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“Call it in. Then we go looking.”

Enneth Holkin, protocol aide to the honorable Denjax Teppler, co–Chief of State of Corellia, dismissed his driver well beyond the vehicle checkpoint that marked the closest approach civilian speeders were allowed to make to the Senate Building. He had a lot to do this morning; a longer walk would settle his mind. For security's sake, he kept his thumb through the panic ring on his topcoat. It wouldn't do for a Corellian functionary to be caught with a weapon at the summit, but the panic ring was perfectly legal and just as likely to save his life in case of kidnapping or a protracted encounter with a criminal.

When he was not far past the checkpoint and beginning to cross the plaza, he heard a faint noise from immediately behind, a scrape of leather on permacrete. He turned and saw the sole of a boot just before it cracked against his jaw.

Valin, rested and calm, looked dispassionately down at the being he'd just assaulted. The man was his own approximate height and coloration, which would prove useful.

He set about relieving the unconscious man of clothes and document bag. He did not bother to take the curious metal ring, with a few centimeters of thin black cord dangling from it, that encircled the man's left thumb.

* * *

More than two hundred meters away, in a claustrophobic security office deep within the Senate Building, a security station picked up an automated emergency transmission on the visiting dignitary comm band. The automated programming selected one security officer from the several on duty and threw graphics up on his monitor. Relevant data on Enneth Holkin, including his name, political affiliations, homeworld, and known associates flickered to life on the screen. Next came a holorecording of his face and a copy of his criminal record, which consisted of stealing a dilapidated speeder bike for a joyride when he was a teenager on Corellia. Then came a coordinate listing of his current location, which was, curiously, not far away.

The security agent, a lean, balding man who, after twenty years of street work, was more than happy to earn his living behind a computer terminal, yawned and typed a tracking instruction into his keyboard.

Out on the plaza and on the exterior wall of the Senate Building, holocams traversed from their usual monitoring patterns and aimed themselves toward the tracking coordinate. As the balding agent flipped from view to view, the ultraviolet-enabled holocams all showed the same scene: a pale-skinned human male, lying faceup in one of the darkest portions of the plaza, eyes closed, wearing nothing but under-things. The readings from infrared holocams indicated that his body temperature was more or less stable, suggesting he was still alive.

The agent upped the computer system's threat code from green to yellow, standard to alert. The security system responded by taking control of the external and internal holocam systems, noting the locations of every individual they detected, submitting faces to data banks whose usefulness had been vastly improved during the recent Galactic Alliance Guard years. Every Senator, aide, functionary, visiting politician, hired companion, janitor, driver, bodyguard, and celebrity within the scanning area was suddenly queued for high-priority identification.

Seconds later, cautionary flags began to pop up on the agent's screen. Avedon Tiggs, actor, musician, and frequently arrested libertine, was exiting with the Senator from Commenor. Gerhold Razzik, a member of the Imperial Remnant delegation who had no business being in the Rotunda, was there, gaping like a tourist, probably recording everything he saw with a disguised holocam. Valin Horn, Jedi Knight, was on level 2, moving confidently and steadily through what should have been a secure corridor. Octa Ramis, Jedi Master, in the company of a younger woman also dressed as a Jedi, was approaching the east main entrance.

The security agent had no special instructions concerning wayward musicians or Imperial spies, but he had very new, very specific orders about