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The Ortolan grounded immediately behind Slave I. He and his partner left their speeder, drew blaster pistols, and, with security agents from other speeders, approached the craft.

When they were three meters away, the front hatch opened.

The Ortolan peered in. He saw the interior, all open space and an enviably muscular airspeeder with a spindly plate-topped mechanic droid at the controls. The droid looked at him and raised its arms.

There was no one else in the seats or elsewhere in the shell.

He sighed loudly enough to cause his trunk to wobble. “Report this. We’ve been chasing a decoy.”

* * *

Just minutes before, wrapped up in a voluminous rainproof garment that fit her like a tent, a crude blond wig on her head, Daala had stood not three meters from the ersatz Slave I and watched the craft lift off. Beside her, Boba Fett, draped in a similar rain garment, its hood up to shadow his features, his helmet in a bag under his arm, also watched the liftoff. Moments later the craft dived into the permacrete canyon beyond, pursued by an oversized security speeder.

Fett gestured. “This way.”

Daala remained silent while they walked to a parked speeder, as innocuous and homely a brown as one could find on fashion-conscious Coruscant. Fett at the controls, they lifted off.

Another two kilometers away, they set down at a small-craft charter and rental firm and stepped into a Lambda-class shuttle. Fett gestured for her to take the controls. “The course is already plotted. You need merely transmit it, wait for authorization, and lift off.”

“Where will you be?”

“Changing.” He went aft and shut the cockpit door behind him.

Daala did as instructed, and minutes later achieved Coruscant high orbit. She called up the second portion of the course, a plot to take the shuttle outside the planet’s gravity well, and maneuvered in that direction.

Fett emerged from the rear compartment. He had left the rocket pack behind, but that was not the only change. The burn crater was gone from his chest and the antenna was restored to his helmet. Daala gave him a careful look. This was indeed the real Boba Fett. She nodded. “I think I understand.”

“Good of you.” He sat in the copilot’s seat and bent over the control board as if double-checking her course.

“Boba Fett showed up at the prison to rescue me. That naturally intimidated, even terrified, the guards and everyone else. But careful study of holocam recordings of the rescue will show that the rescuer was wearing false Boba Fett armor. Therefore they will conclude it was not the real Boba Fett.”

Fett nodded. “An impression enhanced by the use of a false Slave One. The droid I modified to pilot that craft will have holocam recordings that reinforce these ideas. The freelancer who portrayed Tevarkian wore the false armor in those recordings.”

“I don’t even know when Jedi Veila replaced him. Is he in the hands of the guards?”

“No. He has reported in safe.”

Daala breathed out a sigh of relief. It was odd for her, since she was relieved on behalf of someone who had just committed a high-level crime and could well be a lifelong professional criminal. “And so you have plausible deniability, and you avoid drawing yourself or the Mandalorians into a dispute with the Jedi. Did you alter your body language, too?”

“I did.” He turned to look at her. “The real Slave One is within the Coruscant system, at the orbit of the outermost planet. We will rendezvous with her and get you to a place of safety.”

“Thank you. The terms I offered in my communication were sufficient?”

“They’ll do.”

Fett leaned back in his seat. “You intend to fight to regain political power?”

“To regain a leadership role, Fett. The galaxy needs leadership.”

“Yes … Where would you like me to take you so that you can begin?”

Daala thought about it, about resources, about alliances that she had foolishly set aside years before. There really was only one answer. And she told him what it was.

KLATOOINE

NOW DRESSED APPROPRIATELY TO THE PLANET AND TERRAIN, CARRYING identification that would