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The next chamber was a surgical theater. The operating table featured an inordinate number of straps and fasteners of varying sizes. There were also injectors on robot arms, monitor screens, tools she couldn’t recognize. She suppressed a shudder.

Then, the office. Within it, another two men, medical technicians. One looked up as she passed, squinted, and shaded his eyes to see her through the partial reflection.

She rounded the turn to the right and punched the combination Tonin had given her into the door keypad there. The door slid open.

The two technicians, dark-haired men of ordinary appearance, their features so similar they were probably brothers, glanced at one another and their expressions brightened. “A new liaison officer?” asked one.

“That’s right.” Lara entered and shut the door.

“Would you please—” said the first.

“Please please please,” said the second.

“Tell us what’s going on with the ship?”

“We were in a battle, weren’t we?” said the second. “I could feel the vibrations even down here.”

“I felt them first.”

Lara looked between them. “You two, and the men in the containment chamber, are the most vomitously despicable creatures I think I’ve ever met.”

The two men looked at one another. “You haven’t even gotten to know us yet,” said the first.

From where she’d tucked it into her belt at her back, she drew her blaster. Both men flinched. “Take me to the containment chamber,” she said. “Or I’ll kill you.”

In moments she was in the largest chamber, four prisoners standing splayed against one blank wall, while she examined the cages at ground level.

Inside the nearest was an Ewok. “Do you understand Basic?” she asked.

It nodded, its motion quick and very human. Its eyes looked like those of an Ewok but possessed an understanding that was unsettling.

“I’m going to free you and get you off this ship. So you can go home or live where you please. Would you like that?”

It nodded.

One of the medics said, “Zsinj will kill you for this.”

“No, he’s going to kill me for several other things.” The lock on the cage was simple, mechanical; she lifted it and the Ewok emerged. The creature looked at the medics and uttered a low, rolling growl.

Then, to Lara’s discomfiture, it spoke, its voice rising and falling in a singsong that did not belong to any Basic dialect she’d ever heard. “I will kill them.”

“No,” she said. “You will go to each cage. Ask each prisoner if it will refrain from attacking me if it is freed. Tell it that I will get them all off this ship. Then free the ones who agree.”

The Ewok looked up at her, so obviously considering her command and his other options that Lara could almost see a strategic program running behind his eyes. Then he shrugged like a human and moved to the next cage.

Out the forward viewport, Zsinj could see little but tumbling asteroids and brilliant flashes of light as Iron Fist’s forward guns blasted the largest of them.

The communications officer said, “The shuttles report our explosives packages being planted on schedule.”

“Good.”

“And Chains of Justice reports sensor contact with Solo’s fleet, sir.”

“Very well.”

“And we have a report from the chief engineer.”

“Hold on.” Zsinj stepped back to his hologram pod in the security foyer directly behind the bridge. “Send it to me here.”

The face and torso of the chief engineer, whose light build and scrupulous cleanliness belied his profession, swam into focus in the air. “Sir, we’ve identified the trouble. The engineering compartments are swarming with, well, saboteur droids.”

Zsinj gave him a look to suggest the man shouldn’t make jokes. “Would you like to try again?”

“Standard MSE-6 utility droids, sir. They’ve gone mad or been reprogrammed. With their internal tools, they’re opening access hatches, chewing their way into wire clusters, sending false data, dragging chips out of their housings. All in the hyperdrive systems.”

The absurdity of what the man was saying hit Zsinj and he almost snorted. “And what are you