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He clicked the transmitter again. This time, a soft series of tones answered.

Splendid! He leaned close to the transmitter. “This is Randa,” he said softly, keeping one eye on the sleeping Ryn guard. “Who is on watch?”

He heard static for a long time. Then, “Randa, where are you?”

His parent’s voice! “I am well,” he told her, “and on Duro. I have only moments. I might be able to buy our people some concessions from the Yuuzhan Vong.” On board the clustership, he’d seen that they were desperate to get Jedi in custody, for study. “There are two young Jedi here. I might be able to deliver one. If they would be interested, have them contact me at the settlement they call Thirty-two. It’s near a large open-pit mine that’s been made into a reservoir.”

“Well done, Randa,” Borga said. “Something with which to bargain—we have too little of that. The invaders do not seem to indulge themselves with any of our trade goods. We are trying to win rights to Tatooine as a safe world. I will do what I can.”

The moment Randa signed off, he wondered if he’d done the right thing. Selling Jacen might be a mistake. Jacen still might join him, if Jaina led the way.

Well, he could always claim the young human escaped. With two options open—his fantasies of a strike team, and the chance of buying his people a haven—one or the other would surely turn for his benefit. Maybe both.

He turned his head slightly.

The ineffectual Ryn guard slept on.

Keeping peace on a team of research scientists, who were competing for limited resources, was starting to remind Leia of trying to feed two-year-old, Force-strong twins from the same plate. Only her hopes for a reborn world and a refugee haven kept her going.

One woman pounded Leia’s makeshift conference table. “Our best hope,” she said, scowling, “is to develop that ‘master net.’ Without a self-perpetuating web of interdependent organisms, everything we do will either undo itself in less than a generation or else overbreed without natural controls. We can—”

“Overbreed?” Dr. Plee, the Ho’Din, folded his long, pale-green arms over his lab coat. “At the moment, unless they do overbreed, how in Kessel are we going to make any headway? They’ve given us a planet, and it’s a planet we’ve got to get under control … and he’s no help at all.”

Overbreed? The Yuuzhan Vong had to breed like crazy, Leia reflected. Otherwise, how could they throw away so many warriors’ lives?

Then she frowned at the single vacant chair. Once again, Dassid Cree’Ar had begged off by comlink. Once, she hadn’t minded it. Three times, she disliked it. But this made five meetings out of five. No wonder Cree’ar’s fellow workers resented him.

“He’s reactive,” the meteorologist said. “He responds to crises only if we point them out.”

The microbiologist raised a finger. “But he has solved every one of them. We’ve kept him so busy fixing our problems that he hasn’t had time to do anything original lately.”

“So put him to work on your master web,” Dr. Plee growled. “Get this world seeded and clean it up, so we can take down these domes. I’m not claustrophobic, but—”

“The Sith you’re not.” Aj Koenes, the big Talz, nudged him with a powerful-looking furry arm. “I’ve seen your—”

Leia pushed wearily to her feet. “Does anyone else have a progress report?”

Sidris Kolb stood. “Cloud seeding is off to a shaky start, but—”

“Shaky?” demanded Cawa, a Quarren who had missed the previous meeting. “I asked you to delay that another six weeks. I’ve barely made headway with existing surface water. The last rainfall samples we took had six hundred parts per million of—”

And they were off again.

This time, Leia let them run. Sadly, everyone’s project seemed to threaten everyone else’s. Interlinked as they were, they ought to support each other. She would find a way to make them cooperate, or else she’d send them all home and start over with a fresh crew. Duro was too important to lose to their bickering.

Not many hours later, another emergency called