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And then, without warning, something small came flying through the air right at the edge of her vision, slamming into a control panel set into the stone wall. There was a flash of sparks—the creak of released machinery—

And a heavy, serrated-bottom door dropped out of the ceiling, catching the creature across the back of its massive neck and driving it to the floor. It growled one last whimper and lay still.

Mara stared at the hulk, not believing it. Skywalker had killed it. Alone, unarmed, he’d actually killed it.

And judging from the tone of the Huttese words rumbling down through the stunned silence from above, Jabba wasn’t at all happy about it.

Mara took a deep breath of the fetid air. All right. Fine. So the creature hadn’t killed Skywalker; but now Jabba would. Probably viciously too, if even half the stories about the Hutt were true. Served Skywalker right. He had to have been grossly stupid and grossly overconfident both to have come here alone and unarmed this way—

The stinking air seemed to freeze in her throat, two mental images abruptly superimposing themselves on the scene in front of her. Skywalker running away from the creature; Skywalker delivering his holo message to Jabba.

His new lightsaber. He hadn’t brought it with him.

Or rather, he hadn’t brought it himself.

The Wookiee didn’t have it—he would have nowhere to hide it. The protocol droid didn’t have it. Leia Organa certainly didn’t have it.

The astromech droid.

She cursed under her breath. No, it wasn’t Skywalker who was being overconfident. It was Jabba. And suddenly this whole thing was up to her again. Stepping back from the grating, she looked for some kind of opening mechanism—

Her danger sense triggered a split second before she heard the shuffling behind her on the tunnel floor. She spun around, dropping into combat stance.

The Gamorrean guards she’d left at the top of the tunnel had caught up with her. And they’d brought a half-dozen friends with them. Two by two, blocking her exit with their bulk, they started toward her.

Mara didn’t have time for this, and she wasn’t in the mood for it anyway. Reaching out with the Force, she jabbed hard at the minds of the first two guards. They stopped short, quivered for a moment on their thick legs, their long force pikes dropping with a clatter from limp hands. Then, to the obvious consternation of those behind them, they collapsed.

Mara had one of the force pikes in her hands before they hit the floor. Swinging it expertly around in the confines of the tunnel, she feinted past the weapons of the second row of guards and slashed the deadly power tip across their faces. They staggered, clutching their wounds, and fell back against the third row. Jumping up on the backs of the first downed Gamorreans, Mara again jabbed past the momentary tangle to cut into the next row.

A brief minute later, it was over.

Breathing heavily, she turned back to the grating. The force pike’s vibroblade made a fair racket as it cut through the metal, but there was probably enough of a ruckus coming down from Jabba’s throne room to cover it. Pitching the force pike through the opening, she squirmed her way into the pit.

The place was even more disgusting than it had looked from the outside. The door that had killed the creature was blocking any exit in that direction, but there was a small round hatchway partway up the opposite wall. The force pike made quick work of the hatchway, revealing a steep but climbable slide behind it. Probably the end of the route that started at Jabba’s trapdoor. Grabbing a nearby bone that was slightly longer than the slide’s width, she wedged it into the opening and pulled herself inside. Alternating her bracing between the bone and her own leg, she started up.

She came out a couple of meters short, the section directly beneath the trapdoor turning out to be a wide, straight drop that funneled the victim into the slide. Wedging the bone against the slide opening, she eased her way up to a precarious standing position. A small