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sent him
undercover to a Separatist base to work as a double agent. As a result, Ferus had been able to bust a Separatist spy ring that had operated throughout the Mid-Rim. It hadn’t won the war, but
it had saved lives.
    If there was anybody in the galaxy who he’d want to watch his back—with the exception of Roan or Obi-Wan—it was Clive Flax.
    “So what’s the plan?” Ferus asked.
    “What plan?”
    “The escape plan. I know you have one.”
    “You’re right,” Clive admitted easily. “I just need an accomplice. The galaxy smiled on me the day I saw your ugly mug in here. That’s why I kept you
alive.”
    “You mean you only saved my life so you could use me?”
    “Of course, mate. You know I only think about my own sweet self.” Clive grinned at him.
    “Tell me the plan,” Ferus said. “I don’t care what it is—I’m in.”
    “I’ve been stealing things for months,” Clive said. He reached inside his coveralls and laid out several items on the hard floor.
    Ferus looked at them dubiously.
    A servodriver.
    A spoon.
    A droid’s restraining bolt.
    A handful of durasteel bits.
    “This is what you’re going to break out of prison with?”
    Clive picked up one of the tiny bits. “You see this? You put a small object in a piece of equipment in the right way, you can disable it. Disable something, you’ve got a distraction.
Sometimes that’s all you need.” He replaced the scrap of metal with something like fondness. “Besides, I had a plastoid datacard, too, but I had to use it to save your sorry neck.
The transport ship comes tomorrow for the new load. Are you in or out?”
    Ferus gave another glance at the motley group of objects. Sure, they didn’t look like much. But Clive had just saved his life with a datacard.
    “I’m in,” he said.

Malorum sat in the cockpit of his private starship on one of the landing platforms of Polis Massa.
    There were too many unrelated facts in his brain. He was used to cataloging facts and swiftly reaching conclusions—that’s how smart he was—but now he felt only confusion. He
hated confusion.
    Think,
he told himself impatiently.
    He suspected that Senator Amidala had been treated here, but he could not locate any evidence of it.
    One of his best agents, Sancor, had been killed here. According to the operational head of the med-center, Maneeli Tuun, Sancor had “accidentally” fallen off an observation platform
and landed on some lethally sharp surgical instruments.
    Accident.
Did they take him for a fool?
    A source had told him that a Jedi had been the one to take Amidala’s body to Naboo. Of course the galaxy believed the Jedi had killed Amidala, but Malorum knew it was a lie fabricated to
slur the Jedi. He didn’t care about that. He cared only about what really happened, because it was information Darth Vader did not have. And any information Vader didn’t have could be
used against him.
    The funeral…
    Malorum tapped his fingers against the cockpit instrument panel. The funeral had been organized in haste. For such a ceremonial people, it was perhaps too hasty.
    He leaned over to the nav computer. He set a course for Naboo. His work here was finished. He’d found nothing.
    Instinct was telling him that his answers lay there, not with Ferus Olin. He would call in the execution order. The galaxy would have one less Jedi sympathizer in it.
    That could only be an improvement.

Trever walked down a warehouse aisle, in between blocks of towering garbage. The smell was overpowering. He could see fat white gaberworms as long as his arm slithering through
the waste.
    Workers of many species toiled without stopping, shoveling the garbage into a machine that cubed and sanitized it. They wore face masks and gloves, but Trever couldn’t imagine that those
helped with the smell or the feel of the garbage.
    “Told you you’d regret tagging along,” Keets told him.
    “It’s not so bad,” Trever said. “You should have seen my brother’s