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By Root 515 0

he was told, which mostly consisted of keeping prisoners in line and trying to avoid situations in which he had to shoot them. Teaching self-defense classes he did on his own time; it helped some of the weaker inmates, maybe gave them a chance against the real predators here. At any rate, it made him feel better about himself. He liked a level playing field, and while his “classes” weren’t going to accomplish that, they did smooth out a bump in the terrain here and there. Now and again he’d hear a story about how someone from his classes used what he taught to avoid being maimed or killed, and that made him feel good. He was pretty careful screening his would-be prisoner students. Yes, they were all crooked as sand snakes, but he tried to keep out the ones who were aggressive—the ones who’d take what he taught them and use it for something other than self-defense. He had a lot of smaller beings as students, weaker ones, and those convicted of crimes that were about money rather than violence. He absolutely did not want to make a stone killer better at killing. More than enough of that went on in the galaxy already, much of it right here on Despayre.

His comlink chirped on his belt, signaling the morning recall. Time to wrap up the class and get back to the guard station, check in, get his next assignment. Some of the other guards thought he was foolish for mingling with the prisoners—you didn’t get to carry a blaster or even a shock baton unless you went out in a quad or a platoon-sized group, for fear that the prisoners would attack you and take your weapon. But Nova wasn’t concerned about that. The really bad actors here knew enough not to mess with him bare-handed, and if they pulled a beam or projectile weapon and took him out, they knew the chances were excellent they’d be dead before the next sunrise. Guard troops took care of their own, and if you attacked one, you attacked them all. They were protective of one another, but there were limits observed for the greater good. If you took a guard hostage and tried to use him or her or it for leverage, it got you and the guard and anybody within a hundred meters turned into a smoking crater. No negotiation, no compromise, just a big, sleek thermal bomb arcing out of the compound and onto your position. You couldn’t hide, because the bomb zeroed in on the guard’s implant, which couldn’t be turned off or destroyed unless you knew exactly where it was, and that location was different for every guard on the planet. You’d have to completely skin the guard alive before finding it, and, while that wasn’t a deal breaker for a lot of the planetary inmates—more, in fact, like a bonus for some of them—the catch was that even if you killed the guard, the implant kept working and reported its wearer dead. Which meant the bomb was on its way, and not even a fleetabeesta with its tails on fire could get out of range in time.

This was a big planet, but not so big that they couldn’t find you. Knowing this tended to keep a lot of the more violent prisoners in line. Because of all this, not to mention his own considerable skills, Sergeant Nova Stihl wasn’t worried about going among the scum. Tough beings recognized each other, and nobody looked at him and saw an easy target.

And besides all that, he had Blink.

The comlink chirped again. “Stihl?” came the lieutenant’s voice from it.

“Yes, sir.”

“You going to play pattycake with those slime beetles all day or are you coming in?”

“On my way, Loot.”

7

IMPERIAL-CLASS STAR DESTROYER DEVASTATOR, EN ROUTE TO HORUZ SYSTEM

Darth Vader stood on the bridge of his warship, staring out through the forward viewport at the kaleidoscopic chaos of hyperspace. The effect, even moving at the relatively stately speed of a Star Destroyer, was akin to tumbling down an endless tunnel of amorphous, whirling patterns of light—starlight and nebulae smeared into impressionistic blotches by the ship’s superluminal speed. He knew that even experienced spacers and navy personnel often hesitated to look out at it. Standard operating procedure was to keep