"How many of these things are in there?" she asked no one in particular.

Then the cannon was firing, driving all higher thoughts of the situation from her mind. She was a soldier. It was her job to fight, not to a.n.a.lyze. Dropping onto her belly, she picked up the sniper rifle again, test-fired it, and began peppering the enemy with rounds.

"How many of those things are in there?" Ula heard Jet say over the sound of blasterfire.

He craned his neck over the fallen beam and risked another look. Sure enough, another of the hexagonal droids had stepped into view.

"Are they in there, " he asked, "or just coming through there?"

"I'm not sure it makes sense if they have another way into the vault. I mean, if they could just turn around and go back, why aren't they doing that? Why are they fighting to get out past everyone else?"

Ula had wondered why they didn't just blow a new hole out, but he had soon found an answer to that. Their blue pulses knocked fist-sized chunks of stone from the wall, and plenty of them. They were lethal against flesh, too, but they lacked the punch to get through reinforced ferrocrete. The security air lock was the only route open to them.

It was also the only escape route open to him and Jet, but they had been cut off from it by the reinforced beam they now took shelter behind. Between them and the exit was ten meters of open s.p.a.ce, littered with broken gla.s.s, rubble, and the occasional body. One of them belonged to the young Sith girl, who had been the first targeted by the hexes, as Ula had come to abbreviate them. Jet's droid watched helplessly from the other side of the room, unable to get any closer to help his master.

"Watch Stryver, " said Jet.

"Why?" Ula had seen enough of the Mandalorian in action for one lifetime.

"He's holding back, almost like he's testing them. "

"Testing who?"

"The droids, of course. Why would he test Shigar? They've fought twice already. "

"Why test the hexes?"

"I don't know. Curiosity, perhaps? Maybe the Mandalore is looking for a new species of pit fighters. Nice name, by the way: hexes. "

They watched as Yeama and Larin positioned a laser cannon for optimal coverage. Larin's face was hidden by her helmet, but Ula was glad to see that she was still on her feet.

"Maybe that's what Stryver has been after the whole time, " Jet said. "After all, it was him who talked about droids before. What was that woman's name? The droid maker?"

"Lema Xandret. "

"Whoever she was, he knew of her, and you said he was asking questions about her all over the place. What if that thing in the Cinzia had something to do with her work? What if the hexes are here now to steal it back?"

"What if they were on the ship the whole time?"

"That can't be the case. The thing you saw was too small, judging by your description. No, they must've gotten in somehow. Maybe someone let them in. "

Ula was watching Shigar, who had developed a new tactic against the hexes. When one of them fired up at Stryver, he hurried in low, under the blue-firing limbs. In close, they were more vulnerable, and he managed to get a couple of good stabs to the body of one of them. It was listing badly to one side, and two of its limbs no longer worked at all.

"That Sith girl is still alive, " said Jet, nudging him with an elbow.

Ula glanced across the battlefield and found to his surprise that this was true. She was rising sluggishly to her hands and knees, shaking her head with a furious expression. Her hair danced like liquid flames. She looked to Ula as though she had been woken from a powerfully unhappy dream.

"They make them tough on Korriban, " said Jet with grim admiration.

The girl was on her feet now. The moment her lightsaber activated, the hexes noticed her. Fourteen streams of energy pulses converged and Ula had time enough to feel sorry for her before she vanished into a glowing sphere of light.

With a boom the laser cannon fired, spearing the eight-legged hex through the midriff. It flailed on its back, screaming piercingly. The two remaining hexes directed their pulses at the cannon's shield, turning it bright red.

Ula was staring at the Sith girl. Amazingly, she hadn't died in the concentrated attack. Even more amazingly, she was still standing, and looking angrier than ever.

"Whose authority do you recognize?" she shouted, lurching headlong into the battle. "Whose authority do you recognize?"

The pitch of her fury was so high that part of Ula actually felt sorry for the hexes as she landed among them and started swinging.

CHAPTER 17.

Ax dreamed of a world much larger than normal, where everything seemed strange and mutable and full of threat. She was p.r.o.ne to getting confused, even though she tried very hard to keep up. When she made a mistake people shouted at her, giant people with terrifying voices. It hurt her to be yelled at. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to run. The voices followed her everywhere, shrieking her name. Cinzia!

Cinzia!

She woke with a start in the middle of a firefight, and couldn't for a moment remember who or where she was. Every cell of her body hurt. Someone was screaming. Not her. It was the screaming that had woken her. Only on awakening did it become clear that the voice wasn't coming from a human throat.

She remembered.

Hutta.

The vault.

Lema Xandret.

Her muscles burned as she willed them into action. Raising her head was like lifting a mountain of pain. She felt a scream of her own boiling inside her, a scream of rage and despair and fear. Containing it hurt her, but at the same time it gave her strength. She needed every ounce of strength she could muster to survive the next few seconds.

Out of everyone in the security air lock, the six-legged droid-things had targeted her first of all.

We do not recognize your authority!

She, however, recognized their defiance. It was the same offered by the crew of the Cinzia when they had been confronted by the smuggler. But whose authority did they recognize? There had to be something-or someone-behind their murderous natures.

Ax raised herself to her knees, and from there, with a supreme effort of will, to her feet. The world swayed around her, but the scream was intact, and growing. The dark side swelled inside her.

The creatures from the vault saw her, and instantly turned their blue pulses onto her.

She set the scream free.

A Force barrier surrounded her, bare millimeters from her skin. It shimmered and flickered as wave after wave of energy crashed against it, but it held. It held as long as she screamed, as long as she didn't want to die.

The attack ceased, and she staggered back a step, breathing heavily. Her lungs were full of hot smoke and ozone. Her head rang with sound. One of the things attacking her had been blown back by some kind of weapon. The details eluded her. The important thing was that the droids were distracted. This was her chance to find out how tough they really were.

"Whose authority do you recognize?" she shouted, launching herself at the nearest. Its hand weapons were concentrated on the shield of a laser cannon and didn't turn in time. "Whose authority do you recognize?"

The droid-thing didn't answer.

Her rage spun instants out into hours.

First, she tried spearing the hexagonal body with her lightsaber.

Some kind of shield appeared between them, bending her blade back at her own arm, forcing her to retreat.

Next she tried blasting it with Sith lightning.

The thing's body caught the energy and discharged it from the tips of its limbs. Four sparkling arms lunged at her, forcing her to duck again.

She reached out a hand and tried to crush its insides telekinetically.

Its honeycomb skeleton resisted more powerfully than durasteel. The hex's deadly limbs flailed to impale or shoot her, no matter how hard she strained.

They screamed together, locked in a vicious stalemate. She couldn't kill it, and it couldn't kill her. It moved on lean, powerful servos that matched her own strength and agility. Its black sense organs tracked her every movement. But every blue pulse it fired at her was reflected by the Force barrier, and every wild slash of its razor-sharp limbs was deflected harmlessly.

Then suddenly it retreated. Its limbs worried at its metallic skin as though scratching itself for fleas. She followed it, puzzled and wary. Was this a trap, some strange new tactic to throw her off her guard? She lunged at it, and it backed rapidly away, firing a stream of blue to keep her at bay.

Then it stopped, stood its ground, and vanished.

For a second Ax doubted the evidence of her own eyes. How could a droid just disappear? It wasn't possible!

A blast of blue energy struck her from the side, out of thin air, and she realized: the droid had activated a camouflage system, reducing its appearance to little more than a blur. It was blending into the background, circling her, trying to shoot her in the back.

Ax narrowed her eyes. She didn't know what these things could or couldn't do, exactly, but of one thing she was completely sure. One way or another, they were going to die. She was going to destroy them all.

Shigar blinked sweat out of his eyes and took the chance to catch his breath. Backup couldn't have come too soon, even if it was in the form of a Sith and a green-skinned Twi'lek at the controls of a laser cannon. He didn't have the energy to complain. With one of the droid-things down, speared by the Twi'lek right through the middle, and another occupied by the girl, that left just one for him and Stryver to finish off.

The Mandalorian hovered over it, peppering it with blasterfire and concussion missiles. Shigar waited for an opening.

His comlink buzzed.

"You should fall back, " Larin told him. "We've got it covered now. "

"I don't think it's that simple. "

"But you're hurt. At least have someone look at that for you. "

He looked down and noticed for the first time that his left arm was covered with blood. He had been completely oblivious to the pain.

The laser cannon fired again. This time the droid-things were ready. The one Shigar was watching dropped to a crouch and threw up its electromirror shield. The bolt from the cannon knocked it backward, but the bolt itself was reflected into the wall. There it exploded harmlessly, showering two crouching noncombatants with gravel.

Stryver swooped in on his jetpack and landed next to Shigar. Shigar raised his lightsaber, but the Mandalorian wasn't on the offensive.

"Tell them to aim for the vault, " he said, indicating the comlink.

"Why, what's in there?"

"Just tell them. "

Then he lifted off and went back to harrying the target. Again the laser cannon fired, and again the bolt exploded into the wall.

Shigar relayed the instruction. "The door's open, " he said, "and it's a confined s.p.a.ce. Anything left in there will be fried. "

Larin pa.s.sed the message on to the Twi'lek. From his position, Shigar could see his lekku swinging in an instant negative. A brief argument ensued before Larin came back to him.

"The navicomp might still be in there, " she said over the comlink. "If you can get it out, then they'll fire into the vault. "

Shigar didn't dismiss the plan out of hand. Far be it from him to aid the Hutts in their venal pursuits, but the Republic needed all the help it could get in the war against the Empire. It wasn't his primary mission, but it was still important.

"All right, " he started to say.

Then two things happened that put all thought of the navicomp from his mind. First, the droid-thing attacking the Sith girl disappeared. Second, the laser cannon fired again, and the bolt was deflected a third time into the wall.

Into the same section of the wall, Shigar realized. The shots weren't ricocheting at random. They were being aimed.

"Stop firing!" he shouted into the comlink. "Tell him to stop firing!"

Larin tapped her helmet, obviously thinking she had misheard his order.

The Sith girl was moving, following a dimple in the air. It fired back at her, blue pulses appearing out of nowhere and bouncing off her Force barrier. The nearly invisible droid-thing was heading for the two noncombatants Shigar had seen earlier.

"I said stop firing!" He waved his arms to convey his urgency. "Now!"

The Twi'lek ignored him. Another bolt went into the wall, widening the crater that had already been bored into it. One more shot, Shigar thought in alarm. That was all it would take to ruin everything.

The hand weapons weren't strong enough that the droids could shoot their own way out, so they were using the Hutts' weaponry instead. Instead of killing them, the laser cannon was going to set them free.

Shigar ground his teeth together and sprinted forward. If Larin couldn't stop the Twi'lek from filing, he would haw to throw himself at the camouflaged droid and hope to succeed where the Sith had failed.

Distantly he heard the roar of Stryver's jetpack pa.s.s overhead, but the significance of it eluded him. The shot he had feared came from the laser cannon and bounced off the electromirror shield, into the deepening pit in the wall. Long cracks spread out from it, and suddenly masonry was tumbling down from the wall. The two noncombatants lay directly in the path of the rubble.

Shigar had a choice. He could intercept the droid or save the two men. He couldn't do both. There was just a split second in which to decide.

Ignoring his pain and exhaustion, he let the Force flow through him and did the only thing he could.

Yeama's teeth were bared in determination as he fired at the cowering hex. Larin yelled at him to stop-she had guessed the droid-thing's intentions, just like Shigar-but the Twi'lek was blindly resolute. He thought he was doing the right thing. He honestly believed that he was on the verge of overpowering his target. He wouldn't listen.

She braced herself to physically wrench Yeama from the laser cannon's controls, but the rising whine of a jetpack made her look up. Stryver was on his way. He must also have seen what the laser cannon was doing. But he wasn't flying to defend the breach, as Shigar was. He was coming right for her.

Barely in time, Larin realized his intentions. She hurled herself away from the cannon and dived for cover. Behind her, the cannon erupted into a ball of flame. Bits of metal whizzed past her, pinging off her armor. A wave of heat engulfed her. She felt like a rancor had gripped her in its jaws and was shaking her back and forth.

When it was over, she looked back at the laser cannon. It was a smoking ruin, destroyed by Stryver's missiles. Of Yeama, there was no sign at all.

Stryver dropped heavily next to her. His armor was as blackened and dented as hers. "Get into the vault. Destroy everything you find there. "