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Now he looked up at Jax, the fleshy tendrils that protruded from his upper cheeks quivering in fear. “You were hired to protect me!” he squealed, his voice scraping unpleasantly along the Jedi’s nerves. “Your job was to help me escape from this overbuilt rock! Is this what you call escape?”

“Well,” Den observed, “that depends on how metaphysical a definition of escape you want to go with …”

Another volley of beams struck their shelter, scorching the air and leaving the unpleasant tang of ozone in Jax’s nostrils. There was no more time, he knew; they had to make their move. He opened himself to the Force, letting it expand his awareness, feeling its strands groping outward, beyond the bulk of the condensor unit, giving him an accurate “picture” of the chamber they were in and highlighting the locations of the eight concealed stormtroopers who had them pinned down.

“On my mark,” he said again. “… Go!”

Laranth hurled herself from behind the right side of the condensor’s bulk, blasters in both hands firing, her eyes as cold and hard as chips of comet ice. I-Five burst from concealment on the left side, the lasers in his index fingers zapping beams of coherent light at their adversaries. Jax let the Force lift him, let it carry him up and over the huge, shielding slab, his vibrosword parrying the blasts as he landed, batting them back toward the astonished troopers. This was much harder than it looked. The durasteel blade had been woven with cortosis, a mineral strong enough to resist energy blasts, but its similarity to a lightsaber ended there. A scarlet ray struck low on the blade, more by luck than by aim, and the vibrogenerator in the hilt shorted out. Even through the insulation the jolt was painful. Jax knew immediately what had happened, as did the troopers; they could see the blade’s edge lose its high-speed blur. Jax dropped the weapon and extended both hands, palms-out, in a Force strike that hurled three of the troopers back against a wall. Even as he did so, however, he could sense another trooper lining up on him—

Laranth stepped into the edge of his peripheral vision, firing her blaster. The beam struck the blast meant for Jax. The air sizzled with multicolored ionized energies, flickering corposant danced along his arms and momentarily wreathed his brow, and the sound was like a thousand fire wasp nests being broken open at once.

Jax’s vision was momentarily dazzled by the pyrotechnics. I-Five’s photoreceptors, fortunately, were not. The droid fired rapidly, his laser blasts unerringly accurate. In a matter of moments it was finished. The eight stormtroopers lay sprawled in various ungainly positions, on the floor or across slurry pipes, control consoles, and other large pieces of industrial apparatus. The three hesitated a moment, wary of another possible attack. Then Jax said, “It’s over. Stand down.”

Laranth nodded and holstered her blasters. The hard-bitten Gray Paladin’s connection to the Force had no doubt told her, just as his had told Jax, that the immediate danger was past. Simultaneously the droid lowered his arms. Jax knew that I-Five had swept the room for life signs and booby traps with his sensors, and that the readings were null.

“That was exhilarating,” I-Five said. “Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy the organic predilection for violence and carnage? No? That might be because—I don’t.”

Jax grinned. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get our reluctant client to the spaceport and on that spice freighter before anyone else shows up wanting to play.” He raised his voice. “Den! Secretary Bura’lya! Let’s go!”

There was a moment of silence, and then Den’s voice came from around the corner of the hypercondenser: “I’m afraid that might be a problem.”

Jax felt himself go cold. Had they come this far, only to have the being to whom they’d promised safe passage die at the last minute? Had a stray energy bolt ricocheted from a reflective surface somewhere in the room at just the right angle to kill the undersecretary? Jax reached out with the Force, just as Den continued,