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Shada looked at Riij, half bent over in Cai’s grip. “Let him go,” she said. “He can’t stop us now. Anyway, he’s sort of on our side.”

“If you say so,” Cai said, releasing her hold on his arm. “We’re ready to go as soon as you are.”

“All right.” Shada pursed her lips. “Riij, can you beat the storm in that airspeeder you had aboard the transport?”

He nodded. “If I can get going in the next few minutes.”

“Fine. Cai, get it unloaded. And then you or Karoly get Deefour aboard and get the ships ready to fly.”

“Got it.” With one last look at Riij, Cai headed for the hatchway.

Riij was still standing there, looking at Shada. “I’m sorry the deal’s fallen through,” she told him, trying to ignore the pang of guilt twisting through her stomach. He’d risked a lot for them, and it looked as if he were going to wind up with nothing. “Look, if you can get back in here after the storm, you’re more than welcome to what’s left of the Hammertong.”

“Let me make you a counteroffer,” Riij said. “Join us. You’ve already said we’re on the same side.”

Shada shook her head. “We’re barely making it ourselves. We don’t have the time or the resources to take on the galaxy’s problems. Not now.”

“If you wait too long, there may not be anyone left to fight with you,” he warned.

“I understand,” she said. “I guess it’s a chance we’ll have to take. Good-bye. And good luck.”

The sand was shaking the transport’s hull by the time Shada finished double-checking the Hammertong’s restraints and made it back up to the bridge. “We all set?” she asked Karoly as she strapped herself in.

“Yes. Riij get off all right?”

Shada nodded. “Looks as if just in time, too.”

Karoly threw her a sideways look. “I’m not sure it was such a good idea to let him go.”

“If we start killing anyone who gets in our way, we’re no better than any other mercenaries,” Shada said. “Besides, he doesn’t like the Empire any more than we do.”

The comm pinged. “I’m ready,” Cai’s voice came.

“Same here,” Shada told her. “Is Deefour all settled in?”

“Deefour?” Cai echoed. “Didn’t Karoly take him?”

“I thought you had him,” Karoly said.

For a long moment she and Shada just stared at each other. Then, with a muttered curse, Shada jabbed at the comm panel. “Riij? Riij, come in.”

There was a hiss of sand-driven static; and then the other’s voice came faintly over the speaker. “This is Riij,” he said. “Thanks for the loan of your droid. I’ll leave him with the Bothan shipping company on Piroket; you can have him back when you return the freighter.”

Another crackle of static and he was gone. “You want me to go after him?” Cai asked.

Deefour, with a complete technical readout on the Hammertong … “No,” Shada told her, smiling in spite of herself at Riij’s ingenuity. “No, it’s all right. We owe him that much. And if he’s right, he and his friends are going to need all the help and information they can get.”

Her smile faded. “D.S. Mark 2” the plate on the Hammertong had said. Death Star, Mark 2, perhaps? A second generation of this thing Riij was so afraid of?

It could be. And if so, the Mistryl might have to seriously consider that offer to join up with the Rebel Alliance.

And if not all of the Mistryl, perhaps Shada would do so on her own. Maybe there she would find something she could truly believe in.

But in the meantime, she had a package to deliver. “Fire up the repulsorlifts,” she told the others. “Let’s go home.”

Play It Again,

Figrin D’An:

The Tale of

Muftak and Kabe

by A. C. Crispin

Muftak whiffed the chilly, moist air with his short, tubular proboscis, testing it, trying to determine whether it was safe. As he sniffed, the huge four-eye searched the street for infrared afterimages with his night-eyes, the larger, lower pair in his furry visage. Here, in the older part of Mos Eisley spaceport, the darkness was nearly absolute, only lightened by the tiny gray half-moon scuttling overhead.

Gesturing to his small companion, Kabe, to stay behind him, the