It was unusual for Kubaz to visit Bburru, the largest orbital city in the Duro system. But nowadays, Bburru’s docks were so crowded with offworld construction workers, shippers, and camp followers that the dark, short-trunked trio who arrived—trailed by a bronze astromech droid—attracted little attention in the off-loading area.
The Bburru Docking Authority agent eyed their credentials. According to the datapad, these weren’t typical refugees from Kubindi’s recent invasion. This family had holdings in the Core Worlds, and they were looking for trade. That explained the fine yacht they’d docked in Slip 18-L.
“Everrrything seems to be in order, gentles.” The tall Duros official momentarily mated their datapad with one of his own, programming a map from Port Duggan to CorDuro Shipping’s main office at Duggan Station.
Oddly, a minute after they had passed from sight, he had no memory of their arrival.
Mara found the hooded cloak, trunked mask, and goggles stifling, but she took advantage of the disguise to observe Duros’ reactions as Port Duggan’s long rideway carried them up the dockyard arm to Duggan Station. She caught red-eyed glares, lowered brows, and stares; and if Duros had noses, she didn’t doubt they would’ve wrinkled in distaste. Tresina Lobi had hinted that the Duros, like other species on worlds the Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t reached, resented the refugee influx. On Duro, that might be complicated by general nervousness about the political tensions at Corellia.
They’d arrived from Coruscant in Mara’s newly modified ship, a yacht Lando had picked up for a song—so he claimed—as soon as he realized how easily its broad aft cargo bay could be modified to carry an X-wing. Other hands had shaped this ship, too. Lando’s wife, Tendra, just back from an extended visit to her Saccorian kin, named it Jade Shadow after admiring its nonreflective gray hull. Talon Karrde and his connections had found the retractable laser cannons, camouflaged torp launchers, and shields to make Shadow almost a match for the Jade’s Fire that Mara had sacrificed at Nirauan.
Carrying Luke’s fighter in the bay, and escorted by Anakin in his own X-wing, she brought the Shadow over Duro’s south pole, using one of Ghent’s universal transponder codes. Groundside, they locked down Anakin’s X-wing, and R2-D2 rerouted Anakin’s shields to draw on a stack of spare power supplies, setting them to pull just enough power to protect the X-wing from Duro’s atmosphere. Then they all boarded Shadow again. Flying with Luke as copilot, Mara made a microjump outsystem, changed transponder codes, and they arrived at Duro as a well-heeled Kubaz family.
Drall and Selonian refugees, leaving Corellia while they still were considered first-class citizens, mingled with dockworkers of half a dozen other species retooling the civilian shipyards for military use. A horned Devaronian shouldered past three gray-skinned, long-faced Duros natives. A massive silver-tipped Wookiee plodded in the other direction. Mara caught a whiff of exotic perfume and spotted a comely Trianii swaggering up the corridor, drawing stares with her feline grace.
Mara still hadn’t felt anything unbalanced or unhealthy about the cluster of cells dividing, differentiating, digging ever more tightly into her body—none of the gut-wrenching signs of abnormality she’d felt in so many diseased cells. She was determined to take every day without ominous developments as a gift, and not worry how many more she might be given.
There’d been nightmares, though.
She eyed Anakin’s slightly slumped posture as he stood to one side of the rideway. She’d coached him in the characteristic Kubaz whirring accent, their cultured speaking style, and their gait, after nixing Luke’s idea of disguising themselves as Duros. It was always hard to pass for a native.
The rideway decanted them in a broad open area that their datapad labeled Duggan Station.
“Straight across,” Luke whirred at her, steering an elegant old luggage float.
At the other side of the open area, a Duros stood on a knee-high platform. She spoke through a powerful amplifier, addressing a crowd of fifty or sixty: almost exclusively Duros, but Mara spotted a Bith and two turquoise-skinned Sunesi.
Luke, walking point, halted and turned his face—what Mara could see of it—toward the speaker. “Listen to this,” he murmured, standing just a little closer than he usually did. Another woman might not have noticed, but Mara was exquisitely aware of her personal space.
The Duros on the platform spoke loudly, waving a knobby hand. “Independence is virrrtue,” she shouted. “In dangerrrous times, depending on an outside force for sustenance or defense could kill us all. If you cannot feed yourrr family group, you fail them. If you cannot protect yourrr own, you kill them. Arrre you murderers … or prrroviders?”
“Anakin,” Mara muttered, “go with Artoo, but stay in visual contact. Get a feel for the crowd. If you sense danger, get back over here.”
“Right,” he said. “Mom.”
Right in character.
“Symbiosis,” the Duros called, “has been prrreached since time immemorrrial. Has it made us frrree? Does it make us safe? They say we depend on each otherrr.” Now she took on a simpering tone. “That we need each otherrr. Hutt slime!”
Several Duros cheered.
“We, we must be strrrong. We, ourselves. Whoever needs help will fall. Each—one—of—us,” she cried, punctuating each word with a grunt, “must be strrrong enough to take what he wants. Or all will die. All!”
On Mara’s left side, a few Duros turned toward her, then moved aside, whispering. She didn’t catch any intent to attack, and her danger sense lay still, but she kept one hand near her lightsaber, under the dark cloak.
The speaker raised her arm, reaching toward a bank of lights that gave Duggan Station the appearance of yellowish daylight. “We are independent of the worrrld below.”
“Yes!” someone from the crowd cried.
“We are independent of the worrrlds at great distance.”
The answering “Yes!” picked up volume.
“Symbiosis,” she cried, “interrrdependence. They are for the weak. The weak must stand togetherrr to stand at all!”
The Duros cheered.
She crouched down, pressing her palms together. “Like the point of a duha spear, like the blade of a knife, strrrength lies where metal comes to a point. Where worrrlds stand alone, with no need to wait for other fleets to defend them, there is trrrue might. Each of us,” she concluded, sweeping an arm out over the crowd, “must be strrrong. Strong enough to take what she wants … and defend it!”
Loud cheers.
Mara backed up against Luke and turned her masked head slightly. “This kind of talk could finish what’s left of the New Republic.”
She caught just a shade of Force energy spinning around him, extended to protect her. Evidently he wasn’t trusting completely to their disguises, but taking a basic defensive stance, blurring the orator’s view of their faces.
“I’ve heard enough,” he said.
Anakin hadn’t gone far. R2-D2 couldn’t roll sideways in a crowd, so when Mara caught Anakin’s attention and flicked a gloved finger, he nodded and backed away from the podium in a straight line. R2-D2 rolled beside him, wearing a new coat of copper-hued glaze.
The avenue inbound from Duggan Station was lined with planters that served the obvious dual purpose of aesthetics and air-scrubbing. Most local traffic seemed to travel on one- or two-passenger hoverbikes or enclosed hoverpods.
They found an inexpensive hostel, where Luke took a two-room unit. It had three basic cot-over-storage units and a refresher. One wall was programmable to several flatscreen images, including—according to its instruction panel—an exterior view of Bburru City, hanging majestically in space over the dull-brown planet below; Coruscant’s night side, with or without an overlay of auroral displays; or shipping traffic entering and exiting hyperspace near Yag’Dhul, at the intersection of the Corellian Trade Spine and the Rimma Trade Route. Mara left it blank.
R2-D2 rolled straight to a data station and plugged himself in. Mara peeled out of her goggles, mask, gloves, and dark robe, emerging in a comfortable flight suit.
By then, Anakin’s disguise lay strewn all over his cot. He sat down, stretching and flexing his fingers. “After all the New Republic has done for them, how could they think that way?”
“That’s just one troublemaker,” Mara said. “But sometimes, it only takes one. Remember Rhommamool, and that firebrand Nom Anor.”
“Fortunately,” Anakin said, “I didn’t meet him.”
For Mara, Rhommamool had been a second encounter. Serving as a minor diplomat’s bodyguard to festivities on Monor II, she’d endured Anor’s rhetoric until even the gentle native Sunesi couldn’t tolerate him. They’d asked him to leave.
“Anor fanned an intrasystem resentment into open warfare at Rhommamool. Got most of his own people killed … and himself, too. But one troublemaker can sometimes be reached.”
Luke nodded. “Reasoned with. I hope that’s what we’ve got here—”
R2-D2 bleeped urgently.
Luke paused halfway through pulling off one boot. “What is it, Artoo?”
Mara couldn’t follow the stream of toots and whistles.
Evidently Luke couldn’t either. “Hold on, hold on.” He pushed up off his cot and crossed to the readout over R2-D2’s data port. Mara felt a sudden, somber change in his mood.
“Nothing serious,” he told her, “everyone’s all right. But Han and Jacen’s dome just got evacuated into Leia’s. Some kind of infestation.”
“Jacen’s probably collecting again,” Anakin said.
“Not funny,” Mara muttered. “I don’t think Duro supports much life.”
Luke’s eyes unfocused for a moment. “They’re all fine,” he said. “And Jacen just arrived up here on Bburru.”
“Great,” Anakin muttered.
“Anakin,” Luke said softly, “Jacen has to find his own path. It’s part of hitting maturity. Sometimes that takes a while.”
Anakin sniffed. Mara wondered if she’d ever had a sibling, and if they would’ve gotten along.
“All right,” she said. “We’ll bump into him sooner or later. But for now, our priorities are to find Tresina’s missing apprentice and figure out Duro’s political situation. Number one’s probably dependent on number two.”
“Right,” Luke said. “I’ll talk to CorDuro Shipping. Unless I’m wrong, that’s where Jacen has headed.”
“Do that.” An idea was forming at the back of Mara’s mind. She’d brought along other disguises. Other people could have come to Duro fishing for well-formulated reasons not to open their worlds to refugees. The Kuati senator Viqi Shesh certainly hadn’t established SELCORE’s main camp anywhere near Kuat. Maybe Mara could scare up some information on who else here had antirefugee leanings.
She hauled one of her duffels into the refresher.
When she stepped out half an hour later, Anakin grabbed his cot’s edge with both hands. His eyebrows rose so far that they almost vanished under his dark hair.
Laughing inwardly, she tilted up her chin and stared down at him. “You may kiss our palm,” she said in a languid Kuati accent.
“Wow,” he choked.
Luke folded his arms and leaned against the blank view-wall, grinning. He’d seen her in many guises, but this one was spectacular. She’d tinted her red-gold mane a deep reddish brown and pulled it back severely into a tail at the crown of her head, securing it with a circlet of false émeraudes. Bits of masking putty raised the bridge of her nose; shadowing gel gave her cheeks a prominent hollow. More émeraudes rimmed her ears and dangled halfway down her neck. The amethyst-colored tunic, belted in what would pass for gold, had a spatter of green gems on one shoulder, and the cutout beneath the high collar plunged drastically. Her elevated shoes were tapered to give the illusion that the extra height was all her own, but the heels could be kicked off if she needed to make a fast getaway.
She cuffed Anakin’s shoulder. “Don’t drool on the carpet,” she said. “I’m surprised you’re still here.”
“We won’t be for long.” Luke pushed off the wall.
Mara smiled ruefully, sensing that he’d like her to stick around for another hour or so. Actually, that sounded good to her, too—but after putting on all this gear, she wanted to keep it unrumpled.
“We have an appointment,” Luke said. “That is, two Kubaz have an appointment.”
Anakin frowned, still massaging life back into his face from wearing the rubbery mask.
“I’m just going to nose around,” Mara said. “See what I can get from that crowd down at Port Duggan, where the performance is going on.”
She read Be careful in his eyes. Respecting his restraint, she didn’t promise that she would. She simply nodded.
His lips twitched.
She enjoyed that—communicating without words or the Force. “I’ll send Artoo a message if I end up elsewhere,” she promised.
Then she realized that she wanted to say, You two take care—simply as a parting nicety. She was getting soft.
She offered Luke her palm. He seized her hand, touched it with his lips, then tugged her close enough to whisper, “Come back soon.”