Raynar flinched and took a step back.
“You’ll never find him,” he said. “Whatever it is you want from my father, you won’t get it.”
“Perhaps we won’t need to find him, if we’ve found you,” Nolaa said, favoring him with her broadest smile. “And children of the Chief of State, daughter of the House of Hapes—you may serve us well indeed when the Diversity Alliance launches its all-out war against humanity.”
Nolaa’s dark robes flowed around her, obscuring her padded armor, as she stood up. Her tattooed head-tail twitched, and all of the Diversity Alliance soldiers came to attention, sensing their leader’s agitation.
Hovrak still scrambled around on the stone floor, picking up his scattered medals, growling in frustration. He hadn’t quite comprehended yet that Jacen was the cause of his embarrassing clumsiness.
Standing calm and motionless, Jacen fixed his attention on the three deactivated lightsabers lying unattended on the dais. He focused his mind on his own weapon, then on Jaina’s, then on Tenel Ka’s. He knew how they worked, knew how to manipulate them.
Nolaa Tarkona clenched her clawed hands at her sides. Her eyes were like two bright lasers.
Her head-tail twitched.
Her feet were very near the lightsaber handles.
Jacen reached out with his mind … and with a push he pressed all three power studs. An emerald-green blade, an electric-violet one, and then a turquoise one sprang out like spears toward Nolaa Tarkona’s feet.
She reacted with astonishing speed, leaping back. The lightsabers writhed as if they were alive, or possessed. The handles vibrated with power, but so far only the hem of Nolaa’s black robe was slashed and singed.
The guards bellowed at each other, causing an uproar. The Gamorreans appeared confused by this new development. Hovrak bounced to his feet, dropping all of his medals again.
“Jedi powers,” Nolaa said. “They’re using Force tricks!”
The Trandoshan hammered Jaina to her knees. One of the Abyssin knocked Tenel Ka aside.
Raynar shouted, “Leave them alone!”
Raaba hurried forward and carefully but frantically tried to grab the handles of the lightsabers to protect Nolaa Tarkona. One of the guards hurried forward, afraid of the Jedi blades, but knowing he had to do something.
“Kill the human Jedi,” Hovrak snarled. “All of them. It is the only way to prevent such incidents.”
The alien guards brought up their blasters, targeting the young captives. The Diversity Alliance soldiers were clearly ready to follow the Adjutant Advisor’s orders without question.
Jacen stepped forward. “No, wait! We surrender.”
He used the Force again, struggling hard to maintain sufficient concentration—and switched all the lightsabers back off.
The guards looked down at the three handles as if they were Unpredictable poisonous snakes.
Raaba reached forward and gathered them up with a growl.
“Do not kill the humans yet,” Nolaa Tarkona said, breathing heavily to control her anger. “These four are too valuable, and we must plan accordingly.” She fixed them each with an ice-pick stare. “However, I think it would be best if they were to disappear for now.”
“Wait. Please let us talk to Lowie first,” Jacen said. “Just for a few minutes.”
Nolaa pursed her lips in mock regret. “Sadly, Lowbacca must never know of your presence here,” she said. Raaba crossed her arms firmly over her chest and nodded vigorously. She seemed to understand that her present tenuous friendship with Lowie would be damaged if he knew his human friends had come to rescue him-and that Raaba had prevented them from seeing him.
“Lowbacca remains with us,” Nolaa said. “And you, too, will serve the Diversity Alliance. After all the pain and loss humans have visited upon alien species, it is only fitting that you now work to profit the Diversity Alliance. Consider it a form of atonement.” She gestured toward one of the side corridors. “Take them down with the other slaves. They will work in the ryll caverns until we decide how best to use them … or until the work itself kills them.”
The young Jedi Knights struggled as the guards dragged them away from the throne room, but Jacen knew there would be no escape from the spice mines of Ryloth.
10
Nowhere.
For the moment, Zekk had decided to go nowhere.
After his brief encounter with Bornan Thul and the other two bounty hunters, Zekk had made a short hyperspace jump to the vicinity of a small and unremarkable star system. He let the Lightning Rod drift in the laser-sharp blackness of space. The dwarf star itself was the only bright spot of light anywhere near.
Zekk had no appointments, no known destination … and he needed time to think.
For now, this was the perfect spot. No distracting planets or spaceports, no ship traffic. No fields of asteroids littered the area about him.
No gaseous anomalies or nebulas lit the darkness with their multicolored glows. Even the Lightning Rod seemed strangely silent in its operation, as if it were holding its breath to give Zekk time for peaceful introspection.
He welcomed the solitude, since he had a great deal to think through.
Nothing was clear at the moment.
Dimming the lights inside the cockpit, Zekk leaned back in the pilot’s seat to organize his thoughts.
He was satisfied for now with what he had accomplished by planting a tracer on Bornan Thul’s ship. Zekk had been careful to ensure that the remote wouldn’t put Thul at risk. He had set its automated transmitter for delayed activation, to keep other bounty hunters from picking up and identifying the signal before Thul left the area. Also, if Bornan Thul himself became suspicious of the “dud” torpedo and ran an immediate check on his own ship, he would detect nothing. It would be a full two days before the tracer beacon would activate.
That was time enough for Zekk to figure out some way to make Bornan Thul trust him. But he knew it might not be very ‘easy. From what Thul had said, he trusted no one with the “information” he possessed.
Zekk shook his head in irritation. Didn’t Thul realize that holding the information back, that trying to keep it a secret, was more dangerous than simply sharing what he knew with the New Republic?
But what could Thul possibly know that Nolaa Tarkona wanted so desperately? And what kind of knowledge would Bornan Thul hide from both the Diversity Alliance and the New Republic?
Zekk tried hard to piece together what he knew.
Clearly, this whole situation made sense to Nolaa Tarkona and to Bornan Thul. Unfortunately, neither of them had been generous enough to let Zekk in on the secret. Between what he had learned from Fonterrat’s message cube, recorded just before the scavenger had died on the ill-fated colony Gammalin, and what Bornan Thul had let slip during Zekk’s conversations with him, there had to be an answer.
As his ship slowly rotated in the emptiness, a bright streak curved across the unrelenting blackness of space, just a few hundred kilometers in front of the Lightning Rod. A comet, Zekk realized, its long ghostly tail evaporated by the distant warmth of the small sun.
Intrigued, he decided to follow the glowing ball of ice that trailed a ribbon of sparkling vapor behind it.
Zekk watched it for a moment, then set a course in his navicomputer so that the Lightning Rod would parallel the beautiful comet and keep pace with it on its long, slow journey around this solar system. He grimaced at the irony: despite the technology Zekk had at his disposal, the comet seemed to have a stronger sense of direction than he did.
The evaporating ice ball sailed confidently along on its course, needing no one to direct it, no navicomputer to guide it or make course corrections—only the pull of gravity.
A frown wrinkled Zekk’s forehead as he tried to recall something that Fonterrat had mentioned about the navicomputer. Bornan Thul had claimed to have “information” that could put millions of lives at risk. Human lives.