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Daala turned toward Tahiri, her mouth opening to say something, and then she realized it was not the man she expected to be standing there. Her jaw dropped.

Tahiri stepped off the controller’s platform. She gave Daala a broad smile and a mock salute. “Thanks for the rescue.” Then she slipped over the pedway rail and dropped into the chasm beyond.

With the Force she shoved herself laterally a few meters, enough to bring her feet into contact with the building front beside her. Just this once she was grateful for footwear; if she’d been barefoot as she preferred, the building’s stone face would have sanded her skin to a bloody ruin. She maintained the pressure provided by the Force for a few meters of sliding descent, then leapt free, straight into the back of an open-topped orange-and-black family airspeeder.

The pilot and the man beside her, both Sullustans, turned back to look.

Tahiri gave them a frank stare. “I’m an escaped federal prisoner and I’m very dangerous. If you cooperate, I’ll accept a ride from you and leave you within a few minutes. If you don’t, I’ll steal your speeder. Your choice.”

The driver jabbered at her in the musical tones of the Sullustans and shrugged.

Daala gaped over the rail. She looked up at Fett. “That was Tahiri Veila.”

He didn’t answer. He pressed a button on his forearm. The front hatch of Slave I swung up and open. It seemed curiously wobbly. He waved her forward, his body language impatient.

She ran to join him. A human male, large and young, probably an athlete, stepped into her path. Maybe he recognized her prison jumpsuit and imagined he’d earn a reward. He reached for her. She kneed him in the groin, cracked her palm against his jaw, and shoved his semi-conscious body out of the way, barely noticing him. She reached Fett’s side.

But it wasn’t Fett. Slave I was creaking like cheap duraplast. Beyond the open hatch she could see that the interior was mostly empty space—a duraplast shell attached by cables and spars to a late-model, high-performance airspeeder.

Fett’s armor hadn’t merely been dented by the blaster shot he’d taken; a portion of it had been burned away. Far from being high-grade Mandalorian armor, this was protection on a par with standard-issue stormtrooper armor. And Fett’s antenna was gone, broken off where it normally attached to his helmet.

She gaped at him. “Who are you?”

But his voice was pure Boba Fett. “Get in. If you want to escape.”

She got in.

* * *

The first GA Security pursuit airspeeder came within sight of Slave I as the vehicle lifted off and accelerated away. Slave I immediately dived, ignoring traffic lanes, picking up speed in its descent.

The pursuing security speeder dived in its wake. The pilot, an Ortolan, blue-skinned and pachydermal, activated the external speaker. “Slave One. We have you surrounded. Heave to and prepare to be boarded … or destroyed.”

His partner, a human female with hair as blue as the Ortolan’s fur, was on her comlink, reporting their location, course, and speed.

The pilot clamped his jaw shut as he came out of the dive. He piloted one of the more powerful security airspeeders around—he had to, in order to be useful in a pursuit situation, since by himself he massed three times as much as a human male—and the maneuver of pulling out of his dive drove him deep into the pilot’s seat.

Slave I did not heave to. Nor, for that matter, did it speed up to outpace its pursuer. It simply blasted along, getting out of the way of cross-traffic with a sluggishness the Ortolan found surprising, given its reputation. Boba Fett ignored all comm and loudhailer commands.

More security speeders dropped into the pursuit, some behind the Ortolan, some ahead of Slave I, some above and below the chase. In barely a minute a dozen speeders surrounded the fleeing craft.

Finally its pilot appeared to accept the inevitable. Slave I descended to a landing platform large enough to accommodate it. It landed, an awkward grounding that caused it to bounce once, and sat there, rocking in the winds that sometimes