"What did she say?" Ula asked let.

"Something about a Sith. I didn't catch all of it. "

Ula glanced at the Imperial envoy, who studiously avoided everyone's gaze.

Yeama waved for reinforcements. A line of Weequay moved in, followed by Potannin and his opposite number on the Imperial side. There was more confusion as all three columns tried to squeeze through s.p.a.ce for one. Ula lost sight of Larin, and craned for a better view.

"Why don't you go closer?" asked Jet.

"I, ah, don't think that would be safe. Do you?"

"I think it's all relative, right now. "

Shamed, Ula headed toward the widening hole. Jet followed, leaving his droid to watch the entrance. Seeing Ula moving in, the Imperial envoy followed, not wanting to be left out. The tunnel through the rubble was crowded with people. What lay at the end of it was not clear through the smoke and dust. Blasterfire cast strange lights into the haze, and Ula distinctly heard the sound the Mandalorian's jetpack. On top of that sc.r.a.ped the volatile hum of lightsabers.

They pa.s.sed a twisted sheet of metal that might once have been the security air lock's outer door. The smell of ozone was overpowering.

"Down, sir!" cried Potannin on seeing him.

Ula let himself be dragged to a relatively sheltered position behind a wall of rubble. From there he still couldn't see the action, but he could see the back of Larin's helmet. She was crouched next to Yeama, sighting along her rifle. Her voice came clearly across the sound of battle.

"Still no alarms, eh?"

Ula didn't hear the Twi'lek's reply.

A ma.s.sive explosion brought down most of the ceiling, deafeningly loud. Ula put his back to the stone shield and covered his ears with his hands. Ash and debris rained on him in thick waves. He closed his eyes tightly.

When he tentatively removed his hands, an uncanny silence had fallen. All he could see were people jostling for position, as pale as ghosts. Rubble continued to fall from the roof. Beside him, Jet slowly inched his head upward to view what was going on.

His expression changed to one of astonishment.

"What the brix is that?"

Before Ula could look for himself, a voice spoke, female and full of rage.

"We do not recognize your authority A chill went through him. He had heard that phrase before.

CHAPTER 15.

Shigar stood at one corner of an equilateral triangle, with the young Sith and Dao Stryver occupying the others. The Mandalorian hesitated, clearly surprised to see them both.

"It's a small galaxy, " reflected Shigar.

"You know him, too?" The Sith's hostile facade cracked just for an instant.

"You should both have let it be, " said the Mandalorian. "This doesn't concern you. "

"You were killing people on Coruscant, " Shigar said. "Of course it was my concern. "

"Stay out of this, " the Sith snarled. " He's mine!"

"I've beaten you once already, " Stryver said. "Being killed won't honor your mother's actions. "

The young woman turned a shade of red brighter even than her hair.

The Mandalorian raised his left arm and blasted her with his flamethrower.

Shigar ducked and rolled, wondering about the scene that had just played out. Fate had delivered all three of them to the same place at the same time. They were all after the same thing-whatever it was inside the vault-and they had a narrow window before the Hutts realized what was going on and brought the entire weight of the palace's security forces to bear on them. Stryver would want to move quickly and decisively. Yet he had stopped to chat to the Sith girl. Why?

It was clear that all the talk of her mother had been a ploy to distract her. Her rage was fully enflamed now, which would make her stronger, if she survived the next few seconds. Shigar juggled several options. Retreating to the vault and leaving them to it was one, but there was only one exit from that position, meaning that he would have to face Stryver eventually. And the Mandalorian had bested him, too. Better to fight now, when there was at least a chance that the Sith might serve as a distraction.

Flames roared after the girl's cartwheeling silhouette. Shigar came at Stryver from the opposite side, swinging his lightsaber to deliver a crippling blow to the shoulder. Stryver raised his arm to block, and Shigars blade skated along the powerful Mandalorian armor, leaving a bubbling welt but not penetrating. A hatch in Stryver's pack opened and a collapsible shockstave fired into his hand. Shigar came in for another strike, and the shockstave stabbed at his chest, blasting him from his feet.

On Stryver's other side, the Sith burst from the flames, lightsaber upraised and hatred blazing in her eyes. Her leap took her over the flamethrower's deadly jet and was timed to deliver a spearing thrust to the Mandalorian's domed helmet. He ducked with startling speed for one so big and thrust the shockstave up at her. She cut it in half, kicked him off-balance, and returned for another slash.

Shigar was back on his feet, circling to take Stryver when an opportunity arose. Again the flamethrower burned, but the element of surprise was lost. The Sith girl easily batted aside the flames. Instead Stryver cast a razor net at her. She ducked its piercing barbs and attempted to shock him with lightning. His insulated suit took the charge and grounded it into the floor, blackening and buckling it. Shigar took the chance to Force-push Stryver to his knees, but the Mandalorian was as solid as a mountain, and he had other weapons he hadn't revealed yet.

From a thigh hatch, Stryver produced a stubby pistol. He pointed it at Shigar and fired a single time. Shigar dodged but not so quickly that the fringes of the shot missed him completely. He was tossed like a leaf into the wall and slid to the ground, temporarily stunned.

Stryver turned the weapon on Ax, who dodged more effectively than the slow-witted Jedi had. She had recognized the weapon instantly and knew how dangerous it was. Disruptors were outlawed in every civilized part of the galaxy. She wasn't surprised to see one on Hutta, in a Mandalorian's gloved hand.

Ax also knew that handheld disruptors were effective at short range only and could manage a bare handful of shots. If Stryver kept firing and missing, the weapon would soon be useless. So she kept moving around her enemy, practically running on the walls of the battle-blackened security air lock, goading him on by hurling broken gla.s.s at his joint seals. Twice, he narrowly missed her, and even the fringes of the beam sent powerful shock waves through her flesh. Only her rage kept her going. She used the pain to fuel the dark side.

The third time he fired in their little dance-the fifth shot overall-she barely felt its aftereffects. The weapon's charge was dying. Grinning with triumph, she turned her circling run into a headlong launch. Time to bring the fight back to him.

He met her attack with a vibroblade aimed at the throat. She screamed, trying to drive her blade through his armor with all the strength of her muscles and willpower combined. His buzzing blade was so close it brushed her skin, raising a fine spray of blood, but still she didn't let up. The Mandalorian was reeling back on his feet from her attack. This was the best shot she'd ever had.

His jetpack activated with a whine. Suddenly they were moving, jerking upward as though lifted by a giant puppeteer. Taken by surprise, Ax lost her grip and fell away. Stryver rose above her on twin jets of fiery exhaust. She rolled to avoid their intense heat and covered her eyes from the glare.

Stryver stopped when he reached the domed recess that had once held the tinkling chandelier, and hovered there, punching commands into his weapons systems. Ax had just enough time to realize that he now had the advantage of height before a strong hand gripped her wrist and dragged her aside.

A stream of missiles struck the ground, exactly where she'd been lying. The Jedi had saved her, and she wrenched herself from him, even as she felt a twinge of grat.i.tude. Surely he hadn't done it out of the vile goodness of his heart! No, she told herself. He knew he couldn't defeat Stryver on his own. It was either save her or be the next to die.

Concussion missiles blew her and the Jedi into the security air lock's inner door. They separated to avoid another round, which blasted the door back into the antechamber, exposing the four vault doors and the hole through which Ax had entered. She had a split instant to note that one of the vault doors was glowing bright red, then a rain of blasterfire came from an entirely different part of the room and she realized that someone else had joined the party. The Hutts, presumably, had noticed that their treasure was at risk.

Before she could take advantage of the shift in the battlefield, the Jedi launched himself at Stryver, deflecting missiles away from him as he came. The missiles exploded into the ceiling, bringing down huge swaths of masonry on all three of them. A large chunk struck the Mandalorian, dropping him from his superior vantage point. Ax dodged a slab large enough to crush a bantha and sought her bearings in air suddenly thick with dust. Shadowy figures danced around her-ta.s.seled Weequay, officers in Imperial uniforms, Gamorreans, and more-but Stryver was nowhere to be seen among them. Either a stunned silence had fallen or her ears were overwhelmed by the most recent explosions.

Red light played across the battlefield, then died. Just light, no concussions. Ax blinked and turned to find the source, remembering as she did the glowing vault door. Not a random hit from the Mandalorian's weapons systems, as she'd initially a.s.sumed. It was clear now that the door had melted entirely away, releasing the vault's precious contents to all comers.

No one was breaking into the vault, however. That much was immediately apparent from the splatters of molten metal on the antechamber floor. It was, rather, the other way around.

Shigar moved closer, weaving around the newcomers to the fight. They had provided an unexpected but very welcome distraction, yet he worried now about the danger they were putting themselves in. Stryver was down but not out, and the Mandalorian had wiped out an entire cell of the Black Sun syndicate on Coruscant single-handedly. Shigar-his head still ringing from the near-miss with the disruptor-knew that Dao Stryver would stop at nothing less to achieve his goals on Hutta, if he had to.

For the moment, though, all eyes were on the vault. The Hutts' security measures had failed. Someone had melted the door and gained access to the inside. Shigar wondered if they had come up the floor of the vault, much as the Sith had attempted. But if so, why not leave that way? Why go to the trouble of melting another exit?

The pool of molten metal that had once been a door cast a b.l.o.o.d.y backlight on the figure that stepped out of the vault. It didn't look like any kind of being Shigar had seen before. It stood two meters high and seemed at first to be an ordinary biped, with skinny arms and legs of equal length. Then it unfolded another pair of arms attached to its midriff, s.p.a.ced equally between shoulder and hip joints. It bore no resemblance, however, to insectile species like the Geonosians or the Killik. Its body was a perfect hexagon, stretched vertically. There was no head. Black sensory organs dotted the central body like the eyes of an arachnid, gleaming in the light. Apart from those organs, its skin was silver. He couldn't tell if it was a creature in an environment suit or some kind of construct.

With unerring steps it crossed the pool of molten metal on feet that were duplicates of its hands. It turned 180 degrees, revealing a back that was identical to the front. When it reached the wreckage of the inner door, it stopped there and swiveled slightly, taking in the ruined security air lock and the beings it contained: the Mandalorian, the Jedi Padawan, the palace guards, the Twi'lek, and the Sith.

"We do not submit to your authority!" it screamed, dropping smoothly into a new posture. The body became a regular hexagon instead of a stretched, almost rectangular torso, and its legs bent into a crouch. All four of its arms splayed out to target different parts of the room.

Shigar instinctively tightened his grip on his lightsaber. He lacked the foresight ability of Master Satele, but every cell in his body screamed in alarm. Whoever or whatever it was that had broken into the Hutts' vault, it wasn't going to walk away quietly.

The hands of the creature spat darts of blue fire that ricocheted off armor and lightsaber blades and exploded whenever they struck flesh or stone. The Sith girl stood at the focus of their initial attack, but when she went down the fire became more indiscriminate. Bodies dived in all directions, either hit or seeking cover. It wasn't easy to tell which. The room's tortured walls surrendered still more of their ma.s.s to dust and gravel.

Shigar stood his ground, reflecting the unfamiliar energy streams back at their source. The creature's silver skin re-reflected them in turn, setting up a resonant stream between him and it that only became more intense with each pulse it fired-then doubled in intensity as it added an extra arm to the attack.

Shigar braced his feet and held on, determined not to give in before it did. The air hummed and crackled with energy along the pulses' combined path. He had never seen anything like this before.

Finally something gave. The stream dissipated with a flash sufficiently violent to blow the creature backward into the antechamber. High-energy sparks ricocheted around the security air lock, making everyone duck again.

Shigar dropped his lightsaber, not his guard. His arms felt like they had been hit with hammers. The ringing in his ears was louder than ever. But until he was sure the thing was incapacitated, he wasn't going to relax one iota.

A second creature stepped from the vault's steaming interior. It didn't say anything. It just screamed and fired.

Shigar jumped as high as he could to evade the converging energy pulses. Staccato blue streams followed him, tearing a shallow, meter-wide furrow in the wall and ceiling. He glimpsed Larin's face below him. She was standing in full view, pumping shot after shot into the second creature's body. Its silver skin dissipated them like raindrops, and he began to worry that he wouldn't be able to outrun the creature's vengeance forever.

A trio of tightly s.p.a.ced concussion missiles from Dao Stryver saved Shigar from bisection. They turned the antechamber into a furnace, finally cutting off the deadly beams. Shigar landed on a section of collapsed roof, winded and singed but largely unharmed.

The creature backflipped, landing on six legs, and stood up again, this time on its hands. It looked exactly the same as it had before.

Behind it, the first one crawled out of the rubble in which it had landed.

A third creature stepped out of the vault.

Shigar's stomach hollowed.

"Get everyone out, " he shouted to Larin through the comlink before the firing started again. "It's not safe in here. "

"What about you?"

"I'll do my best to hold them back. "

"Why not just let them go?"

He didn't have a short answer to that question. Because doing so would mean admitting failure. Because whatever these creatures were, he wasn't going to let them have what was inside the Cinzia. Because he wasn't going to let things this murderous rain fire upon the hapless denizens of the Hutt palace. "Just because. "

"All right, " she said, "but I'll be back with heavier munitions as soon as..."

Everything else she said went unheard. With an earsplitting screech, the three creatures fired in tandem, tearing the air apart.

CHAPTER 16.

Larin caught Yeama by the lekku as he ran for dear life. "a.s.sault cannon, sniper rifles, ma.s.s-drivers, " she said. "Everything you've got-now!"

The Twi'lek dithered, torn between conflicting fears: of his mistress; of the things wreaking havoc in the demolished security air lock; and of Larin. Given a choice, he looked as though he would run for the nearest ship and head for the stars.

To help change his mind, Larin raised her rifle and aimed it between his eyes. "You won't get a single step unless you make the call. "

Yeama brought his comlink to his mouth and began issuing orders.

She ran back to where Sergeant Potannin lay on his belly, watching the battle unfold through the standard-issue electromonocular scope she had loaned him. He handed it back to her and said, "I think they're droids. Look at the one on the left. It's been damaged. "

She focused the scope on the spider-like creature Potannin had indicated. One of its forelimbs had been sliced away, revealing not flesh or exoskeleton but a mess of wires that flexed and twisted, showering golden sparks. She narrowed the field of view to see more closely. Wires, definitely, as thin as hairs and as lithe as quicksilver.

Her mind cast back to the Hortek maintenance crew she and Shigar had stumbled across in the tunnels below the palace. There she'd seen silver threads as well.

Before she had time to follow the thought through, Yeama returned, pushing a long-barreled sniper rifle into her arms.

"More coming, I hope?"

He nodded unhappily and hurried away.

She lined up the rifle, resting its weight on a protruding chunk of stone.

"Go for the joints, " Potannin advised her, but she ignored him. The hands were doing the damage. If she could take them out, that would reduce the threat to Shigar. At the moment, only he and Stryver were doing anything to stop the killer droids from getting out of the antechamber.

The droids moved fast, and they didn't move like anything Larin had fired at before. Any of the six limbs could act as a leg, meaning they didn't so much run as cartwheel from place to place like spindly, animated tumbleweeds, firing as they went. They could also crouch with anywhere from three to all six legs on the ground, giving them a more stable base to fire from. They could even curl into a ball to protect their hexagonal midriffs. Furthermore, the damaged one demonstrated a potent kind of shield when Shigar got too close. It crossed two limbs into an X and created a short-lived circular electromirror that bent his lightsaber back into a V, almost taking off his arm in the process. He retreated, and the droid went back to firing at him.

Larin took her first shot, and missed. Her second hit the forelimb and was deflected. Her third struck the wrist joint squarely, severing the fire-shooting hand with a reddish flash. Instantly the droid rotated to make that limb a foot, bringing another hand weapon into play. She moved her target reticule to aim at that one next.

Another sniper rifle arrived, and Potannin took up the fight. He tried the joints, with little success, and moved on to the sense organs scattered across the chests of the things. The black circles reacted differently from the silver skin under fire. They absorbed everything that came at them, and radiated the energy as heat. Their reflective black surfaces soon turned to red, then ramped up to orange and yellow. Eventually one hit purple and exploded, making the droid spin around in circles for a moment before recovering.

Larin steadily picked off the hand weapons of her chosen target. When there were just two left, the droid transferred its weight to its four injured legs and hopped to where one of its fellows was trading fire with Dao Stryver. The injured droid jumped onto the back of its counterpart, and the two bodies locked together. The four injured legs retracted, creating a more ma.s.sive droid with eight legs, all willing and able to fire.

"Oh, come on, " she said.

Larin and Sergeant Potannin's efforts didn't go unnoticed. The droid menacing Shigar sprayed a wave of blue pulses in their direction, forcing them both to take cover. When it was over, the barrels of both their rifles were blackened but still seemed capable of firing. Sergeant Potannin, however, had not been so lucky. A ricochet had caught him in the eye and killed him instantly.

Before she could get revenge, someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see Yeama and three Houks pulling in a wheeled, turret-mounted laser cannon.

"About time, " she growled, crawling over. "Here, let me. I've used this model before. "

Yeama waved her away. His look said as clearly as words that if anyone was going to fire it in his mistress's palace, it would be him.

She backed down as another wave of blue pulses converged on them. A fourth six-legged droid had emerged from the vault.