fact, why not the whole Black Sun information network?

Dayja wrinkled his nose. Intriguing, but highly unlikely. There might yet be other cryodexes still floating around, any one of which could instantly slice the unsliceable code. Xizor was far too smart to put too many hatchlings in the same basket.

But even if it was just the blackmail files, getting hold of that cryodex would be a major accomplishment. Especially now that most of the remaining models were part of the expanding dust cloud that had once been Alderaan. Dayja had no idea how Eanjer’s team had gotten hold of Aziel’s device, but he had no intention of letting Qazadi or anyone else kick it back into the shadows.

Assuming, of course, that the device he’d left Qazadi holding was indeed the real cryodex.

Mentally, he shook his head. He was with Villachor on this one. Stealing Aziel’s cryodex or duplicating it both seemed to be at roughly the same level of impossibility. The whole thing was smelling suspiciously like a con man’s shell game, and until he knew which shell the real cryodex was under, there was no point making any moves.

Except, of course, for the first move in any and all future plans, which was to get free of Qazadi’s thugs.

“Get in,” one of the thugs growled as the turbolift door slid open. Hunching his shoulders in the very image of demoralization, Dayja obeyed. The guards joined him, and they headed up.

Holodrama writers, Dayja had noticed over the years, had a strange fascination with turbolifts. They especially liked casting such places as the perfect spot for a captured hero or heroine to burst into action against evil captors, using hands or feet or concealed weapons to render their opponents dead or unconscious, usually before they even reached their designated floor. Maybe it was the drama of the close quarters that the producers liked, or maybe it was simply that turbolift fights required no set dressing and left minimal damage to clean up afterward.

It was, of course, ridiculous. The close quarters meant there was nowhere a would-be escapee could run to, along with the added disadvantage of having to fight an entire circle of enemies at the same time. The lack of furniture or decoration meant no impromptu weapons close at hand. There was also no telling what kind of setting or situation the turbolift door would open up on. Even if the hero made it through all that, a turbolift car had no place in which to hide the bodies.

Finally, the fact that the bad guys watched those same holodramas meant that they fully expected trouble to break out in turbolift cars. As a result, guards had a tendency to press even more closely around a prisoner in such a setting, their senses alert to any sign of trouble.

Unfortunately for them, the fact that they were watching for signs of impending violence tended to make them oblivious to everything else. Which made turbolifts the ideal place for a prisoner to pick his binders.

Dayja had his unfastened by the time the door slid open on the fourth floor. “Where are we going?” he asked, peering nervously out through the opening. The hallway was exquisitely decorated, with potted plants and expensive artwork along the walls, a thick carpet on the floor, and a molded glitter-coated ceiling above them. A guest floor, undoubtedly, with Qazadi and his guard contingent probably the only current residents. Several of the doors lining the hallway stood open, but there was no one in sight.

“To your own personal hell,” one of the guards answered, giving him a shove out of the car. “Move.”

Turbolift cars were rotten places to pick a fight. Turbolift car doorways, on the other hand, were ideal.

The nearest open door led into a sleeping room that was even more nicely furnished than the hallway. The walk-in closet had a lock, but there was enough room on the far side of the massive bed for both of the bodies. Dayja paused long enough to relieve the late guards of his appropriated comlink and holocamera, then headed back to the turbolift. It would have been nice to take one of their blasters, too, but he wouldn’t put it past Qazadi to have all his guards’ weapons track-chipped. Once the alarm went up and the hunt began, there was no point in making it too easy for them to find him.

The original plans for the governor’s mansion had included a roof stairway beside the dumbwaiter shaft that led up from the kitchen in the building’s central section. There was a chance Villachor had sealed it up as unnecessary and a possible security risk, but it was worth a try.

To his mild surprise the stairway was still there, its entrance concealed behind an impressive four-panel wall painting. He got the door open and slipped inside, closing the painting behind him as best he could.

Rooftops were traditionally a bad place for a fugitive to be trapped, especially rooftops high enough that jumping would almost certainly lead to death or serious injury. But his escape probably would be discovered within a very few minutes, and the same logic that argued against rooftops as a hiding place should send Villachor’s searchers running off to check all the other likely places first. At the very least, it should buy Dayja a little more time.

And right now, time was what he needed most.

Taking the stairs as quietly as he could, he pulled out his comlink. He only hoped his call wouldn’t be too late.

Across the darkening grounds came the sound of crunching wood. “There,” Tawb said, pointing in that direction. “There goes another one.”

“Sounds like a maintenance droid kicking over a bench,” Manning added. “Yes—make that an affirmative. Tallboy’s heading over to try to tackle it.”

With an effort, Villachor held on to what was left of his patience. A few malfunctioning droids, and his so-called professional security men were panicking? “We have tech people for this,” he growled, spinning around and heading back toward the open doorway behind him. “Call them.”

“No,” Qazadi’s voice came from inside the doorway.

Villachor stopped, swallowing a curse. “They’re malfunctioning droids, Your Excellency,” he bit out. “It happens all the time. Probably a frequency bleed-through between motivators—”

“Or a deliberate attack,” Qazadi cut him off. “Your security chief himself seems to think so.”

Villachor frowned. “What?”

“He comes to you now,” Qazadi said.

Villachor turned back around. Sure enough, Sheqoa had appeared from the edge of the crowd and was hurrying toward him, his hand locked around the wrist of a young woman in a red dress as he half pulled, half dragged her behind him.

And there was definitely a hard set to his face.

Villachor bared his teeth. Treason and betrayal all around him, prisoners who might hold the key waiting to be interrogated, and all these fools could worry about were a few rampaging droids?

But Qazadi was concerned, and Qazadi was the one calling the shots. All Villachor could do was get the mess fixed as quickly as possible and get back to the real issues.

“It’s the droids, sir,” Sheqoa said as he came up to them. “Serving and maintenance both.”

“Yes, I can hear them,” Villachor snarled as another crash and startled scream came from somewhere to the northwest. “I’ve already called Purvis. If there’s a programming glitch, he’ll fix it.”

“I don’t think it’s a glitch,” Sheqoa insisted. “I think this is a deliberate diversion. My men are already stretched thin, and this is distracting them even more—”

“Sheqoa!” Villachor snapped, feeling a surge of horror and fury. The man’s neck—“Your key pendant!”

Sheqoa’s free hand went to his throat, his eyes widening in the same horror as he touched the spot where the pendant should have been. Then, with a curse, he hauled the woman around in front of him. “Where is it?” he bit out as she stumbled to a halt between him and Villachor. “Curse you, where is it?”

“Where is what?” she protested, shrinking back from his glare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sheqoa swore again and shoved her toward Tawb. “Hold her,” he ordered as he dug into his pocket and pulled out his glow rod. Spinning the selector to ultraviolet, he grabbed the woman’s right hand, pulled it close, and turned the light on it. Villachor took a step closer and peered down at the hand.

Nothing. Just plain skin, the calcium in her fingernails glowing the usual white, with no signs anywhere of the tracking dye that coated all the key pendants.

Sheqoa flashed Villachor an unreadable look, dropped the girl’s right hand, and tried the UV light on her left. Still nothing.

“And?” Qazadi prompted from inside the doorway.

“She took it,” Sheqoa said blackly. “I don’t know why there’s no dye, but I know she took it.” He dropped her hand, all but throwing the arm back to her side. “Maybe with—” He grabbed her left hand again, this time turning it so that he could look closely at the undersides of the fingernails. He swore under his breath and swapped it out for her right hand, giving that set of nails the same scrutiny.

“Fingersnips?” Villachor asked.

Again Sheqoa flung the woman’s hand back at her. “She must have gotten rid of them somehow,” he growled.

“What are you talking about?” the woman demanded. “Look, I don’t want to bring any trouble on you people, but enough is enough. I have rights, and I don’t have to—”

“Shut up,” Sheqoa cut her off. He turned and looked out over the crowd, reaching for his comlink clip. “Kastoni should be closest. I’ll have him take her inside and do a complete search.”

“No,” Qazadi said calmly. “I will take her.”

Villachor turned, frustration surging through him. “With all due respect, Your Excellency, you have other prisoners to interrogate,” he said as civilly as he could. “Prisoners we know are involved.”

“She’s involved, too,” Sheqoa insisted.

“The others will keep, Master Villachor,” Qazadi said. “But this one’s a female. We Falleen have a certain way with females.”

Villachor looked at the woman. Her face had gone rigid. “Anything you want to tell us?” he invited.

She swallowed. “I have nothing to do with whatever it is you’re all talking about,” she said firmly. “I came here today to honor moving fire, and—”

“Take her inside, Sheqoa,” Villachor said, jerking his head toward the door. “If His Excellency wants her, His Excellency can have her.”

“Yes, sir.” Sheqoa took her wrist and once again half pulled, half dragged her to the door and the waiting Falleen.

“And then pull some men from the grounds and do a sweep of the mansion,” Villachor called after him. “Starting with the prisoners.”

“Yes, sir.”

Villachor turned back to the grounds, snarling under his breath at each distant crash or thud or scream. Apparently, Kwerve’s boss wanted his people back.

Time to see just how big a price he was willing to pay for them.

“They’ve taken her inside.” Rachele’s tense voice came from Lando’s comlink. “Someone in there took her—I couldn’t see who it was.”

Lando gazed across the darkening grounds, ducking reflexively as a spiraling fireball overhead briefly lit up the area. “I’ll lay you odds it was Qazadi,” he said. “At least I hope so.”

“You hope so? Lando, do you have any idea what Falleen do to women?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the stories,” Lando said grimly. “I’m hoping he’s got her because I figure he’s got Han, too. And we know where Han is.”

“Maybe,” Rachele said. “If Winter was right about the smoke.”

“I haven’t seen her wrong yet,” Lando reminded her. “And begging a cigarra from someone just so he could send a few puffs into a skylight is exactly the sort of thing Han would do.”

“Fine,” Rachele said. “You just better get in there and get them both out. And fast.”

“As fast as we can,” Lando promised. “Give me the signal.”

“Right,” she said reluctantly. “Just watch yourselves, and don’t forget Dozer’s run-in with Aziel. They’re almost as bad with men as they are with women.”

“We’ll be careful.”

He keyed off and looked at the sky. Night was rapidly falling, with the main fireworks display no more than half an hour away. They had to get this thing done before then.

Only he and Chewbacca couldn’t move. Not yet. Not until Bink had the others safely inside the vault.

For her sister’s sake, Bink had better be on schedule.

Kell and Zerba were waiting near the garage door when Bink arrived. “You get it?” Kell asked.

Bink nodded, reaching into her mouth and retrieving the key pendant from where she’d concealed it under her tongue. The tracking dye tasted exactly the way it smelled, only stronger. “Nice work with the droids, by the way,” she said as they hurried to the door and went through. Beyond was a plain tan-colored service corridor. “Where to?”

“Droid repair room is this way,” Kell murmured, heading off down the service corridor. “Droid control and operations are typically bundled into the same area.”

“Go ahead,” Bink said to Zerba, pulling at the sealing strips of her brown dress. “I’ll catch up.”

“Right,” Zerba said, pulling a hold-out blaster from his belt. “Light-saber?”

Bink pulled up the hem of her skirt and unstrapped the lightsaber from her inside calf. She handed it to Zerba, accepted the blaster in exchange, and as he trotted down the corridor after Kell, she returned to the task of getting rid of her dress.

It wasn’t the same easy tear-away material as the red dress that she’d worn on top of it. But Zerba had at least made sure there were no complicated hooks, laces, ties, or any of the other annoyances often associated with this class of dress. Within a minute she had the dress off and the tools and other bits of equipment fastened to her lower legs back to more convenient spots on belt and hip.

Her last task was to embed the key pendant in a glob of rock putty, open the door a crack, and toss the putty to the ground beside the door. Now, whenever Lando was ready to make his move, he could get inside without having to bully some security man into unlocking the door for him.

She was less than two minutes behind the others. But those two minutes had made all the difference in the universe. Just beyond the droid repair room, she spotted a door with a long, black-edged slice cut into it. Wincing, she hurried over and looked through the crack.

It was the droid control room, all right, its walls lined with controls, computer consoles, and status displays. Kell and Zerba were inside, moving around and between three unmoving bodies sprawled on the floor near various chairs. Grimacing, she eased the door open and went in.

Zerba spun around as the door opened, his hold-out blaster tracking toward her. He lowered the weapon again as he saw who it was. “What kept you?” he asked.

“You try getting out of one of those dresses,” she countered, nodding back toward the door. “I never realized lightsabers made that much of a mess.”

“Mine does,” Zerba said, still sounding a little annoyed. “Why did you think I didn’t want to use it on the outside door? Come here and tell me what I need to do.”

“Probably nothing,” Bink said, gingerly stepping over one of the bodies. “I hope you remembered Han’s order not to kill anyone if we could avoid it.”

“Don’t worry—they’re just stunned,” Kell assured her. “I think this is the Zed console over here. But it looks pretty solid.”

“Not a problem,” Bink said, glancing over the console Zerba was standing beside. “Zerba, that keypad there. Enter eight or nine numbers—any eight or nine will do—then repeat three or four times.”

“Right,” he said, and got to work.

She crossed to Kell’s console, a more heavily armored version of Zerba’s. “Same thing,” she told him, pointing to one of the keypads. “Zerba, toss me that lightsaber, will you?”

“I’ll do it,” Zerba said. He keyed in one final number and then walked over to them, pulling his lightsaber from his belt. “Sorry, but it’s temperamental enough as it is. What do you need?”

“A small cut right here,” she said, running her finger along one of the rear connections. “About three centimeters long, and don’t cut any of the wires behind it.”

“Got it.” He ignited the lightsaber, which gave a gurgly sort of hissing that didn’t sound a thing like the ones in old holodramas. The blade didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen, either, a sort of sickly yellow that was no more than fourteen or fifteen centimeters long.

“I know,” Zerba growled as he positioned it carefully at the spot Bink had indicated. He probably found himself apologizing for the weapon a lot.

Still, useless as it would be in a fight, it was perfectly adequate for what she needed. The tip of the blade cut easily, if noisily, through the metal, leaving another blackened scar like the one on the door. “Good,” she said. “Close it down, and let’s get out of here.”

“You figured out a spot where we can go to ground?” Kell asked as they crossed back to the door.

“I think so,” Bink said, easing the door open and looking out. The corridor was still deserted. “Service stairs twenty meters that way, and up to the second floor.”

“Wait a second,” Kell said, pulling a flat disk from his pocket and gazing up at the ceiling. “Any idea where the intercom and alarm wires would be?”

“What in space do you need those for?” Bink asked.

“That’s right—you don’t know,” Kell said. “Lando called while you were chatting up Sheqoa. Villachor grabbed Han when he came in earlier.”

Bink felt her breath catch in her throat. “What? Oh, bloody—”

“It’s okay—we’ve got a plan,” Zerba hastened to assure her. “We’ll clue you in later.”

“Right now we need an excuse for Lando to come in and make some noise,” Kell said. “That’s this.” He wiggled the disk.

Bink clenched her teeth, running a practiced eye over the top of the door. If the system was laid out like they usually were … “Probably there,” she said, pointing at the right-hand upper corner of the door. “That should be one of the nexus points, anyway.”

“Good enough.” Straining to his full height, Kell pressed the disk into place against the wall. “Okay, let’s go.”

Bink nodded, frowning back over her shoulder at the disk as she again started down the corridor. “What does it do?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Kell said. “But they won’t know that.”

“We should be quiet now, right?” Zerba suggested.

Bink nodded. She had a lot more questions, but they would have to wait.

The service stairs opened up into a gorgeous hallway, and as Bink led the way across the thick carpet she decided that this was, without a doubt, the nicest target she’d ever hit.

“Where are we going?” Kell murmured.

Bink smiled. They had secrets? Fine. So did she. “You’ll see.”

“What do you mean, they’re gone?” Villachor demanded. “Both of them?”

“Yes, sir,” Kastoni said, his tone one of barely controlled fury. “And two of Master Qazadi’s guards are dead. Looks like our glitterstim peddler is more than a typical drug dealer.”

Villachor squeezed his comlink hard enough to hurt. That, or they’d had help from whoever had stolen Sheqoa’s key pendant. “Find them,” he ordered, his own anger and frustration dropping to a quiet simmer. Overt fury would only keep him from thinking clearly, and that was the last thing he could afford. “Pull as many men off ground patrol as you have to, but find them.”

“Sir, they’re probably already off the grounds—”

“If they are, we’ll deal with them later,” Villachor cut him off. “You concentrate on making sure they aren’t hiding somewhere in my house. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

Villachor keyed off, snarling a curse under his breath, and keyed for Sheqoa. “The prisoners are loose,” he said when the other answered.

“Yes, I just heard,” Sheqoa said grimly. “I’ve sent Kastoni five more men, and I’m trying to pull enough guards from the grounds to put one on every door.”

“Good,” Villachor said. “Make it clear that no one goes in or out without my express order.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheqoa said. “Do you want me to assign a couple more men to you?”

“You mean in case they catch Manning and Tawb napping like they did Master Qazadi’s late guards?” Villachor said acidly. “I think that very unlikely.”

“Yes, sir,” Sheqoa said. “If they’re still here, we’ll find them.”

Han had rearranged the snacks and drink bottles on the tray for probably the seventh time, and was wondering how much farther he should try to press his luck, when he heard the soft sound of multiple footsteps coming his way down the hallway.

He froze, one of the apples still in his hand. Then, deliberately, he set it back on the tray and began once again moving the items back onto the sideboard. If whoever it was decided to take a closer look, he decided, the tray itself would be his best bet. He would swing it at whoever was first in line, flinging its current contents into the guard’s face, then try to get to the second guard fast enough to hit him with the tray itself. The footsteps got closer …

And passed the door without slowing.

Han took a deep breath, some of the tension fading. That had been close.

He frowned, taking another deep breath. Wafting in from the hallway was a faint but highly distinctive scent.

The perfume Bink and Tavia had both been wearing this morning.

He was at the door in three quick strides. Sure enough, hurrying quietly down the hallway were Bink, Kell, and Zerba. At least he assumed it was Bink. “Bink!” he stage-whispered, slipping out into the hall and heading after them.

All three spun around, their blasters spinning toward him as well. All three sets of eyes widened as they saw who it was. Bink beckoned him urgently forward, her gesturing hand shifting to a warning finger across her lips.

Han nodded. He’d already figured out that part.

The three of them had stopped in front of a plain metal door by the time Han caught up to them. “We thought you were a prisoner,” Kell whispered as Bink crouched down by the door with her lockpick.

“I was,” Han whispered back, eyeing the ELECTRICAL CLOSET sign on the door. “There going to be enough room in there for all of us?”

“Easily,” Bink assured him. There was a soft click, and the door popped open. “Inside. Quietly.”

Han had seen electrical closets before. In fact, he’d spent a fair amount of time hiding in such places off and on over the years. But he’d never seen one nearly this big. It was a good two meters square, with a ceiling that was pushing three meters, and there were a dozen twenty-centimeter-diameter cables running vertically along the back wall. “What are they powering, a Star Destroyer?” he muttered, looking at the massive cables.

“Close,” Bink murmured. She had her syntherope dispenser out and was fastening the end of the cable to a small glob of rock putty. “These are the cables from the generator in the north subbasement to the south-section umbrella shield projectors on the roof.” Unfolding a small slingshot, she fired the rock putty at one edge of the ceiling, the dispenser feeding a thin line of syntherope behind it. “Kell, that one’s yours,” she said, cutting the line with her fingersnips and refitting the dispenser with more rock putty. “Give it a ten-count, then hook in your belt link and go all the way to the ceiling.”

By the time the putty was solid enough for Kell to start pulling himself up, she had two more lines in place. “I guess you and I are going to have to share one,” Bink said, slipping out of her climbing belt and handing it to Han. “Ever had someone sit in your lap two meters off the ground?”

“Not lately,” Han said as he fastened the belt around his waist. By the time he was ready, Kell and Zerba were all the way up at the ceiling, their bodies pressed flat against the ceramic. “What do we do if they look up?”

“Got it covered,” Bink assured him. She stepped over to him, threaded the syntherope through the belt link, then turned around and backed way too cozily against him. “You want to operate it?” she asked. “Or shall I?”

“I’ll do it,” Han growled, feeling an unexpected flush of annoyed embarrassment. Whether she’d meant it that way or not, there was a time and a place for flirting, and this was neither. Finding the control, he sent them swinging up off the floor as the belt reeled in the line. A few seconds later, the two of them were pressed against the ceiling between Kell and Zerba. “Now what?” Han asked.

“Take this,” Bink said, handing him a thick, hand-sized piece of something that felt like the silk Zerba had used to make the women’s tear-away outfits. In the center of one side was a flexible finger-sized ring. “Get a grip on the ring, hold it beneath you, and slip off the loop that’s around the edge. And don’t drop it.”

Lowering his hand, Han did as instructed—

And jerked in surprise as the material unfolded outward in all directions, each edge expanding until it ran into the wall on that side.

“Chameleon cloth,” Bink explained. “Instant wall or ceiling, in a handy carry size.”

“Won’t they notice the ceiling’s lower than it’s supposed to be?” Kell asked.

“People never know how high ceilings are supposed to be,” Bink said with a shrug. “You two, get a grip on the edges and stabilize it. Great. Now all we have to do is wait for the searchers to pass this part of the—”

She broke off as a soft click came from below them. A second later, the door was flung open and a glow rod flashed, its light flickering faintly across the edges of the chameleon cloth as whoever was below waved it around the room. Han tensed, waiting for the inevitable shout of discovery …

And then, without any such shout, the door was slammed shut.

Bink gave it a full twenty-count before she spoke again. “And then we’ll be almost ready to go,” she finished.

“Not quite,” Zerba said, pulling out his comlink. “I have to call Rachele and give her the go-ahead.”

“The go-ahead for what?” Han asked.

“After you were grabbed, we decided we couldn’t afford to let Villachor figure out the droid thing by himself,” Zerba explained. “So Lando’s going to help.”

“Lando?”

“Yep,” Zerba said. “Too bad we’ll miss his performance. It should be the crowning point of his career.”

“Really?” Han asked, frowning. “What’s he going in as?”

“The last thing you’d expect,” Zerba said, and Han could visualize him smiling in the darkness. “He’s going as someone respectable.”

Lando had never liked Bink’s idea of hiding in an electrical closet. He’d liked it even less as the afternoon wore on into evening, and first Han and then Tavia were grabbed. Marblewood security would be on even higher alert after all that, and having had the chameleon cloth demonstrated for him hadn’t helped his doubts.

So when he finally got Rachele’s call, it was with both relief and a fair bit of surprise.

And there was even a bonus on the relief part.

“And Han is with them?” he asked, just to make sure.

“Unless Zerba messed up with the tap code,” Rachele said. “He didn’t send any details, but if Han had been hurt, I think he would have said something.”

“Probably,” Lando said. So Han had gotten loose on his own. He should have guessed they couldn’t hold him for long. “What about Tavia?”

“No word,” Rachele said grimly. “But if Qazadi has taken over—and we’ve certainly given him enough reasons to do so—it’s likely that both she and Han would have been taken to wherever he’s set up shop. Zerba has confirmed that those puffs of smoke we saw were a signal from Han, so Tavia’s probably in that same area.”

“It’s the place to start, anyway,” Lando agreed, peering around the corner of the portable refresher station at the garage door fifty meters away. One of Villachor’s men had taken up position there, his spine straight and stiff, his head moving back and forth as he continually scanned the area around him. Villachor and Qazadi were jumpy, all right. Time to push them over the edge. “Okay, I’m going in,” he said. “Tell Chewie and Eanjer the door should be clear in a couple of minutes.”

“Got it. Good luck.”

Lando keyed off the comlink and put it away, moving back around the side of the refresher and glancing casually around. Villachor’s techs and security men had chased down most of the scrambler-rigged droids that Kell and Zerba had turned loose, but there were still enough of them running around to give an edge of distracted concern to the otherwise festive crowd. Between that and the fire jets and fountains still going off all over the grounds, there wasn’t a lot of attention left to spare for someone like Lando just standing quietly off to the side.

Bracing himself, he pulled out Zerba’s egg and squeezed the activator.

He’d expected to feel a shock or a jolt as the silk outer clothing was ripped away into the egg. But there was barely a whisper of sensation. A neat trick, Lando decided, and one he’d have to look into for future use.

He took a moment to examine the Iltarr City police uniform he was now wearing, brushed off a piece of silk debris that somehow had come loose during the ripping process, and pulled out the flattened cap tucked into the tunic. He settled the cap on his head, making sure the bill was pulled down low over his eyes, and sent one final hope skyward that the gadget Bink and Tavia had planted to mess up the cam droids had done its job. It wouldn’t do to have the guard over there recognize him as the same man who’d brought in a contraband cryodex for his boss to look at.

Taking a deep breath, stiffening into the arrogant official posture he’d seen way too many times on police and security officers, he rounded the corner of the refresher station and strode toward the garage door.

The guard’s first reaction as he spotted the approaching figure was to slip his hand beneath the edge of his tunic toward his concealed blaster. His second reaction, as a flame jet across the grounds briefly lit up the scene and Lando’s uniform, was to not budge a single centimeter from that pose. “What do you want?” he called.

“Sergeant Emil Talbot, Iltarr City police,” Lando said curtly. “I need to check out an emergency call we’ve received from someone inside.”

Another flame jet went off somewhere behind him, this one a whistling spiral, and in the light Lando saw the guard’s eyes narrow. “I’m sorry, Officer, but I have orders not to admit anyone without authorization from—”

“It’s sergeant, not officer,” Lando snapped. “And I don’t need your permission to investigate an emergency situation. Someone in your droid control room called in that he was under attack. I was already on the scene, so—”

“The droid room?” the guard asked, stiffening.

“Yes, the droid room.” Lando jabbed a finger at the door behind him. “Now, you get that door open right now, or I swear to you—”

“Yes, of course,” the guard said, taking a step back and reaching up to his shoulder comlink clip. “I just need to call it in … Sir, this is Pickwin. I’ve got an Iltarr City police sergeant here who says they’ve had an emergency call from the droid control room … Yes, sir, right away.”

He reached behind and opened the door. “Master Villachor’s sending some of our men to check it out,” he said.

“I still need to take a look for myself,” Lando insisted.

“Understood, sir,” Pickwin said. “As always, Master Villachor is more than happy to cooperate with the police. If you’ll come this way, I’ve been ordered to escort you to the scene.”

“Thank you,” Lando said. He brushed past the guard and strode through the doorway, pausing just inside to wait for Pickwin. The other man followed, closing the door behind him.

And just before it shut, Lando caught a glimpse of a pair of figures moving across the grounds toward the door: one of them the size of a normal human, the other the towering bulk of a Wookiee.

“This way, sir,” Pickwin said, heading down the hallway.

Lando followed, resisting the urge to throw a furtive look behind him. If Bink had followed the plan and left her stolen key pendant where Chewbacca could find it, he and Eanjer should be right behind him.

If she hadn’t, Lando was on his own.

“Confirmed, sir,” Kastoni said grimly. “The droid control room was definitely broken into. Probably a plasma torch, though the cut looks a little strange. Three techs are down, including Purvis. The good news is that they were just stunned.”

“Yes, that’s wonderful,” Villachor snarled as he glared out across the darkened grounds at the pockets of chaos still rippling through the crowds. Purvis was the droid chief, with more working knowledge of the cursed machines than any five of Villachor’s other men. With him out of commission, the servers and maintenance droids running amok outside would probably have to be taken down one by one. “Why in hell didn’t they call for help? Even a plasma jet would take time to get through that door.”

“They probably tried,” Kastoni said. “There’s something on the wall on top of the intercom and alarm lines. Signal damper of some sort, probably.”

“And they didn’t think to use their comlinks instead?”

“Sure—that’s how the cops got wind of it,” Kastoni said sourly. “I’m guessing they couldn’t get through to anyone here until it was too late.”

Because all the security men had also been on their comlinks, chasing malfunctioning droids and searching for missing prisoners. Villachor glared at a set of flame fountains in the distance, twisting to the rhythms of a song too distant for him to hear. “What about this cop? You check him out?”

“Yes, sir,” Kastoni said. “Sergeant Emil Talbot. Don’t know him personally, but his ID looks good and he’s in the system. Seems to know how to handle a crime scene, too.”

“Keep an eye on him anyway,” Villachor ordered, his mind flicking back to the incident at the Lulina Crown Hotel and how Qazadi had manipulated Villachor’s contacts in the police department to bury that investigation. “Is Pickwin back on the door?”

“Yes, sir,” Kastoni confirmed. “I sent him back out as soon as he’d passed Talbot over to us.”

“Good,” Villachor said, though there wasn’t a single thing that was good about this situation. “I’m sending Sheqoa to take over. As soon as he arrives, you and Bromley rejoin your search team.”

“Yes, sir.”

Villachor keyed off, scowling again at the fire-filled darkness, and keyed for Sheqoa. “Have you heard anything from Qazadi about Aziel and his cryodex?” he asked when the other answered.

“Not from him, sir, no,” Sheqoa said. “But our men at the hotel just reported that Lord Aziel and his guards have left the suite and are heading to the airspeeder garage. I was just about to call you.”

“Have them follow him,” Villachor ordered. If this was some game Qazadi and Aziel had cooked up between themselves, he wanted to at least have eyes on the situation. “Then get over to the droid control room. We’ve had a break-in, and I want you to supervise the cop who’s come to investigate.”

“Yes, sir.”

Villachor keyed off and sent another glare at the grounds. It would be time soon for the fireworks to begin. Normally that was the most festive and eagerly anticipated part of the Festival.

But Villachor wasn’t looking forward to it. Not at all.

Because a proper fireworks display required him to shut down his umbrella shield.

He peered up at the sky. Cancelling the display would be a tremendous loss of face in the community.

But if Qazadi or Aziel had some kind of aerial attack planned …

Fortunately, there was no need to make that decision. Not yet. He could wait until they’d either caught the prisoners or confirmed they’d left Marblewood, and until Sheqoa’s men found out what Aziel was up to at the Lulina Crown.

And he would definitely not make any decisions until Sheqoa and Sergeant Talbot found out what the intruders had been doing in the droid control room.

“We about set?” Dozer asked.

“I think so,” Winter said, lowering her electrobinoculars and giving her eyes a quick rub with her fingertips. Four airspeeders had gone into the Lulina Crown Hotel parking garage, three others had come out, and between them she had the procedure and the timing down cold. “We’ll want to start moving as soon as an airspeeder passes the fourth opening from the entryway,” she continued, pointing toward one of the wide vents that lined the garage wall. “That should let us ram into him without giving him enough time to get out of the way, while still making it look like an accident.”

“And our angle’s okay?”

Winter frowned at him. He’d been staring intently at the garage ever since they arrived, intently enough that she could practically hear the gears turning in his brain. “The angle’s fine,” she said. “We’ll hit them from their blind spot, and with the attendant facing the other way for the checkout procedure, he won’t see us coming, either. You okay?”

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I’m thinking that after we ram them and block this entrance, maybe you should stick around and keep the attendant busy while I go across and block the one on the other side.”

“I thought you wanted me to come help you.”

“I don’t think I’ll need you,” he said. “You might as well stay at this end, where you’re out of the way.”

“Where I’m out of the way?” Winter echoed. “What’s that supposed to—”

“Here’s one,” Dozer cut her off, resettling his grip on the wheel and turning on his lights. “Hang on.” The airspeeder passed the vent Winter had pointed out—

She grabbed for her restraints as their vehicle leapt forward, accelerating toward the garage entrance. She tensed reflexively, then forced her muscles to relax. Better chance of escaping injury that way. The target vehicle moved into view past the attendant station and started its leisurely turn into the opening. Dozer accelerated a half second longer, then hit the brakes as if he’d suddenly noticed the obstacle.

With a stomach-churning crash, Winter’s whole world seemed to ram itself into her chest, flip itself up over her head, and drop like a sack of vegetables onto her shoulders. There was a horrendous screeching of metal and plastic and ceramic that ground across her ears like a rasp file.

And then, abruptly, all was silence.

Winter blinked twice, and with the second blink her confused world abruptly resolved itself. The airspeeder was canted to the right at a thirty-degree angle and pointed upward with its nose nearly touching the garage ceiling. Something nearby was hissing; beneath the hiss, she could hear the faint sounds of people shouting. There were plumes of white smoke everywhere, probably a mixture of coolant from a ruptured turbojet and spray from the airspeeders’ fire suppression systems.

And Dozer was gone.

Winter shook her head, the movement helping clear it, and popped her restraints. If he thought she was going to just sit here looking helpless, he had some serious rethinking to do.

The commotion was even louder and more frantic-sounding with the door open, and the air reeked of coolant and fire mist. Winter listened carefully as she rolled out through the opening and eased herself to the floor, but the shouts were more along the line of dismay and fury than of actual pain or injury. At least Dozer had followed that part of the plan correctly. She took a second to confirm that the two airspeeders were indeed completely blocking this entrance, then slipped away through the smoke. Staying low behind the neat rows of parked vehicles, she headed for the entrance at the hotel’s opposite side.

The attendant at the booth there was gazing anxiously across the floor at the smoking wreck but was making no move to head over to help. He probably had strict instructions to stay at his post no matter what, Winter guessed.

Though that would probably change when the biggest vehicle in the garage came roaring at him, did a half flip, and wedged itself solidly across his entrance. There were, Winter saw, three perfect candidates for the job, all of them within four rows of the entrance.

Dozer wasn’t at any of them.

For a moment she leaned back against the last of the big airspeeders, breathing in the faint fumes drifting across the garage from the fire mist, her pulse thudding loudly in her ears. What the hell was he up to? All Lando had asked them to do was keep Aziel from bringing the real cryodex to Qazadi.

Unless Dozer had decided to get creative.

Sure enough, she found him at the rear of the garage, lying on his back beneath one of Aziel’s four black landspeeders. “What are you doing?” she demanded as she knelt down beside him.

“About time you showed up,” he said with a grunt. “You’re the one with the insane eye for detail. Is there a particular one of these that Aziel usually rides in?”

“Dozer—”

“I know, I know,” he cut her off. “Yell at me later. Right now, just tell me which one is his.”

Swallowing a word that had once gotten both her and Leia in trouble, Winter looked at the landspeeders. The small, minor marks … “That one,” she said, pointing to the one to Dozer’s right. “They line them up in random order when they travel, but he always rides in that one.”

“I knew it,” Dozer said, grunting again as he pulled himself out from under the landspeeder and slid under the one Winter had identified. “These guys are always so predictable.”

“Sure,” Winter said. “Speaking of insane eyes, are you completely out of your insane mind? Aziel could be here any minute, and you’re trying to hotwire his landspeeder?”

“Not trying,” Dozer corrected, his voice punctuated by the clink of tools. “Anyway, we all agreed the blackmail files are worth a whole lot more if we have a cryodex to go with them, right?”

Winter felt her mouth drop open. “Are you insane?”

“You already asked me that,” Dozer reminded her. “Here—peel the insulation off the ends, will you?”

A small finger-sized cylinder rolled out from under the airspeeder.

“Dozer, you’re not thinking this through,” Winter persisted, crouching down and starting to pull the insulation off the ends of the wires sticking out from one end of the cylinder. “Do you even have a blaster? Because I don’t.”

“Don’t need a blaster,” Dozer said. There was a double clink as he tapped one of his tools against the edge of the vehicle’s frame. “I’ve got this. You finish that yet? Great—thanks.”

Winter rose into a low crouch and peered across the landspeeder’s hood at the bank of turbolift doors along the wall. “How long is this going to take?”

“Not long,” Dozer said, the last word coming out as a grunt. “I just have to bypass the security system—which is absurdly easy; Black Sun really needs to invest some credits in a real system—and then hook up the remote. I’ll be finished in no time.”

Across the garage, one of the turbolift doors slid open.

“I hope you’re right,” Winter murmured urgently. “Because here they come.”

“I don’t know,” Kastoni said, looking back and forth across the monitors and keypads. “I’m sure they changed some settings somewhere. Why else would they come in here? But I haven’t got a clue which ones.”

“We’re going to need a tech,” Lando agreed, pretending to look around. He’d spotted Zerba’s sliced console almost as soon as he’d walked into the room. But, of course, he’d known what to look for. He also knew better than to point it out too quickly. “I’ve put in a call, but all our techs are scattered across town at the various Festival venues. It’ll take a while to get anyone back in.”

“That’s okay,” the other guard, Bromley, said from across the room. “I don’t think Master Villachor would want your people poking around here anyway. Our droid master can fix it when he wakes up.”

“I hope so,” Lando said, glancing casually out the door.

And froze. At the far end of the hallway, talking intently toward his comlink clip as he strode toward the control room, was Sheqoa.

One of the handful of people in Marblewood who knew Lando by sight.

And Lando had suddenly run out of time. “Wait a second,” he said, jabbing a finger at the damaged console. “That console—see the cut?”

“Yeah,” Kastoni said as he crossed toward it. “Looks like the same whatever they used to slice open the door.”

“Sure does,” Lando said, joining him and looking over the console itself. There was nothing identifying it as a 501-Z control panel, at least nothing he could see. But obviously Bink had figured it out, and if she could, Police Sergeant Talbot certainly could. “Looks like a 501-Z control console,” he commented. “You have Zeds patrolling the grounds somewhere?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Kastoni’s head jerk toward him. “This controls the Zeds?” he breathed. “Oh, hell.” He tapped his comlink clip. Lando held his breath … “Kastoni, sir,” Kastoni said quickly. “It looks like they hit the Zed control panel … Yes, sir.”

He took a step back and craned his neck to look out into the hallway. “Yes, I see him … Master Sheqoa?” he called. “Master Villachor wants you.”

Kastoni stepped into the doorway. Lando turned his back, leaning over the Zed console, pretending to examine the jagged cut Zerba’s light-saber had made. Behind him, the two men conversed in low tones, and though Lando couldn’t make out the words, he could hear the shift in Sheqoa’s tone as he stopped talking to Kastoni and started talking to Villachor. The conversation ended, and Lando heard footsteps heading rapidly away.

“Gone to check on your Zeds?” Lando asked over his shoulder.

“Yeah, if they’re still there,” Kastoni growled, coming up beside him.

“You cops know any fast ways to bring someone out of a stun blast?” Bromley asked. “Some drug or something we can use?”

“Nothing that would be legal,” Lando said. “Sorry. Here, help me move this other console out of the way, will you? We need to see if they got into the wall conduits, too.”

The echo of the hard service corridor gave way to the silence and softer cushioning of the main mansion hallways.

Sheqoa hardly noticed.

So it was the Zeds they’d been after. Kriffing obvious in retrospect, especially after Villachor replaced all the armored human guards in the vault with more of the kriffing droids.

All of which had been Qazadi’s idea. Curse the stupid green-scaled Falleen idiot, anyway.

Unless it hadn’t been stupidity. Unless it was part of whatever insane plan Qazadi and Aziel and Kwerve and maybe Prince kriffing Xizor himself had worked up to bring down Villachor and put someone else in his place.

Well, they could just dream on. Whatever success the mysterious intruder had managed with the serving and maintenance droids outside, he’d find the Zeds a much harder nut to crack. They were horribly difficult to reprogram or disable, especially without the general access codes that only Villachor and Purvis, the droid chief, had. Once Purvis recovered from the stun blast, he could check on the Zeds and fix any damage the intruder had managed to inflict. In the meantime, Sheqoa and Villachor would go into the vault—alone if necessary—and guard the safe and Xizor’s precious blackmail files.

Unless Purvis was part of the plot.

Sheqoa glared at the fancy hallway. A nice, complicated Festival of Four Honorings had suddenly become a maze of spinners within spinners within spinners. With Qazadi and his hidden agenda on one end and someone throwing bribe credits at the Marblewood staff on the other, he no longer had a clue as to whom he could trust.

“Master Sheqoa?”

Sheqoa pulled his lips back in a snarl. He absolutely didn’t trust this one. “What do you want, Barbas?” he growled, not bothering to turn around or even slow down.

“We have a message from His Excellency,” Barbas said. There was the soft sound of hurrying footsteps, and Barbas and one of Qazadi’s other guards—Narkan, Sheqoa tentatively identified him—came up on Sheqoa’s sides. “His Excellency requests the pleasure of your presence.”

“His Excellency will have to wait,” Sheqoa told him shortly. “Right now we’ve got a possible crisis on our hands.”

“A crisis for Master Villachor and Marblewood?” Barbas asked pointedly. “Or a crisis for Master Lapis Sheqoa?”

Sheqoa shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then let me make it clearer,” Barbas said. “The woman you sent to us has been making some fascinating statements to His Excellency. One of those statements is that she can’t remember seeing your key pendant for at least an hour before Master Villachor finally noticed it was missing.”

Sheqoa felt a surge of contempt over his anger. “And you believed her? A kriffing thief, and you actually believed her?”

“Yes, about that,” Barbas said. “We’ve examined her thoroughly and have found nothing. No hint of tracking dye; no fingersnips, or even marks where fingersnips might have been attached; no weapons, tools, or contraband of any sort. As far as we can tell, she’s nothing more than the brainless social floater that she appears.”

“Then dig deeper,” Sheqoa growled. “She’s the thief. I know it.”

“And His Excellency would be delighted to have you prove that to him,” Barbas said. “This should take only a few minutes of your time.”

“I don’t think so,” Sheqoa said, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Barbas and Narkan were caught completely by surprise, each of them taking another step before they could react. They stopped, turned to face Sheqoa—

And froze at the sight of his drawn blaster.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Sheqoa said into the taut silence. “I’m going to the vault, and I’m going to confirm that the safe and its contents are secure. After that, if Master Villachor feels he can dispense with my services for the few minutes you mentioned, I’ll be happy to answer any questions His Excellency has for me.” He lifted the barrel of his blaster a couple of centimeters. “You can come with me, you can return to His Excellency and wait, or you can die. Your choice.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Barbas said darkly.

“We have two escaped prisoners and possibly another intruder inside these walls,” Sheqoa reminded him. “One of them could easily have picked up a blaster.”

Barbas’s lips twitched in a small smile. “Very well,” he said. “We accept your gracious invitation. After all, the most valuable item in the safe is His Excellency’s, so it only makes sense for us to help you secure it.” He gestured down the hall. “Lead the way.”

Sheqoa brushed past them, jamming his blaster back into its holster as he did so. Barbas could smile all he wanted, but Sheqoa knew the other wouldn’t forget this.

That was okay. Neither would Sheqoa.

Aziel’s landspeeder hadn’t been nearly as easy to slice as Dozer had made it sound. Far from it. But he was the best, he was determined, and Black Sun really did need to spend their credits on better security.

Still, he could hear the approaching footsteps on the duracrete by the time he finally finished and rolled across the floor to safety.

Winter was waiting for him five rows over, crouched behind a classic and lovingly restored Incom T-24. “Nothing like cutting it straight to the wire,” she murmured.

“Keeps the heart pumping,” he murmured back, peering around the T-24’s ventral fin and wondering briefly whether its owner had opted for a decent security system. There were twelve of them striding across the floor, including Aziel. The whole contingent, if Rachele’s earlier estimate of their numbers was correct. Wrapped around Aziel’s waist was a hip pouch that presumably held the cryodex.

“What’s the plan?” Winter asked.

“First part of every plan is always the same,” Dozer told her, unfolding the control pad for the remote he’d hooked into the landspeeder’s system. The timing here was going to be critical. “You separate the goodies from the people hired to guard them.”

“If you mean you’re hoping he gets into that airspeeder all by himself, that’s not going to happen,” she warned. “Back at Marblewood, the driver and two guards always got in the same time he did.”

“I know,” Dozer said. “We’ll just have to do what we can with what we’ve got.”

The first human in line stopped at Aziel’s landspeeder and climbed in the driver’s door. As he did so, the next man in line passed him and opened the rear passenger door. He climbed in and was followed by Aziel, who was followed in turn by the next man in line. The rest of the guards waited until both doors were closed, then headed toward the other three landspeeders. Straining his ears, Dozer heard the first landspeeder’s engine activate.

And in the half second between the activation and the driver keying in his power train access, Dozer hit the reroute switch on his pad.

With a roar, the engines kicked to full power. Keying in the boost and twisting the level control all the way over, Dozer sent the vehicle leaping straight up to slam hard into the duracrete ceiling.

The guards were good, all right. Not a single one of them wasted time gaping at the landspeeder’s sudden and inexplicable movement. Instead, all eight snatched out their blasters and spread out, looking for whoever was responsible for the jacking.

A second later, they were scrambling frantically for cover as Dozer dropped the landspeeder squarely into their midst.

“You got one,” Winter called softly from her new position at the T-24’s nose. “The rest are taking cover between other vehicles.”

Where Dozer couldn’t get at them. But it was an obvious defensive move, and he’d expected it. All he’d really wanted to do was slow them down and get them reacting instead of thinking.

Because it was time now to get them away from him. Lifting the landspeeder back up above the general vehicle level, waggling it violently back and forth to keep the passengers flopping around inside, he sent it careening across the garage toward the two-vehicle wreck he and Winter had assembled earlier.

With the perfect mix of frustrated anger and unthinking reaction he’d hoped for, the whole batch of guards rose from their hiding spots and tore off after it.

Dozer smiled tightly. Perfect. Now all he had to do was keep the vehicle bouncing around enough that the driver couldn’t get to the engine kill switch, let the guards go hunt for the jacker who they naturally assumed was somewhere near the vehicle’s end point, and then fly it back here. Before the guards could return he should be able to flip the thing over on its head, pop the door, grab the cryodex from Aziel’s pouch while the Falleen and his guards were still too dazed to do anything, and get the hell out of here.

“Watch it—three of them are getting into one of the other landspeeders,” Winter warned.

Dozer felt his smirk turn into a wince. Okay, so Aziel’s guards weren’t as dumb as he’d thought. They were hedging their bets, one group handling the ground-level search while another went airborne.

Which meant he had less time than he’d thought to finish this up. “Can you hotwire an airspeeder?” he asked Winter.

“Probably,” she said, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her looking around. “Any one in particular?”

“Never mind,” Dozer said, backing up to her and thrusting the control pad into her hands. “Forward—backward—sideways—wiggle—boost,” he said briefly, touching each control to identify it. “Keep it over there, and keep it moving.”

“Dozer—”

“And if it drops out of the sky, that means the driver’s killed the engine, and we give it up and run,” he added, glancing over the nearest parked vehicles. The OS-20 two vehicles over, he decided.

“Dozer—incoming!”

He spun back around. A black airspeeder was roaring through the unblocked entrance, with two more hovering in guard positions behind it. The first vehicle stopped just inside the garage as the driver apparently paused to assess the situation.

“They’re Villachor’s,” Winter said tensely. “The license tags—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dozer cut her off, snatching back the control pad. “Get us a vehicle—I’ll hold them off.” The new arrival finished his assessment, turned toward Aziel’s hovering landspeeder—

And twisted hard to the side, trying to get out of the way, as Dozer sent the jacked vehicle shooting straight at him.

The other pilot almost made it. Aziel’s vehicle caught his fender a glancing blow, bouncing the vehicle into the side wall with a grinding crash. A flicker of motion caught Dozer’s eye: Aziel’s other landspeeder was off the floor now, boosts at full power, heading toward the jacked one.

And with that, Dozer’s numbers had suddenly gone straight to zero. With two other vehicles in the game and two more hovering outside waiting for their chance to join in, it was only a matter of time before they’d be able to box Aziel’s jacked vehicle in long enough for the driver to untangle himself from the seats and get to the kill switch.

It was now or never.

“Cover,” he snapped, and turned the control over hard. The jacked airspeeder reversed direction, slamming again into the newcomer. Dozer switched back to forward motion and ran it straight toward where he and Winter were crouching. Peripherally, he noted that the two vehicles outside had disappeared somewhere. He brought the jacked vehicle almost to them, rammed it one final time into the ceiling, and then flipped it over and sent it crashing to the floor in front of them.

He had no idea how long it would take the men and Falleen inside to recover from that double punch. He also had no intention of hanging around long enough to find out. Jumping up from his crouch, he ran to the turtled vehicle, keyed the lock control, and pulled open the door.

The landspeeder’s interior was nearly as much of a mess as its exterior. Apparently Aziel had had a miniature refreshment bar set up for his convenience, the contents of which were now scattered or dripping across the fancy seats.

But none of that mattered. All that mattered was that the cryodex was fastened around a dazed Falleen’s waist, and there were no blasters pointed at him. Unfastening the hip pouch, Dozer ducked back out and sprinted toward the turbolifts. No time to get an airspeeder now, he knew, even if there’d been anywhere to go with it. Their only chance was to try to beat the pursuit out of the garage and take their chances on the ground.

Winter was crouched beside one of the airspeeders, working on the lock. Dozer grabbed her wrist as he passed, yanking her to her feet and dragging her after him. Behind them, the garage exploded with the flash and fury of multiple blaster shots, and Dozer winced as several of the bolts blazed past overhead. He thought about looking back to see how close the pursuit was, decided he needed to focus all his attention on running. The turbolifts were no more than thirty meters ahead. The doors slid open, all of them at once—

And with a horrified curse, Dozer stumbled to a halt. In the sudden blink of an eye, the situation had suddenly ended.

The game was over … and he and Winter had lost.

Villachor had been waiting impatiently in the vault anteroom for nearly two minutes before Sheqoa finally showed up.

Only he wasn’t alone. He’d thoughtfully brought guests.

“What are they doing here?” Villachor demanded. “I didn’t call for anyone except you.”

“I didn’t call for anyone, either, sir,” Sheqoa growled. “They invited themselves. And I didn’t think I had time to kill them.”

Villachor glared at the two thugs, sorely tempted to order them away and to back up the command with the Zeds currently standing motionless in front of the vault doorway.

But Sheqoa was right. There would be time to deal with Qazadi’s thugs later.

With a derisive snort, he turned his back on them. They wanted to watch? Fine—let them watch. He was still the master of Marblewood, the Marblewood vault, and everything inside it. And for the moment, at least, there was nothing Qazadi’s men or even Qazadi himself could do about it. Striding to the key Zed, he held his hand up to the droid’s face for the usual scent confirmation. He and Sheqoa would go inside, he decided, double-check that the safe was still secure, and then reconfigure the Zeds inside the vault for possible intrusion. At that point, he could either leave or wait inside with them—

He frowned. His hand was still in the Zed’s face, but the Zed was just standing there. “Smell,” he ordered, moving the hand a little closer. The passcode cologne couldn’t have worn off. It never wore off. “I said smell,” he repeated, this time pressing his hand right up to the metal.

He barely snatched it back in time as the Zed suddenly came to life, one massive hand reaching for Villachor’s arm, the other going for the neuronic whip coiled at its side.

“Sir!” Sheqoa said, leaping forward.

“I know, I know,” Villachor snarled as he hastily backed up out of the whip’s range. The Zeds were programmed to react strongly if they were touched.

And then the full implications of that reaction turned his blood cold.

The intruder had gotten into the Zed programming, all right, just like the cop in the droid control room had warned. But he hadn’t simply shut all of them down, the way an unimaginative thief would have. Instead he’d reprogrammed their loyalties, flipping them to his side, so that instead of keeping out intruders, they were keeping out Villachor.

There was only one reason to do something that complicated and time-consuming: to buy more time at the other end of the road.

The intruder wasn’t hoping to break into the vault. He was already inside.

With a curse, Villachor yanked out his comlink and punched for Kastoni. “Is Purvis awake yet?” he snapped.

“I don’t know, sir,” Kastoni said. “Bromley and two of the techs took him and the others to the infirmary—”

“Never mind,” Villachor cut him off. So the intruder thought he could turn the Zeds against their master? Fine. Two could play that game. “Go to the Zed control board and pull up the main status page.”

“Yes, sir.”

Villachor motioned Sheqoa closer. “You still have men on standby in the ready room?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“Yes, sir, five of them,” Sheqoa confirmed. “Uzior’s in command.”

“Have them suit up,” Villachor ordered. “Full gear, and get them down here as quickly as possible.”

“Yes, sir.” Sheqoa touched his comlink clip, his eyes flicking to Qazadi’s men, standing off to the side. “Sir?”

“I know, and I don’t care,” Villachor growled. “The intruder’s in there, or will be soon, and he’s got the Zeds running interference for him. So we take them out of the equation.”

Sheqoa looked at the double line of Zeds. “Yes, sir,” he said, not sounding at all happy at the idea. “Sir, do you think—”

“I have the status page, sir,” Kastoni cut in.

“Go to the code input box at the upper left,” Villachor directed, closing his eyes and visualizing the sequence. “Input the following numbers: eight, four, five, five, two …”

He ran through the full string, then had Kastoni read it back to him. “Good,” Villachor said. “Now hit activate.”

“May I ask what you’re doing, Master Villachor?” one of Qazadi’s men called.

“I’m solving a problem,” Villachor said, glowering at him. “I trust you’re not planning to become another one.”

“No, sir, not at all,” the man assured him, smiling faintly. But Villachor noticed that the smile didn’t go all the way to his eyes.

And his hand was resting very close to his blaster.

It wasn’t until the heavy footsteps began thudding along the hallway outside the electrical closet that Han really began to believe that this whole thing might actually work.

It was an astonishing thought. Most of the time he figured his plans for about a 50 percent chance of success, and even then only if he scrambled like crazy when the original idea started coming apart at the edges. But this one, for some reason, seemed to be working exactly like it was supposed to.

Minus the couple of small side glitches they’d had along the way, of course.

“Sounds like five of them,” Bink murmured, her ear pressed to the door. “In a hurry, too.”

“I guess Han and his magic data card came through,” Zerba said. He seemed even more astonished than Han that the plan was working. “What was on it, anyway?”

“Just plain simple flux perfume base,” Bink said, sliding a slender optic line under the door and adjusting the eyepiece over her eye. “The kind that adapts to your body chemistry through the day. One touch was enough to get the solvent reagents into the cologne on Villachor’s hand and alter it just enough to be unrecognizable to the Zeds. Okay, looks clear.”

Han nodded. “I’ll go first,” he said.

The hallway was indeed deserted. The guards who’d just thundered past had remembered to lock the ready room on their way out, but it was an ordinary lock and Bink was through it in seconds. The four of them slipped inside, closing and relocking the door behind them.

It was about as close a copy of a standard military ready room as Han had ever seen. Two of the walls were lined with suits of the Zed-droid-mimicking armor Kell had warned them about, set into the same type of multiarmed self-suit frameworks that Imperial spacetroopers used to help them get into their armor. The other two walls were given over to clothing lockers, equipment cabinets, and a refreshment sideboard like the one back in the lounge where he’d been hiding out earlier. In the center of the room were a couple of game tables and chairs, with a group of three-tier bunks visible through an open door in a back room. “Where do we start?” he asked Bink.

She was crouched between the two tables, holding a small sensor just above the floor. “Right here should do nicely,” she said, drawing a small circle on the thin carpet with her finger. “Zerba?”

“How deep?” he asked, crouching beside her and igniting his light-saber.

“About ten centimeters,” she said, attaching a hook to the carpet at that spot. “Doesn’t have to be precise—there aren’t any sensor wires under it.”

He nodded and carefully sliced a circle around the hook. He closed down the lightsaber, and she pulled out the plug. “Now, if they’ve done this properly,” she commented as she inserted the end of her optic line into the hole and moved it around, “they should have a crisscross grid of sensor wires … yep, there they are. Okay, Zerba: a meter-diameter circle from here to here. This deep.” She held up the plug to demonstrate. “This time, neatness counts.”

“Right.” Igniting his lightsaber again, Zerba got to work.

Han looked around the room, suddenly struck by an odd thought. His part of the field work was supposed to have ended with the delivery of the gimmicked data card to Villachor. In fact, according to the original plan, he should be in the suite right now, watching the Marblewood grounds with electrobinoculars and helping Rachele and Winter coordinate the rest of the operation. Right here, right now, he basically had nothing to do.

His eyes fell on the line of armored suits. Or maybe he did.

“Kell?” he invited quietly, walking over to the nearest suit. It didn’t look that complicated to get into.

“What?” Kell asked, coming up beside him.

“You know anything about these?”

“Nothing specific,” Kell said, running his fingers thoughtfully along the metal of the helmet. “Full life support, probably. Certainly has motion-echo power enhancement, half-face heads-up display, comm capability, and a partial sensor suite. Possibly targeting optics, too.”

“Thanks,” Han said dryly. A shame the kid didn’t know anything specific. “Give me a hand, will you?”

“Going someplace?” Bink asked, looking up from Zerba’s work.

“Thought I’d wander downstairs and see what Villachor’s up to,” Han told her, pulling experimentally on the armor’s torso. It lifted easily on its counterbalanced self-suit arm. “You three look like you’ve got this end pretty well covered. Don’t you?”

“Pretty much,” Bink said as she and Zerba lifted out the circle of flooring and set it to the side.

Han craned his neck to look into the hole as he worked his left leg and hip into the lower section of armor. Beneath the main floor was a multiple zigzag grid of wires a couple of centimeters apart set into a subfloor. “Is that the alarm?”

“That’s it,” Bink confirmed. “A randomized, variable-pulse flicker field, to be specific. You can put jumpers across the lines all day and still not hit all the combinations.”

“So what do we do?” Kell asked.

“We first make sure there aren’t any unwelcome surprises waiting for us below,” she said, tapping a part of the subfloor between two of the wires. “Zerba? A hole straight through here, if you please. As small as you can manage.”

Zerba nodded and again ignited his lightsaber. This time, instead of cutting with the edge, he carefully pushed the blade straight down into the floor. There was a small jolt as he broke through the other side, and he quickly closed it down. “I guess a lightsaber cuts through magsealed armor plate just fine,” he commented.

“Never thought it wouldn’t,” Bink assured him. She slipped her optic line into the hole, turned it around a couple of times.

“Well?” Han asked.

With a puff of exhaled air, Bink pulled out the line and leaned back. “He did it,” she announced. “Villachor shut down the Zeds for us.”

“Awfully nice of him,” Kell said. “What about the alarm?”

“Patience, child, patience,” Bink said. She took another deep breath, puffed this one out as well, and leaned forward again. “First job is to slow everything down to a manageable rate,” she continued, putting her optic line back into the hole and turning it slowly around. “See, the regulator and randomizer cascade switch for the whole thing are … right over there.” She pointed toward the wall beneath the sideboard. “Hitting them in just the right spots will slow the flicker pattern without shutting it down completely, and therefore not trigger any alarms.”

“You need me to cut you a hole over there?” Zerba asked, starting to get to his feet.

“Don’t bother,” Bink said. Pulling her hold-out blaster from its belly holster, she lowered it into the hole, lined it up carefully with the optic line, and carefully squeezed the trigger. The hole lit up briefly with the shot; shifting aim slightly, she fired again. Setting the blaster on the floor beside her, she ran her sensor over the zigzag wires again. “Perfect,” she said.

“Now what?” Zerba asked.

“There are a couple of ways of bypassing a grid like this,” she said. “But they take time, and we’re in a hurry. So we’re going to be clever.” She nodded back toward the equipment cabinets behind her. “Zerba, go find me one of those neuronic whips, will you?”

“A neuronic whip?” Zerba echoed, frowning, as he stood up.

Han glanced at the collection of weapons racked beside his armor. Along with a half dozen blasters were two of the whips. “Here,” he said, detaching one from its peg and tossing it across to Bink. “I can’t wait to hear this one.”

“It’s really very simple,” she said as she uncoiled it. “Neuronic whips adapt to the neural characteristics of whatever skin they happen to be touching, right?”

Kell’s mouth dropped open. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all,” she assured him as she carefully laid out the whip in a circle on top of the wire grid. “It’s not fast enough to adapt to a normal flicker-field, which is why no one bothers to worry about them. But with the randomizer slowed down, the whip should pick up the incoming pulses and echo them just fine.” Giving the whip’s positioning a final adjustment, she reached in to the handle and activated the switch.

There was a crackle of energy from the whip, accompanied by a flash of blue-white light. The whip flashed again, then settled down into a flickering blue glow.

“And that should be that,” Bink concluded.

“Do we need to be worried about the should in that sentence?” Zerba asked.

“Let’s find out.” Bink gestured into the hole. “Make a hole, Zerba. Be sure to stay inside the circle of the whip.”

Zerba took it slow and careful, clearly expecting a blare of alarms to go off somewhere midway through the procedure and just as clearly surprised when they didn’t. As he worked, Bink unfolded a small but sturdy tripod lifter and set it up over the hole, and Han could see its legs strain as it slowly took the weight of the section of subflooring and the armor plate beneath it. By the time Kell eased the helmet shut over Han’s head, they had the hole cut and the plug ratcheted up, and they were maneuvering the circle of material out of their way.

“How’s it look?” Han asked.

“See for yourself,” Bink’s muffled voice came faintly through the helmet.

“How?” Han growled, glaring at the darkness in front of him.

And then, suddenly, the inside faceplate lit up with a view of the room, overlaid with range markings. There was a tiny inset infrared version in the upper right corner and an equally tiny rear view in the upper left. “That better?” Kell’s voice came normally in his ears.

“Yeah,” Han said, looking over the display. There was a status bar running along the bottom of the image, marking comm setting, power levels, auditory levels, and advanced sensor options.

“Controls should be right here,” Kell said, turning Han’s left arm over and indicating the inner wrist area. “You see anything?”

“I do now,” Han said, smiling tightly. Where he’d seen only bare metal from outside the suit, the heads-up display now indicated a half dozen buttons and touch sliders. Experimentally he reached over with his right hand and tapped the telescopic button, then ran the finger along the slider. The image in front of him jumped, zooming in on the controls, the arm, and the section of floor beyond them. “Yeah, got it,” he said, moving the slider back and keying off the telescopics. “Any place in here to put an extra comlink? I’m guessing this one is locked into the security circuit.”

“Yeah, there should be room right here,” Kell said, touching the helmet behind the right-hand cheek flange. “There’s a disguised air intake behind the flange. Let me see if I can wedge mine in there for you … Okay, that should do it. Zerba?”

Zerba pulled out his comlink. “Testing?”

“Got it,” Han said. The sound from the comlink was faint, but as long as it didn’t get too noisy outside he should be able to hear well enough. “Okay, I’m heading down. Good luck with the safe.”

“Wait a second.” Bink pulled a small comm signaler from her pocket and tossed it to Kell. “As long as you’re in an accessorizing mood, Kell, see if you can find a spot for this.”

“No problem—it should fit right below the comlink,” Kell said. “Let me see … there. Right below the comlink, Han. Push it straight forward to trigger.”

“Wait a second,” Zerba said, frowning at Bink. “I thought you were going to handle that part.”

“Han’s going to be down there watching the show anyway,” Bink pointed out. “He might as well have the honor. Besides, he’ll have a better view and angle than I will.”

“She’s right,” Han agreed, looking at the weapons rack. All he needed to complete his new outfit was something that packed the maximum punch at close range.

His eyes fell on a Caliban Model X heavy blaster pistol: fifty shots fully charged, a sixty-meter range, and nearly as powerful as a full blaster rifle. It would do nicely.

He slipped the Caliban into his armor’s right-hand side holster. Then, almost as an afterthought, he unhooked the other neuronic whip and secured it to his left hip. “Watch yourselves,” he said as he headed out.

“You too,” Kell said.

A moment later Han was on his way, clumping along the hallway, a bad feeling tugging at him. This was Bink’s part of the operation, and if she pulled it off, it would be the crowning point of her entire career. There was no way in the galaxy she would hand off the grand moment to him. Not unless she had a very good reason to do so.

Unfortunately, that reason wasn’t hard to guess. The minute she had the safe open, she was going to head across the mansion and find her sister.

He muttered a curse, feeling the breath bounce off his heads-up display back into his lips. Problem was, she’d never make it. Not alone. Absolutely not alone and with Marblewood’s whole security force stirred up the way they were. The division of tasks in this whole thing had been very clear: Lando and Chewbacca at the mansion’s north end would go after Tavia; Bink, Zerba, and Kell at the south end would deal with the safe. That had been the arrangement from the start, and none of Lando’s last-minute tweaks had changed it.

Bink, apparently, was going to do so anyway.

And there was nothing Han could do about it. Not unless they wanted to scratch the job and have all of them troop off after Tavia together, and they’d come way too far for that.

All he could do was hope that Bink would calm down and think it through. As long as Qazadi didn’t know who was on whose side—or even what the sides were—he would be a fool to push Tavia too hard. Especially with the question of the cryodex still up in the air. If Bink would just relax a little, maybe she’d see that she could back off and let Lando and Chewbacca get her sister out.

Because if she didn’t, they might well wind up with two prisoners to be rescued instead of one.

And there was a very good chance that Qazadi would decide he didn’t need to keep both of them alive.

With a sizzle of old-fashioned chemical propellant, the first of the fireworks shot upward from the Marblewood grounds. The propellant burned out, and there was a moment of anticipation as nothing seemed to happen. Then, with a burst of vibrant color, the rocket exploded, shooting tiny stars into the air to soar, swoop, and then fade into oblivion.

Sitting against one of the chimney spires where the shadows were the deepest, Dayja frowned. Fireworks, he knew, were the traditional finale to the Festival of Four Honorings. But that finale was supposed to wait until full dark, and they still had fifteen or twenty minutes until then. Had something else gone wrong?

Maybe. On the other hand, maybe someone had noticed that the spate of rampaging droids had threatened to spark a mass exodus of the visitors and was hoping to stem that flow by starting the fireworks a little early.

If that was the plan, it definitely seemed to be working. As a second rocket sizzled upward and then burst, Dayja could see that the flow of people toward the exits had slowed as the visitors turned back to watch the show.

Only …

Frowning, Dayja broke open his fake holocamera and extracted the knife and the small but powerful electrobinoculars tucked away inside. Slipping the weapon into his sleeve, where it would be handy if he needed it, he activated the electrobinoculars and focused on the low wall surrounding the grounds.

According to the faintly glowing indicator lights, Marblewood’s umbrella shield was still active.

A third rocket exploded overhead, this one spitting its stars into a serise-flower pattern. Leaving the shield up for these smaller ones was all well and good. But the larger, more elaborate fireworks later in the show were designed to travel considerably higher before exploding. If the shield was still up when those were fired, they were either going to spatter early or possibly even ricochet down into the crowd.

Maybe Villachor already had that covered and would be dropping the shield before the show got to the point of endangering the visitors.

Or maybe endangering the visitors was exactly what someone else had in mind

Either way, it would be very interesting to watch.

The big round safe was halfway across the room, moving ponderously on its floating platform, as Bink slid down through the hole in the ceiling.

To her relief, the Zeds spaced around the room remained silent and motionless. There’d always been the chance, however slim, that Villachor would reconsider his strategy and reactivate them. Watching through the hole above her, Zerba and Kell were almost as silent as the droids.

Which was just as well, since Bink didn’t feel like talking to anyone right now.

Had Han figured it out? Probably. He could be a pretty fair judge of people when he put his mind to it, and he knew her well enough to be able to read her reactions. Of course, just giving him the spare trigger should have been all the hint he’d have needed.

But he hadn’t done anything to stop her. He hadn’t even said anything. Probably had known it would be a waste of time.

Because Tavia was in danger, and Bink was the one who’d put her there. And as much as she liked and trusted Chewbacca, she had no intention of letting him carry the football on this one alone.

But first she had a job to do, if for no other reason than that it would ensure that this was the last time her sister would ever have to be in this kind of danger.

She landed with a quiet thump on the floor, glancing once at the doorway and then moving toward the floating safe, studying it as she walked. As Rachele had described earlier, the platform was slowly rotating as it traced its path around the ballroom. Not very quickly, probably only about once every three minutes.

Unfortunately, at this point any rotation was a problem. Their first task, therefore, was to get it stopped.

There was a soft thump from behind her, and she looked back to see Kell disengaging from the syntherope. “Anywhere in particular you want me to start?” he stage-whispered.

“You don’t need to whisper,” Bink told him. “The place is completely soundproof.”

Kell glanced up, as if he was going to point out that the open hole above them was most definitely not soundproof. Fortunately, he seemed to think better of it. “I was thinking we should kill the platform’s movement,” he continued in an only slightly louder voice as he hurried toward her. “Otherwise, the timing—”

“Exactly,” Bink cut him off. “Think you can do that without dropping everything?”

Kell nodded. “No problem.”

“Then do it.”

He nodded again and strode past her, pulling out his compact tool kit and one of his small detonite charges. Bink watched as Zerba rappelled down, landing with considerably more bounce than either she or Kell had managed. “You ready?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said, hurrying toward her. “You going to be able to find the door? I’m not crazy about the idea of poking randomly into that thing.”

“I wouldn’t be crazy about it, either,” Bink said. “Don’t worry, I’ll find it.”

The stairs unfolded as they approached, just as Rachele had said they would. Bink climbed up onto the platform and began slowly circling, running her fingers over the surface of the duracrete, looking for the telltale scuff marks Winter had identified. Midway through the operation she felt the platform come to a smooth halt. “Got it,” Kell called up to them. “I’ll start setting the charges.”

“Good,” Bink called back, scowling at the safe. It would be just her luck if she’d started right past the proper finger holes and was going to have to go all nine and a half meters around the edge of the sphere before she found them.

But the universe had decided to play nice today. Two steps later, she spotted the marks.

The finger holes just to the right, Winter had said. Bracing herself, Bink slipped her fingers into the holes.

And with a gratifying lack of fuss or bother, the bottom segment folded down, exactly as Rachele’s simulation had showed. Bink stepped to the side out of the way as it settled onto the platform, and peered inside.

The tunnel had its own lighting system: a set of tiny glowbugs set into the ceiling, with a larger glowpanel over the black stone door and the keypad at the far end.

“I hope you’re not going to ask me to cut through that,” Zerba warned from behind her. “I read up a little on Hijarna stone. I doubt my light-saber can even begin to handle it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of putting your lightsaber through that,” Bink assured him, pulling out her sensor and stepping into the tunnel. The spit-mitter inside the fake data card had been silent since Villachor shut it up in the safe, its lower-powered transmitter incapable of punching a signal through both Hijarna stone and magsealed vault walls. But Tavia had calculated that it should be able to get a signal through the stone if the receiver was close enough to the safe.

As usual, she’d been right. The signal was faint but readable. “What have we got?” Zerba asked.

“Villachor opened the safe three more times in the past four days,” Bink said with satisfaction.

“So four total, counting the one when he put it in there,” Zerba said doubtfully. “I don’t know. Going to be tricky to pull a pattern with only four points.”

“Rachele and Winter can do it,” Bink said firmly, backing out onto the platform again. “Don’t you have some work of your own to do?”

“Just waiting until I was sure it wasn’t going anywhere,” Zerba said. He leaned over the edge of the platform. “Kell?”

“It’s not going anywhere,” Kell confirmed. “And if we don’t get this done before Villachor’s men get in, none of us will be going anywhere, either.”

“Point taken,” Zerba said. He peered at the door, then turned his back on it and crouched down beside the short pillar that connected the duracrete ball to the platform. Igniting his lightsaber, he set to work.

Bink took a couple of steps away from him and the hiss of his light-saber and keyed her comlink.

Rachele picked up almost before the call signal sounded. “Bink?”

“Yes,” Bink confirmed. “We’re ready here. Can you get Winter hooked in?”

“I’m trying,” Rachele said tautly. “I haven’t heard from either her or Dozer since they went in.”

Bink squeezed her comlink. “You think something’s happened to them?”

“I don’t know,” Rachele said. “I’m starting to wonder if we’re going to have another rescue mission on our hands.”

Bink hissed between her teeth. “I hope to hell not.”

“Me too,” Rachele said. “But either way, I think you and I are on our own.”

The five armored guards came clumping through the door into the anteroom, to Villachor’s simultaneous relief and annoyance. About kriffing time. “I want to get into my vault,” he growled. “Those Zeds are in my way. Move them.”

“Yes, sir,” Uzior’s filtered voice came from the lead guard. “We’ll have them clear in no time.”

Villachor threw a sideways look at Barbas and Narkan, still standing silently against the wall, their expressions unreadable. Probably already working out how they were going to report this to their boss.

Let them. Let them say anything they wanted. One way or another, Villachor was going to get through this. “Make it fast,” he told Uzior. “Very fast.”

The game was over, Winter thought distantly. She’d played it well and survived far longer than she’d ever expected. Certainly longer than many of her comrades. But now it was over.

And she’d lost.

There were at least thirty of them, she estimated numbly as she watched them pour out of the turbolifts. Thirty Imperial stormtroopers, their white armor gleaming brighter than it should have in the garage’s muted light, their blaster rifles held ready as they spread with silent efficiency across the garage.

“So much for making a run for it,” Dozer murmured beside her. “At least we know why those other two airspeeders suddenly found somewhere else to be.”

Winter looked over her shoulder. Hovering outside the garage entrance, gleaming like the stormtrooper armor in the diffuse city lights, was an Imperial landing craft, Sentinel class, its laser cannons and rotating blasters covering the garage.

“You,” a filtered voice said brusquely.

Winter turned back. Two of the stormtroopers had come up to her and Dozer, their blaster rifles not quite aimed at them. “Come with us.”

And now the game really was over.

Another man had emerged from the open turbolifts by the time Winter and Dozer arrived. He was something of a surprise: an older man, his face ruddy, his body far more overweight than even a senior Fleet officer should be allowed to get away with, his clothing casual but expensive. Someone important, judging from the way their stormtrooper escort stiffened to attention as they stopped in front of him.

“Ah,” the man said, his lips smiling genially, his eyes sharp and clear and knowing. “Is that it?”

“Is that what?” Dozer asked, genuine-sounding puzzlement in his voice. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Master, but I’m very glad you and your troops showed up. Those people”—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“were going crazy in here. Just crazy.”

“Really,” the man said calmly. “Flying about like maniacs, were they?”

“And crashing into the ceiling and parked vehicles and just ripping up the whole place,” Dozer said, warming to his story. “I thought we were going to be killed for sure.”

“A frightening experience, indeed,” the other commiserated, almost as if he genuinely believed it. “But don’t worry. It’s all over now. We’ll take everyone in and get it sorted out.” He nodded toward Dozer’s side. “And thank you so much for retrieving my hip pouch for me. I’m not sure how you managed it, but I’m pleased you were able to rescue it before their antics could damage it further.”

Winter felt her heart seize up. So the Imperials even knew about the cryodex.

“Your hip pouch?” Dozer asked, frowning as he looked down at the one in his hand. “No, no, this is—”

“This is my pouch, which was stolen from me,” the man cut him off firmly. “Which is why, when I received a tip as to its whereabouts, I immediately called Captain Worhven of the Imperial Star Destroyer Dominator and asked him to help retrieve it.” He smiled again, and this time the smile had a brittle edge. “I’m sure you understand how difficult it can be sometimes to work with locals.”

Winter swallowed. Especially when the locals were essentially owned and operated by Villachor and Black Sun. This man knew, all right. He knew everything.

“We’re glad we could help,” Winter said, giving Dozer a nudge. Under the circumstances, there was really no point in dragging this out any further.

With a resigned sigh, Dozer handed him the pouch. “Immensely glad,” he said.

“Thank you,” the man said. He opened the pouch and peered inside. “Yes, this is it, Commander,” he confirmed, closing it and turning to the stormtrooper beside him. “Have your men gather everyone and take them to the Tweenriver garrison for questioning. What became of those other two airspeeders, by the way? I trust you didn’t let them get away.”

“No, my lord, we have them,” the stormtrooper said.

“Excellent,” the man said. “No communications are to be allowed from any of the prisoners, of course.”

“Yes, my lord.” The stormtrooper nodded at Dozer and Winter. “What about these two?”

The man looked back at Winter and Dozer, and it seemed to Winter that his smile this time had an edge of ironic enjoyment to it. “Master and Mistress Smith can go,” he said. “Will you need assistance with your vehicle?”

There was a brief pause as Dozer apparently tried to find his voice. “No,” he said. “Thank you. We can manage.”

“Very good,” the man said briskly. “Farewell.” Turning, he strode back to the turbolift, one of the stormtroopers following respectfully behind him.

The other stormtrooper gestured with his blaster. “You heard him,” he said gruffly. “Move along.” Without waiting for a response, he brushed past and headed across to where the other Imperials were collecting Aziel’s furious men into small knots for disarming and binding.

“Come on,” Dozer muttered, taking Winter’s arm and heading back toward the airspeeder she’d been working on. “Is it open?”

“Yes,” Winter said, her head spinning. This had to be some kind of trick. Some game the predator was playing with his prey.

She was still waiting for the hammer to fall as Dozer hotwired the airspeeder, got them into the air, and edged gingerly through the exit under the watchful eye but silent lasers of the Sentinel standing guard.

“So much for secrecy,” Dozer said sourly as he lifted them toward the traffic pattern flowing across the lights of the city.

“What do you mean?” Winter asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he growled. “The Imperials are on to the whole thing. They let us get the cryodex for them, and now they’re letting us run loose in hopes we can get them the blackmail files, too.”

Winter felt her stomach tighten. Of course. She’d been so focused on her life with the Alliance that she’d momentarily forgotten that she was on an entirely different side this time. “Eanjer’s contact,” she murmured.

“Who else?” Dozer said darkly. “No wonder the man knew so much about Black Sun and Qazadi.”

“I wonder what kind of deal Eanjer’s made with him.”

“Whatever it is, he’s not delivering on it,” Dozer said firmly. “We got here first. Still, this should make a pretty puzzle for Villachor and Qazadi to chew on.”

“You mean Aziel and the cryodex disappearing without a trace?” Winter asked, pulling out her comlink and trying the signaler. No good—they must still be inside the Imperials’ jamming field. “It won’t be for long, you know. They’ll have to let him go.”

“Sure, but hopefully not until we’re long gone—”

“Hold it,” Winter said as her comlink signaled. She keyed it on. “Rachele?”

“Yes,” Rachele said, sounding relieved. “Are you all right? I’ve been calling and calling.”

“We’re fine,” Winter assured her. “The Imperials had a jamming field set up over the hotel.”

“The Imperials?”

“Long story; no time,” Winter said. “What’s happening with Bink?”

“Wait a second,” Bink cut in. “You can’t just leave it at that. What’s going on with Aziel?”

“The Imperials came in and snatched him,” Winter said. “Him and the cryodex both.”

“Which should actually work to our advantage,” Dozer put in. “Depending on how fast Villachor’s spy network picks up on this, he’ll either assume Aziel has gone over to the Empire or else figure that he’s made a run for it.”

“I don’t see how that helps us,” Rachele said. “If they think Aziel’s on the run, they could decide to squeeze Tavia to find out what he’s up to.”

“Except that they only have Sheqoa’s word that she’s even involved,” Dozer pointed out. “Sheqoa means Villachor, and Qazadi doesn’t trust Villachor farther than he can throw Villachor’s safe. He’s not going to interrogate someone purely on Sheqoa’s say-so.”

“Look, we can talk about this after Bink cracks the safe,” Winter said. “What have we got?”

“Three more code sequences,” Bink said. She read them off. “You’ll note they’re different lengths, which means they’re not just variants of some standard multidigit code or something.”

“So far the computer hasn’t come up with any patterns,” Rachele said. “Any thoughts?”

Winter stared off at the city stretched beneath them, visualizing the standard High Galactic keypad layout Villachor was using and superimposing their four known sequences over it. “The series seems to be in alphabetic order,” she offered.

“Yeah, we already got that part,” Bink said tersely. “You’re the one who’s read everything there is on Villachor. Could it be a list of famous battles, or his old pets or schools—”

“Got it,” Winter said as it suddenly fell into place. Of course. “Try this: seven two nine two three four.”

There was a short silence. “No good,” Bink said.

Winter frowned. No good?

She smiled tightly. Of course no good. Served her right for not following the other sequences all the way to the end. “Try the same sequence, followed by three two five five three three six.”

Another short silence. Dozer lifted them into the next airlane and picked up speed.

“That’s it,” Bink said, all but crowing. “We’re open … here we go. A box of Black Sun blackmail cards—a really pretty box—plus a stack of other data cards Villachor no doubt would also hate to lose. And a whole fistful of the prettiest credit tabs you’ve ever seen.”

“I give up,” Rachele said, sounding excited and bewildered at the same time. “The computer can’t find a thing with that sequence.”

“That’s because the computer looks for standard words but can’t cover the whole spectrum of proper names,” Winter said. “Today’s code is Qazadi Falleen. Villachor’s rotating through an alphabetical list of Black Sun’s nine vigos, with their respective species attached.”

“Beautiful,” Dozer said. “Boot-licking subservient, and it’s a list he has to have memorized anyway.”

“Exactly,” Winter said. “How’s the rest of it going?”

“We’re on track,” Bink said. “Kell’s got my sensor and is setting his final charges, Zerba’s clearing out the safe, and I’m heading back up to the ready room.”

“Just be sure you’re right behind them when the charges go,” Rachele warned. “That part of the universe is going to be a very unhealthy place to be for a long time afterward.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,” Bink said softly. “See you.”

“Wait a second—I’m not done talking about Tavia yet,” Rachele said. “Maybe we should send Lando and Chewie in earlier than planned.”

“If you do, we’ll risk losing both teams,” Dozer warned. “The whole idea was to have everything happen at once so that Villachor doesn’t know which way to jump. Remember?”

“Han?” Rachele called. “This is your plan, really. What do you think?”

“Let’s hold off for now,” Han’s voice came, soft and with an odd echo to it. “I don’t think Qazadi would do anything without telling Villachor about it first. If that word comes through, we’ll know fast enough to get Chewie and Lando moving.”

Winter frowned at Dozer. “How does he expect to know what Villachor is or isn’t doing?” she murmured.

Dozer shrugged. “It’s Han,” he said, as if that was all the explanation she needed. Or, more likely, all the explanation she was going to get.

“So we sit on it,” Rachele said. She still didn’t sound happy but was apparently willing to accept Han’s decision. “But stay on him, okay?”

“Sure,” Han said. “Conference over. Everyone back to your jobs.”

Winter looked at Dozer questioningly. He shrugged and gestured, and she keyed off. “What now?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Eanjer’s contact probably knows where the suite is. Then again, he might not. I’m really hoping he doesn’t know where the rendezvous is.”

“So we don’t go to either the suite or the rendezvous?”

He shrugged again. “I was just thinking it’s a nice night for a drive. Care to join me?”

Winter looked out across the city. In the distance, one of the climactic fireworks displays was starting. “Sure. Why not?”

With a quiet sigh of relief, Kell settled the last of his detonite charges in position and gently switched on its arming switch. Working around explosives was one thing. Working around someone else’s booby trap explosives was something else entirely. “Zerba?”

“All set,” Zerba announced, stepping around the curve of the safe and fastening his now-bulging hip pouch around his waist. “You?”

“Ready,” Kell said, looking up at the hole in the ceiling. Bink should be up there, looking down to make sure they were still on schedule.

Only she wasn’t. She was nowhere in sight. “Bink?” he called softly.

“Don’t bother,” Zerba said with a grunt. “She’s long gone.”

Kell felt his jaw drop. “She’s gone?”

“Of course,” Zerba said. “Why do you think she gave Han the trigger? She was never planning to stick around once she got the safe open.”

“But—” Kell looked up again. “Where did she go?”

“Where do you think?” Zerba said sourly. “She’s charged off to rescue her sister.”

A lone woman, wearing a burglar outfit loaded with burglar tools, with no weapon except a small hold-out blaster. “She’ll never make it,” Kell murmured.

“Nope,” Zerba agreed grimly. “I just hope she doesn’t get caught in time to foul it up for the rest of us.”

Kell stared at him. “How can you—”

“Because that’s the kind of business this is, kid,” Zerba said quietly. “You can join up with someone for a job like this, but you learn not to make any long-term commitments. Not even in your own mind.”

He gestured. “Come on. Time to get ready.”

Han hadn’t tried to stop her, Bink mused as she headed across the mansion. Zerba hadn’t, either. Kell might have, except he’d probably completely missed the fact that she was running out on them.

That part of it bothered her. She’d worked with a fair number of people over the years, and she’d never failed any of them before.

She wasn’t failing Zerba and the others here, either, of course. Not really. Han had the trigger, and Han knew what he was doing. Usually.

But sometimes the perception of guilt was more important even than the guilt itself.

She set her jaw. It was her sister. If they couldn’t see that or didn’t care, then to chaos with all of them.

And especially to chaos with anyone who objected on the grounds that she’d just walk up to the door of Qazadi’s suite and get herself killed. That one was not only a misunderstanding but also a professional insult.

Directly ahead, the between-floors gap narrowed into another of the tightly framed doorways she’d already passed twice. Releasing the climbing grip clamps from the ceiling above her, she worked her head and shoulders through the gap, reconnected the clamps on the other side, and kept moving. Han at least shouldn’t have been worried on that score—from what she’d heard of his story while they were waiting in the electrical closet, it was clear he’d already looked up here and seen that there was plenty of room for her to make her way invisibly across the mansion.

Though in all fairness, maybe what he’d been worried about was how she was going to handle the vertical distance between the second and fourth floors. The elevator shafts were the obvious routes, which of course meant that Villachor’s people would have them covered.

Luckily for her, there was a route that would probably never occur to any of them.

It always amazed her how many buildings more than a hundred years old included hidden rooms or corridors somewhere. Maybe the rich and powerful in those eras had been more paranoid than their modern-day descendants, or maybe they’d just liked the old-fashioned romance and glamour of it all. Given that Villachor’s mansion had once housed a sector governor, she would bet heavily that there was a whole set of emergency passages tucked away coyly somewhere between the walls.

Unfortunately, Rachele’s schematics hadn’t included any hidden boltholes, and she didn’t have time to search them out.

Fortunately, those same schematics had showed the dumbwaiter.

She broke her way through the wall with little effort and even less noise. The shaft was just as narrow as she’d expected. It was also as easily passable for someone her size who knew what she was doing.

Climbing into the narrow space, she headed up.

The Zeds were heavy, bulky things, and even with the armored suits’ power assistance it took Uzior and his men nearly ten minutes to move the first row of five out of the way. Villachor watched in silence from beside Sheqoa, listening to the seconds tick away, furiously anxious to know what was happening behind that door but equally determined to keep his fears and frustration invisible to Qazadi’s men.

Uzior had started on the second row when Villachor suddenly noticed that a sixth armored guard had slipped unseen into the anteroom and was watching silently from the wall across from the vault door. “Who are you?” he demanded. “Who is he?” he repeated, glaring at Sheqoa.

“I assumed that you called him in,” Sheqoa said, sounding confused. “Earlier, when I was giving the others their instructions.”

“If I’d called him in, he’d be helping,” Villachor snarled, glaring at the newcomer. “Who are you?”

“My name is Dygrig,” the other’s filtered voice came. “His Excellency Master Qazadi ordered me to come and observe.”

Villachor threw a look at Barbas and Narkan. The whole anteroom was starting to stink of Black Sun vigo. “Did he tell you to suit up in my armor for the occasion?”

“You already said there might be trouble inside the vault,” Dygrig reminded him. “His Excellency thought it would be a good idea if someone else came prepared.”

Villachor took a deep breath, his entire blood system feeling as if it were about to explode. For Qazadi to send one of his guards, fitted out in one of Villachor’s armored suits … “Very thoughtful of His Excellency,” he replied, fighting viciously for self-control. Going berserk in front of witnesses would be all the excuse Qazadi would need to throw him out and put someone else in his place. “As long as you’re here, you can give my men a hand.”

“I was told to stand ready for whatever we found inside,” Dygrig demurred calmly. “My orders didn’t say anything about helping with the preliminaries.”

No, of course Qazadi wouldn’t want his men to get their hands dirty. “Uzior?”

“We’ll have the area clear in eight minutes,” Uzior promised.

“I could call more men,” Sheqoa offered.

“Have the search teams found the intruder?”

Sheqoa winced. “No, sir.”

“Then we’ll make do,” Villachor said. He shot a glare at Dygrig, who was now watching with the same condescending detachment as Barbas and Narkan. If he survived this challenge, Villachor promised himself darkly, he would find a way to make Qazadi pay for his heavy-handedness, vigo or not. “Have the nearest search team go to the ready room,” he ordered Sheqoa. “If Qazadi has more of his people up there helping themselves to our equipment, I want to know about it.”

Rachele’s comlink twittered “Report,” she said.

“Trouble,” Han said, his voice so low she could hardly hear it. “Zerba, how hard did you lock the ready room after I left?”

“As hard as the lock that was there,” Zerba said. “We didn’t weld it or anything, if that’s what you’re asking. Why?”

“Villachor’s sending someone up there,” Han said. “The minute they see the hole, it’ll be all over. They’ll have ten guys down in the vault before Villachor stops screaming.”

“And that’ll be it for Zerba and Kell,” Rachele said grimly. “So we blow it now?”

“We can’t,” Han said. “Villachor hasn’t got the vault door open yet.”

“You sure we need it open?” Kell asked. “The magseal didn’t stop the lightsaber.”

“You’re not using a lightsaber this time,” Rachele reminded him. “I don’t know what the magseal will do, but I’d really rather not risk it.”

“If you don’t, we sure don’t,” Zerba agreed. “I vote we go ahead and turn Chewie and Lando loose.”

“Hold on,” Bink cut in. “They can’t go yet—I’m not in position.”

“You’ve got two minutes to get in position,” Han told her tartly. “Uzior says the vault will be open in eight. We need something to distract the guards from this part of the mansion, and Chewie and Lando are it.”

“Can you do it, Bink?” Kell asked.

“Do I have a choice?” Bink bit out. “Fine—go ahead. But if anything happens to Tavia, it’ll be on your head. And I mean that literally.”

“I know,” Han said. “Two minutes, Rachele.”

“Got it.” Rachele braced herself as she switched over to Chewbacca’s more secure comlink frequency. “Chewie, Eanjer: two minutes.”

Over the years, Bink had accumulated an extensive collection of words that were appropriate to this kind of situation. On her way to the top of the dumbwaiter shaft, she ran through the entire list of them.

Two minutes. She was still half a mansion away from where Tavia was being held, and Han was giving her two measly kriffing minutes to get there.

There was no way she could make it there via the between-floors gap. Her grip-clamp techniques were perfect for this kind of surreptitious travel, but the very nature of their operation put a cap on speed. And that top speed wouldn’t be enough.

Which left her only one option. An option that, like the dumbwaiter itself, the mansion’s original designers had given her.

The horizontal conduits were right at the top of the shaft, heading off in opposite directions: one each to the southeast wing and the northeast wing. With a fully enclosed conduit, even one as cozy as this, there would be no need for grip clamps. Her standard nonslip friction gloves were the only tools she needed, and she could easily cover the distance in half the time the between-floors route would take. Maybe even within the two-minute window Han had allotted her.

The problem was that the between-floors route allowed her to choose where she came out at the other end. With the food delivery conduit, unfortunately, there was exactly one exit. If Qazadi or his guards happened to be looking the wrong way at the wrong time, she’d never even see the shot coming.

But she had to try. It was Tavia. It was her sister.

She twisted her body around the bend at the top of the dumbwaiter shaft and worked her way into the conduit, angling her shoulders along the diagonal to take best advantage of the limited space. Pulling at the metal sides with her gloves, starting again at the top of her list of curses, she headed into the darkness.

Kastoni was starting to get dangerously impatient, and Lando was down to his second-to-last stalling technique, when the whole wing seemed to explode in a cacophony of shattered ceramic, wood, and stone.

And as he and Kastoni spun toward the door, an airspeeder roared past down the corridor, bouncing back and forth into the walls on either side. Kastoni had just enough time to bark a startled curse before a second vehicle went shooting past behind it.

And right behind the vehicles, running for all they were worth, were Chewbacca and Eanjer.

Lando puffed out a sigh of relief. Finally. “What in the name of—” he began. He broke off as the racket of the bouncing airspeeders was replaced by the bellowing of alarms.

“Emergency!” Kastoni shouted into his comlink clip as he snatched out his blaster. “Garage has been breached. Two airspeeders are running loose in the north wing heading for central—I say again, two airspeeders are moving through the north wing headed for central.”

He got an acknowledgment and headed for the door.

“What can I do?” Lando asked, coming up behind him.

“You can get your rear back outside,” Kastoni snarled. “You’re done here.” He stopped at the doorway, eased his head out for a quick look—

And crumpled to the floor as Lando rammed his fist directly behind Kastoni’s left ear.

Shaking the sudden throbbing out of his hand, Lando dropped to one knee beside the unconscious man and scooped up his blaster. For a moment he considered checking in with Rachele, decided he didn’t have the time, and headed off after Chewbacca.

He’d assumed earlier that the interior of the mansion was essentially deserted except for the kitchen staff crafting the refreshments for the Festival visitors outside. Certainly most of the security force had been outside, riding herd on the crowd and trying to chase down the last of the out-of-control droids. But as he followed in the wake of Chewbacca, Eanjer, and the airspeeders, he found a surprising number of people peering fearfully, cautiously, or disbelievingly through the various doorways. Most of them seemed to be techs of some sort, which wasn’t surprising this close to the garage and droid repair facilities.

A couple of them helpfully pointed the way to the uniformed police sergeant charging after the intruders. None of them made any move to stop or challenge him.

He’d left the north wing and was heading up the wide staircase leading to the central section and the northeast wing beyond when he heard the first sounds of blasterfire.

The comlink built into Han’s armor was locked into the Marblewood security channel, which meant he got the news about the rampaging airspeeders at the same time as Sheqoa, and a few seconds before Villachor.

He’d expected Villachor to go ballistic with the report of something else going wrong. But instead of dissolving into fire, the crime lord’s attitude turned into ice. “Inform His Excellency that he may have intruders on the way,” he told Sheqoa evenly. He gestured to Barbas and Narkan. “You might want to go assist in your master’s defense,” he added.

The two men exchanged looks. Barbas nodded silently, and they headed at a fast jog across the anteroom and out the north door.

Han grimaced. Hopefully, Chewbacca and Lando would know to watch for trouble coming up from behind.

“You can go with them,” Villachor added.

Han blinked away his tactical visualizations. Villachor was gazing at him, the same deadly ice in his eyes. “I was ordered here,” Han said. “I’ll leave if and when I receive new orders.”

“You’ll leave when I order you to leave,” Villachor said calmly. “This is still my territory. My word is the law here, not Master Qazadi’s.”

“I understand, Master Villachor,” Han said, trying for the right mix of respect and arrogance that so many midlevel Fleet officers had mastered. “And I have no intention of violating that command. But—”

“Alert!” a taut voice came suddenly over the suit’s comlink. “The vault has been breached from above. Repeat, the vault has been breached.”

“Sir, the vault’s been breached,” Sheqoa relayed urgently to Villachor. “Sounds like they got in through the ready room.”

For a heartbeat Villachor just stared at him. Then he spun around to the men straining at the frozen Zeds. “Get that door open now!” he snarled.

He jabbed a finger at Han. “And put that man under arrest.”

The blasterfire was getting louder and more intense, Lando noted uneasily as he charged up the stairs three at a time. So far he hadn’t spotted any of Villachor’s guards coming up from behind. But that was bound to change soon.

Ideally, the blasterfire should have been over by the time he reached the fourth floor of the northeast wing. Halfway down the hallway was the reason it hadn’t. One of the two airspeeders had ground to a halt in the center of the floor, blocking the one behind it. Chewbacca and Eanjer were crouched behind the rear vehicle, Chewbacca working the remote as he tried to get it past the damaged one. At the far end of the hall, a Falleen and a pair of human guards were crouched behind an F-Web repeating blaster that was sending a continual spray of fire at the airspeeders, while a second Falleen lay prone beside them sniping with what looked like a knockoff version of a BlasTech T-21.

Lando skidded to a halt beside Eanjer. “What’s the holdup?” he shouted over the scream of the blasterfire.

“Got in a lucky shot,” Eanjer shouted back. “Chewie thinks he can fix it, but it’ll take some time, and we need to get the other one past it if we want to keep pressure on the gunners down the hall.”

“Why can’t you—” Lando strangled off the question. Of course Eanjer couldn’t do that for him. The remote pad took two hands, and Eanjer’s medsealed right hand was useless. “Chewie, give it to me,” he told the Wookiee. “I’ll get it around. You get the other one fixed.”

Chewbacca rumbled and thrust the controller into Lando’s hands, then dropped to the floor and crawled toward the downed airspeeder.

With a normal airspeeder, Lando could have simply rammed the second one over the top of the first, crushing or shattering the first vehicle’s canopy and creating whatever room he needed. But Villachor’s airspeeders were too heavily reinforced and armored for that, which not coincidentally was also the reason they hadn’t already been cut to ribbons by the blasterfire from the other end of the hall. Chewie’s efforts had already smashed away part of the ceiling; unfortunately, the between-floors gap hadn’t given him quite enough extra space to get the airspeeder past.

But he hadn’t yet tried ramming the walls. If they were thin enough, and if there was enough room along the hallway’s sides, that might do the trick.

Backing up the hovering airspeeder a few meters, Lando angled it toward the wall and prepared to ram.

The end of the dumbwaiter conduit was no more than twenty meters ahead when the hallway to Bink’s left erupted in the sound of muffled blasterfire.

She swore again, trying to get a little more speed out of her sideways crawl. Lando and Chewie had started their assault, and Tavia’s time was rapidly running out. Even a Black Sun vigo could put two and two together, and an assault on Qazadi’s suite while he was hosting a prisoner was too obvious a connection to miss.

The war outside had settled down into a steady rhythm, with at least one heavy repeating blaster in operation, by the time she reached the end of the conduit. Stripping off the friction gloves, she drew her hold-out blaster. Setting her teeth, she put her other hand on the conduit door and pushed.

She’d worried that it would be locked and that she would have to waste precious seconds working a probe around the rubber seals to trip the catch. But there was no lock and no catch. She eased the door the rest of the way open, listening as best she could over the noise for any indication that the amazing self-opening door had been spotted.

Nothing. Getting a grip on the edge, she pulled herself the rest of the way through.

She found herself in probably the most gorgeous dining room she’d ever seen. There were two doors leading out of it, one of which was ajar. Moving silently across to the half-open door, she peeked through the gap.

And felt her stomach tighten. Tavia was there all right, seated on a low-backed couch with her back to Bink’s door. Bink couldn’t see her face, but she could see the tension in her sister’s shoulders. Seated in a high-backed chair across from her was a Falleen in full intimidating royal-type garb. Qazadi, without a doubt. His eyes were on the hallway door to his right, his expression cool and calculating, a hint of a macabre smile about his lips.

Between him and the door, facing the muffled blasterfire with their own weapons drawn and ready, were two Falleen bodyguards.

Bink was a ghost burglar, not a soldier, assassin, or even a smuggler. She normally carried a blaster on the job, but only because it was an occasionally useful tool. She’d fired at another living being exactly twice in her life, and in both instances her full intent had been to keep the person pinned down so she could make her getaway. As far as she knew, none of those shots had even connected, let alone caused any actual damage.

Now she was going to have to shoot two Falleen. In the back.

To kill.

But there was no other way. Not if she was going to get herself and Tavia out of this alive. With her throat so tight it felt like she was strangling, she got a two-handed grip on her blaster, lined up the muzzle on the first guard, and squeezed the trigger.

He jerked as if he’d been slapped across the face, his legs collapsing and dropping him without a sound to the floor. The second guard was starting into a sort of spinning sideways leap when her second shot blew a small cloud of vaporized cloth and skin from his torso. He landed full-length on the floor, hitting hard enough to make Bink wince in sympathetic pain. Shoving the door the rest of the way open with her foot, she swiveled the blaster to point at Qazadi. “Don’t move,” she warned.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” the Falleen said coolly. He and Tavia were both looking at Bink now, Qazadi from the depths of his chair, Tavia over the low back of her couch. Qazadi was openly smiling, his eyes flicking between Bink and Tavia. Tavia’s expression, in contrast, was tense and frightened. “Now at last we have the solution to the puzzle,” Qazadi continued. “Very clever.” He held out a hand to Bink. “You, I take it, are the thief with the tracking dye on her hands?”

“Just don’t move,” Bink ordered. The adrenaline rush of the brief battle was fading, and as her brain started working again, she realized she had no idea what she was going to do next. Obviously she and Tavia couldn’t leave the same way Bink had arrived—all Qazadi had to do was saunter into the dining room, fire a few shots down the conduit, and call it a day.

But with the noisy war going on in the hallway, that way wouldn’t be an especially healthy direction to run either.

Unless the two women brought along a hostage. “On your feet,” she ordered Qazadi, stepping all the way into the room. The Falleen’s smile was positively radiant, she noted suddenly. Odd that she hadn’t picked up on that before. “You’re going out that door …”

She trailed off. The smile wasn’t just radiant—it was borderline saintly. Saintly, forgiving, loving—

And then, abruptly, she understood.

But it was too late. It was far too late.

Cursed kriffing Falleen pheromones.

“Please,” Qazadi invited, gesturing to the couch beside Tavia. “We have so very much to talk about. Master Villachor, Lord Aziel, and this.” He nodded toward a side table, where Winter’s fake cryodex was prominently displayed.

Bink looked at Tavia’s strained face. There was no hope there—her sister was as deep into Qazadi’s chemical spell as she was. Probably even deeper.

Bink had a blaster, ready in her hand. She’d already used it twice. Surely she could use it again.

Only she couldn’t. Even as her brain ordered her hand to raise the weapon and fire, her heart was ordering the hand to remain at her side.

And for once her heart was stronger.

Which meant it was over. She and Tavia were finished. So, probably, were the rest of Han’s team.

And as she sank down onto the couch beside her sister, it occurred to her that she’d just killed two living beings. For nothing.

There were still two Zeds frozen in front of the vault door, but the path was finally clear enough for Villachor to get to the keypad. He folded it out from the wall and punched in the access code, jabbing the keys so hard that Han found it slightly amazing that his fingers didn’t punch all the way through the pad. The door swung open, and Han craned his neck to look.

The safe had stopped near the center of the vault, the platform that normally carried it around the room now hovering motionlessly. The fold-down segment of the sphere that opened up into the Hijarna-stone cabinet in the middle was hanging wide open, and Han didn’t need his helmet’s audio enhancements to hear Villachor’s vicious curse as he saw that his safe had been breached. Right at the edge of Han’s vision, two security men were sliding down the syntherope line that Bink had left dangling, their blasters ready as they scanned the room. “Careful, sir,” one of them called toward the door. “Give us a moment to make sure it’s clear.”

Villachor ignored them. He gestured three of the armored guards forward, and as they strode into the vault, he pointed the other two back to Han, just in case they’d forgotten he was supposed to be taken into custody. Spinning back around, Villachor strode into the vault behind the three guards, Sheqoa and Villachor’s two usual bodyguards close beside him.

The two guards clumped toward Han, their massive hands resting warningly on their holstered blasters. Han reached his hands up to his head, just to show that he knew proper prisoner procedure.

And as his hand passed the helmet’s right cheek flange, he slipped a finger around to Bink’s trigger and gently pushed it forward.

With a final lunge and a crash of wood and stone, the airspeeder bashed out enough of the hallway’s side wall to open a path past the stalled vehicle. Giving the control a final shove, Lando bounced the vehicle through one last half meter of wall surface and got it in front of its downed partner.

And with that, they were finally ready to take on the other end of the target range. F-Webs came with built-in shield generators, but he would bet heavily that a shield designed to deflect small-arms fire wouldn’t do a bit of good against an armored airspeeder rocketing in on it at a hundred kilometers an hour.

He had started the airspeeder on its way, and the fire from the F-Web had suddenly intensified as Qazadi’s guards saw the armored black death coming at them, when Eanjer abruptly leapt up and charged after the roaring vehicle.

“Eanjer!” Lando shouted after him. “Get back here!”

But it was too late. Eanjer was off and running, his legs pumping with a strength and speed Lando wouldn’t have guessed the man had in him, pounding after the airspeeder like an Imperial Center bureaucrat trying to catch an airbus.

Lando hissed out a curse. He’d planned to keep the airspeeder right at the ceiling until the last second, presenting as much of the armored underside to the blasterfire as he could in hopes of protecting it from the same kind of lucky shot that had taken out the first one. But with Eanjer running like a maniac straight into the line of fire, that was no longer an option. Scowling, he dropped the vehicle nearly to the floor, moving its bulk into position to provide Eanjer with as much cover as possible.

And, of course, leaving the airspeeder more vulnerable to attack. If the guards nailed it before he could flip it up on its side and sweep both them and the F-Web out of action, as he was hoping to do, he and Chewbacca might just have to use Eanjer himself as their shield when they stormed Qazadi’s suite.

With a suddenness that strongly implied to Dayja that it had been prearranged, Marblewood’s massive fireworks display kicked off in all its full, brilliant glory. Not just the lower-flying rockets he’d seen being fired earlier, but also the high, elaborate, all-but military-grade explosives.

The problem was that the umbrella shield was still in place. And as the rockets hit the invisible energy field, bursting prematurely and showering fire onto the ground, the crowd below finally hit the breaking point. With shouts, curses, and a scattering of hysterical screams, the whole mass dissolved into chaos.

A piece of flaming debris crashed to the roof barely five meters from Dayja’s chimney spire. He twitched back from it, grabbing his comlink. Enough was finally enough. Whether this was Eanjer’s doing or just an accident, he couldn’t sit by and watch any longer.

Another misfire burst against the shield, raining fragments down on the crowd, and with a sense of resignation Dayja put away the comlink. It was too late. The panic had started, and there was nothing he, the police, or any of Iltarr City’s other emergency services could do about it now.

All he could do now was watch.

Han had warned Kell that the whole thing had to go quickly. The kid had taken him at his word.

The detonite beneath the floating platform went first, a set of deceptively small charges that knocked out the power lines to all the repulsorlifts on the forward half. The platform held position for maybe half a second, and then the front edge dropped to the floor with a booming crash. Almost buried in the thunderous echo was an even deeper creaking as the lightsaber-weakened connecting pillar bent and distorted under the sudden and unexpected stress. Another half second, and Kell’s final charges went off, blowing away chunks of duracrete from the rear of the safe and triggering a pair of ear-numbingly powerful shaped-charge explosions from booby traps that had been buried just beneath the surface.

Looking like a miniature Death Star on afterburners, with a rumble that seemed to shake the whole mansion, the safe broke loose from its pillar, rolled down the slanted platform, and headed across the floor.

For a frozen second, Villachor and his men stared in disbelief at the six-meter sphere bearing down on them. Then, in almost perfect unison, they scrambled madly to get out of the way.

Villachor and his two bodyguards made it. Sheqoa and the three other guards didn’t.

Even before they disappeared beneath the sphere, Han was in motion, stepping forward and planting himself between the two guards now gaping at the drama going on inside the vault. He put a hand on each of their chests and shoved as hard as he could to either side.

The suits were heavy, but Han’s strength enhancements were more than up to the job. The two guards flew backward a good three meters each before sprawling onto the floor—maybe far enough to be out of the way of the approaching sphere, but Han really didn’t care that much one way or the other.

Right now he was far more concerned with the lives of the hundreds of citizens who could be unknowingly walking or standing directly in the path of the rolling juggernaut about to crash through the mansion wall. The fireworks triggers Kell and Zerba had set up earlier should have most of the crowd moving toward the exits, but there were always a few who were too brave, too casual, or too stupid to know when it was time to get out.

For those people, the rolling safe was likely to be the last miscalculation they ever made.

The safe was nearly to the armored vault wall. Spinning around, Han raced for the anteroom side door, emptying his borrowed Caliban blaster into the wall around it as he ran. The weapon ran dry; tossing it aside, Han threw himself at the door, hoping his armor was as tough as it looked.

It was. He crashed through the door with barely a jolt, a large section of wall coming down with him. The nearest exit to the outside was thirty meters away to the south; recovering his balance, he angled toward it, hoping fervently that he could beat the sphere outside. Behind him, he heard the violent grinding crunch as the sphere ground its way through the vault’s armor plating—

And then he was through the door, out into the courtyard, and angling back toward the sphere’s path.

He’d been right about the crowd. Most of them were already far in the distance, racing for the gates as fireworks continued to splash spectacularly against the umbrella shield above them. But a few dozen of them were still hanging around, watching the misfires with studied casualness or bravado.

Han rolled his eyes. Even he knew enough to come in out of the rain, especially when the rain consisted of live coals. Still, if random overhead explosions weren’t enough to get these last stubborn few moving, maybe something closer and more personal would.

Grabbing the neuronic whip from his belt, he activated it and whirled it high over his head.

Most of the loiterers had already spotted Han in his gleaming armor. All of them spotted the whip’s crackling blue-white sizzle. “Go!” Han bellowed, spinning the whip over his head. “Get away from here—now!”

They were finally on the move, running like frightened Toong, when the sphere crashed through the mansion’s outer wall and rolled across the courtyard, crushing the flagstones beneath it as it went. Ten meters ahead of it, where the flagstones gave way to textured grass, the spikering fence slashed its way upward out of the ground, encircling the mansion in a six-meter-tall crackling forest of electrified death.

The safe rolled through it without even slowing down.

Ducking through the still sizzling gap, pushing his armor’s speed and power enhancements to the limit, Han sprinted around past the safe and got in front of it. Again thrashing the whip wildly above his head, he charged.

It was about as crazy a stunt as he’d ever pulled. But it was working. In the darkness, with the distraction of the fireworks, a lot of the people in the sphere’s path probably would never have seen the danger until it was way too late. But an armored figure with a glowing blue whip was impossible to miss. They scattered in front of him, most taking the hint and heading for the exits, the others dashing in all directions except the vector Han and the safe were on.

He kept going, watching the safe in his rear display, hoping he could stay ahead of it until it finally ran out of steam. Hoping, too, that it wouldn’t catch up with the rear of the main crowd heading for the exits, mow a wide swath of death through them, then shatter the outer wall and roll out into the heavy Iltarr City traffic.

He really, really hoped that didn’t happen.

From out in the hallway came a horrendous crash, accompanied by the kind of piercing, metal-on-duracrete scraping that Bink had sometimes heard when a wrecked airspeeder hit a landing platform and skidded along it.

And as the scraping sound faded away, she realized the blasterfire had also ceased.

She looked at Qazadi. His eyes were on the door, his expression hard and cold. “Be silent,” he told the two women. “No noise.” His hand dipped into his robe and emerged with a blaster. “Sit quietly and watch your friends die.”

Bink swallowed hard, fighting against the unreasonable calm and even more unreasonable sense of love and contentment flowing through her. Those were her teammates out there. She couldn’t let them simply walk into the fire from Qazadi’s blaster. She had to do something to stop him.

Only she couldn’t. She couldn’t even get her voice to work, let alone her hand.

Her hand. She looked down at her lap, at the hold-out blaster lying there. Qazadi had permitted her to keep the weapon, knowing she would be unable to use it against him.

And he’d been right. She willed her hand to move, willed it with all the strength she had in her. But her hand stayed where it was. The blaster would sit there uselessly, and she would sit here uselessly and watch her teammates come through that door and die.

“There’s one thing you’re forgetting, Master Qazadi,” Tavia said.

Bink jerked her head, staring in disbelief at her sister. Tavia’s face was pinched and strained, so much so that it was hardly recognizable. Her voice was low and hesitant, the words sounding like they’d been ground out individually from beneath a grain farmer’s millstone.

Qazadi had ordered her not to speak. And yet she was speaking. Out of the corner of her eye Bink saw Qazadi turn to look, apparently as surprised as she was. “I told you to be silent,” he said.

“You’re forgetting,” Tavia ground out, all but panting with the incredible mental exertion, “that we didn’t come here alone. You’re forgetting … that they are our friends.”

“I said be silent!” he snarled. He swung his blaster to point at her.

With a violent shattering of wood and stone, the hallway door blew inward.

Qazadi was caught by surprise, his arm jerking with impacting debris as he tried to bring his blaster back on target. Through the cloud of smoke, Bink saw a figure step calmly into the room.

She caught her breath. She’d assumed it would be Chewbacca or Lando who would be risking his life to save them. But it wasn’t either of them.

It was Eanjer.

His hands were stretched out in front of him as if he were surrendering, his misshapen right hand wrapped in its medseal, his left hand open and empty. “I bring you an offer, Your Excellency,” he called over the muffled clatter of door shards hitting the floor and furniture.

“I don’t make deals,” Qazadi snarled. He got his blaster lined up on the intruder—

Green fire erupted from Eanjer’s distorted right hand, flashing across the room squarely into the center of Qazadi’s face.

And with the defiant snarl still in place, the Falleen slumped in his chair.

Dead.

Bink looked at Eanjer, her eyes dropping to the smoking hole in his medsealed hand. The hand hadn’t looked the way it did because it was mangled, she realized now, or even because it had been replaced by some strange alien prosthetic.

It had looked that way because it was a normal, fully functional human hand curled around a hold-out blaster.

She looked up at Eanjer’s good eye. “You—”

“It was him or us,” he said calmly. “You two okay?”

“We’re fine,” Tavia assured him. Her voice still sounded ragged, but Bink could hear it starting to recover.

As was Bink’s own brain. Without the pheromones, she could feel the fog rapidly lifting. “What’s the plan?” she asked, grabbing her blaster from her lap and standing up.

“To get out of here,” Eanjer said, nodding toward the ragged hole behind him. “Lando and Chewie are waiting beside the other airspeeder. Move.”

Bink nodded, taking her sister’s arm and helping her to her feet. “What about you?” she asked as she guided Tavia over the debris.

“I want to get the cryodex,” Eanjer said. His half mouth half smiled. “Might as well leave them wondering. Go on—go.”

Bink got her sister to the hallway, noting peripherally the half-crushed airspeeder to their right and the mangled F-Web blaster poking out from underneath it. To their left, Lando and Chewbacca were crouched behind a hovering airspeeder, their eyes and blasters focused the other way down the hall. She turned Tavia in that direction. As they headed away from the suite, she paused for a final look at Qazadi, wondering how her mind could ever have been fooled into thinking he was good and kind and loving.

And because she was looking in that direction, she saw Eanjer standing over the Falleen’s body.

She couldn’t be sure, not with the single quick glance she had. But it looked very much like he was taking holos …

It was like something out of an insane holodrama, Dayja thought numbly as he watched the scene unfold below him. An armored figure cracking a neuronic whip over the last remnants of the evening’s crowd, driving them out of the path of the giant sphere rolling inexorably across the Marblewood grounds.

He’d expected Eanjer’s team to steal the contents of Villachor’s safe. He’d never dreamed they might try to steal the safe itself.

He’d also never dreamed that when the theft went down, he would be stuck on the mansion roof half a kilometer from the action.

So much for getting in and grabbing the blackmail files before the thieves made their getaway.

Still, it wasn’t over yet. Eanjer had promised him the files, and Eanjer surely was still on the scene. Somewhere.

The safe was mostly invisible now as it rolled beyond the range of the lights from the mansion and the shimmering crackle of the spike-ring fence. But the distinctive glow of the neuronic whip more than made up for that, and the safe itself was sporadically visible in the brief flare-ups from the fireworks.

Picking up his electrobinoculars, Dayja began a careful scan of the area. If Eanjer was out there, he was going to find him.

It was, Han thought more than once, like something out of a crazy holodrama.

He’d expected the safe to roll in a nice, neat straight line. It didn’t. The open sphere segment occasionally caught on the ground, sometimes slowing its forward momentum, other times drastically changing its direction. Han had to keep a close eye on his helmet’s rear display to keep from losing the thing entirely, all the while continuing to play the berserk-droid role as he scattered people out of harm’s way.

A couple of times he thought he spotted some of Villachor’s security men, but they were gaping as hard as the visitors. None of them made any effort to stop him. About halfway across the grounds the dangling segment finally hit the dirt hard enough to break off. After that, the sphere’s path was a lot more predictable.

For a few bad moments Han thought his earlier concern would be borne out, that the sphere would indeed crash through the wall and out into the city. But for once the worst-case scenario didn’t happen. The sphere slowed and finally came to rest about fifty meters from the wall. Shutting off the whip, Han turned and headed back to it.

He was peering down the tunnel at the Hijarna-stone cabinet when the door swung open and Zerba and Kell crawled unsteadily out. “You all right?” Han asked.

“Just great,” Kell said, sounding and looking drunk. “Remind me to never do that again.”

“Still beats walking,” Zerba offered. “Especially when there are people shooting at you.”

“As long as your door doesn’t end up at the bottom,” Han said as he helped them out of the tunnel onto the ground.

“Not a chance,” Zerba assured him. “The cabinet was off-center, and Hijarna stone is a lot denser than duracrete. Same principle as loaded chance cubes.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Han said. A stutter of muffled explosions came from the direction of the mansion, and he turned to see a multipassenger speeder truck zoom through the gap the safe had made in the spike-ring fence and head across the grounds toward them.

Behind it, a barrage of fireworks was pelting the mansion walls.

“Nice,” Zerba said approvingly. “No chance they’ll burn the place down, I suppose.”

“Probably not,” Han said. “But it ought to keep what’s left of security inside, where they won’t bother us.”

“Unless that’s some of them now,” Kell warned, pointing a still unsteady finger toward the incoming vehicle.

“That’s just Chewie,” Han assured him.

“You sure?” Kell asked.

Han nodded. “I know his flying style.”

Just the same, it wouldn’t hurt to check. Keying in his suit’s telescopics, he zoomed in on the speeder truck. It was Chewbacca, all right, with Lando and the twins riding behind him.

There was no sign of Eanjer.

Frowning, he keyed for more enhancement, in case he’d missed Eanjer sitting in the shadows in one of the rear seats. But the man wasn’t there. Frowning a little harder, Han shifted his attention to the grounds behind the speeder truck, then to the mansion. Still no sign of Eanjer.

He was checking the mansion’s windows to see if the other might be trapped inside when something above the windows caught his eye.

There was a man sitting on the roof.

Han bumped his telescopics up a bit. Not only was the man sitting calmly up there, but he had a set of electrobinoculars pressed to his eyes. Some kind of observer?

But those weren’t ordinary electrobinoculars, Han realized as he focused on them. They were small and compact, the kind a person could stick in a side pocket without them even being noticed. The expensive kind that a senior Imperial officer might use.

A senior officer, or an Imperial agent.

Casually, Han looked away. Dozer had speculated earlier that Eanjer’s contact might be an Imperial. It looked like he’d been right. “You get everything?” he asked Zerba, pulling off his helmet and popping the catches on his torso armor.

“Right here,” Zerba confirmed, patting the hip pouch around his waist. “Blackmail files, a few other assorted data cards, and all of Eanjer’s credit tabs.”

“Good,” Han said, dropping the arm and torso armor onto the ground. “Let me have it. Kell, give me a hand getting out of this thing, will you?”

In the reflected light he saw Zerba frown. But the other merely unfastened the pouch and handed it over.

The armor was off and Han was rummaging through the pouch when the speeder truck braked to a halt beside them. The door popped open and Chewbacca growled.

“Yeah, almost,” Han said. “Where’s Eanjer?”

“He stayed behind to turn a few more of the fireworks launchers toward the mansion,” Lando said, climbing out the other side and striding over to Han. “He said he’d get to the rendezvous on his own.” He held out his hand. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take my share now.”

Han winced. He’d guessed that Lando would pull this stunt. “How about we wait until we’re all at the rendezvous?” he suggested.

“How about you give it to me now?” Lando countered. “Then I can skip the rendezvous and get on with life.”

“What’s he talking about?” Zerba asked.

“He wants to trade his share of the credits for the blackmail files,” Han said.

“Can he do that?” Kell asked, frowning.

“Yes, he can,” Lando said firmly. “We’ve already agreed. And no offense, Han, but you’ve got a bad habit of losing the take to other people. So let’s have it.”

There was no way around it. “Fine,” Han said with a sigh. Pulling out the blackmail file box, he handed it over.

“Thanks,” Lando said, sliding it inside his police tunic. “Now, if you’ll kindly drop me at my airspeeder, I’ll be on my way. The rest of you, it’s been fun.”

A moment later they were inside the speeder truck and Chewbacca was heading toward one of the exits. There were probably still security guards on duty, but Han wasn’t expecting them to make trouble. Not with one of Villachor’s own vehicles.

He was more worried about Lando, and what Lando would say.

And what Lando might do.

“About one point seven-five meters, dark hair, dark skin, number-three-type mustache,” Dayja said hurriedly into his comlink as the airspeeder drove through the gate and out into the bustling city traffic. “He’s got the blackmail files, and if he has any sense, he’ll be taking them off Wukkar as soon as he hits the spaceport.”

“I don’t suppose you have a name,” d’Ashewl said. “There are a lot of ships on the ground right now.”

“I don’t know any names except Eanjer’s,” Dayja said. “But I think we can narrow it down. His ship will probably be something small and one-man—I got the feeling that he showed up a little later than the others and alone. From his grooming style, he’s probably the sort who loves the better things in life but can’t quite afford them, so look for a ship that was once high on the snob list but currently looks a little threadbare. Arrival time will be nine days ago, with probably a twelve-hour window on either side.”

“Got it,” d’Ashewl said. “What’s he wearing?”

“This’ll kill you,” Dayja said, ducking back as one of the fireworks pelting the mansion splashed fire up onto the roof nearby. “He’s in an Iltarr City police uniform. But I doubt he’ll try to get through the spaceport that way.”

“I would hope not,” d’Ashewl agreed. “Anything else?”

“He’ll be in a hurry,” Dayja said. “In fact …” He paused, running the numbers through his head. Taking the stolen speeder truck to where a proper escape vehicle was undoubtedly parked, transferring to that other vehicle, driving to the spaceport, getting to his docking bay, firing up his engines … “He should be calling for a lift slot in either thirty-two or fifty-five minutes, depending on whether he comes in with an airspeeder or a landspeeder.”

“Okay,” d’Ashewl said. If he was surprised or skeptical at Dayja’s estimates, he kept it to himself. “You want him picked up on the ground?”

“Better not,” Dayja said. “I don’t know what shape Villachor and his organization are in right now, but we can’t risk one of his people at the spaceport getting in on this before we have him secured. Have the Dominator grab him after he passes orbit.”

“I’ll call Captain Worhven right away,” d’Ashewl said. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted to be handed yet another unexplained task.”

“Part of his job,” Dayja said. “Anything new on Aziel?”

“Unfortunately, we had to let him go,” d’Ashewl said. “Prince Xizor was kind enough to provide him with diplomatic credentials. But there was just enough evidence that the cryodex was originally stolen that I was able to hold on to it as evidence.”

“Perfect,” Dayja said. “If we can grab the blackmail files, we’ll have the lock and the key. The Director will be pleased.”

“Never mind the Director,” d’Ashewl said with a grunt. “Lord Vader will be pleased. He’s the Empire’s future.”

“Maybe,” Dayja said cautiously. The last thing he wanted right now was to get embroiled in yet another political discussion. “Get a tap into the spaceport tower feed and put the Dominator on alert. I’ll be there as soon as I can grab an airspeeder from Villachor’s garage.”

“I assume you’ll want to be in on the interrogation yourself?”

Dayja smiled tightly. “You just pick him up,” he said. “I’ll handle the rest.”

Eanjer had expected to come though the job alive. He hadn’t been nearly so sure about the rest of the team.

He was also more than a little surprised that the scheme had actually worked.

The docking bay was quiet as he slipped through the door. He’d worried that Han and Chewbacca might get here ahead of him, despite the fact they had to drop the others off at the vehicle switch point. But the Falcon was sitting silently in the backwash glow from the nearby city, its lights and systems dark and cold.

Briefly he wondered what the others would think when both he and Han failed to show up at the rendezvous. They’d probably conclude that the two of them had cooked this whole thing up between them, with no intention of ever sharing the millions in those credit tabs with anyone else. They would be furious, vow revenge, and do all the other things people did in those situations.

And they would talk. They would certainly talk. With luck, whatever was left of Han’s blotchy reputation would never recover.

Not that Han would be needing that reputation. Not anymore.

He found a spot where he could sit comfortably and watch the entire section of open ground between the docking bay entrance and the Falcon’s ramp. Resting his hold-out blaster in his lap, he settled in to wait.

The last of the others had been dropped off, Han had ditched the borrowed speeder truck, and he and Chewbacca were finally ready to hit the spaceport themselves.

Chewbacca rumbled. “I know, I know,” Han said irritably. Chewbacca had been giving him the same disapproving look for the past hour. “It’ll be all right. Trust me.”

Chewbacca rumbled a final comment and then went silent.

Han sighed. He was right, of course. Lando was going to be furious. Or worse.

But there’d been nothing else he could do. Not with that Imperial on the roof watching the whole thing. “He’ll get over it,” he told Chewbacca firmly. “They’re not going to do anything to him. Not without any evidence.”

Chewbacca growled the obvious.

“Sure, except that he’s not just going to leave the box sitting out in the open,” Han explained patiently. “Look, it’ll be okay. Lando and me go back a long way. He’ll get over it.”

Chewbacca didn’t answer.

There were two approaches when dealing with a sudden and overwhelming Imperial presence, Lando thought distantly. One was to continue along in calm and perfect innocence, an ordinary citizen of the Empire with nothing to hide. The other was to throw power to the sublight engines and make a run for it.

In retrospect, he should have made a run for it.

“I don’t understand any of this,” he insisted to the two hard-faced Fleet troopers standing between him and the door of his ship’s lounge. “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to have done. Can you at least tell me what the charge is?”

The troopers didn’t answer. But then, aside from ordering him to open his hatch after he’d been tractored into the Star Destroyer’s hangar bay, and then further ordering him into the lounge, neither of his guards had said a word.

With a sigh, Lando gave up this latest effort at communication. Clearly, they were all waiting for someone, and nothing was going to happen until that someone arrived.

It was going to be a long, long night.

Across the docking bay, the door latch clicked open. Eanjer raised his blaster, sighting along it with his good eye.

And lowered it again as a cleaning droid shuffled into the bay, its four arms scrubbing industriously at the walls and floor.

He checked his watch, frowning. Han was late.

The lounge door opened, and to Lando’s surprise a masked, hooded, and cloaked figure stepped into the room. “Good evening,” he said, stopping between the two troopers. “I apologize for the delay. I trust you’ve been comfortable?”

“Quite,” Lando said, feeling his heart sink. No uniform, no badge, his face shrouded, and walking freely around a Star Destroyer. Some kind of special agent, then—Intelligence, Ubiqtorate, maybe even Imperial Security Bureau.

“Good.” The man gestured to the troopers. “Wait outside.”

“Yes, sir,” one of them said. Together they left the room.

The man waited until the door had closed behind them. Then he pushed back his hood and cloak and pulled off his mask. “So much for that,” he said briskly as he rubbed his forehead. “Sorry about the theatrics, but for reasons I won’t go into I can’t show my face aboard this ship.”

“I understand,” Lando said, his heart sinking even further. The man facing him was young. Far younger than he’d expected. Terrifyingly young.

Because the young were always ambitious. And in the murky universe where these people operated, there was only one way for young agents to climb up the ladder: by bringing in trophies to present to their superiors.

Enemies of the Empire. Real ones, or merely plausible ones.

This just got worse and worse.

“Now, then,” the young man said, dropping his mask on the side table and settling into the chair facing Lando. “Let’s start with introductions. I’m Dayja, and you’re—well, let’s just call you Lando, shall we?”

“Whatever you want,” Lando said, stifling a grimace. So much for the carefully constructed false identity and ship’s ID he’d flown in under.

“Good,” Dayja said. “Well. It’s late, we’ve both had a very busy day, and I’m sure you’re at least as tired as I am. So what do you say we make this quick and easy, and you just give me the box.”

“Box?”

“The box of Black Sun blackmail files,” Dayja said patiently. “The ones you stole this evening from Avrak Villachor’s safe. Magnificent work, by the way. I’m very impressed.”

“We’re glad you liked it,” Lando said, his brain spinning with possibilities. There seemed little point in denying that Han had given him the files. Dayja obviously knew that somehow.

But if he played his cards right, maybe there was still some bargaining room. “If I give you the box—”

“If?” Dayja interrupted, looking puzzled. “Oh, no, you misunderstand. Not if. When you give me the box. Then we’ll see about making a deal.”

“Sounds more like an ultimatum than a deal.”

“I suppose it does,” Dayja agreed, looking around the room. “Tell you what. To save time, how about I just get the box myself?” He stood up and walked over to the engineering monitor station on the side wall.

And to Lando’s horrified disbelief, he gave the corner of the ventilation monitor display a quick push and release, and as the hidden catch popped, he swung the monitor open to reveal the concealed storage compartment behind it.

“Sorry,” he said, giving Lando a tight smile. “Unfortunately for you, this little gem stash has been a standard feature on the G 50 series for quite some time.”

Lando sighed. “I was told it was a custom refitting.”

“And were charged extra for it, no doubt. Some people have no scruples at all.” Reaching into the opening, Dayja carefully removed the box. He sent Lando an unreadable look, then almost reverently worked the catch and raised the lid.

His expression changed. For another moment he held the pose, then raised his eyes again to Lando. “Cute,” he said, his voice suddenly brittle. “Where are they?”

“Where are what?” Lando asked, a nasty sense of doom rushing in on him. No—Han hadn’t.

Dayja turned the empty box to face him. “Where are the data cards?”

Lando sighed. Yes, Han had. “Still on Wukkar, I assume,” he said. “Actually, they’re probably somewhere in hyperspace by now.”

“Where were they going?”

“There’s a rendezvous point on Xorth,” Lando said. “But I doubt they’ll stay there long. In fact, since they were obviously expecting you to pick me up, they probably won’t go there at all.”

For a long minute Dayja stared at him. Then, carefully, he closed the box. “You play sabacc, Lando?” he asked.

“Yes,” Lando said, feeling a frown crease his forehead.

“Yes, of course you do,” Dayja said, walking back over to the chair but remaining standing. “And I’ll bet you rely heavily on your ability to bluff.”

“I prefer having the actual cards.”

“So do I,” Dayja said. “But sometimes we have to be creative with the hand we’ve been dealt.” He pulled out his comlink. “Captain Worhven? I’m finished. Have your men prepare my shuttle.” He gave Lando an oddly wry smile. “As soon as I’m gone, our guest and his ship will be free to leave.” He got an acknowledgment and put the comlink away.

“Really?” Lando asked cautiously.

“Really,” Dayja assured him. Reaching down to the chair, he picked up his mask. “Fortunately for you, it’s now in my best interests to make it look as if we had a deal, transacted our business, and then parted company.” He cocked his head. “Unless you wanted to stay aboard?”

“No, no, not at all,” Lando said hastily.

“You’re not to tell your friends about this, of course,” Dayja continued. “What happened here will remain our little secret.”

“Don’t worry,” Lando growled. “I doubt I’ll be seeing any of them again. Not for a long time.”

“Good.” Dayja put on his mask and readjusted his cloak and hood. “A good night to you, and a safe voyage. And one more thing.”

He leveled a finger at Lando’s face. “You owe me,” he said. “Someday I’ll be back to collect.”

Tucking the box into a pocket of his cloak, he turned and left the lounge.

Lando waited for a minute. The troopers didn’t come back. He waited another minute, then one more, and finally opened the lounge door.

The troopers were gone. So was Dayja. Lando went to the hatch, made sure it was properly sealed, then headed to the cockpit.

He was in the pilot’s seat, gazing at the men moving around inside the flight control station across the hangar, when he was given his release order.

It took all the way to hyperspace, though, before he started breathing normally again.

The sound of fireworks from around the city had long ceased. So had the mass of traffic as the people of Iltarr City left the various Festival venues and headed for home. And Han still hadn’t shown up.

Finally, belatedly, Eanjer got it.

It was an excellent copy, he had to admit as he walked beneath the ship, playing his glow rod over the hull. A vintage YT-1300 freighter, roughly the proper age and condition, even with some of the same modifications.

But only some. Others, like the concussion missile bay and the Ground Buzzer blaster cannon, were missing.

It wasn’t the Millennium Falcon. It was a decoy, swapped out in the landing bay sometime during the past nine days.

Han wasn’t coming. In fact, he was undoubtedly long gone.

Eanjer smiled a brittle smile into the darkness. Dozer, of course. It had to be. All that time he’d spent away from the suite during those first days of preparation, supposedly running errands and buying equipment for all the others.

He would have to find some way to pay the ship thief back.

Still, there would be other opportunities. He could wait.

Leaving the bay, he headed across the spaceport to where his own ship was docked. He didn’t look back.

The crowds had long since gone, and the rogue fireworks had long since spent themselves.

And Villachor’s life was over.

He stood at the railing of his balcony, gazing across the grounds at the massive, impenetrable safe sitting out there for all the universe to see. The impenetrable safe that had been breached.

Prince Xizor’s blackmail files were gone. Aziel had gotten free from the Imperials but had lost the cryodex and was looking furiously for someone to blame.

And Qazadi was dead. Murdered.

In Villachor’s own house.

Behind him, the suite’s secure comm station warbled. Briefly Villachor considered ignoring it. But there really was no point. When Black Sun decided to track him down, there wouldn’t be anything he could do about it. Giving his beloved, devastated estate a final look, he turned and went inside.

He’d expected it to be Aziel, possibly Prince Xizor himself. But it was neither.

“Master Villachor,” Lord d’Ashewl said, smiling genially out of the display screen. “I trust I’m not calling too late?”

“Not at all,” Villachor said. “What can I do for you?”

“I was thinking about our conversation of a couple of days ago,” d’Ashewl said, “and I thought you’d be interested in something that’s just come into my possession.” Reaching down, he lifted the Black Sun file box into view. “I presume I don’t need to tell you what this means,” he added, opening the box to show Villachor the five black data cards nestled neatly inside.

“No, you don’t,” Villachor agreed wearily. “Did you call me to gloat?”

“Not at all,” d’Ashewl assured him. “I called to see if you were still interested in a deal.”

Villachor frowned, trying to read past that round, ruddy face. “You have the files and you have the cryodex. What do you need me for?”

D’Ashewl shrugged. “You know a great deal about Black Sun. You could be very valuable to us.”

“And you would protect me, of course?” Villachor growled sarcastically.

“We’re quite good at such things, actually,” d’Ashewl said, all traces of levity gone from his face and voice. “Lord Vader is even better. I rather think that under the circumstances he could be persuaded to take a personal interest in this.”

It was a long shot, Villachor knew. Black Sun had people and agents everywhere. His life was still probably measured in days or even hours.

But even a long shot was better than no shot at all.

“Very well,” he said. He braced himself. All his life, all his efforts, all his amassed power and wealth … “You have a deal.”

“And still no sign of Eanjer?” Dozer asked, for probably the tenth time since he’d arrived.

“No,” Han said, dropping tiredly onto the couch. The suite wasn’t as large or fancy as the one on Iltarr City, and the furniture wasn’t nearly as comfortable. But under the circumstances it was much safer.

And safe was good right now. Safe was very good. “And there won’t be,” he added. “Rachele just found—”

“Wait a second,” Zerba cut in incredulously. “Are you telling us he just bailed?”

“More likely he missed the note at the rendezvous,” Bink put in. “Maybe one of us should go back and see if he’s still waiting there.”

“He’s not.” Han waved at Rachele, seated behind her computer, a pinched look on her face. “You want to tell them, Rachele? Or should I?”

“I will,” Rachele said, her voice somber. “I just picked up a report from the Iltarr City police. They’ve found Eanjer’s body.”

“Oh, no,” Tavia breathed, looking stricken. “Oh, Rachele.”

“Don’t get too mushy,” Han growled. “Tell them the rest.”

“They found his body,” Rachele repeated, “where he’d apparently been dumped and left to bleed out.” Her throat worked. “Six weeks ago.”

For a long moment no one spoke. Han looked around the room, watching their expressions of surprise or confusion turn to horrified understanding. “You mean … before he even talked to Han?” Kell demanded. His eyes darted to Han. “Or—”

“Or whoever it was,” Dozer said, sounding like he wasn’t sure whether to be stunned or outraged. “But then—”

“What did he want?” Han shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“I do,” Bink said in a low voice. “He came to kill Qazadi.”

Chewbacca rumbled.

“That’s for sure,” Winter agreed soberly. “And we all fell for it.”

“But you at least suspected something, didn’t you, Han?” Rachele asked. “That conversation you had with him after we got Lando and Zerba back.”

“I knew something was funny with the guy,” Han said. “He seemed more interested in getting inside the mansion than he did in us getting his credits out. But I figured that was just the revenge part talking. The rest of it—” He shook his head. “I didn’t have a clue.”

“So he used us,” Kell murmured. “He brought us in to do all the heavy lifting, get him inside, and take out Qazadi’s guards. Son of a bantha.”

“And for nothing,” Zerba growled, tossing the credit tab he’d been fiddling with back into the stack on the table. “Without Eanjer—the real Eanjer—these things are worthless.”

“Not completely,” Rachele said. “I know some slicers. We should be able to get—I’d say about eight hundred fifteen thousand.”

“My mistake,” Zerba said sarcastically. “It’s still closer to zero than it is to the hundred sixty-three million we signed up for. If I ever catch up with that guy—”

“You won’t,” Bink said. “Whoever he was, he was a professional.”

“Or an Imperial,” Dozer growled.

“Or an Imperial,” Bink agreed. “My point was that we don’t even know what he really looks like. Not with all that medseal plastered across his face. Wherever he disappeared to, he’s gone for good.”

“So what now?” Kell asked.

“We salvage what we can,” Han said, trying hard to keep his own crushing disappointment out of his voice. So much for his dream of being free of Jabba. So much for all his dreams. “Rachele’s said she can get eight hundred fifteen out of the tabs. That’s eighty-one five each. Still not bad for a couple weeks’ work.”

“Eighty-one five?” Zerba asked, frowning. “I make it ninety plus change.”

“Ten of us makes eighty-one five each,” Kell reminded him.

“I only see nine people in this room.”

“Lando still gets his share,” Han said firmly.

“I thought his share was the blackmail files,” Zerba said, scowling.

“Which he didn’t get,” Han said. “So he gets a tenth of the credits like he signed up for.”

“Which you’re going to deliver in person?” Zerba snorted. “That I’d pay to watch.”

“We’ll get it to him,” Han said, eyeing the collection of loot on the table. The rest of the data cards had turned out to be worthless—details of Villachor’s smuggling operations that would be interesting to a prosecutor’s office but not to a bunch of freelance scoundrels.

But there were still the five blackmail cards. Like the other data cards, they were worthless to everyone in the room.

But maybe not useless to everyone. From what Han had seen of the Yavin base, the Rebel Alliance had all sorts of strange stuff squirreled away. If they could dig up a cryodex somewhere, maybe they could put the blackmail files to some use.

And if so, maybe he could hit up Dodonna for some more reward. Probably not enough for a lifetime of leisure, like this job was supposed to have provided, but maybe enough to at least give him and Chewbacca a little breathing space.

He did a quick mental calculation. If he kept back enough to pay off his debt to Jabba … “Let me sweeten the pot a little,” he offered. “I’ll buy out your shares of the blackmail files for eighteen five each. That’ll bring you all up to an even hundred grand.”

Chewbacca rumbled a question.

“Well, yeah, I’m dipping into your share,” Han confirmed. “How else did you think I was going to get to eighteen five each?”

“So first Lando wants the cards, and now you want them?” Zerba asked suspiciously. “Is there something you’re not telling the rest of us?”

“Not really,” Han said. “I just figured you could all use the extra credits. And it’s not like Chewie and me are going anywhere.”

“You could pay off your debt to Jabba,” Bink pointed out.

“We’ll have enough left to do that,” Han assured her.

“Actually—” Rachele broke off. “Never mind.”

“So is it a deal?” Han asked.

The others looked at each other. “Fine with me,” Kell said.

“Me too,” Dozer seconded.

“Sure, why not?” Zerba growled. “It’s not like I can use them in my act or anything.”

“Okay,” Han said. “Leave your contact info with Rachele and she’ll send you your splits after she gets the tabs sliced.”

“And we never talk about this again,” Rachele added. “To anyone.”

“No problem,” Kell said. “For starters, who’d believe us?”

“Only the people who’d kill us for having done it,” Zerba said, standing up. “Well. So long, everyone. Happy flights.”

“It was great not meeting like this,” Tavia said wryly.

“For whatever it’s worth, Han, it’s been fun,” Bink said as she also stood up. “Call us next time you’ve got a job.”

Five minutes and a round of farewells later, all of them except Chewbacca, Rachele, and Winter had left. “Did you want something?” Han asked Winter.

“In a minute,” Winter said. “First I’d like to hear what Rachele was starting to say earlier.”

Chewbacca growled agreement.

“That makes it unanimous, Rachele,” Han said. “Go ahead.”

Rachele sighed. “It was something I picked up on the back channel earlier,” she said. “Before we found out about Eanjer.” She took a deep breath. “Jabba’s raised your debt marker, Han. Raised it to half a million.”

Han stared at her. “Half a million?”

“He’s blaming you for Black Sun finding out about Morg Nar on Bespin,” Rachele said miserably. “I’m so sorry. I figured it wouldn’t really matter, since you were about to pull in almost fifteen million, and I didn’t want to ruin the moment for you. But then we found out about Eanjer, and …” She trailed off.

“It’s okay,” Han said, feeling the weight of the entire universe crashing down on him. He hadn’t expected word about Nar to get back to Jabba so fast. Even if it had, he wouldn’t have figured Jabba would be able to pin it on him. He certainly wouldn’t have expected Jabba to take the loss of his Bespin operation personally.

So instead of getting Jabba off his back for good, he was in even deeper.

Chewbacca grunted.

“Yeah, maybe,” Han agreed doubtfully. “But he sure isn’t going to cool down for a while. That Bespin operation wasn’t bringing in much, but for some reason he really liked it.”

“If you need somewhere to stay, I’m sure I can find you a place,” Rachele offered.

“Or,” Winter said quietly, “you could go back to your other friends.” Han frowned. “What other friends?”

“The people you work with,” Winter said. “The people I assume you’re going to give the blackmail files to.” She raised her eyebrows slightly. “The people who just might be able to track down another cryodex.”

Han shot a look at Chewbacca. How in space had she been able to figure that out? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do,” Winter said. “You see, I work procurement for them … and that escape pod you fired into the factory was part of a lot I smuggled to them seven months ago.”

“Of course it was,” Han said in disgust. He should never, ever have let Her Worshipfulness talk him into letting her replace the escape pods he’d dumped during that Death Star thing. “Look, I didn’t steal them, if that’s what you think. She insisted we take them.”

It was as if someone had flipped on a searchlight behind Winter’s eyes. “She?” she echoed, abruptly sitting straighter in her chair. “Which she are we talking about?”

Han stared at her, that bitter-edged confession she’d made suddenly coming back to mind. I was connected with the royal palace on Alderaan … “The Princess,” he said. “Leia.”

“You’ve seen her?” Winter asked, her voice shaking a little. “Since Alderaan, I mean?”

“Sure,” he said. “In fact, I was with her at Yavin, where the—” He shot a look at Rachele.

“It’s okay,” Rachele said. “We know about Yavin and the Death Star.”

“She got away from there just fine,” Han said. “Far as I know, she’s still fine.” And stuck-up and insufferable, he thought about adding. Still, if Winter knew the Princess, she probably already knew all that.

“Thank you,” Winter said quietly. “I’ve been … we hadn’t heard the details.”

“Well, you’ll have to get the rest from someone else,” Han said, standing up. “If Jabba’s jumped my debt, he’s probably jumped the bounty, too. We need to find someplace to lie low for a while.”

“Leia will take you in,” Winter promised.

“We’ll see.” Han eyed her. “By the way, that thing about never mentioning this to anyone? That goes double for Her Highness.”

Winter smiled. “Absolutely,” she promised. “Take care, Han.”

“He will,” Rachele said with a smile of her own. “He always does.”

They were back in the Falcon and waiting for their lift slot when Chewbacca finally asked the obvious question.

“I don’t know yet,” Han said. “We’ll go back when it’s time, I guess.”

Chewbacca considered, then rumbled again.

“Of course she likes me,” Han said dryly. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Master?” the protocol droid called hesitantly from the doorway. “It’s time.”

“Time for what?” Eanjer asked, focusing on the mirror in front of him as he eased the last of the medseal strips off his face.

“His High Exaltedness awaits your presence,” the droid said, sounding even more nervous than usual.

Not surprising, really. “Tell His Exaltedness I’ll be there when I’m ready.”

“Yes, sir.” The droid hesitated. “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d rather wait here until you’re ready.”

“Fine,” Eanjer said. “Suit yourself.”

Gently he prodded his cheek where the medseal had covered it. He hadn’t realized what three weeks of being wrapped up like that would do to the skin. It was red and puffy, was mottled in places, and itched like deep-core chaos. His right hand and arm looked nearly as bad.

Still, the symptoms were temporary. They would fade away soon.

What wouldn’t fade so quickly was the annoyance of a job only half done.

Any group of thieves or mercenaries could have gotten him into Villachor’s mansion and over, around, or through all the guards while still leaving enough of Qazadi to be identifiable. The only reason for him to have lured Solo to Wukkar in the first place, and then manipulated him into taking the job, was so that the casually arrogant smuggler would be where Eanjer could nail him when it was all over. Planting that fake message with Rachele so that he could bring Calrissian into the crosshairs was another planned perk that had sputtered away into nothing.

So maybe he should consider the job only a third successful?

Still, what was past was past. All the annoyance and regrets couldn’t change that.

And if only a third had been successful, it was nevertheless the biggest and most rewarding third. The bounty for Qazadi’s death would more than make the whole operation worthwhile.

There would be other opportunities to catch up with Solo and Calrissian. Patience, as always, was the key.

“Master?”

“I heard you.” Standing up, he picked up the battered Mandalorian helmet and set it on his head. “Jabba had just better have my credits ready.”

“I am sure he does, Master,” the droid assured him hastily.

“Good.” Boba Fett gestured. “Lead the way.”

Did you wonder what Lando was referring to
when he said, “Zerba I only worked with
once, on that Tchine thing”?

Find out in

STAR WARS:
WINNER LOSE ALL

An original eBook novella
by Timothy Zahn

Available now for all e-reading devices

About the Author

TIMOTHY ZAHN is the author of more than forty novels, nearly ninety short stories and novelettes, and four short fiction collections. In 1984, he won the Hugo Award for best novella. Zahn is best known for his Star Wars novels (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, Specter of the Past, Vision of the Future, Survivor’s Quest, Outbound Flight, Allegiance, and Choices of One) with more than four million copies of his books in print. Other books include the Cobra series, the Quadrail series, and the young adult Dragonback series. Zahn has a B.S. in physics from Michigan State University and an M.S. from the University of Illinois. He lives with his family on the Oregon coast.

BY TIMOTHY ZAHN

STAR WARS

STAR WARS: | | Scoundrels
STAR WARS: | | Choices of One
STAR WARS: | | Allegiance
STAR WARS: | | Outbound Flight
STAR WARS: | | Survivor’s Quest
STAR WARS: | | Vision of the Future
STAR WARS: | | Specter of the Past
STAR WARS: | | The Last Command
STAR WARS: | | Dark Force Rising
STAR WARS: | | Heir to the Empire

ALSO

Cobra Alliance
The Judas Solution
Conquerors’ Legacy
Conquerors’ Heritage
Conquerors’ Pride
Cobra Bargain
Cobra Strike
The Backlash Mission
Cobra
The Blackcollar

Read on for an excerpt from

STAR WARS: Crucible
by Troy Denning

Published by Del Rey Books

With lowlifes of every species from three-eyed Gran to four-armed Hekto standing belly-to-bar, the Red Ronto reminded Han Solo of that cantina back on Mos Eisley, the one where he had first met Luke and Obi-Wan all those years ago. Smoke hung in the air so thick and green he could taste it, and the bartender was pulling drinks from a tangle of pipes and spigots more complicated than a hyperdrive unit. There was even an all-Bith band up on stage—though instead of upbeat jatz, they were blasting the room with outdated smazzo.

Usually, the raucous music made Han think of banging coolant lines. But today he was feeling it—that driving bass and stabbing wailhorn … and why not? This trip promised to be more getaway than mission, and he was looking forward to seeing Lando again.

“I don’t like it, Han,” Leia said, raising her voice over the music. “It’s not like Lando to be so late.”

Han turned to look across the table, where Leia sat with a fogblaster in front of her; the glass was barely half-empty. Wearing a gray gunner’s jacket over a white flight suit, she was—as always—the classiest female in the joint … and, despite a few laugh lines, still the most beautiful. He thumbed a control pad on the edge of the table, and the faint yellow radiance of a tranquility screen rose around their booth. The screen was a rare touch of quality for a place like the Red Ronto, but it was one Han appreciated as the raucous music faded to a muffled booming.

“Relax,” Han said. “When has Lando ever missed a rendezvous?”

“My point exactly. Maybe that problem is more dangerous than he thought.” Leia nodded toward the entrance. “And take a look at that miner over there. His Force-aura is filled with anxiety.”

Han followed her gaze toward a swarthy young human dressed in the dust-caked safety boots and molytex jumpsuit of an asteroid miner. With a nose just crooked enough to be rakish and a T-6 blaster pistol hanging from his side, the kid was clearly no stranger to a fight. But he was not exactly streetwise, either. He was just standing there in the doorway, squinting into dark corners, while he remained silhouetted against the light behind him.

“He doesn’t look like much of a threat,” Han said. Still, he dropped a hand to his thigh holster and undid the retention strap. As a Jedi Knight, Leia felt things through the Force that Han could not sense at all, and he had long ago learned to trust her instincts. “Probably just some crew chief looking for new hires.”

The miner’s gaze stopped at the Solos’ booth. He flashed a brash smile, then said something to the bartender and raised three fingers.

“I don’t think he’s looking for new hires, Han,” Leia said. “He’s looking for us. This must have something to do with Lando and his pirate problem.”

“Could be,” Han allowed, but he hoped Leia was wrong. Missed rendezvouses and strange messengers were never good signs.

Any lingering doubt about the miner’s intention vanished when the bartender handed him three glasses and a bottle of Corellian Reserve, and he started in their direction. There was something in his bold stride and cocky grin that set Han on edge.

“Whoever he is, I don’t like him,” Han said. “He’s way too sure of himself.”

Leia smiled. “Actually, I like him already,” she said. “He reminds me of you at that age.”

Han shot her a scowl meant to suggest she needed an eye exam, and then the newcomer was at their table, stepping through the tranquility screen. He placed the glasses on the table and opened the bottle.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, pouring. “But they keep a case of Reserve on hand for Lando, and I thought you might prefer it to the usual swill around here.”

“You were right,” Leia said, visibly relaxing at the mention of Lando’s name. “Whom shall I thank?”

The miner placed a hand on his chest. “Omad Kaeg at your service,” he said, bowing. “Captain Omad Kaeg, owner and operator of the Joyous Roamer, one of the oldest and most profitable asteroid tugs in the Rift.”

Han rolled his eyes at the overblown introduction, but Leia smiled. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Captain Kaeg.” She motioned at the table. “Won’t you join us?”

Kaeg flashed his brash smile again. “It would be an honor.”

Instead of taking a seat where Leia had indicated, Kaeg leaned across the table to set his glass in the shadows on the far side of the booth—an obvious attempt to position himself where he could watch the door. Han quickly rose and allowed Kaeg into the back of the booth. If a stranger wanted to place himself in a crossfire zone between two Solos, Han wasn’t going to argue.

“So, how do you know Lando?” he asked, resuming his seat. “And where is he?”

“I know Lando from the miner’s cooperative—and, of course, I supply his asteroid refinery on Sarnus.” Kaeg’s gray eyes slid toward the still empty entrance, then back again. “I think he’s at the refinery now. At least, that’s where he wants you to meet him.”

Han scowled. “On Sarnus?” The planet lay hidden deep in the Chiloon Rift—one of the densest, most difficult-to-navigate nebulas in the galaxy—and its actual coordinates were a matter of debate. “How the blazes does he expect us to find it?”

“That’s why Lando sent me,” Kaeg said. “To help.”

Kaeg’s hand dropped toward his thigh pocket, causing Han to draw his blaster and aim it at the kid’s belly under the table. He wasn’t taking any chances.

But Kaeg was only reaching for a portable holopad projector, which he placed on the table. “Let me show you what you’ll be facing.”

“Why not?” Han waved at the holopad with his free hand.

Kaeg tapped a command into the controls, and a two-meter band of braided shadow appeared above the pad. Shaped like a narrow wedge, the braid appeared to be coming undone in places, with wild blue wisps dangling down toward the corrosion-pitted tabletop and even into Han’s ale tankard.

“This, of course, is a chart of the Chiloon Rift,” Kaeg said.

He tapped another command, and a red dash appeared in the holo-map, marking the cantina’s location on Brink Station just outside the Rift. The dash quickly stretched into a line and began to coil through the tangled wisps of hot plasma that gave the Chiloon Rift its distinctive array of blue hues. Before long, it had twisted itself into a confusing snarl that ran vaguely toward the center of the nebula.

“And this is the best route to Lando’s refinery on Sarnus,” Kaeg said. “I’ve been doing my best to keep the charts accurate, but I’m afraid the last update was two standard days ago.”

“Two days?” Han asked. With three kinds of hot plasma rolling around at near light speed, hyperspace lanes inside the Rift tended to open and close quickly—sometimes in hours. “That’s the best you can do?”

“I’m sorry, but yes,” Kaeg said. “It’s important to take it slow and careful in there. If you were to leave a hyperspace lane and punch through a plasma cloud, you would fry every circuit on your ship—including your navigation sensors.”

“You don’t say,” Han said. Hitting a plasma-pocket was one of the most basic dangers of nebula-running, so it seemed to him that Kaeg was working way too hard to make sure he knew how dangerous Rift travel was. “Thanks for the warning.”

“No problem.” Kaeg grinned, then let his gaze drift back toward the cantina door. “Any friend of Lando Calrissian’s is a friend of mine.”

Instead of answering, Han caught Leia’s eye, then tipped his head ever so slightly toward their tablemate. She nodded and turned toward Kaeg. After forty years together, he knew she would understand what he was thinking—that something felt wrong with Kaeg’s story.

“We appreciate your concern, Captain Kaeg.” Leia’s tone was warm but commanding, a sure sign that she was using the Force to encourage Kaeg to answer honestly. “But I still don’t understand why Lando isn’t here himself. When he asked us to look into the pirate problem in the Rift, he was quite insistent about meeting us here at the Red Ronto.”

Kaeg shrugged. “I’m sorry, but he didn’t explain. His message just said to meet you here and make sure you reached Sarnus.” Continuing to watch the door with one eye, he paused, then spoke in a confidential tone. “But I don’t blame you for hesitating. This trip could be very risky, especially for someone your age.”

“Our age?” Han bristled. “You think we’re old or something?”

Kaeg finally looked away from the door. “Uh … no?” he replied. “It’s just that, uh—well, you do need pretty quick reflexes in the Chiloon Rift.”

“It’s called experience, kid,” Han said. “Someday, you might have some yourself … if you live that long.”

“No offense,” Kaeg said, raising his hands. “I’m just worried about you heading in there alone.”

“Don’t let a few wrinkles fool you, Captain Kaeg,” Leia said. “We can take care of ourselves.”

Kaeg shook his head almost desperately. “You wouldn’t say that if you had ever been inside the Rift,” he said. “It isn’t the kind of place you should go without a guide on your first visit. The plasma in there kills S-thread transmissions, so HoloNet transceivers are worthless—and even emergency transmitters aren’t much good.”

“What about the RiftMesh?” Han asked. Communication inside the Chiloon Rift was supposed to be handled via a network of fifty thousand repeater beacons. “All that hardware, and you’re telling me it doesn’t work?”

“The ’Mesh works, but it’s slow. It can take an hour for a beacon to relay a signal.” Kaeg tapped the holopad controls again, and a multitude of tiny white points appeared in the holochart. “And it’s not unusual for a message to pass through a thousand beacons before being picked up. Trust me, there’s no lonelier place in the galaxy to be stranded.”

“It’s a wonder any rock-grabbers go in there at all,” Han replied. “I can’t imagine a worse place to drag around half a billion tons of ore.”

“It’s worth it, my friend.” Ignoring Han’s sarcasm—or possibly missing it altogether—Kaeg flashed a square-toothed grin. “The tumblers in the Rift are fantastic, Han. There are more than anyone can count, and most are heavy and pretty.”

By stone and tumblers, Han knew Kaeg meant asteroids. Heavy and pretty was slang for a high content of precious metals. According to Lando Calrissian, the Chiloon Rift contained the most bountiful asteroid field anywhere, with more capture-worthy tumblers than any other field in the galaxy. Unfortunately, its roiling clouds of plasma and a sudden infestation of pirates meant it was probably also the most dangerous.

“Which makes asteroid tugs very easy prey for pirates,” Leia said. “You’re hauling all that valuable ore, and there’s no one to call for help.”

Kaeg nodded eagerly. “It’s terribly dangerous. You can send a message and go gray waiting for an answer.” He winced almost immediately, then said, “No offense, of course.”

“None taken,” Leia said, a bit stiffly. “But with all of those asteroid tugs running around, I can’t imagine the pirates coming after a small vessel like the Falcon.”

Not seeming to notice how he was being tested, Kaeg shrugged and leaned forward. “Who knows?” he asked. “Even if the pirates aren’t interested in the Falcon, there are many other dangers.”

“And let me guess,” Han said. “You’re willing to make sure that doesn’t happen to us—for the right price?”

“I could be persuaded to serve as your guide, yes,” Kaeg said. “As I said, any friend of Lando Calrissian is a friend of mine.”

“How very kind of you.” Leia flashed a tight smile, and again Han knew what she was thinking. No trick was too low for a pirate gang, and one of their favorites was to slip a saboteur aboard the target vessel. “But you still haven’t explained why Lando didn’t meet us here himself.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Kaeg said. “As I mentioned, he didn’t give a reason.”

Han leaned toward Kaeg and pointed a finger at him. “You see, now that’s where your story falls apart. Lando isn’t the kind of guy who fails to show with no explanation. He would’ve said why he couldn’t make it.”

Kaeg showed his palms in mock surrender. “Look, I’ve told you all I know.” He focused his attention on Leia. “He kept the message short. I’m assuming that’s because he didn’t want everyone in the Rift to know his business.”

“And why would that happen?” Leia asked. “Do you have a habit of breaking a confidence?”

Kaeg scowled and shook his head. “Of course not,” he said. “But I told you—Lando sent that message over the RiftMesh.”

“And?” Han asked.

Kaeg sighed in exasperation. “You really don’t understand how things work here,” he said. “The RiftMesh is an open network—open, as in one single channel. Everybody listens, with nothing encrypted. If a message is encrypted, the beacons won’t even relay it. That makes it tough to keep a secret out here, but it also makes life hard on the pirates. They can’t coordinate a swarm attack if everybody is listening to their chatter over the RiftMesh.”

“And that really works?” Han asked.

Kaeg waggled a hand. “It’s not perfect. The pirates find other ways to coordinate,” he said. “But the ’Mesh is better than nothing. And it helps the rest of us keep track of one another, so our tugs don’t pile up when a good hyperspace lane suddenly opens.”

Han turned to Leia. “That actually makes sense.”

“As far as it goes.” Leia did not look away from Kaeg. “But he’s been working pretty hard to get us to take him on, and that just doesn’t make sense.”

“Yeah, I know.” Han looked back to their confused-looking table companion. “Since when do tug captains have time to take on extra work as tourist guides?”

The confusion vanished from Kaeg’s face. “Is that all that is troubling you?” he asked. “My tug has been in for repairs for a month. That’s how Lando knew I would still be here to give you his message. And, quite honestly, I could use something to do.”

Han considered this, then nodded and holstered his blaster. “Maybe we’re being too hard on the kid,” he said. “After all, he did know about Lando’s stock of Corellian Reserve.”

Leia continued to study Kaeg for a moment, no doubt scrutinizing him through the Force, then said, “Fair enough. But he’s worried about something.”

“Yes. I’m worried that you aren’t going to let me guide you to Sarnus.” Kaeg glanced toward the door again, then said, “If you don’t want my help, you know how to use a holochart.”

He started to rise.

“Not so fast, kid.” Han grabbed Kaeg’s arm. “You’ve been watching the door since you got here. You expecting someone?”

“Not anymore,” Kaeg said, still watching the front of the cantina. “If you don’t mind, I have things to do.”

Han pulled the asteroid miner back down, then followed his gaze and saw a huge scaly green figure entering the cantina. The reptilian was so tall it had to duck as it stepped through the entrance, and its thick arms hung from shoulders so broad they rubbed both sides of the doorframe. Its spiny skull-crest almost scraped the ceiling, and a thick tail swept the floor behind him. The creature stopped just inside the room, vertical pupils dilating to diamonds as its eyes adjusted to the dim light.

“Who’s that?” Han asked, keeping one eye on the newcomer.

“No one you’d ever want to meet.” Kaeg slid into the back of the booth and slumped down in the shadows. “Just one of the Nargons.”

“Who are the Nargons?” Leia asked. “I’m not familiar with that species.”

“Lucky you,” Kaeg said, sinking even deeper into his seat. “You should try to keep it that way.”

“Care to explain why?” Han asked. “And while you’re at it, maybe why you’re hiding from them?”

As he spoke, two more Nargons ducked through the door, their big hands hanging close to the blasters in their knee-holsters. They stepped forward to flank the first one and began to scan the cantina interior.

Kaeg was careful to avoid looking in their direction. “Who says I’m hiding?”

“Kid, I was ducking bounty hunters before your grandfather met your grandmother.” As Han spoke, the first Nargon’s gaze reached their table and stopped. “I know the signs, so answer the question—or you’re on your own.”

Kaeg’s brow shot up. “You would back me?”

“Assuming you’re really a friend of Lando’s,” Leia said cautiously, “and if you start being honest with us. Then, yes, we have your back.”

The first Nargon said something to its companions. They eased away in different directions, one going to the far end of the bar, the other drawing angry glares as it jostled its way into the opposite corner.

Kaeg swallowed hard. “Deal.”

“Good. Tell us what you know about Nargons,” Han said. He reached over and tapped the holopad controls, and the chart dissolved in a rain of sparkles. “Like, where do they come from?”

“Kark if I know,” Kaeg said. “I never saw them before the new outfit brought them in, when the pirates grew bad.”

“New outfit?” Han asked. He was no expert on the Chiloon Rift, but he knew the miners here were mostly independent operators whose families had been in the business for generations. “What new outfit?”

Kaeg’s lip curled in distaste. “G.E.T.,” he said. “Galactic Exploitation Technologies. You know them?”

Han had never heard of G.E.T., but he didn’t bother to ask for details. His attention was fixed on the entrance, where two more figures were just stepping through the doorway. Unlike the Nargons, this pair was not an exotic species. Standing less than two meters tall, with shoulders no broader than Han’s, they were almost certainly human. But they were also wearing full suits of colored armor and blocky helmets with opaque visors, and that could only mean one thing.

“Mandalorians!” Leia whispered.

“Yeah.” Han hated Mandalorians. Like their leader, Boba Fett, they had a bad habit of selling their combat skills to the highest bidder—and the highest bidder was almost always on the side opposite Han. He turned to Kaeg. “What are Mandos doing here?”

“They work security for G.E.T. They’re sort of handlers for the Nargons.” As Kaeg spoke, the first Nargon leaned down to say something to the taller Mandalorian. “Is this going to be a problem? Because if you can’t handle Mandalorians, then you really can’t handle—”

“Relax, kid,” Han said. “We can handle Mandos. We can handle anything in this room.”

Kaeg looked doubtful. “Tell me that after you figure out what a Nargon is.”

The first Nargon raised a long arm and pointed toward their booth, then fell in behind the two Mandalorians as they crossed the room. The muffled rhythms of the smazzo music continued to reverberate through the tranquility screen, but otherwise the cantina fell uneasy and still. Judging by all the worried brows and averted eyes, Han half-expected the other patrons to clear out. Instead, most remained in their seats, and the miners in the crowd turned to glare openly as the trio passed.

“Not real popular, are they?” Han remarked.

“Nobody likes rock-jumpers,” Kaeg said. “Galactic Exploitation came in fast and hard with a whole fleet of those giant asteroid crunchers. Trouble is, vessels that big aren’t nimble enough to run the Rift—and even if they were, G.E.T. crews have no nose.”

“No nose?” Leia asked.

Kaeg scowled. “You need a sixth sense to operate here,” he said. “Outsiders can’t smell good rock, and they can’t see a lane getting ready to open. They have no feel for how the Rift moves.”

“So they trail independent operators,” Han said. “And then push in on your finds.”

Kaeg nodded. “Push in is one way to say it. Steal is another.”

“And when did that start?” Leia asked.

“About ten standard months ago,” Kaeg said. “G.E.T. showed up a little before the pirate problem grew bad.”

Leia shot Han a look that suggested she found the timing as suspicious as he did, but before she could say anything, the Mandalorians arrived with the lead Nargon. Too huge to fit completely inside the tranquility partition, the reptile stopped halfway through and loomed over Leia, seemingly oblivious to the gold static dancing over its scales. The short Mandalorian—a squat fellow in yellow armor—came to Han’s side and stood with one hand resting on his holstered blaster.

The taller Mandalorian placed a chair at the table across from Kaeg, then removed his helmet and sat. He had dark, curly hair and a burn-scarred face that still appeared half-melted along the left side. Barely glancing at the Solos, he placed the helmet in front of him, then folded his hands on top and leaned toward Kaeg.

“Skipping out on your marker, Kaeg?” he asked. “I took you for smarter than that.”

“I’m not skipping out on anything, Scarn.” Kaeg’s voice was a little too hard to be natural. “I’m just catching a ride so I can get what I owe you.”

A muffled snort sounded inside the helmet of the shorter Mandalorian, and Scarn sneered. “Why do I doubt that?”

“Look, you know what those pirates did to my tug,” Kaeg said. “There’s no way she’s leaving the repair docks for another two weeks, minimum.”

Scarn shrugged. “So?”

“So I’ll be back for her,” Kaeg said. “But it’s going to take more credits than I had before our game to pay for repairs. I’m just heading to Sarnus to make arrangements. I’ll get what I owe you at the same time.”

“Arrangements with Calrissian?” Scarn rubbed his chin just long enough to pretend he was thinking about it, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. We don’t like Calrissian, and he doesn’t like us. We’ll do this another way.”

“That’s the only way we’re going to do it,” Kaeg said. “I’m not giving you the Roamer—that ship has been in my family for two hundred years.”

Kaeg overtly dropped his hand below the table, and Han tried not to wince. Hinting at violence was usually a bad idea when you were outnumbered and outflanked. But at least Han was feeling better about the kid’s story. Gambling debts he could understand, having had a few himself, and the debt explained why Kaeg was so eager to get off Brink Station. Han rested a hand on his own holstered blaster and tried to look bored, as though firefights against armored Mandalorians backed by overgrown lizards were a common occurrence for him … and, really, that wasn’t much of an exaggeration.

The Nargon hissed and started to pull the blaster from its knee-holster, but Scarn called it off with a two-fingered wave.

“There’s no need for anyone to get hurt today.” The undamaged half of his face smiled. “The last thing I want is that crate of corrosion you call an asteroid tug.”

It was hard to say whether Kaeg’s frown was one of confusion or outrage. “The Roamer may not look like much, but she’s all pull,” he said. “She’s dragged moons out of orbit.”

Scarn looked unimpressed. “If you say so. But I have another idea.” He extended a hand toward his Mandalorian subordinate. “Jakal?”

Jakal withdrew a pair of folded flimsis from a pouch on his equipment belt and handed them to Scarn.

Scarn unfolded the sheets and pushed them toward Kaeg. “Considering the size of your marker, that’s more than fair.”

Kaeg eyed the flimsis skeptically, then reluctantly picked them up and began to read. Scarn waited with a bored expression, as though the kid’s consent was irrelevant to what was about to happen. Han kept his hand on his blaster grip and watched the Nargon watch him. Jakal’s helmet pivoted from side to side as he kept an eye on the rest of the miners in the cantina, who were all carefully observing the situation at Kaeg’s table. The other two Nargons continued to stand guard in opposite corners of the room, their tails bumping the walls as they, too, scanned the crowd. But no one was watching Leia, who was probably the most dangerous person in the Red Ronto.

Maybe the situation wasn’t as bad as it looked.

Kaeg was still on the first page when he stopped reading and looked across the table. “Galactic Exploitation wants my family’s share of the miner’s cooperative?”

Scarn nodded. “That’s right,” he said. “You sign your share over to G.E.T., then G.E.T. pays me, and your debt is settled. Simple.”

Kaeg looked more confused than alarmed. “Why?”

Scarn shrugged. “All I know is the bosses want to join your little coop,” he said. “Maybe they’re worried one of their yachts will need to be rescued or repaired or something.”

“Then they can pay for an associate membership.” Kaeg tossed the flimsis in the middle of the table. “I’m not giving you a Founder’s Share. I’d be run out of the Rift.”

Scarn’s expression grew cold. “Either you put your thumb in the verification box, or Qizak here rips your arm off and does it for you.”

A nervous sheen came to Kaeg’s lip, but he looked into the Nargon’s eyes and managed to fake being calm. “Just so you know, Qizak, you touch me and you die. Clear?”

Qizak bared a fang, then looked to Scarn. “Now, Boss?”

Leia raised a hand. “Hold that thought, Qizak.” Her voice was calm and soothing, the way it always was when she made a Force-suggestion. “There’s no rush here.”

The Nargon studied her as though considering whether to rip her limb from limb, or simply bite off her head.

Leia ignored the glare and focused on Scarn. “How much does Omad owe, ver’alor?”

The eye on the good side of Scarn’s face flashed at her use of the Mandalorian word for lieutenant. But the eye on the scarred side merely pivoted in her direction, its cybernetic cornea fogging as it adjusted focus.

Scarn studied Leia in silence. His sneer of contempt suggested that he had no idea she was Princess Leia Organa Solo, sister to Jedi Grand Master Luke Skywalker, and a famous Jedi Knight herself. And if Scarn hadn’t recognized Leia, it was a pretty good bet he didn’t realize that her companion was Han Solo, one of the finest gamblers in the galaxy—and someone who would know how a cybernetic eye might be used to cheat a kid in a high-stakes sabacc game.

Finally, Scarn asked, “What do you care? You his mother or something?”

Leia’s eyes grew hard. “Or something,” she said. “All you need to know is that I’m a friend who might be willing to cover his debt … once you tell me how much it is.”

She pointed at the transfer document and used the Force to summon both pieces of flimsi into her hand.

Scarn’s jaw dropped, then his gaze snapped back to Kaeg. “If you think hiring some old Jedi castoff will get you out of your marker—”

“She’s not exactly a castoff,” Kaeg interrupted. “But you’ll get your money, Scarn. Omad Kaeg is no shirker.”

“Yeah, but he is kind of a rube,” Han said. He looked Scarn square in his artificial eye, but when he spoke, it was to Kaeg. “Omad, the next time you play sabacc, make sure it’s not with someone who has a cybernetic eye. Those things can be programmed to cheat in about a hundred ways.”

Kaeg’s voice turned angry. “You have a cybernetic eye, Scarn?”

“He didn’t mention that?” Han shook his head and continued to watch Scarn. “You see, now that’s just bad form.”

Scarn’s face grew stormy. “You calling me a cheater?” His voice sounded just like the voices of all the other cheaters Han had spotted over the years—well-rehearsed outrage with no real astonishment or confusion. “Because you weren’t even there.”

“No, but Omad was.” Being careful not to look away from Scarn, Han nodded toward Kaeg. “What do you think, kid? Fair game or not?”

It was Leia who answered. “Not, I think.” Her eyes remained on the flimsi. “Omad, a million credits on a marker? Really?”

“I needed to pay for repairs,” Kaeg explained. “And I’m usually very good at sabacc.”

“Oh, I can see that,” Han said. He was starting to wonder about the convenient timing of the pirate attack on Kaeg’s ship … and he was starting to get angry. “And I’ll bet after the pirates had you limping back into the station, someone at the bar was buying drinks and talking about the Mando sucker in the back room.”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Kaeg sounded embarrassed. “How did you know?”

“It’s an old trick, Omad.” Leia’s voice was kind. “Han has fallen for it himself a few times.”

“You have?” Kaeg asked. “Han Solo?”

“No need to talk about that now,” Han said. A few times was exaggerating, but he knew Leia was just trying to keep Kaeg from starting a fight she didn’t think they would win. Deciding she was probably right, he shifted his gaze back to Scarn. “So now that we know your marker is no good, why don’t you sign it paid—”

“I didn’t cheat,” Scarn said, sounding a little too insistent. He raised a thumb to the damaged side of his face, then popped out his cybernetic eye and slapped the device on the table. “Check it yourself.”

Han barely glanced at the thing. “I’d rather check the eye you used during the game.”

“That is the one I used.”

Scarn’s tone remained aggressive and hostile, but the mere fact that he had switched from intimidation to arguing his innocence told Han the balance of power had shifted. Scarn recognized the Solo name, and he was no more eager to start a fight with Han and Leia than they were to start one with him and his Nargons.

“Maybe that’s the cybernetic eye you were using,” Han said, “and maybe it’s not. But you didn’t tell the kid you had one, and you gotta admit that looks bad.” When Scarn didn’t argue, Han extended a hand. “So give me the kid’s marker, and we’ll put all this behind us.”

Scarn remained silent and looked around the table, no doubt weighing his chances of actually leaving with Kaeg’s thumbprint against the likelihood of surviving a fight. Han risked a quick peek in Leia’s direction and was rewarded with a subtle nod. She could feel in the Force that Scarn was worried, and worried meant they were going to avoid a battle.

Then Kaeg asked, “What about the rest?”

“The rest of what?” Han asked, confused.

“I lost ten thousand credits before I signed that marker,” Kaeg said. “It was all the money I had.”

Han frowned. “You took your last ten thousand credits to a sabacc table?”

“I didn’t see another choice,” Kaeg said. “And don’t tell me you haven’t done the same thing.”

“That was different,” Han said.

He glanced over at Scarn and caught him glaring at Kaeg in fiery disbelief. There was no way the Mandalorian was going to return the ten thousand credits, probably because most of it had already been spent. Han shifted his gaze back to Kaeg.

“Look, kid, ten thousand credits may seem like a lot right now, but it’s not worth starting a firefight over. Why don’t you think of it as tuition?”

“No,” Kaeg said, glaring at Scarn. “Nobody cheats Omad Kaeg.”

“Omad,” Leia said gently, “we’re going to pay you for serving as our guide. It will be more than you lost, I promise.”

Kaeg shook his head. “It’s not about the credits. These Out-Rifters come pushing in here, thinking they can just take what’s ours.” In a move so fast it was barely visible, he laid his blaster on the table, his finger on the trigger and the emitter nozzle pointed in Scarn’s direction. “It’s time they learned different.”

Han groaned but slipped his own blaster out of its holster and placed it on the table with a finger on the trigger. Scarn did the same, while Jakal pulled his weapon and held it nozzle-down, ready to swing into action against Han or Kaeg. Leia simply laid the transfer document in front of her and dropped one hand onto her lap, where it would be close to her lightsaber. The Nargon watched them all and snarled.

When no one actually opened fire, Han let out his breath and shifted his gaze back and forth between Kaeg and Scarn. “Look, guys, things can go two ways from here,” he said. “Either everyone in our little circle dies, or you two come to an understanding and we all walk away. Which will it be?”

Kaeg stared into Scarn’s remaining eye. “I’m good with dying.”

“Then why are you talking instead of blasting?” Scarn asked. Without awaiting a reply, he turned to Han. “Jakal is going to put his blaster away and hand over that marker. Then we’re done here. Clear?”

“What about the kid’s ten thousand?” Han didn’t really expect to get it back, but he wanted Kaeg to understand that some mistakes couldn’t be fixed, that sometimes the only smart move was to cut your losses and move on. “Jakal going to hand that over, too?”

Scarn shook his head. “The ten thousand is gone,” he said. “You think I’d be out here on the edge of nothing, wrangling a bunch of overgrown lizards, if I didn’t have problems of my own?”

The question made Qizak’s skull-crest stand erect, and it studied Scarn with an expression that seemed half appetite and half anger. Han contemplated the display for a moment, wondering just how much obedience the Mandalorian could truly expect from his “overgrown lizards,” then turned to Kaeg.

Kaeg sighed and took the finger off his blaster’s trigger. “Fine.” He held a hand out toward Jakal. “Give me the marker.”

Jakal holstered his weapon, then pulled another flimsi from his belt pouch and tossed it in the middle of the table.

And that was when Qizak said, “Coward.”

Scarn craned his neck to glare up at the Nargon. “Did you say something?” he demanded. “Did I tell you to say something?”

Qizak ignored the question and pointed to the unsigned transfer document, still lying in front of Leia. “The bosses need Kaeg’s share,” he said. “That is the plan they have.”

Kaeg’s eyes flashed in outrage. “Plan?”

Shaking his head in frustration, Han said, “Yeah, kid, plan. You were set up. I’ll explain later.” Hoping to keep the situation from erupting into a firefight, he turned back to Scarn. “Like you said, we’re done here. Go.”

Qizak pointed a scaly talon at the transfer document. “When Kaeg gives his share to the bosses.”

“No, now,” Scarn said, rising. “I give the orders. You—”

A green blur flashed past Han’s face, ending the rebuke with a wet crackle that sent Scarn sailing back with a caved-in face. The blur hung motionless long enough to identify it as a scaly green elbow, then shot forward again as Qizak grabbed Kaeg’s wrist.

Jakal cursed in Mandalorian and reached for his blaster again—then went down in a crash of metal and snapping bone as the Nargon’s huge tail smashed his knees. Han stared. How do we stop this thing?

By then, Qizak was dragging Kaeg’s hand toward the transfer document. Han checked the other Nargons and found them both in their corners, still watching the crowd rather than the trouble at the booth. Good. If they were worried about the other patrons getting involved, it would take them longer to react. That gave the Solos ten or twelve seconds to even the odds—maybe longer, if the miners really did jump into the fight.

Han pointed his blaster at Qizak’s head. “Hey, Finhead. Let—”

A green streak came sweeping toward Han’s arm. He pulled the trigger, and a single bolt ricocheted off Qizak’s temple. Then a scaly wrist cracked into Han’s elbow; his entire arm fell numb, and the blaster went flying.

From the other side of the booth came the snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber. The acrid stench of burning scales filled the air. Qizak roared and whirled toward a spray of blue embers that made no sense, and then an amputated forearm dropped onto the table, trailing smoke and sparks.

Sparks?

Too desperate to wonder, Han launched himself at Qizak, burying his shoulder in the Nargon’s flank and pumping his legs, driving through like a smashball player making a perfect tackle.

Qizak barely teetered.

But the huge alien did look toward Han, and that gave Leia the half-second she needed to jump onto the booth seat. Her lightsaber whined and crackled, and Qizak’s remaining arm dropped next to the first. Two arms, maybe three seconds. Not fast enough. Han drove harder, trying to push the Nargon off balance … or at least distract him.

Leia buried her lightsaber in Qizak’s side. The Nargon roared and pivoted away … but not to retreat. Remembering how the lizard had smashed Jakal’s knees, Han threw himself down on the huge tail, slowing it just enough to give Leia time to roll onto the table. The lightsaber fell silent for an instant, then sizzled back to life.

Qizak let out an anguished bellow, then its tail whipped back in the opposite direction. Han went tumbling and came to rest against a flailing heap of armor—Jakal, writhing with two broken legs. Han spun and reached for the Mandalorian’s blaster but discovered his numb hand lacked the strength to wrench the weapon from Jakal’s grasp.

Jakal pulled the blaster free and started to swing the nozzle toward

Han.

“Are you crazy?” Han jerked his thumb toward Qizak. “He’s the one who smashed Scarn’s face!”

Jakal paused, and Han used his good hand to snatch the blaster away. So far, the fight had lasted six, maybe seven seconds. The other Nargons would arrive soon. A tremendous banging sounded from the booth, and suddenly Leia was trapped against the wall as the armless Qizak tried to kick the table aside to get at her. Kaeg stood next to her, pouring blaster fire into the lizard’s chest, but the bolts bounced away with little effect.

“What are those things?” Han gasped.

Jakal might have groaned something like scaled death, but Han was already attacking Qizak from behind, firing with his off-hand. The storm of ricochets was so thick, he did not realize he was caught in a crossfire until he stood and nearly lost his head to the bolts screeching in from two different directions.

Han dived and began to kick himself across the floor behind Qizak. The bolts had to be coming from the other Nargons, blasting on the run as they tried to push through the panicked crowd to help their companion. But who would do that, fire into a brawl when their buddy was right in the middle of it?

He continued to squeeze his own trigger, pushing himself toward Qizak’s flank and firing toward the smoking hole Leia had opened in the Nargon’s ribs. Finally, he saw a bolt disappear into the dark circle.

And that drew a reaction. Qizak spun as though hit by a blaster cannon, pupils diamond-shaped and wide open. Gray smoke began to billow from its chest, followed by blue spurting blood and something that looked like beads of molten metal. The Nargon lurched toward Han, its legs starting to shudder and spasm as it prepared to stomp its attacker into a greasy smear.

Leia came leaping over the tabletop, her lightsaber flashing and sizzling as she batted blaster bolts back toward the other Nargons. She pivoted in midair, bringing her bright blade around in a horizontal arc. Qizak’s head came off and went bouncing across the durasteel floor.

Han saw the body falling and tried to roll away, but he was too slow. The huge corpse crashed down atop him, and the air left his lungs.

In the next instant, the weight vanished. He saw Leia crouching at his feet, one arm outstretched as she used the Force to send Qizak’s body flying into a charging Nargon.

“You okay, Flyboy?” she asked.

“I’m …” Han had to stop. His chest hurt something fierce, and the breath had definitely been knocked out of him. Still, he managed to get his feet under him. “Fine. I think.”

Kaeg scrambled from beneath the table. A flurry of blaster bolts nearly took his head off. He cried out in surprise, then waved an arm toward a dark corner.

“Emergency exit!”

He scrambled away, staying low and not looking back.

Han did not follow immediately. Recalling the strange sparks that had sprayed from Qizak’s arm as Leia amputated it, he grabbed one of the limbs off the table—and was so surprised by its weight he nearly dropped it. He flipped the stump around and saw that instead of bone, the Nargon’s flesh was attached to a thick durasteel pipe with just room enough for a bundle of fiberoptic filaments.

“Han!”

Leia used the Force to send the last Nargon stumbling back toward the bar, then grabbed Han by the arm and raced down a short passage, past the refreshers and out through an open iris hatch. It wasn’t until Kaeg sealed the hatch behind them and blasted the controls that she finally released his arm and took a good look at what he was carrying.

“Really, Han?” She rolled her eyes in disbelief. “Souvenirs?”

Read on for an excerpt from

STAR WARS: Dawn of the Jedi:
Into the Void
by Tim Lebbon

Published by Del Rey Books

At the heart of any poor soul not at one with the Force, there is only void.

—Unknown Je’daii, 2,545 TYA (Tho Yor Arrival)

DARK MATTERS

Even at the beginning of our journey I feel like a rock in the river of the Force. Lanoree is a fish carried by that river, feeding from it, living within it and relying upon the waters for her well-being. But I am unmoving. An inconvenience to the water as long as I remain. And slowly, slowly, I am being eroded to nothing.

—Dalien Brock, diaries, 10,661 TYA

She is a little girl, the sky seems wide and endless, and Lanoree Brock breathes in the wonders of Tython as she runs to find her brother.

Dalien is down by the estuary again. He likes being alone, away from all the other children at Bodhi, the Je’daii Temple of the Arts. Lanoree’s parents have sent her to find him, and though they still have some teaching to do that afternoon, they’ve promised that they will walk up to the boundary of the Edge Forest that evening. Lanoree loves it up there. And it scares her a little, as well. Close to the Temple, close to the sea, she can feel the Force ebbing and flowing through everything—the air she breathes, the sights she sees, and all that makes up the beautiful scenery. Up at the Edge Forest, there’s a primal wildness to the Force that sets her blood pumping.

Her mother will smile and tell her that she will learn about it all, given time. Her father will look silently into the forest, as if he yearns to explore that way. And her little brother, only nine years old, will start to cry.

Always, at the Edge Forest, he cries.

“Dal!” She swishes through the long grasses close to the riverbank, hands held out by her sides so that the grass caresses her palms. She won’t tell him about the walk planned for that evening. If she does he’ll get moody, and he might not agree to come home with her. He can be like that sometimes, and their father says it’s the sign of someone finding his own way.

Dal doesn’t seem to have heard her, and as she closes on him she slows from a run to a walk and thinks, If that was me I’d have sensed me approaching ages ago.

Dal’s head remains dipped. The river flows by, fast and full from the recent rains. There’s a power to it that is intimidating, and closing her eyes, Lanoree feels the Force and senses the myriad life-forms that call the river home. Some are as small as her finger, others that swim upriver from the ocean are almost half the size of a Cloud Chaser ship. She knows from her teachings that many of them have teeth.

Perhaps her brother is asleep. She bites her lip, hesitant. Then she probes out with her mind and—

“I told you to never do that to me!”

“Dal …”

He stands and turns around, and he looks furious. Just for a moment there’s a fire in his eyes that she doesn’t like. She has seen those flames before, and carries the knotted scar tissue in her lower lip to prove it. Then his anger slips and he smiles.

“Sorry. You startled me, that’s all.”

“You’re drawing?” she asks.

Dal closes the art pad. “It’s rubbish.”

“I don’t believe that,” Lanoree said. “You’re really good. Temple Master Fenn himself says so.”

“Temple Master Fenn is a friend of father’s.”

Lanoree ignores the insinuation and walks closer to her brother. She can already see that he has chosen a fine place from which to draw the surroundings. The river curves here, and a smaller tributary joins from the hills of the Edge Forest, causing a confusion of currents. The undergrowth on the far bank is colorful and vibrant, and there’s a huge old ak tree whose hollowed trunk is home to a flight of weavebirds. Their spun golden threads glisten in the afternoon sun. The birdsong compliments the river’s roar.

“Let me see,” Lanoree says.

Dal does not look at her, but he opens the pad.

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “The Force has guided your fingers, Dal.” But she’s not sure.

Dal picks a heavy pencil from his pocket and strikes five thick lines through his drawing, left to right, tearing the paper and ruining it forever. His expression does not change as he does so, and neither does his breathing. It’s almost as if there is no anger at all.

“There,” he says. “That’s better.”

For a moment the lines look like claw marks, and as Lanoree takes a breath and blinks—

A soft, insistent alarm pulled her up from sleep. Lanoree sighed and sat up, rubbing her eyes, massaging the dream away. Dear Dal. She dreamed of him often, but they were usually dreams of those later times when everything was turning bad. Not when they were still children for whom Tython was so full of potential.

Perhaps it was because she was on her way home.

She had not been back to Tython in more than four years. She was a Je’daii Ranger, and so ranging is what she did. Some Rangers found reasons to return to Tython regularly. Family connections, continuous training, face-to-face debriefs, it all amounted to the same thing—they hated being away from home. She also believed that there were those Je’daii who felt the need to immerse themselves in Tython’s Force-rich surroundings from time to time, as if uncertain that their affinity with the Force was strong enough.

Lanoree had no such doubts. She was comfortable with her strength and balance in the Force. The short periods she had spent with others on retreats on Ashla and Bogan had made her even more confident in this.

She stood from her cot and stretched. She reached for the ceiling and grabbed the bars she’d welded there herself, pulling up, breathing softly, then lifting her legs and stretching them out until she was horizontal to the floor. Her muscles quivered, and she breathed deeply as she felt the Force flowing through her, a vibrant, living thing. Mental exercise and meditation was fine, but sometimes she took the greatest pleasure in exerting herself physically. She believed that to be strong with the Force, one had to be strong oneself.

The alarm was still ringing.

“I’m awake,” she said, easing herself slowly back to the floor. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”

The alarm snapped off, and her Peacemaker’s ship’s grubby yellow maintenance droid ambled into the small living quarters on padded metal feet. It was one of many adaptations she’d made to the ship in her years out in the Tython system. Most Peacemakers carried a very simple droid, but she’d updated hers to a Holgorian IM-220, capable of limited communication with a human master and other duties not necessarily exclusive to ship maintenance. She’d further customized it with some heavy armor, doubling its weight but making it much more useful to her in risky scenarios. When she spoke to it, its replies were obtuse. She supposed it was the equivalent of trying to communicate with a grass kapir back home.

“Hey, Ironholgs. You better not have woken me early.”

The droid beeped and scraped, and she wasn’t sure whether it was getting cranky in its old age.

She looked around the small but comfortable living quarters. She had chosen a Peacemaker over a Hunter because of its size; even before she flew her first mission as a Je’daii Ranger, she knew that she would be eager to spend much of her time in space. A Hunter was fast and agile, but too small to live in. The Peacemaker was a compromise on maneuverability, but she had spent long periods living alone on the ship. She liked it that way.

And like most Rangers, she had made many modifications and adaptations to her ship that stamped her own identity on it. She’d stripped out the pre-fitted table and chairs and replaced them with a weights and tensions rack for working out. Now she ate her food sitting on her narrow cot. She’d replaced the holo-scan entertainment system with an older flatscreen, which doubled as a communications center and reduced the ship’s net weight. There had been a small room beside the extensive engine compartment that housed a second cot for guests or companions, but because she never hosted either, she removed it and filled the space left behind with extra laser blaster charge pods, a water recycling unit, and food stores. The ship’s several cannons had also been upgraded. At the hands of the Cathar master armorer Gan Corla, the cannons now packed three times more punch and had more than twice the range of those standard to Peacemaker ships. She had also altered and adapted the function and positions of many controls, making it so that only she could fly the ship effectively. It was hers, and it was home.

“How long to Tython?” she asked.

The droid let out a series of whines and clicks.

“Right,” Lanoree said. “Suppose I’d better freshen up.” She brushed a touch-pad and the darkened screens in the forward cockpit faded to clear, revealing the star-speckled view, which never failed to make her heart ache. There was something so profoundly moving about the distance and scale of what she saw out there, and the Force never let her forget that she was a part of something incomprehensibly large. She supposed it was as close as she ever came to a religious epiphany.

She touched the pad again and a red glow appeared surrounding a speck in the distance. Tython. Three hours and she’d be there.

The Je’daii Council ordering her back to Tython meant only one thing: They had a mission for her, and it was one that they needed to discuss face-to-face.

Washed, dressed, and fed, Lanoree sat in the ship’s cockpit and watched Tython drawing closer. Her ship had communicated with sentry drones orbiting at two hundred thousand miles, and now the Peacemaker was performing a graceful parabola that would take it down into the atmosphere just above the equator.

She was nervous about visiting Tython again, but part of her was excited as well. It would be good to see her mother and father, however briefly. She contacted them far too infrequently.

With Dal dead, she was now their only child.

A soft chime announced an incoming transmission. She swiveled her seat and faced the flatscreen, just as it snowed into an image.

“Master Dam-Powl,” Lanoree said, surprised. “An honor.” And it was. She had expected the welcoming transmission to be from a Je’daii Ranger, or perhaps even a Journeyer she did not know. Not a Je’daii Master.

Dam-Powl bowed her head. “Ranger Lanoree, it’s good to see you again. We’ve been eagerly awaiting your arrival. Pressing matters beg discussion. Dark matters.”

“I assumed that was the case,” Lanoree said. She shifted in her seat, unaccountably nervous.

“I sense your discomfort,” Master Dam-Powl said.

“Forgive me. It’s been some time since I spoke with a Je’daii Master.”

“You feel unsettled even with me?” Dam-Powl asked, smiling. But the smile quickly slipped. “No matter. Prepare yourself, because today you speak with six Masters from the Council, including Temple Master Lha-Mi. I’ve sent your ship the landing coordinates for our meeting place twenty miles south of Akar Kesh. We’ll expect you soon.”

“Master, we’re not meeting at a temple?”

But Dam-Powl had already broken the transmission, and Lanoree was left staring at a blank screen. She could see her image reflected there, and she quickly gathered herself, breathing away the shock. Six Je’daii Masters? And Lha-Mi, as well?

“Then it is something big.”

She checked the transmitted coordinates and switched the flight computer to manual, eager to make the final approach herself. She had always loved flying and the untethered freedom it gave her. Almost like a free agent.

Lanoree closed her eyes briefly and breathed with the Force. It was strong this close to Tython, elemental, and it sparked her senses.

By the time the Peacemaker sliced into Tython’s outer atmosphere, Lanoree’s excitement was growing. The landing zone was nestled in a small valley with giant standing stones on the surrounding hills. She could see several other ships, including Hunters and another Peacemaker. It was a strange place for such a meeting, but the Je’daii Council would have their reasons. She guided her ship in an elegant arc and landed almost without a jolt.

“Solid ground,” she whispered. It was her first time on Tython in four years. “Ironholgs, I don’t know how long we’ll be here, but take the opportunity to run a full systems check. Anything we need we can pick up from Akar Kesh before we leave.”

The droid emitted a mechanical sigh.

Lanoree probed gently outward, and when she sensed that the air pressures inside and outside the ship had equaled she opened the lower hull hatch. The smells that flooded in—rash grass, running water, that curious charged smell that seemed to permeate the atmosphere around most Temples—brought a rush of nostalgia for the planet she had left behind. But there was no time for personal musings.

Three Journeyers were waiting for her, wide-eyed and excited.

“Welcome, Ranger Brock!” the tallest of the three said.

“I’m sure,” she said. “Where are they waiting for me?”

“On Master Lha-Mi’s Peacemaker,” another Journeyer said. “We’re here to escort you. Please, follow us.”

They led the way, and Lanoree followed.

“Forgive us for not welcoming you back to Tython in more … salubrious surroundings,” Temple Master Lha-Mi said. “But by necessity this meeting must be covert.” His long white hair glowed in the room’s artificial light. He was old and wise, and Lanoree was pleased to see him again.

“It’s so nice to be back,” Lanoree said. She bowed.

“Please, please.” Lha-Mi pointed to a seat, and Lanoree sat facing him and the other five Je’daii Masters. This Peacemaker’s living quarters had been pared down to provide a circular table with eight seats around it, and little more. She had already nodded a silent greeting to two of the Masters, but the other three she did not know. It seemed that things had moved swiftly while she had been away, especially when it came to promotions.

“Ranger Brock,” Master Dam-Powl said, smiling. “It’s wonderful to see you again, in the flesh.” She was a Master at Anil Kesh, the Je’daii temple of science, and during Lanoree’s training she and Dam-Powl had formed a close bond. It was she more than any other who had expressed the conviction that Lanoree would be a great Je’daii one day. It was also Dam-Powl who had revealed and encouraged the areas of Force use that Lanoree was most skilled at—metallurgy, elemental manipulation, alchemy.

“Likewise, Master Dam-Powl,” Lanoree said.

“How are your studies?”

“Continuing,” Lanoree said. She built a workspace in her Peacemaker ship, and sometimes she spent long, long hours there. Her skills still sometimes felt fledgling, but the sense of accomplishment and power she felt while using them were almost addictive.

“You’re a talented Je’daii,” Master Tem Madog said. “I can sense your experience and strength growing with the years.” It was a sword forged by this master weapons-smith that hung by Lanoree’s side. The blade had saved her life on many occasions, and on other occasions it had taken lives. It was her third arm. In the four years since leaving Tython she had never been more than an arm’s reach from the weapon, and she felt it now, cool and solid, keen in the presence of its maker.

“I honor the Force as well as I can,” Lanoree said. “I am the mystery of darkness, in balance with chaos and harmony.” She smiled as she quoted from the Je’daii oath, and some of the Masters smiled back. Some of them. The three she did not know remained expressionless, and she probed gently, knowing that she risked punishment yet unable to break her old habit. She always liked knowing who she was talking to. And as they had not introduced themselves, she thought it only fair.

They closed themselves to her, and one, a Wookiee, growled deep in his throat.

“You have served the Je’daii and Tython well during your years as Ranger,” Lha-Mi said. “And sitting before us now, you must surely believe that we mean you no ill. I understand that this meeting might seem strange, and that being faced with us might seem … daunting. Intimidating, perhaps? But there is no need to invade another’s privacy, Lanoree, especially a Master. No need at all.”

“Apologies, Master Lha-Mi,” Lanoree said, wincing inwardly. You might have been out in the wilds, she berated herself, but be mindful of the Je’daii formality.

The Wookiee laughed.

“I’m Master Xiang,” one of the strangers said. “Your father taught me, and now I teach under him at Bodhi Temple. A wise man. And good at magic tricks.”

For an instant Lanoree felt a flood of emotion that surprised her. She remembered her father’s tricks from when she and Dal were children—how he would pull objects out of thin air, turn one thing into another. Back then she’d believed he was using mastery of the Force, but he had told her that there were some things not even the Force could do. Tricks, he’d said. I’m merely fooling your senses, not touching them with my own.

“And how is he?” Lanoree asked.

“He’s fine. He and your mother send their best wishes. They’d hoped you could visit them, but given the circumstances, they understand why that would be difficult.”

“Circumstances?”

Xiang glanced sidelong at Lha-Mi and then back at Lanoree. When she spoke again, it was not to answer her query. “We have a mission for you. It’s … delicate. And extremely important.”

Lanoree sensed a shift in the room’s atmosphere. For a few moments they sat in almost complete silence—Temple Master Lha-Mi, five Je’daii Masters, and her. Air-conditioning hummed, and through the chair she could feel the deeper, more insistent vibration of the Peacemaker’s power sources. Her own breath was loud. Her heart beat the moments by. The Force flowed through and around her, and she felt history pivoting on this moment—her own history and story, and that of the Je’daii civilization as well.

Something staggering was going to happen.

“Why do you choose me?” she asked softly. “There are many other Rangers, all across the system. Some much closer than me. It’s taken me nineteen days to get here from Obri.”

“Two reasons,” Xiang said. “First, you’re particularly suited to the investigations required. Your time on Kalimahr brokering the Hang Layden deal displayed your sensitivity in dealing with inhabitants on the settled worlds. The assassinations on Nox saved many lives and prevented many awkward questions for the Je’daii. And your defusing of the Wookiee land wars on Ska Gora probably prevented a civil war.”

“It was hardly a defusing,” Lanoree said.

“The deaths were unfortunate,” Lha-Mi said. “But they prevented countless more.”

Lanoree thought of the giant apex trees aflame, countless burning leaves drifting in the vicious winds that sometimes stirred the jungles there, the sound of millennia-old tree trunks splitting and rupturing in the intense firestorm, and the screams of dying Wookiees. And she thought of her finger on the trigger of her laser cannons, raised and yet more than ready to fire again. It was me or them, she thought whenever the dream haunted her, and she knew that to be true. She had tried everything else—everything—but in the end, diplomacy gave way to blood. Yet each time she dreamed, the Force was in turmoil within her, dark and light vying for supremacy. Light tortured her with those memories. Dark would let her settle easy.

“You saved tens of thousands,” Xiang said. “Maybe more. The Wookiee warlord Gharcanna had to be stopped.”

Lanoree glanced at the Wookiee Master and he nodded slowly, never taking his eyes from hers. He had great pride, and he carried his sadness well.

“You said two reasons,” Lanoree said.

“Yes.” Xiang seemed suddenly uncomfortable, shifting in his seat.

“Perhaps I should relay the rest of the information,” Lha-Mi said. “The mission first. The threat that has risen against the Je’daii, and perhaps even Tython itself. And when you know that, you will understand why we have chosen you.”

“Of course,” Lanoree said. “I’m honored to be here, and eager to hear. Any threat against Tython is a threat against everything I love.”

“Everything we all love,” Lha-Mi said. “For ten thousand years we have studied the Force and developed our society around and within it. Wars and conflicts have come and gone. We strive to keep the dark and the light, Bogan and Ashla, forever in balance. But now … now there is something that threatens us all.

“One man. And his dreams. Dreams to leave the Tython system and travel out into the galaxy. Many people desire to do so, and it’s something I understand. However settled we are in this system, any educated being knows that our history lies out there, beyond everything we now know and understand. But this man seeks another route.”

“What other route?” Lanoree asked. Her skin prickled with fear.

“A hypergate,” Lha-Mi said.

“But there is no hypergate on Tython,” Lanoree said. “Only tales of one deep in the Old City, but they’re just that. Tales.”

“Tales,” Lha-Mi said, his eyes heavy, beard drooping as he lowered his head. “But some people will chase a tale as far and hard as they can, and seek to make it real. We have intelligence that this man is doing such a thing. He believes that there is a hypergate deep beneath the ruins of the Old City. He seeks to activate it.”

“How?” she asked.

“A device,” Lha-Mi said. “We don’t know its nature, nor its source. But it will be fueled by dark matter, harnessed through arcane means. Forbidden. Dreaded. The most dangerous element known to us, and which no Je’daii would dare to even attempt to capture or create.”

“But if there’s no hypergate—”

“Tales,” Lha-Mi said again. “He chases a legend. But whether it exists or not is irrelevant. The threat is the dark matter he intends to use to try to initiate the supposed gateway. It could …” He trailed off and looked to his side.

“Exposing dark matter to normal matter would be cataclysmic. It would create a mini black hole,” Dam-Powl said. “And Tython would be swallowed in a heartbeat. The rest of the system, too.”

“So you see the dire threat we face,” Lha-Mi said.

“Just one man? So arrest him.”

“We don’t know where he is. We don’t even know which planet he’s on.”

“The intelligence is sound?” Lanoree asked, but she already knew the answer to that. Such a gathering of Je’daii Masters for this purpose would not have taken place otherwise.

“We have no reason to doubt it,” Lha-Mi said, “and every reason to fear. If it does transpire that the threat is not as severe as it appears, then that’s a good thing. All we waste is time.”

“But the hypergate,” Lanoree said. “Protect it. Guard it.”

Lha-Mi leaned forward across the table. With a blink he closed off the room—air-conditioning ceased, the door slammed shut and locked. “The hypergate is a tale,” he said. “That is all.”

Lanoree nodded. But she also knew that talking of a simple story would surely not require such care, and such an arrangement as this. For later, she thought, guarding her thoughts.

“And now to why it’s you we’ve chosen for the mission,” Xiang said. “The man is Dalien Brock, your brother.”

Lanoree reeled. She never suffered from space sickness—the Force settled her, as it did all Je’daii—but she seemed to sway in her seat, though she did not move; dizziness swept through her, though the Peacemaker was as stable as the ground it rested upon.

“No,” she said, frowning. “Dalien died nine years ago.”

“You found no body,” Xiang said.

“I found his clothing. Shredded. Bloodied.”

“We have no reason to doubt our sources,” Lha-Mi said.

“And I have no reason to believe them!” Lanoree said.

Silence in the room. A loaded hush.

“Your reason is that we order this,” Lha-Mi said. “Your reason is any small element of doubt that exists over your brother’s death. Your reason is that, if this is true, he might be a threat to Tython. Your brother might destroy everything you love.”

He fled, I found his clothes, down, down deep in the … the Old City.

“You see?” Lha-Mi asked, as if reading her thoughts. For all Lanoree knew he had, and she did not question that. He was a Temple Master, after all, and she only a Ranger. Confused as she was, she could not help her thoughts betraying her.

“He always looked to the stars,” Lanoree said softly.

“We hear whispers of an organization, a loose collection of cohorts, calling themselves Stargazers.”

“Yes,” Lanoree said, remembering her little brother, always looking outward to the depths of space as she looked inward.

“Find your brother,” Lha-Mi said. “Bring him back to Tython. Stop his foolish schemes.”

“He won’t come back,” Lanoree said. “If it really is him, he’ll never return after so long. So young when he died, but even then he was growing to …”

“To hate the Je’daii,” Xiang said. “All the more reason to bring him back to us.”

“And if he refuses?”

“You are a Je’daii Ranger,” Lha-Mi said. And in a way, Lanoree knew that was answer enough.

“I need everything you know.”

“It’s already being downloaded to your ship’s computer.”

Lanoree nodded, unsurprised at their forwardness. They’d known that she could not say no.

“This is a covert operation,” Xiang said. “Rumors of the hypergate persist, but the knowledge that someone is trying to initiate it might cause panic. We could send a much larger force against Dalien, but that would be much more visible.”

“And there’s a deeper truth,” Lha-Mi said.

“You don’t want people supporting his cause,” Lanoree said. “If news of what he plans spreads, many more might attempt to initiate the gate. More devices. More dark matter.”

Lha-Mi smiled and nodded. “You are perceptive and wise, Lanoree. The threat is severe. We are relying on you.”

“Flattery, Master?” Lanoree said, her voice lighter. A ripple of laughter passed around the assembled Je’daii Masters.

“Honesty,” Lha-Mi said. He grew serious once again, and that was a shame. A smile suited him.

“As ever, I’ll give everything I have,” Lanoree said.

“May the Force go with you,” Lha-Mi said.

Lanoree stood, bowed, and as she approached the closed door Lha-Mi opened it with a wave of his hand. She paused once before leaving, turned back.

“Master Xiang. Please relay my love to my mother and father. Tell them … I’ll see them soon.”

Xiang nodded, smiled.

As Lanoree left the room, she almost felt her little brother’s hand in her own.

On her way back to her Peacemaker, a riot of emotions played across Lanoree’s mind. Beneath them all was a realization that was little surprise to her—she was glad that Dal was still alive. And this was why she had been chosen for such a mission. There were her past achievements, true, and for one so young she had already served the Je’daii well. Her affinity with the Force and the Je’daii’s purpose and outlook was pure. But her personal involvement might be her greatest asset.

Because she had failed to save her brother’s life once, and she would not let him go again. She would do everything she could to save Dal—from danger, and from damnation—and that determination served the mission well.

But it might also compromise the assignment.

She breathed deeply and calmed herself, knowing that she would have to keep her emotions in check.

Two young Je’daii apprentices passed her by. A boy and a girl, they might well have been brother and sister, and for a fleeting moment they reminded Lanoree of her and Dal. They bowed respectfully and she nodded back, seeing the esteem in their eyes, and perhaps a touch of awe. She wore the traditional clothing of a Ranger—loose trousers and wrapped shirt, ink-silk jacket, leather boots and equipment belt—but as with her ship, she had also personalized her own appearance. The flowing red scarves were from one of the finest clothing stores on Kalimahr. The silver bangles on her left wrist bore precious stones from the deep mines of Ska Gora, a gift from the Wookiee family she’d grown close to during her time there. And her sword was carried in a leather sheath fashioned from the bright green skin of a screech lizard from one of Obri’s three moons. Add these exotic adornments to her six-foot frame, startling gray eyes, and long, flowing auburn hair clasped in a dozen metal clips, and she knew she cut an imposing figure.

“Ranger,” the young girl said. Lanoree paused and turned, and saw that the two children had also stopped. They were staring at her, but with a little more than fascination. They had purpose.

“Children,” Lanoree said, raising an eyebrow.

The girl came forward, one hand in the pocket of her woven trousers. Lanoree sensed the Force flowing strong in them both, and there was an assuredness to their movement that made her sad. With her and Dal it had been so different. He had never understood the Force, and as they’d grown older together that confusion had turned into rejection, a growing hatred … and then something far worse.

“Master Dam-Powl asked that I give you this,” the girl said. She held out a small message pod the size of her thumb. “She said it’s for your eyes only.”

A private message from Master Dam-Powl, beyond the ears and eyes of the rest of the Je’daii. This was intriguing.

Lanoree took the pod and pocketed it. “Thank you,” she said. “What’s your name?”

But the girl and boy hurried away toward the Peacemaker, a gentle breeze ruffling their hair. The ship’s engines were already starting to cycle up.

Ironholgs stood at the base of her ship’s ramp. It clicked and rattled as she approached.

“All good?” she asked absently. The droid confirmed that, yes, all was good.

Lanoree paused on the ramp and looked around. The Masters’ Peacemaker and several smaller ships were being attended to, and farther afield there were only the hillsides and the ancient standing stones, placed millennia ago to honor long-forgotten gods.

The feeling of being watched came from elsewhere. The Je’daii Masters. They were waiting for her departure.

“Okay, then,” Lanoree said, and she walked up the ramp into the comforting, familiar confines of her own ship.

But she was distracted. This short time on Tython, and hearing of Dal’s mysterious survival, was waking troubled memories once again.

STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

THE LAST HYPERSPACE JUMP HAD BEEN A TRICKY ONE, STARTING AS IT did in one minor star system barely on the charts and ending in another even more obscure one. But the ISD Chimaera’s officers and crew were the finest in the galaxy, and as Commander Gilad Pellaeon looked over the repeater display he confirmed that they’d made the jump precisely.

He strode down the command walkway, gazing at the Chimaera’s long prow, wondering what in space they were doing here. The Chimaera was an Imperial Star Destroyer, a kilometer and a half of heavy armor and awesome weaponry, the very symbol and expression of Imperial power and authority. Even the arrogant anarchists of the Rebellion hesitated before going up against ships like this.

So with that same Rebellion boiling ever more loudly and violently across the Empire, with Lord Vader himself tasked with tracking down and destroying their leadership, what in the name of Imperial Center was the Chimaera doing on passenger transport duty?

“This is insane,” Captain Calo Drusan muttered as he came up beside Pellaeon. “What in the galaxy is Command thinking of?”

“It does seem a bit odd,” Pellaeon said diplomatically. “But I’m sure they have their reasons.”

Drusan snorted. “If you believe that, you’re a fool. Imperial Center has gone top-heavy with politicians, professional flatterers, and incompetents. Reason and intelligence went down the garbage chutes a long time ago.” He gestured at the starlit sky in front of them. “My guess is that someone’s just trying to impress everyone with his ability to move fleet units around.”

“Could be, sir,” Pellaeon said, a small shiver running up his back. In general, Drusan was right about the way the Imperial court was going, though even a ship’s captain shouldn’t be discussing such things out loud.

In this case, however, Drusan was wrong … because this particular order hadn’t come from some flunky at Imperial Center. That was how it had looked, and how it was clearly intended to look.

Unlike the captain, though, Pellaeon hadn’t taken the order at face value, but had taken the time to run a backtrack. While it had indeed come through proper channels from Imperial Center, it hadn’t originated there. It had, in fact, come from an undisclosed location in the Outer Rim.

According to the top-secret dispatches Drusan had shared with his senior officers, that was where Grand Admiral Zaarin was right now, quietly touring the edge of Imperial space aboard the ISD Predominant.

Which strongly implied that the Chimaera’s orders had come from the Grand Admiral himself.

“Incoming ship, Captain,” the sensor officer called from the starboard crew pit. “Just jumped into the system. Sensors read it as a Kazellis-class light freighter.”

Drusan whistled softly. “A Kazellis,” he commented. “That’s a rare bird—they stopped making those years ago. We have an ID yet?”

“Yes, sir,” the comm officer called from the portside crew pit. “Code response confirms it’s the Salaban’s Hope.”

Pellaeon cocked an eyebrow. Not only had their mysterious passenger arrived, but he’d arrived within minutes of the Chimaera’s own appearance. Either he had a highly developed sense of timing, or he was remarkably lucky.

“Vector?” Drusan asked.

“Directly starboard,” the sensor officer called. “Range, eighty kilometers.”

Not only practically on top of the Chimaera in time, but in position, as well. Pellaeon’s estimation of the freighter’s pilot went up another couple of notches.

Of course, not everyone saw it that way. “Kriffing fool,” Drusan grunted. “What’s he trying to do, run us down?”

Pellaeon took a few steps forward and peered out the starboard viewport. Sure enough, the glow of a sublight drive was just barely visible out there against the background stars.

Except that the glow shouldn’t have been visible. Not at that distance. Not unless the pilot was hauling his sublights for all they were worth, and then some.

And the only reason someone would do that …

“Captain, I recommend we go to full alert,” Pellaeon said urgently, turning back to Drusan. “That ship’s running from something.”

For a moment Drusan didn’t reply, his eyes flicking past Pellaeon’s shoulder to the approaching freighter. With an effort, Pellaeon forced himself to remain silent, letting his captain work through the logic in his own unhurried, methodical way.

Finally, to his relief, Drusan stirred. “Full alert,” the captain called. “And reconfirm that identity code. Just in case he’s not running from anyone, but is thinking of ramming us.”

Pellaeon turned back to the viewport, hoping he’d been able to keep his bewilderment from showing before the captain could see it. Did Drusan honestly believe anyone would be stupid enough and suicidal enough to try such an insane stunt? Even the lunatics of the Rebellion knew better than that. Still, as long as Drusan’s paranoid assumption got the shields up and the turbolasers charging—

“Incoming!” the sensor officer snapped. “Six unidentified ships jumping in, bearing in sweep-cluster pattern behind the Salaban’s Hope.”

“Come about,” Drusan said, his voice taking on an edge of eagerness. The captain loved it when he had a chance to fire the Chimaera’s turbolasers at something. “All turbolasers to full power.”

Pellaeon grimaced. As usual, Drusan was following standard combat procedure.

Only in this case, standard procedure wasn’t going to work. By the time the Chimaera was ready to fire, the attackers would have caught up with the Salaban’s Hope and be swarming it.

But if the Chimaera threw power to its sublight engines and headed straight toward the freighter, they might scare off the attackers, or at least give them a moment of pause. Closing the distance would also mean getting to the turbolasers’ effective range a little sooner. “Captain, if I may suggest—”

“No, you may not, Commander,” Drusan cut him off calmly. “This is no time for your fancy theories of combat.”

“Captain, the Salaban’s Hope is hailing us,” the comm officer called. “Lord Odo requests your immediate attention.”

Pellaeon frowned. Lord Odo was the sort of name that belonged in the Imperial court, not way out here in the Outer Rim. What would a member of the court be doing this far from Imperial Center?

“Put him through,” Drusan ordered.

“Yes, sir.” There was a click—

“Captain Drusan, this is Lord Odo,” a melodious voice said from the bridge speaker. “As you may have noted, I’ve come under attack.”

“I have indeed, Lord Odo,” Drusan said. “We’re charging the turbolaser batteries now.”

“Excellent,” Odo said. “In the meantime, may I request you shunt all other available power to the tractor beams and pull—”

“Not a good idea, my lord,” Drusan warned. “At this range, a full-power tractor beam could severely damage your hull.”

“That you shunt all power to the tractor beams,” Odo repeated, a sudden edge to his voice, “and pull the two endmost attackers toward you.”

“And if we breach—” Belatedly, Drusan broke off. “Oh. Yes. Yes, I understand. Ensign Caln, tractors on the two endmost raiders—lock up, and reel in.”

Pellaeon turned back to the viewport, a lump in his throat. The engine flares of the attacking ships were visible now, blazing against the stars as they drove hard on the Salaban’s Hope’s stern. Drusan had been right about the dangers of full-power tractor beams at this range. Clearly, that was what Odo was hoping for, that the Chimaera’s tractors would be strong enough to crack or even shatter the raiders’ hulls.

But if the attackers’ ships were stronger than Odo thought, all the maneuver would accomplish would be to pull two of the raiders forward into close-fire range faster and easier than they could manage on their own.

At which point the Salaban’s Hope would have enemy lasers behind it and on both flanks, and it was unlikely that it would have enough shield capacity to handle all three. Hissing softly between his teeth, Pellaeon watched.

Abruptly, the two pursuing ships on the ends began corkscrewing violently, their drive trails spinning like children’s windsparklers. “Tractors engaged,” the tractor officer called. “Attackers locked and coming toward us.”

“Any signs of hull fractures?” Drusan asked.

“Nothing registering, sir,” the sensor officer reported.

“Acknowledged,” Drusan said. “So much for that,” he added to Pellaeon.

“Well, at least they can’t fire on the Salaban’s Hope,” Pellaeon pointed out. “Not with that helix yaw.”

“Difficult to get a stable targeting lock that way,” Drusan agreed reluctantly. “But not impossible.”

And then, suddenly, Pellaeon got it. Odo wasn’t just hoping the Chimaera’s tractors would tear the attacking ships apart. He was letting the Imperials pull the raiders up alongside him, banking on the helix yaw to interfere with their own firing long enough—

He was still working through the logic when the Salaban’s Hope’s lasers flashed to either side, blasting the two tractored raiders to scrap.

And as the expanding clouds of debris twisted free of the tractors’ grip, they naturally and inevitably fell backward past the still-accelerating Salaban’s Hope, and directly into the paths of the four raiders still chasing it.

“Captain, turbolasers online,” the weapons officer reported.

“Target the remaining attackers.” Drusan snorted. “That is, if there’s anything there still worth targeting. And alert the hangar bay duty officer that he has a ship coming in.”

He looked at Pellaeon. “If this Lord Odo is a member of the Imperial court,” he murmured, “at least he’s a competent one.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. “Shall I take over here while you go down to welcome him?”

Drusan made a face. “Fortunately, I’m too busy cleaning up this mess to bother with visitors,” he said. “You go. Get him aboard, get him settled—you know the routine. Tell him I’ll be down to greet him as soon as we’ve made the jump to lightspeed.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. “Maybe I can get him to tell us where exactly that encrypted course setting we were sent is taking us.”

“Don’t count on it, Commander,” Drusan said. “Imperial court loves its secrets as much as anyone else.” He waved a hand. “Dismissed.”

Pellaeon had never before had the dubious honor of welcoming an actual member of the Imperial court aboard his ship. But he’d heard all the stories about the nobles’ arrogance, their love of all things rare and expensive, and their colorful and sycophantic entourages.

Lord Odo proved to be a surprise. The first person to emerge into the hangar bay from the docking tunnel was an old, frail-looking human dressed not in lush and expensive colors but in plain, drab pilot’s garb. The second was another human—Pellaeon assumed he was human, anyway—dressed in a gray-and-burgundy hooded robe, black gloves, boots, and cloak, and the black metal full-face mask of a pantomime-mute actor.

There was no third person. If Odo had an entourage, he’d apparently left it behind.

Pellaeon waited, just to be sure, until the pilot signaled for the boarding hatch to be sealed. As it closed with a thump, he stepped forward. “Lord Odo,” he said, bowing at the waist and hoping fervently that the visitor would forgive any unintentional lapses in proper court etiquette. “I’m Commander Gilad Pellaeon, third bridge officer of the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera. Captain Drusan asked me to greet you, and to inform you that he’ll pay his own respects as soon as his duties on the bridge permit.”

“Thank you, Commander,” Odo said in the same melodious voice Pellaeon had heard on the bridge, now muffled slightly by the mask. There was no mouth opening, Pellaeon noted, nor were there even any eye slits. Either Odo could somehow see right through the metal, or else there was a compact heads-up display built into the inside. “Are we on our way?”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, glancing at the nearest readout panel just to make sure. “I believe the encrypted course data that arrived with your boarding authorization data said it would be a ten-standard-hour journey.”

“Correct,” Odo confirmed. “I trust you’ll forgive my appearance. My reason for this visit must remain private and my identity unrevealed.”

“No explanation necessary, sir,” Pellaeon hastened to assure him. “I understand how things are done in the Imperial court.”

“Do you, now,” Odo said. “Excellent. Perhaps later you can instruct me on its more subtle aspects.”

Pellaeon felt a frown crease his forehead. Was Odo merely having a joke at a lowly fleet officer’s expense? Or did he really not know the nuances of Imperial court procedure and behavior?

In which case, he was obviously not a member of the court. So who was he?

“I trust you have quarters prepared for us,” Odo continued. “The journey was long and fraught with danger.” The masked and hooded head inclined slightly. “Speaking of which, may I also thank you for your assistance against those raiders.”

“Our pleasure, my lord,” Pellaeon said, wondering for a split second if he should point out that the main tactical thrust of the engagement had in fact been Odo’s.

Probably not. It wouldn’t do for the Imperial fleet to admit that a visiting civilian had come up with a better combat plan than they had. “And yes, quarters have been arranged just off the hangar bay for you and your pilot.” He looked at the pilot and raised his eyebrows. “Your name?”

The pilot looked at Odo, as if seeking permission to speak. Odo made no move, and after a moment the pilot looked back at Pellaeon. “Call me Sorro,” he said. His voice was as old and tired as the rest of him.

“Honored to meet you,” Pellaeon said, turning back to Odo. “If you’ll follow me, my lord, I’ll escort you to your quarters.”

Exactly nine and three-quarter standard hours later, even though it wasn’t his watch, Pellaeon made sure to be on the Chimaera’s bridge.

It was a waste of effort. The Star Destroyer emerged on the dark side of a completely unremarkable world, with an unremarkable yellow sun peeking over the planet’s horizon and an unremarkable starscape all around them.

“And we aren’t likely to see anything else, either,” Drusan growled. “We have orders to hold position right here until Lord Odo returns.”

“There he goes,” Pellaeon said, pointing at the glow of the Salaban’s Hope’s drive as the freighter emerged from beneath the Chimaera’s long prow. The freighter headed toward the planetary horizon ahead, its image fogging briefly as it circled past the edge of atmosphere, and then vanished.

“What do you think about that mask of his?”

With an effort, Pellaeon dragged his mind away from the mystery of where they were to the mystery of who Odo was. “He definitely doesn’t want anyone knowing who he is,” he said.

“Who or what,” Drusan said. “I had Environmental Services do a scan of the air outflow from his quarters. I thought—”

“You what?” Pellaeon interrupted, aghast. “Sir, the orders made it clear we weren’t to question, interfere, or intrude upon Lord Odo’s activities.”

“Which I haven’t,” Drusan said. “Keeping tabs on my ship’s systems is part of my job.”

“But—”

“Besides which, it didn’t work,” Drusan said sourly. “There are fifty different species biomarkers coming off him, at least eight of which the computer can’t even identify.”

“Probably coming from his mask,” Pellaeon murmured, remembering now the sets of parallel slits set into the mask’s curved cheekbone areas. “I assumed the cheek slits were merely decorative.”

“Apparently, they’re stocked with biomarkers,” Drusan said. “Clever little flimp, isn’t he? Still, whatever the reason for his visit, it should be over soon and we’ll be able to take him and his ship back where we found them.”

“Unless he wants us to take him elsewhere,” Pellaeon pointed out.

“What does he need us for?” Drusan countered. “He’s got a ship and a pilot. Let him go on his own.” He exhaled noisily. “Well, there’s no point standing around waiting for him. I’m heading back to my quarters. I suggest you do likewise, Commander.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said. Giving the planetary horizon one final look, he followed Drusan back down the command walkway.

“Well?” the Emperor asked.

For a moment Senior Captain Thrawn didn’t answer, merely continued to gaze out the viewport at the forested landscape stretched out below. “An interesting situation,” the blue-skinned Chiss said at last.

Seated at the helm of his freighter, Jorj Car’das kept his gaze straight ahead at the moon’s horizon, wishing fervently that he was still in his self-imposed exile from the rest of the universe. Thrawn clearly didn’t need him here. The Emperor clearly didn’t want him here.

But Thrawn had quietly insisted. Why, Car’das didn’t know. Maybe Thrawn felt he owed Car’das. Maybe he thought he was doing Car’das a favor by bringing him back into contact with the high and mighty this way.

Car’das also didn’t know why the Emperor hadn’t chosen to make an issue of his presence aboard. Maybe he regarded Thrawn highly enough to forgive the other’s little quirks. Maybe he was just amused by Car’das’s obvious discomfort.

Car’das didn’t know. Nor did he really care. About anything.

“First of all, the multifrequency force field you have set up should be more than adequate to protect the construction site,” Thrawn said, gesturing past Car’das’s shoulder at the huge half-finished sphere floating above the moon’s surface. “I trust the generator has redundant energy sources, plus an umbrella shield to protect it from orbital attack?”

“It does,” the Emperor confirmed. “There are also a number of fully crewed garrisons in the forest around the generator.”

“Has the moon any inhabitants?”

“Primitives only,” the Emperor said contemptuously.

“In that case multiple garrisons are an inefficient use of resources,” Thrawn said. “I would recommend burning off the forest for a hundred kilometers around the generator and putting a small mechanized force of AT-ATs and juggernaut heavy assault vehicles under the umbrella shield. Add in point support from three or four wing-clusters of hoverscouts, and the rest of the troops and equipment could be reassigned to trouble spots elsewhere in the Empire.”

“So you would suggest I make the generator completely unassailable?” Palpatine asked.

“I assumed that was the intent.” Thrawn paused, and Car’das glanced back in time to see the captain’s glowing eyes narrow. “Unless, of course, you’re setting a trap.”

“Of course,” the Emperor said calmly. “You of all my officers should understand the usefulness of a well-laid trap.”

“Indeed,” Thrawn agreed. “One final recommendation: don’t dismiss too quickly those natives you mentioned. Even primitives can sometimes be used to deadly effect.”

“They will not be a problem,” the Emperor said, dismissing the natives with a small wave of his hand. “They don’t like strangers. Any strangers.”

“I leave that to your judgment,” Thrawn said.

“Yes,” Palpatine said flatly. “And now, I sense you have a request to make. Speak.”

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Thrawn said. If he was surprised or discomfited by the Emperor’s casual reading of his mind, it didn’t show in his voice. “It concerns a warlord named Nusoesva who has become a serious power in the Unknown Regions.”

Palpatine gave a small snort. “I wonder sometimes if you focus too much of your attention in those far reaches, Captain.”

“It was you who authorized me to make such surveys,” Thrawn reminded him. “And properly so. The Rebellion is a threat, but hardly the most serious one facing the Empire.”

“In your opinion.”

“Yes,” Thrawn said.

There was a short pause. “Continue,” the Emperor said.

“Warlord Nusoesva had become one of those threats,” Thrawn said. “He possesses an unusually strong spacegoing navy, along with many slave and tributary worlds stretching into Wild Space and to the edge of the Empire. I believe he is even now planning to extend his influence into Imperial space.”

“An alien, I presume,” Palpatine said, his voice dripping with disgust. “Can he be bought?”

“Not bought, bargained with, or allied with,” Thrawn said. “I’ve sent several communiqués to him suggesting each of those options. He’s turned down all of them.”

“And what makes you think he wishes to extend his reach into my Empire?”

“He’s begun a campaign against some of the worlds at the edge of the territories I’ve pacified,” Thrawn said. “His usual pattern is to use hit-and-run tactics on shipping, or attempt to bribe or otherwise suborn the officials on those worlds.”

“All of whom are also aliens,” Palpatine said with a sniff. “I’ve warned you before that such beings cannot be molded into any sort of permanent political structure. The history of the Republic proves that.”

“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “The point is that Nusoesva is using these raids to pin down my forces, and the only targets I can see that are worth such efforts are in Imperial space. Obviously, this cannot be tolerated.”

“Then deal with him,” the Emperor said flatly.

“I intend to,” Thrawn said. “The difficulty is that my forces are already overextended and overcommitted. In order to deal a crushing blow I’ll need a minimum of six more Star Destroyers.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Car’das saw the Emperor’s eyes narrow. “Do you seriously believe I have six Star Destroyers to spare, Captain Thrawn?”

“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” Thrawn said evenly. “It’s not just the border sectors that are at risk, either. There are indications he may also be making overtures to the Rebellion.”

“Then perhaps you should speak to Lord Vader,” the Emperor said. “The Rebellion is his special interest. Perhaps he can give you the Star Destroyers you require.”

“An excellent suggestion, Your Highness,” Thrawn said, inclining his head. “I may do just that.”

“It would be interesting to hear what the two of you have to say to each other.” The Emperor gestured. “We’re finished here, pilot. Return us to the Predominant.”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Car’das said. Getting a firm grip on the yoke, he put the ship into a smooth curve and headed for the Star Destroyer orbiting in the near distance behind them, wondering distantly if Thrawn realized what he was getting himself into. Sitting here with the Emperor and a silent pair of Imperial Guards behind him was bad enough.

But Vader was even worse. Ever since Yavin, every report Car’das had picked up had indicated that the appropriately titled Dark Lord of the Sith had grown a whole lot darker. The thought of asking him for anything, let alone six Star Destroyers, was something Car’das’s mind wasn’t up to.

It hadn’t always been that way. Once, Car’das had been head of an organization that had spanned the galaxy, a network of smugglers and information brokers who had serviced everyone from the Hutts to the highest levels of the Imperial court. Car’das himself had been to the edge of Chiss space with Thrawn, back before the Clone Wars had savaged the Republic. He’d worked with the young commander, watching as he defeated forces far larger than his own. Later, as Car’das’s organization grew, he’d had many occassions to speak directly with some of the most powerful men in Palpatine’s new Empire. In those days, standing before Darth Vader would have been little more than an unusually interesting day.

But that had been before Car’das’s nearly fatal encounter long ago with that Dark Jedi. Before his subsequent illness and weakness and impending death. Before his abrupt decision to abandon his organization and leave it helpless before the infighting that was probably tearing it apart at this very moment.

Before he’d given up—on everything.

Still, even with his past burned behind him and his future lying bleak and formless in front of him, Car’das could feel an unexpected and unwelcome flicker of old curiosity stirring inside him.

It really would be interesting to hear what Thrawn and Vader had to say to each other.

Pellaeon had returned to his quarters, and had been asleep for nearly six hours when he was awakened by the insistent buzz of his intercom. Rolling over, he tapped the key. “Pellaeon.”

“This is the captain.” Drusan’s voice was practically quivering with suppressed emotion. “Report to the bridge immediately.”

The rest of the senior bridge officers were already assembled across from the aft bridge turbolift when Pellaeon arrived. He eased his way through toward the front, noting uneasily that the group also included all the off-duty engine room officers and the senior commanders of the Chimaeraa’s TIE fighter, trooper, and stormtrooper contingents. Whatever was going on, it was big.

He found Drusan waiting stiffly beside one of the consoles. Beside the captain, standing silent and still, was Lord Odo.

“Now that we’re all assembled,” Drusan said, his eyes flicking to Pellaeon, “I have an announcement. We’ve been selected for the honor”—he leaned on the word just a bit too hard—“of acting as Lord Odo’s personal transport on a special assignment.”

His lip twitched. “As part of that assignment, Lord Odo will be in ultimate command of the Chimaera,” he continued. “I trust all of you will respect his position and give him your full measures of skill, effort, and obedience. Questions?”

The first officer, Senior Commander Grondarle, cleared his throat. “May I ask the nature of this assignment?” he asked.

“It’s important,” Odo told him evenly. “For now, that’s all you need to know.”

There was a brief, awkward silence. “Have you orders for us, my lord?” Drusan asked at last.

Odo’s hand came up from beneath his cloak, a data card in his gloved fingers. “Here’s our new course,” he said, offering the card to Drusan. “Our first stop will be the Wroona system.”

“And what exactly is at Wroona?” Grondarle asked.

“Commander,” Drusan said warningly.

“That’s all right, Captain,” Odo said. “There’s some specialized equipment that I’ll need to fulfill our mission. The equipment is at Wroona. As it won’t come to us, we shall have to go to it.”

Grondarle’s eyes narrowed. But he knew better than to rise to the bait. Better officers than him, Pellaeon knew, had been shunted to nowhere stations for reacting to the sarcasm of superiors. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Take this to navigation,” Drusan said, handing Grondarle the data card. “Get us moving as soon as the course is loaded.”

“Yes, sir.” Taking the card, Grondarle strode through the pathway that opened up for him and headed through the archway into the main bridge.

“The rest of you, as you were,” Drusan continued, looking around the group. “The watch change is coming up. Don’t miss it.”

He looked at Odo. “Our new commander,” he added, “wouldn’t like it.”

Pellaeon was back in his quarters by the time the Chimaera made the jump to lightspeed. There was, he judged, enough time for him to grab another two hours of sleep before his next shift.

But sleep wouldn’t come.

Lord Odo wasn’t human. That much was pretty well guaranteed by the extraordinary means he’d taken to disguise himself, with the mask and the confusing mix of biomarkers. Pellaeon himself didn’t have anything against aliens, and in fact had known and worked with quite a few whom he’d greatly respected.

But the Emperor wasn’t like that. His opinion of aliens was well known, and while he was willing enough to make alliances with aliens when it served his purposes, there were virtually none in the senior positions of the court or the military. The only exception Pellaeon knew of was Senior Captain Thrawn, and even he was frequently sent away into the Unknown Regions to get him off Imperial Center for a while.

So who was Odo? That was the question that kept chasing itself around Pellaeon’s brain. Who was Odo, and what was this mission that was important enough to take the Chimaera off patrol duty and put it under an alien’s command?

Pellaeon didn’t know, and it was clear that Odo himself wasn’t going to tell them.

But maybe there was another way. The Empire, after all, was the greatest repository of information the universe had ever known. Maybe Odo had left a trail somewhere that could be followed.

Getting up, Pellaeon put on a robe and went to his desk. He turned on the computer and keyed the intercom for the duty security officer. “This is Commander Pellaeon,” he said when the officer answered. “Where are Lord Odo and his pilot?”

“Lord Odo is on the bridge,” the officer replied. “Sorro is in their shared quarters.”

“When was Sorro last out?”

“One moment … it appears that when they returned from their planetary excursion, he went to the bay officers’ mess while Lord Odo went to the bridge.”

“Lord Odo doesn’t eat on the bridge, does he?”

“He hasn’t so far,” the officer said. “Sorro typically brings food back to their quarters for him.”

“Any particular types of food?”

“There’ve only been three meals, so I can’t make any generalizations,” the officer said. “But so far it’s been a different menu each time. Would you like a list?”

“Yes, send it to me,” Pellaeon said. A person’s taste in food and drink could be useful clues in establishing his identity. “And set up a standing order to inform me whenever Sorro leaves his quarters. I presume Captain Drusan has already told you to keep track of them both?”

“Yes, sir, he has.”

“Good. Carry on.”

Pellaeon keyed off the intercom, and for a moment he gazed off into space. Then, settling himself in his chair, he began punching computer keys. Somewhere on his way to gaining the Empire’s trust, someone had to have crossed official paths with Odo, Sorro, or the Salaban’s Hope.

Wherever and whenever that was, Pellaeon was going to find it.

Introduction to the OLD REPUBLIC Era

(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

Then, a thousand years before A New Hope and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …

If you’re a reader new to the Old Republic era, here are three great starting points:

• The Old Republic: Deceived, by Paul S. Kemp: Kemp tells the tale of the Republic’s betrayal by the Sith Empire, and features Darth Malgus, an intriguing, complicated villain.

• Knight Errant, by John Jackson Miller: Alone in Sith territory, the headstrong Jedi Kerra Holt seeks to thwart the designs of an eccentric clan of fearsome, powerful, and bizarre Sith Lords.

• Darth Bane: Path of Destruction, by Drew Karpyshyn: A portrait of one of the most famous Sith Lords, from his horrifying childhood to an adulthood spent in the implacable pursuit of vengeance.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the Old Republic era.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

LORD SCOURGE RAISED the hood of his cloak as he stepped off the shuttle, a shield against the wind and pelting rain. Storms were common here on Dromund Kaas; dark clouds perpetually blocked out the sun, rendering terms like day and night meaningless. The only natural illumination came from the frequent bursts of lightning arcing across the sky, but the glow from the spaceport and nearby Kaas City provided more than enough light to see where he was going.

The powerful electrical storms were a physical manifestation of the dark side power that engulfed the entire planet—a power that had brought the Sith back here a millennium before, when their very survival had been in doubt.

After a crushing defeat in the Great Hyperspace War, the Emperor had risen up from the tattered ranks of the remaining Sith Lords to lead his followers on a desperate exodus to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Fleeing the Republic armies and the relentless revenge of the Jedi, they eventually resettled far beyond the borders of Republic-charted space on their long-lost ancestral homeworld.

There, safely hidden from their enemies, the Sith began to rebuild their Empire. Under the guidance of the Emperor—the immortal and all-powerful savior who still reigned over them even after a thousand years—they abandoned the hedonistic lifestyles of their barbaric ancestors.

Instead they created a near-perfect society in which the Imperial military operated and controlled virtually every aspect of daily life. Farmers, mechanics, teachers, cooks, janitors—all were part of the great martial machine, each individual a cog trained to perform his or her duties with maximum discipline and efficiency. As a result, the Sith had been able to conquer and enslave world after world in the unexplored regions of the galaxy, until their power and influence rivaled those of their glorious past.

Another burst of lightning split the sky, momentarily illuminating the massive citadel that loomed over Kaas City. Built by slaves and devoted followers, the citadel served as both palace and fortress, an unassailable meeting place for the Emperor and the twelve handpicked Sith Lords who made up his Dark Council.

A decade earlier, when Scourge had first arrived on Dromund Kaas as a young apprentice, he had vowed to one day set foot inside the citadel’s exclusive halls. Yet in all his years of training at the Sith Academy on Kaas City’s borders, he had never been granted the privilege. He had been one of the top students, marked by his superiors for his strength in the Force and his fanatic devotion to the ways of the Sith. But acolytes were not permitted inside the citadel; its secrets were reserved for those in direct service to the Emperor and the Dark Council.

The dark side power emanating from within the building was undeniable; he had felt the raw, crackling energy every day during his years as an acolyte. He had drawn on it, focusing his mind and spirit to channel the power through his own body to sustain him during the brutal training sessions.

Now, after almost two years away, he was back on Dromund Kaas. Standing on the landing pad, he could once again feel the dark side deep inside his bones, the sizzling heat more than compensating for the minor discomfort of the wind and rain. But he was no longer a mere apprentice. Scourge had returned to the seat of Imperial power as a full-fledged Sith Lord.

He had known this day would come eventually. After graduating from the Sith Academy he had hoped for a posting on Dromund Kaas. Instead he had been sent to the fringes of the Empire to help quell a series of minor rebellions on recently conquered worlds. Scourge suspected the posting had been a punishment of some type. One of his instructors, jealous of the star pupil’s potential, had probably recommended that he be stationed as far from the seat of Imperial power as possible to slow his ascent to the upper ranks of Sith society.

Unfortunately, Scourge had no proof to back his theory. Yet even exiled to the uncivilized sectors on the farthest borders of the Empire, he had still managed to forge his reputation. His martial skills and ruthless pursuit of the rebel leaders caught the notice of several prominent military leaders. Now, two years after leaving the Academy, he had returned to Dromund Kaas as a newly anointed Lord of the Sith. More important, he was here at the personal request of Darth Nyriss, one of the most senior members of the Emperor’s Dark Council.

“Lord Scourge,” a figure called out over the wind, running up to greet him. “I am Sechel. Welcome to Dromund Kaas.”

“Welcome back,” Scourge corrected as the man dropped to one knee and bowed his head in a gesture of respect. “This is not my first time on this world.”

Sechel’s hood was pulled up against the rain, covering his features, but during his approach Scourge had noticed the red skin and dangling cheek tendrils that marked him as a pureblood Sith, just like Lord Scourge himself. But while Scourge was an imposing figure, tall and broad-shouldered, this man was small and slight. Reaching out, Scourge sensed only the faintest hint of the Force in the other, and his features twisted into a sneer of revulsion.

Unlike the humans that made up the bulk of the Empire’s population, the Sith species were all blessed with the power of the Force to varying degrees. It marked them as the elite; it elevated them above the lower ranks of Imperial society. And it was a legacy that was fervently protected.

A pureblood born without any connection to the Force was an abomination; by custom such a creature could not be suffered to live. During his time at the Academy, Lord Scourge had encountered a handful of Sith whose power in the Force was noticeably weak. Hampered by their failing, they relied on the influence of their high-ranking families to find them postings as low-level aids or administrative officials at the Academy, where their handicap would be least noticed. Spared from the lower castes only by their pureblood heritage, in Scourge’s eyes they were barely better than slaves, though he did have to admit that the more competent ones could have their uses.

But never before had he encountered one of his own kind with as feeble an attunement to the Force as the man huddled at his feet. The fact that Darth Nyriss had sent someone so vile and unworthy to greet him was unsettling. He’d expected a more substantial and impressive welcome.

“Get up,” he snarled, making no effort to conceal his disgust.

Sechel quickly scrambled to his feet. “Darth Nyriss sends her apologies for not coming to meet you personally,” he said quickly. “There have been several attempts on her life recently, and she only leaves her palace under the rarest of circumstances.”

“I’m well aware of her situation,” Scourge replied.

“Y-yes, my lord,” Sechel stammered. “Of course. That’s why you’re here. Excuse my stupidity.”

A crash of thunder nearly drowned out Sechel’s apology, heralding an increase in the storm’s intensity. The driving rain started to come down in stinging sheets.

“Were your Master’s instructions to leave me standing here in this downpour until I drowned?” Scourge demanded.

“F-forgive me, my lord. Please, follow me. We have a speeder waiting to take you to the domicile.”

A short distance from the spaceport was a small landing pad. A constant stream of hovercabs was landing and taking off—the preferred way for those of the lower ranks who couldn’t afford their own speeder to traverse the city. As was typical at a busy spaceport, a thick crowd surrounded the base of the landing pad. Those just arriving quickly fell into the queues waiting to hire a driver, moving with the disciplined precision that was the hallmark of Imperial society.

Of course, Lord Scourge had no need to step into the line. While some in the crowd cast sharp glances at Sechel as he tried to force a path through, the throng quickly parted upon catching sight of the towering figure behind him. Even with his hood drawn against the rain, Scourge’s black cape, his spiked armor, his dark red complexion, and the lightsaber prominently displayed at his side clearly marked him as a Sith Lord.

The individuals in the crowd showed a wide variety of reactions to his presence. Many were slaves or indentured servants out running errands for their masters; they wisely kept their eyes fixed on the ground, careful not to make eye contact. The Enlisted—the ranks of ordinary individuals conscripted into mandatory military service—snapped smartly to attention, as if waiting for Scourge to inspect them as he passed by.

The Subjugates—the caste of offworld merchants, traders, dignitaries, and visitors from planets not yet granted full status in the Empire—stared with a mixture of wonder and fear as they stepped quickly aside. Many of them bowed as a sign of respect. On their homeworlds they might be rich and powerful, but here on Dromund Kaas they were well aware that they ranked only slightly above the servants and slaves.

The only exception to the rule was a pair of humans, one male, the other female. Scourge noticed them standing at the foot of the stairs leading up to the landing pad, stubbornly holding their ground.

They were wearing expensive clothes—matching red pants and tops trimmed with white—and both clearly wore light armor beneath their outfits. Dangling from the man’s shoulder was a large assault rifle, and the woman had a blaster pistol strapped across each hip. However, the two humans were clearly not part of the military, as neither displayed the official Imperial insignia or any indication of rank on their garb.

It wasn’t unusual for Subjugate mercenaries from other worlds to visit Dromund Kaas. Some came seeking profit, hiring their services out to the highest bidder; others came to prove their value to the Empire in the hope of one day being granted the rare privilege of full Imperial citizenship. But mercenaries typically reacted with deference and humility when confronted with someone of Scourge’s rank.

By law, Scourge could have them imprisoned or executed for even a trifling offense. Judging by their confrontational behavior, they were blissfully unaware of this fact.

As the rest of the crowd parted, the mercenaries remained in place, staring defiantly at Scourge as he approached. The Sith Lord bristled at the continued lack of respect. Sechel must have felt it as well, because he quickly rushed ahead to confront the pair.

Scourge didn’t slow his pace, but neither did he make a move to catch up with the scurrying servant. At this distance, he couldn’t hear what was being said over the wind and rain. But Sechel was speaking frantically, gesturing and waving his arms while the humans stared at him with cold contempt. Finally, the woman nodded, and the pair slowly moved out of the way. Satisfied, Sechel turned and waited for Scourge to arrive.

“A thousand apologies, my lord,” he said as they mounted the steps. “Some Subjugates lack a proper understanding of our customs.”

“Perhaps they need me to remind them of their place,” Scourge growled.

“If that is your wish, my lord,” Sechel said. “However, I must remind you that Darth Nyriss is expecting you.”

Scourge decided to let the matter drop. They climbed into the waiting speeder; Sechel at the controls. Scourge settled into the luxurious seat, pleased to note that the vehicle had a roof—many of the hovercabs were open to the elements. The engines engaged, and they rose to a height of ten meters before the speeder accelerated, leaving the spaceport behind.

They rode in silence, drawing ever closer to the massive citadel that stood at the heart of Kaas City. But Scourge knew this was not their destination today. Like every member of the Dark Council, Darth Nyriss was allowed access to the Emperor’s citadel. In the wake of two recent assassination attempts, however, Scourge fully expected her to stay within the walls of the personal stronghold she maintained on the outskirts of Kaas City, surrounded by her most trusted staff and servants.

This didn’t strike Scourge as cowardly in any way; Nyriss was simply being practical. Like any high-ranking Sith, she had many enemies. Until she discovered who was behind the assassination attempts, exposing herself unnecessarily was a foolish and unwarranted risk.

Yet her practicality had to be balanced against the understanding that her rank was based solely on strength. If Nyriss appeared weak or ineffective—if she was unable to take firm and decisive action against whoever was plotting her death—others would sense it. Rivals both off and on the Dark Council would prey on her situation, leveraging her vulnerable position to their own advantage. Darth Nyriss would not be the first of the Emperor’s inner circle to lose her life.

That was why Scourge was here. To root out the secret masterminds behind the assassinations, and destroy them.

Given the importance of his mission, he couldn’t understand why Nyriss hadn’t sent a full honor guard to escort him through the city. She should want everyone to know of his arrival. He was proof that steps were being taken to solve her problem; a warning to any other rivals who might be emboldened by the recent attempts on her life. Keeping his arrival almost secret served no purpose … at least none Scourge could see.

They passed by the Emperor’s citadel and made their way to the western edge of the city. After several more minutes, Scourge felt the speeder begin to slow as Sechel brought it in for a landing.

“We’re here, my lord,” Sechel said as the vehicle touched down.

They were in a large courtyard. High stone walls stood to the north and south. The east end was open to the street; the west was bordered by what Scourge assumed was Darth Nyriss’s stronghold. In many ways the building resembled the Emperor’s citadel, though on a significantly smaller scale. The architectural similarities were more than just an homage to the Emperor. Like his citadel, this building would serve both as Nyriss’s dwelling and as a fortress she could fall back to in times of trouble, and it had been designed to be simultaneously ornate, imposing, and easily defensible.

The courtyard itself was populated by half a dozen large statues, each several meters wide at the base and easily twice as tall as Scourge. The two largest depicted humanoids in Sith robes—a male and a female. They stood with their arms raised slightly forward, their hands palms up. The man’s face was hidden by a hood—the common depiction of the Emperor. The woman had her hood thrown back to reveal fierce Sith features; if the sculptor’s work was accurate, Scourge knew this was his first glimpse of what Darth Nyriss actually looked like.

The other statues were abstract pieces, though each incorporated Nyriss’s household emblem—a four-pointed star inside a wide circle. The ground was covered with fine white pebbles. A rare type of lichen that thrived in the gloom of Dromund Kaas had been planted in decorative patterns throughout the stone, the faint purple glow providing a ghostly illumination. A smooth path of finished stone led from the massive double doors that marked the entrance to the stronghold, through the center of the courtyard, and out to the small landing pad where their speeder had touched down.

Sechel scrambled out of the vehicle and raced around to open the exit hatch on the other side for his passenger. Scourge stepped out of the speeder and into the rain, which had lessened only slightly during their journey.

“This way, my lord,” Sechel said, heading down the path.

Scourge followed him, fully expecting the doors to swing wide at their approach. To his surprise, the entrance remained sealed. Sechel didn’t seem taken aback, however. Instead, he turned to the small holoscreen on the side and pressed the call button.

A flickering image materialized on the holoscreen—a human male of about forty. He appeared to be wearing the standard uniform of an Imperial security officer, and Scourge surmised he was the head of Nyriss’s personal guard.

“Our guest has arrived, Murtog,” Sechel explained, nodding in Scourge’s direction.

“Did you verify his identity?” Murtog asked.

“W-what are you talking about?” Sechel stammered.

“How do we know this is the real Lord Scourge? How do we know this isn’t another assassin?”

The questions seemed to catch Sechel completely off guard.

“I don’t … I mean, he seems to be … uh, that is …”

“I’m not letting him in until I have proof,” Murtog declared.

Sechel glanced back over his shoulder at Lord Scourge, his expression a mix of humiliation and fear. Then he leaned in close to the holocomm and, in a low voice, said, “This is completely inappropriate. You’ve overstepped your authority!”

“I’m the security chief,” Murtog reminded him. “This is completely within my authority. Just give me five minutes to confirm everything’s on the up-and-up.”

Scourge stepped forward, grabbing Sechel by the shoulder and yanking him aside.

“You dare insult me by making me wait out in the rain like some beggar?” he spat at the screen. “I am a guest! Darth Nyriss herself invited me!”

Murtog barked out a sharp laugh. “You might want to check your facts on that.”

The holoscreen clicked off abruptly. Scourge turned around to find Sechel cowering against the wall.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” he said. “Murtog has become somewhat paranoid since—”

Scourge cut him off. “What did he mean when he told me to check my facts? Was I invited by Darth Nyriss, or not?”

“You were. Of course you were. Sort of.”

Scourge raised his hand toward Sechel and reached out to the Force. The servant began to gasp and clutch at his throat as his body was lifted slowly up into the air by an invisible hand.

“You will tell me what is going on,” Scourge said, his voice devoid of all emotion. “You will tell me everything, or you will die. Do you understand?”

Sechel tried to speak but could only cough and sputter. Instead he nodded frantically. Satisfied, Scourge released his hold. Abruptly Sechel dropped the full meter to the ground, where he landed in a heap, grunting in pain before scrambling to his knees.

“It wasn’t Darth Nyriss’s idea to hire you,” he explained, his voice still raw and rough from the choking. “After the second assassination attempt, the Emperor suggested that her own people could be involved. He suggested she bring someone in from the outside.”

Suddenly it all made sense. The Emperor’s will was absolute; a “suggestion” from him was a de facto order. Darth Nyriss had invited him here because she’d had no choice. Scourge had assumed he was an honored guest, but in actuality he was nothing but an interloper. His presence was an insult to her loyal followers, and a reminder that the Emperor doubted her ability to deal with the assassins herself. That was why he’d received such a meager reception, and why Nyriss’s security chief had reacted to him with such hostility.

Scourge realized he was in a precarious situation. His efforts to investigate the assassinations would be met with resistance and suspicion. Any mistakes—even those that were not his fault—would be blamed on him. A single misstep could spell the end of his career, or even his life.

He was still pondering this new information when he heard a speeder approaching through the storm. The sound was innocuous, but it instantly put his senses on high alert. His heart began beating rapidly and his breathing quickened. A rush of adrenaline caused his cheek tendrils to twitch and his muscles to tense.

He drew his lightsaber and glanced up at the sky. At his feet, Sechel cried out and covered his face, assuming the lightsaber was meant for him. Scourge ignored him.

In the darkness of the storm, he could just make out the speeder’s silhouette heading straight for them. He reached out with the Force, probing the vehicle and its passengers. He felt a bolt of anger rip through him as his suspicions were confirmed: Whoever was in the speeder was coming to kill him.

All of this, from Scourge’s first awareness of the speeder to confirmation of its hostile intent, took less than two seconds. Time enough for the speeder to close the distance and come bearing down on him.

Scourge leapt to the side as a barrage of blasterfire was unleashed from the vehicle. He hit the ground in a roll that brought him to his feet just in time to spring clear of a second series of bolts. Moving with the blinding speed of the Force, he raced across the courtyard, bolts ricocheting off the ground just behind him every step of the way. He dived behind the cover of the Emperor’s statue, his mind assessing the situation.

The speeder had to be equipped with an autotargeting blaster cannon; there was no other way the shots could have tracked him so closely on his desperate run for cover. Even a Sith Lord couldn’t evade that kind of firepower forever. He had to disable the vehicle.

The speeder was heading away from him, circling around for another strafing run. Before it could complete its turn, Scourge stepped out from behind the statue and launched his lightsaber across the courtyard. The crimson blade went spiraling through the night, tracing a wide, looping arc. It clipped the back end of the speeder, sending up a shower of spark and flame, and continued on its trajectory to return to Scourge’s outstretched hand.

The hum of the speeder’s engine pitched into a screaming whine as it completed its turn. Black smoke, barely visible against the dark clouds, billowed out from the rear engine. The vehicle began to lurch and wobble, losing altitude rapidly even as it opened fire yet again.

Scourge ducked back behind the Emperor’s statue, pressing his back firmly against it as a shower of bolts rained down on him. A second later the speeder flew overhead, its angle of attack dropping so steeply it actually decapitated the statue he was hiding behind.

The heavy stone head toppled down toward him, forcing Scourge to break cover to avoid being crushed. At the same time, he saw the speeder slam into the ground. Emergency repulsor fields absorbed the impact, saving the vehicle from being smashed to bits, but it still hit hard enough to send a piece of the damaged engine flying.

Holding his lightsaber high above his head with both hands, Scourge charged the downed speeder. Two passengers scrambled from the wreckage, shaken but unharmed. Scourge was only mildly surprised to recognize the two red-clothed mercenaries he’d encountered on the speeder pad back near the spaceport.

The male was on the far side of the speeder, struggling to get his blaster rifle out of the wreckage. The female was on the near side, her blaster pistols already drawn. Scourge was less than five meters away when she opened fire.

He didn’t bother trying to block the bolts. Instead, he launched himself upward, his forward momentum carrying him in a high, somersaulting leap that arced over both the woman and the damaged speeder. The sudden move caught her off guard, and though she fired several hurried shots, none hit him.

Twisting 180 degrees as he flew through the air, he landed on the other side of the speeder, right beside the male mercenary just as the man was bringing his own weapon to bear. Before he could fire, Scourge slashed his lightsaber diagonally across his enemy’s torso.

As the man’s corpse toppled to the ground, Scourge turned his attention back to the first mercenary. By this time she had spun to face him, and as her partner went down she unloaded another series of shots, forcing Scourge to duck behind the speeder for cover.

This time several of her blasts found their mark. Scourge’s armor absorbed the worst of the attack, but he felt a searing pain in his shoulder as a small amount of the particle beam energy found its way through a joint in his armor to scorch his flesh.

He focused on the pain, transforming it into anger to fuel the Force for a savage counterattack. At the same time, instinctively, he drew upon his opponent’s fear, adding it to his own passion and further amplifying the power he was gathering.

Channeling his rage, he unleashed a concentrated wave of energy that struck the woman square in the chest. The impact lifted her off her feet and sent her flying backward through the air. Her journey was cut short when she slammed against the base of one of the abstract statues. The sudden stop jarred the pistols from her hands, leaving her momentarily defenseless.

Scourge placed one hand on the hood of the speeder and vaulted over it, rushing to close in on his prone foe before she could regain her footing. But the mercenary was quick: She scrambled to her feet and pulled out a short electrorod, its tip crackling with a charge potent enough to knock an opponent unconscious with even a grazing blow.

Scourge pulled up short. The mercenary dropped into a fighting crouch, and the two combatants circled each other warily.

Had he wanted to, Scourge could have ended the encounter right then and there. Without her pistols, electrorod or not, the mercenary had no chance against a Sith Lord with a lightsaber. But killing her wouldn’t get him what he really wanted.

“Tell me who hired you and I’ll let you live,” he said.

“Do I look that stupid?” she countered, feinting and making a quick lunge that Scourge easily sidestepped.

“You’re obviously skilled,” he told her. “I can use someone like you. Tell me who hired you, and I’ll let you work for me. That, or throw your life away.”

She hesitated, and for an instant Scourge thought she might drop her weapon. And then the night was shattered by the sound of multiple blaster carbines. The bolts hammered the mercenary in the back, sending her stumbling toward Scourge. He saw a look of total bewilderment on her face as she sank to her knees. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. Then she fell facedown in the gravel, dead.

Turning, Scourge saw half a dozen guards standing in the courtyard near the door leading into the stronghold. Among them was a human wearing a commander’s uniform. He was short, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested, with close-cropped blond hair and a neatly trimmed blond beard that contrasted sharply with his dark brown skin. Scourge recognized him from the holo: Murtog, Darth Nyriss’s head of security.

Before Scourge could say anything, Sechel exclaimed, “About time you got here.”

He was still cowering against the wall, in nearly the exact same place Scourge had left him after the brief interrogation that had preceded the ambush.

“Get up,” Murtog told him, and the Sith lackey did as ordered.

“Clean this mess up,” Murtog snapped at his guards, who scrambled to obey.

Satisfied, the security chief slung his weapon over his shoulder and nodded in Scourge’s direction. “Darth Nyriss will see you now.”

Introduction to the RISE OF THE EMPIRE Era

(33–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

This is the era of the Star Wars prequel films, in which Darth Sidious’s schemes lead to the devastating Clone Wars, the betrayal and destruction of the Jedi Order, and the Republic’s transformation into the Empire. It also begins the tragic story of Anakin Skywalker, the boy identified by the Jedi as the Chosen One of ancient prophecy, the one destined to bring balance to the Force. But, as seen in the movies, Anakin’s passions lead him to the dark side, and he becomes the legendary masked and helmeted villain Darth Vader.

Before his fall, however, Anakin spends many years being trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi. When the Clone Wars break out, pitting the Republic against the secessionist Trade Federation, Anakin becomes a war hero and one of the galaxy’s greatest Jedi Knights. But his love for the Naboo Queen and Senator Padmé Amidala, and his friendship with Supreme Chancellor Palpatine—secretly known as the Sith Lord Darth Sidious—will be his undoing …

If you’re a reader looking to jump into the Rise of the Empire era, here are five great starting points:

• Labyrinth of Evil, by James Luceno: Luceno’s tale of the last days of the Clone Wars is equal parts compelling detective story and breakneck adventure, leading directly into the beginning of Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith.

• Revenge of the Sith, by Matthew Stover: This masterfully written novelization fleshes out the on-screen action of Episode III, delving deeply into everything from Anakin’s internal struggle and the politics of the dying Republic to the intricacies of lightsaber combat.

• Republic Commando: Hard Contact, by Karen Traviss: The first of the Republic Commando books introduces us to a band of clone soldiers, their trainers, and the Jedi generals who lead them, mixing incisive character studies with a deep understanding of the lives of soldiers at war.

• Death Troopers, by Joe Schreiber: A story of horror aboard a Star Destroyer that you’ll need to read with the lights on. Supporting roles by Han Solo and his Wookiee sidekick, Chewbacca, are just icing on the cake.

• The Han Solo Adventures, by Brian Daley: Han and Chewie come to glorious life in these three swashbuckling tales of smuggling, romance, and danger in the early days before they meet Luke and Leia.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the Rise of the Empire era.

The light freighter Bargain Hunter moved through space, silver-gray against the blackness, the light of the distant stars reflecting from its hull. Its running lights were muted, its navigational beacons quiet, its viewports for the most part as dark as the space around it.

Its drive gunning for all it was worth.

“Hang on!” Dubrak Qennto barked over the straining roar of the engines. “Here he comes again!”

Clenching his teeth firmly together to keep them from chattering, Jorj Car’das got a grip on his seat’s armrest with one hand as he finished punching coordinates into the nav computer with the other. Just in time; the Bargain Hunter jinked hard to the left as a pair of brilliant green blaster bolts burned past the bridge canopy. “Car’das?” Qennto called. “Snap it up, kid.”

“I’m snapping, I’m snapping,” Car’das called back, resisting the urge to point out that the outmoded nav equipment was Qennto’s property, not his. As was the lack of diplomacy and common sense that had gotten them into this mess in the first place. “Can’t we just talk to them?”

“Terrific idea,” Qennto bit out. “Be sure to compliment Progga on his fairness and sound business sense. That always works on Hutts.”

The last word was punctuated by another cluster of blaster shots, this group closer than the last. “Rak, the engines can’t hold this speed forever,” Maris Ferasi warned from the copilot’s seat, her dark hair flashing with green highlights every time a shot went past.

“Doesn’t have to be forever,” Qennto said with a grunt. “Just till we have some numbers. Car’das?”

On Car’das’s board a light winked on. “Ready,” he called, punching the numbers over to the pilot’s station. “It’s not a very long jump, though—”

He was cut off by a screech from somewhere aft, and the flashing blaster bolts were replaced by flashing starlines as the Bargain Hunter shot into hyperspace.

Car’das took a deep breath, let it out silently. “This is not what I signed up for,” he muttered to himself. Barely six standard months after signing on with Qennto and Maris, this was already the second time they’d had to run for their lives from someone.

And this time it was a Hutt they’d frizzled. Qennto, he thought darkly, had a genuine talent for picking his fights.

“You okay, Jorj?”

Car’das looked up, blinking away a drop of sweat that had somehow found its way into his eye. Maris was swiveled around in her chair, looking back at him with concern. “I’m fine,” he said, wincing at the quavering in his voice.

“Of course he is,” Qennto assured Maris as he also turned around to look at their junior crewer. “Those shots never even got close.”

Car’das braced himself. “You know, Qennto, it may not be my place to say this—”

“It isn’t; and don’t,” Qennto said gruffly, turning back to his board.

“Progga the Hutt is not the sort of person you want mad at you,” Car’das said anyway. “I mean, first there was that Rodian—”

“A word about shipboard etiquette, kid,” Qennto cut in, turning just far enough to send a single eye’s worth of glower at Car’das. “You don’t argue with your captain. Not ever. Not unless you want this to be your first and last tour with us.”

“I’d settle for it not being the last tour of my life,” Car’das muttered.

“What was that?”

Car’das grimaced. “Nothing.”

“Don’t let Progga worry you,” Maris soothed. “He has a rotten temper, but he’ll cool off.”

“Before or after he racks the three of us and takes all the furs?” Car’das countered, eyeing the hyperdrive readings uneasily. That mauvine nullifier instability was definitely getting worse.

“Oh, Progga wouldn’t have racked us,” Qennto scoffed. “He’d have left that to Drixo when we had to tell her he’d snatched her cargo. You do have that next jump ready, right?”

“Working on it,” Car’das said, checking the computer. “But the hyperdrive—”

“Heads up,” Qennto interrupted. “We’re coming out.”

The starlines collapsed back into stars, and Car’das keyed for a full sensor scan.

And jerked as a salvo of blaster shots sizzled past the canopy.

Qennto barked a short expletive. “What the frizz?”

“He followed us,” Maris said, sounding stunned.

“And he’s got the range,” Qennto snarled as he threw the Bargain Hunter into another series of stomach-twisting evasive maneuvers. “Car’das, get us out of here!”

“Trying,” Car’das called back, fighting to read the computer displays as they bounced and wobbled in front of his eyes. There was no way it was going to calculate the next jump before even Qennto’s luck ran out and the fuming Hutt back there finally connected.

But if Car’das couldn’t find a place for them to go, maybe he could find all the places for them not to go …

The sky directly ahead was full of stars, but there was plenty of empty black between them. Picking the biggest of the gaps, he punched the vector into the computer. “Try this one,” he called, keying it to Qennto.

“What do you mean try?” Maris asked.

The freighter rocked as a pair of shots caught it squarely on the aft deflector. “Never mind,” Qennto said before Car’das could answer. He punched the board, and once again the starlines lanced out and faded into the blotchy hyperspace sky.

Maris exhaled in a huff. “That was too close.”

“Okay, so maybe he is mad at us,” Qennto conceded. “Now. Like Maris said, kid, what do you mean, try this one?”

“I didn’t have time to calculate a proper jump,” Car’das explained. “So I just aimed us into an empty spot with no stars.”

Qennto swiveled around. “You mean an empty spot with no visible stars?” he asked ominously. “An empty spot with no collapsed stars, or pre-star dark masses, or something hidden behind dust clouds? That kind of empty spot?” He waved a hand toward the canopy. “And out toward the Unknown Regions on top of it?”

“We don’t have enough data in that direction for him to have done a proper calculation anyway,” Maris said, coming unexpectedly to Car’das’s defense.

“That’s not the point,” Qennto insisted.

“No, the point is that he got us away from Progga,” Maris said. “I think that deserves at least a thank-you.”

Qennto rolled his eyes. “Thank you,” he said. “Such thanks to be rescinded if and when we run through a star you didn’t see, of course.”

“I think it’s more likely the hyperdrive will blow up first,” Car’das warned. “Remember that nullifier problem I told you about? I think it’s getting—”

He was cut off by a wailing sound from beneath them, and with a lurch the Bargain Hunter leapt forward like a giffa on a scent.

“Running hot!” Qennto shouted, spinning back to his board. “Maris, shut ’er down!”

“Trying,” Maris called back over the wailing as her fingers danced across her board. “Control lines are looping—can’t get a signal through.”

With a curse, Qennto popped his straps and heaved his bulk out of his seat. He sprinted down the narrow aisle, his elbow barely missing the back of Car’das’s head as he passed. Poking uselessly at his own controls, Car’das popped his own strap release and started to follow.

“Car’das, get up here,” Maris called, gesturing him forward.

“He might need me,” Car’das said as he nevertheless reversed direction and headed forward.

“Sit,” she ordered, nodding sideways at Qennto’s vacated pilot’s seat. “Help me watch the tracker—if we veer off this vector before Rak figures out how to pull the plug, I need to know about it.”

“But Qennto—”

“Word of advice, friend,” she interrupted, her eyes still on her displays. “This is Rak’s ship. If there are any tricky repairs to be made, he’s the one who’ll make them.”

“Even if I happen to know more about a particular system than he does?”

“Especially if you happen to know more about it than he does,” she said drily. “But in this case, you don’t. Trust me.”

“Fine,” Car’das said with a sigh. “Such trust to be rescinded if and when we blow up, of course.”

“You’re learning,” she said approvingly. “Now run a systems check on the scanners and see if the instability’s bled over into them. Then do the same for the nav computer. Once we get through this, I want to make sure we can find our way home again.”

It took Qennto over four hours to find a way to shut down the runaway hyperdrive without slagging it. During that time Car’das offered his help three times, and Maris offered hers twice. All the offers were summarily refused.

Sometime during the first hour, as near as Car’das could figure from the readings tumbling across the displays, they left the relatively well-known territory of the Outer Rim, passing into a shallow section of the far less well-known territory known as Wild Space. Sometime early in the fourth hour, they left even that behind and crossed the hazy line into the Unknown Regions.

At which point, where they were or what exactly they were flying into was anyone’s guess.

But at last the wailing faded away, and a few minutes later the hyperspace sky collapsed into starlines and then into stars. “Maris?” Qennto’s voice called from the comm panel.

“We’re out,” she confirmed. “Running a location check now.”

“I’ll be right there,” Qennto said.

“Wherever we are, we’re a long way from home,” Car’das murmured, gazing out at a small but brilliant globular star cluster in the distance. “I’ve never seen anything like that from any of the Outer Rim worlds I’ve been to.”

“Me, neither,” Maris agreed soberly. “Hopefully, the computer can sort it out.”

The computer was still sifting data when Qennto reappeared on the bridge. Car’das had made sure to be back at his own station by then. “Nice cluster,” the big man commented as he dropped into his seat. “Any systems nearby?”

“Closest one’s about a quarter light-year directly ahead,” Maris said, pointing.

Qennto grunted and punched at his board. “Let’s see if we can make it,” he said. “Backup hyperdrive should still have enough juice for a jump that short.”

“Can’t we work on the ship just as well out here?” Car’das asked.

“I don’t like interstellar space,” Qennto said distractedly as he set up the jump. “It’s dark and cold and lonely. Besides, that system up there might have a nice planet or two.”

“Which means a possible source of supplies, in case we end up staying longer than we expect,” Maris explained.

“Or a possible place to settle down away from the noise and fluster of the Republic for a while,” Qennto added.

Car’das felt his throat tighten. “You don’t mean—?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Maris assured him. “Rak always talks about getting away from it all whenever he’s in trouble with someone.”

“He must talk that way a lot,” Car’das muttered.

“What was that?” Qennto asked.

“Nothing.”

“Didn’t think so. Here we go.” There was a screech, more genteel than the sound from the Bargain Hunter’s main hyperdrive, and the stars stretched out into starlines.

Silently, Car’das counted off the seconds to himself, fully expecting the backup hyperdrive to crash at any time. But it didn’t, and after a few tense minutes the starlines collapsed again to reveal a small yellow sun directly ahead.

“There we go,” Qennto said approvingly. “All the comforts of home. You figure out yet where we are, Maris?”

“Computer’s still working on it,” Maris said. “But it looks like we’re about two hundred fifty light-years into Unknown Space.” She lifted her eyebrows at him. “I’m thinking we’re going to have a stack of late-delivery penalties when we finally get to Comra.”

“Oh, you worry too much,” Qennto chided. “It won’t take more than a day or two to fix the hyperdrive. If we push it a little, we shouldn’t be more than a week overdue.”

Car’das suppressed a grimace. Pushing the hyperdrive, if he recalled correctly, was what had wrecked the thing to begin with.

There was a twitter from the comm. “We’re being hailed,” he reported, frowning as he keyed it on. He threw a look at the visual displays, searching for their unknown caller—

And felt his whole body go rigid. “Qennto!” he snapped. “It’s—”

He was cut off by a deep rumbling chuckle from the comm. “So, Dubrak Qennto,” an all-too-familiar voice rumbled in Huttese. “You think to escape me so easily?”

“You call that easy?” Qennto muttered as he keyed his transmitter. “Oh, hi, Progga,” he said. “Look, like I told you before, I can’t let you have these furs. I’ve already contracted with Drixo—”

“Ignore the furs,” Progga cut in. “Show me your hidden treasure hoard.”

Qennto frowned at Maris. “My what?”

“Do not play the fool,” Progga warned, his voice going an octave deeper. “I know your sort. You do not simply run from something, but run rather to something else. This is the lone star system along this vector; and behold, you are here. What could you have run to but a secret base and treasure hoard?”

Qennto muted the transmitter. “Car’das, where is he?”

“A hundred kilometers off the starboard bow,” Car’das told him, his hands shaking as he ran a full scan on the distant Hutt ship. “And he’s coming up fast.”

“Maris?”

“Whatever you did to shut down the hyperdrive, you did a great job,” she said tightly. “It’s completely locked. We’ve still got the backup, but if we try to run and he tracks us again—”

“And he will,” Qennto growled. Taking a deep breath, he switched the transmitter back on. “It wasn’t like that, Progga,” he said soothingly. “We were just trying to—”

“Enough!” the Hutt bellowed. “Lead me to this base. Now.”

“There isn’t any base,” Qennto insisted. “This is the Unknown Regions. Why would I set up a base out here?”

A light flashed on Car’das’s proximity sensor. “Incoming!” he snapped, his eyes darting back and forth among the displays as he searched for the source of the attack.

“Where?” Qennto snapped back.

Car’das had it now, coming from directly beneath the Bargain Hunter: a long, dark missile arrowing straight toward them. “There,” he said, pointing a finger straight down as he stared at the display.

It was only then that his brain caught up with the fact that this wasn’t the vector a missile would take from the approaching Hutt ship. He was opening his mouth to point that out when the missile burst open, its nose ejecting a wad of some kind of material. The wad began to expand as it cleared the shards of its container, opening like a fast-blooming flower into a filmy wall stretching over a kilometer across.

“Power off!” Qennto snapped, lunging across his board to the row of master power switches. “Hurry!”

“What is it?” Car’das asked, grabbing for his board’s own set of cutoffs.

“A Connor net, or something like it,” Qennto gritted out.

“What, that size?” Car’das asked in disbelief.

“Just do it,” Qennto snarled. Status lights were winking red and going out now as the three of them raced against the incoming net.

The net won. Car’das had made it through barely two-thirds of his switches when the rippling edges came into sight around the sides of the hull. They folded themselves inward, curling around toward the bridge—

“Close your eyes,” Maris warned.

Car’das squeezed his eyes shut. Even through the lids he saw a hint of the brilliant flash as the net dumped its high-voltage current into and through the ship, sending a brief coronal tingling across his skin.

And when he carefully opened his eyes again, every light that had still been glowing across the bridge had gone dark.

The Bargain Hunter was dead.

Through the canopy came a flicker of light from the direction of the Hutt ship. “Looks like they got Progga, too,” he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.

“I doubt it,” Qennto rumbled. “His ship’s big enough to have cap drains and other stuff to protect him from tricks like this.”

“Ten to one he’ll fight, too,” Maris murmured, her voice tight.

“Oh, he’ll fight, all right,” Qennto said heavily. “He’s way too stupid to realize that anyone who can make a Connor net that big will have plenty of other tricks up his sleeve.”

A multiple blaze of green blasterfire erupted from the direction of the Hutt ship. It was answered by brilliant blue flashes vectoring in from three different directions, fired from ships too small or too dark to see at the Bargain Hunter’s range. “You think whoever this is might get so busy with Progga that they’ll forget about us?” Maris asked hopefully.

“I don’t think so,” Car’das said, gesturing out the canopy at the small gray spacecraft that had taken up position with its nose pointed at the freighter’s portside flank. It was about the size of a shuttle or heavy fighter, built in a curved, flowing design of a sort he’d never seen before. “They’ve left us a guard.”

“Figures,” Qennto said, glancing once at the alien ship and then turning back to the green and blue flashes. “Fifty says Progga lasts at least fifteen minutes and takes one of his attackers with him.”

Neither of the others took him up on the bet. Car’das watched the fight, wishing he had his sensors back. He’d read a little about space battle tactics in school, but the attackers’ methodology didn’t seem to fit with anything he could remember. He was still trying to figure it out when, with a final salvo of blue light, it was over.

“Six minutes,” Qennto said, his voice grim. “Whoever these guys are, they’re good.”

“You don’t recognize them, either?” Maris asked, looking out at their silent guard.

“I don’t even recognize the design,” he grunted, popping his restraints and standing up. “Let’s go check on the damage, see if we can at least get her ready for company. Car’das, you stay here and mind the store.”

“Me?” Car’das asked, feeling his stomach tighten. “But what if they—you know—signal us?”

“What do you think?” Qennto grunted as he and Maris headed aft. “You answer them.”

Introduction to the REBELLION Era

(0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

This is the period of the classic Star Wars movie trilogy—A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi—in which a ragtag band of Rebels battles the Empire, and Luke Skywalker learns the ways of the Force and must avoid his father’s fate.

During this time, the Empire controls nearly the entire settled galaxy. Out in the Rim worlds, Imperial stormtroopers suppress uprisings with brutal efficiency, many alien species have been enslaved, and entire star systems are brutally exploited by the Empire’s war machine. In the central systems, however, most citizens support the Empire, weighing misgivings about its harsh methods against the memories of the horror and chaos of the Clone Wars. Few dare to openly oppose Emperor Palpatine’s rule.

But the Rebel Alliance is growing. Rebel cells strike in secret from hidden bases scattered among the stars, encouraging some of the braver Senators to speak out against the Empire. When the Rebels learn that the Empire is building the Death Star, a space station with enough firepower to destroy entire planets, Princess Leia Organa, who represents her homeworld, Alderaan, in the Senate and is secretly a high-ranking member of the Rebel Alliance, receives the plans for the battle station and flees in search of the exiled Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Thus begin the events that lead her to meet the smuggler and soon-to-be hero Han Solo, to discover her long-lost brother, Luke Skywalker, and to help the Rebellion take down the Emperor and restore democracy to the galaxy: the events of the three films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

If you’re a reader looking for places to jump in and explore the Rebellion-era novels, here are five great places to start:

• Death Star, by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry: The story of the construction of the massive battle station, touching on the lives of the builders, planners, soldiers, and support staff who populate the monstrous vessel, as well as the masterminds behind the design and those who intend to make use of it: the Emperor and Darth Vader.

• The Mandalorian Armor, by K. W. Jeter: The famous bounty hunter Boba Fett stars in a twisty tale of betrayal within the galactic underworld, highlighted by a riveting confrontation between bounty hunters and a band of Hutts.

• Shadows of the Empire, by Steve Perry: A tale of the shadowy parts of the Empire and an underworld criminal mastermind who is out to kill Luke Skywalker, while our other heroes try to figure out how to rescue Han Solo, who has been frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt.

• Tales of the Bounty Hunters, edited by Kevin J. Anderson: The bounty hunters summoned by Darth Vader to capture the Millennium Falcon tell their stories in this anthology of short tales, culminating with Daniel Keys Moran’s elegiac “The Last One Standing.”

• Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, by Matthew Stover: A tale set shortly after the events of Return of the Jedi, in which Luke must defeat the flamboyant dark sider known as Lord Shadowspawn while the pilots of Rogue Squadron duel his servants amid tumbling asteroids.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the Rebellion era.

1

FLIGHT DECK, IMPERIAL-CLASS STAR DESTROYER STEEL TALON, POLAR ORBIT, PLANET DESPAYRE, HORUZ SYSTEM, ATRIVIS SECTOR, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES

The alert siren screamed, a piercing wail that couldn’t be ignored by any being on board with ears and a pulse. It had one thing to say, and it said it loud and clear:

Scramble!

Lieutenant Commander Villian “Vil” Dance came out of a deep sleep at the blaring alarm, sat up, and leapt from his rack to the expanded metal deck of the Ready Room quarters. Save for the helmet, he already wore his space suit, one of the first things an on-call TIE pilot learned to do was sleep in full battle gear. He ran for the door, half a step ahead of the next pilot to awaken. He grabbed his headgear, darted into the hall and turned to the right, then sprinted for the launching bay.

It could be a drill; there had been plenty of those lately to keep the pilots on their toes. But maybe this time it wasn’t. One could always hope.

Vil ran into the assembly area. A-grav on the flight deck was kept at slightly below one g, so that the pilots, all of whom were human or humanoid, could move a little faster and get to their stations a little sooner. The smell of launch lube was acrid in the cold air, and the pulsing lights painted the area in bright, primary flashes. Techs scrambled, getting the TIE fighters to final-set for takeoff, while pilots ran toward the craft. Vil noticed that it was just his squad being scrambled. Must not be a big problem, whatever it was.

Command always said it didn’t matter which unit you got. TIE fighters were all the same, down to the last nut and bolt, but even so, every pilot had his or her favorite ship. You weren’t supposed to personalize them, of course, but there were ways to tell—a scratch here, a scuff mark there … after a while, you got to where you knew which fighter was which. And no matter what Command said, some were better than others—a little faster, a little tighter in the turns, the laser cannons a hair quicker to fire when you touched the stud. Vil happened to know that his assigned ship this rotation was Black-11, one of his favorites. Maybe it was pure superstition, but he breathed just a little easier, knowing that particular craft had his name on it this time around.

The command officer on deck, Captain Rax Exeter, waved Vil over.

“Cap, what’s up? Another drill?”

“Negative, Lieutenant. A group of prisoners somehow managed to take over one of the new Lambda-class shuttles. They’re trying to get far enough away to make the jump to hyperspace. That isn’t going to happen on my watch. The ID codes and tracking will be in your fighter’s computer. Don’t let ’em get away, son.”

“No, sir. What about the crew?” Vil knew the new shuttles carried only a pilot and copilot.

“Assumed dead. These are bad guys doing this, Dance—traitors and murderers. That’s reason enough to cook them, but we do not want them getting away to tell anybody what the Empire is doing out here, do we?”

“No, sir!”

“Go, Lieutenant, go!”

Vil nodded, not bothering to salute, then turned and ran. As he did, he put his helmet on and locked it into place. The hiss of air into his face was metallic and cool as the suit’s system went online. It felt very comforting. The vac suit’s extreme-temp-resistant weave of durasteel and plastoid, along with the polarizing densecris helmet, were the only things that would protect him from hard vacuum. Suit failure could make a strong man lose consciousness in under ten seconds, and die in under a minute. He’d seen it happen.

TIE fighters, in order to save mass, had no defensive shield generators, no hyperdrive capability, and no emergency life-support systems. They were thus fragile, but fast, and that was fine with Vil. He’d rather dodge enemy fire than hope it would bounce off. There was no skill in piloting some lumbering chunk of durasteel; might as well be sitting with your feet up at a turbolaser console back on the ship. Where was the fun in that?

The TIE tech had the hatch up on Black-11 as Vil arrived at the gantry above the ship. It was the work of an instant to clamber down and into the fighter’s snug cockpit.

The hatch came down and hissed shut. Vil touched the power-up stud, and the inside of the TIE—named for the twin ion engines that drove it—lit up. He scanned the controls with a quick and experienced eye. All systems were green.

The tech raised his hand in question. Vil waved back. “Go!”

“Copy that, ST-One-One. Prepare for insertion.”

Vil felt his lips twitch in annoyance. The Empire was determined to erase all signs of individuality in its pilots, on the absurd theory that nameless, faceless operators were somehow more effective. Thus the classification numbers, the anonymous flight suits and helmets, and the random rotation of spacecraft. The standardizing approach had worked reasonably well in the Clone Wars, but there was one important difference here: neither Vil nor any other TIE pilot that he knew of was a clone. None of the members of Alpha Squad had any intention of being reduced to automata. If that was what the Empire really wanted, let them use droid pilots and see how well that worked.

His musing was interrupted by the small jolt of the cycling rack below the gantry kicking on. Vil’s ship began to move toward the launching bay door. He saw the tech slip his own helmet on and lock it down.

Already the bay pumps were working full blast, depressurizing the area. By the time the launch doors were open, the air would be cycled. Vil took a deep breath, readying himself for the heavy hand of g-force that would push him back into the seat when the engines hurled him forward.

Launch Control’s voice crackled in his headphones. “Alpha Squad Leader, stand by for launch.”

“Copy,” Vil said. The launch doors pulled back with tantalizing slowness, the hydraulic thrum of their movement made audible by conduction through the floor and Black-11’s frame.

“You are go for launch in five, four, three, two … go!”

Outside the confines of the Star Destroyer, the vastness of space enveloped Lieutenant Vil Dance as the ion engines pushed the TIE past the last stray wisps of frozen air and into the infinite dark. He grinned. He always did. He couldn’t help it.

Back where I belong …

The flat blackness of space surrounded him. Behind him, he knew, the Steel Talon was seemingly shrinking as they pulled away from it. “Down” and to port was the curvature of the prison planet. Though they were in polar orbit, Despayre’s axial tilt showed more of the night side than day. The dark hemisphere was mostly unrelieved blackness, with a few lonely lights here and there.

Vil flicked his comm—though it came on automatically at launch, a good pilot always toggled it, just to be sure. “Alpha Squad, pyramid formation on me as soon as you are clear,” he said. “Go to tactical channel five, that’s tacfiver, and log in.”

Vil switched his own comm channel to five. It was a lower-powered band with a shorter range, but that was the point—you didn’t want the enemy overhearing you. And in some cases, it wasn’t a good idea for the comm officer monitoring you back on the base ship to be privy to conversations, either. They tended to be a bit more informal than the Empire liked.

There came a chorus of “Copy, Alpha Leader!” from the other eleven pilots in his squad as they switched over to the new channel.

It took only a few seconds for the last fighter to launch, and only a few more for the squad to form behind Vil.

“What’s the drill, Vil?” That from Benjo, aka ST-1-2, his second in command and right panelman.

“Alpha Squadron, we have a Lambda-class shuttle captured by prisoners. They are running for hyper. Either they give up and come back, or we dust ’em.”

“Lambda-class? That’s one of the new ones, right? They have any guns?”

Vil sighed. That was Raar Anyell, a Corellian like Vil himself, but not somebody you’d want to hold up as a prime example of the human species. “Don’t you bother to read the boards at all, Anyell?”

“I was just about to do that, sir, when the alarm went off. Was looking right at ’em. Had the latest notices right in my hand. Sir.”

The other pilots laughed, and even Vil had to grin. Anyell was a foul-up everywhere except in the cockpit, but he was a good enough pilot that Vil was willing to give him some slice.

His sensor screen pinged, giving him an image of their quarry. He altered course to intercept.

“Anybody else behind on his homework, listen up,” he said. “The Lambda-class shuttle is twenty meters long, has a top speed of fourteen hundred g, a Class-One hyperdrive, and can carry twenty troops in full battle gear—probably a couple more convicts in civvies.

“The ship carries three double-blaster cannons and two double-laser cannons. It can’t accelerate worth a wheep and it turns slower than a comet, but if you get in its sights, it can blow you to itty-bitty pieces. It would be embarrassing to have to inform your family you got shot apart by a shuttle, so stay alert.”

There came another chorus of acknowledgments:

“Copy, sir.”

“Yes, sir!”

“No sweat.”

“Anyell, I didn’t hear your response.”

“Oh, sorry, sir, I was taking a little nap. What was the question?”

Before the squad commander could reply, the shuttle suddenly loomed ahead. It was running as silently as possible, with no lights, but as its orbit brought it across the terminator and out of Despayre’s night side, the sunlight struck rays from its hull.

“There is our target, four kilometers dead ahead. I want a fast flyby so they can see us, and then I want a fountain pattern dispersal and loop, two klicks minimum distance and bracket, one, four, four, and two, you know who you are. I’ll move in close and have a word with whoever they have flying the stolen spacecraft.”

Benjo: “Aw, Lieutenant, come on, let us have a shot, too.”

“Negative. If you had a clue about the vessel, I might, but since you’re just as likely to shoot each other as the quarry, you’ll hold the bracket.”

More acknowledgments, but without much enthusiasm. He couldn’t blame his squad—they hadn’t had any action except drills since they’d been assigned to this project—but his secondary goal was to bring all his men back alive. The primary, of course, was to accomplish their mission. He didn’t need a squad for this; any fighter pilot worth his spit should be able to deal with a lumbering shuttle, even one with the new-vehicle smell still in it. The Lambda’s delta vee wasn’t all that efficient, but with constant drive it could get above the solar plane and far enough out of the planet’s gravity well to engage its hyperdrive fairly soon—and once it was in the chute, they’d never find it.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

The pyramid-shaped formation zipped past the fleeing shuttle, close enough for Vil to see the pilot sitting in the command seat. He didn’t look surprised, of course—he would have seen them coming on the sensors. But he couldn’t outrun them, couldn’t dodge, and no way could he take out a full squad of TIE fighters even if he was the best gunner who’d ever lived, not in that boat. And anyway, Vil wasn’t going to give him the opportunity to try.

The squad flowered into the dispersal maneuver as ordered, looping out and away to their assigned positions, angled pressor beams in their arrays providing maneuverability. Vil pulled a high-g tight turn and came around to parallel the shuttle a few hundred meters away, slightly above it. He watched the wing turrets closely. As soon as they started to track him, he jinked to port, then to starboard, slowed, then sped up. They tried to keep up with him, but they were a hair too slow.

Vil toggled to a wide-band channel. They’d hear this back in the Destroyer, he knew.

“Attention, shuttle RLH-One. Turn the craft around and proceed immediately to Star Destroyer Steel Talon’s tractor beam range.”

There was no answer; nothing but the slight hiss of the carrier.

“Shuttle craft, do you copy my transmission?”

Another pause. Then: “Yeah, we hear you, rocketjock. We aren’t of a mind to do that.”

Vil looked at his control panel. They were two minutes away from Minimum Safe Distance—the point far enough from Despayre where they could safely attempt the jump to lightspeed. Jump too close to a planet’s gravity well and the shift would tear the vessel apart. If the guy he was talking to had enough skill to fly the shuttle, he’d know that. His control panel would tell him when he reached MSD, and then it would be over. Lieutenant Dance would have failed a mission, for the first time.

Never happen, he thought. “Turn it around, or we will fire,” he said.

“You’d do that? Just blow us apart? Essentially murder fifteen men—and two women? One of them is old enough to be your granny. You can live with that?”

He was stalling for time, Vil knew. The beings on that shuttle were bad enough to have been sent to the galaxy’s number one prison planet, and the Imperial courts didn’t bother to do that with petty thieves or traffic violators. His granny hadn’t robbed any banks or killed anybody. Not that he knew of, anyway.

“Shuttle pilot, I say again—”

Vil saw the port turret on the shuttle open up. He cut across the craft’s flight path, angling away aft as the starboard gun began firing. He hit his thrusters full, coming up in a half loop and twisting away from the incoming laser-fire.

Even a good gunner couldn’t have spiked him at this angle, and these guys weren’t anywhere close to good enough. Still, the pulsed incandescent beams came close.

“Lieutenant—!” That from Benjo.

“Hold your position, Alpha Squad, there’s no problem here.” Cool and calm. Like discussing what they might be having for dinner.

He zipped Black-11 out of range.

The clock was running down. Less than a minute to MSD.

“Last chance, shuttle. Turn it around. Now.”

In answer, the pilot pulled the shuttle topward so his gunners could get a better angle. They started shooting again.

The shots were wild, but there was always a chance a stray beam could hit you, even by accident. And wouldn’t that be a glorious end to an unblemished career? To be killed by a convict on a milking shuttle?

Enough of this. Vil hit the drive controls and damped the thrust to zero. Then he pushed the throttles to full, angled to port and topside, did a roll and loop, and came around, driving at the shuttle amidships.

He pressed the fire-control button.

Black-11 spat twin laser bolts from the low-temp tips—blip-blip, blip-blip, blip-blip—

Vil Dance was a better-than-average shooter. The bolts ripped into the shuttle, chewed it up, and as he overflew and peeled away to starboard-downside, the Lambda blew apart, shattering into at least half a dozen large pieces and hundreds of smaller ones amid a cloud of flash-frozen air, liquid, and debris.

And pinwheeling bodies.

Vil switched back to tac-five. “Anyell, Lude, move in and check for survivors.” He kept his voice calm, emotionless, no big deal. His pulse was racing, but they didn’t have to know that. Let them think his heart pumped liquid oxy.

“None of ’em were wearing suits, Lieutenant,” Lude said a moment later. “No survivors. Too bad about that brand-new ship.”

“Good hit, Vil,” Benjo said. “Congratulations.”

Vil felt a warm glow of satisfaction. It had been a good hit. And they had been firing at him, so it wasn’t like shooting yorks in a canister. It had been a righteous response.

He switched back to the main op-chan. “Fighter Control, this is ST-One-One, Lieutenant Vil Dance of TIE fighter Alpha Squadron. Mission accomplished. You might want to send out a recovery vessel to pick up the pieces.”

“Copy, ST-One-One,” said Captain Exeter. “Good job.”

“Thank you, sir. Let’s return to base, Alpha Squad.”

Vil smiled as he waited for his team to form up again. This was the best job in the galaxy, being a fighter pilot. He couldn’t imagine a better one. He was young, not even twenty-five yet, and already a legend among his peers—and among the ladies as well. Life was good.

As they started for the Destroyer, Vil saw in the distance the frame of the gigantic battle station that was being built in planetary orbit. They were a hundred kilometers away from the structure, and it was still skeletal, its interior construction only just begun, but even so, it looked impossibly huge at this distance. It was to be the size of a small moon when it was finished, dwarfing the largest Star Destroyer.

Incredible to think about. And if he kept racking up missions like the one just completed, there was a very good chance that he would be assigned as unit commander on board the new station.

He led his squad back to the equatorial launching bay. Looking at the awe-inspiring base, he felt a surge of pride in the Empire, and a feeling of gratitude at being a part of the Tarkin Doctrine’s glorious mission. There was no official appellation or designation, other than battle station, that he knew of for the Grand Moff’s vision, but there was a name for it that everybody he knew, officers and enlisted alike, used.

They called it the Death Star.

Introduction to the NEW REPUBLIC Era

(5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

The destruction of the second Death Star and the death of Emperor Palpatine—the climactic conclusion of Return of the Jedi—has shaken the Empire to its core. While the remnant of the loyal Imperials settles in for a long, drawn-out last stand, the victorious Rebel Alliance and its supporters found a galactic governing authority they name the New Republic. Troops and warships are donated to the cause, as New Republic military leaders forge plans to seize Imperial fortress worlds, invade the Core Worlds, and retake Coruscant itself. Eventually, the Imperial Remnant is pushed back to a small part of the Outer Rim, and the New Republic is finally able to focus on restoring just and democratic government to the galaxy.

At last the heroes of the Rebellion are free to pursue their own lives. Han and Leia marry … but before the birth of their twins, Jacen and Jaina, the galaxy is once again torn asunder by war, as the Imperial forces—under the control of military mastermind Grand Admiral Thrawn—step up their campaign of raids against the New Republic. Even after Thrawn is defeated, the Imperial forces forge on, harrying the New Republic and Luke’s nascent Jedi academy—the start of Luke’s dream to rebuild the Jedi Order from the ground up. Plagues, insurrections, and rogue warlords add to the chaos and push the New Republic back a step for every two steps it takes forward in its quest for peace and prosperity for all. Meanwhile, Leia becomes Chief of State of the New Republic, and the Solos’ third child, a boy they name Anakin, after his grandfather, is born; Luke has met Mara Jade, a secret dark side apprentice to the Emperor whom he helps bring into the light, and the two subsequently fall in love and marry.

Finally, after a series of further setbacks and plots against the young galactic government and Luke’s Jedi, a peace treaty formally ends the long conflict between the New Republic and the remnants of the Empire. The events of these years are the answer to the question … “What happened after the movies?”

If you’re a reader looking to dive into the New Republic era, here are three great starting points:

• X-Wing: Rogue Squadron, by Michael A. Stackpole: A taste of life at the edge, Rogue Squadron and the subsequent X-Wing novels bring to life Wedge Antilles and his brave, sometimes rambunctious fellow pilots in fast-paced adventures that switch smoothly and easily between entertaining repartee and tense battlefield action.

• Heir to the Empire, by Timothy Zahn: The book that reintroduced a generation of fans to Star Wars is full of the elements that made the movies great—space battles, intriguing villains, and derring-do.

• Before the Storm, by Michael P. Kube-McDowell: With a harder sci-fi edge to Star Wars, this novel features the classic heroes Han, Luke, and Leia, and explores everything from military forensics to the nature of the Force.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the New Republic era.

CHAPTER
1

“Captain Pellaeon?” a voice called down the portside crew pit through the hum of background conversation. “Message from the sentry line: the scoutships have just come out of lightspeed.”

Pellaeon, leaning over the shoulder of the man at the Chimaera’s bridge engineering monitor, ignored the shout. “Trace this line for me,” he ordered, tapping a light pen at the schematic on the display.

The engineer threw a questioning glance up at him. “Sir …?”

“I heard him,” Pellaeon said. “You have an order, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” the other said carefully, and keyed for the trace.

“Captain Pellaeon?” the voice repeated, closer this time. Keeping his eyes on the engineering display, Pellaeon waited until he could hear the sound of the approaching footsteps. Then, with all the regal weight that fifty years spent in the Imperial Fleet gave to a man, he straightened up and turned.

The young duty officer’s brisk walk faltered; came to an abrupt halt. “Uh, sir—” He looked into Pellaeon’s eyes and his voice faded away.

Pellaeon let the silence hang in the air for a handful of heartbeats, long enough for those nearest to notice. “This is not a cattle market in Shaum Hii, Lieutenant Tschel,” he said at last, keeping his voice calm but icy cold. “This is the bridge of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Routine information is not—repeat, not—simply shouted in the general direction of its intended recipient. Is that clear?”

Tschel swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

Pellaeon held his eyes a few seconds longer, then lowered his head in a slight nod. “Now. Report.”

“Yes, sir.” Tschel swallowed again. “We’ve just received word from the sentry ships, sir: the scouts have returned from their scan raid on the Obroa-skai system.”

“Very good,” Pellaeon nodded. “Did they have any trouble?”

“Only a little, sir—the natives apparently took exception to them pulling a dump of their central library system. The wing commander said there was some attempt at pursuit, but that he lost them.”

“I hope so,” Pellaeon said grimly. Obroa-skai held a strategic position in the borderland regions, and intelligence reports indicated that the New Republic was making a strong bid for its membership and support. If they’d had armed emissary ships there at the time of the raid.…

Well, he’d know soon enough. “Have the wing commander report to the bridge ready room with his report as soon as the ships are aboard,” he told Tschel. “And have the sentry line go to yellow alert. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” Spinning around with a reasonably good imitation of a proper military turn, the lieutenant headed back toward the communications console.

The young lieutenant … which was, Pellaeon thought with a trace of old bitterness, where the problem really lay. In the old days—at the height of the Empire’s power—it would have been inconceivable for a man as young as Tschel to serve as a bridge officer aboard a ship like the Chimaera. Now—

He looked down at the equally young man at the engineering monitor. Now, in contrast, the Chimaera had virtually no one aboard except young men and women.

Slowly, Pellaeon let his eyes sweep across the bridge, feeling the echoes of old anger and hatred twist through his stomach. There had been many commanders in the Fleet, he knew, who had seen the Emperor’s original Death Star as a blatant attempt to bring the Empire’s vast military power more tightly under his direct control, just as he’d already done with the Empire’s political power. The fact that he’d ignored the battle station’s proven vulnerability and gone ahead with a second Death Star had merely reinforced that suspicion. There would have been few in the Fleet’s upper echelons who would have genuinely mourned its loss … if it hadn’t, in its death throes, taken the Super Star Destroyer Executor with it.

Even after five years Pellaeon couldn’t help but wince at the memory of that image: the Executor, out of control, colliding with the unfinished Death Star and then disintegrating completely in the battle station’s massive explosion. The loss of the ship itself had been bad enough; but the fact that it was the Executor had made it far worse. That particular Super Star Destroyer had been Darth Vader’s personal ship, and despite the Dark Lord’s legendary—and often lethal—capriciousness, serving aboard it had long been perceived as the quick line to promotion.

Which meant that when the Executor died, so also did a disproportionate fraction of the best young and midlevel officers and crewers.

The Fleet had never recovered from that fiasco. With the Executors leadership gone, the battle had quickly turned into a confused rout, with several other Star Destroyers being lost before the order to withdraw had finally been given. Pellaeon himself, taking command when the Chimaera’s former captain was killed, had done what he could to hold things together; but despite his best efforts, they had never regained the initiative against the Rebels. Instead, they had been steadily pushed back … until they were here.

Here, in what had once been the backwater of the Empire, with barely a quarter of its former systems still under nominal Imperial control. Here, aboard a Star Destroyer manned almost entirely by painstakingly trained but badly inexperienced young people, many of them conscripted from their home worlds by force or threat of force.

Here, under the command of possibly the greatest military mind the Empire had ever seen.

Pellaeon smiled—a tight, wolfish smile—as he again looked around his bridge. No, the end of the Empire was not yet. As the arrogantly self-proclaimed New Republic would soon discover.

He glanced at his watch. Two-fifteen. Grand Admiral Thrawn would be meditating in his command room now … and if Imperial procedure frowned on shouting across the bridge, it frowned even harder on interrupting a Grand Admiral’s meditation by intercom. One spoke to him in person, or one did not speak to him at all. “Continue tracing those lines,” Pellaeon ordered the engineering lieutenant as he headed for the door. “I’ll be back shortly.”

The Grand Admiral’s new command room was two levels below the bridge, in a space that had once housed the former commander’s luxury entertainment suite. When Pellaeon had found Thrawn—or rather, when the Grand Admiral had found him—one of his first acts had been to take over the suite and convert it into what was essentially a secondary bridge.

A secondary bridge, meditation room … and perhaps more. It was no secret aboard the Chimaera that since the recent refitting had been completed the Grand Admiral had been spending a great deal of his time here. What was secret was what exactly he did during those long hours.

Stepping to the door, Pellaeon straightened his tunic and braced himself. Perhaps he was about to find out. “Captain Pellaeon to see Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he announced. “I have informa—”

The door slid open before he’d finished speaking. Mentally preparing himself, Pellaeon stepped into the dimly lit entry room. He glanced around, saw nothing of interest, and started for the door to the main chamber, five paces ahead.

A touch of air on the back of his neck was his only warning. “Captain Pellaeon,” a deep, gravelly, catlike voice mewed into his ear.

Pellaeon jumped and spun around, cursing both himself and the short, wiry creature standing less than half a meter away. “Blast it, Rukh,” he snarled. “What do you think you’re doing?”

For a long moment Rukh just looked up at him, and Pellaeon felt a drop of sweat trickle down his back. With his large dark eyes, protruding jaw, and glistening needle teeth, Rukh was even more of a nightmare in the dimness than he was in normal lighting.

Especially to someone like Pellaeon, who knew what Thrawn used Rukh and his fellow Noghri for.

“I’m doing my job,” Rukh said at last. He stretched his thin arm almost casually out toward the inner door, and Pellaeon caught just a glimpse of the slender assassin’s knife before it vanished somehow into the Noghri’s sleeve. His hand closed, then opened again, steel-wire muscles moving visibly beneath his dark gray skin. “You may enter.”

“Thank you,” Pellaeon growled. Straightening his tunic again, he turned back to the door. It opened at his approach, and he stepped through—

Into a softly lit art museum.

He stopped short, just inside the room, and looked around in astonishment. The walls and domed ceiling were covered with flat paintings and planics, a few of them vaguely human-looking but most of distinctly alien origin. Various sculptures were scattered around, some freestanding, others on pedestals. In the center of the room was a double circle of repeater displays, the outer ring slightly higher than the inner ring. Both sets of displays, at least from what little Pellaeon could see, also seemed to be devoted to pictures of artwork.

And in the center of the double circle, seated in a duplicate of the Admiral’s Chair on the bridge, was Grand Admiral Thrawn.

He sat motionlessly, his shimmery blue-black hair glinting in the dim light, his pale blue skin looking cool and subdued and very alien on his otherwise human frame. His eyes were nearly closed as he leaned back against the headrest, only a glint of red showing between the lids.

Pellaeon licked his lips, suddenly unsure of the wisdom of having invaded Thrawn’s sanctum like this. If the Grand Admiral decided to be annoyed.…

“Come in, Captain,” Thrawn said, his quietly modulated voice cutting through Pellaeon’s thoughts. Eyes still closed to slits, he waved a hand in a small and precisely measured motion. “What do you think?”

“It’s … very interesting, sir,” was all Pellaeon could come up with as he walked over to the outer display circle.

“All holographic, of course,” Thrawn said, and Pellaeon thought he could hear a note of regret in the other’s voice. “The sculptures and flats both. Some of them are lost; many of the others are on planets now occupied by the Rebellion.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon nodded. “I thought you’d want to know, Admiral, that the scouts have returned from the Obroa-skai system. The wing commander will be ready for debriefing in a few minutes.”

Thrawn nodded. “Were they able to tap into the central library system?”

“They got at least a partial dump,” Pellaeon told him. “I don’t know yet if they were able to complete it—apparently, there was some attempt at pursuit. The wing commander thinks he lost them, though.”

For a moment Thrawn was silent. “No,” he said. “No, I don’t believe he has. Particularly not if the pursuers were from the Rebellion.” Taking a deep breath, he straightened in his chair and, for the first time since Pellaeon had entered, opened his glowing red eyes.

Pellaeon returned the other’s gaze without flinching, feeling a small flicker of pride at the achievement. Many of the Emperors top commanders and courtiers had never learned to feel comfortable with those eyes. Or with Thrawn himself, for that matter. Which was probably why the Grand Admiral had spent so much of his career out in the Unknown Regions, working to bring those still-barbaric sections of the galaxy under Imperial control. His brilliant successes had won him the title of Warlord and the right to wear the white uniform of Grand Admiral—the only nonhuman ever granted that honor by the Emperor.

Ironically, it had also made him all the more indispensable to the frontier campaigns. Pellaeon had often wondered how the Battle of Endor would have ended if Thrawn, not Vader, had been commanding the Executor. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ve ordered the sentry line onto yellow alert. Shall we go to red?”

“Not yet,” Thrawn said. “We should still have a few minutes. Tell me, Captain, do you know anything about art?”

“Ah … not very much,” Pellaeon managed, thrown a little by the sudden change of subject. “I’ve never really had much time to devote to it.”

“You should make the time.” Thrawn gestured to a part of the inner display circle to his right. “Saffa paintings,” he identified them. “Circa 1550 to 2200, Pre-Empire Date. Note how the style changes—right here—at the first contact with the Thennqora. Over there—” he pointed to the left-hand wall “—are examples of Paonidd extrassa art. Note the similarities with the early Saffa work, and also the mid-eighteenth-century Pre-Em Vaathkree flatsculp.”

“Yes, I see,” Pellaeon said, not entirely truthfully. “Admiral, shouldn’t we be—?”

He broke off as a shrill whistle split the air. “Bridge to Grand Admiral Thrawn,” Lieutenant Tsehel’s taut voice called over the intercom. “Sir, we’re under attack!”

Thrawn tapped the intercom switch. “This is Thrawn,” he said evenly. “Go to red alert, and tell me what we’ve got. Calmly, if possible.”

“Yes, sir.” The muted alert lights began flashing, and Pellaeon could hear the sound of the klaxons baying faintly outside the room. “Sensors are picking up four New Republic Assault Frigates,” Tschel continued, his voice tense but under noticeably better control. “Plus at least three wings of X-wing fighters. Symmetric cloud-vee formation, coming in on our scoutships’ vector.”

Pellaeon swore under his breath. A single Star Destroyer, with a largely inexperienced crew, against four Assault Frigates and their accompanying fighters … “Run engines to full power,” he called toward the intercom. “Prepare to make the jump to lightspeed.” He took a step toward the door—

“Belay that jump order, Lieutenant,” Thrawn said, still glacially calm. “TIE fighter crews to their stations; activate deflector shields.”

Pellaeon spun back to him. “Admiral—”

Thrawn cut him off with an upraised hand. “Come here, Captain,” the Grand Admiral ordered. “Let’s take a look, shall we?”

He touched a switch; and abruptly, the art show was gone. Instead, the room had become a miniature bridge monitor, with helm, engine, and weapons readouts on the walls and double display circle. The open space had become a holographic tactical display; in one corner a flashing sphere indicated the invaders. The wall display nearest to it gave an ETA estimate of twelve minutes.

“Fortunately, the scoutships have enough of a lead not to be in danger themselves,” Thrawn commented. “So. Let’s see what exactly we’re dealing with. Bridge: order the three nearest sentry ships to attack.”

“Yes, sir.”

Across the room, three blue dots shifted out of the sentry line onto intercept vectors. From the corner of his eye Pellaeon saw Thrawn lean forward in his seat as the Assault Frigates and accompanying X-wings shifted in response. One of the blue dots winked out—

“Excellent,” Thrawn said, leaning back in his seat. “That will do, Lieutenant. Pull the other two sentry ships back, and order the Sector Four line to scramble out of the invaders’ vector.”

“Yes, sir,” Tschel said, sounding more than a little confused.

A confusion Pellaeon could well understand. “Shouldn’t we at least signal the rest of the Fleet?” he suggested, hearing the tightness in his voice. “The Death’s Head could be here in twenty minutes, most of the others in less than an hour.”

“The last thing we want to do right now is bring in more of our ships, Captain,” Thrawn said. He looked up at Pellaeon, and a faint smile touched his lips. “After all, there may be survivors, and we wouldn’t want the Rebellion learning about us. Would we.”

He turned back to his displays. “Bridge: I want a twenty-degree port yaw rotation—bring us flat to the invaders’ vector, superstructure pointing at them. As soon as they’re within the outer perimeter, the Sector Four sentry line is to re-form behind them and jam all transmissions.”

“Y-yes, sir. Sir—?”

“You don’t have to understand, Lieutenant,” Thrawn said, his voice abruptly cold. “Just obey.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pellaeon took a careful breath as the displays showed the Chimaera rotating as per orders. “I’m afraid I don’t understand, either, Admiral,” he said. “Turning our superstructure toward them—”

Again, Thrawn stopped him with an upraised hand. “Watch and learn, Captain. That’s fine, bridge: stop rotation and hold position here. Drop docking bay deflector shields, boost power to all others. TIE fighter squadrons: launch when ready. Head directly away from the Chimaera for two kilometers, then sweep around in open cluster formation. Backfire speed, zonal attack pattern.”

He got an acknowledgment, then looked up at Pellaeon. “Do you understand now, Captain?”

Pellaeon pursed his lips. “I’m afraid not,” he admitted. “I see now that the reason you turned the ship was to give the fighters some exit cover, but the rest is nothing but a classic Marg Sabl closure maneuver. They’re not going to fall for anything that simple.”

“On the contrary,” Thrawn corrected coolly. “Not only will they fall for it, they’ll be utterly destroyed by it. Watch, Captain. And learn.”

The TIE fighters launched, accelerating away from the Chimaera and then leaning hard into etheric rudders to sweep back around it like the spray of some exotic fountain. The invading ships spotted the attackers and shifted vectors—

Pellaeon blinked. “What in the Empire are they doing?”

“They’re trying the only defense they know of against a Marg Sabl,” Thrawn said, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction in his voice. “Or, to be more precise, the only defense they are psychologically capable of attempting.” He nodded toward the flashing sphere. “You see, Captain, there’s an Elom commanding that force … and Elomin simply cannot handle the unstructured attack profile of a properly executed Marg Sabl.”

Pellaeon stared at the invaders, still shifting into their utterly useless defense stance … and slowly it dawned on him what Thrawn had just done. “That sentry ship attack a few minutes ago,” he said. “You were able to tell from that that those were Elomin ships?”

“Learn about art, Captain,” Thrawn said, his voice almost dreamy. “When you understand a species’ art, you understand that species.”

He straightened in his chair. “Bridge: bring us to flank speed. Prepare to join the attack.”

An hour later, it was all over.

The ready room door slid shut behind the wing commander, and Pellaeon gazed back at the map still on the display. “Sounds like Obroa-skai is a dead end,” he said regretfully. “There’s no way well be able to spare the manpower that much pacification would cost.”

“For now, perhaps,” Thrawn agreed. “But only for now.”

Pellaeon frowned across the table at him. Thrawn was fiddling with a data card, rubbing it absently between finger and thumb, as he stared out the view port at the stars. A strange smile played about his lips. “Admiral?” he asked carefully.

Thrawn turned his head, those glowing eyes coming to rest on Pellaeon. “It’s the second piece of the puzzle, Captain,” he said softly, holding up the data card. “The piece I’ve been searching for now for over a year.”

Abruptly, he turned to the intercom, jabbed it on. “Bridge, this is Grand Admiral Thrawn. Signal the Death’s Head; inform Captain Harbid we’ll be temporarily leaving the Fleet. He’s to continue making tactical surveys of the local systems and pulling data dumps wherever possible. Then set course for a planet called Myrkr—the nav computer has its location.”

The bridge acknowledged, and Thrawn turned back to Pellaeon. “You seem lost, Captain,” he suggested. “I take it you’ve never heard of Myrkr.”

Pellaeon shook his head, trying without success to read the Grand Admiral’s expression. “Should I have?”

“Probably not. Most of those who have been smugglers, malcontents, and otherwise useless dregs of the galaxy.”

He paused, taking a measured sip from the mug at his elbow—a strong Forvish ale, from the smell of it—and Pellaeon forced himself to remain silent. Whatever the Grand Admiral was going to tell him, he was obviously going to tell it in his own way and time. “I ran across an offhand reference to it some seven years ago,” Thrawn continued, setting his mug back down. “What caught my attention was the fact that, although the planet had been populated for at least three hundred years, both the Old Republic and the Jedi of that time had always left it strictly alone.” He cocked one blue-black eyebrow slightly. “What would you infer from that, Captain?”

Pellaeon shrugged. “That it’s a frontier planet, somewhere too far away for anyone to care about.”

“Very good, Captain. That was my first assumption, too … except that it’s not. Myrkr is, in fact, no more than a hundred fifty light-years from here—close to our border with the Rebellion and well within the Old Republic’s boundaries.” Thrawn dropped his eyes to the data card still in his hand. “No, the actual explanation is far more interesting. And far more useful.”

Pellaeon looked at the data card, too. “And that explanation became the first piece of this puzzle of yours?”

Thrawn smiled at him. “Again, Captain, very good. Yes. Myrkr—or more precisely, one of its indigenous animals—was the first piece. The second is on a world called Wayland.” He waved the data card. “A world for which, thanks to the Obroans, I finally have a location.”

“I congratulate you,” Pellaeon said, suddenly tired of this game. “May I ask just what exactly this puzzle is?”

Thrawn smiled—a smile that sent a shiver up Pellaeon’s back. “Why, the only puzzle worth solving, of course,” the Grand Admiral said softly. “The complete, total, and utter destruction of the Rebellion.”

Introduction to the NEW JEDI ORDER Era

(25–40 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

A quarter century after A New Hope and the destruction of the Death Star, the galaxy is free of wide-scale conflicts—but the New Republic must contend with many regional brushfires. And Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Order faces its own growing pains: Some New Republic officials want to rein in the Jedi, leading Luke to wonder if the Jedi Council should be restored.

On the planet Rhommamool, Leia Organa Solo, Mara Jade Skywalker, and Jaina Solo meet with a mysterious rabble-rouser named Nom Anor. Anor rejects Leia’s diplomatic entreaties, but she’s more disturbed by what she finds when she reaches out to him in the Force: nothing. It’s as if he isn’t there.

Anor is a secret agent of the Yuuzhan Vong, powerful warriors from another galaxy who regard technology as blasphemous, relying on biological constructs to serve as their starships, weapons, and communicators. Long ago, a devastating war destroyed much of the Yuuzhan Vong’s galaxy and cut them off from the Force, sending their clans across the intergalactic void in search of a new home. Now they are at the edge of the Star Wars galaxy, ready to invade.

As head of the New Jedi Order, Luke is central to the galaxy’s defense; Leia’s skills as a former Chief of State and respected political adviser are also called on. The five-year war shakes the galaxy to its foundations. Technologically advanced worlds within the Yuuzhan Vong invasion corridor are subjected to the newcomers’ biotechnology and altered into strange hybrids combining what they had been with the new Yuuzhan Vong ecosystem. Entire species are enslaved—or eradicated. The New Republic is ill prepared to meet the extragalactic threat, with regional rivalries, political dissension, and concern over the Imperial Remnant limiting the effectiveness of its military response. Wrangling in the Senate snarls the war plans, as do disagreements between planetary fleets and armies, while assassination and war thin the ranks of the New Republic’s leaders. Officers and pilots who battled for so long against the Empire, such as Admiral Ackbar and Wedge Antilles, work feverishly to figure out how to outmaneuver their new enemies.

The invasion sorely challenges the Jedi, as well. Some take it upon themselves to meet the Yuuzhan Vong threat head-on, disdaining foot-dragging by politicians—and some of those skirt the dark side of the Force, giving in to their anger and fear as the Yuuzhan Vong ruin worlds and lives. The Yuuzhan Vong come to recognize the Jedi as the biggest threat to their plans, and begin hunting them down using New Republic traitors and bioengineered killers. At the forefront of the war against the Jedi are the Solo children—now teenagers and Jedi Knights in their own right. By the time the war is over, the Solo family will never be the same again.

The other heroes of the Rebellion, too, face personal struggles and tragedies. Luke fears for the life of his wife, Mara—infected with a Yuuzhan Vong–engineered disease—and for that of his newborn son, Ben, hunted by the Jedi’s enemies. Han and Leia’s losses are even harder to bear, as their oldest friends and children risk everything to stop the Yuuzhan Vong.

If you’re a reader looking to explore the epic tale of the Yuuzhan Vong war and the era of Luke’s New Jedi Order, the best place to start is with the first book in the series:

• The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime, by R. A. Salvatore: The first novel in the series introduces the pitiless Yuuzhan Vong and immediately makes clear that the heroes of the Rebellion are in mortal danger.

Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the New Jedi Order era.

ONE
Fraying Fabric

It was too peaceful out here, surrounded by the vacuum of space and with only the continual hum of the twin ion drives breaking the silence. While she loved these moments of peace, Leia Organa Solo also viewed them as an emotional trap, for she had been around long enough to understand the turmoil she would find at the end of this ride.

Like the end of every ride, lately.

Leia paused a moment before she entered the bridge of the Jade Sabre, the new shuttle her brother, Luke, had built for his wife, Mara Jade. Before her, and apparently oblivious to her, Mara and Jaina sat comfortably, side by side at the controls, talking and smiling. Leia focused on her daughter, Jaina, sixteen years old, but with the mature and calm demeanor of a veteran pilot. Jaina looked a lot like Leia, with long dark hair and brown eyes contrasting sharply with her smooth and creamy skin. Indeed, Leia saw much of herself in the girl—no, not girl, Leia corrected her own thoughts, but young woman. That same sparkle behind the brown eyes, mischievous, adventurous, determined.

That notion set Leia back a bit, for she recognized then that when she looked at Jaina, she was seeing not a reflection of herself but an image of the girl she had once been. A twinge of sadness caught her as she considered her own life now: a diplomat, a bureaucrat, a mediator, always trying to calm things down, always working for the peace and prosperity of the New Republic. Did she miss the days when the most common noise around her had been the sharp blare of a blaster or the hiss of a lightsaber? Was she sorry that those wild times had been replaced by the droning of the ion drives and the sharp bickering of one pride-wounded emissary after another?

Perhaps, Leia had to admit, but in looking at Jaina and those simmering dark eyes, she could take vicarious pleasure.

Another twinge—jealousy?—caught her by surprise, as Mara and Jaina erupted into laughter over some joke Leia had not overheard. But she pushed the absurd notion far from her mind as she considered her sister-in-law, Luke’s wife and Jaina’s tutor—at Jaina’s own request—in the ways of the Jedi. Mara was not a substitute mother for Jaina, but rather a big sister, and when Leia considered the fires that constantly burned in Mara’s green eyes, she understood that the woman could give to Jaina things that Leia could not, and that those lessons and that friendship would prove valuable indeed to her daughter. And so she forced aside her jealousy and was merely glad that Jaina had found such a friend.

She started onto the bridge, but paused again, sensing movement behind her. She knew before looking that it was Bolpuhr, her Noghri bodyguard, and barely gave him a glance as he glided to the side, moving so easily and gracefully that he reminded her of a lace curtain drifting lazily in a gentle breeze. She had accepted young Bolpuhr as her shadow for just that reason, for he was as unobtrusive as any bodyguard could be. Leia marveled at the young Noghri, at how his grace and silence covered a perfectly deadly fighting ability.

She held up her hand, indicating that Bolpuhr should remain out here, and though his usually emotionless face did flash Leia a quick expression of disappointment, she knew he would obey. Bolpuhr, and all the Noghri, would do anything Leia asked of them. He would jump off a cliff or dive into the hot end of an ion engine for her, and the only time she ever saw any sign of discontentment with her orders was when Bolpuhr thought she might be placing him in a difficult position to properly defend her.

As he was thinking now, Leia understood, though why in the world Bolpuhr would fear for her safety on her sister-in-law’s private shuttle was beyond her. Sometimes dedication could be taken a bit too far.

With a nod to Bolpuhr, she turned back to the bridge and crossed through the open doorway. “How much longer?” she asked, and was amused to see both Jaina and Mara jump in surprise at her sudden appearance.

In answer, Jaina increased the magnification on the forward screen, and instead of the unremarkable dots of light, there appeared an image of two planets, one mostly blue and white, the other reddish in hue, seemingly so close together that Leia wondered how it was that the blue-and-white one, the larger of the pair, had not grasped the other in its gravity and turned it into a moon. Parked halfway between them, perhaps a half a million kilometers from either, deck lights glittering in the shadows of the blue-and-white planet, loomed a Mon Calamari battle cruiser, the Mediator, one of the newest ships in the New Republic fleet.

“They’re at their closest,” Mara observed, referring to the planets.

“I beg your indulgence,” came a melodic voice from the doorway, and the protocol droid C-3PO walked into the room. “But I do not believe that is correct.”

“Close enough,” Mara said. She turned to Jaina. “Both Rhommamool and Osarian are ground based, technologically—”

“Rhommamool almost exclusively so!” C-3PO quickly added, drawing a scowl from all three of the women. Oblivious, he rambled on. “Even Osarian’s fleet must be considered marginal, at best. Unless, of course, one is using the Pantang Scale of Aero-techno Advancement, which counts even a simple landspeeder as highly as it would a Star Destroyer. Perfectly ridiculous scale.”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said, her tone indicating that she had heard more than enough.

“They’ve both got missiles that can hit each other from this close distance, though,” Mara continued.

“Oh, yes!” the droid exclaimed. “And given the proximity of their relative elliptical orbits—”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said.

“—they will remain within striking distance for some time,” C-3PO continued without missing a beat. “Months, at least. In fact, they will be even closer in two standard weeks, the closest they will be to each other for a decade to come.”

“Thank you, Threepio!” Mara and Leia said together.

“And the closest they have been for a decade previous,” the droid had to slip in, as the women turned back to their conversation.

Mara shook her head, trying to remember her original point to Jaina. “That’s why your mother chose to come out now.”

“You’re expecting a fight?” Jaina asked, and neither Leia nor Mara missed the sparkle in her eye.

“The Mediator will keep them behaving,” Leia said hopefully. Indeed, the battle cruiser was an impressive warship, an updated and more heavily armed and armored version of the Mon Calamari star cruiser.

Mara looked back to the screen and shook her head, unconvinced. “It’ll take more than a show of force to stop this catastrophe,” she replied.

“Indeed, it has been escalating, by all reports,” C-3PO piped up. “It started as a simple mining dispute over mineral rights, but now the rhetoric is more appropriate for some kind of a holy crusade.”

“It’s the leader on Rhommamool,” Mara remarked. “Nom Anor. He’s reached down and grabbed his followers by their most basic instincts, weaving the dispute against Osarian into a more general matter of tyranny and oppression. Don’t underestimate him.”

“I can’t begin to give you a full list of tyrants like Nom Anor that I’ve dealt with,” Leia said with a resigned shrug.

“I have that very list available,” C-3PO blurted. “Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Thank you, Threepio,” Leia said, too politely.

“Why, of course, Princess Leia,” the droid replied. “I do so like to be of service. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Tonkoss Rathba of—”

“Not now, Threepio,” Leia insisted, then to Mara, she added, “I’ve seen his type often.”

“Not like him,” Mara replied, somewhat softly, and the sudden weakness in her voice reminded Leia and Jaina that Mara, despite her nearly constant bravado and overabundance of energy, was seriously ill, with a strange and thankfully rare disease that had killed dozens of others and against which the best doctors in the New Republic had proven completely helpless. Of those who had contracted the molecular disorder, only Mara and one other remained alive, and that other person, being studied intently on Coruscant, was fast dying.

“Daluba,” C-3PO went on. “And of course, there was Icknya—”

Leia started to turn to the droid, hoping to politely but firmly shut him up, but Jaina’s cry stopped her abruptly and swung her back to face the screen.

“Incoming ships!” Jaina announced, her voice full of surprise. The telltale blips had appeared on her sensor viewer as if from nowhere.

“Four of them,” Mara confirmed. Even as she spoke, the warning buzzers began to go off. “From Osarian.” She turned her curious expression up to Leia. “They know who we are?”

Leia nodded. “And they know why I’ve come.”

“Then they should know to leave us alone,” Jaina reasoned.

Leia nodded again, but understood better. She had come to the system not to meet with the Osarians—not at first, at least—but with their principal rival, Nom Anor, the cult figure stirring up trouble on Rhommamool. “Tell them to back off,” she instructed Mara.

“Politely?” Mara asked, smiling, and with that dangerous twinkle in her eyes.

“New Republic shuttle,” a halting voice crackled over the comm. “This is Captain Grappa of Osarian First-Force.”

With a flick of a switch, Mara put an image of the captain on the viewscreen, and Leia sighed as the green skin, spiny head ridge, and tapirlike snout came into view.

“Wonderful,” she remarked sarcastically.

“The Osarians have hired Rodians?” Jaina asked.

“Nothing like a few mercenaries to quiet things down,” Leia replied dryly.

“Oh, dear me,” C-3PO remarked, and he shuffled aside nervously.

“You come with us,” Grappa insisted, his multifaceted eyes sparkling eagerly. “To Osa-Prime.”

“Seems the Osarians want to talk with you first,” Mara said.

“They’re afraid that my meeting with Nom Anor will only heighten his stature, both among the Rhommamoolians and throughout the sector,” Leia reasoned, a notion not without credence, and one that she had debated endlessly before making the decision to come here.

“Whatever the reason, they’re closing fast,” Mara replied. Both she and Jaina looked to Leia for instructions, for while the Jade Sabre was Mara’s ship, this was Leia’s mission.

“Princess Leia?” an obviously alarmed C-3PO asked.

Leia sat down in the chair behind Mara, intently studying the screen, which Jaina had switched back to a normal space view. The four approaching fighters were clearly visible.

“Lose them,” she said determinedly, a request that neither of the pilots needed to hear twice. Indeed, Mara had been eager to put the shuttle, with its powerful twin engines and state-of-the-art maneuvering systems, through a real test.

Green eyes sparkling, smile wide, Mara reached for the controls, but then retracted her hands and put them on her lap. “You heard her, Jaina,” she said.

Jaina’s mouth dropped open; so did Leia’s.

“You mean it?” Jaina asked.

Mara’s only reply was an almost bored expression, along with a slight yawn, as if this whole thing was no big deal, and certainly nothing that Jaina couldn’t easily handle.

“Yes!” Jaina whispered, clenching her fists, wearing a smile nearly wide enough to take in her ears. She rubbed her hands together, then reached out to the right, rolling her fingers over the floating-ball control of the inertial compensator. “Strap in,” she ordered, and she dialed it down to 95 percent, as fighter pilots often did so that they could gain a tactile feel to the movements of their ships. Reading the g’s, Jaina had heard it called, and she always preferred flying that way, where fast turns and mighty acceleration could push her back in her seat.

“Not too much,” Leia said with concern.

But her daughter was in her element now, Leia knew, and she’d push the shuttle to its limits. Leia felt the lean as Jaina veered right, angling away from the approaching ships.

“If you run, we shoot you down!” came the uneven voice of Grappa.

“Z-95 Headhunters,” Mara said derisively of the closing craft, an antiquated starfighter, and she flipped off the comm switch and looked back at Leia. “Can’t shoot what you can’t catch,” she explained. “Kick them in,” she added to Jaina, motioning to the primary thrusters, thinking that a burst of the powerful engines would shoot the Jade Sabre right past the befuddled Rodians and their outdated starfighters.

Even as she spoke, though, two more blips appeared on the sensors, streaking out from the shadows around Rhommamool, angling right in line with the Jade Sabre.

“Mara,” Leia said with concern. At that, Mara did reach for the controls. But only for a moment, and then she looked Jaina right in the eye and nodded for the young woman to proceed.

Leia lurched forward in her seat, held back only by the belt, as Jaina reversed throttle and kicked the etheric rudder right. There came a metallic thump behind them—C-3PO hitting the wall, Leia guessed.

Even as the Jade Sabre came to a sudden halt, nose turned starboard, Jaina pumped it out to full throttle and kicked the rudder back to the left, then hard right, fishtailing the ship about in a brutal one-eighty, then working the rudder hard and somewhat choppy in straightening out her direct retreat. As they turned, a laser cannon blast cut across their bow.

“All right, the first four are on our tail,” Mara instructed calmly. The Jade Sabre jolted, hit aft, a blow the shields easily held back.

“Try a—” Mara started to say, but she lost the words, and nearly her lunch, as Jaina pulled a snap roll right, and then another right behind it.

“Oh, we’ll be killed!” came C-3PO’s cry from the doorway, and Leia managed to turn her head to see the droid leaning in against the metal jamb, and then to see him fly away, with a pitiful cry, as Jaina kicked the etheric rudder again, putting the ship into another sudden fishtail.

A pair of Headhunters streaked past the viewscreen, but just for a split second, for Jaina vectored away at a different angle, and at single-engine full throttle, pressing Leia back in her seat. Leia wanted to say something to Jaina then, some words of encouragement or advice, but found her words stuck in her throat. And not for any g forces.

It was the sight of Jaina, the fire in her brown eyes, the determined set of her jaw, the sheer concentration. At that moment, Leia knew.

Her daughter was a woman now, and with all the grit of her father and mother combined.

Mara glanced over her right shoulder, between Jaina and Leia, and both followed her lead long enough to see that two of the initial four had altered course accordingly and were fast closing, laser cannons blasting away.

“Hold on,” a confident Jaina warned, and she pulled back the stick, lifting the Jade Sabre’s nose, then shoved it forward, dropping the shuttle into a sudden, inverted loop.

“We’re doomed!” C-3PO cried from the hallway—the hallway ceiling, Leia knew.

Halfway around, Jaina broke the loop with a snap roll, then kicked her into a fishtail and a barrel roll, bringing her about to nearly their original course, but with the initial four behind them. Now she did kick in both ion drives, as if to use sheer speed to split the gap between the two incoming fighters.

Both angled out suddenly, then turned back in, widening that escape route but giving them a longer shooting angle at the shuttle, and an easier turn to pursue.

“They’re good,” Mara warned, but, like Leia, she found her words lost in her throat, as Jaina, teeth gritted to fight back the g’s, reversed throttle.

“Princess—” The plaintive cry from the corridor ended abruptly in a loud crash.

“Coming in hot!” Mara cried, noting the fighter fast approaching to port.

Jaina didn’t, couldn’t even hear her; she had turned inward now, was feeling the Force coursing through her, was registering every movement of her enemies and reacting instinctively, playing the game three moves ahead. Before Mara had even begun to speak, Jaina had hit the forward attitude adjustment jets, lifting the nose, then she pumped the throttle and kicked the rudder, lifting the Jade Sabre and bringing her nose about to starboard, to directly face the other incoming Headhunter.

And that eager Rodian did come in at them, and hard, and the Jade Sabre’s defensive array screeched and lit up, warning of a lock-on.

“Jaina!” Leia cried.

“He’s got us!” Mara added.

But then the closer ship, coming from port, passed right under the Jade Sabre, and Jaina fired the repulsorlifts, bouncing the Jade Sabre up and sending the poor Headhunter into a wild, spinning roll.

The closing ship from starboard let fly its concussion missile, but it, and the Headhunter, zipped right underneath the elevated Jade Sabre.

Before the three women could even begin to catch their breath, another ship streaked in, an X-wing, the new XJ version of the starfighter, its own laser cannons blasting away from its wingtips. Not at the Jade Sabre, though, but at the Headhunter that had just gone past.

“Who is that?” Leia asked, and Jaina, equally curious, brought the Jade Sabre about hard.

The Headhunter snap-rolled left and dived, but the far superior X-wing stayed on her, lasers scoring hit after hit, depleting her shields and then blasting her apart into a million pieces.

“A Jedi,” Mara and Jaina said together, and Leia, when she paused to collect the Force sensations about her, concurred.

“Fast to the Mediator,” Leia instructed her daughter, and Jaina swung the Jade Sabre about yet again.

“I didn’t know there were any Jedi in the sector,” Leia said to Mara, who could only shrug, equally at a loss.

“Another one’s out,” Jaina informed them, watching the blips on her sensor screen. “And two others are vectoring away.”

“They want no part of a Jedi showing a willingness to shoot back,” Mara remarked.

“Maybe Rodians are smarter than I thought,” Leia said dryly. “Smooth it out,” she instructed her daughter, unbuckling and climbing unsteadily to her feet.

Jaina reluctantly dialed the inertial compensator back to full.

“Only one pursuing,” Jaina informed them as Leia made her way to the door.

“The X-wing,” Mara added, and Leia nodded.

In the hallway outside the bridge, Leia found C-3PO inverted and against the wall, his feet sticking up in the air, his head crunched forward so that his chin was tight against his chest.

“You have to learn to hold on,” Leia said to him, helping him upright. She glanced across the way to Bolpuhr as she spoke, to find the Noghri still standing calmly in the exact spot she had assigned him.

Somehow, she wasn’t amazed.

Jaina took the Jade Sabre at a swift but steady pace toward the distant Mediator. She checked often for pursuit, but it quickly became obvious that the Rodians in their outdated Headhunters wanted no part of this fight.

Leia rejoined them a short while later, to find Jaina in complete control and Mara resting back in her seat, eyes closed. Even when Jaina asked her aunt a question about docking procedures, the woman didn’t respond, didn’t even open her eyes.

“They’ll guide you in,” Leia interjected, and sure enough, a voice from the Mediator crackled over the opened comm, giving explicit directions for entry vector.

Jaina took her in, and Jaina took her down, easily—and after the display of flying she had just given them out with the Headhunters, Leia wasn’t the least bit surprised by her ability to so smoothly tight-dock a ship as large as the Jade Sabre.

That final shudder as Jaina eased off the repulsorlifts and settled the shuttle onto the docking bay floor stirred Mara from her rest. She opened her eyes and, seeing where they were, rose quickly.

And then she swayed and seemed as if she would fall.

Leia and Jaina were there in an instant, catching and steadying her.

She regained her balance and took a deep breath. “Maybe next time you can dial down the inertial compensator to ninety-seven instead of ninety-five,” she said jokingly, straining a smile.

Jaina laughed, but Leia’s face showed her deep concern. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Mara eyed her directly.

“Perhaps we should find a place where you can rest,” Leia said.

“Where we all can rest,” Mara corrected, and her tone told Leia to back off, a reminder that Leia was intruding on a private place for Mara, a place she had explicitly instructed all of her friends, even her husband, not to go. This disease was Mara’s fight alone, to Mara’s thinking, a battle that had forced her to reconsider everything she thought about her life, past, present, and future, and everything she thought about death.

Leia held her stare for a moment longer, but replaced her own concerned expression with one of acceptance. Mara did not want to be coddled or cuddled. She was determined to live on in an existence that did not name her disease as the most pressing and important facet of her entire life, to live on as she had before, with the illness being relegated to the position of nuisance, and nothing more.

Of course, Leia understood it to be much more than that, an internal churning that required Mara to spend hours and tremendous Force energy merely holding it in check. But that was Mara’s business.

“I hope to meet with Nom Anor tomorrow,” Leia explained, as the three, with C-3PO and Bolpuhr in tow, headed for the lower hatch, then moved down to the landing bay. A contingent of New Republic Honor Guard stood waiting there, along with Commander Ackdool, a Mon Calamarian with large, probing eyes, a fishlike face, and salmon-colored skin. “By all reports, we should all be rested before dealing with him.”

“Believe those reports,” Mara said.

“And first, it seems I get to meet with our savior Jedi,” Leia added dryly, looking back behind the Jade Sabre to see the X-wing gliding in to rest.

“Wurth Skidder,” Jaina remarked, recognizing the markings under the canopy on the starfighter.

“Why am I not surprised?” Leia asked, and she blew a sigh.

Ackdool came over to them, then, and extended his formal greetings to the distinguished guests, but Leia’s reaction set him back on his heels—indeed, it raised more than a few eyebrows among the members of the Mediator’s Honor Guard.

“Why did you send him out?” Leia snapped, motioning toward the docking X-wing.

Commander Ackdool started to answer, but Leia continued. “If we had needed assistance, we would have called for it.”

“Of course, Princess Leia,” Commander Ackdool said with a polite bow.

“They why send him out?”

“Why do you assume that Wurth Skidder flew out at my command?” the cool Commander Ackdool dared to respond. “Why would you assume that Wurth Skidder heeds any order I might give?”

“Couple o’ ridge-head parachutes floating over Osarian, if those Rodians had any luck,” came the singsong voice of Wurth Skidder. The cocky young man was fast approaching, pulling off his helmet and giving his shock of blond hair a tousle as he walked.

Leia stepped out to intercept him and took another quick step for no better reason than to make the Jedi stop short. “Wurth Skidder,” she said.

“Princess,” the man replied with a bow.

“Did you have a little fun out there?”

“More than a little,” the Jedi said with a wide grin and a sniffle—and he always seemed to be sniffling, and his hair always looked as if he had just walked in from a Tatooine sandstorm. “Fun for me, I mean, and not for the Rodians.”

“And the cost of your fun?” Leia asked.

That took the smile from Wurth Skidder’s face, and he looked at Leia curiously, obviously not understanding.

“The cost,” Leia explained. “What did your little excursion cost?”

“A couple of proton torpedos,” Wurth replied with a shrug. “A little fuel.”

“And a year of diplomatic missions to calm down the Osarians,” Leia retorted.

“But they shot first,” Wurth protested.

“Do you even understand that your stupidity likely escalated an already impossible situation?” Leia’s voice was as firm and cold as anyone present had ever heard it. So cold, in fact, that the always overprotective Bolpuhr, fearing trouble, glided closer to her, hanging back just behind her left shoulder, within fast striking distance of the Jedi.

“They were attacking you,” Wurth Skidder retorted. “Six of them!”

“They were trying to bring us down to Osarian,” Leia harshly explained. “A not-so-unexpected response, given my announced intentions here. And so we planned to avoid them. Avoid! Do you understand that word?”

Wurth Skidder said nothing.

“Avoid them and thus cause no further problems or hard feelings,” Leia went on. “And so we would have, and we would have asked for no explanations from Shunta Osarian Dharrg, all of us pretending that nothing had ever happened.”

“But—”

“And our graciousness in not mentioning this unfortunate incident would have bought me the bargaining capital I need to bring some kind of conciliation from Osarian toward Rhommamool,” Leia continued, anger creeping in thicker with each word. “But now we can’t do that, can we? Now, so that Wurth Skidder could paint another skull on the side of his X-wing, I’ll have to deal with an incident.”

“They shot first,” Wurth Skidder reiterated when it became apparent that Leia was done.

“And better that they had shot last,” Leia replied. “And if Shunta Osarian Dharrg demands reparations, we’ll agree, with all apologies, and any monies to be paid will come from Wurth Skidder’s private funds.”

The Jedi squared his shoulders at the suggestion, but then Leia hit him with a sudden and devastating shot. “My brother will see to it.”

Wurth Skidder bowed again, glared at Leia and all around, then turned on his heel and walked briskly away.

“My apologies, Princess Leia,” Ackdool said. “But I have no real authority over Jedi Skidder. I had thought it a blessing when he arrived two weeks ago. His Jedi skills should certainly come in handy against any terrorist attempts—and we have heard rumors of many—against the Mediator.”

“And you are indeed within striking distance of surface missiles,” C-3PO added, but he stopped short, this time catching on to the many disapproving looks that came his way.

“I did not know that Jedi Skidder would prove so …” Ackdool paused, searching for the right word. “Intractable.”

“Stubborn, you mean,” Leia said. As they all started away, Leia did manage a bit of a smile when she heard Mara behind her tell Jaina, “Maybe Nom Anor has met his match.”

C-9PO, a protocol droid, its copper coloring tinged red from the constantly blowing dusts of Rhommamool, skittered down an alley to the side of the main avenue of Redhaven and peeked out cautiously at the tumult beyond. The fanatical followers of Nom Anor, the Red Knights of Life, had gone on the rampage again, riding throughout the city in an apparent purge of landspeeders on their tutakans, eight-legged lizards with enormous tusks that climbed right up past their black eyes and curled in like white eyebrows.

“Ride the beasts given by Life!” one Red Knight screamed at a poor civilian as the wrinkled Dressellian merchant was dragged from the cockpit and punched and pushed to the ground.

“Perversion!” several other Red Knights cried in unison. “Life-pretender!” And they set upon the landspeeder with their tubal-iron pummelstaves, smashing the windshield, bashing in the side moldings, crushing the steering wheel and other controls, even knocking one of the rear drive’s cylindrical engines from its mounts.

Satisfied that the craft was wrecked beyond repair, they pulled the Dressellian to his feet and shoved him to and fro, warning him to ride creatures, not machines—or, better still, to use the legs that nature had provided and walk. Then they beat him back down to the ground and moved on, some climbing back atop the tutakans, others running beside.

The landspeeder continued to hover, though it had only a couple of repulsors still firing. It looked more like a twisted lump of beaten metal than a vehicle, tilting to one side because of the unequal weight distribution and the weakened lift capacity.

“Oh, dear me,” the protocol droid said, ducking low as the contingent stormed past.

Tap, tap, tap came the ringing of metal on metal against the top of the droid’s head. C-9PO slowly turned about and saw the fringe of the telltale black capes, and the red-dyed hides.

With a screech, the droid stood up and tried to run away, but a pummelstave smashed in the side of his leg and he went facedown in the red dust. He lifted his head, but rising up on his arms only gave the two Red Knights a better handhold as they walked past, each scooping the droid under one shoulder and dragging him along.

“Got a Ninepio,” one of the pair called out to his lizard-riding buddies, and a cheer went up.

The doomed droid knew the destination: the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

C-9PO was glad that he wasn’t programmed to experience pain.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” Leia said firmly.

“Wurth thought he was helping us,” Jaina reminded, but Leia wasn’t buying that argument.

“Wurth was trying to find his own thrills,” she corrected.

“And that hotshot attitude of his will reinforce the ring of truth to Nom Anor’s diatribes against the Jedi,” Mara said. “He’s not without followers on Osarian.” As she finished, she looked down at the table, at the pile of leaflets Commander Ackdool had given them, colorful propaganda railing against the New Republic, against the Jedi, and against anything mechanical and technological, and somehow tying all of these supposed ills to the cultural disease that engulfed the society of the planet Osarian.

“Why does Nom Anor hate the Jedi?” Jaina asked. “What do we have to do with the struggle between Osarian and Rhommamool? I never even heard of these planets until you mentioned that we’d be coming here.”

“The Jedi have nothing to do with this struggle,” Leia replied. “Or at least, they didn’t until Wurth Skidder’s antics.”

“Nom Anor hates the New Republic,” Mara added. “And he hates the Jedi as symbols of the New Republic.”

“Is there anything Nom Anor doesn’t hate?” Leia asked dryly.

“Don’t take him lightly,” Mara warned yet again. “His religious cry to abandon technology and machines, to look for truth in the natural elements and life of the universe, and to resist the joining of planets in false confederations resonates deeply in many people, particularly those who have been the victims of such planetary alliances, like the miners of Rhommamool.”

Leia didn’t disagree. She had spent many hours before and during the journey here reading the history of the two planets, and she knew that the situation on Rhommamool was much more complicated than that. While many of the miners had traveled to the inhospitable red planet voluntarily, there were quite a number who were the descendants of the original “colonists”—involuntary immigrants sent there to work the mines because of high crimes they had committed.

Whatever the truth of the situation, though, Leia couldn’t deny that Rhommamool was the perfect breeding ground for zealots like Nom Anor. Life there was tough—even basics like water could be hard to come by—while the prosperous Osarians lived in comfort on white sandy beaches and crystal-clear lakes.

“I still don’t understand how any of that concerns the Jedi,” Jaina remarked.

“Nom Anor was stirring up anger against the Jedi long before he ever came to Rhommamool,” Mara explained. “Here, he’s just found a convenient receptacle for his wrath.”

“And with the Jedi Knights scattered throughout the galaxy, and so many of them following their own agendas, Nom Anor might just find plenty of ammunition to add to his arguments,” Leia added grimly. “I’m glad that my brother is thinking of reestablishing the Jedi Council.”

Mara nodded, but Jaina seemed less convinced. “Jacen doesn’t think that’s such a good idea,” she reminded her mother.

Leia shrugged. Her oldest son, Jaina’s twin, had indeed expressed serious doubts about the course of the Jedi Knights.

“If we can’t bring some sense of order to the galaxy, particularly to isolated planets like Osarian and Rhommamool, then we’re no better than the Empire,” Mara remarked.

“We’re better than the Empire,” Leia insisted.

“Not in Nom Anor’s eyes,” Jaina said.

And Mara reiterated her warning to Leia not to take the man lightly. “He’s the strangest man I ever met,” she explained, and given her past exploits with notorious sorts like Jabba the Hutt and Talon Karrde, that was quite a statement. “Even when I tried to use the Force to gain a better perspective on him, I drew …” Mara paused, as if looking for some way to properly express the feeling. “A blank,” she decided. “As if the Force had nothing to do with him.”

Leia and Jaina looked at her curiously.

“No,” Mara corrected. “More like he had nothing to do with the Force.”

The perfect disconnected ideologue, Leia thought, and she expressed her feelings with a single sarcastic word:

“Wonderful.”

He stood on the platform surrounded by his fanatical Red Knights. Before him, ten thousand Rhommamoolians crowded into every open space of the great public square of Redhaven, once the primary trading spaceport of the planet. But those facilities had been leveled in the early days of the uprising, with the Rhommamoolians declaring their independence from Osarian. And more recently, since the coming of Nom Anor as spearhead of the revolution, the place had been renamed the Square of Hopeful Redemption.

Here, the citizens came to declare freedom from Osarian.

Here, the followers came to renounce the New Republic.

Here, the believers came to renounce the Jedi.

And here, the fanatics came to discredit progress and technology, to cry out for a simpler time, when the strength of a being’s legs, and not the weight of his purse, determined how far he could travel, and the strength of his hands, and not the weight of his purse, allowed him to harvest the gifts of nature.

Nom Anor loved it all, the adulation and the fanatical, bordering on suicidal, devotion. He cared nothing for Rhommamool or its inhabitants, cared nothing for the foolish cries for some ridiculous “simpler time.”

But how he loved the chaos his words and followers inflicted upon the order of the galaxy. How he loved the brooding undercurrent of resentment toward the New Republic, and the simmering anger aimed at the Jedi Knights, these supercreatures of the galaxy.

Wouldn’t his superiors be pleased?

Nom Anor flipped his shiny black cape back from his shoulder and held his fist upraised into the air, drawing shrieks of appreciation. In the center of the square, where once had stood the Portmaster’s Pavilion, now was a huge pit, thirty meters in diameter and ten deep. Whistles and whines emanated from that pit, along with cries for mercy and pitifully polite words of protest—the voices of droids collected by the folk of Rhommamool and dropped into the hole.

Great cheers erupted from all corners of the square as a pair of the Red Knights entered from one avenue, dragging a 9PO protocol droid between them. They went to the edge of the pit, took up the poor 9PO by the arms and the legs, and on a three-count, launched him onto the pile of metal consisting of the astromech and mine-sniffer droids, the Redhaven street-cleaner droids, and the personal butler droids of the wealthier Rhommamoolian citizens.

When the hooting and cheering died down, Nom Anor opened his hands, revealing a single small stone. Then he clenched his fist again, squeezing with tremendous power, crushing the stone in his grasp so that dust and flecks of rock splinters slipped out the sides.

The signal to begin.

As one the crowd surged forward, lifting great chunks of stone, the debris from the wreckage of the pavilion. They came to the edge of the pit one after another and hurled their heavy missiles at the pile of droids.

The stoning went on for the rest of the afternoon, until the red glare of the sun thinned to a brilliant crimson line along the horizon, until the dozens and dozens of droids were no more than scrap metal and sparking wires.

And Nom Anor, silent and dignified, watched it all somberly, accepting this great tribute his followers had paid to him, this public execution of the hated droids.

Introduction to the LEGACY Era

(40+ YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

The Yuuzhan Vong have been defeated, but the galaxy has been slow to recover from their depredations, with powerful worlds chafing at the economic burdens and military restrictions put upon them by the nascent Galactic Alliance, once-powerful species seeking to rise again, newly prosperous worlds testing their influence, and long-buried secrets coming to light. The result of all this instability is civil war. Faced with a Galactic Alliance that has fallen away from its values, Luke and the Jedi Order must decide where their loyalties lie—and so, too, must the heroes of the Rebellion.

While hostilities spread across the Core Worlds, lurking in the shadows is a Sith adept who wastes no time in taking advantage of the galactic chaos to wage a very personal war against the Skywalkers and the Solos. Luke will face terrible loss, Han and Leia will be tested as never before, and their daughter, Jaina, will learn just what it means to fulfill her destiny as “the Sword of the Jedi.” And even as the Galactic Alliance pulls the galaxy back from the brink of total disaster, the Skywalker–Solo clan will never be the same again.

The mop-up is difficult. Luke Skywalker is exiled from Coruscant, and while he and his son, Jedi Knight Ben Skywalker, set out on a quest to discover what caused such darkness to befall the galaxy and their family, Han and Leia are left to raise their granddaughter, Allana, and help shepherd the government back into some semblance of order. But little do any of them know that a long-lost tribe of Sith is making its way toward the Core, determined to fulfill their destiny of dominance over the galaxy … and that both Sith and Jedi are about to run headlong into a terrifying creature of untold Force abilities and an insatiable appetite for power …

If you’re a reader new to the Legacy era, here are four great starting points:

• Legacy of the Force: Betrayal, by Aaron Allston: The first in the nine-book Legacy of the Force series, setting the stage for galactic civil war and a fall to darkness.

• Millennium Falcon, by James Luceno: Han Solo’s famous freighter becomes a character in her own right as Han, Leia, their granddaughter Allana, and the droid C-3PO set out on an adventure that brings to light the ship’s colorful, mysterious past.

• Crosscurrent, by Paul S. Kemp: A remnant of the Old Republic comes into Luke Skywalker’s time in a tale of insane clones and time-traveling Jedi and Sith.

• Fate of the Jedi: Outcast by Aaron Allston: The nine-book Fate of the Jedi series blasts off with the new adventures of Luke and Ben Skywalker—Jedi Master and apprentice, father and son—in search of answers to a terrifying question.

Read on for excerpts from Star Wars novels set in the Legacy era.

chapter one

CORUSCANT

“He doesn’t exist.” With those words, spoken without any conscious thought or effort on his part, Luke Skywalker sat upright in bed and looked around at the dimly illuminated chamber.

There wasn’t much to see. Members of the Jedi order, even Masters such as Luke, didn’t accumulate much personal property. Within view were chairs situated in front of unlit computer screens; a wall rack holding plasteel staves and other practice weapons; a table littered with personal effects such as datapads, notes scrawled on scraps of flimsi, datachips holding reports from various Jedi Masters, and a crude and not at all accurate sandglass statuette in Luke’s image sent to him by a child from Tatooine. Inset into the stone-veneer walls were drawers holding his and Mara’s limited selection of clothes. Their lightsabers were behind Luke, resting on a shelf on the headboard of their bed.

His wife, Mara Jade Skywalker, had more personal items and equipment, of course. Disguises, weapons, communications gear, falsified documents. A former spy, she had never given up the trappings of that trade, but those items weren’t here. Luke wasn’t sure where she kept them. She didn’t bother him with such details.

Beside him, she stirred, and he glanced down at her. Her red hair, kept a medium length this season, was an unruly mess, but there was no sleepiness in her eyes when they opened. In brighter light, he knew, those eyes were an amazing green. “Who doesn’t exist?” she asked.

“I don’t know. An enemy.”

“You dreamed about him?”

He nodded. “I’ve had the dream a couple of times before. It’s not just a dream. It’s coming to me through currents in the Force. He’s all wrapped up in shadows—a dark hooded cloak, but more than that, shadows of light and …” Luke shook his head, struggling for the correct word. “And ignorance. And denial. And he brings great pain to the galaxy … and to me.”

“Well, if he brings pain to the galaxy, you’re obviously going to feel it.”

“No, to me personally, in addition to his other evil.” Luke sighed and lay down again. “It’s too vague. And when I’m awake, when I try to peer into the future to find him, I can’t.”

“Because he doesn’t exist.”

“That’s what the dream tells me.” Luke hissed in aggravation.

“Could it be Raynar?”

Luke considered. Raynar Thul, former Jedi Knight, presumed dead during the Yuuzhan Vong war, had been discovered a few years earlier—horribly burned during the war, mentally transformed in the years since through his involvement with the insectoid Killik race. That transformation had been a malevolent one, and the Jedi order had had to deal with him. Now he languished in a well-protected cell deep within the Jedi Temple, undergoing treatment for his mental and physical afflictions.

Treatment. Treatment meant change; perhaps, in changing, Raynar was becoming something new, and Luke’s presentment pointed toward the being Raynar would someday become.

Luke shook his head and pushed the possibility away. “In this vision, I don’t sense Raynar’s alienness. Mentally, emotionally, whoever it is remains human, or near human. There’s even the possiblity that it’s my father.”

“Darth Vader.”

“No. Before he was Darth Vader. Or just when he was becoming Vader.” Luke’s gaze lost focus as he tried to recapture the dream. “What little of his face I can see reminds me of the features of Anakin Skywalker as a Jedi. But his eyes … as I watch, they turn a molten gold or orange, transforming from Force-use and anger …”

“I have an idea.”

“Tell me.”

“Let’s wait until he shows up, then crush him.”

Luke smiled. “All right.” He closed his eyes and his breathing slowed, an effort to return to sleep.

Within a minute the rhythm of his breathing became that of natural sleep.

But Mara lay awake, her attention on the ceiling—beyond it, through dozens of floor levels of the Jedi enclave to the skies of Coruscant above—and searched for any hint, any flicker of what it was that was causing her husband worry.

She found no sign of it. And she, too, slept.

ADUMAR

The gleaming pearl-gray turbolift doors slid open sideways, and warm air bearing an aroma that advertised death and destruction washed over Jacen Solo, his cousin Ben Skywalker, and their guide.

Jacen took a deep breath and held it. The odors of this subterranean factory were not the smells of corrupted flesh or gangrenous wounds—smells Jacen was familiar with—but those of labor and industry. The great chamber before them had been a missile manufacturing center for decades, and no amount of rigorous cleaning would ever be quite able to eliminate the odors of sweat, machine lubricant, newly fabricated composite materials, solid fuel propellants, and high explosives that filled the air.

Jacen expelled the breath and stepped out of the turbolift, then walked the handful of steps up to the rail overlooking the chamber. He walked rapidly so that his Jedi cloak would billow a little as he strode, so that his boot heels would ring on the metal flooring of this observation catwalk, and so his apprentice and guide would be left behind for a moment. This was a performance for his guide and all the other representatives of the Dammant Killers company. Jacen knew he was carrying off his role quite well; the company officials he’d been dealing with remained properly intimidated. But he didn’t know whether to attribute his success to his bearing and manner, his lean, brooding, and handsome looks, or his name—for on this world of Adumar, with its history of fascination with pilots, the name of Jacen’s father, Han Solo, went a very long way.

His guide, a slender, balding man named Testan ke Harran, moved up to the rail to Jacen’s right. Contrasting with the dull grays and blues that were common on this factory’s walls and its workers’ uniforms, Testan was a riot of color—his tunic, with its nearly knee-length hem and its flowing sleeves, was the precise orange of X-wing fighter pilot uniforms, though decorated with purple crisscross lines breaking it down into a flickering expanse of small diamond shapes, and his trousers, belt, and scarf were a gleaming gold.

Testan stroked his lustrous black beard, the gesture a failed attempt to conceal the man’s nervousness. Jacen felt, rather than saw, Ben move up on the other side of Testan.

“You can see,” Testan said, “ar workars enjoy very fan conditions.”

Ben cleared his throat. “He says their workers enjoy very fine conditions.”

Jacen nodded absently. He understood Testan’s words, and it had taken him little time to learn and understand the Adumari accent, but this was another act, a ploy to keep the Adumari off-balance. He leaned forward to give the manufacturing floor below his full attention.

The room was large enough to act as a hangar and maintenance bay for four full squadrons of X-wing snubfighters. Tall duracrete partitions divided the space into eight lanes, each of which enclosed an assembly line; materials entered through small portals in the wall to the left, rolled along on luminous white conveyor belts, and eventually exited through portals on the far right. Laborers in gray jumpsuits flanked the belts and worked on the materials as they passed.

On the nearest belt, immediately below Jacen, the materials being worked on appeared to be compact visual sensor assemblies. The conveyor belt brought in eight such units and stopped. Moving quickly, the laborers plugged small cables into the units and turned to look into monitors, which showed black-and-white images of jumpsuited waists and worker hands. The workers turned the units this way and that, confirming that the sensors were properly calibrated.

One monitor never lit up with a view from the sensor. The worker on that unit unplugged it and set it on a table running parallel to the conveyor belt. A moment later, the other workers on this section unplugged their sensor units and the conveyor belt jerked into motion again, carrying the remaining seven units to the next station.

One lane over, the conveyor belt remained in constant motion, carrying sensor unit housings along. The workers on that belt, fewer in number than the sensor testers, reached out occasionally to turn a housing, to look inside, to examine the exterior for cracks or warping. Some workers, distributed at intervals along the line, rapped each housing with a small rubber-headed hammer. Jacen assumed they were listening for a musical tone he could not possibly hear at this distance over the roar of noise from the floor.

Another lane away from him, the workers were clad not in jumpsuits but in full-coverage hazardous materials suits of a lighter and more reflective gray than the usual worker outfit. Their conveyor belt carried white plates bearing irregular balls the size of a human head but a nearly luminous green. The belt stopped as each set of eight such balls entered the lane, giving the workers time to plunge needlelike sensors into each ball. They, too, checked monitors for a few seconds before withdrawing the needles to allow the balls to continue on. Jacen knew that poisonous green—it was the color of the high explosive Adumari manufacturers used to fabricate the concussion missiles they exported.

While Jacen made his initial survey, Ben kept their guide occupied. “Do you wax your beard?” he asked.

“I do not.”

“It just seems very shiny. Do you oil it?”

Testan’s voice was a little more irritated in tone. “I do not oil it. I condition it. And I brush it.”

“Do you brush it with butter?”

Jacen finally looked to the right, past Testan and at his cousin. Ben was thirteen standard years of age, not tall but well muscled, with a fine-featured freckled face under a mass of flame-red hair. Ben turned, his face impassive, to look at Jacen, then said, “The Jedi Knight acknowledges that this factory seems to meet the minimum, the absolute minimum, required safety and comfort standards of a Galactic Alliance military contractor.”

Jacen nodded. The nod meant Good improvisation. He was exerting no Force skill to communicate words to Ben; Ben’s role was to pretend to act as his mentor’s translator, when his actual function was to convince the locals that adult Jedi were even more aloof and mysterious than they had thought.

“No, no, no.” Testan drew a sleeve over his brow, dabbing away a little perspiration. “We are wall above minimam standards. Those duracrete barriars? They will vent any explosive farce upward, saving the majority of workars in case of calamity. Workar shifts are only two-fifths the day in length, unlike the old days.”

Ben repeated Testan’s words, and Jacen shrugged.

Ben imitated his motion. The gesture caused his own Jedi robe to gape open, revealing the lightsaber hanging from his belt.

Testan glanced at it, then looked back at Jacen, clearly worried. “Your apprentice—” Unsure, he looked to Ben again. “You are very young, are you not, to be wearing such a weapon?”

Ben gave him a blank look. “It’s a practice lightsaber.”

“Ah.” Testan nodded as though he understood.

And there it was. Perhaps it was just the thought of a thirteen-year-old with a deadly cutting implement at hand, but Testan’s defenses slipped enough that the worry began to pour through.

It was like the game in which children are told, “For the next hour, do not think about banthas.” Try as they might, they would, within minutes or even seconds, think about a bantha.

Testan’s control finally gave way and he thought about the banthas—or, rather, a place he wasn’t supposed to go, even to think about. Jacen could feel Testan try to clamp down on the thought. Something in the increased potency of that worry told Jacen that they must be nearer to the source of his concern than during previous parts of their factory tour.

When Testan turned back, Jacen looked directly at him and said, “There is something here. Something wrong.” They were the first words he’d spoken in Testan’s presence.

Testan shook his head. “No. Evrything is fan.”

Jacen looked past him, toward the wall to the far right of the chamber. It was gray and regular, a series of metal panels each the height of a man and twice as wide stacked like bricks. He began a slow, deliberate scrutiny, traversing right to left. His gaze swept the walls, the assembly lines, the elevated observation chamber directly opposite the turbolifts by which they had entered, and continued along the wall to the left.

As his attention reached the middle of the left wall, along the observation balcony, he felt another pulse of worry from Testan. Ben cleared his throat, a signal; the boy, though nowhere near as sensitive in the Force as Jacen, had gotten the same feeling.

Jacen set off along the balcony in that direction. This time the ringing of his boots and billowing of his cloak were a side effect of his speed rather than an act.

“You wish to see the observation chambar?” Testan hurried to keep up. His anxiety was growing, and there was something within it, like a shiny stone at the bottom of a murky pond.

Jacen reached into that pond to draw out the prize within.

It was a memory of a door. It was broad and gray, closing from above as men and women—in dark blue jumpsuits, the outfits of supervisors in this facility—scurried out ahead of its closing. When it settled in place, it was identical to the wall panels Jacen saw ahead of him in the here and now.

Jacen glanced over his shoulder at Testan. “Your thoughts betray you.”

Testan paled. “No, there is nothing to betray.”

Jacen rounded the observation balcony corner, took a few more steps, and skidded to a halt in front of one of the wall sections.

It was here. He knew because he could feel something beyond.

Conflict. He himself was there, fighting. So was Ben. It was a faint glimpse of the future, and he and his apprentice would be in peril beyond.

He jerked his head toward the wall.

Ben brought out his lightsaber and switched it on. With a snap-hiss sound, its blue blade of coherent energy extended to full length.

Ben plunged the blade into the wall panel and began to drag it around in a large circle.

Testan, his voice pained, said, “He told us it was a practice weapon.”

Jacen gave him an innocent look. “It’s true from a certain point of view. He does practice with it.” In his nervousness, Testan didn’t seem to notice that Jacen was understanding him clearly now.

Ben completed his circle and gave the meter-and-a-half-high section he’d outlined a little kick. It fell away into a well-lit chamber, clanging on the floor beyond; the edges still glowed with the heat the lightsaber had poured into them.

Ben stepped through. Jacen ducked to follow. He heard Testan muttering—doubtless an alert into a comlink. Jacen didn’t bother to interfere. They’d just been within clear sight of hundreds of workers and the observation chamber. Dealing with Testan wouldn’t keep the alarm from being broadcast.

The room beyond Ben’s improvised doorway was actually a corridor, four meters wide and eight high, every surface made up of the same dull gray metal rectangles found in the outer chamber, greenish white light pouring from the luminous ceiling. To the left, the corridor ended after a few meters, and that end was heavily packed with tall plasteel transport containers. They were marked DANGER, DO NOT DROP, and DAMMANT KILLER MODEL 16, QUANTITY 24.

To the right, the corridor extended another forty meters and then opened up; the rail and drop-off at the end suggested that it opened onto another observation balcony above another fabrication chamber.

Now making the turn from the balcony into the corridor and running toward them were half a dozen troops armed with blaster rifles. Their orange jumpsuits were reminiscent of X-wing pilot uniforms, but the green carapace armor over their lower legs, torsos, lower arms, and heads was more like stormtrooper speeder bike armor painted the wrong color.

And then behind the first six troops came another six, and then another eight …

Jacen brought his lightsaber out and snapped it into life; the incandescent green of his blade was reflected as highlights against the walls and the armor of the oncoming troops. “Stay behind me,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Ben’s sigh was audible, and Jacen grinned.

The foremost trooper, who bore gold bars on his helmet and wrists, shouted, his voice mechanically amplified: “Stop whar you are! This saction is restricted!”

Jacen moved forward at a walk. He rotated his wrist, moving his lightsaber blade around in front of him in a pattern vaguely reminiscent of butterfly wings. He shouted back, “Could you speak up? I’m a little deaf.”

Ben snickered. “Good one.”

“You may not entar this saction!”

They were now twenty meters from the ranks of troopers ahead.

Jacen continued twirling his blade in a practice form. “Fewer people will be hurt if you just get out of my way.” It was a sort of ritual thing to say. Massed enemy forces almost never backed down, despite the reputation of the Jedi—a reputation that became more widespread, more supernatural, with each year the Jedi prospered under Luke Skywalker’s leadership.

The phrase was ritual in another way, too. Once upon a time, Jacen would have felt tragedy surround him when his actions resulted in the deaths of common soldiers, common guards. But over time he’d lost that sense. There was a wearying inevitability to leaders sending their troops to die against more powerful enemies. It had been happening as long as there were violent leaders and obedient followers. In death, these people became one with the Force, and when Jacen had accepted that fact, his sense of tragedy had largely evaporated.

He took another two steps and the trooper commander called, “Fire!”

The troopers began firing. Jacen gave himself over to the Force, to his awareness of his surroundings, to his sudden oneness with the men and women trying to kill him.

He simply ignored most of the blaster bolts. When he felt them angling in toward him, he twirled his lightsaber blade in line and batted them away, usually back toward the crowd of troopers. In the first few seconds of their assault, four troopers fell to blasts launched by their friends. The smell of burned flesh began to fill the corridor.

Jacen felt danger from behind; felt Ben react to it. Jacen didn’t shift his attention; he continued his march forward. He’d prefer to be able to protect the inexperienced youth, but the boy was good at blaster defense practice. Hard as it was to trust a Jedi whose skills were just developing, he had to. To teach, to learn, he had to trust.

Jacen intercepted the next blaster shot that came his way and batted it toward the trooper commander. It struck the man in the helmet and caromed off, burning out against the ceiling; a portion four meters square of the ceiling’s illumination winked out, darkening the corridor. The commander fell. The shot was probably not fatal—protected by his helmet, the man would have forehead and scalp burns, probably a concussion, but he was unlikely to die.

The strategy had its desired effect. The troopers saw their commander fall. They continued firing but also exchanged looks. Jacen never broke pace, and a trooper with silver stripes on his helmet called “Back, back.” In good order, the troopers began a withdrawal.

Behind him, Jacen heard more blasterfire and the distinctive zap of a lightsaber blade intercepting it, deflecting it. Within the flow of the Force, Jacen felt a shot coming in toward his back, felt it being slapped aside, saw and felt it as it hit the wall to his right. The heat from the shot warmed his right shoulder.

But the defenders continued their retreat, and soon the last of them was around the corner. Jacen’s path to the railing was clear. He strode up to it.

Over the rail, a dozen meters down, was another assembly-line pit, where line after line of munitions components was being assembled—though at the moment all the lines were stopped, their anonymous jumpsuited workers staring up at Jacen.

Jacen’s movement out of the corridor brought him within sight of the orange-and-green defenders, who were now arrayed in disciplined rows along the walkway to Jacen’s left. As soon as he reached the railing they opened fire again. Their tighter formation allowed them to concentrate their fire, and Jacen found himself deflecting more shots than before.

He felt rather than saw Ben scoot into position behind him, but no blaster bolts came at him from that direction. “What now?” Ben asked.

“Finish the mission.” Jacen caught a too-close bolt on his blade near the hilt; unable to aim the deflection, he saw the bolt flash down into the assembly area. It hit a monitor screen. The men and women near the screen dived for cover. Jacen winced; a fraction of a degree of arc difference and that bolt could have hit an explosives package. As inured as he was to causing death, he didn’t want to cause it by accident.

“But you’re in charge—”

“I’m busy.” Jacen took a step forward to give himself more maneuvering and swinging space and concentrated on his attackers. He needed to protect himself and Ben now, to defend a broader area. He focused on batting bolt after bolt back into the ranks of the attackers, saw one, two, three of the soldiers fall.

There was a lull in the barrage of fire. Jacen took a moment to glance over his shoulder. Ben stood at the railing, staring down into the manufacturing line, and to his eye he held a small but expensive holocam unit—the sort carried by wealthy vacationers and holocam hobbyists all over the galaxy.

As Jacen returned his attention to the soldiers, Ben began talking: “Um, this is Ben Skywalker. Jedi Knight Jacen Solo and I are in a, I don’t know, secret part of the Dammant Killers plant under the city of Cartann on the planet Adumar. You’re looking at a missile manufacturing line. It’s making missiles that are not being reported to the GA. They’re selling to planets that aren’t supposed to be getting them. Dammant is breaking the rules. Oh, and the noise you’re hearing? Their guys are trying to kill us.”

Jacen felt Ben’s motion as the boy swung to record the blaster-versus-lightsaber conflict.

“Is that enough?” Ben asked.

Jacen shook his head. “Get the whole chamber. And while you’re doing it, figure out what we’re supposed to do next.”

“I was kind of thinking we ought to get out of here.”

With the tip of his lightsaber blade, Jacen caught a blast that was crackling in toward his right shin. He popped the blast back toward its firer. It hit the woman’s blaster rifle, searing it into an unrecognizable lump, causing her green shoulder armor momentarily to catch fire. She retreated, one of her fellow soldiers patting out her flames. Now there were fewer than fifteen soldiers standing against the Jedi, and their temporary commander was obviously rethinking his make-a-stand orders.

“Good. How?”

“Well, the way we came in—no. They’d be waiting for us.”

“Correct.”

“And you never want to fight the enemy on ground he’s chosen if you can avoid it.”

Jacen grinned. Ben’s words, so adult, were a quote from Han Solo, a man whose wisdom was often questionable—except on matters of personal survival. “Also correct.”

“So … the ends of those assembly lines?”

“Good. So go.”

Jacen heard the scrape of a heel as Ben vaulted over the rail. Not waiting, Jacen leapt laterally, clearing the rail by half a meter, and spun as he fell. Ahead of and below him, Ben was just landing in a crouch on the nearest assembly line, which was loaded with opalescent shell casings. As Jacen landed, bent knees and a little upward push from the Force easing the impact, Ben raced forward, reflexively swatting aside the grasping hand of a too-bold line worker, and crouched as he lunged through the diminutive portal at the end of the line.

Jacen followed. He heard and felt the heat of blaster bolts hitting the assembly line behind him. He swung his lightsaber back over his shoulder, intercepting one bolt, taking the full force of the impact rather than deflecting the bolt into a neighboring line.

No line workers tried to grab him, and in seconds he was squeezing through the portal.

GALACTIC ALLIANCE DIPLOMATIC SHUTTLE, HIGH CORUSCANT ORBIT

ONE BY ONE, THE STARS OVERHEAD BEGAN TO DISAPPEAR, swallowed by some enormous darkness interposing itself from above and behind the shuttle. Sharply pointed at its most forward position, broadening behind, the flood of blackness advanced, blotting out more and more of the unblinking starfield, until darkness was all there was to see.

Then, all across the length and breadth of the ominous shape, lights came on—blue and white running lights, tiny red hatch and security lights, sudden glows from within transparisteel viewports, one large rectangular whiteness limned by atmosphere shields. The lights showed the vast triangle to be the underside of an Imperial Star Destroyer, painted black, forbidding a moment ago, now comparatively cheerful in its proper running configuration. It was the Gilad Pellaeon, newly arrived from the Imperial Remnant, and its officers clearly knew how to put on a show.

Jaina Solo, sitting with the others in the dimly lit passenger compartment of the government VIP shuttle, watched the entire display through the overhead transparisteel canopy and laughed out loud.

The Bothan in the sumptuously padded chair next to hers gave her a curious look. His mottled red and tan fur twitched, either from suppressed irritation or embarrassment at Jaina’s outburst. “What do you find so amusing?”

“Oh, both the obviousness of it and the skill with which it was performed. It’s so very, You used to think of us as dark and scary, but now we’re just your stylish allies.” Jaina lowered her voice so that her next comment would not carry to the passengers in the seats behind. “The press will love it. That image will play on the holonews broadcasts constantly. Mark my words.”

“Was that little show a Jagged Fel detail?”

Jaina tilted her head, considering. “I don’t know. He could have come up with it, but he usually doesn’t spend his time planning displays or events. When he does, though, they’re usually pretty … effective.”

The shuttle rose toward the Gilad Pellaeon’s main landing bay. In moments, it was through the square atmosphere barrier shield and drifting sideways to land on the deck nearby. The landing place was clearly marked—hundreds of beings, most wearing gray Imperial uniforms or the distinctive white armor of the Imperial stormtrooper, waited in the bay, and the one circular spot where none stood was just the right size for the Galactic Alliance shuttle.

The passengers rose as the shuttle settled into place. The Bothan smoothed his tunic, a cheerful blue decorated with a golden sliver pattern suggesting claws. “Time to go to work. You won’t let me get killed, will you?”

Jaina let her eyes widen. “Is that what I was supposed to be doing here?” she asked in droll tones. “I should have brought my lightsaber.”

The Bothan offered a long-suffering sigh and turned toward the exit.

They descended the shuttle’s boarding ramp. With no duties required of her other than to keep alert and be the Jedi face at this preliminary meeting, Jaina was able to stand back and observe. She was struck with the unreality of it all. The niece and daughter of three of the most famous enemies of the Empire during the First Galactic Civil War of a few decades earlier, she was now witness to events that might bring the Galactic Empire—or Imperial Remnant, as it was called everywhere outside its own borders—into the Galactic Alliance on a lasting basis.

And at the center of the plan was the man, flanked by Imperial officers, who now approached the Bothan. Slightly under average size, though towering well above Jaina’s diminutive height, he was dark-haired, with a trim beard and mustache that gave him a rakish look, and was handsome in a way that became more pronounced when he glowered. A scar on his forehead ran up into his hairline and seemed to continue as a lock of white hair from that point. He wore expensive but subdued black civilian garments, neck-to-toe, that would be inconspicuous anywhere on Coruscant but stood out in sharp relief to the gray and white uniforms, white armor, and colorful Alliance clothes surrounding him.

He had one moment to glance at Jaina. The look probably appeared neutral to onlookers, but for her it carried just a twinkle of humor, a touch of exasperation that the two of them had to put up with all these delays. Then an Alliance functionary, notable for his blandness, made introductions: “Imperial Head of State the most honorable Jagged Fel, may I present Senator Tiurrg Drey’lye of Bothawui, head of the Senate Unification Preparations Committee.”

Jagged Fel took the Senator’s hand. “I’m pleased to be working with you.”

“And delighted to meet you. Chief of State Daala sends her compliments and looks forward to meeting you when you make planetfall.”

Jag nodded. “And now, I believe, protocol insists that we open a bottle or a dozen of wine and make some preliminary discussion of security, introduction protocols, and so on.”

“Fortunately about the wine, and regrettably about everything else, you are correct.”

At the end of two full standard hours—Jaina knew from regular, surreptitious consultations of her chrono—Jag was able to convince the Senator and his retinue to accept a tour of the Gilad Pellaeon. He was also able to request a private consultation with the sole representative of the Jedi Order present. Moments later, the gray-walled conference room was empty of everyone but Jag and Jaina.

Jag glanced toward the door. “Security seal, access limited to Jagged Fel and Jedi Jaina Solo, voice identification, activate.” The door hissed in response as it sealed. Then Jag returned his attention to Jaina.

She let an expression of anger and accusation cross her face. “You’re not fooling anyone, Fel. You’re planning for an Imperial invasion of Alliance space.”

Jag nodded. “I’ve been planning it for quite a while. Come here.”

She moved to him, settled into his lap, and was suddenly but not unexpectedly caught in his embrace. They kissed urgently, hungrily.

Finally Jaina drew back and smiled at him. “This isn’t going to be a routine part of your consultations with every Jedi.”

“Uh, no. That would cause some trouble here and at home. But I actually do have business with the Jedi that does not involve the Galactic Alliance, at least not initially.”

“What sort of business?”

“Whether or not the Galactic Empire joins with the Galactic Alliance, I think there ought to be an official Jedi presence in the Empire. A second Temple, a branch, an offshoot, whatever. Providing advice and insight to the Head of State.”

“And protection?”

He shrugged. “Less of an issue. I’m doing all right. Two years in this position and not dead yet.”

“Emperor Palpatine went nearly twenty-five years.”

“I guess that makes him my hero.”

Jaina snorted. “Don’t even say that in jest … Jag, if the Remnant doesn’t join the Alliance, I’m not sure the Jedi can have a presence without Alliance approval.”

“The Order still keeps its training facility for youngsters in Hapan space. And the Hapans haven’t rejoined.”

“You sound annoyed. The Hapans still giving you trouble?”

“Let’s not talk about that.”

“Besides, moving the school back to Alliance space is just a matter of time, logistics, and finances; there’s no question that it will happen. On the other hand, it’s very likely that the government would withhold approval for a Jedi branch in the Remnant, just out of spite, if the Remnant doesn’t join.”

“Well, there’s such a thing as an unofficial presence. And there’s such a thing as rival schools, schismatic branches, and places for former Jedi to go when they can’t be at the Temple.”

Jaina smiled again, but now there was suspicion in her expression. “You just want to have this so I’ll be assigned to come to the Remnant and set it up.”

“That’s a motive, but not the only one. Remember, to the Moffs and to a lot of the Imperial population, the Jedi have been bogeymen since Palpatine died. At the very least, I don’t want them to be inappropriately afraid of the woman I’m in love with.”

Jaina was silent for a moment. “Have we talked enough politics?”

“I think so.”

“Good.”

HORN FAMILY QUARTERS,
KALLAD’S DREAM VACATION HOSTEL,
CORUSCANT

Yawning, hair tousled, clad in a blue dressing robe, Valin Horn knew that he did not look anything like an experienced Jedi Knight. He looked like an unshaven, unkempt bachelor, which he also was. But here, in these rented quarters, there would be only family to see him—at least until he had breakfast, shaved, and dressed.

The Horns did not live here, of course. His mother, Mirax, was the anchor for the immediate family. Manager of a variety of interlinked businesses—trading, interplanetary finances, gambling and recreation, and, if rumors were true, still a little smuggling here and there—she maintained her home and business address on Corellia. Corran, her husband and Valin’s father, was a Jedi Master, much of his life spent on missions away from the family, but his true home was where his heart resided, wherever Mirax lived. Valin and his sister, Jysella, also Jedi, lived wherever their missions sent them, and also counted Mirax as the center of the family.

Now Mirax had rented temporary quarters on Coruscant so the family could collect on one of its rare occasions, this time for the Unification Summit, where she and Corran would separately give depositions on the relationships among the Confederation states, the Imperial Remnant, and the Galactic Alliance as they related to trade and Jedi activities. Mirax had insisted that Valin and Jysella leave their Temple quarters and stay with their parents while these events were taking place, and few forces in the galaxy could stand before her decision—Luke Skywalker certainly knew better than to try.

Moving from the refresher toward the kitchen and dining nook, Valin brushed a lock of brown hair out of his eyes and grinned. Much as he might put up a public show of protest—the independent young man who did not need parents to direct his actions or tell him where to sleep—he hardly minded. It was good to see family. And both Corran and Mirax were better cooks than the ones at the Jedi Temple.

There was no sound of conversation from the kitchen, but there was some clattering of pans, so at least one of his parents must still be on hand. As he stepped from the hallway into the dining nook, Valin saw that it was his mother, her back to him as she worked at the stove. He pulled a chair from the table and sat. “Good morning.”

“A joke, so early?” Mirax did not turn to face him, but her tone was cheerful. “No morning is good. I come light-years from Corellia to be with my family, and what happens? I have to keep Jedi hours to see them. Don’t you know that I’m an executive? And a lazy one?”

“I forgot.” Valin took a deep breath, sampling the smells of breakfast. His mother was making hotcakes Corellian-style, nerf sausage links on the side, and caf was brewing. For a moment, Valin was transported back to his childhood, to the family breakfasts that had been somewhat more common before the Yuuzhan Vong came, before Valin and Jysella had started down the Jedi path. “Where are Dad and Sella?”

“Your father is out getting some back-door information from other Jedi Masters for his deposition.” Mirax pulled a plate from a cabinet and began sliding hotcakes and links onto it. “Your sister left early and wouldn’t say what she was doing, which I assume either means it’s Jedi business I can’t know about or that she’s seeing some man she doesn’t want me to know about.”

“Or both.”

“Or both.” Mirax turned and moved over to put the plate down before him. She set utensils beside it.

The plate was heaped high with food, and Valin recoiled from it in mock horror. “Stang, Mom, you’re feeding your son, not a squadron of Gamorreans.” Then he caught sight of his mother’s face and he was suddenly no longer in a joking mood.

This wasn’t his mother.

Oh, the woman had Mirax’s features. She had the round face that admirers had called “cute” far more often than “beautiful,” much to Mirax’s chagrin. She had Mirax’s generous, curving lips that smiled so readily and expressively, and Mirax’s bright, lively brown eyes. She had Mirax’s hair, a glossy black with flecks of gray, worn shoulder-length to fit readily under a pilot’s helmet, even though she piloted far less often these days. She was Mirax to every freckle and dimple.

But she was not Mirax.

The woman, whoever she was, caught sight of Valin’s confusion. “Something wrong?”

“Uh, no.” Stunned, Valin looked down at his plate.

He had to think—logically, correctly, and fast. He might be in grave danger right now, though the Force currently gave him no indication of imminent attack. The true Mirax, wherever she was, might be in serious trouble or worse. Valin tried in vain to slow his heart rate and speed up his thinking processes.

Fact: Mirax had been here but had been replaced by an imposter. Presumably the real Mirax was gone; Valin could not sense anyone but himself and the imposter in the immediate vicinity. The imposter had remained behind for some reason that had to relate to Valin, Jysella, or Corran. It couldn’t have been to capture Valin, as she could have done that with drugs or other methods while he slept, so the food was probably not drugged.

Under Not-Mirax’s concerned gaze, he took a tentative bite of sausage and turned a reassuring smile he didn’t feel toward her.

Fact: Creating an imposter this perfect must have taken a fortune in money, an incredible amount of research, and a volunteer willing to let her features be permanently carved into the likeness of another’s. Or perhaps this was a clone, raised and trained for the purpose of simulating Mirax. Or maybe she was a droid, one of the very expensive, very rare human replica droids. Or maybe a shape-shifter. Whichever, the simulation was nearly perfect. Valin hadn’t recognized the deception until …

Until what? What had tipped him off? He took another bite, not registering the sausage’s taste or temperature, and maintained the face-hurting smile as he tried to recall the detail that had alerted him that this wasn’t his mother.

He couldn’t figure it out. It was just an instant realization, too fleeting to remember, too overwhelming to reject.

Would Corran be able to see through the deception? Would Jysella? Surely, they had to be able to. But what if they couldn’t? Valin would accuse this woman and be thought insane.

Were Corran and Jysella even still at liberty? Still alive? At this moment, the Not-Mirax’s colleagues could be spiriting the two of them away with the true Mirax. Or Corran and Jysella could be lying, bleeding, at the bottom of an access shaft, their lives draining away.

Valin couldn’t think straight. The situation was too overwhelming, the mystery too deep, and the only person here who knew the answers was the one who wore the face of his mother.

He stood, sending his chair clattering backward, and fixed the false Mirax with a hard look. “Just a moment.” He dashed to his room.

His lightsaber was still where he’d left it, on the night-stand beside his bed. He snatched it up and gave it a near-instantaneous examination. Battery power was still optimal; there was no sign that it had been tampered with.

He returned to the dining room with the weapon in his hand. Not-Mirax, clearly confused and beginning to look a little alarmed, stood by the stove, staring at him.

Valin ignited the lightsaber, its snap-hiss of activation startlingly loud, and held the point of the gleaming energy blade against the food on his plate. Hotcakes shriveled and blackened from contact with the weapon’s plasma. Valin gave Not-Mirax an approving nod. “Flesh does the same thing under the same conditions, you know.”

“Valin, what’s wrong?”

“You may address me as Jedi Horn. You don’t have the right to use my personal name.” Valin swung the lightsaber around in a practice form, allowing the blade to come within a few centimeters of the glow rod fixture overhead, the wall, the dining table, and the woman with his mother’s face. “You probably know from your research that the Jedi don’t worry much about amputations.”

Not-Mirax shrank back away from him, both hands on the stove edge behind her. “What?”

“We know that a severed limb can readily be replaced by a prosthetic that looks identical to the real thing. Prosthetics offer sensation and do everything flesh can. They’re ideal substitutes in every way, except for requiring maintenance. So we don’t feel too badly when we have to cut the arm or leg off a very bad person. But I assure you, that very bad person remembers the pain forever.”

“Valin, I’m going to call your father now.” Not-Mirax sidled toward the blue bantha-hide carrybag she had left on a side table.

Valin positioned the tip of his lightsaber directly beneath her chin. At the distance of half a centimeter, its containing force field kept her from feeling any heat from the blade, but a slight twitch on Valin’s part could maim or kill her instantly. She froze.

“No, you’re not. You know what you’re going to do instead?”

Not-Mirax’s voice wavered. “What?”

“You’re going to tell me what you’ve done with my mother!” The last several words emerged as a bellow, driven by fear and anger. Valin knew that he looked as angry as he sounded; he could feel blood reddening his face, could even see redness begin to suffuse everything in his vision.

“Boy, put the blade down.” Those were not the woman’s words. They came from behind. Valin spun, bringing his blade up into a defensive position.

In the doorway stood a man, middle-aged, clean-shaven, his hair graying from brown. He was of below-average height, his eyes a startling green. He wore the brown robes of a Jedi. His hands were on his belt, his own lightsaber still dangling from it.

He was Valin’s father, Jedi Master Corran Horn. But he wasn’t, any more than the woman behind Valin was Mirax Horn.

Valin felt a wave of despair wash over him. Both parents replaced. Odds were growing that the real Corran and Mirax were already dead.

Yet Valin’s voice was soft when he spoke. “They may have made you a virtual double for my father. But they can’t have given you his expertise with the lightsaber.”

“You don’t want to do what you’re thinking about, son.”

“When I cut you in half, that’s all the proof anyone will ever need that you’re not the real Corran Horn.”

Valin lunged.

The STAR WARS Novels Timeline

OLD REPUBLIC 5000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Lost Tribe of the Sith[*]

Precipice

Skyborn

Paragon

Savior

Purgatory

Sentinel

3954 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Old Republic: Revan

3650 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Old Republic: Deceived

Lost Tribe of the Sith*

Pantheon

Secrets

Red Harvest

The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance

The Old Republic: Annihilation

2975 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Lost Tribe of the Sith*

Pandemonium

1032 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Knight Errant

Darth Bane: Path of Destruction

Darth Bane: Rule of Two

Darth Bane: Dynasty of Evil

RISE OF THE EMPIRE 67–0 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

67 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Darth Plagueis

33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

Darth Maul: Saboteur*

Cloak of Deception

Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter

32 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE I: The Phantom Menace

Rogue Planet

Outbound Flight

The Approaching Storm

22 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones

22-19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Clone Wars

The Clone Wars: Wild Space

The Clone Wars: No Prisoners

Clone Wars Gambit

Stealth

Siege

Republic Commando

Hard Contact

Triple Zero

True Colors

Order 66

Shatterpoint

The Cestus Deception

The Hive*

MedStar I: Battle Surgeons

MedStar II: Jedi Healer

Jedi Trial

Yoda: Dark Rendezvous

Labyrinth of Evil

19 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE III: Revenge of the Sith

Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader

Imperial Commando

501st

Coruscant Nights

Jedi Twilight

Street of Shadows

Patterns of Force

The Han Solo Trilogy

The Paradise Snare

The Hutt Gambit

Rebel Dawn

The Adventures of Lando Calrissian

The Force Unleashed

The Han Solo Adventures

Death Troopers

The Force Unleashed II

REBELLION 0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Death Star

Shadow Games

STAR WARS: EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE

Scoundrels

Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina

Tales from the Empire

Tales from the New Republic

Allegiance

Choices of One

Galaxies: The Ruins of Dantooine

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

3 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE V: THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Tales of the Bounty Hunters

Shadows of the Empire

4 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

STAR WARS: EPISODE VI: RETURN OF THE JEDI

Tales from Jabba’s Palace

The Bounty Hunter Wars

The Mandalorian Armor

Slave Ship

Hard Merchandise

The Truce at Bakura

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor

NEW REPUBLIC 5–25 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

X-Wing

Rogue Squadron

Wedge’s Gamble

The Krytos Trap

The Bacta War

Wraith Squadron

Iron Fist

Solo Command

The Courtship of Princess Leia

A Forest Apart*

Tatooine Ghost

The Thrawn Trilogy

Heir to the Empire

Dark Force Rising

The Last Command

X-Wing: Isard’s Revenge

The Jedi Academy Trilogy

Jedi Search

Dark Apprentice

Champions of the Force

I, Jedi

Children of the Jedi

Darksaber

Planet of Twilight

X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar

The Crystal Star

The Black Fleet Crisis Trilogy

Before the Storm

Shield of Lies

Tyrant’s Test

The New Rebellion

The Corellian Trilogy

Ambush at Corellia

Assault at Selonia

Showdown at Centerpoint

The Hand of Thrawn Duology

Specter of the Past

Vision of the Future

Scourge

Fool’s Bargain*

Survivor’s Quest

NEW JEDI ORDER 25–40 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Boba Fett: A Practical Man*

The New Jedi Order

Vector Prime

Dark Tide I: Onslaught

Dark Tide II: Ruin

Agents of Chaos I: Hero’s Trial

Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse

Balance Point

Recovery*

Edge of Victory I: Conquest

Edge of Victory II: Rebirth

Star by Star

Dark Journey

Enemy Lines I: Rebel Dream

Enemy Lines II: Rebel Stand

Traitor

Destiny’s Way

Ylesia*

Force Heretic I: Remnant

Force Heretic II: Refugee

Force Heretic III: Reunion

The Final Prophecy

The Unifying Force

35 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

The Dark Nest Trilogy

The Joiner King

The Unseen Queen

The Swarm War

LEGACY 40+ YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Legacy of the Force

Betrayal

Bloodlines

Tempest

Exile

Sacrifice

Inferno

Fury

Revelation

Invincible

Crosscurrent

Riptide

Millennium Falcon

43 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A New Hope

Fate of the Jedi

Outcast

Omen

Abyss

Backlash

Allies

Vortex

Conviction

Ascension

Apocalypse

X-Wing: Mercy Kill

[*]An eBook novella