"No, you can't stay here," said Lumiya. Telepathy was beyond her, but she knew a proprietorial look when she saw it. It made sense to keep an eye on Alema: she was so fixated and reckless that she might—just might—put a hydrospanner in the works, and that wasn't something Lumiya was prepared to risk. The stakes were too high, the moment too close.

If I had any sense, I'd kill her now before she becomes too much trouble. But . . .

Alema still had her uses, until her madness became too unmanageable.

"You understand revenge," said Alema. She settled on a sofa, one arm conspicuously limp, and a petulant frown creased her brow for a moment. "Luke Skywalker destroyed your life. He left you scarred, too."

"Oh, much more than scarred." Lumiya pulled her veil from her face and let Alema see the damage to her jaw. Then she placed one boot on a chair, took out a vibroblade, and rammed it into her thigh. There was a metallic

scrape. Alema's expression was suitably surprised.

"I'm actually more machine than organic," Lumiya went on. "There's a point, I think, at which a woman ceases to be a human with cybernetic implants and becomes a machine with organic parts. I believe I've passed that threshold. And you know what? I'm not unhappy with that."

"You want to punish Luke, as we want to punish Leia."

Lumiya leaned over Alema and caught her by her collar, jerking her face close to hers so she couldn't look away.

"Luke seems to think that, too, which I find staggeringly arrogant." Was that a little fear in Alema's eyes? Sometimes it was interesting to play the madwoman herself. "The galaxy revolves around him, he thinks, but then many men think that way. No, I don't miss my beauty, you fool, because it would have vanished by now anyway. Once I understood that my injuries freed me from worrying about such trivia, I realized I had a task that only I could fulfill." She tightened her grip on the flimsy fabric at Alema's throat. "And that task is close to completion, so if you thwart me in any way, I'll become very focused on you. Do you understand?"

For a moment, Alema lost that oddly demented expression and looked like a normal sane person in fear of her life. Lumiya wasn't sure what she looked like herself at that moment, but it seemed to work.

"We will . . . respect your wishes," Alema said imperiously.

Lumiya decided not to backhand her, but it took an effort. She didn't have time for this nonsense.

"Do yourself a favor," she said, and let Alema's collar slide out of her grasp with a hiss of sheer fabric over her gloves. "Ask yourself what you have against Leia Solo other than the fact that she made you ugly. If there's nothing beyond that, then your quest for Balance is a waste of time."

Alema blinked as if she'd been slapped. Maybe it was the first time anyone had used the word ugly to her. She wasn't; she wasn't anything. In a galaxy

But Alema looked as if she was thinking it over.

"We still wish to help you achieve your objective."

"Good," said Lumiya. The way Alema used we gnawed away at her patience for some reason. She knew it was a hive-mind remnant of her Joiner days, but it irked her. "Because if hurting Leia is what you want most, letting Jacen get on with what he has to do is going to hurt her most of all."

"Do you want to hurt Leia?"

"She's done nothing to me. I have no feelings either way. There might be something you can do to help me, something you do better than anyone." Appeal to her vanity. It's big enough. "Keep tabs on Jacen for me. Covert observation."

"We will, but can you not locate him anytime you want?"

"Not closely enough." Lumiya didn't have the complete Sith ability to see all the pieces in the game, every element in the battle. That was for a full Sith Master. But she didn't need to let on that she had fewer powers than Alema might think. "I don't have time to log his movements, but for his own safety, I need to know exactly where he is at all times, especially when he leaves Coruscant. Do you think you can do that? It's tedious work, but necessary."

"We can."

"And lose the Conqueror. I'll find you a less conspicuous ship."

"The orange sphere?"

"No." Alema seemed to have taken a fancy to the Sith vessel.

Perhaps it was because she could communicate with it: once Lumiya penetrated the jagged chaos in her mind, there was a sense of isolation in the Twi'lek that made her recoil. "Something more suitable. And cover your tracks when you leave—don't lead anyone back to this asteroid."

"Our expertise is surveillance and assassination," Alema said stiffly. "We aren't an amateur."

Lumiya took her through the winding passages that honeycombed the asteroid and brought her to the emergency access—even in space, she thought of it as the backdoor—where a few small ships were standing idle.

Once she'd had a battle fleet, but it was long gone in the Yuuzhan Vong war. Her needs were different now anyway. She needed stealth, not firepower.

"There." She pointed Alema to a decidedly scruffy shuttle, the kind that priority couriers used to ferry urgent consignments between worlds.

It was fifteen meters long, and a third of that was now given over to a hyperdrive and discreet armaments. A courier shuttle needed to be fast and able to defend itself against piracy, but this one had considerably more than the standard specifications. Lumiya waited for Alema to complain about it.

"We won't be noticed in this," the Twi'lek said, appearing satisfied.

"You can change the identification transponder and the livery panel to any of a hundred courier companies." That configuration was actually standard, but Lumiya had added a few bogus and untraceable companies for good measure. "It's not luxurious, but it does the job."

Alema lifted the hatch. It sprung away from the casing to form an awning. She peered inside.

"She took everything from us." Her voice was muffled by the hatchway. Then she pulled out again. "We're alone. She's made us solitary."

Oh, give me strength, she's rambling again. "Who did?"

"Leia Solo. She took our lekku, and so we can't communicate fully with others. She caused the destruction of our nest, too. And she took what attracted others to us, our beauty." Alema had been thinking, then: she'd chewed over Lumiya's challenge and worked out what really drove her. "We're lonely, and we can never touch the world properly again."

Lumiya had been trained never to drop her guard, and pity wasn't something she was accustomed to feeling. She didn't quite feel pity for Alema, but she did get a sudden and painful glimpse of her loss, and it must have been a particularly agonizing one for a Twi'lek; without both lekku intact, she would have difficulty communicating with others of her kind, feeling pleasure—even loving someone. The head-tails were part of her nervous system. And how much more in need of intimacy was she now, after becoming part of a close-knit Killik nest?

Alema did have her reasons for wanting retribution, then. Lumiya was careful not to let that brief flood of pity start her thinking about what normality she, too, had lost.

"I'm sorry," Lumiya said, and meant it. "Now use that to remain focused, and to bide your time."

Alema looked at the courier shuttle and seemed to be somewhere else entirely. Then she gazed down at the deck of the hangar and began swaying a little as if listening to music. She raised one arm—the other hung limp, paralyzed by Luke Skywalker's lightsaber—and seemed to be going through the motions of a dance, turning slowly and with difficulty on her crippled foot.