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“What’s going on, Pavan? Who’s—?”

The Hutt noticed I-Five then. He made a gesture, and two burly Gamorrean guards blocked the exit before Pavan could reach it.

Rokko looked first at Pavan, then at Den and I-Five. His eyes narrowed.

Uh-oh, Den thought.

“How interesting,” the Hutt growled. “A Sullustan grifter brings to me a droid with an unusual penchant for gambling, and who just happens to know the Jedi who comes to me earlier, offering another moneymaking deal. This can hardly be a coincidence. Something about this stinks like a ripe keebada.” He made a gesture, and a Trandoshan standing near one of the support columns leveled his blaster on them.

“Explanations,” Rokko said. “Plausible ones just might preserve your lives a bit longer.”

The man who, according to I-Five, was Jax Pavan said, “I have no idea who this droid is, Rokko. I’ve never seen it before in my life. Same goes for Shorty here.” He gestured at Den.

“Okay,” Den said. “You’re off my Feast Day holocard list.”

“Keel-ee calleya ku kah, Jedi,” the gangster snarled. “I would have thought you cleverer than that.” He gestured at the Trandoshan. “Keepuna nanya,” he said.

The Trandoshan raised his blaster.

“Wait!” Pavan said. “We had a deal!”

“Had. Past tense. Which is what you’ll all be in another second.” The Hutt turned away, his boneless mass flowing over the flagstone floor.

This is it, Den thought, feeling surprisingly calm about it, all things considered. Well, at least I’m underground.

A flash of red light from I-Five’s direction caused him to turn quickly. The droid was pointing an index finger, firing the hidden laser within it. But he wasn’t firing at Rokko, or at the Trandoshan. Instead, the beam was aimed squarely at one of the pictures—or windows; Den wasn’t sure what they were, really—that showed realtime images of Nal Hutta. The image seemed to be absorbing the high-intensity light ray. A crimson tint spread slowly over it.

Rokko stopped and spun about with a moist flapping sound. Den hadn’t known that Hutts could move that fast. “What are you doing?” Rokko cried.

“Tell the Trandoshan to put down his weapon,” I-Five said. “While you’re at it, tell your other thugs to disarm themselves as well. And I’m sure my colleagues would like their weapons returned.”

“Eniki! Eniki!” the Hutt yelled. Then, to his staff: “Do as he says! Yatuka!”

Several weapons were quickly brought and returned to Pavan and his Twi’lek companion, while Rokko’s bodyguards disarmed themselves. “Deactivate your attack droids and defense mechanisms as well,” I-Five instructed the Hutt. “No attempts at subterfuge, please. Right now my laser is set at a collimation factor of five-point-three. Any higher, and it’ll begin to melt through the condensate’s densecris-impervium alloy glaze.”

Rokko actually blanched—the Hutt’s entire body turned a sickly mottled white. Den had never seen one of the big slugs look so scared.

The four of them backed out of the underground chamber, I-Five keeping his laser trained on the image as long as he could before the turn in the corridor forced him to shut it off.

“Now what?” Den asked him.

“Now we run.”

But before they could reach the turbolifts they heard sounds of pursuit behind them: the whine of repulsorplates. The big guard droid was after them.

Pavan stopped, turned, and assumed a battle stance, activating his lightsaber. “Keep going,” he said tensely. “I’ll hold them off.”

“You and what legion of droidekas?” the Twi’lek, whose name Den didn’t know, demanded. “That droid can go through a ferrocrete bunker like a neutrino through plasma.”

“You have to complete the mission,” Pavan said. “Find the droid and—”

“Excuse me,” I-Five said. He stepped in front of the Jedi and fired both lasers full-blast at the ceiling just above the last turn. He also began using his vocabulator to emit a high-pitched screech; so high, in fact, that Den was probably the only one who could hear it, and he wished he couldn’t.

Pavan and the Twi’lek looked