A screaming burst of energy struck the tracker square in the back, killing him before he struck the ground. The injured reptoid, now riderless, kept on crashing loudly away through the foliage.

Tigereye brandished his vibro-ax at Kempo.

"I should have let that thing take a bite out of you, if only to teach you a lesson."

"I was doing just fine before you showed up."

"Let me guess-you had him exactly where you wanted him," the Trunsk snorted as he caught his breath.

"Check the body. If we're lucky, he didn't have a chance to report in."

"We're never that lucky," Kempo retorted as he headed over to the body of the dead tracker.

Hugo got to his feet, holding up the contraption. Brixie looked on, eyeing him and his spontaneous invention dubiously.

He began to move slowly toward the sensor mast, fumbling for the power switches that would activate the united parts. He suddenly stopped in his tracks.

"What's wrong?" Brixie half-whispered to him, trying to watch him and their surroundings at the same time.

"Something about this type of sensor mast."

He took another step. A whine came from the ' datapad's power coupling. The device was not used to handling the power requirements of the other components.

The two and a half meter tall mast loomed over his head as he slowly approached. An expression of recognition came over Cutter. He stopped in his tracks, making quick adjustments to the components in his hands.

"Now I remember!"

"Remember what?" Brixie sputtered: An intense beeping came from Hugo's contraption. Before Brixie's eyes, an alternating pattern of light began to phase from the sensor mast. She gasped as the solid-looking ground before their feet suddenly evaporated, exposing a cargo speeder-sized ditch trap. Explosives and mines lay at the bottom of the excavated pit. Hugo smirked.

"A holographic trap. Very sneaky. Very expensive.

These slavers have better security than I thought. Did you see how I set the multiphase emitter to turn off the hologram?"

Brixie had been watching Hugo so intently that she almost did not hear the sound of dead leaves and underbrush being crushed behind her.

She spun around, Kempo's vibrocutlass in her hands. A second tracker and his reptoid leered at her like predators about to pounce.

A threatening rumble echoed in the sharp-toothed beast's throat as the tracker leveled the point of his force pike at Brixie's throat.

"Ah, Hugo?" she gulped.

The sound of a female scream cut through the jungle air like the edge of Sully Tigereye's polished vibro-ax. The Trunsk plunged through the jungle, back toward the sensor perimeter.

Tigereye stumbled into a clearing in time to see Lex Kempo drop from the trees and fall on the tracker. The reptoid bucked underneath them as the pathfinder slapped a now familiar-looking organism on the tracker's head. The tracker, his eyes completely covered by the filmy creature, knocked Kempo off as he swung the force pike wildly.

The whole scene looked completely ridiculous until the blinded tracker spurred the reptoid forward. A shot from Tigereye's own heavy blaster brought the tracker down, but the creature still charged into and over a shrieking Brixie.

"Brixie!" Tigereye bellowed, leaping forward.

The beast suddenly became quiet and rolled away from the startled girl in a heap-Kempo's vibrocutlass buried up to its hilt in its scaly chest. She looked more terrified than hurt as Tigereye ran up to her.

"Are you okay?"

She gulped once and fought to bring her fear under control.

"Yes yes I'm fine."

Even Cutter was stunned as he looked up at the tree branch where Kempo had jumped from.

"And I thought I was crazy," he muttered.

Kempo had gotten to his feet. Brixie watched him for some time, trying to think of some way to thank him without sounding petty.

Shrugging the incident away, the pathfinder turned his back to her and retrieved his vibrocutlass. He then moved to the body of the fallen tracker, switching off his comlink. Exhaling hard, Brixie collected her medkit and gear, not desiring to look on the scene anymore.

In the meantime, Cutter and Tigereye had turned their attention to the disarmed sensor mast and the exposed pit trap.

"Can we go around it?" Tigereye had exchanged his vibro-ax for the map locator. Cutter triumphantly held up his device.

"No problem. Those slavers are probably scratching their heads, wondering how we did it."

"If the slavers stick around long enough to wonder."

Tigereye interjected. "We have only one shot at this.

Karazak slavers aren't stupid. Once they figure out we bypassed their perimeter, they will probably leave their paid guns behind to pick us off while they jump planet with their valuables-including the children."

"Sully," Brixie slung a medical pack over her shoulder.

"Before we go any further with this, I have to know who these children are. The least you can do is tell us why their lives are more important than ours."

"The kid's right," Kempo added as he sheathed the vibrocutlass in its carrier. "I'm deliberately jumping out of perfectly good trees for these pups. You owe us that much."

Tigereye sighed. "They're the children of the ambassador to Cantras Gola. "

"Cantras Gola is a corporate world." Brixie found herself getting angry. "An Alignment world. What's so important about that?"

"Everything," Tigereye silenced her. "Kempo is right, Brixie.

We're soldiers. We don't ask questions. We supply answers. With an entire corporate world about to sway over to the New Republic, and the New Republic unable to openly confront the Pentastar Alignment, you need someone else to fight the battle. We are that someone else."

"But I thought the reason why the Red Moons broke away from the New Republic was because the New Republic wasn't doing enough. Now we're fighting their battles for them!"

"Helping the New Republic win Cantras Gola helps everyone.

Like it or not, returning these kids alive to the Cantras Gola ambassador is crucial. We need to take that slaver ship before it gets away. It's the only way to save those kids and for us to get off this planet. Now are there more questions from the ranks?"

The four of them looked at each other, the faint odor of ozone from blaster fire still in the air around them.

"I suppose it's too late to request a transfer?" Kempo remarked.

The longer he waited, the more Greezim Trentacal nervously paced about the deluxe stateroom aboard Atron's Mistress. The trackers sent out to investigate the crashed freighter's missing escape pod had not reported in for several hours. There was more to the mysterious, downed vessel than even Vex had anticipated.

"They must be soldiers. Or worse. Mercenaries." He shuddered at the thought. The incentive of credits and personal fortune that drove beings to enslave other beings also drove them to fight for foolish causes.

"Well?" He looked to Vex, still poised like a dark statue beside the stateroom's viewports. He dropped the comlink from his ear.

"The tracker team is still not responding. In addition, one of the perimeter sensors seems to have malfunctioned, although I do not know why yet. "

"They're here!" Trentacal put a hand over his mouth, completely alarmed now. "Lords of Atron! They're here already! Give the order to debark. Immediately!"

"As I pointed out earlier," the Defel spoke quietly but firmly, "we have not loaded the latest shipment of slaves." He gestured at the large prefabricated building that served as a temporary clearing-house for the newest arrivals. "They have to be tagged and medically scanned.

Many slaves from this shipment are to be sold to the Hutts. You know how displeased the Hutts become when they are sent inferior wares."

"You can medically scan them after they have been loaded. Do as I command!"

Vex's expression did not change. He bowed slightly.

"I will give the order personally, master. We shall depart immediately."

Trentacal rushed out of the stateroom to his own sleeping quarters.

The Defel wraith looked upon the ambassador's children, still chained to the cabin wall. Expressions laden with fear and loathing gazed back up at him. The girl, several years older than her brother, tried to protectively shield him from Vex's penetrating, awful stare.

Suddenly, the wraith was gone. The girl blinked, uncertain whether or not to believe her eyes. She had not imagined the disappearance.

Abruptly, the cabin door bolts clanged solidly shut, locking them in darkness again. Her brother whimpered. She held him a little tighter, silently wondering what would become of them.

Something touched her shoulder. The girl gasped loudly, if only long enough for a hand to clamp down over her mouth. She recognized the pained expression of Trentacal's favorite slave girl. How long had she been hiding here, waiting for Vex to leave? The slave pressed a key into her hand and made a gesture with her finger to her lips.

Before she could say a word of thanks, the door to Trentacal's private chamber was suddenly shoved aside, the slave master's bulky outline filling the doorway. His face was masked in shadow.

"What's going on in here?"

Lying prone in the foliage ahead of the assault team, Lex Kempo aimed the macrobinoculars at the clearing in the jungle growth before him.

"What do you see?" 'Brixie whispered beside him.

The slaver camp consisted of several watchtowers, a few prefabricated buildings and a currently vacant landing pad for a snubfighter-sized craft. In the middle of the camp, the jungle's heavy humus had been pressure-formed flat to provide room for the large cargo transport situated there. Beings of all origins were being rushed into the ship, which was not a good sign.

Kempo chewed slowly on a bit of protein survival wafer as he continued to sight the camp through the binocs.

"Looks like we're outgunned maybe seven to one. There are four watchtowers armed with blaster cannons: two close to us, two past the freighter. The camp is crawling with thugs. See that bunker right beside the ship? Looks like their command center. All sensors, communications and defensive controls are probably housed in there."

"Are those hatches on the side?"

Kempo frowned as he zoomed the binoculars. "You've got laser eyes, kid. Those are definitely gun ports. It doesn't matter, that bunker might as well be half a light year away. We'll get cut down before we even reach the freighter."

"Not if I can keep them occupied," Cutter's voice murmured behind them.

Kempo and Brixie looked around in unison at Cutter and his bag of magic tricks. In his hands he had one of the oddly concave Mesonics focalized explosives, the kind used to demolish structures. Squatting beside Hugo, Sully Tigereye made a hand gesture, fingers spread open wide which he turned into a fist. Kempo snorted derisively, but still nodded in agreement. Confused, Brixie poked at Kempo.

"I'm not familiar with that hand signal," she whispered to him.

"What does it mean?"

The pathfinder smiled grimly as he switched the safety off on the grenade launcher mounted to his storm-trooper blaster rifle.

"It means hang on to your pretty head. We're about to make some noise."

The slave girl lunged at Trentacal, a slender metal object in her hands. Despite his size, the slave master could move quickly if he wanted to. In seconds, he had the girl's arms pinned. She strained silently against his grip, trying to bite his hands. Trentacal held her long enough for him to press the emergency call. The wraith and several armed guards appeared in moments, just as Trentacal pushed the slave girl roughly to the cabin floor.

"Fools! All of you! You're supposed to protect me!" He held up the knife he had taken and pointed it at the slave girl. "I want you to vaporize this insolent thing and get us out of here! And pray that my next wish is not all of your heads on a serving platter!" The guards drew their energy weapons; aiming them at the slave. The ambassador's daughter cried aloud, trying to shield her brother from the cruel scene.

A muffled explosion rattled the huge. transport. Trentacal's eyes bulged in mute surprise as he watched two of the guard towers tip over and collapse in perfect unison.

Kempo and Brixie had made it only as far as the makeshift landing pad for the camp's snubfighter when the snouts of several huge blaster cannons appeared from slits in the command bunker. The heavy weapons were laying down a withering curtain of fire, pinning them there.

"Hold still!" Brixie was still trying to apply a medical wrap to Kempo's singed right leg. The pathfinder had unexpectedly been the first target of the heavy blaster attack.

"Look at the size of those guns!" Kempo clucked his tongue in a tisking manner. "They probably ripped them out from some capital ship."

"Who cares! Can you see Hugo and Sully?"

Kempo poked his head slightly around the corner and shot a slaver guard in the torso, dropping him instantly.

He spotted Cutter's familiar tousled mane of hair as he hid from the energy fire coming from the command bunker. The prefabricated structures he hid behind would not last for long.

"Hugo's trapped over by those buildings." He tapped his comlink switch twice, but there was no reply. He shook his head. "I can't raise Sully, but I think he made it to the freighter."

When Kempo looked around the corner again, the bunker's weapons were aiming once again for Cutter. Energy beams mined down all over the demolitions expert, burning away huge chunks of the prefabricated structures.

Kempo shouted over the din back to Brixie.

"Hugo's gonna be a little smoking pile of nothing unless we do something to shut those guns up!"

Surprised by his words, she looked over at the impregnable command bunker. "But shouldn't we be going for the freighter? That's our way out of here!"

"Leaving teammates behind is not in my employment description."

Kempo took a step back and jostled something. The niche where they were hiding served as a storage shed for the landing pad. He disappeared for a moment inside and returned with a grav-cart and a half dozen large cylinders with prominent warning labels plastered over them.

"I think it's time we extended a warm Red Moon greeting to our slaver friends."

Two guards armed with sun prods stood by a secondary boarding ramp of the cargo transport, shoving as many of the enslaved beings as they could into the ship. Many of the slaves, panicked by the explosions and screaming beams of energy fire, had taken this opportunity to run.

The guards were in no place to argue. One by one, the other loading ramps were closing as the ship began its final 'preparations for takeoff. A message crackled over the guards' secure comlinks.