SEVEN

Down in the valley, the Taat were scavenging along the floodplain, their thoraxes glowing green in Jwlio’s hazy light. With the rest of their foraging territory brown and withering from a Chiss defoliant, the workers were stripping the ground bare, leaving nothing in their wake but rooj stubble and mud. It was a desperate act that would only deepen their famine in the future, but the insects had no choice. Their larvae were starving now.

In the midst of such poverty and hardship, Jaina Solo felt more than a little guilty eating green thakitillo, but it was the only thing on the menu tonight. Tomorrow, it would be brot-rib or krayt eggs or some other rarity more suitable to a state dinner than a field post, and she would eat that, too. The Taat would be insulted if she did not.

Jaina spooned a curd into her mouth, then glanced around the veranda at her companions. They were all seated on primitive spitcrete benches, holding their bowls in their laps and using small Force bubbles to keep the dust at bay. Despite the gritty winds raised by the tidal pull of Qoribu—Jwlio’s ringed gas giant primary—the group usually took their meals outdoors. No one wanted to spend more time than necessary in the muggy confines of the nest caves.

After the curd had dissolved, Jaina tapped her spoon against the bowl. “Okay,” she asked. “Who’s responsible for this?”

One by one, the others raised their gazes, their faces betraying various degrees of culpability as they examined their thoughts over the last week or so. Shortly after arriving, the team had discovered that whenever they talked about a particular food, the Taat would have a supply delivered within a few days. Concerned about squandering their hosts’ limited resources, Jaina had ordered the group to avoid talking about food in front of the Taat, then to avoid mentioning it at all.

Finally, Tesar Sebatyne flicked up a talon. “It may have been this one.”

“May have been?” Jaina asked. “Either you said something or you didn’t.”

Tesar’s dorsal scales rose in the Barabel equivalent of a blush. “This one said nothing. He thought it.”

“They can’t eavesdrop on thoughts,” Jaina said. “Someone else must have slipped.”

She glanced around the group, waiting. The others continued to search their memories, but no one recalled talking about food.

Finally, Zekk said, “I’m just happy it’s thakitillo instead of some skalrat or something.” Seated on a bench next to Jaina, he wore his black hair as long and ragged as he had in his youth, but that was all that remained the same. A late growth spurt had turned him into something of a human giant, standing two meters tall, with shoulders as broad as Lowbacca’s. “I thought Barabels liked to catch their own food.”

“When we can, but this one was thinking of our last meal aboard Lady Luck, and he alwayz tastes thakitillo when he rememberz Bela and Krasov and…” Tesar trailed off and glanced briefly in Jaina’s direction, quietly acknowledging the bond of grief they had come to share through the Myrkr mission. “…the otherz.”

Even that gentle reminder of her brother’s death—even seven years later—brought a pained hollow to Jaina’s chest. Usually, her duties as a Jedi Knight kept her too busy to dwell on such things, but there were still moments like these, when the terrible memory came crashing down on her like a Nkllonian firestorm.

“So maybe the Taat are eavesdropping on our thoughts,” Tahiri said, bringing Jaina’s attention back to the present. “If we’re sure no one said anything, that has to be it.”

Lowbacca let out a long Wookiee moan.

“I suppose we will have to avoid thinking about food,” Jaina agreed. “We’re Jedi. We can’t keep eating like Hutts while the Taat larvae starve.”

“It certainly takes the fun out of it,” Alema Rar agreed. The Twi’lek slipped a spoonful of thakitillo into her mouth, then bit into a curd and curled the tips of the long lekku hanging down her back. “Well, most of the fun.”

Zekk ate a spoonful, then asked, “Does it bother anyone that they’re listening to our thoughts?”

“It should,” Jaina replied. “We should feel a little uneasy and violated, shouldn’t we?”

Alema shrugged. “Should is for narrow minds. It makes me feel welcome.”

Jaina considered this for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “Same here—and valued. Zekk? You brought it up.”

“Just asking,” he said. “Doesn’t bother me, either.”

“I feel the same,” Tekli agreed. The furry little Chadra-Fan twitched her thick-ended snout. “Yet we avoid the battle-meld now because we dislike sharing feelings among ourselves.”

“That’s different,” Tahiri said. “We get on each other’s nerves.”

“To put it mildly,” Jaina said. “I’ll never forget how that blood hunger came over me the first time Tesar saw a rallop.”

“Or how twisted inside this one felt when Alema wanted to nest with that Rodian rope-wrestler.” Tesar fluttered his scales, then added, “It was a week before he could hunt again.”

Alema smiled at the memory, then said, “Nesting wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Lowbacca banged his bowl down on the bench next to him, groaning in distaste and weary resignation. After the war, Jaina and the other strike team members had begun to notice unexplained mood swings whenever they were together. It had taken Cilghal only a few days to diagnose the problem as a delayed reaction to the Jedi battle-meld. Their prolonged use of it on the Myrkr mission had weakened the boundaries among their minds, with the result that now their emotions tended to fill the Force and blur together whenever they were close to each other.

Sometimes Jaina believed the side effect was also the reason so many strike team survivors found it difficult to move on with their lives. Tenel Ka was doing well as the Hapan queen, and Tekli and Tahiri seemed to regard Zonama Sekot as both a friend and a home, but the rest of them—Jaina, Alema, Zekk, Tesar, Lowbacca, even Jacen—still seemed lost, unable to maintain a connection with anyone who had not been there. Jaina knew that was why she had failed to reconnect with Jagged Fel during their desperate rendezvous when he had still been serving as Chiss liaison to the Galactic Alliance. She loved him, but she’d just grown increasingly distant from him. From everyone, really.

Sensing that she had let her dour mood affect the others, Jaina forced a smile. “I do have some good news,” she said. “Jacen is coming.”

As she had hoped, this lifted spirits instantly—especially those of Tahiri, who shared a special kinship with Jacen by virtue of the time they had spent in Yuuzhan Vong torture dens.

But it was Alema—always quick to take an interest in males—who asked, “Can you tell how soon?”

“It’s hard to say,” Jaina answered. No one bothered to ask if she had actually spoken to her twin brother; there was no HoloNet in the Unknown Regions—and even if there had been, they were too close to the Chiss frontier to risk being overheard by a listening post. “But it feels like he’s made it past whatever was delaying him.”

“How will he find the Colony?” Tahiri asked. Though she could certainly sense Alema’s interest in Jacen as clearly as Jaina did, she seemed more amused by it than irritated. “Tekli and I would have been lost without Zonama Sekot’s help.”

“I left a message for him with the coordinates of the Lizil nest,” Jaina said. “So, assuming he tries to comm…”

She let the sentence trail off when she felt a sudden alarm. The sense did not ripple or grow or rise. It simply appeared inside Jaina, instantly full-blown and strong, and at first she thought she was feeling something inside her brother. Then bowls of thakitillo began to clack down on the spitcrete benches, and her companions started to rise and reach for their lightsabers.

“You feel it, too?” Jaina asked no one in particular.

“Fear,” Zekk confirmed. “Surprise.”

Lowbacca rawwled an addition.

“Resolve, too,” Jaina agreed.

“What the blazes?” Tahiri asked. “It’s like the Taat were a part of the meld, too.”

“Maybe they’re more Force-sensitive than we thought,” Alema suggested.

Jaina gazed around, searching the faces of her companions for any indication that the sensation had felt even remotely like a normal Force perception to someone else. She found only looks of confusion and doubt.

A familiar rumble rose deep inside the nest. Long plumes of black smoke began to shoot from the exhaust vents above the hangar cave, then a cloud of dartships poured into the air above the valley and began to climb toward Qoribu’s ringed disk.

“Looks like another defoliator squad coming in.” Jaina was almost relieved as she started toward their own hangar. After the unexpected feeling of alarm, she had feared something worse. “Let’s turn ’em back.”