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After a moment, a trio of humans appeared, working their way through the downed machines and bodies. They wore black-and-purple thinskins and jump boots, with slugthrower carbines slung over their shoulders.

"Those are Salissian mercenaries," Barriss said. "I had heard that Dooku had some working for him here."

Dhur said, "Yep. Some are mechanics, some run the harvesters-not many battle droids are programmed to pick the local produce, which is why, ultimately, we are all here on this fetid dungheap of a world. A few are special troop, recon, like that, who can go places and do things droids don’t do too well-climb trees, covert those kinds of things.

Sometimes only a humanoid will do. And Salissians will do just about any-thing as long as there’s a few credits at the other end of it. Ugly bunch of folks, just as soon shoot you as look at you. Probably rather shoot than look at you," he added to Jos.

Jos smiled indulgently and glanced at Zan. "They’re so cute when they’re that size, aren’t they?"

The three mercenaries were scavenging, picking up tools and weapons from the battle site and checking the clone bodies. There was no sound, and the image occa-sionally wavered a bit, breaking into digital blocks and then steadying again.

"Droid was on its last power reserves," Dhur said. "Cam went dead a few minutes after this was captured. Just sheer luck it happened to be pointing the right way."

Suddenly the three Salissians froze. They dropped their weapons and raised their hands, then backed away from their fallen blasters.

"It seems somebody has caught our mercenaries off-guard," Tolk said.

A moment later, a man walked into the cam’s frame, a blaster rifle held on the trio.

Jos looked at the human. The odd angle made recog-nition difficult, but still, he felt he knew this guy. He leaned to one side, studying the holo from a different perspective. Of course-it was-"Phow Ji," Barriss said. Her voice was soft.

As they watched, Ji smiled-then threw his gun to the ground. It struck in a silent splatter of mud.

Tolk, Jos, and Zan reacted in surprise. Barriss did not. "What’s he think he’s doing?" Zan said.

Tolk was watching the holo closely. "He knows what he’s doing," she said. Jos said nothing. As far as he knew, neither Zan nor Tolk had seen the combat teacher in action, although Tolk’s cold-reading skills had obviously told her Ji was no one to trifle with.

Jos looked at Barriss. She shook her head, but Jos was pretty sure she, like Tolk, knew what was about to hap-pen, because he was pretty sure he knew as well.

And Zan was about to find out...

The holo flickered again as Ji moved in and the three Salissians went for him-A moment later, all three mercenaries were on the ground, and darned if Jos could tell what had happened.

Maybe he’d had enough to drink for today, after all.

Dhur said. "Let’s look at the replay on that." He touched a control on the sphere.

Everyone sat up and watched carefully as the scene began again at one-quarter speed.

Even slowed down, it wasn’t easy to see exactly what Phow Ji did, but Jos knew enough anatomy to recognize what damage had been inflicted as the three mercenar-ies fell. One had a crushed larynx, one a broken neck, and the third had taken an elbow to the temple that had surely cracked the skull. All three injuries were apt to be fatal if not treated, and he didn’t see any Separatist medics in the jungle clearing.

Phow Ji went to each in turn, squatted next to the body, and appeared to take something.

The image froze as he squatted next to the last one.

"Not sure what he was doing at the end," Dhur said, "but I’d guess he was taking some kind of trophies. Sep-aratist troops use sub-Q implants for ID, so it’s proba-bly pieces of clothing, or... something."

Looking around the table, Jos knew everyone was thinking the same thing-the "something" Ji had taken could have been a chevron or some other adornment - or it could have been a finger, or an ear.

"The droid’s power kicked out about then, ’cause that’s all there is." Dhur looked at Jos.

"Worth