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“Of course. But he’s also been waxing existential of late about the whole war effort. I get the feeling Jos was pretty much apolitical when he was conscripted, maybe even leaning toward war a bit. But I’d say his sensibilities have taken a sharp turn away from the party line since he’s been on Drongar.”

Uli snorted. “Show me one person who hasn’t made that turn.”

“I could have, but he’s dead now. Went out in a blaze of glory, mowing down Separatists and probably, it looks now, preventing an assassination attempt that might have cost the Republic dearly.” Den shrugged. “But he was definitely in the minority. Around here, in fact, he pretty much was the minority.”

“Phow Ji,” Uli said. “The Martyr of Drongar, they’re calling him. HoloNet News is doing a documentary.”

“Of course they are.” For a moment, Den thought about joining Jos in the cantina, for that was surely where the captain was headed. But then Epoh Trebor introduced Eyar Marath, a most comely Sullustan singer and dancer, and he decided to stay for a while longer. Nothing wrong with watching a good-looking fem wearing next to nothing, was there?

Nevertheless, it was hard not to brood on the cosmic injustice of it all. True, Ji was dead and thus unable to enjoy his brief notoriety. But that only deepened the irony as far as Den was concerned.

Ah, well—all fame is fleeting. He watched Eyar Marath prance about the stage, belting out the lyrics of one of the songs that had recently made it onto the Galactic Top 40,000. She was beautiful, of course. She was hot plasma now, but where would she be in ten years? And the band backing her up—what were they called? The Modal Nodes?—were also rocketing high now, but if, twenty years later, they wound up playing for pouch change in a dingy spaceport bar somewhere, he wouldn’t be at all surprised. It was the nature of the business. No matter how bright the spotlight on you, sooner or later it went out.

At that point all the lights in the camp went out.

A surge of panic enveloped the crowd. Den heard cries of shock and surprise, and the uneasy babble of questions. Both he and Uli were small enough to hunker down and roll under the bench, and he was about to tell the young human to be ready to do so if the crowd around them panicked. Better an uncomfortable squeeze than being trampled.

But before he could open his mouth, the emergency generators kicked on, washing away the darkness. Den could see Trebor, Marath, and some other members of the troupe looking about in puzzlement and apprehension.

The collective stir of fear ebbed with the light. But then things got really interesting. Den felt a cold draft touch the back of his neck. Then, in the somewhat-dimmerbut-still-sufficient-to-see lighting, fat white flakes began to drift down upon the gathering. One of them landed on Den’s hand. He stared at it, watched it melt.

Snow.

Holy milking Sith! Snow?

13

Jos had just settled himself at a table in the cantina—he had plenty from which to choose, since nobody else was in the place except the serving droid Teedle—when the lights blinked off. The emergency generators rumbled online and quickly replaced the darkness with a slightly dimmer, more hard-edged lighting.

Now what? he wondered.

Teedle rolled up on her gyroscopic single-wheel platform. “Hey, Doc. What’ll it be? The usual?”

“Sure. Keep ’em coming and—” He stopped, staring at one of the windows. Outside the transparisteel there was some kind of chaff falling. Spores? No, these were too big, and there were too many of them. Anyway, they didn’t look like spore colonies …these were white and flaky, like ash or like…

“Snow?”

Teedle said, “That’s what it looks like, don’t it? And my sensors tell me that the temperature in here is going down faster than an off-duty Ugnaught.”

At her words, Jos noticed it himself. Son-of-a-raitch, it was getting colder. A lot colder.

He stood and headed for the door, Teedle rolling along just behind him.

Outside, he looked up. The force-dome, high overhead, was usually transparent, though sometimes a slight crescent