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Wuher had dressed for the wedding. He’d changed his shirt.

The cantina was dark and silent; I’d never seen it like this before, except the first few minutes in the morning. I gave Wuher my invitation; the Lady Valarian had given it to me in gratitude for acquiring the “Nodal Notes” for her wedding, while hinting that, in the future, I might find it better business to share information with her rather than with Jabba.

Someone’ll kill Jabba, someday, but it’s not going to be Valarian.

“You’re sure the wedding’s going to be broken up,” he repeated.

“I’m sure the Modal Nodes aren’t going to want to go back to Jabba after this. All you have to do is offer them a place to lie low for a while, play a few gigs, pick up a few credits. They’re going to be broke; Valarian won’t pay them after her wedding is broken up.”

He shook his head, tucking his shirt in again. “You think they’ll go for it?”

“I think they’ll jump at it.”

Wuher stood there, studying me in the gloom. “Lab … if you put this kind of effort into anything else, you could be a wealthy being.”

I shook my head, and said gently, “My friend, this is all that I want.”

It’s hard to outthink Jabba. Also dangerous.

I sat in the shadows of a building down the way from the Lucky Despot, watching the crowd arrive for the wedding. A scummy lot, all around. I recognized several of the “guests” as Jabba’s people. I hoped there wasn’t any shooting. I didn’t see enough of Jabba’s troops to make that likely; if he’d decided to wipe out Lady Valarian for her theft of his musicians, he’d have sent more soldiers. That was a good sign.

I could hear, so faintly that my ears twitched, a song that might have been “Tears of Aquanna.” It was followed by what was, quite definitely, “Worm Case.” Odd choices for a wedding. Maybe they were playing requests.

And then the bad news arrived.

Stormtroopers.

Two squads. They set down out of the night, quietly and with running lights doused, in full combat armor. One squad covered the entrance to the hotel, and the second squad went in. From the moment they set down I doubt it took them twenty seconds.

Oh, the noise was awful. From where I sat, I could hear it. Screams, blaster bolts, yelling, another round of blaster fire—one of the stormtroopers near the entrance went down. I lifted my macrobinoculars and watched the building through them. Windows opened and the scum of a dozen different races came squirming out through them. I moved the macrobinoculars up, scanning across the structure of the half-buried ship … Toward the top of the ship, three stories above the dirty sand, an emergency airlock clanged open. The first head through it was a Bith. I couldn’t guess who: All Bith look alike, even when you’re not looking through macrobinoculars. More Bith followed, and then the unmistakable squat form of my friend Wuher. They took off across the sand together, Wuher and the Bith, and ran straight by me in the darkness without pausing.

I’d never have guessed that Wuher could move that fast … and a moment later I saw why he was managing it. A pair of stormtroopers came charging after them, weapons at the ready. I shed a little Grace by tripping the one in the lead. The second stormtrooper tripped over him. I bent over them and picked up their rifles. I hadn’t handled an assault rifle in—well, in a very long time, but they hadn’t changed. I pulled the charge cages from them and handed them back to the two stormtroopers as they recovered their feet.

“You appear to have dropped these, gentles.”

One of them immediately jumped backward, rifle pointing at me, and shouted, “Don’t move!”

The other one looked at me, and then at his rifle, and then at me again.

“Come now,” I said gently. “We’re reasonable beings. You tripped and I helped you up again. No need for anyone to get upset. If you got injured in the fall, perhaps, I’d be more than happy to compensate you for it …”

I let my voice trail off and the three of us watched each other for a beat.

The one pointing the useless rifle at me said in a strained voice, “Are you trying