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Lavint knew it would take her a long time to die. The Duracrud would continue to provide breathable air for weeks. The stores of food and water would run out first, in a few days. She’d have plenty of time to record and transmit a few final messages. One would denounce Jacen Solo for his treachery. One would confirm that her will, on file with an advocate’s office on remote Tatooine, did accurately record her final wishes. She might even record a final speech, something to put her life into perspective.

Then she’d die of thirst, or, if she chose to end her suffering faster, she could shoot herself or step out an air lock.

But one thing she could be sure of: given the remote, untraveled nature of the spot she’d chosen for her first hyperspace jump, no cargo vessel or fast-moving courier would ever chance upon her…and her last transmissions, traveling at the speed of light, would take eight years to reach the nearest star.

She was as alone and doomed as anyone in the universe could be.

“Delicious, isn’t it?” The voice was female, and came from outside the meager light provided by Lavint’s glow rods.

Lavint jerked upright. She grabbed for her blaster, then remembered it was with her holster belt in her cabin—she’d left it there when collecting her tools. “Who’s there?”

“Your suffering, we mean,” the voice continued. “You suffer like a child who cries herself to sleep each night, knowing that her parents will never, ever understand. How long has it been since you were that child?”

Lavint rose on shaky legs and began to edge her way back to the door out of this compartment. At the door she could turn on the overhead glow rods and see who was tormenting her.

But she almost didn’t want to turn on those lights. What if there was no one in the compartment with her? What if recognition of her fate had driven her crazy, and she was doomed to spend her last few days hearing voices?

As if reading her mind, the voice in the darkness laughed.

Lavint reached the doorway, found the light control by touch, and activated it. The overheads came on, bright, blinding her—

And then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw her visitor. And she knew she was not crazy, because her accumulated experiences and neuroses would never concoct a being like the one she saw.

Her visitor was a blue Twi’lek woman of no unusual size. She was dressed in a dark traveler’s robe and black clothes. Her features were pretty, but she had obviously been the victim of catastrophe at some point in her life. Her left shoulder was lower than her right, with her left arm hanging in such a way that Lavint suspected it was nonfunctional, and her right head-tail had been severed at about the halfway point.

And now, as she stepped forward, she limped.

This was no monster in the night or phantom of the imagination. Lavint stared, incredulous. “Who are you?”

“We are Alema.”

“Alema. And what are you doing here?”

“We are a stowaway.”

Lavint stared at Alema for a few moments more, and then it happened. The laugh came bubbling up out of her like a high-pressure sanispray stream. The laugh became a painful howl. It shook her and it kept coming.

Dizzied, Lavint bent over to rest her hands on her knees and rested her backside against the bulkhead; otherwise she would have fallen. Finally her laughter trailed away, leaving her throat hoarse, her body weary.

Alema’s expression did not change, except to become slightly curious. “Why do you laugh?”

“Because you’re the worst stowaway in the galaxy, in history.” Lavint straightened. “Because you picked the worst possible ship to stow away on. The Hero of the Galactic Alliance sabotaged my hyperdrive.”

“We know this. We watched his agents do it.”

That snapped Lavint out of her manic mood. “You watched it?”

“Yes.”

“And got on board anyway.”

“Yes.” Alema smiled. “No, we do not wish to die. We stowed away after making sure of what the agents had done…and after acquiring the parts needed to repair the drive.”

Lavint took an involuntary step forward. “You can fix it?”

“Yes. Though we will only