Balance Point

by Kathy Tyers

  The warmaster said something in that other language, and one of her guards grasped her left elbow. The last she saw of the warmaster, he was delicately pulling the long worm back out of his ear.

  Her guards took her to a storeroom, shoved her in, then spun her around. One took hold of the creature that held her hands together and plucked it off. Then he gave her another shove and shut her into darkness.

  She let herself stand motionless, unthinking, for one moment. She couldn’t escape the sensation that she’d evaded death by micrometers.

  Then something moved in the shadows to her left. Something huge.

  She shrank away.

  “It’s only myself,” a blubbering voice rumbled. “Your fellow prisoner.”

  “Randa?” she demanded. “I suppose you went to them, offering to ship prisoners—and they threw you back.”

  “No, no, I swear by my kajidic! I tried to reach your mining laser. I meant to sacrifice myself, and kill as many of these despicable creatures as I could.”

  “Oh, certainly,” Leia said. She’d known too many Hutts to believe this. “You meant to sacrifice yourself.”

  “But it is true,” he moaned. “I deserve nothing better. My repentance is sincere, my mortification utter and complete. I—”

  “Mortification?” Leia tried giving the door a shove. Nothing happened. “Where’s Basbakhan?”

  “They took him,” Randa moaned.

  “He’s dead, then.”

  “No, no.”

  They took a Noghri alive? She’d thought that couldn’t be done. She wiped a sheen of sweat off her forehead.

  “What were you doing with that villip? Answer me, answer honestly, and maybe I’ll believe you. Maybe.”

  He gave a low moan. Then he mumbled, “I tried to bargain. I tried to get them to promise my people a safe world. Would you not try to do the same?”

  Was there anything, she wondered, that might buy a world’s safety? “In exchange for what?” she asked curtly.

  Her eyes were adjusting. Now she could see a long, bulbous tan-colored shape, pressing up against the storage closet’s other corner. She couldn’t tell if he’d been hurt, and she didn’t much care.

  He licked his lips with his fat, pointed tongue. “They want Jedi,” he said. “They know nothing about the Force. They want to find out what makes you powerful.”

  “So you tried to sell me to them? Is that what you’re telling me?” How utterly appropriate, then, that they’d locked him up with her.

  He flattened himself on the floor. She’d never even imagined what a Hutt might look like in abject misery.

  “No,” he said. “Not you. Jacen.”

  Her son? This … Hutt … had offered her son to the enemy? Her hands flexed, her spine straightened. She would’ve crossed the closet and tried to take him with her bare hands, but it’d taken a chain to kill Jabba and a lightsaber to finish Beldorian.

  Randa probably didn’t know about Beldorian, but it was common knowledge she’d killed Jabba. “How dare you,” she said through clenched teeth.

  He pulled himself even farther away. “Now you understand,” he said, “why I tried to sacrifice myself. Not that you believe me.” His voice fell dismally into the bass range. “Not that you ever trusted me, or you will ever believe me again. I wish, oh, I wish I could convince you how sincere my repentance—”

  “No,” she said, “I don’t, and I won’t, and you can’t.” On the other hand, she had seen tracks that looked as if Randa had been dragged out of the laser’s storeroom. “But go ahead, tell me another lie to pass the time. How did they catch you?”

  “I was bending over the laser, trying to activate the repulsor sled—”

  “Which you couldn’t do,” she interrupted. “I coded it to my voiceprint.”

  “Ah-h.” He made it a long, sobbing sigh. “I am glad,” he said, “to have been able to tell you this. If no one else ever knows, and we go to our death together, at least I—”

  “Oh, shut up,” she muttered.

  She leaned back against the stone wall. Her left shoulder hit a power-cable conduit, and she shifted to get comfortable.

  She couldn’t. The warmaster had told her he would destroy all the Duros’ cities, then drive on to Coruscant. Only one conclusion was possible: he had more forces on the way.

  Bburru, and CorDuro Shipping, had consistently cheated the refugees they’d been contracted to aid. Evidently, though, it wasn’t the refugee population in imminent danger of being slaughtered, after all—but the Duros themselves!

  She shut her eyes and reached out for her children.

  She sensed Jaina’s subtle resonance at some distance. Jacen’s might be farther away, or closer—damped down. In the mines? she wondered. Or still in her secret tunnel?

  She scratched her shoulder absently against the power conduit—then spun around, grasping it in one hand. It ran from the closet’s floor to its ceiling. She thought back, imagining the admin building in her mind: which rooms lay above her, which ones below. This conduit ran through the storeroom that opened into her tunnel.

  She bent down and swept the floor with both hands.

  “Is there some way I might help?” Randa asked.

  “I want a pebble,” she snapped. “There are always pebbles falling out of our duracrete. The factory never quite got the formula right—”

  “Here, Administrator.”

  Something fell almost into her lap. She groped toward the noise it made, found the pebble, and seized it in one hand.

  “Thanks,” she murmured.

  She tapped out a distress signal in the old Mon Cal blink code. Naturally, no one answered.

  She stood up, flattened her palms against the closet door, and gave it another push. It still didn’t budge.

  “I tried that, too,” Randa offered. “But if you think my weight, added to yours, might—”

  “No,” she said. Maybe he was sincerely repentant. For the moment.

  Or just suitably scared of her.

  She sat down again.

  She had only one thing left to try, but she hesitated. If she called Jaina or Jacen back through the Force, they might endanger themselves.

  Oh, right, her inner voice mocked. As if Luke doesn’t already know I’m in trouble. She’d sent Jacen and Jaina away, though—insisting they save themselves—and she’d meant it.

  But if Luke already knew …

  She sat down and relaxed deeply. Luke, she cried silently to her own twin. Luke, hear me …

  She sensed no answer. Maybe he was in hiding, too.

  Curled up on Jade Shadow’s pilot’s chair, Luke felt a tendril of energy brush against him. Alert for scanners from off-ship, he ducked down into the Force and let the probe pass over. As it faded, he touched it cautiously to confirm its electronic, impersonal nature.

  Instead, he caught the faint sense of Leia, and danger, and warning.

  Chagrined, he reached toward her. He instantly recognized the sensation of being trapped—and this time, she was in urgent peril. She wanted to make him understand even more, but the rest of it came through garbled. Battles—a warmaster—a threat to Coruscant.

  He jumped off the chair and strode aft, toward his X-wing.

  Halfway to the hold, he halted. Save his sister? Or stay on station, for the sake of his wife and child? Mara had told him to take off, if he had to.

  He tried to get some guidance from the Force. Surprisingly, his clearest impression was that this wasn’t Leia’s moment at all. Her destiny was established, but within the next hour, Jacen must stand firm … or fall utterly.

  Drawing down deep into the Force, Luke stretched out toward Jacen, and then to Leia. Was she doomed? He couldn’t tell. Jacen remained closed off to him, walled inside his own barricades. Luke’s shoulders slumped.

  Jaina responded instantly, though. He even felt the assurance that Jaina was already returning to try to help her mother. Linked with her, now, circumventing the irritation Jaina usually showed towa
rd Leia, Luke sensed her love for the woman who was so much like herself. Her first friend, her role model.

  Maybe Jaina could get through to Jacen, too.

  He reached for Leia again. If she were deliberately opening herself to him, he might be able to catch some memory, some image, that he might relay to Jaina. He had to save her, and Jacen.

  The only clear image in her mind showed her tapping against a conduit with a pebble, and a location. He sent that to Jaina—

  Then he caught a whistle from Shadow’s comm board. He hustled back to the pilot’s chair.

  “Skywalker,” he answered.

  “Luke, it’s Hamner. I’m sorry, but it isn’t good news.”

  “No reinforcements?”

  “None. Sounds like you’d better evacuate, if you can.”

  “Good try, Kenth.”

  Luke sensed a shipyard crew approaching in the corridor outside. He pulled back into hiding, closing his hand on his comlink. He had to get Hamner’s word to Mara.

  Wasn’t there some way to help Jacen and Leia?

  Jacen pulled himself into the smallest possible shape and waited for heavy footsteps to pass by in the stairwell. Five minutes ago, sick of slinking and wondering, he’d reentered the admin building. He’d found the smashed bits of a U2C1 housekeeping droid, plastic legs and shredded tubing scattered in the stairwell. Then this empty cubicle, exactly large enough to hold such a droid. Something nibbled at the back of his mind. Once again, something enormous was trying to break through, something out of the infinite. A warring urge tempted him to simply spring out of the cubicle and have done with all his struggles.

  Wait. The sensation came through plainly.

  Anguished—almost angry, now—he dug his fingernails into his ankles. Wait for what? he screamed back.

  Han leaned against a stone wall. Returning toward the underground gathering place from Gateway’s last hidden hauler, he’d found Leia’s GOCU antenna. He promptly patched in his comlink. He got no answer from Leia or Jaina, but C-3PO picked up.

  “No sign of ’em, Threepio?”

  In his mind he saw the protocol droid, perched in the Falcon’s offset cockpit, standing watch out on that bluff.

  “No more of the alien ships have appeared, Captain Solo—”

  “Check the sensors. What’s on approach?”

  Brief pause. Behind him, Han heard the soft shuffling of hundreds of feet, refugees making their way past him, up the tunnel toward Droma.

  “Nothing, Captain. For the moment, it still appears as if the enemy has deployed only the small task force—”

  “Good enough, Goldenrod. Be ready to fire it up the second I get there.”

  He tried Leia once more, then flicked off the comlink and stuck it deep in a pocket. He didn’t like her silence.

  One of the shaved-down Ryn paused alongside him. “Get through?” Han recognized Romany’s voice.

  “Yeah. Doing all right?” Han murmured.

  Romany’s blue jumpsuit sagged on his arms. He brandished his own comlink. “R’vanna says the last ones have gotten down into the tunnel.”

  “Good enough.”

  “Where are your children?”

  “Probably with their mother.” I hope. Han peered ahead. Just beyond this point, they were entering the most dangerous section, where the ancient mining tunnel joined Leia’s scientists’ recent dig, connecting their lab with the marshes. Here, if anywhere, there could be a trap—

  As if on cue, he heard a soft crack overhead. Then a crackle that seemed to go on for a full minute. Gravel sprinkled his leather helmet.

  “Don’t panic,” he muttered to Romany. “Not yet, anyway …”

  Unbelievably, no one cried out. Far behind, a section of ceiling dumped itself on refugee heads. He heard gasping noises, saw and felt a press of bodies surge toward him. But even the children stayed quiet.

  “What’d you do to them, Romany?” he demanded.

  The Ryn shrugged. “They know if they’re heard, we’re all dead. They’ve been running so long they’re starting to get good at it.”

  Mentally Han cursed the Yuuzhan Vong. He turned and moved on.

  At tunnel’s end, daylight shone faintly. Droma had scavenged an old cargo-stacking frame off the hauler and painstakingly pushed it along the cliff’s base toward the tunnel. As he moved it, he—and a growing number of refugees—kept stacking hay over it, creating a tunnel. Han was able to move this largest group yet onto the hauler without being seen from outdoors.

  As they streamed past—human, Vor, Vuvrian, here and there a Gotal and a Snivvian—he ducked against the hay frame with Droma. Now that it was time to say good-bye, he didn’t want to do it.

  Neither did Droma, evidently. “If we can break orbit, I’m going to head out the Trade Spine. Senex-Juvex might still be taking refugees.”

  “You’ve changed,” Han said bluntly. “What happened to the loudmouth I met back at Ord Mantell?”

  “Guess he died,” the Ryn said somberly. He pulled off his red and blue cap, knocked straw out of it, and replaced it at the usual angle. “With about half of his clan.”

  “If I find any stragglers, I’ll put ’em on the Falcon.”

  “Right,” Droma said. “You know,” he said wistfully, “I really wanted to meet Luke Skywalker.”

  Han laughed shortly. “You did. On board the Queen of Empire—”

  “Not to talk with him.”

  Han shrugged. “I’ll send him along someday.” He backhanded the Ryn’s bristly upper arm. “Keep your scanners up.”

  “You know, Solo, for such a mouthy human you’ve got a good heart.”

  The line’s end passed them by. Droma fell in with the stragglers, hustling them along. They’d agreed he would wait for Han to signal when the Falcon was ready to run for open space. Han would escort him to the jump point, then head in his own direction—with Leia and the kids. He thumbed the comlink, but once again, none of them answered.

  He was turning toward the tunnel when Droma came dashing back. “Comm unit’s dead,” he puffed. “Transmitter seems to be functioning, it’s just the voice pickup. Let me patch in your comlink.”

  Han hesitated, then decided he could talk to the kids from the Falcon—and it was high time he got there. He handed Droma the link. “We were about even on that running rescue total,” he said. “I think you owe me, now.”

  “Put it on my account,” Droma said.

  Leia’s prison door opened wide enough for a clawed hand to reach down, leaving a pitcher of water and a bowl full of something that squirmed. Randa snored softly in his corner. She sniffed the water. It seemed all right. She took a cautious taste, rolling the sip over her tongue, listening hard for the infant danger sense that protected Luke and Mara so effectively. She sensed no warning, so she drank thirstily. Then she considered the bowl. No matter how hungry she got, she couldn’t face that.

  She nudged Randa’s midsection with her foot. “Hey,” she said. “Dinner.”

  He came awake quickly, blinking his huge black eyes.

  “It’s something you’d like.” She shoved the bowl into his small hands.

  “Oh,” he exclaimed. “It’s been so long.”

  She turned away, repulsed by his appetites.

  A faint pinging that had gone on for several seconds finally caught her attention. It seemed to be coming from the conduit.

  She pressed closer. In blink code, she heard letters formed by long and short groups of pings. R-M-E. Pause. C-A-N-Y-O-U-H-E-A-R-M-E. Pause.

  By this time, she’d found her pebble again. She pinged back, “W-H-O-I-S-T-H-I-S.”

  “Jaina,” the answer came. “What floor you on?”

  Exultant, Leia stretched out through the Force. There, indeed, was her daughter. From Jaina’s mind came images of Luke hiding shipboard, docked at Bburru, and of Mara speaking with the Duros military command—but nothing from Han. For secrecy’s sake, Jaina had switched off her comlink.

  Laboriously, Leia spelled out th
e warmaster’s threefold threat as she formed explanatory images in her mind. The others must know about the incredible danger to the Duros cities, word for word, exactly as the warmaster threatened. Also the impending enslavement of refugees, and the promised strike on the Core.

  “Warn Mara,” she concluded, sliding back into signaling mode. “Use GOCU transmitter. Hurry, then come back. Randa prisoner also.”

  Jaina pinged back, “Get you first.”

  “No. No. Warn Mara first. Get Han, come back,” Leia answered.

  Silence. The warm echo at the back of her mind faded, cooled, vanished. She counted off almost a minute. Then, “OK,” Jaina pinged back.

  Leia sank back down, dropped the pebble, and rested her elbows on her knees.

  Four armed Duros waited for Mara at the top of the lift.

  “Charming,” she said. “A welcoming committee. I need to speak with the admiral.”

  “You’re under arrest,” the Duro wearing the most stripes on his collar snapped.

  “On what charge?” Mara demanded.

  “Trespassing on military property, to starrrt.”

  “Mm.” Mara flexed her hands, holding them close to her blaster and lightsaber. “Tell you what. You can try to lock me up, in which case either you’ll end up on the floor or else as Yuuzhan Vong sacrifice bait … or you can take me to see Admiral Wuht first. If he still wants me locked up, I’ll go peacefully. Think you could handle that?”

  The lead Duros’ eyes blinked once. “This way,” he ordered.

  She followed him, ready to make a break the moment he took a wrong turn. But less than a minute later, the escorts marched her into a private dining room, where a Duros sat next to two burly humans. The Duros’ charcoal-gray uniform had filigreed epaulettes, white shoulder cords, and a row of stars around his collar.

  “Admiral,” Mara said. “My name is Mara Jade Skywalker. I urgently need to speak with you.”

  Admiral Wuht cocked his long head to one side. He glanced at his human guests. “Interesting,” he said. “These gentlebeings just predicted that you, or one of your kind, would force your way in to see me within the hour. And here you are.”