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barehanded.
    Intrigued, Xizor watched the man come. The assassin was big, bigger than any of the guards and much larger than Xizor himself, built like a heavy-gravity weight lifter, and he was obviously crazed if he would charge three armed men without a weapon.
    How interesting.
    “Don’t shoot him,” Xizor said.
    The running man was only twenty or so meters away and closing fast.
    The Dark Prince allowed himself one of his tight smiles.
    “Leave him alone,” he said. “He’s mine.”
    The trio of bodyguards tucked their own blasters away and moved aside. They knew better than to question Xizor’s orders. Those who did could wind up like the still-smoking guard lying on the polished marble floor.
    The assassin continued his run, screaming incoherently.
    Xizor waited. When the man was nearly upon him, the Dark Prince pivoted on the balls of his feet and slapped a hard palm against the back of the man’s head as he charged past. The extra momentum of the strike was enough to off-balance the yelling man so that he overstepped and fell. He managed to turn the fall into an awkward shoulder roll. He came up, spun, faced Xizor. He was a bit more wary now. He moved in, more slowly, hands held in tight fists.
    “What seems to be the problem, citizen?” Xizor asked.
    “You murdering scum! You bog slime!”
    The man lunged in closer, swung a roundhouse punch at Xizor’s head. Had it connected it would have shattered bone. Xizor ducked and sidestepped, kicked the attacker in the belly with the toe of his right boot and knocked the man’s wind out.
    The attacker tottered back a few steps to catch his breath.
    “Have we met? I have an excellent memory for faces, and I don’t recall yours.” Xizor noticed a bit of lint on the shoulder of his tunic. He reached up and brushed it off.
    “You killed my father. Have you forgotten Colby Hoff?”
    The man charged again, fists swinging wildly.
    Xizor stepped aside and almost nonchalantly slammed a hammerfist into the man’s head, knocking him down.
    “You are mistaken, Hoff. Your father committed suicide, as I recall. Stuck a blaster in his mouth and blew the back of his head off, didn’t he? Very messy.”
    Hoff came up from the floor, and his rage drove him at Xizor again.
    Xizor V-stepped to his right and drove his left bootheel at Hoff’s left knee, hard. He heard the joint go with a wet snap as he connected.
    Hoff fell, his left leg no longer able to support him.
    “You ruined him!” He struggled up to his good knee.
    “We were
business
competitors,” Xizor said matter-of-factly. “He gambled that he was smarter than I. A foolish mistake. If you cannot afford to lose, you should not play the game.”
    “I’m going to kill you!”
    “I think not,” Xizor said. He stepped in behind the wounded man, moving fast for one his size, and grabbed Hoff’s head with both hands. “You see, to contend with Xizor is to lose. As far as any reasonable person is concerned, attacking me will also be judged a suicide.”
    With that, Xizor gave a sharp, hard twist.
    The crack of vertebrae was quite loud in the corridor.
    “Clean up this mess,” he said to his guards. “And inform the proper authorities of this poor young man’s fate.”
    He looked down at the body. He felt no remorse. It was like stepping on a roach. It meant nothing to him at all.
    I n his most private chamber, the Emperor sat staring at a life-size holographic recording: Prince Xizor breaking the neck of someone who’d attacked him in a protected corridor.
    The Emperor smiled and turned in his floating repulsor chair to look at Darth Vader.
    “Well,” the Emperor said, “it seems that Prince Xizor has kept up his martial arts practice, does it not?”
    Unseen under his armored mask, Vader frowned.“He is a dangerous man, my master. Not to be trusted.”
    The Emperor favored him with one of his unattractive, toothy smiles. “Do not trouble yourself with Xizor, Lord Vader. He is my concern.”
    “As you