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“Perhaps if you did,” I-Five said, “it might get you there a little faster.”

Jax didn’t reply. Hesitantly, he extended himself, opened his being—

And the Force was there.

Nothing was different.

Stymied, Jax pulled out his comlink. “Laranth, are you there?”

Her voice crackled from the link. “Copy, Jax. This little Sullustan’s a pretty good pilot.”

Jax turned away and lowered his voice. “The droid’s not bad in an emergency, either.”

“I heard that,” I-Five said.

Kaird knew he had to make a decision. If he was going to take out Prince Xizor, it would have to be soon. Every instinct he had as an assassin argued for it. Every opportunity he ignored to drop him might be the last one. Underlord Perhi had made it clear that bringing back the droid with the information was not mandatory. The most prudent thing to do would be to take out the Falleen Prince now, which he could do as easily as pointing a finger. Attached to the back of his right hand with a binary adhesive was a small black box, not much larger than a pack of deathsticks. A flexible firing tube ran from it to the tip of his forefinger. It was a dart spitter, loaded with fifteen slender stingers, each one coated with toxical, a poison so virulent that ten darts would drop a full-grown bantha. One dart was more than enough to kill even as superb a physical specimen as Xizor. Toxical was also extremely biodiverse. It didn’t matter if you shot a Nikto, a Falleen, a human, or just about any other humanoid species with it. They all died—usually before they hit the ground.

Currently Kaird was about a dozen meters from his target, well within range. They were in a multi-tiered complex that, ages ago, had probably been a shopping center or office park, but had now become a low-rent ghetto for illegal aliens. The tenants were mostly Ugnaughts, with a few Kubaz and Ishi Tib families as well. Kaird’s Kubaz disguise let him blend in well enough to stalk his prey openly, without being noticed.

The Nediji abruptly made up his mind. He would do the deed now. After all, he could always find the droid himself if it was deemed necessary. And truth to tell, this particular bodysuit was becoming a bit chafing.

He stepped out onto an overhanging balcony. Xizor was passing two levels beneath him, crossing the open gallery. The former shops, or office spaces, or whatever they had been in ancient times, were now dwelling places for the poor and the disenfranchised; makeshift walls of synthwood and plasteel had replaced display windows, and the air was redolent with the smells of boiled rankweed pods, grilled gartro, and bloodrat. Music, which sounded to Kaird mostly like the caterwauling of sleen in heat, skirled up from the bottom floor, where the tents and produce stalls of an open-air market could be glimpsed through the aromatic smoke of cooking fires. This be a goomby place t’live ’n’ die, bloodline, oh yar …

Well, it wasn’t his life, thank the Egg. Kaird leveled the dart spitter. He lined up on his target, took a breath, and—

A naked Ugnaught child, chasing a gyroball, stumbled and slammed into Kaird from behind just as he fired. He lurched forward, and the shot went wide. He saw it splinter on the wall beside Xizor, saw the Falleen’s cold, handsome face look up, scanning the crowd, locking in immediately on the disguise Kaird was wearing. His composed green features suddenly burned orange-red with rage. He whipped out his blaster and fired.

Kaird was no Jedi, able to dodge energy bolts; had he not already been in motion, diving for the floor, as soon as he saw his enemy reach for his weapon, he would have been fried where he stood. As it was, the bolt scorched a smoking furrow down the costume’s back, a centimeter away from his skin.

He got to his feet and lunged for the nearest domicile entrance. Pandemonium had broken out following Xizor’s blaster shot; children and parents of various species were running madly about, screaming and crying in fear. Many of the adults had blasters or slugthrowers of their