Walking toward the entrance, she reached to pull her headset back into place-only to hear the beep of an incoming call. She activated the comlink. "Where have you you been, Rusher? I hate to break this to you, but we're going to have another guest!" been, Rusher? I hate to break this to you, but we're going to have another guest!"

"I am not Rusher," a scratchy voice said.

Kerra stopped running. She didn't have time for guessing games. "Look, I don't care who you are, as long as you're with Diligence Diligence-"

The speaker didn't let her finish. "We met on Darkknell-twice. The first time, you stole something from me."

Kerra stared into the dim light. She'd barely been able to get a signal before. But this voice was pure and clear. And familiar.

"The Bothan?"

"You do remember."

"I-I'm surprised to hear from you." Kerra didn't even know his name. "Are you here?"

"I wouldn't be talking to you at all," came the curt response, "but I have my instructions. And here are yours," he continued. "Divide and conquer." "Divide and conquer."

"Wait! What?" She looked around the darkened control room. The only thing here was the Celegian in its tank. She looked around the darkened control room. The only thing here was the Celegian in its tank.

"Where are you?"

"I am here, Jedi Jedi," responded a much different voice from behind her. Seeing red light reflected in the container, Kerra felt fire lash her back. Rolling forward, she looked back to see six of the lightsaber-batons-all in the tentacles of a single attacker.

The Krevaaki!

I will destroy the Jedi!

Dromika's command rang in the regent's cavernous ears. It helped to remember it. Every syllable stirred his body to action, restored his lost youth and vigor. The teenager's commands had always had that effect, but never so much as now-now, when he had just set his emerald eyes on his first living Jedi in years.

"I will destroy the Jedi! I will destroy the Jedi!" The Krevaaki's tentacles whirled into motion, making deadly rotors of the weapons they held. He had discarded his robe in the turbolift-and on seeing the human woman dawdling, had pounced.

He'd only torn into the back of the dark-haired invader's jacket when she dived forward, tumbling out of the way. She was a Jedi. She had to be, to move like that. And Quillan, upstairs, had already sensed that she was, and told Dromika, who had ordered the regent-aspect- "I will destroy the Jedi!" he said, whirling ahead into the command center.

The woman leapt an overturned chair, left from the days when the Celegian wasn't handling communications. There was the creature, up ahead, in its tube. Calician remembered that he hated it, this time. He would have to put it back to its tasks once he had dealt with the interfering Jedi Knight. "I will destroy the Jedi!"

"Shut up!"

The Jedi raised her hand and sent one of the chairs tumbling through the air toward him. A strange skill A strange skill, Calician thought as he cut the furnishing to pieces in a blur of lightsabers. He vaguely recalled once knowing how to levitate things, but it had been more than a decade since he had exercised the power.

But combat, his body remembered. And Dromika's command had unlocked talents he'd never had. Krevaaki were formidable fighters. But even the greatest Krevaaki Jedi, Vodo-Siosk Baas, had only used his two uppermost limbs to hold his battle-staff. Now tentacles that could not lift a cup for Calician that morning were wielding lightsabers of their own.

The Jedi stood, meters from him, her own weapon ignited. An emerald lance in the darkness. She looked at him, warily. "The Krevaaki, I take it."

Calician didn't deign to respond as he zigzagged through the maze of furnishings on the shortest route to the woman. The Jedi Knight backed off, leaping from desk to upended desk. She seemed to want to parlay, to find something out about him and the operation. Calician charged ahead. He had his orders.

And now he had his chance. Seeing the Jedi duck in front of the Celegian's gas chamber, the regent twirled one of his lightsabers and hurled it at her. The woman started to move, just as he'd expected-only to halt, knocking the thrown weapon to the floor with her own. Charging, Calician threw another, aiming at a spot over her head.

"No!" the woman yelled, leaping to knock the smallish lightsaber away before it struck the tube. "What are you doing? You'll smash the chamber!"

"I will destroy the Jedi!" Calician yelled. Calician yelled.

"And you, too, you idiot!" She jabbed a thumb against the transparisteel.

Calician froze for a moment, watching the giant brain bobbing in the toxic gas. He looked down at the four remaining lightsabers curled in his tentacles. Yes, rupturing the tank would have killed them both. And yes, he didn't care. He was destroying the Jedi.

The regent slithered back a meter, shifting the weapons to different limbs. This wasn't supposed to be the Sith way-not the one that he remembered learning about. Sith weren't self-destructive. He'd thought he was part of something larger, earlier, something worth surrendering his identity to. But Dromika's implanted command had urged him to his own demise, in order to protect her and her brother.

Not this way, he thought. He gestured invitingly for the Jedi to engage him, well away from the Celegian's chamber.

"Now you're thinking," the Jedi said, leaping a table and entering a defensive stance.

Calician lurched forward, tentacles whipping the lightsabers back and forth in a weaving motion. The Jedi lunged powerfully downward, glancing off the upper sabers before yanking her weapon back upward, singeing his facial tendrils. The regent advanced again, only to find her leaping nimbly to his right, forcing him to turn to follow. The more he turned, the farther she moved. The regent snarled. Moving in a circle kept him from bringing more than two of his weapons to bear at any one time.

The Krevaaki turned back the other direction suddenly, hoping to catch the Jedi off guard. But instead, she moved inward, grabbing one of his weaponless limbs with her spare hand and yanking. Knocked off balance, Calician fell- -and found himself looking up at one of his tentacles, dead and unmoving in the Jedi's gloved hand. She'd severed it on the way down.

No pain, Calician noticed. It was one of the limbs from his middle carapace; that morning, he hadn't been able to feel a thing in it, either. Only Dromika's power of suggestion had restored its movement. Now the thing was dead again.

And so would he be, if he didn't move. Calician skittered backward as the Jedi advanced. The woman was too strong. He had the skills to destroy her, deep in the recesses of his memories. But he needed direction, just as his withered limbs had needed life. There was only one place to get both.

"Jedi!" he said, moving back toward the lift he'd descended in.

"So you can say something other than-"

Calician ignored her. "You came looking for children, Jedi. I heard the Celegian pass your command to the sentries." He stepped inside the lift. "If you care to see children, follow me!"

The doors closed behind him. Byllura would, again, be a trap.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

"You're not going to believe this, Brigadier."

Waiting on the cargo deck, Rusher stared blankly as the image came up on the monitor. Defying all sense, they'd crossed over kilometers of ocean back to the mesa where the Dyarchy airspeeders had come from. And there, below, was Beadle Lubboon, sitting in the middle of an airspeeder and waving to the sky like a castaway outside a life pod.

Rusher looked over to Dackett, standing by at the drop-gate. "Now if we only had audio, we could hear your savior yelling like an idiot."

Dackett rolled his eyes. "Are we clear to open or not?"

"Oh, by all means," Rusher said, patting the master's shoulder and stepping to the other side of the cargo door. "But remember, if you want to keep him, he's your responsibility."

Ignoring his elder aide's response-something about brigadier generals and their mothers-Rusher flipped the switch to lower the ramp.

The Duros stood, alone, in an airspeeder floating just outside the speeder bay. No one contested his presence; in fact, nothing had impeded their own approach. From their level, they could see the Sullustan girl sitting on the ledge of the landing port, kicking her legs.

"Why didn't you pick up the girl?" Rusher yelled down to the bobbing airspeeder.

Beadle gestured meekly toward the vehicle's steering yoke. "I started the speeder before she got in," he said. "I only know forward and stop."

Directing his bridge crew to bring Diligence Diligence down closer to the sea, Rusher started to concoct a response. But the ship's master got his attention first. down closer to the sea, Rusher started to concoct a response. But the ship's master got his attention first.

"Great suns, Brigadier. Look!"

Bodies littered the garage behind the nonchalant Sullustan. At least a dozen of the scarlet-clad sentries, like those who had hassled them at the dock, all chopped down at various points in the huge room. Here and there, wrecked airspeeders still burned, remnants of a colossal melee.

Dackett looked down at Beadle, struggling to climb the line they had dropped to him. "Do you think he fought all those people to get her out?"

"I haven't got the slightest idea." Rusher looked at Dackett-and in unison, they both pulled on the rope, hauling up the wayward Duros.

"Where's your headset, recruit?" Rusher asked, watching him clamber onto the ramp. "You see what comes of going out without your comlink."

"Begging the brigadier's pardon, Brigadier," Beadle said, "but if the brigadier recalls, the brigadier gave it to the Jedi."

Rusher pursed his lips. "Oh." He looked back into the airspeeder bay, and the corpses strewn across the floor. "You did this?"

"Kerra Holt came after us," the Sullustan yelled from her perch.

Rusher stepped aside so two of his troopers could leap down into the floating airspeeder. "Look-what's your name?"

"Tan!"

"Tan, we're going to back this speeder up to you so you can get on. My ship can't land here, and we can't get any closer." The airspeeder bay was meters below, and cargo ramps would never reach it without the stowed cannon barrels jabbing the cliff wall. "Hop in when they get to you!"

"No!"

"No?"

"She's here inside the mesa, somewhere. You have to go in after her."

Rusher looked at Dackett. I'm going to die I'm going to die, he mouthed.

"I'm sorry, kid," Rusher said, looking down and attempting to appear kindly. "We just don't know where she is. This is a huge place, and we don't know how much time we have to go searching for-"

Suddenly scrap metal struck Diligence Diligence from above, ricocheting off the starboard cargo assembly and raining down past Rusher. from above, ricocheting off the starboard cargo assembly and raining down past Rusher.

He was almost afraid to ask. "What was that?"

"Droids, sir." Dackett pointed to more of the stuff, coming down. Arms. Legs. The odd torso. All were part of a larger shower of transparisteel shards, falling from the cantilevered facility atop the mesa.

"She's up there, Brigadier!" Tan squealed, standing on the ledge and jumping up and down. She pointed to the building, hundreds of meters above.

Rusher straightened. "I stand corrected. Just stop jumping, before you fall in!" He glowered at Dackett. "Or before I jump jump in." in."

Another locker opened-and another droid launched forward, hurtling toward Kerra. As she had with the last five, she used the Force to hurl the bulbous thing through the shattered window.

This was getting old.

Kerra had followed the Krevaaki upstairs in a service turbolift. She wasn't about to follow in the same car. It didn't seem likely that the Krevaaki would kill her with a booby-trapped lift, but she wasn't willing to put it past him.

Stepping out of the lift had confirmed her location. The room was vast, easily the full diameter of the squashed dome she'd seen from outside; spacious living quarters perched high above the bay. They always nest on the top floor They always nest on the top floor, she thought. You could usually tell a Sith Lord by the real estate.

An opaque dome rising nearly to the ceiling sat in the room's center, well away from her. The curved window went all the way around the pent house, its path interrupted every twenty meters by small rooms jutting inward. Some held nothing but multicolored storage bins neatly shut and stored away. Others held banks of lockers-and as soon as she passed, she learned what was in them.

Nanny droids. Big, chubby spheres-on-spheres, tumbling around on their repulsorlift bases. She'd seen their like before, in the Republic; the BD series had cared for generations of aristocratic young, teasing and tending with metal tendrils not unlike the Krevaaki's.

And like the Krevaaki, they had thrown themselves at her in a most un-tender fashion. As each locker burst open, its metallic occupants sailed into the room, encircling the colossal upside-down bowl at its center in a whirlwind of protection. The droids were unarmed, but at a hundred kilograms each, the hurtling mamas were weapons themselves. With every step Kerra took into the room, another droid broke from the swarm, throwing itself at her. She'd beheaded the first three with her lightsaber-and while she kept it handy still, she had long since lost patience with this game. Now, when one lunged, she simply waved her free hand, angling the writhing projectile through the windows. If the living occupants of the room were here, they wouldn't be able to miss the noise.

With the last droid tumbling down into the bay outside, Kerra surveyed the room. Still no Krevaaki; just the strange onyx hemisphere, a dozen meters across, sitting silently. The room around it had a playroom feel, but it seemed long since out of use. Brightly colored furnishings peeked out from beneath drab sheets. All the toys were tucked away. It reminded Kerra of the spare room in a neighbor's house in Aquilaris, years before. A child had lived there, but childhood joy did not.

Instead, she only felt the angry presence of the dark side. She'd felt it elsewhere in the facility, but here in the loft-that was a good name for it, she thought-it permeated everything. And it was more than anger, she realized; it was furor furor. Furor over being trapped. Over the loss of something never known. Whoever lived here had sat on that resentment, letting it grow into a thick hate that made her heart sink with every step.

And at its center: the black dome. Lightsaber at the ready, Kerra circled it. Was it a prison? Or a lid lid? She heard rustling from within. Wrecking the place hadn't drawn anyone out. Would anything?

Then she noticed a slightly raised platform in the shape of a diamond, just steps away from the dome. The carpet leading to it was worn; whoever stood there only ever approached from the outside, facing the dome. Gritting her teeth, she did the same.

As soon as both her feet were on the dais, Kerra saw the half orb ahead shudder. Recirculated air whooshed from its base as a gap opened between it and the floor. It was was a lid, rotating on a horizontal axis and sinking back into the floor behind. A raised round stage sat within-but this was no amphitheater. Light from the shattered windows fell across a mass of orange cushions, piled high in the largest bed-fort she'd ever seen. a lid, rotating on a horizontal axis and sinking back into the floor behind. A raised round stage sat within-but this was no amphitheater. Light from the shattered windows fell across a mass of orange cushions, piled high in the largest bed-fort she'd ever seen.

Near the center sat two teenage humans. A boy rocked with his hands around his knees, glancing furtively at Kerra and then looking quickly away. For someone just a few years younger than she was, Kerra thought he dressed younger still, sitting in bedclothes in the middle of the day. But his dark eyes looked old, set back in his bald head above heavy bags.

He, at least, seemed to notice her. The blond girl beside him sat endlessly brushing her hair, paying Kerra no mind whatsoever. Kerra wondered for a moment whether the well-fed pair were indeed the Krevaaki's prisoners-until she realized that they were the focus of the dark side energy she'd felt. She looked up at the lid, tilted backward. A meditation chamber, the largest she'd ever seen.

The boy looked again at Kerra, eyes searching for familiarity. Just as Kerra started to speak, the girl noticed her, too, dropping her brush and speaking to the air. "Regent will address the Jedi-aspect."

A strange statement from a stranger source. The girl dressed in the oversized nightshirt was well on her way to womanhood, and yet she had the wide eyes of a youngling.

"You are in the presence of the Dyarchy" came a voice from behind the round lid. The Krevaaki emerged from behind the half dome, bearing his four shortened lightsabers. His stump of a tentacle hung, limp and unbandaged. "This is Lord Quillan," he said, gesturing to the boy, "and his sister, Lord Dromika."

Kerra remained on the dais, looking warily at the pair. "And I call you-?"

The Krevaaki seemed to stall, fumbling for words. Looking back at the human couple, he finally answered. "I am regent here."

The scheming regent, Kerra thought, remembering Rusher's joke. But it wasn't clear who was in charge here. "You've taken my friends," she said. "I've ordered them freed."

Quillan simply bobbed back and forth and looked away, while his sister looked angrily at Kerra. Dromika seemed eager to blurt something-but, glancing back at her brother, she said nothing.