From the author: Read the other story (Dark Forces: Enemy Within) first. This story picks up where it leaves off, except for the epilogues, which are considered as non-canon to the sequel.

No content warnings. Read at your own risk.

The Smuggler's Moon didn't have a single street corner where a common being could feel truly safe, but the Dumandi District was both bright and clean enough that it might have fooled an unwary visitor before he or she was lured to a sticky and unpleasant end.

Glowlamp poles oozed sweat-colored incandescence onto the ferrocrete streets. Where the glowlamps were sputtering or altogether dead, glitzy holodisplays of neon pink or green or cyan took over with enchanting, lusty glows. There were no trash collectors or astromech droids converted to burn barrels, no stains of sentient waste or blood, hardly even any trash. Loiterers and loungers were nowhere in sight, Phindian death stick pushers and Twi'lek streetwalkers only a rumor. Still, pedestrians were plentiful: humans and Gran, Aqualish and Zabrak, Vippits and Vuvrians; Fuzzums, Felinians, Falleen, and fifty or a hundred more species. All of them stayed on the move and spoke softly, but to a being each one was rumpled, desperate, and hungry.

Yet none were likely as hungry as Deena Demarakesh, whose haste in coming to this infamous moon had given him a ravenous appetite. He was a thick-furred Bothan with dark, chocolatey fur and eyes the color of flowstone. His mauve commoner's clothing had been hastily chosen at the last shuttleport; as such, both his shirt and pants were on the baggier side.

He had kept up a brisk pace since disembarking in the Dumandi District. Coming to a junction, he paused to squint up at a sign, then consulted the map on his datapad. "Corner of Visquis Avenue and Cudgel Street," he muttered.

His teeth gritted as a powerful groan radiated from his stomach. He cast a fierce look over his shoulder and growled, "Come along now. We're almost there." Starting off again, he gave the chain in his left hand a sharp tug, and the being on the other end of it stumbled after him, silent except for a low gurgle.

The pair drew no more than a glance from the many passersby. On Nar Shaddaa, the sight of a young sentient in chains was not even worth a comment.

Deena Demarakesh fairly gasped with relief as he manuvered the boy around a final gauntlet of pedestrians and laid eyes on the front of a medium-sized establishment. Though the windows were grimy, the light straining to pour through them was warm and inviting. The door was emblazoned, in peeling faux-gold paint, with the crest of the Galactic Empire encircling the outline of a mountainous pyramid of facades and spires. In the same color, a sign overhead declared, IMPERIAL PALACE RESTAURANT.

As Deena approached, the door split down the middle and its halves folded in on themselves. A Balosar waiter with sickly yellowish skin approached, but Deena talked over him. "I'm meeting some people. They should already have a table. The reservation's for Gartor Nhagy."

The waiter bit the inside of his cheek, his antennapalps twitching as he checked a terminal. "Yes. You come this way."

Though it claimed to be replicating the atmosphere of its namesake on Coruscant, it was obvious the Imperial Palace's proprietors had never set foot there. The carpet, discolored in some spots, worn thin in others, was bergundy crisscrossed with indecipherable knotted designs. The chairs, tables, and other furniture were all dark synthwood, and the hanging glowlamps that gave the restaurant such warmth were shrouded in thin paper lanterns. The walls hosted portraits of Sate Pestage, Sim Aloo, Grand Admiral Tigellinus, and other members of the Imperial Court (not to mention the Emperor himself)—all of them vibro-prints on flimsiplast sheets, but in a style meant to simulate the ethereal watercolors of Serroco, where these Bolusar hailed from.

Only three or four parties were dining in, chatting and chuckling in brief spurts. The waiter led Deena and the boy to a table at the back of the dining room. The former took a seat beside a looming figure whose face was shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat, though the blood-orange eyes that glinted beneath were unmistakably reptilian. The hands that rested on the table were scaly and clawed, but the rest of his features as well as his clothing were hidden under a ragged, patched-up poncho of gray armorweave. It was Gartor, the contact of Deena's employer.

"You're late," he growled in surprisingly smooth Basic.

"Only by a few minutes," protested Deena, who had checked his chrono on the way across the room. Remembering the waiter, he hurriedly glanced over the flimsiplast menu. "Uh, I'd like a Stereb Special, General Ashen's Endorian chicken, and ghoba fried rice."

The Balosar's antennapalps curled. "Thank you good. And you sirs, you good?"

Gartor Nhagy and the two guards that sat flanking him and Deena—a swarthy, noseless, horned Gotal and a pasty, brain-swollen Siniteen—muttered in the negative, and the waiter hurried off. The Bothan's eyes roamed over the others' plates—piled as they were with steaming slop too greasy and transparently cheap to get anywhere but Nar Shaddaa—and his mouth watered.

Gartor raised his head, and some of the light snuck under his hat to reveal that he was a Trandoshan. "So this is what you're offering?"

Deena glanced toward the boy as though noticing him for the first time: his fair face caked with filth, his once-proud head sagging, his dark hair a mess, his bare feet caked with dust and dried blood. The neural disruptor fitted around his neck kept him in a dulled stupor. Though it was an extremely efficient tool, both for Deena's purposes and those of his employer, Deena himself had lost interest in the human after being obliged to make use of it. The length of chain running from the disruptor collar, necessary only when moving him about, now simply piled on the floor.

"Hrm! Yes, that's him," said Deena Demarakesh. "He's a baseline human, Alderaani, fifteen standard years of age. Physically fit and athletic..."

The Trandoshan shoveled an enormous glob of yobshrimp ghoba fried rice into his mouth. While still chewing it he said, "Have a look at it, Poorra."

The Siniteen wiped snoruuk sauce from his leathery hands, got up, and gave the boy a once-over, starting with the teeth and other facial features. "His eyes—Thesh-Fifties," he grunted. "Fit only to be a slave."

"Well, I should warn you he's very defiant without the neural disruptor," the Bothan said at length. Half of his snouted mouth quirked upward. "Now personally, I and my, uh, employer, we find those to be desirable qualities, but I suppose in your—"

"Ready sir!"

It was the waiter gliding back in, his arms filled with plates, his near-human face a mask of concentration as he deposited them before a salivating Deena Demarakesh. The Balosar had scarcely taken a step back before Deena dug with ravenous energy, forgetting even to chew the first several morsels of General Ashen's sweet and spicy chicken.

"Your employer's... tastes... do not align with mine," said the Trandoshan slowly. The piercing glare of those blood-orange eyes, shadowed beneath the enormous hat, punctured the pleasure of Deena's incontinent mastication. "Ka'Pa requires male humanoids as workers and attendants, not for the uses your kind prefer."

Poorra chuckled in disdain, and Deena paused to glower over his food. Were the Bothan's mouth not too full to speak, he might have defended himself. Then again, he wasn't even here of his own accord. The entire visit to the Smuggler's Moon was strictly a necessary and critical errand; this delicious, disgusting meal was a mere indulgence, and so was conversation.

"Well," he said at last, "breaking an unruly slave shouldn't be too much trouble. The Hutts are known for their ability to get results."

Gartor Nhagy swallowed another steaming mass of food. "Indeed they are."

The Siniteen sat down again. Deena said, "Let's talk pricing, then. My employer's willing to part with this human for a paltry ten thousand Imperial credits."

"Outrageous. It's worth no more than seven."

They spent a few minutes going back and forth, leaving their meals momentarily untouched. Deena was no haggler, though, and he knew that the credits themselves were not really what concerned his employer. What mattered was making sure this boy disappeared.

"We will pay eight thousand," Gartor growled at last.

Having taken another large bite of General Ashen's Endorian chicken, Deena merely grunted and nodded assent.

Wiping his lipless mouth with a napkin, the Trandoshan bowed his head, then produced a debit ledger from under his poncho. The device clicked and beeped as credit chips began to slide into its deposition slot. As he waited, Deena glanced across the restaurant. Their waiter was collecting the bill from another table. Behind them, a portrait of Janus Greejatus gazed upon the scene with bloated solemnity. Nearby the boy remained in place like a baraka tree, a battered shell of a creature. Not a standard week earlier he had boasted that he would escape from Deena's employer, whatever the cost; now thanks to the neural disruptor, he was oblivious to the new hell to which he would soon be delivered.

Swallowing the chicken, Deena turned back to his food and scooped up some ghoba fried rice.

And then the door opened.

The Imperial Palace's next customer paused as the door unfolded itself, cutting the restaurant off from the grime of Nar Shaddaa's streets. He took in the scene before him, noting the positions of the various diners and staff, the furnishings and other obstacles between them, and the door leading to the kitchen—the only other visible exit. Several heads had turned his way; the human's cherfer hide shock boots were too heavy for the cheap synthetic carpet to muffle.

Two Balosar waiters were converging on him: one from the kitchen entrance, the other from one of the tables. The human had already located his objective and was crossing the dining room with long, booming strides.

"You! One! Party one! Wait for table!"

The waiters' antennapalps stood erect as they planted themselves before the human, their taut faces only masks of rigidity to hide the trepidation within. The newcomer stopped, but his muscular frame and the measured confidence of his movements told that he could have walked through them like a ronto through womp rats.

"Get out of my way," he told them.

"You wait for table," one of them snapped, "or go now. No trouble!"

The human brought his hands together, made sure his shata-leather swoop gloves were snug, and planted his left fist in the nearest Balosar's face. The other waiter jolted back as his compatriot crumpled, blood spilling from his smashed nose. Several diners gasped. A third and much fatter Balosar now stood in the kitchen doorway with mouth agape.

"Thanks," the human said, "but I can seat myself."

He held open the left flap of his heavy brown blast jacket, showing the armored vest beneath as well as the long-barreled blaster pistol on his belt. To the waiter who was still standing he said, "You guys ought to go on break."

The waiter he had punched was gibbering to himself in some other language, flecking blood onto his shirt and the carpet, but allowed his fellow to help him up, and they disappeared into the kitchen. Meanwhile, diners were hastily leaving through the other door. The human watched the staff's departure with a gratenite-hard look of contempt. He knew their type. They cast themselves as pepetual victims, poor innocent relocatees from their homeworld, simply trying to run an honest business; yet a brazen crime against sentience had walked right into their establishment, and they had done nothing. They'd get no sympathy from him.

He turned to the only table that was still occupied and barked, "Deena Demarakesh!"

A gnawed scrap of meat fell from the corner of the dark-furred Bothan's mouth. His answer came out shaking. "I know you. You're Kyle Katarn." He turned to the Trandoshan. "He's with the Rebel Alliance."

"Is he now?" asked the Siniteen.

Kyle's eyes stayed locked on Deena Demarakesh like a calibrated targeting laser. "So are you," he said, "and you're coming with me. So is the kid."

The Trandoshan gave a loud snort. The debit ledger was gone, and a bulge had appeared beneath his smoky-gray poncho—as he crossed his arms, perhaps. "I've heard of you, Katarn. You've gotten into enough trouble on this moon to know where you are. This is a legitimate business transaction you're disrupting."

Kyle sized the aliens up for the fourth time in as many standard time parts. They were all sitting down, which put them at a disadvantage, but Kyle had done this sort of thing enough times; he could feel, he could smell their grubby, sauce-stained fingers creeping toward concealed weapons. His muscles charged, ready to explode into movement. Four against one might look like bad odds to most beings, but Kyle Katarn didn't do math the same way he'd been taught in the Imperial Academy.

Besides, it wasn't actually four against one.

"You've sure got a funny definition of legit," Kyle answered, with a grimly pointed look at the tranquilized boy still standing a little off to the side like a sentient mannequin. His blood simmered, his hands ached to wrap themselves around Deena Demarakesh's throat, but he controlled his rage and kept his mind on tactics. If it came to a shootout, the hardest part would be keeping the kid from harm. Meanwhile, he identified two weak points in the enemy formation: the Bothan was wound up tight as an steristeel spring, and his flowstone eyes were wide and fluttering; he would rather run than fight. Meanwhile, the Gotal thug was too relaxed, too confident; when the bolts started flying, he'd flinch.

With his voice hardening to ferrocrete, Gartor Nhagy drew his poncho aside. "The definitions of your Alliance have no. Meaning. Here." With his last syllable the entire table shook, liquids spilling over glass rims, ghoba rice jumping like Jawa beans as a long, wicked-looking metal barrel slammed down on the rim. Resting in the crook of the reptilian's right arm, it was angled toward Kyle Katarn's chest.

It took him less than half a standard time part to recognize a Stouker concussion rifle—and to note the pitch of its humming power pack. It was set to primary fire. Not the best choice for combat in close quarters.

It really was true, what they said about Trandoshan brains.

"You said you're doing business here." Kyle slowly drew aside the right flap of his jacket and unclipped a small bag from his belt. He gave it a shake, letting them hear the unmistakable jangle of the credit coins within. "How many did you say? I couldn't hear you so good from outside."

They didn't answer. He tossed the bag onto the table, making sure it landed on Gartor's right. "Here's a new deal: that's bag's got twenty thousand. You three keep it and finish eating while Demarakesh and the kid leave with me. Then you leave a nice, big tip for the waiters, go back to your boss and tell him the Bothan never showed up, and forget that we ever met. Does that sound good?"

All the eyes around the table were drawn inevitably by the magnetic force of the bag—except those of the Bothan, which stayed twitching and manic. Glistening sweat beaded at the ends of his long whiskers.

In unison the two guards looked up. The Gotal's swarthy, noseless face opened a smile of crooked, protruding teeth. "You really don't know Nar Shaddaa, do you, Katarn? We don't leave tips here."

Kyle kept his eyes on Gartor, knowing he was calling the shots—perhaps literally so, depending on what sort of mood he was in. The Trandoshan looked up, began to cock his head, and—

Behind Kyle there was a crash of glass. Simultaneously the brilliant streak of a high-charged disruptor beam lanced past him, painting the scene in a ruby glow for a split second. A cruet exploded, its contents vaporizing. The Siniteen loosed a blood-curdling scream as a dirty red-gold sheath of disintegrating energy swept over his body, choking away the sound when it reduced his lungs—along with every other organic particle—to ash.

Demarakesh, by contrast, went on screaming.

Meanwhile the Gotal flinched back as Kyle knew he would, almost knocking himself clean over in his chair. The Trandoshan also recoiled as shards from the exploding glassware sprayed his scaly face, jerking the concussion rifle to the right—opposite the way Kyle had leaped—an approximate microsecond before it discharged. Cobalt light burst into a sphere of blue fire centered on the Greejatus portrait, shredding wood, pulverising plaster, and leaving a dust-choked hole large enough to fit a swoop bike. A wave of heat swept through the room.

Knocked off balance by the outer shock wave, Kyle landed hard on his side, though he'd managed to draw his bryar pistol. Ears ringing, vision blurred by dark constellations, he scrambled up and fired as he strafed, searching for cover.

Gartor tipped over the table with a mighty shove, sending unfinished meals crashing to the floor in a heap of gnawed food and shattered betaceramic. The Gotal and Demarakesh huddled on either side of him, blaster pistols in hand. Lasers slashed the dust-ridden air. A flaming paper lantern drifted to the carpet, curling up as it burned.

A red-white bolt zapped over Kyle's shoulder, close enough to singe his blast jacket and crisp his beard. His reply nailed the Gotal in the center of the forehead, dropping him out of sight. Meanwhile, the Trandoshan maniac was fumbling to bring his concussion rifle back into firing position. The weapon clicked loudly as it switched over to secondary mode; this would fire a much tighter and more concentrated energy beam. Even as Kyle took aim at him, though, another disruptor shot tore into the room. Howling with rage and pain, Gartor was knocked sideways and fell, his shoulder covered in a half-charred, half-melted mess of armorweave; the tough poncho had saved him from outright disintegration. His hat went flying, as did the concussion rifle.

Chased by a crazed spray of shots from Demarakesh, Kyle hopped into a booth built into a cleft in the wall. Returning fire from around the corner, he spotted the kid, curled up on the floor two meters away from the overturned table. Even with his consciousness suppressed by the neural disruptor collar, the explosion must have partially broken through to his survival instincts. The Bothan suddenly leaped toward him and landed on all fours, groping for the length of chain still affixed to the boy's collar.

Two laser bolts grazing him in the buttock and the forearm, respectively, were enough to persuade him to reconsider this course of action. The Bothan danced to his feet, shrieking and whooping, and made a hasty retreat for the kitchen door. Kyle started after him—the Bothan had dropped his blaster, so taking him alive was a more viable option—but then Gartor popped up from behind the smoking, laser-riddled table, and sent a chair spinning his way with an overhand throw.

At the last instant Kyle twisted, avoiding a direct collision, but a chair leg caught him in the arm and knocked the bryar pistol from his hand. Still carried forward by his own momentum, he ran directly into Gartor and they tumbled to the floor together.

As soon as Kyle realized he had tumbled to the floor within arm's reach of an angry, wounded Trandoshan, he pushed himself away, rolling into a crouch. Before he could grab the stun baton in his vest, the back-punch of a scaly fist took him full in the chest; though his armor absorbed the worst of it, the blow still sent him head over heels. Landing prone on top of some hard, oddly-shaped object felt like a second blow that left him gasping and coughing.

Gartor snarled with savage rage, stomping closer. Scrambling, Kyle grasped the object he'd fallen on, hoping it was sturdy enough to fend off an angry Trandoshan with. But then his hands felt a metal grip and his ears registered a dangerously humming power pack.

It's still on secondary, Kyle realized.

He had just pushed himself to his knees when the Trandoshan closed in, dagger-toothed mouth opening wide to bite his victim's face off. Clawed hands took Kyle's shoulders in an irresistible grip, but Gartor's expression turned from fury to consternation as he found that he could not pull the human close enough. Looking down, he saw the barrel of his own concussion rifle braced against his gut.

Kyle Katarn gave him a devilish smile.

With burned poncho fluttering, the Trandoshan threw himself back. Kyle squeezed the trigger and the room flashed blue again. The kickback crushed the rifle's stock against his ribs and sent him skidding on his back over three meters of carpet. Gartor Nhagy's waist and legs went spinning the opposite way, while his upper half (what was left of it) bounced off the ceiling before cratering into the far wall, beneath the hole that had been left by the potent beam of concussive energy.

Kyle lay wheezing for a moment, then tossed the concussion rifle aside. Spying his bryar pistol, he grabbed it and crouched beside the still-cowering boy. Some small bits of debris had battered him, but he seemed otherwise unharmed.

Thank the stars.

Behind him there was a shattering din as what remained of the window was broken. Kyle tensed, mentally replaying everything that had just happened—and remembering what had started the shootout.

"Kyle! You all right?!" said a voice.

"No thanks to you!" Kyle barked, glaring over his shoulder.

Wade Vox's high-collared longcoat rippled behind him as he crossed the devastated dining room, his skrag-eating grin bright even in the patches of darkness left by destroyed glowlamps. The trousers and boots were stereotypically Corellian, more holothriller than the real deal. His keen, overeager face was framed by a messy bowl cut, thick sideburns, and a soul patch. His left hand held a shining, silver-plated DL-44 XT blaster pistol, while the Tenloss disruptor rifle dangled from a shoulder strap.

Kyle did not ask why his "partner" on this excursion had come through the window rather than using the door; though he was not long acquainted with Wade Vox, those kinds of antics seemed appropriate for him.

Wade was unbothered by Kyle's gruffness. "How's the kid?"

"Seems to be okay. Just need to get this collar off him—" Abruptly, Kyle leaped to his feet. "Did the Bothan get past you?"

The other man scoffed. "What do you take me for?"

Kyle's eyes flicked to the kitchen door. More than likely, there was a back exit to the building through there. He checked his blaster's power pack and gestured at the boy. "Take care of him and call Jan. Tell her I'll meet you on the roof. I'm going after Demarakesh."

"Have fun."

The waiters and cooks were cowering in kitchen. Smoke billowed from unattended nanowave stoves and shrouded the air. A high-pitched alarm was blaring. Kyle hid his nose under his jacket as he boled through the room, knocking carts out of his way. The exit at the end was an archaic hinged door, left ajar. He kicked it open and found himself in an alley between the Imperial Palace and the next building. Except for the passing lights of overhead speeder traffic, it was as black as a sarlacc's belly.

To the left was a duracrete wall. Ahead, the door to the other building was solid metal and locked; only one way to go. Kyle ran, then caught himself against a gated chainlink fence twice his height; it had almost been invisible in the dark.

Kyle rattled the fence with one hand while fumbling for a glowrod, but the light cast by a large transport passing overhead gave him a good look. Splattered blood shone on the head of a simple mechanical lock and glistened about the little bundle of razor wire that topped the fence. Demarakesh had climbed through that.

Son of a ruskakk is scared, thought Kyle. He should be.

A shot from his bryar pistol took care of the lock, and he was moving again. The sheer duracrete walls on either side seemed to be closing in until the alley strained him out onto a walkway rimming this megablock. The levels above and below hosted garbage disposal docks, with brick-shaped haulers coming and going. The air was tingling with a deep insect-hum of repulsorlift engines, and the hot pungence of fresh trash throttled Kyle's olfactory system worse than the smoke back in the kitchen had.

Every fifteen meters or so, a catwalk provided access to the next megablock. Along the closest one, a furry humanoid figure was half-running, half-limping away.

Even as Kyle's shock boots first rang against the metal, his trigger finger ached. Demarakesh was only halfway across. He could not possibly have been an easier target, but there were still answers to be gotten... and a bolt to the spine was better than he deserved.

Kyle didn't dare run half as fast as he wanted to. The catwalk was only wide enough for one person and had no railing. That was the Vertical City for you: one wrong step on Nar Shaddaa, and you'd be falling for so long that you could scream your lungs out, lose consciousness in midair, wake up, and still have hours to go.

A sudden, palpable twist in Kyle's gut tore at his concentration. Without thinking, he threw himself on his face right in time for a renegade garbage hauler to lumber overhead. At point blank range, the hum of its repulsorlift was a baritone howl that shook the brain in Kyle's skull like a container of Andorian jelly. Straining against it, he craned his neck up and tried to glimpse the hauler's cockpit, wondering what the space-happy lunatic who'd nearly killed him might look like. All he saw, though, was a dirty gray blur as the craft receded into the distance.

Over the engine block were the words BARUK REFUSE MANAGEMENT and HOW'S MY FLYING? followed by a transceiver signal number that had been scraped off.

Kyle's hand was actually halfway to his blaster pistol before he remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. "Get a grip," he told himself with a shaky, joyless laugh.

A fresh jolt of adrenaline hit his system like a stim-shot and got him back on his feet. The stench of the refuse docks gave way to cold winds that roiled in the abyss. The catwalks, Kyle realized, linked the Dumandi District to what looked like a mixed-up skeleton of a building—a starscraper, apparently abandoned mid-construction. Random sections of wall were missing, exposing black-rusted girders that looked like the burnt ribs of an immolated giant. Tattered plastic tarpaulins rippled in the wind like wraiths.

Kyle fought down his instinct to break into a sprint as he entered the construction site. The lights of the Vertical City were rapidly sliced into shadow as he went farther inside. Old crates and lifting machines were haphazardly piled everywhere, and entire rooms looked to be missing a floor. It was a perfect place for a blundering, incautious being to get himself killed.

A tremendous metallic crash echoed through the building. Kyle followed the sound, threading between vertical girders and stacks of equipment. He stayed close to the starscraper's outer wall, where there was still enough outside light to see by. Even so, there were enough chunks of loose ferrocrete or dropped tools to stumble over occasionally. He wished he'd thought to bring his head lamp. If Demarakesh had fled somewhere deeper inside the starscraper—

There he is.

Past a pile of knocked-over sensor poles, a curtain of tarp was drifting shut over a gap in the far wall. Kyle vaulted the debris and yanked the tarp aside, revealing Deena Demarakesh in the next room, hobbling for cover. The Bothan screamed as the thunder of approaching shock boots closed in. Twisting in mid-limp, he brought an autowrench up in a wild, one-handed swing that missed its mark by a kilometer. He dropped the tool as Kyle's tackle took him full-force and slammed him to the duracrete floor. Dust exploded in all directions.

The next thing Kyle knew, he was straddling a demon: a squirming, squealing, slippery little mass of scratching and cursing and biting. Spittle and blood flecked Kyle's face, and clawed fingers jabbed toward his eyes. Tipping his head back, he staggered to his feet, hauling Demarakesh with him by the collar before flinging him sideways into the nearest crate, which rattled with the impact.

Demarakesh bent over as he pushed off from the crate—but the low, bestial hiss that strained through his sweat-soaked whiskers warned that he had some fight left in him. As Kyle's right hook came at him, the Bothan ducked, his clawed right hand moved like a Gallian spike-cobra, striking directly toward Kyle's groin.

Kyle's left hand caught him by the wrist and gave it a good, slow crank as he drew Demarakesh back up to his proper height. The Bothan's scream went higher and higher. Rather than break the arm outright, Kyle settled for planting a shock boot between Demarakesh's legs. The guy wasn't faking this time when he folded in half.

Just about done playing games, Kyle decided. He gathered Demarakesh in a bear hug, then threw him. The Bothan corkscrewed through a plastic tarp, ripping it free as he went, and landed in a tangle on a platform of dynaglass spanning a frame of thin metal girders.

Demarakesh gagged and groaned. Kyle rolled his shoulders, bent down to yank the plastic tarp off, and let the wind carry it away.

The platform they stood on could have fit a landspeeder, and the metal bars stuck out a quarter-meter beyond where the glass ended. Kyle supposed that the architect had a transparent balcony in mind, the kind you'd see in the Manarai Hills or another fancy part of Imperial City. The two of them—Kyle Katarn standing tall, Deena Demarakesh curled on his side—looked down into the black abyss of Nar Shaddaa, the lights of crisscrossing traffic lanes running like rivers of molten silver.

"Had enough, whiskers?"

Calling a Bothan whiskers was a good way to start a fight in polite society, but the Vertical City had never heard of polite society, and Kyle Katarn wasn't about to encroach upon local custom for the sake of this being.

Deena Demarakesh's eyes brimmed over with delirious contempt. "Yeah," he wheezed. "I've had enough."

With the bryar pistol encouraging him, the Bothan spread himself flat on the dynaglass while Kyle went through his pockets, drawing out a small datapad, comlink, wallet, and other items. One was a hypo pen, a medical injector no larger than a stylus.

It could have been a death stick. Then again, it could have been anything.

Kyle straightened up and took a few steps back, blaster in one hand and datapad in the other.

"You shouldn't have bothered, Katarn," Demarakesh said, propping himself up on one elbow. Spittle and blood flecked about his mouth, and his voice sounded like glass sawing through raw meat. "You're wasting your time. We'll get rid of that kid, one way or another."

The kid.

Kyle's fingers dug against the plastisynth casing of the datapad, remembering certain other such devices and the things he had seen on them a standard year ago. He felt like a decade had passed since then, like he could almost forget what he knew had happened at Kolaador and Dathomir...

"You're not putting your stinking hands on him ever again." His trigger finger itched. He wished every word could be the contents of a flechette canister ripping into Demarakesh's carcass.

The Bothan's laugh was indistinguishable from a retch. "Whatever you say. Let's just get this over with. Put me in stuncuffs, drag me on back to the Alliance. You'll catch hell for what you just did to me. I'll be patched up in medbay, and by the time I'm out, Utric'll find us—"

"Your boss isn't gonna get you out of this."

"The hell he won't. It's gonna be your word, and that brat's, against ours. Do you have any idea how hard it's gonna be to prosecute the number-two guy in Alliance Security—and his assistant? You're fracked, Katarn. You did all this for nothing."

Kyle blinked, Demarakesh's question bouncing around inside his skull like a haywire probe droid. One standard year ago, he'd heard a very similar question after being locked inside a dark room by a group of beings who claimed to be Alliance Intelligence agents—though his relationship to the man who'd asked that question was much more complicated now than he could have guessed at the time.

"Who said anything about prosecuting you?" asked Kyle Katarn. "I'm not gonna drag you back to the Alliance, you Gamorrean slime cat. I know how the system deals with this kind of thing. I was there when Crix Madine happened." His eyes narrowed to knife-edge slits, and the recognition that dawned in Deena Demarakesh's face showed that he would have preferred negotiating the razor wire. "You won't answer to the Rebels. You'll answer to us. You'll tell us everything Utric Sandov has done, everything you know and were a part of, and then you're gonna learn a thing or two about justice."

"But I— It— Y-you—" Demarakesh sputtered and slurred, his already pain-stretched face warping with dread and outrage. "You can't be serious! W-what about my rights?! What about the, the Constitution?!"

Kyle had to strain his reply through gritted teeth. He knew this was a mistake, stalling like this instead of calling for the Moldy Crow, but he couldn't help himself. Knowing what Demarakesh was involved in, knowing what kind of atrocities he was covering for, hiding in plain sight inside of the Rebel Alliance, the supposed beacon of light for the galaxy—and seeing him here on the Smuggler's Moon, after being caught trying to sell a child rape victim into slavery, hearing him gibber about his rights and protections under the Galactic Constitution...

"The Constitution's got limits," growled Kyle Katarn, "and you and me, where we're standing right now, those limits are a million parsecs away."

"We're no different from you!" Demarakesh cried, lurching upright—and prompting Kyle to level the bryar pistol with his face. The Bothan held up a feeble hand and continued to babble. "If we're freaks and criminals, it's because that's what you made us. You push us out of galactic society. You hate us even though you refuse to understand us!"

"What the hell are you talking about? Who is us?" demanded Kyle.

Demarakesh only sagged, groaning and pawing at his many injuries. Seeing the state he was in, Kyle backed away another two paces, holstered his blaster, and switched the datapad on.

Or began to. Kyle found his thumb hovering over the power button as though a tractor beam was trying to pull it away. Again the clear, level, sturdy part of his mind was telling him to get out the comlink and call for Jan and Wade, to leave the business of interrogation to the others.

And again, that part of Kyle Katarn was not quite as strong as it usually was. Not at this moment, there on that half-finished dynaglass balcony, kilometers over the surface of the Smuggler's Moon.

He switched the datapad on and started to glance through the file directories. Just a glance, he told himself. See what kind of stuff he—

Kyle Katarn's stomach turned inside out.

There were images.

There were probably going to be, he'd figured that. Figured it abstractly, mentally, as a matter of bare, unvarnished fact, but actually seeing them—

That they were right here on this fracking Bothan's datapad, which didn't even have a digital lock, and—

Kyle's fists contracted, trying to crush the datapad in his fists, turn it into a warped lump of plastisynth and microcircuitry.

But even as the images scrolled past, scorching his retina like cutting lasers, yanking at his innards until he thought they would leap out of his throat, two facts registered before him.

The first was that he recognized some of them. He'd tried to blot them out of his memory, even thought he had succeeded, but it was unmistakable. The images he recognized were ones from the Madine case, ones which had been leaked on the Alliance FleetNet by some disgruntled Intelligence official, when the scandal was still at fever pitch.

The other fact was that there was a block of other images, ones logged as much more recent—

Kyle almost staggered, his gut lurching. He wasn't ready to see, it wasn't possible for a sentient being to steel himself, to endure this—

That poor kid—

That kriffing dirt-sucking freak, Utric Sandov—

But then he realized there were two Bothans in some of those pictures.

Kyle pressed a button, and the datapad's screen went blank. He tore his eyes away, settled on Deena Demarakesh's splayed, crumpled, bloody form.

"It was both of you." Kyle didn't recognize his own voice. Around him, something seemed to be happening to Nar Shaddaa: the sharp-lined cityscape blurring to an indistinct mass of duracrete, the lights of speeder and starship traffic fading, and their glows turning red—

Everything red.

"You don't know what it's like," the Bothan croaked.

Then the bryar pistol was in Kyle's hand and he was aiming, firing. His throat vibrated as he roared out his disgust, a single animalistic syllable beyond all language to express his world-shattering fury, but the sound barely registered to him—perhaps because the blood pounding in his ears seemed to be louder. Meanwhile, Deena Demarakesh whooped and hollered, rolling and jerking back and forth in a feeble attempt to avoid the blaster bolts. He needn't have bothered, though, because instead of burning the Bothan's flesh, Kyle's shots melted the joints of metal support bars and shattered panels of dynaglass. Sparks and chunks and fragments glittered as they scattered into the night.

And then Kyle found himself stock-still, gasping with wrath as the cold breeze of Nar Shaddaa chilled the sweat that now coated his forehead. Before him, Demarakesh was clinging to the central bar like a Rutenian slug-rat. With all the other bars damaged, however, it was slowly but steadily dipping under his weight. Every breath he gave out was a miniature scream. There was no way he could reach the solid edge of the building on his own.

"You can't do this to me, Katarn!" he shrieked. "You have to save me! There's more I can tell you! I can still help you!"

The bryar pistol didn't move. "You'll do anything I tell you?!" Kyle snarled.

"Yeah!"

"You'll give me anything I tell you to?!"

"Every credit I have! Everything I know! EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! I'll give it to you, I swear!"

Kyle stepped to the duracrete edge of the starscraper. The metal framework of the balcony groaned and hissed as it continued to give way. Nar Shaddaa's surface was hundreds of kilometers below. The chunks that he had already blasted off had to be still falling, and would be for hours.

"That's good," he said, "but there's only one thing I want from you."

"Huh?!"

The Bothan's eyes were wild with confusion and hope and beastly desperation as he tracked the bryar pistol. Kyle was lowering it slowly, carefully.

But he stopped when it was pointing at the base of the support bar.

He said, "Give that kid his innocence back."

A red flash, a cough of sparks, and the metal frame finally tumbled free, its bars now forming a cage for the flailing, twisting aggregate of biomass which, it can be speculated, may have once been a sentient creature with thoughts, feelings, rights, and a soul.

But to Kyle Katarn, watching as the whole tangled wreck shrank into the darkness, listening as Deena Demarakesh's howl was consumed by the polluted winds, it seemed as plain as a sunset that not everything that looked like a person actually was one.

After uncounted moments he finally noticed that his comlink was buzzing, and that Demarakesh's datapad was still clutched loosely in his other hand. He holstered his bryar pistol, drew out the comlink, and offered a wide gaze to the black sky above.

Soon enough the Moldy Crow would be there, and Nar Shaddaa would be behind him. Kyle and Jan would be on their way back into the wider galaxy with the child they had rescued and the pieces to a puzzle which, for the greater part of a standard year, they had assumed to be unsolvable. It seemed that they had finally made contact with the invisible parasite that had attached itself to the Rebel Alliance, the enemy within. There were many dark corners to illumine and more demons to exorcise.

CHAPTER COMPLETE

PASSWORD: SEDRISS