"In the storeroom. We'll get it for you before we leave."

There was one guard in the room. The Dorun sat in a deeply indented chair designed to accommodate his commodious back side. In his twinned tentacles, he held an oval reader. Both stalk-mounted oculars swiveled in Kyakhta's direction as the latter emerged from the stairwell.

"How beeth the prisoner?"

Kyakhta shrugged boredly as Bulgan emerged behind him. Barriss kept out of sight farther down in the stairwell. "Quiet. An unusual state of affairs, or so I have been told, for a humanoid female."

"Resignedeth to her fate by now, I wager." The Dorun re turned to his viewing. Neither of his independently swiveling eyes noticed Bulgan picking up an empty chair. Both swiveling oculars dimmed when the powerful Alwari brought it down on the guard's head.

"Quickly now!" Entering a combination into a keypad, Kyakhta reached into the drawer that popped open in response and withdrew Barriss's service belt. Her lightsaber, she was re lieved to note, was still fastened in place. As she was slipping the belt around her middle, she noticed Kyakhta fingering a small device secured at his own waist.

"What's that?"

"We have to call in our position at regular intervals," the Alwari explained dolefully, "or we'll die." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Bossban Soergg had explosive devices placed in our necks to ensure our compliance with his orders."

Barriss made what was, for a Padawan, a rude noise. "Typical of a Hutt. We certainly can't let him track us. Come, let me see."

Obediently, Kyakhta and Bulgan approached. Taking a scanner from her belt, she passed it carefully over the indicated spot on the back of Kyakhta's neck. It wasn't hard to find the inserted device. There was a perceptible bump under the skin just to the right of his mane.

Checking the scanner's reading, she entered a sequence and passed the compact instrument a second time over the Alwari's neck, then repeated the procedure with Bulgan. Satisfied, she headed cautiously for the outer door.

Kyakhta followed, once more rubbing his fingers over the

raised place. "The explosive is still there." Cleansed mind or not, he was still understandably uneasy at its presence.

Barriss studied the street outside. From everything she could see, traffic appeared normal. "I could cut them out, but I'd rather have it done neatly, and I don't have the tools with me. So I just deactivated them. They're harmless now. But we'd do well to move fast. Possibly the process of my deactivating them will result in notification of whoever is monitoring you for your boss-ban that something has gone wrong. I assume a rapid response will be forthcoming."

"Let's go, then." Pushing past her, Bulgan opened the door and stepped unflinchingly out onto the street. Kyakhta and their former prisoner followed.

"Central square, I think. The shop where you found me." Barriss followed Kyakhta's lead. "In looking for me, my companions will split up and begin their search from there." She fondled the closed-band comlink on her belt. "As soon as we're a safe distance away from here, I'll notify them of our destination, course, and that I'm okay." She smiled. "And of your change of heart, as well."

"Better to say change of mind." Everything that was previ ously familiar to him, Bulgan was now seeing out of new eyes. Harmless it might now be, having been rendered so by the Padawan, but the lethal packet embedded in his neck still itched. "Get rid of this as soon as possible."

"We will," Barriss assured him as they turned a corner onto a much busier thoroughfare. The presence of so many sentients around them eased her tension. "Until then, we'll simply tell anyone we meet to be careful what they say to you, because you happen to have an explosive personality."

Prior to her discerning ministrations, Bulgan would have

simply gaped dumbly at this remark. Now, both he and his friend Kyakhta had the pleasure of laughing at the joke.

It was the kind of pleasure that had been all too long de nied them.

Sooner or later, a distraught Ogomoor felt, Bossban Soergg was going to grow tired of listening to his majordomo deliver bad news. When that happened, Ogomoor knew he had better be ready to run-or at least be standing well out of range of the Hutt's massive, powerful tail.

"Gone." Soergg lay on the resting divan in his sleeping quar ters. He had been in the midst of his afternoon nap when Ogo moor, driven by urgency, had felt duty-bound to wake him. "Vanished. And those two morons with her."

"We do not know that they are with her, Great One. Only that she is missing, and so are they. The guard says he was at tacked from behind, in all likelihood by one of them. Why would they suddenly decide to go with her?"

"Who knows?" The Hutt grunted as he slouched his sagging corpus off the divan and onto the floor. Immediately, a pair of tiny geril servants commenced the odious task of grooming the sluglike shape. Soergg ignored them as he scowled down at his subordinate. "I smell the stink of Jedi wiles behind this misfortune."

"The devices that were supposed to ensure the loyalty of the two abductors?…" Ogomoor left the question hanging.

"Pagh! I activated those as soon as you told me what had happened. Either those imbeciles are now headless, or else more Jedi sleight of hand is at work in this." As the gerils clung to his massive body, continuing their grooming without interruption, Soergg lumbered forward. Exhibiting courage he did not feel,

Ogomoor held his ground. His own head, he knew, remained at tached to his shoulders only because of his continuing value to the Hutt.

"Put out the word to every lowlife, criminal, lawbreaker, and felon in Cuipernam. A thousand Republic credits to anyone who brings the accursed Padawan back to me alive, or the head of a dead Jedi. Hurry! We may still have a chance if she can be intercepted before she can rejoin her companions."

"I hear and obey, Bossban." Too relieved at the dismissal to fear a shot in the back, Ogomoor whirled and fled unceremoni ously from the bedroom, his comlink already out and activated.

Behind him, the gerils reflexively sealed their nostrils as their misshapen employer voided his disgust in an exceptionally ghastly and malodorous manner.

What Ogomoor did not know was that his intimidating employer now had to report the failure to one far more important than his Huttish self. Soergg did not fear that individual-but he respected him. Almost as much as he respected the credits being paid into his own local account in the service of furthering the cause of Ansionian secession.

Who was behind the one making the payments? he often wondered. Not that it really mattered. It was the money, the credits, that were important. The Hutts had little interest in politics except insofar as these served their immediate interests. It mattered not at all to Soergg whether Ansion and the worlds to which it was tied via treaties and pacts remained within the Republic or pulled out.