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Zekk smiled. “To sweeten the deal, the lead I picked up, if you take it, means you’ll have to commandeer a shuttle or a rescue craft and go flying around outside.”

Wedge sighed. “It’s always the quiet ones. All right, master motivator, you have a deal.” From a side pocket he removed a clean orange rag that appeared to be wrapped around something. He held it above Jaina’s hand but did not release it. “Your clue?”

“We were looking for Tawaler, too, as Jaina said. His comlink reads as being off-base,” Zekk said. “So I dismissed it for a while. But then I remembered. Off-base, as a comm term, is normally used on groundside bases. We use the same terms in the order, probably because Master Skywalker is ex-military. Means that the wearer is not on-base, but his comlink is still returning a signal. Right?”

“Right,” Wedge said. “Oh.”

Jaina caught it just as fast. “So our suspect’s comlink is still returning a signal from nearby…but we’ve all been assuming it meant that he’d flown off to some planet somewhere. Give it.” She wiggled her fingers.

Wedge dropped the rag into her hand. The object within it had a little weight to it, perhaps half a kilogram.

Jaina turned the rag over and unfolded it, revealing what lay within. “Huh,” she said.

chapter twenty-one

Throughout the night when diplomats should have been asleep or planning the next day’s negotiations, the Jedi and other investigators scoured pertinent areas of the Narsacc Habitat.

Wedge and Tycho confirmed with the frigate Firethorn that a shuttle had departed another habitat at about the same time the assault on the diplomatic envoys was beginning. Hyperdrive-equipped, it had headed away from Kuat and her gravity well at a rate that did not elicit suspicion, and it had entered hyperspace before the first alarms were transmitted from the habitat. After the alarm, Toryaz Station Security had locked the station down, permitting no vehicles or vessels to arrive or depart. The obvious conclusion was that the individual or individuals who’d left via the main spoke to Toryaz Station were still there, or had departed on the shuttle.

Leia and Mara arranged for security operatives familiar with forensics to be brought in to examine the bodies of the attackers. All had been killed either by trauma from blasters or lightsabers, or through the introduction of a powerful alkaloid poison administered by small injectors in their mouths. Preliminary evidence was that each of them had already been dying from incurable illness, as well, and a simple genetics test offered the probability that three-quarters or more of the attackers were Corellian.

Wedge and Tycho, accompanied by Luke, acquired a shuttle and a sophisticated set of comm sensor gear from Lieutenant Yorvin. After an hour’s careful flying out from the station, they homed in on the signal being broadcast by Captain Tawaler’s comlink. Tawaler, stone-dead, victim of explosive decompression, was still in possession of that comlink. They retrieved his body and brought it back to the station, turning it over to the forensics experts dealing with the attackers’ bodies, but those experts could report only that Tawaler had died of hemorrhaging and exposure consistent with explosive decompression. There were no wounds on or chemicals present in his body; there were no signs that he had been bound. To all appearances, he had willingly stepped out into space and died a gruesome, painful death.

Jacen, Ben in tow, wandered throughout the habitat, seeking additional impressions that might point to use of the Force. He found them in the auxiliary security chamber now occupied by Lieutenant Yorvin and in the air lock where Tawaler had died. In each case there was a female aspect to the impressions, but Jacen could get no clear sense of them—the harder he looked, the more they seemed to blur.

Mara and Leia ran a thorough examination of the security auxiliary control room, finding the code modifications that had allowed the shuttle to maneuver into position without being detected by the base sensors. They were able