Balance Point Read Free Page B

seized his hand and held tightly.
Hang on, Jacen!
The slope steepened under their feet. Stars extinguished. The Yuuzhan Vong warriors scrambled forward. Whole star clusters winked out, a dark cascade under clawed enemy feet.
    Plainly, the strength of a hundred-odd Jedi couldn’t keep the galaxy from falling to this menace. One misstep—at one critical moment, by one pivotal person—could doom everyone they’d sworn to protect. No military force could stop this invasion, because it was a spiritual battle. And if one pivotal person fell to the dark side—or even used the ravishing, terrifying power of light in a wrong way—then this time, everything they knew might slide into stifling darkness.
    Is that it?
he cried toward the infinite distance.
    Again, Jacen perceived the words in a voice that was utterly familiar but too deep to be Luke’s.
Stand firm, Jacen
.
    One of the Yuuzhan Vong leapt toward him. Jacen gasped and flung out both arms—
    And grabbed a flimsy bedsheet. He lay on his back, on a cot under a corrugated blue synthplas roof. The room was bigger than a refugee shelter. It had to be the medical end of the dome’s hardened control shed.
    “Junior,” another familiar voice drawled. “Hey, there. Glad you could join us.”
    Jacen looked up into his father’s wry half smile. Worry lines crowded Han’s eyes. Behind him, the Ryn named Droma clutched and twisted his soft red and blue cap, and his long mustachios drooped. In recent months, Droma had become his dad’s … what? His friend, his assistant? Certainly not a partner or copilot, but a real presence.
    The settlement’s most valuable droid, a 2-1B medical unit that Han pirated no-one-knew-where, lingered on Jacen’s other side, retracting a flexible breath mask.
    “What happened?” Han looked befuddled. “Hit your head on the way down? Skinny, here—”
    Droma pointed at the droid and finished Han’s sentence. “—wants to dump you into the bacta tank.” Ryn were shrewd observers, perceptive enough to lock into other people’s thought patterns and finish their sentences.
    Han swung toward his friend. “Listen, bristle-face. When I want to say something,
I’ll
say it—”
    “Jaina,” Jacen managed. The back of his skull throbbed in rhythm with his pulse. Evidently he
had
hit it as he fell. He almost opened his mouth to describe what he’d seen, but he hesitated. Han was already confused by Jacen’s emotional paralysis, and the way he’d begged out of the other Jedis’ rescue and fact-finding missions. As hard as Jacen had tried to pull back from Jedi concerns, the Force wouldn’t leave him alone. It was his heritage, his destiny.
    And if the fate of billions rested on a balance point so narrow that one misstep could doom everyone, did he dare even mention his vision until his own path seemed clear? He’d almost gotten himself enslaved once, following a vision into danger. The Yuuzhan Vong had gone so far as to plant one of their deadly coral seeds against his cheekbone. Maybe this time, he’d been given a private warning to steer clear of some dangerous course. Would he know it when it opened up in front of him?
    This vision hadn’t eased his confusion at all.
    “What?” his father demanded. “What about Jaina?”
    Jacen squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to trivialize the Force by using it to ease a headache.
What is it
, he begged the unseen Force,
that you want me to do?
    Or would he cause the next galactic catastrophe by trying to prevent it?
    “We’ve got to contact Rogue Squadron,” Jacen blurted. “I think she’s been hurt.”

CHAPTER TWO
    At the control shed’s other end, a shapely young Ryn female sat near the middle of a wall of mostly dark displays, cradling a child in her lap. The colony’s resident Hutt—Randa Besadii Diori—lay snoozing along the near wall. His long tan-colored tail twitched.
    “Piani.” Han Solo stepped into the main room right behind Jacen. “We need a line out.”
    The smile