ajsh and the unknown man finished their conversation, and the latter moved away back into the mass of browsers and shoppers. Two booths over, Corran Horn set down the melon he'd been examining and eased into the flow behind him.

The stranger didn't seem to be trying to lose himself in the crowd.

Though any such effort would have been quickly negated by the company he linked up with: a hard-eyed, competent-looking woman, a young man about Corran's own age, and a yellow-skinned alien with several short horns protruding from his chin. For a moment the four of them conversed; then, with the contact man leading the way, they continued on down the street.

At the edge of Corran's vision, a heavyset figure stepped to his side.

"Trouble?"

"I don't know, Dad," Corran said. "You see that foursome up there?

Tooled brown jacket, blondish woman, white-spiked collar, yellow-skinned alien?"

"Yes," Hal Horn nodded. "The alien's a Tunroth, by the way.

Fairly rare outside their home system; most of the ones you run into these days work with high-stakes safaris, mercenaries, or bounty hunters."

"Interesting," Corran said. "Possibly significant, too.

Brown Jacket just waltzed up to Sajsh's booth and tried to make a delivery to Borbor Crisk."

"Did he, now," Hal said thoughtfully. "Have Crisk and Zekka Thyne patched up their differences while I wasn't looking?"

"If they did, I wasn't looking either," Corran told him.

"Either Brown Jacket and his pals are incredibly stupid, or else something very odd is going on."

"Either way, I doubt Thyne will simply pass on it," Hal said.

"Did Brown Jacket happen to mention where they could be contacted?"

"No, but Sajsh has that covered," Corran said. "He said they might want the owner of the booth next to his and suggested they come back about seven."

"Where they'll be asked to have a quiet conversation with a group of Black Sun heavies." Hal stretched his neck to peer over the crowd.

"Well, well-the plot thickens.

Look who our innocents have hooked up with."

Corran rose up on tiptoes. There was Brown Jacket and his friends; and with them - "I'll be shragged," he breathed. "Is that Boba Fett?"

"No, I don't think so," Hal said. "Possibly Jodo Kast, though I'd have to get a closer look at the armor to be sure."

"Well, whoever it is, we've definitely moved into the big time," Corran pointed out. "Mandalorian armor doesn't come cheap."

"When you can find it at all," the elder Horn agreed.

"This is getting odder by the minute. I take it you've had some thoughts already?"

"Only one, really," Corran said. The group was moving off again, and he and his father set off to follow. "Thyne wouldn't be stupid enough to kill them out of hand, certainly not until he knows who they are and what their connection is to Crisk. That probably means bringing them to the fortress."

"And you think you might be able to invite yourself along?"

"I know it's risky-"

"'Risky' isn't exactly the word I had in mind," Hal interrupted. "Getting into the fortress is only the first step, you know. You think you'll be able to simply march up to Thyne, slap the restraints on him in the name of Corellian Security, and march him out?"

"We do have the legal authority to do that, you know," Corran reminded him.

"Which means nothing at all inside his stronghold," Hal countered.

"You have any idea how many CorSec agents have gone after top Black Sun lieutenants like Thyne and simply vanished?"

Corran grimaced. "I know," he said. "But that's not going to happen this time. And if getting into the fortress is only the first step, it still is the first step."

The elder Horn shook his head. "'Risky' still doesn't begin to cover it. For starters, we don't even know what game Brown Jacket and his Mandalorian friend are playing."

"Then it's time we found out," Corran said. "Let's stay close and see if we can find an opportunity to introduce ourselves."

They had gone perhaps two blocks-though where Kast was leading them Trell hadn't the faintest idea-when they heard the shout.

"What was that?" Riij demanded, looking around.

"There," Pairor rumbled, pointing his thick central finger to the left.

"Argument starting."

Trell craned his neck. There was an open-air tapcafe that direction, with a long serving bar at the rear and perhaps twenty small tables spread out in the open space in front of it beneath a wide, Karvrish-style woven-leaf canopy. A slightly built man wearing a proprietor's apron was standing in the middle of the dining area, a half dozen large and rough-looking men wearing mercenary shoulder patches looming in a threatening circle around him. The chairs from a nearby table were scattered back or lying on the ground, indicating a quick and unruly departure from them. "I think the argument's over," he said. "It's gone straight to trouble now."

"Come on," Riij said, angling that direction. "Let's check it out."

"Leave it alone," Kast ordered. "It's none of our business."

But Riij and Pairor were already heading off through the crowd.

"Blast," Trell growled. Stupid idealistic gornt-brained Rebels-"Come on, Maranne."

A line of onlookers had started to form at the edge of the tapcafe by the time he and Maranne broke through the stream of pedestrians.

Riij and Pairor were already to the mercenaries, who had opened their circle around the tapcafe proprietor in order to face this new distraction.

And now Trell could see something he hadn't been able to before.

Standing beside the proprietor, clinging tightly to his waist in terror, was a young girl. Probably his daughter; certainly no more than seven years old.

Trell hissed a curse between his teeth. It took a particularly vile form of low-life to threaten a child. But that didn't mean he was going to follow Riij's lead and charge in blindly like a mad Jedi Knight on Cracian thumper-back.

"Backup left," he murmured to Maranne. "I'll take right."

"Right," she murmured back. Dropping his hand casually onto the grip of his blaster, Trell started drifting behind the ring of onlookers to the rightw And with a suddenness that startled him, the fight started.

Not with blasters, which had been his main fear, but 'with hands and feet as the two closest mercenaries lashed out at Riij and Pairor.

With three-to-one odds on their side, the mercs must have felt weapons to be unnecessary.

They got a shock. Riij had clearly had some good training in unarmed combat, and Pairor was a lot faster than Trell would have guessed from the alien's bulk. Riij's counterattack sent his opponent reeling back; Palror's threw his merc slamming back with a horrendous crash into one of the other tables, sending it spinning and scattering its chairs across the floor.

Someone swore viciously. The downed merc scrambled to his feet and rejoined his comrades, their former casual semicircle now reformed into a deadly, no-nonsense combat line facing their attackers. The proprietor had taken advantage of the distraction to hustle his daughter back across to the bar; heaving her up and over to the relative safety behind it, he turned back to watch.

For a long moment the combatants stood motionless facing each other.

Trell kept drifting toward his chosen backup position, his eyes on the mercs, his hand tightening on his blaster. Would they draw now, in which case Riij and Pairor were probably dead? Or would sheer pride dictate they beat such insolent opponents bloody with their bare hands?

The watching crowd was obviously wondering the same thing. Trell could feel their tension, their excitement, their bloodlust...

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement to his left. The mercs caught it, too, anger-filled eyes shifting that direction-Their expressions changed, just slightly. Frowning, Trell risked a look of his own.

Jodo Kast had stepped forward out of the ring of onlookers.

For a moment the bounty hunter just stood there, gazing silently at the scene. Then, stepping to one of the tables at the edge of the tapcafe, he pulled out a chair and sat down. Crossing his legs casually beneath the table, he folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head slightly to one side. "Well?" he asked mildly.

And with that one word the decision was made. No mercenary with a speck's worth of professional pride was going to use weapons against outnumbered opponents who hadn't themselves drawn. Not with a bounty hunter like Jodo Kast watching.

Roaring obscure and probably obscene battle cries, the mercs waded in.

At that first exchange Riij and Palror had had the element of surprise.

This time they didn't. They did their best, certainly-and still better than Trell would have expected given the odds-but in the end they really had no chance. Less than ninety seconds after that battle roar, both Riij and Pairor were on the floor, along with two of the mercs. The remaining four, not all of them looking all that steady on their feet, were grouped around them.

One of them looked around, jabbed a finger toward the proprietor cowering at the bar. "Them first," he snarled, breathing heavily.

"You next."

"No," Kast said.

The merc spun around to face him, almost losing his balance in the process as a damaged knee tried to buckle under him. "No what?" he demanded.

"I said no," Kast told him. His hands were in his lap now, concealed under the table, but his legs were still casually crossed.

"You've had your fun; but I need them alive."

"Yeah?" the mere snarled. "What, you got a bounty to collect on them?"

"You've had your fun," Kast repeated, but this time there was frosty metal glittering in his voice. "Leave it and go. Now."

"You think so, huh?" the mere spat. "And who do you think's gonna stop-?"

And abruptly, right in the middle of his sentence, he dropped his hand to his blaster and yanked it from its holster.

It was an old trick, and one that had probably given the mere the desired edge in many a facedown. Unfortunately for him, it was a trick Trell had seen used countless times before; and even before the other's hand had reached his blaster grip Trell was hauling out his own weapon.

At the other side of the ring of bystanders he spotted Maranne also drawing-The mere had good reflexes, all right. In that split second he froze, his weapon not quite cleared of its holster; staring from beneath thick eyebrows at the four blasters suddenly pointed at him from the circle of people around the tapcafe.

Trell blinked as it suddenly registered. Four blasters?

Four. Two people down from Maranne, a bulky middle-aged man also had a blaster trained steadily on the mercs... and out of the corner of his eye, Trell could see the fourth blaster sticking out from his side of the crowd. Held with equal steadiness.

The merc spat. "So that's how you want to play it, huh?"

"We're not playing," Kast said icily. "As I said: leave it and go. If you don't-" Trell never saw the warning twitch he was watching for.

But Kast obviously did. Even as the merc started to haul his blaster the rest of the way free of its holster there was the brilliant flash of a blaster bolt from the direction of the bounty hunter's table, and a roar of rage from the merc as his holster and the blaster muzzle behind it shattered.

"-I promise you will regret it," Kast finished calmly.

"This is your final chance."

The merc looked like he was about two seconds short of a complete berserk rage. But even furious and with a burned gun hand, he was in control enough to know when the odds were stacked too high against him.

"I'll be watching for you, bounty hunter," he breathed, straightening up from his combat crouch. "We'll finish this some other time."

Kast bowed his head slightly. "Whenever you're tired of life, mercenary."

The merc gave a hand signal. The others helped their two casualties to their feet-one groggily starting to come to, the other still in need of basic portage-and the group straggled their way through the onlookers and out into the crowd.

Kast waited until they were out of sight. Then, pushing back his chair, he stood up, the blaster he'd used on the merc's weapon already secreted back in whatever hidden holster it had been drawn from. "The show's over," he announced, looking around at the bystanders. "Stay and buy a drink, or get moving."

The proprietor was already beside Riij and Pairor, helping the former to a sitting position, when Trell and Maranne reached them.

"You all right?" Maranne asked, offering Pairor a hand.

The Tunroth waved it away. "I am not hurt," he said, rolling to his feet and flexing an elbow experimentally. "I was merely temporarily disabled."

"You're lucky the condition wasn't permanent," Trell reminded him.

"You should have left it alone like Kast told you to."

"Yeah," Riij said, holding his stomach as he got to his feet with the proprietor's assistance. "Thanks, Kast.

Though I wouldn't have minded if you'd stepped in a little earlier.

Say, before they started pounding on us?"

"Six mercenaries wouldn't have backed down in front of three blasters," Kast told him. "I needed you to take some of them out first."

He half turned. "If I'd known it would be five blasters instead of three, I might have moved sooner."

Trell turned to look. The two men who'd drawn with them were standing there watching. "Thanks," he said.