"The omission of the clone from your report, " he said, "was premeditated, deliberate, and dangerous. The Dark Council disapproves of anything that smacks of disloyalty-or of emotional attachment to anything other than the Council itself. "

"I felt no kinship with the clone, my lord, " she said.

"None at all?"

She struggled to find words for the emotions that still stirred her when she thought of the pathetic creature in the tank. "Lema Xandret refused to let her daughter go, so she created a new one, whom she imprisoned. She refused to be controlled, yet she herself was possessive and controlling. What imprisonment might she have fashioned for me had I not been rescued from her by Darth Chratis? Was that why my memories of her have been so easy to suppress? The only thing stirred up in the entire affair was a recollection of her screaming. I think, in short, " she concluded, "that I had a lucky escape. And the clone, too, in the end. "

"Did you order the hexes to commit suicide?"

"That I didn't do, " she said, "but I probably could have ordered them not to. "

He nodded. "It was the amnioid, then. "

"This time, yes. Lema Xandret lost her daughter twice. There was nothing else to live for. Not even revenge. "

"So instead of becoming their master, you let them die. " Darth Howl lowered his rifle and fixed her with an obsidian stare. "Some might find it puzzling that you did not use the hexes to fulfill your vendetta against Dao Stryver, and then go on to conquer the galaxy. "

"Yes. " I could have been Emperor!" The thought did occur to me. But the Mandalorian had already escaped by then, and I remain loyal to the Dark Council. "

"Some might say that your exposure to the Grand Master of the Jedi addled your thoughts. Some might use this as an argument to never trust you again. "

"I don't care what people say. "

"You only need to worry about what the Dark Council decides to do about you. "

"I met with them yesterday. They-you said..."

"Many things are said, Ax, and many things are done. They are not always the same. "

She knew it. "So are you going to have me killed?"

He laughed at her, and raised the rifle. Another shot; another scream of pain.

"That depends entirely on how you spin it, " he said. "Were the fugitives punished?"

The fate of her mother and the clone left her in no doubt on that score. "Undoubtedly. "

"Did the planet fall into the Republic's hands?"

"No. "

"So you survived where your Master did not, and you returned with valuable intel. You are strong and determined, like your mother. You deserve nothing but admiration, and a close eye.

"If anyone does learn the secret about the hexes, the explanation is simple. Your loyalty to the Emperor is such that you would never attempt to unseat him. Note that I said 'Emperor, ' not the Dark Council. It's a Sith's job to try to unseat us. That's why we have to keep a close eye on you. Fire the gun. "

Ax closed one eye and stilled her hammering heart. Perhaps she would survive after all.

The creature in her sights did not survive, and neither did two more that came to investigate.

She wasn't going to tell Darth Howl that the only reason she had not spared the hexes was because trying to control them would have undoubtedly backfired. Riddled with the twisted spirit of her mother, the hexes would have turned on her eventually, and she would have ended up as trapped as her clone. Far from becoming Emperor, she would have been a bitter princess in a cage, shouting for help at an empty galaxy.

Better that it all disappear into a black hole, literally and metaphorically, and she get on with her life. Her life. However much of it she had left.

"Why did you invite me here?" she asked. "It wasn't to grill me on my report or to offer me advice. "

"True. You are young and inexperienced, but you are observant, and you survived this crisis unscathed. Perhaps you are hiding your true feelings well, or you are more resilient than you look. Either way, you can be useful to me. I brought you here to offer you an alliance. "

Ax didn't even see what lay down her sights. "What kind of alliance?"

"One considerably more to your advantage than the last one. Darth Chratis deserved what came to him. His methods were unreliable, his philosophies dangerous, and his ambition unchecked. It was therefore inevitable that he would fall. The only question was: how far would you fall with him?"

She didn't answer.

Darth Howl's teeth gleamed faintly in the night. "Darth Chratis failed you, just as my last apprentice failed me. It's time to look beyond failure and see the successes awaiting you and I. With my power and your potential, can you imagine what we might accomplish together? We might shake the Supreme Chancellor from his seat, and earn rewards beyond our wildest dreams!"

She wasn't thinking that far ahead. All she had in mind was how useful it would be to have a Master actually on the Dark Council, not just dreaming about it.

"What happened to your last apprentice?"

"She liked to keep pets, " he said, taking aim and dispatching another hapless furball down below. "And now I keep her in the observation dome directly above our heads. She loves it when I entertain guests. "

His smile was cold and vicious, and something about it thrilled Ax to her core. Darth Howl needed her, and she needed him. There was no shame in admitting it. There were bigger games to play now.

Dao Stryver could wait. When she needed to feel anger in its purest form, he would be there, ready to inspire her. It didn't matter where he was or what he was doing. The longer her vow remained unfulfilled, the greater her anger would become. The end justifies the means, as he himself had said.

"I would be honored, my lord. "

"Good. And I will accept you as my student. You will put the messy business of your mother behind us and we'll both look forward to slaughtering the Jedi sc.u.m in their beds. And, most important... "

He winked like the chopping of a guillotine.

"Most important of all, my young apprentice, we will both watch our backs. "

EPILOGUE : TATTOINE.

There was no shortage of cantinas on Tatooine, nor of cantina brawls. Akshae Shanka had come in second in yet another combat tournament, and emotions were running high. There had been riots around the arena, and several full-blown shoot-outs had rivaled those of the contest itself.

Dao Stryver wasn't there to fight, however.

From the shadowy depths of the Wing and Wanderer, the Mandalorian watched the arrival of the human who called himself "Jet Nebula" with a keen eye.

The smuggler had a sandy air, as most people did on the desiccated planet. His gray hair was as wild and his uniform as s.p.a.ceworn as ever. The droid trailing him had earned a couple of extra dents in his travels since Sebaddon. But they looked much as Stryver had expected. They were watchful in a way that older warriors learned to be.

"Jet Nebula" looked around the bar, saw the impa.s.sive Gektl sitting alone, and performed a subtle double take.

Then he held up two fingers to the bartender, who chattered confirmation, and he and the droid pressed through the dusty crowd.

"Fancy meeting you here. "

"You recognize me?"

"Dao Stryver, in the flesh. You looked better with your helmet on. "

Stryver showed teeth in a way that might have been mistaken for a smile. "In my culture, this expression is considered a challenge. "

"Come on. I know you can take a joke. " He pulled up a chair. "Besides, you're obviously waiting for me. I reckon I'm safe at least until you tell me what you want. "

"I've come for the droid. "

Nebula raised an eyebrow. "He's not for sale. "

"I'm not offering you money. "

Two tiny gla.s.ses clunked down between them. Stryver made no move to pay, and neither did he. He obviously had a tab.

"Good fortune in battle, " Nebula toasted. "May all your eggsp.a.w.n hatch as soldiers. "

"You know about that, too?"

"I've got a good sense of smell. And I transported some life-paintings from Hoszh Iszhir once. You've a nice planet, there, if you breathe poisonous gas. "

Stryver raised the other gla.s.s and tipped the fiery liquid down her throat.

"I was wrong to take you for granted, " she said.

"It's not your fault. I go out of my way to give a certain impression. "

"I am not apologizing. I am offering you a compliment. Few deceive me. "

"We both have our masks. Do you keep your tail trimmed to fit into that armor or have you had it permanently removed?"

She shook her head, unwilling to be deflected. "I've been looking for you ever since the Sebaddon affair. "

"I'm gratified it's taken you so long to find me. "

"The word on the grapevine is that you have been shopping technical data to the black market. What kind of data?"

He shrugged. "Everything I had on the hexes, which wasn't much. Chemical a.n.a.lyses, video footage, a sample of their subs.p.a.ce code. I sold it as a job lot to a character called Shavak. Don't worry: there's nowhere near enough for him or anyone else to rebuild them. "

She let him believe that this was her concern-if he did in fact believe it. He was a man of many masks. In Ta.s.saa Bareesh's palace he had been careful not to play things too smart lest he be considered a threat, while at the same time he was reinforcing his value as the man who found the Cinzia, and who might find other bounties like it, in order to avoid being conveniently disappeared. While the Hutts had been watching the envoys, the smuggler in their midst had kept his eyes and ears carefully open.

In the same way, he had pulled the strings of the Republic's puppet envoy, making certain the Xandret affair ended to his advantage. He might be doing much the same thing right now.

"You know, I'd make an excellent Mandalorian, " Nebula said, "were I that way inclined. "

Stryver stiffened in her seat, resisting the urge to reach across the table and tear his puny head right off.

"Explain, " she growled.

"We both have a sense of irony. " He signaled at the bartender for another round of drinks. "And our goals are the same. I mean, seriously. You engineered the whole Sebaddon thing from the start, right? You gave Xandret coordinates for a meeting that would take her through privateer-infested s.p.a.ce. You knew where the ship would end up once it was caught, and what the Hutts would probably do with it. Then you hopped around the Empire and the Republic, escalating the situation. You wanted people to think that you were chasing the Cinzia to stop it from falling into anyone else's hands, but in fact you were doing the exact opposite. That's why you didn't kill any of the players you came across. You wanted a fight over the hexes just as much as you wanted to erase your own involvement in it. "

The drinks came. Stryver let hers sit untouched on the table as Nebula went on.

"You were testing the Empire's and the Republic's responses to the hexes. You wanted to see who has the edge, these days. Has the Republic recovered from the near-beating you gave them a decade ago? Has the Empire grown strong enough to be considered a serious contender in your next campaign? I'd say the results were tied, which suits me. What do you think? Who's Mandalore going to fight next, when he gets tired of working for everyone else? That's the question I bet every Jedi and Sith would like answered right now. "

He skulled the contents of his gla.s.s without taking his eyes off her.

She was careful not to give him an answer. "Where does the irony come into it?"

"We have no leader. Do you remember that? I'm sure you do, and I'm sure it struck a chord. Your kind is of a fairly individualistic bent, as is mine. We sympathize with Lema Xandret's desire to follow her own path, even if we don't share her methodology. After all, we don't have the army of droids that allowed her political indulgences-an army that was probably more about building and terraforming originally than fighting anyone, until we showed up. And that's where the irony lies.

"The Emperor certainly didn't endorse Xandret's egalitarian aspirations, and I'm positive the Supreme Chancellor would have disapproved, too. Empires and Republics dislike those with the capacity to overturn their regimes. In that sense, our two squabbling friends are more alike than they prefer to think-and Xandret's political meme might have been even more dangerous than her hexes, had it escaped. "

Stryver nodded, thinking of the stratified hierarchies, bureaucracies, and undercla.s.ses she had witnessed in both Empire and Republic, all foaming with discontent, not all of it brought about by the cold war that had existed for more than a decade now. It wasn't impossible to imagine either regime being overturned by rebellion from within.

Just as dangerous, however-and for more important-was the possibility that the two rival factions might one day unite against a common enemy, as they had against the hexes. Keeping the two at each other's throats was therefore vital, from a Mandalorian perspective.

"Are you nodding off, " Jet asked, "or agreeing with me?"

Stryver focused her thoughts. "I am thinking that the most dangerous thing in the galaxy is an ambitious serf. "

"As every exploitative regime discovers to its cost, when those who do the work decide they want to keep the profits for themselves. "

"What would happen if droids ever came to the same decision?"

"It would mean the end of civilization as we know it. Luckily, the hexes weren't ambitious per se-just badly programmed. "

"I'm not talking about the hexes. I'm talking about Clunker. "

Nebula showed enough teeth to suggest that his smile might be a threat, too. "Don't you think we'd already be his slaves, if that's what he wanted?"

"You tell me what he wants. What motivates a machine that can take over Imperial and Republic ships at will, and then just run away?"

"Not power or glory, obviously. Or profit, otherwise I'd be a trillionaire. Sometimes he does what I ask him to, and sometimes he doesn't, so it's not about obeying me. To be honest, I've been trying to figure him out for years and may be no closer to the answer than I was when I started. "

"You didn't make him like this?"

"Not a chance. He was a mistake, some kind of factory error, and he'd been scheduled for melting when I found him. His brain had a reset problem, apparently. Every few minutes, he'd shut down and lose his memory. A droid with no capacity for storing incriminating evidence appealed to me, so I nicked him and patched him up as best I could. These days, he can manage days at a time without flatlining, but it still happens. The only things he remembers are me and the ship, I guess because we were where his life really started. "

Stryver peered up at the stationary droid. "So he won't remember Sebaddon and what happened there?"

"No. He's reset four times since then. I've come to think it's all connected-like his thoughts get too big for his brain to handle, so it shuts itself down periodically to stop him going crazy. After all, what could be worse than a droid with ambition, as you put it? You've seen what people do to them when they get ideas. "

"And with good reason, when it came to the hexes. "

"Clunker is no hex. He's just a damaged droid struggling to cope in a big, bad universe. "

"Then perhaps the time has come to relieve him of his burden. "