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Then Cracken bit down on something that made his molars ache. He brought his left hand to his mouth, and used his tongue to push the object into his cupped hand. The center of attention, he opened his hand briefly, recognizing the object at once. Keeping the thing palmed, he set it on the table and slid it to his left, where, in the blink of an eye, it disappeared under the right hand of Page.

“Holowafer,” the captain said softly, without taking a second look. “It’ll display only once. We’re going to have to be quick about it.”

Cracken nodded his chin to the horned Devaronian. “Find Clak’dor, Garban, and the rest of that crew, and bring them here quickest.”

The Devaronian stood up and hurried out the doorway.

Page ran his hand over his bearded face. “We’re going to need a place to display the data. We can’t risk doing it in the open.”

Cracken thought for a moment, then turned to the long-bearded Bothan to his right. “Who’s the one with the sabacc deck?”

The alien’s fur rippled slightly. “That’d be Coruscant.”

“Tell him we need him.”

The Bothan nodded and made for the doorway. As word spread through the hut, the prisoners began to converse loudly, as cover for what was being said by those who remained at the table. The Ryn banged his ladle against the side of the pot, and several of the prisoners distributed fruits to the others by tossing them through the air, as if in a game of catch.

“How are things in the yard?” Page asked the lookouts at the doorway.

“Coruscant’s coming, sir. Also Clak’dor’s bunch.”

“The guards?”

“No one’s paying any mind.”

Coruscant, a tall, blond-haired human, entered grinning and fanning a deck of sabacc cards he’d fashioned from squares of leather. “Did I hear right that someone’s interested in a game?”

Page motioned for everyone to form a circle in the center of the hut, and to raise the noise level. The guards had grown accustomed to the boisterous activity that would sometimes erupt during card games, and Page was determined to provide a dose of the real thing. A dozen prisoners broke out in song. The rest conversed jocularly, giving odds and making bets.

The human gambler, three Bith, and a Jenet were passed through the falsely jubilant crowd to the center of the circle, where Page and Cracken were waiting with the holowafer.

Coruscant began to dole out cards.

Highly evolved humanoids, Bith were deep thinkers and skillful artists, with an ability to store and sift through immense amounts of data. The Jenet, in contrast, was short and rodentlike, but possessed of an eidetic memory.

When Page was satisfied that the inner circle was effectively sealed off, he crouched down, as if to join in the game. “We’ll get only one chance at this. You sure you can do it?”

The Jenet’s muzzle twitched in amusement, and he fixed his red eyes on Page. “That’s why you chose us, isn’t it?”

Page nodded. “Then let’s get to it.”

Deftly, Page set the small wafer on the plank floor and activated it with the pressure of his right forefinger. An inverted cone of blue light projected upward, within which flared a complex mathematical equation Page couldn’t begin to comprehend, much less solve or memorize. As quickly as the numbers and symbols appeared, they disappeared.

Then the wafer itself issued a sibilant sound, and liquefied.

He had his mouth open to ask the Bith and the Jenet if they had been successful in committing the equation to memory, when S’yito and three Yuuzhan Vong guards stormed into the hut and shouldered their way to the center of the circle, their coufee daggers unsheathed and their serpentine amphistaffs on high alert, ready to strike or spit venom as needed.

“Cease your activities at once,” the subaltern bellowed.

The crowd fanned out slowly and began to quiet down. Coruscant and the ostensible card players moved warily out of striking range of the amphistaffs.

“What’s the problem, Subaltern?” Page asked in Yuuzhan Vong.

“Since when do you engage in games of chance at nourishment hour?