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Bastori Rak hesitated for a moment. His usual tactic during such boardings was to instill pain and fear into the ship’s officers to eliminate any possibility of defiance, but no defiance was being offered. It was obvious that the female already knew she was a subject of the Yuuzhan Vong. He briefly considered striking her anyway, but decided to test the extent of her willing obedience instead.

He drove the pointed end of his amphistaff into the blaster pistol’s grip, shearing through it and into the deck plating beyond, then shook the blaster’s remains free from his weapon. “What is your destination, and what do you carry?” he asked.

“We are bound for the Hapes Cluster with a cargo made up mostly of refugees,” she said. “We carry seven crew, three hundred twenty-six refugees—three hundred forty if you count the ones who are in hidden compartments—as well as food, personal effects, trade items, and Jedi training materials. Shall I give you the codes to our computer security now?”

“Yes, and then you will follow—Jeedai training materials?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of materials?”

“I’m not sure. I saw only the contents of one barrel. They include holos of training regimens, holos of Jedi history and philosophy, infectious agents that transform normal beings into Jedi, a lot of lightsabers from their new manufacturing plant, that sort of thing.”

For a moment, Bastori Rak could only gape at her. Visions of his future passed briefly before his eyes. A find of this significance would result in his advancement, in his name accumulating long-deserved fame. Finally, he managed, “Are there Jeedai here?”

The woman considered. “I don’t think so. Though if there are, I expect they’ll be back with the training materials, destroying them.”

“Take us there at once.”

She shrugged and turned down the long corridor leading into the transport’s depths.

Two levels down, in one of the forward holds, Bastori Rak and his warriors looked with distaste at the tall stacks of nearly identical cargo containers, obviously the result of mechanical manufacture, as the female led them between aisles of the things. “There,” she said, and pointed.

Set out in an open area between two stacks were barrel-shaped metal containers, a bit over a meter tall and nearly a meter wide at their thickest point, arrayed in four rows of four. Each was labeled JEDI ACADEMY PROPERTY. DANGER. DO NOT OPEN.

Bastori Rak felt light-headed. “Can we move them without harm?”

“I don’t think so,” the woman said. She held her hand up, palm toward the ceiling, a gesture that suggested she was begging for something. “Here, let me show you.”

Bastori Rak looked at her. She now met his eyes, her expression one of mocking humor.

In his peripheral vision, Bastori Rak saw something silver moving from above. It smacked down into the woman’s palm.

The hilt of a lightsaber.

She said, “Embrace the pain, scarhead,” and ignited the weapon; a bright silver blade of energy shimmered into existence.

The weapon’s distinctive snap-hiss noise jolted Bastori Rak into action. He swung up his amphistaff in a blocking motion.

Her strike, a lateral slice, danced around his parry. It sliced the miniature villip from his shoulder and seared into his neck between the vonduun crab armor on his torso and his helmet. He felt blinding pain, pain too great for him to accept or ignore, and the amphistaff flew from his nerveless fingers as he collapsed.

But he was not dead, and could still see. He saw his second-in-command strike at the woman, saw her graceful parry, heard her laugh. He saw the tops of the Jeedai barrels bulge as their contents stood up within them and smashed through the thin metal sheets sealing them.

Their contents were droids, war droids, weapons at the ready. Their blasters opened up, chewing through his warriors.

There was blinding whiteness to his vision now. He struggled to stay focused but could not. He died watching his warriors jittering in the concentrated fire coming from the hated war droids.

Colonel Gavin Darklighter, sitting in darkness relieved only by the glows from