Dengar would never know what had hit him or where Zekk had gone.
7
Aryn Dro Thul stood on the busy bridge of the flagship Tradewyn, gazing out into space. She turned slowly to get the full 360-degree view of her fugitive fleet. A simple gown of midnight blue shot with silver draped around her like the star-dusted vista of space. Her fingers plucked absently at the material of her garment.
Even surrounded by the entire Bornaryn fleet, she felt alone. Her husband was missing, her brother-in-law kidnapped, her son Raynar returned to the Jedi academy.
The merchant fleet looked to her for guidance and reassurance, but Aryn had no one to rely on but herself. As the wife of Bornan Thul, she was their leader, and she could not let them—or herself— down. She would not let them down.
Aryn forced herself to stop fiddling with her gown. She excused the communications officer from his post. Sitting down at the station, she quickly calculated the coordinates for sending a routine message to her staff on Coruscant, composed a dispatch, and set the message pod’s origin memory to scramble as soon as it left the Tradewyn. Taking care of business details like these kept her busy, kept her mind off her own troubles.
Aryn sent a similar message pod every few days to corporate headquarters on Coruscant. The reports were encrypted with a proprietary code, based on a complex combination of music, light, and speech, which Aryn and Bornan had devised together while they were still students at the university on Alderaan, a long time ago.
In this way, she managed to communicate with the fleet’s administrative staff, who also sent out regular messages in encrypted scattershot packets, hoping that the fleet would intercept at least some of them. So far, Aryn had only obtained the messages numbered two, seven, and fifteen. She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders, and launched the new packet with its instructions for the staff and a special note to her son Raynar.
Then Aryn scanned the hyperwave frequency bands in hopes of finding one of the message bursts sent from Coruscant. A minute later, her efforts were rewarded when she located a transmission packet carrying a Thul family identifier. Grateful to finally have some news from headquarters, Aryn quickly retrieved and decoded the message while her navigators and helmsmen calculated a new jump through hyperspace.
Staring off through the viewports while she waited for the usual audio message to begin, Aryn Dro Thul was astonished to see a tiny hologram appear in the air above the comm console.
Bornan Thul, himself.
It was her husband, alive and well! The image of his face seemed thinner, and he wore the rough-woven garb of a Randoni trader, but he seemed healthy.
The figure seemed to stare directly at her as it spoke. “My dear wife and son, I’ve been hiding for so long now that you may have feared me dead. But I am very much alive—for the moment at least. In my tradings I learned of a conspiracy so powerful, so … evil, that the fate of all humanity may depend on its prevention. I can tell you no more without placing your lives in great danger. I will not contact you again until I’m certain this threat is no longer to be feared. I hope I can survive long enough to do it. My thoughts are, as always, only with you.”
The tiny figure raised its hand as if to turn off a recording device, then seemed to think better of it. In a low voice, Bornan Thul added, “Perhaps I have too rarely told you in the past, but I love you both.”
The image dissolved into static.
Silent tears of relief, joy, and loneliness ran in rivulets down Aryn Dro Thul’s face. She reset the holomessage and played it again from the beginning. Lifting a finger to touch the tiny image in front of her, she listened.
Again. And again.
8
For the tenth time Lowie adjusted his crash webbing and rearranged his limbs in the Rising Star’s cramped copilot area—but his fidgeting was due more to nervousness than discomfort. In contrast, Raaba’s movements were spare and confident, like a well-rehearsed dance. Her deft fingers punched in coordinates and flicked switches, preparing for the skimmer’s jump to hyperspace.
Away from Yavin 4, away from his friends at the Jedi academy.
Lowie’s fingers tapped restlessly against one hairy knee, until Raaba told him to relax. He tried folding his hands and leaning back in the seat, but that felt too stiff and awkward. He reached down to check Em Teedee, only to remember that he had left the little droid behind with Jaina on the jungle moon. The tension inside Lowie just had to get out. He jiggled one leg but decided it might irritate Raaba, and so he stopped. He settled for simply crossing his arms over his chest.
It was ironic that Lowie should feel so self-conscious alone with Raaba. She had been his sister Sirra’s friend, but Raaba had always admired him when they were growing up—had even attempted her rite of passage alone because that was the way Lowie had done it.
But now … the chocolate-furred Wookiee seemed different. Poised, independent, self-assured. He was not sure what to make of her anymore. Even the freshly washed strip of red cloth she wore cinched above her ears as a headband made him wonder how well he knew her—or had ever known her. She carried an energy and a sense of direction that he couldn’t help but admire. Lowie supposed anyone would find those qualities attractive.
A tunnel lined with star streaks dilated in front of them as Raaba launched the Rising Star into hyperspace. Lowie shifted his weight and began to assess his agitation and restlessness with detached interest. He had always been confident, too, priding himself on being a deep thinker; he knew he could figure this out. Reason and logic came naturally to him— and he had no rational cause to be nervous, just because Raaba had changed.
In the past, however, deep thought and discussion had not really been something that he and Raaba had shared. Lowie wondered if she had changed in that respect, too. Well, they were going to be in hyperspace for quite a while, so there was no better time to find out. He started the conversation by telling Raaba that it seemed she had done a lot of growing up since they’d known each other on Kashyyyk.
The Wookiee woman found grim amusement in his observation and answered with a bitter growl of laughter. It would have been hard not to grow up after the atrocities she had heard of and witnessed firsthand. She and Lowie had both led sheltered lives in their beautiful tree city on Kashyyyk, she explained. Even the dangers of the lowest forest levels were nothing compared to the barbarous cruelties the alien species of the galaxy had suffered. This was what the Diversity Alliance had taught her. And most of those atrocities had been committed by humans.
That was why the Diversity Alliance was so important as a political force for change, Raaba went on, the passion in her voice rising. The Alliance accepted and championed the rights of all the species who had suffered indignities at human hands. For example, the Empire had never been punished for its enslavement of Wookiees. The Diversity Alliance vowed never to allow such a thing to happen again. All species had been affected by the human-loving Empire’s repression and prejudice, in fact.
Raaba spoke with fire in her voice. Her eyes flashed, and Lowie couldn’t help but realize how large and beautiful those eyes were—or how the shaved patches at her wrists, elbows, and neck contrasted with her luxurious dark fur.
Clearly, Raaba had given some thought to the Diversity Alliance and what it stood for. Lowie was impressed by her spirit and enthusiasm … but also disturbed by the conclusions she drew. Humans were not the only species that had ever mistreated another, he pointed out. Surely she couldn’t believe that all of the ills of the galaxy were the sole responsibility of human beings?