The huge crab-like droid dropped fifteen meters toward them, screaming as it fell. The sound was beyond inhuman, sibilant and insectile, echoing through the cavern with ear-splitting vengeance until the thundering crack of impact as its sharp durasteel legs met the rock floor. Hanging glowlamps jumped and swung on the ends of their cables. Benches and chairs and pieces of equipment shook. A wraith-ring of dust blew outward in every direction.

Tash ran for her life even though the dust had blinded her; despite the ringing in her ears, she sensed the murderous machine's razor-sharp tentacles whipping through the air, breaking rock and cutting metal, striking at its victims. No matter what, she had to get away. Wiping her eyes, she found herself stumbling, running up something like stairs—a haphazard arrangement of containers that wobbled beneath her weight. Before she could stop herself she stepped into empty space, fell, and blood-black nothingness exploded in her brain...

Pain like a sonic hammer strike pulsed in her stomach and skull—

Heartbeat, pulse, pulsing blood out of her—

Tash looked up, spat blood, blinked through blood, wiped away hair and blood—

She had fallen and hit something and fallen onto the floor, but the floor was long and narrow and floating and moving, carrying her through the room...

It was a conveyor belt Tash had run onto, fallen onto. It was running between two big metal boxy things. Chambers of some kind, she thought, things Rebus must have used for building or fixing up weapons, like he'd said. She'd fallen onto one of those belts, and somehow or other it had gotten accidentally turned on...

Strange flashes of light and the din of screaming metal made her jump, drew her eyes.

Barely fifteen meters away, the crab-droid was rampaging through the workshop, its tendrils lashing and whirling and spearing, its legs shuffling and stomping...

CLACK-CLACK-clack-clack-CLACK-CLACK!

...kicking and flinging objects like shockballs, smashing the support beams of catwalks and crafting stations, bringing them down in small avalanches of debris. Delicate power modulation units and conductors shorted out and burst into flames or sprouted halos of sparks. Kyle and his team along with Rebus had scattered and were trying to navigate that tumble of chaos—hurdling junk or crawling beneath it, dodging, rolling, scrambling to get away. Several discharged their blasters, but these only added to the confusion and destruction, and worst of all—

Worst of all, there was Zak: insensible from the neural disruptor on his neck, he was tangled up in a dozen tentacles, and the bio-droid was swinging him around ahead of itself as it stalked toward the strike team members.

It was using Zak as a human shield.

"Don't shoot!" Tash screamed. "Don't shoot my brother!"

Whether her voice reached them, she had no idea. Jaykay was currently moving on Quagga, who had been cornered against a dented, smashed-up pressurization chamber the size of a landspeeder. Notwithstanding the risk, the Wookiee warrior was firing his bowcaster with abandon, trying to shoot around Zak's wandering form, aiming for the bio-droid's flanks and legs. But the green-flashing projectiles, when they hit, dissipated harmlessly against a deflector shield of some kind.

Blood continued to stream from the cut in Tash's forehead, but she could hardly even blink to clear the eye into which it ran. Terror was squeezing her throat and all of her insides, locking her in place, turning her limbs to permacrete even as the conveyor belt slowly carried her away somewhere. With tortured movements, she forced air into her compacted lungs, trying to regain control.

Meanwhile Quagga was hesitating more between each bowcaster bolt as Zak's body was moved closer and closer. Finally the droid shoved him against the pressurization chamber's outer wall, using its helpless hostage as a battering buffer. Howling with dismay, the mighty Wookiee warrior grabbed Zak with one huge hand and thrust the bowcaster past him, perhaps hoping that he'd be able to fire from inside his enemy's shield—but now he was well within lethal range of the killing machine.

Jaykay's free tendrils—of which it had many to spare—moved to the point of invisibility. In the blink of an eye, one of those sliver ropes looped around Quagga's weapon arm at the shoulder, while two more ensnared his waist. The bio-droid shuffled backward, taking Zak with it, but kept its opponent pinned...then drew the first tentacle taut and whipped it back.

"HAOWROOOOOOR!" yowled the Wookiee.

Tash's bloodstained eyes tracked an object like a long, thick tree branch as it flew through the air, then landed some meters before her with a splat. With horror she realized it was Quagga's arm, still clutching the bowcaster. Jaykay had plucked it off like the leaf of a hydenock tree during blossom-season.

Tash looked up to see two more silver threads arcing forward. Poor Quagga's head popped from his thick neck, corkscrewing half a meter into the air while his upper torso—sliced neatly in two—made a grotesque hop of its own before collapsing in a splattering pile of gore.

Curled up on his side a stone's throw away, Rebus screamed like a baby.

"YOU BASTARRRRRD!" thundered Wade Vox, but the rage of his voice cracked into despair. Through that entire grisly scene—lasting only a few standard seconds—the other members of the Bryar Force had been pumping laser bolts into Jaykay's rear and sides, feeling assured that they would not hit Zak. Like Quagga's bowcaster, however, they proved useless against the bio-droid's shield.

Arching her back, Tash tried to pull another breath down her throat—and failed, rolled, and fell...

But she woke up soon enough, or she guessed so. Her back hurt, the back of her skull hurt, her heart hurt, the world hurt...

A laser bolt or two went overhead, but she was lying on her back, staring into a hanging glowbulb. She didn't feel like moving, but she decided she had to.

Everything hurt, but the glowbulb hurt the worst, and she had to get away...

Coming back to herself, Tash turned over and started crawling. With almost every breath she spat up blood, but at least she was breathing...

Rock, she thought, wincing as her fingernails scraped against the floor of the cave. I must have fallen off the conveyor belt. I guess that's a good thing...

Surrendering to adrenaline as much as instinct, she got to her feet, fell, went back to crawling, forced herself up again, fell and went back to crawling. She had to get someplace where she would be able to help. Where that was, how she would do so, Tash didn't have the slightest idea, nor was it even a conscious decision on her part. But ever since the time she had learned of her gift, Tash Arranda had done all she could to accustom herself to the Force's guidance; to surrender her own choice of movement and let it move her to wherever she was supposed to be. She had always hoped that this self-taught trust would come through for her in times of crisis, most of all when danger was at its greatest, when the pain and terror were so overwhelming that it thrust her beyond her limits; when all of the time she'd spent studying, all of her thinking, all her knowledge and intellect (which had gotten on Zak's nerves so many times over the years) proved useless.

And so Tash—trapped in a cave with an invincible bio-droid monster that was slaughtering her friends and holding her brother as a hostage—

Tash, battered and bleeding, half out of her mind—

Tash followed her instincts and moved.

More shouts, more crashes of metal, more laser flashes. Rebus had mentioned building weapons here and having them lying around, including explosives. Maybe something like that would be able to hurt Jaykay...but Zak was still in its grip.

Tash kept moving. Tripped onto a wiry black staircase, barely caught herself on blood-slicked hands. "Blood's okay," she told herself. "Head cuts always bleed a lot. It's nothing to panic over..." Found a rail, she grabbed onto it and started climbing.

Climbing. The stairs led up...and up...and up...

"Please...be with me...please...be with me..."

Tash was not in the habit of praying to the Force. Though she had encountered beings that seemed to be more one with it than herself (beings like the Jedi ghost at Nespis) she rarely got the idea of talking to this mysterious energy field. Again, though, nothing she was doing here was exactly a particular choice of hers; her body, including her power of speech, was simply acting out the years-long choice to trust in the Force.

Whatever the case, if the Force was leading her anywhere, she needed to get there soon.

The stairs carried up three meters, five meters, eight, higher and higher. It seemed to be part of a frame of walkways hugging one wall of the gave, providing access to a variety of maintenance tunnels which presumably wound their way through all of Pinnacle Base. It gave her a guba bird's-eye view of the carnage below: Jaykay continuing in the pursuit of its prey, seemingly unstoppable. Even as Tash looked, streaking lines of blaster fire converged on the crab-droid's back, again to no effect. In retaliation, Jaykay howled and lashed out with several tentacles, skewering a hover-cart where Kyle and Jan had been standing a microsecond earlier—the former carrying the latter in his strong arms.

Gasping, Tash reached the grated platform at the top of the stairs, where she was startled by the powerful discharge of another energy weapon. Grasping the rail to keep herself steady, she saw it was the disruptor rifle of Wade Vox, who had rushed up here to get a good firing position on the crab-droid.

"Stang it!" he said. "Tash, what in the name of all Alderaan's ghosts are you doing up here?!"

The girl's body was too exhausted and her mind was too addled for her to supply an answer. The gunslinger kept talking, but she ignored the words and simply dropped to her knees beside him. That gave her a new pain to add to the list, but she ignored it and reached out to the Force.

Because she thought—hoped—intuited—knew, somehow—that this was it. This distance, this spot well out of the monster's range, this was where she was supposed to be right now in order to help.

It didn't take much. Just a short moment of closing her eyes, a heartbeat of fierce effort, and she pushed away the pain. The Force showed her what she was supposed to do.

She didn't know how to beat this bio-mechanical monster, but that was all right. From what little she'd read, Jedi always tried not to get too caught up in the big picture; they wouldn't give up a fight simply because they didn't understand how the victory would be won. They lived in the moment and responded to what they saw right in front of them; and what Tash saw, with her vision narrowed and brought into clarity by the Force's subtle workings, was nothing but her little brother.

Tash's little brother, who needed her.

In an instant she remembered—or was shown—the power of the Force to influence the minds of others. Tash herself had used this power to calm the rage of Borborygmus Gog's creature, Eppon, and on a number of occasions since. Most recently, she had used it on Jaykay once already, aboard the Hospital Platform. During a brief moment of lucidity, being stirred from her trance, she had confused Jaykay's mind, preventing it from noticing her, Kyle, Wade, and the others as they hid in the maintenance sublevel. If she'd done it before, she could do it again.

Had to do it again.

"Stang it all!"

Startled, Tash opened her eyes. The voice was practically unrecognizable, but she saw it must have come from Wade. He still had his disruptor rifle braced against his shoulder, charging and firing down on the crab-droid again and again, with no visible damage. A wet line that shone in the orange glowlamps was running down from his eye.

He was sobbing. He had seen the gruesome demise of Quagga: a mighty Wookiee who had also survived Jabba's sadistic demolition games, who had fought bravely for the Rebellion, who had stood with the Bryar Force...and who had hoped that at the end he would be able to retire and open a droid shop in Mos Eisley, but his dream had passed with him into the Force. And Wade lamented more than Quagga's death. He had saved Zak from the homicidal droid Versch on the Hospital Platform; and like Kyle Katarn, he blamed himself for Zak being recaptured by the cult on Far Qasqi, and it was devouring him like a ravenous swarm of drog beetles.

Tash felt it, felt how much Wade Vox was hurting. She was hurting too. Everything hurt, hurt so much that her eyes kept blurring, but she knew she had to hold on.

And so did he. The Force had chosen him. That was why Tash had given him one of the Lorrdian gemstones, the gifts from Vima Da-Boda: because Tash solved the old woman's riddle: the graveyard's castaway. "The Graveyard" was what they called the remains of Alderaan after it had been destroyed by the Death Star. Like the Arrandas, Wade was Alderaani—and unlike Jan Ors, he was sensitive to the Force. He was chosen.

When Wade pulled back to check his disruptor's power level, Tash put a hand on his arm. In a voice that was so calm and resonating and peaceful that it couldn't be just her own, she told him, "Wade, just wait for a minute. The Force is with us."

He stared back at her like she was his own mother come back from the dead.

Tash did not elaborate, nor did she wait for an answer. Withdrawing her hand, she closed her eyes again and reached out to the Force.

Reached out for the pulsing orbs which were minds on the cave floor below. It took no time at all to single out Jaykay. She had no idea what species it was within that shell of micropistons and electrodrivers and circuitry and armor...but it was alive and it was part of the Force. It gave off violence like puss oozing from an infected wound, but at the center of its being, at the essence, Jaykay gave off light. Luminous like Kyle Katarn and the other beings it was trying to kill. Luminous like Zak, still caught in its metallic clutches.

And luminous like Tash.

Touching that violent presence Jaykay, Tash felt what she knew she would—the blooming of contempt and spite and rage that rose up in her own heart. How much she could hate this thing, this monster...but she knew that following those feelings was not the way of the Jedi. The Force could be used to strike and wound and crush and kill, but that was the path of the dark side—the path of Darth Vader, Jerec, and the clone of Tash that she had confronted on Dantooine. And she had sworn on that planet that that was not the sort of person she would be— someone who used the Force as a weapon of destruction.

The Transcendent had violated Tash and her brother in ways that neither had known were possible, and done the same to others, kids even younger than them. They had brainwashed and murdered other people, members of the Rebel Alliance who must have once been brave and good, like Luke Skywalker. And Jaykay had just dismembered Quagga and was using Zak as a human shield.

Even knowing all that, seeing all that, Tash chose not to hate Jaykay. She didn't want to hurt or kill the bio-droid. She just wanted her brother back.

Let go of him, he said, pressing her thoughts on that strange little consciousness. Let my brother go. Let him go let him go let him go let him go...

Below, bio-droid seemed to stumble, allowing Ktrame Zaposug to slither out of its reach.

Stop stop stop let him go let him go...

Tash pushed harder and harder, seeing that it appeared to have some effect. But all she was doing was slowing Jaykay down. It was still stomping around, slashing and chasing the others...

But then she saw something interesting. Not with her eyes, though. It was more that she felt it—felt a very small event which anyone would have missed if they were relying on their ordinary senses.

The small event in question being the neural disruptor around Zak's neck unlocking itself, falling free, and clattering to the floor.

Tash sensed it only barely, incidentally, as her attention was focused on the crab-droid. Curious and confused, she expanded her Force perception—and almost jumped, because one of the sentient presences down there reacted to her.

Faced her.

Reached out to her.

Grinned at her.

Zak!

Because it was Zak. Tash could hardly believe it, because her brother had been resisting the Force all this time. Now, though, he was radiant with it, blazing like a firecracker. He hadn't just been helpless. In his captivity, he must have finally called on the Force, and he had just used it to free himself from the neural disruptor!

Tash was so happy that she wanted to cry, but she knew there was still a lot to do. In the Force, the Arranda children joined hands, joined energies, and focused all their combined will toward Jaykay.

Let go let go let go let go let GO!

Wiping sweat and tears from his eyes, Wade Vox had a very hard time looking away from Tash Arranda as she knelt beside him. It was more than the fact her eyes were closed, more than the fact that her face—marred though it was by bruises and half-dried channels of blood—looked stunningly, impossibly calm, considering she was just a teenager. In itself that was incredible, because Wade could swear he'd seen that exact expression once before in his life, on the face of Ferus—his acquaintance from Alderaan who had turned out to be a Jedi Knight before his tragic death at the hands of the Empire.

No, what stunned Wade, what enraptured him, was nothing available to his regular senses. He could feel that something invisible was taking place, something Tash was doing. The Force was moving through her.

Finally he tore his eyes away. To his astonishment, the crab-droid below had fallen almost completely still. It stood in the center of the cave, shuffling about on his deadly-sharp durasteel legs but no longer attacking. Kyle, Jan, and the others were still scattered all over the place. A few continued to fire, but most of them seemed stunned or injured. MIMIC was sparking as he limped away, and it looked like Jan had gotten winged by a piece of debris; Kyle was trying to get a bacta patch on her. Rebus was simply hiding like the cowardly Imperial he was.

Wade was just about to wonder, angrily, where the absolute kriff Mort and his team were...

But then the bio-droid's assemblage of tentacles suddenly slackened. Zak spilled to the floor like an old sack of M'shinnian hydrocorn rice, then started to crawl on bloodied knees and elbows, dragging himself to safety. His captor listed and flexed its serpentine members, buzzing as angered by his escape.

"Wade, it's your turn." The girl's voice was faint, rigid with pain. "I—we can't hold it much longer. It's you, you've got to do something."

If her strangely authoritative word of encouragement seconds earlier had been the plugging in of a power converter, that was switching it on. All this time Wade had been embarrassing himself, losing his fragging mind and running all over this cave, wasting his disruptor's energy cells on useless shots, blaming himself and crying... What had he been thinking? His old man would have whipped the Tarnoongan tar out of him!

"I know what to do," Wade heard himself say. He let go of his Tenloss disruptor rifle, allowing the strap to catch it, and produced the lightsaber hilt from his longcoat pocket. "If this thing won't cut through that shield, nothing will."

Tash's awed look was suited to the occasion. This was the moment the ghost of Atton Rand, the Jedi Master, had spoken of. This was the moment Wade Vox would become his dream.

There was just one problem: he was between fifteen and twenty meters off the ground, and already the bio-droid was sluggishly moving after the still-crawling Zak. Descending via stairs would take too long, and the alternative was prohibitively lethal.

"But ronto snot!" Wade said, his spirit flagging. "I dunno how I'm supposed to get down there in time!"

"Perhaps I could be of assistance."

Wade and Tash whirled around. Standing behind them was a tall, hooded man in ragged commoner's clothing. He was gray-skinned, thin as a whip, and had a long, dark-eyed face that exuded preternatural calm. The stranger spread his hands in a placating gesture—in the process evincing fingers that were much longer than natural to a human. Though Wade had met many alien species (near-human and otherwise) in his travels, he would have found these traits a bit disturbing, albeit somewhat less so than his sudden appearance. The latter fact proved to be no eerie mystery, however, for one of the nearby maintenance hatches stood conspicuously open.

In spite of everything, Wade made no move to attack or defend. Without recognizing or comprehending anything, he understood intuitively that there was more to this man than met the eye—and that he was a friend. As for Wade, this was the moment which called him to suspend his understanding and need to be in complete control. So there was no time for any questions—except one.

"How?" he asked.

The figure extended a long arm. "Take my hand and hold on—now."

There was no arguing with that commanding tone. Without hesitating, Wade complied, shifting to allow the man to pass him. Tash was still on her knees, gazing up at the stranger with a mouth that gaped and eyes that streamed.

The newcomer gave her a glance—and if Wade didn't know better, he'd have thought the guy came close to stumbling there for a second. His voice, when he spoke, barely broke a whisper. "I'm sorry, Tash. You'll have to wait just a little longer."

With that, he stepped over the edge of the catwalk, pulling Wade after him. Wade's instinctive cry of alarm was cut short by amazement—because as they fell, the stranger's skin seemed to stretch and ripple and flow and change color. The next standard time part, the stranger was gone, and Wade was hanging from a fistful of blue fur along the belly of some creature he'd never seen before. Somewhat larger than a fully-grown mynock, it was sailing down through the air on a pair of thick, leathery wings, whipping its tail and shrieking like a Corellian banshee bird.

In mere seconds they were almost to the ground—where Jaykay had almost caught up to the still-crawling Zak Arranda. "HANG ON, KID!" Wade screamed. The boy gawked upward in amazement as the gunslinger and his apparently shapeshifting airborne steed passed overhead. Wade let go and dropped into a crouch, directly in front of the seething, stomping monstrosity that had killed their comrade Quagga.

Clack-clack-CLACK-CLACK-clack-clack-CLACK-CLACK!

"WADE, WHAT THE KRIFF—?!" shouted Kyle Katarn from somewhere.

But Wade had no answer for him. He had emptied his mind and turned himself over to the instinct-beyond-instinct that had guided so many of his impossible shots.

Become pure pazaak, Atton had said.

Wade didn't know what that meant. Despite his initial irreverence, he'd decided that it must have been some kind of ancient Jedi riddle or proverb, an element of their credo exemplifying self-abandonment to the all-powerful guidance of the Force.

Whatever Tash had done to slow Jaykay down, it had clearly worn off by now. Emitting a beastly squeal, the bio-droid gathered its dozens upon dozens of tentacles, then snapped them forward like a brood of pouncing rawl-cobras from the low-gravity moon of Ranroon in the ancient Empire of Xim the Despot. Sharp as vibro-saws, they could slice any human into a pile of sizzling meat—especially Wade Vox, since every single one was aimed at a different part of his body.

With every iota of energy in his muscles, Wade sprang forward and to the right, tottering wildly, very nearly losing his balance, and allowing the mass of metal strange—spread out over a radius of nearly a full meter—to hiss past him. Several sliced chunks from the flap of his longcoat.

Recovering himself, Wade raised the lightsaber over his head and thumbed the activation plate. A beam of glorious white rimmed with crimson sprouted from the hilt, humming with deadly power. Jaykay's squirming mass of tendrils rippled to circle back and slash through his body, but proved a microsecond too late; Wade swept his Jedi weapon down, and its arc of plasma cut through them all at once, letting them fall uselessly to the ground.

Jaykay squealed in fury.

Without hesitating, Wade took the lightsaber in both hands and plunged it into the hybrid-creature's midsection. A miniature star was born where plasma blade met deflector shield. Even as it seared his eyes, Wade put all his weight into the lunge and roared from the throat as his saber's power cell—flawed and cobbled-together though it was, just like himself—poured energy into the defensive barrier until it broke. Jaykay recoiled, but Wade followed for a stride and swung upward, slicing off one of the bio-droid's front legs.

Another squeal. Wade jumped, not knowing why since he was still blind, but as his legs moved beneath him, he understood that he was running over the droid's back; it had made a clumsy attempt to trample him. Almost as an afterthought, he slashed down to the side, hearing another insectile wail as his blade bit deep.

He hopped from the creature's back and landed, trying to blink the blindness away as Jaykay's wounded charge carried it on for five or six more meters. The lightsaber hummed in Wade's ears, its glow impressed in his dazzled eyes—the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard or seen.

But even in that ecstasy, Atton Rand's words echoed in his heart: Become the dream.

In the dream, that glorious weapon's moments were numbered and brief.

Artfully, almost carelessly, Wade tossed the lightsaber over his shoulder, listened to its hum pinwheeling and undulating as it spun in a high arc, until it landed right beside Jaykay and exploded with the force of a concussion grenade.

With his vision beginning to clear, Wade turned around, drawing his DL-44 XT pistol with the ease of a breath. Even as he did so, a second explosion shattered the door via which Kyle's team had entered. Mort and Rookie One came bursting through the smoke, took stock of the situation with a glance, and sent a continuous stream of blaster fire toward the wounded monstrosity. More shots came from across the cave—Kyle and Jan and the others, presumably—and Wade joined in like there was no tomorrow.

The bio-droid sparks and snarled and thrashed as energy beams fell around it like hail. Even with one of its pincer-like legs gone, it was frighteningly fragile, covering great distance with savage leaps like a Yavin moss-hopper. Rather than attacking any of them, however, it seemed to be fleeing deeper into the cavern.

Wade hesitated and looked, trying to guess what the thing was up to. His eyes alighted on the door which had opened into another section of the workshop when Jaykay first attacked; they'd all forgotten it during the mayhem. Sure enough, someone was scrambling out of that room. It looked like a Mon Calamari encased in a bulky, white-armored like support suit with blinking indicator lights.

"Fale Rottwerm," Wade hissed through his teeth.

"Fale Rottwerm—you're dead, you kriffing child-mutilating psychopath," snarled Jan Ors.

Looking away from her was almost impossible; she'd gotten clipped by some debris that the bio-droid had thrown, and Kyle had needed to carry her to safety as the workshop practically collapsed around them. A bacta patch and a stimshot got her stable for now, but that did nothing for the crushing pressure in Kyle's heart, the nausea that churned and threatened to overwhelm him, many times worse even than what he'd felt over Quagga's death.

And yet Kyle, crouched beside his...well, no way around it; Jan was the only woman he would ever love...but he managed to look up.

And there, indeed, was Fale Rottwerm, teetering and tottering as he ran toward Jaykay, who was leaping as if to rendezvous with him.

"Get him for me," Jan whispered. "And for the kids."

"Copy that." With his E-11 smashed during the pandemonium, Kyle swiftly drew his SE-14r light repeater, sending a spray of staggered beams toward the mad doctor. He wasn't the only one. Sparks and chunks of rock and metal fragments flew in all directions. Kyle was certain he'd gotten a few hits, but Rottwerm didn't fall; instead he jumped on top of Jaykay, clinging to its segmented main chassis for dear life. "Take me to safety! Hurry!" he cried in his modulated, sexless voice.

The creature obeyed at once. Still chased by laser fire, it bounded to the far end of the cave, crashing through the secondary door which Mort's team had originally hoped to enter through, and disappeared.

And the room was quiet.

Kyle wheezed and almost dropped his SE-14r, but managed to holster it. The cave's sudden peacefulness was so jarring that it was almost painful. The rock ceiling seemed to be spinning above...while beneath him, anchored in place like a true center to the universe, lay Jan.

His need to say something to her was so overpowering that he could say nothing at all. If only they didn't have to be here, doing this. If only they could be someplace quiet, someplace like Sulon, a place with golden fields and simple, straight-dealing neighbors who lived just over the hill...

"Kyle...c'mon." Jan pusher herself up on one elbow and brushed a loose tuft of hair from her lovely eyes. "We've still got work to do."

While she sat up, Kyle straightened and found himself stammering. "Jan, when this is over, I—I mean, we..."

She didn't cut him off, only smiled sadly, and for whatever reason he couldn't go on. At once he understood. This wasn't the time. They were still on a mission and he was still in command.

Grim though they were, he set about with his duties, the first of which was to take stock of his team. MIMIC was damaged. Rebus had given himself some good cuts while fleeing through upended machinery and debris, but Dr. Zaposug was treating him. The only casualty was Quagga. Staving off nausea, Kyle dutifully retrieved the fallen warrior's ceremonial bandolier. Wookiee custom dictated that if the body could not be returned to Kashyyyk for funeral rites, a prized possession of the deceased had to be substituted. It shamed Kyle to think of leaving Quagga's actual remains here, but he had a hunch they would need to make a speedy exit from Pinnacle Base. In the meantime, they had to move fast, because another child was still in danger.

Right now, though, there were some questions that needed answering.

Now reunited, the two teams were coalescing in the middle of the ruination, Zak and Tash clinging to each other and sobbing with relief. Recalling the close encounter with Jaykay from the Hospital Platform, Kyle supposed Tash's Force abilities were to thank for Zak's escape from the murderous machine cold clutches. However...

"Wade!" he called. Marching up to the gunslinger, he pointed up to the catwalks where he had been moments ago. "What the hell just happened? You were up there, and you—"

Wade chuckled nervously, wearing a look of abject confusion. "Well, I'm not sure what to tell you. There was this guy, and—"

"Uncle Hoole!" Tash cried, jumping to her feet and pulling Zak with her. "That was Uncle Hoole! He's here!"

"I get it now!" answered Wade, snapping his fingers. "You said he's a Shi'ido—a shapeshifter. He came outta the maintenance shafts, and then he turned into a...into a whatever that was—"

The girl was all but jumping up and down. "He turned into a shreev! T-they're these flying things from the planet S'krrr that—that—well, never mind that!" Eyes bulging, she turned back and forth. "Where is he? UNCLE HOOOOOOLE!"

Her desperate call bounced off the cavern walls and echoed back on her, but no answer came. The question lingered...but slowly, one after the other, everyone's eyes went to the doorway that Jaykay had smashed through in its frantic retreat.

"Enough—enough! Release me!"

Fale Rottwerm half-leaped, half-fell from Jaykay's back, bracing himself against the outside wall of his laboratory. The inside of his rang with chiming alarms as his suit registered various forms of damage. Flipping open the carbo-plas panel protecting his torso control box, he pawed at the switches and toggles, trying to calibrate his systems to compensate, but it was useless. In spite of Jaykay's agility, he had been hit at least a half-dozen times. The suit was as much armor as anything else, but the sputtering HUD readouts of his egg-like helmet showed that the internal temperature and humidity regulation system was inoperable. Likewise, the primary and secondary power cells supply his vital monitors, helmet sensors, and other onboard instruments had been damaged and were close to critical.

With a feeble motion, the doctor managed to throw the latch of his emergency pain suppression injector, dumping a potent cocktail myoplexaril, spectacillin, and (of course) liquefied morpheon into his system. Only with this would he be able to withstand direct exposure to the atmosphere of a natural airbreather—the atmosphere of humans. Only then would he be able to...to...

The doctor's train of thought stuttered. He was not sure of his next course.

Against his will, he had accompanied Saw Gerrera to the workshop to take part in this brazen ambush. But he'd gotten his revenge for the ape-human's meddling. Though Gerrera's command of the soldiers was unassailable, Jaykay, being the doctor's creation, would only answer to Rottwerm. Though prone to erratic behavior at times, the bio-droid had performed admirably in this instance, remaining hidden until after Gerrera had expired (a victim, ironically, of his morpheon addiction rather than the violence of Kyle Katarn, who at least initially had tried to take him alive). But the subsequent confrontation, observed by Rottwerm from the darkness of the adjacent room, had taken an unaccountably disastrous turn. His calculations had not accounted for failure so dire.

Now he was on the ropes. He had used his suit's comlink to call for help, but no answer came; it seemed that Pinnacle Base's garrison had in fact been crushed, leaving no one but Jaykay to defend Rottwerm and his research.

Yes, research, he thought as the morpheon coursed through his system and turned his veins to liquid gold. With the symphony of flesh underway, that was all that mattered to him. Soon nothing would matter at all, but until then...

CLANK-CLANK-clank-clank!

Jaykay had shifted to point its visual sensors back down the hall. Rottwerm tried to look, but his helmet's readout was thickening with static, so that he could barely recognize the lone humanoid figure that had followed them.

"Defend me," he rasped. "Kill him."

The bio-droid hissed in acknowledgment and moved. Straightening himself with great effort, Rottwerm focused on unlocking his laboratory, his center of power, his sanctuary, his only home—of course he would go there (where else?). However, his helmet's vision continued to fail, his hands were still encased in the thick flipper-gloves, and his coordination was rapidly being overwhelmed by the drug injection. Though he managed to insert the Red Key into its slot, he couldn't seem to get it out.

Crashing metal and grunts and other strange noises reached the doctor's muffled ears. After five tries he gave up, left the Red Key in place, and stumbled half-blind into the laboratory, zigzagging and banging against the walls as he went, disturbing shelves and knocking specimen containers to the floor. Glass shattered, organs twitched, broken electro-instruments sparked, and chemical soup sloshed to form slippery pools.

Staggering onward, the doctor plunged his plasteel-sheathed hands into various release latches across the seams of his suit. Armored segments clicked and hissed as they released, allowing the foul air to rush in upon his grafted, blistering alien flesh. In spite of the drugs, the pain was indescribable—burning and peeling and gnawing and squeezing. One by one the pieces of his shell broke off and clanged to the once-sterile floor; the crash of the barrel-shaped torso casing was ear-ringing, and his shoulders and spine screamed, unable to bear being separated from its weight so suddenly.

Golden-black delirium washed over him and through him, drowned him and violated him. His relocated eyes wept bloody tears when he passed his reflection in a dynaglass display case. As he had told Zak Arranda, Fale Rottwerm was his own first work...and his first failure. He had been too hasty, attempting to transcend too soon, when his knowledge was incomplete...

But Cycsila is still pleased, Cycsila loves me, I gave Ezra to Cycsila, Ezra is near-perfection, Ezra will be glorious morsel, Cycsila will perfect me

I am a beautiful Mon Calamari and I am a beautiful woman and I will swim in a beautiful ocean and I will be a beautiful fish oh I wish oh I wish I were a fish hold my fish as I fish to be wish

Metal wept and glass exploded—close by, far too close, mere meters behind him. Some of the noises, he knew, were from Jaykay. It seemed impossible, but whoever, whatever had chased him here from the workshop was here had gotten inside the laboratory.

Damn him, or it, whatever it was... It had helped Wade Vox in his attack with that Jedi weapon! But no matter, no matter... All that mattered was the symphony. All that mattered was that Mother was fed.

The din of brutal combat receded as Rottwerm turned one corner, then another. Free of the armor, the suit, the lies, the judgment of others, he ran across sunless seas and swam through visceral skylines, drinking of Cycsila's wondrous ichor, being drunk by the blisters and the rotting that crawled across his exposed and dripping folds of skin.

When he came back to himself, he was bent over a computer station, gazing into its flashing readout lights as his hands worked upon the controls of their own accord. It is my invention, he realized. My beautiful, beautiful machine. If only I had but invented this years ago, I would be a beautiful woman, I would be a beautiful beautiful fish, and Zak Arranda would be but a beautiful beautiful girl, and Mother Cycsila would eat her and she would eat me and all of us would be would be so very very happy

"SKRREEWUURGEEEUURGNGRNGRR-NGEEURRRAWWWWWWW!"

Dr. Rottwerm started and looked up, blinking blood and puss from his eyes. The next din that smote his hearing was entirely kinetic: a bashing, thrashing cannonade as the chassis of Jaykay tumbled down seven meters of stairs from the entrance and collapsed in a smoking, sparking heap beside the purring surgical machine. Rottwerm's mouth—flattened and elongated by crude Arkanian sonic-surgical techniques to resemble that of a fish—gulped in dismay. That the bio-droid had been overpowered and thrown so savagely was astonishing enough, but that was only the beginning of it.

The control cylinder within the main body segment, the sophisticated capsule supporting the JK-13 droid's pilot, had been ripped open. Lubricants from its electrodriver system were oozing from ruptured micropumps...but the largest puddle spreading out was of the specialized chemical solution—mostly pristine water havested from the aquifers of Cestus, though with a few modifications—that kept the dashta eel in a state of relative comfort and lucidity.

Or that had done so, in any case.

Atop the stairs there loomed a muscular biped of three towering meters, coated in thick white fur. Curved horns flanked a simian face where puss-colored eyes glowered over a mouth of razor-sharp teeth, glinting yellow in the murky lights of the surgical chamber. Straining through his drug-induced haze, Rottwerm identified the creature, though that was stupefying in itself. It was a wampa ice beast, hailing from the frozen world of Hoth in the far Outer Rim, where the Rebel Alliance had once built its headquarters. How such a creature, acclimated by the forces of evolution to survive in extreme cold, could be on a planet such as Da Soocha V, was incomprehensible...

Unless...

For a horrible moment Rottwerm's eyes were captured by those of the wampa. It seemed to be staring at him with a finality and understanding utterly beyond the cognitive limits of a beast. Its intent was lethal, but it was not driven by hunger or territorial instinct.

How was it possible? Had it not been an ordinarily proportioned humanoid that chased Rottwerm here? Had the morpheon taken him away from himself altogether? Or had the very universe, at long last, been unfurled by Mother Cycsila and tipped into wonderful madness?

A pitiful aquatic gibbering broke in on his thoughts, and he realized the wampa was not alone up there. Pinned within the durasteel grip of a massive clawed hand was a wriggling, glistening coil of flesh, squealing and weeping slime as it struggled vainly to escape.

The wampa glanced briefly down at its captive.

Then spoke in a rough, throaty voice like the grinding of Dromund Kaas gravel.

"Despite myself, I owe you a compliment. There is a speck of genius in you—to have accomplished such...horrors."

The wampa clenched its fist, and the helpless creature made a final squeal as it was sliced and crushed to pulp. What happened next, however, was truly extraordinary: the wampa's furry form twisted, rippled, and seemed almost to deflate like a Nosaurian balloon. Mere seconds later, it had reshaped itself into a tall, thin, gray-skinned humanoid with black eyes and a face that was at once almost clean of emotion, yet unmistakably resolute.

The man dropped the mess from his hand: a blob of shredded, slimy tissue mingled with slivers of crushed microcircuitry. "I've studied the dashta eels of Ord Cestus," he said, his voice now matching with his humanlike appearance. The rise of a single brow betrayed his disgust. "They are radical pacifists—as much from biology as from culture. That is why the X'Tin and the Confederacy ultimately failed in their project, but you succeeded. You drove this dashta eel mad by forcing it to kill, then enslaved it with a crude cybernetic interface. Your knowledge is truly a loss to the galaxy."

Rottwerm paid little attention to this sanctimonious monologue. "I know what you are now," he mused. "Shape-shifting in such a way—only the Shi'ido are capable of that. You could only be one man: Borborygmus Gog."

"I'm afraid you are mistaken." The stranger's disdain was simultaneously understated and yet palpable. Slowly, deliberately, he started down the steps. "My erstwhile partner met his end years ago on the planet Kiva, in the defunct laboratories of Project Starscream. I am Dr. Mammon Hoole, anthropologist."

Fale Rottwerm sneered. A trail of mingled puss and snot strained from the slits in his artificially flattened nose. "Doctor, indeed. I've never heard of you."

"For better and for worse, my reputation is obscure," Hoole granted. "A natural consequence of being hunted by the Empire. These days I travel the galaxy for my research. However..." The Shi'ido's black eyes began to narrow. "...I also make a point, when permitted by circumstance, to deal with those who sully my profession, and those of scientists everywhere. Gog was not the first, nor was he the last...and neither will you—Mister Rottwerm."

"I...am a Madame Doctor," Rottwerm growled, his bony shoulders tensing, his spindly fingers gripping the edges of the nearby console. His surgical machine, though not fully repaired, was prime to engage. It needed to be, deserved to be, because Rottwerm's first work had failed, but now he could succeed, he would be a beautiful fish a beautiful girl a beautiful Mon Calamari a beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful

Now halfway down the steps, Hoole inspected his right hand, which was still coated with the dasha eel's viscera. His impassive face rippled in disgust. "I have always been a man of science—not a soldier. The taking of life, even nonsentient life, is repulsive to me. But in recent years I have done many things that were repulsive to me, in order to atone for my mistakes. And you, Fale Rottwerm, must pay for what you have done."

Rottwerm decided he'd had enough. With one hand he slammed the ignition button of the surgical machine. With an electric whine the multi-segmented device came to life, spinning crazily. The lights in the room dimmed, nearly failing completely as Rottwerm's invention sucked reserves from the already strained power grid. At the same time he drew a blaster pistol from a concealed drawer in the console, primed it, and fired rapidly six times. The red flashes were torment to his eyes, and he cried out. Next he knew, Hoole was neither on the stairs nor the floor.

"Hrrerrgh!" Rottwerm said, stepping away from the console and waving the blaster about. "What did you do, Hoole—turn into a mynock and fly up somewhere?! I know I got you at least once..."

As if in mockery, the shrill chitter of a mynock answered him from somewhere overhead. Rottwerm tracked the sound, fired again, and sparks rained down. Meters away, the surgical machine rumbled as it spun along its advanced gryo-tracks.

"So this is what it is—Doctor Hoole?!" Rottwerm called. "A game of nexu and womp rat? You've hunted me down here, so do you intend to kill me? Isn't that barbaric to you? Why not turn me over to the Alliance authorities?"

Hoole's voice echoed through the room, seeming to descend upon him from every direction at once; it was like the voice of Mother Cycsila, far below in the womb of Da Soocha V, and the resemblance made Rottwerm sway on his flattened feet. "I do believe in the rule of law. I believe in courts, the right to a trial, and all the rest. But after what you did to my nephew...what your friends did to him and to my niece...

"For that, I promise you will die."

"Hagh!" Rottwerm tried to laugh, but was forced instead to expel the phlegm which had been collecting in his throat. "Then why not show yourself, Hoole? You're afraid...I've already hit you once! A Shi'ido won't be able to maintain a dangerous shape while wounded."

"In that you are also mistaken—for the last time."

Now Hoole's voice was truly lethal. Chilled to the bone even through the embrace of the morpheon, Rottwerm quaked with dread before recovering himself and realizing that his opponent was on the floor of the chamber...directly behind him! He spun, bringing the blaster around.

Instead of Hoole, though, he saw the enormous, greasy frame of Bor Gullet. Rottwerm was too dumbfounded to move. The Locutor had descended into the womb of Cycsila over an hour ago! What was it doing here, unless—

Rottwerm screamed as a dozen tentacles lashed up at him like thick, powerful whips. One smacked his right arm so hard that it snapped backward on the elbow. He screamed and the blaster went flying. Before he could fall, four other limbs encircled his own as well as his torso, and the remainder fell on him from all sides, smacking and battering and slamming him against the floor.

"Gog and I made experiments of ourselves, much as you did!" crowed the thunderous voice of Hoole-Gullet. "We genetically altered ourselves to enhance our shapeshifting ability, well beyond what is natural even to a Shi'ido!" He raised Fale Rottwerm overhead and tightened his grip, grinding the mad scientist's fracture bones to the tune of hellish screams. When the accused ran low on breath, Hoole slithered forward, lining himself up with Rottwerm's oozing eyes.

"Look upon me," the Shi'ido whispered. "You covet this, the changing of shapes, thinking it transcendence—but you understand nothing." As he went on his voice rose and rose, quaking with rage that he had not felt in decades. He was not a violent man, and he thought less of himself for taking pleasure in dealing out pain, but these months he had been trapped here, knowing what Zak and Arranda had gone through, was beyond his ability to quantify. Pure, white-hot vengeance enveloped him. "I can imitate a thousand-million species perfectly, and be impossible to distinguish...but those are only accidents. My form, my substance, my essence, will always be Shi'ido! AND YOU...!"

Slowly but surely the tentacles extended and drifted aside, until Rottwerm was suspended directly over his own surgery machine, which was still gyrating ravenously.

"YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A HUMAN! YOU WILL ALWAYS BE A MAN! YOU HAVE NO BARBELS! YOU HAVE NO GILLS! YOUR FINGERS ARE NOT WEBBED! YOU HAVE NO OVARIES AND YOU PRODUCE NO EGGS! YOU CANNOT SURVIVE IN AN AQUATIC ENVIRONMENT! YOU ARE A PREDATOR OF CHILDREN, TWISTED BY DRUGS AND SURGERY INTO A CRUDE MOCKERY OF NATURE'S PERFECTION!

"YOU WILL NEVER BE A WOMAN, NOR A MON CALAMARI!"

With that, the tentacles opened, and gravity plunged Fale Rottwerm into the midst of the spinning rings of his invention. With repairs incomplete, its sensors improperly attuned, and its power supply imperfectly regulated, it was in many ways less a machine than it was a hungry, immobile creature of metal blades and cutting lasers. Slammed by the first of its outer rings, Rottwerm fell almost senseless into its gullet.

Metallic members unfolded and swung down toward him, vibroblades priming and energy instruments powering on with a chorus of hums, and the machine fed.

Fed.

Fed.

Far much sooner than Hoole expected, it became too much to bear. Still in the guise of Bor Gullet, he brought one mighty tentacle crashing down on the main control panel in a single blow. The computer imploded in a short burst of flaming sparks, and random electrical discharges sparked over the surgical machine's undulating frame. In a final spasm of energy the monstrosity heaved, then shook itself to pieces and collapsed into a smoking pile of blood-drenched metal.

Mammon Hoole returned to his familiar humanoid shape, but stood in the dark room, staring at the wreckage for a long moment, breathing deeply as the rage passed out of him.

There was nothing truly joyful or pleasurable about it; he'd known there wouldn't be. Some, no doubt, would think him a hero for ending Fale Rottwerm's life, but in that dark moment his thoughts dwelled on the great number of years that went into any beings life, and into any man's career as a scientist, and the question...

After all this time, how could it really have come to this?

No answer came to him, of course; only the sputtering of ruptured power conduits and melted machinery. With a heavy heart, Hoole carefully rounded the wreckage of the JK-13 droid, reached the stairs, and began to plod his way up, one step at a time.

Before he knew it, though, he was taking them two at a time.

Then three.

Then he was bolting from the laboratory, huffing and wheezing.

He still had so very, very much to do.

So very much to atone for.

CHAPTER COMPLETE

PASSWORD: ABELOTH