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“Well, sir, the false alarm seems to have been intended as a trap. Someone ambushed me as I was preparing to return to the sabacc game—a stranger.

“I’m rather afraid I’ve killed him, Administrator Senior.”

The older man’s eyebrows danced up a fraction of an inch and he leaned into the video pickup. “You aren’t joking, are you, Captain Calrissian?”

Lando sighed. “I don’t believe I’d joke about something like this. He surprised me, attacked me with a piece of pipe, and I was forced to shoot him.”

The Administrator Senior’s eyes widened and his eyebrows soared impossibly close to the crown of his naked scalp. “Shoot him? Did you say—”

“Hold on a moment, Captain …”

Bassi Vobah leaned over and whispered something. Doluff looked puzzled a moment, then nodded.

“Captain Calrissian—Lando, my boy, stay right where you are. I’m going to send Miss Vobah directly over to you. I believe she can be of help to both of us in this affair. In the meantime, leave everything exactly as it is; I’ll order access to your service corridor closed off. We’ll get this over with a quickly and discreetly as possible.”

Another whispered conference.

“Yes, and by the way, it is perhaps better that you tell Miss Vobah and myself nothing further about what happened. We are duty-bound to testify in court about it, being administrative personnel, the both of us. You understand.”

Lando understood. He nodded, signaled off, slouched back in his pilot’s chair disconsolately. Outside, the light seemed unnaturally harsh, even for an airless asteroid, and flickered now and again as if a fleet of ships were passing overhead. The colors all seemed a bit off, as well, but that may have been explainable by the mood of the observer. Finally he turned to Vuffi Raa.

“Well, old vegetable-slicer, it looks as though we’re in for it again. I must be losing my touch.”

“Now, Master,” the robot replied, patting the gambler on the shoulder with a gentle tentacle, “I’m sure everything will work out. You would not have done what you did, had you not been forced to.”

He extracted a cigar from beneath the control panel, trimmed it, handed it to Lando, and lit it with a glowing tentacle tip.

“I didn’t know you could do that. Do you suppose he was the party behind the bombings, the fellow I shot?”

“The idea had crossed my mind, Master. I do not know.”

A glum silence settled over the pair.

The control panel beeped. Lando flipped a switch. “Yes?”

“It’s Bassi Vobah here, Lando. I’m in the service accessway beneath you. Come down and meet me, will you?”

“Very well. Shall I bring a toothbrush?”

Her voice was apologetic. “It might be a good idea.”

Lando gave the robot a few instructions, then turned and retraced his steps to the bottom of the ladder. When he turned around, she was bending down, dispassionately examining the body.

She was wearing the uniform of the Oseon police.

* * *

In his cell a few hours later, Lando once again resisted the urge to get up and pace. He’d never taken very well to confinement. It was well past local midnight, there on a different spot on the equator, closer to the small city of which the Esplanade formed the core. Yet the lights had been left on—more or less standard practice in jails everywhere. Worse yet, the syrupy music still dribbled from the overhead. Resentfully, he looked up—

—and was nearly blinded by a flash of overwhelming brilliance in the sky. As his eyes began to readjust, he saw that long streamers of color had begun to creep across the zenith, deepening every second in hue, like mutant fingers closing over the transparent bowl of the heavens.

Crimson flared. Yellow seethed. Blue and green pulsed steadily against a syncopated counterpoint of violet.

The Flamewind had begun.

• VII •

A POLICEPERSON’S LOT is not a happy one.

Sometimes, it was downright discouraging, thought Peacekeeper Bassi Vobah as she wrote up her report on the Millennium Falcon killing. What a time for something like this