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“And how did his death hit you?” Merit asked.

“Hard,” Den admitted, “but not as hard as it hit Jos. I don’t think it hit anyone as hard as it hit Jos. I mean, I really didn’t know Zan all that well …he’d show up for the sabacc games, and he played a mean quetarra, but…”

Merit leaned back in his chair. “But it’s not his death you want to talk about, is it?”

Den stared at the minder in surprise. “Oh, you’re good,” he said. “You’re very good.”

“That’s why I make the big credits.”

Den squirmed in the formchair, despite how comfortable it was. “Well, it’s just that—recently I came across some more intel about the men that Phow Ji killed—you remember, he died in his one-man assault.”

Merit didn’t move, but something about him warmly invited the reporter to continue. “The twirl pundits managed to sell him as a hero—no one wanted to touch my story with a ten-meter force pike. Ji was a killer, cold as vacuum, when he was alive. Now he’s a milking hero.

“Thing is, he just might really be one.”

“How do you mean?”

Den fluttered his dewflaps. “He took out a whole contingent of Salissian mercs and a super battle droid. Never seen anything like it. Padawan Offee said he just went berserk—killing mindlessly. But he knew he was going to do it—he had himself holoed, and sent the ’cron to me.

“And, according to my source, he didn’t pick those mercs at random. They were an elite combat team on a training mission, sent here because of the extreme conditions. Supposedly, they were a strike force being prepared for a major covert attack.”

“So you’re led to what you feel is an inescapable conclusion: that Phow Ji, instead of just indulging in an orgy of mindless murder, gave his life in a heroic action that may have had large-scale benefits for the Republic.”

“I’m not entirely dismissing the mindless-murder-orgy element,” Den said. “But basically—yeah.” He paused. “When I heard this, I was stunned. Stunned. I felt like Ji himself had kicked me in the gut. I thought I had his number: he was crazy as a dyslexic Givin, and he couldn’t stand being humiliated—so he thought—by a Jedi Padawan. He defeated a Jedi Knight in a match once, you know. So he heads for the front lines and goes out in a blaze of glory. Simple.”

“Indeed. And it lets you feel a satisfying righteous outrage when he’s painted as a champion.”

Den sighed. “I’m nearly twenty standard years a reporter, Doc, and if anyone knows the galaxy isn’t black and white, it’s me. But now I feel like some wet-between-the-dewflaps cublet who’s just learned his system’s Senator takes graft. I feel …betrayed.” He snorted, shook his head, and looked at Merit. “Why?”

“I have a theory. So do you. Let’s hear yours first.”

Den looked skeptical. “Why not yours first?”

“It’s my office.”

Merit smiled slightly, and Den couldn’t help grinning back. A minder, a Jedi, and a Silent in the same camp, he thought. No wonder the psychic energy around here’s thicker than swamp gas.

He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Padawan Offee told me I had the ‘aura’ of a hero,” he said.

“You certainly proved that when you rescued Zan’s quetarra for him.”

“Lotta good it did him. Nobody to play it at his funeral. Look, I don’t want to be a hero, Doc. Heroes may get medals, but mostly they get dead, in my experience.”

“No one’s insisting you be a hero, Den.”

“Good, ’cause they’ll be disappointed. But I don’t want some rabid nexu idolized as one, either. I just want people to know the truth.”

“Your truth,” Merit said. “Your version of events. And you want them to do more than know—you want them to believe.”

Den frowned at him. “You sound disapproving.”

“I neither approve nor disapprove. This is just the view from here. But,” Merit added, “in all modesty, it’s a view that’s backed by considerable expertise in reading people.”

Den was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. He didn’t want to hear Merit’s theory; he wasn’t interested in spacing down the lane the minder was going. He stood and turned toward the door. “Look, I gotta