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A minute later a little twitch in the Force convinced her to move closer and get a good look at Jacen’s conversation partners—which was when she had recognized Luke and Mara.

That recognition sent such a jolt of adrenaline through her that she had to spend several moments calming herself. She brought out her blowgun as she savored the opportunity fate had presented her.

Luke Skywalker was here. And if he was here, the odds improved that Han and Leia Solo were here, too, or would be soon. It was possible that Alema could finish her mission—could strike down Han and Mara before the disbelieving eyes of their loved ones, causing Luke and Leia the anguish that would return Balance to the universe, to her soul.

She tucked her blowgun under her bad arm and fumbled for her darts. Just a few more seconds and she would spit poison toward Mara.

But the disturbance she’d sensed had obviously upset Jacen, and it had to have made Luke and Mara alert; Mara was pulling out a comlink, but Luke was vigilant, looking after Jacen and then around the casino. An assassination attempt now was likely to be detected. But when would she have a better chance?

She got her dart in hand, placed it into the mouthpiece of her blowgun, and was just raising the weapon to her lips when Luke stood and looked straight at her.

She froze. He couldn’t possibly see her, not in these conditions. But if she attacked now, when his senses were obviously at their keenest, he couldn’t possibly fail to detect the attack.

Comlinks all over the casino began to beep and chime. Military personnel stood up from their tables, from their drinks, many of them now in the direct line of fire between Alema and Mara. She hissed, vexed.

She needed to be closer. She moved forward, still cloaked by the chamber’s natural shadows.

Then Mara rose, saying something, and she and Luke ran toward the exit. Uniformed personnel also began crowding that way, most of them listening to or speaking into their comlinks.

Alema picked up the pace, but she was slowed by the crowd, by the fact that one of her feet, little more than a stump, caused her to limp. She shoved gamblers out of her way, using the Force to add a little strength to her efforts.

But still, it was long, frustrating seconds before she got through the exit, in the middle of a pack of military men and women. Not a tall person, she hopped up and down, looking along the access corridor in both directions for her target.

There she was, Luke beside her, at a full run in the direction of the bow, almost at the limits of the blowgun’s range. Alema put the weapon to her lips, paused half a second to calm herself, elevated the weapon’s tip to give her dart a trajectory that would carry it near the corridor ceiling, and blew.

The dart was lost to her sight the moment it left the blowgun. She hopped up twice more to maintain a line of sight on Mara’s retreating back. The dart should hit just about—

Luke and Mara passed the entrance to a cross-corridor and turned left into it. An Ortolan—blue-furred, big-boned, and squat, with drooping oversized ears and a nasal trunk that reached to midchest—came trotting out of that corridor, turning toward the Maw Casino. Then the Ortolan stumbled and fell face-first onto the corridor floor.

Alema snarled. Her dart had found the wrong target.

The moving crowd had grown so thick that without exerting herself fully, and very obviously, through the Force, she could make little headway through the mass of military personnel heading toward the Errant Venture’s vehicle bays. By the time she got to the cross-corridor, there was no sign of the Jedi.

A human male emerging from the side corridor bumped into her. He was dark-skinned, good-looking, with thick white hair and a trim white beard and mustache; he carried a silver-tipped cane, and his flaring silken cloak slid across the bodies of everyone he passed, Alema included.

Alema was twenty meters down the side corridor before she realized who