Balance Point by Kathy TyersJacen Solo stood with his father outside the mud-block refugee hut they were sharing on Duro. Jacen’s brown coveralls had accumulated a layer of grit and dust, and his wavy, dark-brown hair fell over his ears, not quite long enough to pull back in a tail. Under a translucent gray dome, tension wrapped around him like a Zharan glass-snake—invisible, but so palpable through the Force that he could almost feel its coils constrict.
Something was about to happen. He could feel it coming when he listened through the Force. Something vital, but . . .
What?
A Ryn female—velvet-furred with a spiked mane, her tail and forearm bristles graying with age—stood talking to Jacen’s dad, Han Solo.
“Those are our caravan ships,” she bellowed, waving her hands. “Ours.” She snorted, and the breath whonked through four holes in her chitinous beak.
Han swung around, narrowly missing Jacen with his left arm. “And right at this moment, we can’t afford to take them offworld to run systems checks. You’ve been in a restricted area, Mezza.”
Splashes of red-orange fur highlighted Mezza’s soft taupe coat. Her blue tail tip trembled, a gesture Jacen had learned to interpret as impatience.
“Of course we’ve been in the ship lot,” she snapped. “There’s never been a security fence Ryn couldn’t get inside, and those are our caravan ships. Ours.” She tapped her threadbare vest, which covered an ample chest. “And don’t tell me to trust you, Captain. We do. It’s SELCORE we don’t trust. SELCORE, and the people up there.” She waved her arm skyward.
Han’s mouth twitched, and seventeen-year-old Jacen could almost feel him trying not to laugh. Jacen’s dad could sympathize with refugees making unofficial reconnaissances, especially on board their own ships. But Han was in charge, now. Instead of showing his amusement, he was supposed to enforce SELCORE regulations—publicly, at least, for the sake of a few juvenile offenders. He and Mezza would undoubtedly settle the real issues later, in private.
So Han plunged back into the argument.
Jacen watched the show, trying to pick up one more piece of the puzzle he felt in every cell of his being. Trained as a Jedi and unusually perceptive, he could tell that the Force was about to move. To shift.
This time, he didn’t dare miss the clues.
His right cheekbone twinged. He touched it self-consciously, then swept his hair back from his face. It needed cutting, but no one here cared what he looked like. His legs were still growing, his shoulders broadening. He felt like an awkward hybrid of trained Jedi and barely grown boy.
He leaned against his hut’s outer wall and stared out over his new home. The dome had been engineered by SELCORE, the New Republic Senate Select Committee for Refugees, to hold a thousand settlers. Naturally, twelve hundred had been squeezed in. Besides these outcast Ryn, there were several hundred desperate humans, delicate Vors, Vuvrians with their enormous round heads—and one young Hutt.
And the relentless Yuuzhan Vong kept sweeping across the galaxy, destroying whole worlds, enslaving or sacrificing planetary populations. Lush Ithor, lawless Ord Mantell, and Obroa-skai with its fabulous libraries—all had fallen to the merciless invaders. Hutt space and the Mid Rim worlds along the Corellian Run were under attack. If the Yuuzhan Vong could be stopped, the New Republic hadn’t figured out how.
Han Solo stood with his left hand on his hip, arguing with Mezza, who led the larger of two Ryn clan remnants, but keeping one eye on the transgressors, a group of youths about Jacen’s age, with fading juvenile stripes on their cheeks. The Ryn clans occupied one of Settlement Thirty-two’s three wedge-shaped arrays of blue-roofed huts. The synthplas dome arched overhead, as gray as the polluted mists that swirled outside.
Jacen had been blessed—or cursed—with a sensitivity that he once hid behind labored jokes, and he did find it easy to see both sides of almost any argument. Part of his job here was to help his dad negotiate. Han tended to cut to solutions, instead of listening to both parties’ points of view. Han had chased the Ryn over half the New Republic, trying to gather his new friend Droma’s invasion-scattered clanmates. As world after world closed its doors to refugees, the Ryn had been beggared, duped, and betrayed. They’d taken terrible losses. They needed a sponsor.
So a reluctant Han Solo registered with the burgeoning Select Committee for Refugees. “Just long enough to settle them someplace.” That was how he explained it to Jacen, anyway.
Jacen had fled here from Coruscant. Two months ago, the New Republic had called him and his brother Anakin to Centerpoint Station, the massive hyperspace repulsor and gravity lens in the Corellian system. There’d been hope that Anakin, who had activated Centerpoint once before, could enable it again. Military advisers had hoped to lure the Yuuzhan Vong into attacking Corellia, and they meant to use Centerpoint as an interdiction field, to trap the enemy inside Corellian space—and then wipe them out. Even Uncle Luke hoped the station might be used only in its shielding capacity, not as a weapon.
The New Republic might never recover from the catastrophe that followed.
Jacen could see stress in his dad’s lined face and his labored stride, and in the gray growing into his hair. Even after all these years of hobnobbing with bureaucrats and tolerating his wife’s protocol droid, patience clearly wasn’t his strong suit.
Standing on the beaten-dust lane outside the Solos’ hut, Mezza’s opposing clan leader twisted his own tail between strong hands. The fur on Romany’s forearms, and the tip of his tail, stood out like bleached bristles.
“So your clan,” Han said, pointing at Romany, “thinks your clan”—pointing now at Mezza—“is likely to hijack our transport ships and strand everybody else here on Duro? Is that it?”
Someone at the back of Romany’s group shouted, “I wouldn’t put it past them, Solo.”
Another Ryn stepped forward. “We were better off in the Corporate Sector, dancing for credits and telling fortunes. At least there we had our own ships. We could hide our children from poisoned air. And even more poisonous . . . words.”
Han stuck his hands into his dusty coverall pockets and caught Jacen’s glance. Jacen could almost look him in the eye, nowadays.
“Any suggestions?” Han muttered.
“They’re just venting their frustrations now,” Jacen observed.
He glanced up. The gray synthplas dome over their heads had been imported in accordion folds and unfurled over three arched metal struts. The refugees were reinforcing it with webs of native rock fiber, roughly half the colony working double shifts to strengthen the dome and their prefab huts. The other half labored outside, at a pit-mine “reservoir” and water purification site assigned by SELCORE.
Abruptly Han flung up an arm and shouted, “Hey!”
Jacen spun around in time to see one young male Ryn somersault out of Romany’s group and crouch for fisticuffs. Two from Mezza’s group body-blocked him with surprising grace. Within seconds, Han was wading into an out-and-out melee that looked too graceful to actually endanger anyone. Ryn were natural gymnasts. They swung their opponents by their bristled tails, hooting through their beaks like a flock of astromech droids. They almost seemed to be dancing, playing, releasing their tensions. Jacen opened his mouth to say, Don’t stop them. They need to cut loose.
At that moment, he collapsed, his chest flashing with fire as if he’d been torn open. His legs burned so fiercely he could almost feel hot shrapnel. The pain blasted down his legs, then into his ears.
Jaina?
Joined through the Force even before they were born, he and Jaina had always been able to tell when the other was hurt or afraid. But for him to sense her over the distances that lay between them now, she must’ve been terribly—
The pain winked off.
“Jaina!” he whispered, appalled. “No!”
He stretched out toward her, trying to find her again. Barely aware of fuzzy shapes clustering around him and a Ryn voice hooting for a medical droid, he felt as if he were shrinking—falling backwards into vacuum. He tried focusing deep inside and outside himself, to grab on to the Force and punch out—or slip into a healing trance. Could he take Jaina with him, if he did? Uncle Luke had taught him a dozen focusing techniques, back at the academy, and since then.
Jacen.
A voice seemed to echo in his mind, but it wasn’t Jaina’s. It was deep, male—vaguely like his uncle’s.
Making an effort, Jacen imagined his uncle’s face, trying to focus on that echo. An enormous white vortex seemed to spin around him. It pulled at him, drawing him toward its dazzling center.
What was going on?
Then he saw his uncle, robed in pure white, half turned away. Luke Skywalker held his shimmering lightsaber in a diagonal stance, hands at hip level, point high.
Jaina! Jacen shouted the words in his mind. Uncle Luke, Jaina’s been hurt!
Then he saw what held his uncle’s attention. In the dim distance, but clearly in focus, a second form straightened and darkened. Tall, humanoid, powerfully built, it had a face and chest covered with sinuous scars and tattoos. Its hips and legs were encased in rust-brown armor. Claws protruded from its heels and knuckles, and an ebony cloak flowed from its shoulders. The alien held a coal-black, snake-headed amphistaff across its body, mirroring the angle of Luke’s lightsaber, pitting poisonous darkness against verdant light.
Conquest by Greg Keyes
Talon Karrde clasped his hands beneath his goatee and studied the scene on the Wild Karrde's command deck viewscreen through pale blue eyes.
"Well, Shada," he told the striking woman at his right hand, "it appears that our baby-sitting chore has become somewhat more . . . interesting than anticipated."
"I would say so," Shada D'ukal replied. "The sensor shroud shows at least seven ships in orbit around Yavin 4 and another six on the surface."
"None of them are Yuuzhan Vong, I take it."
"No. A mixed bag, but I'd lay odds that they are Peace Brigade."
"Gambling is a foolish occupation," Karrde said. "I want to know. And I want to know what they're doing." He ticked his finger against the armrest. "I knew we should have found some way to leave sooner. Skywalker was right." He sighed and leaned forward, studying the long-range sensors.
"There's some sort of firefight on the surface, yes, H'sishi?"
"Looks like it," the Togorian mewled.
"Solusar?" Karrde wondered. "Maybe. How long before we can be there?"
"They outnumber us badly," Shada pointed out. "We should call the rest of our ships before we do anything."
"We should certainly call them, but we can't wait for them. Someone down there is fighting for his life, most likely one of the people I told Skywalker I would protect. What's more, the fact that there are still ships on the surface suggests they haven't finished what they came here to do. That is, they don't have the Jedi children yet. If we wait until they have them aboard, in space, the job of rescuing them will become much more complicated."
"I see that," Shada said. "But it will be more complicated yet if they blow us out of the sky."
Karrde laughed. "Shada, when will you learn to trust my instincts? When have I ever gotten you killed?"
"YOu have a point there, I suppose."
Karrde pointed at Yavin 4, at the moment a dark disk silhouetted against the larger orange profile of its primary. "So I want to be there, now. Dankin, keep full cloak, but let me know when they notice us."
"Of course, sir." That point came an hour later, when they were almost sitting on the nearest of the orbiting ships.
"They're hailing us, sir," Dankin told him. "And powering up weapons."
"Put them on."
A moment later, a thick-featured human male with thin, graying hair appeared on the communication holoscreen.
"Freighter, identify yourself." He chopped the words out in even syllables.
"My name, sir, is Talon Karrde. Perhaps you've heard of me."
The man's eyes pinched warily. "Yes, I've heard of you, Captain Karrde. It's rude to sneak up on someone like that. And dangerous."
"And it's rude to be given a name and not offer one," Karrde returned.
A look of annoyance crossed the fellow's face. "Don't try me, Captain Karrde. You may call me Captain Imsatad. What do you want?"
Karrde favored the man with a wan smile. "I was going to ask you the same question."
"I don't follow you," Imsatad said.
"You seem to be having some sort of trouble. I'm offering my assistance."
"We need no assistance, I assure you. And to be blunt, Captain Karrde, I don't believe you. I remember you as a smuggler, a pirate, and a traitor to the Empire."
"Then perhaps you remember, as well, what became of those who treated me with disrespect," Karrde said icily. "But if we are being blunt—and perhaps that is best here, since you seem to lack the education for more civilized discourse—I am undoubtedly here for the same reason you are—to collect the bounty on the young Jedi below."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Karrde leaned toward the screen, eyes glittering dangerously. "You are a liar, Captain, and a poor one. I see no reason for us to play games."
"I trust you've noticed you're outnumbered."
"I trust you noted I was able to drop in on you in, shall we say, an unannounced fashion. Do you really think I brought only one ship?"
Imsatad glared at him, then cut his visual. Karrde waited patiently until, a few moments later, the image returned.
"This is none of your business," the man said.
"Profit is always my business."
"There is no profit here, and if there were, you would already be too late."
"Oh, I don't think so. Why are your ships still on the surface? Why do my sensors show what seems to be protracted search activity? You've let your quarry slip through your fingers, Captain." Karrde smiled and leaned back in his chair. "Consider my offer of help. I ask little in return, and I could be a nuisance if you spurn my kindness."
"That sounds like a threat."
Karrde spread his hands. "Take it however you please. Shall we discuss this further or not?"
"You say you ask for little. What, exactly, would that be?"
"A few kind words in the ears of the Yuuzhan Vong. An introduction. You see, Captain, for some years now I've been retired from my chosen profession. But these are very interesting times, exactly the sort of times my kind thrives on, if you know what I mean. I'd like to come out of retirement."
"Go on."
Karrde stroked his mustache thoughtfully. "The Yuuzhan Vong have promised a truce if the Jedi are delivered to them. I would like to bargain for passage through Yuuzhan Vong space, once the borders are established."
"Why should they allow a smuggler to use their space?"
"There may be things they need. I can get them. If not, I would be doing them no harm; all of my activities would be aimed at the scattered remnants of the New Republic. But those remnants are separated, at times, by Yuuzhan Vong-occupied systems. The cost of circumventing them, frankly, would be prohibitive."
Imsatad nodded, and a brief look of disgust wrinkled his features. "I see. You realize I can promise none of that."
"I only asked for a mention of my help in this affair. You can promise that."
"I could," Imsatad acknowledged. "What exactly can you offer me?"
"Better sensors than you have, for one thing. Detailed knowledge of Yavin 4 that I believe you lack. A crew that is very, very good at finding things. Certain special defenses against Jedi—and the means of finding them."
Imsatad stiffened, and his voice dropped low. "I was with Thrawn at Wayland. You still? . . ."
"Ah. You know what I mean, then."
"I know you betrayed him."
Karrde rolled his eyes. "How tiresome. Very well, Captain, if you don't wish my services, there are others who will."
"Wait!" Imsatad chewed his lip for a moment. "I need to consult with my officers on this."
"Take a few moments," Karrde said, lifting a finger. "But do not bore me." He cut the transmission.
Rebirth by Greg Keyes
Chapter One
"You've had worse ideas, Luke," Mara Jade Skywalker reluctantly admitted, nodding her head back so the sunlight fell on her face and her deep red-gold tresses trailed behind her. Posed that way, eyes closed, framed against the blue line of the sea, her beauty closed Luke's throat for a moment.
Mara's green eyes opened, and she looked at him with a sort of wistful fondness before arching a cynical brow.
"Getting all fatherly on me again?"
"No," he said softly. "Just thinking how ridiculously lucky I am."
"Hey. I'm the one with the hormone swings. You aren't trying to one-up me, are you?" But she took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Come on," she said. "Let's walk a bit more."
"You sure you're up to it?"
"What, you want to carry me? Of course I'm up to it. I'm pregnant, not hamstrung. You think it would be better for our kid if I spent all day lying around sucking on oorp?"
"I just thought you wanted to relax."
"Absolutely. And this is relaxing. Us, all alone, on a beautiful island. Well, sort of an island. Come on."
The beach was warm beneath Luke's bare feet. He had been reluctant to agree to going shoeless, but Mara had insisted that's what one did on a beach. He found, to his surprise, that it reminded him pleasantly of his boyhood on Tatooine. Back then, in the relative cool of early evening-- one of those rare periods when both blazing suns were nearly set--sometimes he would take his shoes off and feel the still-warm sand between his toes. Not when Uncle Owen was looking, of course, because the old man would launch into an explanation of what shoes were for in the first place, about the valuable moisture Luke was losing though his soles.
For an instant, he could almost hear his uncle's voice and smell Aunt Beru's giju stew. He had an urge to put his shoes back on.
Owen and Beru Lars had been the first personal casualties in Luke Skywalker's battle against the Empire. He wondered if they had known why they died.
He missed them. Anakin Skywalker may have been his father, but the Lars had been his parents.
"I wonder how Han and Leia are doing?" Mara wondered aloud, interrupting his reverie.
"I'm sure they're fine. They've only been gone a few days."
"I wonder if Jacen should have gone with them?"
"Why not? He's proven himself capable often enough. And they're his parents. Besides, with half the galaxy after him, it's better he stay on the move."
"Right. I only meant it makes things worse for Jaina. It's hard on her, doing nothing, knowing her brother is out fighting the fight."
"I know. But Rogue Squadron will probably call her up pretty soon."
"Sure," Mara replied. "Sure they will." She sounded far from convinced.
"You don't think so?" Luke asked.
"No. I think they would like to, but her Jedi training makes her too much of a political liability right now."
"When did the Rogues ever care about politics? Has someone said this to you?"
"Not in so many words, but I hear things, and I'm trained to listen to the words behind the words. I hope I'm wrong, for Jaina's sake."
Her feelings brushed Luke in the Force, running a troubled harmony to her assertion.
"Mara," Luke said, "my love, while I'll believe you when you say picking up parasites on a strange beach is relaxing--"
"Nonsense. This sand is as sterile as an isolation lab. It's perfectly safe to walk barefoot. And you like the feel of it."
"If you say so. But I forbid any more talk about politics, Jedi, the war, the Yuuzhan Vong, anything like that. We're out here for you to relax, to forget all of that for a day or so. Just a day."
She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're the one who thinks the whole universe will collapse unless you're there to keep it spinning."
"I'm not pregnant."
"Say something like that again, and I'll make you wish you were," she said, a bit sharply. "And by the way, if we do this again, it's your turn."
"We'll play sabacc for it," Luke responded, trying to keep a straight face but failing. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, hard.
They continued along the strand, past a rambling stand of crawling slii, all knotted roots and giant gauzy leaves. Waves were beginning to lap on the beach, as they hadn't earlier, which meant they were on the bow side of the "island."
It wasn't an island at all, of course, but a carefully landscaped park atop a floating mass of polymer cells filled with inert gas. A hundred or so of them cruised the artificial western sea of Coruscant, pleasure craft built by rich merchants during the grand, high days of the Old Republic. The Emperor had discouraged such frivolity, and most had been docked for decades and fallen into disrepair. Still, many were still in good enough shape to refurbish, and in the youth of the New Republic, a few sharp businessmen had purchased some and made them commercial successes. One such person, not surprisingly, had been Lando Calrissian, a longtime friend of Luke's. He had offered Luke use of the craft whenever he wished it. It had taken Luke a long time to call in the offer.
He was glad he had done it--Mara seemed to be enjoying it. But she was right, of course. With everything that was happening now, it was hard not to think of it as a waste of time.
But some feelings could not be trusted. Mara was showing now, her belly gloriously rounded around their son, and she was suffering from all of the physical discomforts any woman did in that situation. Nothing in her training as an assassin, smuggler, or Jedi Knight had prepared her for this compromised state, and despite her obvious love for their unborn child, Luke knew physical weakness grated on her. Her comment about Jaina might just as well have been about herself.
And there were other worries, too, and a pocket paradise wasn't likely to help her forget them, but at least they could take a few deep breaths and pretend they were on some distant, uninhabited world, rather than in the thick of the biggest mess since before the Empire had been defeated.
No, strike that. The Empire had threatened to extinguish liberty and freedom, to bring the dark side of the Force to ascendance. The enemy they faced now threatened extinction in a much more literal and ubiquitous sense.
So Luke walked with his wife as evening fell, pretending not to be thinking of these things, knowing she could feel he was anyway.
"What will we name him?" Mara asked at last. The sun had vanished in a lens on the horizon, and now Coruscant began to shatter the illusion of pristine nature. The distant shores glowed in a solid mass, and the sky remained deep red on the horizons. Only near zenith did it resemble the night sky of most moonless planets, but even there was a baroque embroidery of light as aircars and starships followed their carefully assigned paths, some coming home, some going home, some merely arriving at another port.
A million little lights, each with a story, each a spark of significance in the Force that flowed from them, around them, through them.
No illusion, here. All was nature. All was beauty, if you had eyes willing to see it.
"I don't know." He sighed. "I don't even know where to start."
"It's just a name," she said.
"You would think. But everyone seems to believe it's important. Since we went public with the news, you wouldn't believe how many suggestions I've gotten, and from the strangest places."
Mara stopped walking, and her face reflected a sudden profound astonishment. "You're afraid," she said.
He nodded. "I guess I am. I guess I don't think it's 'just a name,' not when it comes to people like us. Look at Anakin. Leia named him after our father, a gesture to the person that became Darth Vader, as a recognition that he overcame the dark side and died a good man. It was her reconciliation with him, and a sign to the galaxy that the scars of war could heal. That we could forgive and move on. But for Anakin, it's been a trial. When he was little, he always feared he would walk the same dark path his grandfather did. It was just a name, but it was a real burden to place on his shoulders. It may be years before we learn the full consequences of that decision."
"For all that I admire your sister, she is a politician, and she thinks like one. That's been good for the galaxy, not so good for her children."
"Exactly," Luke said reluctantly. "And whether I like it or not, Mara, because of who we are, our child will inherit part of our burden. I'm just afraid of placing an extra one on his shoulders. Suppose I named him Obi-Wan, as a salute to my old Master? Would he think that means I want him to grow up to be a Jedi? Would he think he had to live up to Ben's reputation? Would he feel his choices in life constrained?"
"I see you've thought a lot about this."
"I guess I have."
"Notice how quickly this takes us back to the things you said we weren't supposed to talk about?"
"Oh. Right."
"Luke, this is who we are," Mara said, stroking his shoulder lightly. "We can't deny it, even alone on an island." She dipped her foot in the wavelets lapping onto the beach. Luke closed his eyes and felt the wind on his face.
"Maybe not," he admitted.
"And so what?" Mara said, playfully kicking a little water on the cuff of his pants. But then her face grew serious again. "There is one very important thing I want to say, now, before another second passes," she informed him.
"What's that?"
"I'm really hungry. Really, really hungry. If I don't eat right away, I'm going to salt you in seawater and gobble you up."
"You'd be dissapointed," Luke said. "It's freshwater. Come on. The pavilion isn't far. There should be food waiting."
Luke and Mara ate outside at a table of polished yellow Selonian marble while the blossoms around them chimed a quiet music and released fragrances to complement each course. Luke felt ridiculously pampered and a little guilty, but managed to relax somewhat into the mood.
But the mood was broken during the intermezzo, when the pavilion's protocol droid interrupted them.
"Master Skywalker," it said, "an aircar is approaching and requesting admittance through the security perimeter."
"You have the signal?"
"Most assuredly."
"Transfer to the holostation on the table."
"As you wish, sir."
A hologram of a man's face appeared above the remains of their meal. It was human, very long, with aristocratic features.
"Kenth Hamner," Luke said, a sense of foreboding pricking up his scalp. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"
The retired colonel smiled briefly. "Nothing important. Just a visit from an old friend. May I come aboard?"
That's what his words said. His expression, somehow, conveyed something altogether different.
"Of course. Link to the ship's computer, and it will land you somewhere appropriate. I hope you like grilled nylog."
"One of my favorites. I'll see you soon."
A few moments later, Hamner appeared from one of the several trails leading to the pavilion, accompanied by the droid.
"You two make me wish I was young again," Hamner said, smiling, looking them over.
"We're not so young, and you're not so old," Mara replied.
Hamner offered her a short bow from the waist. "Mara, you're looking lovely as ever. And my deepest congratulations on your upcoming event."
"Thank you, Kenth," Mara returned graciously.
"Have a seat," Luke said. "May I have the droid bring you something?"
"A cold drink of a mildly stimulating beverage perhaps?
Surprise me."
Luke sent the droid off with those rather vague instructions and then turned to Hamner, who was now seated.
"You didn't come here just to congratulate us, did you?"
Hamner nodded sadly. "No. I came to give you a heads-up.
Borsk Fey'lya has managed to secure an order for your arrest. The warrant will be served about six standard hours from now."
