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Den was still trying to wrap his mind around the con-cept of a gift from Phow Ji. "He specified me by name?"

"Not by name, sir. His exact words were, ’Give it to that pop-eyed little womp rat who thinks he’s the galaxy’s gift to news media.’" The droid added, "This required some extrapolation on my part."

"Now I believe you. All right. Thank him for me."

"I am afraid that will be quite impossible, sir. Phow Ji is no longer among the living."

A herd of curlnoses couldn’t have kept Den from hur-rying into his cubicle to view the recording. He dark-ened the chamber, inserted the cube, and activated the projection unit.

The three-dimensional image flowered in front of him.

The scene was of a small clearing in a jungle. As Den watched, a Separatist combat droid scout eased into the clearing, did a quick 360 scan, then started across.

Phow Ji stepped into view in the foreground, his back to the cam. He wore a pair of blasters in low-slung hol-sters on his hips. The droid didn’t appear to see or hear him, but this changed when Ji yelled, "Hey, mechani-cal! Over here!"

As the droid turned toward him, Ji snatched the blasters from their holsters so fast that the action was a blur, and fired. The twin bolts caught the droid’s visual sensor array, instantly blinding it.

Ji ran to his right, five or six fast steps, and dropped prone. The droid fired his laser cannon at the spot where Ji had been standing a moment before.

Ji rolled up to his knees and shot the droid again, and the bolts-there must have been at least six or seven hits-lanced into the chink under its control box. This was, Den knew, a weak spot on this model’s armor, but so small that it was seldom a problem in battle.

It was a problem this time. Blue smoke erupted from the droid’s casing, the thing listed to one side, then ground to a halt, critically damaged.

Ji leapt up and ran, again to his right.

A trio of Salissian mercenaries came out of the woods, blaster rifles working. Streaks of incandescent plasma scorched the air.

Ji dodged, dodged left, then right, then stutter-stepped as enemy bolts fell short or to the sides. He also shot as he ran, once, twice, thrice-and all three merce-naries were hit with fatal body strikes. They went down.

A heavily armored super battle droid emerged from the woods, followed by two more mercenaries, but Ji was on top of them almost before they realized it. He bodyslammed into one of the mercenaries, shot the other, and fired three times more at the droid, which erupted in fire and smoke as had the one before. Den watched in astonishment. Mother’s milk, but this was incredible shooting, extremely accurate for sidearm fire, especially from a man running full out over uneven ter-rain and using both hands.

Ji holstered his blasters, straddled the remaining merc, who was still alive and trying to get up. He grabbed the man’s head from behind and jerked it powerfully to one side. Den could clearly hear the Salissian’s neck snap.

He’d thought his capacity to be astonished had reached its limit. But then his jaw dropped as two more mercs emerged from the woods, and Ji drew both blasters and shot the guns out of their hands!

Den had never seen anything like this, not even in en-tertainment holodramas.

The small 3-D image of Ji holstered his weapons again and ran to engage the surprised Salissians in hand-to-hand combat. The first man went down from a hammer fist to the temple; the second caught an elbow to the throat. Then Ji drew his weapons again, so fast that they seemed to just appear in his hands, and fired into the woods at unseen targets.

He shot until the blasters depleted their charges, turning this way and that as he spied new targets. When the charge chambers were empty he tossed the useless weapons away, and charged into the forest out of sight.

A moment passed-then a mercenary pinwheeled into the clearing and hit a patch of rocky ground head-first. Again, the snap of cracking vertebrae was audible.

Another mercenary staggered into view and collapsed,