Balance Point Page 6

  That had to be the one Tekli spotted. He held himself crookedly. He could’ve been badly injured, but …

  “That one,” Anakin whispered.

  “Check him through the Force.”

  She pressed farther back in the booth, narrowing the angle between Anakin and the human-looking attendant so she could see them both without moving her head. Anakin narrowed his blue eyes, leaning forward enough that a strand of hair fell across his forehead. He frowned.

  “You look like the champion of the galaxy,” she whispered a warning.

  He compressed his lips, irked.

  Then he straightened several centimeters.

  Mara slid a hand under her vest, getting a grip on her lightsaber. “Nothing?” she murmured.

  “Nothing.”

  Mara stretched out and double-checked Anakin’s pronouncement. The alleged human did feel like a shadow—a dead spot, an emptiness.

  Anakin was already rising from the table.

  “No,” Mara said sharply. “Not in the middle of a restaurant full of bystanders.”

  “What do we do?” he demanded. “He’s going to get away.”

  “Hardly. He’s working a shift. We finish our dinner.” Mara leaned against the mossy tabletop. “And before we move in, we see if he’s got reinforcements in the kitchen.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Randa lumbered into the Solos’ sleeping shelter. Han was out at the reservoir today, tinkering with something at the pumping station. Jacen had come back for a spare comlink.

  Randa barely could fit into the open space between cots, but he tried.

  “Bad enough,” he fumed, twitching the end of his tail away from the pile of belongings at the foot of Jacen’s cot, “that I cannot rush to my homeworld’s aid. But now, to be told I must subsist on the same ration allotment as one of the Ryn …” He drew up as tall as he could, puffing out his midsection. “Is my body type even remotely similar to those small, furred pests? My metabolism requires—”

  “Not the same allotment.” Jacen slipped the comlink into a pocket and sat down on his cot, resting his back gingerly against the wall. Some of these buildings had been collapsed by rambunctious Ryn children. “The same percent of standard nutritional ration. If your metabolism is measured at three times a Ryn’s, you’ll be issued—”

  “Not enough. I will waste, shrivel, atrophy. Already I am small for my age.” In the light of the shelter’s open door, Jacen saw Randa’s sunburstlike irises enlarge, narrowing the pupils to slits.

  “Was there news from Nal Hutta, Randa? Have you heard, is your parent in danger?”

  Bull’s-eye. Randa’s four-fingered hands opened and closed in frustration. “I have heard nothing,” he rumbled, “from my exalted parent.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jacen attempted. “We—”

  “The New Republic will not defend Nal Hutta,” Randa thundered. “It is sacrificing our world, just as it sacrificed Tynna and Gyndine. We were triaged. They are pulling their forces back toward Coruscant.” The mighty tail twitched again. “And those precious shipyards at Bilbringi.”

  “Bothawui’s going to be threatened soon, too,” Jacen said flatly. Randa naturally expressed his concern as fear, which easily led to aggression. “We’re all in danger, Randa. The fleets are spread so thin—”

  “Then why aren’t you out fighting, Jedi?” Randa clenched one stubby hand. “I watched a skillful Jedi kill a yammosk. You have talents beyond anything you are able to use here. Your family has done great things.”

  “I have my own issues, Randa.” Jacen shook his head, suspicious of Randa’s flattery. He might not know Hutt sincerity if he heard it, but as for his family having done great things … well, Randa surely knew who strangled Jabba.

  Randa wriggled closer to the shelter’s single window, on the opposite wall from the door. “If we could get to Coruscant, you and I could strike a blow that would make the Yuuzhan Vong regret ever coming to this galaxy. My clan has resources on a dozen worlds. We could afford to equip our own squadron, but sadly, fighters are not built for my people.”

  Jacen tried to imagine a full-grown Hutt in an X-wing. The canopy wouldn’t even close!

  He had loved flying an X-wing, though. That ship made him feel nimble, powerful, almost invincible.

  “I hear you are an exceedingly good pilot.” Randa narrowed his huge black eyes and cleared his throat.

  “My sister’s better.” Jaina! Three days had passed, and Rogue Squadron still hadn’t gotten through with a prognosis. “So is my brother,” Jacen admitted, granting Anakin the honor he earned at Lando’s Folly, on the asteroid training run—and at the battle for Dubrillion.

  “But your honored siblings are not here. Destiny brought us together, Jedi Solo. I could make your name even greater than it already is.”

  Jacen stretched his arms, cracking his knuckles. His name? At the moment, his name might as well be bantha fodder with the Jedi and the New Republic military.

  “I will find a way to leave Duro and rush to Nal Hutta’s aid, if all I can do is arrive too late and crash a ship in the middle of the invaders’ celebratory banquet. Or I shall locate Kyp Durron and throw my support behind his squadron, carrying the battle to the enemy.” The Hutt slithered toward the door.

  “Randa,” Jacen soothed, “we do need your help. Here.”

  “Oh?” Randa paused. “Tell me, young Solo. What can I do besides stir hydroponics vats? Besides tend the water pumps, and—”

  Jacen’s comlink beeped. “Hold on,” he said, raising one hand in entreaty. “Randa, don’t go.” He yanked the comlink off his utility belt. “Jacen Solo,” he said.

  “This is Piani at Communications,” a tinny voice announced. “We’ve finally got that message. You’d better get down here.”

  Stunned, Jacen flicked his comlink to another channel. “Dad, did you get that?”

  The elder Solo’s voice sounded fuzzy. Even from short distances, low-power communications were iffy in Duro’s weird atmosphere. “On my way,” Han said.

  The same contact person as before greeted Jacen over the voice-only link. “Her vision will clear up without medical intervention, over time. She’s out of action for several weeks at the inside, though.”

  Han burst through the control shed’s door. “Vision? What was that?”

  “The exposure clouded her corneas, Captain,” Major Harthis repeated. “It’s reversible, but it’ll metabolize very slowly.” The voice hesitated. “In someone older, we might have implanted artificial eyes, or a Traxes ultrasound enhancer. But she’s young, and a Jedi can heal herself pretty well.” Longer pause, this time. “We’re, uh, also up against some wartime shortages.”

  Han shook his head. “That’s all right. If those eyes will heal, you leave them right where they are.”

  “That was our feeling. We can’t tie up military personnel to nursemaid her, so we’re furloughing her to family.” The officious voice finally softened. “We’d, ah, like to send her to you on Duro, Captain. That’ll save us the trouble of hunting down her mother.”

  Mara got up from the mossy table. “Stay here,” she murmured. Their suspect had vanished into the Leafy Green’s kitchen.

  Anakin scowled at her half-finished gornt steak. “Be careful.”

  Wonder of wonders, the boy wasn’t going to insist on following her. She’d pull off this reconnoiter alone more easily. “If I’m not back when you’ve finished your scrimpi, come looking.”

  Anakin stabbed a slice and sawed off a long, thin bite.

  The kitchen entry wasn’t far from the refresher, and she spotted an empty table nearby. She’d already counted the Leafy Green’s sentient staff and checked each one through the Force. Only their suspect seemed absent.

  Now, for the kitchen personnel—in case he had reinforcements, or maybe a boss.

  She walked purposefully to the empty table, then sat with her face in the shade of her hood. When all the servers—especially the one under suspicion—were off on their
rounds, she slipped to the kitchen door. She palmed the opening panel as the servers had done. The door swung aside.

  No one challenged her. Keeping one hand near her blaster, which was already set for stun, she eased left along a wall, away from the noisiest area. She found a station where a line of small, four-armed droids, the first mechanicals she’d seen inside the Leafy Green, were laying garnishes on trays. Programmed to react only to food configurations, they ignored her.

  She heard four distinctly living presences clattering at other stations, a large sentient staff. The owner was definitely trying to project a pastoral setting. It was a place where a Yuuzhan Vong might choose to establish a cover ID.

  She reached down inside herself and then listened through the Force.

  Sentient One, near a cooking surface, came through loud and clear—and sweaty. There was Sentient Two, talking near One’s shoulder. Number Three scurried toward the back of the establishment. Sliding silently along behind a bank of cooking machinery, Mara tracked her. Through the Force, she wasn’t Yuuzhan Vong either, and when Three departed, Mara located a back door. The fourth noisemaker also cast a shadow in the Force—not a pleasant shadow, but not Yuuzhan Vong.

  Behind her, the door slid open. She straightened and pulled her vest closer. Footsteps hustled toward her. She lowered her head and stalked toward the entry.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you can’t … ma’am? Ma’am!”

  She jerked up her head. “Plevay isobabble,” she exclaimed hotly. “Dekarra do-jui!”

  A human server stood with her forehead scrunched up in bewilderment.

  Mara ad-libbed again, this time pantomiming an urgency she didn’t feel.

  The server spread her hands and smiled, then beckoned. She led Mara out through the door into the dining area, then pointed toward the refresher.

  Mara seized her hands, nodding quickly. “Jeeaph wentz,” she exclaimed, still improvising. Then she hustled up the hall. In the ladies’ refresher, she pushed one wisp of red-gold hair back under her hood, waved the water on and off several times, counted ten, then emerged and hurried back to her table. Anakin was sopping up the last of his glockaw sauce with a final bite of scrimpi.

  “Just in time,” he muttered.

  Mara slid in. “He’s the only one, as far as I can tell. One of the cooks has a bad feel to him, though. We’ll grab when our quarry’s on his way home.”

  Anakin shrugged. “You’re in charge.”

  She made a wry face, thinking, For the moment, Solo. In about five years, you’ll probably be giving the orders. “You’re set for stun, aren’t you?”

  He nodded curtly.

  Spotting a target who didn’t show up in the Force would take a little extra attention. Mara posted Anakin at the Green’s back door, and she loitered in the busy skin-art parlor across the pedestrian corridor. When the early night shift ended and late workers came on duty, she caught movement out the corner of her eye as her pale, hunched target slipped into the flow of passersby.

  “Thanks,” she told the attendant, who’d rolled her hookah toward the viewbubble while Mara superimposed abstract samples on her bared shoulder. “Not today, I guess.”

  “No body contact,” the attendant called after her. “Entirely laser done.”

  Mara was already out the door, straightening her flight suit’s neckline and hood. She located Anakin through the Force and nudged him to get moving. At the same time, she double-checked their quarry. He still wasn’t there, except to her eyes.

  Mara, who was tall enough to see over half the beings between them, followed the server. Now and then, she caught a clear glimpse. He held his head straight forward, looking right or left only when necessary.

  “Got him in sight?” She heard Anakin at her left elbow.

  “Straight ahead, easing left.”

  “Where? … There,” Anakin exclaimed. “He’s not wearing armor, just the masquer.”

  “As far as I can see. They still might not stun easily.”

  “We’ll find out,” Anakin said. “I’ll get off to one side.”

  He edged away. Mara kept pace with the pedestrian flow while Anakin drifted left. The restaurant server reached a station where repulsor trains departed the Dometown area. Mara pushed closer, watching more attentively, flowing parallel to her target until he’d chosen a loading platform. Then she pushed through the gate behind a family of armored Psadans. She slipped one of her false IDs through the reader, then settled in to wait, keeping her head down. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Anakin pass the gate. Not long ago, he would’ve waved a hand over the reader. She was glad when he used a false ID. The more he learned to operate without using the Force, the better attuned he could stay to its flow and others’ movements. He would learn his own capabilities, too. In this respect, Jacen’s … retreat, for lack of a better word … seemed good and honorable.

  Sometimes she imagined Jacen forty years in the future, either teaching at the academy or ensconced on his own little world, like Yoda. If he survived.

  The next repulsor train swept out of its approach tunnel, emerged on the side of the city-canyon, and braked silently. Mara pushed in with the rest of the crowd. By now, she’d counted and cataloged them by species, sex, and threat level. More intriguing than her fellow passengers was the fact that this run would take them right back where they started, toward the governmental zone.

  The train traveled smoothly, its minimal noise covered by conversations inside the thirty-passenger compartment. Her target pushed out through standing riders as they approached Embassies Row and the main SELCORE office. Mara caught Anakin’s glance and cut her eyes toward the door. He nodded, then followed the server.

  Mara let the pod reach one more station before getting off and doubling back. She caught Anakin’s sense like a shout through the Force.

  The quarry was moving more quickly now, up a lane Mara knew to be lower-income housing for embassies’ staffers. She hustled closer, listening for any warning from her finely honed danger sense.

  The server finally turned around. Mara kept walking straight, but Anakin stopped and looked aside a little too innocently.

  The target ducked down a narrow side passage. Anakin sprinted after him.

  Shaking her head in frustration, Mara broke into a run. For all of Anakin’s potential, he had the subtlety of a Hutt in a Mon Cal meditation pool.

  He’s barely sixteen, she reminded herself. Still plenty young enough to be trigger-poppy. At least he’d quit trying to wring vengeance for Chewie out of every suspected Yuuzhan Vong in the galaxy.

  The cul-de-sac was a high gray corridor that wormed into one of Coruscant’s complex edifices. A few windows, none with ledges, opened overhead. Yellowish light standards hung from the third story. The stranger hunched close to a doorway, bending toward an access panel.

  Anakin sprinted forward, drew his blaster, and fired. Flickers of blue energy connected with the bent form.

  The server whirled, raising one arm.

  Evidently that’s not close enough! Not even the ooglith masquer seemed affected, so far as Mara could tell. Her lightsaber cleared her vest as she came on.

  A black shape slithered down out of the server’s sleeve. With his free hand, he flung something toward Anakin. Whatever it was, it screeched as it flew.

  Anakin ignited his lightsaber one-handed and lit the cul-de-sac a pale, eerie rose-purple.

  Mara couldn’t spare Anakin any more attention. Her danger sense was tingling. The server seized his limp black staff at both ends. It stiffened in his grasp, liquid eyes glittering, reflecting Mara’s blue blade. She swept her lightsaber low, hoping to hobble the enemy agent.

  He brought up the amphistaff, blocking her swing, then tried to force the locked weapons higher. Mara gave ground for an instant, shifted direction, and swung again. At the corner of her vision, Anakin swung at a small, black flying object. It swooped at his face, clawing for his eyes.

  She disengaged, sidestepped, and aimed a st
roke at the amphistaff’s head. Get with it, Solo! Stun him! Until she defanged this amphistaff, she couldn’t spare one hand to grab her blaster, and Anakin’s was in his left hand.

  The amphistaff went limp and almost fell out of her opponent’s grasp. In the same instant, he abandoned his hunched posture. His face and torso stretched like something out of a bizarre nightmare.

  Mara refused to be distracted. She tried another low cut, this time opening one seam of his pants near the knee. White fluid spattered on stone. She’d cut the masquer. In that moment, the amphistaff straightened again, surprising her with a stream of venom. It splashed on the exposed back of her left hand. Her quarry laughed and swung high, going for her throat. She ducked.

  Her hand stung. She and Cilghal had developed a biotoxin drill, and she called scavenging white cells, now laden with the mysterious essence of Vergere’s tears, to her left hand.

  Evidently convinced he’d killed her, the warrior reached for a pouch at his belt. Mara straightened and swung one-handed, aiming for the pouch. Again, that tingling at the back of her mind came just in time. She backstepped swiftly as the alien flung down the pouch. Something splashed out of it near her feet. It reached up pseudopodia, grabbing for her feet.

  You again! Scowling, she vaulted the sticky blorash jelly. She tossed her lightsaber to her stiffening left hand and reached inside her vest for her blaster.

  Anakin was closing in from behind, out of the enemy’s line of vision. His lightsaber dispatched the swooping attack creature. Then he pulled his other weapon from his belt. Not a smooth-sided fear stick at all, it almost looked like a Stokhli spray stick, but it was smaller and shorter.

  Mara left her blaster holstered, reached across to cross hands on her lightsaber, and swept in again. The warrior swung his amphistaff once more.

  Maybe the staff creature’s ability to heal itself made it almost impervious. She swung hard and fast, aiming directly into the snake head’s crest, while ducking aside. Half of the head flew off, hitting the nearest stone wall with a satisfying crunch. The amphistaff went limp.