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  The Bothan's fur rippled, just noticeably. "On many worlds, you say?" he asked. "Is there some problem you have with maintaining ownership of your shops?"

  Navett frowned, as if trying to decipher his way through a complicated sentence, then let his face clear. "Naw, you got it all wrong," he said. "I'm not tryin' to set up a place I can settle down in. 'Sides, unless you got a bunch of guys to run the racks for you, you can't make a go of the exotic pet business unless you keep movin'. Lot of potential stock you'll never even hear about unless you go where they come from."

  "Perhaps," the Bothan murmured. "But I suspect you will not find much of a market on Bothawui in these troubled times."

  "You kiddin'?" Navett said, letting some oily smugness show through. "Hey, this place is perfect. A planet under siege—lots of tension—that's exactly where folks are going to need a pet to get their minds off their troubles. Trust me—I seen it happen dozens of times."

  "If you say so," the Bothan said with a ripple of his shoulder fur, obviously not caring whether this slightly uncouth alien made a profit here or not. "Leave me your comlink frequency and code and you'll be notified when the quarantine is ended."

  "Thanks," Navett said, collecting his documents together. "Make it fast, okay?"

  "It will be as quick as regulations require," the Bothan said. "A day of peace and profit to you."

  "Yeah. Same to you."

  Five minutes later Navett was walking down the street, jostling his way through the mass of travelers hurrying in and out of the spaceport. Passing up the rows of for-hire landspeeders, he put his back to the setting sun and headed off on foot toward a row of cheap hotels bordering the spaceport area.

  With his back to the sun, he spotted the shadow coming up behind him a few seconds before Klif dropped into step at his side. "Any problems?" the other asked quietly.

  "No, it went real smooth," Navett said. "You?"

  Klif shook his head. "Not a one. He took the bribe, by the way, but he wouldn't promise we'd get the animals out any sooner."

  "Not with a bribe that small," Navett agreed, smiling to himself. An insultingly small gratuity from the pet dealer's assistant, and none at all from the dealer himself, ought to nicely reinforce their carefully constructed image as small-timers trying to turn a fast profit without the slightest idea how the game was played.

  And with the Bothans, an image like that practically guaranteed them to be the focus of private amusement, back-room contempt, and complete official disinterest.

  Which meant that when the time was right for the Drev'starn section of the Bothawui planetary shield to come down, it would.

  "You see Horvic or Pensin in there?" Klif asked. "I didn't spot either of them."

  "No, but I'm sure they got in all right," Navett said. "We can tap the rendezvous point tomorrow if we can find a shop fast enough."

  "I picked up a rental listing," Klif said. "Most of them come with apartments above them."

  "That'll be handy," Navett said. "We'll look through it tonight and see if there's anything in the right area. If not, we can always check with a rental agent in the morning." Klif chuckled. "Don't worry—we've got plenty of bribe money left."

  "Yes," Navett murmured, looking around. Fifteen years ago, according to rumor, it had been information from Bothan spies that had led the Rebel Alliance to Endor and resulted in the death of Emperor Palpatine and the destruction of the second Death Star. In the years since then, Bothans had been involved with the Black Sun organization, the destruction of Mount Tantiss, and any number of other blows against the Empire.

  He didn't know the full scope of the plan that was under way here; but of all the worlds Grand Admiral Thrawn might have chosen for destruction, few would have given him more personal satisfaction than this one.

  They had reached their chosen hotel now, and as they started up the steps an ancient droid standing warden beside the door stirred himself. "Good even, good sirs," he wheezed. "May I call for a baggage carrier?"

  "Naw, we can handle 'em," Navett said. "No sense wasting good money on a droid."

  "But, sir, the service is free," the droid said, sounding confused. But by then Navett and Klif were past him, pushing through the doors and strolling into the lobby. They were, he noted, the only hotel guests carrying their own bags.

  But that was all right. Let the Bothans and their more sophisticated guests snicker at them behind their backs, if they chose, When the fire began to rain from the sky, the laughter would turn to screams of terror.

  And Navett would be enjoying every minute of it.

  CHAPTER

  6

  It was on her fifteenth day in the darkness of the Nirauan cave when Mara Jade awoke to discover a rescuer had finally arrived.

  It was not, however, any of the potential rescuers she would have expected. Mara?

  She sat up suddenly in her bedroll, blinking her eyes reflexively open despite the fact that in the pitch-darkness there was absolutely nothing to see. The sense of someone calling to her had been wordless, but as clear as if her name had been spoken aloud. She stretched out with the Force... And as she did so, the sense of his presence came drifting in to her. His presence, and his identity. It was Luke.

  The tone of his emotions changed, the hard edge of anxiety permeating it turning abruptly to relief as he sensed her response and knew that she was unhurt. A new touch of anticipation flowed into his mind, and as she focused she could sense a physical darkness around him. Best guess was that he was in the cave, she decided, probably working his way her direction.

  Which unfortunately meant that his anticipation was a bit premature. Finding the cave was one thing; finding each other within its multiple twistings was going to be something else entirely. But Luke already had that covered. To her wordless question came a renewed sense of assurance from him; and even as she frowned, she caught a sense of others around him, beings who he seemed to be following. Apparently, some of the mynocklike creatures who had hauled her in here in the first place were acting as guides.

  She looked up at the ceiling and walls around her. More of the creatures were up there, silently watching her. "Skywalker's coming," she called up into the darkness. "You happy?" They were. Even with her frustrating inability to hear their words directly, there was no mistaking the surge of excitement that rippled through them. "I'm so pleased," she said. Standing up, she felt her way toward the subterranean creek gurgling its way through the rock a few meters away. She'd picked this spot early on in her captivity as a place where she would have water available, and in the days since then had learned to navigate the trip without using her glow rod. She reached the creek, located the conveniently placed flat rock where she kept the small bottle of personal cleaning solution from her survival kit, and stripped off her jumpsuit. The outfit itself was one of the top-of-the-line brands that was standard issue aboard Karrde's ships and shrugged off dirt and oils with ease. Mara herself, unfortunately, did not; and if she had company coming it seemed only reasonable to make herself presentable.

  The water was shallow, swift-moving, and icy cold. Mara splashed it all over herself, trying not to sputter too much with the thermal shock. A few drops of cleaning solution rubbed vigorously into skin and hair, another agonizing dip into the liquid ice of the creek to rinse off, and she was through. An only marginally warmer breeze flowed along the same path as the water, and she stood in the draft for a few minutes, brushing off excess water and fluffing her hair until she was mostly dry. Getting back into her jumpsuit, she collected her things and headed back to her encampment. Just in time. She was still sorting her equipment back into their proper niches in her pack when she caught the first flickers of reflected light against the rocky walls and high ceiling. Rolling up her bedroll and tucking it into her pack, she sat down on her "chair"—another mostly flat rock—and waited.

  It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time before the bouncing light finally resolved itself into a Jedi Master carrying a glow rod; but when i
t did she finally understood the reason for the slow trip. Luke himself was burdened down with what looked like the sort of

  everything-but-a-set-of-alluvial-dampers survival kit Karrde's people liked to put together; and trundling awkwardly but gamely along beside him on the uneven ground was his R2 astromech droid.

  "Mara?" Luke called, his voice echoing through the cave.

  "Right here," Mara called back, standing up and waving her glow rod. "You sure took your time."

  "Sorry," he said dryly, making his way to her. "We couldn't find the local airspeeder-hire stand and had to walk. You look good."

  "You look terrible," she countered, running a critical eye over him. His jacket and the jumpsuit beneath it were stained with dirt and sweat and dotted here and there with small rips and punctures.

  "How far did you walk, anyway? Halfway around the planet?"

  "No, only about ten kilometers," he said, shrugging the pack off his shoulders onto the ground and running a hand through his hair. "But it was cliffs and wilderness all the way."

  "And thornbushes, apparently," Mara added, gesturing toward the tears in his jumpsuit. "You want to get cleaned up? There's a stream right over there that doesn't have too much ice floating in it." The droid gurgled. "Maybe later," Luke said. "How have they been treating you?" Mara shrugged. "Ambiguously," she said. "At first I thought I was being held prisoner. But they didn't seem to mind if I moved around the immediate area, so I thought I might have been mistaken. On the other hand, they also wouldn't let me go too far in any direction, and they've still got my lightsaber and the blaster they took from me."

  "Your blaster?"

  "Yes, my blaster," Mara said, putting a drop-it tone into her voice. The aliens had taken both of her main weapons; but they'd missed the tiny backup blaster snugged in its holster against her left forearm. Up till now she hadn't had occasion to use it, but she didn't want Luke announcing its existence, either. "And my lightsaber," she repeated. "So now I'm not sure what's going on."

  "Yes, my Qom Jha guides told me you have trouble understanding them," Luke said. Apparently, he'd gotten the message about the blaster. "It sounds to me like the reason they brought you in here was to keep you safe."

  "I was afraid of that," Mara said, feeling her cheeks warming and hoping the chagrin didn't show. Bad enough that someone had had to come all the way out here to the edge of Unknown Space to rescue her after she walked the side of her head into that rock. Even worse that it had to be Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, who probably had a million better things to do with his time. But for the

  "rescue" to be from what was essentially an impromptu alien baby-sitting service was embarrassing beyond words.

  "Don't worry about it," Luke said quietly.

  She blushed harder. "Blast it, Skywalker, stay out of my mind." She felt his own flush of embarrassment at the unintended intrusion. "Sorry," he apologized. "But I didn't mean it that way. They say they needed to protect you because you were being hunted by the Threateners from the High Tower."

  Mara frowned, her embarrassment abruptly forgotten. "The Threateners?"

  "That's the Qom Jha name for them," Luke said. "Beings similar to us, they say, and allied with the Empire."

  "Terrific," Mara murmured. With her attention these past few days focused on survival and the exploration of her surroundings, the reason why she'd come to Nirauan in the first place had rather been lost in the back of her mind.

  But now it was suddenly back in a rush: the mysterious spaceship she and Luke had spotted skulking around the Cavrilhu Pirate base, and the one that later had buzzed Booster Terrik's private Star Destroyer. Alien beings and alien technology, but with a distinctly Imperial flavor mixed into the design. "So we were right," she said. "They were hunting for Imperials at the Cavrilhu base."

  "It's starting to sound that way," Luke said. "Though don't forget we only have the Qom Jha word for that. We'll need to check it out for ourselves."

  "Um." Mara eyed him. "So they can talk to you, huh?"

  "Through the Force, yes." Luke paused, eyes slightly unfocused as if he were listening to a faint sound. Mara stretched out to the Force herself, but aside from the creatures' normal chirping she could still catch only the familiar almost-voices making almost-words. "You can't hear that?" he asked.

  "Not understandably," Mara admitted. The thought annoyed her almost as much as having to be rescued. "What are they saying?"

  "At the moment, not much," Luke said. "They're waiting for their Bargainer to arrive. I gather from an earlier conversation I had with a group called the Qom Qae that that's the local term for leader or spokesman."

  "Ah." Mara frowned as a ripple of displeasure ran through the almost-voices. "I get the distinct feeling they don't like the Qom Qae very much."

  "Yes, I know," Luke agreed, his tone a little uneasy. "Actually, it may be partially my fault. I think they're displeased that I brought a Qom Qae in here with me."

  "Not necessarily the most politic thing you could have done."

  "He spent the last couple of days guiding me here," Luke said, sounding a little defensive. "He wanted to come inside and see you, and I decided he'd earned that much. Besides, whatever's going on probably concerns both groups."

  "Could be." Mara glanced around them. "Where is this guide of yours?"

  "Up there somewhere," Luke said, playing the beam from his glow rod around the ceiling. Each of the mynocklike Qom Jha twitched as the spot of light passed, shying away from the glare. All except one, a somewhat smaller creature whose leathery hide seemed to be a slightly different color than that of the beings clustered closely around him. Also unlike the others, who hung casually from cracks or bumps in the ceiling, he was perched awkwardly upright on a rock jutting out from the wall. "That him?" Mara asked.

  "Yes," Luke said, holding the light there a moment and then turning it back toward the ground.

  "He's called Child Of Winds."

  Mara nodded, thinking back to her flight in through the deep canyon and all the small caves she'd noticed pockmarking the rock walls along the way. "I take it the Qom Qae are cliff-dwellers?"

  "His nesting is, anyway," Luke said. "His father is also their Bargainer."

  "Friends in high places," Mara said. "That could be handy."

  "I'm not sure 'friends' is exactly the word I would have used," Luke said dryly. "They seem to have made off with my X-wing when I wasn't looking, and Child Of Winds either can't or won't tell me where they took it. It must have taken a whole lot of them to even move it."

  "It did," Mara said with a grimace. "I know because I watched the Qom Jha do the same thing with my Defender, hauling it into the cave to who knows where. Looks like they've got more in common with the Qom Qae than they might like."

  "Actually, your Defender isn't very far away," Luke said. "Artoo and I spotted it on our way in. He gave it a quick scan—it didn't seem to be damaged."

  "That's a relief," Mara said, a small amount of the weight lifting from her back. The Defender might be useless for getting her home, but without it she couldn't even get off the ground. "After everything Karrde went through to get his hands on it, he'd kill me if I lost it. When's he getting here with backup?"

  Luke winced. "Well, to be honest... I told him not to send anyone else." Mara felt her mouth go a little dry. "Did you, now," she said, striving to keep her voice calm. If Luke was starting to slip back into his old omnipotent-Jedi habits... "You don't think the two of us tackling a whole fortress full of unknown enemies is giving us too much of an advantage, do you?" An odd look flicked across his face. "That's not it at all," he protested. "I just didn't think it would be a good idea for a full battle force to come storming into the system. Especially since we didn't know whether or not you were a prisoner."

  "I suppose that makes sense," Mara conceded, the knots untying a little. "I guess that means you don't have a Star Cruiser skulking in the outer system, either?"

  "I doubt the New Republic could spare even an armed t
ransport right now," Luke said, his expression turning grim. "Things are getting very nasty out there."

  "Let me guess. Caamas and the Bothans?"

  "Caamas, the Bothans, and a thousand worlds using Caamas as an excuse to pick up on old grudges against their neighbors," he told her. "And frankly, I'm starting to wonder if there's any way at all of stopping it."

  "That's a cheery thought," Mara growled. "Let's deal with one problem at a time, all right? Starting with confirming these Threateners are the same ones we're looking for. We think we spotted one of those alien ships on its way in when we came out of lightspeed, but it was too far away for a positive identification."

  "Oh, they're the right ones," Luke assured her. "I had two of them escort me in, then try to shoot me down."

  Mara grimaced. "I guess that says whose side they're on."

  "Not necessarily," Luke cautioned. "Or at least, not permanently. We might be able to persuade them—wait a second. The Bargainer's here."

  Mara nodded; she'd already sensed the anticipation flowing ahead of the new arrival. "You're going to have to translate for me," she told him. "I wish I could hear them myself."

  "It would sure make things easier," Luke agreed, forehead wrinkling with thought. "I wonder if—here, give me your hand."

  "My hand?" Mara echoed, frowning, as she extended her left hand toward him.

  "I can sense them," he explained, taking her hand with his right and gripping it firmly, "and we can sense each other. If we can make that link strong enough..."

  "Worth a try," Mara agreed, stretching out to the Force. The aliens' communications were indeed clearer now, like whispered words beneath the chirping just a little too soft to hear. She stretched out harder, frowning with concentration.

  "Let's try this," Luke said, stepping close to her side and turning to face the same direction she was. Shifting her hand from his right to his left, he slipped his right arm around her waist and leaned over to touch the side of his head against hers.