XXVI

The Ebon Hawk slid into existence next to the planet Duro, Carth and Gwen at the helm.

The planet was a quilt of squares: green, yellow, blue and brown patch-working the whole curved surface. The terminator line cut across the middle, and on the dark side noctilucent lights were rare; Gwen saw one circle of yellow globes, like a fairy ring, surely a landing complex in case the vast, lonely network of droid factories needed sentient repair.

The crew had researched this planet on the HoloNet, and so Carth knew to angle the ship toward one of the orbital cities ringing it instead of making for the surface. The cities looked not unlike Ithorian herdships, buildings rising out of a bowl of durasteel and giant repulsor tubes augmented by sublight engines. Sunlight flared off their faceted, gray surfaces.

"Hooking on to a spacelane toward a city above the region the galaxy map indicated," Carth reported.

That, Gwen had learned, was their only possible course of action. No one lived on Duro itself; it was too polluted, and too useful barren.

The space station's skyscrapers rose up around the Hawk as it descended on a landing pad in their midst.

Gwen's choice of companions to accompany her out of the ship was quick and designed to eliminate emotional impact. She settled a strategists' mein around herself like a cloak, just like Anna had shed her general's one in favor of failing discipline. She pointed at Luke for knowledge of the present, Carth for firepower, and Bao-Dur for Force backup, and marched down the ramp toward the streets of the orbiting city. The three followed before anyone could protest. The one person who lingered at the ramp, leaning against a bulkhead and wringing her hands, was Mission. Gwen paused to meet the Twi'lek's eyes.

"Gwen," Mission asked, "Do you think we're going to see Captain Solo again?"

"Maybe, "was the truthful answer. "Why?"

"He was nice to have around, that's all. We played cards once. He was a good guy."

"Yeah." I didn't know that you were fond of him, Mission. Maybe you talked to him instead of me? And that's not just self-deprecation. It's something I need to work on. She turned partly away, tightened her collar against her neck. "I'll be back, Mission." Then Gwen turned away before her friend could, and was swept away into the crowds of the city.

This crew, Gwen knew, needed to hold together. More quietude could increase their comradery, as possibly could more battles; she didn't know the chemistry between all of these soldiers from varied times.

She had only begun to be lonely–for anyone except Carth anyway–when Anna found her on Dantooine. Afterward, when Gwen's thoughts could have returned to her allies, she'd been too occupied with the new, future world–and with Carth–to think about 'family' dynamics. She needed to, when this mission was over, so that her crew was a team more than they were now.

On the fringes of the spaceport, a market spread like a web. Its mein was like that of a gregarious open-air market on a much less technologically advanced world, although girders and transparisteel separated the sky from space above. Plastic tables sat along the sides of the footpath in front of row houses, each manned by a person and piled high with goods. Oval Duros eyes watched over beaded clothes and bags, or datapads and speeder parts. Humans hawked datapads. A Balosar lifted his husky voice in praise of the meat kabobs he held aloft, oil dripping down his hand.

Gwen could not help looking around the market and wondering why they had to land in such a chaotic and possibly disreputable part of the city. Carth gripped her elbow as a group of bald-pated Duros children speaking enthusiastically among themselves in their bubbly voices pushed past the four offworlders, and she thought that he wanted to protect her from pickpockets. But he pointed subtly at the children and laughed at their gregariousness. Luke moved ahead of them, scanning the crowd and then a table. Gwen had walked on a few steps, following Carth's gaze and diluting her stress with his happiness. He likes children, she thought, He is less accustomed to soldiery than I am, even though I would never have guessed he didn't feel more comfortable with it, in the beginning. While I was a Jedi stoic, he had a family. He loved Morgana and Dustil. And I...think I need to know what a love like that is like. But words could not quite express the feeling that made her lips turn up and her hand slide to Carth's.

"Look!" Luke rushed back to her through the crowd, eyes bright. Awe dropped years from his features. "Look, Master Gwen!" He jogged to a stop in front of her.

"What is it?"

"Look at that!" His voice was loud, but so was the rest of the crowd. He pointed at a nearby table. "Isn't that what we're here for?"

On the table to their right, cheap baubles caught dull light. In front of the transparent models of solar systems hunched plastic decorations in the shape of crystals. Four of the things were pink-tinted and gaudy. The fifth was identical to the shard of technology-infused crystal which Gwen had at her waist in a pouch.

"Is that," she breathed, cutting off her initial skeptic reply, and trailed off.

"It is!" Luke assured her. "I told you the Force would bring us what we needed!"

"Wait." Gwen approached the table, picked up the crystal and met the heavy-lidded eyes of the Duros behind the table. She poked the stone with her nails, felt it solid and cold under the pads of her fingers. Crystal indeed, certainly not plastic.

"Fourteen credits," the Duros burbled in Basic.

"Where did you get this?" Gwen asked it.

"Salvage. All very official suppliers of course. From the surface of our lovely planet. It's genuine rock, not like these other ones." The gray-green hand swept dispassionately over the four false stones.

Gwen thought about it for a moment, then glanced at eager Luke and her silent companions. "I'll take it."

She handed over her money, and was given the crystal in a plastic box. Gwen handed it to Bao-Dur when they had walked a few steps away from the vendor. "Take this to the ship, please," she said. "See if it works with the navicomputer."

"Yes, Master." He received it in cupped, disparate hands, but did not yet move, stalled by the next exchange..

Gwen felt a poke at her shoulder. "Hey." She turned to find the Duros merchant standing at the corner of his table and pulling his hand back from her, purplish gaze lolling between her and Luke. His first word was not Basic, but then he managed, "Isn't he the Rebel boy?"

A Sluissi merchant next to the Duros had fished a datapad out from a pile of them and displayed a wanted poster, issued by the Empire, complete with a blurry image of Luke.

"No," Gwen asserted.

"They say I look like him all the time, though–" Still wide-eyed, Luke stopped speaking in time to backhand a Duros who was approaching him from behind, greed in his sense–

Luke's knuckles struck the alien between its eyes. When it flung out its arms in surprise, the crowd parted too. Shouts rose up as Luke turned, ready for the next attack. But not everyone in the marketplace was in on the sudden grab for fame and bounty money. Gasps and screams cut through the nearby air as the quick Duros fighter punched and Luke blocked close to his own face. People began to mill; and the serpentine, green-skinned Sluissi slithered forward as if to protect his merchandise.

Gwen raised her hands, weaponless but ready to call whatever would send most civilians running in the opposite direction, away from Luke's attackers. Her voice carried. "Official business! Stay calm. Leave this area!" Although whatever the officials were here, they probably weren't human, and most of the Duros were taller than her, some of the members of the crowd heeded her cries and eddied toward side streets. But others gawked, forming a thick circle of living bodies around Luke and his foes.

Both of them were still unarmed. Luke pushed the Duros away ungracefully, the Suissi undulating forward and the second Duros pushing through the unresisting crowd to get closer to them. A group of friends, bound together by greed–

"Bao-Dur!" Luke shouted. "Get back to the ship." Gwen knew exactly what the younger Jedi was trying to say–that the crystal was more important than he was.

Bao-Dur, a good soldier, followed orders and started to jog back toward the spaceport.

"No it's not," Gwen muttered to herself– I won't lose one of my family members. She stepped toward Luke. A moment later new, distinct presences separated themselves from the crowd; intent, firm minds coming her way, and out of the corners of her eye she saw the dull white of stormtrooper armor.

She turned, determined to stop them before they too attempted to detain Luke. Mindtricks would work nicely.

The Sluissi was unarmed, but he brought his leathery, flat tail to bear in a slap that whooshed through the air above Luke's head. The Jedi ducked, and scanned the streets for somewhere to run to, finding only one crowded street and a thick-bodied Duros who did in fact have a blaster–and I don't have a lightsaber!

He flung the blaster out of the alien's hand with the Force, then hit the Sluissi in the face with it. Luke jumped out of the way of the Sluissi's return and clumsy swing, and put an abandoned wares table between himself and the three opportunistic bounty hunters. The second Duros was scrabbling for the dropped blaster as the crowd surged backwards, spooked by the firearm even if they hadn't noticed the Force power too. Luke kicked the table over, spilling electronic devices over the crouching Duros, who raised his long-fingered hands to protect his shoulders.

I don't want to hurt them, they're just people–so Luke took the only escape route available. He found a foothold on the windowsill of the three-story building behind him and pushed himself up, then grabbed hold of an aesthetic outjut of metal and used it just as he had used vines to climb on Dagobah. He pulled himself up, and had scaled halfway up the cliff that the house had become before he sensed a prickle of danger, a blaster trained on his back. He summoned the Force, pushed down on his hands and somersaulted onto a white, baked-tarmac roof studded with flat coolant vents. Thin blue energy fields protected a leafy, green garden on the far corner of the building.

The Sluissi's scaly head poked up over the corner of the roof that Luke had just vacated. Luke backpedaled as it pushed itself up with its muscular tail. Luke spun, and ran to the opposite edge of the roof, expecting a maze of streets in which to loose his pursuers and get back to the Hawk.

That was not the sight that greeted him. The floating city itself ended here and all streets ended too, replaced by the oval caps of repulsor pods, and then a shimmering field of energy which was the only thing separating the habitable city from inky space. If he jumped down there, the distance and radiation or other energies would prove fatal even if the impact didn't.

The stormtroopers were easy to turn around, the Duros easy to stun with their own blaster, but the Sluissi had disappeared onto the roof. Outjuts made easy handholds--Gwen began to scramble up after the Luke and the last remaining bounty hunter, propelling herself with the Force so that sometimes her fingers barely touched the smooth surface of the residence's walls.

At the moment that she gained the roof she saw the Sluissi corner Luke at the far side of the flat roof, tail waving threateningly beside it. Words she couldn't quite hear flew between them. Then the Sluissi lashed out with a hand. Luke slipped backward and disappeared off the edge of the roof.