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“How about that—me, too! Another thing we have in common.”

“Stop it!” She looked surprised by the volume of her voice and looked around to see if anyone had noticed.

Donos looked, too, but the camp was still bustling with activity. No one stopped to peer at the source of the cry.

When he looked at Lara’s face again, though, something had changed. There was a stillness to her, a watchfulness that was almost reptilian. He suppressed an urge to step away from her.

“I could say twelve words,” Lara said, “and when I was done, the very least you’d do is turn away and leave me alone forever.”

He could tell that she was speaking the truth, and the fact that she had the power to do this, to send him away, dismayed him. “Then don’t say them.”

Donos had really only meant to let her know of his interest, perhaps to rattle her, but she now looked so distant and lost that he couldn’t just let her be. He put his arms around her and drew her to him.

When her lips met his, they were clenched tight and she was shaking. But then she relaxed into the kiss. Her arms snaked up around his neck. She made a noise that was part wail, and only he could hear it.

There she was, suddenly part of him, and he wondered how he’d ever lived so long without her being there.

Then she drew back her head, her remoteness gone, her expression a little curious, a little anxious.

“That’s more like it,” he said. And realized immediately that it was the wrong thing to say.

She gave him a look he could only imagine her normally offering to someone pouring paint into her X-wing’s engines. “Thanks,” she said. “For reminding me what a gasbag of ego you are.” She turned him around, trading places with him, and gave him a hard shove.

His head banged into the interceptor wing. “Ow,” he said.

She spun and walked away from him at a fast stride. “Stay away from me, Lieutenant,” she said. “Just keep away.”

Oh, well. Considering how badly he usually did with people, that hadn’t gone poorly at all. Donos sighed and headed back to his snubfighter, resisting the urge to whistle.

5

The landspeeder Seteem Ervic drove along the old country road was old and slow, but it was still powerful enough to haul a several-ton load of grain cakes from his family business to his customers in Lurark.

He ran a hand through what was left of his hair. He could buy a newer, sportier speeder, of course. But he hadn’t inherited the family’s failing concern and then built it into a flourishing business by throwing money away on nonessentials. He was almost rich. He’d never be rich if he loaded up on luxuries.

True, it had taken him years. Cost him his first wife, who said he was boring, that they never had anything to talk about. Cost him his hair, which had fallen away as the seasons had passed. At least his hair was something to talk about. And, true, nothing ever really happened to him. But he was almost rich, and that was what counted. If his brightest daughter turned out the way he expected her to, she’d take his solid business and make a worldwide concern out of it. And she’d be rich for real.

He rounded a bend in the dusty road and something happened to him.

There, a hundred meters up, something lay in the road. As he got closer, in spite of the glare from the sun, he could see it was a body—a human body. He slowed, and when he was a mere handful of meters away, locked the landspeeder down in hover mode and hopped out to take a look.

Human female, dark-skinned, eyes closed, lying in the dust as though she’d been thrown—from what? A speeder? There was no recent sign of repulsor traffic on this road. A riding animal? No hoof marks. In fact, there were no footprints around her.

She was wearing a black jumpsuit like a TIE fighter pilot’s, and her pose—lying on her back, one arm behind her head—suggested she was sleeping rather than injured. There was no sign of gross injury. She wasn’t even dusty.

He leaned closer. Maybe she wasn’t hurt. Maybe he wouldn’t have to interrupt his trip to the city. “Young lady?”

Her eyes popped open. She smiled,