"Ben, come away from there... now!"

Ben pressed his back to the closet. "It's not what you-"

Mara reached out with the Force and pulled him to her side, then grabbed his wrist and-keeping one eye on the closet door-knelt at his side.

"Ben, we just received a holo from Aunt Leia," she said. "She was worried that a Killik a.s.sa.s.sin might have stowed away aboard the Shadow.

So if all that gelmeat you've been taking is for-"

"Gorog's no a.s.sa.s.sin!" Ben said. "She's my best friend."

"She's an insect, Ben."

"So? Your best friend's a lizard."

"Don't be ridiculous." Mara rose and pushed him behind her. "Aunt Leia is my best friend."

"Doesn't count," Ben said. "She's family. Saba is a lizard."

"Okay, maybe my best friend's a lizard."

Mara was both repulsed and terrified at the thought of her son developing a relationship with a Killik-especially given what Cilghal was learning about the Joiner bonding mechanism. But she was also beginning to worry about the psychological damage Ben might suffer if she slew his "friend" in front of him.

"If Gorog's your friend, tell her to come out nice and slow. We'll talk this-"

The m.u.f.fled groan of a sliding wall panel sounded from two rooms over. Holding her lightsaber at the ready, Mara used the Force to open Ben's closet-and nearly ignited her blade when an empty exoskeleton tumbled into the room. It was about a meter high, with thick blue-black chitin and barbed mandibles half the length of Mara's arms.

"Ben!"

"I told you it wasn't what you thought."

"Stay here!"

Using the Force to slide the wall panels aside in front of her, Mara rushed two rooms over and found six black limbs-two legs and four arms- sticking out from under the low table that Luke used for a writing desk. The mandibles were protruding from one end, and the whole piece of furniture was trembling as though there were a groundquake.

Ben rushed up beside Mara.

"I told you to stay in your room," Mara said.

"I can't," Ben said. "Gorog's scared."

"Okay. Tell her to come out. Everything will be all right."

A low rumble reverberated from under the table.

"She doesn't trust you," Ben reported.

Mara actually looked away from the bug. "You speak Killik?"

"I don't speak it. I just understand it." Gorog drummed again, and he added, "She says you're a killer."

Coming from her son, the words felt like a vibroblade to the heart.

"We talked about that, Ben. Sometimes I have to kill. Many Jedi Masters do. "

Gorog rumbled something else, and it seemed to Mara that there was something sharp in the insect's rhythm, something spiteful and malevolent.

"Mom, what's cold blood?" Ben asked.

"Is that what she's saying?" Mara squatted down so she could look Gorog in the eye. Instead, she found herself staring at a dark sheaf of mandibles and mouthparts. "It means you kill when you don't have to. I don't do that."

The Killik slowly moved away, carrying the table along on her back and drumming incessantly.

"She says you killed lots of people when you didn't have to, for Palpytine," Ben said. "Mom, who's Palpytine?"

"Palpatine," Mara corrected automatically. She felt as though the Emperor were reaching across time to her yet again, as though to prove how foolish she had been to believe she could ever truly escape him. "A bad man I used to know. How does Gorog know his name?"

A stream of brown saliva shot out from under the table. Mara's reflexes were too quick for it to come near her face, but in the quarter second it took her to draw away, the insect came flying at her with the table still on its back. She activated her lightsaber instinctively-and heard Ben crying out over the crackle of the igniting blade.

"Don't!" Ben cried. "Please!"

Mara deactivated the blade in a pang of motherly concern and whirled into a spinning back kick instead, her foot landing high because she had to lift her leg above Ben's head. Instead of launching the Killik across the room, the attack simply knocked off the table and drove the insect to the floor.

A soft sizzle sounded from the wall beside Mara, and a sour, acrid smell filled her nostrils. She put down a hand to push Ben back, and Gorog slammed a mandible into her ankles, sweeping her from her feet.

Mara hit the floor flat on her back. The Killik stabbed a pair of sharp pincer-hands down on her shoulders and brought her head around, a hypo-shaped proboscis pushing out between the mandibles, venom dripping from its tip. Mara smashed her lightsaber handle into the tube, folding it over and drawing a boom of pain from the Killik's chest cavity.

"Mom!" Ben cried.

"Go to your room!" Mara hooked her elbow around the arm on her shoulder and pulled, dropping Gorog to an elbow. "Now!"

The Killik reached for Mara's neck with its other two hands.

Mara drove her free hand up under the insect's jaw, then bridged on her shoulders and flipped it onto its back. She sprang instantly to her feet-and the Killik flexed a wing and flipped instantly to its feet.

Ben remained in the doorway, on the opposite side of the Killik from Mara.

"Ben, I'm very disappointed in you." Mara's shoulders were throbbing where the pincers had pierced them, and blood was running down the front of her jumpsuit. She could sense that Luke was only a couple of minutes behind her, but a lot could happen in two minutes-too much to be sure that she would not have to kill Ben's friend. "You need to start obeying me and go find your father."

"But you said to go to my-"

"Ben!" Mara brought her lightsaber up and started to circle toward him. "Just do as I say. You're in enough trouble already."

Ben's face grew pale, and the Killik began to pivot with Mara, keeping itself between her and her son. She thought for a moment the Killik meant to use Ben as a hostage, but it was careful to stay away from him-as though it, too, were worried he might be accidentally injured.

"Ben, I think Gorog wants you to leave, too."

Ben glanced at the Killik, then asked Mara, "Are you going to kill her?"

"Ben, I'm the one who's bleeding here."

"But you're a Jedi Master," Ben said. "It doesn't matter if a Jedi Master bleeds."

"You've been watching too many action holos," Mara said.

Nevertheless, she hung her lightsaber on her belt. "But, okay, I promise-if you leave right now."

Gorog rumbled something that caused Ben to scowl.

"Maybe you should just be nice," he said to the Killik. "Then maybe Mom would let you stay."

Gorog thrummed, and Mara began to wish C-3PO were here to translate.

"She doesn't always lie," Ben protested. "Not even most-"

Gorog raised two hands and shooed him toward the door.

Ben sighed and left the room.

Mara waited until she heard the front door slide open, then said, "Thank you for that."

The Killik spread its mandibles and sprang. Mara caught it in the Force and slammed it into a support post. There was a sharp crackle, and when the insect dropped to the floor, one of its wings jutted out at an angle.

"I don't understand why you want to fight," Mara said. "Because you have no chance of winning-"

Gorog jumped across the room, mandibles snapping at head height.

Mara rushed to meet the attack, then dropped into a slide, catching both ankles as she pa.s.sed beneath the insect, spinning to her belly, twisting its legs around and slamming the Killik down on its back.

The insect flexed its good wing and landed back on its feet, but Mara was already driving an elbow into a tubular knee. The leg snapped with a sickening crackle, and the Killik dropped to the floor.

Mara grabbed the Killik's good leg and stood, jerking it up more or less upside down, then snake-locked her leg over the insect's and shoved against the joint.

"All right, that's enough," she said. "I promised Ben I wouldn't kill you-but I didn't say anything about hurting."

The Killik clacked its mandibles wildly, then released an acrid, foul- smelling vapor that filled Mara's eyes with cloudy tears and turned her stomach queasy and rebellious. She snapped the joint and attempted to launch herself out of danger with a departing thrust-kick, but the insect was already rolling into Mara's leg.

She landed facedown, her kicking leg trapped beneath the Killik.

Four pincer-hands grabbed hold of her calf and began to pull, dragging her foot toward the clacking mandibles. Mara's own hand drifted toward her lightsaber, but she stopped short of pulling it free. This bug was not going to make a liar and a killer of her in her son's eyes. She reached forward, clawing at the wooden floor, trying to pull free, and only slipped farther beneath the insect.

Then Mara saw the table, lying on its side where it had fallen when Gorog attacked. She reached out with a mental hand, turned it end-on, and brought it sailing into the Killik's head.

The table connected with a spectacular pop, and Gorog's grasp loosened. Mara scrambled free and Force-sprang to her feet, then spun around to find the Killik collapsed on its belly, ail six limbs trembling and shaking in convulsions. She rushed to its side and pulled the table away, revealing a ten-centimeter dent in the head where the edge had cracked the chitin.

"Stang!"

Mara pulled the comlink from her pocket and started to call for medical a.s.sistance-then noticed the Killik slowly drawing its trembling arms in toward its body, gathering itself to spring.

Mara slipped forward and brought her heel down on the dented chitin. "I said that was enough!"

Gorog collapsed again, unable to do anything but lie on the floor and tremble. Then Mara felt Luke urgently reaching out to her, warning her to be careful, urging her not to kill it.

Mara eyed the insect with spite in her heart. "What is it with you?"

A few seconds later, Luke came rushing in the door with half a dozen senior apprentices at his back.

"Mara, are you-"

"I'm fine, Skywalker." She took the hand he offered and glared down at the trembling insect. "But I'm getting awfully tired of people telling me not to squash that bug."

"Sorry about that, but the comm center just finished reconstructing some of Leia's message." Luke motioned the apprentices to secure the Killik, then added, "She says it could explode."

TWENTY-NINE.

Reclining in long diagnostics chairs with their heads hidden beneath scanning helmets and their bodies swaddled in sensor feeds, the subjects of the experiment-Tahiri and the other Joiner Jedi Knights-reminded Luke of captives in an Imperial interrogation facility. It did not help that the Killik and Alema Rar, who had arrived aboard the Falcon just hours before, were heavily sedated and strapped in place with nylasteel bands. Even the isolation chambers in which the subjects were located - dark, gas-tight compartments with transparisteel doors-looked like detention-center cells.

"I'm sorry it's so dim in here, Master Skywalker," Cilghal said.

She was standing behind a semicircular control station in a white laboratory smock, studying a data-holo comparing the brain activity of her subjects. "But it's better to have as little background stimulation as possible. It helps isolate their responses."

"I understand." Luke did not bother denying his revulsion. Cilghal could certainly sense his feelings through the Force, just as Luke could sense the excitement that had caused her to comm him in the first place.

"And it's more than the darkness. The whole lab raises unpleasant a.s.sociations."

"Yes, it does have a certain Imperial utilitarianism," Cilghal said. "I wish there had been time to design something less dismal, but this configuration was the quickest to a.s.semble."

"Speed is important," Luke a.s.sured her. "It will only take Han a few days to repair the damage to the Falcon, and I'd like to have this thing figured out before he and Leia start back to the Qoribu system."

Cilghal studied him out of one bulbous eye. "You can't convince them to wait until we learn more?"

"Not with Jaina still there, not after what happened to Saba."

"Saba will recover, and Jaina..." Cilghal turned up the palms of her fin-like hands. "If Jaina would not return before, what makes them think she will listen to them now?"

"I don't know," Luke said. "But they're convinced we need to return to Qoribu as soon as possible... and I think I agree with them."

Luke had heard reports of Jacen's visit to Tenel Ka and rumors of unexplained Hapan fleet maneuvers, and Leia had told him flatly that the balance of power at Qoribu was about to shift. He and the other Masters were still debating if that was a good thing or bad, but events were clearly moving faster than the order's ability to deal with them. Whether the Jedi understood the Killiks or not, they had to take action soon.

After considering Luke's words for a moment, Cilghal said, "Then I should just tell you what I need and not waste time reporting failures."

Luke frowned at the hesitation... shame... he felt from the Mon Calamari. "If you think that's best," he said cautiously.