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Now Ben smiled, too. “Finally. Dad’s in charge again. We’re back to business as usual.”

KLATOOINE

WITH GROWING SATISFACTION, DEI WATCHED, ON HIS DATAPAD SCREEN, the transmission from C-3PO’s optics. They mostly showed the backs of taller, broader beings, many of them Klatooinian, but occasionally the protocol droid would glimpse the stage and those on it—the little Klatooinian Jedi, the Klatooinian woman speaking to her, and, mere steps away from them, Tenel Ka Djo.

It had been a fast, efficient operation. Grab the protocol droid, send a charge through him to power him down, slap a restraining bolt into place, hustle him into a tent rented from a weapons vendor happy to earn credits any way he could. A quick bit of mechanics to install the explosive charge and relays that would send the droid’s sensor data to Dei’s datapad. Directly load a forged message into the droid’s comm queue. Finally, hand the droid off to a well-bribed representative of the Manumission Mandate Militia. Then it was merely a matter of waiting for the proper time. As luck would have it, the Solos’ little girl had found the droid a bare two minutes before Dei would have transmitted the order to release him anyway.

The Solos’ little girl …

At the moment, the datapad was receiving a close-up of Tenel Ka Djo’s features. The woman was smiling, a polished, political smile, clearly offering support for the events transpiring at the center of camp, but there was something about her expression, a touch of tension, that Dei found familiar.

Kneeling on the sand of the eastern overlook, Dei set the remote detonator down beside him and picked up the datapad. Ignoring for a moment the live feed on the screen—C-3PO would take two minutes at least to get to the raised stage—Dei backed up through the last half hour’s worth of recordings from the droid.

There she was, the little girl in the last moments C-3PO had stared down into her face. Her hair was a familiar red, her eyes a familiar gray. Her expression bore a familiar seriousness.

Dei flipped back and forth between images of Amelia Solo and Tenel Ka Djo. A wash of realization went through him like a cold stream.

Jedi Queen. Perhaps Tenel Ka had already borne a second daughter. Or perhaps this girl was the child believed dead years ago. It made sense. Tenel Ka’s association with the Solos, the need of a Hapan queen to keep an heir away from murderous rivals …

Dei would just have to kill both of them. But now it was Tenel Ka’s turn. He flipped back to the live feed.

The screen showed a veiled Hapan woman speaking directly to C-3PO, nodding. She stepped aside to let him pass. The next person ahead, not five meters away, was Tenel Ka Djo. Dei reached for the remote.

His fingers encountered sand. He groped around, surprised. He was usually spot-on accurate, remembering exactly where he placed items. But his fingers felt nothing but sand.

He looked down.

The remote was gone.

* * *

Reaching the top of the trail ascending the eastern ridge, Allana gulped and looked back down at the camp. It had seemed so large when she was in it, and now it was a tiny thing. The Millennium Falcon, at one edge, its surface bathed in lights set up by the Alliance guards, gave her a sense of scale. Even at this distance, she could hear occasional roars from the crowd in front of the central stage. She could also hear the faint hum from the nearest shield generator, hundreds of meters away.

But the camp was not her concern now. She turned to look over the dark desert. It occurred to her, belatedly, that this close to the uneven overhang, a single misstep could cause her to fall dozens of meters—to be badly injured or even killed.

Well, there was nothing to be done except be careful. If time allowed.

Anji walked a few steps away, then, graceless for a nexu, fell over on the warm sand and began grooming the fur on her side.

Allana ignored her and, as well as she knew how, opened herself to the Force.

Here, where there were no people around, perhaps she could feel the man she was looking for. It was