“Don’t know,” Zekk said. “Guess we’ll have to ask her when we track her down.”
Jaina glanced up into the night sky, eyeing the bright flecks of the Ducha’s gathering fleet. “I think there are a couple of things we’ll need to ask her about.”
She reached out in the Force and was a little surprised to feel only a single sentient presence on the other side of the gate.
“Open up!” she demanded. “We’re not here to hurt anyone,”
There was no response.
After a moment, Zekk glanced at Jaina and cocked a questioning brow. Jaina shrugged and stepped into position behind him, prepared to counter any attacks they were about to draw. Zekk plunged his lightsaber into the seam where the gate met the wall, then began to drag the blade slowly downward, cutting the internal locking bars.
A muffled voice sounded from the other side. “Stop!”
They heard a loud clunk, then the gate retracted into the wall with a pneumatic whoosh. On the other side stood a brawny, moon-faced woman wearing a grimy leather apron over a much-stained tunic. Her eyes were narrow and puffy, her nose was wide and fiat, and her thick lips were curled into a permanent sneer. All in all, she was probably the ugliest Hapan whom Jaina had ever seen.
The woman frowned at Jaina. “It wasn’t necessary to have your man cut the Ducha’s gate,” she said. “I would have let you in.”
“Then you shouldn’t have taken so long to make up your mind.” Jaina deactivated her lightsaber, but continued to glare at the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Entora,” the woman replied. “Entora Zar.”
“Well, Entora,” Jaina said, “the next time a Jedi Knight addresses you, you might want to answer.”
She and Zekk stepped through the gate into an eye-boggling mass of domed, white-gratenite structures, packed so tightly that at first glance it looked impossible to squeeze between them. Every window was shuttered, every door closed, and, aside from the ugly woman, there was no one in sight.
Jaina extended her Force-awareness a few dozen meters deeper into the compound and felt only the furtive presences of tiny vermin creatures.
“Where is everyone?” Zekk demanded.
“Gone,” Zar said. “Your poor piloting was an affront to the Ducha’s sensibilities.”
Jaina was too astonished by Zar’s audacity to be offended. “Our piloting?”
“Your entry angle was too steep,” Zar said. “You couldn’t decelerate fast enough to make a graceful approach. I’m surprised you didn’t rip your wings off.”
“We weren’t trying to make a graceful approach,” Jaina said through gritted teeth. “And I don’t recall asking your opinion.”
“Our craft have unique flight characteristics,” Zekk explained. “They don’t handle like XJ-Sevens, especially in the atmosphere.”
“I doubt you could do any better with an XJ-Seven,” Zar replied. “You obviously need more simulator time in anything you fly.”
This was too much for Jaina. “Listen, rodder, I started flying XJs into combat before I was old enough to sign my own contracts. How many hours have you logged?”
“In an XJ?”
“No, in a pedal car!” Jaina retorted. “Of course in an XJ.”
Zar looked away. “None, actually.”
“None?” Jaina could not believe what she was hearing; no decent pilot would presume to know the proper atmospheric entry angle for a craft she’d never flown. “Then what do you fly?”
“A lot of different stuff,” Zar answered with pride. “The Naboo Royal N-One, the Mark One Headhunter, the Xi Char DPS…”
“Those are antiques, not starfighters!” Jaina objected.
“And the DPS was a droid fighter,” Zekk said, scowling suspiciously. “Where have you been flying those craft?”
Zar glared at Zekk, clearly offended that a mere male would dare question her credentials. “The same place I do all my flying,” she said. “On my holosimulator. I’m a rated instructor.”
Jaina’s jaw dropped. “Are you crazy? There’s a …” She felt a Force-nudge from Zekk and realized that she was allowing herself to be distracted by what was at best an irrelevancy and at worst an intentional delaying tactic. “Never mind. Just take us to the Ducha.”
But Zar wasn’t ready to drop the holosimulator debate. “In fact, I’m probably a better pilot than you, since my unit…”
“You’re not” Jaina interrupted. “And we’re done arguing about it.”
Jaina pushed past on one side and Zekk on the other, both ignoring Zar’s protests that they had no permission. As the daughter of a famous stateswoman, Jaina had learned early that it was always best to ignore blowhards and idiots.