The Bakurans' usual dislike of droids had obviously been overcome by pragmatism in this case. Surveillance of the area was frequent and random, making it difficult to predict when sweeps would next take place.

Worst of all, she had tripped some sort of concealed alarm when she'd dared make her first dash for the rear entrance. The entire compound was now on full alert, ready and waiting for someone to break in.

Half an hour's careful observation convinced her that it was unlikely she could sneak in un.o.bserved. And if the se-curity on the inside was as stringent as that on the outside, then she wasn't going to last a minute in there-let alone reach the cell she needed. No, she was going to have to try another way.

Slipping out from her hiding s.p.a.ce, she crossed the roof of the warehouse and descended a narrow ladder fixed to the far wall. The laneway at its base was cluttered with rubbish, suggesting it was rarely used. Following it to its end, she allowed a trio of deep and calming breaths to fill her with a sense of control and authority.

I am not a covert agent, she told herself. I am the representative of visiting dignitaries, and the people here are our allies.

With a brisk, measured pace, she walked around the corner and into full view of the security droids. A spotlight instantly hit her full in the face, but she didn't break step-the slightest hesitation could destroy the illusion she was trying to create.

Two G-2RD droids swooped from emplacements in the high ferrocrete wall that was the rear of the prison. Floating spheres equipped with several means to inflict discomfort, they converged on her, buzzing furiously like agitated insects.

"Halt!" exclaimed one. She couldn't tell which.

She stopped within three meters of the rear entrance, radiating patient obedience.

"State your name and purpose here," ordered the other, its voice a nasal whine probably designed to irritate.

"My name is Jaina Solo," she replied easily. "I'm here to speak with Malinza Thanas." Both droids buzzed as they performed a quick check on her clearance. After a couple of seconds, one of the droids advanced with its stun prod crackling. "No such visitation has been authorized."

"Please don't threaten me," she said, sending the small droid into a spin with a push from the Force. "I really don't take too kindly to things like that." The second droid emitted a piercing wail that Jaina was quick to cut short.

She reached deep into the droid's circuitry with the Force and fused its vocabulator.

More droids and spotlights converged on her. She couldn't have drawn more attention to herself if she'd wanted to. Nevertheless, she maintained her calm exterior and kept her hands well away from her lightsaber.

"I am here to speak with Malinza Thanas," she repeated, patiently and firmly.

"Please let me through." The first droid recovered from its spin and faced her again, this time speaking with a different voice, that of a guard from within the compound, obviously watching through the droid's sensors.

"I'm sorry, but we cannot allow visitors without authorization."

She folded her arms in front of her. "Then I suggest you get it, because I'm not going anywhere until I've seen Malinza And I have no intention of leaving quietly. I'll give you one minute to comply." The droid buzzed, bobbing up and down as though itching to be given the okay to attack her.

She watched it warily while counting from one to sixty in her head.

At the end of the minute, she heard hurried footsteps coming toward her from around the nearest corner.

"I can't wait all night, you know," she said, brushing the droids easily aside and taking three more paces toward the rear door that the Ryn had specified in his message. There she spoke the code word she'd been given.

"Fringe dweller." The door instantly hissed open, lifting sharply up into the ceiling. She strode through into a glowing white corridor that led as straight as a beam of light into the heart of the building.

A chorus of buzzing from the droids followed her. A new voice issued from the nearest droid's casing.

"This is a flagrant disregard for regulations!" There was no disguising the guard's annoyance. "Whoever you are, I must insist that-"

"As I have already explained," she said, "my name is Jaina Solo, and I'd appreciate it if you could make up your minds as to whether you intend to a.s.sist me or arrest me. I really have no desire to fight you, but if you force my hand then I-"

"You can't expect to just walk in here and see any prisoner you like! Ever heard of protocol?"

"You ever heard of a diplomatic incident?" she shot back. "Because that's what you're going to get if I don't get to see Malinza Thanas. "

The pause was longer this time, and she sensed the droids backing off slightly. A squad of guards had appeared behind them, and waited uncertainly to see what she would do next.

"Well?" she prompted after a while. "What's it to be?"

"Please wait where you are." The voice seemed more cowed than it had been a moment before, and Jaina suspected the guards had been instructed by their superiors to let her through. "An escort will arrive shortly." No sooner had this been said than four Bakuran security guards came hurrying around the corner-their weapons, she noted, carefully bolstered.

"Come with us," ordered the one nearest to her. He spoke firmly, gruffly, but there was no escaping the fact that he was a little uneasy.

Jaina allowed herself a slight smile at this; they weren't as good at hiding their nervousness as she was.

She didn't move. "Not until I know where you're taking me."

"You're to be taken to see the prisoner," he replied. "As requested." There was derision in his tone, but it was all bl.u.s.ter and show. He knew that Jaina had the upper hand in this situation.

Her smile widened. It never hurt to boost respect for Jedi on outlying worlds, and respect wasn't always earned at the end of a lightsaber.

She offered a polite bow of her head in the direction of the droids, knowing that whoever had authorized her would no doubt be watching. There would be no further need for any aggressive posturing this evening-not unless she was provoked, of course. "I apologize for this inconvenience. The sooner I can see Malinza Thanas, the sooner I can be out of your hair." Her senses finely attuned for any sign of deception, she let herself be shepherded by the four guards deep into the heart of the penitentiary. The high - security wing was identical to the regular wings except for G-2RD droids stationed at every junction. They hummed menacingly when she pa.s.sed, as though warning her not to try the same tricks she had employed on their fellow sentries. She tried to memorize every turn and corridor as she went, but it wasn't easy. They all looked the same to her, and the cell numbers didn't seem to follow any particular pattern.

Finally they arrived at Cell 12-17. The door looked like all the others they'd pa.s.sed along the way: sterile white with no window or openings. One of the lead guards keyed a short code into a keypad, then stepped back as the cell door slid open with a dull grinding sound.

Inside, on a narrow cot, sat a thin, dark-haired girl of about fifteen years.

Despite the gray prison uniform and the bruises to her face and arms, she still had a defiant look about her-but there was also exhaustion behind that defiance.

"What now?" the girl asked.

"A visitor," the first guard said, motioning Jaina to enter. He indicated a green touchpad by the door. "When you're done, just hit the CALL b.u.t.ton."

"Kinda late for visitors, isn't it?" Malinza said, looking Jaina over suspiciously.

Jaina stepped into the brightly lit cell. "My name is Jaina Solo,"

she said as the door closed behind her. She examined the girl quickly, wondering what sort of treatment she'd been subjected to.

Malinza's sharply defined face tilted upward. She studied Jaina for a moment before nodding. "Uncle Luke has spoken about you. He once showed me a holo of you and Jacen when you were little." Jaina felt an unaccountable stab of jealousy at the girl's words. Uncle Luke?

Who was this girl she'd never met, claiming Jaina's uncle as her own?

Indignation quickly gave way to understanding, however, when she remembered that Malinza was Luke's sponsor daughter. With both her parents dead-Gaeriel Captison, former Prime Minister of Bakura, had sacrificed her life to destroy a large chunk of the troublesome Sacorrian Triad, while Pter Thanas died of Knowt's disease some years earlier-Luke Skywalker was probably the closest thing she had to family. What right did Jaina have to deny the girl that?

"I wish we could have met under better circ.u.mstances," she said, moving deeper into the small room, close to the girl. She gestured to the bunk. "May I?"

"You sure picked a bad time to visit," Malinza said as she moved to make room for Jaina to sit down.

"Want to tell me about it?" Malinza studied Jaina with a maturity that was at odds with her age. Her gaze was piercing, made even more disconcerting by the fact that her eyes were different colors. Her left iris was green, her right gray.

Just as her mother's had been, Jaina thought.

For a long moment it seemed as though Malinza wasn't ever going to reply to Jaina's question.

"You know why I'm in here," she said after a while.

"You've been charged with kidnapping the Prime Minister."

"Actually, the official charge is disturbing the peace and conspiracy."

"Doesn't it amount to the same thing?" Malinza shook her head. "The difference is an important one, actually." t: "Why? Now that Cundertol has returned-"

"I had nothing to do with him," Malinza interrupted. "But the rest is true enough."

"Sorry, but I find it hard to picture you as a disturber of the peace." Malinza smiled faintly at Jaina's comment as she held out her arms to display the bruises. "Look at me," she said. "If they wanted to beat me, there are ways they could have done it without leaving any marks. I earned these while resisting arrest. It took three of them, as well as two droids, to bring me down." Her expression held a burning pride, but it failed to hide the terrible weariness that Jaina recognized all too clearly. She remembered that feeling from when Anakin had died: of there being nothing left to lose; of desperation; of despair. It was so easy to mistake the signs of self-destruction for battle scars.

"What are you fighting for?" Jaina asked.

"That's the strange thing. A week ago, I wasn't fighting at all."

Malinza's defiance dissolved altogether then, and became a look of genuine bemus.e.m.e.nt.

"You've no idea what you've just stepped into. I tell you, it's crazy around here."

"In what way, Malinza?" Jaina leaned in closer to en-couiage a feeling of trust.

The girl chuckled. "That I'd even think about telling you is probably the craziest thing of all," she said, slumping back against the wall. "If anyone here is the enemy, it's you." Jaina frowned but said nothing, sensing that there was no point pushing. It would come or it wouldn't.

After more than a dozen heartbeats, Malinza sighed. "Whatever. It's not as if I haven't tried to tell everyone here already."

"They don't believe you? "

"Why else do you think I'm in here?" The girl pointed at where a security cam watched them. "I guess it couldn't hurt for them to hear it one more time. And who knows: they might even listen this time."

"And even if they don't," Jaina said, "you can be a.s.sured that I will." Malinza smiled and nodded. "Okay," she said, leaning forward again to begin her story. "About a month ago I was in charge of a cell of activists, capitalizing on my parents' reputations to get our message heard. There were sixteen of us in all. At first we just organized protests, spread the word-but it's grown much more over time. We called ourselves Freedom." She rolled her eyes. "It's lame, I know, but it gets the point across."

"And what point is that?"

"That we're tired of kowtowing to Imperial doctrines, of course.

It's time for us to throw off our shackles and govern ourselves."

"Imperial?" Jaina echoed, confused. It had been almost thirty years since the Imperial presence had been repelled from Bakura.

"Not the Empire," Malinza explained. "The thing that took its place: the New Republic. Don't you know that nature abhors a vacuum?

Especially a power vacuum.

No sooner had we won our freedom than we held out our wrists to be shackled again. We offered ourselves up to the New Republic like pets begging for a sc.r.a.p of affection. And that's all we got, too: sc.r.a.ps."

Jaina winced at the description of the government her parents had helped create.

"Of course, you don't call it the New Republic anymore, do you?

It's been given a new name ever since it lost its war against the Yuuzhan Vong." Malinza snorted derisively. "No one wants to be a.s.sociated with losers, do they?

Therefore, your only hope of fighting back was to pretend to be something else.

But cratsch droppings by any other name still stink, don't you think?" She shook her head and looked away. " If you do beat the Yuuzhan Vong, you'll just chain everyone up like before. And if you lose, you'll drag everyone else down with you."

"It's not like that."

"No? You'll probably tell me that we'll all die unless we band together to defeat the common enemy. But there's always a common enemy, Jaina. Oppressive regimes don't function without them. The Empire had its Rebel Alliance; once, we had the Ssi-ruuk; and right now, you have the Yuuzhan Vong. Who will it be next time you feel the cracks spreading? "

"I'll be happy just to reach the next time," Jaina said. "But tell me, Malinza, what would happen if we did lose this war? What would you do if the Yuuzhan Vong turned up on your doorstep and we weren't there to help you, like we did with the Ssi-ruuk?"

"We'd fight them, of course," the girl said simply. "And yes, we would probably all die in the process. But it would be our decision, not one made by some faceless bureaucrat on the other side of the galaxy."

"Is that really the issue, Malinza? Does it really boil down to who controls you? Or who makes the decisions for you?"

"Of course it does!"

"I don't recall the New Republic ever demanding anything of Bakura.

You were always asked."

"And we always said yes. I know that. That galls me more than you could possibly understand. While we abased ourselves before the New Republic, it was happy in return to steal our defense fleet, our families-" Malinza stopped there, leaning back heavily against the wall with a troubled, weary sigh. Jaina was relieved to see tears in the girl's eyes. She had already guessed what lay at the heart of Malinza's dislike of the New Republic, no matter how she dressed it up in rhetoric.

Behind her stoic defiance, she was still just a fifteen-year-old girl.

One pushed into defying a government she regarded as being oppressive, forced to learn skills no teenager should have had to know-but still only fifteen. That she had risen above that disadvantage spoke volumes about her ability and her determination. She had taken the example of her adopted uncle to heart, it seemed.

Jaina herself hadn't been much older when the war with the Yuuzhan Vong had broken out. People were capable of extraordinary things when circ.u.mstances demanded it, she reflected.

"I'm sorry about your mother, Malinza," Jaina said, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder. It wasn't pushed away. "I met her briefly at Centerpoint before she died, but I was just a kid then. I know Uncle Luke held her in very high regard."

"I barely remember her," Malinza said, trying to be casual as she knuckled away the tears she was fighting. "I recall her leaving, and my aunt trying to explain what had happened when she didn't come back, but I was only four years old, and I never really understood. I just knew who had taken her from us. The New Republic dragged her into a war she wasn't part of, and she gave her life to save others. She did a very good thing, and I suffered because of it." She shrugged helplessly. "I guess the uni - verse found its balance, as it always does. It's just that in this instance I was on the receiving end, that's all."

"Balance?" asked Jaina. "What do you mean?"

"Cosmic Balance. The wheel of fate, you know?" She shifted her position on the bunk so she was facing Jaina fully. "Every action causes a reaction. A great force for good can't exist without there also being a counterbalancing force for evil, somewhere. In the same way, good works lead to evil results for someone else, quite unintentionally. It's just how the universe works, *and the Force, too. Save someone on Bakura today and you might kill another later. That's why I don't want this Alliance of yours here. It's too dangerous. I have no desire to see my home get caught in friendly fire."

"So you want no part in the Galactic Alliance and the war against the Yuuzhan Vong. Is that what you're saying?"

"Don't get me wrong, Jaina. I have nothing against Uncle Luke.

Apart from Aunt Laera, who raised me after Mom died, he's the only family I have left. Dad died not long after I was born, so I never got to know him. If I should side with anyone, it would be you. It's only my fear of the backlash from the Balance that stops me."