Mara heard them before she saw them, but it took her a critical second to recognize their clanking, jangling sound. She'd only heard them once before, and she didn't realize where right away.

As it was, she barely had time to whip up her lightsaber for defense when three droidekas rolled into view, unsnapped their circular bodies, and began firing a hail of green laser blasts at the Jedi.

"Destroyer droids!" K'Kruhk shouted as he batted two laser blasts right back into a droideka's spherical shields, where the energy flashed and dissipated harmlessly.

"We've fought them before!" Mara said. Their mission to the wreckage of Outbound Flight felt like a lifetime ago.

The droids strutted slowly toward them on three curved legs. Luke, K'Kruhk, and Mara kept batting their laser blasts back at them, but every time they had to take a step back.

"They're herding us," Luke warned.

Mara risked a look over her shoulder. The droidekas had not only stopped their advance into the hangar bay, but were now trying to shuffle them toward to entrance to some auxiliary storage chamber. If they became stuck in there, it would become all the easier for the enemy to pin them down indefinitely.

As she deflected yet another energy blast, Mara felt a spike of alarm in the Force. For a moment she thought it was Ben; then she realized Jacen was trying to call on her.

"I felt it too," Luke breathed. He was trying to stand his ground, but the droidekas were getting closer. None of them were as young as they'd once been, and they could only keep this up for so long.

Mara looked over her head and saw a long catwalk running overhead. She gave Luke and K'Kruhk a small nudge with the Force, then hurled her body upward. She tucked her knees against her chest and wheeled upward; the droidekas tries to track her at first, but their horizon-tal weapons sweep had a very limited range. When her hands grabbed hold of the railing her body unfolded and slammed against the side of the platform. Pain stabbed through her torso but she hung on tight, found one last pulse from the Force, and threw her whole body over the railing.

She crouched for a second, winded and pained, clutching her ribs and feeling for cracks. Luckily she found none.

She was getting too old for this. They all were.

She looked down and saw two droidekas concentrating on K'Kruhk, while the other fired at Luke. She leaned over the railing and threw her lightsaber down. It pinwheeled as it fell and she guided it onto the head of the droideka attacking her husband. As expected, the droideka had been focusing its shields forward to fend off deflected bolts. Mara's lightsaber sheared through its rear end, cutting off one leg and sending it falling onto its curved back. She pulled her lightsaber back up, and on its way to her hand it spun through what passed for the droideka's head.

Her lightsaber slapped back into her palm but she was already readying another throw. One of the droidekas attacking K'Kruhk was now pivoting toward Luke, but Luke was moving fast. He executed a sharp shoulder roll that brought him up on the droideka's left side. His lightsabed blazed the whole way, cutting a smoking line through the bottom of the deck, then whipping up and scraping against the droideka's shields. Luke came up behind it and as it struggled turn on three ungainly legs, K'Kruhk deflected a laser blast from his own opponent into the back of the other droid. Luke's droideka sparked, whined, and toppled face-down on the deck.

Mara hurled her lightsaber down one more time, and it was over.

Luke and K'Kruhk switched their lightsabers off. Both old Jedi Masters were panting in exhaustion but their relief emanated through the Force.

"I hope," said K'Kruhk, "That there are not many more of those."

"We need to hurry!" Mara called down. "Jacen's in trouble!"

"I feel it too," Luke said.

As he and K'Kruhk began moving further into the curving hangar bay, Mara scanned the upper level catwalks for a possible shortcut.

Before K'Kruhk and her husband got far the hangar was filled with the groaning of an old door rolling open. From her high vantage point, Mara could see an opening door to one auxiliary room some hundred meters deeper into the hangar.

"Incoming!" she shouted down. She raced down the catwalk to the hangar's inner wall, where another walkway hugged the gently curving side.

Luke and K'Kruhk advanced, lightsabers ready. They moved for the cover of a massive old Baktoid droid troop carrier that lay derelict. Mara hurried along the walkway, then stopped suddenly when she got a look at the new arrivals.

There were six of them. They were of much thicker design than that spindly droids they had been fighting so far. They had wide shoulders, short neckless heads, long arms that ended in bristling laster cannons, and thick legs that pounded on the floor. Despite a clearly lethal design, their actual bodies seemed strangely patchwork. As they got closer, Mara realized that some kind of dark gray armor playing had been bolted onto their existing carapaces. The plating covered not only their torsos, but their arms and legs and the bumps of their heads.

"They've been modified!" she shouted down. "I don't like this!"

"They are B3 battle droids!" K'Kruhk called up. "They are formidable, but I have fought them before!"

"Their hulls are different! I think-"

Her voice was drowned out by the sound of laserfire. The droids not only fired at Luke and K'Kruhk, but also upward at Mara. She sprinted across the walkway and red blasts scored the metal behind her. She saw what she thought was a lift tube entrance, down on the bottom deck, but the droids were moving to cut her off.

Behind her, K'Kruhk bellowed, "Cortosis!"

One word was all she needed to hear. Even worse than Mandalorian beskar'gam armor, Cortosis was a bane of the Jedi. Not only did it block lightsabers, mere contact caused a lightsaber to short-circuit, rendering it inoper-able unless repaired.

Still running along the catwalk, she looked down and saw K'Kruhk attempted to retreat. Luke's lightsaber was still on and he was deflecting bolts back at the droids, but even the shots that made contact only hissed impotently against the strapped-on cortosis armor.

K'Kruhk was a big target, and Mara's heart sank as a few bolts tore through his massive animal-fur cloak. Yet the Whiphid did not slow down; instead he ran to the base of the Baktoid droid carrier and threw himself upward. Luke followed his lead and the two Jedi pressed themselves low against the carrier's roof. The Jedi were temporarily out of the cortosis droids' range, but they were already shifting positions for a better shot.

"Go!" Luke shouted, his voice suddenly clear now that no no laser blasts echoed through the hangar. "Help Jacen!"

She wanted to shout an objection, but she knew he was right. She leaped off the walkway, plunged, and called on the Force at the last minute to soften her landing on the hard deck. Pain still shot through her legs, and the moment her boots touched ground red last-blasts began whipping past her head.

She brought her lightsaber up and began backing toward the lift tube, all the while facing the two droids advancing toward her. She could keep deflecting their bolts, but it they got close enough they could simply throw themselves on her lightsaber in order to short-circuit it, and after that she would be helpless.

Mara spared a second of concentration to reach out with the Force and nudge the lift's control panel, summoning it to her deck.

She really, really hoped it was still working.

She heard a metallic sound muffled by the wall behind her, and then she heard the hiss of doors sliding open. She leaped backward into the lift but kept her lightsaber up the whole time.

The doors slid shut before her, but a droid was charging fast. The massive thing managed to throw itself into the air like a missile. It scraped against the doors as they were closing and Mara snapped off her lightsaber, lest it hit cortosis and short-circuit. The droid found its broad shoulders wedged between the closing doors. It arms flailed helplessly at its sides, trying to squeeze them forward, and Mara could swear she saw alarm in the red eye-like lights of its face.

With her free hand, she pulled out one of her blasters, placed the barrel into a spot between cortosis plates, and fired five shots into its head.

Its limbs kept flailing dumbly, but its head and shoulders were a smoking ruin. She summoned the Force to add extra strength to her legs and gave the droid a strong two-foot kick out of the tube.

Then, finally, the doors slid neatly shut, and she was carried upward toward the command deck and the unknown.

-{}-

As the amplified artificial gravity crushed Jacen against the deck, pulling his limbs to the metal floor and pinning his vision on the ceiling and nearly squeezing the breath out of his lungs, he couldn't believe that after everything he'd done, he was about to die like this.

He'd escaped from the Shadow Academy at fourteen. He'd defeated the Yuuzhan Vong Warmaster in single combat. He'd slain the voxyn queen. He'd physically merged with the Force and turned Supreme Overlord Onimi's poisonous toxins against himself.

Hell, he'd even won over Tenel Ka.

Now he was about to be crushed to death by an unknown enemy after stumbling into a stupid trap he should have anticipated. Worse still, he'd dragged Tenel Ka into this; she was now pinned face-down onto the desk, and had given up her vain struggled to push herself up with only one arm. A long time ago Jacen would it vaguely romantic to die alongside the woman he loved. Right now the thought of dying, and leaving Allana helpless against the Dark Man, filled him with such rage he could have torn the entire deck apart.

If he could have, he would, but he couldn't summon the Force. He was too panicked for that, and wracked by too much physical pain. The most he could manage was a spike of alarm through the Force, hopefully touching his cousin or uncle or aunt, but he had no way of knowing if he got through. All he could do now was wait.

Through his anger and pain, he realized that he wasn't dead yet, though he probably should have been. Who-ever had trapped him here certainly had the means to kill him, just like they could have blown Teneniel and Jade Shadow up in orbit.

Whoever had him here wanted him alive. Jacen had given his enemies exactly what they wanted, and for all his anger, he couldn't muster the strength to do anything about it.

Something changed. The pressure roared in his ears, drowning out sound, but he felt vibration through the deck. It was thick, hard, like heavy footsteps. His vision was unfocused and he couldn't turn his head without fear of snapping his own neck, but as he stared at the pale blurry ceiling, he thought he saw some dark figure step over him. He saw no head, just broad shoulders and broad torso.

The thing leaned in closer. His eyes found focus, briefly, on the metal form of some kind of thick-bodied combat droid. It was hard to tell, but the droid's exterior seemed strangely discolored and patchwork.

He felt a pain, sharp and small, in his arm. A needle, he thought. The droid was sticking him with a needle. The droid was taking a blood sample to take back to its master, who had already claimed samples from Tenel Ka and Allana.

It was taking the samples to deliver them to Neev Alsok, the master geneticist, to put into a Spaarti tube so they could grow a clone of him, of Tenel Ka, of Allana.

He tried to scream, but no sound came out. He tried to use the Force to tug the lightsaber from his belt and decapitate the droid, but it wouldn't budge.

The shadow pulled away. The deck shook with receding footsteps until those, too, were gone.

They had what they'd drawn him here for all. All that was left was to amp up the artificial gravity just a little more and kill him.

He wanted to reach out to Tenel Ka one last time, to tell her he was sorry, not just for this, but for everything he had and hadn't done.

He couldn't even manage that.

Another vibration rippled through the deck. This one was not as strong. He waited for the pounding of more boots but they never came. Against the dull, all-engulfing roar in his ears, he thought he heard a faint sharp snapping sound. Again and again he heard it, but he didn't know what it was. He couldn't even guess.

Then, suddenly, the weight was gone.

He gasped. Breath drew into his lungs and filled them and he pushed air out again. He lifted one trembling hand over his face and waited for his eyes to find focus.

Finally, he turned his head.

Tenel Ka was on her knees, head bent against the metal floor as she struggled to rise. At her side: Aunt Mara, lightsaber blazing in one hand, lifting Tenel Ka with the other.

Jacen planted both palms against the deck and pushed himself up. He couldn't muster the strength to stand, but sitting on the floor he looked around to see the smoking mess Mara had carved the bridge into. Black curving lines, still smoking, danced around the floor. The control consoles were sparking wrecks. Even the lights were flickering now.

"Aunt Mara," he gasped, "Thank you. What did you-"

"Smashed stuff up until I killed the gravity," she said as Tenel Ka rose to her knees. "Are you okay, Your Majesty?"

"I am... mildly damaged," Tenel Ka said. She had been slammed face-first onto the deck and blood trailed her nose to her lips; her forehead had been cut and red welts were forming on her face that would leave ugly bruises if untreated.

"Can you stand?" Jacen asked her, not quite ready to attempt it himself.

"I... believe so..." With Mara grabbing one shoulder, raised herself on one leg, then the other. When Mara carefully let her go she shifted and swayed but did not fall.

As Mara came over to offer Jacen a hand, he asked her, "Did you get the droid?"

"What droid?" she asked. From her tone it sounded like she already knew.

"Big battle droid. It came... took a blood sample."

He reached out and grabbed wrist. She clasped his hard and pulled him to his feet. For a second he felt like he was going to topple back over.

"Did it have patchwork skin?" asked Mara.

"Uh, yeah, I think so."

"That's a layer of cortosis ore," she said. "You know, the lightsaber-killer."

"Where is Master Skywalker?" asked Tenel Ka.

"He and K'Kruhk got pinned down in the hangar bay, fighting those things."

"We must help them!" said Tenel Ka. "We should-"

"We need to find that droid. And the Spaarti tubes," Jacen said. "Uncle Luke can take care of himself."

To his relief, Mara nodded. "Jacen's right. We have to stick to the primary mission. Let's go search the com-mand sphere."

"What if they try the grav trick again?"

Mara held up her lightsaber. "Then we wreck the place."

Jacen nodded. Right now he wanted to tear this entire ship apart bolt-by-bolt. Doing it deck-by-deck would be good enough.

It was finally time to pay back some of the damage they'd been dealt, and he was looking forward to it.

-{}-

Though his parents had passed beyond his range of vision, deep into the curving hangar bay of the control ship, Ben knew that something was very, very wrong.

The urgency and confusion in the Force only fueled the feelings inside of him. His parents- both of them- had ordered him to stay in the cockpit of the gunship. He was young, he was half-crippled, and he'd be more of a burden than a help if he'd gone with them. That wasn't just what his father had intimated, it was certifiable fact.

It was also a fact that he couldn't just sit back here and do nothing while his family could be hurt, even killed. His father had warned him in no uncertain terms that people might be killed, and that Ben more than any others needed to survive because he was the youngest and had the biggest future ahead of him.

Ben that thought was poodoo. He'd have no future if he lost his parents on miserable Kal'shikar, so instead of sitting in his seat and doing nothing like a good boy, he dropped into the cockpit and began fumbling with the controls.

He struggled to remember the lesson his father had given him just hours before. He found the switch that closed the transparisteel bubble, which was probably a good place to start, and flipped it. The servos groaned as the heavy seal settled over the cockpit until it closed with a heavy clanking sound.

After that he searched for the engines. He found a couple red switches, flipped them, and got nothing. Maybe those were weapons. He found another set of switches, orange this time, and began trying those. Just as he was considering this might not have been the best way to fly a ship, the entire hull starting rattling with the firing of thrust engines.

"Okay," he breathed, "Not bad."

The gunship's repulsorslifts had never worked to begin with, so instead of trying to levitate the ship for a soft launch, he gripped the twin control sticks in front of him and tried to push the ship upward. He fit his good foot onto the trust pedal beneath the console and pressed on it, lightly.

The gunship jerked into the air. Ben was thrown back into his seat and he tugged the stick back with him, launching the ship into an even steeper climb. The hangar ceiling was suddenly jumping to meet him.

He started swearing incoherent profanities as he wrested with the stick. He pushed it forward and the gunship jumped down again. He relaxed pressure on the thrusters, then eased the stick back once more.

Slowly, one awkward jerk after another, he began to get control over his ship. After wobbling past the wrecked droid starfighters, he nearly smashed into the top, bottom, or sides for the hangar a half-dozen times before he got the ship steady and level.

When he did, he finally risked kicking the engines up a notch.

He was thrown back in his seat once more by the acceleration, but this time he kept the stick steady. The gunship began to cruise deeper into the hangar, and he tugged the stick gently to the right to keep pace with the ship's slow curving.

It didn't take him long to find his dad.

The back end of the hangar was filled with smoke and debris and the fall of artificial rain. Red lasers flashed through the air and he thought he saw the green blur of his father's saber from the top of a big brown hump-backed droid carrier. His dad was crouched low as the droids fired up at him, and right next to him was K'Kruhk's shaggy gray bulk.

He couldn't see his mother at all.

He shoved down his panic- he'd know if she was hurt- and cut energy from the thrusters. As the gunship veered toward the droid carrier he could see his father turn to see his approach. The droids stopped to pivot also, and a second later they all raised their arms and began shooting.

Closing the cockpit had been a very good idea. Red energy splattered and hissed and scarred streaks across the transparisteel bubble. Ben winced as the light blinded him. He knew he was going to crash and he cut the engine power entirely. His stomach leaped up toward his heart as he dropped. He threw his hands over his face.

What happened after that, he wasn't sure. His entire body got knocked around the cockpit; elbows, knees, ribs, everything except his well covered head and cast-encased leg seemed to take hits. When he opened his eyes everything was a smoky blur. He fumbled with the control panel, found the switch to open the cockpit bubble, and flicked it. Nothing happened.

He listened for the sounds of laserfire but heard nothing. He grabbed his lightsaber, but hesitated before trying to cut his way out.

Then he remembered the short ladder leading down to the cargo bay. He awkwardly tried to pull his cast-encased leg out from beneath the console, but somehow it had gotten stuck. He swore and tried to move it again, but it was wedged tight between something.

Then, with a harsh groaning noise, the bubble began to open. At first Ben thought there might have been some damage-induced time delay between his command and the action. Then he saw his father standing before him on the gunship's nose, arms crossed over his chest.

Ben stared at his father. Luke stared back.

"Um," he said, "I stayed in the ship, just like you said."

Before Luke could reproach him, the gunship shifted portside under some additional weight. When it didn't tip, Ben carefully pivoted around to see K'Kruhk standing on the gunship's back.

"Well done, padawan," the old Whiphid said. "You've crushed them all! Your timing was excellent."

Ben looked at his surroundings. He'd managed to fly the gunship right into a wall, but he seemed to have collided with the bulkhead right as the ship was skidding to a halt anyway. The droid carrier the two Masters ha been perched on was over his left shoulder. The mangled metal corpses of some thick-bodied combat droids were scattered around the gunship's blackened base.

Ben took one long, sweet moment to feel proud of himself. Then he said, "What's that sound?"

He seemed to have heard it before Luke or K'Kruhk, but from their expressions they were also noticing it. It sounded like a high-pitched wobbling sound, oddly muffled. Kind of like the sound you got from old, malfunctioning repulsorlifts. This sound seemed to be coming from all sides of the hangar.

He saw the first two slip out from behind a battered disc-shaped Corellian freighter. They floated in the air on broad semi-circular brown metal aprons, while their upper bodies were topped with long pivoting laser cannons. Ben looked toward the mouth of the hangar and saw two more approaching. Balanced on the apron of each craft were two battle droids just like the ones he'd mowed down: broad shoulders and thick bodies, all covered in some kind of mottled armor plating.

"Tanks," Ben said. "Great."

Apparently his timing wasn't very good after all.

-{}-

Overall, things were not going to plan. They weren't in the critical emergency stage yet, but they were certainly not going to plan. Even the calm, confident masks Dician and Vidious always wore noticeably slipped as the ancient LAAT/i gunship skid madly across the hangar deck and ran down a whole squadron of cortosis-skinned battle droids like an out-of-control speeder truck.

At least they'd collected Jacen Solo's DNA sample. Paks Veem just needed to get his hands on it.

They'd been watching the fight in the main hangar long enough. Veem asked, "What happened to the others? Where are they?"

"Just a moment," Dician said, and she tapped the table's console. The image of battle tanks surrounding the crashed gunship minimized and was replaced with a cycling feed from a number of security cameras inside the command sphere.

One image after another flicked by. More than a few showed empty rooms and corridors that had been savagely torn apart. Black tears had been slashed across floor-panels and walls.

"Tried the grav trap again?" Dorcan asked.

"Unfortunately, Jedi are quick learners," Vidious said. "Most traps only work the first time."

"That why you're sending more cortosis droids against Skywalker and the Whiphid?" Veems asked, then immediately regretted his sarcasm.

The Sith didn't seem phased. Dician suddenly stopped cycling through cameras when the holo showed a long corridor, so far undamaged. Three figures were walking from an entrance on the far end toward the camera emplacement.

"Where are they?" Alsok asked.

"Deck A7, Section 12," Dician said.

"Ah, not good," Veem said. "That's close to the lab. They're going to find all the Spaarti tubes."

Calmly, Vidous said, "Some of the specimens have already been moved."

"What?" Veem, Dorcan, and Alsok bleated in unison.

Dician brought up the feed from the laboratory. Of the twelve Spaarti tubes Veem had last seen in there, only four still had beings floating inside. The others had all been emptied, not only of clones, but of the enriching fluid that had once filled them.

"What did you do?" Alsok stared at the Sith. "Remov-ing clones from the tubes before they are fully mature can be-"

Vidious held up a hand. "We are keeping them safe."

"You should have consulted me beforehand!" Alsok snapped. "I'm your chief scientist!"

"You're the chief geneticist," Dician said. "I am still the overseer on the cloning project and I commissioned droids to move the clones when it looked like the Jedi weren't going to do down easily."

"You should have known that in the first place," Veem said. "They're Jedi, and you're-"

He snapped his mouth shut before he could say any more. Alsok and the Sith were staring at him, expectant, but Dorcan's expression had a decidedly shut up now! bent to it.

Dician faced Alsok. "As the chief geneticist, however, I believe you should go to the laboratory now to make sure all the secure data is erased. Destroy the computer if you have to. Also, the droid with the male Jedi's blood sample is on its way to the lab. We need that DNA sample secured."

"Me?" Alsok paled. "The Jedi are on their way now!"

"Don't worry, we'll send a half squad of battle droids to accompany you."

"You've sent a lot more against them so far and it's barely slowed them down!"

"I'll go with you too," Veem said.

"You?" Alsok gogged. "When did you go crazy?"

If they hurried to the lab and got the blood sample they could make a break for it, which should have been obvious, but apparently the Omwati didn't have his head in the game.

"I'll go too," Dorcan said. "More the merrier."

That seemed to slap sense into him. Alsok, suddenly determined, gave a nod and said, "All right. We'll all go together."

"You had better hurry," Vidious said dryly. "You likely have only fifteen minutes before the Jedi arrive at the laboratory."

"Then we'd better run." Veem grabbed Dorcan and Alsok by the shoulders. "Come on!"

And, to Veem's slightly giddy amazement, they walked out of the chamber with no Sith looming behind them. A half-dozen bulky cortosis-covered battle droids, sure, but with no Force-users in sight, Veem felt better already.

At a fast pace, it would take them eight or nine minutes to get to the lab, which meant they had to hurry. As they walked down the corridor to the lift shaft, trailing by a long line of clanking droids, Veem tapped the inside of his wrist so Dorcan could see. The man nodded, pulled up his sleeve, and punched something into the panel on his wrist.

"Can we speak freely now?" wheeze Alsok. The fast pace was taking a little breath out of the scientist and Veem hoped he didn't slow them down. They couldn't afford it.

"We're good," Dorcan nodded. "What's the plan?"

"We get the blood sample and we run."

"We can run now, too," Alsok said.

"You don't want to clean up your lab?"

"I backed up all my data before the Jedi arrived. If they get the original files on the computer, good for them. I've had it with this job."

"But you don't have Jacen Solo's blood sample."

"Is he the one with the queen?" Dorcan asked.

"He is, and I want his blood," Veem said with finality.

He wasn't going to tell that that he suspected Solo was the father of Tenel Ka's child- he had no proof yet, and he didn't trust either of them enough to tell them even if he'd been sure.

"What about our getaway vehicle?" Alsok asked. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Dorcan, but isn't your ship currently right next to the major firefight with some Jedi?"

"I'd noticed that," Dorcan fought a scowl. "I was hoping we could grab the Lady when everybody's distracted."

"That's a risk. If they see you powering up your ship, our bosses call one of their tanks and blow it to bits. Before or after we get on board."

"There's always a backup plan," Veem said. "We've still got that crappy freighter we stole from Coruscant. It's not Lady, or my old ship, but it'll fly. I parked it closer to the hangar mouth, in one of the side sections, so it's not in the middle of a firefight."

"Are you sure it didn't get smashed when the Jedi came in?" Dorcan asked.

"I kept an eye on the security cams. She didn't get hit."

When they got into the lift, they managed to cram in all three sentients plus three battle droids. The remaining ones stay on the lower level, apparently with the intent of riding up on the lift once it came for them. Sure enough, when they got off at the proper deck, one of the battle droids sent the lift back down to fetch its comrades.

Machines could be scary sometimes.

When they arrived through the laboratory's rear door, the room seemed strangely hollow with most of the Spaarti tubes emptied. The only ones that remained were the Mon Cal, a Bith female, a dark-haired human female one, and a light-haired human male.

"Looks like they took Mr. Tattoo with them" Dorcan commented.

"How long can those clones survive outside their tubes?" Veem asked Alsok.

The Omwati was bent over the computer. "It depends. If put in cryo, they can last for close to a year without major damage."

"Do they have stasis tubes?"

Alsok gave an irritated shrug and kept scouring the computer. He said, "I was right, I've got everything backed up."

The lab's front door swung open. Veem and Dorcan drew their blasters but instead of angry Jedi they met a single cortosis battle droid. Its left arm was tipped not with a blaster cannon, but a slim translucent vial of red blood.

"Wonderful, got the package," Veem went up the droid and, barely wondering if it might blow a hole in him, pulled the vial off its arm.

He stared at the little thing in his palm. Combined with the data-chip in his pocket, he had everything he needed to commit the mother of all blackmails.

All he had to do now was get off this ship alive.

Then the other three droids arrived through the back entrance, and he suddenly felt surrounded by enemies.

"Here." He handed the vial to Alsok. "Scan the data into the computer. Fast."

The Omwati hesitated, but only for a second. The scientist could be thick sometimes but he wasn't stupid. He plugged the vial into the data-reader. Veem slipped the datachip out of his pocket and, as casually as possible under the prying red eyes of seven deadly battle droids, handed it off to Alsok. He leaned over the Omwati's screen, just to make sure he really was copying the initial sampling data. Alsok handed him back the chip, then unplugged the blood vial and stuck it in his pocket with those of Tenel Ka and her child.

The whole dance had taken some thirty seconds. Dorcan watched all the while, not saying a thing. He'd probably figured Veem's plan out without being told. The only issue was what kind of a cut he'd want, but they could hack that out if they survived.

"Are we good?" he asked Alsok. The Omwati nodded. "Then we should make sure the Jedi don't get it."

Veem pocketed the data-chip and hefted his blaster. Alsok backed away with both hands held up and said, "I'm done. Do it."

Dorcan joined in too. A half-dozen laser blasts from each gun turned Alsok's computer- probably one of the most sophisticated pieces of genetic analytical equip-ment in the galaxy- into a hulk of slag.

All the while, those damned cortosis droids watched and didn't budge an inch.

"Okay, we're good." Veem looked back and forth between Alsok and Dorcan. "Is it time?"

"Let's get closer to the lift," Dorcan's voice had an uncharacteristically nervous edge. "We've only got one shot at this."

"Shutdown's risky," said Veem. "It'll definitely alert the Sith."

"I know, but it's ready if we need it."

"Okay." Veem gestured to the back door. "Let's get out of here."

He only made one step before he heard the sound of the front doors opening. He turned, knowing and dreading what he'd see.

Three Jedi walked in with lightsabers on and lifted high. In the front was a tall, middle-aged red-haired woman. Mara Jade Skywalker. Over her right shoulder, the Queen of Hapes. Tenel Ka. And over her left, a dark-haired man whose eyes blazed with intent. Jacen Solo.

All here to make an end of it.

His eyes locked on Solo's, and for the tiniest of moment he remembered the messy-haired, goofy, outgoing kid he'd watched from a distance on Yavin 4. He could have never imagined their paths would cross like this, half a lifetime later, and for the tiniest second he felt the stir of regret for what he planned to do to both Jacen Solo and Tenel Ka. Unlike most of the beings he'd cheated, conned, or otherwise harmed over the years, they hadn't done anything in his knowledge to deserve it.

Dorcan called, "Hey, Your Majesty, never thought I'd see you again!"

Then all seven battle droids raised their guns as one and opened fire.