One hand stayed on the cushion. The other cupped the bodyguard's forehead. Concentrating, Shigar nudged the flow of the Force through his body, encouraging wakefulness.

The bodyguard twitched and opened his eyes in alarm. There was a tearing sound as all the spines on his scalp shot out. The cushion absorbed them all.

"I'm sorry to startle you, " Shigar said in calm voice. "You've been drugged. My name is Shigar Konshi. This is Larin Moxla. Grand Master Satele Shan sent us to aid you. " That wasn't entirely true, but as an explanation it would do.

The man pushed him away and sat up. He ran his hand across his scalp and cleared his throat.

"My apologies for attacking you. I am Sergeant Potannin. Where is Envoy Vii?"

"We don't know, " said Larin. "We were hoping you could tell us. "

Potannin shook his head. "We must have been ambushed. Envoy Vii was talking to a man who works for the Hutts. His name is Jet Nebula. And there was someone else-a Mandalorian. "

"What Mandalorian?" Larin asked, leaning close. "Do you have a name?"

"I don't remember. " He looked at Larin and Shigar in appeal. "We have to find the envoy. "

Shigar nodded. An active Dao Stryver on Hutta would be an unexpected complication, but it wasn't necessarily a disaster. The primary mission could still continue.

"All right, " he said. "You and Larin look for the envoy. If the Twi'lek is telling the truth, the Hutts will help you. "

"And you?" asked Larin.

"I'm going to check out that vault. What you can't learn from the envoy, I'll find out there. Sergeant Potannin, will you give me directions?"

Potannin provided a comprehensive description of the route from the luxury suite to the vault, via a security air lock. Shigar committed it to memory.

"Did you see what was in there?"

"There's the Cinzia's navicomp and an artifact Envoy Vii couldn't identify. Made of some weird metal. " Potannin looked apologetic. "I'm sorry, but that's all I know. "

"No matter. " Shigar wished Potannin had learned more. Ancient Sith and Jedi relics could sometimes be identified by their markings. "I'll take a look myself and see if I can figure it out. "

"Are you sure you want to do this alone?" asked Larin before he set out.

"I have my comlink, " he said. I'll call you if I get into trouble. "

"You'd better. " She touched his arm briefly, and then pulled away. "See you later, either way. "

Shigar left her and Sergeant Potannin to wake the others. With lightsaber at the ready, he eased back into the ebbs and flows of Ta.s.saa Bareesh's palace and counted off the intersections, one at a time.

CHAPTER 11.

Darth Chratis's voice carried faintly across the thousands of kilometers separating him from his apprentice.

"Did you see any Jedi in the Republic envoy's party?"

"None at all, Master. " Ax could hear the disappointment in her own voice. She'd been looking forward to fighting something more challenging than the inept palace guards. "If they're here, they're maintaining a very low profile. "

"It's clear, then, that they plan to steal the artifact before us. Otherwise they would be visible. Your orders are unchanged. You must move quickly to ensure you get there first. "

"It will be difficult, Master. The doors are ma.s.sive, and there are bound to be alarms..."

"That's for you to worry about. Fail me and you will report to the Council yourself. "

The line clicked shut, and Ax smiled in the darkness. Darth Chratis was as transparent as gla.s.s. If she succeeded, he planned to take the credit; if she tailed, the blame would be hers. But some of the tarnish would inevitably rub off on him if she did fail, halting his plans for advancement. It was amusing, therefore, to keep him nervous. That made him predictable.

Barely three minutes had pa.s.sed since she had set the charges. They were old, leftovers from a mining expedition that had abandoned its gear in one of the palace's three warehouses, but she had taken enough of them to knock a small chunk out of a hill. If the timers worked properly, Ta.s.saa Bareesh's guards would soon have something to occupy their attention.

Meanwhile, she had crawling to do. Plans of the vaults sliced from the palace's mainframe showed that they were freestanding structures with their own power and air supplies. Surrounding all of the broad durasteel boxes was a meter of clear s.p.a.ce, filled with laser trip wires. If anything got past the trip wires and simultaneously touched both box and wall, a circuit would trip, sounding an alarm loud enough to wake the Emperor himself on Dromund Kaas.

The plans also showed that the vault was held in place by a series of repulsors, powered by induction coils at the base of a ferrocrete cradle. Ferrocrete was relatively easy to cut through with a lightsaber. Ax wormed her way through tiny crawl s.p.a.ces to a position directly under one corner of the vault containing the remains of the Citizia. Wiring schematics showed no cables at that point. All she would have to do was wait for the distraction, cut her way upward, disable the trip wires, and leap across the gap. Within the hour, she hoped to be touching the outside of the vault with her bare fingertips. From there, she would play it by ear.

She slithered like a rat through s.p.a.ces that were barely large enough for her to breathe, angling awkwardly around sharp corners and edging with her toes and fingertips. She held her lightsaber ahead of her, ready to cut through any serious obstacles. The air was thick with dust and smoke. She blinked frequently to clear her eyes.

A subsonic boom came through masonry surrounding her, followed quickly by another. She held her breath as the palace shook, and pressed outward with the Force, just in case something heavy shifted into her. A series of smaller booms reverberated when the charges triggered a chain reaction in the palace's primary reactor, as she'd hoped they might. She imagined the Hutts and their slaves scurrying to find out what had happened. Whether they did or not didn't matter to her. Neither did she care if the secondary reactor restored power immediately. The vault was self-contained. Keeping her hosts distracted was her primary objective.

Another minute's crawling brought her to the place she needed to be. The crawl s.p.a.ce was broad enough for her to squat, and she did so, holding her lightsaber pommel before her. Closing her eyes, she ignited it and raised the blade slowly into the ceiling above her. Ferrocrete bubbled and hissed; stinging flecks struck her skin. When the hilt was flush with the ceiling itself, she stopped and closed her eyes.

The power of the dark side flowed through her, raising the temperature of the ferrocrete to scalding. She breathed lightly through her nose, not caring if she was scalded. A red glow surrounded her, radiating from the surface above. She maintained her concentration, forming a self-protective bubble about her as the ferrocrete became molten and began to drip.

The bubble rose gently through the lava, delivering her without further effort to the s.p.a.ce under the base of the vault. When the bubble broached the top of the molten ferrocrete, she lowered her lightsaber and opened her eyes. By the red glow she made out the durasteel vault through the top of the bubble and a tangle of cables that was part of the ferrocrete structure around her. They remained entangled as the lava cooled. Not one of the cables had been cut, so in theory no alarms should have sounded.

Almost there.

Only the trip wires remained. She raised her head carefully out of the cooling bubble, but didn't see any sign of lasers anywhere. They should have been clearly visible in all the smoke, but not one glowing line broke the view.

Intrigued, she placed her gloved hands on the still-warm lip of the bubble and raised herself bodily into view.

No alarms. None other than those caused by her explosions, anyway. Against all expectations, the vault's external security system appeared to be disabled.

Could the Jedi possibly have beaten her to the prize?

She crouched in the s.p.a.ce under the vault, next to one of the repulsors holding the ma.s.sive structure above her head, and reactivated her lightsaber. By its ruddy glow, she made out the lenses of the laser system staring blindly at her. They hadn't been physically interfered with, at least. She reached up and touched the base of the vault. No footsteps or other obvious movements from within. That was another positive sign.

An unexpected detail gave her further reason to be cautious. The midsection of the vault had been physically connected to the cradle beneath by a series of silver wires. She approached them, careful not to snap them. Their purpose was unknown, as was the way they had prevented the second alarm system from going off. As soon as the vault was penetrated, all of Ta.s.saa Bareesh's palace should have known.

Something unexpected was going on, and she didn't like it.

Ax deactivated her lightsaber and sat cross-legged on the hot ferrocrete. If someone deactivated the repulsors, she would be squished like a bug. Quashing that thought as best she could, she cast her feelings out into the s.p.a.ce around her, searching for signs of anything out of place.

The vault, first of all, was uninhabited, apart from the faintest glimmer of biological activity inside the anomalous artifact recovered from the Cinzia. She took the opportunity to examine it this way, and felt a rare shiver race down her spine. What was in there? The tiny life signs were cl.u.s.tered in four groups, but they didn't feel like minds, exactly. And something about them made her instincts recoil.

My mother made this, she couldn't help but think. My mother, who should be dead.

Putting all speculation on that front firmly from her mind, Ax examined the antechamber and the other three vaults, next. It was possible, albeit exceedingly unlikely, that an entirely independent thief had targeted something in one of the other vaults, shutting down hers in the process. A quick scan proved that theory false. There was no one out there at all.

Almost she gave up there, chiding herself for overreacting. The distraction she had created wouldn't last forever. And she didn't want Master Chratis to worry too long. Part of the point of telling him that the mission would be difficult was to surprise him when she pulled it off quickly. The thought filled her with antic.i.p.atory satisfaction.

Before rising, she cast a quick mental look through the circular security air lock outside the antechamber.

Her face twisted into an immediate scowl. Jedi! She would recognize that humorless and inhibited mental stench anywhere. A single specimen had bypa.s.sed the alarms and burned through the locks on the outer door. That was impressive work, but he wasn't moving fast enough. She could cut her way under the vault and up into the antechamber long before he had the inner door open. And then, when he did, he would get a whole lot more than he bargained for.

Grinning, she moved from cross-legged to a crouch, and began melting her way through the last barrier standing between her and her enemy.

CHAPTER 12.

Dao Stryver used a dense, adhesive web extruded from a nozzle on his left cuff to lash Ula and Jet into their seats. The dining room he had led them to was empty, containing nothing but chairs and a table, but as befit the palace of Ta.s.saa Bareesh these were fine examples of precious materials and design, and therefore too st.u.r.dy for the prisoners to break.

Ula's head was pounding with the aftereffects of the Reactor Core, but he noticed the gleam of metal revealed when Stryver welded the door shut. Durasteel, most likely, also befitting the palace of a Hutt. All manner of safety-conscious criminal celebrities might have eaten in this room. And died here, possibly.

Ula tested the bonds and found them to be immovable. His fingers were already going numb.

"You know my name, " said the Mandalorian, standing over him. "How?"

Trying and foiling to suppress a stammer, Ula described the report received by Supreme Commander Stantorrs from Grand Master Satele Shan. That was where the Mandalorian had first been identified to him. He had no compunctions about revealing the extent of the Republic's knowledge, since it would a.s.sure Stryver that little else had been uncovered about him or Lema Xandret.

"Will you untie me now?" Ula asked him.

"The only reason you are still alive is because there is no honor in killing you-and no advantage, either. " The Mandalorian towered hugely over him. "That could easily change. "

Ula fell back into his scat and closed his mouth.

Jet sat in the chair next to Ula, staring unflappably up at their captor.

"I a.s.sume you know me from somewhere, " he said. "Did I ruin your sister's reputation? If so, I'm afraid she was quite forgettable. "

Stryver didn't rise to the bait. "Captain Nebula, I'm told it was you who spoke to the crew of the Cinzia. "

"Who said that?"

"A former crewmate of yours called Shinqo. "

"He'd say anything to get your blaster out of his face. "

"My a.s.sessment precisely. Is what he told me true?"

"How do you know I'm any different from him?"

"I'll be the judge of that. "

"Why you want to know? What's so important that you'll go halfway across the galaxy to find it out?"

"Just answer my questions, Nebula. What did they tell you?"

"Do you mean 'what' or 'how much'?"

Ula didn't understand why Jet was making things more difficult than they had to be. "I've heard the recording, " Ula said. "They didn't say anything to him. "

The Mandalorian turned back to him. "What were their exact words?"

"That they were on a diplomatic mission and didn't want to be boarded. "

"Did they mention any names?"

"None. "

"Could the recording have been edited?"

"I suppose it might have been, but..."

"Be silent. " Stryver turned back to Jet. "Does the name Lema Xandret mean anything to you?"

"If that's your sister..."

The b.u.t.t of Stryver's blaster dug into Jet's throat. "Do not play games with me. She was an Imperial droid maker who disappeared fifteen standard years ago. Was her name mentioned by anyone aboard that ship?"

"No, " Jet said. "And there were no survivors, if you think she was aboard. Shinqo told you that, I'm sure. "

"He told me there was wreckage and that you gave it to the Hutts. "

"Why would I do something like that?"

The m.u.f.fled boom of an explosion rocked the floor, making Ula jump. Dust rained from the ceiling. Stryver pointed his rifle at the door, ready to fire on anyone who burst through it, but the blast had come from much farther away. A second quickly followed the first, and the lights flickered. Distantly, alarms began to sound.

"The palace is under attack, " said the Mandalorian. "There is no time now for prevarication. If you know what survived the explosion, you must tell me. "

There was something in the Mandalorian's voice, a rising urgency that made Ula speak out of more than just self-preservation.

"I've seen it, " he said. "It's in a vault not far from here. "

"What is it?"

"There are two things, and they're both for sale. The Cinzia's navicomp..."

"Intact?"