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“Sir, let me explain.” Face tried to compose himself, to make his lines authentic. “First, if I sold you my honor, I could never buy it back. Second, I realize I may be displeasing you … but I want you to understand that I’ll keep faith with the warlord until I die. People look at me, and see my little habits, and think I am a shallow man, but I am an honorable officer, and will not break faith with my commander.” He gave Trigit his most intent stare, abandoning all of Darillian’s florid mannerisms. “It may be, sir, that I will leave Zsinj’s employ sometime in the future. It may be that I will enter yours. If I do, you will know from this encounter that I will always keep faith with you.”

Trigit drew back. He did not seem to be angered. “Point taken, Captain.”

“Thank you, sir. And may I say, I would be pleased to serve under you in any formal capacity. But until I do …”

“Until you do, let us make no more assaults, no matter how well intended, upon your honor.” Trigit gave him a faint smile. “You surprise me, Captain Darillian.”

“I intend to do so again, sir.”

“Very well.” Trigit gave him an uncommonly gracious half bow. “I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”

“I look forward to it.”

Trigit winked out.

Face swiveled toward the comm center doorway, where Wedge stood waiting.

“We have him,” Wedge said.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

Grinder awoke with a start. There was the sound again, no dream, no hallucination, but an intermittent scratching.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

He opened the door to the hall. There was nothing beyond it.

Scritch, scritch, scritch.

No, the sound was coming from up in the ceiling, just above his bed, beyond plates of durasteel. After another few moments, it stopped.

Grinder tore through his pile of personal possessions until he found the datapad that had come with the Storini Glass Prowler. He scrolled his way through the information. What to feed the creature. How many hours of light and dark it should endure each day. What its preferred temperature ranges were. How to tell male from female.

Nothing about how it could find its way out of an X-wing cockpit and come to a chamber it had never visited to find the man who had taken it from its homeworld.

He switched on the chamber’s terminal to the ship’s computer. It was not likely that the computer would contain information about the creature, but it was possible …

And the index popped up the name Storini Glass Prowler.

He brought the data up on his monitor.

Nothing much that he hadn’t seen on the instructional datapad, except for a sophisticated hologram showing the creature’s exterior; on-screen controls allowed Grinder to move his point of view into the creature’s insides and look at its physical structure at a variety of magnifications.

But at the bottom of the entry was a link labeled, “See also Storini Crystal Deceiver.” He activated it.

And read, in growing dismay, the description.

Often mistaken for its nearest relative, the Glass Prowler, the Storini Crystal Deceiver is far less common and far more dangerous.

He skipped down past the description of the creature’s natural habitat.

The Crystal Deceiver’s jaws secrete a poison that is dangerous both to the native life-forms of Storinal and to mammals from other worlds. The creature feeds on creatures that prey on the Glass Prowler. It simulates the Glass Prowler’s movements, luring predators to it; only when they strike does it revert to its natural speed and ferocity, eluding all attacks and ferociously biting its attacker. Its poison is a powerful paralytic that keeps its enemies helpless while it literally eats them alive.

Crystal Deceivers are a particular danger to mammalian life-forms because of their unusual olfactory-based memory retention. A Crystal Deceiver encountering the scent of a mammal will remember it for the rest of its life and follow it whenever it encounters the scent. This unfortunate trait has led to many instances of Crystal Deceivers following wilderness observers from the wild into communities and attacking them in their residences.