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Nothing happened.

She tried stroking another spot, slightly left, away from the blur’s center.

Still nothing. Meanwhile, her mind raced. What if she needed to draw her lightsaber? She could hardly see the guy!

He batted his face distractedly, the way a nerf herder might flick away summergnats.

But she’d practiced endlessly against remotes, sometimes blindfolded. Remotes had no more Force presence than a Yuuzhan Vong.

She pressed outward again.

Mara sat stiff-backed on Cree’Ar’s shipping crate, as if it were a baronial throne. Dr. Cree’Ar had finally consented to explain some of his philosophy.

“… undermine local jurisdictions, and … ai!”

He flung up both knobby hands, but not before Mara saw something horribly familiar. Just below one of the dark folds that crossed his face, his gray hide rippled. A corner peeled back, exposing pale skin and the edge of a black tattoo.

She sprang to her feet, seized her lightsaber out of her amethyst-colored tunic’s folds, and activated it. Instantly, Jaina jumped back, whipping her own lightsaber from her dark, heavy sleeve.

Blue-gray skin kept shrinking, revealing a skeletal face with bluish eye sacs. As if his hide had turned to liquid, the loose flap melted down inside his laboratory coat.

Cree’Ar stood his ground, laughing. For all Mara could see, he was unarmed.

“Don’t move,” she warned him. “You’re not wearing armor, and you’re vulnerable.”

Cree’Ar’s laughter died, and his pale lip curled. “Mara Jade Skywalker, is it? Why aren’t you dead?”

Caught off guard, Mara demanded, “Have we met?”

The Yuuzhan Vong tossed back his hideous head. “No wonder the New Republic can’t hold on to a galaxy. Even its so-called heroes are stupid. Yes, we have met. I’ve nearly killed you.”

Jaina took one step closer. “I know that voice,” she muttered.

“You should,” the alien growled. “Let me give you a hint—”

“Rhommamool.” Jaina held her lightsaber low. “You’re Nom Anor! You tricked people into believing you were human, then you tricked them into thinking you were killed.”

He inclined his head. “You, at least, approach worthiness. But you are not worthy yet.”

Mara gripped her lightsaber, thinking back to another meeting with Nom Anor, at Monor II. The native Sunesi had invited several hundred diplomats to the accession of their tenth priest-prince, Agapos the Tenth. Some trigger-poppy splinter group had threatened a minor diplomat from Coruscant, so Mara went along as a bodyguard. She’d also wanted to see Monor II’s glittering, cirrifog-laden atmosphere.

“You wore a black mask and black robes,” Jaina said. “What happened to your slave, that mousy little man?”

The creature’s lips peeled back in a sneer. “Shok Tinoktin was well rewarded for faithful service.”

Mara glanced around the laboratory. Even if Anor had biological weapons in plain sight, she might not recognize them—but she would love to catch him alive. She’d made a science of stomping on massive egos, of throwing people off guard and probing for their weaknesses.

“So the petty troublemaker is making petty trouble again,” she said, raising one eyebrow.

“Petty?” He reached toward the lab bench.

“Freeze,” she ordered. “Pick anything up and you’re dead.”

His fingers twitched toward the flask, the one he had been holding when she entered the room. “You couldn’t reach me before I threw this. It’s full of coomb spores, Jade Skywalker. The spores I painted on a hundred abominable breath masks, before that outdoor ceremony.”

Mara’s stomach lurched. “They didn’t all sicken right away,” she recalled. She’d fallen ill two months later. “The epidemiologists eventually concluded multiple causes.” But that occasion had been fingered as the single time all those sick people were in one place.

He laughed. “They were meant to conclude that. The coomb spore’s sheath dissolves at different rates in different species. This is your worst fear, Jedi.” His fingers twitched again. “Relapse. Weakness. Death. A much higher dose than before, and that was fatal in all other cases. All species.”

In that instant, she realized how vulnerable