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He was a mixture of light and darkness, a man no one truly knew. He lived in the shadows.

Czethros sat at his cluttered desk in a high warehouse tower on Ord Mantell. Outside in the anteroom, computer screens and robotic receptionists diverted the common business activities, aboveboard correspondence, and trivial conversations that allowed Czethros to run one of the most successful shipping and packaging companies on the entire planet.

Everything had been set up for him through Black Sun.

But these legitimate activities were a mere cover-up, the tiniest fraction of the income he contributed to the hidden coffers of the underground criminal group. After all this time, he found it somewhat bothersome to keep such a clean public face for inconsequential people like Han Solo and the other nosy officials of the New Republic. In a way, however, the pretense amused him, and he would keep it up for now.

Soon though, once his plans were completed, his arm of Black Sun would be so solid and so influential that no one in the New Republic would dare question anything he did.

Czethros had been a lieutenant in the once-powerful Black Sun, a henchman, a hired killer, a bounty hunter-an expediter for the plans of powerful leaders such as Prince Xizor and Durga the Hutt. He had learned how to be ruthless, how to kill, how to take care of difficult situations before they became real problems.

Yet numerous crackdowns and disasters had forced Black Sun to go underground, into hiding. Some thought the criminal organization had been mortally weakened. But now Czethros and a few other lieutenants were working to build a newer, more powerful organization.

This new Black Sun wou'J become dominant, because Czethros knew how to work both sides of the law, the dark and the light.

Keeping track of the many ongoing threads of his master plan put him under constant pressure.

He sat back at his desk, touched a hidden control under the front drawer, and his flat image screen flipped over to reveal a secret terminal.

Tweaking a volume control, he turned up the dissonant Sullustan opera that had been playing in the background. The squeaky, overlapping tones gave most people instant headaches-at the very least, the noise kept strangers out of his office. Coincidentally, Sullustan opera had the added benefit of being particularly effective at jamming all known histening devices.

Czethros focused his cyber-eye on the secondary screen and scratched at the moss-green hair that covered his scarred head. Then he adjusted the visor over his eyes, tuning the reception spectrum deeper into the infrared. He nodded with satisfaction as a formerly invisible series of letters and words suddenly appeared on the screen. Human eyes could not read them, but with his visor Czethros could pick up every letter as perfectly as if it were written in fire.

He knew he would not be disturbed. In the reception area outside, his two beautifully polished female-form receptionist droids handled the incoming calls and correspondence with their protocol programming.

Dimly, he could hear their sultry voices repeating the familiar phrases:

"Master Czethros is in a meeting,"

"Master Czethros is unavailable,"

"You'll find that Master Czethros has already attended to that matter."

Meanwhile, he sat back and called up the encrypted files that showed summaries of the most important Black Sun activities. This was how he got his real work done.

His weapons-running business had shown a great profit over the past few years, especially with the dragged-out civil war on Anobis. But sales of destructive devices had taken a recent downturn there, thanks to the cursed peacemaking efforts of that meddling Han Solo and the young Jedi Knights.

Czethros had tried to have Anja take care of the meddlers, but since he'd been forced to keep his involvement in Anobis gun-running activities a secret-especially from her-he could hardly explain to Anja why it was important to him. Anja was so volatile, such a loose cannon,