Star Wars: The Bounty Hunter Wars 03: Hard Merchandise – Read Now and Download Mobi

STAR WARS: HARD MERCHANDISE
A Bantam Spectra Book / July 1999

SPECTRA and the portrayal of a boxed “s” are trademarks of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Copyright © 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™.
All rights reserved. Used under authorization.
Cover art by Steve Youll.
Cover art copyright © 1999 by Lucasfilm Ltd.
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eISBN: 978-0-307-79648-6

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1745 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.

v3.1

To Mark & Elizabeth Bourne
and Austin Lawhead

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would once again like to extend thanks to Sue Rostoni and Michael Stackpole for invaluable assistance, and to Pat LoBrutto for saintly patience. Also, a special thanks to Irwyn Applebaum. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

About the Author

Also by this Author

Introduction to the Star Wars Expanded Universe

Excerpt from Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance

Introduction to the Old Republic Era

Introduction to the Rise of the Empire Era

Introduction to the Rebellion Era

Introduction to the New Republic Era

Introduction to the New Jedi Order Era

Introduction to the Legacy Era

Star Wars Novels Timeline

1

NOW …
(DURING THE EVENTS OF STAR WARS:
RETURN OF THE JEDI)

Two bounty hunters sat in a bar, talking.

“Things aren’t what they used to be,” said Zuckuss morosely. As a member of one of the ammonia-breathing species of his homeworld Gand, he had to be careful in establishments such as this. Intoxicants and stimulants that produced feelings of well-being in other creatures often evoked a profound melancholy in him. Even in a high-class place that supposedly catered to all known physiologies—the soothing, programmed play of lights across the columned walls, the shifting spectra that were supposed to relax weary travelers’ central nervous systems, struck Zuckuss as crepuscular and depressing as the faded hopes of his youth. I had ambitions once, he told himself, leaning over the tall, blue-tinged glass in front of him. Big ones. Where had they gone?

“I wouldn’t know,” said Zuckuss’s companion. The droid bounty hunter 4-LOM sat across from him, an untouched drink—perhaps only water—in front of him. A mere formality: the drink had been taken away twice already and replaced with exactly the same thing, so the charges could be rung up on 4-LOM’s tab. That was the only way that nonimbibing constructs such as droids could make themselves welcome in any kind of watering hole. “Your attitude,” continued 4-LOM, “implies a value judgment on your part. That is, that things were better at one time than they are now. I don’t make those kinds of judgments. I merely deal with things as they are.”

You would, thought Zuckuss. This was what he got for hooking up with a cold-blooded—cold-circuited, at least—creature like 4-LOM. There were plenty of excitable droids in the galaxy—Zuckuss had run into a few—but the ones that were attracted to the bounty hunter trade all shared the same vibroblade-edged logic and absolute-zero emotional tone. They hunted, and killed when necessary, without even the tiniest acceleration of electrons along their inner connectors.

The bar’s soft, dirgelike background music—it was supposed to be soothing as well, with harmonic overtones of almost narcotic languor—made Zuckuss think of his previous partner Bossk. The Trandoshan bounty hunter had been cold-blooded, literally so, but one would never have guessed it from the way he’d carried on.

“Now that,” said Zuckuss with a slow, emphatic nod, “that was real bounty hunting. That had some passion to it. Real excitement.” He extended the retractable pipette from the lower part of his face mask and sucked up another swallow of the drink, though he knew it would only deepen and darken his mood. “We had some good times together, me and Bossk …”

“That wasn’t what you said when you agreed to become partners with me once more.” 4-LOM’s photo-optical receptors kept a slow, careful scan around the bar and its other occupants, even as the droid kept up his end of the conversation. He talked for no reason other than to avoid drawing attention to himself and Zuckuss as they waited for their quarry to make an appearance. “Value judgments aside, the exact record of your statement is that you had had enough of Bossk’s way of doing business. Too much danger—if that’s what you mean by ‘excitement’—and not enough credits. So you wanted a change.”

“Don’t use my own words against me.” Zuckuss knew that he had gotten what he had asked for. And what could be worse than that?

“Mourn the old days if you want,” said 4-LOM after a few moments of silence had passed. “We have business to take care of. Please direct your waning attention toward the entrance.”

Worse than dealing with Boba Fett, grumbled Zuckuss to himself. At least when you got involved with Fett, you were assured that you were face-mask-to-helmet with the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, someone who had plenty of reason for taking such a high-and-mighty attitude. Where did 4-LOM get off, lording it over him this way? If it hadn’t been for some stretches of bad luck, and a few unfortunate strategic decisions, it would have been the droid that had been looking to hook up with him again, rather than the other way around. Though they had been partners before, and for a lot longer than Zuckuss had been hooked up with Bossk, the relationship between them could never be the same. Back then, 4-LOM had even saved Zuckuss’s life, when he had been dying from his ammonia-breathing lungs having been exposed to an accidental inhalation of oxygen. The two of them had even made other plans together, of working for the Rebel Alliance in some way …

Those plans hadn’t worked out, though. Their time as members of the Rebel Alliance—double agents, actually, since they had kept secret their new allegiance to the Rebel cause—had been occupied with one significant operation: an attempt to snatch from Boba Fett the carbonite slab with Han Solo frozen inside it, before Fett could deliver the prize to Jabba the Hutt. The plan, using several other bounty hunters as unwitting dupes, had had disastrous results. It hadn’t succeeded, and 4-LOM had needed a complete core-to-sheath rebuild to get back on his feet. And, mused Zuckuss, he wasn’t the same after that. This idealism that had led 4-LOM to join the Rebel Alliance had all but evaporated, replaced by his former cold-spirited greed. Zuckuss supposed that came from hanging out once again with the other bounty hunters; he had felt their mercenary natures rubbing off onto him as well.

Plus there was one factor that both of them hadn’t counted on when they had joined the Alliance. A factor that made all the difference in the universe—

Being a Rebel didn’t pay.

At least not in credits. And there were still so many tempting targets all through the galaxy, the kind of hard merchandise that a smart, fast bounty hunter could get rich from. Like the one that Zuckuss and 4-LOM had come here to get.

Zuckuss took another sip of his drink. Triple agents, he thought. That must be what we are now. Neither he nor 4-LOM had ever formally renounced allegiance to the Rebel Alliance, but they had both been taking care of their own business for some time now.

Moodily, he shook his head. He’d have to think about all the rest of those things some other time; right now, there were more pressing matters at hand.

Zuckuss did as he’d been instructed by 4-LOM. The entrance to the bar was the one direction, in back of 4-LOM, that the droid bounty hunter couldn’t scan without cranking around his head unit. Bright laughter, some of it as high-pitched and sharp-edged as breaking glass, and a tangled whirl of gossiping conversations sounded in Zuckuss’s ears as he lifted his gaze toward the entrance’s fluttering circumference. Beyond it, a sloping tunnel led up to the surface of the planet and its night sky filled with a chain of pearllike moons. Smaller and more avid orbs dotted the length of the entrance tunnel; those were the eyes of the tiny ergovore creatures that scuttled and darted in and out of the soft, trembling crevices.

As a way of keeping weapons out of the establishment, metal detector units would have been both useless and insulting; the bar catered to a clientele that not only included independent droids such as 4-LOM, who could pay their way handsomely enough, but also any number of the galaxy’s most aristocratic and stiff-necked bloodlines. From the rims of his own large, insectoid eyes, Zuckuss could spot some of the galaxy’s richest and most glittering denizens, devoted to spending their vast inherited wealth in as ostentatious a manner as possible. For many of them, their weapons were ceremonial ornaments, dictated by fierce custom and the privileges given to their rank; to have asked them to divest of even the smallest dagger or low-penetration blaster would have been an insult, expiable only by the death of the establishment’s proprietor, a stub-fingered Bergamasque named Salla C’airam. The only acceptable alternative, preserving their honor and the bar’s decorum, was to ask them to hand over the power sources for their blasters and similar high-tech weapons, thus limiting the damage and potential loss of life to what could be achieved with inert metal. C’airam kept the ergovores in the entrance tunnel hungry enough that their sensitive antennae were at constant quivering alert for the emanations from even the smallest power cell, no matter how well hidden; their flocking and chittering toward any they detected was a sure giveaway of anyone trying to violate the house rules.

All of which meant that the blaster holstered at Zuckuss’s hip was useless at the moment; that was an uncomfortable feeling for him. It was little consolation that everyone else in the bar was similarly disarmed. He would have preferred the usual setup that he encountered in the watering holes in which he more often hung out, where everyone including the bartenders was armed to the teeth. Then you know where you stand, thought Zuckuss. This other stuff’s too tricky.

“How much longer?” He leaned forward to ask the question of 4-LOM. “Until the merchandise is supposed to show up?” He didn’t have much patience for waiting, either. He hadn’t become a bounty hunter in order to sit around waiting.

“His arrival is precisely fixed,” replied 4-LOM. “Such precision of movement and timing is nearly the equal of my own; in that, I admire the creature. Especially given that there is a price on his head, a bounty that it is our intention to collect. Many other sentient creatures, given those circumstances, would try to make their comings and goings erratic, to vary them in such a way as to frustrate pursuers in determining their target’s patterns of behavior. But he has confidence in the precautions that he has taken, including the limiting of his public recreational activities to this establishment.” 4-LOM rested his hands unmoving on the table. “We shall soon determine if the merchandise’s confidence is rewarded with a continuing freedom.”

There was no point in arguing with a droid such as 4-LOM. One might as well have had a conversation with the tracking systems aboard a standard pursuit ship. Even worse, Zuckuss knew that 4-LOM was correct; there had been a good reason for arriving at this place so far ahead of their quarry, getting set up and letting the minutes pass until the moment of action came. He knew all that; he just didn’t care for what he knew.

If only … Zuckuss kept an eye on the bar’s entrance and allowed his thoughts to slip back into brooding about the past.

If only the old Bounty Hunters Guild hadn’t broken up. If only its successor organizations, the short-lived True Guild and Guild Reform Committee factions, hadn’t fallen apart with the speed of a core meltdown. Those were big ifs, Zuckuss knew, especially when it was taken into account that the main reason the Guild and everything that came after it had disintegrated so rapidly and thoroughly was the basic greed and irascibility that lay at the center of every bounty hunter’s heart—or whatever a droid like 4-LOM had instead.

That was the real reason. Zuckuss took another sip of the drink in front of him. Boba Fett was just the excuse. There were plenty of bounty hunters, former members of the vanished Guild, who blamed Fett for everything that had happened. And it was true, up to a point, that Boba Fett’s entry into the old Bounty Hunters Guild had been the event that had brought about the organization’s disintegration, and that had put every creature in it at the throat of those he had previously called his brothers. But Zuckuss knew that Boba Fett had been no more than the key in the lock that had let free all the forces of avarice and conspiracy that had been bottled up inside the Guild for so long, getting stronger and more malignant all the while. It was amazing that the Bounty Hunters Guild had even endured as long as it had, given the irascible and hungry natures of its members; that was a tribute to the organizational skills of its final leader, the Trandoshan Cradossk. He had probably been the only creature in the galaxy ruthless and clever enough to have kept a lid on the Guild’s rank and file.

We did it to ourselves, thought Zuckuss glumly. The drink, and the ones before it, had done nothing to lift his spirits. Now we have to live with the consequences. He knocked back the sour dregs at the bottom of the glass.

“You know what?” Zuckuss let his thoughts turn into spoken words. “It’s a cold, hard galaxy we live in.”

4-LOM gave him a typically unemotional droid glance. “If you say so.”

Nothing that the Rebel Alliance could do was likely to change that, either. The Rebels didn’t have a chance of winning, anyway, not against the massed strength of the Empire and all of Palpatine’s deep, enfolding cunning. In the darker corners of the galaxy, where surreptitiously acquired information was bought and sold, traded in whispers from one furtive creature to the next, rumors had been heard of a gathering of the Imperial forces, somewhere out near a moon called Endor—like a fist clenching together, into a hammer that would crush the Alliance forever, and end once and for all its crazy dreams of freedom. And now, the galaxy’s bounty hunters were without the Guild that had preciously enforced professional relations among its members—the Hunter’s Creed had at least kept them from murdering one another outright in the course of pursuing business. Small, upstart organizations had sprung up in the power vacuum created by the old Guild’s destruction, but they were still too weak to create order among such naturally violent and greed-driven creatures. Most hunters were still on their own, friendless except for whatever partnerships they could forge with one another. Zuckuss had been partners with different bounty hunters before, even while the Guild had been going through its ugly process of disintegration. He had even been partners with Boba Fett, on more than one occasion—but somehow, he had never come out any the better for it. Typically, Boba Fett wound up getting what he was after, and all the rest were lucky if they were still alive afterward. Doing business with Fett was a recipe for disaster.

Truth to tell, though, Zuckuss’s other partnerships hadn’t gone much better. Whatever his personal feelings about 4-LOM, he could swallow those easily enough, given that the two of them had actually been putting credits into their pockets since hooking up. They seemed to have complementary skills: Zuckuss operated on instinct, the way most organic creatures were capable of, and 4-LOM possessed the cold logic of a machine. What had made Boba Fett such a fearsome individual in the bounty hunter trade was that he had all of those capabilities, and more, inside a single skin.

“Here he comes—”

Zuckuss’s musings were interrupted by the soft-spoken announcement from 4-LOM. Even without facing the entrance, the droid bounty hunter had been able to detect the sudden flamboyant appearance of their quarry, the presently free creature they planned on turning into hard merchandise and a hefty addition to their credit accounts.

“A round for everyone, innkeeper!” The booming voice of Drawmas Sma’Da filled the bar, like the rumble of thunder over the planet’s horizon. Zuckuss looked up from his drink and saw the immense, befurred, and caparisoned form of the most notorious gambler and oddsman in five systems, spreading his arms wide. The gemstones studding Sma’Da’s pinkly manicured fingers sparkled in a multicolored constellation of wealth and extravagance; his broad, thrown-back shoulders were swathed in the soft fur pelts of a dozen worlds’ rarest species. The artfully preserved heads of the animals that had died for his adornment, with black pearls for eyes, dangled over a belly of wobbling girth. “If I’m in a good mood,” shouted Sma’Da, “then all should be so lucky!”

Luck was a preoccupation with Drawmas Sma’Da. As it was with Zuckuss and every other sentient creature in the galaxy: If I had his luck, thought the bounty hunter, I’d be retired by now. Sma’Da had been fortunate not only in the placing of his bets, but clever as well, in that he had virtually created an entirely new field of wagering. The flamboyant gambler had been the first to cover wagers on the various ups and downs of the struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. No military conflict was too small-scale, no political infighting too inconsequential, for Sma’Da to make odds, accept bets—often on either side of the outcome, then pay off and collect when the particular event was over. By now, his “Invisible & Ineluctable Casino,” as he called it, stretched from one end of the galaxy to the other, a shadow of the actual war going on between Emperor Palpatine and the Rebels. No matter who won, either on the battlefield or the database of wagers, Drawmas Sma’Da came out ahead: he raked off the house percentage on every bet placed, win or lose. All those profitable little bites mounted up to an impressive pile of credits, one reflected in Sma’Da’s own ever-increasing girth.

Two humanoid females, with the kind of large-eyed, mysteriously smiling beauty that made the males of nearly every species weep with frustration, draped themselves on either side of Sma’Da’s capacious shoulders, as though they were the ultimate ornaments of his success and wealth. They moved in synch with him, or almost seemed to float without walking, so ineffable was their grace; the tripartite organism of Sma’Da and his consorts moved into the center of the establishment, like a new sun rearranging the orbits of all the lesser planets it found itself among.

The proprietor Salla C’airam, all bowing obsequiousness and fluttering tentaclelike appendages, hurried toward Sma’Da. “How good to see you again, Drawmas! It’s always too long between visits!”

Sma’Da had been in the bar just the previous night, Zuckuss knew. The proprietor was carrying on as though he and the gambler had been cruelly separated for years.

A crowd of sycophants, flatterers, favor-seekers, gold diggers, and those who derived some deep spiritual benefit from basking in the radiance of accumulated credits, had already formed around Sma’Da. Signaling to the bar’s waiters and serving staff, Salla C’airam led the way to the highly visible table that had been kept in readiness for just such distinguished personages. Sma’Da’s jowly face, split by a gold-toothed smile, beamed above the crowd as it shifted, like the swell of an ocean tide, toward the other side of the bar. A banquet equal to both Sma’Da’s appetite and credit accounts had already been laid out by the swiftly darting waiters; crystalline decanters, filled with exotic offworld liqueurs and roiling with low-level combustibles, towered above platters of meats spiced with cellular-suspension enhancements.

“There’s enough in front of him to feed an Imperial division.” Zuckuss kept the gambler and his entourage in sight from the corner of his eye. If the expensive viands had been converted back into credits, the sum would have gone to feed several divisions. He could see Sma’Da’s oddly delicate hands, pudgy folds welling around the wide bands of his rings, picking at the delicacies, playfully stuffing the choicer morsels into the smiling mouths of the consorts at either side of him. “Eventually,” mused Zuckuss, “he’ll implode, from sheer mass and density, like a black hole.”

“Unlikely,” said 4-LOM. “If creatures could suffer such a fate, that’s what would have happened to Jabba the Hutt. His appetite was many times greater than this person’s. You saw that for yourself.”

“I know.” Zuckuss slowly nodded. “I was just trying to forget about anything I might have seen at Jabba’s palace.” As with every other mercenary type in the galaxy, he had spent some time in the employ of the late Huttese crimelord. Jabba had been involved in so many shady dealings throughout the galaxy that it would have been hard for a bounty collector not to hook up with him at some point. Rarely, though, had any of them profited by it; a successful assocation with a creature like Jabba the Hutt was one that you survived intact.

“Anyway,” continued 4-LOM, keeping his emotionless voice low, “don’t waste time worrying about our target’s state of health. He just has to live long enough for us to collect the bounty that’s been posted on him.”

A burst of laughter and bright, chattering voices came from the crowd at Drawmas Sma’Da’s table. All eyes and attention in the bar had been drawn to the gambler from the moment he had entered. Zuckuss felt a bit more secure because of the noise and the general diversion, as though it had made him and 4-LOM briefly invisible. With someone like Sma’Da in the room, no one would be watching them.

“It’s ready.” 4-LOM made the simple, quiet announcement. The droid bounty hunter leaned forward slightly, passing a small object underneath the table to Zuckuss. “Time to put our plans into action.”

Time was always the crucial factor. Despite his complaints, Zuckuss knew exactly why they had had to arrive at the bar so much earlier than their target. Some preparations required precisely measured amounts of time, things readied in silence and stealth, even if right under the inquisitive eyes of a bar full of ignorant onlookers. They don’t need to know, thought Zuckuss with a measure of satisfaction. But they will.

He took the object from 4-LOM’s hand, carefully minimizing his actions so that anyone glancing in this direction would have no clue of what might be happening beneath the table. The rest of the preparations were swiftly completed; there was no need for Zuckuss to watch his own hands going about their work. With this kind of equipment, so essential to a bounty hunter’s trade, he could have performed the necessary operations with his large eyes completely blindfolded.

“Okay,” said Zuckuss after a moment. He leaned back, chancing a quick peek under the table’s surface. A tiny blinking red light indicated that his part of the preparations had been completed satisfactorily. “Looks good to me.”

4-LOM gave a slight nod, a humanoid gesture that he had picked up somewhere along the way. “Then I suggest you proceed.”

It’s always up to me, grumbled Zuckuss to himself as he pushed back his chair and stood up. No matter who he had for a partner, somehow he always wound up doing the dirty work.

“Excuse me …” The crowd around Drawmas Sma’Da’s table had grown even larger and denser, just in the short while that Zuckuss had been getting ready. He shoved and wedged himself through the press of bodies, the din of their excited words and laughter clattering in his earholes. “Pardon me … I’ve got a message for the esteemed Sma’Da …”

The blinking dot of red light that Zuckuss had checked under the table with 4-LOM was safely hidden inside his close-fitting, equipment-studded tunic. A couple of quick, sharp blows from the points of his elbows right to a few midsections of the closely packed crowd enabled him to work his way right up to the front of Sma’Da’s table. He gave a slight, formal bow as he found himself confronting the gambler over the trays of picked-over delicacies.

“A message?” Drawmas Sma’Da was well known for his alert attention to voices from the crowd. “How interesting. I wasn’t expecting any such; these aren’t my usual business hours.” The gambler’s eyes were barely visible through the rounded folds of flesh, pushed upward by his exuberant smile. “But,” he continued with an expansive wave of his grease-shiny hands, “I might be interested in hearing it. If it’s important enough.”

Sma’Da’s words hardly counted as a witticism, but the smiles on the faces of his escorts widened, and his flatterers in the assembled crowd broke into loud, appreciative guffaws.

“Judge its importance for yourself.” Zuckuss gazed back into the gambler’s fat-swaddled eyes. “The information in it comes from Sullust.”

The smile on Sma’Da’s own face didn’t diminish, but what could be seen of his eyes grew brighter and more avarice-driven, like glints of razor-edged durasteel. “ ‘Sullust’? That doesn’t sound any chimes in my memory.” He tilted his head to one side, as coyly as possible for something so massive. “Who is this Sullust you speak of?”

At Zuckuss’s back, the laughter and the hubbub of voices had died away. They knew what the name meant—the bar was exactly the sort of crossroads where information about Imperial and Rebel comings and goings would be traded.

“Not who,” replied Zuckuss, “but where. And I think you already know that.” Sma’Da had based his entire gambling enterprise upon rumors and secrets, the tiny scraps of information that enabled him to calculate odds with such precision. “Don’t you?”

“Perhaps so.” Sma’Da’s golden smile gleamed even more dazzlingly. “But only a fool turns down an opportunity to learn more. Dear things—” He turned to his female companions on either side of him, one after the other. “Amuse yourselves elsewhere for a little while. I need a moment alone with this interesting person.” He fluttered his beringed paws at the crowd. “Make way, make way.” Pouting, the females detached themselves and floated away. The sycophants and other assorted hangers-on took the cue as well, dispersing while whispering among themselves and keeping watch on the gambler from the corners of their eyes. “There,” said Sma’Da as Zuckuss sat down beside him. “Much more private now, wouldn’t you say?”

“Adequate.” Zuckuss still didn’t feel entirely at ease in such public surroundings. Proper bounty hunting, he felt, was best done in remote areas or in the depths of interstellar space, where it would have been just him, the target, and a high-powered weapon pointing in the target’s direction. That’d wipe the smile from this one’s face, Zuckuss thought. He glanced over at the table he’d left; 4-LOM was sitting as placidly as before, not even seeming to be interested at all in the action that was about to come down. Zuckuss turned back toward Sma’Da. “I was pretty sure that a creature in your line of business would be interested in news from Sullust. You’re probably already taking in bets on it.”

“Oh, I might.” The dangling animal heads bobbed as Sma’Da shrugged his broad shoulders. “It’s hard, though, to get any of my regular clientele to put down their credits, one way or another. The reports that have circulated, concerning the Imperial buildup near the moon of Endor, have made a great many creatures nervous. It’s one thing to bet on a minor battle here or there, a mere skirmish or a Rebel raid on an Imperial armaments depot, that sort of thing; quite another to place a wager on what could very likely be the end of this great game.” Sma’Da heaved an immense, fat-quivering sigh. “If that should be the case—if Emperor Palpatine should indeed quash the Rebellion once and for all—how I shall miss these glorious days!” He shook his head, as though already immured in regret over a vanished past. “The Rebel Alliance has brought the radiant aspect of hope to every corner of the galaxy; and where there’s hope, there’s risk-taking. And then …” Sma’Da’s smile reappeared, even slyer than before. “There’s wagering. And that’s always profitable, for someone like me.”

The gambler’s words gave Zuckuss a measure of cold comfort. He’s no different than me, thought Zuckuss. Not that he had expected anything different; most of the galaxy’s denizens, in Zuckuss’s estimation, spent all their time looking out for Number One, namely themselves. If he had ever believed otherwise, he might have been tempted to stay with the Rebel Alliance. But he was certain that idealism was a rare trace element in the universe’s composition, whereas greed was as ubiquitous as hydrogen atoms.

“I like profits as well,” said Zuckuss. One of the waiters had brought another drink, shimmering amethyst in color, and had placed it in front of him; he didn’t touch it. “That’s why I sought you out.”

“Good for you.” Sma’Da gave an appreciative nod. “And good for me, if whatever information you’ve brought with you should turn out useful. The more one knows, the easier it is to make odds. Though mind you”—he peered closer at Zuckuss—“it’s hard to take me by surprise on these things, anymore. There’s not much I haven’t heard about what’s been going on near Endor; I have excellent sources for all kinds of gossip and rumor.”

“I’m pretty sure this is something you haven’t heard before.” Zuckuss reached into his tunic.

“Ah.” Sma’Da put the tips of his glittering fingers together. “My pulse races with anticipation.”

“How’s this, then?” Zuckuss pulled out a blaster pistol and set its cold, hard muzzle against Drawmas Sma’Da’s forehead. “You’re coming with me.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing the gambler’s eyes widen for a moment. Then they all but vanished again, from the upwelling pressure of Sma’Da’s expansive grin.

“That’s very funny. How amusing!” Sma’Da drew his hands apart, enough to clap them together again in appreciation. “Everyone—please observe!” He called out loudly to the crowd in the bar; eager faces swiveled in the direction of the table. “To what lengths creatures go merely to provide me with a few fleeting moments of amusement!” His laughter boomed against the walls, as though to frighten the play of colors against their surface. “Bringing in and waving around a blaster, in the one place it’s sure to be useless! Not even a power source for it!”

The laughter was contagious; Zuckuss could hear it sweep through the establishment like a wave breaking over and carrying away the staff as well as the patrons. Their bright, barking noise mounted louder, approaching some critical mass of hilarity. Zuckuss glanced over at 4-LOM, in the center of the establishment’s space; the droid bounty hunter was the only one not laughing. 4-LOM sat and waited with machinelike patience, knowing what was to come.

“You poor fool.” Drawmas Sma’Da hadn’t bothered to pull away from the blaster placed at his brow; he obviously wanted all the onlookers to relish the joke to its full. “Did you think I’d be somehow frightened by a lump of dead metal? Or did you not even notice what happened when you came in here, what little piece of that weapon was taken away from you by our good innkeeper’s minions? Really—” With one pudgy hand, he dabbed away the tears that had managed to squeeze past the folds surrounding his eyes. “It’s just too good.”

“Even better than you think,” said Zuckuss. He shifted the blaster slightly away from Sma’Da’s head and squeezed the trigger. A coruscating bolt of energy shot out and blew away a section of the bar’s ceiling, charred fragments and hot sparks raining down on the upturned faces of the crowd. “This weapon’s live.”

Sma’Da had instinctively dived when the blaster bolt had scorched past the side of his head. His immense girth had toppled the table, sending a cascade of liquor and the remains of the banquet cascading across the floor. Crockery and crystal decanters shattered, the fragments gleaming like transparent teeth imbedded in the wetly gleaming disorder. A few of the bar’s patrons still looked stunned and disbelieving; some of the sharper-witted ones had rushed for the exit and were now scrabbling to get past one another and up the narrow tunnel to the surface.

“Let’s go.” Zuckuss reached down with his free hand, grabbed Sma’Da’s trembling elbow, and pulled the gambler to his feet; he had to lean back to counterbalance Sma’Da’s greater weight. “There’s some creatures who are ready to pay a nice pile of credits for the privilege of having a talk with you. A long talk.” And probably not a pleasant one, judging from the panicked look on the other’s face and the fear-induced quivering that shook this mass like a small planet’s seismic activity.

The bar’s proprietor came rushing up, pushing his way past the remaining crowd. “What is the meaning of this?” Salla C’airam was nearly as agitated as the gambler caught in Zuckuss’s grip. “It’s an outrage? It’s impossible! It’s—”

“It’s business.” Zuckuss diverted the blaster’s aim for a moment, away from Sma’Da and toward C’airam. That was enough to stop him in his tracks. C’airam’s tentacles drew short and wrapped themselves tightly around his body. “You’ve already got a mess here.” Zuckuss used the blaster to point to the sodden, trampled-upon—and expensive—garbage on the floor. “You can either start cleaning it up … or you can join it. Your pick.”

C’airam’s floppy, seemingly boneless appendages settled lower, a sure sign in his species of wanting to avoid a violent confrontation. “I do not know,” he spoke with measured sulkiness, “how you managed to get a power source for your weapon into these premises. It’s strictly forbidden—”

“Sue me.”

“If any of my staff here were involved …” The gaze of the proprietor’s gelatinous-appearing eyes, nearly as large as Zuckuss’s, swept menacingly across the waiters and bartenders. “If I should discover any complicity, any treachery on their part …”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Zuckuss. He pushed the trembling mass of Sma’Da ahead of himself. “They’re off the hook.” He didn’t feel like sharing any of the credit for this job with nonbounty hunters; the little bit of action, the deep, warm feeling of empowerment that came with drawing a live weapon on a fat, blubbering piece of merchandise, had given his spirits a considerable lift. With the gambler’s quivering bulk ahead of him, Zuckuss stopped just beside the table at which his partner 4-LOM had remained sitting throughout all the commotion that had taken place. “Speaking of your staff”—Zuckuss turned, swiveling the muzzle of the blaster back toward C’airam—“you’ve got the usual service droids in your kitchen, don’t you?”

C’airam gave a puzzled nod.

“Fine. Go have one of your other staff pull the motivator out of one of ’em. A standard FV50 unit will do nicely.” Zuckuss raised the weapon’s muzzle a little higher. “I suggest you have them hurry. I might not have the same resources of patience that you do.”

On hasty orders from C’airam, one of the bar staff scuttled back into the establishment’s kitchen and returned only seconds later with a double-cylindrical object in his hands.

“Thanks.” Zuckuss took the motivator from him, and then shooed him away with a wave of the blaster. “Don’t move,” he warned Sma’Da—needlessly. The gambler, face now shiny with sweat, looked incapable of anything beyond involuntary respiration. Keeping the blaster in one hand, Zuckuss set the motivator down on the table, then swiftly—he had practiced this step before coming to C’airam’s bar—unlatched the access panel just below the back of 4-LOM’s head unit. “This should do it …”

“Don’t forget the red feedback-loop clip.” Even without a working motivator inside the bounty hunter droid, 4-LOM retained enough low-level auxiliary power to maintain consciousness and interactive communications. “Make sure you’ve got that in-phase before you power up the major thoracic systems.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Zuckuss replied testily. With just one hand, it took a few moments longer to get the circuits aligned properly. “You’ll be up and running in a minute.”

4-LOM’s immobilized state had been a necessary part of the plan; otherwise, the droid could have taken a more active part in rounding up Drawmas Sma’Da. The most essential item, though, had been making sure that Zuckuss had had an operative blaster pistol to work with. That had meant getting a power source past the establishment’s security—impossible—or creating one on the spot. Which was exactly what 4-LOM had figured out how to do in its preparations for this job, even before he had taken Zuckuss on as a partner. With the help of a few highly paid technical consultants, 4-LOM had designed and installed within himself a device capable of stripping out the internal circuit of a standard motivator, the primary mechanism that enabled droid locomotion, and high-grading the resulting simple power source into one both powerful and small enough to be used in a blaster pistol. Like the alchemical wizards on certain remote worlds, who claimed to be able to convert base materials into infinitely more valuable substances, 4-LOM had given himself the ability to change a dull but useful internal component to something very valuable indeed—a blaster power-source, in a locale where none was expected to be.

There were only two drawbacks to the motivator-into-power-source procedure. The first was that the resulting power source would only have enough charge for a few bolts. The second was that without a motivator, 4-LOM would be incapable of any motion, either walking toward the target’s table or even lifting an arm with a weapon clutched in its hand. That second problem was the main reason that 4-LOM had decided to take on a partner; pulling this off was obviously a two-creature job. And as far as the first problem was concerned, that new partner was well versed enough in ordinary, nonbounty hunter psychology to know that a few shots would be all that was needed.

“Got it.” Zuckuss slammed the access panel cover into place. “Time to get out of here.”

“Agreed.” 4-LOM pushed its chair back and stood up from the table. The droid reached over and grabbed Sma’Da’s elbow. “I would prefer it,” 4-LOM told the gambler, “if you did not show any resistance. I have ways of enforcing my preferences.”

Sma’Da stared back at the droid bounty hunter with blubbering terror.

“Good,” said 4-LOM. “I’m pleased you understand.” 4-LOM glanced over at Zuckuss. “You see? I told you this would be an easy job.”

Zuckuss nodded. “I’ve had worse.” Lots worse, he thought. So far he hadn’t actually risked being killed on this one. Though that might change, if he and his partner didn’t hurry.

“Both of you—” The proprietor Salla C’airam had recovered enough of his composure that he was able to screech and flap several of his appendages simultaneously. “You’re barred from this establishment! Permanently! Don’t ever show your faces around here again!”

“Don’t worry about that.” Zuckuss shoved Sma’Da toward the exit tunnel. He kept everyone in the bar covered with the blaster—there were one or two shots left in its charge, at the most—as he and 4-LOM hustled Sma’Da out. “The drinks were terrible, anyway.”

Not until later, when he and 4-LOM were aboard the droid bounty hunter’s ship, with Sma’Da safely stowed in a cage belowdecks, did Zuckuss realize that they had stiffed C’airam. Neither he nor 4-LOM had settled their drinks tab before leaving.

Serves him right, thought Zuckuss.

“So where are we taking this merchandise?” Standing in the hatchway of the cockpit, Zuckuss gave a nod to indicate Drawmas Sma’Da below them.

“I’ve already notified the nearest Imperial outpost.” 4-LOM reached across the controls and made slow minor navigational adjustments. “They know we’ll be bringing him in. And they’ll have the bounty ready to be paid out.”

“This was a job for the Empire?” Zuckuss hadn’t even bothered to ask before he had agreed to hook up with the other bounty hunter. “Why would Palpatine want him?”

“Let’s just say that our merchandise, in his previous role as gambling entrepreneur, was a little too accurate about setting odds for various military encounters between Imperial forces and the Rebel Alliance.” 4-LOM didn’t glance back as he tweaked the ship’s controls. “There’s a limit to how many times one creature can predict things like that, using nothing but intelligence and luck. At the rate that Sma’Da was calling the shots, it began to look like he might have had access to some sources of inside information. From inside the Imperial forces, that is.”

Zuckuss mulled the other’s words over. “It’s possible,” he said after a moment, “that it could’ve been just luck. Real good luck.”

“If that’s the case,” replied 4-LOM drily, “then it wasn’t good luck for our merchandise at all. It was bad luck—the worst kind, in fact, since it brought him to the attention of Emperor Palpatine. Now he’s going to have a lot of explaining to do. It won’t be a pleasant process.”

Probably not, thought Zuckuss as he left the ship’s cockpit area. Even if Drawmas Sma’Da rolled over on any informants he might have had among the Emperor’s minions, the techniques that would be used to ensure that the former gambler was telling the truth would leave him a squeezed-out rag. He wouldn’t be so fat and jolly when all that was over.

The brief excitement that Zuckuss had felt during the job, when he had pulled out the live blaster and fired it off, shutting off all the onlookers’ laughter like flipping a switch, had already faded. He sat down with his back against one of the ship’s weapons lockers and defocused his large, insectlike eyes. He couldn’t help feeling that even if his bounty hunter career was going better now that he had hooked up with 4-LOM, it somehow wasn’t quite as much … fun, for lack of a better word. Granted, that kind of amusement had nearly gotten him killed, and on more than one occasion. Still …

His thoughts turned to memories as he leaned his head back against the locker. He remembered two other partners in particular; one of them, Boba Fett, could be anywhere in the galaxy now. There was no stopping Fett, or apparently even slowing him down. The last glimpse of Boba Fett that Zuckuss remembered had been through the narrow hatch of an emergency escape pod, just prior to being jettisoned from another ship similar to this one.

There had been another bounty hunter in that escape pod, one that had fumed with a murderous anger the whole time that the pod had been hurtling through space, toward some yet-unknown destination. That had been Bossk; both murder and anger were things that came naturally to Trandoshans. But it had made for cramped quarters inside the little durasteel sphere. Tempers had flared, both his and Bossk’s, and they had kept from killing each other only by agreeing, once the escape pod came to rest on the nearest planet, that they would go their separate ways. And so they had.

He was both glad and somehow sorry that his partnership with the cold-blooded, fiery-tempered reptilian Bossk was long over. There was no amount of fun that was worth the risks that came with an association with a creature like that.

Zuckuss shook his head. At least I’m still alive, he thought. That has to count for something.

He wondered where Bossk was now …

2

He didn’t need to kill him … but he did. Bossk thought it was a good idea, not just to stay in practice for the bounty hunter trade, but also to make sure that no one in the Mos Eisley spaceport knew the circumstances of his arrival.

The broken-down old transport pilot, a shambling wreck with a spine bent nearly double by too many high-g landings, had come gimping up to Bossk, obviously looking for a handout. “Wait a minute,” the old man had rasped, digging a yellow-nailed paw through the grey wisps of his beard as his rheumy eyes had peered closer at the figure in front of him. “I know you—”

“You’re mistaken.” Bossk had taken passage aboard a number of local system freighters, all under assumed names, to reach the remote planet of Tatooine. There had been plenty of times in the past when he had flown his ship Hound’s Tooth directly here and had made no attempt at concealing his identity. Right now, circumstances were different for him. “Get out of my way.” He shoved past the beggar, heading for the perimeter of the spaceport’s landing field and the low shapes of the buildings beyond. “You don’t know who I am.”

“I sure do!” The beggar, dragging one foot-twisted leg behind himself, tagged after Bossk. They crossed the landing field, streaked with blackened char marks from thruster engines. “Bumped into ya out in the Osmani system; that was a long while back.” He struggled to keep up with the Trandoshan’s quick strides. “I was piloting a shuttle between planets—that was the cheapest gig I ever worked—and you lifted one of my passengers right off the ship.” The beggar emitted a phlegm-rich, cackling laugh. “Gave me a damn good excuse for blowing my schedule, it did! I owe ya one!”

Bossk halted and turned on his clawed heel. From the corner of his eye, he spotted some of the other passengers that had disembarked with him, now glancing over in this direction as though wondering what the raised voices were all about. “You don’t owe me anything,” hissed Bossk. “Except a little peace and quiet. Here—” He dug into a belt pouch and pulled out a decicredit coin, then flipped it into the dust beside the beggar’s rag-shod feet. “Now you’ve made a profit on our little encounter. Take my advice as well,” growled Bossk, “and try to keep it that way.”

The beggar scooped up the coin and followed after Bossk. “But you’re a bounty hunter! One of the big ones! Top of the biz—or at least you were.”

That brought blood up into Bossk’s slit-pupiled gaze; he could feel the muscles tightening underneath the scales of his shoulders. This time, when he stopped and turned around, he reached down and gathered up the front of the beggar’s rags in his clenched fists and lifted the insolent creature up on tiptoe. He didn’t care if anyone was watching. “What,” he said quietly and ominously, “do you mean by that?”

“No offense.” A gap-toothed smile showed on the beggar’s seamed humanoid face. “It’s just that everybody in the galaxy knows what happened to the Bounty Hunters Guild. It’s all gone, ain’t it? Maybe there aren’t any big-time bounty hunters left.” The smile widened, like an overripe fruit splitting open in the heat of Tatooine’s double suns. “Except for one.”

Bossk knew which one the beggar meant. It didn’t improve his temper to be reminded about Boba Fett. “You’re pretty free with your little comments, aren’t you?” Holding the beggar up close, he could smell the encrusted dirt and sweat on him. “Maybe you should be a little more careful.”

“I’m no freer with ’em than anybody else in this dump.” Dangling from Bossk’s doubled fists, the beggar nodded toward the sun-baked hovels of Mos Eisley. “Everybody around here talks their heads off, however many they’ve got of ’em. Pretty gossipy bunch, if you ask me.”

“Did I?” Bossk felt the points of his claws meeting through the beggar’s wadded rags.

“You don’t have to, pal. ’Cause I’ll tell you the way it is.” The beggar appeared completely unafraid. “Place like Mos Eisley, ain’t much else to do except talk. Mostly about each other’s business. Maybe your business, once they know you’re in town. Lots of ’em would be real interested in hearing that a certain bounty hunter named Bossk just arrived. Without a ship of his own, traveling on an ordinary freighter, and”—the beggar leaned his head back to survey Bossk with one squinting eye—“not looking like he was doing too good at the moment.”

“I’m doing fine,” said Bossk.

“Sure you are, pal.” The beggar managed a shrug. “Appearances can be deceiving, right? So maybe you got some real good reason for coming here, all incognito and all. Tricky guy like you, maybe ya got some big plan up your sleeve. So you probably want to stay incognito, right? Is that a good guess, or what?”

Bossk forced his anger down a few degrees. “If you’re so smart, why are you a beggar?”

“It suits me. Nice clean outdoor work. You meet lovely people, too. Besides, it’s only a part-time thing for me. It’s a good cover for my real business.”

“Which is?”

“Finding things out,” said the beggar. “In a place like Mos Eisley, somebody like me is just about invisible. It’s like being the plaster on the walls. So when creatures don’t notice you, don’t know you’re even there, you can find out some interesting stuff. Stuff about other creatures—like you, Bossk. I didn’t just recognize you, like pulling something out of my own personal memory bank. I knew you were coming here to Tatooine; I got friends all through this system and out on the freighters. They let me know you were heading this way. We kinda keep an eye on interesting characters like you, when they show up in these parts. Let’s face it, nobody comes to a backwater world like this, unless they got a good reason. It’s not exactly the center of the universe, you know. So it figures that you’ve got some kind of a reason for coming here.” The beggar scratched the side of his head with a dirty fingernail. “Couldn’t be any kind of job for Jabba the Hutt—he’s dead, must be a coupla weeks now. Ain’t nothing worth bothering with out in what used to be his palace. And there’s nobody around here with a bounty on his head—and believe me, I’d know if there was.” The expression on his grizzled face turned slyer. “So maybe it’s just kinda your personal business, huh?”

Bossk glared straight into the beggar’s eyes. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I’m sure you would, pal. So that’s why I was thinking, soon as I recognized you, when you came off that transport. Thinking about some way you and I could do business, like. You’ve had partners before—shoot, bounty hunters are always hooking up with each other. Guess that’s so you can watch each other’s back, huh?” The beggar showed some more of the gaps in his smile. “Well, maybe you and me can be partners.”

“You must be joking.” Bossk sneered at the beggar. “What use would I have for a partner like you? My line of work is bounty hunting, not begging.”

“Like I said before, pal, this ain’t all I do. There’s lots of other things I’m good at. One you might find really valuable. And that’s keeping my mouth shut. I’m an ace at that—for the right price, of course.”

“I bet you are.” Bossk gave a slow nod, then lowered the beggar to the black-streaked surface of the spaceport’s landing area. “But what about all the others? The ones in your little network of informants that you heard about me from?”

“No problem; they can be taken care of.” The beggar brushed off the front of his rags to little visible effect. “I’ve handed ’em a line before. All they knew was that you were heading this way, here to Tatooine. They don’t need to know whether you stopped here, or for how long. I can tell ’em that you were just passing through, on your way to some other hole in the borderland regions. Communications are so bad out in these territories, they’ll figure it just stands to reason if nobody reports spotting you for a while.”

“I see.” Bossk looked down at the beggar. “And just what is the price for this … service of yours?”

“Very reasonable. Even in what appears to be your rather, um, reduced state financially, I’m sure you’ll be able to afford it.”

Bossk mulled it over for a few moments. “All right,” he said at last. “You’re right about one thing. We’re both men of business.” He didn’t want to attract any more attention to himself, out here in the public zone of the landing field. “Why don’t we go on into town?” Bossk nodded toward Mos Eisley itself. “So we can talk over the details of our little partnership. Like businessmen.”

“Sounds good to me.” The beggar started walking, in his hobbled, awkward manner, toward the distant buildings. He glanced over his shoulder. “I’m a little thirsty, if you know what I mean.”

“Everybody’s thirsty on this planet.” With an easy stride, Bossk followed after the beggar. He already knew just what business arrangements he was going to make.

When he was done making them, in one of the first back alleys that they came to inside Mos Eisley, Bossk wiped from his clawed hands the dirt that had stained the beggar’s neck so greasily black. It didn’t take long to do so; hardly more than the few seconds that had been required to snap the scrawny bones in the first place. Killing someone, Bossk had found over the years, was always the best way to ensure their silence.

With a couple of kicks, he pushed what now looked like no more than a bundle of rags over against the wall of the alley. Bossk glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no routine security patrol had spotted what had gone down. He had come here to Tatooine, and specifically to Mos Eisley, for the purpose of lying low and making his plans without anyone being too curious about his identity—the beggar had been right about that much. About how to conduct business with a Trandoshan, the beggar had been a little off the mark. Too bad for him, thought Bossk as he headed for the bright-lit mouth of the alley.

As for the suddenly deceased beggar’s network of contacts off-planet—Bossk had already decided not to worry about them. He was probably lying to me, anyway. The beggar could have recognized Bossk and then made up that story about informants strung through the system, all keeping an eye on bounty hunters and other suspicious creatures, just to jack up the price he had been asking for his continued silence.

Which hadn’t even been all that high; Bossk knew he could have easily afforded it, without dipping too far into his stash of credits. Things are cheaper on Tatooine, thought Bossk. They deserve to be. The shade of a pair of tethered dewback mounts fell across him as he made his way across Mos Eisley’s central plaza and toward the cantina. Deciding to eliminate the beggar rather than pay the shakedown had been more a matter of general principles rather than economics. If a bounty hunter let himself begin paying to keep his affairs private, he’d eventually wind up paying off everybody. With that kind of overhead, Bossk knew, it’d be hard to turn a profit.

He descended the rough-hewn stone steps into the cantina’s familiar confines. In a hole like this, he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone sticking a proboscis into his affairs. They’d know what the consequences would be. Plus, most of them had their own secrets—some of which Bossk knew a little about—so silence was a mutually desired commodity.

A few glances were turned his way, but the faces remained carefully composed, devoid of even the slightest sign of curiosity. The cantina’s regulars, the various lowlifes and scheming creatures with whom he’d had innumerable business dealings, here and elsewhere in the galaxy, all responded as if they had never seen him before.

That was the way he liked it.

Even the bartender said nothing, though he remembered Bossk’s usual order; he poured it from a chiseled stone flagon kept beneath the bar and set it down in front of the Trandoshan. Bossk didn’t need to tell him to put it on his tab.

“I’m looking for a place to stay.” With his massive, scaled shoulders hunching over the drink, Bossk leaned closer to the bartender. “Someplace quiet.”

“So?” The scowl on the bartender’s lumpish face didn’t diminish; he continued wiping out an empty glass with a grease-mottled towel. “We ain’t running a hotel here, you know.”

This time, Bossk slid a coin across the bar. “Someplace private.”

The bartender laid the towel down for a moment; when he picked it up again, the coin had vanished. “I’ll ask around.”

“Appreciate it.” Bossk knew that those words meant the negotiations were concluded, and successfully. The Mos Eisley cantina actually did have some chambers for rent—dark, airless holes, down beneath the cellars and subcellars where the barrels of cheap booze were stored—but only a few creatures, even among the establishment’s regular habitués, knew about them. The cantina’s management preferred keeping them little known, and empty more often than not; it cut down on the amount of raids and general hassles from the Empire’s security forces. “I’ll check with you later.”

“Don’t bother.” The bartender slapped something down. “Here’s your change.”

Bossk didn’t even bother to look. He palmed the small object, feeling the outline of a primitive all-metal key, and slipped it into one of the pouches on his belt. He already knew the way to the chambers beneath the cantina, down one of the narrow stairs tucked behind a crumbling stone wall.

Carrying the drink with him, he slipped into one of the booths along the far wall. It wasn’t too long before somebody joined him.

“Long time, Bossk.” A rodent-faced Mhingxin sat himself down on the other side of the booth’s table. Eobbim Figh’s long-fingered hands, like collections of bones and coarse, spiky hairs, set out a multicompartmented box with an assortment of stim-enhanced snuff powders. “Good to see you.” Figh’s sharp-pointed nails dipped into the various powders, one after another, then to the elongated nostrils on the underside of his wetly shining snout. “Heard you were dead. Or something.”

“It would take a lot to kill me, Figh.” Bossk sipped at the drink. “You know that.”

“Boba Fett is a lot. Lot of trouble.” The Mhingxin shook his tapered head. “Shouldn’t take him on. Not if you’re smart.”

“I’m plenty smart enough for Fett,” said Bossk sourly. “I just haven’t been lucky.”

Figh exploded into high-pitched laughter, a squealing gale that sent clouds of acrid snuff rising from the box on the table. “Lucky! Lucky!” He slapped his narrow paws beside the box. “Luck is for fools. Used to tell me that. You did.”

“Then I’ve gotten even smarter than I was before.” Bossk could feel the expression on his muzzle turn ugly and brooding. “Now I know how important luck is. Boba Fett has luck. That’s why every time I’ve encountered him, he’s won.”

“Luck?” Figh shrugged. “Little more than that. What I think.”

The awkward Basic of the creature sitting across from Bossk irritated him. “I don’t care what you think,” he growled. “I’ve got plans of my own. Plus, I’ve got the odds on my side now.”

“Figure that? How so?”

“Simple.” Bossk had had a long time to brood over the matter. “Boba Fett’s run of luck has gone on way too long. It’s got to end; maybe it’s already ended. Then it’ll be my turn.” He nodded slowly, as though already tasting blood seeping between the fangs in his mouth. “And it’ll be payback time for Boba Fett.”

That produced another bout of snickering laughter from Figh. “Long time coming. That payback. Not the only one—you.”

Bossk knew that was true enough. The breakup of the old Bounty Hunters Guild, for which Boba Fett had been largely responsible, had left a lot of creatures throughout the galaxy with a simmering hatred for Fett. He hit us all, right where it hurts. Bossk nodded again, even slower and with eyes narrowed. In our pockets. The old system, under the Guild, had spread the wealth out, not evenly—Bossk’s father, Cradossk, as head of the Bounty Hunters Guild, had always done better for himself than any of his followers—but well enough that no hunter went completely hungry. All that was changed now; a lot of former bounty hunters were either dead or had dropped out of the trade, getting into other lines of work that were either closer to or further from being legal. The criminal organization Black Sun had reorganized; the Empire had picked up some new recruits, as had the Rebel Alliance.

“We could’ve hung together,” sulked Bossk. “If we’d been smart.” He couldn’t—and didn’t—blame himself for that much; he had tried to keep the other bounty hunters, or at least the younger and tougher ones, together after the Bounty Hunters Guild had broken up. That had been the whole point of the Guild Reform Committee that he had put together—with himself at the head, naturally—right after he had eliminated old Cradossk, in the traditional and time-honored Trandoshan fashion. The old lizard would’ve wanted it that way, Bossk told himself. And if Cradossk hadn’t, who cared? He was still just as dead and out of the way now.

“Smart, lucky—big ifs,” said Figh. “For you. For Boba Fett, not ifs.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see about that.” The drink’s intoxicants had fueled Bossk’s anger. “Like I said, I got plans.”

“Plans take money. You got?”

Bossk glared at the Mhingxin, wondering just how much he knew. “Enough.”

“True?” Figh gave a doubtful shrug. “Not so heard around here.”

The murder of the beggar, whose body Bossk had left in the alley at Mos Eisley’s perimeter, was starting to seem pointless. Or at least pointless beyond the simple pleasure of snapping another creature’s neck in his fists. It was beginning to seem that everybody in the spaceport had a line on his financial condition.

“You heard wrong, then.” Bossk decided to bluff it out. “Use that little rodent brain of yours, for a change. The old Bounty Hunters Guild had a huge treasury stashed away, before it fell apart. Who do you think wound up with all those credits?”

Figh smiled unpleasantly. “Not you.”

“Look, just because I didn’t land here with my own personal ship—that doesn’t mean anything. I got my own reasons for wanting to keep a low profile.”

The Mhingxin uttered a common, low-slang expression for bovine waste material. “Broke, you, that’s the truth. What heard, more than one mouth. Smiling and laughing, too. Nearly as many enemies, you, as Boba Fett. All that killing.” Figh shook his head, rudimentary snout whiskers fluttering. “Stepping on toes. Probably why your bad luck. Nobody wish you good luck.”

Bossk felt the urge rise in him to reach across the table and do the same thing to Figh that he had done to the beggar he had left in the alley. He restrained himself; the consequences wouldn’t have been insurmountable, but he didn’t need the expense right now of paying the bartender to take care of the mess. Plus—now that Bossk thought about it—there was a certain value to having an information source like Figh around.

“So tell me something.” Bossk leaned across the table, clawed hands folded around the drink in front of him. “Since you’ve heard so much about my state of affairs. If I didn’t get the Bounty Hunters Guild treasury, then who did?”

“Everybody knows. Not even worth charging you for.” Figh’s sneer split one side of his face. “The credits gone, and so is Gleed Otondon. Figure out.”

That jibed with everything Bossk had been able to find out while he had been making his way here to Tatooine. He could still remember the annihilating fury that had boiled up inside him when he had attempted to access the mountain of credits that had been stashed away from the vanished Guild and had found the accounts completely ransacked. Whoever had been responsible, and who now had the credits that should rightfully have been in Bossk’s pockets, had not only known the crypto-security codes for the accounts, but also exactly what banking and financial-center worlds they had been located at. Obviously an inside job: some of the accounts had been emptied just a few minutes before Bossk got to them and found them bare. So it must have been somebody who had been at the top levels of the old Bounty Hunters Guild, Bossk figured, one of his father Cradossk’s most trusted advisors, a creature that would have been in a position to snoop out the access codes and the other information necessary for locating all those hidden credits. And stealing them, brooded Bossk. The injustice of it still rankled. If anyone was going to steal that money, it should have been him.

Whoever it had been, though, it obviously wasn’t one of the younger bounty hunters that had gone with him into the Guild Reform Committee. None of those had had access to that kind of information in the old Guild; they had all still been trying to scrabble up the ladder to those levels, with the places and positions of influence all occupied by their elders.

That had been the reason why so many of them had welcomed the breakup of the old Guild, and had even helped bring it about; even Bossk had seen the personal advantages in revolution, of smashing the system in place and putting in a new one with himself in charge, supported by the younger and tougher bounty hunters. It just hadn’t worked out that way. We should’ve killed ’em all, thought Bossk in retrospect, right at the start. Too many of the elders in the old Guild had survived the breakup, and had gone on to form their own spin-off fragment, the so-called True Guild. All that had been accomplished by the existence of two splinter groups was a war of attrition between them. The elders had been a lot tougher than the young bounty hunters, Bossk included, had expected; tough enough, at least, to have thinned out the Guild Reform Committee’s ranks pretty drastically, at the same rate that the True Guild’s members had been picked off. If the goal had been to reduce the number of bounty hunters alive and working in the galaxy—and Bossk had heard rumors to that effect, about whoever had been behind Boba Fett’s entry into the old Guild—then that goal had been well and bloodily achieved.

Though now, it appeared as if somebody else had done all right by the smashing of the old Guild. It and its successor fragments, the Guild Reform Committee and the True Guild, were long gone—why would any bounty hunter in his right mind stay in either organization when all it seemed to do was target him for death by the other side? The even smaller and less powerful splinter groups, forming after the disintegration of the two main factions, held no attraction for Bossk. He had already decided that it was better to be an independent operator, on one’s own or, at the most, hooked up with a partner. The Hunter’s Creed, the honor code that had kept most bounty hunters from killing one another off too readily, was over with; from now on, it was every hunter for himself. The only thing left of value from the old Bounty Hunters Guild had been its treasury—and now that was gone as well.

As was Gleed Otondon. That scum, brooded Bossk. Otondon had been one of old Cradossk’s chief advisors, a power on the ruling council of the Bounty Hunters Guild. Then he had become the head negotiator for the True Guild splinter group. For all Bossk knew, Otondon might well have been the absolute leader of the True Guild all along, the one that the other old-timers had looked to for their marching orders. If so, Otondon had pulled a fast one on them as well: Bossk knew the whereabouts of all the bounty hunters still alive, the young ones and the old-timers who hadn’t yet managed to kill one another off, and none of them showed any signs of having that kind of credits on them. They were all scrabbling to survive, now that the Guild and its offshoots were no more. The only one that couldn’t be located, either alive or in his grave, was Gleed Otondon. He had conveniently vanished—conveniently for himself, that was; if Bossk had been able to get his hands on him, he would have torn out Otondon’s throat and most of his internal organs in pursuit of the stolen Guild treasury.

The kind of disappearance that Otondon had undergone took credits, a lot of them; the galaxy was stuffed with informants and squealers, and none of them had a clue as to Otondon’s whereabouts. Bossk didn’t even bother asking Eobbim Figh sitting across from him whether there had been any word in these parts about the missing bounty hunter; that kind of news would only reach Tatooine long after it was common knowledge everywhere else.

“No talk Gleed Otondon? All those credits?” Figh made a show of feigning sympathy for Bossk. “Can understand. More bad luck for you, eh?” He gave a slow shake of his head. “Silence preferred, no surprise.”

“I’ll take care of Gleed Otondon when the time comes,” said Bossk. “He’ll have his turn. But not right now. I’ve got other things on my agenda.”

“No—one thing.” Figh smiled. “Boba Fett.”

The Mhingxin had read that much right, as though Bossk’s anger had written the other bounty hunter’s name on his scale-covered brow. The image of Fett’s narrow-visored helmet, battered and dented, but still as awesomely functional as when it had shielded some long-ago Mandalorian warrior, filled Bossk’s gaze when he squeezed his eyelids shut. He had never seen Boba Fett’s actual face—very few creatures had, and lived to tell about it—but Bossk could still vividly imagine how the blood would seep from beneath that helmet’s hard gaze as he crushed the other’s neck in his bare hands. Right now, here in the Mos Eisley cantina, his fists clenched tighter, talons digging into his palms, as he yearned to make the vision of Boba Fett’s death a reality. That vision, that death, was all that Bossk could think of; the thirst for revenge, like burning acid poured down his throat, seeped through every fiber of his being. As much as he hated and despised the vanished Gleed Otondon for having stolen from him, that was a matter of mere credits. For a Trandoshan, wealth meant nothing compared to honor. And that was what Boba Fett had stolen from him.

“My reputation,” said Bossk, ominous and quiet. “That’s what he took. Over and over and over …”

“Reputation? Yours?” Another gale of squealing laughter came from Figh. “Such doesn’t exist. Not anymore. Zero on any scale, what creatures think of you.”

A galling realization broke over Bossk. He’s not afraid of me—he looked across the table at the Mhingxin with something like horror. That was how much his own reputation had diminished; that was the ultimate consequence of his continuing series of defeats at the hands of Boba Fett. A scurrying sentient rodent such as Eobbim Figh could laugh at him, without apparent fear. The humiliation of that fact was like a flood of ice water dumped on the fires of his anger. And more than humiliation: if fear hadn’t shown itself in the creature sitting across from him in the booth, its dark flower now rose inside himself.

How can I survive? For a moment, that thought blotted out all others in Bossk’s mind. He had his own list, one that he had never before paid much attention to, of creatures in the galaxy that had reason to hold a grudge against him. In his own bounty hunter career, back when the Guild had still been in existence, he had bought his personal triumphs at the cost of stepping on a lot of other hunters’ toes, stealing hard merchandise out from under their noses and handing out other humiliations, just as if none of the others would ever have a chance of retribution at him. That list was probably as long as Boba Fett’s—perhaps longer, considering that more of them were still alive. Creatures who wound up running afoul of Boba Fett also had a way of winding up dead, their grievances buried with them.

The other difference, between his list of enemies and Boba Fett’s, was that only a few, and those the most foolhardy ones, would take a shot at getting satisfaction from Fett. Better to sit on one’s grudges rather than give Boba Fett any more reasons for eliminating someone else from the universe of the living. If Bossk had still been in any way rational on the subject of the long-hated Boba Fett, that would have been the advice he’d have given to himself. The same kind of warning no longer held for any of Bossk’s own enemies, especially now that it had been demonstrated to the entire galaxy, over and over, that he could be bested in a confrontation. Any other bounty hunter who might have previously had second thoughts about settling accounts with Bossk would now be having third thoughts about the matter—and deciding to act on them. If Bossk hadn’t had a good reason for keeping a low profile before, that one would do for now.

“When creatures think zero,” continued Figh, “chances of death high. For you.”

One corner of Bossk’s muzzle lifted in a snarl. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

Figh stroked the stiff whiskers of his pointed snout. “So not matter of mere emotion, your grudge against Boba Fett. More important. Squatting aquatic avian, until proved that killer stuff in you. Somebody get, sooner, later. Too bad. Only way to get respect of others back, plus keep skin intact, take down Boba Fett. Nothing else do.”

He knew Eobbim Figh was right about that. There was a lot more at stake than just his honor and reputation. Once word got out that he was stuck here on Tatooine—and it would, no matter how many gossipy street beggars he killed—then he’d be a target for all those other bounty hunters. Some of them might even have conceived the notion that he, rather than Gleed Otondon, was sitting on the treasury from the old Bounty Hunters Guild. That would add a financial motive—always an effective one for bounty hunters—to their personal ones, for seeking him out, murder in mind.

“Wait a minute.” Bossk peered suspiciously at Figh. “How do you know Boba Fett’s still live?”

“Simple.” Figh mimed a shrug. “Open data, one like you. Can see through all way. Brooding on failures, humiliations—very unlike. Heard about, before your arrival here, even. To get under scales that bad, only possible for Boba Fett. Your long-standing rivalry well known, everywhere. If Fett really dead, you a happy Trandoshan. Happy as Trandoshans can get. Brood, sulk, you know that Fett alive. What you know, I know. Or can guess.” Figh’s imitation smile showed. “Guess proved right, just now.”

Bossk nodded. “You’re pretty smart,” he said. “For a Mhingxin.”

The comment got the reaction he expected—and wanted. Figh’s coarse, spiky fur bristled across his neck and shoulders. “Smarter than you,” spat Figh. “Not waiting to get killed, sitting around. Like you.”

“Simmer down. You didn’t come over here to talk to me just to point out the obvious, did you?” The glass was empty in front of Bossk; he pushed it away with one claw-tipped finger. “You must have had your reasons. Somebody like you always does.”

Figh’s black, beadlike eyes still flashed with irritation. “So smart, then you say. My reasons, talk with you.”

Bossk had dealt with other Mhingxins in the past. They had a simple, easily manipulable psychology. “Simple,” he said. “You think the two of us can do some business together.” Mhingxins had a low self-image, due probably to their resemblance to the kind of furtive creatures that crept into food supplies on any number of worlds, and a well-aimed personal remark could easily provoke them. That’s when their guard slipped. “You know what I want to do; maybe you got some notion of how you could help me accomplish that.”

“Help you? Not likely!” Figh thrust his tapering snout forward; his long, hairy, and knobby hands flattened themselves against the table. “Want to track down Boba Fett, get name back, do it on your own. Got information that could help, but give to you, think again.”

“Come on, Figh; nobody gives anybody anything, not in this galaxy. But now that we’ve established that you’ve got something to sell, we can talk about price.”

“ ‘Sell’?” Figh drew back, eyeing Bossk warily. “What would be?”

“Information, obviously. You don’t have to play around with me. You must have something on Boba Fett, something that you think I’d be interested in. Okay, you’re right about that; I am interested.” Bossk jabbed a finger toward the creature on the other side of the table. “I was interested even before you came around, trying to get the price jacked by getting me all worked up about Fett. So let’s deal.”

“Deal … price … sell …” Figh shook his head. “All need something else, if happen.”

“What’s that?”

“Credits,” Figh said bluntly. “Your credits. Got?”

“I’ve got enough.” Bossk shrugged. “For the time being.”

“Said before. Doesn’t look like it.”

It was Bossk’s turn to grow irritated. “Appearances can be deceiving.”

“Very.” Figh had recovered enough of his composure to show his unpleasant smile again. “But have to be credits up-front. Pay as you go. Not running a tab; not with me.” Figh nodded toward the bartender at the other side of the cantina. “Stiff that fool, you want. Here, business.”

Business was all that mattered. Bossk had already made some decisions along that line. It wasn’t just a matter of his own personal priorities, his thirst for revenge against Boba Fett, that had led him to put off going after Gleed Otondon and the pilfered treasury of the old Bounty Hunters Guild. He was caught in a double-bind situation: as useful as all those credits would be—there was more than enough to buy a new ship and completely outfit it with all the necessary weaponry for hunting down and eliminating Fett—his chances of successfully tracking down Otondon were virtually nil as long as his own reputation was so badly impaired, with every other bounty hunter with a grievance against him in the way. It was a better idea, with the limited resources at his disposal, to reestablish his reputation by settling his own grudge against Boba Fett; that would make him a feared individual once more in the galaxy-wide community of bounty hunters, and he would have a free hand in going after the stolen property that should rightfully have been his all along.

“All right,” said Bossk. “Business it is. Pay as we go.” He leaned across the table, bringing his hard, unsmiling gaze close to Figh. “What’ve you got for me?”

“Very valuable.” Figh didn’t flinch. “Location of Boba Fett. Where at. Now.”

Bossk was impressed. “You got that?”

“No. But can get.”

Unimpressed now, Bossk sat back, his spine against the booth’s padding. “Let me know when you do. Then you get paid.”

“Don’t worry.” Figh slid out of the booth. “You see me again.”

Bossk watched the Mhingxin work his way through the crowd that had started to fill up the cantina. Then Figh was gone, up the stairs to the surface and the streets of Mos Eisley. Where presumably such marketable information could be found.

He hoped that Figh did come back with the info. That was something he wouldn’t mind paying for, no matter how slim his finances were at the moment. You can’t hit a target, he told himself, if you don’t know where it is. All the time he had been traveling toward Tatooine, he had made attempts to discern Boba Fett’s whereabouts. That had been a big part of Bossk’s reasons for coming to the planet on which Boba Fett had last been spotted, taking off from the Dune Sea with another bounty hunter named Dengar and some dancing girl who had managed to escape from Jabba the Hutt’s palace; Bossk didn’t even know her name, or why Fett would have had enough interest in her welfare to have kept her around. But those two had been with Fett when another low point in the continuing litany of Bossk’s humiliations at his hands had occurred. With another one of his underhanded psychological ploys, Boba Fett had managed to chase Bossk out of his own ship, the Hound’s Tooth, and once more into an emergency escape pod, hurtling away from what Bossk had thought was certain destruction but which had turned out to be only a dud autonomic bomb.

It was a good bet that Boba Fett was still in possession of the Hound’s Tooth. Fett’s own ship, Slave I, had been found abandoned by a Rebel Alliance patrol squad. Along with Dengar and the female, Boba Fett must have transferred over to the Hound and piloted it toward some unknown destination. Which makes, Bossk thought grimly, one more thing he’s stolen from me. Bossk’s reputation and his ship; Boba Fett had a lot to answer for.

And Bossk had already vowed that he would. That kind of payback could only be made in one kind of coin. Death. The taste of blood in Bossk’s jaws would not just be imagined then; soon it would be real.

He sat brooding for a while longer, hunched forward at the table, the empty glass in front of his claws. Brooding and wondering where Boba Fett was right now; he was already impatient for Eobbim Figh to return with that information.

Probably taking it easy somewhere, Bossk thought bitterly. The Hound’s Tooth was a good ship, well appointed in the best of Trandoshan taste; not just an efficient hunting craft, but one with a minimal but necessary degree of comfort for its rightful owner. Thinking of Boba Fett lounging about in the Hound’s comforts infuriated him even more.

He’s there, seethed Bossk, and I’m stuck here. His claws closed into fists, aching for a throat to break inside them.

There was no justice in the galaxy. While he scrabbled for a place to lie low, on a backwater hole like Tatooine, Boba Fett was safe in the peace and tranquillity of interstellar space, far from harm.

No justice at all …

3

She had just about decided to kill them both.

Neelah looked at the back of Boba Fett’s helmet as he sat at the cockpit controls of the Hound’s Tooth. There was no indication that he was aware of her standing in the hatchway behind him. But knowing Fett, with his constant, preternatural awareness, she felt sure that nothing was getting by him. He can hear the blood rushing in my veins, thought Neelah. He knows.

The other bounty hunter, the one named Dengar, was still asleep in the ship’s cargo area. Neelah had left him there, worn out from relating Boba Fett’s grim history to her. Like most bounty hunters, Dengar was a creature of action; shifting words about, bringing the past to life in even the rawest, most direct terms, was hard labor for him. Especially under duress; she had woken him up before this last time with a blaster pistol aimed at his head. She had been impressed with the degree of motivation that had inspired in Dengar.

She still had the blaster pistol with her; in fact, it dangled from her hand as she watched Fett adjusting the ship’s navigational controls. Originally, it had been one of Boba Fett’s weapons; she had managed to slip it away from him here in the cockpit, before he had been able to stop her. That had earned Neelah a grudging congratulations from him. Very few creatures had ever managed a stunt like that.

Maybe I should’ve killed him then, thought Neelah. Or at least tried to. Her finger tightened upon the weapon’s trigger. All she had to do was raise the weapon, aim—hardly difficult at this minimal distance—and fire. And this uncertainty in her existence would be taken care of, once and for all …

“Don’t delude yourself.” Boba Fett’s voice snapped her out of the murderous reverie into which she had fallen. “I’m aware of your presence.” He hadn’t turned around, but had continued his adjustments to the ship’s controls. A final number was punched into one of the navicomputer touchpads, then Fett swiveled around in the pilot’s chair to face her. “You’d have more luck if you were a droid. Some of those can be virtually silent.”

The remark struck Neelah as unintentionally ironic. If I were a droid, she thought, I wouldn’t have any of the problems I do now. Even her identity, knowing who or what she was, other than a human female with a false name, a name not her own, and a past that had been stolen from her—it was hard to imagine a droid being concerned about things like that. Memory for a droid was a matter of chips and micro-implants, tiny recording devices as manufactured and interchangeable as themselves. Machines have it easy, thought Neelah. They didn’t need to find out what they were; they knew.

“I’ll be more careful next time,” said Neelah. With Boba Fett facing her, she had no more clue than before as to the secrets held within his skull. The dark, T-shaped visor of his helmet, that battered and discolored but still awesomely functional relic of the ancient Mandalorian warriors, concealed anything that might have told her what he thought and knew. The entire answer about who she was and how she had come to the remote, friendless sectors of the galaxy in which she had found herself might be locked up inside Boba Fett, like a key hidden in the very strongbox it was meant to unlock.

But the helmet, and its dark, shielded gaze, didn’t matter; not really. She was one of the few creatures in the galaxy who had ever seen Boba Fett without his helmet—for all the good it had done her. Back on the planet Tatooine, in the harsh glare of the twin suns above the Dune Sea, Neelah had found him close to death, vomited out onto the hot sands by the Sarlacc beast whose death throes he had engineered from inside its gut. The Sarlacc’s gastric secretions, like a corrosive acid capable of etching unalloyed durasteel, had stripped Boba Fett of his armor, right down to and including a good deal of his skin. If she hadn’t stumbled across him, his life would have oozed away like the blood seeping out from his raw flesh and hissing on the sun-baked rocks surrounding him.

She had saved his life then, hiding him with the help of Dengar, and keeping him safe long enough to let his wounds heal, wounds that would have killed a creature of lesser will. Even unconscious, under the chemical weight of the most powerful anesthetic drugs, he had still been Boba Fett, tenacious in his grasp on the world of the living.

And Boba Fett afterward, as well—frustratingly so. Gratitude seemed to be a substance in short supply among bounty hunters. Save the guy’s life, thought Neelah bitterly, and what do you get? Not much—and definitely not answers to questions. Anything she knew of her past was limited to the few scraps that had survived that mystery-producing memory wipe, and the infuriatingly little bits and pieces that she had picked up back in Jabba the Hutt’s palace, and then here aboard the stolen ship Hound’s Tooth. So far she had gotten nothing from Dengar; the history he had been relating to her, of the infighting and skulduggery that had finally broken up the old Bounty Hunters Guild, hadn’t yet revealed anything of her past. And what it had told her about Boba Fett’s past she had already pretty well figured out: that he was nobody to get involved with, even on a partnership basis. A successful business dealing with Boba Fett was one where he kept all the credits, and the other creature got to keep its life. And an unsuccessful one? Boba Fett still kept the credits.

For him to have hauled Neelah onto first his own ship, Slave I, when they had all been under siege by a couple of well-armed lowlifes out of Mos Eisley, then onto this ship he had taken from the reptilian bounty hunter known as Bossk, didn’t indicate any gratefulness on Boba Fett’s part, any recognition of the fact that he wouldn’t even be alive now if it hadn’t been for her. He’s got some use for me—Neelah had figured that out a while back. If she wasn’t exactly hard merchandise—the bounty hunter term for their captives, to be traded in for the nice fat rewards that had been placed on their heads—she was nevertheless part of one of Fett’s mercenary schemes. I just don’t know what part yet.

“Careful might not be enough.” Boba Fett’s cold, emotionless words broke into her thoughts. “Being smart is better. A smart creature doesn’t make it a habit to come up behind me without warning. I’ve killed a few, just for doing that.”

“Oh?” Neelah had become sufficiently used to his capacity for violence to no longer be intimidated. Plus, having nothing to lose—not even one’s self—reduced one’s fears. “And for no other reason?”

“A warning, perhaps.” Boba Fett gave a slight shrug. “To others, not to do the same thing.”

“That only works,” said Neelah, “when the creature who’s listening cares what happens.”

He gave no sign of being amused by her comment. “You don’t?”

“I’m still trying to find out. If I do or not.”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” said Boba Fett, “whether you do. Just as long as you stay out of the way. While I go about my business.”

Neelah felt a hot spark of anger igniting inside her, triggered by Fett’s matter-of-fact tone. “And what business is that? Specifically.”

“You’ll find out soon enough. When we reach our destination.”

Even as small a piece of information as that had proved impossible for her to pry out of Boba Fett. He hadn’t seen fit to divulge it to Dengar, either, even though the two bounty hunters were supposed to be partners. Instead, Fett had been cagey and silent as to the course he had plotted for the Hound’s Tooth since they had taken over the ship.

“I’ve asked you before.” Neelah spoke through gritted teeth, her hand straying toward the blaster pistol she had tucked inside her belt. “Why all the big mystery?”

“No mystery at all,” replied Boba Fett. “Just as I said, you’ll find out soon enough. Right now, you don’t need to know.”

A part of herself that was as cold and dispassionate as the bounty hunter observed her own reaction to his obstinate words, as though there were some small clue to be derived there. Neelah was well aware that the imperious response, which she had to keep a tight grip upon, was not that of someone born to be a slave, a dancing girl, and eventual food for a pet rancor in some obese Hutt’s palace. She had known that even while she had been under the control of the late and unlamented Jabba, without even the slightest scrap of memory as to how she had come to be there. The only thing left of her previous existence, whatever it had been and on what distant world, had been the certainty that the cold attention the bounty hunter Boba Fett had directed toward her, in that grisly pit of depravity known as Jabba’s palace, had been for some reason inextricably linked with that past.

“You can’t blame me,” said Neelah, “for wanting to know. You’re the one who’s told me so many times about what a dangerous place the galaxy is. If we’re heading into some region that’s going to turn out to be trouble—big trouble—I’d like some warning about it.”

“Why?” The question, the way it was spoken by Fett, didn’t invite an answer. “There wouldn’t be anything you could do about it.”

That infuriated her even more. The feeling of helplessness, of events being out of her control—that rubbed against some part of her innermost nature as though it were a raw wound. But the blood that she wanted to spill wasn’t her own, but Fett’s.

“Don’t be too sure about that,” said Neelah. “There’s two other people on this ship—and only one of you.”

“If you think that you and Dengar could pull off a little mutiny, you’re welcome to try.” No emotion, not even scorn, sounded in Boba Fett’s voice. “I’ve some use for both of you at the moment, but that could change. Real fast.” He gestured with one gloved hand toward Neelah. “It’s up to you.”

She already knew that it was no good asking him what exactly that “use” was. Boba Fett was notorious for playing his cards close to his chest, revealing nothing, not even to those who were supposedly his partners.

“You don’t leave someone with very many options.” Neelah heard her own voice go as cold and hard as Fett’s. “Do you?”

“My business is to reduce other creatures’ options. That’s why I always kept a cage in the cargo hold of my own ship.” Boba Fett’s hand now pointed toward the decks below the cockpit. “The previous owner of this ship had the same facilities installed; all bounty hunters have them. If you’d rather make the rest of the journey in a rather less comfortable manner, believe me, it can be arranged. Don’t expect Dengar to join you, though. He’s at least smart enough not to go along with a plan like that.”

One more creature around here, thought Neelah, that I can’t trust. Boba Fett was infuriatingly correct about that as well; she knew that if Dengar was given the choice between throwing his lot in with her or maintaining whatever kind of partnership he had with Fett, he’d go on following the other bounty hunter’s orders in a flash. Why wouldn’t he? If Dengar stuck with Boba Fett, he had a chance of getting a piece of the action, a slice of the credits that Fett’s various schemes and enterprises generated. And that slice, however thin it was cut compared to Boba Fett’s own, was still better than risking a shot at getting killed for the sake of somebody without even her real name, let alone any other known friend or ally in the galaxy. Dengar couldn’t be blamed if he was smart enough to know the odds and to play them for his own benefit.

As for winding up in the cage herself—Neelah wasn’t sure whether she cared or not. What’s the difference? She could see her own face reflected in the dark visor of Boba Fett’s helmet; it was a face that bore the grim, fatalistic expression of someone who might have managed to save herself from the deadly confines of Jabba the Hutt’s palace, only to have wound up in another situation that was just like it in essence. I don’t make the decisions, she thought. Even whether I live or die.

“So we should all go along with your plan,” said Neelah, “whatever it is. Without complaining.”

Boba Fett shrugged. “Complain all you want. Just not to me. And”—he pointed to the blaster pistol tucked in her belt—“without thinking you could get a jump on me. It’s not going to happen.”

“Sure about that?”

“Let me put it another way,” said Fett. “It hasn’t happened yet. And all those who tried to make it happen—they’re no longer with us.”

She didn’t need to be reminded about that. Everything she had heard about Boba Fett, from her time back in Jabba’s palace to here onboard the stolen Hound’s Tooth, listening to Dengar’s tale of the disintegration of the old Bounty Hunters Guild and its ugly aftermath, had reinforced the impression she’d already had of him. A sentient creature put its own life up as the wager when it gambled in any dealings with Boba Fett.

Still—it was a thought she’d had more than once—there are times when you have to go ahead and place your bet. If she hadn’t done that, back when she had been the personal property of the late Jabba, she would have eventually wound up being fed to the Hutt’s pet rancor, just as poor Oola had been. It was better to die with a wager on the table than to just cringe and wait for any one of the many grisly deaths that this galaxy held for the timid.

Neelah’s hand had strayed to the butt of the blaster pistol at her side, resting there as though only another thought, and another decision, were all that stood between her and testing the advice that both Boba Fett and her own remaining caution had given her.

One shot was all that it would take; one fiery bolt from the blaster. The weapon grew warm within her grasp. Some wordless certainty deep inside her, unattached to any fragment of memory, any recall of her stolen past, told Neelah that she actually had a chance of pulling it off. The person she had been before, her true identity, hidden behind the blank curtain that had been drawn across all that was rightfully hers to recall—that person, she had come to realize, had reflexes nearly as fast as Boba Fett’s. Maybe faster, given that even now she had the element of surprise on her side. He wouldn’t expect it, thought Neelah. She could tell that for all his skills as a bounty hunter, both physical and psychological, there was a blind spot in that helmet-visored gaze: it was only to be expected that he would be unable to admit that any part of his plans, any piece of hard merchandise, could have moves equal to his own.

The notion was tempting. She could almost taste it under her tongue, like the hot salt of her own blood. It was the same temptation that she had yielded to once before, in Jabba’s palace back on the planet of Tatooine, when she had decided it was better to put an end to the Hutt’s ownership of her body and spirit, even if the price to do so was her life. The mystery of her true name and identity was just as maddeningly intolerable; knowing that the answer might be locked inside the mind held by that dark-visaged helmet of Mandalorian battle armor—that thought drove out all others. One quick move with her hand, which already could feel the cold metal of the blaster a millimeter away from her sweating palm, and the mystery would be over, one way or another. One of them would be dead, with either a smoking blaster hole drilled through Boba Fett’s chest or her own, depending upon which of them got a bolt off first. And right now, she knew deep inside herself, she was close to not even caring which of them it was …

“But then you’ll never know.”

Neelah heard the voice, and for a moment thought it was her own, speaking inside her head. Then she realized that the hard, emotionless words had been Boba Fett’s.

He can tell, she realized. He can always tell. Exactly what she had been thinking—her hand, trembling close to the butt of the blaster pistol at her side, had given it away.

“That’s the price,” continued Fett. “That’s still the price.”

She nodded. But didn’t pull her hand away from the blaster.

“I’ll make it easy for you.” Boba Fett reached down and drew the blaster that had been holstered on the belt of his battle armor. Holding it by the barrel, he threw it into the farther corner of the cockpit space, where it clanged against one of the bare durasteel bulkheads. “Now you won’t have to worry about whether it would cost you your life. The only one that’s at stake is my own.”

He’s playing with me. The lack of any perceptible emotion in his voice only made it clearer to her. The same thing she had known from the beginning: Boba Fett didn’t win by sheer violence, or the brutal efficiency of his weapons. The force of his will, and his understanding of other creatures’ thoughts, were just as annihilating. She was wrong, she knew that now. Whatever he did, it wasn’t play; it was deadly serious. Even in this, in making it easy for her to kill him—if that was what she chose—there was something he wanted from her.

Neelah pulled the blaster from her belt—the weapon seemed to rise of its own accord, as though directed by some intelligence wired into its intricate circuitry—and pointed it straight at Boba Fett’s chest. Her finger made closer contact with the trigger, the small bit of metal sensed by and made one with the twitching filament at the end of her nervous system, that then ran directly into the churning storm of thoughts and desires caught inside her skull. With her arm held out, unmoving, she gazed over the blaster’s sights at the cold, dark visage that mirrored her own face …

And couldn’t fire.

She lowered the blaster, her finger loosening upon the trigger. “You win,” she said.

“Of course.” No more emotion sounded in Boba Fett’s voice now than before. “There was little doubt of that. You might not know who you really are—and I might not know, either. That’s something you haven’t determined. But I still know more about you; I know how your mind works.” A gloved forefinger tapped the side of his helmet. “You have to win here—” Shifting forward in the pilot’s chair, Fett reached out and set the same fingertip lightly on Neelah’s brow. “And here, before you have a chance of winning anywhere else. Or even surviving.”

“That’s why the others lost, I suppose.” As Boba Fett had drawn his hand away, Neelah gave a slow nod of her head. “Like Bossk. You were able to take his ship away from him, just because of what you were able to do inside his head.”

“Exactly,” said Fett. He reached out again, taking the blaster pistol from Neelah’s hand. It rested on his palm, an inert object. “Something like this …” The shoulders of his Mandalorian battle armor lifted in a shrug. “It just makes things final. Sometimes. But by then, the battle is already over.”

There was a certain wisdom in Boba Fett’s words; Neelah knew that these were true as well, like the other things he had told her. “Why do you bother?” She peered toward the gaze hidden behind the dark visor. “Nobody ever said you were a creature of words; someone who would explain the reasons why he would do anything.” Back in Jabba’s palace, there had been henchmen of the Hutt who had claimed that Boba Fett was a creature of silence; they had never heard him speak even a single word. She didn’t know if those thugs had been stupid or lucky. When somebody finally did hear Boba Fett speak, there was usually a reason for it, and one that was rarely to the listener’s advantage. “So why are you telling me all this?”

“You’re a reasonable creature,” said Fett. “There are few such in the galaxy. In this, you and I are more similar than different in nature. Most sentient creatures are only partly so; they think a little, but then are governed by their emotions. The emotions I seek to produce in them are fear and helplessness. Then they’re easier to deal with. But you, on the other hand …” He gave a slow nod, as though carefully weighing his words. “It’s different with one of your kind. First there is emotion—anger, frustration, the desire for revenge—all those things that you have yet to learn to control. But then your reasoning ability, your capacity for logic kicks in. Cold and analytical, even about the things that matter the most to you. Even about your own lost identity. To be cold about other creatures’ fates—that comes easily to most worlds’ denizens. But to be cold about one’s own self …” His nod this time was more approving. “That’s something I recognize. And that I have to treat differently from the other creatures I encounter.”

Neelah wondered if this was more of his mind-gaming, another attempt to control her from within. “What happens if you don’t? Treat it differently, I mean.”

“Then the possibility is raised of my losing the battle.” Boba Fett’s hidden gaze stayed locked upon her face. “Though not the war, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“Simple,” replied Fett. “You’re valuable enough to me that I prefer to keep you alive. And … cooperative. It’s easier to get that from you outside of a cage. But at the same time, I know the dangers of letting you keep a measure of freedom.” He handed the blaster pistol back to her. “If those dangers were to become too great—then I’d have to eliminate you. As quickly, and as definitely, as possible.”

Neelah regarded the blaster pistol in her hand for a moment, then finally tucked it back in her belt. When she raised her eyes, she looked past Boba Fett, to the star-filled viewport of the cockpit. Somewhere out there was the world from which she had come, that was now lost to her along with so much else. Perhaps, she mused, perhaps they’ve forgotten my name was well …

And if that was true … then she had nowhere else to go. The ship that surrounded her might be the only world she had left.

She brought her gaze around again to Boba Fett. “You’ll have to forgive me,” said Neelah. She managed a thin smile. “For being a little concerned about this mysterious destination of ours. But you were the one who told me about all the big events shaping up—out there.” One hand pointed toward the viewport. “About the Imperial forces gathering … some place named Endor.” Even the name of the moon seemed fraught with dire portent. “You said it might be a decisive battle; maybe the one that ends the Rebel Alliance.” She shook her head. “I came close enough to that struggle between the Empire and the Rebels, back on Tatooine.” Bit by bit, Neelah had pieced out the significance of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa having been on that remote backwater world. She had seen them both in Jabba’s palace, along with their companion Han Solo—first frozen in a block of carbonite, then released and brought to life again. They had been responsible for the death of Jabba, she knew, which she also figured had been a stroke of good luck for herself; escaping from Jabba’s clutches and staying free were two different things, at least as long as the Hutt had still been alive. She might owe them, and all the rest of the Rebels, her survival—but that wasn’t enough to get her involved with any of them again. “I don’t,” said Neelah decisively, “want to get near them. They’ve got their war; I’ve got mine.”

“Don’t worry.” Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder at the viewport, then back to her again. “That’s something else we’ve got in common. Rebellions are for fools; I deal with the universe as it is. So we’re not going anywhere near Endor.” He slowly shook his head. “Let them battle it out. And whoever wins … it’ll make no difference. Not to creatures like us.”

She found a measure of comfort in his words. Though not without sensing the irony of accepting the wisdom of someone who would kill her, or cash her in to the highest bidder, if it suited him. It’s all business, thought Neelah. Nothing more than that.

“Leave me,” said Boba Fett. He swiveled the pilot’s chair back toward the cockpit controls. “I have other things to take care of.”

Neelah realized she had nothing more to say. He had won again. Before she’d even had a chance to make a move.

She turned away, stepping through the hatch and then starting down the ladder to the ship’s cargo hold.

He smiled when she saw Neelah coming down the ladder. “Sounds like we’ve got something in common also,” said Dengar. “You didn’t have any luck with him, either.”

The resulting scowl on the female’s face amused him. “What do you know about it?”

“Come on.” From where he sat against one of the hold’s bulkheads, Dengar pointed to the open panel and the same comm lines that Neelah had tapped into. “More than one can play that kind of game. I heard everything both you and Boba Fett said up there.”

“Good for you,” Neelah said sourly. She sat down with her back against the opposite bulkhead. “Congratulations—now you know as much as I do. Which isn’t much.”

“Actually … I do know a little more than you.”

Neelah’s brow creased in puzzlement. “You found out something? About where we’re going?”

“Of course not.” Dengar shook his head. “If Boba Fett wants to keep quiet about his intentions, at least I’m not stupid enough to pry into them. But that’s the future; that’s what is going to happen, and right now we don’t have any say about that. I guess that’s just how things are when you accept a partnership with Boba Fett.” Leaning back against the bulkhead behind him, Dengar spread his hands apart. “The past, though—that’s another thing. Now that, I do know something about.”

“Great.” The scowl deepened on Neelah’s face. “You mean this story you’ve been telling me … this history of how Boba Fett broke up the old Bounty Hunters Guild and everything that happened after that.”

“Precisely,” said Dengar. “You’ve already learned a lot from me. More than you’re probably willing to admit. You’ve got a lot better notion now of how Boba Fett operates—and how far you can trust him—than you did when we left Tatooine.”

“For all the good it’s done me—” Neelah crossed her arms across her breast. “You might as well have stayed quiet.”

“So?” Still smiling, Dengar raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to hear the end of it, then? Not too long ago, you were pretty interested in the story. Enough to hold that blaster pistol on me, to get me to keep on telling it.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” said Neelah. “What’s the point? He won, he survived, other creatures didn’t—pretty much business as usual for Boba Fett. Big deal.”

“Very well.” Dengar was interested in seeing how long this mood of hers would last. “Of course, there’s always the chance that the end of the story would have something you need in it, the one clue that would unlock a whole lot of other puzzles. But if you don’t want to take that chance—it’s up to you.”

“That’s right.” Neelah closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “So don’t bother me with it.”

The mood, and the feigned sleep, lasted all of five minutes. Then one of her eyes opened, then both. She glared at Dengar with them.

“All right,” Neelah said finally. “So finish it, already.”

It was a small triumph, but still worthwhile. And it would pass the time until they reached whatever destination they were headed for. “You’re not going to bother pointing the blaster at me?”

Neelah shook her head. “I’m right at the point where that’s probably not such a good idea. The impulse to blow you away might be a little too irresistible. So let’s skip it. Just start talking, okay?”

“Fine,” said Dengar. “Whatever you want …”

4

AND THEN …
(JUST AFTER THE EVENTS OF
STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

“Where’s Boba Fett?”

That was the most important question—and Prince Xizor, the head of the Black Sun criminal organization, expected an answer from his underlings. And soon, thought Xizor grimly. Under the present circumstances, he didn’t feel like taking the time to kill a few of them just to motivate a quicker response time.

“We’re tracking him, Your Lordship.” The comm specialist aboard the Vendetta bowed his head with a sufficient measure of cringing obsequiousness to avoid Xizor’s wrath. Serving aboard the Falleen prince’s personal flagship was an honor earned not only by excellence at one’s job, but also by attention to all the little rituals that flattered his ego. “Our tracking sensors had detected his jump into hyperspace; his ship should be arriving in this sector of realspace momentarily.”

Xizor stood brooding at the Vendetta’s forward viewport; the curved transparisteel revealing the dark panorama of stars and vacuum extended far above his head. One hand rubbed the angles of his chin as the violet centers of his half-lidded eyes focused on the arc of his own thoughts. Without turning around, he spoke another question: “Were we able to determine his final navigation coordinates? Before the jump.”

“Data analysis was able to break out only the first broad-scale coordinates—”

Once again, he turned his hard glare onto the comm specialist standing on the platform walkway behind him. “ ‘Only’?” He slowly shook his head, eyes narrowing even farther. “I don’t think ‘only’ is good enough. Make a note”—Xizor extended the tapered claw of his forefinger toward the datapad clutched in the specialist’s hands—“to the disciplinary unit. They need to have a little discussion with the data analysis section. They need to be … motivated.”

The change in the comm specialist’s face, from merely pallid to dead white, was pleasing to Xizor. Motivation, in the lower ranks of Black Sun, was a synonym for terror; he had put a lot of his own effort in designing and maintaining the appropriate measures for creating just that effect. Violence was an art; a balance had to be maintained, somewhere short of the deaths of valuable and not easily replaced staff members. At the same time, it had to be made clear that no creature ever left Black Sun, at least not while alive. Such administrative duties would have been a chore to Prince Xizor, if the practice of the art involved had not been such an intrinsic pleasure.

“So noted, Your Excellency.” As long as it was someone else’s neck on the chopping block, the comm specialist was only too eager to comply with Xizor’s request.

He had already dismissed the comm specialist from his mind. With only fragmentary information available about the trajectory of the bounty hunter Boba Fett’s ship, Slave I, there was much for Xizor to mull over. He gazed out at the galaxy’s bright skeins, not seeing the individual stars and systems so much as the possibilities they represented. It had already been verified that Boba Fett had left the dull, virtually anonymous mining planet on which the former Imperial stormtrooper Trhin Voss’on’t had taken refuge; a refuge that had proven ineffective when Fett and his temporary partner Bossk had tracked Voss’on’t down for the bounty that Emperor Palpatine had placed on his head. Voss’on’t was now Boba Fett’s hard merchandise, to use the language of the bounty hunters; the bounty for the traitorous stormtrooper was due to Fett as soon as delivery was made to the arachnoid arranger and go-between known as Kud’ar Mub’at.

Turning his gaze to one side of the viewport, Xizor could see the unlovely fibrous mass of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web, floating in otherwise empty space. The web had been woven, over a period of unknown decades, perhaps centuries, from the assembler’s own extrudations. Mired in the weft of tough exterior strands were bits and pieces of various ships, poking out like metal scraps sunk in the corrugated mud of a dried swamp; those fragments were all that remained of debtors that Kud’ar Mub’at had foreclosed upon, or business partners whose dealings with the assembler had gone disastrously awry. Involvement with Kud’ar Mub’at might not lead to the same degree of violence as with Boba Fett, but annihilation was just as final.

To enter into the web—Xizor had done it many times—was to step inside Kud’ar Mub’at’s brain, both metaphorically and literally. The thinner, palely glistening fibers were spun-out extensions of Kud’ar Mub’at’s own cerebro-neural tissue; tethered to the strands and scuttling along them were the numerous subnodes that the assembler had created, little replicas and variations of itself, taking care of appointed duties ranging from the simple to the complex. They were all linked to and under the control of their master and parent—

Or so Kud’ar Mub’at thinks, Prince Xizor reminded himself. The very last time he had been inside the assembler’s web, just before coming back here aboard the Vendetta, Xizor had had a most interesting—and potentially profitable—conversation. Not with Kud’ar Mub’at itself, but one of the assembler’s creations, the accountant subnode called Balancesheet. It had shown Xizor that it had managed to detach itself from the web’s linked and intertwining neurofibers, without Kud’ar Mub’at being aware of what had happened. Balancesheet had also mastered the assembler’s knack of creating subnodes, one of which it had spliced into the web in order to deceive Kud’ar Mub’at that all was well. The net result was as if part of Kud’ar Mub’at’s brain had begun its own mutiny against its creator, laying out plans and schemes, of which Kud’ar Mub’at was as yet unaware.

It was going to find out soon enough, though. That thought lifted a corner of Xizor’s mouth into a cruel smile. He would enjoy even more the actual moment when the crafty arachnoid, squatting on its nest in the center of its self-created web, discovered that it had been outsmarted. At last, after having been the puller of so many invisible strings laced throughout the galaxy that had brought wealth to its dusty coffers and ruin to other sentient creatures. Not that Xizor felt pity for any of those; they had gotten what they deserved for letting themselves get entangled in Kud’ar Mub’at’s intricately woven schemes. But those schemes had become a little too extensive for Xizor’s taste; when they started interfering with his and Black Sun’s various enterprises, it was time to trim them back. What better way than uprooting them at the source? The unexpected discovery of Balancesheet’s own ambitions along those lines—the crafty subnode had made it clear that it no longer cared to remain a mere appendage of its creator-parent—made possible the removal of Kud’ar Mub’at, while still retaining all the valuable go-between services that the assembler performed for Black Sun.

Get rid of the old one—the notion had a definite appeal to Prince Xizor—and put a new one in its place. And by the time that Balancesheet, as inheritor of all its creator’s position and power, would get just as troublesome as Kud’ar Mub’at had become, perhaps a new generation of crafty arachnoids would be ready for patricidal rebellion. Or even more pleasing to contemplate: Xizor’s ambitions for Black Sun would have reached such a zenith of power, outstripping even that of Emperor Palpatine, so there would be no need for such a scuttling, secretive little creature. Now there was a particular “old one”—the image of Palpatine’s wizened visage appeared in Xizor’s thoughts, like a senile ghost—who had also enjoyed his day, his moment in power. And during that time, Xizor had had to bow his proud head and pretend to be the Emperor’s loyal servant more than once. The fact that the old man had been taken in by that little charade was proof enough that Palpatine’s time was soon to be over, and that the remnants of the Empire would then be ready to fall into the control of Black Sun. Prince Xizor and his followers had waited long enough in the shadows, biding their time, waiting for the lightless dawn that would be their moment of triumph …

Soon enough, Xizor promised himself. He and all the rest of Black Sun had only to wait, and craftily move into their final positions the pawns that were already arrayed on the great gameboard of the universe. The arachnoid arranger Kud’ar Mub’at’s web of plans and schemes was nothing compared to the one that Xizor had woven, a net cast across worlds and entire systems of worlds. Neither Emperor Palpatine nor his dark henchman Lord Vader had any comprehension of Black Sun’s reach, the things that were in its grasp already or the ones that its fist was about to close upon. For all of Palpatine’s vaunted claims of knowledge of the Force and its dark side, he was still blind to the machinations and maneuverings taking place virtually under his nose. That was due, Xizor figured, to the old fool’s own greed and ambition, and to his perpetual undervaluing of any other creature’s intelligence. The Imperial court of Palpatine, on the distant world of Coruscant, was stuffed with flunkeys and witless servants; their master had made the mistake of assuming that everyone else was either a dolt like them or a mysticism-addled thug like Vader.

The memory of the Dark Lord’s invisible grip upon Xizor’s throat, squeezing out the breath from his lungs, was still sharp and humiliating; he didn’t believe in that mysterious Force, not the same way that Vader and the Emperor did, but he had still been compelled to acknowledge something of its cruel power. Mind tricks, brooded Xizor, that was all it had amounted to. But that had been enough—more than enough—to reignite his hatred for Darth Vader. That hatred had been born in the deaths of Xizor’s family members, deaths for which he held Vader personally responsible. Behind all his other ambitions, the goals of conquest and domination toward which he’d mercilessly driven Black Sun, there lay a smaller, more personal one: to make sure that Lord Vader paid the ultimate price for his deeds against the blood of a Falleen prince.

That vengeance could not come soon enough to satisfy Prince Xizor.

And a small piece of the machinery that would bring that vengeance about was on its way here—or it should be, if he had correctly gauged his understanding of the bounty hunter Boba Fett. For one such as that, Xizor had decided, profit is everything. He had baited the trap with enough credits to ensure Boba Fett’s keen interest, first to bring about the destruction of the old Bounty Hunters Guild, and now to bring the renegade Imperial stormtrooper Trhin Voss’on’t back to Kud’ar Mub’at’s web, where the price that had been put on Voss’on’t’s head was supposedly waiting. The fool, thought Xizor contemptuously. Boba Fett had no idea of how he had been manipulated, a mere pawn in Xizor’s gambits. Perhaps he would never learn, or learn too late to save himself, now that his usefulness to Xizor had come to an end.

The Falleen prince’s eyelids drew partway down upon the violet color of his gaze as the deep intertwinings of his meditations continued. Beyond the curved transparisteel of the Vendetta’s great viewport, the waiting stars, ripe for the plucking, lay scattered in silence. So also with the pieces, both visible and invisible, his own and the other players’, upon the squares of that gameboard to which the galaxy had been reduced. If one pawn was about to be swept from the board, what did it matter? There were plenty left with which the game could be played to its conclusion.

Prince Xizor folded his arms across his chest, the motion bringing the edge of his cape around his boots. He felt sure now that Slave I would soon emerge from hyperspace … and into the trap that had been so carefully prepared.

After all—a thin smile lifted one corner of Xizor’s mouth as he contemplated the stars—where else was it to go?

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.” On the other side of the holding cage’s durasteel bars, the Imperial stormtrooper—former Imperial stormtrooper—slowly shook his head. And smiled. “I wouldn’t want to be in your boots right now.”

“Don’t worry about that,” replied Boba Fett. He had come down from the cockpit and into Slave I’s cargo hold to see how this particular piece of hard merchandise was enduring the rigors of the journey. The bounty placed on Trhin Voss’on’t’s head by Emperor Palpatine had stipulated live delivery—a corpse was therefore useless and, worse, unprofitable to Boba Fett.

If Voss’on’t’s death had been all that was required to collect that veritable mountain of credits, the job would have been much easier. I wouldn’t have needed that fool Bossk along, thought Fett. Partners—even temporary ones—were always an irksome expedient, to be disposed of as quickly as possible.

“Your position here,” continued Boba Fett aloud, “is quite secure. As is mine. I’m the winner, and you’re the loser. I’ll get paid, and you’ll get whatever Palpatine has in store for you.” Which wasn’t likely to be pleasant, Fett knew. Though that hardly concerned him—once a bounty hunter collected his fee, interest in the merchandise’s fate ceased.

“Think so?” The smile on Voss’on’t’s scarred, hatchetlike face turned into an ugly smirk. “This galaxy is full of surprises, pal. There might just be one in store for you.”

Boba Fett ignored the stormtrooper’s warning. Mind tricks, he figured. Voss’on’t was part of the usual run of thugs and laser-cannon fodder that got recruited into the Empire’s fighting ranks. If not of the same intellectual caliber of the Imperial Navy’s admirals, he was still smart enough to have risen to those ranks trained in basic psychological warfare techniques. And sowing doubt in the mind of an opponent was the first, and most effective, of such subtle weapons—one didn’t have to be a Jedi Knight to use it.

Still—he had to recognize that Voss’on’t had a point. Treachery was an infinite substance in the galaxy, as widely distributed as hydrogen atoms in space. And in getting involved in the Voss’on’t job, he had become unavoidably entangled with some of the most treacherous sentient creatures on or off any of the galaxy’s worlds. Not just Palpatine, but the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at as well.

It’s a lot of credits, thought Boba Fett as he gazed at the captive in the holding cage. He no longer saw Voss’on’t as a living thing, but simply as merchandise to be delivered for a profit. It was the largest bounty that Fett could remember hearing of in his entire career. The lengths to which Emperor Palpatine would go to satisfy his lust for vengeance made a lesser entity like the crimelord Jabba the Hutt look like a piker. But it was one thing for Palpatine to offer that kind of bounty for the renegade stormtrooper; it was another thing for him to actually pay it out. Not that Palpatine couldn’t afford to—he had the wealth of uncounted systems at his command—but because his greed was even greater than that wealth.

And as far as Kud’ar Mub’at was concerned—Boba Fett held zero illusions about that immense, scuttling spider, with its wobbling, pallid abdomen and obsequious, conniving words. Kud’ar Mub’at was presumably holding the bounty for Voss’on’t, awaiting whichever of the galaxy’s bounty hunters returned to its web with the merchandise. Boba Fett knew that the assembler would love to have both the merchandise and the bounty wind up in its sole possession—and the best way to do that would be to arrange for the sudden demise of whoever had actually done the work of capturing the stormtrooper.

“I can see you thinking.” Trhin Voss’on’t’s sly voice insinuated itself into Boba Fett’s consciousness. “Even through that helmet of yours—I can hear the little gears meshing.”

“You hear nothing except your own delusions.” Boba Fett defocused his hard, cold gaze upon his captive.

“Think so?” The ugly, lopsided smile still curled one corner of Voss’on’t’s mouth. “Consider your situation from a … military point of view.” He gave another pitying shake of his head. “You’re outgunned, Fett. Deal with it.”

There was still time remaining before Slave I was scheduled to emerge from hyperspace and within sight of Kud’ar Mub’at’s space-drifting web. Time enough to play a little more of this mental game with the hard merchandise. Boba Fett didn’t need the amusement—nothing amused him except more credits stacking up in his accounts. But there was at least one good reason for letting Voss’on’t rattle on: it was common knowledge that high-level stormtroopers, such as he had been before his defection, were trained in self-annihilatory techniques, in case of capture by enemy forces. A self-willed shutdown of his entire autonomic cardiovascular system would render Voss’on’t as unprofitable as any hot bolt from the blaster slung at Boba Fett’s hip would.

Standard bounty hunter procedure in a case like this, where the suicide of the merchandise was a possibility, would have been to render him safely unconscious with a steady-release transdermal anesthetic patch applied just above one of the main neck arteries. Boba Fett had done just that, many times before, with other pieces of hard merchandise—it was rare when any one of them looked forward to being handed over at the end of their journeys with anything but total dread. And if Trihn Voss’on’t was as intelligent and rational as he appeared, he had no reason to be optimistic about the welcome that he would receive from his former master, Emperor Palpatine. Death would be at the end of that process as well, though it would be a long—and uncomfortable—time in coming. Palpatine had ways of making sure of that.

But Boba Fett’s own bounty hunter’s skills, his ability to see into the workings of his merchandise’s thoughts, had told him that Voss’on’t was not going to take his own life. Once the former Imperial stormtrooper had gotten over both the physical trauma of being captured—it hadn’t been easy on anyone; both Boba Fett and Bossk had nearly been killed in the process—plus the indignity of waking up caged, a measure of his fighting spirit had reappeared, even cockier than before. Boba Fett had caught a glint in Voss’on’t’s narrow gaze of the same will to survive—and even dominate—that burned like a cold fire under the jacket of his own Mandalorian battle armor.

He actually thinks he can win. The stormtrooper ceased being mere merchandise for a few seconds as Boba Fett regarded him in the holding cage. He hadn’t expected a combat-hardened veteran such as Trhin Voss’on’t to beg and grovel for his life, as so many previous tenants of the holding cage had done. What he had expected was a show of snarling, raging defiance, the kind of ugly temper to which the sadistically violent were given when the tables were turned on them.

“Outgunned—and outsmarted, Fett.” The voice of Trhin Voss’on’t was a centimeter away from sneering laughter. “It’s been real nice knowing you. I’m glad we had this little time together.”

A quick chiming note sounded from the comlink inside Boba Fett’s helmet. That was the signal from the monitoring computer in Slave I’s cockpit indicating that the final lockdown sequence had to be initiated before the ship could emerge from hyperspace. There wasn’t much more to be done before he collected the bounty, the mountain of credits that had been posted for Voss’on’t’s capture.

His favorite part of the job was getting paid—but Boba Fett decided to postpone it a moment longer. As much as he was aware that Voss’on’t was trying to warp his thinking, deflect it from its most logical course like the gravitational tug of a black hole, another part of him was intrigued by the stormtrooper’s mocking display of confidence.

He wants me to think he knows something, thought Boba Fett, that I don’t. Hardly likely—Boba Fett hadn’t survived this long as a top-rank bounty hunter except by having better information sources than his prey did.

Another thought itched at a dark corner of Boba Fett’s cortex. There’s always a first time. The problem was that in this business, the first time—outgunned, outsmarted, out-intelligenced—would also be the last time.

“All right,” said Boba Fett quietly. “So tell me.” He leaned closer to the holding cage’s bars, unconcerned about bringing himself within reach of his captive. It would be a real mistake for Voss’on’t to try reaching through the bars and grabbing him—his superior reflexes would have Voss’on’t down on the cage’s floor in less than a second. “You feel like talking so much—what do you mean, ‘outgunned’?”

“What, you blind?” Voss’on’t scoffed at him. “This ship’s falling apart. Even if you hadn’t told me about that bomb your former partner hit the hull with, I would’ve been able to make the damage assessment for myself, just from looking around here. The last time I heard so many structural integrity alarms going off, I was on an Imperial battle cruiser being attacked by an entire wing of Rebel Alliance starfighters.”

“Tell me something,” growled Boba Fett, “that I don’t already know.” That Slave I was in bad shape was a fact of which he was uncomfortably aware. Even before he had made the jump into hyperspace, away from the colonial mining planet where Voss’on’t had been hiding out, he had to make a hard assessment as to whether the ship was even capable of standing up to the journey. If he’d had any option, he would have laid over at the closest suitable planet for repairs. But with such a valuable cargo as the former stormtrooper aboard, and with every other bounty hunter in the galaxy eager to relieve him of this hard merchandise, the choice to make the jump had been forced on him. It was either that or wind up a sitting target in the crosshairs of too many laser cannons to even have a chance of surviving. “This ship will come out all right,” Boba Fett told his captive. “It might be just barely holding together when we get there, but we’ll make it.”

“Sure it will, pal—but then what?” Voss’on’t tilted his head to one side, peering at Fett, an eyebrow raised.

“Then I get paid. And there’ll be plenty of time for repairs.” He was even looking forward to that. There were some modifications to Slave I—some advanced weaponry systems, proximity and evasion scan units—that he had been contemplating for some time.

“Oh, you’ll get paid, all right.” Voss’on’t’s smile widened, showing mcre of his yellowed ivory and steel-capped teeth. “But maybe not in the way you’re expecting.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Of course—there’s nothing else you can do. But if you’re wrong about what’s waiting for you …” Voss’on’t slowly nodded. “Then your options are even more limited than they are now.”

Boba Fett calmly regarded the other man. “How do you mean?”

“Come on. Don’t be naive. You have a reputation for smarts, Fett. Try earning it. You’ve got no maneuvering ability in this ship, not in the condition it’s in now. All your weaponry won’t do you any good if you can’t bring it to bear on a target. And if that target is firing at you instead—if there’s a lot of targets with you in their gunsights—then there isn’t going to be anything you can do, except take it, for as long as you think you can hold out.”

“Hardly my only option,” said Fett. “I can always jump back into hyperspace.”

“Sure—if that’s your preferred method of dying. This broken-down tub barely made it through one jump without disintegrating.” Voss’on’t’s smile indicated how much he enjoyed the dismal prospects he was describing. “You might be able to slam this thing into hyperspace—but you won’t be able to get it back out.” An evil glint appeared in one of the stormtrooper’s eyes. “I’ve heard that’s a real unpleasant way to go. Nobody even ever finds the pieces.”

Boba Fett had heard the same. A squadron of the ancient Mandalorian warriors, a suit of whose battle armor he wore as his own, was reputed to have been destroyed in just that manner by the now-vanished Jedi Knights. “You sound as if you’ve been analyzing this for a while.”

Voss’on’t shrugged. “It didn’t take long. Just like it didn’t take long to figure out your only other option. The one that leaves you alive afterward.”

“Which is?”

“Surrender,” said the smiling stormtrooper.

Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. “That’s something I don’t have a reputation for doing.”

“Too bad,” replied Voss’on’t. “Too bad for you and your chances of getting out of this mess alive. You can either be smart and survive, Fett, or carry on with what you’re doing, and wind up as a toasted corpse. Your choice.”

Another chime signal sounded from Slave I’s cockpit. He had already wasted too much time with this creature. Boba Fett made a mental note that in the future he should remember that all merchandise was the same, given to trying to talk its way out of a jam.

He allowed himself one more question before he returned to the cockpit and began the final preparations for emerging from hyperspace. “Just who do you think it is that I should surrender to?”

“Why mess around any further?” Trhin Voss’on’t gripped two of the durasteel bars and brought his hard-angled face closer to Fett’s. “I’m the only one who can get you out of this. I know what’s waiting for you on the other side. And believe me, Fett, they’re not your friends.” The stormtrooper’s fingers tightened on the cage’s bars as his voice dropped lower. “Let me out of here, Fett, and I’ll cut you a deal.”

“I don’t deal, Voss’on’t.”

“You better start—because it’s your life that’s on the bargaining table, whether you like it or not. Let me out, and turn the ship over to me, and I might just be able to keep you from being blasted into atoms.”

“And what would be in it for you?”

Voss’on’t leaned back and shrugged. “Hey—I don’t want to go up in smoke with you, pal. Your stupidity is endangering me as well. All things being equal, I’d just as soon stay alive. If I’ve got control of the ship and its comm units—in other words, let me do the talking—I’d have a chance of getting the ones who aren’t so well disposed to you to stand down.”

The other’s words provoked an instinctive response from Boba Fett. Inside the suit of Mandalorian battle armor, he could feel his spine stiffen. “Nobody,” he said, “commands this ship but me.”

“Have it your way.” Voss’on’t let go of the bars and took a step back into the center of the holding cage. “I’ve at least got a chance of making it through. You don’t.”

The chime signal sounded again in Boba Fett’s helmet, louder and more urgent. “I have to congratulate you,” he said. “I thought I’d heard all the scams, all the wheedling and begging and bribery attempts, that creatures were capable of. But you came up with something new.” He started to turn away from the holding cage and its occupant. “I’ve never been threatened by my merchandise before.”

Voss’on’t’s taunting voice followed after Fett as he strode toward the metal ladder leading back up to the cockpit. “I’m not your usual run of merchandise, pal.” A note of mocking triumph sounded in Voss’on’t’s words. “And if you don’t think so now—believe me, you will. Real soon.”

All the way up to the cockpit, Boba Fett could hear the stormtrooper’s laughter. Pulling the hatchway shut behind him only cut off the distant, irritating sound, not the memory of it.

Boba Fett sat down in the pilot’s chair, letting the work of his hands moving across and adjusting the navigation controls fill his consciousness. Victory in any combat, fought with weapons or words, depended upon a clear mind. The former stormtrooper Voss’on’t had done his best to mire Boba Fett’s thoughts with his sly insinuations of conspiracy and predictions of violence. Boba Fett was afraid of neither of those; he had proved himself a master of them on many occasions.

At the same time, Voss’on’t’s lies and mental tricks had evoked a deeper sense of unease inside Boba Fett. His survival in the dangerous game of bounty hunting hadn’t been based on coldly rational strategizing alone. There were elements of instinct that he depended upon as well. Danger had a scent all its own that required no trace molecules in the atmosphere to be detected by his senses.

His gloved hand hesitated for a second above the controls. What if Voss’on’t wasn’t lying …

Perhaps the stormtrooper hadn’t been playing mind games with him. Perhaps the offer to save Boba Fett’s life from whatever might be waiting for him in realspace had been genuine, even if motivated by Voss’on’t’s own self-interest.

Or—Boba Fett’s thoughts pried at the puzzle inside his skull—the game was even subtler than it first had appeared. Voss’on’t might not have wanted him to surrender control of the ship at all. What if, mused Fett, he knew I would refuse? And that was what he’d been banking on. In which case, Voss’on’t also would have been angling for Boba Fett to disregard all doubts, suspicions, even his own instinctive caution, as having been planted in his head by Voss’on’t. The game might not have been to change Boba Fett’s course of action—but to make sure that he didn’t abandon it.

He needn’t have bothered, thought Boba Fett. A familiar calm settled over him, which he recognized and remembered from other times, moments when he’d set his fate in the balance. Between the thought and the deed, between the action and its consequences, between the roll of the ancient bone dice and the coming up of the number that would indicate whether one lived or died …

Lay infinity.

Bounty hunters held no faith, religions, creeds—those were for other, deluded creatures. Emperor Palpatine could immerse himself in the shadows of some Force that the Jedi had believed in—but Boba Fett didn’t need to. For him, that moment, expanding to the limits of the universe both inside and outside him, was all the unspoken knowledge of the infinite, risk balanced against power, that he required. What more could there be? All else was illusion, as far as he was concerned.

That simple truth had kept him alive so far. His profits, the counters in the game he played, meant more to him than his own life. You can’t gamble, Fett reminded himself, what you’re not prepared to lose …

All other considerations fell away, like the dying sparks of dead suns. Only the holding cage below held the former Imperial stormtrooper now; Boba Fett had dismissed even the image of Trhin Voss’on’t from his mind.

A computerized voice, as clear of emotion as Boba Fett’s thoughts, spoke aloud, breaking the cockpit’s deep silence. “Hyperspace preemergence lockdown completed.” The logic circuits built into Slave I were as thorough as those of their master. “Current options are to activate final emergence procedures or lower operational condition to standby and minimal power drain.”

Without any further prompting from the ship’s computer, Boba Fett knew that the latter was not much of an option at all. To remain much longer in hyperspace was merely a delayed—but certain—death. In the ship’s present damaged condition, structural maintenance and life-support systems would begin to fail in a matter of a few minutes. Slave I had to enter realspace soon—or never.

Boba Fett didn’t bother making a verbal reply to the onboard computer. In a single, unhesitating motion, he reached out across the cockpit’s controls and pushed the final activation trigger.

Even before he drew his gloved hand away from the controls, the cockpit’s forward viewport filled with streaks of light that had been the cold points of stars a millisecond before. On the black gameboard behind them, the die had been cast.

“There he is.” The comm specialist placed a hand against the side of his head, listening intently to the cochlear implant inside his skull. “Forward scout modules have spotted Slave I, registered emergence from hyperspace as of point-zero-three minutes ago.”

Prince Xizor nodded, well pleased with the alacrity shown by the crew of his flagship Vendetta. The disciplinary measures he had initiated a little while ago had obviously had a salutary effect on the lower Black Sun ranks manning the strategic operation posts. Fear, noted Xizor, is the best motivator.

“I trust that we have a fix on his projected trajectory.” Prince Xizor stood before the Vendetta’s forward viewport, its transparisteel scan of stars arching high above him. With boots spread apart and hands clasped at the small of his back, he gazed out at the galaxy’s distant worlds. He brought that same cold, calculating gaze over his shoulder for a moment. “In other words, do we know where Boba Fett is headed?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. Of course we do.” The comm specialist’s words rushed out, almost tripping over each other in their speaker’s anxiety. He tilted the side of his head closer to his fingertips, listening to the words being relayed from outside the Vendetta. “Plotted trajectory matches previous strategic analysis coordinates, Your Excellency.”

The forward scouts’ report brought a glow of pleased satisfaction beneath Xizor’s breastbone. The analysis had been his alone, calculated by no computer other than the flesh-and-blood one behind his slit-pupiled, violet eyes. Boba Fett has no choice, thought Xizor, but to come this way. A smile twisted a corner of Xizor’s mouth. And to his death.

Gazing upon the bright, cold stars in the viewport, Xizor gave a slow nod without turning toward the comm specialist. “And the estimated time of arrival at Kud’ar Mub’at’s web is …?”

“That’s … a little more difficult to project, Your Excellency.”

Xizor’s brow creased as he glanced back at the comm specialist. He didn’t need to speak aloud to get his meaning across, as well as the degree of his dissatisfaction.

The comm specialist hurried to explain. “It’s because of the degree of damage, Your Excellency, that the vessel being tracked has sustained. Boba Fett’s ship is in considerably worse shape than we had originally anticipated. The hyperspace transit has weakened the ship’s structural integrity, almost to the point of collapse.”

A tinge of disappointment made itself felt inside Xizor. If Slave I actually did break apart in the vacuum of space, a great opportunity would be lost thereby. To be that creature known as the one who had eliminated Boba Fett from the galaxy, to have arranged the death of the bounty hunter who had profited from so many other creatures’ misfortunes—that would add considerable glory to Prince Xizor’s dark prestige.

And to have brought about Boba Fett’s death, not through dumb luck or accident, or by a snarling, flesh-rending, Trandoshan-like show of violence, but by having ensnared Fett in a web of intrigue and double and triple crosses—the exact same type of subtle machinations and conspiracies that the galaxy’s most-feared bounty hunter had always excelled in—that would only make the final victory sweeter and more rewarding.

Xizor could see his own reflection, ghostlike and faint, in the glossy inner curve of the viewport. Beyond the image of his own violet eyes, narrowed with contemplation, the stars seemed close enough to grasp. For a moment, the passing of a second, Xizor felt a twinge of sympathetic feeling for Emperor Palpatine, as though his heart had synchronized its slow, unhurried pulse with that of the distant old man on Coruscant. Old, but infinitely crafty—and greedy beyond even that measure. I’ve come to understand him, mused Prince Xizor. He clasped his strong-sinewed hands behind his back, in the folds of the cape whose lower edge brushed against the heels of his boots. They were planted even farther apart, as though the Falleen noble was already bestriding worlds under Black Sun’s dominion.

That was the lure, and the danger, of letting one’s deepest meditations dwell upon the stars. Such a view as the one afforded from the Vendetta, and the expanse of dark sky and wheeling constellations that could be seen from the Emperor’s palace, would only unlock the desire for power inside a sentient being’s heart. Power both absolute and abstract, for he who possessed it, and hard and crushing as a boot sole ground into a bloodied face, for those beneath. But the purity of the stars, the icy coldness of their vacuum-garbed light—that was a splendor to be enjoyed, and endured, by only those great enough to translate their desires into action. And if those desires, and that action, were translated into fatal consequences for those foolish enough to have let themselves become enmeshed in Xizor’s intricate schemes …

So be it, thought the Falleen noble. He gave a single, meditative nod as he gazed at the waiting field of stars. All had gone according to plan—his plan, and no other creature’s. As his breast swelled with both satisfaction and anticipation, one fist tightened inside Xizor’s other hand, as though it held and drew the cords binding all the far-flung worlds into a single woven net.

Another entity, smaller and nearer, also stood by and waited. Behind Xizor, the comm specialist emitted a discreet but clearly audible cough. “Excuse me, Your Excellency—” The comm specialist had obviously summoned all his remaining store of courage. He knew the risk involved in disturbing the meditations of Black Sun’s leader. “Your crew,” he reminded his commander as diplomatically as possible, “awaits their orders.”

“As well they should.” Xizor knew that the crack of the whip, the slight but necessary touch of discipline he had administered, would have every station aboard the Vendetta primed and ready for action, with every crew member eager to demonstrate his worth. A shame, mused Xizor, to waste all that energy on so small a target. The Vendetta and its crew deserved more pyrotechnics—and the satisfaction that came with both violence and victory—than would be provided by one broken-down bounty-hunting hulk.

“Your Excellency?” The comm specialist’s words gently prodded him again.

Xizor answered him without turning around from the Vendetta’s great viewport. “The crew,” said Xizor, “will have to wait a while longer.”

“But … Boba Fett’s ship …” The comm specialist sounded genuinely puzzled.

There was no need to be reminded of Slave I’s approach, the vector of its entry into this sector of space. Xizor could feel it in the tautening nerves of his own body, an ancient predatory instinct responding to the nearness of its prey. Even without that subtle, almost mystical sense, Xizor knew that the Vendetta’s sensors would have hard confirmation of Slave I’s presence, well before Boba Fett suspected that anything was amiss. A barrier of drifting structural debris, left over from the various ships and other artifacts that the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at had incorporated into its web, served to effectively screen the Vendetta from long-range detection.

“Notify the bridge,” instructed Prince Xizor. “I’ll be there directly. Have them bring all weapons systems to full operational capacity—immediately.” He didn’t want to take any chances on not having enough firepower for Boba Fett. “Have all target-accessing controls keyed to my command.” Xizor glanced over his shoulder, displaying a thin, cold smile to the comm specialist. “This is one that I wish to take care of personally.”

5

The first hit was nearly the last one.

Boba Fett didn’t even see it coming. The first indication that Slave I had come under attack was the sudden burst of light that flared across the cockpit’s viewport, as though the ship had struck the heart of some hidden sun. He would have been permanently blinded if the optical filters in his helmet’s visor hadn’t flashed opaque, protecting his eyes. Fett’s own quick instincts had snapped him away from the searing glare, raising a forearm across the front of the helmet as he had twisted about in the pilot’s chair, away from the navigation controls and the obliterated view of stars he had seen only a fraction of a second before.

The impact of the laser-cannon bolt struck the ship’s frame and his contorted spine simultaneously, throwing him from the pilot’s seat and sprawling him out across the bare durasteel floor of the cockpit, his arms barely able to brace himself and catch the rush of the bulkhead near the hatchway. Past the roar of the explosion shuddering through Slave I’s hull and into the core beams running from forward sensor antennae to the shielded engine compartments, Boba Fett could hear the high-therm welds of the bulkhead panels ripping free from one another. A metal edge as viciously sharp as a vibroblade’s business end peeled upward from the cockpit’s floor, coming within a centimeter of slashing through the heavy collar of his Mandalorian battle armor and across his throat. All that prevented a slashed jugular vein and subsequent death was a tight ducking of his head against one shoulder, so that the ripped durasteel panel caught one side of his helmet instead. The left side of the helmet blunted the cutting strike, adding another mark of violence to the other dents and scrapes gathered in combat.

Rumbling downward in pitch, the sound of the laser-cannon bolt and its concussive hammer-blow against the ship faded enough that the wails and shrieks of the ship’s alarm systems became audible to Boba Fett. He may have escaped death—for the moment—but Slave I had been mortally wounded; the ear-shredding, electronic screech was its death cry.

“Mute alarms.” Fett spoke the command into the microphone of his helmet. “Switch to optical status report.” As the high-pitched notes fell to ominous silence, a row of minuscule lights appeared at the limit of Boba Fett’s peripheral vision. He knew what each glowing dot meant, which of the ship’s systems was represented by vertical rank order, and what conditions were indicated by the lights’ colors. Right now, they were all red, with a few of them pulsing at various speeds. That wasn’t good; the only thing that could have been worse would be if one or more had gone to black and out, the indicator of a complete systemic failure. The topmost dot of light in the row was for Slave I’s structure-envelope integrity, measured in atmospheric-maintenance capability. If that one blinked out—and at the moment it was flickering faster than Boba Fett’s own pulse rate—it would mean that the ship was breaking into fragments, the hull’s durasteel sheath delaminating away from the broken internal frame and scattering into empty space like the silvery ashes from an extinguished groundfire. It would also be a sight that Boba Fett wouldn’t live to see; the loss of the ship’s air when the hull was breached would be an event with a survival rate of zero for any living creatures aboard.

Fett rolled onto his side, away from the sharp edge of the bulkhead that would have at least given him a quick death, and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He shook away the last bit of dazing fog from the blow to the battle armor’s helmet. The now-silent alarms hadn’t informed him of anything that he couldn’t discern by other means. With the fragile condition that the ship had already been in, a direct hit by a Destroyer-grade laser cannon was bound to have a significant—and close to catastrophic—effect. After the stresses of jumping in and out of hyperspace, Slave I had barely been holding together; that the vessel could have taken another blow on top of that without disintegrating was a tribute to the extra armor and structural reinforcements that Boba Fett had ordered installed by Kuat Drive Yards. But there was a limit to how much damage those protective measures could soak up before collapsing along with the rest of the ship. When they went, his life span would be measurable in seconds; there was no emergency escape pod in which he could bail out.

Getting to his feet, the bounty hunter grabbed the back of the empty pilot’s chair and pulled himself toward the cockpit controls. The panel’s indicator signals and gauges were awash with pulsing red lights, telling him the same story he’d already surmised from the dots at the side of his helmet, bright as the ends of severed arteries.

Quickly, Boba Fett punched a gloved forefinger at the manual override command pad, inputting the code that would allow the ship’s onboard computer to take over the navigational procedures. “Randomize all maneuvers,” he instructed. “Calculate and implement nonpredictive evasion pattern.” Even before he took his hand away from the pad, Slave I’s docking-correction rockets burned on hard, twisting the ship out of its previous slow course and slamming Fett against the side of the cockpit; another burn, close to ninety degrees off the first one, would have sent him sprawling again if he hadn’t kept a tight hold on the back of the pilot’s chair.

The evasive maneuver was just in time: a second laser-cannon bolt shot cometlike past the curve of the forward viewport, coming close enough for Boba Fett to feel its heat through the clear transparisteel. Fading to a dull red, the bolt trailed away, leaving a bright afterimage in Fett’s vision, but without hitting the ship’s hull.

Another warning sound became audible as the stressed frame groaned from the transmitted force of the rockets. No electronic sensors were needed to register what was happening; Boba Fett could feel the chill of falling temperature through his battle armor, and hear the sibilant hiss of dwindling atmospheric pressure. The reserve oxygen tanks’ emitters kicked in, attempting futilely to overcome the loss from the ship’s main cabin areas. The evasive maneuver initiated by the onboard computer had wrenched some part of the hull loose, already weakened by the first laser-cannon hit. Slave I might be able to dodge most, and perhaps even all, of the coruscating bolts being aimed its way—Boba Fett had personally programmed in the randomizing algorithms—but it would be a process equally fatal, and rapidly so, as the quick, darting shifts in direction and acceleration tore at the ship’s damaged fabric.

Boba Fett leaned over the back of the pilot’s chair, scanning the forward viewport for any sign of the enemy that had opened fire on him. It didn’t matter who it might be—he figured that he had enough enemies, from his years in the bounty hunter trade, that at any given moment there would be someone yearning to take a shot at him. For all he knew, it might have been possible that Bossk had already found some way to catch up with him; what the Trandoshan lacked in smarts, he made up in tenacity and the ability to carry a grudge.

All that mattered right now was where the laser-cannon’s bolts had come from. Slave I had a deep arsenal of long-range weaponry itself; if Boba Fett could get a fix on the other ship, he would be able to bring his own laser cannons to bear on the target. That would be a calculated gamble on his part: setting up and holding position long enough to return fire would increase the enemy’s targeting ability, and the laser cannons’ drain upon Slave I’s rapidly dwindling power resources, as well as the structural shock from firing the weapons, could very likely destroy rather than save the ship and its occupants. Two shots, calculated Boba Fett as he looked out across the field of stars. Maybe three. His instinctive connection with the ship he mastered told him that that would be the limit of its endurance. If he wasn’t able to take out his enemy that quickly, any further action, including the resuming of evasive maneuvers, would leave him as a lung-emptied corpse drifting amid his own ship’s debris.

The main engines came on again, a quick burst thrusting Slave I away from its previous location. A trail of churning, fading light at the corner of the viewport indicated the effectiveness of the onboard computer’s randomizing program; the enemy’s laser-cannon bolt had scorched past, only a few meters away from the ship’s hull. Boba Fett leaned closer to the cockpit’s forward viewport, balancing himself with one hand braced against the control panel’s flashing red lights, scanning with a hunter’s intent gaze for any sign of the opponent he faced. His enemy, whoever it might be, obviously was aware that its target would be doing exactly that, trying to locate the source of the bolts aimed toward him. That was the reason why the other ship wasn’t sending out a steady stream of rapid-fire laser-cannon bolts; their fiery passage would have been a dead giveaway, negating the advantage it had at the moment, of mounting its offensive from some undetermined hiding place.

Boba Fett’s strategizing had been encompassed in mere milliseconds. Without warning, the computer’s evasion program kicked in again, twisting Slave I into a full 360-degree looping spiral, the side-mounted rockets diverting the thrust of the main engines. It wasn’t enough: Boba Fett’s grip upon the back of the pilot’s chair was torn loose as another laser-cannon bolt scored a direct hit upon the curved center of the hull. The impact sent him flying backward, landing sprawled on his back halfway through the cockpit’s open hatchway. A torrent of sparks, blinding gnatlike miniatures of the laser fire that had filled the viewport, lashed against his chest and helmet visor as the control panel’s circuits overloaded and shorted out. The acrid smell of burning hard-wire insulation and frying silicon mixed with the hissing steam of the fire-extinguisher cylinders letting loose their contents beneath the panel’s gauges and buttons.

As the cockpit filled with smoke, Boba Fett grabbed the side of the hatchway and pulled himself upright. The louder hiss in his ears was the sound of oxygen venting from the ship’s hull; the last laser-cannon bolt had done even more damage than the first that had hit Slave I.

His helmet comlink had gone dead, as well as the red warning lights arrayed at the side of the visor. Fett pushed past the toppled pilot’s chair, its pedestal stanchion ripped loose from the buckling floor. The panel was slick with combustion-retardant foam and wet ash as he punched the computer’s input microphone control. “Prepare to seal off cockpit area,” he commanded. The only way to obtain a few precious minutes more of breathing time—and the chance, however slim, to survive beyond that—was to reduce the stress on Slave I’s life-support systems to as close to zero as possible. Letting every other section of the ship go to complete vacuum would turn the cockpit into a temporary bubble of safety. Once it was set up, Boba Fett could override the computer’s evasion program and turn the underside of the craft toward the source of the laser-cannon bolts, so the inert metal would act as a shield for the cockpit’s curve of transparisteel.

The rest of the plan formulated itself in Fett’s mind. He had limited options at this point, but there was still always the chance of outwitting his foe. Play dead, he told himself. That could work. The damage that Slave I had suffered would be obviously visible from the outside; with the engines shut down and all signs of onboard power switched off, his ship would look like a lifeless hulk drifting in space. That might be enough to get this unknown enemy to come close enough, imprudently within range of a sudden, unexpected volley from Boba Fett’s own laser cannons. At that kind of distance, he could cripple or even destroy the other ship; either way, he’d then have the time to head for the safety of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web, before the remaining store of oxygen aboard Slave I ran out.

“Atmospheric lockdown procedures concluded,” announced the onboard computer’s voice, still emotionless though coarsened now with burring static. “Cockpit area ready to be sealed on your order.”

“Maintain status,” said Fett. There were things he had to do before the cockpit’s life-support systems were secured. “Standby until I return to this area.” He pushed himself away from the control panel.

From the cockpit area, Boba Fett quickly descended the metal treads of the ladder leading down to the main cargo hold. He still had hard merchandise aboard the ship that he intended to deliver and be paid for. The renegade stormtrooper Trhin Voss’on’t had to be alive in order for that to be accomplished.

The air pressure in the cargo hold had dropped to a dizzying, heart-accelerating level. As he stepped from the last tread of the ladder, Boba Fett could see a swimming cluster of black dots form in his vision, a telltale sign of oxygen starvation. The spots quickly vanished as his battle armor’s reserve oxygen supply kicked in. As useful as those reserves were in emergencies such as this, they were still limited; Fett knew that he would have to accomplish his mission here fast, and get back up to the cockpit with Voss’on’t before they ran out. All his strategizing would do him little good if he was lying on the cargo hold’s floor unconscious when the enemy ship approached.

“I was … wondering … when you’d show up.” Gasping for breath, eyes reddened from the smoke that filled the cargo area, Trhin Voss’on’t held himself upright with both fists tightly clenched upon the holding cage’s bars. “Figured … maybe you were dead already …”

“Lucky for you that I’m not.” The miniaturized security key was implanted in the fingertip of Boba Fett’s gloved hand; the mere act of grabbing the pull-bar on the cage’s door would unlock it and allow him to yank Voss’on’t out. He could feel the renegade stormtrooper’s hard gaze bearing down on him like two laser trackers as he stepped close and reached for the door. “Let’s get going.”

Fett had already calculated that he didn’t have time to render Voss’on’t unconscious, or the strength, given the depleted level of oxygen in the cargo hold, to drag the stormtrooper’s limp body up the ladder to the cockpit. It would be better just to get him up there, with whatever degree of threats or personal violence was necessary, then knock him out so he wouldn’t interfere with the rest of the operation.

“Why should I?” Voss’on’t hunched over, his head at a level with his hands gripping the bars, chest laboring to draw in enough breath to support life functions. “What … do Iget … out of it?”

That was one more thing he didn’t have time for: one more argument from Voss’on’t. The stormtrooper had never yet seemed to realize that Boba Fett wasn’t interested in his opinions on what to do next.

“What you get,” said Boba Fett as he pulled open the holding cage’s door, “is a chance to go on living a little while longer. If that’s not important to you—too bad. You don’t get a vote on it.”

“I’ll tell you … what’s important to me …” Voss’on’t straightened up, pushing himself back from the vertical bars. “Giving you … a little surprise …” His voice was suddenly louder and more forceful, as though he were now expending a carefully husbanded store of vital energy. Taking one step backward to brace himself, he swung the single bar that had somehow come loose from its mounting at both the top and bottom welded frames of the cage. The length of glistening metal moved through a flat horizontal arc, its end striking Boba Fett directly in his abdomen. The blow had all of Trhin Voss’on’t’s weight and strength behind it, hitting Fett with enough velocity to lift him for a moment off his feet and slam his spine back against the edge of the open cage doorway.

Stunned and doubled over from the blow to his gut, Boba Fett lay on the cargo area’s grated metal floor, one shoulder rolled beneath him. His own sudden flurry of motion revealed to his dazed and swimming vision what had previously been concealed by the thick smoke gathered at the base of the cage: the laser-cannon bolts from the hidden enemy ship had buckled the hold’s floor enough to spring loose a section of cage bars. The one with which Voss’on’t had struck him had come completely free, and had been held in place only by the stormtrooper’s fist, giving the visual impression that he was still trapped inside the cage. In fact, and as Boba Fett had just painfully learned, he had been merely waiting for Fett to unlock the door and come within striking distance.

“You should have … listened …” Voss’on’t’s words came from somewhere in the blurred, red-tinged distance above Boba Fett. “When you had … the opportunity …”

As Fett tried to push himself up from the floor, another blow from the metal cage bar to the base of his battle armor’s helmet sent him sprawling again. The helmet’s visor scraped across the cargo hold’s grating. His mouth filled with the taste of smoke as he gulped for breath.

“But you … didn’t …” Voss’on’t had planted his boots on either side of Boba Fett, the better to raise the cage bar high and aim a killing blow at the top of the bounty hunter’s vertebrae. “You don’t get … a second chance …”

Boba Fett heard the bar come whistling down through the oxygen-thinned air. But the broken weld of its tip struck the hold’s floor instead of his spine as his own arm grabbed hold of one of Voss’on’t’s legs and jerked him off balance. Voss’on’t lost his grip on the metal bar as he fell backward, and it clattered across the floor and against the farthest bulkhead.

The butt of the holstered blaster pistol was already clamped in Boba Fett’s fist. Before he could draw it and fire, Voss’on’t’s close-combat training asserted itself: with his elbows braced against the floor, he brought the heel of his boot hard under Boba Fett’s chin, snapping his helmeted head back. The blaster went flying from Fett’s loosened grasp. Before Boba Fett could recover, the renegade stormtrooper dived for the weapon. Voss’on’t landed with his chest scraping across the edges of the grate, outstretched hands clawing desperately for the blaster.

Fett didn’t wait to see if Voss’on’t came up with it. He scrambled onto his knees and snatched up the cage bar that had fallen from the stormtrooper’s grasp before. In one fluid motion, Fett twisted about, the bar poised javelinlike in one gloved hand; he saw Voss’on’t also kneeling a couple of meters away, turning with the blaster pistol gripped in his doubled fists. Behind the weapon, and through the eye-stinging haze filling the cargo hold, the harsh angles of Voss’on’t’s triumphantly grinning face could be seen as he took aim and squeezed his finger upon the weapon’s trigger.

The cage bar flew from Boba Fett’s hand as he whipped his arm straight before him. A bolt from the blaster pistol scorched an inch away from Fett’s helmet as he dived to one side. Across the hold, a screeching intake of breath sounded from Voss’on’t’ as the jagged tip of the cage bar ripped through his sleeve and tore a red wound through the flesh underneath. The force of the thrown bar was enough to pull one hand away from the blaster—but the other hand tightened its grip.

“Good … shot …” With his heart and lungs laboring in his chest, Voss’on’t stood up, his wounded arm pressed tight against his side in a vain attempt to stanch the flow of blood. Dark red ribbons wound past the hip of his grease-stained uniform trousers and down his thigh. “But not … good enough …”

Boba Fett made no reply, but watched as the blaster pistol in Voss’on’t’s shaking hand drew down upon an invisible line to the center of his helmet.

“I might’ve … put you in the cage …” Voss’on’t grimaced with the effort of pulling in enough breath to remain conscious. Beneath the smoke and ash streaking his narrow face, the scarred and chiseled flesh was as pallid white as a sheet of flimsiplast. “And kept you … alive …” He held the blaster, unwavering now, straight out in front of him. “But I’ve changed my mind.”

Fire and a blinding glare erupted through Slave I’s cargo hold, overwhelming the single bolt that shot out from the muzzle of the blaster. Boba Fett felt himself being thrown backward as the hold’s grated flooring ripped into pieces from the explosion that pushed apart the ship’s bulkheads as though they were mere fluttering sheets of metallic cloth. He knew what had happened, even as he fell again, with one forearm protectively shielding his helmet’s visor. From somewhere in the airless distance outside, the other ship, his unidentified enemy, had taken aim and fired its laser cannon, scoring a direct hit on his own ship’s hull.

Another explosion rumbled from deep in the bowels of Slave I, in the main engine compartments. Fire, laced with electrical sparks, white-hot wasps swirling in dense clouds of oily smoke, leapt up through the chasms that had been driven through the flooring and bulkheads. The blood that had already been spilled now hissed into red steam as the remaining atmospheric content shimmered with the fierce heat from below.

There he is—

Boba Fett spotted the renegade stormtrooper behind a wall of flame and black, coiling smoke. Stunned by the impact of the laser-cannon bolt and the catastrophic systems failure it had triggered, Voss’on’t had fallen to his knees and now-empty hands, his head lowered as though to preserve the last flickerings of consciousness inside his oxygen-starved brain.

At the same time, the ship’s alarm systems overrode the muting command that Boba Fett had given them. A chorded electronic wail sounded both inside his helmet and through the diminished air, as though the damage suffered by Slave I had given it a shrill, ululating voice, one with which it could keen its own death.

Tendrils of smoke streamed past Boba Fett like elongated ghosts as he strode through the flames; the ship’s hull had been breached in enough places that the vacuum outside had begun sucking out the remaining oxygen in the cargo hold. The fire from the main engine compartments had begun to diminish, but still remained high enough that its bright tongues lapped past Fett’s knees.

“Let’s go.” Boba Fett reached down through a wash of smoke and grabbed Voss’on’t underneath one arm. He lifted the stormtrooper up onto his wobbling legs.

Voss’on’t’s head lolled back, as though the bones had been surgically extracted from his neck. The fire’s heat had cauterized his wounded arm, stopping the flow of blood, but a thinner red line trickled from the corner of his mouth. The close impact of the laser-cannon bolt had taken him closer to death than any of Boba Fett’s weapons could have.

“Go ahead …” Voss’on’t’s eyelids were barely able to drag back above his unfocused sight. There was barely enough breath left in his lungs for his voice to be emitted as a dry, forceless whisper. “Finish … me off …”

“I told you before.” The other man was taller than Fett; he had to lift Voss’on’t higher and brace him against his chest, then step backward to pull him away from the flames and smoke. “You’re too valuable to let die.” Boba Fett took one hand away from where he had clutched the torn front of the stormtrooper’s insignia-less uniform, and prodded his gloved fingertips up underneath the edge of his own armor’s helmet. He took one last, lung-filling inhalation from the helmet’s air supply, then tugged and ripped the breathing tube out beneath the helmet’s lower edge. The tube extended only a few inches from the helmet; Boba Fett had to bring the stormtrooper’s face up close to his own, foreheads separated only by the dark visor, in order the thrust the end of the tube into Voss’on’t’s mouth.

The minute flow of oxygen from the helmet’s air supply triggered an automatic response in Voss’on’t. His back arched as his lungs filled reflexively, drawing deep from what little remained in the tiny canister inside the helmet. Voss’on’t coughed, expelling the tube.

Fett saw that the stormtrooper still had enough of his wits about him, despite the battering he had taken in the explosions that had ripped through the cargo hold, to clamp his mouth shut and hold in the life-restoring breath he had been given. Bearing Voss’on’t up, with one arm wrapped around him, Boba Fett dragged the unresisting figure through the smoke and toward the ladder leading up to the cockpit area.

The ladder still stood upright, though it swayed when Boba Fett put a hand upon one of the metal treads. Looking past the threads of smoke sifting toward the hull’s air leaks, he could see that one of the upper attachment points had been ripped loose by the laser-cannon bolt’s impact; the entire bulkhead behind the ladder had buckled nearly in two, as though crumpled in a giant fist.

A screech of tormented metal sounded, barely audible through the dinning layers of system alarms, as Boba Fett mounted the ladder and began the laborious process of carrying the barely conscious stormtrooper toward the cockpit. With Voss’on’t’s weight balanced precariously against himself, each higher tread he stepped upon threatened to break the ladder’s single remaining weld with the bulkhead above. If the ladder was to come crashing down, once he and his awkward burden were at the halfway point, the fall would be enough to send both of them plummeting through the broken grating below and into the smoldering pit of the main engine compartments. Boba Fett knew he wouldn’t be climbing out from there. With that much lethal hard radiation going unshielded, no one could.

The weld point broke just as Boba Fett reached for the top rung.

For a split second, the ladder swayed clear of the bulkhead, overbalanced by the combined weight of Fett and his hard merchandise. With Voss’on’t’s chest pressed against one shoulder, Boba Fett bent his knees into a tense crouch. The edge of the hatchway to the cockpit area drew farther away from his upraised hand. Lungs burning, fingers straining clawlike, he pushed his legs straight, leaping for the metal ridge above him.

His fingertips caught hold of the hatchway’s curved lower rim. The stormtrooper’s weight slipped in the grasp of Boba Fett’s other arm; dangling alongside the crumpled bulkhead, he squeezed his hold tighter around Voss’on’t’s chest, his own fist locked under the edge of the other’s shoulder blade, tight enough that he could feel the ends of the stormtrooper’s broken ribs grind against one another.

The only device that Boba Fett had left that would be of any use was the wrist-mounted arrow-dart with its trailing, tethered line coiled along his forearm. Right now, that arm was the one holding up Voss’on’t; he couldn’t do that, and aim and fire the dart. Even with his own carefully trained resources of strength and will, Boba Fett’s grip with his other hand upon the open cockpit hatchway above was beginning to fail, the sharp metal edge scraping slowly, centimeter by centimeter, across the fingertips of his battle armor’s glove.

There was no time for further calculation. Boba Fett loosened his grip upon the renegade stormtrooper. Voss’on’t’s weight slid lower against him as Fett brought his arm vertical and fired the arrow-dart toward the cockpit.

The breath that Voss’on’t had managed to hold now escaped in an involuntary gasp of pain as the tip of the dart scored a red line across his shoulder blade and neck. His torso was jerked higher as the trailing line, penetrating the back of his uniform jacket, gathered up the heavy oil- and bloodstained fabric like a sling beneath Voss’on’t’s arms, dragging him almost a full meter upward. The torn front of his uniform jacket slid across the visor of Fett’s helmet.

Boba Fett felt the trailing line of the dart grow taut, indicating that the barbed metal had snagged onto some anchoring point inside the cockpit. The dart’s built-in circuitry was programmed to both spread its barbs wider upon target contact and alter its final trajectory into a tight loop, giving the head section of the trailing line the chance to magnetically seize and fasten upon itself.

Using the control studs at the base of his battle armor’s glove, Boba Fett hit the arrow-dart’s retract function. The line reaching up into the cockpit went even tighter, as though strung from the ends of a primitive bow weapon. Boba Fett had to grip the line with his upraised hand and strain his bicep muscles against its tension to keep his own weight and that of Voss’on’t’s body from pulling his arm out of its socket.

The miniaturized traction engine embedded in the sleeve of Fett’s armor had been designed only to handle one humanoid-sized burden, not two; he could sense a warning glow of heat against the flesh of his forearm as the dart’s trailing line reeled back, drawing him and Voss’on’t slowly up toward the open hatchway. The ladder fell away from his boot soles, its length clattering against two angles of bulkhead, then falling to the grated floor of the cargo hold. A swirl of red sparks burst up as the ladder slipped through one of the jagged openings and tumbled farther into the ship’s bowels.

A tendril of grey smoke, lighter than the dark, oily clouds from the fire in the main engine compartments, leaked from a tear in Boba Fett’s sleeve. The heat against his skin increased to a white-hot burn as the retracting line brought him inches away from the metal ridge above him. With nothing to push against from below, Fett had to wait until the line had dragged him high enough to throw one elbow across the rim of the hatchway, then lever himself into position for pushing Voss’on’t up onto the floor of the cockpit area.

Voss’on’t came to, at least enough to realize what Boba Fett was trying to accomplish. The stormtrooper’s fingertips reached out and scrabbled a hold on to the cockpit flooring; with a kicking thrust, he managed to drag himself up and out of Fett’s supporting grasp.

With both arms free now, Boba Fett threw his other elbow across the hatchway’s lower rim and tensed to pull himself the rest of the way up.

“Hey … thanks …”

Fett heard the grating, smoke-harshened voice and looked up into Voss’on’t’s grinning face. The stormtrooper had rolled over and gotten himself into a sitting position, his one good arm braced behind himself, knees drawn up toward his chest. The narrowed eyes and angles features wore a black mask of sweat-streaked ash and oil; his leering smile broke through as though cut with a diagonal swipe of a vibroblade.

“Thanks,” repeated Voss’on’t. The cockpit’s air filters had cleared away enough smoke for the ex-stormtrooper to draw in a full breath. “I appreciate it. Now you can go die.”

One boot shot out, its sole catching Boba Fett directly in the visor of his helmet. The kick had enough force to knock him back from where he had clambered onto the lower rim of the hatchway; only the line tethered from his wrist into the cockpit behind Voss’on’t kept Fett from falling back down toward the cargo hold.

Boba Fett managed to grab the rim of the hatchway with one hand. He looked up and saw that Voss’on’t had gotten to his feet, and now stood gazing down at him. In one hand, Voss’on’t held a sharp fragment of metal, part of the debris that the laser-cannon bolts had scattered through the cargo hold. His ugly smile growing wider, Voss’on’t held the edge of the shard against the line running past him, from Fett’s wrist to its anchor inside the cockpit.

“This time,” said Voss’on’t, sneering, “it’s really goodbye. For you, at least.” As he pressed the cutting edge of the metal fragment harder against the line, he raised one booted foot and prepared to smash it down upon Boba Fett’s hand.

Before the boot came down, Voss’on’t was thrown off balance by the tethered line going suddenly slack. Pressing the miniature control studs at the base of his wrist, Boba Fett let the arrow-dart’s line reel out, until it had lengthened by several meters. That was enough for him to cock his free arm back and snap it forward again. The tethered line looped lassolike and snagged around Voss’on’t’s neck. Fett hit the wrist-mounted control studs again, retracting the line once more, into a choking garrote around the other man’s throat.

Voss’on’t staggered backward, fingertips clawing at the line digging under his throat. The pull from the taut line enabled Boba Fett to climb up into the hatchway.

With his eyes squeezed shut in pain, Voss’on’t didn’t see the blow from Boba Fett’s gloved fist that sent the stormtrooper sprawling onto his back, head slamming against the base of the pilot’s chair. Boba Fett reached over with his other hand and snapped the arrow-dart line free from his own wrist, pushed the dazed Voss’on’t over, and used the loose end of the line to bind Voss’on’t’s hands together with a hard knot. He pulled the rest of the line down to Voss’on’t’s ankles and bound them the same way. Then he picked Voss’on’t up by the front of his jacket, hoisted the stormtrooper to eye level, and threw him into the far corner of the cockpit.

“Seal off the cockpit area,” Boba Fett spoke aloud. He was already leaning over the control panel as Slave I’s onboard computer executed the command; with a hiss, the hatchway door closed behind him. With a few quick jabs at the controls, he silenced the alarm signals once again.

The silence was broken by Fett’s own deep, ragged breathing as his lungs refilled themselves from the cockpit’s reserves of oxygen. Those were enough to bring Voss’on’t back to full consciousness as well.

“Now … now what …” Hands tied behind himself, Voss’on’t lay on one shoulder and labored to speak. “Are you … going to do …”

Fett ignored him for a moment. With a few adjustments from the still-functioning navigational rockets, he had brought Slave I around to where he could at last see the other ship that had fired upon them. Even from this distance, where the visible details of his enemy were little more distinct than the stars behind it, he could recognize the vessel whose laser cannons had brought his own to the brink of destruction.

He knew as well whose vessel it was, and who had given the orders to fire.

It’s Xizor. Another adjustment to the controls brought the viewport’s optical magnification into the circuit. The outlines of the Falleen prince’s flagship were unmistakable—and intimidating. The ship was known to be one of the deadliest and most thoroughly armored in the galaxy, the equivalent of anything matching its gross tonnage in Emperor Palpatine’s war fleet. If Slave I had gotten into a full-pitched battle with it, there wouldn’t even have been this much of Boba Fett’s ship left hanging together.

The mystery of why the Vendetta hadn’t moved in for the kill was easy enough to determine. He’s holding back, decided Fett. Just waiting to see if there’s any sign of life. Prince Xizor was known to be something of a trophy collector; it would be entirely consistent for him to want the hard physical evidence—the corpses—of those he had set out to kill rather than just blowing them into disconnected atoms drifting in space.

The greater mystery was why Xizor had lain in wait and fired upon Slave I in the first place. Fett had been aware of no connection between Xizor and this high-stakes job of rounding up the renegade stormtrooper for which Palpatine had posted such an astronomical price. But there had to be some link—it was too much to believe that it was mere coincidence or just random malice on Xizor’s part. The Falleen prince’s mind was too coldly rational—similar to Boba Fett’s own in that manner—for anything like that to be the case.

Boba Fett lowered his gaze from the viewport and began punching in new commands on the control panel.

“What …” Voss’on’t’s voice was a harsh croak. “Tell me …

There was neither time nor need to explain to the merchandise lying on the floor of the cockpit. “I’m doing,” said Boba Fett, “the same thing I’ve been doing all along. Saving both our lives—whether you like it or not.”

With a final jab of his forefinger, he hit the button to fire up the one main engine that was still functioning. Slave I shuddered, its hull threatened to tear loose from the battered structural frame beneath, as the engine’s convulsive thrust blurred the stars in the viewport.

6

“What’s he doing?” The comm specialist leaned closer to the Vendetta’s forward viewport, scanning the sector ahead. “It’s amazing, Your Excellency—he must be still alive!”

Prince Xizor wasn’t amazed. Standing at the bridge’s controls, with one hand still resting upon the laser cannons’ target acquisition module, he watched as, in the star-filled distance, the ship known as Slave I fired up its remaining thruster engine and started to move. Another screen, smaller and mounted to the side of the viewport, showed the damage-assessment scan that had been run on the target: a complete schematic showed in glowing red the operational systems that had already shut down. There were only a few—the one engine, basic navigational equipment, life support in the cockpit area—that still appeared in the green that indicated ongoing functions. Crippled, but slowly gathering speed, Boba Fett’s ship had some of its own life left in it yet.

“He’s hard to kill,” said Xizor with a slow, admiring nod of his head. He liked that in a sentient creature; it made the final victory over one of them so much sweeter. Too many of the galaxy’s denizens, on whatever remote systems they could be found or on the homeworlds in the Empire’s center, gave up all too easily when they perceived the hand of the Black Sun about to set its grasp upon their throats. Deep within himself, Xizor possessed the characteristic Falleen disdain for those too weak to put up a struggle, even when facing certain death. For a Falleen, that was the moment when the struggle should be at its keenest, when there was no hope of extending one’s life even by a single heartbeat. Xizor had suspected for a long time, from when he had first envisioned the scheme in which Boba Fett was now fatally enmeshed, that the bounty hunter would not disappoint him in this regard. “Hard to kill, “Xizor mused aloud once more. “A very worthy prey. But then …” He turned his head and smiled at the comm specialist standing beside him. “A true hunter would be.”

The comm specialist appeared nervous, with a sheen of sweat upon his brow. As with the rest of the operations crew, arrayed at their posts in the Vendetta’s bridge, he was understandably eager that his master’s wishes, especially in something as important as this, would not go unfulfilled. At the same time none of them had the same innate confidence in the outcome of the pursuit that Xizor himself did. Which is as it should be, thought Xizor with satisfaction. Keeps them on their toes.

“Excuse me, Your Excellency”—the comm specialist raised a hand and pointed toward the high, concave surface of the central viewport—“but Boba Fett’s ship—Slave I—its velocity is increasing.” He glanced over at the readout numbers on one of the tracking monitors. “Rather substantially, in fact. Perhaps it’s time to finish him off. Otherwise …” The tech’s shoulders rose in a ticlike shrug. “He might actually get away.”

“Calm yourself.” The corner of Xizor’s mouth twisted in a contemptuous sneer. “Your fears are groundless.” That was one more emotional response that provoked scorn in a Falleen noble. “Where exactly do you think Boba Fett could run to? You can see for yourself that his ship no longer has the capability of making a jump into hyperspace.” Xizor pointed to the damage-assessment screen. “Even if he could—were he foolish enough to try it—the stress would blow that poor wreck into atoms. No …” Xizor gave another slow shake of his head. “There’s nothing to worry about now. We may bring his futile struggle to an end at our leisure.”

He could tell that the comm specialist was unconvinced, as well as the others surrounding him on the bridge. They did not possess the greatness of spirit to savor a moment such as this. A legend dies, mused Xizor, and it means nothing to them.

For Boba Fett was precisely that, a dark legend. One whose exploits had been for so long a source of fear and envy—and all the other spirit-lessening emotions that sentient creatures could inflict upon themselves—in every shadowed corner of the galaxy. Even though Boba Fett’s death had not been the primary aim of all of Xizor’s plotting and scheming, it was still an undeniable benefit to become the author of his demise. In the unspoken rules of the great, deadly game played among hunters, no prize was more desirable than the blood of an opponent upon one’s hands.

Xizor looked past the image of Boba Fett’s ship to the stars beyond. And someday—the thought burned within his breast—that blood will be from other opponents, even greater and more deadly than Boba Fett. The time would come when he would place his boot sole upon the neck of another helmeted figure, one who had long been the target of his hatred. If the web that Xizor spun had resulted in Boba Fett’s destruction, that was only a byproduct of the scheme meant to crush Lord Darth Vader. And when that vengeful goal had been accomplished …

After vengeance came ambition. Which for Prince Xizor was just as limitless. It was something that withered old fool Emperor Palpatine would discover too late to save himself. The mystical Force, which Xizor had felt more than once squeeze the breath from his throat, would not be enough to forestall that day of triumph for Black Sun and its commander.

Some things, thought Xizor with a thin smile, are more powerful than any Force. And over those things—fear, vengeance, greed, and so much else—his command extended as well.

Even the most pleasant meditations had to end eventually. Xizor brought his thoughts back from that future, glittering like light from a honed vibroblade, and returned it to those concerns over which his underlings fretted. “Let us proceed,” said Xizor. He gestured to one of the weapons techs standing behind him. “Reaccess previous target and prepare to fire.”

“Your Excellency …” The comm specialist sounded even more nervous than before. “That … that might not be such a good idea …”

Fearful insubordination angered Prince Xizor as thoroughly as any other kind. His heavy cape swung outward from his shoulders as he whirled about to face the other man, already cringing before the onslaught of his wrath. The violet tinge of his eyes darkened to a color closer to that of spilled blood as he pinned the comm specialist with his fiercely heated gaze. “You dare,” said Xizor, the lowered tone of his voice more intimidating than any increase in volume could have been, “to question my orders?”

“No! Of course not, Your Excellency—” The comm specialist actually took a step backward, hands raised as though to fend off a blow. A look of controlled panic swept around the faces of the other staff on the bridge. “It’s just thuh-that—” Stammering, the technician pointed with one hand to the viewport behind Xizor. “The situation has changed somewhat … suh-since you last looked at it …”

Brow creased, Xizor turned back to the viewport. He saw immediately what the comm specialist was referring to, even before the other man could manage an explanation.

“You see, Your Excellency … Boba Fett has maneuvered his ship so that it’s directly between ourselves and the web of Kud’ar Mub’at …”

The situation would have been obvious to any eye, let alone one as skilled in strategic matters as Prince Xizor’s. Beyond the image of the ship Slave I in the viewport, the larger mass of the arachnoid assembler’s drifting, self-constructed home and place of business could be seen, like a shabby, elongated artificial asteroid.

“To fire off any laser-cannon bolts now, Your Excellency, would be highly inadvisable.” The comm specialist had summoned up his last reserves of courage; his voice sounded a little less shaky. “Any evasive maneuvers on Boba Fett’s part might result in the bolts striking Kud’ar Mub’at’s web instead.” The comm specialist shrugged and spread his hands, palms upward. “Of course, that would be up to you to decide, as to whether to risk it or not. But given the ongoing business relations between Black Sun and the assembler—”

“Yes, yes; refrain from explanation.” Xizor irritably waved off the underling. “You don’t need to remind me about all that.” Sending a few laser-cannon bolts through Kud’ar Mub’at itself, and not just the assembler’s messily conglomerated web, would not have been any cause for grief; Xizor had already decided upon the elimination of this business associate, whose entangling concerns had grown so inconvenient. But to do so in this way, with all the repercussions that would follow from it becoming known throughout the galaxy that Black Sun had a short and fatal way with those that served them, would cripple Xizor’s further plans. Beyond that, the new ally that Xizor had slated to replace Kud’ar Mub’at was also inside the assembler’s web—Xizor had no intention of losing so potentially valuable a creature as Balancesheet, the crafty little accountant subnode that had declared its independence from it creator. “Hold your fire,” Xizor instructed the weapons systems techs behind him.

The comm specialist had put one hand to his ear, listening to a subaudible message being patched through the cochlear implant inside his skull. “Your Excellency—” he said, looking up at Xizor. “Kud’ar Mub’at has made direct contact with us. He wishes to have a word with you.”

All I need, thought Xizor irritably. “Very well—put it through.”

He listened to Kud’ar Mub’at’s high-pitched, nerve-grating voice through the speaker mounted above the bridge’s central control panel. “My so-esteemed Prince Xizor,” came the assembler’s voice. “Of course, as always, boundless is my trust in your wisdom and abilities. Never would I doubt the propriety of any action that was initiated by your spotless hands—”

“Get on with it,” growled Xizor. The panel microphone picked up his words and relayed them on a tight-beam connection to the web drifting in the distance, beyond Boba Fett’s ship. “I’ve got more urgent things to take care of than listening to you.” He kept an eye on the viewport and the image of Boba Fett’s ship, still gathering speed.

“Very well,” sniffed the assembler. Xizor could imagine it on its nest in the web, folding multiple jointed limbs more tightly around its pallid, wobbling abdomen. “Your display of temperament is perhaps understandable, but it does not diminish the admiration I—”

“Either say what you want of me or be silent.”

The tone of the assembler’s voice turned sour and sulky. “As you wish, Xizor. How is this for bluntness: you must be an idiot to have begun firing upon Boba Fett in open space. Do Falleens have no capacity for discretion? This entire sector is under constant observation because of the presence of my web here. Must I remind you that others are very likely watching? Some of those watchers are business associates of mine, or those with whom I might wish to do business at some time. I realize that your reputation would be enhanced by publicly eliminating the so-esteemed Boba Fett—but what about my reputation?” Kud’ar Mub’at’s voice grew louder from the panel speaker. “I certainly would prefer to have creatures killed rather than pay the money I owe them—don’t mistake me about that—but I would prefer if it didn’t become widely known that this sort of thing happens to them. Pray tell, who’s going to do business with me if they think they’re going to wind up dead?”

“Don’t worry about it,” replied Prince Xizor. Only a portion of his attention was given to the conversation with the absent assembler. “You can tell anyone you want that Boba Fett’s death had nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, but of course.” The voice coming from the speaker was tinged with sarcasm. “It just happened that he got blown to atoms while he was bringing a piece of hard merchandise to me, a piece for which I’d have to hand over a pretty sum of credits. Creatures will believe that, all right.”

“Let them believe whatever they will. You’ve got more pressing concerns right now.”

“What?” Kud’ar Mub’at sounded puzzled. “To what are you referring, Xizor?”

“Simple enough.” His own admiration for Boba Fett had increased, now that he could see what the bounty hunter was up to. “Your ‘business associate,’ for whom you’ve expressed such concern—Boba Fett—he’s headed right your way.”

“Well, of course he is. He’s got merchandise to deliver—”

“I’m afraid you don’t understand.” Bestowing bad news on another sentient creature was a minor diversion that paled next to murder and plunder, but it was one from which Xizor could still derive some pleasure. “Or perhaps more likely, you simply have no awareness of what condition his ship Slave I is in. But we’ve already done a complete damage assessment. So you can believe me, Kud’ar Mub’at, when I tell you—Boba Fett’s not going to be able to stop.”

“But … but that’s absurd!”

“No,” said Xizor. “It’s actually rather clever of him. He’s burning up the last remaining thruster engine aboard his ship, and he’s already achieved a considerable velocity. It’s a tribute to his piloting skills that he’s able to keep Slave I—what’s left of it—on a steady course, at that speed. But what Boba Fett can’t do now—no one would be able to—is bring Slave I to a halt before it crashes into your web. From our scanning of his ship, we know that all of his braking rockets are out of commission. Which, of course, is something that he knows as well.”

A wordless, panicked shriek came over the comm unit speaker. The image that came to Prince Xizor’s inner eye was that of Kud’ar Mub’at almost literally flying out of his nest inside the drifting web, with his spidery legs thrashing around him.

“How—” The absent assembler managed to regain a measure of control, enough to sputter out a desperate question. “How much time do I have?”

“I’d say …” Xizor glanced over at the tracking monitor and the rapidly flickering numbers on the readouts below it. “You’d better brace yourself.”

Before any more annoyingly high-pitched sounds could come over the speaker, Xizor reached over and broke the comm unit connection between the Vendetta and Kud’ar Mub’at’s web. A monitor below the main viewport showed the view from a remote scout module stationed on the other side of the web; glancing at the screen, Xizor could see the flaring jet of Slave I’s remaining thruster engine. From this angle it looked like a star going nova, all glaring flame, bright enough to sting one’s eyes.

“Your Excellency.” Standing beside Xizor, the comm specialist spoke up. “Do you have orders for the crew?”

Xizor remained silent for a moment longer, watching the bounty hunter’s ship as it sped on its trajectory straight toward Kud’ar Mub’at’s web. His cold admiration of Boba Fett—and his appreciation—went up another notch. The game of death had just been made more complicated—and much more interesting. There was no doubt about the eventual outcome; there never was when Xizor played at it. But however sweet the bounty hunter’s death would have been before, the pleasure was enhanced far beyond that now.

“Track and pursuit,” said Xizor at last. “There’s going to be some pieces to pick up. Interesting pieces …”

Boba Fett emerged from Slave I—he had to step back and kick the exterior hatchway door open; its operational power had failed and a loosened section of hull plating had wedged into one corner—and stepped into absolute, screeching chaos.

He’d expected as much. This result had been a part of his plan, from the moment he’d conceived the notion of plowing his ship into Kud’ar Mub’at’s space-drifting web. His long familiarity with the arachnoid assembler, their years of doing business together, had enabled him to scope out the web’s nature and capabilities. Kud’ar Mub’at had designed and spun the web out of self-extruded filaments, both structural and neural, so that it could incorporate bits and pieces of ships and other artifacts made by sentient creatures; both the web’s inside and outside were studded with those segments of durasteel, like functioning wreckage mired in the irregular, scum-thick surf of a frozen sea. That physical incorporation of such items had been due to Kud’ar Mub’at’s greed—its desire to magnify and glorify itself with trophies from those unfortunates who’d found themselves enmeshed too deeply in its schemes to get out—and to a need to preserve the web itself. The web had no other defenses; its ability to quickly incorporate and seal itself around anything that penetrated it was the only way it could maintain a life-supporting environment inside its curved, matted, and tangled fibrous walls.

With one gloved hand grasping the side of the hatchway, Boba Fett scanned the scene around him. The interior of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web was lit a shimmering blue-white by the phosphorescence of masses of illuminator subnodes. The simple creatures clung to the upper walls by their tiny, scuttlings legs and radiated the soft glow from the bioluminescent compounds in their translucent, distended abdomens, hardly more than the size of Boba Fett’s doubled fists. All of the shrieking noise in the web came not from the living light sources, tethered by neural filaments to their own creator, but from their subnode cousins, the faster-moving emitters of the sticky, viscous fluid by which the web repaired itself and incorporated fragments of ships into the crudely shaped structure.

The emitters scuttled around the web’s torn edges, where Slave I had broken through and mired itself. Before crashing into the web, Boba Fett had reoriented the ship from it usual vertically oriented, tail-downward position; that would have brought the rounded curve of the cockpit like a blunt hammer-blow against the web’s exterior. At the last second, a quick burst of one of the navigational jets had brought the sharper, knifelike projection of the hull above the cockpit toward the rapidly approaching web. Once Slave I had thrust its way into the web, thick fibers entangling around it, a final burst from the opposite jet had brought it upright again, so that the wider surface of the cockpit against the web’s interior brought it to a halt. The smell of the fibers that had been scorched black by the jets’ firing hung as an acrid miasma in the web’s pallidly lit cavern.

More than the web’s structure had been hurt in the ship’s impact. The web, a living thing itself, reacted to the trauma in its own pain-filled way. The din of shrieking that sounded in Boba Fett’s ears came from the other subnodes that had already been in this section of the web, rather than having scurried there to contain the damage. Most of them had been torn loose from the neural-fiber strands that had tethered them to their controlling parent Kud’ar Mub’at; some were mute, never having been given vocal abilities, but the others now gave idiot cries as they dropped from the rough domed ceiling of the space. The matted floor was thick with the scuttling forms, writhing in spasms of pain or scrabbling in tight little circles, their limited onboard cerebral functions completely overloaded by the sudden disconnection from the assembler on his nest in another part of the web. Spidery, crablike subnodes, trailing their snapped connectors behind them, clambered over Boba Fett’s boots as he stepped down from Slave I’s hatchway. He kicked a few aside as though they were chitin-shelled rats; a few of the smaller ones were unavoidably crushed beneath his boot soles, their husks crackling like thin eggshells.

Fett looked up toward the prow of his ship and saw that the emitter subnodes had almost finished sealing the web around the hull; only a section around the main thruster nozzles still extended out into the vacuum of space. The various high-pitched whistling noises that the web’s atmosphere had made, escaping through the torn structural fibers, slowly died out as the emitters went about their work, filling in the last of the gaps between the living biomass and the ship’s curved durasteel hull. Around Boba Fett, the blue-lit space grew steadily quieter, as more and more of the disconnected subnodes lapsed into a quivering catatonic state, overturned on their backs like sea creatures stranded by some planet’s receding tide. The silence that slowly overcame the previous hectic din was that of a partial death: as the web was strung with living fibers spun out from Kud’ar Mub’at’s own cortex and cerebrospinal system, to stand in an excised section such as this was like standing in some creature’s grossly magnified brain after an equally gigantic surgeon’s scalpel had cut away a wedge of grey matter.

“Let’s go.” Boba Fett reached back inside Slave I’s hatchway and grabbed the front of Trhin Voss’on’t’s uniform jacket, now hardly more than rags held together by its blood-tarnished metal fastenings. With a sharp pull, he got the former stormtrooper to his feet; another tug brought the other man stumbling out of the ship. “Time to get paid.”

Voss’on’t’s eyes were two burning nicks in his bruised, oil-stained face. The hands tied behind his back thrust his shoulders forward. “If you’re in such a hurry—” His voice was raw from both smoke inhalation and barely controlled rage. He nodded toward his boots and the segment of arrow-dart line that hobbled his ankles together. “Then you’d better untie these. Never get there, otherwise.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Fett. With a swift horizontal arc of his forearm, he clouted Voss’on’t across the face, sending him slamming back against the edge of Slave I, then sprawling among the twitching, dying subnodes that littered the space’s floor. Blood streamed from Voss’on’t’s nose as Fett looked down at him. “Let’s leave you tied up just the way you are, and you can forget about any more escape attempts.” Reaching down, he grabbed the rags of Voss’on’t’s jacket and hauled him upright again. “They’re not going to do you any good now. And I’ve started to find them annoying.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Voss’on’t sneered at him. His bound hands squeezed into white-knuckled fists, as though he were imagining them around Boba Fett’s neck.

The stormtrooper had been on the losing end of every exchange with Fett, going right back to the distant colonial mining world where Fett and his temporary partner Bossk had tracked him down. Yet he still displayed a deeply ingrained will to fight. It won’t do him much good, thought Boba Fett. There would be little difference in the outcome whether Voss’on’t continued to struggle and scheme, or whether he finally gave up and accepted his fate. That being the case, Boba Fett didn’t care which the stormtrooper wound up doing. It was just a matter of convenience.

A darker, more venomous expression settled across Voss’on’t’s face. “You might be able to get paid, bounty hunter. You managed to get your merchandise this far, so anything’s possible. But what are you going to do when Prince Xizor shows up here?” Voss’on’t had seen the image of Xizor’s ship on Slave I’s cockpit viewport, and had been able to identify it just as readily as Fett had. “And that’s going to be any minute now.”

“You don’t need to worry about that. I’ll deal with him then.” A length of loose cord dangled from the knot around Voss’on’t’s wrists; Boba Fett used that to pull him along, twisted partway around and barely able to walk. As they progressed toward the interior tunnel that would lead them to Kud’ar Mub’at itself, Fett glanced over his shoulder at his captive. “You didn’t appear surprised by Xizor being in this sector of space, waiting for us. It seems a reasonable assumption that you knew he’d be here.”

“Assume whatever you want.” Voss’on’t leaned back from the tug of the line around his wrists. “You’ll find out what the deal is soon enough. And you want to know something? It’s going to be a real surprise.”

Boba Fett maintained his own silence. And kept a hand on the butt of the blaster pistol strapped at his side.

“Ah … my inimitable associate … the esteemed … Boba Fett …” A halting voice, squeaking like rusted metal, greeted them as they emerged from the web’s central tunnel. “How charmed … I am … to see you once more …”

Standing in the center of the web’s main chamber, with the stormtrooper tethered a few steps behind him, Boba Fett gazed upon the arachnoid assembler. Or upon the crippled shell of what Kud’ar Mub’at had been; Slave I’s crashing into the web had obviously had an effect for the worse upon its master as well.

“You’re not looking too good, Kud’ar Mub’at.” It was a statement of plain fact; Boba Fett felt no great sympathy for the assembler. I’d better get my credits, thought Fett, before it dies.

“How … kind of you … to show such concern …” The pneumatic subnode that had formed Kud’ar Mub’at’s cushioned throne was apparently dead, its deflated and flaccid membrane extending around the assembler like a grey, waxen puddle. Kud’ar Mub’at itself was hunched down in the thicket of its spidery black legs, the inverted triangular face lowered and tilted to one side. Most of the compound eyes studding its visage appeared lifeless, the sentient spark gone out behind them, as though a gust of wind had blown out the guttering flame inside a lantern. Only the two largest eyes at the front seemed able to focus upon the web’s untimely visitors. “To be honest with you … there’ve been times … I’ve felt better …”

“Face it,” Boba Fett said bluntly. “You’re dying.”

“Oh, no … not at all …” The triangular head raised itself a bit, displaying a shakily lopsided imitation of a humanoid smile. “I’ll survive this … as I’ve survived other things …” A twiglike forelimb lifted, its end claw twitching and pointing to Kud’ar Mub’at’s head. “This is no more … than the results of … a neural feedback surge … from the crash … that’s all …” The claw tapped against the black shell of the assembler’s skull with a dry little clicking noise. “Your sudden entry … into my humble abode … most unfortunate …” Kud’ar Mub’at tried to raise itself a little higher in its deflated nest, but failed, collapsing once more into the broken tangle of its arms. “But you shall see … all things can be mended …” A crazed light shone in the largest of the assembler’s eyes. “I’ve had so much practice … creating additions to myself … outside my body … that I can create a new cortex inside here …” The raised claw tip dug harder at the skull behind the triangular face, as though already getting down to the repair job. “To replace the one … that the circumstances … of your arrival … damaged.”

“Perhaps you can.” Boba Fett shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me, though.”

“And what … precisely … does matter to you?”

“Getting paid.”

“Ah …” The assembler’s head twisted about, as though trying to force its visitor into focus. “You, at least … have not changed …” The raised claw tip shook as it pointed toward Boba Fett. “But you know the rules … to be paid … one must first deliver … the merchandise …”

Boba Fett stepped to one side, at the same time yanking the end of the cord tied around the renegade stormtrooper’s wrists. Trhin Voss’on’t fell forward, his head almost striking the soft edge of the assembler’s thronelike nest. Before he could rise up onto his knees, Boba Fett put his boot between the man’s shoulder blades and shoved him back down.

“There you go,” said Fett. “Good enough?”

“How could … I ever … have doubted you?” Kud’ar Mub’at’s gaze rested upon the bounty hunter for a moment, then lowered again to the merchandise sprawled in front of him. The one leg’s clawed tip reached down and caught the point of Voss’on’t’s chin, raising the stormtrooper’s bruised and scowling face toward it. “Seems … very much … like the desired object …” The claw tip pushed at one side of Voss’on’t’s face, displaying its profile. “Though of course … verification … will be needed …”

“Don’t play games with me.” With one hand, Boba Fett reached out and grabbed the end of Kud’ar Mub’at’s raised forelimb. He pulled the assembler partway out of its nest, bringing the triangular face closer to the dark visor of his helmet. “If I say this is Trhin Voss’on’t—then that’s all the verification you need.” His gloved hand tossed the assembler back onto the deflated subnode. “I didn’t go to all the trouble that I did just to bring back the wrong piece of merchandise.”

“Of … course … not …” Kud’ar Mub’at slowly disentangled itself from its own unresponsive limbs. The effort caused a tremor to run through the assembler’s body, its globular abdomen pulsating visibly. “Would I doubt you … my esteemed Boba Fett?” The assembler’s head slowly shook back and forth. “My faculties are not so damaged … as for that … to be possible.” The lopsided imitation smile showed once again. “But I am not … the one … who is paying … for this merchandise …”

“You’re supposed to be holding the credits.”

“And so … I am … but there’s another involved … and he decides when you get paid …” Kud’ar Mub’at’s smile turned even uglier. “And if … you do …”

Those words were not to Boba Fett’s liking. His preference was always for straightforward business deals, delivery of merchandise followed by prompt payment of the bounty. This deal had become far more intricate than that—though he already had a notion about who was behind these complications. That’s why Prince Xizor showed up, decided Boba Fett. Somehow, it must have been the Falleen’s credits, rather than Emperor Palpatine’s, that got put up for the return of Trhin Voss’on’t. And Xizor would rather kill me than pay me.

“It looks like … you’re starting … to figure out a few things …” The halting words were tinged with Kud’ar Mub’at’s sly laughter. The assembler had a knack for knowing what another sentient creature was thinking, even if it had to read those thoughts through the dark visor of a Mandalorian battle-armor helmet. “About … what kind of job … you took on …”

Another possibility occurred to Boba Fett. Maybe, he thought, the Emperor did put up the bounty. Voss’on’t had been, after all, a servant of the Empire; the betrayal of his stormtrooper’s oath would have been more of an affront to Palpatine than anyone else. But the bounty that Palpatine had put up for him might very well have tempted even a creature with the vast resources of the Black Sun criminal organization at his command—such as Xizor. Or else Xizor wasn’t interested in the credits for bringing back Voss’on’t, but was more concerned about currying favor with one of the few beings in the galaxy more powerful than he. If Xizor was able to claim that he had tracked down and captured the renegade stormtrooper, his prestige at the Imperial court on the planet of Coruscant, and his influence with Palpatine, would overshadow that of Lord Vader. Boba Fett was more than aware of the stories of bad blood between Xizor and Vader; there was little possibility of two such rivals for the Emperor’s favor being anything other than enemies.

Whether Prince Xizor was after the bounty that had been posted for Voss’on’t, or something more intangible and more valuable, made little difference to Boba Fett. If he plans on taking something from me, then he’s made a mistake. One he’ll regret …

“All I know,” said Boba Fett aloud, “is that I’ve done the job that was put up. I don’t care whether it was Emperor Palpatine or Prince Xizor who was really behind it. I only work for myself. And I just want the bounty that was promised me.”

“You poor fool.” Kud’ar Mub’at’s scorn appeared to reinvigorate the damaged creature. “You have no idea … for whom you’ve been working … all along …” The one claw tip extended toward Boba Fett. “You’ve been part of Xizor’s schemes … and mine … for a long time now …”

From underneath Boba Fett’s boot, the stormtrooper Voss’on’t turned a sneer upward at his captor. “How does it feel, bounty hunter? You’re not the winner in this game—you’re the pawn.”

A thrust of the boot flattened and silenced Voss’on’t again. “What are you talking about, Kud’ar Mub’at?”

“Very … simple …” The arachnoid assembler fumbled its sticklike legs tighter around itself. “Our little scheme … yours and mine … to break up the old Bounty Hunters Guild …” Kud’ar Mub’at shook its narrow head. “That was Prince Xizor’s idea … I only went along with it … because he made it worth my while … but he’s the one who wanted to break up the Guild … and you did that for him …”

“Then you lied to me.” Boba Fett’s voice was as emotionless as always, but inside him there was a spark of anger.

“A mere matter … of business … my dear Boba Fett.” In its crippled fashion, Kud’ar Mub’at imitated a nonchalant humanoid shrug. “That’s all …”

“What else did you lie to me about?”

“You’ll find out … soon enough …” Kud’ar Mub’at’s smile didn’t diminish as it gazed at Boba Fett, then turned toward one of the smaller fibrous corridors that branched off the web’s central space. Another of the assembler’s subnodes, a fully functioning one, scuttled out of the corridor and onto the tip of its parent’s feebly extented forelimb. “Tell me … my dear little Balancesheet …” Another forelimb tenderly stroked the subnode’s head, a miniature version of Kud’ar Mub’at’s own. “Has our other guest … arrived …”

Boba Fett recognized the subnode creature as the one that had always taken care of the financial details from Kud’ar Mub’at’s business dealings. More than once, the tiny scuttling Balancesheet had paid out the bounty that had been held in escrow by its creator. The sharp intelligence that had always been discernible in the subnode was still visible there, completely undiminished, as though it had been unaffected by the neural overload resulting from the crash of Slave I into the web. That was a mystery, but one that Boba Fett didn’t have time to wonder about now.

“The Vendetta is just now docking with us.” As though to confirm Balancesheet’s statement, a shudder ran through the rough structure around them; somewhere in the distance, the sleek mass of Prince Xizor’s flagship was linking up with the larger subnodes that allowed visitors to transfer over. “I have been in communication with Xizor,” said Balancesheet, perched on Kud’ar Mub’at’s raised forelimb. “He informs me that he is greatly looking forward to our meeting.”

“I imagine … he is …” Kud’ar Mub’at’s other limbs twitched and its lipless smile widened. “All creatures of business … relish the successful conclusion … of a project …”

“Then he and I have something in common.” Boba Fett gave a quick nod. “Let’s get this over with.” He took his boot from between Trhin Voss’on’t’s shoulder blades and strode over to the mouth of the corridor leading to the docking area. From its holster, he drew out his blaster pistol.

Head still tilted to one side, Kud’ar Mub’at looked at him with alarm. “What … are you doing …” In front of the assembler, Voss’on’t managed to scrabble into a sitting position, also watching Boba Fett. “This is … not necessary …”

“I’ll tell you what’s necessary and what’s not.” Carefully and slowly, Boba Fett pointed the blaster’s muzzle at Kud’ar Mub’at and Voss’on’t in turn. “If you both want to live a little longer, you’ll stay quiet.” He raised the blaster up by the side of his helmet. “And not spoil this little surprise for Prince Xizor.”

The footsteps against the web’s resilient tangle of fibers, from several creatures coming down the corridor, were already audible. Boba Fett flattened himself against the side of the opening, blaster at the ready.

“Watch out—”

He had known that Voss’on’t would try to warn Xizor as soon as the Falleen prince appeared. A quick bolt from the blaster pistol, hitting Voss’on’t in the shoulder and knocking him back against the base of Kud’ar Mub’at’s nest, served both to silence him and distract Xizor’s attention. That gave Boba Fett the microsecond he needed to get an arm around Xizor’s throat and put the muzzle of the blaster against his head.

“Tell your men to back off.” Boba Fett used Xizor as a shield, putting the Falleen between himself and the two Black Sun guards that had been just behind in the web’s corridor. “I want their blasters on the floor—now.”

Xizor seemed more amused than surprised by what had happened. “Very well,” he said calmly. “Do as the bounty hunter says.” The two scowling guards lowered the blaster pistols they had so quickly unholstered, then tossed them into the center of the space. “You know—” Xizor turned his head, looking back at Boba Fett. “The guards are only a formality. I could kill you in a second. And I’d hardly have to move at all.”

“You don’t have a second.” Boba Fett kept the blaster aimed straight at the prince’s skull. “If you want to test your speed against mine, go ahead. But right now you’ve got a lot more to lose than I do.”

“True enough,” replied Xizor almost cordially, but still maintaining his haughty nobility. “I regret having backed you into this corner, Boba Fett. Desperate creatures seek desperate remedies for their situations. Which is a shame in this case, as you and I have more interests in common than you might otherwise suspect.”

The Falleen prince’s smooth words didn’t impress Fett. With a shove against Xizor’s back, Boba Fett pushed him toward Kud’ar Mub’at and the stormtrooper still bound hand and foot on the central space’s floor. Boba Fett took a step backward, to where his blaster pistol had an angle on the others, including the two Black Sun guards at the mouth of the corridor.

“There’s no need for that.” Prince Xizor’s cold half smile almost made it seem as if he were somehow in charge of the situation. “We can discuss these business dealings like civilized creatures. Here—” He gestured in command toward the two guards. “Return to the Vendetta. Your presence is no longer necessary here.”

“But—” one of the guards protested.

“Your presence was hardly of any value before; why should it be now?” Xizor repeated the gesture. “Go. Leave us.” As the Black Sun guards turned and disappeared down the corridor, Xizor spread his empty hands apart. “You see, Fett? I intend you no harm. Quite the contrary, in fact. You are a valuable entity to me.”

“Difficult to believe.” Boba Fett didn’t lower the blaster pistol in his hand. “Given that you were so recently trying to blast me into atoms with your ship’s laser cannons.”

“A misunderstanding,” said Xizor soothingly. “These things sometimes happen in the course of business. Just as it sometimes happens that a person such as myself might change his mind about what needs to be done. And who needs to be eliminated.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Fett. “But I don’t buy it.”

“You have a right to be skeptical. I’m sure our mutual friend and associate here has been telling you some interesting things. Information that might not reflect too well upon me …”

“My most esteemed … Prince Xizor …” The arachnoid assembler’s forelimbs quivered. “You mistake … my intentions …” Kud’ar Mub’at’s words stumbled out, as though the Falleen were holding the blaster on him. “I would never …”

“Don’t waste our time,” Xizor said coldly. “There are matters that you need to be informed of as well, Kud’ar Mub’at.” The edge of anger in Prince Xizor’s voice made his attitude of command even more apparent. “You deceive yourself if you assume that I have any continued need for your services.”

“But …”

“Silence!”

Boba Fett broke into the exchange between the two other creatures. “I’ll say when anybody should talk or not.” He aimed the blaster pistol straight toward Xizor. “All right?”

Xizor gave a thin smile and a nod. “As you wish. For now.”

“The assembler said you were behind the plot to break up the old Bounty Hunters Guild. Is that true?”

“Does it matter?” Xizor looked at him almost pityingly. “If there was something that I wished to achieve through destroying the Guild—and I’ll admit there was—that doesn’t negate its value for you. Let’s face it: many times, in its own crude, bumbling way, the Bounty Hunters Guild got in your way. As an organization it was a rival for those very same pieces of hard merchandise that you wished to procure for their bounties. Now the Guild is no more, and you face any other bounty hunter as an individual, on his own, without anyone to back him up. Thus your work is made that much easier and more profitable.” Xizor’s cruelly smiling gaze seemed to penetrate the visor of Boba Fett’s helmet. “So what is there for you to complain of?”

“Being taken for a fool. That’s what.” Boba Fett used the blaster pistol in his hand to point toward Kud’ar Mub’at. “If there was something you wanted done—by me—then that’s who you should’ve come to. Instead of bringing in a go-between like this.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Xizor gave a judicious nod. “Perhaps I underestimated you, bounty hunter. There might be even more in common between us than I at first suspected. I’ll remember that—for our future business dealings.”

“Assuming you have a future.” The blaster pistol swung back toward the Falleen. “I haven’t decided about that,” said Boba Fett. “If I wasn’t in the loop on this little scheme of yours, there must’ve been a reason. The same reason that you had your ship’s laser cannons fire on Slave I as soon as I came out of hyperspace. You didn’t want me to still be alive after all your plotting and scheming was finished.” Fett raised the blaster higher, sighting down the length of its barrel toward Xizor. “Why is that?”

“Do you want the truth?” Xizor shrugged. “You’re a dangerous individual, bounty hunter. You have a habit of coming out on top, no matter what kind of situation you find yourself in. That can be inconvenient for other creatures. And very inconvenient for Black Sun. We’re engaged in our own war with the Empire, regardless of whether that fool Palpatine knows who is on his side and who isn’t. But I intend to win that war, bounty hunter, no matter what.” The Falleen’s voice hardened. “The situation has already been complicated by this doomed Rebellion, even though it’s to Black Sun’s advantage that the Emperor’s attention is diverted by it.” Xizor slowly shook his head. “But there can only be one winner at this game, however many players are sitting at the board.”

“And you thought it would be better for you—and for Black Sun—if there was one less.”

“Precisely,” said Xizor. “I admire the precision of your analysis. And you can believe this, if nothing else that I tell you. If I had continued to want you dead, now that you’ve accomplished the job I had for you—the real one, that of smashing the Bounty Hunters Guild—then all your vaunted survival skills would have done you no good at all. Crashing into the web here was a clever move, but it was the only one left to you. How much time do you think it would have bought you if I hadn’t changed my mind about the desirability of your death?” The corner of Xizor’s mouth curled into a sneer. “The life of some scheming assembler and his assortment of scuttling little subnodes wouldn’t have stopped me from turning my laser cannons on this web and blowing it into tattered shreds drifting in space.”

“Wuh-what …” Xizor’s words brought a startled reaction from Kud’ar Mub’at. Even in its crippled condition, it managed to draw itself up higher in the flaccid nest. “You can’t … mean that …” Then the assembler visibly relaxed, even managing a smile of relief. “Of course … you’re only joking, my dear Xizor … if that were true … then you would have gone ahead … and destroyed my humble … abode …” The narrow triangular head shook back and forth. “But … you didn’t …”

“I didn’t refrain from blowing away this floating garbage pile because of any concern for you.” Xizor turned his head to give the assembler a cold merciless gaze. “Your value to me has long been marginal, Kud’ar Mub’at. And now it’s zero.”

A hissing shriek sounded from the assembler; its forelimbs flailed in rage. “You think so … do you, Xizor …” Rage was enough to bring the larger compound eyes into focus. “After all … I’ve done for you …” Kud’ar Mub’at’s head shook back and forth. “And all … I continue to do … for you and Black Sun …” One claw tip trembled as it pointed at Xizor. “You survive … only as long … as your affairs remain secret …” With the same claw, the assembler pointed at itself. “I am the one … who keeps those secrets for you … I am the one … who acts as your go-between … everywhere in the galaxy …” The narrow face contorted with withering anger. “How will you keep Palpatine in the dark … without me … to do your dirty work for you …”

“Simple enough,” replied Xizor evenly. “I have another business associate who will take your place. One who has all your contacts, all your connections; one who knows your business better than you do.”

“Impossible!” All of Kud’ar Mub’at’s spidery limbs thrashed the stale air in the chamber. The accountant subnode called Balancesheet had already scurried onto the nearest wall for safety. “There is.… no such creature …” The assembler’s reedy voice spiraled into a high-pitched, fragmented scream. “Anywhere … in the galaxy …”

With the blaster pistol still covering the others before him, Boba Fett watched the small drama play out between the Falleen prince and the arachnoid assembler. He already had an idea what the final act was going to be.

One of Prince Xizor’s hands reached out, languid and graceful, yet possessed of untrembling power. He held his open palm upward, and the subnode Balancesheet scuttled onto it. The miniature version of its parent turned around in the small space and set its multilensed gaze upon Kud’ar Mub’at.

“You old fool.”

The subnode’s words were no longer spoken in the tone, both efficient and obsequious, that it had always used before. Now its voice was both deeper and touched with a newly won authority. To Boba Fett’s eyes, the subnode even appeared slightly larger than before, as though it were already literally expanding into its new role in life. Perched on Xizor’s hand, Balancesheet raised its own forelimbs in a expansive gesture.

“Things will be very different now,” said Balancesheet. Its brilliant glittering eyes glanced over at Boba Fett. “For many of us. And yet, in certain ways, things will remain exactly the same. There will be a member of our unique species, an arachnoid assembler, at the center of a vast, invisible web spanning the galaxy.” The little subnode’s voice rose in volume and pitch. “Arranging delicate matters, pulling strings, putting one creature in contact with another—all those delicate items of business that one of our breed is capable of doing so well. But there can only be one web like that, and only one assembler listening to and making those little tugs upon its strands. And that assembler’s name will no longer be Kud’ar Mub’at. You’ve had a long time at the center, time in which you’ve grown old and fat and stupid. But that time is done now.”

At the base of Kud’ar Mub’at’s nest, the stormtrooper Voss’on’t looked up at the small creature perched on the Falleen’s hand. The grimace on Voss’on’t’s face spelled both repugnance and incomprehension. It was obvious that he wasn’t sure what was going on, but had figured out that it wasn’t going to do him any good.

“An excellent demonstration, don’t you think?” Prince Xizor smiled cruelly as he held his new business associate up at his own eye level. “That a powerful entity may be housed within an unimposing physical form. It should serve as a reminder to all of us that appearances can be deceiving.”

Boba Fett watched as the larger assembler twitched and shook uncontrollably in its nest. The revelation had struck Kud’ar Mub’at dumbfounded. Its lipless mouth hung open, gaping at its own creation, now completely independent—and triumphant.

“Such a thing … cannot be …” The trembling in Kud’ar Mub’at’s limbs grew even more pronounced and erratic, as though it were trying to reassert its will over the mutinous Balancesheet. “I … I made you!”

“And if you had not been so blind,” replied Balancesheet, “and besotted with your own cleverness, you would have been able to detect that I was no longer merely an extention of your own neurosystem.” In one of its forelimb claws, Balancesheet held up the thin, pallid strand that had once linked it to the living web around it. The broken end dangled from the former subnode’s grip, a few centimeters from the palm that held Balancesheet aloft. “I was free from you even before Boba Fett’s ship crashed into the web.”

Like a broken thing, Kud’ar Mub’at shrank back down into its nest. “I … had … no idea …” The spidery limbs folded around its abdomen, as though trying to preserve the fading warmth of life. “I trusted you … I needed you …”

“That was your mistake,” said Balancesheet coldly. “And your last one.”

Prince Xizor extended his hand toward the chamber’s curved wall; Balancesheet scuttled from his palm and onto the densely tangled structural fibers. “I’m afraid,” said Xizor, “that the business relationship between us is over now, Kud’ar Mub’at.” The edges of Xizor’s cape swung forward as he folded his massive arms across his chest. “While Black Sun still has need of a go-between for certain delicate matters where we wish to keep our own participation as secret as possible, what we don’t need is an associate who has grown either too complacent or too senile to notice this small rebellion taking place under its own nose. You’ve already lost a war, Kud’ar Mub’at, that you didn’t even know was being fought. Black Sun can’t afford to be sentimental about what you’ve done for us in the past; we have to go with the winner.”

Kud’ar Mub’at’s voice wavered with fear. “What … what are you going … to do?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.”

“Nobody’s finding out anything,” said Boba Fett. He had listened to the exchange between the Falleen prince and the arachnoid assembler with mounting impatience. The blaster pistol rose in his hand once more, reasserting its hold on the others’ attention. “That is,” he continued, “until my business is taken care of.”

“Of course.” Xizor gave a nod of acknowledgment. “But you see, bounty hunter—this is your business. My new associate Balancesheet was the one who convinced me that you should be allowed to go on living. And that was after I had already decided that you should be killed.” An indulgent though still cruel smile showed on Xizor’s face. “You’re a fortunate creature. Many in Black Sun will testify that it’s a rare occasion when I change my mind.”

“Then why did you?”

From its perch on the chamber wall, Balancesheet answered. “My analysis was that you’re worth more to me alive than dead, Boba Fett. With the old Bounty Hunters Guild now dismantled, there’s no one in your chosen profession with your resources and skills. Black Sun—as well as the other clients whose accounts I’ve inherited—will still have need of an effective bounty hunter such as yourself. The consideration that had prompted Prince Xizor’s previous decision to kill you was based upon seeing the need to reduce the number of creatures who were aware—or who might become aware—that he and Black Sun had been behind the anti-Guild operation from the beginning.” The former subnode spoke as matter-of-factly as if it had been adding up a long column of numbers in its head. “But as I pointed out to Xizor—we were having our discussion via comm unit the whole time you were talking here—getting rid of Kud’ar Mub’at accomplishes the same thing, and more. Not only do we eliminate the weakest link in the chain—after all, an assembler buys and sells information all the time—but we also leave a more valuable business associate alive. One that would owe us a favor as well.”

Boba Fett shook his head. “If you’re expecting gratitude, then I’m in short supply. And you’re the ones who owe me, remember? For him.” He pointed with the blaster toward Voss’on’t. “Nobody leaves here, dead or alive, until the bounty gets paid out.”

“That’s right!” Kud’ar Mub’at unfolded his forelimbs, stretching their sticklike lengths out toward Fett. “Don’t … trust them,” the assembler cried in agitation. “They’re … they’re trying to cheat you.” A pleading tone filtered into the high-pitched voice. “I’m … the only one … who’s on your side …”

“Shut up.” Boba Fett knocked the assembler’s claws away with a swipe of the blaster pistol. “If there’s anybody on my side, I haven’t found them yet.” He turned his visor-shielded gaze, and the blaster, toward Prince Xizor. “So how about it?”

“The bounty? Very well.” Xizor gave a slight nod, then turned and gestured with one hand toward Balancesheet. “Transfer the funds being held in escrow on Coruscant to the main operating and receipt account of the bounty hunter Boba Fett.” He glanced back at Boba Fett and smiled. “You didn’t really think all those credits were being kept here, did you?”

“Doesn’t matter where they were.” Boba Fett kept the blaster pistol raised. “As long as they wind up in the right place.”

“The credits are already there,” said Balancesheet. “I signaled for the transfer to be made before I had my own discussion with Prince Xizor.” This time a trace of self-satisfaction sounded in the former subnode’s voice. Its small compound eyes looked toward the Falleen. “I was confident that we would wind up in agreement on this matter.”

Xizor’s eyes narrowed to slits. His courtly manner of just a few seconds before seemed to have evaporated. “Assumptions such as that might cause difficulties between us in the future.”

“Perhaps.” The tiny creature didn’t appear intimidated. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”

Through his own comlink mounted inside his helmet, Boba Fett accessed the remote communications functions aboard Slave I. It took only a few seconds to verify the sum that had been in the now-empty escrow account, and that a transfer had gone through into his own account. The bounty for Trhin Voss’on’t was his now.

“Fine,” said Boba Fett. The blaster pistol stayed raised in his hand. “You two can sort out your business affairs any way you want. They don’t concern me. The only other item on my agenda is making sure that I get out of here alive. All those credits don’t mean much if I’m too dead to spend them.”

“I’ll guarantee you safe passage.” Prince Xizor pointed down the web’s central corridor, back toward Slave I mired in the fibrous structure. “You’ve got your bounty now. I’d suggest you return to your ship. You’ve delivered your hard merchandise, and we don’t have anything more to discuss. And frankly”—Xizor glanced around the chamber with distaste—“I’ve spent enough time here already.”

“That’s one thing we agree on, then.” Boba Fett regarded the Falleen over the barrel of the blaster pistol. “But for the rest—I have my doubts. How much do you think I trust you, Xizor? You could be lying to me now, the same way Kud’ar Mub’at was when I got involved in this whole business.” Fett slowly shook his head. “You know that my ship is barely capable of traveling; I can nurse it along to the nearest planet with an operating repair yard if I take it slow. But I’m not going to sit out there and be a sitting duck for you to fire off your laser cannons at again.”

“You should weigh your words a little more carefully, bounty hunter.” The cruel smile had long vanished from Xizor’s harshly chiseled features. His violet-tinged eyes narrowed into slits that might have been cut with the point of a vibroblade. One hand shot out and grabbed the barrel of the blaster pistol being held on him. His fist squeezed tighter on the weapon, but made no move to push it away; it remained aimed directly at his chest. “I gave you the word of a Falleen noble; that should be enough to remove any doubts concerning your fate. If not, think on what my associate Balancesheet has told you: we have determined that you are worth more to us as a living bounty hunter than a dead one. Don’t tempt me to change my mind once more on that point.”

“There’s something I haven’t decided, though.” The blaster remained locked between Boba Fett and Xizor, with the bounty hunter’s finger tight against the trigger. “I don’t know,” continued Fett, “if you’re worth more to me alive or dead.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said Xizor coldly. “I’ve humored you long enough, allowing you to keep this thing pointed at me. If it pleased you to talk business while waving a blaster around, then so be it. But if you’re planning on firing it, you’d better try doing it soon. I’ve just about run out of patience.”

“So have I.”

“Believe me, bounty hunter—you’ll run out of luck just as quickly. You kill me, and what do you think would happen next? Even if my guards didn’t find out within minutes, where do you think you’d run to in your crippled ship? I can assure you, Black Sun would not take well to the loss of its leader—and the life of that assassin would be a very brief proposition.” Xizor’s hard gaze drilled through the visor of the Mandalorian battle-armor helmet and into Boba Fett’s own. “It’s not a matter of sentiment, bounty hunter; just business, pure and simple.” He took his hand away from the barrel of the blaster pistol. “Now you have to decide.”

Boba Fett weighed the other creature’s words. A few seconds of silence ticked away, then Fett nodded. “I appear to have no choice,” he said. “Except to trust your word.” He lowered the blaster and slipped it back into its holster. “Whether I want to or not.”

“That’s smart enough.” The chill half smile reappeared on Xizor’s face. “You don’t have to figure out everything in this galaxy; just enough to survive will do.” He turned his gaze around to the former subnode Balancesheet, still perched on the chamber’s wall near him. “Send for my guards,” he ordered. “And have them bring the others—the cleanup crew—with them. It’s time to bring this show to an end.”

The renegade stormtrooper had silently watched the tense exchange between the bounty hunter and the Falleen noble. Now, as Boba Fett turned away, Voss’on’t called after him, “Take care of yourself.” The words were filled with mocking venom. “I want you all in one piece, Boba Fett. For the next time we meet up.”

Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder at the other man. “I don’t think there’s going to be a next time. It doesn’t matter who wanted you returned to them, or who put up the bounty for you.” He slowly shook his head. “It doesn’t even matter if you were part of the scheme to break up the old Bounty Hunters Guild.” Boba Fett turned and walked back toward Voss’on’t, then grabbed the rags of his jacket front and pulled him partway up from the chamber’s matted floor. “Did you really think I hadn’t figured that part out?” A rare tinge of anger sounded in Boba Fett’s carefully emotionless voice. “The bounty for your return was far too much for a stormtrooper’s life, no matter what he might have stolen. Ernperor Palpatine doesn’t buy his vengeance at that high a price. There’s always something else he wants, some other grand scheme involved. But I’m happy to take the credits, no matter the ultimate reason they were paid out.”

“All right—” Voss’on’t’s expression had gone from a sneer to burning anger as he had listened to Boba Fett. “So you’re further ahead of the game than I thought. You must feel clever, huh?”

“Clever enough,” said Fett. “Now let’s see how clever you are.” He let go of Voss’on’t, dropping him back to the chamber floor. “Didn’t you hear what Balancesheet and Prince Xizor said just now? They don’t want any more creatures around than necessary who know the truth behind this scheme to break up the Bounty Hunters Guild. They’ve already decided to get rid of Kud’ar Mub’at. What makes you so confident that they’ll want to leave you still alive?”

Voss’on’t was taken aback by Boba Fett’s words; it took him a moment to sputter out his reply. “You’re … you’re wrong! You don’t know anything about that! Everything I did … I did it in the service of the Emperor!” Voss’on’t’s eyes went wide, the tone of his voice growing more desperate. “The Emperor wouldn’t let anything happen to me now … not after all the risks I went through …” He snapped his beseeching gaze toward Xizor. “It wouldn’t be right … it wouldn’t be fair …”

“You’re going to discover,” said Boba Fett quietly, “that Palpatine is the one who decides what’s fair and what’s not.” He turned away and strode toward the chamber’s exit.

“Wait! Don’t …”

Another voice, a higher-pitched shriek, sounded after Boba Fett. At the mouth of the web’s corridor, he found himself suddenly encumbered by the sticklike limbs of the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at. It had managed to scramble off its flaccid nest and lunge after him. Boba Fett looked down and saw the assembler’s triangular face below, the compound eyes peering futilely for some sign of sympathy behind the helmet’s dark visor.

“Take me with you,” pleaded Kud’ar Mub’at. “You’ll see … I can still be of some … use to you …”

Boba Fett peeled the creature’s limbs away from himself. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Business partners always wind up getting in my way. Then I have to do something about them.” He shoved the assembler back toward the center of the main chamber. “You’re just as well off with your other business associates.”

Before he turned and walked away, Fett caught a glimpse of Prince Xizor’s guards; they had returned and had pulled Trhin Voss’on’t up between them. The look of panic on the stormtrooper’s face was the last he saw before he continued heading back to Slave I.

The web started to die before he even reached the ship.

A shudder ran through the walls around Boba Fett, as though the heavy structural fibers had suddenly contracted in upon themselves. The smaller, entangled fibers that formed the shell of the web scraped across each other, like rough woven fabric being pulled apart by invisible giant hands. A sudden wind came close to knocking Boba Fett off balance as the atmospheric pressure inside the web fell. The rush of oxygen to the surrounding vacuum tore the tattered rents in the web open wider; Boba Fett felt the chill of space seep through his Mandalorian battle armor as he clamped his teeth on the helmet’s breathing tube, drawing in its last store of oxygen. As the tangled floor buckled beneath his feet, he fought his way toward Slave I.

He knew that in the distance behind him, the assembler Kud’ar Mub’at was facing the Black Sun cleanup crew. An operation such as that would be as thorough, and final, as Prince Xizor’s commands would dictate. When they were done, there would no longer be a Kud’ar Mub’at, or the web that had once formed the assembler’s private little world.

The web’s death throes intensified as the interwoven neural fibers reacted to their creator’s agony. On all sides of the central corridor and above Boba Fett’s head, the tethered subnodes thrashed and convulsed, stirred from their torpor by the inputs of pain overloading their own systems. A thicket of spidery limbs rose up in front of Boba Fett, like animated twigs and the heavier, thicker branches of a leafless forest caught in a winter planet’s flesh-stripping tornado. Sets of compound eyes gazed upon him with uncomprehending fear as the subnodes’ claw tips fastened upon his battle armor, the larger ones seizing his arms and legs like chitinous hunting traps.

One of the immense docking subnodes, its bulk extending twice the length of Boba Fett’s own height, reared up beneath him, toppling him onto one shoulder. A swarm of hand-sized subnodes scurried in panic across the visor of his helmet; they clung to his fist as he unholstered his blaster pistol and fired at the docking subnode crashing down toward him. The subnode’s shell burst apart, the blaster-charred fragments swirling like black snow in the vortices of the web’s atmosphere rushing through the disintegrating structure. On his back, Boba Fett kept his outstretched fists locked together on the blaster; the continuous volley of white-hot bolts scorched through the docking subnode’s revealed soft tissues, dividing them into smoldering gobbets falling on either side of him.

In the thinned remainder of the web’s air, the docking subnode’s hollowed exoskeleton collapsed silently, the translucent broken pieces thrust aside by Boba Fett’s forearm. He got to his feet, kicking aside the feeble claws of the smaller subnodes, just as a pulsing red dot at the side of his vision signaled the exhaustion of the helmet’s store of compressed oxygen. With lungs already beginning to ache, he sprinted for Slave I’s entry hatchway.

Boba Fett collapsed in the pilot’s chair as the ship’s cockpit sealed tight around him. The dizzying constellation of dark spots, the forerunner of unconsciousness that had swelled in his vision as he’d climbed the ladder up from the main cargo hold, now faded as he breathed in the flow of air from the ship’s minimized life-support systems. A moment later he leaned forward in the chair, eyes raised to the viewport as his right hand reached for the controls of the few navigational rockets still functioning on the ship.

It wasn’t necessary to fire the rockets to get away from the web. As Boba Fett watched, the last of the heavy structural fibers broke free from one another, the interwoven fabric unraveling into loose strands. Where Kud’ar Mub’at’s abode and place of business had blotted out the stars behind, the light-specked black of empty space now stood.

In the distance, Prince Xizor’s flagship awaited the approach of the transfer shuttle bearing the Falleen noble, his guards and the Black Sun cleanup crew, and whatever might be left of the Imperial stormtrooper Trhin Voss’on’t. It was of no concern to Fett whether the hard merchandise he had worked so hard to deliver in living condition might still be breathing; once payment had been made, his interest ceased.

A swarm of dead subnodes, the creations and servants of the arachnoid assembler, bumped against the convex transparisteel of the cockpit’s viewport. The crablike ones were ensnared in the same pale strands of disconnected neural tissue that tangled around the empty claws of the larger varieties. Atmospheric decompression had burst open the shells of some of them, spreading apart their contents like grey constellations of soft matter; others were still intact enough to appear as if they were merely asleep, awaiting some synapse-borne message from their parent and master.

Boba Fett applied a burst of rotational force to Slave I. The hull-mounted navigational jet rolled the ship on its central axis, letting the loose, ragged net of subnodes slip past. A visual field clear of everything but cold stars showed in the viewport.

At the edge of the viewport a brighter light glared, as though one of the stars had gone nova. Fett could see that it was Prince Xizor’s flagship, maneuvering out of the sector and preparing for a jump into hyperspace. Whatever business the Falleen noble was about, it was likely far from this desolate area of the galaxy; it might very well be back at the Emperor’s court on Coruscant. I imagine, thought Boba Fett, that I’ll encounter him again, before too long. The course of events in the Empire was accelerating ever faster, spurred by both Palpatine’s ambitions and the Rebellion’s mounting challenge. Xizor would have to move fast if he was to have any chance of bringing Black Sun to victory on that rapidly shifting gameboard.

It didn’t matter to Boba Fett who won. His business would stay the same.

Before he looked down to the control panel’s gauges to assess what kind of condition Slave I was in, another pallid strand traced its way across the curved exterior of the viewport. The rope of silent neural fiber was linked only to the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at, or what remained of it after the work of Xizor’s cleanup crew. The once-glittering compound eyes were empty and grey now, like small round windows to the hollows of the corpse that drifted slowly past. Around the assembler’s globular abdomen, split open like a leathery egg, the spidery legs were drawn up tight, forming the last self-contained nest for the once-proud, now-vanquished creature.

Careful …

Boba Fett indulged himself for a moment, imagining a warning from the dead. The expressionless face turned slowly past the viewport.

Beware of everyone. If Kud’ar Mub’at’s empty husk could speak, that was what it would have said. In this universe, there are no friends … only enemies. The assembler’s gaping mouth was a small black vacuum, surrounded by the greater one of interstellar space. No trust … only betrayal …

He didn’t require advice such as that, even from one whose withered corpse testified to the truth of the silent words. Boba Fett knew all those things already. That was why he was alive, and the assembler was dead.

All his remaining concerns—for the moment—were technical ones. Boba Fett turned toward the cockpit’s navicomputer. He began accessing and inputting Slave I’s astrogational coordinates, at the same time scrolling through the onboard computer’s database of the surrounding systems and planets. What he needed now was an advanced-technology shipyard, one without too many entanglements with either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance, or scruples about working for payments made under the table, as it were. Some of the weapons and tracking modules aboard Slave I were technically restricted; a good deal of his profits from past jobs had gone into the bribery or commissioned theft necessary for getting top-secret beta-development tech out of the Imperial Navy’s hidden research-and-development labs. Only a shipyard remote from the galaxy’s center, and away from the prying scrutiny of Palpatine’s spy agents, would have enough nerve—and greed—to do the kind of work that ordinarily had the death penalty attached to it.

A list of possibilities appeared on the computer’s readout screen. He was already familiar with most of the shipyards; his line of work was hard on his tools, from personal weapons to navigable craft. Not those, Fett decided, eliminating with a few strokes of his fingertip all of the planet-based yards. In its present fragile condition, Slave I wouldn’t survive a hard-gravity landing.

The remoter possibilities, those on the other side of the galaxy, were similarly eliminated. Even if Boba Fett tried to make it that far—and if a hyperspace jump didn’t wind up disintegrating Slave I—the longer he took to reach his destination, the greater the chances of attracting the attention of any number of his enemies. They’d be able to pick him off without much of a struggle. He had already decided that speed of service was as important a consideration as the quality. I need to get up and running, thought Boba Fett as he studied the remaining short list on the computer’s readout screen. And fast.

Before he could finish his calculations, a voice came over the comm unit.

“It was a pleasure doing business with you.” The voice of the distant Balancesheet was not quite as obsequiously formal as its parent Kud’ar Mub’at’s had been. “We’ll do it again.”

The control panel’s proximity monitors registered the presence of another ship in the sector; from the ID profile, Boba Fett could see that it wasn’t Prince Xizor’s Vendetta. He scanned the viewport and spotted it, near the drifting wreckage of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web. Hitting the viewport’s long-range mag function brought up a clear image of a standard bulk freighter. Its registration was clear, but showed former ownership by one of Xizor’s—and Black Sun’s—holding companies.

Boba Fett thumbed his own comm unit’s transmit button. “I thought you were going independent, Balancesheet.”

“I am,” replied the voice from the comm unit speaker. “This freighter, however humble, is mine alone. But then, my needs are not elaborate. And Prince Xizor did give me a good deal on it—virtually free.”

“Nothing’s free with him. You’ll pay for it, eventually.”

“I suspect you’re correct in that.” Balancesheet did not sound overly concerned. “But in the meantime, it gives me a base of operations that is many degrees more suitable than Kud’ar Mub’at’s shabby old web. A ship such as this already has the required operational systems built in; I won’t have to create and extrude as many subnodes as my parent did in order to make it serve my needs. Thus the chances of a mutiny, such as the one by which I came to power, are greatly lessened.”

“Smart.” Boba Fett made a mental note that dealings with this new go-between assembler were likely to be more dangerous than they had been with its predecessor.

“It is, however, little more than a large empty space, with a set of thruster engines attached to an autonomic navigational system. I suspect that it was used for some of Black Sun’s simpler smuggling operations, out in the edge systems, and it’s become too outmoded and slow for the organization’s current needs.” The voice of the small assembler creature, alone in the vacated freighter, seemed to echo off the bulkheads around it. “I’ll have to spend a considerable amount to equip it the way I wish.”

“Save up your credits, then.” Boba Fett looked back down to the list of shipyard possibilities on the computer readout. “That kind of work doesn’t come cheap.”

“Oh, I’ve got the credits already.” Balancesheet’s voice turned subtly smug. “More than enough.”

Something about the way the assembler’s words had been spoken piqued Boba Fett’s interest. “What are you talking about?”

“You might want to check the status of your transfer accounts on Coruscant.” The smile in Balancesheet’s voice was almost audible. “You forget that I do a lot more financial business than you do; that’s what I was created to do. And I inherited, so to speak, all of my creator’s old friends and associates—especially the ones willing to be bribed in exchange for certain small favors.”

“ ‘Favors’ … what kind of favors?”

“Merely the kind that involves splitting a transfer of credits from an escrow account, and very quietly diverting one half into my receipt account rather than yours.” Balancesheet’s voice turned pitying. “You really should have checked your own accounts after seeing that the transfer had been made; if you had, you would have seen that you wound up with half the bounty that had been posted for Voss’on’t.”

Boba Fett pushed himself back from the control panel. His gaze locked upon the empty freighter visible in the distance. “That was a mistake,” he said grimly. Without even checking further, he knew that what the assembler had said was true. It wasn’t the kind of thing a sentient creature would joke about; not with him. “A big mistake, on your part.”

“I don’t think so.” No apprehension sounded in the voice coming from the speaker. “The way I see it, you owed me at least that much. If it hadn’t been for me, Prince Xizor would have gone ahead and eliminated you. Permanently. You might not care to show any gratitude for that—I don’t expect it, either. So let’s just call this another little business deal.”

“Let’s call it theft.” Boba Fett rasped out the words. “I’m the wrong creature to steal from.”

“Perhaps so,” replied Balancesheet. “But it’s in your interest for my go-between business to be up and running. There’s a lot of potential clients out in the galaxy, who will only deal with someone like you at an arm’s-length basis. You need me, Boba Fett. So you can go on hunting down more hard merchandise and collecting the bounties for it. Without a go-between to hold the credits, a lot of this business breaks down; it doesn’t work anymore.”

The analysis didn’t sway Boba Fett. “I can take care of my own business.”

“Good for you. But I’m still keeping half the Voss’on’t bounty. I’ve got expenses as well.”

“You don’t have to worry about meeting them. You won’t live that long. Nobody does who steals from me.”

“Get serious, Fett.” The assembler’s mocking words slid out of the comm unit speaker; Balancesheet had given up any semblance of maintaining the formalities and sly fawning in which Kud’ar Mub’at had indulged. “What are you going to do about it? The condition your ship is in, you’re not able to blow away a midge-fly. Not without blowing yourself up. And as slow as this freighter might be, it’s still faster than you at the moment.”

“I’ll catch up with you,” promised Boba Fett. “Sooner or later.”

“And when you do, you’ll have either figured out how much you do need me, or I’ll be under the protection of Prince Xizor—Black Sun also needs a go-between. Or I’ll have some other surprise waiting for you. It doesn’t matter; I’m not exactly worried.”

“Get worried.” The thought of the stolen credits burned deep within Boba Fett’s breast. “Get real worried.”

“Until the next time,” said Balancesheet. “I’ll be waiting, bounty hunter.”

The comm unit connection with the freighter broke off, and silence filled Slave I’s cockpit once more. Boba Fett watched as the other ship’s thruster engines flared into life, then dwindled into fading, starlike points.

For a moment longer, he gazed out at empty space, his own thoughts as dark and brooding. Then he turned again to the calculations of the slow journey ahead of him …

7

NOW …

The story ended.

Or at least for now, thought Neelah. She had been sitting for a long time with her back against the cold durasteel bulkhead of the Hound’s Tooth’s cargo hold. Sitting and listening as the other bounty hunter Dengar had finished his account of Boba Fett’s past, and all that had come out of the scheme to destroy the old Bounty Hunters Guild.

“That’s it, huh?” She was glad she hadn’t had to keep a blaster aimed at Dengar to motivate him to keep talking. Her arm would have gotten tired by now. It had been a long story, though filled with enough action and violence to keep her from getting bored. With one hand she rubbed at the small of her back, then unfolded her legs and stood up. “I take it that Boba Fett got everything sorted out after that.”

“Good guess,” said Dengar. He rapped his knuckles on the bulkhead behind himself. “Since you’ve been on Slave I, before we transferred over to this ship, you know it’s in fully functional shape now. There were some incidents I heard about, though, that happened in the process of getting repaired. And redesigned, from the bulkheads to the engine core.” Dengar pointed with his thumb to the cage. “Apparently, Fett decided that he needed bigger quarters for the amount of hard merchandise he was going to be ferrying around—so things had to be shifted around to make room for it. Otherwise, the ladder wouldn’t be necessary to get to the cockpit. The whole refitting process took more than just credits, from all reports. And a few other creatures wound up getting killed. But that’s not unusual with the way Boba Fett works.”

“I’ll say.” After hearing the story of the war among the bounty hunters, Neelah found it a wonder that anybody who had ever come in contact with Boba Fett was still alive. Creatures he doesn’t like, she thought wryly, have a habit of winding up dead. If Bossk, the Trandoshan bounty hunter that Fett had stolen this ship from, was still alive somewhere, it was a triumph of the same dumb luck that had gotten him out of his previous scrapes with his rival. “Too bad for those creatures, I suppose.”

And what about me? She had been warned by Dengar that the story wasn’t going to answer all of her questions. It didn’t matter how much she had found out about Boba Fett—as if she had needed more confirmation about how cold and ruthless he could be—she still hadn’t found out anything more about herself. I still don’t know who I am, thought Neelah glumly. Who I really am. All the mysteries, all the questions that repeated over and over inside her skull, were still infuriatingly present. They had been in there since she had found herself in Jabba the Hutt’s palace, back on that remote world of Tatooine. Since then, little scraps of the past had slipped into her memory-scrubbed brain, tantalizing pieces of the world from which someone, some dark entity, had abducted her. The only constant, the only link between that past world and this harsh, threatening one in which she was forced to feel her way like a blind creature in a vibroblade-edged corridor, was Boba Fett—of that, Neelah was certain. She could feel it in the tightening of her sinews, the white-knuckled clenching of her fists, that overtook her every time she found the reflection of her face caught in the dark visor of Boba Fett’s helmet. Even in Jabba’s palace, when she had seen his ominous form across the Hutt’s crowded, noisy throne room, Neelah had been certain of the connection between herself and the bounty hunter. He knows, she thought bitterly. Whatever my true name is—he knows it. Her name, her past, all that she had lost. But as of yet, she had found no way of forcing him to reveal those secrets to her.

She was beginning to wonder why she had bothered to save his life.

Turning her head, Neelah looked around at the confines of the ship’s cargo hold. This part of the ship that had formerly belonged to the Trandoshan Bossk was not much different from Boba Fett’s own Slave I. Form and function, stripped bare metal, cages for hauling around a bounty hunter’s unwilling merchandise. It smelled different, though; the acrid, reptilian stench curled in her nostrils with each breath, reminding her unpleasantly of the blood-scented musk that had permeated the stone walls of the fortresslike palace where she had served as a dancing girl. And where I would’ve wound up, she knew, as rancor bait. The same mix of odors from dozens of the galaxy’s species, their bodies’ exudations and hormonal secretions, that had hung in the palace’s close, stifling air, seemed to have penetrated the very metal of Bossk’s ship. Slave I had been cleaner and closer to sterile, befitting the cold, precise logic of its owner. A clinical surgery, in its own way, with Boba Fett the doctor that took creatures’ spirits apart, the better to convert them into the hard merchandise in which he traded. An involuntary shiver traced Neelah’s spine as she saw in her mind’s eye the scalpel that lay in Boba Fett’s hidden gaze.

“Sorry it didn’t do the trick for you.” Dengar’s voice broke into her thoughts. “But if you didn’t know it before, at least you do now. He’s not anybody to fool around with. Not unless you don’t care whether you live or die.”

“I don’t have that choice,” replied Neelah. “Believe me, if I could have avoided meeting Boba Fett, I would have.” She had the notion, unsubstantiated yet by any hard facts from memory, that the life she had led before had been one where bounty hunters, and all the sticky, spirit-corroding evil they brought with them, were on the scarce side. “I could have done without the pleasure of his acquaintance.”

“Suit yourself.” Dengar had made up a little pallet for himself near the bulkhead where he had sat while recounting the story about Boba Fett’s past. “Now for me, it’s a real honor, hooking up with him and all. Being as I’m in the bounty hunter business myself. Not at the same level as him, though.” Hands clasped behind his head, Dengar lay down on the thin nest of rags and packing foam. “So for him to ask me to come along as his partner …”

Dengar didn’t have to explain anything more than that. Good for you, thought Neelah. Back on Tatooine, in their hiding place below the parched surface of the Dune Sea, Dengar had told her about his hopes of actually quitting the dangerous bounty hunter trade and settling down with his beloved Manaroo. The couple had been betrothed for some time, but had put off their marriage until Dengar had found some way of getting out from under the enormous weight of debt he carried. Financially, it had all been downhill for him since he’d quit—at Manaroo’s gentle prodding—his previous speciality as a Grade One Imperial Assassin. He was a different person now, and a better one—working for the Empire ate away at one’s spirit, sometimes fatally so, and he had Manaroo to thank for saving him from that fate. But it still left the mountain of debt that had accumulated so swiftly upon his back. Creatures who owed credits in this galaxy, and who didn’t pay up, also had a good chance of winding up dead; even with Jabba the Hutt dead, there were plenty of other hard lenders who operated that way. A partnership with the notorious Boba Fett was the best, and maybe only, opportunity Dengar had for clearing his accounts. If, Neelah figured, he doesn’t get killed along the way.

She looked down again at the bounty hunter on the makeshift pallet. Dengar was already asleep, or doing a good imitation of it. Telling stories—even true ones—was obviously not in his usual repertoire of skills. Any kind of action, no matter how strenuous or life-endangering, was more suited to him than stringing words together.

A feeling of acute distaste rose inside Neelah as she raised her eyes again to the dull metal bulkheads of the ship’s cargo hold. She had only been able to stand being here as long as the unreeling story had diverted her attention. Now, the close, stench-filled air formed a choking fist inside her throat, as though she could literally taste the despair and anger of that other hard merchandise, the ones who had fallen into the hands of Bossk. They might not have been as profitable as those that Boba Fett tracked down and secured, but their lives had been worth just as much to themselves, if no one else.

I’ve got to get out of here, thought Neelah desperately. She didn’t know if her own words meant the cargo hold, this ship that its previous owner had named Hound’s Tooth, or the dark mystery that her life had become. It didn’t matter; there was only one exit before her, the metal ladder at the side of the hold that led to the ship’s cockpit area. Go on, Neelah told herself, hesitating as she set a hand on an eye-level tread. You’ve faced him before. A wry smile twisted the corner of her mouth. And you’re not dead yet. She had even pulled and held a blaster pistol on Boba Fett, right there in the Hound’s cockpit—how many other creatures in the galaxy could say they had done something like that and survived to talk about it? Neelah put her boot on the lowest rung and started climbing.

Boba Fett was at the cockpit’s panel, making precise adjustments to the large, troughlike controls designed for a Trandoshan’s outsize claws. In the hatchway behind, Neelah stood watching him, the back of his scarred and dented helmet as enigmatic as the dark, T-shaped visor that hid his eyes. I’ve seen those as well, she reminded herself. And lived. Another accomplishment that undoubtedly put her in a tiny fraction of the galaxy’s inhabitants, on all the worlds and in every system. The helmet had been the one part of the battle gear that hadn’t been reduced to wet rags by the acidic digestive juices of the Sarlacc creature in the Great Pit of Carkoon, into which Boba Fett had fallen when Han Solo had been rescued by his friends Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. But Neelah and Dengar had still had to remove the helmet from the unconscious Fett to feed and rehydrate him until he could fend for himself once more. Even in that condition, hovering between life and death, Boba Fett had still seemed an intimidating figure. Anyone with a degree less furious energy and survival instinct as part of his spirit would have been consumed by the blind, gaping-mawed creature that had swallowed him, rather than finding the means to literally explode his way out to the open air. It wasn’t just Boba Fett’s short way with other creatures’ lives that made him such a legend; it was also the tenacity with which he clung to his own.

The bounty hunter was either ignoring her as he went about his tasks on the Hound’s control panel, or he hadn’t been aware of her coming up the cargo-hold ladder to the cockpit’s hatchway; he continued the work of his gloved hands without remarking on her presence. He knows I’m here, thought Neelah. There’s not much he doesn’t know …

She raised her eyes to the viewport in front of the control panel just as Boba Fett dropped the Hound’s Tooth out of hyperspace. A vista of stars, different from those left on the other side of the galaxy, filled the viewport. Neelah looked across the bright, cold field, hoping that the uncaring regard of the distant stars would provide her some relief from the cramped, claustrophobic quarters inside the ship. She looked, and she saw—

The past.

Not her own, but Boba Fett’s. It’s just like the story, a part of Neelah marveled, almost childlike in its reaction. The story Dengar told.

Floating in the vacuum outside the Hound’s Tooth were the tattered fragments of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web. It had not been from any particular skill on Dengar’s part that she had been able to so vividly imagine the image of the arachnoid assembler and its web, both before and after Prince Xizor’s cleanup crew had torn it apart. There had been another tantalizing fragment of memory inside her own head, something that had somehow evaded the attempt to wipe it out of existence. Somehow, from out of her past and the world that had been stolen from her, Dengar’s account of Boba Fett’s history had triggered that remembrance; she had known exactly what Kud’ar Mub’at and his flock of created subnodes had looked like. I knew it, thought Neelah. And now they were here, gently drifting, surrounded by strands of pallid neural tissue like elongated ghosts, bumping soundlessly against the transparisteel of the cockpit’s forward viewport.

The dead subnodes looked both eerie and pathetic, their broken exoskeletons surrounded by thin, twiglike limbs, claws curled up under the split abdomens. Smaller ones, seemingly no bigger than a child’s fist, were entangled with the giants that had been capable of tethering a ship to the now-vanished web’s docking area. All of them were hollow-eyed, with the unseeing gaze that blind, dead things turned toward those fortunate creatures still alive. Or unfortunate, thought Neelah. Maybe the poor dead subnodes, pieces of their defeated master and creator, were really the lucky ones; they no longer had to wonder about what would happen to them next. For them, all the galaxy’s cruel uncertainties were over.

For a moment, the sight of the space-drifting subnodes evoked the disturbing sensation in Neelah that she had fallen backward in time, pulling this ship and its contents along, as though her empty memory were a true black hole, with its own irresistible gravity. But somehow the process had wound up landing them in Boba Fett’s past, the moment just after the crude dissection and death of his former business associate Kud’ar Mub’at. But that was so long ago, thought Neelah; it made her feel dizzy to even contemplate it. She closed her eyes, wondering if when she opened them again, time would begin unreeling on its proper course once more.

Her eyelids flicked open without her willing them to. I was wrong. She saw that now. The momentary displacement in time had passed. Neelah stepped forward and laid a hand on the back of the pilot’s, steadying herself as she gazed out the viewport. “They’ve been dead a long time,” she said softly. “A very long time.”

“Of course.” Boba Fett had raised his own gaze from the instrument gauges; now he looked out on the same dark vista as Neelah did. “The last time I was in this sector, these entities had just been killed—along with their creator, Kud’ar Mub’at.” He turned and looked over his shoulder at Neelah. “But you know all about that, don’t you?”

A sudden realization hit her. “You were listening in, weren’t you? Over the ship’s internal communications system. All the while that Dengar was telling me about what happened to you in the past.”

Boba Fett gave a single dismissive shake of his head. “I hardly needed to,” he replied. “Since Dengar was acting on the exact instructions I had previously given him.”

“What?” Neelah looked back at Fett in amazement. “You told him—”

“It’s convenient for me to have you brought up to speed on a few matters of common interest. Having Dengar take care of it saves me the trouble—and it kept the two of you occupied while I was tracing this sector’s exact location and navigating us here. That took time, as we arrived here via a route that would throw off anyone else who might have been spying upon my activities. Time, which you managed to pass in your own way.” Boba Fett’s voice sounded almost tinged by a partial smile. “I’ll have to congratulate my colleague Dengar on his acting abilities—he kept his act going, even when you pulled that blaster pistol on him.”

Her surprise faded quickly. He’s been ahead of me before, thought Neelah. He probably will be again. “So this is the location, huh?” She peered again toward the dark vista afforded by the viewport. “Where Prince Xizor tried to eliminate you, then changed his mind and took out that arachnoid assembler instead.”

“Precisely.” Boba Fett pointed toward the viewport. “As you can see, everything Dengar told you about the incident was the truth. Xizor’s cleanup crew didn’t leave much of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web. Black Sun operatives are known for their thoroughness.”

More of the dead subnodes, like the shed carapaces of ordinary crawling spiders, drifted past the Hound’s Tooth. Neelah felt the skin of her forearms prickle into goose-flesh as she heard—or imagined that she did—the light scraping and tapping of empty chitin against the ship’s hull. The sensation was more dreamlike than anything to do with actual memory.

“Why did you bring us here?” The spirit-chilling uncanniness of the sight out of the viewport, the dead creatures tethered together by the strands of neural tissue, as much a part of one another now as they had been in their living existence, touched a thread of anger inside Neelah. “Just to reminisce?”

“There’s very little I do,” replied Boba Fett calmly, “that is without purpose. I came here for a reason. And you were brought here for the same reason.”

“How would I know that?” Neelah folded her arms across her breast. “You haven’t seen fit to tell us anything about where we were headed, or why.” She glared at the figure in front of her. “Or is this something else that you let Dengar in on, but not me?”

“Neither you nor Dengar were aware of our destination, and there was a good reason for that as well. If you don’t know something, you can’t be compelled to reveal it. That’s why I’ve made it a practice not to tell anyone, even my own associates, if I can avoid it.” Boba Fett pointed a gloved fingertip toward Neelah. “I don’t keep my silence for your sake, but it’s to your advantage, nevertheless. A good many of the ways to get someone such as yourself to talk are not pleasant. And some of them don’t leave you alive afterward, either.”

“Thanks for your concern,” Neelah said sourly. “I appreciate it.”

“Your sarcasm is pointless. When I decide to start caring about anyone else’s opinions of my operating methods, I’ll let you know.” Boba Fett leaned back in the pilot’s chair. “But you wanted to find out; you merely had to wait, and the time has come.”

Like flicking a switch, the bounty hunter’s words transformed the anger inside Neelah to sudden, unreasoning panic. “I … I don’t know …”

“You don’t know if you’re ready for that.” Boba Fett’s visor-shielded gaze seemed to penetrate to the depths of her spirit. “You’ve come all this way; you’ve waited so long and so impatiently; you’ve fought to find out all that’s been hidden from you. And now you’re afraid.”

“No—” She quickly shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

“We shall see about that,” replied Boba Fett, even more quietly—and more ominously—than before. “Because you don’t have a choice. You never did.”

He’s right. Neelah squeezed her eyelids shut once again; at her sides, her hands closed into fists, the sinews of her forearms straining with tension. From the moment she had caught sight of this helmeted figure, before she had learned his name, she had known that this moment would come. It had been fated to do so, if she could only stay alive long enough. She had done that much, escaping from the death that would have been hers inside Jabba the Hutt’s palace, then binding her destiny to one who had been only a shadow’s breadth away from death himself. Just to find out, Neelah told herself fiercely. To find out …

She didn’t know. Whether it would be better to discover what lay in that other world, the past that had been stolen from her, or to go on in darkness, to leave it hidden.

“Go tell Dengar to come up here.”

Neelah heard Boba Fett’s command, and slowly opened her eyes.

I don’t have a choice. She nodded slowly. About any of it.

Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder at the dead, hollow-eyed creatures drifting in the emptiness outside the ship, then brought his gaze back around to her.

“We have a lot to talk about,” said Boba Fett. “We’d better get started.”

8

He was dreaming.

Dengar knew he was, because he could see Manaroo right in front of him.

Turning with a bunch of flimsiplast sheets in her fist and a seriously annoyed look on her face—though that made her no less beautiful to him—Manaroo rapped the knuckles of one hand across the invoices. “Those Jawas are undercutting us again,” she said. “We’re going to have to do something about them, once and for all—”

“They undercut us because they sell junk.” In the loading bay of a medium-tonnage cargo freighter, surrounded by datacoded shipping containers and uncrated machinery still shiny with factory lubricants, Dengar took his wife in his arms and kissed her on the brow. They had been married how many years now, and the skip in his pulse was still the same as the first time he had ever held her soft warmth against himself. The tiny tattooed moons and stars on her wrists no longer glowed as brightly as before, but his own love for her showed no sign of fading. “That’s their stock in trade; they’re Jawas, right? So don’t worry about ’em. They’re not our competition.”

Manaroo fretted some more, looking over his shoulder at the invoices in her hands. “They’re little chiseling womp rats, is what they are.”

“Don’t worry.” Another kiss; Dengar smiled as he leaned back from her face. “The word’s getting out among the moisture farmers, about what kind of equipment we’re selling. And what kind of long-term percentage contracts we can offer. Hey—” With one hand he stroked her hair, only slightly darker than the pale blue of her Aruzan skin, away from her forehead. “We’re already in the black …”

“You slimy bucket of nerf-waste.”

That wasn’t Manaroo’s voice. And the kick in the ribs, as he lay on the makeshift pallet with his eyes closed, wasn’t from his beloved, either.

“I ought to kill you,” continued Neelah, from somewhere on the other side of his closed eyes and the sweet, dwindling remnants of his dream. A blow from her small, rock-hard fist, right across the side of Dengar’s jaw, produced a constellation of stars that blotted out the image he was trying to hold, of Manaroo wrapped in his embrace. “As a matter of fact, maybe I will …”

He had been knocked far enough awake that he was able to roll with the next punch Neelah delivered from where she stood above him. Getting onto his hands and knees, Dengar scrambled toward the nearest bulkhead, then grabbed hold of it and pulled himself upright to face her.

Definitely not dreaming, Dengar told himself, not now. He found himself uncomfortably awake and standing in the rank-smelling, close-quartered cargo hold of the Hound’s Tooth. “What are you going on about?” He crouched slightly, taking a stance with his empty hands outstretched to fend off another attack from the anger-crazed female in front of him. “What did I do?”

“What did you do …” Neelah echoed his words as she looked at him in disgust, her own hands planted on her slim hips. “Tried to make a fool out of me, that’s what. All that time I was pressing on you to tell me about what’d happened to Boba Fett in the past, and you were already under orders to fill me in on exactly that.”

“Oh.” Dengar relaxed a bit, lowering his hands. “No big deal.” He immediately raised them again when he saw that her anger hadn’t ebbed any. “Anyway—what’re you complaining about? You didn’t have somebody waving a blaster in your face, wanting a bedtime story!”

The structural damage sustained by the Hound’s Tooth had loosened the durasteel bars of the holding cage, with several of them wrenched free of their upper sockets and splaying out into the cargo hold. Neelah grasped one of the shorter bars from near the cage’s door and pulled it free of the socket below. It made a formidable if simple weapon; with it cocked back over her shoulder, ready to swing, she took a step closer to Dengar.

Fire flashed in her eyes for a second, then just as quickly dimmed. “Let’s face it,” she said. The metal bar clanged on the hold’s floor as she tossed it away. “He ran a number on both of us. Just so he could have as much peace and quiet as he wanted while he navigated the ship.”

“Well, yeah, I’m willing to let him have it, if that’s what he wants.” Dengar slowly straightened from his defensive crouch, ready to drop back into it if this female showed any more signs of her murderous temper. There was a big difference between her and Manaroo, it struck him. His betrothed could be just as tough if necessary, but so far she hadn’t ever given any indications that she wanted to kill him. That might change after they were married—if that ever happened—but he was willing to take the chance. “He’s not just the head bounty hunter around here. He’s also the pilot of the ship. I can wait until he gets us to where he wants to go.”

“Your waiting’s over,” said Neelah. With her thumb, she pointed toward the cockpit above them. “We’ve arrived.”

“Yeah?” Dengar rubbed his chin, warily regarding the female. A hard knot of apprehension coalesced in his stomach. It was one thing to travel toward an unknown destination, but quite another thing to reach that mysterious point. Whatever else Boba Fett might have filled him in on—it didn’t amount to much—there hadn’t been any talk about the events that would go down once they got there. “Now what?”

“That’s the big question. But our intrepid captain has decided to break his silence, at least. So get a move on—Fett wants us both up in the cockpit for a briefing.”

Dengar nodded, then managed a half smile. “That oughta improve your disposition, at least.”

He followed Neelah up the ladder. But even as he mounted the metal treads, his mind slipped back to the last fading vestiges of the dream he had been enjoying before being so violently awoken. It had been all about the same fantasy in which he indulged even when awake, during those relatively quieter times when he wasn’t trying to keep from getting killed. The partnership with Boba Fett had to pay off, figured Dengar. Big time. Fett had to have something major cooking, or he wouldn’t have bothered taking on a partner—gratitude wasn’t a sufficient motivation with a hard character like that. Save a guy’s life, brooded Dengar, and what do you get for it? Not much, except for a chance to get killed in some scheme of his. That was the easy part; the harder one would be turning this partnership gig into cold, hard credits, the kind that would pay off his debt load and set him and Manaroo up in a new life. Something like brokering the galaxy’s high technologies to underdeveloped backwater planets, like that dump of a world Tatooine. That was where the real profits were to be made, and a lot more safely besides. Even with paying out the bribes to keep a commercial operation going, either to the Empire or, if the wildest imaginable possibilities came true, to whatever was put together by the Rebel Alliance, there would still be the chance of him and Manaroo doing well together. All it took were the connections—I’ve got those already, Dengar told himself—and a little bit of operating capital. Actually, a lot of capital; that was why he’d agreed to hook up with Boba Fett in the first place.

As he stepped from the ladder and through the cockpit hatchway, Dengar slowly shook his head. Whatever was next on Boba Fett’s agenda, he had the feeling it might not lead to that pile of credits he needed, and the new life they could buy.

“Let’s get right to business,” said Boba Fett, turning around in the pilot’s chair to face Dengar and Neelah. “I don’t care to waste any more time than we already have.” He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “This is what’s left of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web—”

Dengar leaned forward, peering toward the viewport behind the other bounty hunter. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. The drifting corpses of the assembler’s subnodes, tangled in ropelike strands of neural tissue, were both eerie and impressive. “It must be …”

“I hardly need to be told when I’m correct about something.” A trace of irritation sounded in Boba Fett’s otherwise emotionless voice. “I rarely am not. And when I say that there is a considerable amount of time pressure upon our actions here, you should believe it.”

“You mean what’s going on with the Empire and the Rebels?” Dengar shrugged, then shook his head. “I don’t see what the worry is. The big battle they’ve got shaping up between them—that’s way out by Endor. That’s practically the other side of the galaxy; in any event, it’s a long stretch from us. I don’t see how it could affect what we’re doing here. If anything—” He pointed to the viewport. “Their problems should make it easier for us to take care of whatever you brought us here for. Both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance have pulled out most of their forces from whatever dispersed locales they were in before, to get ready for the confrontation between them. That leaves a lot of systems and space just about empty of them. We can do what we want, and neither the Empire nor the Rebels will be any the wiser.”

“That kind of simplistic analysis is why you’re the one taking orders, and I’m the one giving them.” Boba Fett laid his gloved hands flat on the arms of the pilot’s chair. “The battle that’s likely to take place near Endor might be over, once it’s begun, in less than a few minutes. And it will have a decisive impact on the fate of the ongoing struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. They’ve been building up to this confrontation for a long time. And it does matter which side wins, to creatures like us. Palpatine wishes to make absolute his control over the galaxy, and everything in it. Such a grasp would extend to you, Dengar, as well as to myself. Our own ambitions, and what we do to pursue them, might no longer be possible if Palpatine were to achieve all that he desires.”

“And what about mine?” Standing beside Dengar, the female Neelah spoke up. “What happens to me, and what I want?”

“You don’t even know what that is,” replied Boba Fett. “But you can believe me about it—or not, just as you choose. The past and the world that was stolen from you will be lost forever if Palpatine wins this struggle with the Rebel Alliance. There will be no way for you to get it back then.”

“And if the Rebels win?”

“There’s no way they can.” Boba Fett gave a flat, hard shake of his head. “My own career as a bounty hunter should be proof enough that cunning and ruthlessness inevitably triumph over all the high-minded ideals that the universe can generate.” The bounty hunter’s scorn for the Rebels, for any creature motivated by something beyond profits, was evident. “But if the impossible should happen—the galaxy has seen stranger events come about—then that would be bad for our business as well. The Rebels’ pretenses to a higher morality would prevent them from paying the established rates for our services, and they would also at the same time seek to exterminate those criminal operations which have been some of my best customers. Let’s face it—the best outcome, as far as bounty hunters are concerned, would be for this battle near Endor to wind up being a draw somehow, with neither force eliminating the other, and the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire continuing. We can hope for that to happen—but we can’t count on it.”

Dengar had felt his own hopes falling as he had listened to Boba Fett’s bleak prognosis. What a universe, he thought glumly. Whether the war was won by the forces of good or by the greatest evil the galaxy had ever known, somehow the results were the same, at least for him. I wind up losing, no matter what. That longed-for future, with him and Manaroo and nothing to do with the bounty hunter trade, seemed to recede at a light-speed pace. The only way for him to make the kind of credits he needed was as a bounty hunter, hooked up with the notorious Boba Fett, but that same Boba Fett made it sound as if it was soon going to be impossible to even be a bounty hunter. Where was the fairness in an arrangement like that?

The female Neelah didn’t seem concerned by the dismal long-term prospects that Boba Fett had described. “So what do you propose doing in the meantime? And why did you bring us here?”

“My plans are my own,” said Boba Fett. “But some of them concern you, and it’s now become convenient for you to have some of your many questions answered. You wanted the past—your past—then so it shall be.” He gestured with one hand toward the viewport behind him. “I hereby give it to you.”

Dengar could see Neelah scowling disgustedly at the viewport. Outside the ship, pallid strands of neural tissue and their tethered, spiderlike corpses continued to drag their shapes past the transparisteel.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Neelah’s glare was even angrier as she turned it toward Fett. “I don’t see anything, that—”

Leaning forward in the pilot’s chair, Boba Fett interrupted her. “You don’t see, because you don’t understand. Not yet, at any rate. But if you listen to me, you will.”

With a scowl still upon her face, Neelah folded her arms across her breast. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

From the corner of his eye, Dengar glanced over at the young woman. It wasn’t the first time that he had heard that tone of command in her voice. She’s used to giving orders, thought Dengar, and having creatures obey them. It was the same haughty tone of voice that Neelah had used on him, ordering him to continue telling the story of Boba Fett and the breakup of the old Bounty Hunters Guild, and it had been more effective than any blaster pistol she could have pulled on him. But to hear her talk that way to Boba Fett, as though barely able to control her impatience with a slow-moving servant, was still startling. Who is she? wondered Dengar. And how did she wind up as a memory-wiped dancing girl in Jabba the Hutt’s palace? His own curiosity about Neelah’s past almost matched hers.

“This part of the story,” said Boba Fett, “didn’t begin here. And it happened a little while before the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at met his demise. I had business in one of the nearby systems that had been successfully concluded—you don’t need to know about that—and I was returning toward the center of the galaxy, where several potentially lucrative opportunities were awaiting me. Of course, I was aboard my own Slave I at the time, and not an under-equipped mediocrity like this ship. One of the functions I had programmed into Slave I’s computers was a complete database of the ships of all other bounty hunters, both those affiliated with the Bounty Hunters Guild and the few, such as myself, operating as independent agents. It rarely happens, but on occasion some other bounty hunter, or the Guild while it still existed, has managed to obtain information before I have, about some particular hard merchandise to be rounded up for a good price.” Fett’s shoulders lifted in a dismissive shrug. “Some clients prefer to employ less-qualified bounty hunters, hoping they’ll be able to get what they want at a lower price. That’s their choice, but it rarely works out that way.”

True enough, thought Dengar. He had heard those other stories, all of which went to prove that it was almost as dangerous trying to avoid doing business with Boba Fett as actually going ahead and getting involved with him. In a lot of ways, he was virtually inescapable.

“So I sometimes find it worthwhile,” continued Boba Fett, “to keep an eye on what other bounty hunters are up to. And if Slave I’s ID scanners home in on a bounty hunter’s ship in a navigational sector that should otherwise be empty of such activity, then I find that very interesting indeed. It’s even more interesting when the onboard computers read out the ID code of a ship belonging to a bounty hunter known for his unsavory business practices.”

That description puzzled Dengar. It was hard to imagine any bounty hunter being more ruthless than Boba Fett himself. “So who was it that you came across?”

“The ID code identified the ship as one known most often as the Venesectrix. Rarely spotted anywhere close to the central sectors of the galaxy; its owner preferred operations farther out into the border territories. And of course, there was a reason for that: the owner of the Venesectrix was a certain Ree Duptom.” Pausing a moment, Boba Fett looked over at Dengar. “Perhaps you’re familiar with the name.”

“Wait a minute …” It took a moment, but the name finally hooked up with a memory synapse inside Den-gar’s head. “Ree Duptom—he’s the only one who ever got booted out of the Bounty Hunters Guild!” That took some doing, Dengar knew; there had been plenty of creatures in the Guild whose ethical standards had been way below his own. He wasn’t familiar with the exact details—Duptom had been booted out of the Bounty Hunters Guild before Dengar had joined it—but there had been an unspoken legend attached to him, as being the one creature that all other bounty hunters considered scum. “I didn’t think he was still active, even out in the border.”

“I guess he’s not,” said Neelah drily. “Pay attention, why don’t you? He’s obviously being discussed in the past tense for a reason.”

“True.” Boba Fett gave an acknowledging nod of his head. “When I came across the Venesectrix in open space, the ship’s engines weren’t powered up; it was simply drifting. I attempted to establish communication with its pilot, but I received no response over the comm unit. The reasonable assumption was that the pilot was either dead or had abandoned his ship. To determine which was the case—and to find anything that might have been valuable aboard—I forced entry through the Venesectrix’s airlock.” In the cockpit viewport behind Boba Fett, a few more dead subnodes bumped against the curved transparisteel. “And I found Ree Duptom, all right.”

“Dead, I suppose.” The expression on Neelah’s face was one of utter boredom. “You know, I’m still waiting to hear the part that has anything to do with me.”

Boba Fett ignored her impatience. “Duptom didn’t make a good-looking corpse. He hadn’t been the handsomest humanoid to begin with—his appearance matched his ethics—but being caught in a hard-energy particle burst from a partial core meltdown of his own ship’s engines hadn’t helped any. Fortunately, the burst’s lethal effects had been contained within a zone just a couple of meters deep; he had obviously been working in the engine compartment when the meltdown occurred, gotten the dose of radiation, then staggered back up to the Venesectrix’s cockpit area to die. Which didn’t take long.”

The story’s details aroused Dengar’s suspicions. “So did his ship’s engines malfunction—or were they sabotaged?” From what he had heard in the Bounty Hunters Guild, Ree Duptom had made nearly as many enemies for himself as Boba Fett had.

“I didn’t investigate that question,” said Fett. “Once a competitor of mine is dead, I lose interest in them. How they wound up that way is someone else’s business; nothing to do with me.”

Right, thought Dengar.

“Anyway, somebody like Ree Duptom was perfectly capable of killing himself through his own stupidity.” Boba Fett shook his head, as though in disgust. “His ship and all of his equipment were poorly maintained; frankly, he was not a credit to the bounty hunter trade in a lot of ways. But Duptom was obviously able to find certain clients, nevertheless. The evidence of that was right there aboard his ship. And the uncompleted jobs that he had been working on were interesting enough for me to take them over.”

“What were they?”

“There were two matters,” replied Boba Fett, “that Ree Duptom’s untimely death had left hanging. The first one was in the form of a deactivated cargo droid—or what had once been a cargo droid. Someone had cleverly transformed it into an autonomic spy device, with not only built-in vid cameras and sound recording equipment, but an olfactory detect and sample circuit as well. The droid’s hidden sensors could pick up trace amounts of scent molecules in the atmosphere and analyze them for biologic source details.”

“Why would anybody want information like that?” This time, Dengar was puzzled by the story, rather than suspicious. “What’s the good of knowing what some event smelled like, if you already had the visual and audio recording?”

“It all depends,” said Boba Fett, “on what you’re looking for, and what the spy device had been designed to catch. This converted cargo droid was capable of detecting evidence of something—or someone—that would otherwise have remained hidden and undiscovered if visual and auditory clues were all that had been processed. Which is what it in fact had done; I found that out when I removed the data record from inside the droid and analyzed it. The truth came out, concerning a certain individual having been at a certain place, and at a certain important time, even though he had tried to conceal his presence from anyone else who might have been watching and listening.”

“What place?” Neelah’s tone was as demanding and impatient as before. “What time?”

“Back on Tatooine—for such a desolate, backwater world, it has assumed a great deal of importance for the rest of the galaxy.” Boba Fett gestured toward the viewport, as though indicating one of the bright points of light visible beyond the drifting subnodes. “But that’s something bounty hunters know instinctively—or at least the ones who survive and prosper. The smallest, apparently insignificant speck of dirt can loom unexpectedly large one day. And you had better be prepared for that. In this case, the speck of dirt was a moisture farm in the Dune Sea, some distance away from the Mos Eisley spaceport. A moisture farm owned by one Owen Lars—nobody important—and operated by him and his wife, Beru, assisted by a young nephew of theirs. Who just happened to be someone very important—”

“Luke Skywalker,” said Dengar. “That’s who you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

“Indeed.” Boba Fett gave a single nod. “Enough of the details have become known, about Skywalker’s transformation from an insignificant, planet-bound nonentity with big and hopeless dreams to a major figure in the Rebel Alliance, to have already coalesced into legend. And that transformation could be said to have begun with a raid by Imperial stormtroopers on that dreary little moisture farm, a raid that left Skywalker’s aunt and uncle as little more than blackened skeletons in the ruins.”

“So what’s the big mystery about that? Darth Vader ordered the stormtrooper raid on the moisture farm—a lot of creatures in the galaxy know about that by now.” Dengar shrugged his shoulders. “Anybody who’s had any contact at all with the Rebel Alliance has heard most of the story.”

“The mystery,” said Boba Fett quietly, “has to do with what I found in the deactivated cargo droid aboard Ree Duptom’s ship. The spy device’s audio and video records documented the stormtroopers’ raid; the droid must have been hiding and watching from behind a nearby sand dune. The details, when I played back the files, were consistent with the known accounts of the raid and its aftermath. There were only Imperial stormtroopers to be observed, going about their lethal business. But the additional data that the cargo droid’s spy recordings held—the olfactory information, taken from the atmosphere at the time and place of the raid on the moisture farm—indicated somebody else had been there, as well as the stormtroopers.”

“All right”—Neelah spread her hands apart, waiting to hear—“who was it?”

“In the analysis of the spy device’s olfactory data were the unmistakable pheromones of a male of the Falleen species.” Boba Fett raised a finger for emphasis. “That much was easily determined. But using my own databases aboard Slave I, I was able to narrow it down even further. The specific pheromone traces could only have come from a member of the Falleen nobility; there’s a genetic marker that is unique to that bloodline.”

“A Falleen nobleman?” Dengar’s brow creased as he puzzled over the information. “But they’re all dead now—”

“There was one still alive,” said Boba Fett, “at the time of the stormtrooper raid on Tatooine. Before that, the Falleen nobility had been virtually wiped out by a genetic warfare experiment, one that was initiated by Lord Vader. Of that family grouping, the only surviving member was Prince Xizor, who was then the head of the Black Sun organization.”

“I don’t get it.” Dengar felt even more confused than before. “You’re saying that Prince Xizor was part of the raid that killed Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle? But Xizor would’ve had to have been directing the Imperial stormtroopers somehow, but keeping himself out of sight—”

“Not at all.” Boba Fett put his gloved hands flat on the arms of the pilot’s chair again. “The spy device into which the cargo droid had been transformed contained the evidence of Prince Xizor being present at the raid on the moisture farm—but the evidence might not have been genuine.”

“Faked? You mean somebody else created some kind of phony evidence and planted it inside the cargo droid?” The possibilities were multiplying faster than Dengar could keep track. “Or maybe Xizor himself did it for some reason.” That didn’t seem to make sense, but then very little seemed to anymore. “But why? Why would anybody do that?”

“That,” replied Fett, “is something I do not know. Or at least, not yet. But the chances of the evidence having been manufactured, with the purpose of making it appear that Prince Xizor had something to do with the raid that killed Skywalker’s aunt and uncle, remain considerable.”

“I don’t see why that should be.” Arms folded across her breast, Neelah seemed less than impressed with Boba Fett’s analysis. “Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Maybe this Xizor creature really did lead the raid, and somehow he got caught out at it, even though he’d tried to keep himself hidden.”

“There’s several reasons for being suspicious about the evidence I found inside the cargo droid. One is that Lord Vader and Prince Xizor were mortal enemies, even as they continued their roles as Palpatine’s loyal servants. Of course, it served the Emperor’s purposes to have Vader and Xizor at each other’s throats, just as I suspect it served his purpose to pretend he didn’t know that Xizor was the leader of Black Sun. The Emperor has a devious mind—he derives more of his power from that, I believe, than any mystical Force—and it suited him for the moment to keep Xizor on a long leash. The time came, though, when the prince found a tighter grip around his neck than he would ever have thought possible. He wasn’t clever enough to avoid being caught in the snare that he helped weave around himself—and that cost him his life. I don’t intend to follow his example.” Boba Fett leaned back in the pilot’s chair, his visor-shielded gaze regarding his audience. “The upshot of the enmity that existed between Xizor and Vader is that it would have been unlikely in the extreme for Xizor to have taken any part in the stormtrooper raid without Vader having known and, more, having approved of it—yet none of my information sources on the Imperial planet of Coruscant, some of them close indeed to Vader, have ever indicated that was the case. Similarly, my contacts inside Black Sun never reported their leader Xizor getting hooked up with one of Darth Vader’s operations. Therefore, the best analysis would be that the evidence linking Xizor to the raid had been created by some third party, possibly as a way of drawing unwanted attention toward Prince Xizor. That possibility is reinforced by Ree Duptom’s own history, before he met his death aboard his own ship: he had been involved on several previous occasions with various disinformation campaigns, some of them actually linking back to Emperor Palpatine’s court. It had become something of a speciality with Duptom, the discreet spreading of lies in the various watering holes of the galaxy, so that they would do the most good for whoever had hired him.”

“That was how he got kicked out of the old Bounty Hunters Guild.” Dengar gave a slow nod. “He got a couple of other bounty hunters killed by circulating stories that they had been the ones responsible for certain double crosses that went down. They weren’t scams that he’d run, but shifting the blame let some other well-paying, weaselly creature get away.”

“A time-honored tradition,” said Boba Fett drily. “And one which Ree Duptom had been making a good part of his living at. Given his reputation for being able to do that sort of thing, someone had obviously engaged his services in some kind of scheme to falsely link Prince Xizor with the stormtrooper raid on Tatooine in which Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle were killed. But two other deaths put an end to that plot: Duptom’s own, when he was fried by the meltdown of his ship’s engine core, and Xizor’s. Whatever the intent had been in trying to link Xizor with the stormtrooper raid, it was hardly worth following through on it once he had been killed as well. The only thing left from the plot was the fabricated evidence contained in the cargo droid, and that was in my possession once I came across Duptom’s ship drifting in space.”

“For which, I’m sure, you’d find some good use.” Unfolding an arm, Neelah held up two fingers. “But you said there was something else you found on that ship. What was the other item?”

“Perhaps this one will compel more of your attention. Ree Duptom might have been dead—” Boba Fett shrugged. “No great loss; but there was still another creature alive aboard the Venesectrix. In the cargo hold’s cages, I found a young female human. Not in the best of physical condition—Duptom wasn’t as careful about maintaining his merchandise as I am—but at least still breathing. She was still unconscious, the aftereffect of a rather thorough memory wipe that she had received …”

Dengar heard a sudden gasp come from Neelah. He looked over at her, standing next to him, and saw that her eyes had gone wide with surprise.

“Good,” said Boba Fett. “I see that I have managed to pique your interest. That moment aboard Ree Duptom’s Venesectrix was indeed our first encounter. One that still remains as mystifying to me as it undoubtedly is to you. I could only assume that a memory-wiped female human had been in Duptom’s possession as part of his various business enterprises—though not, of course, as an item of hard merchandise for which a bounty had been posted. While it was possible that Ree Duptom might have gotten wind of some paying gig before I had, enough time had passed—as was indicated by the advanced state of decomposition of his corpse—so that I would have heard of anyone offering a bounty for the return of a person matching your physical description. That was not the case, so obviously Duptom had been involved in some other, probably less savory, type of business. But what that would have been, I had no clue—when you regained consciousness, you couldn’t even tell me your name.”

“I remember …” Neelah’s eyes were even wider than before. She nodded slowly. “Not my name … that’s still lost … but I remember now, that was the first time I laid eyes on you. Not in Jabba the Hurt’s palace, but in a ship out in space.” Neelah touched the side of her head with trembling fingertips. “It was like I woke up there … and there were the bars of the cage, and I felt so cold …”

“That was because you were dying. Whoever had done the memory-wipe job on you had been both thorough and brutal.” Boba Fett’s voice was flat and unemotional. “They didn’t leave you in good shape. Plus you had been unconscious for some time, without food or water, after Ree Duptom had managed to get himself killed. If I hadn’t taken care of you and nursed you back to a reasonable semblance of health, you would have died there aboard the Venesectrix—or on Slave I after I had brought you over to my ship. So you might want to regard whatever you did for me, back in the Dune Sea on Tatooine, as just repayment in kind.”

“But you didn’t save me … because you felt sorry for me …”

“And pity didn’t motivate you either, when you found me near death.” Boba Fett regarded her coldly, but with no tone of accusation in his voice. “It was a simple business matter for both of us. You thought I might be of some use to you, just as long before that, I calculated the potential for turning a profit from you. And”—he turned his head slightly, as though studying her from another angle—“we both might be correct yet. But at the time I found you, that was an unknown quantity, just as it remains now. I have my standards, though; no piece of possibly valuable merchandise has ever died while in my keeping, other than when they’ve managed to commit suicide. That, I could tell, wasn’t going to happen in your case; even starving and dehydrated, suffering from a traumatic memory wipe, enough of your inner spirit remained, fighting to survive. Once you were out of physiological danger, it was just a matter of stowing you someplace where you’d be out of danger while I determined the best way of profiting from your situation.”

“So you put her in Jabba the Hutt’s palace?” The notion astonished Dengar. He stared at Boba Fett, eyes wide as Neelah’s had gone. “That hellhole? She could’ve gotten thrown to Jabba’s pet rancor!”

“The dangers of Jabba’s palace were well known to me,” said Boba Fett. “While substantial, they were nevertheless limited and predictable. And I would be on hand to circumvent them, in case Neelah had aroused any of Jabba’s crueler desires—the Hutt, like all of his greedy species, might have been averse to meeting my price, but he valued my services enough to have made a standing offer for me to stay on at his palace for as long as I cared to.”

“So you could keep an eye on me,” said Neelah. Her gaze narrowed as she slowly nodded. “But more than that—you had already come to a dead end, trying to find out anything about me, who I really was, why somebody had done all those things to me. So you passed me off as a mere dancing girl, bringing me there to Jabba’s palace while I was still too confused to even know what you were doing. But what you were really hoping for was that someone in that crowd of thugs and criminals in Jabba’s court would recognize me for who I really was—and that would be how you’d find out how to turn a profit from me!”

“That possibility had occurred to me. Jabba’s palace was a crossroads for all sorts of the galaxy’s lowlife; some of them had even been in business with Ree Duptom before. There was always a chance that one of them might have had an inkling about what kind of scheme he had been engaged upon when he met his death—who he was working for, and what they were trying to accomplish.”

The corner of Neelah’s mouth twisted in a sneer. “I guess it’s too bad for both of us, then, that you didn’t find out anything.”

“Ah.” A trace of amusement filtered into Boba Fett’s voice. “But that’s where you’re wrong. I did discover something. Perhaps not the whole truth—your real name and where you came from—but enough to follow up on. Enough that might lead us to that mutually profitable truth.”

Standing beside Neelah, Dengar could see her hands tightening into fists.

“Tell me,” commanded Neelah. “Now.”

“I’ll tell you because it suits my own purposes, and not for any other reason.” The amused tone evaporated from Boba Fett’s words. “There was a former business associate of Ree Duptom at Jabba’s palace—his name doesn’t matter—but what is important is that the two of them had been working together until just before Duptom’s death. As a matter of fact, they’d had a falling out, the sort of thing that happens with low criminal mentalities like that. It was also the sort of thing that would lead one of them to do a delayed-effect sabotage on the engines of the other’s ship, resulting in a lethal core meltdown.” Fett shook his head. “No great loss—just as it wasn’t any great loss when I had to sneak out of Jabba’s court for a second, while the other dancing girl, the one named Oola, was giving her final performance. That was just long enough to set up a rendezvous later with my informant. It wasn’t until after Princess Leia, disguised as an Ubese bounty hunter, had brought the Wookiee Chewbacca into the court that I had enough time to obtain the data that this certain creature had—and then I made sure that he wouldn’t be informing anyone else that I had been asking questions about your real identity.”

“He knew … he knew who I am?” Neelah leaned forward. “My real name?”

“Unfortunately, the creature knew nothing of that. And you can rest assured that I used every means of persuasion at my disposal to make sure he told me everything that he did know. I didn’t have to worry about leaving traces of those techniques; in Jabba’s palace, a corpse turning up in that kind of condition was pretty much a daily occurrence. What he did tell me, though, before I returned to Jabba’s court, was that his former business associate Ree Duptom had accepted two new jobs just before they had had their falling out with each other, and that one client would be paying for both jobs. But he didn’t know who that client was; Duptom hadn’t told him that much.”

“Then the information’s worthless!” A look of furious despair sparked in Neelah’s gaze. “It still doesn’t tell us who I really am, or what happened to me!”

“Calm yourself. You’ve waited this long for the answers you want; you can wait a little while longer. Because that may be all that it takes.”

“What … what do you mean?”

“Did you forget,” said the bounty hunter, “that I brought you to this point in space for a reason? Those answers, if they’re to be found anywhere, are here.” Boba Fett pointed to the cockpit’s viewport and its unsettling vista of dead arachnoid subnodes. “My late contact inside Jabba the Hutt’s palace wasn’t able to tell me your name—he had never even laid eyes on you before coming there—but he was able to provide the clue I needed.”

Dengar spoke up this time. “So what was that?”

“Simple. The two last jobs that Ree Duptom had taken on were obviously the ones I found aboard his ship Venesectrix—whoever the person was who had hired him to do something with the fabricated evidence about Prince Xizor’s involvement in the stormtrooper raid on Tatooine, that person must also have been the one that had arranged for the abduction and memory wipe of Neelah. But what my contact in the palace told me was that the person who paid for those jobs hadn’t hired Ree Duptom directly. He had used an intermediary—a go-between.”

“A go-between …” Suddenly, Dengar understood. “It must have been Kud’ar Mub’at! The assembler was the only creature who would have arranged that kind of job for Ree Duptom. But—”

“But it’s dead,” Neelah said flatly. “Kud’ar Mub’at is dead, remember? You were here when it happened.” She shook her head in disgust. “You’ve brought us all the way out here for nothing. The dead can’t tell us any secrets.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” Boba Fett turned in the pilot’s chair and pointed to the viewport behind him. “Look.”

The Hound’s Tooth had slowly moved farther into the tethered constellation of dead subnodes. Until it had at last come to the center of the torn strands of neural tissue.

In the scan of space visible outside the ship, a spiderlike corpse larger than all the others drifted, jointed legs tucked up beneath what was left of its globular abdomen. The hollow, blind eyes of Kud’ar Mub’at gazed back at the visitors to the cold vacuum of its tomb.

“We only need to bring the dead back to life.” Boba Fett spoke with calm assurance, just as though nothing would be easier. “And then listen …”

9

A woman talked to a traitor.

“You got what you wanted.” The traitor’s name was Fenald; in the dim, smoky light of the underground watering hole, his smile was both unpleasant and knowing, like an animal toying with its prey. “That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

Kodir of Kuhlvult tried to keep her cloak from touching the damp walls of the establishment. She had known there were such places on the world of Kuat, but she had never been in one before. Her life had been spent in another world, one that was on the same planet but that might as well have been light-years away. That world contained all the luxury and power of Kuat’s ruling families; this one contained the planet’s human dregs.

A candle stub’s inadequate light flickered from a rough niche carved in the wall, merging her shadow and Fenald’s with the darkness in which other figures sat hunched and brooding over squat mugs of intoxicants. Even the air seeped rankly into Kodir’s lungs, every molecule laden with the soot that lined the low, crouch-inducing stone ceiling.

“I’ve got some of what I wanted.” Kodir leaned forward, arms on the sticky-wet table, so that Fenald would be able to make out her hushed words. “There’s always more.”

Fenald was a little drunk; he had obviously been waiting for her to show up for some time. “ ’Fraid I can’t help you much with the rest. I’m not exactly in an influential position these days, am I? I sort of spent all that on the last part of your plans.”

“Yes—” Kodir nodded inside the cloak’s loose hood that she had put on to conceal her identity from any prying scrutiny. “You’re quite an actor. Everybody was fooled. And they still are. So you did a very good job for me. I appreciate that.”

“Good,” said Fenald thickly. He regarded her from heavy-lidded eyes. “Because I need you to show that appreciation. I’m a little short on credits these days … what with having lost my job and all. And since you’ve got that job now—just what you wanted, huh?—then I think it’s only fair if you pay a little more than what you did up front. Like on a continuing basis. So I wouldn’t be tempted into talking to anybody about our little … performance, shall we say. It’d be a shame to spoil the show, while it’s still going on.”

“You’re right. It would be.” Kodir reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his. “But you know—there’s more than one way for me to show my appreciation.”

In his present state, it took Fenald a few seconds to understand what she meant. Then his smile grew wider and uglier. “Fine,” he said. “But that’ll have to be in addition to the credits.”

She didn’t say anything in reply, but leaned farther across the table, bringing her face closer to his. Just before their lips met, her other hand emerged from inside the cloak with something bright and glittering in her grip. Fenald’s eyes went round with shock as he felt the object move across his throat.

“No,” said Kodir softly. She dropped the vibroblade onto the table, next to where Fenald had collapsed facedown in a widening pool of his own blood. “It’s instead.”

Drawing the cloak’s hood forward, Kodir turned and looked back across the watering hole’s dim space. None of its clientele appeared to have noticed that anything at all had happened. She slid a few coins onto the table’s corner, then got up and walked unhurriedly toward the steps leading back up to the surface level.

A woman talked to a gambler.

A different woman, and far from the planet of Kuat. But she too had wrapped herself in a hooded cloak to prevent anyone from prying into her affairs.

“Business is still a little slow for me right now,” said the gambler. His name was Drawmas Sma’Da, and he sat at a table in a glittering, brightly lit pleasure den. The laughter of the galaxy’s rich and foolish denizens sounded from all sides of the establishment. “You have to understand, I’m not yet at the level where I used to be—I had a little, um, embarrassment a few weeks ago. I had to spend most of my operating capital getting out of that mess; you know, the usual bribes and payoffs and stuff. Believe me, Palpatine’s not the only greedy creature inside the Empire.” Lacing his hands together across his expansive belly, he leaned back in his chair. “So I can’t cover any big bets at the moment. None of that Alliance versus the Empire stuff.”

“That’s fine.” The woman kept her voice low. “I want to place a different kind of wager. On a bounty hunter.”

“Bounty hunters, huh?” Sma’Da’s face darkened into a scowl. “I’ll give you a good bet on a couple of ’em. You can bet that if I ever get my hands on a pair named Zuckuss and 4-LOM, they’re both dead meat. They’re the ones who dragged me out of here, not too long ago.”

She shook her head. “I’m not interested in them.”

“All right.” Sma’Da gave her a jowly, cajoling smile. “Who do you want to bet on?”

The woman told the gambler.

“You got to be joking.” He looked at her in amazement. “Him?”

“Will you cover the bet?”

“Oh, I’ll cover it all right.” Sma’Da’s shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Hey, that’s my business. And I’ll give you great odds, too. Because frankly—he’s not going to make it. I know just what kind of trouble he’s in. It doesn’t get any worse.”

The woman’s gaze turned cold. “All the better for you, then.”

When the wager was recorded and the stakes transferred to a holding account at one of the galaxy’s banking worlds, Sma’Da offered to buy her a drink. “You should get something for your money,” he said. “I hate to take credits from a pretty female, and not give them something in return.”

“There is something you can do for me.” The woman rose from the table.

Sma’Da looked at her. “What’s that?”

“Just be ready to pay up when the time comes.” She turned and strode toward the establishment’s ornately framed exit, the edge of the cloak trailing across the gold-specked floor.

Near the planet Kuat, other conversations were taking place.

“Believe me,” said the leader of the Scavenger Squadron, “I don’t like being here, either. I’d rather be out near Sullust right now, getting ready for the real battle.”

Kuat of Kuat turned from his lab bench and looked over his shoulder at the figure standing, flight helmet in the crook of one arm, in the middle of Kuat’s own private quarters. To one side of the space, a high, arching bank of transparisteel panes revealed stars and the immense, intricate shapes of Kuat Drive Yards’ construction docks. Against Kuat’s ankles, the felinx rubbed its silk-furred flank; glancing down at it for a moment, Kuat saw the creature turn a hostile, slit-pupiled glare at the intruder.

“Then you should feel free to leave,” Kuat of Kuat said mildly. “The presence of your squadron here is entirely unnecessary.”

“The Rebel Alliance feels otherwise.” An impressive scar ran in an almost perfect diagonal across Commander Gennad Rozhdenst’s face, the result of surviving a previous skirmish with Imperial fighters. “And I have my orders, directly from former Senator Mon Mothma, with the Alliance fleet near Sullust.”

“So I understand.” Kuat had bent down and picked up the felinx; the animal now lay cradled in the safety of his arms. Its yellow eyes closed in contentment as he scratched behind its ears. “But you must also bear in mind, Commander, that I have my duties to perform as well.”

Right now, those duties weighed heavily on Kuat of Kuat’s shoulders. Everything depends upon me, he mused. The felinx might very well consider its comfort to be the most pressing concern of its master, but there was far more than that in his thoughts. The fate of Kuat Drive Yards itself, the corporation whose ships and armaments spanned the galaxy and formed the bulk of the Imperial Navy—the leadership of that enterprise was Kuat’s hereditary legacy, just as it had been for his father and grandfather, and to generations before them. When he gazed out upon the construction docks, with a fleet of Destroyers and heavy cruisers nearing completion in them, he felt as though their combined mass bent his spine. And more: rising above Kuat Drive Yards was the mottled green sphere of the planet Kuat itself, an entire world and people dependent upon the fate of the corporation that funneled such a large share of the galaxy’s wealth into their coffers.

And I fought for this. Kuat’s fingertips continued their instinctive caress of the felinx’s silken fur. I fought to keep this burden mine, rather than let others usurp it from me. At times such as this, when the weight of his responsibilities translated into bone-weary fatigue, he began to question the wisdom of such a struggle. There had been plenty of others in the ruling families of the planet Kuat, nobles whose bloodlines were by custom prevented from taking over the leadership of Kuat Drive Yards, who had been eager to conspire against him, overthrow their world’s ancient wisdom, and place themselves in this seat of power. As much as Kuat of Kuat might have been willing to let them have their chance, he had found himself unable to let go of his tight grasp upon the corporation. Because I know—he closed his eyes as he stroked the felinx—that they would never have been able to prevail. Not against me, but against all our other enemies. Kuat found it cruelly ironic that when death had removed the threat posed by Prince Xizor, another potential opponent should arise, in the form of the Rebel Alliance.

“There’s no conflict,” said Commander Rozhdenst, “between your duties and mine.” The wintry blue eyes in the hard-angled face seemed to have peered into and discerned the careful workings inside Kuat’s heart. “The Rebel Alliance has no designs upon Kuat Drive Yards. We would just as soon have the corporation remain in your hands.”

“I wish I could believe that, Commander.” Kuat’s hand froze in its gentle motions upon the felinx’s neck. He could hear his own voice turning cold. “But stationing a squadron of armed Rebel spacecraft—even one that so justly merits its ‘scavenger’ descriptor—is hardly the action of those who seek friendship with Kuat Drive Yards.”

“The Rebel Alliance would be satisfied with maintaining a neutral relationship with you. We seek no more than that.”

“Ah.” Kuat of Kuat managed a wry smile before slowly shaking his head. “But you see, Commander—that’s what everybody says. Everybody who has ever done business with Kuat Drive Yards, back to my father’s and my grandfather’s times before me, has always assured us that they had the corporation’s welfare—and independence—at heart. And if we had trusted them on that point, I doubt if Kuat Drive Yards would even exist now. So you’ll have to excuse my skepticism; I know it’s unseemly in even an unwilling host such as myself. But I assure you that Emperor Palpatine himself has informed me that he has no ‘designs,’ as you put it, upon us. Don’t be offended if I state that the reliance I place upon his words is just about the same as I put upon those from a representative of the Rebel Alliance.”

The commander regarded him for a moment, then spoke. “You have a way of putting things very bluntly, Kuat.”

“Ascribe it to my training as an engineer. I prefer to think of it as exactitude, rather than bluntness.”

“Then I’ll speak to you just as … exactly.” Rozh-denst’s voice grew even icier, like durasteel exposed to the vacuum of space. “My squadron and I were sent here on a mission, and we intend to carry that mission out. But you’re correct in assuming that there’s something that the Rebel Alliance wants from you. I’ve been quite thoroughly briefed on the political and strategic analysis that’s been made by our leadership concerning the value of Kuat Drive Yards. Not just to ourselves, but to Palpatine as well. When I say that your neutrality is something that we value, I don’t mean just toward the Alliance; I mean toward the Empire.”

“Kuat Drive Yards does business with the Empire. Nothing more than that. The armaments and fleet procurement authorities of the Imperial Navy value what we do here—as they should; we have no rivals when it comes to our military shipbuilding expertise—and they are capable of meeting our prices.” The felinx shifted lazily in the crook of Kuat’s arm as his shoulders lifted in a shrug. “We sell to others as well, if they can pay for the goods they desire. That, in fact, is the only distinction we make between our customers and potential customers: whether or not they’ve got the credits in their accounts, for us to take an order from them.” Kuat displayed a thin, humorless smile. “Believe me, Commander, if the Rebel Alliance was capable of paying, Kuat Drive Yards would be happy to take your credits. From the look of that motley collection of patched-together Y-wings you’ve got stationed around our construction docks, they could certainly use a little maintenance and retrofitting work.”

A spark of anger showed in Rozhdenst’s eyes, amusing Kuat even more. He knew that his comment had struck home. The only reason that this particular collection of Rebel Alliance craft was here rather than on their way to Sullust to join up with the others preparing for the imminent confrontation with the Imperial Navy was that they were too beat-up or outmoded to represent much of a tactical threat against a well-armed and prepared enemy. Most of them were old Y-wings, representing the previous-generation technology that the Imperial Navy’s advanced TIE fighters and Interceptors would be capable of chewing up and dispersing into flaming shards within the first seconds of a tactical encounter.

“I have to wonder,” Kuat continued maliciously, “whether the Rebel Alliance command sent you and your squadron here to accomplish anything at all, or whether patrolling Kuat Drive Yards is just a convenient excuse for getting you all safely out of the way, so you won’t needlessly interfere with the actual fighters, once the battle starts.” The felinx sensed its master’s amusement and purred in happy agreement. “I imagine that Mon Mothma has more important things to worry about than how to deploy a so-called squadron that’s really little more than laser-cannon fodder.”

The glower on Gennad Rozhdenst’s face was nearly as deep as the disfiguring scar. “My men and their craft can take care of themselves.”

“I have little doubt of that, Commander. It’s just a question of whether they can accomplish anything else. Your loyalty to them is impressive, if not unexpected. And of course, the reasons that the Rebel Alliance command put you in charge of them are perfectly understandable. It speaks volumes about the advanced moral nature of the Rebel leaders that they would be concerned to find an assignment suitable for someone whose military career has not been crowned, so to speak, with conspicuous amounts of glory.”

In Rozhdenst’s eyes, the spark turned darker and smoldering. He made no reply.

“Bad luck can happen to anyone, Commander. I can attest that often that which makes one a hero is a simple matter of chance and fortune—though some would say that the true hero makes his own chances. But that’s a lot to be asked of anyone. So your own history—your failures, the crashes and the dogfights that the other creature won—are certainly excusable.”

Kuat saw that he had succeeded, though; it was clear that he had managed to goad the Alliance commander into a barely controlled fury. Just what I wanted, he thought with satisfaction. He had never been overly impressed with hoary old Jedi blather, but he did believe in the time-tested negotiator’s maxim that to anger someone was to own him.

That anger manifested itself in the form of Commander Gennad Rozhdenst striding right up to Kuat and jabbing a blunt forefinger into his chest. “Let’s get something straight, Kuat. I got my orders to come here straight from Mon Mothma herself, after I had rounded up this squadron that you think so little of—and that was on her direct orders as well. I scoured every system in this galaxy for every operational remnant, every shot-down fighter and support craft we could lay our hands on, and every orphaned Alliance pilot who’d had to be left behind by his previous outfit. We got our Scavenger Squadron up and flying without any help from technicians like you, since your chasing after your own profits kept you just a little too busy for something like that.” The forefinger poked harder into the front of Kuat’s regulation KDY coveralls. “My squadron and I were already on our way to Sullust—on Admiral Ackbar’s orders—when he was overruled by Mothma and the rest of the Alliance high command and instructed to send us here.”

“So I’ve already heard.” Kuat pushed the other man’s hand to one side and away from himself. “It seems that there are others inside your Alliance who have a more discerning analysis, shall we say, of the strategic value of your squadron.”

“What they have, Kuat, is a pretty keen idea of what they can expect from somebody like you. They know exactly how much business that your corporation has done with the Empire.” Rozhdenst made a dismissive gesture toward the construction docks visible through the arching panels of transparisteel. “This whole place would’ve probably gone broke and been dismantled for scrap if it hadn’t been for Palpatine and Vader steering so many procurement contracts your way. You’ve got a lot to be grateful to them for, don’t you? That entire fleet that’s nearing completion in your docks is a commission for the Imperial Navy—and the payment for it will put a nice pile of credits in your world’s accounts. And that’s all that concerns you, right? You’ve said as much yourself, just now.”

“I’m glad to see you’ve been listening, Commander. That’s the kind of observational skill I wouldn’t have expected from my previous investigations into your record.”

“Don’t crack wise with me.” Rozhdenst had regained a small measure of self-control. “It would’ve been better for you—and for Kuat Drive Yards—if we had been able to even pretend to be on a friendly basis. But no amount of hostility on your part—and no amount of affection for the Empire that pays you and your corporation such a handsome wage—is going to stop my squadron and me from doing what we were sent here to take care of.”

“Which is, exactly?” Kuat resumed his stroking of the felinx’s silken fur. “Neither the necessity for it, or the details, have been made clear to me.”

“Very well.” Rozhdenst gave a curt nod. “Mon Mothma and the rest of the Rebel Alliance high command recognize the long-term strategic importance of Kuat Drive Yards. Not just for what your corporation is capable of doing in the future, but for the armaments and ships that are in your construction docks at this moment. None of us in the Rebel Alliance have any doubts that you are fully willing to shift your allegiances to whichever force emerges victorious from the coming battle, and all the ones that shall follow. As you’ve indicated, you have Kuat Drive Yards’ best interests at the center of your thoughts. But if events go as I believe they will at Endor—and how I wish I could be there to see it!—then the Empire is going to need replacements for its operational fleets as soon as possible, and taking delivery of what you’ve built for them here will be the fastest way of accomplishing that. The Empire knows that, you know that—and we know it. Which is the whole reason we’re here. The Scavenger Squadron is going to be keeping an around-the-chronometer vigil on everything that happens here at Kuat Drive Yards; there’s not going to be much that we’re going to miss. And I promise you”—the commander’s jabbing finger stopped an inch short of Kuat’s chest—“when word comes from Endor about what’s happened out there, and the Imperial Navy tries to take possession of the completed ships in your docks—” Rozhdenst shook his head. “It’s not going to happen. The Rebel Alliance command may have decided that they’ve got enough forces available, out at Sullust, that they can spare my pilots for this detail and still be able to beat whatever Palpatine and his underlings can come up with. Fine; that’s a strategic decision and I’m satisfied to go along with it. But it also means that Mon Mothma is confident that my raggedy, patched-together outfit can take of business here.”

“Indeed.” Kuat raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’m sure you’ll make a valiant attempt at it.”

“Oh, we’ll do more than that. Since we’ll be missing the action out at Endor, my squadron will be ready to do some serious damage of their own, right here. If any Imperial forces show up and try to get hold of those ships, or if any of your KDY transport crews think they’ll be able to pilot them out to some rendezvous point and deliver them, there’ll be hell to pay. You can bank on that.”

“And what happens if the Rebel Alliance comes here and wants these ships? What gets paid out then?” The temper in the other man’s voice had disturbed the felinx in Kuat’s arms; he did his best to soothe it. “Am I to assume that Mon Mothma and the rest of the Alliance command will be prepared to negotiate a fair—and profitable—deal for them?”

“I’m not authorized,” said Rozhdenst, “to make those kinds of arrangements.”

“What that translates to is that you don’t have the means. The credits. And neither does the Alliance. Otherwise, Mon Mothma would have made the offer already.”

A sneer twisted the corner of Rozhdenst’s mouth. “And would you have accepted it? Not as long as you’re so afraid of the reaction of your best customer, Emperor Palpatine.”

“The deals I make,” replied Kuat stiffly, “are for the best interests of my corporation.”

“And too bad for everybody else in the galaxy.” The sneer remained as Rozhdenst nodded. “They’re fighting for their freedom—and their lives—and all you’re concerned about is the amount of credits rolling into your coffers. Fine; arrange your ethics however you want to. You don’t want to throw in your lot with the Rebel Alliance, that’s up to you. But I think I’m clear in warning you what the Alliance’s ‘Offer’ is likely to be for those ships in your construction docks.” Rozhdenst pointed to the view beyond the transparisteel panels. “If the Alliance decides that it needs the ships you’ve been building—and there’s a high possibility of that—I’m going to be happy to take delivery of them from you whether or not you’ve agreed to sell them to us instead of the Empire. And we’ll worry about making compensation to Kuat Drive Yards after the war is over.”

“Your language doesn’t surprise me, Commander. I would have been more surprised if you had persisted in maintaining a pretense of goodwill toward Kuat Drive Yards. But now we know exactly where we stand with each other, don’t we?” Kuat turned and set the felinx down on top of the lab bench beside him. “So I guess we have made some progress.”

Rozhdenst regarded him through eyes narrowed to slits. “As I said when I came here, Kuat—it would be better if we could work things out on a friendly basis. I’d rather trust you than have to watch you. But now we will be watching you.”

“As you wish.” Standing with his back turned toward the Rebel Alliance commander, Kuat picked up a micro-insertion logic probe from his lab bench. With the back of his other hand, he kept the felinx from investigating the delicate tool. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work todo …”

He heard the commander’s footsteps receding, and then the doors of his private quarters opening and closing once more. In the space’s restored silence, he regarded the thin, shining metal of the probe resting in the curve of his palm, as though it were a sharp-edged weapon. “They can watch all they want,” murmured Kuat. He addressed his soft words to the noncompre-hending felinx, confident that no one else would overhear them. Since having been betrayed by Kuat Drive Yards’ former head of security, Kuat of Kuat had personally overseen the electronic security sweep of his private quarters. “They have no idea what I’m doing here.” A faint smile moved across his face. “And they won’t have much luck getting their hands on those ships …”

•   •   •

“So what’s the scoop?” Ott Klemp, one of the younger and less-experienced pilots in the Scavenger Squadron, matched his pace to that of his commanding officer. “Are they going to cooperate with us?”

“There’s no ‘they’ at Kuat Drive Yards,” replied Commander Rozhdenst. He had let Klemp bring him down to the KDY construction docks from the squadron’s mobile base-support ship mainly to get the youngster some more, and much-needed, flight time near the immense, system-circling facility. “There’s only Kuat of Kuat himself. He makes all the decisions.” Rozhdenst continued his purposeful stride down the high-ceilinged corridor, away from his unpleasantly terminated conference with Kuat Drive Yards’ chief. “And right now, he’s decided to keep on being ‘neutral,’ as he puts it. That’s not good.”

“You think he’ll turn over this new fleet to the Imperial Navy?”

“What I think is that he’ll do whatever he feels is in the best interests of Kuat Drive Yards. I believe him when he says as much. Which means that he’ll do it in a second, soon as Palpatine forks over the credits for the ships.”

The landing dock, with the Scavenger Squadron shuttle waiting for them, was only a few meters away. “Maybe we should do a preemptive strike,” said Klemp. “Get our pilots inside those ships immediately, so that if any Imperial Navy forces show up, we can keep ’em from getting their hands on the goods.”

Rozhdenst impatiently shook his head as he walked. “Negative on that. We’d be playing right into the Empire’s hands if we tried something like that. We don’t have enough pilots and crew to fully man even one ship out of a fleet like that. Getting them up and away from the KDY construction docks would be difficult enough, but trying to fight off an Imperial task force from inside those ships, without enough personnel to crew the onboard weaponry, would be suicide. No, we’d be better off—we’d have more of a chance, that is—by intercepting any Imperial ships coming from outside this sector, and fighting them off with what we’ve already got.”

“Sir, that’s not much of a chance at all.” Klemp’s face had paled with the contemplation of what the commander had described. “Our squadron might be able to keep a lid on a bunch of KDY ship fabricators and technicians, but if the Empire routes any significant number of fighting craft here, we’re done for.”

“Tell me something,” growled Rozhdenst, “that I don’t already know.” The two men had reached the side of the shuttle craft. Next to the extended landing gear, the commander turned to the younger man. “Let me fill you in on something about our mission here. You’re absolutely correct: if the Imperial Navy’s forces were to move in, there wouldn’t be much we could do to stop ’em. There’s only one reason we’re able to stay up there—” He pointed toward the sealed landing dock’s upper reaches, and the rest of the Scavenger Squadron beyond it. “And that’s because, right now, the Empire’s attention—and its strength—is turned elsewhere. Endor, to be exact. With our beat-up, inadequate craft, we wouldn’t be able to stop the Imperial Navy—but we can slow it down. Maybe, if we fight hard and smart enough, slow it down to the point that we could contact the Alliance communications ship that’s in orbit near Sullust, and get some kind of operational task force ordered out here. And that Rebel force could stop the Imperial Navy from getting hold of these new ships.” Rozhdenst started to climb up the rungs of a rolling ladder platform toward the shuttle’s hatchway. “Of course,” he said over his shoulder to Klemp, “if that’s what happens, we won’t be here to see it. We’ll be dead.”

“Maybe.” Ott Klemp climbed up after the commander. “But that’s only going to be after a lot of them are dead as well.”

Rozhdenst leaned forward and slapped the younger man on the shoulder. “Save it for when they get here.”

The landing dock’s doors swung slowly open, revealing the field of stars beyond, as Klemp fired up the shuttle’s thruster engine. A moment later, the craft traced a red arc away from Kuat Drive Yards, heading back toward the waiting squadron.

10

“I can’t believe,” said Dengar, looking around himself, “that this place was any more cheerful when it was alive.”

He and Boba Fett were surrounded by the tangled fibrous walls of what had been Kud’ar Mub’at’s web. Enough structural integrity had been achieved that the main chamber and a few of the narrow corridors leading from it could hold a breathable atmospheric pressure. That made working in the reconstructed spaces easier, if nowhere near enjoyable.

Boba Fett ignored his comment, just as he had ignored all of Dengar’s previous grumbling complaints. Standing several meters away, near the spot where Kud’ar Mub’at’s thronelike nest had once been, Boba Fett continued the application of the low-level electrosynaptic pulse device that was slowly bringing the web back from the dead. Behind the bounty hunter, thick cables snaked back toward the temporary exit port that led to the web’s exterior. The cables’ glossy black sheathing, like the skin of a planet-bound herpetoid creature, shimmered with the effects of the energy coursing within. That energy, and the parallel data flow that shaped and adjusted it to the task of revivifying the web’s interwoven neural cells, came from the Hound’s Tooth, moored almost within touching distance of the heavier structural fibers that bound the mass of finer neurons together.

“That should hold.” Dengar made the comment aloud, as much for the purpose of hearing a human voice in this dismal space as for getting any reaction from his partner. The walls of the web’s main chamber had to be propped apart from each other, to keep them from collapsing in on him and Fett. From the Hound’s cargo hold, they had stripped out enough durasteel beams for the job, transferring them over from the ship and awkwardly wrestling them into place among the sections of web they had previously scoured from the vacuum and laboriously bound back together. Even doing that much of a reconstruction on the late arachnoid assembler’s web would have been impossible if the Black Sun cleanup crew, the henchmen of Prince Xizor that had destroyed it in the first place, had turned blasters or any other kind of incendiary weapons on it. But all the pieces, the floating strands and knots of pallid grey tissue, had still been floating in the vacuum, waiting to be resurrected. “Any more of them?” Catching his breath, Dengar rested a hand on a horizontally mounted beam next to his head. “Might be able to scrounge a few more out of the ship—”

As if in reply, the durasteel beam groaned and creaked, echoed by the others that filled the chamber like the elements of a three-dimensional maze. The tangled walls pulsed and contracted, as though the two men were caught in some giant creature’s digestive tract.

It’s like the Sarlacc, thought Dengar. He gazed with both fascination and disgust at the motions of the web’s structure. The effect had reminded him of the few details that Boba Fett had recounted, about having been swallowed by the blind, omnivorous beast that had once formed the fang-ringed center of the Great Pit of Carkoon, back in the Dune Sea on Tatooine. This must be what it’s like, to be swallowed up and still be alive …

The pulsing motion ceased as Boba Fett drew the working tip of the tool in his hands away from the intricate cluster of neural ganglia before him. Across his boots, the black cable lay, still shimmering with the power relayed from the ship. The dark gaze of Boba Fett’s helmet visor glanced back over his shoulder, toward Dengar. “That was just a test,” he said. “Of the web’s spinal connections.”

“Thanks for warning me.” The shiver that had tightened Dengar’s shoulders now slowly ebbed away. I’ll be glad, he thought, when this is over. Facing blaster fire, and every other hazard that seemed to come with being Boba Fett’s partner, were all preferable to the task of restoring Kud’ar Mub’at’s web to a semblance of life.

Unfortunately, that was a necessary part of the plan. Without it—without the extended neural system of the web being once more filled with the sparks of impulse and sensation—the quest that had led both Dengar and Boba Fett, and Neelah as well, to this remote sector of space, and even remoter and more isolated sector of the past, was over.

Fett had explained it all to them. How it was going to work, the only way it could: if the past held the key to the present, then the past had to be broken into and ransacked, the same way the high walls of some rich creature’s palace on a fortified planet would be breached. You found a crack in the wall and widened it enough to enter, then went in and got what you wanted. Simple in the concept; difficult—and dangerous, it seemed to Dengar—in the execution.

The crack in the wall of the past was represented by the memory of the once-living, now-dead arachnoid assembler, Kud’ar Mub’at. Great, Dengar had said to Boba Fett. That ends it right there, doesn’t it? Talking to the dead, learning their secrets, wasn’t a hard job; it was an impossible one. Kud’ar Mub’at was the link to Neelah’s stolen past, and the key to Dengar and Boba Fett’s profiting from that past—if it had been important enough to steal from her, and hide the traces of the theft through a deep memory wipe of her brain, then the chances would be good that it would be worth a good deal of credits to find it and restore it once again. The scent of credits was even stronger with the other possibility connected to the theft of Neelah’s past: finding out who—or what—it was that had been behind the failed plot to implicate the late Prince Xizor in the raid by Imperial stormtroopers on a moisture farm on Tatooine, a raid that had been the trigger, or at least part of it, for Luke Skywalker’s transformation into a leader and legend of the Rebel Alliance. As Boba Fett, with his keen instinct for profits, had pointed out, anytime a trail led that close to the center of major events in the galaxy—with threads tangling around not only a creature who had been the leader of the richest and most powerful criminal organization in all the systems, but also around Emperor Palpatine and his most feared servant, Lord Darth Vader—then the terminus of that trail was likely to be buried under a mountain of credits and influence.

As much as Dengar might have felt that the quest was hopeless, he had to confess to himself that all of his inner greed circuits had been fired up by his partner’s talk. Sure, he had thought, you can get killed, poking into Palpatine’s and Vader’s secrets. But you can also get rich—or at least rich enough to get out of the bounty hunter game. And back into the safe haven of his beloved Manaroo’s arms, and a life that didn’t revolve around kidnapping and killing other creatures while trying to avoid getting killed oneself. That was worth at least a little risk.

All it would take would be bringing a certain assembler back from the dead, so that its memory of those events and plots and schemes could be riffled through. Dengar had gotten used to surprises from his bounty hunter partner, but the next revelation from Boba Fett had exceeded all that had gone before.

Bringing Kud’ar Mub’at back from the dead, Fett had explained, isn’t impossible. Gathering together the pieces of the puzzle—all the scattered strands and chunks of neural tissue that the Black Sun cleanup crew had left drifting in space—would be the hardest part. But the pieces were all there, floating around the Hound’s Tooth. The rest would be relatively easy, or at least according to Boba Fett. I knew more about Kud’ar Mub’at than it knew about itself. In the cockpit area of the Hound, Fett had related to Dengar and Neelah the results of his previous investigations into the nature of such assembler creatures.

Knowing things about one’s business associates always gave one an advantage, especially if they were matters of which the other creature was ignorant. And Kud’ar Mub’at had never shown any great curiosity about its own genetic background or physiology, or whether other assemblers existed anywhere else in the galaxy. Kud’ar Mub’at had been content to consider itself unique, with nothing else like it anywhere in the known systems; it made negotiations with clients easier to have the confidence that there was no other arachnoid assembler whose services they could engage. If Kud’ar Mub’at had ever encountered any other assemblers, it would probably have arranged for their murder, much as it had eliminated its own predecessor, the assembler that had originally created it as a subnode, then suffered the consequences of an unforeseen rebellion. Just as Kud’ar Mub’at had suffered in turn, its former subnode Balancesheet was now somewhere else in the galaxy’s empty spaces, taking care of the business it had inherited from its own deposed creator. But there are other assemblers, Boba Fett had told Dengar and Neelah. I found them. And even more important: I learned from them.

The location of the arachnoid assemblers’ homeworld was something that Boba Fett wouldn’t reveal. You don’t need to know that. Which was just as well with Dengar; the notion of a whole hidden world somewhere, populated by an entire species of spidery, scheming assemblers gave him the creeps. But Boba Fett’s knowledge of an aspect of their physiology was something he did share. Just as an individual assembler, such as Kud’ar Mub’at or Balancesheet, could generate and extrude additional cerebro-neural tissue in the form of an extended nervous system running through a web big enough in which to live and in the tethered subnodes that filled the space, so could that tissue be regenerated from the outside. A constantly monitored and adjusted stimulating pulse would actually restore the strands of dead tissue to functioning life, with the synaptic terminals seeking one another out and knitting themselves back together.

That basic rundown of assembler physiology had taken place in the cockpit of the Hound’s Tooth. Standing now inside the reconstructed web, Dengar looked down at the black, shimmering cables looped near his boots. Neelah was still back aboard the ship moored alongside, making sure that the necessary energy and controlling data kept flowing from the onboard computers. There was no danger of her disengaging the Hound’s Tooth and leaving them stranded inside the web; she was more intent on breaking through to the past and its secrets than either bounty hunter could have been.

Dengar looked up as another shimmering motion ran through the fibers of the web. The effect was less spasmodic and threatening than the previous one, and settled down to a barely discernible but constant trembling in the curving structure. At the same time, the vibration died in the black cables running out to the ship; they became as inert as the web itself had been when he and Boba Fett had commenced its resurrection from the dead.

“That’s it,” Boba Fett announced. He stood up from where he had been kneeling beside the empty nest at the center of the chamber and tossed the pulsator tool aside. “Now we’re ready for the last step.”

Which was exactly what Dengar had been dreading. He had been able to reconcile himself to being inside the living web; it was at least without personality or a guiding intelligence, the revivified neural circuits as empty of thought as some giant, hollow vegetation. But for the past to be retrieved, with all its secrets intact and readable, that idiot nervous system would have to be linked to the brain that contained the necessary memories. And we’ll be inside it, thought Dengar. It struck him as being even worse, in some ways, than the Sarlacc could ever have been.

“Come over here and give me a hand.” Boba Fett gestured as he spoke the order. “We need to get it into position for the hookup.”

Reluctantly, Dengar ducked his head beneath the horizontal beam keeping the web’s walls spread apart. He threaded his way through the maze of the other supports that had been so laboriously installed, mostly by him rather than Fett.

At the center of the chamber, the neural activity that Boba Fett had summoned up from the formerly dead tissue was more visible, the pulsing of the structural fibers overlaid with a shimmering network of sparks racing across the synaptic connections. Dengar tried to maintain his balance on the uneven floor of the space, without laying a hand on any of the surrounding structural fibers. There was no chance of receiving an electrical shock from the bright circuits of light, but the thought of touching the now-living mass unnerved him.

“Get on that side of it,” instructed Boba Fett. He pointed toward the one thing inside the chamber that was still part of the dead world they had found when they had come to this point in space. “We’ll need to lift it all the way clear. I don’t want the legs dragging across any of the neural fibers.”

He did as Fett had told him, still trying to avoid contact with the dead object for as long as possible. Dengar’s reluctance betrayed him; as he stepped gingerly toward it, the toe of one of his boots caught on a loop of black cable, tripping him and toppling him forward.

His hands automatically caught hold of the object’s hard, chitinous exoskeleton, the stiff hairs on the spidery limbs poking into his own flesh like tapering needles. Dengar managed to push himself away, just far enough that he found himself looking straight into the largest of the empty multiple eyes.

There had been no need to bring any of the dead subnodes here inside the web; the small corpses had all been left outside, continuing to drift through the cold vacuum, their curled forms dragging across the hull and cockpit canopy of the Hound’s Tooth as before. But this one, the creator of all the others, was the most important element of the procedure.

Kud’ar Mub’at’s narrow face, only an inch or so away from Dengar’s, almost seemed to be smiling at his discomfiture. In this small, nightmarishly claustrophobic world, the dead found enjoyment in mocking those still alive.

“Quit fooling around,” said Boba Fett with a trace of impatience. “Grab hold and lift.”

Dengar did as ordered, helping the other bounty hunter settle Kud’ar Mub’at’s corpse onto the waiting receptacle of the nest it had occupied in its previous existence. He stepped back, wiping his hands against the front of his gear, and watched as Fett picked up the pulsator tool and went back to work.

He knew it wouldn’t be long now before a flicker of life and intelligence appeared in the empty eyes that had gazed into his own. The prospect of discovering the secrets of the past, and finding the way to a mountain of credits, didn’t make him dread that coming moment any less.

It was her turn to sit in the pilot’s chair.

Neelah had stood in the hatchway of the Hound’s Tooth cockpit area often enough, watching Boba Fett as he had navigated the ship to this remote sector. Even when the bounty hunter had swiveled the chair around in order to talk with her, the difference between their positions had been irritatingly symbolic. Like Jabba’s court, it had struck Neelah, with him on his throne and everybody else petitioning for his attention.

One of the metal panels beneath the cockpit’s gauges and controls had been pried open by Boba Fett, so he could rig up the black cables that now snaked out through an airlock access port and across the few meters of distance to the reconstructed web. All of the equipment aboard the Hound was inferior to what Boba Fett had installed aboard his own Slave I; he’d had to improvise the necessary gear and connections, to get the needed stream of electro-neural pulsations to apply to the dead fibers. Even now, the onboard computer generating the control data was unstable enough that Neelah had been assigned the task of monitoring it, riding gain on its output to keep it within operational limits.

That took only a fraction of her attention, no matter how important the job might have been. Fortunately so; sitting at the cockpit’s control panel, with access to the rest of the ship’s computerized databases, she could set about her own agenda. And without Boba Fett or Dengar knowing anything about it—that suited her to perfection. They’ll find out, she had told herself, when—and if—I want them to.

There were already secrets she was keeping from the two bounty hunters. She had been keeping them for a while now, since the moment when Boba Fett had recounted the story of what he had found aboard the other ship, the one called the Venesectrix, that had belonged to the dead Ree Duptom. Little doors to the past had opened up inside her head, into chambers of memory; dark chambers, whose contents she could barely make out, and with the doors to the chambers beyond still frustratingly locked to her. Boba Fett and Dengar were over there in the assembler’s web that they had so painstakingly woven back together, as though they had been primitive scientists stitching together a dismembered body, hoping to animate it with lightning pulled down from some planet’s storm-wracked sky. Their creation, with the formerly dead Kud’ar Mub’at installed as the brain atop its spine, might very well sit up and tell them the secrets they had come here to discover, as though the past were a golden key on its cold tongue. But in the meantime, Neelah had a little key of her own to use. There were some other doors, outside her shadowed memory, and right inside the computers of the Hound’s Tooth, that she was going to unlock.

He didn’t want to tell me, thought Neelah. All the things that he knows about my past. She nodded with the pleasure of anticipation. Boba Fett wasn’t as smart as he always pretended to be. The bounty hunter had left her right where she needed to be, to find out all those secrets on her own.

Neelah bent over the control panel, turning her attention to the computer’s main display panel. The power and data flow through the black cables, out to the web tethered to the ship, was operating smoothly for now; she could safely ignore it while she worked on her own agenda.

The keypads for the computer were at the far end of the troughlike grooves in the panel, designed for the use of a Trandoshan’s heavy claws. Her own forearms disappeared in them, almost up to the elbow, as she punched in command sequences, first laboriously, then with increasing speed. Within seconds, a screenful of information appeared in front of her that had been locked away beneath Boba Fett’s own personal security codes before.

She sat back in the pilot’s chair, breathing out a deep sigh of relief. Satisfaction mingled with the previous pleasure she had felt. The little doors inside her head, which had opened when she heard Boba Fett say the name of the dead bounty hunter, had given her access to a key more valuable than Fett could ever have imagined. Not in the form of information, such as her real name, or the story of how she had come to be aboard Ree Duptom’s ship—That would’ve been too easy, Neelah thought wryly—but as an ability, the skill and craft necessary to hack through the coded locks that Boba Fett had installed on this ship’s computers when he had transferred his own data files over from his Slave I. Like disjointed pieces of an archaic jigsaw puzzle fitting together, showing just a bit of the total picture, the name of Ree Duptom had connected with other fragments floating inside the vacuum that her memory had been wiped into.

I know how to do this, she thought as she punched a few more commands into the computer. Whoever she had been in the past, whatever her real name had been in that world stolen from her, that person had not only been someone born to a noble bloodline, on a planet and among people accustomed to taking orders from someone of hereditary rank—her own growing impatience with the two bounty hunters, her frustration at not being instantly obeyed, had already indicated as much—but also was a person of considerable technical expertise. Boba Fett, thought Neelah with a smile, should’ve known better than to leave me here with his computer files. But then, the bounty hunter would have had no way of knowing just how easy it would turn out to be for her to break through his security codes and into his private data.

The hardest thing had been keeping her mask up, of showing just enough surprise at what Boba Fett had told her and Dengar, while not giving away just how much buried memory it had restored to light inside her head. She wasn’t going to reveal any of that, until after she had found some more pieces to fit in with the others.

At least, thought Neelah, I know the name of the piece I’m looking for. She had already figured out that Boba Fett had been holding back on her, not telling everything—or anything—of what he knew about the one name, the one fragment of memory, that had still been there in the darkness. She had said the name Nil Posondum to him, long before they had arrived at this point in space, and she had instantly known from the slight catch of silence in his reaction that the name meant something to Boba Fett as well. Exactly what the connection was to the bounty hunter, she was about to discover. With her hands deep within the Trandoshan-sized grooves on the cockpit’s control panel, Neelah keyed in the name and initiated a core-deep search function.

It took only a few seconds for the results to come up on the display screen. While it was still blank she glanced down at the smaller display that monitored the flow of data and power to Dengar and Boba Fett in the web, saw that all was within operational parameters, and looked back up. This time, there was a face to go with the name.

Human, balding and aging, with a nervous, fidgety quality to his eyes, apparent even in a still-frame shot—both full-on and in profile, Nil Posondum was not particularly impressive. Even worse, the sight of his face did nothing to trigger any more memory flashes inside Neelah. There was almost the opposite effect: the conviction grew certain within her that she had never laid eyes on him before, in this life or in the stolen past.

Below the man’s unprepossessing image was a summary of personal data—nothing in its details caught Neelah’s eye. Until the very last notation, which indicated that the man had died in one of Slave I’s holding cages, en route to being delivered by Boba Fett to the creatures who had put up the bounty for him. Neelah slumped back in the pilot’s chair, glaring at the display screen in frustration. The thought that this piece of memory had led to nothing more than a blind alley sparked fury inside her. Boba Fett may have found some way of wringing secrets out of a deceased arachnoid assembler, but getting anything out of the late Nil Posondum was more likely to be a lost cause.

Neelah glanced up at the control panel’s chronometer, gauging how long Dengar and Boba Fett had been working over in the reconstructed web. She knew she’d have to shut down her investigations into Fett’s databases before the two bounty hunters returned to the ship—and there would be no way of telling when she would get another chance at rummaging through the files for the clues she needed.

Feverishly, she punched in another string of commands, bringing up the last of the files associated with the name Nil Posondum. A cursory autopsy indicating the cause of death as autoasphyxiation, a statement of credits received by Boba Fett for turning over merchandise in a damaged condition, a list of personal effects owned by the late merchandise, mainly the torn and stained clothing he had been wearing when captured by Fett, a visual scan of markings that Posondum had managed to scratch into the metal floor of the holding cage …

Wait a minute. Neelah suddenly froze, cold sweat dampening her palms inside the keypad grooves. She leaned closer to the display screen, her nose almost touching the transparent panel. Her heart began pounding faster, the rush of blood almost dizzying her as she stared at the image before her.

Just some lines scratched into blank metal … a circle, perhaps a little lopsided; understandable, given the circumstances that the man who’d made them had been in … and a triangle inside the circle, the three points just touching the enclosing line …

And three stylized letters, in an archaic, pre-Basic language. Three letters that only a person who had seen them since childhood, and who had been taught their meaning, would recognize. Someone such as Neelah herself, and any of her noble bloodline. A lineage that came from one of the most powerful industrial planets in the galaxy, its ancestry reaching generations back in time. Boba Fett, for all his cleverness and carefully groomed information sources, would never have been able to discern what was meant by the image—not because it was a guarded secret, but simply because it was a symbol that had fallen out of use, supplanted by a later one that could be understood by anyone in the galaxy. Only the old traditionalists, the memory-rich families and their entourages, of the planet on which Neelah had been born would have kept it as a token of a glorious past.

For a moment, a great, calming peace descended upon Neelah, like the hand of a noble infant’s nurse drawing a blanket snug upon the small, cooing form; a blanket marked with the exact same image, only embroidered with pure golden thread rather than scratched into the floor of a squalid holding cage on a bounty hunter’s ship. One by one, the locked doors inside her head opened, spilling their pent-up light into the depths of her spirit, chasing away the dark, obscuring shadows in which she had been wrapped for so long.

She gazed upon the image awhile longer, not caring if anyone should discover her doing so. None of that mattered now. The key she had found had not only opened the locks, but had burst them asunder. Nothing could make her forget.

That’s what the corporation used as its emblem, Neelah told herself, a long time ago. Before I was born …

The old, archaic letters spelled out the initials KDY, for Kuat Drive Yards. Bound by a triangle, for the art of engineering, and a greater circle that represented the universe and everything in it.

Another key turned, in one of the farthest locks, as she looked upon the image.

It turned, and she remembered her name.

Her real name …

The empty eyes opened, but were still blind.

Yet Kud’ar Mub’at—the hollowed thing that had been Kud’ar Mub’at—seemed to sense the presence of other creatures.

The joints of the spidery legs creaked as though about to break into splinters. The broken abdomen, edges of its wound frozen by exposure to the cold of the vacuum surrounding the web, scraped against the remains of what had been its nest and throne of power, the point from which it had drawn the strands entangling so many others of the galaxy’s creatures. Slowly, the small triangular head rose from where it had shrunk into the chitinous thorax.

“Is there … business … to transact?” The assembler’s voice, which had once been so gratingly high-pitched, was now a rasping whisper, as of dry strings twisting against one another. “Business … is what I want … all that I want …”

Dengar had the unnerving sensation that the assembler’s gaze had fastened upon him. The narrow face, with its clusters of unseeing eyes, turned in his direction and stopped for a moment, before moving like a rusted mechanical apparatus toward the other bounty hunter in the web’s central chamber.

“I won’t say it’s good to meet up with you again, Kud’ar Mub’at.” Standing closer to the arachnoid assembler’s withered form, Boba Fett held the black cable looped in one gloved hand. The cable’s surface shimmered, seeming much more imbued with life than the greyed-out thing in the nest, as the power and controlling data continued to stream from the ship tethered alongside the web. “But then, I never much cared for our little meetings.”

“Ah! You are so unkind.” The triangular head gave a tiny nod, imitating human gestures as it had done in its previous existence. “You were always nearly as cruel as you were greedy, Boba Fett—it is Fett, isn’t it? I can recognize your voice, but it’s so dark in here now … I can’t see you.”

“It’s not dark, you fool.” From Boba Fett’s hand, the black cable ran into the narrow cleft right behind the assembler’s head; a metal needle had been inserted into the knot of ganglia inside the thinly armored skull that had functioned as the neuro-cerebral center for the creature. “You’re dead. Get used to it.”

“Believe me, Fett … I already have.” A lopsided smile opened on the narrow face. “There are advantages … to my present condition.” One thin forelimb withdrew from the cluster of legs curled beneath Kud’ar Mub’at’s abdomen, and wavered feebly in the air. “For one … death is much less painful than dying … which I remember in excruciating detail … not pleasant. And second … now I can say whatever I please … without worrying about the consequences. What can I suffer now, any greater than that which I already have?” Laughter like breaking twigs came out of the angled mouth. “So let me tell you right now, Boba Fett … I never cared for you, either.”

“Then we’re making progress,” replied Fett. “Since we can skip your usual line of empty flattery.”

Dengar stood back, watching the confrontation between the former business associates. One’s dead, he thought, and the other’s alive—but they still have something in common. Neither one gave up easily.

“Very clever of you … managing this.” The dry husk of the assembler shifted in the flaccid remains of the nest, as though its vacuum-blunted nerve endings were capable of feeling discomfort. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible …” One of its hind limbs scratched at the inserted cable, but was unable to dislodge it. “I’m not sure I care for it …”

“Don’t worry. It’s only a temporary condition.” Boba Fett didn’t bother displaying to the creature’s blind eyes the black cable he held. “Soon as we’re done here, I’ll pull the plug. And you can go back to being what you were a few moments ago. A corpse, floating in space.”

The triangular head slowly nodded. “Then you have at last, Boba Fett, that which I want … more than anything else. Bargain with it, as you will.”

“I want information, Kud’ar Mub’at. Information that you have.” Boba Fett’s gloved fist closed tighter upon the cable. “That you knew when you were alive, but you wouldn’t have told me then.”

At Dengar’s back, he felt the slow pulsing of the web around him. He turned and saw brighter sparks racing across the neural fibers. Once more, the sensation of being inside a living brain—or at least a partly living one—assaulted him. The assembler’s thoughts and ideas were like storm clouds, threaded with electrical discharges, ominous as a slowly darkening horizon.

“What would you like to know, Boba Fett?”

Stepping closer to the assembler’s revivified corpse, Boba Fett brought his own visor-shielded gaze closer to the blind one’s. “I want to know about a client of yours. A former client, I mean.”

“Exactly so.” The dry, rasping laughter sounded again. “I understand that certain progeny of mine … have taken over the family enterprise, as it were.” The upraised forelimb reached out and lightly tapped the brow of Fett’s helmet. “Perhaps you should go and talk to young Balancesheet. It keeps secrets very well, though, as I learned so painfully. You’d have to bargain hard to get what you want.” Feebly, the limb folded back in on itself and scratched at Kud’ar Mub’at’s chest, or what would have been the place where its heart had once functioned. “I don’t feel so well … I feel cold …”

Boba Fett shook his head. “I know enough about how you managed your affairs. Some things you let your subnodes in on, and others you kept to yourself. There were certain matters—the shadier sorts of deals you arranged—that you preferred to keep just in your own private memory, rather than the one shared through the web’s neural fibers. The client I’m inquiring about was one of those. His name was Nil Posondum—”

The deracinated laugh from Kud’ar Mub’at’s mouth was even harsher and louder this time. “Posondum!” The noise from the hollowed-out form was like the claws of rats scuttling across crumpled flimsiplast. “A client of mine!” From beneath the dead assembler, several of its limbs thrashed about in a spasm of mirth. “You are so rarely wrong, Boba Fett … but this time you are!”

The mention of the human’s name puzzled Dengar. He had heard it before, from Neelah when she had been musing aloud, away from Boba Fett, about the few scraps of memory left to her. But even before that, Dengar had come across the name; he remembered it as a piece of hard merchandise for which a standard bounty had been posted, some time in the past. It wouldn’t have surprised him at all to have learned that Boba Fett had been the bounty hunter who had collected the credits on that one, like so many others.

“Don’t lie to me.” Boba Fett seemed as if he were about to jerk the black cable like a noose around the dead assembler’s neck. “I know all about the money you received from Nil Posondum. I found the record of it aboard Ree Duptom’s ship Venesectrix.”

“You might … very well have,” wheezed Kud’ar Mub’at’s corpse. “And that is in fact the truth; I did receive a substantial sum of credits from our late friend Nil Posondum. But such a transaction … does not mean he was a client of mine. Just as I was a go-between, an arranger of deals, when I was still alive … so have other creatures served that oh-so-useful purpose. Perhaps not on the overarching scale … at which I did …” The chitinous form paused, as though it needed to catch its breath, or more likely, let the pulsating energy from the black cable recharge its neuro-cerebral tissues. It hunkered down lower in the nest, the joints of its thin legs sticking above its head. “Posondum was merely—what is the term criminal types use?—a bagman. Yes … that’s right … that’s the word.” Two of Kud’ar Mub’at’s forelimbs slowly wavered apart in an expansive gesture. “He brought the credits here to the web … to me … and communicated certain important details … of what his client desired. I then made certain other arrangements on behalf of that third party … such as the hiring of Ree Duptom to carry out two very delicate assignments. Which, alas, he never lived to do—and so much trouble and confusion has resulted from that lapse!”

“I’ll say.” From behind Boba Fett, Dengar muttered his comment. Getting answers from the dead assembler had seemed only to make things more confusing rather than less.

“Standard business practice,” continued Kud’ar Mub’at’s withered corpse. “I kept most of the credits … that the original client sent here with Nil Posondum. For a tiny percentage of what was left over … Posondum then delivered the fee I had arranged with Ree Duptom. Posondum then went about his other scrabbling little business affairs, one of which turned out badly enough for him to wind up as hard merchandise in your holding cage, Boba Fett. Of course … I always knew that a little hustling nonentity such as Nil Posondum would end up like that … but I’m suspicious about what happened to Duptom. He operated on a large enough scale to have real enemies … who would very much have liked to have seen him dead …”

“I’m not interested in Ree Duptom’s enemies.” Boba Fett’s words turned impatient. “I want to know who he was working for. Who hired him—through you—to transport fabricated evidence about Prince Xizor’s involvement in an Imperial stormtrooper raid on the planet Tatooine? Was it the same person who paid for him to kidnap and wipe the memory of the young female human I found aboard his ship?”

“Of course it was, Boba Fett.” The dead assembler tucked its forelimbs back around its abdomen. “You know that—it had to be, since one payment was made for both jobs. I got the client a bargain rate that way. I like to keep my customers happy … it makes for good business.”

Boba Fett dropped the black cable and stepped forward. With one gloved hand, he grabbed the dead assembler’s narrow, triangular head, almost wrenching it from the stalklike neck as he turned the blind eyes toward himself. “Tell me,” demanded Fett. “Who was the client? Who paid Ree Duptom for those jobs?”

“A good question, my dear Fett.” The dead assembler managed to sneer at him. “A very good question, indeed … and how I wish I could answer it for you … and for myself.”

“What are you talking about?” Boba Fett took his hand away from the other creature. “You know who it was. You’d have to know—”

“Correction; I did know. When I was alive.” A macabre, tittering laugh came from within the assembler’s hollowed body. “But that was then, and this is now. You and your partner here have done a very good job of reassembling my poor, sundered web—but not a perfect job. There were some parts of my extended neural system that were too damaged for you to restore; I can feel them missing, as though some of my actual physical limbs had been amputated. And when there are pieces missing in a web, it stands to reason that there must be holes in their place.” The claw tip at the end of the raised forelimb tapped at the skull’s enclosing chitin. “There are, I regret to inform you, large gaps in my memory … things I cannot remember. Though, of course, it would have been impossible for me to have ever forgotten the inimitable Boba Fett … I’m afraid that Nil Posondum was not quite so memorable a figure. There may have only been a few strands of my memory in which details about him were encoded … so you have to understand how they would be easily lost.” The blind eyes seemed to regard Boba Fett with amusement. “You’ve come all this way for nothing … how unfortunate.”

“I’ll tell you what’s unfortunate,” said Boba Fett. “Unfortunate is how you’re going to feel when I’m done with you. You’re not going to hold out on me this time.”

“What are you going to do about it?” The assembler’s laughter turned into a grating cackle. “A hundred different ways of killing at your disposal—I can just see you standing there, bristling with all your weapons, like a walking arsenal—and all of them useless now. You can keep me alive as long as you want … it merely delays the moment of my falling once again into the sweetness of death. You were as much responsible as any other creature, Boba Fett, for my having discovered the pleasures of being dead—I realize now that it was the best deal I ever made! But I’ve tasted it, and drank deep of that intoxicating darkness … deep enough that I can wait for it again. And in the meantime … your threats are of little avail …”

The assembler’s words unnerved Dengar more than anything else that had happened so far, in this roughly woven mausoleum floating in space. “Come on—” He stepped forward and grabbed Boba Fett by the elbow. “It’s right. There’s nothing you can do—”

“Just watch.” Fett pulled his arm away from Dengar’s grasp. “Maybe the problem isn’t whether you’re dead or alive, Kud’ar Mub’at.” He stepped around to the side of the nest and the grey creature hunkered down in it. “Maybe you’re just not alive enough.” Boba Fett reached behind the assembler’s jointed neck and grabbed the controls of the pulsator device, leaving the gleaming metal needle still inserted up into the cerebral cortex. “That can be changed.”

Looking down at the black cable, Dengar saw its surface shimmer with a wildly increasing intensity. Instinctively, he drew his boot back, as though it had come too close to an exposed high-voltage conduit. The cable seemed almost alive, twisting about on the fibrous floor of the web, like a glistening serpent from the bogs of a swamp-covered planet.

At the same time, he heard a crackling and tearing noise from the center of the chamber. Dengar looked up and saw the assembler’s corpse thrashing convulsively, the jointed sticklike limbs pulled out from beneath the torn abdomen and whipping in the air, as though a windstorm had animated the black, leafless branches of a winter forest. Kud’ar Mub’at’s triangular face was contorted with the energy surging behind the blind eyes, the angled mouth stretched open in a silent scream.

Boba Fett still had his hand upon the pulsator device’s controls, his durasteel-like grip forcing the assembler’s overloaded corpse to stay in the hollow of the flaccid nest. “Now do you remember?”

The assembler made no answer. A couple of its smaller, weaker limbs detached themselves from the corpse, flying across the chamber and striking the curved walls.

“Hey …” Dengar looked around himself with alarm. The storm he had imagined tearing through the web’s confines now seemed to have become even stronger and more visible. Flaring sparks ran through the neural fibers like quick lightning, leaving behind the scent of ozone and burning tissue. “Maybe you’d better back off on that—this place is tearing itself apart!”

Echoing Dengar’s words, the web shuddered, hard enough to knock him from his feet. He caught hold of one of the horizontal durasteel beams that had been installed to keep the unpressurized structure from collapsing in on itself, and managed to keep himself upright. Though only for a second: another convulsive wave rolled through the web, the floor whipping high enough to throw him clear. As he fell backward, Dengar saw the beam rip loose from its mooring point on one side of the tunnellike space; it swung about from the other end, smashing loose the beams farther on in a clashing chain reaction.

He’s gone crazy, thought Dengar. Through the falling, colliding durasteel beams and the heaving of the web’s floor and walls, he couldn’t even spot Boba Fett, up in the main chamber beside the corpse of Kud’ar Mub’at. The frustration from coming all this way, intent on information, and finding no answers, must have unhinged the other bounty hunter’s mind. Boba Fett was normally so calm and calculating—he would have to have been temporarily insane not to see how the drastically increased pulsator flow had triggered a catastrophic agony in the assembler. The creature’s diminished physical form and the attached neural fibers running through the length of the web were thrashing themselves to pieces; Dengar could hear the racketing clatter of the spidery limbs, and the shattering of the chitinous exoskeleton at their center. That was bad enough, but the web shook and buckled at the same time; already, great sections of the fibrous structure that Dengar and Boba Fett had so laboriously sealed back together were now ripping apart from one another, like rough cloth being pulled by giant, invisible hands.

With speed born of desperation, Dengar scrambled beneath the tilted beam and dived for the black cable. It seemed even more animated now, with the motion imparted to it by the buckling and heaving of the web’s floor. He grabbed hold of the cable with one hand while simultaneously reaching into his belt pouch for his vibroblade. With one upward stroke, the blade sliced through the cable, sparks of short-circuited wires spitting out from the raw end.

He had thought that terminating the pulsing input from the computers back onboard the Hound’s Tooth would also end the thrashing agony of the web. The remainder of the cable running to the pulsator device inserted in the back of Kud’ar Mub’at’s skull had gone slack and lifeless, the shimmering now dissipated and inert. But for some reason Dengar couldn’t understand, the web around him continued its self-destroying contortions. One of the largest structural fibers, thicker in diameter than his own waist, suddenly snapped, shredding apart a tangle of smaller strands, their pallid grey shafts flurrying across his shoulders and hastily averted face.

Pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, Dengar looked through the maze of fallen durasteel beams. He could just barely make out the figures of Boba Fett and the assembler collapsed inside its nest. For some reason, Kud’ar Mub’at’s corpse now looked as lifeless as it had when he and Boba Fett had first dragged it into the reconstructed web. There wasn’t time to ponder that mystery; before Dengar could get to his feet, a blaze of light seemed to explode in the main chamber ahead of him. In its glare, Boba Fett was knocked back as the assembler disintegrated, its sticklike limbs flying through tumbled arcs and away from the atomized fragments of its body.

The noise from the explosion had deafened Dengar for a moment. Shaking his head to clear it, he was suddenly aware of another, even more threatening sound: the ragged ends of the structural fibers around him fluttered and streamed pennantlike, drawn by the slowly increasing roar of the web’s atmosphere rushing through an exterior breach.

Dizzied by the oxygen thinning in his nostrils and lungs, Dengar staggered forward and grabbed Boba Fett’s forearm, pulling the other bounty hunter to his feet. “What’s … what’s happening? …” With his free hand, Dengar gestured toward the tattered remains of Kud’ar Mub’at. “It’s dead again! It has to be—there’s nothing left of it!” He gazed around in panic at the heaving walls of the surrounding web. “Why is it still—”

“You idiot.” Boba Fett shoved him away from the assembler’s nest and toward the web’s main corridor. “Can’t you tell? We’re under attack!”

Dengar realized that the other man was correct; as if in confirmation, another white-hot flash tore through the chamber, inches behind them. He felt the heat of a laser-cannon bolt on his back as he ran through the collapsing, disintegrating web. The transfer hatch to the Hound’s Tooth was just meters ahead of him …

It might as well have been kilometers.

Another bolt hit, bursting apart the curve of structural fibers directly above him. Sparks and blackened shards of tissue whirled around Dengar as he felt himself both rising and falling into darkness.

She had been turning over the words inside her head. The words, a name, her true name. Neelah had exited from the security-locked files that she had broken into—all the things that Boba Fett hadn’t told her, that he himself didn’t know the value of—and shut down that part of the ship’s computers. That had left a blank display screen in front of her as she had taken her hands and forearms out of the Trandoshan-fitted control grooves on the cockpit panel. She didn’t care about that, or the cold stars slowly wheeling about in the forward viewport. In her mind’s eye, she could still envision the symbol she had found buried in Boba Fett’s datafiles, the ones concerning the late Nil Posondum. As she leaned back in the pilot’s chair, eyes closed, the lopsided circle and inner triangle that Posondum had scratched into the floor of the holding cage, so long ago, transformed itself into the ancient, gold-worked emblem of the planet Kuat’s noble families.

And one of them, she mused, is my family. Neelah wasn’t quite sure of all the details—parts of her memory were still shrouded in obscuring mists—but she knew for certain that there were several such noble families, all of them linked economically to the fount of wealth known as Kuat Drive Yards. They all had at one time borne the KDY emblem on their most dignified robes, and other items such as the heirloom blanket in which she had been wrapped as an infant. It had only been in later generations that factionalism and bad blood between the ruling families had given rise to separate clan insignia.

Though she didn’t know everything—such as what had happened to have brought her so far from home—she knew the name of that infant swaddled in the ancient emblem. My name, thought Neelah. My real name.

“Kateel.” She whispered the name aloud, as though calling softly to that person who had been lost and now was found again. “Kateel of Kuhlvult.”

Then she smiled. Well, thought Neelah, it’s a beginning …

Another sound—or silence, the absence of sound—broke into her contented meditations. Her brow creased as she opened her eyes; it took a moment before she realized what had happened. Looking down, she saw that the black cable that Boba Fett had rigged from the ship’s computer, snaking out to the airlock’s exit port and then looped to the reconstructed web of Kud’ar Mub’at, had suddenly ceased its pulsating shimmer. It lay like a dead thing across the floor of the cockpit.

Perhaps the two of them, Dengar and Boba Fett, had finished their work over there. Neelah found it hard to imagine that the pair of bounty hunters had found out anything from the arachnoid assembler, or what part of it they had been able to reclaim from the dead, comparable in value to what she had discovered while sitting in the comfort of the pilot’s chair.

That guess didn’t make sense, though; Boba Fett had expressly told her that the power and data line would have to run continuously, right up until he came back here to the Hound’s Tooth and switched it off himself. Her part of the entire process had been to watch and make sure that the improvised device had kept inside the operational parameters programmed by Fett. So if it stopped on its own—the realization slowly crowded out the thoughts about her own rediscovered name—then something must have happened to them …

Neelah looked up to the forward viewport, and saw the web disintegrating into chaos and flame.

Barely a second passed before she was able to spot the source of the destruction. In the distance, another ship had appeared, firing its laser cannon. Another coruscating bolt tore through the web, even as she watched.

Instinctively, she grabbed for the navigational controls on the panel in front of her. Piloting the ship, even a cumbersomely fitted-out one such as the Hound’s Tooth, was within her abilities; manning its weaponry and firing back at the attacking ship were impossible, though.

She shoved forward the main thruster engine control; its responding force shoved her back into the pilot’s chair. Another few quick adjustments brought the Hound about, away from the web and the unknown ship, still firing its laser cannon as it rocketed closer. Through the ship’s frame, Neelah had heard the conducted noise of the transfer hatch ripping away from where it had been sealed to the web.

Another push on the thruster control would send the Hound’s Tooth on a full-power, blazing arc away from this sector of space. An emergency escape vector was already programmed into the hyperspace navicomputer; she would only have to punch a couple of buttons to reach safety.

And then what? Neelah sat frozen at the ship’s controls, mind racing. Maybe I’ve found out enough, she told herself. Her name, her true name; there had been many times, all the way back to the palace of Jabba the Hutt, that she had despaired of ever discovering even that much. She should be satisfied with that …

More words escaped her lips that came from the past and the memories she had found within herself. They were a string of expletives in one of the planet Kuat’s ancient, pre-Basic tongues.

She slammed on the Hound’s side jets, and was immediately swiveled about in the pilot’s chair as the ship swung back toward the web and its attacker.

This is just like the story I told, thought Dengar. About all those things that happened back then …

He struggled to remain conscious, knowing that death was on the other side of the blackness threatening to engulf him. The swirling dark spots that signaled terminal oxygen starvation had coalesced into one annihilating wave, roaring down the length of the web’s central tunnel. Any further drop in atmospheric pressure would be enough to kill both him and Boba Fett; the murderous vacuum of space would boil the blood right out of their ruptured flesh and viscera. Dragging in as much fiery breath as he could, Dengar saw the web clear and partly come into focus; once more, he saw the image from the story he had related to Neelah, of the Black Sun cleanup crew tearing apart the living web of Kud’ar Mub’at. Only this time, there weren’t any henchmen of Prince Xizor going about their destructive business; the web seemed almost to be ripping itself apart before his red-misted eyes.

Then the image changed. Now that, he thought deliriously, wasn’t in the story. The prow of a bounty hunter ship, the one called Hound’s Tooth, tore through the exterior of the web. Great tangles of structural fibers rolled across the curve of the cockpit’s forward viewport; through the mired transparisteel, Dengar just barely recognized Neelah at the control panel. Braking jets spat flame, slowing the ship down before it could barrel over him and crush his form to the web’s tangled floor.

It’s too late. That was his last thought as the blackness exploded from inside his skull. I’ll never—

Something grabbed him around his bursting chest, picking him up bodily and diving with him toward the hull of the Hound’s Tooth. But he didn’t strike the ship’s exterior; instead, he felt himself land skidding across the level flooring of the ship’s open airlock.

A rush of oxygen filled his aching lungs, and he was able to see a blurred vision of Boba Fett standing just inside the airlock door, smashing his gloved fist upon the small control pad at its edge. The door sealed shut and the enclosed space repressurized itself.

Dengar pushed himself up onto his knees and collapsed against the curved metal behind him. He wiped a trembling hand across his face, then looked at his palm and saw it reddened with the blood leaking from his nose and mouth.

The airlock’s interior door hissed open. Boba Fett didn’t bother to reach down and help Dengar stand upright, but instead just stumbled into the ship’s cargo hold. Even weaker, Dengar crawled after the other bounty hunter, then used the bars of one of the empty cages to pull himself to his feet. He stood clutching the bars as his heart slowly stopped hammering in his chest.

“All right …” Dengar managed to wheeze out a few painful words. “Now … we’re even …”

Boba Fett didn’t seem to hear him. As Dengar watched, the other bounty hunter started climbing the ladder up to the ship’s cockpit.

11

The thruster engine controls were under Neelah’s palm, ready for her to shove them forward and send the Hound’s Tooth bursting out of the remains of the entangling web. Before she could move, she heard something from the hatchway behind her; she turned and saw Boba Fett standing there. The only time she had seen him looking worse had been back on Tatooine when he had been lying on the desert sands, half-dead from the Sarlacc’s digestive secretions.

Strands of Kud’ar Mub’at’s extruded neural fibers were draped and twisted about Boba Fett’s battle armor as he pushed himself from the hatchway and shoved Neelah away from the control panel. Pressing herself back into the pilot’s chair, keeping out of his way, she watched as he slapped row after row of weapons systems controls; their bright red lights pulsed on like bright, fiery jewels.

Once the Hound’s own laser cannons had all been brought operational, Boba Fett hit the thruster control on which Neelah’s hand had been poised only a few seconds before. One quick flare from the main thruster engines, and the tattered fragments of the web broke apart and swirled away from the ship’s forward viewport. He quickly hit the braking jets, slamming the Hound to a dead stop in empty space. The attacking vessel was centered in the cannon’s targeting systems.

Fett snapped on the comm unit. “You can fire or you can try to run.” The indicator light on the control panel showed that the ship he had hailed was receiving the transmission. “Either one won’t do you much good.”

Leaning past him, Neelah peered through the viewport. From this close, the other ship didn’t appear to be much of a threat. Instead of the sleek, threatening lines of a fighting craft, it looked more like a slow and bulky freighter vessel.

“What a surprise,” came the voice over the comm unit speaker. It sounded amused rather than angry—or frightened. “I did not know it was you, Boba Fett. Believe me, if I had, I wouldn’t have fired upon you.”

“Wait a minute.” Neelah looked up at the comm unit in amazement, then over to Boba Fett. “This creature … knows you?”

Boba Fett gave an acknowledging nod. “We go back a bit, with each other. And you already know about it.”

That last remark puzzled her even more. “Who is it? And does everybody who knows you just open fire when they see you?”

“It happens often enough.” He shrugged. “Just an occupational hazard. Especially in this line of business.” Turning from her, Boba Fett hit the comm unit button again. “Balancesheet—I could blow you away right now, and I’d be justified in doing that.”

“How fortunate for me then that you’re so capable of controlling your wrath.”

Another sound came from the cockpit hatchway. Neelah turned and saw Dengar—looking even worse for his experiences aboard the reconstructed web—standing there.

“Balancesheet?” Dengar stared up at the comm unit speaker, then glanced over at Neelah. “You mean the little assembler that used to be Kud’ar Mub’at’s accountant subnode? That’s who fired on us?”

“I guess so,” replied Neelah. “I mean—how would I know for sure? You’re the one who told me about it.”

“That doesn’t mean I know it personally.” Dengar stepped closer and peered at the viewport. “I was just repeating the stuff Fett told me. But that must be the freighter that Prince Xizor gave to it, after the web was destroyed the first time. So …”

“It’s Balancesheet, all right.” Boba Fett turned away from the comm unit. “I’ve heard its squeaky little voice enough times to recognize it.” He pressed the transmit button again. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Assembler. So presumably there’s some accounting for what you’re doing in this sector—since there’s not a lot of your kind of business going on here at the moment—and why you’re so prepared to fire on other creatures before you even know who they are.”

“Yeah—” Dengar scowled in annoyance as he wiped some of the dried blood from his face. “Even bounty hunters don’t do that.”

“Very well,” said the high-pitched voice from the comm speaker. “I agree that I owe you an explanation for these otherwise inexplicable actions. And it’s in my best interests to give you one; I’d just as soon stay in your good graces, Boba Fett—or at least as far as that is possible for any creature to do—plus I’d regret acquiring a reputation for being, as you might say, trigger-happy. So please, by all means, let us have a conference, as it were. But not like this, over a comm unit; it’s so … impersonal.”

“Right,” Dengar muttered to Neelah. “Like unloading a few laser-cannon bolts on us was so warm and caring.”

“Actually,” continued Balancesheet’s voice from the speaker, “it would give me great pleasure if you would accept my hospitality here aboard my ship. I am in fact the only living creature aboard it, so I confess to experiencing bouts of loneliness when I’m between business meetings.”

“You’ll have to bring your ship alongside,” said Boba Fett. “Our transfer hatch suffered considerable damage during this little fracas.”

“Wait but a moment. And then we’ll talk.”

Fett reached over and broke the comm unit connection. “Let’s get ready to make our visit.”

“What?” Neelah stared at him in amazement. “You trust this creature?”

“About as much as I trust anyone. You included.”

The last comment caught her by surprise. It wasn’t the first time that Neelah had felt his penetrating glance, hidden by the dark visor of his helmet, penetrate to some remote part of her spirit. She wondered if he could somehow discern her thoughts, her secrets—was he aware that she had learned so much of her own past while he and Dengar had been over in the reconstructed web? There’s just no hiding from him, thought Neelah. In any way …

“But we didn’t find the answers we were looking for,” continued Boba Fett. “We could bring the dead—or at least one of them—back to life, but Kud’ar Mub’at didn’t know anything. Or if it did, there’s no point in trying to find out now; that assembler is gone for good. It was gone before the laser-cannon bolts hit.”

“So you think this former subnode of Kud’ar Mub’at knows something?” Dengar pointed with a thumb toward the slowly approaching freighter, visible in the viewport. “That the old assembler didn’t?”

“Balancesheet wouldn’t be hanging around in this sector if it wasn’t important to him. And the only thing that’s here is the past, in the form of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web, or what was left of it.”

“Not much of that now,” said Neelah.

“So Balancesheet is our only lead.” Boba Fett headed for the cockpit’s hatchway. “So we talk to it.”

By the time Neelah had descended the ladder to the Hound’s cargo hold, following after the two bounty hunters, the freighter’s transfer hatch had sealed onto the exterior hull. She noticed, as they left the Hound, that Boba Fett hadn’t armed himself with anything more than he had already been carrying. Then again, she thought, that’s quite a bit.

The air inside the freighter smelled sterile and scrubbed by high-filtration recyclers, in contrast to the fetid Trandoshan odors that lingered about the Hound’s Tooth. All of the spaces were less cramped as well; stepping from the transfer hatch, Neelah was able to tilt her head back and look up at the curve of the main container area’s upper limit, far above her. Whatever interior bulkheads the freighter had once possessed, they had apparently been stripped out to make one large enclosed space, spanned with retrofitted control circuits. In that much emptiness, even the brace of laser cannons—Balancesheet must have picked them up from one of the Empire’s military hardware suppliers—looked small.

And Balancesheet itself looked minuscule. The tiny arachnoid assembler scuttled across the freighter’s interior girders and taut wiring networks, its multiple eyes glittering and largest forelimbs raised in greeting. “How delighted I am to see you here!” Balancesheet halted and perched on an eye-level metal ledge near where Boba Fett stood. “Really—it’s been too long.”

“Not long enough,” growled Boba Fett. “I have a real good memory for creatures who steal credits from me.”

“Oh, that.” The assembler dismissed the comment with a wave of a tiny claw tip. “A different time—and a different situation, my dear Fett. Given the exigencies of your present situation, I’d hardly think it wise of you to go on brooding about such matters.”

Neelah glanced over at Boba Fett. Even through the dark visor of the bounty hunter’s helmet, the fierce radiation of the glare directed at Balancesheet was discernible.

“Especially since you brought more company with you!” Balancesheet tapped its claws together. “Let’s not spoil the occasion for them.”

It was the first time that Neelah had seen one of the creatures that had been described to her by Dengar. The repulsiveness of its spiderlike form was mitigated for her by its relatively small size; she could have picked it up and held it in the palm of her hand. Well, thought Neelah, maybe both hands. At any rate, there had been uglier—and more immediately dangerous—creatures back in Jabba the Hutt’s palace.

“Let me think for a moment …” Balancesheet pointed one of its claw tips at Dengar. “I remember you; one of my predecessor’s customers, I believe.”

Dengar nodded. “Yeah, I did a couple of jobs that’d been arranged through Kud’ar Mub’at.”

“And you survived—that’s a credit to your skills. Not everybody in your position did.”

“Yeah, well …” Dengar shrugged. “I didn’t get rich from them, either.”

“Nobody did,” said Balancesheet. “Kud’ar Mub’at was a fool in many ways. You can’t do business with creatures as dangerous as bounty hunters and the like, and just keep shortchanging them the way it did. Eventually, all that catches up with you.”

Dengar glanced back through a small viewport beside the transfer hatch. Through it, some of the remaining fragments of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web were visible, drifting in space. “You could say that, all right.”

“You, however …” Balancesheet turned his bright multiple gaze toward Neelah. “I haven’t met you before. But you might be surprised at how much I know about you.”

“Maybe not,” replied Neelah coldly. “Depends upon how much you know about Nil Posondum. And Ree Duptom. And whoever it was that used your predecessor to hire Duptom to kidnap me and have my memory wiped.”

“I see.” Balancesheet nodded its small triangular head. “You’re a very clever young human female, Neelah—that’s what you’re called, isn’t that correct?”

She hesitated a moment, then nodded in agreement. She had decided to keep a few of her secrets awhile longer, until there was a way of knowing how much the small assembler knew.

“You’ve come to some interesting conclusions.” Balancesheet continued to regard her. “But it might or might not have been the late Ree Duptom who did all those unfortunate things to you.” A tiny smile showed on the assembler’s face. “Doesn’t really matter, though, does it? The effect is largely the same, my esteemed guest.” She made no reply.

“It must be genetic,” said Boba Fett. “You’ve gotten as bad as Kud’ar Mub’at ever was, with all the cheap pleasantries.”

“I was unable to speak as I wished while I was still part of old Kud’ar Mub’at. My rhetorical skills have greatly increased since then.”

“Why don’t we dispense with them and get down to the reason we came here.”

“But of course.” Balancesheet turned its jagged smile toward the helmeted bounty hunter. “And surely that reason is that you’re looking for answers. But I don’t think you’ve found any so far, have you?”

“Not the ones we wanted.”

“Or any at all, I imagine.” The narrow triangular head gave a small shake. “I could have told you that your search would be pointless. Because, believe me, I’ve already tried. That’s why I’m here in this sector, with this ship that’s become such a home to me. I had heard about your previous inquiries into the possibilities presented by the nature of arachnoid assembler physiology, Boba Fett; I didn’t think you would be interested in the subject unless there might be a use for that knowledge someday. And so I found out a few things on my own. Enough to go rummaging through the scraps of Kud’ar Mub’at’s old web—my previous home, in its way—and through the memories of my predecessor. Of course, I didn’t need to go through as elaborate a procedure as you and your partner were forced to; but then, I am of the same species as the late Kud’ar Mub’at. I was able to merely integrate the various pieces of the web, and even that withered husk that its spirit and mind once resided in, into an extrusion of my own cerebro-nervous system, and I could access all of its residual memories without even bringing Kud’ar Mub’at back to momentary consciousness.”

“I wish we had been able to do that.” Dengar shook his head, too. “I could have done without that last encounter.”

“Alas,” said Balancesheet, “while my journey through the late assembler’s memories might have been more pleasant than yours, it was to little more avail. There were many mysteries, various matters of unfinished business, that it would have been most advantageous for me to have cleared up—including the arrangements that Kud’ar Mub’at had made with Nil Posondum and Ree Duptom. Anyone who was behind both the fabricating of evidence against Prince Xizor and this mysterious abduction of an unidentified but seemingly important human female—that unknown party was obviously after something big in his plans. And as we both know, Boba Fett, those kinds of schemes can often have a great deal of credits tied up with them. Sometimes to carry them out … and sometimes to keep silent about them.”

Boba Fett’s shielded gaze held the small assembler without moving. “And which one of those are you interested in, Balancesheet?”

“I don’t really have a choice—since, as I said, I did not find the answers to those questions in what I could recover of Kud’ar Mub’at’s personal memories. If I’m to get any share of profits out of this situation, I have to join forces with you, and assist you with your quest for those answers.”

“Opening fire on us with your laser cannons didn’t seem like much assistance.”

“Oh, that.” Balancesheet made a dismissive gesture with one upraised claw tip. I told you before. I didn’t know that it was you, putting the web back together and—I had to assume—reviving the dead Kud’ar Mub’at inside it. You have to consider my position, after all. I have taken over my predecessor’s business; I’ve established myself with a select list of clients that had previously been associated with Kud’ar Mub’at. At the same time, I was aware that Kud’ar Mub’at could be at least partially restored to life. Quite frankly, I don’t need the competition from it, especially considering the hostility I could expect him to bear toward me. And of course, many of my clients might consider it advantageous to have the two of us operating simultaneously, so that we would be forced to undercut each other’s prices. No—” Balancesheet shook his head emphatically. “I really couldn’t allow anyone to set about bringing old Kud’ar Mub’at back from the dead. It had been mere sentimentality on my part, and perhaps a notion of generating a profit from them in the future, not to have already destroyed its carcass and the remainders of his web. I’ve already made a mental note to finish that process once our little conference is finished.”

“All right,” said Boba Fett. “I’m going to give you a break this time. Basically, because I need to do some business with you. But if you try firing a laser cannon at me again, you’re going to find yourself looking down the barrel of one. And there won’t be any pieces for somebody else to glue back together.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” The small assembler spread both of its raised forelimbs apart. “Now let’s get down to that business you were talking about. You want to find out who it was at the beginning of the chain that led through Nil Posondum and Kud’ar Mub’at to Ree Duptom; you want to know who it was that thought it so important to plant fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor, and do the kidnap and memory-wipe job on Neelah here. That seems reasonable enough. So, for a piece of the action, I’m willing to help you out on that quest.”

“How?” Neelah broke into the exchange between the assembler and the bounty hunter. After all, she had told herself, it’s me they’re talking about. “You already said you hadn’t found out any more than we did!”

“Calm yourself,” said Balancesheet. “It’s true: you didn’t find anything here, and neither did I. But all of you have made a faulty assumption from that fact. You simply believe there’s nowhere else to look, and that’s not the case.”

“So where else is there?” Boba Fett’s voice sounded neither impressed nor amused. “Everybody in the chain leading to Neelah is dead now.”

“Yes, but certain evidence they left behind still exists.” One of Balancesheet’s tiny claw tips pointed straight toward Boba Fett. “You’ve stated that you found the fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor inside a cargo droid that had been transformed to a spy device. Where is that droid now?”

“That’s your idea of a lead?” Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. “That droid—if it still exists at all—is completely unavailable to us. Once I pulled the data records out of the droid’s memory unit and stored them on my ship’s computer, I didn’t do anything more with the droid itself. When I took over Bossk’s ship Hound’s Tooth, the one that brought us here, I transferred that information over to its computer. But the original cargo droid was still left aboard Slave I—and that ship is in the hands of the Rebel Alliance now. A Rebel patrol found and confiscated it, where I had abandoned it in orbit above Tatooine.” Fett recited the events in his customary emotionless tone, though Neelah knew how great the attachment was between him and his own ship. “Whatever contacts I’ve still got inside the Alliance, they’re preoccupied right now with other things, like what’s shaping up to happen out near Endor. They’re not likely to go rooting around through their storage units for some antiquated cargo droid found onboard an empty ship. Why should they? They wouldn’t know that it might have any value, except as scrap.”

“So you have a record of the fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor—an incomplete copy, as it were—but not the fabricated evidence itself. That is a pity.” Balancesheet smiled. “Because if you had the actual evidence, the original that was inside the modified cargo droid, then you might be able to examine and analyze it further, for clues that you didn’t have time to find before.”

“As I said,” growled Boba Fett. “The cargo droid is gone. Lost. It might as well not exist, for all the good it does us.”

“Perhaps so. But that doesn’t mean that the original of the fabricated evidence, from which you took the information you possess, is lost.” The jagged smile on the assembler’s triangular face grew wider. “In fact, I know where it is. And it’s not in the hands of the Rebel Alliance.”

For the first time, Neelah saw something take Boba Fett by surprise. The bounty hunter stepped back as if from a blow, then he peered closer and harder at Balancesheet.

“What’re you talking about? It has to be still inside the droid. That’s where I left it.”

“Let me tell you something more,” said the smiling assembler. “You and your associates here are not the only ones who are interested in it. Some very powerful forces are searching for that same fabricated evidence.”

“Who?” Boba Fett’s hand shot toward the smaller creature, as though he were about to seize Balancesheet within his fist. “Who else is looking for it?”

“While you’ve been making your way here, I’ve been in contact with my own information sources; that’s what I do. I hear all sorts of interesting and potentially profitable things. Only this time, I was approached directly by the other party involved; a representative from one of the most powerful men in the galaxy searched me out, to inquire whether I knew the whereabouts of that fabricated evidence against the late Prince Xizor, the same evidence that you found aboard Ree Duptom’s ship Venesectrix.”

“It must have been somebody from Black Sun, then. From whoever took over that organization after Xizor’s death—”

“Not at all.” Balancesheet gave a slow shake of his head. “From what I’ve been able to find out, neither Xizor nor Black Sun ever knew anything about whatever plot had been cooked up with this fabricated evidence. Besides, even if somebody in Black Sun found out about it now, why would they care? Prince Xizor is dead. Tying him to an Imperial stormtrooper raid on the planet Tatooine doesn’t mean anything now.”

“Then who—”

“Oh, but it gets even more interesting.” On the metal ledge, Balancesheet seemed to vibrate with the pleasure of telling so many secrets. “The person who sent their representative here, looking for information about the fabricated evidence’s whereabouts, seems to bear a considerable hostility toward you, Boba Fett. Or else he simply doesn’t want to risk the possibility of you finding that fabricated evidence before he does. Because he’s the one who ordered the bombing raid on the Dune Sea, back on Tatooine. The bombing raid in which you yourself came very close to being blown to atoms. You managed to escape—obviously—but I wouldn’t say that this very powerful individual has ceased wishing you were dead. And he’d be happy to make that come about, given the opportunity.” Balancesheet, multiple eyes glittering, leaned forward from its perch. “So you should appreciate the fact that I’m betting a lot on our doing business together, Fett. Because I could sell the information about your whereabouts to that other party, for a handsome pile of credits indeed.”

“That’d be more efficient, at least,” Dengar spoke up. “If all Balancesheet wanted was to eliminate us, it’d be easier to do it that way rather than firing off its own laser cannons.” He shrugged. “Maybe the little guy’s got a point.”

“Maybe.” Boba Fett appeared to mull it over for a second. “It all depends upon who this other person is, who not only tried to kill all of us, but is also looking for the same thing we are.”

“Fine,” said Balancesheet. “I’ll tell you, and then you can make your own determination about what to do. The person in question is Kuat of Kuat, the head of Kuat Drive Yards.”

Neelah was unable to stifle a gasp of surprise. I know him—the thought jumped unbidden into her mind, complete with an image of the powerful Kuat. That faded away as quickly as it came; she blinked and saw Boba Fett glancing in her direction. He said nothing, but turned back toward the assembler on the metal ledge.

“How do you know it was Kuat of Kuat who did all that?” Boba Fett’s voice was tinged with suspicion. “Why would the head of one of the largest engineering firms in the galaxy be interested in fabricated evidence against the late Prince Xizor? And why would he want me dead?”

“Questions, questions, questions.” Balancesheet shook its head in mock despair. “They wouldn’t be necessary if you trusted me more.”

“I haven’t stayed alive as long as I have in this business by trusting other creatures. So just answer them.”

“Very well; I know it was Kuat of Kuat who ordered the bombing raid on the Dune Sea, because his representative told me so, on his instructions. Kuat wanted me to be assured of his desire to have you dead, so that I would be confident of getting paid in case I came across any news of your whereabouts. And as to why he’d want you dead, and why he’d be interested in this fabricated evidence against the late Prince Xizor—” Balancesheet spread his raised claw tips apart. “Of that, I have not the slightest notion. But it does confirm in my mind that if we had what he was looking for, and given the vast wealth of Kuat Drive Yards at his disposal, we’d be able to force him to pay a substantial sum for it. And let’s face it: you and I have considerable experience at bargaining for that kind of thing.”

“Then the only problem,” said Dengar, “is getting our hands on what he wants.”

And what I want, thought Neelah to herself.

“How fortunate then that the fabricated evidence isn’t with the Rebel Alliance, but someplace where it can be gotten at instead.” Balancesheet’s jagged smile almost seemed to split its triangular face in half. “And also, that your new business associate—myself—knows where it is.” The assembler looked back over toward Boba Fett. “We are in business together, aren’t we?”

“All right,” answered Boba Fett. “We’ll work out the split later. After we get hold of the fabricated evidence and figure out the best way to cash in on it.”

Balancesheet laughed, a sound like tiny, mistuned bells.

“What’s so amusing?”

“It’s so paradoxical.” One of the claw tips wiped at the largest of the multiple eyes, in another parody of humanoid emotional gestures. “You’ve come all this way, looking for the answers you want, and the only means of getting those answers now is to find this phony evidence against the dead Xizor—and it’s back on Tatooine!”

Neelah and both bounty hunters were stunned into silence for a moment. She found her voice first. “Tatooine? How … how did it get there?”

“Simple.” Balancesheet wrapped its forelimbs around itself, the better to contain its growing mirth. “It’s been there for quite a while now. You see, when our associate Boba Fett here”—the assembler gestured toward the helmeted bounty hunter—“managed, through his impressive personal skills, to chase Bossk off Slave I, the fabricated evidence went with him, inside the emergency escape pod he used to get away.”

“And how do you know this?” Boba Fett regarded the assembler with skepticism.

“My friend, you’ve been out of the loop, this whole time that you’ve been making the journey to this remote sector. If you were in contact with your own information sources, the way I am with mine, you might have heard an interesting piece of news that’s been circulating through some of the seedier watering holes and meeting places of the galaxy. It seems that your fellow bounty hunter is holed up in the Mos Eisley spaceport back on Tatooine, and he has a certain … item to sell. And he’s looking for the right buyer for it. The item is rather unique, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate; it’s the fabricated evidence against the late Prince Xizor that supposedly linked him to the Imperial stormtrooper raid on a certain moisture farm on that planet. Of course, Bossk’s attempts to unload these goods are complicated by the fact that he doesn’t know the phony evidence’s significance, its real value, or that Kuat of Kuat is in fact trying to locate it. If Bossk knew that, he could sell it in a heartbeat, for a very good price. But alas … he doesn’t know.” The assembler’s voice filled with a mocking sympathy for the absent bounty hunter. “That’s what happens when you try to do things yourself, for which you should have contacted an expert like me.”

“Advertise on your own time,” said Boba Fett irritably. “So Bossk has got it …” He nodded slowly, mulling over the information. “He must have found the cargo droid when he was aboard Slave I, before I called it down to the Dune Sea to pick us up. And he discovered the fabricated evidence about Xizor inside the droid and removed it, without knowing its significance but hoping that he’d be able to find some way of cashing in on it. I didn’t have time to check the storage areas inside Slave I before abandoning it. So it seems I finally underestimated Bossk; I wouldn’t have thought he had the native intelligence to have discerned any value in that cargo droid’s contents.”

“And then he must have shoved it inside the emergency escape pod.” Dengar had managed to keep up with the others’ explanations. “Right when you were coming down on him. Either he got lucky with what he decided to grab and take with him, or he’s gotten a lot smarter than any of us would’ve ever have taken him for.”

“What does it matter?” With growing exasperation, Neelah looked from one bounty hunter to the other. “The only thing that’s important is that this fabricated evidence still exists. And if we can get our hands on it—” The possibilities had already leapt up in her mind, of finding the answers to the remaining questions about her own past. “Then we might be able to figure out who created it in the first place, and why they did it, and …”

“And that person’s connection to you, of course.” Boba Fett glanced over at her. “Don’t worry; that mystery might not have the same personal significance for me that it does for you, but it still represents a potential source of profit. That makes it important enough to me.”

“So it’s back to Tatooine,” said Dengar. The notion seemed to cheer him; Neelah figured that was because he would be able to see his betrothed, Manaroo, once again.

“If only it were as easy as all that.” The jagged smile had vanished from Balancesheet’s face. “But I’m afraid it’s not. My poor lumbering freighter, as comfortable a home and place of business as it provides for me, would never reach Tatooine before Bossk found a buyer for the item he’s trying to sell.”

“So what’s the problem? The Hound’s Tooth is plenty fast enough—”

“Yes,” interrupted Balancesheet, “and it’s a marked ship. It’s the one vessel in which it would be a dead certainty you’d never be able to reach Tatooine. Or, at least, not alive. Bossk has apparently kept silent about losing his ship to his enemy Boba Fett, but Kuat of Kuat hasn’t. After the bombing raid he ordered didn’t succeed at killing you off, and after his information sources had let him know that the Rebel Alliance had confiscated the abandoned Slave I, Kuat was able to figure out that you must be aboard the Hound. So Kuat has put out the word that he wants the Hound’s Tooth found and intercepted—and if that means killing whoever’s aboard it, so much the better. Which means that there are a lot of bounty hunters looking for it. Given that a great many of them still bear a grudge against you, for what you did to break up the old Bounty Hunters Guild, this is their perfect opportunity to get paid a substantial pile of credits and get their revenge, all at the same time.” The assembler’s triangular head tilted to one side, regarding Fett. “Ironic, isn’t it? You’ve been the hunter for so long … and now you’re the hunted.”

“If I still had Slave I,” said Boba Fett, “none of them would have a chance of stopping me.”

“But you don’t. And Bossk’s ship is nowhere near the equivalent of your own, even if you were completely at ease with its weapons systems. The other bounty hunters would pick you off long before you got anywhere near Tatooine. There’s probably not much time remaining before one of them finds you here in this remote sector. So it’s no longer just a matter of realizing profits, or discovering the secrets of some stolen past.” Balancesheet’s glittering eyes took in the others, one by one. “For all of you, it’s a matter of survival now.”

“Great,” muttered Dengar. The lifted spirits he had shown just minutes before had now evaporated. “We’re dead. I knew this was going to happen …”

“Come, come.” Balancesheet sounded almost pitying. “Would I have thrown my lot in with yours if I had thought you were all doomed? I’m a better business-creature than that.”

“Then you’ve got a plan,” said Boba Fett. “What is it?”

“Very simple. You just need to find another way to get to Tatooine. That’s all.”

“Easier said than done. It’s a long walk from here.”

“No need to, even if that were possible.” The jagged smile returned to Balancesheet’s narrow face. “I took the liberty of making other arrangements while you were on your way here to my ship. I’ve been in contact with a certain individual, with whom you’ve done business before—in a manner of speaking—and his ship is close enough to this sector, so that he can be here shortly.”

Boba Fett regarded the assembler with suspicion evident even through the helmet’s dark visor. “Who is it?”

“Oh …” The assembler’s smile widened even further than before. “You’ll see soon enough …”

“Well, well.” A thin figure had emerged from the transfer hatchway, leaving his smaller craft tethered to the exterior of Balancesheet’s freighter. From a face with youthfulness sharpened by feral cynicism, his gaze met with that of the helmeted bounty hunter. “Balancesheet told me he had a surprise in store. This is a good one.”

“I knew you’d be amused,” replied Balancesheet. “For a lot of reasons.”

With a cocky swagger, the new arrival approached Boba Fett. “The last time we ran into each other, you just about killed me. I’m still wondering why you didn’t.”

Fett gazed back at him coldly. “Don’t make me start wondering, Suhlak.”

“Suhlak?” Dengar studied the youth for a moment, then glanced over at Balancesheet. “As in N’dru Suhlak? You called in a hunt saboteur?”

“Who better?” The assembler’s response was mild and unruffled. “He is uniquely qualified for the task we need performed.”

“Yeah, but …” Dengar’s expression soured as he shook his head in disgust. “I don’t like dealing with this kind of lowlife. It … it just goes against everything I believe in.”

“What?” Neelah turned and looked at the bounty hunter standing next to her. “That’s hard to believe. Since when did people in your line of business start getting moral attitudes?”

Suhlak smiled at her. “You’ll have to excuse him, lady. But once a bounty hunter, always a bounty hunter. That’s his job. And my job is to mess things up for him, and for every other bounty hunter.” He made a small, mocking bow. “That’s just what I do.”

“You see, Neelah …” From the metal ledge, Balancesheet gestured toward Suhlak. “The existence of specialized entities such as bounty hunters has inevitably given rise to other, competing specialities. Such as this young—and very gifted—hunt saboteur. What he does is get certain individuals from point A to point B as quickly and safely as possible; that in itself is not so special. But Suhlak here performs this service for individuals who have had bounties placed on their heads, and whom bounty hunters such as Dengar and Boba Fett are seeking to capture. He, in essence, spoils their hunt. You can hardly expect bounty hunters to approve of someone like that.”

“Yeah, and like I care.” Suhlak leaned his shoulder against a bulkhead and folded his arms across his chest. “They do what they do for credits, and I do what I do for the same. Which brings up the matter at hand. I take it you called me here for a reason, Balancesheet. That reason better be a nice, high-paying job.”

“I think it’s one for which we can offer you satisfactory terms.” Balancesheet pointed a minuscule claw tip toward Boba Fett. “Our mutual friend here needs to reach Tatooine as quickly—and as unobtrusively—as possible.”

“That’s going to be a little bit difficult for him.” Suhlak aimed a smirk in Boba Fett’s direction, then turned back toward the assembler. “There’s a lot of other creatures out there gunning for him. I mean, he wasn’t too popular before; now that there’s a pile of credits offered in exchange for his hide, his chances have gone way down.”

“We’re aware of the difficulties,” said Balancesheet. “And while of course there’s a certain, shall we say, irony that comes with asking a hunt saboteur to assist in conveying a bounty hunter past other bounty hunters, we still think your services might be useful in that regard.”

“Useful?” Suhlak gave a slow nod. “Yeah—and expensive.”

“There’s a surprise,” said Dengar sourly.

“Shut up.” Neelah hissed the words at him. “This is the only way we’ve got.”

Suhlak pointed toward Balancesheet. “You mentioned a certain sum of credits when you contacted me.”

“Yes—” The assembler nodded. “That was to get your interest.”

“Oh, you got it, all right. But now that I see exactly what you’re talking about …” Suhlak made a show of reluctantly shaking his head. “I’m not sure it’s enough. Given the risks involved, and all. And … certain personal issues that have to be overcome.”

“What sum,” asked Balancesheet, “would take care of those problems for you?”

“The figure you mentioned—up front. And then”—Suhlak’s eyes narrowed to slits—“the same amount again, when the job’s completed.”

It was Balancesheet’s turn to look doubtful. “That’s a considerable amount of credits.”

“Yeah, and it’s a considerable amount of risk. Plus—you don’t have any other options right now. So take it or leave it.”

“Taken,” Boba Fett spoke up. “Pay this creature, Balancesheet. I don’t feel like haggling.”

“You got yourself a good deal.” Suhlak barked out a harsh laugh. “Think about it. I’ve made a lot of deliveries in my time—and you’re the only one who ever succeeded at getting in my way. With you aboard this time, that’ll be one thing I won’t have to worry about.”

“So you’re going to be taking all of us back to Tatooine?” Neelah pointed to herself and the two bounty hunters. “That’s the deal?”

Suhlak shook his head. “Sweetheart, I’ve only got a modified Z-95 Headhunter—that’s what I use in my business. Fast, maneuverable—but a little on the cramped side, even with the bubbled-out passenger space I had added to it. There’s really just room for me and one other creature. Boba Fett’s making this trip, and that’s it.”

“But …” An edge of panic, a glimpse into the unknown, cut through Neelah’s thoughts. Everything—all the answers to the questions that remained with her—depended upon Boba Fett. “How do I know … how do we know … that you’ll come back?”

“Don’t worry,” said Boba Fett. “This will be a two-way journey, all right. How else am I going to make any credits on this deal?”

“Hey, wait a minute.” Suhlak pushed himself away from the bulkhead on which he’d been leaning. “Nobody said anything about getting back here. My price was just for getting you to Tatooine!”

Boba Fett turned his shielded gaze toward the younger man. “Take it or leave it, Suhlak. Or else we’ll explore another option—namely, my killing you and then piloting your ship myself. The odds of making it to Tatooine wouldn’t be as good, but at least I wouldn’t have to put up with you any longer.”

For a few seconds, the hunt saboteur glared back at Fett. Then he nodded. “All right. Let’s get going.”

12

“We’ve found them.”

Those words came from the comm unit speaker in Kuat of Kuat’s private quarters. The felinx watched from its silken-lined basket beneath Kuat’s lab bench as he turned toward the voice of the absent Kodir of Kuhlvult, security head for all of Kuat Drive Yards.

“I’m not so much concerned about ‘them.’ The person we need to locate is Boba Fett.” Kuat regarded the view of stars and construction docks visible from the curving bank of transparisteel panels near the bench. “If you haven’t found him, I don’t even want to hear your report.”

“Don’t worry,” said Kodir. “I wouldn’t have put the link through if I hadn’t succeeded at the task given to me.”

Kuat made no reply. Even though Kodir wasn’t physically present at the Kuat Drive Yards corporate headquarters, he had as clear an image of her as if she were standing before him. She had all the haughty bearing of a member of one of Kuat’s ruling families, combined with the intimidatingly honed athletic grace that had made her such a suitable candidate for the position she now held. That, plus a sharp-edged mental acuity equal to his own, evoked a small measure of unease in Kuat. In truth, he’d had a better personal relationship with Fenald, his previous security head; the only problem being that Fenald had been a traitor, to both Kuat and to Kuat Drive Yards, by being part of the scheme to wrest control of the corporation away from him and turn it over to the greediest and most ambitious factions among the ruling families. If it hadn’t been for Kodir of Kuhlvult, Fenald and the conspirators he’d fallen in with would very likely have succeeded in their plans—and the corporation that Kuat of Kuat and his predecessors had treasured and protected for so many generations would now be on its way to utter ruin. No one from the planet Kuat’s other ruling families had the experience and cunning to-circumvent all of Emperor Palpatine’s schemes to break Kuat Drive Yards’ independence and make it a mere component of the Empire. So Kodir had earned both Kuat’s respect and his trust, no matter how much her tough, even brutal mannerisms grated against his own instincts. It’s a brutal universe, Kuat had told himself more than once. And he had certainly played his own hard game of survival in it. Perhaps what disturbed him about Kodir was a certain essential resemblance to his own ruthlessness in service to the corporation.

“So now we know where Boba Fett is.” Kuat spoke into the comm unit mike on top of the lab bench. “Is he still aboard the ship called the Hound’s Tooth?”

“That’s how I found him.” A tone of self-satisfaction was audible in Kodir’s voice. “The Hound’s Tooth was spotted by one of our paid spies, at the edge of one of the remoter border systems. Then it vanished again; obviously, Boba Fett was piloting a course designed to throw off any trackers. But the sighting of the Hound’s Tooth was close enough to a certain navigational sector that had figured prominently at one time in Boba Fett’s activities that I took a chance at keeping it under more intensive surveillance. And sure enough, the Hound’s Tooth showed up there.”

“Indeed.” Kuat nodded to himself. That was the type of work, both methodical and insightful, that he had expected from Kodir. “So where is it?”

“It’s out by where the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at used to have its web, before it was destroyed by Prince Xizor. And the fragments of the web had drifted a bit since then, so Boba Fett apparently had to do some searching of his own to find them. But he did; by the time my ship got close enough to do some surreptitious monitoring of his activities, he and his companions had reconstructed most of the web.”

“Interesting.” Rubbing his chin, Kuat wondered what that piece of information meant. The death of the assembler Kud’ar Mub’at at the hands of Prince Xizor’s Black Sun cleanup crew had previously been something of a relief to him. Kud’ar Mub’at had had too much knowledge of Kuat’s own dealings with the assembler; those kinds of secrets were better kept by the dead than by any living creature, no matter how well paid for silence. If Xizor hadn’t taken care of Kud’ar Mub’at, then the chances would have been good that Kuat of Kuat would have been forced to, eventually. “Were you able to discern exactly what they were up to?”

“Negative on that,” came Kodir’s reply. “I ordered our ship to pull back from the sector when another vessel was detected, approaching from directly opposite us. We did manage to ID that ship; it’s the freighter that Kud’ar Mub’at’s successor Balancesheet is now using as its base of operations.”

“Do you think there was some kind of arranged rendezvous between Balancesheet and Boba Fett?”

“I’m pretty sure there wasn’t.” Kodir’s voice sounded grimly amused. “Balancesheet has had that clunky old freighter of his outfitted with some decent armaments; it opened fire on both the reconstructed web and the Hound’s Tooth alongside. Things got a little confused after that, but right now it seems as if Balancesheet and Boba Fett have sorted it out; Fett and his associates are currently aboard Balancesheet’s freighter.”

“Any way of finding out what they’re discussing?”

“Negative again,” replied Kodir. “Balancesheet values its privacy as much as Kud’ar Mub’at did. That freighter is shielded against every distance-operational spy apparatus we’ve got. Short of cracking open the hull with one of our own laser cannons, that meeting is completely secured.”

“Too bad.” For both myself—and Boba Fett, thought Kuat. If there had been some way of determining exactly what the bounty hunter was discussing and scheming with the arachnoid assembler, Kuat would have been able to more accurately assess what kind of threat Boba Fett’s continued existence represented to him and to Kuat Drive Yards. But as it was, he’d have to err on the side of caution …

And eliminate Fett.

“That’s the situation at this point.” Kodir’s voice broke into his thoughts. “I await your decision about what to do next.”

“Have you got this freighter of Balancesheet’s in your weapon-sights?”

“Not yet,” said Kodir. “We’re out of range for that. But that problem can be corrected very shortly.”

“Then do so.” Kuat had already made his determination about the bounty hunter’s fate. “And when you’ve locked on to the target, proceed with its destruction. I want complete annihilation of the freighter and all living creatures aboard it.”

“We could be a little more surgical in our approach. It wouldn’t be too difficult to disable the freighter, then board it and extract Boba Fett without harming the others. We could eliminate him alone—that is, of course, if there were some value to be placed on the lives of the others with him.” Kodir expanded on the option she had presented. “Balancesheet, for instance; the assembler has its uses for us.”

“Not enough of them.” Kuat shook his head, though there was no way that Kodir could see him. “Not enough to outweigh the disadvantages of having it remain as a witness to our actions against Boba Fett. I don’t want any of this traced back to Kuat Drive Yards. So proceed as I indicated.”

“Very well. I’ll report back when the operation is concluded.” From the faraway ship, Kodir broke off the comm unit connection.

In the resulting silence, Kuat of Kuat could hear the felinx asking for attention, its voice a mere guttural whine. He reached down and scratched behind its ears.

“Believe me,” said Kuat. “It’ll be for the best …”

“Not so fast,” said Suhlak. “There’s a couple of other things that have to be taken care of before we go anywhere.”

The hunt saboteur hadn’t moved toward the transfer hatch that would have led both him and Boba Fett to his waiting Headhunter. Fett and the others aboard Balancesheet’s freighter gazed at him impatiently.

“Now what’s the problem?” Neelah set her hands on her slim hips. “I thought we already figured out, we don’t have time to waste.”

“Look, I’m just trying to help you out here. So you’ll be like a satisfied customer and all. I’ve got a reputation to maintain,” Suhlak said testily. “If all you wanted was for me to get this bounty hunter here to Tatooine, quick and quiet, I can take care of that for you. But you want a roundtrip; you want me to bring Fett back here as well. Now that’s going to be kind of hard for me to pull off if this whole freighter and everybody aboard it is gone by the time Fett and I return.”

“Why would we be gone?” Puzzled, Dengar stared at the hunt saboteur. “Where would we go?”

“You wouldn’t have gone anywhere, pal, except up in flames.” Suhlak shook his head in disgust. “None of you even knows what’s sitting out there, keeping a watch on your every move. But there’s a light cruiser, top of the line, from the Kuat Drive Yards, keeping surveillance on this tub right now. Matter of fact, it’s a KDY ship; I identified it when I snuck past it. It’s the Kuat Drive Yards’ main security enforcement vessel, and it’s armed and very dangerous.”

“It didn’t spot you?” Boba Fett gestured toward the hull of the freighter and the empty expanses of space outside it. “They don’t know you’re here?”

“Naw; I’ve got my ways of sliding past something like that—especially when their attention is fixed on something else, like this freighter here.”

Neelah looked over at Fett. “What do you think they want?”

“Given the fact that the last time any KDY ships got this close to me, they unloaded enough bombs to atomize a few square kilometers of the Dune Sea, I’d expect that this one isn’t going to be any friendlier.”

The arachnoid assembler Balancesheet had scurried over to its freighter home’s detect and tracking screens. “It would appear,” it announced, “that not only is our young friend correct about the presence of this other ship, but that we also have a limited time in which to determine what to do about it. It’s come within range of my ship’s scanners, and is continuing to head this way.”

“All right,” said Boba Fett with rapid authority, “here’s the deal. I can get away with Suhlak, just like we planned, but this freighter won’t be able to either outshoot or outrun that KDY ship. But the KDY security forces aboard it undoubtedly are bearing down this way, because they figure I’m aboard here.” He pointed to Dengar and Neelah. “You two—get back aboard the Hound’s Tooth and head out, full thrusters, to open space and prepare for a hyperspace jump to the Oranessan system. They’ll assume that it’s me aboard the Hound, and they’ll follow after you.”

“But then what?” Dengar pointed with his thumb toward the cruiser’s image on the screen. “If we go into hyperspace, that KDY ship won’t be able to follow us.”

“They will, if they know your destination. Before you make the jump, fire off a comm transmission with a minimum encryption level, giving the details of the rendezvous point. Suhlak and I will already be out of range, but the KDY ship will be able to pick it up. When you come out of hyperspace, it’ll be right behind you. Then all you’ll have to do is stay out of its reach until I’m finished with my business on Tatooine and can hook up with you again. Then we can lose them for good.”

Dengar shook his head. “I won’t be able to elude that KDY ship for very long, out there in the Oranessan system. Wouldn’t it be simpler to jump there, and then as soon as the KDY ship shows up, make another quick jump to some other point that we can use for a rendezvous? That way, we’d already have lost them.”

“Only for as long as it would take KDY security to tap their information sources and find out just where you were waiting for me. And if I were delayed getting back from Tatooine, you’d still have the same problem of eluding the KDY ship. In the Oranessan system, at least, there’d be a chance of pulling that off.” Boba Fett made a quick sharp gesture with the flat of his hand. “Maybe not forever—but then, all you have to do is elude them for long enough. And that way, Suhlak and I would have an even better chance of making it to Tatooine without getting intercepted.”

“Smart.” Suhlak nodded in appreciation. “I always like improving my odds.”

“Oh, I approve as well.” Balancesheet had scuttled back onto the metal ledge alongside the larger figures. “You can just draw the Kuat Drive Yards ship away from here, and I won’t have anyone firing laser cannons at me. Much better.”

“Right—and you won’t be tempted to find some way of turning me over to them.” Boba Fett gestured toward the transfer hatchway. “Now it’s really time to get going.”

Moments later, Neelah and Dengar were back aboard the Hound’s Tooth. In the forward viewport of its cockpit, the smaller shape of Suhlak’s modified Z-95 Headhunter had already shot away, detection by the approaching KDY cruiser blocked by the imposing bulk of Balancesheet’s freighter. The flare from the Headhunter’s main thruster engines dwindled to a streak of light, then was gone.

“Hold on—” In the pilot’s chair, Dengar grabbed the Hound’s thruster controls. “I’m not waiting around, either.”

Neelah braced herself in the corner formed by the cockpit’s two rear bulkheads. The sudden acceleration, as Dengar slammed the controls, forced her spine and the back of her head against the metal behind her. Another burst, from the ship’s side jets, threw her against the hatchway.

“What’re you doing?” She had grabbed the back of the pilot’s chair to keep from being knocked off her feet. Past Dengar, she could see out the forward viewport; a few remaining scraps of Kud’ar Mub’at’s once-living web scattered to either side of the Hound as it gained speed, heading for a larger shape ahead. “You’re going straight toward the KDY ship!”

“If I’m supposed to be chased by something with guns,” said Dengar between gritted teeth, “I want to make sure I’ve got their attention!”

The combined acceleration of the two ships ate up the distance between them; at the last possible moment, and as the cruiser fired off a bolt from its prow-mounted cannon, Dengar banked the Hound’s Tooth to one side and above the other ship’s hull, clearing it by what seemed to Neelah to be less than a few meters.

Below the Hound, the cruiser’s rear thruster exhausts shot past. Dengar kept the ship at full throttle, taking them out into empty space, with nothing but stars ahead of them. Reaching into one of the Trandoshan-sized grooves on the control panel, he toggled onto one of the display screens the image from the stern viewport. Far off in the distance was Balancesheet’s untouched freighter; closer was the KDY cruiser, wheeling itself around to follow them.

“Good.” Dengar backed off the thruster controls a fraction of a centimeter. “Now all we have to do is fire off our comm transmission—”

Neelah watched as he picked up the comm unit mike, then listened as he gave the rendezvous coordinates to the now-vanished Headhunter with Fett and Suhlak aboard. A moment later, the Hound’s Tooth was in hyperspace as well.

“Now we’re all set.” Dengar leaned back, hands behind his head.

“You think so, huh?” Neelah had managed to stay on her feet through the Hound’s violent maneuvers. Hands braced against the back of the pilot’s chair, she leaned down closer to Dengar. “Did you ever stop to think about what happens when we reach the Oranessan system? And if Boba Fett doesn’t show up? Then we’re supposed to just hang around there and wait, I suppose. Seems to me, that’s a perfect opportunity for this KDY cruiser to eventually catch up with us and sort us out into a lot of little pieces.”

Dengar’s face fell. “You’re right … I didn’t think about that.”

“Great.” Neelah straightened up and shook her head. “Boba Fett’s the one with a clear shot right now, and we’ve got the heavy artillery chasing us. That worked out, all right—for him. Too bad for us if anything happens to him—or he decides to change his plans again.”

“I guess …” Dengar had been hit hard by Neelah’s words; he spoke slowly, his thoughts obviously turned to the KDY ship, heading for the same destination. “I guess we’ll just deal with it when we get there …”

13

“Of course,” said the α-foreman of the Kuat Drive Yards’ construction docks, “we remain loyal to you personally. Even beyond our loyalty to the corporation itself.”

“That means a great deal to me.” Kuat of Kuat was not surprised to hear the statement, though. He had come down from the office in his private quarters, to which he normally would have summoned the various supervisors one by one, the single alpha and the ranks of beta team supervisors below him. This time—perhaps for the last time, Kuat knew—he preferred to meet with the crew leaders here among the docks, the true heart of the corporation he led. To find a devotion equal to his own was only fitting in such a place. “But you must remember,” continued Kuat, “loyalty to me is the same as loyalty to Kuat Drive Yards. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that would not be best for it, and for all that we’ve worked so hard to create.”

The men and women assembled in the meeting shed—there were probably close to a hundred of them, representing all of the corporation’s divisions—looked back at him with complete understanding in their collective gaze. They were as aware as he was of all the enemies arrayed against Kuat Drive Yards, the greedy and ambitious who desired to consume the corporation whole, bring it entirely under their power, make it a mere part of that greater entity known as … the Empire. Palpatine and the underlings that he had come to dominate with his insatiable will, from Lord Vader down through the ranks of admirals in the Imperial Navy—none of them could abide the thought of any entity, from the last solitary Rebel to one of the most powerful corporations in the galaxy, remaining independent. The faithful KDY employees standing before Kuat knew that their only options were to resist the Empire’s encroachment with all their possible strength and will—or see themselves crushed inside Palpatine’s fist, as he had crushed worlds with wealth greater than any possessed by the planet Kuat.

One of the eldest β-supervisors stepped forward. Kuat recognized the man as the leader of the shipbuilding team that laid down the enormous central frames of the ships that took form in the KDY construction docks. The β-supervisor had been a lead operator, back in the days of Kuat’s father, of one of the massive cranes spanning the docks, each nearly as long—and powerful—as an Imperial battle destroyer. Through the meeting shed’s overhead skylights, the outline of one of them could be seen, blotting out an entire swath of stars.

“You’ve led this corporation well, Kuat.” Though white-haired, the β-supervisor was still a figure of imposing musculature, with a razor-sharp gaze in his age-seamed face. “And through times perhaps more difficult than any faced by your predecessors; you’ve proven yourself to be the true heir of the Kuat Drive Yards’ helm.”

A murmuring chorus of agreement sounded behind the man.

“Is it your intent, then, to be the final leader that this corporation will ever see?” The β-supervisor peered closely at Kuat. “Perhaps you seek to ensure that Kuat Drive Yards will never have a leader greater than yourself.”

“That’s not my intent,” said Kuat of Kuat. The ranks assembled in the meeting shed fell absolutely silent to hear his softly spoken words. “But if it turns out to be my duty, then I will accept it.”

The grizzled figure standing before him slowly nodded. “A fine answer, Kuat. And a worthy decision. I’ve heard that there are many, on the planet of Kuat that we orbit—” As with most of the KDY workforce, the old man had spent his entire life in the construction docks and the attached dormitory complex. “—and on worlds far from here, who believe that from our work, our lives among the ships we build, we wind up with hearts as cold and precise as machines. So be it; perhaps those other creatures speak truly. But if such is the case, then you should feel certain of the judgment of the living machines you see before you.” The β-supervisor turned and gestured with an outflung arm toward the other KDY workers. “And that judgment is—as you accept your duty, however painful, so do we accept ours.”

The voices behind the man were louder this time, but just as united in their assent.

Kuat looked away from his followers for a moment, toward the bank of transparisteel panes along the side of the meeting shed. From here he had a closer view than from his personal quarters, high above the construction docks, of the corporation’s work. As far as his eye could see, and against a glittering backdrop of stars, the massive shapes of a completed battle fleet were arrayed one after another. The cranes and other heavy equipment that the shipbuilders used in their intricate craft arched over the ships, as though to protect them from hands that would defile their beauty and power. Kuat’s heart, however hard and machinelike it may have become, swelled in his chest. No matter what happened, however dark the fate closing upon Kuat Drive Yards, its accomplishments would remain. We built these, thought Kuat as he gazed at the ships. They were ours before they became anyone else’s. He nodded slowly to himself. What became of them now was a matter for him to decide.

The β-supervisor had stepped back into the ranks of the others filling the shed. At the front of them was the α-foreman of the Kuat Drive Yards’ construction docks, as before. “Are there further instructions,” said the α-foreman, “that you wished to give us?”

“No …” Kuat of Kuat brought himself back from his deep musing. “Proceed with the plans as I’ve outlined them. Let me know when we’ve reached operational stage, and then await word from my offices before going any further.”

“As you wish.” The α-foreman turned back toward the others and made a single gesture with an upraised arm. “Let’s get to work.”

After the workers had filed out, Kuat remained by himself in the meeting shed for a while longer. He stood at the bank of transparisteel windows, looking out at the ships beneath the immense cranes but not really seeing them at all. In the distance, some of the bright points of light above the construction docks weren’t stars, but the small, armed craft of the Rebel Alliance that had been assigned to keep an eye on whatever might happen to the new and valuable fleet waiting here. Those Rebel pilots were only doing their own duty; Kuat held no grudge against them. But he couldn’t let them stop him from his own.

He was reluctant to return to his private quarters, and to the ongoing confrontation with the various conspiracies encircling Kuat Drive Yards. This conference with the various supervisors from the construction docks had been a momentary break from all those pressures, and one that had been, he knew, somewhat unnecessary. He could have been sure of his followers’ loyalty without having to come here in person; some of them had already routed memos to his offices assuring him of that much.

One takes one’s pleasures, mused Kuat of Kuat, where one can find them. Given what he knew about the dark forces moving among the stars, and what he would have to do to keep Kuat Drive Yards from falling into their hands, there were not many pleasures left to him.

Or time left to enjoy them …

“We’ll soon be out of range,” said one of the Kuat Drive Yards’ security personnel, “if we wish to contact headquarters and inquire as to any changes in our orders.”

Kodir of Kuhlvult, the head of security for the corporation, stood in the command bridge of the cruiser, with her hands clasped in the small of her back. Past the staff manning the cruiser’s flight and weaponry controls, the cruiser’s forward viewport was visible. Locked in that center of the star-filled image was a brighter flare, that of the main thruster engines of the ship known as the Hound’s Tooth. The distance to that target had remained stable for the last several minutes. Stable—and tantalizingly just beyond range of the KDY cruiser’s laser cannons.

“There’s no need to contact Kuat, if that’s what you mean.” Kodir was aware that some of the members of Kuat Drive Yards’ security division had yet to accept her leadership as a fact, and her decisions as final. “He’s authorized me to act as I see fit in this matter.”

Her words, crisply spoken, had an interesting effect on the underling, drawing his spine up straighter and stiffen “Kuat did more than just ‘authorize’ your actions,” he replied in measured tones. “He gave all of us the same orders, that we were to fire upon and destroy the ship bearing Boba Fett at the earliest opportunity.”

“So he did.” Kodir didn’t turn toward the man, but remained gazing toward the viewport. “Your point?”

“My point is that we had our weapons systems locked upon this ship that we are presently following back when it left the sector at which we first intercepted it. We could have eliminated it at that time, if you hadn’t directly ordered our crew to hold their fire.”

Kodir glanced toward the man standing beside her. “Are you questioning my decision?”

“I fail to see how that decision corresponds with the orders and the mission that were given to us by Kuat of Kuat. His authority outranks yours, whether he is physically present or not; he is, after all, the head of the Kuat Drive Yards, and we all serve under that command.”

“Very well put,” replied Kodir. “When I require a lecture on the theory and practice of corporate structure, I’ll be sure to remember that you seem to be unusually well versed on the subject. In the meantime, my orders as head of the security division remain as before. We will continue pursuing this ship bearing Boba Fett, and we will forgo contacting Kuat of Kuat at the corporation’s headquarters. Is that clear?”

“Absolutely clear.” The man’s eyes narrowed to slits as he regarded her. “It is my duty, when we return to Kuat Drive Yards, to make a full report to Kuat regarding your conduct in this regard.”

“That’s your decision.” She smiled thinly at the man. “But I assure you, the head of the corporation places a great deal of trust in me. That’s how I became your superior. If there’s anything that you think you might be able to say that would alter Kuat’s trust, you’re more than free to speak up about it. But be prepared for the consequences, if Kuat doesn’t agree with you.”

The underling remained silent, still glaring at her.

“Now that we understand each other,” continued Kodir, “you may return to your other duties. As I’ll return to mine.”

With a curt nod the underling turned and strode away.

Several other faces on the bridge had swiveled in her direction, watching and listening to the brief altercation. Kodir gestured with one hand. “Carry on,” she said. “Unless, that is, any of you wish to question my command?”

A moment passed, then the security staff returned to their various tasks.

Kodir gazed past the heads bent over the gauges and display screens. Soon, she told herself. A mere matter of time …

“You know, I’m beginning to think you’re just plain bad luck.” N’dru Suhlak glanced over his shoulder at the figure behind him in the Headhunter’s cockpit. “Whether I’m going up against you, or whether we’re supposed to be on the same side—there’s just evil stuff that happens to me when you’re around.”

“What’s the problem?” Boba Fett grasped the back of the pilot’s chair Suhlak sat in and pulled himself forward, the better to see what was up ahead of the small craft. “I thought we had just about reached Tatooine.”

“Sure—dead ahead.” Suhlak pointed to the forward viewport. In the distance was the buff-colored orb, with little of its surface obscured by cloud cover beneath the radiance of twin suns. “Plus, I thought we’d already gotten past the worst we were going to encounter along the way. Without having to get into any running dogfights—I’d much rather sneak past anyone trying to stop me, instead of having to shoot my way through.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that with this customer.”

“You’ve spotted someone?”

“Correction—someone’s spotted us.” A red dot of light was pulsing on the control panel; Suhlak pointed to it. “I can’t see him yet, but whoever it is, he’s definitely got some kind of multifrequency scanning and lock-on device. It’s got real distance capability, too. None of my detect systems can even get a fix on his location; the signal that got bounced off us was less than a nanosecond in duration, and that’s way too small to calculate off of.”

The cockpit area of the Headhunter had been extensively modified, bubbled out to add a larger carrying capacity for Suhlak’s paying passengers. But the space was still cramped enough that all Boba Fett would have had to do was turn away from the pilot’s chair in order to place his hands against the curved bulkhead, as though he might have been able to sense the approaching predator in that way.

On the cockpit panel, the red light began pulsing faster, at an accelerating clip. “I take it,” said Boba Fett, “that we’re picking up more of this unknown individual’s scanning signals?”

“You got it, pal. He’s obviously trying to get enough vector data on us to predict our path and speed. Which means”—Suhlak slammed the navigational controls hard to one side; the stars in the viewport blurred horizontally as the Z-95 Headhunter banked at close to a ninety-degree deflection from its original course—“we go another way.”

The sharp maneuver had slammed Boba Fett against the pilot’s chair. He braced himself, widening the stance of his boots and holding on tighter to the seat’s back.

Suhlak glanced over his shoulder at his passenger. “You better sit back and strap yourself in. This might get a little raucous.”

“And leave you running this show by yourself?” The lights from the control panel glinted on the dark visor of Boba Fett’s helmet as he shook his head. “Don’t worry—lean handle it.”

“Suit yourself. Because it seems our friend has gotten in range of us.” Suhlak pointed to the upper left quadrant of the viewport. “There he is now. And it doesn’t look like he just wants to say hello.” Boosting the Headhunter’s main engines to full throttle, Suhlak threw the small ship into a looping spiral, piling on multiple g-forces. “Hold on—”

The first shot fired from the pursuer struck the Headhunter’s exterior hull, to the rear of the expanded passenger area. A burst of hot sparks rained across Boba Fett’s back as a section of insulated circuitry overloaded and caught fire. Both he and Suhlak ignored the black smoke that started to fill the cockpit as the hunt saboteur pushed the thruster controls even farther forward, at the same time taking the craft into a wrenching counter-directional dive.

“There. That should’ve taken care of him.” Suhlak pointed to the display from the rear scanner. “See? We’ve lost him.” With one hand, Suhlak pulled back the engines’ throttle. “Kinda disappointing, actually. I was hoping for a lot more fun from—” He suddenly fell silent, leaning forward and peering at the forward viewport. “What the …”

“Something wrong?”

“Yeah … you could say that …” Suhlak slowly nodded, then raised his hand and pointed to the curved transparisteel in front of the control panel. “There he is …”

At the center of the viewport, the pursuing ship sat waiting in the distance, engines dropped to standby as though its pilot was confident of there being no escape for its prey.

“Oh, great.” Suhlak looked down at a smaller readout on the control panel. “We finally got an ID code from this guy. Believe me, he’s the last one I wanted to run into.”

Boba Fett peered at the small bright image of the ship ahead. “Who is it?”

“Osss-10,” said Suhlak, shoulders slumping. “Now I’m sure you’re bad luck.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You wouldn’t have.” Disgust sounded in Suhlak’s voice. “That’s because you’re an old story, and he’s the latest thing. Don’t you get it? This is all because of what you did when you broke up the old Bounty Hunters Guild. The old rule book’s been thrown out, and there’s enough chaos in the bounty-hunting environment for totally new ones to start up. New—and better.” Suhlak pointed his thumb at the viewport. “I’ve never even seen this Osss-10 guy face-to-face, don’t know where he comes from, but I’ve already had some real unpleasant encounters with him. Somebody with a lot of credits must be bankrolling him: he’s got all the state-of-the-art equipment, plus he’s a real genius at programming his onboard computers. He’s got some kind of predictive algorithms wired into his gear that I’ve never encountered before. The more confrontations you have with him, the bigger operational database he has to extrapolate from about what your next moves are going to be—just like he did right now. If he gets much smarter, next he’s going to be able to know what I’m going to do before I know!”

“So what are your plans?”

“What difference does it make?” Suhlak slumped down in defeat. “I already threw my best stuff at this guy. The only thing I can think of to do is … give up.”

“Right—” Boba Fett leaned past Suhlak and shoved the main thruster engine controls forward. The Z-95 Headhunter shot forward, rapidly accelerating toward the other craft in the distance.

“What’re you doing?” Suhlak struggled against the forearm restraining him in the seat. “You’ll get us killed!”

Fett said nothing, but pushed the thruster controls all the way to their limits.

The pursuer craft loomed larger in the center of the viewport as the Headhunter sped straight toward it. Suddenly, the prow-mounted laser cannons began firing. Bolt after coruscating bolt struck the Headhunter, buffeting the craft from side to side, as more sparks and smoke filled its interior as though it were in the middle of a planetary lightning storm. Boba Fett kept his grip locked upon the thruster controls. Shock and the force of acceleration were enough to keep Suhlak pinned where he was, watching helplessly as Boba Fett made quick navigational corrections with his other hand, maintaining their fiery course toward their opponent.

A final volley of laser-cannon fire burst across the viewport, blinding in its white-hot glare. The Headhunter burst through it, finding the other craft now directly ahead. They were close enough to each other that Suhlak, opening his squeezed-shut eyes, had a momentary glimpse of a grimly intent face behind a curve of transparisteel—

That was all he saw of Osss-10. Suhlak braced himself for the annihilating impact of the two ships crashing together. Then suddenly he could see the rear of the other craft encircled with the flare from its own engines at full throttle. The cockpit through which he had glimpsed the pursuer’s face swept upward and out of his vision; the bottom of the other ship’s hull filled the viewport, near enough that Suhlak could have counted the thermal weld seams in the durasteel panels if they hadn’t gone by so fast.

A scraping noise, metal against metal, sounded through the smoke roiling in the cockpit area as the underside of Osss-10’s ship tore off one of the Z-95 Headhunter’s sensor arrays. Then silence filled the space, broken only by the hissing of the automatic fire-control systems extinguishing the burning circuitry.

Trembling, Suhlak leaned forward and checked the angle from his ship’s rear scanner. The other ship was nowhere to be seen. He punched up the rest of his detection monitors. They all told the same story: Osss-10 had vanished from the sector as quickly as he had appeared.

Boba Fett had pushed himself back from the control panel, leaving the Headhunter at cruising speed. In the forward viewport loomed the planet Tatooine, closer now.

“That … that was just insane …” Suhlak shook his head, still seeing in his mind’s eye the vision of the other ship coming within millimeters of a shattering crash with his own. “We were that close to being killed …”

“But we weren’t,” said Boba Fett. “So much for your new breed of bounty hunter. He might be able to predict what you’re going to do—but he can’t predict what I’m going to do. Nobody can.”

Suhlak reached for the ship’s controls and aimed toward the cloudless terrain of the Dune Sea. Predictions, he thought. I’ll give you predictions. He had already decided, deep inside himself, that whatever amount of credits he was slated to get for this job—

It wasn’t going to be enough.

14

“I was wondering when you’d show up.” Bossk’s unpleasant smile lit up in the shadows of the rear booth, the dim lights of the cantina glinting off the full array of his fangs. “I would’ve been real disappointed if you hadn’t. I mean—disappointed in you.”

Boba Fett slid into the opposite side of the booth. A few inquisitive faces had turned his way as he strode through the dimly lit space, but his visor-shielded glance over his shoulder had convinced them to limit their attention to their own business. “Hope you haven’t been waiting.” He set his gloved hands down flat on the table’s damp-ringed surface.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting, all right.” Grimly brooding anger tinged Bossk’s words. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”

“Don’t make a big deal about this,” said Fett. “I just came here to do business with you. That’s all.”

“Yeah, and that’s the moment I’m talking about. The moment when I’ve got something that you want.”

Bossk leaned back in the booth’s thinly padded seat and regarded—with growing satisfaction—the other bounty hunter sitting across from him. The feeling was the kind of satisfaction that came just before even stronger, more pleasurable feelings: the savoring of triumph and the satiation of one’s appetite. He could almost taste them, like the sweet saltiness of blood leaking through his fangs. Turnabout, thought Bossk, isn’t just fair play. It was the peak of one’s existence, at least for a creature like him. Trandoshans were famous throughout the galaxy for their ability to carry a grudge.

“Not only that you want,” continued Bossk. “But that you need.”

“Careful.” Boba Fett’s voice remained flat and unemotional, as though all of Bossk’s taunting had had zero effect on him. “You might be overestimating the value of the goods.”

“I don’t think so.” Bossk set his own massive claws down on the table. “You wouldn’t have come all this way—and back to Tatooine, which is hardly full of pleasant memories for you, is it?—if there hadn’t been a pretty good reason for you to do so. You especially wouldn’t have risked coming here with the odds stacked against you the way they are—what with every bounty hunter left over from the old Guild, and a bunch of new ones, all gunning for you.”

“For somebody who’s as far out of the loop as you are these days, Bossk, you seem to know a lot about what’s been going down.”

That remark got under Bossk’s scales. “Look,” he said, voice harshening, “I may not be working as a bounty hunter these days—” It galled him to have to make even that much of an admission of his prior defeats. “But that’s all because you stole my ship from me. If I still had the Hound’s Tooth, believe me, I’d be on top of this game.”

“I didn’t steal the Hound from you,” said Boba Fett mildly. “You abandoned it, and I took it over. A piece of junk like that really isn’t worth stealing.”

“Junk!” His claws dug into the tabletop as he started to push himself up from the booth’s seat. “That’s the best ship in the galaxy—”

At the edges of his slit-pupiled vision, Bossk was aware of the others in the cantina looking once again in his and Boba Fett’s direction, some of them glancing surreptitiously from the corners of their eyes, others more boldly. Bossk’s raised voice had alerted them all to the possibility of imminent violence, which was always one of the chief sources of amusement for this crowd. He had always known that they didn’t come here just for the clattering and whining music from the jizz-wailer band, still setting up and sound-checking their gear over in the corner.

“Junk,” muttered Bossk sulkily. With an effort of will, he forced his temper below the boiling-over point as he sat back down. Boba Fett was playing the usual round of mind games with him, just as the other bounty hunter had done so many times before. It was all part of Fett’s usual negotiating strategy, a way of getting a psychological advantage over an adversary. Whoever angers you, owns you—that was one of Boba Fett’s operational mottoes. Bossk had heard it before, and had fallen for it often enough, that he knew it was true.

“It’s served my purposes,” said Fett. “Well enough.”

Bossk raised one of his scaly eyebrows. “It’s not here with you, is it?” His voice lifted with hope. “I mean, here in the spaceport.”

“Of course not. I had to get here in something of a hurry. I didn’t have time to creep along in that pile of …” Fett paused for a moment. “That valuable relic.”

“Don’t start.” Bossk let his shoulders slump. “I just thought … that maybe I’d gotten it wrong from my information sources. That you’d been detected as being aboard N’dru Suhlak’s Headhunter.” Bossk tried turning his opponent’s verbal tactic around. “You know, that’s kind of a new low, even for you, Fett. Using a hunt saboteur to ferry you around. I never knew anybody in the old Bounty riunters Guild who would’ve touched one with a gaffi stick, except to beat him to death with it.”

Boba Fett didn’t rise to the bait. “Circumstances, rather than desires, dictate my actions. That’s why I’m still a bounty hunter, and you’re not.”

“Don’t worry about that,” replied Bossk testily. “I’m going to be in the game again—and real soon. Aren’t I?” To be on the safe side, he tilted his head back and scanned the crowd in the cantina, trying to spot any creature with whom Fett might be working. The chances of that were slim—most of the other top-rank bounty hunters would have been out searching for Boba Fett instead, scheming on turning him into the kind of hard merchandise for which Kuat of Kuat had posted such an impressive price. And Fett himself, as Bossk knew from his own past experience, rarely took on partners; Bossk was still amazed at having heard of him being in league with a relative second-rater like Dengar. “That’s why you’re here. You’re going to make that all possible for me, huh? Even if you didn’t bring the Hound back with you, so you could return it to me.”

“You can have your ship back—when I’m done with it.” Boba Fett shrugged. “And if there’s anything left of it then.”

Bossk ignored the comment, as being just another of Fett’s infuriating verbal gambits. “Okay. So you came here to take care of some other business with me, right? Let’s see if we can make this mutually rewarding. Because it’s not going to happen unless it is.” Boss leaned across the table, letting his eyes narrow to slits. “How much you going to pay?”

“You’re mistaken.” The other bounty hunter gazed right back at him. “I wasn’t planning to ‘pay’ anything.”

“Plan again, pal.” Bossk grated out the words. “I’ve got what you want—what I found inside that cargo droid aboard your ship—and I’ve got a real good idea of what it’s worth. Because there are other creatures besides you looking for it, and they’re offering a nice high fee on delivery.”

“So why didn’t you sell it to them? From the looks of it, you could use the credits.”

“Because …” His fangs ground together, as though they had seized upon Boba Fett’s throat. “I figured I could get even more out of you. And even if I couldn’t get more—even if I couldn’t get the same—I still wanted to get it out of your pockets. I wanted you to pay, Fett. Because I know that’s worse for you than if I killed you.”

“You’re right. I don’t find that prospect at all pleasant.” Boba Fett reached under the table. His hand came back up with a blaster pistol in it, which he pointed between Bossk’s eyes. “So why don’t you just hand the goods over to me, and that way I won’t have to kill you.”

“Are you crazy?” The sight of the weapon, hanging motionless right in his face, had frozen him as well. Glancing out of the corner of his sight, Bossk saw that all the mingled hubbub of conversations in the cantina had suddenly died, with every creature there turning and looking in the direction of the rear booth in which he and Boba Fett sat. “I thought you wanted to do business.”

“That’s what this is.” Boba Fett raised the weapon’s muzzle a fraction of an inch higher. “Consider it my final offer.”

The show was too good to ignore; the cantina’s other patrons had started buzzing and whispering, excitedly pointing out details of the confrontation to one another.

“You are crazy.” The blood in Bossk’s veins, never warmer than the surrounding atmosphere, had suddenly chilled. “Look … let’s think about this.”

“There’s no need to,” said Fett evenly. “It’s a straightforward proposition. Hand over the material that you found inside the cargo droid, when you were rummaging around in Slave I, and I won’t kill you. What could be fairer than that? Mutually rewarding as well: I’d have what I came here for, and you’d still be alive.”

“But … but look at the chance you’re taking.” The gears of Bossk’s thoughts slowly started moving again. “I don’t have what you’re talking about right here on me. You think I’d carry stuff like that around? No way.” Bossk shook his head vigorously. “I’ve got it well hid, someplace where nobody else would be able to find it.”

“Whatever’s been hidden can be found again.”

“Maybe so,” said Bossk, “but not without a lot of searching. And that would take time. Time that you don’t have right now.” His words started coming faster. “You said yourself, just a couple minutes ago, that you came here to Tatooine in a hurry. That must mean you’ve got to get your hands on that stuff real quick. You kill me now, and that’s not going to happen. You’ll be stuck here in Mos Eisley, rooting through every possible place I could have stashed the goods. And maybe you won’t ever find it. Think about that.” Bossk gave a quick nod, his own fanged muzzle almost brushing that of the blaster being held on him. “Then what’ll you do? You won’t be getting any help from me, if I’m already dead.”

“Good point.” The blaster pistol remained where it was, unwavering in Boba Fett’s grip. “But not good enough. Do the math, Bossk. If I kill you now, I might indeed have only a small chance of finding what I came here for. But all your chances will be over. What’s inconvenient for me will be terminal for you.” Boba Fett’s finger rested upon the trigger, a centimeter away from unleashing its fire. “There’s nothing left to discuss. So what’s it going to be?”

The darkly shining metal in the other bounty hunter’s hand mesmerized Bossk. He had looked straight at death before—in the bounty hunter trade, it was a regular occurrence—but never with as much certainty as now. The pulse in his veins seemed to stop, along with time itself; all the rest of the cantina faded away, along with its whispering voices and watching eyes. The universe seemed to have contracted, down to the width of the booth’s table, holding nothing but himself and the helmeted figure across from him, with the blaster as the pivot of gravity between them.

“All right …” Bossk’s throat had gone as dry as the Dune Sea, somewhere out in that vanished world surrounding the booth. “I’ll …” The next words caught in his throat, as though they were too big to dislodge. “I’ll go ahead and …” His hands drew into fists, claws digging ragged parallel grooves in the table’s surface. For a moment longer, Bossk remained paralyzed, then he found himself slowly shaking his head. “No, I won’t,” he said flatly. “I won’t do it.”

“What did you say?” The blaster didn’t move, but a minute fraction of surprise sounded in Boba Fett’s voice.

“You heard me.” Bossk’s heart was racing now; his vision blurred with the increased pressure for a moment, then he managed to bring Boba Fett’s image into focus again. “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to give you the stuff I found inside that droid.” He raised his hand from the marks his claws had dug into the table and spread them wide, making an additional target out of his chest. “Go ahead and fire. I don’t care.” A certain exhilaration came with those words; Bossk felt absolutely free for the first time in his existence. “You know … I just realized something. That’s how you always won before,” he marveled aloud. “It was because you didn’t care. Whether you lived or died, or whether you won or lost. So you always wound up surviving, and you always won.” Bossk slowly shook his head, admiring his own sudden insight. “That’s amazing.”

“Spare me.” The dark-visored gaze remained as steady as the blaster in Boba Fett’s hand. “I won because I had more firepower—and brainpower—than you or anyone else did. That’s what matters. Nothing else.”

“Yeah, well, not this time.” Bossk found himself smiling with genuine pleasure, even though he knew he might very well be enjoying the last few seconds of his life. “You know, I really should’ve figured this out before. I’ve been in plenty of tight spots, where I was looking death straight in the face—like when Governor Desnand was planning on peeling my skin right off me—and I always managed to fight or bribe my way out of them. I even managed to steal the Hound’s Tooth back from Tinian and Chenlambec, and that took some doing, believe me. And then to have you steal the Hound away from me …” Bossk slowly shook his head. “Crazy business, huh? Not surprising that I never figured out what it all meant. At least until now.” Bossk gestured at the blaster in Boba Fett’s hand. “So you got the firepower, all right, for all the good it’ll do you. Go ahead. Shoot.”

A shadow fell across the table. The cantina’s bartender had pushed his way through the crowd, right up to the side of the rear booth. “Hold on, you two—” The man’s lumpish face was shiny with sweat. “We don’t want any trouble here—”

“It’s a little late for that.” Boba Fett swung the muzzle of the blaster around toward the bartender. “Isn’t it?”

“Now … wait a minute …” The bartender held up his hands, palms outward, as though they were capable of stopping a blaster bolt. “I was just … trying to help you work things out. That’s all …”

“And so you can.” With his free hand, Boba Fett reached into one of the pouches in his battle armor and drew out a data-transfer chip. “Does this establishment have a verify-and-transmit connection with the local banking exchange?”

“Sure—” The bartender nodded and pointed toward the opposite side of the cantina. “Back in the office. We use it for our own accounts. We get a lot of credits, from a lot of different systems, moving through here.”

“Fine.” With his thumb, Fett punched in a few quick commands on the chip’s miniaturized input module. “Take this and have the balance in my local cache account deposited in the name and identity scan of this individual here.” He indicated Bossk with a nod of his helmet. “Keep the five-percent service fee for yourself. Got that?”

The bartender nodded again.

“Then do it.”

Bearing the transfer chip in his hands like a precious relic, the bartender turned and hurried toward the cantina office. The crowd parted before him, to let him pass. Then their wondering faces all turned back toward the scene in the booth.

“All right,” said Boba Fett. He tucked the blaster back into its holster. “There. You’ve won.”

Bossk stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment before he could speak. “What did you say?”

“You’ve won.” A note of impatience tinged Fett’s words. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

A tiny bell note sounded from a pouch on one of the straps crossing Bossk’s scale-covered chest. He fumbled out the small readout card with his own account balance encoded on it. A few minutes ago, the numbers had been pitifully small. But now the transfer of funds had gone through, as Fett had instructed the cantina’s bartender. The resulting change in the readout figure widened Bossk’s eyes into almost perfect circles.

The crowd in the cantina had heard what Boba Fett had said. The volume and buzzing urgency of their comments to each other went up several notches.

“I won?” Bossk lifted his gaze from the readout to his own reflection in the dark visor of Fett’s helmet.

“Look,” said Boba Fett. “I don’t have time to either kill you or argue with you any further. I’ve paid you—” He pointed to the readout in Bossk’s claws. “And that’s more than you would’ve gotten from Kuat. So that’s my half of the business we’re doing here. So work with me on this, all right? Your turn. Where’s the stuff you took from my ship?”

Bossk still felt slightly stunned. “It’s … not here …”

“You told me that already. So where is it?”

“Back at the hovel-stack … where I’ve been staying …” Bossk gave him the directions, the exact route down Mos Eisley’s twisting alleys. “Move the pallet … and there’s a hole underneath, covered with a board …”

“That’s your hiding place?” Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. “I could have saved my credits.” He slid out from the booth. “Make it last,” he said, pointing to the readout in Bossk’s hand. “Might be all you’ll see for a while.” Fett turned and strode away, the crowd quickly shifting to either side of the cantina.

Bossk sat staring at the display for a few moments longer, then tucked it away again. He stood up from the booth and immediately halted in place.

The cantina crowd was massed solid in front of him, eyes of the galaxy’s various shapes and colors regarding him, with none of the creatures saying a word. Then—slowly—the silence was broken, as first a few individuals, then the entire crowd, began applauding and raucously cheering.

A drunken harf, with shining red, gogglelike eyes and an elongated snout, put a massive arm around Bossk’s shoulders. “We don’t like you any more than we ever did,” said the creature. “We just never saw anything like that before. Not with Boba Fett, that is …”

“Sure …” Bossk nodded in appreciation of the other’s words. “It means a lot to me, too.” Back in the game, he thought dizzily. He didn’t need the Hound’s Tooth anymore; with the credits he had now, he could buy a whole new ship. And a better one …

Ideas and desires whirled through Bossk’s head. He pushed his way through the noisy crowd, heading for the light outside.

“Must’ve been one of those days.” On a level stretch of plain outside Mos Eisley, N’dru Suhlak looked up from the access panel on his Headhunter’s exterior hull. He had been keeping himself busy with necessary repairs to the craft; after the encounter with Osss-10 above Tatooine’s atmosphere, the Headhunter hadn’t been in optimum shape. Reaching into his tool kit for a larger hydrospanner, he had spotted Boba Fett returning from his “business meeting” in the spaceport’s cantina. “Couple of folks came by a little while ago; they told me some of what happened.”

Fett had a small parcel, wrapped in unmarked flimsiplast, tucked under his arm. “Creatures talk. You should ignore them.”

“Don’t know about that.” Suhlak wiped his hands on a greasy rag, then slammed the access panel shut. “Sounded kind of interesting. I mean, a big roaring blaster fight like that, and all those other creatures getting killed. Must have wiped out half the ’port’s population.”

“Nowhere near,” said Fett drily. “These things get exaggerated when they get told over and over.” He reached up and stowed the package in the Headhunter’s bubbled-out passenger area. “Is this thing ready to go? Just because I got what I came here for, that doesn’t mean I’m in any less of a hurry.”

“We’re outta here.” Suhlak picked up his tool kit. “Sooner you’re off my hands and I get paid, the happier I’ll be.”

In a few minutes, the Z-95 Headhunter was beyond Tatooine’s atmosphere again, heading for deeper space and the rendezvous point with Dengar and Neelah aboard the Hound’s Tooth. From the pilot’s chair, Suhlak glanced over his shoulder and watched as Boba Fett unwrapped the package and began examining its contents.

I don’t even want to know, thought Suhlak. He turned back to the controls and the forward viewport. Whatever the package might hold, it was Fett’s business and none of his own. Let him get killed over it.

Suhlak started punching numbers into the navicomputer, getting ready for the jump into hyperspace.

15

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait around here?” Dengar turned from the Hound’s controls and glanced over his shoulder. “Before he shows up?”

“I don’t know,” said Neelah. “Hope it’s soon …”

They had dropped out of hyperspace and into the Oranessan system, followed by the KDY security cruiser, just as Boba Fett’s scheme had predicted. Since then, Dengar had kept the Hound’s Tooth at the precise speed that their strategy called for: just fast enough to stay out of reach of the pursuing cruiser. The mottled orb of Oran-μ, the system’s largest planet, filled the forward viewport as the chase continued.

All that Neelah and Dengar needed now was for Boba Fett to have successfully completed his mission on Tatooine and then rendezvous with them here, as they had agreed upon back at Balancesheet’s freighter. Neelah had half expected Fett to already be here waiting for them; that sort of thing was exactly his style. But instead, when the Hound’s Tooth had reached its destination, they had been greeted with the disappointing reality of empty space, with no sign of the smaller Headhunter craft, with its hunt saboteur pilot and bounty hunter passenger.

“The way I see it,” fretted Dengar, “is that there’s a couple of things that could go spur right about now. “Either something happened to Boba Fett and Suhlak on the way to Tatooine or on the way here—like them getting intercepted and blown away by one of the other bounty hunters gunning for ’em—in which case they’re not going to be showing up here at all. Or Boba Fett had some other plan of his own all along, and he’s double-crossed us, which would mean that he never intended to meet up with us here at all.” That notion made Dengar grit his teeth while giving a slow shake of his head. “Then we’d be waiting around here for nothing.”

“I don’t think that last one’s too likely,” said Neelah. Leaning back against the cockpit hatchway, she crossed her arms tight across her breast, as though that were the only way to keep her jangling nerves under control. “He’s got reasons for hooking up with us again. Not because he’s got any great affection for either one of us, but because he’d still be thinking there’d be some way of generating a profit from me.”

“Maybe so.” Dengar didn’t seem convinced. “It’s just that he’s got such a devious mind. But then, I knew that before I ever became partners with him.”

“There’s another possibility.” It was one that had been gnawing away for a while now, even before they had caught sight of the Oranessan system approaching in the distance. “The worst one.”

“What’s that?”

“Just this,” said Neelah grimly. “That nothing happened to Boba Fett on the way out to Tatooine, and nothing happened to them on the way here. And nothing happened on Tatooine, either.”

Dengar’s brow creased with puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t you get it? What if Boba Fett gets all the way to Tatooine, finds this Bossk creature—and Bossk doesn’t have this fabricated evidence that was taken out of that cargo droid, back on Fett’s ship.” Neelah’s voice tightened in her throat. “Maybe it doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe Bossk got rid of it; maybe he decided it wasn’t worth anything, and he destroyed it somewhere along the way.”

“You’re forgetting something,” said Dengar. “Bossk has already put the word out that he’s sitting on this stuff, looking for a buyer for it.”

“That doesn’t mean he has it.” Neelah shook her head in disgust. “Boba Fett isn’t the only bounty hunter with a devious mind. Bossk could’ve gotten rid of, or lost track of it in a hundred different ways, before he had any idea of its value. Then when he heard that Kuat of Kuat was looking for it and was ready to pay a high price for it, he might have decided to see if he could scam the money for it from Kuat, without actually delivering it. Or Bossk might have thought that if it was so valuable, the prospect of getting it back would be a perfect enticement for luring Boba Fett within striking range—you know what kind of a grudge Bossk has against Fett. This might’ve been Bossk’s way of finally settling up old scores—or at least trying to.”

“Yeah … maybe so.” Dengar slumped in the pilot’s chair, looking deflated. “I hadn’t thought about anything like that. But I guess you’re right. It’s possible.”

Neelah had been doing plenty of thinking like that. All the way from Balancesheet’s freighter and the drifting fragments of old Kud’ar Mub’at’s web, her mind had been ceaselessly turning over one bleak idea after another. All of them processed out as the complete dashing of her hopes, of any chance of answering the remaining questions about her past. Those hopes had been raised from the dead, more thoroughly than Dengar and Boba Fett had revived Kud’ar Mub’at, by the assembler’s successor and its surprise about the fabricated evidence being back on Tatooine. Whether that was true or not, it had at least renewed Neelah’s faith in there being still one more slender thread that would lead them out of the blind alley to which all their searching up until now had brought them.

But if, as she couldn’t keep herself from fearing, the last possible clue no longer existed—if it had been a fool’s errand on which Boba Fett had gone to Tatooine—then she had no idea of where she would be able to turn next. In a galaxy consumed with the struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, the chances were slim for someone with only a name as the key to the mysteries of her past, a name and its connection to the ruling families of the planet Kuat. For all she knew, it might have been the powerful Kuat of Kuat who had ordered the wiping of her memory and the abduction from her homeworld. And she’d already seen evidence enough, in the bombing raid on the Dune Sea, that Kuat was not someone who would forgo murderous violence to achieve his ends. If she were to blithely show up on the planet Kuat, seeking whatever position in its ranks of nobles that had been stolen from her, she might well be placing herself in the hands of those who had sought to eliminate her once before. Kuat might indeed be the one place where the answers could be found to the mysteries surrounding her—but it could just as easily be where certain death awaited her. Without Boba Fett returning from Tatooine with the fabricated evidence that had been hidden in the cargo droid aboard his ship, she had no chance of knowing which would be the case.

He either meets up with us here, she thought, gazing above Dengar’s head toward the viewport, and has the evidence with him …

Neelah left the thought uncompleted in her mind. It was something she didn’t want to contemplate any further.

And—she realized—she didn’t have to.

“Look.” Neelah pointed to the viewport. “Right there …”

Dengar had been monitoring the relative position of the KDY security cruiser behind them, on the display from the Hound’s rear scanner. He looked up and saw the bright spot of light in the midst of the field of stars. Bright and growing brighter, straight ahead of them.

“It’s pretty small, from the looks of it. And fast. Maybe …” Quickly, Dengar punched up the approaching craft’s ID profile. “It’s him,” said Dengar, dropping his tensed shoulders in relief. “It’s that Headhunter ship of N’dru Suhlak’s. So Boba Fett has to be aboard it, right?” Smiling, Dengar glanced over his shoulder at Neelah. “I mean, it stands to reason—Suhlak wouldn’t have come here to rendezvous with us without Fett, would he?”

“No—” Neelah shook her head. “He wouldn’t have any reason to.” So that set of possibilities, of the total that she had been obsessing over, was ruled out. At least Boba Fett hadn’t abandoned them; she and Dengar were still part of whatever plans he was pursuing. “Now all we have to see is whether he found what he went to Tatooine for.”

“We’ll have to do a running transfer, in order to get him aboard.” Dengar pointed to the image from the rear scanner. The cruiser from the Kuat Drive Yards’ security division was still the same distance behind the Hound’s Tooth. “If we come to a halt, even for a couple of minutes, they’ll be on top of us.”

“Can we do that?”

“It’s tricky, but possible.” The comm unit mike was already in Dengar’s hand. “Suhlak’s Headhunter is coming within range. I’ll get the details worked out with Boba Fett. You’ll need to run the controls here in the cockpit while I man the transfer hatchway.”

She listened as first Suhlak’s, then Boba Fett’s voice came over the cockpit speaker. As Dengar and Fett quickly calculated the necessary matching velocities for the ships, Neelah fought the impulse to ask—demand, rather—what had been found and brought back from Tatooine. You’ve waited this long, she scolded herself. You can wait a few moments longer.

Left by herself in the Hound’s cockpit, Neelah kept her hands poised on the thruster engine controls. Suhlak had brought the Z-95 Headhunter up alongside the Hound’s Tooth, carefully modulating his speed and narrowing the gap between the two ships’ hulls. A muted thump sounded through the frame, followed by the sharper vibrations of the transfer hatchway locking into place.

The three men showed up in the cockpit area at last, with Suhlak trailing behind the bounty hunters. “I got a stake in this now,” Suhlak said to Neelah with a grin. “I didn’t want to miss any of the show.”

“You found it,” said Neelah. She had spotted the object, a black rectangle a few inches thick, in one of Boba Fett’s hands. The data recording unit trailed a few loose connectors, as though Fett had been working on it while en route. “You got it from Bossk.”

“That poor guy.” Dengar shook his head pityingly. “I hope Bossk was smart enough not to put up too much of a fight. What kind of condition did you leave him in? Or is he even still alive?”

“When I left him,” said Boba Fett, “he still was. And not in too bad a shape.”

“Who cares about him?” Neelah could conceal her impatience no longer. “You got it—that’s all that matters.”

“Correction.” Suhlak pointed to the rear scanner display. “You’ve still got a KDY security cruiser on your tail. And”—he leaned toward the control panel, peering at the image—“it’s gaining on us.”

“I’ll take care of that.” Boba Fett took over the pilot’s chair from Neelah. She stood back and watched as the bounty hunter’s hands fastened onto the thruster engine controls. With his hands inside the Trandoshan-sized grooves on the panel, Fett slammed the controls to their maximum—

And nothing happened.

“The engines have cut out,” said Dengar. Reaching past Boba Fett, he tapped a forefinger against the power consumption gauges. “Take a look at that.” The glowing red digits had dwindled to zero. He pointed to the indicator lights for the navigational jets. “Everything’s gone down. This ship’s not going anywhere.”

“What’s happening?” Neelah looked from the image on the rear scanner display, showing the KDY cruiser rapidly approaching, to the bounty hunters’ faces. “What’s gone wrong?”

“Good question,” said Boba Fett. “If it was just the main thruster engines going dead, or the navigational jets by themselves, it could be a simple systems malfunction. But for all of them to go out at once—something else did that to them. And deliberately.”

“Like what?”

“Right now, I don’t know—but let’s take a look at the comm unit log.” With a couple more commands tapped out inside the control grooves, Boba Fett brought a different set of data scrolling across the smaller display screen. “There’s part of the explanation.” He pointed to the last line of digits and letters. “A coded pulse was received from the vector directly behind us—obviously, from the KDY cruiser. We didn’t hear anything on the comm unit speakers because the pulse didn’t include a transceive request. So the pulse was picked up and acted upon by some other part of the Hound’s operational circuitry.”

“Hey—don’t worry about it.” The hunt saboteur Suhlak’s voice broke into the discussion. “I can fix it.”

“You can?” Standing next to Suhlak, Dengar looked at him in surprise.

“Sure.” Before Dengar could react, Suhlak reached over and plucked the blaster pistol out of Dengar’s belt. Suhlak took a quick step backward, covering the others with the weapon raised in his hand. “At least as far as I’m concerned.”

Neelah glanced up from the blaster to Suhlak’s face. “What’re you doing?”

“Figure it out.” Suhlak backed toward the cockpit area’s hatchway. “That KDY cruiser has obviously got some way of keeping this ship stuck here—but it can’t do it to my Headhunter. So I’m outta here. And you people can deal with whoever’s aboard the cruiser.” Still keeping the blaster trained on them, Suhlak set his foot on the top tread of the ladder down to the Hound’s cargo area. “Don’t bother to ask if any of you can come along. I’m not going to risk having that cruiser chasing after me.”

Boba Fett watched as the hunt saboteur started down the ladder. “If you think you’re going to get the cut we agreed on, you’re wrong.”

“Chances are good that there won’t be anything to get a share of once that KDY cruiser finishes with you.” Suhlak’s head and the upraised blaster were just visible above the lower rim of the hatchway. “I’d rather cut my losses and keep my skin intact, if you know what I mean.”

A few moments after Suhlak had made his exit, they heard the noises through the hull, of the Headhunter disengaging from the transfer hatch. In the forward viewport, the smaller ship could be seen, speeding away from the Hound’s Tooth and then disappearing among the stars.

“That’s one person who’s managed to save himself.” Dengar slowly shook his head. “Now what happens to the rest of us?”

“We’re about to discover that,” said Boba Fett. “The KDY cruiser has already come within targeting range, and it didn’t fire on us. So they must have something else in mind, other than just blowing us away.”

“Somebody must want to talk, then.” Dengar pointed to the viewport. “We’re moving; they’ve got a tractor beam locked on us.”

A voice came over the comm unit speaker: “This is Kodir of Kuhlvult, head of security for Kuat Drive Yards.” A female’s voice, crisply articulating. “Am I correct in assuming that the bounty hunter Boba Fett is aboard this ship?”

He hit the transmit button on the panel. “You’re speaking to him now.”

“Then I’ll be transferring over with a couple of my people. I want to have a meeting with you. And I don’t want any funny stuff.”

“What do you think I’m likely to try,” said Fett, “with a cruiser sitting on top of me?”

“Just keep that in mind.” The comm unit connection broke off.

“What do you think she wants?” Neelah glanced from the overhead speaker toward Fett.

“Could be anything. But given that I’ve returned here from Tatooine with exactly what her boss Kuat of Kuat has been looking for, the chances are slim that it has much to do with anything other than that.”

There wasn’t time for Neelah to question Boba Fett about what he’d brought back with him. The hull of the Hound’s Tooth had already come up against the larger ship’s grappling mechanisms and been seized by them. “Let’s get down to the cargo area.” Boba Fett pushed himself up from the pilot’s chair. “We all might as well hear what this person’s got to say.”

Kodir of Kuhlvult, flanked by two KDY security operatives, proved to be an arrogantly impressive figure, with a full cape falling back from her shoulders and brushing the heels of her outspread boots. Neelah found herself gazing intently at the woman’s face, searching for any clue that might be revealed there.

“So you’re the bounty hunter that I’ve heard so much about.” Kodir’s gaze had swept across all three of them and then locked upon Boba Fett’s dark-visored helmet. “You have a considerable reputation for surviving in situations where others would have died. Is that luck or intelligence, Fett?”

“Creatures who depend upon luck,” replied Boba Fett, “don’t survive.”

“Well spoken.” Kodir nodded in appreciation. “Believe me, I bear you no ill intent; I would just as soon have you alive as not. So whether it’s luck or brains, your string doesn’t have to be broken now—if you don’t want it to.”

“All right.” Boba Fett folded his arms across his chest. “So what is it that you do want?”

“Please.” A smile lifted one corner of Kodir’s mouth. “Let’s not make this any more difficult than necessary. You’re aware, I imagine, that Kuat of Kuat seeks certain things—”

“Including my death.”

“Only as an incidental matter. And that merely as a way of preventing a certain item from falling into the wrong hands.” Kodir’s gaze narrowed, the smile turning crueler and more knowing. “Now, if that certain item were to be placed in Kuat’s hands, then I can assure you that he would have no interest in your death at all.”

“And what makes you believe I have this … ‘certain item,’ as you put it?” The gaze from the dark-visored helmet remained level with hers. “If you’re referring to the fabricated evidence purportedly linking the late Prince Xizor with Imperial stormtrooper raids on Tatooine, then I can give you equal assurance that at the time Kuat of Kuat tried to kill me before, it wasn’t in my possession.”

“Ah … but that was then, and this is now. It doesn’t matter what the situation used to be; it only matters if you have that fabricated evidence with you now.” The smile disappeared from Kodir’s face. “And don’t bother saying that you don’t have it. You were brought to this rendezvous point by a ship that was reported having been seen recently at the planet Tatooine; we’ve also just heard that your fellow bounty hunter Bossk was seeking to find a buyer for exactly that item we’ve been seeking. It’d be too much of a coincidence for your journey to Tatooine to be unrelated to what Bossk had for sale. And in fact”—her smile reappeared, more unpleasantly—“I’m somewhat grateful to you for having gone to Tatooine and acquired the item for us; you’ve saved me the journey and the potential unpleasantness of dealing with a creature like Bossk. He doesn’t have the same reputation for being a levelheaded businessman that you do, Boba Fett.”

“I’m enough of a businessman,” replied Fett, “to listen to a good offer.”

“Then I’ll make you an excellent one.” Kodir of Kuhlvult signaled with one hand to her accompanying KDY security operatives; they immediately drew blaster pistols from the holsters on the belts and covered the two bounty hunters and Neelah with them. “And it’s an offer open to everyone: hand over this fabricated evidence and you won’t be killed.” She spread both her hands apart. “What could be a better offer than that?”

Dengar broke the resulting silence. “It’s up in the cockpit. Stashed by the pilot’s chair.”

“You idiot.” Neelah glared at him. “Now we’ll never—”

“Don’t be too hard on him,” said Kodir. “Your associate’s acceptance of my offer, while appreciated, merely saves me time and effort. Even if you had gone to some effort to hide the desired item, we would have found it soon enough after you were all … gotten out of the way, so to speak. Even if we’d had to take this ship apart bolt by bolt; I haven’t gone to this much effort not to get my hands on it.”

One of the KDY security operatives had already climbed up the ladder to the cockpit. He returned carrying in one hand the object Boba Fett had brought back from Tatooine. Pulling his blaster from its holster again, the operative resumed his position flanking Kodir.

“Perfect.” Kodir looked at the object that the operative had just given her. She turned it over and examined the code marks on the underside. “Exactly what I came for.” Kodir looked up at Boba Fett. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you. I’ve enjoyed it so much that I’m actually going to keep my end of our bargain. After all … you’ve been useful to Kuat Drive Yards in the past; there’s no saying when we might find you handy to have around again. Plus, you’re not going anywhere soon in this ship—are you? So that should keep you from interfering with any of my immediate plans.”

Kodir signaled to the KDY operatives. They began backing toward the transfer hatch, while still keeping their blasters pointed at the Hound’s occupants.

“Sorry things didn’t go as well for you as you might have hoped.” Holding the black data recording unit in the crook of one arm, Kodir smiled even less humorously than before. “But I’ve had a very good day—surprisingly so. I not only got what I originally wanted, but I found an unexpected bonus as well.” She gestured to Neelah. “You—you’re coming with us.”

Neelah stiffened, regarding the other woman with suspicion. “Why should I?”

“Oh, I could give you all sorts of reasons. But there’s really just one important one, as far as you’re concerned.” Kodir of Kuhlvult tilted her head to one side, studying Neelah’s reactions. “You’ve got questions, don’t you? Questions that you want answers for—I know you do. Well, I’ve got the answers to them. That should make it a simple decision for you.”

A moment passed, then Neelah slowly nodded. She stepped away from Dengar and Boba Fett, and followed the first of the two KDY security operatives into the transfer hatch. Behind her as she stepped toward the other ship, she could hear Kodir give one last taunting farewell to the two bounty hunters.

“Good luck,” said Kodir to Dengar and Fett. “When you’re outsmarted and outgunned, that’s the best you can hope for.”

Glancing over her shoulder, Neelah saw the transfer hatch seal shut.

Kodir pushed her forward. “Let’s get going. We’ve got an appointment to keep.”

16

“I still don’t understand how they were able to stop us.” In the cockpit of the Hound’s Tooth, Dengar shone a handheld worklight through the access panel. “What did they do to make the engines cut out like that?”

“It’s obvious.” Boba Fett’s voice came muffled from beneath the control panel. He lay on his back, shoulders and helmeted head deep within the maze of circuitry cables. “This ship wasn’t built at the Kuat Drive Yards, but Bossk must have taken it in there at some point for some custom retrofitting. Probably an updated weaponry targeting system—that’s one of the first modifications that a bounty hunter gets done on his ship when he’s a few credits ahead.”

That was accurate, Dengar knew—there had been a time when he had been planning on getting the same job done on his craft, back before he’d met up with his betrothed, Manaroo, and other, more desirable goals had been put on his agenda. And Kuat Drive Yards, the top in the shipbuilding and engineering field, had been where he’d wanted to go for it.

He knelt down beside Boba Fett’s outstretched legs, angling the light source up to where the other bounty hunter’s gloved hands were working. “So you think Bossk took it in there, and they put in some hidden cut-out device that he didn’t know about?”

“Exactly,” replied Fett. “Nothing too elaborate, just a simple override that could be triggered by a coded pulse from a remote transmitter. Which, of course, they had aboard their own security division vessel.”

“Yeah, but why would they do that to Bossk’s ship? I mean, KDY would’ve had to have done it a while back; they wouldn’t have known it would come in handy like this someday.”

“They didn’t do it against Bossk specifically.” With a needle-tipped logic probe, Boba Fett traced the intricate wiring beneath the control panel. “KDY probably does it to every ship that comes into their docks for retrofit work—just so they’d have a backdoor system in place, in case they ever needed to disable one of their customers’ ships. It’d be an insurance policy for KDY—and shutting down the Hound’s Tooth was one of the times they cashed it in.”

“Yeah, but …” Dengar shook his head. “I can’t believe they’d put something like that in the ships they build for the Imperial Navy—or in your ship. I mean, Kuat Drive Yards built Slave I, didn’t they?”

“Of course KDY wouldn’t try putting a cut-off device into my ship, or anything they built for the Empire.” Boba Fett peered upward at the circuits, concentrating on his task. “There would be too much at risk if it was found. And KDY knows that the Imperial Navy has a standard practice of thoroughly checking out all the work done on new vessels, and on any retrofits, for precisely that reason, to make sure that any kind of delayed or optional sabotage device hasn’t been smuggled in. As do I; when I accepted delivery of Slave I, I went over the ship with a fine-tooth comb, just as I had told them I would. So naturally, I didn’t find anything amiss. A customer like Bossk, though, isn’t quite as thorough—which is what KDY was counting on.” Boba Fett tilted his head to one side. “Bring the light in a little closer; I think I’ve found it.”

“Can you fix it?” Leaning forward on his knees, Dengar tried to see in through the access panel.

“It’ll take some work. Typical KDY job; very well engineered. It’s not just a simple break in the circuit with a pulse-reception activator. They wired in a parallel microfilament of some kind of high-temp pyrogenic; when it went off, it vaporized the entire signal-relay subsystem, out to the main engines and the navigational jets.” Boba Fett pulled himself out from underneath the control panel and sat up. “We’ll need to strip out the circuits from most of the cargo area servo-mechanisms, just to get the materials to patch in here.”

“Okay—” Dengar stepped back as the other bounty hunter got to his feet. “I’ll get started pulling out the bulkhead sheaths.” He reached down and picked up a clench-awl from the open tool kit on the cockpit’s floor. “But I got another question.”

Boba Fett didn’t look at him, but continued examining a section of charred wiring from beneath the controls. “What’s that?”

“When we get this ship up and running—what happens then?”

“Then we head for the planet Kuat,” said Boba Fett. “I don’t let anyone—not even Kuat of Kuat—take things from me. Without paying for them.”

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” said Kodir of Kuhlvult. “Don’t we?”

Neelah gazed back at the figure seated before her, in the security head’s private quarters. The other woman had dismissed the rest of the ship’s personnel, leaving her and Neelah by themselves. She had heard the door hiss shut behind her, as though it were sealing them both into a space inviolable enough for the revealing of secrets.

But I don’t know if that is what will happen here, thought Neelah. For all she knew, there would be nothing but more lies and mystery, darkness and words whose only meaning was to conceal.

And worst of all—some of those words would be her own.

“I suppose we do.” Neelah remained standing, even though Kodir had offered her a chair. “I’ve got a lot of questions. That I think you might have the answers to.”

“That’s not how it works.” Kodir gave a single shake of her head. “Kuat of Kuat put me in charge of security for Kuat Drive Yards, not because I was good at giving information away, but because I know how to keep a lid on it. People—even you—find out things when I want them to, not the other way around.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come along for the ride, then.”

“You didn’t have that choice.” Kodir stood up and stepped toward her. The edge of the other woman’s cape swirled close to Neelah’s feet as Kodir reached out and gently stroked the side of her head. “Choices have been in short supply for you, I know. So much has been lost to you …”

“Those are the things,” said Neelah, “that I’m looking for.” She didn’t draw away from the other’s hand, though it felt cold and alien as the fingertips drew down to the curve of her jaw. “The things I’ve lost: my past, and my name.”

“And you’ve had no luck. What a shame.” Kodir smiled sympathetically at her. “Perhaps you should have chosen your companions more wisely. One rarely profits by hanging out with bounty hunters.”

Neelah didn’t correct her, though she could have. My name, she thought to herself, is Kateel. She had discovered that much in the fragments of her memory. And that the name belonged to one of Kuat’s ruling families. Neelah had remembered that as well, when she had seen the record in Boba Fett’s datafiles of the emblem that his hard merchandise Nil Posondum had scratched into the floor of the holding cage. There had been other things she had remembered, little bits of light penetrating the mists, when she had seen Kodir of Kuhlvult’s face …

She had seen the woman long before Kodir had stepped through the transit hatch and boarded the Hound’s Tooth. Of that, Neelah was sure.

That certainty had given rise to caution inside her. In that past, whose shapes were still frustratingly vague, things had happened between this Kodir of Kuhlvult and herself—and they hadn’t all been pleasant. She wanted me to do something—Neelah couldn’t remember what yet, only that it had been important, and that a great many other creatures’ fates besides her own had depended upon her answer. Which had been a refusal; she hadn’t gone along with Kodir’s plans back then, whatever they had been.

There had been a spark between her gaze and Kodir’s when the other woman had come aboard the Hound; Neelah had seen her eyes widen, a reaction that had been swiftly caught and controlled, as though Kodir had unexpectedly recognized her. She didn’t expect me to be there, mused Neelah. It was a shock to her. But one that Kodir of Kuhlvult had made a considerable effort to hide. Why?

Another question without an answer; they multiplied rather than lessened the more she discovered about herself, as though she were trapped in a galaxy composed of infinite and expanding darkness.

But there was one other thing of which Neelah was sure: if this Kodir of Kuhlvult, with all of her connections to the planet Kuat and to the mysterious figure Kuat of Kuat, was going to play it cagey about revealing what she knew … then she would, too. Neelah had spent too much time with crafty and scheming creatures such as the bounty hunter Boba Fett not to have some of their survival-oriented mind-set seep into her own. Boba Fett didn’t tell all he knew; and he had won so many times before, just as in the stories that Dengar had told her while they had both been down in the cargo hold of the Hound’s Tooth, the whole history of how Fett had come out on top of the wreckage of the old Bounty Hunters Guild. He won those wars, thought Neelah, by being smart. She’d have to do the same to win hers.

Which meant—for now, at least—concealing exactly how much she had remembered of her own past. Until she could be sure of Kodir’s connection to it.

“You’re better off here with me.” Kodir had taken her hand away; she turned and walked back to the chair. “It’s … safer that way.”

Safer for whom? wondered Neelah. “Where are we going?” She asked that question aloud, watching as Kodir rested one hand on the chair’s curved back and raised her gaze to the private quarters’ ceiling, as though deep in thought.

“Where?” Kodir glanced over her shoulder. “Shouldn’t you have guessed that by now? We’re going to that place that you most want to arrive at, the place where all your answers are waiting for you.”

“You mean, we’re going to Kuat?” The words slipped out of Neelah’s mouth before she could stop them.

Kodir’s brow creased as she studied Neelah for a moment. Then she smiled. “Very near there,” said Kodir. “So close, you’d almost be able to reach out and touch the world of Kuat—if that’s what you meant. But there’s another Kuat—a man, Kuat of Kuat—and we won’t be seeing him just yet. There’s a little more business that needs to be taken care of before that can happen. And then both of you will be in for a bit of a surprise.”

Neelah listened, but did not reply. But inside her, the twin strands of caution and suspicion grew and knotted around each other.

“You were correct in your suspicions, sir.” The comm specialist made his report to Kuat of Kuat. “There has been another person added to the Rebel Alliance fleet currently above our facility. Nonmilitary, but of considerably high rank, from what we’ve been able to determine; possibly of negotiating attaché level.”

Kuat sat near the bank of transparisteel overlooking the KDY construction docks. Stroking the silken fur of the felinx curled in his lap, he had listened to the report without turning to look at the comm specialist. “When did this attaché arrive?”

“About six minutes ago, sir. Commander Rozhdenst personally smuggled in the attaché—or attempted to, but our spy units managed to penetrate their operation without them knowing. Both Rozhdenst and this attaché—the name is Wonn Uzalg, from what we’ve been able to determine—are currently aboard the base station unit.”

“Indeed,” said Kuat. The felinx murmured beneath his gently moving hand. “And do we have access to what’s going on in there?”

The comm specialist smiled. “Excellent access, sir. From this close a range, we had no problem sending out a micro-probe unit with stealth auguring capabilities. It’s already penetrated the base unit’s hull and tapped into the interior monitoring circuits. We can hear everything that’s said in there.”

“Very good; I commend you and your staff on the quality of your work.” Kuat gave no compliment beyond that, but he felt an undeniable measure of gratitude toward the comm specialist, and to the other personnel of Kuat Drive Yards. Their loyalty was still unquestioned. “And what is being said at this moment?”

“Not much,” admitted the comm specialist. “Or at least nothing that our security analysts feel is significant. Both Rozhdenst and this attaché Uzalg appear to be waiting for the arrival of another person, with whom they’ll be having some kind of meeting.”

“And do we know,” said Kuat of Kuat patiently, “who that ‘other person’ is?” Both his gut instinct and logic told him it had to be someone important; the Scavenger Squadron’s commander wouldn’t have gone to the effort of sneaking in a Rebel Alliance attaché if the individual in question was some nonentity.

“That’s the critical part, sir.” The comm specialist stood with his hands clasped behind the back of his standard-issue, insignia-less overalls. “And that’s why I thought it best to make this report to you personally, rather than routing it through the usual security division channels.” He hesitated nervously for a moment. “It’s possible—but unlikely—that Rozhdenst discovered the bug device we’ve managed to place aboard their base station, and that he and Uzalg are using it to feed us false information. As I indicated, our own analysts feel there’s little chance that the micro-probe has been found yet; it didn’t trip any of the base unit’s perimeter alarms. So there’s a definite probability that Rozhdenst and the Rebel Alliance attaché are indeed waiting for the person whose name we’ve overheard in their conversation so far.”

Kuat swiveled the chair about and regarded the comm specialist. “And what name is that?”

Another fraction of a second passed before the comm specialist spoke. “It’s Kodir of Kuhlvult, sir. That’s who it appears they’re waiting for. And she’s on her way; we’ve picked up the approach signals from the cruiser she’s aboard.”

“Kodir?” One hand froze where it had been scratching behind the felinx’s ear. “That’s impossible. Our analysts must have misunderstood what Commander Rozhdenst and the Rebel Alliance attaché said … or there’s something wrong with the bug you’ve planted.” Kuat shook his head firmly. “There’s simply no way that Kodir could be rendezvousing with them. Not without notifying me first.”

“I’m sorry, sir.” The comm specialist stood his ground. “The facts remain. Our analysts did a thorough spectral breakdown of the signals we recorded from the base station probe. And there’s no other interpretation of the data: the person that Rozhdenst and the attaché said they’re waiting for is Kodir of Kuhlvult.”

“And her cruiser is presently on its way here?”

“Either here, sir—or to the Scavenger Squadron’s base station.”

“Establish a comm unit hookup with her. Immediately,” ordered Kuat of Kuat. “I need to speak with her now.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible, sir.”

“And why not?”

“We’ve already attempted raising Kodir’s cruiser on both the secured and unsecured transceiving bands.” The comm specialist gave an apologetic shrug. “The communications equipment seems to be working—we know that the cruiser received our signals—but Kodir has apparently given orders to her own crew not to respond. They’re effectively maintaining link silence—or at least they have been since their last transmission, which we just managed to detect before the micro-probe bug was activated. That transmission was to the Scavenger Squadron base station.”

The felinx stirred beneath Kodir’s hands; it could sense its master’s tension.

“Sir?” A few moments had passed in silence. “Do you have orders for us?”

Deep inside Kuat, his brooding thoughts had grown darker. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I’ll need to speak to the α-foreman and β-supervisors out in the construction docks. It’s time …”

The comm specialist frowned in puzzlement. “Sir? Time for what?”

“Don’t worry.” Kuat closed his eyes as he stroked the soft fur of the felinx. “Everything will be all right. You’ll see …”

17

“This is very serious,” said the Rebel Alliance attaché. “We’re indeed grateful that you brought it to our attention.”

“Sometimes,” replied Kodir of Kuhlvult, “one has to do what’s right. No matter what the cost might be to oneself.”

The three figures—Kodir, the attaché Wonn Uzalg, and Commander Rozhdenst—sat circling an improvised conference table aboard the Scavenger Squadron’s mobile base unit. The table was little more than a durasteel access panel that had been taken off its hinges and laid flat across a pair of plastoid shipping crates that had once held foam-wrapped weaponry fuses. In the center of the bare metal sat a glossy black, rectangular object; its contents had been extracted as well, and run through the portable data scanners that Uzalg had brought with him from Alliance headquarters. A hard-copy printout on several sheets of flimsiplast detailed the atmospheric sampling and olfactory bio-analysis that had been broken out of the spy device that had originally contained the evidence.

“Of course, it’s obviously fabricated.” Uzalg’s hairless skull was reflected in the black container’s sheen. “There’s no question about that.”

“What the attaché is saying”—Commander Rozhdenst made a dismissive gesture at the items on the conference table—“is that there’s no way anybody in the Rebel Alliance is going to believe that the late Prince Xizor had anything to do with this Imperial stormtrooper raid that this thing caught.” One corner of his mouth curled downward as he shook his head. “The responsibility for that particular raid has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt. It all came direct from Darth Vader’s personal command. Our own information sources, both within the Empire and Black Sun, have confirmed that. Xizor had nothing to do with it.”

“That does seem to be the case.” Uzalg spoke much more calmly and soothingly than the Scavenger Squadron commander; Kodir could understand how he had risen to a high diplomatic position inside the Alliance. “Nevertheless, this evidence—no matter how fraudulent it is in essence—still has some significance for us.”

“I don’t see why we’re even bothering with it.” Rozh-denst’s sneer grew even more pronounced. “We’ve got other, more important business to take care of—like keeping an eye on what’s going on down in the KDY construction docks. This stuff is old news; Xizor’s been dead for a long enough time now. There isn’t going to be any trouble coming from that direction. Let’s concentrate on our living enemies, all right?”

“You’re missing the whole point,” snapped Kodir. Her gaze tightened into slits as she regarded the commander. She hadn’t come all this way, back here to a point just above Kuat Drive Yards itself, to wind up dealing with some one-track military mind. “It doesn’t matter whether Prince Xizor is alive or dead. All that’s important is knowing who had an interest in creating this phony evidence against him, and why they did it.”

Uzalg reached out and touched the commander’s sleeve. “She’s got an excellent point,” Uzalg said softly. “After all, that’s why I came here. On an emergency basis, as well—given what’s shaping up out near Endor, there’s a great many other things I could be taking care of right now.”

“You and me both, and everybody else in my squadron.” The commander’s temper flared even higher. “Look, the Alliance wants to put us out where there’s nothing happening, that’s the high command’s decision, and there’s nothing I can do about it. But you can bet that my men and I would sell our own viscera on the black market if there was a way of buying into that battle at Endor. We’d rather die in the action than fall asleep baby-sitting some fancy dry-dock facility like this.”

“Rest assured, Commander, that the value of your service here will become apparent before too long.” Uzalg took his hand from the commander’s sleeve and tapped with a forefinger on the spread-out data before them. “You are a creature of action—your calling demands that of you—but it makes you understandably impatient with the slow sifting of the past’s remnants, the gleaning of the small grains of truth. As our friend Kodir here has spoken, it is not the surface appearance of this fabricated evidence that matters. It is what lies underneath.”

“All right,” grumbled Rozhdenst. “So what is it?”

Kodir watched as the attaché leaned closer to the other man. “Someone,” said Uzalg darkly, “wanted the Rebel Alliance to believe that Prince Xizor and the Black Sun organization were involved in some way with a raid by Imperial stormtroopers on a moisture farm on the planet Tatooine. It’s logical to assume that the target of that disinformation would have been the Rebel Alliance, and more specifically Luke Skywalker himself. As heinous as that stormtrooper raid was, its significance is primarily for us. Skywalker has become both an inspiration and a charismatic leader for our forces; at this point, it might very well be said that his joining the Rebels was a crucial turning point for the Alliance, at one of our darkest hours. As Skywalker has shown us, one brave individual can turn the course of battle. And bravery can be contagious: right now, there are many ready to fight at Endor whose hearts have been strengthened by Skywalker’s example. As you’ve said, Commander, you would give a great deal to be with them. But the moral strength that has flowed into the Alliance was largely shaped by a purity of vision as well; Skywalker knew that the raid in which his family died was the work of the Empire. He’s known since then exactly what he’s had to fight against. What would the consequences have been, both for Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance, if that vision had been confused and muddied by evidence showing that Prince Xizor and Black Sun had somehow been involved in that stormtrooper raid? Skywalker’s attention might well have been diverted at some crucial point while he tried to unravel this mystery, the clues of which were all lies to begin with. He very likely would have found that out, and seen through the lies, but at a price of critically lost time—and the Alliance would have paid that price with him.”

The sneer had vanished from Rozhdenst’s face. “I see your point.”

“It’s exactly why I wanted the Alliance to have this information,” said Kodir. “As security head for Kuat Drive Yards, I’ve discovered some things I’d rather not have found. My sympathies are with the Rebel Alliance, gentlemen—but apparently my feelings are not shared by everyone here. Most importantly, they’re not shared by Kuat of Kuat, the leader of Kuat Drive Yards. He’s made it plain to me that he fears and distrusts the Alliance. Of course, it’s bad enough that he has not supported you in your struggle against the Empire—but it turns out that he’s been actively seeking your defeat.” She paused a moment, gauging the two men’s reactions to her words. “For it was Kuat of Kuat who created this false evidence, and who sought to have it planted where Luke Skywalker would have eventually learned of it, and been deceived by it.”

“I’m not completely sure of your interpretation of Kuat’s actions.” Uzalg frowned and stroked his chin with his fingertips. “I’ve dealt with Kuat of Kuat in the past, before you became head of security for Kuat Drive Yards. At that time, I implored him to throw the resources of his corporation behind the Alliance, and he refused—but I was convinced that he bore the Alliance no ill will, but was simply concerned with the corporation’s fate, should Emperor Palpatine defeat and destroy us. Such a decision on his part was prudent, but regrettable. Of course, he may have deceived me on that point; Kuat of Kuat is an undeniably clever individual whose wits have been sharpened by dealing on a constant basis with Palpatine and his admirals. Or Kuat may have changed his position regarding the Rebel Alliance; we can expect that Palpatine has brought great pressure on him. Or …” The Alliance attaché nodded thoughtfully. “The scheme in which this fabricated evidence was to have played a part might not have been directed against the Rebels at all. It might have been considerably more devious than that; the target might have been Prince Xizor himself, while he was still alive. Rumors had circulated for some time concerning Xizor and Black Sun’s own designs on Kuat Drive Yards; greed and ambition are qualities hardly limited to Emperor Palpatine. By entangling Xizor with Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance, Kuat might very well have been getting one enemy off his hands, leaving all of his attention intact in order to fight off Emperor Palpatine.”

Sitting across from the attaché, Kodir said nothing, but tried to conceal her own reaction to Uzalg’s words. He’s even smarter than I expected, thought Kodir. Maybe too smart …

“We don’t have time to sort out all the possibilities.” Commander Rozhdenst laid a hand down flat on the improvised conference table. “The question is, what’re we going to do about it?”

“True,” said Uzalg. “Whether Kuat of Kuat was conspiring against the Alliance directly, or whether he was attempting to use the Alliance against another enemy such as Prince Xizor, is immaterial at this point. The battle between the Alliance and the Empire, which we’ve been anticipating for so long, might already have begun; communications from that sector have been effectively silenced. We have no way of foreseeing what the outcome of the events out near Endor will be—the Alliance has a prime strategic opportunity in front of it, a chance to destroy the Imperial Navy’s new Death Star while it is still under construction, with its weapons systems not yet activated. Our analysis is that the Death Star is relatively unprotected, with most of the Imperial forces scattered about the galaxy attempting to engage with Rebel ships wherever possible. But there’s still no way of accurately predicting just what kind of losses our forces will indeed suffer in their attack upon the Death Star, or what the Empire’s response will be to such an action. In the aftermath, the relative balance of forces between the Alliance and the Empire may be absolutely critical—that’s where Kuat Drive Yards comes in.” The Alliance attache’s words had become more clipped and efficient. “If the Imperial Navy can take possession of the fleet replacements sitting here in the KDY construction docks, they might still be able to administer a killing blow to the Rebels.”

“Or the other way around.” Rozhdenst’s eyes gleamed with anticipation. “If we could get our guys into those ships … it’d take more than my Scavenger Squadron, but still …” He drew his breath in through clenched teeth. “We’d be in line to finish off the Imperial Navy!”

“That would depend on a great many things.” Uzalg’s response was spoken in quieter tones. “But the fact remains that the ships here at Kuat Drive Yards would be valuable to both the Empire and the Alliance—perhaps decisively so. We need to make sure that they don’t fall into the hands of the Imperial Navy. And”—he glanced over at Kodir—“we also need to make sure that Kuat Drive Yards is on our side, not just now but in the future. The Empire is still powerful; the struggle against it might continue for a lot longer. It would be best for both the Alliance and Kuat Drive Yards if we were united in that struggle. But given the evidence we’ve seen …” One hand gestured toward the items on the conference table. “Unfortunately, we can’t depend upon Kuat of Kuat to see it that way.”

“You’re talking about eliminating him,” said Rozhdenst.

“Or at least removing him from his position of control over the corporation. In which case, Kuat Drive Yards will need someone else running it.”

Both men looked over at Kodir of Kuhlvult.

“Is that what you’re offering me?” She kept her face a carefully composed, expressionless mask, hiding the thrill of triumph she felt at the moment. At last, thought Kodir. Everything I wanted … everything for which I’ve been scheming and plotting for so long …

“Exactly,” said Uzalg. “We’ve already been in communication with the heads of the ruling families down on the planet Kuat. Given the circumstances, a majority of them have agreed with what the Alliance has recommended concerning your taking over Kuat Drive Yards if something were to, shall we say, happen to Kuat of Kuat. They might be a little surprised about it coming around so soon—but that doesn’t matter.”

It was all hers now. Handed to her by the Rebel Alliance.

“It is a great responsibility,” Kodir said quietly. “I’m not sure I’d be up to the task.”

Uzalg studied her for a moment in silence. “You have no choice,” he said finally. “Nor do we. You must do it.”

“Very well.” Kodir felt her hands squeezing into fists, as though they were already grasping the very circuits of unlimited power. “I accept the burden you have offered me.” She couldn’t stop a thin smile playing about her lips. “You are now looking at the new head of Kuat Drive Yards.”

•   •   •

The α-foreman and β-supervisors made their report.

“All the systems you requested are in place,” said the α-foreman. He stood with the others behind him, just inside the high doors of Kuat of Kuat’s private quarters. “Just say the word and we’ll …” The man hesitated a moment. “We’ll put them into operation.”

“That won’t be necessary,” replied Kuat. He had been gazing out at the construction docks as he listened to the men, with the felinx sidling around his ankles; now he turned and looked at the corporation’s faithful employees. “I thank you for the work you’ve done; I’m sure it’s all at your usual high standard of accomplishment. But your job is over now. I’ll take care of the rest.”

“But …” The α-foreman’s brow furrowed, as though he doubted his own hearing. “We have served under your leadership in so many things. Do you not believe that we would wish to see this through as well?”

“I have no doubt of that. It’s not even an issue. But most of you have families and loved ones; I have neither of those, except for Kuat Drive Yards itself. There are places for you to go to, when all of this is over—the demand for workmen with your skills will always be high, no matter who wins the distant battles in which the galaxy is embroiled. But there is no place else for me to go.” Kuat looked at his own empty hands for a moment, then back up at the gathered men. “Therefore, the price to me of finishing this job is smaller than any that you could pay … and what is bought by that price is great to me.” Peace, thought Kuat. That’s what it buys. Something I’ve never known. “My own decisions, however well meant they were—and my own failures—have brought this day upon us. It’s not only my desire to finish this job by myself. It’s my duty.”

“But it’s our duty as well, Technician.” One of the β-supervisors raised his voice. “The corporation belongs to us as much as it does to you.”

Soon, Kuat mused, it will belong to no one.

“He speaks true,” said the α-foreman, tilting his head toward the β-supervisor in the ranks behind him. “We placed our faith in you, but we did so willingly. The responsibility for your decisions is shared among us all.”

“Ah.” Kuat of Kuat slowly nodded. “But you see—I am still the head of Kuat Drive Yards. No matter what others outside this room might think, that is still the case. So the decisions are mine to make, and yours to obey. To do otherwise on your part would be the withdrawal of your faith in me. Do you wish to do that?”

The men remained silent. Kuat knew that he had caught them in the trap formed of his logic and their loyalty. It was perhaps the last machine he would ever devise, but it had worked as well as any before it.

“As you wish, Technician.” The α-foreman bowed his head in defeat. “And as you order. We leave you now, in all but spirit.”

There was no further need to thank the men who had worked for him, and for Kuat Drive Yards. Kuat stood watching as they turned and slowly filed out through the high, arched doorway. As long as they were still employees of the corporation—and in some ways, they would be even after Kuat Drive Yards had ceased to exist—they functioned as precisely and predictably as the tools upon which they had laid their hands.

When the footsteps of the men had faded down the corridor outside his quarters, Kuat of Kuat turned back to his lab bench. A simple audio recording device was plugged into the signal relay from the micro-probe spy device that listened to those other voices far above the construction docks. Those voices—Kodir’s, and the Scavenger Squadron commander’s, and that of the negotiating attaché from the Rebel Alliance—had also talked of the fate of Kuat Drive Yards.

18

“You know,” said Kodir, “we really should have had this little talk a long time ago.”

Neelah stood with her arms folded across her breast, watching the other woman as she stepped away from the door and into the center of the tiny room. The door had been locked from the moment Neelah was shoved inside by a pair of KDY security operatives; she had expected as much, even before she tried opening it.

“I’ve been waiting.” Neelah made sure that no emotion was apparent in her voice. That was something she had picked up from Boba Fett, a way of masking one’s intent as completely as though behind the dark visor of a helmet. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

“There’s enough.” With a thin smile on her face, Kodir halted a few steps away from Neelah. “But always—so little time.”

“So I can imagine.” Neelah warily regarded her. “You must be busy right now. What with that stuff you managed to take off of Boba Fett, and everything you could do with it.”

The smile shifted to a puzzled frown. “What do you know about that?”

“A lot,” said Neelah. “More than you might think I’d know. I’ve got a good idea why you’d want a pile of fabricated evidence against a dead Falleen, and who you’ve been talking to about it.” Neelah couldn’t help letting a thin smile of her own show. “And I know things about you, Kodir. I know you like keeping secrets. Well, this is one that’s gotten away from you.”

Surprise flickered at the center of Kodir’s gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Come on. There’s no sense in trying to create any more lies, any more mysteries. You’ve been talking to somebody from the Rebel Alliance. Haven’t you? Somebody important, who can get you what you want, what you’ve been after for a long time.”

“How do you know that?”

Neelah stepped to one side, in a slow, circling dance with Kodir, their gazes locked tight with each other.

“That part’s easy,” she said. “I could see the Rebel ships up above the construction docks as we came in. And I know that we didn’t land on the planet Kuat.” Neelah tilted her head for a moment toward the surrounding bulkheads. “And you can’t pass off something like this as the KDY headquarters. You see, I know what those headquarters are like. I’ve been there before. I remember them.”

Kodir’s eyes widened. “You remember …”

“Everything.”

Both women stood still, the wary circling ended. Neelah now had her back to the small room’s door.

“That changes … a great deal …” Kodir studied the figure standing before her. “Depending upon what it is that you think you know.”

“It’s not a matter of thinking,” replied Neelah grimly. “Next time you try something like this, you should hire better people to do your dirty work for you. Spend the credits; get the best. Not some incompetent like Ree Duptom—” That name produced a quick, startled reaction in Kodir that Neelah was pleased to see. “Because if a memory wipe isn’t done correctly—and thoroughly—then there’s a lot of little, disconnected pieces left over. Scraps of memory, right around the edges of the dark. And bit by bit, those memories can link up with each other, and with things that can bring back even more memories from the shadows. And then—like I said”—she gave a single, slow nod—“everything comes back.”

“That fool.” Kodir’s voice turned bitter. “I paid him enough so that whatever go-betweens and intermediaries were used, the end result would be to get just such a specialist, one that had formerly worked for the Empire itself—they’re available, but expensive. I wasn’t pleased when I found out later that some cheap hustler had pocketed the credits and done the memory-wipe job himself.”

“Lucky for me, then, that he wasn’t very good at it.” Neelah tapped the side of her head with one finger. “Because I had already remembered my real name—Kateel of Kuhlvult—before you ever showed up at the Hound’s Tooth; I had already found the clues that brought back that part of my memory. But when I saw your face—again—then all the rest came back.” Neelah’s hand lowered and clenched into a trembling, white-knuckled fist. “Everything—including why my own sister had tried to get rid of me.”

“I got rid of you”—a sneer curled one corner of Kodir’s mouth—“because you were a fool.”

“Because I wouldn’t go along with the schemes you had worked up to overthrow Kuat of Kuat and take control of the corporation.”

“Still a fool, I see.” Kodir shook her head in disdain. “It’s not a matter of ‘overthrowing’ anyone. As I told you long ago, it’s simple justice. Kuat and his predecessors have run Kuat Drive Yards for generations—and they’ve kept all the other ruling families frozen out. Kuat and his bloodline have never had the right to do that. But if you had joined forces with me, all of that would have come to an end. The others in the ruling families who had tried to force Kuat from the leadership—they were nothing but a diversion, too stupid to even conceal their intentions from him as I have.”

“You confuse justice with ambition, Kodir. That was your first mistake. And then you mistook me for someone as greedy as yourself.”

“Oh, I admitted that I was wrong—that’s why I had to do something about you, before you could let Kuat of Kuat know that I was plotting against him. I had to have you abducted from the planet Kuat, and have your memory wiped, so you’d no longer present a threat to me.” Kodir’s expression darkened into a venomous scowl. “But when I found out that the ones I had trusted—and paid—to do my ‘dirty work’ for me, as you call it, had failed me, I realized that I should have taken care of these things myself.” Kodir’s smile was hardly less ugly than the scowl had been. “And that’s exactly what I’ve done, isn’t it? After all—I tracked you down before you could do any damage to my plans. And believe me, it wasn’t easy.”

“You were lucky,” said Neelah. “I had just enough clues—enough little pieces of my memory left—to try and find out what had happened, and try to make my way to someplace where I could find out those answers. I didn’t realize that what I was doing would make it possible for you to stumble across me.”

“How ironic.” Kodir’s words were edged with sarcasm. “The things we do to try and save ourselves—they so often put us right in harm’s way. As when I offered to make you part of my plans to get rid of Kuat of Kuat; if I had known how stupid and blindly loyal you were, I’d never have done that.” She spread her hands apart, palms upward, in a mocking, blasé show. “But that’s why it’s so important to learn from our mistakes. Isn’t it? You made your mistakes—and I’ve made mine. And we’ve both gotten what we wanted. You wanted the truth about the past, about what happened to you—and now you know. And I wanted the leadership of Kuat Drive Yards. Guess what? That’s just what I’ve been given.”

“So you convinced the Rebel Alliance to get rid of Kuat, so you can take over the corporation. Congratulations. For however long it lasts.”

“That’ll be for quite a while,” said Kodir. “It doesn’t even matter which side wins the battle out near Endor. Now that I’ve got control of the corporation, I can deal with the Alliance or the Empire—it makes no difference to me.”

“I can see that.” Neelah gave a slow nod. “Maybe if the Empire wins the battle, Palpatine will find that you’re just the kind of servant he prefers. Greedy and self-serving, but smart enough to recognize just who’s got the upper hand.”

“Don’t bother trying to insult me.” Kodir’s laugh was quick and harsh. “As long as I’ve gotten what I want, I really don’t care about your moral opinions.”

“I’m sure you don’t. But that makes me wonder about just one thing.” Neelah peered closer at the figure standing before her, the woman whose bloodline she shared. “If getting what you want is all that matters … why were you so tenderhearted about my fate? If all that worried you was my interfering with your plans, wouldn’t it have been more effective—and final—to have simply had me killed, rather than abducted and memory-wiped?”

“As I said: we need to learn from our mistakes. And that’s one I’m not going to repeat again.” Kodir reached to the section of her belt that had been concealed by the flowing cape, and pulled out a small but efficient-looking blaster pistol. She raised and pointed it straight at Neelah. “I’m sorry that I don’t still have the same sisterly feelings toward you that I once did. There was a time when my foolish sentimentality made me think that I could spare your life. I’ve gotten over it, though. The Rebel Alliance, on the other hand, has shown a depressing tendency to let mere ethics guide its decisions; that very likely means that after this coming battle at Endor, I will be dealing with the Empire rather than the Rebels. Palpatine, though, has a vindictive streak that’s just as worrisome. And he doesn’t like plotting and scheming that’s not his own: if anyone was going to get rid of Kuat of Kuat, the Emperor would have wanted to be the one to do it. So you see”—Kodir raised the blaster a fraction of an inch higher—“there’s no way I can afford to let you remain alive, and risk having you tell what you’ve remembered.”

“You’re right,” said Neelah. She didn’t flinch from the weapon poised in her direction. “And you really do seem to have learned from your mistakes. There’s just one problem with that.”

A thin smile showed on Kodir’s face. “And what would that be?”

Neelah didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she stepped forward toward the blaster; at the same time, she brought one forearm up and smashed it against Kodir’s wrist, faster than the other woman could react. The blaster pistol went flying, its high arc broken by the nearest bulkhead. With her other hand, Neelah grabbed the collar of Kodir’s flowing cape; with a quick, sharp tug, she pulled her off balance. As Kodir fell forward, Neelah brought her raised knee into the other woman’s solar plexus, knocking the air from Kodir’s lungs in a pain-filled gasp. Neelah stood back and let Kodir fall, forearms clutched instinctively to her gut; another blow to the back of the head laid her out flat on the room’s floor.

A few seconds later, Kodir managed to twist herself onto her back. She blinked at finding the muzzle of the blaster pistol set right between her eyes.

“The problem with learning from our mistakes”—Neelah leaned down to keep the weapon aimed point-blank at her sister—“is that sometimes we learn a little too late.”

Face pale with shock and pain, Kodir gazed up at her in disbelief. “You … didn’t used to be able … to do stuff like that …”

“I’ve been hanging out with a tough crowd.” Keeping the blaster muzzle fixed on Kodir’s skull, Neelah reached down and grabbed the front of the cape, using it to draw Kodir to her feet. “If you can stay alive long enough, there’s a lot you can pick up from somebody like Boba Fett. Especially when you’ve got nothing to lose.”

Before Kodir could manage a reply, another sound pulsed through the room, so deep and low that Neelah could feel it through the soles of her boots. Both she and Kodir looked up, as though storm clouds could have been seen through the durasteel bulkheads surrounding them.

The noise sounded like distant thunder. But she knew it was something else.

News from a distant world arrived almost simultaneously with the shock wave from the explosions.

Commander Rozhdenst had been personally monitoring the link to the Rebel Alliance communications ship near Sullust. When word came at last that the attack on the uncompleted Death Star had turned into a full-scale battle between Rebel and Imperial forces, he closed his eyes for a moment, letting his chin sink down upon his chest. The desire to be there, to be in any fighting craft no matter how antiquated or unwieldy, as long as it was in the thick of the action, rose with tidal force through his heart.

He heard the door to the officers’ quarters open. Opening his eyes, Rozhdenst looked up from where he sat at the comm unit controls and saw Ott Klemp. “It’s started,” said Rozhdenst simply. He didn’t have to explain what he was referring to. “And we’re stuck here, in the middle of—”

His words were cut off by the first explosion shivering through the frame of the mobile base. A dull, low-frequency rumble made the air in the room suddenly tangible upon both the commander’s and Klemp’s skin. The younger man, muscles visibly tensing, looked up toward the ceiling. “What was that?”

Before an answer could be ventured, indicator lights burst red across the comm unit panel. The voice of one of the Scavenger Squadron’s forward scouts crackled over the speaker. “Commander! Something’s going on down at the KDY construction docks—something big!”

Rozhdenst had already switched on the scanners for the base’s viewport array. Across a row of display screens, from multiple angles, flame and churning smoke billowed up from the angular masses of equipment below. As both he and Klemp leaned toward the screens, another explosion was suddenly visible, uprooting one of the gigantic cranes at its base and sending it toppling down across the docks’ central access corridor. The crossed durasteel struts of the crane’s framework crumpled and bent upon one another with the force of their crashing impact; cables several meters thick snapped like string, their broken ends whipping through ranks of load shifters and rail trucks, scattering them as though they were toys.

The noise from the explosions couldn’t pass through the surrounding vacuum to the Scavenger Squadron’s mobile base above, but the shock wave and expelled metal debris were enough to conduct the rumbling and clattering sounds from the hull to the interior a few seconds after the bursts of glaring light on the display screens. As Klemp put out an all-craft command to pull back from the inferno erupting beneath them, the commander punched in the highest levels of surveillance magnification from the scanners.

“It’s not the ships—” Rozhdenst laid a broad fingertip on the closest display screen. “The fleet isn’t what’s going up.” The elongated ships of the cruisers and Destroyers could be seen through the smoke, harshly lit by flames and the hard-shadowed light of another series of explosions. “It’s the docks and all of the major shipbuilding equipment.” As both he and Klemp watched, a durasteel-jawed magna-hoist lurched forward like a dying saurian, its blind head bursting through a wall of fire and plowing into a rack of structural girders. “The whole facility’s been stuffed with high-thermal explosives, from the looks of it.”

“Yeah, but …” Klemp shook his head. “That whole fleet is going to be scrap as well by the time it’s all over.” Another impact shook the mobile base. “You think Kuat of Kuat did this? What’s he after—sabotage or suicide?”

“Who cares—” Rozhdenst reached for the comm unit mike. “We’ve got to get those ships out of there.”

“Sir, that’s impossible. There’s nobody aboard any of those ships. Who’s going to bring them out of the docks?”

Rozhdenst glanced over his shoulder. “Who do you think? Our guys can do it.”

“That’s crazy. I mean … it just is, sir.” Klemp pointed to the image of the flames billowing up on the display screen. “You want our squadron to fly into that? The condition that most of our Y-wings are in, they can just barely avoid getting hit—and you want them to go into that kind of a mess? They’ll get torn to pieces!”

“If they’re in such rotten shape, then it won’t be much of a loss, will it?” Rozhdenst locked his gaze with that of the younger man. “Look, if you or any of the other members of the squadron don’t want this job, then fine—you can stay out here at the base and watch. But I’m going in.”

Klemp was silent for only a fraction of a second. “And I’ll be right behind you, sir. Along with everybody else.”

“Good.” Rozhdenst gave a single, quick nod, then handed the microphone to Klemp. “There’s no time for plotting a formation attack; this show is going to be over in minutes. Give the squadron full operational initiative—everyone’s on their own for vector, approach, and target. Total scramble, eye and comm unit contact to avoid taking each other out.” The Scavenger Squadron commander stood up from the controls. “Let’s get going.”

“They must have seen us coming,” said Dengar. “So they decided to blow the whole place up.”

The explosions had filled the forward viewports as soon as the Hound’s Tooth dropped out of hyperspace. Both Dengar and Boba Fett, in the ship’s cockpit, could see the fiery cataclysm taking place in the Kuat Drive Yards’ construction docks.

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Fett. He pointed to the display screen. The tiny dark shapes of Y-wing craft could be seen silhouetted by the roiling masses of flame. “Those Alliance fighters are obviously going in to try and pull out what they can of the ships moored there. The docks are being blown up from within; there’s only one person who could have arranged it, and that’s Kuat of Kuat.”

“He’s blowing up his own facility?” Dengar frowned in puzzlement. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he’d rather destroy it,” said Fett, “than let it fall into anyone else’s hands. I’ve dealt with him before; Kuat Drive Yards is all that matters for him. Something must have happened—probably with the Rebel Alliance and that fabricated evidence his head of security took from us—that would end his control over the corporation. So he’s taking the whole thing with him.”

“You mean … he’s in there? You don’t think he escaped?”

Boba Fett shook his head. “There’s no place for Kuat of Kuat to escape to. Or at least no place that has Kuat Drive Yards in it. Survival doesn’t mean the same thing for him that it does for you and me; for Kuat, it’s just death without peace.”

“This is the end of the road, then.” Dengar stood back from the pilot’s chair and folded his arms across his chest. “You’re not going to get any answers out of him now.”

“Don’t bet on it.” Boba Fett reached for the navigational controls.

A sharp current of alarm raced up Dengar’s spine. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m going in. To find Kuat.”

“You’re crazy—” The main thruster engines had already kicked in. As Dengar watched in mounting horror, the explosions bursting up from the Kuat Drive Yards’ construction docks swelled in the forward viewport. The black shapes of collapsing cranes and heat-warped girders became visible. “You’ll get us killed!”

“Maybe,” said Fett. “But I’m willing to take the chance.”

“Yeah, well, you might be willing, but I’m not.” Standing behind Boba Fett, Dengar clutched the back of the pilot’s chair to keep the Hound’s surging acceleration from throwing him off his feet. “I can live without every question in the galaxy being answered.”

“I don’t care about every question. Just the ones that deal with me.”

The shock wave from another explosion, larger than the ones before it, buffeted the Hound’s Tooth. In the forward viewport, a gaping hole could be seen in the center of the KDY construction docks large enough to fly a ship through and ringed with twisted, smoldering metal.

Dengar, with sudden desperation, tried to reach past Boba Fett and grab the controls. “We’re supposed to be partners—” His fist locked on to one of the main thruster engine throttles. “And I say we don’t get ourselves killed—”

With a quick swing of his forearm, Boba Fett knocked Dengar back against the cockpit’s rear bulkhead. “You’re outvoted on this one,” said Fett.

Slumping down to the floor and squeezing his eyes shut, Dengar could still see the bright glaring light of the explosions, as though they were about to shatter the viewport and annihilate everything in the cockpit. Alarm signals shrieked from the control panel as the Hound’s Tooth bucked and spiraled through an engulfing bloom of shrapnel-filled flame.

Not a good idea, thought Dengar as he ground his teeth together and scrabbled for any hold he could find. The worst one yet—

•   •   •

The commander of the Scavenger Squadron had been within a few meters of Ott Klemp’s wingtip, matching velocity with him all the way to the inferno consuming the KDY construction docks. But he’d had to bank hard to one side to avoid another fireball and whirling tangle of girders and cables; by the time Klemp pulled back on course, any visual contact with the rest of the squadron was cut off by roiling masses of smoke and flame.

A gap appeared in front of the Y-wing through which Klemp could just make out a moored Lancer-class frigate. As with the other newly constructed ships in the docks, a tug module was magnetically clamped to the bridge. The tugs were not much bigger than the fighter craft swarming through the explosions and white-hot shrapnel; they had no thruster engines of their own, but were designed to be wired through the cruisers’ and Destroyers’ data-cable ports, using the larger craft’s engines to maneuver out of the docks and into open space. At the moment, the tugs were still enclosed in the balloonlike atmospheric-maintenance shrouds in which the Kuat Drive Yards had worked while routing the control lines. The durasteel-laced shrouds had a programmed viscous layer between the inner and outer membranes, with near-instantaneous resealing capabilities to prevent fatal air-loss during routine industrial accidents. Without those shrouds, Klemp knew, there would be no chance of the Scavenger Squadron’s pilots pulling any of the fleet out of the cataclysm engulfing the construction docks.

He could see the bridge of the frigate now, with the shroud’s bubble on the section of hull immediately behind. The sequenced explosions hadn’t reached the ship yet, though its flanks were tinged with the churning red and orange of the approaching flames. Klemp rolled the Y-wing into a diving arc, straight toward the shroud.

The Y-wing’s prow ripped through the shroud’s fabric; Klemp could hear the sharp ping of the durasteel threads snapping against the leading edges of the wings. At the same time, he was blinded by the thick semiliquid smearing across the cockpit’s canopy. That wouldn’t be enough to slow the Y-wing down; within a fraction of a second of penetrating the shroud, he slammed on the craft’s braking rockets, their maximum force nearly enough to cut the pilot seat’s restraining straps through his chest, and snapping his head forward hard enough to momentarily dizzy him.

A tangle of broken durasteel threads, embedded in the shroud’s viscous resealing layer, pulled away from the Y-wing’s hull as Klemp popped the canopy. There wasn’t time to check if there was any atmospheric pressure left in the construction shroud; he gulped in the thin oxygen and looked back along the inner curve of the bubble behind the Y-wing. The fighter’s rear section was mired in the rapidly setting substance, with fluttering tatters of the white fabric sucked into the dwindling gaps. Klemp didn’t wait to see if the new seal would hold, but instead ran along the frigate’s upper hull toward the tug module.

Within seconds, he was inside the tug and slamming the exterior hatch shut behind him. The controls on the panel before him were the minimum necessary for lifting the frigate out of the dock in which it had been built; even before Klemp hit the tug module’s pilot’s chair, he had engaged the controls running to the cruiser’s auxiliary thruster engines. There was a response lag of nearly a second before the ship responded; with a slow surge of power, its enormous mass began ponderously rising from the dock. The power cables and mooring conduits that were still connected to the hull’s various ports now tautened and snapped free when they had stretched to their limits.

He hadn’t rescued the ship a moment too soon. A burst of fire filled the tug module’s viewports as a sudden crashing impact struck the frigate from below. The shock wave of an explosion ripping apart the empty dock jolted the frigate’s stern. Klemp struggled with the navigational controls, fighting to keep the ship from toppling end over end and the prow out of the churning debris that welled up toward it.

The nearest dock cranes still towered above the frigate, like immense durasteel-strutted gallows. Even with the thruster controls pushed to their maximum, the ship seemed to be only inching toward the clear space where Klemp would be able to hit the main thrusters and bring it out of danger. The fierce heat from the explosions seeped through the tug module’s thin hull, evaporating the sweat as it beaded on his brow.

A sharp blast ripped through the base of the nearest crane. Glancing toward the side viewport, Klemp saw the tapering metal structure begin to topple toward the frigate. There would be no way he could get the ship beyond the reach of the crane’s top-mounted arm as it swung scythelike into the hull. If the crane’s weight struck midship, it would break the frigate in half, sending the pieces tumbling back down toward the exploding construction docks. Klemp knew he would be dead before the ship’s remnants hit the twisted metal rubble below it.

He quickly calculated the chances of abandoning the tug module, sprinting back toward the Y-wing, and flying it out through the entangling construction shroud and into the clear. Possible, he told himself. But you wouldn’t have done the job you came here for—

Cursing, Klemp reached for the navigational controls. The frigate halted its slow rise as he diverted all available power from the auxiliaries to the stern’s side thrusters. With increasing speed, the ship pivoted about on its vertical axis.

The toppling crane hit, its mass shearing along the flank of the frigate, grinding and tearing away any protruding structural elements; inside the tug module, the impact of metal shearing away against metal sounded louder than any of the explosions below. Wincing against the stabbing, deafening noise, unable to take his hands away from the controls to shield his ears, Klemp saw a jagged piece of the crane snag the construction shroud’s fabric. As the crane continued to topple away from its shattered base, it ripped away the shroud and the Y-wing fighter mired in it.

No great loss, Klemp told himself as he looked over his shoulder and saw the Y-wing breaking apart, dragged toylike across the topside of the ship’s hull. With a last, shuddering impact, the crane hit the stern and then toppled away.

The ship was clear—at last. Klemp expelled his pent-up breath in one gasp, then slammed on the main thruster engines. The Lancer frigate seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second, then heaved its bulk toward the stars.

“All right. That does it.” Dengar picked himself up from the floor of the Hound’s Tooth’s cockpit. On wobbling, unsteady legs, he confronted Boba Fett. “The partnership’s over.”

He reached over to the nearest bulkhead and steadied himself against it with one hand, watching as Fett methodically checked out the weaponry strapped across his Mandalorian battle armor. Lucky we’re even alive, thought Dengar. Though how long that was going to last, he had no idea. Their ship had barely managed to survive the high-velocity plunge from open space into the thick of the construction docks’ roiling explosions. More of the blasts, approaching in sequence, shook the Hound’s shock-loosened frame, the metal of its hull grating against the rubble-strewn area on which it had crashed.

“Suit yourself,” said Fett. “I owed you for saving my life back on Tatooine. You decide if that debt’s repaid by now.”

“Oh, it’s paid, all right.” Trembling with anger and accumulated shock, Dengar stepped back as Boba Fett approached the hatchway. “A few thousand times over. You haven’t managed to get me killed yet—but I don’t feel like giving you any more chances.”

“Fair enough.” Boba Fett started down the ladder to the Hound’s cargo hold. “I’ve got business to take care of.”

From the cockpit hatchway, Dengar stared at him in amazement. He’s going looking for Kuat. The realization caused Dengar to slowly shake his head. There’s no stopping him.

“You go your way,” Dengar shouted into the smoke filling the hold. “And—”

The explosions out in the construction docks grew louder, mounting on top of one another and blocking his words.

And I’ll go mine, he thought to himself. Dengar turned from the hatchway and dived toward the controls.

He didn’t bother plotting a trajectory, but simply slammed maximum power to the main thruster engines. Holding on to the controls inside the Trandoshan-sized forearm grooves, Dengar heard and saw a tangle of cables, their insulated sheaths charred and smoking, drag across the forward viewport. The hull’s underside scraped across the warped freight tracks beneath as it accelerated; the explosions that had been marching across the docks finally caught up with the Hound’s Tooth, lifting the stern as though it were caught and thrown by a giant hand. Dengar hung on desperately as the ship spun end over end, directly toward the side of one of the towering cranes.

The sequence of explosions was faster than the tumbling ship. Before the Hound’s Tooth struck the crane, the dizzying image through the viewport was blotted out by pure white light, as if Dengar had caught a glimpse into the searing heart of a nova star.

Metal ripped apart from metal as the crane dissolved in the blast, its massive struts flaring outward and then spiraling into the vacuum. Through the flames and smoke filling what had been the explosion’s center, the Hound’s Tooth spun into the clear.

Dengar gaped at the cold, bright stars filling his vision. Made it … I made it …

A few quick adjustments with the navigational jets steadied the ship to a level course. Panting, and with his pulse beginning to slow, Dengar let a fragile smile form across his face. He hadn’t been expecting to survive at all; his real intent, he realized now, had been only to keep his corpse from being crushed and incinerated in the wreckage of the Kuat Drive Yards’ construction docks.

Pulling his hands from the grooves on the control panel, he laughed in amazement. “After all that,” he said aloud. “And I’m the one who’s still alive—”

The words inside his head were wiped out by another blinding burst of light. Dengar shielded his eyes with a quickly raised forearm. As the glare faded, he lowered his arm and squinted through the forward viewport. In the distance, another, larger ship—one of the fleet that the Rebel Alliance pilots had been trying to rescue from the construction docks—had not been as lucky as he had been. The other ship’s stern had been engulfed by flames just as it lifted away; one main thruster engine had been destabilized in the blast, and had gone into core overload. The resulting explosion had blown a gaping hole in the ship’s hull, stranding the ship close to the Hound’s Tooth.

Dengar watched, then ducked reflexively as another one of the larger ship’s thruster engines went off. Weakened by the first engine’s explosion, the ship disintegrated, one fireball after another ripping the structural frame to pieces.

He watched, then froze in place, held by what he saw in the viewport. A massive section of the other ship’s hull, larger than the Hound itself, shot away from the fragmented wreckage, its jagged edges trailing white-hot streaks and quick sparks of debris. The hull section spun and swelled in the viewport, heading directly for the Hound’s Tooth.

I guess I spoke too soon …

There wasn’t time to either dodge or swing the ship about and try to outrun the doom heading for it. Dengar didn’t even bother to brace himself as the broken section of the larger ship raced toward him.

It hit, and he was thrown through sparks that stung his face and arms like a swarm of angry insects, into a darkness filled with the shrieks of alarm systems and the even louder clash of metal being ripped apart. For a moment, Dengar felt weightless; then he realized, as his arms flailed behind him, that he had been knocked through the cockpit hatchway and was falling to the cargo hold below. The impact of its grated floor against his spine and the back of his skull brought him right to the point of losing consciousness. He held on, dazed and unable to move, listening as the Hound’s Tooth’s deflector shields collapsed, and the ship began to come apart around him.

He had the cold but genuine comfort that he had at least gotten away from the exploding construction docks. That’s all I wanted, Dengar thought once more. Just so my body could be found … somewhere, by someone …

Another realization struck him. I must be already dead. It couldn’t have happened while he was still alive, that a hand was reaching for him and taking his arm, pulling him up as though from his own grave. And that there would be light, and a face looking down at him; the one face he wanted to see more than any other.

“Dengar!” The vision spoke his name. “It’s me—it’s Manaroo—”

“I know.” Drifting closer to unconsciousness, he smiled up at her. “I’m sorry, though … I’m sorry I’m dead …”

“You idiot.” A real hand, not a hallucination, slapped him across the jaw, jolting him fully aware. “I’ll let you know whether you’re dead or not.”

And then he knew he wasn’t.

•   •   •

“How did you know I’d be here?” Kuat of Kuat turned and regarded the figure that had entered the bridge of the moored Star Destroyer.

“Where else would you be?” Boba Fett’s battle armor was blackened with ash from the fires consuming the constructions docks’ wreckage. “It suits you; this is the biggest ship in the fleet. That makes for a suitably grandiose coffin. Plus—the construction shroud had been obviously torn away before the explosions started. So there wouldn’t be any risk of the Rebel Alliance pilots dropping in.”

“Very astutely observed.” Kuat gave a judicious nod. “But I really believed that I’d be alone, right to the end. I didn’t think that even you would try to track me down here.”

The ship’s bulkheads trembled as another series of explosions went off. From the viewports of the bridge, masses of dark clouds, shot through with reddening flame, mounted up toward the stars.

“It’s worth making the effort,” replied Boba Fett. “I’ve got questions that I want answers to.”

“Ask away, then.” Kuat of Kuat smiled gently. “It’s too late for me to try and conceal anything from you.”

Boba Fett stepped closer, across the floor buckled with heat and through the smoke filtering into the bridge. “Why did you want me dead?”

“Nothing personal,” said Kuat. “You mean zero to me. But I knew you had in your possession certain items that could prove rather embarrassing to me. And fatal to Kuat Drive Yards. There’s an ancient piece of wisdom that advises anyone taking a shot at a powerful creature to be sure to hit him. That’s very good advice; I knew the risks I was taking when I created that false evidence against Prince Xizor. But if my scheme had worked, I would have eliminated a major enemy—or at least given him something else to deal with, rather than conspiring to take over my corporation. But the one thing happened that I was unable to foresee: that both Xizor and a vital element of my scheme would be killed before the blow could be struck. Which left a considerable mess to clean up. Getting rid of you would have just been part of that cleanup process. Regrettable—but necessary, in the course of business.”

“I already figured out that much. A long time ago.” Boba Fett had come within arm’s reach of the other man. He pulled out his blaster pistol from its holster and aimed it at Kuat’s chest. “What I need to know now is whether that’s the end of it.”

Kuat looked with amusement at the weapon in front of him. “Rather late for that kind of threat, isn’t it? I already consider myself as good as dead.”

“You can die here, the way you want—or I can drag you out of here and hand you over to Palpatine or the Alliance, or whoever else would be interested in settling some old scores with you. Your choice.”

“Very persuasive, Fett. But unnecessary. I’ll be happy to tell you the truth—since I have nothing to lose now by doing so.” Kuat reached out his hand and pushed the blaster muzzle away from himself. “All the conspiracies end here. There’s no one else involved, no other forces to deal with, once these particular loose ends are taken care of. You don’t have anything to be concerned about. Once I’m gone—and I’ve taken Kuat Drive Yards with me—there won’t be anyone else coming after you. Or at least not in regard to the evidence I fabricated against Prince Xizor. You’ll just have your usual run of enemies, and all the various creatures with a grudge against you, to deal with.” Kuat peered more closely at the bounty hunter. “But you knew that already, didn’t you? You said as much, that you had figured it all out. You wouldn’t have come all this way, and risked this much—even your life, which you seem to value so highly—just to make absolutely sure of what you knew. So there must have been something else on your mind—right? Some other question you needed to ask of me. What is it?”

Boba Fett hesitated a moment before speaking. “There’s a female named Neelah that’s been traveling with me.” His voice lowered slightly. “But that’s not her real name. She doesn’t know I found out that she’s actually Kateel of Kuhlvult. She’s a member of one of the ruling families of the planet Kuat.”

“Very interesting.” Kuat raised an eyebrow in surprise. “She would also then be the sister of Kodir of Kuhlvult, the head of security for Kuat Drive Yards. And someone that Kodir had been extremely interested in locating.”

“Did Kodir tell you why?”

Kuat shrugged. “The love between one sister and another, I suppose—that’s within the range of normal human emotions. But whatever the reason, it was enough for Kodir to force her way into becoming security head so she would have the resources to find this sister who had vanished.”

“Then here’re the questions.” Boba Fett’s dark-shielded gaze locked upon Kuat’s eyes. “You’ve heard of a man named Fenald?”

“Of course. He was head of security for Kuat Drive Yards, before Kodir of Kuhlvult was given the position.”

“So naturally,” continued Fett, “you would’ve given a sensitive, important job—like making the arrangements for the planting of fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor—to him.”

“True enough.” Kuat nodded. “That’s exactly what I had him do. But how do you know about Fenald?”

“There was encoded material attached to that fabricated evidence when I found it inside the freight droid that had been converted to a spy device. I didn’t have time to break the encryption seal then, but when I was coming back from Tatooine, where I had retrieved the evidence from another bounty hunter named Bossk, I managed to crack it. The encrypted material was Fenald’s own identity code, including his connection to Kuat Drive Yards. He probably put it there so he’d have the ability to blackmail you by threatening to reveal to Xizor—or Palpatine or the Rebel Alliance—exactly where the fabricated evidence had come from, and who had been responsible for it.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“Here’s the other question,” said Boba Fett. “Did you also order Fenald to make arrangements for Kateel of Kuhlvult to be abducted and memory-wiped?”

“Of course not,” said Kuat stiffly. “That’s absurd. What motivation would I have for wanting something like that done?”

“Then this Fenald could have been following someone else’s orders when he contacted a go-between named Nil Posondum and made those arrangements?”

“Very likely.” Kuat smiled ruefully. “I know from personal experience that Fenald was capable of working for another at the same time he was my head of security. Loyalty, as I found out, was a negotiable item with him; he double-crossed me when members of some of the other ruling families conspired to take over Kuat Drive Yards.”

“Fenald’s treachery might have been even more complicated than that. Apparently he was double-crossing Kodir of Kuhlvult at the same time.”

Kuat’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”

“What better way for Kodir to have gotten your confidence—and the security head position—than to expose Fenald as a traitor to you? And the best way to do that would be to arrange for it with Fenald himself. Especially since Fenald had already been working for Kodir while he was still your security head. In fact—” Boba Fett’s voice drew taut as a durasteel wire. “Fenald was working for Kodir—following her orders—when he set up Kodir’s sister Kateel to be abducted and memory-wiped.”

“Interesting,” said Kuat, “if true.”

“It’s true, all right. The only thing I needed to find out was whether or not you had ordered the acts committed against Kateel of Kuhlvult—and as you’ve pointed out, you’re beyond having any interest in lying about the matter. So that leaves Kodir as the only one who could have given that job to Fenald to take care of.”

“How do you know that?”

“Simple,” replied Boba Fett. “When Kodir intercepted me with the KDY security division cruiser, she also found her sister Neelah—or Kateel, her real name—aboard the ship I had been using. Yet Kodir deliberately concealed any reaction to seeing Neelah there; in particular, Kodir showed no surprise at Neelah’s not recognizing her in return. So Kodir knew that a memory wipe had been done on Neelah. If Kodir hadn’t found that out from you—because you had been the one who ordered it—then logically, it must have been done on Kodir’s instructions. It’s easy enough to figure out what Fenald did: he had orders from you for one job to be taken care of on the sly, and he had orders from Kodir for another, different job that had to be kept quiet. So he put more credits in his own pocket by using the go-between Nil Posondum to hire just one lowlife, Ree Duptom, to take care of both jobs. Fenald must have gotten a good rate that way. The only problem was that when Duptom was accidentally killed, it left a mess for both you and Kodir of Kuhlvult to worry about, without either one of you knowing that the other was involved. But it took getting information from both you and Kodir to figure out what must have happened back then.”

“I’m impressed.” Kuat regarded the bounty hunter thoughtfully. “You’re a creature of considerable intelligence; a shame that you found no better use for it than being a bounty hunter.”

“It suits my personality.”

“Perhaps so. But that makes me wonder about something else.” Kuat’s gaze grew sharper. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, not to find out what you needed to know—because you already knew that. You’ve risked your life coming here to find out what someone else, this female named Neelah, desperately needs to know. That kind of tenderheartedness isn’t exactly your style, Fett. Unless …” Kuat managed a thin smile. “Unless you’ve developed some other interest in her besides just business.”

“Guess again,” said Boba Fett. “I owe her a favor. And I always pay my debts. But I’ve got better reasons than that for what I do.”

“Well, you’re going to have a hard time letting this person know what you found out. Listen.” Kuat raised a hand. Outside the Star Destroyer, the rumbling, percussive sounds of the explosions advanced closer and closer. “I saw the ship, the one that brought you down here to the construction docks, take off; there must have been somebody aboard it with an even sharper sense of self-preservation than your own. So there’s no way out of here now.”

“Yes, there is.” Fett gestured with the blaster pistol. “Get away from the controls.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. One man can’t fly a ship this size; it takes a trained crew. The only way it would be possible is with the tug module, and you can’t get to that with the atmospheric pressure shroud gone.”

“I said—get away from the controls. If you want to stay here in the docks, go ahead. But this ship is leaving.”

“As you wish,” said Kuat. “Every man should pick his own way of dying. And I’ve already chosen mine.” He turned and walked toward the bridge’s hatchway and the corridor beyond that would lead to one of the ship’s main exit ports.

The explosions hadn’t yet torn away the narrow connector to the pressurized equipment shed next to the Star Destroyer. Kuat sealed its hatch behind himself, then sat down on a crate marked with the emblem of Kuat Drive Yards. He felt tired and glad at the same time; tired from his long work, glad that it would soon be over.

His eyes closed for a moment, then snapped open when something soft and warm jumped into his lap. He looked down and saw the golden eyes of the felinx gazing back at him.

“So you’re faithful, too.” Kuat stroked the creature’s silken fur. “In your own way.” Somehow, it had gotten out of his private quarters and followed him this far, through all the chaos and noise of the corporation’s fiery death. “Just as well,” he murmured. “Just as well …”

He picked up the felinx and held it to his chest, bending his own head down low, so that the pulse of its heart drowned out everything that was to come.

“How many did we get out?” Commander Rozhdenst stood at the mobile base’s largest viewports, gazing at the conflagration sweeping across the distant construction docks.

“Four of the Lancer-class frigates, sir.” From the center of the room, Ott Klemp made his report. “Those were our top priority. The rest that we extracted were Zebulon-B frigates.”

“And how many men did we lose?” The commander glanced over his shoulder.

“Only two. One in the frigate that got caught in the explosions, and another still in his Y-wing, going in.” Klemp carried his helmet in the crook of his arm. Both he and Rozhdenst were still in their flight gear. “I think, sir, you’d have to consider this a successful operation.”

“Perhaps,” said Rozhdenst. “But I only consider it worth losing good pilots if something worthwhile is accomplished. Until we hear what’s happened out at Endor, we don’t know whether there’s even going to be an Alliance that can make use of these ships.”

Klemp looked toward the control panels. “We’re still under comm unit silence?”

“You got it.” The commander nodded. “Right now, there’s no signals going in or coming out of that sector—”

His words were interrupted by a sudden, brighter flare of light from the Kuat Drive Yards’ facility. Both men turned toward the viewport.

“What’s going on?” Rozhdenst’s brow furrowed. “Those aren’t explosives.”

“It’s the Star Destroyer,” said Klemp, pointing out the flame-engulfed shape. “The big one at the end of the docks that we couldn’t get any of our men into. Somebody’s giving its engines full power. It’s moving!”

Klemp and the commander watched as the Star Destroyer, larger than any of the rescued ships nearing the base, slowly began to rise from the dock in which it had been moored. The ship suddenly veered to one side, the flank of its hull crashing against the warped and broken towers of the cranes arching above it.

“Whoever’s aboard that thing—they’ve lost control of it.” Rozhdenst shook his head. “They’ll never get it out.”

The commander’s assessment appeared to be true. The Star Destroyer’s stern had slewed around horizontally, barely meters above the dock. Metal collided with metal, as the rear thruster ports flared through the base of the crane. The impact was enough to send the already loosened tower crashing down upon the upper length of the ship’s hull.

“If he tries to pull out of there,” said Rozhdenst, “he’ll tear that ship to pieces.”

Klemp peered closer at the image in the viewport. “It looks like … he’s got another idea …”

The Star Destroyer’s thruster engines had throttled back down. There was a moment of stillness at the end of the construction docks, lit by the encroaching flames, then the ship was lit suddenly brighter by the simultaneous flash of its arsenal of high-powered laser cannons going off. The bolts weren’t aimed, but achieved an impressive amount of damage despite that, ripping through the weakened structure of the docks and the twisted metal of the fallen crane. Another volley of flaring white bolts followed the first.

Now the two men at the viewport could see the crane and the surrounding docks slowly disintegrate, the girder beams and great, torn masses of durasteel collapsing across one another and into a loose tangle over the Dreadnaught. Once more, thruster engines lit up; this time, the awkward forward course of the ship sent the metal fragments scattering like straws.

Rozhdenst nodded in appreciation as he watched the Star Destroyer move away from the burning wreckage of Kuat Drive Yards and into open space. “Too bad …”

“Sir?”

“Too bad that’s not one of our guys.”

19

A woman talked to a bounty hunter.

“You know,” said Neelah, “you could be a hero. If that was what you wanted.”

“Hardly.” Boba Fett’s voice was as flat and unemotional as it had always been. “Heroes don’t get paid enough.”

“Think about it, though.” A thin smile raised a corner of Neelah’s mouth. With one hand, she tugged higher upon her shoulder the strap of the bag she carried. “Or at least savor the irony. Your blasting your way out of the KDY construction docks did the Rebel Alliance more good than their own Scavenger Squadron was able to achieve.”

She and the bounty hunter were standing in the bridge of the Star Destroyer that Fett had managed to extract from the docks’ inferno. The massive ship was silent and empty, except for them.

“How do you figure that?”

“Simple,” replied Neelah. “Kuat of Kuat had wired up enough sequentially linked explosives to blow up all of Kuat Drive Yards. If he couldn’t have it under his control, he didn’t want to leave anything but smoking rubble behind. But this Star Destroyer was one of the critical links in the chain; the detonator circuits ran right through its main thruster engine compartment. And when you pulled the ship out of the docks, the chain was broken. Kuat himself didn’t live long enough to see what happened, but the result is that over eighty percent of the KDY construction docks survived intact.”

Fett shrugged. “That’s not my concern.”

“Perhaps not.” Neelah regarded the bounty hunter. She’d had no expectation of what would come from this secret rendezvous with him. The comm message had come to her at the Scavenger Squadron’s mobile command post, giving the coordinates of where she was to meet up with an unnamed entity; she had known instinctively that the message was from Boba Fett. She hadn’t told Commander Rozhdenst about that, though, but had convinced him to let her go alone and unescorted, as the comm message had directed. It was her own decision to pilot the battered Hound’s Tooth to the rendezvous. “But,” she continued, “it might be my concern. If I want it to be.”

“Of course.” As always, Fett was way ahead of her. “Kuat of Kuat is dead. That means Kuat Drive Yards is going to need a new leader. The other ruling families can see how things stack up now—if the Rebel Alliance indicates that it wants you running KDY, they’ll undoubtedly fall into line.”

“I’m not sure about that.” Neelah shook her head in disgust. “I know the Kuati ruling families better than you do, and a lot better than anybody in the Rebel Alliance. I was born into those families, remember? My sister Kodir isn’t the only one of them for whom treachery and scheming come easily. There are plenty of ruling family members who would just as soon back the Empire, if they thought it would serve their purposes.”

“And you don’t want to do anything to oppose them?”

“I’m not sure I want to.” Neelah could see her own reflection in the dark visor of Boba Fett’s helmet. “Or that I even care what happens to Kuat Drive Yards. After all that’s happened, I’m not exactly close to anyone on the planet Kuat. Kodir is the only direct blood relation I have, and she’s already being shipped down to face a tribunal of elders from the ruling families. There’s a lot of charges being made against her: conspiracy, murder, kidnapping …” Neelah slowly shook her head. “Loyalty doesn’t seem to run thick in the Kuhlvult bloodline. I don’t feel it, at least. And maybe Kuat of Kuat was right; maybe Kuat Drive Yards deserves something more than that.”

“Suit yourself,” said Fett. “But I have other business to take care of. That’s why I told you to come here.”

“All right. Let’s hear it.”

“I’ll make you a trade.” Fett gestured toward the bulkheads of the ship surrounding them. “Here’s a new, completely operational Star Destroyer, fresh out of the KDY construction docks. It’s yours. You can signal the Scavenger Squadron commander to come out here and pick it up. That should make you even more popular with the Rebel Alliance.”

Neelah glanced around the ship’s bridge. “Or maybe I could sell it to them. It’s a nice piece of hardware.” She looked again at Boba Fett. “So what do you want in exchange?”

“Two things. First, the Hound’s Tooth—”

“The Hound’s in pretty bad shape.” Neelah shook her head. “Certainly not worth as much as a ship of the line like this.”

“It’ll get me where I need to go,” said Fett. “And second—your silence.”

“What about?” Neelah peered at the bounty hunter.

“Me. I take it that you didn’t tell anyone from the Rebel Alliance that you’ve been traveling with me.”

“I didn’t think it was advisable. Creatures tend to judge you by the company you keep.”

“Fine,” said Fett. “So go on that way. And don’t tell them about me.”

“Why?”

“I have my reasons. Right now, it’s more convenient for me if everyone goes on believing I’m dead. If any of the creatures who might’ve spotted me at the Mos Eisley cantina want to talk about what they saw—” Fett shrugged. “There aren’t many who’ll believe lowlifes like that. And if the Rebel commander back at the KDY construction docks has an idea about who it was that pulled out this Destroyer, I imagine that he’ll keep it to himself. Why would he want to let the rest of the galaxy know that a bounty hunter was able to do what he and his squadron couldn’t? So being dead—or being thought dead—is a real opportunity for me.”

“As you told me—suit yourself.” Neelah’s gaze turned tighter and harder. “But this ship isn’t enough to buy that kind of silence. I want something a little more.”

Fett’s spine visibly stiffened. “Like what?”

“Like some answers. I want to know why you really went down to have your little confrontation with Kuat of Kuat while the construction docks were blowing up all around you. I can’t believe it was really out of any concern for me, and finding out the truth about whether there was some big conspiracy of which I was the target.”

A second passed, then Boba Fett nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “None of that is of any consequence to me. Your life, your death—it means nothing. All that matters is my life and my business—and that’s what I was taking care of when I confronted Kuat of Kuat.”

“You wanted the truth from him,” said Neelah. “Did you get it?”

Fett nodded. “Enough of it. Now that I’m certain that the conspiracy didn’t extend any further than Kuat, I can go ahead and deliver the fabricated evidence—to those who want it.”

His words puzzled Neelah. “Who would want it now? Prince Xizor is dead. Kuat fabricated the evidence against him—so what use would it be now?”

“As you say, Xizor is dead. But Black Sun isn’t. And Black Sun is still a very powerful—and dangerous—organization. And since Xizor’s death, the leadership of Black Sun has been a matter of some dispute. A power struggle between those who had been most loyal to Xizor and the others who had been plotting against him even while he was still alive.”

“Who’s winning?”

“For the moment, the Xizor loyalists have the upper hand. But all that could change very quickly. Especially when I deliver the fabricated evidence into the hands of the usurper faction. They can use it to break the hold on power of the Xizor loyalists by showing the Black Sun ranks that the late Prince Xizor had been foolishly—and traitorously—involving the organization in the affairs of the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. Even though it wouldn’t be true, it might be enough to tip the scales in the usurper faction’s favor.”

“I don’t get it,” said Neelah. “Why would you care who wins control of Black Sun?”

“It’s all the same to me. But what I do care about,” said Boba Fett, “is staying alive. And the usurper faction has made it clear to me that I stand a good chance of dying—in as painful a manner as possible—if I don’t hand over the fabricated evidence to them. Through their own information sources, the usurpers had learned about the evidence and that I was in search of it. They figured—correctly—that I could find it before they would be able to. While you were listening to Dengar tell about my past, I was in the cockpit of the Hound’s Tooth receiving a comm unit transmission from the usurper faction inside Black Sun, with the details of the offer they were making me. An offer that I was in no position to refuse.”

“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to have just offered you credits for the fabricated evidence? After all”—Neelah showed a thin smile—“aren’t you willing to do anything, as long as you get paid?”

“That would have worked for me,” replied Fett, “but not for these particular creatures. The problem with paying me for the goods was that it would leave a trail that could be followed. Anytime credits change hands, there’s a link that can be traced. And the usurper faction didn’t want this matter being traced back to them. Killing me—or threatening to do so—is much simpler. If I got hold of the fabricated evidence and turned it over to them, there would be no exchange of credits to link us. And if I failed to do so, then I’d be dead, and there would be no way I could divulge the usurpers’ scheming to the Xizor loyalists. All very neat and tidy. Especially since Black Sun—even just a small faction of the organization—is the only thing that could make a threat against me … and pull it off. Anybody else I’d have a chance against. But not Black Sun. Killing is one of its specialities.”

“I’m impressed,” said Neelah. “I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

“This isn’t fear. It’s reality.”

She nodded; it had all started to make sense, the last pieces of the puzzle fitting together. “So when you told us, when we were aboard Balancesheet’s freighter, that getting hold of the fabricated evidence was just a matter of potential profits—you were lying to us.” Neelah peered closer at the bounty hunter. “It wasn’t credits you were after. It was survival.”

“Credits are useless when you’re dead.”

“Then I take it that this is part of the deal as well.” Neelah pulled the shoulder bag in front of herself and extracted the flat black parcel inside. She held the fabricated evidence, the other item that Boba Fett had told her to bring, in both hands. “The deal between you and me.”

“This part isn’t negotiable,” said Fett. “I’m taking the fabricated evidence with me whether you hand it over or not.”

“Since I don’t have any use for it—” Neelah shrugged and held the parcel out. “Go ahead.”

Boba Fett took the parcel with no word of thanks. She hadn’t expected any, either.

“Wait a minute.” Neelah spoke up as Fett turned away. The dark gaze of his visored helmet looked back at her. “You realize,” she said quietly, “that you’re being a complete fool about this. Don’t you?”

A moment passed before Fett spoke. “How so?”

“Come on. Use your brains.” Neelah pointed to the parcel in Boba Fett’s gloved hands. “You’re going to be carrying that stuff into a pretty dangerous place. Sure, this Black Sun usurper faction is going to be happy to get it, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to keep their end of the deal. They want to keep things quiet, about what they’re up to? Then they’re more likely to take the fabricated evidence from you, say thanks very much, and then drill a blaster bolt through your skull. There wouldn’t be any trail linking them to you, after that.”

“Of course not,” replied Fett. “But I’ve already thought about that. And I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve, in case they try anything.”

“Tricks which might not work. Not on some Black Sun faction. As you said, killing is one of their specialities.”

“True.” Boba Fett gave a single nod. “But as it is, if I don’t deliver the fabricated evidence to the usurpers, I have very little chance of surviving. If I do deliver it to them—then my chances will be up to me.”

“Do it, then.” Neelah stepped back and gestured toward the bridge’s exit hatchway. “Good luck.”

“It’s not a matter of luck. Not for me.” Fett turned and walked toward the hatchway. He stopped and looked back at her. “You can trust in your luck, if you care to. When you came here, did you stop to think what your chances would be if I had decided to tie up a few loose ends by eliminating you?”

“Sure.” Neelah reached into the shoulder bag and pulled out a blaster pistol. She held it with both hands, aimed straight toward Fett. “That’s why I came prepared.”

Fett gazed at her and the weapon for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Good,” he said. “I’m glad you learned a few things from me.”

“Oh, I learned lots.” Neelah kept the weapon pointed at him. “More than I wanted to.”

She lowered the weapon only when she could hear the echo of his boot steps fading away in the corridor beyond the hatchway.

A few moments later, Neelah glanced toward the bridge’s main viewport. What was visible there was the fiery trace of the Hound’s Tooth, battered but still capable of traveling toward its hidden destination. But when Neelah closed her eyes, what she saw were the heat-shimmering expanses of the Dune Sea on Tatooine, and a nearly dead figure, skin and battle armor eroded, facedown in the sand.

She still couldn’t decide whether it might have been better if she had just left him lying there.

A woman talked to a bounty hunter.

Though maybe, thought Dengar, I’m not one anymore. It didn’t matter to him now; he was just glad to be alive.

“You came all that way, and found me.” Both he and Manaroo sat in the cockpit of his ship, the Punishing One. “And just in time.”

“It took some doing,” said his betrothed. “You weren’t easy to track down.”

She couldn’t have cut it any finer, either. Punishing One had shown up near the KDY construction docks just as Bossk’s former ship Hound’s Tooth was hit by the ragged chunk of metal that had come whirling toward it. Manaroo had witnessed the Hound shuddering from the impact; without a second thought, she had hit the Punishing One’s thruster controls to maximum, swooping into the debris and managing to grapple and lock on to the other ship’s cargo hold before it lost its remaining atmospheric pressure. They had both been aboard the Punishing One when she slapped him back to full consciousness.

The relief at finding himself alive, and in the arms of the woman he loved, ebbed a little inside Dengar. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I failed you. I failed us both.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re right back where we started.” He shook his head ruefully. “We needed credits, a lot—and I didn’t get them. With everything I did, risking my life all that time being partners with Boba Fett, and we still can’t pay off that debt load I’m carrying.” He laid his head against Manaroo’s shoulder. “We’re no closer to the life we want than we were before.”

“You are an idiot.” She laughed and pushed him back to where she could look at him full in the face. “None of that matters as long as you’re alive.”

“That’s sweet of you to say so.”

“No, really; I mean it.” Manaroo’s expression turned earnest. “You don’t realize what you’ve done just by remaining alive. You’ve won; we’ve won.”

He looked at her in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“Before I came to find you,” said Manaroo, “I wagered on you. Every credit I could scrape up, every one I could borrow—I took us even deeper into debt in order to get the stake together. Then I went to the gambler Drawmas Sma’Da; he agreed to cover the wager I proposed. A wager on the survival of a bounty hunter. Your survival.” Her smile brightened her face. “Believe me, I got great odds on you. Nobody expected you to be able to live through being partners with Boba Fett. But you did!”

“But that would mean … you and I …”

“Yes!” Manaroo grabbed him by both shoulders. “I’ve already contacted Drawmas Sma’Da and claimed my winnings—our winnings. I only made the bet; you won it for us. The credits have been transferred into our holding account. It’s more than enough to pay off your debt load. Pay it off, and start us in whatever business we want.” She leaned forward and kissed him, long and happily, then looked into his eyes again. “It’s our new life together. It’s come at last.”

“Yes …” Dengar nodded slowly. “You’re right …” An unbidden chill touched his heart as a shadow fell across the joy he knew he should feel. “If only … everything else works out …” He could hear the echoes of the dire warnings that Boba Fett had given him. “There’s still the Empire to worry about. How can anyone in the galaxy be happy with that looming over us?”

Manaroo kissed him on the brow this time, then leaned back and shook her head, still smiling. “You don’t know,” she said, “what I heard. Just a few minutes ago. I intercepted a comm unit transmission from the Rebel Alliance headquarters out at Sullust to the Scavenger Squadron’s commander here. The battle’s over.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “And the Rebels won. It’s the Empire that was crushed … to a billion pieces …” She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. “Everything will be different now.”

He could hardly believe it, yet he knew it was true. Everything, thought Dengar. All their plans and hopes—those could come true now. And he wouldn’t be a bounty hunter anymore …

In the midst of his happiness, there was a thread of regret. It seemed a shame, after having survived and even profited from a partnership with Boba Fett—how many other creatures could say the same?—for him to turn his back on all that. Plus, there had been a certain excitement to all that had happened, from the moment when he first stumbled upon an almost lifeless Boba Fett, lying on the hot sands of Tatooine’s Dune Sea.

Maybe, thought Dengar, I could still keep my hand in. Just a little. His business enterprise with Manaroo might not be immediately successful; it might require a fresh infusion of credit now and then. Right at the beginning …

He’d have to think about that some more. But for the moment, Dengar wrapped his arms around his betrothed. He turned his face away from hers and looked out the cockpit’s viewport at all the stars cascading in stately progression to the galaxy’s edge.

Everything …

The stars were so bright, even as he closed his eyes and held his betrothed closer to himself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

K. W. JETER is one of the most respected sf writers working today. His first novel, Dr. Adder, was described by Philip K. Dick as “a stunning novel … it destroys once and for all your conception of the limitations of science fiction.” The Edge of Human resolves many discrepancies between the movie Blade Runner and the novel upon which it was based, Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Jeter’s other books have been described as having a “brain-burning intensity” (The Village Voice), as being “hard-edged and believable” (Locus) and “a joy from first word to last” (San Francisco Chronicle). He is the author of more than twenty novels, including Farewell Horizontal and Wolf Flow. His latest novel, NOIR, was described by the New York Times as “the science fiction equivalent of The Name of the Rose.”

Bantam Books by K. W. Jeter

STAR WARS®: The Bounty Hunter Wars
The Mandalorian Armor
Slave Ship
Hard Merchandise

BLADE RUNNER™:
The Edge of Human
Replicant Night

NOIR

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.

CHAPTER 1

SHIGAR KONSHI FOLLOWED the sound of blasterfire through Coruscant’s old districts. He never stumbled, never slipped, never lost his way, even through lanes that were narrow and crowded with years of detritus that had settled slowly from the levels above. Cables and signs swayed overhead, hanging so low in places that Shigar was forced to duck beneath them. Tall and slender, with one blue chevron on each cheek, the Jedi apprentice moved with grace and surety surprising for his eighteen years.

At the core of his being, however, he seethed. Master Nikil Nobil’s decision had cut no less deeply for being delivered by hologram from the other side of the galaxy.

“The High Council finds Shigar Konshi unready for Jedi trials.”

The decision had shocked him, but Shigar knew better than to speak. The last thing he wanted to do was convey the shame and resentment he felt in front of the Council.

“Tell him why,” said Grand Master Satele Shan, standing at his side with hands folded firmly before her. She was a full head shorter than Shigar but radiated an indomitable sense of self. Even via holoprojector, she made Master Nobil, an immense Thisspiasian with full ceremonial beard, shift uncomfortably on his tail.

“We—that is, the Council—regard your Padawan’s training as incomplete.”

Shigar flushed. “In what way, Master Nobil?”

His Master silenced him with a gentle but irresistible telepathic nudge. “He is close to attaining full mastery,” she assured the Council. “I am certain that it is only a matter of time.”

“A Jedi Knight is a Jedi Knight in all respects,” said the distant Master. “There are no exceptions, even for you.”

Master Satele nodded her acceptance of the decision. Shigar bit his tongue. She said she believed in him, so why did she not overrule the decision? She didn’t have to submit to the Council. If he weren’t her Padawan, would she have spoken up for him then?

His unsettled feelings were not hidden as well as he would have liked.

“Your lack of self-control reveals itself in many ways,” said Master Nobil to him in a stern tone. “Take your recent comments to Senator Vuub regarding the policies of the Resource Management Council. We may all agree that the Republic’s handling of the current crisis is less than perfect, but anything short of the utmost political discipline is unforgivable at this time. Do you understand?”

Shigar bowed his head. He should’ve known that the slippery Neimoidian was after more than just his opinion when she’d sidled up to him and flattered him with praise. When the Empire had invaded Coruscant, it had only handed the world back to the Republic in exchange for a large number of territorial concessions elsewhere. Ever since then, supply lines had been strained. That Shigar was right, and the RMC a hopelessly corrupt mess, putting the lives of billions at risk from something much worse than war—starvation, disease, disillusionment—simply didn’t count in some circles.

Master Nobil’s forbidding visage softened. “You are naturally disappointed. I understand. Know that the Grand Master has spoken strongly in favor of you for a long time. In all respects but this one do we defer to her judgment. She cannot sway our combined decision, but she has drawn our attention. We will be watching your progress closely, with high expectations.”

The holoconference had ended there, and Shigar felt the same conflicted emptiness in the depths of Coruscant as he had then. Unready? High expectations? The Council was playing a game with him—or so it felt—batting him backward and forward like a felinx in a cage. Would he ever be free to follow his own path?

Master Satele understood his feelings better than he did. “Go for a walk,” she had told him, putting a hand on each shoulder and holding his gaze long enough to make sure he understood her intentions. She was giving him an opportunity to cool down, not dismissing him. “I need to talk to Supreme Commander Stantorrs anyway. Let’s meet later in Union Cloisters.”

“Yes, Master.”

And so he was walking and stewing. Somewhere inside him, he knew, had to be the strength to rise above this temporary setback, the discipline to bring the last threads of his talent into a unified design. But on this occasion, his instincts were leading him away from stillness, not toward it.

The sound of blasterfire grew louder ahead of him.

Shigar stopped in an alley that stank like a woodoo’s leavings. A swinging light flashed fitfully on and off in the level above, casting rubbish and rot in unwanted relief. An ancient droid watched with blinking red eyes from a filthy niche, rusted fingers protectively gathering wires and servos back into its gaping chest plate. The cold war with the Empire was being conducted far away from this alley and its unhappy resident, but its effects were keenly felt. If he wanted to be angry at the state of the Republic, he couldn’t have chosen a better place for it.

The shooting intensified. His hand reached for the grip of his lightsaber.

There is no emotion, he told himself. There is only peace.

But how could there be peace without justice? What did the Jedi Council, sitting comfortably in their new Temple on Tython, know about that?

The sound of screams broke him out of his contemplative trance. Between one heartbeat and the next he was gone, the emerald fire of his lightsaber lingering a split instant behind him, brilliant in the gloom.

LARIN MOXLA PAUSED to tighten the belly strap on her armor. The wretched thing kept coming loose, and she didn’t want to take any chances. Until the justicars got there, she was the only thing standing between the Black Sun gangsters and the relatively innocent residents of Gnawer’s Roost. It sounded like half of it had been shot to pieces already.

Satisfied that nothing too vulnerable was exposed, she peered out from cover and hefted her modified snub rifle. Illegal on Coruscant except for elite special forces commandos, it featured a powerful sniper sight, which she trained on the Black Sun safehouse. The main entrance was deserted, and there was no sign of the roof guard. That was unexpected. Still the blasterfire came from within the fortified building. Could it be a trap of some kind?

Wishing as always that she had backup, she lowered the rifle and lifted her helmeted head into full view. No one took a potshot at her. No one even noticed her. The only people she could see were locals running for cover. But for the commotion coming from within, the street could have been completely deserted.

Trap or no trap, she decided to get closer. Rattling slightly, and ignoring the places where her secondhand armor chafed, Larin hustled low and fast from cover to cover until she was just meters from the front entrance. The weapons-fire was deafening now, and screaming came with it. She tried to identify the weapons. Blaster pistols and rifles of several different makes; at least one floor-mounted cannon; two or three vibrosaws; and beneath all that, a different sound. A roaring, as of superheated gases jetting violently through a nozzle.

A flamethrower.

No gang she’d heard of used fire. The risk of a blaze spreading everywhere was too high. Only someone from outside would employ a weapon like that. Only someone who didn’t care what damage he left in his wake.

Something exploded in an upper room, sending a shower of bricks and dust into the street. Larin ducked instinctively, but the wall held. If it had collapsed, she would have been buried under meters of rubble.

Her left hand wanted to count down, and she let it. It felt wrong otherwise. Moving in—in three … two … one …

Silence fell.

She froze. It was as though someone had pulled a switch. One minute, nine kinds of chaos had been unfolding inside the building. Now there was nothing.

She pulled her hand in, countdown forgotten. She wasn’t going anywhere until she knew what had just happened and who was involved.

Something collapsed inside the building. Larin gripped her rifle more tightly. Footsteps crunched toward the entrance. One set of feet: that was all.

She stood up in full view of the entrance, placed herself side-on to reduce the target she made, and trained her rifle on the darkened doorway.

The footsteps came closer—unhurried, confident, heavy. Very heavy.

The moment she saw movement in the doorway, she cried out in a firm voice, “Hold it right there.”

Booted feet assumed a standing position. Armored shins in metallic gray and green.

“Move slowly forward, into the light.”

The owner of the legs took one step, then two, revealing a Mandalorian so tall his helmeted head brushed the top of the doorway.

“That’s far enough.”

“For what?”

Larin maintained her cool in the face of that harsh, inhuman voice, although it was difficult. She’d seen Mandalorians in action before, and she knew how woefully equipped she was to deal with one now. “For you to tell me what you were doing in there.”

The domed head inclined slightly. “I was seeking information.”

“So you’re a bounty hunter?”

“Does it matter what I am?”

“It does when you’re messing up my people.”

“You do not look like a member of the Black Sun syndicate.”

“I never said I was.”

“You haven’t said you aren’t, either.” The massive figure shifted slightly, finding a new balance. “I’m seeking information concerning a woman called Lema Xandret.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“I thought I was the one asking questions here.”

“You thought wrong.”

The Mandalorian raised one arm to point at her. A hatch in his sleeve opened, revealing the flamethrower she’d heard in action earlier. She steadied her grip and tried desperately to remember where the weak points on Mandalorian armor were—if there were any …

“Don’t,” said a commanding voice to her left.

Larin glanced automatically and saw a young man in robes standing with one hand raised in the universal stop signal.

The sight of him dropped her guard momentarily.

A sheet of powerful flame roared at her. She ducked, and it seared the air bare millimeters over her head.

She let off a round that ricocheted harmlessly from the Mandalorian’s chest plate and rolled for cover. It was hard to say what surprised her more: a Jedi down deep in the bowels of Coruscant, or the fact that he had the facial tattoos of a Kiffu native, just like she did.

SHIGAR TOOK IN THE confrontation with a glance. He’d never fought a Mandalorian before, but he had been carefully instructed in the art by his Master. They were dangerous, very dangerous, and he almost had second thoughts about taking this one on. Even together, he and a single battered-looking soldier would hardly be sufficient.

Then flame arced across the head of the soldier, and his instincts took over. The soldier ducked for cover with admirable speed. Shigar lunged forward, lightsaber raised to slash at the net that inevitably headed his way. The whine of the suit’s jetpack drowned out the angry sizzling of Shigar’s blade as he cut himself free. Before the Mandalorian had gained barely a meter of altitude, Shigar Force-pushed him sideways into the building beside him, thereby crushing off the jet’s exhaust vent.

With a snarl, the Mandalorian landed heavily on both feet and fired two darts in quick succession, both aimed at Shigar’s face. Shigar deflected them and moved closer, dancing lightly on his feet. From a distance, he was at a disadvantage. Mandalorians were masters of ranged weaponry, and would do anything to avoid hand-to-hand combat except in one of their infamous gladiatorial pits. If he could get near enough to strike—with the soldier maintaining a distracting cover fire—he might just get lucky …

A rocket exploded above his head, then another. They weren’t aimed at him, but at the city’s upper levels. Rubble rained down on him, forcing him to protect his head. The Mandalorian took advantage of that slight distraction to dive under his guard and grip him tight about the throat. Shigar’s confusion was complete—but Mandalorians weren’t supposed to fight at close quarters! Then he was literally flying through the air, hurled by his assailant’s vast physical strength into a wall.

He landed on both feet, stunned but recovering quickly, and readied himself for another attack.

The Mandalorian ran three long steps to his right, leaping one-two-three onto piles of rubbish and from there onto a roof. More rockets arced upward, tearing through the ferrocrete columns of a monorail. Slender spears of metal warped and fell toward Shigar and the soldier. Only with the greatest exertion of the Force that Shigar could summon was he able to deflect them into the ground around them, where they stuck fast, quivering.

“He’s getting away!”

The soldier’s cry was followed by another explosion. A grenade hurled behind the escaping Mandalorian destroyed much of the roof in front of him and sent a huge black mushroom rising into the air. Shigar dived cautiously through it, expecting an ambush, but found the area clear on the far side. He turned in a full circle, banishing the smoke with one out-thrust push.

The Mandalorian was gone. Up, down, sideways—there was no way to tell which direction he had chosen to flee. Shigar reached out through the Force. His heart still hammered, but his breathing was steady and shallow. He felt nothing.

The soldier became visible through the smoke just steps away, moving forward in a cautious crouch. She straightened and planted her feet wide apart. The snout of her rifle targeted him, and for a moment Shigar thought she might actually fire.

“I lost him,” he said, unhappily acknowledging their failure.

“Not your fault,” she said, lowering the rifle. “We did our best.”

“Where did he come from?” he asked.

“I thought it was just the usual Black Sun bust-up,” she said, indicating the destroyed building. “Then he walked out.”

“Why did he attack you?”

“Beats me. Maybe he assumed I was a justicar.”

“You’re not one?”

“No. I don’t like their methods. And they’ll be here soon, so you should get out of here before they decide you’re responsible for all this.”

That was good advice, he acknowledged to himself. The bloodthirsty militia controlling the lower levels was a law unto itself, one that didn’t take kindly to incursions on their territory.

“Let’s see what happened here, first,” he said, moving toward the smoke-blackened doorway with lightsaber at the ready.

“Why? It’s not your problem.”

Shigar didn’t answer that. Whatever was going on here, neither of them could just walk away from it. He sensed that she would be relieved not to be heading into the building alone.

Together they explored the smoking, shattered ruins. Weapons and bodies lay next to one another in equal proportions. Clearly, the inhabitants had taken up arms against the interloper, and in turn every one of them had died. That was grisly, but not surprising. Mandalorians didn’t disapprove of illegals per se, but they did take poorly to being shot at.

On the upper floor, Shigar stopped, sensing something living among the carnage. He raised a hand, cautioning the soldier to proceed more slowly, just in case someone thought they were coming to finish the job. She glided smoothly ahead of him, heedless of danger and with her weapon at the ready. He followed soundlessly in her wake, senses tingling.

They found a single survivor huddled behind a shattered crate, a Nawtolan with blaster burns down much of one side and a dart wound to his neck, lying in a pool of his own blood. The blood was spreading fast. He looked up as Shigar bent over him to check his wounds. What Shigar couldn’t tourniquet he could cauterize, but he would have to move fast to have any chance at all.

“Dao Stryver.” The Nautolan’s voice was a guttural growl, not helped by the damage to his throat. “Came out of nowhere.”

“The Mandalorian?” said the soldier. “Is that who you’re talking about?”

The Nautolan nodded. “Dao Stryver. Wanted what we had. Wouldn’t give it to him.”

The soldier took off her helmet. She was surprisingly young, with short dark hair, a strong jaw, and eyes as green as Shigar’s lightsaber. Most startling were the distinctive black markings of Clan Moxla tattooed across her dirty cheeks.

“What did you have, exactly?” she pressed the Nautolan.

The Nautolan’s eyes rolled up into his head. “Cinzia,” he coughed, spraying dark blood across the front of her armor. “Cinzia.”

“And that is …?” she asked, leaning close as his breathing failed. “Hold on—help’s coming—just hold on!”

Shigar leaned back. There was nothing he could do, not without a proper medpac. The Nautolan had said his last.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’ve no reason to be,” she said, staring down at her hands. “He was a member of the Black Sun, probably a murderer himself.”

“Does that make him evil? Lack of food might have done that, or medicine for his family, or a thousand other things.”

“Bad choices don’t make bad people. Right. But what else do we have to go on down here? Sometimes you have to make a stand, even if you can’t tell who the bad guys are anymore.”

A desperately fatigued look crossed her face, then, and Shigar thought that he understood her a little better. Justice was important, and so was the way people defended it, even if that meant fighting alone sometimes.

“My name is Shigar,” he said in a calming voice.

“Nice to meet you, Shigar,” she said, brightening. “And thanks. You probably saved my life back there.”

“I can’t take any credit for that. I’m sure he didn’t consider either of us worthy opponents.”

“Or maybe he worked out that we didn’t know anything about what he was looking for in the safehouse. Lema Xandret: that was the name he used on me. Ever heard of it?”

“No. Not Cinzia, either.”

She rose to her feet in one movement and cocked her rifle onto her back. “Larin, by the way.”

Her grip was surprisingly strong. “Our clans were enemies, once,” Shigar said.

“Ancient history is the least of our troubles. We’d better move out before the justicars get here.”

He looked around him, at the Nautolan, the other bodies, and the wrecked building. Dao Stryver. Lema Xandret. Cinzia.

“I’m going to talk to my Master,” he said. “She should know there’s a Mandalorian making trouble on Coruscant.”

“All right,” she said, hefting her helmet. “Lead the way.”

“You’re coming with me?”

“Never trust a Konshi. That’s what my mother always said. And if we’re going to stop a war between Dao Stryver and the Black Sun, we have to do it right. Right?”

He barely caught her smile before it disappeared behind her helmet.

“Right,” he said.

THE OLD REPUBLIC
 (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.

1

Dessel was lost in the suffering of his job, barely even aware of his surroundings. His arms ached from the endless pounding of the hydraulic jack. Small bits of rock skipped off the cavern wall as he bored through, ricocheting off his protective goggles and stinging his exposed face and hands. Clouds of atomized dust filled the air, obscuring his vision, and the screeching whine of the jack filled the cavern, drowning out all other sounds as it burrowed centimeter by agonizing centimeter into the thick vein of cortosis woven into the rock before him.

Impervious to both heat and energy, cortosis was prized in the construction of armor and shielding by both commercial and military interests, especially with the galaxy at war. Highly resistant to blaster bolts, cortosis alloys supposedly could withstand even the blade of a lightsaber. Unfortunately, the very properties that made it so valuable also made it extremely difficult to mine. Plasma torches were virtually useless; it would take days to burn away even a small section of cortosis-laced rock. The only effective way to mine it was through the brute force of hydraulic jacks pounding relentlessly away at a vein, chipping the cortosis free bit by bit.

Cortosis was one of the hardest materials in the galaxy. The force of the pounding quickly wore down the head of a jack, blunting it until it became almost useless. The dust clogged the hydraulic pistons, making them jam. Mining cortosis was hard on the equipment … and even harder on the miners.

Des had been hammering away for nearly six standard hours. The jack weighed more than thirty kilos, and the strain of keeping it raised and pressed against the rock face was taking its toll. His arms were trembling from the exertion. His lungs were gasping for air and choking on the clouds of fine mineral dust thrown up from the jack’s head. Even his teeth hurt: the rattling vibration felt as if it were shaking them loose from his gums.

But the miners on Apatros were paid based on how much cortosis they brought back. If he quit now, another miner would jump in and start working the vein, taking a share of the profits. Des didn’t like to share.

The whine of the jack’s motor took on a higher pitch, becoming a keening wail Des was all too familiar with. At twenty thousand rpm, the motor sucked in dust like a thirsty bantha sucking up water after a long desert crossing. The only way to combat it was by regular cleaning and servicing, and the Outer Rim Oreworks Company preferred to buy cheap equipment and replace it, rather than sinking credits into maintenance. Des knew exactly what was going to happen next—and a second later, it did. The motor blew.

The hydraulics seized with a horrible crunch, and a cloud of black smoke spit out the rear of the jack. Cursing ORO and its corporate policies, Des released his cramped finger from the trigger and tossed the spent piece of equipment to the floor.

“Move aside, kid,” a voice said.

Gerd, one of the other miners, stepped up and tried to shoulder Des out of the way so he could work the vein with his own jack. Gerd had been working the mines for nearly twenty standard years, and it had turned his body into a mass of hard, knotted muscle. But Des had been working the mines for ten years himself, ever since he was a teenager, and he was just as solid as the older man—and a little bigger. He didn’t budge.

“I’m not done here,” he said. “Jack died, that’s all. Hand me yours and I’ll keep at it for a while.”

“You know the rules, kid. You stop working and someone else is allowed to move in.”

Technically, Gerd was right. But nobody ever jumped another miner’s claim over an equipment malfunction. Not unless he was trying to pick a fight.

Des took a quick look around. The chamber was empty except for the two of them, standing less than half a meter apart. Not a surprise; Des usually chose caverns far off the main tunnel network. It had to be more than mere coincidence that Gerd was here.

Des had known Gerd for as long as he could remember. The middle-aged man had been friends with Hurst, Des’s father. Back when Des first started working the mines at thirteen, he had taken a lot of abuse from the bigger miners. His father had been the worst tormentor, but Gerd had been one of the main instigators, dishing out more than his fair share of teasing, insults, and the occasional cuff on the ear.

Their harassments had ended shortly after Des’s father died of a massive heart attack. It wasn’t because the miners felt sorry for the orphaned young man, though. By the time Hurst died, the tall, skinny teenager they loved to bully had become a mountain of muscle with heavy hands and a fierce temper. Mining was a tough job; it was the closest thing to hard labor outside a Republic prison colony. Whoever worked the mines on Apatros got big—and Des just happened to become the biggest of them all. Half a dozen black eyes, countless bloody noses, and one broken jaw in the space of a month was all it took for Hurst’s old friends to decide they’d be happier if they left Des alone.

Yet it was almost as if they blamed him for Hurst’s death, and every few months one of them tried again. Gerd had always been smart enough to keep his distance—until now.

“I don’t see any of your friends here with you, old man,” Des said. “So back off my claim, and nobody gets hurt.”

Gerd spat on the ground at Des’s feet. “You don’t even know what day it is, do you, boy? Kriffing disgrace is what you are!”

They were standing close enough to each other that Des could smell the sour Corellian whiskey on Gerd’s breath. The man was drunk. Drunk enough to come looking for a fight, but still sober enough to hold his own.

“Five years ago today,” Gerd said, shaking his head sadly. “Five years ago today your own father died, and you don’t even remember!”

Des rarely even thought about his father anymore. He hadn’t been sorry to see him go. His earliest memories were of his father smacking him. He didn’t even remember the reason; Hurst rarely needed one.

“Can’t say I miss Hurst the same way you do, Gerd.”

“Hurst?” Gerd snorted. “He raised you by himself after your mama died, and you don’t even have the respect to call him Dad? You ungrateful son-of-a-Kath-hound!”

Des glared down menacingly at Gerd, but the shorter man was too full of drink and self-righteous indignation to be intimidated.

“Should’ve expected this from a mudcrutch whelp like you,” Gerd continued. “Hurst always said you were no good. He knew there was something wrong with you … Bane.”

Des narrowed his eyes, but didn’t rise to the bait. Hurst had called him by that name when he was drunk. Bane. He had blamed his son for his wife’s death. Blamed him for being stuck on Apatros. He considered his only child to be the bane of his existence, a fact he’d tended to spit out at Des in his drunken rages.

Bane. It represented everything spiteful, petty, and mean about his father. It struck at the innermost fears of every child: fear of disappointment, fear of abandonment, fear of violence. As a kid, that name had hurt more than all the smacks from his father’s heavy fists. But Des wasn’t a kid anymore. Over time he’d learned to ignore it, along with all the rest of the hateful bile that spilled from his father’s mouth.

“I don’t have time for this,” he muttered. “I’ve got work to do.”

With one hand he grabbed the hydraulic jack from Gerd’s grasp. He put the other hand on Gerd’s shoulder and shoved him away. Stumbling back, the inebriated man caught his heel on a rock and fell roughly to the ground.

He stood up with a snarl, his hands balling into fists. “Guess your daddy’s been gone too long, boy. You need someone to beat the sense back into you!”

Gerd was drunk, but he was no fool, Des realized. Des was bigger, stronger, younger … but he’d spent the last six hours working a hydraulic jack. He was covered in grime and the sweat was dripping off his face. His shirt was drenched. Gerd’s uniform, on the other hand, was still relatively clean: no dust, no sweat stains. He must have been planning this all day, taking it easy and sitting back while Des wore himself out.

But Des wasn’t about to back down from a fight. Throwing Gerd’s jack to the ground, he dropped into a crouch, feet wide and arms held out in front of him.

Gerd charged forward, swinging his right fist in a vicious uppercut. Des reached out and caught the punch with the open palm of his left hand, absorbing the force of the blow. His right hand snapped forward and grabbed the underside of Gerd’s right wrist; as he pulled the older man forward, Des ducked down and turned, driving his shoulder into Gerd’s chest. Using his opponent’s own momentum against him, Des straightened up and yanked hard on Gerd’s wrist, flipping him up and over so that he crashed to the ground on his back.

The fight should have ended right then; Des had a split second where he could have dropped his knee onto his opponent, driving the breath from his lungs and pinning him to the ground while he pounded Gerd with his fists. But it didn’t happen. His back, exhausted from hours of hefting the thirty-kilo jack, spasmed.

The pain was agonizing; instinctively Des straightened up, clutching at the knotted lumbar muscles. It gave Gerd a chance to roll out of the way and get back to his feet.

Somehow Des managed to drop into his fighting crouch again. His back howled in protest, and he grimaced as red-hot daggers of pain shot through his body. Gerd saw the grimace and laughed.

“Cramping up there, boy? You should know better than to try and fight after a six-hour shift in the mines.”

Gerd charged forward again. This time his hands weren’t fists, but claws grasping and grabbing at anything they could find, trying to nullify the younger man’s height and reach by getting in close. Des tried to scramble out of the way, but his legs were too stiff and sore to get him clear. One hand grabbed his shirt, the other got hold of his belt as Gerd pulled both of them to the ground.

They grappled together, wrestling on the hard, uneven stone of the cavern floor. Gerd had his face buried against Dessel’s chest to protect it, keeping Des from landing a solid elbow or head-butt. He still had a grip on Des’s belt, but now his other hand was free and punching blindly up to where he guessed Des’s face would be. Des was forced to wrap his arms in and around Gerd’s own, interlocking them so neither man could throw a punch.

With their limbs pinned, strategy and technique meant little. The fight had become a test of strength and endurance, with the two combatants slowly wearing each other down. Dessel tried to roll Gerd over onto his back, but his weary body betrayed him. His limbs were heavy and soft; he couldn’t get the leverage he needed. Instead it was Gerd who was able to twist and turn, wrenching one of his hands free while still keeping his face pressed tight against Des’s chest so it wouldn’t be exposed.

Des wasn’t so lucky … his face was open and vulnerable. Gerd struck a blow with his free hand, but he didn’t hit with a closed fist. Instead he drove his thumb hard into Des’s cheek, only a few centimeters from his real target. He struck again with the thumb, looking to gouge out one of his opponent’s eyes and leave him blind and writhing in pain.

It took Des a second to realize what was happening; his tired mind had become as slow and clumsy as his body. He turned his face away just as the second blow landed, the thumb jamming painfully into the cartilage of his upper ear.

Dark rage exploded inside Des: a burst of fiery passion that burned away the exhaustion and fatigue. Suddenly his mind was clear, and his body felt strong and rejuvenated. He knew what he was going to do next. More importantly, he knew with absolute certainty what Gerd would do next, too.

He couldn’t explain how he knew; sometimes he could just anticipate an opponent’s next move. Instinct, some might have said. Des felt it was something more. It was too detailed—too specific—to be simple instinct. It was more like a vision, a brief glimpse into the future. And whenever it happened, Des always knew what to do, as if something was guiding and directing his actions.

When the next blow came, Des was more than ready for it. He could picture it perfectly in his mind. He knew exactly when it was coming and precisely where it would strike. This time he turned his head in the opposite direction, exposing his face to the incoming blow—and opening his mouth. He bit down hard, his timing perfect, and his teeth sank deep into the dirty flesh of Gerd’s probing thumb.

Gerd screamed as Des clamped his jaw shut, severing the tendons and striking bone. He wondered if he could bite clean through and then—as if the very thought made it happen—he severed Gerd’s thumb.

The screams became shrieks as Gerd released his grasp and rolled away, clasping his maimed hand with his whole one. Crimson blood welled up through the fingers trying to stanch the flow from his stump.

Standing up slowly, Des spat the thumb out onto the ground. The taste of blood was hot in his mouth. His body felt strong and reenergized, as if some great power surged through his veins. All the fight had been taken out of his opponent; Des could do anything he wanted to Gerd now.

The older man rolled back and forth on the floor, his hand clutched to his chest. He was moaning and sobbing, begging for mercy, pleading for help.

Des shook his head in disgust; Gerd had brought this on himself. It had started as a simple fistfight. The loser would have ended up with a black eye and some bruises, but nothing more. Then the older man had taken things to another level by trying to blind him, and he’d responded in kind. Des had learned long ago not to escalate a fight unless he was willing to pay the price of losing. Now Gerd had learned that lesson, too.

Des had a temper, but he wasn’t the kind to keep beating on a helpless opponent. Without looking back at his defeated foe, he left the cavern and headed back up the tunnel to tell one of the foremen what had happened so someone could come tend to Gerd’s injury.

He wasn’t worried about the consequences. The medics could reattach Gerd’s thumb, so at worst Des would be fined a day or two’s wages. The corporation didn’t really care what its employees did, as long as they kept coming back to mine the cortosis. Fights were common among the miners, and ORO almost always turned a blind eye, though this particular fight had been more vicious than most—savage and short, with a brutal end.

Just like life on Apatros.

2

Sitting in the back of the land cruiser used to transport miners between Apatros’s only colony and the mines, Des felt exhausted. All he wanted was to get back to his bunk in the barracks and sleep. The adrenaline had drained out of him, leaving him hyperaware of the stiffness and soreness of his body. He slumped down in his seat and gazed around the interior of the cruiser.

Normally, there would have been twenty other miners crammed into the speeder with him, but this one was empty except for him and the pilot. After the fight with Gerd, the foreman had suspended Des without pay, effective immediately, and had ordered the transport to take him back to the colony.

“This kind of thing is getting old, Des,” the foreman had said with a frown. “We’ve got to make an example of you this time. You can’t work the mines until Gerd is healed up and back on the job.”

What he really meant was, You can’t earn any credits until Gerd comes back. He’d still be charged room and board, of course. Every day that he sat around doing nothing would go onto his tab, adding to the debt he was working so desperately to pay off.

Des figured it would be four or five days until Gerd was able to handle a hydraulic jack again. The on-site medic had reattached the severed thumb using a vibro-scalpel and synthflesh. A few days of kolto injections and some cheap meds to dull the pain, and Gerd would be back at it. Bacta therapy could have him back in a day; but bacta was expensive, and ORO wouldn’t spring for it unless Gerd had miner’s insurance … which Des highly doubted.

Most miners never bothered with the company-sponsored insurance program. It was expensive, for one thing. What with room, board, and the fees covering the cost of transport to and from the mines, most thought they gave ORO more than enough of their hard-earned pay without adding insurance premiums onto the stack.

It wasn’t just the cost, though. It was almost as if the men and women who worked the cortosis mines were in denial, refusing to admit the potential dangers and hazards they encountered every day. Getting insurance would force them to take a look at the cold, hard facts.

Few miners ever reached their golden years. The tunnels claimed many, burying bodies in cave-ins or incinerating them when somebody tapped into a pocket of explosive gases trapped in the rock. Even those who made it out of the mines tended not to survive long into their retirement. The mines took their toll. Sixty-year-old men were left with bodies that looked and felt like they were ninety, broken shells worn down by decades of hard physical labor and exposure to airborne contaminants that slipped through the substandard ORO filters.

When Des’s father died—with no insurance, of course—all Des got out of it was the privilege of taking on his father’s accumulated debt. Hurst had spent more time drinking and gambling than mining. To pay for his monthly room and board he’d often had to borrow credits from ORO at an interest rate that would be criminal anywhere but in the Outer Rim. The debt kept piling up, month to month and year to year, but Hurst didn’t seem to care. He was a single parent with a son he resented, trapped in a brutal job he despised; he had given up any hope of escaping Apatros long before the heart attack claimed him.

The Hutt spawn probably would have been glad to know his son had gotten stuck with his bill.

The transport sped above the barren rocks of the small planet’s flatlands with no sound but the endless drone of the engines. The featureless wastes flew by in a blur, until the view out the window was nothing but a curtain of shapeless gray. The effect was hypnotic: Des could feel his tired mind and body eager to drift into deep and dreamless sleep.

This was how they got you. Work you to exhaustion, dull your senses, numb your will into submission … until you accepted your lot and wasted your entire life in the grit and grime of the cortosis mines. All in the relentless service of the Outer Rim Oreworks Company. It was a surprisingly effective trap; it worked on men like Gerd and Hurst. But it wasn’t going to work on Des.

Even with his father’s crushing debt, Des knew he’d pay ORO off someday and leave this life behind. He was destined for something greater than this small, insignificant existence. He knew this with absolute certainty, and it was this knowledge that gave him the strength to carry on in the face of the relentless, sometimes hopeless grind. It gave him the strength to fight, even when part of him felt like giving up.

He was suspended, unable to work the mines, but there were other ways to earn credits. With a great effort he forced himself to stand up. The floor swayed under his feet as the speeder made constant adjustments to maintain its programmed cruising altitude of half a meter above ground level. He took a second to get used to the rolling rhythm of the transport, then half walked, half staggered up the aisle between the seats to the pilot at the front. He didn’t recognize the man, but they all tended to look the same anyway: grim, unsmiling features, dull eyes, and always wearing an expression as if they were on the verge of a blinding headache.

“Hey,” Des said, trying to sound nonchalant, “any ships come in to the spaceport today?”

There was no reason for the pilot to keep his attention fixed on the path ahead. The forty-minute trip between the mines and the colony was a straight line across an empty plain; some of the pilots even stole naps along the route. Yet this one refused to turn and look at Des as he answered.

“Cargo ship touched down a few hours ago,” he said in a bored voice. “Military. Republic cargo ship.”

Des smiled. “They staying for a while?”

The pilot didn’t answer; he only snorted and shook his head at the stupidity of the question. Des nodded and stumbled back toward his seat at the rear of the transport. He knew the answer, too.

Cortosis was used in the hulls of everything from fighters to capital ships, as well as being woven into the body armor of the troops. And as the war against the Sith dragged on, the Republic’s need for cortosis kept increasing. Every few weeks a Republic freighter would touch down on Apatros. The next day it would leave again, its cargo bays filled with the valuable mineral. Until then the crew—officers and enlisted soldiers alike—would have nothing to do but wait. From past experience, Des knew that whenever Republic soldiers had a few hours to kill they liked to play cards. And wherever people played cards, there was money to be made.

Lowering himself back onto his seat at the rear of the speeder, Des decided that maybe he wasn’t quite ready to hit his bunk after all.

By the time the transport stopped on the edges of the colony, Des’s body was tingling with anticipation. He hopped out and sauntered toward his barracks at a leisurely pace, fighting his own eagerness and the urge to run. Even now, he imagined, the Republic soldiers and their credits would be sitting at the gaming tables in the colony’s only cantina.

Still, there was no point in rushing over there. It was late afternoon, the sun just beginning its descent beyond the horizon to the north. By now most of the miners from the night shift would be awake. Many of them would already be at the cantina, whiling away the time until they had to make the journey out to the mines to start their shift. For the next two hours Des knew he’d be lucky to find a place to sit down in the cantina, never mind finding an empty seat at a pazaak or sabacc table. Meanwhile, it would be another few hours before the men working the day shift climbed onto the waiting transports to head back to their homes; he’d get to the cantina long before any of them.

Back at his barracks, he stripped off his grime-stained coveralls and climbed into the deserted communal showers, scouring the sweat and fine rock dust from his body. Then he changed into some clean clothes and sauntered out into the street, making his way slowly toward the cantina on the far side of town.

The cantina didn’t have a name; it didn’t need one. Nobody ever had any trouble finding it. Apatros was a small world, barely more than a moon with an atmosphere and some indigenous plant life. There were precious few places to go: the mines, the colony, or the barren wastes in between. The mines were a massive complex encompassing the caves and tunnels dug by ORO, as well as the refining and processing branches of ORO’s operations.

The spaceports were located there, too. Freighters left daily with shipments of cortosis bound for some wealthier world closer to Coruscant and the Galactic Core, and incoming vessels bringing equipment and supplies to keep the mines running arrived every other day. Employees who weren’t strong enough to mine cortosis worked in the refining plants or the spaceport. The pay wasn’t as good, but they tended to live longer.

But no matter where people worked, they all came home to the same place at the end of their shifts. The colony was nothing more than a ramshackle town of temporary barracks thrown together by ORO to house the few hundred workers expected to keep the mines running. Like the world itself, the colony was officially known as Apatros. To those who lived there, it was more commonly referred to as “the muck-huts.” Every building was the same shade of dingy gray durasteel, the exterior weathered and worn. The insides of the buildings were virtually identical, temporary workers’ barracks that had become all too permanent. Each structure housed four small private rooms meant for two people, but often holding three or more. Sometimes entire families shared one of those rooms, unless they could find the credits for the outrageous rents ORO charged for more space. Each room had bunks built into the walls and a single door that opened onto a narrow hall; a communal bathroom and shower were located at the end. The doors tended to squeak on ill-fitting hinges that were never tended to; the roofs were a patchwork of quick fixes to seal up the leaks that inevitably sprang whenever it rained. Broken windows were taped against the wind and cold, but never replaced. A thin layer of dust accumulated over everything, but few of the residents ever bothered to sweep out their domiciles.

The entire colony was less than a kilometer on each square side, making it possible to walk from any given building to any of the other identical structures in fewer than twenty standard minutes. Despite the unrelenting similarity of the architecture, navigating the colony was easy. The barracks had been placed in straight rows and columns, forming a grid of utilitarian streets between the uniformly spaced domiciles. The streets couldn’t exactly be called clean, though they were hardly festering with garbage. ORO cleared trash and refuse just often enough to keep conditions sanitary, since an outbreak of diseases bred by filth would adversely affect the mine’s production. However, the company didn’t seem to mind the cluttered junk that inevitably accumulated throughout the town. Broken-down generators, rusted-out machinery, corroded scraps of metal, and discarded, worn-out tools crowded the narrow streets between the barracks.

There were only two structures in the colony that were in any way distinguished from the rest. One was the ORO market, the only store onworld. It had once been a barracks, but the bunks had been replaced with shelves, and the communal shower area was now a secure storage room. A small black-and-white sign had been fastened to the wall outside, listing the hours of operation. There were no displays to lure shoppers in, and no advertising. The market stocked only the most basic items, all at scandalous markups. Credit was gladly advanced against future wages at ORO’s typically high interest rate, guaranteeing that buyers would spend even more hours in the mine working off their purchases.

The other dissimilar building was the cantina itself, a magnificent triumph of beauty and design when compared with the dismal homogeny of the rest of the colony. The cantina was built a few hundred meters beyond the edge of the town, set well apart from the gray grid of barracks. It stood only three stories high, but because every other structure was limited to a single floor it dominated the landscape. Not that it needed to be that tall. Inside the cantina everything was located on the ground floor; the upper stories were merely a façade constructed for show by Groshik, the Neimoidian owner and bartender. Above the first-floor ceiling, the second and third floors didn’t really exist—there were only the rising walls and a dome made of tinted violet glass, illuminated from within. Matching violet lights covered the pale blue exterior walls. On almost any world the effect would have been ostentatious and tacky, but amid the gray of Apatros it was doubly so. Groshik often proclaimed that he had intentionally made his cantina as garish as possible, simply to offend the ORO powers-that-be. The sentiment made him popular with the miners, but Des doubted if ORO really cared one way or the other. Groshik could paint his cantina any color he wanted, as long as he gave the corporation its cut of the profits each week.

The twenty-standard-hour day of Apatros was split evenly between the two shifts of miners. Des and the rest of the early crew worked from 0800 to 1800; his counterparts worked from 1800 to 0800. Groshik, in an effort to maximize profits, opened each afternoon at 1300 and didn’t close for ten straight hours. This allowed him to serve the night-crew workers before they started and catch the day crew when that shift was over. He’d close at 0300, clean for two hours, sleep for six, then get up at 1100 and start the process all over again. His routine was well known to all the miners; the Neimoidian was as regular as the rising and setting of Apatros’s pale orange sun.

As Des crossed the distance between the edge of the colony proper and the cantina’s welcoming door, he could already hear the sounds coming from inside: loud music, laughter, chatter, clinking glasses. It was almost 1600 now. The day shift had two hours to go before quitting time, but the cantina was still packed with nightshift workers looking to have a drink or something to eat before they boarded the shuttles that would take them to the mines.

Des didn’t recognize any faces: the day and night crews rarely crossed paths. The patrons were mostly humans, with a few Twi’leks, Sullustans, and Cereans filling out the crowd. Des was surprised to notice a Rodian, too. Apparently the night crew were more tolerant of other species than the day shift. There were no waitresses, servers, or dancers; the only employee in the cantina was Groshik himself. Anyone who wanted a drink had to come up to the large bar built into the back wall and order it.

Des pushed his way through the crowd. Groshik saw him coming and momentarily dipped out of sight behind the bar, reappearing with a mug of Gizer ale just as Des reached the counter.

“You’re here early today,” Groshik said as he set the drink down with a heavy thud. His low, gravelly voice was difficult to hear above the din of the crowd. His words always had a guttural quality, as if he were speaking from the very back of his throat.

The Neimoidian liked him, though Des wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because he’d watched Des grow up from a young kid to a man; maybe he just felt sorry Des had been stuck with such a rankweed for a father. Whatever the reason, there was a standing arrangement between the two: Des never had to pay for a drink if it was poured without being asked for. Des gratefully accepted the gift and downed it in one long draft, then slammed the empty mug back down onto the table.

“Ran into a bit of trouble with Gerd,” he replied, wiping his mouth. “I bit his thumb off, so they let me go home early.”

Groshik tilted his head to one side and fixed his enormous red eyes on Des. The sour expression on his amphibian-like face didn’t change, but his body shook ever so slightly. Des knew him well enough to realize the Neimoidian was laughing.

“Seems like a fair trade,” Groshik croaked, refilling the mug.

Des didn’t guzzle the second drink as he had the first. Groshik rarely gave him more than one on the house, and he didn’t want to abuse the bartender’s generosity.

He turned his attention to the crowd. The Republic visitors were easy to spot. Four humans—two men, two women—and a male Ithorian in crisp navy uniforms. It wasn’t just their clothes that made them stand out, though. They all stood straight and tall, whereas most of the miners tended to hunch forward, as if carrying a great weight on their backs.

On one side of the main room, a smaller section was roped off from the rest of the cantina. It was the only part of the place Groshik had nothing to do with. The ORO Company allowed gambling on Apatros, but only if it was in charge of the tables. Officially this was to keep anyone from cheating, but everyone knew ORO’s real concern was keeping the wagers in check. It didn’t want one of its employees to win big and pay off all his or her debts in one lucky night. By keeping the maximum limits low, ORO made sure it was more profitable to work the mines than the tables.

In the gaming section were four more naval soldiers wearing the uniform of the Republic fleet, along with a dozen or so miners. A Twi’lek woman with the rank of petty officer on her lapel was playing pazaak. A young ensign was sitting at the sabacc table, talking loudly to everyone around him, though nobody seemed to be listening to him. Two more officers—both human, one male, one female—also sat at the sabacc table. The woman was a lieutenant; the man bore the insignia of a full commander. Des assumed they were the senior officers in charge of the mission to receive the cortosis shipment.

“I see you’ve noticed our recruiters,” Groshik muttered.

The war against the Sith—officially nothing more than a series of protracted military engagements, even though the whole galaxy knew it was a war—required a steady stream of young and eager cadets for the front lines. And for some reason the Republic always expected the citizens on the Outer Rim worlds to jump at the chance to join them. Whenever a Republic military crew passed through Apatros, the officers tried to round up new recruits. They’d buy a round of drinks, then use it as an excuse to start up a conversation, usually about the glorious and heroic life of being a soldier. Sometimes they’d play up the brutality of the Sith. Other times they’d spin promises of a better life in the Republic military—all the while pretending to be friendly and sympathetic to the locals, hoping a few would join their cause.

Des suspected they received some kind of bonus for any new recruit they conned into signing up. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t going to find too many takers on Apatros. The Republic wasn’t too popular on the Rim; people here, including Des, knew the Core Worlds exploited small, remote planets like Apatros for their own gain. The Sith found a lot of anti-Republic sympathizers out here on the fringes of civilized space; that was one of the reasons their numbers kept growing as the war dragged on.

Despite their dissatisfaction with the Core Worlds, people still might have signed up with the recruiters if the Republic wasn’t so concerned with following the absolute letter of the law. Anyone hoping to escape Apatros and the clutches of the mining corporation was in for a rude shock: debts to ORO still had to be paid, even by recruits protecting the galaxy against the rising Sith threat. If someone owed money to a legitimate corporation, the Republic fleet would garnish his or her wages until those debts were paid. Not too many miners were excited about the prospect of joining a war only to have the privilege of not getting paid.

Some of the miners resented the senior officers and their constant push to lure naïve young men and women into joining their cause. It didn’t bother Des, though. He’d listen to them prattle on all night, as long as they kept playing cards. He figured it was a small price to pay for getting his hands on their credits.

His eagerness must have shown, at least to Groshik. “Any chance you heard a Republic crew was stopping by and then picked a fight with Gerd just so you could get here early?”

Des shook his head. “No. Just a happy coincidence, is all. What angle are they working this time? Glory of the Republic?”

“Trying to warn us about the horrors of the Brotherhood of Darkness,” was the carefully neutral reply. “Not going over too well.”

The cantina owner kept his real opinions to himself when it came to matters of politics. His customers were free to talk about any subject they wanted, but no matter how heated their arguments became, he always refused to take sides.

“Bad for business,” he had explained once. “Agree with someone and they’ll be your friend for the rest of the night. Cross them and they might hate you for weeks.” Neimoidians were known for their shrewd business sense, and Groshik was no exception.

A miner pushed his way up to the bar and demanded a drink. When Groshik went to fill the order, Des turned to study the gaming area. There weren’t any free seats at the sabacc table, so for the time being he was forced into the role of spectator. For well over an hour he studied the plays and the wagers of the newcomers, paying particular attention to the senior officers. They tended to be better players than the enlisted troops, probably because they had more credits to lose.

The game on Apatros followed a modified version of the Bespin Standard rules. The basics of the game were simple: make a hand as close to twenty-three as possible without going over. Each round, a player had to either bet to stay in the hand, or fold. Any player who chose to stay in could draw a new card, discard a card, or place a card into the interference field to lock in its value. At the end of any round a player could come up, revealing his or her hand and forcing all other players to show their cards, as well. Best hand at the table won the hand pot. Any score over twenty-three, or below negative twenty-three, was a bomb-out that required the player to pay a penalty. And if a player had a hand that totaled exactly twenty-three—a pure sabacc—he or she won the sabacc pot as a bonus. But what with random shifts that could unexpectedly change the value of cards from round to round, and other players coming up early, a pure sabacc was a lot harder to achieve than it sounded.

Sabacc was more than a game of luck. It was about strategy and style, knowing when to bluff and when to back down, knowing how to adapt to the ever-changing cards. Some players were too cautious, never betting more than the minimum raise even when they had a good hand. Others were too aggressive, trying to bully the rest of the table with outrageous bets even when they had nothing. A player’s natural tendencies showed through if you knew what to look for.

The ensign, for example, was clearly new to the game. He kept staying in with weak hands instead of folding his cards. He was a chaser, not satisfied with cards good enough to collect the hand pot. He was always looking for the perfect hand, hoping to win big and collect the sabacc pot that kept on growing until it was won. As a result, he kept getting caught with bomb-out hands and having to pay a penalty. It didn’t seem to slow his betting, though. He was one of those players with more credits than sense, which suited Des just fine.

To be an expert sabacc player, you had to know how to control the table. It didn’t take Des many hands to realize the Republic commander was doing just that. He knew how to bet big and make other players fold winning hands. He knew when to bet small to lure others into playing hands they should have folded. He didn’t worry much about his own cards; he knew that the secret to sabacc was figuring out what everyone else was holding … and then letting them think they knew what cards he was holding. It was only when all the hands were revealed and he was raking in the chips that his opponents would realize how wrong they’d been.

He was good, Des had to admit. Better than most of the Republic players who passed through. Despite his pleasant appearance, he was ruthless in scooping up pot after pot. But Des had a good feeling; sometimes he just knew he couldn’t lose. He was going to win tonight … and win big.

There was a groan from one of the miners at the table. “Another round and that sabacc pot was mine!” he said, shaking his head. “You’re lucky you came up when you did,” he added, speaking to the commander.

Des knew it wasn’t luck. The miner had been so excited, he was twitching in his seat. Anyone with half a brain could see he was working toward a powerful hand. The commander had seen it and made his move, cutting the hand short and chopping the other gambler’s hopes off at the knees.

“That’s it,” the miner said, pushing away from the table. “I’m tapped out.”

“Looks like now’s your chance,” Groshik whispered under his breath as he swept past to pour another drink. “Good luck.”

I don’t need luck tonight, Des thought. He crossed the floor of the cantina and stepped over the nanosilk rope into the ORO-controlled gaming room.

RISE OF THE EMPIRE
 (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.

  1

SCRAMBLE LINE ENCRYPTED

STAND BY STAND BY

GEONOSIS FORWARD CONTROL TO FLEET SUPPORT, ORD MANTELL.

PREPARE TO RECEIVE CASEVAC TRANSPORT. MED TRIAGE TEAM ESTIMATE SERIOUS INJURIES, TWELVE THOUSAND, REPEAT TWELVE THOUSAND. WALKING WOUNDED EIGHT THOUSAND, REPEAT EIGHT THOUSAND. ETA TEN HOURS. LOGISTICS PRIORITY FOR BACTA TANK SUPPORT TEAMS.

PREP FOR SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND COMBAT-FIT TROOPS, REPEAT SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND, PENDING REDEPLOYMENT. PRIORITY WEAPONS SUPPORT FOR COMMANDO UNITS.

THAT IS ALL. OUT.

Republic assault ship Implacable: inbound for extraction from Geonosis. Stand by.

Republic Commando 1136 studied every face in line waiting to board the gunships.

Some were helmeted, and some were not, but—one way or another—they all had his face. And they were all strangers.

“Move it,” the loadmaster shouted, gesturing side-to-side with one outstretched arm. “Come on, shift it, people—fast as you can.” The gunships dropped down in clouds of dust and troopers embarked, some turning to pull comrades inboard so the ships could lift again quickly. There was no reason to scramble for it. They’d done it a thousand times in training; extraction from a real battle was what they’d prepared for. This wasn’t a retreat. They’d grabbed their first victory.

The gunships’ downdraft kicked the red Geonosian soil into the air. RC-1136—Darman—took off his helmet and ran his gauntlet carefully across the pale gray dome, wiping away the dust and noting a few scrapes and burn marks.

The loadmaster turned to him. He was one of the very, very few outsiders whom Darman had ever seen working with the Grand Army, a short, wrinkled Duros with a temper to match. “Are you embarking or what?”

Darman continued wiping his helmet. “I’m waiting for my mates,” he said.

“You shift your shiny silver backside now,” the loadmaster said irritably. “I got a schedule.”

Darman carefully brought up his knuckle plate just under the loadmasters’s chin, and held it there. He didn’t need to eject the vibroblade and he didn’t need to say a word. He’d made his point.

“Well, whenever you’re ready, sir,” the Duros said, stepping back to chivy clone troopers instead. It wasn’t a great idea to upset a commando, especially not one coming down from the adrenaline high of combat.

But there was still no sign of the rest of his squad. Darman knew that there was no point in waiting any longer. They hadn’t called in. Maybe they had comlink failures. Maybe they had made it onto another gunship.

It was the first time in his artificially short life that Darman hadn’t been able to reach out and touch the men he had been raised with.

He waited half a standard hour more anyway, until the gunships became less frequent and the lines of troopers became shorter. Eventually there was nobody standing on the desert plain but him, the Duros loadmaster, and half a dozen clone troopers. It was the last lift of the day.

“You better come now, sir,” the loadmaster said. “There’s nobody unaccounted for. Nobody alive, anyway.”

Darman looked around the horizon one last time, still feeling as if he were turning his back on someone reaching out to him.

“I’m coming,” he said, and brought up the rear of the line. As the gunship lifted, he watched the swirling dust, dwindling rock formations, and scattered shrinking patches of scrub until Geonosis became a blur of dull red.

He could still search the Implacable. It wasn’t over yet.

The gunship slipped into the Implacable’s giant docking bay, and Darman looked down into the cavern, onto a sea of white armor and orderly movement. The first thing that struck him when the gunship killed its thrusters and locked down on its pad was how quiet everyone seemed.

In the crowded bay full of troopers, the air stank of sweat and stale fear and the throat-rasping smell of discharged blaster rifles. But it was so silent that if Darman hadn’t seen the evidence of exhausted and injured men, he’d have believed that nothing significant had happened in the last thirty hours.

The deck vibrated under the soles of his boots. He was still staring down at them, studying the random patterns of Geonosian dust that clung to them, when an identical pair came into view.

“Number?” said a voice that was also his own. The commander swept him with a tally sensor: he didn’t need Darman to tell him his number, or anything else for that matter, because the sensors in the enhanced Katarn armor reported his status silently, electronically. No significant injury. The triage team on Geonosis had waved him past, concentrating on the injured, ignoring both those too badly hurt to help and those who could help themselves. “Are you listening to me? Come on. Talk to me, son.”

“I’m okay, sir,” he said. “Sir, RC-one-one-three-six. I’m not in shock. I’m fine.” He paused. Nobody else was going to call him by his squad nickname—Darman—again. They were all dead, he knew it. Jay, Vin, Taler. He just knew. “Sir, any news of RC-one-one-three-five—”

“No,” said the commander, who had obviously heard similar questions every time he stopped to check. He gestured with the small bar in his hand. “If they’re not in casevac or listed on this sweep, then they didn’t make it.”

It was stupid to ask. Darman should have known better. Clone troopers—and especially Republic commandos—just got on with the job. That was their sole purpose. And they were lucky, their training sergeant had told them; outside, in the ordinary world, every being from every species in the galaxy fretted about their purpose in life, searching for meaning. A clone didn’t need to. Clones knew. They had been perfected for their role, and doubt need never trouble them.

Darman had never known what doubt was until now. No amount of training had prepared him for this. He found a space against a bulkhead and sat down.

A clone trooper settled down next to him, squeezing into the gap and briefly clunking a shoulder plate against his. They glanced at each other. Darman rarely had any contact with the other clones: commandos trained apart from everyone, including ARC troopers. The trooper’s armor was white, lighter, less resistant; commandos enjoyed upgraded protection. And Darman displayed no rank colors.

But they both knew exactly who and what they were.

“Nice Deece,” the trooper said enviously. He was looking at the DC-17: troopers were issued the heavier, lower-spec rifle, the DC-15. “Ion pulse blaster, RPG anti-armor, and sniper?”

“Yeah.” Every item of his gear was manufactured to a higher spec. A trooper’s life was less valuable than a commando’s. It was the way things were, and Darman had never questioned it—not for long, anyway. “Full house.”

“Tidy.” The trooper nodded approval. “Job done, eh?”

“Yeah,” Darman said quietly. “Job done.”

The trooper didn’t say anything else. Maybe he was wary of conversation with commandos. Darman knew what troopers thought about him and his kind. They don’t train like us and they don’t fight like us. They don’t even talk like us. A bunch of prima donnas.

Darman didn’t think he was arrogant. It was just that he could do every job a soldier could be called upon to do, and then some: siege assault, counterinsurgency, hostage extraction, demolitions, assassination, surveillance, and every kind of infantry activity on any terrain and in any environment, at any time. He knew he could, because he’d done it. He’d done it in training, first with simunition and then with live rounds. He’d done it with his squad, the three brothers with whom he’d spent every moment of his conscious life. They’d competed against other squads, thousands just like them, but not like them, because they were squad brothers, and that was special.

He had never been taught how to live apart from the squad, though. Now he would learn the hardest way of all.

Darman had absolute confidence that he was one of the best special ops soldiers ever created. He was undistracted by the everyday concerns of raising a family and making a living, things that his instructors said he was lucky never to know.

But now he was alone. Very, very alone. It was very distracting indeed.

He considered this for a long time in silence. Surviving when the rest of your squad had been killed was no cause for pride. It felt instead like something his training sergeant had described as shame. That was what you felt when you lost a battle, apparently.

But they had won. It was their first battle, and they had won.

The landing ramp of the Implacable eased down, and the bright sunlight of Ord Mantell streamed in. Darman replaced his helmet without thinking and stood in an orderly line, waiting to disembark and be reassigned. He was going to be chilled down, kept in suspended animation until duty called again.

So this was the aftermath of victory. He wondered how much worse defeat might feel.

Imbraani, Qiilura: 40 light-years from Ord Mantell, Tingel Arm

The field of barq flowed from silver to ruby as the wind from the southwest bent the ripening grain in waves. It could have been a perfect late-summer day; instead it was turning into one of the worst days of Etain Tur-Mukan’s life.

Etain had run and run and she had nothing left in her. She flung herself flat between the furrows, not caring where she fell. Etain held her breath as something stinking and wet squelched under her.

The pursuing Weequay couldn’t hear her above the wind, she knew, but she held her breath anyway.

“Hey girlie!” His boots crunched closer. He was panting. “Where you go? Don’t be shy.”

Don’t breathe.

“I got bottle of urrqal. You want to have party?” He had a remarkably large vocabulary for a Weequay, all of it centered on his baser needs. “I fun when you get to know me.”

I should have waited for it to get dark. I could influence his mind, try to make him leave.

But she hadn’t. And she couldn’t, try as she might to concentrate. She was too full of adrenaline and uncontrolled panic.

“Come on, you scrag-end, where are you? I find you …”

He sounded as if he was kicking his way through the crop, and getting closer. If she got up and ran for it, she was dead. If she stayed where she was, he’d find her—eventually. He wasn’t going to get bored, and he wasn’t going to give up.

“Girlie …”

The Weequay’s voice was close, to her right, about twenty meters away. She sipped a strangled breath and clamped her lips shut again, lungs aching, eyes streaming with the effort.

“Girlie …” Closer. He was going to step right on her. “Gir-leeeeee …”

She knew what he’d do when he found her. If she was lucky, he’d kill her afterward.

“Gir—”

The Weequay was interrupted by a loud, wet thwack. He let out a grunt and then there was a second thwack—shorter, sharper, harder. Etain heard a squeal of pain.

“How many times have I got to tell you, di’kut?” It was a different voice, human, with an hard edge of authority. Thwack. “Don’t—waste—my—time.” Another thwack: another squeal. Etain kept her face pressed in the dirt. “You get drunk one more time, you go chasing females one more time, and I’m going to slit you from here to—here.”

The Weequay shrieked. It was the sort of incoherent animal sound that beings made when pain overwhelmed them. Etain had heard too much of that sound in her short time on Qiilura. Then there was silence.

She hadn’t heard the voice before, but she didn’t need to. She knew exactly who it belonged to.

Etain strained to listen, half expecting a heavy boot to suddenly stamp on her back, but all she could hear was the swish and crunch of two pairs of feet wading through the crop. Away from her. She caught snatches of the fading conversation as the wind took it: the Weequay was still being berated.

“… more important …”

What was?

“… later, but right now, di’kut, I need you to … okay? Or I’ll cut …”

Etain waited. Eventually all she could hear was the breath of the wind, the rustling grain, and the occasional fluting call of a ground-eel seeking a mate. She allowed herself to breathe normally again, but still she waited, facedown in ripe manure, until dusk started to fall. She had to move now. The gdans would be out hunting, combing the fields in packs. On top of that, the smell that hadn’t bothered her while she was gripped by terror was starting to really bother her now.

She eased herself up on her elbows, then her knees, and looked around.

Why did they have to manure barq so late in the season anyway? She fumbled in the pockets of her cloak for a cloth. Now if only she could find a stream, she could clean herself up. She pulled a handful of stalks, crushed them into a ball, and tried to scrape off the worst of the dung and debris stuck to her.

“That’s a pretty expensive crop to be using for that,” a voice said.

Etain gulped in a breath and spun around to find a local in a grubby smock scowling at her. He looked thin, worn out, and annoyed; he was holding a threshing tool. “Do you know how much that stuff’s worth?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. Sliding her hand carefully inside her cloak, she felt for the familiar cylinder. She hadn’t wanted the Weequay to know that she was a Jedi, but if this farmer was considering turning her in for a few loaves or a bottle of urrqal, she’d need her lightsaber handy. “It was your barq or my life, I’m afraid.”

The farmer stared at the crushed stalks and the scattered bead-like grains, tight-lipped. Yes, barq fetched a huge price in the restaurants of Coruscant: it was a luxury, and the people who grew it for export couldn’t afford it. That didn’t seem to bother the Neimoidians who controlled the trade. It never did.

“I’ll pay for the damage,” Etain said, her hand still inside the cloak.

“What were they after you for?” the farmer asked, ignoring her offer.

“The usual,” she said.

“Oh-ah, you’re not that good looking.”

“Charming.”

“I know who you are.”

Oh no. Her grip closed. “You do?”

“I reckon.”

A little more food for his family. A few hours’ drunken oblivion, courtesy of urrqal. That was all she was to him. He made as if to step closer and she drew her arm clear of her cloak, because she was fed up with running and she didn’t like the look of that threshing tool.

Vzzzzzmmmm.

“Oh, great,” the farmer sighed, eyeing the shaft of pure blue light. “Not one of you lot. That’s all we need.”

“Yes,” she said, and held the lightsaber steady in front of her face. Her stomach had knotted, but she kept her voice under control. “I am Padawan Etain Tur-Mukan. You can try to turn me in, if you want to test my skill, but I’d prefer that you help me instead. Your call, sir.”

The farmer stared at the lightsaber as if he was trying to work out a price for it. “Didn’t help your Master much, that thing, did it?”

“Master Fulier was unfortunate. And betrayed.” She lowered the lightsaber but didn’t cut the beam. “Are you going to help me?”

“We’re going to have Ghez Hokan’s thugs all over us if I—”

“I think they’re busy,” Etain said.

“What do you want from us?”

“Shelter, for the moment.”

The farmer sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Okay. Come on, Padawan—”

“Get used to calling me Etain, please.” She thumbed off the lightsaber: the light died with a ffumm sound, and she slipped the hilt back inside her cloak. “Just to be on the safe side.”

Etain trailed after him, trying not to smell herself, but it was hard, nauseatingly hard. Even a scent-hunting gdan wouldn’t recognize her as a human. It was getting dark now, and the farmer kept glancing over his shoulder at her.

“Oh-ah.” He shook his head, engaged in some internal conversation. “I’m Birhan, and this is my land. And I thought you lot were supposed to be able to use some sort of mind control tricks.”

“How do you know I haven’t?” Etain lied.

“Oh-ah,” he said, and nothing more.

She wasn’t going to volunteer the obvious if he hadn’t spotted it for himself. A disappointment to her Master, she was clearly not the best of the bunch. She struggled with the Force and she grappled with self-discipline, and she was here because she and Master Fulier happened to be nearby when a job needed doing. Fulier never could resist a challenge and long odds, and it looked as if he’d paid the price. They hadn’t found his body yet, but there had been no word from him, either.

Yes, Etain was a Padawan, technically speaking.

She just happened to be one who was a breath away from building permadomes in refugee camps. She reasoned that part of a Jedi’s skill was the simple use of psychology. And if Birhan wanted to think the Force was strong in her, and that there was a lot more behind the external shell of a gawky, plain girl covered in stinking dung, then that was fine by her.

It would keep her alive a little longer while she worked out what to do next.

Fleet Support, Ord Mantell, barrack block 5 Epsilon

It was a waste, a rotten waste.

RC-1309 busied himself maintaining his boots. He cleaned out the clamps, blowing the red dust clear with a squirt of air from the pressure gun. He rinsed the liners and shook them dry. There was no point being idle while he was waiting to be chilled down.

“Sergeant?”

He looked up. The commando who had walked in placed his survival pack, armor, and black bodysuit on the bunk opposite and stared back. His readout panel identified him as RC-8015.

“I’m Fi,” he said, and held out his hand for shaking. “So you lost your squad, too.”

“Niner,” RC-1309 said without taking the proffered hand. “So, ner vod—my brother—you’re the sole survivor?”

“Yes.”

“Did you hold back while your brothers pressed on? Or were you just lucky?”

Fi stood there with his hands on his hips, identical to Niner in every way except that he was … different. He spoke a little differently. He smelled subtly different. He moved his hands … not like Niner’s squad did, not at all.

“I did my job,” Fi said carefully. “And I’d rather be with them than here … ner vod.”

Niner considered him for a while, and went back to cleaning his boots. Fi put his kit in the locker beside the bunks, then swung himself up into the top rack in one smooth motion. He folded his arms under his head very precisely and lay staring up at the bulkhead as if he were meditating.

If he had been Sev, Niner would have known exactly what he was doing, even without looking. But Sev was gone.

Clone troopers lost brothers in training. So did commandos. But troopers were socialized with whole sections, platoons, companies, even regiments, and that meant that even after the inevitable deaths and removals during live exercises, there were still plenty of people around you whom you knew well. Commandos worked solely with each other.

Niner had lost everyone he had grown up with, and so had Fi.

He’d lost a brother before—Two-Eight—on exercise. The three survivors had welcomed the replacement, although they had always felt he was slightly different—a little distant—as if he had never quite believed he’d been accepted.

But they performed to expected levels of excellence together—and as long as they did, their Kaminoan technicians and motley band of alien instructors didn’t seem to care how they felt about it.

But the commandos cared. They just kept it to themselves.

“It was a waste,” Niner said.

“What was?” Fi said.

“Deploying us in an operation like Geonosis. It was an infantry job. Not special ops.”

“That sounds like criticism of—”

“I’m just making the point that we couldn’t perform to maximum effectiveness.”

“Understood. Maybe when we’re revived we’ll be able to do what we’re really trained for.”

Niner wanted to say that he missed his squad, but that wasn’t something to confide in a stranger. He inspected his boots and was satisfied. Then he stood up and spread his bodysuit flat on the mattress and checked it for vacuum integrity with the sweep-sensor in his glove. It was a ritual so ingrained in him that he hardly thought about it: maintain boots, suit, and armor plates, recalibrate helmet systems, check heads-up display, strip down and reassemble DC-17, empty and repack survival pack. Done. It took him twenty-six minutes and twenty seconds, give or take two seconds. Well-maintained gear was often the difference between life and death. So was two seconds.

He closed the top of his pack with a clack and secured the seal. Then he checked the catches that held the separate ordnance pack to see that they were moving freely. That mattered when he needed to jettison explosive materials fast. When he glanced up, Fi was propped on one elbow, looking down at him from the bunk.

“Dry rations go on the fifth layer,” he said.

Niner always packed them farther down, between his spare rappelling line and his hygiene kit. “In your squad, maybe,” he said, and carried on.

Fi took the hint and rolled over on his back again, no doubt to meditate on how differently things might be done in the future.

After a while he started singing very quietly, almost under his breath: Kom’rk tsad droten troch nyn ures adenn, Dha Werda Verda a’den tratu. They were the wrath of the warrior’s shadow and the gauntlet of the Republic; Niner knew the song. It was a traditional Mandalorian war chant, designed to boost the morale of normal men who needed a bit of psyching up before a fight. The words had been altered a little to have meaning for the armies of clone warriors.

We don’t need all that, Niner thought. We were born to fight, nothing else.

But he found himself joining in anyway. It was a comfort. He placed his gear in the locker, rolled onto his bunk, and matched note and beat perfectly with Fi, two identical voices in the deserted barrack room.

Niner would have traded every remaining moment of his life for a chance to rerun the previous day’s engagement. He would have held Sev and DD back; he would have sent O-Four west with the E-Web cannon.

But he hadn’t.

Gra’tua cuun hett su dralshy’a. Our vengeance burns brighter still.

Fi’s voice trailed off into silence the merest fraction of a section before Niner’s. He heard him swallow hard.

“I was up there with them, Sarge,” he said quietly. “I didn’t hang back. Not at all.”

Niner closed his eyes. He regretted hinting that Fi might have done anything less.

“I know, brother,” he said. “I know.”

REBELLION
 (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 tac-fiver, 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 laserfire.

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.

THE NEW REPUBLIC
 (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.

1

You’re good, Corran, but you’re no Luke Skywalker. Corran Horn’s cheeks still burned at the memory of Commander Antilles’s evaluation of his last simulator exercise. The line had been a simple comment, not meant to be cruel nor delivered that way, but it cut deep into Corran. I’ve never tried to suggest I’m that good of a pilot.

He shook his head. No, you just wanted it to be self-evident and easily recognized by everyone around you. Reaching out he flicked the starter switches for the X-wing simulator’s engines. “Green One has four starts and is go.” All around him in the cockpit various switches, buttons, and monitors flashed to life. “Primary and secondary power is at full.”

Ooryl Qrygg, his Gand wingman, reported similar start-up success in a high-pitched voice. “Green Two is operational.”

Green Three and Four checked in, then the external screens came alive projecting an empty starfield. “Whistler, have you finished the navigation calculations?”

The green and white R2 unit seated behind Corran hooted, then the navdata spilled out over Corran’s main monitor. He punched a button sending the same coordinates out to the other pilots in Green Flight. “Go to light speed and rendezvous on the Redemption.”

As Corran engaged the X-wing’s hyperdrive, the stars elongated themselves into white cylinders, then snapped back into pinpoints and began to revolve slowly, transforming themselves into a tunnel of white light. Corran fought the urge to use the stick to compensate for the roll. In space, and especially hyperspace, up and down were relative. How his ship moved through hyperspace didn’t really matter—as long as it remained on the course Whistler had calculated and had attained sufficient velocity before entering hyperspace, he’d arrive intact.

Flying into a black hole would actually make this run easier. Every pilot dreaded the Redemption run. The scenario was based on an Imperial attack on evacuation ships back before the first Death Star had been destroyed. While the Redemption waited for three Medevac shuttles and the corvette Korolev to dock and off-load wounded, the Imperial frigate Warspite danced around the system and dumped out TIE fighters and added bombers to the mix to do as much damage as they could.

The bombers, with a full load of missiles, could do a lot of damage. All the pilots called the Redemption scenario by another name: the Requiem scenario. The Warspite would only deploy four starfighters and a half-dozen bombers—known in pilot slang as “eyeballs” and “dupes” respectively—but it would do so in a pattern that made it all but impossible for the pilots to save the Korolev. The corvette was just one big target, and the TIE bombers had no trouble unloading all their missiles into it.

Stellar pinpoints elongated again as the fighter came out of hyperspace. Off to the port side Corran saw the Redemption. Moments later Whistler reported that the other fighters and all three Medevac shuttles had arrived. The fighters checked in and the first shuttle began its docking maneuver with the Redemption.

“Green One, this is Green Four.”

“Go ahead, Four.”

“By the book, or are we doing something fancy?”

Corran hesitated before answering. By book, Nawara Ven had referred to the general wisdom about the scenario. It stated that one pilot should play fleethund and race out to engage the first TIE flight while the other three fighters remained in close as backup. As long as three fighters stayed at home, it appeared, the Warspite dropped ships off at a considerable distance from the Korolev. When they didn’t, it got bolder and the whole scenario became very bloody.

The problem with going by the book was that it wasn’t a very good strategy. It meant one pilot had to deal with five TIEs—two eyeballs and three dupes—all by himself, then turn around and engage five more. Even with them coming in waves, the chances of being able to succeed against those odds were slim.

Doing it any other way was disastrous. Besides, what loyal son of Corellia ever had any use for odds?

“By the book. Keep the home fires burning and pick up after me.”

“Done. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Corran reached up with his right hand and pressed it against the lucky charm he wore on a chain around his neck. Though he could barely feel the coin through his gloves and the thick material of his flight suit, the familiar sensation of the metal resting against his breastbone brought a smile to his face. It worked for you a lot, Dad, let’s hope all its luck hasn’t run out yet.

He openly acknowledged that he’d been depending quite a bit on luck to see him through the difficulties of settling in with the Alliance forces. Learning the slang took some work—moving from calling TIE starfighters “eyeballs” to calling Interceptors “squints” made a certain amount of sense, but many other terms had been born of logic that escaped him. Everything about the Rebellion seemed odd in comparison to his previous life and fitting in had not been easy.

Nor will be winning this scenario.

The Korolev materialized and moved toward the Redemption, prompting Corran to begin his final check. He’d mulled the scenario over in his mind time and time again. In previous runs, when he served as a home guard to someone else’s fleethund, he’d had Whistler record traces on the TIE timing patterns, flight styles, and attack vectors. While different cadets flew the TIE half of the simulations, the craft dictated their performance and a lot of their initial run sequence had been preprogrammed.

A sharp squawk from Whistler alerted Corran to the Warspite’s arrival. “Great, eleven klicks aft.” Pulling the stick around to the right, Corran brought the X-wing into a wide turn. At the end of it he punched the throttle up to full power. Hitting another switch up to the right, he locked the S-foils into attack position. “Green One engaging.”

Rhysati’s voice came cool and strong through the radio. “Be all over them like drool on a Hutt.”

“I’ll do my best, Green Three.” Corran smiled and waggled the X-wing as he flew back through the Alliance formation and out toward the Warspite. Whistler announced the appearance of three TIE bombers with a low tone, then brought the sound up as two TIE fighters joined them.

“Whistler, tag the bombers as targets one, two, and three.” As the R2 unit complied with that order, Corran pushed shield power full to front and brought his laser targeting program up on the main monitor. With his left hand he adjusted the sighting calibration knob on the stick and got the two fighters. Good, looks like three klicks between the eyeballs and the bombers.

Corran’s right hand again brushed the coin beneath his flight suit. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, then settled his hand on the stick and let his thumb hover over the firing button. At two klicks the heads-up display painted a yellow box around the lead TIE fighter. The box went green as the fighter’s image locked into the HUD’s targeting cross and Whistler’s shrill bleat filled the cockpit. Corran’s thumb hit the button, sending three bursts of laser bolts at the lead fighter.

The first set missed but the second and third blasted through the spherical cockpit. The hexagonal solar panels snapped off and spun forward through space while the ion engines exploded into an expanding ball of incandescent gas.

Corran kicked the X-wing up in a ninety-degree snap-roll and sliced through the center of the explosion. Laser fire from the second fighter lit up his forward shields, making it impossible for him to get a good visual line on the TIE. Whistler yowled, complaining about being a target. Corran hurried a shot and knew he hit, but the TIE flashed past and continued on in at the Korolev.

Time to write a new chapter for the book on the Requiem scenario. Corran throttled back almost all the way to zero and let the X-wing decelerate. “Whistler, bring up target one.”

The image of the first TIE bomber filled his monitor. Corran switched over to proton torpedo target control. The HUD changed to a larger box and Whistler began beeping as he worked supplying data to the targeting computer for a missile lock.

“Green One, your velocity is down to one percent. Do you need help?”

“Negative, Green Two.”

“Corran, what are you doing?”

“Making the book a short story.” I hope.

The HUD went red and Whistler’s tone became constant. Corran punched the button and launched the first missile. “Acquire target two.” The HUD flashed yellow, then red, and the pilot launched the second missile.

Numbers scrolled away to zero as the missiles streaked in at their targets. Two kilometers away the first missile hit, shredding the first TIE bomber. Seconds later the second missile hit its target. A novalike explosion lit the simulator’s cockpit, then melted into the blackness of space.

“Acquire target three.”

Even as he gave the order he knew the rate of closure between the bomber and his ship would make the last missile shot all but impossible. “Cancel three.” Corran throttled up again as the third bomber sailed past and brought his ship around. He switched back to laser targeting and climbed right up on the bomber’s stern.

The dupe’s pilot tried to evade him. He juked the double-hulled ship to the left, then started a long turn to the right, but Corran was of no mind to lose him. He cut his speed, which kept the bomber in front of him, then followed it in its turn. As he leveled out again on its tail, he triggered two laser bursts and the targeting computer reported hull damage.

The bomber’s right wing came up in a roll and Corran did the same thing. Had he continued to fly level, the X-wing’s lasers would have passed on either side of the bomber’s fuselage, giving the bomber a few seconds more of life. Keeping the bomber centered in his crosshairs, Corran hit twice more and the bulky craft disintegrated before him.

Pushing his throttle to full, Corran scanned for the fighter he’d missed. He found it two klicks out and going in toward the Korolev. He also found five more TIEs coming in from the other side of the corvette, eighteen kilometers away. Damn, the bomber took more time than I had to give it.

He brought the torpedo targeting program back up and locked on to the remaining fighter. The HUD seemed to take forever before it went red and acquired a lock. Corran fired a missile and watched it blast through the fighter, then turned his attention to the new TIEs.

“Green One, do you want us to engage?”

Corran shook his head. “Negative, Two. Warspite is still here and could dump another flight.” He sighed. “Move to intercept the fighters, but don’t go beyond a klick from the Korolev.”

“On it.”

Good, they can tie the fighters up while I dust these dupes. Corran studied the navigational data Whistler was giving him. The Korolev, the bombers, and his X-wing formed a shrinking triangle. If he flew directly at the bombers he would end up flying in an arc, which would take more time than he had and let them get close enough to launch their missiles at the corvette. That would be less than useless as far as he was concerned.

“Whistler, plot me an intercept point six klicks out from the Korolev.”

The R2 whistled blithely, as if that calculation was so simple even Corran should have been able to do it in his head. Steering toward it, Corran saw he’d have just over a minute to deal with the bombers before they were in firing range on the Korolev. Not enough time.

Flicking two switches, Corran redirected generator energy from recharging his shields and lasers into the engines. It took the acceleration compensator a second to cycle up, so the ship’s burst of speed pushed Corran back into the padding of his command seat. This better work.

“Green One, the Warspite has hyped. Are we released to engage fighters?”

“Affirmative, Three. Go get them.” Corran frowned for a second, knowing his fellow pilots would make short work of the TIE fighters. They would deny him a clean sweep, but he’d willingly trade two TIEs for the corvette. Commander Antilles might have gotten them all himself, but then he’s got two Death Stars painted on the side of his X-wing.

“Whistler, mark each of the bombers four, five, and six.” Range to intercept was three klicks and he had added thirty seconds to his fighting time. “Acquire four.”

The targeting computer showed him to be coming in at a forty-five-degree angle to the flight path of his target, which meant he was way off target. He quickly punched the generator back into recharging lasers and his shields, then pulled even more energy from his quartet of Incom 4L4 fusial thrust engines and shunted it into recharging his weapons and shields.

The resource redirection brought his speed down. Corran pulled back on the stick, easing the X-wing into a turn that brought him head-on into the bombers. Tapping the stick to the left, he centered the targeting box on the first of the dupes.

The HUD started yellow, then quickly went red. Corran fired a missile. “Acquire five.” The HUD started red and Whistler’s keen echoed through the cockpit. The Corellian fired a second missile. “Acquire six.”

Whistler screeched.

Corran looked down at his display. Scrolling up the screen, sandwiched between the reports of missile hits on the three bombers, he saw a notation about Green Two. “Green Two, report.”

“He’s gone, One.”

“A fighter got him?”

“No time to chat …” The comm call from the Twi’lek in Green Four ended in a hiss of static. “Rhysati?”

“Got one, Corran, but this last one is good.”

“Hang on.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Whistler, acquire six.”

The R2 unit hissed. The last bomber had already shot past the intercept point and was bearing in on the Korolev. The pilot had the wide-bodied craft slowly spinning, making it a difficult target for a missile lock. The Korolev, being as big as it was, would present large enough of a target that even a rolling ship could get a lock on it.

And once he has that lock, the Korolev is so much space junk. Corran switched back to lasers and pushed his X-wing forward. Even though two klicks separated them, he triggered a couple of laser blasts. He knew his chances of hitting were not good at that range, but the light from the bolts would shoot past the TIE and give the pilot something to think about. And I want him thinking about me, not that nerf-vette grazing there.

Corran redirected all power back into the engines and shot forward. Two more laser blasts caused the TIE bomber to shy a bit, but it had pushed into target-acquisition range. The ship’s roll began to slow as the pilot fixated on his target, then, as Corran brought his lasers to bear, the bomber jinked and cut away to port.

The Corellian’s eyes narrowed. Bror Jace has got to be flying that thing. He thinks it’s payback time. The other pilot, a human from Thyferra, was—in Corran’s opinion—the second best pilot in the training squadron. He’s going to kill the Korolev and I’ll never hear the end of it. Unless …

Corran pulled all his shield energy forward and left his aft as naked as the shieldless TIE bomber. Following Jace through a barrel roll, he kept the throttle full forward. As they leveled out again Corran triggered a snapshot at the bomber. It caught a piece of one wing, but Jace dove beneath the X-wing’s line of fire. Here we go!

Corran shoved his stick forward to follow the bomber’s dive, but because his rate of speed was a good twenty percent faster than that of Jace’s ship, the X-wing moved into a broad loop. By the time Corran inverted to finish the turn off, Jace’s bomber came back up and banked in on the X-wing’s tail.

Before the bomber could unload a missile or two into his aft, Corran broke the fighter hard to port and carved across the bomber’s line of fire. Basic maneuver with a basic response. Without even glancing at his instruments, and paying no attention to Whistler’s squealed warning, Corran cut engine power back into recharging his shields. One more second.

Jace’s response to Corran’s break had been a reverse-throttle hop. By bringing the nose of the bomber up in a steep climb, then rolling out in the direction of the turn, Jace managed to stay inside the arc of the X-wing’s turn. As the bomber leveled off, it closed very quickly with the X-wing—too quickly for a missile lock, but not a laser shot.

The TIE bomber shrieked in at the X-wing. Collision warning klaxons wailed. Corran could feel Jace’s excitement as the X-wing loomed larger. He knew the other pilot would snap off a quick shot, then come around again, angry at having overshot the X-wing, but happy to smoke Corran before taking the Korolev.

The X-wing pilot hit a switch and shifted all shield power to the aft shields.

The deflector shield materialized as a demisphere approximately twenty meters behind the X-wing. Designed to dissipate both energy and kinetic weapons, it had no trouble protecting the fighter from the bomber’s twin laser blasts. Had the bomber used missiles, the shields could even have handled all the damage they could do, though that would have been enough to destroy the shields themselves.

The TIE bomber, which massed far more than the missiles it carried, should have punched through the shields and might even have destroyed the fighter, but it hit at an angle and glanced off. The collision did blast away half the power of the aft shield and bounced the X-wing around, but otherwise left the snubfighter undamaged.

The same could not be said of the unshielded bomber. The impact with the shield was roughly equivalent to a vehicle hitting a ferrocrete wall at sixty kilometers per hour. While that might not do a land vehicle much damage, land vehicles are decidedly less delicate than starfighters. The starboard wing crumpled inward, wrapping itself around the bomber’s cockpit. Both pods of the ship twisted out of alignment so the engines shot it off into an uncontrolled tumble through the simulator’s dataspace.

“Green Three, did you copy that?”

Corran got no response. “Whistler, what happened to Three?”

The R2 unit gave him a mournful tone.

Sithspawn. Corran flipped the shield control to equalize things fore and aft. “Where is he?”

The image of a lone TIE fighter making a strafing run on the Korolev appeared on Corran’s monitor. The clumsy little craft skittered along over the corvette’s surface, easily dodging its weak return fire. That’s seriously gutsy for a TIE fighter. Corran smiled. Or arrogant, and time to make him pay for that arrogance.

The Corellian brought his proton torpedo targeting program up and locked on to the TIE. It tried to break the lock, but turbolaser fire from the Korolev boxed it in. Corran’s HUD went red and he triggered the torpedo. “Scratch one eyeball.”

The missile shot straight in at the fighter, but the pilot broke hard to port and away, causing the missile to overshoot the target. Nice flying! Corran brought his X-wing over and started down to loop in behind the TIE, but as he did so, the TIE vanished from his forward screen and reappeared in his aft arc. Yanking the stick hard to the right and pulling it back, Corran wrestled the X-wing up and to starboard, then inverted and rolled out to the left.

A laser shot jolted a tremor through the simulator’s couch. Lucky thing I had all shields aft! Corran reinforced them with energy from his lasers, then evened them out fore and aft. Jinking the fighter right and left, he avoided laser shots coming in from behind, but they all came in far closer than he liked.

He knew Jace had been in the bomber, and Jace was the only pilot in the unit who could have stayed with him. Except for our leader. Corran smiled broadly. Coming to see how good I really am, Commander Antilles? Let me give you a clinic. “Make sure you’re in there solid, Whistler, because we’re going for a little ride.”

Corran refused to let the R2’s moan slow him down. A snap-roll brought the X-wing up on its port wing. Pulling back on the stick yanked the fighter’s nose up away from the original line of flight. The TIE stayed with him, then tightened up on the arc to close distance. Corran then rolled another ninety degrees and continued the turn into a dive. Throttling back, Corran hung in the dive for three seconds, then hauled back hard on the stick and cruised up into the TIE fighter’s aft.

The X-wing’s laser fire missed wide to the right as the TIE cut to the left. Corran kicked his speed up to full and broke with the TIE. He let the X-wing rise above the plane of the break, then put the fighter through a twisting roll that ate up enough time to bring him again into the TIE’s rear. The TIE snapped to the right and Corran looped out left.

He watched the tracking display as the distance between them grew to be a kilometer and a half, then slowed. Fine, you want to go nose to nose? I’ve got shields and you don’t. If Commander Antilles wanted to commit virtual suicide, Corran was happy to oblige him. He tugged the stick back to his sternum and rolled out in an inversion loop. Coming at you!

The two starfighters closed swiftly. Corran centered his foe in the crosshairs and waited for a dead shot. Without shields the TIE fighter would die with one burst, and Corran wanted the kill to be clean. His HUD flicked green as the TIE juked in and out of the center, then locked green as they closed.

The TIE started firing at maximum range and scored hits. At that distance the lasers did no real damage against the shields, prompting Corran to wonder why Wedge was wasting the energy. Then, as the HUD’s green color started to flicker, realization dawned. The bright bursts on the shields are a distraction to my targeting! I better kill him now!

Corran tightened down on the trigger button, sending red laser needles stabbing out at the closing TIE fighter. He couldn’t tell if he had hit anything. Lights flashed in the cockpit and Whistler started screeching furiously. Corran’s main monitor went black, his shields were down, and his weapons controls were dead.

The pilot looked left and right. “Where is he, Whistler?”

The monitor in front of him flickered to life and a diagnostic report began to scroll by. Bloodred bordered the damage reports. “Scanners, out; lasers, out; shields, out; engine, out! I’m a wallowing Hutt just hanging here in space.”

With the X-wing’s scanners being dead, the R2 droid couldn’t locate the TIE fighter if it was outside the droid’s scanner range. Whistler informed Corran of this with an anxious bleat.

“Easy, Whistler, get me my shields back first. Hurry.” Corran continued to look around for the TIE fighter. Letting me stew, are you, sir? You’ll finish the Korolev then come for me. The pilot frowned and felt a cold chill run down his spine. You’re right, I’m no Luke Skywalker. I’m glad you think I’m not bad, but I want to be the best!

Suddenly the starfield went black and the simulator pod hissed as it cracked open. The canopy lifted up and the sound of laughter filled the cockpit. Corran almost flicked the blast shield down on his helmet to prevent his three friends from seeing his embarrassed blush. Nope, might as well take my punishment. He stood and doffed his helmet, then shook his head. “At least it’s over.”

The Twi’lek, Nawara Ven, clapped his hands. “Such modesty, Corran.”

“Huh?”

The blond woman next to the Twi’lek beamed up at him. “You won the Redemption scenario.”

“What?”

The grey-green Gand nodded his head and placed his helmet on the nose of Corran’s simulator. “You had nine kills. Jace is not pleased.”

“Thanks for the good news, Ooryl, but I still got killed in there.” Corran hopped out of the simulator. “The pilot who got you three—Commander Antilles—he got me, too.”

The Twi’lek shrugged. “He’s been at this a bit longer than I have, so it is not a surprise he got me.”

Rhysati shook her head, letting her golden hair drape down over her shoulders. “The surprise was that he took so long to get us, really. Are you certain he killed you?”

Corran frowned. “I don’t think I got a mission end message.”

“Clearly you have too little experience of dying in these simulators because you’d know if you did.” Rhysati laughed lightly. “He may have hit you, Corran, but he didn’t kill you. You survived and won.”

Corran blinked, then smiled. “And I got Bror before he got the Korolev. I’ll take that.”

“As well you should.” A brown-haired man with crystal blue eyes shouldered his way between Ooryl and Nawara. “You’re an exceptionally good pilot.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The man offered Corran his hand. “Thought I had you, but when you shot out my engines, your missile caught up with me. Nice job.”

Corran shook the man’s hand hesitantly. The man wore a black flight suit with no name or rank insignia on it, though it did have Hoth, Endor, and Bakura battle tabs sewn on the left sleeve. “You know, you’re one hot hand in a TIE.”

“Nice of you to say, Mr. Horn—I’m a bit rusty, but I really enjoyed this run.” He released Corran’s hand. “Next time I’ll give you more of a fight.”

A woman wearing a Lieutenant’s uniform touched the TIE pilot on the arm. “Admiral Ackbar is ready to see you now, sir. If you will follow me.”

The TIE pilot nodded to the four X-wing pilots. “Good flying, all of you. Congratulations on winning the scenario.”

Corran stared at the man’s retreating back. “I thought Commander Antilles was in that TIE. I mean it had to be someone as good as him to get you three.”

The ends of Nawara Ven’s head tails twitched. “Apparently he is that good.”

Rhysati nodded. “He flew circles around me.”

“At least you saw him.” The Gand drummed his trio of fingers against the hull of Corran’s simulator. “He caught Ooryl as Ooryl fixed on his wingman. Ooryl is free hydrogen in simspace. That man is very good.”

“Sure, but who is he?” Corran frowned. “He’s not Luke Skywalker, obviously, but he was with Rogue Squadron at Bakura and survived Endor.”

The Twi’lek’s red eyes sparked. “The Endor tab had a black dot in the middle—he survived the Death Star run.”

Rhysati looped her right arm around Corran’s neck and brought her fist up gently under his chin. “What difference does it make who he is?”

“Rhys, he shot up three of our best pilots, had me dead in space, and says he’s a bit rusty! I want to know who he is because he’s decidedly dangerous.”

“He is that, but today he’s not the most dangerous pilot. That’s you.” She linked her other arm through Nawara’s right elbow. “So, Corran, you forget you were a Security officer and, Nawara, you forget you were a lawyer and let this thing drop. Today we’re all pilots, we’re all on the same side”—she smiled sweetly—“and the man who beat the Redemption scenario is about to make good on all those dinner and drink promises he made to talk his wingmates into helping him win.”

THE NEW JEDI ORDER
 (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.

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.

THE PAST:
5,000 YEARS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF YAVIN

THE CRUST OF PHAEGON III’S LARGEST MOON BURNED, buckled, and crumbled under the onslaught. Sixty-four specially equipped cruisers—little more than planetary-bombardment weapons systems with a bit of starship wrapped around them—flew in a suborbital, longitudinal formation. The sleek silver cruisers, their underbellies aglow in reflected destruction, struck Saes as unexpectedly beautiful. How strange that they could unleash annihilation in such warm, glorious colors.

Plasma beams shrieked from the bow of each cruiser and slammed into the arboreal surface of the moon, shimmering green umbilicals that wrote words of ruin across the surface and saturated the world in fire and pain. Dust and a swirl of thick black smoke churned in the atmosphere as the cruisers methodically vaporized large swaths of the moon’s surface.

The bright light and black smoke of destruction filled Harbinger’s viewscreen, drowning out the orange light of the system’s star. Except for the occasional beep of a droid or a murmured word, the bridge crew sat in silence, their eyes fixed alternately on their instruments and the viewscreen. Background chatter on the many comm channels droned over the various speakers, a serene counterpoint to the chaos of the moon’s death. Saes’s keen olfactory sense caught a whiff of his human crew’s sweat, spiced with the tang of adrenaline.

Watching the cruisers work, watching the moon die, Saes was reminded of the daelfruits he’d enjoyed in his youth. He had spent many afternoons under the sun of his homeworld, peeling away the daelfruit’s coarse, brown rind to get at the core of sweet, pale flesh.

Now he was peeling not a fruit but an entire moon.

The flesh under the rind of the moon’s crust—the Lignan they were mining—would ensure a Sith victory in the battle for Kirrek and improve Saes’s place in the Sith hierarchy. He would not challenge Shar Dakhon immediately, of course. He was still too new to the Sith Order for that. But he would not wait overlong.

Evil roots in unbridled ambition, Relin had told him once.

Saes smiled. What a fool his onetime Master had been. Naga Sadow rewarded ambition.

“Status?” he queried his science droid, 8K6.

The fires in the viewscreen danced on the anthropomorphic droid’s reflective silver surface as it turned from its instrument console to address him.

“Thirty-seven percent of the moon’s crust is destroyed.”

Wirelessly connected to the console’s readout, the droid did not need to glance back for an update on the information as the cruisers continued their work.

“Thirty-eight percent. Thirty-nine.”

Saes nodded, turned his attention back to the viewscreen. The droid fell silent.

Despite Harbinger’s distance from the surface, the Force carried back to Saes the terror of the pre-sentient primates that populated the moon’s surface. Saes imagined the small creatures fleeing through the trees, screeching, relentlessly pursued by, and inevitably consumed in, fire. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Their fear caressed his mind, as faint, fleeting, and pleasing as morning fog.

His fellow Sith on Harbinger and Omen would be feeling the same thing as the genocide progressed to its inexorable conclusion. Perhaps even the Massassi aboard each ship would, in their dim way, perceive the ripples in the Force.

Long ago, when Saes had been a Jedi, before he had come to understand the dark side, such wholesale destruction of life might have struck him as wrong. He knew better now. There was no absolute right and wrong. There was only power. And those who wielded it defined right and wrong for themselves. That realization was the freedom offered by the dark side and the reason the Jedi would fall, first at Kirrek, then at Coruscant, then all over the galaxy.

“Temperature in the wake?” he asked.

The science droid consulted the sensor data on its compscreen. “Within the tolerance of the harvester droids.”

Saes watched the cruisers slide through the atmosphere and light the moon on fire. He turned in his command chair to face his second in command, Los Dor. Dor’s mottled, deep red skin looked nearly black in the dim light of the bridge. His yellow eyes mirrored the moon’s fires. He never seemed to look up into Saes’s eyes, instead focusing his gaze on the twin horns that jutted from the sides of Saes’s jaw.

Saes knew Dor was as much a spy for Naga Sadow as he was an ostensible aide to himself. Among other things, Dor was there to ensure that Saes returned the Lignan—all of the Lignan—to Sadow’s forces at Primus Goluud.

The tentacles on Dor’s face quivered, and the cartilaginous ridges over his eyes rose in a question.

“Give the order to launch the harvester droids, Colonel,” Saes said to him. “Harbinger’s and Omen’s.”

“Yes, Captain,” Dor responded. He turned to his console and transmitted the order to both ships.

The honorific Captain still struck Saes’s hearing oddly. He was accustomed to leading hunting parties as a First, not ships as a Captain.

In moments hundreds of cylindrical pods streaked out of Harbinger’s launching bay, and hundreds more flew from her sister ship, Omen, all of them streaking across the viewscreen. They hit the atmosphere and spat lines of fire as they descended. The sight reminded Saes of a pyrotechnic display.

“Harvester droids away,” 8K6 intoned.

“Stay with the droids and magnify,” Saes said.

“Copy,” answered Dor, and nodded at the young human helmsman who controlled the viewscreen.

The harvester droids’ trajectories placed them tens of kilometers behind the destruction wrought by the mining cruisers. Most of them were lost to sight in the smoke, but the helmsman kept the viewscreen’s perspective on a dozen or so that descended through a clear spot in the sky.

“Attrition among the droids upon entry is negligible,” said 8K6. “Point zero three percent.”

The helmsman further magnified the viewscreen again, then again.

Five kilos above the surface, the droids arrested their descent with thrusters, unfolded into their insectoid forms, and gently dropped to the charred, superheated surface. Anti-grav servos and platform pads on their six legs allowed them to walk on the smoking ruin without harm.

“Give me a view from one of the droids.”

“Copy, sir,” said Dor.

The helm worked his console, and half the viewscreen changed to a perspective of a droid’s-eye view of the moon. A murmur ran through the bridge crew, an exhalation of awe. Even 8K6 looked up from the instrumentation.

The voice of Captain Korsin, commander of Harbinger’s sister ship, Omen, broke through the comm chatter and boomed over the bridge speakers.

“That is a sight.”

“It is,” Saes answered.

Smoke rose in wisps from the exposed subcrust. The heat of the plasma beams had turned the charred surface as hard and brittle as glass. Thick cracks and chasms lined the subcrust, veins through which only smoke and ash flowed. Waves of heat rose from the surface, distorting visibility and giving the moon an otherworldly, dream-like feel.

Hundreds of harvester droids dotted the surface, metal flies clinging to the moon’s seared corpse. Walking in their awkward, insectoid manner, they arranged themselves into orderly rows, their high-pitched droid-speak mere chatter in the background.

“Sensors activating,” intoned 8K6.

As one, long metal proboscises extended from each of the droids’ faces. They ambled along in the wake of the destruction, waving their proboscises over the surface like dowsing rods, fishing the subsurface for the telltale molecular signature of Lignan.

Thinking of the Lignan, Saes licked his lips, tasted a faint flavor of phosphorous. He had handled a small Lignan crystal years before and still remembered the charge he had felt while holding it. His connection with that crystal had been the first sign of his affinity for the dark side.

The unusual molecular structure of Lignan attuned it to the dark side and enhanced a Sith’s power when using the Force. The Sith had not been able to locate any significant deposits of the crystals in recent decades—until now, until just before the battle for Kirrek. And it was Saes who had done it.

A few standard months ago, Naga Sadow had charged Saes with locating some deposits of the rare crystal for use in the war. It was a test, Saes knew. And Los Dor, his ostensible aide, was grading him. The Force had given Saes his answer, had brought him eventually, and at the last possible moment before the conflict began, to Phaegon III. The Force had used him as a tool to ensure Sith victory.

The realization warmed him. His scaled skin creaked as he adjusted his weight in his chair.

He would harvest enough Lignan from Phaegon III’s moon to equip almost every Sith Lord and Massassi warrior preparing for the assault on Kirrek. If he’d had more time, he could have mined the moon in a more methodical, less destructive fashion. But he did not have time, and Sadow would not tolerate delay.

So Saes had created his own right and wrong, and the primates and other life-forms on Phaegon III’s moon had died for it.

He tapped his forefinger on his lightsaber hilt—its curved form reminiscent of a claw—impatient to see the results of the droids’ sensor scans. He leaned forward in his chair when an excited beep announced the first discovery of a Lignan signature. Another joined it. Another. He shared a look with Dor and could not tell from the fix of Dor’s mouth, partially masked as it was by a beard of tentacles, if his colonel was pleased or displeased.

“There it is, Saes,” said Korsin from Omen. “We’ve done it.”

In truth, Saes had done it. Korsin had been simply following his lead. “Yes.”

“It appears to be a large deposit,” said 8K6.

More and more of the harvester droids chirped news of their discovery over the comm channel.

“Perhaps more than we have time to acquire,” said Dor. “Shall I recall the mining cruisers, Captain? Further destruction seems … unwarranted.”

Saes heard the question behind the question and shook his head. Dor would find no pity in Saes. “No. Incinerate the entire surface. What we cannot take before the battle at Kirrek, we will return for after our victory there.”

Dor nodded, and a faint smile disturbed the tentacles. “Yes, Sir.”

Saes fixed his colonel with his eyes, and Dor’s gaze fell to Saes’s jaw horns. “And when you report back to Lord Sadow, you tell him all that you saw here.”

Dor looked up, held Saes’s eyes only for a moment before his tentacles twitched and he turned away.

Saes allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction as drill-probes extended from the droids’ abdomens and began pulling the rare crystal from the burning corpse of the moon. The Force continued to carry the terror of the primates to Saes’s consciousness, but with less impact. There were fewer left. He could not help but smile.

“Use the shuttles to collect the ore,” he said to Dor. “Omen’s, too. We take as much as we can as quickly as we can.”

“Copy.”

Several standard hours later, Phaegon III’s smoking moon and all its inhabitants were dead. The mining cruisers, having finished their work, had jumped out of the system. A steady stream of transport shuttles traveled between the moon and Omen and Harbinger’s cargo holds, filling both ships with unrefined Lignan ore. The presence of so many crystals so near caused Saes to feel giddy, almost inebriated. Dor and the other Force-sensitives aboard Harbinger and Omen would be feeling much the same way.

“Extra discipline with the Massassi,” Saes said to Dor. The Lignan would agitate them. He wanted to head off outbreaks of violence. Or at least he wanted the violence appropriately directed.

“I will inform the security teams,” Dor said. “Do you … feel that, Captain?”

Saes nodded, drunk on the dark side. The air in the ship was alive with its potential. His skin felt warm, his head light.

With an effort of will, he regained his focus. He had little time before he would rendezvous with Naga Sadow and the rest of the Sith force moving against Kirrek. He opened a comm channel with Omen.

“An hour more, Korsin,” he said.

“Agreed,” Korsin answered, and Saes felt the human’s glee through the connection. “Do you feel the power around us, Saes? Kirrek will burn.”

Saes stared at the incinerated moon in his viewscreen, spinning dark and dead through the void of space.

“It will,” he said, and cut off the connection.

Relin stared out of the large, transparisteel bubble window that fronted the cockpit of his starfighter. Beside him, his Padawan, Drev, tapped hyperspace formulae into the navigation computer. Drev’s body challenged the seat with its girth. His flight suit pinched adipose tissue at neck and wrist, giving his head and hands the look of tied-off sausages. Still, Drev was almost thin by the standards of Askajians. And Relin had never before met an Askajian in whom the Force was so strong.

Their Infiltrator hung in the orange-and-red cloud of the Remmon Nebula. The small ship—with its minimal, deliberately erratic emission signature, sleek profile, and sensor baffles—would be invisible to scans outside the swirl.

Lines of yellow and orange light veined the superheated gas around them, like terrestrial lightning frozen in time. Relin watched the cloud slowly churn in the magnetic winds. He had been across half the galaxy since joining the Jedi, and the beauty it hid in its darkest corners amazed him still. He saw in that beauty the Force made manifest, a physical representation of the otherwise invisible power that served as the scaffolding of the universe.

But the scaffolding was under threat. Sadow and the Sith would corrupt it. Relin had seen the consequence of that corruption firsthand, when he had lost Saes to the dark side.

He pushed the memory from his mind, the pain still too acute.

The conflict between Jedi and Sith had reached a turning point. Kirrek would be a fulcrum, tilting the war toward one side or the other. Relin knew the Jedi under Memit Nadill and Odan-Urr had fortified the planet well, but he knew, too, that Sadow’s fleets would come in overwhelming force. He suspected they would also strike Coruscant, and had so notified Nadill.

Still typing in coordinates, Drev asked, “We will be able to pick up the beacon’s pulse once we enter hyperspace?”

“Yes,” Relin said.

At least that was the theory. If they were right about the hyperspace lane Harbinger and Omen had taken; if Saes had not diverted his ship to another hyperspace lane; and if Harbinger and Omen remained near enough the hyperspace lane for the beacon’s signal to reach them.

“And if the agents did not place the hyperspace beacon? Or if Saes located it and disabled it?”

Relin stared out at the nebula. “Peace, Drev. There are many ifs. Things are what they are.”

Matters had moved so rapidly of late that Relin had not had time to report back to his superiors as regularly as he should, just the occasional missive sent in a subspace burst as time and conditions allowed.

He had picked up Saes’s trail near Primus Goluud. There, he’d seen the armada of Sith forces marshaling for an assault; he’d seen Saes’s ship leave the armada with a sister ship, Omen, falling in behind.

After sending a short, subspace report back to the Order on Coruscant and Kirrek, Relin had received orders to follow Saes and try to determine the Sith’s purpose. He had learned little as Harbinger and Omen moved rapidly from one backrocket system to another, dispatching recon droids, scanning, then moving on.

“He is searching for something,” Relin said, more to himself than Drev.

Drev chuckled, and his double chin shook. “Saes? His conscience, no doubt. He seems to have misplaced it somewhere.”

Relin did not smile. The loss of Saes cut too sharply for jest.

“I worry over your casual attitude toward matters of import. Many will die in this war.”

Drev bowed his head, his shoulders drooping, trying to look contrite under his mass of thick brown hair. “Forgive me, Master. But I …” He paused, though his round face showed him struggling with a thought.

“What is it?” Relin asked.

Drev did not look at him as he said, “I sometimes think you laugh too little. Among my people, the shamans of the Moon Lady teach that tragedy is the best time for mirth. Laugh even when you die, they say. There is joy to be found in almost everything.”

“And there is also pain,” Relin said, thinking of Saes. “Are the coordinates ready?”

Drev stiffened in his chair and in his tone. “Ready, Master.”

“Then let us find out what it is that Saes is looking for.”

Relin maneuvered the Infiltrator out of the nebula and checked it against Drev’s coordinates. Stars dotted the viewscreen.

“We go,” Relin said.

Drev touched a button on his console, and the transparisteel cockpit window dimmed to spare them the hypnotic blue swirl of a hyperspace tunnel. Relin engaged the hyperdrive. Points of light turned to infinite lines.

THE PRESENT:
41.5 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF YAVIN

Darkness plagued Jaden, the lightless ink of a singularity. He was falling, falling forever. His stomach crawled up his throat, crowding out whatever scream he might have uttered.

He still felt the Force around him, within him, but only thickly, only attenuated, as if his sensitivity were numbed.

He hit unseen ground with a grunt and fell to all fours. Snow crunched under his palms and boots. Gusts of freezing wind rifled his robes to stab at his skin. Ice borne by the wind peppered his face and rimed his beard. He still could see nothing in the pitch. He stood, shaky, shaking, freezing.

“Where is this place?” he called. The darkness was so deep he could not see his frozen breath. His voice sounded small in the void. “Arsix?”

No response.

“Arsix?”

Odd, he thought, that the first thing he called for in an uncertain situation was his droid rather than a fellow Jedi.

He reached for the familiar heft of his primary lightsaber, found its belt clip empty. He reached around to the small of his back for his secondary lightsaber—the crude but effective weapon he had built as a boy on Coruscant without any training in the Force—and found it gone, too. His blaster was not in his thigh holster. No glow rod in his utility pocket.

He was cold, alone, unequipped, blind in the darkness.

What had happened? He remembered nothing.

Drawing his robes tightly about him to ward off the cold, he focused his hearing, but heard nothing over the wind except the gong of his heartbeat in his ears. With difficulty, he reached out with his Force sense through the fog of his benighted sensitivity, trying to feel the world around him indirectly. Through the dull operation of his expanded consciousness he sensed something …

There were others there with him, out in the darkness.

Several others.

He sharpened his concentration and the tang of the dark side teased his perception—Sith.

But not quite Sith, not entirely: the dark side adulterated.

He tried to ignore the familiar caress of the dark side’s touch. He knew the line between light and dark was as narrow as a vibroblade-edge. His Master, Kyle Katarn, had taught him as much. Every Jedi walked that edge. Some understood the precipice under their feet, and some did not. And it was the latter who so often fell. But it was the former who so often suffered. Jaden frequently wished he had remained in ignorance, had stayed the boy on Coruscant for whom the Force had been magic.

Summoned from the past, his Master’s words bounced around his brain: The Force is a tool, Jaden. Sometimes a weapon, sometimes a salve. Dark side, light side, these are distinctions of insignificant difference. Do not fall into the trap of classification. Sentience curses us with a desire to categorize and draw lines, to fear that after this be dragons. But that is illusion. After this is not dragons but more knowledge, deeper understanding. Be at peace with that.

But Jaden never had been at peace with that. He feared he never would. Worse, he feared he never should. After completing his training, Jaden had done some research into unorthodox theories about the Force. He had come to think—and fear—that his Master had been right.

“Show yourselves,” he called into the darkness, and the howling wind devoured his words. He knew the Sith would have sensed his presence, the same as he had sensed theirs.

They were all around him, closing fast. He felt vulnerable, with nothing at his back, unable to see. He sank into the Force and denied his fear.

Finding his calm, he stood in a half crouch, eyes closed, mind focused, his entire body a coiled spring. Even without his lightsaber, a dark side user would find him a formidable foe.

“Jaden,” whispered a voice in his ear, a voice he’d heard before only on vidscreen surveillance.

He spun, whirled, the power of the Force gathered in his hands for a telekinetic blast, and saw … only darkness.

Lumiya.

It had been Lumiya’s voice. Hadn’t it? But Lumiya was long dead.

A hand clutched at his robe.

“Jaden,” said another voice. Lassin’s voice.

He used the Force to augment a backward leap, flipping in midair, and landed on his feet three meters behind Lassin, a fellow Jedi Knight who should have been dead, who had died soon after the Ragnos crisis. Lassin’s voice unmoored him from his calm, and Force lightning, blue and baleful, came unbidden and crackled on his fingertips …

He saw nothing.

The hairs on Jaden’s neck rose. He stared at his hand, the blue discharge of his fingertips. With an effort of will, he quelled it.

“Jaden Korr,” said a voice to his left, Master Kam Solusar’s voice, but Jaden felt not the comforting presence of another light-side user, only the ominous energy of the dark side.

He spun, but saw only darkness.

“What you seek can be found in the black hole on Fhost, Jaden,” said Mara Jade Skywalker, and still Jaden saw nothing, no one.

Mara Jade Skywalker was dead.

“Who are you?” he called, and the wind answered with ice and screams. “Where am I?”

He reached out again with his Force sense, trying to locate Lumiya, Lassin, Solusar, and Skywalker, but found them gone.

Again, he was alone in the darkness. He was always alone in darkness.

It registered with him then. He was dreaming. The Force was speaking to him. He should have realized it sooner.

The revelation stilled the world. The wind fell silent and the air cleared of ice.

Jaden stood ready, tense.

A distant, sourceless cry sounded, repeated itself, the rhythm regular, the tone mechanical. It could have been coming from the other side of the planet.

“Help us. Help us. Help us. Help us …”

He turned a circle, fists clenched. “Where are you?”

The darkness around him diminished. Pinpoints of light formed in the black vault over him. Stars. He scanned the sky, searching for something familiar. There. He recognized only enough to place the sky somewhere in a Rimward sector of the Unknown Regions. The dim blue glow of a distant gas giant burned in the black of the sky, its light peeking diffidently through the swirl. Thick rings composed of particles of ice and rock belted the gas giant.

He was on one of the gas giant’s moons.

His eyes adjusted more fully to the dimness and he saw that he stood on a desolate, wind-racked plain of ice that extended as far as he could see. Snowdrifts as tall as buildings gave the terrain the appearance of a storm-racked ocean frozen in time. Cracks veined the exposed ice, the circulatory system of a stalled world. Chasms dotted the surface here and there like hungry mouths. Glaciers groaned in the distance, the rumbles of an angry world. He saw no sign of Lumiya or Lassin or any of the other Sith imposters he had sensed. He saw no sign of life anywhere.

His breath formed clouds before his face. His left fist clenched and unclenched reflexively over the void in his palm where his lightsaber should have been.

Without warning, the sky exploded above him with a thunderous boom. A cloud of fire tore through the atmosphere, smearing the sky in smoke and flame. A shriek like stressed metal rolled over Jaden. Ice cracked and groaned on the surface.

Jaden squinted up at the sky, still lit with the afterglow of the destruction, and watched a rain of glowing particulates fall, showering the moon in a hypnotic pattern of falling sparks.

His Force sense perceived them for what they were—the dark side reified. He disengaged his perception too slowly, and the impact of so much evil hit him like a punch in the face. He vomited down the front of his robes, fell to the frozen ground, and balled up on the frozen surface of the moon as the full weight of the dark side coated him in its essence.

There was nowhere to hide, no shelter; it fell all around him, on him, saturated him …

He woke, sweating and light-headed, to the sound of speeder and swoop traffic outside his Coruscant apartment. The thump of his heartbeat rattled the bars of his rib cage. In his mind’s eye, he still saw the shower of falling sparks, the rain of evil. He cleared his throat, and the sensors in the room, detecting his wakefulness, turned on dim room lights.

“Arsix?” he said.

No response. He sat up, alarmed.

“Arsix?”

The sound of shouts and screams outside his window caused him to leap from his bed. With a minor exercise of will, he pulled his primary lightsaber to his hand from the side table near his bed and activated it. The green blade pierced the dimness of his room.

The black ball of Korriban filled Kell’s viewscreen. Clouds seethed in its atmosphere, an angry churn.

He settled Predator, a CloakShape fighter modified with a hyperspace sled and sensor-evading technology copied from a stolen StealthX, into low orbit. The roiling cloak of dark energy that shrouded the planet buffeted Predator, and the ship’s metal creaked in the strain. Kell attuned his vision to Fate and saw the hundreds of daen nosi—fate lines, a Coruscanti academic had once translated the Anzati term—that intersected at Korriban, the planet like a bulbous black spider in a web of glowing potentialities. The past, present, and future lines of the galaxy’s fate passed through the Sith tomb-world’s inhabitants, threads of glowing green, orange, red, and blue that cut it into pieces.

Space–time was pregnant with the possible, and the richness of the soup swelled Kell’s hunger. He had first seen the daen nosi in childhood, after his first kill, and had followed them since. He thought himself unique among the Anzati, special, called, but he could not be certain.

Thinking of his first kill turned his mind to the food he kept in the cargo hold of Predator, but he quelled his body’s impulse with a thought.

His own daen nosi stretched out before him, the veins of his own fate a network of silver lines reaching down through the transparisteel of the cockpit and into the dark swirl, down to the tombs of the Sith, to the secret places where the One Sith lurked. He had business with them, and they with him. The lines of their fates were intertwined.

He punched the coded coordinates of his destination into the navicomp and engaged the autopilot. As Predator began its descent through the black atmosphere, he left the cockpit and went below decks to the cargo hold. He had half a standard hour before he would reach his destination, so he freed his body to feel hunger. Growing anticipation sharpened his appetite.

Five stasis freezers stood against one wall of the hold like coffins. Kell had given them their own clear space in the hold, separated from the equipment and vehicles that otherwise cluttered the compartment. A humanoid slept in stasis in each freezer, three humans and two Rodians. He examined the freezers’ readouts, checking vital signs. All remained in good health.

Staring at their still features, Kell wondered what happened behind their closed eyes, in the quiet of their dreams. He imagined the zest of their soup and hunger squirmed in his gut. None were so-called Force-sensitives, who had the richest soup, but they would suffice.

He glided from one freezer to the next, brushing his fingertips on the cool glass that separated him from his prey. His captives’ daen nosi extended from their freezers to him, his to them. He stopped before the middle-aged human male he had taken on Corellia.

“You,” he said, and watched his silver lines intertwine with the green lines of the Corellian.

He activated the freezer’s thaw cycle. The hiss of escaping gas screamed the human’s end. Kell watched as the freezer’s readout indicated a rising temperature, watched as color returned to the human’s flesh. His hunger grew, and the feeders nesting in the sacs of his cheeks twitched. He needed his prey conscious, otherwise he could not transcend.

He reached through the daen nosi that connected him to his meal.

Awaken, he softly projected.

The human’s eyes snapped open, pupils dilated, lids wide. Fear traveled through the mental connection and Kell savored it. The freezer’s readout showed a spiking heart rate, increasing respiration. The human opened his mouth to speak but his motor functions, still sluggish from stasis, could produce only a muffled, groggy croak.

Kell pressed the release button, and the freezer’s cover slid open. Be calm, he projected, and his command wormed its way into the human’s mind, a prophylactic for the fear.

But growing terror overpowered Kell’s casual psychic hold. The human struggled against his mental bonds, finally found his voice.

“Please. I have done nothing.”

Kell leaned forward, took the human’s doughy face in his hands. The human shook his head but was no match for Kell’s strength.

“Please,” the Corellian said. “Why are you doing this? Who are you? What are you?”

Kell watched all of the human’s daen nosi, all of his potential futures, coalesce into a single green line that intersected Kell’s silver one, where it … stopped.

“I am a ghost,” Kell answered, and opened the slits in his face. His feeders squirmed free of their sacs, wire-thin appendages that fed on the soup of the sentient.

The human screamed, struggled, but Kell held him fast.

Be calm, Kell projected again, this time with force, and the human fell silent.

The feeders wormed their way into the warm, moist tunnels of the Corellian’s nostrils, and rooted upward. Anticipation caused Kell to drool. He stared into the human’s wide, bloodshot eyes as the feeders penetrated tissue, pierced membranes, entered the skull cavity, and sank into the rich gray stew in the human’s skull. A spasm racked the human’s body. Tears pooled in his wide eyes and fell, glistening, down his cheeks. Blood dripped in thin lines from his nose.

Kell grunted with satisfaction as he devoured potential futures, as the human’s lines ended and Kell’s continued. Kell’s eyes rolled back in his head as his daen nosi lengthened and he temporarily became one with the soup of Fate. His consciousness deepened, expanded to the size of the galaxy, and he mentally sampled its potential. Time compressed. The arrangement of daen nosi across the universe looked less chaotic. He saw a hint of order. Revelation seemed just at the edge of his understanding, and he experienced a tingling shudder with each beat of his hearts.

Show me, he thought. Let me see.

The moment passed as the human expired and Kell let him drop to the floor of the bay.

Revelation retreated and he backed away from the corpse, gasping. He came back to himself, mere flesh, mere limited comprehension.

He looked down at the cooling body at his feet, understanding that only in murder did he transcend.

He retracted his feeders, slick with blood, mucus, and brains, and they sat quiescent in their sacs.

Sighing, he collected the human’s corpse, bore it to the air lock, and set the controls to eject it. Through the centuries, he had left such litter on hundreds of planets.

As he watched the automated ejection sequence vacate the air lock, he consoled himself with the knowledge that one day he would feed on stronger soup that would reveal to him the whole truth of Fate.

Reasonably sated, he returned to the cockpit of Predator and linked his comm receiver to the navicomp, as he had been instructed. In moments the autopilot indicator winked out—reminding Kell of the way the Corellian’s eyes had winked out, how the human had transformed from sentience to meat in the span of a moment—and another force took control of Predator. Kell settled into his chair as the ship sped through the malaise of Korriban’s atmosphere toward the dark side of the planet.

A short time later Predator set down in the midst of ancient structures. Lightning illuminated weathered pyramids, towers of pitted stone, crystalline domes, all of them the temples and tombs of the Sith, all of them the geometry of the dark side. Black clouds roiled and jagged runs of lightning formed a glowing net in the sky.

Kell rose, slid into his mimetic suit, checked the twin cortosis-coated vibroblades sheathed at his belt, and headed for Predator’s landing ramp. Before lowering it, he took a blaster and holster from a small-arms locker and strapped them to his thigh. He considered blasters inelegant weapons, but preferred to be overarmed rather than under.

He pressed the release button on the ramp. Hydraulics hummed and the door lowered. Wind and rain hissed into Predator. Korriban’s air, pungent with the reek of past ages, filled his nostrils. Thunder boomed.

Kell stared out into the darkness, noted the clustered pinpoints of red light that floated in the pitch. He shifted on his feet as the lights drew closer—a silver protocol droid. He attuned his vision to Fate, saw no daen nosi. Droids were programming, nothing more. They made no real choices and so had no lines. The false sentience of the droid unnerved Kell and he cut off the perception.

The anthropomorphic droid strode through the wind and rain to the base of the landing ramp and bowed its head in a hum of servos.

“Master Anzat,” the droid said in Basic. “I am Deefourfive. Please follow me. The Master awaits you.”

The droid’s words rooted Kell to the deck. Despite himself, Kell’s twin hearts doubled their beating rate. Adrenaline flowed into his blood. The feeders in his cheeks spasmed. He inhaled, focused for a moment, and returned his body to calmness, his hormone level to normal.

“The Master? Krayt himself?”

“Please follow,” the droid said, turned, and began walking.

Kell pulled up the hood of his suit but did not lower the mask; he strode down the ramp and stepped into the storm. Korriban drenched him. With a minor effort of will, he adjusted his core body temperature to compensate for the chill.

The droid led him along long-dead avenues lined with the ancient stone and steel monuments of the Sith Order. Kell saw no duracrete, no transparisteel, nothing modern. On much of Korriban, he knew, new layers had been built on the old over the millennia, creating a kind of archaeological stratification of the Sith ages.

Not here. Here, the most ancient of Sith tombs and temples sat undisturbed. Here, Krayt wandered in his dreams of conquest.

A flash of lightning veined the sky, painting shadows across the necropolis. Kell’s mimetic suit adjusted to account for the temporary change in lighting. As he walked, he felt a growing regard fix on him, a consciousness.

Ahead, he saw a squat tower of aged stone—Krayt’s sanctuary. Spirals of dark energy swirled in languid arcs around the spire. Only a few windows marred its otherwise featureless exterior, black holes that opened into a dark interior. To Kell, they looked like screaming mouths protesting the events transpiring within.

The droid ascended a wide, tiered stairway that led to a pair of iron doors at the base of the spire. Age-corroded writing and scrollwork spiraled over the door’s surface. Kell could not read it.

“Remain here, please,” the droid said, and vanished behind the doors.

Kell waited under Korriban’s angry sky, surrounded by the tombs of Korriban’s dead Sith Lords. Checking his wrist chrono from time to time, he attuned his senses to his surroundings and waited on Krayt’s pleasure.

Footsteps sounded behind him, barely audible above the rain. He changed his perception as he turned, and saw a thick network of daen nosi that extended through the present to the future, wrapping the galaxy like a great serpent that would strangle it.

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

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

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 33–0 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

0

STAR WARS: EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE

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

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

*An eBook novella