Today the Big Circle of Fun looked more like a stockyard than a dirt field used to hold footraces and shoving contests. Several thousand shaggy Octusi were gathered in the primitive arena, singing and stomping and working themselves up for another parade through downtown Arari. Madhi Vaandt found it impossible to tell who was in charge, for there seemed to be dozens of elders making speeches, issuing instructions, and supervising the repair and replacement of the placards that the Mandalorians had shot up during the last march.

Nearly fifty Octusi, all proudly displaying the burn holes where they had been hit by blasterfire, were positioning themselves at the near end of the circle, almost directly in front of the droid-repair shop where Madhi and her crew were hiding. From her vantage point, in a darkened second-floor storeroom, it appeared the demonstration would be the largest yet, with the violence suffered during the last march only hardening the resolve of the slaves.

Madhi glanced toward the adjacent window, where her cam operator was crouching on the floor, attaching a small right-angle surveillance lens to his cam. A slender human male with graying blond hair and a weatherworn face, Tyl Krain had taken Madhi under his wing early in her still-blossoming career, teaching her not only the hows of getting the story but also the ethics of pursuing it, and her duty to present a fair and balanced report. In short, Tyl had helped shape a young, ambitious Devaronian female into a journalist whom even the legendary Perre Needmo felt comfortable airing—and Madhi loved him like a father for it.

Well, maybe not exactly like a father. He was a fairly handsome human, after all.

Tyl finished attaching the surveillance lens, then quickly adjusted the focal length and activated the display. Almost instantly his steely eyes grew wide, and he began to record.

“You spot the Jedi already?” Madhi asked.

Their mysterious contact in Freedom Flight had warned them that two young Jedi Knights, Sothais Saar and Avinoam Arelis, were on their way to Blaudu Sextus to prevent the Octusi from being slaughtered. It seemed doubtful that they could have made planetfall on Blaudu Sextus so quickly—the journey required a lot of staging stops and hyperspace jumps. But Jedi were capable of amazing feats, and the Freedom Flight contact had promised they were in for a surprise.

When her cam operator did not answer after a moment, Madhi asked, “Tyl?”

“Not Jedi,” Tyl whispered. With a wall of fifteen-centimeter stone separating them from a field full of bleating Octusi voices, there was little chance of being overheard, so it seemed obvious that something was very wrong. Without looking away from the hand-sized screen, he spoke to the Chev assistant standing at the back of the storeroom. “Shohta, get the power generator up and get us a HoloNet link. Perre will want this live.”

Madhi immediately glanced back, looking down a narrow aisle flanked by shelves piled with droid parts, and nodded to the heavy-browed Chev waiting next to the door. A former slave whom Madhi had won in a drinking contest on Vinsoth, Shohta Laar had not yet adjusted to his freedom, and he still had a habit of awaiting Madhi’s permission before he followed instructions from anyone else. Once the Chev had begun to assemble the equipment, Madhi returned to her window and peered out—then gasped aloud. Hovering in the alley mouths surrounding Big Circle were dozens of QuickStryke assault sleds, the barrels of their laser cannons depressed for close-in ground support. A partially exposed Mandalorian sat atop each vehicle, using a swivel-mounted auto blaster to cover a squad of debarking commandos.

The Octusi were casting a few wary glances toward the assault sleds, but continuing to organize and repair placards. Madhi knew from her time on the planet that the semi-sentient Octusi probably did not understand what the arrival of the Mandalorians meant. They were a gentle, rule-abiding species that could not conceive of others being otherwise. And since a peaceful assembly in their own Big Circle of Fun did not violate the rules established by their Blaudun masters, it simply had not occurred to them that the Mandalorians might intend them harm.

Madhi, on the other hand, had a very good idea of what was about to happen, and in her heart she ached to rush out and explain the danger to the Octusi. She wanted to urge them to flee, or at least to turn on their oppressors and go down fighting. And part of her wanted to take Tyl up on the roof, to reveal their presence so the Mandalorians would know the entire galaxy was watching as they did whatever they had come to do.

Instead Madhi called, “Shohta, how long? I want to be live on the ’Net when this thing blows.”

“Blows, mistress?” Shohta asked. “You think there is going to be a riot?”

“A riot or a massacre,” she said. “Maybe both.”

The back of the room fell quiet as Shohta stopped work. When Madhi heard no indication of it resuming, she glanced back down the aisle. The Chev was standing idle and slump-shouldered, holding a power feed in one hand and a coupling socket in the other, his brutish Chev features sagging with dismay.

“Shohta!” she snapped. “We need to go live now.”

Shohta merely cocked his head. “So we can show a massacre live on the HoloNet?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we do something instead?”

“We are doing something, Shohta,” Madhi retorted. “Our jobs. And if you want to keep yours, get me that HoloNet link.”

Shohta knelt down and connected the power feed to the generating unit, but his movements were slow and languid, a silent form of protest that Madhi had learned to recognize among slaves and the grievously oppressed. She let out a long breath and, starting to feel like a despot herself, spoke in a gentler tone.

“Look, Shohta,” she said. “We’re journalists, not Jedi. We don’t involve ourselves in the story.”

“Not even to save lives?” Shohta asked.

It was Tyl who answered, in a voice devoid of sympathy. “Not even to save lives.” His gaze remained fixed on the cam display. “If we involve ourselves with the story, we change the story.”

“And what is wrong with changing it?” Shohta demanded. “What is wrong with saving the lives of innocent beings?”

“What’s wrong is that if we try to interfere, the most likely thing to happen is that we get killed first.” Tyl’s voice had grown hard. “And then the galaxy will never know what happened here.”

“We’re not police and we’re not medicos,” Madhi added. “We’re journalists, and our first duty is to report the facts.”

“As you wish, mistress.” Shohta depressed the power unit’s activation safety and held it down, then slowly ran his gaze over the small control panel, searching for the priming switch that he had probably flicked a thousand times since joining Madhi’s crew. “After the power unit is running, I’ll have to find a good place for the antenna. We should have a link in ten minutes or so.”

“Ten minutes?” Tyl tore his eyes away from his display and started to set his vidcam aside. “That’s ridiculous, Shohta. If I have to do this myself—”

“Tyl,” Madhi interrupted. “Stay on the cam. Shohta will handle the HoloNet link.”

Tyl’s brow rose, but he nodded and looked back to his cam.

Madhi turned to Shohta. “Shohta, I understand how you feel. So does Tyl. But it’s the truth that matters in this job, not our feelings about it.” She paused, waiting for a nod that did not come, then continued, “If we go out there to interfere and somehow survive the experience, then we become the story—not the Mandalorians and what they’ve come to do.”

“But a lot of lives might be saved,” Shohta said.

Madhi shook her head. “Those lives might be saved,” she said. “But more would be lost in the long run. We can’t be there every time an army of thugs uses violence to put down a slave revolt.”

“This way, the galaxy sees what’s really happening,” Tyl said, his gaze still fixed on the cam display. “Maybe the public won’t care about a bunch of four-hooves on a world so far off the hyperspace lanes that the Empire never bothered to give it a survey number. But my guess is, when they see Mandalorians blasting Octusi in cold blood, they’ll want it stopped.”

“And not just on Blaudu Sextus,” Madhi added. “On Tatooine, Karfeddion, Thalassia … and on Vinsoth, too. If we keep doing our jobs and exposing the truth about slavery, maybe the public will demand that the Galactic Alliance stop turning a blind eye. Maybe it will start asking questions about who’s been sending Mandalorians to put down the revolts.” Madhi paused, allowing herself a smile of anticipation. “And when we tell them, they’re going to want her head.”

“Assuming we can confirm what we know,” Tyl reminded her.

“We’ll get there,” Madhi assured him. “We’ll connect her to the credit trail, or the Sextuna executives will get tired of taking the blame and admit she’s the one who’s really paying the Mandalorians. Something will turn up. It has to.”

“By her, you mean Daala?” Shohta asked. “She has been helping the slavers?”

“We’re pretty sure,” Madhi said. “But we don’t have the evidence to prove it yet.”

Tyl looked from the cam display toward Shohta. “What you need to decide is whether you want to stop her,” he said. “Whether you want to help all slaves, or just the ones you see out there.”

Madhi saw the resentment in Shohta’s eyes change to understanding, then to determination, and his fingers quickly found the priming switch he had seemed unable to locate just moments before. The generator gave a soft clickclack, then hummed to life. Shohta grabbed the antenna assembly and began to point it around the room, his eyes fixed on the interface screen as he tried to find the strongest signal.

“Link in two minutes,” he reported. “I’m sorry for the delay.”

“Don’t waste time apologizing,” Madhi ordered. She slipped her sound bud into her ear and activated the button mike on her tunic collar. “Just get me on the ’Net.”

Madhi returned her attention to Big Circle and saw that the Mandalorians already had the field surrounded. Finally beginning to sense that something was wrong, the Octusi had stopped their preparations and were looking toward the main entry arch, located just a hundred meters or so from where the wounded veterans of the last demonstration were lining up. She stepped to one side of the window and leaned against the wall, straining to see what had caught the Octusi’s attention.

Floating down the narrow lane directly in front of the repair shop she saw a QuickStryke urban assault car. Protruding from the commander’s hatch were the head and shoulders of a helmetless Mandalorian male with blond, short-cropped hair and cold blue eyes. He had a long scar down one cheek and a flat, crooked nose that had obviously been broken several times—both signs, to Madhi’s way of thinking, that he probably wasn’t one of Mandalore’s better hand-to-hand fighters. He held his chin a little too high, peering down on the Octusi as though he were a butcher selecting stock for his slaughterhouse.

“That commander looks familiar,” Madhi said. As she spoke, an image came to her, a HoloNet report she had seen of the siege of the Jedi Temple. She pulled her datapad from her pocket and activated the search function. “Isn’t he the one who blasted that apprentice on the steps of the Jedi Temple?”

“Sure looks like him,” Tyl replied. “Rhal, I think. Something Rhal.”

Madhi entered the name and moments later was rewarded with a news capsule of the incident. The apprentice, Kani Asari, had been Kenth Hamner’s personal assistant, and the killer had been a Mandalorian commander placed in charge of the siege by Chief Daala herself. Madhi compared the killer’s image with the commander outside, and her heart began to pound in excitement.

“Tyl, this is it,” she said. “Belok Rhal was the Mandalorian commander at the siege of the Jedi Temple.”

“So?” Tyl asked.

“So, Daala gave him complete authority at the Temple siege, and he killed an unarmed apprentice in full view of the media,” Madhi said. “And now here he is, putting down a slave revolt on Blaudu Sextus.”

“That’s a coincidence, not proof,” Tyl said. “It doesn’t establish a connection to Daala.”

“No,” Madhi said. “But it is a fact—and we do report facts, don’t we?”

Tyl thought for a moment, then reluctantly nodded. “Just be careful with your phrasing, okay?”

“No worries, I won’t imply anything,” Madhi said. Outside her window, the QuickStryke had come to a stop directly in front of the wounded Octusi, and Rhal gazed out over the Octusi, probably looking for a leader. “Shohta, how are we coming with the link?”

“We’re connected to the relay satellite,” he reported. “But I’m trying to buy more bandwidth. Their equipment is old out here, so we’re only getting grade-three signal.”

Madhi glanced over at Tyl. At grade three and standard bandwidth, her voice would be distorted and the vidimages grainy and jerky. But both would be recognizable—and the primitive quality of the broadcast might give the report an added note of urgency.

“Let’s do it,” she said.

Tyl nodded. “Keep the offer open,” he said to Shohta. “And bring the parabolic mike to Madhi. We’ll want an enhanced voice signal on Rhal.”

As Tyl spoke, he raised one hand and began a silent five-finger countdown. Madhi made a quick mental list of the points she needed to cover in her introduction, keeping in mind that her feed was arriving at the Perre Needmo studio at the beginning of their workday, about six hours before they were scheduled to go on-air. By now, a vidimage of the situation in Big Circle was already streaming onto the control room, where a startled production assistant would be rushing to bring it up on a monitor and confirm that the automatic recording equipment was capturing the transmission. Next, he would feed the transmission into the studio’s internal network and bring it to the attention of Perre Needmo and the senior production staff, who would decide whether to relay the report to the network immediately or save it for their own broadcast. Given the likelihood of the situation erupting into mass violence, Madhi was betting they would pass it into the network immediately—which meant her report would need to mention the Perre Needmo Newshour prominently and often, if she wanted to keep her employers happy.

Tyl’s last finger folded down into his palm, and Madhi began to speak in a hushed, urgent voice. “This is Madhi Vaandt on assignment for the Perre Needmo Newshour on Blaudu Sextus in the Regulan system, an insignificant mining world on the galactic edge where the hands of power operate beyond the umbrella of Alliance law. The field below is Big Circle of Fun, an Octusi sporting arena in the capital city of Arari. As you can see, a mechanized company of Mandalorian infantry has surrounded a gathering of Octusi slaves preparing to begin a protest march through the downtown area. Although this will be the thirteenth such march in as many days, the Mandalorian company is a remarkable show of force. The Octusi are a pacifist species whose demonstrations have been marked by their gentleness and good order.

“It appears, however, that their Blaudun masters may be growing weary of the inconveniences caused by the daily marches. Yesterday a group of Mandalorian mercenaries hired to put down the revolt opened fire on the front of the march, killing fifteen Octusi, wounding more than fifty, and causing a stampede that resulted in the first significant property damage of the revolt. Determined to avoid a repeat of the aggravation, today the Mandalorian mercenaries have trapped the Octusi in their staging area, surrounding them with light armor more suitable for urban combat than crowd control.

“Whatever the Mandalorian intentions, they seem determined to present an ominous front, as they have brought in a veteran commander with a reputation for ferocity.”

Madhi glanced over at Tyl, waiting for the nod that would indicate the vidcam was now focused on Rhal, and saw Shohta approaching with a small parabolic mike that she could use to capture Rhal’s words. Normally, journalistic ethics would prohibit eavesdropping on a subject without his knowledge, but since Rhal was in a public forum obviously preparing to make a public statement, an exception could be made. She nodded her thanks to Shohta and pointed it out the window at Rhal.

When Tyl nodded that he was ready, Madhi continued, “This is Commander Belok Rhal. No stranger to our news audience, he was in command of Mandalorian forces during the siege of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Chief of State Daala had personally charged him with persuading the Jedi to turn over Jedi Knights Sothais Saar and Turi Altamik, who were then suffering from the mysterious psychosis that had been plaguing Jedi Knights at that point. It remains unclear whether his authorization included a dispensation to commit murder, as only a handful of government officials know the full extent of his orders. But one thing is beyond debate: Belok Rhal is the man who killed a teenage girl named Kani Asari on the steps of the Jedi Temple, in cold blood and in full view of the Coruscant media, just to make a point. And his presence here sends a chilling message.”

Rhal’s gaze finally settled on an Octusi Elder with a wrinkled face and gray fur, and he began to say something that Madhi could not quite make out from her hiding place.

“And I think we’re about to hear exactly what that message is.” She lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “Let’s listen.”

Madhi activated the parabolic mike, and a moment later Rhal’s voice began to come through her earbud. It was just the way the feed would sound to listeners on Coruscant—a little fuzzy and distorted, but clear enough to convey the Mandalorian’s words.

“… been hired to put a stop to this illegal revolt, and we intend to do so.” Rhal’s voice grew menacing. “What is your name, slave?”

The Octusi stepped forward, until he was standing chest-to-armor with the QuickStryke. “I am Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind of the Redolog family, Elder of the Quansasi Haulage Team. And what is your name, Mandalorian?”

“Not for you to know,” Rhal replied. “You appear to be the leader of this mob. Is that so?”

Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind inclined his head. “I am one of the Elders, yes.” He laid a palm flat on the QuickStryke’s nose armor. “And I am asking you to remove your carriages, Not-for-You-to-Know. They frighten our people.”

“Then your people are wise.” Rhal flicked something inside the command hatch, and his voice rang out across the circle. “Elders will come forward and present themselves.”

A low murmur rolled through the crowd as dozens of elderly Octusi began to make their way forward. Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind twisted his upper body around, turning his T-shaped head sideways so that he was looking up at Rhal with one eye and out over the crowd with the other.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because I ordered it,” Rhal said. “As I told you, this revolt has come to—”

“No.” Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind boomed the word calmly, sharply, and loudly enough that it carried out over the circle and brought the migration of Elders to an instant stop. He turned back to Rhal and continued in his deep Octusi voice. “You are no one’s master. You do not order us—”

The defiant words came to a shrieking halt as Rhal raised a blaster pistol from inside the commander’s hatch and sent a single blue bolt burning through the Elder’s head. Races-the-Water-Bringing-Wind’s upper body folded back over his shaggy midsection, and then he collapsed onto his side, limp and dead before his body hit the dirt.

So shocked was Madhi that she forgot why they were here—until Tyl began to speak in a soft voice. “I’m going in for a close-up on the body.” With a grade-three signal, his words would probably be audible only as background noise, but it hardly mattered. They had just captured a cold-blooded murder on vid, and their viewers would be too shocked to be wondering what the cam operator was saying. “You might want to do some personal reaction, then slip into conjecture about where this is all going to lead.”

The suggestion brought Madhi back to her senses, and she slipped smoothly into a hushed narrative. “This is Madhi Vaandt for the Perre Needmo Newshour. What you have just seen is the cold-blooded murder of an Octusi Elder by the Mandalorian commander, Belok Rhal. The Octusi crowd is obviously as shocked as we are, and there is no telling what will happen next.”

Outside, Rhal leveled his blaster pistol at another Elder. Madhi deactivated her button mike long enough to whisper, “Tyl, get back on—”

“Got it,” Tyl said, scraping his right-angle lens along the windowsill. “Stay live. The image might be fuzzy enough that you need to confirm what’s happening.”

Madhi clicked her button mike back on, but before she could resume, the parabolic mike began to pick up Rhal’s voice again.

“You, slave, come forward.”

The Octusi remained where he was and, in a loud booming voice, said, “No.”

A blaster bolt screeched from Rhal’s weapon, taking the Elder low in his forequarters. His huge mouth opened wide, and he let out a deep, thrumming howl of pain that was instantly echoed by all of the other Octusi in the circle.

“I don’t know how well you can hear that over the HoloNet,” Madhi narrated for her audience. “But the entire Octusi crowd has joined the wounded Elder in crying out. It’s called the Song of Sorrow, and we witnessed the same thing yesterday …”

As Madhi spoke, a female voice began to sound in her earbud. “This is network control, letting you know that we’re carrying this live on the news channel. We’ve just seen the murder, and we’re estimating a five-second signal lag. Your vid is grainy, so keep telling us what we’re seeing.”

“… when the Mandalorians opened fire in the streets of Arari,” Madhi continued. Between the voice issuing instructions in her ear, the violence outside, and her own shock, her thoughts were racing and whirling through her mind like a beldon flying through a hurricane. But there was strange calm inside her, a recognition that this was what she had spent her life training to do … and that she was more than up to the task. “We are told that the Octusi use similar songs to communicate over great distances as they race over their native plains on Blaudu Octus.”

Madhi fell silent as Rhal’s speaker-enhanced voice cracked across the circle, splitting the Song of Sorrow like a thunderclap. “I won’t ask you again, slave.”

Rhal pointed his blaster at the injured Octusi.

The Elder folded his knees beneath him and dropped to the ground, then looked Rhal straight in the eye. “No.”

“The courage of the Octusi is legendary in the Albanin sector,” Madhi continued. “And yet, they are described as the gentlest of species. In their own culture, they engage in nothing more violent than the aptly named Shove-Dances, which young males perform during mating season.”

Her last two words were drowned out by the shriek of a blaster bolt. A smoking hole appeared in the center of the second victim’s chest, and the Elder collapsed forward onto the ground, his great, dark eyes still staring up at Rhal.

“We have just witnessed a second cold-blooded murder by the Mandalorian commander in charge of this company,” Madhi reported. “It is difficult to understand the reasoning behind this excessive use of force. However, lawless actions are common out here on the galactic edge. Pirates plague the region, as do crime rings and bounty hunters. Perhaps Sextuna Mining Corporation feels justified in employing beings such as Belok Rhal to protect their fleets.”

As Madhi spoke, a tremendous thrumming filled the circle, overwhelming the parabolic mike she was holding and filling her head with a painful boom that left her ears ringing. In the next instant the Octusi sprang into flight, rushing for the alleys and streets that the Mandalorians had blocked with their assault sleds. Rhal reached up to activate his throat mike, and Madhi barely managed to swing the dish back in time to capture what he was saying.

“Commence Operation—”

The last part of the command was lost to the ear-piercing wail of a blaster cannon barrage. The circle below erupted into a blinding mesh-work of colored bolts and flashes, and the outer ring of Octusi fell almost as one.

“The Mandalorians have opened fire!” Madhi yelled, unconcerned about being heard above the roar and screech of so much blasterfire. “A massacre of unbelievable magnitude has begun before our very eyes here on Blaudu Sextus. And this reporter, on assignment for the Perre Needmo Newshour, must conclude that it was the Mandalorian commander’s intention all along to provoke a stampede as justification for the cold-blooded atrocities that you are now witnessing. Hundreds of Octusi lie dead or dying already, and still the Mandalorians continue to fire …”

As Madhi spoke, the gunner’s hatch on Rhal’s QuickStryke flew open, and out popped the head of a female Mandalorian with short-cropped brown hair and a small, button-ended nose. She said something about being borked, then pointed up toward the window where Tyl’s right-angle lens lay recording the massacre in the circle.

Rhal glanced up, and Madhi’s parabolic mike captured his static-filled voice asking, “Live?”

The female nodded and said something that Madhi’s parabolic mike did pick up: “You stupid idiot.”

Rhal ignored her and grabbed the swivel-mounted heavy blaster in front of his hatch, then swung the barrel toward the droid-repair shop where Madhi and her crew were hiding.

Madhi dropped to take cover, but continued to report. “It appears the Mandalorians have discovered our presence. They are not pleased to have their actions—”

A flurry of blaster bolts came shrieking through the window, filling the stockroom with the stone shards, smoke, and flying droid parts.

“—brought to light for you to see.” The quaver that had come to Madhi’s voice was unprofessional, she knew, but there was nothing she could do to disguise it. “We are under direct fire here, so please be patient while—”

The deafening crack of a cannon bolt shook the repair shop, spraying hand-sized stones across the room and filling the air with so much smoke that Madhi could no longer see Shohta waiting by the door. She glanced across at Tyl and found him holding a hand to his forehead. There was blood pouring down over his eye, and it was dripping onto the vidcam’s display. But he was still squinting at the screen with his good eye, struggling to keep Rhal in the frame.

“—change locations,” Madhi finished. She deactivated her collar mike, then tossed the parabolic mike out the window and scrambled across the floor to Tyl. “Will you forget about the shot for a minute? We’ve got to move! Now!”

Without waiting for a reply, she grabbed his arm and started to race toward the back of the room. Another cannon bolt struck the front of the storeroom, pelting them with fist-sized stones and dropping both of them to their knees. Tyl went limp. For a moment, Madhi thought he had been seriously injured.

Then she saw him toss the right-angle lens aside and reach for the wide-angle, and she knew he was fine.

Taking her lead from his example, Madhi activated her collar mike and began to narrate again. “My cam operator has quite a gash over one eye, so please forgive us if our images grow unclear. We remain under fire, and we are fleeing our observation post. Again, this is Madhi Vaandt, bringing you events live from Blaudu Sextus for the Perre Needmo Newshour.”

They reached the back of the room and found Shohta crouched over the uplink antenna and power generator.

“I don’t know if you can see this, but my Chev assistant, the former slave Shohta, is attempting to shield our equipment with his own body.” Madhi grabbed him by the arm and dragged him toward the door. “We’ll keep transmitting until it’s no longer possible, but I’m afraid we will be going off ’Net sometime soon.”

The female voice began to sound in Madhi’s earbud again. “This is great stuff—a Peamoney Award for sure,” she said. “Keep it going as long as you can, and don’t worry about medical expenses. The network has you covered.”

“That’s because there aren’t going to be any medical expenses,” Tyl grumbled. He braced the vidcam on one shoulder and grabbed the uplink antenna with his free hand, then nodded Shohta toward the generator unit and turned to Madhi. “Go!”

Madhi cracked the door open and peered into the hall, then sighed in relief. “No Mandos,” she reported. “Let’s go.”

They stepped through the door and, still trailing a power feed and datalink to the abandoned equipment, scurried down the hallway to the stairwell.

“As you can see, we’re attempting to relocate to a more secure position,” Madhi reported. “We may have to abandon our generator and uplink antenna at any moment, so …”

Madhi reached the top of the stairwell and found herself staring down at Belok Rhal and a handful of armored Mandalorians. She stopped short.

“Tyl, you getting this?” she whispered.

“Wrong lens.” He activated the vidcam floodlights, filling the stairwell with illumination. “But we’re sending pictures.”

That was all Madhi needed to hear. She started down the stairwell toward the Mandalorians.

“Commander Rhal,” she began, “the entire galaxy has just witnessed your company initiate an assault of incredible violence in the Big Circle of Fun. Would you care to explain these atrocities for the record?”

“No.” Rhal pointed his blaster over Madhi’s shoulder, no doubt in the direction of the vidcam. “Turn the cam off.”

Madhi’s knees began to shake, and she grew very afraid that she was going to lose control of her bladder on the intergalactic news.

“That’s not going to happen, Commander Rhal,” she said.

“No?” Rhal shifted the blaster barrel toward her chest, and Madhi knew she was about to die. “I beg to differ.”

As Rhal spoke, two tiny circles of brightness appeared in the stone wall behind him. Madhi could not imagine what they were—but she felt sure it was nothing she wanted to point out to the Mandalorians. She began to descend the stairs, one hand turning the button mike on her lapel toward Rhal.

“The galaxy is watching, Commander. Would you care to comment on what you’ve done here today?” she asked. Behind Rhal, the bright circles turned into lightsaber tips, one green and one blue, and Madhi began to think she and her crew just might survive this assignment. “Are you truly in the employ of Sextuna Mining Corporation? Or do your orders come from somewhere else—somewhere closer to the Core?”

This last question, she knew, was pushing the boundaries of journalistic ethics. But considering that the man was pointing a blaster at her chest, she was going to allow herself some leeway.

“Is it possible, Commander Rhal, that your true employer is Chief of State Daala?”

Madhi saw Rhal’s eyes narrow, and she knew that she had pushed things farther than was safe. The lightsaber tips at the bottom of the stairwell became lightsaber blades and began to cut through the thick stone as though it were flimsiplast, and Rhal’s companions spun around, preparing to open fire on the two Jedi that the Freedom Flight agent had promised were on the way.

Rhal merely pulled the trigger of his blaster pistol … twice.

The bolts caught Madhi in the torso, knocking her back onto the stairs with a chestful of fire. She heard someone screaming and saw Shohta flying down the stairs toward her, his brutish Chev features twisted into a mask of grief, his big fists flailing in anger.

Meanwhile, Rhal’s escorts began to pour fire toward the bottom of the stairs. Their efforts were, of course, useless. No sooner had they opened fire than the Jedi used the Force to send the lightsaber-weakened wall flying inward, knocking the Mandalorians over backward. In the next instant, a pair of young Jedi Knights, one a furious-looking Chev and the other a handsome young human, were standing at the bottom of the stairs, using the Force to slam the armored Mandalorians first against one wall, then against the another, denying them any chance to bring their weapons to bear … and making them suffer terribly for the attempt.

In the same instant, Shohta reached Madhi’s side. Her vision was already starting to narrow and darken, but she saw her assistant tearing at her tunic, first exposing her wounds, then covering them with hands that her flesh was already too cold to feel.

Then Madhi saw Tyl descending the stairs, the vidcam still on his shoulder and focused on the bottom of the stairwell. He stopped beside her and turned the lens on her face, tears pouring out down his cheeks. He knelt beside her but made no move to lower the vidcam and help her—and there wouldn’t have been any sense in it. Madhi could feel what had happened to her, how much of her had been burned away by the Mandalorian’s bolts, and she had been a journalist too long to deny the truth of her situation.

She looked up at Tyl and smiled. “Did you get the shot?” she asked. “Just tell me you got the shot.”