by Troy Denning
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 moirestone, 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, dru
mming 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 arou
nd 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—”