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Jaina saw very few places for them to hide; her jumpsuit, along with Lowie's ginger-brown fur, would stand out like a striking beacon.

They had no choice but to send Em Teedee.

His fingers already numb with cold, Lowie bent down to manipulate the tiny cords. Using a special quick-release knot, he attached the two canisters of explosives below the hovering droid's casing. With her hands, Jaina showed Em Teedee the distance he needed to keep between his casing and the rough surface of the planetoid.

"You have this much play between the explosive and the ground right now,"

she said. "We'll need you to fly as low as possible to keep from being seen, but don't let the explosives hit a rock."

"Indeed, Mistress Jaina. I assure you that I won't."

Lowie grunted something, and Em Teedee snapped, "What do you mean by

'famous last words'? I intend to follow our plan exactly!"

Lowie touched the buttons on the shaped charges with his claws and chattered to the droid.

Em Teedee answered in alarm, "Six standard minutes? Do you think that will be sufficient time?" The Wookiee shrugged.

"These aren't high-capacity charges, Em Teedee," Jaina said. "I don't think they're made with long timers."

"Very well, I shall do my best." The little droid hovered off the ground and then, with a burst of his microrepulsorjets, skimmed across the powdery surface of Kessel like a glinting silver bullet. Keeping low, he wove around rocks, over fissures, across the broken and rugged terrain.

A troop of guards would likely be stationed in a protective hut near the transmitter, just waiting for Czethros to send his signal. The droid had to get there before they saw him.

Em Teedee increased speed, still painfully aware that he could not allow the canisters of explosives to strike against a hard rock or a projection of encrusted salt. His internal clock counted down the seconds that remained on the bomb timers. The transmitting dish seemed very far away.

Em Teedee pushed his microjets faster and faster, drawing closer.

Finally, the structure loomed up ahead of him: scooped amplifiers and curved screens to focus the communication beam. The miniaturized droid rose like a tiny satellite over the lip, then dropped toward the center of the flower. There, an aiming antenna would direct the signal while the pulse ricocheted off the parabolic petals and increased its power, sending it out to all secret receiving stations attuned to the Black Sun's command frequency.

After he landed in the center, Em Teedee gently touched the explosive canisters to the central control point, jerked upward against the quick-release knots to detach the short cables, then rose into the air.

He had very little time left, and he was anxious to get away. Stealth had required him to take longer than anticipated reaching the station, and now that there was nothing to delay him, the droid shot upward and sped away.

He must have made a fine glittering target, because two guards barreled out of a small hutment beside the transmitting station. They were curious at first, gazing up at him, then began shouting. One of the men turned back to the transmitting station as if he realized something must be wrong. The other guard grabbed for his weapon, but didn't seem to know what to shoot at.

Em Teedee streaked across the rocky landscape and vanished into the distance.

Jaina and Lowie stood up, waving him on toward the doorway that would lead back into the pressurized docking bay.

When the translating droid was only a hundred meters away from them, the transmitter erupted in a blossom of orange fire. Shrapnel blew sky-high-some of it perhaps even into orbit, because of Kessel's low gravity.

Jaina and Lowie watched as the fires from the explosion slowly sputtered out for lack of oxygen. Huge sections of the antenna fell, teetering before they collapsed. A few seconds later, the shock wave and the sound reached them at the docking bay doors, high-pitched and tinny due to the thin air.

"Let's go!" Jaina said. "They're really