"If you do not, I will flay you alive in front of the Dark Council, before they in turn flay me. "

"Yes, Master. "

"Abase yourself before me, " he told her, "and swear to me that the thought I see in your mind is not another reason I should kill you now. "

She froze. All she had been thinking was that the hexes fought her as hard as they fought her enemies-harder, in fact, because she was a Sith. Surely, instead, they should have recognized her and held back. After all, Lema Xandret had created both of them. She had even named the ship after her daughter. They should be her allies, not her enemies.

Darth Chratis held her mind like an egg, ready to crack it with a thought.

She did exactly as he said, pressing herself face down onto the cold metal floor to reaffirm her allegiance to him.

"I remain your trustworthy servant, " she said. "I am yours to kill if you deem it fit. "

She waited, hardly daring to breathe, and gradually the pressure eased.

"You shall live, " her Master told her, "for now. Find me the location of that planet. If you fail me again, I will show no mercy. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, Master. "

"Leave. "

She went.

Only when she was sure she had reached a safe distance did she dare think, You can expect no mercy from me. Master, the day our positions are reversed.

CHAPTER 25.

The very second the medkit bleeped to tell her its work was done, Larin slid her half hand free and headed for the refresher. She was tired and ached all over, but this couldn't wait. There was only so much she could ask of a self-cleaning body glove. A good rinse was exactly what it needed.

When she was done, she did as Ula had suggested, and looked through his suitcases for anything she might be able to wear. Much of it was formal wear and still vacuum-sealed in its original packaging. A lot of it was also made from more expensive natural fabric, and therefore not amenable to on-the-fly adjustments, but Ula wasn't significantly larger than she. Eventually she found dark blue pants and a matching jacket with a militaristic cut. The sleeves and legs came up to match her length, and the other measurements pulled in tight enough. With the black body glove underneath, she almost looked stylish-but for the bruises on her face and the missing fingers of her left hand.

Larin considered what she had told Ula she would do, and rejected it. She was tired, but knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. The first thing she'd noticed on leaving the refresher was that the ship wasn't moving. It was still in orbit about Hutta.

She explored the main level of the Auriga Fire. Hetchkee was sound asleep in the crew quarters, and like any good soldier hadn't been disturbed by her rummaging around. The soft male voices coming down the stairwell from the c.o.c.kpit belonged to Jet and Ula. All the holds she poked her head into were empty, bar one.

Shigar sat cross-legged with hands folded across his lap and eyes closed. The silver sc.r.a.p sat innocently on the floor in front of him. His face was expressionless, but she could feel the tension radiating from him like an audible tw.a.n.g. He looked like she had felt half an hour earlier: exhausted, dirty, and beaten half to death.

She went and got the medkit.

"Your arm, " she told him when she returned. "How are you going to achieve anything if you bleed out here in the dark?"

Without moving a single other muscle, he opened his eyes.

"I can't do it anyway, Larin. "

"You know, you'll never be able to prove that true, " she said, holding the medkit at him like a challenge. "All you can prove is that you've stopped trying. "

"But if you distract me..."

"That's not the same thing as giving up. That's called a regroup. I'm your reinforcements. "

His mask of concentration finally broke into a faint smile. "I'd happily trade places with you. "

"Me, too, " she said, raising her injured hand.

He took the medkit from her without another word.

She explained the clothing situation while he tended his arm. He nodded vaguely. She slid down the wall and sat with her back against it. He didn't stop her. By the light spilling through the open door, he looked much older than she knew him to be.

"Everyone is waiting for me, " he said as the medkit hummed away. "Not just you and Master Satele. Supreme Commander Stantorrs, hundreds of soldiers and starfighter pilots, the entire Republic-waiting for me to do something I've never been able to do. Not properly, anyway. It conies and goes. It's not reliable. I can tell you where your armor came from, but this thing... ?"

The piece of droid-nest glinted impa.s.sively back at him.

"What about my armor?" she said.

"Once, when I brushed against it, I got a flash of its former owner. She was a sniper from Tatooine. She got a medal for taking out a local Exchange boss. "

"What happened to her?"

"She didn't die in the armor or anything, if that's what you're worried about. "

Larin nodded, feeling a small amount of relief. "Maybe she was promoted out of the field and took the armor with her. That happens, sometimes. "

"But she sold it, " he said. "Would she have needed the money that badly?"

"Her kids might have. It's old armor, Shigar, last in action before the Treaty of Coruscant. Took me a lot of work to get it into the shape it was, let me tell you. "

"You could've bought new armor anytime, " he said, "but you didn't want to. It's a symbol standing in for all the things that need to be fixed. "

"Is that what you think?"

"Just a guess. "

His green eyes watched her unblinkingly. She felt sometimes that they looked right into her. Sometimes she liked that feeling. Sometimes she didn't.

"You're thinking too much, " she told him.

"That's what I've been trained to do. "

"I'm sure it isn't. I'm sure the Grand Master trained you to think just enough, and no more. But the lesson hasn't quite sunk in yet because people only learn it the hard way. And that's where you are right now. Absolutely stuck, in a hard place. Right?"

Still he didn't look away. "Maybe. "

"Maybe nothing. You know you have to do something. You know what it is and you know why it has to be done. But you can't do it because you're too busy going over it and over it, making sure you're absolutely right. Most of you knows you are right, but there's a small part that wants to think it over one more time. The reasons, the method, the fallout. Whatever. Like you can plan everything in advance and then just sit back and watch it happen, so perfectly you don't even have to be there to do it. Things will just happen on their own. Maybe you don't need to do anything if you think about it hard enough. That's always worth hoping for. "

"You're speaking from experience, I can tell. "

"You bet, " she said, but then she stopped. The words had dried up.

"It's okay, " he said. "You don't have to tell me. "

"No, I do. I need to tell someone, one day. It might as well be you, now. " She felt her face growing warm, and she turned away, hoping he couldn't see. "I ratted on a superior officer. "

"I presume you had a reason. "

"The best. Sergeant Donbar was corrupt. But that didn't change anything. I went against the chain of command and reported him to his superiors. They slapped him down and discharged him, but the reason for it was hushed up. There were always going to people who didn't believe me, thought I was doing it out of a grudge, but because of the secrecy I couldn't defend myself. No one wants Special Forces to look bad, and he was about as bad as it gets. He was discharged, and eventually I quit. It got way too uncomfortable. "

"Do you regret it?"

"Sometimes, " she said, thinking of the Zabrak on Coruscant, "but it had to be done. If I tried to capture the weeks of agonizing I went through leading up to me actually doing it, I'd bore you to death. "

The skin around his eyes tightened. "And now you think I should just get over myself and do what I have to do. "

"You don't agree?"

"Not at all. Finding a planet that could be anywhere in Wild s.p.a.ce is a little different from putting in a report, don't you think?"

"Sure it's different. You don't stand to lose every friend you've ever had if you do the right thing. And you've actually been training for this most of your life. Remember, Shigar, that you didn't have to crawl up from nowhere to get where you are. You were handpicked from everyone on Kiffu to be a Jedi Knight. Whatever happens today, you'll go back to the life you know. So you can do it at your own pace, or you can do it when you need to do it. I for one think there's only one right choice. "

He looked away. "You came to tell me you think I've got it easy. That makes a huge difference. Thanks. "

His sarcasm stung. Larin didn't know what she'd come to him for, really, except to break him out of his funk. She was surprised at how deep the feelings ran and the harshness with which she had spoken. It was hard to tell how much was for his benefit.

"All right, then, " she said. "I'll leave you to it. "

When she stood, her knees practically shook with fatigue.

"I will do it, " he said. "I have to. "

"Well, keep it down when you do. I'm going to catch up on some sleep. "

She didn't wait for his snappy comeback, if he had one. Letting her legs work on autopilot, she went to a bunk in the crew quarters and was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

Shigar listened to her go. Already he regretted the way he had reacted to her combined advice and confession. Clearly, she had been building up to the latter part for some time, and he should have showed more compa.s.sion. But he was so bound up in his own issues, his own self-centered mess, that he hadn't been able to see the raw wound she had exposed to him. Not her hand, but the aching severance from everything she had once held dear.

How would he feel, he asked himself, if he had to turn his back on the Jedi Order? It was impossible to imagine Master Satele ever doing anything counter to the Code he lived by, but famous Jedi had fallen to the dark side before. What if he discovered that she was in fact working against the Council? And what if he knew that her word would be taken against his? Was his sense of justice strong enough to make the call anyway, as Larin's had been?

Once he would have been completely sure of himself. Now, after his dealings with Ta.s.saa Bareesh, he wasn't so sure.

And still there was the matter of the mysterious world, waiting to be resolved.

The piece of droid-nest glinted impa.s.sively back at him.

Larin was right on one point: sitting around thinking about it would get him nowhere. All the time he had been isolated in the dark, he hadn't even touched the silver sliver. He had been trying and tailing to get his mind into the right state, believing that there was no point even starting until he was completely ready.

Larin's faith in you is not unwarranted. Perhaps you should have faith in her, too.

Shigar remembered how he had felt when Master Satele had ordered him to go to Hutta. He had invited Larin along because he felt she needed him to prove something to herself. She was full of bl.u.s.ter but lacking a clear sense of purpose. Now he understood why that core of her life was missing, and it was he who needed to prove something. If he didn't, he would do much worse than let down his Master and the Republic. He would fail himself.

There's only one right choice.

He picked up the sliver of metal. It was cool and sharp-edged to the touch. If he put it in his right fist and squeezed, it would surely draw blood.

He engulfed it in his fist and squeezed.

The bottom dropped out of the hold and he was suddenly falling.

His first thought was to grab hold of something and hang on, both mentally and physically. This was utterly unlike any psychometric information he had ever received before. But what he was reading this time was unlike anything he'd tried touching before, so fighting the vision could be self-defeating. Perhaps being plunged in the deep end was exactly what he needed. He braced himself against the rush of vertigo and tried to take from the experience what he could.

Falling. At first there seemed to be nothing more to it than that. Then he noticed details highly reminiscent of the strange blue geometry of hypers.p.a.ce. Was that what he was glimpsing? The nest's last journey, or its first?

There was a blinding flash of light, and he stopped with a jerk. All was dark again. Voices came and went, too indistinct to make out words. They were raised, though, as if in an argument. He could make out no faces, no locations, no coordinates. Just a feeling: that the thing the sliver had belonged to was determined to survive.

The Cinzia, he thought. He was spooling back through the droid factory's history, in reverse. It clearly possessed a rudimentary self-awareness, which shouldn't have come as a surprise since it had single-handedly organized the surrept.i.tious creation of four advanced combat droids without being detected. Even if most of its internal algorithms were automated, it had taken a certain degree of cunning to know when to lay low and when to become active.

The flash was probably the explosion that had almost killed it.

Shigar wanted to get moving again. The next jump would be the one that would take him home, to where the droid factory had originated. But his eagerness only caused the vision to fray about the edges-and suddenly he was dumped back onto the hard floor of the hold with nothing to show for the experience.

He sat, breathing heavily and cursing his impatience.

When he opened his right hand, the sliver rested on his palm in a growing pool of blood.

What had he done this time, compared with all the other times before, that had worked?

He could guess the answer, and it was dismayingly simple. He hadn't done anything special. He'd just done it. The Force had moved through him in exactly the right way, and the knowledge he'd been looking for had come to him. It hadn't taken any particular degree of concentration, or any fancy mental footwork. He had done it because he could do it. There was a fair chance he hadn't always been able to do it; he was sure that all those years of training hadn't been for nothing. But at some point, as Larin had said, all the extra thinking he did on the subject had been wasted. It had, in fact, been counterproductive.

The next question was: could he do it again?

He didn't need to ask. He didn't want to ask it. The time for questions was over.

He transferred the sliver to his left hand and squeezed again.

A second vision of hypers.p.a.ce enfolded him. Falling faster this time. The blue tunnel was twisted, warped. He felt dizzy. Mysterious forces tugged at him, shook him violently at times. He felt like he was running down a steep mountain and that at any moment he might trip and tumble headlong all the way to the bottom. As the droid factory's journey unspooled backward in time, it took him into a deep, dark place.

Shigar didn't question the vision. He let it unfold at its own pace. The shuddering grew worse as he neared the Cinzia's origin, until he felt that he might be torn apart.

When it ceased, all was quiet. He felt a sense of homecoming, even though that was surely illusory. The factory was a machine, and it had been leaving its homeworld, not arriving there. But the feeling was persuasive. He felt that he belonged here, and that here-wherever here was-was important and precious. Unique. Shigar understood that feeling, even though he'd never felt it for Kiffu, his birthplace. Shigar had been a citizen of the galaxy for too long to feel close ties anywhere.

Again he thought of Larin and her changed circ.u.mstances. She, too, had taken great strides across the Republic and beyond. But now she was stuck on Coruscant-or had been until his arrival. She had never expressed any unhappiness about her relative confinement, but he could only imagine how it must feel.

The droid factory felt as though it belonged. Wherever it came from, that was where it had wanted to be. And Larin had killed it.