AX FELT LIKE she was being swallowed whole by a space slug. Even through the Force barrier she threw around herself as protection from the tumbling surf of rock, every sharp edge and crushing pressure squeezed the breath utterly from her. Almost instantly she gave up trying to guide her descent.
She consoled herself with the knowledge that Stryver had to be faring just as badly. Escaping this way was the height of desperation. She admired his guts even while she despised him for capturing the navicomp out from everyone else.
It wasn’t over yet, though. She would find him, no matter what it took. There was absolutely no way she was going to report to her Master empty-handed.
The rough-and-tumble finally eased off, and she was able to make her way through the debris, using the Force to help shove aside rocks and gravel, cutting through larger obstacles with her lightsaber if she had to. At every pocket of air she stopped to breathe, grateful for every single lungful of oxygen. It was almost completely dark, but very noisy. When the debris itself wasn’t groaning and grinding around her, she could hear voices crying for help.
Finally one arm emerged into free air, then her head. A trio of dusty Evocii grabbed her armpits and began to pull. She shrugged them off and got herself out. At the sight of her lightsaber, they squealed and ran.
Ax dusted herself down.
Now, Stryver.
She had emerged in some kind of dormitory, with bunks lining two walls and the rest crushed under the avalanche. The true extent of the collapse was hard to measure. She could have fallen a dozen levels or just one. Judging by the relative poverty she saw around her, however, she guessed that she was a long way from the luxurious upper floors. These were the beds of slaves, not valets.
Stryver would be farther down, and he would want to go up. His ascent, no doubt, would not be a quiet one.
She closed her eyes and tuned out the screams, the settling debris, the occasional blaster shot. She was looking for one particular sound out of the multitude surrounding her. It would be faint, but it would definitely be there.
The whine of Stryver’s jetpack.
There.
The moment she had it, she swung her lightsaber in a circle around her feet. The floor fell out from under her, and she arrived with perfect poise in the middle of an attempt to rescue a Hutt slave driver’s tail from its squashed position under a fallen wall.
She ignored everyone involved, crossed to the nearest wall, and slashed an impromptu doorway through that in turn. This led to a torture hall, where indolent or disobedient slaves were publicly punished in order to serve as examples to others. Again, Ax didn’t stop to admire the techniques of the Dug in charge. She noted only that many of the screams she had assumed to be caused by the collapse of the building actually emanated from here.
Through another wall, and Stryver’s jetpack was definitely sounding louder. She could also distinguish the dull booming of his assault cannon from the welter of other sounds. Like Ax, he was using the weapons in his arsenal to blast a way through the palace. Where doorways or corridors didn’t exist, he wasn’t above making his own.
Ax skirted the edge of a deep rancor pit. The massive beasts snapped and roared at her, enraged by all the commotion. The handlers did their utmost to restrain them, using chains, hooks, and heavy weights, but the rancors’ wild natures weren’t so easily subdued. The truncated scream of one of the handlers followed Ax as she Forceleapt across the enclosure in pursuit of her quarry.
The jetpack was close enough now that she could smell its exhaust.
Through a junkyard, a cantina, and a Tibanna gas containment facility, at last Ax had reached Stryver’s trail.
It was instantly recognizable. His assault cannon had blasted a tunnel diagonally upward through every structure in his way. The series of holes led through walls and floors in a perfectly straight line. At the end of it, Ax could see a glimmer of bright light: the jetpack’s fiery wash.
Baring her teeth in anticipation, she set off after him. Each leap took her one step higher on the long ad-hoc staircase. The surfaces she landed on were unreliable. Sometimes they crumbled beneath her; sometimes they slipped, still molten from the heat of the cannon. Sometimes people fired at her, made trigger-happy by the Mandalorian’s violent passage. Ax kept her footing and deflected every shot. She didn’t stop for anything or anyone.
Closer and closer she came to Stryver. He didn’t look behind him. His attention was focused solely on going upward. Past the glare of his jetpack she could see the transparisteel box clutched tightly in one massive hand. The navicomp was still inside. She almost reached for it through the Force, but held herself back. If she revealed her presence prematurely, Stryver would have time to react. Better to strike him in the back and take the prize from his dead hands.
Two more floors. Three. She threw up a barrier to prevent the heat of the jetpack from flaying away her skin. Four. Now she was so close she could almost have reached out and tripped him. The pounding of his cannon was deafening.
Now.
She lunged for the navicomp just as Stryver burst through the roof of the palace. A brown glare struck them, and Ax squinted as she struggled for possession of the box. Stryver showed no surprise, although he momentarily lost control of his jetpack. They spiraled and swooped across the roof, while guards peppered them with blasterfire.
Stryver’s gloved hands let go of the box.
For a fleeting instant, she felt triumph. She braced herself to kick away from him.
Then his left hand lunged out to catch her around the throat while his right brought up the assault cannon and fired into her stomach.
At point-blank range, the shot was like being hit by an aircar in full flight. Had she not put a Force barrier in place, her entire midsection would have been instantly vaporized. As it was, she was blown backward out of his cruel grip and left sprawling, momentarily insensate, on the roof.
Stryver caught the box neatly, one-handed, and flew off into the sky.
Ax watched dazedly, too stunned to feel anything other than curiosity. Where was he going? His jetpack couldn’t possibly have enough fuel to get him far. Tassaa Bareesh would have a price on his head within the hour—a price large enough to guarantee he would never leave Hutta.
Then a sleek black shape swooped into view. A ship. She recognized the angular foils of a Kuat scout but couldn’t determine the model. It dipped low to intercept Stryver, and then roared up into the sky.
Her quarry was gone.
She felt nothing.
A blurry shape occluded her view of the muddy sky. She tightened her focus. It was a Nikto guard. She was nudged by a business-like boot, as though to ascertain whether she was alive or dead. Another Nikto joined it, then a third. She watched them as though from the bottom of a deep, dark well.
I will kill you, Dao Stryver, or die trying.
Her rage returned, like life itself. She had lost the navicomp, but that didn’t have to be the end of the world. She would find another way to satisfy Darth Chratis and the Dark Council—and herself, too. It wasn’t really about Stryver and the navicomp, anyway. It was about where they led. The mysterious rare-metal world. The fugitives from Imperial justice. Her mother.
It couldn’t end here.
She wouldn’t let it.
She was on her feet in a single eyeblink. The dozen or so guards converging on her across the roof weren’t going to be a problem at all.
HER FIRST STEP was to devise a new plan. Stealing the navicomp and cracking its secrets obviously wasn’t going to be possible now. Stryver had it, and she had no illusions at all regarding the likelihood of him sharing those secrets.
There had to be another way. All she had to do was find it.
The palace was in an uproar as she fought her way back to the site of the battle with the droids—the “hexes,” as she had overheard someone calling them. It made sense to return to the scene, since only there lay any chance of learning anything about their origins. She wasn’t sure exactly what she hoped to find, though. Maybe the smuggler hadn’t told the Hutts everything he knew. Maybe she could torture him to extract every last piece of information.
As she wound through the palace’s labyrinthine halls, she passed a clutch of Gamorreans bearing the unconscious Jedi captive over their heads. She smirked but didn’t stop. It was good to see someone worse off than she was.
When she arrived at the ruins of the security air lock, she found it sealed behind a dense press of guards wielding laser cannons. The hole in the wall was protected by a bank of portable particle shields. Getting in wasn’t going to be as easy as getting out—and she had no intention of crawling back up the avalanche of debris. Fighting was an option, of course, but fatigue was beginning to take its toll. Under better circumstances, she would never have let Stryver beat her like that.
She needed to be smarter, rather than stronger.
Retreating to a quiet place to think, she examined everything she knew about the hexes. It wasn’t much. They were single-minded—but what did she know about the minds they possessed? They refused to acknowledge any authority beyond that of their maker. They killed everyone else with impunity. Was there anything else she could say about them?
She remembered the way they had tricked the Twi’lek into blowing an escape route for them through the wall. That displayed resourcefulness and cunning, qualities lacking in many droids, but not all. It wasn’t a unique feature of their design.
Something niggled at the back of her brain. A thought stirred there, hesitantly pushing itself forward for consideration.
Escape.
The hexes had been trying to escape.
So where were they trying to escape to?
Home.
But how did they know where home was?
The answer to that question burst into her mind with crystalline clarity.
The navicomp isn’t the only map.
Ax was moving, circling the ruin until she found the path that the two escaping droids had taken. No one stood in her way until she reached the first of the bodies. It was cordoned off by Gamorreans, and she let them be. The Jedi had made a real mess of that hex, spilling its guts out in a mess of silver and red. The second, she hoped, would be in better condition.
It, too, was cordoned off, but she could see through the guards that the body was intact, tangled up in a net like an animal caught in a trap.
Perfect, she thought, bringing her lightsaber into play.
WHEN SHE HAD the corpse safely slung over her shoulder, all she had to do was leave. That was accomplished as easily as walking through the palace to the spaceport, where the Imperial shuttle awaited her pleasure. Palace security had been tightened in an attempt to stop anyone from leaving. The attempt was doomed to failure.
Two armed Imperial guards stood at attention by the air lock’s inner door. They saluted as she stepped through.
“Any problems?” she asked them.
“There was a guy sniffing around the Mandalorian’s ship before it took off,” said one.
“And some nonhuman scum trying to get in here,” said the other. “We sent him packing.”
“Very good.”
She strode confidently up the ramp and into the cockpit, where the pilot sat waiting. He took in her dusty, battered appearance but didn’t remark upon it.
“We’re leaving,” she said. “Advise Darth Chratis of our imminent rendezvous. I want a droid tech on hand the moment we dock.”
“Yes, sir. But what about the envoy?”
“He’s no longer with us.”
The pilot nodded uncertainly, obviously comparing his standing orders with those he had just been given. A Sith always outranked a superior officer. That was the only conclusion available.
While the repulsors warmed up, Ax took the dead hex and stored it in the secure hold that had been set aside for the navicomp. This cargo was no less precious. The good thing about a droid was that, although dead was indisputably dead, memory took time to fade. With the right expertise, the location of the mystery world could be extracted from the data stored in the carcass, and her success would be assured.
A warm glow filled her, part relief, part pride, part exhaustion. She was looking forward to sitting down. But there was something she had to do first.
The shuttle was lifting off when she returned to the cockpit. She gazed through the viewports at the spaceport and its minuscule cluster of ships.
“Which ship did the Republic envoy arrive in?”
“That one,” said the pilot, indicating a stubby, fat-nosed craft resting on four wide-spaced legs.
“Destroy it,” she said.
“Yes, sir.”
The shuttle’s cannon fired, strafing the back of the defenseless ship. It burst into a ball of flame so bright it outshone the sun.
Ax smiled in satisfaction as the palace’s scarred roof receded into the distance. With any luck, she thought, that was the last she’d ever see of Hutta.
SHIGAR HAD SEEN the spaceport on plans of the palace, but hadn’t been there before. He moved quickly and carefully through the corridors of the palace, counting corners and noting landmarks while avoiding guards and security cordons. Getting lost or pinned down was the last thing he needed. Stryver would have farther to go but he knew the layout better. If there was going to be another confrontation, Shigar wanted to have the advantage.
Also on his mind was Larin’s well-being. Again he debated the wisdom of bringing her to Hutta. She had been a great help, and good company, too, but now she was hurt, possibly maimed, and that made her future prospects even grimmer. He swore to make sure her hand was properly tended, but was that enough? Had the kindness he had assumed he was doing for her turned into an intolerable cruelty?
He was afraid of what his Master would think when she saw where his judgment had led him.
All the more important, then, to succeed with Stryver. The entire palace was in an uproar, which was to be expected after explosions in the lower levels, a fight in the security air lock, rogue droids running wild through the corridors, and the multilevel collapse Stryver had engendered. Conflicting alarms overlapped wildly, creating a head-jangling row that Shigar did his best to ignore. He could only imagine how Tassaa Bareesh was taking it.
The spaceport guards were on high alert. Shigar plucked a sentry from his regular patrol and used the Force to persuade him into revealing the command structure of the emplacement. There had been enough killing already that day. Besides, any evidence of a struggle would alert Stryver to an ambush.
Encaasa Bareesh was a junior nephew of the palace’s matriarch. He oversaw the security detail from an office two floors away, and was notorious for only occasionally glancing at the cam views. It was a simple matter to convince Encaasa that a completely unrelated crew member wanted to board their ship, but had misplaced their clearance code. Shigar imagined the indolent Hutt wearily slapping his fat fingers on the right controls and then settling back into his hammock. Not even a palace-wide security alert could ruffle him.
The main entranceway to the spaceport slid open. Shigar walked through, watching behind him for any sign of the Mandalorian. None, yet. The doors closed, leaving him alone in the circular disembarkation area.
Shigar had asked the guard which berth the First Blood had been assigned to, and he headed straight there. The spaceport’s umbilical door was open, revealing the gray skin of Stryver’s ship at the far end. Shigar wasn’t so foolish as to go anywhere near that inviting portal. It would be booby-trapped for certain.
Instead he waited nearby, in full view of both the First Blood and the spaceport entrance, with his lightsaber inactivated but held tightly at the ready. Stryver had to come for his ship sometime, and Shigar would be prepared.
He emptied his mind of all concerns—every worry about Larin and his mission, every ache and pain—and stood poised and ready for action.
The sound of repulsors activating broke him out of his trance. One of the ships was warming up its engines for liftoff. He circled the disembarkation area to identify which one, but the sound wasn’t coming from any of the closed air locks. It was coming from Stryver’s berth.
That surprised him. He had assumed Stryver was traveling alone. There could, therefore, be no one inside his ship to warm it up for him. Either Shigar was wrong on that point, or Stryver had activated it by remote.
The repulsor whine continued to rise in volume. This wasn’t just warming up. The ship was about to take off.
Cursing under his breath, Shigar abandoned subtlety. Approaching the ship’s outer air lock, he quickly examined it for weak points and found just one. The door was keyed to Stryver’s biometric signs—height, breadth, proportion of limbs, and so on—but it also featured an override, just in case Stryver was ever grievously injured in the course of a mission. If he lost a major limb, for instance. That override could be sliced into by someone clever enough.
Shigar wasn’t as good a slicer as Larin, but he had seen this kind of trick before. Mandalorian ships had been Jedi targets ever since the Great War, and he had been taught over and over again the best way to disable them. Working quickly, he tapped a series of codes designed to reset the override function back to a commonly used default. When he typed in the default, the door slid open.
Not a moment too soon. The repulsors were at screaming-pitch and the ship was hovering lightly on the ground. In another second, it would’ve been high above the palace.
Shigar leapt lightly into the air lock and was swept upward with it. The moment his boots touched the floor, however, a secondary security system kicked in. Powerful electric shocks coursed through his body, sending his muscles into irresistible spasms. He fell onto his side, unable even to cry out. His jaw was locked open in a silent scream.
The autopilot raised the ship straight above the spaceport and adjusted its trim. Shigar felt himself rolling toward the open air lock, but couldn’t move a finger to save himself.
The electric shocks ceased the moment he cleared the air lock. That was something to be grateful for as he fell like a stone to the roof below.
HOW LONG HE WAS unconscious he didn’t know. Minutes, probably. Sufficient time for his helpless body to be gathered up by a roof security team, secured with binders at wrists and ankles, and gagged for good measure. When he woke, he was being transported through the palace on the shoulders of a squad of Gamorreans. Neither his lightsaber nor his comlink was within reach.
Instead of fighting, he concentrated on easing his body’s many bruises and batterings. He didn’t know how far he had fallen, but fortunately he had ended up with no broken bones. A ringing skull, yes, and a crushing blow to his dignity, but nothing worse. For the moment, he was grateful simply to be alive.
His captors whisked him at a brisk jog through the palace. He memorized the turns but without a starting point had no way of knowing exactly where he was going. His general impression, however, was of opulence increasing around him, not decreasing. When he arrived at a large space full of people whispering and talking, with one loud voice booming away in Huttese over the top of them, he guessed instantly where he was.
The Gamorreans came to a halt in the center of Tassaa Bareesh’s throne room, and with a coordinated grunt dumped him onto the floor. Silence radiated around him as people noted his presence. He clambered awkwardly to his feet and looked about.
A large crowd of beings stared back at him, whispering and pointing. He saw no less than twenty different species in one quick glance, from trunked Kubaz to feline Cathars, with bipeds occupying a pronounced minority. Their exotic origins belied their unified purpose: to pander and preen before the one who controlled their fates.
“Bona nai kachu,” roared the matriarch of the palace, “dopa meekie Seetha peedunky koochoo!”
Shigar turned to face Tassaa Bareesh. She was sprawled heavily on a horrifically ornate throne-bed at one end of the hall, and decorated almost as ornately as it was. He didn’t know enough about the Hutts to read her expression, but the quivering of her lipless mouth and the spittle she sprayed as she talked left little to the imagination.
An A-1DA protocol droid shuffled forward on spindly legs. “Tassaa Bareesh wishes you to fully comprehend the certainty that you will be punished, treacherous Sith.”
Shigar considered his options. There were at least two dozen weapons trained on him. Behind the crowd, armed guards ran back and forth, responding to various emergencies unfolding in the palace.
He bowed as ceremonially as he was able, given his bindings. “I must correct your mistress. I am in fact a Jedi.”
“Stoopa dopa maskey kung!”
He ignored the insult. “I can hardly have double-crossed you when we had no agreement between us. Beyond trespassing on your territory without permission, I mean no harm.”
Tassaa Bareesh rumbled threateningly, shifting to a different dialect now that she realized he could understand at least some of her words.
“Tassaa Bareesh says: Your intention was to steal from her. For that, you must die.”
“If you search me, you’ll find I’m carrying nothing I didn’t come here with.”
“Tassaa Bareesh says: Your accomplices have made off with the prize.”
“The navicomp? The last time I saw that it was in the grip of a Mandalorian, not a Jedi.”
“Tassaa Bareesh says: Your treachery is surpassed only by your puniness. He stole it from you after you stole it from us.”
“You are upset,” Shigar said. “Your judgment is clouded. A moment ago you thought I was a Sith. Perhaps the lie you think I am telling is actually the truth.”
The crowd muttered in consternation. Clearly few people were bold enough to question Tassaa Bareesh’s judgment to her face.
The Hutt matriarch growled something long and involved that didn’t really need translation. The droid rapidly blinked its round blue eyes and made a valiant effort anyway.
“Tassaa Bareesh is most displeased. She has, ah, devised numerous ways to use you for entertainment.”
Shigar didn’t argue the point. He had finished counting the guards and exits, and reached the conclusion he’d expected. There was no way to fight his way out of this one, and he couldn’t rely on reinforcements. He would have to talk. He might even have to make a deal.
That thought sickened him to the stomach.
“Your anger is perfectly justifiable,” he said. “Your palace has been attacked, and the property and information you planned to sell have been stolen. You’ve been deprived of the profit you deserve. No one would deny that you have a right to seek revenge, to make an example out of those who have caused you embarrassment and significant harm.” He bowed again. “All I beg is that you blame the right people.”
Another explosion ripped through the palace, causing great upset in the throne room. Tassaa Bareesh’s huge eyes showed white around the edges as she waved a Twi’lek over to her. His comlink was squawking urgently. They hastily conversed, too quietly for Shigar to overhear. Then anger got the better of the matriarch. She backhanded the Twi’lek away from her and roared at the translator.
“Tassaa Bareesh wishes you to understand that the spaceport has been attacked,” said the droid, its tapering head bobbing obsequiously.
“By whom?”
“By Imperials. The Republic shuttle has been destroyed.”
Shigar considered saying nothing. On one level he didn’t need to. The actions of the Imperials had won the argument for him, by their blatant violation of the Treaty of Coruscant. But on another level he was still in hot water. Tassaa Bareesh could have him executed just for being an irritation, and an inconvenient reminder of her loss. He had to give her a reason to spare him, not kill him.
He had to appeal to her business sense.
“We are both the victims here,” he said, choosing his words with exquisite care. “Killing me won’t get the navicomp back, and it will make an enemy of the Jedi Council. Either way, you end up worse off. Letting me live, however, offers you a way to cut your losses.”
“Tassaa Bareesh asks: How?”
Shigar swallowed. A bad taste had crept into his mouth. “I intend to follow the Mandalorian wherever he goes. He has injured both my pride and my companion, and he will pay for these crimes. The information he has stolen might no longer be of value, in and of itself, but every new world offers opportunities for trade and exploitation. In return for releasing me, I will ensure that those opportunities come to you first, before anyone else.”
The matriarch hummed a pitch almost too low for a human ear to hear. Her eyes didn’t leave Shigar’s face, but they had an inward cast now.
“Tassaa Bareesh is considering your offer,” said the droid, glancing back and forth between them.
“I worked that out.”
She rumbled something, and the translator said, “Tassaa Bareesh wonders how you intend to follow the Mandalorian when you don’t have a ship, let alone directions.”
“I’m a Jedi.” He tapped his forehead, hoping to hide the fact that he hadn’t the faintest idea on either point. “We have our ways.”
A new wave of whispering spread through the crowd.
“Tassaa Bareesh says that your ways are insufficient. The investment is too risky.”
“But—”
The translator raised a metal hand. “She says that in order to protect her stake in this venture, she must be allowed to provide you with assistance.”
“ ‘Must be’?” The choice of words gave him pause. What was being forced on him, exactly? “Tell me more.”
The matriarch settled back on her throne. Her eyes narrowed to slits.
“Tassaa Bareesh will provide you with transport. Her nephew will make the necessary arrangements. If you accept the offer, you may leave immediately.”
Shigar wondered what would happen if he rejected her offer. He mistrusted the matriarch’s sudden satisfaction. Just moments ago she had been seething with rage at the way her plans had been ruined. Had that been an act, or was this the act?
“All right,” he said, following his instincts. Living right now was better than dying. That was the bottom line. And if he got even luckier, he might be able to do something to help Larin as well, assuming she was still alive. “I accept the offer.”
The matriarch broke out into an enormous and unsavory smile. One chubby finger pointed at him. “U wamma wonka.”
“Tassaa Bareesh says—”
“I know what she said.” He swallowed another foul taste.
She clicked her fingers and the guards dropped their weapons. A Gamorrean scurried forward to return his comlink and lightsaber. He fixed them to his belt and bowed. The crowd watched him, silently now.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure doing business.”
As the guards led him from the throne room—a guest now, rather than a prisoner—the sound of the Hutt’s chuckling, low and lugubrious, echoed and re-echoed through the sybaritic halls behind him.
“ARE YOU FEELING all right?”
Larin turned to look at the smuggler. She had left herself for a moment, left the ruins of the security air lock and the blasted droid factory, left the clamor of palace security digging through the rubble, even left the occasional potshot in their direction from an ambitious Houk, currently stationed in the hole that shortsighted Yeama had blown through the wall. Now she was back, and the view wasn’t pretty.
The answer came to her at last.
Are you feeling all right?
“Yes.”
They were hunkered down out of sight in the entrance of the vault. She was squatting on her knees, still applying pressure to her injured hand under her right armpit. The suit had sealed the wound as best it could, leaving her nothing else she could do about it now. She knew that well enough, having been injured in combat before. Once, she had been caught in an intense urban guerilla exchange that Special Forces Blackstar Squad had been sent in to deal with. Intel had leaked, leading Larin and three squad members into a trap. She still dreamed sometimes of the way frag grenades had torn into the group, instantly reducing two of her friends to ribbons. She had been sheltered from the bulk of it, but even so the skin down her right leg and side had been flayed completely away, along with a fair chunk of muscle. It had taken an extended period in a bacta tank to regrow the tissue, and three months of rehabilitation to restore her to full flexibility.
This was different, though, and it wasn’t just because fingers couldn’t be regrown. In the Blackstars, she had had many clear-cut reasons to fight: among them strengthening the Republic cause, enforcing principles of liberty and equality among all beings in the galaxy, and furthering her own career. She had thought herself perfectly normal in that regard. Why else did one join special forces but to be a hero on the side of good?
She knew now that not everyone was like her. Every barrel contained a bad apple or two. She also knew just how important at least two of those principles were to her. More important, combined, than the last one. Sacrificing her career to uphold them had seemed the right thing to do, at the time.
Without her career, though, it was very hard to fight for any cause at all. And now her situation was totally muddied. Was invading a sovereign state—albeit one comprising criminals and murderers—the best way to go about enforcing freedom and equality? How did squabbling with Mandalorians and Sith over a battered navicomp help the Republic? To whom did she owe her allegiance now, if not herself or her former peers?
She didn’t have good answers for any of these questions, yet she had lost the fingers of her left hand fighting for them. That made the pain worse, somehow.
“What happened to your droid?” she asked Jet in return.
“Clunker? He’s somewhere under that lot,” the smuggler said, indicating the pile of masonry left in the wake of the thermal detonation. He had armed himself with a blaster dropped by one of the dead soldiers outside. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back when he’s ready.”
“I recognize his model,” she said, clutching at the fact as though it would explain everything. “J-Eight-O, soldier class. That’s why he talks in combat signs. But they were phased out, weren’t they?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “I found him on a scrap heap two years ago. His vocoder was dead, and when I tried to fix it, he just broke it again. That proves how smart he is. He’s worked out that if you don’t respond to orders, no one can prove you heard them.”
“That’s a pretty good survival tactic,” she said, “for anyone in the army.”
They leaned out of the vault to see if anything had changed outside. The Houk kicked up some pebbles nearby, but missed by more than a meter. Potannin’s last surviving escort returned fire from the other side of the antechamber. He missed, too. Larin could have aimed better, even with just one hand.
“What’s your name, Private?” she called to him.
“Hetchkee, sir,” he called back. He was a young Kel Dor, and his face was mostly hidden behind a face mask and goggles designed to protect him from a harsh oxygen atmosphere.
“Who told you to call me ‘sir’?”
“No one, sir.”
He obviously didn’t know anything about her past. She wasn’t going to be the one to fill him in.
The sound of digging grew louder.
“Larin,” said Jet, leaning in closer, “do you think we’ve been left to hold the baby?”
“In what sense?”
“In the Someone’s going to have to explain this mess to Tassaa Bareesh and it might as well be you sense.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’ll be back.”
“Who? Your Jedi friend or Envoy Vii?”
Larin looked around. She hadn’t noticed that the envoy was gone—although now that she thought about it, she did remember Jet telling her something about Ula meeting them at the shuttle. It hadn’t occurred to her to wonder when and how they would go about getting there. Ula had left before the security forces had sealed their only way out.
“I mean Shigar,” she said. “Jedi Knights always keep their promises.”
“And what exactly did he promise you?”
She suppressed a sharp reply. What was Jet getting at? Sure, Shigar may not actually have promised to come back for her, but she knew he would if he could. And while Tassaa Bareesh’s security forces amassed outside, there was nothing else she could do but trust him. She had given up trying to hail him on the comlink long ago.
She stood up.
“I suggest—”
The sound of a distant explosion cut her off. The floor shook, and a rain of dust settled down on them from above.
There was no way to tell where this latest blast had come from, so she finished what she’d been about to say.
“I suggest we look at this thing while we still have the chance.”
She crossed to the miniature droid factory and peered inside. The swirling silver cilia were still now, so she felt safe assuming it was dead. She tried tipping it over to see the base, but it was firmly affixed by the wire-like threads that had eaten down into the vault floor like tree roots.
A piece of the silvery alloy had melted off during the firefight in the vault. She picked it up and weighed it in her hand. It was surprisingly heavy.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “This thing was on the Cinzia. You found it in the wreckage and brought it to Hutta. Tassaa Bareesh locked it in here. It looked inert, but it wasn’t. It sent out those thread things into the floor and began scavenging metal. It infiltrated the security system. It started building the droids.”
“Ula called them hexes.”
That was as good a name as any, for now. “Maybe just one or two hexes at first, to defend itself. It kept them hidden inside, like a nest or an egg. If you look into one of the hexes, you’ll see they’re not solid all the way through. They have a honeycomb structure. So two could easily fit in here, if they were collapsed down.” She poked the cilia with the barrel of her rifle. “Two would be enough to take over a ship.”
Jet looked at her, not the droid-nest. “You think it was waiting for someone to win the auction and take it away?”
“I do. The hexes would’ve emerged, overpowered the crew, and gone safely home.”
He nodded slowly, thinking through her proposition.
“I think you’re partly there,” he said. “Given enough time, I reckon the hexes could’ve escaped from here on their own steam. Note how they emerged from the vault the moment everyone started fighting over it. The door melted like butter, probably thanks to wires like these. If everyone had waited just one more day, I think our nest here would have turned up empty.”
“You might be right,” she said.
“It’s just a guess,” he said self-deprecatingly.
“Here’s another one,” she said, edging back to the door. “If the homing instinct theory is right, then the hexes must know the way home.”
Jet’s face brightened. “So if we can get out of here with one of their brains, we won’t need the navicomp after all!”
They peered out at the body of the double-hex lying on the floor of the vault. The laser cannon had blasted a hole right through both conjoined abdomens. The innards were blackened and melted, totally unsalvageable.
Jet’s face fell. “Worth a thought, anyway.”
Larin leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Shigar sure was taking his time. Her blood sugar was low, and the endless pain was making her dizzy.
The sliver of metal from the factory was still in her one good hand. She slipped it into one of her suit’s many sealed compartments. At least they wouldn’t return empty-handed.
A disturbance outside distracted her. “Someone’s coming!” called Hetchkee.
Larin propped the barrel of her rifle on the back of her left hand and trained it through the door. The mound of rubble at the far end of the security air lock was moving. Someone was clearly coming up through it—but was it Stryver, the Sith, or Jet’s loyal droid?
A scuffed orange hand, reaching out of the gravel to find purchase on a fallen beam, soon answered the question.
“Told you,” said Jet with a satisfied expression. “Over here, mate!” he yelled to the droid.
Clunker extricated himself from the rubble and limped over to join them, utterly unmolested. The Houk had stopped firing. Instead of reassuring Larin, that worried her. There was no way to know what was going on outside their impromptu redoubt. She presumed the Hutts wouldn’t leave them alone for long.
“Good work, Hetchkee,” she said, returning to the safety of the vault’s interior. “I think we’ll have more company soon, so stay alert.”
“Yes, sir.” If the soldier was worried by that prospect, he didn’t show it.
Clunker was communicating with Jet via a series of rapid signs.
“Bad news,” the smuggler translated. “Stryver got away with the navicomp.”
“That’s the end of that, then,” she said, unable to hide her bitterness. The trail had gone cold. Any hopes she might have entertained about redeeming herself by means of a successful volunteer mission were now officially dead. “What does he want with this colony, anyway? Doesn’t Mandalore have enough soldiers already?”
“Doesn’t Tassaa Bareesh have enough money?” His cynical smile flashed again. “I think Stryver wanted the navicomp for two reasons. To find the Cinzia’s origins, and to hide its destination. That would make sense if Mandalore has been part of this right from the beginning.”
She stared hard at him. “You could be right. Stryver knew about the Cinzia long before anyone else. It was him going around asking questions that tipped us off.”
“And the Cinzia was on a diplomatic mission, but neither the Empire nor the Republic had ever heard of it. Can you name any other major players in the galaxy at the moment?”
She granted him the point. Even if the Mandalorians hadn’t acted as a united body since the war, it wasn’t inconceivable that they might do so again, for honor, or the right price, or just because they needed a good war. “Why did those things attack Stryver, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“And who saved the nest from destruction when the Cinzia’s crew blew themselves up?”
“I don’t know that, either.”
She shook her head. “Every way I look at this, it keeps on getting crazier.”
“Tassaa Bareesh had no idea, did she?”
The sound of grinding rubble came from outside the vault. Larin hurried to the door before Hetchkee could call. The giant mass of stone blocking the far entrance was moving forward. Behind the crunching of rock and ferrocrete, she could hear a hissing and pounding that could only have come from dirt-moving droids.
“Okay,” she said, “this is it. If you’ve got any other bright ideas, Jet, now would be the time.”
“You’ve had your daily quota, I’m afraid.”
“Well, then, you’d better join me in hoping that Shigar turns up soon. Otherwise, we’ll see what Tassaa Bareesh’s hospitality is really like, behind all the chintz.”
“I suppose we could try to make a last-ditch break for it,” he said.
“And go where?”
“Well, there’s my ship.”
“I thought it was impounded.”
“Oh, that. A small technicality.”
“Like getting out of here alive.”
He winked. “A man can dream, can’t he?”
Levity in the face of unspeakable odds always buoyed her spirits. It surprised her how much she had warmed to the smuggler in their short time together. Maybe their cells would be next to each other in Tassaa Bareesh’s dungeon. Maybe they would be stretched on adjacent racks.
With a rumbling crash, the droids broke through the rubble. Once the way was clear, they retreated to allow the palace’s security forces past. There were dozens of them, all heavily armored and armed, creeping forward across the exposed beams of the floor with sights trained on the vault.
Larin almost laughed. Tassaa Bareesh had sent an army to capture just four people! It would’ve been absurd if she hadn’t been on the wrong end of the equation.
“What do you think, Hetchkee?” she called to the Kel Dor soldier. “We can try surrendering to them, if you like. We haven’t done anything wrong, when you think about it. Your boss was actually invited.”
“I don’t reckon they’re in the mood to care about that, sir.”
That was true enough. The ranks of Weequay, Houks, Niktos, and Gamorreans looked as though they expected a whole army of Sith, Jedi, and Mandalorians to burst out of the vault and make off with their mistress’s fortunes. If only they knew there were just three people and a droid. It hadn’t even occurred to Larin to try unlocking the other three vaults.
“All right, then,” she said. “Wait until you can see the red of their eyes.”
Her opposite number among the security team was saying much the same thing, judging by the sudden tightening of their ranks. One enormous Weequay raised his right hand to give the signal to attack.
At that moment, Larin’s comlink buzzed.
She froze, unable to fire and answer at the same time. What was more important: the last shots she might ever fire in her life, or the last communication she might ever receive?
The Weequay had frozen, too. A blue-skinned Twi’lek had appeared at the far end of the room, waving and shouting something in a language she couldn’t understand.
“Can you follow that?” she asked Jet.
He shook his head. “Sounds important, though, whatever it is.”
No one was coming for them at that moment, so she took the opportunity to put her rifle aside and reach for the comlink.
“Larin, it’s me,” said Shigar. “Where are you?”
“Right where you left me. Tell me you’ve got a flip card up your sleeve.”
“I might just have. Has Tassaa Bareesh sent anyone to you yet?”
She peered out at the masses of security guards. “You could say that.”
“Go wherever they take you. I know what she has in mind.”
“You want me to surrender?”
“It won’t be surrender. We, ah, reached an agreement, she and I.”
Larin didn’t like that moment of hesitation. What if he was under duress and walking her into a trap?
She asked him, “Do you remember lightning season on Kiffu, when the static trees take to the air?”
“What—? Yes, I do. Spark-dragons lure them into caves to steal their charge. I’m not setting you up, Larin. You can rest easy on that score.”
“All right,” she said, keeping a close eye on the leading Weequay. He was yelling at the Twi’lek and brandishing his massive fists. “You’ll be where they take us?”
“Count on it.”
She put down the comlink and turned to Jet. He had heard everything.
“I will admit,” he said, “that I prefer resolutions that involve talking rather than shooting.”
“So you think we should do this?”
“I do. And Clunker agrees.”
The droid looked as though he was fully prepared to shoot his way out, but nodded stiffly.
“Hetchkee! Put down your rifle. When I say so, we’re coming out.”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Wait for the signal. If we get the timing right, I think we’ve got a good chance of surviving this with a little class.”
The Weequay shook his hands overhead one last time, then let them fall to his sides. The Twi’lek looked satisfied. The Weequay turned to his troops and grunted a series of commands.
The security detail rose to its feet one at a time, and lowered their weapons.
“Right,” said Larin. “That’s our cue. Put down your blasters, but keep your hands at your sides. We’re not surrendering.”
She stepped first out of the vault, and the Twi’lek came to meet her.
“I am Sagrillo,” he said with a short bow. “By the order of Tassaa Bareesh, you are free to go.”
Larin kept her relief completely hidden. “You better believe it.”
“And me?” asked Jet hopefully.
“Alas, Captain Nebula, my mistress still has need of your services.” The Twi’lek bowed again. “If you will accompany me, please, all of you, I will take you where you are required to be.”
Larin fell in behind the Twi’lek, with Jet beside him. Clunker and Hetchkee brought up the rear. The only sound was a subterranean growling from the Weequay as the security detail parted before them. Larin considered tipping him a salute farewell, but thought better of it.
She glanced at Jet. Apart from the slow clenching and unclenching of his jaw muscles, he showed no emotion at all.