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Bria laughed a little. “I don’t know about that. If I were crazy enough to mess with black holes, I hope they’d be sane enough to hold back. But my troops would follow me into Palpatine’s Imperial Palace, that I know.”

“You wouldn’t last very long,” he said dryly.

She smiled, but no warmth reached her eyes. “But we’d have fun for a while. It would be worth my life to get a shot at Palpatine.”

“How soon does the first wave launch?”

She glanced at the tiny chrono-ring she wore. “We’re waiting for the signal from my operative on the space station. Then we’ll microjump into position. He’ll tell us the moment Helot’s Shackle undocks from the Ylesian space station. We want to catch the slavers before they can leave the system.”

“Makes sense.”

Bria turned right and entered the turbolift. “I’m going down to do a final check of my troopers who will be going in the boarding shuttles. Want to tag along?”

“Sure.”

They took the lift down to the shuttle launch bay. When they stepped out, the launch area was a controlled frenzy of crews making last minute checks of vessels, equipment and weapons. One of the troops, seeing Bria, put two fingers in his mouth and whistled piercingly. “Commander on deck!”

Bria spoke to her lieutenant, Jace Paol, who was overseeing the last pre-battle preparations. “Assemble troops, please.”

One quick order later, and the boarding squads were falling in. There would be one squad per shuttle, about ten troops on each. Two waves of three shuttles each, first wave and second wave. First wave would have the responsibility for boarding Helot’s Shackle and neutralizing the slaver resistance. The second wave would reinforce the first, and help with the mopping up.

Bria walked slowly down the lines of troops, inspecting them, checking their uniforms, their weapons, their expressions. At one point she stopped before a young trooper whose eyes glittered with more than eagerness. Studying his flushed cheeks and reddened nose, she frowned. “Corporal Burrid …”

He came to full attention. “Yes, Commander!”

She reached up, touched his cheek, then his forehead. “Fall out, Burrid. You’ve got at least a degree of fever.”

Sk’kot Burrid saluted. “Respectfully, Commander, I feel fine!”

“Right,” Bria said. “And I’m the Emperor’s Wookiee concubine. Hyx?”

The medical officer took a med-probe out of his belt pouch and touched it to the young man’s face. “Two degrees fever, Commander. White cell counts indicate infection, possibly contagious.”

“Report to the med droid, Corporal,” Bria ordered.

Crestfallen, the young man opened his mouth to protest, then he thought better of it and obeyed. Without a word, his backup from the reserves moved into his place in line.

When Bria had finished her inspection, she paused, then addressed her soldiers. “All right, people. We’re waiting now for the signal to make our microjump. The Y-wings will go in first, and make their runs to bring their shields down. Then it will be up to you people. You’ll be docking with their airlocks where they have them, and fighting your way in. Where there are no airlocks, we’re going to make ones. Special engineering teams will accompany two boarding shuttles. Those squads will cut through the hull just in front of the engineering sections.”

She paused. “Remember, there are going to be slaves underfoot, confused, frightened, and probably beginning to suffer from Exultation withdrawal. They may try to attack you. Don’t risk yourselves, but make every reasonable effort not to harm them seriously. Use stun beams on those slaves, all right?”

There was a general murmur of agreement. “Are there any questions?”

There weren’t. The troops had already been briefed by their squad leaders and platoon leaders, and they’d been through repeated drills.

Bria nodded at the troops. “This is Red Hand’s most ambitious undertaking yet, people. If we can pull this off, you can bet we’ll be seeing more action. So let’s impress the Sector Command … right?”

Agreement was unanimous.

As Bria turned to confer with her platoon leaders, suddenly her comlink