[Dark Nest] - 1(33)

Jacen looked up at the crater rim and was puzzled to find an image of his mother there, frowning across the gap at the Flier’s blast-pocked hull. She was wearing a white blouse with a brown skirt and vest that reminded Jacen of his father’s swashbuckling style, right down to the holstered blaster hanging on her hip. There were some new strands of gray hair and a few more laugh lines around her mouth, but she looked healthy and content, and Jacen’s heart leapt at the sight of her. The last time he had seen her face had been over five standard years ago, before leaving on his odyssey of self-discovery, and he was astonished at the joy even a vision of it brought to him.

Jacen swallowed his surprise and tried instead to simply concentrate on what the Force was revealing to him. He knew that she was not actually standing there now, but at some other time. And, since his mother was the only figure he could see, she was probably the link to discovering what had become of Raynar.

She turned to someone he could not see, then asked, “What happened to the crew?”

There was a pause while she listened to the reply. Jacen could imagine only one thing that would bring his parents this deep into the Unknown Regions, the heart of the Colony itself. They had to be looking for the strike team.

His mother looked back to the Flier. “I mean the rest of the crew. We know Raynar survived.”

Jacen had his answer, but he was not ready to release the vision-not yet. He looked up at his mother’s image, reaching out to her in the Force to strengthen their contact.

“Hello.”

Her gaze dropped toward Jacen’s voice, then she furrowed her brow and reached out, as though grasping for someone’s arm. “Jacen has been here.”

Has. So they were still behind him.

The guide snapped its mandibles next to Jacen’s ear. “Bubu ruu bu?”

“No one. Sorry.” Continuing to hold the vision through the Force, Jacen finally took the helmet and flight suit. “Okay. Where am I going?”

The guide replied that Jacen wouldn’t recognize the name of the system. It was on the Chiss frontier.

Up on the crater rim, the vision of his mother frowned. “Jacen? I’m having trouble hearing you.”

Jacen ignored her and continued to speak to the guide. “Humor me. In case something happens and I need to find my own way.”

The navigator spread its antennae. “Burubu,” it answered. “Ur bu Brurr rubur.”

“Jacen?” His mother’s face grew pale. “How? You’re not-“

“I’m fine, Mom,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

The guide turned a bulbous eye toward the crater rim.

“Qoribu,” Jacen said, looking up at his mother. “In the Gyuel system.”





NINE


As the Falcon dropped toward the mottled pinnacles below, Leia found herself straining against her crash webbing, almost gasping at the bustling vastness of the Colony’s central nest. The Yoggoy towers, brightly adorned in wild splashes of color, stood hip-to-hip across the entire planet, and the air was so thick with flying vehicles that she could barely see the surface.

“Kind of looks like old Coruscant,” Han said, speaking to Leia and-over the comm-to Luke, Mara, and everyone else aboard the Shadow. “So big-and all that bustle.”

Leia continued to strain forward over her controls, peering out the lower edge of the canopy. As the Falcon descended, she began to see that while the pinnacles came in every size, they were all distinctly cone-shaped, and they all had horizontally banded exteriors-like the insect spires in Killik Twilight.

She started to say as much, then decided she was letting her imagination run wild. Cones were a basic geometric form. Creating them out of mud rings was probably as common among intelligent insects as was erecting stone rectangles among social mammals.

“I’m gonna blast that can of corrosion back to quarks!” Han said.

Leia glanced over to find Han frowning at his tactical display, then checked her own screen and saw that the XR808g’s transponder code had disappeared. “Did Juun land already?”

Han shook his head. “The little earworm shut off his transponder.”

Knowing better than to ask if Han had remembered to run a code search, Leia activated her throat mike.

“We’ve lost the Exxer”

The report was greeted with a troubled silence. Right now, the XR808g was their only hope of locating Jaina and the others.

“Any ideas?” Han asked. “I’d like to find these kids before they become a bunch of bughuggers.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Even over the cockpit comm, Luke’s voice was calm and reassuring. “They’re Jedi.”