Star Wars Balance Point

Jacen Solo stood with his father outside the mud-block refugee hut they were sharing on Duro. Jacen's brown coveralls had accumulated a layer of grit and dust, and his wavy, dark-brown hair fell over his ears, not quite long enough to pull back in a tail. Under a translucent gray dome, tension wrapped around him like a Zharan glass-snakeinvisible, but so palpable through the Force that he could almost feel its coils constrict. Something was about to happen. He could feel it coming when he listened through the Force. Something vital, but . . . What? A Ryn femalevelvet-furred with a spiked mane, her tail and forearm bristles graying with agestood talking to Jacen's dad, Han Solo. "Those are our caravan ships," she bellowed, waving her hands. "Ours." She snorted, and the breath whonked through four holes in her chitinous beak. Han swung around, narrowly missing Jacen with his left arm. "And right at this moment, we can't afford to take them offworld to run systems checks. You've been in a restricted area, Mezza." Splashes of red-orange fur highlighted Mezza's soft taupe coat. Her blue tail tip trembled, a gesture Jacen had learned to interpret as impatience. "Of course we've been in the ship lot," she snapped. "There's never been a security fence Ryn couldn't get inside, and those are our caravan ships. Ours." She tapped her threadbare vest, which covered an ample chest. "And don't tell me to trust you, Captain. We do. It's SELCORE we don't trust. SELCORE, and the people up there." She waved her arm skyward. Han's mouth twitched, and seventeen-year-old Jacen could almost feel him trying not to laugh. Jacen's dad could sympathize with refugees making unofficial reconnaissances, especially on board their own ships. But Han was in charge, now. Instead of showing his amusement, he was supposed to enforce SELCORE regulationspublicly, at least, for the sake of a few juvenile offenders. He and Mezza would undoubtedly settle the real issues later, in private. So Han plunged back into the argument. Jacen watched the show, trying to pick up one more piece of the puzzle he felt in every cell of his being. Trained as a Jedi and unusually perceptive, he could tell that the Force was about to move. To shift. This time, he didn't dare miss the clues. His right cheekbone twinged. He touched it self-consciously, then swept his hair back from his face. It needed cutting, but no one here cared what he looked like. His legs were still growing, his shoulders broadening. He felt like an awkward hybrid of trained Jedi and barely grown boy. He leaned against his hut's outer wall and stared out over his new home. The dome had been engineered by SELCORE, the New Republic Senate Select Committee for Refugees, to hold a thousand settlers. Naturally, twelve hundred had been squeezed in. Besides these outcast Ryn, there were several hundred desperate humans, delicate Vors, Vuvrians with their enormous round headsand one young Hutt. And the relentless Yuuzhan Vong kept sweeping across the galaxy, destroying whole worlds, enslaving or sacrificing planetary populations. Lush Ithor, lawless Ord Mantell, and Obroa-skai with its fabulous librariesall had fallen to the merciless invaders. Hutt space and the Mid Rim worlds along the Corellian Run were under attack. If the Yuuzhan Vong could be stopped, the New Republic hadn't figured out how. Han Solo stood with his left hand on his hip, arguing with Mezza, who led the larger of two Ryn clan remnants, but keeping one eye on the transgressors, a group of youths about JaceTyers, Kathy is the author of 'Star Wars Balance Point', published 2001 under ISBN 9780345428585 and ISBN 0345428587.