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“Well, maybe you should,” he rasped, without turning around.

Where moments earlier images of the sacrifice had played, twenty captives now huddled inside an inhibition field, raised and sustained by two small bloodred dovin basals. At the center of the mixed-species group stood the Gotal H’kig priest, whom Harrar had promised imminent death. The field’s hemispherical outline shimmered like waves of rising heat.

With Harrar, Nom Anor, Raff, Elan, and her pet observing from the command platform, a youthful Yuuzhan Vong warrior wearing a wine-colored tunic entered the hold, paid obeisance to his elite audience, and approached the field.

“An assassin,” Elan said to Vergere in hushed surprise.

“A mere apprentice,” Harrar amended. “Said to show little promise—though the task he is about to execute will escalate him in the eyes of many.”

Ripples played across the immaterial surface of the inhibition field as the warrior stepped through its one-way perimeter. Nearby guards raised their amphistaffs in anticipation of a desperate charge, but whether out of fear or curiosity none of the prisoners made a move against the intruder. Once inside, neither did the warrior move, except to turn slightly in the direction of the priest.

“Observe closely,” Harrar said to Elan.

A subtle gesture of Harrar’s right hand was the assassin’s signal to begin. Swinging about, the youth emptied his lungs with a sibilant and protracted exhalation.

The effect on the captives was almost immediate. To a being they fell back in surprise, then in stunned realization, and finally in agony, clutching at their windpipes as if the inhibition field had been drained of breathable air. Smooth faces turned a ghastly shade of cyan; others lost color entirely or blackened, as if scorched by fire. Limbs and appendages spasmed, and tufts of fur wafted from the hirsute. Sudden blood mottled the flesh, then began to seep and mist from burst capillaries. Some of the prisoners fell to their knees and vomited blood; the more resilient staggered about, lurching into one another, until they fell writhing and gasping to the deck.

Only the assassin remained standing, but not for long. Knowing better than to draw a breath, he hurried for safety, only to find that the dovin basals maintaining the field were denying him egress. He spent a desperate moment moving along the perimeter, as if hoping to discover some gap, some oversight that would permit him to escape. Then the full awareness of his predicament dawned on him. Turning to Harrar, he drew himself up to his full height, snapped his closed fists to the opposite shoulders, and inhaled deeply. Blood began to stream from his nose and eyes. Torment warped his features into a macabre mask, but no sounds escaped him. His body trembled from head to foot, then he pitched forward to the deck.

All at once the inhibition field began to teem with hundreds of spontaneously generated life-forms no larger than phosfleas. In crazed motion they scuttled over the prostrate bodies and massed along the edges of the field, as keen on finding some way out as the warrior had been.

Harrar motioned one of his acolytes forward. “Capture a specimen and bring it here—quickly!”

The acolyte bowed and rushed to the field. Reaching a gloved hand through the invisible barrier, he pinched one of the scurrying critters between his thumb and index finger and ran it to the command platform. Even before he had reached the steps, the frenetic activity in the field began to abate, as if the swarm had suddenly expended its energy and was dying.

The acolyte delivered his tiny hostage to Harrar, who pinched the jittery thing between the three fingers of his right hand and held it up for Elan’s inspection. Faintly opalescent, the creature was a flattened disk, from which sprouted three tiny pairs of articulated legs.

“Bo’tous,” Harrar explained. “Both carrier and byproduct of the toxin. Precipitated from the assassin’s breath. They grow rapidly in the presence of abundant oxygen, but are extremely short-lived.”

“Your weapon against the Jedi,” Elan