Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 06_ Balance Point - Kathy Tyers [63]
Carrying Luke’s fighter in the bay, and escorted by Anakin in his own X-wing, she brought the Shadow over Duro’s south pole, using one of Ghent’s universal transponder codes. Groundside, they locked down Anakin’s X-wing, and R2-D2 rerouted Anakin’s shields to draw on a stack of spare power supplies, setting them to pull just enough power to protect the X-wing from Duro’s atmosphere. Then they all boarded Shadow again. Flying with Luke as copilot, Mara made a microjump outsystem, changed transponder codes, and they arrived at Duro as a well-heeled Kubaz family.
Drall and Selonian refugees, leaving Corellia while they still were considered first-class citizens, mingled with dockworkers of half a dozen other species retooling the civilian shipyards for military use. A horned Devaronian shouldered past three gray-skinned, long-faced Duros natives. A massive silver-tipped Wookiee plodded in the other direction. Mara caught a whiff of exotic perfume and spotted a comely Trianii swaggering up the corridor, drawing stares with her feline grace.
Mara still hadn’t felt anything unbalanced or unhealthy about the cluster of cells dividing, differentiating, digging ever more tightly into her body—none of the gut-wrenching signs of abnormality she’d felt in so many diseased cells. She was determined to take every day without ominous developments as a gift, and not worry how many more she might be given.
There’d been nightmares, though.
She eyed Anakin’s slightly slumped posture as he stood to one side of the rideway. She’d coached him in the characteristic Kubaz whirring accent, their cultured speaking style, and their gait, after nixing Luke’s idea of disguising themselves as Duros. It was always hard to pass for a native.
The rideway decanted them in a broad open area that their datapad labeled Duggan Station.
“Straight across,” Luke whirred at her, steering an elegant old luggage float.
At the other side of the open area, a Duros stood on a knee-high platform. She spoke through a powerful amplifier, addressing a crowd of fifty or sixty: almost exclusively Duros, but Mara spotted a Bith and two turquoise-skinned Sunesi.
Luke, walking point, halted and turned his face—what Mara could see of it—toward the speaker. “Listen to this,” he murmured, standing just a little closer than he usually did. Another woman might not have noticed, but Mara was exquisitely aware of her personal space.
The Duros on the platform spoke loudly, waving a knobby hand. “Independence is virrrtue,” she shouted. “In dangerrrous times, depending on an outside force for sustenance or defense could kill us all. If you cannot feed yourrr family group, you fail them. If you cannot protect yourrr own, you kill them. Arrre you murderers … or prrroviders?”
“Anakin,” Mara muttered, “go with Artoo, but stay in visual contact. Get a feel for the crowd. If you sense danger, get back over here.”
“Right,” he said. “Mom.”
Right in character.
“Symbiosis,” the Duros called, “has been prrreached since time immemorrrial. Has it made us frrree? Does it make us safe? They say we depend on each otherrr.” Now she took on a simpering tone. “That we need each otherrr. Hutt slime!”
Several Duros cheered.
“We, we must be strrrong. We, ourselves. Whoever needs help will fall. Each—one—of—us,” she cried, punctuating each word with a grunt, “must be strrrong enough to take what he wants. Or all will die. All!”
On Mara’s left side, a few Duros turned toward her, then moved aside, whispering. She didn’t catch any intent to attack, and her danger sense lay still, but she kept one hand near her lightsaber, under the dark cloak.
The speaker raised her arm, reaching toward a bank of lights that gave Duggan Station the appearance of yellowish daylight. “We are independent of the worrrld below.”
“Yes!” someone from the crowd