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Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind inclined his head. “I am one of the Elders, yes.” He laid a palm flat on the QuickStryke’s nose armor. “And I am asking you to remove your carriages, Not-for-You-to-Know. They frighten our people.”

“Then your people are wise.” Rhal flicked something inside the command hatch, and his voice rang out across the circle. “Elders will come forward and present themselves.”

A low murmur rolled through the crowd as dozens of elderly Octusi began to make their way forward. Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind twisted his upper body around, turning his T-shaped head sideways so that he was looking up at Rhal with one eye and out over the crowd with the other.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I ordered it,” Rhal said. “As I told you, this revolt has come to—”

“No.” Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind boomed the word calmly, sharply, and loudly enough that it carried out over the circle and brought the migration of Elders to an instant stop. He turned back to Rhal and continued in his deep Octusi voice. “You are no one’s master. You do not order us—”

The defiant words came to a shrieking halt as Rhal raised a blaster pistol from inside the commander’s hatch and sent a single blue bolt burning through the Elder’s head. Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind’s upper body folded back over his shaggy midsection, and then he collapsed onto his side, limp and dead before his body hit the dirt.

So shocked was Madhi that she forgot why they were here—until Tyl began to speak in a soft voice. “I’m going in for a close-up on the body.” With a grade-three signal, his words would probably be audible only as background noise, but it hardly mattered. They had just captured a cold-blooded murder on vid, and their viewers would be too shocked to be wondering what the cam operator was saying. “You might want to do some personal reaction, then slip into conjecture about where this is all going to lead.”

The suggestion brought Madhi back to her senses, and she slipped smoothly into a hushed narrative. “This is Madhi Vaandt for the Perre Needmo Newshour. What you have just seen is the cold-blooded murder of an Octusi Elder by the Mandalorian commander, Belok Rhal. The Octusi crowd is obviously as shocked as we are, and there is no telling what will happen next.”

Outside, Rhal leveled his blaster pistol at another Elder. Madhi deactivated her button mike long enough to whisper, “Tyl, get back on—”

“Got it,” Tyl said, scraping his right-angle lens along the windowsill. “Stay live. The image might be fuzzy enough that you need to confirm what’s happening.”

Madhi clicked her button mike back on, but before she could resume, the parabolic mike began to pick up Rhal’s voice again.

“You, slave, come forward.”

The Octusi remained where he was and, in a loud booming voice, said, “No.”

A blaster bolt screeched from Rhal’s weapon, taking the Elder low in his forequarters. His huge mouth opened wide, and he let out a deep, thrumming howl of pain that was instantly echoed by all of the other Octusi in the circle.

“I don’t know how well you can hear that over the HoloNet,” Madhi narrated for her audience. “But the entire Octusi crowd has joined the wounded Elder in crying out. It’s called the Song of Sorrow, and we witnessed the same thing yesterday …”

As Madhi spoke, a female voice began to sound in her earbud. “This is network control, letting you know that we’re carrying this live on the news channel. We’ve just seen the murder, and we’re estimating a five-second signal lag. Your vid is grainy, so keep telling us what we’re seeing.”

“… when the Mandalorians opened fire in the streets of Arari,” Madhi continued. Between the voice issuing instructions in her ear, the violence outside, and her own shock, her thoughts were racing and whirling through her mind like a beldon flying through a hurricane. But there was strange calm inside her, a recognition that this was what she had spent her life training to do … and that she was more than up to the task. “We are told that the Octusi use similar