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“Sure you haven’t,” Melina said grimly. “You haven’t infiltrated here under false pretenses. Or lied about who and what you are. Or conspired with the Lady Valarian to assassinate Jabba.” She jabbed the blaster muzzle again into Mara’s back. “Have you?”

Mara blinked. An assassination plot? Here? And without her even noticing? That wasn’t just sloppy, that was embarrassing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she protested, trying one last time. “I have nothing against Jabba. Really.”

“Sure you haven’t. You just wanted that guard’s blaster as a souvenir.” Melina jabbed again. “In here.”

It was another tunnel, this one slanting sharply downward before leveling out and bending away out of sight. Loitering just inside the tunnel entrance were a pair of Gamorrean guards, leaning casually on their force pikes and grunting quietly to each other. “What in blazes are you two doing here?” Melina snarled at them. “Straighten up. Now.”

Slowly, obviously bewildered as to why a lowly dance designer should be giving them orders, they pulled themselves a little more upright. “That’s better,” Melina growled. “But just marginally. Who do you think you are anyway, the Imperial Royal Guard? Get off your rears and take this woman down to the dungeons for me.”

She gave Mara a shove toward them. “Get going. Be a good girl and maybe I’ll ask Jabba to let you die quickly.”

“I appreciate it,” Mara said, looking back over her shoulder. She still couldn’t safely snatch the blaster from Melina’s grip. But what she could do …

Reaching out with the Force, she gave the muzzle a sharp twist to the right. There was a flash as Melina reflexively fired, the blast sounding twice as loud as usual in the confines of the tunnel.

It was followed by a grunt of pain and rage from the Gamorrean Melina had just shot. The other Gamorrean grunted, too, and the two of them lowered their force pikes and lumbered toward this human who had unreasonably attacked them.

Melina’s expression at what she’d just done was priceless, but Mara didn’t have time to enjoy it. With her captor’s attention distracted, now was the time to act. Ducking between the Gamorreans, she sprinted down the tunnel.

“Stop her!” Melina shouted. But the guards paid no attention. A pair of quick shots lit up the tunnel, scattering rock chips and spurts of dust.

And then it was just the grunts of the slug-brained Gamorreans and Melina’s angry and increasingly frantic shouts. Mara kept running, hoping she could get out of the line of fire before they got things straightened out up there. Near the bottom of the tunnel came her first opportunity: a curved and highly odoriferous cross tunnel that branched off to the left. Throwing a last glance back at the noisy confrontation, she ducked down it.

It was short—no more than twenty meters—and was almost a dead end. Almost. At the end was a rock wall with a half-meter-square ventilation grating cut into it, a grating that was literally shaking with the growls of something behind it. Cautiously, she stepped up to it and looked in.

The roaring was coming from probably the largest and ugliest biped creature she’d ever seen. A creature which, judging from the number of bones lying around the stinking filth of the pit, was both carnivorous and ravenous.

And which at the moment seemed intent on making a snack out of Luke Skywalker.

Pressing her face against the grating, the stench forgotten, Mara watched as Skywalker scrambled out from beneath a small ledge and dashed between the creature’s legs toward a tunnel-shaped area of the pit she couldn’t see into from her angle. This was perfect. The creature would make short work of Skywalker, in front of the dozens of witnesses she could hear cheering it on, and without a single link Vader could backtrack to either her or the Emperor. And if for some reason the creature needed help, well, she was right here to give it.

The creature had turned around now and was thudding its way in pursuit. Skywalker himself was out of sight, but from the noise coming from that direction she could tell that Jabba’s people