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And because of the birds diving and lighting the air with their chests, Dengar pulled out his heavy blaster pistol, set it to kill. On most worlds he would have hesitated to assassinate a dignitary with a blaster. But somehow here on Aruza, it seemed right. Kilometers away, people would see gunfire here on the hill, and they would imagine that it was only farrow birds feeding.

Dengar listened to Kritkeen’s conversation with a little man named Abano.

“O Affluent One, O Moderate One,” Abano, one of the poor Aruzan land barons was saying loudly, desperately, “I implore you. My daughter is fragile. She is much needed and much loved by her mother, and by her friends. Yet tomorrow, she is scheduled for Imperial processing in the hospital at Bukeen. You cannot let this terrible thing happen!”

“But what can I do?” Kritkeen asked, and he moved to his desk beside the window. Dengar had his cybernetic eyes set at 64X magnification, and he could see Kritkeen clearly. The man was tall, with a lean build and thick brown hair. He was perhaps a bit stockier than Han Solo, and he had a hatchet nose, but he looked enough like Solo. “I, like you, have others above me that I must serve,” Kritkeen said reasonably. “I would love to save your daughter from the processors, but even if I could rescue her, who would I send in her place? No, her number was chosen. She must be processed.”

“But, my daughter is a lovely child,” Abano pleaded. “She is gentle. She is a jewel among women. It is said that the processors will cut into her brain, remove all kindness from her, so that if she survives the hospital at all, she will come out vicious.”

“True,” Kritkeen said. “Men like me and you, we cannot understand how the Empire would want vicious servants. But what can we do?” Dengar wondered at Kritkeen, wondered why he feigned a lack of power. It must have satisfied his sick sense of humor. COMPNOR—The Commission for the Preservation of the New Order—had sent Kritkeen to Aruza as a planetary chief of “Redesign,” with the mission of implementing “precessional orientation experiments” that would lead to “cultural mass edification” that would make Aruza “a viable social force within the New Order.” Dengar had seen Kritkeen’s orders to report, though at first he had had some initial difficulty puzzling them out. But one thing Dengar knew: On this planet, Kritkeen was god. He took orders from no one, and his orders were followed explicitly. And if Kritkeen could not edify the planet to the point that it became a “viable social force,” then the planet was to be, as the hazy orders put it, “alleviated of the potential for further evolution.” Over the weeks of travel, Dengar had finally made sense of the orders: “Round up these pacifists and turn them into a war machine. If they refuse, fry this planet until even the worms choke on the ashes.”

And so, Dengar wondered why Kritkeen played games with the locals. Kritkeen sat facing Abano and said solmenly, as if to console the little man, “I wish I could help you. But is it not better to have a daughter who is feral and alive, than one who is virtuous … and dead?”

“I would give anything to you,” Abano cried. “Anything. My daughter, Manaroo, is lovely, more beautiful than any other in the valley. She dances, and when she moves, she moves as fluidly as water under moonlight. She is more than a woman, she is a treasure. If you saw her dance, you would not send her to the processor!”

“What?” Kritkeen asked. “You would give me your daughter to be my lover?”

There was the sound of indrawn breath, the local man trying to speak his horror, for the gentle Aruzan would never think of such a thing, and when Kritkeen understood that this was indeed not what Abano was offering, he tapped three times on his desk with his right index finger. It was a standard code in Imperial Intelligence. It was an order for the guards to terminate the conversation.

“Come this way!” a stormtrooper’s voice cut in, and moments later Dengar