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  Trey was the first Controller. He held a large screen-only datapad and used the on-screen controls to command a floating droid. Round and glowing, the size of a human head, it drifted up to chest height in the middle of the wide circle the Wraiths formed.

  Trey set the timer for sixty seconds. He put his finger on the floating ball controller, knowing that the first twitch that set the ball into motion would also start the countdown. “Ready ... go.” He sent the ball into flight.

  As he maneuvered the ball, guiding it through a spinning, diving, zigzagging route that still stayed within the circle of Wraiths, they began to fire. Tally-marks began to appear beside names listed along the right side of the datapad screen.

  Each time a Wraith’s shot hit the ball, the ball made a noise, a musical thunk. Other hits, badly aimed ones, yielded a different sound, a musical thoooo that sounded like a droid, suddenly de-powered, sitting down for an unexpected nap.

  The last second counted down. The ball stopped glowing and came to a dead stop. Trey raised his voice. “Round One done. Your results ...” He scanned the list of names, which was sorted by score. “Wran, you disgust me. Ten shots, eight hits, no tragedies. Voort and Myri tie for second place with twelve shots, four hits, no mistakes each. Drikall and Scut, you each had three hits on the ball and none against your fellows, but Drikall, you shot thirteen times and Scut ten, so Scut wins the tiebreaker ... Jesmin, one shot, one hit on the ball, none on any of us. Are you not feeling well?”

  There was no answer from the darkness.

  “Jesmin?”

  “One shot, one kill.” Jesmin’s response was a whisper breathed in Trey’s right ear. “That’s the Ranger way.”

  Trey jumped with her first word. “Not funny. Well, maybe a little funny. Thaymes, you make us all proud: Sixteen shots, no hits on the ball, and you killed me, Drikall, and Jesmin, and Voort twice, for a total score of negative ten.”

  Thaymes’s voice floated out of the darkness. “Thank you all. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  Trey handed the datapad to Jesmin. “Your round.”

  But the screen blanked, showing a sensor view of the quarry and a kilometer around it. A blinking green dot approached the quarry property.

  Voort stepped up to take a look, then checked his chrono. “That’ll be Sharr ... probably. Everybody get topside.”

  Sharr paid the driver, took his bag, and waited until the speeder had lifted off and gotten half a klick away before he mounted the short step to the main building and the ops center.

  The main room was empty of Wraiths. He shut the outer door and stood in the doorway, puzzled.

  “It’s him.” The voice was Trey’s but muffled, and it came from a blank spot on the floor. A square of flooring a meter on a side, its seam invisible, lifted and tilted back on hinges. Trey stood up out of the hole beneath.

  The door into the Catastrophic Mess slid up and the Wraiths filed out. All wore nightsuits. Voort spoke first. “Welcome back. Don’t unpack: you’re going to Chiss space.”

  Sharr sagged. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “I’m joking. Sit. Eat. Drink. Report.”

  Sharr settled into a chair, pointed to where Trey was stepping out of the hidey-hole. “That’s new.”

  Trey shut the hatch. Again it became an innocuous part of the floor. “I can’t leave any device, vehicle, or construction unchanged. You know that.” He and the others took seats.

  Sharr rubbed his face as if to scrub a thick layer of tiredness away. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

  Voort snorted. “You know our traditions. Lead off with the bad.”

  “General Thaal knows it’s Wraith Squadron.”

  All the others leaned forward.

  Voort’s eyes widened. “Say again?”

  “While I was on Coruscant acquiring the package, I did a little sniffing around. You know, checking into how much of a trail we might have left without meaning to. And I found out that, quietly but very persistently, General Thaal is looking for Wraith Squadron. I was actually queried, a comm message sent to my home. An army investigator asked, politely, if I’d had any contact with certain individuals since the unit was dissolved three years ago. He apparently bought into the notion that I was indeed retired and making my living writing the ‘What’s Wrong With You?’ quizzes.”

  “So if he didn’t suspect you ...” Voort rubbed his jaw. “He was only looking for Bhindi’s team.”

  “Not even that.” Now Sharr let a bewildered smile cross his face. “When I dug into it, I found out that they’re looking ... for a third Wraith unit.”

  Thaymes put his face in his hand. “My head hurts. Please hammer a nail into my skull. To release the pressure.”

  Voort kept his tone light and pleasant. “Ah. And who is in this third Wraith unit?”

  “Well, there’s a Defel named Queevar.”

  Voort shook his head. “I’ve never heard of—him? Her?”

  “Her. Female name. Then there was a manumitted destroyer droid, pre–Clone Wars era, named Impaler.”

  Scut jerked, surprised. “That’s a freakish coincidence.” He frowned. “When I was first taken in by my human parents, they gave me something to help me get over my fear of machinery. It was a toy droid in the form of a destroyer. It chased stinging insects out of my room. And it would impale bits of litter on its claw-spikes and take them to the waste bin. I called it Impaler.”

  Voort’s expression grew blank. “Sharr, if this is a joke ...”

  “No joke. Jokes around here usually involve stealing your clothes. You’re still dressed. No, there’s a real, ongoing investigation by the army, and a big one. Anyway, also in this Wraith Squadron, there’s a bounty hunter named Zilaash Kuh.”

  “Wait a minute.” Jesmin looked as startled as Scut had. “I’m Zilaash Kuh. Or I was, for a couple of years. It’s a cover identity.”

  “Well, this cover identity is supposed to be a woman who trained as a Jedi until she was kicked out because they discovered she was only masquerading as a human. She was Anzati.”

  Jesmin looked appalled. “A brain eater?” Then her expression cleared. “Actually, that would explain a lot. That’s a good addition to her background.”

  “But the kicker ...” Sharr returned his attention to Voort. “... is the unit’s leader. A man thought dead for decades. Now more machine than man. Doctor Ton Phanan.”

  “Not possible.” Voort shook his head vehemently. “Ton Phanan is dead.”

  “Who?” Thaymes looked as though he were falling behind in the day’s school lesson and beginning to panic.

  Voort explained. “One of the original Wraiths, back when we were with Starfighter Command. Back when Myri’s dad was still in charge. Ton was our first medic. He died on a mission.”

  Sharr shrugged. “Did you see him die, Voort? Did you see his body?”

  “No, only Face did.”

  “Could he still be alive?”

  “Sure. If Face lied to us all those years ago. If he maintained the ruse all this time to preserve Ton as—as an asset of some sort.” Voort shook his head. “Or this could be a ruse on Thaal’s part, an effort to draw out Scut or Jesmin by using details only they would react to. Or some other sort of disinformation. Maybe we can use it ourselves.”

  “Well, that’s all my bad news.” Sharr pointed skyward. “The package is installed at Skifter Station.”

  Trey nodded. “I know, I installed it myself.”

  “Not your package. My package from Coruscant. And she wants to help. And ... what was the last thing? Oh, yes. General Thaal’s here. His troop transport docked at the naval station as I was coming in to Skifter Station.”

  “That was fast.” Voort whistled appreciatively. “He must really want those gems.”

  “What’s been happening here while I’ve been gone? In addition to Trey making a very nice hole in the floor.”

  Trey glowered. “I got us three droids today. Really banged up, just as ordered. I
’m working on fixing two of them now. The third one’s a loss.”

  “Turman’s in position.” Voort gestured at Jesmin. “Huhunna’s on watch duty now. Jesmin will be relieving her in an hour.”

  “Jesmin and I found the civilian exit from the Black Crest Mountain mines.” Thaymes sounded pleased with himself. “It wasn’t at the site of the old mine exit, which really is all sealed over. It’s a few hundred meters farther into the city, in an army-surplus business and warehouse. It’s on the plaza surrounding Old Kura Courthouse Square.”

  “Plaza.” Sharr raised an eyebrow. “That’s ... actually good, isn’t it?”

  Voort nodded. “When it comes time for witnesses, we’ll have them by the hundreds. And there’s room in the plaza and on the courthouse lawn to land the starfighters. Sharr, our number one goal is accomplished—getting all the elements into place.”

  “Good.” Sharr smiled. “Now we just have to live through triggering all of them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAKHAM ARMY BASE

  General Thaal suppressed the impulse to grimace as he shook the alien’s hand. They hadn’t told him that the creature ... smelled. From its mouth issued a faint but inescapable odor—sweetness, rotting. Thaal just gulped down a touch of nausea and continued speaking. “I hear you have made remarkable strides with our language just in the time I’ve been traveling.”

  “It is ... my gift.” Embassy-Who-Climbs shook the general’s hand. “An Embassy is spawned with that gift. A Render is spawned with savage claws and jaws. A Tapper has spikes that cut stone.”

  “Your jaws aren’t savage?”

  “Mine—small.”

  Thaal kept himself from shuddering. “Well. Formalities are called for. As King-Warlord of the Galaxy, I accept you as ambassador of all your race, and wish prosperity and peace on your kind. Speaking of prosperity ...” He held out a hand. An aide placed a rolled piece of flimsi in it. Thaal presented it to Embassy-Who-Climbs. “This is the deed to the world of Bastion, one of my many worlds, for your own king-warlord. He may find it to be a charming world to visit. I hear its cavern systems are lovely. He may reshape it to please himself and find many colonies there for his own glory.”

  Embassy-Who-Climbs bowed. “I will convey it to him when the first Lifters come with his gifts for you.”

  As he left the negotiations room, the alien’s crystalline box of jewels in his hands, Thaal smiled. He kept his voice low so that only his aide could hear him. “Pretty good day so far.”

  “Pretty good, General.”

  “Wouldn’t Head of State Reige be startled if he ever found I just gave away his capital?”

  The aide kept his face straight. “Yes, General.” But Thaal suspected that he heard the man snicker.

  TIARA RIDGE ESTATES, NORTHWEST OF KURA CITY

  She let the door slide closed behind her, shutting out everything that did not belong in the sanctuary of her new home.

  Ledina Chott leaned back against the outer door and looked down at herself. The white dress she wore, which had been crisp and almost incandescent this morning, now drooped a bit. A day’s worth of public appearances had left the cloth sagging like her energy, and the garment bore purple-blue smears where an overenthusiastic little girl had hugged her with food-stained hands.

  But Ledina smiled and kicked off her shoes. After two short years of fame and wealth, she still wasn’t used to them yet. She hoped she never would be. Or ever too jaded to delight a small child with food-stained hands.

  She moved forward through her entry hall toward the social room. “Twelve-String? What’s for dinner?”

  Her droid house manager did not answer.

  She moved into the social room. Two stories high and larger than the house where she’d spent her entire childhood, it was filled with expensive furniture. Its walls were decorated with holos from some of her concerts. She’d have preferred holos of some of the singers and actors she liked, but her publicist had wanted it this way, so visitors to her home would be reminded of nothing but Ledina Chott.

  “Hello, Ledina.” The voice was not Twelve-String’s—it was deep, raspy, male.

  Startled, Ledina whipped around. Her visitor stood in the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Burly, with yellow skin and dark hair and beard, he leaned against one stone wall with a nonchalance that suggested he was in his own home. He wore casual clothes in white and tan that would be appropriate to a day sailing; Ledina recognized the maker’s mark on the breast and knew that this one ensemble was worth a new speeder bike.

  She thought about turning, bolting for the front door ... but then she recognized her visitor. “Oh! Thadley Biolan. In person. You startled me.”

  “I’m so sorry.” He moved forward, extended a hand. “Your droid let me in. I’m so delighted to meet you at last.”

  She gave him her hand, expecting him to shake it, but he leaned over and kissed it like an old-fashioned courtier. She withdrew it, hoping she hadn’t actually snatched it back. “I’m the one who should be sorry. You’ve caught me right after a day of publicity. I’m a mess.”

  “Nonsense. You’re ... beautiful.”

  “Let me get you a drink. Twelve-String.”

  “He said something about power fluctuations. Perhaps he’s having them diagnosed.”

  “She.”

  “Yes, I meant she.” Thadley turned away, surveying the room. He smiled as he saw the crystalline glow rod housing, all flowing bars in different colors, atop one end table. “Ah! I see you enjoyed the moodsetter enough to display it.”

  “I’ve appreciated all your gifts. Thank you so much.” Ledina forced a note of gratitude into her voice. She had appreciated the gifts and the messages of praise for her music. But meeting him in person was not turning out to be what she had expected. She was ... unsettled. “I need to find Twelve-String. Give her a talking-to about not being on hand.”

  “No, no.” He spun to face her again, the smile never leaving his face. “I’ve traveled thousands of light-years to see you. Just arrived earlier today. Please, talk with me for five minutes. I have a business proposition for you.”

  “Business.” She felt a touch of relief. “Of course. But I should get my manager on the comm to listen in. So you won’t have to repeat anything to her later.”

  “Oh, it’s so simple, there’ll be no problem remembering the terms I’m offering.” He shrugged. “I want you to sign a personal services contract with me. Five standard years, renewable by me if I wish. Salary, whatever I choose to give you.”

  Hoping she was as innocuous as she’d been taught to be, Ledina used her thumb to depress the band inset in the ring she wore on her right hand. Then she spun and ran for the door.

  The door ahead snapped open before she was close enough to trigger its sensor. In the doorway stood two men, their uniforms brown, their collars decorated with stylized teeth.

  She turned rightward and dashed toward the hallway Thadley had emerged from.

  Another uniformed man, stepping out from the shadowy interior of her music room, caught her around the waist and lifted her. He ignored her kicks and ineffectual blows, carrying her back to Thadley.

  Thadley sighed. “Clearly, negotiations are going to take a while.” He scratched at his beard. “And blast this thing.” Irritated, he tugged at his sideburn, then peeled the beard and mustache entirely away from his face, revealing tanned skin, the color of Ledina’s own, beneath. Thin streamers of transparent adhesive stretched between beard and skin; he began rubbing them away.

  Ledina stared at him, confusion crowding out the fear for just a second. “You’re that general. You were on the news today.” Then she felt a sting, as if from an angry insect, in her left shoulder. She twisted in time to see a uniformed woman with muddy brown hair and dull eyes withdraw an injector from her arm.

  “No!” Ledina kicked at the man holding her, lashed out at the woman with the injector. She connected, but the strength was already fading from her limbs. Dizziness swept ove
r her, followed by a murky darkness.

  One Pop-Dog trooper struggled to hoist Ledina onto his shoulder.

  Thaal offered the man a mildly disapproving stare. “Careful, Lieutenant. She’s delicate. She’s an artist.” He finished rubbing the adhesive from his face and handed the false beard to another trooper. “Her ring is an emergency beacon. Switch it off. Let’s go.” He led the way to the door and out into the night.

  Two hours later, the man with the yellow skin, dark hair, and beard sat in the rear seat of the expensive airspeeder while his driver walked the half block back from Ledina Chott’s home. There, Kura City Guard speeders were situated with their lights flashing all around the home, and cordons had been strung so no one could step onto the property without the guards’ leave. The man with the beard felt a stab of worry. This was not good.

  His driver returned and slid behind the controls. “She’s been taken.”

  “Taken? Who took her?”

  “Unknown. I dropped some credits and think I got some real answers, but they know very little. It happened a few hours ago. The housekeeper droid apparently took a scrambler hit and saw nothing. There’s no sign of violence and there was no ransom note left behind. She broadcast a brief panic signal, but it went out after less than a minute.”

  The man with the beard sat back, stunned. “Back to the base. We have to figure out what’s happened here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  WRAITH HEADQUARTERS

  Midmorning the next day, Voort, dressed again in his orange X-wing fighter pilot jumpsuit, began dispatching Wraiths from their operations center.

  He heard Huhunna roar off on the larger swoop. She’d be joining Jesmin, forming Team Shellfish. The two of them would be making their last insertion into Chakham Base.

  There was a metallic slam as Scut finished loading the delivery speeder. In moments the Yuuzhan Vong appeared in the doorway, then nimbly navigated among all the remaining Wraiths as they packed their bags, donned disguises, checked the charges on their blaster rifles and pistols.