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  Han’s admission took some of the fire out of her. Wait…was he admitting he’d been wrong? “You know what?” she asked suspiciously.

  He stood up and paused to wipe some of the sticky fungus off his elbows and out of his hair. Then he looked at her with a grin. “I know exactly where we are—and you do too.”

  She turned and really looked at the room. Knee-deep stagnant water, a variety of entrance shafts high on the wall, one main tunnel entering into the chamber, and a large circular drainage hole at the far end of the room. The sound of water trickling into the room and water dripping out—it was all very familiar.

  Lady Proxima called it the Cistern of Discipline. Worms were sent here after storms to scavenge for flotsam. Sometimes they dropped nets down through the drainage hole to catch fleek eels and coppergrins.

  More often, though, White Worms were sent here as punishment, for not meeting Lady Proxima’s quotas or missing curfew too many times. The scrumrats would be tossed through the drainage hole into the giant underground basin below. If they could swim to the edge and find their way back, their transgressions were forgiven. Qi’ra had made it back, but not everyone did. The littlest ones struggled especially.

  “This is the entrance to the Cistern of Discipline,” she said.

  “This is the entrance to the Cistern of Discipline,” Han said enthusiastically.

  “So if we go down the hole, we can swim to the drainage tubes and make our way down toward the Bottoms.”

  “Right,” Han said, jerking a thumb the other direction. “Or we can sneak back through the other tunnel toward the White Worm den, and—”

  “Han,” Tsuulo interrupted.

  “Not now,” Han said impatiently. “I’m trying to explain my plan.”

  Qi’ra heard, and then saw, the same thing Tsuulo did. She whispered urgently, “Han. Don’t. Move.”

  “What?” he snapped, spinning around. “Just because…”

  The words died on his lips. Standing at the entrance to the tunnel were three of Rebolt’s hounds. Their large, bone-white bodies were machines of glistening muscle. The sharp wedges of their heads ended in ferocious jaws that could tear a man in half, framed by tentacle-like growths.

  Where the hounds were, Rebolt would not be far behind.

  The lead hound sniffed the air and growled. The other two spread out to flank Qi’ra, Tsuulo, and Han.

  “Get behind me,” Han whispered, putting himself between Qi’ra and the hounds.

  “All the better for me to escape,” she whispered, and started edging back toward the drainage hole. Han followed her, step by step.

  Tsuulo, on the other hand, walked right toward the hounds. He was going to sacrifice himself to give them a chance to escape—which was a terrible plan! He had the datacube, and they needed it if they were going to have any chance of survival.

  “Don’t do it, Tsuulo,” she pleaded.

  His one good antenna quirked in puzzlement, and then he reached into his bag—maybe he was going to throw her the cube!—and pulled out the rest of the dog biscuits.

  The hounds closed on him like they were seeing an old friend. He gave one biscuit to each, and patted their sides while they rubbed their tentacled snouts against his face.

  Rebolt’s voice echoed down the tunnel, shouting for his hounds. The largest hound swiveled his head toward the voice, and then back toward Tsuulo, growling again.

  “We need to go,” she said, and she turned and ran for the drain.

  There was nothing to do but jump.

  She folded her arms tight to her chest, closed her eyes, and leaped.

  The drop felt like it lasted forever, although it couldn’t have been more than nine or ten meters. She hit the water with a hard splash. Cold darkness closed in over her head. It was too easy to get disoriented in dark water, but she knew a trick. She calmed herself and allowed her body to sink until her boots met sludge. Then she kicked off the bottom and shot to the surface. As she treaded water and gasped for air, a second and third splash landed nearby.

  Han’s head popped up first, and he shook it like a wet dog, scattering water everywhere. Tsuulo popped up a moment later, and she could see the light glinting in his huge black eyes.

  “The datacube,” she said. “We can’t let it get wet!”

  Tsuulo opened his mouth and showed her the datacube on his tongue.

  Han nodded enthusiastically. “Good thinking.”

  She was set to argue that a mouth wasn’t much drier than a cistern, but the hounds stood at the edge of the drain above them and started howling. They had only seconds until Rebolt showed up, and if he didn’t have a blaster, the White Worms who followed him would.

  As one, they started swimming toward the far end of the reclamation basin and the overflow tubes. She dreaded the sound of a splash behind them, but no one followed, and moments later, they had climbed, breathless and dripping wet, onto a ledge at the end of the basin.

  Rebolt’s voice echoed through the massive underground chamber. “Come back. It will be worse for you if you don’t.”

  Qi’ra was forming a suitably sharp response, but looking back at the water, she saw ripples from a school of fish—or something larger—cutting toward them. The White Worm scrumrats weren’t the only ones who visited this cistern to find something to eat.

  “Let’s go,” she cried, pushing Han and Tsuulo up the metal rungs of a ladder to the nearest overflow tube.

  Seconds later, she clambered in behind them. It was pitch-black. “We can’t walk down this tube blind,” she said. “We could fall down a shaft, miss our turn….Tsuulo, maybe you can use your datapad to light our way?”

  Tsuulo mumbled something in reply, but she couldn’t understand him.

  “He says we have to wait for the datapad to dry out before turning it back on,” Han translated.

  “Can’t he take the cube out of his mouth now?” She looked at her own soaked clothes and wet hands. “Never mind—there’s no place drier to put it.”

  Tsuulo mumbled something again, but with the datacube in his mouth, even her basic Huttese failed her.

  “No, I’m not trusting some old superstition!” Han said. “And Qi’ra isn’t either.”

  Tsuulo blurted out a longer phrase, and Han calmed down.

  “Oh, that works,” he said. Then to Qi’ra, he explained: “He says not to worry—he can see really well in the dark.”

  “That’s great,” she said. “Why don’t you lead the way, Tsuulo.”

  He said something else she couldn’t understand. She waited for Han to translate, and then, after a moment, realized she was standing there alone. The only sound was her own breathing. They’d left without her.

  I will not panic. I am not a panicker. With one hand on the wall, she began feeling her way down the black tunnel, hurrying until she stumbled right into someone.

  “Han! Tsuulo!”

  “We’re right here,” whispered Han. “Maybe you should hold on to my sleeve, and I’ll hold on to Tsuulo’s, so we don’t get separated.”

  Tsuulo mumbled something.

  Han said, “Yeah, I’m cold too. Stop complaining.”

  Qi’ra was beginning to shiver. Her stomach growled, and she regretted that Tsuulo had given the last of the biscuits to Rebolt’s hounds. She’d been running and hiding all day, and was hungry and exhausted. But they couldn’t stop yet. “Now let’s move.”

  Hours later—feeling even hungrier and more exhausted—Tsuulo led them up out of the tunnels and into a basement beneath an old warehouse.

  They reached a rusty arched gate that was their last remaining barrier to escape. Light drifted down from a gutter in the street above, but not much. Night was falling. They’d been running and hiding all day.

  The gate was old, and it seemed to barely hang on its hinges, but the latch was controlled by a modern access pad. Qi’ra had never been here before; it was one of the few areas Lady Proxima did not have entrée to. She sized up the gate. Maybe with the right amo
unt of force, applied just so, they could pop it off its hinges.

  She was just about to suggest as much when Han stepped forward and pressed his thumb to the reader. Something clicked. The gate swung open.

  Qi’ra and Tsuulo stared at him.

  “Hey, I get around, okay?” he said.

  Tsuulo bleeped something. He had taken the datacube out of his mouth and was holding it in his fist. She caught the word for “people.”

  “Yeah, I know some people here too,” Han said. “If you’d told me the speeder you had access to was at this garage, I could have gotten us here quicker. I know a shortcut.”

  Tsuulo chattered back angrily, something about “trust” and “fodder,” as the three of them stepped through the gate, closed it behind them, and found themselves confronted by a ladder. A rung was missing about two-thirds of the way up, but Qi’ra decided it looked sound enough.

  Han climbed up first and disappeared through a hatch, then Tsuulo and, finally, Qi’ra. When her head crested the floor, her nose was assaulted by the scents of wet duracrete, overheated grease, and exhaust fumes. She climbed up onto the floor and sprung to her feet, ready for anything—blasters, CorSec, angry droids.

  She needn’t have worried. They were in an old warehouse, with high ceilings and pollution-fogged clerestory windows. Speeders were everywhere, every variety and color, in every possible state of repair. Beings and maintenance droids scurried all over the place, getting ready for something. A few attended the speeders themselves, checking gauges, tightening sockets, siphoning fuel from nearby tanks.

  Two humans and one droid greeted Han; he’d obviously been here before. But no one else paid them any mind. Qi’ra felt her breathing ease.

  All of a sudden, Tsuulo swore loudly. Qi’ra jumped before she realized that he was angry, not frightened. She was going to have to get him to teach her a few choice Huttese swear words. He obviously knew several.

  He and Han talked back and forth a bit. Qi’ra gathered that their arrival was terribly timed. A race was about to start, and the speeder Tsuulo had access to was no doubt lined up and ready to go.

  “Which speeder?” Han asked. “I know a lot of people who rent space in this garage.”

  Tsuulo told him.

  “You’re kidding me!” Han said. “Reezo is your brother?”

  Tsuulo made a sad sound.

  “Yeah, don’t get me started about family,” Han said with a knowing sigh.

  “It’s your brother’s speeder we’re looking for?” Qi’ra asked.

  Tsuulo nodded.

  “Then why don’t you just ask him to borrow it?” she suggested. “He wouldn’t mind sitting out one race, right?”

  Tsuulo protested vehemently.

  “He and his brother don’t talk,” Han said. “Or maybe Tsuulo doesn’t talk to Reezo? They haven’t said a word to each other in six months. Anyway, he says there’s absolutely no way Reezo would skip a race. Racing is everything to him.”

  Qi’ra didn’t know much about racing, only that there was the legal kind and the illegal kind, and the kind that happened in this part of the city, with these color-drenched, souped-up speeders, was definitely the illegal kind. It was such a part of the local culture, though, that CorSec mostly looked the other way. Sometimes a fatal accident would occur, or property owned by an important citizen would get damaged, and CorSec would make a show of busting someone and decrying the practice of illegal street racing. But after a little time had passed and the good people of Coronet had forgotten to be shocked and angry, everything would go back to normal.

  “Maybe someone else has a speeder we could borrow?” Qi’ra suggested.

  Han and Tsuulo gaped at her.

  “What? What did I say wrong?”

  “You don’t just ask to borrow someone’s speeder,” Han said.

  Tsuulo nodded vigorously.

  “It’s like asking to borrow someone’s spouse. Or their soul.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  Han looked down at the ground. “It does to some of us.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Well, no…” A maintenance droid flew by, startling them all, but it paid them no mind. “I mean yes!” Han said. He looked up at her, his face shining with that abominable grin.

  “Uh-oh,” said Qi’ra.

  Han grabbed Qi’ra and Tsuulo by the shoulders and brought them close so the three of them were head to head. He whispered, “We grab Reezo. Tie him up. Take his place in the race.”

  Qi’ra blinked. “That might be the worst idea I’ve ever—”

  “Hear me out. The race route takes us right down Narro Sienar Boulevard, across all the downtown bridges. When we’re near the Bottoms, we’ll veer off track. No one will question what happened. They’ll just assume we blew a valve or something.”

  A few speeders rumbled past, cruising out toward the street. One belched dirty gray smoke. Another whined, high-pitched and metallic like a rusty nail scraping a mirror. The race was starting soon. Whatever they decided, they had to do it quickly.

  “All right, maybe that’s not the worst plan,” Qi’ra admitted. “Tsuulo, what do you think?”

  Tsuulo jabbered something while bobbing his head up and down.

  Han gave him a weird look, but he translated: “He loves the idea of tying up his brother. Apparently, they really don’t get along.”

  “Then let’s do it,” Qi’ra said. “Tsuulo, lead the way.”

  Tsuulo set off toward the far corner of the garage, and the others followed.

  “How are we going to do this?” Han whispered.

  “Reezo hasn’t seen his brother in a long time, right?” Qi’ra said. “I figure he’ll be really surprised. While he’s distracted, you sneak up behind him.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know, hit him over the head with a wrench or something.”

  “Qi’ra, I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “Better him than us.”

  Tsuulo froze in his tracks. He turned and whispered something.

  “That’s Reezo,” Han said, pointing.

  Another young Rodian crouched beside a speeder. His skin had a slightly yellower cast than Tsuulo’s and he seemed a couple of years older. A pair of massive goggles hung from his neck, sized for Rodian eyes.

  But it was the speeder Reezo was tinkering with that took Qi’ra by surprise. It was huge and unwieldy, as green and shiny as an emerald, and it hovered closer to the ground than all the other speeders. Qi’ra couldn’t tell if the repulsorlift was broken or if it was meant to be that way. Florescent green light rimmed the lower edge, making the oil-slicked cement beneath glow like a rotting swamp. Two stems, each ending in a disk, protruded from the hood; it took Qi’ra a moment to realize the twin receivers were colored and contoured to look like Rodian antennae.

  “Holy moons, that thing looks like a giant green bug,” Qi’ra whispered.

  “I was thinking hover-brick,” said Han. “It gets worse, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Reezo was oblivious to their presence. He leaned over the seat and hit a switch on the console. Holographic flames shot out from the fender and rear spoiler, dancing bluish and hazy in the air. Qi’ra imagined that while the speeder was racing, the flames would appear to stream behind.

  “That’s what I mean,” Han said. “Also, he removed the dampener from the engine coil so it would be as loud as possible.”

  Sure enough, Reezo fired it up, and the whole warehouse rumbled so loudly Qi’ra felt it deep in her chest.

  She stretched on her tiptoes and leaned toward Han’s ear so he could hear over the noise. “We should make our move now! That horrible sound will cover any scuffle.”

  Han nodded, but then he paused. “Are we sure we want to do this?” he asked them both.

  Tsuulo twittered something in Huttese that even Qi’ra could tell was an enthusiastic affirmative.

  “No, I don’t have a better idea,” Han said
glumly.

  With Tsuulo leading the way, the three of them crept forward.

  Han had been in his share of scuffles, sure. Like the time that Grindalid caught him cheating at sabacc. Well, not cheating exactly. He was still figuring out how the game was played and had made an honest mistake.

  Then, like always, Han had faced him down. He either came away from a fight victorious or crawled away bloody, but he didn’t back down. In fact, he preferred direct confrontation to innuendo, sneaking around, or the complicated planning Qi’ra seemed to prefer.

  But that didn’t mean he went looking for trouble. And it didn’t mean he particularly liked hurting people. So as Tsuulo walked up to his brother and tapped him on the shoulder, Han’s gut was in a knot.

  Reezo spun around, and his long snout-mouth dropped open. “Tsuulo?” he squeaked out. “What are you doing here?”

  Han grabbed a pilex driver that was lying on a tool cart and began to circle around behind Reezo.

  “Reezo,” Tsuulo said, his voice full of barely contained rage. “I see you’ve spent even more of our inheritance. Holo-flames? Really? I thought you said the money had run out.”

  “I won some,” he said, wiping his hands on his pants. “By racing. I’m getting a lot better.”

  Tsuulo snorted. Han raised the pilex driver and prepared to whack Reezo over the head. Then he got a better idea.

  A long rag swung from Reezo’s back pocket. Han whipped it out, flipped it over Reezo’s head and into his mouth, and yanked him backward. Reezo started to flail, reaching for the gag, but Han kicked the back of his knee. Reezo crumbled to the ground, dragging Han with him.

  “Someone grab his arms, quick,” Han said. “There’s some cable on the tool cart—”

  A small form darted forward. Before Han could blink, a fist crashed into Reezo’s face. The Rodian boy swayed a moment, then slumped over, unconscious.

  Han looked up to find Qi’ra standing over them, cradling her right fist. “Ouch,” she said. “That hurt.”

  “I’m sure Reezo sympathizes,” he said drily. “Here, help me get him out of sight.”

  Tsuulo ran forward. “Is he okay?”

  “I think so,” Han said, dragging Reezo’s limp form behind the speeder. “Just knocked out is all. You hit people often?” he asked Qi’ra.