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Kaird shuddered. He had the worst feeling ever about this place.

thirty-five

As far as Den was concerned, everybody else in this little group had lost their minds. Even I-Five. Especially I-Five.

It was taking all his self-control to keep from yelling at the droid, What are you, crazy? Not content with finding the Jedi Pavan, now he—and, by extension, Den—was tagging along on a fool’s quest after another droid. It was insane; and yet I-Five evidently had no intention of leaving Pavan’s side, even though the Jedi had repeatedly demonstrated that he wasn’t interested in the droid’s help.

Den had had just about enough of this. He’d tried to be a good friend. Tried to be supportive of I-Five’s quest, even though he’d privately thought it was verging on obsession. He’d tried not to let himself grow jealous over the droid’s devotion to Lorn Pavan’s son, even though he felt that he’d been tossed aside, his feelings neglected, his warnings unheeded. He’d tried to have an open mind about Jax Pavan, to believe there was a decent person buried somewhere beneath all that formal Jedi mopak.

And where had trying to be nice gotten him? On a dilapidated Corellian smuggler ship, headed who knew where … and, what’s more, in pursuit of a ship that looked like it could make them eat cosmic dust without even kicking into hyperdrive. Let’s face it, Den told himself, this bucket isn’t going to win any interstellar speed-setting trophies anytime soon. In fact, he doubted it could come in third in a Tatooine Podrace.

All in all, it was hard to see how things could get any worse.

“He’s headed for the Factory District,” Nick Rostu announced.

It’s worse, Den thought.

The Factory District, located on the opposite side of the planet from Imperial City, was reputed to be the most dangerous place on Coruscant: a nightmarish setting of blasted and demolished structures, prowled night and day by devolved members of various species, subterranean cannibalistic throwbacks using near-primitive technology, beasts that hunted in packs, and—possibly the worst of all, if even a fraction of the stories he’d heard were true—feral droids.

“We can’t go there,” he said.

No one answered. The Far Ranger began to descend, dropping out of the night sky.

It would be different if he were following a story. If he’d been hot on the trail of a good lead, he had no doubt that he’d be leading the pack—or at least somewhere in the middle. But he’d learned the folly of risking his favorite hide years ago if the stakes didn’t warrant it. And following a droid, who was maybe carrying valuable information that might be of aid to a rebellion not even fully formed yet, seemed to him the longest of long shots. You couldn’t give that story away.

“Listen to me,” Den said. “If anyone here has any higher brain functions still working, think about this. Why are we doing this?”

The silence continued. Then: “I have to fulfill my Master’s last request,” Pavan said. “I didn’t ask the rest of you to come. Except for Laranth.”

“Well, I don’t recall volunteering for this,” Den said. “And I especially don’t recall wanting to go to a part of Coruscant that would scare the Red Guards white.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Jax Pavan said.

Den looked at him. “You know what it’s called if a tribe of Noghri moves in there? Gentrification.”

“I agree with Den,” Laranth said. “I understand your oath to avenge Even Piell, Jax. But if he were here, he’d be the first to tell you not to throw your life away.”

“Then it’s a good thing he’s not here.”

Nobody had any reply to that. Den stared gloomily through the viewport, watching as the ship dropped closer to the desolation below. “On top of everything else, there are the feral droids,” he said. “Anyone thought about them?”

Laranth answered. “They may be apocryphal—”

“Let’s hope,” Den muttered. Supposedly the droids, which were mostly construction and wrecker units, had been left behind when the area was abandoned. The story was that they had gone bad; no one was sure just how. The most popular theory was