"I'm telling the truth. "

"I'll count to five. Then I'll start hacking up your friend here. And then it'll be your head, I promise. "

The Sith approached the last surviving member of Ula's security detail. He backed nervously away.

"One. "

The box containing the navicomp was in Ula's possession. All he had to do was surrender it to the Sith and Larin would be saved. And he would safely deliver the information to the Empire. It was a simple solution to all his problems.

"Two. "

But Ula couldn't move. The Sith and the Empire weren't the same thing. Oh, to trillions they were inseparable-the Emperor himself was the Sith to whom all others deferred!-but to him they were very different. On the one hand, the Empire offered a society of rules and clearly defined justice that could, if allowed to do so, bring peace and prosperity to every planet in the galaxy. On the other, oppression and constant conflict. Could he in good conscience give any advantage to the followers of the latter? Would Larin want him to?

"Three. "

If only he could deliver the navicomp to the Minister of Logistics. With it in her hand, she could surely find a way to turn it to their advantage. The Empire was so huge it wouldn't miss this world's resources, for all the squabbling over them now. All Ula wanted was the chance to prove the rightness of his principles. He didn't mind the existence of the Sith, but they shouldn't be allowed to run roughshod over everyone else.

"Four. "

Yet there was no point dreaming. The Minister of Logistics might have been in another universe entirely. He could no more give her this vital piece in the puzzle than he could stand up to the Sith himself and survive. He was just a p.a.w.n in a game much larger than he could imagine. He was insignificant and disposable. How foolish to think that he could ever have changed the way this would turn out! The navicomp had been earmarked for the Sith the very moment she arrived.

"Five. " The Sith moved in to start slashing.

"Wait!" he called out.

All eyes turned to him. The Sith glared at him with hateful eyes. Jet looked as shocked as though Ula had sprouted wings and flown up to the ceiling. Larin's expression was hidden by her helmet, and that was the one he most wanted to see.

"Here, " he told the Sith, holding up the navicomp. "Take it. Just leave her alone. "

The girl's expression became hungry, triumphant. Ula didn't want to get any closer to that blade than he had to. He hefted the box and tossed it to her.

At the height of its arc, a gleaming web reached in and s.n.a.t.c.hed the box clean out of the air "What-?" Ula spun around.

The Mandalorian caught the box neatly in one hand and tossed something back to Ula in return. He caught it automatically. It was a heavy metal sphere with a blinking red light.

"No!" screamed the Sith, robbed of her prize.

Stryver was already moving, rising up on his jetpack and heading for the exit.

"Chuck it!" yelled Jet to Ula. "That's a thermal detonator!"

Ula hurled the sphere away from him as hard as he could. It went up, and kept going up as Shigar, the Jedi, used the Force to sweep it away. The tactic wasn't entirely defensive. The detonator exploded high in the creaking scaffolding that had once been the security air lock's roof, directly above Stryver's escape route. The statue of Ta.s.saa Bareesh toppled and fell. Yet another avalanche came crashing down after it, burying the Mandalorian and a herd of palace guards that had come to quell the disturbance.

The floor gave way, and kept giving way as Stryver fired downward, riding the tide of collapse into the palace's deeper levels.

Snarling, the Sith girl went after him, determined not to lose her prize. She vanished into the roil of stone and ferrocrete, and didn't reappear.

Ula took one step toward Larin, but Shigar beat him to it.

"Are you all right?" the Jedi asked her.

She was leaning against the outside of the vault with her crippled left hand compressed under her armpit. With her right hand, she tugged off her helmet. Her face was white and pinched.

"I'll live, " she said. "Meanwhile, it's not over. Stryver will head for his ship first chance he gets. You have to cut him off and get the navicomp back, any way you can. Do you think you can do that without me?"

Shigar nodded, tight-lipped, and loped off across the shattered floor to the hole in the wall, leaping gracefully from girder to girder.

Larin held her grin until Shigar was out of sight. Then she slumped in pain.

Ula's pain was different but no less real. It was clear that Larin had a close connection with Shigar. The Jedi even had tattoos similar to hers. It was some kind of cultural thing, surely. Perhaps they were married. The thought made his chest ache.

He knew it was ridiculous to feel this way. He knew it was based on nothing at all. He knew he had built it all up in his own head, and that made him an idiot of the highest order. He had more important things to worry about than this.

The battle for the navicomp was over. Ta.s.saa Bareesh's palace security forces would be converging on the site to clean up and make accusations. He didn't want to be there when that happened. His loyalties were so compromised, he wasn't sure he could convince anyone that he wasn't guilty of everything.

"Stryver will be going for his ship, like she said, " he told Jet, "but he's going the wrong way around. I'll head him off and see if I can salvage something. Tell her-tell the others I'll meet them at the shuttle. "

The smuggler studied him closely, and then simply said, "All right, mate. I might need a lift myself. "

"Isn't your ship-?"

"Impounded and crewless. " He shrugged. "And what's a freight captain without his ship? Guess I'd better start thinking about a normal job. "

Ula patted him on the shoulder with what he hoped was appropriate bonhomie, because it was utterly genuine. A normal job. Those three words had struck him with the force of one of Stryver's thermal detonators.

He hurried off, following with infinitely greater clumsiness Shigar's route across the shattered floor. He ignored the shouts and screams coming from the levels below. He ignored the shaking of his hands. He kept his mind firmly on its goal.

There was an Imperial ship in the palace's dock. That was where he was headed. If he could get there before it left, he could reveal his true ident.i.ty and claim amnesty. He could escape with the Sith and the navicomp when she returned from hunting Stryver, and he could finally report to his superior.

He could relax the disguise, and speak freely, without lies or deceptions.

He could be himself. And then...

A normal job?

Nothing at that moment appealed to him more.

PART THREE.

THE CHASE.

CHAPTER 19.

Ax felt like she was being swallowed whole by a s.p.a.ce slug. Even through the Force barrier she threw around herself as protection from the tumbling surf of rock, every sharp edge and crushing pressure squeezed the breath utterly from her. Almost instantly she gave up trying to guide her descent.

She consoled herself with the knowledge that Stryver had to be faring just as badly. Escaping this way was the height of desperation. She admired his guts even while she despised him for capturing the navicomp out from everyone else.

It wasn't over yet, though. She would find him, no matter what it took. There was absolutely no way she was going to report to her Master empty-handed.

The rough-and-tumble finally eased off, and she was able to make her way through the debris, using the Force to help shove aside rocks and gravel, cutting through larger obstacles with her lightsaber if she had to. At every pocket of air she stopped to breathe, grateful for every single lungful of oxygen. It was almost completely dark, but very noisy. When the debris itself wasn't groaning and grinding around her, she could hear voices crying for help.

Finally one arm emerged into free air, then her head. A trio of dusty Evocii grabbed her armpits and began to pull. She shrugged them off and got herself out. At the sight of her lightsaber, they squealed and ran.

Ax dusted herself down.

Now, Stryver.

She had emerged in some kind of dormitory, with bunks lining two walls and the rest crushed under the avalanche. The true extent of the collapse was hard to measure. She could have fallen a dozen levels or just one. Judging by the relative poverty she saw around her, however, she guessed that she was a long way from the luxurious upper floors. These were the beds of slaves, not valets.

Stryver would be farther down, and he would want to go up. His ascent, no doubt, would not be a quiet one.

She closed her eyes and tuned out the screams, the settling debris, the occasional blaster shot. She was looking for one particular sound out of the mult.i.tude surrounding her. It would be faint, but it would definitely be there.

The whine of Stryver's jetpack.

There.

The moment she had it, she swung her lightsaber in a circle around her feet. The floor fell out from under her, and she arrived with perfect poise in the middle of an attempt to rescue a Hutt slave driver's tail from its squashed position under a fallen wall.

She ignored everyone involved, crossed to the nearest wall, and slashed an impromptu doorway through that in turn. This led to a torture hall, where indolent or disobedient slaves were publicly punished in order to serve as examples to others. Again, Ax didn't stop to admire the techniques of the Dug in charge. She noted only that many of the screams she had a.s.sumed to be caused by the collapse of the building actually emanated from here.

Through another wall, and Stryver's jetpack was definitely sounding louder. She could also distinguish the dull booming of his a.s.sault cannon from the welter of other sounds. Like Ax, he was using the weapons in his a.r.s.enal to blast a way through the palace. Where doorways or corridors didn't exist, he wasn't above making his own.

Ax skirted the edge of a deep rancor pit. The ma.s.sive beasts snapped and roared at her, enraged by all the commotion. The handlers did their utmost to restrain them, using chains, hooks, and heavy weights, but the rancors' wild natures weren't so easily subdued. The truncated scream of one of the handlers followed Ax as she Force-leapt across the enclosure in pursuit of her quarry.

The jetpack was close enough now that she could smell its exhaust.

Through a junkyard, a cantina, and a Tibanna gas containment facility, at last Ax had reached Stryver's trail.

It was instantly recognizable. His a.s.sault cannon had blasted a tunnel diagonally upward through every structure in his way. The series of holes led through walls and floors in a perfectly straight line. At the end of it, Ax could see a glimmer of bright light: the jetpack's fiery wash.

Baring her teeth in antic.i.p.ation, she set off after him. Each leap took her one step higher on the long ad-hoc staircase. The surfaces she landed on were unreliable. Sometimes they crumbled beneath her; sometimes they slipped, still molten from the heat of the cannon. Sometimes people fired at her, made trigger-happy by the Mandalorian's violent pa.s.sage. Ax kept her footing and deflected every shot. She didn't stop for anything or anyone.

Closer and closer she came to Stryver. He didn't look behind him. His attention was focused solely on going upward. Past the glare of his jetpack she could see the transparisteel box clutched tightly in one ma.s.sive hand. The navicomp was still inside. She almost reached for it through the Force, but held herself back. If she revealed her presence prematurely, Stryver would have time to react. Better to strike him in the back and take the prize from his dead hands.

Two more floors. Three. She threw up a barrier to prevent the heat of the jetpack from flaying away her skin. Four. Now she was so close she could almost have reached out and tripped him. The pounding of his cannon was deafening.

Now.

She lunged for the navicomp just as Stryver burst through the roof of the palace. A brown glare struck them, and Ax squinted as she struggled for possession of the box. Stryver showed no surprise, although he momentarily lost control of his jetpack. They spiraled and swooped across the roof, while guards peppered them with blasterfire.

Stryver's gloved hands let go of the box.

For a fleeting instant, she felt triumph. She braced herself to kick away from him.

Then his left hand lunged out to catch her around the throat while his right brought up the a.s.sault cannon and fired into her stomach.

At point-blank range, the shot was like being hit by an aircar in full flight. Had she not put a Force barrier in place, her entire midsection would have been instantly vaporized. As it was, she was blown backward out of his cruel grip and left sprawling, momentarily insensate, on the roof.

Stryver caught the box neatly, one-handed, and flew off into the sky.

Ax watched dazedly, too stunned to feel anything other than curiosity. Where was he going? His jetpack couldn't possibly have enough fuel to get him far. Ta.s.saa Bareesh would have a price on his head within the hour-a price large enough to guarantee he would never leave Hutta.

Then a sleek black shape swooped into view. A ship. She recognized the angular foils of a Kuat scout but couldn't determine the model. It dipped low to intercept Stryver, and then roared up into the sky.

Her quarry was gone.

She felt nothing.

A blurry shape occluded her view of the muddy sky. She tightened her focus. It was a Nikto guard. She was nudged by a business-like boot, as though to ascertain whether she was alive or dead. Another Nikto joined it, then a third. She watched them as though from the bottom of a deep, dark well.

I will kill you, Dao Stryver, or die trying.

Her rage returned, like life itself. She had lost the navicomp, but that didn't have to be the end of the world. She would find another way to satisfy Darth Chratis and the Dark Council-and herself, too. It wasn't really about Stryver and the navicomp, anyway. It was about where they led. The mysterious rare-metal world. The fugitives from Imperial justice. Her mother.

It couldn't end here.

She wouldn't let it.

She was on her feet in a single eyeblink. The dozen or so guards converging on her across the roof weren't going to be a problem at all.

Her first step was to devise a new plan. Stealing the navicomp and cracking its secrets obviously wasn't going to be possible now. Stryver had it, and she had no illusions at all regarding the likelihood of him sharing those secrets.

There had to be another way. All she had to do was find it.

The palace was in an uproar as she fought her way back to the site of the battle with the droids-the "hexes, " as she had overheard someone calling them. It made sense to return to the scene, since only there lay any chance of learning anything about their origins. She wasn't sure exactly what she hoped to find, though. Maybe the smuggler hadn't told the Hutts everything he knew. Maybe she could torture him to extract every last piece of information.

As she wound through the palace's labyrinthine halls, she pa.s.sed a clutch of Gamorreans bearing the unconscious Jedi captive over their heads. She smirked but didn't stop. It was good to see someone worse off than she was.

When she arrived at the ruins of the security air lock, she found it sealed behind a dense press of guards wielding laser cannons. The hole in the wall was protected by a bank of portable particle shields. Getting in wasn't going to be as easy as getting out-and she had no intention of crawling back up the avalanche of debris. Fighting was an option, of course, but fatigue was beginning to take its toll. Under better circ.u.mstances, she would never have let Stryver beat her like that.

She needed to be smarter, rather than stronger.

Retreating to a quiet place to think, she examined everything she knew about the hexes. It wasn't much. They were single-minded-but what did she know about the minds they possessed? They refused to acknowledge any authority beyond that of their maker. They killed everyone else with impunity. Was there anything else she could say about them?

She remembered the way they had tricked the Twi'lek into blowing an escape route for them through the wall. That displayed resourcefulness and cunning, qualities lacking in many droids, but not all. It wasn't a unique feature of their design.

Something niggled at the back of her brain. A thought stirred there, hesitantly pushing itself forward for consideration.