"What is it?" Luke asked, his own step faltering at the abrupt spike he felt in her. "Mara?"

"Blast it," she bit out, sprinting past him as she doubled her speed. "Come on—no time to waste. Blast them all."

"What—?"

But she had left Luke and his bewildered question behind her. So simple; so embarrassingly simple.

And yet Mara Jade Skywalker, former Emperor's Hand, had missed it completely. Musing on the Empire that had been, and her former place in it, she had missed it completely.

She was nearly to their target turbolift, and over her panting breath she could hear Luke's footsteps as he caught up to her. Steady, his thought came, flowing calmness over her as he tried to soothe some of her agitation.

But even Jedi calm couldn't help her now. People had already died because of her carelessness. Unless they hurried, others would suffer the same fate.

Maybe even all of them.

The turbolift lobby was almost completely dark when Pressor and Trilli arrived. "This is crazy," Pressor declared, looking around in disbelief. Even some of the emergency permlights were out, which should have been well-nigh impossible. "What could have caused all this?"

"You got me," Trilli said. "The power's all right at the generators—that was the first thing the techs checked. It's just getting lost somewhere along the way."

"So, what, we've got a short in the wiring?"

"It'd take a lot more than just one," Trilli pointed out. "And that wouldn't explain the permlights, anyway."

"Yes," Pressor conceded. "Have we got a tech crew on the way?"

"One's already here," Trilli told him. "They're a deck up, checking out the turbolifts. Apparently, that's where the outages started."

Pressor scratched his cheek. "The turbolifts that the two Jedi and Imperials were able to get past?"

"I thought about that, too," Trilli said. "But the power was just fine earlier after they got out."

"Maybe it's some sort of delayed reaction," Pressor suggested. "Something they set up to cover their tracks."

"I don't know," Trilli said doubtfully. "Seems kind of a waste of effort. Especially for Jedi."

Across the lobby, the faint sound of a ventilator fan went silent. "There goes another one," Pressor said, peering in that direction. "You know what this reminds me of? That infestation of conduit worms we had a few years after the landing."

"That's impossible," Trilli insisted. "We exterminated them thirty years ago."

"Unless we've just imported a new batch," Pressor said, jerking his head back down the corridor.

Trilli muttered something under his breath. "Uliar's not going to be happy about this at all."

"No kidding." Pressor started to reach for his comlink, remembered the jamming in time and headed instead toward one of the wall-mounted comms. "We'd better get a couple more tech teams down here," he said. "If it's conduit worms, we want them gone, and fast."

"Right," Trilli said. "You want me to wait here while you go tell Uliar the good news?"

Pressor made a face. "Let's both wait," he said. "There's no point in starting rumors until we know for sure what we've got."

"Besides which, you don't want to spring this on Uliar alone?"

Pressor keyed the wall comm for the tech section. "Something like that."

The center portside corridor on D-6 was as snarled with rusted debris as anything Fel had seen up on D-4. The center starboard corridor, in contrast, was almost perfectly clear.

"They've definitely been using this one," Watchman commented as the group made their cautious way aft. "Not very much traffic, but it's steady."

"How do you figure that?" Fel asked.

"From the pattern of dust on the deck," Drask told him. "There are places where occasional footsteps have lifted or moved it. No more than twenty people come this way each day. Possibly fewer."

"Possibly as few as ten," Watchman agreed. "The two guards we left stunned back there, running three shifts a day, plus a few more would pretty well cover it."

"Commander?" Grappler, in the lead, called back over his shoulder. "I'm picking up voices ahead."

"Extend formation," Watchman ordered. "Not too far—make sure to stay in sight."

"I see a light," Grappler announced. "Looks like it's coming from one of the crew bunkrooms."

"Watch for trouble," Fel warned. "They may have had time to get reinforcements in position."

Apparently, they hadn't. A minute later, the group had arrived.

At a prison.

Fel hadn't been particularly impressed by Luke's claim that there had been an old prison down in the supply core, and Drask's description of the setup hadn't done anything to modify that skepticism. But about this place he had no doubts at all. The door to the old crew quarters had had a pair of narrow slits cut into it, one at eye level for observation, the other just above the floor and wide enough to pass a tray of food through. Supplementing the door's original lock was a heavy add-on with the kind of twin access ports that implied two separate codes were necessary to open it.

"Hello?" a woman's voice called tentatively from behind the door. "Perry? Is that you?"

Fel stepped to the door and pressed his face to the upper slit. The bunkroom had been divided into at least three sections, two of which were currently closed off by light, hand-movable panels. The center section, the one visible from the observation slit, had been set up as a recreation area, with chairs, a couple of small tables, games, and toys. Seated in two of the chairs were a pair of women, one in her twenties, the other much older, watching as four children with ages ranging between six and ten years old played or talked. The younger woman was leaning toward the door, squinting to try to see Fel through the narrow slit.

Abruptly, she stiffened. "You're not Perry," she said, her voice quavering a little. "Who are you?"

"I'm Commander Chak Fel of the Empire of the Hand," Fel identified himself as the children all paused in their activities and turned to see what was going on. "Don't worry, we aren't going to hurt you."

"What do you want?" the older woman asked.

"We're here to help," Fel assured her, frowning as he looked around. These certainly didn't look like hardened criminals who deserved to be kept behind a double-coded lock and supplied through a zoo-style feeding slot. In many ways the room reminded him of the nursery they'd passed down the corridor, in fact, or perhaps a special classroom of some sort. "Who are you people?"

"We're the remnant of the Republic mission called Outbound Flight," the older woman said.

"Yes, we know that part," Fel said. "I mean you and the children. What are you doing in there?"

"Why, we're the dangerous ones, of course," the younger woman said bitterly. "Didn't you know?" She waved a hand to encompass the children. "Or rather, they are. That's why they're in Quarantine. We're just here to take care of them, poor dears."

"The dangerous ones, huh?" Fel asked, eyeing the children. As far as he could tell, they looked like any other kids he'd ever known. "What exactly did they do?"

"They didn't do anything," the older woman said quietly. Apparently she'd been at this long enough for her bitterness to decay into resignation. "All they were was a little bit different from everyone else. That's all. Director Uliar's imagination and hatred did all the rest."

"And what exactly does his imagination and hatred tell him?" Fel asked. "What does he think they are?"

"Why, pure evil, of course," the younger woman said. "Or at least, that's what he's afraid they'll grow up to be."

Fel looked at the kids again. "Pure evil?" he asked.

"Yes," the older woman added, her forehead creasing as if it should be obvious. "You know.