"Thirty, with more on the way; at least two capital vessels so far.

It looks like a fleet."

"Have they contacted Bakura?"

"They're being hailed now. I'll patch you into the defense fleet net."

"Copy that." Jag flicked back to the secure channel. "I'm sorry, Leia, Han, but I have to go."

"We just got the call, too," Leia responded crisply. "We'll let you know if anything changes."

"Flights A and B," Jag said on the Twin Sun frequencies, "stay here and mind the big bird. C, you're with me." He peeled out of formation and was followed by two X-wings and a clawcraft. On the scanner before him, the ships emerging from hypers.p.a.ce stood out like a nebula in the deep void. The number of contacts now stood at forty, with still more coming.

"This is Bakuran Defense Fleet," called the local traffic control.

"Please identify yourself and state your intentions." The response came in the form of a warbling, dissonant fluting.

REFUGEE 159 Jag had been briefed; he knew enough to recognize the language. The fleet had originated from Lwhekk-but who was commanding it?

The Ssi-ruuk or the P'w'eck?

The voice of C-3PO came over the comm. "The message says: 'I come in peace, people of Bakura, to consecrate this world and bond our two cultures in alliance.' " Another voice spoke from Bakura in response to this. Jag recognized it as belonging to Prime Minister Cundertol.

"We welcome the Keeramak to Bakura in the hope that this new friendship will bring prosperity and enlightenment to all." The sickly sentiment made Jag roll his eyes. Luckily the speeches didn't last any longer than that.

"Keeramak Entourage, please a.s.sume the following orbits," the first voice from Bakura said. There followed a long list of requests designed to minimize the disruption caused by the many new arrivals, at the end of which there came a brief burst of alien song, which C-3PO interpreted to mean, simply, " 'Understood.' " Jag turned his interception flight into a sweeping, exploratory cruise, examining the alien vessels with a critical eye. The Chiss had fought the Ssi-ruuk on several occasions, contributing behind the scenes to the Imperium's retreat at the advance of the New Republic. He himself, though, had never seen one outside of a simulation.

While their battle droids consisted of simple, angular pyramids with weapon and sensor arrays at each corner, the larger ships possessed a smoothly organic appearance. Great sweeping hulls with relatively few breaks formed bulbous, sh.e.l.l-like structures that bulged in odd but beautiful ways. He spotted two ovoid Sh'ner-cla.s.s planetary a.s.sault carriers, accompanied by numerous Fw'Sen-cla.s.s picket ships. The a.s.sault carriers were crewed by more than five hundred P'w'eck-plus over three hundred en-teched droids, if they were still used-and were nearly 750 meters long. Overall, given their structure, they displaced a greater volume than a Victory-cla.s.s Star Destroyer.

It seemed an awful lot of hardware to accompany a diplomatic mission. But then, he supposed, the P'w'eck were probably just as nervous of the Bakurans as the Bakurans were of them. With their freedom only recently attained, they wouldn't be keen to send their leader into the middle of a potentially difficult situation without sufficient backup.

At least they weren't shy about sharing their battle data, though.

On the screen before him, names rapidly appeared next to all the major P'w'eck vessels. The cruiser in the middle of the formation was called the Firrinree, while the one lagging slightly behind was designated the Errinung'ka. He didn't even bother to attempt to remember the names of the picket ships.

As he watched, the last of the stragglers arrived and the formation broke in three to a.s.sume the orbits given them by the Bakuran Defense Fleet. The maneuver was accomplished smoothly and without fuss-and that spoke loudly of the discipline and flexibility of the P'w'eck fleet. One thing was for certain: they might be new to the idea of being in charge of their own destiny, but the P'w'eck had been exhaustively trained by their Ssi-ruuvi masters to fly battleships. It showed.

He hung around the main chunk of the fleet long enough to follow security negotiations with the reception team on the ground, and to witness the launch of seven heavily armed D'kee-cla.s.s landing ships. The Keera-mak was on its way.

Jag only hoped that Bakura was ready for it.

PART THREE

AGGRESSION.

The warm, dry air of the library was making Saba's scales itchy, and she scratched absently at them while skimming through one of the many books suggested by Tris. She barely noticed the discomfort, however; her thoughts were too focused on the information she was reading. It surprised her how effortlessly she had taken to this form of research.

When they'd first started, she had thought she'd never get used to the turning of pages-it seemed so time-consuming! And yet now she was skimming through the books with an ease and confidence similar to that with which skotcarp lizards back home would skate down the shaley slopes of Mount Ste'vshuulsz.

"Found anything yet?" Saba looked up to see Mara peering at her from the end of an aisle of towering bookcases. She shook her head with some apology as she closed the book she'd been browsing through. She'd been reading up on a world on the outer edge of the Unknown Regions where a species of stilt-legged insects lived in a densely oxygenated atmosphere. Their legends spoke of a fire G.o.d who burst out of the planet's core every three years to burn large swaths of their world to the ground, initiating a new cycle of death and rebirth. But as interesting as it was, it didn't help their search. There was nothing about mysterious planets appearing in the sky anywhere in the text.

"This one has found nothing," she replied.

Mara nodded. "None of us has, unfortunately. I guess we're all still trying to come to grips with these books. It's frustratingly slow."

"It would be slower still if not in Basic. Our persistence will pay off," Saba told her. "It alwayz does." Mara smiled, then moved off in the direction of Danni; probably, Saba thought, to check on the young scientist's progress also.

Saba pushed the book she'd been reading to one side and took another from the stack that Tris had supplied. Another species, another dead end. She didn't mind, though. She was reveling in the diversity of life in the Unknown Regions. The search was a far cry from any of her previous duties as a Jedi, and in many ways she knew it could turn out to be one of the most difficult, given the amount of material they had to work through. But she also knew that finding the data itself would probably turn out to be the easiest part; examining it and determining if it was relevant or not would undoubtedly take a lot longer.

Two books later, it was time to get up and stretch. Her eyes were starting to ache from reading, and her back was stiff and sore. Seeking a new list, she loped through the narrow aisles to the center of the vast room, from where the voices of Jacen and the others came. Luke and Mara looked up from three ma.s.sive piles of books as she approached. They had conscripted a ma.s.sive snow-wood table for their use; broad and square, it was easily large enough to seat twenty people. Datapads lay scattered before them, into which fragmentary notes had been entered. Lieutenant Stalgis emerged from one of the aisles, staggering under yet another stack of books. No one could be spared from the effort. The only person missing was, ironically, the one who would have been the most fascinated by it all: Soron Hegerty. Worn out from the episode on Munlali Mafir, the doctor had elected to wait out this mission to the Chiss from orbit. But she was still there in spirit, and her voice could often be heard issuing from comlinks, requesting more data in annoyed tones.

"Look at this," Luke announced, holding up a book before him for the others to see. Saba leaned over Jacen's and Mara's shoulders. While the bulk of the text had been translated into Basic, there were still porti6ns in the native Cheunh that demanded a.s.sistance from the librarian. Saba concentrated to make sense of the words before her.

The pages Luke had opened to showed the location and history of a world called Yashuvhu. It had been settled by humans some three thousand standard years earlier, but had only recently encountered the Chiss. A quick scan of the pages revealed no reference to any wandering planets, although there was a description of an ancient woman called the Prophetess who oversaw the spiritual development of the colony. This woman taught that there was a living energy field pervading and connecting all things, which, when tapped into in the correct way...

"She's talking about the Force," Mara said. "I think so," Luke said.

"Look." He opened to a page containing pictures of the Prophetess, whose real name, it turned out, was Valara Saar. It showed a woman of advanced years in a state of excellent preservation. The Chiss contact team had attempted to visit her home in the Yashaka Mountains, but they'd been repelled. No one, it seemed, came to the Prophetess's retreat uninvited.

The images were sketchily drawn and portrayed the chaos of a hasty retreat, but one thing was plain to see. "She's wielding a lightsaber!"

Jacen exclaimed. "It looks very much like it," Luke agreed, displaying a bit more calm than his excited nephew. "How long haz she been there?"

Saba asked.

"The records don't say," Mara said. "But if she was trained as a child, it could be decades."

"Either that or she found a Holocron," Jacen suggested.

"Let's not jump to any hasty conclusions," Luke said. "Strictly speaking, this isn't what we're here to look for." Nevertheless, he had dived deep into the information on Yashuvhu and the Prophetess. Saba noted other books open around him, all tracing the same topic. The woman herself had not deigned to speak to the Chiss landing party, but many of her acolytes had. The records contained a list of her primary teachings: patience, humility, compa.s.sion, clarity of thought, balance between physical and mental prowess, strict observance of diet, and, lastly, a solitary lifestyle. In all the years that Valara Saar had been teaching the people of Yashuvhu, they had never known her to take a mate, so she never had any children. In fact, her only constant companion was a creature called a duuvhal, which she had raised from a pup.

"Hey, I think I've found something!" All attention shifted to Danni, who emerged from an aisle clutching a very large book. Beneath the overhang of her unkempt hair, there was excitement in her eyes as she placed the book heavily on the table and flicked through some pages.

"See: here, and here..." Saba and the others looked to where she was pointing. The young scientist had found a reference to an asteroid belt that had been perturbed by recent tidal forces. Millions of chunks of rock ranging in size from grains of dust to giant boulders had been knocked out of orbit by something very large within the last three decades. That in itself wasn't so unusual; solar systems were frequently unstable, with planets drifting in from interstellar s.p.a.ce, wandering across...o...b..ts, or leaving at the whim of chaotic perturbations. What made this one unique was a record made by the civilization on an inner world before their atmosphere clouded. More than a dozen large rocks had impacted on the planet, rendering it uninhabitable.

The ruins contained murals depicting a new star in the sky-a blue-green star that had appeared one summer as though out of nowhere, then disappeared half a year later. Its appearance had triggered a terrible religious war that had seen one entire nation subjugated and another reduced to rubble. The victors had celebrated the star's visit. But their celebrations had quickly turned to mourning as first fire rained from the sky, and then the new sun vanished. Within two generations, they'd been reduced to savagery.

"Another fleeting visit, another violent culture," Mara said, cutting through the silence. "The correlation gets stronger."

"I see no evidence that Zonama Sekot is deliberately trying to harm the people it comes across," Luke said thoughtfully.

"Nevertheless," Mara said, "this is what it's doing."

"Inadvertently, perhaps," Luke said. "Not deliberately."

"Maybe it just isn't thinking straight," Stalgis suggested.

"Or wasn't thinking straight," Jacen added. "This is an old reference, after all."

"True," Luke said. "And until we see something more recent, I don't think we can judge it." Saba realized only then that Luke was warring within himself over Zonama Sekot. Something as powerful as an intelligent planet might just as easily be influenced to do evil as it could to do good. So even if they did find it, the Galactic Alliance would still have to decide whether or not to trust it. Any evidence to suggest that it had been responsible for destroying a civilization-inadvertently or not-would be viewed unfavorably.

"Good work, Danni," Luke said. "And that goes for everyone. It may be slow, but we are making progress." Obtaining another list from Tris, Saba followed Danni back into the maze of books.

"You know, Saba," the young human scientist said, "I think we've got the easiest job here. Have you ever tried to extrapolate star maps from the sort of old sketches we're finding here? It's almost impossible!"

"This one suspectz that'z the idea," Saba responded, sissing deep in her throat.

Danni pulled out a book on a new system near the one Saba was exploring. It was a long way from any of the other known contact regions.

If they found something there, that would suggest that Zonama Sekot's search for a hiding place had ranged extensively across the Unknown Regions. If it had followed a random search pattern, then a clear trail might not even exist, which meant that no amount of searching here would help them find it. She had to a.s.sume that this wasn't the case-otherwise there was no real point in even trying.

Worlds upon worlds upon worlds... Saba ranged among the records of civilizations dead, thriving, or newly born. There were a thousand new species to examine, but time didn't allow her to linger too long on any of them; she could only touch fleetingly upon each, skimming over their aspirations and philosophies like a pebble across a pond.

"Be sure to take a break if you need to," Luke said the next time she returned for another list of books. "You've certainly all earned it."

"That might not be a bad idea, actually," Jacen put in, eyeing the towers of books building on the table. "You and Danni have been searching for six hours. We have plenty of data to pore over while you rest." Saba was speechless for a moment. Six hours? It didn't feel anywhere near that long. It had been so pleasant to be apart from the world, to forget her own troubles for a while. Now that she thought about it, though, she could feel her body's fatigue. Her tail was as limp and lifeless as the trail of Zonama Sekot itself.

She shook her head.

"Time iz pa.s.sing," she said, picking up the next list. "And hunting iz this one'z specialty." Then, with the scent of old books and cold trails rich in her nostrils, she resumed her patient, determined prowl of the data.

Jaina kept her head low as she followed Malinza across the flat, tiled rooftop.

"Are you sure you know where you're going?" she asked after a while.

"Positive." The escapee didn't look over her shoulder to reply, nor slacken her pace. "This way." Malinza sidetracked to the edge of the roof, jumping off without hesitation into s.p.a.ce. Jaina hurried to the same spot in time to see Malinza land heavily on another rooftop two floors below. Despite her growing reservations, she followed easily with a similar leap.

Salis D'aar from the air had seemed a lot more sophisticated than the side of it she was seeing now. Its weblike radial layout and high towers had reminded her of many other affluent colony worlds she'd visited. On Bakura, the beginnings of rot had seeped in at bas.e.m.e.nt level, with the high water table and humidity attacking steel-crete and other preventives directly, or encouraging plant life to grow around and into it. The cultural unwillingness to use droids meant that menial repair work often went undone. Since fleeing the penitentiary, she had become quite familiar with the sort of decay the city was capable of. The farther she went out from the center of the city, the more unattractive it became. The paint jobs were rougher, the streets themselves were considerably grubbier, and fewer repulsors meant that things like street-lamps, vehicles, or buildings didn't float. It was almost like an entirely different world than the one she'd initially been introduced to.

Jaina maintained Malinza's pace perfectly, staying half a dozen steps behind at all times. She wasn't trying to catch up; watching the girl's back was her priority right now. This whole escape had been way too easy, and her tingling senses were screaming for her to keep her eyes peeled. Her only consolation was that their route through the city had been far too convoluted for anyone to follow.

They descended a stairwell to the third floor of the building.

There they climbed through a window and went handover-hand along a dead power line to yet another building. This one appeared as if it had been empty since the Ssi-ruuvi invasion. Its outer sh.e.l.l held empty offices and reception areas; the interior was a giant atrium filled with tropical plants gone wild. The faceted roof far above consisted of dirty transparisteel that seemed as though it had been designed to let the sun in during the day and open at night, although it obviously hadn't done so for a long time. The opening mechanism had long since turned to rust, and now, apart from a narrow slit through which the rain crept in, it remained permanently closed.

Malinza stopped briefly at a balcony on the second floor, quickly checking on Jaina. She was about to continue when Jaina grabbed her by the shoulder and held her back. Malinza faced her, confused, and Jaina put a finger to her lips to indicate that she should remain still. The sense of walking into a trap was stronger here than ever.

The only noises she could hear were dripping sounds from within the dense vegetation at the heart of the building. If Bakuran security forces had managed to follow them, then they were being exceptionally stealthy about it. Still, she had more than just a sneaking suspicion that Bakuran security weren't the only threat awaiting them.

From above her in the trees, Jaina heard a soft click. In an instant her lightsaber was out. With her free hand she pushed Malinza behind her, protecting her from any attack.

"She's fast." Jaina squinted into the trees, but she couldn't make out the owner of the voice.

"Who is she?"

"Look at the lightsaber," replied another. "She's a Jedi."

"One lightsaber against three blaster rifles," returned the first.

"She couldn't be that fast."

"Just try me and find out," Jaina challenged the voices, tightening her grip on her lightsaber while pinpointing the exact location of the voices in the trees. There were three of them at different heights, two male and one female. A subtle movement of the leaves suggested that perhaps there was a fourth slightly higher, silent for now. The leader, perhaps?

Whatever, she thought. A quick tug of the branches with the Force would soon bring them down.

"It's okay," Malinza said, taking a step forward so she stood between Jaina and those in the trees. "At least I think she's okay, anyway."

"What's she doing here, Malinza?"

"I brought her." Malinza faced Jaina. "It's all right. You can put your weapon down. This is Freedom." Jaina reluctantly relaxed her posture, deactivating the lightsaber and dropping her hands to her sides.

She wasn't completely convinced everything was all right, but the last thing she wanted to do was give the rest of Malinza's rebel cell the wrong impression.

The mini forest rustled as leaves parted and three people emerged.

The woman was striking, with the sides of her skull shaved and the remainder of her blond hair tied back in a whiplike ponytail. The man nearest to her was dressed in a tatty security uniform about two sizes too big; his brown hair was wild and he looked as though he hadn't shaved in a week. The third was a Rodian, his green skin blending almost perfectly with the foliage.

"This is Jaina Solo," Malinza told them.

Jaina acknowledged them with a curt nod, glancing uneasily toward the tree for a glimpse of the fourth person she suspected to be still hiding there.

"And what is it, exactly, that Jaina Solo wants?" the blond-haired woman asked.

"There's something going on here, on Bakura," Jaina replied for Malinza. "I'd like to find out what it is."

"You mean something other than the usual?" the human male asked.

"The exploitation of the weak by the powerful, the rape of natural resources, the corruption of innocents-"

"Easy, Zel," the blond said. "Let's not scare her away before we've heard everything she's got to say."

"Be mindful, Jjorg," the Rodian said in a rasping voice. "A Jedi is likely to put things into a mind as open as yours."

"That only works on the weak-minded," Jaina said. "Besides which, I'm not here to brainwash anyone."

"And we're just supposed to take your word on that?"

"Hey, that's enough," Malinza said firmly. "Where's Vyram, Jjorg? I need to talk to him."

"He's lurking about somewhere," Zel said. "As usual."