Drake rubbed his eyes, massaging the tension from his brow and winced in pain. His fingers ached from burying Suhailya's father in one of the branch tunnels. Having dug out a shallow depression in the rock floor with a torch, they properly laid him to rest beneath what stones they could salvage from the cave-in. He nodded to his first mate as the Wookiee rejoined him in the cave where they had found the corpse. She was carrying a crate of Socorran raava as provisions from the explosion.

"The blast from the rigged crates must have triggered the beacon," Drake said, absently fingering the golden hoop in his earlobe. "How is she?" He nodded, knowing the answer before the Wookiee could reply. "Talk about the worst luck. From the time stamp on his personal log, he recorded that message ten years ago. He drew The Maw card, too."

He sighed in frustration. "Been reading his journal. On the way here, his ship got shot up pretty good by Feyyaz Ferdusi. Despite crippled engines, he fled into the Akkadese Nebulae and crashed landed a few kilometers from us. Vegetation must have covered up his ship." He chuckled and shook his head in sorrow. "Even in a damaged ship, he managed to make the Kessel Run in 15 parsecs. I'm feeling strangely inadequate."

Drake held up the journal."According to this, Ferdusi's a Nduuati merc turned bounty hunter. Worked for Jabba. Yeah," he chuckled at Nikaede clipped bark, "the Nduuati are professed cannibals. From what I've heard of them, I wouldn't want to get too close. He runs with a custom-job droid, but I can't recall the name."

"Harbinger I," Suhailya said from the passage. Arms folded across her chest, she lingered in the shadows. "And you definitely don't want to get close to either of them. It's rumored Ferdusi built Harbinger from the spare parts of an Imperial interrogation droid and a probe bot. Hard to tell which of them is more sadistic: the droid or its master."

"Suhailya, I'm really sorry."

"I am, too, Drake," she whispered. "What a horrible way to die. All alone. But at least I know what happened to him."

"Jabba sent bounty hunters after your father to ensure he didn't finish the race." Drake scratched at his chin. "That won't go over well with the Black Bha'lir when I report this to Ancher, trust me."

"What's important is my father died trying to save his family. He was thinking of us in his last moments." She sat down beside him on the edge of the crate. "Anything else in his log? Like a way out?"

"He was hurt bad from the crash. By the time he got into the caverns, he knew he wasn't leaving," Drake replied. "There's nothing specific about these caves, but something tells me if we find that card, we'll find our way out of here. Getting in has been too easy. There has to be some gimmick."

"Any ideas?" Suhailya asked, looking at the datapad in his lap.

"It's odd. This cave should be a dead end. The writing on the walls in here has been cut out of the stone, blasted away by some powerful heat source. I can't figure out what did it, but it was too precise for hand torches."

"One of my father's last entries was a verse. Is it from the same song we've been following?"

"No, it's not. It's not part of any song I know, and I've been listening at the table since I could walk." He scrolled down to the verse. "Your father was quite a writer, Suhailya. He wrote this. I've run the Kessel and survived the show. Made the billboard in old Mos Eisley."

"What does that mean? Made the billboards."

"He had a price on his head. A sizable one. Jabba probably arranged that."

"Explains the bounty hunters."

"But I'm no hero, I'm just a lonely rogue. The shadow of the gallows waits for me." Hearing her sob, Drake embraced the Twi'lek and held her close. "Hey, it's going to be all right. We're going to get through this and finish what your old man started." He reared back to look her in the face, raising her chin to meet his gaze. "This log entry is there for a reason. We need to figure out why." Hands on his hips, he scrutinized the walls of the cave. "He was wounded, dying. He knew he wasn't going home, but that someone, maybe you, might follow him."

"The ground is uneven here," Suhailya said. "Not like the other passages, which have been smooth." She grinned at his surprised expression. "Call it a dancer's intuition."

"Put your lights down on the ground and let's get a closer look." Drake dropped to his knees to inspect the cavern floor. Suhailya was correct. Only a few feet from where her father had died, there were nearly imperceptible changes in the stone dust path.

"There's definitely something underneath all this dirt," Suhailya said, using her hands to brush away the loose gravel.

"Some sort of carving?" Drake said, waiting for Niakede's stronger, larger hands to remove swaths of the debris. Working quickly, the three of them uncovered a circular ring that was five meters in diameter. Drake stood up to get a better look, unsettled by the visage of a forlorn figure in the center of it.

The carved figure was dressed in robes, his face buried in his hands, obscuring any prominent features. Skillfully rendered in stone, an eyeless skull leered from over his right shoulder. The image of a stormtrooper peered from the other, as if each effigy sat in judgement over the tormented figure.

Nikaede moved her fingers gently over the skull. "It moves?" Drake asked her. "Are you sure, partner?" Wary of a pressure plate, he poked cautiously at the image of the stormtrooper helmet with the toe of his boot. "This one moves, too. I bet one of these is our way out of this tomb."

"But which one?" Suhailya asked at his shoulder.

"I've run the Kessel and survived the show. Made the billboards in old Mos Eisley," Drake sighed. "He's run into what we loving call Imperial entanglements, suggesting the stormtrooper maybe? I am no hero, just a lonely rogue; the shadow of the gallows waits for me. That suggests a death sentence."

"Well, which is it? The skull or the helmet."

Drake knelt down, hovering over the face of the tormented figure. "Death comes to each of us," he said, reaching his hand over the skull. "But being captured by the Empire usually means life in an Imperial prison." He nodded, listening to the Wookiee. "You're right, partner. Imperial imprisonment is a kind of death. It's not which one gets us out of here because it's both." He tightened his grip on the stone effigies and turned them in the only direction they would move.

With a teeth-rattling noise, the natural rock ceiling above them slid slowly away, and a sallow light filtered down seven meters onto their astonished faces. When the grating stopped, the floor beneath them shifted, and the circular seal lifted them from the cavern floor like a maintenance lift.

"Why do I have a really bad feeling about this?" Drake thumbed the restraint from his blaster and rested the palm of his hand on the heel.

When it was flushed with the upper level, the carved floor of the elevator stopped. The echo of stone grinding against stone reverberated outward into a circular-shaped room. Fifty meters in diameter, the chamber was veiled in shadows, despite being lit with torches, whose scant, flickering light made it difficult to clearly see the dozen or so figures standing on the perimeter.

"Intruders," a voice said. "Kill them." A menacing hiss filled the room with ominous vibrations as seven crimson lightsabers ignited in the darkness

"Sith," Suhailya whispered. "The caverns must be directly below their temple."

"Nik!" Drake dropped into a tactical stance and swiftly drew his heavy blaster as a lightsaber flew at his head. The crimson blade narrowly missed him.

Nikaede roared defiantly at the pale-skinned Zabrak who threw it. She took quick aim at the Sith and fired her bowcaster. Having missed his intended target, the Dark Jedi summoned the lightsaber back to his hand and parried the bolt, deftly sending a richochet back at the Wookiee. The energy bolt struck her in the left shoulder, knocking the Wookiee off her feet and down to the ground.

Wary of the Sith's abilities, Drake fired a shot straight on, waited to see how the man would move, then fired a second and third bolt to penetrate his defenses. With a slight widening of the eyes, the Sith deflected the first two bolts, but was hit in the torso by the third blast.

Though injured, the wound smoking from the impact, the Sith barely took a step back. Scowling at the smuggler, he tightened his grip on the menacing lightsaber and sprinted toward Drake to engage him. Undaunted, the Socorran narrowed his eyes and drew down on him with the heavy blaster, taking careful, measured aim for a head shot.

Before he could fire, Suhailya lunged at the Dark Jedi, ensnaring his foot with a graceful step. Well inside his defenses, she used her leverage to counter and defeat his balance. Grabbing him by the wrist, she twisted her body gracefully, as if dancing, and wrested the lightsaber from his hand.

The Sith resisted with an elbow, but the Twi'lek ducked beneath his arm and swung the ignited lightsaber at him with a practiced precision, purposely missing him. Backed up by his compatriots, the Zabrak moved to overtake her, but a blast of crimson-tinged electrical energy erupted from the lightsaber in her hand and knocked them all back, violently throwing them to the floor or against the walls.

Suhailya grabbed the aggressive Zabrak by the hair and kicked the fallen Dark Jedi in the face, bringing the crimson blade to the soft folds of his neck. "Get back or this one loses his head."

"Stop!" A dark-skinned Human man walked into the center of the arena. He was tall, dressed in black robes, his white hair tied tightly in a cord at the nape of his neck. "You are not one of us, and yet you fight with the bearing of one who is. Who is your master?"

"One more step, and he's dead," Suhailya whispered. She kept her distance, covering Drake who stood over his injured first mate.

"Loyalty. I respect this," the leader of the Sith said. "I am called Xanle."

"Suhailya," the Twi'lek said. "We don't want any trouble."

"No?" Xanle taunted. "But I suspect you want this." He held up a faded black envelope. It was old and the paper had begun to fray at the edges. "A memento I accepted from a messenger some decades ago. I killed him, of course, for disturbing my sanctuary. Others came seeking this. I killed them, too. After a time, no one else came."

"We just want the card," Suhailya said, "and we'll be on our way. We'll say nothing of what we've seen."

"Not that anyone would believe us," Drake whispered.

Extending his arm, Xanle offered the card to her. Warily, Suhailya stepped away from her hostage, who quickly scrambled toward the safety of his peers. With the lightsaber still ignited, she approached the Sith leader and cautiously took the card from his gloved hand.

"That is no trifle relic you hold, little one. It is known as Bane's Heart."

"I'm a lot of things, but a thief isn't one of them," Suhailya said. "I'll leave it behind once we get to safety."

"No one here has been able to master it, until now." Xanle bowed his head in deference, never taking his eyes from her. "Keep it. The blade has clearly chosen its master. But before you leave, will you do me one small courtesy?"

Suhailya disengaged the weapon, her body taut and ready to spring into action.

"Tell Maliss that he is welcomed to return to us—when he is ready. All is forgiven. Show him Bane's Heart, and he will know what you say is true." Xanle turned his back to her and retreated into the darkness on the outskirts of the chamber.

"Hush, Niakede," Drake whispered. "I know, they do smell bad. Come on, let's get back to the Steadfast before they change their minds."