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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."

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, a tradition from their Alderaanian heritage. For the millionth time since his father's disappearance, Raynar found himself wishing that his whole family could be together again, and that he had remembered to enjoy those times more in the past....

"He's in danger, you know," Raynar said.

Without looking away from the fountain, Aryn nodded.

"Tell me what you've learned."

Raynar took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "It all started with the Twi' lek leader, Nolaa Tarkona. Dad was negotiating some trade agreements with her when he disappeared."

Her gaze still fixed on the fountain, Aryn nodded.

"Boman was planning to meet with her at the Shumavar trade conference...

but he never arrived."

"Dad decided to disappear, but he had a good reason. Nolaa Tarkona's interplanetary political movement, the Diversity Alliance, was supposed to bring nonhuman species together to right the wrongs of the past.

Unfortunately, Nolaa decided that the only way to right those wrongs was to destroy all humans."

"But why should she have singled out Borran?" Aryn asked.

"An alien scavenger named Fonterrat discovered an Imperial storehouse that held a plague that could kill humans specifically. 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 an ancient planet called Kuar."

"And so Nolaa Tarkona sent Boman?" Aryn said.

"Right. As far as we know, Dad traded a time - locked case full of credits for a navicomputer module that had the location of the plague store-house in its memory. Just a simple exchange. Dad was supposed to deliver the navicomputer to Nolaa Tarkona at the Shumavar conference.

He'd probably never 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.

"That scavenger could have been exaggerating about the plague."

"He wasn't," Raynar said. "Early in his negotiations with Nolaa Tarkona, Fonterrat gave her at least one sample. Nolaa used that sample to booby -

trap his payment. At Fonterrat's next stop, an all-human colony on Gammalin, the plague killed everyone. The colonists locked him up before the plague killed them, and Fonterrat died in a tiny jail, since no one was left alive to take care of him. If Nolaa Tarkona ever gets her hands on that plague, the entire human race will be destroyed. So, ever since he got the navicomputer from Fonterrat, Dad has been on the run, trying to keep it from her."

Aryn's shoulders drooped. "That sounds like your father-but why didn't he simply destroy the module, or bring the information here to Coruscant?"

"It's not that easy," Raynar said. "We know that some members of the Diversity Alliance have infiltrated 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 wouldn't be safe if he delivered it here."

"Yes, your father has 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 I were prisoners on Ryloth, we learned that she wants to release that plague and infect every last human in the galaxy."

"I wish I were there to help your father," Aryn said.

"I wish I could help him too," Raynar said, taking his mother's hand a bit awkwardly. It felt strange at first, but he had come to realize in the past months how easy