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They ducked back inside the spice mines of Kessel, hoping they could find a safe place to hide.

When Czethros learned of the disaster, his roar of rage was almost as loud as the explosion itself. His blazing cyber-eye scanned back and forth, looking for someone to blame.

"Timing is everything!" he bellowed. "If I don't send my signal, the uprising will never commence-and unless we do this all at once, the New Republic will find a way to crush each separate little brush fire." A guard nodded. "I understand, my Lord Czethros."

"Of course you understand! An idiot could understand. But what can you do about it?"

"Nothing that I know of, my Lord Czethros."

The Black Sun lieutenant stormed back and forth in Nien Nunb's office, which he had commandeered. He knew his superiors were counting on him, and he knew that the leaders of Black Sun were not very forgiving when something went wrong.

"I thought you had imprisoned everyone who could cause problems for us,"

Czethros said, whirling about. "What did you forget to take into account?

Who is still missing?"

"I don't know, my Lord Czethros."

"Of course you don't know, or the situation would already be under control!" He pounded a hand on the Chief Administrator's low tabletop.

He wished the Sullustan were taller so that his office and its furnishings would have been a bit more comfortable for a man of his size.

Czethros glared at the guard. The other armed mercenaries milling about in the hall nervously awaited their turn for a reprimand. Each hoped he would survive the wrath of Czethros.

"It's safe to say we have some sort of little rodents unaccounted for.

The saboteurs know what they're doing, and they intend to ruin my plans.

Make sure all our prisoners are securely locked away. Then I want full teams to comb every inch of the spice mines. We must find whoever is responsible for blowing up my transmitting station. I want them-dead or alive. I don't care which."

He turned, not deigning even to look at his crew anymore, then slowly glanced back over his shoulder. "Of course, if you don't find them for me to torture"-his cracked lips curled in a faint smile-"I'll be forced to take out my frustrations on some of you instead."

Anja had never felt so out of control.

While the Jedi all around her in the minisub worked with brisk determination to diagnose and fix the ailments of the Elfa, she felt herself slipping away into a zone of pain somewhere between madness and death.

Her vision narrowed and filled with static at the edges. She found she could not concentrate on what her friends were doing-the need for spice was too great, no matter how she tried to push it back. The tiny claustrophobic vessel felt unbearably hot, stifling, despite their arctic prison. Unreasonable quantities of perspiration soaked her leather headband, streamed into her large eyes, ran down her neck and back to leave damp stains on her clothing.

The others around her were talking, planning, brainstomng, but it all seemed so far away. A deep ache burned in her muscles and ate its way down to her bones, igniting liquid agony in every joint of her body.

Moving her hands or any part of her body produced an instant punishing pain. So she did not move. Each breath became a struggle. Her head throbbed with unimaginable pressure. She realized now that only one substance in the galaxy could put an end to her agony: andris.

Stupid, her mind raged. How could she have let this happen to her?

Addiction was for fools and weaklings, not for someone like herselfindependent, intelligent, strong-willed. She had never meant for the andris to affect her this way. She'd always thought she was in charge of her own body, but now she was a prisoner of spice.

Fool! she snarled at herself Anja had been sure that addiction was for other people, weak people. She had convinced herself from the beginning that she would be able to handle it. She'd known when she started taking spice that many people had been destroyed by addiction.

Anja had watched it, had known it for a fact. And yet, with