Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 10_ Jedi Bounty - Kevin J. Anderson [62]
At the heart of the plaza, a fountain with hundreds of tiers burbled, trickled, gushed, and spouted. The spectacular display reminded him of the Dro family's Ceremony of the Waters. It seemed to him like years since his entire family had gathered together for the celebration.
For the millionth time since his father's disappearance, Raynar found himself wishing that his whole family could be together again, wishing that he had remembered to enjoy those times more in the past....
"This view was one of the reasons Bornan and I chose this building for our headquarters." His mother wore her midnight-blue gown shot with silver and belted with a sash in the colors of the House of Thul.
Her fingers toyed with the sash and her lips curved in a faint smile.
"Somehow I feel closer to your father just standing here."
"He's in danger, you know," Raynar said.
Without looking away from the fountain, Aryn nodded. "Tell me what you've learned."
"It all started with the Twi'lek leader, Nolaa Tarkona. Dad was negotiating some trade agreements with her when he disappeared."
Gaze still fixed on the fountain, Aryn nodded.
"Bornan was planning to meet with her at the Shumavar trade conference...
but he never arrived."
"Well, Uncle Tyko was right about one thing.
Dad wasn't kidnapped. He decided to disappear, but he had a good reason.
Nolaa Tarkona had started an interplanetary political movement called the Diversity Alliance. It's supposed to bring nonhuman species together to right the wrongs of the past. Unfortunately, Nolaa Tarkona decided that the only way to right those wrongs was by destroying humans."
"But why should she have singled out Bornan?" Aryn asked.
"An alien scavenger named Fonterrat discovered an Imperial storehouse containing a plague that could kill humans quickly. Fonterrat offered to sell the information to Nolaa Tarkona, but he refused to deal directly with her. Instead he insisted that she send a neutral party to meet with him on the ancient planet Kuar."
"And so Nolaa Tarkona sent Bornan?" Aryn said.
"Right. As far as we know, Dad exchanged a time-locked case full of credits for a navicomputer that contained the location of the plague storehouse. Just a simple exchange. Dad was supposed to take the navicomputer to Nolaa Tarkona at the Shumavar conference. He would never even have known what he was carrying-but at the last minute I guess Fonterrat confessed it to him."
Still looking down at the bustling plaza far below, Aryn Dro Thul shook her head. "This plague sounds a little far-fetched. That scavenger could have been exaggerating."
"He wasn't," Raynat said. "The plague is real.
Fonterrat had given Nolaa Tarkona at least one sample, and Nolaa used that sample to booby-trap his payment. At Fonterrat's next stop, an all-human colony called Gammalin, the plague killed everyone. The colonists locked up Fontor-rat before the plague killed them, and he himself died in a tiny jail since no one was left alive to take care of him. Ever since then, Dad has been on the run, trying to keep the navicomputer away from Nolaa Tarkona. We can't let her get her hands on that plague, or the entire human race will be destroyed."
Aryn's shoulders dropped. "That sounds like your fatherrebut why didn't he simply destroy the navicomputer, or bring the information here to Coruscant?"
"It's not that easy," Raynar said. "We know that some members of the Diversity Alliance have infdtrated the New Republic government. A Bothan soldier wearing a New Republic uniform even tried to kill Lusa on Yavin 4. Maybe Dad suspected the information wasn't safe if he delivered it here."
"Yes, your father always had good people instincts," Aryn agreed.
"Then he probably also guessed that Nolaa Tarkona would stop at nothing to get that plague, with or without the navicomputer. When Jacen, Jaina, Tenel Ka, and