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“Is it the Force that binds us to this place?”

“The Force binds all, if you would believe in it.”

“I believe only in the hunt”

The lamproid’s teeth shifted in amusement—the Florn equivalent of a smile. “That’s not what you said when we first met here. You were most eloquent then, my romantic Wolf man.”

Sivrak’s eyes narrowed. Was she teasing him? “Is there a price to be paid?” he asked stiffly. An altercation began at the bar. “To understand why everything is familiar yet new at the same time?”

“Poor Wolfman,” Dice said. “You still don’t understand the promise I made you. So for now the price of your understanding is the same price it was the first time we met here.”

Sivrak searched his memory for events yet to happen. He cast back to predict what he had already seen. On the other side of the bar the farm boy was thrown into a table. Despite Dice’s hold on him, Sivrak leaned forward threateningly. “You’re a member of the Alliance, aren’t you?”

A lightsaber thrummed into life. The Aqualish pirate screamed. Sivrak’s nostrils flared at the scent of fresh blood exploding through the smoke-filled air. The lamproid’s tail tip fluttered as she scented it, too. A severed arm fell to the floor of the cantina.

“I am a member of the Alliance,” she said. “Just as you chose to be, that first time.”

But the heady wash of the blood scent pushed Sivrak beyond understanding, and Dice swiftly released the pheromones that would guide the Wolfman to the one state he could achieve without endangering bystanders.

Sivrak arched in her deadly grip, and with a powerful undulation, Dice uncoiled the rest of her body and slithered across the table toward him. Then perfect killer met perfect hunter as their fangs clashed, then locked in the lethal kiss of predators. Sivrak’s senses were overwhelmed. He felt the floor of the cantina shift beneath him, gaining momentum as it spun faster and faster, just as if he rode an—

—X-wing fighter spinning through space. A storm of debris rattled against his fighter’s skin as Sivrak fought to stabilize the craft. His tactical display showed that two of the TIE fighters had survived his headlong strike. The third was a vapor of incandescent particles dispersing in vacuum. He turned to Dice to make certain she was safe and growled when he saw only the reflection of his own glowing eyes in the canopy. The cantina had been a hallucination, a dream of what had been … what might have been … he couldn’t be sure.

A second sun flared over Endor’s moon and Sivrak was torn from his memories by a lance of unthinkable energy that burst from the Death Star to claim a Rebel frigate. The communicator channels were flooded with transmissions of shock and confusion. The Death Star was operational.

Admiral Ackbar ordered a retreat—all fighters were to return to base. General Calrissian countermanded the retreat—all fighters were to engage the Star Destroyers at point-blank range. And every other Rebel voice asked about General Solo’s strike team on the moon’s surface. Would they destroy the force-field generator? Had they already tried and failed?

Sivrak pulled back on the controls to bring his X-wing on course to the nearest Star Destroyer. There were many ways to die in space. He would find one soon enough, he knew.

The X-wing did not respond.

Sivrak activated the diagnostics, rechanneled auxiliary power, and closed his wings for increased etheric stability.

But the X-wing continued its fall toward the forest moon, and nothing he could do would change its course.

One thought and one thought alone flooded through him: He was going to live.

Once in the moon’s atmosphere, Sivrak knew he could use the fighter’s control surfaces—useless in vacuum—to bring his craft to a soft landing. A whole forest world waited for him. The Alliance and the Empire would fall from his consciousness as he stalked its prey and returned to what he knew and understood—the hunt. Perhaps, in time, he might even forget Dice Ibegon, and things would be as they had always been. Simple. Balanced. The pure equation of life and death, free of