"All right, " he said, following his instincts. Living right now was better than dying. That was the bottom line. And if he got even luckier, he might be able to do something to help Larin as well, a.s.suming she was still alive. "I accept the offer. "

The matriarch broke out into an enormous and unsavory smile. One chubby finger pointed at him. "U wamma wonka"

"Ta.s.saa Bareesh says..."

"I know what she said. " He swallowed another foul taste.

She clicked her fingers and the guards dropped their weapons. A Gamorrean scurried forward to return his comlink and lightsaber. He fixed them to his belt and bowed. The crowd watched him, silently now.

"Thank you, " he said. "It's been a pleasure doing business. "

As the guards led him from the throne room-a guest now, rather than a prisoner-the sound of the Hutt's chuckling, low and lugubrious, echoed and re-echoed through the sybaritic halls behind him.

CHAPTER 21.

"Are you feeling all right?"

Larin turned to look at the smuggler. She had left herself for a moment, left the ruins of the security air lock and the blasted droid factory, left the clamor of palace security digging through the rubble, even left the occasional potshot in their direction from an ambitious Houk, currently stationed in the hole that shortsighted Yeama had blown through the wall. Now she was back, and the view wasn't pretty.

The answer came to her at last.

Are you feeling all right? "Yes. "

They were hunkered down out of sight in the entrance of the vault. She was squatting on her knees, still applying pressure to her injured hand under her right armpit. The suit had sealed the wound as best it could, leaving her nothing else she could do about it now. She knew that well enough, having been injured in combat before. Once, she had been caught in an intense urban guerilla exchange that Special Forces Blackstar Squad had been sent in to deal with. Intel had leaked, leading Larin and three squad members into a trap. She still dreamed sometimes of the way frag grenades had torn into the group, instantly reducing two of her friends to ribbons. She had been sheltered from the bulk of it, but even so the skin down her right leg and side had been flayed completely away, along with a fair chunk of muscle. It had taken an extended period in a bacta tank to regrow the tissue, and three months of rehabilitation to restore her to full flexibility.

This was different, though, and it wasn't just because fingers couldn't be regrown. In the Blackstars, she had had many clear-cut reasons to fight: among them strengthening the Republic cause, enforcing principles of liberty and equality among all beings in the galaxy, and furthering her own career. She had thought herself perfectly normal in that regard. Why else did one join special forces but to be a hero on the side of good?

She knew now that not everyone was like her. Every barrel contained a bad apple or two. She also knew just how important at least two of those principles were to her. More important, combined, than the last one. Sacrificing her career to uphold them had seemed the right thing to do, at the time.

Without her career, though, it was very hard to fight for any cause at all. And now her situation was totally muddied. Was invading a sovereign state-albeit one comprising criminals and murderers-the best way to go about enforcing freedom and equality? How did squabbling with Mandalorians and Sith over a battered navicomp help the Republic? To whom did she owe her allegiance now, if not herself or her former peers?

She didn't have good answers for any of these questions, yet she had lost the fingers of her left hand fighting for them. That made the pain worse, somehow.

"What happened to your droid?" she asked Jet in return.

"Clunker? He's somewhere under that lot, " the smuggler said, indicating the pile of masonry left in the wake of the thermal detonation. He had armed himself with a blaster dropped by one of the dead soldiers outside. "Don't worry. He'll be back when he's ready. "

"I recognize his model, " she said, clutching at the fact as though it would explain everything. " J-Eight-O, soldier cla.s.s. That's why he talks in combat signs. But they were phased out, weren't they?"

"Perhaps, " he said. "I found him on a sc.r.a.p heap two years ago. His vocoder was dead, and when I tried to fix it, he just broke it again. That proves how smart he is. He's worked out that if you don't respond to orders, no one can prove you heard them. "

"That's a pretty good survival tactic, " she said, "for anyone in the army. "

They leaned out of the vault to see if anything had changed outside. The Houk kicked up some pebbles nearby, but missed by more than a meter. Potannin's last surviving escort returned fire from the other side of the antechamber. He missed, too. Larin could have aimed better, even with just one hand.

"What's your name, Private?" she called to him.

"Hetchkee, sir, " he called back. He was a young Kel Dor, and his face was mostly hidden behind a face mask and goggles designed to protect him from a harsh oxygen atmosphere.

"Who told you to call me'sir'?"

"No one, sir. "

He obviously didn't know anything about her past. She wasn't going to be the one to fill him in.

The sound of digging grew louder.

"Larin, " said Jet, leaning in closer, "do you think we've been left to hold the baby?"

"In what sense?"

"In the Someone's going to have to explain this mess to Ta.s.saa Bareesh and it might as well be you sense. "

"Don't worry, " she said. "He'll be back. "

"Who? Your Jedi friend or Envoy Vii?"

Larin looked around. She hadn't noticed that the envoy was gone-although now that she thought about it, she did remember Jet telling her something about Ula meeting them at the shuttle. It hadn't occurred to her to wonder when and how they would go about getting there. Ula had left before the security forces had sealed their only way out.

"I mean Shigar, " she said. "Jedi Knights always keep their promises. "

"And what exactly did he promise you?"

She suppressed a sharp reply. What was Jet getting at? Sure, Shigar may not actually have promised to come back for her, but she knew he would if he could. And while Ta.s.saa Bareesh's security forces ama.s.sed outside, there was nothing else she could do but trust him. She had given up trying to hail him on the comlink long ago.

She stood up.

"I suggest..."

The sound of a distant explosion cut her off. The floor shook, and a rain of dust settled down on them from above.

There was no way to tell where this latest blast had come from, so she finished what she'd been about to say.

"I suggest we look at this thing while we still have the chance. "

She crossed to the miniature droid factory and peered inside. The swirling silver cilia were still now, so she felt safe a.s.suming it was dead. She tried tipping it over to see the base, but it was firmly affixed by the wire-like threads that had eaten down into the vault floor like tree roots.

A piece of the silvery alloy had melted off during the firefight in the vault. She picked it up and weighed it in her hand. It was surprisingly heavy.

"Let me get this straight, " she said. "This thing was on the Cinzia. You found it in the wreckage and brought it to Hutta. Ta.s.saa Bareesh locked it in here. It looked inert, but it wasn't. It sent out those thread things into the floor and began scavenging metal. It infiltrated the security system. It started building the droids. "

"Ula called them hexes. "

That was as good a name as any, for now. "Maybe just one or two hexes at first, to defend itself. It kept them hidden inside, like a nest or an egg. If you look into one of the hexes, you'll see they're not solid all the way through. They have a honeycomb structure. So two could easily fit in here, if they were collapsed down. " She poked the cilia with the barrel of her rifle. "Two would be enough to take over a ship. "

Jet looked at her, not the droid-nest. "You think it was waiting for someone to win the auction and take it away?"

"I do. The hexes would've emerged, overpowered the crew, and gone safely home. "

He nodded slowly, thinking through her proposition.

"I think you're partly there, " he said. " Given enough time, I reckon the hexes could've escaped from here on their own steam. Note how they emerged from the vault the moment everyone started fighting over it. The door melted like b.u.t.ter, probably thanks to wires like these. If everyone had waited just one more day, I think our nest here would have turned up empty. "

"You might be right, " she said.

"It's just a guess, " he said self-deprecatingly.

"Here's another one, " she said, edging back to the door. "If the homing instinct theory is right, then the hexes must know the way home. "

Jet's face brightened. "So if we can get out of here with one of their brains, we won't need the navicomp after all!"

They peered out at the body of the double-hex lying on the floor of the vault. The laser cannon had blasted a hole right through both conjoined abdomens. The innards were blackened and melted, totally un-salvageable.

Jet's face fell. "Worth a thought, anyway. "

Larin leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Shigar sure was taking his time. Her blood sugar was low, and the endless pain was making her dizzy.

The sliver of metal from the factory was still in her one good hand. She slipped it into one of her suit's many sealed compartments. At least they wouldn't return empty-handed.

A disturbance outside distracted her. "Someone's coming!" called Hetchkee.

Larin propped the barrel of her rifle on the back of her left hand and trained it through the door. The mound of rubble at the far end of the security air lock was moving. Someone was clearly coming up through it-but was it Stryver, the Sith, or Jet's loyal droid?

A scuffed orange hand, reaching out of the gravel to find purchase on a fallen beam, soon answered the question.

"Told you, " said Jet with a satisfied expression. "Over here, mate!" he yelled to the droid.

Clunker extricated himself from the rubble and limped over to join them, utterly unmolested. The Houk had stopped firing. Instead of rea.s.suring Larin, that worried her. There was no way to know what was going on outside their impromptu redoubt. She presumed the Hutts wouldn't leave them alone for long.

"Good work, Hetchkee, " she said, returning to the safety of the vault's interior. "I think we'll have more company soon, so stay alert. "

"Yes, sir. " If the soldier was worried by that prospect, he didn't show it.

Clunker was communicating with Jet via a series of rapid signs.

"Bad news, " the smuggler translated. "Stryver got away with the navicomp. "

"That's the end of that, then, " she said, unable to hide her bitterness. The trail had gone cold. Any hopes she might have entertained about redeeming herself by means of a successful volunteer mission were now officially dead. "What does he want with this colony, anyway? Doesn't Mandalore have enough soldiers already?"

"Doesn't Ta.s.saa Bareesh have enough money?" His cynical smile flashed again. "I think Stryver wanted the navicomp for two reasons. To find the Cinzia's origins, and to hide its destination. That would make sense if Mandalore has been part of this right from the beginning. "

She stared hard at him. "You could be right. Stryver knew about the Cinzia long before anyone else. It was him going around asking questions that tipped us off. "

"And the Cinzia was on a diplomatic mission, but neither the Empire nor the Republic had ever heard of it. Can you name any other major players in the galaxy at the moment?"

She granted him the point. Even if the Mandalorians hadn't acted as a united body since the war, it wasn't inconceivable that they might do so again, for honor, or the right price, or just because they needed a good war. "Why did those things attack Stryver, then?"

"I don't know. "

"And who saved the nest from destruction when the Cinzia's crew blew themselves up?"

"I don't know that, either. "

She shook her head. "Every way I look at this, it keeps on getting crazier. "

"Ta.s.saa Bareesh had no idea, did she?"

The sound of grinding rubble came from outside the vault. Larin hurried to the door before Hetchkee could call. The giant ma.s.s of stone blocking the far entrance was moving forward. Behind the crunching of rock and ferrocrete, she could hear a hissing and pounding that could only have come from dirt-moving droids.

"Okay, " she said, "this is it. If you've got any other bright ideas, Jet, now would be the time. "

"You've had your daily quota, I'm afraid. "

"Well, then, you'd better join me in hoping that Shigar turns up soon. Otherwise, we'll see what Ta.s.saa Bareesh's hospitality is really like, behind all the chintz. "

"I suppose we could try to make a last-ditch break for it, " he said.

"And go where?"

"Well, there's my ship. "

"I thought it was impounded. "

"Oh, that. A small technicality. "

"Like getting out of here alive. "

He winked. "A man can dream, can't he?"

Levity in the face of unspeakable odds always buoyed her spirits. It surprised her how much she had warmed to the smuggler in their short time together. Maybe their cells would be next to each other in Ta.s.saa Bareesh's dungeon. Maybe they would be stretched on adjacent racks.

With a rumbling crash, the droids broke through the rubble. Once the way was clear, they retreated to allow the palace's security forces past. There were dozens of them, all heavily armored and armed, creeping forward across the exposed beams of the floor with sights trained on the vault.

Larin almost laughed. Ta.s.saa Bareesh had sent an army to capture just four people! It would've been absurd if she hadn't been on the wrong end of the equation.

"What do you think, Hetchkee?" she called to the Kel Dor soldier. "We can try surrendering to them, if you like. We haven't done anything wrong, when you think about it. Your boss was actually invited. "

"I don't reckon they're in the mood to care about that, sir. "

That was true enough. The ranks of Weequay, Houks, Niktos, and Gamorreans looked as though they expected a whole army of Sith, Jedi, and Mandalorians to burst out of the vault and make off with their mistress's fortunes. If only they knew there were just three people and a droid. It hadn't even occurred to Larin to try unlocking the other three vaults.

"All right, then, " she said. "Wait until you can see the red of their eyes. "