people."
Den was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. He didn't want to hear
Merit's theory; he wasn't interested in spacing down the lane the minder was
going. He stood I and turned toward the door. "Look, I gotta go. It's nearly
I dark and I haven't had one drink yet. Don't want to fall I behind."
"You can hide from this behind a mug for a while, | Den," Klo Merit
said. "If you do, two things can happen, One: the mug will have to get
bigger and bigger, to keep shielding you from whatever it is you don't want
to iook at. Eventually, you'll fall in."
"And the other thing?"
Merit shrugged. "You look. And you deal with what you see."
"Terrific," Den said. He activated the portal and stepped out into the
glare of the setting sun. "You'd make a lousy pubtender, Doc."
5
Drongar's tropical twilight had begun when Jos finally left the OT. He
saw Uli sitting on a bench under a broadleaf tree. The kid had dumped his
gown into the re-cycler and was wearing a Republic army one-piece that
looked too large for him. A small cloud of fire gnats buzzed about him, but
he was evidently too tired to even wave them away.
Jos ambled over. He pulled a chunk of spicetack from a pocket and held
it out. "Here. You look like you could use this."
The kid hesitated. "Go ahead," Jos told him. "It's safe enough. A mild
rejuvenant. You'll still feel like you've been dragged through a
thorn-needle bush-just not backward."
Uli took the spicetack and wadded it into his mouth. "Are you kidding?"
he asked around his chewing. "I lived on this stuff during rny residency.
Like everyone else I knew."
Jos sat down. "Yep. I remember it well," he said with a sigh. "Stimcaf
and spicetack-the diet of champions." He nodded toward the OT. "You handled
yourself pretty well in there. Better than I thought you would, frankly."
Uli rubbed his eyes. Jos noticed that his hands were trembling
slightly. "Is it always like this? And please don't say, No, usually it's
worse."
"Okay. But it is."
The youth glanced at him with eyes far too old for so young a face.
"The first one I worked on had been hit by an agonizer."
Jos nodded grimly. The agonizer was new, an experimental hand weapon
that targeted the limbic system with a high-collimation microsonic beam that
somehow stimulated runaway prostaglandin formation. The result was intense
pain without any physical trauma. It couldn't be blocked by somaprin or
other heavy soporifics, and it was often so intense that the patient died
from sensory overload. The only way to override it was to sever the
no-ciceptor synapses in the thalamic cortex. This required a delicate
neurolaser procedure-just the sort of operation ill suited for
quick-and-dirty mimn'yet surgery.
"I think I did pretty well, all things considered," said, his voice
hollow. "Stopped the pain. Of course, he'll have severe dyskinesia and motor
ataxia for the rest of his life ..."
Jos grimaced in sympathy. Neither spoke for a moment. Then Uli said, "I
heard about what happened to Doctor Yant. I'm sorry, Jos. I can see how you
wouldn't want a new kiosk mate just now."
Jos said, "Sometimes I feel like finding whoever started this rankweed
war and performing a pneumonectomy with my bare hands."
"Really."
"For starters, yeah."
Uli chuckled. He glanced at Jos, and Jos, after a moment, grinned.
Then, suddenly, they were both laughing, hard gusts and whoops that were not
about mirth so much as about anger, loss, frustration . . .
After a minute they subsided-although neither was really laughing
anymore.
"I know how you feel," Uli said, wiping his eyes. "I lost a good
friend, nearly two years ago, in Mos Espa on Tatooine. There was some battle
going on between a couple of bounty hunters and she was too close to it." He
hesitated. "It never goes away, does it?"
"No," Jos said. "No, it doesn't. But it does get easier to bear."
"I can't do anything about it," Uli said.
"That's right. And you need to understand that you can't. Blaming
yourself because you couldn't save your friend, or stop this war, is a waste
of effort and energy. It isn't your fault, Uli. None of it is your fault."
Jos stopped, realizing that he was speaking more to himself than to the
boy. He shook his head again. Easy to say that. Harder to believe.
But maybe, just maybe, easier with time.
Kaird was again uncomfortable. The robes disguising him as a Silent had
been bad enough in this weather, but this new masquerade was worse, since he
was now wearing a flex-mask as well. Such precautions were necessary,
however. One of the reasons he was successful as a Black Sun operative,
despite being someone who tended to stand out in a crowd, was his skill at
camouflage. He had hidden his distinctive features and form behind a number
of different identities in his years of service, all to good degrees of
success. He had even worn a "Hutt suit" once, a plastoid frame with
synthflesh skin and face. By the Egg, that had been a chore. Compared to
that, this Kubaz flex-mask and robes weren't all that bad.
His choice of species to impersonate was somewhat limited, due to the
shape of his own features. The trun-
cated trunk of a Kubaz nose hid his own beaklike mouth very well,
however, and the goggles that the bug-eaters wore in bright sunlight covered
his violet eyes. No one glanced twice at him at the spaceport; Kubaz were
ubiq-uitous throughout the galaxy.
Kaird was waiting for the latest transport to land, Along with the
supplies and materiel it was delivering, it was also bringing a team who had
been highly recommended to him. One was an Umbaran, the other a Falleen,
According to Lens they were not cheap antenna-breakers, but possessed
subtlety and skill. They were opportunists, con artists who made their way
along the space lanes from world to world by virtue of various scams. Like
most grifters, Lens had said, they had had periods of solvency, even wealth,
and periods of desperation. The latter was their current lot in life. Which
meant that they might be useful to Kaird. The transport lowered on repulsor
beams down through the crimson and copper spore clouds, was admitted through
the force-dome's interrupt, then settled on its pad, Droids and binary
loadlifters began unloading the cargo. Kaird watched the disembarkation
ramp. There were only a few passengers on this trip: a Kaminoan there for
some sort of biological inspection, and a trio of human officers to discuss
the bota plant shipment quotas with Colonel Vaetes. Some droids, and his two
potential employees, rounded out the list.
His two prospects were the last to debark, followed by an RC-103
"redcap" droid carrying their luggage. Neither seemed disturbed by the hot,
soupy air, even though the spores were particularly bad today. Kaird
appraised the prospects. They appeared as different as it was possible for
two carbon-based humanoids to be, so dissimilar as to be almost ludicrous.
The Umbaran was short, perhaps one and a qu
arter meters, bald and pallid.
The Fall-een on the other hand, was more than a head taller and wore her
hair gathered in a topknot. She walked proudly, like a warrior. She carried
no weapons, but from the fluid play of her muscles under the tight
synthcloth one-piece, Kaird judged that she would be dangerous even unarmed.
In contrast, the Umbaran looked like a strong wind would send him
sailing away over the poptrees, particularly with that voluminous cloak
enveloping him from neck to feet. Kaird had done his research on both
species, and knew that the garment was called a shadowcloak. To most
humanoid species it appeared as chalk-white as the Umbaran's skin, but not
to other Umbarans, since their vision range was primarily in the ultraviolet
wavelength, below three hundred nanometers.
Nor did it appear that way to Kaird. The winged raptors that were his
ancestors had had access to a visual palette wider than the narrow slit of
radiation available to most eyes. Though hundreds of thousands of
generations removed, the Nediji eye could still see deep into both ends of
the visible spectrum. To him the cloak was a churning riot of colors for
which few languages beside his own had names: berl, crynor, nusp, onsible .
. .
It really was beautiful. As the Umbaran walked, the cloak's designs
seemed to eddy and swirl into ever-new shades and hues, a constant,
kaleidoscopic play of light and shadow. A magnificent garment, Kaird
thought. He had seen rulers of worlds who were content to wear far less.
He stepped forward and greeted them, the vocoder chip in the mask
imitating a harsh Kubindi accent. "Hu-nandin of Apiida Clan, at your
service. I have been di-
rected by our mutual friend to welcome you to Drongar," The "mutual
friend" was, of course, the spy, Lens. "How may I be of use to you?"
The two regarded him. Kaird felt a definite tug of something-yearning?
charisma?-toward the Falleen. He knew the probable cause of this. The
reptiloids could give off pheromones with a broad chemosignal base that
subtly-or not so subtly-influenced many different sen-tients. He wondered if
she was releasing the pheromones on purpose or as a reflex action. It didn't
matter-as long as he was aware of them, his mind was disciplined enough to
cope.
Then he was shocked when the Umbaran spoke. "Fly free, fly straight,"
he said, "Brother of the Air."
The Nest Blessing, spoken with the proper laryngeal inflection! How?
How did they know? His disguise was good enough to fool everyone in the
camp, even other Kubaz. There was no way-
Wait. He recalled now another fact about Umbarans: they were reported
to have paramental abilities, to be able to see and even influence others'
thoughts. Wonderful. Yet another mindplayer in Rtmsoo Seven, A miracle all
our heads don't explode.
Evidently he wasn't the only one who had done research. Few non-Nediji
knew any of the language of The Flock. Lens did, and now these two .. .
He said in a low voice, glancing about to make sure no one was within
earshot: "I congratulate you on your perspicacity, but let me assure you it
is to our mutual benefit to maintain the illusion of-"
"Of course," the Falleen said. The Umbaran's voice had been little more
than a husky whisper; in contrast, hers was rich and full of life. "Your
secret identity is safe with us, Hunandin." There was a slight twist of
sarcasm when she spoke the name. "And excuse our poor manners; we have yet
to introduce ourselves." She drew herself up, and Kaird realized that she
was slightly taller than he was. "My name is Thula." She gestured to the
Umbaran. "This is my associate, Squa Tront."
"Delighted," the Umbaran whispered dryly. "Might there be some place on
this forsaken world where one can get a drink?"
Inside his mask, Kaird smiled. "Certainly. Come with me; we have much
to talk about."
6
Perhaps half a dozen meters behind Barriss's kiosk was a small clearing
bounded on three sides by thick and verdant waxy-leaved croaker bushes-so
called because of the odd sound the leaves made when rustling in a breeze.
The thick plants were half again her height, and it was here Barriss came to
practice various fighting techniques with her lightsaber. Such training
wasn't something Jedi ordinarily did in public, but this place was as
private as she could find. The only way somebody would see her was if they
happened to pass by the open end of the little clearing. Since the local
swamp started a dozen meters past that, it was unlikely anyone would be
walking around in the ooze for their health.
The heat lay upon the small open space like a sodden blanket. Under it,
and under the loose brown robes she wore, she sweated, the perspiration
soaking hair and skin, hardly evaporating at all in the high humidity.
Unpleasant, but a fact of life on Drongar. She'd gotten used to carrying a
hydropak with her at all times; to do otherwise was to risk dehydration.
As she had done countless times before, Barriss ran through the basic
arm- and shoulder-limbering exercises, cutting and slashing the fetid
tropical air in simple two-and three-combination moves, switching her weapon
from hand to hand. The martial movements she danced were primarily those of
Form III, one of the seven fighting systems that the Jedi had developed over
the ages. Master Unduli favored Form III over the others, even though it was
disparaged by some as primarily a defensive discipline. It was true that it
had been developed originally as a response to blasterfire and other
projectile weapons, but over the centuries it had developed into much more.
"Of all the seven forms," her Master had told her, "Form Three, with its
emphasis on anticipating and blocking lightspeed energy blasts, requires the
greatest connection to the Force. The road is long, but it is worth the
journey, for a true master of Form Three is invincible."
The lightsaber's power hum was a comforting drone, the hard-edged
energy beam as familiar to her as her own arm. She could not remember a time
when she had not wielded a lightsaber. As a child, there had been the
low-powered practice models, with which she and other young Padawans had
dueled. They were strong enough to deliver a powerful jolt; when one of them
stung you, you knew it.
Pain was a most tasking instructor.
When she turned sixteen she had built her own fully powered unit,
choosing a blue crystal as her beam's signature hue. It had been hooked to
her belt ever since- she knew every part of it as well as she knew her own
fingers. As part of her training, she had taken it apart and reassembled it
using only the Force. It was more than a weapon-it was an extension of her
body, an almost or-ù ganic part of her . . .
She smiled as she stepped forward, spinning the light-saber rapidly
before her, creating what seemed a solid shield of light. Thinking too much
again. Concentrate on the moment.
At that instant, there came a blast of cold air, as if someone had
opened a freezer door just behind her, shocking in its intensity.
It was
gone almost before she knew what it was, but the combination of her drifting
thoughts and the frigid breeze startled her. She knew immediately that the
lightsaber, now moving across her lower body and headed up and around,
was-too low.
She heard rather than felt the tip of the pulsing blade slice through
the top of her boot. The boot was spun-plast orthotic, pliable yet extremely
tough. When she'd bought the boots, they'd come with a guarantee-wear them
out and the manufacturer would replace them, free, for as long as the
original owner lived. Spun-plast would turn the edge of a sharp durasteel
blade, or even a vibroknlfe. There were few material objects proof against a
lightsaber, however, and tough as it was, spun-plast wasn't among those.
Barriss quickly extinguished the lightsaber. She looked, down and saw
blood welling in the surgically neat slice across the top of her boot.
She was astonished-not by the wound, but by the error that had resulted
in the accident. How many times had she done this form? Five thousand? Ten?
This was a beginner's mistake, a blunder that would be inexcusable in a
Padawan child nowhere near her skill level.
Had she imagined it? It was tempting to think so, but when the moving
air had rustled the croaker bushes, she had distinctly heard their
unmistakable, mournful sound. The breeze had been real,
She hung the lightsaber on her belt, lifted her foot, and pulled the
boot off, balancing easily on the other foot.
The cut was narrow and not too deep, maybe three centimeters long, and
a couple of centimeters above her second and third toes. The epidermal edges
were burned,
but the cut was still bleeding freely; evidently the spun-plast had
absorbed just enough of the blade's energy to prevent complete cauterization
of the wound. Barriss stood there, still balanced on one leg, staring at the
injury. She shook her head.
She reached for the Force, felt it flowing through her, and
concentrated on the cut. There was no danger of her bleeding to death from
it, but she certainly didn't fancy hopping back to the base for treatment,
leaving a trail of blood behind her.
The steady flow ebbed, then stopped. She could feel the pain beginning
to throb, now; she breathed deeply, made space for it, shunted it into that
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