“I told you I don’t want your help with this.” Cair held up his hook. “I’m managing just fine.”

  “You can’t play your dulcimer with that,” Xylan scoffed.

  “He said no, Graf,” Ino’olo said.

  Avar stood up. Everyone stopped and looked at her. Avar calmly said, “Can this wait a little while longer?”

  “Yes.” Cair pushed at Xylan’s stomach with the curved side of the hook. “Go away.”

  Xylan glanced at the specialist with a nod, and she just as efficiently packed up her display and headed for the door. Then Xylan smiled briefly at Avar. “My apologies for the interruption. Do continue.”

  With a flourish he tossed back the wild orange tails of his jacket and sat on an elegant wingback chair a bit off to the side of the table. He made it look like a pretty throne. Then he stared at Cair and said very seriously, “If you truly want me to leave, I will, but I’m taking my dog.”

  Plinka heaved herself up and padded over, settling again so that her forepaws nudged Xylan’s polished boot and her fluffy white tail flapped gently against Cair’s.

  Ino’olo crossed her arms over her chest and sat down, too, where she had a perfect view of Xylan to glare coldly at.

  Avar was glad she didn’t have to stay here for very long herself. As someone who’d spent her fair share of time yearning, Avar hoped the two men could work this out, but it really wasn’t her business. She cleared her throat. “All right. Cair, if you can gather the information you do have about possible locations of the blight in the O.Z., I’d appreciate it. We don’t know anything about it, why it’s appearing, if there’s a pattern to it. We can’t find the correct pattern until we have all the data.”

  “Sure.” He leaned in and started tapping. “We could try one of the algorithms we used to use to plot new hyperspace routes. It suggests potential terminus points with a set of data as if the data were a route. If we have enough about the blight, then maybe it can be reversed so there’s an origin point instead of terminus.”

  Cair quickly outlined his information, including commentary such as who had provided it and how many degrees of separation he was from the source, and together they decided how viable the data was. Ino’olo had a lot of input, clearly having spent time previously scouring immense amounts of data to find reliable and useful information. Once or twice Xylan threw in a comment, earning sharp looks from both Cair and Ino’olo, but he was making decent suggestions based on what he knew personally of how the Nihil did and did not work. Avar hoped Xylan was scheduled for a very long conversation with several Jedi to analyze everything he knew.

  And Avar listened, open to the Force, to the intricate play of melodies in this room. Ino’olo’s underlying earnest desire to help and soft loyalty was a running, thrumming bass, Cair’s passion was like scales dancing up and down a harp, and Xylan’s skittering flute kept high and apart from the company but tied in rhythm and theme to his husband. Even Plinka had a Force song, and it was a pinging happy harmony. Avar listened and wove it together with her breath.

  And she let the Force narrow her focus on two of the planets from their “viable” category. She studied them and realized the connection.

  “There were Drengir here,” she said suddenly.

  The song around her sharpened.

  “Drengir,” Xylan said with obvious disdain. “I thought you all took care of those monsters.”

  Avar didn’t answer directly but said, “Here and here,” pointing to the map. “I personally engaged with them on Selvernis. Before the Stormwall. There wasn’t blight there then, at least not noticeably.”

  Cair frowned as he flicked through information on the smaller display screen before him.

  “We should find out if any of these other worlds have had such Drengir sightings,” Avar said.

  “Why?” Ino’olo asked.

  “We are sure the Nihil were responsible for propagating the Drengir problem as widely as it was. They dropped Drengir offspring and seeds across the galaxy to distract us. Why not use the same tactic again? If they are behind the blight, the Drengir connection might help us find a pattern, or determine if it’s truly scattershot.”

  Cair said, “When you get somebody back through the Stormwall, we should ask Belin and Rhil for the most up-to-date information. Or…you should go yourself.”

  “Yes,” Avar said. “I’ll see to it. Get me what you want me to say or send.”

  “I want to go with you,” Cair said, standing.

  Xylan immediately huffed in outrage.

  “No,” Avar said. “Thank you. But no. You need to keep healing, and this is Jedi business now. We can handle it. We will.”

  Cair stepped toward her. “Let me help, if you think of anything I can do.”

  “I will.” She held out a hand, and he took it.

  “May the Force be with you,” Cair said quietly. The yearning in him was sweet, rippling through the Force.

  Avar smiled. “Let the people who love you take care of you for a little while.”

  Then she nodded to Ino’olo and Xylan, the latter of whom exuded a much more frustrated kind of yearning. When Avar left, she was already mentally composing the message she would record for Elzar, explaining they’d have to miss out on sharing dinner yet again.

  Chapter Fifty

  Oanne, Republic Space, Border of the Occlusion Zone

  Burry gasped with his renewed effort, pushing back against the blight. His hands trembled, held out before him in the air as they directed the Force—shoving, reaching, yearning.

  He trembled. His lungs ached as if he hadn’t been breathing.

  His shoulder was hot, but he shrugged it away, focused. He felt it: longing, ache, a…loneliness, and the deepest silence he’d ever imagined. A silence so vast it might swallow an entire planet.

  Burry pushed back.

  He breathed, though it hurt. He pushed back again. He would not be silent—could not. Life was loud.

  Something suddenly rang in his skull, and he cried out, snapping awake.

  “Burry!” came a voice he knew. It had been yelling his name for a long time.

  Burry blinked, rubbed his eyes. He felt awash in…in…he wasn’t sure. He was dizzy, though.

  Taking a few breaths to center himself, Burry blinked his eyes open again. It was Bell. Bell. Zettifar. He knew Bell. Bell was his partner.

  Ember whined beside them.

  He groaned an apology in Shyriiwook.

  “It’s all right, Burry,” Bell said. “Are you okay?”

  Burry nodded automatically but then sighed harshly and actually performed a quick self-scan. Other than the echo of pain in his head, he was stiff and hot, and he ached with exhaustion. His stomach rolled over in a twisted combination of hunger and nausea. He told Bell he needed to eat.

  Bell smiled, despite the tightness around the human’s dark mouth and eyes. “You were deep in that meditation.”

  Slowly, Burry became aware of the drifting pinkseeds and the forest around them.

  Oanne, the Elia-An colony. Arryssslesh, the medicine artist who’d sent for help because their nativity forest was being…

  Burry cried out softly, turning to glance at the blight.

  The sight that greeted him was horrifying and shocking. The forest, turned to gray, retained the shape of trees—trunks, branches, even individual leaves, though many had scattered to particles of sand or ash. All that remained. He could see the outline of what had been animals, too: rodents and birds, dropped where Burry and Bell were, trying to escape. Worse: The line of ash, of devastation, had grown nearer to where they were, had crept beyond the trees he remembered from when he sat down to work. But it was uneven.

  A small semicircle seemed cut out of the blight line, right before where Burry himself sat.

  It had worked.

  Burry had held the blight off with the Force. But only the slightest bit.

  He swayed, lightheaded.

  “Careful, Burry. You were in that trance for about five hours,” Bell answered. The human crouched next to where Burry sat with his legs folded under him on the soft grasses.

  Burry’s heart fell. He’d depleted himself in so little time and barely kept the blight away.

  Tiny leaves on the trees curled before his eyes, turning gray ever so slowly, and the wind scattered the tips of the nativity trees into ash.

  He could keep trying. But it would only stave off the inevitable.

  Maybe that was worth it.

  The charhound Ember’s fur flashed to life in little lines of fire as if she was agitated. Burry looked around, anxious, but Bell only patted the hound’s head and tugged one ear. “She’s worried about you, Burry. So am I. You were…shaking.”

  It had been difficult, and Burry tried to explain.

  “I see.” Bell pointed at the arc of forest Burry had seemingly protected.

  Burry needed to rest, get his bearings, and then push again. He asked if Bell thought the two of them could push together, forge a connection and double the strength of their push.

  Bell shook his head. “We have to go. We need to report this and keep looking for Drengir.”

  Burry surged to his feet and shook his head emphatically. He swayed again and Bell jumped up to catch his elbow. Burry shook him off. He insisted they needed to help the Elia-An.

  “Help them what, Burry? You were killing yourself.”

  Burry shook his head, roaring softly in frustration. How could Bell not get it? The Elia-An wouldn’t leave. They couldn’t. They would die if they left, but if this blight destroyed their nativity trees, they’d die anyway. This planet was too much like Burry’s homeworld. He understood what was at stake here. He had to stop it. He had to. He couldn’t watch this world die.

  “Burry, what you’re doing isn’t enough.”

  Burry reared back, shocked.

  Bell held out his hands. “I watched what you were doing. It was working, but only right here, and with all your effort. Whatever this is, we need to know more, and we need more Jedi, more people who can do what you’re doing. Otherwise what will you do but make a tiny island of safety, and for how long? It won’t be enough to save them.”

  Burry stared at Bell. His friend’s words pounded at him. “Won’t be enough” was not something Burry wanted to face again. Not ever. Not after Starlight, not after the cave in the Eiram ocean where he’d spent weeks starving and desperate, completely alone. Where he’d pulled out his own hair, throwing tiny hopeless pleas into the roiling sea. Where he’d wondered if there was any point in trying to feed himself anymore or if he should just let the Force keep him forever. He’d stopped talking to himself just to hear something other than the roar of the vortex, stopped picturing rescue, stopped hoping. Because nothing he’d done then had been enough.

  Burry had thought, so quietly, tucked away in the darkest part of his mind, Even the Force isn’t enough sometimes.

  But then he’d lived, and he’d promised himself he’d never give up again.

  He couldn’t give up on this. If it didn’t matter to push at this now, how could anything ever matter?

  “Burry, you’re panting. I think you’re hyperventilating.” Bell grabbed Burry’s shoulders and used all his strength to shake him once. “Breathe, Burryaga. Breathe.”

  Burry tried. His chest heaved, stuttered. He closed his eyes.

  Bell smacked a hand on his chest, shoving aside his tabard and the strap of his lightsaber holster. He thumped his palm to Burry’s chest again and again. “Breathe. Breathe.”

  It took a long moment, but Burry focused on the hits, on Bell’s voice. On the shriek of insects in the living part of the forest—the part still alive! Those insects, they didn’t know. They didn’t know what was coming for them. He felt the wind in his long hair, ruffling his braids so a few of the tiny beads clacked together. He heard Ember’s sparking cough.

  “I’m here,” Bell said.

  The ache of the blight burned at the edges of Burry’s senses. It nibbled painful, yearning bites against his emotions, the living Force inside him. Burry pushed at it more gently this time. Not to fight it but to free himself of it.

  He breathed, he leaned down until his forehead touched Bell’s. They made an arch, and Ember’s tail whapped against Burry’s thigh.

  “I am here,” Burry said.

  “I’m glad, my friend,” Bell answered. “I know it’s hard. I want to help them, too. We need to know the best way to do it, though.”

  Burry straightened up, glancing at the line of awful gray death. He could see the shell of a nativity tree crumbling.

  He looked the other way, and there were more of the trees, lighting up along their heartlines with that bluish phosphorescence.

  And there was Arryssslesh, her spines lighting in the same patterns. The connection between the Elia-An and their nativity trees.

  In the closest he could come to Arryssslesh’s language, he told them he had to go, but that he wouldn’t abandon them.

  “We understand,” the medicine artist said.

  “The Jedi want to help,” Bell added, triggering his translation device again. “I promise, if we can stop it, when we know how, we’ll be here.”

  “We will be here, too,” Arryssslesh said. “We have nowhere else to go.”

  Burry didn’t know what to say. There was nothing. If this were Kashyyyk, he did not know if he would be able to make his feet move.

  But then again, Bell would be there to help him.

  Burry walked to the medicine artist and bent to his knees again, lowered his head to her.

  She put one long-fingered hand on his cheek. Patted him lovingly.

  As they hurried back to their Vector, Burry couldn’t help glancing over his shoulder to watch the blight.

  They would need help. So much help. People to measure the speed of the blight’s spread. Scientists to experiment and try to understand. And Jedi who could be spared to keep pushing at it to protect the living Force of this world before it was all drained away.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Isolt, Inside the Occlusion Zone

  Once, Isolt had been a pastoral world of lively green, but over a year ago, the Nihil had bombed it repeatedly, aiming for the caldera in the north. Some enterprising Nihil wanted to know if they could trigger a super eruption as had occurred on Dalna. The bombing had destroyed nearly all life there. And they had managed to cause at least one major volcanic eruption.

  Now Isolt was quiet. The comm buoys had been diverted long ago, and interstellar traffic avoided the area even more than most places in the Occlusion Zone. It was a prime location for a secret enemy base, if Porter was honest. And he liked to be honest, especially with himself.

  He set his shuttle down a three-day hike from the exact location specified by Viess in her invitation. There, at the edges of the volcanic activity, life had already begun creeping back. Vivid-green grass sprouted everywhere, and the charred trees were surrounded by seedlings. Porter even picked his way around a small meadow of tiny orangish flowers whose faces followed the dark sun.

  On the third day, after suffering through stinky sulfur pockets and gaseous springs, passing ruins of settlements and sometimes skeletal remains, Porter reached the outskirts of the small base Viess had created on a low platform over the bed of an extinct river long since turned to steam.

  Sweating, Porter found high ground and settled down to observe. He had thermal blankets, dried rations, a dull all-weather cloak that blended with the landscape, macrobinocs, and his lightsaber. What more did he need for this hunt?

  For two more days he watched.

  The base consisted of two buildings, one that he guessed was an operations center, the other a barracks and garage for various speeders and short-range ships. Two Strikeships were docked at the edges of the low platform. Porter estimated there were only about thirty Nihil here, and half of those were affiliated mechanics and cooks and service personnel.

  In the dead of night, he slipped down the rough slope, closer and closer, waiting for the sudden onset of fear.

  Porter walked the long perimeter of the platform, moving nearer every few meters to test for the presence of the Nameless. He had to be extremely gentle, knowing that if he was near enough to sense them, they could likely feel his strength in the Force, too. He didn’t want to alert the creatures, and therefore the Nihil, that he was here and biding his time.

  During the day he returned to his dugout, chewed on a few rations, and meditated. He didn’t let his thoughts turn toward the past, toward his sister.

  It had been so long.

  The same number of days that he’d known Viess, he’d missed Barash.

  Porter did not think of it, and instead let the Force flow through him. He was not alone.

  A second night he returned, testing the edges of Viess’s defenses again. Listening, he reached out with the Force.

  The fear never came. She didn’t have Nameless here.

  Another clear invitation.

  Porter was almost amused at the transparency.

  He didn’t let himself wonder what Barash would do.

  As quickly as he could under stealth conditions, Porter returned to his shuttle and gathered what he needed to make a few delicate little explosives.

  * * *

  —

  In the early morning, before sunrise, Porter slipped to the southern rim of the base platform, hunkering down as near as he could get. He kept his mind blank as he put his rebreather on, ready for fire and smoke—and the gas so favored by the Nihil. Using the Force to carefully compress the trigger mechanisms, Porter sent the explosives in high arcs up and up, until they hovered over the center of the compound. He released his grip, and they fell hard as the triggers popped. Just as alarms screamed to life, explosions ripped across the southern wall.