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Terpfen felt shudders pass through his body as he strained to resist the calling. But he knew by now, after all these years, that he could do nothing to fight it. Screaming nightmares never let him forget his ordeal in the hellish conditioning on the Imperial military training planet of Carida.

The scars on his battered head were not just from torture, but from Imperial vivisection, where the doctors had sawed open his skull and scooped out portions of his brain—segments that controlled a Calamarian’s loyalty, his volition, and his resistance to special commands. The cruel xenosurgeons had replaced the missing areas of Terpfen’s brain with specially grown organic circuits that mimicked the size, shape, and composition of the removed tissue.

The organic circuits were perfectly camouflaged and could resist the most penetrating medical scan, but they made him a helpless cyborg, a perfect spy and saboteur who could not think for himself when the Imperials wanted him to think their thoughts. The circuits left him sufficient mental capacity to play his part, to make his own excuses each time the Imperials summoned him.…

After guiding his ship for several standard time units, Terpfen looked at the chronometer. At the precise instant indicated he pulled the levers that switched off the hyperdrive motors and kicked in the sublight engines.

His ship hung near the lacy veil of the Cron Drift, the gaseous remnants of a multiple supernova where four stars had simultaneously erupted some four millennia ago. The wisps of gas crackled with pinks, greens, and searing white. The residual x rays and gamma radiation from the old supernova caused static over his comm system, but it would also mask this meeting from prying eyes.

A dark Caridan ship already hung there waiting for him. With a flat stealth coating on its hull, the Caridan ship looked like a matte-black insect that swallowed starlight, leaving only a jagged silhouette against the starfield. Protrusions of assault blasters and sensor antennas stuck out like spines.

A burst of static came across Terpfen’s comm system; then the tight-beam holotransmission of Ambassador Furgan’s head focused itself inside the B-wing cockpit.

“Well, my little fish,” Furgan said. His huge eyebrows looked like black feathers curling up on his forehead. “What is your report? Explain why our two victims were not killed in the crash you engineered.”

Terpfen tried to stop the words from coming, but the organic circuits kicked in, providing all the answer the Imperial ambassador needed. “I sabotaged Ackbar’s personal ship, and that should have meant death for both passengers—but even I underestimated Ackbar’s skill as a pilot.”

Furgan scowled. “So the mission failed.”

“On the contrary,” Terpfen said, “I believe it is even more successful. The New Republic is far more affected by this chain of events than it would be if a simple crash had killed the Minister of State and the admiral. Their fleet commander has now resigned in disgrace, and the ruling Council is left without an obvious replacement.”

Furgan considered for a moment, then nodded as a slow smile spread across his fat, dark lips. He changed the subject. “Have you made any progress in uncovering the location of the third Jedi baby?”

During his torturous conditioning, Terpfen had spent four weeks with his head entirely encased in a solid plasteel helmet that kept him blinded, sent jabs of pain at random and malicious intervals. He could not speak or drink or eat, fed entirely through intravenous nutritional supplements. Now, as he sat trapped inside the cockpit of the B-wing fighter, he felt swallowed up in that black pit again.

Terpfen answered in a steady, uninflected voice. “I have told you before, Ambassador. Anakin Solo is being held on a secret planet, the location of which is known only to a very few, including Admiral Ackbar and the Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. I think it highly unlikely that Ackbar will divulge it in casual conversation.”

Furgan looked as if he had just bit into something sour and