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certainly not telling her what the Sith wish to know.”
    Now that Wynn’s vision was clearing, he could see that his visitorhad changed from the hideous tentacle-armed Abeloth into an elegant, blue-skinned Jessar female. There was a slight bulge to her eyes, and her face looked as though it were starting to peel from a bad sunburn. But anyone with access to the HoloNet would have no trouble recognizing her as Rokari Kem, Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance.
    “You might suggest that she ask nicely,” Wynn said. “Really, who wants to cooperate with someone who keeps blasting Force probes through his mind?”
    “Then perhaps we
should
try something else,” Kem suggested. “How would you like to be released from this cell?”
    Wynn raised his head as high as was possible. “You must know how very silly that question is.”
    Kem’s only response was a series of soft
click
s as the cuffs around Wynn’s wrists and ankles fell open. The tension vanished from his arms and legs, and when he tried to pull his pain-numbed limbs in toward his body, they actually moved.
    More suspicious than surprised, Wynn struggled into an upright position and was finally able to get a good look at Kem’s companion. Dressed in the gray jumpsuit of a GAS prisoner, the woman had blond hair, narrow eyes, and a hard, familiar face that Wynn knew he should have recognized, but could not quite place in his current condition.
    He shifted his gaze back to Kem. “Well, that was easy,” he said. “What’s the catch?”
    “Catch?”
Kem asked. “Ah—what I want in return. That would be your help.”
    “My help?” Wynn echoed, still trying to work out the second woman’s identity—and what she had to do with his own captivity. “To do what?”
    “Help me rule,” Kem replied simply.
    Now Wynn
was
surprised. “You want me to help you rule the Galactic Alliance?”
    “You would help me run the government, yes,” Kem confirmed. “You would be saving lives, Wynn—a great many lives.”
    Keenly aware that there had to be a trap—with Abeloth and her Sith, there was
always
a trap—Wynn fell silent and did his best to sort through priorities with his torture-raddled brain. His most importantgoal was to protect the informal intelligence network he had been operating with Admiral and Eramuth Bwua’tu. By now, the two Bothans knew of his capture, and they had undoubtedly taken precautions to protect themselves. But the network itself would be vital to the Jedi when they returned to liberate the planet, and so far he had managed to avoid revealing its existence to Lady Korelei and her assistants.
    But Wynn knew he could not put that off much longer. He had run out of unimportant details three sessions earlier and begun to feed his tormentors small scraps of more valuable information. Now they were beginning to put together a more complete picture of the secret workings of the Galactic Alliance government—a picture that was leading them closer to Club Bwua’tu all the time.
    “Is it such a hard decision, Wynn?” Kem asked. “You can save lives and escape your torture. Or you can condemn thousands to die … and remain here to feed Lady Korelei’s appetites.”
    Of course, it wasn’t a hard decision at all—and that’s what made Wynn hesitate. Rokari Kem—or Abeloth, or whatever she called herself—was not only the new leader of the Galactic Alliance. She was also the secret leader of the Sith, and Sith cared nothing about the lives they took or the harm they caused. They cared only about their own power. If Abeloth was willing to forgo the secrets that her torturers were slowly prying from his mind, then it could only mean she saw a more valuable way to use him—a way that would allow her to do even more damage to the Galactic Alliance.
    But Abeloth didn’t know everything, and one of the things she didn’t know was that Wynn just needed to buy time—time for the Jedi to arrive
before
he broke. Finally, he looked up and