Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 06_ Balance Point - Kathy Tyers [38]
Luke raised an eyebrow. “For the last few minutes, anyway.”
The Chev woman halted about two meters from him. “Master Skywalker, and Mara.” Her voice was low and musical. “Forgive me for coming with urgent business.”
“That’s never a problem,” Luke said graciously. “Sit down, Tresina. Get your breath.” Again he glanced at Mara.
Mara shook her head. It’s nothing, she thought at him. She eyed the Chev woman.
“I’m all right,” Tresina said. Despite the woman’s Jedi discipline, Mara remembered her as someone who usually smiled—but not today. “I just got back from Duro,” she said. “I went out with my apprentice, Thrynni Vae.”
Mara nodded. In the last year, Luke had assigned Jedi listening teams to most major systems and some critical minor ones. She crossed her hands over her vest, just below her belt line, and pressed gently. She felt nothing through the vest—no lump, no defensive wriggle.
That was not good.
“Thrynni and I have been keeping watch on several Duros shipping concerns,” Tresina said. “The situation there has been quietly getting … complicated.”
“In what way?” Mara asked. This couldn’t be her disease, flaring up again. It couldn’t …
“Well, I hardly know where to start.” Tresina shook her head. “The Duros High House wasn’t at all thrilled by SELCORE’s reclamation proposal. Evidently their shipping concerns bought out a few representatives, and then SELCORE carried the vote.”
“Why would the shipping concerns do that?” Luke asked.
Meanwhile, Mara ran a fast physical inventory. She did feel oddly tired, infinitesimally wearier than listening to pompous councilors ought to make her. She’d never been able to sense the disease itself through the Force, but she did feel an odd thickening of her own cells, below the pit of her stomach.
It had attacked her reproductive system before. Not this time, she vowed. Back at their rooms, she still had a few precious drops of Vergere’s tears.
Luke frowned. Again Mara shook her head slightly, then stared at Tresina.
The Chev woman’s wheat-blond hair caught a gleam of the sunset light. “Thrynni and I thought we had a lead,” she said. “SELCORE’s contractor for outsystem goods, CorDuro Shipping, has been intercepting shipments. They’re letting out tapcaf talk that they’re reselling to other refugee groups, but there are quieter rumors of goods being stockpiled in another orbital city.”
“Interesting ruse,” Mara said, determined to concentrate. You stick to business, too, Skywalker!
“Then Thrynni heard a mechanic claim he’d been working on one city’s drive and steering unit. They’ve multiplied its drive power by factors of several hundred.”
“They want to be able to take it out of orbit,” Mara concluded. “They could retreat, if the Yuuzhan Vong attacked the refugees down on the planet.” Including Han, Jacen, and Leia. And now Jaina, according to a flagged medical report sent directly to Luke. “What are Duro’s defenses like?”
“There’s a Mon Cal light cruiser, Poesy. Fighter complement of E-wings and B-wings, and some local police craft they call Dagger-Ds, divided among Poesy and some of the cities.” Tresina finally sat down. “Thrynni and I were collecting information in the capital city, the one the Duros call Bburru. We traced some of the intercepted goods from one shipyard arm to another, where it left for another habitat—Urrdorf, the one that’s supposedly being modified.”
“And?” Mara prompted gently.
Tresina’s hands had tightened on the arms of her chair.
“Eleven days before I left Bburru,” Tresina answered, “Thrynni vanished.”
Luke didn’t look pleased when Mara left him with Tresina at NRI, nor when she claimed she needed to do something back at the suite, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t need to. She knew he’d get there as quickly as possible.
As she entered, R2-D2 rolled away from his post at the local-data feed in the kitchen and whistled a query.
“No, thanks, Artoo. I don’t need you at the moment.”
He wheeled around