Whoever was outside hadn’t knocked. It didn’t bode well.

He clipped the grenade attachment to his rifle and aimed at the far side. Etain stood at the door, lightsaber held above her head for a downward stroke.

Darman hoped her aggression would triumph over her self-doubt.

He gestured with his left hand, rifle balanced in his right. One, two–

Three. He fired one grenade. It smashed through the sack-covered window and blew a hole in the wall just as he was firing the second. The blast kicked him backward, and the front door burst open as Etain brought her lightsaber down in a brilliant blue arc.

Darman switched his rifle to blast setting and swung his sight on the figure, but it was an Umbaran and it was dead, sliced through from clavicle to sternum.

“Two,” Etain said, indicating the window, or at least where it had been seconds earlier. Darman sprang forward across the room, dodging the table and firing as he came to the hole smashed in the wall. When he stumbled through the gap there were two Trandoshans coming toward him with blasters, faces that seemed all scales and lumps, wet mouths gaping. He opened fire; one return shot seared his left shoul­der. Then there was nothing but numb silence for a few mo­ments, followed by the gradual awareness that someone was screaming in agony outside.

But it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t Etain. That was all that mattered. He picked his way across the room, conscious of the growing pain in his shoulder. It would have to wait.

“It’s all clear,” Etain said. Her voice was shaking. “Except for that man …”

“Forget him,” Darman said. He couldn’t, of course: the soldier was making too much noise. The screams would at­tract attention. “Load up. We’re going.”

Despite Etain’s assurance that there were no more waiting outside, Darman edged out the door and kept his back to the wall all the way around the exterior of the farmhouse. The wounded soldier was an Umbaran. Darman didn’t even check how badly hurt he might be before he shot him cleanly in the head. There was nothing else he could do, and the mission came first.

He wondered if Jedi could sense droids as well. He’d have to ask Etain later. He’d been told Jedi could do extraordinary things, but it was one thing to know it, and another entirely to see it in action. It had probably saved their lives.

“What was that?” she asked when he returned to the lean-to. She already had the extra pack slung on her back, and he realized she’d actually moved the micromines even though they were still live. Darman, swallowing anxiety, disabled the detonator and added it to the list of things he needed to teach her.

“Finishing the job,” he said, and pulled on his bodysuit section by section. She looked away.

“You killed him.”

“Yes.”

“He was lying wounded?”

“I’m not a medic.”

“Oh, Darman …”

“Ma’am, this is a war. People try to kill you. You try to kill them first. There are no second chances. Everything else you need to know about warfare is an amplification of that.” She was horrified, and he really wished he hadn’t upset her. Had they given her a lethal lightsaber and not taught her what it really meant to draw one? “I’m sorry. He was in a bad way, anyway.”

Death seemed to shock her. “I killed that Umbaran.”

“That’s the idea, ma’am. Nicely done, too.”

She didn’t say anything else. She watched him attach the armor plates, and when he finally replaced his helmet he knew he didn’t care how conspicuous he looked in it, be­cause he wasn’t going to take it off again in a hurry. He needed that edge.

“No more safe houses,” Darman said. “There’s no such thing.”

Etain followed him into the woodland at the back of the house, but she was preoccupied. “I’ve never killed anyone before,” she said.

“You did fine,” Darman told her. His shoulder was throb­bing, gnawing into his concentration. “A clean job.”

“It’s still not something I would care to repeat.”

“Jedi are trained to fight, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but we never killed anyone in training.”

Darman shrugged and it hurt. “We did.”

He hoped she got over it fast. No, it wasn’t enjoyable, killing: but it had to be done. And killing with lightsaber or blaster was relatively clean. He wondered how she’d handle having to stick a blade in someone and see what ran out. She was a Jedi, and with any luck she’d never have to.

“Them or us,” he said.

“You’re in pain.”

“Nothing major. I’ll use the bacta when we reach the RV.”

“I suppose they turned us in.”

“The farmers? Yeah, that’s civilians for you.”

Etain made a noncommittal grunt and followed silently behind him. They moved deeper into the woods, and Darman calculated how many rounds he’d expended. If he kept en­gaging targets at this rate, he’d be down to his sidearm by nightfall.

“It’s amazing how you can sense people,” Darman said. “Can you detect droids, too?”

“Not especially,” she said. “Usually just living beings. Maybe I can—”

A faint whine made Darman turn in time to see a blue bolt of light streaking toward him from behind. It struck a tree a few meters ahead, splitting it like kindling in a puff of vapor.

“Obviously not,” Etain said.

It was going to be another long, hard day.

A warning siren sounded: three long blasts, repeated twice. Then the peaceful fields northwest of Imbraani shook with a massive explosion, and terrified merlies bolted for the cover of the hedgerows.

“Blasting today, then,” Fi said. “Lovely day for it.”

Niner couldn’t see anything but droids—industrial droids—moving around the quarry. He ran his glove across his visor to clear the droplets of rain and tried several binoc magnifi­cations, flicking between settings with eye movements. But if there were organic workers around, he couldn’t see any.

The quarry was a massive and startling gouge in the land­scape, an amphitheater with stepped sides that allowed droid excavators to dig out rock for processing. The depression sloped gently at one side; it was a towering cliff on the other. A small site office with alloy-plated walls and no windows sat beside a wide track at the top of the slope. Apart from the steady procession of droids laden with raw rock for the screening plant, the area was deserted. But someone—something—was controlling the detonations. They had to be in the building. And structures with solid alloy walls like that tended to have interesting contents.

The all-clear siren sounded. The droids moved in to scoop up the loose rock, sending spray and mud flying as they rum­bled up the slopes.

“Okay, let’s see what we can liberate from the hut,” Niner said. “Atin, with me. Fi, stay here and cover.”

They darted out of the trees and across a hundred meters of open land to the edge of the quarry, dodging between giant droids that took no notice of them. One droid, its wheels as high as Niner was tall, swung its bucket scoop un­expectedly and struck his shoulder plate a glancing blow. He stumbled and Atin caught his arm, steadying him. They paused, waiting for the next droid to return up the slope, then jogged alongside it until level with the site building.

They were now exposed, pressed close to the front wall.

The building was only ten meters wide. Atin knelt at the door and studied the single lock.

“Pretty insubstantial if this is where they store the explo­sives,” he said.

“Let’s take a look.”

Atin stood up slowly and placed a scope on the door to lis­ten for movement. He shook his head at Niner. Then he slid a flimsi-thin flat endoscope around the jamb, working it back and forth, slowly and carefully. “Now that’s a tight fit,” he said. “Can’t get it in.”

“We could always just walk in there.”

“Remember, we’re probably heading into a store full of explosives. If I could get a probe through it could at least get a sniff of the air and test for chemicals.”