Balance Point Read online

  “One more tidbit,” Mara said, staring straight at her husband’s eyes. “He claims he infected me with this disease. At Monor II.”

  She hadn’t wanted to transmit that over the link because she wanted to see his reaction, and he didn’t disappoint her. He raised his head, eyes wide, radiating a depth of fury she rarely saw in him. He controlled it instantly, of course.

  “What do you think?” he asked, once again projecting that Jedi Master calm.

  Mara had crossed her forearms. She clenched her opposite elbows. “He might know how to tell if I’m really cured. I would love to go back for him.”

  Luke’s cheek twitched—again, the reaction so subtle that Jaina and Anakin missed it entirely. “So would I,” he said, “but if you’ve confirmed a Yuuzhan Vong agent downside, that fits what we’ve been finding.”

  He gave her a sketchy report, implicating CorDuro Shipping in the downside colonies’ shortfalls—and his own suspicions. By digging back through layers of encryption in altered shipping records, R2-D2 had discovered that the Port Duggan branch of CorDuro Shipping was in fact diverting SELCORE and other supplies to another Duros habitat—but recording the supplies as sold offworld, in case SELCORE enforcers got suspicious.

  “We also checked every lead Tresina Lobi gave me, and Artoo’s been searching the port authority’s records.”

  Mara glanced at the little droid, who stood at a data port. “Comparing arrivals with departures?”

  Luke nodded. “And tracing them both back. We’re trying to verify a connection with the Peace Brigade. And possibly a link to SELCORE itself.”

  If Karrde’s suspicion proved correct, and SELCORE or other high-level councils had been infiltrated, the New Republic was in worse trouble than anyone suspected.No wonder Luke seemed agitated: the small, jerky hand movements, the set to his chin, and most of all, the edginess that was getting through to her on the Force.

  “Thrynni Vae vanished in a seedy area of Port Duggan,” he continued. “No surprise, really. Anakin and I just looked it over. The tapcafs are quiet. Almost too quiet.”

  R2-D2 squealed softly.

  Luke straightened. “Got something more?” He leaned toward the readout over R2-D2’s data port, and Mara bent close.

  Letters appeared, scrolling rapidly. It started with a list of entries that had been deleted or altered in some way: recent hires at Port Duggan, arrivals back half a year, visitors logged into Vice-Director Brarun’s office. Several names reappeared.

  Under that list, R2-D2 had tracked the frequently mentioned names’ travel backward and forward. For several, the trail vanished after three hops. Two, though, had traveled to Ylesia and back—several times. Those entries were flagged.

  Next appeared a security file from Duro’s communication repeaters. Very few droids in the New Republic carried the programming it would take to slice into that log. The links between here and Ylesia showed multiple hits.

  “What’s there?” Anakin asked, peering around Mara’s shoulder. “That’s clear out in Hutt space.”

  “The Hutts used to run a slave-snaring scam there,” Mara murmured. “And your dad claims it’s a Peace Brigade hot spot.” She turned to Luke. “So maybe Thrynni was abducted there?”

  Luke hesitated for several seconds. “It’s the best lead we’ve had, but I hate to send anyone on a wild yunax chase.”

  “I’d guess Vice-Director Brarun is in this up to his big round eyes,” Mara said. “Add this to the diverted goods ending up at Urrdorf, and an influx of Duros there—”

  She caught a gust of concern out of Luke.

  Jaina spoke up from beside the window. “Let me guess. All their brightest and best, suddenly taking vacations at lovely Urrdorf.”

  Luke turned away from the readout.

  “What?” Mara demanded.

  “Jacen’s with Brarun. He could be in danger.”

  Jaina pushed away from the window.

  Luke raised a hand. “Not for a while, though, I think.”

  “Brarun’s being cagey?” Mara demanded.

  Luke nodded. “We’re all seeing the same pattern. Someone is about to sell out the SELCORE refugees and make a run for it. For the moment, Jacen wants to stay where he is.”

  Mara shook her head.

  “We’ve got to call for another downside evacuation, and somehow do it without tipping off the Peace Brigade. I’d guess they’ve promised the Yuuzhan Vong several thousand prisoners for sacrifice.” Luke rubbed his chin. “Unless …” He trailed off.

  Mara cleared her throat.

  “Unless it’s not the refugees they mean to sacrifice, but the Duros in orbit. They could use the refugees as slaves. We’ve seen that before. And think about this. If the Yuuzhan Vong occupied Duro, they could hit the Core from here.”

  Mara firmed her lips. Worse and worse.

  “Mara, Jaina, did you get any kind of information on SELCORE while you were down there?”

  Mara frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “They may have been infiltrated,” he said.

  “Let me think.” Mara shut her eyes. “Nothing obvious so far. Just what seems to be a normal set of bureaucratic problems.”

  Luke laid a hand on R2-D2’s dome. “Artoo, you can break into the outsystem military net, can’t you?”

  The droid warbled in a major key, sounding confident.

  Luke pulled a comlink out of one pocket and handed it to Anakin. “And I want you to connect this with Artoo’s manipulator arm.”

  Whistling cheerily, R2-D2 plugged himself back in. Mara watched her husband. In Lando’s terms, ten to one he was going to try to contact the military on Coruscant without alerting SELCORE.

  She wrapped her hand around his arm, squeezed tightly, and headed for the refresher to clean up and wash the tint out of her hair.

  When she came out again, Luke was sitting close to R2-D2’s temporarily modified manipulator arm.

  “Hamner,” Luke said urgently. “Kenth, are you there? This is Skywalker.”

  A sleepy groan came out of the comlink. Luke smiled ruefully up at Mara, then turned back to R2-D2.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Kenth, we’re getting indications that the Yuuzhan Vong could be getting ready to hit Duro, and it’s too vital a system to lose. If millions of lives weren’t reason enough, it’s actually inside the Core. From here, they could block trade on the Spine, too.”

  “I know, I know,” the sleepy voice muttered.

  “Is there any way you can get a battle group sent?”

  She heard another groan. “Try SELCORE—”

  “There’s a good chance,” Luke said, “that SELCORE is part of the problem. I know, the forces are already spread thin. Do what you can, Kenth. May the Force be with you.”

  “Right.” Hamner’s voice was heavy with static. “You, too.”

  Luke thumbed off the comlink. “Good,” he grunted, straightening his legs to stand slowly. “Well done, Anakin. You, too, Artoo.”

  The droid trilled. Anakin took back the comlink and sat down on the bed, fiddling with its components.

  Luke slumped against the wall, bowing his head, rubbing his eyes.

  “What’s wrong?” Mara asked. “You got off a warning.”

  He shot Jaina a glance. “Jacen,” he said simply. Then he crossed his arms. “And I’m not looking forward to flying escort to another retreat under fire.”

  “I don’t even have a ship here,” Jaina complained.

  “I’ve got Shadow, and I’ll need a copilot,” Mara reminded her. “Stick with me.”

  Jaina nodded somberly.

  Anakin snapped the cover back onto the comlink and handed it up to Luke. “Before things get wild,” Anakin said, “we ought to try to find Thrynni Vae again. We didn’t accomplish much by going out in disguise.”

  Looking amused, Luke pocketed the comlink. “Do you think we’d do better, declaring ourselves?”

  Anakin squared his shoulders. “I don’t like to skulk.”

 
; Mara laughed shortly. “You need the practice. But it isn’t always necessary. Jaina and I could use a rest,” she added. It’d been a long day.

  “All right.” Luke pointed across the room. “Artoo?”

  The little droid gave a rising chirp.

  “How many security people are on duty at SELCORE’s transshipping dock, in the next hour?”

  R2-D2’s interface slid back into place and rotated. He made contented chuckling noises. Then he peeped a short, cheerful signal.

  “Five,” Luke told Anakin.

  Anakin straightened his tunic. “We can do that.”

  “Without making enemies,” Luke emphasized. “We’re going to be civilized.”

  “In other words,” Anakin said, “we’re going to act like Jedi Knights.”

  Durgard Brarun embraced his wife, then handed her the controls to their hovercart and said, “I’ll join you as soon as I can.” He hated to lie, but she never would’ve left Bburru for Urrdorf without that comforting falsehood.

  She followed their son and daughter-in-law up the ramp, onto the regularly scheduled shuttle.

  Now everything was in place. When Brarun had heard SELCORE was looking for a place to locate millions of refugees, he’d had the same reaction as most Duros: Not on my planet! A second reaction formed slowly. If the Yuuzhan Vong ever started looking in this direction for an advance base—and he’d never doubted that day would come—then thousands or millions of refugee lives would make excellent bargaining material.

  To his mind, they were doomed anyway. They’d just managed to delay their fate for a month, maybe a year.

  So he grabbed the SELCORE contract and bought off a few votes in the Duros High House. He encouraged Ducilla’s theatrics, knowing other Duros didn’t want the refugees here. Someday, his people would thank him. His Peace Brigade connections assured him that the Yuuzhan Vong admiral, or warmaster, probably would spare all twenty orbital cities in exchange for those refugee lives.

  Just in case, though, he’d arranged a family vacation on Urrdorf.

  The servant who brought Jacen’s next meal wore a CorDuro uniform, but his flattened skull was a brilliant shade of turquoise. Silvery brow ridges tapered into prominent bulges on both sides of his forehead.

  A Sunesi?

  “Just set it there.” Jacen turned away from the round window and motioned toward a long table alongside his bed. “Who are you? Do you want something?”

  The Sunesi set down the covered meal pouch. “My name is Gnosos, though I don’t expect you to remember that. More important, I have a gift.” He held out a turquoise hand.

  Jacen gingerly took a data card from the brightly colored alien. “And this is—?” he asked.

  “It contains my voiceprint, which will key a hoverpod in slip thirty, in the second-floor garage. I think it likely you will need to leave Vice-Director Brarun’s hospitality in a hurry.”

  Startled, Jacen touched his lips with one finger and gestured toward the listening devices he’d found—but hadn’t deactivated.

  The Sunesi spread his hands. “My people can overlay our speech or another’s with ultrahigh-frequency noise. That disrupts such devices as the ones that concern you.”

  Intrigued, Jacen slipped the data card into a pocket. He tried, without using the Force, to get a read on … Gnosos. The Sunesi carried an air of serenity Jacen hadn’t seen in anyone, even his uncle, since the first reports of Yuuzhan Vong intruders.

  “Why?” he asked. As he spoke, Gnosos’s mouth opened slightly, but Jacen picked up no sound in his own range of hearing. “I mean, thank you,” Jacen continued, “but—”

  “As the Maker gave me, I give to you.”

  “Maker?” Now Jacen remembered. The monotheistic Sunesi went through a dangerous metamorphosis between their juvenile and adult stages. Supposedly, surviving that change predisposed them to believe in life after death.

  “Maker and Giver.” The Sunesi spread his hands. “To my people, the universe’s endless variety implies a master Maker, one with a fine and glorious creativity and affection. And a sense of humor, as well.”

  Lumpheads, the Imperials had called the Sunesi, for those prominent cranial bulges. Jacen patted the data card in his breast pocket. “Maybe this time, the joke will be on CorDuro Shipping.”

  His visitor spread long, smooth hands. “An excellent thought.” He hurried out.

  And what eerie timing, Jacen reflected. If his guest’s theology had anything to do with reality, then the Force not only refused to be abandoned, but something or someone was taking a firm hand in showing Jacen the next logical step.

  “Thank you,” Jacen mouthed the words silently.

  Luke swiped his ID past a reader at the hoverbike stall just outside the hostel, rented two units, and straddled one. Driving conservatively, he and Anakin stepped off at Duggan Station ten minutes later. For the moment, people ignored them. Workers of several species, followed by droids in all states of repair, crowded the dock area and its rideways.

  So many worlds were endangered. He had just a few months to find a safe place for one small child—and, wishfully thinking, her mother. He knew better than to go beyond wishing to hoping, though. Mara wouldn’t take their child into danger, but she wouldn’t avoid an enemy that must be fought, especially now that she’d seen the enemy’s face.

  He strode beside Anakin. Tresina had come back here once, after Thrynni vanished. By then, their contact had vanished, too. As Luke and Anakin approached the area R2-D2 had targeted, Luke noticed less foot traffic. A few heavy loaders passed by, motors laboring, cargo-bay doors shut.

  Around the second bend in this corridor, his danger sense started its odd, subtle vibration at the back of his mind. Just ahead, a chest-high barricade blocked the corridor. Patrolling the narrow gap, three hulking Gamorreans and a Rodian stood in CorDuro-brown flight suits. The Gamorreans’ uniforms bulged on them like overloaded shipping sacks. The Rodian’s looked half-empty.

  Five, R2-D2 had told him. The security team’s supervisor was keeping out of sight.

  Softly, Luke reminded Anakin, “Don’t antagonize. But cover me.” Then he picked up his pace, to arrive several meters ahead of his apprentice.

  The Rodian moved forward—a thin one, who looked as if he’d always been ill. “Restricted area,” he wheezed. “Unless you got authorization, this isn’t your street.”

  Luke reached into a breast pocket. Simultaneously, he stretched out with the Force, gently brushing up against the guard’s memory. “I’m looking for a missing person. My group on Coruscant would appreciate your help.” He handed the guard a small holocube.

  It was too easy, really. Like Gamorreans, Rodians were notoriously weak minded, their reactions simple and violent. As the guard clenched the cube, the image of the Jedi apprentice’s bloodied body, dumped out a side airlock, hit Luke like a blast of pain. From her wounds, he knew her death hadn’t come easily.

  May the Force be with you, Thrynni Vae! He struggled momentarily to regain his own balance. In reviving the Jedi, he’d put out the call that Thrynni followed—to die for someone else’s freedom.

  He didn’t look forward to telling Tresina Lobi.

  He made himself concentrate on the refugee crisis, and the possibility of imminent attack. “Thank you for helping. I’m sure you’d like me to leave, now.” Luke backstepped, then started to walk away.

  Anakin hung back about four meters, balancing his weight on both feet, keeping his hands loose at his sides. A good covering stance, if a little obvious.

  “Just a minute,” a deep voice gargled behind Luke.

  Luke turned slowly.

  The security team’s fifth member had arrived: a male Duros, unusually tall, dressed in red-trimmed brown coveralls with the triangular CorDuro Shipping insignia on his right breast. Luke heard more foot-shuffling behind his back—even behind Anakin, judging from faint echoes. Several more minds suddenly nudged his awareness.

  Luke kept his hands limp at his sides, but he rea
ched out in all directions, getting a grip on the Force between himself, the deck, the bulkheads—and the CorDuro employees. Ten of them, now. He took a split instant to make sure none of them was a masqued Yuuzhan Vong.

  Then he made the slightest bow to the supervisor. “One of my people went missing several weeks ago. I’ve been inquiring into her whereabouts. We’ve spoken with Vice-Director Brarun about this.” Literally true, but his conscience twinged at implying Brarun authorized this investigation. Even after all these years, he despised shielding a lie behind “a certain point of view.”

  “Would you care to come with me while I check that?” The security super phrased it like a question, but his body language offered no quarter.

  “No, I would not,” Luke said softly. “I am sorry to have inconvenienced your staff.”

  He turned away a second time. He took two steps toward Anakin.

  His left foot was touching down when Anakin’s lightsaber cleared the pocket where he’d hidden it. It ignited with a snap-hiss recognizable anywhere in the New Republic. Beyond Anakin, a startled Rodian in CorDuro brown-and-red backed away.

  Displaying his empty hands, Luke kept walking.

  “Take them,” the supervisor growled.

  Luke spun around, activating his lightsaber. Two Gamorreans headed toward him, two toward Anakin. The rest of the CorDuro people hung back. Anakin’s eyes gleamed, his chin set with satisfaction. The guards brandished local-made blasters, offering the Jedi little challenge.

  But Luke didn’t want to make enemies. Now he would see how well he’d trained Anakin. He calculated the oncoming guards’ angle and then reached out with one hand, beckoning subtly. All four converged on him.

  He somersaulted out of their midst, leaving them to pile up together, while he landed lightly between Anakin and the supervisor.

  “We’re not going to hurt them,” Luke said, “but you can’t hold us.”

  To his satisfaction, Anakin held his ground, ready to strike—but only if necessary.

  “Skywalker,” the supervisor muttered, “so it is you. A word of advice, then.”