Balance Point (16 page)

Jacen spotted Randa, pushing out through the assembled crowd toward the hydroponics area.

He sprinted to intercept the Hutt. “What are you doing?” he demanded softly. “Get back to the gate and stay put!”

“I will lock down the food supply, against our return.”

“Dad’s got a Vuvrian crew working on that. Go on, get back.”

“If you try to give me orders, young Jedi, you will regret it.”

Jacen shifted his approach. “Not orders, Randa. We need you. Please do it our way. Help keep those people from wandering away from the gate. If they do, we’ll have a stampede when the crawlers get here.”

Muttering a retort, the Hutt turned tail and slithered back toward the gate.

Jacen took a deep breath and looked over the Ryn area. Other than Randa, the alert was going well, with
the last families donning gear and proceeding toward the gate area—except for the swat team, still hard at work atop its ERD-LL droid. Close to the Vor quarter, a dribble of gray haze started flowing from the area thickest with moths. The colony’s breach siren sounded, a low electronic moan. The hindmost Vors, still emerging from their huts, shrieked and erupted forward, a mass of slender limbs and long faces. Jacen sprinted toward them.

The forefront of the charging contingent hit him and spun him against a rough mud-brick surface. Winded, he took a few deep breaths. Then he spotted a Vor without a breath mask. “Here!” he shouted, tossing his own.

The delicate-looking creature jammed the mask over his pointed face and pushed on.

Then he spotted another gray dribble. Moths skittered away from the second breached spot, settled closer to a strut, and started chewing again.

Jacen hoped Duro’s atmosphere would kill the creatures. He grabbed his comlink. “Dad?”

“Gateway’s here, Junior. Bring ’em on.”

“Copy that.”

Jacen thumbed off the link and pressed away from the wall. One of the Vors staggered and fell. A Ryn bounded up and gathered the slender female into his arms.

Two Vors turned around, shouted something, and grabbed their kinswoman back from the Ryn.

“Thanks.” Jacen clapped the Ryn on one shoulder. “Go on, go ahead. I’ll bring up the rear.” He scrambled up onto a roof and got one good look.

The entire colony had streamed out onto the lanes, pressing toward the gate like fizzbrew against a bottle cap. Some stragglers were spinning around, pointing up at the two—now three—breached spots, ducking and cowering like ten-year-olds with a crystal snake loose in
their quarters. A gray cloud boiled down over the Vors’ huts. Jacen caught a whiff of Duro’s ghastly odor, the concentrated stench of thousands of abandoned Imperial war factories. He held a fold of his vest over his mouth while he strode toward the gate.

A Ryn met him, wearing a full chem suit and mask. “What else do you need?” it wheezed in Romany’s voice.

“Has anyone checked your people’s shelters? If we leave anyone behind, asleep, they might miss the ride out.”

Romany pulled two hefty adults out of line to assist him, then demanded the chem suits of a less muscular pair. “We’re going back,” he explained. “We could be here for a while. Go on, get on board!”

The others protested. Jacen left them to their argument and pressed back into the control shed.

Randa and the comm tech were gone. Jacen peered out the viewbubble. Outside, five enormous idling vehicles reminded him of hydroponics tanks laid side to side and joined over three axles, each of their knobby tires bigger than five refugee huts. Flexible cofferdams had been extended to three of them. Colonists wearing full suits streamed away from the boarding tubes through Duro’s perpetual fog, toward the farthest vehicle, directed by similarly suited SELCORE personnel.

He pushed out of the shed, into the mob.

More SELCORE crewers had taken control of the boarding area, directing refugees forward. To Jacen’s dismay, Randa slithered forward, knocking down Ryn and humans in his rush to reach the gate.

“Hey!” Han’s voice rose. Jacen spotted him standing on a stack of crates. “Back off, Randa! Push like that and you’ll be the last one on board!”

The Hutt drove on, parting the wave of refugees like one of Lando’s cruise ships at full throttle.

Han drew a blaster. “Hold it right there, Randa. If I let you do this, there’s no stopping anyone.”

Randa halted, glaring back over his shoulder. Refugees paused to help up the ones Randa had bowled over, then streamed around him.

Jacen spotted a young mountain of belongings alongside the gate, and an officious-looking Twi’lek in a SELCORE chem suit directing refugees to drop their bundles before he let them pass.

Jacen sidled alongside the SELCORE man. “Look,” he murmured, “these people have hardly got anything left to call their own. Don’t beggar them all over again—”

The Twi’lek spread his pale hands. “We will send back for your belongings. For now, saving life is our priority—wait! What’s that?”

An elderly human woman clutched one hand to her chest and supported her husband with her other arm. Something black and furry stuck up out of the woman’s bunched coat. The Twi’lek seized the coat and fingered it open. A furry bundle clung to the woman, splaying four scrawny limbs against her tunic. Jacen recognized a young whisperkit, betrayed by one quivering ear.

“Sorry,” the Twi’lek grunted. “Don’t know how you got a pet this far, but it can’t come aboard.”

The woman’s blue-gray eyes thickened. “Sir, we’re keeping it safe for our grandson. He’s with the Fifth Fleet, and we promised—”

Saving life. Priority. The galaxy, teetering on a balance point the size of one frightened whisperkit.

Jacen shoved forward and tugged the Twi’lek’s fingers off the woman’s coat. “If we don’t see it, it isn’t here.” He turned around and glared at the SELCORE official. “How much,” he muttered, “does a whisperkit eat or
breathe, compared with what leaving it here would do to morale?”

The Twi’lek set his knobby jaw. “What whisperkit?”

Jacen backed away. The Duro-stink grew stronger with every breath. The last mixed mob of Ryn and Vuvrians pressed forward, dropping bundles in their haste to reach the cofferdams. The final refugees trampled the bundles.

Droma flicked Han a salute. “That’s everybody, Solo.”

Han lowered his blaster. “Go on, Randa. Jacen? Stun him if he gives you trouble, but don’t leave him here.”

Jacen followed the fuming Hutt up the near crawler’s boarding ramp as Han sprinted past. Randa halted just inside the hatch, blocking Jacen’s way.

Three SELCORE crewers loped up behind Jacen. “Come on,” one urged. “We’re moving out.”

“Randa,” Jacen shouted. “Farther in!”

The Hutt turned his head, rumbling angrily. “Your father said I would be the last one on board. So this crawler is full.”

Something pushed Jacen from behind. He fell over Randa’s surprisingly solid body. The Hutt’s muscular tail whipped around, flinging several Ryn against other refugees. One fell senseless.

Jacen thumb-checked the stun setting on his confiscated blaster, leveled it at the Hutt, and fired. Randa drooped. Hoots, whistles, and muffled applause broke out on board.

Something dug into Jacen’s ribs. “Nice going,” Jaina growled.

He exhaled. “Glad you’re aboard.”

“What was that about not being aggressive?”

“He was hurting people.” Jacen returned the blaster to his belt. “And I wasn’t using the Force.”

“And the Yuuzhan Vong aren’t hurting people? So they shouldn’t be stopped with everything we’ve got?”

Ignoring her sarcasm, Jacen braced himself against the hatch. The crawler started to vibrate.

“Everybody get steady,” he shouted. “This road’s a little rough.”

As the crawler lurched along, the warmth and odor of several hundred none-too-clean bodies—compounded by nervous sweat—made Jacen wrinkle his nose. He felt lucky to be next to a hatch. He’d be one of the first off.

“Lovely,” Jaina murmured. “Where’s my breath mask?”

At the far end of the hold, someone started singing. Singly and in groups, Ryn joined the melody, some whistling harmonies through their perforated beaks. Jacen didn’t need words to recognize a traveling song. The perennial outcasts were moving on to their next adventure.

His comlink chirruped. “Excuse me,” he said to the Ryn he elbowed while raising it to his mouth. “Sorry,” he told the one he shoved while trying to steady himself. “Jacen Solo,” he said.

“Crew deck here. You’re the one who called over?”

“Affirmative.”

“Tell me again what caused the breach. All I’ve got is a report that sounds like miniature mynocks.”

“Didn’t someone get you a sample?”

“Not if you don’t have one.”

“I don’t.” Jacen explained as little as possible. When he got to the point about the moth creatures pupating on the outside of sleeping huts, there was a long silence.

He flicked the comlink. “Crew deck, did you get that? They’re singing in here, and—”

“Copy,” a voice that hadn’t spoken before said. “We’re calling ahead, about decontamination.”

The refugees close enough to hear Jacen’s comlink turned their heads.

“Believe me,” Jacen said, “nobody brought a pupa.”

“Not deliberately,” the comlink voice said, “but one egg, stuck to one hairy Ryn, will restart the cycle—and our dome’s taller than yours. Put a flock of moths up there out of reach, and you’ll bring down the whole operation.”

Jacen clutched the link, leaning against Jaina and swaying with the crawler’s motion. Other than Randa, most of the other passengers at this end of the cavernous hold seemed to be Ryn. If Jacen couldn’t have told that by looking, he could’ve figured it out by the odor. If it bothered him, it must be driving the Ryn out of their minds. Several of them had raised their arms and were rotating in place, actually dancing.

Jacen murmured into the comlink, “Ryn are almost compulsively clean. There won’t be white-eye eggs or anything else on them.”

“Maybe you’re convinced,” the crewer said. “A furred species is tricky to decontaminate. We’ve got a sealable refugee processing area inside Gateway dome. Only problem is, we don’t have any UniFumi stockpiled—SELCORE usually ships their decontam chemicals with every boatload of refugees. High-energy irradiation would work, but it could cause skin damage. And low-energy lamps won’t get through fur. So they’re going to have two choices. We can strip-and-dip everybody in med-lab disinfectant, but I can’t guarantee that won’t make them sick. Or we can shave and irradiate.”

The Ryn next to Jacen honked softly. He turned aside and muttered to three others.

“Isn’t there something else?” Jacen asked, uncomfortably aware that he was surrounded by several hundred sleep-deprived Ryn, who’d just left all their belongings behind—again.

“We can separate out the Vuvrians and Vors,” the voice continued. “Hairless folks can zip through a fast irradiation, and we’ll send them on their way.”

Jacen curled against the hatch. “Why are you asking me? Where’s Captain Solo?”

“He seems to have lost his comlink. You’re next in charge.”

Jacen thumbed off the comlink, hoping SELCORE’s administration would come up with a better idea. The engine thrummed rhythmically under his feet. Some of the Ryn were now stamping out that rhythm as others sang. Jacen flexed his knees, swaying against Jaina.

“That doesn’t sound good,” she muttered.

The comlink chirped again. “Solo?”

He raised it. “Here.”

“We’ve got word from someone named Mezza. They’re refusing to be dunked in med-lab juice, not that I blame them.”

“Me, neither,” Jacen said. “And don’t discriminate against Ryn. Whatever goes for them, goes for Vors and Vuvrians and humans. And the Hutt,” he added, glancing down. Randa had curled up in a bulbous spiral.

The song ended. Someone started a new one. Two verses later, Jacen got another announcement via comlink.

“Finally found the other Solo. He says fair’s fair, same treatment for everybody.”

Well done, Dad
. Jacen murmured to Jaina, “I don’t care if they shave me.”

“Me, neither. I’ve seen buzz-cut female pilots.”

When the shaking and thrumming died away, something clanged against the hatch. Jacen tried to move back. The mob behind him pushed in the opposite direction. He braced against a bulkhead. Fortunately, the crew had moved a ramp up to the hatch, so when it opened, he didn’t fall headlong. Crewers called commands, directing the debarking refugees to fan out and keep moving. Ryn streamed around the prone Hutt.

The crawlers had been driven inside a mammoth metal room, larger than many docking bays and sealed off from the rest of the dome. A chem-suited crewer waved Jacen and Jaina aside, so they headed for an elevated platform—and spotted their father on his way to the same spot, trading shoves with Droma. Other Gateway crewers directed the new refugees toward a fenced area, where still others scurried around, laying something out on the ground. The noise level rose steadily, Vors and humans and Vuvrians and Ryn all talking at once.

Through a bay door that resealed instantly, there whirred a small ground-effect vehicle marked ADMINISTRATION. Four figures sat inside, wearing brilliant orange chem suits and full helmeted masks. Jacen appreciated their situation. Like the crewers, anybody who joined them in quarantine would face decontamination. But why hadn’t they just set up a holoprojector?

Then he got a feeling about that vehicle.

Incredulous, he nudged Jaina. She’d been right here. Here, all along. At Gateway!

Jaina nudged him back. They turned toward one another so each one could watch their father with side vision.

The second-smallest of the three orange-suited figures jumped out of the vehicle. Her face was shrouded, but her determined gait was unmistakable, and Jacen felt her
through the Force. Her smaller shadow had to be one of the Noghri.

Han and Droma strode up. Han looked half-ready to send Droma flying. “No, they don’t have repulsor combs. We’re just going to have to do this—”

“The hard way?” Droma interrupted. “What do you care, if they take off that little patch of fur on top of your empty head? Do you have any idea how
cold—
”