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“What do you mean, the rest of it isn’t coming until next week? We need that allotment. The new hydroponics will stall without soluble potash, or whatever it is. Blast those Duros!”

The supply clerk, to his credit, sat there and took it until she paused for breath.

“Sorry,” Leia muttered. “Not your fault. We’re all getting a little short in the fuse, and I am glad to get that mining laser. Can you open a line to Bburru?”

Ten minutes later, she was getting another runaround on the ground-orbit comm unit. “Listen,” she said, gritting her teeth to keep from shouting. “I want that stuff here, where it belongs. I’ve got the biggest population onworld.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” the voice on the other end said. “CorDuro took that shipment to Settlement Thirty-two for their water treatment plant, with an allowance for next month. They do supply you with—”

“Next month?” Incredulous, Leia glared at the GOCU. “They think we can stockpile? Who is this guy?”

The shipping clerk shook his head. “He seemed to feel that since the water purification benefits your people even more than his own, you wouldn’t mind. Do you want to send a message?”

“I’m too busy to waste the effort. Contact SELCORE and see if we can get a duplicate shipment.” And a new administrator for Settlement Thirty-two, she would’ve added, if she’d thought it would do any good. Maybe SELCORE could draft Lando and Tendra.

Down a stone tunnel between Gateway’s laboratory building and the toxic marshes, Nom Anor had set up an underground office. Leia Organa Solo’s people had dug out the long tunnel; he’d created a side passage, using small organisms that fed on soft rock. As they bloated and died, he disposed of them by the thousands, deep in the marshes. There they decomposed, their gut bacteria working the “miracles” that delighted Organa Solo’s people.

He marched through his outer chamber, fingering the disengagement spot on his gablith masquer. Pore by pore, it pulled out of his body. He gritted his teeth. Unlike Warmaster Tsavong Lah and the rest of them, he did not believe that his pain fed the gods. He claimed to serve Yun-Harla, the Trickster—and if she did exist, she probably loved the deception—but Nom Anor served only himself, and his chance of promotion. He had told the warmaster the truth, by one definition. Leia Organa Solo was not true Jedi, and her daughter still was not proven—but if Tsavong Lah thought of them that way, he would be all the more impressed when Nom Anor destroyed them.

As soon as Thirty-two collapsed, Organa Solo would probably put him to work analyzing the catastrophe. He wished he didn’t have to avoid her. He would love to see her face when they brought word that her children had been caught in the disaster.

He shook off the semisolid mass of masquer around his ankles, then stretched languorously, relishing the sensation of free, living air on his own skin. He had an hour to spare. To relax.

He plucked one of his tiny pets off the wall and hefted it one-handed. It didn’t feel quite fully grown, which made it perfect for another purpose. Stretching up, he pressed its wriggling cilia deep into a ceiling crack. He’d weakened several sections of ceiling this way, then stationed other kinds of creatures down in the fracture zones. On his command, they could inflate themselves like woodcutters’ wedges, bringing down long or deep stretches of ceiling.

It was simply one more precaution.

Jacen crouched at the edge of a hut, scraping wormlike creatures off the underside of its synthplas eaves.

“They could be edible,” Mezza cautioned, gripping her hips to make a bunch of culottes fabric on each side. One of her people had found these creatures less than an hour ago. “Maybe we could raise them? Extra protein for the phraig stew?”

Jacen tried not to gag as he sealed his sample sack. “It’s a thought. But feel this spot on the eaves. There’s a pit.” He ran a hand along the area where he’d scraped off the wriggling, finger-length creatures. “They’re actually