Free The Bacta War by Michael A. Stackpole

a moustache on Jula made telling them apart rather simple. Likewise, the fact that Jula’s hard work on a moisture farm had left him harder and more weathered than his prosperous brother helped differentiate them. There definitely seemed to be affection between the brothers, though Huff tended to keep Jula in his place by referring to the cost of this item or that and feigning astonishment when Jula said he didn’t own one.
    Jula, for his part, showed incredible restraint and even resignation over his brother’s lack of manners. Corran shook his head. If I had a brother and got that treatment from him, my sister-in-law would be a widow . Jula’s responses were polite, and in some ways his forbearance seemed to bother Huff more than any direct confrontation would have.
    Gavin’s mother, Silya, could have been Lanal Darklighter’stwin. Her concern for Gavin rolled through every question and comment, though she managed to avoid tears all but once or twice. In the way she looked at Gavin, Corran recognized the same expression his mother wore when he graduated from the Corellian Security Force Academy. Pride and fear—a mother’s dreams and her nightmares—fight for supremacy .
    The focus of the gathering quickly became Gavin. He thrilled his cousins and younger siblings with stories of what he’d seen and done, though Corran noted that he downplayed nearly getting killed on Talasea. That didn’t surprise him, but it was also clear to Corran that Jula had not missed what had gone unsaid. The specter of Biggs’s death formed the foundation for every question and comment.
    And the comparison of Gavin with Biggs fuels the analysis of stories he’s telling . There was no doubt that Biggs had been a hero and had acted heroically. His death at Yavin had allowed Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star. His death marked the extreme danger of the situation and was not unexpected, given the circumstances. Even so, the situations in which Gavin found himself were no less perilous, yet he had survived them. To Corran’s mind, Gavin’s parents had to be thinking that made him better than Biggs in some undefinable away, and for Huff it planted the seeds of doubt about how great his son truly was.
    Because he had been an only child born of only children, the Darklighter family gathering gave Corran a window into a whole different family dynamic. Because there were so many children among whom things were shared, personal boundaries and the ideas of ownership were weakened. Younger kids seemed to see every adult as part of the family, fearlessly climbing into laps or asking permission or asking for help.
    At first this threatened Corran—in part because of the utter chaos of the situation but mostly because the children thrust responsibility into his hands. The fact that none of the Darklighters seemed to mind their children paying him attention—as long as the kids didn’t seem to be bothering him or to be ill-mannered—meant he had to accept that responsibilityand act on it. The openness of the families drew him in and they accepted him, but Corran was uncertain if he was ready to be accepted.
    Mirax and her father, by way of contrast, formed a little insulated party within the grander goings-on. The hushed tones of their conversation, their quiet laughter and their general ease with each other reminded Corran very sharply of the relationship he’d had with his own father. Hal Horn had been friend and confidant as well as parent and work associate. Corran had always thought of family as a place where he could open himself up and get advice without fearing censure or ridicule. Shared blood meant a bottom-line alliance that no disagreement could shatter . He and his father had disagreed on plenty of things, but that which united them was far stronger than anything that could divide them.
    Despite the efforts of everyone to include him in what was going on, Corran began to retreat a bit as melancholy over his father’s death