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“I look forward to getting home.”

“By the way, who won the tournament?”

Wynn felt a little flush of emotion, but wasn’t sure whether it was more pride or embarrassment. “I did.”

The general looked at him as if he’d just magically transformed himself into a Twi’lek dancer. “Are you joking?”

“No.”

“Well … when I retire from the military, I’m coming straight to you for a job.”

“Make sure I get a private cabin back to Coruscant, and I’ll certainly consider it.”

“Pilot, back to Ops.”

The pilot put the landspeeder in motion.

On the bridge of the Dust Dancer, the young redheaded woman who had received Dolo’s signature sat in the copilot’s chair and watched the final shuttle arrive. It would be carrying Lando Calrissian and his retinue. They’d be traveling back to Coruscant to present a credible case of being innocent of any complicity with the plans of Booster Terrik or the Jedi.

The young woman knew this, of course. Her name was Seha, and she had recently been elevated to the rank of Jedi Knight. Even more recently, she had flown shuttle missions—recovery of EV pilots—above the world of Almania.

After the Almanian engagement, events had developed with startling speed. The Masters along with the StealthX mission had emerged from a private meeting, including a holocomm exchange with the Masters back at the Jedi Temple, with a new set of objectives. Until the Sith were found, they had plenty to do involving Coruscant.

Booster Terrik, once a smuggler and presumably long retired from that profession, but with connections to that trade that never seemed to become fewer in number, had arranged for the Dust Dancer to be loaned to them. A legitimate cargo transport owned by a legitimate company, it had an unsullied record. That would probably change soon.

Booster had also arranged for many of the untouched stores brought aboard his ship for the sabacc tournament to end up in Dust Dancer’s cargo modules. The two shuttles connected to the freighter’s main spar, repainted and with new false IDs, had shielded smuggling compartments.

By choosing a planet not too far from Coruscant but with limited transportation facilities, by positioning Dust Dancer there first, and then by commandeering all the celebrity players’ own shuttles and transports before dropping the celebrities themselves off on the planet’s surface, the Jedi had all but guaranteed that the Dust Dancer itself would be commandeered to transport the players back to Coruscant.

Which meant that, in a few hours, their shuttles would quite probably be able to transport armed Jedi right into the Senate Building.

Seha’s comm board blipped. She looked down to see a text message pop up. She read it over, then turned to the woman in the pilot’s seat—her Master, Octa Ramis. The woman was nearly unrecognizable, her skin temporarily dyed dark, her hair bleached nearly white. “We have a message from Borleias Operations. They’re requesting that Wynn Dorvan receive a private cabin for the trip back to Coruscant.”

Master Ramis snorted, amused. “Our first special request. I wonder how many of the celebrities will be requesting—demanding—private cabins. Of which we have one, mine.”

“You going to give it to him?”

“Sure. I’ll make certain we have a listening device in place before he boards.” She rose to accomplish that errand. “There’s no hurry, I suspect. We’re going to be herding unhappy, uncooperative drunks for the next couple of hours.”

Seha gave her a wise-beyond-her-years smile. “Ah, the glamorous life of a Jedi.”

NAM CHORIOS, MERIDIAN SECTOR

IT WAS A WHITISH PEBBLE DRIFTING IN SPACE, SURROUNDED BY A FEW gleaming specks of sand, all under the mild violet glow of the system’s sun.

Luke gestured toward Ben, a circular motion ending on an upward stroke, and Ben obligingly dialed the visual magnification upward. The pebble grew larger, and the specks of dust around it resolved themselves into space stations—mostly Golan III Space Defense NovaGun stations, the same platforms, thick with domed turbolaser batteries, that protected far more populous,