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She docked her little craft against Boman Thul's empty vessel and used robotic grapplers, magnetic sealers, and powerful blasters to rip her way into the abandoned ship. She didn't care about. causing damage. All that mattered to her was the information she might find inside. Shakra came aboard like a predator stalking a wounded creature. She looked from side to side, scanning the decks, observing the cockpit, tasting the air with her forked tongue. Through the front windowports she watched Fett's ship closing in on the escape pod, while the newly arrived Lightning Rod raced to intercept. They had left Shakra alone with this craft, and she hoped to make a killing.

Alarms flashed in the cockpit. The engines groaned, rumbled, and whined as power built up. Her hard lips expressed her distaste in a scaly frown.

Her slender black tongue flicked out. The air tasted hot, angry.

Apparently, this craft had sustained more damage during the attack than she had expected. But anything that remained was now hers. She let out a long hissing laugh, and her slit pupils widened as she contemplated which files to steal first. Abruptly her attention fixed on the engine diagnostics, the power levels, the heat exchangers that blazed a silent warning: a countdown. Her frill shot up in astonishment and alarm.

Thul had set his ship to self-destruct! She whirled about, her fanged jaws wide open as she gasped in the hot recycled air. The timer showed only seconds remaining. Crying out like a coward, Shakra fled toward her ship, glad that none of her brood-mates could see her reaction. If only she could get far enough away from the blast zone! Her clawed feet scrabbled on the deckplates. Through the hole in the hull up ahead she saw her own ship, her escape...

Just as she reached the opening, Borran Thul's craft exploded like a supernova, obliterating Shakra, her ship, and itself, along with any residual information its computers might have carried....

As Zekk jockeyed into position to cut off Boba Fett's ship, he looked grimly at the Lightning Rod's weapons systems. He had shot at and chased the masked bounty hunter before, but in each case Zekk had had the element of surprise, and he had fled before the firefight could get too intense. Fett outgunned him by a significant margin.

"Get the tractor beam on that escape pod," he said to Raynar. "We don't have much time."

"Which is the tractor beam?" Raynar said, looking frantically at the control panels. "We haven't covered that one yet."

Zekk dodged and rolled the Lightning Rod, skimming past a volley of laser fire from Boba Fett.

"That one!" he said, jabbing quickly at a control panel in front of the copilot's chair. He fought his impatience with Raynar's lack of training.

The blond-haired young man was just as interested in rescuing his father as Zekk was in surviving this encounter. Slave IV came in shooting. Boman Thul's voice came over the comm system.

"If you're going to rescue me, you'd better do it quickly."

"I got him!" Raynar yelled as he successfully locked on the tractor beam.

Boba Fett cruised toward them, ready to snatch the escape pod directly from their grip. At that moment, without warning, Borran Thul's ship exploded in a nightmare of blinding white that washed across space in an expanding sphere.

"Hang on!" Zekk swung the Lightning Rod around to shield the escape pod just as the shock wave struck. Fett's ship was knocked into a dizzying spiral. Zekk barely held position, nudging his thrusters to keep the Lightning Rod balanced.

"We're still here. We're still intact," he said.

"So am I," Boman Thul shouted over the comm system. "But I won't be for long unless you get me aboard."

Fett recovered quickly and came after them again, angry now. Zekk fired, but his weapons were much weaker than the bounty hunter's. He fed all available power to his shields but still felt the pounding of Boba Fett's blasts. He checked to see if Raynar had drawn the escape pod into the