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Her last words were drowned in a rising roar. Someone yelled, “Festering hag witch, what in blazes does she know?” and Luke was on his feet, his whole body aflame with rage, not at the man who had shouted insults at his sister but at the man who stood on the dais, just visible beside the glimmering holo, his head bowed in pious resignation and regret.

Luke yelled, “Liar!” but his voice was drowned in other outcries, and before he could draw breath for another shout he realized that to protest that the holo was faked would only reveal his own identity and make it impossible for him to locate Callista. The holo was as much a fake as the cheap sculptures in the niches, holographically altered to resemble family members. For one thing, even before Leia had eliminated the bodyguards, she had never appeared in public with the Noghri. When “Leia” rose from her chair Luke was sure of it: the chair itself was nothing like those in the Borealis’s conference room or indeed anywhere on the executive flagship at all. The crimson robe was one she’d worn on a dozen state occasions over the past few years, easily copied. Luke had never seen it done this effectively, but presumably a really good slicer could get a holo of Leia’s face and alter the movement of the lips to mesh with any voder-modified script.

But all this, he realized, was something he’d learned over the course of years with the Rebellion, years of dealing with the sophisticated technologies and scientific neepery available on Coruscant and its inner worlds. As a kid on Tatooine—and had he grown to adulthood there, as Uncle Owen and Uncle Owen’s friends had—he’d had no more suspicion that truth could be skillfully edited than he’d had the ability to fly.

They believed what they saw.

They believed Seti Ashgad.

And they were furious.

Ashgad was up on the dais artfully giving the impression that he was mollifying the crowd without in any way lessening their outrage. Luke slipped past the synthdroids by the door, crossed through the smaller chamber beyond, his boots making no sound in the carpet, too angry to remain. He was aware of the synthdroids watching him—their Central Control Unit, wherever it was, was undoubtedly programmed with the faces of every Rationalist on the planet. But no one stopped him. He stepped through a pair of long windows to the outside, breathing hard with fury, and made his way through the thickets of blueleaf and aromatic shrubs to the street. The wind had died to a dull hammering with the coming of full darkness. The voices in the dining hall still echoed in his ears, yelling vituperation at his sister.

Beyond the edges of the settlements, the tsils glistened like spikes of ice in the cold-eyed starlight of the wastes. The ground was lustrous with frost, and the cold was like iron. He felt the Force all around him, breathing—waiting.

There were people out there in the waste, not far away. Though they bore no lights he sensed them dimly: eddies, stirrings in the Force. Therans?

Probably. Watching Seti Ashgad’s house.

Release your anger, his father had said. Release your anger.

He had meant it then as a lure, a come-on—use your anger in combat—a fool’s trick.

But now Luke truly released his anger, let go of it: let it rise like steam, to be absorbed and defused by the stars. There was entirely too much anger afoot that night anyway, deliberately being stirred up, raised like a magician raising power back in that house. Rid of it, Luke was able to think clearly again, to ask questions. And the chief question was: What does Seti Ashgad stand to gain?

11

Under pouring rain, the port of Bagsho on Nim Drovis crawled with troops.

Han had alerted the Med Center from orbit that he had fifteen critical cases of radiation sickness on board. Ism Oolos, the Ho’Din physician he’d talked to over subspace, awaited him in the docking bay with an emergency team, surrounded by a squad of uniformed Drovians who seized Han’s arms the minute he came down the Falcon’s ramp, shoved him up against the nearest