Aside from the guards walking their rounds far below and the distant aircars patrolling the outer perimeter of the palace grounds, no one was visible. Stretching out to the Force, she got a grip on the package she'd hidden earlier beneath one of the decorative bushes lining the outer wall and pulled.

For a moment nothing happened. She focused harder, and this time the handle came free and floated swiftly upward, its connecting cord trailing behind it. A moment later it was in her hands, and at a touch of a b.u.t.ton the motors inside began reeling in the cord and the much heavier black-wrapped package at the far end.

A minute later the package was inside, its contents spread on the office floor. Two minutes after that, she had exchanged her flowing gown for a gray combat suit, her delicate flowery shoulder sculpt for a shoulder-slung Stokhli spray stick, and her embroidered waist sash for a belt and a lightsaber.

The packet also included a tube of compressed air and an inflatable-mannequin duplicate of her, dressed in formal wear identical to that she had been wearing moments before. She set it up and arranged it on the couch as a decoy for any prying eyes; with her real gown out of sight beneath the desk, she headed back to the window and slipped outside.

Mara had been introduced to the spray stick only a few months earlier, and in that time had worked hard to master it and add it to her already extensive repertoire of tools and weapons. This entire gambit, in fact, - was one she'd practiced over and over again at her training center in the Imperial Palace. Straddling the windowsill, she pointed the device at an upward angle along the outer wall and squeezed the thumb trigger.

There was a sharp hiss, and the spray stick snapped back against its shoulder sling as a jet of fine mist shot out the far end. As it hit the air, the mist turned into a roiling flow of liquid that quickly solidified against the stonework, forming a twist-surfaced bridge that could be climbed. Shutting off the spray, Mara rotated the stick out of her way on its strap and started up.

She had to pause twice to spray additional length to her private pathway before she reached the twentieth floor and Glovstoak's private quarters.

His windows were protected by the same intruder grid she'd found in the office, with the same built-in weakness. Stretching with the Force through the transparisteel, she first shut off the grid and then tripped the catch. A minute later she was inside.

The quarters were deserted, Glovstoak and all his people downstairs at the grand party. Still, Mara stayed alert as she moved silently between the rooms. The moff could easily have left a droid or two to watch over his private possessions.

But droids could be scanned or reprogrammed, and Glovstoak apparently wasn't willing to take that kind of chance. Instead he had chosen to rely on two highly sophisticated alarms on his concealed walk-in safe.

Sophisticated from his point of view, anyway. The professional thieves the Emperor had brought in to instruct Mara in their craft would have laughed at both systems. Mara herself, not nearly so experienced, merely smiled and had both neutralized within ten minutes.

After all the preliminaries, getting the safe itself open was almost an anticlimax. Two minutes later she pulled open the heavy door and stepped inside.

One wall of the safe had been taken over entirely by data card file cabinets, containing the sector's duplicate administration records.

Interesting enough, certainly, but even if Glovstoak had been careless enough to leave a data trail that would show his alleged financial irregularities, it would take a small army of accountants to sniff it out. Instead Mara headed toward the back of the safe, looking for more personal items. And there she found the evidence she needed. For a long moment she gazed at the half dozen artworks sitting in the beam of her glow rod. At first glance the private collection seemed rather puny, especially considering the number of flats, sculptures, tressles, and volmans decorating the public areas of the palace.

Mara wasn't fooled. The pieces downstairs were grandiose but relatively cheap. More importantly, they were comfortably within the budget of an honest administrator of Glovstoak's position. The six pieces in the safe were something else entirely.

one of them would fetch upward of a hundred million credits from the galaxy's wealthiest private collectors, no questions asked. Taken together, they were probably worth three times the value of Glovstoak's palace and everything in it.

Which meant that the Emperor's suspicions were correct. Glovstoak was skimming the top off the tax revenues he was sending to Imperial Center.

Picking up one of the flats, Mara turned it around. In the light from her glow rod the back surface appeared to be plain and unmarked. But there was a little thing art dealers did that Glovstoak might not be aware of.

Tuning her glow rod to a specific frequency of ultraviolet light, she tried again.

There it was; a complete listing of all the dealers and auction houses and brokers through whose hands the flat had traveled throughout its long history.

Mara smiled. The dealers made these lists invisible to avoid introducing such cra.s.s commercialism into the carefully nurtured elegance of their world. Professional art thieves routinely obliterated the markings in order to make their new acquisitions harder to trace. Glovstoak hadn't done that, which immediately told her he hadn't obtained the art through a professional. Interesting.

She made a note of the last listing-Peven Auction House, Crovna-and set the flat back where she'd found it. She made a similar check of two more of the artworks, then left the safe, closing the door and reactivating the alarms behind her.

The trip down the wall was much easier and faster than the trip up had been. The solidified Stokhli spray would evaporate in another couple of hours, leaving no trace even if Glovstoak's men thought to look.

She was back in her gown, the rest of her gear hidden again behind its ground-level bush, when the office door eased open a cautious crack.

"Countess?" Deerian's voice called quietly.

"Yes, General," she called back, sitting up on the couch and stretching.

"Please, come in."

"I trust you're feeling better?" the other said, stepping into the doorway.

"Much better," she a.s.sured him, smiling as she crossed to him. "Thank you for your thoughtfulness."

"My pleasure," he said, smiling back as he offered her his arm. "Shall we return to the reception?"

"Yes, indeed," she said, taking his arm.

And let's hope everyone enjoys it, she thought as they headed past the watchful sentries. It's the last party Glovstoak will ever throw.

Chapter Three.

MARCROSS'S INFORMATION, AS USUAL, TURNED OUT to be correct. Six days after the Teardrop ma.s.sacre an ISB tactical unit arrived aboard the Reprisal.

They arrived in force, too: ten full squads, including officers, troopers, droids, even their own intel a.n.a.lysis group. More disturbing to LaRone were the two squads of stormtroopers who came with them.

"Which means that whatever they do-shoot up another town, or worse- they'll be wearing our armor, which means the whole stormtrooper corps will get the blame for it," he warned Quiller and Grave as the three of them gazed down from the observation walkway into Hangar Bay 5. The ISB people had brought a strange a.s.sortment of vehicles with them, from light freighters to old and outmoded military transports and even a dilapidated pleasure yacht.

"Not that we're not blamed for everything anyway," Quiller added with an edge of bitterness. "Comes from our always catching the tough ones."

"Which comes from our being the Empire's finest," Grave countered with a touch of pride. "We certainly have better transports than these clowns."

"What, you mean those?" Quiller asked, pointing at the cl.u.s.ter of ships below them. "Don't you believe it, buddy, not for a minute. That Suwantek TL-1800, for instance-see those crimp marks on the engine nozzles?"

"Which one are we talking about?" LaRone asked, frowning at the unfamiliar designs.

"That flat, angular job with the oversized sublight engines," Quiller said, pointing. "Usually the 1800's a piece of junk-holds together okay, but it's slow, badly armed, and poorly shielded. The nav computer glitches a lot, too."

"Sounds perfect for the ISB," Grave murmured. "Let's turn 'em loose and let 'em get lost."

"Like I said, don't believe it," Quiller said. "Those engines have been upgraded probably six ways from Imperial Center, and odds are everything else beneath the plating has, too. Ditto for the rest of the ships."

"You suppose they run under false IDs?" LaRone asked.

Quiller snorted. "They probably have whole racks full of them," he said.

"We may be the Empire's finest, but you'd never know it when ISB gets up from the budget table."

"You have a problem with the ISB, soldier?" a dark voice demanded from behind them.

LaRone felt his stomach knot up. It was Major Drelfin, the ISB man who'd ordered the ma.s.sacre on Teardrop.

"No, sir, not at all," Quiller a.s.sured him quickly.

"Glad to hear it," Drelfin said as he stalked toward them, his hand resting on the grip of his holstered blaster. "Now, you have exactly five seconds to tell me what you're doing in a restricted area."

"We're Imperial stormtroopers, sir," LaRone told him, fighting to keep the proper level of military respect in his voice. "We're allowed access everywhere aboard ship."

"Really," Drelfin said, his gaze flicking over LaRone's fatigues. "Why aren't you in armor?"

"We've been permitted a bit of lat.i.tude in that area, sir," LaRone said, choosing his words carefully. Regulations unequivocally stated that stormtroopers were always to be in armor whenever outside their barracks section. But Captain Ozzel resented their presence aboard his ship and didn't like seeing armored men wandering around during their off hours.

Since the stormtrooper commanders had, in turn, refused to confine their men to barracks when they were off duty, they'd come to a more unofficial arrangement.

"Permitted by whom?" Drelfin demanded. "Your lieutenant? Your major?"

"Is there a problem here, Major?" a new voice said from the far end of the observation gallery.

LaRone turned to find Marcross and Bright.w.a.ter walking toward them, the latter with a rag tucked into the pocket of his fatigues and grease stains on his hands.

"What is this, the Kiddie Klub meeting room?" Drelfin growled. "Identify yourselves."

"Stormtrooper TKR 175," Marcross said, an edge of both pride and challenge in his voice. 'This is TBR 479."

"Also not in armor, I see," Drelfin growled. "Also apparently ignorant of the regulations regarding off-limit areas."

He shifted his glare back to LaRone. "Or is it that you border-world recruits don't know how to read the regulations in the first place?"

"As I said, sir-" LaRone began.

"-you didn't think regulations applied to you," Drelfin finished sarcastically. "I trust you know better now?"

"Yes, sir," Bright.w.a.ter said. He touched LaRone's arm. "Come on, LaRone.

You were going to help me change the steering vanes on my speeder."

"LaRone?" Drelfin echoed, his voice suddenly strange. "Daric LaRone? TKR 330?".

LaRone glanced at Marcross, noting the sudden crease in the other's forehead. "Yes, sir," he said.

"Well, well," Drelfin said softly. Without warning, he drew his blaster.

"I've been going over the records of the Teardrop operation," he continued, an unpleasant tightness at the corners of his eyes as the weapon came to a halt pointed at LaRone's stomach. "Your squad was ordered to execute some Rebel sympathizers. You deliberately missed your shots. That's dereliction of duty."

LaRone felt his throat tighten. So someone had noticed his lack of precision shooting that day. This was not good. "My duty is to protect and preserve the Empire and the New Order," he said, forcing his voice to stay calm.

"Your duty is to obey orders," Drelfin countered.

They were unarmed and nonthreatening civilians," LaRone said. "If there were charges or suspicions concerning them, they should have been arrested and brought to trial."

"They were Rebel sympathizers!"

Quiller took a step forward. "Sir, if you have a complaint against this man-"

"Stay out of this, stormtrooper," Drelfin warned. "You're in enough trouble as it is."

"What sort of trouble?" Marcross asked.

"You're out of uniform, you're in a restricted area without authorization-"Drelfin nodded at LaRone. "-and you're obviously friendly with a traitor to the Empire."

"What?" Grave demanded. "That's insa-" "With all due respect, Majoii TKR 2014 is correct," Marcross cut him off. "Regulations require that a charge of this magnitude be brought immediately to the attention of the senior stormtrooper officer."

"Let me explain something, TKR 175," Drelfin growled. "We're the Imperial Security Bureau. What we say is principle; what we decide is regulation; what we do is law."

"And whoever you order shot is dead?" LaRone retorted.

"So you do understand," Drelfin said, the corners of his mouth quirking upward in a death's-head smile. "I was in command of that operation, which means I will decide what to do with you. Not your lieutenant; not your major; certainly not your stupid Captain Ozzel."

He stepped up and pressed the muzzle of his blaster into LaRone's forehead. It was an unfamiliar design, LaRone noted distantly: large and nasty, with an odd-looking attachment at the end of the barrel. "And if I choose to summarily execute you for treason-" His finger tightened visibly on the trigger.

He was bluffing, a small part of LaRone's mind knew. He was toying with his victim in one of the macabre games that these small-minded, s.a.d.i.s.tic little men enjoyed so much.

But LaRone was an Imperial stormtrooper, ruthlessly trained in the arts of combat and survival, and those deeply embedded reflexes knew nothing about ISB mind games. His left hand snapped up of its own accord, slapping Drelfin's wrist and knocking the blaster away from his forehead.

It was probably the last thing Drelfin expected. He stumbled with the impact, snarling a curse as he tried to swing the weapon back on target.

But even as he did so LaRone's right hand came up, catching the other's wrist and giving it an extra push. For a single, nerve-racking fraction of a second the blaster was again pointing at LaRone's face; then it was past, overcorrecting and swinging wide to LaRone's left. He swiveled on his right foot, spinning himself halfway around as he held on to the major's wrist, and a second later he had Drelfin hunched over, his arm twisted around, the blaster pointed harmlessly at the ceiling. "What was that about ISB whims being law?" he ground out.

"LaRone, are you insane?" Bright.w.a.ter demanded, his eyes bulging.

"Maybe," LaRone said. His anger was draining away, and to his dismay he realized that Bright.w.a.ter was right. If he hadn't been in trouble before, he was certainly there now. "But that'll be for the proper procedure to determine," he added. Reaching up, he twisted the blaster out of Drelfin's grip, then let go of his arm.

Drelfin straightened up, his eyes staring vibroblades at LaRone, his face contorted with rage, his mouth working with soundless curses. His left hand gripping a small hold-out blaster. And this time, LaRone knew, it was no game. There was a soft flash, a muted blast- Without a sound, Drelfin collapsed silently to the deck.

For a long, frozen moment, no one moved or spoke. LaRone stared at the crumpled body, then at the major's blaster still in his hand, his mind struggling to believe the evidence of his eyes. No-something else had surely happened. The major must have had a stroke or heart attack, or perhaps been shot from concealment by some unknown party. That hadn't even sounded like a real blaster shot, for pity's sake- "Oh, no," Bright.w.a.ter murmured, sounding stunned.

LaRone swallowed hard; and with that, the bubble of wild speculation burst, and the cold reality flooded in on him. Daric LaRone, with all his high-minded prattlings about duty and honor, had just gunned down a man in cold blood.

Not just a man. An officer. An ISB officer. And in that second frozen moment, he knew he was dead.

The others knew it too. "It was self-defense," Quiller said, his voice shaking in a way LaRone had never heard from him in even the most desperate combat situations. "You all saw it. Drelfin drew first."

"You think ISB will care?" Grave bit out.

"I just meant-"

"They won't care," Marcross said, his voice tight as he looked quickly around the observation deck. "The question is, how serious are they going to be about tracking us down?"

"Wait a second," Bright.w.a.ter said. "What do you mean, us?"