Balance Point Read Free

bureaucrats and tolerating his wife’s protocol droid, patience clearly wasn’t his strong suit.
    Standing on the dust-beaten lane outside the Solos’ hut, Mezza’s opposing clan leader twisted his own tail between strong hands. The fur on Romany’s forearms, and the tip of his tail, stood out like bleached bristles.
    “So
your
clan,” Han said, pointing at Romany, “thinks
your
clan”—pointing now at Mezza—“is likely to hijack our transport ships and strand everybody else here on Duro? Is that it?”
    Someone at the back of Romany’s group shouted, “I wouldn’t put it past them, Solo.”
    Another Ryn stepped forward. “We were better off in the Corporate Sector, dancing for credits and telling fortunes. At least there we had our own ships. We could hide our children from poisoned air. And even more poisonous … words.”
    Han stuck his hands into his dusty coverall pockets and caught Jacen’s glance. Jacen could almost look him in the eye nowadays.
    “Any suggestions?” Han muttered.
    “They’re just venting their frustrations now,” Jacen observed.
    He glanced up. The gray synthplas dome over their heads had been imported in accordion folds and unfurled over three arched metal struts. The refugees were reinforcing it with webs of native rock fiber, roughly half the colony working double shifts to strengthen the dome and their prefab huts. The other half labored outside, at a pit-mine “reservoir” and water purification site assigned by SELCORE.
    Abruptly Han flung up an arm and shouted, “Hey!”
    Jacen spun around in time to see one young male Ryn somersault out of Romany’s group and crouch for fisticuffs. Two from Mezza’s group body-blocked him with surprising grace. Within seconds, Han was wading into an out-and-out melee that looked too graceful to actually endanger anyone. Ryn were natural gymnasts. They swung their opponents by their bristled tails, hooting through their beaks like a flock of astromech droids. They almost seemed to be dancing, playing, releasing their tensions. Jacen opened his mouth to say,
Don’t stop them. They need to cut loose
.
    At that moment, he collapsed, his chest flashing with fire as if he’d been torn open. His legs burned so fiercely he could almost feel hot shrapnel. The pain blasted down his legs, then into his ears.
    Jaina?
    Joined through the Force even before they were born, he and Jaina had always been able to tell when the other was hurt or afraid. But for him to sense her over the distances that lay between them now, she must’ve been terribly—
    The pain winked off.
    “Jaina!” he whispered, appalled. “No!”
    He stretched out toward her, trying to find her again. Barely aware of fuzzy shapes clustering around him and a Ryn voice hooting for a medical droid, he felt as if he were shrinking—falling backwards into a vacuum. He tried focusing deep inside and outside himself, to grab on to the Force and punch out—or slip into a healing trance. Could he take Jaina with him, if he did? Uncle Luke had taught him a dozen focusing techniques, back at the academy, and since then.
    Jacen
.
    A voice seemed to echo in his mind, but it wasn’t Jaina’s. It was deep, male—vaguely like his uncle’s.
    Making an effort, Jacen imagined his uncle’s face, trying to focus on that echo. An enormous white vortex seemed to spin around him. It pulled at him, drawing him toward its dazzling center.
    What was going on?
    Then he saw his uncle, robed in pure white, half turned away. Luke Skywalker held his shimmering lightsaber in a diagonal stance, hands at hip level, point high.
    Jaina!
Jacen shouted the words in his mind.
Uncle Luke, Jaina’s been hurt!
    Then he saw what held his uncle’s attention. In the dim distance, but clearly in focus, a second form straightened and darkened. Tall, humanoid, powerfully built, it had a face and chest covered with sinuous scars and tattoos. Its hips and legs were encased in rust-brown armor. Claws protruded from