Balance Point Page 4

  “May I wonder, Mistress Leia …”

  She chewed a rubbery bite. “Go ahead, Threepio.”

  “If you would permit me to make a personal inquiry …” He trailed off again. Leia thought she knew what was coming.

  “Is it possible,” he said, “that Captain Solo will be permanently absent from our … operation? I had rather thought he might appear, or at least communicate, by this time.”

  The soypro stuck in her throat. “The last time he called in, he didn’t know exactly where he was going.”

  She eyed the protocol droid’s gleaming finish. Was that a touch of corrosion on his left shoulder? She’d sent him outside the dome several times, grateful for an assistant who didn’t need to breathe. Duro-stink wasn’t toxic to most species, but the atmosphere had gotten significantly worse over the last few decades, and now working outside without rebreathers was nearly impossible. Masking up had become habit for most of them.

  “Why do you ask? Han hasn’t exactly been respectful to you, over the years.”

  C-3PO let his arms hang at his sides. “Recently, I was given a reason to take some pride in our ongoing relationship. I was surprised to learn that on Ruan, he was greeted as something of a hero by my cyborg counterparts.”

  “Say that again, Threepio?” She rocked forward. Han, a droid hero? “Where did you hear that?”

  “After we returned to Coruscant.” C-3PO reached out expansively with one arm. “There was a HoloNet story you might have missed, since you were somewhat preoccupied. On Ruan, several thousand droids held a peaceful demonstration against the Salliche Ag establishment, which had meant to deactivate them—”

  “I remember that,” she broke in. “Vaguely.” Something about droids being warehoused, so that if the Yuuzhan Vong arrived, they might be presented as a peace offering. Obviously, Ruan didn’t intend to resist the invaders.

  “In the subtext,” he said, “I found additional references to someone that the droids had called a ‘long-awaited one,’ the ‘only flesh and blood’ who would be able to help them. As it turned out, Captain Solo did save them from imminent destruction. In our recent flurry of activity, I neglected to mention—”

  “Good heavens,” Leia said softly. “Whatever was he thinking?” She’d love to rub his nose in that little tale.

  Actually, she’d love to rub his nose against hers. It’d been so long.

  Did his long silence mean that an enemy had found him? But he had Droma’s help, now. He’d made it plain that he didn’t want hers.

  If he was dead, and their last words had been scornful taunts, she would regret it for the rest of her life. She was almost tempted to stretch out with the Force, looking for him.

  No. He could be on the other side of the Mid Rim by now. If she reached out and felt nothing, she would fear the worst. She finished her meal in silence, then assembled her dishes for C-3PO to recycle.

  “Whatever happens, I’ll take care of you,” she promised. “I need you.”

  Then she frowned at the datapad beside her elbow. Before she could turn in tonight, she had to check on the secondary rock-chewer crew. She needed to make sure Abbela sent off her weekly burst to the main Duros orbital city, Bburru, and then renewed their request for better satellite data. Then there was Gateway’s still-nonfunctional bakery. Its staff had requested a shipment of salt and sucrose, anticipating a cereal crop. Ruan had sent this year’s surplus burrmillet seeds as a goodwill gesture—and then slammed the door on accepting any more refugees.

  Also, SELCORE still hadn’t delivered that mining laser.

  No wonder she hadn’t had time to go looking for Han. She would’ve given everything to see him, the way he’d been before tragedy tore them apart. He’d matured so much from the scoundrel she’d come to love, although he’d never lost the glimmer in his eyes, or the quirk to his lips—till he lost Chewie. Suddenly, he was Han with the itchy trigger finger again. Han with the low-life friends. Scoundrel she could tolerate, even enjoy. All right, she admitted to herself: Scoundrel she’d adored. Over the years, he’d learned to drop the defenses that first turned him into a scoundrel. He’d learned to let her glimpse his real idealism. He needed warmth in return.

  Over the years, slowly, she’d learned to give it. She loved both sides of him, the knight-errant and the scoundrel—but this time, she must wait until he came to her. She couldn’t baby a full-grown man.

  At least he’d been involved in the Ryn rescue episode. Unlike Han, she tried to stay current on HoloNet news. His ongoing involvement with the Ryn seemed like a sign of recovery.

  Four hours later, she let down her long coil of hair and tumbled onto her cot. What am I doing here? flitted through her mind. Living with only a protocol droid for company—Basbakhan and Olmahk slept in the stairwell—made her feel as if she’d forgotten something critically important, day after day. It really was fortunate she was too tired to worry … much too tired … to worry too much, anyway … about him … or the children …

  Her last thought was, I really should reach out through the Force for them. How many days has it been? …

  CHAPTER THREE

  The war vessel Sunulok, under way for decades, showed its age in a thousand small ways.

  Luminescent colonies of lichen and bacteria grew at intervals near its passengers’ head level. Many of those colonies flickered, and some had dulled or dimmed. Communication nodes, where tiny nondedicated villips stood on protrusions of fiery red-orange phong coral, had turned as gray as ash.

  Striding down one of its coral-lined arteries, Tsavong Lah ignored those marks of age and death. A living cape clung to his shoulders by its needle-clawed gripping fingers. Rust-colored scales hung like armor plates from his breastbone and shoulder blades. Each larval armor scale had been seeded against bone while a priestly choir sang atonal incantations on his behalf, renewing his pledges of devotion to Yun-Yammka, god of war. Over half a year, the plates had grown slowly, stretching his tendons, tugging his joints to new angles. Then the priests had declared Tsavong Lah’s painful transformation to warmaster complete.

  Tsavong Lah embraced pain. Suffering honored his gods, who had created the universe by sacrificing parts of themselves.

  Two sentries stood ahead. Their claw joints were immature and deadly sharp, their tattooed insignia far from complete. Outside his communication center, they snapped their fists to opposite shoulders. Tsavong raised one hand, receiving their homage and signaling his door. The organic door valve thickened at its edges, then dilated.

  A striking young attendant, black honor bars burned across her pale cheeks, sat at her station. Seef sprang up and saluted. As she did, her seat extended pseudopodia and propelled itself sideways.

  “Warmaster,” she said reverently. “I roused the master villip in your privacy chamber, and I commanded the executor to present himself.”

  She strode to the far bulkhead. This part of Sunulok had grown an array of geometrically staggered coral blastulas where dozens of smaller villips lay quiescent.

  Tsavong Lah strode past them, into the largest blastula of all. He waited until the cubicle’s sphincter closed, then frowned at the leathery ball isolated on a display stand. Budded like yeast from master villips and nurtured in onboard nurseries, or raised in berrylike galls that parasitized certain swamp plants, the mollusklike genus enabled instantaneous, long-distance communication.

  The villip mirrored the disgraced executor’s face, sparely fleshed, with the crooked nose of multiple breaks showing great devotion—and maybe more vanity than was appropriate. In place of his left eye, he’d inserted a venom-spitting plaeryin bol.

  Few of Nom Anor’s contacts had ever suspected his true identity, not even his succession of duped human servants. His long-term mission included finding and neutralizing their people’s most dangerous enemies. Ironically, after his major assignment at Rhommamool, a few residents of the New Republic honored him as a fallen hero—slain, they thought, in a war he had actually incited.


  Yun-Harla, the Trickster goddess, seemed to smile on Nom Anor.

  “Warmaster.” The villip gave a good imitation of Nom Anor’s voice. Its bass undertones suggested deference and submission.

  “How many have they added to your herd?” Tsavong asked.

  “Six thousand four hundred since we spoke. Many came from Fondor. Another dome is under construction.”

  “Abominable, but temporary. Be careful not to tip your hand.” Tsavong’s fringed lips, slit many times in devotion to Yun-Yammka, curled in a smile. Fondor had resisted one of his supreme commanders, Nas Choka, less than a klekket ago—two months by the infidels’ calendar. In the process of destroying its ghastly mechanized shipyards, Choka had taken only a few hundred captives.

  Then a torrent of starfire wiped out half of Choka’s flotilla and three-fourths of the enemy’s own ships. Tsavong’s tacticians still were trying to decide whether that had been a deliberate sacrifice on the enemy’s part. The infidels’ usual urge to preserve life had been their greatest weakness, their most heinous spiritual perfidy. Were they learning? Had they discovered that sacrifice was the key to victory?

  According to spies, the torrent originated in the system the infidels called Corellia, at a monstrous mechanical installation they named Centerpoint. Until Tsavong Lah’s strategists could explain the weapon’s hideous power, they advised him to find a Coreward staging point that lay behind multiple gravity wells from Centerpoint’s direct line of fire.

  By happy coincidence, the disgraced executor had been sent to just such a world.

  “Watch for worthy ones,” Tsavong reminded him.“With better sacrifices, we might be cleansing the inner worlds now.”

  Nom Anor ducked his head. “And Jedi,” he promised, pronouncing the difficult word well. He’d lived among these people for years. “Difficult to catch, but some seem worthy.”

  Tsavong Lah nodded and touched the ridge crest of Nom Anor’s villip. The face faded and smoothed out. The villip retracted, sucking itself back through its mouth hole.

  On his distant world, Nom Anor would be putting his new masquer back on—not an ooglith, but a newly bred type that imitated a nonhuman species. Anor’s human contact, on the enemy’s capital world, had agreed to deliver shiploads of captives to his current system.

  As soon as Tsavong arrived there, he would have the glad task of sorting the worthy from the unworthy. A reverent mass sacrifice might convince mighty Yun-Yammka to let Tsavong reach the Galactic Core, where fertile gardens—tended by fecund slave races—were promised by the supreme overlord.

  Six thousand more infidels would enhance the sacrifice, bringing him that much closer to the world he truly wanted to offer his gods.

  Coruscant.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mara Jade Skywalker had been a wide-eyed child when Emperor Palpatine brought her to Coruscant. She’d survived Palpatine’s training one hour and one day at a time. Now, everyone tended to think of Coruscant as ground zero again—this time, as the Yuuzhan Vong’s ultimate objective.

  Meanwhile, her husband was training another apprentice—obviously assuming there would be peace and justice to defend in the future. She wondered, though, if it was hope or just habit that kept them all sticking to business.

  She stared over folded hands at her younger nephew. Seated next to Luke, wearing a light-brown tunic under his Jedi robe, dark-haired Anakin Solo had a saturnine intensity, a Corellian surname, and his father’s wry lift to one eyebrow. Still, his blue eyes simmered with the eagerness to save the galaxy—alone, if necessary—and that was pure Skywalker.

  Recently returned from Yavin 4, Luke had formed a habit of gathering several Jedi every few days in some secluded but public place. All Jedi had fallen under public scrutiny in recent months. Ithor was lost, despite Corran Horn’s sacrificial effort. Renegade battle squadrons led by young Jedi Knights dived in and out of three major invasion fronts, blatantly disregarding military strategy.Almost as damaging, the intelligence her former boss Talon Karrde recently helped the Jedi gather—concerning the Yuuzhan Vong’s imminent attack on Corellia—proved false.

  If the Jedi couldn’t work together, they would be vaped separately, or tumble one by one to the dark side.

  Seven Jedi had circled their chairs deep in central Coruscant’s governmental district this morning, a few meters from a balcony overlooking a bustling mezzanine. A fountain bubbled nearby, looking and sounding like something out of the Empire’s glory days …

  The days when she’d been the Emperor’s Hand. She carried around plenty of regret from those days, things she wished she’d never seen or done. But she’d made her peace. She’d given up the one thing dearest to her, her ship, Jade’s Fire. In its place, she’d received … well …

  Enough.

  Again she eyed Luke and Anakin. Whenever she saw those two together, she glimpsed two outward reflections of the same inner strength. They had the same compact build, though Anakin hadn’t finished fleshing out—and those matching poke-mark clefts in their chins—but most telling of all, those terminally earnest attitudes.

  Colonel Kenth Hamner, a strikingly tall human Jedi with a long, aristocratic face, served the New Republic’s military as a strategist. He shook his head and said, “With Fondor’s shipyards gone and the hyperspace routes mined, we’re pulling in from the Inner Rim, even the Colonies. Rodia is in serious danger. Thank the Force, Anakin brought Centerpoint back up—”

  Anakin leaned forward, gripping his hands as he interjected, “As long as we don’t lose Corellia. Thrackan’s likely to expel all the Drall and Selonians, declare Corellia a human-only zone, and lock out the rest of us, if we let him.”

  Mara knew Anakin well, so she could imagine the thoughts he didn’t speak: Because I didn’t fire Centerpoint when I could have. Now Thrackan’s a hero, no matter how many bystanders he killed … With Governor-general Marcha kicked out of office, Thrackan and the Centerpoint Party were making a strong bid for power at Corellia.

  Kenth Hamner shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself, Anakin. A Jedi must keep his power under control. We have to hesitate and consider the consequences. You couldn’t hurry to fire Centerpoint, and you did well. Maybe Centerpoint will be the Core’s last defense, if we can get it repaired. From there, we could defend the shipyards at Kuat and protect Coruscant.”

  “True,” Luke told Hamner. A new wave of yorik coral warships had hit the Corellian Run, near Rodia. Anakin’s sister, Jaina—Mara’s apprentice—had deployed with Rogue Squadron toward that front, and with so many Yuuzhan Vong between them, it was difficult to sense her through the Force. Yuuzhan Vong somehow damped it down.

  Bothawui, though—between the embattled Hutts and threatened Rodia—clearly was endangered. The last time Mara had heard of Kyp Durron, he’d parked Kyp’s Dozen near Bothawui, spoiling for a fight and expecting it right there.

  Mara had just about had it with Kyp Durron. She noted, though, the way Kenth Hamner deferred to Anakin. Anakin had saved her life on Dantooine, where Yuuzhan Vong warriors chased them for days while her mysterious disease slowly sapped her strength. Since the fall of Dubrillion, since the retreat at Dantooine—and especially since Centerpoint—strangers saluted barely-sixteen-year-old Anakin in Coruscant’s Grand Corridor. Vendors of exotic delicacies offered him samples, and supple Twi’lek women twitched their long lekku when he passed.

  Luke also wore a Jedi robe today, almost the shade of Tatooine sand. So did Cilghal, the Mon Calamari healer, who sat bowing her massive head over salmon-shaded, webbed hands. She’d brought along her new apprentice, quiet little Tekli. Tekli, a Chadra-Fan with marginal Force talent, seemed perpetually wide-eyed. Her large, fan-shaped ears swiveled whenever an atmospheric craft passed their balcony.

  These days were growing long for the healers. Cilghal had confided that they were seeing stress illnesses like never before. The fearful strain of watching an invasion displace and kill so many peoples was like watching a disease eat away at a helpless friend—


  Mara caught a glint of blue from Luke’s direction. She intercepted his concerned glance and choked off the dismal thought. Her disease, like a protean cancer, had undergone constant random mutations, making it uncontrollable. It should have been fatal.

  For three months, she’d been in remission. The tears of an alien creature, Vergere—briefly in custody, with a Yuuzhan Vong agent—had restored her strength. She hesitated to call herself cured, though. Just as Luke hesitates to call this group a council—because it isn’t. For the moment, I feel good. That’s enough.

  So she eyed him right back, admiring the signs of maturity. He’d lost that half-ripe farmboy look years ago. Around his intense blue eyes, he’d gathered a network of smile lines—and furrows of concern over the bridge of his nose. Here and there, especially near his temples, he’d sprouted a few gray hairs. Altogether distinguished, she decided.

  Ever since that hour in Nirauan’s caves, when deadly danger forced them to fight so closely, reaching so deep into the Force that each saw the world through the other’s mind, she and Luke had moments when they seemed to fight, think, even to breathe as one person. Utterly different on the surface, their strengths balanced perfectly. Destiny had been kind to Mara Jade, the former Emperor’s Hand—and she didn’t need the Force to see that their union made Luke Skywalker a happy man.

  So naturally, the risk of her suffering a relapse worried him desperately. They still had so many dreams to chase.

  Luke flushed.

  Then conduct your meeting, Skywalker, she thought at him, amused by his embarrassment. Quit worrying about me.

  Though their Force link rarely let them communicate in actual words, he clearly caught the message. He turned to Kenth Hamner and said, “Daye Azur-Jamin on Nal Hutta hasn’t reported for almost a week. I asked his son Tam to head out that way—carefully—and see if he could get any leading through the siege force’s shadow.” As at Kalarba, the enemy’s massed presence near Nal Hutta seemed to damp down the Force.