DRAMATIS PERSONAE

PROLOGUE

Like thieves all across the galaxy, Tibanna tappers worked best in darkness. They slipped and stole through the lowest levels of Bespin’s Life Zone, down where daylight faded to dusk and shapes softened to silhouettes, down where black curtains of mist swept across purple, boiling skies. Their targets were the lonely platforms where honest beings worked through the endless night de-icing frozen intake fans and belly-crawling into clogged transfer pipes, where the precious gas was gathered atom by atom. In the last month alone, the tanks at a dozen stations had been mysteriously drained, and two Jedi Knights had been sent to bring the thieves to justice.

Emerging into a pocket of clear air, Jaina and Zekk saw BesGas Three ahead. The station was a saucer-shaped extraction platform, so overloaded with processing equipment that it seemed a wonder it stayed afloat. The primary storage deck was limned in blue warning strobes, and in the flashing light behind one of those strobes, Jaina and Zekk saw an oblong shadow tucked back between two holding tanks.

Jaina swung the nose of their borrowed cloud car toward the tanks and accelerated, rushing to have a look before the processing facility vanished behind another curtain of mist. The shadow was probably just a shadow, but down here at the bottom of the Life Zone, heat and pressure and darkness all conspired against human vision, and every possibility had to be investigated up close.

Spin-sealed Tibanna gas had a lot of uses, but the most important was to increase the yield of starship weapons. So if somebody was stealing Tibanna gas, especially as much as had been disappearing from Bespin in recent weeks, the Jedi needed to find out who they were—and what they were doing with it.

As Jaina and Zekk continued to approach, the shadow began to acquire a tablet-like shape. Zekk readied the mini tractor beam, and Jaina armed the twin ion guns. There was no need to remark that the shadow was starting to look like a siphoning balloon, or to complain that the strobe lights were blinding them, or even to discuss what tactics they should use. Thanks to their stay with the Killiks, their minds were so closely connected that they scarcely knew where one began and the other ended. Even after a year away from the Colony, ideas and perceptions and emotions flowed between them without effort. Often, they could not even tell in whose mind a thought had formed—and it did not matter. They simply shared it.

A blue glow flared among the holding tanks, then a small tapper tug shot into view, its conical silhouette wavering against the pressure-blurred lights of the station’s habitation decks. An instant later three siphoning balloons—the one Jaina and Zekk had spotted and two others—rose behind it, chased by long plumes of Tibanna gas still escaping from siphoning holes in the holding tanks.

Jaina opened fire with the ion guns, narrowly missing the tug, but spraying the station’s central hub. Ion beams were safer to use around Tibanna gas than blaster bolts, since all they did was disable electronic circuitry, so the barrage did not cause any structural damage. But it did plunge two levels of habitation deck into a sudden blackout.

Zekk swung the tractor beam around and caught hold of a siphoning balloon. The tappers released it, and the balloon came flying straight at the cloud car. Zekk deactivated the beam immediately, but Jaina still had to swing wide to avoid being taken out by the huge, tumbling bag of supercooled gas.

Jaina let out a tense breath. “Too—”

“—close!” Zekk finished.

By the time she brought the cloud car back around, the last two balloons were following the tug up into a dark, churning cloud. Jaina raised their nose and sent another burst of ionized energy streaming after the tappers, but Zekk did not reactivate the beam.

They agreed—the capture attempt had looked realistic enough. Now the quarry needed room to run. Jaina backed off the throttles, and they began a slow spiral up after the thieves.

A moment later, a fuzzy pinpoint of yellow appeared deep inside the cloud, rapidly swelling into a hazy tongue of flame that came shooting out into clear air almost before Jaina could bring the ion guns around. She pressed both triggers and began to sweep the barrels back and forth. She was not trying to hit the missile—that would have been impossible, even for a Jedi. Instead, she was simply laying a blanket of ionized energy in its path.

Zekk reached out and found the missile in the Force, then gently guided it into one of Jaina’s ion beams. Its electrical systems erupted into a tempest of discharge lightning and overload sparks, then failed altogether. Once the tempest died down, Zekk used a Force shove to deflect it from the extraction platform. The dead missile plunged past, barely a dozen meters from the edge of the storage deck, then vanished into the seething darkness of the Squeeze Zone.

Jaina frowned. “Now, that was—”

“—entirely uncalled for,” Zekk finished.

With all that supercooled Tibanna pouring out onto the storage deck, even a small detonation would have been enough to blow the entire platform out of the sky. But that had probably been the idea, Jaina and Zekk realized: payback for calling in Jedi—and a warning to other stations not to do the same.

“Need to get these guys,” Zekk said aloud.

Jaina nodded. “Just as soon as we know who they’re working for.”

Judging they had allowed the thieves a large enough lead to feel comfortable, Jaina and Zekk stretched out into the Force in an effort to locate them. It was not easy. Even at these depths, Bespin was surprisingly rich in life, from huge gasbag beldons to their mighty velker predators, from vast purple expanses of “glower” algae to the raawks and floaters that scavenged a living from extraction platforms like BesGas Three.

Finally, Jaina and Zekk found what they were searching for, a trio of presences exuding relief and excitement and more than a little anger. The three thieves felt insect-like, somehow more in harmony with the universe than most other beings. But they remained three distinct individuals, each with a unique presence. They were not Killiks.

And that made Jaina and Zekk a little sad. They would never have changed the decision that had gotten them banished from the Colony. It had prevented the outbreak of a savage war, and they did not regret it. But being apart from Taat—the nest they had joined at Qoribu—was like being shut off from themselves, like being cast aside by one’s sweetheart and friends and family without the possibility of return. It was a little bit like becoming a ghost, dying but not departing, floating around on the edges of the living never quite able to make contact. So they did feel a little sorry for themselves sometimes. Even Jedi were allowed that much.

“Need to get these guys,” Jaina said, reiterating a call to action that she felt sure was more Zekk than her. He had never had much use for regrets. “Ready?”

Silly question. Jaina accelerated after the tappers, climbing up into a storm so violent and lightning-filled that she and Zekk felt as if they were back in the war again, fighting a pitched battle against the Yuuzhan Vong. After a standard hour, they gave up trying to maintain a steady altitude and resigned themselves to having their stomachs alternately up in their throats and down in their guts. After three hours, they gave up trying to stay right-side up and concentrated on just making forward progress. After five hours, they emerged from the storm into a bottomless canyon of clear, still air—only to glimpse the tappers entering a wall of crimson vortexes where two bands of wind brushed against each other in opposite directions. Amazingly, the tug still had both siphoning balloons in tow.

Jaina and Zekk wondered whether the tappers knew they were being followed, but that seemed impossible. This far down in the atmosphere, Bespin’s magnetic field and powerful storms prevented even rudimentary sensor equipment from working. Navigation was strictly by compass, gyroscope, and calculation. If the tug was going through that wind wall, it was because it was on its way to deliver its stolen Tibanna.

Jaina and Zekk waited until the tappers had vanished, then crossed the cloud canyon and carefully accelerated into the same vortex. The wind grabbed them immediately, and it felt as if they’d been fired out of a turbolaser. Their heads slammed back against their seats, the cloud car began to groan and tremble, and the world beyond their canopy became a blur of crimson vapor and stabbing lightning. Jaina let go of the control stick, lest she forget herself and tear the wings of their craft by attempting to steer.

An hour later, Jaina and Zekk sensed the tappers’ presences drifting past to one side and realized they had made it across the Change Zone. Still keeping her hand off the stick, Jaina pushed the throttles to full. The cloud car shot forward screaming and bucking; then the vapor outside faded from crimson to rosy, and the ride grew suddenly smooth.

Jaina eased off the throttles until the cloud car’s repulsor drive finally fell silent, then began to circle through the rosy fog at minimum speed.

“Well, that was—”

“—fun,” Zekk agreed. “Let’s never do it again.”

Once their stomachs had settled, Jaina brought the cloud car around and they crept back through the pink fog, unable to see a hundred meters beyond their noses, still using the presences of the tappers to guide them. It felt like they had overshot the thieves by a considerable distance, but it was impossible to say whether that distance was a hundred kilometers or a thousand. The Force did not have a scale.

After a quarter hour, they began to suffer the illusion that they were simply floating in the cloud, that they were not moving at all. But the instruments still showed their velocity at more than a hundred kilometers per standard hour, and it felt as if they were closing rapidly on their quarry.

Jaina wondered where they were.

Zekk said, “The gyrocomputer calculates our position as three-seven-point-eight-three north, two-seven-seven-point-eight-eight-six longitude, one-six-nine deep.”

“Is that in—”

“Yes,” Zekk answered. They were about a thousand kilometers into the Dead Eye, a vast region of still air and dense fog that had existed in Bespin’s atmosphere at least since the planet’s discovery.

“Great. Only nineteen thousand kilometers to the other side,” Jaina complained. “Do the charts show—”

“Nothing,” Zekk said. “Not even a marker buoy.”

“Blast!” This, they said together.

Still, it felt like they were catching up to the tappers quickly. There had to be something out there.

“Maybe they’ve just stopped to—”

“No,” Jaina said. “That gas was already—”

“Right,” Zekk agreed. “They’ve got to—”

“And soon.”

The stolen Tibanna gas had already been spin-sealed, so the tappers had to get it into carbonite quickly or see it lose most of its commercial value. And charts or no charts, that meant there was a facility somewhere in the Dead Eye. Jaina eased back on the throttles some more. It felt as if they were right on top of the thieves, and in this fog—

The corroded tower-tanks of an ancient refinery emerged from the pink haze ahead, and Jaina barely had time to flip the cloud car up on edge and bank away. Zekk, who was just as surprised but a lot less busy, had a moment to glance down through the open roof of a ruined habitation deck. The rest of the station remained hidden in the fog beneath, showing just enough ghostly corners and curves to suggest the lower decks had not fallen off … yet.

Focusing on the presences of the three Tibanna tappers, Jaina carefully spiraled down around the central tower complex while Zekk looked for ambushes. Much of the outer skin had long since rusted away, exposing a metal substructure caked and pitted with corrosion. Finally, the ruins of the loading deck came into view. Crooked arms of pink fog reached up through missing sections of flooring, and the docking berths were so primitive that they were serviced by loading ramps instead of lift pads.

A berth close to a missing section of floor held the conical tug Jaina and Zekk had been chasing. The vehicle was standing on three struts, with the boarding ramp lowered. The two siphoning balloons lay on the deck behind the tug, empty and flattened. There was no sign of the crew.

Jaina and Zekk circled once, then landed near the empty siphoning balloons. At once, they felt a rhythmic quiver—the station’s repulsorlift generator was straining.

The hair rose on the back of Jaina’s neck. “We need to make this fast.”

Zekk had already popped the canopy and was leaping out onto the deck. Jaina unbuckled her crash webbing and followed him over to the tug, her lightsaber held at the ready but not ignited. The repulsorlift generator was in even worse condition than she had thought. The quiver was cycling up to a periodic shudder, and the shudder lasted a little longer and grew a little stronger every time it came.

Jaina and Zekk did not like the sound of that. It seemed odd that it should fail now, after so many centuries of keeping this station afloat. But perhaps power was being diverted to the carbonite freezing system—since that was clearly what the tappers were using this place for.

When they reached the tug, it grew apparent they would need to rethink that theory. They could feel the tappers inside the vessel, listless, far too content, almost unconscious. While Jaina stayed outside, Zekk ascended the ramp to investigate, and she received through their shared mind a complete perception of what he was finding.

The ramp opened onto an engineering deck, which—judging by the debris and nesting rags strewn about the floor—also doubled as crew quarters. It felt like the tappers themselves were on the flight deck, one level above. The air was filled with a cloying odor that Jaina and Zekk both recognized all too well, and the floor was piled high with waxy balls containing a dark, muddy liquid filled with stringy clots.

“Black membrosia?” Zekk asked.

There was only one way to be certain, but Zekk had no intention of tasting the stuff. After a brush with the dark side as a teenager, he held himself to a strict standard of restraint, and he never engaged in anything that even hinted of corruption or immorality.

So, after a last check to make sure nothing was creeping up on them out of the fog, Jaina ascended the boarding ramp. She picked up one of the balls and plunged her thumb through the wax, then withdrew it and licked the black syrup. It was much more cloying than the light membrosia of their own nest, with a rancid aftertaste that made her want to scrape her tongue … at least until her vision blurred and she was overcome by a feeling of chemical euphoria.

“Whoa. Definitely membrosia.” Jaina had to brace herself against a wall, and she and Zekk were filled with a longing to rejoin their nest in the Colony. “Strong stuff.”

Jaina could feel how much Zekk wanted to experience another taste—even through her mind—but the dark membrosia was almost narcotic in its potency, and now was hardly the time to have her senses dulled. She pinched the thumb hole shut and set the ball aside, intending to retrieve it on the way out.

“Bad idea.”

Zekk used the Force to return the ball to the pile with the others. He could be such a zealot sometimes.

The image of a vast chamber filled with waxes of stringy black membrosia came to Jaina’s mind, and she recalled where black membrosia came from.

The Dark Nest had survived.

“And we need to know—”

“Right.” Jaina led the way up the ladder to the flight deck. “What Dark Nest membrosia is doing here.”

“Yes—”

“And what it has to do with Tibanna tapping.”

Zekk sighed. Sometimes he missed finishing his own sentences.

On the flight deck, Jaina and Zekk found three Verpine slumped at their flight stations in a membrosia-induced stupor. The floor surrounding all three tappers was littered with empty waxes, and their long necks were flopped on their thoraxes or over their shoulders at angles unnatural even for insects. The long fingers and limbs of all three were fitfully jerking, as though in a dream, and when the pilot managed to turn his head to look toward them, tiny sparkles of gold light appeared deep inside his bulbous eyes.

“Won’t get any answers here for a while,” Jaina said.

“Right,” Zekk said. “But they didn’t unload those siphoning balloons themselves.”

Jaina and Zekk left the tug and returned to the siphoning balloons, then followed a new transfer hose over to a section of missing deck. The line descended through the hole and disappeared into the fog, angling down toward the top of the unipod—where the carbonite freezing facilities were usually located.

Jaina and Zekk looked at each other, silently debating whether it would be better to slide along the hose or work their way down through the central hub of the station … and that was when the repulsorlift generator finally stopped shuddering.

They felt their stomachs rise and hoped that they were just reacting to the sudden stillness—that the sudden silence was not the bad sign they feared.

Then the blue glow of a large repulsor drive flared to life below.

“Rodders!” Jaina cursed.

The blue glow of the departing vessel swung around, briefly silhouetting the hazy lance of the station’s unipod, then quickly receded into the fog.

“They shut the generator down!” Zekk said.

Jaina and Zekk turned to race to their cloud car, then remembered the tappers and started for the tug instead.

Their knees buckled as the deck suddenly lurched upward beneath them; then a strut collapsed beneath the tug, and it tumbled across the platform. Jaina and Zekk were too confused to react—until they noticed that they were also starting to slide.

The station was tipping.

Jaina spun back toward their cloud car and found it sliding across the deck, rocking up on its struts and about to tumble over. She thrust an arm out, holding Zekk with her other hand, and used the Force to pluck the vehicle up and bring it over. She caught hold of the cockpit and started to pull herself inside, then realized Zekk was still a deadweight in her other hand.

He was staring toward a missing section of deck, holding his arm out. But his Force grasp was empty, and Jaina could feel how angry he was with himself for missing the tug.

“Get over it!” She pulled herself into the cloud car’s cockpit, dragging him after her. “They’re Tibanna toppers. They’re not worth dying for!”

ONE

WOTEBA.

The last time Han Solo had been here, the planet had had no name. The air had been thick and boggy, and there had been a ribbon of muddy water purling through the marsh grass, bending lazily toward the dark wall of a nearby conifer forest. A jagged mountain had loomed in the distance, its pale summit gleaming against the wispy red veil of a nebular sky.

Now the air was filled with the aroma of sweet membrosia and slow-roasted nerf ribs, and the only water in sight was rippling down the face of an artificial waterfall. The conifer forest had been cut, stripped, and driven into the marsh to serve as log pilings beneath the iridescent tunnel-houses of the Saras nest. Even the mountain looked different, seeming to float above the city on a cushion of kiln steam, its icy peak almost scraping the pale-veined belly of the Utegetu Nebula.

“Interesting, what the bugs have done to the place,” Han said. He was standing in the door of the glimmering hangar where they had berthed the Falcon, looking out on the nest along with Leia, Saba Sebatyne, the Skywalkers, and C-3PO and R2-D2. “Not so creepy after all.”

“Don’t call them bugs, Han,” Leia reminded him. “Insulting your hosts is never a good way to start a visit.”

“Right, we wouldn’t want to insult ’em,” Han said. “Not for a little thing like harboring pirates and running black membrosia.”

He crossed a spinglass bridge and stopped at the edge of a meandering ribbon of street. The silver lane was packed with chest-high Killiks hauling rough lumber, quarried moire-stone, casks of bluewater. Here and there, bleary-eyed spacers—human and otherwise—were staggering back to their ships at the sore end of a membrosia binge. On the balconies overhanging the tunnel-house entrances, glittered-up Joiners—beings who had spent too much time among Killiks and been absorbed into the nest’s collective mind—were smiling and dancing to the soft trill of spinning wind horns. The only incongruous sight was in the marshy, two-meter gap that served as the gutter between the hangar and the street. A lone insect lay facedown in the muck, its orange thorax and white-striped abdomen half covered in some sort of dull gray froth.

“Raynar must know we’ve arrived,” Luke said. He was still on the bridge behind Han. “Any sign of a guide?”

The bug in the gutter lifted itself on its arms and began to drum its thorax.

“I don’t know,” Han answered, eyeing the bug uncertainly. When it began to drag itself toward the bridge, he said, “Make that a maybe.”

The Killik stopped and stared up at them with a pair of bulbous green eyes. “Bur r rruubb, ubur ruur.”

“Sorry—don’t understand a throb.” Han knelt on the street’s glimmering surface and extended a hand. “But come on up. Our protocol droid knows over six million—”

The insect spread its mandibles and backed away, pointing at the blaster on Han’s hip.

“Hey, take it easy,” Han said, still holding out his hand. “That’s just for show. I’m not here to shoot anybody.”

“Brubr.” The Killik raised a pincer-hand, then tapped itself between the eyes. “Urrubb uu.”

“Oh, dear,” C-3PO said from the back of the bridge. “She seems to be asking you to blast her.”

The bug nodded enthusiastically, then averted its eyes.

“Don’t get crazy,” Han said. “You’re not that late.”

“I think it’s in pain, Han.” Mara knelt on the street beside Han and motioned the insect to come closer. “Come here. We’ll try to help.”

The Killik shook its head and tapped itself between the eyes again. “Buurubuur, ubu ru.”

“She says nothing can help,” C-3PO said. “She has the Fizz.”

“The Fizz?” Han echoed.

The Killik thrummed a long explanation.

“She says it is very painful,” C-3PO said. “And she would appreciate it if you would end her misery as soon as possible. UnuThul is waiting in the Garden Hall.”

“Sorry,” Han said. “I’m not blasting anyone this trip.”

The Killik rumbled something that sounded like rodder, then started to drag itself away.

“Wait!” Luke extended his hand, and the Killik rose out of the mud. “Maybe we can rig an isolation ward—”

The rest of the offer was drowned out as Saras porters turned to point at their nest-fellow’s frothy legs, drumming their chests and knocking the loads out of one another’s arms. The Joiner dancers vanished from their balconies, and startled spacers staggered toward the gutter, squinting and reaching for their blasters.

Luke began to float the Killik back toward the bridge. It clacked its mandibles in protest and thrashed its arms, but its legs—hidden beneath a thick layer of froth—dangled motionlessly beneath its thorax. A steady drizzle of what looked like dirt specks fell from its feet into the gutter.

Han frowned. “Luke, maybe we’d better leave—”

A blaster bolt whined out from down the street, taking the Killik in midthorax and spraying a fist-sized circle of chitin and froth onto the hangar’s milky exterior. The insect died instantly, but another uproar erupted on the street as angry spacers began to berate a wobbly Quarren holding a powerful Merr-Sonn Flash 4 blaster pistol.

“Ish not my fault!” The Quarren waved the weapon vaguely in Luke’s direction. “Them Jedi wash the ones flyin’ a Fizzer ’round.”

The accusation diverted the angry looks toward Luke, but no one in the group was membrosia-smeared enough to harangue a party that included four beings dressed in Jedi robes. Instead the spacers staggered toward the hangar’s other entrances as fast as their unsteady legs could carry them, leaving Han and the Jedi to stare at the dead Killik in astonished silence. Normally, they would have at least taken the killer into custody to await local law enforcement, but these were hardly normal circumstances. Luke just sighed and lowered the victim back into the gutter.

Leia seemed unable to take her eyes off it. “From the way those spacers reacted, this is fairly common. Did Raynar’s message say anything about an epidemic?”

“Not a word,” Mara said, standing. “Just that Unu had discovered why the Dark Nest attacked me last year, and we needed to discuss it in person.”

“I don’t like it,” Han said. “Sounds more convenient all the time.”

“We know—and thanks again for coming,” Mara said. “We appreciate the backup.”

“Yeah, well, don’t mention it.” Han returned to his feet. “We’ve got a personal interest in this.”

Strictly speaking, the pirate harboring and membrosia running in which the Killiks were engaged was not Han and Leia’s concern. But Chief of State Omas was using the trouble as a pretext to avoid keeping his side of a complicated bargain with the Solos, saying that until the nests of the Utegetu Nebula stopped causing so much trouble for the Galactic Alliance, he could not muster the votes he needed to give the Ithorians a new homeworld.

Han would have liked to believe the claim was just a big bantha patty, but someone had leaked the terms of the deal to the holopress. Now both the Solo name and the Ithorian homeworld had become linked in the public mind with the pirate raids and “tarhoney” dens that were blighting the frontier from Adumar to Reecee.

Once the street traffic had returned to normal, Luke said, “We seem to be out a guide. We’ll have to find Raynar ourselves.”

Han started to send C-3PO into the street to ask directions from a Killik, but Luke and the other Masters simply turned to Leia with an expectant look. She closed her eyes for a moment, then turned down the street and confidently began to lead the way deeper into the shimmering nest. Fairly certain that she knew exactly where she was going, Han fell in beside C-3PO and R2-D2 and followed the others in silence. Sometimes hanging out with Jedi was almost enough to make him feel inadequate.

For a quarter of a standard hour, the nature of Saras nest did not change. They continued to meet long lines of Killik porters coming in the opposite direction, to crave the roasted nerf they smelled in the air, to marvel at the iridescent sheen of the sinuous tunnel-houses—and to gasp at the purling beauty of the endless string of fountains, sprays, and cascades they passed.

Most of the Killik nests Han had visited had left him feeling creepy and a little sick to his stomach. But this one made him feel oddly buoyant and relaxed, perhaps even rejuvenated, as though the most pleasant thing in the galaxy would be sitting on a tunnel-house balcony, sipping golden membrosia, and watching the Joiners dance.

It made Han wonder what the bugs were up to now.

Gradually, the streets grew less crowded, and the group began to notice more froth-covered bodies in the gutter. Most were already dead and half disintegrated, but a few remained intact enough to raise their heads and beg for a merciful end. Han found himself torn between the desire to stop their suffering and a reluctance to do something so drastic without understanding the situation. Fortunately, Luke was able to take the middle road, using the Force to render each victim unconscious.

Finally, Leia stopped about ten meters from an open expanse of marsh. The street continued, snaking through a brightly mottled sweep of bog flowers, but the road surface turned dull and frothy ahead, and the ends of the nearby tunnel-houses were being eaten by gray foam. In the center of the field stood a massive spinglass palace, its base a shapeless mass of ash-colored bubbles and its crown a braided tangle of iridescent turrets swimming with snakes of color.

“Tell me that’s not where Raynar was waiting,” Han groaned. “Because there’s no way we’re going—”

“Raynar Thul could not be waiting there,” a gravelly voice said from a nearby tunnel-house. “You should know that by now, Captain Solo. Raynar Thul has been gone a long time.”

Han turned around and found the imposing figure of Raynar Thul standing in the tunnel-house entrance. A tall man with regal bearing, he had a raw, melted face with no ears, hair, or nose, and all of his visible skin had the shiny, stiff quality of a burn scar. He wore purple trousers and a cape of scarlet silk over a breastplate of gold chitin.

“Guess I’m a slow learner that way,” Han said, smiling. “Good to see you again, uh, UnuThul.”

Raynar came into the street. As always, he was followed by the Unu, a motley swarm of Killiks of many different shapes and sizes. Gathered from hundreds of different nests, they accompanied Raynar wherever he went and acted as a sort of collective Will for the Colony.

“We are surprised to see you and Princess Leia here.” Raynar made no move to take the hand that Han extended. “We did not summon you.”

Han frowned, but continued to hold out his hand. “Yeah, what’s the deal with that? Our feelings were kind of hurt, seeing how we’re the ones who gave you this world.”

Raynar’s eyes remained cold. “We have not forgotten.” Instead of shaking hands, he reached past Han’s wrist and rubbed forearms in a buggish greeting. “You may be sure of that.”

“Uh, great.” Han tried to hide the cold shudder that ran up his spine. “Glad to hear it.”

Raynar continued to rub arms, his keloid lip rising into a faint sneer. “There is no need to be afraid, Captain Solo. Touching us will not make you a Joiner.”

“Never thought it would.” Han yanked his arm away. “You’re just enjoying it way too much.”

Raynar’s sneer changed to a small, taut smile. “That is what we have always admired most about you, Captain Solo,” he said. “Your fearlessness.”

Before Han could respond—or ask about the gray foam eating the Saras nest—Raynar stepped away, and Han found himself being stared down by one of the Unu, this one a two-meter insect with a red-spotted head and five blue eyes.

“What are you looking at?” Han demanded.

The insect snapped its mandibles closed a centimeter from Han’s nose, then drummed something sharp with its thorax.

“The Colony certainly seems impressed with your courage, Captain Solo!” C-3PO reported cheerily. “She says she is either looking at the bravest human in the galaxy—or the dumbest.”

Han frowned at the bug. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

The Killik looked away and walked past him, leading the rest of the Unu to join Raynar and the Skywalkers. Han motioned C-3PO and R2-D2 to his side, then shouldered his way through the softly droning mass to stand with Saba and Leia.

“I’m not liking the buzz around here,” he whispered to Leia. “It’s beginning to feel like a setup.”

Leia nodded, but kept her attention fixed on the center of the gathering, where Raynar was already exchanging greetings with the Skywalkers.

“… apologize for receiving you in the street,” he was saying to Luke. “But the Garden Hall we built to welcome you was …” He glanced toward the marsh. “… destroyed.”

“No apologies are necessary,” Luke answered. “We’re happy to see you anywhere.”

“Good.” Raynar motioned them up the street, toward a small courtyard only a couple of meters from the marsh. “We will talk in the Circle of Rest.”

Alarm warnings began to knell inside Han’s head. “Shouldn’t we go someplace safer?” he asked. “Farther away from that froth?”

Raynar turned to Han and narrowed his eyes. “Why would we do that, Captain Solo?”

“Are you kidding me?” Han asked. “Why wouldn’t we? I’ve seen what that foam does.”

“Have you?” Raynar asked. Han’s vision began to blur around the edges, and soon all that remained visible of Raynar’s face were the cold, blue depths of his eyes. “Tell us about it.”

Han scowled. “What do you think you’re doing? Don’t you try that Force stuff …” A dark weight began to gather inside his chest, and words began to spill out of Han of their own accord. “There was a bug outside our hangar covered in gray froth. It was disintegrating before our eyes, and now we get here and see the same thing happening to your—”

“Wait a minute!” Leia’s voice came from in front of Han. “You think we know something about this ‘Fizz’?”

“You and Captain Solo are the ones who gave us this world,” Raynar said. “And now we know why.”

“I don’t think I like what you’re saying.” Han could still see only Raynar’s eyes. “We pull your feet out of … the fire at … Qoribu, and …” The weight inside his chest grew heavier, and he found himself returning to the original subject. “Look, this is the first time we ever saw the stuff. It’s probably some bug disease you guys brought baaarrggh—”

The weight became crushing, and Han dropped to his knees, his sentence ending in an unintelligible groan.

“Stop it!” Leia said. “This is no way to win our help.”

“We are not interested in your help, Princess Leia,” Raynar said. “We have seen what comes of your ‘help.’”

“You must want something from us,” Luke said. It sounded to Han as though Luke had also stepped in front of him. “You went to a lot of trouble to lure us here.”

“We did not lure you, Master Skywalker.” Raynar’s blue eyes slid away. The weight vanished from inside Han’s chest, and his vision slowly returned to normal. “Unu did discover why Gorog is trying to kill Mara.”

“Is trying to?” Luke’s tone was one of clarification rather than surprise. Gorog was a furtive nest of Killiks—called the Dark Nest by Jedi—that acted as a sort of evil Unconscious for the Colony’s collective mind. The Jedi had attempted to destroy it last year, after it had precipitated the Qoribu crisis by secretly persuading Raynar to establish several nests on the Chiss frontier, but they had realized they had failed as soon as the Dark Nest’s black membrosia began appearing on Alliance worlds. “We’re listening.”

“In good time,” Raynar said. “We will tell you about the plot against Mara after you tell us about the Fizz.”

He turned and started toward the Circle of Rest.

Han rose and stomped after him. “I told you, we don’t know anything about that—and if you ever try that heavy-chest thing on me again—”

Leia took Han’s arm. “Han—”

“—I’m going to buy myself a spaceliner,” Han continued. “Then I’m going to start booking culinary tours—”

Leia’s fingers bit into Han’s triceps hard enough to stop him from uttering the fateful from Kubindi, and he turned toward her, scowling and rubbing his arm.

“Ouch,” he said. She had spent the last year training under Saba, and even without the Force, her grasp could be crushing. “What’d you do that for?”

“Maybe we do know something,” she said.

Han’s frown deepened. “How do you figure?”

“Because we have Cilghal—and a state-of-the-art astrobiology lab,” Leia said. “Even if we’ve never seen this stuff before, we can probably figure it out.”

Raynar stopped at the Circle of Rest and turned to glare at them. “We want to know now.” His entourage began to clack and thrum thoraxes. “We will not stand for your stalling, Princess.”

“I don’t care for the way you’re speaking to us, UnuThul.” Leia met Raynar’s gaze from where she was standing, about three meters down the street. “We’ve done nothing to deserve that tone.”

“You cheated us,” Raynar insisted. “You tricked us into leaving Qoribu and coming here.”

“Cheated you?” Han exploded. “Now just a blasted—”

“I’m sorry,” Leia interrupted. “But if that’s the way the Colony feels, we have nothing to discuss.”

She turned away and started back up the street toward the Falcon. Luke and the other Jedi instantly followed Leia’s lead, and Han did likewise. This trip had become, he sensed, something of a test of Leia’s progress toward becoming a full Jedi, and he was not going to mess it up for her—no matter how much he was aching to put that ungrateful bughugger in his place.

An indignant rumble sounded from the Unu entourage, and Raynar called, “Stop!”

Leia continued to walk, and so did Han and everyone else.

“Wait.” This time, Raynar managed to sound as if he was asking instead of ordering. “Please.”

Leia stopped and spoke over her shoulder. “These discussions can proceed only in an atmosphere of trust, UnuThul.” She slowly turned to face him. “Do you think that’s possible?”

Raynar’s eyes flashed, but he said, “Of course.” He motioned them back toward the Circle of Rest. “You may trust us.”

Leia appeared to consider this for a moment, but Han knew she was only posturing. She and Han wanted these discussions as badly as Raynar did, and there was no way Luke was going to leave the planet without learning more about the Dark Nest’s vendetta against Mara. No matter how crazy and paranoid Raynar sounded, they had to deal with him.

Leia finally nodded. “Very well.”

She led the way back up the street, and Raynar waved them into the courtyard with the Unu. Basically a walk-in fountain, the Circle of Rest consisted of four egg-shaped monoliths arrayed in a semicircle, the open side facing the Garden Hall. All four had sheets of water rippling down the sides, and looking out from inside each monolith was the hologram of a blinking, smiling Joiner child or pucker-mouthed Killik larva. Han found the place oddly soothing—in a cold, creepy sort of way.

They joined Raynar in the center of the semicircle, where C-3PO immediately began to complain about the fine mist spraying them from all sides. Han silenced him with a quiet threat, then tried not to complain himself as the insects of the Unu began to crowd around.

“Perhaps I should begin by explaining why Han and I are here,” Leia said. She looked from Raynar to his entourage. “If that’s agreeable to you and Unu.”

The insects clacked their approval, and Raynar said, “We approve.”

Leia’s smile was polite, but forced. “As you may know, after Han and I discovered these worlds inside the Utegetu Nebula, our first intention was to give them to refugees who are still looking for new homeworlds after the war with the Yuuzhan Vong.”

“We have heard this,” Raynar allowed.

“Instead, Chief of State Omas encouraged us to give them to the Colony, to avoid a war between you and the Chiss,” Leia continued. “In return, he promised to secure a new homeworld for one of the refugee species we had hoped to settle here, the Ithorians.”

Raynar’s gaze drifted out across the marsh, to where the gray foam was steadily creeping higher up the Garden Hall. “We fail to see what that has to do with us.”

“The arrangement has become common knowledge in the Galactic Alliance,” Leia explained. “And people are blaming us and the Ithorians for the trouble your nests in the Utegetu Nebula are causing.”

Raynar’s eyes snapped back toward Leia. “What trouble?”

“Don’t play dumb with us,” Han said, unable to restrain his anger any longer. “Those pirates you’re harboring are raiding Alliance ships, and that black membrosia you’re running is eating the souls of whole species of Alliance insect-citizens.”

Raynar lowered his fused brow. “The Colony kills pirates, not harbors them,” he said. “And you must be aware, Captain Solo, that membrosia is gold, not black. You certainly drank enough on Jwlio to be certain of that.”

“The Dark Nest’s membrosia was dark,” Luke pointed out. “And Alliance Intelligence has captured dozens of pirates who confirm that their vessels are operating out of the Utegetu Nebula.”

An ominous rumble rose from the thoraxes of the Unu, and Raynar turned on Luke with blue eyes burning. “Pirates lie, Master Skywalker. And you destroyed the Dark Nest on Kr.”

“Then why did you say is?” Saba demanded. “If it’z still hunting Mara, then it hasn’t been destroyed.”

“Forgive our exaggeration.” Raynar returned his attention to Luke. “You destroyed most of the nest on Kr. What remains couldn’t supply a starliner with black membrosia—and certainly not whole worlds.”

“Then where is it all coming from?” Leia asked.

“You tell us,” Raynar replied. “The Galactic Alliance is filled with biochemists clever enough to synthesize black membrosia. We suggest you start with them.”

“Synthetic membrosia?” Han echoed.

He was beginning to feel as if they had had this conversation before. The Colony’s concept of truth was fluid, to say the least, and its peculiar leader was incredibly stubborn. Last year, Raynar had literally had to be hit in the face by a Gorog corpse before he would believe that the Dark Nest even existed. It had been just as hard to convince him that the mysterious nest had been founded by the same Dark Jedi who had abducted him from Baanu Raas during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong. Now Han had the sinking feeling it would prove even harder to convince Raynar that the Utegetu nests were misbehaving.

Han turned to Luke. “Now that’s something we hadn’t thought of—synthetic membrosia. We’ll have to check it out.”

“Uh, sure.” Luke’s nod could have been a little more convincing. “As soon as we get back.”

“Good.” Han turned back to Raynar. “And since you’re so sure that the Utegetu nests aren’t doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t have a problem sharing a log of your legitimate traffic with the Galactic Alliance. It would really help them out with the pirate problem.”

Raynar’s eyes grew bright and hot. “We are telling the truth, Captain Solo—the real truth.”

“The Jedi understand that,” Mara said. “But the Galactic Alliance needs to be convinced.”

“And Chief Omas is willing to make it worth your while,” Leia added. “Once he’s convinced that the Utegetu nests aren’t supporting these activities, he’ll be willing to offer the Colony a trade agreement. It would mean larger markets for your exports, and lower costs for your imports.”

“It would mean regulations and restrictions,” Raynar said. “And the Colony would be responsible for enforcing them.”

“Only the ones you agreed to in the first place,” Leia said. “It would go a long way toward bringing the Colony—”

“The Colony is not interested in Alliance regulations.” Raynar signaled an end to the subject by stepping closer to Luke and Mara and presenting his back to Han and Leia. “We invited the Masters Skywalker here to discuss what Unu has learned about the Dark Nest’s vendetta.”

Leia refused to take the hint. “Strange, how you can remember the vendetta,” she said to Raynar’s back, “and still not know what’s really happening here inside the nebula.”

Raynar spoke over his shoulder. “What are you saying?”

“You know what she’s saying,” Han said. “The Dark Nest fooled you once—”

The air grew acrid with Killik aggression pheromones, and Raynar whirled on Han. “We are not the ones being fooled!” He glanced in Leia’s direction, then added, “And we will prove it.”

“Please do.”

Leia’s wry tone suggested she believed the same thing Han did—that it could not be done, because Raynar and the Unu were the ones being fooled.

Raynar smirked their doubts aside, then turned to Mara. “When you were the Emperor’s Hand, did you ever meet someone named Daxar Ies?”

“Where …” Mara’s voice cracked, and she paused to swallow. “Where did you hear that name?”

“His wife and daughter came home early.” Raynar’s tone grew accusatory. “They found you searching his office.”

Mara narrowed her eyes and managed to put on a good impression of collecting herself. “Only three people could know that.”

“And two of them became Joiners.”

Luke reached out to steady Mara, and Han knew she had really been shaken.

“All right,” Han said. “What’s going on?”

“Daxar Ies was a …” Mara’s hand slipped free of Luke’s, and she forced herself to meet Han’s and Leia’s gazes. “He was a target.”

“One of Palpatine’s targets?” Leia asked.

Mara nodded grimly. Recalling her days as one of Palpatine’s special “assistants” was not something she enjoyed. “The only job I ever botched, as a matter of fact.”

“We would not call it botched,” Raynar said. “You eliminated the target.”

“That was only part of the objective.” Mara was looking at Raynar now, glaring at him. “I didn’t recover the list … and I left witnesses.”

“You let Beda Ies and her daughter live,” Raynar said. “You told them to vanish forever.”

“That’s right,” Mara said. “As far as I know, they were never harmed.”

“They were well protected,” Raynar said. “Gorog saw to that.”

“Wait a minute,” Han said. “You’re saying these Ies women joined the Dark Nest?”

“No,” Raynar said. “I am saying they created it.”