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The warm, boyish, husky voice coming to him from the recording, the gray eyes in the ghostly oval of her face.

I’m sorry, Luke …

The shuttle deck of the Borealis was quiet. Only a few security officers stood around the antiquated Seinar system brig that had brought Seti Ashgad over from the Light of Reason, talking with the brig’s graying, downtrodden-looking pilot, their white-and-silver ceremonial blaster rifles slung on their backs. Ashgad had arrived with only his secretary, his pilot, and three synthdroids; and Luke could have reassured his sister’s guards that it was not physically possible for a Seinar brig to carry more than six humans. Seinar brigs—particularly the old H-10s like that one—were the staple of small-system personnel transport. Luke had taken apart and put together enough of them in his youth on Tatooine to know there wasn’t a compartment big enough to tuck a Ranat into, let alone anything human or human size.

The vessel was in good shape, but the metal was patched, pitted, and old. If Seti Ashgad, who according to Leia was one of the wealthiest men on Nam Chorios, could obtain no better, it was little wonder he was willing to join up with the Rationalist Party to try to better conditions on the planet.

He turned the message in his fingers again.

The music box, a cheap and ingenious mechanical contraption without a chip in it, had been forwarded from Atraken, but analysis of the peculiar crystalline dust beneath the nailheads securing the panel behind which the message had been found had revealed that it had been put together on Nam Chorios.

Callista was on Nam Chorios.

Or had been, when she sent the message.

Artoo tweeped again, more quietly. Artoo-Deetoo was the only droid Luke had ever encountered who seemed to be able to sense human moods. See-Threepio would catch on eventually if the problem were translated into binary and jacked at full-blast into his receptors—and would then feel and express genuine sympathy—but Artoo just seemed to know.

Luke sighed and patted the little droid’s domed cap, as if it were a pittin’s head. Through the gaping maw of the magnetically shielded shuttle port, the violet-white speck that was Nam Chorios’s primary glimmered against the powdery banners of starlight and galactic dust.

There was something about it. A curious tingling in the Force that Luke could feel even at this distance. What it might be, he didn’t know.

Do not meet with Ashgad.

Do not go to the Meridian sector.

“Can I be of any further assistance, Master Luke?” Threepio’s voice was diffident. Luke made himself smile, and shook his head.

“No. Thanks.”

“According to my internal chronometers, Her Excellency’s meeting with Master Ashgad should be concluding now. Normal departure protocols occupy on the average twenty minutes, and you did express a desire to be away from the Borealis before Master Ashgad returns to the shuttle bay.”

Luke glanced at the chronometer on the wall, an automatic gesture, since he knew Threepio’s internals were accurate to two or three beats of atomic vibration. “Right. Thank you. Both of you.” He hesitated, then slid the plast into the pocket of his gray flightsuit.

“Good luck, Master Luke,” said Threepio. He hesitated a moment, then added, “Given an estimated population of less than one million humans, and no indigenous life forms on Nam Chorios, chances of locating Lady Callista within a standard year should be well within the seventeenth percentile.”

Luke made himself smile again. “Thanks.” And the seventeenth percentile—in a year—wasn’t bad. Not when you considered how vast even the known portion of the galaxy was. It had been a year already, since the Knight Hammer had plunged blazing into the atmosphere of Yavin 4.

At least he had it narrowed down to one planet.

If she were still there.

Why Nam Chorios?

He was turning toward the ladder that led up to the B-wing’s hatch when the main bay doors opened. His sister entered, golden boot tips flashing beneath her figured gown and the great state robe of ruby velvet spreading behind her like a thranta’s wings