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"Keela! Keela-Keela-is Pell with you?"

A man shouted from the center, "Quiet!"

"Rankin, it's Terrel and Keela! Didn't you hear them? Keela, what about Pell-"

"Hold your position, you stupid nerf! And shut up!" the man snarled. His voice was ragged: angry, exhausted, and desperate. "We don't know who else is here! This place is completely fragged."

"Rankin-"

"They could be bait. Shut your mouth before I shoot you myself."

Mace nodded to himself. He would have suspected the same thing.

"Terrel?" The man called out in a much softer tone: warily calm. "Terrel, it's Pek Rankin. Come on out where we can see you."

Terrel looked at Mace. Mace said, "You know him?"

The boy nodded. "He's-sort of a friend of my dad's. Sort of."

"Go on, then," Mace said gently. "Move slowly. Keep your hands in plain sight, away from your body."

Terrel did. Out from the bunker door, feeling his way down the grade toward the shattered huts. "Can somebody put on a light? I can't see."

"In a minute," Rankin's voice replied from the darkness. "Keep on coming this way, Terrel. You'll be all right. What happened to your 'crawler?

How come you don't answer comm? Where are the other kids?"

"We had an accident. But we're okay. We're all okay. Okay?" Terrel caught his foot on a rock and stumbled. "Ow! Hey, the light, huh? I got one broken arm already."

"Just keep walking toward my voice. Are you alone? Where are the other kids?"

"In the bunker. But they can't come out," Terrel said. "And you can't go in."

"Why's that?"

Mace said, "Because I'm in here."

In the Force he felt their tension ratchet up, sharp as an indrawn breath. After a moment, Rankin's voice came out of the darkness. "And who might you be?"

"You don't need to know."

"Is that so? Why don't you step out where we can get a look at you?"

"Because the temptation to take a shot at me might prove overwhelming,"

Mace said. "Any bolts that miss will be bouncing around the inside of this bunker. Where there are four more innocent children."

A new man's voice rang out from the right, thin with fear and anger. "Two of those kids are my sons-if you hurt them-"

"All I have done," Mace said, "is tend their injuries and keep them sheltered. What happens to them now depends on you."

"He's telling the truth!" Terrel called. "He didn't hurt us-he saved us.

He's okay. Really. He's just afraid you'll shoot him 'cause he's a korno!"

A burst of low, half-strangled profanity came from the right.

Terrel called hastily, "But he's not a real korno. He just looks like one. He talks almost like a regular person-and he's like, like a, a bounty hunter, or something..."

His voice trickled off, leaving a silence empty and ominous. Mace felt currents of intention shifting and winding through the Force; the Balawai must have been consulting in whispers on comm.

Finally, Rankin called out once more. "So? What drr "QU want?"

"I want you to take these children and go away from nere."

"Huh? What else?"

"That's all. Just take the children and go."

"Well. Aren't you generous," Rankin said, dry. Bitter. "Listen, I'm gonna make a light. Nobody get twitchy. I don't want to get fragged, okay?"

Mace said, "Light will be welcome."

Yellow-white glo1 ared behind a slab of tumbled wall, and a cell-powered glow flipping through the air to land not far from Terrel's fee<- _ced, and rolled to a stop. Its half globe of up-angled light stretched the surrounding shadows toward the sky, painting them even darker.

Terrel held a hand at his chin to shade his eyes. "Hey, don't make me stand around alone out here, huh?"

"Come on over here, boy." A man stepped into view, moving slowly into the light. He held a blaster rifle in one hand, its barrel slanting dowvi, carefi " cted at the ground beside him. His other hand was up and forv,

^alm out. His clothing was scorched and stained, and one whole side of his head bore a clotted mass of spray bandage, the foam covering one eye.

From his voice, this was Rankin. "Get yourself under cover,''