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Sapha gazed at the thin gray gruel. “Creatures cook this?”

Again, Roa and Fasgo swapped glances. “In a manner of speaking,” Roa said delicately.

Sapha frowned. “In what manner of speaking?”

Fasgo set the bowl down. “Look, you don’t care for the stuff as is. Maybe you shouldn’t be wondering where it comes from or how it’s cooked.”

Sapha was about to ask regardless, but Skidder abruptly surfaced from his pensive trance.

“Randa has an entourage with him? Bodyguards?”

“Some Rodians, Aqualish, and Twi’leks,” Sapha said. “The usual mix.”

“How many bodyguards?”

Sapha looked to one of her clanmates, who said, “Ten.”

“Roughly the same number of guards in the yammosk tank hold,” Skidder muttered. He fell silent, then looked hard at Sapha and the other Ryn.

“Listen carefully: The next time you’re summoned, you’re going to tell Randa that he’s going to be betrayed. He’s been lured aboard only so that Commander Chine-kal can sacrifice him.” He cut his eyes to Sapha. “You understand?”

She and the other Ryn regarded one another in bafflement. “And when that doesn’t come to pass? You’ll have us all sucking vacuum.”

Skidder shook his head. “It will come to pass, because I’m going to plant an idea in the yammosk that Randa is going to betray Chine-kal, and that he only agreed to come aboard to free us. The yammosk is sure to alert Chine-kal, and Chine-kal might even want the yammosk to take a peek at what’s in the Hutt’s head.”

Sapha shook her head as if to clear it. “People have found unusual purposes for the Ryn, but this …”

Roa frowned at Skidder. “Look, Keyn, just because the creature has taken a liking to you, that doesn’t mean you can actually talk to it, much less plant an idea in its brain.”

Skidder sneered. “You’re wrong. I’ve already been conversing with it.”

Fasgo choked on his food and made a comical gesture to indicate madness. “Someone’s been in the tank too long,” he fairly hummed.

Roa continued to stare at Skidder. “You say you’ve been conversing with the yammosk?”

“By using the Force.”

Fasgo broke the protracted silence by saying, with patent disbelief, “The Force?”

“I’m a Jedi Knight,” Skidder announced, in a way that managed to combine modesty and pride. “My real name is Wurth Skidder.”

“Well, well,” Roa huffed, “that certainly answers a lot of my questions about you.”

“Then I was right,” Sapha said. “You deliberately allowed yourself to be captured.”

Skidder nodded. “At the time I didn’t know they had a war coordinator aboard this ship. But one thing is clear: they’re conveying it to a world they plan to invade and utilize as a forward base of operations. We need to learn that destination, and find some way to get the information to the Jedi or the New Republic military.”

Roa was the first to respond. “Let’s say you do manage to turn Chine-kal and the Hutt against one another. How’s that going to help you get what you want?”

Skidder was one step ahead of him. “Once I’ve gained the yammosk’s trust, it’s going to tell me where we’re headed.”

“Okay,” Roa said tentatively.

“I’ll make use of the yammosk to control the dovin basal that drives the ship.”

Roa and Sapha traded glances. “And then?” the old man asked.

Skidder fixed him with a look. “We mutiny.”

The Hutt consulate on Coruscant was chaotic. Servants and dozens of hired workers were busy emptying the place of the vast amount of antiques, keepsakes, and collectibles Golga had amassed in his too-brief reign as consul general. Reclining on the couch that occupied the center of the courtyard chamber he had come to think of as home, he could only hope that the galaxy would return to normal in the near future, and that Borga the Almighty might deem him fit to continue serving as Nal Hutta’s envoy to the New Republic. Until such time, he would simply have to accept whatever posting Borga assigned him, though it chilled him even to imagine being sent to somewhere like Sriluur, Kessel, or—perish the thought—Tatooine.

“Careful with those