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It bothered Luke that no one approached him. A normal droid factory would have sent a sales representative by now.

Brakiss again.

Both he and Luke knew this would be no normal visit.

Before Luke dropped to the metallic floor, he closed the X-wing’s canopy and set the safety seals. They wouldn’t do much good against a determined saboteur, but they would deter a droid.

Brakiss had other ways of tampering with Luke.

Luke patted his lightsaber, its slight weight a comfort at his hip. He wore only a loose shirt and tight military pants. His cloak remained in the X-wing. He wanted no diversions here, and with this much equipment, a flowing cloak could easily snag on a metallic edge.

His mouth was dry. He had expected a confrontation. He hadn’t expected no greeting at all.

But Brakiss was still Empire. He liked games. He always had.

Luke took a deep breath, and headed for the open door. He was probably being watched. Brakiss would note each of Luke’s movements, from the patting of the lightsaber to the sealing of the X-wing. He would know that Luke was uneasy in this place.

At the mouth of the door, Luke paused. The door’s frame should shield him from any holocams. He reached out through the Force, sending tendrils of inquiry across it, searching for Brakiss.

Brakiss’s presence was strong here, but diffuse. Luke couldn’t pinpoint it. That didn’t surprise him; Brakiss’s mother had said Brakiss was expecting Luke. Which meant Brakiss had had time to prepare.

He knew many tricks, some Luke had taught him, others that he might have learned from the Empire. Any gifted Force-sensitive being could scatter his presence through a finite area. The fact that Luke could feel Brakiss at all meant that he was close.

Luke stepped through the door and into the next room. And stopped.

Thousands of golden hands hung from the ceiling. The right hands faced palm-out, the left hands had the knuckles showing. The thumbs all went in the same direction. They gleamed in the light. More hands lay on conveyor belts. All those hands were in partial assembly. Some had open forearms revealing equipment not unlike the equipment in Luke’s right wrist. Unattached fingers lay beside the conveyor belts, and golden arm sockets waited attachment to golden shoulders.

Threepio might have started life in a place like this. Somewhere in one of these domed buildings, the domed heads of the R2 units were assembled. Hard to believe such ignoble beginnings might have led to the personalities that had become so important in Luke’s life.

The room was eerily silent. The belts were off, the atmosphere controls made no noise, and there was no movement. The hands hung like stalactites, stalactites with a hint of life.

Luke glanced at the ceiling. The arms were resting in metal runners, and were not attached to anything.

His relief was palpable.

“Hello?” he said.

His voice echoed off the metal around him, returning in tiny, tinny sounds to him.

“Hello?”

He had no idea where to go from here. He wouldn’t follow the ghosts of the false Brakiss in search of the real one. Brakiss probably wanted to lead him through room after room like this, one filled with legs, another with torsos, to make some kind of point.

A point Luke would only learn when he reached Brakiss himself.

“Hello?” Luke called again. He would remain here, near the open door to his ship, until he got a response.

Even though it felt as if one would never come.

Nineteen

Brakiss tracked Luke four ways: with the surveillance equipment he had installed all over Telti; with the computer system; with a group of specially designed gladiator droids that silently flanked Luke; and with the Force. His Force sense was the most reliable. Luke’s presence felt as if someone had tossed a boulder into the calm pond of Brakiss’s world. Although Brakiss had known Luke was coming, he still wasn’t prepared for the strength of the disturbance.

Brakiss stood in his communication center, in the dome of the protocol-droid building. Experimental droid parts hung from the rounded ceiling: eyes