Beside him, Tenel Ka stood up straighter and glanced around as if searching for something. Their eyes met. She felt it too.
“Now,” Tyko said, “I’ll need the rest of you children off the bridge. We’re going to be in the middle of a firefight. All weapons, power up and calibrate your targeting systems!”
Jaina stepped forward boldly. “I could be some help to you here. I have a lot of gunnery experience.” She looked over at Jacen. “I’m a pretty good shot and so is ” Jacen, feeling an urgent need to follow Raynar, gave a minute shake of his head.
“—uh, so is Lowie,” Jaina went on, catching the hint, though she didn’t seem to understand her brother’s intentions.
Lowie cocked his head in surprise, then smoothed the fur down on his neck with both hands. He gave a sharp bark of agreement.
“Very well, then. You may both stay. We’ll need all the help we can get,” Uncle Tyko said. “But the rest of you, to your quarters until the emergency has passed.”
Jacen and Tenel Ka hurried from the bridge and into the turbolift. When the door slid shut behind them, Tenel Ka raised her eyebrows. “Are you thinking the same as I?”
Jacen nodded. “I’m thinking that Aryn and Raynar may not be safe even down in the protected chambers. Something is very wrong here.”
Tenel Ka made a fist and thumped it against her bare thigh. “This is a fact.”
“He’s somewhere on this level,” Jacen said, stepping out of the turbolift. “I can sense him.”
“But we are nowhere close to the center of the ship,” Tenel Ka pointed out. “I believe we have reached the docking bays. The guard should not have brought Aryn and Raynar here.”
Jacen swallowed hard. “Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” he said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
As if to prove his intuition correct, a blaster shot rang out from down the corridor.
“Hey, that came from the docking bay down there!” Jacen said. “Isn’t that where—”
Tenel Ka’s face was grim. “Yes. Where we left the Rock Dragon.”
Suddenly, the flagship thrummed with a sharp impact, as if someone had struck the hull with a giant hammer—or a powerful turbolaser blast. “I think that deadline the High Roller gave us just expired,” Jacen said.
They ran.
The Tradewyn hummed as it fired back at the ship that had ambushed it. The space battle had begun.
When they reached the entrance to the docking bay, a strange sight greeted them.
His face flushed, Raynar stood protectively in front of his mother near the boarding ramp to the Rock Dragon, colorful robes swirling around him like an aurora.
Closer to the entrance, the guard Kusk faced them, speaking into a comlink gripped in one hand. His other hand held a blaster aimed more or less at Raynar. The blaster, however, seemed to have a mind of its own. It raised and lowered and wobbled and dipped while Kusk wrestled to hold it steady. Obviously, Raynar was struggling through the Force to get a grip on Kusk’s weapon.
“Yes, I have the merchandise you requested,” Kusk said into the comlink, straining to keep hold of his squirming weapon. “I’ll meet you in five minutes at the pickup point.”
A harsh voice replied. Though it was crackly with static, Jacen still recognized it as the voice of the helmeted man aboard the High Roller. “It worked, just like I said it would.”
Another blow struck the ship. The mysterious attacker had shot again, but the guard Kusk merely smiled in satisfaction.
The Tradewyn fired back with a loud whining discharge of deadly energy.
Tenel Ka took her own action. “Prepare to fight, traitor!” she said in a loud voice.
She stepped forward, ready for battle.
“Hey I have a feeling your plans aren’t going to turn out quite as well as you thought, Kusk,” Jacen said. He wished fleetingly that he and Tenel Ka were wearing their lightsabers, but they had removed them for the Ceremony of Waters.
Sliding his comlink through a loop in his belt, Kusk faced the door, only mildly surprised by the intruders. His lip curled in a sneer. “I don’t really think three children and a woman can do much to thwart the plans of a trained killer and a seasoned bounty hunter.” He turned back toward his quarry. Aryn Thul glared contemptuously at the traitorous guard.
Raynar squared his shoulders. “Maybe not,” he said. “But there’s a great deal that three Jedi can do.”
As the guard snorted in disdain, another hammer blow from the attacker struck the Tradewyn. Taking advantage of the distraction, Jacen administered a hard Force shove against the guard’s back. At the same moment Tenel Ka lifted Kusk a few centimeters off the floor with her mind, throwing him off balance. Raynar held out one arm, and the astonished guard’s blaster finally spun from his grasp into the young man’s Outstretched hand.
“Don’t hurt him,” Aryn cautioned in a loud voice. “We’ll need him alive to learn how far this conspiracy goes.”
Kusk’s feet thumped down onto the deckplates.
Open-mouthed, he retreated as if pulled by invisible strings until his back pressed against the hull of the Rock Dragon.
His eyes darted in panic from Jacen and Tenel Ka to Raynar and Aryn and back again.
“How did you do that?” he rasped.
Jacen crossed his arms over his chest.
“We’re Jedi. One of my best friends is training to be a bounty hunter,” he said, thinking of Zekk. “And you violated one of their most fundamental rules: Always do your research.”
Kusk snatched at his comlink. “High Roller, this is Kusk. I’ve been captured. Save yourself.”
Aryn strode to the comm panel by the airlock door. “Security backup team to secondary docking bay immediately,” she said in a calm, commanding voice. Red lights strobed and sirens whooped. Kusk flailed for the entry hatch of the Rock Dragon and attempted to pull himself inside.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” Tenel Ka said. Kusk hesitated for just a moment. “My ship has a fail-safe navigational program,” she explained. “Unless my crew or I input the proper authorization code, the ship is programmed to find the most direct route to Hapes and dock at the high-security hangar of the Hapan royal house.” She smiled coldly. “Not even you would want to explain yourself to my parents, my grandmother, and the seven hundred hand-picked guards stationed there.”
A burst of static blasted from the comlink in Kusk’s hand. He dropped it as if it were a venomous reptile and sank to the floor. The next moment the Tradewyn’s security squad arrived. One of the guards stopped to report. “That particular bounty hunter won’t be bothering you anymore,” she said to Aryn Thul. “We sustained only minimal damage, but the High Roller made an unlucky bet. The ship is completely destroyed. No survivors.”
“Thank you,” Raynar’s mother said.
A thin wail rose from the floor next to the Rock Dragon. Jacen could just barely make out the words of Kusk’s mournful cry: “My brother!”
6
Still trying to make peace with the memories of his Dark Jedi days, Zekk eagerly sought out an assignment to begin his new career as a bounty hunter. As a first step toward finding an employer, he went to the most bustling place he could think of—a bazaar of traders and smugglers, scam artists, lawbreakers, and opportunists, inside the hollow center of asteroid Borgo Prime. From there, he hoped to establish his credentials, while adhering to the Bounty Hunters’ Creed.
At a loss after his arrival, he spent days wandering through the airlocked, low-gravity city. He moved from establishment to establishment, putting out the word that he was looking for work as a bounty hunter. He also made numerous inquiries about the most recent known location of a man named Bornan Thul.