Leia glanced over at Saba and mouthed Welk’s name. The Barabel’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded and quickly slipped away.
At last, the insect din quieted, and Raynar opened his eyes.
“Even if you are right about the Dark Nest, conquering is not our way, ” he said. “The Kind seek only to live in harmony with the Song of the Universe.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to conquer something to take it over,” Han said. “And the Dark Nest had more in it than just Killiks.”
“I assume you remember the Dark Jedi,” Leia pressed. “Raynar fought them as a young man at Yavin Four. And Welk and Lomi Plo abandoned the strike team on Baanu Rass.”
Raynar studied her for a moment, then nodded. “We remember. And you think…” He let the sentence trail off as the Unu began to rustle and clack; then his voice grew stubborn again. “But you must be wrong. Welk and Lomi Plo died in the Crash.”
“Then who is this?” Saba asked.
She emerged from shadows dragging Welk’s badly slashed body. He was still dressed in his chitin-and-plastoid armor, with a new insect arm grafted to his shoulder. His face looked even less human than Raynar’s, but he clearly wasn’t Chiss.
Saba sent the corpse gliding toward Raynar’s chest.
Han waited until the thing hit, then said, “He’s got some pretty bad burn scars, but that tells you something right there.”
Once it was in front of him, Raynar seemed riveted by the corpse, his blue eyes slowly sliding back and forth beneath his scarred brow, his breath coming in ever-raggeder rasps.
“Jacen investigated the Crash,” Leia said. “He saw you pull Welk and Lomi out of the flames.”
The Unu fell deathly quiet, and Raynar’s gaze swung to Leia. “Saw us?”
“Through the Force,” she clarified.
“Yes-we remember.” Raynar nodded and closed his eyes. “He was there… on the bridge… for just a moment.”
“You saw Jacen?” Han gasped.
“That’s impossible,” Leia said. “He would have had to reach across time-“
“We saw Jacen. He gave us the strength to continue… to pull them…” Suddenly Raynar stopped and turned toward the center of the nursery. “Where is Lomi?”
He had barely asked the question when the Unu entourage began to disperse across the nursery, their shine-balls illuminating the vault in a spray of whirling light.
“Where is Lomi?” Raynar repeated.
Relief washed over Leia like a Rbollean petal-oil shower. She had broken through to Raynar’s memory. “Then you recall saving her?”
“We remember,” Raynar said. “She was afraid that the Yuuzhan Vong would find us again, or that Anakin would come looking for her, or Master Skywalker. She was afraid of many things. She wanted to hide.”
“Well,” Han said, “that sure confirms Cilghal’s theory.”
“What theory?” Raynar asked.
“The way Cilghal sees it,” Han said, “when a Killik nest swallows up someone who’s Force-sensitive, the nest takes on some of his personality.”
“In your case, the Yoggoy absorbed the value you place on individual life Leia said. “They started to care for their feeble and provide tor the starving, and it wasn’t long before their success led to the creation of the Unu.”
“That’s much how we remember it,” Raynar allowed. “But it has nothing to do with the Gorog.”
“You said you remember pulling Welk and Lomi Plo out of the fire,” Han pointed out. “But then they just disappeared.”
“You said Lomi was afraid and wanted to hide,” Leia added. “That was what Yoggoy absorbed from her. Isn’t it possible that she also created a nest of her own-a nest hidden from everyone else?”
As Raynar considered this, the color seemed to drain from his face. “We caused this?”
“That’s not what we’re saying,” Leia said. “Only that the Dark Nest is influencing-“
“If we saved Lomi and Welk, we are responsible.”
An eerie tempest of clacking and muffled booming rolled through the nursery as the Unu again started to protest. Raynar turned from Leia and the others and slowly glided along the wall, peering into each cell he passed and shaking his head in despair.
“If we saved Lomi and Welk-“
Han caught up and took Raynar by the arm. “Look, kid, you couldn’t have known.”
Amazingly, Raynar did not send Han tumbling across the room or silence him with a gesture or even pull away. He merely continued to float along, seemingly unaware of Han at all, staring into the cells.